Death & Disco

Emily Bingham
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Weekly

Death & Disco is the podcast where we explore how truly embracing death can lead to a more meaningful, magical and radically alive life. Host Emily brings together researchers, healers, mystics, scientists and everyday people with extraordinary perspectives on mortality — because the conversations society avoids most are often the ones we need most urgently. We go deep on physical death and grief, the metaphorical deaths of ego and identity, and the profound cost of our collective denial — how running from death keeps us hustling, dividing, and sleepwalking through the one life we have. We sit with the evidence from near-death experiences, psychedelic research, ancient philosophy and neuroscience that facing death doesn't diminish life. It explodes it open. Because no one gets out of here alive. So we might as well enjoy the ride. Death & Disco — dance 'til you die vibes.

  1. 5d ago

    Your Last Party: Death Dinners, Funeral Playlists, and Living Before Your Deadline with Eva Kiemeney

    This week, Emily sits down with Eva Kiemeney, founder of Your Last Party, a Netherlands-based organization that hosts death dinners and festival workshops to help people reflect on mortality and live more fully. Emily found Eva on Instagram, drawn in by dinner tables that looked vibrant and alive, then realized every one of them was about DEATH. Here's how Eva's events work: guests send in the songs they want played at their funeral, show up in the outfit they want to be buried in, and sit down with strangers. Three hours later, they leave connected to each other. Eva walks through her dinners course by course. The first two courses are about LIFE, and the funeral conversation waits for dessert. Guests pull question cards from an urn made of mushrooms. In one exercise they tear their current age off a paper measuring rod, then tear off the age they expect to die at, and look at what's left. She explains why talking to strangers about death often feels safer than talking to the people we love. She shares the most common thing guests leave behind at the end of the night: their fear of dying. Eva also tells the story behind her work. Her dad lived with Alzheimer's for five years, which meant a long series of small goodbyes. The family was ready for his death because her mom had been asking at the dinner table, since Eva was 13, what song everyone wanted at their funeral. The name Your Last Party came to Eva while she was writing his eulogy. She and Emily talk about practicing for death through life's smaller endings, why death needs a rebrand, and Eva's plan for her own funeral: outside, barefoot, with a silent DISCO walk to the grave. Work With Emily ● The Wake-Up Call: a private, 90-minute guided journey to the end of your life and back, live on Zoom. Walk away with deathbed clarity on what actually matters, what's standing in the way, and the fuel to go live it now. Book yours: https://iamemilybingham.com/wake-up-call ● The Bucket LIFE: a community for soul-led humans choosing to live with the end in mind, clear on what matters, done delaying their dreams, and awake to the magic of this one precious life. Join here: https://iamemilybingham.com/bucket-life Key Takeaways ● Talking about death won't kill you. As Eva puts it, "death itself is hard and super sad, but the conversation about it shouldn't be that." ● Mortality is your literal deadline. Treat it as a friend that pushes you to launch the podcast, take the trip, or ask your mother about her youth now instead of later. ● Strangers can be the easiest people to talk to about death, because the conversation doesn't hit as close as it does with loved ones. ● Thinking through your last wishes is only the first step. The people who will actually plan your funeral need to know what you want and where you've written it down. ● Life keeps giving us practice at letting go: friendships that fade, moving house, identities we outgrow. Each one helps prepare us for the final letting go. ● Everybody dies, but not everyone lives. Celebrate failures, collect stories, and choose consciously which road you stay on. Connect with Emily ● Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Book a Wake-Up Call: https://iamemilybingham.com/wake-up-call Connect with Eva ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/your_last_party/ ● Website: https://www.jelaatstefeestje.com/homepage ● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/je-laatste-feestje #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #YourLastParty #DeathDinner #DeathPositive #MortalityAwareness #FuneralPlanning #LetGoToLive

  2. Oct 21

    Ashes to Authority: Turning a Mother's Murder Into a Life Fully Lived with Celia Peachey

