October 14, 2025 • 53 mins
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 a high-risk, eight-hour brain surgery that would change her life forever. With humor, vulnerability, and crystal clarity, she explores the collapse of identity, the death of an old self, and the painful but profound process of learning to live—and speak—again.
But Dana’s story doesn’t end in silence. It becomes a story of spiritual awakening, intuition, chosen purpose, and using her voice to help others connect to their own. From losing her father at 14 to channeling messages from the other side, Dana opens up about survivor’s guilt, intuitive healing, and embracing the power of reinvention. She reminds us that we all have “battle scars,” and that the ability to evolve—again and again—is the truest sign of being alive.
Cover Art: Daniel Garcia @Superduperfi
Story Producer: Nicholas Tecosky* If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a Live Again, a production of Psychopia
Pictures and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My brain was broken. It was scary. Hi, my name
is Dana Swanson. In twenty twelve, I had an aronal
neoplasm very rare brain tumor in my brain. However, it
was in such a position within my head that it
(00:37):
was extremely difficult to diagnose and basically, I'm happy I'm
here today. It was a high risk surgery. I'm a
very intuitive person. I'm a very spiritual person, and another
series of events led me to become an intuitive reader.
I'm a medium, Akasha record reader. I do the cards,
(01:00):
I do it all. I do a lot of channeling.
I'm not chosen. I'm not any of that. It's just
everybody can do this. It's just like how do you
tap in? And my favorite thing to do is to
pull people's soul missions, which is like a thing you've done,
and not just this life, but every life before, every
life after. It's like the thing that's going to anchor you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Welcome to a Live Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous
accounts of human fragility and resilience from people. His lives
were forever altered. After having almost died. These are first
hand accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes
with death. Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share
(01:42):
these stories to remind us all of our shared human condition.
Please keep in mind these stories are true and maybe
triggering for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I was so dead set on I need to tell
people I love them. I need to get all this
out of the way. I think part of that was
when I was fourteen, my dad died of cancer, and
he had that lead time to be like, Okay, we're
gonna fight this, we're gonna fight this, we're gonna do this.
And then when he realized, oh this is not going
(02:19):
as planned, he didn't use those words, but you know,
you realize that hospice care is coming in, and oh
there's a bed that's now in the living room, like
all that small stuff, and I think he knew that
he had to say something before it got too dark.
He knew that he wanted to be able to express
those emotions before it was too late. So I think
(02:41):
I use that as a model of I gotta tell
people I love them. I have to. I have to
make things known that are important. I have such limited
time with a functional brain that I want to ensure
that everything gets on the page, everything gets handed off off. Honestly,
(03:01):
I was a producer at heart. My dad was awesome.
He used to do what I would call affordable field tripping,
which we lived in Atlanta, and he would take us
on Marta, which is the which is the rapid transit system.
(03:24):
So we just like ride Marta and be like, look
what the conductor's doing, and then we go and watch
the planes take off at the airport. He was very
into like okay, like how do how do I educate?
How do I do something on the cheap? He was
super funny, very very beloved, funny guy. He had a
nickname at work that was Uncle Lou, and I would
(03:45):
be so confused. I was like, wait, Uncle Lou, what
is that? Oh wait, whose uncle are you? But it
was just because he felt like everybody's uncle that was
him was He was hilarious. All I wanted to do
was make my dad laugh. And so I think it's
also why I I studied comedy and I really wanted
to go that route of like, oh, all I want
to do is make my dad left. All I want
(04:06):
to do is make my dad laugh. I have no
idea if I've achieved that, but at least gave me
some purpose. And I think him passing when I was
fourteen gave me that life direction of still all I
want to do is make my dad laugh. So before
(04:27):
I started to have problems talking, before my brain just
took a dump. I don't know if that's appropriate to say.
I was thirty. I just turned thirty. I had an
amazing thirtieth birthday. I was so excited. I was a
(04:49):
writer producer at Adult Swim, writing promos and commercials and
then occasionally providing voice work. I was writing songs from
voice work done, so I got really into writing ridiculous
songs and performing those live with what can only be
described as a queer core band. I don't I have
(05:11):
no other way to describe it, but it was a
very like sexual humorous band, which you can look up
if you want to. I'm not going to say the name.
We were doing really well and people loved us. Just
won the Georgia Voice Awards Best Local Band. It was
like very exciting. I was interviewing celebrities for my job
(05:38):
and just getting to like fly across the country. To
work on stuff, and I'd really felt like, oh my gosh,
this is great, Like I'm making stuff, I'm getting to
solve problems. All the time, I had felt like I'm
my career is taking off. I'm finally in the place
I want to be with my career. Everything felt great.
(05:58):
I was married and just happy. Everything's coming up, Dana.
It just felt on point. Everything felt correct, and then
my Saturn return hit. Some shit went down. I had
injured my back from going too hard at Disney World
(06:23):
and Universal Studios of Florida. You know, sometimes you go
too hard at Universal Studios and Disney World and you
wear those awful sketcher shape ups. Those messed up my back, y'all.
So I had a bad back. I was on painkillers
for those and kind of tapering off, and I just
remembered being really hazy. So this was probably start of
(06:43):
April twenty twelve. I just remembered being really hazy, and
I just chalked it up too. I got those I
got those painkillers. There was a night that I had
two drinks and was just feeling fuzzy, and I just
(07:03):
thought like, oh, that's funny. I've only had two drinks,
like why am I so fuzzy? I remember laying on
this meat wad bean bag that we used to have
in our condo, and I couldn't tell my body to
get up. I just remembered like laying and being like, hey,
get a body, and body was like, no, we're good.
This is fine. Which when you tell your body to
(07:24):
do something, even if it's like hey, just wave your arm, okay,
and it does it. Okay. We have work in communication,
but I just felt like the communication wasn't working, and
I was like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't take those
weird painkillers and I'm still hazy. So I was trying
to relay the story the next day at work, and
(07:44):
when I was like, oh, it's so funny, I couldn't Wow.
I just couldn't get up from this band bag. I
was trying to say that, but my voice started to
do this, So I was speaking with this stilted robot,
stuttering almost to where I knew what I wanted to say,
but it wouldn't come out. So when we talk about
(08:08):
the brain, sometimes it's word finding. I don't know the word.
I want to say, what's the word. Oh, But for me,
it was the actual packaging and distribution of the word.
I had the words and knew exactly what they were,
but couldn't get them out of my mouth. My mouth
was like, nope, we're good. We don't need to we
don't need to say those. That was frightening. I called.
(08:32):
I remember calling my doctor and my doctor was like,
you're having a stroke, and I was like, what, I'm
having a stroke. So I'm freaked out. And then that
(08:53):
was what spawned my husband at the time and I
going to the emergency room of like, I guess I'm
having a stroke. I don't know, and then that adds
more stress, and when your brain's not functioning well, I
got to tell you that stress doesn't help it. I
was just like I felt not quite catatonic, but I
was definitely just in a daze of like I don't
(09:13):
know which way is up, and I don't know I
don't know what my baseline is anymore because this is
so stressful. When everything was happening, and I realized that
I couldn't I couldn't speak correctly, that the words were
coming out weird or not coming out at all, my
first neurologist diagnosed it as language seizures, and I was
(09:33):
trying to tell him things I did at my job,
and I was like, yeah, I write and I produce,
but I also, you know, sometimes I'll get on the
mic and I sing and do all this stuff, and
he was like, you might want to you might want
to not do that, and hearing those words having somebody
else tell me that it's not my choice was really hard.
(09:55):
So having another person say like, yeah, you know, I
know you occasionally do voices on aquitine, hunger fors and squidbillies,
but maybe don't. And I felt like, oh, we have
to keep this between us was what I felt like, like, oh,
we can't tell everybody that I have to stop was
part of my processing there. And I also noticed that
(10:16):
certain words were hard to say, very emotional words hard
to say. Being on Mike was such a big part
of where I wanted to be. I wanted to be
doing more voice work. I wanted to be speaking more
on Mike. I wanted to be performing more. We were
trying to record an album. I wanted to be on
stage and be able to speak and be able to
(10:36):
communicate clearly through speaking. But then also whenever I had
to produce something, being able to be like, hey, this
is me and this is what we're doing, and just
even that thing of like, hey, I'm the person in
the room to look at, here's what's happening. Okay. I
felt like I was being faced with death, death, and
then the death of who I was. So as far
(11:02):
as it being a long term life change, I think
I was just trying to get through the next piece.
So Okay, go see this doctor. Okay, now try this. Okay,
now try this. Okay, now go to Houston. Okay, now
schedule surgery. Okay, now have surgery. I think it wasn't
(11:24):
until after surgery that the life change sunk in. Is
just felt like what do you mean? What do you mean?
I have to take a lot of naps. But recovery
is its own journey and everybody goes in different phases
with that. But it was a long road to get
(11:44):
to where I am today, which is I'll never be
the person I was when I was thirty. That was
a different person. I'm this person now and I like
this person and that was its own journey too, of like, oh,
I have to forgive that and I have to like
who I am now and see the good things that
(12:05):
I've done in the past twelve years that are different
as far as that realization setting in of oh, things
are going to be different. Now you're kind of just
trying to keep your head above water until there's this quiet.
