This story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. We’ve sold out our copies, the only ones left are in stores—perhaps there’s one near you? Secure yourself the next 4 issues by subscribing.
The Strangest Person I Know is a new VICE column, in which we interview strange people and then ask them who the strangest person they know is so we can interview them too, creating a never-ending daisy chain of spiraling human strangeness in an increasingly square world.
Next up is Dr. Rodney Rodderson, a 43-year-old mortician and part-time scuba-diving instructor who relocated from his native Isle of Sheppey to Izberbash some time ago. He got in touch offering to speak with VICE after seeing an iteration of this column on the internet.
VICE: So, undertaking. How do you get into a profession like that?
Dr. Rodney Rodderson: That’s a great question. I guess you could say that I [REDACTED] a few incidents at school when I [REDACTED] and things progressed naturally from there. It’s not for the faint hearted but after I had already [REDACTED] five or six times before the age of 12, I [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED]. I guess you could say I was born to work in death!
That’s a neat turn of phrase. I guess my next question would be, how did you find yourself in Izberbash? There can’t be many people who’ve moved there from Kent.
There was a [REDACTED] with a [REDACTED] that I [REDACTED] with a [REDACTED]. Obviously, I feel bad about it. But we must all live with regrets: our mistakes shape us. Thankfully, the good people of Izberbash welcomed me with open arms. Dagestan has a very forgiving culture—even when you’re fleeing [REDACTED] from the Crown Prosecution Service just because you happened to [REDACTED] the wrong [REDACTED] wife’s snorkel on the wrong way.
What was that, sorry?
The time when I [REDACTED] the [REDACTED]?
Yes, what happened there?
I mean, there are people you meet in life who just really [REDACTED], you know? That said I would never have risked endangering my professional reputation in the scuba-diving industry on purpose. It was just [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED] at the wrong time. Shit happens.
“Dagestan has a very forgiving culture—even when you’re fleeing [REDACTED] from the Crown Prosecution Service just because you happened to [REDACTED] the wrong [REDACTED] wife’s snorkel on the wrong way”
But surely you could just have [REDACTED] the [REDACTED] and none of this would have happened?
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. You can’t let your life be defined by your mistakes.
Earlier you said more or less the exact opposite.
Did I? Classic me!
Just before going to print, VICE was contacted and informed that we should not, under any circumstances, publish the information divulged to us by Dr. Rodderson, by lawyers representing his estate and former employers.
This story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. We’ve sold out our copies, the only ones left are in stores—perhaps there’s one near you? Secure yourself the next 4 issues by subscribing.
The post The Strangest Person I Know: The Busiest Mortician in Dagestan appeared first on VICE.
