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Speaker 3: Oh boy, wow, Okay, here we go. So from the
Speaker 3: moment I heard that this ology existed, I knew I
Speaker 3: wanted to run as far away from it as humanly possible,
Speaker 3: which then made it obvious that I should dive into
Speaker 3: it sooner rather than later. So in fact, when I
Speaker 3: sat down with this week's guest, the first thing I
Speaker 3: said was that I'm a little anxious about mortality. And
Speaker 3: she said she'd listen to other episodes, and I picked
Speaker 3: up on.
Speaker 4: That, and I was like, Oh, we have this locked
Speaker 4: and loaded.
Speaker 3: She had my number now. I've wanted to do a
Speaker 3: project about ologies for over a decade, and each time
Speaker 3: I write out ologies, my computer autocorrects it to eulogies
Speaker 3: and I get a little shiver. I get a little scared,
Speaker 3: and then the wind whispers at me, Ellie, one day,
Speaker 3: everyone you know and love will be eaten by a
Speaker 3: fungus and rotting back into the earth. And so I,
Speaker 3: I guess, guess why I don't like it? Even just
Speaker 3: the word eulogies heby Geebi's okay, I can tell you though.
Speaker 3: After recording this episode, I felt way better. It's weird,
Speaker 3: so you're gonna have to listen to figure out how
Speaker 3: and why that worked. It's probably gonna be a long
Speaker 3: ass episode. I don't know. I haven't put it all
Speaker 3: together yet. I'm just starting to edit it. But it's
Speaker 3: gonna be worth it. Listen when you're like cleaning out
Speaker 3: the shed, or I don't know, bathing an elephant when
Speaker 3: you've got a lot to do. Or you can break
Speaker 3: it up and listen to the last half after, but
Speaker 3: listen the whole thing, because it might seriously change the
Speaker 3: way you live. Okay, First things first, panatology etymology, now
Speaker 3: the word straight up Greek mythology thanatose just being the
Speaker 3: god of death and dying. What a god. Apparently he
Speaker 3: was referred to often but seen seldom, kind of like
Speaker 3: one of those weird x's that everyone talks about but
Speaker 3: you hope you never run into a brunch. So not
Speaker 3: only was he the bringer of mortality, but he also
Speaker 3: he had super shitty siblings, like the whole family sucked.
Speaker 3: Among them, one sibling the God of old age, another
Speaker 3: the God of Retribution, the God of suffering, the God
Speaker 3: of deception, the God of doom, another sibling the God
Speaker 3: of strife, and yet another one of his homies, the
Speaker 3: God of blame. So, first off, I come from a
Speaker 3: really big, large Catholic family and that is still a
Speaker 3: lot of kids. Secondly, they sound awful, so humans fear
Speaker 3: death much. I wanted to come to grips with it.
Speaker 3: A few months ago, I wound up doing some light
Speaker 3: Instagram stalking of the hashtag thanatologist, and up popped the
Speaker 3: feed of this fresh faced mohawk woman in Cincinnati, and
Speaker 3: I followed her big case I ever wound up in Cincinnati,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to talk about it death. Wouldn't you
Speaker 3: know it? A few weeks before Halloween, I flew in
Speaker 3: to shoot Innovation Nation, which is my other job, and
Speaker 3: I was able to coerce this woman to meet me
Speaker 3: in the hotel lobby of a Hampton end at nine
Speaker 3: thirty pm on a Tuesday, where we chatted about mortality
Speaker 3: and the best way to be buried, and what people
Speaker 3: regret on their deathbeds, and why you shouldn't shit talk
Speaker 3: anyone in a hospital and why we're also scared. But
Speaker 3: more importantly, we talked about just being alive. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of where I was shocked, because this guest, in
Speaker 3: just over an hour, stripped a lot of the darkness
Speaker 3: from death and honestly helped me a shitload. I felt
Speaker 3: like I should have paid her at the end of it,
Speaker 3: and I didn't. Maybe I still should. Anyway, We talk
Speaker 3: about disposition methods, do you get buried or do you
Speaker 3: fling yourself via catapult into a pile of burning mattresses. Whatever.
Speaker 3: But I didn't want to make this all about fear
Speaker 3: and gore of death. You can get that somewhere else.
Speaker 3: This episode is about death and dying as much as
Speaker 3: it is about being alive. Now it's getting released on Halloween,
Speaker 3: so I hope as you listen, you remember that you
Speaker 3: are sitting on a subway full of human skeletons, and
Speaker 3: you are a big bag of blood and atoms in
Speaker 3: a skin suit, and more importantly, you are alive. So
Speaker 3: please let your mind and heart get blown away by
Speaker 3: phanatologist Cole and Perry. Okay, all right, let's get right
Speaker 3: down to some real bare bones questions. What is thanatology?
Speaker 5: So, first of all, it's the study of death and dying,
Speaker 5: And to me, death is the easy part. The dying
Speaker 5: part is much more fascinating and rich and deep and
Speaker 5: intense than the actual death part.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 5: There is also no such thing as a job of
Speaker 5: like just being a panatologist, Okay, because I've looked, and
Speaker 5: nobody will pay me to just walk around and know
Speaker 5: about death and dying. So what I have found is
Speaker 5: thanatology is an enhancer. It is something that enhances whatever
Speaker 5: you already are.
Speaker 3: And that will help you with whatever your other job is,
Speaker 3: like a school counselor who's also a panatologist something like that.
Speaker 5: There's actually thousands of panatologists that are certified. I'm an
Speaker 5: intense and like a very intense individual, so I had
Speaker 5: to get not only one panatology certification, I had to
Speaker 5: get two, which is all of them as far as
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 3: So one of her certifications is an integrative panatology. Now
Speaker 3: I don't know what that was.
Speaker 5: Apparently we looked at in that program more of the
Speaker 5: like esoteric stuff, funky stuff.
Speaker 3: What would you count as funky death stuff.
Speaker 5: Well, one of my most favorite pieces of that training
Speaker 5: program was about the use of psilocybin and other hallucinogenics
Speaker 5: at the end of life, because we're.
Speaker 4: Finding that those can help your death.
Speaker 5: Like it can be great, it can mitigate a lot
Speaker 5: of pain, but it can also help with things like
Speaker 5: existential pain. Keyword existential pain, if you don't know, is
Speaker 5: something like where usually.
Speaker 4: Happens on your deathbed.
Speaker 5: It's when you're confronting all this stuff from your life,
Speaker 5: like am I a good person?
Speaker 4: What is a good person? Or where do I go
Speaker 4: after I die?
Speaker 5: Those can be actually very very painful things to think
Speaker 5: about because they're all attached to all kinds of junk
Speaker 5: from the life that we lived.
Speaker 4: Religious stuff.
Speaker 5: Think about how you were raised religiously all the way
Speaker 5: to your end of your life, and all the baggage
Speaker 5: you pick up with that stuff.
Speaker 3: What happens if you have those thoughts all day, every day.
Speaker 5: Welcome to my life. Yeah, I think about this stuff
Speaker 5: a lot, and a lot of people do. One of
Speaker 5: the problems I see socially in the United States is
Speaker 5: that these big questions, they're not uncommon, but the problem
Speaker 5: is we don't really have containers for them. It just
Speaker 5: doesn't exist, and it's not necessarily appropriate party conversation or
Speaker 5: water cooler conversation. So we don't have a place for
Speaker 5: these big conversations to live, So we end up keeping
Speaker 5: all that inside.
Speaker 4: And I think that that.
Speaker 5: Is sad, because talking about death it's one of the
Speaker 5: It's a great easy way to be really intimate with
Speaker 5: somebody and to really connect with someone on a deeper level.
Speaker 5: And I find that when you talk about something like
Speaker 5: death and dying, you leave feeling like way more connected
Speaker 5: to the world, and it can actually be very positive
Speaker 5: and freeing.
Speaker 3: Well, take me back a little bit to how you
Speaker 3: grew up. When did you have an interest in death
Speaker 3: and dying and when did you decide that you weren't
Speaker 3: terrified of it?
Speaker 4: Yes, interesting question.
Speaker 5: So growing up, I never had a crazy death experience
Speaker 5: as a child, So I never had anything crazy happen,
Speaker 5: but it is something that I've always been immensely comfortable
Speaker 5: with and really interested in and really enjoyed. Anyway, several
Speaker 5: months ago, the mother of my best friend in grade
Speaker 5: school mailed me a card that I made for my
Speaker 5: best friend in third grade when her dog died, and
Speaker 5: it was full of me writing about the meaning of.
Speaker 4: The loss and grief.
Speaker 5: And it was really interesting to look back and see
Speaker 5: my thoughts and stuff on death and dying as a child.
Speaker 5: And I don't know where I picked that up, because
Speaker 5: I didn't grow up in a funeral home. I didn't
Speaker 5: grow up around around that at all. I just kind
Speaker 5: of entered the earth with that sort of like software
Speaker 5: expansion pack already in Do.
Speaker 3: You think you carried it over from a past life?
Speaker 3: Science people? I was kidding, Actually, what does science say
Speaker 3: about the afterlife? Well, I read a whole article by
Speaker 3: lauded cosmologist and physics professor Sean Carroll. He said, the
Speaker 3: laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and
Speaker 3: there's no way within those laws to allow for the
Speaker 3: information stored in our brains to persist after we die.
Speaker 3: So in short, wamp wamp says science, shrug say some
Speaker 3: other folks.
Speaker 5: Anyway, looking into death and dying opens up thoughts and
Speaker 5: ideas and just it makes you question so many of
Speaker 5: the things that you think that you know. And it's
Speaker 5: only when you're pushing yourself to these different areas where
Speaker 5: things are uncomfortable, that you can really grow. And that's
Speaker 5: the purpose of life, right is to grow, is to
Speaker 5: just continue to expand until you die, Until you die.
Speaker 3: What about what about your schooling? At what point did
Speaker 3: you start steering your your like academics, toward death and dying.
Speaker 4: So, I don't know. I've always kind of been into it.
Speaker 5: I mean even in high school I wrote about death
Speaker 5: and dying a lot, and I had it in a
Speaker 5: bunch of my papers, so I've always had it in there.
Speaker 5: My purpose in life is to positively change the way
Speaker 5: that we die in the United States in my lifetime.
Speaker 5: That's my goal, just putting it out there. And I
Speaker 5: have felt that way for a very very long time.
Speaker 5: And there's no magic thing I can say that was like,
Speaker 5: oh well, like I almost died and then this thing happened.
Speaker 5: It's like no, I've just this is what I'm supposed
Speaker 5: to do, so I'm trying to do it. It's hard, though.
Speaker 3: What does your job entail, Like what's a typical day
Speaker 3: like or typical week like for you? Are you involved
Speaker 3: with like funeral planning or ebombing or speaking to the public,
Speaker 3: Like what kind of stuff do you do?
Speaker 4: Okay, So I do not have a traditional nine to
Speaker 4: five job.
