Death, et seq.

Estate planning should involve more than simply creating the appropriate documents to address who will receive your property after your death. Modern estate planning also includes some planning for a period of time prior to death, particularly if circumstances arise that a person cannot manage their own property or cannot make health care decisions for themselves.  The vast majority of people will die after a period of some incapac...

On this week’s episode, I am happy to share with you a conversation that I recently had with Barbara Kemmis, the Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America, or CANA. Cremation is on the rise in the United States. As Barbara will explain, after it was legalized in a handful of states in the 1870s, it took about a century for the cremation rate to hit 5% in this country. For the past several years, cremation ...

The Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century changed countless aspects of everyday life for every kind of person across Europe. One of the things most profoundly affected was the popular conception of death. On this episode, I will be speaking with third year Wake Forest University Law School student Jordan Artrip about how the theology of the Reformation caused a paradigm shift for how death and the dead were viewed by soc...

About a month ago, I sat down with my friend Tim Mossberger in Champaign, Illinois to talk about our mutual favorite band, The Avett Brothers, and a bunch of their songs that deal with topics related to mortality. 

Tim has a website called As My Life Turns to a Song – The Avett Brothers Archive.  He has been methodically collecting and documenting the history of the band, and together with Paul Oehler has created an Avett setlist d...

Death is celebrated all over the world on annual basis. More than 175 million Americans will celebrate Halloween this year, with total spending in 2018 reaching $9 billion, with the average consumer planning to spend $86.79 on decorations, candy, costumes and more. While celebrated on a mass scale, most Americans likely do not know the history behind Halloween and how it has turned into a billion-dollar industry.

Another major deat...

This hybrid episode combines Cemetery Tourism in Philadelphia and the music of recording artist Dan Zlotnick. In Part I, I discuss the history and some of the notable burials in Spruce Street Cemetery, the Old Pine Street Church churchyard, Christ Church churchyard and burial ground, the potter’s field in Washington Square, and Laurel Hill Cemetery. In Part II, singer-songwriter Dan Zlotnick shares two original songs, “Day 2 for D...

My guest this week is my friend Josh Slocum, who is the Executive Director of Funeral Consumers Alliance and the co-author of Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death. Josh is a consumer advocate who is also willing to give consumers a little tough love in the face of what he refers to as learned helplessness. At the same time, he argues that the industry should be more transparent with pricing so that consumers are bet...

Amy Cunningham is a progressive funeral director and the owner of Fitting Tribute Funeral Services in New York City. A former journalist, Amy co-authors a blog, The Inspired Funeral, with Kateyanne Unullisi.

Full Transcript:

Intro: This is Tanya Marsh and you’re listening to Death, et seq. The Fall semester just started at Wake Forest, so we’ve gone to episodes every other week for a little while, but the students in my Funeral a...

Episode Transcript:

My name is Tanya Marsh and you’re listening to Death, et seq. We’ve been talking about funerals a lot on this podcast so far, and I wanted to switch gears this week and talk about one of my favorite topics – cemeteries. I love cemeteries. As my friends and family will attest, I am a semi-professional cemetery tourist. When I visit a new place, I want to check out the historic cemeteries. When I visit a plac...

Lee Webster discusses her educational and advocacy efforts in the "neo-traditional" home funeral and green burial movements.

Links to organizations and resources mentioned in this episode:

Green Burial Council

National Home Funeral Alliance

New Hampshire Funeral Resources, Education & Advocacy

Changing Landscapes: Exploring the growth of ethical, compassionate, and environmentally sustainable green funeral practice

Se...

One of my major goals with this podcast is to introduce listeners to a variety of perspectives on the funeral industry and changing death practices. In Episode 3, I talked to Dan Isard, who is a management and financial consultant to funeral homes. In Episode 4, I talked to Caitlin Doughty, who is a non-traditional funeral director in Los Angeles with a critique to the status quo. In the next few weeks you’ll hear from Lee Webst...