Doing Death podcast
In this monthly podcast series Doing Death founder Amanda Blainey interviews personalities, artists, mavericks, and game changers from the fields of literature, art, healthcare and entertainment about their experiences of life, death, grief, and their own personal stories. From these interviews we try to find out what can be learned from death and how talking about it can shine a light on how we are living. The host’s forthright questioning, compassionate approach and honesty has won the podcast a cult following.
“It’s enough to actually just feel for another human being”
Host Amanda Blainey talks to thought leader BJ Millar, who is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator who is dedicated to moving healthcare towards a more human-centered approach. His 2015 Ted talk 'What Really Matters at the End of Life' has been watched over 14 million times. BJ has given numerous interviews including Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times, and GOOP. He co-founded Mettle Health which aims to provide holistic consultations to patients or caregivers navigating the practical emotional and existential issues that can come with serious illness and disability.
We talk about;
The complexity of being human
Compassion
Being not doing
The Illusion of normal
Allowing space for our pain and feelings
Feeling grief rather than controlling it
Openings that can happen in dying
How deathcare can be inclusive?
Letting go and hanging onto relationships
The use of Psychedelics
Finding our bliss
Podcast references
Mettle Health https://www.mettlehealth.com/
Papyrus https://www.papyrus-uk.org/
Ted talk what really matters at the end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apbSsILLh28
Tyler Perry Oscars
"What is the sum total of the impact of our lives on this earth"
Host Amanda Blainey talks about living and dying more sustainably with Emily Mathieson who is the founder and director of Aerende, an award-winning homeware and gift brand with all products handmade in the UK by people facing barriers to employment. Prior to launching her social enterprise, Emily was a lifestyle and travel editor for titles including The Guardian, Red, and Condé Nast Traveller, and is committed to the power of storytelling. Emily’s passion for sustainable interiors and businesses that do things differently inspired her to create Aerende (an old English word meaning care or message) with inclusivity and transparency at its heart.
We talk about;
The legacy we leave behind
Living in harmony with the planet
Consciously consuming
Living holistically
Where do products we buy come from?
The integrity of products we buy
Ethical homewares
Gratitude practice
Sustainable funerals
Podcast references
Marie Kondo
Artist http://www.claudiabicen.com/
Snow Patrol – Run
“The Grief You Feel Equals the Love, you Felt"
Greg Wise
Actor Greg Wise has appeared in British Television, theatre, and feature films. He portrayed the character, John Willoughby, in the Oscar-winning film 'Sense and Sensibility. Greg's sister Clare died in September 2016 from cancer, she started a blog post to update family and friends, which Greg took over writing when Clare became too ill. Two years after she died the blog was turned into their book titled 'Not That Kind of Love’. We met before lockdown to talk about Clare’s death, their relationship, navigating cancer, and post-traumatic growth. This is a useful conversation for anyone caring for someone dying and gives insight into grief and love through Greg's own personal and moving experience.
We talk about
Grief is essential to our healing process
Being in denial about death
The shame that comes with dying.
Being a carer
Doing death properly
The signs of death
Giving permission to die
Dying her way
Choosing when to die
Support
The chaos of death
Compassion fatigue
Post-traumatic growth
What is Love?
Being here now
What he has learned
The Clarity of grief
Podcast references
Books
Not That Kind of Love – Greg & Clare Wise
Being Mortal – Atul Gawande
With The End in Mind - Kathryn Mannix
Links
https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/
“The legacy of love is the thing you pass on, and that baton to your children of confidence, love, and happiness, I hope is the most significant legacy”
Charles Gladstone
Entrepreneur Charlie Gladstone has the most infectious positivity and zest for life. Being the great-great-grandson of the UK's Prime Minister Sir William Ewart Gladstone, Charlie comes from an incredible family legacy. He is a business owner, farmer, father and is one of the co-founders of The Good Life Experience, founder of Glen Dye Cabins and Cottages, Pedlars shops, and the ‘Some Good Ideas’ online community dedicated to encouraging British craft and manufacture. He also hosts the ‘Mavericks’ Podcast’ and is the author of several books, his latest 'Do Team' will be published in 2021. We meet to talk about legacy, death, and his interest in making a good life and embedding some of that huge spirit within his family and generations to come.
