How do we mind our mortality without being overwhelmed with morbid thoughts?

Stoically, says philosopher William Irvine. But he says Stoicism doesn't require us to be unemotional about death and loss. Irvine says the Stoics used thoughts about mortality to make our lives more joyful.

Although people have long been curious about the experience of death, the science of the question is still relatively young.

Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel is one of the leading near death experience researchers. He says all this time studying death has got him curious about his own end. 

"There is nothing romantic about death," Christian Wiman says.

The poet and editor of Poetry Magazine has been battling blood cancer for years. In his most recent book of poems he breathes life into writing about mortality.