March 11, 2016 • 58 mins
What will the cemeteries of the future be like? Will we bury our dead in skyscrapers? Or in forests?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomed up Forward Thinking the
podcast and looks at the future. It says, I'm all
dressed up with nowhere to go. I'm Jonathan Stricker, I'm
(00:21):
La and I'm Joe McCormick. And today, Yeah, we're gonna
talk about something cheerful, right Lauren, Nope, Nope, We're We're
going to talk about the future of burial. Yeah. This
was actually when I when we started talking earlier this
week about what podcast sort of topics do we want
to look at? Um, this was one I sent around
(00:41):
Buried if you will, in a list of several, and I,
being the goth kid at heart that I am, was like, oh, hey,
let's do this. Let's let's do the one talking about death.
Part of this is because I've kind of had it
on the brain more than usual lately, because I got
to be on a on a pan with Julie Douglas
for her new show Stuff of Life, in which we
(01:04):
were talking about how how people process death in our
culture and and it was a really interesting discussion. Um uh,
Julian I got to go interview a professor who studies
death culture and and that was a really fascinating thing.
The one of those episodes is up and other should
be up soon. Let's let's mention it now while we're
talking about other shows. Joe, you guys over and Stuff
(01:24):
to Blow your Mind. Recently did an upset about burial correct?
Not well, depends on what you mean by recently. Robert
Lamb and I on the other podcast I do. We
did the Stuff to Flow Your Mind episode called Human Remains, Past,
Present in Future in September. Wait September, No, it wasn't September.
It was October. It was October, sort of kind of
(01:47):
getting into the spirit of Halloween. I am right, Yeah,
it fit our October theme all all all months we
do creepy stuff. That's fair so as opposed to other
times when nothing you say is creepy. All okay, since
we're talking about other shows, I'll alway mentioned this. Uh,
not that you could listen to it or see it,
although there's a documentary where I briefly appear in in it.
(02:07):
Where I was doing this, I did a a two
man show. I wrote and acted in a two man
show about the history of burial practices and funeral practices,
and we performed it at uh at a cemetery, historic
cemetery here in Atlanta, historic Oakland Cemetery where Margaret Mitchell
(02:28):
is buried. Yes, and uh, two different people acted in that,
um besides myself, Bernie Clark and Nick Takowski, who are
both local artists madmen types here in Atlanta, and I
think they would appreciate those labels. But so we did
this this sort of comedic uh grave diggers from Hamlet
(02:52):
type presentation. So I've been fascinated by this for quite
some time, not just the future of rural practices, but
the present state and how we got to that. Now,
we're not gonna go too far looking into the past.
We're really going to talk about what goes on today
and how that might change over time and why it
(03:12):
might change. Yeah, and so okay, so we're gonna we're
gonna be talking about some some very serious kind of topics.
But but we're all going to die, you guys. And
and this is the thing that we all have to
deal with. Well, Kurts is not okay, well fair to everyone,
but Kurtswile is going to die. So yeah, so so
so let's so let's get into it today. UH. And
(03:34):
apparently in countries other than the United States, embalming is
not very it's not a very common practice at all,
but here it's it's quite common. Yeah. Yeah, I think
a lot of like the average American might assume that embalming,
the way we typically very dead in funeral homes in
the United States is just how it's always been done.
(03:54):
It's not the case. It's not the case here, and
it's not the case in other parts of the world.
We're largely going to be talking about the way it's
done here in the United States because that's where we live,
and also to cover all the different variations all over
the world, that would be a series unto itself, certainly. UM.
But embalming is not mandated in the United States except
(04:14):
in certain states under certain conditions. UH. A few will
require embalming if a body needs to be transported across
state lines, for example. But that's not all the states,
it's just a few. But it still has become kind
of the standard practice, UH, for multiple reasons. UM. There
are some religions that forbid embalming. It is against their
(04:36):
religion to to treat the body in that way. Orthodox
Jews and Muslims both hold those beliefs. Uh. There are
others as well that other faiths that require the body
to be cremated rather than buried, so it's not common
all the way across the board. You might often find
cremation in Hinduism exactly as that is one of them.
(04:57):
So embalming in the United States didn't even become that
standard practice until the Civil War, which makes sense. The
Civil War you had thousands of soldiers dying and so
they would be embalmed before the bodies would be shipped
back to their hometowns. From that point forward, embalming became
more of a standard process in funerals in the United States.
(05:21):
It's really all about preservation. Yeah, in a weird way,
I would almost say that embalming is a physical It's
like the science of the denial of death, a technological
realization of pushing death out of our out of our
view by making it look for as long as possible,
(05:41):
like you, you're really pretty much still alive. Yeah, it's
it's mainly to stave off the decomposition process as long
as possible. And I agree with you, Joe, that that
is largely I think due to our our our philosophy,
our feelings about death, and they're pretty complicated. But ultimately,
(06:03):
I think a lot of people like the idea of
of this this preservation so that you can almost compartmentalize
it in your mind and and it it doesn't have
as strong an effect emotionally on you in that way.
Julie and I got to talk to to to live
stuts doctor Lives stuts Is is the professor's name, a
(06:24):
little bit about this very subject, and she she put
forth a theory that has been discussed in the industries
some that that death practices, like death rituals for the living,
are a sort of way of of dealing with an
in between state of the body of the deceased. Uh,
(06:44):
it's sort of sort of like a transitional state, a
sort of coming of age ceremony almost like a like
a like like an end of age ceremony, sort of
like like prom but for you know, dead bodies. And
which makes sense considering the SONGNI this very much like
a problem for it for dead people are right and
so um and so yeah. So it's it's letting the
(07:07):
living take the deceased through this this in between stage
into the finality. Of being buried, right, but so when
so there are psychological reasons we do this, but doing
it doesn't come without cost. Oh yeah, yeah, that the
practical application is pretty morbid. Yeah, and uh yeah, there's
(07:29):
their costs, both psychologically, financially and environmentally as it turns out. So,
and that's sort of what we're going to focus on
today is some of these alternative methods of dealing with
bodies after we have died in ways that might be
less costly and less environmentally destructive. In some cases they
might be more so, but there are super cool we'll
(07:50):
get into that. So if you're talking about the traditional
involving process, the way it works is the body is
is stripped of cloe oaths, it's washed h then you
use a tube with a needle. You inject the needle
into an artery, and you the tube is connected to
an embalming machine which pumps embalming fluid into the body. UM.
(08:12):
That fluid is specifically designed to prevent bacteria from growing
uh and other organisms as well, thus leading to the decomposition.
So it's to preserve the body, usually long enough so
that you can have your memorial service and your funeral service.
UM and we're talking about a pretty significant amount of
(08:32):
this stuff per body, and then you think about how
many people die every year, it really starts to add up.
So you use about a gallon of this embalming fluid
for every fifty pounds of the persons, or three leaders
per every twenty three or so. That's right. So it's
a fairly significant amount of this stuff and embalming fluid.
Typically it's not bio friendly, not in the US. In
(08:55):
the US, it typically contains formaldehyde as one of the
ingredients and that's a our synogen. So you there are
a lot of people who are concerned about this carcinogen
finding its way into the water table, you know, eventually uh,
moving from the body into the soil and then getting
absorbed into that particular call it ecosystem and UH it's
(09:19):
it's such a big concern in some places that they
have moved the places that still practice embalming, they have
moved from that to other types of chemicals. In the UK,
UH there was actually a call for a band of
for malde hyde back in and the industry started moving
towards using UH gluterol hide gluderol to hide a boy.
(09:41):
I don't know if I'll ever say that the way
it's supposed to be said. But it's glutterol to hide
based fluids which are less toxic than for malde hyde.
So that's the sounds like. You don't talk about gluterald
to hide all that much. Not so often, really, I don't.
It doesn't come up. And most of my conversations, Yeah,
I hang out with the different crowd these days, we
(10:02):
mostly talk about pokemons pokemon. Yeah, we don't know what
they are. We just talk about them and how you've
got to grab them all we know, we know there's
some grabbing of pokemons. That's about it. To make a
little transition, you know what you do with pokemons as
you put them inside a container like almost like a coffin,
exceptance of ball. Yeah, we're gonna talk about coffins now.
(10:23):
So also sometimes in the US called caskets, although that
term is not frequently used in places like the UK
or Australia, not for a coffin anyway. A casket may
just be a container for jewelry, but in the US
coffin and casket tends to be used pretty much interchangeably.
So these days they the standard coffins that you would
find are really meant as a barrier between the body
(10:45):
and the elements. They're not impermeable. Normally, they're made out
of things like wood or metal, and they're lined with
some sort of plush material. But there are some coffins
that come with a rubber seal to make them as
close to impermeable as possible, the idea being that this way.
Really don't want this, yeah, yeah, but the idea being
that it's supposed to prevent water from coming in, because,
(11:07):
as the grave digger from Hamlet will tell you, water
will ruin a body. Um, it's actually in the speech. Well, yeah,
it's it's preventing preventing water from getting in and preventing
the materials that make up the coffin and the contents
of the coffin from getting out. Yes, so that's really
what the purpose is. But you don't want to truly
(11:28):
impermeable coffin because as a body decomposes, it produces methane gas.
If you have a container that has no way to
vent the gas, that pressure builds and builds and builds
until yes, coffins can and sometimes do explode. We mentioned
this in our stuff to blow your mind episode exploding coffins. Yeah,
it's happened both in coffins that are buried under the
(11:50):
ground and coffin stored in mausoleums. Did you talk about
any mausoleums with explosions, because there's been a few cases
where mausoleums have been severely damaged through exploding coffins. Uh. So,
there are some coffins that are designed to vent this gas. Occasionally,
they're called burping coffins. They could have called it something else.
(12:12):
They could They could have called it farting coffins. That
would have been worse. So I don't know. For some reason,
I'm less grossed up by farting coffins. I mean, that's
a generational thing, I think at this point. Okay, that's
that's fair enough. I I just burping reminds me of tupperware.
I anyway, so you can tell it's still fresh. Um. So,
(12:33):
the coffin is then placed in what it's called a
burial vault, which is a sealed chamber mint to protect
the coffin from the weight of the earth that's above it,
as well as any machinery that has to pass over it.
So typically US cemeteries you're using something like a backhoe
in order to dig the grave site or the internment
site as they sometimes call it in the funeral business
(12:54):
um because they don't like to they don't like to
use words that make people think of death, which is
one of those weird culture things that I can totally
understand on one side, and I think it's totally weird
on the other side. It's also relatively recent. A lot
of the well, I mean funeral homes didn't even really
exist until around World War two or so, when it
(13:14):
became it started becoming so common to have in bombings
that we needed a whole industry to to offset it,
because embombing isn't the kind of thing that you that
you can d I Y at home. You know, the
big one in my hometown, Strickland Funeral Home. No no relation. Yeah,
small town in Georgia, Strickland Funeral Stricklands. Yeah, apparently not
(13:37):
related to it to my branch. Uh. If they were,
those that would be the family members we would be
mooching off of, because funeral directors tend to make a
lot of money um at any rate. So we've got
we've got the burping coffins, we've got the vaults that
we've talked about. The vaults are typically lined with either
concrete or steel so that they can create the support
(13:59):
system so that the ground does not cave in while
machinery is driving across it. If you don't have a vault,
the ground will tend to sink. Yes, sure, sure, so
so this right, this, This protects the coffin, and it
also protects the environment from the coffin and the contents
of the coffin, or you might say the appearance of
the burial grounds. That. Yeah, that's also a case, like
it would be somewhat disturbing to walk up to a
(14:20):
cemetery and see areas of sunken earth around. I mean,
it might feel a little weird. You might feel like
you're in a Romero film. Also, grass might stop growing
there because of toxic compounds and the coffins or the
embolbing fluid that also could happen stuff like that. So
there is a growing concern, which is probably pretty clear
(14:41):
from our conversation so far, that the traditional approach in
the United States to funerals is environmentally harmful through many aspects.
