Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowHow did you get here? What happens when you die? These questions have fascinated (and terrified) human civilization since the dawn of time, and often new discoveries only lead to more questions. In tonight's interview, the guys welcome filmmaker, writer and producer Dan Bush to explore his newest podcast, Alive Again. Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion of existence, science, spirituality and mortality -- and what it means to die, then return.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolh.
They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know, As current science argues, if you are hearing this, you are most likely what we call alive. What happens when we die? Guys, let's get past the small talk for the intro. We've asked ourselves this question often.
Yeah, and we arrived at a conclusion. Yet acquiring minds would like to know.
We've spent a couple full episodes thinking about these concepts. What is consciousness? What is it to be alive? What is it to be a universe?
What is that?
M you know, the universe and the grain of sand? Another question similar, where were we before? What happens when we move on? And as you said, Matt, we've explored this over the years. It's a dilemma or a mystery that humanity has wrestled with since before humans began writing stuff down. It's a question that's as beautiful and awe inspiring as it is terrifying and mysterious.
And as we like to say, on stuff.
They'll want, you know, past a certain point of inquiry, the science becomes very close to philosophy. It blends inextricably so with spirituality. So one of our favorite new shows addresses these ancient questions, timeless questions, unique, never before heard way. It's called Alive Again. And I know we're talking about this off air before we get into it. Can we play a clip from the show No we must?
What happens when we come face to face with death. My truck was blown up by a twenty pound anti tank mine. I jumped out of an airplane. My parachute did not toploy.
I was kidnapped by a drunker tilling the outskirts of Mexico City.
I was startured than held for ransom.
I open an eye and the bayonet comes down one inch from this sheet.
I just remember everything getting dark. I was like, oh my god, I'm dying. When we stepped beyond the edge, of what we know. I had the flat line clinically died.
In return, I grabbed the electricity going into the train system.
All of the electricity went through me.
I was dead for aleven point five minutes, and the heart stopped beating alive again. These are first hand accounts of people who have stood at the.
I was quite literally losing my own life.
I've remembered the baited breath that we all had.
It was going to be my reminder to keep reading, and the fear I was bleeding to death.
I was not going to be able to make it out of this.
He told me, kneel down, We're going to kill you.
Their stories are terrifying, miraculous, heartbreaking, and deeply inspiring. It's a miracle I was brought back because if you know anything about CPR, they do not typically go that long. It isn't just about near death experiences. It's about what comes after.
And now you got to rebuild the image of yourself again.
How surviving the unthinkable transforms us.
That is the choice that we get to make, taking the possibility over the pain.
You have to learn how to change your mindset.
I'm not a victimum survivor that capacity to open our consciousness to something more than just what's in that western box.
My name is Dan Bush. My mission is simple.
You know your strongest one, you're the most vulnerable.
To find, explore, and share these stories. You cannot hold despair and gratitude in your heart.
At the same time, everything reduces to its minimum expression, which is the search of meaning.
To remind us what it means to be live. I step out of my grave and into my life. This life I'm living now. I have a spiritual function, a spiritual purpose.
Having gotten through all of these near death experiences.
I'm so proud of myself alive again. Not just that I was the guy that cut his armah, but that I'm the guy who is smiling when he cut his arm off. A podcast about the fragility of life, the strength of the human spirit, and what it means to truly live.
Life is precious and I am a success story.
And that is a live again. This is a phenomenal show for us and hopefully for you.
This is.
Tough to put into words, so we needed a little bit of help. We have a special surprise for tonight. We are joined in that endeavor with none other than the creator of Alive Again himself the one and only award winning filmmaker, writer, and producer Dan Bush. Dan welcome, thank you for joining us.
Hey, hey guys, thanks so much for having me. What an honor, what a privilege to jump on the show with you. I'm such a fan.
Now you had to hear us play your trailer in front of you.
Yeah, you said you like it. It kicks butt, and oh my gosh, just that alone is so much fodder for conversation.
So y'all, what do you say we take a.
Tiny little break and then just jump right into this discussion of the unknown.
Let's do it.
And we're back.
We want to, as we're diving in, talk a little bit about Bona Fie and origin stories. Now, d you've made many many projects. We are in full disclosure, privileged enough to be friends and fans of yours, and we've seen screenings of various films that you have created. You've also done a number of podcasts in advance Alive Again.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because you know, this is my first time jumping into sort of a documentary space, if you will. You know, I'm a fiction guy. I'm a storyteller, you know, in my heart of hearts, but I've always there's a there's a commonality between my fiction stories and Alive Again, which is, you know, not just a sort of an exploration of that which exists outside of the boundaries of what we know, what we understand to be true. But you know, I found very quickly when I was doing a Live Again that these stories that I'm collecting they are more about transformation. Yes, there are some real hardcore nd near death experience stories that have all of the things that come with the near death experience, the classical sort of cross cultural phenomenon that are reported, like a life review or encountering you know, a very warm space, or some sort of angelic creatures or even ancestors loved ones who have passed before. And there are a lot of commonalities across you know, different religions in different you know, cultures and different ethnicities and so forth that make it sort of these these phenomenon really interesting and make it go Okay, well there's something going on here. But I also found out that it's about transformation. So a lot of our stories aren't necessarily classical near death experiences, but they're people who have had brushes with death and either had to rehabbilitate or had to come to some understanding. Like Manuel Gesperrett, who was you heard in the U and the teaser there he was abducted by a drug cartel and came to have this extreme compassion and forgiveness for his abductors. And so there are these stories of transformation that I think are really interesting, and it gets into this this thing that happens in storytelling, with filmmaking and with screenwriting, which is the same thing you're you're not you know, you're following a transformation of a character across three acts, you know, and for the purposes of theatrics and storytelling mechanics that usually you know that that abides by a certain set of Aristotilian rules that we all follow with Catharsists and so forth. And it was fun to hear these stories because there's this thing called a liminal or you know, this liminal state, which is the in between states, in between the threshold of you know, the childhood self dies typically in you know, in different like primal cultures. Yeah, and then there's the birth of the adult self or there's some some identity loss, some transformation, and there's this liminal process or this liminal period where there is an unknown and the identity has been ripped away and the new one has not been born yet. And those liminal states are really what we're starting to key in on with the Live Again.
