SERIOUS REPORTING ON DEATH
AND LIFE IN THE MEANTIME
LetterHeadstone · Editor’s Note
This week’s newsletter — our second prelaunch edition made especially for our earliest supporters (thank you, thank you) — is a meditation on the forces compelling us to remember that we’re going to die and those hellbent on making us forget.
First, neuroscientist Olivia Layne Babyok explains why self-proclaimed Immortal Unc Bryan Johnson and the human brain itself agree that death is irrelevant. Then, author Molly Horan rounds up memento mori book recs for the death-curious of all ages. For those braving the aftermath of someone else’s death, our long read is a handy primer from journalist Kelli Finger on how not to get screwed over during funeral planning.
Finally, I hope you’ll tune in this Thursday @ 2 p.m. ET for our very first HellFireside Chat, a live digital event with special guests who’ll help us get our affairs in order. More details below, and free registration here. Bring your favorite death denier.
— Delaney Rebernik, founder + editor-in-chief
The Short Read · Expert Perspective
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“Your Brain Won’t Let You Die”
As humans, we know we’re mortal. A growing body of neuroscience research shows how our brains try to make us forget.
BY Olivia Layne Babyok
There is a thought experiment that philosophers have returned to for centuries. It goes like this: Imagine your own death. Not the circumstances surrounding it, not the grief of the people you leave behind, but the thing itself: the absolute cessation of your existence. The lights going out and staying out. Where you used to be, simply nothing.
If you’re like many people, you’ll find you can’t hold this thought for long. It slips from your mind like ice from a hand, and suddenly you’re musing about what you would want at your funeral, or whether you remembered to text someone back, or what nothing even means, philosophically speaking. A growing body of research suggests that this difficulty we have fathoming our death is not a failure of imagination but a feature of human design.
The Long Read · Feature
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Funerals and the Fine Print
The bereaved must often make pricey decisions within days of a loved one’s death. Knowing your rights as a consumer can help temper shock and urgency in a high-stakes marketplace.
BY Kelli Finger
“She loved angels. So, I bought a casket with angels on it,” says Mark Przygocki about the drive he felt to get his mother’s funeral arrangements just right.
“The casket was going into a vault, which was going in the ground. No one would see it,” remembers the retired teacher from Southgate, Michigan. “I could’ve chosen something cheaper. But I didn’t because I knew it was something that would’ve made her happy.”
To avoid undue pressure in the fraught aftermath of a loved one’s death, experts say it’s important for bereaved people to enter funeral planning with a basic understanding of their protections and options.
HellFireside Chat · Join Our First Digital Live Event!
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Nobody blocks off an afternoon to plan their own death, but that’s exactly what we’re asking you to do.
Register and join us for GraveSite’s first live HellFireside Chat this Thursday, Aug. 27, at 2 p.m. ET, for refreshingly candid conversations and uber-practical advice on wills, advance directives, powers of attorney, and all the feelings that gum up the paperwork.
Independent journalist Jamie Cattanach — who authored our guide to wills, advance directives, and the well-ordered affairs that protect the people you love — joins Sarah Chavez, executive director of the Order of the Good Death and a leading voice in the death-positivity movement. Our editor-in-chief Delaney Rebernik hosts, and audience editor Charli K. Elder produces.
We’ll dig into what these documents actually do, who standard estate-planning advice tends to leave out, and the one thing you can knock out before you log off for the day. And bring your questions — we’ll work through them.
‘Read in Peace’ Book Club · Memento Mori
Introducing the ‘Read in Peace’
Book Club
Welcome to ‘Read in Peace’, a monthly column and online book club.
Death, grief, and intervening life can’t fit into a neat box, and neither can their stories. So each month, we’re bringing you an author-curated reading list of the best books on a death matter of great import. Whether you’re into gravity or gallows humor, searching for yourself or a precocious death-curious kid, we’ve got you covered.
August’s Theme:
Memento Mori
Columnist Molly Horan spent the summer reading a couple dozen books about death — not the stuff of your typical beach TBR. The Latin phrase memento mori means “remember you must die,” and Horan’s roundup runs the full range: Rosie Grant’s cookbook of recipes sourced from gravestones sits alongside an essay collection from David Sedaris covering his sister’s cancer diagnosis and all the contact details of dead people still in his address book. There’s also a YA romance of mythic proportions and a picture book about a bird’s first encounter with a fallen comrade.
GraveSightings · Death News from Elsewhere
The emerging science of near-death experiences is not for the faint of heart: “Peer-reviewed studies find consciousness can persist when the heart and brain have stopped.”
Flight attendants and pilots are at the highest risk of dying from radiation-related cancers, according to a new JAMA study of 12 million death certificates.
Racism defines and intensifies how people experience grief, a new study in BMC Medicine finds.
Rest in peace, Hayden Panettiere. More must be done to protect child actors, Melissa Gilbert says.
Spared execution eight times, Francis Clifford Smith — the oldest incarcerated person in the U.S. — has died at 101 years old. His final years were spent in a “de-carceration” environment that advocates would like to see made more widely available as the prison population ages. According to a recent projection, people over 50 will comprise up to one-third of those incarcerated in the U.S. by 2030.
MAID watch: France has formally adopted legislation granting terminally ill adults the right to assisted dying after approving and publishing the law’s final text Aug. 19.
Kim Clark’s husband was kicked out of hospice for dying too slowly; the couple is “enjoying these unexpected bonus days.”
Justice for the chronic dark joker: I’ll be citing this piece next time I get a sidelong glance for invoking the Dead Parents Club within five minutes of meeting someone.
C. Russell Price’s Bisquick: An American Seance sounds like an absolute romp based on this glowing review. The collection of 40 poems “veraciously and humorously explores loss, loneliness, love, sex, yearning, friendship, aesthetics, what it means to be a cowboy, what it means to be an American, and all the situations and scenarios your grief can still find you in,” writes Hannah Korbel. Phew.
Dancing after death: This party girl hopes grief discos (and raves?!) take off stateside.
Rejoice, Tubi heads! The streamer just launched an eternal ‘Terror on Tubi’ horror hub, and I’m taking bets on whether I’ll make it through all 13,000+ hours of programming by Halloween.
Some detritus from DeathTok for the fellow chronically online (because how else am I to justify all the hours and personal data I sacrifice to the technocratic overlords du jour?): The sickest MCR “Helena” transition for all my Millennial pop punk girlies.⚰️ Second and third song drops from Hereditary: The Musical cover the “lil diva head come off” scene and “I am your MOTHER” speech — praise Paimon.🤕 Afters with Hansel — not so hot right now.🧙♀️
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
Meet the team
Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Delaney Rebernik
Co-Founder and Executive Producer: Alexis Haut
Audience Editor: Charli K. Elder
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