(12:27):
It's like when we're go go, go, go go, and
you know, maybe we're working or at a convention or something,
and it's go, go, go, go go, and then we
get sick right after because your body finally has time
to let everything catch up. It's like we put everything
off of the adrenaline. Puts it off, puts it off,
puts it off. So I feel like that that realization
(12:47):
didn't set in until maybe after because I was so
concerned about, well, I might not be here, So dealing
with that of Okay, what happens if I'm not here?
Number two, what happens if I can't function? The recovery
(13:09):
process of having an eight hour brain surgery. So my
surgery was done on what was called an MRI suite.
I was on one of eight in the country where
they're using an MRI to find where your issue is,
and that's where they discovered I had a neuronal neoplasm
(13:32):
and rare are air brain too, where they have no
idea how it behaves. But it's chill so far. So
I'm on that tip. I still have some in there.
So that also was part of it, was I wake
up from this surgery and you're high in anesthesia, y'all.
(13:52):
Like anesthesia is its own thing. People breakdance, people do
weird stuff. But I remember looking like Toad from the
Mario Brothers. They put you in this giant it's it's
a turban, but it's like a very pronounced turban, so
it's not like, oh, it's like this nice turban and
it's it, you know, looks like something you'd see somebody wearing.
(14:13):
Now this is its own thing where it's like extra gauze.
It's just it's large. It's a large turban. And I
had that on and I remember looking up and seeing
my partner and just like I he told me that
I made out with him, which is like my mom's
there and he is there, and I'm like, oh, like
(14:34):
just gross, gross tongue out in front of my mom,
Like not cool, not cool, But like it's so hard
because you can like sit there and tell yourself, hey,
when you wake up, you might be an asshole, like
you could do that, but you just you have no
function when you wake up. Okay, so brain surgery is wild.
(15:00):
They the day after they make you get up and
walk around part of the deal. So I was doing
laps and part of like one of our landmarks was
what we called puppy corner because there was like a
little puppy puzzle that somebody was doing and so we're like, hey,
it made it past puppy corner. Keep going. They have
you up and walking because they want to make sure
(15:20):
that your mobility is still in check and that nothing
is off that way, so check that. Let's see they oh,
day I think I might have been day three. They
took the bandage off and then you kind of see like, okay,
I have this giant head scar, which I thought it
might just be this little when I my hairdresser was like, oh,
(15:41):
I know somebody had brain surgery. It was just like
this a little like made that little noise and like
it's what she was showing me was it was like
a tiny, little, maybe centimeter scar in the back of
her head. And I was like, that's what I'm going
to have. And I remembered my sitting with my surgeon
and I just felt his finger or start from the
(16:02):
top of my forehead, so right where a widow's peak
would be, and then drawing all on the side down
by my ear, and I was like, girl, that is
a seven inch train. That is much larger than what
my hairdresser would refer to as like it was much larger.
So even just like that of like having to see
(16:23):
the scar, there's all these staples, it's very it's your face.
So then you're like, my face is different, even my
hair is different. The whole thing's different. But it's I'm
alive and that's working. So I have this giant head
scar and for the first week or two, they don't
let you wash it yourself. You have to have somebody
(16:45):
else wash around it because they don't want the staples
getting wet. It's a whole thing. So I remember my
nurse being like, you get to go to the beauty
parlor today. And for those of us who are assigned
female at birth, it can be like oh wow, yay,
like that might be something we grew up with and
that's exciting and or people want you to be excited
about it. So I just remembered being like, okay, cool,
(17:08):
let's do that. So we go down and it smelled
horrific because of just my nose is so sensitive and
I'm just smelling shampoo and conditioner. And I don't think
they had nail polish there, but it smelled like they
probably should have. But it was so strong, all these
things that seemed so innocuous. When your old factory nerve
(17:31):
is pissed off, all of a sudden become your world
of this is so disgusting, Like this is so gross.
When when is this over? I remember telling a friend
of mine that being in the hospital it's war, and
surgery was war. That's how I felt about it. And yeah,
I remember that being a tough part of recovery, of
just being in the hospital, my days of being in
(17:52):
the hospital, and I remember telling people it's war. Being
in the hospital is war, which is not, but that's
that's what it felt like. So then getting home, something
they didn't tell me until after surgery was hey, you
can't lift more than five pounds right now, so don't
do that. For three weeks, we had friends come and
(18:15):
feed the cats if my partner was at work, because
I was so afraid of tripping over them. They were sharks, man,
they just want to get underfoot. I was really tired.
I just remember being really tired for a long time.
I tried to I was so bored that I went
back to work earlier then I needed to. They gave
(18:38):
me six weeks off. That was what my surgeon said,
was you can take six weeks off. And I was
just so ready to get back to what I knew
that I was like three and a half weeks, let's go.
I remember we were eager to get back on recording
and making stuff for this album that a friend came
in to record and I was engineering in the vo booth,
(19:04):
and I just remembered being like, I have to nap now,
I am done, and falling asleep at the computer, like
I hope we got that. Having a brain tumor, having
surgery recovery, the recovery from all that just taught me
(19:24):
how to slow down and how to be okay with
slowing down. And I still feel like that took me
years of being okay with slowing down. I eventually got
to where my energy levels are good. I'm in a
much better spot with it now. I still have side
effects from tumor from surgery. I'm a different person. I
(19:54):
feel like I used to be this very loud, lively,
goofy person, and that would just be quick, like I'm
gonna jump on what you're gonna say. We're gonna like
riff and have a good time, very playful, and I
felt like I had to learn a new way to play.
I had to learn all about food sens activities. And
(20:15):
I worked with a naturopath group for a while and
loved it. I found really wonderful community through it. But
then the hard thing is people go, and then you
have survivor's guilt of why did this person pass and
not me. That's a piece of recovery that I don't
(20:37):
even know how to talk about, which is you make
friends that are going through something similar, or you coach
friends of friends that come to you for advice, and
you support and you provide resources where you can. But
then when if they don't make it, or their situation
(20:58):
doesn't turn out for the best, if they die, or
if they are rendered very different, rendered into a position
where they're now really not themselves, you have a lot
of guilt. I wanted to start recording and sharing my
(21:23):
process because I was so terrified of the rumor mill.
I wanted whatever my journey was, I wanted that to
come from my mouth. I wanted to be able to
control the narrative. As some publicists say, I think I
(21:44):
was dead set on getting the information correct. And also
for me, I felt that it was easier to do
that than to like sit twenty people down and tell
them here's what's going on. So I made videos so
I could speak about what my process was as myself.
(22:04):
And then I also was so tired and so disorganized.
My thoughts were so disorganized that I wanted to be
able to put them on video, edit, organize, like here
it is. It was definitely twofold, and I put it
on YouTube. I put my first videos on YouTube called
Unfortunate Brain News, and I think I entitled the first
(22:27):
one Unfortunate Brain News number zero zero one because I
was like, I don't know how long we're going to
be talking about this, so I kind of just made
it like this could be one hundred episodes, Like that's
kind of When I think back to that, I'm like,
that's really ambitious.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I was having weird problems Wednesday night. I thought maybe
I was just drunk. I'm tired, but I couldn't get
it from my bean bag chair or tell my husband Chris,
what was going on. It was a little weird.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And then I went into work to try to just
do whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And I was talking with my boss, who's also one
of my best friends, and telling him, yes, weird thing happened.
Maybe I was drunk, and uh, it started happening again.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
So I went to the emergency room with my husband
and we were there for seven hours, and it was
like an episode out of Children's Hospital. After a cat
scan in an MRI, they found a spot in the
same place. I don't have a picture to show you
(23:40):
in this episode, but it's.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Behind my cave man lobe. There's a little spot behind
my sonus cave man lobe when they discharged me.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
A piece I didn't expect was finding community through it
and finding other people who were like, hey, I found
your videos. Come into this group. It was so nice
to be able to find other people going through similar stuff.
I tried to make them funny, because that's just my
nature is how do I find the balance between silly
and serious, because there's this very serious thing that's happening
(24:18):
to me, and I would get real serious on those.
But I also wanted everybody to know that my sense
of humor is still here and I'm still intact, and
there was I think a big part of my identity.
I remember the most important thing I ever read. It
was a comment there was something to the effect of
(24:41):
my son has a brain tumor. I'm up all night
trying to find resources and information and your videos made
me laugh. Thank you, And I was like, if nothing
else comes out of these that felt so important, and
(25:04):
it felt like, Okay, this is bigger than me, these
videos are bigger than me. I felt really driven by that,
and it also made me realize whenever I was doing
it gave me a lot of purpose. Because if I
was doing something in my life or working on something
and I'm like, listen, nothing's gonna does this top that comment?
(25:26):
Like does this top somebody finding a place to rest
after having a really awful day of trying to research
what's going on with their child? That really fuels me. Now,
that feeling and that purpose have fueled me in a
new way, and I love it. I'm a very intuitive person.
(25:53):
I'm a very spiritual person, and when I moved to La,
another series of events led me to become an intuitive reader.
I'm a medium, akashak record reader, I do the cards
to do it all. I do a lot of channeling.
Part of it is I realize, oh my god, so
many people, so many people are afraid of intuitive work
(26:15):
because they're like, oh, what a scam. It's a scam.
It's a scam. And then you're like, you know what's
a scam? Mlfs, this is a scam. So I try
to make things as affordable as possible with what I do,
and if someone's just looking for answers, you just realize
how tough it is. Especially I think I work with
(26:36):
a lot of people that have animals. You're gonna get
the five hundred dollars diagnosis, so you're gonna go spend
thousands of dollars on stuff. So part of what I
do is like, all right, what do you actually need
to do? What needs to happen here? What's the deal?
