Conversations on Death

On this episode, I chat with Ryan Matthew Cohn and Regina Marie Rossi about their upcoming book, The Witch’s Door: Oddities & Tales from the Esoteric to the Extreme, and their experience collecting oddities and curiosities. We talk about how they met, their beginnings of collecting, some of their favorite items, potentially haunted dolls they owned, Ryan’s involvement in the reality TV show Oddities, Regina’s Oddities Flea Mark...

Stephanie Rodriguez is a certified Grief Counselor with specializations in Child and Adolescent Grief and Animal Companion Loss Support. She has been a practicing Grief Counselor, Support Group Facilitator, Death Midwife, and End-of-Life Speaker and Educator since 2004. 

We chat about pet hospice, decision making process for euthanizing your pet, disenfranchised grief, rituals for honoring your pet, adapting to a new loss, and  navi...

Jennifer Muldowney, also known as The Glam Reaper, is a modern memorial planner, author, and speaker dedicated to transforming the funeral industry with a focus on personalized planning, digital legacies, and environmental impact. Through her business, Muldowney Memorials, Jennifer helps families create meaningful and unique farewells for their loved ones. We chat funeral industry, her work as a celebrant, and digital legacies! She...

Dr Dan O’Brien is a historian of death in eighteenth century England. His research focuses on the development of the funeral trade and the funerals which it performed. He has also focused on funerary journeys and the exciting topic of death at sea. And these are all the cool things we talk about on this episode! Enjoy!

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Marie Carter is a writer, tour guide, and tour guide developer. Her Scottish upbringing is responsible for her fascination with macabre, strange, forgotten, and ghostly histories. Combining that with her passion for New York City, she became a licensed tour guide, as well as researcher and developer with Boroughs of the Dead over nine years ago.

Her most recent book, Mortimer and the Witches: A History of 19th-Century Fortune Teller...

Candice Johnson is a transformational coach, but she's also an alternative cancer treatment advocate and concierge nurse and death doula. Her vision in the clinical industry is for patients and family members to understand what other options outside of the pharmaceutical fear complex are available for them and their treatments.

On this episode, she shares with us her experience as a nurse and the what and how behind h...

Aoife is a doctoral researcher at the University of Bradford in archaeological and forensic sciences. Her research focuses on the display and acquisition of 18th-19th century anatomical specimens, and how they are viewed in museums today. She runs a blog called Pathological Bodies Project and an online magazine called Mortiferous Muse. She is also a trustee of the Victorian era Undercliffe Cemetery.

We chatted about the hi...

K. Krombie is the author of "Death in New York: History and Culture of Burials, Undertakers and Executions", a freelance writer, journalist, and founder of boutique NYC walking tour company Purefinder New York. She's a fucking blast, full of knowledge based on deep research, and gives some amazing tours! 

On this episode, we chat about all things NYC and death! If you love this episode and wanna go even deep...

Joanna Ebenstein is a Mexico-based author, photographer, curator and designer. She is the founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy, an organization that has been exploring the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture, since 2007. She traces her lineage back to Judah Loew ben Bezalel, credited with creating the Golem in 16th century Prague. She is also a proud member of The Order of the Good Death.

Her books include ...

Shelby Forsythia (she/her) is a grief coach author, and podcast host. In 2020, she founded Life After Loss Academy, an online course and community that has helped dozens of grievers grow and find their way after death, divorce, diagnosis, and other major life transitions.

Following her mother’s death in 2013, Shelby began calling herself a “student of grief” and now devotes her days to reading, writing, and speaking about ...

Chris Woodyard is a writer and historian based in Ohio. She studies death and the supernatural.  In addition to nine books on Ohio ghost-lore, as well as three volumes of historical ghost stories, she is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, on the popular and material culture of Victorian mourning and death, as well as A is for Arsenic: A Little Book of Victorian Death, a guide to the basics of Victorian mourning tradition...

Elyse Neiman Seiter is an Emmy-Award winning TV producer/director with over 20 years experience producing shows for various networks including MTV, Food Network, HGTV, and Travel Channel. She became interested in death and dying after her own brush with cancer as a young mom, which woke her up to what was truly important in her own life. Elyse founded Mindful Films, a boutique production house dedicated to producing films/TV and di...

Dr. John Troyer is the Death Studies Scholar at Large and Overlord of Death in the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath in the UK. He's also the co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project, and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His most recent book Technologies of the Human Corpse was published by The MIT Press in May 2020.

On this episode, we tackle a very controve...

ABCnews.com has called Marc Hartzman "one of America's leading connoisseurs of the bizarre" and George Noory from Coast to Coast AM said he's "as bizarre as Robert Ripley." In addition to his books about UFOs, ghosts, Mars, Oliver Cromwell's embalmed head, weird things on eBay, sideshow performers, and unorthodox messages from God, Marc has written for Mental Floss, HuffPost, AOL Weird News, AllTh...

Ray is an acclaimed author, metaphysical teacher, theorist, and coach. He is a survivor of a near-death experience (NDE) and has dedicated his life to helping others achieve their full potential. Ray's unique approach combines scientific theories with his own life experiences to reveal how anyone can harness the power of the mind, create their own reality, and BE Limitless!

Learn how his NDE completely shifted his life and the ...

Paul Gambino has been an avid collector of the bizarre for over 25 years with an extensive collection of Victorian memorial photographs, antique funeria, mug shots, and vintage religious items.

Paul is the author of some absolutely gorgeous books (which I recommend you get your hands on ASAP): MORBID CURIOSITIES: Collections of the Uncommon and the Bizarre, SKULLS: Portraits of the Dead and the Stories They Tell, and KILLER COLLECTI...

Jackie Dent is a journalist and an author. She's been writing fiction for years, but found success with non fiction and a much more personal story about her grandparents donating their bodies to science. She's the author of "The Great Dead Body Teachers".  Her journey began when she started to dive into the reasons why her paternal grandparents had donated their bodies to a university. 

On this episode we cover e...

Today I talked to Dr. Monica Walker, the Engagement Manager at the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret in London, which is the oldest surviving surgical theater in Europe. She sees herself as a storyteller that gets to bridge the gap between academia and the general public through the stories and collection of the museum which stands as the last remaining bastion of Old St Thomas' Hospital in its original location n...

In 2006, Natalie Sudman went to Iraq, serving as a project engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While working in Iraq, the vehicle she was riding in was hit with a roadside bomb. Her book Application of Impossible Things vividly recounts her Near Death Experience when she went out of the body to the spirit world. There it was decided that her work on Earth was not done and with the help of spirit guides, they repaired the...