Show Notes
After the death of a close friend, Erica Buist found herself consumed by anxiety about dying. In this episode of Constant Wonder, she tells host Marcus Smith how she set out to face that fear by visiting death festivals around the world, and found more celebration than mourning.
From the Day of the Dead in Mexico to a rollicking festival in Madagascar where she gets hit in the head with a corpse, Erica explores the bonds between the living and the dead. She visits a cow festival in Nepal and the mummies of Sicily, and asks why Western cultures are so somber about death, and what we can learn from the carnival atmosphere of these celebrations.
Guest: Erica Buist, journalist and author of This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World's Death Festivals
Originally aired August 31, 2022
Chapters: (0:00) Erica Buist and death anxiety (8:07) Confronting death close to home (16:31) Day of the Dead in Mexico (23:14) Gai Jatra, Nepal's cow festival (29:33) The mummies of Sicily (34:08) Love after death
More from Constant Wonder
A chance encounter with milkweed changes Allison Fragakis' life and soothes her grief over her mother's death. In this episode of Constant Wonder, Tennery Taylor explores how a variety of mystical experiences keep Allison's deceased mother close.
Hosts Marcus Smith and Tennery Taylor explore some of our favorite lost-and-found stories from previous episodes of Constant Wonder.
George Forster didn't begin life as a revolutionary. He was an 18th-century botanist whose life ended in Paris during the Reign of Terror. In this episode, historian Andrea Wulf tells host Marcus Smith about how, as a teenager, Forster sailed with Captain James Cook through the Southern Hemisphere and around Antarctica. Forster developed a transcendent love for the people he met along the way. And, as Andrea Wulf followed in his footsteps, she felt the distance of 250 years collapse on itself.
Tim Kovar leads climbing tours high up in the canopy of massive trees. In this episode of Constant Wonder, he tells host Marcus Smith about how he used to fell trees as an arborist. But now, he's traded in his chainsaw for ropes and climbing saddles; so, instead of cutting trees down, he can take regular people high into old-growth canopies to experience unparalleled views of nature. The trees have taught him to be more in tune with the natural world and with himself.
Lea Korsgaard felt a tug toward the natural world and followed it, setting out to find all 64 species of butterfly in her native Denmark. What began as an impulse became a consuming quest that transformed her understanding of nature, mortality, grief, and joy. In this episode, Lea and host Marcus Smith revisit the journey: the small tortoiseshell butterfly that connected her to her mother’s story, the family members drawn into her search, and the exhilaration of finding out that maybe her quest hadn't been about butterflies at all.