Spirit-Beings, Ghosts and the Afterlife With Matt Arnold

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Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles. The

podcast where we unravel the mysteries of the past. One

ghostly tale at a time. I'm

your host Michelle. And

I'm thrilled to be your guide on the series journey through the pages of history. Picture

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this. A

realm where the supernatural intertwines with the annals of time. Where

the echoes of the past reverberate through haunted corridors and forgotten landscapes. That's

the realm we invite you to explore with us. Each

episode will unearth stories, long buried secrets, dark folklore, tales of the macabre, and discuss parapsychology topics. From

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whether you're a history buff with a taste for the supernatural, or a paranormal enthusiast with a thirst for knowledge, Haunted History Chronicles is your passport to the other side. Get

ready for a ride through the corridors of time, where history and the supernatural converge. Because

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every ghost has a story, and every story has a history. And

now, let's introduce today's podcast, or guest. Today

we have a special treat in store, as we welcome the editor of the Christian parapsychologist and acclaimed author Matt Arnold to the show. Join

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us as we journey through the ethereal landscapes of his book, the invisible dimension, spirit beings, the afterlife, and ghosts in the supernatural and the Bible. In

this captivating exploration, Matt offers us a unique perspective on the Bible's supernatural world, challenging conventional Christian beliefs, and uncovering hidden truths. Guided

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by Matt's extensive research and sensitive approach, prepared to experience countless moments, it will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew. Renowned

author Peter Laws, Hales Matt's work is a mind -expanding tour of the supernatural. While

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John Drayne praises his ability to remain faithful to biblical scripture, while shedding light on esoteric topics often dismissed by mainstream Christianity. Join

us, as we delve into Matt's remarkable insights, and explore the intersection of faith, the paranormal, and biblical scholarship. So

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sit back and prepare to be enthralled, as we unlock the secrets of the unseen world with Matt Arnold. Hi

Matt, thank you so much for joining me this evening. Thank

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you. Do

you want to start by just telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background? Well,

I'm Matt Arnold. I

am the editor of the Christian Parapsychologist Journal and the author of the new book, The Invisible Dimension, Spirit Beings, Ghosts, and the Afterlife. I'm

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51, so I grew up as a haunted generation youngster in the 1970s and early 80s. My

interest in the paranormal started with that very ubiquitous book, The Us -Born World of the Strange Ghosts, where I did a school project on it. And

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it was a fantastic, sort of really gripping book that told the stories of the haunted places and haunted people. And

I just found myself really interested. In

time, I was also in a very fairly fundamentalist church, Baptist Church in Dudley, in the West Midlands. And

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I really didn't seem to have much of a conflict at the time, because these things just seem to be natural to me that this sort of thing was another realm of existence. I

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went into science as my main sort of qualifications, chemical engineer by training. And

then I kind of put that on the back burner, really. And

I did a lot of, in the last, since about 2007, I did some work in mind, body, spirit, fair. So

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I came across a lot of people who were psychically gifted, people who would be all sorts of clairvoyant type characters. And

I wanted to know really what was going on there. So

rather than go down the, oh, it's all demonic route, the Bible actually says to test everything and hold on to what is true. And

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so to hold on to what is true, however inconvenient that truth might be to my preexisting ideas, is how I've rocked and rolled with this. In

when I got to do my masters, I finished and graduated from my masters college, which was a theological masters. And

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my dissertation was paranormal hauntings and applications in deliverance ministry, a critical investigation, which my master's tutor said, well, it's either going to be a first or a fail mat. I

ended up with 82%, which I thought was quite pleasing, and ended up with the award for the best dissertation. So

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roll on from 2019 to 2020 when I supply teacher, and I get furloughed because of COVID. And

I'm wondering, what am I going to do with all of this time? It

would be an absolute waste to just sort of sit and relax, because I'm not that kind of person. And

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so I decided to carry on with my studies, because I really enjoyed what I've been studying. And

I developed the website, Ghost Schools and God, and started to write a load of studies on the Bible, taking that from the perspective of the original writers. So