You've got the formalde hyde, which is a chemical concern Again,
not everyone gets embalmed before burial, so it's not always
a factor, but it's common enough where it's it's more
of the rule and less of the exception. Also, you've
(15:04):
got the fact that you're using woods, often fairly rare
woods for a lot of these coffins, and they're beautiful
and that's the point. But yeah, but it's not necessarily
sustainable wood that you're that's being used for these coffins.
So there's that environmental factor. And there's also the concern
about just the fact that cemeteries take up a lot
of open space, right, So that's space that could be
(15:26):
used for something else, especially in high concentration areas, like
I've read about the the problem in New York of well,
where are we going to bury people? We're just we're
out of places. Same in Tokyo. That's another I mean,
it's a really big problem. Mausoleums are off often a
solution to that because and I'll talk about them a
(15:46):
little bit more in just a second. Literally in just
a second, it's like a it's like a skyscraper for bodies. Yeah,
and we'll talk about more about that idea in greater
detail later too. So that that kind of brings us
to this this concept of entombment as post burial. So
in tum mont often you have a lot of the
same processes that lead up to the stage of burial,
(16:08):
except of course it's burying someone in the ground. You're
putting them in a crypt or a tomb or a
mausoleum above ground. And there are a lot of different
reasons to do this. One is if you happen to
live in a place where the soil is not good
for digging in, whether it's too rocky or it's too sandy,
it won't support itself, it will collapse in on itself
too easily, or the water table is too close to
(16:30):
the surface of the ground where you can't dig down
very far before you get water. There are a lot
of mausoleums in New Orleans, yeah, which also and it's
not just the water table there, it's also the propensity
for flooding that is a big concern. Yeah. New Orleans
cemeteries are amazing. Uh, that was one of my favorite
things to do. Oddly, I'm not a Michabra person in general,
(16:52):
but but the cemeteries are gothic and gorgeous and creepy.
And awesome all at the same time. And there's so
amazing stonework in some of these these cemeteries in New Orleans,
and it's all above ground because they couldn't dig down
to to bury their dead. So and tuman is definitely
one of those things that is common in certain parts
(17:15):
of the country and the world. But when we get
to masoleums, the the interesting thing there is that you
can be more conservative with your space. That's one of
the solutions to this problem of having a lot of
open space that you would have to dedicate to a
cemetery um. They can hold lots of unrelated people. It's
kind of like a cemetery, but in almost like a
(17:36):
file cabinet kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, and that doesn't
make them make them any less lovely than cemeteries can be.
I've I've had the opportunity to visit a number of
really beautiful, uh like large structure mausoleums and yeah, like
in Florida, mostly where at sea above re groundwater issue,
ground water table, the whole, the whole way these things
(17:57):
come about. They're very expend of initially, but but that
expense can easily be distributed amongst the population and then individually.
The process of having someone interred in a mazoleum can
be much cheaper than traditional burial depending upon the situation UM,
and they can be very lovely, respectful places. It's not
(18:21):
like it's, you know, a terrible alternative. UM. It also
depends upon how you view what should happen to someone
after they pass away. That also leads us to cremation,
which is the other major way of of of saying
goodbye to someone after they've passed on, and is one
that is mandated by certain religions as well. So before cremation, obviously,
(18:47):
what you would want to do is remove anything that
would not incinerate properly. Uh, anything artificial like an artificial
heart or prosthetic um. Sometimes even things like hip replacements
things like that can be removed moved so that you
can then place the body in a flammable coffin and
put it into the incineration chamber. Very high powered flame
(19:08):
is used to incinerate the body. Usually takes between two
to three hours, depending upon the size of the body
that we're talking about. UM. The ashes you get back
are really sort of the calcified, crumbled bones that are
left all the other tissues are essentially vaporized in this process. Um,
but fire pretty much breaks down everything I wasn't when
(19:29):
I was reading our We have an article at how
stuff Works about how cremation works that goes into much
greater detail about what happens to each type of tissue
throughout the cremation process. And as I read it, I thought,
that's not necessary for us to include in this for
it to be informative. But if you want to learn more,
I highly recommend reading how Cremation Works at how stuff
works dot com because it will it will totally inform you. Yeah. Now,
(19:53):
you mentioned about the cremains people receive or they're often
referred to as ashes, but of course they're not the
like we're saying. They're not the ashes of the soft
tissues of your body there the ground up bones. Yeah,
I think that's a lot of people don't know your
bones calcify and they essentially just crumble in the process
of this of this cremation um. And so that's what
(20:15):
you would receive in the cremins. They must be raked
out in the end, I believe. So. Uh, it's really,
by the way tricky to estimate what's the carbon footprint
of this process. So obviously you're talking about using a
lot of energy to burn a body. Uh, that's going
to have some sort of carbon footprint. But a lot
of different factors will take part here. We're talking about
(20:38):
again the size of the body. It's a larger body,
it's gonna take longer, so it's gonna require more energy.
It's also the time of day. Apparently I didn't know this,
but apparently the time of day also depends on determines
how big a carbon footprint is generated. Um and whether
or not. Uh the crematorium is doing this on a
(20:58):
case by case basis or in batches essentially. Uh So
a lot of those factors are making impossible for us
to really say what the carbon footprint is except to
say there is a carbon footprint here. Uh so you
are you know, is is not a carbon negative or
carbon neutral kind of approach to disposing of a body?
(21:21):
Well in case you are being environmentally conscious when you're
trying to do that, yeah, which I mean, you know
is especially especially in these are modern times, that is
absolutely a concern. Uh And and all of these practices
do have these environmental impacts and and right you know,
like like a lot of people are living a lot longer,
and that's wonderful. But we but we do have to
(21:42):
take this kind of stuff into consideration. Yeah, no, it's
it's and I think on an individual basis, it's a
lot easier to have this conversation than rather talk about
large groups of people, because then when you talking about
large groups of people, it sounds like you're mandating something,
and we certainly, of course never do that. It's so
deeply per sal Yeah, I mean, the grieving process is
(22:03):
incredibly personal. But there are some interesting alternatives that have
emerged over the past few years for people who want
to look into something else for you know, to happen
to their body after they pass on, so that it
falls in line with their individual philosophies. And one of
those that's growing in popularity is the natural burial concept.
(22:27):
The funny thing about this is there's really not that
much to it. Yeah, it's actually about as basic as
it gets. So you're essentially getting rid of a lot
of the stuff that's involved in your traditional US burial
system by by formaldehyd Yep. You don't use embombing fluid
by vault ye. You use a very simple biodegradable coffin
(22:49):
made out of or no coffin at all, or no
coffin at all, maybe just like a shroud or some
kind of cloth. Yeah, I think I think most people
look at at least some form of coffin. There's probably
a psychological element to that that I am not qualified
to speak on, but uh, the ones I've seen have
largely been biodegradable materials, sustainable materials as well. That's another
(23:13):
important part of it, because part of the philosophy of
the natural burial is to reduce the environmental impact of
your passing as much as possible, and so you want
the body to be able to deteriorate naturally, and that
includes the whatever coffin or other like wrapping or whatever
is around you as well. So I've actually seen some
(23:36):
really interesting solutions to this, a lot of interesting coffins,
like some that are gorgeous in their simplicity made out
of stuff. I've seen cardboard coffins, so those would degrade
pretty quickly. Um. I've seen bamboo and banana leaf coffins,
ritan coffin, sea grass, lots of these sort of natural
(24:00):
materials and they look really nice. I mean, there It's
almost like a very large basket in many of these cases,
but they look very nice. Uh. And then there's also
the Eco pod, which sadly right now is no longer available.
It's at least temporarily unavailable. I guess the the operations
in the UK uh in neerd in some sort of
(24:22):
financial difficulty or something. I know that the company hopes
to open up h handmade operational system in the North
America continent somewhere, but I don't know what the status
is on that. But the eco pods were really cool,
made from recycled newspaper, and they have a very interesting
shape to them. The very outside was actually coated with
(24:44):
a different type of paper, so it has a very
kind of classy look to it doesn't quite look like
a coffin. It has as almost a sort of a
space age type of shape. You really have to look
at a picture at one of these things to kind
of get an idea. But I like this idea because
if I went this route, I could ask that they
just coat my entire coffin with the Braves win a
(25:06):
j C front page from when the Braves won the
World Series. I would have been amazing. Uh. But you
know that's not necessarily what I'm planning on doing. And
also eco pod is not currently available. And if you're
interested in having a open, open casket memorial service or
anything like that, there are options for using dry ice
(25:28):
to preserve the body rather than embalming fluid. Right dry
ice or refrigeration, both of which are much more environmentally
friendly than using embalming fluid and won't won't halt the
or or slow down the decomposition process once you're buried.
So for this to work, you also have to have
a place to bury people. You can't just bury him anywhere.
(25:50):
It's frowned upon it anyway. Yes, no, I mean you can.
Disposal of corpses is a highly regulated thing and it
should be. Yeah, there's a lot for lots of different
reasons it should be. But in the United States there
are there are several natural burial grounds. In the UK
there are more than two hundred, so the UK it's
(26:12):
been embraced much faster than here in the United States.
They tend to be in areas that are, you know,
these natural landscapes. A lot of them are in forests,
and typically you might just use something as simple as
a rock or a a native tree as a marker
for that that burial site, so again very green. Some
(26:34):
of the places actually use GPS core and it's to
mark the site, so you would use your GPS system
to find a particular spot and that would be where you're,
you know, the person you cared about was buried. I
kind of like that idea too, the idea of not
leaving any any physical thing there so that it's as
untouched a landscape as you can possibly make it. Um
(26:58):
And there are a couple of different very aitions on this.
Their hybrid burial grounds that's where you can find both
the traditional burials and the um the natural burials, all
in one general region, one general one cemetery. Essentially, there's
natural burial grounds which are kind of the medium. That's
where they practice land stewardship and restoration planning, and they
(27:21):
can only use that land as a green cemetery. It
cannot be used for any other purpose. And then you
have conservation burial grounds that go a step further where
there their conservation strategy goes to the point where they're
actually looking at ways to protect and restore local wildlife
and habitats as well as act as a natural burial ground,
(27:43):
And uh, I really like this idea a lot, like
if if I didn't have my other plan in place,
as sinister as it is, then I would probably go
with this approach. And as a way of not I'll
tell you what my sinister joke plan is at the end.
But the the there's an actual group called the Green
Burial Council that has formed to try and create standards
(28:06):
for this, because clearly you want to follow very careful
protocols to make sure that you're being respectful both of
the land and of the people. It's very important. And
they also want to make sure that no one gets
away with calling their operation a natural cemetery or green
cemetery while practicing things that are against the philosophy. So
(28:31):
greenwashing is what we're talking about this, and greenwashing is
a problem in all different industries where they're claiming to
be where it's a marketing term rather than an actual practice. Yes, yeah,
where you're like, hey, we can get more consumers if
they think we're being very environmentally conscious, So let's call
this the green approach. Uh. Side note, little tangent, I'll
(28:54):
never forget when I was I was going to attend
CS one year and I got a big box in
the mail UH that was related to c S. I was,
I wonder what this is, and I opened it up.
