Does life have any meaning? What is the purpose of living? If you are asking these questions, you might be experiencing an existential crisis.

To tackle grief, loss and these huge life questions, New Orleans writer Anne Gisleson formed the Existential Crisis Reading Group. Along the way, the book group discovered writers like Dante, James Joyce, Franz Kafka and Clarice Lispector. They even creatively reenacted the Stations of the Cross. 

Anne's book The Futilitarians: Our Year Thinking, Drinking, Grieving, and Reading explores the grief of losing two younger siblings to suicide, as well as the beloved father who forbid writing about their deaths before his own. It is a deep, beautifully written book. 

While reading, host Katy Sewall really latched onto one quote by the Greek philosopher Epicurus writing about death.

He wrote: 

Against all other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city. 

Anne Gisleson invited Katy into her Bywater, New Orleans home to discuss life, death, and how we make meaning along the way.

 

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