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I had to go and study their cultures, their histories, their language, even, what did the words that were used in the Bible actually mean to the original writers and their original readers? Because

the Bible wasn't written to 21st century people, it was written to ancient people. Okay,

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but it's messages for everyone at all times and all places, but it wasn't written to us. So

trying to go back through things like the Reformation and all of the dogmas that were brought up through that, even going back further than that, right the way to the very earliest beliefs of the Hebrews and the Christians, and see them all in the context of the surrounding cultures and the interplay between them and how ideas about the afterlife, even ghosts, which many say aren't in the Bible, there are loads of them, you just have to know what the words mean. That's

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where my research carried on. And

for the last four years, I was working on the book, The Invisible Dimension, and I've just had it relieved. And

I was just going to say, I mean, I think you touched on something really, really significant, which is that for many people, conversation around whether elements of the supernatural, you know, the idea of ghosts being in the Bible is just so far removed from what they actually think. But

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your right is there, it's just knowing how to look and where to go to to see it. And

I suppose the first question would be to kind of really ask you about what that historical relationship you think has been between the church and the paranormal. When,

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you know, from my personal perspective, that there's not a lot of conversation from what I've seen between the two. It

seems like they don't exist, and yet they do, because it's talking about what happens after death. And

that's something very much relevant, I think, as a touching point and as a something to discuss and to think about. Yes.

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Well,

I mean, the very earliest Christians believed in ghosts, and they wrote about it in the New Testament. Even

Jesus twice, the disciples think that he's a ghost, and he goes, actually, no, I'm not, because and proves otherwise. But

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there's an implicit that implicit statement that actually ghosts do exist, according to the beliefs of Jesus. So

the very earliest Christians did believe this, and they believed in a very active afterlife as well. We

look at the catacombs, where they would have on the inscriptions of the Christian burials. So

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and so, so and so, please pray for us, the deceased person to pray for the living. So

there was always this interplay between the physically alive and the physically dead, although one didn't actually go and tundra them up, as it were, with necromantic practices, because that was forbidden in scriptures. However,

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there was a knowledge that they are surrounded by these, this great cloud, as it's called, of those that have gone before us, our ancestors. And

this has gone on throughout the church, really, in certain traditions within the church, we've got the saints, the tradition of the saints, and these developed over the years, as certain ideas come into play. But

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overall, ghosts have been part of the Christian tradition, whether or not they've been seen as a positive thing, or even a negative thing. But

when we come to sort of the last, maybe, century, century and a half, when spiritism took up, there's been this backlash against having anything to do with the dead, pretty much. It's,

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I mean, Luther himself, the Reformation, what happened was that there was the selling of indulgences, indulgences were sort of, you could pay for somebody to pray for you when you died, and so that you would have a better afterlife experience. And

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the Reformation, this kind of went on and it was very badly abused. And

Luther rebelled against this. And

he kind of wrote off the afterlife, he made it such that the afterlife consisted of those who were in a deep and dreamless sleep, which kind of really annoyed another reformer called John Calvin, who got so angry with Luther that he actually wrote a tract called Psycho Panachea, which is a rebuttal of Luther's ideas, and also the Anabaptists who were saying that when you die, you're in stasis, this thing called soul sleep. As

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a result of that, most of the Protestant church has got this idea that when you die, that's it, until you wake up in the resurrection, or they try and do some wangling around by saying, well, maybe you bypass time and you appear at the resurrection of the dead at the end of this age. But

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overall, the compartmentalization of the dead as not being anything that has any meaning to us anymore has been a big part of the Protestant church, whereas for things like the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic, the living faith of the dead has still been something that has inspired and found soccer for those who have been following. So

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when you get to the 20th century, we've got this all this death from World War One, and a lot of people were saying to their minister, to their vicar, my son, my husband, my father, appeared to me last night, and he's dead. How

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is that? And

a lot of the church didn't really know what to do, and because of that, they went, well, it's either all in your head, so we're going to psycho -babble it, or we're going to say, well, perhaps this wasn't your grandfather, your father, your son, or whatever, perhaps it was an impersonating demon. Now,

