An App That Predicts Your Death Date: Would You Want to Know?”

Can knowing your death date help you live longer? Explore the Death Clock app, AI longevity predictions, and how small lifestyle shifts can extend your life. https://bit.ly/4cBBrDK

A study of 60,000 people found that just a few minutes of better sleep, a little more movement, and small changes in diet could add years to your life. Not dramatic changes, small ones.

Now imagine an app that tracks those choices—and tells you, in real time, how they’re affecting the day you’re likely to die. I tried it. It gave me a date. And then, after one good night of sleep, it gave me a different one. 

Today, we’re exploring what happens when technology meets mortality—and whether knowing your “death date” changes how you live. Because Everyone Dies. And every day is a gift.

In this Episode:

• 00:00 - Predicting Mortality: Would You Want to Know Your Death Date?
• 03:17 - Ikaria Longevity Recipe: Zucchini-Herb Pie
• 04:02 - The Voice of Pink Floyd: Clare Torry’s "Great Gig in the Sky"
• 09:09 – An App Called Death Clock: Learn How AI Calculates Life Expectancy
• 11:17 - Preventive Health Protocols: Turning Data into Longevity
• 15:21- Can One Night of Sleep Shift Your Death Date? Learn How a 60,000-Person Study Backs Small Changes in Lifespan
• 17:33 - Facing the Countdown: Listener Perspectives on Mortality
• 23:50 - Active Devotion: Lyrics from "The Great Gig in the Sky"
• 25:10: Outro

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies. Relax and settle in for our podcast about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Because even though everyone dies, no one must face it unprepared.

In this episode, we explore technology that predicts the date of our death. We explore whether knowing your date death is helpful or harmful, and what science actually says about how small changes can extend your life. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life.

And I'm Charlie Navarrette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We're both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions. Remember, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice.

Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. In the first half, Charlie's going to talk about Claire Torrey's assignment when she arrived at Abbey Road Studio for a singing gig for Pink Floyd and has our recipe of the week. In the second half, I'm going to talk about the death clock.

And in the third half, we have the lyrics from Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky. So, Charles, anything new? I'm going to say no, and I'm sure as soon as we finish recording, then it'll pop into my mind. What about you? What about me? It's like I'm perfectly happy and busy and doing things, but God knows what it is I'm doing.

I mean, you know, like the garden is up and running, and that sucks up tons of time, and, you know, baking bread and doing my glass stuff. I don't know. I don't know where the time goes.

I don't know how I ever had time to work. I don't know how I ever had time to work and have two kids. I just don't know.

Have you recently smelled a rose that's just come out of the garden? No. But I know what you mean. There's still a laughingly referred to as the flower district.

It's nothing like it was in the past. But I do remember there were some mornings, early mornings, I would walk by, and really, really nice, yeah. Well, the ones, you know, in the garden.

And what's interesting is I never really knew that, I guess they must breed in different scents or whatever. I don't really know how it works, because some of the flowers, you know, sort of have a, you know, a real sweet smell, and some have more of like a spicy smell, and they don't all smell the same from the garden. It's really kind of nice.

Yeah, and with me, my thought always goes back to apples and to tomatoes, because when we were kids, certain apples and tomatoes were not available year-round. And our funeral lunch recipe is Icaria Longevity Zucchini Herb Pie, which can be sliced and served as appetizers at your next funeral lunch. A favorite summer phyllo pie from Icaria, Greece.

It is easy to make, nutritious and delicious, and a perfect example of one of the island's most important longevity secret. Simple, fresh food in season. Oompa! Oompa! Oompa! And remember, folks, oompa, you need to spell it with two O's, just in case that comes up in conversation.

Or if you're misspelling me. So, this is a background story to The Great Gig in the Sky, which is the fifth track on the Dark Side of the Moon, the 1973 album by the English rock band Pink Floyd. On a quiet Sunday evening in January 1973, Claire Torrey expected an uneventful night.

She was a session singer, which means steady work, decent pay, no fame, no spotlight. Most nights meant jingles or background harmonies. Nothing that changed the world.

