This week Digital Planet explores digital death and how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to update our death rituals and move most of our grieving online. We hear from a listener whose mother passed away with her children by her side via Facetime and how they then moved their traditional American-Irish funeral practices online. In India people of all religions are facing huge disruptions to their traditional burials and are taking tech into their own hands to share their experiences. In some developed countries funeral businesses are using cutting edge tech including sophisticated recording set ups in places of worship to bring together mourners from across the world. People are moving more and more online not only with virtual memorials, RFID tags on gravestones and also ceremonies in gaming environments including Animal Crossing. And we find out more about the Reimagine Festival that’s about to start. The now virtual event explores death during COVID-19 and we see how people are determining their digital legacies after they die.

Guests include Khyati Tripathi, a PhD student at the University of Delhi, who tells how the restrictions in the pandemic have changed funerals in the country, Candi Cann, Associate Professor of Religion at Baylor University, and co-creator of the Virtual Funeral Collective and Dr Stacey Pitsillides, a Senior Research Fellow at Northumbria University who is organising the virtual festival “Reimagine: Life, Loss, & Love”.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with studio commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

(Image: Mourners live stream a funeral to family back in Nepal and to those waiting just outside. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds vis Getty Images)

Studio Manager: Jackie Margerum