I started this episode thinking about endings, the ones I'm walking towards in my own life right now, and somehow that musing turned into one of the most life-affirming, funniest conversations about death I have ever had.

I’ve spent years sitting with families through birth, and I’ve always felt that birth and death are close cousins, both thresholds, both asking something of us we rarely feel ready for. So when Dr Hannah Gould, cultural anthropologist, death studies scholar and author of How to Die in the 21st Century, sat down across from me, it felt like coming home to a conversation I’ve wanted to have for a long time.

We explore:

• Why most of us have never been modelled a healthy ending, and what that does to our relationship with death
• The coffin catalogue moment that sent Hannah down the path ...