Latest / Brian Thomas / Brian Thomas with Sebastian Junger -- 12/5/25

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Brian Thomas with Sebastian Junger -- 12/5/25 · Brian Thomas

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Speaker 1: Buck Sexton, even if she's a lib. You pay on
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Speaker 1: the first eight guys today after glad, I'm fifty five
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Speaker 1: KRC the talk station, A six fifty five KRC DE
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Speaker 1: talk station. A very happy Friday to everyone. Bryanton is
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Speaker 1: happy to bring to the welcome with the fifty five
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Speaker 1: carre mor Karse Morning Show. A man who you're going
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Speaker 1: to want to hear the next Tuesday, December ninth, It's
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Speaker 1: an empower You seminar virtual only, so you can stay
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Speaker 1: at home and log in from the comfort of your
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Speaker 1: own home. Just register it empower at you America dot
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Speaker 1: org of course to start time seven pm Tuesday. Mark
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Speaker 1: it down for my guest, Sebastian Younger and I hope
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Speaker 1: I pronounced in your last name right, Sebastian, you may
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Speaker 1: very well be aware of. I'm an author of a
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Speaker 1: whole bunch of very highly praised books. He's an award
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Speaker 1: winning journalist, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, special correspondent to
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Speaker 1: ABC News. He's been a war correspondent, covered major international
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Speaker 1: news stories around the world, received both a National Magazine
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Speaker 1: Award and a Peabody Award. And get a load of this.
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Speaker 1: He did a documentary res Strepo, nominated for an Academy Award,
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Speaker 1: and won a Grand Jury prize at sun Dance. Also
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Speaker 1: written for magazines. You've heard about The New York Times magazine,
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Speaker 1: National Geographic Adventure. You've read his stuff. Welcome to the program, Sebastian.
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Speaker 1: It's a real pleasure to have you. I'm to talk
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Speaker 1: about this rather fascinating. I guess I just sort of
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Speaker 1: life change that you went through in my time of dying,
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Speaker 1: how I came face to face with the idea of
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Speaker 1: an afterlife, which is the name of your book, hugely
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Speaker 1: successful book. Sebastian. Welcome to the fifty five krs Morning Show.
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Speaker 2: Hey, thank you very much for having me.
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Speaker 1: You know your I got it. You died. I'm gonna
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Speaker 1: let you summarize what occurred to you and how life
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Speaker 1: transformational this death experience was. But I got to tell
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Speaker 1: you I had a friend of my father's or one
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Speaker 1: of my fathers, my late father's friends, went through almost
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Speaker 1: word for word, exactly what you experienced when you ended
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Speaker 1: up in the hospital. I mean he in his case,
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Speaker 1: he died and met his mom and ended up being
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Speaker 1: revived in your case as your father. So let's walk
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Speaker 1: through this and I think it's really important for my
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Speaker 1: listening audience to know that going into this experience, you
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Speaker 1: were an atheist, a confirmed atheist.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I still am. And my father was an
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Speaker 2: atheist and a physicist, which is like atheist square. So
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Speaker 2: that's where my family and I are coming from. So
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Speaker 2: I had a you know, I was a war reporter
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Speaker 2: for a long time, and I've come close to getting
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Speaker 2: killed a number of times, and I'd made my sort
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Speaker 2: of peace with that, and then I stopped war reporting.
2:33
Speaker 2: I had a family. I felt like I sort of
2:35
Speaker 2: slid into home base. And I'm in good shape. I'm
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Speaker 2: not a walking heart attack. I'm an athlete. I had
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Speaker 2: no reason to have any concern for my medical wellbeing.
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Speaker 2: And in mid sentence, I felt that pain in my
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Speaker 2: abdomen and it wasn't I had an undiagnosed aneurism in
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Speaker 2: my pacriatic artery, which is this little artery that no
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Speaker 2: one needs to think about. And an aneurism is a
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Speaker 2: sort of unnatural ballooting in the side of the artery
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Speaker 2: that will eventually burst, and when it ruptures, you start
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Speaker 2: bleeding out into your own abdomen. And the problem with
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Speaker 2: that is doctors don't know where it is. If you
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Speaker 2: get stabbed in the stomach, they know where to plug
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Speaker 2: the leak, as it were, but not if it's internal hemorrhage,
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Speaker 2: which is what I had. I lost half of my blood.
