Season 1
Nelly's Offer (episode 1 of 4)
The Raft (episode 2 of 4)
The River Mouth (episode 3 of 4)
Under the River (episode 4 of 4)
The Amphicar
The Last False Alarm
Episode 2: The Nervous Corrector
Chapter 2 of an unfinished book based on The Odyssey, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then follows a single story — the next chapter after Episode 2 — into morning on a private hillside above Los Angeles. Tonight, just after midnight, arrangements break in Georgia, in Atlanta paperwork, among county words for absence and kin, beside a hearing date drawing too close, and inside a little certificate that has not yet decided whether it is allowed to become a death. Virgil sits in expensive water while Nelly takes the paper from the tray before the houseman reaches the last stair — calmly, the way she takes a glass from his hand when he begins talking to people who are not there. She has made an island of pools, fountains, orange oil, and weather that alters what can be thought in her vicinity. Below them, morning assembles the city from haze: silver roofs, black palms, a freeway already alive with punishment. The paper is official and faintly ridiculous: Georgia. Atlanta. Absence. Presumption. Petition. Next of kin. A hearing date that is too close. A little death certificate without the death — disappearance treated as if he had been an accident in the woods, though he has been visible every day to staff, mirrors, peacocks, and Nelly. She offers him a terrible kindness: let them bury the husband, the father, the signature, the man who owed Christmas. Keep the part of him that still warms in water. Here he is not late. He answers that he is unfinished. But he needs to see what they are burying — what he left — and the island hears the sentence for what it is. This episode is about names claimed by paperwork, the mercy and cruelty of being kept, and the offer to let a failed life die so a preferred one can continue. Featuring: Virgil Nelly The houseman Georgia (mentioned) "Say you preferred it." This Day in Deaths is a fictional series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented. This episode is Chapter 2 of an unfinished novel (Chapter 1 appeared as Episode 2); later book chapters will appear as Episodes 6–7.
Chapter 3 of an unfinished book based on The Odyssey, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then follows a single story — the next chapter after Episode 5 — out of a moonless bedroom and down into the machine under paradise. Tonight, just after midnight, arrangements break in a moonless bedroom beside a long white bed, in a silver wastebasket where tissue and eucalyptus catch, down a concrete servants' stair, and in a black sedan called a raft where half a plan meets half a warrant. Virgil has rehearsed leaving for years. Tonight he does it with the vulgarity of happening: practical pockets, garage-dust shoes, and a fax page folded against his ribs. He feeds a small fire of discarded beauty — napkin, ribbon, eucalyptus — so the island will look the other way, then descends through laundry vapor and polite alarms. At the staff elevator the houseman appears, finger to lips, and hands him a key that opens unfinished concrete. Below, the estate is geology only as costume: pumps, tarps, broken statues, and the car he built by neglect. The raft. Road maps. A Thomas Guide. Cash. An Atlanta address. Before he can start the engine, a compact man with a leather folder and bad coffee steps out between the covered cars. He is using the name Dante. He has half a warrant from a court in Georgia; Virgil has half a plan. Between them they might make a door. What follows is smoke and sprinklers, a bay door held open by a man who will not be thanked, a service gate that scrapes paint and dignity, and a lower keypad that needs a screwdriver before Los Angeles will admit them. Behind, Nelly watches from a high terrace as fog takes the island. Ahead, freeways, flood channels, and a city that has no opinion of his comfort. This episode is about theoretical departures that finally leave the room, paperwork that arrives as escort, and the first wet miles after paradise ends. Featuring: Virgil Nelly Dante The houseman "You've got half a plan. I've got half a warrant. Between us we might make a door." This Day in Deaths is a fictional series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented. This episode is Chapter 3 of an unfinished novel (Chapter 1 appeared as Episode 2; Chapter 2 as Episode 5); a later book chapter will appear as Episode 7.
