Podcast · Tech & Science

Alive Again

by iHeartPodcasts · English · Tech & Science

That which doesn’t kill us… Hosted by award-winning filmmaker Dan Bush, Alive Again is a weekly series featuring extraordinary stories from people who faced death—and came back changed. From near-death experiences to near-fatal accidents and moments of profound crisis, each episode dives into t

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 49 min
Latest: 3 Mar 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

3 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

45 | Overtime: A Conversation With Dr. David Fajgenbaum

Today’s guest is Dr. David Fajgenbaum, survivor, scientist, physician, and disease hunter. Dr. Fajgenbaum is a world-renowned physician-scientist, bestselling author, inspirational speaker, and survivor on a mission to save lives by using AI and relentless hope to unlock hidden cures. At 25 years old, Dr. David Fajgenbaum was told he had hours to live. A rare immune disorder called Idiopathic Multicentric Castleman Disease was shutting down his organs. He received last rites. He said goodbye to his family. And then — against all odds — he survived. Not once. Five times.…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S1 · E44 · 24 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
44 | Fourteen Bullets
On May 5, 1994, South Australian police officer Derrick McManus was shot 14 times in under five seconds and left bleeding on the ground for nearly three hours while a 40-hour siege raged around him. In this raw conversation, Derrick reconstructs those first seconds, the long climb through surgeries and rehab (including a steel plate in his forearm), and the mental frameworks that kept him calm when survival looked impossible. We talk suffering, meaning, and mortality—and what his ordeal ultimately took, gave, and taught him about human durability. Story Producer: Dan Bush If you have a…
S1 · E43 · 17 Feb 2026 · 56 min
43 | Rip
Zoe Cooper grew up around parachutes—her parents were skydivers—and by her eighth jump she felt like a pro. Then the parachute ripped. Spinning low, she and her instructor had to cut away and free-fall before a reserve could open. As the ground “was coming up impossibly fast,” time slowed. Zoe made a stark bargain—“I was willing to lose both of my legs in that moment”—yet a calm certainty kept breaking through: “today wasn’t my day.” She walked away without injury and with a revelation about fear, survival, and how the mind…
S1 · E42 · 10 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
42 | Extraordinary Awakening: A Conversation with Filmmaker Jonas Elrod
Filmmaker Jonas Elrod never set out to become a spiritual seeker. While making a documentary in San Francisco, his life was suddenly upended: lights flickered, voices appeared, and a portal opened in the corner of his room. What followed was a series of visions and encounters that would change his life forever — and inspire his acclaimed documentary Wake Up . In this episode of Alive Again, we revisit Jonas’s extraordinary journey, first captured in Wake Up , and later expanded in his series In Deep Shift , from living an ordinary life to suddenly seeing and hearing angels,…
S1 · E41 · 3 Feb 2026 · 37 min
41 | Angel Falls
At 26, Taylor Maxson was searching for purpose while working with at-risk youth in Kentucky. After months of exhaustion and stress, he and two friends set out on the Cumberland River for what was meant to be a healing trip into nature. But when their canoe flipped above Angel Falls—a class V rapid known for its deadly currents—Taylor was pulled under, battered against rocks, and certain she would not survive. In this episode of Alive Again , Taylor recounts the terrifying minutes when he nearly drowned and resurfaced, and how the experience led him toward connection, healing, and…
S1 · E40 · 27 Jan 2026 · 39 min
40 | The Bondage of Self
In this unforgettable episode of Alive Again , Charlie Collins shares the moment that changed everything: when he was electrocuted by 12,500 volts on top of a moving train in New York. Legally blind since childhood and long battling self-doubt, drugs, and despair, Charlie’s near-death experience left him burned and broken—but also opened the door to a profound transformation. Through survival, recovery, and surrender, Charlie found meaning, connection, and a calling to help others discover their own light. This is a story about ego death, resilience, and finding light after…
S1 · E39 · 20 Jan 2026 · 49 min
39 | Maybe It Saved My Life
On a 110° Grand Canyon trek rerouted by wildfire, Drew Seibert collapsed alone—hallucinating a friend, cooling in a cave, and realizing he might die there. He didn’t. A river guide’s sat phone summoned a helicopter, and Drew went home to Atlanta… where a midnight fall in his bathroom broke his neck and stopped his breathing. Kept alive by his partner’s improvised rescue and then a ventilator, Drew awoke to a new life as a quadriplegic. What followed was the slow, stubborn work of neuroplastic recovery at Shepherd Center: first wrist, first ankle, standing,…
