playnext.fm

The Skeptic Metaphysicians | A Pragmatic Guide to Spiritual Awakening, Metaphysics & Enlightenment · Will & Karen | Hosts of The Skeptic Metaphysicians - Awakening Seekers of Spiritual Growth & Expanded Consciousness

Should We Fear Death? An Honest Conversation with Hospice Nurse Julie McFadden

March 3, 2026·45 min·3 clips
About a month before death, most people start seeing deceased loved ones who come to comfort them and say they are coming to get you soon.
1. The Skeptic Metaphysicians hosts Will and Karen interview hospice nurse Julie McFadden about overcoming the fear of death. 2. McFadden worked as an ICU nurse for eight years before transitioning to hospice and palliative care; she has been featured in Newsweek, The New York Post, USA Today, and The Atlantic. 3. The episode's central thesis is that natural death is not painful, and that the body has built-in mechanisms to make dying mostly comfortable. 4. McFadden explains that in the ICU she witnessed traumatic deaths because medical interventions prevented the body from dying naturally, which prompted her shift to hospice work. 5. After about a year in hospice, she observed that most dying bodies follow the same predictable pattern, leading her to describe natural death as 'beautiful' and comparable to watching a baby being born. 6. Host Karen notes her fear of dying is focused on the process — the physical pain — while host Will says his fear centers on what happens after death, illustrating the two distinct anxieties McFadden addresses throughout the episode. 7. McFadden describes 'visioning': starting roughly a month before death, most hospice patients report seeing deceased family members, friends, and pets who visit to say they are coming to get them soon. 8. She distinguishes visioning from hallucinations or delirium, stating that patients experiencing visioning are alert, oriented, and not in hypoxia, and that the phenomenon is documented in hospice educational materials given to families. 9. McFadden says that 100 percent of the time, if it is genuine visioning, the patient feels comforted rather than frightened — and that patients who were not at peace with dying often become accepting after visioning begins. 10. She observes no meaningful difference between religious and non-religious patients in the prevalence of visioning, and notes that even atheists who vision tend to attribute it to the body protecting itself while still finding comfort in it. 11. Regarding whether the soul leaves the body, McFadden says she has never seen anything physical but describes the room feeling 'sacred,' 'expanded,' and 'eternal' in the final moments, with a distinct change in atmosphere when the last breath is taken. 12. She describes the final weeks and months of dying as a gradual functional decline: sleeping more, eating and drinking less, reduced social activity, losing the ability to walk outside, then to the bathroom, then independently at all. 13. McFadden explains the biochemistry of the final stage: rising calcium levels cause extreme fatigue, the body enters ketosis from complete cessation of eating and drinking, which releases endorphins and dulls pain receptors. 14. She states that people do not actually feel hungry or thirsty as they stop eating and drinking near death, and that they feel better the more dehydrated they become — a counterintuitive finding she calls 'miraculous.' 15. McFadden emphasizes that death itself does not cause pain; pain near death comes from the specific disease, not from dying, and that this is a widespread misconception she aims to correct. 16. She describes what 'actively dying' looks like — fully unconscious, eyes open, mouth open, altered breathing patterns, skin color changes, gurgling breath — and explains these result from muscle relaxation, not distress. 17. McFadden notes that family members, and even untrained healthcare workers, frequently misread these signs as suffering, which is why she created her educational channel. 18. The conversation is warm and informal, with Will and Karen sharing personal fears and losses; McFadden is direct and clinical while remaining empathetic, and the hosts frequently interject with relatable reactions. 19. People who have recently lost a loved one, or who fear the process of dying rather than what follows, will find the most value in this episode. 20. Listeners looking for spiritual certainty about an afterlife, or those who prefer not to hear clinical descriptions of physical death, may find the episode less useful.

As heard by us

A hospice-grounded conversation that faces death plainly and leaves room for spiritual possibility.

Death is the subject, but the conversation treats it with nerves, a little humor, and plainspoken curiosity about what hospice workers see at the end of life.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If death thoughts keep ambushing you, this hospice-and-palliative-care guest brings the room back to earth.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
Listen to the show on
Apple PodcastsSpotify
Play clips from this episodeMore from The Skeptic Metaphysicians | A Pragmatic Guide to Spiritual Awakening, Metaphysics & Enlightenment