Death in the Digital Age

23:01Kara Swisher:You mentioned the idea that people need to be comfortable with all this. Describe the legal landscape here, because it is complicated. 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. And 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.

23:44Because if you don't spell it out explicitly, you don't have any control.

23:49Kara Swisher:So to come back to the premise of the series is about aging and longevity and whether we can force stall 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 think about that and what does it do? How do you think of the technology? 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.

24:30And 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, people call us up and say, okay, my mother died two months ago. And can you bring her back? And the answer is, I mean, yes, we can. But my next question is, well, what stories do you want to tell? Like, did you actually go have these conversations with her while she was alive? and can we, because we want to be faithful to that. So it's much easier if people have gone out and they've had their conversations with them, gone talk to their parents beforehand. You're never going to regret that.

25:15You're never going to regret the time you spend with your parents or with whoever it is. So ultimately, my message is not about the technology. It's go 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 relive it.

25:33Kara 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. You see it as a good transformation. I see it as a, oh, wow, this could go seven different ways wrong, right? That kind of thing. For me personally, like, I mean, I would want to be remembered. But I mean, for me, it's like, I'd 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 yeah biology is going to live out hopefully i can have make the most of the time i have right longer life healthier longer life um but i completely understand people who don't who just want to fade and uh move on to whatever comes next 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.

26:31Kara Swisher:Like another physical creature. Well, if they want to freeze themselves and come back in a thousand years, then... Or a robot. Put your brain in a robot. 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. Yeah. I don't know if I'm serious about that or not. Yeah. Well, you just thought of something. They could. Yes, they could. You can imagine it happening. So imagine 15 years from now when the technology is far more advanced. How do you see it working then? Does it go into a robot?

27:04Kara Swisher: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 maybe what's your biggest worry about the way it could go? 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 can have your digital version of your grandmother coming with you to the zoo, then maybe you could bond over something there.

27:45If, again, it's technically possible this question of, is that something you're comfortable with? I think that the technology for displays is going to continue to get better as far as making it feel like someone's actually in the room with you. Is it feeling a Zoom call or is it on a large screen or a VR headset? All that technology is just going to get better.

28:09Kara Swisher:So last question, what happens to the Carator? Where does she go? Where is she? What's she doing? Well, ultimately, that's up to you. Right now, she's not doing anything. She's just hanging out in like some file somewhere. Well, yes, but 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. All right. So I shouldn't kill it. I shouldn't kill it. I say you shouldn't make the decision as to whether to kill it. Ask your kids and ask what they want. All right. Well, I need to get control of it so I can decide whether Caritar should live or die.

28:47Kara Swisher:I'm not sure yet. I've got to think about it. And I will talk to my kids. You're right. All right, Valerie, what you do is really beautiful, I have to say, in a lot of ways. And I'm really, what a great experience. It was really interesting, especially from thinking about what memories are in the digital age, which are really complex. And I really appreciate the work you do. I appreciate it. And I really, I loved getting to meet both you and your digital capital. 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 care is a pain in the ass.

29:18Kara Swisher:I'm just saying. Anyway, thank you, Val. Thank you. We'll be back in a minute.

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30:42Kara Swisher:This episode mentions thoughts 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. 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 Daniel Crittenden. She's a journalist and author and the former host of a great podcast called The Femmesplainers.

31:22Kara Swisher: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 Daniel is such a gifted writer and observer. She's a sharp and witty and smart, but it's simultaneously so hard to read because the topic is unbearably sad, and her 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.

31:58Kara Swisher: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 on. Thank you for having me. It's a true honor to be with you, Kara. 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.

32:36Kara Swisher:And I know how that is. I have a lot of kids. So So I immediately sort of, that was struck me. 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 expect it, 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.

33:18And so when she died very suddenly, from the consequences we would learn later of a brain operation she'd had five years before. It was completely unexpected, and to all purposes, she was healthy. So when that kind of tragedy happens, and also it's a child, you're just thrown into another dimension 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.

