In this episode, we explore a deceptively simple question: what makes a death culturally significant?

The conversation begins with an unsatisfying Reddit-style list of famous deaths by decade and quickly turns into a more analytical discussion. The team teases apart different kinds of significance: the death of an already important person, the death of someone whose future mattered as much as their past, and deaths that became historically or culturally transformative even when the individual was not especially well known.

Along the way, they discuss deaths that mark the end of an era, deaths that act as catalysts for social or political change, and deaths that become mythologised through mourning, media and time. They also consider whether cultural significance can be measured at all, and toy with building a rough model comparing the significance of a person’s life with the significance of their death.

Examples range from Princess Diana, JFK and Julius Caesar to George Floyd, Mohamed Bouazizi, Emmett Till and Jesus, with stops along the way for Harambe, Queen Victoria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Alan Turing.

The episode closes on a more personal note, as each speaker reflects on a death that feels significant to them personally, from Ray Charles to John Cazale and Alan Turing, before things take an irreverent turn in classic Cognitive Engineering fashion.

In this episode:

• What counts as a culturally significant death
• The difference between a significant life and a significant death
• Deaths that changed history versus deaths that symbolised lost potential
• Whether cultural significance can be measured
• Why time, myth and collective mourning matter
• Personal reflections on deaths that still resonate

People and examples mentioned:

Queen Victoria, Vladimir Lenin, John Lennon, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, Queen Elizabeth II, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Michael Jackson, George Floyd, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Harambe, Mohamed Bouazizi, Kitty Genovese, Emmett Till, Neda Agha-Soltan, Rachel Corrie, Thích Quảng Đức, the Princes in the Tower, William of Norwich, Crispus Attucks, Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr, Jeffrey Epstein, Ray Charles, John Cazale, John Candy and Alan Turing.

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGrewer.

I'm here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragge, and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights.

On this podcast, we look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint.

And today we're asking the question, what is a culturally significant death?

Nick, what is a culturally significant death?

Sorry, are these the only ones?

The way that they did it was they.

They would.

They.

Everyone would suggest things.

And the most highly voted suggestions have been put on this list.

Okay.

I found this very unsatisfying.

I was like, this is a real rag bag, but of different types of cultural significance here.

Can we do better?

Obviously we can.

And if so, how can we define what the cultural significance of a death is in a way that makes sense?

Then can we come up with metrics for it?

How do we think about cultural significance of death if we wanted to kind of make a list of our own?

And finally, I've compiled a few contenders.

Okay, why do we want to talk about it?

Fun.

Got it.

But also, I mean, I think if someone said, who was the most.

One of the most fun topics.

Who was the most culturally significant death of all time?

It's a meaningful question.

You know, I actually would quite like to have a measurable answer and say, yes, it's that person.

Okay, this is a big one.

Pretty profound.

That's the kind of insight we're famous for delivering.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

My mind's firing with all sorts of stuff.

You know.

Well, look, can I just put a little bit of structure on the first bit?

Right.

As well as I.

How.

Where on earth do we start with this?

Okay, so I have a few potential things which are slightly different, and I think we need to distinguish between them.

So you have sort of the death of a culturally significant person.

I mean, Queen Victoria was an important person, but she was about a thousand years old when she died.

It's not like, well, that, oh, gosh, what ructions.

This was unexpected.

And it's not like her dying did anything.

It didn't have any significant impact on anything.

So I'd say, well, they're just people who died who had a culturally significant Life, then we have sort of the death actually not as an event being significant, but more of a feeling that actually we have missed out on a significant life.

So you might also someone who was going to be influential.

And I think people like maybe Elvis Presley or John F. Kennedy or whatever, people who, whether, you know, the.

Okay, I've called that the Day the Music Died.

Right, Brilliant.

And then.

And then finally, of course, there's people who were sort of insignificant, but whose death as an event had a significant impact.

I think they're different categories of thing.

