Facing Death (with Sebastian Junger)

About this episode

Sebastian Junger discusses his near-death experience and explores themes of death, consciousness, and the fragility of life.

What does a lifelong atheist do when his dead father appears above him in the emergency room? Author and war reporter Sebastian Junger nearly bled to death in 2020 from a ruptured aneurysm, and what he saw in those moments sent him on a journey into physics, near-death experiences, and the nature of consciousness itself. In his third appearance on EconTalk, Junger discusses his remarkable book In My Time of Dying with host Russ Roberts. He reflects on covering wars from Sarajevo to Afghanistan, the strange phenomenon of dying people seeing the dead, and why he's still an atheist. Along the way, Junger offers a powerful meditation on terror and reverence, blessing and wounding, and why understanding life's fragility might be the most sacred gift of all.

People in this episode

Host: Russ Roberts

Guest: Sebastian Junger

Topics covered

• death
• atheism
• consciousness
• near-death experiences
• war reporting
• life's fragility

Keywords

• Sebastian Junger
• near-death experience
• atheism
• consciousness
• war reporting
• In My Time of Dying

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: In My Time of Dying

More episodes of EconTalk

• The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis) · June 8, 2026 · 1h 11m
• Making Your 80,000 Hours Count (with Benjamin Todd) · June 1, 2026 · 1h 7m
• Tom Cruise's Body of Work (with Aled Maclean-Jones) · May 18, 2026 · 1h 8m
• Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein) · May 11, 2026 · 1h 11m
• Golfing Alone (with Gary Belsky) · May 4, 2026 · 60 min
• Claude, War, and the State of the Republic (with Dean Ball) · April 27, 2026 · 1h 17m