Media Storm - S4E1 The death debate: Assisted dying and the legacy of CoppaFeel!

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

There’s a morbid theme to Media Storm’s first new weekly format - but that’s ok because it’s Dying Matters Awareness Week so we all need to get talking about death! Our key voices today are people with terminal illnesses - as we discuss the late Kris Hallenga’s legacy beyond 'CoppaFeel!' and the debates on assisted dying laws unfolding across the British Isles. And - we reveal the inside scoop on a controversial BBC documentary dropping next week on ‘assisted suicide’. Plus, your round up of the headlines through a Media Storm lens - if you read right-leaning papers you’ll have gotten an eyeful, but left-leaning readers are left in the dark… We pick apart a divisive story about a Holocaust Memorial Day protest in Poland. It’s a story that tells us more about the media than what’s actually happening on the ground. This episode features lived experience speakers Jenny Carruthers, Kit, Gareth, Anne and Warwick. Plus Lord Charlie Falconer, comedian and host of Conversations in Company Isabelle Farah, and Sarah Wootton from Dignity in Dying. Access their open letter here. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Read our Q&A in PodBible! Support Media Storm on Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. a warning this episode contains descriptions of assisted dying in suicide for anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts the samaritans helpline is open 24-7 just call 116-123

welcome to media storm series four we're so excited to be back with you all we are launching our new weekly series and Hannah's been doing her homework. I have. I've been listening to many a news podcast to find out where we fit in in the landscape. What did you think? We're not men. Should we just go home now? Anyway, look, we're bringing you the week's biggest stories, but from the voices missing in the conversation, we do news a bit differently, not just because of our gender and or race. Mostly because of the guests that we'll be bringing you. So let's talk about what's been going on in the news this week? Yeah, obviously we had the local elections.

We had the London mayoral election. Hamza Yusuf formally resigned as Scotland's first minister. The weather was all over the place. There were more train strikes. These were all the stories you could read on any mainstream media news outlet. But this is media storm. So, Matilda, to start,

tell me what stood out to you in the news this week from a media storm lens. So something that happened in the news this week was it was the Holocaust Memorial Day and I was taken by a headline I read and it was about the fact that during the annual march at Auschwitz in memory of the Holocaust victims there was a demonstration staged by pro-Palestinian protesters

that turns out that this demonstration involved about five or six people who were wearing Palestinian colors or waving Palestinian flags and carrying a stop genocide poster. But what really struck me about the story was that while it was repeatedly reported across center and right-wing papers, it didn't even appear in any left-wing outlet. This appeared to be a total blind spot for the left-wing media. And the issue with that, well, there's several issues with that. I mean, it's one of the biggest problems in our society that people on different sides of the political

divide are seeing totally different news. But it also means that that news can be flavored in very inaccurate ways. I want to read you like the headlines. The telegraph headline that I saw was pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt Auschwitz Remembrance March. Now remembering that there were five to six people here, the Sun headline read, immense anger. Pro-Palestine protesters spark outrage after massing at Auschwitz death camp during Holocaust Remembrance Day March. And the Daily Express wrote outrage as pro-Palestine mob storm Auschwitz to chant at Holocaust survivors. Now, there was, however, one centrist news outlet that reported on this, AP Associated Press, which is a newswire. And this is what a non-partisan headline on the story looked like.

That said, the yearly memorial march at the former death camp at Auschwitz overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war. Now that reflects a few things. I mean, it reflects maybe the scale of the protest, the fact this wasn't a storming or amassing. The fact that also the politics of Israel Hamas was present on both sides or among the Auschwitz marches as well. But yeah, to me that was a really, really interesting picture of what's happening in our partisan media today.

Yeah, it raises the question, was this wrong of the left-wing media to ignore or, and wrong of the right-wing media? to over-inflate. I mean, I agree with you that this is not a non-story. And I do think we have to ask ourselves, in what way was this story being reported by the right-leaning press? We heard some of those headlines you said about the pro-Palestinian protesters, five or six of them. Words like outrage amassing and disrupt and storming. I mean, does this tell the public beyond the headline that there were five or six protesters there? I'm not sure I would

call that massing or storming or a mob? I mean, does this point to an agenda, a deliberate motive of the right-leaning press to paint these protesters as aggressive and to strip all nuance from the conversation? I mean, to be honest, I've thought it's for a while

