Playback: I See Dead People

The Modern Mann

Matt Hill

Relationships, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 753 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pathology technician Carla Valentine always knew she wanted to work with corpses. In childhood, she conducted funerals for roadkill. These days, she is curator of the Barts Pathology Museum, and a passionate advocate for more awareness about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut... In this interview with Olly, she reveals how to prepare for an autopsy, how to get a sense of how a person lived from examining their remains, and how to create that ‘look of gentle repose’ so important to grieving families. You’ll discover when rigor mortis starts, how identify the difference between primary and secondary flaccidity, and you'll learn about alkaline hydrolosis (‘the new cremation’) and the American trend for being embalmed sitting up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History?
0:04.5	On Monday, the anniversary of the day America held hands.
0:07.6	On Tuesday, how Australia came to terms with its colonial past.
0:11.0	On Wednesday, the parliamentary fight that led to an actual fight with guns.
0:15.0	On Thursday, why the 90s proved you could never make a movie out of Super Mario Brothers.
0:19.8	And on Friday, recording one of the great Christmas songs in the middle of spring.
0:23.5	That's today in history with the retrospectors, 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:29.0	Hello, Olli Mann here, and as it's the last Friday of the month, it is time for our
0:33.1	playback edition, a classic conversation from an older episode, revived, for your listening
0:38.7	enjoyment.
0:40.0	And following my interview with palliative vet, Caroline Flicker, in this month's new episode,
0:45.4	we thought it would be worth revisiting a previous conversation we had about death from back in
0:50.4	2017, when producer Matt and I went to meet a pathology technician and museum curator
0:56.4	who advocates for more awareness about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut. It is a
1:03.8	conversation that, as you might expect, from that context, has some grisly details in it, but it's
1:08.7	very illuminating, particularly when it comes to the
1:11.6	multifunctionality of cotton wool. I see dead people. That's this month's modern man playback.
1:18.8	And it all starts next.
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	...

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