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Speaker 2: Ologites. Okay, just a few more days until we're back
Speaker 2: in the swing of things and I'm back back with
Speaker 2: all new, fresh episodes, starting with a brand new minisod
Speaker 2: that will serve as a companion to this encore. But
Speaker 2: I've been saving this episode to replay for about five years.
Speaker 2: The time is right. The guest has changed my life
Speaker 2: in so many ways, which is why we're doing that
Speaker 2: follow up minisod with her with a bunch of updates
Speaker 2: and even some tips on what's helped me Your Internet
Speaker 2: Lady Dad the last few months. When processing the farewell
Speaker 2: of your my dad. That'll be new and up in
Speaker 2: a few days, but for now, settle in. This is
Speaker 2: one of the best episodes we've ever done. It's time.
Speaker 2: It's time to rehear it. This was the sixth episode
Speaker 2: ever published back in twenty seventeen, when I was editing
Speaker 2: it myself and using six dollars mic cables. And I've
Speaker 2: learned some lessons. Okay, poor boy, Wow, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2: So from the moment I heard that this ology existed,
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to run as far away from
Speaker 2: it as humanly possible, which then made it obvious that
Speaker 2: I should dive into it sooner rather than later. So
Speaker 2: in fact, when I sat down with this week's guest,
Speaker 2: the first thing I said was that I'm a little
Speaker 2: anxious about mortality. And she said she'd listen to other episodes,
Speaker 2: and I picked up on that.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, we have this locked and loaded.
Speaker 2: She had my number. Now. I've wanted to do a
Speaker 2: project about ologies for over a decade, and each time
Speaker 2: I write out ologies, my computer autocorrect sed to eulogies
Speaker 2: and I get a little shiver. I get a little scared.
Speaker 2: And then the wind whispers at me, Hellie, one day
Speaker 2: everyone you know and love will be eaten by a
Speaker 2: fungus and rotting back into the earth. And so I
Speaker 2: guess guess why I don't like it, even just the
Speaker 2: word eulogies heby Geebi's okay, I can tell you though.
Speaker 2: After recording this episode, I felt way better. It's weird,
Speaker 2: so you're gonna have to listen to figure out how
Speaker 2: and why that worked. It's probably gonna be a long
Speaker 2: ass episode. I don't know. I haven't put it all
Speaker 2: together yet. I'm just starting to edit it, but it's
Speaker 2: gonna be worth it. Listen when you're like cleaning out
Speaker 2: the shed, or I don't know, baiting an elephant when
Speaker 2: you've got a lot to do. Or you can break
Speaker 2: it up and listen to the last half after, but
Speaker 2: listen the whole thing because it might seriously change the
Speaker 2: way you live. First things first, panatology, etymology now the
Speaker 2: word straight up Greek mythology thanatose just being the god
Speaker 2: of death and dying. What a god? Apparently he was
Speaker 2: referred to often but seen seldom, kind of like one
Speaker 2: of those weird exes that everyone talks about but you
Speaker 2: hope you never run into a brunch. So not only
Speaker 2: was he the Bringer of mortality, but he also he
Speaker 2: had super shitty siblings, like the whole family sucked. Among them,
Speaker 2: one sibling the God of old age, another the God
Speaker 2: of Retribution, the God of Suffering, the God of deception,
Speaker 2: the God of doom, another sibling the God of strife,
Speaker 2: and yet another one of his homies, the God of Blame.
Speaker 3: So first off, I.
Speaker 2: Come from a really big, large Catholic family and that
Speaker 2: is still a lot of kids. Secondly, they sound awful.
Speaker 2: So humans fear death much. I wanted to to grips
Speaker 2: with it. A few months ago, I wound up doing
Speaker 2: some light Instagram stocking of the hashtag Thanatologist, and up
Speaker 2: popped the feed of this fresh faced, mohawked woman in Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: and I followed her the case I ever wound up
Speaker 2: in Cincinnati and I wanted to talk about death. Wouldn't
Speaker 2: you know it? A few weeks before Halloween, I flew
Speaker 2: in to shoot Innovation Nation, which is my other job,
Speaker 2: and I was able to coerce this woman to meet
Speaker 2: me in the hotel lobby of a Hampton End at
Speaker 2: nine thirty pm on a Tuesday, where we chatted about
Speaker 2: mortality and the best way to be buried, and what
Speaker 2: people regret on their deathbeds, and why you shouldn't shit
Speaker 2: talk anyone in a hospital, and why we're also scared.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, we talked about just being alive. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of where I was shocked, because this guest,
Speaker 2: in just over an hour, stripped a lot of the
Speaker 2: darkness from death and honestly helped me a shitload. I
Speaker 2: felt like I should have paid her at the end
Speaker 2: of it, and I didn't. Maybe I still should. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we talk about disposition methods. Do you get buried or
Speaker 2: do you fling yourself via catapult into a pile of
Speaker 2: burning mattresses, whatever, But I didn't want to make this
Speaker 2: all about fear and gore of death. You can get
Speaker 2: that somewhere else. This episode is about death and dying
Speaker 2: as much as it is about being alive. Now it's
Speaker 2: getting released on Halloween, so I hope as you listen,
Speaker 2: you remember that you are sitting on a subway full
Speaker 2: of human skeletons, and you are a big bag of
Speaker 2: blood and atoms in a skin suit, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: you are alive. So please let your mind and heart
Speaker 2: get blown away by phanatologist Cole and Perry. All right,
Speaker 2: let's get right down to some real bare bones questions.
Speaker 2: What is thanatology?
Speaker 3: So, first of all, it's the study of death and dying.
Speaker 3: And to me, death is the easy part. The dying
Speaker 3: part is much more fascinating and rich and deep and
Speaker 3: intense than the actual death part. There is also no
Speaker 3: such thing as a job of like just being a panatologist, okay,
Speaker 3: because I've looked, and nobody will pay me to just
Speaker 3: walk around and know about death and dying. So what
Speaker 3: I have found is thanatology is an enhancer. It is
Speaker 3: something that enhances whatever you already are.
Speaker 2: And that will help you with whatever your other job is,
Speaker 2: like a school counselor who's also a panatologist something like that.
Speaker 3: There's actually thousands of panatologists that are certified. I'm an
Speaker 3: intense and like a very intense individual, so I had
Speaker 3: to get not only one panatology certification, I had to
Speaker 3: get two, which is all of them as far as
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: So one of her certifications is an integrative phanatology. But
Speaker 2: now she is triple certified, possibly the only triple certified
Speaker 2: phanatologist in the world, and She also started her own school,
Speaker 2: the School of American Anatology. So more on all the
Speaker 2: cool things she's been up to in the Fresh twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two minisod that'll be dropping in a few days.
Speaker 2: But one of her certifications is integrative thanatology, and I
Speaker 2: did not know what that was.
Speaker 3: We looked at in that program more of the like
Speaker 3: esoteric stuff, funky stuff.
Speaker 2: What would you count as funky death stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, one of my most favorite pieces of that training
Speaker 3: program was about the use of psilocybin and other hallucinogenics
Speaker 3: at the end of life, because we're finding that those
Speaker 3: can help your death. Like it can be great, it
Speaker 3: can mitigate a lot of pain, but it can also
Speaker 3: help with things like existential pain. Keyword existential pain, if
Speaker 3: you don't know, is something like where usually it happens
Speaker 3: on your deathbed. It's when you're confronting all this stuff
Speaker 3: from your life, like am I a good person? What
Speaker 3: is a good person? Or where do I go after
Speaker 3: I die? Those can be actually very very painful things
Speaker 3: to think about because they're all attached to all kinds
Speaker 3: of junk from the life that we lived. Religious stuff,
Speaker 3: think about how you were raised, religiously all the way
Speaker 3: to your end of your life and all the baggage
Speaker 3: you pick up with that stuff.
Speaker 2: What happens if you have those thoughts all day, every day.
Speaker 3: Welcome to my life. Yeah, I think about this stuff
Speaker 3: a lot, and a lot of people do. One of
Speaker 3: the problems I see socially in the United States is
Speaker 3: that these big questions, they're not uncommon, but the problem
Speaker 3: is we don't really have containers for them. It just
Speaker 3: doesn't exist, and it's not necessarily appropriate party conversation or
Speaker 3: water cooler conversation. So we don't have a place for
Speaker 3: these big conversations to live, so we end up keeping
Speaker 3: all that inside. And I think that that is sad
Speaker 3: because talking about death it's one of the It's a
Speaker 3: great easy way to be really intimate with somebody and
Speaker 3: to really connect with someone on a deeper level. And
Speaker 3: I find that when you talk about something like death
Speaker 3: and dying, you leave feeling like way more connected to
Speaker 3: the world, and it can actually be very positive and freeing.
Speaker 2: Well, take me back a little bit to how you
Speaker 2: grew up. When did you have an interest in death
Speaker 2: and dying and when did you decide that you weren't
Speaker 2: terrified of it.
Speaker 3: Yes, interesting question. So growing up, I never had a
Speaker 3: crazy death experience as a child, So I never had
Speaker 3: anything crazy happen. But it is something that I've always
Speaker 3: been immensely comfortable with and really interested in and really enjoyed.
Speaker 3: An interesting girl. Anyway, several months ago, the mother of
Speaker 3: my best friend in grade school mailed me a card
Speaker 3: that I made for my best friend in third grade
Speaker 3: when her dog died, and it was full of me
Speaker 3: writing about the meaning of the loss and grief. And
Speaker 3: it was really interesting to look back and see my
Speaker 3: thoughts and stuff on death and dying as a child.
Speaker 3: And I don't know where I picked that up, because
Speaker 3: I didn't grow up in a funeral home. I didn't
Speaker 3: grow up around around that at all. I just kind
Speaker 3: of entered the earth with that sort of like software
Speaker 3: expansion pack already in Do you think.
Speaker 2: You carried it over from a past life? Science people?
Speaker 2: I was kidding, Actually, what does science say about the afterlife? Well?
Speaker 2: I read a whole article by lauded cosmologist and physics
Speaker 2: professor Sean Carroll. He said, the laws of physics underlying
Speaker 2: everyday life are completely understood and there's no way within
Speaker 2: those laws to allow for the information stored in our
Speaker 2: brains to persist after we die. And a fun note,
Speaker 2: the week after this episode went up in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Doctor Carroll tweeted out his writings on it and added quote,
Speaker 2: of course nothing is impossible or proven wrong. That's not
Speaker 2: how science works. But some things are so unlikely we
Speaker 2: shouldn't take them seriously. And it's obviously hotly debated, and
Speaker 2: in my mind it is the most exciting mystery about
Speaker 2: life itself. And more on historical thoughts on the soul
Speaker 2: and the afterlife a bit later in this episode.
Speaker 3: Anyway, looking into death and dying opens up thoughts and
Speaker 3: ideas and just it makes you question so many of
Speaker 3: the things that you think that you know. And it's
Speaker 3: only when you're pushing yourself to these different areas where
Speaker 3: things are uncomfortable, that you can really grow. And that's
Speaker 3: the purpose of life, right is to grow, to just
Speaker 3: continue to expand until you die, until you die. What
Speaker 3: about what about your schooling?
Speaker 2: At what point did you start steering your your academics
Speaker 2: toward death and dying.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I've always kind of been into it.
Speaker 3: I mean, even in high school. I wrote about death
Speaker 3: and dying a lot, and I had it in a
Speaker 3: bunch of my papers, so I've always had it in there.
Speaker 3: My purpose in life is to positively change the way
Speaker 3: that we die in the United States in my lifetime.
Speaker 3: That's my goal, just putting it out there. And I
Speaker 3: have felt that way for a very very long time.
Speaker 3: And there's no magic thing I can say that was like,
Speaker 3: oh well, like I almost died and then this thing happened.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, I've just this is what I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to do, So I'm trying to do it. It's hard, though.
