Death impacts everyone and we often shy from from discussing it. We talk to a variety of people to puzzle out questions that come along with death.

Voices:

Saul Arber -  Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center. He is a Radiology Oncologist and Director of Radiology Oncology Dept. at Brookdale.

Daniel Braunfeld - The Facing History High School. He is a high school history teacher and lives in Manhattan.

Phil Harris - Harris Funeral Homes. He has been a licensed director since 1977 and along with his wife Cathy has lived in West Bend since 1987. They are the parents of Allison and Ashley Harris.

Steven Luper - Trinity University Philosophy Dept. He specializes in epistemology and ethics. Epistemology: In “The Epistemic Predicament” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984) 26-50, on p. 38, I defended the condition that has come to be called the safety condition for knowledge. Ethics: Much of my work on ethics concerns the philosophy of death. In "Annihilation" The Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1985) 233-252, I argue that Epicurus's position that death is not bad for us makes sense only if life is not good for us. In The Philosophy of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) I argue that death is sometimes bad for its victims both in a timeless sense and also retroactively.

Robert A. Neimeyer - University of Memphis Psychology Dept. He is a professor in the Psychotherapy Research Area of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, where he also maintains an active clinical practice. Since completing his doctoral training at the University of Nebraska in 1982, he has conducted extensive research on the topics of death, grief, loss, and suicide intervention. Neimeyer has published 25 books, including Grief and bereavement in contemporary society: Bridging research and practice, Constructivist Psychotherapy, and The Art of Longing, a book of contemporary poetry. The author of nearly 400 articles and book chapters, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process, both in his published work and through his frequent professional workshops for national and international audiences.

Helen Spiegel - Animal Kind Clinic in Brooklyn. She has been a veterinarian at Animal Kind since the fall of 1996. When she is not working she can be found at the park holding onto two misbehaved rat terriers, "Molly" and "Milo". Dr Spiegel enjoys working and living in Park Slope.

Michelle Valladares - The City College of New York. She is a Creative Writing and Poetry professor as well as an active poet.

Tyler Volk - New York University Biology Dept. He is biology professor and Environmental Studies Director and has been active in what might be called biosphere theory, or Gaia theory (with "biosphere" or "Gaia" defined as the system of atmosphere, ocean, soil, and life). Are there unifying scientific principles that govern diverse phenomena within the biosphere? Past work in Gaia theory has primarily focused on the state of the global environment that surrounds living things, for example, on the chemistry or temperature of atmosphere or ocean. He has been suggesting another approach. This involves close attention to how organisms fit into and in fact make the chemical cycles, the so-called biogeochemical cycles. A potential universal metric for these cycles is the "cycling ratio." This is the ratio of an element's flux into the photosynthesizers within a system (either the biosphere system or subsystems within) relative to the flux of that same element across the system's boundary into the system. Volk explores how this metric could be useful for biosphere theory, as a way of comparing systems with life across different scales of space, essential nutrients, and evolutionary time.

Simkah Weintraub - The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City. He serves as Rabbinic Director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (JBFCS), one of the nation's premier voluntary mental health and social service agencies, serving more than 60,000 New Yorkers of all religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds through a diverse network of 172 community-based programs, residential facilities and day-treatment centers. He maintains a private practice in Couples and Family Therapy in New York, working with couples and families confronting a wide range of issues, including chronic illness, infertility, and bereavement.