Alive Again

On a 110° Grand Canyon trek rerouted by wildfire, Drew Seibert collapsed alone—hallucinating a friend, cooling in a cave, and realizing he might die there. He didn’t. A river guide’s sat phone summoned a helicopter, and Drew went home to Atlanta… where a midnight fall in his bathroom broke his neck and stopped his breathing.
Kept alive by his partner’s improvised rescue and then a ventilator, Drew awoke to a new life as a quadriplegic. What followed was the slow, stubborn work of neuroplastic recovery at Shepherd Center: first wrist, first ankle, standing, driving, and the daily discipline of building strength when it would be easier to give up. Along the way, he reimagined purpose—leaving medicine, going to law school, and now advocating for veterans while speaking frankly about autonomy, access to care, and what we owe one another. “You don’t have a lot of choice in the matter,” he says. “Do the best you can to keep heading in the right direction.”
Story Producer: Brent Dey
If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at [email protected] We’d love to hear your story!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At UC Santa Cruz, Brooke Knisley fell more than twenty feet from a redwood while drinking and spent ten days in a coma. What followed was the long, messy work of living with a traumatic brain injury: double vision, memory gaps, relearning daily life, and building white-board systems to keep moving forward. With sharp humor and hard-won clarity, Brooke traces the shift from bar fights and self-numbing to therapy, sobriety, and a steadier kindness toward herself and others—learning to “play the tape through,” when making decisions, and to find joy in the small moments.
Brooke is a talented freelance writer specializing in humor, personal essays, and reporting on disability, mental health, and culture. To read more of Brooks insightful and engaging work, visit her website: https://www.brookeknisley.com/
Contains traumatic brain injury/coma, alcohol misuse, and a reference to sexual assault. Listener discretion advised.
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 [email protected] We’d love to hear your story!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2015, Robert was poisoned by someone he knew. A rapidly spreading infection sent him into emergency surgery—then into a profound near-death experience. In a vivid desert vision, a calm “guide” spoke to him in the precise, mathematical language his mind trusted, explaining reincarnation, non-linear time, and a threshold beyond which returning is impossible. A nurse later told him he had been clinically dead during the operation. Robert emerged changed: less nihilistic, newly attentive to meaning, and committed to leaving people and places better than he found them.
Contains poisoning, drug use, and discussion of clinical death. Listener discretion advised.
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 [email protected] We’d love to hear your story!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When a falling rock shattered Rhesa Bailey’s pelvis at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, survival became immediate and bodily— improvised splints, a perilous raft run to the remote ranger station, a turbulent helicopter through weather.
In the year leading up to the accident, Rhesa had begun to doubt her beliefs—beliefs that had defined her—beliefs that once seemed unshakable—about God, safety, and certainty. These were stripped down to questions.
In this riveting episode, Rhesa talks about the Grand Canyon accident that almost killed her, her crisis of faith, the ache of doubt, the humility of not knowing, and how her experience of almost dying helped reshaped her identity. Eventually she re-imagined faith— not as answers to the mysteries of the universe, but as a practice: presence, honesty, and love enacted in small, daily choices. What emerged was a renewed understanding of herself and her place in the grand universe.
This is a story of faith transformed by experience, moving from borrowed conviction to a grounded, personal belief that can hold both mystery and joy.
Contains traumatic injury, blood loss, and medical/ICU details. Listener discretion advised.
Story Producer: Brent Dey
If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at [email protected] We’d love to hear your story!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Angelyn Pass was an actress-turned-artist, making holiday ornaments in her Midtown studio, when a massive headache dropped her to the floor. Hours later she woke in Emory’s neuro-ICU, intubated, fresh from emergency surgery on a ruptured aneurysm. She spent weeks relearning, rebuilding and refusing to be defined by tubes and machines and she willed herself back to a craft fair barely ten days after discharge. But the real recovery began later: admitting the memory gaps, moving to start over, taking meticulous notes to be a better friend, finding purpose in helping others through legal casework, and—eventually—letting her creativity return on gentler terms. Angelyn didn’t see tunnels or light; she remembers “just nothing”—and from that void came a new vow: to stop chasing an identity and choose a smaller, kinder life she actually loves.
Story Producer: Nicholas Tecosky
Cover Art: Angelyn Pass
If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at [email protected] We’d love to hear your story!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.