I'm going to say it here. I think the term pro-Palestinian or pro-Palestine contributes massively to this stripping of nuance. Oh, how so? It signals that you can be pro or you can be anti. That the fight is simple, the fight is equal. I mean, this label completely oversimplifies

people's opinions about the ongoing onslaught against Palestine. A pro-Palestinian person might just be somebody who wished to say stop killing children. A pro-Palestinian person might be supportive of Palestinian people in the current war, but they may also support a two-state solution. A pro-Palestinian person may care very much for the Jewish residents of Israel. Do you know what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. And actually, maybe the main problem with these articles is that it's really hard to gauge a sense of those views because they obviously don't speak to any of the people they're actually reporting on. And while they don't speak to the people apparently massing and storming Auschwitz, taking the Daily Mail, they do quote

Israel Katz, Poland's Minister of Foreign Affairs, controversially calling Hamas a Nazi terrorist organization. So yeah, who you speak to, who you don't speak to is really important. But same for the left wing media. You know, what you cover and what you don't cover at all can be a problem because it doesn't give you the opportunity to provide that missing context. And I mean, the fact that they didn't speak to the so-called pro-Palestinian protesters, this highlights the importance of lived experience when reporting on a story.

And that brings us on to what we're going to be discussing today. Old listeners of Media Store might remember at the end of series two, we did an episode on death, terminal illness and the right to die. That question of whether dying people should be able to ask for medical assistance to end their lives has made its way into the news cycle. Over 200,000 people signed a petition in favour of assisted dying, which led to MPs debating the topic. in Parliament.

And two days ago, we heard the news that Chris Hellinger, the founder of the Breast Cancer Awareness Charity Copperfield, has died aged 38 after being diagnosed with the disease 15 years ago. Her death has topped headline rounds and we've seen waves of tributes posted on mainstream and social media platforms. The coverage has highlighted her fantastic legacy in saving lives by raising awareness of the importance of young women checking their breasts for early signs of cancer. But something of her legacy has gone unmentioned.

And we think it deserves some limelight. Because it's no small issue. Rather, it's one of the most pressing and newsworthy topics facing our society today. And that is not our opinion. That is the British publics. Chris Hallinger also campaigned for the right to choose how she dies. Listen for yourself.

I just want the choice. I just want all options. In the same way, we have loads of different toys. for palliative care, loads of different tools for treatment options, this would just be one extra bolt on, and whether you choose to do that or not is up to you, no one else. And I can't be sure that I would do that, but knowing that it's there would just add another element to just being more comfortable and more accepting of the situation. And she was not alone.

Recent headlines also paid tribute to the late Labor peer, Frank Field. Well, when he revealed he was terminally ill in 2021, he too said he'd want the choice of how to die for himself. And that too was not reported as part of his legacy. So where are we with this choice? This week marks Dying Awareness Matters Week. So why are those who are terminally ill continually left out of the conversation on the right to die? And does the media help or hinder in opening conversations about death and grief? Time TV News has been given the clearest signal yet of a monumental change in the law around how we die.

I'm personally in favour of changing the law. For some people, the moment of your passing is a matter for the almighty. I just want the choice. I just want all options. Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity and decency and God forbid maybe even humor? Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that's started. Starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helen O'Owadia. And I'm Matilda Malinson.

This week's media storm. The death debate. Who gets a say? Our first guest today is an ex-NHS health worker who retired on ill health. She has terminal breast cancer and previously endured her partner's death. He died from liver cancer. Jenny Carruthers, why is it that you've decided to join us today and share your expertise with our listeners?

I think the idea is. that attitudes towards assisted dying is changing is really important. It becomes more important when you become diagnosed terminally ill. But actually, as a society, our attitudes do need to change, need to be more open. So joining a discussion that helps people to think these things through is really important. We're really happy to have you here. Thank you. Thanks very much.

Our second guest is the chief executive of Dignity in Dying, One of the highest profile political campaigns in the UK today. It calls for greater choice and control at the end of life, including the option of safe, legal-assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in their final months of life. Sarah Whitten, thank you for joining us. Help us to understand why you personally are so dedicated to this issue, having campaigned for it for almost 20 years, is that correct?