Speaker 5: I own a small consulting firm called DOTH and we
Speaker 5: specialize in death care. So one of the ways that
Speaker 5: I'm changing the way that we die is people like
Speaker 5: funeral home, cemeteries, crematories, those businesses. I know those businesses
Speaker 5: really well, how they work, and they'll hire my company
Speaker 5: to help make them better.
Speaker 3: Cole also travels overseas speaking about death and death care,
Speaker 3: and also overseas a local cemetery making cool events like
Speaker 3: movie screenings. I imagine there's a lot of cute hipsters.
Speaker 3: Was really really good picnic game. Are you afraid of
Speaker 3: dying or are you excited about it? To see what happens?
Speaker 4: So, okay, let's talk about death and dying.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So death, death is like just when you die, like
Speaker 5: you're dud. The light switches off. The dying process leading
Speaker 5: up to the death. That is the thing that I
Speaker 5: am most concerned with and the thing that tends to
Speaker 5: cause the most issues for people, because you could be
Speaker 5: dying for months or years. And then there's this whole
Speaker 5: question about when do you start dying. I mean, some
Speaker 5: would argue you start dying at birth technically, right, But
Speaker 5: then you get into actively dying, which is when your
Speaker 5: body is in the shutdown process, which there is kind
Speaker 5: of an order of things that happen.
Speaker 3: First, let's get all up in death's business and define it.
Speaker 3: Death is the cessation of all vital functions of the body,
Speaker 3: including the heartbeat, brain activity including the brain stem, and breathing.
Speaker 3: Some researchers say that there is an evidence to suggest
Speaker 3: that there's a burst of brain energy as someone dies.
Speaker 3: I was reading this article about near death experiences, and
Speaker 3: about eighteen percent of people who had them reported being
Speaker 3: able to recall some portion of what happened when they
Speaker 3: were clinically dead. So, according to some researchers, the conditions
Speaker 3: that make you have near death experiences like low oxygen
Speaker 3: and low blood flow and low blood sugar, those can
Speaker 3: kill your brain cells and then the brain just doesn't
Speaker 3: know what to do. It responds by having this flood
Speaker 3: of chemicals. And it's apparently very similar to the drug ketamine,
Speaker 3: and that is what they think produces out of body
Speaker 3: sensations and hallucinations and all the cool shit that happens
Speaker 3: when you die. Now, this info was from an article
Speaker 3: written by author and science journalist Jennifer Willett. Now, remember
Speaker 3: that physicist Sean Carroll I mentioned earlier. They're married. That
Speaker 3: is a lot of good brains in one relationship. I
Speaker 3: went ahead and emailed them both and I said, Hey,
Speaker 3: do you guys talk about cool stuff like this over
Speaker 3: dinner or while you're grocery shopping. Jennifer wrote me back
Speaker 3: and said, we actually do talk about things like this,
Speaker 3: but not always. Other times we talk about our kiddies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what happens?
Speaker 5: Okay, So what happens when you're actively dying from sort
Speaker 5: of a medical viewpoint, your body shuts down. It has
Speaker 5: a process, and there's kind of an order that it follows,
Speaker 5: just like.
Speaker 4: When you're born.
Speaker 5: Birth and death are actually very very similar, and a
Speaker 5: lot of people ask me like, oh, I'm so afraid
Speaker 5: to die, like is it going to hurt? And I
Speaker 5: always ask, I'm like, you know, I haven't died, so
Speaker 5: I can't tell you, but I'll ask, do you remember
Speaker 5: your birth? Did it hurt when you were born? They'll
Speaker 5: be like, well, no, no. The word on the street
Speaker 5: is it's pretty similar. So the last sense that remains,
Speaker 5: because your senses will shut down, Oh they go hearing,
Speaker 5: they go in order. They don't necessarily go in order.
Speaker 5: There are people who would argue probably that they do.
Speaker 5: But I'm also a hospice volunteer. I've been with people
Speaker 5: as they're dying, and everybody's death is different. As you're
Speaker 5: actively dying, hearing tends to be the last sense that
Speaker 5: is there. So like, imagine that you're the dying person.
Speaker 5: You can't see, you can't smell, you can't taste, and
Speaker 5: your sense of feeling is kind of like, okay, have
Speaker 5: you ever gone to the dentist and they put that
Speaker 5: lead thing over top of you and you get an
Speaker 5: X ray like, imagine that that is the feeling that
Speaker 5: you have. That's kind of a good way to describe
Speaker 5: when you start to lose your sense of feeling, so
Speaker 5: everything's dark, you can't talk, but all you can do
Speaker 5: is here. That's kind of where you go plus your
Speaker 5: foggy That's a good way that I can kind of
Speaker 5: describe the shutdown process, which not everybody has that. That's
Speaker 5: a disclaimer, but that's kind of how it kind of
Speaker 5: can go.
Speaker 3: So you should never shit talk someone while they're on
Speaker 3: their deathbed, that.
Speaker 5: Is right, because they can hear y Yes, they can yep.
Speaker 5: And that's why one of the things that if you're
Speaker 5: ever with someone who's dying, you need to always talk
Speaker 5: to them and say what you're doing. Their body may
Speaker 5: be reacting in a way that makes you think that
Speaker 5: they're long gone, but they may not be, because a
Speaker 5: lot of times when you're dying, you lose control, but
Speaker 5: you're still hearing.
Speaker 4: But we know that the hearing is there. Another sign
Speaker 4: of active death is it's often called the death rattle,
Speaker 4: but it has to.
Speaker 5: Do with usually when you're actively dying, your mouths open
Speaker 5: and you're breathing out of your mouth and it's like
Speaker 5: it's sort of congestion. And that can be really scary
Speaker 5: for people to hear who are not dying, because it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: this has getting real, but it's not something that the
Speaker 5: dying person necessarily feels or is aware of, because you remember,
Speaker 5: they're kind of shutting down.
Speaker 3: I feel like that would be scary to hear even
Speaker 3: if you were another dying person. It'd be scared to
Speaker 3: hear if you're not dying, and as well if you
Speaker 3: are happen to be dying next to them, like are
Speaker 3: you going A I going?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who's going first?
Speaker 3: Is this okay? Is a lot of the work you
Speaker 3: focus on in terms of dying usually the death as
Speaker 3: a result of an illness, or what about traumatic deaths
Speaker 3: or more sudden perishing.
Speaker 5: So in my work, so I am not I'm not
Speaker 5: a counselor I'm not like a medical professional, but I
Speaker 5: do have the opportunity to be brought into or involved
Speaker 5: with specific death situations and scenarios. Man, humans can die
Speaker 5: in all kinds of ways. Statistically, my PROSOL number is
Speaker 5: twenty percent of all people will die in an ICU,
Speaker 5: an intensive care unit. Really, yes, but ninety percent of
Speaker 5: Americans want to die at home, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 5: You want hospice, It is good, it is next level care.
Speaker 5: But the problem in the United States is we don't
Speaker 5: deal with death. We don't like to think about it
Speaker 5: or talk about it. So we will do these last
Speaker 5: ditch efforts, like things that put you in an intensive
Speaker 5: care unit when we know the outcome is you're going
Speaker 5: to die from this, when you really should have just
Speaker 5: gotten on hospice and just rode out the last few
Speaker 5: months really comfortably, not in pain, and not with tubes
Speaker 5: and all kinds of junk coming out of your body if.
Speaker 3: You're wringing your hands convinced that you're going to be
Speaker 3: eaten by a shark. Let's look at statistically, what causes
Speaker 3: deaths at least in the United States. Number one heart disease,
Speaker 3: two cancer, three respiratory disease is accidents, And that kind
Speaker 3: of threw me off because I thought it would be
Speaker 3: another illness, but who knew. Essentially, the fourth biggest threat
Speaker 3: to each of us is just gravity in a nutshell,
Speaker 3: I mean, brush up on physics, make sure you wear
Speaker 3: a bike helmet, maybe don't climb the roof on a
Speaker 3: snowy day, trying to hang like an illuminated candy cane
Speaker 3: or something. It's not worth it, So.
Speaker 4: That's most likely probably going to be what you die of.
Speaker 3: So not of embarrassment like I've oftentimes thought would be
Speaker 3: the cause of my death.
Speaker 5: Yes, and from all my work with death and dying
Speaker 5: and seeing all kinds of stuff over the years, the
Speaker 5: thing that makes life life, that makes it special, that
Speaker 5: makes it meaningful, is the fact that we die.
Speaker 4: If we didn't die.
Speaker 5: Like, the whole reason it means anything is because it ends,
Speaker 5: and so it's difficult for me to I mean, that's
Speaker 5: awesome because of for science, we need to understand.
Speaker 4: What makes us die, what makes us live.
Speaker 5: But death is very important and it's critical and an
Speaker 5: important life cycle event that happens to all of us,
Speaker 5: and it is what makes life meaningful.
Speaker 3: I guess if you lived at Disneyland, you wouldn't be
Speaker 3: as excited about going to Disneyland, you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, life is kind of like a short term stint
Speaker 3: at a theme park. You know it's going to end,
Speaker 3: so you better enjoy it. I suppose, yes, But you personally,
Speaker 3: how is your work and your focus on death and
Speaker 3: mortality changed the choices that you make on.
Speaker 5: A day to day basis just being exposed and around
Speaker 5: even just stories and things like that. I am so
Speaker 5: grateful for my life day to day, but it's made
Speaker 5: me hyper aware that it ends, because I've seen people
Speaker 5: on their deathbed who are facing a lot of regrets
Speaker 5: about the stuff they didn't do. Not the stuff they did.
Speaker 5: It's all the stuff they didn't do, really like what
Speaker 5: just businesses that they didn't start, or girls they didn't
Speaker 5: chase after, or the kids that they didn't have, or
Speaker 5: the risks that they didn't take.
Speaker 4: It's the stuff that you didn't do right.
Speaker 5: And sometimes it's more painful to see someone who's dying
Speaker 5: grappling with those questions than it is to see someone
Speaker 5: who's dying in physical pain.
Speaker 3: To be honest, the anguish emotionally is worse than the pain.
Speaker 5: Yes, wow, deep, we're getting heavy that I tend to
Speaker 5: bring that with me wherever I go.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is about dad and dying. I think
Speaker 3: about this stuff like all day every day. I'm I
Speaker 3: used to have nightmares about graveyards. I had this recurring
Speaker 3: nightmare that I was walking through a graveyard and coffins
Speaker 3: were overturned, and I had a crippling fear of graveyards
Speaker 3: where I would get I would start panicking when I
Speaker 3: was a kid just driving past them. So I've always
Speaker 3: been really really spooked by by dead bodies, by morgues,
Speaker 3: by cemeteries. And I also grew up Catholic, so we
Speaker 3: had open Catholic funerals, so they were like, oh, kiss
Speaker 3: your dead great grandma, and you're like, I'm eight, we know,
Speaker 3: but here we go. So, I mean, do you find
Speaker 3: that that death is something people can accept over time
Speaker 3: or are there people who can deal with it and
Speaker 3: people who can They're well.
