EPISODE 0: Brief Histories

EPISODE +1 Overlooked Bodies

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 0: Brief Histories

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 -1 Welcome

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.