9 ~ Birds Aren’t Real with Michael Burrows

9 ~ Birds Aren’t Real with Michael Burrows

As Season One of Live Well, Leave Well comes to a close, I couldn’t think of a better guest to put in the hot seat than my producer, Mikey. Why? Because he’s absolutely terrified of death. And I know many of you will relate. The first time we met to talk about the podcast, I arrived at his office carrying a dead crow. (You’ll need to listen to the episode for more on that one.) He was wearing a Birds Aren’t Real T-shirt. 🤣 He was completely supportive of the vision but upfront about the fact that, like many people, death was his greatest fear. Debilitating, even. So Mikey spent the season sitting behind the glass, producing every episode and listening to every story. (There were moments I’m fairly certain he was eyeing the fire escape.) Together, we created a podcast we’re both incredibly proud of that exceeded all expectations. What unfolded in our conversation was raw, vulnerable and beautiful because it turns out he’s no stranger to death and dying. Together we explored his father’s dementia diagnosis, his beautiful wife nearly dying during childbirth, his first experience of death sitting bedside with his grandmother as she died, and so much more. There were tears. There were laughs. And more than once, I sat in complete disbelief at what was being uncovered. Mikey sharing his brave and deeply personal experiences is less about “listen to my story” and more about “can you find yourself in his story?” Which is why sharing our experiences of death and dying remains so important. Michael Burrows is an award-winning Australian songwriter, producer and founder of Brand Music, one of Australia’s most established sonic branding agencies. For more than two decades he has helped leading brands find their voice through music, storytelling and human connection, collaborating with internationally acclaimed artists including Neil Finn of Crowded House, with original music reaching the U.S. Billboard Adult Contemporary charts. And as one chapter closes, another begins. Season Two is coming and I’m beyond excited.  Stories are, and always have been, the heartbeat of change. Because every time we share our stories, we help change the way we live, the way we grieve, and the way we face death for ourselves, for those we love, and for our communities. https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com] https://brandmusic.com.au [https://brandmusic.com.au] 💛 Griefline Free, confidential grief support 📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days) 🌐 griefline.org.au 💙 Lifeline 24 hour crisis support 📞 13 11 14 🌐 lifeline.org.au [http://lifeline.org.au] This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer. For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:  https://www.deadicate.com/ [https://www.deadicate.com/] Talk to LWELL here: lwell.ai [https://www.lwell.ai/] Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter [http://deadicate.com/newsletter] Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review! Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] (https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/) [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/) [https://brandmusic.com.au/]

8 ~ Master Your Energy Master Your Life with Tanya Levy

There are some people who dedicate their lives to helping others return to themselves. Tanya Levy is one of them. For more than three decades, Tanya has worked at the intersection of yoga, meditation, breathwork, intuitive healing, stress management, energy work, and transformation guiding people through overwhelm, uncertainty, grief, burnout, and life’s biggest transitions with compassion, wisdom, and deep practical insight. A Certified Jay Shetty Life Coach, Shadow Yoga teacher, intuitive healer, retreat facilitator, and corporate wellbeing educator, Tanya’s work is grounded in helping people better understand and manage their energy in a world that constantly pulls us out of ourselves. In this episode of Live Well, Leave Well, we explore what it truly means to “master your energy” - not as a luxury, but as an essential part of navigating modern life, grief, stress, change, and emotional overwhelm. Together we speak about: > How Tanya’s mothers death ultimately led her to this work  >Breath and the nervous system, >Energy and end-of-life care, Psych-K, >Transformation, >The body’s wisdom, and the practices that help steady us through life’s hardest moments. This conversation is thoughtful, reflective, grounding, deeply human and filled with practical wisdom for anyone feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, burnt out, grieving, or searching for greater steadiness and meaning. Tanya is also about to run her Master Your Energy, Master Your Life course in Melbourne -  a powerful immersive experience I’ve personally completed and highly recommend. Links are below Enjoy Links & Resources 🎟 Tickets + Course Information: 📅 30 & 31 May 2026 📍 GenHuntly, Victoria 🔗 https://events.humanitix.com/understanding-energy-management-q5lzmehk [https://events.humanitix.com/understanding-energy-management-q5lzmehk] 🌐 Tanya Levy -  InPurpose https://www.inpurpose.com.au [https://www.inpurpose.com.au] This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer. For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:  https://www.deadicate.com/ [https://www.deadicate.com/] Talk to LWELL here: lwell.ai [https://www.lwell.ai/] Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter [http://deadicate.com/newsletter] Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review! Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] (https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/) [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/) [https://brandmusic.com.au/]