Yeah.
It's just fascinating because there whether it takes you know, eighty years for a liminal state to take place, or whether the liminality happens in five seconds.
Right, so somewhere beyond time.
Yeah, so we've really started to explore, you know, what it means to be a human being, not just the edges of consciousness, but also the edges of you know, identity.
I guess could you give us a bit of an origin story and what inspired they Live Again project?
Yeah? Sure, listeners won't be able to see this, but see that picture behind me, yes, all right, So that's my dear old friend Patrice Burnside. She passed away in a car accident. We were together. We moved to Atlanta together back in nineteen ninety six, and she was with me for about three or four years. We had known each other for about ten She passed away in a car accident, and that was nineteen ninety seven. And you know, there were these interesting, strange phenomenon that surrounded her passing that I experienced and other people did too, and they were I was born and grew up in an atheist family. My parents were scientists, and there was sort of this real push to not ever accept anything by faith, because faith could be considered dangerous because it could be used as mind control or what have you, and empirical evidence was the only way to go right, and this sort of idea that there were no illusions about what happens when you die as far as an afterlife. My parents had rebelled against their church because they saw a lot of racist tendencies in the church they went to in the sixties. And so I understand the rebellion, and I understand my father, who's a chemist, and I understand his sort of scientific bent towards not accepting anything that can't be measured. But I, you know, I started to wonder about these experiences I was having. Some people call it shared death, but there's certain experiences that were happening around with me and with what happened with Patrice. Her friends were having dreams about it. The night that it happened, she had gone home to say goodbye to her father, who was a Vietnam vet and an alcoholic and very very dysfunctional. And she actually went and said goodbye to him the night before she passed, which was miraculous. She had hair down, she was a ballerina. She had hair down to her waist and she cut it all off two days before she passed. There was all these transitions she was going through, and all of these things that I experienced before I found out that she had died, they were just phenomenal. They were like, really unexplainable, and it just sparked my curiosity and I was like, what is going on? There's something happening here. And more than anything, it pushed me towards trying to understand why I have my own dogmas about, you know, having grown up in sort of an atheist family and having not really been able to consider certain questions about you know, miraculous events or things we don't understand. So I guess that's the origin of it.
Yeah.
And I had heard about near death experiences my whole life, and I'd met a few people who had some crazy stories, and I was like, let me get into it. I mean, I'm not a scientist, I'm a storyteller, but let me, let me try to start charting this and see where it leads.
I think some of the most interesting stories you end up finding, at least for personally, for me and alive again, are stories of people who are very scientifically minded and then they do experience a personal end of some sort, and then their attempts to describe what they've gone through, what they've seen, what they've felt, to get that into other people's minds so they understand what they've been through.
That.
I'm thinking specifically about Adam Tapp, who was a paramedic, you know, and he sees death and close to death all the time in his work, and then to experience being electrocuted. You can listen to that episode's episode five of the show and to hear him describe stuff that seems pretty science fiction y, you know, like pretty out there. Could you describe a little bit of maybe Adam taps.
Yeah, Adam. Adam was fascinating. Adam Dye he had a near death experience where he was clinically dead for eleven point five minutes. That's a long time to have no functionality, no no signs of life. And yeah, he he he was electrocuted and he had a very very clear experience of out of body experience and and sort of he describes you know, it's almost interesting because he he sort of describes the coming back into this and Peter Panegor does this too in episode one. There's this description of once you return, coming back and just not being satisfied with sort of this meat avatar that we have the crude, the crude quality of life itself and having to eat and what you know, And it's it's fascinating because he gets into and he's also done a lot of there. You know, he's he's used different psychedelics and he compares those experiences and there are some really there, there are some definite similarities between near death experiences and the use of psychedelics that he sort of describes on the show. One of them that we talk about a lot with our guests is the default mode network. Do you guys know about the default mode network and how that functions with psychedelics?
And yes, yeah, and this may be alluding also to an exploration you have with Rick Doblin. Yes, so could you tell or share with the audience what we mean by that prime.
Yeah, So, pulling my notes up, default mode network, it's a network of interacting brain regions, right, that become active when the mind is at rest, So if you're daydreaming, if you're talking, thinking about yourself, or thinking about the past or the future, anything that's not directly active. In other words, it's sort of your brain's idle mode, and it's linked to your sense of self. It is your internal monologue. It's the roommate in your head that's nagging you all the time. It's basically where your ego lives, and so if you're not really focused on the outside world, you know, it includes certain areas of the brain, like the medial prefrontal cortex in some other parts of the brain. But under psychedelics, when you take psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD or ayahuasca, the default mode network becomes less active and the normal patterns of brain activity are disrupted, which means that you have this dissociation. Your ego sort of dissolves. And you would think that when you take psychedelics your brain would become much more active. The opposite happens. It calms down, and the thing that this default mode network that's sort of this filter of reality that's constantly putting things together for you and creating pictures for you at all times. It starts to deactivate and so your brain, parts of your brain that normally would not talk to each other start to talk to each other, and you have these feelings of loss of sense of self right ego death yea, And that's sort of one of the phenomenon that come with that.
But another one that that he was talking about, adamsapp was talking about, is this And also we get into this a little bit with Rick Doblin, who's the RIX the Presidency of MAPS, multi Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
And that's the non local sort of filter theory of consciousness, and that's a big one we can get into. But it's this idea that you know, because he talks about d m T and these these psychedelics that are potentially released at the moment of death, and you know, these are neurotransmitters that naturally they're naturally occurring, but they so yeah, so there's some some really interesting similarities between near death experiences and what happens in your brain and the brain, the mechanics of the of the neurology and your but yeah, Adam tab gets into that in a really interesting way, because he's one of the several guests we've had who have experienced both, you know.