So I definitely try to help people figure out if
they need to spend five grand on a course or
(26:57):
on something for their pet because of that, as of like,
I'm so desperate, what do I need to be doing.
I was a senior writer, producer. I was a super
creative person, constantly every year getting a little better with
my health. Which was very exciting. So my partner and
(27:17):
I were kind of hitting a like, I don't know,
I don't know if this works, Like we're we're hitting
that and nothing wrong with it. Just sometimes two people
grow apart, and it was that part was super hard
for me, not only because he's a great person, but
also I felt so indebted to him. It was wonderful.
It was so nice to have somebody. So you have
(27:39):
that piece and then you're like, oh am I gonna
find anybody ever again, who's gonna put up with my
with my soup of what my brain is doing, and
that risk of I don't know. I might have twenty
more years, I might have thirty more years, I might
have two months. I don't know, like of having that,
I don't know what my brain's gonna do. I need
to I need to see what else is out there.
(28:01):
I got to try something else. That's terrifying. Moving to
another cities terrifying. I lived in Georgia for thirty seven years.
I had a wonderful job. I lived in the same
state as my mom. It was just that thing of like,
uh oh, buddy, I just felt this pull of it's
time to move. So I moved from Atlanta to Los
(28:25):
Angeles March twenty nineteen. I decide, I'm going to give
myself a year to kind of see what it's like
to be freelance. I'd also for most of my adult life,
I'd had a career. I had had a corporate job
that afforded me amazing health insurance, and I was getting
a paycheck. So then all of a sudden, Uh, oh,
(28:46):
I'm going to a new state. I don't know if
I'm going to get health insurance. I don't know if
I'm going to have a paycheck. I don't know how
this is all going to work. Was terrifying, Absolutely terrifying.
Had a childhood friend reach out and just like in
insist on reading for me, and I was like, okay, cool, yeah, buddy,
Like let's do it. She sits me down. I'm like, oh,
(29:08):
I'm so excited to see her, and talked in a while.
She's in Atlanta, I'm here in Los Angeles and we're
talking over FaceTime. She's like, sit down, and then she
proceeds to read me a three page letter from a
spirit who basically was telling me things I said at
(29:33):
my dad's grave. So it's probably my dad, and it
was it was wild. It was this whole thing of
I just felt like, oh my god. I had avoided
talking to my dad through readings because I think I
had when I was a kid, and just it was
so generic that I I was like this, I don't
know if that's my dad, Like I don't know, I
(29:54):
don't know, And so I just avoided it because it
made me upset. So oh, this was just like boom,
I'm here, by the way, you can do this. I
was like, I haven't heard from my dad since I
was fourteen, Like, yeah, let's go. At the time it
(30:15):
was twenty four years. I was like, I, yeah, how
do I talk to my dad? I got obsessed with
how do I how do I channel? How do I
talk to spirits? Like what are the gifts? What are
my psychic gifts? Like how does this all work? I
took a lot of classes, I practiced a lot I
and then I did a program where I actually started
(30:38):
reading for people. I was just going to write a
script with my dad and call that it like we
did it, we write a script. That's fun. But instead
I wound up reading for people. The hook for me was, oh,
here's the thing you want to be doing. What do
you need to do to get it to happen? How
do I take this work which is very, very otherworldly
(31:03):
and then like bring it down to what you're going
through right now. I also really love teaching people how
to use their own gifts, because everyone's got them. I
think everybody goes through stuff we don't know about. So
I'm in a city where people kind of have reintroduced
themselves a lot, like you don't know my past life.
You don't know who I am, Like you don't know
(31:24):
past life in the sense of like I had a
career well before this and a life and friends before this,
and so you're meeting me today now. I think everybody
has stuff like that in their previous, previous work, previous
whoever they were. Even if you're twenty and your elementary
school friends remember you way differently than your high school
and college friends. Like even if you're even if you're
(31:44):
young and you're listening to this, everybody knows us from
different worlds. So for me, it's part of it's like, yeah,
this is my different world is I think of it
that way. But it also gives me a lot of
empathy for everybody's gone through something we don't know about.
I have people that I know now that find out
about my brain surgery and they're like, what are you
(32:06):
talking about? So it's that that's a big piece for me,
is like you just don't know what somebody's gone through.
You have no idea. And same with losing my dad
at a young age. I don't know. I don't know
who's gone through that. I don't know who's gone through,
what kind of losses or what kind of situations people
(32:29):
have done. And so it reminds me to always keep
that door open to like, there's something else to this person,
There's something else in their life, There's something hard they
had to do. Because we're humans, we all have battle scars,
like we all have things that we've had to do.
They are hard, and if you haven't, then I'm waiting
(32:52):
for it to happen to you. I think that being
kee in as a mixture of free will and fate,
and if it ain't, I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Welcome back. This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story or my other alive again story.
Producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Dye and I'm
your host, Dan Bush.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
All Right, this is.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Dan Bush and I'm in the studio with Lauren Vogelbaum,
Brent Dye, and our story producer for Today, Nicholas Dakowski.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Hi, I'm Nicholas Dakowski. I'm our story producer.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Let's talk about Dana.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
Yeah, Data, I have known for years. They are one
of the funniest people I've ever met. They have always
been really quick on the uptake, really charming. They make
weird art. They are They've produced for Adult Swim for
a number of years. They are the voice of Sarah
(34:20):
and Tunami. They're like really well established artists. And years
and years ago, as I was just kind of first
getting to know Dana, they went through this thing and
all of a sudden, there were these videos called weird
brain News kind of pumping out, and I was aware
of those at the time. I watched a handful. This
(34:41):
wasn't a person I knew particularly well, but they were
talking about this thing in this incredibly charming, very open,
honest kind of way. And we're also really really fucking funny,
just really funny. And Yeah, when we first started reaching
out to people for this show, the first person I
(35:02):
thought of was Dana. This was my very first interview
and it was easy peasy. It was just like, here's
this person who has a really great grasp on this
thing that happened to them, and uh yeah, and they
just tell it really, really well. It's a very It
(35:22):
was a very just as a producer who's never done
this kind of thing before, it was like a gimme.
Speaker 6 (35:28):
I mean, it's pretty cool to make your first interview
someone who is a storyteller.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Oh my god, I mean, yeah, good looking out and
listen the amount of the amount of just like incredible
jokes that I had to cut to streamline the story
because the initial interview was like an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I want to hear more about the Unfortunate Brain News
because I haven't. I've never heard that.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
It started as a way to tell friends and family
in one go what was going on. You know, when
something really bad happens to you, Uh.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
Right, numbers you have to make is exhausting.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Like going like you're you know, going through divorce or
a death in the family. Everybody wants to talk to you.
Everybody wants to talk to you, everybody wants to hear
the story and you reach a point, like a saturation
point real ely on with that. And so Dana, who
(36:27):
is a voiceover artist and a writer and a producer,
was like, well, why don't I just use my skills
to just put out this.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
You know, you want to hear the story go to you.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
So you'd get you get a text from a friend,
or you'd get a you'd get a phone call, and
you would just pass along this information. You know, it's like, hey, here,
this is what's going on right now, and you post
it on your social media and and everybody gets to
kind of see it on mass But it turned into
this thing that was it started as something for friends
and family, but other people on YouTube who are looking
(37:03):
up information about similar problems would find this and start
following Dana and would and would start reaching out to
Dana and and sort of forming a little bit of
a community based around these videos, and Dana gets into
(37:25):
it some that you know, it was it was a
blessing to find this community. And also at times, you know,
there were people that didn't make it, so it was
there was this bittersweet thing to It's like I get
to talk about this and I get to commune with
these people. But I also kind of have to the
flip side of that is that I meet people who
(37:45):
aren't going to be around, who aren't going to make it,
or who aren't going to be the same person.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
I mean, it's it's a heightened version of the human condition.
I mean, that's the danger in all kinds of connection
and communication.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And that's why it.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Can be so seductive to just want to be like,
why don't I just sit on my couch and disassociate
for a while.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
Well, I'm not gonna let people close.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
So it starts off, so she's trying to control the
narrative sort of before the rumor, you know, factory starts.
But then it becomes this thing where she's actually able
to use her voice to help all these other people. Yeah,
and and sort of indirectly, her art did what all
artists most want to ever fucking do, right, which is
(38:27):
to actually, you know, have an influence over people in
a positive way or be or you know, be a
you know, a focal point or a point of reflection
so that people can then that's just so cool, man.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Yeah, and coming from a place where they're really scared
of what the future is going to be and they're
really scared of whether they're going to.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Be being honest about that and vulnerable with that.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
And Yeah, I think a lot of artists, or a
lot of people in general, you know, when they're in
their worst moments, think like I I've never done anything good,
I've never been able to like I don't have a
positive effect on the world.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
What mark have I left?
Speaker 5 (39:05):
But and Dana got to experience this idea that like,
even these small things that we do can have echoes outward.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
Like it sounds cliche, but even if it's just one person,
like that comment that woman left. I think if I
spent my entire life making art and got one comment
like that, it'd be worth it. You made it easier
for one persistence made this easier for me.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah. A film professor told me, like talking about trauma
and your own experience in your art, you can't make
it right by making it art, Dan, But in this case, Dana,
you can't.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
You can't make it right by making it art, but
you can help other people.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
You know, there's there's a comedian that I follow on
on Instagram. He is He's got this like really raw grungey,
like almost nihilistic kind of humor.
