Grief comedy with its heart still open.
Dying Laughing with Jessimae treats grief as something messy, funny, bodily, inconvenient, and deeply human. The show moves between solo riffs and grounded interviews, using jokes to make death, family loss, holiday pressure, and emotional overwhelm easier to look at directly.
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Dying Laughing with Jessimae is built around the emotional truth that grief rarely arrives in a dignified outfit. It shows up in anger, birthdays, family holidays, death anxiety, spirals, and the weird little moments when a bracelet clasp can feel like a personal attack. The show uses comedy as pressure relief, but not as avoidance. It keeps walking toward the uncomfortable thing. Death gets discussed plainly, especially in conversations like the episode with Julie McFadden about hospice, palliative care, and what actively dying can look like when fear is replaced with information. That clarity sits beside chaos. A solo episode on anger can turn into the Petty Anger Olympics, while still making the serious point that rage often carries a message from deeper pain. Holiday episodes trade perfect-season fantasy for boundaries, lowered expectations, family survival, gratitude, micro joys, and the freedom to make Christmas or Thanksgiving less performative. Birthday grief becomes a way to talk about aging without parents. Joy gets complicated too, especially when laughter happens during a week full of collective horror or personal heartbreak. The show is fast and conversational, with emotional pivots that can feel sudden but rarely feel cold. It can be silly, tender, blunt, reflective, and restless within the same stretch. Pop culture is part of its emotional vocabulary, from Rob Reiner films to headlines and comfort references. The strongest episodes turn everyday absurdity into a map for coping. They do not promise serenity. They offer recognition. This is grief for people who still want jokes, movement, opinions, and a host willing to say that healing can be awkward before it is beautiful. The result is a dark-comedy companion for listeners who are tired of grief being treated like a quiet room with perfect lighting.
Made for: For listeners who want grief, death, anger, holidays, and aging discussed with humor that stays emotionally honest. It especially fits people who find polished wellness talk too sterile but still want useful perspective.
What sets it apart: The show pairs frantic dark-comedy confession with real emotional processing, so hospice education, family boundaries, petty rage, and joy guilt can sit in the same episode. It makes grief feel less ceremonial and more like something lived through in public, mess and all.
Welcome to Dying Laughing — the comedy podcast that explores grief in all its messy, magical, and mortifying glory. Hosted by stand-up comedian, Netflix host, and professional grief reliever Jessimae Peluso aka your favorite “comedy death doula" and "griefluencer” , this show dares to laugh in the face of death, because if you’re not laughing, you’re crying in a Marshall’s fitting room while listening to Fleetwood Mac on repeat. You’re going to lose a lot in this life: your loved ones, your job, your dog (way harder than your ex), your relationship, your mind, your appetite and yes, your favorite necklace that your dad gave you (which your toxic ex absolutely kept). While all of that sounds…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jessimae Peluso makes grief legible through candid conversation, practical reflection, and jokes rooted in the strange behavior loss brings out.
Jessimae Peluso treats grief as an experience that can withstand both scrutiny and a well-placed joke. She moves between solo monologues and guest conversations, covering denial, anger, holiday strain, end-of-life care, and the human refusal to accept endings.
A bracelet clasp wins the Petty Anger Olympics when grief has already worn your patience thin.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid, grounded conversation about dying, hospice care, and the fear that grows in the absence of clear information.
Death is handled as a practical subject with real emotional weight, as the host and Julie McFadden, a palliative care and hospice nurse, sort through the gap between what people imagine and what dying can actually look like.
A funny, grounded look at the petty eruptions and buried pain grief can send through ordinary moments.
Dying Laughing treats anger as evidence, not a mess to clean up. Jessie Mae frames it as one of grief's most honest signals: the part that recognizes what was unfair, unfinished, or never fully named.
A sharp, darkly funny look at the human refusal to accept an ending, anchored by a self-written obituary.
Finality becomes something people keep trying to outwit in this brisk, darkly comic review of denial, grief, and control. The episode moves from Tom Brady cloning his dog to Linda writing her own obituary, then finds its bite in the smaller details: the A wife and B husband…
A funny, unsettled reflection on laughing while the world is still hurting.
Joy lands at an uneasy moment in Dying Laughing with Jessie Mae Peluso, where a night of comedy in La Jolla presses up against shootings, heartbreak, and shared grief. The episode does not treat that tension as a puzzle to solve.
A Syracuse Thanksgiving episode about family diagnostics, grief spikes, boundaries, and finding one small thing to be grateful for.
Thanksgiving in Syracuse brings childhood memories, a returning accent, and a family still ready to talk to the host like grounding remains on the table.
Sarah Barthel's grief conversation lets a butterfly sign and a broken Wu-Tang slipper share the same emotional weather.
Sarah Barthel's grief story moves through a childhood without a proud dad, a changed bond with her mother, and a medium's reading that turns butterflies into something emotionally loaded.
A funny, tender review of denial, busywork, and the pressure to seem fine.
Denial gets a warm, unruly reading here: emotional bubble wrap, a mental loophole where someone gone can still be imagined as simply away in Italy.
Dark history, bad taste, live-wire banter.
Gaming culture, derailed on impact.
Banter with bad ideas attached.
Irish pop-culture riffing with teeth.
Host Jessimae Peluso explores the first stage of grief, denial, in a solo episode of Dying Laughing.
Jessimae Peluso shares a personal story about a terrible birthday gift and announces her live tour supporting Alzheimer's research.
In part two with Sarah Barthel of Phantogram, she delves into grief from losing her father to a brain tumor and her sister to suicide.
["Hospice nurse Julie McFadden tells Jessimae that hospice is meant to help people live, not just die, and says the difference from palliative care is mostly about timing and treatment goals.", "She says palliative care manages symptoms for people with chronic illness, cancer, or heart disease who are still being treated, while hospice is usually for people told they have less than six months to live.", "McFadden says families often fear not eating, not drinking, and letting someone die, and she argues that clear hospice conversations reduce that panic more than they create it.", "She also walks through actively dying signs, including unconsciousness, terminal secretions, and breathing changes, and contrasts hospice deaths with the ICU deaths she saw during 17 years of nursing."]
Jessimae Peluso opens Dying Laughing by framing anger as the emotion with the worst reputation and the most honesty in grief.
Dying Laughing with Jessimae's "Why We Can't Let Go of Reality" ties Tom Brady's cloned dog, Linda Brossy Murphy's obituary, and Bailey Sellers' flowers into one argument about finality.
Jessimae Peluso reflects on the personal and surreal lessons learned in 2025, blending humor and grief.
Jessimae Peluso offers a humorous guide to surviving Christmas without stress, overspending, or losing your mind.
Jessimae Peluso frames “The Grief of Joy” around La Jolla Comedy Store, collective trauma, and the feeling of asking, “is it cool to laugh right now?” She ties her own weekend on stage to Rob Reiner’s death, a shooting in Australia, and the sense that phones have turned life into “tabs” and doomscrolling.
Jessimae Paluso records from Syracuse, New York, and frames Dying Laughing as 'laughter is a stage of grief' for Thanksgiving Eve.
Jessimae Peluso shares a guide to navigating grief and aging on your birthday when parents are no longer present.
Sarah Barthel discusses growing up without a proud father, how grief changed her relationship with her mom, and a powerful medium reading from beyond.
Jessie Maple Luso introduces a swapcast episode with Annie Lederman, promoting upcoming guests and live shows.
Comedian Jessimae Peluso introduces a grief survival guide episode, sharing her experience with loss and offering tips for navigating the holidays.