315 ‒ Life after near-death: a new perspective on living, dying, and the afterlife

1. 0:00 – 0:43

   Intro

   1. SJSebastian Junger0:00

      And so I thought, what about, what about now? I stopped going to front lines, but then I went to the ultimate front line, which is my own death, my own mortality, this thing we all face and that almost all of us fear. I was allowed to go to the precipice, look over the edge, and then allowed to come back. Did I come back with any sacred knowledge? In other words, any knowledge that will help me or other people live with more dignity, less fear, more connection, more love, et cetera, et cetera. That's, that's the task.

   2. PAPeter Attia0:31

      [upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. Sebastian, thanks so much

2. 0:43 – 4:50

   How Sebastian’s near-death experience shaped his thinking about mortality and gave him a reverence for life

   1. PAPeter Attia0:43

      for coming to Austin. It's, uh, it's great to finally meet you in person, having, you know, spoken with you and emailed you many times over the past few years, and spoken with you, obviously, on a previous podcast. Um, th- this book is, is really a fantastic book. It's hard to describe, um, [lip smack] the experience of, of reading it. It's, um-- I think it's, it's, it's so beautiful it can almost bring you to tears in certain sections because, um, y- you know, there are the stories within it that, that sort of tell us about our mortality. Um, but I also think there's something so beautiful about it, which I'm, I'm curious if others have explained to you their reaction, which is you can feel so incredibly insignificant reading this, which is actually kind of a nice thing. It, it makes, it makes this whole thing seem a little less scary, and by this whole thing, I mean death.

   2. SJSebastian Junger1:36

      Well, our insignificance in the cosmos does sort of take the pressure off, right? Like, [chuckles] um, we don't mean anything, and that's, um, that's terrifying and kind of liberating. I mean, it's sort of both. And one of the things I talk about in the book is a kind of, um, reverence for life, and I think it's quite hard to find one's way in the busyness of daily life in a modern-- our modern society. It's quite fi- hard to find your way to that reverence, um, it was for me, without having been terrified. Once I was terrified by almost dying, the flip side of that terror was reverence, and I found it quite easily after that. And so for me, you know, at one point after my, um, near-death experience, I had a lot of psychological struggles, and you know, we can talk about that. But, um, at one point, my wife said to me, "Sebastian, do you feel lucky or, or unlucky that you almost died? I mean, not that you survived, of course, you're lucky, but that, that it happened at all."

   3. PAPeter Attia2:42

      Yeah.

   4. SJSebastian Junger2:42

      Like, could-- if you could go back and push a button and have it not happen, would you push that button? And I didn't-- um, I honestly didn't know how to answer. Um, was I blessed or cursed? And the psychological consequences of almost dying and what I saw on the threshold, what I remember from the threshold, they were frankly so devastating that I absolutely felt cursed. And then I, um, in struggling to answer, I, I tracked down the origin of the word blessing. Now, I'm an atheist, but I feel that there are secular, um, meanings to words, beautiful words like blessing or sacred, that we atheists are free to use. And, um, and I-- so I tracked down the origin of the word blessing, and it comes from the Anglo-Saxon wlecsian, which means blood. And the ide- the idea being that there is no blessing without a, a, a wounding, without a sacrifice. Um, and, and maybe there's no wounding without a blessing, and that battlefields are sacred because blood has been shed, b- childbirth is sacred because blood has been shed. In pre-Christian Europe, often animals were s- were sacrificed on holy days to bless, um, to bless fields, to bless buildings, to bless people. And, and so that, that, that... the twinning of blessing and, and wounding, um, uh, were w- th- that, that really they're the sa- th- th- they're aspects of the same thing. And when I, when I realized that, it, it allowed me to make this sort of psychological step, an important psychological step, where I stopped feeling sort of cursed by too much knowledge, that I'd somehow gotten too much knowledge on the threshold of death and con- couldn't continue daily life with that knowledge. It was too burdensome. It was too scary. It was too true. And once I read the origin of the word blessing, I was like, "Oh, I'm free. I'm-- It's both. How wonderful." And that really did sort of release me from this existential, um, conundrum that I was in.

3. 4:50 – 16:19

   The aneurysm that led to Sebastian’s near-death experience

   1. PAPeter Attia4:50

      I think it's probably worth telling listeners if they haven't already read the book or even heard you on another podcast where you've, um, described the story of what happened in, uh, June of twenty twenty. In fact, you and I actually discussed it a little bit, I believe, on our last podcast.

   2. SJSebastian Junger5:06

      Yeah.

   3. PAPeter Attia5:06

      But again, maybe just to make sure everybody knows what we're talking about vis-à-vis your experience, um, do you wanna kinda recount the s- the story in, in-

   4. SJSebastian Junger5:16

      Yeah

   5. PAPeter Attia5:16

      ... enough detail that people will understand the, the technical aspects of what happened and, and basically how, how much luck played a role in you sitting here today?

   6. SJSebastian Junger5:28

      Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm happy to. So last night, uh, at my book reading at BookPeople in Austin, um, uh, yesterday was June 16, and I was able to, because of the time difference, et cetera, with the East Coast, I was able to say to the audience, "This moment, right now, this moment exactly four years ago, I started dying." It was exactly the time.

   7. PAPeter Attia5:54

      Mm.

   8. SJSebastian Junger5:55

      And, um, so I was-- it was during It was during COVID. I was living with my family, uh, uh, at the time, a three-year-old girl and a six-month-old girl, my little daughters, and my wife, Barbara. We were living in a, an old house in a remote part of Massachusetts at the end of a dead-end dirt road, um, deep in the woods, no cellphone service, landline, landlines that would, would short out when it rained and often didn't work, and, um, in other words, paradise, right? And, um, we were there during COVID, and I, you know, I, I was in my, you know, in my 50s, a lifelong athlete, um, in extremely good health, strong, like, never, never thought twice about emergency transport to a hospital. Why would I? I'm, I'm not a walking heart attack. I don't have high cholesterol, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I know we all age, and we can get cancer and things like that, but, you know, the, the idea... I, I didn't think I had anything that would drop a middle-aged man in his tracks, right? And, um, who knew? So one afternoon, the, the, the, uh, some neighbors down the road called, a family that we knew, and their teenage girls offered to come over and babysit, and, uh, you know, that was a rare opportunity. Like, we-- So we jumped on it. They ca- the girls came over to babysit our, our, our little girls, and, um, my wife and I went off to a cabin that's even deeper in the woods and an even more beautiful spot and, and, uh, completely cut off from everything and down a trail. And we were, we were s- we were able to spend a couple of hours there, and, um, thank God we did, and that I didn't go running or something w- that would've put me even more, uh, off the grid, because I would've died had that happened. We were in this cabin, and in mid-sentence, [clears throat] in mid-sentence, I s- felt this sort of stab of pain in my abdomen. It wasn't unbearable, but it was r- it really got my attention, and it wouldn't go away, unlike indigestion, you know, sort of digestive pain. You know, it just wouldn't-- Nothing would ease it, and I finally stood up to sort of walk, walk it out, and, um, and the floor went reeling away from me, and I almost fell over, and I sat back down, and I said words I never thought I'd have to say. I said, "Honey, I think I'm gonna need help. Uh, I've never felt anything like this." And, um, she sort of half dragged me out of the cabin and down the trail, and we made it to the dirt driveway, and she put me in the passenger seat of the car and ran in to tell the, um, the babysitters, like, "Try to call the ambulance. Seba- Something's wrong with Sebastian." And I, um, [clears throat] you know, I'm sitting there in the car, and now I, I start going blind. Um, the, the sky turns electric white, and that, the electric white takes over the trees and the house and everything around me, and, um, I didn't, I didn't know it, but I was in and out of consciousness. Uh, and, um, these were all the symptoms of catastrophic blood loss. So what had happened was I'd had an, uh, an aneurysm, an unnatural ballooning at one spot in my pancreatic artery, which is this little artery that almost no one ever needs to think about. [chuckles] And I had an aneurysm in this thing, which is really quite rare, and it was the result [clears throat] of having a sort of, a ligament sort of in the wrong place in my abdomen that sort of occluded my celiac artery. It's all sort of rather complicated, but basically, the celiac is this garden hose, and when you, if you cut it off with this ligament in the wrong place, the blood has to flow somewhere else, and it flows through these smaller arteries, and if the, one of them has a weak spot or a vulnerability, that weak spot will balloon, and the, the, the, the bubble will get bigger and bigger, and the arterial wall will get thinner and thinner, and it can rupture. And if it ruptures, you're now bleeding out into your own body, into your own abdomen. If someone would just, had done you the favor of stabbing you in the stomach, when they got you to the hospital, the doctors would know where to put their finger to stop the bleed, right? In some ways, it's an easier proposition, but with internal hemorrhage, it can be quite f- hard to find the location. I mean, to the, to the layman, your abdomen is just a big bowl of spaghetti. Like, where do you even start looking, [chuckles] and how do you get, how do you get in there? And [clears throat] so, so I didn't know all of this, but I, I, my an- I had an undiagnosed aneurysm that had been growing probably for decades, and, um, it had finally ruptured in that moment. And, uh, I was losing a pint of blood probably every 10 or 15 minutes into my abdomen, and, um, there's 10 units of blood in the human body, thereabouts, and you can lose maybe two-thirds of it before you sort of cross over to territory where it's really hard to come back from, even if you're transfused. And, um, and I-- And we lived a one-hour drive from the nearest hospital, so I was literally a human hourglass. And the ambulance finally came, and, um, off we went, and I had sort of rebooted a bit. Um, I went into compensatory shock, which makes you feel a little bit, little bit better for a little while. And an hour later, we pulled into the hospital, and I went out of compensatory shock right then into end-stage hemorrhagic shock, deeply hypothermic, um, not of right mind, and actively dying and would probably have been dead in the, in the next 10 or 15 minutes had I not been in an ER at that moment, and they rushed me into the trauma bay and started trying to save my life.

   9. PAPeter Attia11:31

      Yeah, I'll just, I'll share an interesting anecdote from my days in the trauma center at Johns Hopkins, which is that, um, time to hospital, uh, and, and more specifically, time to either surgery or IR, interventional radiology, which is where your life was saved, is the single most important metric. And there's an amazing guy named Eddie Cornwell, who was at the time the chief of trauma surgery at Hopkins, um, who wanted to test this because of an interesting observation he had made Which was when he was, um, a trauma surgeon in Los Angeles, um, he noticed that the gang bangers who were brought in by their buddies were surviving at a slightly higher rate than those that were brought in by ambulance.

   10. SJSebastian Junger12:21

       Wow.

   11. PAPeter Attia12:21

       So this is very counterintuitive, right? So this is, you know, this is the, this is all penetrating trauma. It's what we call the knife and gun club. And when a guy got shot or stabbed and his buddies drove him to the ER and dropped him off and took off, 'cause obviously everyone's in the wrong here-

   12. SJSebastian Junger12:38

       Right

   13. PAPeter Attia12:38

       ... um, those guys had a better chance of surviving than the guy who got brought in by the ambulance with the IV fluids running in him and brought in.