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the idea of impersonating demons has been around for about 1800 years. Tertullian,

one of the early church fathers, said maybe that those things were impersonating demons, and even said that the idea of Samuel, which is a story in the book of one Samuel, chapter 28 in the Bible, Samuel is summoned from the underworld by the ghost mistress of Endor, as Irvin Finkel calls her, and he said, well, no, it can't be Samuel, because Samuel would be in heaven. He

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wouldn't be coming up from the ground in the underworld, so therefore, it must be an impersonating demon. So

this idea of it being an impersonating demon has kind of had traction, and it's gone through from World War I and World War II, where the church rejected, in a lot of places, the idea that the dead would actually be able to come back and say goodbye or whatever. And

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that really kind of backfired on the church, because the people just went, well, I know in my heart that that wasn't an impersonating demon, it was my grandfather, my son, my husband. I'm

going to go down the next building, which is the Spiritualist Church, and that is what you will see. You

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will see the rise in the Spiritualist Church takes off after World War I and World War II. Then

you get to the Satanic Panic Errors in sort of like 70s stroke 80s, and that's where your more evangelical wing really clamped down on any conversation to do with ghosts. And

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as a result, I think what's happened is everybody's just gone, well, we've always had ghosts around in our stories, in our experiences for four and a half thousand years or more. Right

from the ancient Mesopotamian times, some things happening here, and we can't just shut this conversation down. So

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what we saw was things like Ghostwatch in 1992, which fascinating program, and then things like Ghost Hunters, the original series, and then you've got Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures, and all of this sort of has taken off. And

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the whole interest in the paranormal has reached a new renaissance, as it were. But

yet this church, by and large, doesn't want to talk about this sort of stuff, because it's frightened. It

doesn't know how to answer this because it's grown up with words that have different meanings, or it doesn't know the meanings of its original words, it doesn't know the context of the words. And

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it's really sad. And

hence, I wrote the book to deliberately open this conversation up and say, look, Ghost are in the Bible, we need to talk about this properly and sensibly, and in a grown -up manner. And

I was just going to say an echo about because, you know, we were talking before the start of the podcast, whereby, you know, for myself, it's a book that I shared with someone in my family for whom, you know, they're deeply of faith, but also hugely spiritual, but marrying those two together has been very problematic for them. And

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just being able to engage in a conversation whereby these things really do go hand in hand, how you can separate them, it baffles me. But

yet, she's found herself in a position where being able to try and converse with her community in her church has been very problematic because it's almost a demonised subject in itself, that, you know, this is just not something that we talk about with reference to the Bible, it's not there, it's not part of it. And

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that's such a shame because I think this is, there is something very innately human about talking about what happens to us after death, about that process and not being able to talk about that is just, I think, like you said, it opens up these other avenues of where people then go to to try and explore the questions that make us pause and wonder as humans. Exactly,

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exactly. I

mean, we've got even death cafes where people go and talk about death. And

yet, for some reason, the church, a lot of churches just want to talk about life. But

we have this life for however many years, however many decades, three score and ten if with less than and more. And

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we don't think about the afterlife, we don't think about when are we going to go for the next stage of the journey. Absolutely.

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21:13

again, I echo what we were talking about and what you said about why you wrote the book, because I do think it's a book that enables people to explore some of this in a way that they possibly haven't been able to do before. It's

a real resource to be able to access and explore the Bible from maybe this other perspective, but also if you're not someone of faith to look at this through a different lens and to appreciate the information that you can see in terms of how this type of material existed, again, through stories, hundreds, thousands of years ago, and we sit again in all cultures, all kind of different geographical locations. This

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is something that exists for all of us as human beings, this idea of again, what happens after death. And

this is just another avenue of a way of trying to explore that and understand that if you're interested in the paranormal just in its own right. So

