Exploring the Impact of Wind Phones on Grieving

Minutes, just how Christopher Nolan intended. Plus some troubling signs that the AI bubble may be bursting and we'll be talking about some of the consequences, like the fact that tech companies might start selling your deepest, darkest secrets if they go bankrupt. Join me, Jess Maddox, and me, Thomas Germain, for the interface. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube. You're listening to the Happy Pod. A wind phone is a phone that has never rung but might have made thousands of calls. It was a concept that was started in Japan by a man called Itaru Sasaki for his personal grief. But after a tsunami devastated his community in 2011, the disconnected phone became a space to leave messages for loved ones lost in the disaster. Now there are more than 500 across the world, often bringing people comfort and hope in times of loss. Madeline Lake takes up this report. Hey mom. The birds are singing again today, I believe. How loud it is here across the world, they've become tools for grief in homes, hospitals and unique locations all over the world. I went to visit a cemetery in London to meet Kate Kruger, where she set one up using her parents old rotary phone. So I read an article online about two years ago about wind phones and was completely entranced by the idea. It was the first time I'd heard of anything similar. So after losing mum and dad, I've been thinking a lot about grief and had been reading about grief phones and lots of things came together in life. Death isn't the end of the relationship with your person, it's the beginning of a new relationship. I said, what's that? Vivian Sentala works at the cemetery and says that the phone has had a huge impact on her. I've had a lot of loss and I've had a lot of conversations. Who have you called with it before? So I called my dad. I've been back a couple of times to talk to my mum and how does it make you feel when you use it? It makes me feel that they can hear me. It really, really does. There's almost a two or three second pause at the end. I can almost hear her saying, love you too, Viv. Amy Dawson has spent more than half a decade mapping wind phones across the world in honour of her daughter Emily. After Emily passed away, I needed to keep being her mom and finding a way to connect with her.