   14. SJSebastian Junger12:46

       [laughs]

   15. PAPeter Attia12:47

       And so what, what Eddie and his colleagues, uh, postulated was what could possibly be better about being thrown in the back of a truck than being in the ambulance? And he realized, well, technically, those guys are getting to us sooner because no one's putting an IV in them, no one's checking their vital signs, no one's doing anything else. And so they did an experiment where, uh, and it's kind of a crazy experiment, where depending on the day of the week, all ambulances were, r- uh, were gonna basically randomize the trauma victims to either business as usual, which means when a penetrating trauma victim is found, you do everything that you would normally do. You put the IVs in them, you stabilize them, you start running IV fluids, and you go. Or what they called scoop and run, which is the ambulance would get there and wouldn't do a thing, would literally pick him up, throw him in the ambulance-

   16. SJSebastian Junger13:43

       Wow

   17. PAPeter Attia13:43

       ... and get him into the hospital. So now you had a randomized experiment which can, uh, infer causality. And sure enough, wouldn't you know it, when you randomized to scoop and run, you did better. And so when I-

   18. SJSebastian Junger13:58

       Right

   19. PAPeter Attia13:58

       ... the first thing I thought about, because nobody would believe this, and it seems so counterintuitive, um, you know, had your wife been able to drive you right to the hospital-

   20. SJSebastian Junger14:07

       Right

   21. PAPeter Attia14:07

       ... which is the most counterintuitive thing-

   22. SJSebastian Junger14:09

       Right

   23. PAPeter Attia14:09

       ... your odds are actually higher.

   24. SJSebastian Junger14:11

       Right.

   25. PAPeter Attia14:11

       Now, it's fortunate that it all worked out, but again, when I was reading the story-

   26. SJSebastian Junger14:16

       Yeah

   27. PAPeter Attia14:16

       ... that was my thought, was, "Barbara, just take him right to the hospital now."

   28. SJSebastian Junger14:20

       Right.

   29. PAPeter Attia14:20

       "Don't do anything. Don't call an ambulance."

   30. SJSebastian Junger14:22

       Right.
4. 16:19 – 27:04

   Emergency room response, his subsequent reflections on the event, and the critical decisions made by the medical team

   1. SJSebastian Junger16:19

      to the, um, we got to the ER, and, um, they rushed me into the trauma bay. The doctors knew immediately what was going on. I mean, I was pale as a sheet, and I just had blood loss written all o- you know, internal hemorrhage written all over me. And, um, the doctor said... 'Cause I, so this is, of course, a, a semi sort of memoir type book. It's about my own experience, which as a journalist, I haven't done much of that. I've, um, in fact, have been averse to it my entire life, making myself the topic. Um, but because I'm also a journalist, I wrote a sort of first person account of something very in- intense and profound, but I interviewed everyone I could to sort of c- confirm to myself that what my memories are roughly correct and to just do some reporting, 'cause that's what one does. And so I interviewed all the doctors who would talk to me. I even interviewed my wife. I interviewed the guys who were in the back of the ambulance, or the guy who was in the back of the ambulance.

   2. PAPeter Attia17:11

      And you know, you had, you were able to read all of the medical records-

   3. SJSebastian Junger17:14

      Yeah

   4. PAPeter Attia17:14

      ... which are very well documented, right? You timestamp every-

   5. SJSebastian Junger17:18

      Yeah

   6. PAPeter Attia17:18

      ... aspect of, you know, you, I mean, you would've seen the moment you arrived in the ER, how many units of fluid, how many units of blood.

   7. SJSebastian Junger17:24

      Right.

   8. PAPeter Attia17:24

      All that stuff is, is, is communicated clearly in the record.

   9. SJSebastian Junger17:28

      Yeah. And just as a writer, you know, the language in these sort of specialty fields is so fascinating. Like, even if you don't quite understand, um, what, you know, what's a French omni flush whatever. You know, I mean, just the language is cool, right? Like, and I would sometimes I put the language in there just 'cause it gives you the feeling of like, wow, I'm in, I'm, we're in, we're, we're in this world, right?

   10. PAPeter Attia17:48

       Yeah.

   11. SJSebastian Junger17:49

       And, and I've always done that in my work, but at any rate, I interviewed everyone I could afterwards. And, um, s- a couple of the doctors didn't wanna talk to me, I think just 'cause they're, you know, sort of skittish for legal, you know, legal reasons, even though the outcome was amazing, right? But they're still just... So, um- So I got to the, they, they rushed me into the trauma bay, and, uh, again, these are my memories, semi-confirmed by people who were there. Um, the, the doctor asked-- I had no idea I was dying. Like, absolutely none, right?

   12. PAPeter Attia18:19

       So what did you think was happening at that moment when you were sitting in the ER? Uh, not in the ER, in the trauma bay, rather.

   13. SJSebastian Junger18:26

       You know, I, I sort of knew in my mind, it's not a heart attack. I don't have left side pain. I, I just, I, I have a healthy heart. Like, there's no reason to think it was a heart attack. Maybe a stroke? Like, is that why I went blind for a while? You know, I was sort of trying to go through the possibilities as a non-doctor.

   14. PAPeter Attia18:44

       And how much pain did you still have in your abdomen when you arrived?

   15. SJSebastian Junger18:47

       Oh, I had a lot of, I had a lot of pain.

   16. PAPeter Attia18:49

       Okay.

   17. SJSebastian Junger18:49

       I mean, it wasn't kidney stone pain.

   18. PAPeter Attia18:51

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SJSebastian Junger18:51

       Right? Which is, anyone who's had kidney stones [laughs] , I mean, you know, it's all but unbearable. But, but it was, you know, I, I mean, I was, I, I've, I was, I'm like visi-- I'm sure I was visibly in pain, right? I mean, you could tell I'm, I'm wincing and I'm like s- I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sure it looked like, you know, maybe the pain of a broken leg, something like that.

   20. PAPeter Attia19:10

       Yeah.

   21. SJSebastian Junger19:10

       And, and, um. So what I thought, as far as I could come to a rational thought, was, "You know what? May-"

   22. PAPeter Attia19:18

       Was your abdomen swelling at all? Does that, does that-

   23. SJSebastian Junger19:20

       I mean, I don't know if it was. They might have, they-

   24. PAPeter Attia19:22

       You, nothing that you would've noticed?

   25. SJSebastian Junger19:24

       No.

   26. PAPeter Attia19:24

       Okay.

   27. SJSebastian Junger19:24

       No. The, I, I was, um... There was abdominal guarding, which I guess is the muscles tensing in the abdomen to protect an injured area, and, but I didn't know that. And, um, I, I had the thought, the grim thought, "You know what? You might have cancer or something. You might have a tumor in your abdomen that, like, ruptured." And I'm making this stuff up as I go along.

   28. PAPeter Attia19:44

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SJSebastian Junger19:44

       But I was just like, "Maybe something like that happened, and you're gonna wake up in the morning with some pretty grim news about, you know, you got six months." I mean, I was sort of vaguely aware of that possibility. I had absolutely no idea that, "Hey, man, you are dying right now."

   30. PAPeter Attia20:00

       Did an aneurysm cross your mind? M- again, not a pancre- I mean-
5. 27:04 – 40:54

   Sebastian’s reaction to first learning he nearly died, and the extraordinary skill of the medical team that save his life

   1. PAPeter Attia27:04

      you, you know-

   2. SJSebastian Junger27:04

      Right

   3. PAPeter Attia27:04

      ... this was something we had to do all the time-

   4. SJSebastian Junger27:06

      Right

   5. PAPeter Attia27:07

      ... in trauma.

   6. SJSebastian Junger27:08

      Right.

   7. PAPeter Attia27:08

      Is, is, is, and sometimes you would have to do this in the operating room. Uh, pardon me, in the emergency room.

   8. SJSebastian Junger27:12

      Right.

   9. PAPeter Attia27:13

      Like, a guy would come in, and he'd have-

   10. SJSebastian Junger27:15

       Right

   11. PAPeter Attia27:15

       ... uh, you know, a, a, a gunshot wound or a stab wound-

   12. SJSebastian Junger27:18

       Yeah

   13. PAPeter Attia27:19

       ... to his aorta, and you have to literally open his chest without anesthetizing him, because of course he's already not responsive at this point, and put your hand in, move his lungs out of the way, get all the blood out of the way, and get a clamp across the aorta.

   14. SJSebastian Junger27:31

       Good God. Wow. Um-

   15. PAPeter Attia27:35

       And I'm sure when you were, you know, covering the wars, um, this is, this is, this is, you know, stuff that was, was being done in the field.

   16. SJSebastian Junger27:42

       Right. Right.

   17. PAPeter Attia27:43

       Yeah.

   18. SJSebastian Junger27:43

       It was, some of it was developed-

   19. PAPeter Attia27:44

       Yeah

   20. SJSebastian Junger27:44

       ... in the, in the field, apparently. Um, so, so they stabilized me with three units, uh, over the course of an hour, and then sent me into the IR suite while they were trying to track down the interventional radiologist.

   21. PAPeter Attia27:56

       What time is it now? It's late.

   22. SJSebastian Junger27:58

       Yeah. It's, like, nine o'clock at night.

   23. PAPeter Attia27:59

       Okay. Yeah.

   24. SJSebastian Junger28:00

       Right. So they sort of called h- uh, called him in from sort of dinner, as it were, and, uh, from his home, Dr. Phil Dombrowski, and, uh, who was sort of known in the hospital as The Magician 'cause he was, like, super, super good at his job. And so interventional radiology involves putting someone on a fluoroscope, which is like a sort of video feed x-ray machine, and, um, and inserting catheters, so rubber or wire, um, rubber tubes or wire into the venous system, usually through the right groin, into the femoral artery, and then threading it around through your body, um, trying to get through the twists and turns of your vasculature, trying to get it to the site that needs, that needs work, and your aorta or your pancreatic artery or whatever it may be. And that avoids having to open the person up because you can work from the inside out, from inside the vascular system. I mean, I know you know all this, but it's fascinating. You know, a lot of people don't. I mean, and, you know, one v- one interventional radiologist was like, "You know, even our spouses aren't entirely sure what we do." [laughs] Like, it's a rather arcane, you know, sort of arc- a lesser-known of the medical specialties, but absolutely crucial.

   25. PAPeter Attia29:09

       And then there's one other thing that they can do there-

   26. SJSebastian Junger29:11

       Yeah

   27. PAPeter Attia29:11

       ... which I'm sure they explained, was they can also, when they want to, inject contrast.

   28. SJSebastian Junger29:16

       They did that.

   29. PAPeter Attia29:17

       Yeah.

   30. SJSebastian Junger29:17

       It's like, right, exactly.
6. 40:54 – 53:31

   Sebastian’s near-death experience

   1. SJSebastian Junger40:54

      it.

   2. PAPeter Attia40:54

      Now, was this the ICU nurse that you later spoke about?

   3. SJSebastian Junger40:58

      Yeah.

   4. PAPeter Attia40:58

      That-

   5. SJSebastian Junger40:58

      Yeah.

   6. PAPeter Attia40:58

      Yeah. So tell, tell-

   7. SJSebastian Junger40:59

      Yeah

   8. PAPeter Attia40:59

      ... tell us a little bit about that discussion.

