Best Of: Sebastian Junger’s Journey to the Edge and Back

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On a June night several years ago, Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, lay on an operating table, dying. An undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery had ruptured, flooding his abdominal cavity with blood. His odds of survival were between 10 and 20 percent. "I said, 'Doc, you've got to hurry. You're losing me right now. I'm going.'" This near-death experience inspired him to embark on a scientific, philosophical, and profoundly personal exploration of what happens after we die. Host: Caleb Bissinger Guest: Sebastian Junger, author of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife. 🎁 We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves. But figuring out what to read — well, that's another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com and use code PODCAST to take 20% off your order.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Caleb Bissinger and this is the next big idea.
0:05.0	Today, Sebastian Younger almost died a few years ago.
0:10.0	What did the experience teach him?
0:12.0	What can it teach you? Nine o'clock, a June night four years ago.
0:37.0	The last traces of daylight glint in the western sky.
0:41.1	And Sebastian Younger, the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm
0:44.6	and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo,
0:49.3	lies on an operating table.
0:52.9	He is dying.
0:56.0	The doctor asked permission to put a large-gauge needle through my neck into my jugular to transfuse me and didn't sound very pleasant.
1:02.7	I said, you mean in case there's an emergency?
1:04.8	And he said, this is the emergency right now.
1:07.4	What Sebastian didn't know, what the doctors didn't yet know, was that an undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery had ruptured.
1:16.3	It was now geysering blood into his abdomen.
1:20.2	He was losing a pint of blood roughly every 10 minutes.
1:23.8	And there are only 12 pints of blood in the human body.
1:27.4	Sebastian, as he puts it, was a human hourglass.
1:32.3	As the doctor raced to transfuse him,
1:35.3	I became aware of this black pit that opened up underneath me,
1:39.3	and it was pulling me into it.
1:41.3	And I kind of knew, in the sort of animal knowledge, that if you go into the infinitely black
1:46.9	pit, you're not coming out.
	...

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