We talk about
The legacy of love
Acts of kindness
Living a privileged life
Running a family business
The death of his father
Death in the family
Growing up and the power of being outside
Working hard
Happiness is here and now
The seasons of life
Imposter syndrome
Podcast references
The Good Life Experience
Glen Dye Cottages and Cabins
Film – It’s a wonderful life
The Adam Buxton podcast
Links
https://www.glendyecabinsandcottages.com/
"It's very shocking when you do lose the person with whom you were expecting to spend the rest of your life, it takes the future with them”. Rev Richard Coles
Reverend Richard Coles has led a colourful and vibrant life, forming the band 'The communards’ with singer Jimmy Somerville in the mid-'80s. He’s the only reverend in the UK and probably the world to have a number 1 hit. After some drug-fuelled years and witnessing the death of many of his friends from AIDS Richard had an awakening which led him to become a reverend for a parish in rural Northamptonshire. Richard’s civil partner David died in December 2019 at the age of 42. A year on Richard talks candidly about his extraordinary life, the madness of grief, and how he is doing now.
We discuss:
The madness and commonality of grief
Being a radical reverend
Princess Diana and the enormity of that grief
The language of death
Real connection rather than social media
The solace of lockdown
Death at Christmas
Letting go of someone’s possessions after their death
Podcast references
Books – The Madness of Grief by Richard Coles & Grief Works by Julia Samuel
Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy
Funeral song – Liber Tango by Astor Piazzolla
Widowed and Young charity
Links
https://www.richardcoles.com/
https://www.widowedandyoung.org.uk/
This episode contains explicit language and a brief conversation about Richard‘s attempt to take his own life as a teenager.
"I think it's going back to impermanence, understanding that one day you are not going to be here. How can you change what you are going to do today, that's going to impact you?”
Jools Barsky
How do you create something that fundamentally changes the way we talk about death, dying, and living? Death Café is a place where people can get together to eat cake, have tea, and discuss death. After becoming inspired by the Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, who created Café Mortels, Jon Underwood founded Death Café in 2011 with a view to increase our awareness of death to make the most of our finite lives. From its humble beginning, there are now 11,577 death cafes in 74 countries. Jon died suddenly in 2017 at the age of 44. Host Amanda Blainey talks to Jon’s sister Jools Barsky and his Mum Susan Barsky Reid about creating a global movement and Jon’s death.
We talk about
Living with being present and impermanence
The magic of death café and why its effect is so powerful
What happened at the first Death Café.
The Dalai Lama envisaging his death and dying every day
Buddhist practice
How Jool's cat's death prepared them for using Buddhist rituals after Jon died
Grieving for Jon and his funeral
Preparing for death as we do with birth
The future of Death Cafe
Podcast references
Jamyang Buddhist centre
Menopause Cafe
Cancer Cafe
Death Over Dinner
Songs:
The Martian - Sex in Zero Gravity,
Sugar Ray - Someday
Links
https://www.patreon.com/deathcafe
“it's so important to recognise when you have a responsibility to a child or your nephew or whoever it is, that actually as individuals we can contribute to that culture change, we can contribute to making this world a better place to live in and the day to day experiences of everyone"
Jack Norman
Suicide is one of the biggest killers in men under 45, this can be caused by many factors including mental health issues, cultural expectations of masculinity, and childhood experiences like grief or abuse. Amanda Blainey talks to Jack Norman who has been working in change management for 5 years and who in 2015 co-founded Milk for Tea a social enterprise that has developed mental health and masculinity programmes with many clients such as We Work, Rolls Royce, and Bacardi.
We talk about
What modern masculinity look like?
The shame and stigma around suicide
Community and connection
Being your truest self
Being okay with vulnerability
Finding space for ourselves
Changing the culture
How children deal with death and trauma
Holding ourselves and each other accountable
The pressures of modern life
Creating community at work
Surviving versus Thriving.
Podcast references
Heads together Prince William and Prince Harry
ITV
Calm
Book – Creative Confidence by Tom & David Kelley
The Irishman on Netflix
Couch to 5K
Links
@jackdpnorman
https://www.mind.org.uk/
“Great Artists, composers, writers, they take one into that territory where life and death are together, I think that’s really the purpose of art"
Maggi Hambling CBE.
Amanda Blainey talks to Maggi Hambling who has established a reputation over the last four decades as one of Britain's most significant and controversial artists, a singular contemporary force whose work continues to move, seduce and challenge.
We talk about
How Maggi became an artist
Keeping the memory of people alive through art
Being terrified of her death
Art as a therapy for grief
Being a channel for truth in her work
How to be vulnerable in your work
Drawing her mother and father in their coffin’s
Which one of her creations Maggi thinks she will be remembered for.
