Doxit No 20 - Katie Engelhart's new book The Inevitable

Exit Podcast - The Good Death

Exit first met Katie Englehart about 5 years ago when she was part of the production team behind the Vice documentary, Time to Die.

After 4 years of filming, Vice had footage on just about everyone that Philip Nitschke had met. It was via this immersion that Engelhart would change mediums, and bring the stories of 3 Exit members into her written word.

The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die is as weighty as an academic tomb, but as engaging and easy to read as a popular biography.

The strength of the book is the stories of the lives that it tells; each on a different theme.

We meet Exit Members Avril Henry who is old, Maia Calloway whose body is failing her due to MS and Adam Maier-Clayton who has some serious and chronic mental illnesses. We also meet Debra Koosed who is losing her mind to dementia.

Engelhart follows each of these people as they negotiate their way to a peaceful end.

She incorporates two doctors working in the field, for good measure: Lonny Shavelson who is one of the talents behind the the lethal drug mixtures, highlighted in February's Doxit Podcast and yours truly, Philip Nitschke.

To read The Inevitable is to be better informed. To listen to this podcast is to be the fly behind the fly on the wall ...