Death in the Digital Age

The only real way for any of us to truly live forever is in the memories of others. In the final episode of the Hacking Longevity series, Kara talks to Valorie Jones, chief technology officer at StoryFile, which uses AI to create interactive video experiences. StoryFile also works with individuals to create a digital twin – or avatar – that can answer questions and create conversations long after they're gone. Kara then speaks with journalist Danielle Crittenden about her new book, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, a memoir about the death of her daughter. They’ll talk about how technology can impact the grieving process and what many get wrong about grief. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Part of the reason I got interested in longevity and aging is because, like so many people in tech whom I've covered, have become obsessed with living forever, like literally. There's a grandness to everything they do, so this is no different. I also think it's really interesting to think about what survives you. What are memories in the digital age? Can you change and transform them? And so I think it's really important to talk about those topics, but I'm not a fan of the idea that you should live forever. The only way to hack death is to remember and memorialize those who have lived. So in the final episode of Hacking Longevity series here on the podcast, we're talking

• 0:54Kara Swisher?

  about that way of thinking about death, preserving the memories of those who died and the messy humanity that comes from dealing with death. Later, I'm talking to Danielle Crittenden, who has written the brilliant and deeply empathetic memoir Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable, about the death of her daughter Miranda. She's preserved the memory of her daughter in a beautiful way. And we start the episode with technology that is preserving memories, of course. I'm joined by Valerie Jones, who I met in the course of my reporting about aging and longevity. Valerie is the CTO of a company called Storyfile, which is a tech company that uses AI to create interactive video experiences.

• 1:35Kara Swisher?

  They can create the digital twin of a person, which they did for me, the Caratar. And the Caratar exists, and they put in all manner of things. They taped me, they used stuff, the documents that were about me, things I've said, and it created a really strange and also uncanny experience. I can't say I loved it, but it was interesting, and you can see where all of this is going. And I will tell you, the Caratar got smart every second I spent with her. But I'm not so sure I wanted to meet my great-grandchildren. We get into the tech, of course, but also the ethics of this and how it could end up being used in the future, sometimes for bad and sometimes, hopefully, for good. It's a good conversation, so stick around.

• 2:27Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more. And listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 3:12Kara Swisher?

  Valerie, thanks for coming on, Aunt.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I'm glad that you've been inviting me.

• 3:17Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it's good to see you again. Last time we talked, there was a weird creature near us, around us, which was Kara Swisher, who I didn't much like. Kara Swisher, the avatar. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I didn't think she was weird. I thought she was, she was nice. She was, she was like you.

• 3:32Kara Swisher?

  She got better. Yeah, she got better. Let me explain. This is an avatar of me that you had trained on things I've written and said. I called her the Kara-Tar. You're the only person on Earth, I believe, who's had faced two of me at once, which is quite an accomplishment, and I appreciate it. It was interesting. And for those who haven't seen the series, it's actually a sort of a 3D version of me that was trained on me. We did some questions and everything else. And then you did other things. But I want to talk about it a little bit. I want to start with that experience, which was interesting and a little uncanny and honestly, even unnerving. I've described it a bit, but I want to have you fill in the details of how it works.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for that intro. Yeah, so what we did with you was blending two different technologies. We do interviews with real people, trying to convert them into these digital doubles. That started off when we were interviewing Holocaust survivors working with the USC Shoah Foundation. And the problem we're trying to solve there is that, how do we keep these stories alive for 10, 20, 50 years from now, when you're not going to be able to go into a museum and have a... Docent or someone volunteering there to talk to. And by interviewing real people, we could then search those videos to playback conversations. You feel like you're learning these real stories. So in your case, we actually brought you in and we interviewed you for about two hours. A lot less than we might do with a

• 4:56Speaker 01

  veteran or Holocaust survivor. So the second aspect is what we call the lookalike technology. And that's using a generative video and a more sort of large language model to simulate videos on the fly. And what that was able to do is as you were asking questions that we hadn't prepared for, it could synthesize a result and that was drawing on other reference material like your book, your biography, other articles.

• 5:24Kara Swisher?

  There's lots of video of me. There's lots of stuff of me out there, right?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yes, there's a lot of reference material to try and capture your personality, your style of speaking, your interviews, your opinions. And even then, I mean, it's, it was a custom thing we built for you in that case. That's sort of created a two-way conversation. It actually asked questions of you, go back and forth. And that was kind of my favorite part.

• 5:47Kara Swisher?

  Right. And so let me be clear, you, you, did you use videos of me? Or I've done hundreds, thousands of interviews. I've done thousands of podcasts. Were those integrated into it?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  So the real-time lookalike component at this point was just based on text reference. But it was also trained on the voice from your interview and your appearance from your video. So we could sort of make them look seamless and blend between the two.

• 6:13Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  So hopefully people wouldn't notice.

• 6:16Kara Swisher?

  What was really interesting was that it really was learning in time, in real time as it was talking to me. I felt it was, maybe I, you know, hallucinated that, as they say in AI. Now, one of the things that really caught me off guard was the goodbye. I say something to my kids that I do not say publicly. See you wouldn't want to be you. And I say that a lot to my kids and I, I, I can't recall anywhere I've said it publicly until this taping. And it's, and when I said goodbye and I was thinking, oh, should I kill this thing at some point? I thought, you know, my, why did that surprise me? I just don't recall saying it and maybe I, maybe I did somewhere. But it got the exact thing I would say when I was saying goodbye to it.

• 6:58Kara Swisher?

  And so that was, that was unnerving, I would say.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I think you actually mentioned that during your interview. And I think that's why it's really important for people to have these interviews. Because if you're just hallucinating everything, it's not gonna know your actual personality, your, your, uh, things that are unique to you.

• 7:20Kara Swisher?

