Advertise on podcast: The Adventures of Memento Mori

Do you believe in destiny? In the season finale, Moss's journey at Bellevue comes to an end with the realization that the path he never could have predicted is the only one that could have happened. But just when the path behind him starts to make sense, a phone rings and the next adventure begins. Please join us for the final episode of Season 3 of The Adventures of Memento Mori. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

What does a dying man's dream of coconut ice cream, an incarcerated high school reunion, and a Marine getting dragged face-first across a lake have in common? In the penultimate episode of the season, D.S. Moss confronts this riddle with the help of his Zen Master mentor. Now nearly finished with his chaplain internship at Bellevue Hospital during the global pandemic, Moss notices something that keeps showing up in the patient's room that he can't quite put his finger on. That something turns out to be the most obvious hidden thing that we all share. Please join us for another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

Moss makes the rookie mistake of thinking a chaplain's job is to absorb the suffering of strangers. Soak it up like a sponge, room after room, story after story. Sounds noble until four months in, when the weight of it starts showing up in places you didn't invite it: your shoulders, your sleepless nights, your ability to be present with the people you love. So how do you sit with someone in their worst moment without letting it move in and take up permanent residence? How do you let energy flow through you instead of collecting inside you? In this episode, Zen Master Trudi teaches Moss the secret technique of flushing and reveals the true healing power of a prayer. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

Does refusing to face a difficult reality become the thing that saves you from it? Or is denial what ultimately takes you down? Moss is three months into his chaplaincy and handed a new framework for caring: hope, meaning, and connection. But when he walks into the rooms at Bellevue, hope is the one box that won't check. The harder he reaches for it, the more fraudulent it feels. How do you project hope onto someone's life when everything about their situation tells you not to? In this episode, a roadside sign, a nun's prayer, and an ostrich named Amadeus force Moss to ask whether denial is actually a tool and hope is nothing more than a weak wish. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

What does a Nazi, an ancient prophecy, and a pack of gum have in common? When beautiful philosophy meets overwhelming suffering, what holds you together when you're falling apart? How do you practice compassion when you're faking it—when you're standing in a room you're supposed to care about, but you feel nothing? Moss learns the difference between an open heart and a bleeding heart, discovers he's connected to the people he despises, and finds out why trying to save the world will destroy you. In this episode, an ancient warrior prophecy offers two weapons for facing darkness—but only if you can wield them both.

Moss thought the hardest part of being a chaplain would be sitting with the dying. He was wrong. It was contextualizing people's suffering. At Bellevue, he meets a man so broken by life he swallowed razor blades just to get medical treatment for hemorrhoids—a man convinced God is actively torturing him, questioning how he could possibly love a God that doesn't love him back. Having experienced hundreds of stories like this herself, Zen Master Trudi reveals an ancient text that offers no resolution, no silver lining, only brutal validation. In this episode, Moss learns the chaplain's job isn't to fix suffering—it's to help people find the constellation that makes sense of their chaos, even when that constellation reflects back their darkest truths.

Faced with the daunting task of responding to his first pager call, D.S. Moss confronts fear and uncertainty, struggling to define his role as a humanist chaplain without religious frameworks. Zen Master Trudi offers insights on authenticity and human connection, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability and presence. Through encounters with patients, Moss grapples with questions of authority, identity, and confidence, ultimately finding power in his beginner's mind and the simple act of being human.   Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

WE'RE BACK! The last time you heard from D.S. Moss, he was in Hawaii taking surfing lessons and contemplating taking a giant leap of faith to become a Humanist Chaplain? But what in the f*ck is a chaplain? And can you be one without believing in God? In Season 3, Moss takes us back to 2021 to his chaplain internship at Bellevue Hospital during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic as he searches for the answers to those questions.  What begins as an expectation to to chaplain the dying transforms into something far more profound. Part documentary and part dharma talk, this season follows me through the vulnerable margins of society where life, death,  spirituality, humanity, and belief intersect in unexpected ways. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

TThis episode is about Texas, a boy and his dog and the unthinkable and inevitable decision that comes to almost all pet owners. D.S. Moss confronts "How do you know when it's time to make the decision to say goodbye?"  to a four-legged family member. If you're a person with a pet, know a person with a pet, or just like a sad 'ol country song - this episode confronts the toughest conversation yet and provides insights for those that must eventually face that same decision.

Ever written an obituary? Yeah, neither had D.S. Moss. In this episode, Moss is asked to write a memorial to his grandfather with the challenge of a limited word count. How do you capture a person's life in two paragraphs? And, what exactly is the purpose of an obit? Is it a matter of record or a legacy statement? To make it even more awkward, his grandfather is actually still alive and will be proofreading. Worried he'll f**k it up, Moss enlists a professional NY Times journalist to help write his first obituary.

The three-part series into religions and their beliefs in the afterlife comes to a close with the Abrahamic traditions. The conversation begins with NYU's Islamic Chaplain where Moss revisits the draw to change his life and become a chaplain. Still faithless, he talks with a mystic Rabbi who literally wrote the book on the Jewish beliefs in the afterlife.  In this surprise ending, Moss takes the biggest leap of faith yet.

The adventure into the afterlife continues with Hindu and Vodou. In this episode, D.S. Moss sits down with a former Vedic monk and a bottle of mezcal to discuss the divine consciousness and taking monumental leaps of faith. Then Moss heads down to the city of New Orleans to chat with a Vodou (Voodoo) priestess where he discovers things are rarely as they seem.

While on his imagined death bed, Zen Buddhist Chaplain Trudi Hirsh-Abramson suggests D.S. Moss would make a good chaplain. And since his most significant life decisions are made from peer pressure, dares and flattery, he is actually considering it. The problem is - and it's a big problem - Moss is religionless. In a three part mini-series, Moss sits down with a priest, pastor, priestess, monk, imam and rabbi to explore their religious belief systems, views on the afterlife and if, in fact, he can find a religion of his own. He begins with Jesus and the Buddha.

After discovering that the fear of death is the worm at the core of the human condition, D.S. Moss stands quivering on the threshold of psychological oblivion. He figures the best way out of this state of anxiety is to actually experience his own passing (obviously). In this episode, Moss crawls into his deathbed and is taken to total body failure with the hope that upon return he'll have a new perspective on life.

D.S. Moss comes back from the jungle for more adventures in mortality. Life coach turned death coach, Devin Martin, gets filled in on Moss' post-psychedelic reflections. This leads Moss to the ultimate question: how to live life with psychological anxiety of knowing you're going to die? To help answer this question, Moss gets social psychology professor and egghead crush Sheldon Solomon on the horn to discuss if the fear of death truly is the worm at humanity's core.