I am the passenger
Alive Again review
Production company – Psychopia Pictures/iHeart radio
Rating – 
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to unsubscribe from podcasts when they finish. I’ll usually bin them if I know that I won’t be going back to them, but like the hoarder that I am, I tend to keep old shows for posterity. Who knows when I’ll need to revisit one if I need a review. Therefore, these old shows sit hidden, waiting for me to revive them and record them for posterity.
A while back, a show called The Mantawauk Caves was a must listen for me. As I mentioned above though, once it ended, it was pretty much forgotten in my archives. One day though, it pinged back onto my episode list, with the new title Alive Again.
So what’s it about?
Alive again I suppose is similar to Real Survival Stories, although it also covers what happens when you don’t get rescued in time. Each episode covers the near death experience of a different person. From freezing to death, torture or electrocution, the gamut of horrible experiences is vast indeed.
The first part of the show is the story told by the protagonist. This adds a lot of emotion to the stories. Unlike Real Survival Stories, when the narration, while florid, detracts somewhat from the experience.
The second half consists of the host, Dan Bush, and the other producers analysing the story and drawing parallels to other experiences. They all have journalistic backgrounds, and are equally fascinated by these tales.
Is it any good?
It is this second part that loses me. I like to hear about the experience, how the person coped, and how it ultimately changed them. Make no mistake, all these experiences are life changing.
Apart from that, the show seems to try and cover an awful lot of different examples. Maybe this is because they didn’t have enough NDEs to make a complete series, or maybe they wanted more feel good endings to analyse.
There is no doubt that the stories of people who really did die and come back are fascinating, there are similarities in an awful lot of them, and strangely, I don’t think anyone saw “a light at the end of the tunnel”.
The other cases are from people who endured the most awful hardships, and whose lives were completely transformed in one way or another. When I think of Alive Again, I imagine the NDE experiences, “rending the veil” if you will. However, the term can mean someone whose whole outlook and experience shifts from what they previously knew to something previously unthinkable.
Final thoughts
If you’re a fan of Real Survival Stories, then this is the next step on that path. Whether you stick with this show though, depends on what you want out of real life stories. For me, it just doesn’t deliver enough of what I want to hear about. As my daughter says “that’s a you problem” and it is. Give the show a listen, it’s pretty unique and you may well fall in love with it.
You can get Alive Again here:
https://www.greatpods.co/podcasts/alive-again-7324424
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