Sounds like Peter's got cooler names for these things.

So let.

Yeah, but also, do we have to.

If it feels like there's a lot of work to do before in terms of defining stuff and parameters and before we even get to ask the question, is that about right?

I mean, do we need to get into defining culture, defining impact, defining, you know, significance?

I think you can hand wave a bit, gets killed.

There's a World War, Queen Victoria.

That's significant.

Yeah, it's exactly.

You can tell that one is significant.

One is.

But also it's significant, but you can say it's historically significant.

But.

And so the extension to that might be this culturally significant, but, you know, it's the culture we want to get.

Boxed down, getting wrapped around the axle.

Peter, help him out.

Yeah, please, Peter, help me.

So I've got a slightly hand wavy list of things that, that make things culturally significant or why they are culturally significant.

So they're not mutually exclusive or comprehensive.

But yeah, that one I called it the Day that Music Died.

So that's the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper.

The Big Bopper.

And they had so much to give.

There was so much promise left.

And it's changed that.

There's a sort of part of the collective mourning is about that loss of things not realized.

There are also end of an era markers.

So that's what I call the Queen Victoria death and also Queen Elizabeth II death.

Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro.

So these are.

Their deaths were not a surprise, but it neatly bookmarked that era in which they were a defining part.

Then there's the shattering events.

So this is things like Michael Jackson, Princess Diana.

Those deaths were unexpected and had big significance to lots of people.

Also, I'd say things like deaths like George Floyd and Franz Ferdinand, where they're materially different because George Floyd wasn't particularly famous.

He wasn't a famous person in his own right like Michael Jackson or Princess Diana.

But that marked a sort of tipping point where Things changed.

Things were different the day after as a result of those deaths.

Another reason why deaths are significant, I think, is the sort of martyrdom of youth, I've called it, where you have people like Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix die very young again.

You have that unrealized potential thing.

But they are.

Then they are immortalized in that youthful state forevermore.

So people remember Amy Winehouse in her late 20s, I think.

Was it late?

27, I think.

27, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's sometimes called the 27 Club, but yeah, they're remembered in that youthful state, and that helps with this sort of significance.

There's some beauty of youth and then finally there's the manner in which they're grieved.

So there's a recent phenomenon is Internet first mourning or memified mourning, where it's the nature, it's the medium means that people grieve in a particular way.

So I'm thinking of Dicks out for Harambe, for example.

Nobody would mourn this gorilla in the zoo if there wasn't an Internet, because nobody would mourn it in the same way.

No one would have heard of him.

Nobody would have heard of him, and nobody would mourn it in a sort of.

In a deliberately humorous or sort of grotesque way.

So you're putting Harambe up as one of the biggest.

Yeah, yeah.

I think one of the things.

So we'll come to Chris, but one of the things that helps is that initial list and where we.

I forget where you said you got it from Reddit.

Like one per decade is not going to cut it because that raises too.

That's got too many restrictions, whereas if you can sort of broaden it out, then that helps with a lot of the questions.

Yeah, I mean, I think the 60s.

1968 Alone probably has a few.

A whole bunch of stuff.

Chris?

Yeah, well, something that just occurred to me then, as Peter was talking was is there a fundamental distinction between the reasons why deaths can be culturally significant?

So we talked about the sort of the young deaths and those having impact and those often being more mourned by people.

And then we talked about the sort of the transformative deaths like Archduke Fervor, Ferdinand or, you know, other.

Other ones that have been catalysts for.

For a change.

And I thought, I think there's two.

Two main categories here.

There's one where the death itself causes a great deal of change.

Right.

So you have.

We were talking earlier about states.

You have one state, and that state is dramatically altered, a result of the death.

So, yeah, I think there's a distinction between these two types of death and why they're significant.

One is about the change that the death catalyzes.

So you go from a state of peace to a state of war or a state of, you know, one political system to chaos and revolution or whatever it might be.

So it's about.