And I was looking through my audible library because it's just kind of like something went off in my head, and I remembered a book that I was listening to a few years ago by Rick Strassmann, MD called DMT The Spirit Molecule, a doctor's revolutionary research into the biology of near death and mystical experiences. And a lot of what you're talking about is covered in that book, and I would highly recommend anybody interested in going a little deeper into that aspect of near death experiences to check that one out. But another one that I've been really enjoying is a book called A New Earth Awakening, Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tooley, and in that he talks a lot about the sort of the disconnect between religion and spirituality and how religion sometimes inherently shuts down spirituality because it's sort of this like imposed, very rigorous, sort of form of thought based experience rather than experience exactly, thank you, Ben, rather than the experience of being a human, the experience of being a spiritual being, et cetera. And I just think that a lot of times in the reports from folks who have had in near death experience is reconciling those two things is really fascinating and something that often people are forced to contend with if they were previous to that experience heavily influenced by dogmatic religion. And I'm just curious about, you know, your thoughts about that and anything you've seen, you know, kind of describing that disconnect and that experience.
Yeah, I think, you know, maybe the core of both stuff they don't want you to know and alive again, is this exploration of controlled narratives maybe. I mean we're looking at reality, you know, I mean we're looking at the shape and our understanding of reality, and whether it's the default mode network or whether it's you know, these narratives are influenced by cultural, religious, institutional even scientific orthodoxies, and you know, they define what we deem possible, what we think is believable or even discussable, you know. And so both of our podcasts in their own way sort of I think, either question or challenge these often these you know, perhaps more Western but materialistic paradigms, you know, and it seems like you guys are constantly uncovering how like social corporate government structures manipulate or suppress information about you know, and I don't know, you know, I want to ask you guys, do you think that's for like to maintain power or stability or you know.
I would say consensus reality, right, power and stability or part of it? And right, we're talking off air. Dan, you had a line that I believe stood out to all of us about a sort of ven diagram or in commonality between these these pursuits of ours, similar to surprising commonalities you find with inde experiencers. And you said, specifically, since we also made you listen to your own trailer, we'll give you a quote from yourself back to you, you said, similarly, Alive Again challenges the dominant narratives surrounding consciousness, life and death. You said, particularly the limited Western view that consciousness arises solely from physical brain processes or processes. Could you tell us a little bit about what you see as that Western view versus alternative interpretations, frameworks or modes of thought.
Yeah, so there's this sort of there's a materialist it's basically a materialist viewpoint that is the dominant narrative right now in science. And I'm not saying it's wrong because we don't know, but I am saying we don't know, and I am interested in stories that you know, there's this idea of a Western sort of box of knowledge, and there's there's a lot of dogma around what goes in that box and what's not allowed to go in that box. And you know, it's it's interesting because I feel like with a lot of our sciences and a lot of our our educational systems and and even you know, our medical systems and so forth, there's sort of a trained arrogance that creates the sort of wall, and there's these guardians that I don't I don't mean to sound too conspiratorial, even though I'm on the right show to do that. I feel like there's this this sort of this guard rail of thought about what is acceptable and what's not. And it's not that, you know, I it's not that there's anything wrong with with saying no, we don't have evidence to support that. There's no empirical evidence. It's it's all you know here say it's all stories, it's all testimonial. And I get that because you can't really flyline people and do studies in an MRI. I but I do think that there's sort of an arrogance around it, and I do wonder you know, you know, mainstream academia and science establishment. I guess there's prestige, there's funding, there's career stability, that's you know, and anybody who comes out and accepts any sort of ideas of like non local consciousness, which we can talk about in a second. And then there's the pharmaceutical and medical industries, and you know, a strictly materialistic viewpoint maintains that consciousness, including mental health and mood, you know, is purely biochemical, and that's a multi billion dollar pharmaceutical you know, the interventions are you know, and then there's religions and cultural sort of institutions that are threatened by the evidence of you know, the idea of universal consciousness. And we can talk about that a little bit now, the idea of universal and then you know, they call them pseudoscience or unscientific, and they they've shut down pretty quickly, and anybody who who starts to look at it, they can also be shunned by science pretty quickly as well. Well, you know, but there's this idea that started to take root and starting to have some real studies behind it now, which is this idea of non local consciousness. And I can get into the orchestrated objective reduction, and I can get into some of these other ideas you guys know about this stuff that orco ur theories or any of that.
Not me.
I mean, probably some tangential things are related. But this is definitely new to me for sure.
Okay.
But the concept, Dan is that consciousness, as we have thought for a long time, is a in some way, the way neurons interact together and create like in our inside our brains somewhere right.
Like a pattern of the song.
It's it's basically the idea that you know, forever most of us have assumed, just either culturally or scientifically or what have you. The narrative that's out there right now, the dominant narrative is that consciousness is created by the brain. It is a product of the brain. And but you know, started with the likes of Oldest Huxley, and there's a Sir Roger Penrose who was a you know, physicist, and doctor Stuart hammer Off was an aesthetician. But they're they're getting into this idea that consciousness is actually not local, it's not something created by their brain. It's something rather we are filtering from a unified field beyond ourselves. And that idea alone, my first thought was, oh both. I mean, I have my own dogmas about it, and I'm thinking, oh, you know, that sounds magical in the force and all that kind of stuff.
And similar to the young and super consciousness. Yeah, yeah, right.
But then you know, if you open up your mind a little bit and back off a little bit and you hear these indies stories and here's you know, and some people describe stuff that happens through their psychedelic experiences where different part of the brain shuts down and there's still this level of consciousness. You know, it begs the question, what the hell's happening? And so this orc O R it's it's orchest strated objective reduction. So the or O R theory it proposes that quantum computations are occurring in the microtubules inside of our neurons. Yes, does that make sense? Yes, I can get into it. But it's so these these computations are the theory is that these are non local, meaning they aren't confined to a single point in time and space. So it's this idea that consciousness arises when these quantum wave functions collapse in a unified moment. So, you know, traditional neuroscience views consciousness is purely a product of the brain activity, neurons firing, synapse is interacting. But in this alternate model, this filter theory, it proposes that consciousness is actually this unified field and that we're just receiving or filtering stuff. Does that make sense.
