April 26, 2025 • 15 mins
Guest host Connie Willis and Dr. Brad Stuart explore his work with terminally ill patients, how the patients prepare themselves for death, and the enlightenment they have gained after returning from near death experiences.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Our guest tonight, our first guest, only guest tonight since
it's Friday and the open lines, is Brad Stuart. It's
the first time he's ever been on Coast to Coast AM.
He's practiced internal medicine in his office, He's practiced in
the emergency room the hospital, the ICU. Really nice guy
to talk with. I really enjoyed the conversation we've had already,
(00:29):
just to kind of say hey and get to know
each other. He spent twenty five years as a hospice
medical director. That's tough. I'll tell you what. That takes
a lot of strength. Founded a national model of care
assist people with serious illness at home. But most importantly,
he learned how to become a healer. And you can
(00:50):
find out well. You can go to his website. It's
Brad Stuart MD dot com and you spell Stuart with
the Stuart MD dot com. That's where you can find him.
His book is Faith Seeing Faith Seeing Death. We can
talk about that, but just in general, I mean, Brat,
thank you welcome for to be here on COASTAKOSAM and
(01:13):
it's a joy to talk with you because we just
had some great conversation before and I think we're both conversationalists.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well, thank you, Connie. It's great to be here. And
that's a compliment. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yes, I agree with you. What I really liked a
lot is that you have the spiritual thing going, you
have this, you have the scientific thing happening, but you
also know that there's some things outside of that box
and you you're admitting to them, and I think that's fantastic.
And you you're saying, well, there's some sort of science
(01:46):
to it, right, Oh.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, I've been In fact, I'm sure we'll get way
into this, but science, science is the root of our
knowledge of this world. And you know, I'm happy to
say that I've been devoted to science for about fifty
years or more as a physician. And you know, I
(02:11):
think science has given us not total answers to questions,
but they point us in the right direction. That being said,
science has limits, and I think some of the things
we're going to talk about tonight around the end of
life and what may come after, especially you know, getting evidence,
(02:33):
I think scientific evidence from people who have died in
ICUs and been revived and have a story to tell
that's scientific evidence, and I think it's going to probably
force science to question its assumptions about materialism, you know,
the brain being the only thing that produces the mind.
(02:56):
I think we have plenty of time here to launch
our ourselves into what may be reality apart from an
above and beyond what science has to tell us.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now you're on coast to coast am Okay, So we
have been talking about this since like the early nineties.
This is what we talk about every night we are open.
You have millions of people here that come and listen
to this show specifically so we can talk about these
kinds of things. So we've been talking about this stuff
for decades. This is nothing new to us. So do
(03:34):
you think science is finally just getting here to where
we are? Because we used to be laughed at all
the time, and now people are really big into it.
And we've been talking about this for a long long time.
We don't care that it's science or not. But I
know science cares about that, So I mean, what do.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You think of that.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Science does care about that? In fact, I was very
disappointed to read the latest article in the Medical Scientific
literature about near death experiences. It came out in one
of the Nature journals. Nature is one of the foremost
scientific journals in the world. And you know, my disappointment
(04:19):
came from right up front. They said, you know, we
will only be discussing near death experiences and what may
cause them in terms of brain chemistry. We will not
be exploring anything beyond beyond that. They call it dualism
when you begin to talk about something other than the
(04:43):
body surviving after death. And you know, my problem with
that is that there are so many reports now coming
straight out of some of the most scientifically based clinical areas.
