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When We Die Talks

Zach Ancell

When We Die Talks is a collection of real conversations with real people about death, meaning, and what it’s like to be human.

Each week, host Zach Ancell speaks with an anonymous caller. It begins with one question: What do you think happens when we die? From there, the conversation goes wherever it goes. Belief. Doubt. Loss. Relief. Fear. Sometimes even laughter.

These aren’t experts or public figures. Just everyday people saying the quiet parts out loud. The result is raw, unpredictable, and deeply human.

New anonymous calls every Tuesday.

Want to add your voice? Apply to be a caller at whenwedietalks.com. Leave a voicemail and share a belief, a question, or a moment you can’t shake about death: 971-328-0864.

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#73
Tuesday · 54 min
Anonymous #51 — Why Does Talking About Death Sound So Woo-Woo?
Content note: This conversation talks openly about drug addiction, recovery, overdoses, and near-death experiences. The subjects are heavy, but the call itself is warm, curious, and funny in places. If today isn't the right day for it, that's okay. The first time it happened, the power went out in the bathroom where the caller had collapsed, and their phone dropped into SOS mode. Nothing else in the house lost power. They've been asking what that meant ever since, and the question of energy and consciousness sent them down a rabbit hole that runs through the rest of the conversation. The caller came close to dying several times during a stretch of addiction, and two of those experiences changed how they think about death. In the one they describe most closely, they were out for thirty or forty minutes by their best guess. They felt themselves pulled slowly toward a tunnel of light at about the speed of a monorail. They heard their own voice tell them to wake up, then say they didn't want to, then say it wasn't their time. The closest they can get to describing the feeling is the moment they first saw their child. From there the conversation covers a lot of ground. The caller grew up with a parent who told them to question everything, so by ten or eleven they were reading the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist texts. They describe dreams where their childhood dog visits, young and healthy and waving a paw, and how they tell those apart from ordinary dreams by how they feel on waking. They talk about tarot, a Ouija board they never closed, and a hike where the whole forest suddenly went silent. They also explain why most people in their life hear all of this as woo-woo, and why they keep saying there's some truth to a little bit of everything. They close with the one thing they still want to do: build a house off the grid in Alaska, and someday be buried at the top of a mountain. In this conversation: Near-death experiences, and the tunnel of light the caller describes Why the caller compares dying to going home, and to the moment they first saw their child A power outage in a bathroom and the caller's questions about energy and consciousness Dreams as visits from loved ones and pets, and how to tell a visit from an ordinary dream What the caller believes comes after death, including staying earthbound, reincarnation, and other planes of existence Growing up with a parent who said to question everything, and reading the Bhagavad Gita as a kid Mysticism, tarot, and why the caller thinks intention is everything Why talking about death and spirits gets written off as woo-woo, and the caller's take that "pseudoscience is still science" Book recommendation: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#72
September 15 · 59 min
Anonymous #50 — Is It Okay to Have Made Peace With Dying When They Need You to Stay?
Content note: This conversation includes discussion around a terminal diagnosis and a period of chronic suicidality. If you aren't in the right space for this today, that's ok. This week's caller is the other half of last week's conversation, the one living inside the diagnosis instead of beside it. They have a former colleague who once opened a tense workplace meeting with three words: I believe everybody. That idea has stuck with them ever since, and it shapes how they think about death now, including their partner's hope that some part of them will linger like the wind. The seizures and fainting started in their twenties. Doctors initially suspected a rare blood cancer. A blood specialist eventually landed on the real answer: a rare, idiopathic bone marrow disorder, diagnosed in 2018 with an initial timeline of three to five years. There's an irony they've sat with. As a teenager, they spent years convinced they wouldn't live past 40, a belief tied to a period of chronic suicidality they've since moved past. Getting an actual terminal diagnosis as an adult, after growing to love the life they'd built, made that old certainty something they never wanted to be right about. They've done two rounds of grueling experimental treatment, daily injections for six weeks with isolation before, during, and after. The first happened in the early months of COVID, while on immunosuppressants that made a single infection potentially fatal. Neither round was for themselves. Both times, it was for the people who weren't ready to lose them yet. They talk about the work of their life in specific terms: living in pursuit of liberation for the people they love, so that when their time comes, the work feels done. Most people in their life don't bring up their dying. One friend changes the subject every time it comes up. Another, a rabbi, is one of the few who can sit in it with them comfortably. In this conversation: A colleague's three words that shaped how our caller thinks about death and belief The years-long path to an idiopathic bone marrow diagnosis, and the doctors who got it wrong before one got it right A teenage belief about mortality that turned out to be true for reasons no one could have guessed Choosing experimental treatment for other people's sake, not their own What it means for our caller to feel like their work is done Book recommendations: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib and Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#71
September 8 · 1 hr
Anonymous #49 — Is It Okay to Need Them to Stay When They've Made Peace With Dying?
