Grand Exit

In this episode, Tamatha and Chelsea trace the “invisible threads” that weave through lineage, friendship, work and love, exploring the ways we are tethered to those who came before us and those we’ll never meet. This conversation moves between the deeply personal and the expansively metaphysical.  Along the way, the two friends ask: What parts of connection are already alive in us? How do we hono...

What happens when something beautiful is complete — but you’re still afraid to let it go? And then what happens when you do it anyway? In this episode of Grand Exit , Tamatha and Chelsea sit down with Jesse Israel —  former music executive, founder of The Big Quiet , and now leadership coach and speaker — to explore the birth, life, and conscious ending of a movement that helped thousands of peopl...

What makes a moment a ritual —and how can those rituals help us live, love, grieve, and remember more fully?  In this conversation with Megan Sheldon, cultural mythologist, lifecycle celebrant, and co-founder of the Be Ceremonial app, Tamatha and Chelsea explore the art of transforming ordinary acts into intentional, symbolic actions that carry deep meaning. This episode is full of creative, deepl...

What if death wasn’t an abstract fear to avoid — but a relationship you could nurture?  In this workshop-style episode, Tamatha invites you into the “bus lane” — her metaphor for living with the daily awareness of mortality — to explore what changes when you treat your own death as a member of your inner circle. Through guided exercises, she and Chelsea unpack how your closest relationships shape...

This week on Grand Exit , Tamatha and Chelsea are profoundly moved by Myra Sack—author of Fifty-Seven Fridays: Losing Our Daughter, Finding Our Way, and founder of the nonprofit Emotion—for a conversation about what it means to live in the deep. After her daughter Havi was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs and given 12–18 months to live, Myra and her husband created a weekly ritual called “Shabbirthday,” c...

How do you know when you’re truly alive—not just happy, but whole ? In this episode of Grand Exit , Tamatha and Chelsea unpack the “vital signs” of living fully—not the medical kind, but the emotional, spiritual, and relational markers that tell us we’re awake to our own lives.  You’ll hear: - Why delight —especially in the joy of others—can be a powerful indicator of vitality - How “shoulds,” ego...

This week on Grand Exit , Tamatha and Chelsea are joined by Dr. Jared Rubenstein — a pediatric palliative care doctor who brings clarity, humor, and heart to conversations people all too often avoid , even in the moments they matter most.  Together, the three explore medicine’s blind spots, cultural weirdness with death, and how care changes when we slow down and truly listen . You can expect to h...

In this tender, funny, and deeply personal episode of Grand Exit, Tamatha and Chelsea introduce their moms—Susan and Tammi—for the very first time! What unfolds is a conversation that spans decades: from giving birth during turbulent world events, to raising daughters who challenge and change them, to the shifting tides as the parent-child roles begin to reverse. You can expect to hear: - How they...

This episode reflects on End Well 2025 – an only-of-its-kind conference about death and life – through Grand Exit’s lens of legacy. Rather than a conference recap, you can expect to hear: 5 takeaways that stayed with us — words that illuminate how tenderness becomes strength, culture becomes medicine for grief, silence causes suffering, and connection matters more than getting it “right.”  An expl...

In the Season 3 opener of Grand Exit , Tamatha and Chelsea dive headfirst into the tension between order and c haos , finding inspiration in the myth of Dionysus—the god of wine, revelry, and joyful disruption.  From birth plans that laugh at our need for neatness, to cancer treatment decisions that trade certainty for quality of life, the two friends explore what it really means to loosen our gri...

They’re baaaack ! Tamatha Thomas-Haase and Chelsea Leader Gold – two friends traveling the life-death-legacy continuum from very different, and always changing, vantage points – bring you a third season of their lovechild: Grand Exit. This season, they’re hanging with life’s polarities – where joy and grief trade places without warning , and where endings often double as beginnings in disguise.  T...

When Nikki Boyer’s best friend Molly Kochan was diagnosed with stage four cancer, she didn’t just face death—she rewrote how to live. Their journey together became the hit podcast Dying for Sex , now an Emmy-nominated FX series streaming on Hulu, and a testament to friendship in its rawest, realest form. In this deeply personal (and dream-come-true!) conversation, Nikki joins Tamatha and Chelsea t...

