Dr Hannah Gould, being. with Lael Stone | Death Is Not an Emergency ♥︎
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How did Lael introduce beginnings, endings and the episode theme?
Ah, the human experience with our flaws, our passions, our triggers, our inspirations and our imprints. If we could see behind everyone's story, then perhaps what we would have is deep compassion. In this podcast, I get the chance to explore these stories from some truly fascinating people in some honest and heartwarming conversations. And best of all, I get to share these discussions with you. I'm Lael Stone, and this is Humans Being. Welcome to Humans Being, I'm Lael Stone. And my humanness for this week is, well, two parts. The first part is about new beginnings. And I've been thinking a lot at this week of my life around the new things that are opening up for me. I'm in this stage where children are about to leave home.
I'm really starting to think about what do I want to do for this next part of my life? and leaning into some of the stories we have around beginnings. Now, I do back myself as someone that often jumps in. I'm not afraid to just be like, hey, there's an idea. I'm going to do it. I've done that most of my life. I just kind of jump in with blind courage. So the beginnings part don't feel too hard for me because I'm often like, hey, what have I got to lose? Let's give this a go. But what comes with beginnings is also endings. And sometimes I find that navigating those endings and ending things well is can be really tricky. And I guess for me, endings, and as I get older, wanting to end things well has been really important.
I think when I was younger, you know, when things were felt over, whether it was a friendship, whether it was a work thing, I'd just be like, I'll just turn away. I'm just moving on to something else. But I realise now how important ending well is and actually how it is often very tricky for people to end well. And because endings can bring up grief, because there can be a big... thing that comes with finishing something, I've noticed that sometimes in order to not feel that, people just blow things up so they don't have to feel the feelings that go with those endings. And I've become really conscious about moving forward in life and making sure I really acknowledge what has come from the past and to end things well.
And so that's what I'm sitting with at the moment as I'm moving into some new things. I'm also having to say goodbye to some old things and I'm just very conscious about treading with a level of awareness as i do that so i wonder how you are going with beginnings and endings in your life right now i wonder if you reflect on the endings in your life have you just kind of run away or blowing them up because it's felt hard or have you been able to turn and really sit with the different things that come up for you when we're when we're finishing something So, talking about endings and new beginnings, my guest today is one I am very excited to talk about, who I think knows a lot about endings, and my guest today is Dr. Hannah Gould.
Thanks for being here, Hannah. Thank you for having me. I'm going to start with just reading a little bit of a bio about you, and then we're going to jump in. So Dr. Hannah Gould is a cultural anthropologist at the University of Melbourne who studies death, Buddhism, and material culture across contemporary Australia and East Asia. She completed her PhD at Melbourne and holds a postdoctoral fellowship focused on death care. She's also a lecturer in Buddhist studies at the university and a fellow of the death tech research team. That's like a serious, like the death tech research team. That's not that scary, I promise. A multidisciplinary research group examining the intersections of death, technology, and society.
Her academic monograph, When Death Falls Apart, traces the life cycle of traditional Japanese Buddhist memorial altars. This is so fascinating. From production to household use to disposal as a way of understanding how death rituals change over time. Her 2026 popular book, How to Die in the 21st Century, can't wait to talk about that, brings her decade of research to a general readership, covering everything from cremation and green burials to grief etiquette and emerging body disposal technologies.
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