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When We Die Talks: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Zach Ancell
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- 1 weeks ago52 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...
- 2 weeks ago48 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 ...
- 3 weeks ago1h 6m
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, a...
- 4 weeks ago46 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...
- Apr 14, 202637 min
Anonymous #32 — What Do You Do With a Faith That Can't Explain the Worst Thing That Happened to You?
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...
- Apr 7, 202644 min
Anonymous #31 — What Happens If There's No 'You' Left to Be Afraid of Death?
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 reb...
- Mar 31, 202642 min
Anonymous #30 — What Happens to a Family That Grief Breaks?
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...
- Mar 18, 202642 min
Anonymous #29 — Can Having Parkinson's Teach You How to Live?
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,...
About When We Die Talks
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 Wednesday.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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