💐 Episode Summary

In this episode host Dinah Alobeid delves into one of her most existential conversations yet. This episode’s guest is author, speaker, Punk Rock HR podcast host, and all around bad ass Laurie Ruettimann. Her playlist is short but powerful, reflecting a genre, a milestone, or a belief system for Laurie. And this guest’s unconventional approach to life, and death, will make you sit up, stop, think, smile, and reflect upon the way you live your own life. Waxing poetic (and nostalgic) about Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, John Cougar Mellencamp, and more. This one’s full of life lessons you won’t want to miss. 

💿 Laurie’s Playlist

1. “More Than This” by Roxy Music

2.  “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails

3. “The Other Side of Summer” by Elvis Costello

4.  “Atomic” by Blondie

5. “Life on a Chain” by Pete Yorn

6. “I Summon You” by Spoon

7. “Cough Syrup” by Young the Giant

8. “Human” by The Killers

9.  “Hurts So Good” by John Cougar Mellencamp

10. “I Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin (Burt Bacharach original)

🎙 About the Guest

Laurie Ruettimann is a former human resources leader turned writer, entrepreneur, and speaker. She has one of the most popular leadership training courses on LinkedIn Learning, and CNN recognized her as one of the top five career advisors in the United States. Her work has been featured on NPR, the New Yorker, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and Vox. She frequently delivers keynote speeches at business and management events around the world and hosts the popular podcast Punk Rock HR. When she’s not up in the air, she lives with her husband and cats in Raleigh, North Carolina.

🌹 About Play This At My Funeral

Play This At My Funeral is a deeply fun, slightly macabre, always heartwarming show about the songs that shape our lives — and the ones we’d play at our funerals. Each episode invites a guest to curate the playlist for their own (hypothetical) send-off and share the stories that made those songs matter. 

In each episode, host Dinah invites a guest on to talk through the soundtrack of their life: the songs that have held them in moments of anguish, haunted them on the regular, and maybe just maybe even saved them. It’s a cozy, 45-minute-ish journey through meaningful lyrics, vivid memories, and the emotional mixtapes that mark our most human moments.

Think Desert Island Discs meets Films To Be Buried With — but with more vibes and fewer survival scenarios.

The show is created and hosted by Dinah Susan Alobeid and is edited and co-produced by Alice Marcondes. 

💜 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts

• Please leave a 5-star review and share with someone who’s quietly building their own “funeral playlist” (or should be!)

• You can follow the show on Instagram at @PlayThisAtMyFuneralPodcast and TikTok at @PlayThisAtMyFuneralPod and Dinah on IG @DinahSusanAlobeidWrites

• You can watch the podcast video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WriteDanceRepeat/playlists 

• Stay in touch with Dinah by joining her Substack community at Write, Dance, Repeat

🎙 About the Host

Dinah Susan Alobeid is a writer, dancer, and VP of Communications & Content by day (not always in that order). She’s the creator and host of the newly launched “Play This At My Funeral” podcast. Her fiction has appeared in Porter House Review, Five on the Fifth, and Reverie Literary Magazine and her nonfiction and poetry can be found in Spectrum Magazine, MediaPost, and more. She lives in New Jersey (even though she’s a born and bred New Yorker) with her partner and their rambunctious toddler. 

I hearby declare that I do not own the rights to any music or lyrics played during the recording of this podcast. All rights to the music and audio belong to their respective owner(s).