#35 - So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish: A Father’s Search For Meaning After Loss When We Die Talks podcast

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#35 - So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: A Father’s Search for Meaning After Loss

3d ago 50:34

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This week’s caller, a father who lost his son to suicide eighteen months ago, speaks with rare clarity about grief, meaning, and why skepticism doesn’t have to harden into despair. The premise is simple and brave: if consciousness is a function of the brain and ends when the brain stops, how do we live with love and purpose anyway?

We trace the moment death moved from abstract to intimate, and how that shift rewired his priorities. Together, we explore the boundaries between belief and evidence, the role of expertise in a world drowning in noise, and the difference between orthodoxy and honest inquiry. It’s a grounded look at life and death through the lens of neuroscience, traumatic brain injury, and the humility to say “I don’t know,” paired with the courage to keep asking.

Along the way, fear of mortality gives way to something sturdier: presence. Not as a slogan, but as a practice that slows time and fills ordinary moments with weight—coffee with a friend, fresh air on a hard day, a laugh that lightens the room. He describes a pilgrimage to wild places, carrying a small portion of his son’s ashes to mountains and lakes his son hoped to see. No grand promises—just a vow to live fully, love fiercely, and make meaning in the world we can still touch.

If you’re craving real talk about death, grief, science, and the fragile gift of being alive, press play. Then share this with someone you love, subscribe for more honest conversations, and leave a review to tell us what presence looks like in your life today.

Book Recommendation: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Maybe the most emotional book recommendation we’ve had yet.)

If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

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Chapters

1. #35 - So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: A Father’s Search for Meaning After Loss (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Nia Emberly (00:01:01)

3. Episode Intro (00:01:36)

4. The Call Begins (00:04:39)

5. Why Talk About Death At All (00:07:54)

6. Losing A Son To Suicide (00:09:19)

7. Hitchhiker’s Guide, Grief, And Tribute (00:13:11)

8. What Happens When We Die? (00:16:35)

9. Belief, Evidence, And Thresholds (00:21:51)

10. Are We Orthodox About Science (00:27:28)

11. Trust, Expertise, And Noise (00:31:47)

12. Miracles (00:35:25)

13. What's one experience? (00:45:22)

14. Voicemail (00:48:39)

44 episodes

#Society #Zach Ancell #Death #Afterlife #Death Anxiety #Existential #Grief #Mortality #Life And Death #Conversations #Religion #Philosophy #End Of Life #Belief #Spiritual Beings