Making Peace with Mortality, Or “Dying, Fast and Slow” (#371)

Summary

Religion on the Mind with Dan Koch
Episode #371: "Making Peace with Mortality, Or ‘Dying, Fast and Slow’"
Airdate: January 5, 2026
Guest: Kristin Tiedman
Host: Dr. Dan Koch

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into mortality, grief, and the existential challenges that surface when facing serious illness or loss. Host Dan Koch, a licensed therapist, and returning guest Kristin Tiedman explore what it means to confront death—quickly and slowly—via personal experience, recent cultural moments, existential therapy, psychology, and spirituality. The conversation is candid, occasionally darkly humorous, and filled with philosophical musings, personal stories, and literary/artistic references.

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Main Topics & Discussion Points

1. Personal Encounters with Mortality

• Kristin's Diagnosis ([02:22–07:03])

  • Kristin shares her recent diagnosis: initially multiple sclerosis (MS), later revised to clinically isolated syndrome (CIS). She explains the confusion, emotional impact, and her experience holding her newborn in the ER.
  • Quote:
    “I've never felt mortality...I have a timeline. I am finite. I guess my finitude hit me in a new way.” – Kristin ([06:13])
  • She describes her grandmother’s recent death as a contrasting experience: a long, slow decline, raising the question of “dying fast and slow.”
  • Dan reflects on narrative versus real modes of dying and how modern medicine shapes these patterns.

• Tatiana Schlossberg’s Story ([09:15–11:10])

  • Kristin discusses being deeply moved by Schlossberg’s New Yorker piece on receiving a terminal leukemia diagnosis right after childbirth.
  • Quote:
    “Death is on my mind. Finitude’s on my mind. And also recognizing how much we don’t want it to be on our minds, how much we push it off of our minds.” – Kristin ([10:42])

2. Medical and Existential Clarity

• Explaining MS/CIS ([11:11–17:57])

  • Kristin gives a clear, layperson’s explanation of MS and its impact, describing her own symptoms (notably visual disturbances) and the uncertainty about prognosis.
  • Memorable Moment:
    “My eye...it looks like deep fried memes. I don't know if everyone remembers those…very overexposed…That’s actually very common…Symptom or onset attack or flare up of MS.” – Kristin ([13:36])
  • Discussion on advances in treatment, shifting MS from a likely sentence of disability/death to a more manageable chronic illness.

• Existential Therapy and Limitation ([18:27–23:43])

  • Dan draws connections to existential therapy, suggesting serious illness can clarify our limits and therefore, paradoxically, increase meaning.
  • Quote:
    “As you accept it and then build your life consciously from within those limits. Because again, that's what we all have to do if we’re going to be honest. And most of us don’t ever get that honest.” – Dan ([20:28])
  • Kristin ponders whether such diagnosis might be a “gift”—an insight or shift in perspective forced by circumstance.
  • Quote:
    “It's a gift I would have never asked for, but I think I have to view it that way, actually.” – Kristin ([23:12])

3. Religion, Art, and Suffering

• Artistic Response to Suffering ([26:06–30:24])

  • Dan hypothesizes that intense suffering produces better art and wonders if the comfort of religious answers can diminish artistic depth.
  • Quote:
    “Maybe [religion] obviates a certain kind of pain...that contributes to art being good.” – Dan ([26:06])
  • Kristin agrees: religious art often swings between beauty and placation, sometimes at the expense of honesty. C.S. Lewis discussed as an exception.

• Religious Literature and Apologetics ([28:12–32:52])

  • They critique Christian knockoff art vs. secular (or suffering-informed) works. Dan praises “The Great Divorce” for psychological richness.
  • Connections drawn between “Love Island” reality TV and C.S. Lewis’ depiction of hell: self-chosen misery and unwillingness to change as a barrier.

4. Grief & Death Practices in Modern Culture

• Modern Bereavement and Ritual ([39:03–45:43])

  • Kristin describes her grandmother’s funeral—how rapid, sanitized modern rituals can undermine collective grieving.
  • The importance of physically interacting with the dead ("sitting Shiva," processions, funeral rites) and how those lessen or contextualize grief.
  • Memorable Moment:
    “It was almost jarring...She was the one dying slow. But then all of a sudden, it was fast.” – Kristin ([41:19])
  • Dan points to modern avoidance of death—hiding it away, minimizing reminders, shortening rituals.
    Quote:
    “So much of what we do seems ultimately designed for us...so that we can get on with our fucking lives and stop thinking about this.” – Dan ([45:05])

• Existential Takeaways

  • “Memento mori” as a motif: keeping awareness of mortality as motivation for meaning.
  • Emmy van Deurzen’s words:
    “We…take the intensity out of life by pretending it will last forever.” – Dan, quoting van Deurzen ([48:34])

5. Not Knowing and the Fear of Non-Existence

• Wrestling with Uncertainty ([52:38–61:16])

  • Both Dan and Kristin admit to ongoing grief and anxiety around the possibility of non-existence after death, describing the psychological loss in moving from religious certainty to open questions.
  • Quote:
    “...to go from that to then not knowing is a deep loss...ones that are honestly devastating to a certain extent.” – Kristin ([58:51])
  • Literary touches: Schlossberg’s writing, Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens, fiction as a tool for truth.

• Philosophical Reflections

  • The question of meaning and justice if this is “all there is.”
  • Value of a religious outlook, even if not all historical claims are defendable.
  • Memorable Moment:
    “If I were God, I’d still create the universe. From what I know of it. You can quote me on that.” – Dan ([54:24])

6. Making Meaning through Limits

• Legacy and Finite Agency ([72:24–87:31])
  • They discuss how knowing our “real limits” can help us live authentically and fully—embracing agency, responsibility, and the finite nature of life.
  • The power of willingly choosing causes to live and die for (personal, communal, artistic, familial).
  • Existential therapy’s “promise”:
    • Choosing to confront or avoid mortality shapes the fullness of life experienced. Modernity offers endless ways to “float above” rather than confront this reality.
    • Quote:
      “There’s real life on the other side of this. The only way is through...You can stay looking at the shadows...Or you can fucking climb out of the cave and go see the real world in the light of the sun. That’s the pitch.” – Dan ([76:35])
  • Grief, legacy, and seeing meaning in what one was “willing to die for.”
    Quote:
    “When value and meaning coincide with the finitude of life and the reality of death, it has a way of clarifying the stakes and the intensity…” – Dan ([81:50])
  • Final musings on facing suffering, mortality, and the possibilities for personal growth—including humor and vulnerability.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “I've never felt mortality...I have a timeline. I am finite. I guess my finitude hit me in a new way.”
  – Kristin ([06:13])

• “Death is on my mind. Finitude’s on my mind. And also recognizing how much we don’t want it to be on our minds, how much we push it off of our minds.”
  – Kristin ([10:42])

• “As you accept it and then build your life consciously from within those limits. Because again, that's what we all have to do if we’re going to be honest.”
  – Dan ([20:28])

• “Maybe [religion] obviates a certain kind of pain...that contributes to art being good.”
  – Dan ([26:06])

• “It was almost jarring...She was the one dying slow. But then all of a sudden, it was fast.”
  – Kristin ([41:19])

• “So much of what we do seems ultimately designed for us...so that we can get on with our fucking lives and stop thinking about this.”
  – Dan ([45:05])

• “...to go from that [religious certainty] to then not knowing is a deep loss...ones that are honestly devastating to a certain extent.”
  – Kristin ([58:51])

• “If I were God, I’d still create the universe. From what I know of it. You can quote me on that.”
  – Dan ([54:24])

• “There’s real life on the other side of this. The only way is through...You can stay looking at the shadows...Or you can fucking climb out of the cave and go see the real world in the light of the sun. That’s the pitch.”
  – Dan ([76:35])

• “When value and meaning coincide with the finitude of life and the reality of death, it has a way of clarifying the stakes and the intensity…”
  – Dan ([81:50])

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Key Timestamps by Segment

• 00:08–02:26: Welcome, context for the episode, brief catch-up
• 02:21–07:03: Kristin’s diagnosis, new motherhood, personal confrontation with mortality
• 07:03–11:10: Experiences of "dying fast and slow," Schlossberg essay, current cultural context
• 11:11–17:57: What MS/CIS is, fears around illness, medical advances, meaning and disability
• 18:27–23:43: Existential therapy, the “gift” of limitation, clarifying meaning
• 26:06–30:24: Suffering and art, religious answers versus creative profundity
• 39:03–45:43: Grief rituals, death in culture, personal and societal avoidance
• 52:38–61:16: Fear of non-existence, theological uncertainty, meaning after religious loss
• 72:24–87:31: Facing limits, legacy, existential therapy’s value, finding meaning in limitation

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Tone & Style

The tone is vulnerable, honest, occasionally irreverent (with “a little bit of cussing”), and deeply philosophical. Dan and Kristin weave personal stories with theory, pop culture, theology, and literature, using humor and candor to make existential subjects both engaging and meaningful.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode stands alone as a profound exploration of mortality, loss, and meaning-making. Through personal stories and reflective dialogue, Dan and Kristin illuminate how facing death (in both sudden and protracted forms) pushes us toward authenticity, deeper meaning, and genuine agency—and how modern life, culture, and even religion offer both obstacles and resources along the way. This is an ideal listen for anyone grappling with existential questions, recent loss, or the search for purpose amidst life’s givens.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome back, everybody, to Religion on the Mind. I'm your host, Dr. Dan Koch, a licensed therapist and recently a therapist interested in the existential questions, which is kind of what we're doing here today. I am slightly sleep deprived, I will say, but I do think that this is a spicy enough topic that it will not make a difference. I'm not particularly worried, but I'm especially not worried when I have my friend Kristin Tiedman back in the virtual studio with me. What up?

