The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2172 - Sebastian Junger
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,897 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- SJSebastian Junger
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music)
- SJSebastian Junger
Joe Rogan.
- JRJoe Rogan
As I was saying, you're one of the last of the Mohicans, rocking that flip phone.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. That's right. I'm proud of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
D- do you text people?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, yeah, I text.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you do the (beeping) where it takes a bunch of times to...
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, it's T- something called T9.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
It's predictive texting so, you know, it gives you a bunch of alternatives. You just have to do it all on a keypad with your thumb rather than with an iPhone which you have the full alphabet.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I bet that battery lasts, like, a week.
- SJSebastian Junger
I don't even travel with a charger, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, I mean, unless I'm gone for a week. But, uh, if I'm just gone for a couple days and I don't have any long conversations planned, I- I don't even bother.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
All email, everything's handled at home?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Plus-
- JRJoe Rogan
All on the laptop, right?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, plus chicks they get bit and it's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
They do?
- SJSebastian Junger
No. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Like what kind of chicks are you hanging around with?
- SJSebastian Junger
(laughs) Yeah. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Savages.
- SJSebastian Junger
No. No, at one point I was- I was at CNN waiting for a, um, to go on and- and these two young women, they kept looking at me. And this was like 10 years ago, so I plausi- plausibly could say to myself, "Well, maybe I still got it," right? Like, who knew, right? Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SJSebastian Junger
And then one of them noticed that I had noticed them looking at me and she goes, "Oh, excuse me sir, we were just... We can't believe that you have a p- flip phone." So I was like, "Well, that's the end of an era." (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
10 years ago?
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. …
- JRJoe Rogan
like, see in a test. You know, like if someone says-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... like if you have, uh, you know, some sort of a disease, they say, "Oh, we found that you're sick with, you know, syphilis," whatever it is. "And we'll give you-"
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... we're gonna give you this-"
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... medicine."
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"And we've got this figured out. We tested you. We know what it is."
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
With your mind, you know, like if someone says they're depressed, like, okay, what does that mean? What does that mean?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's no measurement. There's nothing, you know?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, so they have to say, "Okay, well, let's try a little of this."
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Or try a little of that, and try to figure out what it is." And ...
- SJSebastian Junger
And there, there are some things that are legit bad, really, really tough things to have, like, uh, borderline. And, uh, I had my, my, my buddy ... I mean, he was my closest friend. He was my brother, right? And, and he was the best man at my, in my first wedding. And we were in a war ... And we were in Bos- I, we, we were in Bosnia together during the civil war, and just brothers, right? And amazing, brilliant, funny, funny man. And, um, but he w- he ha- he was a lifelong depressive. And part of his brilliance was rooted in d- uh, uh, he sa- he says like, in his depression. Like it may- gave him a certain kind of mind. And he was, he, um ... But he wa- he was, uh, finally diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. And one of the problems with schizoaffective is that they reject the diagnosis, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
They're saying, "No, no, no. You all, you, everyone you're having it- has it wrong. I'm fine and I have no problem. And it's you guys that are n- don't understand what I'm up against," right? And so it's very hard to treat, because they re- like borderlines, they reject the idea. Narcissism disorder is another one. They reject the idea there's anything wrong with them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
So it was really, really hard to treat.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales loudly) It's crazy when someone's, um, weakness is actually like their strength like in their career.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? Which is, uh, a thing with some creative types. Like, there's this guy, Richard Jeni. He's like one of my all-time favorite comedians, and he killed himself. And everyone who didn't know him was baffled. They were like, "That guy's at the top of his game. That guy is everything we all wanna be."
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was so good that, uh, I went to this club in New York, in Upstate New York, or in, uh, Long Island rather, East Side Comedy Club. And this dude, uh, Peter, who was the, uh, emcee, was depressed 'cause he worked with Richard Jeni all weekend. And he was like, he did a new hour every night. He did a, new hou- two hours Friday, two different hours, two different hours Saturday.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
For most of us, we have one hour.