Speaker 2: What does your job entail, Like what's a typical day
Speaker 2: like or typical week like for you? Are you involved
Speaker 2: with like a funeral planning or ebombing or speaking to
Speaker 2: the public, Like what kind of stuff do you do?
Speaker 3: Okay, So I do not have a traditional nine to
Speaker 3: five job. I own a small consulting firm called DOTH
Speaker 3: and we specialize in death care. So one of the
Speaker 3: ways that I'm change in the way that we die
Speaker 3: is people like funeral home cemeteries, crematories, those businesses. I
Speaker 3: know those businesses really well how they work, and they'll
Speaker 3: hire my company to help make them better.
Speaker 2: She also travels all over the country giving keynote speeches
Speaker 2: on death and grief and dying, and in the five
Speaker 2: years since this first aired, she opened the School of
Speaker 2: American Danatology. She's also in the new Netflix series The
Speaker 2: Future of She's in the episode Life After Death. She's
Speaker 2: so good in it. We're going to go over more
Speaker 2: updates in the upcoming minutisote. Oh and her hair was
Speaker 2: purple when we recorded this, but her signature elegant pompadour
Speaker 2: with the shaved sides and back is now shades of
Speaker 2: ochre and green. I called it a mohawk in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: but that's not really accurate. And also that term in
Speaker 2: the style is considered reserved for indigenous sculptures, So forgive
Speaker 2: my twenty seventeen misnomer. But yes, she has awesome hair.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to death. Are you afraid of dying
Speaker 2: or are you excited about it to see what happens?
Speaker 3: So okay, let's talk about death and dying, right. So death?
Speaker 3: Death is like just when you die, like you're dud,
Speaker 3: the light switches off. The dying process leading up to
Speaker 3: the death. That is the thing that I am most
Speaker 3: concerned with and the thing that tends to be cause
Speaker 3: the most issues for people, because you could be dying
Speaker 3: for months or years, and then there's this whole question
Speaker 3: about when do you start dying. I mean, some would
Speaker 3: argue you start dying at birth technically right, but then
Speaker 3: you get into actively dying, which is when your body
Speaker 3: is in the shutdown process, which there is kind of
Speaker 3: an order of things that happen.
Speaker 2: First, let's get all up in death's business and define it.
Speaker 2: Death is the cessation of all vital functions of the body,
Speaker 2: including the heartbeat, brain activity including the brain stem, and breathing.
Speaker 2: Some researchers say that there is an evidence to suggest
Speaker 2: that there's a burst of brain energy as someone dies.
Speaker 2: Is reading this article about near death experiences, and about
Speaker 2: eighteen percent of people who had them reported being able
Speaker 2: to recall some portion of what happened when they were
Speaker 2: clinically dead. So, according to some researchers, the conditions that
Speaker 2: make you have near death experiences, like low oxygen and
Speaker 2: low blood flow and low blood sugar, those can kill
Speaker 2: your brain cells and then the brain just doesn't know
Speaker 2: what to do. It responds by having this flood of
Speaker 2: chemicals and it's apparently very similar to the drug ketamine,
Speaker 2: and that is what they think produces out of body
Speaker 2: sensations and hallucinations and all the cool shit that happens
Speaker 2: when you die. This info was from an article written
Speaker 2: by author and science journalist Jennifer Willett. Now, remember that
Speaker 2: physicist Sean Carroll I mentioned earlier. They're married. That is
Speaker 2: a lot of good brains in one relationship. I went
Speaker 2: ahead and emailed them both and I said, Hey, do
Speaker 2: you guys talk about cool stuff like this over dinner
Speaker 2: while you're grocery shopping. Jennifer wrote me back and said,
Speaker 2: we actually do talk about things like this, but not always.
Speaker 2: Other times we talk about our kiddies. Yeah, what happens?
Speaker 3: Okay, So what happens when you're actively dying from sort
Speaker 3: of a medical viewpoint, your body shuts down. It has
Speaker 3: a process and there's kind of an order that it follows,
Speaker 3: just like when you're born. Birth and death are actually
Speaker 3: very very similar. And a lot of people ask me like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm so afraid to die, like is it going to hurt?
Speaker 3: And I always ask I'm like, you know, I haven't died,
Speaker 3: so I can't tell you. But I'll ask do you
Speaker 3: remember your birth? Did it hurt when you were born?
Speaker 3: They'll be like, well, no, no. The word on the
Speaker 3: street is it's pretty similar. So the last sense that remains,
Speaker 3: because your senses will shut down, Oh they go hearing,
Speaker 3: they go in order. They don't necessarily go in order.
Speaker 3: There are people who would argue probably that they do.
Speaker 3: But I'm also a hospice volunteer. I've been with people
Speaker 3: as they're dying, and everybody's death is different. As you're
Speaker 3: actively dying, hearing tends to be the last sense that
Speaker 3: is there. So like, imagine that you're the dying person.
Speaker 3: You can't see, you can't smell, you can't taste, and
Speaker 3: your sense of feeling is kind of like, okay, have
Speaker 3: you ever gone to the dentist and they put that
Speaker 3: lead thing over top of you and you get an
Speaker 3: X ray? Like, imagine that that is the feeling that
Speaker 3: you have. That's kind of a good way to describe
Speaker 3: when you start to lose your sense of feeling. So
Speaker 3: everything's dark, you can't talk, but all you can do
Speaker 3: is here. That's kind of where you go, plus your
Speaker 3: foggy That's a good way that I can kind of
Speaker 3: describe the shutdown process, which not everybody has that. That's
Speaker 3: a disclaimer, but that's kind of how it kind of
Speaker 3: can go.
Speaker 2: So you should never shit talk to someone while they're
Speaker 2: on their deathbed.
Speaker 3: That is right, because they can hear day, Yes, they can, yep.
Speaker 3: And that's why one of the things that if you're
Speaker 3: ever with someone who's dying, you need to always talk
Speaker 3: to them and say what you're doing. Their body may
Speaker 3: be reacting in a way that makes you think that
Speaker 3: they're long gone, but they may not be, because a
Speaker 3: lot of times when you're dying, you lose control, but
Speaker 3: you're still hearing, but we know that the hearing is there.
Speaker 3: Another sign of active death is it's often called the
Speaker 3: death rattle, but it has to do with usually when
Speaker 3: you're actively dying, your mouth is open and you're breathing
Speaker 3: out of your mouth and it's like it's sort of congestion.
Speaker 3: And that can be really scary for people to hear
Speaker 3: who are not dying, because it's like, oh, this has
Speaker 3: getting real, but it's not something that the dying person
Speaker 3: necessarily feels or is aware of, because your remember, they're
Speaker 3: kind of shutting down.
Speaker 2: I feel like that would be scary to hear even
Speaker 2: if you were another dying person, they'd be scared to
Speaker 2: hear if you're not dying, and as well if you
Speaker 2: are happen to be dying next to them, like are
Speaker 2: you going? Am I going?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Who's going first?
Speaker 3: Is this okay?
Speaker 2: Is a lot of the work you focus on in
Speaker 2: terms of dying, usually the death is a result of
Speaker 2: an illness or what about traumatic deaths or more sudden perishing.
Speaker 3: So in my work, so I am not I'm not
Speaker 3: a counselor, I'm not like a medical professional, but I
Speaker 3: do have the opportunity to be brought into or involved
Speaker 3: with specific death situations and scenarios. Man, humans can die
Speaker 3: in all kinds of ways. Statistically, my Brosol number is
Speaker 3: twenty percent of all people will die in an ICU,
Speaker 3: an intensive care unit. Really, yes, but ninety percent of
Speaker 3: Americans want to die at home, So keep that in mind.
Speaker 3: You want hospice. It is good, it is next level care.
Speaker 3: But the problem in the United States is we don't
Speaker 3: deal with death. We don't like to think about it
Speaker 3: or talk about it. So we will do these last
Speaker 3: ditch efforts like things that put you in an intensive
Speaker 3: care unit, when we know the outcomes, you're going to
Speaker 3: die from this, when you really should have just gotten
Speaker 3: on hospice and just wrote out the last few months
Speaker 3: really comfortably, not in pain, and not with tubes and
Speaker 3: all kinds of junk coming out of your.
Speaker 2: Bod twenty twenty two. Alley Here, as a person who
Speaker 2: has just spent the last several months bedside with someone
Speaker 2: in hospice at home who died peacefully during his afternoon snooze,
Speaker 2: I can confirm it is filled with so much quality
Speaker 2: time and care. So if you die at home in
Speaker 2: hospice with friends or family caring for you, what a
Speaker 2: lovely way to say farewell. But what if you're not lucky,
Speaker 2: if you're wringing your hands convinced that you're going to
Speaker 2: be eaten by a shark. Let's look at statistically, what
Speaker 2: causes deaths at least in the United States. Number one
Speaker 2: heart disease, two, cancer, three respiratory disease. Four is accidents.
Speaker 2: And that kind of threw me off because I thought
Speaker 2: it would be another illness, but who knew. Essentially, the
Speaker 2: fourth biggest threat to each of us is just gravity
Speaker 2: in a nutshell, I mean, brush up on physics. Make
Speaker 2: sure you wear a bike helmet. Maybe don't climb the
Speaker 2: roof on a snowy day trying to hang like an
Speaker 2: illuminated candy cane or something. It's not worth it. Also
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two update, things have changed a little and
Speaker 2: the third leading cause of death COVID, according to the
Speaker 2: Journal of the American Medical Association. So there is that.
Speaker 3: So that's most likely probably going to be what you
Speaker 3: die of.
Speaker 2: So not of embarrassment like I've oftentimes thought would be
Speaker 2: the cause of my death.
Speaker 3: Yes, and from all my work with death and dying
Speaker 3: and seeing all kinds of stuff over the years, the
Speaker 3: thing that makes life life, that makes it special, that
Speaker 3: makes it meaningful, is the fact that we die. If
Speaker 3: we didn't die, Like, the whole reason it means anything
Speaker 3: is because it ends. And so it's difficult for me
Speaker 3: to I mean, that's awesome because for science we need
Speaker 3: to understand what makes us die, what makes us live.
Speaker 3: But death is very important and it's critical, and it's
Speaker 3: an important life cycle event that happens to all of us,
Speaker 3: and it is what makes life meaningful.
Speaker 2: I guess if you lived at Disneyland, you wouldn't be
Speaker 2: as excited about going to Disneyland, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Life is kind of like a short term stint at
Speaker 2: a theme park. You know it's going to end, so
Speaker 2: you better enjoy it. I suppose, yes, But you personally,
Speaker 2: how is your work and your focus on death and
Speaker 2: mortality changed the choices that you make on.
Speaker 3: A day to day basis just being exposed and around
Speaker 3: even just stories and things like that. I am so
Speaker 3: grateful for my life day to day, but it's maybe
Speaker 3: hyper aware that it ends, because I've seen people on
Speaker 3: their deathbed who are facing a lot of regrets about
Speaker 3: the stuff they didn't do. Not the stuff they did.
Speaker 3: It's all the stuff they didn't do, really like what
Speaker 3: just businesses that they didn't start, or girls they didn't
Speaker 3: chase after, or the kids that they didn't have, or
Speaker 3: the risks that they didn't take. It's the stuff that
Speaker 3: you didn't do right. And sometimes it's more painful to
Speaker 3: see someone who's dying grappling with those questions than it
Speaker 3: is to see someone who's dying in physical pain.
Speaker 2: To be honest, the anguish emotionally is worse than the pain.
