When We Die Talks

This week’s Saturday Contemplation invites you to notice what often goes unseen — the quiet moments that make up a life. From the hum of a familiar room to the light shifting across a wall, we explore how impermanence turns the ordinary into something sacred. Gratitude, after all, begins with paying attention.

In honor of the two-year anniversary of When We Die Talks, all Saturday Contemplations from October are available to everyone — a small thank-you for being part of this project and for helping it grow from a single voicemail into a larger conversation.

The first contemplation of every month will always be free. But if you want the full experience — every weekly Saturday Contemplation and early access to new podcast episodes — you’ll need to join WWDT+. It’s the best way to support the show, keep these conversations alive, and make sure you don’t miss out on the reflections reserved only for members.

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 it mean to release your grip on the things you can’t control? This week’s Saturday Contemplation explores the quiet art of letting go — of expectations, identities, and moments that have already passed. Through breath and awareness, we reflect on how surrender can open space for peace, acceptance, and renewal.

Available exclusively to WWDT+ members. Saturday Contemplations are a weekly practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on your mortality, and reconnect with what gives your life meaning.

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.

In this week’s call, an anonymous caller from Perth, Australia — with deep family roots in Colombia — shares how culture, belief, and experience shape the way we face death.

She describes an Australia where humor keeps things light, sometimes at the cost of connection, and a Colombia where grief is collective — marked by candles, stories, music, and the warmth of family gathered to mourn and celebrate together. Those contrasts reveal not just different customs, but different ways of healing. When we share laughter or song, we resist the isolation that so often shadows Western grief.

Our conversation moves through faith and spirituality — from Catholicism to paganism to a blended, loving Christianity — and into a view of God and the universe rooted in compassion. She speaks of an afterlife that might meet each of us where we are: heaven, reincarnation, liminal spaces, or even the quiet possibility of nothingness. But more than any theory, it’s love that carries through — what we give, what we leave, what others hold on to.

The image she leaves us with lingers: when we die, we return to the universe like stardust — scattered, but still ourselves in the people and patterns we’ve touched.

Book Recommendations: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak; The Werewolf by Angela Carter (I believe “The Werewolf” is part of Angela Carter’s book of stories, The Bloody Chamber.)

Existence Is Evidence of Immortality by Michael Huemer

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.

You don’t need another reminder that time is limited. But you might need a reminder to act like it.

This week’s Saturday Contemplation explores what it really means to live as if your time mattered. Not in a rushed or panicked way, but with presence and intention. What would change if you stopped waiting for the “right moment” and started treating this moment as enough?

Available exclusively to WWDT+ members. Saturday Contemplations are a weekly practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on your mortality, and reconnect with what gives your life meaning.

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 if the clearest way to love life is to look directly at death?

This week’s caller has lived with chronic illness, which has kept mortality close. But instead of fear, he’s found a deep sense of gratitude — for warmth, for connection, for the chance to still be here.

We talk about the small joys that give life its texture, and the ways imagination can shape belief. He shares how, as a child, The Velveteen Rabbit made him believe that love could bring something to life — and how that same sense of magic continues to color how he sees the world.

There’s also a story about a car accident in his twenties — the sudden thought, “Here I come, God,” flashing through his mind before impact. That moment opened a lifelong curiosity about what it really feels like to die, and what might happen in those final seconds of awareness.

From there, we explore consciousness, spirit, and the idea that maybe God isn’t separate from us at all — but something that lives in the space between people, in our attempts to truly understand one another.

It’s a conversation about illness, faith, imagination, and gratitude — and how even when we face death, there’s still beauty in simply being alive.

Book Recommendations: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Movie Referenced: Before Sunset (dir. Richard Linklater)

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.

If you knew you only had one year left to live, what would you do differently? This week’s Saturday Contemplation invites you to sit with that question — not as a thought experiment, but as a mirror. What truly matters when time becomes finite? What would you let go of? And what would you finally make space for?