- SJSebastian Junger
You're right. (laughs)
- 30:00 – 45:00
Right. …
- JRJoe Rogan
disable a nation's army almost instantaneously-
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then take over their cities or bomb their cities, like, instantaneously, it's just we're relying on good nature.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
The- the understanding that this is a horrible thing to do to humanity-
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to- to pull that trigger first.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right. Well, there's also this sort of, what do you- what- what happens when the dog catches the tire, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
So if Russia had ... I mean, what the Ukrainians- I mean, all the politics and whatever aside, just on this- on a military level, what the- what the Ukrainians were able to do, you know, quite outmatched by the- by the Russians, what the Afghan- what the- what the Taliban were able to do with the US, the mujahideen against the Russians, all of this, like, what the- what the Ukrainians were able to do against the Russians is quite extraordinary. The Russians really should have taken Ukraine in a few weeks, right? And had they-... that would've been what, that was what everyone predicted. I didn't think that was gonna happen, but that was what everyone predicted. Didn't happen, and, um, the motivation to defend your home is always far greater than the dev- than the motivation to invade someone else's home. Just for the 19-year-old male, like, the, the moti- and motivation is ex- as you know, I'm sure from MMA, is like super important in outcome, right? And, um, so... But had the Russians done it, had they taken, had they just blitzkrieged all the way through Ukraine, seized it, then they would have, what- what they would have had is the huge, huge and costly problem of, um, maintaining order, uh, in, uh, in a nation of 40 million people, 40 million resentful people who do not want to be governed by outsiders. Like, don't try this at home, right? I mean, this is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
... and so I think, yeah, so you can take out... Say you had a magic, you know, electromagnetic pulse that took out everything in the U- I mean, I'm just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
... bullshitting here, but took out everything that the US military relies on to communicate and to function. You just zapped it out of existence and invade it, right? The Russians took the, you know, east of the Mississippi, (laughs) the Chinese took west of the Mississippi or whatever, whatever it might be. Then you got to run this place.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
And that's when you really have a tactical problem township by township.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
Mountain by mountain. And then it's real- and then your electromagnetic pulse actually doesn't serve you that well. And there, you know, there, the Afghans... I mean, the Taliban didn't defeat us. They just outlasted us-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
... until we got tired of being there and didn't want to pay the bill.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So you're... The, what I, when I got reached out to, uh, about you was that you had gotten through a near-death experience. And, uh, I really didn't want to read into it at all. I just wanted to ask you about it.
- SJSebastian Junger
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
So y- something happened. You had an aneurysm that burst inside, internally?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that what it is?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. So, I mean, the short, you know, the, the medical description is I had an undiagnosed aneurysm, which is a ballooning of an artery, um, and a weak spot. Like, so, I mean, arteries can dilate to get more blood flow, but an aneurysm is like one specific spot that, for one reason or another, uh, is weak and it starts to sort of give way, and it'll bubble outwards. And as that bubble grows bigger, and this takes decades, it's a very slow process, right? I have a, basically, I have a ligament in the wrong place, and that set in motion a sort of vascular problem that r-resultted in an aneurysm. And they, they don't, they don't hurt. There's no way to diagnose them. I mean, unless you scan someone's abdomen. I'm always been super healthy, and so throughout my life, I just never had any reason for an abdominal scan, right? I'm fifth, fit, healthy male, right? Uh, fit, healthy person. And so I just never needed that, that look inside me. So no one saw the aneurysm growing, right? And, um, so at, at s- at some point, the wa- artery wall gets stretched so far that it will rupture. It'll, it'll just burst. And now you have an arterial bleed. So you know what that... You know, if someone shoots you in the femoral or stabs you in the abdomen and you have an arterial bleed, you know your life is measured in minutes or whatever, or hours. And if someone does you the favor of stabbing you in the abdomen and severing your pancreatic artery, which is the artery that ruptured on me, you know, it's a little artery. This, you know, thickness of a number two pencil. It's not a big deal, but if you're... It's arterial blood, right? I mean, even, you know, don't stop that shit, you're gonna die, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
And so if someone just, like, stabbed you in the abdomen and you rush to the hospital, the doc- it's no problem. The doc- if you're still alive, they'll transfuse you. The doctors know exactly where to sort of put their finger to plug the leak. It's no problem. The problem with the internal hemorrhage, an abdominal hemorrhage, is the doctors have no idea where it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SJSebastian Junger
And your abdomen is basically a big bowl of spaghetti, right?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
So what'd they do?…
- SJSebastian Junger
I was appalled. I was offended. I was like, "You're dead. Why would I wanna go with you? You're dead. You're the opposite of what I am. Why would, why would I possibly wanna go with you and be dead with you? Because I'm alive with my family right n-" Like, "I'm not going anywhere with you. Like, get out of here." And I said to the doctor, "You have to hurry. I'm going right now." I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was sort of outbound. And once that happened, I was... there's no inbounds. And I sensed that. I said, "You gotta hurry. You're losing me right now." (exhales)
- JRJoe Rogan
So what'd they do?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, they transfused me. They stabilized me with three units of blood, and eventually I needed 10 units, which is a full complement of blood. Like... And so let me just pause for a moment and say, please donate blood. Like, everybody who's listening, I'm alive, my daughters have a father because 10 people who I'll never know donated their blood. And i- when you donate blood, you are literally allowing another person to live. And one day, you might live because someone else donated blood. And it's, it... You know, doctors can't manufacture that shit. Like, if you donate blood, it takes an hour, it doesn't hurt, and your body will replace it in a couple weeks. It's the ultimate free lunch. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it's quicker than a couple weeks. I think it's pretty quick.
