What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Todd Meyers on postmortal futures, future studies, de-growth, immortality imaginaries, future collective death, Westworld, and promoting your work in 2026 Who is Todd?Joshua Hurtado Hurtado is a Mexican interdisciplinary researcher, currently finalising his PhD research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He studied International Relations for his Bachelor’s degree at the Tecnológico de Monterrey university,in Mexico. He obtained his first Master’s degree in International Relations as well, specialising in Ideology and Discourse analysis, from the University of Essex, in the United Kingdom. He did a second Master’s degree at the University of Turku, in Finland, this time in Futures Studies. After that, he began hisPhD research at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences. He uses his expertise in several disciplines and fields of study to conduct theoretical and empirical research on the topics of death and immortality, as well as on the topics of degrowth and sustainability more generally. Scholars in the DeathStudies field will find his articles ‘Towards a postmortalsociety of virtualised ancestors? The Virtual Deceased Person and the preservation of the social bond’, ‘Envisioning postmortalfutures: six archetypes on future societal approaches to seeking immortality’, and ‘Exploited in immortality: Techno-capitalism and immortality imaginaries in the twenty-firstcentury’ published in the journal Mortality, his article ‘Fight, or flee, the future: Affect in contrasting responses against future collective death’ published in the journal Journal of Sociology, and his book chapters ‘Westworld, Morality, and Digital Afterlives’ in the edited collection Depicting the Afterlife in Contemporary Film and Media: Morality, Religion and Death byAngelique Nairn, and ‘Death, Relationality, and Resistance against Necropolitical Violence in Latin America’ in the upcoming edited book Decolonising Death Studies by Panagiotis Pentaris, Stacey Pitsillides and Hajar Ghorbani. In addition to his academic trajectory, he has also worked at the Ministry of Social Development at the local level in Nuevo León, Mexico, in the roles of policy analyst and later chief of research. He has taught courses at the Undergraduate level at Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Mexico, on Business Models andEntrepreneurship (despite his insistent anti-capitalist critiques) and at the Master’s level at the University of Helsinki, on Organizations and EconomicDegrowth. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, watching films and TV series, and playing with Luna, his family’s dog. You can contact him via the following email addresses: [email protected] (personal), and [email protected] (institutional, as of January 2026). You can find him at BlueSky at @joshuahh.bsky.socialHow do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?To cite this episode, you can use the following citation: Hurtado Hurtado, J. (2026) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 2 January 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com,DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.30987202What next?Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts!Got a question? Get in touch.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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