Humanist Chaplain D.S. Moss on Memento Mori, Bellevue Training, and Death Row Spiritual Care

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/15

Devin Sean “D.S.” Moss is a humanist chaplain and creator of The Adventures of Memento Mori, a podcast on mortality, meaning, and connection. After hospital chaplaincy training in New York during the pandemic, he became the non-theist spiritual adviser to Oklahoma death-row prisoner Phillip Hancock, accompanying him through his November 30, 2023, execution. Moss relaunched Seasons 1 and 2 on YouTube on July 15, 2025, with Season 3 chronicling chaplaincy at Bellevue and Season 4 following his death-row work. His forthcoming book, Something to Believe In, is scheduled for HarperOne in summer 2026. Moss blends storytelling, ethics, and spiritual care.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews D.S. Moss about the evolution from podcaster to humanist chaplain. Moss discusses three proximities to death—distant, near, and personal—why reflective listening and “support the defence” meet patients where they are, and how vulnerability strips away masks in hospitals and prisons. He recounts his Bellevue training, the “E.T. moment” of connection, and supporting Phillip Hancock on Oklahoma’s death row, including subtle signals like food preferences, temperature adjustments, and last-meal requests that reveal deeper needs. Moss frames his ethic as connection—to people, meaning, and Earth—and explains how spiritual care without God honours stories rather than correcting beliefs, emphasizing presence over persuasion.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we’re here with D.S. Moss (Devin Sean Moss), creator of The Adventures of Memento Mori, a podcast exploring mortality, meaning, and human connection beyond religion. After a multi-year hiatus while pursuing humanist chaplaincy, Moss relaunched Seasons 1 & 2 on YouTube on July 15, 2025, and announced that his book Something to Believe In is slated for release from HarperOne in summer 2026. During the pandemic, he completed a chaplaincy residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He later served as the non-theist spiritual adviser to Oklahoma death-row prisoner Phillip Hancock, accompanying him through his execution on November 30, 2023. Thank you for joining me today. What led to humanist chaplaincy? Many people are humanists or atheists. Why chaplaincy?

D.S. Moss: It fell into my lap. It wasn’t something I pursued or even considered. Through the podcast, exploring mortality, it presented itself. From The Adventures of Memento Mori, I found that people relate to death in three ways, depending on their proximity to it.

First is “out there,” as evidenced by statistics, news, and media. Second is “somewhere close,” the deaths of family, pets, or neighbours—where grief resides. That’s where most people in the modern world first encounter death. The third and closest is reflecting on one’s own mortality. That’s where my interest has always been: how do I, as a person, face my mortality?

Even then, the question people asked most was, “What do you think happens after we die?” There’s a tendency toward denial or avoidance—deflecting outward instead of staying with the self.

I created a mini-series called “The Myths of Immortality” to explore afterlife beliefs across various religions. While working on the Buddhist episode, I interviewed a Zen master in upstate New York. She was the most connected person I had interviewed, and the conversation lasted two hours instead of one. At the end, she said, “You would make a good chaplain.”

I replied, “I can’t. I don’t believe in God.”

My experience with chaplains was limited to the military. I served in an infantry battalion, and we had a chaplain, so I was familiar with the role in that context. Still, I said, “I can’t be a chaplain. I don’t believe in God.”

She responded, “I don’t believe in God either. The question is, what do you believe in?” She sensed I was a searcher, and that question, though simple, was worth pursuing. She told me, “Go meditate and see what happens.”

So I meditated on the question. The breadcrumbs became bread loaves. The very next interview I had was with an imam at NYU.

I wasn’t interviewing him because he was a chaplain, but he happened to be one—the head chaplain of the NYPD. I wanted to get Islamic perspectives on the afterlife. He had construction in his office, so he suggested we go to a colleague’s office for quiet. That office turned out to be the humanist chaplain’s.

Out of curiosity, I asked, “What is a humanist chaplain?” He said, “A chaplain who doesn’t believe in God.” This was only a week after my conversation with Trudy. From there, I just kept following the breadcrumbs.