    Celia Peachey learned her mother had been murdered while standing alone in a field. She had just finished a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat, the week before Christmas in 2008. In this episode, Emily sits down with Celia, a Transformation Coach and the founder of Ultimate Alchemist. Celia is also a vibe artist and an international speaker, and she trained as an actor and fine artist before building a global AI-first coaching brand. She describes the moment the news arrived as a space between stimulus and response so wide it held pure presence. Then a voice inside her said, "Be faithful. The balance is being addressed." She clapped her hands and chose: this would make her, not break her. Emily and Celia trace the ego death at drama school that came first and prepared her for that call. They also cover the 10 years she spent fighting the criminal justice system for an inquest, and the moment she realized she was beating her head against an institution that would not receive her light. Celia refused to be framed as a victim and named herself a pioneer of her own experience. She calls this pioneer authority, or "ashes to authority." She also explains why she left the UK in 24 hours during COVID, left everything she owned behind, and built her business midair from the Costa Rican jungle. In the second half, Celia unpacks character wealth, the law of attraction in reverse, and her six-week program Love Is the Currency, which works on healing our relationship to money. Her line on it: "love is not blind, it's wide awake and super discerning." She also describes a deathbed breathwork exercise at 28. Her life looked broken on paper, yet she was the only one in the room laughing and cheering. This is a fierce, joyful conversation about grief, faith over hope, and why the worst thing happening to you might be an invitation to let the best thing happen too. Work With Emily ● The Wake-Up Call: a private, 90-minute guided journey to the end of your life and back, live on Zoom. Walk away with deathbed clarity on what actually matters, what's standing in the way, and the fuel to go live it now. Book yours: https://iamemilybingham.com/wake-up-call● The Bucket LIFE: a community for soul-led humans choosing to live with the end in mind, clear on what matters, done delaying their dreams, and awake to the magic of this one precious life. Join here: https://iamemilybingham.com/bucket-life Key Takeaways ● An ego death can be preparation for a physical one: Celia says she would not be here without the inner work that came before her mother's murder.● Pioneer, not victim: you can feel the full tragedy and still choose to claim it as material for your making, without bypassing the grief.● Know where your impact will land. Pouring your life force into institutions that won't change can cost you your aliveness.● Character is the only wealth that compounds. When you decide from love instead of fear, Celia says, "You always get your ROI."● Don't grieve alone. Celia names faith, not hope, as the medicine, and says healing needs connection, guidance, and people who have been through it.● A life well lived comes down to memories and to love that does not end with DEATH. Say the hard thing, tell someone you love them, and admit when you were wrong. Connect with Emily ● Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham/ Connect with Celia ● Website: https://celiapeachey.com/celiapeachey● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misspeacheycelia/● Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissCeliaPeachey● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celia-peachey-transformation-coach-mentor-consultant-speaker-336ba61/● YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UltimateAlchemist● The Wealthiest Woman Alive podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wealthiest-woman-alive/id1807412565● Love Is the Currency: https://celiapeachey.com/litc-offer-388875 #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #UltimateAlchemist #CeliaPeachey #LoveIsTheCurrency #GriefAndGrowth #PioneerNotVictim

  3. Oct 7

    Parts of Me Died, So Much More Grew: Grief, Rebirth, and Radical Advocacy with Ginna Roe

