This Is Your Afterlife

Adam Gilbert (Just for Laughs) is a real sweetie, and he was in a punchy mood (or maybe that's just him?) when we recorded. And even though he compared me to Bill Maher, we had a lot of fun. This makes two weeks in a row of standups, and who knows, maybe this is the start of This Is Your Afterlife as traditional comedy podcast! (It's not.)

Content warning: alcoholism, dead dad, escalators, spiders, time, self as a concept like gender or money, unsucked boy.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want the uncut conversations and bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Adam on Instagram: @adamgcomedy, and TikTok: @adamgilbertcomedy.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

SNL writer, stand-up comedy comrade of mine, and O.G. observer of my coma, Steven Castillo joins me to brag about the memory of his second Saturday Night Live audition. Actually, this is a very sweet and warm chat between old friends, and I was so grateful to have it (on my 40th birthday! I don't mention this on the main feed, but it's in the full convo on the Patreon). Now it's yours.

Content warning: YouTube comments, therapy, failure, convoluted reincarnation, a healthy amount of "fuck you," vape soul.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want the uncut conversations and bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Listen to Steven's new podcast, Mind of Castillo, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and/or watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOfCastillo/

Visit his website: stevencastillohasawebsite.com

And follow him on social media.

IG: @steezus_castillo

Twitter: @STEEEZUSCHRIST

TikTok: @steeezuschrist

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

"Why Cleveland?" is the question I get when I tell people I moved from Chicago to Cleveland, mostly from people IN Cleveland. This Very Special Episode of This Is Your Afterlife does not answer "why" and in fact cautions against reading too much into every little detail of such a huge life transformation. My lovely pal, very funny comedian, and big TIYA fan Claire Favret helps me tease it all out.

Content warning: employment, power outage, crappy apartment, COVID precautions, reckoning with the concept of sour grapes, relationship between making a living and making art, disillusionment with standup, commute soundtrack, are you a club or BLT?

Here's the Craig Wedren post on the 30th anniversary of Shudder to Think's Pony Express Record, which I reference.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want the uncut conversations and bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Claire @clairefavs on IG and Twitter.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

As a follow-up to last week's Will Oldham episode, I'm re-releasing my episode with the man Will called an "internet angel," saxophonist and Fuubutsushi member Patrick Shiroishi.

This conversation has been on my mind because my move to Cleveland has come with consuming more Taco Bell than I have in the past decade, so take any shade I throw toward T. Bell with that grain of salt.

In my mind, this is a classic This Is Your Afterlife. I hope you enjoy it.

Content warning: Japanese internment camps, ambiguously supportive parents, ancestors, shit, therapy, the Get Up Kids, Taco Bell.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Patrick on IG, @patrickshiroishi.

Check out Patrick's website for tour dates.

Go buy Fuubutsushi's new album, Meridians, right now at cached.media/shop!

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Booking This Is Your Afterlife sometimes looks like me hand-writing a list of dream guests off the top of my head. Will Oldham appears on every one of those lists. I've been a fan since he released the first Superwolf album with Matt Sweeney in 2005, and their 2021 follow-up, Superwolves, joins it as one of my favorite albums ever.

Few artists are better at combining mystery, sincerity, wisdom, and mischief. And rather than strive for any sort of definitive Will Oldham interview, I just wanted to do the best This Is Your Afterlife episode I could with him on the day we recorded. I hope you like it.

Content warning: dying parents, genocide, convenience, hell is a Twitter feed, the shock of early Facebook, the scourge of superhero movies, Kentucky Pocket Wolf, examining the function of music, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Patrick Shiroishi as internet angel.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

If you want to follow Will on social media, he's @wignifier on Instagram and @signifyingwolf on Twitter.

Listen to Superwolf and Superwolves and all the Bonnie Prince Billy solo albums and the old Palace records and and and...

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Playwright, actor, and well-balanced adult Steven Strafford is a breath of fresh air when it comes to putting creative pursuits in their proper place, i.e. as part of a life rather than a whole life. It was wonderful to talk to him about sobriety, meeting his husband, and moving from Chicago to Ohio as a grown man.

Content warning: sobriety, family, having kids, people pleasing, ants and grasshoppers, the "Pumpkins" song, a funeral at a sensible black box.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Watch Steven's solo show, Methtacular!, free on YouTube.

Buy his play, Small Jokes About Monsters, from Dramatists Play Service.

Follow him on Twitter, @StevenStrafford. He doesn't post often on Instagram, but you can follow him there too, @stevenstraffordelkins. Hell, you can go follow him on Facebook if you like!

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

I've wanted artist, writer, educator, and organizer Benji Hart on the show for a while, and today we finally make it happen. It's such a pleasure to speak with them about navigating abolition work while acknowledging the very human desire to see evil punished. It's something I think about a lot, and clearly Benji does too.

Content warning: abolition, punishment, religion, not being able to relate to doing a genocide, Saturn return, voguing, bomba, dismantling the binary between thinking and feeling, why am I mourning Ben Carson?

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Find out more about Benji and all their work at benjihart.com.

Follow them on Instagram at @benjifemini + Twitter at @radfagg.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

My conversation with Lyn Rye was so intense and locked in that I gave up on taking notes (and doing bits). They're a bass player, songwriter, artist, gardener, "house dad" at Casa Al-Fatiha (an autonomous sanctuary house for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers), and abolitionist troublemaker. Yet our conversation stretched beyond even all that work!

Content warning: domestic violence, carceral violence, assisted dying, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Islam's day of reckoning, Joe Hill, afterlife-as-memory synchronicity.

Wanna hear the full-length version of this conversation? Become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Lyn on IG: @lyn_rye_music, and find their music on Bandcamp at lynrye.bandcamp.com.

For more information and live show dates, visit their website, lynrye.com.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Daniel Wyche is a composer and improvising musician who uses guitar, pedals, and other electronics to make tracks full of ideas, noise, and even humor. I love his new tape with Lia Kohl, Movie Candy, so I talked to him in my living room about how to listen to experimental music (a Patreon-only part of our talk) and just how important other people are to his well-being.

Content warning: hell is NO people, a gap year without the name "gap year," Chris Wiersema, learning how to hitchhike, metalhead with duffel bag full of CDs, Estonian farm, cousins.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Daniel on Instagram, @danielwyche. And go to Elastic Arts, where he frequently curates programming.

You gotta hear Movie Candy. Then, check out his solo albums, 2021's Earthwork and 2016's Our Severed Sleep. You can hear him collaborate with previous TIYA guest Patrick Shiroishi on Long Day (also with Ted Byrnes). And he has a forthcoming project with Lake Mary, so stay on the lookout for that!

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Improviser, actor, and teacher Mary Cait Walthall directed Feed Wolf Ice Cream, the one-man show this podcast grew from. I talk to her about how the project has evolved and the comas that lead away from the dream of fame.

Content warning: punishment, parenting, enlightenment, death of childhood friends, talking circle funeral, Karens.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Mary Cait's improv team, Super Human, performs on Thursday nights at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago.

Get tickets to the play she's in, Comet, at Rhino Fest 2024. There are two more performances, on June 19 and 28.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email [email protected].

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.