O Death, Part 1: The Reaper’s Image

really start looking for it. Like I was just reflecting over the movies that my family and I watched to get during the month of December, and they are like three different films that had a personification of the Grim Reaper in it, you know, to varying degrees. So two of them were of course from a Christmas Carol from Mickey's Christmas Carol, which we watched, and then also the

nineteen seventy Scrooge Musical, which is also excellent. Both of those have a manifestation of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, which is a death entity. Of course, in the original story and in pretty much any adaptation you encounter often depicted as a grim reaper, a skeletal figure in a black robe.

that don't have at least some death personification analogue. You know, even if it's not a direct Reaper style figure, then maybe it's somebody who just looks like death, like for instance, Star Wars. Of course, you know, the Emperor or Emperor Palpatine is month after sent past cinematic depictions of death.

of human culture. So again, yeah, it's hard not to think about about the personification of death, you know, even just sort of like you know, I don't know, spitballing over the years and just think, you know, encountering death in life. I've long thought of death, and I'm not the first to think of it this way, like a

figure in the distance, you know. And perhaps if you're very lucky, you begin at a considerable distance from this figure, though it inevitably comes closer, and not merely in terms of the advancement of one's own life, but of course also the myriad ways we wind up experiencing death through the passage of others in the world around us, close, distant, you know, it makes no difference. It's all unavoidable, of course.

And as this figure approaches, we continually make out more details, at first in its silhouette, and then as it comes closer still we make out more exact features. Features maybe we've long suspected we're there, believed to be there, or that we've been taught to expect, and perhaps new revelations as well. And I still find this to be the case.

if you want to skip them. In many ways, I feel like I had my fill of death in twenty twenty five, and I'm sure virtually everyone feels the same. I don't think anyone out there is thinks thinking to themselves, Man, I wish I'd experienced more death in my world, so part of me would prefer not to think about it either. But I also feel like it's helpful to chase after these concepts instead and maybe better understand them, and also you know, explore how everyone before us has thought about

these concepts. So in this series, we're going to tackle the subject matter here from a number of different angles. This episode is going to deal largely with some of the overreaching classifications that they are going to be essential for our conversations moving forward.

that we might call the psychopomp. The psychopomp coming from the Greek meaning the soul guide, the guide to the afterlife. So the grim reaper type figure appears at or right before the moment of death. It is sometimes glimpsed by the doomed as a notice of impending death. Maybe you even see it a good time before your death, but you know it's just there letting you know, like hey soon.

Sometimes it is portrayed as showing up right before death and kind of calling the still living person to the realm of death, or sometimes it is imagine to actually mechanically cause death in some way, maybe by touch or by kiss or by a word. So it's there at the moment the person dies to either let them know death is coming, to call them, or to make them die.

and mythologies, but of course it's not universal. Sometimes there are major death associated figures that don't exactly fit either type. Sometimes there are figures that embody both rolls simultaneously, as if you know, the bouncer tells you it's time to leave and then also gives you a ride home.

it and so forth. Whereas the psychopomp that feels much more human in nature because it is like it is it is ultimately well maybe not always, but in many cases the psychopomp is an ally. It is someone you want to find you because you've died, Yes, but now you have this journey that needs to be undertaken to reach the afterlife, and the psychopomp is going to guide you there.

them all to reclaim mastery over his house. And then after the slaughter, Odysseus and Penelope go off to bed together. And later we're told what happens to the souls of the dead suitors. So here I'm gonna read from the beginning of book twenty four. Hermes of Kyline summoned the souls of the suitors to come forth, and in his

hands he was holding the beautiful golden staff. This is the Cadusius, the beautiful golden staff with which he mazes the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maize, or wakes again the sleepers, hurting them on with this, he led them along, and they followed, gibbering, and as when bats in the depth of an awful cave, flitter and gibber when one of them has fallen out of his place in the chain that the bats have formed

by holding one on another. So gibbering, they went their way together, and Hermes, the kindly healer, led them along down moldering pathways. They went along and passed the ocean stream and the White Rock, and past the gates of Helios the Sun, and the country of dreams, and presently arrived in the meadow of Asphodel. This is the dwelling place of souls, the images of dead men. Oh wow,

so here Hermes. And if you read older translations, this is sometimes rendered as Mercury, but Hermes would be the accurate name of the god. Here in the great context, Hermes leads the powerless and bewildered souls of the dead into Hades, into the land of the dead, kind of like Batman with his bat summoning beacon. You know, I remember that? Is is it?