   9. SJSebastian Junger41:01

      So as soon as, as soon as she said, "Mr. Junger, congratulations. Good morning. You made it. It's a miracle." You know, sort of, "It's a miracle." As soon as she said that, I sudden-- I was shocked, horrified and shocked, and then I had this memory from when I was on the threshold, right? It, it came back to me instantly, and this was the, this was the sort of, particularly for, [clears throat] for me as an atheist, this was the central mystery of my experience, and whether it's brain chemistry or not, this was the central sort of mystery that I've grappled with. So when I was in the trauma bay, the doctor said to me, "Can I, uh, uh, I'm, I wa- I wa- um," ask permission to put a line, like, through my neck into my jugular, right? Which didn't sound like a lot of fun, and I had no idea I was dying, and I didn't know what all the fuss was about. And so I said, "Is that, you know, is that really necessary?" Like, "Why?" And I said, "In case there's an emergency?" And he said, "This is the, this is the emergency, Mr. Junger," right? And he was a young guy. He was, like, probably twenty-five. I'm like, "Kid, I'm three times your age." [laughs] Like, "What's happening here?" Right? Like, and, um So he started working on me, and they use an ultrasound probe and, you know, it's a whole-- they had the, whatever, this whole pr- whole procedure that I think probably doesn't take particularly long. It felt like a long time to me. And while I'm lying there and I'm feeling this pressure on my neck while they're starting to prep the area and-

   10. PAPeter Attia42:28

       And you're under a sheet.

   11. SJSebastian Junger42:30

       I'm under a, a, a clear-

   12. PAPeter Attia42:30

       A sterile sheet

   13. SJSebastian Junger42:31

       ... clear plastic sheet.

   14. PAPeter Attia42:33

       Yeah.

   15. SJSebastian Junger42:33

       Right? He asks if, [chuckles] he asks if I'm claustrophobic, and since being in combat, I-- combat made me extremely claustrophobic for some reason that I don't understand. Apparently, that's quite common. And, uh, he said, "Are you claustrophobic?" And I said, "I a- I am, actually." And he said, [chuckles] "Well, that's too bad." And he put the sheet over me, and I was like, "Oh, finally someone with a sense of humor." Um, so they were, [laughs] they're working on, they're working on my neck, and [clears throat] to my shock, to my horror, suddenly beneath me and to my left, I sense this black void open up, this abyss, and it's like this infinitely dark pit without dimension, and, um, and I'm getting pulled into it. And again, I have no idea that I'm dying, but I, I was like a, I was like a wounded animal. I just had this animal sense, like, "Don't go into the pit, 'cause if you go into the pit, you're not coming back."

   16. PAPeter Attia43:25

       Your eyes are open? Your eyes are closed?

   17. SJSebastian Junger43:27

       Well, I'm conversing with the doctor, so I don't know if they're open or not. I mean, and, and I'm, you know, frankly not craning my neck to look down at the floor.

   18. PAPeter Attia43:34

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SJSebastian Junger43:34

       So it's not like I visually saw it, but I felt it. Like, I, it-- suddenly there was this pit. It w- it was like standing on the edge of a cliff. You can kind of feel the-

   20. PAPeter Attia43:43

       Mm.

   21. SJSebastian Junger43:44

       You s- you can feel the void, right? I was like, "Oh my God, I'm getting pulled into this hole," right? And it was a completely new experience. I hadn't felt it before. It was there very suddenly, and it was, um, unopposable, right? I mean, it was just, "This is what's happening." And I got very scared, [clears throat] and as I got scared, suddenly I, in quotation marks, "saw" my dead father above me. Now, not only am I an atheist, but my father was an atheist. He had died eight years earlier. He was a physicist and a rationalist and trained me well in all those practices, basically, right? In that way of thinking about the world. And [clears throat] my mother, who was kind of a bit on the woo-woo side, you know, he drove her crazy by sort of asking precise questions about her beliefs like, "What do you mean bad energy?" Like, how, how, how, how, what, w- what, w- uh, how does bad energy make you sick? You know, like, I mean, he would ask things [chuckles] like that, which it's amazing they stayed married. But at any rate, um, [clears throat] suddenly my dead father was above me and to my left, and I was shocked to see him, 'cause I'm still talking to the doctors, right? It's not like I had cardiac arrest and I'm in some, some nether world, right? I'm still there, and there he is above me in the room. And, and he communicated to me something along the lines of, "It's okay. You don't have to fight it. You can come with me. I'll take care of you," right? And I was absolutely horrified. I mean, it was almost grotesque. I was almost offended. Like, "Go with you? You're dead. W- uh, uh, why would I go with you? Like, I'm alive. I g- you know, we have nothing to talk about." And I love my dad, right? But I said, "We have nothing to talk about. I'm not going anywhere with you."

   22. PAPeter Attia45:32

       Why, why do you think you weren't comforted by him in some way? In the-- like, uh, for example, you hadn't seen him in e- eight years. I-- it's clear from your book that you have an amazing affection for your father.

   23. SJSebastian Junger45:45

       Yeah.

   24. PAPeter Attia45:45

       It's not like this is a person you don't love or miss. Um, I just find it interesting, and there's no answer to this question-

   25. SJSebastian Junger45:52

       Yeah

   26. PAPeter Attia45:53

       ... but, um, your aversion to his presence, does it suggest to you that something about engaging with him in any way was tantamount to death for you?

   27. SJSebastian Junger46:07

       Well, he, he was clearly inviting me to join him where he was, and I knew he was dead, right? And, and I, you know, I, I wasn't s- literally thinking in my mind, "I have two little girls. I'm married. I have a lot to live for. I'm only, I'm only fifty-eight, for God's sake." You know, I mean, I wasn't thinking those thoughts precisely.

   28. PAPeter Attia46:24

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SJSebastian Junger46:25

       But there was this basic dichotomy. There's the black pit. There's my dead father, and that's all death. That's nothingness, right? That's you're outbound on a journey you're not coming back from into the nothing, right? That's what it felt like, and he was part of that. And I just, I was almost offended that he would imagine that I would prefer to go with him into that than to stay in my life, right? And I almost worried that it would hurt his feelings. I mean, it was like on that level of, of, like, "Don't you want to spend time with your daddy?" You know? Like, and I was like, "No, you're dead." Like, "I want to spend time here [chuckles] for the rest of my life. We'll talk later." You know? And, um, it was a very, very visceral response, and I really was horrified. And one of the theories about near-death experiences is that it's a form, it's an adaptive sort of, like, behavior that's a form of comforting. You know, it's comforting to the dying person that they see beloved loved ones and, ah, I'm not just leaving this life. I'm s- you know, I'm sort of going... you know, I'm sort of crossing over into this beautiful world of all these dead people that I miss, and, you know, it's gonna be fine. Like, that was absolutely not the case for me. I was horrified. And, um, and I said to the doctor, "You..." 'Cause he just kept fumbling around in m- what to me felt like fumbling around with my neck, right? I know that's not fair to him, but that's what it felt like. And, um, and I said, "You gotta hurry. I'm going." Like, I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know I was dying, but I knew I was going somewhere where I wasn't coming back. I knew that much. And, um, and he got the line in, and they started transfusing me.

   30. PAPeter Attia48:07

       So are you m- realizing this for the first time in the ICU the next day, or are you just remembering it and now experiencing it sort of through your memory the second time?
7. 53:31 – 1:01:18

   The psychological impact of surviving against overwhelming odds

   1. PAPeter Attia53:31

      Is there a sense of, um... I don't know what the right word is. It's not gratitude. That's a bit glib. Um, is there a sense of awe in that, or is there a sense of... Do, do you believe there's meaning in that, or do you believe that there's no meaning in that and that it's just as fortunate, uh, it's just as much luck as the world is full of bad luck, right? If-- I think of all the-

   2. SJSebastian Junger53:55

      Yeah

   3. PAPeter Attia53:55

      ... you know, I'm, I'm much more familiar, as I'm sure you and many people listening are, uh, we're much more familiar with the opposite, right? It's like the person who did everything right-

   4. SJSebastian Junger54:05

      Yeah

   5. PAPeter Attia54:05

      ... and they just happened to get hit by some drunk idiot who ran a red light, and there was, you know, virtually nothing they could have done to have prevented it. It's purely a lightning strike. Um, and, and how often does bad luck take a life just as remarkable-

   6. SJSebastian Junger54:21

      Yeah

   7. PAPeter Attia54:21

      ... luck saved a life? D- Do you process it like that at all?

   8. SJSebastian Junger54:25

      Yeah, I do. I mean, it, it, it, like, you know, we all are sort of looking for meaning in the universe and, and, you know, nothing, you know, um, there are no coincidences and everything happens for a reason, and all those sort of like narratives that we put-

   9. PAPeter Attia54:38

      Hmm

   10. SJSebastian Junger54:38

       ... on a, I think, a fairly random universe. And, uh, I mean, random but for the laws of physics, but, um, in terms of the events of our life. Like, so I, you know, I was at an American outpost in Afghanistan, and, um, w- uh, w- I, I, I was shocked to feel some sand flick into the side of my face. You know, bullets travel faster than sound, right? And the outpost would get attacked from about 500 meters out, which is quite a long shot for an AK-47 or a PKM. And, and, um, by the time those bullets arrive, uh, well, the bullets arrive way before the sound does, right? So some sand flicked into the side of my face. I just had time to think, "What was that?" I was standing against some sandbags. "What was that?" And then I heard, "Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta." And I was-- So that was the first burst of an hour-long firefight, and the bullets had to have hit with maybe an inch or two from my forehead, right?

   11. PAPeter Attia55:29

       Hmm.

   12. SJSebastian Junger55:30

       Um, in my opinion, utterly random, right?

   13. PAPeter Attia55:32

       Yep.

   14. SJSebastian Junger55:33

       I was blown up by an IED. It went off under the engine block instead of under us. The c- the guy with the cl- you know, the, the Taliban guy with the clacker in the ravine missed it by a second. A second, right? But the whole rest of my life unfolded because of that, or is contained in that second, right? In some ways, and because we were spared. And [clears throat] so at one point, I was at a reading early, early on, you know, like, um, right when the book came out, and, um, a guy raised his hand at the end. He was quite agitated and, and he said, uh, he said, "I'm Christian, and [clears throat] you, you're alive because of God's grace, and you have to come to Jesus and understand that it was only God's grace that saved you." And I said to him... You know, my, one of my best friends, my brother, my colleague, Tim Hetherington, was killed in combat in Libya on an assignment I was supposed to be on. His death was what got me out of war reporting, and then had a family, et cetera. And, you know, he, he bled out also, right?

   15. PAPeter Attia56:30

       Yeah.

   16. SJSebastian Junger56:30

       I mean, from a wound in his groin and, but he was in a war zone, and they couldn't save him. And, um, and so I said to the guy, I said, "You know, my problem with that way of thinking, that there's some purpose here, some meaning here, is why me?" Right? Like, why me and not Tim? For that matter, why me and not some nine-year-old with cancer? I'm sorry. Like, and if God is running a random lottery for his grace, I don't want any part of it, right? I think that the universe is run in, you know, it, it unfolds in, in, in random ways, and I just got super, super lucky. But that, the fact that I got that lucky makes me profoundly grateful and is also incredibly depressing to me, um, uh, for some reason, for reasons that I can't quite understand. But I just sort of think about what was statistically supposed to happen by a factor of maybe 10 to one or something, and, or, or more.

   17. PAPeter Attia57:28

       Probably more.