It's really interesting, especially when it comes to specific experiences where people people get the sense that time either slows down or disappears or stops, or they can move time along a timeline. There's a I'm just going to go back again to h to our buddy Adam tap Here, who was electrocuted, was dead for eleven and a half minutes. He talks about the experience of being defibrillated, having electricity show through his body, starting his heart again, almost coming back for a moment, and then going back into this space that he is and he experiences time there as so stretched out. How does he describe it? It's like inception, right, It's the yeah, yeah, yeah, where it's like it's like whatever his consciousness thing is this filter we're talking about through you know, these quantum these cubits matching up at the right moment, right that we would consider now uh, he he experiences that for a moment, then it just goes away and he's on some unknown timeline again.
Rights, And it's hard to make sense of that. And one thing I do know is that the folks that do have these near death experiences, they there was a paper. I can steer you guys to the paper, but there's been some papers recently that are in defense of and in support of, you know, non local consciousness. And you know, one of the things they say, and again is just it is, but like if people have near death experiences, have an eighty percent more likelihood of not being afraid of death afterwards, right, Yeah. They are so committed to this idea. They are so you know, they are so assured in their experience and having come back that they no longer fear death. And I mean that's something right, to have died or to have been clinically dead for some amount of time and then come back and you don't fear death anymore. You think it'd be the opposite, right.
Yeah, well, pause for a word from our sponsors, and then return with more from Dan Bush. And we've returned one of so far. I think our collective favorites among favorites of Alive Again episodes, is that fascinating conversation you have with Rick Doblin. It's episode six NET zero Trauma. It's a wide ranging conversation, and I had one of those what MPR calls a driveway moment, yes, where you are listening in the car and you can't get out of the car until you hear the rest of the things yea. And what stood out to me was this excellent comparison you all make to to what we sometimes call the overview effect when astronauts see the planet entire and say, you know, they get a little John Lennon about it. No religion, right, no countries. Can you tell us a little bit about how you and Rick find the overview effect of astronauts similar to the phenomenon of a near death experience.
That's interesting. I hadn't quite thought about that. I think, you know, I think what I'm trying to do ri rix fascinating. I love him because he talks about this. He has this cool concept of net zero trauma, right, which is not eliminating trauma. It's just not adding any more trauma to the global trauma that you know, all people are. We're not doing a very good job of not adding to that right now in the world. But and there are you know, some wonderful new sciences, you know, studies and stuff that are coming out about you know, generational trauma and how it actually affects the genome. Yeah, there is this thing that that I would like to speak to about that which is something that that I found through this show, through Alive again in interviewing these people. It's something that Aaron Ralston talks about. Aaron Ralston was the subject of one hundred and twenty seven Hours, the Danny Boyle film. He was solo hiking through the canyons in Moab near Moab, and he got trapped and the boulder caught his arm, putting it off for years. It seems patently unpleasant. Yeah, well, we had a wonderful you know, he shared his story with us on the show. And he gets to a point where after six days without food and water, trapped down there and realizing that he's going to probably have to cut his own arm off, before he's willing to go there. He starts to videotape himself and he just starts to have conversations after saying, hey, look, if you find me and you find my remains, please tell my mom. Other than that, the next step is he starts to say goodbye to all the people that he knew in his life. He starts to speak to his family members, and he starts to people, speak to people he loved, and to apologize, and this overwhelming sense of gratitude starts to overwhelm him right sort starts to overtake him, and he he this gratitude continues to lift him even though he hasn't had any food or water for six days. Eventually he does have a near death experience or he does have an out of body experience where he sees his future son like this blonde headed, blue eyed kid that he later is so confident that he's going to meet someday. But he then in this moment when he's he has this gratitude hit him and he realizes that you cannot He says this, he cannot hold simultaneously hold despair and gratitude in your heart at the same time. And this speaks to something that that I started to I started to look into, and it's actually true. Neurologically, those two states are incompatible. So the migdala, which is responsible for you know, fear, fight or flight, distress, courtisol, the amygdala, if that's firing and active, there is no place where the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that has to do with gratitude, dopamine oxytocin, which is the love hormone or neurotransmitter, the two are incompatible. So it's like a light switch. So in that sense, the antidote then to despair, to depression, to feelings of fear. The antidote truly is on a neurological level gratitude and love, because when you start to activate the gratitude and love part of it, the other one, the amigola, is shut down in your brain. So you know, they say love conquers fear, you know it's actually physically biologically true. And I thought that was basing. And so I think about this about Rick Doblin and this net zero trauma, and you know, we've known for a long time that you can you can sort of shut down your miggelow with practices of meditation and so forth. But you know, it's I wonder if everybody in the world turned off there. It's hard because you're so scared you don't want to let go of the news cycle, right especially these days. I'm not going to be here tomorrow. But there's a strong argument for making the world a better place by tuning out and focusing on gratitude instead and starting to harvest a different sort of mode, which is also can become you know, people have become contaminated by whatever thought energies you have. I found, you know, whether if you're negative all the time, you're going to create negative environments. You're going to surround yourself with negative situations and negative people. Yeah, and the opposite is also true.
True.
I like that, like pro noia the opposite of paranoia. Yeah, but a concept we discussed with a friend of ours, John Cameron Mitchell.
It's pretty neat.
It also reminds me of a word that Nol and Matt taught me, which was what was the guy's catastrophizing.
Catastrophizing.
Yeah, it's just that loop, that spiral of negative thoughts and a lot of that too kind of fits in with what Eckartotli talks a lot about, which is the separation from you know, our spiritual selves. It imbues us with these thought patterns that are just that, that are kind of this almost like.
Voice inside of our head. Yeah, exactly.
