A Conversation with Gail Rubin, The Doyenne of Death®, a Pioneer in Death Education
About this episode
Gail Rubin discusses her work in death education and the importance of end-of-life conversations.
Gail Rubin, CT, The Doyenne of Death®, is a pioneering death educator based in New Mexico. A doyenne is a woman considered senior in a group who knows a lot about a particular subject. Gail is a Certified Thanatologist (a death and grief educator) and speaker who uses humor and films to get end-of-life conversations started. She’s the author of the award-winning books A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die, Kicking the Bucket List: 100 Downsizing and Organizing Things to Do Before You Die , Hail and Farewell: Cremation Ceremonies, Templates and Tips, and The Before I Die Festival in a Box. Her next book, 98.6 Mortality Movies to See Before You Die , was published April 2026. She is also the coordinator of the award-winning Before I Die New Mexico Festival, a pioneer of the Death Cafe movement in the United States, and host of the Mortality Movies TV series and Mortality Movie Night events. She’s a two-time TEDx speaker. Her first talk in 2015, “A Good Goodbye,” focused on the importance of starting end-of-life conversations before there’s a death in the family. The second talk in 2025, “We offer our pets a good death, why not our people?” is about…
People in this episode
Host: Maria Leonard Olsen
Guest: Gail Rubin
Topics covered
- death education
- end-of-life conversations
- humor in grief
- funeral planning
- pioneering death education
Keywords
- death education
- funeral planning
- end-of-life
- Gail Rubin
- humor in grief
- TEDx speaker
- mortality movies
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Before I Die New Mexico Festival, Association for Death Education and Counseling
Books & works: A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die, Kicking the Bucket List: 100 Downsizing and Organizing Things to Do Before You Die, Hail and Farewell: Cremation Ceremonies, Templates and Tips, 98.6 Mortality Movies to See Before You Die
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