The reason it's culturally significant is because it's, it is the point at which change occurs.

And you have this other type of death, which is the death that robs you of the change, right?

Which is the death of the young.

The JFK is the classic example, right.

So actually you get maintenance of status quo and what you're mourning is the absence of the change.

And I wonder if that's meaningful in some way.

But it just occurred to me as Peter was talking about those, you know, there's those different reasons why deaths are culturally significant.

So as I think about metrics, how do we try and measure cultural significance in a way that isn't just necessarily our kind of immediate perceptions?

And I mean, there's a whole bunch of things we could look at.

So I was sort of thinking about things like, well, how does behavior change not just the short term, but are there longer term things?

I mean, you've got short term things like, know, the flowers at Diana's funeral and all the massive outpouring.

I mean, some people saw Diana's death as almost a kind of catharsis after the excess of, of the 80s.

You know, this is like a sort of collective process where we were really becoming 90s people.

You know, almost like the modern sensitive kind of person.

You could.

There is a sort.

It does feel like there was something weird happened then.

And.

But then things like, you know, people avoiding certain kinds of activity because someone famous dies, you know, doing something dangerous like Steve Irwin or someone, something like that, you know, but then you've got sort of institutional responses you could look at, look at as, has there been an official statement made here?

Blah, blah, blah, you know, cultural narratives mentioned, if they're mentioned in a history book, for example.

The big problem here is that it's really hard to separate all of these indicators, significance of the life from significance of the death.

Now we have talked about the fact that actually these things are in some sense inseparable, that, you know, you can have a culturally significant death because the person was culturally significant or would have been, you know, and so that's fair enough, but I'm.

I would like to isolate the two effects.

Right.

Who are the people if you like who are kind of insignificant as people take out the find insignificant people.

But they had.

Their death was significant.

And so one thought we're talking about.

George Floyd sort of stuff or the market trader.

Was he Tunisian who self immolated and caused the Arab Spring?

Yeah, he is an.

Absolutely.

Mohamed Bouazizi.

Yes.

So a fruit seller in Tunisia.

I guarantee.

I know you'll claim you've heard of him before that.

I'd heard of him before that.

Yeah.

You knew him.

So best oranges in Tunis have got a list of.

This is a start.

Certainly on end, but I've got a list of articles in Wikipedia where a death is its own article.

Right.

And so this might give us a bit of a steer.

So these are things where the death itself is something which is obviously of such interest.

It's not going to be old people who died in bed.

Yeah.

So we've got in no particular order, Michael Jackson, Osama bin Laden, the crucifixion of a guy called Jesus, don't know if you know about him, Assassination of jfk, death of Diana.

We've mentioned all these death of the dinosaurs.

They're in there.

That was very culturally significant.

We have Hitler, Martin Luther King, George Floyd, Elizabeth Second, someone we haven't mentioned yet, but Julius Caesar.

Then we've got some, you know, cultural figures like Kurt Cobain and.

And John Lennon.

Political people.

You've got well, Rober Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln.

Recent ones include like Jeffrey Epstein and actually.

And then there's another one about the heat death of the universe.

So we've got the universe, dinosaurs and Jeffrey Epstein and.

But, but I, I thought.

Oh, and the death of Marat, which is actually about the painting by David.

So that.

I thought that was.

This is quite useful.

This is different from.

It does feel like.

Yeah, actually these are people where I have an idea about how they died.

And that idea is quite important.

Right, yeah.

These are all.

These are so Adolf Hitler's death.

There's a mythos around that, you know.

You know, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein, another good example, like.

And so these are.

These are.

These are definitely interesting deaths.

Interesting enough to have an article about them.

So there you go.

I'm just saying I think this is a good place to start because we are finding the actual death.

I suppose you have to filter out those where the death is interesting for culturally insignificant reasons.

Like it's a weird or exciting way to die.

That didn't make any cultural waves.

