A Brief History of the Afterlife

This episode explores the Aztec conception of the afterlife. We give a brief overview of the Aztec people and then dive directly into their conception of the hereafter, which involves several unique possibilities that are contingent upon the method of death an individual has undergone.This episode was originally recorded in April 2026 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

This episodes chronicles the Ancient Greek conception of the afterlife, going into Hades and some of that region's most famous denizens. This episode was recorded in April 2026 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

This episode discusses the Zoroastrian conception of the afterlife, giving a brief overview of the history of the religion and its origins before delving into the specifics it envisions for the world to come. This episode originally aired in April 2026 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

This episode looks at the ancient Vedic Religion, the ancestor of modern Hinduism which developed in northwestern India in the second millennium BCE. We talk about its concept of reincarnation, which takes place in other worlds rather than in this one, and the different factors that might influence into which world one is reborn. We also discuss the various hypotheses about the origins of the Vedic Religion, including its connection to the mysterious Indus Valley Civilization, whose writing remains undeciphered.This episode was originally recorded in August of 2025 for The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

This episode takes on the Ancient Egyptian conception of the afterlife; while the burial practices of the Egyptians are well-known to many of us from school, what they believed happened after mummification is less well-understood. Here we discuss mummification, the pyramid texts, and the mysterious Field of Reeds. We also draw comparisons between the classless afterlife of Mesopotamia and the more stratified vision of the Egyptians, as well as noting that, for perhaps the first time, in this mythology the afterlife is envisioned as a potential paradise. This episode was originally recorded in August 2025 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

Our third episode covers the views held by the Ancient Mesopotamians as depicted in The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest works of literature to be preserved. We discuss the conception of the afterlife presented in the poem, which is quite egalitarian if not exactly comforting. We also discuss the second half of the poem which deals specifically with Gilgamesh's attempts at achieving immortality.This episode was originally recorded and released in August 2025 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

In this episode we discuss the earliest evidence that has been discovered for prehistoric ideas about the afterlife, including cave art, early totemic sculptures, as well as burial practices. We also consider the Neanderthal and Denisovans, our hominid cousins and whether they too might have believed in "the world to come." The episode concludes with a conversation about Göbekli Tepe and other early ritual sites in addition to skull cults, the best (?) kind of cult.This episode was originally recorded in August 2025 as part of The End of the World with Michael and Stu.

As an introduction to our occasional series, A Brief History of the Afterlife, we offer a discussion of Albert Brooks' brilliant 1991 film Defending Your Life. Is this an afterlife we would like to "wake up to" after death? What does this vision of our eternal reward tell us about the moment when the film was made or the particular preoccupations of the filmmaker, Albert Brooks? Originally recorded in August, 2025 for The End of the World with Michael and Stu.