You're Going to Die

You're Going to Die A Creatively Conscious Mortality Movement

You’re Going to Die [YG2D] began over a decade ago as a simple open mic held in the golden belly of a San Francisco apartment. After its very first occurrence, it promptly shifted into the community spaces of the city, filling local cafes & dark bars with the words & songs of community. And now, the event has grown into something far beyond its origins...

YG2D is a 501(c)3 nonprofit bringing dive

rse communities creatively into the conversation of death & dying, inspiring life by unabashedly sourcing our shared mortality...
..with a free creatively conscious mortality podcast, monthly sell-out live open mics, concerts, & workshops facilitating creatively conscious mortality space for community, a hospice program sending musicians to patients' bedsides, connecting & enlivening prison programming for community [inside & out], cancer patient workshops & bedside visits for healing through creative writing, & an organizational branch offering safe space for Black & Indigenous community, reparation-funded by non-Black/non-Indigenous contributions.

"I feel like we're told that we can't do anything ourselves...Maybe it's a hyper-monetized culture, perhaps we're so sti...
05/08/2026

"I feel like we're told that we can't do anything ourselves...

Maybe it's a hyper-monetized culture, perhaps we're so stimulated & distracted that it's hard to organize ourselves to create culture.

Well, an open mic, and one like this, is about YOU reaching into YOUR experience of love and loss and making something out of it. Nobody else can do it for you, and nobody else can do with it what you can.

And how beautiful: We're all going to gather together with open ears and hearts just to listen to YOU!

Watch out for when the people start to believe they can do things themselves, next thing you know we'll be living in a different world."

- Josie Friedman
this month's musical feature at next Thursday night, May 14th's, You're Going to Die: Poetry, Prose, & Everything Goes... at The Lost Church - San Francisco!

TICKETS HERE: https://tinyurl.com/YG2Dmay14

"I feel like we're told that we can't do anything ourselves...Maybe it's a hyper-monetized culture, perhaps we're so sti...
05/08/2026

"I feel like we're told that we can't do anything ourselves...
Maybe it's a hyper-monetized culture, perhaps we're so stimulated & distracted that it's hard to organize ourselves to create culture.

Well, an open mic, and one like this, is about YOU reaching into YOUR experience of love and loss and making something out of it. Nobody else can do it for you, and nobody else can do with it what you can.

And how beautiful:
We're all going to gather together with open ears and hearts just to listen to YOU!

Watch out for when the people start to believe they can do things themselves, next thing you know we'll be living in a different world."

- Josie Friedman
this month's musical feature at next Thursday night's You're Going to Die: Poetry, Prose, & Everything Goes... at The Lost Church - San Francisco!

TICKETS HERE: https://tinyurl.com/YG2Dmay14

Listen now ’s bio link or anywhere podcasts are available!In the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast, hos...
05/07/2026

Listen now ’s bio link or anywhere podcasts are available!

In the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast, host Ned Buskirk speaks with ahlay blakely & SHE BURSTS INTO SONG!

ahlay is a Seattle-based singer-songwriter and community grief practitioner whose work explores more-than-human kinship, ancestral memory, and collective lament through participatory song and ritual.

Rooted in Ashkenazi, Scandinavian, and British folk lineages, her practice brings together decolonial inquiry, depth psychology, and ecological devotion to address the entanglements of trauma, extraction, and ecological rupture, expressed through community singing projects including WAILS: Songs for Grief and Anthems for an Apocalypse.

CLICK ’s BIO LINK TO LISTEN
or find You’re Going to Die: The Podcast
on your favorite podcast app!

04/27/2026

LISTEN NOW: https://yg2d.podbean.com/e/mark-nepo/
or anywhere podcasts are available.

In the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast, host Ned Buskirk speaks with poet and philosopher Mark Nepo a teacher in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 50 years.

With over a million copies sold, Mark has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening.

A beloved poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.”

A cancer survivor, Mark writes and teaches from the heart, exploring what it means to have the life we want by being present to the life we have.

His new book, coming out May 26th, 2026, is The Language of the Soul: How the Words You Choose Shape the Life You Live.

LISTEN NOW: https://yg2d.podbean.com/e/mark-nepo/
or anywhere podcasts are available.

LISTEN NOW: https://yg2d.podbean.com/e/mark-nepo/or anywhere podcasts are available.In the newest episode of You’re Goin...
04/23/2026

LISTEN NOW: https://yg2d.podbean.com/e/mark-nepo/
or anywhere podcasts are available.

In the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast, host Ned Buskirk speaks with poet and philosopher Mark Nepo, a teacher in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 50 years.

With over a million copies sold, Mark has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. A beloved poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.”

A cancer survivor, Mark writes and teaches from the heart, exploring what it means to have the life we want by being present to the life we have.

His new book, coming out May 26th, 2026, is The Language of the Soul: How the Words You Choose Shape the Life You Live.