Speaker 6 (40:04):
Don't know why you would like that.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
Yeah, I've got a type. But he's somebody that he'll
just pop up on my Instagram. He's not super famous,
but he's like established. He'll pop up on my Instagram
every once in a while and it's just like I'll
get a good laugh out of it. And sometimes on
a bad day when you're doom scrolling, you just have
somebody like make that joke that just like gets you
(40:26):
in the gut. But he also struggles from severe depression.
It's very clear because every once in a while he'll
post a story that's like, what does it fucking matter?
And every time I see him do that, he does
Nobi fucking Adam. But every time I see him do
that has happened two or three times now. I'm like, dude,
you I know what you're going through because I go
(40:50):
through it too.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
M m.
Speaker 5 (40:52):
But like, you have given me bursts of relief at
hard moments, and I want to let you know that,
like is like, at least I know it's not just me.
But but if I'm speaking out, you've done this for
other people. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's I think
that that's meaningful and I think when something touches you, you
(41:14):
should reach out. I think that going back to stuff
that we were speaking about earlier today, we were talking
about we're talking about how the internet can be dehumanizing.
We can talk. We were talking about how you can
see something that pisss you off and you're just gonna
go at it, You're just gonna tear down.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But here's the flip side of that.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
But here's a flip side of that. We also have
the opportunity to use that that tool of what is
normally a tool of destruction to do something good, to
touch other people's lives, and when they touch our lives,
we can we can reach out and say, hey, this
was important to me. What you do is important to me.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (41:54):
But I think it's kind of like Aaron Ralston's story
where she's speaking from a point of vulnerability and she
being very real, honest about what she's going through, which
kind of cuts through the bullshit of And again, you
can't create those moments, you know what I mean, Like, you.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Can't not if you're too hard, right.
Speaker 7 (42:11):
It has to come from a real place to connect
like that.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
Right.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
It also just speaks to how like on a larger level,
as we're going about our daily lives, what we do matters,
you know, like the communications that we put out there,
the just the way that you move through public space,
because you never know how what you put out is
going to affect other people and who is going to
(42:34):
interact with that, you know, and so if you put good, weird, friendly,
caring stuff out there, you don't know who needs it.
But sometimes it finds just the right person at just
the right time.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
It's funny too, because in this sort of state of
affairs that we're in right now politically and socio politically happening,
you know, a lot of us are very scared, and
a lot of us don't, you know, if the future
seems uncertain, and sometimes it feels like there's like there's
no room. We should all be rebellious, we should all
be in the streets, we should all be fighting, we
should all be you know, sort of how dare you
(43:07):
have a joyous moment when others are suffering? But in
this light what you're saying, Lauren, about what you're putting
out in the world, it's almost like we have a
responsibility to you know, not just good vibes only man,
but like right, but like to be a source of
authenticity and also to be able to laugh at it
in some way and to find a light in the
(43:29):
darkness is so important.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
Honestly, I think that the reason good art comes out
of adversity is I think because adversity forces you into
a certain understanding of the human condition. Yeah, and I
think that I think that you can take good and
bad things away from that. I think some people allow
(43:53):
adversity to make them bitter and angry, and I think
that some people it opens up their lives. It opens
it opens up the world for them, and it makes
them feel more grounded and connected to the world. And
that was clearly something that that Dana, you know, went through.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, I'm excited for I will say I I thought about,
you know, sort of this time period that we're going through.
I'm sorry to take it back.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Oh no, no, no, no, all I think about, but.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I'm like, I kind of have this thought the other day.
I was like, I bet we're gonna have some really
fucking good art. I bet there's going to be some
really interesting new artists that are going to kind of
rise out of this adversity and some new voices that
are going to be you know, the next Bob Dylan
or whatever right is going to come because of because
(44:41):
of this sea change, you know.
Speaker 7 (44:43):
Nice we got some new politicians out of it.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
Well, gotta have a revolution. First.
Speaker 7 (44:50):
We did get Timothy Chamalat as our new Bob Dylan Shallow.
I was interested in their whole past life medium reading thing.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Can I jump in just a tiny bit on that one?
Speaker 2 (45:11):
You take great?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Yeah? Yeah, So you've got to think outside of your
Western box that you've been, you know, imprisoned in Nick.
Speaker 5 (45:18):
I refuse, I refuse to think of anything beyond my experience.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I like my box.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
It's smelly in here, but it's my smell.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Consciousness is non local. You got to get past consciousness.
Speaker 5 (45:31):
I don't know about that, man.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
So I'm really okay.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
I do want because I do want to address that,
but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
So thanks guys, no pressure.
Speaker 6 (45:48):
So I am really fascinated by Dana's spiritual transformation. And
they don't talk a lot about how they felt before
all of this occurred. But you know, like, of course
you go through a brain tumor sit situation, and like
you are going to reevaluate your place in and connection
to the universe. And furthermore, I'm fascinated by the fact
(46:10):
that she kind of did it through performance, because like
she goes from in her life from performing connecting with
people in stage shows and on broadcasts to these very personal,
intimate performances, And like, I've got friends who dabble in
taro and other forms of divination, And when you do
(46:32):
a reading for someone, it is absolutely a performance, but
one way you're working with the other person to create
a meaningful interpretation of the cards or whatever signs and
signals you're looking at. Whether I think that there's any
great power behind and any kind of like universal with
(46:53):
a capital you sort of sort of stuff going on
in those cards, I'm.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Like, Eh.
Speaker 6 (46:58):
But as people who you know, try to parse together
this weird world that we're in and find signals and
find patterns, I think that that can be a very useful.
Speaker 5 (47:09):
Tool to help form, to help people form the narratives
that they need to exactly to be okay exactly. And
I agree with you, I absolutely agree with you on that,
whether you believe in this kind of stuff or not,
a medium is somebody who helps you understand the narrative.
Life is not just a series of unconnected events happening
(47:31):
to you. You can create your story and live in
that story and and change the world for you will. Yeah, yeah,
it allows you to. It allows you to structure your brain.
That's why we read books, That's why we have religion.
I mean, like, there's all of this stuff. It allows
us to understand the world that we live in. And
and because it's not just some random nightmare hellscape of
(47:56):
like just things that happen in the world's people act
on the world. We can act on the world.
Speaker 7 (48:03):
Did you just did Nick Tikoski say that life is
not just a random collection of a healthscape.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
But here's the thing. I'm not a I'm not a
I'm a nihilist in the sense that I think nothing
matters except for the things that we attribute value to.
And I and I think that that's.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
A creative process. Do you know what I mean by that?
Speaker 5 (48:26):
What creating our narrative?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, we're creating reality when we create our native that
is free will, and that is.
Speaker 6 (48:32):
The future is what we make it. Terminator too, let's go.
Speaker 5 (48:35):
Right, Well, which is why I think that, like, like
nihilism in the best sense is is you know, there
is no value except what we attribute value to the
negative sense is always like nothing fucking matters. I'm gonna
do what the fuck I want. Yeah, that's not that's
not healthy, that's not smart, that's not good for you
or anybody. Yeah, but I think that the taro. I
(48:56):
think horoscopes. I think that.
Speaker 7 (48:59):
I mean, I'll even say, as a Christian, I think
religious stories. You know, there's the Christian belief that they
literally happen, and there's the Christian belief that they're allegory,
you know, but they they they pull us into a
collective truth. Whether you can get that from a set
of Tarit cards or from a different religion, or from
no religion or a TV show. I think that's all possible.
(49:20):
I got it through rock and roll as a teenager,
you know. I got my door to the universe by
listening to Bob Dylan, you know. So whatever can help
you align with that greater force is Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
And I think that as long as it's not I
think that there's something insert your thing you're against here.
As long as it's not it's not those As long
as not those dirty hippies. I don't know, man, I
think that there. I think that that the idea of mediumship,
of of of the oracle, of of the person who
(49:57):
takes the job upon themselves of helping people navigate this life. Yeah,
I think it's I think there's a high value to that,
to the guides, whether you believe in their methods or not.
I think there's a lot of value in people who
are earnestly trying to selflessly help others through the world.
(50:21):
I think that's where it gets sticky with religion, like
a lot of organized religions, because people and you know,
mediums who just are telling people what they want to
hear so they'll get money, right, there's absolutely a way
to abuse that. But I think that Dana is one
of these people who's genuinely, like lovingly trying to help
(50:42):
guide people through a world that they struggled themselves through
for a long time. Also, Dana's fucking awesome. Dana's awesome.
Speaker 7 (50:51):
I will say her personality is bubbled through this podcast.
I just loved spending time with her.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
I've really I just I could have just like left
the hour and a half uncut and we just we
just talk about random shit and it's just a delight.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (51:06):
So Dana Swanson you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
We can put some jokes back in.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
Yeah, well, Dana Sanson look them up. Just have a talk.
Have a talk, Dana. Dana knows where it's that man.
Dana's good people and a brilliant artist.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Next time on Alive Again, we hear the story of
Maggie Slepian, who nearly drowned during a kayaking trip.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
How long can a human body survive without breathing? I
can't think of any other.
Speaker 8 (51:36):
Time that you're about to die, where you have just
a few minutes left and you know it. I have
grappled with what it means to have survived and why
I went.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
On the river in the first place.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Her journey through PTSD and self acceptance is a powerful
tale of personal reckoning. Our story producers are Dan Bush,
Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbam music
by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive
producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special thanks to
(52:14):
Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio engineers are
Rima L. K Ali and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are
Dan Bush, Gerhart Slovitchka, Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing
by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush.
