WeCroak

Season 6, Episode 3: Alex Ebert on writing songs after a crisis of faith This is our second conversation of Alex Ebert, famous for his hit songs from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. We talk about some new music that comes from his meditations on death, and what he's spent the last few years […]

Season 5, Episode 8: Lauren Kennedy on Pets, Death, and Dignity I found Lauren Kennedy on TikTok doing breathtaking end-of-life photography sessions for beloved family pets, often taken just hours before a schedule vet appointment. It turns out she also founded The Tilly Project, a national resource for creating end-of-life memories for families and their pets. […]

Season 5, Episode 7: WeCroak Has A Baby: The Social Stomach App Hansa and Ian, the guys who brought the world WeCroak, announce their second app called Social Stomach. It's an app for waking up to the power of social eating, one of the simplest lifestyle changes you can make, besides contemplating death often, to […]

Season 5, Episode 6: Katie Engelhart's Dispatches on the Right to Die I've never been so uncomfortable reading a book about death or having a discussion. Katie Englehart's book The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die is a master work of journalism about people who say they are not suicidal and believe they have […]

Season 5, Episode 5: Massimo Pigliucci on Choosing a Good Life Massimo Pigliucci was the first guest we ever had on the WeCroak Podcast. In that episode we talked about his adult decision to commit to Stoicism as a life philosophy. Today, we talk about his new book, “How to Live a Good Life,” about […]

Season 5, Episode 4: Clay Risen from the NYT Obit Pages This is a conversation about death, who gets remembered and how we write stories about the departed. We are joined by Clay Risen who writes for The New York Times Obituaries page so expect a lot of your host nerding out about obits and […]

Season 5, Episode 3: Emily Nagoski PHD on Burnout This is a conversation about how everything is connected. We speak with Emily Nagoski about burnout, that feeling of overwork and overwhelm and how it connects to things far outside of stressful jobs and schedules. It comes down to, she argues, how we buy into major […]

Season 5, Episode 2: Dr. René Najera on the History of Vaccines When we forget our history, we lose our context for the present and the future. The past year has been a return to humankind's historic relationship with mass death caused by disease. Early vaccines were a breakthrough that picked winners in fights for […]

Season 5, Episode 1: Dr. Nikki Mirghafori on Death & Mindfulness Retreats Today we talk about Buddhism, Technology and why you might want to go to a seven day death and mindfulness retreat with meditation teacher Dr. Nikki Mirghafori.  Guest Website: NikkiMirghafori.com Guest Website: One Day Retreat: Jan 30, 2021 Guest Website: Five Day Retreat: […]

Season 4, Episode 5: Casper ter Kuile on The Power of Ritual Six years ago, Casper Ter Kuile started reading the Harry Potter series as a sacred text on his hit podcast downloaded over 22 million times. Now he has a whole lot more rituals inspired by practice that can be adapted to our more secular lives […]

Season 4, Episode 4: Heather Christle on Crying In this conversation we look at crying and tears in countless ways good and bad with poet Heather Christle. It’s about why we do it, what it feels like, and how tears bring out both the best and the worst in us.  Further Reading: The Crying Book Download […]

Season 4, Episode 3: Massimo Riva on The Decameron In 1348 the Black Death Plague took as a third of the population. In Florence Italy, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron in response to the plague, a classic that has lasted down the ages. We have on Professor Massimo Riva to talk about this book which has so […]

Season 4, Episode 2: Long Litt Woon on Mushrooming and Mourning This is a conversation about grief and how Long Litt Woon found her way back to feeling alive by following forest paths looking for mushrooms. It’s about how only knowledge can protect you from a poisonous mushroom and how one needs all the senses […]

Season 4, Episode 1: Donald Robertson on How to Think Like a Roman Emperor You know who else thought about death often? Ancient Roman Stoics including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In this episode we chat about what practical philosophy meant to these powerful practitioners and why it feels so modern. A not to be missed […]

Season 3, Episode 8: Dr. Sunita Puri Talks That Good Night Dr. Sunita Puri is the Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Service at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California. We talk on this episode about her new book, “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in […]

Season 3, Episode 7: Alex Ebert Contemplating Zero Alex Ebert is the lead singer of the band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and an American singer songwriter and composer. The first rock star on the WeCroak Podcast, Alex Ebert talks about how important contemplating death has been to his creative process.  Download our app, […]

Season 3, Episode 6: Shoshana Ungerleider – The People Trying to Change How We Die Doctor Shoshana Ungerleider is the founder of the End Well Project, working to change how the medical profession treats the dying. We talk about her involvement in award winning Netflix documentaries and the End Well conference working to change the […]

Season 3, Episode 5: Rebecca Goldstein – Why Mattering Matters Rebecca Goldstein is an award-wining philosopher and novelist, an unexpected combination from an original thinker. We talk about her latest work on why mattering matters to us and how the search for a more meaningful life is essential to our mental health and well-being. We […]

Season 3, Episode 4: Jay Michaelson – Enlightenment by Trial and Error Jay Michaelson is a journalist, meditation teacher, and author of several books about the contemplative life. In this episode we talk about his latest book, “Enlightenment by Trial and Error” about the search for a meaningful life in a world that doesn’t always […]