Having whiskey at 6.00 pm
Born in 1945 in Suffolk Hambling studied with Lett Haines and Cedric Morris, and then Ipswich, Camberwell and the Slade Schools of Art. In 1980 she became the First Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London, and in 1995 won the Jerwood Painting Prize (with Patrick Caulfield). In 1998 her sculpture A conversation with Oscar Wilde was unveiled at Adelaide Street, London, facing Charing Cross Station. In 2003 Scallop, a sculpture to celebrate Benjamin Britten was unveiled at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and won the Marsh Award in 2005 for Excellence in Public Sculpture.
Her work is represented in major collections internationally, and in the UK these include the British Museum, Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery.
Podcast references
Composer Benjamin Britten
Henrietta Moraes
Andy Murray
Extinction rebellion
Links
Maggihambling.com
Paintingsinhospitals.org.uk
Marlboroughgallery.com
“ I’ve never been one to plan ahead, I don’t like to be too organised with life, I like life to sometimes just happen. Being okay with the fact that you can’t control things right now, even though that’s hard. Taking each day as it comes is literally the only way that we can get through this, so accepting that sooner rather than later is going to do you much better” Kris Hallenga
Amanda Blainey talks to the extraordinary and courageous Kris Hallenga who after an incurable cancer diagnosis at the age of 23, eleven years ago, kick-started a unique breast cancer awareness charity called CoppaFeel. That was 11 years ago, Kris thankfully is still here and has been spending her time in lockdown writing her forthcoming book “How to Glitter a Turd”. We talk about
Finding meaning by living a simple life
Listening to our bodies and trusting our instincts
Breathwork for trauma
How Kris’s family copes with her diagnosis
Grieving life
What has cancer taught Kris
Dealing with loss
Navigating uncertain times
The sadness that is being unearthed from her writing process
What Kris thinks has kept her alive
Having space for love
Kris Charity 'Coppa Feel’ is the first UK Breast cancer charity to solely create awareness amongst young people to detect early symptoms of breast cancer and to educate them and provide tools to get to know their bodies and learn healthy habits for life. For more information or to donate please visit Coppafeel.org
Podcast references
Book ‘How to Glitter a Turd” Kris Hallenga
Book ‘With The End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial’ Kathryn Mannix
Grayson Perry Rites of Passage - All 4
@glennondoyle
This podcast contains explicit language.
"You can be Bold and gentle-hearted, you can be soft and a warrior. Power in vulnerability”
The Fandangoe Kid
Host Amanda Blainey talks to The Fandangoe Kid a print artist who makes large-scale narrative pieces for the public realm to create a platform around complex subjects such as grief, trauma release, mental health, and gender constructs. Much of her work is driven by navigating her own story following the death of most of her family in New York in 2011. In this episode we discuss:
Sitting with grief
The physical & emotional manifestation of grief
Post-traumatic growth
Dancing through grief
Processing grief through meditation and exercise
Embodying and making friends with grief
Grief as an individual & and non-linear experience
The uncertainty of change
Legacy and moving on from your ancestors
Finding ways to connect more than ever
Being a vulnerable warrior
Unlearning as we get older
The Fandangoe Kid has created work for a wide range of purposes, most recently installing artwork on 14-metre pillar for University of the Arts London's 120th year anniversary and a large-scale permanent piece of public art at the Southbank Centre for the charity CALM. For World Mental Health Day 2019, she installed an 80-metre floor narrative at City Hall for the Mayor of London's charity Thrive, addressing the connection between movement and mental health. Additionally, she screened her film Into Your Light, directed with Tara Darby, at Tate Modern and on the Manhattan Bridge, looking at dancing as a tool for survival following a great personal loss.
Podcast references
www.fandangoekid.com
http://taradarby.com/film/into-your-light/
The Ted interview Elizabeth Gilbert
Books
Grief Works - Julia Samuel
The Body Keeps Score - Bessel Van Der Kolk
"I have a platform, I can share that platform with other people, that's what my mum would have expected at this stage of my career. That's why things like The Good Immigrant' came about because a win for me is a win for the community" Nikesh Shukla.
Amanda Blainey talks to Nikesh Shukla who is a novelist and screenwriter. His 7th novel Brown Baby will be published in February 2021. Brown Baby is a memoir of race, family, and home that is essentially a love letter written to his children and his mum after her death. It's about loss and rebirth.
