Sebastian Junger: War journalist, filmmaker (Restrepo), and bestselling author whose ruptured pancreatic-artery aneurysm and near-death experience inspired his book In My Time of Dying.
What this episode covers
Sebastian Junger tells Joe Rogan how an undiagnosed aneurysm ruptured during COVID at a remote Massachusetts cabin, leaving him minutes from death as he lost two-thirds of his blood. He describes a near-death vision of a black pit and his dead father beckoning him, despite being a lifelong atheist, and his subsequent research into near-death experiences, hospice deathbed visions, and quantum physics. The conversation ranges across NDEs, biocentrism, consciousness as possibly fundamental to reality, and the meaning of a finite life. They also discuss war, the morality of intervention, Junger's combat trauma reporting, and human aggression through the lens of chimpanzee coalitions and Genghis Khan. Junger urges listeners to donate blood, crediting ten anonymous donors with saving his life.
Recommended on this episode
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford
“there's an amazing book by is it Jack Weatherford I think his name is about geni Khan like the classic book it's amazing book worth reading”— Joe Rogan
Hardcore History: Wrath of the Khans
Dan Carlin
“Dan Carlin's hardcore history is this amazing podcast and uh he has this uh series called the wrath of the con”— Joe Rogan
Wolf Watching
Ted Hughes
“there's an amazing poem by Ted Hughes called wolf watching... it's worth looking up it's just one of the most extraordinary poems”— Sebastian Junger
The guest's own work
In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife
Sebastian Junger
“say it now I definitely don't want you get killed especially after what you've been through In My Time of Dying how I came face to face with the idea of an afterlife”— Sebastian Junger
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Light Phone
Light
“it's the same sort of that's what it is light phone yeah that thing so it has basically the same thing as your phone except you could text like a normal human”— Joe Rogan
Biocentrism
Robert Lanza
“it's called biocentrism there's a guy named Adam lonza that you might be interested in talking to he's a brilliant guy um he's one of the sort of pioneers of biocentrism”— Sebastian Junger
Big reveals from this episode
- Junger reveals an undiagnosed aneurysm on his pancreatic artery ruptured, causing a hidden internal abdominal hemorrhage during COVID at a remote cabin.
- At the hospital his blood pressure hit 60/40 and he lost roughly two-thirds of his blood, ten minutes from death from end-stage hemorrhagic shock.
- As a lifelong atheist he sensed a black pit pulling him in, then his dead father appeared offering to take him, which he angrily refused.
- Doctors signaled they had failed with the catheter through his groin until Dr. Dabrowski tried one last route through his left wrist and saved him.
- Junger reveals he had a nightmare of hovering over his grieving family 36 hours before the rupture, mirroring a classic NDE pattern.
- He recounts hospice nurses describing dying patients consistently having visitations from the dead who come to receive them.
- He shares Dostoevsky's mock execution story and the resolution to turn every moment into an infinity.
- He notes Genghis Khan killed so many people that reforestation altered Earth's carbon record visible in core samples.
Worth remembering
- Junger still uses a flip phone with T9 texting and often travels for days without a charger.
- Junger reinterprets Ajax's suicide in the Iliad as PTSD, theorizing Ajax killed himself fearing he was a danger to his own family.
- Junger needed ten units of donated blood and makes an impassioned pitch for listeners to donate blood.
- He describes interventional radiology using a fluoroscope and catheter threaded from the groin to plug an internal bleed.
- He cites a case where electrodes on a dying man's brain recorded a flood of gamma waves associated with long-term memory at the moment of death.
- Junger explains the double-slit experiment and how conscious observation appears to determine quantum reality.
- Recently captured images of quantum-entangled photons resemble a yin-yang symbol.
- Genghis Khan's actions caused an estimated 50 to 70 million deaths, and about 11 percent of people in conquered regions descend directly from him.
- His burial site remains unknown because everyone involved in the burial was killed to keep it secret.
- Junger notes chimpanzees form coalitions to attack but not to defend, unlike humans who rush to aid each other.