Terminal cancer patient shares goodbye letters on Dying Out Loud podcast

Kris Saim is turning private goodbye letters into public testimony, reading words meant for his children, friends and colleagues on Dying Out Loud, a podcast that has become part confession, part record of how families confront terminal illness. The 52-year-old husband and father wrote 74 personal letters during chemo, radiation and surgery, then began sharing them aloud in intimate conversations that center on grief, forgiveness and the urgency of saying what matters now.

Saim said the idea began nearly three years ago in a chemo chair, after he had built a collection of letters to people he has known throughout his life. Anthony Saim, his husband, pushed the project forward and now helps produce it. From the apartment the couple shares in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, Kris Saim records a show that is less about fighting to live than choosing to live, using the letters as a living record of gratitude and legacy.

The podcast's most affecting moments come when Saim reads unsent messages to the people closest to him, including a former best friend who stepped away after his stage 4 terminal colon cancer diagnosis. In another episode, he speaks directly through letters to his children and childhood friends, turning an act of personal preparation into a public model for end-of-life communication. The result is a reminder that the hardest conversations are often the ones families avoid until a crisis makes silence impossible.

The show also widens beyond Saim's own story. Jen Ripa, a grief coach and founder of Thrivologie, appears as a guest and brings a perspective shaped by devastating loss: the death of her 16-year-old son Oliver to cancer, followed years later by the death of her husband of 25 years. Her presence places Saim's letters inside a broader conversation about what people carry after loss and how they learn to speak honestly about it.

That conversation lands in the middle of a stubborn public-health crisis. The American Cancer Society projects 158,850 new colorectal cancer cases in the United States in 2026 and 55,230 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 53,779 U.S. colorectal cancer deaths in 2023. Against that backdrop, Dying Out Loud offers something beyond intimate storytelling: a plainspoken example of how Americans are changing the language of dying, making room for legacy, emotional preparedness and the dignity of goodbye while there is still time.