Conversations

BJ Miller · TED 2015

What really matters at the end of life

A palliative-care physician makes the case for designing dying the way we design anything else that matters — the space, the light, the rituals, the aesthetics. Miller lost three limbs at nineteen and later co-founded the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco; the talk is nineteen minutes of a doctor thinking, on his feet, about what medicine has forgotten. It is polished and moving, and by design not the whole conversation. Fine to watch on a phone during lunch. A doorway, not a depth text.

Anderson Cooper · CNN Audio · 4 seasons

All There Is

Cooper began the show in 2022 while going through his late mother Gloria Vanderbilt's boxed possessions. He records his own grief in his childhood apartment and then, in each episode, speaks with someone else — Stephen Colbert, Andrew Garfield, a therapist, a stranger — about the deaths they carry. Careful, unshowy, sometimes very hard to listen to. Focused on grief after the death, not preparation before it. Start with season one.

Shoshana Ungerleider & End Well Project

End Well

The podcast arm of the End Well project, founded by internist Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider (also a producer on the Netflix documentary End Game). Interviews with clinicians, designers, artists, and dying people about reclaiming the end of life as a human experience — the medical system, cultural design, art, and policy. Leans toward the practitioner audience; consumer listeners may want to skim episode descriptions to find the ones that land for them.

Karen Wyatt, MD · Independent

End-of-Life University (EOLU)

Long-running interview podcast — over four hundred episodes — hosted by hospice physician Karen Wyatt. Guests include hospice workers, doulas, funeral directors, researchers, chaplains, and grief teachers, most of them not otherwise available in podcast form. Production is homespun; the substance is the draw. If you want breadth across the field rather than a single voice, this is where to spend twenty hours.

Bruce Greyson & Oprah Winfrey · The Oprah Podcast

Near-death experiences, explored with Bruce Greyson

Dr. Bruce Greyson has been studying near-death experiences at the University of Virginia for over four decades — he is one of the very small number of psychiatric researchers who have published this material through mainstream academic channels rather than the afterlife-book industry. In this Oprah episode he walks through the data, then the conversation opens up to Jeremy Renner and others describing their own experiences. Included here because Greyson is the real thing and readers curious about the science will otherwise find only the pop-spirituality shelf. The register of the episode itself is mainstream talk; if that puts you off, go directly to Greyson's book After.

Cariad Lloyd · BBC Sounds

Griefcast

British comedian Cariad Lloyd — whose father died when she was fifteen — interviews other comedians and writers about the deaths in their lives. It sounds unpromising as a description and is much better than that in practice. If you cannot bear the reverent register right now, Griefcast is where the reverent register goes to be gently taken apart by people who have lived on the other side of a death and made jokes about it. UK-heavy references. Comedy tone is the entry point, not the point.

BJ Miller & Shoshana Berger · TED Ideas

How to prepare for a good death

The written companion to the talk above, expanded and made practical. Miller and co-author Shoshana Berger walk through the specific decisions most people never make until it's too late — the paperwork, the conversations, the people to call, the place to die in. If you'd rather read than watch, start here. Still an introduction. Still not the whole conversation. But less polished and more usable than the talk.

The Conversation Project · Institute for Healthcare Improvement

The Conversation Project — starter kits

Free, printable, plain-language guides to talking about the end of life with the people in your life. There are separate kits for parents of seriously-ill children, for people caring for someone with dementia, and for the general first conversation with a spouse or adult child. It is a conversation prompt, not a philosophy — and that is precisely its strength. If you have ever wanted to raise the subject at Thanksgiving and didn't know how to start, this is the tool.

Caitlin Doughty & collaborators

Order of the Good Death — essays & "Ask a Mortician" archive

The intellectual home of the death-positive movement, founded in 2011 by the mortician Caitlin Doughty. Essays cover funeral-industry criticism, historical mourning practice, disposition legislation, and grief written by people who have chosen mortality as a profession. Sharper and funnier than most writing in this space; the editorial voice is intentional and strong. If you want quiet, look elsewhere — this one has opinions.

Atul Gawande · 2014

Being Mortal

The book that reset the mainstream conversation on how medicine treats the end of life. Start here if you start anywhere. Gawande is a surgeon who spent the middle of his career watching medicine do the wrong thing carefully.

Kathryn Mannix · 2017

With the End in Mind

Thirty years of UK palliative care, told as thirty stories. Mannix's argument: most of us have never seen an ordinary death and are terrified of an idea rather than a reality.

Paul Kalanithi · 2016

When Breath Becomes Air

A neurosurgeon writes his own dying. Short, brutal, essential. Finished after Kalanithi's death by his wife Lucy; the ending is not what you expect.

Frank Ostaseski · 2017

The Five Invitations

Five orientations drawn from Ostaseski's decades co-founding the Zen Hospice Project. Practical and un-mystical — the invitations are things like "don't wait" and "welcome everything."

Joan Halifax · 2008

Being with Dying

Companion text to the Upaya training of the same name. For caregivers — clinicians, hospice workers, family. Reads like teaching notes translated back into a book, which is essentially what it is.

Stephen Jenkinson · 2015

Die Wise

The most stringent and least consoling book on this list. Jenkinson argues that our whole cultural framing of dying is wrong — that we have made death a medical event and forgotten how to grow old. Read it if you want to be argued with, not soothed.

