Make Friends With Death to Live a Better Life

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We live in a culture that does everything it can to keep death at a distance. We hide it behind hospital curtains, euphemize it in conversation, and hustle through grief like it's just another item on the to-do list. We don't want death to get in the way of living.

But my guest would say that making friends with death is the key to fully embracing life. Joanna Ebenstein is the founder of Morbid Anatomy, a project that uses exhibitions, lectures, and classes to explore how death intersects with history and culture. She's also the author of Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life. Today on the show, Joanna shares why we lost a more intimate relationship with death and the life-stifling consequences of that disconnect. We discuss practices for coming to terms with death and removing our fear of it, including looking at memento mori art, meditating on death, talking to the dead, and simply taking care of the practicalities surrounding our inevitable departure.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Back when I launched the Art of Manly Store was wearing a lot of new hats, product manager,
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1:20.4	That's castero.fm.
1:33.1	Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
1:36.9	We live in a culture that does everything it can to keep death at a distance.
1:41.9	We hide it behind hospital curtains, euphemizing in conversation, and hustle through grief like it's just another item on the to-do list.
	...

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