Daily: Why DEATH should be a party

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When writer Erica Buist had the traumatic experience of finding her partner’s father dead in his home, it led her to ask why we respond to death with fear and sadness – and ultimately to travel from Mexico to Nepal and beyond to research the surprisingly uplifting book This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy And Spilled Rum At The World's Death Festivals. She talks to Arthur Snell about greeting the dead and dancing with corpses, feasts where dead bodies are “invited to the party”, the true meaning of Voldemort… and why Westerners need to get over the idea that talking about death is “rude”. “We leave this incredibly important thing to your highest moment of trauma. Why would you do that?” “I got hit on the head with a corpse at one of these festivals. They were dancing with it…” “We’re happy to look at the blue corpse of a girl in a movie, but somehow not in real life.” “In the West, when you die you lose your powers. But in a lot of these cultures, death is where you GAIN your power.” “Hanging out with a dead body sounds bizarre. But after a couple of minutes, it’s so normal.” “The idea that teaching kids about death will traumatise them? No. Kids LOVE death. It’s their favourite.” Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
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0:30.0	Pets brings so much joy.
0:32.0	From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick most people living in the Western world, Erica Bueist had not had to
1:16.3	encounter death at first hand until very sadly her father-in-law died and he was undiscovered for several days. The experience of this discovery
1:28.4	prompted Erica to re-examine her own attitude to death and to look at how death is celebrated in many cultures around the world.
1:37.0	And the subject of these investigations forms an amazing book that she's written called This Party's Dead. I'm delighted to have Erica here
1:44.7	with me in the bunker. Erica welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Erica I tried to
1:51.2	sort of explain your way into this story but I think it would be great to have it from in your own words because it is a remarkable kind of transformative moment in many people's lives, imagine and certainly in yours and particularly in
2:04.7	that sort of unexpected way that your own sort of encounter happened with
2:09.2	with your father-in-law could you say a bit about that? So we'd actually lived with his father for two years
2:15.0	and then we'd moved out.
2:16.0	And there was just this week where he wasn't responding to emails.
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