Ultimately, humanist chaplaincy gave me two things. First, it helped me define what I believe in. Second, it acted like a beacon I could follow. It also clarified my inherent calling: to connect deeply with people and support them in their most vulnerable moments.

I used to think—selfishly, though I no longer see it that way—that being with someone at the end of their life was also a way for me to figure out how best to live my own life. It created a state of flow. From there, I went to seminary school and became a chaplain.

Jacobsen: There’s a good New Yorker-based joke about “yadda yadda yadda” in Seinfeld. For the book, which is framed around that idea, to whom are the acknowledgments?

Moss: That’s a good question. I haven’t written that part yet. I’ll have to get back to you. We can omit the question for now. It’s going to be a long list.

Jacobsen: You went through chaplaincy school. What do you believe in? How does that belief evolve in chaplains-in-training?

Moss: I’ll start with what I thought I believed in. I thought I believed in human aspiration—the idea that humanity has an inherent sense of goodness, and that we need to rise above strife to reach our potential. That was my starting point.

Through the COVID pandemic, through my work in Oklahoma with Phillip Hancock, and through my own introspection, I realized that’s not my belief. It isn’t that lofty, nor do I think potential is something to stake one’s belief in. My belief has become simpler.

I believe that the energy that makes humanity what it is—our exponential power—is connection. That connection can be understood as love, not just platonic or emotional love, but an underlying force that binds humans to one another. Most importantly, it connects us to meaning, and “meaning” can be defined individually. I also believe that there is an inherent human search for meaning and purpose. Finally, I think that same connection—let’s still call it love—ties us to the place we live, Earth.

So it’s a threefold connection: to each other, to the larger ecosystem, and to something greater than ourselves.

Jacobsen: Would you characterize these as choices or as instincts?

Moss: I would characterize them as instincts—fundamental characteristics of the human condition.

Jacobsen: How do you approach this in chaplaincy?

Moss: By showing up. One thing about chaplaincy that reveals itself—in any setting, whether hospital or prison—is that when people are at their most vulnerable, whether facing illness or even execution, there is a profoundly beautiful peeling back of layers. The masks we all wear fall away. When a chaplain enters the room, people are often at their core selves.

In hospitals, especially, vulnerability is heightened. Patients are stripped of dignity in so many ways—from the gown to the bedpans to relying on others for basic needs. You become a distilled version of who you are.

For a chaplain, knowing or expecting this means walking into the room as close to one’s own core self as possible. The result is often a connection. My mentor, the Zen master Trudy, calls it the “E.T. moment,” when fingers touch and a spark ignites. That happens frequently when people are at their most authentic.

That is the essence of chaplaincy: holding that connection, holding space and relationship with someone—what hurts them, what helps them.

What hurts is trying to make it something it’s not. For example, if I were a priest or even an atheist chaplain, and someone dying spoke of seeing their spouse in heaven, it would be harmful for me to counter that by saying, “That doesn’t exist.” The same is true in reverse: if someone is a non-believer or struggling with doubt, and a Catholic priest insists on reciting doctrine, that too is harmful.

What helps, by contrast, is meeting people where they are and holding their story. It took me some time to embrace this because it sometimes runs counter to my own beliefs. But there’s a practice in chaplaincy called “support the denial, support the defence.”

It means simply being with the person and helping co-create the mythology they’re living through. If someone with stage four cancer talks about going to Jamaica for their next vacation, you don’t remind them that it’s unlikely they’ll leave the hospital. You support the defence.

Let’s deal with what’s going on right now. That’s what we want to do, right? Even as truth seekers, we want to live in reality and then work with that reality. 

Jacobsen: What are other principles like “support the defence”? I assume that’s short for supporting the defence mechanism—the denial of reality they’re facing.

Moss: Yes, their story. You support whatever is going on for them. Another fundamental skill—chaplaincy 101—is to always listen to the first thing they say. It’s all about listening. There’s an art to reflective listening, where we’re trained to repeat back what someone says. But in particular, we’re taught to cue in on the very first thing they tell you, because that often reveals the real issue.