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I think it's a fantastic book, a really good read and fabulous resource. Thank

you. I

aim to give people tools. I

don't, I aim to give them tons of information, although the book does contain a ton of information, but the tool that comes from the book is how you view the Bible through the eyes of the original reader and the original writer, and you get into their head and then you start to see a whole new world and the afterlife is just throughout, if you know the different words that are used for the afterlife, rather than say, maybe use something like the new international version translation of the Bible, where the underworld realm called Sheol, which is in the original Hebrew text, is just called the grave. And

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that is a deliberate translation by us, by the guy who headed up the committee, because he didn't have this accept, this belief in an active afterlife. And

so the text was changed as a result. I

mean, I just think it's a brilliant read for so many different, on so many different levels. I

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think the ability to have a greater understanding of the historical period and that the context in itself is just so rich and vibrant. And

you're able to really try and, you know, you're able to really see some of that and explore some of that, as well as explore all these other aspects that we've been touching upon. So

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as I say, it's just one that I really, really highly recommend. And

a few weeks ago, as I was saying to you before the start of the podcast, it was one I was talking about with my brother's fiancee and saying, you know, you've got to read this, this will be one that you want to, you want to get your hands on and you won't be able to put down. And,

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and I know she's, she's been enjoying reading it thus far. So

yeah, I think it's, it's one that's very relevant for a lot of people, I would say. It

certainly will give those even that are not Christians, the ability to back back the ideas that certain Christians have and, and denigrate their activities, their ideas, their beliefs. For

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instance, a lot of Christians will just use verses from certain parts of the Bible that are at a time when the afterlife was at a certain stage of development in the understanding of the writers. And

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yet, for some reason, they treat the afterlife as a monolith, a whole block of just one thing that it does not change throughout the text. And

yet the afterlife evolves throughout the whole biblical text and even gives you access to the inter -testamental material. So

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the stuff that didn't make the cut into the Old Testament and the New Testament, it gives you access to those books that you won't hear preached on in a, in a church. So

do you want to just kind of give a brief overview, overview in terms of the, the structure of the book in terms of what people could expect to, if they pick up a copy, what kinds of materials it would contain in terms of taking you through the different sections? The

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idea of the afterlife. First

off, we look at how does the afterlife evolve from the early Hebrew ideas where you go to be with your fathers, with your ancestors, through to your being with your tribe or your nation, and then through to the ideas, the later Hebrew ideas of the segregation between the righteous and the unrighteous within the afterlife. And

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then there's several subcategories within that as well, including things like those who died before they actually had a full life, those that died and they were completely wicked in this life. And

then it takes you through the inter -testamental period, stuff further with the ideas of angelology and demonology, how these, how angels actually came to be in terms of the idea of angels. Because

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angels were just messengers, you could have humans who were messengers. And

yet when you get to the hecho again, to which is the Greek translation about the third to the second century BC, The Septuagint writers who translated the Hebrew into Greek were trying to work out, hold on a second, we're trying to translate this word for angel, for malak, malak, which means messenger, but we've got a word called daimon, which is the same thing in Greek, a messenger. And

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so what the Septuagint writers did was they actually changed, they used the word angel, angelos, Greek in messenger, and said these angelos are the ones between Yahweh, God Almighty and humans, and the daimon, we're going to have three different categories of those, including the gods of the nations, the intermediary spirits between those gods and humans, so they're not angels, they're daimons, and then the human spirits are also called daimons as well. You'll

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see that in the New Testament, so it takes you through that, takes you through the ideas of, the ideas of biblically accurate angels, you'll have seen the meme where you've got these wheels and eyes all over them and these fearsome weird creatures that AI generated images produce. Some

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of those are just actually biblically inaccurate because they aren't angels, as I said, angel is a messenger, you've got certain spirit beings that aren't messengers, angel itself is just a job description, it's not a category, an ontological idea of a particular type of spirit being. So

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you've got the cherubim, who are a bit like, they mark out the sacred space, they mark it out a bit like those barriers, the seatbelt style barriers that you get in the supermarkets for queuing, that sort of thing. They