Speaker 5: That multifaceted look at that, Like so okay, people who
Speaker 5: tend to be more religious, statistically, by some studies, also tend.
Speaker 4: To be more afraid of dying.
Speaker 5: Why interesting right, Well, because and it's interesting because like
Speaker 5: my mom's side is Catholic, and I went to Catholic school,
Speaker 5: and there was always this talk of like, when you die,
Speaker 5: you're you going to go.
Speaker 4: Up or down? I mean, I feel like we had
Speaker 4: to bring this up every single day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like as a growing up Catholic that
Speaker 5: was always talked about, but we don't. It was never
Speaker 5: talked about in any depth beyond that. It was just
Speaker 5: like you're going to be judged if you're good or
Speaker 5: you're bad.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was like you're it was like Santa
Speaker 3: almost like someone's going to decide if you're on the
Speaker 3: good list or bad list, and you might go to
Speaker 3: an after party in the sky or you might have
Speaker 3: hell fire forever, yes, which you're like, death is terrifying
Speaker 3: because you're like, what happens if, like I steal someone's
Speaker 3: parking space and then I get hit by a bus
Speaker 3: five minutes later? Where am I going?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yeah, I remember as a kid like being anxious.
Speaker 5: About like, oh, I like took a piece of paper
Speaker 5: from my best friend Becky, and now I'm going to
Speaker 5: go to hell, I'm pretty sure, like and.
Speaker 4: Just being really like a conserve of that.
Speaker 5: Well, anyway, at the end of life, depending on how
Speaker 5: someone was raised, just religious values or just cultural values
Speaker 5: that really goes a long way and impacting how well
Speaker 5: or not well they're able to talk about or deal
Speaker 5: with death and dying. I have Okay, this is if
Speaker 5: you are listening to this and you know someone in
Speaker 5: your family who is avoiding death, or who needs to
Speaker 5: talk about it, or you need to talk about it
Speaker 5: with him. Talking about death is like trying to approach
Speaker 5: a deer in the woods.
Speaker 4: You cannot go.
Speaker 5: Directly at a deer because it will run away. But
Speaker 5: if you go around the side and curve around some
Speaker 5: trees and come up and be like, hey, you know,
Speaker 5: then you can get close.
Speaker 4: To it, and then you might be able to actually
Speaker 4: touch it.
Speaker 5: So talking about death usually directly doesn't work well for
Speaker 5: i'd say sometimes most people. But coming at it from
Speaker 5: the side, you know, and kind of easing around it,
Speaker 5: that tends to be much more effective in getting there.
Speaker 3: Are you at what age should people have a will?
Speaker 3: Because I'm realizing I'm sitting here, We're sitting in a
Speaker 3: hotel conference room in Cincinnati, and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 3: have a will, I don't have a do I don't
Speaker 3: know what a testament is, Okay, will versus testament samesias
Speaker 3: roughly the same thing. Now. They started about sixty nine
Speaker 3: dollars if you want to get them through legal Zoom,
Speaker 3: who is not sponsoring this podcast, so you're welcome legal Zoom.
Speaker 3: There's also a book, and it's called I'm Dead Now. What,
Speaker 3: And it is a planner you can put like your passwords,
Speaker 3: what to do with your pets, what you want them
Speaker 3: to do with your body, et cetera in it. I
Speaker 3: look this up on Amazon and there are a few
Speaker 3: reviews that are like helpful book not feel in the title.
Speaker 3: And there's a competing book and I looked at it,
Speaker 3: same table of contents, verbatim, and it's published by the
Speaker 3: same company. But there's I'm dead now what, And then
Speaker 3: they make an identical book called a Peace of Mind Planner.
Speaker 3: Know your demo, people know your brand now. Wills? Did
Speaker 3: they all have to be notarized? I thought so, but
Speaker 3: not necessarily. I thought you had to sign them in
Speaker 3: blood and a priest had to put like a special
Speaker 3: stamp on them.
Speaker 5: Not so.
Speaker 3: It does depend on your state, so check first. There
Speaker 3: are also a few different flavors of wills, and their
Speaker 3: names sound like racehorses, or they sound like smoothies at
Speaker 3: like a really obnoxious juicery. There's a holographic will. This
Speaker 3: just means it's in your handwriting. That's convenient. There's mystic will,
Speaker 3: which is sealed until your demise, a will in solemn
Speaker 3: form that's a legit one that's signed by you and
Speaker 3: some witnesses, and then there's a living will, and that
Speaker 3: is a directive for your medical care if some shit
Speaker 3: goes down, pretty much like when to pull the plug.
Speaker 3: That's totally different than it will. Living will, totally different thing. Now,
Speaker 3: of course, Cole is covered on this front. I mean, duh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean I'm sitting here in a hotel being interviewed
Speaker 5: about my expertise and death is dying and I don't
Speaker 5: have a will.
Speaker 3: Why don't you have?
Speaker 5: I just said, my godna, I'm just too busy working
Speaker 5: on death and dying to do my own will.
Speaker 4: I mean, here's the deal. Yes, you should have one.
Speaker 5: I mean, when you're an adult, you should have You
Speaker 5: should have you should have one.
Speaker 4: You should have something.
Speaker 5: I did write up a sheet about, like some things
Speaker 5: like if I died and my husband died, who would
Speaker 5: take my begles? Like who I would want them to
Speaker 5: go to? And that's like in an email, So you know,
Speaker 5: having that's better than nothing. But the problem is when
Speaker 5: we die, a lot of times wills are these like
Speaker 5: notes usually aren't found until after the funeral because when
Speaker 5: someone dies then it's like all hands on deck. To
Speaker 5: get the person you know buried or cremated or whatever,
Speaker 5: and that stuff isn't looked at till after the fact. Also, FYI,
Speaker 5: what you want to happen with your funeral? A lot
Speaker 5: of times if you put it in your will, depending
Speaker 5: on state law, it's not like valid or enforceable.
Speaker 3: So you have to sell your loved ones, like shoot
Speaker 3: me out of a cannon or plant my ashes in
Speaker 3: a pumpkin patch or something.
Speaker 5: Yes, your best bet is to tell the people who
Speaker 5: will be the ones making decisions about what happens to you,
Speaker 5: like while you're alive, and be real.
Speaker 3: Clear about it. What do you want to have happened
Speaker 3: to when you die?
Speaker 5: So I actually at this point because it's changed over
Speaker 5: the last ten years, because I see everything death and
Speaker 5: dying all the time. Right now, I would like to
Speaker 5: be buried in a sort of green cemetery and then
Speaker 5: just wrapped in a shroud. It's called it's like not
Speaker 5: actually like a fool and casket or coffin. You're kind
Speaker 5: of wrapped in fabric, like swaddled. It's like a little
Speaker 5: death swattle.
Speaker 3: Like a like a death pegmina.
Speaker 4: Yes, mine will be stylish, am I.
Speaker 3: Purple so and so the ways of being disposed of.
Speaker 3: Let's say, I hear you can get planted underneath some
Speaker 3: tree roots, you can get cremated, Like what is the
Speaker 3: best for the planet.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, So disposition method is the lingo for what
Speaker 5: you do with your dead body, just in case you
Speaker 5: want to know about that. So the two most common
Speaker 5: disposition methods in the United States are burial or cremation,
Speaker 5: and about one in every two bodies in.
Speaker 4: The United States is cremated. Now it was not like.
Speaker 3: That half half.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, cremation just went over the fifty percent mark.
Speaker 5: Very exciting. Kind do you have like all a scoreboard
Speaker 5: in your office?
Speaker 4: Yep, yep, yep, I got a ticker.
Speaker 5: So, and what's interesting is like state by state it
Speaker 5: really varies. So like Kentucky, which is where I live,
Speaker 5: we're I think a bottom five state for our cremation rate,
Speaker 5: like we're a burial state.
Speaker 4: But if you go out to like Nevada.
Speaker 5: Or Arizona, like Washington State, I think is like eighty
Speaker 5: ninety percent cremation rate. Really yeah, So you can go
Speaker 5: all over the country and what you do with your
Speaker 5: body differs significantly.
Speaker 3: Okay, I just looked up a map of the United States,
Speaker 3: colored state by state according to the popularity of cremation.
Speaker 3: Then I looked up red states versus blue states and
Speaker 3: they are almost the same map.
Speaker 5: So this is the two main There's also something called
Speaker 5: alkaline hydrolysis, which is legal, I believe in thirteen states
Speaker 5: now only. And it's like your body plus water plus lie,
Speaker 5: which LIE is also I learned how to make soap
Speaker 5: this past year, and so you use LIE in soap making,
Speaker 5: just like you do when you I want to alkaline
Speaker 5: hydrolylyze yourself. So at the end of sometimes they'll call
Speaker 5: it like liquid cremation or water cremation.
Speaker 4: That's just kind of the word they use.
Speaker 5: But at the end of that process, you know how
Speaker 5: when you're cremated, cremated remains are left. Yeah, at the
Speaker 5: end of alkaline hydrolysis, it's basically the same end product,
Speaker 5: except your there's not fire that does it to you.
Speaker 5: It's like water technically, or this chemical reaction.
Speaker 3: But is it is it moist? No?
Speaker 4: It's dry? Okay, all the liquid and stuff all right
Speaker 4: to the dream.
Speaker 3: You imagine if someone just handed in a bucket of
Speaker 3: Grandpa and you're like, thank you it's moist. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna give you the quick rundown on how alkaline hydrolysis works.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna just tell you, like it's a recipe. Okay.
Speaker 3: You take one human body, not living, and you add
Speaker 3: ninety two gallons of water four gallons of lye. Essentially,
Speaker 3: you put it into a big chamber preheated to around
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty degree, let
Speaker 3: simmer under pressure for four hours, and then you just
Speaker 3: drain off the excess, which is kind of the texture
Speaker 3: of motor oil, and then what's left are some well
Speaker 3: cooked bones. It's easy. Is this kind of like what
Speaker 3: happened in the in the very beginning of Breaking Bad?
Speaker 3: Didn't they try to dispose of a body in a
Speaker 3: bathtub that way? That was an acid bath. This is
Speaker 3: an alkaline bath. Also, don't diy either of these ever, Okay. Now,
Speaker 3: some other disposition methods are buried at sea. There's also promess,
Speaker 3: which is a technique invented by the Swedish biologist. This
Speaker 3: process she invented. It's where your freeze dried kind of
Speaker 3: like astronaut ice cream, and then you are vibrated into
Speaker 3: dust and it's said to be pretty eco friendly. You
Speaker 3: can also be a tree pod. This is a thing
Speaker 3: invented in Italy. It's called cup solo mundi and it
Speaker 3: means world box and it looks like a huge dusty
Speaker 3: easter egg. And they pose your body in the fetal position.
Speaker 3: Then they pop you in the ground. They plant a
Speaker 3: tree of your choosing as long as it's indigenous to
Speaker 3: the region on top of you, and then the tree
Speaker 3: kind of slowly eats you and you become the tree.
