Alive Again

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 rec...

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 nav...

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 prioritiz...

“We'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 st...

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 d...

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 mor...

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,...

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 hu...

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 duri...

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 fri...

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 tumo...

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 dea...

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...

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 cance...

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 th...

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 b...

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 hea...

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, depre...

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 passag...