Special thanks to Dana Swanson for sharing her story. Alive
(52:36):
Again is a production of I Art Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l
I v E A g A I N p R
O j E c T at gmail dot com. Don't
(53:00):
don't do
You're listening to a Live Again, a production of Psychopia
Pictures and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My brain was broken. It was scary. Hi, my name
is Dana Swanson. In twenty twelve, I had an aronal
neoplasm very rare brain tumor in my brain. However, it
was in such a position within my head that it
(00:37):
was extremely difficult to diagnose and basically, I'm happy I'm
here today. It was a high risk surgery. I'm a
very intuitive person. I'm a very spiritual person, and another
series of events led me to become an intuitive reader.
I'm a medium, Akasha record reader. I do the cards,
(01:00):
I do it all. I do a lot of channeling.
I'm not chosen. I'm not any of that. It's just
everybody can do this. It's just like how do you
tap in? And my favorite thing to do is to
pull people's soul missions, which is like a thing you've done,
and not just this life, but every life before, every
life after. It's like the thing that's going to anchor you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Welcome to a Live Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous
accounts of human fragility and resilience from people. His lives
were forever altered. After having almost died. These are first
hand accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes
with death. Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share
(01:42):
these stories to remind us all of our shared human condition.
Please keep in mind these stories are true and maybe
triggering for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I was so dead set on I need to tell
people I love them. I need to get all this
out of the way. I think part of that was
when I was fourteen, my dad died of cancer, and
he had that lead time to be like, Okay, we're
gonna fight this, we're gonna fight this, we're gonna do this.
And then when he realized, oh this is not going
(02:19):
as planned, he didn't use those words, but you know,
you realize that hospice care is coming in, and oh
there's a bed that's now in the living room, like
all that small stuff, and I think he knew that
he had to say something before it got too dark.
He knew that he wanted to be able to express
those emotions before it was too late. So I think
(02:41):
I use that as a model of I gotta tell
people I love them. I have to. I have to
make things known that are important. I have such limited
time with a functional brain that I want to ensure
that everything gets on the page, everything gets handed off off. Honestly,
(03:01):
I was a producer at heart. My dad was awesome.
He used to do what I would call affordable field tripping,
which we lived in Atlanta, and he would take us
on Marta, which is the which is the rapid transit system.
(03:24):
So we just like ride Marta and be like, look
what the conductor's doing, and then we go and watch
the planes take off at the airport. He was very
into like okay, like how do how do I educate?
How do I do something on the cheap? He was
super funny, very very beloved, funny guy. He had a
nickname at work that was Uncle Lou, and I would
(03:45):
be so confused. I was like, wait, Uncle Lou, what
is that? Oh wait, whose uncle are you? But it
was just because he felt like everybody's uncle that was
him was He was hilarious. All I wanted to do
was make my dad laugh. And so I think it's
also why I I studied comedy and I really wanted
to go that route of like, oh, all I want
to do is make my dad left. All I want
(04:06):
to do is make my dad laugh. I have no
idea if I've achieved that, but at least gave me
some purpose. And I think him passing when I was
fourteen gave me that life direction of still all I
want to do is make my dad laugh. So before
(04:27):
I started to have problems talking, before my brain just
took a dump. I don't know if that's appropriate to say.
I was thirty. I just turned thirty. I had an
amazing thirtieth birthday. I was so excited. I was a
(04:49):
writer producer at Adult Swim, writing promos and commercials and
then occasionally providing voice work. I was writing songs from
voice work done, so I got really into writing ridiculous
songs and performing those live with what can only be
described as a queer core band. I don't I have
(05:11):
no other way to describe it, but it was a
very like sexual humorous band, which you can look up
if you want to. I'm not going to say the name.
We were doing really well and people loved us. Just
won the Georgia Voice Awards Best Local Band. It was
like very exciting. I was interviewing celebrities for my job
(05:38):
and just getting to like fly across the country. To
work on stuff, and I'd really felt like, oh my gosh,
this is great, Like I'm making stuff, I'm getting to
solve problems. All the time, I had felt like I'm
my career is taking off. I'm finally in the place
I want to be with my career. Everything felt great.
(05:58):
I was married and just happy. Everything's coming up, Dana.
It just felt on point. Everything felt correct, and then
my Saturn return hit. Some shit went down. I had
injured my back from going too hard at Disney World
(06:23):
and Universal Studios of Florida. You know, sometimes you go
too hard at Universal Studios and Disney World and you
wear those awful sketcher shape ups. Those messed up my back, y'all.
So I had a bad back. I was on painkillers
for those and kind of tapering off, and I just
remembered being really hazy. So this was probably start of
(06:43):
April twenty twelve. I just remembered being really hazy, and
I just chalked it up too. I got those I
got those painkillers. There was a night that I had
two drinks and was just feeling fuzzy, and I just
(07:03):
thought like, oh, that's funny. I've only had two drinks,
like why am I so fuzzy? I remember laying on
this meat wad bean bag that we used to have
in our condo, and I couldn't tell my body to
get up. I just remembered like laying and being like, hey,
get a body, and body was like, no, we're good.
This is fine. Which when you tell your body to
(07:24):
do something, even if it's like hey, just wave your arm, okay,
and it does it. Okay. We have work in communication,
but I just felt like the communication wasn't working, and
I was like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't take those
weird painkillers and I'm still hazy. So I was trying
to relay the story the next day at work, and
(07:44):
when I was like, oh, it's so funny, I couldn't Wow.
I just couldn't get up from this band bag. I
was trying to say that, but my voice started to
do this, So I was speaking with this stilted robot,
stuttering almost to where I knew what I wanted to say,
but it wouldn't come out. So when we talk about
(08:08):
the brain, sometimes it's word finding. I don't know the word.
I want to say, what's the word. Oh, But for me,
it was the actual packaging and distribution of the word.
I had the words and knew exactly what they were,
but couldn't get them out of my mouth. My mouth
was like, nope, we're good. We don't need to we
don't need to say those. That was frightening. I called.
(08:32):
I remember calling my doctor and my doctor was like,
you're having a stroke, and I was like, what, I'm
having a stroke. So I'm freaked out. And then that
(08:53):
was what spawned my husband at the time and I
going to the emergency room of like, I guess I'm
having a stroke. I don't know, and then that adds
more stress, and when your brain's not functioning well, I
got to tell you that stress doesn't help it. I
was just like I felt not quite catatonic, but I
was definitely just in a daze of like I don't
(09:13):
know which way is up, and I don't know I
don't know what my baseline is anymore because this is
so stressful. When everything was happening, and I realized that
I couldn't I couldn't speak correctly, that the words were
coming out weird or not coming out at all, my
first neurologist diagnosed it as language seizures, and I was
(09:33):
trying to tell him things I did at my job,
and I was like, yeah, I write and I produce,
but I also, you know, sometimes I'll get on the
mic and I sing and do all this stuff, and
he was like, you might want to you might want
to not do that, and hearing those words having somebody
else tell me that it's not my choice was really hard.
(09:55):
So having another person say like, yeah, you know, I
know you occasionally do voices on aquitine, hunger fors and squidbillies,
but maybe don't. And I felt like, oh, we have
to keep this between us was what I felt like, like, oh,
we can't tell everybody that I have to stop was
part of my processing there. And I also noticed that
(10:16):
certain words were hard to say, very emotional words hard
to say. Being on Mike was such a big part
of where I wanted to be. I wanted to be
doing more voice work. I wanted to be speaking more
on Mike. I wanted to be performing more. We were
trying to record an album. I wanted to be on
stage and be able to speak and be able to
(10:36):
communicate clearly through speaking. But then also whenever I had
to produce something, being able to be like, hey, this
is me and this is what we're doing, and just
even that thing of like, hey, I'm the person in
the room to look at, here's what's happening. Okay. I
felt like I was being faced with death, death, and
then the death of who I was. So as far
(11:02):
as it being a long term life change, I think
I was just trying to get through the next piece.
So Okay, go see this doctor. Okay, now try this. Okay,
now try this. Okay, now go to Houston. Okay, now
schedule surgery. Okay, now have surgery. I think it wasn't
(11:24):
until after surgery that the life change sunk in. Is
just felt like what do you mean? What do you mean?
I have to take a lot of naps. But recovery
is its own journey and everybody goes in different phases
with that. But it was a long road to get
(11:44):
to where I am today, which is I'll never be
the person I was when I was thirty. That was
a different person. I'm this person now and I like
this person and that was its own journey too, of like, oh,
I have to forgive that and I have to like
who I am now and see the good things that
(12:05):
I've done in the past twelve years that are different
as far as that realization setting in of oh, things
are going to be different. Now you're kind of just
trying to keep your head above water until there's this quiet.
(12:27):
It's like when we're go go, go, go go, and
you know, maybe we're working or at a convention or something,
and it's go, go, go, go go, and then we
get sick right after because your body finally has time
to let everything catch up. It's like we put everything
off of the adrenaline. Puts it off, puts it off,
puts it off. So I feel like that that realization
(12:47):
didn't set in until maybe after because I was so
concerned about, well, I might not be here, So dealing
with that of Okay, what happens if I'm not here?
Number two, what happens if I can't function? The recovery
(13:09):
process of having an eight hour brain surgery. So my
surgery was done on what was called an MRI suite.
