Death, Sex & Money - Life Is a Mystery
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2016
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When we talked with her this spring, Elizabeth Caplice described her life to us as "one big near death experience." She died on July 12, after more than two years of cancer treatment. This is more of her story.
Support Death, Sex & Money by becoming a monthly sustaining member. Sign up now.
Follow the show on Twitter @deathsexmoney and Facebook at facebook.com/deathsexmoney.
Sign up for the Death, Sex & Money newsletter at deathsexmoney.org/newsletter.
Email us at deathsexmoney@wnyc.org.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Anna. I'm still out on maternity leave. I'm actually recording this in a closet while June's out on a walk with Arthur. |
| 0:13.1 | I'm in here because I wanted to share something with you, the conversation that we recorded back in March. |
| 0:18.4 | I talked with a woman named Elizabeth Kaplis. |
| 0:21.3 | She was all the way on the other side of the world in a studio in Canberra, Australia. |
| 0:25.9 | Are you wearing like a raincoat or something? |
| 0:29.1 | I'm wearing a leather jacket, which I can take right off. |
| 0:33.2 | What color is the leather jacket? |
| 0:35.1 | Black. |
| 0:36.1 | Does it have like a lot of zippers on it? A big zip in the front. Yep. One of my the leather jacket? Black. Does it have, like, a lot of zippers on it? |
| 0:38.7 | A big zip in the front. |
| 0:40.3 | Yep. |
| 0:40.6 | One of my other leather jackets has multiple zippers, but this is my simple one. |
| 0:47.3 | Elizabeth charmed me right off the bat. |
| 0:50.1 | She was funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful. |
| 0:53.6 | Hers was one of the stories that you heard in our episode called When I Almost Died. |
| 0:58.3 | I spoke with listeners who shared their near-death experiences, |
| 1:01.7 | and Elizabeth described her life as one big near-death experience. |
| 1:06.1 | With stage four cancer, the reality of it is you will probably die. |
| 1:11.9 | So it's kind of always been an awareness in the back of my mind that this is probably what |
| 1:15.8 | would kill me. |
| 1:17.2 | What had started as colorectal cancer had spread to her liver and lungs. |
| 1:22.0 | She'd been writing about this in detail for about two years on her blog called Sky Between |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

