May 28, 2013 • 40 mins
Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead? We'll bet you'll learn plenty - like the difference between a coffin and a casket - in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and this stuff you didn't
know the podcast that's right. This is part of our
ongoing death Suite, which is sweet. Yeah, we've covered death
(00:24):
a lot because death is multi faceted. Sure you know.
This reminded me of the I guess we covered green
burial not in its own podcast, but in like different
ways to what to do with the dead Bonnie. There
you go, That's what I thought it was into. But
I'm surprised we didn't do a podcast dedicated just to that.
Maybe we should. Yeah, I looked up because I'm interested
(00:45):
in that for myself. And uh, there are some lovely
places right outside Atlanta to be buried greenly where you
can just be wrapped in a shroud and buried in
the field, which ripped to death by coyotes left in
the field that they don't leave you enough. No, well
they bury you in a shallow grave for the coyotes
to come get you. Now. They said they don't have
a problem with that. But I'm not one of those
(01:06):
people that uh cares about that. Yeah, like about what
happens to your body, Like I would do a sky burial.
That wouldn't bother me for vultures to pick me apart.
Like use the body if it would feed an animal? Great,
why not donated to science? Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
I'm not precious about that my body after death. I'm
not precious about my body in life. Why start then? Exactly? Yeah,
(01:30):
that's funny. Yeah. So anyway, well a shroud, a shroud
does kind of technically count as a coffin. Chuck, Yeah,
back in the day if you didn't have a lot
of money, right, um, or if you're into being picked
apart by coyotes. Um. But the the whole point of
a coffin or what constitutes a coffin is it provides
(01:52):
a barrier between the body and the ground. And technically
a shroud does that. It's a really really poor coffin.
But that it's the whole point. It's that the body
is encapsulated in something that just dropping a body into
a grave is um undignified. You might say, even cremating
a body without some form or fashion of a coffin
(02:14):
is considered undignified. And you'll be hard pressed to find
a crematorium that will let you just put your loved
one on the conveyor belt and let them just kind
of flop lifelessly toward the flames. I don't think they
flop well, I mean, if they're jostle, they're gonna flop, okay,
especially after rigors um the coffin, the word coffin. We're
not gonna do any Merriam Webster stuff, because that's who
(02:37):
would start an article like that or do it six
times in an article. But we will say we like
to get root words. And of course Greek and Latin
are involved here with the Greek cofinos in Latin cofee nuts.
They're always like, oh yeah, right, I'll change that cato
a c and that otto a you remember, the Greeks
happen exactly. So that's where the word coffin came from. Um.
(03:01):
But here in the United States we generally referred to
that vessel as a casket, whereas in places like England
and Australia I'm sorry, Great Britain and Australia they might
say coffin, even though a lot of people here think
that's like a word you shouldn't use. Well, yeah, their
casket still means a place to like keep your valuables right,
(03:21):
your bubbles right. Yeah. Here in the US, if you
go to a funeral directorium also called a funeral home,
you're going to find that they'd never use the word coffin. No,
and you know it's pretty subtle, but the language is definitely.
They don't say, uh, we'd love to pick out for you,
to pick out a coffin for your husband's dead body, um,
(03:43):
and then we'll dig a grave over there and put
it in the ground. They will say things like, we
would like you to pick out a casket for your
husband and from our display area, from the display area,
and we will take you there in the casket coach,
not a hearse and uh, and place him in internment
space which is opened, and then we'll close afterward. Rather
(04:05):
than filling or digging the grapes, they don't say where
it's like digging and ground isn't anything that that brings
to mind. Um, the guy from phantasm does the funeral
industry avoids those words. Yeah, And of course we've ruined
six feet under and the Fisher and Sons the boys,
such a great show. Michael always did, such a great
(04:27):
job of you know, being the proper funeral director and
using all the all the words that you should use,
like casket. He's good at it, and then he turned
into a serial killer. No, well yeah, um, so there
actually is a distinction beyond where you live with the
word casket in coffin. There's a slight difference. Shape. Yeah,
(04:48):
it's it's all. It's basically shape. A casket is a
long rectangle and the top is usually split, so you
can know that's a coffin. That's a casket. Oh yeah,
that's a casket. Coffin is the hexagonal, right, a hexagonal box. Yeah,
and that you know, back in the day you had
the old pine box. Actually a lot of those were
just rectangular. Um, but somewhere you know, had that familiar
(05:12):
sort of keyhole shape. Well back in the day, in
the nineteenth century, the person who was responsible for carrying
out your funeral services and building your coffin was usually
the local carpenter, and he undertook your funeral service, hence
the word undertaker from what I understand, Um, but it
(05:32):
was usually somebody who built wagons and kitchens and whatever.