I was on one of eight in the country where
they're using an MRI to find where your issue is,
and that's where they discovered I had a neuronal neoplasm
(13:32):
and rare are air brain too, where they have no
idea how it behaves. But it's chill so far. So
I'm on that tip. I still have some in there.
So that also was part of it, was I wake
up from this surgery and you're high in anesthesia, y'all.
(13:52):
Like anesthesia is its own thing. People breakdance, people do
weird stuff. But I remember looking like Toad from the
Mario Brothers. They put you in this giant it's it's
a turban, but it's like a very pronounced turban, so
it's not like, oh, it's like this nice turban and
it's it, you know, looks like something you'd see somebody wearing.
(14:13):
Now this is its own thing where it's like extra gauze.
It's just it's large. It's a large turban. And I
had that on and I remember looking up and seeing
my partner and just like I he told me that
I made out with him, which is like my mom's
there and he is there, and I'm like, oh, like
(14:34):
just gross, gross tongue out in front of my mom,
Like not cool, not cool, But like it's so hard
because you can like sit there and tell yourself, hey,
when you wake up, you might be an asshole, like
you could do that, but you just you have no
function when you wake up. Okay, so brain surgery is wild.
(15:00):
They the day after they make you get up and
walk around part of the deal. So I was doing
laps and part of like one of our landmarks was
what we called puppy corner because there was like a
little puppy puzzle that somebody was doing and so we're like, hey,
it made it past puppy corner. Keep going. They have
you up and walking because they want to make sure
(15:20):
that your mobility is still in check and that nothing
is off that way, so check that. Let's see they oh,
day I think I might have been day three. They
took the bandage off and then you kind of see like, okay,
I have this giant head scar, which I thought it
might just be this little when I my hairdresser was like, oh,
(15:41):
I know somebody had brain surgery. It was just like
this a little like made that little noise and like
it's what she was showing me was it was like
a tiny, little, maybe centimeter scar in the back of
her head. And I was like, that's what I'm going
to have. And I remembered my sitting with my surgeon
and I just felt his finger or start from the
(16:02):
top of my forehead, so right where a widow's peak
would be, and then drawing all on the side down
by my ear, and I was like, girl, that is
a seven inch train. That is much larger than what
my hairdresser would refer to as like it was much larger.
So even just like that of like having to see
(16:23):
the scar, there's all these staples, it's very it's your face.
So then you're like, my face is different, even my
hair is different. The whole thing's different. But it's I'm
alive and that's working. So I have this giant head
scar and for the first week or two, they don't
let you wash it yourself. You have to have somebody
(16:45):
else wash around it because they don't want the staples
getting wet. It's a whole thing. So I remember my
nurse being like, you get to go to the beauty
parlor today. And for those of us who are assigned
female at birth, it can be like oh wow, yay,
like that might be something we grew up with and
that's exciting and or people want you to be excited
about it. So I just remembered being like, okay, cool,
(17:08):
let's do that. So we go down and it smelled
horrific because of just my nose is so sensitive and
I'm just smelling shampoo and conditioner. And I don't think
they had nail polish there, but it smelled like they
probably should have. But it was so strong, all these
things that seemed so innocuous. When your old factory nerve
(17:31):
is pissed off, all of a sudden become your world
of this is so disgusting, Like this is so gross.
When when is this over? I remember telling a friend
of mine that being in the hospital it's war, and
surgery was war. That's how I felt about it. And yeah,
I remember that being a tough part of recovery, of
just being in the hospital, my days of being in
(17:52):
the hospital, and I remember telling people it's war. Being
in the hospital is war, which is not, but that's
that's what it felt like. So then getting home, something
they didn't tell me until after surgery was hey, you
can't lift more than five pounds right now, so don't
do that. For three weeks, we had friends come and
(18:15):
feed the cats if my partner was at work, because
I was so afraid of tripping over them. They were sharks, man,
they just want to get underfoot. I was really tired.
I just remember being really tired for a long time.
I tried to I was so bored that I went
back to work earlier then I needed to. They gave
(18:38):
me six weeks off. That was what my surgeon said,
was you can take six weeks off. And I was
just so ready to get back to what I knew
that I was like three and a half weeks, let's go.
I remember we were eager to get back on recording
and making stuff for this album that a friend came
in to record and I was engineering in the vo booth,
(19:04):
and I just remembered being like, I have to nap now,
I am done, and falling asleep at the computer, like
I hope we got that. Having a brain tumor, having
surgery recovery, the recovery from all that just taught me
(19:24):
how to slow down and how to be okay with
slowing down. And I still feel like that took me
years of being okay with slowing down. I eventually got
to where my energy levels are good. I'm in a
much better spot with it now. I still have side
effects from tumor from surgery. I'm a different person. I
(19:54):
feel like I used to be this very loud, lively,
goofy person, and that would just be quick, like I'm
gonna jump on what you're gonna say. We're gonna like
riff and have a good time, very playful, and I
felt like I had to learn a new way to play.
I had to learn all about food sens activities. And
(20:15):
I worked with a naturopath group for a while and
loved it. I found really wonderful community through it. But
then the hard thing is people go, and then you
have survivor's guilt of why did this person pass and
not me. That's a piece of recovery that I don't
(20:37):
even know how to talk about, which is you make
friends that are going through something similar, or you coach
friends of friends that come to you for advice, and
you support and you provide resources where you can. But
then when if they don't make it, or their situation
(20:58):
doesn't turn out for the best, if they die, or
if they are rendered very different, rendered into a position
where they're now really not themselves, you have a lot
of guilt. I wanted to start recording and sharing my
(21:23):
process because I was so terrified of the rumor mill.
I wanted whatever my journey was, I wanted that to
come from my mouth. I wanted to be able to
control the narrative. As some publicists say, I think I
(21:44):
was dead set on getting the information correct. And also
for me, I felt that it was easier to do
that than to like sit twenty people down and tell
them here's what's going on. So I made videos so
I could speak about what my process was as myself.
(22:04):
And then I also was so tired and so disorganized.
My thoughts were so disorganized that I wanted to be
able to put them on video, edit, organize, like here
it is. It was definitely twofold, and I put it
on YouTube. I put my first videos on YouTube called
Unfortunate Brain News, and I think I entitled the first
(22:27):
one Unfortunate Brain News number zero zero one because I
was like, I don't know how long we're going to
be talking about this, so I kind of just made
it like this could be one hundred episodes, Like that's
kind of When I think back to that, I'm like,
that's really ambitious.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I was having weird problems Wednesday night. I thought maybe
I was just drunk. I'm tired, but I couldn't get
it from my bean bag chair or tell my husband Chris,
what was going on. It was a little weird.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And then I went into work to try to just
do whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And I was talking with my boss, who's also one
of my best friends, and telling him, yes, weird thing happened.
Maybe I was drunk, and uh, it started happening again.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
So I went to the emergency room with my husband
and we were there for seven hours, and it was
like an episode out of Children's Hospital. After a cat
scan in an MRI, they found a spot in the
same place. I don't have a picture to show you
(23:40):
in this episode, but it's.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Behind my cave man lobe. There's a little spot behind
my sonus cave man lobe when they discharged me.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
A piece I didn't expect was finding community through it
and finding other people who were like, hey, I found
your videos. Come into this group. It was so nice
to be able to find other people going through similar stuff.
I tried to make them funny, because that's just my
nature is how do I find the balance between silly
and serious, because there's this very serious thing that's happening
(24:18):
to me, and I would get real serious on those.
But I also wanted everybody to know that my sense
of humor is still here and I'm still intact, and
there was I think a big part of my identity.
I remember the most important thing I ever read. It
was a comment there was something to the effect of
(24:41):
my son has a brain tumor. I'm up all night
trying to find resources and information and your videos made
me laugh. Thank you, And I was like, if nothing
else comes out of these that felt so important, and
(25:04):
it felt like, Okay, this is bigger than me, these
videos are bigger than me. I felt really driven by that,
and it also made me realize whenever I was doing
it gave me a lot of purpose. Because if I
was doing something in my life or working on something
and I'm like, listen, nothing's gonna does this top that comment?
(25:26):
Like does this top somebody finding a place to rest
after having a really awful day of trying to research
what's going on with their child? That really fuels me. Now,
that feeling and that purpose have fueled me in a
new way, and I love it. I'm a very intuitive person.
(25:53):
I'm a very spiritual person, and when I moved to La,
another series of events led me to become an intuitive reader.
I'm a medium, akashak record reader, I do the cards
to do it all. I do a lot of channeling.
Part of it is I realize, oh my god, so
many people, so many people are afraid of intuitive work
(26:15):
because they're like, oh, what a scam. It's a scam.
It's a scam. And then you're like, you know what's
a scam? Mlfs, this is a scam. So I try
to make things as affordable as possible with what I do,
and if someone's just looking for answers, you just realize
how tough it is. Especially I think I work with
(26:36):
a lot of people that have animals. You're gonna get
the five hundred dollars diagnosis, so you're gonna go spend
thousands of dollars on stuff. So part of what I
do is like, all right, what do you actually need
to do? What needs to happen here? What's the deal?
So I definitely try to help people figure out if
they need to spend five grand on a course or
(26:57):
on something for their pet because of that, as of like,
I'm so desperate, what do I need to be doing.