    Ginna Roe lost her wife Candy to colon cancer after a six-year illness. The two had been together for 23 years and raised six children. Eight months later, Ginna's youngest son Jeremy died by suicide. In this episode, Emily sits down with Ginna, a former client who she helped move through years of pain and trauma. Today Ginna is the Founder of Sunflower Print Works KC, a veterans-for-peace advocate, and a public speaker. As she puts it, none of it would have happened without DEATH. Ginna talks about the early days of her grief, when everything felt "dark and blurry," she dealt with it by drinking whiskey, and anger was the only emotion she knew how to feel. Things began to shift when a TikTok video led her to Emily's holiday grief program. She describes holding Candy as she died, watching the last heartbeat in her neck, and hearing a wail she later realized was her own. She also describes going from "a we for almost 24 years to suddenly just a me." Ginna deleted a dating app within an hour of downloading it because she couldn't answer a single profile question about herself. Then she spent the next year or so dating herself, taking herself to fancy restaurants and sitting in the middle of the damn room. From there, the conversation turns to rebirth. A diving injury forced Ginna out of her job as a college custodian. Emily's deathbed ceremony showed her a vision of screen printing screens on a wall. The sunflowers she and Candy grew every year became the symbol for her new company. Ginna and Emily also talk about inner child work, EMDR, and making peace with the parts of us that once kept us safe. The episode closes with Ginna's move into activism with Veterans For Peace and her practical advice for anyone who wants to get involved during a collective DEATH of old systems. Her belief is that rugged individualism got us into this mess and collectivism will get us out. Key Takeaways ● Grief needs community. When Ginna lost Jeremy, she wanted to isolate, drink, and avoid. She chose to reach out to her group instead, and that choice kept her from losing another year of her LIFE. ● Loving your grief isn't crazy. Ginna once thought Emily was "batshit crazy" for saying she loved her grief. Now Ginna loves hers too, because it keeps her connected to Candy and Jeremy. ● Loss can erase the self you built as part of a couple. Dating yourself is one way to find out who you are when you're no longer part of a "we." ● When one door closes, look for the redirect. A diving injury, a hospital bed, and a deathbed visualization led Ginna to the creative work that had been waiting in her all along. ● Your protective parts aren't the enemy. Patterns labeled "maladaptive" kept you safe once, and healing starts when you acknowledge them, care for them, and let them rest. ● You don't have to be political to show up. Existing is a political statement. Find a local group, a community garden, or a coalition of neighbors, and look out for each other. Connect ● Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Book a Wake-Up Call: https://iamemilybingham.com/wake-up-call ● Join The Bucket LIFE https://iamemilybingham.com/bucket-life ● Ginna Roe on Instagram: Ginna Is Enough - https://www.instagram.com/ginna_is_enough/ ● Sunflower Print Works KC on Instagram: Sunflower Print Works KC - https://www.instagram.com/sunflowerprintworkskc/ #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #GriefAndLoss #SuicideLossSurvivor #WidowLife #VeteransForPeace #PostTraumaticGrowth #InnerChildHealing #CommunityCare

  4. Sep 23

    Nothing Needs to Happen: Kidney Failure, Surrender, and the End of Chasing with Jeppe Ogard

    This week Emily sits down with Jeppe Ogard, a mindset mentor, coach, and author based in the Danish countryside who has spent 13 years helping people dissolve suffering and cultivate confidence, inner peace, and fulfillment. His work is rooted in neuroscience, human psychology, and philosophies including Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, delivered through global stages, workshops, and books. Emily found him the way most of us find our teachers now, through a scroll, when he said the thing nobody wants to hear: the root of your suffering is not your circumstance. It is you. Jeppe built his acceptance muscle the hard way, through years of near daily panic and anxiety attacks in which the real torment was not the anxiety itself but the constant, exhausting fight against it. Fourteen months ago that muscle got tested at a scale he never asked for. Mid summer, feeling flu symptoms nobody else in his house had, he pushed for a second round of tests. The results were not burnout. They were severe kidney failure, a serious autoimmune disease, blood pressure so high it had caused small strokes and stolen his sight, and a stretch of hospitalization where the doctors ran cancer panels and no one could tell him what was happening. He thought he had a year to live. He is now stabilized on medication and looking toward a kidney transplant, which is not a finish line but another door. What he describes from that hospital wheelchair is the whole episode: the thoughts still came, the pain was excruciating, the uncertainty was total, and yet none of it got to him the way it once had. Emily and Jeppe go deep on metaphorical DEATH and the ending of a version of yourself, on why what you resist persists, on treating yourself as your own best friend when grief arrives, and on the kinky cosmic joke that surrender only feels like defeat to the ego. "On paper, my life has never been more challenging. But internally, I feel like it's never been more easy and more simple than it is right now." No one makes it out alive. The only real question is what you let these moments show you. Key Takeaways ● The suffering is in the resistance, not the experience. Jeppe's anxiety loosened its grip only when he stopped trying to outrun it and let it be there. ● Acceptance is a muscle you build before the crisis. The work he did on his panic attacks is what made space for him when the kidney failure and strokes arrived. ● Treat yourself as your own best friend. Most of us give ourselves almost no credit, compassion, or love while we are grieving or in pain. ● Meditation is watching the river flow by without touching the water. You acknowledge the anxiety, the rage, the grief, and you do not attach to it. ● Surrender feels like losing to the ego, but as Jeppe puts it, "we are getting the world in exchange for the ego." ● Mortality comes for everyone, physical or metaphorical. A life well lived, in his words, is listening much more than taking action. Connect ● Death and Disco Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily Bingham on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/: ●Emily on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham ●Book a Wake Up Call: iamemilybingham.com/wake-up-call ●Jeppe‘s website: jeppeaagaard.com ●Jeppe On Instagram: instagram.com/jeppe_aagaard ●Jeppe On YouTube: youtube.com/@jeppeaagaardmindsetmentor #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #MindsetMentor #Acceptance #Surrender #ChronicIllness #AnxietyRelief #Advaita #Buddhism #ConsciousLiving