guided to the next place in their journey. And importantly, they need a guide because in this ancient Greek vision of death, the souls of the dead are not They don't go to the afterlife automatically, I think, you know, in some visions of ancient Greek afterlife they do, but

here they really need a guide. And also, the souls of the dead in this ancient Greek vision of the afterlife are not elevated to a superhuman state of like demi godhood, as we often imagine the ghosts of the dead and modern media, you know, when you see like movies and stuff today, it's almost like people imagine that when someone dies they become a ghost or an angel, and they become like a god, they gain extra powers, they're semi omniscient, you know. The souls of the dead

are not like that. In the vision of Homer, these souls are distinctly diminished. They're confused, frightened, and without much strength or agency of their own. And that's why they're described does gibbering like bats in a cave. They're just you know, they're they're no longer even fully human. They're just kind of like, you know, crying out in pain

and astonishment, and they don't know what to do. They are like sheep in a flock, actually, and they need a shepherd with the staff to guide them or they will be lost. So that's a classic psychopomp. But by contrast, reaper type figures usually appear before death to the living, giving them a signal of impending doom.

This is, of course, just one tiny bit from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and it goes as follows, like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round, walks on and turns no more his head because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.

do but just continue on in the state of anxious dread. Now, there are a couple of more fun examples of a clear grim Reaper character that you can find in the writings of the Brothers. Grim Death's Messengers is one that's pretty fun and ultimately has a punchline. One of the things about the grim Reaper or any personification of death, as I'll probably mention again, whenever there's a joke, generally you are the punchline. That's just how Death's humor goes.

And that's pretty much what happens here. But in Death's Messengers, a fun little story in which Death gets caught up in a fight with a giant, like essentially the Grim Reaper ends up fighting a giant and gets whooped by the giant. Usually we think of personifications of death being pretty powerful when it comes to mortals, and maybe even like semi immortal characters. But here the giant just whips Death leaves them, you know, laying next to a stone

on the side of the road or whatever. And then a young man comes across Death, doesn't know that he's Death, and says like, oh, here's a guy who needs my help. I'll help him out. And we also come to understand that this is necessary because if the longer Death is out of action, the more Death cannot do his thing. People are not going to die, the world's going to become overrun, and so forth. Oh no, so, But the

young man knows nothing of this. He just helps him up, and then Death asks the young man if he knows who he is. The young man says, nope, no idea, just trying to do a good deed, and Death says, I am Death. I spare no one, nor can make an exception with you, however, so you may see that I am grateful. I promise you that I will not attack you without warning, but instead I will send my messagers to you before I come and take you away.

And then the twist is that after various bouts of illness, death does come for the man, and he initially is like, whoaa, whoa hold on? You promised me that you would send messengers first. You wouldn't just come and swoop me up. I would have some warning, and Death informs him, yes, I did send you messengers, and he gives a list of all these ailments that the man had suffered. He's like, those were my messengers, and then the story ends with the man did not know how to answer, so he

surrendered to his fate and went away with Death got him. Yeah. And there's another tale, Godfather Death, which involves Death being named as the godfather of a child who then grows up to become a famous physician because his godfather Death shows him a special healing herb that grows in the forest and also gives him this ability to see where death stands in relation to an ill person. So if he sees death at the head of the bed, of the sick person is a bond, then he knows that

that individual can be cured with the magic herb. If death stands at the foot of the bed, well, then no cure is possible. Might as well pack it up. But then the physician ends up exploiting this trick by turning the bed around. And this works, you know, once or twice, but he runs a foul of death in the process.

he actually have a scythe? And is he going to swing that scythe and like sever something like sever you from the mortal world? Is there a thread that needs to be cut? Is there a soul that needs to be like ripped out of the body Mortal Kombat style or is it more of like, hey, I'm here, come with me. Get in, dummy, We're off to the afterlife.

you want to jump into that, Let's do it. So there's one concept I think we should start with before we talk about anything else about archetypes of death in psychology, because lots of psychology studies about the personification of death refer back to the same foundational text, and that text is a book from nineteen seventy two called The Psychology of Death by Robert Castenbaum and Ruth Aisenberg. This was a very important work in the academic study of how

we think and feel about death. But the idea that gets repeated the most from it is this idea of the four archetypes of death. So Castenbaum and Aisenberg set out to investigate how Americans think about death when they imagine it as a person or an entity, and they use the following prompt in their initial sort of open ended question and answer sessions. So they said, if death were a person, what sort of a person would death be? Think of this question until an image of death as

a human being forms in your mind. Then describe death physically, what death would look like? Now, what would death be like? What kind of personality would death have? And after comparing a whole bunch of answers, And then after they did the initial research with like open ended queries, they started doing kind of consolidating these into categories and asking people

multiple choice questions. And the authors end up arguing that most Americans' ideas about death fell into one of four general categories, which they called the macabre, the gentle comforter, the gay deceiver, and the automaton. So to briefly summarize these archetypes, I'm going to draw from an updated edition of The Psychology of Death published by Castenbaum in the year two thousand. So the first one is the macab.