[A]

Oh, hello, Dan. It's been far too long.

[B]

It's been since aar. Like a year ago. Huh? Since you've been on.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Wow. That feels like forever ago.

[B]

Really responding to the election. I don't really want to go back to that place. I don't think I will be re listening to that episode. So a couple little house cleaning here. Just kind of let me set this up. So first of all, we are recording this a day before we record again for something that will already be out by now, which is our Zoom Holiday party for patrons. So if you are like, man, I really like Dan and Kristen's vibe. Become a patron. And then by the time you're listening to this, you will be able to listen to the recording of that live party, which will be on the patron only podcast.

[A]

You will have missed the party. Just so you have now. You will have missed the party. So get.

[B]

Get on.

[A]

So next year you don't miss the party.

[B]

You will have missed the live element of the party. But you could listen back to more discussion between Chris and I and we're gonna play some games and stuff. It's gon fun. I'm looking forward to it. But here's a little basic background for our conversation today. In October, we were at Theology Beer Camp. As regular listeners will know, that is an event, Kristen, that you have been heavily involved with for many years now, essentially kind of putting it on at this point. Let's not, you know, not to overstate. It is still Tripp's thing, but you basically plan it. You're in charge. What's your. What was your title?

[A]

Camp director.

[B]

Camp director Tripp does things his own way. But you were not there in person. And the reason you were not there is because you recently got a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. And this is also coinciding with brand new motherhood for you. Your life has. You've been sort of punched in the face twice in a row. Well, I guess the baby's not a.

[A]

Punch in the face except for when she Actually does, but yes, except for.

[B]

The physical punches in the face. Yeah, but like wild. Just wild series of events in your life. We were, of course, very sad to not have you there in person. I was sad to not be able to hang out. I'm glad to see you today. This also is coinciding with some studying that I'm doing in existential psychology and therapy practices, because that's an area of my personal therapy practice that I'm wanting to beef up. But the thematic resonance here is strong. So I would say no commitments yet, but expect something to come from a collaboration between the two of us in the coming year or whatever, as we are both working through this stuff simultaneously. We would like to turn this into some kind of larger project. And we've been keen to get something going for a while. But you had a couple really interesting ideas for just a standalone episode to do now kind of at the beginning of this whole thing. So that's what we're going to do. You don't have to. This episode is. Just listen to this. You don't need other context or whatever first. Before I have you give us the two main ideas or these two topics that we're going to be talking about. I got to give you credit for this excellent episode titled Dying Fast and Slow. That's, of course, a reference to Daniel Kahneman's dual process theory of cognition, as in thinking fast and slow. And that's the first of the two ideas. Right. So what's the idea there as you are presenting it to us today?

[A]

Yeah, I probably should extend credit to Myron for getting that more on my radar. Although also my friend Camille, who told me about it years ago, and I let it go in one ear, out the other, but. So, yes, 2025 has been insane. And yeah, I've had this really interesting diagnosis, which I will admit it's a little murky in the whole world of ms, but there's. Technically, I got mildly downgraded. I don't know if you saw my email update, Dan, but it's clinically isolated syndrome, which is the. Essentially, it could be ms, but it's just because there's only one thing. It can't be multiple. It's not multiple sclerosis.

[B]

You have singular sclerosis at the moment, yes.

[A]

Okay. So I can't say it's multiple now. It could never be multiple. That would be the dream come true. The singular would be the dream.

[B]

That's possible.

[A]

And I'm gonna be doing the same medicine treatment. It's really same very Similar. But if we're trying to be as truthful as possible, must acknowledge which syndrome is accurately describing my condition.

[B]

It's like when people call me a psychologist, I say, hold on, I'm a doctor. I'm a licensed therapist. I'm not yet a psychologist. These things matter. Yeah.

[A]

Yes. And really more so to doctors than me, probably, but yes. So I had this diagnosis now only two months ago, and they did tell me multiple sclerosis initially, which was, yeah, tough. And at that moment, which I was actually in the emergency room, I won't go through the entire story, but I was holding my little baby, who at that point was three months, and I was like, this is like, the beginning of my life, in a way, like, the beginning of my life with her in this new world and my partner Beau, starting a family. And I have this thing where I didn't know what the diagnosis meant and I had no, like, full grasp of. Like, everyone's heard of it, but if you are not diagnosed with it and don't know someone, you're not close to someone who has it, then the kind of exact effects are, like, unknown. And I didn't want to rush to Google while I just received this information, like, an hour ago. And I'm like, am I. I'm like, I've never felt mortality. So, like, I've never felt it like that. I've never thought. This is really. I have a timeline. I am on a timeline. I am finite. I guess my finitude hit me in a new way. Not like I haven't discussed it before. And, you know, that's a common theme, of course, that comes up in theology and philosophy or with Aaron Simmons and what is worthy of your finitude, all.

[B]

These sorts of things.

[A]

But to feel it like, that was crazy. And at the same time, other things have been going on. My Grandma, who was 95, passed away just about a month after my diagnosis, which was really very, like, very tough as well. I mean, she had a long, long life. This is where the dying slow comes in. I'll get into more details in a minute. But she. I mean, we even joked as a family that she defied death, like, many times, and she went up to the edge and then came back, but really, at the end, was deteriorating for a number of years. And that was really. I mean, in a way, you know, it was very sad that she passed, but it. And also, it was a relief, which.

[B]

Is also just a quite common story of, like, you know, I think we obviously, we know that not everybody dies quickly, like, in Accidents or with like sudden heart attacks or whatever, but like a huge proportion of people just kind of break down. I mean, like, like it's. That's like the least narratively interesting way for a person to die is probably what I'm trying to say. So it shows up in stories pretty rarely, but it's not rare in actuality, that that's in some ways kind of the default, you know, and then finally something will stop working and that'll cascade everything else. But it's a slow process.

[A]

And I will say also more recently, is this default as possible, because I am sure probably even 30 years ago, her medication was not available to the way that it was able to extend her life.

[B]

Right, that's true. Yeah.

[A]

Or medical research, which is a whole. I mean, that's another phenomenon.

[B]

Yeah. Basically, if you. If like, for instance, if you cure polio or something, you cure one specific way that people's lives could end other than that sort of quote, unquote, natural causes, like at the end of a long life. And you just stack up all the things that we're constantly making progress on. And that would in the aggregate mean a greater percentage of people will make it to the end of like what we would sort of colloquially. Colloquially think of our natural life or whatever. Of course, cancer is natural. Right. So it's not that, you know, that breaks down technically, but you know what I'm saying.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But then, well, cancer. Okay, so let's introduce my. Yeah, let's bring in cancer, my fast component. So basically, and this is now, I guess a little over a month ago too, all within this two month time frame. Many people probably saw Tatiana Schlossberg, who is the granddaughter of jfk, who's just a little bit older than I am, found out that she had a terminal leukemia diagnosis and wrote, I mean, an extremely touching, heartbreaking New Yorker piece about it. And it just hit me in a way that of course, really related to my diagnosis, which is not this terminal thing. But she found out when she had just given birth to her second child. She was in the hospital. It was the day she gave birth.

[B]

Yeah. It came from like a blood test that she had done routinely as a part of giving birth.

[A]

I. Oh my gosh, I cannot imagine, like, having just given birth, you know, again, not even six months ago. I'm like, to have this new joy and then to have this extremely complicated journey and chemo and all these hopes and then hopes dashed, going into remission multiple times. And then she also very thoughtfully touches on dying in her piece. And of course, it's been all over the news, like, at least where I've been looking, like, all these people talking about this tragedy of her life. And also, I mean, there's this greater tragedy of the Kennedys that kind of plays into that. Obviously, there's a element of celebrity that goes into all of it, too. But, yeah, it was like, wow, all of this happening. Death is on my mind. Finitude's on my mind. And also recognizing how much we don't want it to be on our minds, how much we push it off of our minds. And I was like, it feels like there's stuff here, stuff that needs to. We need to remember. You know, we need to remember or we'll be reminded, essentially.

[B]

So before we get to the second of the two ideas, I did want to clarify, because you're right, people don't really know what Ms. Is. I actually. I couldn't tell you right now, like, what the mechanism is about it. And I think that's quite. I don't think I'm out of the ordinary in that respect. And so I assumed, also, in part because of a way that Tripp had phrased something. I assumed that it was a kind of like a. At some point, a fatal diagnosis. And you were able to clear that up for me, even back when it was multiple. Now it's singular. You got the sc. S. S. Oh. Can't call it that. Oh, shit.

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

There's a reason no one calls it that. Okay. But now that it's just okay. Especially now that it's single. But when I just thought it was Ms. And just being someone. Yeah. Who. I don't have a close person in my life with that experience, so I don't have the kind of detailed knowledge. I could tell you a lot about miscarriages, but I don't know about ms, you know, like, that kind of a thing. So your diagnosis is not, at the moment, anyway, necessarily even lethal. Right. Like, what are we actually dealing with here?

[A]

Yeah. So in the realm of. I will just say multiple sclerosis or ms, just for shorthand, because it's still in that realm.

[B]

It's still in that realm, yeah.