Season 3, Episode 3: Agnes Callard- On Anger Anger is one of the most common and difficult human emotions and here, we talk about its hidden risks and benefits. After all, we are all going to have anger in our lives and what we do with it will determine much of who we are. This […]

Season 3, Episode 2: Joseph Margulies – On The People We Torture The WeCroak Podcast is the place we talk about all the things we don’t talk about enough and this week that means discussing torture. Our guest Joseph Margulies is an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center and has represented prisoners who have been […]

Season 3, Episode 1: Jennie Dear – What Does It Feel Like To Die? Journalist and Writer Jennie Dear is the author of the new book, “What Does it Feel Like to Die?” We talk in this episode about that essential question we’ve all wondered about but most of us have always been too afraid […]

Season 2, Episode 8: Rachel Menzies – Death Anxiety and Mental Health What does death anxiety have to do with mental health? According to some new studies by Rachel Menzies of The University of Sydney, death anxiety may be the “worm at the core” of several mental health conditions. We talk about the science as […]

Season 2, Episode 7: The WeCroak Guys  WeCroak Co-Founder Ian Thomas joins your host Hansa Bergwall to discuss all the death news that’s fit to croak about. We talk Kara Swisher, problems in tech, changes coming to the app, Hansa’s overwhelm finishing a book, and some interesting obits.  Support WeCroak on Patreon Download our app, as […]

Season 2, Episode 6: Jules Evans – The Art of Losing Control After a spontaneous Near Death Experience, Jules Evans finds philosophy and puts his life back together in his hit book “Philosophy for Life.” But the ecstasy he experienced in his NDE always haunted him and in his second book “The Art of Losing […]

Season 2, Episode 5: Elizabeth Minnich – The Evil Of Banality Elizabeth Minnich has spent the last few decades studying how genocides happen and her findings may surprise you. It turns out to pull off the biggest evils, you need a very particular kind of person, a thoughtless kind that is dependable and does his […]

Season 2, Episode 4: Katy Butler – The Art of Dying Well Our society doesn’t talk enough about death enough and as a result, few are prepared for a thing we should all know to expect for ourselves and everyone we care about. Katy Butler is a refreshingly honest voice with practical information on navigating […]

Season 2, Episode 3: Todd May – A Fragile Life Todd May is a philosopher at Clemson University who consulted on the hit show The Good Place. We talk about death in philosophy and in living today. We also talk about all the practical philosophies like Stoicism, Buddhism and Taoism that promise to make us […]

Season 2, Episode 2: Ann Neumann – The Good Death Ann Neumann takes us on an exploration of dying in America in this episode of The WeCroak Podcast. We talk about how death in America today is a system fraught with contradictions and failures that don’t serve the dying. We also talk about some of […]

Season 2, Episode 1: Hugh Ryan – When Brooklyn Was Queer Hugh Ryan is a writer and historian who works on issues of queers politics and culture. In his book we talk about a queer subculture that thrived along the waterfront in Brooklyn for over a hundred years, had its own lingo and values and […]

Heather Havrilesky writes the advice column Ask Polly for New York magazine’s The Cut. Her writing is about looking closely at the culture we are living in and taking apart the delusions we are so close to we don’t see them. It’s why she makes a great advice columnist and why her new book of […]

We’ve spoken with meditation teachers, palliative care nurses who work with the dying, physicists and technologists. But have we learned anything about death? In this episode we discuss the WeCroak Podcast thus far and talk about the questions we want to explore next. We think we are on to something here. Tune in for a […]

Sharon Salzberg is as influential a meditation teacher as you are likely to find. She is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and has written nine books on mindfulness and meditation including The New York Times best-seller Real Happiness. In this book, we discuss her newest book, Real Love and how death fits in […]

Jaron Lanier’s new book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is opening the world’s eyes to the real world consequences of social media’s business model based on maximum addiction and distraction. And it goes way beyond wasting the precious hours of your life. Lanier makes an almost unassailable case that these […]

Frank Ostaseski is an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and visionary cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder of the Metta Institute. In this episode we talk about his new book The Five Invitations: Discovering what Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully based on his years of caring for dying people and the unexpected […]

Adam Cayton-Holland was named a top 25 comic to watch by Esquire and creates, writes and stars in the hit show “Those Who Can’t.” He also just came out with his first book, “Tragedy + Time: A Tragic Comic Memoir” about his sister’s life and suicide. Our conversation is about his family and how he […]

Alan Lightman is a theoretical physicist, author of six novels, meditator and professor who has served at both Harvard and MIT. His latest memoir Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is as much about finding beauty in the natural world as understanding the science behind how it changes all the time. On the […]

Sallie Tisdale is the author of nine books and today we are talking about her most recent Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Tisdales writing has also appeared in Harper’s, Antioch Review, Conjunctions, Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, and Tricycle, among other journals. As a palliative care nurse, meditator and writer, this […]

Massimo Pigliucci is the professor of philosophy at City University of New York who wrote the book How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life. It’s about the author’s own journey finding the right practical philosophy for living in today’s modern chaos by listening to voices from early Rome and […]

First episodes available on Sept 19, 2018. On the WeCroak Podcast we talk about the things we don’t talked about enough. Starting with death. But not ending there. On our first season we talk to a palliative care nurse, a stoic philosopher, a theoretical physicist, a comedian and a tech visionary. Support us on Patreon. Download […]