Episode · Stuff You Should Know · 2025-05-20
Books mentioned on Faking Your Own Death: We All Do It, But Why?
Face it, when things get desperate we all consider faking our death as an easy way out. But what they don’t tell you in school is that it’s much harder than it looks, it’s way less glamorous, and you have to pull it off perfectly to not get caught.
Josh Clark recommended Playing Dead by Elizabeth Greenwood. Chuck Bryant discussed The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Playing Dead
Playing Dead by Elizabeth Greenwood explores the phenomenon of pseudocide and the realities of faking one's death.
Recommended“um we should probably give a pretty big shout out at the outset here um to Elizabeth Greenwood. She's an author. I think her day job is a creative writing professor at Colombia. Uh but she wrote a book which as far as I can tell is the most exhaustive look at pseudocide anyone's ever created. Um the her book”
Where to get it
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The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth is a classic thriller novel that meticulously details the planning and execution of an assassination plot alongside the clandestine methods used to acquire false identities.
Discussed“Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsight had been published a few years before and it and it appears that he literally kind of followed the steps of how to obtain a false identity from that book kind of note by note.”
Where to get it