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Speaker 2: It took me an hour and a half to get
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Speaker 2: to the hospital. I lost at least half my blood,
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Speaker 2: if not more, and I was an end stage hemorrhagic
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Speaker 2: shock when I got there. And while they were trying
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Speaker 2: to get a pick line into my jugguler to transfuse me,
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Speaker 2: I needed ten units of blood, basically a full oil change.
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Speaker 2: Right while they were doing that, I felt myself getting
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Speaker 2: pulled into this black pit, this sort of infinitely black pit,
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Speaker 2: like the universe had cracked open. I had no idea
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Speaker 2: I was dying, but I was terrified of going into
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Speaker 2: this darkness. And then my father, my dead father, appeared
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Speaker 2: above me and communicated to me, it's okay. Basically, it's okay.
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Speaker 2: I'll take care of you. You don't have to fight it.
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Speaker 2: I'll take care of you. And I was horrified, but
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Speaker 2: I was like, I don't want to be with you.
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Speaker 2: I want I want to stay here like and I said,
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Speaker 2: on that point, on that point, I hate the interrupt
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Speaker 2: But on that point, were you I mean, I don't
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Speaker 2: want to be with you.
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Speaker 1: Was that a recognition that this was death? And I mean,
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Speaker 1: you knew your dad was dead and you were talking
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Speaker 1: or he was speaking with you from apparently beyond the
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Speaker 1: grave or some sort. So is that is that where
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Speaker 1: your fearstem from?
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Speaker 2: Well, you know, when you've lost half your blood, your
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Speaker 2: brain's not working very well. I never connected those dots, right.
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Speaker 2: I was very puzzled to see him hovering above me.
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Speaker 2: I mean, A, you're dead. B why are you floating right?
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Speaker 2: I mean, I just I was. I can't tell you
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Speaker 2: how puzzled I was. And he was basically offering to
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Speaker 2: take care of me. Come with me, I'll take care
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Speaker 2: of you. I was like, why would I go? You're dead?
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Speaker 2: Why would I want to go with you? The party's
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Speaker 2: over here. We'll talk later, like in a long time. Yeah, later.
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Speaker 2: And I said to the doctor, you have to hear
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Speaker 2: I'm going right, And as he was working to get
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Speaker 2: the line into my neck.
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Speaker 1: Wow, Well, now that is one element that differs from
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Speaker 1: the friend of my father's, because he was in my
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Speaker 1: view of it, I use the term piece of God
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Speaker 1: all the time. You know, it's like the piece of
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Speaker 1: God that passes all human understanding. I think he experienced
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Speaker 1: something like one would believe the piece of God. No anxiety,
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Speaker 1: full relief, joy, happiness, no worries, no concerns, And when
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Speaker 1: he saw his mother speaking with him, I mean, he
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Speaker 1: was just totally enlightened. But he looked down and saw
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Speaker 1: himself on the operating table. He heard the doctors talking
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Speaker 1: to each other. And some may argue, going back to
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Speaker 1: your point about a dream state, was he really experiencing
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Speaker 1: sort of a dream at the time his cognitive functions
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Speaker 1: were still working and this was a manufactured thing. Or
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Speaker 1: was he indeed experiencing an afterlife? And is that sort
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Speaker 1: of what led you on this post experience journey that
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Speaker 1: you went on that you write about in the book.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So afterwards, I was very, very puzzled by what happened.
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Speaker 2: And they managed to save my life. They got enough
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Speaker 2: flood into me. They used a individual radiology a catheter
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Speaker 2: to get through my venous system, through my arterial system
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Speaker 2: to the rupture and plug it. Amazing, amazing medical care.
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Speaker 2: And I woke up in the ICU the next morning,
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Speaker 2: and I went through all this conscious because they couldn't
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Speaker 2: sedate me because my vital size was so low. So
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Speaker 2: the next after I got home from the hospital, I
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Speaker 2: started reading about NDS near death experiences and what I
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Speaker 2: found out was that what I experienced seeing a dead
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Speaker 2: loved one is very very common. And uh, and I
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Speaker 2: started to so I started to explore that, and the
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Speaker 2: the you know, the the ultimate question and maybe the
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Speaker 2: ultimate mystery is, as you say, are these just the
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Speaker 2: hallucinations of a dying brain? Or are is it a
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Speaker 2: glimpse into into the fact that we may not understand
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Speaker 2: reality completely? We may not understand it very well. I mean,
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Speaker 2: we may not understand consciousness and life and death in
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Speaker 2: any way. And is this are these visions death bad visions?