Available exclusively to WWDT+ members. Saturday Contemplations are a weekly practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on your mortality, and reconnect with what gives your life meaning.

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.

A single question opens a door most of us avoid: what do you think happens when we die? For this caller, the answer comes not from theory but from experience. During a medical crisis, she finds herself floating above her body, greeted by family who had already died, and facing an ornate threshold she’s told not to cross.

It’s a story that’s strange and tender, playful and grounded. Not a doctrine, but a report from the edge. Told by someone who has worked in hospice, studied death across cultures, and still didn’t expect the peace, or the humor, she found there.

We follow her journey from childhood Mormon teachings to teenage nihilism, through her years in hospice care and anthropology studies, and finally into the operating room where sepsis and surgeries bend time. She describes the gallery-like theater, the clarity of hearing loved ones without words, and the message she was sent back with: tell people it’s okay to die.

Along the way, we talk about why rituals matter in healthcare, how visibility reduces trauma, and how stories can soften fear. If you’ve ever carried questions about what comes next, or felt the weight of “nothingness” and wished for a crack of light, this conversation offers a new way of looking at it.

Book Recommendation: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Hey Cool, I'm Dead.

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 first Saturday Contemplation centers on the reality that each breath brings us closer to death. Our lifespan is ever-decreasing, and while that can feel heavy, it’s also what makes each breath, each moment, so precious.

The first contemplation of every month will always be free. But if you want the full experience — every weekly Saturday Contemplation and early access to new podcast episodes — you’ll need to join WWDT+. It’s the best way to support the show, keep these conversations alive, and make sure you don’t miss out on the reflections reserved only for members.

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 (and episode) marks the one-year anniversary of When We Die Talks.

Instead of an anonymous call, I’m taking time to pause and reflect. I share what this past year has taught me. About death, grief, connection, and even my own shifting beliefs. I talk about what I’ve learned from starting the podcast, the challenges and surprises along the way, and where things might be headed from here.

I also introduce something new: Saturday Contemplations. These short weekly reflections are designed to give you a moment to sit with mortality in your own life. The first one each month will always be free, and the rest will be available through WWDT+.

WWDT+ members not only get access to every Saturday Contemplation, but also early access to new episodes. It’s the best way to support the podcast and help me keep these conversations going.

Finally, I just want to say thank you. Whether you’ve listened to one episode or all thirty, shared the podcast with a friend, left a voicemail, or simply sat with these conversations quietly on your own. It all matters and it’s all appreciated.

The episode leaves off with a bit of uncertainty (maybe fittingly for a podcast about death). To be completely honest, I’m not sure where this is going to go this next year. Nothing is changing soon, but I’ve had the incredibly fortunate opportunity to spend a lot of time on this project the past couple of months. I’m not sure how long I’ll continue to be able to do that. So if you have any ideas about how to get sponsors, grow the community, or anything like that, please reach out: [email protected].

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 marks a few big milestones for the project. It’s Episode #30, the final full conversation of the podcast’s first year, and it’s also the very first international call.

Our caller from Canada takes us through a wide-ranging conversation about death, culture, science, and what it means to see ourselves as part of something larger. From how the brain behaves in our final moments to how different cultures approach death, the discussion moves between the personal and the collective, the scientific and the spiritual.

At the heart of it all is one powerful idea: that each of us is a universe in and of ourselves.

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

In this episode, we discuss:

• Book recommendations: Mostly Happy by Pam Buston and Speak by Louisa Hall
• The idea that when we die, our bodies return to nature and our energy to the cosmos
• How the brain might create whole new realities at the moment of death
• An incredible story of a man in a coma who believed he had lived decades in another life
• Growing up between cultures, and how Western and non-Western perspectives shape the way we see death
• The tension between science and spirituality — and the limits of what science can explain
• Why collective well-being is inseparable from individual well-being
• Reflections on seeing death up close in today’s world, and what it teaches us about community
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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.