The Basement: William Shatner | Beyond the Final Frontier: Life, Death, and What Comes After

-It’s time to upgrade your nicotine pouch. Get 20% off your first order by using code BASEMENT at https://Lucy.co #ad -If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://ForThePeople.com/WHY -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovegold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code WHYFILES at https://cowboycolostrum.com/whyfiles William Shatner joins us on The Basement to talk about the masks we wear for the people we love. Then the conversation turns to stranger ground. In 1967, Shatner crashed his dirt bike into a prospector’s trench in the Mojave Desert, alone and baking in his leathers. Over the ridge stood a figure dressed in silver, and it led him somewhere. He also opens up about surviving stage 4 melanoma in the same stretch of time his daughter faced her own diagnosis. He shares the phone call he made to his dying sister, and what it taught him about Captain Kirk’s final words. From Spinoza to the Great Pyramid’s hidden hum, this is a man still asking big questions. What do we see at the very end? Shatner has a theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:30AJ Gentile?

  Today, we're sitting down with William Shatner. Since August, he's put out an album with Brad Paisley, started a heavy metal band, and finished a book of poems about living and dying. He's 95, by the way. His new album opens with a song called "Masks", about the ones we all wear. That's where we started, and that's where he kept going. The stage-four cancer he and his daughter fought at the same time, a man in silver in the Mojave Desert, and why he wants to be buried under a tree. I made it almost the whole hour without saying the word Kirk. When I finally asked about his last line in Generations, Bill went somewhere, and I didn't see coming.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Bill? He lets you call him Bill? Uh, Ewing, did your dream come true? Uh, did he say anything about me? Uh, did he smell like leather and Priceline?

• 1:16AJ Gentile?

  Settle down.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

• 1:17AJ Gentile?

  This one's shorter than usual. He had to get home to his dogs, but I could have talked to him for hours. After a conversation, I'll come back and break down the talk. Let's go down to Bill's basement.

• 1:36AJ Gentile?

  A few weeks ago, you had to do Riot Fest in Chicago.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:39AJ Gentile?

  Um, in front of the crowd. It's cold, it's rainy.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Thousands of people in the rain in Chicago.

• 1:46AJ Gentile?

  Screaming.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Screaming.

• 1:48AJ Gentile?

  Take me to the wings, though. What's going in your ear before you step out?

• 1:53Speaker 03

  So, either it was here, at home. I worked very hard for months because heavy metal music, like a symphony orchestra, doesn't have a... The non-musician doesn't know the count of when you come in, when you come in and when you go out, essentially. Oh, say, can you see? Well, I recognize that. Oh, say, can you see? But people like me don't know where to, you know, come in and get a nod. Um, a couple of days ago, I was on, uh, late-night television doing one of the songs for my, my album, and Brad Paisley was the musician. So, there was a gap between... So Brad said, "I'll nod you in."

• 2:38Speaker 03

  He's wearing a cowboy hat, okay? So he says, "I'll nod you in." Uh, nod you in is good, come in. And then you begin... So he's like...

• 2:52Speaker 03

  He's nodding the whole time. I didn't know which nod I should take. There was a stereo, "Oh, I'll take that nod." Uh, and the same with Chicago. I worked very hard of when to come in and when to wait for the brilliant musicians they... That, uh, the name of the album is, uh, "What the F is Heavy Metal", which is what I said when the album, when the label said, "Why don't we do a heavy metal?" And I said, "What the F is Heavy Metal"? Uh, that's a good title for the album. So that'll be out in the wintertime. In the meantime, there's all kinds of things out there now. Books and albums and, oh, my God.

• 3:28AJ Gentile?

  I'm gonna get to the list.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I, I'm sure you will. But what I'm saying is it requires a lot of talking. And I'm trying to remember, what was the name of that album? And so, yes, "Love and Other Mysteries". No, "Love and Other" is the Brad Paisley album. The, the, the heavy metal album. Three songs that Robert, Sherno, and I wrote, and three cover songs, six songs, a half hour. They call it a set. Did you know that?

• 3:54AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  I didn't know that. You did a set, I did a set. Uh, and, uh, so 30 minutes in a heavy metal, uh, festival, one of the big ones, and, uh, and thousands of people in a mosh pit and... And I said, "It's raining." When we got to the thing, I said to the venue, I said, "Will anybody be there?" They said, "No, they'll be there." They expect rain.

• 4:20AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Rain is part of the agony of heavy metal. Oh, my Lord, it was such an experience. It was, it was beyond anything I've ever experienced before. As a result, maybe not quite as a result.

• 4:35AJ Gentile?

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• 5:20AJ Gentile?

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• 5:59Speaker 03

  When they announced that I'm gonna do heavy metal, 50 of the best Brian, Brian...

• 6:05AJ Gentile?

  May?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  May. Brian May.

• 6:08AJ Gentile?

  AKA the astrophysicist.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Uh, exactly. And AKA the great guitarist on Queen.

• 6:16AJ Gentile?

  He's playing on your record, right?

• 6:17Speaker 03

  He's playing on a number that Robert and I wrote called Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light. So the numbers we wrote, and the three numbers I did at, uh, at Riot Fest, those three numbers that we wrote are part of a legacy we've given ourselves of five or six albums of numbers that Robert and I wrote based on autobiographical material. Leaving Montreal to go to Toronto, I'm leaving Ca... I've graduated university. Uh, this is a note I've gotta follow right now.

• 6:56AJ Gentile?

  If it says "kick me", somebody's fired.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Actually, it says "No Time to Die", "Launch", "Love and Other Mysteries". Oh, that should... My, my beautiful, uh, assistant. "Wisdom and Other Words" is the name of the, the, the book I'm about to tell you about. So, we, uh, we wrote, Rob and I wrote five, uh, five of the, of the songs in the, in the heavy metal album, and the rest, six or seven or eight, are cover songs. We did three of the songs we wrote and three of the cover songs for Riot Fest, and it went very well.

• 7:38AJ Gentile?

  What about "Impatience"? Did you do that one, or is that gonna be in the record?

• 7:42Speaker 03

  That's interesting. So, so we're assembling, you know, what are we writing? That's, are we gonna continue writing of my life's experience, but in that passion? Rage Against the Dying of the Light? You know, uh, what will they do when the sky turns black? One about the, the planet, so it has that passion.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  What'll they do?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  So, Brian May saw the lyric to Rage, and he does essentially a solo, and it's brilliant. So one of the songs that we wrote as Brian May, maybe the greatest guitarist?

• 8:30AJ Gentile?

  Maybe.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Maybe. There are a couple of others. Brad Paisley himself, who accompanies me in this album, "Love and Other Mysteries", Taylor Goldsmith, do you know that name? Virtuoso guitarist, so two virtuoso guitarists on my album, including Brad's band, who are filled with brilliant musicians. So "Love and Other Mysteries", which I did on, on the late-night show, uh, is wonderful. And, uh, and I did a song that we wrote called "Masks". We all wear masks. You may wear a mask to your wife, you wear a mask to your, to your girlfriend,

• 9:16Speaker 03

  you marry a mask to your child, to your mother, your father. We're all wearing different masks. And is that anything, any different than I as an actor who wear masks?

