"There is nothing theorizable or interesting about death," Tom Krell says 30 minutes into his appearance on my podcast about death. He's speaking precisely. By "death," he means what he's learned of it from watching those close to him die. The annihilation of self. The finality of it. What he's not doing is dismissing the topic. Tom earned his PhD in philosophy, metaphysics specifically, so it makes sense he's intentional and unsparing with his words. But he also makes this beautiful music.

Under the name How to Dress Well, his art-damaged R&B soundtracked my bike rides the summer before my coma in 2014. Since then, his music has grown deeper and more promiscuous. He incorporates metal, noise, and field recordings on tracks with lyrics about the hegemony of realism and intergenerational trauma. But it's all wrapped around a spine of primal, haunting melody. In our conversation, Tom tells me how important it is for him to use direct language to discuss philosophical ideas. And that is what he's doing with his music. He piles layers of sound and meaning onto melodies to bury the ideas and feelings deep. I'm still listening.

This episode also includes the fun of Tom claiming Hegel, Heidegger, and Marx are easy to grasp and the rare TIYA exclusive! Here it is: Tom plans to call the new How to Dress Well album "Glow Palimpsest No Hell."

We talk about: working on philosophy in piecemeal while touring, writing about your own work, Gaspar Noe's Climax, exoteric vs. esoteric, his version of the "terribly stupid" movie Memento, consciousness as Hegelian "picture thinking," metaphysical cope.

This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show & get bonus episodes by subscribing to TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Follow How to Dress Well:

https://howtodresswell.substack.com/

https://instagram.com/howtodresswell/

https://twitter.com/HowToDressWell

Listen to (and buy!) I Am Toward You. It's really very good:

https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-toward-you

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

Podcasting in Time is brought to you by the Afterheads and Producers on Patreon in collaboration with my unemployment. If you enjoy it, SUBSCRIBE to get episodes early and enable me to do more things like this. You'll also get all the other bonus episodes of TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Welcome back to Podcasting in Time, a This Is Your Afterlife bonus miniseries exploring the filmography of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Stalker is the only movie I'd seen before embarking on this project, and it's in the conversation for most people's favorite Tarkovsky. But for me, the real treat of this episode is my guest. Philip Metres is a poet, scholar, and TRANSLATOR OF ARSENY TARKOVSKY'S POETRY. That's right, the father of Andrei whose poems feature prominently in several of his films, especially including Stalker. Phil and his co-translator Dimitri Psurtsev published I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky, an approachable volume that shows the father as an artistic force, a fact the son clearly knew. Beyond his translation work, Phil has amassed a heap of impressive accomplishments. Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships! A Pushcart Prize! He's the director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University! And I just happen to know him socially as a fellow Clevelander and 80s punk rock fan. Who better to talk to about Andrei Tarkovsky's status as "the poet of cinema"? What a treat.

Follow Philip and read his work:

https://philipmetres.substack.com/

https://instagram.com/philipmetres/

https://twitter.com/PhilipMetres

https://linktr.ee/philipmetres

https://philipmetres.com/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

This is a preview of this week's bonus episode. Subscribe to TIYA After Dark on Patreon to support This Is Your Afterlife & get all bonus episodes for $5 a month: patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife.

Here's another solo episode of TIYA After Dark where I give myself a starting point and an endpoint and improvise the in-between. This one is brought to you by moving to Ohio and driving to restaurants in the suburbs as well as my conversation with NEXT WEEK'S This Is Your Afterlife guest. Listen to find out who it is!

I'm having fun with these. I hope you are too.

I talk about: messy Chipotles, beef patties on shroom burgers, the conversation vs. the show, doing it wrong, authoritative truth, trusting your eyes.

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

I razz him for using "brutally honest" in descriptions of two separate projects, but I love Brandon Ogborn. I know the comedian, playwright, podcaster, and reluctant "content creator" from our days on the same improv team at iO Chicago, Sports Team. Reminiscing about that time is the closest I get to nostalgia, and even then, Bubba had stories that made all our eyes pop out of our skulls. He's continued to amass stories as a parent of two young kids he makes fun of on Instagram, and now he's turned his parenting and growing up stories into a one-man stage show, SAHD (Stay-At-Home Dad). It's a funny, personal piece full of heart and the idiosyncrasies that make Brandon such a joy to know. You should see it in L.A. if you can (details below). Either way, enjoy this little slice of Brandon.