And it's these constructs that we participate in, whether willingly or just buy you know, necessity, I guess, because it's just sort of the structure that we find ourselves in. And it's really helpful with you know, mindfulness and meditation and you know, some forms of spirituality and even some forms of religion that are maybe a little less on the dogmatic side, to kind of separate ourselves from a lot of those and while we still have to live in the construct that we find ourselves in, it is helpful to be able to, you know, consciously separate yourself from that. And I think that near death stuff and a lot of this psychedelic stuff is a very very important kind of pathway to that kind of thinking. And it made me think of, you know, why are psychedelics illegal. Why have they historically been illegal? I think that in and of itself has historically been a means of control, because there's a sense that if you experience these things. Then you are less susceptible to those modes of control, whether it be governmental or organized religion or.
What have you. God forbid that we do find out someday that you know, consciousness is universal and not local, but you know it's not generated from the brain, but it's actually something we're all filtering. The universe is consciousness like that idea? Yeah, yeah, so a lot of in fact that happens. Peter Panagor our first story, he had a near death experience while ice climbing, died on a mountaintop, came back, and for years he struggled because and several other people have have talked about this on our show, where they take this story of what happening, they take it to their church, or they take it to their pastor, or they take it to you know, their rabbi or whatever, and they propose this idea and they say, look, this happened to me, and I'm trying to reconcile this with what the teachings are you know, in this institution or what have you. And they were rejected. Yeah, like hands down, like this doesn't this doesn't go with the narrative about what you know, Jesus said and so therefore, you know, and these people were left going, Okay, I've got to find out what the answers are because I thought I would have an answer in my church that I thought that would be a place where I could reconcile these this this experience that have had with the narrative, and they couldn't.
Well, isn't it interesting how close some of those experiences do feel, like close to the imagery that's written down in things like a torah or Bible, or you know, just in places like that, it feels close. I'm thinking about ditch Field, David Ditschfield's paintings that he created in episode eight. You can listen to that one. David Ditchfield. This man who fell underneath the train. He got stuck and caught underneath the train and almost bled out, and he did I guess he. I don't know if he was in a como or if he actually physically died.
I can't remember, but I think that they had to do a self induced como with him. But he did have a full on, complete, authentic near death experience.
Well, can I share? Can I share this picture? Just this picture so we can all look at it at once. This is the image that he reported seeing. I don't know if you guys can see this, it'll blow it up a little bit. Yeah, thank you of this white light that was surrounded by flames in essentially space. Like he said, he felt his own body laying on a slab of granite out in space and with this light that approached him and there were others. Weren't there entities there with him?
Yeah? Yeah, And that's a common it's a common thing. Is is people. Ronnie White speaks about this his episodes coming up, Peter panicgre speaks about this. But there's this Anne Bayford talks about this. There's this experience of these other beings who are doing this sort of this fine tuning and healing of the of the soul.
On certain levels, which is also something you hear reported with d m T experiences, the machine elves or what have you. It seems it to be a lot of parallels there.
Yeah. Absolutely, and yeah, and I you know, it's when so many people have this similar such a similar experience, and there I mean, there are indie experiences where people described things obviously that they could not have been witnessed to. They describe conversations that happened while they were the brain was dead, and or they've seen they see things, uh in parts of the building that they could not have possibly seen because they came in unconscious. And then they and there there was no brain activity. They could not have heard anything that there was. It was just zero brain active, zero functionality, usually through cardiac you know, situations, and they come back and they describe clearly they've had some you know, and there's no explanation for this stuff, you know.
Right, how did that sensory input and that recollection arrive. If the materialist view of purely local conscience holds true, then there is no explanation under that theory, which I find so incredibly fascinating now even terrifying. What I want to go back to something we've we've mentioned a few times here, Dan, We've brought up the words commonality. We've brought up the words parallels. Uh We establish or you establish through your.
Work that.
Despite Eddie, you know, living demographic whether that be culture, creed, location, uh age, at the time of the experience, you and your team do discover these commonalities that go past the dogma and the sort of legislative nature of religious beliefs. Could you tell us some of the most surprising commonalities you discovered. Was there anything that really surprised you.
I will say that the biggest one, right off the top of my head, has to do more with that liminal state that we talked about, and so it wasn't so much during the event itself. It was afterwards where they came back and when asked would you do it again? We often ask what would you know? Would if you had this to do again, to experience again, to die again, would you do it? And they all say I wouldn't change a thing, not that.
Yeah, and you name a couple of things.
Yeah, because of who they've become and how that adversity and how that trauma has forced them to grow and become something now that they could not have become without. They all say, I and change a thing. Who I am now is awesome. And even if they even if they still can't walk or if they can't, they tend to have that sensibility.
I guess it makes me think of I mean, the ultimate goal of religion for many people is to not fear death, is to have some understanding that there is something positive beyond this life, or in a way that makes you either live better or a lack of fear of what happens when we die. And what more concrete way to get past that than to actually die and then see what it's like. And I can only imagine the overview effect to your point ben of that experience.
And you know, not all of them, but a high percentage of in most of the stories we've collected, a high percentage of these near death experiences. They also report being embraced by a very loving, warm and this is where culture does come in. Like these perspectives, Some describe it as a Jesus like figure, others from different other from other cultures describe it very differently, but the commonality is this idea that there's this embrace from a very warm, ultimately loving entity that reassures them and makes them feel at peace. And that's you know, call it God or however we could possibly describe it. It is indescribable. They also that's another that's another sort of commonality is that it's like trying to describe a smell with a crayon. You.
I love that because it's it reminds me of one of those old truisms. Honestly, for good storytelling, you meet people where they're at, so people have a cultural framework through which they experience, uh, the indescribable. Like when you're in that experience, you have to you have to again kind of filter it through your current lived understanding.
Right right, Yes, how do you reckon style what you've just experienced with anything you've been told or taught or learned or experience so far? Yeah, just so, yeah, I can't imagine.
Mean when they say they had their minds blown, they.
