Rethinking Death

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  • Artist Candy Chang turned an abandoned house into a giant chalkboard with a provocative prompt: "Before I die I want to ____." Her neighbors' answers grew into a kind of monument to the aspirations of the community.
  • Journalist Amanda Bennett explains why having hope while watching a loved one die shouldn't warrant a diagnosis of "denial." She calls for a more heroic narrative for death — to match the ones we have in life.
  • Can we commit our bodies to a cleaner, greener Earth, even after death? Visual artist Jae Rhim Lee says it's possible by using a special burial suit seeded with pollution-gobbling mushrooms.
  • As an emergency medical technician, Matthew O'Reilly was used to telling a white lie when patients asked if they were dying. O'Reilly describes what happened on one emergency call, when he decided to tell the truth.
  • At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? BJ Miller is a palliative care physician who thinks about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients.

Learn more or listen again to this week's episode.

Photo: Shutterstock

Credits

Host:

Guy Raz