- SJSebastian Junger
It's pretty quick, yeah. It- it, um... Yeah, I mean, to get a wh- up to 100%, it's, I think it's a little long, but whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't matter, right? It's like, we're talking about human life here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
And if you wanna be part of something greater than yourself, it's blah, blah, blah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
All these things that we all kinda want. Like, "How do I participate?" You know? Like, "No, um, nobody needs me. I'm not part of anything. I feel lonely." Give blood, man. Then you'll be part of something amazing, right? And you might... So I give blood regularly. So at any rate, there's my pitch. But, um... So they, they, they, they sta- (laughs) stuffed some blood in me through my jugular. I stabilized, and they brought me to the interventional ri- the cath la- lab, the interventional radiology suite. And what interventional radiology is, it's a freaking miracle, right? Like, 20 years ago, I'd have been dead, right? I mean, even... The advances are so fast and so miraculous. So what they do is they put you on something called a fluoroscope, which is basically... Sees into you with X-rays, but it's X-ray video, right? So they can see in real time what's going on in your body, and then they pop a hole into your femoral from your right groin, and they insert a catheter into it, which is a flexible rubber tube or wire. And because of the way these, the heads of these catheters are designed, they can... They have little shepherd's crooks and little curves and all this stuff, and they can navigate through your venous system, through the twists and turns, and they can get that thing almost anywhere in your body. And then once they're there, they can pop a coil and plug a leak, or they can inflate and put in a stent or whatever. They can do miraculous things. They can inject radioactive dye, and then they see where it goes, and they turn on the fluoroscope, and then they can see, ah, the, the dye is leaking into the abdomen from here. Here's where the leak is. It's amazing what they can do, right? And so they, they popped a... They popped a entering into my femoral and then threaded a catheter and the, uh... Threaded the catheter up through my venous system, and because of this ligament that's in the wrong place, the, my, my, uh, the arteries in my abdomen are d- very distorted, right? And they're tortuous. They're called tortuous. And they couldn't get the catheter through these twists and turns, right? And, um, they couldn't get it to the site of the bleed, which they knew where it was, right? And they couldn't get the catheter there. The alternative, if you can't fix it with a catheter, is you pull your gear out, and you send the guy to the OR...... and you do this crazy, like, race against time. And you cut him open, and then all the... One of the reasons the blood loss slows down is that there's so much blood in your abdomen that there's back pressure. And it keeps... It slows down the blood loss from your artery, because now it's trying to flow into a full container-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
... and it doesn't leak as fast, right? So as soon as you open up the abdomen, you can imagine what happens.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, you geyser blood. And, you know, you gotta, like, push the organs aside and it's this desperate search for the bleed-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exhales sharply ] Whew.
