In Search of the Good Death
Examining our changing relationship with the afterlife
Caitlin Doughty is the death professional behind the Internet’s favorite show about death, Ask a Mortician, and founder of the Order of the Good Death, which works to overcome our culture’s anxiety about dying, grief, and the afterlife. She runs her own funeral home, Undertaking LA, which offers alternatives to traditional, formaldehyde-soaked approaches to burial. In her book From Here to Eternity, she travels the world in search of the good death, from Mexico and North Carolina to Japan and Bolivia, learning about the ways in which other cultures have approached the end of life. We originally spoke to her in 2017, digging in to the subjects of corpse interaction, alternatives to the casket, and what death means to her.
Go beyond the episode:
- Caitlin Doughty’s From Here to Eternity
- Ask a Mortician all about coffin birth, ghost marriage, and the iconic corpses of the world on Caitlin’s YouTube channel
- Read more about the Order of the Good Death, an organization of funeral professionals working to change attitudes about death
- Virtually visit the high-tech Ruriden Columbarium in Tokyo, Japan with head monk Yajima Taijun
A selection of Landis Blair’s illustrations of scenes in South Sulawesi, Tokyo, and La Paz:
A row of tau tau, the Torajans’ realistic wooden effigies of the dead, represent the souls of the anonymous dead. Older tau tau are depicted at left, getting progressively more modern (and realistic) moving right.
Examining our changing relationship with the afterlife
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Music featured from Master Toad (“Dreadful Mansion”), Dead End Canada (“Witch Hunt”), and 8bit Betty (“Spooky Loop”), courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.
