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The question

What do you believe happens when we die?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Others on this question

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Hugh Skinner
I think we’re definitely gone, but I do think people leave traces everywhere from what they did in life, and live on and continue to make an impact through the ripple effect of that.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 May 2026 source ↗
Frank Bowling
I hope I’ll find my mother and father in heaven. Only my father would probably say, “You can’t come and live here, boy!”
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 June 2026 source ↗
Ben Okri
We don’t die. We change realms. Life is eternal. Living is not. Live while you are alive.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 July 2026 source ↗

More from Tom Burke

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Question When were you most embarrassed? Failure & regret
Putting chocolate mousse in my agent’s face. Somebody had done it to me – that thing where they go, “Smell this, it smells funny”, and then they put it in your nose. A year later I was in this French restaurant with a very 1980s-style dessert trolley and, before I knew it, I had a bowl of chocolate mousse in front of me. And my agent went, “What’s that smell?”, and it felt impossible not to … I immediately felt awful and tried to apologise. He, of course, said that he found it funny. But I knew he didn’t.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 May 2026 source ↗

More on death & what remains

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Neil Gaiman, Sarah Perry, Johannes Radebe, Midge Ure, Ben Okri, Russell Mael

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