LISTEN NOW: https://yg2d.podbean.com/e/mark-nepo/
or anywhere podcasts are available.

DETAILS & TICKETS ’s BIO LINK!SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA! Another chance for some entertainingly meaningful time together, i...
04/18/2026

DETAILS & TICKETS ’s BIO LINK!

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA! Another chance for some entertainingly meaningful time together, in the medicine of community connection, to gather, grieve & be grateful, to laugh & cry, with songs, poetry, & story-telling…

You’re Going to Die: Poetry, Prose, & Everything Goes - a GRIEF & GRATITUDE OPEN MIC event, the communal offering for us to explore the conversation of death & dying, to embrace our losses & mortality, to grieve, bereave & honor what we’ve lost & love… while all the while making room with connected community, in laughter & in tears, for the joy & gratitude at simply being ALIVE.

You’re Going To Die: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes is here for you…
Thursday, May 14th
from 7:30-10:30pm
in San Francisco’s North Beach
Hosted by Ned Buskirk

DETAILS & TICKETS VIA OUR BIO LINK!

04/17/2026

LISTEN ’s BIO LINK!
or anywhere podcasts are available.

Dr. Kaye Cleave on SYMPATHY vs EMPATHY…

An excerpt from the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast where host Ned Buskirk speaks with Dr. Kaye Cleave . Her children’s picture book—A Kangaroo Tale—helped raise funds to build a school in a remote Nepalese village in memory of her daughter. Her award-winning documentary, Catherine’s Kindergarten, about the death of her daughter and the life Kaye has lived to grieve, honor and celebrate her, has screened at film festivals world-wide. Kaye is currently on the Advisory Board for Impact Schools in Nepal and co-leads Grief & Healing Retreats at Laguna Writers in San Francisco.

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE MOVING CONVERSATION ’s BIO LINK!
or anywhere podcasts are available.

And watch Catherine’s Kindergarten now via the link in our bio!

04/15/2026

LISTEN ’s BIO LINK!
or anywhere podcasts are available.

About her new documentary, CATHERINE’S KINDERGARTEN, Dr. Kaye Cleave describes one of the most powerful moments in the film…

An excerpt from the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast where host Ned Buskirk speaks with Dr. Kaye Cleave . Her children’s picture book—A Kangaroo Tale—helped raise funds to build a school in a remote Nepalese village in memory of her daughter. Her award-winning documentary, Catherine’s Kindergarten, about the death of her daughter and the life Kaye has lived to grieve, honor and celebrate her, has screened at film festivals world-wide. Kaye is currently on the Advisory Board for Impact Schools in Nepal and co-leads Grief & Healing Retreats at Laguna Writers in San Francisco.

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE MOVING CONVERSATION ’s BIO LINK!
or anywhere podcasts are available.

And watch Catherine’s Kindergarten now via the link in our bio!

04/13/2026

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE POWERFUL CONVERSATION VIA THE LINK IN THE COMMENTS!
or anywhere podcasts are available.

In the wake of her daughter’s death, Dr. Kaye Cleave describes a pivotal moment of epiphany…

An excerpt from the newest episode of You’re Going to Die: The Podcast where host Ned Buskirk speaks with Dr. Kaye Cleave. Her children’s picture book—A Kangaroo Tale—helped raise funds to build a school in a remote Nepalese village in memory of her daughter. Her award-winning documentary, Catherine’s Kindergarten, about the death of her daughter and the life Kaye has lived to grieve, honor and celebrate her, has screened at film festivals world-wide. Kaye is currently on the Advisory Board for Impact Schools in Nepal and co-leads Grief & Healing Retreats at Laguna Writers in San Francisco.

Our 5th year with our prison program ALIVE INSIDE communing with exonerees - the wrongfully convicted & innocents, some...
04/12/2026

Our 5th year with our prison program ALIVE INSIDE communing with exonerees - the wrongfully convicted & innocents, some of whom have spent decades in prison for something they didn’t do. The endless ripples of such injustices should be acknowledged & understood & felt by us all.

And as usual it is both devastatingly heartbreaking & overwhelmingly inspiring to see the hundreds of exonerees stand up at the front of the conference hall on our first night, while the applause roars, their faces filled with both the joy of freedom & the marks of trauma & loss & heartbreak…

For those exonerees in attendance this year, total years lost to unjust incarceration was almost 7,000, with most exonerees having served over 20 years time.

When you try to fathom that number, & take in the row of the hundreds of exonerees in this video, just imagine how many people are still inside…

There is still so much work to do. Thanks to the Innocence Network, the legal teams, the innocence projects, the nonprofits & programs, & especially the exonerees who have turned their trauma into purpose, who all have it as their undying mission to keep doing it. Honored to be in their midst.

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PO Box 720040
San Francisco, CA
94172

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