What Next TBD: Facebook for the Dead

ICYMI

Slate Podcasts

Entertainment News, News, Tech News, Society & Culture

3.8 • 678 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this New Year's Day, ICYMI brings you an encore of one of our favorite episodes of What Next: TBD: Tony Tran didn’t find his grandfather. But traveling to, photographing, and uploading his grandfather’s memorial stone gave him something else. Guest: Tony Tran, senior tech editor at Slate and author of the feature “My Weekends with the Dead.” Want more What Next: TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, Cheyna Roth, and Alexandra Botti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I see why my listeners. I hope you've been resting, scrolling, and enjoying this holiday season.
0:23.2	Today, our team is taking a well-deserved break, so we're bringing you an episode from our friends over at What Next TBD. Back in 2017,
0:29.1	Slate's senior tech editor, Tony Tran, decided to learn more about his grandfather. He didn't have
0:33.9	much to go on, except that his grandfather was an American soldier who served served in Vietnam and lost touch with Tony's grandmother when she left after the war.
0:42.3	But Tony's curiosity turned hopeful when he looked up his grandfather on a website called findagrave.com.
0:50.3	From there, his journey led him to Texas, ancestry enthusiasts, and possibly an answer to who his
0:57.3	grandfather really was. I love Tony's story, so let's go to his episode for What Next TBD. Enjoy.
1:07.6	The journey to find my grandfather started back in 2017 or thereabouts when I decided to find his identity for the first time.
1:18.8	Tony Tran, Slate's senior tech editor, didn't have much information to go by.
1:24.0	His grandparents met in Vietnam during the war.
1:27.6	And growing up, I never knew who he was and my mom never knew who he was because her mom, my grandma, and her had lost contact with him shortly after the war.
1:38.8	And my grandma was very, very hush-hush about who he was, like very cagey.
1:44.3	Tony's grandmother left Vietnam not long after the war and was always pretty quiet about the
1:50.2	specifics of the man she fell in love with.
1:52.9	We knew some things. We knew that it was an American soldier who served in Vietnam during the
1:58.0	mid to late 60s and left in the early 70s.
2:01.6	And I always wanted to find his identity, and it wasn't until I embarked on this genealogy project, was I able to find him.
2:08.6	Part of the way Tony did that was by using the website findagrave.com.
2:13.6	The site is a vast repository of information, pictures of headstones, family photos, little memorials to the dead.
2:22.7	Throughout the process of looking for his identity and trying to find out who he was, I would
2:27.5	find different, like, find a grave memorials and pages. And it always came across my mind, like,
2:32.9	what if I found him on one of these websites one day?
	...

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