Our caller's framework for what happens after we die starts with basic physics: energy can't be created or destroyed. From there, they work backward. If someone survives a traumatic brain injury and comes out unable to remember who they used to be, wanting different things than they did before, are they still the same person? Our caller thinks so. Just changed. It's the same logic they apply to death itself. Their partner has a terminal illness, and has had it since before the two of them met. Long before this relationship, their partner had already lost two former partners, one to a drunk driving accident and one to COVID, so grief wasn't a new subject between them. Their partner has a phrase for it: grief and joy are sisters. Our caller didn't understand that phrase at first. They came to understand it slowly, through other kinds of loss along the way. Early in the relationship, our caller caught themselves hesitating before telling their partner they were upset about something, wondering if it was worth rocking the boat. They decided almost immediately that it wasn't a real option. Treating a partner more carefully just because they're dying, they realized, isn't a relationship. It's something closer to caretaking. So conflict stayed on the table, same as it would for anyone. They've also thought through the practical side of death more than most people twice their age: a natural burial, wrapped in muslin, buried with flowers, composted into the ground. They want to be in the room when their partner dies, and to help prepare the body afterward, if their partner is willing. They've watched pets die, watched a grandmother taken off life support, even sat in on autopsies during a college internship. Their reasoning: avoiding death doesn't protect anyone from it. It just means it's kicking your door in later. In this conversation: Believing energy can't be created or destroyed, and what that might mean after death Traumatic brain injury and the question of what makes someone "still themselves" Grief and joy as "sisters," a phrase passed down from a partner who has lost two previous partners Refusing to let a terminal diagnosis change how conflict gets handled in a relationship Planning a natural burial, human composting, and witnessing death firsthand Book recommendation: Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#70
September 1 · 51 min
Anonymous #48 — Would You Believe a Sign From the Dead More If Someone Else Had the Same One?
The caller was raised by two atheist parents who explained death the way you'd explain any other natural process: you die, you break down, you go back into the earth. They never fully believed it. Their grandmother offered something else, reincarnation, and the caller spent years circling that belief instead, even as they kept collecting moments that didn't fit cleanly into either story. The strangest one came from their own child, three years old at the time, who had a sudden and vivid memory of dying somewhere else entirely, complete with a name and a place, then lost the memory completely an hour later like it had never happened. Years after that, the caller fell for a partner with the opposite belief system, a devout Christian convinced God would save them even as cancer made that less and less likely. In the days before the diagnosis came back, a crow flew into the caller's office and died at their door, an omen their grandmother had always warned them about. The caller was in the room when their partner died, and watched something shift in their eyes in the final moment. About a week later, the caller's bed shook like an earthquake and they dreamed their partner came to them inside a ship, telling them not to be afraid. When the caller mentioned it to their sibling as a strange story, the sibling said they'd had their own dream that same night, one that ended in a single word only the caller and their partner had ever shared. The caller never told their sibling that word. What they landed on by the end of the call wasn't a belief. It was contentment, and boundaries they'd fought hard to build. In this conversation: Being raised by two atheist parents, and the reincarnation their grandmother taught them instead Their child's sudden, unprompted memory of a past life at age three, and how completely it disappeared after A crow that died at the caller's office door in the days before their partner's cancer diagnosis came back The dream the caller had the week their partner died, and their sibling's corroborating dream the same night A family religious confrontation at the caller's father's bedside while he was dying Choosing contentment and strong boundaries over a settled answer about what happens next Book recommendation: Henry and June by Anaïs Nin — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#69
August 25 · 55 min
Anonymous #47 — When Someone Dies Why Does Everyone Stop Saying Their Name?
