The Rise of the Death Podcast (and a few of my personal favourites)
As the producer of Dead Honest, I’m often asked “What are your favourite death podcasts?” It is such a personal choice. But let’s start with the main players, the award-winning podcasts that frequently make the Top 20 lists. One of my favourites is Terrible, Thanks for Asking. It’s hosted by Nora McInerny a young widow whose husband Aaron died of brain cancer in 2014. Is it sad? Yes. But it is also blackly funny and totally unsentimental as the title suggests. McInerny is not afraid to call out her own disastrous behavior which only makes you like her all the more.
Closer to home, we have our own award-winning podcaster, Cariad Lloyd. Her podcast series Griefcast has brought her international acclaim and deservedly so. In a nutshell, Lloyd interviews her fellow comedians about their experiences of grief and loss; a simple but surprisingly revealing premise. “It’s cheerier than it sounds”, she’s quick to add. Like McInerny, she uses her own grief experience to build trust with her guests and has scored some remarkably intimate interviews as a result.
What makes a good podcast about grief and loss
Do you need to have lived experience to make great podcasts about death and dying? No, some of the best episodes about death come from podcasts you might not expect. Let me share some of the gems I have found in the deeper recesses of the internet at 4.00am:
The Living Room New York writer Anna Weipert charts a deeply intimate and voyeuristic relationship she develops with a neighbour she never gets to meet. A story of grief observed that is both lyrical and haunting.
The Bitter End: Why are doctors the last people to save themselves? A disturbing investigation into the realities of “end of life care” and why the very people we rely on to keep us going, are opting out.
Hot Dog: What happens when man’s best friend loses his best friend? A really charming and heartbreaking story of a big man and his little sausage dog and what happens when everything goes wrong.
Bringing Wes Home: Wes was 22 when he was killed in a car accident. Rather than let the funeral home take their son's body away, his family picked him up from the morgue and took him home. This is their story.
Really Long Distance In a small town in northern Japan, a man placed a disused telephone box in the bottom of his garden. After the 2011 Tsunami, this ‘ghost phone’ became a refuge for survivors to come and ‘speak’ to those they had lost.
Of course, this selection is highly personal and I’d love to hear what you are listening to. In the meantime, feel free to share my recommendations.