Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

You know what? More than ever in this series, I am grateful for red tape.

Because death is so personal. And in radio we're not supposed to refer to quote the listener,

but I'm going to do it. You listener, I have no idea how you want to talk about death.

When I was coming up with ideas for the episode, I was like, I'll open with the 7th seal,

or Bill and Ted's bogus journey, or Barbara's adagio for strings.

Because I don't know, are you irreverent about death? Does it terrify you?

Maybe you're dealing with it right now in your life and it's horrible and it's consuming everything.

So all I'll do is say that when I have dealt with death in my own life,

I strangely took comfort in the rules and regulations and systems of it.

Because I'm sad and I'm angry and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel,

but okay, let's see what the lawyer has to say.

How many copies of the death certificate do we need? Let's talk about the arrangements.

But these conversations are so awkward.

We don't like to talk about it. We don't like to think about it.

This is Dr. Ken Iserson.

A professor emeritus at the University of Arizona Department of Emergency Medicine.

He's written several books on death, including dust to death, what happens to dead bodies?

No, even in the shoot them up, cops and robbers and military films and other media,

where they show lots of deaths and lots of killings, they don't show the funerals.

They don't show the dead bodies, except maybe for game of thrones.

But in general, a lot of people don't like to go to funerals.

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