Castenbaum writes quote, the macab was characterized as a powerful, overwhelming, and repulsive figure. The image often was of an emaciated or decaying human, or of a monster with only faint resemblance to human form. So a few characteristics of the Macab. In terms of age and gender. When human in form, the Macab was most often imagined as a hideous old man. In terms of personality, the Macab is either callous and unfeeling or actively sadistic, wanting to hurt you. People. I

thought this was interesting. They reported feeling emotionally close to the Macab figure, but in a threatening way, not a good emotional closeness, like you know this this thing knows me, and it wants to hurt me.

snarling looking and so forth. You know, So we almost take it for granted that the embodiment of the thing would look like victims of the thing. But yeah, when you really stop and ask, well, why would that be, And it's not certainly not always the case in you know, human myth making, fantasy and so forth.

you're coming home. Unlike the macabre, which was most often a frightening old man, the gentle comforter seems to be of any a your gender, though usually an adult and not a child. The comforter is All of the categories are more often male than female, and that's true of the Comforter as well, but the male bias is much smaller in the Comforter category than in the macab It's

more mixed with gender representations. A commonly reported image is that of Father Time, a soft spoken, grandfatherly figure with a beard who eases your fears. Some people even There are some reports that Castembaum includes where people identify identify that the comforter figure with like biblical figures you know, I don't know, you know, like Abraham or something you're imagining, like a bearded figure from the Bible welcoming you.

and sure of his actions and attitudes. This passage, for some reason, really hits something kind of like it touched a deep intuition that I thought was mysterious and interesting. So the figure is friendly and soothing, but also firm and mysterious, like it's not going to be persuaded and you don't understand it.

of this are also very attractive. There is one, in particular in the poem when Lilac's last in the dooryard bloomed by Walt Whitman, And I want to read a couple of lines from that here, because I found this quite enchanting. Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet, have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome. Then I chanted for THEE. I glorify THEE above all. I bring THEE a song that, when thou must indeed come,

come unfalteringly approach strong deliveries. When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead lost in the loving, floating ocean of THEE, laved in the flood of thy bliss o death. That's great. That's that's how everyone would want it to.

I think fun, and fatal irony. This figure is usually depicted as an attractive, elegant, and sophisticated middle aged adult or young adult of any sex, most often actually described as just a few years older than the person doing the imagining, and usually but not always, the opposite sex of the person imagining. So the deceiver here, they tempt

their victim with pleasures, with excitement, pleasure, and adventure. And from a lot of the descriptions I'm reading here, I get notes of what'st thou like a taste of butter, So the trickster. One key thing about this figure is that people think of it as something that is first seen one way and then revealed to be another way. So you think of it first as one type of being, but then later there's an iron You find out who they really are only once it's too late, usually after

your death is sealed. And so this death archetype shares a lot in common actually with literary depictions of the Christian devil, you know, glamorous, powerful, irresistible, and dangerous when

imagined as a man. Some respondents mention a goateee and a dark suit, very devil imagery when imagined as a woman often thought to be tall and beautiful with long dark hair and Castenbaum says interestingly that this archetype often involves elements both of ego ideal meaning an idealized version of the self, but also of scammer or con artist.