  5. Sep 9

    The Cards That Crack Us Open: Talking About Death Before It Talks to Us with Lisa Pahl

    Emily sits down with Lisa Pahl, CEO and Co-creator and owner of the Death Deck, for a conversation about what happens when we finally say the thing out loud. Lisa has spent nearly 20 years in hospice and about eight in the ER, and what she witnessed over and over was the same quiet catastrophe: families forced to make impossible decisions on behalf of someone they love, with no idea what that person actually wanted. So in 2018 she partnered with Lori Lo Cicero, the spouse of a former hospice patient, and built a card game. Multiple choice questions. A friendly little skull. Humor as the way in. Because as Lisa puts it, even though we think we don't want to talk about death and dying, we actually do. The conversation goes exactly where you'd hope. Lisa reads a question from the deck live, Emily wrestles with it, and both women end up somewhere honest about what it would mean to know your own expiration date. They talk about the difference between mortality awareness and knowing the actual calendar square, about the battle and warrior language we drape over illness that makes it nearly impossible to ask a dying person what they want, and about the clinicians who should be starting these conversations and often don't. Emily shares the regret that still sits with her: Ian dying in front of her while the conversation stayed stuck in the room like an elephant nobody would name. Lisa shares her own humbling, caring for her mother-in-law in hospice and realizing she could not give anyone the perfect death, because it was never hers to give. They also get practical, which is rare in this genre. How do you bring this up with parents who just turned 70? Complete your own advance directive first, then use it as the doorway. Use a TV show. Use a podcast episode. Use whatever medium the person you love already speaks. Lisa walks through her three decks, The Death Deck for mortality awareness, the EOL Deck for people living with serious illness, and the Dementia Deck for advance planning around the most feared diagnosis in the country. And she names the secondary gain nobody expects from a game about dying: when people talk about real things, they stop performing, and connection shows up. As Lisa says near the end, this felt really good, so go out and talk about real stuff. Key Takeaways ● Peace at the end starts with the conversations we're willing to have right now, not the ones we hope to have later. ● Humor is not disrespect. Lisa built The Death Deck with multiple choice questions and a friendly skull specifically to make the topic approachable, and found that once people start, they rarely want to stop. ● Warrior and fighter language around illness can make it nearly impossible to ask someone what they'd want if the fight doesn't go their way, which is exactly why timing and receptivity matter so much. ● The burden should not fall on the family alone. Lisa argues end-of-life professionals need more courage to directly initiate advance directive and planning conversations with patients. ● Grief support is hard for most people because supporting a griever means acknowledging that we too will die. ● If a goodbye didn't happen the way you needed, it isn't closed forever. Emily talks openly about returning to that moment through healing work and rewriting the story in her heart. Host, Emily Bingham ● Podcast Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist ● Emily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham/ Connect with Lisa Pahl ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedeathdeck/ ● Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedeathdeck/ ● TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedeathdeck ● The Death Deck: https://thedeathdeck.com/ ● The Death Deck on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0aktSuXG If this conversation moved something in you, leave a review and send it to the person you've been avoiding this conversation with. #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #TheDeathDeck #LisaPahl #HospiceCare #AdvanceCarePlanning #DeathPositive #MortalityAwareness #GriefSupport #EndOfLifeConversations #DementiaAwareness

