Episodes

How is it that some of us live difficult early lives and find a way to a beautiful and meaningful adulthood, while others get lost along the way to addiction, depression, hopelessness and despair? Winston Price found in facin...

What compels a successful film, television and commercial ad company to make numerous films about death? Sara and Bobby Sheehan have maintained a commitment to improving the conversation about end of life, guided by their own...

Receiving a cancer diagnosis plunges your life into a whole new dimension, challenging what you thought it would look like. Receiving a brain cancer diagnosis at 29 is an even deeper challenge to all you know. When Liz Salmi ...

When the twin towers fell in 2001, Elizabeth Hack was hit hard. She'd visited family many time there, considering it a home away from home. She felt the pain of all those losses and the impact of hopelessness and anger coming...

Grief is a heroes' journey, sending us into our own wilderness and requiring that we step out into the unknown. What guides us on this fearsome path? And what might we find at the end? When Therèse Tappouni's 11 year old son ...

When Azim Khamisa's only son, twenty year old Tariq, was murdered by a fourteen year old boy, his immediate thought, beyond reason, was that two lives had been lost. Drowning in a sea of grief, he knew he had to bring meaning...

Watching our own parents face the end of their lives often illuminates questions about how we want to navigate that territory. What will support our own end of life experiences? What are the limits of medical intervention? Ho...

When Dr. Paul Kalanithi faced a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in his last year as a neurosurgical resident, his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi faced it with him. In the twenty-two months that followed, they continued to work, had ...

Are there human acts that are un-forgivable? Perhaps, but as human beings, some of us are able to find a way to forgive the person or people who have hurt us. Marina Cantacuzino's mission is to collect the narratives of peopl...

For Claudia Bicen, curiosity about the meaning of life inevitably led to curiosity about facing death. But how would she explore that deepest of human questions? A self taught artist, she decided to interview and draw people ...

Keeping a sense of humor at the worst of times seems impossible until you're actually living through the worst of times. No one knows that better than Nora McInerny Purmort, whose husband died of brain cancer when she was 32,...

How does a parent cope with the illness of a child? We want to protect and insulate our children from all harm. But when a child is diagnosed with cancer, we watch them experience many pains and ills. Purvi Shah's son Amaey w...

In times of profound loss, what do we turn to? Some of us look for a way to express our experience through writing or art or movement. Some of us write. Some of us turn to the comfort of the natural world, finding our place i...

Ned Buskirk did not consciously intend to open a conversation and create a movement about dying and death. But when he thought about what would make his open mic events meaningful, the title popped into his mind. What if he c...

After a loss, people often have to return to work much too soon. And what do they encounter? A workplace which understands very little about grief or how to support a colleague in the loss. Often, a lack of experience and edu...

With the legalization of marriage for all Americans and the greater level of acceptance for LGBT people, we could come to the mistaken conclusion that bias no longer affected LGBT people. But far from it, aging and dying LGBT...

At the end of life, there is so much mystery, so much we don't know. But because of the work of Barbara Karnes, we do have a map of the physical territory. Just knowing that what is happening to a loved one at the end is part...

Going through the deepest struggle is sometimes the road to new illuminations. Robin Perry Braun knows this first hand. The tremendous struggles in her early life led her to a belief that with the right practices, she could a...

Palliative care has been a little understood aspect of our overall health care system even as it has become more recognized within that system as a valuable resource for patients and their families. Patients often have no edu...

At first, grief knocks us down. we are stuck on the corner, watching almost everyone else moving down the block. But as we investigate, there is the possibility of bringing meaning to our own experience and to open up realms ...

Our religious and spiritual teachers encourage us to forgive, as if we know how to do that and naturally want to. Yet forgiveness is actually a complex and nuanced experience, especially complicated when great loss has result...

Breaking the silence to talk about the end of life is sometimes hard, but can also be compelling. For those who have had experience with people facing the end of their lives, the conversation is crucial. And if you work with ...

When Rachel Stephenson was five years old, her mother died in a car accident and never returned home. While the rest of her family was determined to move on, replace her mom and maintain their silence, Rachel rebelled against...

No one talks about the hidden losses that come along with a cancer diagnosis. For Barbara Musser, a single young woman in 1989 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, suddenly facing struggles with her sexuality was an une...