Peter Ricchiuti talks to a lot of business people on this radio show/podcast, but this is his first conversation about death and Insanitea.

There’s a big difference between living in New Orleans, and being a tourist in New Orleans. Tourists do all kinds of fun things that most of us who live here don’t. They go on swamp tours. On ghost tours. They drink hurricanes and hand grenades. They wear beads when it’s not Mardi Gras. And when they’re wandering around the French Quarter with a Big Ass Beer, do you know that a huge number of them are paying $15 for a self-guided tour of a place on Dauphine Street called The Museum of Death?

Down on Dauphine Street

The Museum of Death has been open since 2014. It’s a collection of artefacts related to death. Not the quiet kind of peaceful death you might wish for after a life well-lived. That would presumably not interest as many people as the museum’s body bags, autopsy videos, skeletons, crime scene photos, serial-killer artwork, and much more.

Zack Frazier

Zack Frazier is Co-Manager of the French Quarter’s Museum of Death.

Most of us don’t want to confront death. Least of all our own. We’re predominantly concerned with staying alive for as long as we can. To do that, we take regular precautions. Like wearing seatbelts and evacuating in the face of a major hurricane.

Gut Feeling

We also try to stay healthy. Today that means, among other things, watching our diet. Foods from kale to kombucha that were once the province of hippies and health food stores, are now widely accepted as nutrients that promote health, and are readily available in supermarkets across the country. If you’re not familiar with kombucha, it’s a fermented tea. It contains probiotic enzymes that are allegedly beneficial for gut health. Here in New Orleans you can buy a locally brewed Kombucha called Insanitea.

Jordi Figueras

Jordi Figueras is founder and owner of Insanitea Kombucha.

Jordi Figueras, Zack Frazier, Peter Ricchiuti

Photos over lunch, death, and Insanitea Kombucha with Peter Ricchiuti at Commander’s Palace by Jill Lafleur.