Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown

What Really Happens After Death - Doctors & Nurses Are Afraid To Tell You

October 16, 2026

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5 min read

What Really Happens After Death — Doctors & Nurses Are Afraid To Tell You

In 1997, on Easter weekend, a man named Jeff Olson fell asleep at the wheel while driving home. His car rolled eight times at 75 miles per hour. His wife and son died at the scene; his seven-year-old son survived. Olson was airlifted to a local hospital with a broken back and crushed leg. While he was on the operating table, Dr. Jeff O'Driscoll—who wasn't assigned to the case—was grabbed by a nurse named Rachel and told he had to come to the trauma room. When he entered, he saw doctors and nurses rushing around the patient. But he and Nurse Rachel also saw something else: a woman with curly blonde hair and flowing white clothing hovering above the man on the table. She wasn't a physical being, but she was clearly in the room. Years later, when O'Driscoll and Olson met and compared notes, Olson described floating above the accident scene in a bubble of light with his wife beside him, who told him he had to go back because their surviving son needed him. The woman O'Driscoll and Rachel had seen was Olson's wife.

This phenomenon has a name in the clinical literature: a shared death experience.

What Shared Death Experiences Actually Are

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What you'll learn

  • 1 What Really Happens After Death - Doctors & Nurses Are Afraid To Tell You
  • 2 Timestamped Outline
  • 3 (00:00) **Opening Case: Dr. Jeff O'Driscoll's ER Experience** - A trauma doctor and nurse witness a woman hovering above a dying patient in the trauma bay
  • 4 (01:09) **Ad Break** - Carvana and Helix Sleep advertisements
  • 5 (02:51) **Introducing Shared Death Experiences** - Hosts define SDEs and distinguish them from near-death experiences (NDEs)
  • 6 (04:17) **Dr. Raymond Moody's Research** - The pioneer who coined "near-death experience" later documented shared death experiences
  • 7 (06:41) **Dr. Raymond Moody in His Own Words** - Audio clip of Moody describing SDEs and his personal experience with his mother's death

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Raymond Moody

Show Notes

What if you could experience someone else’s death…without being the one who was dying?


For centuries, people across cultures have reported something far stranger than a traditional near death experience: shared death experiences (SDEs). Healthy, conscious people (including doctors, nurses, family members, and even people thousands of miles away) have described witnessing or experiencing phenomena seemingly connected to someone in the process of dying.


But how is that possible?


Some witnesses report seeing hovering apparitions, mysterious lights, mist, sounds, or even figures seemingly guiding the dying person into another realm. In some cases, multiple people in the same room claim to witness the same phenomenon.


Are these experiences hallucinations? A psychological response to grief? Something science hasn't yet explained? Or could they point to something much deeper about consciousness, death, and what happens when we die?


And then there are the experiences that happen after death.


People who report after-death communication experiences sometimes say they have perceived a deceased loved one as being healthy, peaceful, and fully present in what feels like a new environment. Others report receiving a specific message, sign, or unmistakable sense that their loved one is still somehow connected to them.


For those who experience them, these encounters can be profoundly comforting, sometimes helping people process grief, accept the death of someone they love, and completely rethink their understanding of the afterlife and what happens to consciousness after death.


But are these simply experiences created by the grieving mind—or could they represent something more?


We'll also revisit near-death experiencers and NDE researchers previously featured on the podcast to hear their perspectives on shared death experiences and what these accounts might tell us about consciousness, death, and the possibility of an existence beyond this life.


In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, we explore the fascinating and controversial world of shared death experiences and ask questions that challenge the way we think about death, and perhaps even life itself.You don't have to be the one dying to experience death!