Had to a degree, Well, David Ditchfield quotes, I think doctor David Eagleman, I think is how you say his name, someone who is talking about experiencing life like all of us are experiencing life right now, he says, imagine that this would be equivalent to VHS tape, like playback of VHS tape. That's what we're in right now, everything we experience every day. And then when you have one of these NDEs, he describes it as like being pulled out into a theatrical string screen, you know, like the full digital projection, like all of the resolution, and just like experiencing that for a moment, then going back to VHS and trying to explain to everybody else who's on VHS what that was.
Right, So if there's this filtering right of our experience, I mean, think about it. The brain is one of the most complicated or compli objects in the in the universe. There are more connections happening in your brain every every microsecond than there are stars in the galaxy.
Take that.
So you know, and so we when you know, when you start to look again at sort of the idea that if you go down to the microtubules and the subatomic particles, it's basically the ion channels that we were talking about. So they're they're like these electrical gates on neurons, and they regulate the flow of ions calcium, potassium in and out of the cell. But so these things they when you get down to that level, the electrons are exhibiting these quantum effects, right, superposition, being in more than one state at the same time, entanglements, which means you know, instantaneously connected ever a distance the distance is irrelevant, irrelevant, the quantum tunneling, where you know, the particles appearing in places that they shouldn't if you're looking at classical physics. So these sort of quantum behaviors are happening on the brain, and it just it undermines this strictly materialist model where neurons are just like binary switches, because they're just not It's just there's no way to describe what's happening. And it just suggests that consciousness might exist in this quantum field and we're just filtering it. I don't know how to say it. I'm still learning about this.
Oh, this is perfect of our One of our favorite quotes about physics comes from a quantum mechanics professor, doctor Schenkor, and he says we quoted him in a recent episode. He says, right now, no one understands quantum mechanics. As he's speaking to his lecture hall, and he says, after about seven days, my hope is that none of you will understand quantum mechanics either, and it's just we bring it out. I thought of I thought of what you're saying there. We also have looked into some of the in our series on the concept of predictive dreams. Right, the dream state, which has a lot in it's another limital space. We could argue, yeah, when you are when you are speaking with these people who have these vastly different experiences, right, but also this vast aggregation of commonalities. What how do you this this is a strategic question. How do you find these people for alive again? And how do you as an interviewer, how do you navigate speaking with them about something so intimate and so personal?
Right?
Yeah, you know, I think the idea is to just listen, to really just listen the stories we have found just by looking up standing we've found through the New York Times, or we've looked for them on the online and found different situations or different different stories that we've pursued, and you know, and it's interesting because a lot of them do lean very religious, very quick, and so I've been sort of We've we've got several of those stories that are that are heavily in that space. But I really like on our show, we have you know, our story producers. We have you know, Nick Takowski, Kate Sweeney, Brent Dye, myself, Lauren Vogelbaum. We have Kate is sort of a skeptic, you know, which is great, and I'm kind of an agnostic just questioning everything. Brent's very Christian and he has you know, he believes very much in faith in Christian Dogma and Nick Takowski is just a cynic show, so uh, you know. And they so these guys together when we're talking about what you know, they're out helping me collect these episodes and they're helping me find these stories. And we learned very quickly on that it's not you know, it's not just about the near death experiences. It's also about what I was talking about, the liminal state. It's about the transformation, so you know, the human fragility and resilience, whether or not they've had a pure indie or not, I want to know. I'm interested in how this experience has changed their understanding, their relationships with the world and with each other and with themselves. So I will say this, speaking back about the picture for those who can't see it online, there's Patrice leaping in the desert. That's Great Sand Dunes National Park. She was a ballerina and this was taken about it a year before she passed away. And my son, who at the time was about five or six years old, was looking at the picture and he said, you know, who is that? And I told him the story and he said, well, what do you you know? It's that thing that all parents have to face with their children of is you know, what do you mean she died and well she's not coming back. Well where did she go? And I looked at him and I was like, you know, we don't know. We don't know where she went. We don't know if she's with us anymore or not, you know, but I we have a I have a feeling about it that I believe. And it led to this conversation about like the ending of things, right that the threshold of this existence and what may or may not come after. And he said, well, maybe she's just at the end of the universe. That's what he said, five year old. And I said, amazing, what do you mean, I said, what do you His name is Roman, I said, what do you Roman? What do you mean the end of the universe? He's like, you know, at the end of it, Like she just went to the end of it, was like, and I said, well, is there an end to the universe? Because you know, if you think about it, Roman, you get to the end of it, then what's on the other side of the end? And he's said and he heard that and he started to laugh. Like for a lot of people, the idea that that time and space are endless is daunting and terrifying. But for for Roman, for some reason, he found that to be the most absurd thing that had ever triggered his brain. And he started laughing so hard he was almost crying. He's laughing. I was like, what's so funn He's like that, you're you know that the that the the universe is endless. He just thought that was the funniest, guy damn thing he had ever heard.
He was he was looking at you like man.
But even like, as you know, adults, the concept of infinity and the concept of something being endless is impossible to wrap one's head around by its very nature.
Right, It's a it's a particularly absurd condition that we live in. Yeah, it's what we could observe, right.
Hey, yeah, let's take a quick break here from our sponsor and then come back with more with Dan.
And we returned.
I want to try and articulate something here, and I can't get it into words, but it goes back to this concept of non localized consciousness. Right, So somehow consciousness being channeled through the system that is our brain, right, and this complex thing. It makes me think about our conversations dealing with simulation theory, dealing with some of these concepts of maybe this is a field that we're all accessing through these brain things, but we, the thing that we would call we, is elsewhere. And then I'm thinking about this white light, this energy of love, whatever this thing is that's described by so many people. And I think about the moment when you turn the power on of your computer, like that moment that electricity first surges through the circuit into the motherboard and activates all the pieces, Because if you really do think about it as a circuit, there is a channel of a white light electricity that is funneling through all of that stuff to turn it on, to make it function. And I just wonder if you guys see any weird potential connection with that, with the concept like the Big Bang and of all of a sudden, there is light, all of a sudden there, you know, complexity occurs and can occur, and things can have energy and light and life. Am I being too weird?
No? No, no, no, the nature of life and existence? Did we get turned on?
Well?