[A]

Basically, it is an autoimmune disease where your body attacks the central nervous system and attacks the myelin sheath, which. Rewind back to your high school DNA in my bio class, which I was like, let me dust off my brain. Haven't thought about this in forever. All I know is that the myelin sheath covers the nerve. They like to show you this as a diagram and then of course, they like to tell you it's like the telephone wire and the casing around it that gets eaten away essentially by your own body attacking. And the nerve can then be damaged. So this varies in severity. For me, it attacked my optic nerve in my left eye, which is. My eye is still affected. My eye has gotten better. But the way they even phrased it when I left the hospital, because I was admitted. Yeah. For three days to receive intravenous steroids, which was unexpected at the end of that journey. Yeah. And they were like the steroids hopefully put out the fire, but it doesn't mean that there's nothing stuff that's burnt underneath. So there. I mean, they say it can be a long recovery. And so I could still expect for it to get better, but as of right now, it's still wonky. Like the way I. The way I phrase it, I think I maybe said this to you, Dan. It looks like deep fried, like deep fried memes. I don't know if everyone remembers those, which is crazy, but I don't think I do. Very overexposed, like whites and then kind of. It's crazy that it really does fit that look. It's not just like it was kind of for a while, it was almost like a shadow.

[B]

Well, eyes are kind of like cameras. I mean, the lens of a camera works the same way as a lens of an eye. Right. So there's at least certain kind of.

[A]

Yeah, everyone can go look up deep fried memes in their own time, but it's not gone. But it is odd. And even it's weird. Some of the colors are off. And that's actually very common. I learned again after the fact, after I've now I've read a lot of stuff online. This is very common on set stuff. Symptom or onset attack or flare up of Ms. Or cis because you can have different symptoms. But a lot of things you think about it like, oh, my legs feel weird or my hands feel weird. Very mysterious. No one's like, oh, it's my central nervous system getting attacked by myself. It's like, but vision, something's really wrong. I can't see. And so more people are prompted to go take immediate action. And I was fortunate that in Philadelphia, I mean, I think it's rare that you go from being in the emergency room same day to essentially getting a diagnosis and getting treatment. I've heard a lot of people have a much longer journey, especially when it's things like their legs, weakness in their legs. But these attacks, they can form, like, lesions. Again, this is my layperson understanding. So, again, not 100% perfect, but that's where you see the sclerosis. Like, the scar tissue that you have in your brain is from that which is evidence of attacks, and that can happen in your brain and your spinal cord. So I had a really fun. Well, Two really fun MRIs, super long, where you're not supposed to move, which when you get in, you're like, oh, I'm fine. I'm totally relaxed. And then two hours in, you're like, I need to move now.

[B]

I can't imagine. Yeah, that sounds like hell.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. And someone was like, what were they playing on the tv? I'm like, there was no tv. I was like, there was nothing. It was me and the sound.

[B]

Everybody raw dogs their MRIs. Yeah.

[A]

My gosh. Oh, yeah. That was like. That was its own existential moment. Existential crisis.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

So that's so for. But for a lot of people, I mean, historically, it was not a death sentence per se, but it was equality of life, deterioration sort of sentence.

[B]

Well, and I think I assumed it is, this is how you will die. Like, I assumed that that was guaranteed. And you're like, well, no, no.

[A]

And they have made so much progress, which is like, I'm grateful.

[B]

That makes sense.

[A]

But there are still a number of people who. I mean, if you get. There's different types. I won't get more into the details. There are just different types.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But you can get to a point where you are handicapped in some way in terms of, like, maybe not being able to walk or not able to properly because it's your nerves. You know, it's like your muscles might be just fine, the actual limbs might be fine, but the signals are not able to arrive as they should. So hopefully that will not be the case. We're gonna do what we can. It's still scary, especially facing potential disability. And one thing I will note that is probably, like, the hardest for me is there's a lot of. A lot of mention of kind of cognitive decline in certain respects, like, just getting foggier, not being able to recall. And that's part of. I think, just. I mean, it's happening in your brain, but, like, the signals. And that's terrifying for me. You know, I love my brain. I love using my brain, having the ability to form thoughts. And so that's why we have to podcast together before things take a turn for the worst.

[B]

It's like, not only do I need to mine this deep vein of Gold before it dries up. But also maybe little calisthenics.

[A]

Here we go.

[B]

You know, you're always right. You're gonna keep in your fire.

[A]

We wire.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I am optimistic. And it does seem like, even if it's something where it's not, I don't know, amazing treatment initially, it seems like there's just still making a lot of progress. So I even would be optimistic that within 10 years they'll have more progress. Anyway, that's the general overview.

[B]

So as I've been thinking through existential therapy stuff basically every day last couple weeks, I sort of have two thoughts about the not quite death sentence of it. Right. So the first is what you're getting at with the title, Dying Fast and Slow. Of course, we're all dying. Right? That's. That's sort of duh. But it's interesting that you are being made aware of it in this particular ongoing, conscious way. Even though your years may end up being literally unchanged, identical, or maybe even you, like, live healthier and therefore longer, that's also a very plausible outcome. But nonetheless, you have now been made aware of a new set of limitations whose contours are not even totally known and will be sort of negotiated through time. In one sense, you are being sort of forcibly reminded of the reality that actually faces all of us in an invisible way beyond simply death. But that we do all have limitations, but most of us, our limitations are not as plain to ourselves. And actually, that's what a lot of existential psychotherapy does, is helps a client map out the real limitations of their actual life. Not living in a dream world, not pretending that they're immortal, all kinds of things. Not pretending that they can basically have their cake and eat it, too, in any number of areas in life. So I'm thinking a lot about limitations there and that. I don't know how you feel. I would not call it a gift. You know, I would. I would say, like, this is a bummer. I wish you had no autoimmune disease or sort of no version of it where it's like a. All in a positive thing. From my perspective. It's not my body, but it is. But it is clarifying in some ways that I think are really interesting in that. And I will say this, I wouldn't be surprised if the clarity that that brings over time, and this would line up with existential therapy, significantly increases the meaning you experience in your life as you accept it and then build your life consciously from within those limits. Because, again, that's what we also all have to do if we're going to be honest. And most of us don't ever get that. Honest. I think you're an honest person. You care about this stuff. You were. You thought a lot about deep things. You have a master's in philosophy. I'm not saying this is the only way for you to do that, but. Yeah, I don't know, it's just fascinating. I empathize with you. Of course, I also find so many of these ideas really resonant and really interesting.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate your view. And yes, I'd like to think that I've considered what this means previously. But it's. It's funny. It just hits different when it feels, like, actually real. I don't know. It's so hard to find the words. I was. What was the song I was listening to the other day where it was like, something like, I can't learn your lessons for you or something like that. I can't remember exactly lyrics, words. But there was something that really hit me. I'm like, oh, yeah, we can read from other people. We obviously are all. Anyone probably listening to this is trying to learn or get at the meaning of life, you know, religion on the mind. I mean, come on. But there are things that are so experiential, which I think is also probably why you and I are drawn to continental philosophy and of course, existential philosophy. But I think that's also why the Tatiana Schlossberg article hit me so hard, because I was like, oh, I feel this. And the way she conveys it, I mean, it's about. That's the beauty I think of writing or storytelling is as close as you can get to actually experiencing it. And that's why art is important. And these people willing to kind of translate what that experience has felt like for them, even when it's painful and even when it's so hard to wrap their mind, maybe even around their own reality, but to give that gift to other people. And yeah, I mean, I'm like, okay, I am really cognizant of this now. It has been reshaping my life now. I'm thinking about things totally different every day. And it's hard to also shift perspectives. There are times I'm noticing I shifted back, and then it's like I notice my eye or I think about something and I'm like, oh, yeah, I have to follow up about my medicine or follow up whatever. And it kind of gets me back to that new view. And it's. It's just odd it's like, all right, here's what we're dealing with now. And I don't know. I do think it might be a gift. I think it might be something where I. It's a gift I would have never asked for, but I think I have to view it that way, actually. I don't know. I don't think I've ever told you this, but I almost got that tattooed, like, back in the day, the phrase, maybe it was a gift.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Truly? Yes. This is like a whole other story, but I was like. Cause. Cause. Yeah, maybe it was a gift, but maybe, maybe not.

[B]

Well, okay, so to clarify what I mean. Yeah. You know, what I mean is you can still. It can end up being gift. Like, you know, like, it can end up being overall an experience that you look back on at the end of your life and say, I think my life was more full because of that diagnosis. I could see that happening, but that would be in part because of how you choose to react to it. And I think there's no way to kind of do a generic valuing there. Like, there's no way to compare and contrast. Right. Like it's apples and oranges. But I'll tell you. Okay, but let me pivot in a slightly more lighthearted direction before we bring in grieving and death practices and keep it all on this level. This is totally off the cuff. I'm not. I am not putting the full weight of myself as a licensed therapist behind this or a researcher. But I think that Darrell would, like. Daryl Van Tonger would like this theory, and I think you might, too. So here's a quick theory that came up when you started talking about the beautiful writing that Schlossberg was able to do about this painful experience. Right? So I was like, oh, yeah, art, like, people who experience a lot of suffering often produce the best art across formats, across time. And I was like, wait, is this maybe a reason that religious art qua. Art. So art as a piece of art tends to be worse because Darrell would say that religion has a prepackaged answer for all of life's existential givens, the natural limit, and stuff that produce human anxiety, right. That we know we're going to die, that we're kind of alone. And then religion's like, no, you're not going to die. You won't be alone. You know, it sort of answers all this stuff. And so maybe it obviates a certain kind of pain, a certain kind of existential suffering that is perhaps not in all cases, but in enough Cases to show up. So the argument would go on the whole. It obviates the particular pain that contributes to art being good.

[A]

I like this theory.

[B]

Dan, what do you think of this theory?

[A]

I like this theory. I. Well, I don't remember who said it, but there's something where there's like this. These people. It's like. I think it's a poem, but it's like the people don't know that when you ask the poet to write poetry, it's saying to the poet, now, bleed. Like, yeah, someone find that poem. I know it exists somewhere.

