Death in the Afternoon
Welcome to your mortality, humans! Death in the Afternoon dispels myths about death and dead bodies, dives into history and dark tales you've never heard before, and features conversations with people working to change the future of death care, Hosted by Caitlin Doughty, Louise Hung, and Sarah Chavez.
Episodes
The author of history's most influential piece of animal mourning literature had been lost...until now. Learn the incredible true story behind The Rainbow Bridge.
Episode Guest
Paul Koudounaris is a founding member of The Order of the Good Death. He has a PhD in Art History and has written three books about the use of skeletal remains in sacred spaces, Empire of Death, Heavenly Bodies, and M...
A court case in California could force death doulas to become licensed funeral directors. We talk to the doula and the lawyer taking on California's Funeral and Cemetery Bureau.
Episode Guests
Akhila Murphy is one of the original co-founders of Full Circle of Living and Dying, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit located in Grass Valley, CA. She is a trained End-of-Life Doula and After-Death care educator....
Go behind the scenes with Cat Warren, who works with cadaver dogs to find the missing dead and locate Black and Indigenous burial grounds.
Episode Guest
Cat Warren is the author of the NYT bestseller What the Dog Knows, which explores how scent-detection dogs help find the missing and dead, sometimes even those missing for hundreds of years. She currently researches how best to...
From viral trends to new options for your future corpse, Caitlin and Sarah review the best and worst of the past year in death, revealing how the death positive movement is making an impact on the way we do death.
Episode Resources
To access The Year in Death Project, sign up to b...
In a space of loss that is already difficult to exist in, we need to do more to understand how our language surrounding green burial can better acknowledge difficult histories and experiences.
Episode Resources
This episode is an audio version of the article “Whose Green Burial Is It Anyway? Read more
Mortuary schools began as embalming schools, sponsored by embalming chemical companies. Today, mortuary schools are designed to be more holistic, covering everything a new mortician may face in the industry. But what groups are being left out of this education? The last decade has brought hard discussions around serious gaps in what is taught to students and if they're ready for the reality of workin...
No matter how long you’ve been working with dead bodies, nothing can prepare you for working on someone you knew and loved.
Episode Resources
This episode is an audio version of the article “Washing Kathryn, Touching Death” by Nora Menkin for The Order of the Good Death.
Where would you even start in opening your own green burial ground? After all, every cemetery is a unique snowflake, with its own confusing blend of regulations. We speak with one expert who will cut through the confusion, and one practitioner who made it all happen.
Episode Guests
Tanya Marsh, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law focusing on l...
Hot Take: We’re all afraid of death – whether it’s the actual state of being dead one day, the pain of dying, or how your remains will be treated. Death Positive or not, that anxiety is something that bonds us all – and while it’s scary, it’s important to know you’re not alone.
Episode Resources
Episode Description
Our future corpses have more options than ever, with eco-friendly processes like aquamation and composting being legalized across the U.S. and Canada. Find out the nitty-gritty truths on what goes into making these death alternatives a reality where you live.
Host, Caitlin Doughty talks to Recompose
Welcome back for Season 3 of the Death in the Afternoon, a podcast from the Order of the Good Death!
In this audio preview of her new book Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Caitlin is sharing whether swallowing popcorn before you die will indeed make your cremation epic (spoiler: no) and whether your sweet cat or dog will indeed eat your eyeballs (spoiler: yes). The book will be out in print and audiobook on September 10th in the US, September 19th in the UK. Thanks deathlings! www.caitlindoughty.com
Today we're talking corpses as entertainment. Not the idea of a corpse (sorry, horror fans) but real live – or should we say real dead– bodies. From 18th century Rome, to 19th century Paris, to 20th century Hollywood, when can corpses be important educational tools, and when are they only tasteless shock value? Who gets to decide? Enjoy, and thank you for your support of season two of DITA.
Before zombies became the brain-eating pop culture phenomenon of the Walking (or Living) Dead, they represented something more complicated. From the procession of the Chinese dead, to hungry ghosts, to the enslaved people of Haiti, zombies say a great deal about a the country or culture where they appear. Perhaps our modern obsession with zombie films and video games also says a great deal about us? Louise and Sarah explain.
Wills, advanced directives, emergency savings accounts – what's not to love? Ok, we get it, facing your mortality through piles of bureaucracy is about the least inspiring task on your to-do list. But paradoxically, these are the exact tasks that once you tackle them head on, put you on a one way train to chill town. In today's episode, Caitlin, with help from her friend Chanel Reynolds, takes us on a journey to clean up her own e...
We know who gets fancy monuments: politicians, military heroes, and so many men on horses. In cemeteries the playing field may be leveling, with faces and names showing up that have never been represented in public sculpture before. But in other areas, monuments are business as usual, the dead forgotten, the Lizard People left unhonored. (That's right... the Lizard People.)
Cremation and burial are all well and good, but why aren't our dead bodies electroplated or cemented? In our first episode of Death in the Afternoon– Season Two, we're talking about the ridiculous funerary innovations that succeeded (see: the death-defying green parks of Hollywood) and the ridiculous funerary innovations that... didn't (see: coffin torpedoes.) Welcome back, deathlings.
You asked for it, deathlings. A bonus episode on the mortuary and embalming scenes in Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House. Are they accurate? A hot mess? Is my job really filled with ghosts? All that and more in today's mini-episode with Caitlin.
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