Long Time Dead

About

Long Time Dead is an exploration of death as the inevitability that transcends culture, religion, wealth, status, and social position. Hosted by Ash Hawrani, the podcast asks us to confront a subject that is simultaneously universal and strangely difficult to discuss. Each episode interrogates death from both an ontological and epistemological perspective: What is death? What is its nature? What can we actually know about it? And what meanings, rituals, fears, and symbols do human beings create in response to it? The show begins by looking at how different people and cultures reckon with mortality. Through conversations with individuals from different faith traditions, we explore questions such as: What do you believe death is? Do you think about it often? How do you reconcile yourself with it? And do you fear it? These conversations examine the striking differences and unexpected similarities in how human beings confront the same inevitable end. From there, the podcast moves into philosophy and psychoanalysis, exploring thinkers such as Plato, Freud, Lacan, and Žižek and their attempts to understand the relationship between life, death, desire, and consciousness. Freud's concept of the death drive, Plato's reflections on mortality, and the tension between carpe diem and memento mori become starting points for a larger question: Can life be understood without death? The podcast also looks beyond formal philosophy. Cultural rituals surrounding the dead, changing attitudes toward mourning, popular representations such as the Grim Reaper, and the reflections of figures such as comedian Norm Macdonald all become evidence in a larger investigation into how human beings give form and meaning to mortality. Long Time Dead is an ongoing conversation about the thing none of us can ultimately avoid and the possibility that confronting it might tell us more about life than death itself. Subscribe and join the conversation.

Category

Society

Language

en-gb

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