Prospect Podcast

The end of death—Headspace #25 with Cathy Rentzenbrink, Joanna Bourke and Philip Ball

Technology and medicine have disrupted the whole process of dying. Tom Clark asks three contributors from the latest issue about efforts to prolong human life

March 16, 2018
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This week Tom Clark, editor of Prospect, sits down with Cathy Rentzenbrink, the writer, and Joanna Bourke, the social historian, to discuss our changing relationship with death.

Medical science is now able to prolong human life in a way that was unthinkable even ten years ago. But is it in our interest to extend life in that way? Who benefits from putting people into this half-alive state? And how is digital technology affecting our ability to mourn?

Also on the podcast Philip Ball, the science writer, describes how scientists in London are growing a second version of his brain. And if we can do that, can we live on after death in the Petri dish? And what does that mean for the question of “the self”?





Previous episodes of “Headspace” can be found here.