Is that you can find, you know, the ICUs and
(05:03):
major medical centers. There are stories coming out of there
that really tell us that there is something beyond what
happens to us when the body dies. And so I
think what it might be nice to talk about tonight
is how to prepare yourself when you're in this life
(05:24):
for the end of it. And then we can also,
of course touch on what we're discovering now what might
lie beyond that from a scientific point of view, because
I think more and more of it is scientific.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And I don't think any of us really care if
it's scientific or not, we just believe in it. So
it's we already know that there's something out there for
the most part, and so whether it's scientific or not,
whether it has to be proved or not, sometimes you
don't have to have all that. We just know it
and we're happy about that and we move on to
other things. But I know a lot of other people
(06:00):
have to have things proven and that's where the science
comes in, and those to me, it's just like, I
know it goes on and I'm happy about that, but
I don't have to prove it to anybody. I'm just
so happy. I feel that way, which does get into
the end of the life teachings. Holy cow, I think
(06:20):
that is a fantastic thing. I never really knew or
thought about any of the end of life type things
because I've never had to deal with that. Even though
I've had people pass away around me, it wasn't like
we got into a lot of the things that you do.
And I think it's really really cool. So can you
(06:43):
teach us more about what happens when people get to
the end of their life? And I guess they know
there's a time amount of time. Maybe is that when
people start learning a little bit more about it and
turning into hey, think about what's happening next. When they
make that turn, I'm probably I'm sure you've seen when
(07:05):
somebody makes that turn to going realizing I'm going to
pass away. And is that the proper phrase to say, Well.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
You can call it making the turn. I think what
it sounds like you're referring to there is when someone
begins to really look at what is going to happen
when their life ends. And the interesting thing about that
is that most people, I'd say almost everyone who is say,
(07:37):
living a healthy life and has something happen like a
cancer diagnosis, and has to or could begin looking at
the end of their lives, most people will do anything
but turn the corner, as you call it. I'd call
it more getting over the hump, because I think there's
a huge emotional wall stands between us when we're alive
(08:04):
and happy and functioning and us when we're actually ready
to leave this life. There's a mountain to climb for
many people, and on the other side of that mountain
is what you're looking at. When people are really ready
to let go and move on. Some people make that
(08:26):
transition really, really easily many other people, it really takes
some work, and that's why in my own medical career,
saving lives was very interesting for about a decade, and
then I discovered that the most fascinating people were the
(08:47):
ones that I couldn't save. And that's when the real
work starts. Is when you discovered, together as a doctor
and patient that a person is really not going to survive,
and breaking news and working your way through to where
you can really let go to what can lie beyond,
that's the real work, and for a lot of people
(09:10):
it's serious work.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, you had stated that fear of dying is wired
into our body and brain.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yes it is. I mean that's what's so interesting about
talking about what can lie beyond the end of life.
That's easy to talk about and imagine when you're in
a body, but when you're really confronted with the fact
(09:43):
that your body is going to stop existing and you
know that's coming, I think it's impossible to not come
up against a certain amount of fear. I don't think
I've ever met anyone out of hundreds and hundre of
people who doesn't hit kind of a panic stage there
(10:06):
Because you're so conditioned to life going on one day
leads to the next. You kind of know what to expect,
and suddenly there's this very very new thing that you
have never experienced. You may think, and I think many
people who feel their spiritual are pretty sure that they've
(10:30):
kind of got the death thing wired and they aren't
going to mind if they find out that they may die.
Most of those people wind up very surprised to discover
that it's a shock. In fact, I went through that myself.
I was diagnosed with cancer after I had dealt with
(10:50):
dying people for a long time, and it knocked me
for a loop. I was totally unprepared for that, and
I tell the story in my book. It's something that
you really have to work your way through and sink
into and feel because it's a feeling thing. You can't
(11:10):
think your way through it. And it's a mystery, and
it's something that you can't just sit down and figure out.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, Facing Death is his book. You can find that
on Amazon. You can also write it's on Amazon as well.
Right that you can go to Brad Stewart MD dot
com and find it there and look at it. I
was interested in the lady saying, what was it more
like a bunch of ants, because because I always thought
(11:42):
that too, that's what we are. We're primitive little ants,
just kind of doing our thing. We have no idea
how huge it is around us and how primitive we
really are. And it was really interesting to hear her
say that in your book.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yeah, that was Stephanie, and I was funny. She my
wife were very close. I knew Stephanie pretty well for
quite a while before she was diagnosed with cancer, and
she really had a difficult time of it, went through
some really tough chemo and had had a problem in
(12:20):
the hospital. She needed to get chemo that was so
potent that she had to be hospitalized to receive it.