Speaker 3: Yes, wow, deep, we're getting heavy that I tend to
Speaker 3: bring that with me wherever I go.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is about dead and dying. I think
Speaker 2: about this stuff like all day every day. I'm I
Speaker 2: used to have nightmares about graveyards. I had this recurring
Speaker 2: nightmare that I was walking through a graveyard and and
Speaker 2: coffins were overturned. And I had a fear of graveyards
Speaker 2: where I would get I would start panicking when I
Speaker 2: was a kid just driving past them. So I've always
Speaker 2: been really really spooked by by dead bodies, by morgues,
Speaker 2: by cemeteries. And I also grew up Catholic, so we
Speaker 2: had open castete funerals, so they were like, go kiss
Speaker 2: your dead great grandma, and you're like, I'm eight, we know,
Speaker 2: but here we go. So I mean, do you find
Speaker 2: that that death is something people can accept over time
Speaker 2: or are there people who can deal with it and
Speaker 2: people who.
Speaker 3: Can They're well that multifaceted look at that, Like, so okay,
Speaker 3: people who tend to be more religious, statistically, by some
Speaker 3: studies also tend to be more afraid of dying. Why interesting, right, Well,
Speaker 3: because and it's interesting because like my mom's side is Catholic,
Speaker 3: and I went to Catholic school and there was always
Speaker 3: this talk of like when you die, you are you
Speaker 3: going to go up or down? I mean, I feel
Speaker 3: like we had to bring this up every single day.
Speaker 3: So I feel like is a growing up Catholic that
Speaker 3: was always talked about, but we don't. It was never
Speaker 3: talked about in any depth beyond that. It was just
Speaker 3: like you're going to be judged if you're good or
Speaker 3: you're bad.
Speaker 2: It was like Santa almost like someone's going to decide
Speaker 2: if you're on the good list or bad list, and
Speaker 2: you might go to an after party in the sky
Speaker 2: or you might have hell fire forever, yes, which you're like,
Speaker 2: death is terrifying because you're like, what happens if, like
Speaker 2: I steal someone's parking space and then I get hit
Speaker 2: by a bus five minutes later? Where am I going? Yes, yep.
Speaker 3: I remember as a kid like being anxious about like, oh,
Speaker 3: I like took a piece of paper from my best
Speaker 3: friend Becky, and now I'm going to go to hell
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure, like and just being really like conserve
Speaker 3: of that anyway at the end of life, depending on
Speaker 3: how someone was raised, just religious values or just cultural
Speaker 3: values that really goes a long way and impacting how
Speaker 3: well or not well, they're able to talk about or
Speaker 3: deal with death and dying. I have Okay, this is
Speaker 3: if you are listening to this and you know someone
Speaker 3: in your family who is avoiding death or who needs
Speaker 3: to talk about or you need to talk about it
Speaker 3: with them. Talking about death is like trying to approach
Speaker 3: a deer in the woods. You cannot go directly at
Speaker 3: a deer because it will run away. But if you
Speaker 3: go around the side and curve around some trees and
Speaker 3: come up and be like, hey, you know, then you
Speaker 3: can get close to it, and then you might be
Speaker 3: able to actually touch. So talking about death usually directly
Speaker 3: doesn't work well for I'd say sometimes most people, but
Speaker 3: coming at it from the side, you know, and kind
Speaker 3: of easing around it, that tends to be much more
Speaker 3: effective in getting there.
Speaker 2: Are you at what age should people have a will?
Speaker 2: Because I'm realizing I'm sitting here, We're sitting in a
Speaker 2: hotel conference room in Cincinnati, and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: have a will. I don't have a do I I
Speaker 2: don't know what a testament is of? Okay, will versus
Speaker 2: testament samesias roughly the same thing. Now. They started about
Speaker 2: sixty nine dollars if you want to get them through
Speaker 2: legal Zoom, who is not sponsoring this podcast, so you're
Speaker 2: welcome legal Zoom. There's also a book and it's called
Speaker 2: I'm Dead Now What? And it is a planner you
Speaker 2: can put like your passwords, what to do with your pets,
Speaker 2: what you want them to do with your body, et
Speaker 2: cetera in it. I look this up on Amazon and
Speaker 2: there are a few reviews that are like helpful book,
Speaker 2: not feeling the title. And there's a competing book and
Speaker 2: I looked at it, same table of contents, verbatim, and
Speaker 2: it's published by the same company. But there's I'm Dead
Speaker 2: Now What. And then they make an identical book called
Speaker 2: a Peace of Mind Planner. Know your demo, people, know
Speaker 2: your brand. No wills. Did they all have to be notarized?
Speaker 2: I thought so, but not necessarily. I thought you had
Speaker 2: to sign them in blood and a priest had to
Speaker 2: put like a special stamp on them.
Speaker 3: Not so.
Speaker 2: It does depend on your state, so check first. There
Speaker 2: are also a few different flavors of wills, and their
Speaker 2: names sound like race horses or they sound like smoothies
Speaker 2: at like a really obnoxious juicery. There's a holographic will
Speaker 2: This just means it's in your handwriting. That's convenient. There's
Speaker 2: mystic will, which is sealed until your demise, a will
Speaker 2: in solemn form that's a legit one that's signed by
Speaker 2: you and some witnesses. And then there's a living will,
Speaker 2: and that is a directive for your medical care if
Speaker 2: some shit goes down, pretty much like when to pull
Speaker 2: the plug. That's totally different than it will living will,
Speaker 2: totally different thing. Now, of course Cole is covered on
Speaker 2: this front, not truly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean I'm sitting here in a hotel
Speaker 3: being interviewed about my expertise and death is dying and
Speaker 3: I don't have a will.
Speaker 1: Why don't you?
Speaker 3: I just said, my god, I'm just too busy working
Speaker 3: on deatha dying to do my own will. I mean,
Speaker 3: here's the deal. Yes, you should have one. I mean,
Speaker 3: when you're an adult, you should have you should have something.
Speaker 3: You should have one. You should have something. I did
Speaker 3: write up a sheet about like some things like if
Speaker 3: I died and my husband died, who would take my beagles?
Speaker 3: Like who I would want them to go to? And
Speaker 3: it's like in an email, So you know, having that's
Speaker 3: better than nothing. But the problem is when we die.
Speaker 3: A lot of times wills are these like notes usually
Speaker 3: aren't found until after the funeral because when someone dies
Speaker 3: then it's like all hands on deck to get the
Speaker 3: person you know buried or cremate or whatever, and that
Speaker 3: stuff isn't looked at.
Speaker 2: Till after the fact.
Speaker 3: Also, FYI, what you want to happen with your funeral?
Speaker 3: A lot of times if you put it in your will,
Speaker 3: depending on state law, it's not like valid or enforceable.
Speaker 2: So you have to sell your loved ones, like shoot
Speaker 2: me out of a cannon or plant my ashes in
Speaker 2: a pumpkin patch or something.
Speaker 3: Yes, your best bet is to tell the people who
Speaker 3: will be the ones making decisions about what happens to you,
Speaker 3: like while you're alive, and be real clear about it.
Speaker 2: What do you want to have happened to you when
Speaker 2: you die?
Speaker 3: So I actually at this point because it's changed over
Speaker 3: the last ten years, because I see everything death and
Speaker 3: dying all the time. Right now, I would like to
Speaker 3: be buried in a sort of green cemetery and then
Speaker 3: just wrapped in a shroud. It's called a shroud. It's
Speaker 3: like not actually like a full on casket or coffin
Speaker 3: you're kind of wrapped in fabric like swaddled. It's like
Speaker 3: a little death swaddle.
Speaker 2: I would say, it's like a like a death pejme.
Speaker 3: Yes, mine will be stylish. It might be purple.
Speaker 2: So, and so the ways of being disposed of, Let's say,
Speaker 2: I hear you can get planted underneath some tree roots.
Speaker 2: You can get cremated, like what is the best for
Speaker 2: the planet.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, So disposition method is the lingo for what
Speaker 3: you do with your dead body, just in case you
Speaker 3: want to know about that. So the two most common
Speaker 3: disposition methods in the United States are burial or cremation,
Speaker 3: and about one in every two bodies in the United
Speaker 3: States is cremated. Now it was not.
Speaker 2: Like that half half. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, cremation just went over the fifty percent mark. Very
Speaker 3: exciting time.
Speaker 2: Do you have like a you have a scoreboard in
Speaker 2: your office?
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, yep, I got a ticker. So, and what's
Speaker 3: interesting is like state by state it really varies. So
Speaker 3: like Kentucky, which is where I live, where are I
Speaker 3: think a bottom five state for our cremation rate, Like
Speaker 3: we're a burial state. But if you go out to
Speaker 3: like Nevada or Arizona, like Washington State, I think, is
Speaker 3: like eighty ninety percent cremation rate. Really yeah, so you
Speaker 3: can go all over the country and what you do
Speaker 3: with your body differs significantly.
Speaker 2: Okay, aside to this aside, I'm sorry for a side seption,
Speaker 2: but SINCEUS was recorded, Cole no longer lives in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: More on that in a bit. I just looked up
Speaker 2: a map of the United States, colored state by state
Speaker 2: according to the popularity of cremation. Then I looked up
Speaker 2: red states versus blue states, and they are almost the
Speaker 2: same map.
Speaker 3: So this is the two main There's also something called
Speaker 3: alkaline hydrolysis, which is legal I believe in thirteen states
Speaker 3: now only, and it's like your body plus water plus lie,
Speaker 3: which LIE is also I learned how to make soap
Speaker 3: this past year, and so you use LYE in soap making,
Speaker 3: just like you do when you want to alkaline hydraullyze yourself.
Speaker 3: So at the end of sometimes they'll call it like
Speaker 3: liquid cremation or water cremation. That's just kind of the
Speaker 3: word they use. But at the end of that process,
Speaker 3: you know how when you're cremated, cremated remains are left. Yeah,
Speaker 3: at the end of alkaline hydrolysis. It's basically the same
Speaker 3: end product, except your there's not fire that does it
Speaker 3: to you. It's water technically, or this chemical reaction.
Speaker 2: But is it Is it moist?
Speaker 3: No, it's dry? Okay, all the liquid and stuff go
Speaker 3: all right to the dream.
Speaker 2: You imagine if someone just had a bucket of Grandpa
Speaker 2: and you're like, thank you, it's moist.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give you the quick rundown on how alkaline
Speaker 2: hydrolysis works. I'm gonna just tell you, like it's a recipe, Okay.
Speaker 2: You take one human body, not living, and you add
Speaker 2: ninety two gallons of water four gallons of lye. Essentially,
Speaker 2: you put it into a big chamber preheated to around
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty degrees, let
Speaker 2: simmer under pressure for four hours, and then you just
Speaker 2: drain off the excess, which is kind of the texture
Speaker 2: of motor oil, and then what's left are some well
Speaker 2: cooked bones. It's easy. Is this kind of like what
Speaker 2: happened in the in the very beginning of Breaking Bad?
Speaker 2: Didn't they try to dispose of a body in a
Speaker 2: bathtub that way?
Speaker 3: You see hydrofluoric acid won't eat through plastic. It will, however,
Speaker 3: dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic.
Speaker 2: So there's that. That was an acid bath. This is
Speaker 2: an alkaline bath. Also, don't diy either of these ever. Okay, Now,
Speaker 2: some other disposition methods are buried at sea. There's also promestion,
Speaker 2: which is a technique invented by the Swedish biologist. This
Speaker 2: process she invented. It's where your freeze dried kind of
Speaker 2: like astronaut ice cream, and then you are vibrated into
Speaker 2: dust and it's said to be pretty eco friendly. You
Speaker 2: can also be a tree pod. This is a thing
Speaker 2: invented in Italy. It's called caps Mundi and it means
Speaker 2: world box and it looks like a huge dusty easter egg.
Speaker 2: And they pose your body in the fetal position. Then
Speaker 2: they pop you in the ground and they plant a
Speaker 2: tree of your choosing as long as it's indigenous to
Speaker 2: the region on top of you, and then the tree
Speaker 2: kind of slowly eats you and you become the tree.