In this episode, we talk about
White privilege
Writers of colour
How The Good Immigrant came about
The predominant white voice in literature
Racism and its prevalence in publishing and the arts
Normalising our reality
Anxiety about being outspoken and burning bridges
The problem with diversity panels
Interrogating representation and identity
How his mum's death permitted him to speak his truth
Cooking his way through grief
Food as a way to connect to his mum
How heritage lives on in us
A win for him is a win for the community
Roots for change
Processing grief through his new book Brown Baby
Grieving in a new way since coronavirus
Nikesh is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award), Meatspace, and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny. He is a contributing editor to the Observer Magazine and was previously their columnist. Nikesh is the editor of the bestselling essay collection, The Good Immigrant, which won the reader's choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene Suleyman. He is the author of two YA novels, Run, Riot (shortlisted for a National Book Award) and The Boxer (longlisted for the Carnegia Medal). Nikesh was one of Time Magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 Global Thinkers, and The Bookseller's 100 most influential people in publishing in 2016 and 2017. He is the co-founder of the literary journal, The Good Journal, and The Good Literary Agency. Nikesh is a fellow of the Royal Society Of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy.
Podcast references
"That's probably been one of the biggest things about all of this, change and the unknown. I think for everybody these are things that need to be embraced, and you've got to suddenly become best friends with the unknown and with change because that's what's happening" Amanda Blainey talks to Ben Branson founder of the world's first distilled non-alcoholic spirits, revolutionising how we drink when we are not drinking and drawing knowledge and wisdom from his 300-year-old family farming legacy. We discuss how Ben has rediscovered the simple things in life from his time so far in Lockdown. We look at how Seedlip evolved from Ben's love of plants, herbs, and nature. Talking about death is talking about how we want to live, what inspires us, doing things we love, playing, and building dreams from small steps. We talk about how Ben would like to be remembered, what his biggest legacy is, and why its important not to have regrets. Ben's story is a truly inspiring one.
In this episode, we talk about
Becoming friends with the unknown and change
The importance of human connection, interaction, relationships and how important it is not to feel left out
How life has changed in Lockdown
Going back to nature as the best medicine
Taking risks Being passionate about what you are doing,
Creating something that people need
Doing what you are good at and not what you aren't starting a business from something you love
Having regrets are a waste of energy
Death as a statistic
The surrealness of the situation we find ourselves in Staring in an episode of Black Mirror
Learning through Doing
Conscious shopping and eating
Life becoming more simple
Grieving our lives Watching contagion on Netflix
The ripple effect of what we do when we change something
Can we ever go back to normality?
How Ben would like to be remembered after his death
Podcast references
Netflix Series - Black Mirror, Contagion
Book ‘The art of distillation’ John French
http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/
www.Seedlipdrinks.com
Rankin is one of the world's most iconic photographers, along with being a director, and cultural provocateur. He is best known for his celebrity portraits including Bowie, Madonna, Kate Moss, The Rolling Stones, and her majesty the Queen.
He co-founded the seminal magazine Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1992 and has published over 40 books of his work. In 2013 Rankin created a thought-provoking exhibition called 'Alive in the Face of Death' creating portraits of people facing a terminal illness which became part of a BBC documentary. We discussed how working on this project confronted Rankin's fear of death, whilst still dealing with his grief after the death of both his parents a few years before. We talked about having those important conversations with those we love and his process for capturing people's authenticity on camera and creating iconic images that will be remembered long after his death.
In this episode we discuss:
- Creating an Iconic image
- How Rankin captures the truth in a person
- Death as a way to celebrate someone’s life
- Ageism and how we live in a youth-orientated society
- The cost of dying
- Not taking life for granted
- Rankins parent's death and how he dealt with these events
- How Rankin confronted death through ‘The Alive in the Face of Death’ Exhibition
- Having those important conversations about advance care planning, funerals and what we want in the end
- Success and what that means
- Learning from our mistakes
Please note that this episode may contain some swearing.
Episode references
Author Diana Athill
Books:
Black Box Thinking, The Surprising Truth About Success by Matthew Syed
Do Death: For a Life Better Lived by Amanda Blainey. There’s a 10% discount if you order on the Do Book website using the code DEATH10 https://thedobook.co/products/do-death-for-a-life-better-lived
Advance life Planning - https://compassionindying.org.uk/
In this special christmas episode, the last in this series until next year, Amanda Blainey talks to Mr Bingo. He is called Mr Bingo because when he was 19 he won £141 at the Gala Bingo. In 2011 he began the project ‘Hate Mail’ on Twitter, where strangers paid him to send a hand-drawn offensive postcard to a name and address of their choice. It sold out within days; since then he has opened it 12 times and it has sold out every time within minutes. Like much of his work, the project started as ‘a drunk idea’, but ended up being exhibited in galleries and gaining notoriety among the global press.
In summer 2015, he ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund a high-end art book of his 'Hate Mail' illustrations. The campaign, was successfully funded within 9 hours, making it the most successful Kickstarter for a book in the UK ever.
in 2015 after a 15 year career as an illustrator, Mr Bingo made a decision to stop working for clients and go it alone as an artist. For the last four years he has created in his own words a ‘nudey scratchy festive fun' christmas advent calendar in which each day in December is represented by a different person whose clothing is printed in removable gold ink , when you scratch off the ink you reveal them in all their naked glory.