Inside the big box was a long smaller box, but
it was a long box. I opened that up and
inside it were a pair of double A batteries that
(29:16):
were called green double a's. And I thought, if you
are trying to create batteries that are supposed to be green,
don't pack them in a long box and then pack
that in an even bigger box and send it like
that's ridiculous. That would be greenwashing. At least I would
argue that would be green washing. So let's talk about
(29:38):
some other UH options besides natural burial. This other one,
This next one is it gets a little gooey. It
certainly does. For those of you who desire to be
literally washed down the drain, you do have an option. UH.
This is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and it's often used
(29:58):
to get rid of animal carcass is and also medical
conduct could average at the Mayo clinic. So this is
not like a We might think of it as a
future technique, not because it's something that's still being developed,
but just because it hasn't been so widely adopted. Culturally speaking,
it's futuristic, so it's known by several different names. The
(30:19):
process itself is alkaline hydrolysis, but it's also known as
resummation or liquid cremation or sometimes bio cremation. And here's
the basic gist of it. You put the body inside
a gigantic steel container. Uh, and this this big steel
cylinder with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide which
(30:39):
is lie and then you heat that up to like
three hundred or three fifty degrees fahrenheit under high pressure,
and this liquefies all of the soft tissue, leaving only
the bones behind. And then the liquefied body can simply
be washed down the drain and the bones then head
on to the cremulator, which is not unique to this process.
(31:02):
A crimulator is also used in cremation. But great name
for a thing, very cromulent name. I didn't know that
was the name for that thing, cremulate. I thought immediately
that that had to be one of the robots from Futurama. Yeah, right,
there were next to the crushing eader, right exactly. But
the cremulator, well, it is sort of a crush in eader.
It it turns your bones into a fine powder that
(31:23):
can then be taken away by the family or loved
ones of the deceased and so. Uh. This process reportedly
uses less energy and produces fewer airborne pollutants and carbon
emissions than traditional cremation. But it is not without its opponents.
It has faced some political opposition, like it's only legal
in some places and not in others. I found one
(31:46):
interesting article in June article for the Springfield News Sun
in Ohio by reporter Kelly Wynn, and it was called
a controversial liquid cremation sought in Ohio. And so this
was talking about how at the times some funeral homes
in Ohio we're trying to adopt alkaline hydrolysis, but they
were facing opposition. Um, I'll just read a little section
(32:08):
from it. Uh, the Catholic Church is opposed to the idea,
and that opposition has prompted State Representative Ron mag chairman
of Government of the Government and Elections Committee, to remove
language from House Bill four eighty one that would have
made alkaline hydrolysis an acceptable form of disposition. That's a
great word, disposition in Ohio. Mag who is a Catholic,
(32:31):
said he felt uncomfortable about the process and spoke to
a Catholic church leader. The process didn't seem respectful to me,
and that's why I contacted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to
get their opinion. Mag said they objected to that type
of disposal of the body. So there are obviously some
cultural factors at play here with with the acceptance of
(32:52):
new methods of dealing with the body, and and that's
to be expected, I think, because how we deal with
our dead is something that's very emotionally charged for people. Yeah,
I think I think there's a lot of association between
decomposition and corruption. I think there's this idea that decomposition
is somehow representative of corruption of the body, and any
(33:13):
process that would speed that up, I think would automatically
create kind of a bulk response with people who who
sort of made that association. And it's I'm not saying
that it's an uh one that should anyone should feel
badly about me. Again, this is very personal sort of thing.
Um Personally, this this approach I thought sounded very interesting
(33:36):
to me. I don't know how I would feel knowing
that someone I loved had chosen to go through this process.
I like, intellectually, rationally, I'm perfectly fine with it. I
don't know how I would react emotionally if I were
actually in the position where I knew someone I loved
was going to be uh dissolved in this way. It
(33:58):
might that might make me bulk at it. I don't know, Yeah,
I mean, I can't thinking about it really see that
there's anything less respectful about this than about burning people
with a flame, or about pumping them through full of
formaldehide and burying them in a box, other than the
fact that we just have the cultural inertia of those
(34:19):
other methods that you know, And again, I don't think
it's necessarily a rational thing. It's purely emotional. But you know,
cultural mores and social moras, that sort of thing. They
have a big impact on our personalities, sometimes larger than
we expect. Uh And so you know, but that that's
(34:40):
that's a really interesting way. What if I wanted to,
I don't know, turn myself into an icicle then explode
into a million pieces. Their their method for that, yep,
and this one, I'm I had never heard of it
before we started composing these notes, and I'm really excited
about this one that sounds like like if you'll forgive
my like Mr Freeze style pun he the coolest way
(35:01):
to go, It is the coolest. You're welcome, Joel Schumacher.
He directed that one. I know, no, I know, I know,
chill out, Jonathan um So. So this is called promission,
and essentially this is freezing shattering and then freeze drying
(35:25):
your body into a powder that can be buried. So
so after death, you take the body and you freeze it.
You submerge it in liquid nitrogen to deep sub zero temperatures,
and this makes it brittle and crystalline. So once the
body is frozen solid in this crystalline state, it is
subjected to mechanical vibration. You sort of put it in
a rock polisher, just a chamber that vibrates high frequency yes,
(35:51):
and this shatters the frozen remains and eventually transforms them
into a fine gravel or sandy consistency. And then you
use a vacuum chamber to sort of boil the moisture
out of the resulting powder. And this is essentially what
the process of freeze drying is. So you freeze dry it,
and then you remove any metal fillings, implants, pros theses
(36:12):
from the powder, and then what's left behind can be
buried in a shallow grave. And in this and we
often say buried in a shallow grave is kind of
like a like sneak. You know, you kill somebody and
bury them in a shallow grave. But in this case
it's a positive thing because the body is not recognizable
as a body, but it can still contribute back to
(36:32):
the ecosystem and nourish the soil. I didn't mean to snicker,
except for the fact that she said we often say it,
and and and just the way you're putting it, like yeah,
daily basis, I'm talking about shallow every Wednesday. So so
is anyone actually doing this? Is this is this hypothetical? Yes,
right now it is. It is a proposal rather than
(36:54):
a real process. As far as I know, this hasn't
been done to any people um or if it has,
I hadn't. I can't. I couldn't find evidence of it.
But it's been promoted by the Swedish company called pro Messa,
which was founded by a biologist named and I'm afraid
I'm gonna mispronounce her last name, but I'll do my best.
Your name is Susanne why a Massac and I might
(37:16):
add the why are uk ran a cool piece on
her and on promission a couple of years ago called
freeze drying the dead could help save the planet. Uh.
And one of the things that I liked about this
article was that it also uncovered this interesting turf war
between this pro promission faction in Sweden and then a
pro cremation faction who insisted at the time that promission
(37:38):
was was never gonna work and it would just never
come to market. Um. But anyway, she gave a quote
to them in this article where she said, we don't
see the dead body is the final end. Well treated,
the body will support something new, life will continue, and
that is going to create a totally new relation to
death and and dying of the body. It also makes
(38:00):
it possible to start talking about death. And I like
her approach here because she's essentially she's proposing a technology.
Now I think it has been it's pretty well accepted
that except among its critics in the cremation community, this
would work. Um, but it's not being done yet. It's
(38:20):
weird to think of a cremation community Uh, yeah, I
think in many ways it's similar to the idea of
the natural burial, this idea of returning the body to
the earth to become part of it again, the circle
of life. I was going to say that too, so
I'm glad you beat me to it. Yes, exactly. Uh.
Similar to that is the Eternal Reefs idea. Now, this
(38:43):
is a company that's actually based out of here in Georgia,
um and their idea is to take the cremains from
someone so you God, So it's not an alternative decremation,
not alternative decremation. It's actually cremation is part of this.
But you would bring the cremains to eternal reefs and
they would use the cremains to uh, to mix with
(39:04):
concrete actually to create artificial reefs or marine life and
then put those offshore to replace some of the natural
reefs that have been destroyed over the course of the
last century. And uh really in this case, again, it's
since it's not an alternative to cremation or anything, you
might wonder, well, what's the deal are these artificial reefs? Only?
(39:27):
Do they only work if you put human cremains in them? No,
the idea here is that you're helping fund this process.
You you are returning. Like from a philosophical standpoint, you
could think, I'm helping give life to other creatures by
giving them a place to to inhabit. It's it's poetic
and also right. And instead of potentially doing harm to
(39:50):
an environment, you're you're you're doing good with your fun
costs exactly. So it's it's really a way of giving
back to the earth by paying in as part of
your your funeral fees to have this happen. So uh,
I like the idea, although again it's not like it's
an alternative to to cremation. It actually is just another step.
(40:13):
So instead of storing the remain cremains and like an
urn or something, we're putting them in a mile's lamb,
you would make them as part of a marine habitat. Uh.
Of course, another process that we should talk about is
one in which you more definitely preserved the body. Yeah,
like like like crazy preservation. We're talking plastination, which was
(40:37):
developed a nineteen This episode full of great words, yea,
So plastination, well, I mean, you've got to come up
with some pretty clever words to deal with with death.
So people don't think about, you know, dying. But plastination
is a process developed in nineteen seventy seven by Gunther
von Hoggins who was looking at a way of preserving
(40:58):
body parts indefinitely. And it involves replacing the water and
fat in a body with certain types of plastic. And
you can use different types of plastic and the different
types will create different effects. And the process has four steps.
I'm not going to go into detail on each of
the steps, but if you want to know what they're called,
it's fixation, dehydration, forced impregnation in a vacuum, and hardening. Yeah.
(41:26):
So it's a relatively illusionary all on their own. Yeah,
you don't really need a whole lot of explanation to
really get it into what that is all about. So,
like I said, use different types of plastics for different effects.
Some of them are more flexible, some of them hardened
to a point where you could actually polish the body
part that you have. Uh plastinated. Often used for for
(41:48):
medical purposes, like if you wanted to do an anatomy
class and you needed to show slices of the body
so that medical students could identify where oregons were. That
sort of thing. That's a very important part. Of course,
it's very useful and and von Hogen's developed this specifically
for the medical community so that doctors and scientists would
(42:09):
have reliable models to look at that could last, you know, indefinitely. Uh.
Of course we've seen it used beyond that particular application,
and I'll get more into that in just a second.
So you might donate your body to plascination if you
specifically wanted your body to be used in the advancement
(42:31):
of science. But there is some controversy around this, uh,
largely around then the concept of consent. Uh. So plascination
is probably most famously associated with the Body Worlds exhibits,
which are they originated in Japan and have traveled the
world multiple times, and there have been several cases of
(42:54):
people accusing Body Worlds of using bodies that came from
people who did not concer sent for their bodies to
be used in this way. Now, supposedly there's a list
thousands of names long of people willing to donate their
bodies to plascination for this specific use, but there have
been at least some cases where there have been accusations
(43:14):
that some of the bodies we came from Chinese prisoners
who had been executed. That's a big problem. Uh some
from uh Russian sources, where again it maybe that the
case was that the people whose bodies were on display
never gave their consent for it to be used in
that way. Now, of course, body worlds said that they
(43:37):
are very much concerned with this. They don't ever want
to use any body that wasn't associated with consent. And
there's been a lot of lawmakers who have said, if
it comes down to it, we need to be able
to say, can you show us the death certificate, the
signed consent, Yeah, to prove that person or at least
the family. So that's where that controversy is. Um that
(44:02):
being said, I think that plastination itself, it serves very
valuable purpose again in that in that medical application of teaching,
I think it's incredibly valuable. So let's talk a little
bit about the future of cemeteries. One of the things
that Lauren mentioned earlier kind of with moles Lambs was
this idea of skyscraper cemeteries, and I can't believe we
(44:24):
didn't touch on this in our our Future of Skyscrapers, right,
we talked about vertical cities, but we did not talk
about vertical cities of the dead, yes, which could be
a thing. Uh. Now, we talked about how open space
is a precious resource in some areas and that you know,
dedicating that open space to what amounts to dead people
(44:46):
is problematic, uh in in a lot of different communities.