   18. SJSebastian Junger57:29

       Probably more, right. Um, and, uh-

   19. PAPeter Attia57:32

       And have you spoken with others? I'm just very curious about that-

   20. SJSebastian Junger57:36

       Yeah

   21. PAPeter Attia57:36

       ... Sebastian. I'm-- The, the gratitude makes a lot of sense to me, and I don't know how I would feel in your situation, so this is, this is curiosity and not, uh, certainly not judgment. I'm curious, though, if you've spoken with others who have survived, you know, similar experiences. I think of my friend Rick Elias. I should introduce you guys.

   22. SJSebastian Junger57:54

       Yeah.

   23. PAPeter Attia57:54

       So Rick was on that, uh, US Airways flight that had to emergency land in the Hudson.

   24. SJSebastian Junger57:59

       Right.

   25. PAPeter Attia58:00

       Right. So again, you've got this guy, you know, Captain Sullenberger, who, like, you know-

   26. SJSebastian Junger58:05

       Yeah

   27. PAPeter Attia58:05

       ... he, he's the, he's the one out of, you know-

   28. SJSebastian Junger58:07

       The dumb 50

   29. PAPeter Attia58:08

       ... 50 of-- Right. He, that's exactly right.

   30. SJSebastian Junger58:09

       Yeah.
8. 1:01:18 – 1:05:43

   Ignored warning signs: abdominal pain and a foreshadowing dream before the aneurysm rupture

   1. SJSebastian Junger1:01:18

      more, right? Which is why this is unsettling to me, right? And if-- So 36 hours prior, the only symptoms I had that something was awry in my abdomen was sort of intermittent pain that would come and go, and, you know, if I were more responsible, I would've gone to the doctor, and they would've s- scanned me, and they would've seen a big-ass aneurysm in my pancreatic artery, and they would've fixed it with all the-- without all the drama, right? But I didn't do that, and it wasn't consistent enough to, like, get me to the doctor. And, uh, and I just thought, "Anything that's gonna kill me is gonna be agonizing." I just thought, uh, in a stupid way, I was like, "It's, uh, it's not gonna-- If, if I can bear the pain, it's not gonna-- Well, what could it do?" Right? So, um, I thought I had, I had irritable bowel syndrome, is what I sort of cooked up for some internet Googling, right? W- and, and what it probably was, was the aneurysm starting to dissect a little bit and leak a little bit of blood into my abdomen, and that's the pain I was feeling. And, and, uh, and my body on some level, I think, knew, like, there's a, there's a five-alarm fire coming, right? And, um, so 36 hours prior to nearly dying, I was woken up at dawn. So my family, we co-sleep and, um, and on a big pad on the floor. And I was woken up by, at dawn by this horrific nightmare, a nightmare that I've never, of the sort I've never had, I've never even heard of. And in the nightmare, I was already dead. It started with me already dead. I'm a ghost. I'm a spirit, and I don't know that I'm dead, and my family is below me, and they're, they're grieving, and I realize they're grieving me. And I'm try-- And I don't know I'm dead, right? So I'm, like, waving my arms and yow- shouting, "Hey, I'm over here. I'm right here. I'm right here." And they can't hear me, and they can't see me. And then I'm made to understand that it's too late, that because of my own stupidity, like, my-- I didn't take my life seriously, and I assume this to mean the intermittent pain in my abdomen. I th- because I didn't take things seriously. I was cavalier about life, like capital L Life. I was cavalier about life, and now it's too late. There's no going back. You're dead, and you're outbound, and you're not coming back. And I was so frantic with terror and anguish and shame, sh- incredible sense of shame.

   2. PAPeter Attia1:03:45

      In the dream or when you woke up?

   3. SJSebastian Junger1:03:46

      In the dr- in the dream.

   4. PAPeter Attia1:03:47

      Okay.

   5. SJSebastian Junger1:03:47

      Just that I had somehow squandered this great treasure of life. I just hadn't taken, I hadn't taken something seriously, and now there's no going back. There's no retrieving it. And it wo- and it woke me up, and suddenly I'm in my bed. I'm like, "Oh, thank God I'm not dead," 'cause it had felt so real. I sort of clutched my little girl, right? Um, I was-- woke up next to my eldest daughter, and I clutched her like I've seen her clutch her stuffies, right? Just like, "Oh, thank God you're here," like, that I'm here. I mean, I was just overwhelmed with gratitude and fear. But-

   6. PAPeter Attia1:04:20

      Were you in pain when you woke up? Was the abdominal pain present?

   7. SJSebastian Junger1:04:24

      No. It wasn't. It was just a dream. The pain was very, very rare and intermittent, but sort of unmistakable.

   8. PAPeter Attia1:04:31

      How long had it been going on?

   9. SJSebastian Junger1:04:34

      About six months.

   10. PAPeter Attia1:04:35

       Did the dream, 'cause you had a full day after that dream before the day-

   11. SJSebastian Junger1:04:40

       Yeah

   12. PAPeter Attia1:04:40

       ... where this all happened.

   13. SJSebastian Junger1:04:42

       That's right.

   14. PAPeter Attia1:04:42

       In that one lucid day, did it cross your mind?

   15. SJSebastian Junger1:04:47

       That, that dream really, that, that wonderfully- I talked to my wife about it, and, you know, I'm an older dad. I had my first child at 55, and I sort of ascribed it to just sort of mortality anxiety about being an older dad. How am-- how long am I gonna live into their lives, into their hopefully adult lives? Um, I didn't really think about it, and lots of compartments in my head, lots of, uh, pl- I put things places where I can't reach them. You know, I've-- as a, you know, in dealing with fear and other things as a journalist, you need those compartments, or you can't function. And I got extremely good at sort of, like, having these sort of, like, firewalls that separate me from emotions that, like, are problematic and get in the way of what I'm trying to do. And, um, it's, you know, it's-- that's, to some degree, it's adaptive and helpful in our lives, and after a certain point, it's maladaptive. And I, you know, clear- [chuckles] clearly I'd got to that point, right? Um, but I didn't, but I didn't know it. And, um, so

9. 1:05:43 – 1:11:38

   Sebastian's recovery, his exploration of near-death experiences, and the psychological turmoil he faced as he questioned the reality of his survival

   1. SJSebastian Junger1:05:43

      after coming back from the hospital, and I will get back to the nurse 'cause she's crucial here. But after coming back to the, from the hospital, I was in, I was, I was in the ICU for five days. I recovered very, very quickly, um, and, and in the general floor population for a couple of days, and then they, then they discharged me. I was out of there, right? And I got home, and I started researching NDEs, near-death experiences, because I was really confused about seeing my father in the black pit and the rest of it. And so it turns out that w- I had a rather classic NDE. And, um, you know, the NDE experiences, they're, they're not sort of infinite in variety, right? Like, there's an infinite number of hallucinations you might have on LSD. But the NDEs, they fall into sort of, like, half a dozen basic sort of buckets, right? A, a, a black pit, a tunnel with a light at the end of it, dead relatives showing up, hovering over your body. There's, like, half a dozen sort of basic scenarios. And I-

   2. PAPeter Attia1:06:40

      And, and what's interesting about this, sorry to interrupt, Sebastian-

   3. SJSebastian Junger1:06:43

      Yeah

   4. PAPeter Attia1:06:43

      ... because, again, I think it's It's really fascinating. This is technology and culture agnostic.

   5. SJSebastian Junger1:06:52

      Yeah.

   6. PAPeter Attia1:06:52

      In other words, these stories that you've researched, um, and, and others have as well, it doesn't seem to matter when. Like, as far back as we have record-

   7. SJSebastian Junger1:07:04

      Right

   8. PAPeter Attia1:07:04

      ... it's the same thing. So it's not like, well, we're influenced... This is just a result of the TV shows we watch.

   9. SJSebastian Junger1:07:10

      Right.

   10. PAPeter Attia1:07:11

       Um, and again, it's culturally agnostic, which is also-

   11. SJSebastian Junger1:07:14

       It's odd, right. It's not like Christians have cer- you know, whatever, like the slight, slight variations between cultures, but, but, but, but not an- um, not enough to ascribe it to culture, right?

   12. PAPeter Attia1:07:26

       Yeah.

   13. SJSebastian Junger1:07:26

       It seems like a more universal experience.

   14. PAPeter Attia1:07:28

       Yeah.

   15. SJSebastian Junger1:07:28

       Um, and so I'm researching this stuff, and one of the classic NDE, NDE experiences is hovering over your family or over the sort of surgery bay where the doctors are losing you, right? And unable to communicate, and you're sort of above them, and you're getting tugged between this force that's pulling you outwards into the, you know, the beyond and the s- these, these last ties to your earthly coil. And so, uh, you know, I had no interest in NDEs at all. I didn't know anything about them. I just, you know, like... So I had these experiences with a rather f- clean slate, right? I'm not culturally prepped for these experiences, right? And so I, I, I realized I had rather classic NDEs, both in the moment and also in this weird dream, and this was the fear that I was seized with, and this is how paranoid and anxious I was. I thought, "Oh my God, obviously I died in my sleep." That was my dream, was my experience of actually dying.

   16. PAPeter Attia1:08:34

       Hmm.

   17. SJSebastian Junger1:08:35

       And my wife woke up to her dead husband in the bed, and I don't know it because I continued on under the illusion that I went to the hospital, that I came back, that here I am holding my daughter in my lap. Like, and it's one long dying hallucination, and I'm not really here. I'm a ghost, and I'm imagining all this. And, you know, it's laughable except it's not disprovable.

   18. PAPeter Attia1:09:02

       Ex- exactly. I was just about to say, that's the, that's the challenge.

   19. SJSebastian Junger1:09:05

       Right? And if you're sufficiently traumatized, and I've been traumatized in combat, and I, like, I know there's a sort of bumpy road to recovery afterwards. I can-- I know it pretty well. It sort of fades over time, like the grie- grief when you lose a loved one and whatever. They-- We're, we're designed to adapt, to survive, right? Humans, we're, we're amazing. We're resilient, right? Unless you're particularly traumatized when you're young, which makes resilience harder. So I know that terrain, right? This was... It completely eclipsed anything from combat, right? And, and I was really traumatized by this because, you know, when you're a war reporter, you're deliberately... You're making a conscious choice to go to the poker table and bet your chips, right? All right, I'm gonna go to Bosnia. I'm gonna go to Ukraine. I got some chips. I think I'm a good enough poker player. I can wager my chips, come back with more chips, right? Career, whatever, experience, whatever it is, maybe I'll get a book out of it. I'm gonna come back with more chips before I lose my shirt, right? I'm gonna leave the poker table before I lose everything, and I'm gonna come back with th- these sort of riches, whatever they, whatever they may be. Experiential riches, right? Professional riches. [clears throat] I stopped doing that. I was like, "Oh, Tim got killed. I'm, you know, I'm gonna get cleaned out the next time. I'm leaving the poker table," right? And I had a family. And so what was so traumatizing was that I thought I was safe, right? And it's like, it's like owing the mafia money, right? Like, there's nowhere you can go where you won't have to pay this back. We will find you. You can go to Northern Canada. You can [chuckles] where- you can go to Calcutta. We are coming after our 100K, and you can't hide from us. And that basically is what the universe is doing. It's like, "Look, we loaned you some carbon, right, to make your body out of. We will be reclaiming that eventually, Mr. Junger," right? And I thought I could sort of delay that, and you can't. You just don't know. None of us know that this isn't the last day of our life. I woke up that morning with not a clue, right, other than this crazy dream. Not a clue that this was it, a beautiful June day, right? And that's what was so incredibly disturbing, and it was what, um, sort of warped my mind afterwards. And then I found out, and there was some consolation in this, that thinking that you're not alive is, is, is a not uncommon delusion for people who almost died. It's a sort of known thing. And likewise, the depression, the anxiety, like I, I was doing something that many people who have almost died, and particularly almost died for medical reasons, have gone through. So there was some, there was some sort of comfort in that. But let me finally return to this amazing nurse.