Well, yeah, but also if you think about the death of Hitler, for example, it is important There is a mythos around it and it did have an impact, but I think there's other things he did in his life that were quite.

You know, he might have his own.

Page for his death because he was fairly infamous in his own, you know.

Well, and I feel that although it's a good place to start, it is.

It makes me wonder if we're just even asking the question and asking it in terms of cultural significance, if that's a worthwhile thing to do.

Isn't it just that, hey, these people died and it had effects which in all sorts of ways.

It's quite difficult to pin it down.

Just the cultural stuff, I mean.

But it's all culture, isn't it?

I mean.

Well.

Which is the same way of saying that.

That.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, but.

Okay, but.

But the.

So I have.

And I've made it what I wanted to do and it's.

I couldn't do this systematically.

Didn't have time.

I think you could do this systematically but was to find people who don't sort of have a corresponding life of article.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

So people who are only.

Yeah.

We've got people whose deaths are significant events.

And as I said, like there are people like Queen Victoria or Isaac Newton or Einstein who.

Their deaths are totally irrelevant.

Then we've got people who like Jesus, where they're an interesting guy and they have some history and their death is highly relevant.

Yeah.

Right.

And.

And so now we've got people who aren't interesting at all.

No disrespect to them, but they're not significant personae.

But their death is important.

Right.

So this is where you're really only known for your death.

So I've got.

And the examples I've got here.

Kitty Genovese, who was.

She was the woman who was murdered in New York in the 70s, I think.

And it.

She.

That that was the first sort of people talked about the bystander effect effect.

I think psychology people very interested in the fact nobody helped.

And they think that nobody helped because there were too many people around.

She was killed in.

The historical details are actually disputed.

But anyway, George Floyd, we've talked about him.

And that turned into a real sort of called celebrity for the civil rights movement.

Understandably.

Mohamed Bouazizi, we mentioned him.

Rachel Corey, the woman who was run over by an IDF bulldozer, and we haven't mentioned him yet, but Thick Kwang Duc, the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire.

Yeah, you.

I guarantee you hadn't heard of him before.

I like where you're going with this because I found it a little bit overwhelming and I like the way you feel to this.

Well, and I've got.

I've got three historical ones which are quite interesting because.

So I got the Princes in the Tower.

Yep.

I mean, potentially significant, very significant impact on the future of the monarchy and stuff.

But also William of Norwich.

What do you know about him?

Well, he was from Norwich.

That's the main thing.

Now, I. I think I believe this is something like the 12th century, but he was apparently the first guy.

He was.

A kid was murdered and I don't know, he was local.

This was the first time that the blood libel, the Jewish blood libel, was kind of created.

So there was some local idea that he'd been murdered by Jews to make bread out of his blood.

And apparently it's the first time this had been concocted and that then became, you know, a massive, like, conspiracy theory in.

Throughout Europe.

So he is.

Him, William of Norwich and then Crispus Attucks.

Yeah, I was waiting for you to say.

Catalyst, probably.

Or at least at least the first catalyst for which, by the inevitable series.

Of events which, Boston, I mean, that.

Led to the American Revolution.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah.

So Lincolnshire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You were really hoping it would be a Lincolnshire thing.

Yeah.

You've had William of Norwich.

Now we've got someone in Boston.

It'll be Spalding.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't want to.

I don't know.

I don't know if I've just cut you off.

No, I'm done.

Okay.

Because what's nice about this is it still starts to feel a bit more manageable, as you say, when you stripped out where it's nothing, it's not their life, it's just their death.

And then at this point, if we try and thin out and isolate the cultural element, because I guess what you can do is, again, putting some metrics on it, go, right, what we measuring could be cultural impact, could be political, hysterical.

I mean, and you could.

You could define some stuff, right.

Get some categories, and then you can say, right, let's grab William of Norwich and you could, you know, assign a value of 1 to 10, for example, in the cultural bit, if you wanted.

And then you Start to feel that you.