Speaker 2: Side note not legal in Italy yet. There's also Viking funerals.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people want to go out
Speaker 2: this way. This is where you set a boat on
Speaker 2: fire with flaming arrows, and I went down a rabbit
Speaker 2: hole watching mortician and founder of the Death Positive movement,
Speaker 2: Caitlin dodi'es. She's got a YouTube channel called Ask Mortician,
Speaker 2: very good, and I wanted to figure out if Viking
Speaker 2: funerals were legal. Yeah, that's a big no on that.
Speaker 2: They are not only illegal, but they're also ineffective. They're
Speaker 2: not hot enough for long enough, so you would be
Speaker 2: kind of like a floating burnt chicken, which is super bummer. Now,
Speaker 2: sky burial, this is where zat fam. I did not
Speaker 2: know what this process was called, so I googled funeral
Speaker 2: Mongolia eaten by birds and zip zob zoom right to
Speaker 2: the wiki for sky burial. Now, in Tibet and Inner Mongolia,
Speaker 2: the ground is too rocky to dig you a hole,
Speaker 2: so they feed you to carry and eaters. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: looking at this right now. Okay, well, all right, just
Speaker 2: pulled up some images. All right, Okay. I thought that
Speaker 2: maybe this would be like a lonely mountaintop situation with
Speaker 2: maybe birds taking a nibble here and there, but the
Speaker 2: birds are pretty hip to the process. I don't want
Speaker 2: to go into doo much detail. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: ask that you envision this instead. This is this is
Speaker 2: a parallel. So picture a European town square, cobblestone, cloudy day,
Speaker 2: a large flock of pigeons bustles nearby, and onto the
Speaker 2: stone you lay one steaming hot aromatic everything bagel. Picture
Speaker 2: what would happen. Now, That is the type of eager
Speaker 2: consumption involved with a sky burial where your body is
Speaker 2: fed to vultures. Now, if your goal in life was
Speaker 2: ultimately just to be wanted, then then sky burial is clutch. Folks,
Speaker 2: I regret learning as much about that as I just did.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when I get weird and sad about death, I
Speaker 2: think it's cool that all of our molecules are just recycled. Yep.
Speaker 2: And hopefully there's part of me that used to be
Speaker 2: a frog. And it would be cool if part of
Speaker 2: my body now went on to become somehow a frog.
Speaker 2: I don't know why a frog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But like I guess, if you eat.
Speaker 2: A than part of your body becomes a frog. But
Speaker 2: the idea, or rather part of a frog becomes your body.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. I'm not on psilocybin, but
Speaker 2: becoming another living animal sounds like less harsh for some reason.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: What makes you you, all of your parts and pieces,
Speaker 3: has been around long before you were in you, and
Speaker 3: you will continue to be around in different forms. I
Speaker 3: believe that. I mean, that's just science, right.
Speaker 2: The you that is sitting there knitting while listening to this,
Speaker 2: or driving, or putting a stamp on a birthday card
Speaker 2: to your mom is made out of dying stars. Stars
Speaker 2: die and implode and the atoms change, and it lands
Speaker 2: on a planet and it's rearranged to become you now. Astronomer, astrophysicist,
Speaker 2: and beloved turtleneck aficionado Carl Sagan is known for saying
Speaker 2: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth,
Speaker 2: the iron in our blood, the carbon and our apple
Speaker 2: pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We
Speaker 2: are made of star stuff. So if someone didn't return
Speaker 2: your text, or you thought you'd get more likes on
Speaker 2: a selfie than you did, it does not matter. You
Speaker 2: are a walking Tetris fortress of exploding Starshit and no
Speaker 2: one can fuck with that. And it's great. Okay, So
Speaker 2: Cole gets personal with me here.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you this with you say you think
Speaker 3: about death and dying, right, what scares you about that?
Speaker 3: Or like what is the thing that like makes you sad?
Speaker 2: Or you know, I think about my own death. What
Speaker 2: freaks me out is the the like surprise of it
Speaker 2: is the not knowing when it's coming. Yeah, Like if
Speaker 2: it feels like walking around all day in white pants
Speaker 2: and someone's like, you're gonna get your period at some
Speaker 2: point today and you're like, god damn it. And so
Speaker 2: it's just this idea that like, this thing's gonna happened,
Speaker 2: but you won't have any control over it. It could
Speaker 2: be tomorrow, it could be when you're eighty, but you
Speaker 2: don't get to decide, and it's the biggest moment of
Speaker 2: your life and you don't get to decide when or
Speaker 2: how or where, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, first of all our own deaths, like usually
Speaker 3: it just like happens to us. Usually we have to
Speaker 3: deal with death only when other people are dying. And
Speaker 3: that can also, more often than not, be the harder
Speaker 3: one to choose, because you don't get to pick when
Speaker 3: your sister dies or your brother dies. But it'll happen.
Speaker 3: You get the call and then you got to jump
Speaker 3: in or drop everything and deal with it right, and
Speaker 3: your whole life can be like, yeah, discombobulated with our
Speaker 3: own deaths. No, we don't know when they're happening, but
Speaker 3: we know it is happening guaranteed. And if we spend
Speaker 3: too much time in the future, which is worry, or
Speaker 3: too much time in the past, which is ruminating, we
Speaker 3: end up missing out on the present. And you know
Speaker 3: what we regret when we die, Like when everything flashes
Speaker 3: before you, it's all those present moments that we just
Speaker 3: skipped out on. I mean, how much of your I
Speaker 3: think about when I'm on my freaking cell phone and
Speaker 3: I pick it up without it. Have you ever been
Speaker 3: in line and you look at Instagram and then you
Speaker 3: get to the front of the line and you pull
Speaker 3: your phone up again to look at Instagram, Like, I'm
Speaker 3: not actually like doing anything worthwhile with my life, and
Speaker 3: at my end of life, how am I going to
Speaker 3: feel about the number of times that I checked Instagram?
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So, the best way to combat this death anxiety is
Speaker 3: what I would call that is this idea of being
Speaker 3: like freaked out about, oh my god, I'm going to
Speaker 3: die and I have no idea when and where and
Speaker 3: how that's going to happen. Is to be as present
Speaker 3: in your day to day life as possible. And humans,
Speaker 3: we are wired, all animals are to seek out stability, safety, shelter,
Speaker 3: and comfort. Right while not knowing what's going to happen
Speaker 3: causes anxiety is the opposite of that. So there are
Speaker 3: One of the most powerful things ibody can do is
Speaker 3: to work hard to get really clear about what your
Speaker 3: purpose in life is or why you're here, or what
Speaker 3: you are most passionate about. Like for me when I
Speaker 3: I had a real hard time coming to terms with
Speaker 3: like that I love death and dying because just how
Speaker 3: I was raised and where I grew up, what part
Speaker 3: of the country I grew up, like I should I
Speaker 3: felt a lot of pressure to like, man, I should
Speaker 3: be a nurse, I should get married and have a
Speaker 3: bunch of kids, and like homeschool then maybe, but like
Speaker 3: big cookies regularly too, like all these pressures, and it
Speaker 3: was real hard for me to come to terms with like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is what I'm here to do. And a lot
Speaker 3: that's how it is for a lot of people with
Speaker 3: what their purpose in life is. A lot of times
Speaker 3: it's the thing that you have a hard time accepting
Speaker 3: that that's what you're good at and that's what you're
Speaker 3: meant to do. So anyway, being clear about that can
Speaker 3: really help reduce death anxiety and also help you like
Speaker 3: do stuff with your life, like accomplish things so that
Speaker 3: you're not kind of spinning your wheels.
Speaker 2: Do you take more risks in your life, like creatively
Speaker 2: or personally keeping that in mind, like like you have
Speaker 2: amazing hair. You have like almost a purple mohawk, Like
Speaker 2: is there a part of you that's just like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I want to live my life with a
Speaker 2: purple mohawk, and I'm not going to worry about what
Speaker 2: anyone wants me to, you know, like you know, have
Speaker 2: a blonde bob or anything. Like I'm gonna do what
Speaker 2: i want to do and be who I'm going to
Speaker 2: be because you have end of life.
Speaker 3: On mind, like in mind, absolutely without a doubt. Has
Speaker 3: taught me over the years it's always better to be myself.
Speaker 3: And apparently I'm a purple haired person. When I'm myself,
Speaker 3: I have more I have met more people and had
Speaker 3: more people in my life since I've had a haircut
Speaker 3: that I just really enjoyed, yeah, than when I was
Speaker 3: having one that you know, resent this right, and it
Speaker 3: is very freeing and liberating to be who you are,
Speaker 3: but it's also real hard to be who you are.
Speaker 3: Get to it's like, yeah, to accept who you are,
Speaker 3: that's the step number one. But once you start to
Speaker 3: do that, you can start to you're outside shows who
Speaker 3: were on the inside. I know we're like talking about
Speaker 3: all this like life meaning stuff, but all of this
Speaker 3: is like directly related to death and dying.
Speaker 2: Did you have a moment where you realized that you
Speaker 2: weren't being yourself and that you wanted you kind of
Speaker 2: had a pivot or do you think it was like
Speaker 2: a gradual kind of bolstering of your own self esteem
Speaker 2: and confidence and sense of self or did you have
Speaker 2: a moment where you were like, you know what, fuck
Speaker 2: this and then you just started doing what you wanted?
Speaker 3: You know, I did in the past few years. So
Speaker 3: currently online there's all this posts about like me too,
Speaker 3: me too, right, right, right, right. So I was assaulted
Speaker 3: several years ago and I actually pressed charges and I
Speaker 3: did the whole deal that, like I mean, I took
Speaker 3: it all the way and going through an experience like that,
Speaker 3: which is another thing that you don't have control of.
Speaker 3: You don't know if someone's gonna mug you, you don't
Speaker 3: know if you're going to be the victim of some
Speaker 3: random thing. I mean, we're all afraid of dying, but
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of other crazy stuff that can happen
Speaker 3: to you. I'm so you know what. It sucks, and
Speaker 3: I still am dealing with it all these years later,
Speaker 3: But that horrific experience connects me to so many people
Speaker 3: that I would not be able to be connected to
Speaker 3: without it, And for that I'm grateful, because the worst
Speaker 3: thing in life is to be alone, Yes, to feel
Speaker 3: like you're alone, And even when something terrible happens to you,
Speaker 3: you can feel so alone when it happens, but you
Speaker 3: know what, it doesn't take very long and you find
Speaker 3: a bunch of other people that had been there too,
Speaker 3: and just it sucks, but there is some level of
Speaker 3: good there. And I find that with my work and
Speaker 3: death and dying, Like when people are actually on their
Speaker 3: deathbeds and things, what people remember is like the things
Speaker 3: that made you weird or distinct, or the crazy experiences
Speaker 3: that happened to you, that's what sticks around, not that
Speaker 3: you dotted all your eyes and crossed all your teas,
Speaker 3: and you responded to every email.
Speaker 2: In your inbox.
Speaker 3: That doesn't matter at the end of your life, and
Speaker 3: when you look back over what you did, what matters
Speaker 3: is like, what where are the explosions in your life?
Speaker 3: You know, where was the crazy stuff? That's yeah, that's life.
