This Is Your Afterlife

Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn has lost enough people in his life to form a "Grief Voltron" (his words), and he didn't hold back in this wide-ranging talk that's been a long time coming. I hope you appreciate this conversation with a man who spends so much time appreciating the music of others through his writing, thinking, DJing, and, yes, curating. We talk about: deliberately cultivating yo...

Podcasting in Time is brought to you by the Afterheads and Producers on Patreon in collaboration with my unemployment. If you enjoy it, SUBSCRIBE to get episodes early and enable me to do more things like this. You'll also get all the other bonus episodes of TIYA After Dark: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Welcome to Podcasting in Time, a This Is Your Afterlife bonus miniseries explori...

This is a preview of this week's bonus episode. Subscribe to TIYA After Dark on Patreon to support This Is Your Afterlife & get all bonus episodes for $5 a month: patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife . I asked, and you delivered: the very first This Is Your Afterlife Mailbag episode. I really loved doing this, and I hope you like it too! Topic include death (naturally), seeking out new media, inter...

Just what the title says. For next week's bonus episode, I am going to do a listener mailbag, and it will be very awkward with no input from you, a listener! So send your questions to my or the podcast's DMs on Instagram ( @thisisdavemaher / @thisisyourafterlife ) or my email: thisisdavemaher@gmail.com . Voice notes welcome! (I assume by sending you're giving me permission to include them in the e...

I met rapper, writer, visual artist, and technical octuple threat Rhys Langston when he opened for This Is Your Afterlife's 200th guest, Open Mike Eagle, at a show in Cleveland. As I say to him in this episode, there were telltale signs he was my type of guy. I think he'll be your type of guy too. We recorded near the end of the NBA playoffs, as my partner and I were deepening our Cavs and general...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. This solo episode was an experiment. Of the things that have occupied my thoughts recently, I picked two, made one a starting point and the other an endpoint, and improvised my way from A to B. I'm pretty happy with i...

Cultural critic & friend of the show Madeline Lane-McKinley joins my conversation with Sean O'Brien about their book The Return of the 90s: A Cultural History of the Present for the end of another two-episode week! Or am I joining their conversation? Doesn't matter! It's a great one because not only do we get to explore in greater depth the project of the book, in the back half of the episode...

I don't tend to use the word "periodizing" for the project of This Is Your Afterlife, but when I ask my guests, "What's your coma?," I'm absolutely "categorizing the past into discrete, quantified, and named blocks of time for the purpose of study or analysis" (thanks, Wikipedia). Periodization is the explicit project of The Return of the 90s: A Cultural History of the Present, a new book edited b...

This is a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear all the other After Dark episodes for just $5 a month. I asked, subscribers voted, and we're doing it: watching all seven Andrei Tarkovsky feature films this summer! Here's an "episode zero" for this bonus miniseries, in which I explain the genesis of the idea, my approach, and my genera...

Is gossip the only thing people want from their media these days? Is your own taste to the contrary evidence of an audience for something different? What do you do when you want to create work that engages culture thoughtfully in a format longer than a single TikTok? The answer for Jeff Weiss is: double down on the publication you started as a rap blog in 2005, which has launched the careers of ma...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. You can also purchase just this standalone episode for $3 here: patreon.com/posts/nasty-squeezes-158644003 Sarah Knittel is a clown, actor, producer, deviser, previous TIYA guest, my close friend, a comrade-in-arms wh...

Pod Casty for Me week on This Is Your Afterlife concludes with a silly, serious, thorough, and discursive episode with that podcast's other host, Jake Serwin. I'm pleased to say our internet interactions have blossomed into an actual friendship, and I'm not at all insecure about how much I text him after the bit about "Lisa Lampanelli" he does at the top of the episode. Nah nah nah, c'mon, Jake is...

Ian Rhine is "one of the guys" who host Pod Casty for Me, my current favorite podcast. He and Jake Serwin talk about film and politics, and their deep friendship is evident in every episode. I find it illuminating and comforting and fun, and, wouldn't you know it, that's also how I feel about this conversation with Ian. I split him from Jake for another two-episode week, so stay tuned for Jake on...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. People have mentioned many versions of the afterlife on TIYA, but which one is THE BEST? That's exactly why we're here today. Afterheads, I present to you the Afterlife Power Rankings . My long-time comedy collaborato...

Place-Goers Week continues on TIYA, an acronym my guest—comedian/actor/YouTuber Danny Catlow—attempts to pronounce in this episode and we agree doesn't quite roll off the tongue. WE COVER SO MUCH GROUND IN THIS EPISODE. It starts with talk of how we met each other when my improv group Computer stayed on his couch for a festival in Austin when he was 18 and I was in my mid-20s. Strange! And then it...

I've become a weekly watcher of Kate O'Connor's YouTube vlog, Place-Goers, which features her going places with her boyfriend, Danny Catlow. I know both comedians—and unapologetic YouTubers!—from doing comedy in Chicago, but since they live in L.A. now, that's the site of most of their place-going. Their dynamic is great together, but for their TIYA appearances, I wanted to talk to them separately...

All-new type of bonus episode this week! I decided to visit the cemetery across the street from me, make my way to the grave of Cleveland working class artist hero and underground comics pioneer Harvey Pekar, and bring you all on the trip. This was a blast to record, and it's one of my favorite episodes of TIYA After Dark and maybe even the entire project of This Is Your Afterlife. Some of the aud...

Chicago comedian and gem-of-a-person-to-talk-to Lucia Whalen returns to This Is Your Afterlife... for the first time? Lucia wanted a few things from episode 83 kept private, so I sent it to the great podcast beyond, and we took the opportunity to record a new conversation as episode 205. I honestly think we had even more fun than before! We're older, wiser, and Lucia is DEFINITELY prepared this ti...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. Thanks to everyone who contributed voice messages to this first call-in episode of TIYA After Dark (at least of the new era)! It's an exorcism of all the casual cruelty we experience at work, from the mundane to the d...

There's only one piece of music from 2026 so far that I've loved, but it's nearing the point of obsession: Wretched Blessing's "How Deep Is Your Love?," which features guitar work from previous TIYA guest Genital Shame! It's a cover of the Calvin Harris & Disciples song (not the Bee Gees), but there's an important note: Norwegian singer/songwriter Ina Wroldsen is uncredited on the original, de...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. A solo episode in which I'm trying to choose narratives for my life. Maybe you can relate? Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Follow/contact This...

"How can this possibly be the way?!" is a question Leigh Claire La Berge asks constantly in Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is a Joke. The book is Leigh Claire's reflection on her time prepping a Fortune 500 company for Y2K by essentially making a bunch of copies, double-checking spreadsheets, and traveling internationally to give frivolous PowerPoint presentations. It's very funny! A...

This is a preview of a bonus episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. Daniel Strauss and Drennen Quinn return to talk about Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York . They're my closest comedy friends since right before this movie came out in 2008, and it was fun to sit down and goof off...

I recently saw two movies that exemplified how I want to make political art: Neo Sora's "Happyend" and "Failed State" by Christopher Jason Bell and Mitch Blummer. Both films tell intimate stories that show rather than obscure the ways political systems influence their characters' lives. In this episode of This Is Your Afterlife, I'm grateful to talk to "Failed State" co-director Chris Bell about h...

This is a preview of a premium episode from the Patreon feed, TIYA After Dark! Head to patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife to hear this full episode and all the others for just $5 a month. I love talking to Lucas O'Neil about the specifics of standup comedy craft, and since he just released his first special, Emotional Man, I use this bonus episode as an opportunity to dig deep with him into the proce...