Like you're getting somewhere.

So I feel a bit calmer in my mind now.

Good.

So where do we go with this?

What is next?

Who's got something?

Well,.

I wonder if the measure is not just insignificance to significance, but the sort of.

So Archduke Ferdinand was not a terribly, you know, significant Habsburg.

It wasn't a nobody.

But he wasn't a nobody.

Right.

But he.

Would we know about him had he not been assassinated and caused the First World War to come about?

Probably not.

Right.

He.

You know, I think that's about right.

So.

So let's say significance to impact 10.

You can't get much right.

World War I, I think he's top.

Right.

Correct.

So.

So it's the ratio between.

Yeah.

Life and death significance.

Yeah.

So we've got a one to five there.

Yeah.

So he's a factor five.

Exact significant death guy.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

And I mean, well, Jesus right now.

Okay, let's do him now.

He was going around telling people he was the son of God and he had.

He had some supporters in a bit of the Middle east, you know, that was reasonably important, but a bit of a backwater in the reality.

I mean, it's not.

Well, you say reasonably important.

We think of, you know, the Middle east as.

We would have a totally different perception of the Middle east if it hadn't been.

Yeah, yeah, quite.

What we doing the set of again?

Is it five or ten?

I. I reckon out of ten.

So Jesus.

Well.

Well, let's see.

But carpenter with knobs on.

Knobs on.

Yeah.

Carpet with aspirations, with.

With big dreams.

A famous dad.

Yeah, exactly.

But I think you'd have to say, if we're doing out of 10 for the life, I think I'm gonna go out.

I think you would only be maybe talking about a 2.

I don't think you would know about Jesus at all were it not for the death.

Right.

But in a different way to Archduke Ferdinand.

He's not.

So what we're saying is he's not an absolute nobody.

I would say he's less than Archduke Ferdinand because if he didn't get crucified, no crucifixion, no returning from the dead and, you know, no Bible, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, I sort of feel like that has got to be in dispute.

The Pharisees knew who he was and were quite annoyed by him.

Yeah.

Right.

I think this is going to annoy Christians because I think they would see that.

That Jesus dying is very much part of his whole deal, you know.

The cross is a giveaway, right?

Yeah, exactly.

But this is where it's different with.

He's almost a category of his own.

Or is he?

I don't know.

No, because the point of Archduke Ferdinand is.

It's almost like the conditioned.

The condition of being Jesus.

What's necessary to that to understand that is the death, which is different to Archduke Ferdinand.

It's just that his death was hugely significant.

I don't know.

It wasn't necessary part of his being.

I mean, maybe I'm getting too theological here.

I don't know.

You are tapping into something here which is, did the death of Jesus bring attention to the life of Jesus in a way that made us realize.

I tell you what it is.

Maybe it's the distinction between fame and significance.

Like, let's say that all the things that Jesus said were really great, but it's just that if it hadn't been for his crucifixion, no one would have heard of them.

So I think we have to decide which thing we're doing with the whole sort of life significance measure.

But also we're giving Archduke Ferdinand, I think, a perfectly rare.

Reasonable, too.

Yeah.

You know, and Jesus, I mean, I think from what we've said on one level, it's a one like we wouldn't have heard of him at all.

Yeah.

I do think it is a special category because I. I'm not having that.

Well, no reason.

No, no, no.

The reason why is the point of Jesus, that he was meant to die.

That was.

That's the whole point theologically.

But that's.

I think we're just going off into a whole different podcast.

How you not died, though.

Maybe then we'd be sitting around none the wiser.

I think we'd be talking.

Sitting around, talking about some bloke called Gary rather than Jesus, because this has to be a Jesus story somewhere.

So I'm.

I'm willing to say Jesus is.

Is plausibly a 10, I think.

Yeah.

Close to maximum for the death.

Cultural significance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And one for significance of life.

It's.

I think that's got to be.