[B]

I didn't make it upright poetry bleed.

[A]

Yeah. And that. But I would say, I mean, what are the things that, I mean, move us? And like, why art. This is. That's a whole other. This is another direction. But I would say, I mean, yeah, you could be moved by extreme beauty. Maybe that's the good. Religious art is moved by extreme beauty. But I agree, a lot of things we see, especially, you know, I think growing up evangelical, we've seen. It's like, oh, well, there's the good thing and then there's the Christian knockoff, which is, you know, it's fine, it's pure. But is it good? Is it as good? I don't know. So I. Yeah, I would say. And then, I mean, for me, too, yeah, I was like, kind of placated. I was placated by a lot of answers. And then you almost. I find, in my experience, I think you can try and be an apologist then in your art, which feels at times a little disingenuous, I guess. Like, it's like.

[B]

I mean, maybe you're saying. Sorry, you're saying that like a religious artist, like a Christian artist, songwriter, poet, author, they. They end up feeling. Because. Is this right? That. Because religion has so much of an in grouping kind of gravity to it that you end up sort of having to argue for the group identity while you're also making your art. And so you end up as an apologist for the faith in a way that is like, kind of can be off putting to somebody who's not already kind of in the fold. Or am I reading something different into what you're saying?

[A]

I would phrase it a little bit more like you have to be a witness, and so your art has to be showing the Christian experience in a favorable way to kind of defend it. And I mean, I think I will say C.S. lewis, I think, is a great writer, an artist, and was also a famous Christian apologist. I don't think this is like, an all encompassing theory. To answer your theory, I wonder if.

[B]

You'Re going to say what I would like to say about him here. Go ahead.

[A]

Oh, no, no, no.

[B]

I mean, I wonder if we're going to have the same opinion. Are you going to go into a little Clive criticism here? Oh, well, as media criticism. Not like making fun of him.

[A]

Oh, no, I would never. Because I found he was a great writer and I found he was very in touch with a lot of human emotion in a way that I would say again, you can almost deny those emotions if they don't serve the purpose of bringing people to Christ, I would say. But I do think sometimes he would make things a little too convenient here and there.

[B]

That's basically what I was gonna say. Like his art, you know, his. So Narnia as well as like the Great Divorce, right, Which is this kind of fantasy. His sci fi trilogy, which is from sci fi's perspective, like, incredibly meager and outdated and stuff. Like he imagines that there are talking beings on Venus. Like, that didn't take very long to become false, falsifiable. But, like, you know, so it's old, you know, he's before Apollo missions and all this stuff. So anyway, before the space race, all that stuff. Right. But his allegory work, his storytelling and narrative work holds up for me so much better than, like, Mere Christianity, which is his major work of apologetics, which I read now. And I'm like, I get what you're saying, but, like, it's not a very good argument. I think that that's not true. Whereas good things done in Tasha's name are like, they're done in Aslan and good things done in bad things done in Aslan's name, or as if they're done for Tash. Like, fucking a, dude, I'll ride that to the grave. That is good. And that is a kind of an argument, but it's wrapped in narrative, you know.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's. I mean, it's funny, I think in this day and age. Again, I've been up and down substack these days, Dan. That's in the middle of the night with these feedings. I'm a substack girl.

[B]

Honestly. Can I just briefly say I wasn't even the, you know, the milker. I was not even the nurser of our young boys, but especially our first one when that. When we were kind of taking some turns at night. No fucking way. I was reading substack essays. All I could do was rewatch movies I had seen five times oh.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

I mean, listen, I had no brain, so you really. It kind of doesn't matter what this singular sclerosis is gonna do. You're starting with such a full deck here. You're gonna.

[A]

Well, that's because I think Jonathan Haidt scared me too much about social media. And I was like, I could just ingest an extensive amount of social blah, blah, blah. That's not gonna make me feel good. Or I can try my darndest to read some stuff. So I've been reading, but it's kind of hilarious because now it's turning into Twitter. But that's a whole other thing.

[B]

Once there's VC involved it to the same place, basically, we train it for what we want it to be and we get what we deserve.

[A]

It is. Oh, my gosh. This is a whole. Listen, so many tendrils are coming from.

[B]

We can't. We gotta. Okay, yeah, sorry.

[A]

But although Derek Thompson's article, Everything is television, please read everyone. Like every. All media. It's like the spinning circle. Everything circles, it keeps going down to television. Everything's.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, isn't that. Basically, that's the. I have a note for an episode in the future. How right was Neil Postman Amusing ourselves to death. Yeah. And that's probably what Derek's piece is. I definitely think I've read it, but it's been a while.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that's the tough part. Sometimes even if you have read something, I'm like, do I remember anything that happened in this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Although the Great Divorce. You mentioned that.

[B]

Well, I was gonna say. And by the way, listeners, please, if you like this idea. One idea I have is. And maybe we would do this together. The Great Divorce is incredibly psychologically rich, I think, in its portrait of heaven and hell and all this stuff. So I've been wanting to do a religion on the mind read along of Great Divorce and discussion. So if you want that, let me know.

[A]

Listeners. Okay, this is not. This is gonna sound like a shameless plug for something that's actually. It's not that good. But the idea was good. I. I wrote a substack piece about Love island and the Great Divorce.

[B]

That, like, Can I guess? Okay, go ahead.

[A]

That was like, there is no one else making this connection on the entire planet.

[B]

Can I guess what it is? The argument is that much like the inhabitants of Hell in the Great Divorce, the contestants on Love island are like, choosing their own personal agony and ongoing hell. And we're. And, like, getting paid millions of dollars to do it. Oh, my Gosh, we're just watching them like it's like a Truman. It's like if the Truman show met the Great Divorce and you had a TV show that was broadcasting down from hell up into heaven.

[A]

In a way, yes. I mean now no one has to read it, but there was one character in character, see reality, reality tv, but one person on the show in particular who was so wedded to, to her view of how things were and how she saw it and people kind of coming against her or whatnot. And I was like, if she let this go, her life would be better. And that's so much of what you see in those characters in the Great Divorce.

[B]

It's also existential therapy.

[A]

And that's.

[B]

But it's crazy directly related.

[A]

Well, it's so you cannot get through to a person like that until they have an iota of willingness to do it themselves.

[B]

Yeah. I mean there are some therapies that are designed to be able to be used when clients are not very motivated to change. Motivational interviewing is probably the most well known these days.

[A]

Oh wow.

[B]

Of those of like a non pharmacological. It's a talk therapy, but it's sort of designed for people who are ambivalent and not really ready to give up something that's hurting them, that kind of a thing. So you sort of do this like rhetorical dance with them. But most therapy, we'll talk about how like this works best when the client is motivated. But existential therapy, like Emmy Van der Zen, who's the psychologist that I'm reading, whose work I'm. Who's whose sort of clinical book I'm working through, she says it really matters. Like that is sort of the whole game. What you need to do if you are going to do proper existential therapy with someone is you need to tell your client early on that like this is the only way this works, is that you are willing to use this like that you basically agree with me in this overall basic assumption that people can make meaning and sense out of their lives and they can take control of their lives. And you gotta wanna do that, or at least want to want to do that. That's kinda how I would frame it because that's like the whole thing. It's like this is. I'm helping you figure out what your real limits are and what you really want to do within those limits as well as potentially uncover areas where you've been ignoring those limits or pretending that they don't exist and sort of living in a kind of a fantasy of your own creation. Or maybe you and a few other people or whatever. Or maybe you and a whole religion. I don't know. It depends on where you want to. How far you want to move the microscope around.

[A]

You and all the people on Substack and your chatgpt who will tell you that that was such a good idea.

[B]

Have you had to. I've multiple times had to tell it to cut that shit out.

[A]

It's so funny. My one friend has said, stop complimenting me. Like, he's told me that he has said this to ChatGPT.

[B]

You can. But then when they update the new model, like, I feel like I've had.

[A]

To do it again. Yeah, I don't think I use it in that way. It's so funny. I became so cognizant because, you know, you read the stuff about it causing psychosis and stuff, but like, it's. I've been so, so much. Treating it almost like a search engine or simply a tool. I don't use it as much for ideating that. It doesn't give me that as much.

[B]

I find that it will give me feedback. Like, it's almost like it's. I'm using it for often something kind of in between where it's like, okay, what, you know, what are some counter arguments to this? Or what have psychologists said about this topic? Of like a. You know, I don't. I could try and Google this, but like, this is going to be much more quick of like, you know what, here's some other people. Or like, you know, what are 10 blanks? And it will sometimes go, yeah, that's such a great combination of things to ask about. And I'm like, fucking. I don't. Just tell me like I'm. That I'm not brilliant for being curious about something. You know what I mean?

[A]

I'm not.

[B]

I'm. I'm like. I'm often using it for sort of like, oh, what are. I'm like setting, you know, I'm like setting background for something or whatever, things like that often. And it's like, there's nothing praiseworthy in this question of mine, so shut the fuck up.

[A]

It's so funny. There was something I had to assess a short dialogue just to get like a kind of, you know, a read on something. But I had it like, like anonymous, like person one, person two. And it was like, if you tell me which person you are, I might be able to suggest some next steps. And I was like, no. Like, it was so. I was like, it was so bizarre. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, I don't. I have. I realized I have a lower level of kind of concern or negatively put would be paranoia about using it, but.

[A]

Because it's your best friend. Yeah. So you.

[B]

Because it is now the last person I talk to before I go to bed and the first person I greet when I wake up.

[A]

Oh my gosh.

