Actor, grief companion and trained Soul Midwife Gabriella Wilde launches MORTAL, a new podcast and filmed conversation series exploring mortality, grief and our continuing relationships with the dead.
Through intimate conversations with artists, scientists, therapists, doctors, morticians, spiritual thinkers and people whose lives have brought them close to death, MORTAL asks a simple but profound question: what might turning towards our mortality teach us about how to live?
MORTAL begins with the belief that facing the truth that we are all going to die need not be morbid. Instead, it can deepen our relationships, bring clarity to the choices we make and wake us up to the lives we are already living.
“We often behave as though talking about death will somehow bring it closer,” says Gabriella. “But my experience has been the opposite. When I turn towards death, life becomes more vivid. I feel more present, more connected and more aware that how we spend our time really matters.”
Why Gabriella is making MORTAL
Best known for her work as an actor, Gabriella has spent recent years exploring grief, death and end-of-life companionship.
She is a trained Soul Midwife and grief-tending practitioner, has supported bereaved people through Cruse Bereavement Support and volunteers with dying patients and their families at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.
Her path towards this work has also been deeply personal. The death of her sister and a later diagnosis of a life-limiting illness that proved to be incorrect brought death out of the abstract and into the centre of her life.
MORTAL grows from Gabriella’s search for truth, connection and a more honest relationship with the unknown. She does not approach these conversations as someone with the answers, but with openness and curiosity, asking what those who live close to mortality might teach the rest of us about being alive.
“I am not trying to solve the mystery of death,” Gabriella says. “I want to create a space where we can speak about it more honestly. Death is the one certainty we all share, yet so many of us feel alone when we encounter it. Perhaps talking about it can help us feel less afraid, less isolated and more deeply connected to one another.”
Why this conversation, and why now?
For generations, death has increasingly been hidden from everyday life. Many people now reach adulthood having had little direct contact with dying, while grief is often treated as something private to be managed and moved beyond.
But there are signs of a profound cultural shift. Conversations about grief, ritual, end-of-life care and death companionship are moving into the mainstream. Public figures including Nicole Kidman, filmmaker Chloé Zhao and musician Erykah Badu have brought renewed attention to the role of the death doula and to the importance of caring for people at the end of life.
MORTAL arrives at the meeting point between this growing openness around death and a wider desire to live with greater meaning and intention. It asks whether remembering that our time is finite might help us inhabit that time more fully.
The conversations
MORTAL brings together leading voices from across grief, science, medicine, culture and spirituality. Guests include:
- Julia Samuel — psychotherapist, bestselling author and one of the UK’s leading voices on grief
- Iain McGilchrist — psychiatrist, philosopher and author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things
- Merlin Sheldrake — biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life
- Brigid Sumser — American palliative psychotherapist, co-founder of Mettle Health and contributor to the Academy Award-nominated documentary End Game
- Perdita Finn — author of Take Back the Magic, The Way of the Rose and My Mother’s Magic
- Bruce Parry — filmmaker, explorer and Indigenous-rights advocate
- Donna Lancaster — therapist, author and co-founder of The Bridge
- Anna Chancellor — actor, speaking personally about love, life and bereavement
- Felicity Warner — founder of the Soul Midwives movement
- Rankin — photographer and cultural provocateur whose recent work confronts death, dying and the assisted-dying debate
- Dr Henry Marsh — acclaimed neurosurgeon and author of Do No Harm and And Finally
Together, these conversations move between the personal and the universal, exploring grief, love, consciousness, nature, medicine, ritual, the body and what, if anything, might lie beyond death.
MORTAL is hosted by Gabriella Wilde and produced by Olivia Percival. .
Listen and follow
Instagram: @themortalpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6YClpJFe94jVfu5KSWxzpO?si=8942bd4a7cb2467d
Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mortal/id6809773933
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mortal-pod/shorts
