Everyone Dies: The Truth About Death We Avoid Talking About | Dr. Marianne Matzo

Send us Fan MailWe spend enormous amounts of time trying to extend life - but almost no time learning how to deal with the fact that it ends. And that gap is creating enormous suffering for families.Dr. Marianne Matzo, Ph.D., FAAN is a nationally recognized gerontologist, hospice nurse, educator, researcher, and advocate whose career has been devoted to one of the most universal - and often avoided - human experiences: dying.Dr. Matzo is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, one of the profession's highest honors, and served as Professor and the Frances E. and A. Earl Ziegler Chair in Palliative Care Nursing at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Over a distinguished academic career, she helped shape the field of palliative care education, co-authoring the first palliative care nursing textbook published in the United States, now in its fifth edition.Dr. Matzo's research has explored everything from end-of-life communication and assisted dying to sexual health among people living with serious illness, helping to advance both clinical practice and public understanding.Following her retirement from full-time academia, Dr. Matzo launched the nonprofit organization Everyone Dies ( https://every1dies.org/ ), dedicated to public education about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Through podcasts, educational resources, and children's literature, she is working to transform how Americans think about mortality and helping families navigate some of life's most difficult conversations with greater confidence, compassion, and clarity.Today we'll explore Dr. Matzo's remarkable career, the evolution of hospice and palliative care, why our culture struggles to discuss death, and what it would mean to build a society that approaches the end of life with wisdom rather than fear.#DeathEducation #PalliativeCare #HospiceCare #EndOfLifeCare #GriefSupport #Healthcare #MedicalEthics #Aging #Gerontology #AdvanceCarePlanning #HospiceNurse #PublicHealth #Longevity #DeathPositive #SeriousIllness #Caregiving #Wellness #Medicine #Bioethics #EveryoneDiesSupport the show