But one of instead of taking up a bunch of
space at ground level, you did the skyscraper approach, so
you had level after level after level. You could take
up a relatively small amount of open space and just
build upward. It's the Morgal approach. Yes. Uh So. In
(45:06):
two thousand thirteen, there was an architecture student named Martin
McSherry who presented a concept called the vertical cemetery. And
it's a really neat looking design. It's a very kind
of it looks kind of like a honeycomb from the outside.
It's white with all these it's almost like a lattice work.
And the idea is that coffins would fit in the
gaps of that lattice, and you would use a crane
(45:27):
to actually lift a coffin up to a higher level
and slotted into the right spot. It would take up
less ground space and it was specifically because there's a
real land scarcity problem in Norway. So this is a
this is this was seen as sort of a conceptual
and yet practical solution to a real problem that is
(45:48):
arising in Norway, and it is something that we could
possibly see if people continue to choose to be buried,
then this might be one of the solutions that we'll
see in the future. Mean, statistically speaking, there's a lot
more dead people on the planet than there are living people.
That's true. That funny how that works out. Uh. So
there's there's also some other interesting ideas, some that are
(46:12):
kind of similar to stuff we talked about before. Uh
there's the Urban Death Project, which sounds like a band
but it's not. Or maybe it is too, but it's
also it's also an actual project that's proposing a way
of dealing with the deceased. Oh yeah, it could fit
in with the concept of natural burial, yes exactly. Architect
(46:34):
Katrina Spade talks about this, and it's a process that
would involve turning a body essentially into compost. And the
process involves taking the body, wrapping it in a shroud
of linen, and laying that body in a bed of
wood chips and sawdust. Now the body would then start
to decompose and over the course of a month turn
(46:54):
into compost um. New bodies would be added over time,
and what happens is that the at the end of
that month, you would extract the soil from the bottom.
There be an extraction mechanism that would allow you to
harvest the soil from the bottom of this uh this
this wood chip and sawdust pit. I guess pit is
(47:15):
probably not a word that they would They would use
their own in their own marketing materials, and I don't
want to think about throwing them into the pit. But
at anyway, you would extract the soil from the bottom,
and you could invite loved ones to come and take
some of that soil home and use that in a guarden,
a kind of a way of remembering the person and
incorporating them back into your life in a in a
(47:35):
symbolic way. But it's also used in like parks and stuff.
Oh yeah, yeah, And there there's lots of other companies
that are working with alternative processes for similar concepts. I'm
sure that you've seen some of them post posted up
on your social media feeds because they've they've they're they're
they're really snazzy headlines. It's you know, like like turn
your body into a tree that kind of stuff. And so,
(47:56):
you know, there's a few companies that are offering biodegradable
urns and tree saplings as like a little paired unit.
So you know, you plant the urn under the sapling
and your ashes help feed the tree. A more dramatic
version is provided by this Italian startup company called Capsula Munda,
which buries a person in this egg shaped biodegradable coffin
(48:16):
that the corpses in a fetal position inside of it,
and it could be planted under a sapling. I'm not
an expert on decomposition, but you know, while I appreciate
the artistry of this of this version, I suspect that
something like the Urban Death Project would would be better
for the tree overall. I just worry about that particular approach.
(48:37):
If there's terrible flooding an erosion, then you have a
dead person emerging from an egg, and that would be awful.
I think the cool thing about this, the Capsula Mondy proposal,
is that you could end up with your skeleton entwined
in the roots of a tree people. People in the
future who dig you up will find the roots going
(48:57):
through your eye holes and everything is in their states.
It's an appealing idea. In the past, trees preyed upon humans,
these love crafty and trees of the century. Oh you've
given me such a great idea for a short story
now alright, so moving on. There's also a concept called
the future cemetery. This is something out of the UK.
(49:18):
The UK appears to be really kind of forward thinking
when it comes to the treatment of the dead. It's
really interesting to me. For those who want the high
tech experience, they could look into the future cemetery. It
offers an interactive approach that incorporates augmented reality, audio installations
and pico projection or pico if you prefer projection. A
(49:39):
Pico projection is the They're very tiny projectors that you
can fit right in your pocket. You can typically connect
them to something like a phone and uh projected against
the wall. Anyway. They use that for memorials in the cemetery.
So imagine recording your thoughts before you die. Obviously, that
could be displayed to someone using a smart phone apple
(50:00):
looking at your grave site like hologram style. Even like
it would be kind of cool. I would imagine, like,
think about something you would just want to impart to
future generations, even if it's just, hey, be cool to
each other. You want to be like do a little
Waynes World thing, like or not Wayns World, the Bill
and Ted thing, be excellent to each other type deal.
It's just kind of a neat idea. Or if you
want to be cranky, you could be get off my
(50:21):
lawn whatever you want. And then the person holds up
the smartphone where they're looking at your grave site, you
pop up and you say the thing. I love that
idea nicely for multiple reasons. Um, this particular cemetery is
actually located at Arnos Veil Cemetery in the UK, so
it's just one part of their cemetery. It's kind of
a proof of concept ever changing project to like they're
(50:44):
always incorporating new stuff into it. And uh, I really
like that idea. But let's say that you set your
sights higher than that, much higher up into orbit. But
since there is no up in space, you could be
setting your sites much or or or you could be
saying your sites but direction has no meaning at any rate.
(51:05):
This is an option that is, for people who are
less interested in minimizing their carbon footprint. We're talking about
space burial. Uh. I feel like that's something that's kind
of in name only, if you know what I mean. Well,
I mean it's not really a burial per se by
by the technical definition of the word. Well, okay, So,
(51:28):
so there are a few companies out there that will
send like a gram or so of your cremains up
into space. Um. And this has been made possible by
commercial and consumer space travel becoming more affordable and common. Um. So,
you know, you can you can take like a two
minute suborbital flight, you can take a full orbital flight.
You can hit your ride on a cube SAT that
(51:50):
will lose orbit and burn up during re entry a
couple of years later. You can crash into the Moon,
or you can leave Earth's orbit entirely. And these services
range in costs from about a thousand bucks to over
twelve thousand, depending on how far out you want to go. Yeah.
Someone I know, no is probably too strong a word.
(52:10):
Someone I met did this. James Dowon also known as
Scotty from Star Trek, right, Jean Roddenberry did it? Timothy Leary? Yeah,
uh yeah, so there there's plenty of precedents for that.
So this kind of brings us to the conclusion. I
thought I would end by talking about what I plan
(52:32):
on doing once I have shoveled off this mortal coil
go ahead. So the joke answer, which I would never
really do, but I like to joke about it, is
that I have a little bit of a reputation for
occasionally irritating my wife. And so I said, what would
be a way that I could continue to do that
even after I'm dead? And I thought, what would what
(52:53):
if I set aside a certain amount of money I
had myself cremated, and that money goes to a person
whose only job is to come into my house and
hide my cremains in a different location each day, and
before my wife is allowed to go to bed, she
has to find me, and that way I can continue
to irritate her even after I'm dead. That's very strange.
(53:17):
I don't deny it, but for some reason it fills
me with glee. Not that I would expect my wife
to even entertains, yeah, I'm going to bed, but actually
she'd be like, I'm not allowing someone into my house,
which is a perfectly valid response. But no, what I
(53:37):
really think I'm going to do. Is I really think
I'm going to leave my my body to science. I
think we donate my body to science. I have not
filled up official paperwork which I really need to dose.
I don't wonder if that means that you may eventually
be subject to alkaline hydrolysis. If so, so be it.
I honestly, first of all, I'm going to be beyond
carrying at that point, so I don't have a personal
(53:59):
issue that. Obviously it would be something I would have
to talk with my my wife, because I do respect
what she wants as well, and obviously it will be
more for her benefit assuming I predecease my wife, which
I certainly hope that's the case, because I can't bear
the thought of the alternative. But yeah, I would certainly
be something I would talk with her about first. But
(54:20):
personally that that's like my first choice because I like
the idea of continuing to contribute in some small way
to educating future generations. Consider that to be part of
what I do here. Like it's a lot of fun,
but I enjoy the idea. I get satisfaction the thought
that we help educate people, um, not just entertain them,
(54:41):
but teach them. And to do that after I'm alive,
you know, once I've gone and passed away. Uh really
just feeds back into that philosophy. So that's kind of
why I look toward it. If I didn't do that,
I think the natural burial is the way I would
want to go. It was really appealing to me, uh
very much. So like before I heard about natural burials,
(55:03):
I was I was leaning much more toward cremation because
I didn't want to take up space. I'm very I'm
already very aware of too much taking up too much
space when I'm in areas. I'm like, I'm constantly apologizing.
I don't want to feel like that after I'm dead. Well, yeah,
we we've spent our whole lives extracting energy resources from
(55:23):
the life all around us in our environment. It seems
only fair that we should allow them to turn around
and do the same thing back to us. Yeah. So
uh yeah, that's that I just thought would conclude with that,
And you also got some insight into my twisted sense
of humor with what I if if all things were
were according to my my design, do you do do
(55:46):
you have plans to that you would like to share
with the audience. I guess not in particular, except I've
had the same thought. Really, I mean, I like the idea.
I don't have particular attachment to the use of a
dead body after the person is dead, and so I
think it would be if if it can be made
use of for medical reasons or for medical research, any
(56:09):
kind of scientific research. I think that's a good thing
to do. Yeah. Absolutely, Yes, I agree with you guys.
Although I'm pretty excited about this. This freezing and shuttering. Sweet,
that's pretty rad Like if if if I can't help science,
then I would like to be frozen in shatter. That's
that's fair. It's pretty dramatic, that would be. I think
that'd be you know, that's a dramatic way to go. Yeah.
(56:31):
I find a lot of these alternatives very la. You
need to help defeat that cremation lobby that's keeping it down. Yeah, yeah,
ice rather than fire. And yes, somewhere somewhere someone can
can can put up a memorial or tombstone with the
Robert Frost poem on it. It'll be great. Yeah, that's
the only thing, Like I think, would I want any
(56:55):
physical Marker and Uh. At this point, I think I've
done enough that's on the Internet that I feel that
would be It's yeah, that's enough for me. The question
is again for for those who love me, if they
want to place to associate uh, then that would be
(57:17):
more for them than obviously for me. Uh. Otherwise, I'm
fine with with not leaving anything else, just saying, you know,
here's a guy who existed. Uh. You know, I have
no romantic notion about that, although it wouldn't mean that
I would deny someone the opportunity to do what I
did to Thomas Hardy's great. All right, On that note,
I'm going to wrap this up. Guys. If you enjoyed
(57:40):
this episode of forward thinking, let us know. If you
have questions, send them in. If you want to know
what I did to Thomas Hardy, I'll tell you. But
you can just send us a message our email addresses
FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop
us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter we
are FW thinking. Just search up thinking in Facebook. We'll
(58:01):
pop right up. You can leave us a message and
we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
this topic in the future of technology, I visit forward
thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomed up Forward Thinking the
podcast and looks at the future. It says, I'm all
dressed up with nowhere to go. I'm Jonathan Stricker, I'm
(00:21):
La and I'm Joe McCormick. And today, Yeah, we're gonna
talk about something cheerful, right Lauren, Nope, Nope, We're We're
going to talk about the future of burial. Yeah. This
was actually when I when we started talking earlier this
week about what podcast sort of topics do we want
to look at? Um, this was one I sent around
(00:41):
Buried if you will, in a list of several, and I,
being the goth kid at heart that I am, was like, oh, hey,
let's do this. Let's let's do the one talking about death.
