New York Times Obituary Writer Sam Roberts on the Art of the Obit

After five years of grading obituaries from The New York Times, Famous & Gravy finally has a conversation with with someone who actually writes obituaries from The New York Times. Sam Roberts is on the show to share his experiences as a NYT obit writer and to talk about his new book Are They Dead Yet? Roberts has written roughly 1,500 obituaries over his career. He and Michael dig into what actually goes into that first sentence of an obituary: accuracy, notability, economy of language, and the pressure of a deadline that can show up with almost no warning. Roberts tells the story of writing an obituary for Jesus of Nazareth, a piece he expected to get torn apart and got almost no pushback on, and explains why Alfred Nobel spent the rest of his life trying to outrun the one obituary that got published about him too early. Along the way, Michael runs Famous & Gravy's own grading criteria past a professional to see if the show's been fair. Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks what a celebrity's life story shows us about ourselves. This week, we ask the person who writes the first draft of it. LINKS: Are They Dead Yet? The Art of the Obit by Sam Roberts Sam Roberts's imagined obituary for Jesus of Nazareth Life Lessons from Dead Celebrities (Substack) Dead or Alive quiz game Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads Famous & Gravy official website See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.