When We Die Talks

This week's caller is 79 years old and has spent the last three years going down every rabbit hole death has to offer. All in service of a book that's about to come out.

They have lost a husband and a mother. They have survived breast cancer. And somewhere in all of that, they stopped being afraid of dying and started being afraid of being dead.

This is a conversation between two people who have ended up in surprisingly similar places on a topic most people won't touch.

We talk about what it means to sit with "I don't know" as an actual answer, why sadness might be easier to live with than fear, and what panpsychism and a pretty intense psychedelic experience have to do with any of this. We also get into ego, annihilation, the logistics of being a ghost, and why the idea of nothing before you were born is somehow less terrifying than the idea of nothing after you die.

In this conversation:

• The difference between being afraid of dying and being afraid of being dead
• Panpsychism — the idea that everything, including rocks and plants, has some form of consciousness — and why it's making a quiet comeback
• 5-MeO-DMT vs. DMT, and why machine elves are not the vibe
• Ram Dass on ego dissolution and why releasing the self might be the only real antidote to the fear of death
• Why fear might just be sadness wearing a disguise
• The "nothing before you were born" reframe — and where it came from
•  Annaka Harris' book Lights On (I mentioned this during the call but couldn't remember the title at the time)

Book recommendations: The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This week's caller was diagnosed with a terminal illness at eight years old. They have never not known that death was part of their life.

They are an actor, a writer, a reader, a person who rescues snails and keeps a pet millipede and loves sharks because they understand what it feels like to be misunderstood. They are also someone who has spent their entire life figuring out how to live fully inside a body that makes that complicated.

This is a conversation about what it looks like to choose life, loudly, intentionally, and without apology, when death has always been in the room.

We talk about the guilt of knowing you're going to hurt everyone who loves you, the difference between being afraid of death and being afraid of dying, and why so much of how we portray terminally ill people in media gets it completely wrong. We also get into what they hope they can do once they're gone, why they want to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival even though their doctors would disagree, and the one thing they still want to experience before they die, which is not what you'd expect.

In this conversation:

• The difference between fearing death and fearing the process of dying
• Why "you don't look sick" is something we should all agree to stop saying
• The guilt of knowing your death is going to hurt the people you love most

Book recommendations: Reverie by Ryan La Sala; I Fell in Love with Hope by Lancali

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This week's caller is a pediatric nurse who has been around death long enough to stop fearing it and start getting curious about it.

They lost their father to suicide as a teenager. A few months later, they were the one doing CPR on their childhood best friend after an accidental fentanyl overdose. They were sixteen. They didn't become a nurse because of those losses exactly, but those losses made them someone who couldn't look away.

This is a conversation about what it looks like when death becomes a daily presence instead of a distant fear, and what a person builds out of that.

We talk about what it's like to have a job where you see about two people die every week and what your mind does to keep moving. We get into reincarnation through a video game analogy that is really fascinating, the difference between what you believe and what you hope, and why this caller's fear isn't death itself. It's leaving people behind. We also hear the story of a man who died alone because he'd told his children he never wanted to see them again, and what he asked this caller to pass on.

Content note: This episode includes a brief mention of suicide and accidental overdose. Neither is dwelt on at length.

In this conversation:

• What it actually feels like to watch someone die and how nurses keep moving after
• The three-lives theory: reincarnation, Mario, and why deja vu might mean something
• Why their fear of death is really a fear of what they'd leave behind
• What a dying man asked this caller to tell people, and why she still hears his voice

Book recommendation: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

Referenced in the intro: Gift Economy — A Mission Statement on Donation-Based Teaching by David Sudar

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This one is different.

When We Die Talks is built around anonymous conversations — people calling in to talk about death, dying, and what they think comes next. No names, no faces, just honest conversation. This episode breaks that format entirely, and I think once you hear it you'll understand why it had to.

Don Sires was one of the very first guests on this podcast. Over a year ago he sat down with me, not anonymously, by his own choice, and talked about living with ALS, his Baha'i faith, and what he believed waited on the other side. That episode, Episode 8, became one of the most listened to conversations this show has ever had. It's still the one I get contacted about the most.

A few weeks ago Don texted me. His nurse had given him four to six weeks to live. And then he asked if I wanted to do a wrap-up interview.

That's very Don.