S1 · E38 · 13 Jan 2026 · 43 min
38 | Play The Tape Through
At UC Santa Cruz, Brooke Knisley fell more than twenty feet from a redwood while drinking and spent ten days in a coma. What followed was the long, messy work of living with a traumatic brain injury: double vision, memory gaps, relearning daily life, and building white-board systems to keep moving forward. With sharp humor and hard-won clarity, Brooke traces the shift from bar fights and self-numbing to therapy, sobriety, and a steadier kindness toward herself and others—learning to “play the tape through,” when making decisions, and to find joy in the small moments. Brooke…
S1 · E37 · 6 Jan 2026 · 37 min
37 | Threshold Metaphysics
In 2015, Robert was poisoned by someone he knew. A rapidly spreading infection sent him into emergency surgery—then into a profound near-death experience. In a vivid desert vision, a calm “guide” spoke to him in the precise, mathematical language his mind trusted, explaining reincarnation, non-linear time, and a threshold beyond which returning is impossible. A nurse later told him he had been clinically dead during the operation. Robert emerged changed: less nihilistic, newly attentive to meaning, and committed to leaving people and places better than he found them.…
S1 · E36 · 30 Dec 2025 · 53 min
36 | From Whom All Blessings Flow
When a falling rock shattered Rhesa Bailey’s pelvis at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, survival became immediate and bodily— improvised splints, a perilous raft run to the remote ranger station, a turbulent helicopter through weather. In the year leading up to the accident, Rhesa had begun to doubt her beliefs—beliefs that had defined her—beliefs that once seemed unshakable—about God, safety, and certainty. These were stripped down to questions. In this riveting episode, Rhesa talks about the Grand Canyon accident that almost killed her, her crisis of faith, the…
S1 · E35 · 23 Dec 2025 · 49 min
35 | A Delightful Little Life
Angelyn Pass was an actress-turned-artist, making holiday ornaments in her Midtown studio, when a massive headache dropped her to the floor. Hours later she woke in Emory’s neuro-ICU, intubated, fresh from emergency surgery on a ruptured aneurysm. She spent weeks relearning, rebuilding and refusing to be defined by tubes and machines and she willed herself back to a craft fair barely ten days after discharge. But the real recovery began later: admitting the memory gaps, moving to start over, taking meticulous notes to be a better friend, finding purpose in helping others through legal…
S1 · E34 · 16 Dec 2025 · 49 min
34 | Surviving the Boxing Day Tsunami
On the day after Christmas, Dwayne Meadows was packing for a beach day in Thailand when a distant “white line” on the sea became a wall of water. Swept through his bungalow and into a churning maze of debris, he fought to breathe, said goodbye to his six-year-old son in his mind, and surfaced into chaos—cars, propane tanks, entire bungalows surging past. Grabbing the lower half of a mannequin for flotation, he navigated toward shore, then helped lead other survivors to higher ground and improvised first aid for the injured until medical professionals arrived. In the months…
S1 · E33 · 9 Dec 2025 · 41 min
33 | Born Astride a Grave
Aileen Loy grew up inside a storm—descended from indentured laborers, raised in a rigid, often violent household, and taught to keep the family together at any cost. At 13, she watched a Halloween car crash fling her four-month-older nephew through a windshield; the year before, a beloved brother had died by suicide. For years she became the caretaker and the peacemaker—“a people pleaser” who never prioritized her own pain—until the reckoning came: an ICU stay after a suicidal spiral and the hard decision to break from the patterns that were breaking her. In…
S1 · E32 · 2 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 25 min
32 | No Soul Left Behind: A Conversation With Dr. Eben Alexander
“W e've taken huge steps backwards in the last few years with warfare and with violence and with disregarding the rights of human beings. It's time to reverse that and start acknowledging this much deeper lesson that's coming to the fore about the nature of our existence, how we're really all in this together, and to hurt another is to hurt oneself.” - Dr. Eben Alexander A Harvard-trained neurosurgeon once grounded in strict materialism, Dr. Eben Alexander was convinced the brain produced consciousness—until a week-long coma and near-death experience shattered that…
S1 · E31 · 25 Nov 2025 · 58 min
31 | The Death of Craving
Content note: This episode includes strong language, discussion of opioid/heroin and crack use, overdose, stroke, withdrawal, arrest/incarceration, and suicidal hopelessness. Listener discretion advised. At 27, Scott Jenkins woke up thrashing in a bathtub—his left arm dead, his vision blown out—after days of speedballs and Agatha Christie marathons. Doctors later confirmed he’d had a stroke, but even that didn’t stop the obsession: “I want to get high, I want to get high… It’s all you can think about.” What began with pain pills after routine…
