Death in the Afternoon

By The Order of the Good Death

Society & Culture Education Comedy

What's Death in the Afternoon about?

Welcome to your mortality, humans! It's a new podcast called Death in the Afternoon, from the team behind Ask a Mortician. The deathcast will dispel myths about death and dead bodies, dive into history and dark tales you've never heard before, and hopefully make you less afraid to talk about the inevitable. Hosted by Caitlin Doughty, Louise Hung, and Sarah Chavez.

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Popcorn & Postmortem Predation

09.05.2019

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 ...

Death in the Afternoon episodes:

09.05.2019 Popcorn & Postmortem Predation 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 ...
06.14.2019 Is That a Corpse in my Culture? 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 ...
05.23.2019 What's In Your Head, Zombie? 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 ...
05.09.2019 Get Your Sh*t Together! 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 ...
04.25.2019 Maggots Holding High Carnival The American Civil War left roughly 700,000 men dead and an entire nation devastated. With millions of pounds of rotting human flesh on the battlefields, burying the dead was a daunting, sometimes insurmountable task for the survivors. Bad when it ...
04.12.2019 Dude, Where's My Monument? 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 ...
03.27.2019 The Least Worst Death Two Manhattan tragedies, two miles and ninety years apart, that changed government policy forever. But the victims couldn't afford to step back and take this long historical view. They were caught in a horrific struggle between two paths, both leading ...
03.14.2019 Fantastic Funerary Failures 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 ...
12.19.2018 The Haunting of Hill House- Mortuary Madness! 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 ...
12.05.2018 Ring RIng, Corpse Phone Ring ring. Hello? Who’s there? IT’S YOUR MORTALITY CALLING. In life, phones make everything easier– just “reach out and touch someone.” But in death, reaching out can be a little more complicated. This week we talk about accessing a dead ...
11.28.2018 Or Maybe It's a Ghost? A wisp of white. A voice in the dark. A lamp mysteriously turns on by itself. Few things capture our imagination like a good ghost story. But is there more to a spooky tale than thrills and chills? Perhaps we ...
11.21.2018 Embalmed Alive Embalming. It sounds like the stuff of horror movies: pump a dead body full of chemicals to make it look alive – ALIVE! Whose idea was this? Is there really such a thing as "extreme embalming"? And what about when ...
11.14.2018 It's OK to Not Decay Ah, to die, to decompose, to become one with the earth. Most of us accept this as our fate. But what happens when that whole “decomposition thing” doesn’t go as planned? This week we discuss incorrupt corpses that inspire devotion, ...
11.07.2018 Don't Drink the KoolAid! Being in a cult... doesn’t always end well. This week, we confront the questions: Why not drink the Kool-Aid? How many puppies does it take to resurrect a teen queen? And, what shouldn’t you bring into a doomsday cave? (Spoiler: ...
10.31.2018 Is That a Foot? Generally speaking, we like our limbs in context. “The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone.” But what about when we encounter limbs that aren’t connected to anybody? Just out there, free ...
10.24.2018 Crematory Whoopsies Mistakes happen. Cremations happen. But few things capture our morbid imagination like cremation mistakes happening. Whether it’s the horror of cremating your coworker, a misplaced corpse on the way to America’s first modern cremation, or plumes of “human remains particulate” ...
10.15.2018 My Roommate, a Corpse In our first episode, we take you on a magical (ok, not always so magical) journey of living with the dead. From an adorable 91 year old lady with a dark secret, to a rhinestone studded cult with resurrection ambitions, ...
10.02.2018 Trailer: Season One Welcome to your mortality, humans! It's a new podcast called Death in the Afternoon from the team that brings you Ask a Mortician. First episode is out on October 15th.