• 9:26AJ Gentile?

  I wanted to ask you about that because you said you're afraid to go out without your mask.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  And I, I, the last line of the song is, "I'll never go out without a mask." Well, you inadvertently wear a mask. I'm wearing a mask right now.

• 9:39AJ Gentile?

  We all are.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, we all. Because that's, again, part of the lyric is, "We never know what we're going to do, what we're going to say and do." So you have to have the brother. Hi, brother, that's, I see, you know, or the lover, or the child. Hi, daddy, hi, mom. And it's a different voice, different attitude, different, uh, different needs.

• 10:02AJ Gentile?

  It's not dishonest, is it?

• 10:03Speaker 03

  What?

• 10:03AJ Gentile?

  It's not dishonest, is it?

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Dishonest?

• 10:06AJ Gentile?

  Dishonest.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Well, what is your true self?

• 10:10AJ Gentile?

  I, I, I don't know.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  We don't know our true self. We hide. We don't know what our true... You know, you go, "I could kill that guy." You don't mean, "I could kill that guy." You know, "He just cut me off." I could... Road rage. Well, road rage, if some people take out a gun and shoot you because you cut them off, he thinks. Whereas, you know, you, you reached for the radio or something. You didn't mean to cut them off, maybe, or you did cut them off, but you get a sense of ownership of the road, and now you've intruded on a guy who's really sick on his property. "That's my road, that's my square footage", and they take their gun out and shoot you. Well, that's a mask. That road rage is a mask.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  It happens to be the one that's disguising that rage that's internal, that fire that's in you all the time. "Give me a cup of coffee now", or, "Don't hit me", you know, "Or I'll kill you." I mean, that rage that is in all of us to one degree or another is a mask.

• 11:14AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Do you have a mask as a lover?

• 11:17AJ Gentile?

  Sure.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Of course you do. So is that part of you? And I mean, it's a really good question.

• 11:23AJ Gentile?

  It is. And are there masks? That we can put away that we're not proud of.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Put them, well, yes. I mean, I got behind, I, I, I, I was coming here. Through the torturous roads in the hills up here. And I was behind a car that stopped at every, you don't stop at every stop sign for God's sake. You drift through, right? This person stopped and looked around, I gotta get here, looked around. Okay, there's nothing there. The wind is blowing through the thistles, you know? And, and slowly they take out, come on already. Uh, road rage, but I didn't take out a gun and shoot the lady.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  But I put it away to be affable with you.

• 12:15AJ Gentile?

  Yeah.

• 12:17AJ Gentile?

  Let's get to the pile. Whole pile. The pile, because it's absurd. We got the record with Brad Paisley in August.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Okay, so, so the pile.

• 12:25AJ Gentile?

  The pile.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  A pile of stuff, so.

• 12:29AJ Gentile?

  It's a pile.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Brad Paisley is a brilliant musician and a brilliant songwriter and is a great uh, group of musicians and he also brought in Taylor Goldsmith, who is equally brilliant.

• 12:44AJ Gentile?

  Uh, "Real" is one of your best songs ever. "Real" has been.

• 12:50AJ Gentile?

  I quoted a lot because of my fans.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Do you, have you heard the album?

• 12:54AJ Gentile?

  It's one of my favorite of all time. It really is, I swear to God, I'm on record.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  You're, you're like the beginning of the, the first notices are coming in.

• 13:02AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Like you are the, like, one of the first notices. It is brilliant.

• 13:07AJ Gentile?

  It is.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  It is brilliant, it's a work of art, both by the musicians and by Robert Chernow and by me. It's a work of love. It, it's deep. I mean, even "Masks", which is so delightful and light and, and ends with, I never go out without a mask. I deliberately make it light.

• 13:25AJ Gentile?

  "Has Been" is very personal.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  But it's very personal and the whole, it, it's personal, which blends into "Wisdom and Worries", which is about to come out now. "Wisdom and Worries" is an amalgamation of all the lyrics of five albums. Sixty, sixty numbers, the twelve, sixteen, twelve, thirteen numbers that we wrote for each album, Robert and I. So there's sixty songs, all fashioned as best we could with poetry and meaning.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  I've got a full theater at the Apollo Theater in London. I'm on tour, I am gonna talk, I'm gonna hopefully amuse and amaze at the Apollo. The legendary Apollo Theater, thirty-five hundred people are waiting for me. I get in Sunday night, I go to sleep. Monday morning, because I got a Monday, the Monday night performance. Monday morning, about mid morning, I get up, I turn on the television set and the Prime Minister is saying, no more than ten people can collect, because it's COVID. I said, ten people, I've got thirty, what's? Car comes, takes me to the theater, I'm there now, behind the curtain, I'm thinking, is there anybody out there? I hear a little murmur, but the thick curtain, is anybody out there?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Curtain goes up, thirty-five hundred people stayed. And all of us, because there was this instantaneous declaration of love. I'm gonna stay here and see you, Shatner, even though I might get COVID.

• 14:58AJ Gentile?

  We needed it, people needed that, like, we're not going anywhere.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  We're not going anywhere.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  And, and, and this moment, an hour and a half with the audience of me, that you're a performer, you have felt in the past, and I feel it frequently, this sense that goes out and the audience and you're linked and everything you do and say and there, that, and it's a magical, it's the reason the theater exists.

• 15:27AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  That moment.

• 15:28AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  It doesn't exist in a lot of time, you know, you're on tour, it's the tenth performance, you're tired, and you're like, hey, I'm doing it, but, but if you can make that moment work, that's the magic of the theater.

• 15:41AJ Gentile?

  Your new landlord is a ghost. He walks through walls without knocking, can't hold a pen long enough to sign anything, and swears your security deposit is safe in the afterlife. He asks for a receipt, he just rattles a chain and drifts through the ceiling. Move out, day comes, your deposit's gone, and so is he. No forwarding address, no goodbye, just an unsettling draft that lingers for weeks. There's a reason you wouldn't trust a ghost with your deposit. It's the same reason millions of people trust Morgan and Morgan. For over thirty-five years, they fought for the people, going up against powerful interests on behalf of regular folks who can't afford to lose. They've recovered over thirty-five billion dollars for their clients. Hiring them is like hiring an army, more than a thousand lawyers and a hundred offices nationwide,

• 16:24AJ Gentile?

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• 16:48Speaker 03

  So, and now it's two, three months later and I'm in front of another audience here in the States. And I said, you know, this is what happened, and I think, you know, maybe I'm overstating it. And somebody gets up and, no, I was there, it was like, it was like that. Wow, that was validation of something I felt deeply, but then you think, did I really feel it? Is there any, any validation for, for, for you to, to have thought that way and somebody validated? Somebody stamped my.

