BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Oh, you think you're dead and gone, but it's not over.

I'm Pearl Mackey, and I'm still here, playing Pan in Forest 404.

Before she went on her mission to find a tree, she worked for the convocation in the sound department,

sifting through layers and layers of digital information from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Like our own archaeologists, carefully brush away the dirt for traces of ancient societies.

What will remain of modern humans when we're gone?

Can our JPEGs and blog posts and selfies and tweets last for centuries?

And who looks after our digital ghosts?

In Pod Talk number six, we'll meet Kathleen Thornton, a graveyard researcher and audio storyteller.

Over to Kathleen.

A few months back, I logged into Facebook pretty absent-mindedly.

One of those memories popped up, and I was unexpectedly faced with a picture of my friend

Jameson and me at a party.

In the photo, we're making ridiculous faces at the camera in unseasonably summery clothing,

celebrating one of the first above zero days after many long and dark winter months.

Seeing this picture was jarring, because Jameson is dead. He died three years ago. This sort of ghost in the Facebook

memories machine is such a new psychological phenomenon that I didn't really feel I had the tools

or protocols in place to suggest how I should react.

When Jameson died, his Facebook page became like a shrine. Years later, a lot of people who were

close with him still treat his page the way they would a grave. They go there on his birthday,

or when something reminds them of him, the word remembering is written above his name.

...