Phone booth to talk to the DEAD (audio)

Miki Meek (This American Life.org); CC Liu, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

There's a phone booth in Japan. You can call the dead and talk to them. I heard it on TAL!

I want to speak to the ancestors. I want to show filial piety. I want to say hi to grandpa!

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Words can seem so puny and ineffective sometimes. On this episode, called "One Last Thing Before I Go," This American Life shares stories in which ordinary people make last ditch efforts to get through to their lost loved ones, using a combination of small talk and not-so-small talk.

Really Long Distance 

This American Life Producer Miki Meek tells a story (22 mins) of a phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people, most of them followers of Buddhism and Shinto, who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake. A Japanese TV crew from NHK Sendai filmed people inside the phone booth, the telephone of which is not connected to anything [except The Dead].

• AUDIO: One Last Thing Before I Go