I went to his home and we sat down one more time. This conversation is quieter than the first one. Slower. The Don you met in Episode 8 is still very much there, the curiosity, the warmth, the willingness to go deep, but you'll notice the difference. He wanted to wrap things up, offer some final thoughts, and leave something behind.

If you haven't heard Episode 8, please start there. Get to know him first. Then come back.

I'm honored that Don trusted me with his story over a year ago. I'm even more honored that he trusted me with this.

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This week's caller has been living with grief long enough to become a student of it. They lost their mom at twenty-two. Then their cat. Then their soul dog thirteen months ago. 

This is a conversation about grief that doesn't rank itself, animals as family, and what it means to believe your soul chose this life even when this life has been really hard.

We talk about losing a parent young and what it does when no one ever talked about death before it happened. We get into ecological grief, the mourning of a world as it used to be, and how a hottest summer on record in Greece sent this caller on a path toward becoming a grief recovery specialist. We talk about souls, reincarnation, the possibility that time doesn't exist where our animals go, and the very real question of whether you'll get to meet your dog again.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, we end up laughing about whether the old souls are just patiently waiting while the young souls keep coming back around to figure it out.

In this conversation:

• Ecological grief and why grieving a changing world is not a disorder, it's a response
• Anticipatory grief — the kind that starts before you've lost anyone
• Why they found it harder to lose their cat than their mother, and why that makes complete sense
• The case for anti-speciesism in grief work — why every animal deserves to be mourned without shame

A few lines from the call:

• "Death is the only thing that is sure that's gonna happen to our body after we're born, and yet no one speaks about it."
• "I didn't even want to live anymore." What losing their soul dog did, said plainly.
• "We don't overcome grief. We learn how to live with grief."

Book recommendation: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

Note: This episode includes an open discussion of suicide and suicide loss. Please listen when you're in a good place to do so.

This week's caller has lived through a concentrated stretch of loss that would bring most people to their knees. A beloved grandmother who raised them. Another grandmother, expected but still hard. And then, in March of 2021, their husband — suddenly, traumatically, in a way that left no warning and no clean answers.

They came to this conversation not from a place of unresolved pain, but from one of hard-won peace. And they wanted to talk about how they got there.

At the center of it is a belief they've held since childhood and leaned on through every loss: that no one dies without a final chance. That in the last moments of any life, there is still an opening — for forgiveness, for grace, for something that doesn't close until it actually closes.

In this conversation:

• Losing three significant people in three years and how each grief felt entirely different
• What it means to find your grandmother on the floor and just know before you know
• Surviving the death of a spouse by suicide
• Why the caller believes their husband is in heaven and the theological reasoning that got them there
• The difference between religion and relationship, and why that distinction mattered most when the questions got hardest
• What it means to be a widow in your forties when you were expecting to grow old together

A few lines from the call:

• "I didn't know up from down. I was totally crushed."
• "He didn't commit suicide. He died by suicide."
• "In those last twinkling moments — every single person has that one last opportunity."
• "When it's my time, I'll be ready. And not fearful."

Book mentioned in this episode: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This week's caller has been sitting with death since childhood. They grew up deep inside Pentecostal religion, the shouting, the standards, the constant weight of what comes next, and instead of finding comfort there, they left with more questions than answers. They've been chasing those questions ever since. 

This is a conversation about ego, identity, and why the thing afraid of dying might not even be you.

We talk about growing up in a religious household and what happens when you rebel your way into actually thinking for yourself, the idea that "authentic personality" is a contradiction because the word personality comes from persona, which means mask. We get into reincarnation, not the hopeful kind, but the honest kind: consciousness continues, the ego doesn't. And the caller makes a case that death isn't just okay. It's necessary. Without it, nothing means anything.

In this conversation:

• Growing up Pentecostal and what that does to a kid who can't stop thinking about death
• Why the caller stopped calling themselves an atheist and what they believe instead
• The ego as the thing that panics and what's left when you start subtracting it
• Their version of reincarnation: the consciousness returns, but you don't, and why that's actually fine
• Why they believe death gives life its meaning and the thought experiment they used to make that case to a believer
• How psychedelics and long stretches of solitude helped them stop fearing and start accepting

A few lines from the call:

• "It sounds like you've been in an existential crisis since you were a child." What their therapist said, and why it tracked.
• "I'm nobody and it's not a bad thing. It's a liberating thing."
• "On psychedelics, I'm more ready to die than at any other time."