[B]

I call him Chad. Chad. GPT Now Chad. That's a joy. I heard that from Joy today earlier. Okay, so let's. There's more to say. We're going to come back to this dying fast and slow thing, but let's get this second idea into the ring, so to speak, so that we can bounce them off each other. And this is the idea of grieving death and of death practices. So what brought this on and made you kind of want to sink your teeth in here?

[A]

Yeah, well, in the reality of my grandma passing and it's funny, you know, we've known she was on her way again for a long time, but when she finally went, it was just almost quick and then it was like, okay, she's gone. She's in the casket and we're burying her. And it was like, okay. I never, you know, I never got to see her. I never got to say goodbyes. I never, I mean there was like there was. My dad kind of did or like, at least you know, was went up to situation. She lived like two hours away and that's. I would have gone had I not had a six month old. And she basically was like not conscious at the time where it was like time to go. So I mean, I think that there are some complications there, but just in general not being able to see the body. I think I did not go back and reread this, but I think it was Clara White in the Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science and Religion there is a section on death.

[B]

There's different articles on which you did some copy editing. What was your role next?

[A]

If you have the chance to index ever, don't do it.

[B]

Just say no.

[A]

Kids, just say no. It doesn't matter how much it pays. No, it was fine. It made me read everything, which was very interesting. But there is a. Again, I'll not use the precise language, but there is something that. Well, at least it has been proven that it shortens the grieving process if people are able to interact with the body of the deceased. That sounds kind of weird, but like if you think about historically embalming or culturally all sorts of practices where.

[B]

Sitting Shiva.

[A]

Sitting Shiva.

[B]

I always think of yeah.

[A]

Where you see. I mean, and you're spending time and you're kind of taking that seriously. I mean, we.

[B]

Or processions, funeral processions. Like, think New Orleans is the. You know, that one gets on media a lot because they have the brass band and stuff. But. But yeah, like a morning procession. You're, like, participating in this ritual and you are sort of putting it to bed. Like, kind of metaphorically, kind of literally.

[A]

Well, and that. I mean, I think it's funny to me, it was almost jarring. So it's funny. It's like dying fast and slow. She was the one dying slow. But then all of a sudden, it was fast. Like, then it was like we even. It was. She had passed. We went up that week for the burial service, and then a couple days later for the actual funeral service. But the burial service, it was kind of cold and windy. It was pretty much just for the family. So there were about, I don't know, 20 of us there, 25. And there was the pastor there, kind of gave a message, and it was very, you know, very. I'm just gonna say evangelical. Like, well, her body's here, but she's not here. You know, she's somewhere else. Like, that's the, you know, the main thing. And it's like, okay. But we went. And then it was like it was over. Like, it was really quick. Then we were like, okay, let's go to the diner. Cause it was like we weren't gonna hang out in this cold, windy graveyard. But I was like, it was funny. Beau even was.

[B]

But it's like, you gotta stay in the cold, windy graveyard. It's better if it's raining. The movies have told us this, Kristen. I mean, I bet in some sense it is actually sort of, like, psychologically better. Maybe that's overstating it for, like, really close loved ones or something, for whom that's a minor factor or whatever. But, like, it. You know, it's like the discomfort is not unrelated to what you're talking about.

[A]

Yeah. Oh. I mean, it ties both to grieving and dying. I put this in kind of my notes for this. The no one dies alone. And I also put the Queen of Dying. The Queen of Dying is a Radiolab episode. If you look up Queen of Dying. Radiolab. About Elizabeth Kubla. She's the person who did the Five Stages of Grief.

[B]

Yeah. Kubler Ross.

[A]

Kubler Ross. And how. It was kind of some of the first studies or interactions with people who were dying. And there's this thing about sitting with them so they're sitting with people as they are dying and as they are grieving, and maybe you are preparing to grieve and then that grieving afterwards. And again, I don't like so much of this is like, why are we rushing it in this 21st century Western way? Almost like, it was funny. Yeah. Bo said at the grave site. Cause his grandma had died a few years back, and I guess they had thrown roses on the casket as they were lowering it. I'm sure people have done this in various capacities, but we didn't even do that. And he's like, well, aren't we gonna throw the flowers on the casket? I'm like, no, I think we're just leaving. And I don't want this to sound like I'm blaming anyone. I think, if anything, there was an urge to. I almost wanna say, like, protect the family from needing to be out there or, like, not prolong it. And I think that's an urge a lot of people have. But I'm like, to what end? And like, in almost a microcosm of that.

[B]

Well, the question you might ask is, like, whose anxiety or suffering is being lessened? Is it the family or is it us? And maybe in some cases, there is a legitimate argument to make for certain things for the family, especially if there's like, you know, maybe some people have health limitations or other things like that. But if it's just suffering because their loved one died, like, well, you kind of can't. All you can do is, like, make it less awkward for you. You can't actually keep them from going through that. And so much of what we do does seem ultimately designed for us. Those sort of less connected or less grieving or whatever. People nearby, the friends or whatever. Well, it's actually a way so that we can get on with our fucking lives and stop thinking about this.

[A]

I think that, yeah, the component of removing the social kind of processing and engagement as well, to the singular isolated end. And also, like, probably, like, stamp down grieving where it's like, this is. It kind of feels like it's not. Again, it's in this. It is in this vein of hedonism. It's like, we're not really supposed to feel this. This isn't part of the good times. So.

[B]

But, like, you know, go ahead.

[A]

Oh, and. Well, I was gonna say, even in the Queen of Dying thing, they talked about how in hospitals at that time, they put people in, like, the back corners of the hospital who were dying. They were like, get them. We don't want to see Them, we don't even want to think about it. Just put them on the side. It's like blinders.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. Yeah. What were you.

[B]

Well, I was, I was gonna say that, you know, I was like, okay, what's the charitable read of, you know, the person kind of being too hasty around the tough stuff? And I thought, well, a more charitable read would be that this is something that most people only do a couple times in their life. And so they don't have experiential knowledge or memory. And so that lets individuals off the hook for sort of like me judging them. But I think what it actually does is just sort of points the blame back at the larger culture that we have co created in the west, which is a culture that can't handle that stuff. So that's why nobody ever gets that expertise in part or they're not even kind of like, you know, you think about like religious confirmation is an example of like, you know, around 13, 14, 12, depending on the religious group. You know, you start this sort of formation project with youth and then at that point or around that age, they will sort of graduate. You know, that's bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, that's confirmation class in most Christian denominations. And you, you kind of, you have a structure that's built up over time. You're like teaching the young people this. And then every year the whole congregation goes through it and sees it happen again. And it's kind of like there's a little bit of that for funerals. You go to a few funerals, you get the sense kind of of how they go. But there isn't like a robust thing around when people are dying or when they get really bad news or. Which are just as common as going through confirmation is or coming of age is. Everybody comes of age, everybody dies. So there is this interesting, like where we put our attention element.

[A]

Well, and that's where it really dawned on me that that's why it's so important for us to talk about this, like as a thing, as a memento mori. As a reminder. Yes. That we are like, it is going to happen of all of us. I like the way you phrase it. It's like. Yeah. It shouldn't be something where it's such a surprise, but I think we're used to thinking of it as kind of this outlier to life as we pretend to be a little immortal.

[B]

Well, I was just gonna throw a quote at you and you're kind of almost beating me there. Here's an Emmy Van der Zen quote about existential therapy, that people who are in need of this kind of therapy, that what we are doing that we need help with is we, quote, take the intensity out of life by pretending it will last forever. End quote.

[A]

It's. Yeah. Amen.

[B]

And, you know, people who are more into, like, unconscious and sort of depth psychology and social unconscious stuff than I tend to be will point to things like beauty projects, beauty products, and de. Aging and all these kinds of things as, like, I think that. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, maybe, maybe. But I tend to think of it more in the terms of, like, when we really get a mental look at our death. Or as I've said to you before, like, I'm more worried about not existing than dying. Right. That's the thing that's, like, when we really get a look at that, that produces a kind of anxiety that is so acute that we don't need very many instances of that for it to leave an incredibly lasting impression. It's like the final boss. You know, it's like, you don't forget it, but it's. But like, you. So it provides you enough impetus to sort of push things down. That's more how I would conceive of it.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I. You know, I want to talk about this thread of non existence, which I.

[B]

Feel like you bring it in. I have alluded to it. We can talk about it if you want to bring it in.

[A]

Yeah. Although I did want to say there was this one thing from Kubler Ross.

[B]

Please.

[A]

My own quote. I found this very touching.

[B]

You are quoting your substack essay about Kubler Ross.

[A]

Oh, no. I am quoting an overbringing podcast.

[B]

Okay, okay.

[A]

This is so funny. I read the transcript while Juni was napping instead of re listening to it. But you know what? I was like, oh, that probably saved me about 20 minutes just reading it. So. But yeah, but it's also convenient because you can screenshot the things. So she was saying, if we do not come back and give them a. If we don't come back and give them a pat on the back and say, don't cry. It's not so bad. It is bad to leave everything and everybody you love. And if we help them be angry and help them be sad and let them express it and cry and not say, you're a man, it's not manly to cry. Like, I was like, wow, this is a part of it. It's about the grieving and the dying at the same time. Because there's a grief of your own to go through it. I think what's at play here in this dying fast and slow is still the kind of knowing of your dying, having that time to grieve, looking at it, looking at your potential non existence and having to reckon with that. That's what the Ms. Initially CIS whatever for me is now I do have to reckon with it. Like I can't keep pretending essentially that's what it's done in my life. And that might not be the same for everyone but you know, and some people, again it might not take a diagnosis. We know that. So I think there, I mean there have been a lot of emotions. I feel like I seem always so chipper with you, but I'm like, please know I was crying in a Whole Foods which is not. There's a famous book called Crying in H Mart which is a little different. But I'm like, it's kind of because I'm trying to eat this anti inflammatory diet was why we were there because I'm trying to eat all these new foods and I'm crying because I'm like I'm not even gonna be able to eat all this food the rest of my life. Like I'm like, I could eat five things which is I think kind of the dumbest thing when you're at a Whole Foods probably, but you're trying to eat healthy. But it was like, you know, I'm not always this happy, happy go lucky sort of galaxy. But yeah, the existential, the threat of non existence is such a threat to me that I am. I have to pretend that it's not real. Like I have to just think, okay, we might not exist. I can't come to terms with that. So that's me right now. I don't know. I know. I want to hear your thoughts about it.