This is my 17th year in the job, and I've seen a lot of change. in that time. As you said, the momentum of the campaign is really growing at the moment. The reason why I'm so committed is because of people like Jenny, really. I've met many people throughout the campaign, and it's all of their voices that I'm thinking of when we're progressing this campaign. The reason that we are covering this topic today, as we mentioned in our introduction, is that headlines about the recent death of Chris Hallinger rather glossed over.

the issue of the right to die when reporting on her legacy. Sarah, as someone who spends her life trying to get the right to die into the news cycle, how receptive are people in the media to reporting on this topic? You know, how easy is it to get it into the news? I think it is easy because it's contentious, because there's a fight. So actually that works for us as well as sometimes against us. Because there is that conflict there, then journalists like to cover the issue. What I would say is that the conflict scares people off.

I've been told by many senior doctors, for example, you will win. I can't help you. They've almost left the field clear for us and our opponents to fight it out between us. It's actually so perceptive because we reported it in this very contentious way, which we're going to get into, but we don't report on it when it is a gentle news piece like Chris Halinger's passing and more of a question of legacy, more of a positive. And non-contentious questions. I think the thing is that, you know, some doctors say, I can't help you.

And maybe the media sometimes ignores this topic. But this is a topic, Jenny, that some people don't get to ignore. So I wonder how does it feel, how does it make you feel if news outlets, policymakers, or other public authorities try to ignore this? Human instinct is to avoid the horror of our own death. The idea that we all have to die is known, but we don't talk about it. And we've developed a way in society of protecting ourselves. But our human need to survive sometimes is at odds with those who are terminally ill who need to find peace and control.

I think the media reflects that. There's obviously other things at stake like government policy, certain sectors of our society who have religious, or their own ethical visions, but to restrict an entire population with that narrow view means that the only people who at the moment aren't covered are those who actually are facing illness and death who do need to talk about it.

I don't want to die, really don't. I love my life. But at the end of the day, the last portion of my life is going to be very, very unbearably painful. I want to avoid that portion. And no one really wants to look that in the face. That's the difficult conversation to start. We need the media to pay attention to this.

And people who haven't yet been touched by the idea of their own actual death don't always want to get involved in the conversation because it's pretty uncomfortable. Yeah, of course. And it's funny actually because there has been a massive wave of news coverage on assistant dying laws in the UK recently. And it's interesting because while these debates are happening, the law in England takes one of the most harshly criminalising approaches in the liberal world. People found guilty of assisting someone's suicide face up to 14 years in prison.

And yet public polls show that quite clearly that an overwhelming majority of people of the public support legal reform. Just a couple of months ago, the largest and most in-depth public polls, ever conducted in this country on the issue, found 75% of people supported legislation to some degree. And that was across the political divide, from green to reform, with majorities in every constituency. That was a poll by opinion research. So something we want to try to understand today is why there is such a discrepancy between public attitudes in the UK and the law. And this is media storm. so obviously we want to know

could it have something to do with the mainstream media? For example, when the topic does feature in our press. The coverage is very both-side system, a term we often use here to refer to the framing of a nuanced topic as a 50-50 debate, in which we must always hear from someone for and someone against, even if the vast majority of people stand in unity on one side,

which, quite clearly on this topic, they do. What is the impact of this for and against structure? Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And I've noticed the BBC in particular always have an opposing voice whenever you speak. And this 50-50 debate impression that's given is not helpful. There are many, many more voices on the side of support. And it would be much better to reflect that kind of significant majority opinion that change has to come. The other critical issue is that the debate is that the debate is,

framed around the hypothetical harms that will come with the change in the law and there's not enough focus on the problems that the current law causes. It feels like a hypothetical debate. Lots of people study this at school. It's a classic debate to have at Oxford and Cambridge unions and that turns it into something that feels less real than it really is. We're all going to die and the vast majority of people would like this choice, even though hardly anyone user. And I just want to provide listeners with some real-life examples of that, because if you just search the topic on your news tab, the first page of results give you sponsored articles from the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Times, or presenting the case that legal reform is a slippery

slope. Slippery slope doesn't actually exist. So to find myself in the situation where I've actually got to think, this current law won't change in time to help. me. I've got a perfect understanding of the screaming agony I potentially face. I watched my partner who spent five days on a ketamine drip screaming and it didn't touch the sides. So all the modern medicine and compassion in the world was offered very kindly, but didn't help. He would have chosen not to have gone through those last two months. And potentially, I will choose not to as well, but I have to think of a way to do that myself. This is the reason that people do the most awful things to themselves to spare their own

pain, to spare their family's grief, to save them from the potential for prosecution. And yet the risks on the opposition's argument is more important than my agony. It doesn't seem very humane. No. And we've all heard of the slippery slope argument, yet we haven't all heard of experiences like Jennys. And I think that just says everything. Yes. This takes us on to perhaps what we think is the most central issue of all in the media coverage. When this debate or this topic suddenly became mainstream news a few months ago and that news has really been sustained because these debates have been happening all across the British Isles. not just in Westminster, in the Isle of Man, in Jersey. The most important voices in the debate were basically not present at all.