I was a senior writer, producer. I was a super
creative person, constantly every year getting a little better with
my health. Which was very exciting. So my partner and
(27:17):
I were kind of hitting a like, I don't know,
I don't know if this works, Like we're we're hitting
that and nothing wrong with it. Just sometimes two people
grow apart, and it was that part was super hard
for me, not only because he's a great person, but
also I felt so indebted to him. It was wonderful.
It was so nice to have somebody. So you have
(27:39):
that piece and then you're like, oh am I gonna
find anybody ever again, who's gonna put up with my
with my soup of what my brain is doing, and
that risk of I don't know. I might have twenty
more years, I might have thirty more years, I might
have two months. I don't know, like of having that,
I don't know what my brain's gonna do. I need
to I need to see what else is out there.
(28:01):
I got to try something else. That's terrifying. Moving to
another cities terrifying. I lived in Georgia for thirty seven years.
I had a wonderful job. I lived in the same
state as my mom. It was just that thing of like,
uh oh, buddy, I just felt this pull of it's
time to move. So I moved from Atlanta to Los
(28:25):
Angeles March twenty nineteen. I decide, I'm going to give
myself a year to kind of see what it's like
to be freelance. I'd also for most of my adult life,
I'd had a career. I had had a corporate job
that afforded me amazing health insurance, and I was getting
a paycheck. So then all of a sudden, Uh, oh,
(28:46):
I'm going to a new state. I don't know if
I'm going to get health insurance. I don't know if
I'm going to have a paycheck. I don't know how
this is all going to work. Was terrifying, Absolutely terrifying.
Had a childhood friend reach out and just like in
insist on reading for me, and I was like, okay, cool, yeah, buddy,
Like let's do it. She sits me down. I'm like, oh,
(29:08):
I'm so excited to see her, and talked in a while.
She's in Atlanta, I'm here in Los Angeles and we're
talking over FaceTime. She's like, sit down, and then she
proceeds to read me a three page letter from a
spirit who basically was telling me things I said at
(29:33):
my dad's grave. So it's probably my dad, and it
was it was wild. It was this whole thing of
I just felt like, oh my god. I had avoided
talking to my dad through readings because I think I
had when I was a kid, and just it was
so generic that I I was like this, I don't
know if that's my dad, Like I don't know, I
(29:54):
don't know, And so I just avoided it because it
made me upset. So oh, this was just like boom,
I'm here, by the way, you can do this. I
was like, I haven't heard from my dad since I
was fourteen, Like, yeah, let's go. At the time it
(30:15):
was twenty four years. I was like, I, yeah, how
do I talk to my dad? I got obsessed with
how do I how do I channel? How do I
talk to spirits? Like what are the gifts? What are
my psychic gifts? Like how does this all work? I
took a lot of classes, I practiced a lot I
and then I did a program where I actually started
(30:38):
reading for people. I was just going to write a
script with my dad and call that it like we
did it, we write a script. That's fun. But instead
I wound up reading for people. The hook for me was, oh,
here's the thing you want to be doing. What do
you need to do to get it to happen? How
do I take this work which is very, very otherworldly
(31:03):
and then like bring it down to what you're going
through right now. I also really love teaching people how
to use their own gifts, because everyone's got them. I
think everybody goes through stuff we don't know about. So
I'm in a city where people kind of have reintroduced
themselves a lot, like you don't know my past life.
You don't know who I am, Like you don't know
(31:24):
past life in the sense of like I had a
career well before this and a life and friends before this,
and so you're meeting me today now. I think everybody
has stuff like that in their previous, previous work, previous
whoever they were. Even if you're twenty and your elementary
school friends remember you way differently than your high school
and college friends. Like even if you're even if you're
(31:44):
young and you're listening to this, everybody knows us from
different worlds. So for me, it's part of it's like, yeah,
this is my different world is I think of it
that way. But it also gives me a lot of
empathy for everybody's gone through something we don't know about.
I have people that I know now that find out
about my brain surgery and they're like, what are you
(32:06):
talking about? So it's that that's a big piece for me,
is like you just don't know what somebody's gone through.
You have no idea. And same with losing my dad
at a young age. I don't know. I don't know
who's gone through that. I don't know who's gone through,
what kind of losses or what kind of situations people
(32:29):
have done. And so it reminds me to always keep
that door open to like, there's something else to this person,
There's something else in their life, There's something hard they
had to do. Because we're humans, we all have battle scars,
like we all have things that we've had to do.
They are hard, and if you haven't, then I'm waiting
(32:52):
for it to happen to you. I think that being
kee in as a mixture of free will and fate,
and if it ain't, I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Welcome back. This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story or my other alive again story.
Producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Dye and I'm
your host, Dan Bush.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
All Right, this is.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Dan Bush and I'm in the studio with Lauren Vogelbaum,
Brent Dye, and our story producer for Today, Nicholas Dakowski.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Hi, I'm Nicholas Dakowski. I'm our story producer.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Let's talk about Dana.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
Yeah, Data, I have known for years. They are one
of the funniest people I've ever met. They have always
been really quick on the uptake, really charming. They make
weird art. They are They've produced for Adult Swim for
a number of years. They are the voice of Sarah
(34:20):
and Tunami. They're like really well established artists. And years
and years ago, as I was just kind of first
getting to know Dana, they went through this thing and
all of a sudden, there were these videos called weird
brain News kind of pumping out, and I was aware
of those at the time. I watched a handful. This
(34:41):
wasn't a person I knew particularly well, but they were
talking about this thing in this incredibly charming, very open,
honest kind of way. And we're also really really fucking funny,
just really funny. And Yeah, when we first started reaching
out to people for this show, the first person I
(35:02):
thought of was Dana. This was my very first interview
and it was easy peasy. It was just like, here's
this person who has a really great grasp on this
thing that happened to them, and uh yeah, and they
just tell it really, really well. It's a very It
(35:22):
was a very just as a producer who's never done
this kind of thing before, it was like a gimme.
Speaker 6 (35:28):
I mean, it's pretty cool to make your first interview
someone who is a storyteller.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Oh my god, I mean, yeah, good looking out and
listen the amount of the amount of just like incredible
jokes that I had to cut to streamline the story
because the initial interview was like an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I want to hear more about the Unfortunate Brain News
because I haven't. I've never heard that.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
It started as a way to tell friends and family
in one go what was going on. You know, when
something really bad happens to you, Uh.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
Right, numbers you have to make is exhausting.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Like going like you're you know, going through divorce or
a death in the family. Everybody wants to talk to you.
Everybody wants to talk to you, everybody wants to hear
the story and you reach a point, like a saturation
point real ely on with that. And so Dana, who
(36:27):
is a voiceover artist and a writer and a producer,
was like, well, why don't I just use my skills
to just put out this.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
You know, you want to hear the story go to you.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
So you'd get you get a text from a friend,
or you'd get a you'd get a phone call, and
you would just pass along this information. You know, it's like, hey, here,
this is what's going on right now, and you post
it on your social media and and everybody gets to
kind of see it on mass But it turned into
this thing that was it started as something for friends
and family, but other people on YouTube who are looking
(37:03):
up information about similar problems would find this and start
following Dana and would and would start reaching out to
Dana and and sort of forming a little bit of
a community based around these videos, and Dana gets into
(37:25):
it some that you know, it was it was a
blessing to find this community. And also at times, you know,
there were people that didn't make it, so it was
there was this bittersweet thing to It's like I get
to talk about this and I get to commune with
these people. But I also kind of have to the
flip side of that is that I meet people who
(37:45):
aren't going to be around, who aren't going to make it,
or who aren't going to be the same person.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
I mean, it's it's a heightened version of the human condition.
I mean, that's the danger in all kinds of connection
and communication.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And that's why it.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Can be so seductive to just want to be like,
why don't I just sit on my couch and disassociate
for a while.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
Well, I'm not gonna let people close.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
So it starts off, so she's trying to control the
narrative sort of before the rumor, you know, factory starts.
But then it becomes this thing where she's actually able
to use her voice to help all these other people. Yeah,
and and sort of indirectly, her art did what all
artists most want to ever fucking do, right, which is
(38:27):
to actually, you know, have an influence over people in
a positive way or be or you know, be a
you know, a focal point or a point of reflection
so that people can then that's just so cool, man.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Yeah, and coming from a place where they're really scared
of what the future is going to be and they're
really scared of whether they're going to.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Be being honest about that and vulnerable with that.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
And Yeah, I think a lot of artists, or a
lot of people in general, you know, when they're in
their worst moments, think like I I've never done anything good,
I've never been able to like I don't have a
positive effect on the world.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
What mark have I left?
Speaker 5 (39:05):
But and Dana got to experience this idea that like,
even these small things that we do can have echoes outward.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
Like it sounds cliche, but even if it's just one person,
like that comment that woman left. I think if I
spent my entire life making art and got one comment
like that, it'd be worth it. You made it easier
for one persistence made this easier for me.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah. A film professor told me, like talking about trauma
and your own experience in your art, you can't make
it right by making it art, Dan, But in this case, Dana,
you can't.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
You can't make it right by making it art, but
you can help other people.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
You know, there's there's a comedian that I follow on
on Instagram. He is He's got this like really raw grungey,
like almost nihilistic kind of humor.
Speaker 6 (40:04):
Don't know why you would like that.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
Yeah, I've got a type. But he's somebody that he'll
just pop up on my Instagram. He's not super famous,
but he's like established. He'll pop up on my Instagram
every once in a while and it's just like I'll
get a good laugh out of it. And sometimes on
a bad day when you're doom scrolling, you just have
somebody like make that joke that just like gets you
(40:26):
in the gut. But he also struggles from severe depression.