S1 · E30 · 18 Nov 2025 · 59 min
30 | Strong In A Different Way
At 17, Nicholas Tecosky, one of our Alive Again story producers, slipped on a rock face above Gem Lake and nearly fell thirty feet to his death—then spent hours lost on the wrong side of the mountain. The brush with mortality was followed by years of anxiety, alcohol, and a brutal run at creative success that left him sleepless, gray, and suicidal. Years later, a harrowing night on psychedelics cracked something open; the morning after, he chose help—therapy, medication, sobriety—and slowly rebuilt a life anchored in love, fatherhood, and a gentler definition of strength.…
S1 · E29 · 11 Nov 2025 · 48 min
29 | Living Is Forgiving
Trigger warning: This episode contains a frank discussion of sexual molestation and drug overdose. Listener discretion advised. After a lifetime of compounded trauma—childhood sexual abuse, relentless bullying, chronic illness, and consequently a two-decade opiate dependency—Brandon Densmore overdosed on heroin and flatlined. What happened next changed everything. In vivid detail, Brandon describes the presence he felt, the visions he was shown (including the unbearable image of his mother finding his body), and the deal he made to come back. This is a blunt, no-BS account of…
S1 · E28 · 4 Nov 2025 · 36 min
28 | Bulletproof Love
Trigger warning: Discussion and images of gun violence. At 33, championship-level ultimate player and teacher Eileen Murray started coughing up blood—then spent a year being dismissed by doctors before hearing the word no one wants: lymphoma. Six months of chemo followed, buoyed by a community she’d spent years building on the field and in the classroom. Two decades later, driving to a friend’s wedding with her husband and kids, a sniper’s round blew out the back glass—missing her temple by a hair. No one died. It barely made the news. But the PTSD was louder…
S1 · E27 · 28 Oct 2025 · 26 min
27 | No One Makes It On Their Own
On a dangerous Australian beach, actor Frankie Mulinix was swept down the coast by a powerful undertow, slammed against rocks, and pulled under again and again. Time telescoped; panic rose; then came a stark clarity— “I’m done… I made peace with it.” At the very moment of surrender, a stranger hauled Frankie to safety and lifeguards took over. What followed was the quiet chaos of shame, flashbacks during rehearsals for Dante’s Inferno , and a hard re-examination of identity, purpose, and community. Frankie reflects on accepting death, being…
S1 · E26 · 21 Oct 2025 · 46 min
26 | The Countdown Clock
When Maggie Slepian flipped her kayak on Montana’s Gallatin River, she found herself trapped underwater, fighting to escape a spray skirt she had never practiced removing. In those harrowing moments, she felt time slow down, her thoughts split between terror, sorrow, and love for her family as she faced the possibility of her final breaths. Surviving the accident left Maggie grappling with PTSD, grief, and the loss of the friend who had pulled her from the water. In this episode of Alive Again , Maggie reflects on her journey from an “indoor child” to an outdoor adventurer,…
S1 · E25 · 14 Oct 2025 · 53 min
25 | Unfortunate Brain News
What happens when the part of you that defines your identity begins to fail? Dana Swanson was a rising creative force—an award-winning writer-producer at Adult Swim, a voice actor, a musical performer, and a self-proclaimed comedy nerd on the brink of big things. But in 2012, her world unraveled when she began to lose control of her speech. What started as a stuttered sentence became a devastating diagnosis: a rare brain tumor—neuronal neoplasm—lodged in a precarious part of her brain. In this episode of Alive Again , Dana recounts the surreal journey from slurred words to…
S1 · E24 · 7 Oct 2025 · 50 min
24 | When the Rain Stopped
When a tornado ripped through his Alabama neighborhood, Chris Alonzo found himself clutching his young son in a closet as the walls shook and the front door blew open. In that moment of terror, his desperate plea— “take me, don’t take my son” —became a prayer. Raised in a devout Catholic family but long estranged from faith after his grandmother’s painful decline, Chris’s brush with death forced him to confront anger, doubt, and the mystery of survival. In this episode of Alive Again , Chris shares how near-death transformed his understanding of God,…
S1 · E23 · 30 Sep 2025 · 57 min
23 | Living on Extra Credit
Thrill seeker, Nate Dorn, never saw himself living past the age of 25, until he set sail for Cuba on a 28-foot boat with no idea he was heading straight into the storm that would change his life. Trapped in gale-force winds with his fingers crushed in an anchor chain, Nate suddenly recognized the recurring dream that had haunted him since childhood—he was living it in real time. What he thought might be his last moment became a rebirth, one that freed him from fear and gave him what he calls “extra credit” on life. In this episode, Nate shares how risk-taking has shaped his…