  So talk about the challenges of the technology at the moment. There's latency, as you know, and you could feel that a little bit, especially in the, the ones that was the retrieval. But which I had taped and, and you have to figure in the realism of facial expression, the eyes. Um, talk a little bit about where we are now and the biggest challenges you see at this moment.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  So yeah, when I started doing this fifteen, twenty years ago, we, people would create these three D elaborate models of the face and trying to model all the geometry and the inter reflections of the eyes was really difficult. The difference right now is we're now transitioning to using more sort of video diffusion models. Things like, like what people heard about Sora and all these other models. Um, that are really just learning from all the videos that are out there on YouTube and on the internet. And they don't explicitly model like this is what the eye works, but they create plausible, I would say, eyes. Um, I think the, the challenges right now is a lot of those faces still look a little bit too generic.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Like everyone has a certain sort of studio lighting glamour look, right?

• 8:31Kara Swisher?

  Smooth, smoothness, right?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Whereas I think what make people's faces look real, real are the imperfections. Like it's all those wrinkles and pores and skin details that make someone look like a real person and not like a Barbie doll. And I think those are still missing. They can create very realistic eyes, but it's justifying why are those eyes smiling? And connecting it back to what they're saying is the, is the, is the loop that people are really working on.

• 9:01Kara Swisher?

  Right, that people do naturally, right?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  People do it so well.

• 9:04Kara Swisher?

  Right, um, one of the things that's, that it also, when I said, uh, well, You should smile more. And it made a joke, finally, after I was saying, I'm funnier than you are, and you don't have enough snark to you. And they said, I am smiling, it's just I'm not showing my teeth, which was funny. The way, it was kind of a weird, but kind of great answer. But it doesn't smile a lot, it doesn't, like, maybe I didn't during that taping or something. But you'd think, I was thinking, why isn't it, why isn't the generative version smiling more, essentially? Maybe I didn't smile enough, or something. I don't really know.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  The generative version, for the most part, was based on your listening resting pose during the interview. So if someone goes in with sort of resting.

• 9:54Kara Swisher?

  Bitch face, yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  I wasn't gonna say it.

• 9:57Kara Swisher?

  That's okay, you can say it. Many, many straight white men have said I should smile more, but go ahead.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you're smiling more in the, in the reference image, then it would be smiling more in the generative video?

• 10:09Kara Swisher?

  Oh, interesting.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I think the, the more exciting thing is when it's doing that dynamically. And if it's cracking a joke, it's making the appropriate facial expression for the joke.

• 10:20Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  In that case, it was making the most of its, its limitations.

• 10:23Kara Swisher?

  So this is really sensitive and emotional work. Obviously, you're preserving people's memories for grieving families, for historical purposes, so certain stories don't disappear, which is a laudable goal. We'll get into the problems people have with AI in a second, but why is this something you personally wanted to do?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Before I did this, I was sort of coming from a visual effects background, doing movies like Avatar, Blade Runner. And it was all about the technology. And the first time I actually met a Holocaust survivor, I realized I kind of had it wrong. It was about story. It was about sort of the human connections that people were building. And

• 11:00Speaker 01

  I really wanted to expand that. A lot of people exist in their little tiny bubbles, sort of echo chambers. And being able to go into a museum and talk to someone who comes from a completely different background from you, a World War II veteran, or a civil rights leader, or an astronaut, and then be able to build those connections and saying, oh, they went through this thing, and I can see that in my experience. It's sort of is breaking people out of those bubbles.

• 11:29Kara Swisher?

  Are there other histories that are working, you're working on preserving, like folks involved in the civil rights movement, survivors of the Vietnam War, indigenous communities, language is quickly disappearing? Talk about this idea of preserving history, rather than the way it is preserved, which is often based on whoever wins, right?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think first-person narrative and all history is one of the oldest, it is the oldest form of history, going back thousands of years. And the ability to have someone talk to you is powerful because you're engaged, is an active form of learning as opposed to passive learning. So that's important. We have applied this for a lot of different cases. We have done, there's the Medal of Honor Museum in Texas. There is, we've done veterans at the National World War II Museum in Louisiana. We have been talking to various Indian tribes about doing language preservation the same way.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  So I think for education, there's a lot of power there in making it engaged.

• 12:34Kara Swisher?

  But people obviously can use, create a digital record of their loved ones before they die, and it can be very tightly tailored, which just answers certain questions. Talk about where it could go, because this is like, I was thinking, do I, I want my great-grandchildren, who I'll never meet, to see this version of me. And I wasn't so sure. You know, I kind of like, maybe they shouldn't see it at all. They have plenty of online video of me that's real. Do they have to have one that responds? And it was, it's, it's complex. They never really answered. I wasn't sure. Part of me, you know, I was thinking of my dad, I kind of would like to see a version of him in movement that's not on a video screen, right? It's not a movie, you know, a home, a handheld camera.

• 13:18Kara Swisher?

  Version of him where he responds. So talk a little bit about about this. And what other some applications you're working on.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  It's really important that we stay authentic to the to the original source. So if you go to the World War Two Museum, it is not generating any videos on the fly. We might interview someone for for five days straight to make sure we have enough content.

• 13:39Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Now, if you were talking to your father, right, or your kids were talking to your father, then I think that would be kind of different because you want your father to be able to sort of listen and say like, oh, I hear you're going through this hard time and sort of acknowledging that. And then personally telling a related story that's based on recorded.

• 13:57Kara Swisher?

  Something you recorded.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  It sort of makes the conversation more.

• 14:02Kara Swisher?

  Real.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Real. It's a two way conversation with people listening to each other.

• 14:06Kara Swisher?

  Because you could just point a camera at an old person and say, tell your stories, right? And that's different than a conversation. Right?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Um, now, what part of what we're working on is trying to make this technology more accessible. So not everyone can have a professional film crew come out like we did with you to film them.

• 14:24Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  So what we're working on is sort of AI biographer that can do the same thing. So you have an AI be the interviewer to help gather all these stories.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Coach you on being the best version of a storyteller you can be. And then feed that into either the retrieval based or generative. And that's really depending on the comfort level of the person you're interviewing.

• 14:48Kara Swisher?