It's very clear because every once in a while he'll
post a story that's like, what does it fucking matter?
And every time I see him do that, he does
Nobi fucking Adam. But every time I see him do
that has happened two or three times now. I'm like, dude,
you I know what you're going through because I go
(40:50):
through it too.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
M m.
Speaker 5 (40:52):
But like, you have given me bursts of relief at
hard moments, and I want to let you know that,
like is like, at least I know it's not just me.
But but if I'm speaking out, you've done this for
other people. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's I think
that that's meaningful and I think when something touches you, you
(41:14):
should reach out. I think that going back to stuff
that we were speaking about earlier today, we were talking
about we're talking about how the internet can be dehumanizing.
We can talk. We were talking about how you can
see something that pisss you off and you're just gonna
go at it, You're just gonna tear down.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But here's the flip side of that.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
But here's a flip side of that. We also have
the opportunity to use that that tool of what is
normally a tool of destruction to do something good, to
touch other people's lives, and when they touch our lives,
we can we can reach out and say, hey, this
was important to me. What you do is important to me.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (41:54):
But I think it's kind of like Aaron Ralston's story
where she's speaking from a point of vulnerability and she
being very real, honest about what she's going through, which
kind of cuts through the bullshit of And again, you
can't create those moments, you know what I mean, Like, you.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Can't not if you're too hard, right.
Speaker 7 (42:11):
It has to come from a real place to connect
like that.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
Right.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
It also just speaks to how like on a larger level,
as we're going about our daily lives, what we do matters,
you know, like the communications that we put out there,
the just the way that you move through public space,
because you never know how what you put out is
going to affect other people and who is going to
(42:34):
interact with that, you know, and so if you put good, weird, friendly,
caring stuff out there, you don't know who needs it.
But sometimes it finds just the right person at just
the right time.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
It's funny too, because in this sort of state of
affairs that we're in right now politically and socio politically happening,
you know, a lot of us are very scared, and
a lot of us don't, you know, if the future
seems uncertain, and sometimes it feels like there's like there's
no room. We should all be rebellious, we should all
be in the streets, we should all be fighting, we
should all be you know, sort of how dare you
(43:07):
have a joyous moment when others are suffering? But in
this light what you're saying, Lauren, about what you're putting
out in the world, it's almost like we have a
responsibility to you know, not just good vibes only man,
but like right, but like to be a source of
authenticity and also to be able to laugh at it
in some way and to find a light in the
(43:29):
darkness is so important.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
Honestly, I think that the reason good art comes out
of adversity is I think because adversity forces you into
a certain understanding of the human condition. Yeah, and I
think that I think that you can take good and
bad things away from that. I think some people allow
(43:53):
adversity to make them bitter and angry, and I think
that some people it opens up their lives. It opens
it opens up the world for them, and it makes
them feel more grounded and connected to the world. And
that was clearly something that that Dana, you know, went through.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, I'm excited for I will say I I thought about,
you know, sort of this time period that we're going through.
I'm sorry to take it back.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Oh no, no, no, no, all I think about, but.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I'm like, I kind of have this thought the other day.
I was like, I bet we're gonna have some really
fucking good art. I bet there's going to be some
really interesting new artists that are going to kind of
rise out of this adversity and some new voices that
are going to be you know, the next Bob Dylan
or whatever right is going to come because of because
(44:41):
of this sea change, you know.
Speaker 7 (44:43):
Nice we got some new politicians out of it.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
Well, gotta have a revolution. First.
Speaker 7 (44:50):
We did get Timothy Chamalat as our new Bob Dylan Shallow.
I was interested in their whole past life medium reading thing.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Can I jump in just a tiny bit on that one?
Speaker 2 (45:11):
You take great?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Yeah? Yeah, So you've got to think outside of your
Western box that you've been, you know, imprisoned in Nick.
Speaker 5 (45:18):
I refuse, I refuse to think of anything beyond my experience.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I like my box.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
It's smelly in here, but it's my smell.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Consciousness is non local. You got to get past consciousness.
Speaker 5 (45:31):
I don't know about that, man.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
So I'm really okay.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
I do want because I do want to address that,
but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
So thanks guys, no pressure.
Speaker 6 (45:48):
So I am really fascinated by Dana's spiritual transformation. And
they don't talk a lot about how they felt before
all of this occurred. But you know, like, of course
you go through a brain tumor sit situation, and like
you are going to reevaluate your place in and connection
to the universe. And furthermore, I'm fascinated by the fact
(46:10):
that she kind of did it through performance, because like
she goes from in her life from performing connecting with
people in stage shows and on broadcasts to these very personal,
intimate performances, And like, I've got friends who dabble in
taro and other forms of divination, And when you do
(46:32):
a reading for someone, it is absolutely a performance, but
one way you're working with the other person to create
a meaningful interpretation of the cards or whatever signs and
signals you're looking at. Whether I think that there's any
great power behind and any kind of like universal with
(46:53):
a capital you sort of sort of stuff going on
in those cards, I'm.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Like, Eh.
Speaker 6 (46:58):
But as people who you know, try to parse together
this weird world that we're in and find signals and
find patterns, I think that that can be a very useful.
Speaker 5 (47:09):
Tool to help form, to help people form the narratives
that they need to exactly to be okay exactly. And
I agree with you, I absolutely agree with you on that,
whether you believe in this kind of stuff or not,
a medium is somebody who helps you understand the narrative.
Life is not just a series of unconnected events happening
(47:31):
to you. You can create your story and live in
that story and and change the world for you will. Yeah, yeah,
it allows you to. It allows you to structure your brain.
That's why we read books, That's why we have religion.
I mean, like, there's all of this stuff. It allows
us to understand the world that we live in. And
and because it's not just some random nightmare hellscape of
(47:56):
like just things that happen in the world's people act
on the world. We can act on the world.
Speaker 7 (48:03):
Did you just did Nick Tikoski say that life is
not just a random collection of a healthscape.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
But here's the thing. I'm not a I'm not a
I'm a nihilist in the sense that I think nothing
matters except for the things that we attribute value to.
And I and I think that that's.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
A creative process. Do you know what I mean by that?
Speaker 5 (48:26):
What creating our narrative?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, we're creating reality when we create our native that
is free will, and that is.
Speaker 6 (48:32):
The future is what we make it. Terminator too, let's go.
Speaker 5 (48:35):
Right, Well, which is why I think that, like, like
nihilism in the best sense is is you know, there
is no value except what we attribute value to the
negative sense is always like nothing fucking matters. I'm gonna
do what the fuck I want. Yeah, that's not that's
not healthy, that's not smart, that's not good for you
or anybody. Yeah, but I think that the taro. I
(48:56):
think horoscopes. I think that.
Speaker 7 (48:59):
I mean, I'll even say, as a Christian, I think
religious stories. You know, there's the Christian belief that they
literally happen, and there's the Christian belief that they're allegory,
you know, but they they they pull us into a
collective truth. Whether you can get that from a set
of Tarit cards or from a different religion, or from
no religion or a TV show. I think that's all possible.
(49:20):
I got it through rock and roll as a teenager,
you know. I got my door to the universe by
listening to Bob Dylan, you know. So whatever can help
you align with that greater force is Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
And I think that as long as it's not I
think that there's something insert your thing you're against here.
As long as it's not it's not those As long
as not those dirty hippies. I don't know, man, I
think that there. I think that that the idea of mediumship,
of of of the oracle, of of the person who
(49:57):
takes the job upon themselves of helping people navigate this life. Yeah,
I think it's I think there's a high value to that,
to the guides, whether you believe in their methods or not.
I think there's a lot of value in people who
are earnestly trying to selflessly help others through the world.
(50:21):
I think that's where it gets sticky with religion, like
a lot of organized religions, because people and you know,
mediums who just are telling people what they want to
hear so they'll get money, right, there's absolutely a way
to abuse that. But I think that Dana is one
of these people who's genuinely, like lovingly trying to help
(50:42):
guide people through a world that they struggled themselves through
for a long time. Also, Dana's fucking awesome. Dana's awesome.
Speaker 7 (50:51):
I will say her personality is bubbled through this podcast.
I just loved spending time with her.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
I've really I just I could have just like left
the hour and a half uncut and we just we
just talk about random shit and it's just a delight.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (51:06):
So Dana Swanson you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
We can put some jokes back in.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
Yeah, well, Dana Sanson look them up. Just have a talk.
Have a talk, Dana. Dana knows where it's that man.
Dana's good people and a brilliant artist.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Next time on Alive Again, we hear the story of
Maggie Slepian, who nearly drowned during a kayaking trip.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
How long can a human body survive without breathing? I
can't think of any other.
Speaker 8 (51:36):
Time that you're about to die, where you have just
a few minutes left and you know it. I have
grappled with what it means to have survived and why
I went.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
On the river in the first place.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Her journey through PTSD and self acceptance is a powerful
tale of personal reckoning. Our story producers are Dan Bush,
Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbam music
by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive
producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special thanks to
(52:14):
Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio engineers are
Rima L. K Ali and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are
Dan Bush, Gerhart Slovitchka, Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing
by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush.
Special thanks to Dana Swanson for sharing her story. Alive
(52:36):
Again is a production of I Art Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l
I v E A g A I N p R
O j E c T at gmail dot com. Don't
(53:00):
don't do
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