Phillip Adams feels like death has been following him his whole life, making him perfect to chair this examination of how we approach the ethics of mortality. When it comes to death Julian Burnside is with Woody Allen: he doesn’t want to be there when it happens, but also wants to know he’ll get good reviews. Novelist Amanda Lohrey says that death becomes easier as we age because we feel like we have lived a good life. Tony Coady, who Adams characterises as “our token god botherer”, Tony Coady thinks we should look at “how our lives had gone” rather than a notion of repentance or punishment.
The conversation hotly debates euthanasia, religion and the possibility of an afterlife in the first of our Melbourne International Arts Festival events.