Then, Alan Parsons called from Abbey Road Studios with an unusual request. Pink Floyd needed a vocalist immediately. Claire barely knew their music, but Abbey Road was the most prestigious studio in Britain.

A gig was a gig, she agreed. She walked into Studio Three and met a band putting up the finishing touches on a strange, ambitious album called The Dark Side of the Moon. They played her an instrument track, Richard Wright's Piano Progression, a slow-building arrangement that felt ominous and vast.

But something was missing. They wanted a voice to complete it. Then came the impossible instruction.

Sing about death, but no words, just emotion. Claire hesitated. She wasn't an improvisational singer.

She followed sheet music, sang melodies, and delivered what she was asked for. She'd never been told to simply feel. But the tape rolled.

The music swelled, and Claire began. At first, she tested small melodic ideas, unsure of the direction. Then she stopped thinking.

The music pushed her somewhere deeper, and she let her voice respond instinctively. Cries, wails, soaring phrases that sounded like grief and defiance intertwined. She had no map, no lyrics, no structure, just raw emotion carried on her breath.

When the take ended, she was trembling. Tears ran down her face. She apologized, certain she'd ruined the session.

Let me do it again, she begged. I'll hold back next time. But the room was silent.

Finally, someone said, that was perfect. Exactly what we wanted. They recorded a few more takes, but everyone in the room knew the truth.

Claire Torrey had captured something extraordinary on that first attempt, something that couldn't be planned or repeated. She'd taken an instrumental meditation on mortality and transformed it into a visceral, wordless confrontation with death. Afterward, she signed the paperwork.

Standard session fee, 30 pounds. Then she went home, assuming the track would be a minor part of the album, if it was used at all. Two months later, the Dark Side of the Moon was released.

It exploded. The record became one of the best selling albums of all time, eventually moving more than 45 million copies. It stayed on the Billboard charts for nearly 18 consecutive years.

And The Great Gig in the Sky became one of its defining tracks. People around the world listened to Claire's voice in moments of grief, transcendence, reflection. They played it at funerals, in hospital rooms, on late night drives.

Her wordless cry became a universal language for fear, sorrow, and release. Listen to The Great Gig in the Sky. Hear the way her voice rises, trembles, fractures, and ascends.

Hear the panic, the pleading, the surrender. Hear a human soul grappling with the one truth we all face. Pink Floyd had asked her to sing about death without words.

Claire Torrey gave them immortality. Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe of Ikaria Longevity Zucchini Herb Pie and additional resources for this program. This is the part where we ask for your financial support.

Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone. You can donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies, dot org. Or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies.

Marianne? Thanks, Charlie. In 2000, I lived in a rural community in New Hampshire. Our town didn't have a zip code, so we had to go to the post office in a neighboring town if we wanted our mail.

It was the postmaster who handed me my diploma for my PhD because I didn't go to the ceremonies. I was pregnant with my first child at age 39. So, in December of 1999, they put up a clock on all the post offices with a countdown to the new millennia.

People would stand in line and watch the clock tick down. There were so many complaints from people about that clock causing them anxiety. Watching it count down felt like their lives were being counted down, thus the anxiety.

At the time, I thought it was an interesting phenomena. Without the clock to remind them, did people actually forget about their mortality? Back in season two, we talked about a film called Big Fish, where the main character says that ever since he was a child, he knew how he was going to die. Each sticky situation he got into throughout his life, he would say, this doesn't worry me.

This isn't how I die. Which must be comforting to tell yourself, knowing that the situation is harrowing, but to have a firm conviction in your survival. Which brings me to an app called the Death Clock, which utilizes AI to provide predictions regarding your death date, life expectancy, biological age, and the top three diseases that are likely to be the cause of your death.

The app gives a three-day free trial and it has a range of price plans. I did the three-day trial, which is what I'm going to tell you about. After I downloaded the app onto my phone, there were questions about age, family history, sleep habits, exercise schedules, sociability, and frequency of health screenings.

They also want any recent lab results. If you don't have them, the lab costs are included in your membership fee. Death Clock is the world's first preventative health platform built to solve healthcare's greatest failure, reacting to disease after it appears.