And obviously you can see how this version of death as a tempter and as a deceiver taps into ideas you find in Christian morality plays about how temptations to the pleasures of the flow, temptations to adventure and lust and greed will ultimately lead to one's destruction.

does not establish a huge human relationship of any kind. So, unlike the first two categories, which both of which were understood to be emotionally close to the dying person, the automaton is not understood as emotionally close at all. Quite the opposite caston Maulmin goes on. He advances with neither diabolical pleasure nor gentle compassion, but as an automatic, soulless apparatus.

still male biased, but more mixed. The deceiver is mixed, often the opposite sex of the dying person. And then this is interesting, weird little detail. Castenbaum says, quote for what it might be worth, funeral directors and students of mortuary sciences, where the subsamples with by far the highest personage of no personifications encountering some type of inner resistance to a task most others did not find very difficult. So you know, you ask people to sit down imagine

death as a person. Most people can play this game. They can play along and say, yeah, here's what I think they would be like. For some reason, people in these professional classes, you know, professional training or professional services around death. They just resisted this task. They were more likely to say, I can't come up with the personification. I'm not going to do it.

departed in removing ourselves from that physical reality? And granted, you know, we have to acknowledge that in much of the modern world we are able to remove ourselves from that physical reality of death and dying in ways that people in different times and even in different places cannot do. So it's you run into the problem of being too universal across time and space with this sort of pondering. But I mean, I mean, it's there in the finding though.

You know, the question is anyway you know that these people who's day in, day out is dealing with the reality of death and the physical reality of death find it much harder to say, oh, yeah, here's a sketch of what death looks like. This is the personification of this individual entity that carries this out.

across time. I think a key finding in death psychology is that the personification of death, while it might possess a few characteristics that are kind of common across culture and time, is mostly pretty variable and is going to be informed by shifting changes in how the culture portrays and processes death, and also by just more obscure factors. In a lot of cases, is going to be hard to understand why people at a certain time and place think about death the way they do. It's just a

lot of cultural input on that. Anyway, I wanted to mention a few more things from Castenbaum's book here, so Castendam cites the work of a different researcher named Richard Linnetto in nineteen eighty two, who compared personifications of death to levels of death anxiety thought this was interesting, and Linetto found that the people with the highest levels of anxiety about death were tended to be among women who

personified death as a woman. That's interesting, I don't know why. Meanwhile, men who imagined death as a man were the most afraid of thinking about the following things, the sight of a dead body, the prospect of another world war, and the shortness of human life. With all of these correlations I just mentioned, it's hard to know if there's really

any significance, but interesting. Linetto also found that people who were most focused on the shortness of human life and the quick passage of time were the least likely to picture a gentle comforter and the most likely to picture the macabre, you know, the grim, horrifying vision of death. I thought that was interesting because while I personally I don't usually think about death as a as a personified figure much. I I found this personally relevant because I

so often find my life defined by time anxiety. I mean, it's like, I feel like it's the main struggle in my life is just always thinking about there not being enough time to do the things I need to do. And yeah, I wonder if that that makes me especially prone to thinking of death as a monster.

But you know, it wasn't until recently that I really created I think we're created or chose or you know, had it thrust upon me, that there would be like more or less a concrete idea of what it is is, you know, I would say that I yeah, I felt, I felt, I felt a fair amount of time anxiety of late as well. You know, the shortness of human life and the threat of greater wars are also both things that weigh on me all the time, you know,

much like the people in this of the study. But you know, yeah, I wouldn't say that I ever strongly associated the idea of death with the personification. I'd say maybe growing up, you know, in in in a Protestant church environment, and being exposed to various you know, works from you know, from from the Western catalog of art, you would, you know, you'd see images of like an Angel of Death, you know, be they classical or something

more recent. And so I think I had maybe a vision of that in my mind, like maybe a vision that maybe maybe leans slightly more masculine and kind of wavered between automaton and gentle comforter, and more recently I think I've gravitated towards more of a gentle comforter, but maybe at times with a little bit of the gay

deceiver thrown in there as well. So I think maybe more feminine in my mind now, maybe more comforting, but also like sometimes wondering if there's a bit of a sly smile there, you know, that there's a joke at play, and again with all death jokes, you're the punchline.

waiting in in the waiting room at a hospice. You know there's going to be perhaps different mindsets in play.

of death make you imagine a comforter. Another variation is that Linetto found that the deceiver archetype was not associated with lower death anxiety, even though this archetype is attractive and seductive. So you might think at one level favorable. I think there's just like people have enough cognitive aw awareness of like the danger and irony wrapped up in this personification to maybe treat it more like they treat

the other less favorable forms. So one more thing we've alluded to several times, how these trends in death personification can change over time. They're clearly not just like fixed in the human animal. You know, they're culturally variable and

they change. So in the two thousand an edition of the book, Castenbaum mentions that he did some research with colleagues in the late nineteen nineties to see if anything had changed about how people personified death since his original work in the sixties and seventies, and this is Castenbaum and Hermann nineteen ninety seven if you want to look up the paper. But the main changes he identify have

