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Investigating the World of Death With Hayley Campbell

How, by getting close to death, we can begin to understand it

Ever since she was a young child, journalist Hayley Campbell has been fascinated by death and in February 2023 she came to Intelligence Squared to talk about the themes of her new book All the Living and the Dead: An Exploration of the People Who Make Death Their Life’s Work, which has been acclaimed by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Nigella Lawson and Tuppence Middleton. In conversation with writer Blanche Girouard, Campbell related the encounters she has had with the people who make a living by working with the dead, including mass fatality investigators, embalmers and a former executioner who is responsible for ending 62 lives. She described the gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, a cryonics facility she visited in Michigan, and a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.


Speakers

Speakers

Hayley Campbell

Author, broadcaster and journalist, whose new book is All the Living and the Dead


Hayley Campbell is an author, broadcaster and journalist. Her work has appeared in WIRED, The Guardian, New Statesman, Empire, GQ, and more. She lives in London with her cat, Ned  
Chair

Blanche Girouard

Interviewer, writer and broadcaster


Interviewer, writer and broadcaster. Over the past fifteen years she has interviewed all manner of people – from artists, nuns and victims of genocide (for The Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times and the Tablet) to fishermen and sociologists (for the British Library) and cleaners, carers, musicians and the homeless (for BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM).