We’re very pleased to be sponsoring a whole season of Dying for a Cuppa, the brilliant podcast hosted by Katie Costello.

And, unlike those slightly baffling sponsorship partnerships where you find yourself wondering what on earth one thing has got to do with the other, this one makes complete sense.

Because Katie talks about something we care about enormously: death and dying.

Not in a gloomy, hushed-voice, let’s-all-look-at-the-floor sort of way. But openly, honestly, practically and often very amusingly.

Which is pretty much our approach too.

We need to get better at talking about death

One of the things we’ve learned through our work as funeral celebrants, celebrant trainers and through our involvement with Coffin Club is that we are still, as a society, remarkably reluctant to talk about death.

We’ll talk about births. Weddings. New jobs. Retirement. Moving house. What we’re having for tea.

But death? We’re still rather inclined to change the subject.

And that reluctance has consequences. If we don’t talk about death while we’re alive and well, we leave an awful lot of decisions, questions and uncertainty until the point when somebody is grieving and least equipped to deal with them.

That’s why we have always been huge supporters of anything that helps to make conversations about death and dying more normal.

And Dying for a Cuppa does exactly that.

Proper conversations with really interesting people

Katie has worked in palliative care, is a soul midwife and, of course, a celebrant, too! On the podcast, she talks to people with all sorts of different experiences and perspectives on death, dying, grief and funerals.

There are healthcare professionals, people working in the funeral world, campaigners, writers and people with extraordinary personal stories to tell.

These aren’t dry, academic discussions about death. They’re conversations.

The sort you might actually have over a cuppa.

And that matters, because the more we hear ordinary people talking openly about death, the less frightening and alien the subject becomes.

It’s also why Katie is part of our celebrant training

We think a really good funeral celebrant needs to understand more than simply how to conduct a funeral.

Of course they need to know how to meet a family, write a bloody good ceremony and stand up and deliver it properly.

But we also think they should understand something about death itself.

What dying can look like. What families may have experienced before somebody died. How people respond differently to death. How the funeral industry works. How funerals are changing. And how we can become more confident talking about all of it.

That thinking sits behind our Funeral Celebrant-Plus training, which takes celebrants beyond the mechanics of conducting a crematorium funeral and looks much more widely at death, dying and the changing funeral landscape.

And it’s why Katie Costello features in that training.

Katie’s Dying for a Cuppa masterclass is also included in our Gold Funeral Celebrant Training bundle, because we think this broader understanding makes people better, more informed and more useful funeral celebrants.

Not just people who can conduct a ceremony, but people who genuinely understand the world they are stepping into.

We’re very much on the same page

At Match & Dispatch, we’ve never believed that death should belong exclusively to funeral directors, medical professionals or people who work in the death industry.

Death belongs to all of us.

Talking about it doesn’t make it happen. It doesn’t make us morbid. And it certainly doesn’t mean we have to spend every Tuesday evening discussing coffin choices over dinner.

It just makes us a little more prepared, a little more informed and, hopefully, a little less frightened.

That philosophy runs through our funeral celebrant training, and it’s a huge part of the reason we also created Coffin Club – to help ordinary people understand their choices and talk more openly about what happens at the end of life.

So when the opportunity came along to sponsor a season of Dying for a Cuppa, it felt like a very easy yes.

We like Katie enormously. We love what she’s doing. We love the people she gets talking. And we think the more conversations like these that are happening in the world, the better.

So put the kettle on, find Dying for a Cuppa wherever you get your podcasts and have a listen.

You might laugh. You might cry. You’ll almost certainly learn something.

And you may even find yourself talking about death over your next cup of tea.

Which, as far as we’re concerned, is rather the point.

Tune in wherever you get your podcasts – and make sure you check out the episode with Kate and Kate!

Kate & Kate