33:53Kara Swisher:Well, it's a similar idea. 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 of those kids knows kids are the way they are. Well, you know, she grew up in Washington, D.C. And around our dinner table, you know, my husband and I were both journalists and connected following politics.

34:29And 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 Frum 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. But she was just like that.

35:06Kara Swisher:Now, one of the things you noted, she had a generosity to people, especially people who seemed like they needed help or out of place or needed a friend. You described that beautifully. She had a depth that even though she presented as this kind of cool, 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 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.

35:50She was really a profound soul.

35:52Kara 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 then it goes away. You know, all these different moments and memories. Talk about preserving them because you didn't, presumably you thought she would outlive you. Yes. Versus the opposite. Yes, of course. But talk a little bit about this idea. 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? Miranda was born pre-internet, so I have albums of her early years.

36:30And then you just have all these photos unsorted on your computer. You don't really think of it. And you'd 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 leveled again. Gosh, I opened a box and it had all her journals and I'm sure copies of the animal in it, you know, from when she was a child.

37:18And just to think that that life stopped. And these things, I call them like relics with no reliquary. Like, what do you do with 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.

37:45Kara Swisher:I used to think I was going to have a Viking funeral, put all my stuff on, and then my kids shoot arrows into the ship as it sails away, and then everything burns, and it's gone. Like, gone, gone, gone. Because I often touch things. I'm like, oh, this is going to be here after I'm dead. I think about death a lot more. Yeah, but how do you burn digital, you know? Right, that's the whole thing. You can't just throw the letters into the fireplace. Right, right, in a dramatic fashion. Exactly. When you talk a little bit about what happened, describe the medical scare that was around 2018 when she had some vision problems.

38:17Kara Swisher:You 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. 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. 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 the surgeon who could do it.

38:53And 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, 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 had 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 had got everything managed.

39:37She was about to throw a five-year tumor-free, successful, you know, I'm great party. She was going to serve tumor-tinis and MRI goritas. And she had all this funny things. And she died, you know, two months before that anniversary.

40:00Kara Swisher:Now, you describe 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. And it's also impossible to understand if you haven't been in that universe. Exactly, exactly.

40:34So 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, 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.

41:15And 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 want to be there for them. But you don't, when they say, I can't even imagine. He'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 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.

41:53Kara Swisher:Like, literally, the child is everywhere. 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. Right, and it's gone, too, at the same time. It hits literally every aspect and corner of your world. One of the things that a lot of people have lost a child is, you know, to tell you there's not a road back to who you were. There's no map to take you there. Right. 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.

42:44Kara Swisher: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. No, that's exactly the thing to say. Yeah. 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.

43:22Kara Swisher:I hope it's better. I'm like, never. It's never going to be better. It says 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. 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?

43:59So 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 is, especially in America or just generally. In America, shoved down. 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 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.

44:43I think what happens, and I'm sure this is true with your dad, you learn to carry it. It becomes part of you like a wound or a chronic, I think of it as almost like a chronic illness. and you learn to carry it 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 person you are now. Right, which is a big difference. 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. Because this is your story now.

45:27Kara Swisher:This is your story. This is your narrative. Like your narrative has shifted. This is a fictional book. And it's never going to get better. I call them in the book happiness hucksters. This is deeply American. Yeah. This is, you know, the worst thing that has ever happened to you, you can now grow from. You know, this is, you know. Yeah, I remember those. Miranda died and now it's not all terrible because you get to grow. Yeah. Thanks. No, it just sucks. I'd rather not. Yeah, it just sucks. It just sucks. Some people used to do that to me. They're like, oh, you'll be okay. I'm like, it won't, but that's okay.

46:02Kara Swisher:Like, I'll just be this. I'll be whatever it happens to be. So you wrote, of course, 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. 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? Well, it's complicated.

46:37I'm no expert on our health care 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 D.C. and you get this recording saying, thank you for calling the Sussan Church 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, you would never have believed it. But I felt the pain was so overwhelming.