Their AI programming is trained on a framework designed by their Clinical Board of Healthcare Practitioners and translates your unique health profile into actionable protocols. There's also the option to let your aura ring, or whatever kind of tracking mechanism you might have, to connect with the Death Clock app. This is where the magic happens.

After all your data has been entered, the report takes you through the clinical findings of your life choices. You probably know if you don't exercise enough, or if you smoke, it's not helping your longevity. But it will tell you anyway.

It tells you the positive choices you're making for your healthy life. Then they do a hormone analysis, genetic predisposition, and a section called what to do next. This part of the report starts with, this is a long-term journey, not a short-term fix.

We will approach it in clear, manageable phases. The immediate focus is on gathering data to create precise baseline, then to bring sustainable habits about exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Now the first thing I liked about this app is that each recommendation that they make, there are links to the signs that supports the recommendation.

So that's super cool. It offers you goals and the reasons why they're suggesting them, and the signs that supports them. So if you're a bit of a geek like me, or if you're the kind of person that says, who says that? It's right there.

You just click on it and you can go to the study. There's a section on supplements and what they can do to help your health, and devices and equipment to give you objective feedback about your health. And of course there is the prediction based on all the data you submit as to your date of death.

Now I wrote mine in my calendar so I don't forget what I'm doing on October 19th, 2044. But what came next was really cool in this feature about the death clock. The death clock changes as data are added.

The next day I happened to have gotten a full eight hours sleep and was very active, and my date of death adjusted forward a year to 2045. Now to my way of thinking, if we wanted to delay our date death as long as possible, this kind of feedback keeps you focused and gives you positive feedback for sleeping instead of doom scrolling on your phone. It's like having Sister Mary Perpetua and her yardstick around watching the choices you're making.

And instead of threatening purgatory or hell because of the choices I make, it shows me the days of my life I'm sacrificing for sitting and knitting instead of going for a walk. Or perhaps it appeals to me because of my 12 years of Catholic school. Who can tell? Since I only did the free day free trial, I don't know what happens next with the clock.

I can see people being stressed when they get alert after a night of drinking beer and eating pizza that they've lost a year of life. But a lifestyle of unfortunate choices results in exactly that. Now we have podcasts about all the factors that can interfere or help you live to an old age.

We want people to modify their risk factors that they can, like not smoking, having a healthy diet, activities, sleep, to achieve a long life. Now a study of 60,000 people in the UK, just published 2026, in the journal Lancet by Cormell and his team documented that small improvements in sleep, physical activity, and nutrition can significantly enhance both lifespan and health span. So if you think it's too late to make improvements in your lifestyle choices, this study says otherwise.

The study identified that the minimum combined improvement of just five minutes of sleep, 1.9 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, and a five point increase in diet quality score could lead to an additional year of life for individuals with poor lifestyle habits. We could live a year longer by every day eating a salad, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and putting our phone down five minutes earlier and going to sleep. According to the study findings, we could live an additional 9.35 healthier years by having seven to eight hours of sleep, more than 42 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, and a healthier diet compared to those with the least favorable habits.

The research emphasizes that even small incremental changes in daily habits can have a significant cumulative effect on long-term health and how long you live. This highlights the importance of a holistic approach to health that has plenty of sleep, physical activity, and nutrition rather than focusing on each factor individually. It may not be a sexy or interesting way to live.

Aren't the fun people the ones who stay out all night drinking, smoking cigarettes, eating carb-loaded cheesy food, having unprotected sex with strangers, and then going out to White Castle before going home at four in the morning? Perhaps. It's all about choices and what you want out of life. The other part of the death clock is if you would really want that information.

When I told my husband about it, he said, why would you want to know that? And Charlie didn't even want to hear the date of death. To me, it's less about the day that we die and more about how our lifestyle affects our longevity. So I put the question out on Facebook as to whether people would want to know their date of death.

Nineteen people responded. Nine said they would want to know, and eight said they would not, and two were undecided. So here's a couple of their responses.

One person said, yes, it would help me get my things in order and think about and act on what's important to me more than I do because I too often live as if I'm not going to die. I know I will, but I can't hold that thought for too long because I don't know if it's tomorrow or in 20 years. Another person said, I might.

