This week's driving question is: who is doing it right? Solana recommends a podcast that investigates the cold case of a young indigenous woman named Alberta Willams, and Mary Kate highlights a project that encourages young black folx to pen their own obits.

EPISODE +3 Listening to Grief

This week's driving question is: what happens when the circumstances of death outweigh individual stories? Solana unpacks the true-crime podcast that started it all and Mary Kate covers a project of national mourning that emerged after 9/11.

EPISODE +2 Serial and Serious Grief

This week's driving question is: what constitutes a grievable body? Mary Kate covers the obituary of a badass woman and hiker and Solana shares the story of a journalist out of LA who pushes back against true crime infotainment.

EPISODE +1 Overlooked Bodies

How did we get to be so true crime obsessed? How did obituaries come to be the standardized last word after someone dies? And why should anyone care about true crime or obits, anyway? This week, Solana and Mary Kate will answer these questions and define concepts like the politics of loss and the grievable body.

EPISODE 0: Brief Histories

Two English major nerds walk into a podcast studio…One is a true-crime aficionado and the other is an obituary expert. Welcome to The Dead Beat! In this unofficial first episode, you’ll get to know a little bit about your hosts, Solana Quistorff and Mary Kate Gorman, how we got here, and our overlapping death-genre interests. You’ll also learn how this podcast got its name.

EPISODE -1 Welcome

In the Summer of 2021, friends and colleagues Mary Kate and Solana were on a walk talking about what young ladies usually talk about: obituaries and murder. 

Well, in fact, many young women ages 18-35 are deeply interested in stories of death and murder. These women make up the dominant demographic listening to true crime podcasts. And these podcasts are a big deal, scoring millions of downloads a week.

Other popular and creepy genres are also important to consider, like the obituary. 

Why are these genres such a big deal? Why aren't all kinds of people included?

Join us as we consider genres about death and dying, and how some storytelling leaves certain kinds of bodies out.

The Dead Beat

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