Chapter 4 of an unfinished book based on The Odyssey, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then follows a single story — the next chapter after Episode 6 — out of the private hillside and into a Los Angeles morning of ash, roadblocks, and concrete water. Tonight, just after midnight, arrangements break on wet streets under ash rain, at a roadblock under a dead traffic light, in a half-open window where an acolyte offered coffee, in a dead raft sedan under a Vegas sign, and in a concrete river washing smoke from a mouth. For three blocks the car works — not well, but sufficiently. Virgil drives with both hands; fax paper presses his ribs; island smoke will not leave his hair. Beside him, Dante sits as if occupying a function: papers open, eyes never still, disaster manageable only if named before it gets sentimental. At a roadblock under a dead traffic light, Dante offers medical transport — for the gentleman in transition — and a city worker points them away with the irritation of a minor god assigned to drainage. What follows is wind and ash, a bus of faces under hazard lights, Dante absorbed by uniforms and blocked lanes, and a young woman in a white vinyl coat who offers coffee and a folded towel. She says Nelly sent her. Dante's rule: don't take warm drinks from weather. The freeway offers Las Vegas through smoke; fire jumps the median; the raft dies under the green sign. They walk through helicopter rain to a locked fence and the city's concrete river — infrastructure that has accidentally remembered flow — where Virgil washes smoke from his mouth. This episode is about departure without arrival, care that is also a leash, and the first water that asks nothing of a man except that he wash. Featuring: Virgil Dante The acolyte in the white vinyl coat The city worker Nelly (offstage) "Don't take warm drinks from weather." This Day in Deaths is a fictional series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented. This episode is Chapter 4 of an unfinished novel (Chapter 1 appeared as Episode 2; Chapter 2 as Episode 5; Chapter 3 as Episode 6).
Chapter 5 of an unfinished book based on The Odyssey, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then follows a single story — the next chapter after Episode 7 — into a concrete channel under Los Angeles where fever, ash, and first mortal mercy meet. Tonight, just after midnight, arrangements break in a concrete channel under Los Angeles, on a slope of ash and newspaper, in a river house of silt and bone, and at a chain-link fence where a water bottle hung undelivered through the diamonds of wire. The river took his smaller name first — the one kept under the tongue. Virgil lies where water, or Dante, or something too tired to be merciful has left him: mud in his collar, hands cut, Nelly’s ruined scarf still intimate at his throat. Above him Los Angeles passes in fragments — tires over a bridge, a helicopter, a siren bending away. Dante has gone upward into gates and flashlights. Order looked down, marked his position, and passed on. Below, fever makes a drainage channel into the Styx, and memory prays because the river has his throat. What follows is a house of silt and bone under all houses — children in drawers, a wife ironing a shirt black, a lamp left on because life continued without him — and then midmorning, almost noon: three young women behind chain-link with a water bottle, a folded cloth, and a paper sack. River maidens, his fever supplies. Girls, he tries to insist. He will not climb. He will not touch the fence. He asks only for water, or the name of the road above — whichever is less dangerous — and will not yet release the name that waits in satchels and offices like an animal trained to attack. This episode is about the name the river takes, survival that must be done carefully, and first mercy held up through wire and still undelivered. Featuring: Virgil The three young women at the fence Dante (absent) Nelly (in fever and scarf) "The bottle hung between them in the bright diamond of fence, water flashing inside it, first mercy visible and undelivered." This Day in Deaths is a fictional series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented. This episode is Chapter 5 of an unfinished novel (Chapter 1 appeared as Episode 2; Chapter 2 as Episode 5; Chapter 3 as Episode 6; Chapter 4 as Episode 7).
Tonight, just after midnight, the desk receives seven names — and every one of them arrived because someone had mistaken survival for permission. Issue No. 4 of This Day in Deaths opens with the series' musical introduction and the universal cold open — tonight's roll-call runs through Texas: Bandera, Port Isabel, San Angelo, Kerrville, Galveston, and a private reservoir where a pale blue Amphicar made theater out of mortal fear one final time. Rafe Dunlow paints his mouth red and steps between a crowd and a bull one time too many. June Albright knows the spillway pulls and goes after a Panama hat anyway. Teddy Mallow climbs onto a pickup hood because the family has mistaken survival for tradition. Sibley Crane makes anecdotes of other people's fear until his own body enters the room quietly. Clara Vane has learned to fall in water and meets the concrete where the water used to be. Mina Elise Voss asks for the machinery to slow down and leaves two live oaks waiting for spring. Benton Ray Harrow drives toward Marrow Lake believing the world will keep laughing with him. What follows are bulls, spillways, birthday rides, dinner-table jokes, drained pools, corrected clinic dates, maintenance warnings, and a pale glove caught in fence wire — while the room tries to decide which permission was finally real. This episode is about danger misunderstood, laughter as pressure, and the objects that remain legible after the story stops protecting the living. Featuring: Rafe Dunlow June Albright Teddy Mallow Sibley Crane Clara Vane Mina Elise Voss Benton Ray Harrow "The day is over now. The clocks will begin again without them."
