At a Loss - It’s life and death

How to be a friend to Sadness

Counsellor Matthew Flynn speaks about grief not as a fixed process, but something deeply personal that shifts and changes over time.   Drawing from years of supporting people through loss, Matt reflects on the ways grief can alter behavior, overwhelm everyday thinking, and leave people feeling disconnected from themselves in ways they may not immediately understand.   At the centre of the conversation is patience, learning to accept grief on the terms it presents itself, rather than forcing it into timelines, expectations, or neat stages of recovery.

Told You’re Terminal

Natasha Plunkett joins the podcast for a candid conversation about breast cancer, caregiving, grief, and the life that shifts after diagnosis. Working as a funeral director, she reflects on what it means to be surrounded by death professionally, then suddenly face her own diagnosis and the shock, clarity, and practical decisions that follow. She speaks about the difficulty of moving from caregiver to someone needing care, the challenge of accepting vulnerability, and how past experiences of loss shape the way she processes her own illness. A conversation about resilience, identity, friendship, and what it means to change without neatly “recovering” into who you were before.

We all need a good Wake

Writer, poet, and filmmaker Kevin Toolis explores a way of understanding death that feels both ancient and immediate. Raised on a remote Irish island, he reflects on a culture where the dead are not hidden away, but kept close - Seen, touched, and shared in the company of the living. Woven through are later experiences reporting from warzones, where death takes on a different kind of presence. At the centre is the Irish wake, offered not just as tradition, but as a guide. A way of meeting loss without distance. What emerges moves between the philosophical and the practical, holding space for a quieter question: what changes when death is no longer something to turn away from, but something to be faced together.

Death Literate

When you meet Trish, what stands out isn’t heaviness — it’s energy. "The space of death is about people, he tangata, what’s more vibrant than people and the journey they are on?”. In this Episode Trish talks about developing a Death knowledge, breaking down the myths around hospice care, and why community connection matters so deeply. After nearly two decades in hospice care, her work is driven by a belief that caring for one another at the end of life is simply what we do.   A conversation about death that is, full of life.

Die Natrually

How to die naturally. Carol McAllum is the doctor you meet when recovery isn’t possible. She shares thoughts, wisdom and wonder in all she has learnt about life and death. Death can be messy, but it can also be natural, here’s how.