In the fifty-seventh episode of GREAT PODVERSATIONS, bestselling author, journalist and filmmaker SEBASTIAN JUNGER discusses his book In My Time of Dying, with the host of NPR’s Wild Card Podcast RACHEL MARTIN.

Sebastian Junger is a bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and a special correspondent at ABC News. Junger has covered major international news stories around the world and has received a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. He is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film Restrepo, (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Junger has written for magazines including Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside and Men’s Journal. Junger’s bestselling book, The Perfect Storm, was based on a true story and was made into a major motion picture starring Kentucky native George Clooney.

His latest book, In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife, is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery. A near-fatal health emergency spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die.

Rachel Martin is the co-creator and host of the podcast Wild Card, an interview game show about life’s biggest questions. She invites notable guests to play a card game that lets them open up about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped their lives. Martin spent six years as a host of Morning Edition and was the founding host of NPR’s award-winning morning news podcast Up First. She previously hosted Weekend Edition Sunday. Prior to that, Martin served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues, and also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent.

In My Time of Dying  by Sebastian Junger

Tribe  by Sebastian Junger

The Perfect Storm  by Sebastian Junger

Original air date: 02/21/25

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