Jay Allison

Other music in this hour from Stellwagen Symphonette, Chad Lawson, Michael Hedges, Richard Hagopian, Budot Sessions, and The Westerlies.

You'll find links to all the music we use at our website.

We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm your host, Jay Allison.

This is an hour of stories about life after death.

And if you don't mind, I'll start with a quote from Keanu Reeves, who, when asked by Stephen Colbert what he thinks happens after we die, said, I know the ones who love us will miss us.

In this show, a bunch more answers to that question from a doctor, a Renaissance fair gravedigger, and of course, the loved ones we leave behind.

We start with Panduranga Rao, who told this at an open mic story slam in Ann Arbor, where we partner with Michigan Public.

Here's Panduranga, live from the Moth.

Panduranga Rao is a nephrologist at the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor.

He told us that despite significant advances, patients with kidney disease, especially those on dialysis, have a higher mortality than the general population.

So he deals with death quite often in his field, but has never gotten used to it.

We asked Dr. Pandu if he still feels the way he did at the end of his story, that as a doctor, despite doing something intensely sad, he manages to bring comfort to others.

Our next story also comes from Ann Arbor, from a Moth Grand Slam, in which 10 slam winners are invited to tell a new story and compete to be crowned the ultimate storytelling champion.

at least for the moment.

From Ann Arbor, here's Jaron Egge.