- SJSebastian Junger
... before you bleed out. And as you can probably guess, it doesn't go well very often, right? So, it's not quite a death sentence, but if you go into the OR with an abdominal bleed, whew, you know, y- y- they, they bring your wife in to say goodbye to you, basically, before you do that. They don't tell you or her that, but that's what they're doing. And that's what they would have done with my wife, who fin- who, who got to the hospital. The, the ER doctor was like, "You better come now." And, uh, so, so at one point I'm in agonizing pain 'cause I've got all this free-floating blood against my kidneys and my liver and my spleen, and just a- a- agonizing, it's like kidney stones, right? It's just, I'm in agony and they can't sedate me 'cause my vitals are too low, right? So I'm conscious through all this and I'm watching the doctors. And at one point, I watch one of the doctors just sorta give, sh- shake his head and shrug, and was basically like, "Well, we tried. This isn't working." And the other doctor sh- nodded and he was like, "Yeah, we tried." And it was the first moment where I realized, "Oh my God, I didn't realize, this is, we're playing for keeps right now. This might not turn, uh, turn out well. I might not be going home." I couldn't believe what I'd seen. And then the first doctor, who's this brilliant interventional radiologist named Dr. Phil Dombrowski, he saved my life, um... You have in your mind a special relationship with someone, a man who, or else, anyone who has saved your life. It's a very particular relationship and that's... I've never been in that position before. And, uh, so Dombrowski said, "La- we- we can try one last thing. Let's try going through his left wrist." And so what f- because of your vasculature, like, their left wrist allows a different point of attack. You come down from above instead of coming up from below, and you don't have to go through all those twists and turns. And, um, he had to get through a problematic spot in my celiac artery w- that was impeded by the ligament that's in the wrong place. Well, it was a lot of problems, right? And you had to be, like, a super high-level IR guy to even think of this, much less do it. Like, v- I was told that very, very few, few interventional radiologists would even think of doing this, right? But he was, he was a genius, right? So the other doctor said, "I like the way you think." And I watched them put a, um, catheter into my, into my left, uh, in my left wrist. I still... I no longer have a pulse in that wrist 'cause it messes up the artery, and, um, and they did it. They got the thing to the place. Like, they got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- SJSebastian Junger
... they got the catheter to the bleed. They popped a coil in there. It blocked the l- it, uh, uh, blocked the artery, blocked the leak, and, um, then they sent me to the ICU. They knocked me out and sent me to the ICU. I remember seeing my wife very briefly afterwards and I held her hand, and, and, um, that sent me off. And I woke up in the ICU the next morning.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so the blood in your abdomen, do they drain it? Does your body absorb it?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, no, they, uh, uh, I guess maybe they do sometimes. Uh, no, your body absorbs it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yup, six pints of blood. Like, and you know, I could feel it in me. I mean, it didn't feel good, right? You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
And, and you're sort of discolored. I mean, it's like, it's awful. Not a good look.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Now, the... Y- y- you keep, uh, saying you're an atheist. What does, what exactly, how do you... Everybody sort of defines that differently. I f-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I feel like a lot of atheists are actually agnostic more than they're atheist, 'cause an atheist is someone who just doesn't believe. I don't believe. What do you think the experience with your father was, the, his presence?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, that's, right, the, the billion-dollar question, right? So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
... I'm an atheist, in part because I, I respect the, um, the highest intentions of religion too much to take them lightly. Now, there's, uh, plenty of ex- religious expression which is not at a very high level which I find even offensive and destructive. But at its, at its best, like journalism, like psychology, like everything, at its best-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
But isn't the problem…
- SJSebastian Junger