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use their wings as it were to show those areas are holy places where God lives. And

then you've got the seraphim, who are the fiery flaming, wielding winged, sword wielding creatures that flash inside and outside and they can move around. Then

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it goes on to look at, well, who was this guy called Satan? Because

he's a character, he doesn't actually appear as a particular character, except in the story of Genesis, the Nakash, the bright shining serpentine one. Then

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you kind of get Hasatan, the Satan, so that's an accuser. That

goes through the Old Testament really, it's a kind of a prosecution, as it were. So

when you have your life review, when you die, these are the guys that have got the books and they're the watchers, as it were, they will look and see what you've done and you're judged according to those things. Then

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you have books of righteousness, books of life, that sort of idea that the whole initial judgment when you go into the afterlife is explored there. You

have a bit of this idea of what hell actually means, because we've got this idea that hell is this big fiery place. But

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actually, that's not necessarily what happened when you get to a guy called William Tyndale. He

took four different words, Sheol, Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus, which you might have heard from the Greek legends. And

30:00

he just compressed those into one word, hell. And

that has created one hell of a translation problem and theological understandings that have come from it. Because

you get this idea because we've just had Easter, where Jesus was crucified on the cross and then there's a resurrection. And

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this whole Christian, very ancient idea of the harrowing of hell or harrowing of Hades is what it actually is. So

we look at what does that actually mean, what went on between the crucifixion and the resurrection that is so amazing. And

yet a lot of more modern Protestant church type folk would just go, well, he was just asleep in the grave. But

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that's not what the text says and it's threaded throughout. Then

we get on to looking at some of the other passages as well. Psalm

23, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not be in want. He

makes me lie down in green pastures. And

though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, what did the valley of the shadow of death actually mean? And

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then the green pastures and it looks at those and says, well, yeah, the Egyptians had similar ideas, the field of rushes. The

Egyptians had a very positive afterlife because basically if you were able to enter the afterlife, you'd made it through the judgment hall and you were eaten by the crocodile goddess. You

31:20

know, you've been judged righteous. Otherwise,

you didn't exist anymore. So

it looks and compares with things like the Mesopotamian ideas as well, where Mesopotamians had a very dim and dark view of the afterlife, where it was just a land of dust and had iron bars on it. And

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that language comes into the Hebrew Old Testament, even things like the gates of Hades or the gates of hell, as Jesus talks about. These

are ideas that have come around in the milieu of ideas from the Hebrews interfacing with both Egyptians and Mesopotamians when they were in captivity in Egypt and in Babylon. So

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it goes through all of that and then it ends with a sort of a look at things like praying for the dead because I was brought in a very fundamentalist Protestant and praying for the dead is forbidden. In

fact, at my mother's funeral last year, I wasn't even allowed to do a prayer for accommodation, committing my mom to God because it was in the Baptist church where they go according to the Baptist Confession of Faith where prayer for the dead is forbidden. And

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I looked and went, well, biblically, prayer for the dead is actually there if you look at the text and take it as it's read. And

if you look at the early Christian beliefs, it's the same thing. They

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were doing prayer for the dead and they were asking the dead to pray for the living. So

it finally goes with a particularly spooky story that happened while I was at St Breville and I will let the readers find out. I

33:07

won't spoil it. It's

a great location to have a spooky experience in those St Breville's. I

think for anybody who has been there to investigate or just explore, which I have, I mean, it's a great location. It's

very atmospheric, very cold, mind you, but very atmospheric. And

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yeah, I defy anyone to not have a spooky encounter there if they go. It's

just one of those locations that I will keep it shut as to what the experience was. Well,

it's a youth hostel as well. And

I'm a member of the youth hostel. So

it's a great time to take your family and you could stay fairly cheaply in a castle. So

33:46

my kids loved it. Yeah,

I think I think I dimly remember years and years ago doing the same thing, taking a group of students there on a residential type thing for the similar reason. So

34:01

yeah, it's a it's a fabulous location. And

I know that many people enjoy going there for paranormal investigations just because of that aspect to it. It's

something that they offer. And

yeah, it does seem to have that draw to it, which is fabulous if you're interested in the paranormal. But