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like death is salt. Death is
Speaker 3: the salt of life. And you live your whole lives
Speaker 3: and every day, every week, you're putting ingredients in that soup,
Speaker 3: and then when you die, death comes in. Now it's
Speaker 3: the salt, and your death is a reflection of how
Speaker 3: you lived. And so if you were a bitter, angry,
Speaker 3: closed off person your whole life who always had a
Speaker 3: chip on the shoulder and an axe to grind, you're
Speaker 3: gonna Swoop's going to be nasty at the end of life,
Speaker 3: and no one's going to want to have any of it,
Speaker 3: and no one's going to want to know what the
Speaker 3: recipe was. But if you die and you are happy
Speaker 3: and you put good in the world and you embrace
Speaker 3: as much as you could, even the really terrible stuff, yeah,
Speaker 3: people are going to want to know the recipe, right,
Speaker 3: that's amazing and that's how you live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you have to use in your experience that
Speaker 2: what you know, things that you've been through and also
Speaker 2: in your work and death and dying. Do you look
Speaker 2: at the grieving process? Do you apply the grieving process
Speaker 2: to things that you've encountered in your own life or
Speaker 2: do you think it's a grieving process is really specific
Speaker 2: just to death.
Speaker 3: So I kind of believe we're grieving our whole lives.
Speaker 3: And there's something called a big death and a little death,
Speaker 3: which is just like my own terminology. We all know
Speaker 3: little death is also a term for right, Yeah, So
Speaker 3: but like a little death is something like I would
Speaker 3: call it, like when I was assaulted. That was a
Speaker 3: little like a death was actually a huge death for
Speaker 3: me because it was like my sense of like safety
Speaker 3: and security and just like that died, like I will
Speaker 3: never be the same moving forward. I mean, it permanently
Speaker 3: alters you, and so I had to grieve the loss
Speaker 3: of like the way life was before that happened. Little
Speaker 3: deaths can be like when you have a miscarriage or
Speaker 3: you get fired. I mean you grieve that stuff. A
Speaker 3: big death is one like a human or an animal
Speaker 3: that you knew or loved dies. Okay, And a lot
Speaker 3: of times the big deaths are easier to deal with
Speaker 3: and get through because you have a dead body somewhere.
Speaker 3: It's harder to deal with the deaths in life that
Speaker 3: like don't have a corpse involved, like you know, divorce
Speaker 3: or your best friend just ghosted you or something. I mean,
Speaker 3: that can be horrific to go through those things.
Speaker 2: Little update. So Cole has since coined the perfect term
Speaker 2: for this. She calls it shadow loss, those little deaths
Speaker 2: and those events that insight overlooked grief. She's done and
Speaker 2: ted X talk about it. She's written extensively on the
Speaker 2: topic of shadow loss and if you are like woman,
Speaker 2: please write a book on this. She's on it also
Speaker 2: any publishers listening to this. Cole is repped by Aaron
Speaker 2: Malone at William Morris Endeavor. In case you want to
Speaker 2: talk about getting dabs on her book. How does the
Speaker 2: grieving process in a healthy way help you through those things?
Speaker 2: What are the real cornerstones of the grieving process of
Speaker 2: getting through stuff like that?
Speaker 3: So, first of all, the grieving process is a roller coaster.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Coogler Ross is known for her five Stages of grief.
Speaker 2: The five pack denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
Speaker 3: But that's often portrayed as it goes in order, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't like you'll wake up one day and be
Speaker 3: angry and then the next day you'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know what's cool, I get it, and then the
Speaker 3: next day you're in denial about it. So you kind
Speaker 3: of flip around. I believe that you can grieve non deaths, divorce,
Speaker 3: all this other kind of hard stuff, and it puts
Speaker 3: you in the same vulnerable position. How many have you
Speaker 3: ever had something that you've dealt with in your life
Speaker 3: that wasn't a death, but it like threw you off
Speaker 3: your rocker, and you like missed meetings and just things
Speaker 3: were just all kurfluffled. Yeah, you're like, it's the bereaved brain.
Speaker 3: It's a real thing and it's real.
Speaker 2: And what about other animals? Are you fascinated by how
Speaker 2: elephants or primates grieve as well?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if anything, it makes me sad sometimes because
Speaker 3: I'm a big animal lover, and animals have, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: the same depth of emotion that humans do.
Speaker 2: Evidently, until nineteen eighties, the notion that animals had emotions
Speaker 2: was schmaltzy. People weren't into it, And then using imaging,
Speaker 2: researchers started looking at brain activity of animals and we're
Speaker 2: like oopsie. In twenty twelve, a group of neuroscientists attended
Speaker 2: a conference on Consciousness in Human and non human Animals
Speaker 2: and together they signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in
Speaker 2: Non Human Animals, which says, hey, assholes, animals are conscious
Speaker 2: and their brains can feel shit. We're all on the
Speaker 2: same page with this. Get on our level. Just to
Speaker 2: be clear, that wasn't That wasn't verbatim.
Speaker 3: Humans are not that different than animals. We really are not.
Speaker 3: We all get sad, we all grieve with looking at
Speaker 3: the pantatology, you'll see how deeply connected death is to life.
Speaker 2: Then why is death so sad? I know that that
Speaker 2: is like such a general question, But why do we
Speaker 2: cry at funerals? Why do we create movies? What do
Speaker 2: you think that sadness is?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: If I was gonna be like scientific or analytical about
Speaker 3: this response only and have that hot hat on, I'd
Speaker 3: say it's because of change. Humans don't like change because
Speaker 3: we're built to seek out stability and safety, right, And
Speaker 3: what is change not safety? Right? So I need to
Speaker 3: So death forces a change, and usually a death is
Speaker 3: not just like oh so, and so it isn't in
Speaker 3: my life anymore, Okay, Like when my grandma died, my
Speaker 3: grandpa died first, then my grandma died on my mom's side.
Speaker 3: When she died, the hierarchy of the family kind of
Speaker 3: shifted because then it wasn't holidays at grandma's house anymore.
Speaker 3: It kind of branched down, and then like the aunts
Speaker 3: and uncles started hosting their own holiday events. Right. So
Speaker 3: a death is never just the body is gone. It's
Speaker 3: like all this other stuff attached to it, and it's change.
Speaker 3: And that's what makes it so hard and why I
Speaker 3: think sad and all those kinds of emotions. If I
Speaker 3: was putting on my like more touchy feely side, I'd say,
Speaker 3: it's so sad when something dies because of love, because
Speaker 3: we love because that's what people do. And it's hard
Speaker 3: to shift from loving somebody who you know. It's a
Speaker 3: two way street when you have a relationship, but when
Speaker 3: they die, you then are left having to send your
Speaker 3: love into someone that's not there more. And that can
Speaker 3: be so hard because you're not getting the feedback. So
Speaker 3: then you have to convert to where do I put
Speaker 3: all this love that I was giving to Grandma or
Speaker 3: that I was giving to my husband or whoever right?
Speaker 2: And that's the hard part. I now, speaking of husbands,
Speaker 2: you work with yours. Your husband is your business partner
Speaker 2: as well. So Cole's husband, Victor and Perry is tall,
Speaker 2: with bookish glasses and a very wry sense of humor.
Speaker 2: And he was actually sitting a few feet away during
Speaker 2: this entire recording, because you know what, it's weird to
Speaker 2: go to a Cincinnati Hampton at at eleven PM on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday to hang out with a stranger to talk
Speaker 2: about corpses. I get it. And a few years ago
Speaker 2: this little Paracutes recreated the painting American Gothic for the
Speaker 2: cover of a magazine, a magazine called American Funeral Director.
Speaker 2: They are warm, wonderful, and they are ferocious pickleball players.
Speaker 2: Beware I love them. Did you guys meet through death
Speaker 2: and dying?
Speaker 3: No, no, not at all. My business was sort of
Speaker 3: grown and my calling is death and dying. And I'm
Speaker 3: very fortunate that I have a partner who supported that.
Speaker 3: So for several years. He had a full time job.
Speaker 3: Then we grew the business, he was able to leave it.
Speaker 3: We traveled together. We're often booked to speak together.
Speaker 2: Are there any movies about death or dying that you
Speaker 2: particularly love that it seems to strike a chord with you.
Speaker 3: David the Nome, I don't know it, okay. David the
Speaker 3: Gnome was like a really popular cartoon series when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, and it came from Japan and came
Speaker 3: to the US and was on like PBS and like
Speaker 3: the early nineties, late eighties, and David the Nome and
Speaker 3: his wife Lisa, so the whole series is just like
Speaker 3: Gnome stuff. Basically, in the last episode, they're just like,
Speaker 3: so Gnomes only live to be four hundred years old,
Speaker 3: but they know they're going to die on their four
Speaker 3: hundredth birthday. So he and Lisa Nome go up to
Speaker 3: a hill. So well, well, my dear David, fare well,
Speaker 3: my beloved, I thank you for all.
Speaker 2: The love you've given me.
Speaker 3: Or like weeping and like squirrels come and they die
Speaker 3: trees and they had a pet fox. The fox comes
Speaker 3: up there and sees his mom and dad are now
Speaker 3: trees and are dead, and then he was left and
Speaker 3: he had to walk back home was two dead parents
Speaker 3: and that was the last episode. And yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: real clincher. Yeah, you know what, it's probably not actually
Speaker 3: helpful to see that. Oops.
Speaker 2: I watched it and cried. And if you want to
Speaker 2: watch this, it's on YouTube. The title of the clip
Speaker 2: is just David the Gnome kicks the bucket. So how
Speaker 2: do you feel about how death and dying are portrayed
Speaker 2: in popular culture?
Speaker 3: In real life, when something when somebody dies, it is
Speaker 3: messy afterwards, because your whole life is discombobulated and you know,
Speaker 3: everything is just off kilter. But I think that is
Speaker 3: a contributing fact because we don't have exposure to examples
Speaker 3: of good coping skills really in other parts of your
Speaker 3: life unless you grew up around it, you know, or
Speaker 3: you grew up in a family that talked openly about
Speaker 3: death and dying. And I'm an instructor at a mortuary
Speaker 3: college and I teach sanatology for a bachelor program, and
Speaker 3: so all of my students are funeral directors, are on bombers.
Speaker 3: Really interesting crowd to be able to teach because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, okay, they want to learn. I'm teaching them panatology,
Speaker 3: but they work day in and day out with death
Speaker 3: and dying, and one of the first assignments in the
Speaker 3: course is they have to tell me about their upbringing
Speaker 3: and how they deal with death and dying. And a
Speaker 3: lot of them, even the ones who grew up in
Speaker 3: funeral homes, never actually talk or talked about death and
Speaker 3: dying with their families. There'd be dead bodies downstairs in
Speaker 3: the funeral home, but they never really like really talked
Speaker 3: about it, And that I think is the most healthy
Speaker 3: thing that any family can do, is just have real
Speaker 3: conversation about death and dying, whatever comes up, you talk
Speaker 3: about instead of it just being Grandma died. The funerals
Speaker 3: on Wednesday. Done.
Speaker 2: Please kiss her? Yes, if it's open casket.
Speaker 3: On the hand, she will be cold and hard, but
Speaker 3: it's still your grandma.
Speaker 2: So put your mouth on her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just to rewind when you say funeral home and the
Speaker 2: bodies are downstairs, I'm sorry, is that actually a home?
Speaker 2: Did you live there? And then do people and funeral
Speaker 2: homes live there? And then the bodies are downstairs.
Speaker 3: Not all funeral homes, but some funeral homes. It's very common,
Speaker 3: and this gives a vestige of like history sort of,
Speaker 3: but like it'd be very normal for the undertaker in
Speaker 3: town to have a home. And he was also the undertaker,
Speaker 3: but he had his family there currently today. And I
Speaker 3: know a lot of even my students, they're living on
Speaker 3: like the third floor of the funeral home and like
Speaker 3: the little apartment and then the funeral home is on
Speaker 3: the main floor, and then the basement usually has like
Speaker 3: body storage and the and all that stuff. So but
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what, So I go to a lot
Speaker 3: of the conventions and stuff in death care, and there's
Speaker 3: just some wonderful, wonderful stories about a lot of these couples,
Speaker 3: funeral director couple couples that like, you know, first date
Speaker 3: or second date and we're going back to my place
Speaker 3: and I have to tell my date that I live
Speaker 3: in a funeral home. And it's just it's just different.