So we want to make sure the significance while alive is like, how much did they get done?

Rather than how many people have heard of them while they were alive.

Good point.

Right.

So let's say that.

How much did they achieve during their lifetime?

Yeah, I'm happy with one for Jesus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

One to ten.

So he's like, sorry, Christians.

He sets a sort of upper bound down.

Let's give us.

Give us A feels like we're constructing a model that someone's.

We're gonna, we're gonna sort of get big bucks.

I'm liking it.

Yeah.

Let's pick another example.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

Sorry.

Let's go Julius Caesar.

Well, okay.

But I was.

Because Chris was leading us through this.

Do you have another figure?

Caesar's a good example because Caesar was, I would say, scores poorly on this.

Right.

Because if you're talking about how famous was he and how much did he get done?

Quite a lot.

He's quite energetic.

So he's right up there on the score for pre death, fame, impact, whatever you want to.

He would be someone we'd put close to a 10.

Yeah, I'd give him like.

Yeah, he's not quite.

I mean, he was kind of big in Europe.

Yeah, I don't think he's quite up there with your kind of maybe Hitler or Genghis Khan.

I'd give him an 8 for his.

Cultural signature, given the dominance of, of European culture globally right now.

I'll get.

Look, I just want to leave room for someone above.

Let's give him a 9.

9 For life significance.

And what about death significance?

What are we saying?

How much impact did that have by itself?

Well, it then started a civil war.

Right.

The system after his death was, was.

I mean, he changed the system, but it, but it was perpetuated after his death.

They didn't go back to being a full republic and so on, did they?

So, so it wasn't.

It, it wasn't insignificant.

A lot of political tumult.

So.

But not, not on Jesus or First World War Five.

No, but this is, but hold on.

This is where we get into the.

Total collapse of the Roman Empire.

But as a result of his death, as you say, there's a Wikipedia article about a Roman civil war that happened.

I mean, that's quite significant.

If you lived through it.

You'd go, this is, you know, you keep going on about your World War I.

Pretty bad for us.

But this is where it gets interesting where I think within this, you could say the wider impact in general, let's say it's a five, for example.

But if we go to our subcategories.

Well, let's pick out the cultural one, the within cultural one.

I think the cultural one's pretty big, arguably, because in just a very literal way is, you know, think of the phrases that we have from, you know, I came, I saw, I conquered, you know, crossing the Rubicon.

And if we think about, you know, Et tu, rute shakes?

I mean, there is.

So there's this as a resonance somehow that within Western culture has come down through the ages.

So culturally, you could say it's wide up there in that subcategory, it's a 10.

But there are other categories in there within the general impact.

And so therefore, if we're weighting them equally, if we go back up to that general importance, it's still maybe relatively small and we're starting to.

Yeah.

So culturally, I would argue, pretty important, I would say.

Yeah.

But I mean, I think what we're saying is it's a good example of someone where you might go, well, that was a very significant death.

But actually, in terms of the life significance versus death significance hits.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's balanced towards the life significance.

I agree.

Yeah, yeah.

So we've got.

So we've got our.

Yeah, Archduke Ferdinand.

Jesus.

Jesus being at the top.

Someone.

Can we find someone who's sort of in the middle?

So we'll do one more or a bottom left.

Well, someone who's.

Just someone no one's heard of and died.

I don't.

I actually don't have a. I don't.

Not sure.

I have a suggestion for someone who's kind of in the middle.

It's quite hard at that point.

By definition, they're difficult to kind of know about.

Well, somebody who did quite a lot of stuff and then died with a bit of pomp.

Jfk, maybe somebody.

I was thinking maybe a bit of a pomp.

Maybe a bit that pomp on the grass.

Yeah.

Maybe a pope of some sort, you know.

Yeah.

We need some middling monarch or pope or president that like, you know, no one's ever quite heard of, that vaguely did.

Yeah.

I mean, I think Queen Elizabeth II might be a good candidate.

