Hello, FD weekend listeners. It's Lila. I'm away on vacation this week, so we've reached

into the vault to bring you one of our favorite episodes. My team and I talk about this episode

a lot. It's about living forever and the ethics of radical life extension. It's also about

defying death on this outrageous family summer vacation, which feels relevant for the season.

One quick note, this episode first published in November, so in the beginning, when I say last

year, I mean March of 2020. Okay, enjoy the show. Did I ever tell you about the time Ira Glass almost gave me coronavirus?

It was the last day of going about our normal lives in March of 2020, and everything was

starting to shut down, and my office was closing. So I packed up my laptop and my keyboard and

some of my notebooks into these kind of unwieldy tote bags, and I slung him over my

shoulder and headed home. But my last stop was this one final interview with the iconic radio host

in the studios of This American Life. So Ira and I sat together in this small audio booth for an hour,

and we talked about the art of storytelling, and then I left.

The next day, his assistant emailed me to say that I might have coronavirus because Ira might

have coronavirus because he had shaken hands with someone who had coronavirus. And I remember thinking,

this cannot be how I go.

And that was my first brush with mortality during the pandemic, and the first of many.

For the next few months, mortality and I became friends.

We like encountered each other very regularly, going to the grocery store, passing a neighbor in the hallway, taking a walk. We all

encountered it all the time. There are some people who come face to face with death early because

they've had loved ones get sick and pass, and it happens more often to us as we get older.

But these past 18 months, it's been different. We have a new

relationship with death. We've had to face it either as a reality or as a real possibility.

...