• 17:19AJ Gentile?

  It's so funny that that's part of the actor personality, you can never shake it, that little insecurity.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  You're always expecting the president of show business to say, I'm here, give me your card.

• 17:31AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  You no longer belong.

• 17:33AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Right. And, and that drives you to two, three hours a day, here or at home, playing a scratch track of the numbers and willing, either I'm sick and tired. No, I had to count, I had to be, I had to hear, I had to, so that I would be ready for that one performance in Chicago, which resulted in an offer from, from Australia to go on tour in Australia, to, to, to perform in, in Miami, in Florida, and to be on this tour, that heavy metal tour boat that they have, a cruise that they have. So, just pop, I've suddenly become a heavy metal thing.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  And I, just one more thing.

• 18:21AJ Gentile?

  Go for it.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  I understand heavy metal as a result of my association with heavy metal. I've begun to understand heavy metal.

• 18:31AJ Gentile?

  So you know what the F it is now?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  What the?

• 18:34AJ Gentile?

  What the F is?

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Well, the, yeah.

• 18:36AJ Gentile?

  You know now?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Yes, it's frenzy, folly, and fruitful.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Yes, I understand what the F it is.

• 18:45AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Because it's life, it's passion, it's noise, it's there, and your heart, you can't help it, but the, the beat of the music raises the heartbeat and suddenly you're flush with something, success or failure or road rage, one or the other, but, but you're there because of the beat of the music. And, and those guitars that wail, they wail. We've got two virtuosos guitarists in, did I tell you the group that I work with now is called The Ukkers, Asterik Ukkers? They're great, brilliant musicians there. I've been blessed, I mean, I've been working a lot in the last several years.

• 19:26AJ Gentile?

  Yes, you have.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  But I've never worked so hard as in this period of time, so as I fade physically in existence, I say, I'm not allowed to. No, you're taking a back in there, you're on tour. I don't want to, I just want to be with my dogs. No, you gotta go out, and I'm going to Midwest in a couple of weeks to tour five cities in the Midwest.

• 19:49AJ Gentile?

  That's Rathacon?

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Rathacon.

• 19:51AJ Gentile?

  What is that?

• 19:52Speaker 03

  You play this wonderful film, it's been refurbished, saying this tour, I'm going to five or six cities in the Midwest.

• 20:00AJ Gentile?

  To watch the film with everybody?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  You watch the film.

• 20:03AJ Gentile?

  Wow.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  And then I come out afterwards and amuse and amaze.

• 20:09AJ Gentile?

  The great line, the just, the, the great line, the scream of Khan.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:14AJ Gentile?

  Classic.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:16AJ Gentile?

  What is, um, what's the lion in the wall?

• 20:20AJ Gentile?

  That's something from Bipa.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  From Bipa?

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Where did you get, how did you know that?

• 20:28AJ Gentile?

  Don't worry about what I know.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  No, no, but I'll tell you why. I'm curious, I'm not worried, I'm not worried. I'm curious as to how you would penetrate the secretive life of my family, because

• 20:42AJ Gentile?

  Because it has been.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  When my daughter, my first daughter, Leslie, was born,

• 20:49Speaker 03

  she would use what everybody calls a blinky, right?

• 20:54Speaker 03

  They're six months old, and you've got the, in this case, it's a diaper, and she's sucking on a clean diaper.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  And the diaper's down, and you pick it up and give it back to them. Yeah, it's a game. Gong, gong, gong, gong, gong. Guy, guy, gong, guy, guy. It's a gaga. It's a gaga. So now, my daughter has children, and the children get, are in the crib, and it's not gong, it's grandpa, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, it's Bipa. So now, grandpa becomes Bipa, and the two boys, the two grandchildren, it's Bipa.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  So that whole family, that whole end of the family, Grant's part of the family, all call me Bipa.

• 21:51AJ Gentile?

  Forever now.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  It's awkward.

• 21:54AJ Gentile?

  Why?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Well, because the mask you're wearing.

• 21:56AJ Gentile?

  Okay. It's not your Bipa mask.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Here's grandpa.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Okay, here's Bipa. So even he, Grant, who's in his 30s,

• 22:11AJ Gentile?

  His 30s.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  And is so successful. My grandchild says, hey, Bipa, what about? I'm like, oh shit, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna correct him.

• 22:21AJ Gentile?

  Don't, he loves it.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  No, but it's a little kid, so how do you know?

• 22:25AJ Gentile?

  Because I was drawn to it because it has been, has that track, That's Me Trying, which is very, very hard to listen to, it's beautiful.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:33AJ Gentile?

  But, and so much of your work after that, especially Boldly Go, was all about family. And That's Me Trying was about this father who's disconnected, and she's right in the same town. Maybe we could read a book together.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:44AJ Gentile?

  Cold Mountain, maybe that's too long, I mean, it's beautiful.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:48AJ Gentile?

  But, and then everything becomes about family for you after that.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Wow. You see,

• 22:56Speaker 03

  long ago, and I don't remember consciously making, but I must have, something conscious must have happened, I don't remember what it was.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Everything an actor does should be from here. Even if you've got the mask of an English killer or something, you know,

• 23:18Speaker 03

  it's gotta come from here. It can't be facile. That truth that permeates you as an actor, that has to be there. Otherwise, you're playing at acting, and you see all these actors doing that. They're acting at acting, well, it's fine, it'll get you by most people. But the reality is your heart, your soul has got to be in whatever, your soul's gotta be in this interview. Otherwise, it's just, you know, yeah, I had the eggs for breakfast.

• 23:51AJ Gentile?

  It's authenticity, people can feel it.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  It's not only authenticity, which is, I agree with you, but it's also, what is real to you? It is authentic, but what is emotionally real to you? And that's gotta be there, that emotional reality. Even though it's affected by the character you're playing, it's gotta be real, so you've got to understand the character you're playing to make that real.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  So, love, so, Robert, my co-writer on these lyrics, assembled five albums of lyrics. And they're all, it's autobiographical book. It's called Wisdom and Worries.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Wisdom and Worries, and it's autobiographical poetry. That's been set to music, but the music isn't in the book. The beauty is in these confessions I make to you, the audience, my audience. Buy the book and see

• 25:02Speaker 03

  things that you will recognize, because I'm exactly the same as you are, that the things I write about,

• 25:14Speaker 03

  I'm leaving home. I've graduated university. I wanna be an actor, I've been an actor since I was six in Montreal, but now the professional world is calling. I had luck, I was in the Summer Theatre. The manager of the Summer Theatre is managing a professional theatre in Ottawa, and I have graduated that year with a Bachelor of Commerce, Business Administration, whatever you call it here. So I have a degree in business. I failed everything in school, okay, at business. But I took, I wrote and directed the college musicals for three years. I acted, directed, wrote.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  I was in radio, I was in, I was a professional actor while going to school, and then Summer Theatre, and then the Summer Theatre manager says, hey, listen, Bill. I said, can I come to Ottawa with you and be part of the act? He says, no, we're filled up with the acting company, but I tell you, I do need an assistant manager. I said, well, I got a business degree. He said, great, you come to Ottawa, we'll pay you thirty-three dollars or something. I think it was exactly that. I had to go without eating if I was gonna do the laundry. And we'll pay. So I proceeded to be as careless about it being as assistant manager as I was about my marks for business. I barely passed anything.