And so she was in the hospital one night after
getting a serious chemo session and got up to go
to the bathroom, had a seizure, passed out, hit her head,
and you know, it could have been a real tragedy.
(12:41):
She woke up in the hospital and it was sort
of the opposite of a tragedy. She she told me
that when she woke up, she was in a different place.
And it turned out she's one of the few people
I've met who began to understand and live and experience
(13:03):
being in a place that I think if you look
at stories people tell when they die and are revived
and come back and have a near death experience, she
got to experience that before she died and in a way,
and she called it the knowledge Place, and it really
(13:24):
resembles what the stories people tell when they come back
from the other side. She was very peaceful. She had
a couple of teenage daughters and she knew they would
be okay. She actually was ready to go. And you know,
I was very impressed by her story because, like I said,
(13:47):
I think she's the only person that had some real
experience of what it might be like on this side
before she actually transitioned to the other side.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, that big bump on the head, man, that was
like crossing over coming back without even anybody helping her
come back, right, it just seemed like what did they
Nobody was there to help her. After she got the
bump on the head for a little bit, right, she
went she like crossover then came back, is what I'm gathering,
before anybody even found her.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
That could be. The funny thing was she survived, went
back home, and she had a very difficult time from
a clinical standpoint. The cancer had invaded her neck, her spine,
right below her her skull, and she was really basically paralyzed,
(14:43):
had to be cared for in bed. She couldn't move
on her own, she had a lot of pain, and
she was in the kind of state where it would
have taken many people to the point where they wouldn't
want to live anymore. She was exactly the opposite. And
I had to go at her at her home a
couple of times because I didn't actually believe until I
(15:05):
sat with her for a few hours each time and
came to understand the place that she had come to.
She she went to the knowledge place and she stayed there.
And I don't think I've seen that many times, but
it's it was a chance to really be with someone
who was truly at peace before they died. She had
(15:28):
she had let go long before she actually was at
the point of leaving her body.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Our guest tonight, our first guest, only guest tonight since
it's Friday and the open lines, is Brad Stuart. It's
the first time he's ever been on Coast to Coast AM.
He's practiced internal medicine in his office, He's practiced in
the emergency room the hospital, the ICU. Really nice guy
to talk with. I really enjoyed the conversation we've had already,
(00:29):
just to kind of say hey and get to know
each other. He spent twenty five years as a hospice
medical director. That's tough. I'll tell you what. That takes
a lot of strength. Founded a national model of care
assist people with serious illness at home. But most importantly,
he learned how to become a healer. And you can
(00:50):
find out well. You can go to his website. It's
Brad Stuart MD dot com and you spell Stuart with
the Stuart MD dot com. That's where you can find him.
His book is Faith Seeing Faith Seeing Death. We can
talk about that, but just in general, I mean, Brat,
thank you welcome for to be here on COASTAKOSAM and
(01:13):
it's a joy to talk with you because we just
had some great conversation before and I think we're both conversationalists.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well, thank you, Connie. It's great to be here. And
that's a compliment. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yes, I agree with you. What I really liked a
lot is that you have the spiritual thing going, you
have this, you have the scientific thing happening, but you
also know that there's some things outside of that box
and you you're admitting to them, and I think that's fantastic.
And you you're saying, well, there's some sort of science
(01:46):
to it, right, Oh.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, I've been In fact, I'm sure we'll get way
into this, but science, science is the root of our
knowledge of this world. And you know, I'm happy to
say that I've been devoted to science for about fifty
years or more as a physician. And you know, I
(02:11):
think science has given us not total answers to questions,
but they point us in the right direction. That being said,
science has limits, and I think some of the things
we're going to talk about tonight around the end of
life and what may come after, especially you know, getting evidence,
(02:33):
I think scientific evidence from people who have died in
ICUs and been revived and have a story to tell
that's scientific evidence, and I think it's going to probably
force science to question its assumptions about materialism, you know,
the brain being the only thing that produces the mind.