Speaker 3: It's just interesting. I think it's fascinating. I think it's
Speaker 3: also lovely. It's a great way to wed out people
Speaker 3: who can't tolerate your life.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, when you're you know how people
Speaker 2: are like, oh, basements are so scary, and you're like, well,
Speaker 2: mine's an actual morgue. Yes, I actually had dead bodies,
Speaker 2: and yes, have you ever seen anything creepy? Or is
Speaker 2: your exposure and your familiarity with death and dying like
Speaker 2: kind of let you understand that, like there's nothing creepy.
Speaker 2: Ghosts aren real, Like there's there's no bumps in the night.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean regularly I'm around dead people and
Speaker 3: it doesn't bother me, and it really never has. And
Speaker 3: in terms of like being scared of stuff, actually I'm
Speaker 3: not afraid of ghosts, but like I'll be home by
Speaker 3: myself sometimes and I'll like hear a noise and I'll
Speaker 3: be like, oh my god, the demons are coming into
Speaker 3: my home because I'll have just read some book about
Speaker 3: like demonology within some like weird ass like tradition or something,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, that demon is here. It found me
Speaker 3: because I summoned it because I read its name out loud,
Speaker 3: so I will freak I am. I am the most
Speaker 3: successful at freaking myself out. But I am not like
Speaker 3: I don't like the ghost thing or whatever. Although I've
Speaker 3: been studying quite a bit about Tibetan Buddhism in particular,
Speaker 3: and there are traditions and Tibetan Buddhists do not play
Speaker 3: when it comes to death and dying, Like what do
Speaker 3: you die if you're a Tibetan Buddhists and you believe
Speaker 3: that they'll do like a like kind of like a
Speaker 3: horoscope at the time of your death to figure out,
Speaker 3: according to the stars when, like how long your body
Speaker 3: should be left out, so that they can identify when
Speaker 3: the soul actually leaves your body, because you do not
Speaker 3: want to bury or cremate someone when the soul is
Speaker 3: still in there. That's what you're trying to void.
Speaker 2: Oh so that's a party fell.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I was talking about this. See,
Speaker 3: this is the problem ghosts. I just got ghosts. So
Speaker 3: Tibtan Buddhists, it's not getting the soul out and then
Speaker 3: but there's whole field of study within that about what
Speaker 3: happens if your soul isn't doing what it's supposed to
Speaker 3: do and it's left behind. And I have read some
Speaker 3: pretty compelling stuff over the years about those kinds of things.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that it's real or it's not real.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that those accounts exist and are very
Speaker 3: thorough and like documented and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So I'm alone in my apartment Saturday night, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking up to Betan Ghosts for this episode, and I'm
Speaker 2: like reading about a type of spirit that is just
Speaker 2: next level bummed out ghost. It's called a hunger ghost.
Speaker 2: They have a tiny throat and a huge stomach, and
Speaker 2: they can never be satisfied. They're said to arise with
Speaker 2: traumatic deaths. Anyway, right as I'm reading about this, this happened.
Speaker 2: I quickly I turn on my phone to record it.
Speaker 2: Hi there, how are you good?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much? Oh sweet?
Speaker 2: That was the sound of a man coming up to
Speaker 2: my door delivering an extra large pizza to me. Just
Speaker 2: me reading about hungry ghosts. I'm meeting an extra large
Speaker 2: pizza by myself. But you know what, it's vegan and
Speaker 2: gluten free because I live in Los Angeles and I'm
Speaker 2: the worst and I don't want to die of any
Speaker 2: of those causes of death that don't involve falling off
Speaker 2: a roof. Okay, get back to it. Do you have
Speaker 2: a book or resource that you recommend to people who
Speaker 2: are just going through the throes of like a grieving
Speaker 2: process the scal.
Speaker 3: Her name is Joanne Fink, and she has a book
Speaker 3: because one day she woke up and her husband did
Speaker 3: not wake up with her. Very sad that I expected.
Speaker 3: So I always recommend books that are written by people
Speaker 3: that have had like whoa and she has this little
Speaker 3: book and I actually buy this book. And this is
Speaker 3: what I give out to people when they've had a loss.
Speaker 3: And it's called When you Lose Someone you Love by
Speaker 3: Joanne Fink. I have a book that I recommend for
Speaker 3: people who like if you are going to be around
Speaker 3: someone who is like dying, like actively dying, like so
Speaker 3: that you know what to do. It's called Attending the Dying.
Speaker 3: And that's by Megarie Anderson.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, super important scientific question. If you could become
Speaker 2: a ghost, would you become a ghost?
Speaker 3: I'm like thought, I'm like, I'm gonna be honest. I
Speaker 3: looked into this, really, yeah, of course I did. I
Speaker 3: will look into anything. Do not check my search history
Speaker 3: because I guarantee you it is like probably offensive in
Speaker 3: some way, but that all that information is out there
Speaker 3: and that probably makes me sound very hippy dippy. But
Speaker 3: if anything I've learned over the years, it's like I
Speaker 3: don't I don't make assumptions about anything anymore.
Speaker 2: What does science say about the soul leaving the body?
Speaker 3: Yes, so I love this question because this is where
Speaker 3: religious and cultural and social beliefs intersect with science, and
Speaker 3: it's where we hit the big question mark and the
Speaker 3: big conflict about are physical bodies. So there is nothing
Speaker 3: scientifically that I'm aware of that's like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: where your soul is.
Speaker 2: So this idea of soul.
Speaker 3: Is informed by the non physical science side of things,
Speaker 3: and it comes down to what do you believe.
Speaker 2: So there's this whole mess of people who think that
Speaker 2: the soul is a thing and it weighs twenty one grams,
Speaker 2: partly because of the two thousand and three blockbuster twenty
Speaker 2: one grams. Now from the trailer that I just watched
Speaker 2: on YouTube, it seems to be about a bunch of
Speaker 2: sad people and Benicio del Toro's in it needing a makeover.
Speaker 2: But this original idea stemmed from the scientific experiments of
Speaker 2: a fellow named McDougall, who in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 2: had this idea to wait around like a really eagle
Speaker 2: eied umpire near the dying and then scoot them over
Speaker 2: to a big scale at their big moment to see
Speaker 2: if they lost any weight as they passed, and he
Speaker 2: measured a bunch of folks and ignored most of the numbers,
Speaker 2: but he did report a small handful who lost about
Speaker 2: twenty one grams of weight as they died. He also
Speaker 2: tried this on dogs. He wanted to at least, but
Speaker 2: he couldn't find any super sick dogs. But then suddenly
Speaker 2: he had a bunch of data on dogs and people
Speaker 2: were like, McDougall, did you poison the dogs? And he
Speaker 2: was like, huh what, No. Nobody believed him. In general,
Speaker 2: people didn't believe him because that twenty one grams of
Speaker 2: weight loss wasn't a consistent figure anyway, and also because
Speaker 2: that could just be due to sweat loss. Can I
Speaker 2: just say that? When I was looking up the trailer
Speaker 2: for twenty one grams, YouTube suggested a video about why
Speaker 2: Hollywood doesn't care about Hillary Swank anymore, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: click that, I'll take the bait. I found that video
Speaker 2: to be more depressing than the part of the web
Speaker 2: site about pod coffins that detailed waiting out Rigor Mortis
Speaker 2: before shaping you into a fetal ball and putting you
Speaker 2: into the biodegrade of lag let the woman win some oscars.
Speaker 2: Why you got a hate honor. So some people believe
Speaker 2: in souls, some people.
Speaker 3: Don't, because this is the thing that impacts the way
Speaker 3: that you are going to live your life or approach
Speaker 3: your life. Because if you believe that your soul's a
Speaker 3: real deal thing, that's probably going to impact your decision
Speaker 3: making process. But if you don't believe it, or if
Speaker 3: you've never heard of this concept before, you know, you
Speaker 3: may make decisions differently. There's this thing called insulment another
Speaker 3: keyword learning word. Insulment is discussed in every religious tradition
Speaker 3: that I know of, and it discusses when does the
Speaker 3: soul enter the body because religious traditions look at that
Speaker 3: point to decide when you are an actual life, because
Speaker 3: you're not a full life until you have body plus soul.
Speaker 3: So you become a life in different points. So in
Speaker 3: Judaism it's the fortieth day of gestation, that's when you're life.
Speaker 3: So and in Judaism, well, traditional I guess is the
Speaker 3: way to say, if you have like a miscarriage, you
Speaker 3: technically there's no grieving in quotes because it wasn't actually
Speaker 3: a life. And then that is something called disenfranchised grief.
Speaker 3: Keyword disenfranchised grief is something that happens when like, let's
Speaker 3: say you have a miscarriage and you people be like, oh,
Speaker 3: at least it wasn't a real baby, and you're like,
Speaker 3: I'm still sad, I'm still devastated. That's disenfranchised grief. It's
Speaker 3: when you're grieving but society or cultural norms will say, oh,
Speaker 3: but you're not entitled to those feelings.
Speaker 2: So it's other people being bitchy about your grief. Yes,
Speaker 2: also it.
Speaker 3: Disadvantchised people are dicks.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you can you are a certified crematory operator. Yes, Okay,
Speaker 2: sorry to jump back to cremation, but it's growing in
Speaker 2: popularity and I've just I felt hazy on the details.
Speaker 3: So like a lot of states now require that for
Speaker 3: someone to operate the crematory that you need to have
Speaker 3: the sort and it's really like just like a little
Speaker 3: simple test. I mean, just you need to not be
Speaker 3: an idiot.
Speaker 2: So I mean to not be an idiot. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: throw your car keys in with the body.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, like don't like get in there for fun,
Speaker 3: because it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they when someone is cremated, they're cremated in
Speaker 2: a casket, right.
Speaker 3: Or not a lot of times? Okay, So okay, cremation.
Speaker 3: So I believe all states in the United States require
Speaker 3: you to be cremated in a cardboard outer container at
Speaker 3: a minimum, So that's basically a cardboard box, and it's
Speaker 3: like basically body cardboard, right, and you get get slit in.
Speaker 3: People also will buy like wood caskets. So let's say that,
Speaker 3: like cold eyes, husband buys me a beautiful casket cherry wood,
Speaker 3: and then I'm just I'm laid out and there's like
Speaker 3: a visitation and then I get cremated in that same casket.
Speaker 3: So it'll burn up the wood, right, but not in
Speaker 3: like a metal casket.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, so some of the ashes might also be
Speaker 2: casket ashes.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, carbon is well no, because at that temperature, okay,
Speaker 3: so the wood goes completely away because you're cremated between
Speaker 3: sixteen and eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, it's very hot. When
Speaker 3: the body is cremated. All that is left if the
Speaker 3: cremation is done to completion, like if it's done right,
Speaker 3: is calcium bicarbonate. That's what's left, and there is no
Speaker 3: genetic material left.
Speaker 2: So like you.
Speaker 3: Let's say that I was just a bunch of cremated
Speaker 3: remains and you wanted to DNA test it to see like, oh,
Speaker 3: let's see if that's actually coal. If you're cremated appropriately,
Speaker 3: there's no genetic material left at all to be able
Speaker 3: to test that.
Speaker 2: And I understand that there's a pretty good chance that
Speaker 2: you might get a couple of flakes of dust from
Speaker 2: somebody else in there too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that absolutely happens. There's no way to
Speaker 3: get one hundred percent of everything out of the retort
Speaker 3: the cremation chamber, because think about what happened. Okay, you
Speaker 3: have a bonfire. What happens when it gets really hot, right,
Speaker 3: it swirls, It swirls around, and you get like hot
Speaker 3: wind that happens inside the cremation chamber. And the cremation
Speaker 3: chamber is much bigger than the size of a body,
Speaker 3: and so you get all these little parts and stuff
Speaker 3: that fly around, and there's things like static electricity that
Speaker 3: can hold things up.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so and what about embalming and body preparation?
