And what struck me so much is that this return of the person is truly a return of the person.

It's not an abstract self, like an Atman or, you know, and some impersonal.

It's this person with this biography, what he or she lives through, succeeded in, strived for

suffered, and so on.

So that's why I mentioned dignity.

It's very hard to look at these 450 cases, you see something scientifically interesting and immensely human.

ID, The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Why would the human mind sometimes appear strongest when the brain is weakest?

Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermid. Well, today I welcome to the show

neurosurgeon Dr. Michael

Egnor, co-author with Denise O'Leary of the recent book, The Immortal Mind, a neurosurgeon's

case for the existence of the soul, and Alexander Batiani, a leading researcher on terminal

lucidity, and author of Threshold, Terminal Lucidity and the

Border Between Life and Death. We're going to discuss the phenomenon of terminal lucidity today,

what it is, what the evidence shows, and how it relates to debates about consciousness,

mind, and human identity. Welcome, gentlemen, to ID the future. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for having

us. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited about this discussion. Alexander, let's, or if I may, Alex,

let's begin unpacking here. We're going to spend a couple of episodes unpacking this topic

and the insights that both of you bring to the table.

Today my goal is to help our audience clearly understand what terminal lucidity is and why it doesn't fit comfortably with standard brain-based explanations of the mind.

Now, let's start at the beginning. First, what is terminal lucidity, Alex, and how did you become interested in studying it?

Well, I mean, terminal lucidity refers to the fact that,

...