The Adventures of Memento Mori

D.S. Moss welcomes Mark Manson to the COVID 19 edition of The Adventures of Memento Mori to talk about death and hope in these strange days. Mark is a New York Times best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, Everything Is Fucked: A Book About Hope, and Love is Not Enough. Visit markmanson.net to read more of his work.

It's March 23, 2020, in New York, New York. The world is confronting a novel coronavirus pandemic and the world will be forever changed because of it. To what extreme that change will be we don't know yet. But that is what we're going to talk about. Joining the show is technology and healthcare futurist, geopolitical expert, and novelist, Jamie Metzl. 

The Adventures of Memento Mori:  A Skeptic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die is a podcast exploring the science, mysticism, culture, and mystery of death. Satirical and philosophical, the show follows host, nontheist Chaplain D.S. Moss, as he attempts to reconcile his own impermanence and live a more meaningful life. Problem is, life keeps getting in the way.

Introducing Goodnight Lovelies, a new daily mortality meditation hosted by D.S. Moss.

The inaugural podcast episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori finds D.S. Moss administratively making death preparations. Who keeps the dog? When to pull the plug? What will happen to his body, and who will DJ his funeral?  Special guests include Everplans.com, Cynthia Beal of Natural Burial Company, and life coach Devin Martin.    

In this episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss enlists the help of medium and intuition coach, Psychic Betsy to conduct a seance in hopes of summoning a particular spirit to reconcile a mysterious twenty-year-old question. What he receives instead only pulls him deeper into the quest for enlightenment.

In the third installment of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss goes on the road in the Immortality Bus with Presidential hopeful Zoltan Istvan of the Transhumanist Party and gets educated on the jaw dropping, mind blowing, and venture capitalist funded movement in the science of living forever.       

Sandra Oh joins D.S. Moss on an adventure into the mind where portals (may or may not) open to past lives. After being told by a palm reader that he'll never find true love in this lifetime because of karmic debt, Moss enlists the help of hypnotist and regression therapist, Daniel Ryan to regress him way back back back to search for answers. No matter what you believe his regression is certainly a trip.     

In the fifth episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss sits for coffee with photojournalist and documentarian Micah Garen, co-author of American Hostage, who recounts his kidnapping in Iraq and his struggle to survive - All leading to how this traumatic experience has changed the way he lives his life today. It's good stuff. Listen. Episode Corrections: This is not the first Interview Micah Garen has given about the kidnapping Nick Berg was beheaded not hanged  

In this two part episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss travels out west to San Francisco for an interview with Thoughts in Passing artist Claudia Biçen. Convinced that the dying would have the answer to how we should be living, Claudia spent two years interviewing 9 people on their deathbed about their lives while drawing a life-size portrait of each of them.

In this two part episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss travels out west to San Francisco for an interview with Thoughts in Passing artist Claudia Biçen. Convinced that the dying would have the answer to how we should be living, Claudia spent two years interviewing 9 people on their deathbed about their lives while drawing a life-size portrait of each of them.

Who would’ve thought a porn star could lead to such a profound inquiry into the nature of human existence in a digital age? As D.S. seeks to distance himself from his digital doppelgänger—a porn star who chose “Devin Moss” as his nom de plume—he is led down the digital rabbit hole of what happens to our internet identities after we die. D.S. talks to experts about curating a thriving social media presence from beyond the grave, managing his digital assets, valuing his digital estate, and securing his online presence. Begging the question, what sort of digital legacy do you want to leave behind?   

In this two part episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori, D.S. Moss goes on a scientific adventure into the past, present and future of humanity to find out what will be the most likely cause of human extinction. After exploring the threats of asteroids, super volcanos, aliens and the wrath of God, D.S. Moss learns that the most probable cause of the next mass extinction - humanities extinction will be caused by either Artificial Intelligence, nuclear war or climate change. Turns out humans are the biggest threat to themselves. Are you surprised?

Finally! Something clicked. It took everyone on the planet dying – the end of the human race – for D.S. Moss to emotionally comprehend his own death and feel the preciousness of life. The feeling, however, isn’t all good. Now he’s forced to reconcile being part of a species that would create nuclear warheads, biowarfare, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and more CO2 than any of the previous mass extinctions. Well, he asked for it.

What? Death being positive? How can that be? Still hungover from Mass Extinction, D.S. Moss goes in search of some positivity and discovers the movement that’s sweeping the nation; Death Positivity.  The quest takes him to a death-centric open mic, tea time at the Morbid Anatomy Museum,  the home of a progressive funeral director and an intellectual baptism into The Order of the Good Death. Put on a happy face and have a listen.

D.S. Moss unplugs from the steady stream of media fuzz to go on a spirit journey in the Peruvian jungle and My God was it sweet! However, after two weeks of peace, quite and psychedelics, he feels compelled to go home and feed his dog.  Once reconnected into the fuzz, he’s caught off guard by the unrelenting reports and images of death in the news. Has the world become more violent? What effect does seeing death in news have on our behavior? And, is it his responsibility as a global citizen to bear witness to images of death across the world even if its at the expense of his own happiness?

In part one of the podcast finale, D.S. Moss physically & mentally prepares for his psychedelic ego death trip. Psychologist and psychedelic guru Dr. Neal Goldsmith, author of Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development, joins the show to discuss how death influences the psychedelic experience - from tribal rites of passage to end-of-life therapy to death of ego. Devin Martin, life (and death) coach extraordinaire returns and cracks open the Moss shell to expose the gooey caramel center where his heart used to be and crafts the 7 ayahuasca ceremony intentions that will (hopefully) reprogram Moss’s less than healthy approach to LOVE and SUCCESS. It's like a blissful car crash.

Part two of the podcast finale joins D.S. Moss in the jungles of Peru at the Temple of the Way of Light where he attempts to kill his ego through a series of seven ayahuasca ceremonies. Life Coach turned Death coach, Devin Martin, returns to guide Moss in his intensions for what turns out to be the finale of finales. If you’re even slightly curious as to how a psychedelic experience sounds, listen to this new podcast.

D.S. Moss comes back from the jungle for more adventures in death, yo. Life coach turned death coach, Devin Martin, gets filled in on Moss’ post-psychedelic reflections. This leads Moss to the ultimate question: how to live life with psychological anxiety of knowing you’re going to die? To help answer this question, Moss gets social psychology professor and egghead crush Sheldon Solomon on the horn to discuss if the fear of death truly is the worm at humanity’s core.

After discovering that the fear of death is the worm at the core of the human condition, D.S. Moss stands quivering on the threshold of psychological oblivion. He figures the best way out of this state of anxiety is to actually experience his own passing (obviously). In this episode, Moss crawls into his deathbed and is taken to total body failure with the hope that upon return he’ll have a new perspective on life.