Episode 3: The Last False Alarm Tonight, just after midnight, the desk receives eight names — and every one of them arrived behind a warning someone had learned not to hear. Issue No. 3 of This Day in Deaths opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then returns to the obituary roll call: fictional deaths filed from Akron, Muncie, Pennsylvania hill country, Iowa, Tacoma, Burbank, St. Paul, and Fresno. Arrangements have been broken in a stairwell, behind a bowling alley, beneath a county school, on a street where a phone would not stop ringing, and in a garage where emergencies were rehearsed too often to be believed. At the Wilbeth Arms, Marion Kells has heard the fire alarm nine times since September. By the tenth, she pauses — and disbelief enters as delay. In Muncie, Clyde Sutter unscrews decorative antlers from a bowling alley wall and calls three friends to say he has been stabbed. He has not been stabbed. In Fallow Creek, Gordon Pike follows an amber auxiliary light that has been blinking since October. In Cedar Rapids, Lenora Mae Fitch presses a medical pendant the monitoring company has stopped taking seriously. In Tacoma, Arnie Price's Honda alarm trains the block to ignore him. In St. Paul, Vivian Dole rehearses an entrance and falls. In Burbank, Edward Arthur Vale calls from the garage with a script, a tape recorder, and a pencil line that asks for a sound nobody can rehearse. In Fresno, Ansel Reeve waits in an emergency room with a book open and a receipt that says slow down the joke. What follows are stairwells, basements, antlers, blinking panels, pendants, car alarms, velvet lobby performances, garage rehearsals, and one recording labeled FALSE ALARM TEST — while the room tries to decide which signal is finally real. This episode is about false alarms, courtesy paid to systems that cry wolf, and the moment the tenth warning becomes the first true one. Featuring: Marion Kells Clyde Sutter Gordon Pike Lenora Mae Fitch Arnie Price Vivian Dole Edward Arthur Vale Ansel Reeve "The day is over now. The clocks will begin again without them." This Day in Deaths is a fictional obituary-radio series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented.
Tonight, just after midnight, the desk receives one name — and follows it through a whole evening. Chapter 1 of an unfinished book, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' new musical introduction and universal cold open, then leaves the obituary roll call behind to tell a single story in full. On a rainy Friday on Lark Street, a municipal records clerk named Warren Bell arrives early at The Bacchanids — a lounge with a stuttering sign, wine-colored velvet curtains, and speed introductions advertised in the back pages. Warren has spent eleven years correcting small errors in names, addresses, and filings. He believes accuracy is a form of mercy. He has been called Walter. He has been called Wallace. He has brought a folded list of instructions for the evening: do not overexplain; do not correct too soon; ask one question before answering the second. At the door, a woman in a dark coat and ivory gloves arrives without hurrying. Her name is Ellie. She corrects his name when the hostess gets it wrong. She asks what makes a correction worth making. She does not hurry to rescue him when he overexplains. The speed round should end with a bell. No bell rings. What follows is one table, one booth half-hidden behind velvet, one broken watch stopped at 8:06, and a lost-and-found box where a name is written down and corrected again — Warren, not Walter — while the music continues and the room prepares for the next introduction. This episode is about names, nerves, courtesy mistaken for visibility, and the hunger that listens carefully before it feeds. Featuring: Warren Bell Ellie The hostess at The Bacchanids The tall waitress The silver-haired waitress "Outside, the rain had begun falling again. Inside, the room warmed itself for the next introduction." This Day in Deaths is a fictional series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented. This episode is Chapter 1 of an unfinished novel; later book chapters will appear as Episodes 3–5.
Note for returning listeners: This is the same premiere episode previously released as the This Day in Deaths pilot. The stories, names, and narration are unchanged. What is new is the musical introduction — remixed and retimed for the series going forward. Tonight, just after midnight, the first names arrive. In the premiere episode of This Day in Deaths, a ruined children's book, a loose theater marquee letter, a coat lining full of handwritten destinations, and a returned library copy begin to draw a quiet map between strangers. Told as a late-night obituary broadcast, "The Map of Elsewhere" follows a series of fictional deaths reported from across the country: a young hotel worker in Sacramento carrying a damaged book, an Ohio geography teacher who mapped places he never visited, a San Francisco bakery worker saving for a journey into family history, a Duluth theater owner trying to reopen his family's cinema for one impossible winter night, and a library worker whose final returned book has been missing for nine years. Some deaths are sudden. Some are quiet. Some are absurd. Some belong to people who wanted more than they had time to reach. Between each life, five seconds of ticking clocks mark the passage from one story to the next. This episode is about arrival, interruption, and the private maps people carry: in books, in buildings, in family stories, in coat linings, and in the names of places that may or may not exist. Featuring: Corinne Applewhite Ambrose K. Welliver Delbert Spoon Nadine Van Orman Evelyn Cusk Brother Matthew of the Small Pines Inez Tallow Ferris Bellwether Noon Hollis Vane Orla Minnow "The day is over now. The clocks will begin again without them." This Day in Deaths is a fictional obituary-radio series. Names, places, and events in this episode are invented.