Part of this is because I've kind of had it
on the brain more than usual lately, because I got
to be on a on a pan with Julie Douglas
for her new show Stuff of Life, in which we
(01:04):
were talking about how how people process death in our
culture and and it was a really interesting discussion. Um uh,
Julian I got to go interview a professor who studies
death culture and and that was a really fascinating thing.
The one of those episodes is up and other should
be up soon. Let's let's mention it now while we're
talking about other shows. Joe, you guys over and Stuff
(01:24):
to Blow your Mind. Recently did an upset about burial correct?
Not well, depends on what you mean by recently. Robert
Lamb and I on the other podcast I do. We
did the Stuff to Flow Your Mind episode called Human Remains, Past,
Present in Future in September. Wait September, No, it wasn't September.
It was October. It was October, sort of kind of
(01:47):
getting into the spirit of Halloween. I am right, Yeah,
it fit our October theme all all all months we
do creepy stuff. That's fair so as opposed to other
times when nothing you say is creepy. All okay, since
we're talking about other shows, I'll alway mentioned this. Uh,
not that you could listen to it or see it,
although there's a documentary where I briefly appear in in it.
(02:07):
Where I was doing this, I did a a two
man show. I wrote and acted in a two man
show about the history of burial practices and funeral practices,
and we performed it at uh at a cemetery, historic
cemetery here in Atlanta, historic Oakland Cemetery where Margaret Mitchell
(02:28):
is buried. Yes, and uh, two different people acted in that,
um besides myself, Bernie Clark and Nick Takowski, who are
both local artists madmen types here in Atlanta, and I
think they would appreciate those labels. But so we did
this this sort of comedic uh grave diggers from Hamlet
(02:52):
type presentation. So I've been fascinated by this for quite
some time, not just the future of rural practices, but
the present state and how we got to that. Now,
we're not gonna go too far looking into the past.
We're really going to talk about what goes on today
and how that might change over time and why it
(03:12):
might change. Yeah, and so okay, so we're gonna we're
gonna be talking about some some very serious kind of topics.
But but we're all going to die, you guys. And
and this is the thing that we all have to
deal with. Well, Kurts is not okay, well fair to everyone,
but Kurtswile is going to die. So yeah, so so
so let's so let's get into it today. UH. And
(03:34):
apparently in countries other than the United States, embalming is
not very it's not a very common practice at all,
but here it's it's quite common. Yeah. Yeah, I think
a lot of like the average American might assume that embalming,
the way we typically very dead in funeral homes in
the United States is just how it's always been done.
(03:54):
It's not the case. It's not the case here, and
it's not the case in other parts of the world.
We're largely going to be talking about the way it's
done here in the United States because that's where we live,
and also to cover all the different variations all over
the world, that would be a series unto itself, certainly. UM.
But embalming is not mandated in the United States except
(04:14):
in certain states under certain conditions. UH. A few will
require embalming if a body needs to be transported across
state lines, for example. But that's not all the states,
it's just a few. But it still has become kind
of the standard practice, UH, for multiple reasons. UM. There
are some religions that forbid embalming. It is against their
(04:36):
religion to to treat the body in that way. Orthodox
Jews and Muslims both hold those beliefs. Uh. There are
others as well that other faiths that require the body
to be cremated rather than buried, so it's not common
all the way across the board. You might often find
cremation in Hinduism exactly as that is one of them.
(04:57):
So embalming in the United States didn't even become that
standard practice until the Civil War, which makes sense. The
Civil War you had thousands of soldiers dying and so
they would be embalmed before the bodies would be shipped
back to their hometowns. From that point forward, embalming became
more of a standard process in funerals in the United States.
(05:21):
It's really all about preservation. Yeah, in a weird way,
I would almost say that embalming is a physical It's
like the science of the denial of death, a technological
realization of pushing death out of our out of our
view by making it look for as long as possible,
(05:41):
like you, you're really pretty much still alive. Yeah, it's
it's mainly to stave off the decomposition process as long
as possible. And I agree with you, Joe, that that
is largely I think due to our our our philosophy,
our feelings about death, and they're pretty complicated. But ultimately,
(06:03):
I think a lot of people like the idea of
of this this preservation so that you can almost compartmentalize
it in your mind and and it it doesn't have
as strong an effect emotionally on you in that way.
Julie and I got to talk to to to live
stuts doctor Lives stuts Is is the professor's name, a
(06:24):
little bit about this very subject, and she she put
forth a theory that has been discussed in the industries
some that that death practices, like death rituals for the living,
are a sort of way of of dealing with an
in between state of the body of the deceased. Uh,
(06:44):
it's sort of sort of like a transitional state, a
sort of coming of age ceremony almost like a like
a like like an end of age ceremony, sort of
like like prom but for you know, dead bodies. And
which makes sense considering the SONGNI this very much like
a problem for it for dead people are right and
so um and so yeah. So it's it's letting the
(07:07):
living take the deceased through this this in between stage
into the finality. Of being buried, right, but so when
so there are psychological reasons we do this, but doing
it doesn't come without cost. Oh yeah, yeah, that the
practical application is pretty morbid. Yeah, and uh yeah, there's
(07:29):
their costs, both psychologically, financially and environmentally as it turns out. So,
and that's sort of what we're going to focus on
today is some of these alternative methods of dealing with
bodies after we have died in ways that might be
less costly and less environmentally destructive. In some cases they
might be more so, but there are super cool we'll
(07:50):
get into that. So if you're talking about the traditional
involving process, the way it works is the body is
is stripped of cloe oaths, it's washed h then you
use a tube with a needle. You inject the needle
into an artery, and you the tube is connected to
an embalming machine which pumps embalming fluid into the body. UM.
(08:12):
That fluid is specifically designed to prevent bacteria from growing
uh and other organisms as well, thus leading to the decomposition.
So it's to preserve the body, usually long enough so
that you can have your memorial service and your funeral service.
UM and we're talking about a pretty significant amount of
(08:32):
this stuff per body, and then you think about how
many people die every year, it really starts to add up.
So you use about a gallon of this embalming fluid
for every fifty pounds of the persons, or three leaders
per every twenty three or so. That's right. So it's
a fairly significant amount of this stuff and embalming fluid.
Typically it's not bio friendly, not in the US. In
(08:55):
the US, it typically contains formaldehyde as one of the
ingredients and that's a our synogen. So you there are
a lot of people who are concerned about this carcinogen
finding its way into the water table, you know, eventually uh,
moving from the body into the soil and then getting
absorbed into that particular call it ecosystem and UH it's
(09:19):
it's such a big concern in some places that they
have moved the places that still practice embalming, they have
moved from that to other types of chemicals. In the UK,
UH there was actually a call for a band of
for malde hyde back in and the industry started moving
towards using UH gluterol hide gluderol to hide a boy.
(09:41):
I don't know if I'll ever say that the way
it's supposed to be said. But it's glutterol to hide
based fluids which are less toxic than for malde hyde.
So that's the sounds like. You don't talk about gluterald
to hide all that much. Not so often, really, I don't.
It doesn't come up. And most of my conversations, Yeah,
I hang out with the different crowd these days, we
(10:02):
mostly talk about pokemons pokemon. Yeah, we don't know what
they are. We just talk about them and how you've
got to grab them all we know, we know there's
some grabbing of pokemons. That's about it. To make a
little transition, you know what you do with pokemons as
you put them inside a container like almost like a coffin,
exceptance of ball. Yeah, we're gonna talk about coffins now.
(10:23):
So also sometimes in the US called caskets, although that
term is not frequently used in places like the UK
or Australia, not for a coffin anyway. A casket may
just be a container for jewelry, but in the US
coffin and casket tends to be used pretty much interchangeably.
So these days they the standard coffins that you would
find are really meant as a barrier between the body
(10:45):
and the elements. They're not impermeable. Normally, they're made out
of things like wood or metal, and they're lined with
some sort of plush material. But there are some coffins
that come with a rubber seal to make them as
close to impermeable as possible, the idea being that this way.
Really don't want this, yeah, yeah, but the idea being
that it's supposed to prevent water from coming in, because,
(11:07):
as the grave digger from Hamlet will tell you, water
will ruin a body. Um, it's actually in the speech. Well, yeah,
it's it's preventing preventing water from getting in and preventing
the materials that make up the coffin and the contents
of the coffin from getting out. Yes, so that's really
what the purpose is. But you don't want to truly
(11:28):
impermeable coffin because as a body decomposes, it produces methane gas.
If you have a container that has no way to
vent the gas, that pressure builds and builds and builds
until yes, coffins can and sometimes do explode. We mentioned
this in our stuff to blow your mind episode exploding coffins. Yeah,
it's happened both in coffins that are buried under the
(11:50):
ground and coffin stored in mausoleums. Did you talk about
any mausoleums with explosions, because there's been a few cases
where mausoleums have been severely damaged through exploding coffins. Uh. So,
there are some coffins that are designed to vent this gas. Occasionally,
they're called burping coffins. They could have called it something else.
(12:12):
They could They could have called it farting coffins. That
would have been worse. So I don't know. For some reason,
I'm less grossed up by farting coffins. I mean, that's
a generational thing, I think at this point. Okay, that's
that's fair enough. I I just burping reminds me of tupperware.
I anyway, so you can tell it's still fresh. Um. So,
(12:33):
the coffin is then placed in what it's called a
burial vault, which is a sealed chamber mint to protect
the coffin from the weight of the earth that's above it,
as well as any machinery that has to pass over it.
So typically US cemeteries you're using something like a backhoe
in order to dig the grave site or the internment
site as they sometimes call it in the funeral business
(12:54):
um because they don't like to they don't like to
use words that make people think of death, which is
one of those weird culture things that I can totally
understand on one side, and I think it's totally weird
on the other side. It's also relatively recent. A lot
of the well, I mean funeral homes didn't even really
exist until around World War two or so, when it
(13:14):
became it started becoming so common to have in bombings
that we needed a whole industry to to offset it,
because embombing isn't the kind of thing that you that
you can d I Y at home. You know, the
big one in my hometown, Strickland Funeral Home. No no relation. Yeah,
small town in Georgia, Strickland Funeral Stricklands. Yeah, apparently not
(13:37):
related to it to my branch. Uh. If they were,
those that would be the family members we would be
mooching off of, because funeral directors tend to make a
lot of money um at any rate. So we've got
we've got the burping coffins, we've got the vaults that
we've talked about. The vaults are typically lined with either
concrete or steel so that they can create the support
(13:59):
system so that the ground does not cave in while
machinery is driving across it. If you don't have a vault,
the ground will tend to sink. Yes, sure, sure, so
so this right, this, This protects the coffin, and it
also protects the environment from the coffin and the contents
of the coffin, or you might say the appearance of
the burial grounds. That. Yeah, that's also a case, like
it would be somewhat disturbing to walk up to a
(14:20):
cemetery and see areas of sunken earth around. I mean,
it might feel a little weird. You might feel like
you're in a Romero film. Also, grass might stop growing
there because of toxic compounds and the coffins or the
embolbing fluid that also could happen stuff like that. So
there is a growing concern, which is probably pretty clear
(14:41):
from our conversation so far, that the traditional approach in
the United States to funerals is environmentally harmful through many aspects.
