This Is Your Afterlife

Dave Maher
  • 5.0 (32)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Weekly

What do you hope happens when you die? If you could relive one memory, what would it be? What's your coma? Comedian and coma survivor Dave Maher ("This American Life") asks artists and organizers these questions in conversations about death, politics, and art.

  1. Podcasting in Time: Ivan's Childhood with Peter Raleigh

    4d ago ·  Bonus

    Podcasting in Time: Ivan's Childhood with Peter Raleigh

    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 exploring the filmography of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. In this very first episode, I welcome film writer Peter Raleigh to talk about Tarkovsky's 1962 debut feature, Ivan's Childhood. After brief descriptions of the filmmaker's early life and the Soviet cinema from which he emerged, we dive deep into this movie about an orphan scout for the Red Army. Tarkovsky said one of his objectives making Ivan's Childhood was "to establish whether or not I had it in me to be a director," and surprise, surprise: he did. This is the first of many wonderful conversations about these movies I'm excited for you to hear. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Follow Peter Raleigh: Long Library Substack: https://peterraleigh.substack.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/PetreRaleigh Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/petreraleigh.bsky.social Follow TIYA & share your thoughts: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisdavemaher@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/

    2h 21m

  2. 5d ago

    PREVIEW — TIYA Mailbag #1: Death Care, Toxic Nostalgia, and Death as Ending

    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, internalizing criticism of others' art, reality shows, poker chips, fantasy baseball, and fruit. Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisdavemaher@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    16 min

  3. Jun 25

    Send me your questions for the first-ever TIYA Mailbag!

    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 episode.) I'll answer questions about me or the show, requests for unqualified advice, or whatever else you can think of, probably. Just send it now! This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show & get bonus episodes—LIKE THE MAILBAG—by subscribing to TIYA After Dark: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    1 min

  4. Jun 23

    The Two Tape Decks in Your Head with Rhys Langston

    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 basketball fandom, and it just so happens Rhys has an entire former life as a basketball player. And that's not even his coma! Enjoy our conversation, and do yourself the favor of checking out his music. It's especially good for summer. We talk about: working in multiple art forms, the tingle vs. the cold sweats, being too intense, amassing an archive of your own work, brain breaking after calling off an engagement, how many notebooks he uses at once, (Long) COVID & brain fog, wishing your art was more of a conversation, anhedonia, berries from the neighbor's yard, George Jackson, Octavia Butler, My Life as a Night Elf Priest. This Is Your Afterlife is made possible by listeners like you on Patreon. Support the show and get bonus episodes by subscribing to TIYA After Dark: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Follow Rhys: https://rhyslangston.substack.com/ https://rhyslangston.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/rhyslangston/ Need a starting point with his massive music catalog? Try... Pale Black Negative: https://rhyslangston.bandcamp.com/album/pale-black-negative and/or Language Arts Unit: https://rhyslangston.bandcamp.com/album/language-arts-unit Especially be on the lookout for his Pacific Northwest tour dates June 29–July 4 (details on IG) + his album and debut book of poetry, both coming in October (on his birthday, of course). Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    1h 36m

  5. Jun 17

    PREVIEW — Does a Yacht Have Mortgage?: Questioning AI and Myself

    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 it! As always, I'd love to know what you think. I talk about: no one actually understands AI, harm reduction, bubbles bursting, property over people, inane job interviews, reckoning with Tarkovsky, echo chambers, losing dreams, news flash: unemployment is hard and sad. Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Dr. Fatima: How to (Anti) AI Better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y85nqc2zm7M Anthopic, OpenAI Should Not Be Allowed to IPO, Says Ed Zitron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKDmkJPVvI FracTracker's U.S. Data Centers Tracker: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/5a4d072ad01449bba5698a80103fb909/page/Map Stop Bad Data Centers: https://datacenters.halttheharm.net/ Food & Water Watch No More New Data Centers!: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2025/11/06/no-more-new-data-centers/ How to Stop a Data Center Near You: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/03/05/how-to-stop-a-data-center-near-you/ Stop Data Centers Now! Campaign Toolkit: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FOR-WEB-Toolkit_-Stop-the-Data-Center-Buildout-2.pdf Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    12 min

  6. Jun 12

    Return of the 90s Part 2: Spirals & Waves with Madeline Lane-McKinley and Sean O'Brien

    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 it gets personal, as we explore how the project of periodization has affected them as people. Plus, we all share our "most 90s" memories. Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife The Return of the 90s: A Cultural History of the Present: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/the-return-of-the-90s/ Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2610-solidarity-with-children Follow them both and find out about book events: https://twitter.com/la_louve_rouge_ https://www.instagram.com/la_louve_rouge_/ https://twitter.com/sean_obee https://www.instagram.com/sean_ob/ Be on the lookout for Sean's Keywords for Value and Culture, edited with Thomas Waller for CLCWeb, and Growing Pains, coming out through Textual Practice: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/ https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rtpr20 Listen to Sean on Genre Reveal Party!, my movie podcast with Madeline: https://pod.link/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vZ2VucmUtcmV2ZWFsLXBhcnR5Lw/episode/N2VkOTY1M2ItOTgwMy00OWQwLWIyZmQtYzdlNDA2M2QyYTlm Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    1h 42m

  7. Jun 9

    Return of the 90s Part 1: Anti-Work, Pro-Sleep with Sean O'Brien

    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 by Sean O'Brien and TIYA friend Madeline Lane-McKinley. In another two-episode week, I'm talking to them about this cultural criticism project and personalizing it. What world did the 90s leave us with? What do we make of the decade's resurgence? And what does it mean if the world we remember never existed in the first place? First up is Sean's solo episode, in which I roll out the purple carpet to give him the same TIYA treatment Madeline got with her solo episode. Then on Friday, I talk to them both in a more free-form conversation about the book, so stay tuned! We talk: an intro to Marxism, the need for sleep, WIRED magazine, afterlife as anti-work utopia, prostrating at the altar of academia, lessons he learned from watching his mother die with grace. Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife The Return of the 90s: A Cultural History of the Present: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/the-return-of-the-90s/ Follow Sean and find out about book events: https://twitter.com/sean_obee https://www.instagram.com/sean_ob/ Listen to Sean on Genre Reveal Party!, my movie podcast with Madeline: https://pod.link/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vZ2VucmUtcmV2ZWFsLXBhcnR5Lw/episode/N2VkOTY1M2ItOTgwMy00OWQwLWIyZmQtYzdlNDA2M2QyYTlm Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    1h 50m

  8. Jun 3

    Announcing "Podcasting in Time," A Tarkovsky Filmography Miniseries

    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 general insecurities for good measure. This thing is so new I didn't even have the name "Podcasting in Time" until writing this blurb after recording. Real-time creative process! Enjoy, chime in on Patreon with your thoughts, and get ready for the first episode of Podcasting in Time by watch Tarkovsky's 1962 debut, Ivan's Childhood. Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlife Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife: https://thisisyourafterlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/ thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com Music by TIYA house band Lake Mary: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/ Artwork by Matt Sage: https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

    21 min
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About

What do you hope happens when you die? If you could relive one memory, what would it be? What's your coma? Comedian and coma survivor Dave Maher ("This American Life") asks artists and organizers these questions in conversations about death, politics, and art.

Information

  • Creator
    Dave Maher
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    253
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Dave Maher
  • Show Website
    This Is Your Afterlife

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