  But extrapolation is a big issue. Would I say that? Would I would I want them to think I said that? Right? If I didn't say it. You know, and you could extrapolate by basic. And for me, there's so much video, you know what I think, right? But not for everyone. And so that to me was like, really like, is this the memory of me? Or is it not? Is it? Is it a facsimile, right? A Xerox copy, essentially. And it was a really interesting discussion that I had with family members. It was like, it won't be. And maybe it shouldn't be. And so it was an interesting thing, but it certainly is a facsimile, correct? Is that how you look at it? A facsimile or something?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I would, yeah, I think it is, and that is, we're not actually making someone live forever. Your consciousness is not being transferred here. However, the ability of you to form human connections is being preserved in some way. In that your grandkids could feel that they have a connection with you in a way that previously wasn't possible and be able to identify with you. And if you think, go back 50 years, people might not even have recordings of their grandparents.

• 16:00Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And then we have static videos of, and now we have like social media. You can go to your parents' social media site, but that's very different from in-person communication.

• 16:10Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  So hopefully, we can take a lot of the information that is on social media that people are recording and repurpose that into these conversations. So it isn't just hallucinating, it's based on some kind of fact.

• 16:22Kara Swisher?

  Right, and so I know this isn't cheap, but compute that you need to answer basic questions must be high. And talk to me about how you make sure this isn't an expensive toy or the cost coming down, or worse, in a vision of the future where something like this really takes off. How do you guard against only the super wealthy being able to preserve themselves digitally? And then all these other lives getting lost?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  The, the basic retrieval version is actually not a high expensive AI process. It's not massive data centers. It's, it's a search algorithm that's searching videos to find the best results.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  That could be running on your local computer.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  The video synthesis is, I'd say, more computationally intensive, but it is becoming a lot faster and a lot less intensive than it was before. But the, I mean, the, the, the amount of cost that we're talking about here is sort of similar to like people having a subscription to MyHeritage or Ancestry.com. Though I actually think the limiting factor for most people isn't necessarily the competition involved in the generation. It's convincing people to spend the time recording and capturing these stories. Like spend the time to talk to your parents. That is sometimes the hardest part of the process. And part of it is just because a lot of people are humble. Well, why would anyone care about my story?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Like, why is my story worth telling? But if you then talk to the kids or the grandkids, they're like, oh, yes, I would love to get grandmother's stories.

• 17:53Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 18:02Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs,

• 18:45Kara Swisher?

  climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize they're not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube starting May 13.

• 19:05Kara Swisher?

  So let's talk about the ethical limits of this, isn't the area of interest for me. Walk me through some of that. How do you approach it and how do you safeguard it?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Well, I think the first thing is to really clearly label what is real and what's been synthesized. And when it has been synthesized, to be able to cite and say, this is what it's based on. This is based on your book. This is based on this social media post. This is based on this interview. And there are standards out there to do things like the Content Authenticity Initiative, which where various companies are involved, trying to label and watermark their content.

• 19:39Kara Swisher?

  What's real? What's real? Yeah, because there's so much AI slop. What's real is less, right? What's actually...

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, most, a lot of content isn't being labeled. And for it to really work, it has to go back to the source. Like, the camera, your cellphone, needs to be encoding that information from the very beginning. Like, this was recorded on this date with this time and...

• 20:02Kara Swisher?

  In this place, yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  And we did a project, interviewing people in Ukraine. And so going through and like, people telling what was happening. And it was really important in that case to show providence of like, this wasn't fake. This is real, right? The second part is...

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Setting guardrails on the interactions. So if we were in a museum, as I mentioned, like the World War II museum, if people are talking to a veteran, everything is going to be actual video that was recorded. If someone goes in and says, where's the bathroom? Like, the avatar is not going to come up and say, the bathroom's down there on the left. What we have there is a separate identity, a generative docent, that comes in and can answer those questions and say, fill in the gaps. In the case of actual people recording their parents, then it comes back to the will of like, people clearly stating, what is their comfort level of generative?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Do you just want to be, this is what it says, have full control? Do you want to say, I'm comfortable with you synthesizing, but only if you base it on these photographs, these social media posts, these documents? And then some people saying, as long as it follows my personality. I think we're getting to the point where people are going to take personality tests, like the big five test and say, are you outgoing? Are you introverted? And the AI can mimic that.

• 21:30Kara Swisher?

  Now, the other, speaking of mimicking, there's some real harm that come from interacting with a chatbot. I've done a lot of parents whose kids who have committed suicide. And people beginning to regard it as something more than a computer. That's the danger and it happens immediately. People, of course, need human friends. It's something I talked about and it's very good for your health. I interviewed Sherry Turkle and a bunch of people. Like, the seamlessness is problematic and the sycophancy at the same time. I can't imagine it getting worse, but it's going to get worse when AI avatars that look like you versus just these sort of generated cartoons or voices or text. Talk about the guardrails around that,

• 22:11Kara Swisher?

  because you could get into these very intense relationships with Caratar and it's not me, like in the future, for example.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  So I do think having it based on a real person does help because you're grounding it in reality in a way. I think the second part is having the avatar have a clear objective. Like, a lot of the, these sort of personal assistants, they're just designed to please you, like, you're always right. So if you establish a purpose that this is here to establish common connections between you, your grandkids, and your, my stories, then it's really, it's adding these guardrails to say, I'm just looking for the stories that are going to establish connections.

• 22:58Kara Swisher?

  You mentioned the idea that people need to be comfortable with all this. Describe the legal landscape here, because it is complicated.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  There is a national law that's being proposed called the No Fates Act. That would basically say that your rights go on for 70 years. And that it is your estate, your family, who control it. So in those cases, there's a question of like, do the laws cover just commercial use? Or is it something that's just existing for your kids? And hopefully, the laws can be flexible enough. But ultimately, I think this is something that, talk to your parents and put those things in your will of like, this is what I want to happen to my likeness. Because if you don't spell it out explicitly, you don't have any control.

• 23:45Kara Swisher?

