3. The Rise of the death podcast and a few of my personal favourites

I am an avid reader. Actually that’s not strictly true, I used to be avid reader. We are talking two books a week. And it was all going swimmingly until late 2017, when I got hooked on podcasts. Now I’m lucky to read three books a year. My dirty secret is out.

What happened? What could podcasts possibly offer that books couldn’t? Companionship in the dark. I have insomnia and switching my light to read on at 3.00am is considered very antisocial. Fortunately, fumbling under the duvet to select a podcast, is not.

When I started listening to podcasts back in 2017, finding something worth listening to was relatively easy. Now, with more than 700,000 podcasts, you have to kiss a lot of podcast frogs before you’ll get near a podcast princess.

So where do you start? As a podcast producer, I am often asked this question. The simplest answer is google the title of your favourite newspaper or magazine alongside the phrase ‘podcast recommendations’. Ideally, this should give you at least three good podcasts to be getting on with.

But what about those of us with an interest in death? Where do we begin?

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 hosted by Nora McInerny a young widow whose husband Aaron died of brain cancer in 2014. In each episode, she steps through her own grief to meet others struggling with their loss. 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 behaviour 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.

And this is why podcast discussions about death are so refreshing. Presenters like McInerny and Lloyd share their lived experience in all its raw vulnerability. Gone are the detached experts that populate our airwaves speaking about death with a level of detachment that leaves you yelling, ‘Oh for God’s sake would you stop speaking about it like it’s never going to happen to you?' Or perhaps that’s just me.

But 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, may your nights be long and full of sleep.