Yeah, instead of going instead of going to the end of the universe, you go back to the beginning of the universe. Whatever that source is that is that allows everything to be.
Big bang, big crunch.
It reminds me of the Oh, Dylan, can we get that old sound when windows queued up?
Do you guys remember that? Of course?
I think Brian Eno designed that. He did.
Yeah, no, kidding this, Uh, this is a phenomenal point, Matt, because and Dan, we're interested in your thoughts on this. There is a current prevailing theory alternative theory to the Big Bang say that argues the universe as observed now by humans exist within a singularity of a black hole, which could explain some of the observations that simply do not function under the Einsteinian understanding of linear time. Now, I'm just word salading people smarter than me, but could there be to your question, Matt, could there be some some kind of non localized space beyond time or beyond what humans understand in their limited, filtered lived experience that gets very close to asking about God.
That sounds like a physicist three drinks in.
I mean, the simulation theories are fascinating, lessly fascinating and entertaining to me. Again, it's good. It just hits right up against we don't can know. I mean, we just don't know. We like, we are so limited in what we and science turns over so often, so frequently. I mean, it wasn't the entire scheme of mankind on planet Earth. That wasn't that long ago that we've realized that the Sun doesn't go around us. You know we killed that Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that idea that you know, science happens one funeral at a time, because there's these gatekeepers who don't want their entire work in their history, you know, in their careers demolished.
You know, science happens one funeral that time.
Yeah, there's a quote I find who says that I can look it up in a minute, but yeah, this science happens one funeral at a time was a quote that I heard recently, and it just speaks to the idea that, like, you know, we get very dogmatic with what we think we can prove, whether with Newtonian physics or whatever. And there's that quote. I don't know if you guys have it. I think I sent it over a little segment from our show from Doctor Care. Yeah, Doctor Kerr, the death Duela that we that we interviewed, she's amazing. Can we play that little clip?
Absolutely?
Absolutely.
I can picture exactly what this profession is.
I mean, that's incredible.
I've never heard it put that way.
Death doula. Yeah, it's a thing.
Yeah.
They she helps, She helps people transition and families transition at the moment of you know, terminal illness. Right.
You also hear a lot about an end of life use of psychedelics as well. Yeah, and that means of transitioning and I'm fascinated by that.
That's that's what Rick Doblin did. He actually did a study with terminal terminally ill patients and psychedelics that that we we talked to him about on I think it was episode six, and he talks a lot about how you can use M d M A along with UH. A lot of times there's a lot of fear involved with dying obviously, and they can use certain you know, opiates to help calm that part. And then the MDM make and open up the oxytocin levels and to turn off the amigdala like we talked about, and the and they and it allows them this this these beautiful moments of actually reconciling and actually having meaningful moments with their families. Because we're very disconnected from from death in this culture. Right, There's another reason I wanted to study to kind of go into the shows, because I think one hundred years ago or so, you would be washing your grandfather's body.
You would be you know, sending, spending the time at the wake as.
Well, correct, and there would there wouldn't be somebody who you know, other people who would come in and take them away. You would be there when they died. You'd probably be bedside at their at the moment of their passing.
There's just such a disconnect from death and right, a lot of it involves fear, but a lot of it is cultural and just this idea of the death industry, you know, in funeral homes and all of the process that goes into that and then backlash against that. But a lot of that is just the fact that we as a culture and as a society have moved so far away from interacting and interfacing and understanding what it is to die.
And we and we and we're fascinated by youth. We're so sure we we sort of worship youth, and you know, in our culture and we we don't think of our elders as having much value, you know, all of these things. It's just it's crazy to me. I don't understand it.
Now before we plate this this clip for you to unpack with us in the audience, Dan, it reminds me, this conversation reminds me of that old quotation. I was trying to hunt it down. I found someone who paraphrased it in the film Spartacus in nineteen six.
Oh yeah, yeah.
But the idea was, you know, why are you afraid to die? Was there a moment when you were afraid to be born?
You know?
And that's that's wildly profound. With this, we're going to play the We're going to play an excerpt from a conversation you had with doctor Kerr.
If you could inspire one change in how our society approaches death and mortality, what would it be and why it's a big one.
We meet death and mortality the same way we meet life, and we meet it through the Western worldview, which has a lot of blinders. It looks at the world as a little box. It says it's material, it's dualistic. It's either on off, yes, no, there's a thousand ways. It's it's happening internally, right, It's we can't have trans personal experiences. So the Western world has this little box, and everything that doesn't fit in this box, we say, well, that's unreal, that's extraordinary, extrasensory, supernatural, parent normal. We have all these ways of just diminishing them, saying they're not real. Now, how you make meaning those is another question, but that they are happening. So that's why I think psychedelics are so exciting. That's why I think this death positivity revolution is so exciting, because people are starting to get their box expanded, and the box of that I'm me and you are you, and we are individuals. Well, we live in a world of ecosystems, where we're all intertwined in webs of corelated reciprocal systems. If we can start to just stretch that box to make space for some more experiences, it not only will change how we meet death, because it won't be that excommunication light switch out, you know, finito end, It'll be the beginning of the next journey. It will also change how we live in the world.
Profound stuff, right.
Yes, you unpacked that for us a bit.
I mean, I just think that's what she's getting at is we have a box. We have a Western box, and what is allowed to go in that box we consider knowledge that we consider, you know, infallible, that we think is the edges of reality, and that box. She's saying, Let's just stretch it more and more. Let's stretch it as much as possible. Let's see what's outside the cave.
Right.
And I'm just excited because there's more of an acceptance for the possibility of things like unified you know, non local consciousness, and there's a sort of an opening. I think people are just ready to sort of stretch their boxes, right, People are more now than ever ready to sort of open up their minds and question some of these dogmas and look at well, in all of time and space and all of human history, we can't have figured everything out. In fact, what we figured out is probably the equivalent of a grain of sand on all of the beaches across the entire globe. Right.
And so I mean, still go team, Yes, one hundred percent.