(02:56):
I think we have plenty of time here to launch
our ourselves into what may be reality apart from an
above and beyond what science has to tell us.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now you're on coast to coast am Okay, So we
have been talking about this since like the early nineties.
This is what we talk about every night we are open.
You have millions of people here that come and listen
to this show specifically so we can talk about these
kinds of things. So we've been talking about this stuff
for decades. This is nothing new to us. So do
(03:34):
you think science is finally just getting here to where
we are? Because we used to be laughed at all
the time, and now people are really big into it.
And we've been talking about this for a long long time.
We don't care that it's science or not. But I
know science cares about that, So I mean, what do.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You think of that.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Science does care about that? In fact, I was very
disappointed to read the latest article in the Medical Scientific
literature about near death experiences. It came out in one
of the Nature journals. Nature is one of the foremost
scientific journals in the world. And you know, my disappointment
(04:19):
came from right up front. They said, you know, we
will only be discussing near death experiences and what may
cause them in terms of brain chemistry. We will not
be exploring anything beyond beyond that. They call it dualism
when you begin to talk about something other than the
(04:43):
body surviving after death. And you know, my problem with
that is that there are so many reports now coming
straight out of some of the most scientifically based clinical areas.
Is that you can find, you know, the ICUs and
(05:03):
major medical centers. There are stories coming out of there
that really tell us that there is something beyond what
happens to us when the body dies. And so I
think what it might be nice to talk about tonight
is how to prepare yourself when you're in this life
(05:24):
for the end of it. And then we can also,
of course touch on what we're discovering now what might
lie beyond that from a scientific point of view, because
I think more and more of it is scientific.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And I don't think any of us really care if
it's scientific or not, we just believe in it. So
it's we already know that there's something out there for
the most part, and so whether it's scientific or not,
whether it has to be proved or not, sometimes you
don't have to have all that. We just know it
and we're happy about that and we move on to
other things. But I know a lot of other people
(06:00):
have to have things proven and that's where the science
comes in, and those to me, it's just like, I
know it goes on and I'm happy about that, but
I don't have to prove it to anybody. I'm just
so happy. I feel that way, which does get into
the end of the life teachings. Holy cow, I think
(06:20):
that is a fantastic thing. I never really knew or
thought about any of the end of life type things
because I've never had to deal with that. Even though
I've had people pass away around me, it wasn't like
we got into a lot of the things that you do.
And I think it's really really cool. So can you
(06:43):
teach us more about what happens when people get to
the end of their life? And I guess they know
there's a time amount of time. Maybe is that when
people start learning a little bit more about it and
turning into hey, think about what's happening next. When they
make that turn, I'm probably I'm sure you've seen when
(07:05):
somebody makes that turn to going realizing I'm going to
pass away. And is that the proper phrase to say, Well.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
You can call it making the turn. I think what
it sounds like you're referring to there is when someone
begins to really look at what is going to happen
when their life ends. And the interesting thing about that
is that most people, I'd say almost everyone who is say,
(07:37):
living a healthy life and has something happen like a
cancer diagnosis, and has to or could begin looking at
the end of their lives, most people will do anything
but turn the corner, as you call it. I'd call
it more getting over the hump, because I think there's
a huge emotional wall stands between us when we're alive
(08:04):
and happy and functioning and us when we're actually ready
to leave this life. There's a mountain to climb for
many people, and on the other side of that mountain
is what you're looking at. When people are really ready
to let go and move on. Some people make that
(08:26):
transition really, really easily many other people, it really takes
some work, and that's why in my own medical career,
saving lives was very interesting for about a decade, and
then I discovered that the most fascinating people were the
(08:47):
ones that I couldn't save. And that's when the real
work starts. Is when you discovered, together as a doctor
and patient that a person is really not going to survive,
and breaking news and working your way through to where
you can really let go to what can lie beyond,
that's the real work, and for a lot of people
(09:10):
it's serious work.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, you had stated that fear of dying is wired
into our body and brain.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yes it is. I mean that's what's so interesting about
talking about what can lie beyond the end of life.