10. 1:11:38 – 1:17:50

    A transformative encounter with a nurse who encouraged Sebastian to view his near-death experience as sacred

    1. SJSebastian Junger1:11:38

       So, um, so I woke up to the sound of a middle-aged, the voice of a middle-aged woman with a heavy Boston accent, which makes sense because I was in Hyannis, Massachusetts, right? Talking about, um... They were-- She and the other nurse were discussing me, right? And I woke up, "Ah, good morning, Mr. Junger. Congratulations. You almost died last night," right? And then, then they left, right, to talk to other, attend to other patients. And I j- I just sat there trying, just thinking about this, this news. Like, like, "I almost died last night? Are you kidding?" Like, it was horrifying, and it is not the sort of, "Woohoo, party." Like, "Wow, I almost died. Here I am. Let's celebrate." It was absolutely crushing. And, um, I sat there physically incredibly compromised and in a lot of pain and throwing up blood and thinking about the fact that I'd almost, you know, as they say, had almost bought the farm and, and not known it. And [clears throat] she came back like an hour later and said, "How you doing? How you doing, Mr. Junger?" You know, like the accent. And, um, I said, um Well, I'm okay, but, um, frankly, what you told me is terrifying, and I can't stop thinking about it." And she said, um, "Try this. Instead of thinking about it like something scary, try thinking about it like something sacred." And then she walked out. And so then I s- lay there thinking about that. Now, um, I'm, you know, I don't go to church. Um, I don't believe in God. But the word sacred, I feel, is one that us secular people have every right to use, and there's very, very fine secular meanings that you can bring to it. And for me, sacred, something sacred, a sacred tas- [clears throat] task is anything that allows people to live with more dignity, more love, more freedom, less fear. Like, that's-- tho- those are sacred things. And it m- you know, religion can be sacred because it can achieve those things. It can really elevate human dignity applied in the right ways. It can also, obviously, destroy it. Um, um, therapists can be, can have a sacred ta- you know, like school teachers, um, even journalists, right? In my mind, I'm like, "Okay, where, what do we do?" You know, on, on our best days, right, we go to places that are at least difficult and hard and intimidating, if not downright dangerous, and we try to come back with information that society, the human race, can make some use of to sh- to chart a better course, to maybe protect human dignity in Ukraine a little bit better, um, to help the human lot a little bit, right? Like that, and that is a sacred task in, by my own secular definition of what sacred is. And I've done this my whole life, and it's a responsibility and frankly an honor that I take extremely seriously, and I'm very proud to be able to do and, and feel quite sort of humble about it. Like, wow, really me? I get to do this? You know, and then so really, um, it's one of the things that, and being a fa- a fa- not just a father, but a good father and a good husband. It's one of the things that I am the most proud of in my life is that I was able to do this, um, passing well for a number of years, right? And so I thought, what about, what about now? I stopped going to front lines, but then I went to the ultimate front line, which is my own death, my own mortality, this thing we all face and that almost all of us fear. I was allowed to go to the precipice, look over the edge, and then allowed to come back. Did I come back with any sacred knowledge? In other words, any knowledge that will help me or other people live with more dignity, less fear, more connection, more love, et cetera, et cetera. That's, that's the task, right? That's what this nurse has asked me to do. Now, she, she might have meant it in a completely Christian sense. I have absolutely no idea. I-- after I recovered and started thinking about writing a book, I, um, of course I thought, because I interviewed everyone who I could at the hospital and elsewhere, I thought, I gotta talk to this lady, this amazing woman. Like, what did she, what did she mean? I mean, I know what I m- you know, I, I know what I, what use I made of, of it, but what did she mean, right? So I called the hospital, and they, you know, the PR, you know, the sort of media relations office, and they weren't much help. And then I finally got a phone line [chuckles] into the ICU and asked the, you know, the gal at the desk like, "So any, middle-aged lady, Boston accent, you know, like, was working on June seventeenth?" "No, no one by that description here. No, there's a young woman with a Boston accent, but no, no, she hasn't-- She's been off lately." You know, whatever. I mean, I-- So, and, and I kept calling and trying to f- you know, like f- and I could not find her. And when I told the story at a reading, one woman said, "Well, clearly she was your guardian angel, and, you know, she appeared to help you in your moment of need." Well, maybe. I mean, I don't know, right?

    2. PAPeter Attia1:17:02

       Or, or a traveling nurse that they forgot about or something.

    3. SJSebastian Junger1:17:05

       Or a trav-- Right.

    4. PAPeter Attia1:17:05

       Right.

    5. SJSebastian Junger1:17:06

       Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or just the hospital bureaucracy, they couldn't figure out who she was, or, um, or she didn't wanna talk to the press, right? She was like, "No way. [chuckles] I'm not talking to this guy," right? "He saw his dead father. I have nothing to do with this," right? Like, who knows, right? The-- No idea. But because I had such trouble figuring out what was reality and what wasn't, you know, of course it crossed my mind. I mean, I saw my dead father. Maybe I imagined a nurse.

    6. PAPeter Attia1:17:34

       Yeah.

    7. SJSebastian Junger1:17:34

       You know, maybe I imagined a nurse who had exactly the information, the idea, which of course is contained somewhere in me, I just didn't have access to it, who had the information that I needed at that moment. So, you know, who knows? And it doesn't really matter, but it was a,

11. 1:17:50 – 1:25:55

    How Sebastian has changed: a journey toward emotional awareness and fully engaging with life

    1. SJSebastian Junger1:17:50

       um, an extraordinary experience for me.

    2. PAPeter Attia1:17:53

       You know, anybody who remembers our first discussion and who, who, who's familiar with your work knows that y- no one's ever accused you of being disconnected, right? So it's not like prior to, uh, June seventeenth or June sixteenth, 2020, you were a guy who was distracted. You were a guy who was, you know, numbing the pain of life with, with hedonic pleasures and things of that nature. Um, you know, you're, you are literally the only person I know who doesn't have a smartphone, who lives, you know, as close to off the grid as possible, and all of that permits you to have this remarkable connection with the people who matter most to you, most, most importantly, your family. So it's almost a little, um, ironic that if we consider this a gift, it was given to you. You almost think that if anybody needs a gift like this, it's, it's someone like me, it-- right? It's a guy who's way more distracted and way more frenetic and, and, and maybe, like most people listening, could use the realignment of, of, of what is sacred. So- Given all of that, I, I'm really curious what has changed in you?

    3. SJSebastian Junger1:19:06

       Right. So what I would say is, um, you know, as I sort of went into my midlife, um, I dropped a number of things that made me feel very, very good when I was young, right? I, I, I really enjoyed alcohol, frankly. I never did any drugs, but I really enjoyed alcohol. I sto- I, nine years ago, I stopped drinking. I wasn't an alcoholic, but, you know, it was just-- it was playing a role in my life that I, I, I wasn't interested in continuing. And, um, uh, I stopped... And I was a totally obsessive athlete, right? So I was a, a pretty good marathon runner and distance runner when I was young. I ran four twelve for the mile-

    4. PAPeter Attia1:19:46

       Wow

    5. SJSebastian Junger1:19:46

       ... which isn't world-class, but it's a decent time. I ran two twenty-one for the marathon, 30 minutes for 10K. You know, decent, decent times requiring an obsessive amount of effort and focus.

    6. PAPeter Attia1:19:56

       No, those are-- For people who don't run, those are exceptional times.

    7. SJSebastian Junger1:20:00

       Um, and, you know, the effort consumed my life and, and, uh, you know, it, it... You know, I was running 100, 120 miles a week at six-minute pace, you know-

    8. PAPeter Attia1:20:08

       Mm

    9. SJSebastian Junger1:20:08

       ... and, and didn't... You know, I was clearly avoiding something. I mean, and I look back, and I was, uh, clearly avoiding a certain sort of emotional experience that I didn't feel prepared for and w- probably wasn't mature enough for, wasn't ready for yet. And it did all that quite well. And, you know, my father was a brilliant, um... really was quite a brilliant physicist in his, in his specialty of acoustics. Um, you know, he was o- he was very, very clearly on the spectrum. Spectrum disorder runs-- Uh, disorder is a bad word because it has so many adaptive uses, but so s- uh, spectrum tendency, [chuckles] um, you know, definitely runs through my family, and I can see it in both directions, downstream and upstream from, from me. Um, and there is a certain sort of, um, focus of mind that, uh, you know, you're looking at the world through a toilet paper tube, right? Like, you're seeing this small circle of light, and that's all you're seeing, which means you can focus incredibly intensely on it, right? And you're pretty oblivious to everything else. And what I watched my father do, and I have a watered-down version of this, of this, is this sort of, like, dogged pursuit of some kind of penetrating insight, some kind of excellence, some kind of transcendent accomplishment. Um, yeah, we get there, right? Like I, I... You know, if I may say this about myself, I write good books that affect people. Like, I did it, right? Like, I figured out how to do it. It requires a huge amount of concentration. My f- my father really advanced physics in interesting ways, right? A lot of his fellow physicists are exactly the same way, just ask their wives. You know? Like, it's like out to lunch most of the time, right? So I-- W- so w- what the cost of that is you're, you're not experiencing your life in emotional terms, and when there are emotions in your life that are unpleasant or even terrifying to deal with, um, you could actively turn on this obsessive focus in order to w- avoid dealing with it, right? So there's a kind of passive not notice. I don't notice. I don't notice. But then when an emotion, a threatening emotion comes along, like a painful breakup or whatever it may be, then you can really tur- you know, like turn on the, [chuckles] turn on the, the, the jets, right? And really blast off into whatever direction you're doing. For a while, it was 120 miles a week. Then later in my life, it was this pursuit of journalism, this maniacal focus that I'm capable of. And once you get into that, um, once you get into that sort of rhythm of being able to go through life, you're richly rewarded for the accomplishments that come with that kind of focus. So society is around you saying, "Well done, sir. Awesome. Amazing. You-- You know, your book changed my life, your blah, blah, blah." Whatever it, whatever it may be. You might be a musician. You might be... It comes in all flavors, right? Um, and so you think your life is a raging success, but actually, you're not experiencing the ac- the actual feeling of being alive all the time, right? And, um, I remember at one point, um... So I've been married-- I'm, I'm in my second marriage. My first marriage didn't work. I'm still very good friends with my ex-wife. Um, but the marriage didn't work s- p- and as we exited-- as my first wife and I exited that marriage, um... Any divorce is incredibly sad and painful, even if it's amicable, which ours, thank God, was. And, uh, we're both good people, and we loved each other, and we did it really q- uh, quite well, and-- But I was incredibly sad. And, and I, I-- You know, I was still going through this sort of the legal process of divorce and really very, very sad, uh, and found myself in this wonderful new relationship that turned into my second marriage and my family. So it all, you know, this all ended, ended quite well for both, both me and my former wife. So in this process, I would-- Because I'm not in touch with my feelings at all, um, or at least u- unless absolutely necessary, um, I would go into these-- I would just drop into these pits, right, of sadness, and I, and I didn't know what they were. And my wife, B- Barbara, m- the woman I'm married to, said, said, H- And then one day she said, "Honey, you seem-- something seems up today. Like, are you all right?" And I said, "No, I'm not. I, I feel really strange. I don't know what it is." And, um, she said, "Maybe, um, you know, your-- the divorce is, you know, like you're, you're going through all this stuff. Maybe, um, maybe you're just really sad." And I was like, "Oh my God, you're right. That feeling, that not feeling quite right, it's sadness. Why-- You know, why are you so brilliant?" Like [both laughing] I'm sad. That's exactly what it is. I couldn't believe her insight, right? And so I said to her, not tongue-in-cheek, not trying to be funny Before I could catch myself, I said, "You know, in the future, if you could tell me how I'm feeling, it would be so helpful." [laughs]

    10. PAPeter Attia1:25:16

        [laughs]

    11. SJSebastian Junger1:25:16

        It's like, "You're a freak," right? [laughs] Like, "What are you talking about?" And so all that to say that you're right, I'm not distracted. I'm tuned out.