7 ~ The Death Equation with Zenith Virago

There are very few people who can sit at the threshold of life and death with the kind of steadiness that both calms the room and delivers the truth. Zenith Virago is one of them. For more than three decades, Zenith has served as a deathwalker, celebrant, educator, and spiritual elder, walking alongside individuals, families, and communities through some of life’s most tender, raw, and sacred passages. Her path into this work was not gentle. It was a baptism of fire, forged in the heart of the AIDS epidemic, where death did not arrive politely or occasionally, but relentlessly, personally, and with profound urgency. In many ways, death itself initiated her, shaped her, and polished her into the elder and wise woman she is today.  Zenith is the co-author of The Intimacy of Death and Dying, the subject of the documentary Zen & the Art of Dying, and a beloved guide to many who are learning how to meet mortality with honesty, courage, and compassion. In this episode, we speak about the importance of learning to hold the midpoint, to stay calm and steady in the presence of intensity, both personally and professionally. Zenith shares how, culturally, we’ve been conditioned into fight, flight, or freeze when faced with death and crisis, and how over time we’ve underestimated our own capacity to function and to meet and respond in these moments. Through medicalisation, control and avoidance, we’ve slowly handed away skills that humans have carried for millennia: the ability to sit, to stay, to tend, and to accompany one another through dying. We talk about ritual, language, community, children and grief and what it means to bring death back into the village, not as something to fear, but as something to meet with presence, reverence, leadership and heart. This episode includes themes of death, dying, grief, and end-of-life care. Please listen in a way that feels supportive for you, and take care of your heart. I hope you enjoy listening to Zen as much as I did.  Links & Resources 💛 Griefline Free, confidential grief support 📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days) 🌐 griefline.org.au  [https://griefline.org.au/] 💙 Lifeline 24 hour crisis support 📞 13 11 14 🌐 lifeline.org.au [http://lifeline.org.au] 🌿 Zenith Virago – Official Website https://www.zenithvirago.com/ [https://www.zenithvirago.com/] 📚 The Intimacy of Death and Dying https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org/a-book-about-dying/ [https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org/a-book-about-dying/] 🎥 Zen & the Art of Dying https://zenandtheartofdying.com/ [https://zenandtheartofdying.com/] 🌱 Natural Death Care Centre https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org [https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org/a-book-about-dying/] 💡 Deathwalker Training (Online & In-Person) https://www.zenithvirago.com/deathwalker-training [https://www.zenithvirago.com/deathwalker-training] This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer. For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:  https://www.deadicate.com/ [https://www.deadicate.com/] Talk to LWELL here: lwell.ai [https://www.lwell.ai/] Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter [http://deadicate.com/newsletter] Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review! Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] (https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/) [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/) [https://brandmusic.com.au/]

6 ~ Meet KING IV - The Modern Day Psychopomp

There are very few people who can sit comfortably in the presence of death without flinching, and fewer still who can make that space feel alive, honest, and strangely liberating. In this episode of Live Well, Leave Well, I am joined by Cheyenne Harper, known artistically as KING IV, a musician, performance artist, and modern psychopomp working at the intersection of music, ritual, and transformation. Through her work, including the album Psychopomp, the new track The Other Side, and the immersive live performance FUNERAL, KING IV explores endings, shedding, and rebirth. Not as concepts, but as lived experiences. An embodied bravery that willingly enters the unseen, names what others avoid, and creates beauty and meaning from spaces many people only encounter through loss, illness, or crisis. In this episode, Cheyenne and I speak about death as a teacher, art as a portal, and the power of meeting mortality with curiosity rather than fear. We explore what it means to consciously prepare for death, not morbidly, but devotionally, and how ritual, music, and presence can transmute grief into connection, agency, and love. This conversation is an invitation to listen differently, to your body, your fears, your endings, and to consider what becomes possible when we stop turning away. KING IV’s next performance of FUNERAL takes place at Midsumma Festival on January 29. This episode offers a glimpse into the world behind the work, and the work behind the becoming. Links and Resources  Shed your grey being.  Buy tickets to FUNERAL here: https://linktr.ee/kingivsound [https://linktr.ee/kingivsound] Midsumma Festival  Howler :: Jan 29 This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer. For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:  https://www.deadicate.com/ [https://www.deadicate.com/] Talk to LWELL here: lwell.ai [https://www.lwell.ai/] Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter [http://deadicate.com/newsletter] Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review! Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] (https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/) [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/) [https://brandmusic.com.au/]

5 ~ Heartfelt - Giving the Gift - with Gavin Blue

Gavin Blue is an award winning photographer, humanitarian, and the President of Heartfelt Australia and New Zealand. For more than a decade, Gavin and his extraordinary team of over 320 volunteer photographers have quietly and reverently stepped into some of the most intimate and devastating moments a family can experience. Together, they offer free photographic memories when a baby dies before, during, or shortly after birth. This is work done with deep presence. With humility. With radical compassion. Gavin and the Heartfelt team meet families at the intersection of joy and grief, where love still exists even when hearts are breaking. Their photographs are not just images. They are legacy. Proof of love. A way of saying you were here, you mattered, and you are forever held. This episode is tender, powerful, and deeply human. Please listen gently and take care of your heart. Still frames. Eternal echoes. One moment of presence. A single photograph, yet it echoes forever in the hearts of those left behind. This conversation includes themes of stillbirth, baby loss, and grief. Please listen in a way that feels supportive for you. Links & Resources: 💛 Griefline Free, confidential grief support 📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days) 🌐 griefline.org.au [https://griefline.org.au/] 💙 Lifeline 24-hour crisis support 📞 13 11 14 🌐 lifeline.org.au [https://lifeline.org.au/] 💬 Beyond Blue Support for anxiety, depression, and grief 📞 1300 22 4636 🌐 beyondblue.org.au [https://www.beyondblue.org.au/] 🤍 PANDA (Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia) Support for parents experiencing perinatal loss or distress 📞 1300 726 306 🌐 panda.org.au [https://www.panda.org.au/] 📸 Heartfelt Australia - Please donate this Christmas! Photographic memories for families experiencing stillbirth or child loss 🌐 heartfelt.org.au [https://heartfelt.org.au/] This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer. For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:  https://www.deadicate.com/ [https://www.deadicate.com/] Talk to LWELL here: lwell.ai [https://www.lwell.ai/] Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter [http://deadicate.com/newsletter] Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review! Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] (https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/) [https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/] Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/) [https://brandmusic.com.au/]