You know, whatever. She was one of those ICU nurses, right? And I liked her enormously. And she, and she was like, "Try this. Uh, instead of thinking about it like something scary, try thinking about it like something sacred." (laughs) And she walked out. Like, a hell of a thing to say to an atheist, right? So I... You know, for me, all those wonderful words like blessing and, and, and sacred, they... You know, they have wond-... They have beautiful secular meanings as well, so I feel entitled to interpret them in my own way. And for me, you know, say-... something sacred is anything that allows... You know, as I was saying before, any e-... any, any work, any task, any knowledge, anything that allows people to live with more dignity, with less fear, more connection, more love, that just helps the human condition a little bit. Like, that's, th- that's sacred knowledge, right? You know, it could be a minister, right? It could be a shrink. It could be a journalist, right? It could be... You could be d- doing sacred work for people. I'm sure you are. And so, you know, the things that you say are helping people navigate their painful lives. "Yeah, bro, absolutely." We're all capable of sacred work, right? That's what it means to me. So when she said that, I'm like, "Okay." I've been going to front lines my whole life and coming back with knowledge that, you know, in my m-... in my most grandiose moments, right, I thought might help humanity. Like, what's going (laughs) on in U-... No, I wasn't in Ukraine. But right now, like, what's going on in Ukraine? What knowledge can we come back with that will help the world and the United States make better decisions about h- how to preserve human dignity and human life? Like, whatever that... whatever that means, right? So that's s-... That's... At its best, it's sort of a sacred task, like many others are. And, um...... so- and now I'm not going to front lines anymore. I went to the ultimate front line, I went to my own mortality. The place w- the front line we're all headed to, and that most of us are scared of, like... And I was allowed to look over the edge, and then I came back. I was allowed to come back. Did I come back with sacred knowledge? In other words, with knowledge that would be helpful to me and to other people lead their lives, and, um, with less fear and more dignity, et cetera. And that was the challenge, and I set about doing it. At that moment, I would just lay there. I was like, "All right, what did I learn? What did I learn?" And the big question that I had to answer for myself was, "What the hell did I see with my father? Like, what was that? And does that mean that there's something, quote, 'more'?" Right? "Is there something after we die that we can sort of, like, look forward to and count on? Or is it just the dying brain hallucinating some shit because we're so friggin' scared?" And the sy- (laughs) you know, the synapses are shorting out and it's going haywire, and that's what you get. You see some weird stuff, right? Like, which is it? And so I started researching NDEs, near death experiences. And there's a whole body of literature, a whole body of knowledge. And frankly, a whole cottage industry, somewhat shameless cottage industry around that. You know, proof of heaven, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, the flakiness aside, there's some legi- you know, there's a- it's very, very common, and the ex- NDEs that people have had, thousands of cases of them from all over the world, different societies, different cultures, even different ages. Um, there are historical accounts of this, and one- the interesting thing about them, you know, if you give a room full of people LSD, they'll all- they'll have a wide variety of hallucinations. And we know how that works, right? We know what happens in the brain when you take LSD. No big mystery there. And they'll hallucinate a whole bunch of crazy stuff, right? With NDEs, what's sort of strange is that the experiences are- they- there aren't infinite number of them, right? It's not like some people see ham sandwiches and other people see kangaroos, right? It's like they fall into some v- some, like, three or four basic buckets, right? And that's across culture, throughout- you know, throughout the a- you know, through history, and- which sort of argues for a sort of seminal- a- a seminal human experience rather than just a sort of function of brain chemistry and dru- and essentially dr- uh, drugs, right? Um, endogenous drugs being released in your brain in your final moments. Um, and so there are a lot of people, very well credentialed, smart people who are like, "Listen, th- these accounts amount to evidence of an afterlife," right? "Sorry." Like, th- there's so many of them, they're so consistent. How do you explain this shit? Like, come on, right? And then there's other people, well credentialed, equally smart, et cetera, et cetera, like, "Nonsense. I'm a neuroscientist. I'm a neurochemist." You know? Like, "We can explain all this through- you know, you put f- fighter pilots in a human centrifuge, spin them to 5 Gs, they will see a tunnel of light, they will see God, they will have s- experience their entire life in one moment," blah, blah, blah. The- you know, epileptics, same thing when- brain seizures. Like, "We can reproduce all of this in the lab." Like, "This isn't evidence of anything," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
But isn't the problem with that that you're actually killing a person when you're s- spinning them in the centrifuge?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, no, no. They do this w- with fighter pilots.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you know if you keep doing that, you'll die.
- SJSebastian Junger
Oh, absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
And your body knows that-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... too. So you are in a near death experience.
- SJSebastian Junger
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're near death.