• 26:40AJ Gentile?

  Didn't they name a building after you?

• 26:41Speaker 03

  What? They did. I was like their hero. He failed everything, still got a degree.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  McGill. I think the building still carries my name. At least the last time I looked.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  So I screw up being an assistant manager in Ottawa.

• 27:01AJ Gentile?

  How do you screw that up?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  I lose tickets, I can't find money. I mean, the lifeblood of the theatre, I bleed, okay? I slashed the arteries of the, of the theatre, and they say, where's the fifty dollars? So they said, Bill, it's not working out. But would you like to be a member of the acting company, because I was a good actor? Yes, yes. I became a member of the professional, one or two professional acting companies in Canada. I did a play a week, so you'd open on a Monday or Tuesday, play till Saturday night. Sunday, you would get rid of the set or refurbish the set

• 27:46Speaker 03

  for the next play, opening Tuesday evening. And I did that for years, three or four years. As a result of being in that company of professional actors, an event happened in Canada where

• 28:05Speaker 03

  they opened up Stratford, Ontario, Classical Acting Company. And some of the great, the greats of England came to manage and direct the theatre, and they asked me to come in. And I came in, I stayed three years playing Shakespeare. I ended up,

• 28:25Speaker 03

  that Stratford, Ontario, took a play by Marlowe to New York, and I had a good part in New York, and then they noticed me, and the agents came tracking, and I got an agent, and then I was in New York, and I started my career in the States as a result of stumbling around.

• 28:44AJ Gentile?

  Didn't you have to pass on Stratford for a couple of years because you had commitments to Ottawa?

• 28:49Speaker 03

  I was at Stratford for three years.

• 28:51AJ Gentile?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  That's what you asked.

• 28:54AJ Gentile?

  Yeah.

• 28:57AJ Gentile?

  No time but now with Melody.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  So, one day,

• 29:02AJ Gentile?

  Okay.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  I go, you know, every six months or a year, go to the doctor. Yeah, my doctor, yeah, you're healthy. So one day I say, you know, I've got this lump here. He says, let me see. You've got a blocked salivary gland. It's like urinary tract, where you get a stone, you get a little pebble in your saliva, massage it, just massage it. For a month, I massaged it.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  It's getting bigger.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  So in my ignorance, I go to another doctor. Yes. Let's get that out right now. Like within two or three days, they had me in the surgeon, thank you, right? And it just happened, again, my life of blundering and the universe taking care of me, blundered to a great doctor, and the doctor says, we'll take that out, I've got my brother concerned, but I've got a guy, I'll bring a guy in with a, and they take out this lump, and it's stage four melanoma. What does that mean? Wow, if you'd come in five years earlier, later, if you'd come in five years earlier, there's no cure, you'd be, you'd say, I know you came in because you've got a lump and you think it's a saliva gland, you're dead.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Pack your bags, in five months, the melanoma will kill you. If I'd come in five years earlier, they had invented something that took care of that melanoma. So for two years, I was infused.

• 30:34AJ Gentile?

  Why didn't you tell anyone?

• 30:37Speaker 03

  The reason I'm doing this, this podcast with my daughter, who at about the same time, a voice said, what is that you're feeling then? She said, well, it's just a lump. And the voice in her said, you better get that checked. She gets a check, woman waving the wand for her breast cancer thing. No, you're fine. And she starts to leave Melanie. And she said to me, the voice said, feel that again. So she's way back. She goes back to the nurse who waved the wand, the x-ray. Would you take a look at that? No, you're,

• 31:18Speaker 03

  would you take it? She takes a look and under the nurse's breath, Melanie hears, I would have missed that. Stage four breast cancer.

• 31:27AJ Gentile?

  So, look, something quiet happened this week that most people missed. A former CFTC chair, the guy who used to regulate derivatives, went on record. And what he said should stop you cold. Congress banned a central bank digital currency. The Fed swore it wasn't building one. This guy said, quote, "That does not mean we're not looking at how to create one." Project Agora, look it up. Meaning, soon every account you own becomes a switch somebody else controls. And they've been telling you why they're gonna want to flip it. National debt just crossed forty trillion dollars. Interest alone, over a trillion a year. Bigger than Medicare and Medicaid combined. There's one way out of that math, and you already know what it is. China's central bank has bought gold

• 32:11AJ Gentile?

  twenty-one months in a row. JP Morgan is telling clients, gold hits six thousand dollars by year end. This isn't a prediction anymore. It's already happening. That's why I trust Golden Crest Metals. Physical gold and silver you hold in your hand. It can't be hacked, can't be printed, can't be turned off. Go to Yfileslovesgold.com and get the free 2026 info kit. Or text files to 638257. Yfileslovesgold.com or text files to 638257. Because when they clicked switch, I was gonna, well, cut it.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  About the same time. So she had the rays of the, you know, the x-rays and all the, the, all the harmful stuff. I just got poisoned. What do you call it? The x-rays, the, where they assault you with the x-rays?

• 33:13AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  So Melanie, who's young, the youngest daughter, said, I've got to die. I've got my own children. My God, I've never thought of dying. Oh, my God. And she becomes, not hysterical, but overwhelmed by the thought of dying. And me, I'm thinking, no, I'm not gonna die. You know, they're gonna take that. I'm blundering, like, yeah, I'll take that job. No, I could, you know, go there. No, I'll sit behind this desk and look important. I don't think those things out, those things out, any more than I plan in parking in front

• 33:55Speaker 03

  of a busy restaurant. But invariably, as I pull up, somebody's pulling out. Thank you. I mean, it's just like the universe is taking care of me. So you got stage four cancer. That's okay. You know, I'm sure it'll be fine. And it was. It is.

• 34:11AJ Gentile?

