Before Grant Inman was a producer on the Premiere Networks-syndicated “Johnjay and Rich Show” on radio, he worked as a funeral director’s assistant at his family’s funeral home. That upbringing, the son of a funeral director father, gave birth to his podcast My Funeral Home Stories. Inman will leverage that upbringing to answer the questions he’s been peppered with through his life, from whether girls would date him to what’s the creepiest place he’s ever gone and whether he believes in ghosts.
“Growing up in the funeral home, these are the questions I get asked all the time,” he said on the show’s preview of the podcast’s just-launched third season. Inman said he’s come to believe there are two types of people who pick up dead bodies for a living — the “thoughtful, caring professional” or the “complete train wreck of a person whose life is always about to spiral out of control — saying he’s “somewhere in between.”
In an interview with the true-crime website Hunt A Killer last November, Inman said his highly descriptive stories had him fearing his show would be removed on four or five occasions. But that’s yet to happen. “I’m surprised that people are stoked on my level of honesty,” he said. “I’ve gotten a fair amount of messages from people saying it’s gratuitous and insensitive and that’s fair. Sometimes if you hear an episode out of context I can see it being questionable, but that’s the part what makes me excited to do it. It’s the wild west.”
Inman likely bought himself some goodwill in recent weeks with the release of a bonus episode that spoke with people working in the funeral home industry about how they’re dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Johnjay & Rich Show” is based at iHeartMedia CHR “104.7 Kiss FM” KZZP Phoenix.