This episode was recorded in London in a coffee lounge, we talk about
- Art
- Not being too busy and doing nothing
- Challenging the norm of what ‘working' is.
- Mr Bingo’s gravestone art project
- Freelancing
- Having fun
- How walking is good for you
- Can work be a hobby?
- What if we live forever?
- And of course we cover those small subjects of death and life!
This episode contains some swearing.
Episode references
https://shop.mr.bingo/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrbingo/hate-mail-the-definitive-collection
In this episode Amanda chats to Anna Hunt, international best selling author, health and wellbeing expert and shaman. A Cambridge graduate and former senior editor at The Mail on Sunday, Anna started to study mental & emotional health and their impact on the body upon developing stress-related health challenges, in her late twenties. This led her to a Jungle in Peru and for almost 20 years since, she has travelled back annually to study one-on-one with her mentor, a shaman based in the Andes. Her work has been featured widely in the international press, including the BBC, The Sunday Times, Harpers Bazaar and other numerous monthly glossies. For the last 16 years she has worked with a global client base of leaders, private clients and corporations. The techniques Anna uses include a combination of Peruvian shamanism, meditation and principles of quantum physics to shift how we think, to become healthier, calmer and more grounded.
In this episode we cover
- Is there a space for Shamanism in life and death?
- Techniques to empower us to deal with life better
- Grieving and how we cope with bereavement
- Letting go of Mental baggage
- Re-connecting to our inner wisdom
- Deep Visualisation tools
- Shamanism V traditional therapy
- Trusting our instincts
- Cycles of nature and the order of things
- Working with plants and crystals
- Death as a natural process
- Repetition of negative patterns
- Finding the right shaman
- Shifting our energy
Episode references
www.Annahunt.com
Books
“The Shaman in Stilettos’ by Anna Hunt
‘Do Death: For a Life Better Lived' by Amanda Blainey
Michele is a Psychic, astrologer, broadcaster and a Sunday Times best selling author. Previously she was the resident astrologer for the UK’s ‘This Morning’ primetime morning TV and ‘The X factor Xtra' and has had a constant presence in the media over the last 20 years. She is a hugely successful business woman who has built an incredible presence in the wellbeing industry, empowering people to be their authentic self and transform their lives. Encountering sexual abuse and neglect at a young age, she used her own self belief, ancient learning and spiritual path to heal herself and create the life that she wanted, with gratitude and love.
In this episode we talk about:
- Finding our soul purpose
- The mystery of death
- Harnessing our own power and changing our self beliefs
- Manifesting what we want by looking at our thoughts and energy
- How we are all connected
- The law of attraction
- Grabbing ideas when they come
- Astrology as a soul map
- Tuning into our intuition
Episode References
Elizabeth Gilbert’s book ‘Big Magic’
Nick Cave ‘ Red hand files’ No.55
In this episode we meet Marie Mitchell Co-founder of the ‘Island Social Club’ which provides a a space to celebrate caribbean culture through food, drink and social events. Marie’s older brother Richard died 10 years ago and we talk about her journey from when he died to how she found love again for herself, her family and finding purpose, setting up a business based around her love of food and community.
Amanda Blainey met with Kathryn Mannix - best selling author of “With the End In Mind: How to Live and Die Well”. They talk about resolving personal issues whilst we are still alive, choosing the place to die, and how we can access better care when dying. And asks the big question: Is how we live a reflection on how we die?
Amanda Blainey caught up with David Hieatt co-founder of The Do Lectures and Hiut Denim. After four amazing hot days at the Do Lectures in Wales in June we spoke to David about his experiences of death and what he has learnt from it. He talked about his father’s values, his death and how this has influenced his life and work.
A difficult topic to discuss. Doing Death talks to our friend - creative producer Sam Rudd about the death of a parent as experienced as both a young child and later herself as a parent. She talks about the suicide of her mum age 5 followed by her father’s death when she was a teenager. More recently she describes the death of her partner and the father of her three boys from a drugs overdose.
We discuss what she learnt from her parents death and how she has dealt with the aftermath of her partner’s death. Her focus has been supporting her children in a way that their lives would not be defined by their fathers death in a negative way.
We caught up with Frank Osteseski - author of “The Five Invitations” about what he has learned from working with the dying and what that can teach us about living. We talk about how best to help the dying, being aware of their breath and rituals like bathing the body after death of our loved one’s at the end.