A note before we start: This episode includes discussion of a suicidal crisis and the loss of a pregnancy. If that's more than you can take in today, that's okay, come back to this one when you're ready. The caller keeps their twin daughters' ashes inside a teddy bear on a shelf beside their bed. Most mornings, they say good morning. The girls' names were Scarlet and Violet, named, in part, for Pokémon. Long before that loss, the caller had already been thinking about how to speak to someone who's grieving. Sitting with an aunt who'd lost her son to COVID, the caller decided to just ask instead of guessing: Do you want me to say his name? Her answer was yes, it made her smile. Bobby. That same instinct, ask, don't assume, is what the caller carried into everything that followed: a partner lost in Afghanistan, a German Shepherd named Whiskey who stayed by their side through a suicidal crisis, and a pregnancy loss they now understand, through the work of Dr. Katherine Shear, as complicated grief. In the middle of that loss, a stray cat showed up outside their door and never left. They named him Sergeant Scout. In this conversation: Losing a partner in Afghanistan, and years later, twin daughters during pregnancy A period of suicidal crisis, and finding a way back from it Asking an aunt whether she wants to hear her late son's name, and carrying that question into their own grief A German Shepherd named Whiskey, and a rescued cat named Sergeant Scout Learning about complicated grief through the work of Dr. Katherine Shear Deciding, deliberately, how they want their daughters spoken of Book recommendation: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#68
August 18 · 1 hr 1 min
Anonymous #46 — Can You Hope for an Afterlife That Was Your Partner's Worst Nightmare?
Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide, physician-assisted death, psychosis, and serious illness. The caller and their late partner met when they were nineteen. For the better part of a decade they were each other's person, the one you call with good news, bad news, or at 4am when you can't stop thinking about what it will feel like to stop existing. For most of that time, the caller was the one afraid of death. Their partner wasn't. Then their partner, searching for anything that might work against treatment-resistant depression, tried psilocybin. It went badly enough that they developed schizophrenia. The person who used to be at peace with the idea of nothing spent the rest of their life terrified of a very specific something, an afterlife they'd seen in that trip and believed was waiting for them. What follows is not a straight line. There's electroconvulsive therapy and the brain damage that came with it. A period that looked, briefly, like hope: the partner coming out as trans, seeming more alive than they had in years. A breakup that was really an act of care. A vein at the temple that only shows when someone is dangerously underweight, and doctors who looked past it. And, in the end, something the caller is careful to call by its real name: a death with dignity, chosen with a death doula, not a crisis. The caller talks about all of it, including where they are now: still afraid of death, but less afraid than before, because for the first time in their life they're the one hoping something comes next. Not despite what happened to their partner, but because of it. Stay through to the very end of this one. Our caller shared a story after our conversation was over that's worth the listen. In this conversation: What it means to lose someone who was, for years, more at peace with death than you were A mushroom trip that triggered psychosis, and the years-long shift that followed: electroconvulsive therapy, a gender transition, a slow physical decline Talking a partner through the idea of dying by choice, and the legal patchwork around death with dignity A friend's theory that memory is physical, and what that means for grief Growing a bat flower, and what it means to still want to see something bloom Book recommendation: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#67
August 4 · 53 min
Anonymous #45 — How Would You Know If a Message From the Dead Was Real?
