Life's Booming

By: Australian Seniors
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  • Summary

  • Series 6: Dying to Know

    Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death.

    Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table.

    If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au

    Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube

    Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts

    Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify

    For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast

    Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel
    2025 Australian Seniors
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Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary
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Episodes
  • Dying Well - with Tracey Spicer and Hannah Gould

    Dying Well - with Tracey Spicer and Hannah Gould
    Apr 15 2025
    Dying well We’re all going to die, but how we acknowledge death and dying is a very personal experience. Award-winning journalist and author Tracey Spicer and anthropologist Dr Hannah Gould explore etiquette, rites and traditions to find out what makes a ‘good death’. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Tracey Spicer AM is a Walkley award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. And she's an ambassador for Dying With Dignity. A vocal campaigner and advocate for voluntary assisted dying (VAD), Tracey penned a letter to her mother following her painful death in 1999. Dr Hannah Gould is an anthropologist who works in the areas of death, religion and material culture. She recently appeared on SBS documentary: Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye. Hannah’s research spans new traditions and technologies of Buddhist death rites, the lifecycle of religious materials, and modern lifestyle movements. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT: James: We're all going to die. Happens to all of us. But how we acknowledge death and dying is of course a very personal experience. With our guest and our expert, we're going to explore the etiquette, the rites and traditions seen in Australia and around the world. Someone who knows a lot about the rites and traditions of death is Dr Hannah Gould, an anthropologist who works in the areas of death, religion and material culture. We're also going to be joined by Tracey Spicer, she’s a Walkley award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. And she's an ambassador for Dying With Dignity. Tracey and Hannah, welcome. Thank you so much. Tracey: Hello. James: Thank you for coming. Hannah Gould. Hello. Thank you for coming. Hannah: Thank you. James: Fantastic. Let's talk death! Tracey: Why not? There'll be lots of fun. James: Do you laugh in the face of death? Hannah: What else can you do? I mean, look, you know. Lots of sadness, lots of joy, every single emotion is reasonable, surely. I mean, it's like the question, the ultimate question of philosophy, of history, of every discipline. Every response is valid. Not always useful, or helpful. James: Yeah. Yeah. Hannah: But valid. Tracey: Well, it's a universal topic of conversation and that's why I've always loved dark humour. Because you do have to laugh, otherwise what do you do? James: I also think it's, it is the ultimate joke that we are all going to die, but we live like we're not going to. We live every day as though it's just not going to happen at all. Tracey: Especially in Western society, I think other cultures have got it right and we're in such deep denial about it. It's detrimental to all of us. James: Yeah. Now this is your area of expertise really, is that do other cultures have it right? Hannah: Everyone does it differently. Right or wrong is kind of a difficult thing to judge. I think certainly there's a big thing called, like, the denial of death thesis, right. And, and people like Ernest Becker, a lot of different philosophers and anthropologists and cultural, you know, analysis have looked at Western culture and gone, Oh my gosh, we are so invested in denying death, right. And whether that's through denying death by religions that say you're going to live forever, like, you know, don't worry, it's not the end. You'll pop off to heaven or whatever it is. Or through, you know, great heroic myths. Yes, you'll die, but the nation will remember you forever. So, you know, you won't really die. You'll be a martyr. Or contemporary, you know. Yes, you'll die, but have you seen how great the shopping is? You know, we can just ignore, we can deny death by being on Instagram and, you know, consuming...
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    32 mins
  • Season 6: Dying To Know

    Season 6: Dying To Know
    Apr 8 2025

    Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death.

    Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table.

    If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au

    Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube

    Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts

    Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify

    For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast

    Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    1 min
  • Let's talk about death, baby - with Andrew Denton & Kerrie Noonan

    Let's talk about death, baby - with Andrew Denton & Kerrie Noonan
    Apr 8 2025
    Let’s talk about death, baby From breaking the stigma to understanding the conversations we need to have before we die, beloved broadcaster and advocate Andrew Denton and clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan dissect everything we should and shouldn’t say about death. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Andrew Denton is renowned as a producer, comedian and Gold Logie-nominated TV presenter, but for the past decade he has been devoted to a very personal cause. He is the founder of Go Gentle Australia, a charity advocating for better end of life choices that was instrumental in passing voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws across Australia. Senior clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan is director of the Death Literacy Institute; director of research, Western NSW Local Health District; and adjunct Associate Professor, Public Health Palliative Care Unit, La Trobe University. For the past 25 years she has been working to create a more death literate society, one where people and communities have the practical know-how needed to plan well and respond to dying, death and grief. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT: James: Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine, and this season, we're talking about death. Or, on this episode, why we don't talk about it enough. Death is really easy to talk about, but avoiding the subject just makes things even harder. From breaking the stigma to understanding the conversations we must have before we die, I'll be dissecting everything we should and shouldn't say about death with two fascinating minds. Andrew Denton is the founder of Go Gentle Australia. A charity advocating for better end of life choices, but you probably know him better from so many shows on our TV. And Dr Kerrie Noonan is a senior clinical psychologist and social researcher, determined to increase our death literacy. Kerrie, Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. Do you know one another? Andrew: Yes we do. Yeah. Kerrie: Yeah, along the way. Andrew: We've had a few conversations about death, dying, literacy, all those things. Yeah. James: How did you learn about death? Like when did you, and who did you go to talk to? When did you start thinking about it? Andrew: Well, I think you learn about death the way everybody does, which is you experience it. And the first time it happened to me, I made a documentary about teenagers with cancer, Canteen, the support group, and one of those young men died. And his parents very generously invited me to visit him as he was dying. And that was the first time I actually saw what death can be. And it was, it was very hard to see and then watching my own father die obviously was a profound moment for me because that was an unhappy death. But how I've learned about it since is, I imagine a bit like Kerrie. I've had thousands of hours of conversations with people who are dying and their families and their carers. And, I've learned so much about death I feel I've mastered it and can move on. James: Yeah, true. That's right. Is that, is this what you mean by death literacy, that, that in some ways we just need to be talking about it more? Kerrie: It's, it's talking about it. That, that's one aspect. But it's, it's kind of developing your know-how and being able to put that know-how into practice. So, you can maybe talk about, maybe have some competency in terms of talking or maybe doing one element, related to death and dying. But, when you put it into practice, that's when death literacy kind of really comes to life. It kind of sits, some of the research we've done recently, it's evident that death literacy sits in networks, in-between people, within...
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    30 mins

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