  So to come back to the premise of the series, it's about aging and longevity, and whether we can forestall or even defeat death, which we cannot. My joke is Scott Galloway's, which is biology is undefeated. As a lot of tech people seem to believe we can, but they also are very enamored with this idea of continuing on and developing, you know, their brain goes on. This technology doesn't defeat death. What do you, what do you think about that? And what does it do? How do you think of the technology?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  So I don't think it defeats death. I don't think it necessarily changes the grieving process. It can become part of the grieving process, but it doesn't change the grief. And it isn't a conscious transfer. So. That's why I keep saying again, enjoy the time that you have with someone. And if someone, I mean, people call us up and say, okay, my, my grand, my mother died two months ago. And can you bring her back? Right? And the answer is, I mean, yes, we, we can. But my next question is, I will, what, what, what stories do you want to tell? Like, did you actually go have these conversations with her while she was alive?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  And did, can we, because I want to, we want to be faithful to that. So it's much easier if we, if people have gone out and they've had their conversations with them. Go and talk to their parents beforehand. You're never going to regret that. You're never going to regret the time you spend with your parents or with whoever it is. So ultimately, my, my message is not about the technology. It's go, have, have these conversations. You'll enjoy it both when you do it and you'll enjoy it 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when you get to be alive it.

• 25:30Kara Swisher?

  Is there something though problematic with wanting not to go? See, I always see the worst case scenario where this could go. And you're a very, obviously a hopeful person. And you see it as a, a good transformation. I see it as a, oh, wow, this could go seven different ways wrong, right? That kind of thing.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  For me personally, like, I mean, I would want to be remembered. But I mean, for me, it's like, I want to be remembered as like, oh, that was someone who made a positive impact in the world. And from that perspective, that would, that to be my legacy, whatever it is. I mean, I know it's, but yeah, biology is going to live out. Hopefully I can have, make the most of the time I have.

• 26:07Kara Swisher?

  Right, longer life, healthier life.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Longer life. But I completely understand people who don't, who just want to fade and move on to whatever comes next.

• 26:17Kara Swisher?

  And then what about those who want to like live forever kind of thing? I mean, don't die is their thing. You know, they talk about moving things out of their brain into another creature, that kind of thing. Like another physical creature.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Well, if, if they want to like freeze themselves and come back in a thousand years, then.

• 26:33Kara Swisher?

  Or a robot, put your brain in a robot.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Well, then a thousand years from now, they can go and talk to their story file and learn what they really were like. And recover all the memories that got lost in the freezing process.

• 26:44Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm serious about that or not.

• 26:47Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, well, there you just thought of something. They could.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yes, they could.

• 26:50Kara Swisher?

  You can imagine it happening. So imagine fifteen years from now, when the technology is far more advanced. How do you see it working then? Does it go into a robot? Does it become a physical manifestation? Like if we could make a new body, you know what I mean? I'm not talking about zombies here, but there's ways to do this. There presumably will be ways, if you can imagine. People have imagined the future in sci fi that now is happening now many years ago. So what do you think the way it should go? And what's maybe what's your biggest worry about the way it could go?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  So I could see someone putting it into a robot if they had the ability and be able to go out and, I mean, experience new things, right? Like if you if you can take have your digital version of your grandmother coming with you to the zoo, then maybe you could bond over something there.

• 27:41Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  If, again, it's technically possible. It's a question of is that something you're comfortable with?

• 27:47Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  The, I think that the technology for displays are going to continue to get better as far as making it feel like someone's actually in the room with you.

• 27:57Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Uh, is it gonna feel is it feeling a Zoom call or is it on a large screen or VR headset? All that technology is just going to get better.

• 28:06Kara Swisher?

  So last question, what happens to the carat? Where does she go? Where is she? What's she doing?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Well, ultimately, that's up to you. Right now, she's not doing anything.

• 28:15Kara Swisher?

  She's just hanging out in like some file somewhere?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Well, yes, but uh, it is, this is your story. And I mean, I would hope that you would want to share it with your kids, or at least.

• 28:27Kara Swisher?

  All right, so I shouldn't kill it? I shouldn't kill it?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  I would say, oh, I say you should you shouldn't make the decision as to whether to kill it. Ask your kids and say what they ask what they want.

• 28:38Kara Swisher?

  All right, well, I need to get control of it so I can decide whether whether whether carat should live or die. I'm not sure yet. I've got to think about it and I will talk to my kids. You're right.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:48Kara Swisher?

  All right, Valerie, what you do is really beautiful, I have to say, in a lot of ways. And I really, what a great experience. It was really interesting, especially from a. Thinking about what memories are in the digital age, which are really complex. And I really appreciate the work you do.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  I appreciate it. And I really, I loved getting to meet both you and your digital avatar.

• 29:07Kara Swisher?

  All right, we'll talk about me taking her in. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. All right, we'll see how we get along because Kara is a pain in the ass. I'm just saying. Anyway, thank you, Val.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 29:19Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 29:27Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Delete Me. Have you ever Googled yourself and found your home address, phone number, or the name of a family member? It's unsettling. Here's what you do to clean up your online data footprint. Go to joindelete.me/kara and enter the code Kara. You get 20% off Delete Me. Delete Me removes your personal information that's being sold online. Delete Me was named the top pick for data removal services by Wirecutter so you know you're in good hands. I really like Delete Me. I use it all the time. It's always surprising how much data people have about me. I am very privacy forward and I still find so much stuff of mine online, some of which is incorrect, some of which is compiled in a really disturbing way. And you have to sort of control it like weeds.

• 30:11Kara Swisher?

  Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now, at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete.me/kara and use the promo code Kara at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me/kara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's joindelete.me/kara code Kara.

• 30:40Kara Swisher?

  This episode mentions "dots of death by suicide in the context of grief." If you're struggling, please reach out for help. In the U.S. and Canada, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, anytime for immediate support.

• 30:58Kara Swisher?

  As I described earlier, the idea that these billionaires have that we can live forever is a dream that's being sold but can never be realized. The only way we can survive beyond our death is to be remembered. That's why our final conversation in this series is with author Danielle Crittenden. She's a journalist and author and the former host of a great podcast called The FemSplainers. And she's written a memoir about the death of her daughter Miranda. Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable. The book is incredible, incredibly moving, actually, and it's very easy to read because Danielle is such a gifted writer and observer. She's as sharp and witty and smart, but it's simultaneously so hard to read because the topic is unbearably sad.