  But what about Melanie, though? She's not walking through the raindrops. She's terrified.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  No, she's terrified. And that terror, what's the, that terror lends itself to Daddy, I need you. And Daddy says, I'm here. And this, we were a very close family. And I was divorced when they were very young. So I was there all the time. And weekends, I had them every weekend. So we had, you know, they went to school and got, did their homework, went to sleep. And at the, on the weekend, there's Daddy. And we go off on adventures. I deliberately, broke as I was, planned to go somewhere, to the beach, go

• 34:52Speaker 03

  to that, get a dog. And have meaningful times with my three daughters. My youngest daughter, Melanie, is three or four years old, crawls over my lap. I drive up to their home that I'm paying a large sum of money for. And I don't resent it because I want them there, but I'm living on a mattress. And she crawls over, she tells the story. Now I crawl over the lap and I get, I open the door. And I'm thinking, Melanie says, I'm thinking Daddy's gonna say, don't go. And I'm thinking, God, I wonder if I told her, don't go. She gets out of the car, she goes up on the balcony. Makes me, to think about what she told me

• 35:34Speaker 03

  makes me weep. And she says, so she gets on the porch of her house, goes up the stairs, the three girls. Bye. Bye, honey. Bye. And I drive off and I'm crying because I'm leaving my child, children. And they're crying. And Melanie says, every time you left us, I thought you'd turn around and come back. And I said, every time I left you, I thought I'll turn around and come back. And that was our life. That's how close we were, all of us. We were, despite the, I've never said this, the mental illness of my wife, despite

• 36:18Speaker 03

  it, she had a chemical imbalance that we didn't know about in those days. Years later, after the divorce and after the children had grown, they discovered, oh, right, there's a chemical imbalance thing that we, that affects your mind. And so if you take whatever the drugs were, you kind of get a cure. And that's what happened. But Melanie, the youngest, was the most moved. And so getting cancer with her daddy, and her daddy putting his arms around her like he wanted to on that balcony, and said, it's gonna be all right, honey. You're gonna be fine. And she is fine.

• 36:57AJ Gentile?

  She is.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Brought us closer than it was possible to think of because we were already close. And, and, and now I see her, the way she prepares for the podcast and, and reads the, knows the books that the people have guessed. I read the pre-seed.

• 37:15AJ Gentile?

  No, she wrangles you on there. She, she runs it.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  She wrangles me. And I follow her lead. What do you think, Melanie?

• 37:22AJ Gentile?

  You had, you had Zeke Magdal on this week. That was a heavy hitter.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, man. There is some really cool stuff going on in that no time but now, which is, which is, you know, when you're ten, eleven, twelve, and you're beginning to, why is the sky blue? You start asking those questions. You're sixty, seventy years old, you think, I don't care if the sky's blue. What, how, how can I take my next step? In that intervening time, you're conscious about your awareness of the mystery of life and the quality of a leaf and, and what's inside here. And that, that is your human

• 38:05Speaker 03

  life. Those fifty years of awareness, that's where your curiosity and your life force is. Do you know fifty years? I can attest, I'm an expert on the passage of fifty years, okay? Wait a minute. Wait a minute!

• 38:23AJ Gentile?

  Right. What did you learn about her that you didn't know?

• 38:29Speaker 03

  What did I learn what?

• 38:30AJ Gentile?

  What did you learn about Melanie that you didn't know in doing the show?

• 38:33Speaker 03

  I am struck dumb by her organization, by her, her concentration and focus, how prepared she is. She ran one of, if not the most popular, not ran, she owned and ran, women's store here in, on this street that's here, where we're shooting. So people from all over, Beverly Hills, all over, would come to her women's store to get what Melanie had chosen to show in her store. She ran it for years. And then finally, you know,

• 39:11Speaker 03

  her children, and she sold the store to these girl employees that she had, who bought, the girls, who I think were sisters, certainly related, their father bought the store for them. Here, sweetheart, here's the store. And they ran it into the ground.

• 39:28AJ Gentile?

  Oh.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because Melanie had the taste and the perspicacity and the engine, which she's showing now in this podcast. I'm looking, I can't believe her questions and her knowledge. And I'm seeing my daughter as not only a great daughter, but a relevant human being who ran, who guided that store. That person who looked into fashion and went to New York and got this clothes and brought them in and did the advertising. And that's my daughter.

• 40:04AJ Gentile?

  Does she ever call you up and say, Dad, can you read the book? Zeke is coming on?

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Because I've got to do you. And people of your ilk, I don't have time. I have time to do research on ChatGPT. I'm consumed by research in ChatGPT. For example, my latest research, and I haven't finished it yet, just started, is on the Mongols.

• 40:34AJ Gentile?

  On the Mongols?

• 40:35Speaker 03

  So I became, because, here's the relationship.

• 40:40AJ Gentile?

  I thought you were researching Keats Mongols.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  I did.

• 40:43AJ Gentile?

  I know.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  That's gone. I mean, I did that. I learned as much as I could. Now the Mongols. Because a lot of the scientists of today are Asian, many of them Chinese, of Chinese extraction. So there's a wonderful man who owns the Los Angeles Times and is a cancer doctor who's in the forefront of research, has a research facility near the airport,

• 41:16Speaker 03

  and is into objective reporting. So Melanie knew all about him. And, and our producer, Amy.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Shit. Um, I'll think of it in a second. The, the, the, the, the collection is there. It just goes a little slower. You know, it goes, and then it's that.

• 41:47AJ Gentile?

  Join the club, man.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  But now it goes tick, tick, tick. So I'm waiting for the last to, for Beth.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Beth, our producer, who's great, and she's booky. So Beth discovered, uh, this wonderful man who owns and is in the forefront of research. So Melanie had read his books. So now we're, we've got this individual who has done our podcast. He's brilliant. And we did his podcast at the Los Angeles Times, which has a studio in it. And, and he's brilliant and he's talking about, why did I bring that up? He's talking about cancer and the potential for the cure for cancers are many varied.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  So the cure for one cancer, cancer isn't the cure for the next cancer. They're separate. You can cure that one, but that one's still virulent. Melanoma apparently is the most virulent. I didn't know that. You mean, I could have died, you know, or I will die because it pops up. But he has some of the answers and the answers. I, we, we interviewed another lady whose name I can never remember, but Melanie can, who's got a stent.

• 43:07AJ Gentile?

  Oh, I remember the story that targets the cells, right?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  What?

• 43:11AJ Gentile?

  That targets the cells.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  It's electrified. So you, you've got it in the vein. So eventually your blood goes through it. And because the cancer cell is engorged and larger than the other cells. This, the stent, which is electrified, it's programmed to zap any large cell. What's the future of that?

• 43:34AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  So we're discovering all these things. So it isn't just, it isn't just, uh, cancer and the cures for cancer and the excitement of being an adventurer in the forefront of cancer. It's no time but now to live your life. Now's the time to do something to, to, to, to, to study the Mongols. Because the Mongols, for a, in a hundred years, they were itinerant herders in north of China. And in a hundred years, they swept across the world and had the largest empire of anybody, bigger than the Romans, bigger than, and they guided China, who then divided into

• 44:21Speaker 03

  all those marvelous spheres of influence. The HANs, for example, the guy who owns, the scientist who owns the, uh, the, uh, Los Angeles Times is from the province of Han, which at one time was the largest, what do you call them? Empire of Chinese thing? So he's proudly a Han. I mean, it's, so the Mongols guided all, started the profusion of, of civilization in its various forms in China.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  China's the ancient, is the country of, the most worthy of respect, other maybe than, than Persia, which, and, and they're our enemies. I mean, it's just, it isn't, it isn't right.