S1 · E22 · 23 Sep 2025 · 52 min
22 | My Body Is Not My Enemy
At 18, Jessica Sanchez thought she was dealing with wisdom tooth pain. Instead, doctors found a tumor that would lead to 18 surgeries, chemotherapy, and a near-fatal bleedout. Years later, she faced another harrowing battle: an ectopic pregnancy and rupture that nearly killed her. Jessica’s journey was made even more perilous by political barriers to reproductive healthcare. The repeated medical traumas—from cancer to miscarriage to near-drowning—stacked one on top of another until her nervous system froze, shutting her down in order to survive. Yet her breakthrough came…
S1 · E21 · 16 Sep 2025 · 50 min
21 | A Better Person Than I Was The Day Before
When Matthew Fortune flatlined for 45 minutes, he didn’t see a tunnel or meet a divine being—he experienced nothingness. But coming back to life forced him to confront everything. In this unflinching and ultimately redemptive episode, Matthew shares his long and painful battle with addiction and homelessness. From growing up in a strict Christian household to surviving a fentanyl overdose and then rebuilding his life through faith, service, and hard-won responsibility, Matthew’s story challenges assumptions about recovery and the human capacity for change. Story Producer:…
S1 · E20 · 9 Sep 2025 · 55 min
20 | Only The Word Gets Out Alive
Our episode title is a lyric by Scott McCaughey, the beloved singer-songwriter behind bands like Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5. McCaughey was also a member of R.E.M.’s touring band and contributed to their albums. He had spent his life living and breathing music—until a massive stroke in 2017 shattered his ability to speak, play, and understand the world around him. He describes the early aftermath as “a bizarre netherworld,” where reality blurred and even the simplest words failed him. In this deeply human episode of Alive Again , Scott opens up about the…
S1 · E19 · 2 Sep 2025 · 39 min
19 | I'm The Hero Of My Own Story
At 20 years old, Amanda Kloehr was a quirky, irreverent Air Force airman trying to find her way in the world. But everything changed in an instant when her car collided with the back of an 18-wheeler. She was nearly decapitated, lost her right eye, suffered major facial trauma, and spent months in the hospital enduring over 20 surgeries. Against all odds, Amanda lived—and began a long and often painful journey of physical healing, emotional reckoning, and radical self-reinvention. In this unforgettable episode of Alive Again , Amanda recounts the horror and absurdity of her accident,…
S1 · E18 · 26 Aug 2025 · 40 min
18 | Beyond Ground Zero
The deepest wounds aren’t always physical. Cliff Bauman was stationed near the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and was among those who raced into the smoke and fire to help in the aftermath of the attacks. But while the country began to rebuild, Cliff’s inner world began to unravel. Haunted by what he’d seen—and what he couldn’t forget—he carried trauma silently, spiraling into guilt, depression, and isolation. This powerful episode of Alive Again explores how reminders of 9/11 became emotional landmines: from anniversary headlines to sleepless nights and…
S1 · E17 · 19 Aug 2025 · 47 min
17 | The Sacred Threshold: A Conversation With Dr. Sarah Kerr
What if death isn’t an ending—but a sacred transition? In this deeply moving episode of Alive Again , we sit down with Dr. Sarah Kerr, a death doula, ritual healing practitioner, and founder of The Centre for Sacred Deathcare. With a PhD in Transformative Learning and decades immersed in cross-cultural and Indigenous traditions, Sarah helps individuals and families navigate dying and grieving as spiritual rites of passage. She guides us through the concept of liminality —the space between worlds, where the old self dissolves and something new begins. Drawing parallels to…
S1 · E16 · 12 Aug 2025 · 36 min
16 | We Are Strongest When We Are Most Vulnerable
On August 3rd, 2008, U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Nick Bradley’s life changed forever when a 20-pound IED detonated under his Land Cruiser during a mission in Afghanistan. Thrown from the vehicle and blinded by the blast, Nick awoke in a ditch, unable to move. “I was helpless,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what was going on—or if I was going to make it out of there.” In this deeply human and unflinchingly honest episode of Alive Again , Nick walks us through the aftermath: a shattered body held together by 14 plates and 20 screws, the surreal detail…

About Alive Again

Alive Again is a English tech & science podcast from iHeartPodcasts. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: iHeartPodcasts
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 49 min
Latest episode: 3 Mar 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1812603337

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