a podcast that doesn't pull punches

Last wishes, care of the corpse, funeral costs… The colorful researcher Richard Monvoisin carried out his investigation into the death. Ten episodes as interesting as they are offbeat.

Dhe proudly skeptical and highly rational nature, Richard Monvoisin slips “into the skin of a corpse” to directly address the questions that we especially don't want to ask about death. On France Culture, the producer demonstrates over ten episodes that the last wishes of the deceased take precedence over those of the living and that as such it would be better to anticipate. Like a mountebank, he harangues the listeners and delivers with great pomp a singularly comical funeral instructions.

Richard Monvoisin is not far from a paradox. Doctor in science education and figure of the French-speaking Zetetic movement, he is in dialogue with “Madame Death” throughout his macabre investigation! Goguenard, he histrionics from one episode to another at the risk of exasperating, falls into the arms of his guests (neurologist, researcher in thanatology, elected official in charge of funeral policies, socio-anthropologist…) as if he were meeting up with childhood friends to prepare together for a joyous hazing event: his future funeral. After these outpourings in the exaggeration of “coolness”, he seizes his subject with a curiosity that leaves absolutely nothing to chance. And if the theme of the series is disturbing, the expedition to mortuary lands proves particularly interesting.

So how do you take care of your corpse? Mortuary cosmetics, organ donation, cremation, concessions, cardboard coffin, ecological burial, humusation (transformation of bodies into compost), promession (consisting of freezing the body in liquid nitrogen then breaking it into pieces on a vibrating table), aquamation (cremation using an alkaline solution which dissolves the body)… The producer succeeds in popularizing this dreaded nebula when everyone is faced with organizing a funeral, including the financial aspect and its hidden abuses. He strives to make listeners knowledgeable about the end of life to the point of leaving the marked paths, offering as his final resting place a double-use library, designed to be reassembled in a coffin, literary for eternity.