The day her son was born, Stephanie Arnold died. Premonitions told her it was going to happen, but no one believed her. Even more unbelievable is what she saw when she flat-lined. In the first half of the program, Arnold joined guest host Dave Schrader (email) to discuss her remarkable near-death experience.
Arnold said her doctors discovered she had a condition called placenta previa (the placenta was growing on top of her cervix) during week 20 of her pregnancy. After researching the condition, Arnold sensed it would worsen and lead to rare complications that would ultimately cause her to die in the operating room. "This is going to happen to me, the only difference is the baby is going to survive," she recalled thinking to herself. Arnold explained how she repeatedly attempted to convince her family and medical team about what was going to happen but they could not see past test results which indicated nothing unusual with the pregnancy.
"I knew when I was going to die... it was going to be the day that I gave birth," she continued, noting the delivery team made sure a crash cart was in the operating room just in case. After the baby was born Arnold flat-lined for 37 seconds. She was quickly resuscitated by her doctors, then began months of recovery. Regression therapy later allowed her to remember details from the experience, including precisely what went on in the operating room when she crashed, and what she discovered on the other side of death. According to Arnold, she brought back the hope, strength, and understanding of the light existing within and around all of us, and absolute proof of an afterlife.
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In the latter half of the show, Jim Bell, professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, talked about the recent SpaceX rocket launch and space exploration. "A lot of people really do care about space... and America continuing to lead the exploration of space," he said. Bell suggested that unlike the Apollo missions the Space Shuttle program kept NASA tethered relatively close to Earth and away from exploring the cosmos—something private companies seem keen to do.
Bell commented on Elon Musk's SpaceX demonstrating how a private company can now do what has historically taken governments to accomplish. "It is really a big deal," he said. Bell compared watching the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rockets land themselves to something from a movie, and how the successful test has ignited much excitement in the space community and even among casual observers. He also spoke about asteroid mining companies currently prospecting to find the best places to set up operations, and the importance of setting safety and ownership regulations. Space flight and exploration is risky and will likely never be routine, Bell warned.