Life doesn’t come with a handbook, and neither does death.
Why do we keep it hidden away? Why do we try so desperately to cheat it? I suppose we’ve come a long way since Walt Disney froze his head (fact check: <a href="https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/walt-disney-frozen-after-death-myth">false</a>), but forever-young <a href="https://time.com/6315607/bryan-johnsons-quest-for-immortality/">Bryan Johnson</a> isn’t any closer to living forever, and, judging by his thawed-over looks and massive supplement regimen, I’m not sure most people would find that route appealing anyway. But <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/silicon-valleys-quest-to-live-forever">Silicon Valley</a> pushes ahead with its plan to play God ­— or at least outwit Him. Spoiler alert, not a good plan with <a href="https://www.bibleanalysis.org/saul-the-rise-and-fall-of-israels-first-king/">Him</a> or the <a href="https://www.caltaxadviser.com/top-10-worst-celebrity-tax-cheats-in-history/">IRS</a>.
But when someone like Ben Sasse comes along, it’s hard to look away. In fact, we must look and look with wonder and awe.
The former senator from Nebraska was diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 pancreatic cancer in December 2025. He was the guest on New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opinion/ben-sasse-death-pancreatic-cancer.html">Interesting Times</a>” podcast on April 9, where he called the diagnosis “a death sentence.”
Days later, Sasse went viral. It wasn’t because of his appearance on the podcast, per se, but because of a <a href="https://x.com/AlexGoldenNBA/status/2042407968528880070?s=20">clip</a> of a young couple sitting courtside at an Indiana Pacers game engaged in a conversation. It was later revealed to be about Sasse’s thoughts on the state of liberal arts colleges and America’s higher education system, as discussed with Douthat.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Pacers TV had these fans on the broadcast, and she is NOT having it 😂
After he finally stops yapping, she says, “that’s you…what the f*** are you talking about?” <a href="https://t.co/XdXMC6xhE9">pic.twitter.com/XdXMC6xhE9</a>
— Alex Golden (@AlexGoldenNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexGoldenNBA/status/2042407968528880070?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 10, 2026</a></blockquote>
Source: @AlexGoldenNBA/X.com
So here we have a made-for-meme moment starring two Pacers fans breathing fresh life into a man not just dying before our eyes but leaning into it so far that Sheryl Sandberg is taking notes. Now we can’t look away.
The good news and bad news are the same: you are going to die. We are all going to die. Fear not! There is no commitment on your end — other than the fate of your eternal soul. The trick to seeing both ways is to pause and consider what this means in life.
Americans are a dynamic, forward-thinking, happy-go-lucky crew who have too much going on at any given moment to stop and think about when things will stop forever. That mentality has had its benefits. We boldly ventured into the great Western frontier, stormed European beaches not once, but twice, to bail out our Old-World brethren from tangles of their own making. We rule the seas and explore the skies.
But all that moving and world-shaking leaves us wholly unprepared for the end. So yes, we’re all going to die. Death and taxes, as the saying goes. Except taxes can be managed, depending on who wields the political levers of power, or if you have an accountant whose address is a P.O. box and insists you pay in cash. Death has no workaround, comes with no instructions, and looks different for every person on the planet. But the good news is that being reminded of our mortality crystallizes the urgency and preciousness of life, and that life isn’t lived out on our timeline, no matter what technological advances the tech wunderkinds promise, and there are no one-size-fits-all guidelines.
In Tim Burton’s 1988 film “Beetlejuice,” married couple Barbara and Adam Maitland (played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) die in a car accident and find themselves stuck in the afterlife with nothing but the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” to guide them. It contains tips and quips: “Live people ignore the strange and unusual,” and “The living usually won&#8217;t see the dead.” But Burton’s film is a fictional tale with a fictional book, devoid of faith, and it spares us the actual dying part.
Ben Sasse doesn’t have a handbook on death or dying, yet here he is publicly facing his mortality in the most painful and gruesome way. Sasse is turning Beetlejuice’s “Handbook” on its head, doling out valuable insight and wisdom to the living, and we treat it like a spectator sport, except this Pacers fan boyfriend, who is trying to impart a piece of that wisdom to his girlfriend. “What the f*ck are you talking about?” she responds. Keep trying, buddy; a nation is cheering for you, and for Ben Sasse.
Douthat asked Sasse if he felt “ready to die.” He replied that although he didn’t feel ready, he had hope, due to his Christian faith, that he would be with God, “I know that that’s what I need,” he said.
We can plan for the afterlife: I want Elvis singing over the loudspeakers and free cigarettes at the funeral cash bar. But mostly, I want people to reflect on how they’re spending their limited time among the living — because even a one-day crash course on death could have repercussions in life. And that is exactly what Ben Sasse did and is doing: offering his death so we might reflect on our lives.
That’s not something we can find in any handbook.

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Ben Sasse Is Going To Die — And So Are You