Welcome to our Final Goodbye Podcast, where we explore the rich traditions, rituals, and beliefs surrounding funerals across different countries.
Final Goodbye is a podcast where we explore how different cultures say goodbye to the people they love — through funerals, rituals, and sometimes big emotions. We wanted to create a space to talk about death in a human way. Because even though we all experience loss, we don’t always talk about it. And actually, there’s so much beauty in the way people around the world honour the dead.
Our podcasts are produced by Cardiff Multimedia student journalists, and each episode invites one or two people from different countries who have experienced a local funeral to share their experiences.Through these dialogues, we aim to promote a deeper understanding of how different cultures honour the final farewell of life and to provide thoughtful perspectives on death and commemoration.
Episode 01: The offerings
The first episode’s theme is offerings. In many cultures, people leave things like food, incense, letters, or symbolic objects. Some are meant to comfort the spirit, some to help them in the afterlife, and some just to say, “I still remember you.”
In the first episode, we explore how two families, one in China and one in India, honor their loved ones through funeral traditions. Yulong from China shared how his family prepared offerings and burnt paper sacrifices to wish his grandfather a good life on the other side. And our Indian guest, Aparna, talked about the power of prayers, flower offerings and the symbolic soshappa cloth at her grandfather’s funeral. Although there are cultural differences, through these stories we see how traditional offerings in different cultures can bring comfort, unity and remembrance.