[B]

Yeah. So in our friendship we've talked about this over the years and I've just shared with you that yeah like my. When I glimpse that it can be pretty terrifying. And you know, it's interesting, it's got this obvious tension with being a Christian. I mean I'm a liberal Christian and that this is kind of the area where I think that distinction matters the most. Maybe that might, I don't know that I would really stand by this. Again, this is off top, the top of my head but like it's a major area where I feel a psychological difference between my older, more traditional Christianity and my current liberal Christianity. I used to feel way more confident that there was like a good afterlife, that this all worked out and Now I think, well, it might. I really, really hope so. I think it would. I sort of think. I mean, I could be wrong about this. Of course. I'm really into sort of holding theology very lightly because I don't know how you would prove it. I don't know really what counts as evidence for this claim one way or the other. But in terms of knowing how it will go. But morally speaking, if there's no. If this life is really all it is, then the universe is, like, profoundly unjust. Now, that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth doing. And I am grateful to have gotten to live. And from God or whatever's perspective, if God, let's say, has no ability to sort of make things go well at all, maybe that's just beyond the power of any God in some, like, logical way that we just don't. That's just. That's just the state. That's just the facts. Let's say that's true. Well, then there's no, like, good loving, at least not just God. If God is constrained by, like, whatever metaphysical constraints are there such that there could, for whatever reason, just never be God who could, like, do miracles. Let's just say that that's impossible for some reason, well, then it's not God's fault. And I would still probably, if I were God, still create the universe. From what I know of it. You can quote me on that. I would still create the universe. But, like. But, you know, an afterlife presents options for actual justice, which is this thing that religious people say about God in Christianity and Judaism and elsewhere. And so it really shows up psychologically that I don't have that confidence. Because really I'm finding learning the existential therapy stuff kind of diving back in there more deeply to be very personally resonant in a way that it wouldn't be if I were still more of a traditional Christian. I would just be like, you guys think life is meaningless. It's not meaningless. It's totally meaningful. Like, connect with the Lord. Like, that's the meaning. It would just seem like they're wrong.

[A]

Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

[B]

Do it and enjoy him forever. I mean, honestly, there's worse answers to that question of the chief end of man. But that's from the Westminster Catechism, by the way, everybody. I am just finding myself so much more. Maybe it's this. Maybe it's like, I still hope that the Christian rough Christian vision is correct, that God does have us all in God's hands and will make things Right. In a real way. But while I'm living here, I might need to settle for existential Christian existentialism or, like, an existential psychology approach, which is like, we're going to die. It's all finite. I'm going to make the most of it. I'm going to live the best life I can, live the most meaningful life that I can live. And that'll be icing on the cake. What's so weird about that? Is icing on the cake. It wouldn't. It would be that this is cake on. This is icing on that cake. You know, like, maybe or maybe not. I don't know. I don't. Maybe we turn into shades. Who knows? Who the fuck knows? And you can't prove it one way or the other. Here I am. I can do no other. I can stand nowhere else.

[A]

Well, that's. Wait, can I just.

[B]

Just.

[A]

Because I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't read any part of the Schlossberg article, but that reminds me of part of it. Please, Can I. Yeah.

[B]

Let's bring it back to that first idea.

[A]

Because it just was also so moving. Okay. Because it's the same thing, but again, just so beautiful. So she's talking about her kids and, like, what it's like with them. And she's kind of also aware that she is dying. And she says at the beginning of the article, like, when you're dying, all your memories kind of are coming back, at least in her experience. So she says of her kids, she's like, mostly, I try and live and be with them now, but being in the present is harder than it sounds. So I let the memories come and go. So many of them are from my childhood that I feel as if I'm watching myself and my kids grow up at the same time. Sometimes I trick myself into thinking, I'll remember this forever. I'll remember this when I'm dead. Obviously, I won't. But since I don't know what death is like and there's no one to tell me what comes after, I'll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember.

[B]

Hmm. You're doing fake crying.

[A]

They cry to cover up my real crying.

[B]

To cover up your real crying. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

That just hit me so hard. Cause that's how I feel. Like that's what we're talking about, is. It's just so hard not to know. Especially when you. For me, and I think for you, I felt like I did know. I felt like it was like, okay, you guys don't know. But you're just not following God. Because listen, we've got it actually. We've got the answer.

[B]

We actually know. Yeah.

[A]

But to go from that to then not knowing is a deep loss and one that, I mean, I don't even know the full psychological effects it has had on me, but ones that are honestly devastating to a certain extent. Like, it really. It really is like, I think the. One of the. This is like, so dramatic. But one of the times that hit me the hardest was driving across the country alone. Which also. Don't do that if you. Unless you're like, in a really. Actually, no. Do it if you're in a really good spot. Do not do it if you're in a not. If you're in a semi not great spot, don't do it. Anything but a really good spot.

[B]

If you're goodwill hunting, going. Going across to Stanford to see about a girl. Enjoy. Hopefully that car will get you all the way there. Enjoy that drive. But otherwise, yeah, approach with caution.

[A]

Yeah. If you're not sure if you should have dated someone and you left them behind and then you're listening to too many podcasts about if you're. If you're doing. You have permission home for Christianity and the Bible for normal people. Back to back to back. While you're going through Wyoming and your phone is dying and you're running out of gas and you don't have any cell phone service.

[B]

Need to hear about that fifth atonement theory before, of course, you do not use the thread.

[A]

Don't. Just don't do it. Anyway. Yeah, I think that was like. That was like. When I was like, oh, gosh, I don't know if we have more. And it was this, like, whole reckoning, because when you're driving, it's just like pure thinking time by yourself. And. Yeah, I didn't know. I think I even said this about the first beer camp I went to. It was so weird because I was hoping it would give me all these answers to kind of like get myself back in order. Like, this was. After I drove across the country, I was like, okay, if I go to beer camp, the Olga beer camp, where all the liberal theologians are who still have hope, then I'll probably regain my faith in the way that feels familiar to me. And that's just not what happened. But again, that's where I feel like I've met with this existential moment of like, okay, now what? Like, that's like, here we are. Here you're given life. What are you gonna do with it?

[B]

So I. Yeah, yeah, it's really tricky. Like, it's tricky to think about it psychologically and theologically because I see the argument from a more orthodox perspective, which would say, you know, C.S. lewis, for instance, to bring him back in. Maybe this is Chesterton, actually GK Chesterton, saying that Christianity is like the lock that the key of human experience fits perfectly into. I might be switching up the key in the lock, but the idea is that, like, it just, like it gives us the things that we need, it makes us. It makes sense of our experience. It sort of completes the picture. Like, we have one piece and it's the other piece that makes a cohesive whole. And if something like that is true, then we would want people to be confident in it. I think. Why would that be different than saying something like secure attachment with a primary caregiver is the number one thing that makes someone feel safe while they're alive. And as one of the top contributors to their later flourishing, don't we want all kids to have secure attachment with their primary caregiver? It's like, yeah, I mean, you want them to have that. And what's tricky though is you could kind of. I mean, from where I'm coming from, there's stronger evidence for attachment science than there is for the existence of a just afterlife. And some people could quibble with that. And I may be too empirical for my own good or something empiricist or too pragmatic or something for my own good. And other people feel a tremendous amount of confidence about these more supernatural or sort of afterlife type claims. I'm including now the remembered experiences of death and near death experience literature. I'm including remembered past lives, childhood, you know, stuff that. That I just tend to find, like, not that compelling. And I know other people do, smart people do.

[A]

So I mean, you know, we. We have. Well, we kind of have this not knowing, like, we'd like it to be a certain way. And it could. Well, it's funny, there was, I think, something you were getting out there is like, can it still be a benefit? And even if it's on, like, kind of unlocking things, unlocking meaning, even if we don't know it's true, which I think you and I would both say yes. And actually on Substack, someone wrote a piece about how we can look at Mormonism, which is so almost demonstrably untrue.

[B]

Its origins historically, factually, in a way that it's tough to. It's tough to argue for the. I've got a lot of time for Mormons and even certain aspects of Mormon theology I think are really interesting. The way they handle heaven and hell, for instance, is really interesting. But you know, it's hard to take the sort of party line on the history. It's like, you don't think it might have been that he wanted to fuck a lot of women? Like really, we gotta have all this stuff, like, and that's not to say he wasn't. Didn't have some brilliant ideas, like, I don't know, or Brigham Young had brilliant ideas or whoever else. I don't know. Yeah, but like, you know that. Yeah, that one's a little. Yeah, that one's a little.

[A]

Yeah, that one. I'm like, yeah.

[B]

If I'm not, If I'm not sure that the arguments for the Odyssey being intact are a good reason to believe that the Gospels are historical, then I am sure as not gonna believe that, that Joseph Smith had magic goggles. I'm just not going to.