It could be about the food. It could be about the temperature in the room. It could be about someone not showing up. Whatever it is, that first thread is often what unravels what they’re truly going through in the moment.

Jacobsen: That’s interesting—the ball of yarn is always there. What stands out to you as the strongest threads to pull on?

Moss: With Phil, the man I supported on death row, the first thing he said was about self-defence. Talk about supporting the defence—it was literal. That came with photographs, legal arguments, and the fundamental question of what was true and what wasn’t. That was not easy to navigate.

Usually, though, it’s about someone’s physical state. They want to be well, and they’ll tell you that. So often, the first thread is about their health. However, the one that stands out most is Philip Hancock, and how much he wanted to be perceived by others in a particular way.

Jacobsen: What about when patients talk about more minor things—like the room temperature, a headache, or food they’re looking forward to? What do those signals mean about where they’re at?

Moss: It depends. Sometimes it’s about helplessness. Maybe I can give a clear example. At Bellevue, one of my assignments was the forensic unit, where men from Rikers Island were brought for medical care that couldn’t be provided there.

On my first day, I was nervous as I walked in. It felt like a prison—gates, sally ports, guards. I checked in at the nurse’s station, and they told me no one needed help. So I started making rounds, going door to door.

At the first door I knocked on, there was a man, probably mid-twenties. I was still practicing my introduction, so I said, “Hi, I’m Chaplain Devin, your spiritual advisor.”

I asked him, “Can I offer you a prayer?” I was nervous and awkward, so I added, “I can do a song and dance, children’s parties…” He said, “Yeah, you can pray for my hemorrhoids.”

I was stunned—and laughed. Then he told me he’d had such a bad case of hemorrhoids at Rikers that no one would take him seriously. To get attention, he swallowed a razor blade. That’s why he was now in the hospital.

Pulling on that thread—starting with “hemorrhoids”—revealed a much deeper story. This was a man who had never been listened to in his entire life. The more he was ignored, the more desperate he became. You could trace it back to childhood, to his disbelief in God, in the system, in America itself. Everything, to him, was set against him.

Often, that first story becomes a metaphor for someone’s entire life. In his case, it was.

Jacobsen: Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, a meta-narrative.

Moss: Exactly. There’s a wealth of information if you pay attention. Part of the skill is reading the room—almost like being a detective, piecing together the evidence in a scene.

Jacobsen: What about prison conditions themselves? Do you have any comments?

Moss: My comment isn’t about physical conditions so much as the bare minimum it takes to do your job. I was always torn—were people being malicious, or did they not care? Because there’s always an opportunity, regardless of belief, to demonstrate the better part of ourselves.

At Oklahoma State Penitentiary, in particular, there seemed to be a culture of doing the least possible—crossing the bureaucratic line and no more. That alone becomes a slow torture. It’s profoundly dehumanizing.

Phil’s last meal made this clear. For three days, all he talked about was wanting a box of dark meat Kentucky Fried Chicken. It became almost Pavlovian—his salivary glands went just thinking about it.

But the night before his last meal, they didn’t give him what he asked for. Instead, they brought him dry chicken fingers. Their excuse was that bones weren’t allowed. Yet the request had to be written a month in advance. There was plenty of time to find a solution. This was a man about to be executed; the least they could do was meet that request.

That, to me, is the cruellest condition—the banality of doing the bare minimum. Not sadism, not overt violence, just indifference.

Jacobsen: We’re drawing a thin line between the banality of evil and the banality of justice—or maybe the thin line when both are made banal. Where can people listen to your work and read your upcoming book?

Moss: Season three comes out in two weeks. It takes the audience through what a chaplain is and how to provide spiritual care without relying on a specific faith or a belief in God. It’s about spirituality understood as a connection to something higher. My book, Something to Believe, is scheduled for release in fall 2026. It’s a seeker’s guide for finding your big belief.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it.

Moss: Thank you.

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