And we have another poll to share here. And it's one actually we have thanks to Dignity and Dying. You orchestrated this with YouGov. The poll asked a couple of thousand British adults, who do you think has the most important perspective on this issue? Who are the voices that we should be listening to the most in this discussion? And the answer overwhelmingly wasn't medical professional, or religious leaders or politicians,

it was people who have terminal illnesses. And yet, these voices have been woefully missing from the news coverage. And so today, our main mission at Media Storm is to correct that. But first, I think we have to wonder, you know, why these voices are not centred or sometimes even included. Jenny, is it something that you've noticed

and if so, how does it make you feel that oversight? Again, I've got to go back to human instinct, wanting to avoid the awful truth. I don't find that anyone's unsympathetic, but just that as a society, we're not used to talking about that discomfort. We want to look at a very specific story now. We're glancing ahead to next week

and a documentary that will certainly be putting this topic back on the news agenda. So next week, the BBC releases a documentary called Better Off Dead, which presents a compelling case against legislation. It's presented by Liz Carr, she's an actress, a comedian and a disability rights activist. You may know her from Silent Witness or The Witcher. She travels to Canada, the country with probably the most permissive laws on the subject, to explore their repercussions.

There's a few very clear editorial agendas with this documentary, which is quite uncharacteristic for the BBC, some of which we support, for example, you know, there's a very clear agenda of centralising people with disabilities in a policy that, may or may not affect them more than others. And that's an agenda in media storm would fully advocate for. But then there's another editorial agenda, which is betrayed, we think,

by the exclusive use of the term assisted suicide rather than assisted dying to describe the law it opposes, even though those laws define themselves quite differently. And from a quick scan, assisted suicide is also often the preferred term, of The Telegraph and the Sun. Sarah, you're nodding a lot.

Can you explain the difference between those terms, assisted suicide, assisted dying, and also why those distinctions are so important? These are hugely different kinds of acts because suicide is by somebody who wants to die, who may not be dying, probably isn't dying. They are living, but they don't want their life anymore. They want it to end.

Whereas assisted dying is a site. somebody who wants to live, but that choice has been taken away from them, and they want to control the manner and timing of how they die. They want to get some peace and control at the end. For me, assisted dying really is an extension of medical practice and treatment. And the only thing that I can do to ease my family's pain is for them not to see me in those final awful places to prevent them from having to live with that image in their mind will assist their grieving. So assisted dying to me as a positive action. And you raise a good point there that when we talk about assisted dying, we're talking about medically assisted dying.

Yeah. Now just returning to the BBC documentary airing next week, morbidly titled Better Off Dead, we don't want to gloss over the issues being raised by Liz Carr because the documentary does a rare and valuable thing by centering the voices of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, we've discussed just how rare that is in our media in an early episode of Media Storm. And it brings a really important layer to the discussion in a voice that is often sidelined. So here's Liz Carr's perspective in her own words. So why am I opposed? Well, because it's very easy to shut up disabled people and go, this is not about you, this is about tamily ill people.

In the public perception in the media and in medical terms, there is such a fine line between disability and terminal illness that we become one and the same. We see people that can't do certain things, can't wipe their own bum or can't get dressed or are worried about those things. Well, there are often things around disability. They're often around loss of autonomy, loss of dignity. So legislation is therefore unsafe already. Because not everybody already starts out as having equal value under the law or in the medical profession or in public perception. Ill and disabled and older people are not getting what they need now, resource-wise, health-wise, pain-wise, pain management, palliative care, housing, that's in a mess. Until those things are sorted, can we really trust that the reasons that people give for wanting to end their lives are the real reasons.

I'm also going to talk about assisted suicide, not assisted dying. And that's partly because I think we should call it what it is. They are choosing to take their own life. It's still that act. And what we do know is that when you change the language and you start calling it assisted dying and you don't use words like euthanasia and assisted suicide, then you increase public support.