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, you're near death because blood's not getting to your brain.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And your body knows that.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I- I mean, you are opening that door.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whether you're opening that door in a safe manner-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you're still opening that door.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. You're right. But the argument for- uh, you're absolutely right and I never thought of it that way, but the argument by the scientists, the rationalists is, "Look, we can- we can reproduce all of this in the- in the lab." Right, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but it's a dumb argument-
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because what you're doing in reproducing it is bringing someone close to death.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right, right. Well, another thing they can do is stimulate the brain in- during brain surgery, and they do that to make sure that they're not scooping out- they're scooping out tumor, not, you know, your piano-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SJSebastian Junger
... your piano lessons or whatever, right? And one of the things they can do is they stimulate certain parts of the brain, they can give people a s- a sensation that they're floating or that they- "Oh my god, my- my grandfather." You know, whatever. They can do weird shit with the brain with, you know, a tooth- basically a toothpick and a- and a- and a- and a bone saw, right? And- and so- and anyway, just- just suffice it to say, there's a- there's the sort of slightly mystical argument of this is proof of an afterlife, and then there's the sort of rationalist argument, "No, no, no. We c- we, uh- we understand the physiology of all this." And so what- there was a guy in, I think it was Estonia, an older guy who fell and hit his head, he had a hematoma. They put electrodes on his scalp to t- um, see what the brain activity was 'cause he was having seizures. Other stuff happened to him that the- the family said, "You know, he doesn't have a chance of recuperating." Pulled the- he basically pulled the pl- plug, let him die. He had the, um, e- the electrodes on his- on his brain, monitoring brain activity before the decision to pull the plug. So they did something that would otherwise not be ethical. If someone's going to die and you're like, "Hey, let's hook him up to see what his brain does," that's not ethical, right? This guy already had that stuff in place as part of the life-saving measures, so they were able to see what happened at the moment of death, right? So what happened in the human brain- in his brain was that there was a flood of- I think it was, um, gamma in his brain that, um, uh, that is associated with long-term memory. A flood of gamma in his brain, right? And, uh, and that was- uh, and one other frequency, I can't remember. At- at any rate, there was- this f- the brain did- basically did what brains do when they're r- remembering very, very old stuff, right? And that they even found that in- in rats that they ethically...... are able to kill. Like, hook 'em up, kill them, what happens in the brain, right? And so the, the an- most ancient sort of mem- memory source centers of the brain are activated at the moment of death, while there's a sort of lingering, dying consciousness. So, boom, all of a sudden, you're five and you're talking to your grandfather. You know, whatever it, whatever it is, we don't know the specific things that that man saw, but we know that, that, that the, his brain was activated in ways that suggest memory retrieval, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 1:15:00 – 1:17:04
Section 6
- SJSebastian Junger
consistency in people, like an enormous percentage of the time, and I can't remember off the top of my head, but quite a large percentage of the time, the dying, people who di- have NDEs and are resuscitated and report their memories, like I was- I was able to, they are received by the dead, right? The dead come to receive them. Sometimes, it's your father. Sometimes, it's a friend who died decades earlier. Um, sometimes, it's someone that you might not even like very much. But the dead come to receive the dying in the way that my father did. You know, in my mind, I'm like, "I don't know." You know? Like, I get it. You give everyone LSD, and they all have hallucinations, and the dying brain produces hallucinations, but it's sorta odd. Like, okay, you stir up the memory banks of the brain when you die with the gamma and all that stuff. So, all right, so suddenly, I'm five years old, and we're playing by the swimming pool, and now suddenly, I'm c- you know, I'm camping with my buddy at 12, and su- yeah, there's a whole array of memories. That's different than Dad showing up, right? Dad showing up, saying, "Come with me into the afterlife," that's not exactly memory recall, right? (laughs) That's something- that's something else, right? So- and then I started talking to hospice nurses, and, um, s- super common experience. Older people, th- people dying of cancer in their last days and hours, what are they doing? They're having conversations with people in the room that no one else can see. They're having conversations with the dead, who are clearly there to take them. Like, "It's okay. Come with me." My- it happened to my mother. She suddenly scowled. In her last hours, she scowled and looked up at the coroner and was like- and she said, "What's he doing here?" And she had a terrible relationship with her brother, who had died in his 50s, you know, like decades earlier, right? And I just guessed. I was like, "Mom, that's Uncle George, and he's come a very long way to see you, and you have to be nice to him." And she frowned, and she said, "We'll see about that." (laughs) It continues into the afterlife, right? It-
Episode duration: 2:17:35
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