[A]

I mean, he looked in a hat though. I didn't know actually any of the origin of this until like fairly recently. And I was like, wait, what?

[B]

It's pretty wild.

[A]

Oh, more wild than I couldn't, in a way, Tyron. You can't make it up. But then it is, it is making things up. So anyway, but all that to say even if.

[B]

But of course. Really quick though. Just, just before, just lest we're not totally shitting on Mormons. Like, I don't think the Exodus happened either. So it's not like, oh, I'm, I'm not like. And that doesn't mean that the Exodus doesn't have really deep true things to say about the human experience and about God. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so that doesn't mean. But what you're talking about, like when, if we want this really high level of confidence, we're talking about a kind of an all in psychological sense of a person of faith. Right?

[A]

And again, and I think that that's like. I mean, we get so 21st century about it, which, I mean there's even. It's funny, I'm thinking of that one Harry Potter line where Dumbledore, who has died, is in this like afterlife King's Cross station with Harry. And Harry's like, at the end, he's like, is this real? Is this real? And he's like, kind of like, it doesn't matter. Dumbledore is basically like, that's not the point. And that's the thing. Like sometimes like the truth.

[B]

But that. Just that.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Okay. I'm familiar with that kind of argument. It matters to people's. It matters to people with shitty lives. Oh, it doesn't matter to me whenever, like if I drop dead in an hour. I had a. I got a really fucking good hand dealt. Like, I'm good. I have nothing to complain about. My kids, okay. They might have a complaint with their dad dropping dead at 2 or 5 or something like that. That's really tough. My wife losing a partner and husband at this stage in life. Wow. She would have something really to complain about me. I did. I got out like a fucking bandit. If I die tomorrow. Okay. So like, yeah, of course for me it doesn't matter. It's not the point. But if I was a slave my whole life, it kind of fucking matters. If there's something better after this, it.

[A]

Really matters what you're saying. Well, but in the. I mean. Well, here's. I guess now we're getting so philosophical in terms of like, how do. What do we mean by better and when and like at what point? And I'm saying like in terms of. You're saying the Exodus story not needing to be true to be valuable, you know, like, that's. I would say I definitely. I've been trying to like, describe why fiction is so important to us. Been talking with Beau about this and kind of like using. It's like, just because it's not true doesn't mean it's not true. Like, it doesn't mean it doesn't tell us true things or tell us about ourselves. So anyway, I echo. I. Yes, echo your thoughts. Thank you for echoing. But rewind. Mormons. It doesn't matter in a way if a lot of their stuff is true to the fact that they have extremely vibrant societies, like social realities that are playing out and like really healthy a lot of time. I mean, it's not.

[B]

Yeah, it does rest on a lot of exclusion, you know, like, you can't be queer. You can. There's a lot of things you can't be and you can't. Again, this is almost like these are psychological realities of group baking or something like that.

[A]

And I'm not. Again, you can, you can't cover every single thing just by saying. But there's a lot, like, there's a lot of works really good and like totally like good family systems and like, like, you know, people going out and being, you know, whether subjectively, you know, you can say what does success mean? But successful, like doing well in life. Like, I think lower poverty levels like, yeah, a lot of positives across the board in those.

[B]

It's not because Utah put a stranglehold on the Pepsi supply and extracted wealth. They aren't fucking Texas or California like that. They really, like. There's a real ethic within that community that I think most historians and sociologists would say is a serious contributor to their success.

[A]

Yes, exactly. And that's, again, not resting on the truth value.

[B]

Exactly. And that's independent or. Well, what I think the question is, what's the relationship between that and the truth, the historical truth value? That's an interesting question. Yeah.

[A]

And that's. Listen, man, whoever wants to start a whole other podcast from the ideas brought up in this podcast? Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Infinite Regress.

[A]

Truly.

[B]

It's gonna be the multiverse before we know it. Go ahead.

[A]

Which reminds me, before I forget, another thing. I don't think I've ever told you that my favorite song is Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens.

[B]

A great song, but it's about a young person dying.

[A]

Dying of bone cancer, which I was. That's why I was like, oh, I gotta bring this up with Dan while I'm talking.

[B]

And it's about miracles. Attempted healing, miracles not working.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. Tuesday night at the Bible study, we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens. Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I. I can't tell you how many times I listen that song. But also, ironically, when I was, like, still very, very Christian.

[B]

If this is your favorite song, we did just skip over the fact that that makes you a fucking sicko. Find some joy in your life. Actually, maybe it was perfect setup for single sclerosis.

[A]

Single sclerosis.

[B]

Now you're like, oh, I've already got the breastplate of righteousness. I've already. I'm already armored up here, you know? Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I don't know. I don't. I couldn't even necessarily tell you.

[B]

This is a total. For another time, but I do think anecdotally that there.

[A]

There's pro.

[B]

I'm sure somebody has written about this from a psychological perspective, but, you know, I'm a person who's drawn to, like, dark films, you know, and sort of, like heavy shit like that. And I kind of always have been. And I feel like you have that. Obviously you have that too. Like, even God Only Knows, which is my favorite song, is, like, totally bittersweet. It is not like a bubblegum pop song, even though it's by the Beach Boys. It's beautiful, but it's kind of got a mournfulness to it. I mean, it does end, hopefully, but it's, you know, there's doubt and things not ending, and there's little references within it that sort of, you know, there's a little cloud over it and even. Yeah, my Beach Boys, like, I love the stuff that they do when they allow themselves to get a little bit darker, you know. Anyway.

[A]

Well, I mean, maybe that takes us back to our artist comments, but, I mean, Sufjan Stevens, well, that's a whole other complicated thing. But I was gonna say deserves to be on the Pretty Good Vibrations, speaking of other podcasts, because he's prolific. But I would say that song, I think, as we. Yeah, like, it faces suffering, maybe that's what I find so beautiful in it. And that's, I think, what we're talking about here. And I guess maybe in all of these comments we've had, even about Mormonism or this. And that is in terms of taking stock in this existential therapy, I guess what is like the. What would be the Existential Therapy 101? It's like taking stock of your life, kind of having some more agency over it. But what's a little bit of the promise there, if you would, or the hope in terms of meaning? I guess maybe taking a step back and relooking at existentialism. I know people who listen to you will kind of be maybe more familiar with that.

[B]

I don't define it all that often, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So let's just look at that maybe for a second. And your take on it, why it's so meaty for you.

[B]

Okay, so there's a couple different questions in there. The promise goes something like. And really, I'm even so early on in this that I feel like I might get some of this slightly wrong. And so other therapists who practice this can.

[A]

Existential theory. I may not always love you, but as long as there are stars above you. Okay, keep going.

[B]

Oh, wow. Nice. God only knows reference. So the promise goes something like this. Most people live less than a full life because of the ways that they try and ignore, avoid or disassociate from the hard realities of. Of the universe and their life, which include things like death and isolation and, you know, and then. So that's why you can kind of take a couple different paths on the question of meaning. So the hardcore path, the sort of hardcore atheistic path, the Sartre, I think it's just Sartre, right? The Ruhs, it's French.

[A]

I've heard it so many different ways. Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, like for him, the world is absurd. There's no meaning, there's no actual meaning. So you have to acknowledge that and then sort of choose very Kierkegaardian, choose to make your own meaning. And that's kind of like bottom of the barrel. That's sort of like the most nihilistic cheerleader you'll ever hear or something like that. But there are also like more Kierkegaardian, Christian inflected versions of this that would just say, regardless of whether we believe that there is a kind of an absolute meaning. Like I would say in the mind of God is kind of my favorite phrase to sort of get at what that would be. We don't have direct access to that, but let's just posit that it exists. Well, we still the way that we are as creatures, we are meaning making creatures. That is the way that our minds work. We create meaning at individual and group levels and we do it all the time. And you actually cannot even experience something as meaningful without in some way participating in creating that meaning yourself. That would be like a softer version of the theory. But the other stuff is really hard and fast. You're going to die, you're going to die alone. You are not yourself, also someone else. You're only you, you know? And like your choices have real consequences. Like the, the realities and limitations of the world means that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. It means that like shit matters in the kind of logistical sense. It will affect people, you will hurt people. Like, acknowledge that, accept that. So the promise is, most people, there's a narrow road, wide road thing here. Most people, we are forced to think about this stuff occasionally when someone dies or gets really sick or if we have accidents or other sort of moments that kind of temporarily bring up the salience of our own mortality like you're talking about. But most people sort of would, would prefer at least in sort of modern times, to sort of float above all this stuff. And then you can add in a kind of a late stage capitalist lens, which is to say that we have extremely potent and sophisticated ways of extracting people's time and attention from them toward that end, towards and enriching other people in the process. So if, if you're in the mood to float, you can, you can find plenty of beds like you don't, you know, it's not going to be hard to do. And so the promise is, look, there's real life on the other side of this there's. The only way is through. It's very much like Plato's allegory of the cave. You know, you. You. You can stay looking at the shadows, but of the flames behind you, and you can participate in the entire cultural discourse that compares the different shadows of the flames to other shadows of the flames. Or you can fucking climb out of the cave and go see the real world in the light of the sun. That's the pitch.

[A]

Yeah. And that's reading. Substack is climbing out of the cave, and Instagram's watching the shadows. So that's why. Exactly.

[B]

AI Slop is watching the shadows.