Speaker 2: Do you do any of that or are you like
Speaker 2: nasts on my bag?
Speaker 3: I am not a licensed and bomber. However, I have
Speaker 3: witnessed them and know about them, and I deal with
Speaker 3: that in my job pretty you know, pretty regularly. So
Speaker 3: it's interesting. Quite a few of my students all they
Speaker 3: want to do morning tonight is in bomb That's it.
Speaker 3: That's all they want to do. And just like I am,
Speaker 3: like I love working with death and dying. I'm into it,
Speaker 3: They're like I love embalming. They love it. Why, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's what they you know. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 3: got to be somebody, and there are a lot of
Speaker 3: families and people who embalming is part of their family
Speaker 3: tradition or their religious tradition and it's important to them.
Speaker 2: So for more on this and the science and the
Speaker 2: art of funeral makeup, listen to the October twenty twenty
Speaker 2: episode on Desertrology with Monica Taurus, Who is a treasure?
Speaker 2: Okay cool? Do you think that people who are in
Speaker 2: the death and dying industry are a certain personality type
Speaker 2: or does it really? Does it totally run the gamut?
Speaker 2: Like does your stereotype of what a mortician is, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of stoic and quiet? Is that completely untrue?
Speaker 3: So this is like love talking about this because in
Speaker 3: death care. Currently in the United States, we are having
Speaker 3: a huge shift in who are like quote unquote typical
Speaker 3: funeral director is. So many years ago, it was by
Speaker 3: far male dominated and like men, men, men, men. Now
Speaker 3: it's female dominated. Most of the students enrolled in mortuary
Speaker 3: school are women, and I believe that's nationwide now really Yeah,
Speaker 3: So you know how like the nursing profession was male
Speaker 3: dominated and then it became like women. Now we're having
Speaker 3: that happen in death care. And I'm personally very excited
Speaker 3: about that because I feel like the role of the
Speaker 3: funeral director is shifting in the United States right now.
Speaker 3: Also within death care the profession, we're starting to see
Speaker 3: an increase in our educational standards. You know, I'm teaching
Speaker 3: a bachelor part of a Bachelor of Funeral Service degree
Speaker 3: because the standard now has been a two year associates degree,
Speaker 3: oh to become a funeral director or in a walmer
Speaker 3: and not all states require that WHOA, and it varies
Speaker 3: state to state. So in Colorado, for example, there's no
Speaker 3: requirement for education to become a funeral director WHOA.
Speaker 2: But like, I love that, You're like, I could buy
Speaker 2: a dime bag grocery store we yeah, funeral director like Colorado, Yeah,
Speaker 2: wild West.
Speaker 3: Yes, I hope that all funeral directors are required to
Speaker 3: have a four year degree in the future.
Speaker 2: You ready for some questions from listeners? Oh? Yes, Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, we got some questions other than I feel
Speaker 2: like I have a million questions to ask you just
Speaker 2: because I'm like, what's going to happen when I do?
Speaker 3: Should I be afraid? What am I doing?
Speaker 2: Okay? Okay? But first a quick break with words about
Speaker 2: our sponsors who make it possible for us to donate
Speaker 2: to a cause, and this week I'm choosing it to
Speaker 2: go to the School of American Thanatology, which was founded
Speaker 2: by Cole and Perry.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: The School of American Panatology offers education in thanatology, death work,
Speaker 2: and more so that more people can expand personally and professionally.
Speaker 2: And there are courses on writing, death and spirituality, and thanobotany,
Speaker 2: which is another term that Cold coined to describe the
Speaker 2: way that plants are used in death care and dying
Speaker 2: and a green So yes, learn more about the school
Speaker 2: at Americanthinatology dot com that'll be linked in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Thank you to sponsors for allowing us to make that doney.
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Speaker 2: Sure, okay, I'm living. For your questions, Karon wants to
Speaker 2: know how accurate is the expression la patitde more in
Speaker 2: describing an orgasm. He said, I won't be mad if
Speaker 2: you don't ask this.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, let me talk about this for a second.
Speaker 3: So in many Eastern traditions in that world, the Eastern
Speaker 3: tradition teaches that when you're asleep, it is one sixtieth
Speaker 3: of death, and so we actually take yoga to practice death.
Speaker 3: We leave that out in America because Americans don't believe
Speaker 3: they're going to die. But that's why you do the
Speaker 3: physical practice of yoga's to become more comfortable with it.
Speaker 3: When it comes to orgasming, different traditions teach that you
Speaker 3: are between death and full life, Like you drop into
Speaker 3: like this sort of in between state and you become
Speaker 3: more closer to death at that point.
Speaker 2: Really Oh, I mean like yeah, so that's an actual thing.
Speaker 2: That's not just the French being French and dramatic.
Speaker 3: No, I mean yeah, I mean yeah, good question, good question,
Speaker 3: okay points.
Speaker 2: John wants to know what did your parents say when
Speaker 2: you told them you wanted to study death and death
Speaker 2: is in all caps.
Speaker 3: I just want you to know them it's because it's
Speaker 3: scary so and you should fear it. I never asked them,
Speaker 3: I just kind of did it. So.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Mark wants to know with her science, it might
Speaker 2: it be possible for human death to be permanently postponed.
Speaker 2: Is that something we should strive for and if so,
Speaker 2: how will that change us? I think that would make
Speaker 2: us bigger dicks.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it would, and dix for the wrong reasons. Like,
Speaker 3: I think from a scientific viewpoint, it's great to be
Speaker 3: able to understand the dynamics of that process. And like
Speaker 3: how that actually works, how you turn it on, turn
Speaker 3: it off. But I don't think for the good of
Speaker 3: society or the world that having a deathless world is good.
Speaker 2: Hery, that's bad too many people.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure I have people who would be like, oh,
Speaker 3: ye're wrong, But that's what I believe. And I've worked
Speaker 3: with death and dying a lot.
Speaker 2: Right, I feel like humans are kind of like a
Speaker 2: cockroach plague on the earth a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're in a verny. We're messy. We don't leave
Speaker 3: things better than when we found them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we gotta die off or else we can't
Speaker 2: make room for new people. Right. Phoebe wants to know
Speaker 2: sell death being what it is. Is there a layman's
Speaker 2: terms short version of how the chemicals used in funery
Speaker 2: prep postponed the decomposition process till after our weird open
Speaker 2: cast funeral rites. Yeah, so she's asking, with cell death,
Speaker 2: how do the chemicals postpone decomposition? How do they do that?
Speaker 3: So it's it's chemistry basically. So okay, so when you die,
Speaker 3: like your skin and all that stuff like dehydrates. Okay,
Speaker 3: like if you're doing a bombing, your blood is drained
Speaker 3: out and it goes down the drain, okay, into the sewer,
Speaker 3: just like your pa and your poop does. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: and the water treatment plants process all that out just
Speaker 3: like they process out pea and poop and whatever the
Speaker 3: heck else do you flush down there? It's also blood
Speaker 3: right good, yep. So that's step one, step two. Then
Speaker 3: depending on how you died. So like if you if
Speaker 3: you were jaundiced, when you die, you're gonna have yellow
Speaker 3: casts to your skin. Well, there's embombing chemicals and ingredients
Speaker 3: that are designed to counteract that so that you don't
Speaker 3: look yellow when you were in your casket.
Speaker 2: Right now, you've got to look good. This is the
Speaker 2: last time some of these people are going to see you.
Speaker 3: That's right, because we are vain. Even when we're not
Speaker 3: that we're vain. We just know that we want.
Speaker 2: To continue that.
Speaker 3: You go, yeah, So this mixture is made. In the mixture,
Speaker 3: it's a chemical reaction, but it rehydrates the skin so
Speaker 3: that it doesn't so you don't look dead. And then
Speaker 3: it also corrects it can like do things like color
Speaker 3: correct or counteract whatever made you be dead.
Speaker 2: Whatever made you be dead. Yeah, cause of death. The
Speaker 2: thing that made me be dead. Yeah, let me see, oh, Jennifer,
Speaker 2: is a great question, Jennifer. I keep hearing that when
Speaker 2: you die, the same chemical in ayahuasca is released into
Speaker 2: your body by your brain. Are we really all tripping
Speaker 2: when we die?
Speaker 3: Dimethyl tripped to mean aka d MT? So ayahuasca is that?
Speaker 3: How say it? Ayahuasca that has DMT in it plus
Speaker 3: other stuff? Right now, the pinial gland and the brain
Speaker 3: makes DMT basically like we make a little bit of
Speaker 3: that and then that's what makes us dream. Wow, next level,
Speaker 3: our bodies are when you die. As far as I'm aware,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure someone would will post to correct me
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong, your body does release DMT okay, and
Speaker 3: other stuff. Like, there's sort of chemical things that happen.
Speaker 3: So this idea of if you're like, are you tripping
Speaker 3: when you die? Well, keep in mind that all of
Speaker 3: your senses have probably if you're dying sort of naturally,
Speaker 3: your senses will have shut down. So if you have
Speaker 3: ever tripped as a living person, you know you had
Speaker 3: sensory input happening when you're dying, and at the moment
Speaker 3: of death, you're not going to be physically where you
Speaker 3: were when you were tripping and alive. So it's not
Speaker 3: going to be the same thing. It doesn't function the
Speaker 3: same way. Does that make sense right?
Speaker 2: Because you're not at Bonnaroo using all of your faculties. Yes,
Speaker 2: you're somewhere much more quiet without those faculties, So I
Speaker 2: get it. So it's kind of like if you had
Speaker 2: a kaleidoscope, but you had less input into the kaleidoscope.
Speaker 3: You know. And the thing is that we don't really
Speaker 3: know what's happening there. But I look at that and
Speaker 3: I keep in mind that, like, our bodies are not
Speaker 3: functioning the same way then they normally do, so it's
Speaker 3: going to be different.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're not like a burning man. You're definitely not
Speaker 2: at burning man. Blake wants to know, is there any
Speaker 2: truth to involuntary body movements after death, like bodies sitting
Speaker 2: up and muscle twitching and groaning and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, like the sitting up thing, I've never heard
Speaker 3: of that actually happening, But like a like a like
Speaker 3: a like a ressing that happens. That's not uncommon because
Speaker 3: depending on how you die or what you die of,
Speaker 3: there can be like a pocket of air or something
Speaker 3: that comes out, but it's not. I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: like sometimes it's the result of just moving the body
Speaker 3: around or shifting it. Okay, so yeah, I've never heard
Speaker 3: of like somebody sitting up in actuality. And I hang
Speaker 3: out with a lot of funeral wreckers, So you guys,
Speaker 3: yeah you got the goods.
Speaker 2: I did hear that that a friend of mine and
Speaker 2: her fiance were at his grandmother's funeral and they went
Speaker 2: up to the casket and they both swear they heard
Speaker 2: her breathe like a interesting. I don't know. I am
Speaker 2: one hundred percent not a doctor, but I'm gonna guess
Speaker 2: that this sound is kind of akin to the breeze
Speaker 2: passing through a flute, just the gentle song of happenstance
Speaker 2: and Stephanie had a question. She wanted to know if
Speaker 2: and this is funny because I know her and her
Speaker 2: birthdays on Halloween. She wants to know if you find
Speaker 2: the Halloween like kind of not irritating, but what your
Speaker 2: stance is on Halloween because it's such a like macabre holiday,
Speaker 2: but you deal with a lot of the themes that
Speaker 2: we explore one day year in your daily life, Like
Speaker 2: how do you feel about Halloween? And how macab it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, I joy Halloween. A lot of people within
Speaker 3: the death and dying world, whether they work in like
Speaker 3: the funeral side, or they're like even like hospice workers
Speaker 3: or something, there's a lot of people that like love
Speaker 3: it and they live for Halloween. And I appreciate that,
Speaker 3: and I like Halloween, but I'm not obsessed with it,
Speaker 3: like honestly, it's just like a I give it a
Speaker 3: C plus in terms of holidays and my like calendar
Speaker 3: of events.
