Death & Disco

Emily Bingham
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated 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. 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 Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  2. 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 Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  3. 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 Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  4. 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 Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  5. 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 Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  6. 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

  7. Jul 8

    Alchemy, Ego Death, and the Sacred Art of Transformation with Dr. Eric Russell

    This week on Death and Disco, Emily sits down with Dr. Eric Russell, a psychologist, plant medicine educator, and integration coach who helps purpose-driven leaders and seekers reconnect to themselves through intentional work with psilocybin and microdosing. The two met on a winter solstice pilgrimage through Egypt, and that shared soul-land becomes the throughline of a conversation about the deaths we survive while still breathing. Together they dive into alchemy, not the medieval-castle kind, but the ancient Egyptian art of transformation that turns the lead of our pain into the gold of our purpose. Eric walks through the seven stages of the alchemical process, from calcination (the moment life gets turned upside down) through dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, and finally coagulation, mapping each one onto the shadow work, ego death, and rebirth we move through in real life. He shares his own catalyst, getting fired from a big-tech career, and how psilocybin became the medicine that helped him uncover the survival programming underneath his perfectionism. Emily brings her own alchemy: the death of her identity as a wife, the ego death that followed career success that no longer felt alive, and the fierce work of asking the ego to take a seat so the higher self can drive the bus. The conversation stretches from the deeply personal to the collective, touching terror management, narcissism, and the survival wiring that keeps humanity stuck in competition instead of communion. Eric closes with the wisdom of Isis and Osiris as a template for alchemical love, and a deathbed reflection that lands on the one truth underneath all of it: life is about how we love one another. Sacred meets disco. Shadow meets light. And, as Eric puts it, in order to heal, you have to feel. Join Eric's Alchemical Love Retreat Egypt! ● Use code EMILY1000 for $1000 off before end of July: https://drericrussell.com/egypt-retreat Key Takeaways ● Alchemy is the ancient Egyptian art of transformation, and spiritual alchemy turns emotional pain into purpose through the same multi-stage process that turns lead into gold. ● The seven stages (calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, coagulation) each mirror a real inner death and rebirth on the path to wholeness. ● Most people stall at stage one, slipping into victim mode or numbing out, and never find the courage to move through the full process of change. ● Ego death is not about killing the ego but relinquishing its grip, asking the part that has been driving the bus to take a seat so the higher self can lead. ● Psilocybin and microdosing can act as their own catalyst, peeling back layers of survival programming to reveal innate self-worth that needs no external validation. ● True transformation requires feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, grief, anger, fear, and all, rather than spiritually bypassing them. Connect ● Podcast Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist ● Dr. Eric Russell: https://drericrussell.com/ ● Eric on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drericrussell/ #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief #Alchemy #EgoDeath #PlantMedicine #Psilocybin #ShadowWork #Transformation Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

  8. Jun 24

    The Death of the Party Girl: Retreats, Awe, and the Medicine of Coming Home to Yourself

    In this crossover episode, Emily Bingham sits down with Mary, a yoga teacher, retreat host, and recovery advocate based in Denver who leads retreats around the world. The two met at a Denver dinner party for soul-led entrepreneurs and felt an immediate kinship, both shaped by loss, both fiercely devoted to two tools the healing world tends to overlook: the power of retreats and the power of AWE. This conversation, shared across both their podcasts, is the result of that instant pull to collaborate. Mary traces her path from digital advertising and addiction in Chicago to getting sober, training as a yoga teacher, and falling in love with the retreat model in the jungles of Cambodia, where she locked her phone away and relearned the language of her own body. Emily revisits the loss of her 32-year-old husband Ian to terminal cancer in March 2019, the years of dissociation and hustle that followed, and the soul retrieval work she is doing now, seven years later, to finally thaw the grief her nervous system once froze to keep her alive. Together they get honest about work addiction, the lie of radical individualism, and why no one heals by being told to "calm down." At the heart of the episode is awe: those mind-cracking, ego-dissolving moments that reorder your understanding of life. Mary recounts trekking the Annapurna circuit in the Himalayas and laughing at how small her worries became against mountains millions of years old. Emily shares her experiences of dark awe watching Ian die and the quiet awe of a Colorado meadow that whispered, I'm going to be OK. They unpack the small self, collective effervescence, moral beauty, and why facing mortality and trauma can be the very things that crack us open to JOY, belonging, and a life that is not just functional but fully ALIVE. Key Takeaways ● Addiction, as Buddhist teacher Vimalasara puts it, is an unwillingness to meet life as it is, and recovery is the practice of opening to wonder without numbing or escaping. ● Grief is not linear; the nervous system can freeze trauma for years, and the protection that keeps you functioning is a form of love, not a failure to "feel it to heal it." ● You can't think or talk your way into safety. The nervous system is a show-not-tell system, which is why somatic, body-based, and movement practices reach what words can't. ● Retreats and peak experiences interrupt the go-go-go loop, then send you home with small, doable practices like phones out of the bedroom and daily contact with nature. ● Awe shrinks the small self in the best way, quieting rumination and reminding you that you are part of something far bigger and that you are not carrying it alone. ● Healing is rarely glamorous or rewarded; choosing to disappear, slow down, and grieve can cost visibility and income, and still be the most courageous, alive thing you do. Experience Awe Firsthand ● Learn more about Emily & Mary’s Wild Magic Madeira Retreat:https://iamemilybingham.com/wild-magic-retreat Connect ● Website: https://iamemilybingham.com/ ● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemilybingham/ ● Join the YOLO Year Waitlist: https://iamemilybingham.com/yolo-waitlist #DeathAndDisco #DeathMedicine #NoOneGetsOutAlive #EmilyBingham #LoveAndGrief Mentioned in this episode: Sign up for Coaching! 1:1 coaching

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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
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Emily Bingham
  • Show Website
    Death & Disco