Assisted dying is far more popular than assisted suicide. So it's equally a political choice, what we call it. Now the fear here is that reducing legal barriers to medically assisted death could lead to instances of abuse or instances of people, particularly people who have disabilities or chronic illnesses or are indeed terminally ill, feeling pressured to take the assisted dying route so as not to become burdens on their families or the welfare state. Jenny, just quickly, would you like to share your reflections on this with us?

I'm quite insulted. I feel that it's a distraction from the actual truth that those who are terminally ill are not represented and cared for in that way. We aren't part of those vulnerable people. This law will only change the situation for those who need more control in the end of their life. And I just find it insulting that these people feel the need to comment on my need for a peaceful death. For listeners who may be wondering why we've seemingly prioritized the lived experience of Jenny and people in Jenny's position over the lived experience of people with disabilities, I just want to explain part of our rationale there, which is that this episode is about dying. This episode is not about disability.

And the fact that as this documentary, like rightly flags, our society may often see the latter as catalytic to the former, that reflects a wider issue about. ableism in our society rather than a core part of the issue of right to die. And so while it raises vital questions about safeguarding in this policy area, we definitely don't think it delegitimizes the rights of terminally ill people to be heard. But unfortunately, as this documentary suggests, the BBC may seem to. Something we truly cannot understand about the BBC's editorial decisions within this documentary is that for all their adherence to balance, we've been told the documentary doesn't feature any terminally ill speakers at all. We've heard this from the person that the BBC did approach to represent the arguments for legal reform, someone regularly approached to do so by

mainstream media outlets, not somebody with lived experience, but they are in the House of Lords. Lord Falconer, the Labour Peer, who proposed a bill on assisted dying back in 2014 and remains one of its biggest proponents in the UK Parliament. And he told us he had an issue with being allowed to speak four-termly ill patients and he told us much to the BBC production team shooting this documentary. Obviously, it being a BBC documentary, I was certainly when I started quite confident it would be a balanced debate where my voice would be heard, but other voices would also be represented.

So when I came to give my interview, I was interviewed by Liz Carr, I think, is the prime presenter in it. I said, well, I'm really keen, obviously, that the real voice that should be heard in all of this is not mine, but those who were terminally ill. She said to me, oh, no, no, no, we're not interviewing anybody who's terminally ill because she took the view that it was exploitative, was her word, to have people who were terminally ill expressing their view on this, which I thought was absolutely extraordinary. I tried to persuade her then and there that she should, she had to have somebody who was terminally ill in order to get a balanced view. I then emailed the BBC. I said I didn't think it was balanced if this is what was going to happen. And I left it there, but I hope that they have got somebody who is terminally ill.

And by terminally ill, I mean somebody who has got six months or less to live. as a result of their illness to express their views on it because they don't have that person, then they haven't got the voice represented. I have actually just received their response. Sadly, I can confirm that they didn't go and heed your advice and speak to anyone who is terminally ill. We've since spoken to the BBC,

and we are not devaluing the perspectives in this documentary. We even encourage people to watch it themselves. But we invite you to do so keeping in mind the missing voices, given they are the most heavily affected by the laws currently in place. Here's a message from a spokesperson for the BBC. This is a personal view documentary authored and narrated by Liz Carr, in which she argues why we shouldn't legalise assisted suicide. There have been a range of documentaries on this subject,

but hardly any from the perspective of disabled people like her who are afraid of these laws. This film offers a rarely heard insight into this difficult and complex debate. And in the film, she meets a range of voices on both sides of the debate, including leading voices pushing for a change in the law. That brings to a close the main section of today's episode. Jenny, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been eye-opening to hear your perspective on this.

And before we leave you, is there anything that you want, to tell listeners that listeners can get involved in or any leaving message that you want to give us. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate being part of the podcast. It's great to hear media, becoming involved and offering us a chance to speak because we do feel that our voices aren't heard.

Everybody can get involved, emailing their MP, talking to each other in the pub. Our society needs to talk about death more in a positive way, a way of celebrating our lives. That's what we do at the end. And finding a way to become a little bit more comfortable. with the idea. Now, Sarah, before you leave us, is there any thing that you want to plug to our listeners a way that our listeners could get involved? Oh, thank you. I've enjoyed it so much.