Our caller was sitting in a college class when a professor, mid-lecture, turned and looked directly at them and asked what it might have been like to be sheltered with your partner under a mantle in Pompeii, watching ash come down. The caller says every hair on their arm stood up. That was the professor's window into something he already suspected about them. Years later, at an artist market, a stranger asked for a reading. The caller doesn't usually charge, and doesn't usually push, but something came through anyway: a message from the woman's late grandfather, gone three years, about a Salisbury steak dinner at a nursing home and a family joke he'd sworn her father to secrecy over. The woman called her father on the spot. He confirmed it, word for word. The caller was raised in the Bible belt, got kicked out of a few churches as a kid for asking the wrong questions, and has spent years since building a belief system with room for all of it: heaven, reincarnation, nothing at all, and fifty other doors besides, none of them locking anyone out for good. These days, they're also working toward a graduate degree in forensic anthropology, with the goal of helping identify people found in mass graves so their families can finally bring them home. In this conversation: Growing up a medium in the Bible belt, and what got them kicked out of church The professor, Pompeii, and the moment logic stopped being enough A grandfather's message about Salisbury steak that convinced a grieving family The horse spirit that's followed the caller their whole life Believing in "fifty doors" instead of one version of the afterlife Studying forensic anthropology to help identify people in mass graves Book recommendations: The Giver by Lois Lowry and Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian (see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here) 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#66
July 28 · 51 min
Anonymous #44 — What Do You Lose When You Carry Other People's Pain?
Content note: this episode centers on suicide loss, discussed directly. If that's not something you're in a place for today, it's okay to sit this one out. Our caller found their housemate in the home they shared, staged in a way that made sure they'd be the one to find him. He'd also been their romantic partner at one point, and one of their closest friends. The application that got them on this call was written about a month shy of the one-year mark. They used to believe in ghosts, built on a childhood theory that energy can't be created or destroyed, so it has to go somewhere. Standing alone in that house afterward, they gave it every chance to prove them right. Nothing came, and that absence is what moved them somewhere new. In the days after, they became the one holding the certainty for everyone else. Friends kept saying it wasn't sinking in, that they couldn't believe it. And our caller, having seen it themselves, became the person other people leaned on to say it was real. A recurring dream followed: finding him alive again, undone each time by a conspiracy where everyone who loved them had lied to punish them. Even inside the dream, the relief of him being alive outweighed the betrayal. In the years since, part of that dream became true in its own way. Not him coming back, but the blame that landed on them anyway. In this conversation: A childhood theory about ghosts built on thermodynamics and energy Losing a friend to suicide in middle school, and an aunt's suicide years later Becoming the one holding the certainty for a friend group that couldn't accept what happened A PTSD diagnosis and a recurring dream about a faked death Losing a shared friend group after the loss, and where the blame landed A missing stretch of memory that swallowed a birthday Avoidance, discomfort, and getting through a worst-case scenario that actually happened Book recommendation: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here) 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#65
July 21 · 51 min
Anonymous #43 — Is Being Forgotten Worse Than Dying?
This week's caller calls themself a radical death advocate. Not because they think dying is good, but because they see it as a part of the life cycle we're better off accepting than fighting. They're mostly at peace with the first death, the physical one. It's the second death, the one where your name stops being spoken, that they're still working through. From there the conversation moves through an ofrenda they keep in their home for a close friend they lost suddenly last year, and what it means for that friend to become part of the conversation every time someone new comes over. They talk about Day of the Dead, growing up between two countries, and a choice to focus on the decades someone lived rather than the last week of their life. They end on where they'd go first if they could see more of the world. In this conversation: Being a radical death advocate, and choosing to accept dying rather than treat it as the enemy The idea of two deaths: the death of the body, and the last time anyone says your name Building and keeping an ofrenda, and what it means to talk about someone you've lost every time a friend visits Reframing grief around a lifetime lived, instead of the final days of it Wanting to see more of the world, starting with the Caucasus Book recommendation: Unwind by Neal Shusterman All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#64
July 14 · 55 min
Anonymous #42 — Who Takes Care of the Person Who Is Living for Everyone Else?
This week's caller was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when they were 22 months old. They've spent their entire life managing something that can genuinely kill them in either direction, and death has been a fact of daily life rather than a distant idea. From there the conversation moves fast and wide. A reference to Coco and what it means to be remembered. The Big Bang and where the energy to start it came from. Consciousness, and why science still can't explain it. Being raised Catholic and no longer able to fully believe it, while also not able to fully let go of it either. There's a period in high school the caller went through completely alone, lying to their parents and saying nothing to their friends. It's what diabetics call burnout, a point where the constant work of managing a condition every hour of every day just becomes too much to keep up. Out of it came a decision to spend their nights taking calls from classmates instead of asking for help themselves, some of those calls going until 2am. That decision turned into something more permanent: a sense that their own survival isn't really about them. It's about their parents, their brother, their friends, and the people they haven't met yet. In this conversation: Coco, the Big Bang, and what it means to be remembered after you're gone Diagnosed at 22 months old, and growing up inside a condition rather than adjusting to one The freshman year burnout no one else knew about, and what came out the other side of it Sonder, The Egg by Andy Weir, and the idea that no one else's unkindness is really about you Living for other people as a stated philosophy, not a coping mechanism Book recommendation: The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#63
July 7 · 57 min
Anonymous #41 — If Life Comes from Death, What if Nothing Ever Really Ends?
