The Art of Dying Well

Send us Fan Mail “The parcel matters, not the postman” Imagine lying in bed near the end of your life, and your mother or father is sitting beside you. No one else in the room can see them. Is it a hallucination, or a peek into the afterlife? For Professor Allan Kellehear, a leading medical and public health sociologist, that is the wrong question. It is like asking where the postman came from, when what matters is what’s in the parcel. In this episode of the Art of Dying Well podcast, Alla...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of the Art of Dying Well podcast features the remarkable Emma O’Brien from Leo's Angels. We learn how Emma channelled her grief, tech skills, and a highly-skilled female entrepreneurial network to turn the dial on Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Tragically, Emma and her family lost their much-loved son Leo to SUDEP when he was just 11 years old. To honour Leo's memory, she founded Leo's Angels to drive technological innovation to address the critica...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of The Art of Dying Well podcast we're bringing you a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation with Dr Libby Sallnow about death, dying, and the growing global movement to bring communities back into the heart of end-of-life care. Dr Sallnow is a palliative care doctor and academic who is Associate Professor and Head of Department of the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department at University College London. She continues to practise clinically in ...

Send us Fan Mail It's Holy Week for the world's 2.4 billion Christians. As such, it's a great time for us to meditate on how sacred music and sacred art accompany us on the road to Calvary to the foot of Christ's Cross and beyond. The life, Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus have provided rich and provoking subject matter for composers and artists for many hundreds of years, so for this 'Art of Dying Well podcast', we're joined by priest and art afficionado Father Patrick van der Vorst...

Send us Fan Mail For this, the first episode of 2026, our 'Art of Dying Well' podcast steps away from the usual interview format to bring you a special interfaith panel discussion titled 'Dying to Live'. Contributors from six major faith traditions - Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity - shared their insights on dying, death, and bereavement. Moderated by Associate Professor Maggie Doherty, Lead at the Centre for the Art of Living and Dying Well at St Mary’s Univers...