Arabella Tresilian is an interpersonal mediator working in the medical care and end-of-life environment. She helps families find acceptance with each other and the challenges they face.

Arabella’s nuanced understanding of how emotions manifest in people stems from an awareness of what’s at stake for people. She has a wonderful ability to integrate different stories into a bigger picture to help people move forward that is both inspiring and consoling. Discerning between empathy and the more radical effects of compassion, Arabella shares a range of insights in this episode, the tools and techniques that she uses to help people communicate deeply and arrive at a common understanding.    

Rhiannon Thomas has learnt a new way of doing law. Guided by purpose and values, Integrative Law a radically different approach to the win/lose adversarial approach of traditional law. Instead, here is a process that is collaborative and reflective, integrating psychological, spiritual and cultural aspects of a person to discover what motivates their wishes and their actions. Because encountering the law is always an emotional thing - especially when it comes to those deathly bits - wills, guardianship, end-of-life care. Here's a better way to do those things...

In this episode, Warrant Officer Stephné Le Roux of the South African Police Service (SAPS) provides intimate detail of her fascinating work identifying skeletal remains.

Frequently, this means determining whether these are perhaps from an ancient burial site or a more recent crime scene. In a country where endemic violence and poverty, migration, substance abuse and other factors tear families apart, many of our dead are unidentified, unclaimed. What is the story they tell?

Stephné discusses the challenges she faces, sharing good ideas to improve the systems that often make her work so challenging. With consistent humour and modesty, she shares detail of the techniques she uses to analyse human remains, and speaks candidly about how her work has influenced her attitude to life.

A whopper of an episode with an extraordinary guest, outgoing Emeritus Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Cape Town Medical School, Dr Graham Louw. We discuss body donation and what it’s like for students to apprehend their first cadaver, and take a trip under the skin, besides discussing a whole pile of other things that Graham has learnt over his long career - a career which has benefited many thousands of people.

Eric Adjetey Anang grew up playing in his grandfather's carpentry workshop in Accra, where he learnt how to make the distinctive Ghanaian abebuu adekai - or 'boxes of proverbs.' These are the fantastic customized coffins pioneered by his grandfather, Kane Kwei, who made the first one in the shape of an airplane for a neighbour who had always wanted to fly...

Kirsty Horn is a Breast Cancer Warrior, no mere 'survivor.' In this episode, she shares extremely useful insight gained during her diagnosis and treatment journey, with candour, energy and a great sense of humour. Tips for self-care, family relationships, support group formation for the help with the explicit nitty-gritty... as well as insider perspective to what kind of friendship and care helps best - this is an amazing resource for anyone who is starting this journey, or who wants to support someone they love.

Karen Borochowitz founded Dementia South Africa over 20 years ago, after caring for her mother who had Alzheimer's Disease.

She shares a lifetime's worth of wisdom and insight into how to care for someone living with a dementia, how it impacts families and what they can do, and discusses stigma and the challenges experienced in South Africa.

Jill Katz is the person you want by your side to help navigate all the stuff a loved one leaves behind. Both super-practical and compassionate, Jill is blessed with intuition and a deep understanding of neurodivergent behaviour, and how we can all get stuck and overwhelmed. She provides a set of simple systems that help guide you through the clutter, and clear things away – materially, emotionally and cognitively – to unlock your true potential.  

Keshnie Mathi is the Grief Companion - a human compendium of diverse emotion, humour, compassion and wisdom, wrapped in the professional ability to listen. In this episode, she details how she supports people in their grief. And at the end of the episode are a few ways you too can support someone experiencing the pain of loss.

Dr Ivan Schewitz is a veteran explorer of the thoracic cavity, having saved and improved many lives in his long and pioneering surgical career. In this episode, he reflects on what a lifetime's work has taught him about life and death, and the responsibility that he carries. He shares intimate experience about what it's like to save a life, and to lose one, and how best to communicate this to a family. A warm and affable man with great experience, related with humility and kindness.