to do with gender breakdown in personification. He says that by the time of nineteen ninety seven, there had, for some reason been a sharp increase in the number of women who personify death as a woman. So there's there's still, you know, a male bias in how people represent death in their minds, but more women personified death as a woman by the late nineties. Also, there were some changes

in the type of personality attributed to death. The gentle comforter is still the most common type of death figure imagined by women and the most common overall, but there was a significant decrease in the percentage of men who imagined a comforter. By nineteen ninety seven, men had come more often to see death as a cold and remote person, the automaton, or as grim and terrifying the macabre. The author is also found that the average age of death

personified had decreased. That's kind of interesting, So, you know, we used to be more likely on average to picture death as a person of advanced age. The average age people imagine has gone down.

But despite variability across time and culture, do think these categories are useful to talk about because, for one thing, it seems they remain very relevant, at least within an American cultural context, and they give us a scaffolding to talk about other findings in death personification. So with that in the background, Rob, if you're cool with it, I wanted to run through a couple of twenty first century research papers I turned up which I thought were intriguing.

Let's do it, Okay, So the first one is I dug up a paper from two thousand and eight by Jonathan Bassett, Polly McCann, and Kelly Kate, published in a journal called Omega Journal of Death and Dying. The paper was called Personifications of Personal and Typical Death as related to Death Attitudes. So This was a simple imagination exercise done with a relatively small group of university students, so

this is not like a hugely powerful study. I wouldn't place a ton of weight on the results, but what they found was interesting to me because it was counterintuitive. So to read from their description of their research here, quote, ninety eight students enrolled in psychology classes were randomly assigned to personified death as a character in a movie, depicting either their own deathbed scene or the deathbed scene of

the typical person. And then after this, the students completed an updated version of a standard inventory called the Death Attitude Profile. So this idea of comparing personifications of one's own death versus death in general or the deaths of others is interesting because obviously death is a highly emotional and frightening subject for lots of people, and I think there's a good chance that variations in how we think about it would depend on the question is it my own death we're talking about?

for four the same. So you had the option to imagine death as a cold or remote sort of person, a gentle, well meaning type of person that's sort of the comforter, a grim terrifying type of person that's sort of the macabre, and then a robot like person. So it seems like we've split the automaton category into these options of a cold or remote person and a robot like person.

or the robot like image. The most popular were the cold, remote sort of person and the gentle, well meaning sort of person. And in fact, something kind of the opposite of what I just hypothesized off the cuff a minute ago is what they found. When asked to imagine another person's death, subjects were relatively more likely to picture the cold, remote figure. When asked to imagine their own death, they

were relatively more likely to imagine the gentle comforter. Huh, and the author is refer to previous work by a researcher named Tomer. Writing in their conclusion quote. These findings seem to support Tomer's position that it is easier to face death with stoic resignation when thinking about the inevitability of other people's death as part of the natural order of things than when contemplating one's own mortality.

better about death in some way. I mean, it might be you could imagine some ways a person might need to think of a threatened, threatening, terrifying figure, like, oh, I don't know, maybe if like the person feels they need to be punished in some way. But I would think this is a relatively rare way it works.

from pain. So if the comforter comes to mind more naturally when we think of our own death versus when we think of the deaths of others, that makes me think that the base level function of the personification of death might be more as a psychological defense mechanism that provides us comfort and puts our fears to rest, rather than doing something else. And I really want to emphasize I mean, when you approach it that way, that sounds kind of obvious, but I would say it doesn't have

to be this way. I would not say that providing comfort is the default reason we conjure visionary or imaginary figures in our mind. For example, I think if there is a default assumption about the evolutionary reason we imagine monsters, it is probably specifically to amplify fears so that we act more defensively and take vigorous steps to avoid danger.

Like the imagination I think usually works to make your fears of the unseen and the unknown more vivid, more powerful and motivating, so as to you know to guide you away from danger. It's not supposed to make you feel like death is going to be okay, but when at least, you know, modern Americans in these experiments think about the abstract idea of their own future death as opposed to the deaths of others, the imagination does the opposite.

