David Ferrugio
David Ferrugio, who built 'DEAD Talks' after losing his father at 12, says he sees the audience as a community rather than a market. David Ferrugio's website

David Ferrugio has spent nearly 25 years turning the worst day of his life into a body of work. The host of the DEAD Talks podcast, who lost his father in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center when he was 12, now operates inside a death care market that The Business Research Company values at about $148B (£110B) in 2026. He would rather you did not call it a market.

'Honestly, I've never really thought of my father's death or DEAD Talks in terms of a market as much as I have in terms of curating a community,' Ferrugio told IBTimes UK in an email interview.

That community is sizeable. His podcast and social channels have passed 1M followers, with more than 330,000 subscribers on YouTube, and a debut book, You're Not Dead Yet: How Grief and Loss Can Teach You to Live, arriving on 8 September 2026 through Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley.

The global death care market is on course to reach roughly $201B (£150B) by 2030, lifted by ageing populations, rising cremation rates, and a shift of services online. Promotional material for Ferrugio's book cites about 2.5M deaths a year in the United States alone, each leaving an average of five grieving people behind.

Building a Business in the Grief Economy

Ferrugio treats the podcast as the base of something wider, describing it as 'the foundation', with extensions including live events, films, speaking, and books. Learning to delegate, rather than run everything himself, was a major adjustment, he said.

He is wary of the language of enterprise all the same. 'What would I be doing if money wasn't a consideration?' he asked himself, and the answer was the work he already does. Even at this size, he added, 'it still doesn't really feel like I'm "running a business" as much as I'm building something around a mission I deeply believe in. The business side matters because it allows the work to grow, but it's never been the reason behind it.'

Asked where DEAD Talks sits in the wellness and media landscape, he leaned 'more toward media', though he was not sure the platform fit any single category.

How the Jossey-Bass Book Deal Came Together

The book was not the product of an auction or a follower count. A friend in the industry introduced him to a contact at Wiley, and both sides initially paused the idea. 'About a year later, the timing seemed to align better for everyone, and the conversation became real,' he said.

He was blunt about how he handled it. 'I had no interest in shopping the book idea around or trying to create some kind of bidding process,' he said, adding that 'it wasn't a case of hitting a certain number of followers and suddenly getting a book deal.' The book draws on hundreds of DEAD Talks conversations, framing grief less as five neat stages than as something messier.

AI, Ethics, and the Death Care Market

One corner of the industry unsettles him. A fast-growing 'grief tech' niche now sells AI tools that recreate the voices and personalities of the dead, offered by services such as HereAfter AI, StoryFile, and Afterlife AI. Asked about these 'ghostbots', Ferrugio did not hide his discomfort. 'It freaks me out a bit, honestly,' he said, calling it a 'user beware' situation.

His worry was partly ethical and partly about consent, including 'whether the deceased ever agreed to have their voice, likeness, or personality recreated in that way.' Academic researchers studying so-called deadbots have raised similar concerns, warning the tools can complicate grief and that the field remains largely unregulated. Ferrugio saw potential in pairing AI with grief support, but only if the focus stayed on people rather than 'the bottom line of the P&L statement.'

For all his ambivalence about the money, Ferrugio is building inside one of the most durable consumer markets there is, one he argues reflects need more than profit. 'I just hope more people are doing it for the right reasons and not superseding the human compassion for money,' he said.

You're Not Dead Yet will be published on 8 September 2026.

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