Speaker 3: Side note not legal in Italy yet. There's also Viking funerals.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people want to go out
Speaker 3: this way. This is where you set a boat on
Speaker 3: fire with flaming arrows. And I went down a rabbit
Speaker 3: hole watching mortician and founder of the death positive movement
Speaker 3: Caitlin Dodi's. She's got a YouTube channel called Ask Mortician
Speaker 3: Very Good, and I wanted to figure out if Viking
Speaker 3: funerals were legal. Yeah, that's a big no on that.
Speaker 3: They are not only illegal, but they're also ineffective. They're
Speaker 3: not hot enough for long enough, so you would be
Speaker 3: kind of like a floating burnt chicken, which is super bummer. Now,
Speaker 3: sky Burial this is where it's at. Fan. I did
Speaker 3: not know what this process was called, so I googled
Speaker 3: a funeral mongolia eaten by birds and zip zob zoom
Speaker 3: right to the wiki for sky burial. Now, in Tibet
Speaker 3: and inner Mongolia, the ground is too rocky to dig
Speaker 3: you a hole, so they feed you to carry and eaters. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at this right now. Okay, well, all right,
Speaker 3: just pulled up some images. All right, Okay. I thought
Speaker 3: that maybe this would be like a lonely mountaintop situation
Speaker 3: with maybe birds taking a nibble here and there, but
Speaker 3: the birds are pretty hip to the process. I don't
Speaker 3: want to go into too much detail. I'm just going
Speaker 3: to ask that you envision this instead. This is a parallel.
Speaker 3: So picture a European town square, cobblestone, cloudy day, a
Speaker 3: large flock of pigeons bustles nearby, and onto the stone
Speaker 3: you lay one steaming hot aromatic everything bagel. Picture what
Speaker 3: would happen? Now? That is the type of eager consumption
Speaker 3: involved with a sky burial where your body is fed
Speaker 3: to vultures. Now, if your goal in life was ultimately
Speaker 3: just to be wanted, then then sky burial is clutch folks,
Speaker 3: I regret learning as much about that as I just did.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when I get weird and sad about death, I
Speaker 3: think it's cool that all of our molecules are just recycled. Yep.
Speaker 3: And hopefully there's part of me that used to be
Speaker 3: a frog, and it would be cool if part of
Speaker 3: my body now went on to become somehow a frog.
Speaker 3: I don't know why a frog. Yeah, but like I guess,
Speaker 3: if you eat a frog, then part of your body
Speaker 3: becomes a frog. But the idea, or rather part of
Speaker 3: a frog becomes your body. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I'm not on silicide, but becoming another living animal sounds
Speaker 3: like less harsh for some reason.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, you. What makes you you, all of
Speaker 5: your parts and pieces, has been around long before you
Speaker 5: were in you, and you will continue to be around
Speaker 5: in different forms.
Speaker 4: I believe that. I mean, that's just science, right.
Speaker 3: The you that is sitting there knitting while listening to this,
Speaker 3: or driving, or putting stamp on a birthday card to
Speaker 3: your mom is made out of dying stars. Stars die
Speaker 3: and implode and the atoms change, and it lands on
Speaker 3: a planet and it's rearranged to become you now. Astronomer, astrophysicist,
Speaker 3: and beloved turtleneck aficionado Carl Sagan is known for saying,
Speaker 3: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth,
Speaker 3: the iron in our blood, the carbon and our apple
Speaker 3: pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We
Speaker 3: are made of star stuff. So if someone didn't return
Speaker 3: your text, or you thought you'd get more likes on
Speaker 3: a selfie than you did, it does not matter. You
Speaker 3: are a walking Tetris fortress of exploding starshit and no
Speaker 3: one can fuck with that. And it's great. Okay, So
Speaker 3: Cole gets personal with me here.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you this with you. Say you think
Speaker 5: about death and dying, right, what scares you about that?
Speaker 5: Or like, what is the thing that like makes you sad?
Speaker 3: Or you know, I think about my own death. What
Speaker 3: freaks me out is the the like surprise of it
Speaker 3: is the not knowing when it's coming. Yeah, Like if
Speaker 3: it feels like walking around all day in white pants
Speaker 3: and someone's like, you're gonna get your period at some
Speaker 3: point today and you're like, god, damn it. And so
Speaker 3: it's just this idea that like this thing's gonna happen
Speaker 3: but you won't have any control over it. It could
Speaker 3: be tomorrow, it could be when you're eighty, but you
Speaker 3: don't get to decide. And it's the biggest moment of
Speaker 3: your life, and you don't get to decide when or
Speaker 3: how or where, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Yes, So, first of all, our own deaths, like usually
Speaker 5: it just like happens to us.
Speaker 4: Usually we have to deal with.
Speaker 5: Death only when other people are dying, and that can also,
Speaker 5: more often than not, be the harder one to choose,
Speaker 5: because you don't get to pick when your sister dies
Speaker 5: or your brother dies.
Speaker 4: But it'll happen.
Speaker 5: You get the call, and then you got to jump
Speaker 5: in or drop everything and deal with it right, and
Speaker 5: your whole life can be like discombobulated with.
Speaker 4: Our own deaths.
Speaker 5: No, we don't know when they're happening, but we know
Speaker 5: it is happening guaranteed. And if we spend too much
Speaker 5: time in the future, which is worry, or too much
Speaker 5: time in the past, which is ruminating, we end up
Speaker 5: missing out on the present. And you know what we
Speaker 5: regret when we die, Like when everything flashes before you,
Speaker 5: it's all those present moments that we just skipped out on.
Speaker 5: I mean, how much of your I think about when
Speaker 5: I'm on my freaking cell phone and I pick it
Speaker 5: up without it. Have you ever been in line and
Speaker 5: you look at Instagram and then you get to the
Speaker 5: front of the line and you pull your phone up
Speaker 5: again to look at Instagram, Like, I'm not actually like
Speaker 5: doing anything worthwhile with my life and at my end
Speaker 5: of life, how am I going to feel about the
Speaker 5: number of times that I checked Instagram?
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: So, the best way to combat this death anxiety is
Speaker 5: what I would call that as this idea of being
Speaker 5: like freaked out about oh my god, I'm going to
Speaker 5: die and I have no idea when and where and
Speaker 5: how that's going to happen, is to be as present
Speaker 5: in your day to day life as possible. And humans,
Speaker 5: we are wired, all animals are to seek out stability, safety, shelter,
Speaker 5: and comfort. Right while not knowing what's going to happen
Speaker 5: causes anxiety is the opposite of that. So there are
Speaker 5: one of the most powerful things anybody can do is
Speaker 5: to work hard to get really clear about what your
Speaker 5: purpose in life is or why you're here or what
Speaker 5: you are most passionate about, Like for me, when I
Speaker 5: I had a real hard time coming to terms with
Speaker 5: like that I love death and dying because just how
Speaker 5: I was raised and where I grew up, what part
Speaker 5: of the country I grew up, like I should I
Speaker 5: felt a lot of like pressure to like, man, I
Speaker 5: should be a nurse, I should get married and have
Speaker 5: a bunch of kids, and like homeschool then maybe, but
Speaker 5: like bake cookies regularly too, like all these pressures, and
Speaker 5: it was real hard for me to come to terms
Speaker 5: with like, Okay, this is what I'm here to do.
Speaker 5: And a lot that's how it is for a lot
Speaker 5: of people with what their purpose in life is a
Speaker 5: lot of times it's the thing that you have a
Speaker 5: hard time accepting that that's what you're good at and
Speaker 5: that's what you're meant to do.
Speaker 4: So anyway, being.
Speaker 5: Clear about that can really help reduce death anxiety and
Speaker 5: also help you like do stuff with your life, like
Speaker 5: accomplish things that you're not kind of spinning your wheels.
Speaker 3: Do you take more risks in your life, like creatively
Speaker 3: or personally. Keep that in mind, like like you have
Speaker 3: amazing hair, you have like almost a purple mohawk, Like
Speaker 3: is there a part of you that's just like, you
Speaker 3: know what, I want to live my life with a
Speaker 3: purple mohawk, and I'm not going to worry about what
Speaker 3: anyone wants me to, you know, like you know, have
Speaker 3: a blonde bob or anything. Like, I'm gonna do what
Speaker 3: I want to do and be who I'm going to
Speaker 3: be because you have end of life on mind, like
Speaker 3: in mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, without a doubt. Has taught me over the
Speaker 5: years it's always better to be myself. And apparently I
Speaker 5: am a purple haired person. When I'm myself, I have
Speaker 5: more I have met more people and had more people
Speaker 5: in my life since I've had a haircut that I
Speaker 5: just really enjoyed, yeah, than when I was having one
Speaker 5: that you know, resent this right, and it is very
Speaker 5: freeing and liberating to be who you are, but it's
Speaker 5: also real hard to be who you are. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: to accept who you are, that's the step number one.
Speaker 5: But once you start to do that, you can start
Speaker 5: to your outside shows you were on the inside. I
Speaker 5: know we're like talking about all this like life meaning stuff,
Speaker 5: but all of this is like directly related to death
Speaker 5: and dying.
Speaker 3: Did you have a moment where you realized that you
Speaker 3: weren't being yourself and that you wanted. You kind of
Speaker 3: had a pivot or do you think it was like
Speaker 3: a gradual kind of bolstering of your own self esteem
Speaker 3: and confidence and sense of self or did you have
Speaker 3: a moment where you were like, you know what, fuck
Speaker 3: this and then you just started doing what you wanted.
Speaker 3: You know, I did.
Speaker 5: In the past few years. So currently online there's all
Speaker 5: this posts about like.
Speaker 3: Me too, me too, right right, right right.
Speaker 5: So I was assaulted several years ago and I actually
Speaker 5: pressed charges and I did the whole deal, like I mean,
Speaker 5: I took it all away. And going through an experience
Speaker 5: like that, which is another thing that you don't have
Speaker 5: control of. You don't know if someone's gonna mug you.
Speaker 5: You don't know if you're going to be the victim
Speaker 5: of some random thing. I mean, we're all afraid of dying,
Speaker 5: but there's all kinds of other crazy stuff that can
Speaker 5: happen to you.
Speaker 4: I'm so, you know what, it.
Speaker 5: Sucks, and I still am dealing with it all these
Speaker 5: years later, But that horrific experience connects me to so
Speaker 5: many people that I would not be able to be
Speaker 5: connected to without it, And for that I'm grateful because
Speaker 5: the worst thing in life is to be alone, is
Speaker 5: to feel like you're alone.
Speaker 4: And even when something terrible happens.
Speaker 5: To you, you can feel so alone when it happens,
Speaker 5: but you know what, it doesn't take very long and
Speaker 5: you find a bunch of other people that had been
Speaker 5: there too, and just it sucks, but there is some
Speaker 5: level of good there. And I find that with my
Speaker 5: work and death and dying, Like when people are actually
Speaker 5: on their deathbeds and things, what people remember is like
Speaker 5: the things that made you weird or distinct, or the
Speaker 5: crazy experiences that happened to you. That's what sticks around.