• 45:16AJ Gentile?

  It isn't right.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  It isn't right. These ancient civilizations who carried humanity and, and the human efforts at living in their hands. They gave us all this history and we're at war with them in one shape or another. It's too bad.

• 45:32AJ Gentile?

  It is.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  And maybe it'll disappear when we learn that killing each other, we're killing, we're killing each other.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  And the, and, and, and, uh, Spinoza talks about the unity of nature, that we're all one.

• 45:50AJ Gentile?

  This is Baroque?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Spinoza, the philosopher.

• 45:54AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  1500 says, it's all one. We're all the building blocks of the universe, of the cosmos. A, 600 years later, I think, a scientist a few years ago says, you know, there's this thing called quantum physics. And there are some of the weirdest laws of nature in the, in the study of quantum, which is the study of this, of the, of the atom and, and the intricacies of the atom.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  That's totally different from the, uh, science of the, of the large of, uh,

• 46:42AJ Gentile?

  Those rules don't apply.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Don't apply.

• 46:45AJ Gentile?

  Don't apply.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  But they do. Cause how could they be different?

• 46:49AJ Gentile?

  Do you know John Wheeler had the same view about consciousness than Spinoza did?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  I don't know John Wheeler.

• 46:54AJ Gentile?

  John Wheeler was a famous physicist. He's, he invented, he coined the term the black hole.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  I thought that was, uh, uh, Hawking.

• 47:02AJ Gentile?

  Nope.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  I know Hawking had the theory.

• 47:05AJ Gentile?

  He had the theory. Um, Wheeler was first, Wheeler was the, was the double slit experiment, the delayed choice experiment.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  It was the double slit?

• 47:12AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  So you understand all of that? That's great. So that examination, so here's the dilemma. Here's dilemma.

• 47:23AJ Gentile?

  Mixing this into my morning coffee is about as simple as habits get. Now with fall here, that small habit matters more than you'd think. Cold and flu season's right around the corner and there's nothing quite like walking into a room full of people coughing and sneezing. If you want to walk into that room feeling good, start with your gut. Colostrum is the very first milk packed with immune components like immunoglobulins and growth factors, exactly the kind of support your body can use right now. A lot of people think being bloated after every meal is just normal. It's not. Cowboy Colostrum is built around fixing that at the source, settling digestion, clearing up skin, even supporting hair growth. Because when your gut's right, everything else tends to follow. Cowboy ran an actual clinical study on this, not just testimonials.

• 48:06AJ Gentile?

  Eighty-three percent of participants reported improved gut health. Seventy-nine percent experienced less bloating and inflammation and 72% saw improved digestion and 62% saw fuller, thicker hair. That's not luck, that's Colostrum doing its job. Cowboy Colostrum is true first milking, whole, full fat Colostrum from 100% American grass-fed cows. No fillers, no artificial anything. Cows eat first, Cowboy only collects the surplus. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off your entire order. Just head to cowboycolostrum.com/wfiles and use code Y files at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code Y files at cowboycolostrum.com/wfiles.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Everything that's atomic in, in, in size has different rules than Newtonian physics that says the stars explode and the gravity and, and somewhere in between is Einstein. And that knowledge, knowing that is more recent study, the last few years of me. So now I'm focused on the Mongols. What did the Mongols have that organized China to become the best empire, the most, the most enriched empire with Confucius and Confucian thought, the Confucius and,

• 49:30AJ Gentile?

  His family tree is still tracked.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  What, what?

• 49:32AJ Gentile?

  They still have track his family tree. Confucius.

• 49:36AJ Gentile?

  Going back to him.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  They're magical.

• 49:38AJ Gentile?

  Yes.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  We, we, we should honor them.

• 49:41AJ Gentile?

  Of course.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  For their history and what they bring. And, you know, how did they fall under the aegis of communism? I don't know. It's beyond my ken. All I know is I'm studying the Mongols now.

• 49:58AJ Gentile?

  What turned you on to it? What made you go?

• 50:02Speaker 03

  I had read somewhere about the HANs.

• 50:04AJ Gentile?

  Okay.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  H A N S. And my scientist friend says, well, uh, my family comes from the HAN. We are HAN. He says with pride. He's Americanized totally. I mean, he was here before he was a teenager. So we, we're, so I read about the HANs. The HANs were like, like the, like the Pope. Uh, they, they were the knowledgeable, they were the, the keepers of the civilization. They spread the word, the HANs. They were in the, I think the southwest, they had a huge hunk of land, the HANs. And so even though various dynasties is the word.

• 50:48AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Various dynasties took over and the HANs were and then weren't, they remained the scribes, if you will. So the HANs have an elite position in China.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  Anyway, that's my curiosity.

• 51:06AJ Gentile?

  What did, um...

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Have we covered everything I wanted to cover? Wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 51:11AJ Gentile?

  Oh, you have a list?

• 51:13Speaker 03

  Well, I got a little list here. Wisdom and Worries, The Metal Album, The Unexplained, is a wonderful show.

• 51:19AJ Gentile?

  I lo- it's one of my favorite shows.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  I'm so bad. Are you sucking up? Are you wearing a mask of a suck- a suck whore?

• 51:26AJ Gentile?

  I'm on the show, Bill.

• 51:29AJ Gentile?

  People laugh at me all the time.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  No, no, it's a wonderful show. It's a wonderful show, which, and it's getting more and more wonderful as the writers...

• 51:36AJ Gentile?

  Well, we plateaued, haven't we?

• 51:38Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 51:39AJ Gentile?

  No, okay.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  No, no, I'll tell you why we haven't plateaued. Because, for example, Unexplained. So we go, "Yeah, it was Unexplained, there's a car coming down, we don't know how the car goes..."

• 51:52Speaker 03

  What about sound and its effect medically? We can't explain it, but somehow, sound, and the ancients built caves with reflecting sound, and there's, there's metallic things that, that give off sound, that may be useful in your health, that people 500, 1,000 years ago knew and we don't know now.

• 52:17AJ Gentile?

  You know, the Great Pyramid vibrates in an F sharp?

• 52:19Speaker 03

  And the, F sharp. I don't, didn't know that. I know that the Great Pyramid has so many mysteries about it that we haven't discovered. A paper like that can fit between the rocks, and we can't do it now.

• 52:33AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  And hidden chambers that we're discovering using, uh, LiDAR, using radar rays going in. There's a, my god, there's a hotspot there, what is that? We're discovering mysteries that the, that 5,000 years ago were perpetrated, and my show, The Unexplained, which is, you can find anywhere the, the shows like that are shown, including the, the, uh, whatever, what's the network?

• 53:05AJ Gentile?

  History.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  The History Channel. It's filled with mystery.

• 53:11AJ Gentile?

  That's a great show.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  And it isn't, uh, I think there are, you know, uh, flying, flying aliens coming down. It isn't aliens, man.