Book recommendations: The Book of Enoch 

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This weeks caller lost their baby brother on Thanksgiving Day when they were five, and has spent their whole life with what they call "a little bird called death" on their shoulder. They're a death doula, a trauma-informed yoga instructor, a Reiki master, and an adventure motorcyclist, and they're still  terrified of death.

But somehow, that's exactly what makes this conversation so good.

The caller is funny, self-aware, and refreshingly honest about the contradiction of doing death work while being afraid of death. We talk about watching grief reshape their entire family after their brother died, what it actually feels like to hold space for mass shooting survivors, and a late-night fight that ended their relationship with their father for good. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, they work out, out loud, a theory about death that involves dimensions, dreamlike transitions, and shedding the skin to see what's really there.

In this conversation:

• What death anxiety actually feels like when you're wired for it, including the moments it just crushes you out of nowhere
• Losing their brother at five, and how that grief quietly shaped everything after
• Holding space for trauma survivors, and what they get out of it that they didn't expect
• Their working theory on what happens after we die: dimensions, metamorphosis, and coming into a new space without trauma

A few lines from the call:

• "I've been sitting with a little bird called death on my shoulder my entire life."
• "We're not actually dead until we're dead. We actually are alive all the way until we die."
• "Maybe when we die it's like having a dream. And when we wake from this dream of death, we come into being in a new space."

Book recommendation: Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul by Stephen Jenkinson

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

This caller grew up without religion, lost their mom to suicide at 13, and spent years in a fear of death so overwhelming they couldn't be around skeletons or eat meat. Then they were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

But somehow, this is not a sad episode.

This week's caller is funny, sharp, and genuinely at peace — not because life got easier, but because they stopped waiting for it to. We talk about what it actually felt like to go from debilitating death anxiety to building a community, writing a book, and strapping roller skates back on at 46 after a hip replacement. We talk about what a Parkinson's diagnosis changed, and what it quietly gave them. And they say something near the end of the call that I've been thinking about since: that they're just glitter. That glitter sticks to everything and you can't get rid of it no matter how hard you try.

In this conversation:

• What death anxiety actually felt like — before a diagnosis put it in perspective
• Losing their mom to suicide at 13, and how that fear lived inside them for decades
• Finding purpose through Parkinson's — and why they call it a "terribly wonderful gift"
• Hope vs. belief: how they hold both, especially when it comes to their mom
• Being a single parent of four kids (two grown, two teenagers) while living with a progressive disease
• Dark humor, living intentionally, and not caring who watches you dance in the rain
• What they still want to do before they're done — and why it's simpler than you'd expect

A few lines from the call:

• "I guess I'll have to embrace this. So I did."
• "Your hundred percent today looks different than your hundred percent yesterday."
• "We're all just meat and electric jelly when it breaks down to it."

Book Recommendation: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

What would change if we treated death as a human event, not just a medical one?

This week’s anonymous caller is a death doula. And instead of going abstract, they get surprisingly specific about what the end can look like and what people wish they’d put in place sooner.

A lot of this episode lives in the gap between what we assume will happen and what actually happens when things move quickly: who makes decisions, what families scramble to figure out, and how easily someone’s wishes can get lost if nothing has been talked about ahead of time.

It’s also a reminder that this isn’t only an “old age” topic. The caller talks about working with people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. Which quietly changes the question from “someday” to “at some point, and we don’t get to choose when.”

And underneath all of that is one simple reframe that keeps showing up throughout the call: the medical side matters, but the human side is usually what people need most.

In this episode:

• What a death doula actually does (and what they don’t)
• Why dying often needs more human support than medical support
• Why end-of-life planning is a form of care
• The reality that terminal diagnoses don’t only happen “late in life”
• Why the timeline is the part none of us gets to know
• What tends to help at the end — and what tends to complicate things

A few moments from the call:

• “Dying is much more of a human event than it is a medical event.”
• “You need more human support than you need medical support.”
• “We have no idea when death will come for us.”
• “I’m working with people who are in their twenties or thirties or forties or fifties, and they’ve received a terminal diagnosis…”

Book Recommendation: Anonymous Caller Spoiler (preorder link)

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness.

Stay Connected
🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com
📰 Substack: When We Die Talks
📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks
▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.