The Death Issues Issue: A Legacy of Passwords, Photos, and Shocktatoes

2025-07-29

Death! That thing we pretend we’ll deal with later, even though “later” is very much someone else’s problem. This week, Pete and Tommy dive headfirst into the gloriously unsexy topic of postmortem administration. Not grief. Not funeral playlists. The actual hellscape of what happens when you suddenly have to explain to Costco that your dad no longer needs a membership because, well, he’s gone to the big food court in the sky.In part one, Tommy reflects on “stuff”—the knickknacks, photos, and inexplicable ov...

Death! That thing we pretend we’ll deal with later, even though “later” is very much someone else’s problem. This week, Pete and Tommy dive headfirst into the gloriously unsexy topic of postmortem administration. Not grief. Not funeral playlists. The actual hellscape of what happens when you suddenly have to explain to Costco that your dad no longer needs a membership because, well, he’s gone to the big food court in the sky.

In part one, Tommy reflects on “stuff”—the knickknacks, photos, and inexplicable oven mitt collections we leave behind. He shares his strategies for helping friends confront the emotional paralysis of legacy clutter, including the deeply rational rule: no landscapes unless they’re breathtaking, and no tuna casserole recipes unless they’re really different.

In part two, Pete takes us on a bureaucratic rollercoaster through the modern administrative afterlife: joint credit cards that implode, death certificates that cost a fortune, and the absolutely vital necessity of a password manager for your aging parents (seriously, do this now). He makes the case for creating a “digital death file,” so your loved ones don’t have to hack into your Apple account to cancel Hulu while you’re ghostbathing.

Plus: a brief but oddly moving tribute to 17th-century haberdasher John Graunt, who basically invented epidemiology by accident while counting plague victims and also possibly ribbons. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll immediately back up your two-factor authentication.

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