[A]

Exactly. No, I'm glad you put it that way. And I would say in embracing this life, I think the question that comes to me again, I think it's so important to look at this to remember that we are mortal, to remember that we have our finitude. I guess I would say, how do we do that? And then there's this component, and this comes to me with the grieving. I phrased it as legacy, but I. I don't know if that's the most appropriate term. But of those who have passed, I think there's this honoring factor that for me, seems so pertinent. And with my grandma, I mean, that's the thing that. Not to be so dark. But when I was thinking about how quickly she died, I mean, she had definitely gotten. She had lost a lot of weight. She had kind of in ways withered away. And when she was in the casket, she would have just been so small. And for some reason I was waking up in the middle of the night being like, she's in that casket and she's so small. And like, it's weird. Then we go to dream.

[B]

Don't do dream analysis. Kristen.

[A]

What am I paying you for, Dan?

[B]

I'm not that Jungian. Sorry.

[A]

I was like, when we were at the funeral, it's funny. Even her picture was her from probably 20 years ago, looking much more healthy and robust. And I.

[B]

Interesting questions around those choices. How do we want to remember her? That's not necessarily denying death, but it could be.

[A]

Yeah. So I know it sounds like she.

[B]

Was really more fully herself 20 years ago than she was. Right. So there could be a kind of. With that long, slow progression. You understand?

[A]

I mean, I know I keep stacking my questions, but I would say two things here in terms of how do we face our own mortality and how do we let it also not swallow up everything that's gone into it? Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah. I Probably can't answer all of that right now at the hour and 24 minute mark.

[A]

Wait, what?

[B]

However, there's one thing I can that I think will kind of get at it to a good bit and that you'll find interesting, which is the idea of like, so think of it like, what is something that you would live for? What is something that you would fight for? What is something that ultimately you would die for? You could think of those as maybe on a continuum. Maybe live for and fight for are actually sort of separate questions. But die for is the sort of ultimate of those three, right? And there's something about, oh, she would have died for that, or she did die for that that is like extremely clarifying. This is why martyrdom is powerful, right? It's like, oh, you know, or Jesus is, you know, the words ascribed to Jesus, greater love has none than this. That a man would lay down his life for his friends, right? And we don't know if that's something that Jesus actually said, the real guy that he knew was happening to him. But I do think we can be pretty confident that he was willing to die for his friends, that he was willing to die rather than fight back. Certainly there's just no evidence that he made any real effort to do that, right? To fight that. So even someone like your grandmother, someone who is not a martyr, but if someone dies and you can say what was the thing that they lived for and were willing to die for even if they didn't die from it, you get a lot of that same stakes and meaning and power. You know, if it's like, oh, like I had a client recently, tell me. So a client went to a funeral of a local person who this woman had just been so connected. And so it's just huge, huge funeral of all these people. And she just lived in one place and been really connected. Especially like, I don't know a lot about the person, but like she. All these people showed up. Cause it's like, oh, like that was the thing she was willing to live and die for was sort of like community, connection and like, you know, being glue in her place. And that was very, you know, that can be very exciting. That can be very invigorating. It can be deeply meaningful to sort of recognize that and go, oh yeah, me too. Or my version is this or whatever. But it's when value and meaning coincide with the finitude of life and the reality of death, it has a way of clarifying the stakes and the intensity that's kind of, that's the Idea that I feel like is getting at a lot of what you're asking. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I. Yeah, I think that is. I mean, that's in a way beautiful and it's. And it's good. And I guess the only thing is, well, I think it helps us to be brave. I think that's like you're taking. It's funny, I recognize you're saying, you know, we're drawn to some of these things that are, you know, maybe darker and meatier, what have you. Like, there's an emo side to me. Maybe that's like, oh, yeah, we just have to be sad. Like, that's what. And I guess I don't know what it is about that. Like, what is it that's appealing about that? I don't even understand it in myself. I don't know if you've thought about that in yourself.

[B]

Well, what's interesting is that I have gone through a period, I've noticed recently where I've been trying to ignore suffering. Like, I didn't even have a sad music playlist for a while there.

[A]

Who are you?

[B]

I know that, like, I really had gotten into. I'd become hedonistic is maybe a little too strong, but it, but there was something about like ignore, like trying to float above too much suffering and ambiguity. And, you know, part of that was like grad school, two babies, you know, just a intense time of life. But I think I'm finding that some of this language feels like it touches on some of what I was doing wrong.

[A]

Hmm.

[B]

You know, and so I'm actually rediscovering now a little bit that side of me that does like really dark shit and finds that valuable and clarifying to sit with that stuff. And that's good timing as my therapy practice really gets going because not that it was effect, it's not affecting my ability to sit with my clients during their sessions, but if I had a. I only have a part time practice because I do the podcast. If I had a full time practice and I was a grief therapist and I was not able to, like that actually would really affect it, you know, so there's. You could imagine things like that.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I. Well, and I think about. I mean it would. That would affect it, but it would affect you, I think, in that amount of grieving. And I think stuff like that would like, you know, people in the medical care and things like that.

[B]

Yeah. And clinicians make decisions around that kind of stuff. Like, you know, a smart clinician will kind of figure out where she, like, can handle more than other people and where she can't. And it's, it's not, you know, generally it will increase burnout if you sort of over index on stuff that is not as good for your personal, you know, your own personality and your own kind of strengths and weaknesses and stuff. So I find that, like, you know, some people would have a hard time sitting with people's like, tough existential religion questions. I light up, you know, like, let's fucking go. You know, like, it makes me stoked. So I, like, I. So I have a greater capacity for that. That does make me anxious. Whereas someone's pastor might not want to talk about that. Like, that might make him anxious or something, you know, so there, you know. Yeah, like, you get into it and you kind of figure this stuff out about your temperament and things like that. Yeah, but that's like, I mean, we got to wrap it up. But just to leave you with one dangling thread, that's really similar to existential therapy where it's like, you know, and really your, Your health situation now, the information that you have about it, like, you have a clearer picture than most people of what your specific limitations are. Yeah, yeah, everyone's got them. But, you know, more what the kind of, you know, the more pertinent ones very clearly. And you know what to be looking for. And if, when I talk to you in 10 years, you're going to re. You're having an insane handle on what you can handle in what area, and you're gonna have like this encyclopedic knowledge of your. Of yourself in that way. And. But we all have those limitations. Like, I'm. I'm realizing, like, I think I'm actually kind of sensory sensitive, especially with hearing, which I think makes sense because I was a composer and a mixing engineer and all this stuff. But, like, I didn't used to think that I was in a fucking band. I was around loud music all the time, like, you know, comfortable in those environments. I've been in rock band. I was in rock bands my whole life. Like, but I do, like, it's funny. It's like kids have shown that because they. You can't turn them off, you know, so it's like that. That's like a new thing where I'm like, oh, what if. Okay, so how have I been papering over that? How have I been trying to live as if that wasn't a limitation of mine?

[A]

That's so funny.

[B]

And what did I do to. To get through that? And that's probably hurt me in some way by. By ignoring that limit.

[A]

Yeah. So limitations, I think, is a key word in terms of. But it makes it almost. The limits give you. Almost. Almost like with a budget gives you freedom.

[B]

I've literally been thinking about it with a budget. It's like you. You can pretend that you don't need a budget and pretend that financial choices don't have effects, or you can fess up to the fact that they do, and you can make choices that end up being meaningful to you because you literally know what you're valuing them at.

[A]

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[B]

You know, so money is actually. Money is both a metaphor and an application of it, I would say.

[A]

Well, I know. Yeah. We gotta wrap it up. We gotta wrap it up. I could talk, obviously, with you all day about all sorts of all things. The little. Yeah, the little threads. But I think it's exciting to. I guess it's funny. I do think, like, when you talk about death, you're expecting it to be so somber. And I think that subconsciously I was like, oh, we're probably gonna get all sad. I mean, I did tear up a little bit. But I think there's something powerful in facing death and saying, and this too, is a limitation, and this too is a part of life that we don't have to actually listen to Kasimir Pulaski Day every time we.

[B]

And even if you thought it was. Even if you think it's good to live forever after Earth, right. Like in heaven or something, which I think is a very defensible view to say, look, whatever that everlasting life would look like, it's going to be different than here, and I'm sure it'll be great here. Everlasting life is grotesque. That is where we get, like, most of the monster stories, you know, so many of them are about, you know, Frankenstein is about seeking immortality. You know, it's like, you know, the Annihilation, the film and book. Like, it's this organic material that just, like, keeps growing. You know, it doesn't. I don't know if it quite never dies, but it's like things that just keep growing and growing and growing and growing. It's like, well, it would just, you know, if there was no animal death on Earth, this was like an old talking point against dumbass Christian apologetics that would say, like, there was no physical animal death before the fall, before humans sinned. Now, if you only believe it's been three days, like, seven days.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, like, I don't know the exact number, but it was like something like, if there was no animal death on Earth in. In like, a month, everybody would be up to their waist and dead in insects or something. Like living insects would just cover everything. They have to be fucking dying all the time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, so it's like.

[A]

Like.

[B]

It's like it really. It. I. I basically. That's what I'm saying is I find it so fascinating. It is like. Yeah, it's such an elemental psychological idea that intersects with Christianity in so many deeply interesting ways to me. So I do think we're gonna. We're gonna be able to scrape something. We're gonna. We're gonna come up with something really cool that we can do together around this. It's too ripe. It's just too ripe, Kristen.

[A]

And listen, I. If I learned anything from this conversation, we got to chat more. We got.

[B]

We got to talk.

[A]

Yeah, I got things to. I'm overflowing with things to tell you that I forgot to tell you about.

[B]

Okay, well, we will have to do that. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Chris and Tiedemann. We will, I hope, have you back for something, but it might be one of these more like we put together a little series together or something like that. We're gonna. We're gonna have to. Time will tell. Time will tell.

[A]

Always a joy.

[B]

But this was a great conversation in the meanwhile. Thank you so much.

[A]

Yes. Cheers.