That's easy to talk about and imagine when you're in
a body, but when you're really confronted with the fact
(09:43):
that your body is going to stop existing and you
know that's coming, I think it's impossible to not come
up against a certain amount of fear. I don't think
I've ever met anyone out of hundreds and hundre of
people who doesn't hit kind of a panic stage there
(10:06):
Because you're so conditioned to life going on one day
leads to the next. You kind of know what to expect,
and suddenly there's this very very new thing that you
have never experienced. You may think, and I think many
people who feel their spiritual are pretty sure that they've
(10:30):
kind of got the death thing wired and they aren't
going to mind if they find out that they may die.
Most of those people wind up very surprised to discover
that it's a shock. In fact, I went through that myself.
I was diagnosed with cancer after I had dealt with
(10:50):
dying people for a long time, and it knocked me
for a loop. I was totally unprepared for that, and
I tell the story in my book. It's something that
you really have to work your way through and sink
into and feel because it's a feeling thing. You can't
(11:10):
think your way through it. And it's a mystery, and
it's something that you can't just sit down and figure out.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, Facing Death is his book. You can find that
on Amazon. You can also write it's on Amazon as well.
Right that you can go to Brad Stewart MD dot
com and find it there and look at it. I
was interested in the lady saying, what was it more
like a bunch of ants, because because I always thought
(11:42):
that too, that's what we are. We're primitive little ants,
just kind of doing our thing. We have no idea
how huge it is around us and how primitive we
really are. And it was really interesting to hear her
say that in your book.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yeah, that was Stephanie, and I was funny. She my
wife were very close. I knew Stephanie pretty well for
quite a while before she was diagnosed with cancer, and
she really had a difficult time of it, went through
some really tough chemo and had had a problem in
(12:20):
the hospital. She needed to get chemo that was so
potent that she had to be hospitalized to receive it.
And so she was in the hospital one night after
getting a serious chemo session and got up to go
to the bathroom, had a seizure, passed out, hit her head,
and you know, it could have been a real tragedy.
(12:41):
She woke up in the hospital and it was sort
of the opposite of a tragedy. She she told me
that when she woke up, she was in a different place.
And it turned out she's one of the few people
I've met who began to understand and live and experience
(13:03):
being in a place that I think if you look
at stories people tell when they die and are revived
and come back and have a near death experience, she
got to experience that before she died and in a way,
and she called it the knowledge Place, and it really
(13:24):
resembles what the stories people tell when they come back
from the other side. She was very peaceful. She had
a couple of teenage daughters and she knew they would
be okay. She actually was ready to go. And you know,
I was very impressed by her story because, like I said,
(13:47):
I think she's the only person that had some real
experience of what it might be like on this side
before she actually transitioned to the other side.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, that big bump on the head, man, that was
like crossing over coming back without even anybody helping her
come back, right, it just seemed like what did they
Nobody was there to help her. After she got the
bump on the head for a little bit, right, she
went she like crossover then came back, is what I'm gathering,
before anybody even found her.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
That could be. The funny thing was she survived, went
back home, and she had a very difficult time from
a clinical standpoint. The cancer had invaded her neck, her spine,
right below her her skull, and she was really basically paralyzed,
(14:43):
had to be cared for in bed. She couldn't move
on her own, she had a lot of pain, and
she was in the kind of state where it would
have taken many people to the point where they wouldn't
want to live anymore. She was exactly the opposite. And
I had to go at her at her home a
couple of times because I didn't actually believe until I
(15:05):
sat with her for a few hours each time and
came to understand the place that she had come to.
She she went to the knowledge place and she stayed there.
And I don't think I've seen that many times, but
it's it was a chance to really be with someone
who was truly at peace before they died. She had
(15:28):
she had let go long before she actually was at
the point of leaving her body.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
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George Noory
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