Across the River

The grave should be the end of the story — but for 19th-century medical schools, it was only the beginning. In this episode of  The Asphodel Archives , Charon’s Intern unearths the world of the Resurrectionists: the grave robbers who supplied cadavers to anatomy classrooms when the law failed to keep up with science. How did society justify turning stolen bodies into medical education, and what di...

In this episode of Across the River , I speak with Lance Houia , a Māori cultural educator and mental health advocate from Rotorua, Aotearoa / New Zealand. We talk about tangi (tangihanga), the Māori funeral tradition, a multi-day process of mourning that brings family, community, and ancestors together. Lance explains what it means to sit with the dead, to grieve openly, and why practices like th...

In the world of deathcare, your reputation is your only currency. For over a century, the Illinois Funeral Directors Association (IFDA) was the gold standard of that currency—a "family of families" protecting the traditions of the trade. But beneath the somber suits and professional handshakes, a $300 million disaster was quietly being hollowed out from the inside. This week, we deconstruct the co...

Before the American Civil War, embalming was rare, experimental, and largely unnecessary. Most people died close to home, buried within days by family or community. War changed that. As hundreds of thousands of soldiers died far from where they were born, families demanded the return of bodies across vast distances. Heat, time, and transport made traditional burial impossible. In response, a new p...

For sixteen years, a company called National Prearranged Services (NPS) promised peace of mind: pay for your funeral in advance so your family wouldn’t have to decide in grief. Headquartered in Missouri, NPS sold prepaid funeral plans across sixteen U.S. states and appeared to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in consumer trust funds. Behind the brochures and polished audits, those funds were...

In the nineteenth century, being declared dead was not a certainty. It was a judgment shaped by limited medical knowledge, social status, and fear. This episode of the Asphodel Archives examines taphophobia, the widespread fear of premature burial, and the conditions that made it plausible in Victorian England. We trace how uncertainty gave rise to safety coffins, signaling systems, and paid vigil...

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gary Laderman (Emory University) about how death shapes culture, religion, and power. We discuss why the sacred is double-edged, how the U.S. funeral industry grew out of the Civil War and the rise of embalming, and why modern life has not become less religious, but differently religious. We dig into true crime and horror as cultural rituals, the death penalty as...

In this episode of When Cerberus Is Asleep , we travel to Noble, Georgia, where a trusted crematory operated for years without oversight, inspection, or verification. Between 1996 and 2002, hundreds of bodies sent to the Tri-State Crematory were never cremated. Funeral homes received paperwork. Families received urns. Regulators never looked. What was eventually discovered in the woods behind the...

In Ancient Egypt, death was never personal, it was procedural. This episode uncovers the spiritual and administrative machinery behind mummification and the afterlife: the priests who managed souls, the workshops that preserved bodies, and the belief that immortality itself could be engineered.

Sunset Mesa was supposed to be a small Colorado funeral home serving its community. Instead, it became the center of one of the most disturbing scandals in U.S. deathcare - falsified cremations, missing paperwork, and bodies sold without consent. In this episode of When Cerberus Is Asleep, we examine how a collapse in documentation and oversight allowed the unthinkable to happen and why every part...

What does it mean to build technology for an industry that no one talks about? In this opening episode of Across the River , Charon’s Intern — the creative voice behind Pantheon Platforms — tells the story of Charon Compliance™ , a copyrighted ethical SaaS platform built for the funeral industry. It worked flawlessly, but no one was there to use it. This is the story of what happens when you build...

Even the guardians of the underworld need rest. When Cerberus Is Asleep is a quiet exploration of the strange, human moments that survive death — grief, duty, love, and the humor that gets us through both life and eternity. Join Charon’s Intern , the reluctant narrator from the Department of Eternal Operations, as they document the stories that unfold after the gates close and the torches dim. Lis...

In the very first episode of Asphodel Archives , we journey back to ancient Greece to explore how life, death, and remembrance intertwined. From the rituals of burial and mourning to the beliefs about the underworld and the soul’s passage to Hades, this episode uncovers what the ancients thought it meant to die well — and why their customs still echo in modern funeral practices. Whether you’re fas...

Between myth and method lies the river — and every episode, we cross it. Across the River explores how ancient rituals, modern systems, and human innovation shape how we face death, memory, and meaning. From the underworlds of Greek myth to the workflows of the modern funeral industry, from digital transformation to moral philosophy — this is where history, ethics, and technology converge. Hosted...