Modern medicine has spent a century training its practitioners to see patients as machines with broken parts—what physician Brewer Eberly has called "the great unsouling of the patient." Physician-assisted dying is spreading across the West, palliative care remains underfunded, and many elders spend their final days alienated from community. We have lost the language for suffering, the patience for dying, and too often the nerve to say that death is not the final word. Rebecca Vachon, director of health research at Cardus, opens in conversation with Dr. Leonie Herx, a palliative-medicine specialist who describes palliative care as whole-person medicine that attends to patients' lives all the way to the hour of their deaths. The circle then widens. Design researcher Sara Hendren, who studies disability and the built world, turns the conversation on a single word: choice. J.S. Park, a chaplain for eleven years at a Level 1 trauma center, describes asking patients what would dignify their dying, and urges them to discuss it early with their families. Louis Kim, a former technology executive now pursuing a second career in palliative care, asks what artificial intelligence will force us to say about being human. And Dr. Lydia Dugdale, a physician and ethicist who has revived the medieval concept of ars moriendi, the art of dying well, reminds us that to die well, we must first live well. Recorded in the Resurrection Chapel on the second afternoon of the 2026 Understory festival. Mentioned: The Patient as Person, by Paul Ramsey; Brewer Eberly on "the great unsouling of the patient"; Cicely Saunders and the founding of modern palliative care; Heidi Janz on being "temporarily able-bodied"; the friends of the paralyzed man in the Gospel of Mark; Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande; The Pitt television series; the ars moriendi; This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust; The Lost Art of Dying, by Lydia Dugdale; David Albert Jones on suicide contagion; Not Dead Yet (US disability rights organization); the death café movement; jesa, the Korean remembrance of death days; From Here to Eternity, by Caitlin Doughty; Accompany Them with Singing, by Thomas G. Long Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at team@comment.org. The Understory is a production of Comment (comment.org), published by Cardus (cardus.ca). Hosted by Anne Snyder. Edited by Allie Crummy. Produced by Tiffany Thompson and Evan Rosa. Episode Highlights "We're not burdens. We bear each other's burdens, and that's actually our responsibility in loving service to bring Christ to each other." (Leonie Herx) "We are very, very good at masking the dying process with the use of technology. In fact, we're very good at dragging out the dying process." (Lydia Dugdale) "My decision is a choir of voices in which I am woven with all of the people who have been with me through my life and through my suffering. I'm not just self-made . . . I'm we-made." (J.S. Park, on patients who decide with family) "If life is a gift to one, and then if one's life might be made a gift, then it is the invitation also to make one's dying well a gift." (Sara Hendren) "AI can't replicate human relationships. Well, human relationships in reality aren't that great either." (Louis Kim, on a common AI-ethics refrain) About the Panel Rebecca Vachon, moderator, directs the health program at Cardus and holds a PhD in public administration from the University of Ottawa. Leonie Herx is a palliative-medicine physician in adult and pediatric care, senior scientific director of Covenant Health's Palliative Institute, and a Cardus senior fellow. Sara Hendren, moderator, is an artist, design researcher, and Northeastern University professor, and author of What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World. Louis Kim is a former HP vice president who led work on AI, a Master of Divinity student at Duke Divinity School, and a member of Comment's editorial board. J.S. Park is an interfaith chaplain at Tampa General Hospital and author of As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. Lydia Dugdale is a primary care physician in New York City, director of Columbia University's Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and author of The Lost Art of Dying. Helpful Links and Resources Cardus Health, Rebecca Vachon's program: https://www.cardus.ca/research-policy/health "The Lost Art of Dying Well," Lydia Dugdale in Columbia Magazine: https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/lost-art-dying-well The Lost Art of Dying, Lydia Dugdale: https://publishersweekly.com/9780062932631 As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve, by J.S. Park: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/180352094-as-long-as-you-need Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral, Thomas G. Long: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780664233198 The Patient as Person, by Paul Ramsey: https://isps.yale.edu/research/publications/isps02-003 #TheUnderstory #CommentMagazine #PalliativeCare #AssistedDying #ArsMoriendi #Chaplaincy #Grief #Disability #EndOfLifeCare #ChristianHumanism