We talk about: his dead dad, ADHD, growing up Christian nationalist in the Midwest, out-of-body experiences vs. astral projection, people outgrowing homophobia, the accuracy of Pixar's Soul, reckoning with the statistical unlikelihood of Hollywood success. Also, there is one f-slur and a very quick mention of child sexual abuse.

This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show & get bonus episodes by subscribing to TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Follow Brandon and his bad-parenting podcast, Listen, They're Fine:

https://www.instagram.com/bubbaogborn/

https://www.instagram.com/listentheyrefine/

https://www.listentheyrefine.com/

If you're in Los Angeles August 22, 29, or September 5, check out SAHD (Stay-At-Home Dad) at the UCB Annex: https://ucbcomedy.com/show/sahd-stay-at-home-dad/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

Podcasting in Time is brought to you by the Afterheads and Producers on Patreon in collaboration with my unemployment. If you enjoy it, SUBSCRIBE to get episodes early and enable me to do more things like this. You'll also get all the other bonus episodes of TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Welcome back to Podcasting in Time, a This Is Your Afterlife bonus miniseries exploring the filmography of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

We've reached Mirror, the 4th of the man's 7 fiction features but not quite the midpoint of our series because of the inclusion of a documentary and a book. I say "fiction," but this is famously Tarkovsky's most autobiographical film. In at least one interview, he claimed every single thing in it had happened. I'm skeptical, but as you'll hear, he certainly went to GREAT LENGTHS for verisimilitude. My guest for this episode is Vienna, a contributor to Madeline Lane-McKinley and Sean O'Brien's The Return of the 90s anthology who also happens to love this movie. This episode is a special one because I refer to Tarkovsky's questionnaire for his mother. He had planned to include her answers as documentary footage in an early version of the film, but instead, these wide-ranging questions serve as punctuation throughout our episode. As always, let me know what you think.

Check out Vienna's work:

https://heatwavemag.info/

https://www.instagram.com/htwvmag/

https://blindfieldjournal.com/2025/01/04/staying-with-the-storm-weathering-with-you-and-the-oceanic/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

This is a preview of this week's bonus episode. Subscribe to TIYA After Dark on Patreon to support This Is Your Afterlife & get all bonus episodes for $5 a month: patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife.

These bonus episodes are nothing if not experimental. Even more than This Is Your Afterlife, TIYA After Dark is a place to test how close I can come to replicating the experience of doing a live show in podcast form. Which is to say I am so curious what you think of this week's episode, in which my fellow comedians and longtime buddies Drennen Quinn and Daniel Strauss join me to talk over Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, a recently reissued concert film Drennen saw at the store recently. He suggested we do the podcast while the movie plays, and so we did. Does the concert audio cut out at one point? Does a baby interrupt the recording? Does the episode start with three people and end with two? Yes, yes, and yes! It is chaos. Here's hoping the good kind! I know I encourage your feedback every week, but if there's any week to email, it's this one.

We talk about: boomers on weed, music babies can play, how volcanoes work, wearing diapers to concerts.

To watch along with us, click the link, hit pause, mute the audio or lower it to your desired volume, and press play when we do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVau7xYA8rk

Follow Daniel and Drennen:

https://www.instagram.com/danielstrauss/

https://www.instagram.com/drennenwon/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

"Ants experience humans as shadows and wind." And with that statement, four-time (!) TIYA guest Oui Ennui blew my mind. There are forces bigger than we can imagine, and how can we be sure of what we know??!!! My conversations with Jonn (Oui) get heady, so I wasn't surprised to be talking about the nature of time, but that ants line was poetry. It's a moment of resonance in a conversation about resonance, artistically and in relationships. The episode starts and ends with the concept of no-contact, but it's the result of the exact opposite between Oui and me.

We talk about: breaking no-contact, Alice Coltrane, Prefab Sprout, not being built for these times, passive suicidal ideation, reasons to stay alive, overexplaining as kink, one-person communities.