    12. PAPeter Attia1:25:30

        It's the-- Yeah. Wow.

    13. SJSebastian Junger1:25:31

        Right? I'm out, I'm out there. Not as bad as my father. My, my, my father, and again, I, sort of this is real physicist territory, was like really, really out there. But I'm out there enough, and there's enough sort of problematic and painful emotional territory in my life that it was-- I found quite a good refuge in athletics, and then this incredible sort of like professional endeavor that s- I so completely fell in love with.

12. 1:25:55 – 1:38:34

    The possibility of an afterlife, and how quantum mechanics challenges our understanding of existence

    1. PAPeter Attia1:25:56

       You know, twice you've alluded to the fact that you're an atheist, and yet I think that something that is worth pointing out here is that whether a person is an atheist or a believer doesn't speak to another dimension, which is, is there or is there not an afterlife?

    2. SJSebastian Junger1:26:13

       Yeah.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:26:14

       And those two do not require each other.

    4. SJSebastian Junger1:26:16

       No.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:26:17

       In other words, there's really a two by two that we should be considering here, which is, is there a God or a creator, or is there not?

    6. SJSebastian Junger1:26:24

       Right.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:26:24

       And is there an afterlife, or is there not?

    8. SJSebastian Junger1:26:26

       Right.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:26:27

       And there are four, there are four squares there.

    10. SJSebastian Junger1:26:30

        Yeah. I saw you draw four squares-

    11. PAPeter Attia1:26:31

        Yeah. I, I-

    12. SJSebastian Junger1:26:32

        ... on your piece of paper, and I was like-

    13. PAPeter Attia1:26:33

        I drew four s-

    14. SJSebastian Junger1:26:33

        ... "Oh, I think I know what's coming."

    15. PAPeter Attia1:26:34

        Yes. And, and I've been thinking a lot about this, right? Because the God problem is an enormous problem, right? Because on the one hand, I don't actually understand how any of us exist. I- in the sense that, like, if you just think about it stochastically, it doesn't make any sense. N- none of this makes sense. It-- I, I can't. It does-- There's no amount of knowledge I have about biology, mathematics, and physics that explains why I'm sitting here and why you're sitting here and why we're doing what we're doing right now, right? The three billion base pairs that define you, the three billion base pairs that define me, each of those base pairs has four possible, you know, uh, DNA, uh, uh, molecules that could define them. Like, we don't-- The, the numbers are so big, they don't, they don't add up. You, you-- So n- none of this makes sense. So you can go down the path of, well, there must be a creator, but then you're stuck with the who created the creator problem, and, and then you wrap yourself around that axle. Okay. So let's, [laughs] let's not even interrogate that-

    16. SJSebastian Junger1:27:44

        Yeah

    17. PAPeter Attia1:27:44

        ... 'cause I don't, neither of us are equipped to. Um, and it sounds like neither of us are particularly predisposed to believe that anyway. But if we just focus on this afterlife question, which again, doesn't require a god necessarily, um, it's hard to do it without talking about physics, right?

    18. SJSebastian Junger1:28:04

        Yeah. I mean, uh, ultimately, it's hard to talk about anything without talking about physics. I mean, at, at the end of the day, that's the, um, that's what the world is, that's what reality is made up out of, is, is, uh, particles and atoms and the laws of physics that govern them. So yes, I agree.

    19. PAPeter Attia1:28:23

        Now, one of the s- [laughs] one of the things you wrote about in your book that I couldn't believe was y- your, your relationship to one of the greatest physicists, um, of, of the last hundred plus years, uh, which is Erwin Schrödinger. Um-

    20. SJSebastian Junger1:28:38

        [laughs] Yeah.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:28:39

        You wanna recount the story of-

    22. SJSebastian Junger1:28:41

        Yeah

    23. PAPeter Attia1:28:41

        ... how, how, how you, uh, how you find yourself within, uh, his sphere?

    24. SJSebastian Junger1:28:47

        Yeah. So my father grew up in Europe. He was born in Dresden. His father was Jewish. His mother was Austrian-Italian, Catholic, and, um, s- which, which was an unheard-of pairing back in, um, uh, you know, the 19, 1910s, 1920s.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:29:06

        Your father's born right after World War I.

    26. SJSebastian Junger1:29:08

        Yeah. He's born in 1923 in Dresden. Ten years later, the Reichstag fire, Germany is-- They, the, you know, people know where this is headed, and, um, they, they decamp for Spain. Um, his dad, my dad's dad, was Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jew, Jewish, so he spoke Spanish and Russian and German. And, um, so they went to Spain, and three years there, my dad's 13 when the fascists come in under Franco. And so now my father's fluent German and fluent Spanish. They leave Spain for France, and he goes to French high school. And then, uh, when he is, uh, 17, I think, the Germans come into France. So now he, they flee France, wind, wind up in Portugal, picks up Portuguese along the way, and then lands in America and learns English. So as I am fond [chuckles] of saying, thanks to the fascists, my father spoke, you know, five languages fluently, right? Five European languages fluently. Um, and he, so he, so that's how he came to America, but he, his fa- his mother's side of his family was from, was from Austria, from Salzburg, so upper middle class. And, um, they, um, the m- my father's mother was born in 1900 and was this great beauty, was known as a great beauty in the small city of Salzburg, as were her, her, um, the tw- the twins, Eti and Viti Junger. And, um, they were sort of renowned as teenage girls for, for being really beautiful. And they happened to know, the family happened to know the Schrödingers. Schrödinger, this preeminent physicist, Schrödinger's cat, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, et cetera. And, um- Nobel Prize. And, uh, so Schrödinger was in his forties and had a family and was a bit of a dog, right? I mean, affairs all over the place and as many people had then and still do, I suppose. And so at one point, these girls, the twins, are, um, they're failing math. They're failing high school math, right? They're sixteen. They're failing high school math, and the mother has the great idea of calling Schrödinger's wife saying, "You know, I know your husband's a mathematician. My girls are failing math. Do you think they could come visit for the summer in Germany where the Schrödingers were living? Could come visit for the summer, and maybe he can sort of tutor them in math." I mean, just think, ima- you just have to understand how completely ridiculous. [laughs]

    27. PAPeter Attia1:31:59

        [laughs]

    28. SJSebastian Junger1:31:59

        I mean, it's like Einstein, right?

    29. PAPeter Attia1:32:00

        Right.

    30. SJSebastian Junger1:32:00

        It's like they're failing s- you know, like sophomore math. Like, can you, can he, can, can Erwin help them? So off the girls go for a summer in Germany, and Schrödinger falls in love with Eti, uh, one of the twins, and he manages to get them through their math tests, right? The, he, he, um, it, it-- But the math is so simple that he actually doesn't understand it very well 'cause it's so simple, so he ha- has to consult with his wife's lover, who's a mathematician, not a physicist, right? And so there's this whole, I mean, there's, it just the dra- the sort of romantic drama of these people was just extraordinary. And anyway, thank God the girls passed their exams and, and Eti and Schrödinger, um, they, they tastefully wait until she's eighteen and he's forty-five or something and, um, they have this passionate affair that lasts some years. Tragically, she got pregnant, the pregnancy was aborted, and as a result she was never able to have children. And you know, I knew her much later in her life when I was a child, um, and, and she was married and you know, a rather sad, a rather sad figure, frankly, um, probably due to, you know, what was really a tragedy in a young woman's life of losing the ability to have, have children. Um, but he was really, he was really in love with her and so that, so Schrödinger and the family, I mean, I have letters that he wrote, I mean, I have letters and poems that he wrote her, right, handwritten. In fact, there's a biography of Schrödinger, a wonderful biography that came out in the '80s, uh, and or '90s and in the bookmark where my father had, you know, like marked something, the bookmark is a handwritten letter by Schrödinger to Eti. Like that's the bookmark in the biography that I found on the shelf. So that's our, that's our history with Schrödinger.
13. 1:38:34 – 1:51:45

    Quantum paradoxes leading to philosophical questions about the nature of reality, existence after death, and whether complete knowledge could be destructive

    1. PAPeter Attia1:38:34

       And again, you, there, there's a, there's a great description in the book of an experiment that I actually wasn't aware of, this experiment that took place, uh, I believe it was off the coast of Spain in the Canary Islands.

    2. SJSebastian Junger1:38:45

       Yeah.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:38:45

       Correct? Um, the experiment is very complicated, but it actually illustrates this point a little more-

    4. SJSebastian Junger1:38:53

       Yeah

    5. PAPeter Attia1:38:53

       ... with a little more nuance.

    6. SJSebastian Junger1:38:55

       Yeah.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:38:55

       Because of course, a layperson listening to this is thinking, "What the hell are you two idiots talking about?" Like-

    8. SJSebastian Junger1:39:02

       Yeah

    9. PAPeter Attia1:39:03

       ... "This is a dumb story."

    10. SJSebastian Junger1:39:05

        Right.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:39:05

        Right? But, but the point is, when you look at the path of these electrons or particles unobserved, they are indeed behaving this way. And this experiment, I don't know if you wanna go into the experiment. If you, do you want-

    12. SJSebastian Junger1:39:18

        I'll try. I'll try.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:39:19

        Yeah. It's just, it's-

    14. SJSebastian Junger1:39:21

        Yeah. [laughs]

    15. PAPeter Attia1:39:21

        It's so mind-boggling.