Speaker 5: Not that you dotted all your eyes and crossed all
Speaker 5: your te's and you responded to every email in your inbox.
Speaker 5: That doesn't matter at the end of your life, and
Speaker 5: when you look back over what you did, what matters
Speaker 5: is like, what where are the explosions in your life?
Speaker 5: You know, where was the crazy stuff? That's yeah, that's life.
Speaker 5: I mean I feel like death is salt. Death is
Speaker 5: the salt of life, and you live your whole lives
Speaker 5: and every day, every week you're putting ingredients in that soup,
Speaker 5: and then when you die, death comes in now it's
Speaker 5: the salt, and your death is a reflection of how
Speaker 5: you lived. And so if you were a bitter, angry,
Speaker 5: closed off person your whole life who always had a
Speaker 5: chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind, you're
Speaker 5: gonna Soup's going to be nasty at the end of life,
Speaker 5: and no one's going to want to have any of it,
Speaker 5: and no one's.
Speaker 4: Going to want to know what the recipe was.
Speaker 5: But if you die and you are happy, and you
Speaker 5: put good in the world and you embrace as much
Speaker 5: as you could, even the really terrible stuff, people are
Speaker 5: going to want to the recipe.
Speaker 4: Right, that's amazing and that's how you live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you have to use in your experience that
Speaker 3: what you know, things that you've been through and also
Speaker 3: in your work and death and dying. Do you look
Speaker 3: at the grieving process? Do you apply the grieving process
Speaker 3: to things that you've encountered in your own life or
Speaker 3: do you think it's a grieving process is really specific
Speaker 3: just to death.
Speaker 5: So I kind of believe we're grieving our whole lives.
Speaker 5: And there's something called a big death and a little death,
Speaker 5: which is just like my own terminology.
Speaker 4: We all know little death is also a term for right, yeah.
Speaker 5: So, but like a little death is something like I
Speaker 5: would call it, like when I was assaulted.
Speaker 3: That was a little like a death.
Speaker 5: It was actually a huge death for me because it
Speaker 5: was like my sense of like safety and security and
Speaker 5: just like that died, like I will never be the
Speaker 5: same moving forward.
Speaker 4: I mean, it permanently alters you, and so I had to.
Speaker 5: Grieve the loss of like the way life was before
Speaker 5: that happened. Little deaths can be like when you have
Speaker 5: a miscarriage or you get fired, I mean you grieve
Speaker 5: that stuff. A big death is one like a human
Speaker 5: or an animal that you knew or loved dies, Okay,
Speaker 5: And a lot of times the big deaths are easier
Speaker 5: to deal with and get through because you have a
Speaker 5: dead body somewhere. It's harder to deal with the deaths
Speaker 5: in life that like don't have a corpse involved, like
Speaker 5: you know, divorce or your best friend just ghosted you
Speaker 5: or something. I mean that can be horrific to go
Speaker 5: through those things.
Speaker 3: How does the grieving process in a healthy way help
Speaker 3: you through those things? What are the real cornerstones of
Speaker 3: the grieving process of getting through stuff like that?
Speaker 5: So, first of all the grieving process is a roller coaster.
Speaker 5: Elizabeth Coogler Ross is known for her five stages of grief.
Speaker 3: The five pack, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
Speaker 5: But that's often portrayed as it goes in order, and
Speaker 5: it does like you'll wake up one day and be angry,
Speaker 5: and then the next.
Speaker 4: Day you'll be like, oh, that's you know, it's cool,
Speaker 4: I get.
Speaker 5: It, and then the next day you're in denial about it.
Speaker 5: So you kind of flip around. I believe that you
Speaker 5: can grieve non deaths, divorce, all this other kind of
Speaker 5: hard stuff, and it puts you in the same vulnerable position.
Speaker 4: How many have you ever had.
Speaker 5: Something that you've dealt with in your life that wasn't
Speaker 5: a death, but it like threw you off your rocker,
Speaker 5: and you like missed meetings and.
Speaker 4: Just things were just all kurfluffled.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're like, it's the bereaved brains.
Speaker 4: It's a real thing, and it it's real.
Speaker 3: And what about other animals? Are you fascinated by how
Speaker 3: elephants or primates grieve as well? Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And if anything, it makes me sad sometimes because
Speaker 5: I'm a big animal lover and animals have, in my opinion,
Speaker 5: the same depth of emotion that humans do.
Speaker 3: Evidently, until nineteen eighties, the notion that animals had emotions
Speaker 3: was schmaltzy. People weren't into it. Using imaging, researchers started
Speaker 3: looking at brain activity of animals, and we're like, oh shit, y'all.
Speaker 3: In twenty twelve, a group of neuroscientists attended a conference
Speaker 3: on Consciousness in Human and non human Animals, and together
Speaker 3: they signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non Human Animals,
Speaker 3: which says, hey, assholes, animals are conscious and their brains
Speaker 3: can feel. Shit. We're all on the same page with this.
Speaker 3: Get on our level. Just to be clear, that wasn't
Speaker 3: That wasn't verbatim.
Speaker 5: Humans are not that different than animals. We really are not.
Speaker 5: We all get sad, we all grieve. With looking at pantatology,
Speaker 5: you'll see how deeply connected death is to life.
Speaker 3: Then why is death so sad? I know that that
Speaker 3: is like such a general question, But why do we
Speaker 3: cry at funerals? Why are we so? Why do we
Speaker 3: cry at movies?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 3: What do you think that sadness is? So?
Speaker 5: If I was gonna be like scientific or analytical about
Speaker 5: this response only and have that hot hat on. I'd
Speaker 5: say it's because of change. Humans don't like change because
Speaker 5: we're built to seek out stability.
Speaker 4: And safety, right, And what is change not safety? Right?
Speaker 5: So I need to So death forces a change, and
Speaker 5: usually a death is not just like, oh, so and
Speaker 5: so isn't in my life anymore? Okay, Like when my
Speaker 5: grandma died, my grandpa died first, then my grandma died
Speaker 5: on my mom's side. When she died, the hierarchy of
Speaker 5: the family kind of shifted because then it wasn't holidays
Speaker 5: at Grandma's house anymore. It kind of branched down, and
Speaker 5: then like the aunts and uncle started hosting their own
Speaker 5: holiday events.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So a death is never just the body is gone.
Speaker 5: It's like all this other stuff attached to it, and
Speaker 5: it's change. And that's what makes it so hard and
Speaker 5: why I think sad and all those kinds of emotions.
Speaker 5: If I was putting on my like more touchy feely side,
Speaker 5: I'd say, it's so sad when something dies because of love,
Speaker 5: because we love because that's what people do, and it's
Speaker 5: hard to shift from loving somebody who you know. It's
Speaker 5: a two way street when you have a relationship, but
Speaker 5: when they die, you then are left having to send
Speaker 5: your love into someone that's not there anymore, and that
Speaker 5: can be so hard because you're not getting the feedback.
Speaker 5: So then you have to convert to where do I
Speaker 5: put all this love that I was giving to Grandma
Speaker 5: or that I was giving to my husband or whoever, right,
Speaker 5: And that's the hard part.
Speaker 3: And now, speaking of husbands, you work with yours, your
Speaker 3: husband is your business partner as well. Call's husband, Victor
Speaker 3: and Perry was actually sitting a few feet away during
Speaker 3: this whole recording, because you know what, it's weird to
Speaker 3: hang out alone with a stranger in a Cincinnati Hampton
Speaker 3: in at eleven PM. I mean, I get it. You
Speaker 3: guys meet through death and dying.
Speaker 4: No, no, not at all.
Speaker 5: My business was sort of growing and my calling is
Speaker 5: death and dying, and I'm very fortunate that I have
Speaker 5: a partner who supported that. So for several years he
Speaker 5: had a full time job. Then we grew the business,
Speaker 5: he was able to leave it. We travel together, we're
Speaker 5: often booked to speak together.
Speaker 3: Victor is tall with bookish glasses, and a few years ago,
Speaker 3: these little cuties recreated the American gothic painting for the
Speaker 3: cover of American Funeral Director. It's adorable, stupid question, but
Speaker 3: are there any movies about death or dying that you
Speaker 3: particularly love that it seems to strike a chord with you.
Speaker 4: David the Nome, I don't know it, okay.
Speaker 5: David the Gnome was like a really popular cartoon series
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, and it came from Japan
Speaker 5: and came to the US and was on like PBS
Speaker 5: in like the early nineties, late eighties, and David the
Speaker 5: Nome and his wife Lisa, so the whole series is
Speaker 5: just like Gnome stuff basically, and that last episode they're
Speaker 5: just like, so Gnomes only live to be four hundred
Speaker 5: years old, but they know they're going to die on
Speaker 5: their four hundredth birthday.
Speaker 4: So he and Lisa Nome go up to a hill.
Speaker 3: So well they're well, my dear David, my husband.
Speaker 4: My last they're like weeping and so.
Speaker 1: Well, my beloved, I thank you for all the love
Speaker 1: you've given me.
Speaker 5: And then like swirls come and they die, may turn
Speaker 5: into trees and they had a pet fox. The Fox
Speaker 5: comes up there and sees his mom and dad are
Speaker 5: now trees and are dead and then he was left
Speaker 5: and he had to walk back home with two dead
Speaker 5: parents and that was the last episode. And yeah, that's
Speaker 5: a real clincher. Yeah, you know what, it's probably not
Speaker 5: actually helpful to see that.
Speaker 3: Oops. I watched it and cried, And if you want
Speaker 3: to watch, it's on YouTube. The title of the clip
Speaker 3: is just David the Gnome kicks the bucket. So how
Speaker 3: do you feel about how death and dying are portrayed
Speaker 3: in popular culture?
Speaker 5: In real life, when something when somebody dies, it is
Speaker 5: messy afterwards because your whole life is discombobulated and you know,
Speaker 5: everything is just off kilter. But I think that is
Speaker 5: a contributing factor because we don't have exposure to examples
Speaker 5: of good coping skills really in other parts of your
Speaker 5: life unless you grew up around it, you know, or
Speaker 5: you grew up in a family that talked openly about
Speaker 5: death and dying. And you know, I'm an instructor at
Speaker 5: a mortuary college and I teach sanatology for a bachelor program.
Speaker 5: So all of my students are funeral directors, are on bombers.
Speaker 5: Really interesting crowd to be able to teach, because you know,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking, okay, they want to learn. I'm teaching them panatology,
Speaker 5: but they work day in and day out with death
Speaker 5: and dying, and one of the first assignments in the
Speaker 5: course is they have to tell me about their upbringing
Speaker 5: and how they deal with death and dying. And a
Speaker 5: lot of them, even the ones who grew up in
Speaker 5: funeral homes, never actually talk or talked about death and
Speaker 5: dying with their families. There'd be dead bodies downstairs in
Speaker 5: the funeral home, but they never really like, really talked
Speaker 5: about it. And that I think is the most healthy
Speaker 5: thing that any family can do, is just have a
Speaker 5: real conversation about death and dying, whatever comes up, you
Speaker 5: talk about instead of it just being Grandma died.