If you feel strongly that the law should change, then you could sign Paola's open letter calling for parliamentary time. Both the leader of the opposition, Kyr Starma, and the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, have agreed that this should be debated and should be given parliamentary time. but we still need the pressure to be kept up. So if you feel strongly, please do sign. We'll put a link to that petition in the show notes. We're about to take a break, but after the break, we'll be bringing you a montage of some of the voices

missing from the mainstream media on this topic before attempting to have a more joyful conversation about death. Look, We're not here just to tell you what the mainstream media isn't giving you. We're here to give it. So before we wrap up the show, it's time to platform some of the most important and most overlooked people in the story, the ones living it. So I'm Kit and I'm 38 years old. And how are you today, Kit?

I'm not too bad. I've got stage four breast cancer. So for me, every day is always going to be a slight challenge. But today's one of the good days. I dream of a future where assisted dying is actually an option for people like me that we get the option to die how we want. Why is that so important to you? What might you want that you currently can't ask for?

I want to fall asleep in my husband's arms and not wake up. I don't want to die lying on a hospital bed. I don't want to die drugged out of my head. I actually lost my voice because I couldn't stop screaming from the amount of pain that I was in. I want the ability to just say goodbye to the people that I love and then just cuddle up and go to sleep. The fact is that's not allowed under our current system.

If you were speaking to someone who opposed your right to and assisted death. What would you say? There's a poem that I absolutely love called Invictus. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. I think it's going to be one of the defining battles of the 21st century. The sort of final clashes, so to speak, between the idea that the state or a church or another body can control you or the idea that you've got individual liberty and freedom. Oh, I sound like an American. As soon as you got the diagnosis,

he said to me, if it gets too much, I'll just shoot myself. But how is that for you and your family when he did actually do what he said he was going to do? It was horrible. It was really, really awful. If a sister died was a thing, right? Me, my sister's our family, we could have all come to terms with it.

He wouldn't have had to have sat in the back garden and blowing his face off. My sister wouldn't have had to have seen it. Gareth, you said to me what your father did, it's not suicide, but under UK law, it is. Why do you think that it's important that we distinguish suicide from what your father did? It isn't suicide. It's like a mercy, if anything, you know. My dad didn't shorten his life. He shortened his death. What did you make of Dignitas? Did it feel safe? Did it feel trustworthy?

They are lovely when you get in touch. They are fabulous. it is such a change. For once you find people who can speak to you and speak to you seriously. The safeguards are there. They do film it all in Switzerland because it has to go to the Swiss authorities and also Pat had to repeat his name

and that he knew what he was doing. If he hadn't have wanted to at any stage, he didn't have to go through with it. And when you got back, you had an unpleasant surprise, didn't you, Anne? Will you tell us about that? I was by myself in my house. The police came to interview me

and it was quite frightening really. The police did decide that it wasn't in the public interest to prosecute me. I couldn't help but think what a waste of their time, resources, efforts when they could have been

protecting, helping somebody else who really need it. Assisted dying was debated in Parliament and I was outraged. Some of our politicians were so clearly under the opinion, palliative care was the answer. Palliative care would not have helped out. When you're getting short of air, no amount of pain control will actually fix that for you. That's not a pain issue.

It's a suffocation issue. She was lucid throughout almost her entire ordeal. In prisons around the world, one of the torture methods. that used is waterboarding. It simulates drowning. It simulates suffocation. Maybe it goes on for hours, I don't know. This experience that Anne went through

took four days and four nights gasping, fighting for every last breath. That's even worse than waterboarding. By the way, I get a little bit emotional sometimes. I'm sorry about this. That's okay. Two years now, and you would think it would be a bit easier, but it's not. And indeed, I have come to terms with Anne's death, the fact that I've lost her.

I think I'm coping quite well with that. What I'm really struggling with Matilda is I haven't come to terms of the way in which she died. You can hear these speaker stories in full if you scroll down our feed to the episode titled Terminal Illness and the Right to Die. And we bring you an update. To those who are moved by her words, we're saddened to update you that Kit, the first speaker, has died since we recorded that interview. We offer our heartfelt condolences to her beloved husband, Philip. Well, just before we wrap up, we've always aimed to leave our listeners with something to talk about.