  6. Aug 26

    Money and Mortality: Mastering the Six Money Games with Jess McKinley Uyeno

    Money might be the only subject more taboo than death, and Emily Bingham brings both to the same table this week with Jess McKinley Uyeno, a mentor to women who went from being a broke single mom to buying mansions and working 10-hour work weeks. Jess teaches women how to master their money in a playful yet financially literate way through what she calls the six money games. She and Emily met on a two-hour bus ride in Puerto Rico, and the connection was immediate: a shared, visceral gratitude for existence that Jess traces directly back to contemplating her own mortality. This conversation lives in duality. Life is only sweet because of the promise of death. Money both totally matters and totally doesn't. Jess walks through the metaphysical death that reshaped her, the dissolution of her marriage and the future she thought was guaranteed, and how facing that loss forced her to confront a financial life she had quietly handed over to someone else. Out of that isolation came an obsession with financial literacy, an unwillingness to identify as a broke single mom, and the radical practice of believing in a future with zero evidence it was possible. Together Emily and Jess unpack the subtraction effect, the difference between needs and wants, the six money games (earning, spending, saving, investing, net worth, and giving), and why selling is serving. They get honest about scarcity, plan A versus plan Z, and the deathbed question that cuts through it all: what is a life well lived. It is fierce, funny, financially literate, and unafraid to say the quiet part out loud, that money matters, and that remembering you are not promised tomorrow is the fastest way to live like it. Key Takeaways ● The opposite of a universal truth is also true: money both matters and doesn't matter, and you get to hold both at once instead of toggling between them. ● Contemplating your mortality is the easiest, fastest path to presence and gratitude, no loss required to start the work. ● There are more money games than earning. Master all six: earning, spending, saving, investing, net worth, and giving. ● Refuse to identify with where you are financially. You cannot out-action an identity you believe is who you are right now. ● Believing in a future with zero evidence is the most underrated skill there is, and community makes it contagious. ● Distinguish real needs from wants, never take on debt you have no plan to eliminate, and put your full energy into plan A before you reach for plan Z. Connect Host, Emily Bingham ● Podcast Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist ● Emily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham/ Guest: Jess McKinley Uyeno, Mentor ● Website: https://www.sincerelyfutureyou.com/ ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessmckinleyuyeno/ ● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manningjessica/ ● Podcast: Fun Money Podcast: https://www.sincerelyfutureyou.com/podcast #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #Money #Mortality #FinancialLiteracy #SixMoneyGames #YOLO #Abundance #WomenAndMoney

  7. Aug 12

    Death, Love, and the Return to Community: Why We Grieve Better Together with Lauren Carroll

    Emily Bingham sits down with Lauren Carroll, a death educator, former funeral director, and co-founder of La Mort and the Death Wives, whose work weaves community and family back into the death space. What begins as one woman's terror of cemeteries becomes a lifelong devotion after a single, shattering assignment: at 21, working a typewriter in the back corner of a funeral home, Lauren was sent to collect a stillborn baby from a hospital. Shaking, nauseous, certain she could not do it, she instead felt an overwhelming wave of calm and love pour out of the child she cradled. In that moment her fear of death dissolved into a truth she has carried ever since: it's just love. This continuation of love. From that origin story, Emily and Lauren move into the heart of the conversation. They talk about why grief so often buries the love underneath it, why our culture's refusal to sit with the dead leaves us with what Lauren calls lingering, ghosty grief, and why community, not avoidance, is the thing that actually heals. Lauren makes the case that loneliness is an unspoken epidemic, that unprocessed grief curdles into the violence and division we see everywhere, and that our ancestors already knew how to tend their own dead, make bread for neighbors, and mark death with ritual. Along the way she introduces legacy work and the Jewish tradition of the ethical will, reframing the deathbed fear that our lives didn't matter. In the second half, Lauren shares her own diagnosis with a rare terminal disease and the ceremonial psilocybin journey that changed her, crying for six hours and emerging, as those around her put it, a different person. She and Emily explore psilocybin as a way to lower the defenses around dying, the deep prep and integration the medicine requires, and mushrooms as decomposers and ancestral communicators. They close with the ecological cost of our death practices, the greener options of water cremation and human composting, and a shared conviction that giving our bodies back to the earth is the last, most beautiful gift we have to offer. Key Takeaways ● Fear of death often masks love. Lauren's transformation came the moment she felt the love a stillborn baby carried, realizing death is a continuation of love, not its end. ● Grief is not low vibration to be avoided. Your body is built to grieve, and surrendering into it, even sobbing for hours, is what actually brings relief and integration. ● We are meant to grieve in community. Direct cremation and avoidance rob us of the funerals, vigils, and rituals that let people reconnect and heal loneliness. ● Small rituals matter. A blessing over the body, a gong or candle at the threshold, an ethical will passing down your beliefs, these bookmarks help the heart and mind catch up with each other. ● Psilocybin can lower the defenses around dying. Done with intention, prep, and integration (never heroic doses), it opens the heart and helps end-of-life workers process their own grief before holding space for others. ● Our death practices can heal or harm the planet. Fire cremation and conventional burial damage the earth, while water cremation and human composting let the body return as fertilizer and continued life. Resources Mentioned ● Terror management theory / Sheldon Solomon (previous Death and Disco guest) ● The Death Cafe ● The ethical will (Jewish legacy tradition) ● A blessing by Starhawk for tending the body after death ● Sage Warrior (book referenced in Lauren's classes) ● Hope Edelman on how the facts stay the same but the story changes ● The Mushroom and the Cross and The Secret Religion (on mushrooms and the origins of religion) Connect Host, Emily Bingham ● Podcast Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist ● Emily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham/ Guest, Lauren Carroll (La Mort and the Death Wives) ● Website: https://lamort.org ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deathwives/ , https://www.instagram.com/lamortcollective/ ● Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauren.harrisoncarroll/ ● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-carroll-deathwives/ #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief

  8. Jul 22

    Widow in the City: Grief, Desire, and the Sensual Reawakening of Midlife with Amy Gabrielle

    This week Emily welcomes her OG client and widow sister, Amy Gabrielle, an author, writer, and digital creator who has spent the last four years turning the wreckage of loss into a body of work that refuses to be sanitized. The two met shortly after Amy's husband, Steven, died in 2021, when Amy joined Emily's very first widow's retreat. Now, at the release of her memoir Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hookups, Amy returns to trace the whole arc: caretaking Steven through three years of terminal cancer, parenting her neurodivergent son alone, and stumbling into an unexpected sensual awakening that cracked her wide open. What follows is a hot, honest, and deeply human conversation about what grief actually does to a body and an identity. Amy talks about the year she gave herself permission to "be crazy," the $1,000 winter coat, the iPhone and tripod she used to photograph herself in lingerie, the double life she led behind a picture-perfect Columbia University finance job. She and Emily name the question that haunts so many widows: do I even exist anymore when the one person who truly saw me is gone? From dating apps and calculated risks to a situationship that ended in a grief tsunami, Amy found her way to the page, launching her Substack, Absolute Pleasure, and writing publications including The Memoirist and Slackjaw. In the second half, Amy, an advocate for authentic self-expression in midlife women, gets fierce about feminism, bodily autonomy, reframing sex work as work deserving of protection, and the difference between consent and trafficking. She makes the case for critical thinking over lazy judgment, for staying civil across disagreement, and for a definition of a life well lived that has nothing to do with doing it all and everything to do with being true to who you are. It is sacred and it is disco, and it is a permission slip for anyone moving through loss. Key Takeaways ● There is no right or wrong way to grieve. As Amy puts it, "grief shows up in different ways for different people," and the distance from a loss does not make it hurt less, it just makes it easier to hold. ● Loss can halve your capacity while doubling your workload, so self-compassion, not self-judgment, is the work. ● Creativity is grief medicine. Whether it is art, music, writing, or building a new life, creating something is how you move forward when you cannot see a foot in front of you. ● Being seen in your grief, even in ways that titillate or unsettle, is one of the most healing exercises there is, and it gives others permission to be seen in theirs. ● Sensuality and desire do not have to disappear in midlife or in partnership. You can reignite that part of yourself instead of vanishing into "mommy and daddy." ● A life well lived is not doing everything you ever wanted. It is being okay letting some things go and staying true to yourself in the present, the only time we actually have. Amy's Book: Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hookups Check out her book on Amazon Connect ● Podcast Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist ● Emily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-emily-bingham/ ● Amy Gabrielle on Substack: https://substack.com/@amygabrielle ● Amy Gabrielle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amygabriellenyc/ #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #WidowInTheCity #AmyGabrielle #GriefAndDesire #MidlifeReawakening #Widowhood

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5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Death & Disco is the podcast where we explore how truly embracing death can lead to a more meaningful, magical and radically alive life. Host Emily brings together researchers, healers, mystics, scientists and everyday people with extraordinary perspectives on mortality — because the conversations society avoids most are often the ones we need most urgently. We go deep on physical death and grief, the metaphorical deaths of ego and identity, and the profound cost of our collective denial — how running from death keeps us hustling, dividing, and sleepwalking through the one life we have. We sit with the evidence from near-death experiences, psychedelic research, ancient philosophy and neuroscience that facing death doesn't diminish life. It explodes it open. Because no one gets out of here alive. So we might as well enjoy the ride. Death & Disco — dance 'til you die vibes.

Information

  • Creator
    Emily Bingham
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Emily Bingham
  • Show Website
    Death & Disco