I mean, didn't really do very much during her life apart from maintaining credibility of the royal family.

And death didn't really change or achieve anything.

But lots of people were aware that it happened.

There's a lot of.

But the Queen.

I think the Queen is very.

Will be very high up.

I know she necessarily do very much, but she's massively famous.

That's true.

Princess Diana might be another candidate here, actually, where.

She's a good one.

Go on.

Yeah.

Well, I think in my head, what I'm thinking is.

Here, let me think about trying to think of someone where the first things I think of is something they did when they were alive and something to do with how they died.

Princess Diana, how she died.

Very important culturally, but at the same time, she was.

She was a, you know, pretty famous figure at the time.

So I sort of think, oh, yeah.

Whereas jfk, in all honesty, the first thing I think of is him being assassinated.

And I know he did other stuff.

I know he was the President of the us which is not an insignificant job, but actually the first thing he.

Was overseeing at quite an interesting time during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Well, I mean.

I mean, that's right, you.

But.

But I'm just going purely on my first reactions.

I think what I'm looking for here is someone where I think of both sort of at the same time.

But.

Yeah, but that goes back to what Chris was saying at the beginning, which is that sort of an opportunity of the potential sort of thing where I think it is an element of that, where there's a reason why you might think of that first, the death.

Because the death, I think there's an element of it being associated with what could have been.

So therefore it's not fair to say, well, they could have done more.

They didn't do.

That's sort of the point.

And wrapped up in it, I think maybe the.

The other factor to bear in mind, I think, is the dimension of time and the fact that obviously as time goes by, you have chance to have more impact.

So how much impact did Jesus's death have, you know, three weeks after his.

After his death and subsequent resurrection.

And his subsequent resurrection.

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

We need to bring that a sub.

Another category, don't we?

That they're coming to life.

How we might.

Was that or not?

But anyway, we might actually need to point out that we're not a Christian podcast because we keep bringing up.

But the point is we've subsequently had 2,000 plus years for that to soak in and have impact.

Right.

So.

So whereas, you know, Queen Elizabeth II relatively, you know, not quite still warm, but, you know, relatively recent death, so we.

And Julius Caesar, there's a lot of time downstream for Shakespeare to write plays and then everybody to read and watch Shakespeare plays.

Right.

Or start reading into it.

So.

So we're like, oh, Jesus, that's a massive one, Jesus.

But actually a lot of that is the passage of time and random events.

You know, who knew that the Romans were going to adopt Christianity, you know, and so, yeah, that's.

Yeah, some future religion might seize upon Amy Winehouse as their.

Right, Exactly.

And turn her into something that she more than she was.

I mean, I'm happy with that.

I mean, I think it's, you know, just saying, well, Sometimes culture.

It's not saying cultural significance is a meaningless or kind of relative thing.

It's just saying you don't know what it is yet.

Yes, but the thing is that your people who died recently, we're not in a position to know what their cultural significance.

Correct.

So we might be surprised.

Yeah.

Also, just before we sort of move to closing this down, it's that thing of time and place and context.

Right.

To what extent were they a vector of what's going on?

To what extent, you know, were they a driver of it?

Okay.

And I think that's where Diana, for example, Princess Diana, is a really interesting one.

To what extent was there sort of other changes going on in society?

And it sort of that.

It sort of just.

It's almost like that perfect sort of meeting of the person and the wider context that together makes that change.

And in fact, I forget who wrote it might be Malcolm Gladwell, Someone else might have written about this, which is with Rosa Parks.

Well, there had been other examples of that, of, you know, similar sort of incidents, but it just how it coincided with other things going on at the time.

So, look, I do want to sort of move us towards a conclusion, but I've got a question.

Yeah.

Thinking maybe sort of from a personal point of view, if we take a death that is considered to be culturally significant for you, what might one of those be?

Who might that be?

That either makes you sad or you would rather it were not the case.

I have one.