You've got the formalde hyde, which is a chemical concern Again,
not everyone gets embalmed before burial, so it's not always
a factor, but it's common enough where it's it's more
of the rule and less of the exception. Also, you've
(15:04):
got the fact that you're using woods, often fairly rare
woods for a lot of these coffins, and they're beautiful
and that's the point. But yeah, but it's not necessarily
sustainable wood that you're that's being used for these coffins.
So there's that environmental factor. And there's also the concern
about just the fact that cemeteries take up a lot
of open space, right, So that's space that could be
(15:26):
used for something else, especially in high concentration areas, like
I've read about the the problem in New York of well,
where are we going to bury people? We're just we're
out of places. Same in Tokyo. That's another I mean,
it's a really big problem. Mausoleums are off often a
solution to that because and I'll talk about them a
(15:46):
little bit more in just a second. Literally in just
a second, it's like a it's like a skyscraper for bodies. Yeah,
and we'll talk about more about that idea in greater
detail later too. So that that kind of brings us
to this this concept of entombment as post burial. So
in tum mont often you have a lot of the
same processes that lead up to the stage of burial,
(16:08):
except of course it's burying someone in the ground. You're
putting them in a crypt or a tomb or a
mausoleum above ground. And there are a lot of different
reasons to do this. One is if you happen to
live in a place where the soil is not good
for digging in, whether it's too rocky or it's too sandy,
it won't support itself, it will collapse in on itself
too easily, or the water table is too close to
(16:30):
the surface of the ground where you can't dig down
very far before you get water. There are a lot
of mausoleums in New Orleans, yeah, which also and it's
not just the water table there, it's also the propensity
for flooding that is a big concern. Yeah. New Orleans
cemeteries are amazing. Uh, that was one of my favorite
things to do. Oddly, I'm not a Michabra person in general,
(16:52):
but but the cemeteries are gothic and gorgeous and creepy.
And awesome all at the same time. And there's so
amazing stonework in some of these these cemeteries in New Orleans,
and it's all above ground because they couldn't dig down
to to bury their dead. So and tuman is definitely
one of those things that is common in certain parts
(17:15):
of the country and the world. But when we get
to masoleums, the the interesting thing there is that you
can be more conservative with your space. That's one of
the solutions to this problem of having a lot of
open space that you would have to dedicate to a
cemetery um. They can hold lots of unrelated people. It's
kind of like a cemetery, but in almost like a
(17:36):
file cabinet kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, and that doesn't
make them make them any less lovely than cemeteries can be.
I've I've had the opportunity to visit a number of
really beautiful, uh like large structure mausoleums and yeah, like
in Florida, mostly where at sea above re groundwater issue,
ground water table, the whole, the whole way these things
(17:57):
come about. They're very expend of initially, but but that
expense can easily be distributed amongst the population and then individually.
The process of having someone interred in a mazoleum can
be much cheaper than traditional burial depending upon the situation UM,
and they can be very lovely, respectful places. It's not
(18:21):
like it's, you know, a terrible alternative. UM. It also
depends upon how you view what should happen to someone
after they pass away. That also leads us to cremation,
which is the other major way of of of saying
goodbye to someone after they've passed on, and is one
that is mandated by certain religions as well. So before cremation, obviously,
(18:47):
what you would want to do is remove anything that
would not incinerate properly. Uh, anything artificial like an artificial
heart or prosthetic um. Sometimes even things like hip replacements
things like that can be removed moved so that you
can then place the body in a flammable coffin and
put it into the incineration chamber. Very high powered flame
(19:08):
is used to incinerate the body. Usually takes between two
to three hours, depending upon the size of the body
that we're talking about. UM. The ashes you get back
are really sort of the calcified, crumbled bones that are
left all the other tissues are essentially vaporized in this process. Um,
but fire pretty much breaks down everything I wasn't when
(19:29):
I was reading our We have an article at how
stuff Works about how cremation works that goes into much
greater detail about what happens to each type of tissue
throughout the cremation process. And as I read it, I thought,
that's not necessary for us to include in this for
it to be informative. But if you want to learn more,
I highly recommend reading how Cremation Works at how stuff
works dot com because it will it will totally inform you. Yeah. Now,
(19:53):
you mentioned about the cremains people receive or they're often
referred to as ashes, but of course they're not the
like we're saying. They're not the ashes of the soft
tissues of your body there the ground up bones. Yeah,
I think that's a lot of people don't know your
bones calcify and they essentially just crumble in the process
of this of this cremation um. And so that's what
(20:15):
you would receive in the cremins. They must be raked
out in the end, I believe. So. Uh, it's really,
by the way tricky to estimate what's the carbon footprint
of this process. So obviously you're talking about using a
lot of energy to burn a body. Uh, that's going
to have some sort of carbon footprint. But a lot
of different factors will take part here. We're talking about
(20:38):
again the size of the body. It's a larger body,
it's gonna take longer, so it's gonna require more energy.
It's also the time of day. Apparently I didn't know this,
but apparently the time of day also depends on determines
how big a carbon footprint is generated. Um and whether
or not. Uh the crematorium is doing this on a
(20:58):
case by case basis or in batches essentially. Uh So
a lot of those factors are making impossible for us
to really say what the carbon footprint is except to
say there is a carbon footprint here. Uh so you
are you know, is is not a carbon negative or
carbon neutral kind of approach to disposing of a body?
(21:21):
Well in case you are being environmentally conscious when you're
trying to do that, yeah, which I mean, you know
is especially especially in these are modern times, that is
absolutely a concern. Uh And and all of these practices
do have these environmental impacts and and right you know,
like like a lot of people are living a lot longer,
and that's wonderful. But we but we do have to
(21:42):
take this kind of stuff into consideration. Yeah, no, it's
it's and I think on an individual basis, it's a
lot easier to have this conversation than rather talk about
large groups of people, because then when you talking about
large groups of people, it sounds like you're mandating something,
and we certainly, of course never do that. It's so
deeply per sal Yeah, I mean, the grieving process is
(22:03):
incredibly personal. But there are some interesting alternatives that have
emerged over the past few years for people who want
to look into something else for you know, to happen
to their body after they pass on, so that it
falls in line with their individual philosophies. And one of
those that's growing in popularity is the natural burial concept.
(22:27):
The funny thing about this is there's really not that
much to it. Yeah, it's actually about as basic as
it gets. So you're essentially getting rid of a lot
of the stuff that's involved in your traditional US burial
system by by formaldehyd Yep. You don't use embombing fluid
by vault ye. You use a very simple biodegradable coffin
(22:49):
made out of or no coffin at all, or no
coffin at all, maybe just like a shroud or some
kind of cloth. Yeah, I think I think most people
look at at least some form of coffin. There's probably
a psychological element to that that I am not qualified
to speak on, but uh, the ones I've seen have
largely been biodegradable materials, sustainable materials as well. That's another
(23:13):
important part of it, because part of the philosophy of
the natural burial is to reduce the environmental impact of
your passing as much as possible, and so you want
the body to be able to deteriorate naturally, and that
includes the whatever coffin or other like wrapping or whatever
is around you as well. So I've actually seen some
(23:36):
really interesting solutions to this, a lot of interesting coffins,
like some that are gorgeous in their simplicity made out
of stuff. I've seen cardboard coffins, so those would degrade
pretty quickly. Um. I've seen bamboo and banana leaf coffins,
ritan coffin, sea grass, lots of these sort of natural
(24:00):
materials and they look really nice. I mean, there It's
almost like a very large basket in many of these cases,
but they look very nice. Uh. And then there's also
the Eco pod, which sadly right now is no longer available.
It's at least temporarily unavailable. I guess the the operations
in the UK uh in neerd in some sort of
(24:22):
financial difficulty or something. I know that the company hopes
to open up h handmade operational system in the North
America continent somewhere, but I don't know what the status
is on that. But the eco pods were really cool,
made from recycled newspaper, and they have a very interesting
shape to them. The very outside was actually coated with
(24:44):
a different type of paper, so it has a very
kind of classy look to it doesn't quite look like
a coffin. It has as almost a sort of a
space age type of shape. You really have to look
at a picture at one of these things to kind
of get an idea. But I like this idea because
if I went this route, I could ask that they
just coat my entire coffin with the Braves win a
(25:06):
j C front page from when the Braves won the
World Series. I would have been amazing. Uh. But you
know that's not necessarily what I'm planning on doing. And
also eco pod is not currently available. And if you're
interested in having a open, open casket memorial service or
anything like that, there are options for using dry ice
(25:28):
to preserve the body rather than embalming fluid. Right dry
ice or refrigeration, both of which are much more environmentally
friendly than using embalming fluid and won't won't halt the
or or slow down the decomposition process once you're buried.
So for this to work, you also have to have
a place to bury people. You can't just bury him anywhere.
(25:50):
It's frowned upon it anyway. Yes, no, I mean you can.
Disposal of corpses is a highly regulated thing and it
should be. Yeah, there's a lot for lots of different
reasons it should be. But in the United States there
are there are several natural burial grounds. In the UK
there are more than two hundred, so the UK it's
(26:12):
been embraced much faster than here in the United States.
They tend to be in areas that are, you know,
these natural landscapes. A lot of them are in forests,
and typically you might just use something as simple as
a rock or a a native tree as a marker
for that that burial site, so again very green. Some
(26:34):
of the places actually use GPS core and it's to
mark the site, so you would use your GPS system
to find a particular spot and that would be where you're,
you know, the person you cared about was buried. I
kind of like that idea too, the idea of not
leaving any any physical thing there so that it's as
untouched a landscape as you can possibly make it. Um
(26:58):
And there are a couple of different very aitions on this.
Their hybrid burial grounds that's where you can find both
the traditional burials and the um the natural burials, all
in one general region, one general one cemetery. Essentially, there's
natural burial grounds which are kind of the medium. That's
where they practice land stewardship and restoration planning, and they
(27:21):
can only use that land as a green cemetery. It
cannot be used for any other purpose. And then you
have conservation burial grounds that go a step further where
there their conservation strategy goes to the point where they're
actually looking at ways to protect and restore local wildlife
and habitats as well as act as a natural burial ground,
(27:43):
And uh, I really like this idea a lot, like
if if I didn't have my other plan in place,
as sinister as it is, then I would probably go
with this approach. And as a way of not I'll
tell you what my sinister joke plan is at the end.
But the the there's an actual group called the Green
Burial Council that has formed to try and create standards
(28:06):
for this, because clearly you want to follow very careful
protocols to make sure that you're being respectful both of
the land and of the people. It's very important. And
they also want to make sure that no one gets
away with calling their operation a natural cemetery or green
cemetery while practicing things that are against the philosophy. So
(28:31):
greenwashing is what we're talking about this, and greenwashing is
a problem in all different industries where they're claiming to
be where it's a marketing term rather than an actual practice. Yes, yeah,
where you're like, hey, we can get more consumers if
they think we're being very environmentally conscious, So let's call
this the green approach. Uh. Side note, little tangent, I'll
(28:54):
never forget when I was I was going to attend
CS one year and I got a big box in
the mail UH that was related to c S. I was,
I wonder what this is, and I opened it up.
