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A Matter of Life and Death

2024/7/15
logo of podcast The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

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Dr. Laurie Santos explores how facing the reality of death can lead to a more fulfilling life, discussing her experience at a Death Cafe and her struggle with thanatophobia.

Shownotes Transcript

Dr Laurie HATES thinking about her own death. It's scary, creepy and morbid, right? Wrong. Thinking about our finite lives can makes us better, happier people.  The shadow of death makes us behave more kindly towards others, and can motivate us both to enjoy the little joys of life and seek out greater fulfilment in our careers and in our relationships. 

But you need to look death square in the face - and that's not easy for a thanatophobe like Dr Laurie. To help her, she enlists psychologist Jodi Wellman (author of You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets) and death doula Alua Arthur (author of  Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End).

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