Kathleen Dowling Singh · 1998

The Grace in Dying

Christian-contemplative-inflected, drawing on Singh's decades in hospice work. For readers for whom that register opens rather than closes something. Older than the others on this list; still one of the most cited.

Sallie Tisdale · 2018

Advice for Future Corpses

A hospice nurse and Zen practitioner writing plainly about what dying looks like, hour by hour — what the body does, what the family does, what the caregiver does. The book that tells you what to expect when nobody else will.

Caitlin Doughty · 2014

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

A young mortician on what she saw during her first years in the crematory. Funny, direct, unsentimental. The book that launched the death-positive movement, whether or not Doughty intended that.

Caitlin Doughty · 2017

From Here to Eternity

Doughty travels to Bolivia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and rural America to see how other cultures handle their dead. Respectful reportage rather than exotica. A useful antidote to the assumption that "the modern funeral" is the only funeral.

Omega Institute for Holistic Studies · est. 1977

Omega Institute — Rhinebeck, NY

A residential learning center in the Hudson Valley that has hosted end-of-life work for over four decades. Omega is a host, not a lineage — it books INELDA's doula training here every summer, the Being with Dying–adjacent retreats, and regular workshops on grief and contemplative caregiving. The catalog is broad: some offerings are contemplative and rigorous, others are frankly esoteric — mediumship workshops share the schedule with clinical trainings. Read specific descriptions carefully. Residential cost and time are real.

Roshi Joan Halifax · Upaya Zen Center

Upaya Zen Center — Santa Fe, NM

Halifax has been doing this work for four decades — anthropologist first, then Zen priest, then founder of a training program specifically for clinicians who sit with dying patients. Upaya offers professional trainings in the Being with Dying program, plus retreats and residency programs for lay students. The frame is Zen — meditation practice is central, not optional. If you're looking for a secular workshop, this is not it. If you're looking for the person who has thought most rigorously about clinical presence at the deathbed, it is.

Koshin Paley Ellison & Chodo Robert Campbell · $3,775

Foundations in Contemplative Care — New York Zen Center

A nine-month program for professionals and lay people integrating meditation practice with caregiving — hospice work, chaplaincy, nursing, or family care. Meets one weekend a month plus a five-day residential at the end. Founded by Koshin Paley Ellison and Chodo Robert Campbell, both Zen priests and long-time hospice teachers. Real money, real time, Zen frame. Not casual. But if you are considering serious training rather than a workshop, this is the most consistent one in the field.

Jon Underwood · London, 2011 · now global

Death Cafes

An open-format, non-commercial gathering: people meet — usually in a café, over tea and cake — and talk about death. There is no agenda, no product, no facilitator qualifications required. Started by Jon Underwood in a London basement in 2011 and now findable in most cities by postcode. Quality varies entirely with who shows up on the night. It is not therapy and is not held by trained clinicians. It is people talking to strangers about the one thing they can't easily talk about with family. Free.

INELDA · International End of Life Doula Association

INELDA — end-of-life doula training

One of the two most established doula trainings in North America. Multi-day intensives run several times a year, often at Omega, with a distance-learning option. Founded by Henry Fersko-Weiss, who came out of hospice social work and adapted the birth-doula model for the other end. INELDA training is intense and pragmatic — the paperwork, the family dynamics, the vigil, the aftercare. It is a training, not a certification-to-practice-anywhere; check your state and provincial rules before you charge money for the work.

Alua Arthur · Going with Grace

Going with Grace

Alua Arthur is the most publicly visible death doula in the United States — a former lawyer, now the author of Briefly Perfectly Human, and the person your favorite podcast has probably interviewed. Her training blends practical planning with somatic and cultural work, and is explicit about the racial, class, and immigrant contexts most funeral education pretends to be universal. Demand is high; tuition reflects it. Cohorts fill months in advance.

University of Vermont · Continuing Education

UVM — End-of-Life Doula Certificate

An eight-week, fully online academic certificate. Structured, credentialed, and considerably less charismatic than the workshop-based alternatives — which is the point for some people. If you want a syllabus, weekly assignments, an instructor of record, and a certificate issued by a university, this is the one. The tradeoff is that the somatic and community elements other trainings emphasize get very compressed in a Zoom room. Best for people who already have a caregiving practice and want the scholarly foundation.

NEDA · National End-of-Life Doula Alliance

NEDA — National End-of-Life Doula Alliance

The professional membership body for practicing doulas, not itself a training. NEDA maintains a proficiency assessment, a code of ethics, and a public directory. Useful for people who have already trained and want a professional home, continuing education, and a formal credential to point to. Listed here as the natural next step after any of the training programs above.

Kavod v'Nichum & the Gamliel Institute

Kavod v'Nichum & Gamliel Institute

The North American body that trains and supports Chevra Kadisha — the volunteer Jewish burial societies who wash, dress, and shroud the dead. The Gamliel Institute runs a five-course curriculum in taharah (ritual preparation of the body), shmira (accompaniment), and the theology and history of Jewish end-of-life practice. A model of community-held, non-professional, deeply-ritualized care that most Western readers have never seen operate. Tradition-specific, not general contemplative training — and included here as a working example of what community death care can look like.