When We Die Talks
When We Die Talks is a collection of real conversations with real people about death, meaning, and what it’s like to be human.
Each week, host Zach Ancell speaks with an anonymous caller. It begins with one question: What do you think happens when we die? From there, the conversation goes wherever it goes. Belief. Doubt. Loss. Relief. Fear. Sometimes even laughter.
These aren’t experts or public figures. Just everyday people saying the quiet parts out loud. The result is raw, unpredictable, and deeply human.
New anonymous calls every Wednesday.
Want to add your voice? Apply to be a caller at whenwedietalks.com. Leave a voicemail and share a belief, a question, or a moment you can’t shake about death: 971-328-0864.
Episodes
73 episodes
Anonymous #36 — Does the Fear of Death Go Away, or Do You Just Get Better at Living With It?
This week's caller is 79 years old and has spent the last three years going down every rabbit hole death has to offer. All in service of a book that's about to come out.They have lost a husband and a mother. They have survived breast can...
Anonymous #35 — How Do You Keep Loving People When You're the One They're Going to Lose?
This week's caller was diagnosed with a terminal illness at eight years old. They have never not known that death was part of their life.They are an actor, a writer, a reader, a person who rescues snails and keeps a pet millipede and lov...
Anonymous #34 — Can The Losses That Broke You As A Teenager Also Be The Things That Made You?
This week's caller is a pediatric nurse who has been around death long enough to stop fearing it and start getting curious about it.They lost their father to suicide as a teenager. A few months later, they were the one doing CPR on their...
Bonus — Don Sires: Exit Interview
This one is different.When We Die Talks is built around anonymous conversations — people calling in to talk about death, dying, and what they think comes next. No names, no faces, just honest conversation. This episode breaks that format...
Anonymous #33 — Why Does Some Grief Get to Be Spoken Out Loud and Some Doesn't?
This week's caller has been living with grief long enough to become a student of it. They lost their mom at twenty-two. Then their cat. Then their soul dog thirteen months ago. This is a conversation about grief that doesn't rank it...
Anonymous #32 — What Do You Do With a Faith That Can't Explain the Worst Thing That Happened to You?
Note: This episode includes an open discussion of suicide and suicide loss. Please listen when you're in a good place to do so.This week's caller has lived through a concentrated stretch of loss that would bring most people to t...
Anonymous #31 — What Happens If There's No 'You' Left to Be Afraid of Death?
This week's caller has been sitting with death since childhood. They grew up deep inside Pentecostal religion, the shouting, the standards, the constant weight of what comes next, and instead of finding comfort there, they left with more questi...
Anonymous #30 — What Happens to a Family That Grief Breaks?
This weeks caller lost their baby brother on Thanksgiving Day when they were five, and has spent their whole life with what they call "a little bird called death" on their shoulder. They're a death doula, a trauma-informed yoga instructor, a Re...
Anonymous #29 — Can Having Parkinson's Teach You How to Live?
This caller grew up without religion, lost their mom to suicide at 13, and spent years in a fear of death so overwhelming they couldn't be around skeletons or eat meat. Then they were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.But somehow, this ...
Anonymous #28 — Do the People Who Sit With Death Every Day Know Something the Rest of Us Don't?
What would change if we treated death as a human event, not just a medical one?This week’s anonymous caller is a death doula. And instead of going abstract, they get surprisingly specific about what the end can look like and what ...
Anonymous #27 — Is the Fear of Death Worse Than Death Itself?
What if death isn’t peaceful, or blank, or anything you can make sense of, but something you’re trapped inside?This week’s anonymous caller doesn’t come in with a comforting belief or a story about loss. They come in with death an...
Anonymous #26 — Are We Making Death Harder by Refusing to Accept It?
What does death look like when it’s part of your job?This week’s anonymous caller is an EMT who’s around emergencies and dying on a regular basis. And because of that, this conversation doesn’t stay in the abstract for long.
Anonymous #25 — How Do You Love Someone You Know You're Going to Lose?
What happens when you’re 19 and you’re loving someone with a terminal illness?This week’s anonymous caller is an anthropology student who’s been studying death, grief, and ritual. But that interest isn’t abstract. Their partner ha...
Anonymous #24 — What Happens to Your Beliefs About Death When You Can't Trust Your Own Mind?
What happens when your mind stops feeling like a safe place to live?This week’s anonymous caller shares about experiencing a psychotic break in 2020, and what it changed about how they relate to death, reality, and their own sense...
Anonymous #23 — Does Surviving Two Heart Attacks Change the Way You See Death?
What if something big happens… and your life still mostly goes back to normal?This week’s caller has had two heart attacks, starting when they were sixteen. On paper that sounds intense. But this conversation isn’t heavy. The call...
Anonymous #22 — What Do You Tell a Child Who Asks If They're Going to Die?
What do you say to a child who asks, “Am I going to die?”This week's caller is a physician who works with children who have cancer and has training in pediatric palliative and hospice care. In this conversation, she shares what it...
Anonymous #21 — How Do You Make Peace With a Death That Was Never Supposed to Happen?
Suicide touches more lives than we often realize. And yet, it’s still something many of us don’t know how to talk about.In this episode, an anonymous caller reflects on losing their brother to suicide and what it’s been like to live with...
Anonymous #20 — Is It Grief or Is It Them Trying to Tell You They're Still There?
Many people are curious about conversations around death but hesitate to listen because they worry it will feel emotionally overwhelming.This episode challenges that assumption.In this anonymous call, the conversation begins with ...
Saturday Contemplation - A Year You’ll Never Get Back
This week’s Saturday Contemplation, A Year You’ll Never Get Back, sits with a simple truth: this year is over, regardless of how it went. Instead of turning toward regret or self-judgment, this reflection invites you to look back gentl...
Anonymous #19 — What Do Four NDEs Actually Teach You About Death?
What if your afterlife looks exactly like what you expect to find? That question sits at the center of this conversation with our caller who has died more than once and come back with stories that challenge the script many of us inherit about d...
Saturday Contemplation - Claiming the Life That's Yours
This week’s Saturday Contemplation turns toward the stories we inherit (from others and ourselves). The ones we pick up early, absorb quietly, and sometimes mistake for who we actually are. It invites you to notice what in your life feels genui...
Anonymous #18 — How Do You Find Your Own Beliefs About Death When You Were Given Someone Else's?
Death wasn’t an idea for her growing up—it was something that walked beside her. In this call, we trace a life shaped by early violence in South Africa, a strict Catholic upbringing that equated identity with sin, and a long stretch of years wh...
Saturday Contemplation – Letting Things Stay Unfinished
This week’s Saturday Contemplation sits with the truth that many parts of our lives don’t get the endings we hoped for. Conversations fade, relationships drift, and chapters close without warning. Instead of forcing closure, this contemplation ...
Anonymous #17 — Does the Guilt of an Unfinished Relationship Ever Go Away?
Mortality feels different when you’re sitting beside a parent and waiting for the breath that doesn’t return. In this call, we stay close to that moment—not with big theories or tidy comfort, but with the real stuff: complicated love, sudden an...
Saturday Contemplation - The Clock We Can’t See
This week’s Saturday Contemplation turns toward a truth most of us struggle to look at: our time is limited, whether we see it clearly or not. Some people learn this through illness or loss. For the rest of us, the illusion of “later” makes it ...