So each week, we're going to give you something we've noticed in which we've noticed in which we've been. weekly news to take home and discuss further. Yay, homework. Everyone likes homework, right? Love homework. For this take home, we're joined by a comedian, actress and writer. If you came to Media Storm's first ever live show at the London podcast festival, you may recognize her. She made her name with her one-woman show, Elypsis, which was performed across Edinburgh and London, a comedy show about grief and grieving. Like all the best things, it is both sad. and funny, we laughed, we cried. Welcome, Isabel Farah. Hi. I feel like people are always so shy after they get an introduction like that and they're like, hi. I think it's just a bit of a weird,

like, oh yeah, that is what, it's like removed from my own body. Yeah. Well, Isabel, we opened this episode reflecting on the recent death of the amazing Chris Hallinger. Now, another huge part of her legacy was opening up the conversation on death. And today's episode is all the more relevant because this week is Dying Matters Awareness Week. It's a week to ask questions like why have only half of British adults written a will and of those who haven't,

half say they're unlikely to do so in future because it's too morbid. I haven't written a will. Have you written a will? I've not written a will. I've looked into it. I've got a really, really big pile of unused headshots that someone can have.

Shotgun, the shrine, the shrine, Deisbel. The fact that no one has this will, I mean, does all of this tell us that death as an everyday subject needs to be way more present in our conversation than it currently is? I don't know whether it's like exclusively British or whether it's different cultures

address things differently. Other cultures talk very differently about death compared to stiff upper lip Brits. I can speak from a large Indian family. First of all, because the family is large. You've got people dying on a more regular basis. My sister and I have like a running joke in our family and I don't know if it's just in like all Indian families, but we basically, when we go to a family gathering, we are time to see how long it is before somebody mentions

another person that's died. Like I think our record is we got about two minutes in once. My grandma literally uses funerals as like the main part of her social life now. It's a good place to catch up I get that. It's like you have the season of weddings. At some point you have the season of funerals. I mean, you turned, you put your grief into art. Did that help you? I think but my cousin died by suicide at the beginning of 2017 and I started writing the show mid-2018. So I was sort of a year and a half through and by that point I think I was through the very worst of the initial stages. When you, I think as a stand up, you get a really good feel for like how an audiences receiving what you're saying to them. And so I felt that at work a bit as well. So

that you say, oh, my cousins just died and you can feel people's sphinxes clenching a little bit. And then you say, and they go, oh, good. How? What? What? How? And you're like, oh, God, I'm going to make this even worse. And you're like, it was a suicide. And they're just like, no. But realizing that quite quickly and going like, oh, this is what I can say for people to be all right with it. And this is how I can make myself feel okay. So it's not that it helped, but it really helped me recognize how we deal with this as a society. I'm really interested, you know, you didn't just put it into art, you put it into comedy. I mean, how do you go about finding that the comedy in such, something that we traditionally see is so tragic?

And where did you find that comedy to be? And why did you think it was important to do it with comedy as well? There was one thing that really stuck out in the first few weeks after my cousin died, that my mum, I was with my mum, and we were sitting down and she was in a real, state. My cousin was quite close to my family. I have to like be clear about that because a lot of British people don't really know their cousins, but she used to come and stay with us quite a lot. And my mum was in a real state about it. And she was like, this about we got so much to do before the funeral. Like we don't have an urn. And I was like, mum, we can buy the urn for her ashes afterwards. Like I don't, you're always worrying about stuff like three weeks

ahead. We'll put the ashes somewhere safe. I'm sure that the crematorium or the funeral parlor can keep them for us and then we'll find the right vessel to put them somewhere or bury them or whatever and she was like no isabel and earn to make tea in in the village hall afterwards it's just these tiny conversations that you can't like it's so hard to even articulate like how ridiculous that moment was for me in stand-up because people are like but your cousin died why are you being funny about it and I basically wanted the reason to put that line into a show. Isabel, thank you so much for joining us.

Where can people follow you and do you have anything to plug? You can follow me on Instagram and with dying one Twitter and the new one TikTok, and either of which I'm on loads, at Irresponsibel. I have a podcast called Conversations in Company, which is one with a charity called Suicide and Co. And it's me and Ben West talking about different aspects of sorts of. suicide bereavement, which is serious. And then I also am doing a new show at the Edinburgh Fringe,

and I'm previewing it at the moment, and it's called Nebuchadnezzar, and it's about the king of ancient Babylon, with no real historical fact, just to be clear if you're a history baron. Cool. Seriousness and nonsense. We love it. Yeah, thank you. That's it. Thank you for listening. Here's a shout out to our Patreon supporters.

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MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire. and follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show via at MediaStormPod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify.