Booking This Is Your Afterlife sometimes looks like me hand-writing a list of dream guests off the top of my head. Will Oldham appears on every one of those lists. I've been a fan since he released the first Superwolf album with Matt Sweeney in 2005, and their 2021 follow-up, Superwolves, joins it as one of my favorite albums ever.

Few artists are better at combining mystery, sincerity, wisdom, and mischief. And rather than strive for any sort of definitive Will Oldham interview, I just wanted to do the best This Is Your Afterlife episode I could with him on the day we recorded. I hope you like it.

Content warning: dying parents, genocide, convenience, hell is a Twitter feed, the shock of early Facebook, the scourge of superhero movies, Kentucky Pocket Wolf, examining the function of music, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Patrick Shiroishi as internet angel.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

If you want to follow Will on social media, he's @wignifier on Instagram and @signifyingwolf on Twitter.

Listen to Superwolf and Superwolves and all the Bonnie Prince Billy solo albums and the old Palace records and and and...

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Playwright, actor, and well-balanced adult Steven Strafford is a breath of fresh air when it comes to putting creative pursuits in their proper place, i.e. as part of a life rather than a whole life. It was wonderful to talk to him about sobriety, meeting his husband, and moving from Chicago to Ohio as a grown man.

Content warning: sobriety, family, having kids, people pleasing, ants and grasshoppers, the "Pumpkins" song, a funeral at a sensible black box.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Watch Steven's solo show, Methtacular!, free on YouTube.

Buy his play, Small Jokes About Monsters, from Dramatists Play Service.

Follow him on Twitter, @StevenStrafford. He doesn't post often on Instagram, but you can follow him there too, @stevenstraffordelkins. Hell, you can go follow him on Facebook if you like!

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

I've wanted artist, writer, educator, and organizer Benji Hart on the show for a while, and today we finally make it happen. It's such a pleasure to speak with them about navigating abolition work while acknowledging the very human desire to see evil punished. It's something I think about a lot, and clearly Benji does too.

Content warning: abolition, punishment, religion, not being able to relate to doing a genocide, Saturn return, voguing, bomba, dismantling the binary between thinking and feeling, why am I mourning Ben Carson?

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Find out more about Benji and all their work at benjihart.com.

Follow them on Instagram at @benjifemini + Twitter at @radfagg.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

My conversation with Lyn Rye was so intense and locked in that I gave up on taking notes (and doing bits). They're a bass player, songwriter, artist, gardener, "house dad" at Casa Al-Fatiha (an autonomous sanctuary house for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers), and abolitionist troublemaker. Yet our conversation stretched beyond even all that work!

Content warning: domestic violence, carceral violence, assisted dying, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Islam's day of reckoning, Joe Hill, afterlife-as-memory synchronicity.

Wanna hear the full-length version of this conversation? Become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Lyn on IG: @lyn_rye_music, and find their music on Bandcamp at lynrye.bandcamp.com.

For more information and live show dates, visit their website, lynrye.com.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Daniel Wyche is a composer and improvising musician who uses guitar, pedals, and other electronics to make tracks full of ideas, noise, and even humor. I love his new tape with Lia Kohl, Movie Candy, so I talked to him in my living room about how to listen to experimental music (a Patreon-only part of our talk) and just how important other people are to his well-being.

Content warning: hell is NO people, a gap year without the name "gap year," Chris Wiersema, learning how to hitchhike, metalhead with duffel bag full of CDs, Estonian farm, cousins.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Daniel on Instagram, @danielwyche. And go to Elastic Arts, where he frequently curates programming.

You gotta hear Movie Candy. Then, check out his solo albums, 2021's Earthwork and 2016's Our Severed Sleep. You can hear him collaborate with previous TIYA guest Patrick Shiroishi on Long Day (also with Ted Byrnes). And he has a forthcoming project with Lake Mary, so stay on the lookout for that!

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Improviser, actor, and teacher Mary Cait Walthall directed Feed Wolf Ice Cream, the one-man show this podcast grew from. I talk to her about how the project has evolved and the comas that lead away from the dream of fame.

Content warning: punishment, parenting, enlightenment, death of childhood friends, talking circle funeral, Karens.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Mary Cait's improv team, Super Human, performs on Thursday nights at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago.

Get tickets to the play she's in, Comet, at Rhino Fest 2024. There are two more performances, on June 19 and 28.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

Moving from Chicago to Cleveland, how do I pay tribute to my home of 22 years, my entire adult life? I do this.

Read the poem I reference (and read), David Whyte's Sweet Darkness.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want more solo (and other bonus) episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.

It's an all-time-great This Is Your Afterlife with artist, musician, and independent folklorist Daniel Bachman. Daniel creates huge concept albums like Almanac Behind, which documented the climate crisis with field recordings of extreme weather that sometimes swallowed his guitar playing, and writes pieces on his Substack like “Well Seasoned”: A History of North American Immunocapitalism.

Content warning: I use this space to alert folks to traditional content warnings as well as cheekily share some of the topics covered in the episode. This time, we've got some fairly heavy genuine content warnings, almost all to do with the American culture of white supremacy: hate crime, suicide, drug overdose, Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, animal cruelty, COVID, and colonialism. AND there is so much genuine beauty, history, camaraderie, and fun in this episode! From Daniel teaching me about abolitionist minister and writer Moncure Daniel Conway to discussing his non-human collaborators, this is just a wall-to-wall banger of a conversation.

If you believe in This Is Your Afterlife and want fun bonus episodes, like the Crossing Guard Trilogy of This Is Your Aftershow episodes, become a patron for $5 or $15/month at patreon.com/davemaher.

Follow Daniel: @almanacbehind on Instagram and Twitter.

Listen to his most recent recording for Longform Editions, Quaker Run Wildfire (10​/​24​/​23​–​11​/​17​/​23) for Fiddle and Guitar.

Follow this show on IG: @thisisyourafterlife, and get more info at thisisyourafterlife.com. Have thoughts on the show? Email thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.com.

Follow me @thisisdavemaher on Instagram and Twitter.

All music by This Is Your Afterlife house band Lake Mary.

Check out my other podcast, Genre Reveal Party!, where I analyze TV and movies with my friend, writer and cultural critic Madeline Lane-McKinley.