Speaker 4: The funerals on Wednesday. Done.
Speaker 3: Please kiss her, Yes, it's it's open casket.
Speaker 4: On the hand, she will be cold and hard, but
Speaker 4: it's still your grandma.
Speaker 3: She'll put your mouth on her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just to rewind when you say funeral home and the
Speaker 3: bodies are downstairs, I'm sorry, is that actually a home?
Speaker 3: Did you live there? And then do people in funeral
Speaker 3: homes live there? And then the bodies are downta.
Speaker 5: Not all funeral homes, but some funeral homes it's very
Speaker 5: common and this is a vestige of like history sort of,
Speaker 5: but like it'd be very normal for the undertaker in
Speaker 5: town to have a home. And he was also the undertaker,
Speaker 5: but he had his family there currently today. And I
Speaker 5: know a lot of even my students, they're living on
Speaker 5: like the third floor of the funeral home and like
Speaker 5: the little apartment, and then the funeral home is on
Speaker 5: the main floor, and then the basement usually has like
Speaker 5: body storage and the blog and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: So but I'll tell you what, So I go to
Speaker 4: a lot of.
Speaker 5: The conventions and stuff in death care, and there's just
Speaker 5: some wonderful, wonderful stories about a lot of these couples,
Speaker 5: funeral director couple couples that like, you know, first date
Speaker 5: or second date and we're going back to my place
Speaker 5: and I have to tell my date that I live
Speaker 5: in a funeral home. And it's just it's just different.
Speaker 5: It's just interesting. I think it's fascinating. I think it's
Speaker 5: also lovely. It's a great way to wed out people
Speaker 5: who can't tolerate your life.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, when you're you know how people
Speaker 3: are like, oh, basements are so scary, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: mine's an actual morgue.
Speaker 4: Yes, I actually had dead bodies, And yes.
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen anything creepy? Or is your exposure
Speaker 3: and your familiarity with death and dying like kind of
Speaker 3: let you understand that, like there's nothing creepy. Ghosts aren't real,
Speaker 3: Like there's there's no bumps in the night.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean regularly I'm around dead people and it
Speaker 5: doesn't bother me, and it really never has.
Speaker 4: And in terms of like.
Speaker 5: Being scared of stuff, actually I'm not afraid of ghosts,
Speaker 5: but like I'll be home by myself sometimes and I'll
Speaker 5: like hear a noise and I'll be like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: the demons are coming into my home because I'll have
Speaker 5: just read some book about like demonology within some like
Speaker 5: weird ass like tradition or something, and I'm like, that
Speaker 5: demon is here, found me because I summoned it because
Speaker 5: I read its name out loud. So I will freaking
Speaker 5: I am. I am the most successful at freaking myself out.
Speaker 5: But I am not like I don't like the ghost
Speaker 5: thing or whatever. Although I've been studying quite a bit
Speaker 5: about Tibetan Buddhism in particular, and there are traditions and
Speaker 5: Tibetan Buddhists do not play when it.
Speaker 4: Comes to death and dying, Like what if you.
Speaker 5: Die if you're a Tibetan Buddhists and you believe that
Speaker 5: they'll do like a like kind of like a horoscope
Speaker 5: at the time of your death to figure out, according
Speaker 5: to the stars when, like how long your body should
Speaker 5: be left out, so that they can identify when.
Speaker 4: The soul actually leaves your body, because you.
Speaker 5: Do not want to bury or cremate someone when the
Speaker 5: soul is still in there. That's what you're trying to avoid.
Speaker 5: So that's a party, fol I don't know why I
Speaker 5: was talking about this. See this is the problem ghosts.
Speaker 5: I just got ghosts. So Tibetan Buddhists, it's about getting
Speaker 5: the soul out and then But there's this whole field
Speaker 5: of study within that about what happens if your soul
Speaker 5: isn't doing what it's supposed to do and it's left behind.
Speaker 5: And I have read some pretty compelling stuff over the
Speaker 5: years about those.
Speaker 4: Kinds of things. And I'm not saying that it's real
Speaker 4: or it's not real.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying that those accounts exist very thorough and
Speaker 5: like documented and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So I'm alone in my apartment Saturday night, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking up to betten Ghosts for this episode, and I'm
Speaker 3: like reading about a type of spirit that is just
Speaker 3: next level bummed out ghost. It's called a hunger ghost.
Speaker 3: They have a tiny throat and a huge stomach, and
Speaker 3: they can never be satisfied. They're said to arise with
Speaker 3: traumatic deaths. Anyway, right as I'm reading about this, this happened.
Speaker 3: I quickly I turn on my phone to record it.
Speaker 3: Hi there, how are you good? Thank you so much?
Speaker 3: I'm true. Oh sweet, that was the sound of a
Speaker 3: man coming up to my door delivering an extra large
Speaker 3: pizza to me. Just me reading about hungry ghosts. I'm
Speaker 3: meeting an extra large pizza by myself. But you know what,
Speaker 3: it's vegan and gluten free because I live in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and I'm the worst, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: die of any of those causes of death that don't
Speaker 3: involve falling off a roof. Okay, let's get back to it.
Speaker 3: Do you have a book or resource that you recommend
Speaker 3: to people who are just going through the throes of
Speaker 3: like a grieving process.
Speaker 4: The scale Her name is Joanne Fink.
Speaker 5: And she has a book because one day she woke
Speaker 5: up and her husband did not wake up with her
Speaker 5: very sadden that I expected. So I always recommend books
Speaker 5: that are written by people that have had like whoa
Speaker 5: And she has this little book and I actually buy
Speaker 5: this book. And this is what I give out to
Speaker 5: people when they've had a loss. And it's called When
Speaker 5: you Lose Someone you Love by Joanne Fink. I have
Speaker 5: a book that I recommend for people who like if
Speaker 5: you are going to be around someone who is like dying,
Speaker 5: like actively dying, like so that you know what to do.
Speaker 5: It's called Attending the Dying. And that's by Megory Anderson.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, super important scientific question. If you could become
Speaker 3: a ghost? Would you become a ghost?
Speaker 5: I like thought, I'm like, I'm gonna be honest. I
Speaker 5: looked into this really, Yeah, of course I did. I
Speaker 5: will look into anything. Do not check my search history
Speaker 5: because I guarantee you it is like probably offensive in
Speaker 5: some way, but that all that information is out there
Speaker 5: and that probably makes me sound very hippy dippy. But
Speaker 5: if anything I've learned over the years, it's like, don't
Speaker 5: I don't make assumptions about anything anymore.
Speaker 3: What does science say about the soul leaving the body?
Speaker 4: Yes, so.
Speaker 5: I love this question because this is where religious and
Speaker 5: cultural and social beliefs intersect with the science, and it's
Speaker 5: where we hit the big question mark and the big
Speaker 5: conflict abound our physical bodies. So there is nothing scientifically
Speaker 5: that I'm aware of that's like.
Speaker 4: Oh, this is where your soul is.
Speaker 5: The So this idea of soul is informed by the
Speaker 5: non physical science side of things, and it comes down
Speaker 5: to what do you believe.
Speaker 3: So there's this whole mess of people who think that
Speaker 3: the soul is a thing and it weighs twenty one grams,
Speaker 3: partly because of the two thousand and three blockbuster twenty
Speaker 3: one grams. Now from the trailer that I just watched
Speaker 3: on YouTube, it seems to be about a bunch of
Speaker 3: sad people and Benicio del Toro's in it needing a makeover.
Speaker 3: But this original idea stemmed from the scientific experiments of
Speaker 3: a fellow named McDougall, who in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 3: had this idea to wait around like a really eagle
Speaker 3: eied umpire near the dying and then scoot them over
Speaker 3: to a big scale at their big moment to see
Speaker 3: if they lost any weight as they passed, and he
Speaker 3: measured a bunch of folks and ignored most of the numbers,
Speaker 3: but he did report a small handful who lost about
Speaker 3: twenty one grams of weight as they died. He also
Speaker 3: tried this on dogs he wanted to at least, but
Speaker 3: he couldn't find any super sick dogs. But then suddenly
Speaker 3: he had a bunch of data on dogs and people
Speaker 3: were like, McDougall, did you poison the dogs? And he
Speaker 3: was like, huh what No. Nobody believed him. In general,
Speaker 3: people didn't believe him because that twenty one grams of
Speaker 3: weight loss wasn't a consistent figure anyway, and also because
Speaker 3: that could just be due to sweat loss. Can I
Speaker 3: just say that. When I was looking up the trailer
Speaker 3: for twenty one grams, YouTube suggested a video about why
Speaker 3: Hollywood doesn't care about Hillary Swank anymore, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: click that, I'll take the bait. I found that video
Speaker 3: to be more depressing than the part of the website
Speaker 3: about pod coffins that detailed waiting out rigor mortis before
Speaker 3: shaping you into a fetal ball and putting you into
Speaker 3: the biodegrade of lag. Let the woman win some oscars.
Speaker 3: Why you got a hate honor. So some people believe
Speaker 3: in souls, some people don't.
Speaker 5: Because this is the thing that impacts the way that
Speaker 5: you are going to live your life or approach your life.
Speaker 5: Because if you believe that your soul's a real deal thing,
Speaker 5: that's probably going to impact some like your decision making process.
Speaker 5: But if you don't believe it, or if you've never
Speaker 5: heard of this concept before, you know, you may make
Speaker 5: decisions differently. There's this thing called insulment another keyword learning word.
Speaker 5: Insulment is discussed in every religious tradition that I know of,
Speaker 5: and it discusses when does the soul enter the body,
Speaker 5: because religious traditions look at that point to decide when
Speaker 5: you are an actual life, because you're not a full
Speaker 5: life until you have body plus soul, So you become
Speaker 5: a life in different points. So in Judaism, it's the
Speaker 5: fortieth day of gestation.
Speaker 4: That's when your life so.
Speaker 5: And in Judaism, well, traditional I guess is the way
Speaker 5: to say, if you have like a miscarriage, you technically
Speaker 5: there's no grieving in quotes because it wasn't actually a life.
Speaker 5: And then that is something called disenfranchised grief. Keyword disenfranchised
Speaker 5: grief is something that happens when like, let's say you
Speaker 5: have a miscarriage and you people be like, oh, at
Speaker 5: least it wasn't a real baby, and you're like, I'm
Speaker 5: still sad, I'm still devastated.
Speaker 4: That's disenfranchised grief.
Speaker 5: It's when you're grieving but society, your cultural norms, will say.
Speaker 4: Oh, but you're not entitled to those feelings.
Speaker 3: So it's other people being bitchy about your grief. Yes,
Speaker 3: also its Disadvantchisle or Dicks. Yes, so you can you
Speaker 3: are a certified crematory operator. Yes, okay, sorry to jump
Speaker 3: back to cremation, but it's growing in popularity and I've
Speaker 3: just I felt hazy on the details.