• 53:23AJ Gentile?

  That reminds me of something. We'll get back to Unexplained. Tell me what happened in Mojave in 1967 with the motorcycle, and there was a story that you said you couldn't get rid of. You know what I'm talking about?

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, I became an, a motorcycle aficionado. Dirt bikes. So, years ago, in this area, in the Los Angeles area, not far, 30 miles outside, you could go up into the, into the dried mountains, where there was that much bush, or you avoided the bush, on trail bikes, which were high, uh, spinning engines, so that you could have a lot of power to go up a hill.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  And I fell in love with it, and went out with groups every, every weekend, on a Saturday, put the bikes on a truck, go out to, uh, to Palmdale, out there, 40, 50 miles, ride them out.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Also, in those mountains, prospectors in Dazior would walk around looking for gold, or, or whatever they were looking for, and they would dig a, a trench, usually three feet wide, six feet length.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Is that a grave?

• 54:45AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  I don't know where they lay in it, but they were looking for something. Well, nothing here, and they go on another mile and dig another grave, okay?

• 54:55AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  So now you got these bikes, these, you know, crazy people like me, saying, lift the, the front of the bike up, so that that rear wheel goes out again, you climb, and it's thrilling. You fall off, and you got helmets and, and you're young, and you get up and you get back on. And I'm doing Star Trek, you know, I come in, "Oh shit." "What did you do?" "Oh, I mean, you can't go there anymore." Paramount, you, you're built, you're off of motor. "Right, okay." And I'd go riding with the lawyers and agents of those networks, of the, of the, of the studios. They were the same guys who said, "You got a contract, so you can't ride a motorcycle. You can't jeopardize yourself."

• 55:39Speaker 03

  "Right, I'll see you, Bob, I'll see you, I'll see you in the truck." So, I'm riding along, boom, and my bike falls into one of those trenches, and I'm buried. And there is a, a ruling, understood ruling, that when you're riding in a group, you keep your eye on the guy behind you. So, the guy behind you, and then the second guy's got his eye on the guy in front, so everybody's taking care of each other. The son of a gun, who was in front of me, didn't.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  I'm lying in the grave, my bike on top of me, they disappear into the vast now of, of the Sonoran Desert, or whatever desert that is. I get up, and I've got leathers on, and a helmet, and leather gloves to protect me from this very thing, and it did. So now I've got heavy leathers in 90 to 100 degree suns overhead, and I'm thinking, should I take my leathers off and dive sunburn?

• 56:47AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Or do I keep my leathers on and die of, of, of heat prostation, prostation, prostration?

• 56:56Speaker 03

  I don't know what to do. But the first thing I gotta do is get my bike out of the hole. The bike's 100 to 150 pound, and you're straight, "Ah, finally, we're gonna get it up," and it won't start.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  So I'm in the middle of the desert, in my leathers, I'm kind of knocked around, so I'm not thinking right anyway. I don't know whether to take the leather jackets and the helmet off of the thing, or to stay the way I am.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  And I look up, and I see a guy in silver over the ridge there.

• 57:30Speaker 03

  And he goes...

• 57:37Speaker 03

  And I push the bike, and I push the bike, and he keeps going.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  And I keep following. For about a half an hour, I'm pushing the bike in the sand, with the leathers on, and 100 degrees in the desert. And finally I come to a road, and I get on the bike, and I push the bike, and I jump on the seat, and I coast about a mile, and there's a gasoline station. The guy says, "Oh, the wire and the thing, you know." Bike starts. I never saw that guy again.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  But that guy was very mysterious. That guy didn't have wings, but he was dressed in silver.

• 58:19AJ Gentile?

  Fatamorgana?

• 58:21Speaker 03

  A Fatamorgana, maybe, no, it was too real. And, and, there was an astronaut. I've forgotten his name, Marshall Magellan, who was very, very spiritual. His journeys as an astronaut were filled with the mystique of, of spiritualism. I mean, space, the, the voyage into space for him meant more than just an adventure as an astronaut. He was very religious, and it was part of reaching for God, so that his mission had a religious overtone that many of the other guys didn't have.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  They're all scientists.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  But I was told by a great scientist just recently, that the magic, the intricacy of a cell forming an envelope, forming what they call it, there's a name for it, forming the container that contains the cell, so that a cell is, is a, a membrane. To form a membrane around a cell is so intricate, that it couldn't have been evolved, evolution. It had to be ordered. That's the scientist said.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  The magic of a cell is so profound, there's no way it could evolve from the primordial soup that was there with all the building blocks and all the chemicals.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  And I was struck by that, because the word "God" defines too much. It doesn't allow, "God, well, it's good, right? Bless you, my son, enter the pearly gates, you know, keep the good book."

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  It's so beyond our ability to encompass how all this started and what it is.

• 1:00:32AJ Gentile?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  That, that's, this, papyrus.

• 1:00:38AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Right? But it's 5,000 years later, and we got chewed up wood, and, and, how, what are we...

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  This is mankind's answer. It doesn't matter AI at all. You got this. This is communication to everybody in the world. And maybe in the universe, given Starlink will eventually, you know, if he lets us. The miracle of existence is not, can't be contained in the word of God. It has to be so much bigger and larger. It is so much bigger and larger and mysterious. And that's what I would argue with my science friend who says, "God ordered it."

• 1:01:25AJ Gentile?

  I heard you argue politely with Melanie last week where she felt like consciousness continues.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32AJ Gentile?

  And you said, "No, we go back to..."

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't say no. If I said no, I was in error. Nobody knows.

• 1:01:43AJ Gentile?

  Right.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  You can't say no. You can only honor the person who, "I hope you're right."

• 1:01:47AJ Gentile?

  I hope you're right.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  But I don't think there's any question that when we die, and by the way, wrote a song. "I wanna be a tree." So my, most of my family is ascribed to my desire to take my molded body, because they have to molder it, and place it beside a tree that we've already chosen, and help nourish that tree. Little plaque, William Shatner and other members of the family, who chose their own tree, by the way. And you help nurse that tree, and you're growing tree, and you bring whatever. The lyrics of the song about "I wanna be a tree" is, "Come under my shade.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  That'll be enough for me." That's my view of what happens. You go out and you rejoin the cosmos.

• 1:02:45AJ Gentile?

  Does Bill continue at all?

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  No. Bill is this guy who wears masks.

• 1:02:52AJ Gentile?

  I think you're right. I think we come here, we learn.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  We come here, we learn, we do, we get. We have 50 years. You die slowly, you die abruptly.

• 1:03:01AJ Gentile?

  Unexplained.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  I love unexplained.

• 1:03:05AJ Gentile?

  Best show on TV, Bill. Best show. You have the contributors are top shelf.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  You know, I've got to think you know exactly what you're talking about. Because that's honorable. I mean, I think it is too. And I think, well, you're living in a, you know, of course you would think so. But if somebody else says, "Wow," and that validates you, mm. It's a terrific show. And the show I just did about sound and the healing of sound, the mystery of the healing of sound. Come on!