34:20

like I said, I'm not going to give away your experience because I think it's one they have to read in the book. No

spoilers. And

I think you gave a really comprehensive kind of overview about what the book is really about. And

from my perspective, I think it highlights just the uniqueness of the book, which is that it's offering this very comprehensive. Analysis

34:43

that allows you to strip back some of those misconceptions and take you back to those original words like you were mentioning that just help you to appreciate the value of those words, what they truly mean and what that could mean to you today, how that resonates with those questions that you may have, but also just gives you that much broader context and deeper understanding of these stories, but also again, human nature and our own questions and our own thoughts about the afterlife, as opposed to closing that discussion down and and not enabling you to see the original meaning behind those words. You're

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kind of opening that up. And

again, I think it's really what makes the book so unique that you bring people that knowledge, that understanding by enabling them to see how some of that has changed how it's been mistranslated or used incorrectly. And

35:42

it's then sent people down this totally other path in terms of thinking. Yeah,

yes, definitely. So

in terms of the book in the process of putting the book together, what was the most surprising discovery for you when it came to research when putting the book together? Oh,

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I think probably that the afterlife evolves. And

it evolves in not necessarily a linear way, but more of a constellation as a gradual brightening of the ideas as you look at the books themselves and when they were written because part of what I had to do was to take away this idea of the Bible. As

36:29

all the books that you get are in chronological order because they're definitely not. So

I had to go and do the research to find out when these particular books were written and then find out plot out where these ideas when each book talks about the afterlife. Where

36:46

does that fit in the overall scheme of things? You

get some books where the interplay between the Israelites and surrounding cultures meant that the Israelites were performing necromanic practices. And

so some of the biblical writers at those times deliberately pick negative views of the afterlife where God is not there or, you know, the dead can't be contacted or the dead know nothing. That's

37:14

a particular favorite text of those that are not wanting to talk about ghosts in the Bible. And

just to be able to unpick and unweave the raggedy tapestry that has been created and then reputting it back into the order that it was, it kind of reveals all sorts of really interesting things like, for instance, the story of Jonah, where we've got this idea of Jonah and he's been swallowed by the big fish. And

37:42

some Christians, and I count myself as one of those guilty of doing this when I was before the research. Yeah,

maybe Jonah was miraculously kept alive inside the fish. You

know, you've got these kiddie stories, pictures where Jonah sitting fishing inside this big cavernous whales belly. But

38:01

actually, Jonah prays from shill from the underworld, he's gone down to the underworld, and the, you know, weeds are wrapped around his head and all sorts of things like that. And

then it starts to look and say, well, Jesus said the sign of Jonah is going to be the same for the sign of me three days in the fish. And

38:24

yet, if you say that Jonah didn't die in the fish, then Jesus is saying, well, I didn't die. And

I was just sort of having a bit of a kip as it were in the tomb, which kind of unpicks the whole idea of what the crucifixion, the descent to the dead, and the resurrection were all about. So

38:42

unwittingly, a lot of Christians will undermine and torpedo their own belief systems without having this comprehensive coherent narrative that is threaded throughout. And

39:00

again, I think that's why this is so relevant to book for so many people, because it does allow you to look at this again and go back to those original sources, those original words to really truly value and understand the meaning behind them. And

39:17

I think this is where someone of faith, someone not of faith will still equally find something of value in that in terms of what they want to draw from that, whether it's looking at it from the spiritual side or from their faith side or both. There

39:35

is just so much that you can draw from the material in terms of being able to access it and discover things that I think really will be quite eyeopening for the majority of people who will come to the book. It's

a very refreshing, different analysis. And

39:50

that's something that I just really appreciate in terms of the effort that you put into that to bring that all together. Thank

you. So

just in terms of the reaction to the book so far, what have people been saying to you about how they've perceived it? I

40:06

mean, obviously you've heard my thoughts, but what's been the perception of others so far that have spoken to you about the book? Well,