• 31:42Kara Swisher?

  And our portrayal of what a mother goes through when she was a child is unflinching. And for someone who has a lot of children, it's really hard to think about. I don't like to think about this topic and it does creep in from time to time. Everybody wants their children to survive them. And when it doesn't happen, it sends a chill throughout anyone who has kids. And this book certainly did. I'm very happy to welcome her on the show. Danielle, thanks for coming on.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. It's a true honor to be with you, Cara.

• 32:16Kara Swisher?

  We should start with Miranda, first of all. The remembrance that emerges in your book, as I said, is beautiful, is singular, it's powerful. There's a lot to it. So let's begin with that. Talk a little about her so people understand. You describe her as living life on her own terms, kind of from the very first instant. And I know how that is. I have a lot of kids, so I immediately sort of, that was struck me.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Well, she was our first child. So you know, with your first child, you have no training. And when the child doesn't turn out the way you expected, after all your very careful parenting, Miranda was just, from the get-go, her own person, super willful, made our hair stand on end throughout her adolescence. And then she developed into this just fascinating, courageous, adventurous, glamorous, young woman. And once we got through the sort of early stuff, she wasn't just like a daughter to me. She was truly my best friend. And so when she died very suddenly, from the consequences, we would learn later, of a brain-

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Operation she'd had five years before. It was completely unexpected and to all purposes she was healthy. So that when that kind of tragedy happens and also it's a child, you're just thrown into another dimension

• 33:41Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  of grief and also another dimension of existence. I mean, it is, I call it the alternative universe. Your life and you have changed forever.

• 33:52Kara Swisher?

  Well, it's a similar idea that my dad died when I was five and it changed everything. It's sort of the opposite perspective of yours, which I think is, I couldn't even imagine. But I want to talk just a little bit more about Miranda. She was kind of fearless. At age 12, she strode up to Dick Cheney when he was vice president and said, I have some questions for you. I like that. I love that idea. But what were the questions? And why was she like that? I mean, anyone who's kids knows kids are the way they are.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Well, you know, she grew up in Washington DC. And around our dinner table, you know, my husband and I were both journalists and connected following politics. So, and they were always encouraged to speak their mind, to ask questions. And then every summer at that time, back when David, my husband, was a Republican, we would go to this annual retreat hosted by his think tank of the time. And Dick Cheney was there. And Miranda and her friend had started their own newspaper, quote unquote, called The Animal. And she just walked up to him and she said, I'm Miranda Fromm of The Animal and I have some questions for you. And then he bent his head, like he was very obedient and answered whatever, you know, whatever she asked, God knows what it was.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  But she was just like that.

• 35:04Kara Swisher?

  Now, one of the things you noted, she had a generosity of people, especially people who seemed like they needed help or were out of place or needed a friend. You described that beautifully.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  She had a depth that even though she presented as this kind of cool, you know, beautiful woman who you wouldn't want to cross because of her ability to come back at you. She could just see right into people and she had a great empathy and compassion for people who were struggling and she, you know, she took in what We began to call her strays. She just had this, in addition to a circle of friends that span the world, she also had these people, including myself, who depended on her for advice and, you know, to talk things through. She was, she was really a profound soul.

• 35:51Kara Swisher?

  Can you talk a little bit about the memories that come to you? Every now and then, something pops, not because of a photo, just some moment with one of my kids pops into my head and I, and then it goes away. You know, all these different moments and memories. Talk about preserving them because you didn't, presumably you thought you, she would outlive you.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:10Kara Swisher?

  Versus the opposite. Yes, of course. But talk a little bit about this idea. Had you, had you thought that the memories were not going to be as many as you thought? Or had it ever occurred to you before this happened?

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Miranda was born pre-internet, so I have albums of her early years. And then you just have all these photos unsorted on your computer. You don't really think of it and you also don't think of looking back on them as being traumatizing. What's weird in the digital age is, I call it like digital haunting, that now, whether you like it or not, your phone will pop up with a curated carousel of, here you were in 2018, you know, remember you and Miranda did this? I describe it as like having an IED explode. Like, there you are thinking you're composed and then suddenly, this memory hits and you're, you're leveled again.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Uh, gosh, I opened a box and it had all her journals and I'm sure copies of the animal in it.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  You know, from when she was a child and just to think that that, that life stopped. And these things, I call them like relics with no reliquary. Like, what do you do them, what do you do with them? What do you do with her apartment keys? What do you do with her driver's license? So I built a kind of little reliquary where I can keep. The things I don't want to throw out, but were just so personal to her.

• 37:43Kara Swisher?

  I used to think I was gonna have a Viking funeral, put all my stuff on it, and then my kids shoot arrows into the ship as it sails away, and then everything burns and it's gone. Like, god, god, god. Because I often touch things. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be here after I'm dead. Or I think about death a lot.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but how do you burr in digital, you know?

• 38:00Kara Swisher?

  Right, that's the whole thing, yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  You can't just throw the letters into the fireplace.

• 38:04Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, in a dramatic fashion.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:07Kara Swisher?

  When you talk a little bit about what happened, describe the medical scare that was around 2018, when she had some vision problems. We eventually discovered she had a tumor, very rare. And there's a great line you said to her, "Of course, you would have had such an original tumor," which made me laugh. So talk a little bit about this.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Her vision had always been terrible. She was home at Thanksgiving and she had these problems. And as it turned out, she had this tumor. And god knows how long it had been there. It could have been there for years. And, but it was vascular, which meant if you tried to remove it without knowing what it was, she would brain hemorrhage. I mean, it would be like a bomb going off in her head. So we had to find a surgeon who could do it. And in the course of the surgery, which was very successful, thank god, it had eaten her pituitary gland. And although you can function allegedly perfectly normally without your pituitary gland,

• 39:06Speaker 02

  you have to take hormones, you have to take medications to offset it. What they don't tell you is if you get these, especially like your cortisol, if you don't get that exactly right, you could suddenly drop dead. And I think what was happening was she was, you know, it'd been five years, and she'd actually gotten to a point where she felt really good about herself. Like, it affects mood, it can affect weight. So she got, she had got everything managed. She was about to throw a five-year Tumor-free, successful entry, you know, a great party. She was gonna serve tumertinis and MRI goritas. And she had all this for funny things.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  And, and she died, you know, two months before that anniversary.