Speaker 2: What's right holiday?
Speaker 3: So I love yon Kippour. I'm Jewish and that's the
Speaker 3: day of atonement, so where it's where you like think
Speaker 3: about what you did. And obviously, because I deal with
Speaker 3: death and dying, I really enjoy the opportunity every year
Speaker 3: to like really think about what I did. Also I'm
Speaker 3: a little bit intense, So I love yon Kipour. Anyway, Halloween.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting probably if you met me, because you
Speaker 3: only are hearing me, I do not like dressing all black,
Speaker 3: and I'm not like, like you're not uber goth, you
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't look at me and know that I'm like
Speaker 3: death person or what I right.
Speaker 2: I would think you're a graphic design or an.
Speaker 3: Artists, like a design person. Yeah so yeah, I like
Speaker 3: and appreciate Halloween. How it is not my number one.
Speaker 2: So what's scarier than Halloween? It's being a pansy. Now
Speaker 2: Here is where I casually shower Cole with wonder and
Speaker 2: praise about all the things she's gotten done in her life.
Speaker 2: I do feel like knowing your life you're getting you
Speaker 2: have gotten the most out of it. I think that
Speaker 2: if anything, you're your proximity to death and dying shows
Speaker 2: in how you choose to live your life and all
Speaker 2: the things that you're so passionate about and what you've
Speaker 2: learned and what you've done. And you know, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of people I don't think would take that risk,
Speaker 2: probably because they're just like, oh me, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to die. I'm a life forever, and I'm also going
Speaker 2: to win the lot of Ye we're off, we're off.
Speaker 3: A lot of people just are like waiting for the
Speaker 3: thing to discover them, right, and it doesn't work that way,
Speaker 3: and doesn't Dying is not to be feared. It's the living,
Speaker 3: like fear your life choices. That's where the fear can
Speaker 3: come from, you know, and the fear of like like
Speaker 3: not like what happened if you don't do the thing
Speaker 3: that you've been wanting to.
Speaker 2: Do, that's so real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you are true. You owe it to yourself
Speaker 3: to do that, and you owe it to everyone that
Speaker 3: came before you to do that. You owe it to
Speaker 3: the world, You owe it to us to be who
Speaker 3: you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2: And what is your will go least favorite to favorite,
Speaker 2: your least favorite thing about your job. And it could
Speaker 2: be anything. It could be like an early hours, could
Speaker 2: be being on call, anything.
Speaker 3: Not a fan of email, not a fan of email.
Speaker 3: It's like real hard for me to just I just
Speaker 3: because it's like I want to be talking to people,
Speaker 3: and I just I really don't like email. I don't
Speaker 3: appreciate it. I don't enjoy it. I don't want it
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I love it as someone who deals with corpses,
Speaker 2: the worst thing is email.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's your favorite.
Speaker 2: Thing about the job or favorite moment on a job,
Speaker 2: or or the thing that really gets you out of
Speaker 2: bed in the morning.
Speaker 3: A lot of times it's I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: I think I have radar or something or like a
Speaker 3: beacon that is sending out, but I can be in
Speaker 3: an immediate, deep, intense conversation involving tears with somebody I
Speaker 3: just met in a heartbeat, and it is because of
Speaker 3: my work and death and dying. One time I was in.
Speaker 2: I took out the name of the museum at Cole's request,
Speaker 2: just in case, just to keep identities private. Also small
Speaker 2: content warning. It does involve the mention of dying by suicide,
Speaker 2: which side note, in the last five years, dying by
Speaker 2: suicide has become the preferred expression over the one that
Speaker 2: we used previously. But yes, so let's pretend for the
Speaker 2: sake of anonymity that she was at the British Lawnmower Museum,
Speaker 2: which is a real place.
Speaker 3: Which is a fantastic museum. And I got my ticket
Speaker 3: and I went to go upstairs, and the guy that
Speaker 3: takes the tickets he was like always like you have
Speaker 3: interesting Harry, you an artist. So I'm like no. When
Speaker 3: I was trying to go upstairs, He's like, who are you?
Speaker 3: What do you do? And I was like, oh, I
Speaker 3: actually work in death and dying, and he like stone
Speaker 3: cold face. All of a sudden, he goes, my best
Speaker 3: friend committed suicide recently, and I almost didn't come to
Speaker 3: work today because I've been struggling, and I was able
Speaker 3: to immediately talk to this individual for well over thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't have had that wonderful opportunity to connect
Speaker 3: with that gentleman who was feeling very alone if I
Speaker 3: didn't work in death and dying and have this training
Speaker 3: and danatology and all this kind of stuff. And for that,
Speaker 3: I'm incredibly grateful because being alone is the worst thing
Speaker 3: in the world for anybody, and a lot of times
Speaker 3: people feel alone with stuff related to loss, and there's
Speaker 3: so few people in the world that are equipped or
Speaker 3: comfortable to be present for that. You know, we want
Speaker 3: to push it away. So that's some example of something
Speaker 3: I love, which is intense and sad but overall great.
Speaker 2: So it's funny because I'm leaving this conversation much more
Speaker 2: cheerful than I thought I would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, that's good.
Speaker 2: I was ready to start. I was like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: probably gonna end up super scared and bawling, and I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I just had to live instead of
Speaker 2: fearing death. Yeah, I just have to get more excited
Speaker 2: about actually being alive.
Speaker 3: Yeap every time you encounter death in some way, it
Speaker 3: is an opportunity to choose to live. Mm hm, it
Speaker 3: really is.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling you're going to be America's favorite panatologist.
Speaker 2: That's the goal, at.
Speaker 3: Least the only purple haired one that I know of.
Speaker 2: As she left, Cole handed me a ziploc bag and
Speaker 2: in it were five freshly baked, fucking delicious sugar cookies,
Speaker 2: and she said, I can't help it, I'm Midwestern. She
Speaker 2: also gave me a pen that she had specially printed
Speaker 2: with type inspired by vintage gravestone fonts, and it's just
Speaker 2: a simple black clickie clickpen bearing the words I don't
Speaker 2: have time for bullshit. We parted ways and I went
Speaker 2: upstairs in my room. I ate more than one one
Speaker 2: of the cookies, and then I just I wished this
Speaker 2: chick lived in California. Twenty twenty two updates. So this
Speaker 2: chick moved to California a few months ago. We lured
Speaker 2: her out here for a visit for our wedding last July,
Speaker 2: and she and Victor Dugett so much. She called me
Speaker 2: up to be like, I have to tell you something,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what happened? What happened. She's like,
Speaker 2: we're moving out to LA I lost my mind. I
Speaker 2: screamed into the phone so loud. They moved west people.
Speaker 2: It rules. She also started a pickleball league here of
Speaker 2: which I'm a member. I love her so much, so
Speaker 2: listen to the miniesode coming out in a few days
Speaker 2: for more on all of that and what she's been
Speaker 2: up to and what it was like to lure her
Speaker 2: to a different state and make her be my friend,
Speaker 2: to befriend her digitally and learn about her school. You
Speaker 2: can see Americanthantatology dot com. I will put more links
Speaker 2: up on my website at alliworn dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 2: slash Panatology, Encore. That link is right in the show notes,
Speaker 2: you don't have to write anything down, along with links
Speaker 2: to Cole's work and social media hand so much more.
Speaker 2: Check out her website Hellocole dot com. She's on Instagram
Speaker 2: as just In Perry. She's on Twitter as Cole and Perry.
Speaker 2: So I hope as you listen to this that you
Speaker 2: walked away with some kind of new appreciation for being
Speaker 2: not dead. I mean, confront death, plan for it, talk
Speaker 2: about it, accept it, but don't fear it. It doesn't
Speaker 2: make our lives any better while we're living them, so
Speaker 2: thanks for listening. Thank you to everyone supporting on Patreon.
Speaker 2: I appreciate every single one of you. You make this
Speaker 2: self produced passion of mine and reality. And if I
Speaker 2: had died without doing it, my life would have been
Speaker 2: dimmer and I would have choked on regret. So thank
Speaker 2: you for making Ologies real. It changes my life on
Speaker 2: a daily basis. Twenty twenty two me again, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting
Speaker 2: the Ologies podcast Facebook group with assists from Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: and Shannon Faults of the podcast You are That. Thank
Speaker 2: you Bonnie and Shannon for the extra help in the
Speaker 2: Facebook group as Aaron Mooren's the loss this week of
Speaker 2: her brother and Lass Scott, so he's in our thoughts too.
Speaker 2: And thank you to Susan Hale for handling merch and
Speaker 2: so much more. Thank you to all Dilworth for all
Speaker 2: the scheduling help. Kelly ar Dwyer makes our website can
Speaker 2: make yours too, Emily White of the Wordery handles our
Speaker 2: professional transcripts and Caleb Patten bleeps them and those are
Speaker 2: up for free at our website at alibar dot com
Speaker 2: slash Ologieslash Extras that's also linked to the show notes.
Speaker 2: We have free kid friendly, all ages friendly episodes called
Speaker 2: smologies in this main feed. You can download them all
Speaker 2: you can listen with all ages. Thank you Zeke read Vegas,
Speaker 2: Thomas and Mercedes Maitland of Mind gem Media for heading
Speaker 2: that up with assists from Stephen Ray Morris and to
Speaker 2: the man who has got me through the last few
Speaker 2: months and also edits the episode, Jared Sleeper, Thank you
Speaker 2: for everything. Nick Thorburn made the music, and if you
Speaker 2: listen for the end of the show, I tell you
Speaker 2: secret this week. The secret is I really do not
Speaker 2: know what this grief and death experience would have been
Speaker 2: like without having Call in my life. I cannot imagine it.
Speaker 2: Her work is so important. I just I'm so lucky.
Speaker 2: The miniesod will have a lot of advice if you're
Speaker 2: going through something similar, or if you're grieving, or if
Speaker 2: you're anticipating that. So I'm going to spill my soul
Speaker 2: out in that in hopes that it helps you a
Speaker 2: wee bit. Some things that I learned, some things that
Speaker 2: I'm glad that I went through. Another secret is that
Speaker 2: the last few weeks of bereavement leave I took was
Speaker 2: the least I've worked in the past twenty years. And
Speaker 2: you know, even though it was filled with obituary writing
Speaker 2: and funeral arrangements and crying into the darkness and having
Speaker 2: to take care of some other work things on the side,
Speaker 2: the whole thing has really inspired me more than ever
Speaker 2: just to have a better life work balance, because even
Speaker 2: if you are doing your dream job, which I am
Speaker 2: times a thousand. I would like to do this job
Speaker 2: until I am in the earth, but you still have
Speaker 2: to live a little while you're on this side of
Speaker 2: the grass, as my dad used to say, because we're
Speaker 2: all going to die one day, so you got to
Speaker 2: enjoy it a little bit and just fuck off and
Speaker 2: do stupid stuff and make collashes out of old magazines
Speaker 2: and pot some plants in the backyard and stuff. So
Speaker 2: text your crush.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I ended up marrying him, And you know what, cut banks,
Speaker 2: Do what you gotta do. I followed my own advice
Speaker 2: on that last night, and you know what, I cut
Speaker 2: some banks. I'm loving them. Okay. More grief advice and
Speaker 2: updates in the minisod, including my tips on had a
Speaker 2: handle bawling at a funeral and saying no to people
Speaker 2: who want you to do things when you can't. But
Speaker 2: you are great. Go enjoy the breeze or a sunset,
Speaker 2: or have a tiny ice cream cone and toast to Grandpod.
Speaker 2: He loved those. Okay, bye bye