I've had a lot of friends put, you know, the books arrived. In

fact, the local Christian bookshop has just posted on Facebook while we've been conversing, all look what's arrived and 10 copies of the book. So

40:26

there's a lot of excitement about it. Generally,

it's been very positively received. John

Drain and Olive Drain are two very well respected theologians whose books are used in theological colleges up and down the country. And

40:41

in fact, worldwide. And

they were glad to write a back piece on the book for it. I

don't know if you've heard of a guy called Peter Laws. He's

a Baptist church minister, the Sinister minister. I

didn't know him. Yeah,

40:58

so he's a great, great guy. And

he wrote a piece, had a read and was fascinated by it. A

guy called John Morehead has read it as well. And

he's provided a back piece as well because he does a lot of horror stuff and Christianity and the interplay between the two. I've

41:19

had one or two people who've had some. Oh,

you've got to be careful with this. It's

dark and dangerous. One

comment. Another

was that I was advocating contacting spirit guides, which is fascinating because they've not read the book and they admitted that not read the book, but I was advocating contacting spirit guides apparently. So

41:43

maybe they are psychically gifted and able to know the contents of the book without reading it themselves. But

generally speaking, no, there's been a very positive response to it. And

I find that exciting because, you know, you've got this idea of publish and be damned. Well,

42:03

I'm happy to be damned for some of the stuff because, well, I would have myself been damning it 10 years ago before I did the research. And

I would say that it from my perspective, it's been a book that has certainly been something that people have been talking about within the paranormal community in terms of some of the people that I know who are part of ASAP, SPR, and for example, who have really found it an interesting read from the perspective of, again, being able to look at this from a different lens and appreciate it from that aspect in terms of exploring the paranormal. So

42:44

again, I think it's a book that is really relevant for so many different people. And

very rarely does that happen. You

know, sometimes it can really squarely fit into one's kind of area. But

it really does blend, I think, those different elements. Because

43:03

again, like we were saying, they are something that are very much interconnected. And

so you're able to extrapolate and draw on that, which again draws people in then from those different areas of interest. I

think you have to read widely in order to be able to write widely. And

43:22

I've certainly read widely. Honestly,

I could just listen to you. I

think I had the same feeling, though, reading the book. It

was one I was really eagerly looking forward to reading and going back into. And

just talking to you, it's the same thing. It's

so interesting to be able to have that deeper perspective and that understanding that you bring to the conversation. So

43:45

I really appreciate being able to share some of that insight as to your approach, why you write the book and some of the material that people will be able to kind of draw upon once if they get their hands on a copy to be able to read it for themselves. And

as I've said throughout the podcast, it's certainly a book that I would recommend. I

44:04

think people will find it really interesting and useful and a resource that I think will surprise them quite frankly. I

think they'll be really pleasantly surprised. I

think many people will go in thinking it's going to be one thing and it's not. So

very much a book that I recommend. Brilliant.

44:22

Thank

you. And

honestly, thank you so much for your time, Matt. It

was honestly a pleasure. I

could listen to you all night, just sharing some of the stories and the origin. And

again, I read the book, but I could still listen to you talk about it. And

I think that speaks volumes. So

44:38

honestly, it's been so enjoyable talking to you and I really appreciate your time. It's

been fantastic to speak with you as well. Thank

you very much for having me on the show. And

I will say to everybody listening, if you want to get a hand that you know, copy hands on a copy, then I'll make sure that all the links are available via the podcast description notes on the website section, etc. As

45:02

well as any other relevant links to Matt so that you can find him on social media and see the other things that he does, etc. I

don't think you'd be disappointed there either. So

I'll make sure all of that is very easily available so that you can be signposted to those relevant pages and sections on the interwebs. So to speak and yeah, I say just I recommend it's a book that I think you'll enjoy. So

if this has been a discussion that's been of interest, it's a book that I hope you follow up with because I think you'll find it fascinating. So

thank you again so much for your time Matt and I will say goodbye to everybody listening. Thank you very much. Goodbye.