Episode description

Archaeological remains, Jewish rituals, music, memento mori and the construction of elaborately carved tombs: Matthew Sweet discusses grief and the expression of mourning with guests: Lindsey Buster, an archaeologist whose work at Death Cafes, set up to help people talk about death, has led her to reinterpret the way people's relationship with 'stuff' shows up in the archaeological record Emily MacGregor, a musicologist who is writing a memoir of the ways her relationship with music changed after the death of her father Christina Faraday, an historian of art who has studied memento mori and vanitas, two popular genres of painting in the early modern period that suggest a different set of attitudes towards death Sally Berkovic, who has written about Jewish rituals and traditions surrounding death and mourning https://sallyberkovic.com/

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find on the BBC Ideas website a short film about how to face death with Kathryn Mannix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CruBRZh8quc and a Free Thinking Festival Discussion Death Comes to Us All https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xnmgz