In preparation to introduce Season 3, Tamatha and Chelsea bridge the liminal space between, with a snapshot of where they are on this life-death-legacy continuum, now , and what kinds of legacy thoughts this time is eliciting. Big announcements, big updates, and as always, big reasons to let this conversation open doors of its own in your life, with people who matter most to you . . . . Consider t...

In this heartfelt conclusion to Season 2, Tamatha and Chelsea reflect on the journey of the past nine episodes—and the life season they’ve gotten to walk alongside you.  With honesty, giggles and a few tears, they open up about where their conversations on mortality have led them, how Tamatha’s cancer and Chelsea’s hopes of starting a family shape their present, and what it means to carry legacy f...

In this episode, Tamatha & Chelsea are in deep and meaningful conversation with Carla Fernandez about what it takes to grieve well in a society that refuses to make eye contact with someone in the thick of it.  Carla is the author of Renegade Grief: A Guide To The Wild Ride of Life After Loss (Simon & Schuster) and co-founder of The Dinner Party, an organization connecting young adult grie...

If our legacy is a sum of all our parts, then that includes our biggest and brightest ideas…our beliefs , and how we piece them together.  In this episode, Tamatha and Chelsea open the floor to listeners to share their ideas on what happens after life. What happens to a person after they die? Is it the end ? If not, then what ? Tune in to explore the source of some of these vivid and inspiring bel...

In this episode, Chelsea and Tamatha are joined by four very special others who’ve never been in conversation together before – for a collective, existential dive into our own belonging, and how that informs what we extend to others.  In our shared exploration of the role belonging plays in legacy, we’ll answer questions like:  Where/what do you come from ? Where/when do you feel like you belong ?...

In this workshop-style episode, Tamatha and Chelsea take you through a sensory activity meant to offer a fresh perspective on how taking time to imagine the elements of your good death hands off to a better life and clearer legacy.  It’s an invitation to dream of your dying - the moment that connects your living to your living on - in rich, vivid color for the benefit of enhancing your living, now...

In this heartfelt episode, dedicated to Chelsea’s dad, Tamatha and Chelsea discuss the complex emotional experience of caring for an aging parent – or really, anyone you love.  They travel through themes like:  What it feels like to care for someone who is no longer who you always knew them to be Living fully vs. being alive How legacies can become intertwined The art of finding and noticing joy i...

Tamatha and Chelsea are joined by Merle Saferstein, Legacy Educator, Author, and perhaps most importantly, Grandy’s mentor. Together, they explore living (and remembering) with intention, and the different lenses through which people assign meaning to their lives. With powerful anecdotes and introspective questions, this episode invites listeners to rethink their relationship with life and legacy....

You know when someone says, "I'm living the dream." What's supposed to happen after that? This episode, a retrospective, is a heartfelt reminder that dreams don’t just end when they come true — they evolve. In it, you can expect to: Travel with Tamatha through the emotional journey landing her dream of attending daughter Harper’s high school graduation Consider the evolving nature of aspirations E...

Join Tamatha and Chelsea as they kick off the second season of Grand Exit, as they share their update on ever-evolving relationships with time, planning, and hope, tackling life’s (very built-in) unpredictabilities, parenthood (and trying for it), and the emotional complexities of both giving and receiving care. Discover the magic that surrounds meaningful conversations about life, death and legac...

Re-enter “the conversation” with Tamatha Thomas-Haase - a fierce public health professional living with metastatic breast cancer - and Chelsea Leader Gold -- a primary caretaker on the verge of starting a family. This new season, an absolute (and unlikely!) gift, has two friends - in extremely different seasons of life - diving deep into conversations about living and dying, centering death as the...

Join Tamatha and Chelsea, in the the last deep-diving conversation of Grand Exit's very first season, in considering the many facets of 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆. This episode takes on: what home means, what 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 has to do with it, and where it fits with living, dying, and living on. The two touch on the feeling of being "at home" in a place, what makes it so, which places have hit it home for them and - perhaps - wh...

This episode features John Haase, Tamatha's husband, who's been in the financial services industry for the past 20 years. (You'll hear that in the way he shows up in this one!) Perhaps more prominently, John's also the CFO the Haase family, a role he plays differently these days as he prepares for his wife's eventual death and takes on more parts of parenting their daughter, all while also working...