The State We're In, 26 June 2010. None of us much likes thinking about it, but death is a fact of life. It happens about 6,500 times an hour, in fact. This episode confronts the final frontier in a light-hearted way: from cremating a 500lb man to the life-altering experience of stealing coffins.

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Curtains
Tom Jokinen did something most of us would find crazy: he quit his day job to work as a funeral home apprentice. He’s written a book about it called Curtains. After handling 4 to 5 corpses a day for about a year, he’s still terrified by death. But he now embraces the need to answer the unanswerable with ritual. For more on Curtains click here.

The lonely funeral
To die alone and unattended seems like the sorriest way to leave this world. But two men in Amsterdam have taken it upon themselves to arrange funerals for those who would otherwise meet eternity unremembered. Producer Michele Ernsting brings us this touching documentary.
Click here to listen to the full version of The Lonely Funeral.

Funeral frou frou
Contributor Dany Mitzman in Italy went to a funeral fair and discovered that being dead doesn’t have to mean being unfashionable.

Coffin stealing
John Kibera in Kenya grew up stealing. He and his gang would cruise funeral services and then steal the coffins and resell them. After three years, they got caught by the police who shot dead his gang members. John survived by hiding in the casket. John is now a pastor.

Hospice hilarity
Jennifer Novak in Washington, DC got in touch with us via Facebook about hearing a joke on the radio while en route to work. She couldn’t stop laughing, not even during a meeting. Trouble was: Jennifer worked at a hospice…