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that softens and totally pulls together the space. And there were so many styles to choose from, from Boho and modern and vintage, and you can filter by size, by color, by material, by designer, and what I love is that they aren't just beautiful and soft, but they're stain resistant for everyday spills and machine washable, making them so easy to clean. And it's especially awesome for our life, because we have two young kids, two dogs and two cats. The built-in non-stick
backing makes sure that even when everyone is running around, there's no slipping. They really are designed lead and performance built. Refresh your home at ruggable.com. Get 10% off your first order, site wide with promo code [email protected]. That's r-u-g-g-a-b-l-e.com and use code tapes that check out. So if you're looking to refresh your space, I really recommend checking them out. Hey everyone, it's Kai and I'm so happy to share this very special backstage AMA with you. After our episode
with Dr. Christopher Kerr, we received so many thoughtful and deeply personal questions from listeners about death, dying, hospice, end-of-life visions, and what it means to be present with someone we love as they transition. Dr. Kerr's work has moved so many of us because he brings such dignity, humanity, and scientific care to a subject our culture often avoids. As a hospice physician and researcher, he spent decades sitting at the bedside of people at the end of life,
listening closely to what they experience, their dreams and visions, fears, and maybe most importantly, moments of healing that can arise as the body begins to fail. In this conversation, our producer Selina sits down with Dr. Kerr to ask your questions. Here's a clip from that episode. Dr. Christopher Kerr, thanks so much for taking the time today. Did you get a chance to look
over some of these questions? Yes, I did. They're incredible. Yes, I'm really interesting ones.
We'll let you get right into it then. So the first question says, "Dear Dr. Kerr, thank you for the fantastic episode. I'm curious about how often you've encountered cases where someone who is not dying, like a family member, caregiver, or clinician sitting in the room, also sees or senses what the dying person is seeing. A friend recently described experiencing this when her father passed away, and I'm curious if you've seen such things. If you have, how do you
understand them?" Yes, I certainly hear about it after the fact, and there's a gentleman in California who it's called the Shared Crossings Project, and really gather a lot of data around this. People describing that, certainly, you hear cases all the time, people see orbs, and all of that.
But we've had a couple of unusual experiences, one I'll absolutely never forget. Actually two,
and they both involved children, and it was a family where there were several women, their sisters, who had had miscarriages, and is not uncommon for women who have lost children to see their children, and that was true of this patient. And in the room, were her sisters, and one little granddaughters came in and pointed, and said, "Look at all the babies.
“That's one case that I'll never forget." What was the other story?”
Yeah, it's kind of a shared experience. It's something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It was a remarkable woman who was very fond of. Very creative, very artistic. She was also a musician, and she was very fond of a piano teacher. She had when she was a child. So every day go around on her, and she was having dreams from her childhood, and her teacher was often,
and they're playing music, et cetera. And I'll never forget, on the middle of the week,
she starts having dreams about a car accident. But she didn't understand them. Why am I having dreams about a car accident? And I left her on a Friday, and I knew she was going to pass over the weekend, and I came in on a Saturday morning, or happened to run to the nurse, and I said, "Did she pass?" And she said, "Yeah, but did you hear what happened?" I said, "No," she said, her son was driving there that morning and had a fatal car accident. So she had been dreaming
of a car accident that somebody dies in, and she can't understand it. And this was like kind of on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then she dies midday on the Saturday and her son died down morning in a car accident. You know, don't know what to say. In that category of the unexplained,
“that's one that always, I'll never quite understand. Does it change your relationship to death?”
Obviously, it's a tragedy, a son dying. But given your experience working, Dan, and Dad, with this, do you have a different approach to it now than you did, maybe before?
Oh, and Dan, I eat.
I always say, I just think there's a better story than the one we imagine in fear.
I don't see that. I see reunion, I see a lot of love. So, yeah, absolutely less fearful of the process of dying, 100%. Yeah, I mean, in the past year of working on these topics, the people who have died and come back or explored death in varied states of consciousness, like psychedelics,
“none of them, none of them have fear of death anymore. No, that's why we're doing this study,”
because most people would assume, you know, it's innate. That's how we survive as to fight off and feared the dying process. And I think there's the death we imagine in health, and then there's the dying that we experience within the actual process. And there are two very different things. Yeah. And you know, when we're looking at this idea of fear, but also of hope,
because what we're always so impressed with is hope for cure, or obviously vanishes. But hope
is vibrant, but it's hope for others. So, people don't stop being hopeful. It just transitions, in odd ways. Mm, yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, so this one says, my husband drowned and was brought
“back to life, but never gained consciousness before he passed. I felt that his soul separated from”
his body in the ocean before he was resuscitated. Do you believe from your experience that he was likely able to hear me talking to him while he was on life support? Yeah, I have a really strong view of this, actually, and I get this question a lot, um, can the dying here? And my firm belief is they can. And I can tell you why for a few reasons, what we see in a lot of is dying patients who are not able to express any more, but are clearly sued with the presence of family and familiar
voices. We see a lot of the opposite, what we call the Jerry Springer family, where there's tension, conflict, and there'll be there, and the patient clearly picks up respiration rates, and you can feel the tension from the patient. It gets to the point sometimes where it's very hard to die if you can't get to sleep, because deep sleep, because that's the state it happens in, that are really plugged in nurses will actually suggest kindly that the family leave the room so the patient can kind of
“let go. So I think most of us who spent a lot of time at the bedside dying patients get all of these”
clues that the patient's hearing. I think what's interesting is what you can't answer as this
is the depth of hearing of auditory processing, but my analogy is always it's like an infant who doesn't
have full language yet, but knows the tone fluctuations in voice, whatever, the familiarity of mom and dad's voice. That's very, very clear. So whether they are processing the content of speech, what they do I think more importantly is they feel that comforting familiarity. Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, I feel like this comes up so often when we talk to people who have experienced NDEs and when they come back, they recount hearing so much. Yeah, in the room outside
of the room, beyond the room. Yeah, we see a lot of this. Absolutely. All right. Well, so this next one says, thank you for your incredible work. I was curious if you've ever explored the Tibetan book of the dead. In that tradition, the dying consciousness is said to navigate a series of internal landscapes and encounters that offer opportunities for resolution and peace. Do you see parallels between the structured stages described in the ancient texts and the consistent meaningful visions
reported by the patients, particularly regarding the reunion with loved ones? This such a fantastic question. Yeah, the perils are actually creepy. To hear the rest of the AMA and to get ask me anything episodes through the rest of the season for me and other special guests from season two, subscribe to our backstage pass. You can find it on our website that'slepathytapes.com.