• 39:58Kara Swisher?

  Now, you described it about, hearing about it as entering an alternate universe, a meteor crashing into your personal galaxy. And the universe, presumably, as you know, it destroyed forever. Just talk about that in terms of, because I think people, as you said before we talked, that people try to avoid talking about it, you know, talking about what happens. And I've had several friends who've lost children. And that's one of the things that upsets them a little bit, that people tend to try to avoid it. But, and it's also impossible to understand if you haven't been in that universe.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So first of all, yeah, you're catapulted into this alternative universe where the minute you've had that phone call, the minute you've learned that your child is dead, you, your life, and certainly at that moment, feels like it's over. It's completely different, although everything around you looks the same. The chairs are still in the same place. Everything is different. And one of the things you learn is how well-populated this alternative universe is. That there are, you know, tragedies of this kind happen every minute of every day. But if you've never been in it or experienced something like that, you can't understand.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  And, and in the book, I express great sympathy for this. Like, I didn't get it. I mean, you know, you try, and if a friend suffers something, you wanna be there for them. But you don't, you, when they say, "I can't even imagine," it's like, no, you can't imagine. And, you know, I'm glad you can't. And it's not just the world that changes, the world that is now suckingly, suckingly absent of your child. I mean, your child has just imbued every corner of your house, every walk that you take, every supermarket you've walked in, like, literally, the child is everywhere.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  But- When I say that Miranda became my best friend, you've also changed, not just in somebody who has been struck by lightning, but also you're never going to be the way you were with that person you've lost. I'm never going to be that mother in that way that I was with Miranda.

• 42:15Kara Swisher?

  Right, it was gone too at the same time.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  It just hits literally every aspect and corner of your world.

• 42:24Kara Swisher?

  One of the things that a lot of people who've lost a child, as you noted, tell you there's not a road back to who you were. There's no map to take you there.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:33Kara Swisher?

  And I had a really interesting encounter and I wasn't sure I said the right thing because you are worried about what you say when someone's lost a child. And I knew you shouldn't not say anything because a lot of people don't say a word. Like they pretend it doesn't happen, sometimes because they don't want it to happen to them or you know, that kind of things, or just they don't want to imagine it in their lives. And once you imagine it, you feel it. And so I just said, well, that sucks. Like this is terrible. And they were like, thank you for saying that.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  No, that's exactly the thing to say.

• 43:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, and they were like, they go, all these people say it's going to be better, right? And I go, but it isn't, is it? Because I know when people say about my dad, they're like, oh, I'm so sorry. I hope it's better. I'm like, never, it's never going to be better. There's no better, there's no way back essentially. So talk about that idea of change of yourself and how you deal with the memories at the same time. Because they're everywhere, everywhere you go, as you said.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  The main thing you want is for someone to lean into the suck. That when someone sees you and they love you, they want to comfort you and they want to find some way to make you feel better. But you don't want to feel better and you don't want to, especially in the early phases, you feel if I feel better, am I dishonoring my love and memory for my child? So I think you did exactly the right thing. The best thing you can do is say, this is terrible. Oh, my God, can I get you another drink? You know, like that's what you want to hear and you want people to be there for you. So much of grief.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Is especially in America, or just, you know, generally.

• 44:16Kara Swisher?

  America shoved down.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  No, it's, yeah, it's more like you're failing at grief if you're not getting over it, or you're not getting through the tidy stages that we all imagine exist but don't. And, and, and I think many people get very lonely as the world moves on, as their circle moves on, their friends move on, as they do, that they're just stuck there because you do not move on. What I think what happens, and I'm sure this is true with your dad, you learn to carry it. You, you kind of, it becomes part of you, like a wound, or a chronic, I think of it as like, almost like a chronic illness.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  And you, you learn to carry it, and, and slowly, you're going to adapt around this to trying to not recapture, but rebuild the person, something of the person you were, and the, the person you are now.

• 45:13Kara Swisher?

  Right, which is a big difference, which is a very big.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Which is a big difference. Like, you've got to learn to carry this pain, you've got to learn to carry this sadness, you've got to learn to be constantly confronted by these memories.

• 45:24Kara Swisher?

  Because this is your story now.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  This is your story now.

• 45:27Kara Swisher?

  This is your narrative, like, your narrative has shifted, it's a fictional book.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  And it's never going to get better. I call them in the book, happiness hucksters. This is deeply American.

• 45:36Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  This is, you know, you, the, the worst thing that has ever happened to you, you, you can now grow from, you know, this is.

• 45:43Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I remember those.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Miranda died, and now, it's not all terrible because you get to grow.

• 45:50Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Thanks, I'd rather not.

• 45:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it just sucks, it just sucks. And some people used to do that to me, they're like, oh, you'll be okay. I'm like, it won't, it won't, but that's okay, like, I'll just be this, I'll be whatever it happens to be.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:03Kara Swisher?

  So, you, you wrote, of course, how, speaking of grief, how hard it was at first to find therapy, and Americans are uniquely bad at grief, I think. Your primary care doctor gave you a list of grief specialists, they are either not taking new clients, or had endless waiting lists. Given that, you know, all of us face grief in different ways, you know, some more serious than others, how, why do you think it's so hard to find help? Is it because people are repelled by helping on this issue, or is there just not enough addressing it as a real issue?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's complicated. I'm no expert on our healthcare system. But I think just to find doctors who are available on any level. I even called this incredibly prominent grief clinic that is here in DC. And you get this recording saying, "Thank you for calling the Sussin Center on Grief. We will not be taking patients till 18 months from now. If you're feeling suicidal, hang up and dial 911." And the grief that a parent is suffering, if you had known me in the before, the idea that I could be suicidal, that as a mother of still living children, I could be suicidal,

• 47:16Speaker 02

  you would never have believed it. But I felt the pain was so overwhelming. And that's how I stumbled onto EMDR therapy, which is for treats PTSD, which is what anybody who suffers a tragedy of this kind is going through. And that was the beginning of getting help over controlling the grief, controlling my thoughts.