It soothes, it provides comfort, It says it's going to be okay, and you know, you could It would be really interesting if you could like compare this to you know,

ancient history or something like. I wonder if this is a historically contingent fact based on the expectation that it's now normal in industrialized societies to live to old age and die from one of a handful of chronic diseases, as opposed to there being like a high likelihood that you die an unexpected sudden death at an early age from unexpected you know, from contagious disease or violence.

theme wearing dark clothing, associated with rural areas, the season of autumn, and the evening time. So I'm thinking, wow, death is it's going trick or treating?

the the hellish one on the front, the debauchery. But you know, unless unless that's more your thing.

back up to something we were talking about earlier. We're talking about the Deceiver or the gay deceiver, and I was kind of there was something like there was a there was an itch that I couldn't quite scratch us, like this is reminding me of something in particular, and it brings to mind the love song of Jay Alfred Proofrock or one line from it from T. S. Eliot, and that is, of course I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker and short, I was

afraid the Eternal Footman is of course death. And I've got back on that line before, like why is why is death snickering? What does he why does he find this funny? Like it's clearly at my expense against again I am the punchline. Yeah, So I thought back to that line.

and automaton. This was twenty twenty one. The core idea in this paper is a further exploration of Castenbaum and Aisenberg's for archetypes, but asking the question what specific aspects of the death of the death experience can be attributed to each of these four personifications. In other words, do specific types of death and circumstances of death make us think of different death figures? And a few interesting trends

and results. Cong says that people were most likely to imagine the macabre figure when thinking about murder, which occurs outside the home. That's kind of not surprising.

I can't you know the reason obviously why people would have this association, But I wonder if this has anything to do with the idea that people think of a heart attack as a surprise. It is something that happens suddenly and without warning. It's like a trick on you, but also something that is thought to be associated with lifestyle and life history. Like I'm not saying this is the right way to conceptualize cardiovascular health, but people do

think about it this way. Like you were tempted by a lifetime of pleasures from you know, Scotch and methamphetamine and French fries, and then the devil sneaks up, yeah and stabs you in the back. It's like, you did those things, they were fun, and now the heart attack is coming.

surprised by the automaton. I mean, on one level, not like you know, when when deaths from cancer occur in a hospital environment, you know, it's there is that sense of like this is very procedural, and things have are being done, and there's kind of like a back and forth and we know where it is going and then we reach eventually reached that place. But at the same time, I mean, cancer often does feel like a cruel, cosmic joke, and I don't know, it seems like that would be

more the deceivers doing. But you know, they could also be me slightly misunderstanding the classifications here.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, people who this matters less to have a better understanding of what's going on because they've seen this process a million times.

where we stand in really to it. So maybe it does demystify it and to to a point anyway, So maybe it doesn't completely erase the figure, Like there a silhouette remains, but it is this automaton silhouette and it's not it's not personal. It is just it's destiny. Yeah. Another way I was thinking about the trickster idea though, is the deceiver? Is that all you really need is just an idea that it's kind of your fault. You know that you were you know that you were tricked

or you tricked yourself into doing it. And you know, I was thinking about this the other day because I was let's see, I was listening to an interview with longevity researcher and Blue Zone proponent Dan Butner, who is not talking specifically about this example, but it was talking in general about modern fitness and diet regimes that you know, often to some degree or another, sort of promising you some sort of mortification against death and some shot at

a longer life. And you know, most of these are not going to you know, especially when they're attached to some sort of a fad, you know that they're not really going to make a huge difference in the long run, you know, or at least Butner would argue that there are these other other aspects that are far more important that are related to you know, broader diet and broader exercise and so forth. But anyway, there's no shortage of people that are willing to say this is your shot.

You can buy this product, you can you can buy this lifestyle, and this is what you need, and there's kind of like implied, and if you don't, well it's kind of on you. You've kind of you know, So that's the trick. I don't know, that's that was one thing I was thinking about in regards to this.

take the right supplements or do whatever. You know, it's just it's not going to happen to me, and it is, you know. So that's the trick in a way. We're given all these these false assurances.

of certain lifestyles on longevity. Nothing is you know, nothing's going to work all the time, but you can change your your odds or you know, on average with the and and the weird thing about this is, you know, from what I can tell, like all the stuff that looks like it's the really good secret trick that only the people really in the know know about that never turns out to be real. You know, it's it's the boring stuff you've already heard in all like diet and exercise and stuff.

because there's a lot more to discover to discuss. We've I think we've we've presented an excellent scaffold on which to build out the rest of our conversations. We're going to get we're certainly going to get more into gender and death personifications. I have some interesting sources on that. We're going to look at.

the upcoming episodes. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on anything we've discussed here, Certainly, even if it's just maybe you had never thought about what death personified would be and how you picture it. If you want to go through that experiment with us, write in and tell us what death looks like. Maybe we can share these in a future Listener Male episode.