Inside the big box was a long smaller box, but
it was a long box. I opened that up and
inside it were a pair of double A batteries that
(29:16):
were called green double a's. And I thought, if you
are trying to create batteries that are supposed to be green,
don't pack them in a long box and then pack
that in an even bigger box and send it like
that's ridiculous. That would be greenwashing. At least I would
argue that would be green washing. So let's talk about
(29:38):
some other UH options besides natural burial. This other one,
This next one is it gets a little gooey. It
certainly does. For those of you who desire to be
literally washed down the drain, you do have an option. UH.
This is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and it's often used
(29:58):
to get rid of animal carcass is and also medical
conduct could average at the Mayo clinic. So this is
not like a We might think of it as a
future technique, not because it's something that's still being developed,
but just because it hasn't been so widely adopted. Culturally speaking,
it's futuristic, so it's known by several different names. The
(30:19):
process itself is alkaline hydrolysis, but it's also known as
resummation or liquid cremation or sometimes bio cremation. And here's
the basic gist of it. You put the body inside
a gigantic steel container. Uh, and this this big steel
cylinder with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide which
(30:39):
is lie and then you heat that up to like
three hundred or three fifty degrees fahrenheit under high pressure,
and this liquefies all of the soft tissue, leaving only
the bones behind. And then the liquefied body can simply
be washed down the drain and the bones then head
on to the cremulator, which is not unique to this process.
(31:02):
A crimulator is also used in cremation. But great name
for a thing, very cromulent name. I didn't know that
was the name for that thing, cremulate. I thought immediately
that that had to be one of the robots from Futurama. Yeah, right,
there were next to the crushing eader, right exactly. But
the cremulator, well, it is sort of a crush in eader.
It it turns your bones into a fine powder that
(31:23):
can then be taken away by the family or loved
ones of the deceased and so. Uh. This process reportedly
uses less energy and produces fewer airborne pollutants and carbon
emissions than traditional cremation. But it is not without its opponents.
It has faced some political opposition, like it's only legal
in some places and not in others. I found one
(31:46):
interesting article in June article for the Springfield News Sun
in Ohio by reporter Kelly Wynn, and it was called
a controversial liquid cremation sought in Ohio. And so this
was talking about how at the times some funeral homes
in Ohio we're trying to adopt alkaline hydrolysis, but they
were facing opposition. Um, I'll just read a little section
(32:08):
from it. Uh, the Catholic Church is opposed to the idea,
and that opposition has prompted State Representative Ron mag chairman
of Government of the Government and Elections Committee, to remove
language from House Bill four eighty one that would have
made alkaline hydrolysis an acceptable form of disposition. That's a
great word, disposition in Ohio. Mag who is a Catholic,
(32:31):
said he felt uncomfortable about the process and spoke to
a Catholic church leader. The process didn't seem respectful to me,
and that's why I contacted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to
get their opinion. Mag said they objected to that type
of disposal of the body. So there are obviously some
cultural factors at play here with with the acceptance of
(32:52):
new methods of dealing with the body, and and that's
to be expected, I think, because how we deal with
our dead is something that's very emotionally charged for people. Yeah,
I think I think there's a lot of association between
decomposition and corruption. I think there's this idea that decomposition
is somehow representative of corruption of the body, and any
(33:13):
process that would speed that up, I think would automatically
create kind of a bulk response with people who who
sort of made that association. And it's I'm not saying
that it's an uh one that should anyone should feel
badly about me. Again, this is very personal sort of thing.
Um Personally, this this approach I thought sounded very interesting
(33:36):
to me. I don't know how I would feel knowing
that someone I loved had chosen to go through this process.
I like, intellectually, rationally, I'm perfectly fine with it. I
don't know how I would react emotionally if I were
actually in the position where I knew someone I loved
was going to be uh dissolved in this way. It
(33:58):
might that might make me bulk at it. I don't know, Yeah,
I mean, I can't thinking about it really see that
there's anything less respectful about this than about burning people
with a flame, or about pumping them through full of
formaldehide and burying them in a box, other than the
fact that we just have the cultural inertia of those
(34:19):
other methods that you know, And again, I don't think
it's necessarily a rational thing. It's purely emotional. But you know,
cultural mores and social moras, that sort of thing. They
have a big impact on our personalities, sometimes larger than
we expect. Uh And so you know, but that that's
(34:40):
that's a really interesting way. What if I wanted to,
I don't know, turn myself into an icicle then explode
into a million pieces. Their their method for that, yep,
and this one, I'm I had never heard of it
before we started composing these notes, and I'm really excited
about this one that sounds like like if you'll forgive
my like Mr Freeze style pun he the coolest way
(35:01):
to go, It is the coolest. You're welcome, Joel Schumacher.
He directed that one. I know, no, I know, I know,
chill out, Jonathan um So. So this is called promission,
and essentially this is freezing shattering and then freeze drying
(35:25):
your body into a powder that can be buried. So
so after death, you take the body and you freeze it.
You submerge it in liquid nitrogen to deep sub zero temperatures,
and this makes it brittle and crystalline. So once the
body is frozen solid in this crystalline state, it is
subjected to mechanical vibration. You sort of put it in
a rock polisher, just a chamber that vibrates high frequency yes,
(35:51):
and this shatters the frozen remains and eventually transforms them
into a fine gravel or sandy consistency. And then you
use a vacuum chamber to sort of boil the moisture
out of the resulting powder. And this is essentially what
the process of freeze drying is. So you freeze dry it,
and then you remove any metal fillings, implants, pros theses
(36:12):
from the powder, and then what's left behind can be
buried in a shallow grave. And in this and we
often say buried in a shallow grave is kind of
like a like sneak. You know, you kill somebody and
bury them in a shallow grave. But in this case
it's a positive thing because the body is not recognizable
as a body, but it can still contribute back to
(36:32):
the ecosystem and nourish the soil. I didn't mean to snicker,
except for the fact that she said we often say it,
and and and just the way you're putting it, like yeah,
daily basis, I'm talking about shallow every Wednesday. So so
is anyone actually doing this? Is this is this hypothetical? Yes,
right now it is. It is a proposal rather than
(36:54):
a real process. As far as I know, this hasn't
been done to any people um or if it has,
I hadn't. I can't. I couldn't find evidence of it.
But it's been promoted by the Swedish company called pro Messa,
which was founded by a biologist named and I'm afraid
I'm gonna mispronounce her last name, but I'll do my best.
Your name is Susanne why a Massac and I might
(37:16):
add the why are uk ran a cool piece on
her and on promission a couple of years ago called
freeze drying the dead could help save the planet. Uh.
And one of the things that I liked about this
article was that it also uncovered this interesting turf war
between this pro promission faction in Sweden and then a
pro cremation faction who insisted at the time that promission
(37:38):
was was never gonna work and it would just never
come to market. Um. But anyway, she gave a quote
to them in this article where she said, we don't
see the dead body is the final end. Well treated,
the body will support something new, life will continue, and
that is going to create a totally new relation to
death and and dying of the body. It also makes
(38:00):
it possible to start talking about death. And I like
her approach here because she's essentially she's proposing a technology.
Now I think it has been it's pretty well accepted
that except among its critics in the cremation community, this
would work. Um, but it's not being done yet. It's
(38:20):
weird to think of a cremation community Uh, yeah, I
think in many ways it's similar to the idea of
the natural burial, this idea of returning the body to
the earth to become part of it again, the circle
of life. I was going to say that too, so
I'm glad you beat me to it. Yes, exactly. Uh.
Similar to that is the Eternal Reefs idea. Now, this
(38:43):
is a company that's actually based out of here in Georgia,
um and their idea is to take the cremains from
someone so you God, So it's not an alternative decremation,
not alternative decremation. It's actually cremation is part of this.
But you would bring the cremains to eternal reefs and
they would use the cremains to uh, to mix with
(39:04):
concrete actually to create artificial reefs or marine life and
then put those offshore to replace some of the natural
reefs that have been destroyed over the course of the
last century. And uh really in this case, again, it's
since it's not an alternative to cremation or anything, you
might wonder, well, what's the deal are these artificial reefs? Only?
(39:27):
Do they only work if you put human cremains in them? No,
the idea here is that you're helping fund this process.
You you are returning. Like from a philosophical standpoint, you
could think, I'm helping give life to other creatures by
giving them a place to to inhabit. It's it's poetic
and also right. And instead of potentially doing harm to
(39:50):
an environment, you're you're you're doing good with your fun
costs exactly. So it's it's really a way of giving
back to the earth by paying in as part of
your your funeral fees to have this happen. So uh,
I like the idea, although again it's not like it's
an alternative to to cremation. It actually is just another step.
(40:13):
So instead of storing the remain cremains and like an
urn or something, we're putting them in a mile's lamb,
you would make them as part of a marine habitat. Uh.
Of course, another process that we should talk about is
one in which you more definitely preserved the body. Yeah,
like like like crazy preservation. We're talking plastination, which was
(40:37):
developed a nineteen This episode full of great words, yea,
So plastination, well, I mean, you've got to come up
with some pretty clever words to deal with with death.
So people don't think about, you know, dying. But plastination
is a process developed in nineteen seventy seven by Gunther
von Hoggins who was looking at a way of preserving
(40:58):
body parts indefinitely. And it involves replacing the water and
fat in a body with certain types of plastic. And
you can use different types of plastic and the different
types will create different effects. And the process has four steps.
I'm not going to go into detail on each of
the steps, but if you want to know what they're called,
it's fixation, dehydration, forced impregnation in a vacuum, and hardening. Yeah.
(41:26):
So it's a relatively illusionary all on their own. Yeah,
you don't really need a whole lot of explanation to
really get it into what that is all about. So,
like I said, use different types of plastics for different effects.
Some of them are more flexible, some of them hardened
to a point where you could actually polish the body
part that you have. Uh plastinated. Often used for for
(41:48):
medical purposes, like if you wanted to do an anatomy
class and you needed to show slices of the body
so that medical students could identify where oregons were. That
sort of thing. That's a very important part. Of course,
it's very useful and and von Hogen's developed this specifically
for the medical community so that doctors and scientists would
(42:09):
have reliable models to look at that could last, you know, indefinitely. Uh.
Of course we've seen it used beyond that particular application,
and I'll get more into that in just a second.
So you might donate your body to plascination if you
specifically wanted your body to be used in the advancement
(42:31):
of science. But there is some controversy around this, uh,
largely around then the concept of consent. Uh. So plascination
is probably most famously associated with the Body Worlds exhibits,
which are they originated in Japan and have traveled the
world multiple times, and there have been several cases of
(42:54):
people accusing Body Worlds of using bodies that came from
people who did not concer sent for their bodies to
be used in this way. Now, supposedly there's a list
thousands of names long of people willing to donate their
bodies to plascination for this specific use, but there have
been at least some cases where there have been accusations
(43:14):
that some of the bodies we came from Chinese prisoners
who had been executed. That's a big problem. Uh some
from uh Russian sources, where again it maybe that the
case was that the people whose bodies were on display
never gave their consent for it to be used in
that way. Now, of course, body worlds said that they
(43:37):
are very much concerned with this. They don't ever want
to use any body that wasn't associated with consent. And
there's been a lot of lawmakers who have said, if
it comes down to it, we need to be able
to say, can you show us the death certificate, the
signed consent, Yeah, to prove that person or at least
the family. So that's where that controversy is. Um that
(44:02):
being said, I think that plastination itself, it serves very
valuable purpose again in that in that medical application of teaching,
I think it's incredibly valuable. So let's talk a little
bit about the future of cemeteries. One of the things
that Lauren mentioned earlier kind of with moles Lambs was
this idea of skyscraper cemeteries, and I can't believe we
(44:24):
didn't touch on this in our our Future of Skyscrapers, right,
we talked about vertical cities, but we did not talk
about vertical cities of the dead, yes, which could be
a thing. Uh. Now, we talked about how open space
is a precious resource in some areas and that you know,
dedicating that open space to what amounts to dead people
(44:46):
is problematic, uh in in a lot of different communities.