I'm undecided. It would make me get things in order. I might forego treatment that won't do much and enjoy the remaining time with family.

Third response, at age 77, it could happen anytime. I've just had three friends who died unexpectedly, so I'd rather not know the exact date. I focus on having fun, making memories, and if I'm lucky enough to die unexpectedly, good for me.

And lastly, this person said, yes, I always do better with deadlines, pun intended. The choices we make today are shaping how long and how well you live right now. It doesn't take a complete life overhaul.

It could be five minutes of more sleep, a walk instead of sitting, a nutritious meal. You don't have to be perfect, just slightly better. And remember, every day is a gift.

So go to sleep, Charles. Oh, sorry, I was taking your advice on going to sleep. You know, Marianne, you had me at white castles at four o'clock in the morning.

Yeah. That was our ute. I wouldn't just throw it back in our ute.

I still enjoy doing that. If I was up at four in the morning and there was a white castle, maybe. But I don't have either.

So what was I going to say? Oh, yeah. You know, it's funny when you spoke about the millennia. I remember I completely forgotten about that when all that occurred.

I remember just people panicking and scientists and all these, you know, the New York Stock Exchange panicking because no one knew would it simply be a simple transition and resetting the clock at the end of 1999 or would everything collapse? Everything from, you know, the computerized world that we had created to stoplights. There was a big, big thing. And then, of course, nothing did.

But the corporation spent a ton of money making sure everything would be safe, et cetera. I forgot about that near panic. Yeah.

Yeah. So while I agree about you, yeah, that extra and I have been more careful now of what you said about just an extra, you know, five minutes here. When I when I walk, I am careful or more cognizant of picking my feet up almost almost like like a soldier would.

And I do that when I, you know, walk to the subway. I will make I make that conscious effort to do that. And on the days I it's not often that I don't go out and I just I'm at home.

I will make like the trek around the apartment again for, you know, five to 10 minutes, just walking a little faster. Again, picking up my my legs and my feet. But yeah, to your point, I do feel that difference.

And I'm careful to throw in, you know, a couple of pieces of fruit or maybe some vegetables, always relying on top shelf booze instead of, you know, not the best stuff, but just that. And it does make a difference. I have noticed that.

OK, that's fine. You just might get an extra year of life, except then. How do you know? Exactly.

How do you know? You know? Yes. So. But if but if you're healthier in our old age, it's not just how long you live, but how healthy you are, too.

Yes. So that makes a big difference if you can still, you know, you can do things that you want to do and take care of your own personal health and do your own grocery shopping. It's makes a difference, too.

And the thing that that you mentioned about, you know, having things in order, you know, we've discussed this a lot on the, you know, in various episodes. But yeah, please, folks, put everything in order. You you're going to have enough to worry about if your health suddenly collapses.

Yeah. The last thing you want to worry about is paperwork. So take care of that paperwork now when you're bored and have nothing to do.

Yeah. Look after yourselves. For our third half, the song The Great Gig in the Sky talks to the pressure of mortality on life, with The Great Gig in the Sky being a reference to heaven or an afterlife.

Some speculate that The Great Gig in the Sky is an allegory for life itself, existence as a momentary performance before being whisked to the next unknown adventure. Others see it as a tribute to the cycle of life and death, and the music serves as a vessel to explore the spaces in between, a purgatory of sound and soul. These interpretations encompass the song's mystical allure, as each listen may reveal a new layer or raises a different feeling.

The phrase The Great Gig in the Sky is, in and of itself, a mysterious reference to an afterlife concert to which all souls hold a ticket. Here are the lyrics. And I am not frightened of dying, you know.

Any time will do. I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it.

You gotta go sometime. I never said I was frightened of dying. And so we end this week's episode of Everyone Dies.

Thank you for listening. You can find more episodes from our series about grief on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Follow and subscribe to the show.

Share it with someone who needs a little hope today. This is Charlie Navarette, and from author Kingsley Amis, no pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home. And I'm Marianne Matzo, and we'll see you next week.

Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice. All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 9-1-1 immediately.

Everyone Dies does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, practitioners, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in this podcast. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast by persons appearing on this podcast at the invitation of Everyone Dies or by other members is solely at your own risk.