We've made some wonderful progress. We've we've we've cracked the code on a lot of things. But there does seem to be a lot of power structures that have an interest of ascid interest in controlling the narrative about what we understand to be real, about what we understand about ourselves internally. And what is that that Joseph Campbell quote where I had, you know, all we have to do is follow the data list thread. And where we had thought you know that quote, Yes, where I had thought to find a god, or where I had thought to find a monster, I find a god. And where I had thought to journey to the outer edges of existence, I journey into my own self about doing a horrible job.
Of noiled it right, And it's the old It's also similar to that y sell you quote. You know, we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring exploration shall be to arrive where we began.
And know it for the first time.
I'm also paraphrasing, I'm sorry, ts if you're hearing.
This, so yeah, So I mean with with a live again. I'm simply adding to I feel like what we're doing is we're contributing to the conversation. I'm not trying to push for against any religious dogma. I'm not trying to push for any sort of scientific orthodoxy or against any scientific orthodoxy. I'm simply sharing stories and looking for commonalities and asking as many questions as we can ask about what is the nature of reality, what is the nature of life? And what is the nature of death? And what can we learn from people who have been dead?
Is that what we as the audience but hopefully take from the journeys.
I mean, look, at some point we're all going to have times up point, we're all going to check out. Everybody you know, and everybody you have ever known, and everybody you will ever know at some point will die. What we can do is instead of fearing that and running from it and closing your eyes to it and looking the other way, instead, we can turn towards it, and we can lean into it together and explore space inward an hour together forever.
Yay, I'm in ye, Dan, before we get you out of here alive again. Is like it's like a signal you're sending out to the world that just just for everybody who's listening. I do a quick search on IMDb for Dan Bush and find some of the word the film work of this man, and go down a journey, Go on a journey down a rabbit hole, starting at the signal. That is a really good place to start. And there's many places to go in including an especially a movie about reconstructing UH that's coded.
Also Don Peyote, The Vault, Reconstruction of Williams Zero.
The list goes on.
We are we are fans and UH friends hopefully, And it seems that there is a new conversation, a new bridge in the shared experiences of what we call in d E and dan UH. The the mic drop moments you've had with some hard truths that a lot of people. You know, it's it's challenging to unpack this, but as our pal Condall once taught us long ago, UH, the world is worth understanding, or at least attempting to do so, you know, And we're all in this together. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Where can let's say we're a person in the audience, right, we have an experience we have had an NDE, a brush with mortality. Is there a way for us to get in touch with you and your team?
Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up. Yes, it's simple. It's a live again project at gmail dot com. So just go to send an email to a live Again project at Gmail and we'll respond as soon as we can we are our first season with I think we've collected forty six stories so far and those are in process right now, and hopefully we can you know, continue with these, So please send us your stories and we'll contact you as soon as possible. And guys, that you've spent this much time with me is insane. I just feel honored and also embarrassed. This is ridiculous.
It's just such rich, you know, territory to mine. It's it's and then it's an excellent show.
I do think that our shows do have that in common, like what is what is real? Right at the end of the day, what the is real? Which narratives are the ones we're gonna focus on. Oh, thank you guys so much.
You've got to enjoy Bible Bonkers now Uncle Baby Billy's Bible Balkers. You've got to join us in the future, Dan, because this, uh, we've raised so many questions that could each inspire their own larger interview, enterprise or episode.
Uh.
For now, UH, We're going to leave it at that. Please do check out Alive Again. Please do reach out to a Live Again project at gmail dot com with stories and experiences of your own.
We're not blowing smoke.
Dan, even though Matt Nole and I will line up at the Plaza every time you have a premiere, we are immensely impressed. This is an important show and thank you so much for creating it.
Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me and again I'm fans of yours as well.
And that is the first of what we hope will be several conversations with our pal, Dan Bush, the creator of Alive Again.
Really great stuff, awesome human being and definitely check out other shows that have been on the iHeart podcast network that Dan has created, including Tomorrow's Monsters, The Manawat Caves, and The Passage, which Ben, you've worked on a couple of those two I'm executive producer of all three of those. But yes, Ben, you've written on a bunch of that and have you voiced any of that?
Is this a legal inquiry? Yes, yes, good.
Yeah, We're phenomenally fortunate to be able to hang out with Dan his team and Matt. As you said, you've been the executive producer of not only those projects but also Alive Again, so we want to thank you for creating this as well.
Heck yeah, that just look give the show a chance if you listening to it right now and listen to that episode one It's nuts. Yeah, that's the one about ice climber who dies and then comes back into his human body and is just so frustrated and then is yearning to go back to that place, that beautiful place wherever, where whatever he experienced.
Double dip into infinity. Right, and please also, folks, by the way, if you are interested in some of these conversations, well, actually we got to send these to Dan to He probably heard them our episode on the Third Man Factor for our series on that as well as Can Dreams Predict the Future, both of which ended up being series. We want you to write to Dan if you have had an NDE. We want you to share your thoughts with us. This is to steal a line from Fox News. Now more than ever, this is an exciting time for NDA research, melding science and spirituality. So find us online, drop us a phone call, or send us a good old fashioned email.
We would love to hear from you. Answer right.
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist all over the interwebs on YouTube, where we have video content galore for you to enjoy. As well as on XFKA, Twitter and Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's the way it gets crazy on Instagram and TikTok. On the other hand, we are conspiracy Stuff show, and there's also more.
Yes, you can call a phone number and leave us a voicemail and it might get on the air. Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us know within the message if we can use your name and message on the air. If you would like to instead send us an email.
We are the entities that read each piece of corresponded we receive. Be well aware, yet I'm afraid sometimes the void writes back. I'd like to hatch a conspiracy with you. Fellow friends and neighbors. Will you help me get my pals Matt and Nole to go get CPR certified with me? Because they change the they change the procedure. Now it's no longer stayed alive for the chest compressions.
Anyway. Good stuff to know. Always better to be prepared.
Shout out to the Scouts conspiracy iHeartRadio dot com. The CPR stuff is just this conversation has got me really in my head. You got Yeah, man, that's our show Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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