At 26, Taylor Maxson was searching for purpose while working with at-risk youth in Kentucky. After months of exhaustion and stress, he and two friends set out on the Cumberland River for what was meant to be a healing trip into nature. But when their canoe flipped above Angel Falls—a class V rapid known for its deadly currents—Taylor was pulled under, battered against rocks, and certain she would not survive. In this episode of Alive Again, Taylor recounts the terrifying minutes when he nearly drowned and resurfaced, and how the experience led him toward connection, healing, and a new way of living.

Story Producer: Kate Sweeney

If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!

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In this unforgettable episode of Alive Again, Charlie Collins shares the moment that changed everything: when he was electrocuted by 12,500 volts on top of a moving train in New York. Legally blind since childhood and long battling self-doubt, drugs, and despair, Charlie’s near-death experience left him burned and broken—but also opened the door to a profound transformation. Through survival, recovery, and surrender, Charlie found meaning, connection, and a calling to help others discover their own light. This is a story about ego death, resilience, and finding light after decades of darkness. And it reminds us: sometimes the near-death isn’t what nearly kills us—it’s what finally sets us free.

Story Producer: Dan Bush

If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!

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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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com 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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!

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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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com 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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com 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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!

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On the day after Christmas, Dwayne Meadows was packing for a beach day in Thailand when a distant “white line” on the sea became a wall of water. Swept through his bungalow and into a churning maze of debris, he fought to breathe, said goodbye to his six-year-old son in his mind, and surfaced into chaos—cars, propane tanks, entire bungalows surging past. Grabbing the lower half of a mannequin for flotation, he navigated toward shore, then helped lead other survivors to higher ground and improvised first aid for the injured until medical professionals arrived. In the months that followed, Dwayne grappled with the scale of loss and turned toward service—returning to Thailand, aiding recovery efforts, and applying his marine-biology skills to disaster mapping and reef restoration. This is a story about presence under pressure, the power of small kindnesses, and honoring the lives lost by the life you live after.

Content note: This episode includes descriptions of a catastrophic natural disaster (2004 Indian Ocean tsunami), near-drowning, serious injury, mass casualties, and trauma/PTSD. 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 aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.