Speaker 5: So like a lot of states now require that for
Speaker 5: someone to operate the crematory, that you need to have
Speaker 5: and it's really like just.
Speaker 4: Like a little simple test. I mean, just you need
Speaker 4: to not be an idiot.
Speaker 3: So I mean to not be an idiot. Yeah, throw
Speaker 3: your car keys in with the body yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like don't like get in there for fun because
Speaker 5: it's not Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is such a stupid question. But when they when
Speaker 3: someone is cremated, they're cremated in a casket, right or not.
Speaker 4: A lot of okay, So okay, cremation.
Speaker 5: So I believe all states in the United States require
Speaker 5: you to be cremated in a cardboard outer container at
Speaker 5: a minimum, So that's basically a cardboard box. And it's
Speaker 5: like basically body cardboard, right, and you get you get
Speaker 5: slid in. People also will buy like wood caskets, Like
Speaker 5: so let's say that like cold eyes, husband buys me
Speaker 5: a beautiful casket cherry wood, and then I'm just I'm
Speaker 5: laid out and there's like a visitation, and then I
Speaker 5: get cremated in that same casket. So it'll burn up
Speaker 5: the wood, right, but not in like a metal casket.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, so some of the ashes might also be
Speaker 3: casket ashes.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, carbon is well no, because at that temperature, okay,
Speaker 5: so the wood goes completely Why because you're cremated between
Speaker 5: sixteen and eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, very hot. When the
Speaker 5: body is cremated, all that is left if the cremation
Speaker 5: is done to completion, like if it's done right, is
Speaker 5: calcium bicarbonate. That's what's left, and there is no genetic
Speaker 5: material left. So like you, let's say that I was
Speaker 5: just a bunch of cremated remains and you wanted to
Speaker 5: DNA test it to see, like, oh, let's see if
Speaker 5: that's actually cool if you're cremated appropriately, there's no genetic
Speaker 5: material left at all to be able to test that.
Speaker 3: And I understand that there's a pretty good chance that
Speaker 3: you might get a couple of flakes of dust from
Speaker 3: somebody else in there too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that absolutely happens.
Speaker 5: There's no way to get one hundred percent of everything
Speaker 5: out of the retort the cremation chamber because think about
Speaker 5: what happened.
Speaker 4: Okay, you have a bonfire.
Speaker 5: What happens when it gets really hot, right, it swirls,
Speaker 5: It swirls around, and you get like hot wind that
Speaker 5: happens inside the cremation chamber. And the cremation chamber is
Speaker 5: much bigger than the size of a body, and so
Speaker 5: you get all these little parts and stuff that fly around,
Speaker 5: and there's things like static electricity that can hold things up.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so and.
Speaker 3: What about embalming and body preparation. Do you do any
Speaker 3: of that or are you like NAT's not my bag.
Speaker 4: I am not a licensed and bomber.
Speaker 5: However, I have witnessed them and know about them, and
Speaker 5: I deal with that in my job pretty you know,
Speaker 5: pretty regularly. So embalming is so it's interesting quite a
Speaker 5: few of my students. All they want to do morning
Speaker 5: tonight is embombed. That's it. That's all they want to do.
Speaker 5: And just like I am, like I love working with
Speaker 5: death and dying. I'm into it, They're like, I love embalming.
Speaker 5: They love it. Why, Yeah, that's that's what they you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's there's got to be somebody, and there
Speaker 5: are a lot of families and people who embalming is
Speaker 5: part of their family tradition or their religious tradition and
Speaker 5: it's important to them.
Speaker 3: Do you think that people who are in the death
Speaker 3: and dying industry are a certain personality type or does
Speaker 3: it really? Does it totally run the gamut? Like does
Speaker 3: your stereotype of what a mortician is, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of stoic and quiet? Is that? Is that completely untrue?
Speaker 5: So this is like love talking about this because in
Speaker 5: deathcare currently in the United States, we are having a
Speaker 5: huge shift in who are like quote unquote typical funeral
Speaker 5: director is so twenty years ago, it was by far
Speaker 5: male dominated and like men, men, men, men. Now it's
Speaker 5: female dominated. Most of the students enrolled in mortuary school
Speaker 5: or women, and I believe that's nationwide now really Yeah.
Speaker 5: So you know how like the nursing profession was male
Speaker 5: dominated and then it became like women. Now we're having
Speaker 5: that happen in death care. And I'm personally very excited
Speaker 5: about that because I feel like the role of the
Speaker 5: funeral director is shifting in the United States right now.
Speaker 5: Also within death care the profession, we're starting to see
Speaker 5: an increase in our educational standards. You know, I'm teaching
Speaker 5: a bachelor part of a Bachelor of Funeral Service degree
Speaker 5: because the standard now has been a two year associate's degree.
Speaker 5: Oh to become a funeral director or in a walmer
Speaker 5: and not all states require that WHOA, and it varies
Speaker 5: state to state. So in Colorado, for example, there's no
Speaker 5: requirement for education to become a funeral director.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 4: But like I love it.
Speaker 3: You're like, I could buy a dime bag at the
Speaker 3: grocery store. Weedy funeral director like Colorado, Yeah, Wild West.
Speaker 5: Yes, I hope that all funeral directors are required to
Speaker 5: have a four year degree.
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Speaker 3: You ready for some questions from listeners.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, oh my gosh, we.
Speaker 3: Had some questions other than I feel like I have
Speaker 3: a million questions to ask you just because I'm like,
Speaker 3: what's gonna happen when I die? Should I be afraid?
Speaker 3: But what am I doing? Okay? Karen wants to know
Speaker 3: how accurate is the expression la petite more in describing
Speaker 3: an orgasm. He said, I won't be mad if you
Speaker 3: don't ask this.
Speaker 5: Well, actually, let me talk about thus for a second.
Speaker 5: So in many Eastern traditions in that world, the Eastern
Speaker 5: tradition teaches that when you're asleep, it is one sixtieth
Speaker 5: of death, and so we actually take yoga to practice death.
Speaker 5: We leave that out in America because Americans don't believe
Speaker 5: they're going to die.
Speaker 3: But that's why.
Speaker 5: You do the physical practice of yoga is to become
Speaker 5: more comfortable with it when it comes to orgasming. Different
Speaker 5: traditions teach that you are between death and full life,
Speaker 5: Like you drop into like this sort of in between
Speaker 5: state and you become more closer to death at that point.
Speaker 4: Really, Oh, I mean like, yeah, so.
Speaker 3: That's an actual thing. That's not just the French being
Speaker 3: French and dramatic.
Speaker 4: No, I mean yeah, I mean yeah, good question.
Speaker 3: Good question, okay. Points John wants to know what did
Speaker 3: your parents say when you told them you wanted to
Speaker 3: study death, and death is in all caps.
Speaker 5: I just want you to know it's because it's scary,
Speaker 5: so and you should fear it. I never asked them,
Speaker 5: I just kind of did it.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, Mark wants to know her science. It might
Speaker 3: it be possible for human death to be permanently postponed.
Speaker 3: Is that something we should strive for? And if so,
Speaker 3: how will that change us? I think that would make
Speaker 3: us bigger dicks.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it would, and dicks for the wrong reasons. Like,
Speaker 5: I think, from a scientific viewpoint, it's great to be
Speaker 5: able to understand the dynamics of that process and like
Speaker 5: how that actually works, how you turn it on, turn
Speaker 5: it off. But I don't think for the good of
Speaker 5: society or the world that having a deathless world is good. Right,
Speaker 5: that's bad too many people, And I'm sure I have
Speaker 5: people who would be like, oh, you're wrong, But that's
Speaker 5: what I believe. And I've worked with death and dying
Speaker 5: a lot, right.
Speaker 3: I feel like humans are kind of like a cockroach
Speaker 3: plague on the earth a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're a dirty, we're messy. We don't leave things
Speaker 5: better than when we found them.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Got we gotta die off or else we can't make
Speaker 3: room for new people's right. Phoebe wants to know cell
Speaker 3: death being what it is. Is there a layman's terms
Speaker 3: short version of how the chemicals used in funery prep
Speaker 3: postponed the decomposition process till after our weird open cast funeral, writes, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so she's asking we sell death. How do the chemicals
Speaker 3: postpone decomposition? How do they do that?
Speaker 5: So it's it's chemistry basically, So okay, So when you die,
Speaker 5: like your skin and all that stuff like dehydrates, okay,
Speaker 5: and so when the chemicals and so after, like if
Speaker 5: you're doing a bombing, your blood is drained out and
Speaker 5: it goes down the drain into the sewer, just like
Speaker 5: your p and your poop does. Really yeah, and the
Speaker 5: water treatment plants process all that out just like they
Speaker 5: process out pee and poop and whatever the heck else
Speaker 5: do you flush down there?
Speaker 3: It's also blood, right yep.
Speaker 5: So that's step one, step two then depending on how
Speaker 5: you died. So like if you if you were jaundice
Speaker 5: to when you die, you're gonna have yellow casts to
Speaker 5: your skin. Well, there's embombing chemicals and ingredients that are
Speaker 5: designed to counteract that so that you don't look yellow
Speaker 5: when you are in your casket.
Speaker 3: Right now, you've got to look good. It's the last
Speaker 3: time some of these people are going to see you.
Speaker 5: That's right, because we are vain. Even when we're not
Speaker 5: that we're vain. We just know that we want to
Speaker 5: continue that. You go, Yeah, So this mixture is made.
Speaker 5: In the mixture, it's a chemical reaction, but it rehydrates
Speaker 5: the skin so that it doesn't so you don't look dead,
Speaker 5: and then it also corrects. It can do things like
Speaker 5: color correct or counteract whatever made you be dead.
Speaker 3: Whatever made you be dead? Yeah, cause of death, the
Speaker 3: thing that made me be dead. Yeah, let me see, Oh, Jennifer,
Speaker 3: is a great question, Jennifer. I keep hearing that when
Speaker 3: you die, the same chemical in ayahuasca is released into
Speaker 3: your body by your brain.
Speaker 5: Are we really all tripping when we die? Dimethyl tripped
Speaker 5: to mean aka DMT. So ayahuasca is I say it
Speaker 5: ayahuasca that has d MT in it plus other stuff?
Speaker 4: Right now, the.
Speaker 5: Pinial gland and the brain makes DMT basically, like we
Speaker 5: make a little bit of that and then that's what
Speaker 5: makes us dream. Wow, next level, our bodies are when
Speaker 5: you die, as far as I'm aware, and I'm sure
Speaker 5: someone would will post to correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: You your body does release d mt okay and other
Speaker 5: stuff like there's some of chemical things that happen. So
Speaker 5: this idea of if you're like, are you tripping when
Speaker 5: you die, Well, keep in mind that all of your
Speaker 5: senses have probably if if you're dying sort of naturally,
Speaker 5: your senses will have shut down. So if you have
Speaker 5: ever tripped as a living person, you know you have,
Speaker 5: you had sensory input happening when you're dying, and at
Speaker 5: the moment of death, you're not going to be physically
Speaker 5: where you were when you were tripping and alive, so
Speaker 5: it's not going to be the same thing.