    16. SJSebastian Junger1:39:23

        Yeah, yeah. Give me a flashlight. We can go into the cave, right? Like, um, so it's called, um, delayed choice quantum erasure. [lips smack] And I actually, I, I include the technical description of the experiment in the book because for the civilian, it is [laughs] just, like, absolute madness. I mean, the words make no sense, and it's, it's describing the physical setup of the experiment with lasers and mirrors and telephone cable and fiber optics cable and, you know, w- um, I mean the... and just as an example of like this is how far out there these scientists are getting, that we don't even understand the language that they use to describe how they unders- understand the universe. So, so there are things called entangled particles, and entangled particles, um, are subatomic particles that affect each other instantaneously and have to do the same or corresponding things, and they do that. They, they-- if you do something to one particle that's entangled with another particle, the entangled particle reacts in the same or a complementary way instantly, and instantly means faster than the speed of light. And information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. It can't travel one foot faster than the speed of light, and it can't travel 50 billion light-years faster than the speed of light. And what they found is that entangled particles, even on opposite sides of the universe, if you do something to one, the other entangled particle is affected instantaneously, okay? Those are entangled particles. That's how the universe, universe works for some reason. So they figured out a, uh, [laughs] fiendish mechanism for sort of tricking the universe, and what they do is they take entangled particles and, you know, I have no idea how they do this. Well, you know, you'd, you'd have to go to the original literature, and I, you probably won't understand it 'cause I sure didn't. But take it, take it on faith from the physicist. You take entangled particles, and you fire one at a double slit in the classic double slit experiment unobserved, and we know for sure that it goes through both slits at the same time because it's unobserved. We know that that's how it works. And then you de- with a tiny delay, you send its entangled twin through double slits, and you observe it, and it's forced be- because of observation, it's forced to go through one slit. But now the universe has a problem because entangled particles have to do the same thing, and we know that they've just done different things.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:42:24

        And again, just so people are following us, the reason the entangled particle has to pick a slit is because it's being observed.

    18. SJSebastian Junger1:42:31

        Right.

    19. PAPeter Attia1:42:31

        It's now in the, quote-unquote, "physical world again." It's no longer a probability distribution.

    20. SJSebastian Junger1:42:37

        Right.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:42:38

        It, it's gonna behave like things that are observed behave.

    22. SJSebastian Junger1:42:40

        Right. Pick a doorway, one or the other, but not both, right? Meanwhile, its twin that was fired off an instant before was unobserved, and so it remains, as you say, a probability distribution and physically goes through both slits at the same time and hits the strike plate on the other side with a classic waveform signature that physicists well know means it passed through both slits. So when they, when they observe the second entangled particle going through one slit, as it has to because it's being observed, and then they look at the results of the first particle that was unobserved and had to go through both slits, when they look at the strike plate- It shows a signature of having only gone through one slit because entangled particles have to do the same thing. But what this means is that quantum, not only do they infect each other instantaneously, but effectively speaking, the mechanism reached back in time and changed the outcome of the first entangled particle. It's delayed choice quantum erasure. And what I say in the book is that if there is any ki-- I, I prefer the phrase, uh, post-death existence for the individual rather than afterlife. It just is too imbued with, uh, a kind of hopeful vision of us in a hammock with a daiquiri forever. You know what I mean?

    23. PAPeter Attia1:44:13

        Yeah.

    24. SJSebastian Junger1:44:13

        There's just, there's something a little too pleasant about that. Post-death existence for the individual, if there's anything to that, um, if there's anything to that idea, I simply say in the book, it would have to, it, it would have to work on a, on a level of just sheer weirdness that delayed choice quantum erasure exists. Like that's, it's unex- totally unex- physicists don't understand why the world-

    25. PAPeter Attia1:44:37

        I mean, is there a chance that there is-- So if you go, if you go back to Newton, right? Like you think about Newtonian physics, which explains everything we see, right? Like we, we see airplanes fly. That doesn't make a lot of sense, right? If you were, you know, one of our ancestors saw that, they wouldn't understand it, but we can understand how an airplane flies. That's Newtonian physics. And of course, what happened with the quantum revolution, um, in the, I guess the early part of the twentieth century, is physicists realize that Newtonian physics breaks down at the atomic level-

    26. SJSebastian Junger1:45:17

        Right

    27. PAPeter Attia1:45:17

        ... and you need new physics to explain what's happening there. Do physicists believe that what you're describing is to quantum theory what quantum theory was to Newtonian mechanics? In other words, is there now a third layer of physics that is as, is, is, is, is set free from what we understand today and, and is yet to be described potentially?

    28. SJSebastian Junger1:45:43

        Uh, honestly, I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, the physicists themselves and the, and the, you know, the sort of like fathers of all, the grandfathers of all this, like Schrödinger and Einstein, um, were on, to some degree or other, many of them were sort of unnerved by this. Like the, the results just didn't make sense in our sort of like human brains.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:46:01

        Yes, because there's this other experiment, right, where Einstein basically comes to the conclusion that one of two things has to be true. Either particles are moving faster than the speed of light, or they are containing within them deciding information. Neither could be true. He sets out to prove it, and the only way he can prove it is to violate something withheld in quantum theory itself, and I, I believe it was through the photoelectric effect. Like-

    30. SJSebastian Junger1:46:31

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
14. 1:51:45 – 2:10:38

    The sweet spot of uncertainty: exploring belief in God, post-death existence, and meaning in life

    1. SJSebastian Junger1:51:47

       I think that to s-sort of answer your question about is this good for us or not, um, other than the completely abstract and terrifying maybe we don't not-- wanna know everything because the universe will collapse [laughs] into a spacetime of zero radius or whatever the phrase is, um, uh, for me, it allow-- it sort of allowed open-- I mean, I'm still an atheist, meaning I don't-- God is not part of my daily practice. It's not how I understand reality. It's not-- God does not guide my decisions and my values. Um, uh, I'm a moral person in my own right and, and, and, um, and I, and I do fine with it. So God is not-- I'm, I-- so I am an atheist. Uh, I don't really particularly like the term agnostic, which I'm happy to talk about if you want.

    2. PAPeter Attia1:52:34

       Meaning you feel you need to either shit or get off the pot with your, your thinking?

    3. SJSebastian Junger1:52:38

       Sort of. I mean, I-- like, put it in more human terms. So if, if you're in a happy marriage, and you have no suspicions that anything is going on that would upset you about y- about your spouse, uh, at all and someone said, you know, "Is your wife cheating on you?" And you said, "Well, I mean, I'm, I'm agnostic on that. I don't know," you wouldn't say that, right? I mean, unless you actually had some reason to doubt, right? So when you say I'm agnostic about God, what troubles me about that is that there's absolutely no evidence that your wife's cheating on you, right? There's absolutely no evidence that God exists, right? So if that's the case, if there is some evidence, she said she was going to the movies, and she didn't go to the movies. Now I'm-- now I could say I'm agnostic, right? But until then, until I've seen some evidence that God exists, if I saw a little bit of evidence that God exists, if I saw overwhelming proof, I would be, I would be a believer. If I saw some evidence that God exists, I would be agnostic. I'd be like, "Well, I'm on the jury, and I don't know."

    4. PAPeter Attia1:53:43

       Okay, so you're not opposed to the term agnostic. You're just saying you're not.

    5. SJSebastian Junger1:53:47

       I think it's in, I think it's inaccurate for the way most people know it. I think mo- it's in-

    6. PAPeter Attia1:53:50

       Do you think most people are in one camp or the other, and they're just not willing to admit it?

    7. SJSebastian Junger1:53:53

       Yeah, right, and, and I think it's like the sort of like cheating spouse analogy. Like, unless you have some reason to doubt your spouse, you say, "No, she's not cheating on me. I have no reason to think that," right? No, I don't believe in God. I have no reason to think there is a God. I've never seen evidence to the effect that there's a God, right? And if there was a little bit of evidence, I'd be like hung jury. Like, there could be-- maybe there is, maybe there-- maybe she's cheating on me, maybe she's not. Maybe there's a God, maybe there isn't a God. That's truly agnostic. I just don't know what would be the basis for that amba- ambiguity.

    8. PAPeter Attia1:54:20

       Well, I think the challenge with the terminology is, um, maybe that we don't have a clear definition of God and that, for example, many different religions will have many different versions-

    9. SJSebastian Junger1:54:30

       Right

    10. PAPeter Attia1:54:30

        ... of what a god is, and then there are probably some people who, um, wouldn't subscribe to anything within an organized religion but would describe themselves still as spiritual and might still argue that there is a God but not, you know, the God kind of thing. So, so-

    11. SJSebastian Junger1:54:48

        Right

    12. PAPeter Attia1:54:48

        ... it g- it, it gets so complicated.

    13. SJSebastian Junger1:54:50

        Yeah.

    14. PAPeter Attia1:54:50

        But again, that's why I wanted to separate it away from that-

    15. SJSebastian Junger1:54:53

        Right

    16. PAPeter Attia1:54:53

        ... because, again, there is a really clear situation of none of that matters-

    17. SJSebastian Junger1:54:59

        Right

    18. PAPeter Attia1:55:00

        ... and we're still wrestling with the question at hand-

    19. SJSebastian Junger1:55:02

        Right

    20. PAPeter Attia1:55:03

        ... which is what does it mean to die on this planet? What does it mean to-

    21. SJSebastian Junger1:55:08

        Right

    22. PAPeter Attia1:55:08

        ... die in this physical body that stops respiring to which, you know, we are rushing towards entropy?

    23. SJSebastian Junger1:55:17

        Right, and so for me, without the, um, the help or baggage of God, however you wanna think about it, I was faced after this near-death experience with some very, very puzzling, um, very, very puzzling memories and, uh, specifically seeing my dead father in some form above me, and, um, is it just neurochemistry? Yeah, possibly, right? Is there- I-- and again, it would have to be at some quantum level, some post-death existence that we just don't understand. For the first time in my life, I would honestly say, yeah, possibly. Right? I'm agnostic on it, and agnostic for specific reasons. I actually have evidence, right? There's evidence on both sides. You know, like the jury, it's a hung jury. I don't know. I can't, I, I'm, I'm not-- I don't know beyond a reasonable doubt. But the idea has been open to me that, you know, the, the, the [chuckles] that the suspect is possibly innocent, right? Or for the court analogy, like I-- maybe there is something, right? And so my book is divided into two sections, what and if. What happened to me, and what if there were some post-death, death existence, just theoretically as a thought experiment, how would it work? There's almost certainly not, I say in the book, there's almost certainly not, but if there were, how would it work? And that's where I sort of wound up in, in quantum physics. I had a hilarious conversation with some colleagues of my father, who I sort of tracked down after, um, my near-death experience, guys who were very fond of my father and, um, yeah, you know, sort of half a generation younger than him, half a generation older than me, really, really sweet guys. And, and [clears throat] we had lunch, and I, and I said, "Guys, I just-- this is what happened to me. My dead father appeared above me, and you know Miguel, like, what do you think he would think of this?" And, you know, the conversation went on, um... I mean, first of all, just so you understand how unclear many physicists are with the idea of like what something romantic is, my, my, my [chuckles] Rudolf, Rudolfo, um, said, said to me, "Well, your fa- you know, your father was a hopeless romantic." [chuckles] I was like, "Really?" Like my mother, that would be news for my mother, right? I mean, they timed their-- they eloped to San Francisco to get married, and they timed it, he timed it for, to coincide with the weekend of the annual meeting of the, um, the American Acoustical Society in San Francisco, right? So I was like, "Really? What makes you say that?" And he s- so there's a something, a, uh, there's something called a Helmholtz resonator in acoustics, right? And, uh, so Rudolf said, "Well, he was deeply in love with the Helmholtz resonator and talked about it constantly." [both laughing] I was like, "Oh, got it. Okay. All right. Yes, hopeless romantic." So, so [both laughing] and at one point, right after my parents were married, and then these are the brains that come up with this kind of thing, right? Um, right after my parents were married, she was cooking dinner, and he was in an armchair, this sort of nineteen, late nineteen fifties marital idyll, right? Like he's in the armchair in front of the fire reading. She's cooking dinner, and he's muttering to himself, "Oh my God, that is so beautiful. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. That's just absolutely gorgeous." And of course, she's like, "What has gotten my new husband's attention in this way? Like, what exactly is he looking at?" Right? So she tiptoes over, you know, I think probably fearing the worst, and he's the b-- he has a p- a book open, and the, and both pages are covered with numbers and equations and symbols, right? That's, that's what's so beautiful to him. Like that was his brain, right? So these are the gentlemen, it's his ilk that I have lunch with, and, um, his col- his former colleagues and I said, "Okay, guys, what are the odds?" Just, and I thought it was a rhetorical question, right? 'Cause I'm not a physicist. So I assume this is a rhetorical question. I was like, "Really, what are the odds that my dead father could appear above me in some form, like while I'm dying? Like, what are the, what are the odds?" Right? And to my like amazement, Rudolf, the Helmholtz resonator guy, looks up, like up, and he strokes his chin, and he's sort of like running the numbers, right? I was like, "Oh my God, is he actually calculating this? Like, is that something you can calculate?" And he said, "Yeah, it's..." He said, "It's around..." And I'm trying, going from memory from my book. He said, "I think ten to the minus sixty," something like that. So one chance in a number that has sixty zeros after it, right? I was like, "What? There's a number for this? Like, what are you talking about?" He said, "Well, it's roughly the chance that all of the oxygen molecules in, in the air of this room would just randomly, through sort of stat- stat- through, through statistical mechanics, would just randomly c- collect in one corner of the room and asphyxiate us. Almost impossible, but it's theoretically possible." Right? Well, likewise, it's probably the odds of your father rematerializing above you are, are roughly on that order of unlikely, right? I was like, "Oh my God, that's what we're dealing with." Like and so but then it turns out, if you look at the odds of the universe existing, it w- it's way, way more unlikely.