This caller was born into death. Their mother survived a rare, near-fatal condition as an infant only because a doctor happened to be at the house that day, checking on a dying sister. That's the reason this caller exists at all and it sets the tone for everything that follows. From there, the conversation opens into a full cosmology the caller has been building for years: reflections in a bubble, a lava lamp as a model of consciousness, the Mandelbrot set and what fractals might have to do with the soul. Robert Monroe's astral projection experiments, the CIA's Gateway Project, a childhood spent doing dream interpretation. It moves fast and doesn't ask permission to be believed. It just asks you to follow. Underneath it all is a caller who grew up Pentecostal in the Bible Belt and never stopped asking the questions the room didn't want asked. Including teaching themselves pieces of Greek and Hebrew just to check if the Bible had been translated right. That same refusal to accept an easy answer is what eventually led them somewhere stranger, and more spacious. This is a good one if you're drawn to big, unresolved ideas that don't tie up neatly. It asks you to sit with concepts you may not have language for yet. But it lands, at the end, on something disarmingly simple. In this conversation: A doctor, a dying aunt, and the coincidence that let the caller's mother survive infancy Astral projection, Robert Monroe, and the CIA's Gateway Project The Mandelbrot set, the Buddhabrot, and fractals as a model for the soul Growing up Pentecostal, teaching themselves biblical languages, and learning not to accept easy answers A string of losses across adolescence and what they taught the caller about impermanence Book recommendation: Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#62
June 30 · 55 min
Anonymous #40 — Does It Matter What You Believe About Death, As Long As You Actually Believe It?
This caller doesn't come from a place of loss. They come from a place of curiosity, and a theory they've spent years quietly assembling. It starts with reincarnation. But not the straightforward kind. Not a linear return to another body in the next moment. The caller imagines all points in time as equally available. Past, present, future. When you die, you pick a new life from any of them. From there, the conversation moves into the one electron theory: the idea that a single electron might be tracing a path so vast and complex that, from our perspective, it looks like billions. And the caller's question: what if souls work the same way? We also talk about non-duality, about the grief they're able to feel versus the grief they're expected to perform, about the Catholic upbringing that they've mostly moved away from, and the one part of it that still quietly unsettles them. And at the very end, after an hour of theory and philosophy, the conversation lands somewhere unexpected. This is a good episode if you enjoy ideas. If you're comfortable sitting with a framework that's genuinely unusual and doesn't resolve neatly. The caller isn't here to convince. They're here to share what helps them. In this conversation: A theory of reincarnation that isn't tied to linear time The one electron theory, and what it might mean for the soul Non-duality, and why the caller thinks separation is something we invented Consciousness as a gradient scale, with humans nowhere near the top The grief they feel versus the grief they know how to show A Catholic upbringing, a mostly-abandoned belief system, and the one fear that stayed Book recommendations: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh and Morning, Noon, and Night by Spalding Gray All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#61
June 23 · 55 min
Anonymous #39 — Can You Stop Needing to Know What Happens When We Die?