Speaker 4: It doesn't function the same way. Does that make sense right?
Speaker 3: Because you're not at Bonnaroo using all of your faculties. Yes,
Speaker 3: you're somewhere much more quiet without those faculties, so I
Speaker 3: get it. So it's kind of like if you had
Speaker 3: a kaleidoscope, but you had less input into the kaleidoscope.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: And the thing is that we don't really know what's
Speaker 5: happening there. But I look at that and I keep
Speaker 5: in mind that, like, our bodies are not functioning the
Speaker 5: same way that they normally do, so it's going to
Speaker 5: be different.
Speaker 3: So it's probably not going to be like you're in
Speaker 3: Joshua Tree, like in a weird triviy orgy. Okay, you're
Speaker 3: not like a burning man. You're definitely not at Bernie
Speaker 3: Man Blake wants to know. Is there any truth to
Speaker 3: involuntary body movements after death, like bodies sitting up and
Speaker 3: muscle twitching and groaning and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, like the sitting up thing, I've never heard
Speaker 5: of that actually happening, But like a like a like a.
Speaker 4: Like a ressing that happens.
Speaker 5: That's not uncommon because depending on how you die or
Speaker 5: what you die of, there can be like a pocket
Speaker 5: of air or something that comes out. But it's not
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just like sometimes it's the result of
Speaker 5: just moving the.
Speaker 4: Body around or shifting it.
Speaker 5: Okay, So yeah, I've never heard of like somebody sitting
Speaker 5: up in actuality, And I hang out with a lot
Speaker 5: of funeral records, so.
Speaker 3: You yeah, you got the goods. I did hear that
Speaker 3: that a friend of mine and her fiance were at
Speaker 3: his grandmother's funeral, and they went up to the casket
Speaker 3: and they both swear they heard her breathe like a interesting.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I am one hundred percent not a doctor,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna guess that this sound is kind of
Speaker 3: akin to the breeze passing through a flute, just the
Speaker 3: gentle song of happenstance. And Stephanie had a question. She
Speaker 3: wanted to know if and this is funny because I
Speaker 3: know her and her birthdays on Halloween. She wants to
Speaker 3: know if you find Halloween like kind of not irritating,
Speaker 3: but what your stance is on Halloween because it's such
Speaker 3: a like macab holiday, but you deal with a lot
Speaker 3: of the themes that we explore one day year in
Speaker 3: your daily life, Like how do you feel about Halloween
Speaker 3: and how macab it is?
Speaker 4: I mean, I enjoy Halloween.
Speaker 5: A lot of people within the death and dying world,
Speaker 5: whether they work in like the funeral side, or they're
Speaker 5: like even like hospice workers or something, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of people.
Speaker 4: That like love it and they live for Halloween.
Speaker 5: And I appreciate that, and I like Halloween, but I'm
Speaker 5: not obsessed with it, Like honestly, it's just like A.
Speaker 5: I give it a C plus in terms of holidays
Speaker 5: and my like calendar of events.
Speaker 3: What's right holiday?
Speaker 4: So I love Yam Kippoor.
Speaker 5: I'm Jewish, and that's the day of atonement, so where
Speaker 5: it's where you like think about what you did. And
Speaker 5: obviously because I deal with death and dying, I really
Speaker 5: enjoy the opportunity.
Speaker 4: Every year to like really think about what I did.
Speaker 5: Also, I'm a little bit intense, so I love on
Speaker 5: before anyway, Halloween. And what's interesting probably if you met me,
Speaker 5: because you only are hearing me, I do not like
Speaker 5: dressing all black, and I'm not like.
Speaker 3: Like you're not uber goth.
Speaker 5: You probably wouldn't look at me and know that I'm
Speaker 5: like death person or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, I would think you're a graphic design or an artists.
Speaker 4: Like a design person.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, I like and appreciate Halloween.
Speaker 4: How it is not my number one.
Speaker 3: So what's scarier than Halloween it's being a pansy. Now
Speaker 3: Here is where I casually shower Cole with wonder and
Speaker 3: praise about all the things she's gotten done in her life.
Speaker 3: I do feel like knowing your life you're getting you
Speaker 3: have gotten the most out of it, Like I think
Speaker 3: that if anything, your proximity to death and dying shows
Speaker 3: in how you choose to live your life and all
Speaker 3: the things that you're so passionate about and what you've
Speaker 3: learned and what you've done. And you know, that's a
Speaker 3: lot of people I don't think would take that risk,
Speaker 3: probably because they're just like me. I'm not going to die,
Speaker 3: I'm not that forever, and I'm also going to win.
Speaker 5: A lot of we're or a lot of people just
Speaker 5: are like waiting for the thing to discover them, right,
Speaker 5: and it doesn't work that way and doesn't Dying is
Speaker 5: not to be feared.
Speaker 4: It's the living like.
Speaker 5: Fear your life choices, That's where the fear can come from,
Speaker 5: you know, And the fear of like like not like
Speaker 5: what happens if you don't do the thing that you've
Speaker 5: been wanting to do.
Speaker 3: That's so real. Yeah, Like you are true.
Speaker 5: You owe it to yourself to do that, and you
Speaker 5: owe it to everyone that came before you to do that.
Speaker 5: You owe it to the world, You owe to us
Speaker 5: to be who you're supposed to be.
Speaker 3: And what is your will go least favorite to favorite,
Speaker 3: your least favorite thing about your job, and it could
Speaker 3: be anything. It could be like an early hours, could
Speaker 3: be being on call, anything.
Speaker 4: Not a fan of email, not a fan of email.
Speaker 5: Guys, like real hard for me to just I just
Speaker 5: because it's like I want to be talking to people,
Speaker 5: and I just I really don't like email. I don't
Speaker 5: appreciate it. I don't enjoy it. I don't want it
Speaker 5: in my life.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I love it.
Speaker 6: As someone who deals with corpses, the worst thing is email. Yeah,
Speaker 6: what's your favorite thing about the job, or favorite moment
Speaker 6: on a job, or or the thing that really gets
Speaker 6: you out of bed in the morning.
Speaker 4: A lot of times it's I don't know what it is.
Speaker 5: I think I have radar or something or like a
Speaker 5: beacon that is sending out. But I can be in
Speaker 5: an immediate, deep, intense conversation involving tears with somebody I
Speaker 5: just met in a heartbeat, and it is because of
Speaker 5: my work and death and dying.
Speaker 4: One time I was in.
Speaker 3: I took out the name of the museum at Cole's request,
Speaker 3: just in case, just to keep identities private. So let's pretend,
Speaker 3: for the sake of anonymity, that she was at the
Speaker 3: British Lawnmower Museum. Which is a real place, which.
Speaker 4: Is a fantastic museum.
Speaker 5: And I got my ticket and I went to go upstairs,
Speaker 5: and the guy that takes the tickets, he was like, oh,
Speaker 5: He's like, you've interesting hair, youre an artist. I'm like no,
Speaker 5: And I was trying to go upstairs and he's like,
Speaker 5: who are you?
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, I actually work in death
Speaker 5: and dying, and he like stone cold face. All of
Speaker 5: a sudden, he goes my best friend committed suicide recently,
Speaker 5: and I almost didn't come to work today because I've
Speaker 5: been struggling. And I was able to immediately talk to
Speaker 5: this individual for well over thirty minutes. But I wouldn't
Speaker 5: have had that wonderful opportunity to connect with that gentleman
Speaker 5: who was feeling very alone if I didn't work in
Speaker 5: death and dying and have this training and thanatology and
Speaker 5: all this kind of stuff. And for that, I'm incredibly grateful,
Speaker 5: because being alone is the worst thing in the world
Speaker 5: for anybody, and a lot of times people feel alone
Speaker 5: with stuff related to loss, and there's so few people
Speaker 5: in the world that are equipped or comfortable to be
Speaker 5: present for that.
Speaker 4: You know, we want to push it away.
Speaker 5: So that's some example of something I love, which is
Speaker 5: intense and sad but overall great.
Speaker 3: So it's funny because I'm leaving this conversation much more
Speaker 3: cheerful than I thought I would be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like good.
Speaker 3: I was ready to start. I was like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: probably gonna end up super scared and bawling, and I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I just had to live instead of
Speaker 3: fearing death. Yeah, I just have to get more excited
Speaker 3: about actually being alive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, every time you encounter death in some way, it
Speaker 5: is an opportunity to choose to live.
Speaker 4: Mm hm, it really is.
Speaker 3: I have a feeling you're going to be America's favorite panatologist.
Speaker 4: That's the goal, at least the only purple haired one
Speaker 4: that I know of.
Speaker 3: As she left, Cole handed me a ziploc bag and
Speaker 3: in it were five freshly baked, fucking delicious sugar cookies,
Speaker 3: and she said, I can't help it, I'm Midwestern. She
Speaker 3: also gave me a pen that she had specially printed
Speaker 3: with type inspired by vintage gravestone fonts and a simple
Speaker 3: black clickie clickpen bearing the words I don't have time
Speaker 3: for bullshit. We parted ways and I went upstairs in
Speaker 3: my room. I ate more than one of the cookies,
Speaker 3: and then I just I wished this chick lived in California.
Speaker 3: Now to gently stock Cole and Pery and be her friend.
Speaker 3: Check out her website hellocoal dot com. She's on Instagram
Speaker 3: as just In Perry. She's on Twitter as Coal and Pari.
Speaker 3: So I hope as you listen to this that you
Speaker 3: walked away with some kind of new appreciation for being
Speaker 3: not dead. I mean, confront death, plan for it, talk
Speaker 3: about it, accept it, but don't fear it. It doesn't
Speaker 3: make our lives any better while we're living them. So
Speaker 3: thanks for listening. Thank you to everyone supporting on Patreon.
Speaker 3: I appreciate every single one of you. You make this
Speaker 3: self produced passion of mine and reality. And if I
Speaker 3: had died without doing it, my life would have been
Speaker 3: dimmer and I would have choked on regret. Thank you
Speaker 3: for making ologies real. It changes my life on a
Speaker 3: daily basis. Now, if you want to wrap ologies ologies,
Speaker 3: merch has shirts and hats and t shirts and now
Speaker 3: are you ready for this? Pins enamel pins with the
Speaker 3: first four ologies are up and they are so incredible.
Speaker 3: So thanks Shannon Felts for the design and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 3: for the merch.
Speaker 5: Help.
Speaker 3: These pins are awesome and they're limited edition, so if
Speaker 3: you want them, get them sooner rather than later. Just saying,
Speaker 3: and now, more than ever, asks smart people all the
Speaker 3: dumb questions you want. Well, you're still romping around on
Speaker 3: Earth as a bucket of freaky stardust. Next week, I'm
Speaker 3: honestly not sure which episode it'll be. It might be Entomology,
Speaker 3: it might be Cosmos. I'm not sure. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's tay tuned, it'll be something now pacadermatology, biology, do zoology, lithology, zemiology, meteorology, apology, serology.
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