    24. SPSpeaker2:00:46

        Yeah.

    25. SJSebastian Junger2:00:46

        It's ten to the minus two thirty. So one chance in a number that has two hundred and thirty zeros after it, right? So it's the chance of finding one grain of sand. It's millions and millions of times less likely than finding one specific grain of sand in all the sand on the Earth on the first try, right? Something like thirty parameters have to be in very precise places for, for a, a physical universe to exist, the force of gravity, all these, all these sort of arcane things that, you know, most humans don't know about. Uh, and then for conscious lice- life to develop, it's almost infinitely unlikely, and it's actually way more unlikely, at, at least according to Rudolf, it's way more unlikely that the universe exists in the first place, and we know that it does 'cause we're here, than my father appearing above me. That's actually in the realm of chance, like way more likely than the universe existing in the first place, which we know it does, right? So in my book, you know, one of the things I say is like, look, my dead father abo- you know, like that's the l- you know, once you get past the stunt of the universe going from absolutely nothing to hundreds of millions of light years across in an amount of time that's too small to measure, once you've pulled off that party trick, you know, the dead appearing above us in some quantum form while we're, you know, passing through into their realm, like, yeah, I can see that may... You know, we don't understand it, but I can imagine that it's possible.

    26. PAPeter Attia2:02:15

        Yeah. I mean, I, I think that's, unfortunately, where I find myself, Sebastian, is, um, because I at least have enough facility with numbers when I go through the exercise, everything you just did, coupled with even simpler things like just the existence of us, like just, let's just limit it to organic material, um, and I can't, then I just have to accept the flaws in my own cerebral machinery, right? Which is I'm not smart enough to understand this stuff. Like, I'm, I'm not and I never will be. Like, I don't understand consciousness.

    27. SJSebastian Junger2:02:56

        Yeah.

    28. PAPeter Attia2:02:56

        I can't explain consciousness. I cannot... And I, and I, and I look at my dog and I think, well, he's conscious. Like, he-- there is a feeling of being a dog.

    29. SJSebastian Junger2:03:08

        Yeah.

    30. PAPeter Attia2:03:08

        Like, he knows what it's like to exist. And then I look at a little roly-poly and I think he's probably not conscious.
15. 2:10:38 – 2:19:12

    The transformative power of experiencing life with awe and gratitude

    1. PAPeter Attia2:10:38

       wrote it, you wrote something so beautiful, uh, near the end of the book: "Without death, life does not require focus or courage or choice. Without death, life is just an extraordinary stunt that won't stop."

    2. SJSebastian Junger2:10:51

       Right, which is a terrifying idea in its own right, and, um, anything that won't stop is a terrifying [chuckles] idea, basically. So after I finished the book, I, I read this extraordinary story about Dostoevsky, the, the great Russian writer, and had I read it when I was doing the book, I probably would've put it in there, but it, it gives me a chance to tell a nice story during conversations like this. So, um, when he was in his 20s, he was a bit of a political radical, and he had a bunch of radical friends, and they would sit around. They had like a, a, a circle, like an intellectual circle, and they would sit around, and they'd talk about stuff, and they'd talk about, for example, freeing the serfs, right? Outrageous ideas like that, right? This is the 1840s, and you know, of course, the same, basically the same conversation was happening in the United States about the slaves, about slavery. So the Tsar Nicholas I, I think it was, was not, um, particularly pleased by s- this talk, and the, his police rounded these boys up and threw them in jail, and they spent eight years in jail. Uh, uh, uh, eight-- I'm sorry, eight months in jail, and it wasn't a particularly serious crime, right? So they were getting their wrists slapped, but no one was particularly worried about anything, and then finally, after eight months, they were, um, shown to the door of the prison and loaded onto a carriage, and you know, they just assumed they were gonna be driven to the court, and discharged, and released to their families, and the nightmare's over. And so they're bouncing along through the streets, and instead of going to the court, they're driven to a city square, and they're tied to posts, and a firing squad is lined up in front of them. They've had to make the transition psychologically from going home to my family to I'm gonna die in a few minutes. Right? They had to make that transition almost instantaneously, right? So they're tied to posts, and the order is given for the soldiers to charge their weapons and le- level them and aim, and Dostoevsky and his buddies are waiting for the command, "Fire," when their chests will be torn open by musket balls. And so what happened was this was theater. It was sadistic, cruel theater. It was a mock execution just to scare them, and a rider galloped into the square just in time, uh, and said, "The tsar forgives them," and they were untied and [chuckles] sent to a penal colony in S- in Siberia for a while, but they survived. Two of the men, um, who went through this, of the six men or so who went through this, were in, uh, insane for the rest of their lives. They could not take... That's what I was saying about the truth. Like, no afterlife? Like, I can't bear that thought. They could not-- The, the, the, the, the, um, the unfiltered vision of infinity starting 30 seconds from now, right? With- without any warm-up, without any time to adjust. You have cancer. You're gonna die in a year. Nothing, just from life to death in, in some minutes was so, um- psychologically traumatizing that they were deranged for the rest of their lives. They never psychologically recovered. Dostoevsky did, and he took that experience and put it into some of his amazing work. But what we know because of him, we know what the world, the nearly hallucinatory quality that the wor- that reality takes on when you go, when you g- do this transition abruptly from I'm alive, yay, to oh my God, I'm gonna be dead in a minute. Like, what does the world look like through the eyes of someone who's experiencing that, right? And, um, this is what he said. He said he looked out and he saw sunlight glinting off the roof, the steeple of a church, and he, he thought to himself, "In, in moments I'm gonna become part of this, I'll be part of the sunlight. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna become part of all things. And if I somehow survive this, I will l- I will li- I will lead, I will live the rest of my life turning every moment into a, a- an infinity," right? And he did survive it, and he took the wisdom of that vision, which of course, if we just stopped, erased our sort of our, the, the sort of s- busy slates of our brains, and just stopped and looked around, it's just the insane, surreal miracle that anything is, the New York City subway, a tree, the ocean, your foot, you know, whatever. I mean, just look at any of it.

    3. PAPeter Attia2:15:44

       Yeah.

    4. SJSebastian Junger2:15:44

       You'll be like, "Oh my God, that exists, and I'm here to see it? Are you, are, are you kidding?" Like, that was what he got. And if you can't live like that, but if you can incorporate a little bit of that sort of strangeness of, you know, if, if it looks stra- the strangeness of that vision allows for s- for awe and gratitude, right? And when that vision becomes, um, when you become accustomed to it, right? When it becomes an everyday thing, I mean, there's a problem with long marriages, with marriage sometimes, right? You're just like, oh, yeah, you fall in love. This person's amazing, and then you adjust, and they're just another person, and you love them or whatever, but the, the sort of awe that you, that this person is with you, like, if you can keep that in your marriage, you have a good marriage. If you can keep that in your life, you have a good life, and that's, that was the, the blessing that came with the curse of what Dostoevsky went through, and I've gotten a little bit of that in my life. And, you know, frankly, it's, um, it changed my life in a way that religion often changes, religion often changes people's lives. I'm not religious. It's changed it in an equivalent way, like a, a profound gratitude, not just for my life as I am living it, but the fact that I have a life at all, and that any of us do.

    5. PAPeter Attia2:16:59

       So does that mean now the answer to the question that your wife posed for you is that indeed you would, you would, you would go through all of this again?

    6. SJSebastian Junger2:17:09

       Yes, I would, as painful as it is to say, and I wonder if Dostoevsky would.

    7. PAPeter Attia2:17:16

       Hmm.

    8. SJSebastian Junger2:17:16

       I'm guessing he would, and those poor guys who never recovered, they wouldn't, you know? But, um, and I was sur- I, you know, I had access to a really good shrink, a very loving family. Like, you know, and I ba- I, frankly, I, it was, it was touch and go for a while. I mean, I, I mean, it could have really, um... You know, I still have a sort of l- weird panic to anxiety disorder around health issues, and I'm, like, prone to the imagining that, like, something's catastrophically wrong with me in a kind of paranoid Woody Allen kind of way. Like, "Oh my God, I'm sure I've got cancer." [laughs] Like, I mean, we, everyone does that a little bit, I think, but you know, it really opened up the gateway for me, and it was extremely unpleasant. And I know that paranoid feeling comes flooding into me, and it's a direct result of, of almost dying on a beautiful June day, you know? And so it's not without its costs, but, um, because I've got, uh, I'm blessed, [laughs] blessed to have some incredibly wonderful, beautiful things going for me in my life, like, I was able to sort of pull it off.

    9. PAPeter Attia2:18:16

       Sebastian, thank you very much. Again, the book is, is, is really, really special. Um, um, not just as a story, but if you're, if you're, if you're willing as the reader, I think, to, um, to, to let yourself really contemplate and imagine what, what's being described and accept the, um, impossibility of, of being able to understand it and being able to resolve it and being able to, to, to, to find a proof, um, it certainly offers more questions than answers, but, but that's, you know, that's what makes it worth living, right?

    10. SJSebastian Junger2:18:53

        Thank you. I'm so glad that you, uh, r- read it and, and enjoyed it so much and that you invited me on. I mean, what a wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it.

    11. PAPeter Attia2:19:00

        Thank you, Sebastian.

    12. SJSebastian Junger2:19:02

        Thank you. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 2:19:12