But one of instead of taking up a bunch of
space at ground level, you did the skyscraper approach, so
you had level after level after level. You could take
up a relatively small amount of open space and just
build upward. It's the Morgal approach. Yes. Uh So. In
(45:06):
two thousand thirteen, there was an architecture student named Martin
McSherry who presented a concept called the vertical cemetery. And
it's a really neat looking design. It's a very kind
of it looks kind of like a honeycomb from the outside.
It's white with all these it's almost like a lattice work.
And the idea is that coffins would fit in the
gaps of that lattice, and you would use a crane
(45:27):
to actually lift a coffin up to a higher level
and slotted into the right spot. It would take up
less ground space and it was specifically because there's a
real land scarcity problem in Norway. So this is a
this is this was seen as sort of a conceptual
and yet practical solution to a real problem that is
(45:48):
arising in Norway, and it is something that we could
possibly see if people continue to choose to be buried,
then this might be one of the solutions that we'll
see in the future. Mean, statistically speaking, there's a lot
more dead people on the planet than there are living people.
That's true. That funny how that works out. Uh. So
there's there's also some other interesting ideas, some that are
(46:12):
kind of similar to stuff we talked about before. Uh
there's the Urban Death Project, which sounds like a band
but it's not. Or maybe it is too, but it's
also it's also an actual project that's proposing a way
of dealing with the deceased. Oh yeah, it could fit
in with the concept of natural burial, yes exactly. Architect
(46:34):
Katrina Spade talks about this, and it's a process that
would involve turning a body essentially into compost. And the
process involves taking the body, wrapping it in a shroud
of linen, and laying that body in a bed of
wood chips and sawdust. Now the body would then start
to decompose and over the course of a month turn
(46:54):
into compost um. New bodies would be added over time,
and what happens is that the at the end of
that month, you would extract the soil from the bottom.
There be an extraction mechanism that would allow you to
harvest the soil from the bottom of this uh this
this wood chip and sawdust pit. I guess pit is
(47:15):
probably not a word that they would They would use
their own in their own marketing materials, and I don't
want to think about throwing them into the pit. But
at anyway, you would extract the soil from the bottom,
and you could invite loved ones to come and take
some of that soil home and use that in a guarden,
a kind of a way of remembering the person and
incorporating them back into your life in a in a
(47:35):
symbolic way. But it's also used in like parks and stuff.
Oh yeah, yeah, And there there's lots of other companies
that are working with alternative processes for similar concepts. I'm
sure that you've seen some of them post posted up
on your social media feeds because they've they've they're they're
they're really snazzy headlines. It's you know, like like turn
your body into a tree that kind of stuff. And so,
(47:56):
you know, there's a few companies that are offering biodegradable
urns and tree saplings as like a little paired unit.
So you know, you plant the urn under the sapling
and your ashes help feed the tree. A more dramatic
version is provided by this Italian startup company called Capsula Munda,
which buries a person in this egg shaped biodegradable coffin
(48:16):
that the corpses in a fetal position inside of it,
and it could be planted under a sapling. I'm not
an expert on decomposition, but you know, while I appreciate
the artistry of this of this version, I suspect that
something like the Urban Death Project would would be better
for the tree overall. I just worry about that particular approach.
(48:37):
If there's terrible flooding an erosion, then you have a
dead person emerging from an egg, and that would be awful.
I think the cool thing about this, the Capsula Mondy proposal,
is that you could end up with your skeleton entwined
in the roots of a tree people. People in the
future who dig you up will find the roots going
(48:57):
through your eye holes and everything is in their states.
It's an appealing idea. In the past, trees preyed upon humans,
these love crafty and trees of the century. Oh you've
given me such a great idea for a short story
now alright, so moving on. There's also a concept called
the future cemetery. This is something out of the UK.
(49:18):
The UK appears to be really kind of forward thinking
when it comes to the treatment of the dead. It's
really interesting to me. For those who want the high
tech experience, they could look into the future cemetery. It
offers an interactive approach that incorporates augmented reality, audio installations
and pico projection or pico if you prefer projection. A
(49:39):
Pico projection is the They're very tiny projectors that you
can fit right in your pocket. You can typically connect
them to something like a phone and uh projected against
the wall. Anyway. They use that for memorials in the cemetery.
So imagine recording your thoughts before you die. Obviously, that
could be displayed to someone using a smart phone apple
(50:00):
looking at your grave site like hologram style. Even like
it would be kind of cool. I would imagine, like,
think about something you would just want to impart to
future generations, even if it's just, hey, be cool to
each other. You want to be like do a little
Waynes World thing, like or not Wayns World, the Bill
and Ted thing, be excellent to each other type deal.
It's just kind of a neat idea. Or if you
want to be cranky, you could be get off my
(50:21):
lawn whatever you want. And then the person holds up
the smartphone where they're looking at your grave site, you
pop up and you say the thing. I love that
idea nicely for multiple reasons. Um, this particular cemetery is
actually located at Arnos Veil Cemetery in the UK, so
it's just one part of their cemetery. It's kind of
a proof of concept ever changing project to like they're
(50:44):
always incorporating new stuff into it. And uh, I really
like that idea. But let's say that you set your
sights higher than that, much higher up into orbit. But
since there is no up in space, you could be
setting your sites much or or or you could be
saying your sites but direction has no meaning at any rate.
(51:05):
This is an option that is, for people who are
less interested in minimizing their carbon footprint. We're talking about
space burial. Uh. I feel like that's something that's kind
of in name only, if you know what I mean. Well,
I mean it's not really a burial per se by
by the technical definition of the word. Well, okay, So,
(51:28):
so there are a few companies out there that will
send like a gram or so of your cremains up
into space. Um. And this has been made possible by
commercial and consumer space travel becoming more affordable and common. Um. So,
you know, you can you can take like a two
minute suborbital flight, you can take a full orbital flight.
You can hit your ride on a cube SAT that
(51:50):
will lose orbit and burn up during re entry a
couple of years later. You can crash into the Moon,
or you can leave Earth's orbit entirely. And these services
range in costs from about a thousand bucks to over
twelve thousand, depending on how far out you want to go. Yeah.
Someone I know, no is probably too strong a word.
(52:10):
Someone I met did this. James Dowon also known as
Scotty from Star Trek, right, Jean Roddenberry did it? Timothy Leary? Yeah,
uh yeah, so there there's plenty of precedents for that.
So this kind of brings us to the conclusion. I
thought I would end by talking about what I plan
(52:32):
on doing once I have shoveled off this mortal coil
go ahead. So the joke answer, which I would never
really do, but I like to joke about it, is
that I have a little bit of a reputation for
occasionally irritating my wife. And so I said, what would
be a way that I could continue to do that
even after I'm dead? And I thought, what would what
(52:53):
if I set aside a certain amount of money I
had myself cremated, and that money goes to a person
whose only job is to come into my house and
hide my cremains in a different location each day, and
before my wife is allowed to go to bed, she
has to find me, and that way I can continue
to irritate her even after I'm dead. That's very strange.
(53:17):
I don't deny it, but for some reason it fills
me with glee. Not that I would expect my wife
to even entertains, yeah, I'm going to bed, but actually
she'd be like, I'm not allowing someone into my house,
which is a perfectly valid response. But no, what I
(53:37):
really think I'm going to do. Is I really think
I'm going to leave my my body to science. I
think we donate my body to science. I have not
filled up official paperwork which I really need to dose.
I don't wonder if that means that you may eventually
be subject to alkaline hydrolysis. If so, so be it.
I honestly, first of all, I'm going to be beyond
carrying at that point, so I don't have a personal
(53:59):
issue that. Obviously it would be something I would have
to talk with my my wife, because I do respect
what she wants as well, and obviously it will be
more for her benefit assuming I predecease my wife, which
I certainly hope that's the case, because I can't bear
the thought of the alternative. But yeah, I would certainly
be something I would talk with her about first. But
(54:20):
personally that that's like my first choice because I like
the idea of continuing to contribute in some small way
to educating future generations. Consider that to be part of
what I do here. Like it's a lot of fun,
but I enjoy the idea. I get satisfaction the thought
that we help educate people, um, not just entertain them,
(54:41):
but teach them. And to do that after I'm alive,
you know, once I've gone and passed away. Uh really
just feeds back into that philosophy. So that's kind of
why I look toward it. If I didn't do that,
I think the natural burial is the way I would
want to go. It was really appealing to me, uh
very much. So like before I heard about natural burials,
(55:03):
I was I was leaning much more toward cremation because
I didn't want to take up space. I'm very I'm
already very aware of too much taking up too much
space when I'm in areas. I'm like, I'm constantly apologizing.
I don't want to feel like that after I'm dead. Well, yeah,
we we've spent our whole lives extracting energy resources from
(55:23):
the life all around us in our environment. It seems
only fair that we should allow them to turn around
and do the same thing back to us. Yeah. So
uh yeah, that's that I just thought would conclude with that,
And you also got some insight into my twisted sense
of humor with what I if if all things were
were according to my my design, do you do do
(55:46):
you have plans to that you would like to share
with the audience. I guess not in particular, except I've
had the same thought. Really, I mean, I like the idea.
I don't have particular attachment to the use of a
dead body after the person is dead, and so I
think it would be if if it can be made
use of for medical reasons or for medical research, any
(56:09):
kind of scientific research. I think that's a good thing
to do. Yeah. Absolutely, Yes, I agree with you guys.
Although I'm pretty excited about this. This freezing and shuttering. Sweet,
that's pretty rad Like if if if I can't help science,
then I would like to be frozen in shatter. That's
that's fair. It's pretty dramatic, that would be. I think
that'd be you know, that's a dramatic way to go. Yeah.
(56:31):
I find a lot of these alternatives very la. You
need to help defeat that cremation lobby that's keeping it down. Yeah, yeah,
ice rather than fire. And yes, somewhere somewhere someone can
can can put up a memorial or tombstone with the
Robert Frost poem on it. It'll be great. Yeah, that's
the only thing, Like I think, would I want any
(56:55):
physical Marker and Uh. At this point, I think I've
done enough that's on the Internet that I feel that
would be It's yeah, that's enough for me. The question
is again for for those who love me, if they
want to place to associate uh, then that would be
(57:17):
more for them than obviously for me. Uh. Otherwise, I'm
fine with with not leaving anything else, just saying, you know,
here's a guy who existed. Uh. You know, I have
no romantic notion about that, although it wouldn't mean that
I would deny someone the opportunity to do what I
did to Thomas Hardy's great. All right, On that note,
I'm going to wrap this up. Guys. If you enjoyed
(57:40):
this episode of forward thinking, let us know. If you
have questions, send them in. If you want to know
what I did to Thomas Hardy, I'll tell you. But
you can just send us a message our email addresses
FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop
us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter we
are FW thinking. Just search up thinking in Facebook. We'll
(58:01):
pop right up. You can leave us a message and
we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
this topic in the future of technology, I visit forward
thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.