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Speaker 2: Are Are they showing us a glimpse of an ultimate
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Speaker 2: reality which would be a sort of unity of all consciousness?
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Speaker 2: That that sort of idea?
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Speaker 1: Now, did this experience transform you in a sense? That
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Speaker 1: what quite often what I've read, and of course there
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Speaker 1: have been multiple accounts, as you point out, and of this,
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Speaker 1: other people experiencing very comparable things. Did you come back
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Speaker 1: with a more profound appreciation for life? Like you know what? Uh,
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Speaker 1: It's like I always do agree. You know, you could
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Speaker 1: die any day. You could go outside, a bustle hit
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Speaker 1: you weren't planning for it. You know, we don't all
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Speaker 1: go through like a long arduous battle with cancer. Sometimes
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Speaker 1: bad things happen and you just check out without a
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Speaker 1: moment's notice. So knowing that you literally can check out
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Speaker 1: with a moment's notice, as you almost did, did it
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Speaker 1: change you and how you see life on a day
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Speaker 1: to day basis?
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Speaker 2: Excuse me? Yes, yes it did, but you know, with
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Speaker 2: a sort of caveat, with a sort of asterisk. So
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Speaker 2: if you realize you can die, not only any day,
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Speaker 2: at any moment, it shed a very very bright light
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Speaker 2: on what the experience of life is and it can
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Speaker 2: make you very very paranoid, right, I mean you literally
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Speaker 2: think I could die at any moment. It's very very
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Speaker 2: hard to relax, right, And that terror is the flip
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Speaker 2: side of reverence. So yeah, I could die at any moment.
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Speaker 2: That's terrifying. Or I could die at any moment. I
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Speaker 2: have a great reverence and thankfulness for the fact that
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Speaker 2: I exist right now, and they sort of go hand
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Speaker 2: in hand and by at one point, so I went
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Speaker 2: through a period of extreme anxiety. It took quite a
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Speaker 2: months a year to sort of get out of that,
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Speaker 2: and it eventually where I landed was a kind of
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Speaker 2: calm appreciation of how sort of blessed we are, and
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Speaker 2: I mean blessed in a secular sense, right, I'm not religious,
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Speaker 2: but how blessed we all are to exist at all.
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Speaker 2: And it's easy to forget that when you're stuck in
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Speaker 2: a traffic jam or you know, running to you doing
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Speaker 2: the groceries or whatever.
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Speaker 1: All right, well, I have a good question for you particularly,
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Speaker 1: and I think it's most appropriate for you because of
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Speaker 1: your being at about atheist. Where did your terror come from?
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Speaker 1: I know people that are afraid of death because they
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Speaker 1: remember what they did during their life, and you can't
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Speaker 1: pat yourself on the back for all the things you
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Speaker 1: did in life. Quite often religion will bring about that.
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Speaker 1: It's like watching the Ebenezer screwge. You know, he looks like,
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Speaker 1: oh my God, look what's going to happen to me?
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Speaker 1: If I don't change my ways, I will be doomed
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Speaker 1: to eternal power or a peril. No, if I think
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Speaker 1: that's a possibility, that's going to scare the hell out
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Speaker 1: of me. So I would have terror thinking that I
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Speaker 1: might die if I haven't changed my life or otherwise
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Speaker 1: undone the bad that I've done. But how about in
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Speaker 1: your case? Because honestly, sir, regardless of my personal philosophy
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Speaker 1: about life, death and doctrine and dogma, I've kind of
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Speaker 1: come to a realization that I'm not afraid of death.
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Speaker 1: I've reconciled myself with that. I'm prepared to meet my
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Speaker 1: make or I'm prepared for whatever comes. And you know,
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Speaker 1: if they pull a plug of meat right now I'm
10:05
Speaker 1: on the morning show, I can handle that. I at
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Speaker 1: least I think I can. I don't live in terror
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Speaker 1: or fear of death at all.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I you know, it was a consequence
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Speaker 2: of trauma, right, I've been in a lot of combat
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Speaker 2: and was traumatized by that. A lot of people who
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Speaker 2: have made their peace with dying are still traumatized by
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Speaker 2: the events that they saw on the battlefield. And I
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Speaker 2: was very traumatized by this experience. You know, in mid
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Speaker 2: sentence talking to my wife, all of a sudden, I
10:34
Speaker 2: was circling the drain, and that that could happen at
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Speaker 2: any moment can make you overly self aware, right, overly
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Speaker 2: conscious of your moment to moment experience I also had
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Speaker 2: very young children. I came to fatherhood late in my
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Speaker 2: mid fifties. I love them more than life itself, and
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Speaker 2: they are life itself for me. And so the idea
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Speaker 2: of being sort of plucked, plucked out of my family,
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Speaker 2: leaving my family with the records of my death, it
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Speaker 2: just I couldn't bear to think about it.
