Death, Dying, and the Afterlife: Lessons From World Cultures

Starting the exploration of this topic with an overview of how human beings think about death; the place it occupies in people's lives; how attitudes about it have changed over time; the symbols and euphemisms used to talk about it.

Defining the subject of death; how the definition of death exists on multiple levels, which include the religious, biological, philosophical, cultural, legal and political; how each of these levels determines when a living being becomes a dead one.

How it is possible to find meaning in life, even when confronting its finality; drawing on the work of Ernest Becker; how forms of death denial serve to allay fears about one's insignificance; how to cultivate meaning in the face of mortality.

Whether death should be considered "bad"; whether people should even bother fearing it; reflecting on philosophical arguments by ancient philosopher Epicurus and modern thinker Thomas Nagel; considering the possibility that both sides are right.

Unpacking the feelings and behaviors of the grieving process; the evolutionary benefits of grief; the five stages of grief laid out by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross; the three categories of grieving identified by psychologist George Bonanno.

Since the dawn of humanity, corpses hold lasting significance for humans; probing the various ways human civilizations "dispose" of corpses, from burial and mummification to cremation and natural exposure.