47:23And that's how I stumbled onto EMDR therapy, which 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.

47:41Kara Swisher:Of all the books you read are grief, and there's a lot of them. It seems you read all of them. It seems like you got them all. So 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 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. 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 I'm a foreign correspondent in the alternative universe.

48:20And 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. And he's trying to work himself back to God. But in the process, 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.

48:57Kara Swisher:Can I read you a line you quote? Yes. 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. Right. And that just nailed it. 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 suddenly I had someone I could identify with. And that sense, exactly as he says, like you go to sleep and you think, oh, you know, God, I have to wake up tomorrow.

49:35I'm going to 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 had suffered similarly and really how they coped. That was the thing that I needed to know. And the grief books and the happiness hucksters 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.

50:04Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm. 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? That was my EMDR therapist, because I said, what's the point of this? I'm never going to 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 going to 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.

50:42But 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, I just, my mind went back to holding Miranda for that first time. So every joy is going to 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 flares up and, you know, there it is again.

51:16Kara Swisher:But I think that's what it means in learning to handle it. 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 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 had him exhumed. I had him cremated then. 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?

51:59Kara Swisher:I had them sent to my house, like, the remains, which was terrible. But she died the day the remains entered West Virginia, which was crazy. Like, that's, and I told her, I said, 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. I completely understand your grandmother wanting to be with her son. And now where Miranda is buried, you know, it doesn't scare me.

52:40I 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 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 you're carrying it in all these physical ways because every part of you wants to retreat. Every part of you just wants to curl up and not deal with anything.

53:29And so that effort to keep going, and especially as a parent or a mother, 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 weeks into it, he just held me and he said, we can't allow each other to withdraw into our own silos of grief. if we're going to get through this we have to do it together and I don't you know that landed with me and I appreciated it and then we both made the effort because we were the only two people in the world who understood what the other was going through and what we'd lost and of course our 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 your children, whether it's job, friendships, everything.

54:58And 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.

55:08Kara Swisher:What would you say the most significant thing changed about you? 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 always live your life like it's your last day. I was always very much embraced 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, Kara, 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 to me after, you know, I'd lost Miranda.

55:53Like, that's people suddenly open up that way because why would they tell you before? Because what are you going to say? Oh, gosh, Kara, 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 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

56:32Kara Swisher:now we did talk about sort of the AI curated photo galleries they haunt you in a lot of ways 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 that bad for me. No, 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 of myself? It's always the wrong music, too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 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?

57:01I 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.

57:33Kara Swisher:Yeah. 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, of course, we'll be able to, you know, we'll upgrade it or update it. But it tells you about the garden. It tells you about her. It just gives you a sense of, yeah, who she was. The person was. That's a great idea. And there's a playlist. We have a playlist. 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?

58:08Kara Swisher: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? I think memory is in every person treacherous. And we always like to remember the best of ourselves. Right. 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, but they always talked. I'd never met his grandparents. They died 10, 15 years before I knew him. But they had a way of talking about them. Like, they were completely real.

58:47And 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, 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.

59:31Right. It would be great to text from heaven.

59:33Kara Swisher:I just want to be able to text her even. Have you ever gone to one of those mediums? 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? Oh, I totally believe it. You know, and there are a few things, and I write a couple of instances in the book about that happening.

1:00:17And so I like to believe there's something. I feel her with me often in ways I can't fully explain. And I think when someone dies whom you love, 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 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, not just in memory, but in action.

1:00:57Kara 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 this? Well the main thing is that you there's a lot of I say that we become that 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?

1:01:42But 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, and it is a gift to be alive and not to squander that gift and not let grief take that gift away from me.

1:02:16Kara Swisher:Right. 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. Well, that's a beautiful way to end. Danielle, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much. Oh, Cara, thank you for allowing me to talk about Miranda to your listeners. Today's show was produced by Tracy Hunt, Emma McNamara, Dave Shaw, Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

1:02:52Kara Swisher:Our engineers are Jim Mackle and Aaliyah 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.

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