This episode includes an open and personal conversation about suicide, suicidal ideation, and suicidality, including experiences from childhood. If you're in a tender place with any of these themes, please take care of yourself first. If you need support, Thrive Lifeline is a great resource. This caller has spent most of their life in relationship with death, and they'll tell you that relationship started before they had words for it. A first-generation Filipino American who grew up without a fixed sense of home, they found their way into community death care not through a course or a calling they could name, but through the accumulation of things they survived and the people they stayed for. What brought them to this work was loss. What keeps them in it is something harder to explain: a sense that being present for someone at the end of their life is less about training and more about showing up with your whole self. This is a conversation about learning to live inside uncertainty, and finding that the mystery of death doesn't have to be something you solve. In this conversation: What it means to grow up without a fixed home, and how that shaped an early, complicated relationship with death Witnessing a parent's suicide attempt as a child, and carrying that in relative silence for most of a lifetime How a family crisis became the unexpected doorway into community death care Volunteering to sit with people who are actively dying, and what that actually looks like The idea that suicidal ideation is more common than most people admit, and what changes when we stop treating it as unspeakable Settling into "I don't know" as an answer to what happens when we die, and why protecting the mystery might matter more than solving it Book recommendation: The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#60
June 16 · 56 min
Anonymous #38 — What Happens to Your Own Life While You're Busy Caregiving Someone Else's?
This week's caller grew up in a Roman Catholic household where death was treated as simply another part of life. Something to be at peace with rather than afraid of. But the conversation quickly turns to something that's shaped most of their adult life: being the one who shows up. From early childhood spent in chemo waiting rooms to becoming, at 16, the family member who could see what others couldn't (or wouldn't) admit was happening to aging parents and grandparents, this caller has spent years as the person carrying the weight of decline that the rest of the family wasn't ready to face. This is a conversation about what it means to be the one who's honest when honesty isn't welcome, what caregiving costs a person in the years they don't get back, and how someone holds onto curiosity and faith even while putting their own life on hold again and again. In this conversation: Growing up with memento mori as a normal part of family life, and what it's like to be raised Catholic in a way that felt welcoming rather than fear-based What it's like to be the one who notices a parent or grandparent is declining — and the toll of being disbelieved by family members who aren't ready to see it Being present for a peaceful death in early hospice care, and what it meant when pain relief wasn't yet standard practice What it costs to keep putting your own health and education on hold for the people who need you Finding small ways to hold onto a life of your own while still being on call for everyone else A different way of imagining what "nothing" might feel like after we die Book Recommendation: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#59
June 9 · 47 min
Anonymous #37 — Can Faith Change What It's Like to Be With Someone Who Is Dying?
This week's caller is a retired physician who spent decades at the bedside of dying patients and now works at a funeral home. They have been present for death on both sides: as the person trying to slow it down, and as the person who shows up after. Somewhere in all of that, faith became the thing that held it all together. This is a conversation about what it looks like to build an entire life around proximity to death and come out the other side more certain, not less. We talk about the difference between the brain that perceives and the brain that just keeps the lights on, what it felt like to be airlifted off an island during a military coup at 22 years old, and why the anatomy lab might be one of the most quietly spiritual places a person can sit. We also get into what families get wrong about what their loved ones are experiencing near the end, why the body is so complicated it's hard not to believe something made it, and what it costs a person emotionally to keep showing up for other people's worst moments without breaking down. In this conversation: What the brainstem keeps doing after the upper brain goes quiet, and why families often mistake that for suffering This is the anatomy book mentioned during the call: Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross Why promising to be there at the deathbed changed how this caller practiced medicine Being airlifted out of Grenada in 1983 and what that moment did to how this caller decided to live What burying your emotions to help other people actually does to you over time Why the caller can't understand choosing to believe there's nothing after death Book Recommendations: The Bible All Anonymous Book Recommendations: 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#58
June 2 · 42 min
Anonymous #36 — Does the Fear of Death Go Away, or Do You Just Get Better at Living With It?
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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#57
May 12 · 51 min
Anonymous #35 — How Do You Keep Loving People When You're the One They're Going to Lose?
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 Nemosené: Your Life Story A guided audio interview to capture your story in your own words for the people you love. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#56
May 5 · 48 min
Anonymous #34 — Can The Losses That Broke You As A Teenager Also Be The Things That Made You?
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 Nemosené: Your Life Story A guided audio interview to capture your story in your own words for the people you love. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#55
April 28 · 1 hr 6 min
Bonus — Don Sires: Exit Interview
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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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#54
April 21 · 46 min
Anonymous #33 — Why Does Some Grief Get to Be Spoken Out Loud and Some Doesn't?
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 Nemosené: Your Life Story A guided audio interview to capture your story in your own words for the people you love. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. 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: zach@whenwedietalks.com 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.
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