Seminar Schedule 2025-2026
October 23, 2025, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House)
The Harm of Death for Animals, Plants, and Fungi
Jeff Sebo, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies; Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law; Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection; Direction of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy; and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program, New York University
Description: Does death harm nonhuman animals as much as it harms humans, and does it harm plants, fungi, and other living beings at all? The answers depend in part on ethical issues such as: Why is death bad? Is it bad because it causes suffering and frustration at present, because it deprives the subject of happiness and satisfaction in the future, or for another reason? They also depend on scientific issues such as: To what extent do animals, plants, fungi, and other living beings have the kinds of desires, preferences, and psychological continuity over time that create vulnerability to the harm of death? Join us for a wide ranging guided conversation about the moral significance of death across species.
November 20, 2025, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House)
Unpacking: Dead/Alive, Dying/Living
Jerry Nessel, MD, Associate Member, Columbia University Seminars
Description: 1. Some comments about the four above words from 32 years as a seminar associate member.
2. Changes that could result from AI's exponential growth, Ray Kurzweil's Law of Acceleration Returns, ASI, AGI, Longevity Escape Velocity and The Singularity; And, to only mention a few other technologies like robots, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, gene therapy, CRISPR gene editing, Synthetic biology, brain-computer interfaces, regenerative medicine (stem cells, organ regeneration), anti-aging and longevity biotech., wearable and implantable health sensors, advanced prosthetics and exoskeletons, lab-grown meat, vertical farming, cellular agriculture and quantum computing.
3. Increasing interest in health, longevity and understanding aging.
4. Wellness, interactive model vs. pathology (sickness), physical, molecular model.
5. Robert Lustig, M.D. listed 8 diseases of Metabolic Syndrome and 8 that aren't diseases and don`t have any medicines except diet. One of the non-diseases is mitochondrial dysfunction. Martin Picard, PhD viewed mitochondria not only as a factor in energy and the production of important substance but also important in ways of communication. Christopher Palmer, M.D. feel that brain energy has mitochondria at its core. Lustig discussed obesity in diabetes as a balance of calories in and out/stored. He feel the insulin/carbohydrate model is better and the ROS/mitochondria is even better.
6. Lustig develops a model explaining metabolic syndrome, technology, processed food, sugar, reduced sleep, drug use, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, drug addiction, depression, stress, pleasure and happiness with the brain.
7. There are many opinions of how to increase longevity. I do not give medical advise but for my own life as explained in the introduction, I try living instead of dying, having hope and optimism in this presentation.
December 11, 2025, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House)
Measuring Consumer Preferences for New Methods of Disposition
Tanya D. Marsh, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Professor of Law, Wake Forest School of Law
Description: The landscape of death care in the United States has been undergoing a significant transformation over the past fifty years. The most notable change has been the increasing popularity of cremation, a shift that has had a profound impact on the industry and societal attitudes towards death. As we look to the future, it's clear that further innovation and evolving preferences are shaping the way we approach death care. What will the next fifty years bring? To help answer that question, an academic survey has been conducted by Wake Forest Law School for each of the past two years which delves into consumer preferences in death care. The annual study aims to assess openness and interest in six methods of disposition: casket burial, cremation, green burial, alkaline hydrolysis, natural organic reduction, and donation to science.
February 24, 2026, 6:30pm - 8:30pm (Zoom)
Beyond grief: Earth emotions at the edge of collapse
Glenn Albrecht, Honorary Associate in the School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Retired Professor of Sustainability, Walter Murdoch University
Description: There is now widespread use of the emotional term 'grief' in connection with the response to the state of the Earth (enviro-grief, eco-grief, climate grief, reef grief, good grief, deep grief, animal grief, etc.). Grief occupies the extreme negative end of the psychoterratic spectrum of Earth emotions, alongside other extreme emotional states like global dread, tierratrauma, terrafurie, solastalgia, and forms of non-sexual necrophilia. However, it is, in my view, grief that has become a defining emotional response to actual and projected biophysical change. In this talk I explore the limits of grief in ‘environmental’ contexts and tentatively examine the issue of “what comes after grief?” I suggest a new concept, ‘mersis,’ is needed to describe an emotional state beyond grief that takes us to the inevitability and nothingness of self-imposed death. As 'we' do not ever wish to go there, I have created ‘mersis’ in order to preemptively destroy its emergence.
March 26, 2026, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House) - Rescheduled for academic year 2026-27.
"Memento Mori, Amor Mundi"
The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Congregational & Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary
Description: To be mindful of death and to love the world describe a dual impetus for many engaged in more ecologically sustainable and communally-engaged deathcare practices. Yet, to love the world is to grieve it in an era of climate collapse and ecological devastation, as our common fate is bound up with the wellbeing of other-than-human companions in a web of life on the brink. This talk and the ensuing conversation will engage in theological reflection on the place of the corpse in the larger web of life, foregrounding ecological theology and ethics in the development and implementation of deathcare practices, with an eye toward the ways the corpse becomes a window into our relationship with the ecological web.
April 16, 2026, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House)
Re-thinking Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) with Green-Wood Cemetery and in a Larger Socio-Cultural Context
Jean F. Bonhotal, Senior Extension Associate, School of Integrative Plant Science, Soil, and Crop Sciences Section, Cornell University
Description: TBD
May 5, 2026, 7:15pm EST (at Faculty House)
End‑of‑Life Communication in a Changing World: Digital Legacies, Divided Families, and Collective Loss
Ágnes Zana MA. Ph.D. associate professor, Semmelweis University Faculty of Medicine Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Description: End‑of‑life (EOL) communication has undergone significant change in the past two decades. While the core questions of meaning, connection, and decision‑making remain, the contexts in which these conversations unfold have shifted rapidly. This talk explores how recent technological, cultural, and societal developments are reshaping the ways individuals, families, and communities speak about dying, loss, and legacy.
At the personal level, digital legacies—from deathbed recordings to post‑mortem social media presence—are creating new rituals and new tensions within families. At the family‑system level, increasing political polarization complicates communication and EOL decision‑making, often requiring new tools to support dialogue across ideological divides. At the societal level, public narratives surrounding large‑scale loss—such as war, climate‑related disasters, or other collective crises—shape how communities understand grief and how these narratives echo back into private lives.
By connecting these layers, the presentation offers a meta‑level view of how EOL communication is evolving and what these shifts mean for clinicians, families, and communities today.
June 10, 2026, Noon - 2:00 PM EST (at Faculty House)
Special Session with Faculty and Students from the University of Southern California “Legacy League: A Facilitated Discussion about Death in Our Lives”
Mandi Zucker, LSW, CT, Executive Director , End-of-Life Choices New York
Description: TBD