This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show & get bonus episodes by subscribing to TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Follow Oui Ennui:

https://www.instagram.com/ouiennui/

https://ouiennui.bandcamp.com/

If you're in Chicago August 14, check him out live at the Electronic Buffet:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbLinkMRHMJ/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

Podcasting in Time is brought to you by the Afterheads and Producers on Patreon in collaboration with my unemployment. If you enjoy it, SUBSCRIBE to get episodes early and enable me to do more things like this. You'll also get all the other bonus episodes of TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Welcome back to Podcasting in Time, a This Is Your Afterlife bonus miniseries exploring the filmography of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

With this Solaris episode, we're deep into this filmography. My head is full of flowing waters, plants swaying in the wind, and horses being weird, and we've reached the point of the series where I'm not sure what I've said and on which episode. Plus, this movie affects me the way the planet Solaris does everyone in its orbit: it scrambles my mind! Fortunately, I've got film critic Fred Barrett here to talk about it. Fred is sharp and insightful, and he rattled off a syllabus' worth of other films to watch during the course of our conversation. If you like it, let me know!

Follow Fred:

https://twitter.com/fred_beretta

https://fredbarrett.substack.com/

https://letterboxd.com/electricdreams/

Incredibly Incomplete List of Works Referenced:

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris

Harlan Ellison: "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"

Solaris (2002)

Red Line 7000 (1965)

Gertrude (1964)

Ugetsu (1953)

Laura (1944)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

High and Low (1963)

Journey to the Shore (2015)

High and Low (1963)

Moon Rainbow aka Lunar Rainbow (1983)

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

This is a preview of this week's bonus episode. Subscribe to TIYA After Dark on Patreon to support This Is Your Afterlife & get all bonus episodes for $5 a month: patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife.

It's another episode of Bracketology, the comedy argument game show created by me and some of my longest friends in comedy. This time, it's Bill Stern, Claire Favret, Meaghan Strickland, and me arguing Ways to Live!

How it works: pick a topic, fill a bracket with examples of that topic, and argue the matchups in the bracket until we crown a winner. The thing is, the winner of Bracketology is the quintessential example of the topic, NOT necessarily the "best" or our favorite example.

If you'd like to look at the bracket in seed order before/while you listen, here you go!

1. Golden Rule
2. Farm With All Your Friends Surrounded by the Ripest, Most Delicious Fruits (Fruit Commune)
3. Extravagantly
4. YOLO
5. Famous Musician Constantly on Tour, Beloved by Fans but at Night After the Shows… Alone (Commitment to Craft)
6. Anonymous
7. Double Life
8. Vicariously

Enjoy, subscribe to TIYA After Dark to hear the full ep, and spread the word!

Follow Claire:

https://www.instagram.com/clairefavs/

Follow Meaghan:

https://www.instagram.com/stricklygram/

Follow Bill and Claire's sketch group, Cigarette Sandwich:

https://www.instagram.com/cigsandwich/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

I don't remember when I started responding "THANK YOU" to guests saying, "Good question," but E Conner said it so often I felt obliged to explain the bit. I was slightly humbled by their admission it's an organizing trick for when you don't have an answer and not the turbo validation I interpret it to be. Fortunately, I don't need permission to self-aggrandize, and I have no plans to retire the bit any time soon. It's a silly moment in the midst of a really pleasant and sometimes intense conversation about E's punk rock radicalization, surprising (to me) orientation toward religion, and what it feels like to be part of an activist/artistic community in the Bay Area for 20 years.

We talk about: punk roots, tenant organizing, Black Liberation Army pamphlets, Maximum Rocknroll, traveling as a homeless teenager, the Ghost Ship fire, environmental grief, turning self activity into collective activity.

This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show & get bonus episodes by subscribing to TIYA After Dark:

https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife

Check out & support the Freedom Archives:

https://freedomarchives.org/

Follow The Weakly:

https://www.instagram.com/thee_weakly/

Follow TIYA, share your thoughts:

https://thisisyourafterlife.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/

[email protected]

Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary:

https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

Artwork by Matt Sage:

https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/