• 47:39Kara Swisher?

  Of all the books you read about grief, and there's a lot of them, it seems you read all of them. It seems like you got them all. There's a single one, and I agree with you. C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. Tell me about this book. I love C.S. Lewis, and I think, you know, everyone knows him for the Narnia Chronicles. But he was a very deep thinker, and he had a tragedy. Somebody fell in the wood died of cancer joy. Talk a little bit about A Grief Observed.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  It's called Dispatches from Grief for a reason, because I was not thinking of writing a book. It was just the journalist reporter instinct in me that needed to start recording. About like, like I'm a foreign correspondent in the alternative universe. And the grief books that I kept coming across, none of it was what I needed to know at that moment, which was, how do I stop this? Is this normal? Am I crazy? And C.S. Lewis was the first book that I read, and it's very short. And it's really because he was, of course, a very religious man. He's trying to work himself back to God, but in the process,

• 48:45Speaker 02

  he describes very vividly what, I think he said at one point, that grief is like now the sky. I mean, it's just so enveloping of his life.

• 48:55Kara Swisher?

  Can I read you a line you quote? Which is, "Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection, the fact that you don't merely suffer, but you have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Right, and that just nailed it, that you're, so he wrote very vividly of what, I think it was in the first five months after his wife died, very vividly of what it was like to experience this. And that, and suddenly I had someone I could identify with. And that sense, exactly as he says, like, you go to sleep and you think, ah, you know, God, I have to wake up tomorrow, I'm gonna still feel this way, and the day after that, and the day after that. And then I started to read like, World War II memoirs and things, because I needed to read what other people, people who'd suffered similarly, and really how they coped. That was the thing that I needed to know. And the grief books and the happiness hucksters,

• 49:54Speaker 02

  who kept trying to tell me that, in a way, what I was doing was wrong, or feeling was wrong, was really not helpful at all.

• 50:03Kara Swisher?

  Now, you wrote at one point that the most honest thing someone told you was that one day you would manage your grief instead of it managing you. What does it mean to manage grief?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  That was my EMDR therapist, because I said, "What's the point of this? I'm never gonna stop grieving Miranda." And she said, especially in those early days where the brain is obsessing and spinning and not knowing how to cope with this terrible thing, she said, "You're gonna learn how to manage grief and not let grief manage you." But to me, it started to feel like, yeah, like some old war wound or something, that you're just constantly aware of it, but you learn to become present in a moment. We just recently had our first grandchild, and that is just so joyous and wonderful. But I remember the first time holding her.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I just, my mind went back to holding Miranda for that first time. So every joy is gonna have melancholy or sadness attached to it. But what you do is you, I'm learning to take that pleasure in the moment. And then, yeah, the war will flares up and

• 51:12Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, ow.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  You know, there it is again. But I think that's what it means in learning to handle it.

• 51:18Kara Swisher?

  When my dad died, my grandmother, who was his mother, they were extraordinarily close. She was very jolly, you know, but I knew it never, she never left her, not for a minute, the whole, the whole loss, right? She got leukemia and was dying and she asked me to move his body to West Virginia, where she was before she died. And it was really something for both of us, you know, unearthing the past, really, essentially. I, I had him exhumed, I had him cremated then, I, I found all the old papers. It was really quite something. And then had him sent to, to me and then I had them sent to West Virginia, right? I had it sent to my house, like the remains, which was terrible.

• 52:01Kara Swisher?

  And, but she died the day the remains entered West Virginia, which was crazy. Like that's, and I told her, I said, they're, they're there now with you. And she died. It was really amazing. And I thought the burden she carried and hid in a way was really so vast that I couldn't even explain it. But talk a little bit about that idea of carrying it with you for people who have not, who probably will, hopefully never have to have this happen to them.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  I completely understand your grandmother wanting to be with her son. And now where Miranda is buried, you know, it doesn't scare me. I, I now know I'll be next to her at some point and that actually gives me great comfort. And what is a little unnerving is that they've found.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  That parents who lose child, their mortality goes up as much as within five years, you're much more likely to die. And part of that is you're just not physically taking care of yourself. You don't care about yourself anymore. Another thing is these parents will commit suicide. But also addiction is very easy. You can understand why people succumb to addiction. So carrying it, you're carrying it in all these physical ways because every part of you wants to retreat. You know, every part of you just wants to curl up and not deal with anything. And so that effort to keep going, and especially as a parent

• 53:35Speaker 02

  or a mother, you know, marriages can just, I totally get why marriages can just fall apart. When this happened, it was David who, I mean, I just really wanted to crawl under the bed and die. And he was the one who, I don't know, a couple of weeks into it, he, you know, he just held me and he said, "We can't allow each other to withdraw into our own silos of grief. We, if we're going to get through this, we have to do it together." And I don't, you know, I don't, that landed with me and I appreciated it. And then, then we both made the effort because we were the only two people in the world

• 54:20Speaker 02

  who understood what the other was going through and what we'd lost. And of course, you know, our living, two living children were going through it and they were experiencing it from a different facet. And so carrying it is having to not just carry this big stone of grief inside you for your lost child, but also being able to resume carrying the other relationships in your life, whether it's marriage, whether it's, you know, your children, whether it's

• 54:53Kara Swisher?

  A job.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Job, friendships, everything. And, and you're having to do this when you can't even think you can stand up and get out of the bed in the morning.

• 55:07Kara Swisher?

