Hugging My Father’s Ghost with Zack Rogow

Summary

Poet and playwright Zack Rogow joins his cousin Jeffrey Mishlove to discuss his memoir 'Hugging My Father's Ghost,' in which he writes imagined dialogues with his father, author Lee Rogow, who died in a 1955 plane crash. Rogow calls the process a kind of literary after-death communication and does not claim it was genuine mediumship, but he says his father's wisecracking personality seemed to come through vividly. The conversation also uncovers family secrets, including a partner swap between two couples, a near-identical plane crash fate, and Lee's hidden role as inspiration for the hero of Herman Wouk's 'The Caine Mutiny.'

Key takeaways

• 1Lee Rogow, a promising author, died in a plane crash in 1955 at age 36, when his son Zack was three years old.
• 2Zack Rogow describes hearing his father's voice in his thoughts while writing, and calls the resulting dialogues 'literary cloning' and literary after-death communication.
• 3Mishlove compares the process to induced after-death communication, a therapy discussed by Jan Holden, former president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
• 4Herman Wouk based the young officer who leads the mutiny in 'The Caine Mutiny' largely on Lee Rogow, who later gave the novel a harsh review in the Saturday Review. Wouk still delivered Lee's eulogy.
• 5Andre Breton's surrealist automatic writing is discussed as a form of channeling a larger force, along with Breton's interest in mediums.
• 6Lee's ex-girlfriend Sugar, a USO singer, survived the worst USO plane crash in history in the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

So my dad says to me, my dad, Lee Rogo, so Zachala, Zachala is an affectionate version of Zach, my name. I understand you're writing a book about my writings. I'm very pleased, but can I ask why? And I say, it's a way of getting to know you, a literary cloning, so to speak. Do you know what cloning is? Oh, of course, we had that idea in my day. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, and all that jazz. So you're cloning me? As best I can. And my dad says, you sure you want to do this now? Because I was just starting to get used to being dead. It's not an easy thing, especially when you go so early, the way I did. And I say, I can't imagine. Could I ask you what it's like, by the way, being dead? And my dad says, well, it's not like you have blintzes with Tolstoy in the morning, and then you push boulders up a hill with Sisyphus in the afternoon. You're not really a you. You're just a bunch of particles wafting in the solar wind, more or less. This is the first time I've had a thought, and, well, how many years has it been? And I say, you've been gone 68 years. And my father says, interesting. I couldn't have told you if it was two days or two millennia. Keep watching to learn more. The New Thinking Allowed magazine, issue 10, on UFOs and UAP, is now ready for free download. And you can also order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Oct 30, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.