I'm happy to sort of start with if you like Ray Charles.

But actually.

Yeah, okay.

So in a sense, it's only about.

80 When he died.

Yeah.

But we're not talking about necessarily a death that shouldn't have been.

We're just talking about someone dying.

Did you get a chance to see him live?

I didn't, no.

And I wish I had.

Yeah.

Because that's.

And it was definitely a possibility I could have.

So the reason why with Ray Charles is, you know, as, you know, I like my blues, I like my gospel, I like my pianists.

And the reason why is as follows.

I remember when he died, not just thinking, oh, that's sad, because I really like Ray Charles and his music and that he was such a spectacular musician and singer.

But it was the first time I realized I thought of someone that those hands that could do that, they've gone.

It's just that cannot happen again.

And it was just.

It was almost like the material side of it and, you know, just in a very literal way, that's gone.

Yeah.

And Because I was just such a, you know, big fan of him and that kind of music.

And that's just that lost moment for me.

It's probably that.

I would say, all right, well, I've got a suggestion.

He's a moderately well known example of someone who died young with lots of promise, but John Cazale.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, okay.

He played, I mean, probably most famous for playing Fredo.

Was it Cazale or Casales?

I can't remember.

Anyway, sorry, go on.

I think it's just Kazar.

But he, he was, you know, kind of.

Well, he was in.

So he was best known for playing Fredo in the Godfather.

Had a really like incredibly talent, talented kind of, well, his presence with this kind of vulnerability.

He was in Dog Day Afternoon, he was in the Deer Hunter.

He's basically in five Oscar nominated films.

And then he just died of cancer, I think.

And it's like he was really young.

I think he was only in, you know, early 30s or something.

And it's like he could.

I just would have loved to see what he'd gone on to do next.

You know, he was such a magnetic kind of character on screen.

He's just brilliant.

He's, you know, you, you kind of go, well, this is a, this is someone who I, you know, thank God we do have what he did.

But it would have been so nice to see what, how he would, what would he be like as an old man?

How would he be acting as an old man?

I'd love to see a film with John Cazale in.

I quite agree.

As a 70 year old guy along.

The same similar line.

John Candy, American comedian, comedy actor, died 43, I think.

Gosh, was he only 43?

Yeah, 43.

He looked about 60 because he was unhealthy and pretty overweight.

But my main one is Alan Turing died at 41.

He could, you know, he could have been in his sort of 80.

When did he die?

So he could have been like, he could have seen the Internet.

We could have lived at the same time as Alan Sherry.

We could have lived at the same time as Alan Turing.

You know, he could have been, he could have been a big deal in computing.

He could.

Well, it could have been a big deal in contemporary computer.

Even more bigger.

I mean.

That's right.

I mean, he's, you know, kind of invented the idea of artificial intelligence.

Invented computers.

Yeah, I think, I think, refused to elaborate.

Died.

I think scientists dying is a great tragedy.

Yeah, it's a big loss they can go on producing, you know, for a long time.

Yeah, I think he would have had a lot more.

Yeah.

There'd been a Nobel Prize probably in it for him, I expect.

Chris.

Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna flip mine round and state some people that I wish had died but didn't.

So, for me, Careful.

It's Oasis.

The.

The Gallagher brothers.

Oh, good Lord.

I. I just wish we'd never had Brit pop.

And then I would rather.

I would trade.

I'd trade a Gallagher brother for a Kurt Cobain.

Anyway.

Yeah, I thought you're gonna say for.

Alan Turing, I think the going rate.

Might not be one to one.

What if you had 10 more years of.

Of.

No, you get one more year of Alan Turing, but you've got to take 10 years off the life of a gallery.

Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, for me, it's more about something I wish hadn't happened and, you.

Know, well, look, spread a little light in our lives.

What else?

Who else?

Absolutely Classic.

I've got a long list.

Chris's hit list.

Okay, I think we should stop there.

I think we should.

Okay.

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