• 1:03:35AJ Gentile?

  I'm shooting my segments next week. I'm looking forward to it. You cold read your parts, yeah?

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:41AJ Gentile?

  You ever come across something that you're like, "This is bullshit." "What is this, guys?" Because I have, when they have me in the paper.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:03:49AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  No, I don't, I don't think, I think if somebody, if somebody's giving an honest answer. I know a lot of people who said, "I saw a spaceship."

• 1:04:01AJ Gentile?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  It's bullshit, man. If it was a spaceship, why didn't they land before he paves over the lawn at the White House? And just land on the White House lawn and say, "We're here from Vulcan," or whatever. And we'd like to talk to you about, you know, about what you're doing. And about the Mongols. We come bearing message about the Mongols. Why aren't they, if, so, "Fata Morgana" has got to be an answer to a lot of it.

• 1:04:32AJ Gentile?

  I think so.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And "Fata Morgana" is a song. And "Fata Morgana" then is, "Are you an illusion? Do you really love me or do you not love me?" Becomes a love song.

• 1:04:46AJ Gentile?

  That's on the Brad Paisley album, I think.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Is it on the Brad Paisley?

• 1:04:49AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, I think it's the last track on there. In Generations, you had that great ad lib when Kirk died. "Oh my," and you said you'd love to do one more take.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. I did it, I did it on a talk show. I've forgotten who it was.

• 1:05:06AJ Gentile?

  Well, let's do another take, whatever. Ad lib, however you want to do it.

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  Well, no. So this character dies. At that point, it was like, it was all over. Star Trek might have ended, or anyway, I was ending. So this legendary fictional character that I played for three years is dying. So the question is, how do you die? What am I gonna be? My sister, who was three years, who was three years older than I,

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  was in Montreal in a coma dying. And her daughter, my niece, calls me and says, "Mommy's dying. She's moaning." And I said, "I haven't, I can't get up there. I can't fly up there." Take the phone and put it next to her ear. Let me talk to her. So she did that. And I hear, "Oh." I said, "Joy." "Joy, it's Billy." "Joy, it's Billy. You're going to go see mommy and daddy.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  And I love you, Joy. You're gonna be all right. You're gonna be peaceful. It's going to be all right, sweetheart." And she went, "Oh." She made the most contented sound. And her daughter started crying, who was holding the phone. And I started crying. And Joy passed away the next day. She died peacefully. I don't know what the coma was. The coma might have been pain, might have been agony, might have been conscious. "I'm dying and I haven't seen Billy." Or, "My daughter is there and I can't reach her."

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  I mean, what are the myriad of thoughts that somebody's dying that's still conscious enough to think? What are they thinking? "I'm leaving this world." I don't want to leave, I, I don't want to leave this world. I'm having too much fun talking to you. No, I'm talking. I'm having too much fun talking and watching you listen, hoping, hoping, hoping that you think it's all right.

• 1:07:47AJ Gentile?

  I do two more hours.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  I can't.

• 1:07:51AJ Gentile?

  I know.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  So the question of what are you seeing when you die? What are you conscious of? Is it blackness and you're totally, I mean, what is, I've been unconscious. I've been under anesthesia and it's blackness. That period of time is blank.

• 1:08:13AJ Gentile?

  My father saw something, Bill.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  Tell me about that.

• 1:08:17AJ Gentile?

  He just, at that moment, just looked out and saw something.

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  Well, but you see, you can't say that because it's a known fact that lack of oxygen.

• 1:08:28AJ Gentile?

  Sure.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  Hallucination.

• 1:08:30AJ Gentile?

  Or.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  Or.

• 1:08:34AJ Gentile?

  Or it's "Oh my."

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  So we go back to "Oh my." So Captain Kirk lived his life bravely. "There's the enemy there. You go there, you go there." So I think he would have faced death bravely, but with wonderment and awe. And that's what I wanted to capture in "Oh my." I didn't want fear, "Oh my." It's "Oh my." That was what I wanted to do. I don't think it's "Oh my." It's "Oh my." It's startled and a little fearful, but that's the actor. That's the notes you can play as an actor.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  If you're feeling, if you know death and your fear of death and how you, you, the actor, want to die, you can interpret those notes to give the character.

• 1:09:32AJ Gentile?

  Thank you, Bill. Bye, everybody.

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:09:39AJ Gentile?

  That was William Shatner. I kept the Star Trek fan thing to myself for a whole hour, which is the hardest thing I've ever done on this show. Let's start with the building. In 1992, McGill students voted to name their student union after him. And the university said, "No. We only name buildings after dead people and big donors." The students kept calling it the Shatner Building anyway. The university's been losing that argument for 34 years. Good for him. Now, that man in silver. That conversation didn't go where I thought it was or hoped it would. In his 2008 memoir, "Up Till Now," Bill says the man in silver was the part he made up for television, and he's been trying to take it back ever since. And he told me that story with the guy in silver in there anyway.

• 1:10:24AJ Gentile?

  But I think the story's better with the silver guy in it, and so does he. And who am I to challenge Captain Kirk? Now, his whole theory that we're all wearing masks, and the one he wears for an interview is pretty good. But then he told me about the phone call to his sister, and for about one minute, I saw the man without his mask. Now, I'll remember that minute for the rest of my life. Bill's album is "Love and Other Mysteries." The book is "Wisdom and Worries." And his podcast with his daughter Melanie is "No Time But Now." Everything I mentioned is linked below. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated and live long and prosper.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  I play for Libya in Area 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. Songs singing like I should. But then another piece of theory theory becomes the truth, my friends. And it never ends. No, it never ends.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  I fear the crackhead and got stuck inside Mel's hole with MKUltra. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Cuprid fake the moon landing alone on a film set? Were the shadows people there? The Rockwell aliens just fought the smiling man. I'm told, and his name was Cold. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 1:12:40Speaker 04

  So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planet circle to Project Star Gate. And what the dark watchers found. In a simulation, don't you worry though. The black night satellite is told to me so. I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  So one more zombie beat all through the night. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  Gertie loves to dance. Yeah, Gertie loved to dance on the dance floor. Because she is a camel. And camels love to dance when the feeling is right always in time.

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  Now for a quick message from Anthropic, the team behind Claude, the AI built for businesses. Imagination doesn't need permission, just room to play. Claude is an AI that works alongside you to give your ideas the space they need to grow. And then it helps you make them real and ready to ship. Discover more with Claude at claude.ai/span.

• 1:15:26Speaker 05

  Streaming October 30th on Paramount Plus.

• 1:15:28Speaker 00

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for that.

• 1:15:36Speaker 05

  He's back. I'm older, I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection, new season October 30th on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan. At Zocdoc, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor.

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  Press 1 for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours.

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