  What would you say the most significant thing changed about you?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I think I became much more aware of suffering in the world. And it's not that I was indifferent to it before, or I, you know, I always, you know, live your life like it's your last day. I was always very much embrace life. And I think the thing is, is when you discover how many, as I said, like, how many other people are here in this universe with you, including people I thought I knew well. Like, care if I'd known you and then I didn't know that your dad had died when you were five, and then you only thought to tell it to me after, you know, I'd lost Miranda. Like, that's people suddenly open up that way, because why would they tell you before?

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Because what are you gonna say? Oh, gosh, Karen, I'm so sorry. That must have been very hard. So everybody's, those further along have learned to carry it, and carry and conceal, I guess we can say. And, and so when you enter, suddenly you're aware of it. So I'm just more, I'm just so more patient with things. I'm able to let so many things go. On the other hand, I'm way more impatient with people who impose suffering. Like, if you are being a dick, I just have zero tolerance for it.

• 56:30Kara Swisher?

  Now, we did talk about sort of the AI curated photo galleries. They haunt you in a lot of ways. And so I don't even like the ones, even if they're happy. I'm like, I don't want to see them pictures anymore. That haircut, it's not.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's like, I just didn't like them before, because I was like, oh, do you have to show me a picture myself?

• 56:46Kara Swisher?

  It's always the wrong music, too.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 56:48Kara Swisher?

  But there are bigger ideas, because what is a memory now in this day and age? How do you think about memories now? Has that changed the idea of remembering people in this age that we're in?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  I created this very beautiful kind of garden around where she's buried. And I thought to have a QR code on a little metal sign that would connect to a website, like a Miranda Memorial website, where you could read about her life. There were photos, because I don't know, and this is in a very historic cemetery up in the rural place where our summer cottage is. And I don't know about you, but if I walk through an old cemetery and I see these crazy graves, I'm like, who is that? I want to know who that was.

• 57:31Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  And so this way, when people visit her grave who don't know her, they can pull up that QR code. And as the technology changes.

• 57:40Kara Swisher?

  Oh, I love that.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  We'll be able to, you know, we'll upgrade it, or update it. But, but it tells you about the garden. It tells you about her. It just gives you a sense of, yeah, who she was.

• 57:52Kara Swisher?

  The person was. That's a great idea.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  And there's a playlist. We have a playlist.

• 57:54Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow. That's a great idea. You know, when people die, they tend to make you saint-like, right? Like, my dad was, nothing was wrong with him. And I was like, what was wrong? I'd like to know what was wrong with him, too. Right? You'd want to know the full person. And so I never knew what the memory was, what was real and not real, because people's memory then shifts. Do you worry about not having the right memory? Or what actually happened?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I think memory is, in every person, treacherous. And we always like to remember the best of ourselves.

• 58:28Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  I learned this before Miranda died with David's family, that they had, and I don't know, maybe it's just part of the Jewish culture, and, but they always talked, I'd never met his grandmother. They died 10, 15 years before I knew him. But they had a way of talking about them, like they were completely real. And I had such a vivid idea of who his grandparents were. If you deify them, they're dead. You've turned them into a plaster saint, and you're not remembering them for who they were. But if you remember them in as many dimensions, including, as I wrote about, you know, Miranda's willful childhood.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Then they stay real to you and you talk about them in real ways. And, you know, we'll often say, oh, my God, I don't even know what Miranda would say to that, you know, and then that's how they keep alive. Somebody said, you know, like, if you have this concept of heaven, or she's in some great afterlife, I think, yeah, but I still can't text her.

• 59:28Kara Swisher?

  Right. It'd be great to text from heaven.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  I just want to be able to text her even.

• 59:33Kara Swisher?

  Have you ever gone to one of those mediums?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  You know, I'm very, I'm so tempted. I don't know what, I mean, some, if, I mean, I believe there's something and I'm very, you know, just practical, pragmatic person, but you get little signs that cannot be explained otherwise, that are so connected to that person that you begin to think, okay, are they present, are they present long enough to get you through to what, you know, able to keep living?

• 1:00:08Kara Swisher?

  Oh, I totally believe in it.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  You know, and, and there are a few things, and I write a couple of instances in the book about that happening. And so I like to believe there's something. I, I feel her with me often in ways I can't fully explain. And I think they, when someone dies whom you love, you, you also want to carry the best of them with you. You don't just remember them, you embody them. I mean, Miranda was someone who used to like leave bottles of water next to the homeless in the streets of Brooklyn, because she figured when they wake up, they're always going to need water. And those are things you just start to do because it's a way of keeping them alive,

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  not just in memory, but in action.

• 1:00:55Kara Swisher?

  So my last question is drawn from the book. You wrote about speaking with a mother who had lost a son, also age 32, who tells you she believes she has to appreciate her own gift of life and make use of it, and that is really the gift to exist. That seems to be the idea that you've taken with you. Is there another one, or is that the main idea that you took away from us?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Well, the main thing is, is that you

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  There's a lot of, I say that we become, the mothers now who have gone through it become intake officers at the alternative universe to the new mothers or parents who are coming through. And we had those people for us, they're the people you want to talk to and say, okay, what's ahead. But, so, when I was connected with her, this mother, and she was telling me about her son, and she goes, I know people say, I have to remember that my son Sean's life was a gift, but I also have to, and she's saying this through tears, because it's very fresh, but I also have to remember that my life is a gift.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  And it is a gift to be alive and not to squander that gift and not let grief take that gift away from me.

• 1:02:13Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  And that's, I think, the ultimate thing, in terms of, in addition to just carrying the grief, you are struggling to get to that point where you can say, even with this pain, even with this grief, I appreciate my life, I appreciate this gift that I have, and I want to make the best of it before I die.

• 1:02:34Kara Swisher?

  Well, that's a beautiful way to end. Danielle, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Oh, Kara, thank you for allowing me to talk about Miranda to your listeners.

• 1:02:43Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Tracy Hunt, Emma McNamara, Dave Shaw. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Our engineers are Jim Mackel and Aliyah Jackson, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, your memory might just live on forever. If not, you're at risk of being forgotten. That's probably a good thing. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. That's it for the Hacking Longevity series on the show. We'll be back on Monday.