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Speaker 1: That I get that makes perfect sense to me, because
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Speaker 1: you know, I have a wife, I have family, I
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Speaker 1: love them dearly, and yeah, the idea of missing them.
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Speaker 1: But see, then that goes back to is there something
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Speaker 1: afterward that will cause you to miss them? I don't
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Speaker 1: know what's coming. In my philosophy. I don't believe in ghosts.
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Speaker 1: For example, Sebastian, I don't want to believe in the afterlife.
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Speaker 1: I'm going to be looming around lurking, watching what people
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Speaker 1: are doing, or scaring the crap out of people. I
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Speaker 1: think God or we have a greater mystery out there
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Speaker 1: to contemplate than something like that. So I choose not
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Speaker 1: to believe in them because I don't want to believe
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Speaker 1: in that as a concept. So, but that longing and
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Speaker 1: that thinking about your current cognitive awareness of people and
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Speaker 1: interactions and people thinking about you were talking about you
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Speaker 1: that that has to continue to exist after you die,
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Speaker 1: to have some concern about what it's going to be.
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Speaker 1: Like I like to think that that's over with.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we may be over with that. But you know,
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Speaker 2: it was more an understanding now as a person who
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Speaker 2: is alive, that this could all end my right and
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Speaker 2: that's that's kind of that's kind of wrenching it and
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Speaker 2: it it and also it was more the concern was
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Speaker 2: more what you would do to my family more left
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Speaker 2: behind like that was that was a very very painful
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Speaker 2: idea very young kids. And you know, I just I
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Speaker 2: was too unbearable, unbearable to think about.
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Speaker 1: I get it in my time of dying, how I
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Speaker 1: came face to face with the idea of an afterlife.
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Speaker 1: My guest today Sebastian Younger. Again, this is empower You
12:33
Speaker 1: America dot org website. Register for the class next Tuesday,
12:36
Speaker 1: beginning at seven pm. And I understand you're gonna be
12:38
Speaker 1: doing question and answers as well. Oh yes, of course, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I know. I look forward to it. I love fielding
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Speaker 1: people's questions. Great part drama, part autobiography, part scientific inquiry
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Speaker 1: into the mystery of death. It's all there. Next Tuesdays
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Speaker 1: the day. I hope a lot of people tune into this,
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Speaker 1: and I hope a lot of people buy your book.
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Speaker 1: And here's what I'll do. I'll have Sean McMahon, my
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Speaker 1: producer for the day, and your book and a link
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Speaker 1: to people where people can get it, probably Amazon, on
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Speaker 1: my blog page, so they can maybe get a copy
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Speaker 1: of advance and start reading about what you experienced, maybe
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Speaker 1: even in advance of the seminar.
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Speaker 2: Oh awesome, thank you very much.
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Speaker 1: My pleasure to do with Sebastian Young are really a
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Speaker 1: pleasure talking with you. Fascinating concept you're dealing with here,
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Speaker 1: and again, best of luck on the Empower Youth Seminar, Tuesday,
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Speaker 1: seven pm. Happy holidays to you, Sebastian, you two, thank
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Speaker 1: you very much. Thanks my friend eight nineteen. Right now
13:26
Speaker 1: fifty five KCD talk station, Sean will open up the
13:29
Speaker 1: phone lines. We have time to talk. I got other
13:30
Speaker 1: stories we can talk about. Maybe there's something I talked
13:32
Speaker 1: about earlier. You want to chime in on it, feel
13:34
Speaker 1: free to do so, but that'll be after I mentioned
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13:41
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13:42
Speaker 1: for years, and there's a good reason I've been going
13:44
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13:47
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14:11
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14:14
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14:18
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14:21
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14:24
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14:28
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14:43
Speaker 2: We're not