They also built coffins too, and they built him the suit.
That sounded to me like our first casket fact. Well done, Chuck, Wow, Yeah,
thank you Jerry for going the extra mile there. And uh,
(05:54):
if you like that, you're going to love this episode
because this place is lousy with casket facts. Yeah, we
won't play the sound effect on this one. But I
thought another interesting fact, because you know, I like origins
of phrases and things. If someone casts the pall over
a room, Paul was actually a dark cloth that they
would put over the casket too. I guess cover you know,
(06:17):
block out the bad juju of having the dead body
in there, right, so you would cast a pall over
the casket. Yeah, or if you're me, you cast a
pall over any room you enter. That's fun, no fun anymore? Everybody?
Can we can we talk a little bit about the
funeral industry for a second. About the casket industry has
to say specifically, there's still some furniture companies that make
(06:38):
caskets on the side, like Lazy Boy. Yeah. I don't
know if Lazy Boy doesn't, but there's they represent a
very small shape of the caskets ultimate Lazy Boy, you
know you're You're forever chair exactly. Well, they actually have
caskets for those people. It's called um, goliath caskets, oversized caskets,
(06:58):
order oversized caskets. Calm huh. Anyway, of course there's someone
that does that because that's a common thing. You know,
caskets aren't you know some people of of girth. That's
pretty embarrassing now when you can't fit in your casket, right,
And I went and looked, and these are very dignified
caskets there for the larger person. Um uh wow Um.
(07:22):
There's also uh okay, so when the largest casket makers.
Batesville originally started out as a furniture company. So there's
like this whole origin of yeah, I'll build your chair
and I'll build your coffin for your uncle too. That
makes sense. It's carpentry. And then um, that's kind of
the way it went. There was some some groups that
(07:44):
that started to consolidate and just make caskets around the
late the turn of the twentieth century the beginning of
the twentieth century, and you know, that was fine. They
kind of created the industry. And then it was like
the fifties after the Korean War, when metal caskets became
like all our age. Yeah, because that was mad looking
(08:04):
and that was popular at the time it was. And
you'll also find in the funeral industry it was easy
to um subtly exploit the grieving out of their money. Um,
there was that it was very cheap to mass produce
metal caskets and so they were sold, sold, sold. There
was a huge profit margin with them, and I think
(08:24):
by um the seventies, half of all caskets were um
we're metal. Yeah, Well, because what better way to protect
your loved one from the elements and the harsh afterlife
that they may encounter than with a good old solid
metal in casing. Yes exactly, um, which also happens to
(08:46):
be I have greater profit margins and it's cheaper to produce,
so it is it's cheaper to mass produced the other
aspect of a metal coffin. In the rise of the
metal coffin, it changed the casket making industry, UM because
it's really really expensive to get into metal coffin making.
Apparently cost about a million dollars just for the dies
to make a standard metal coffin just for the dies alone.
(09:10):
So this kind of consolidated industry down to a fewer
and fewer companies that were making metal caskets, UM, so
it became a real industry at that point. UM. And
then ultimately the casket industry started to suffer and decline
thanks to advances in medicine. There were fewer deaths, so
their profits dropped or the revenue drop. And then starting
(09:31):
in the eighties, people said, you know what, maybe cremation
isn't so bad, and so in I think of people
opted for cremation, and then by two thousand, um, I think, no,
two thousand eleven, it's like yeah, and every time somebody
gets cremated, the coffin industry dies a little bit. Yeah,
(09:52):
although you know, um, like you said, you can um
still have a casket to be cremated in and we
can over this in the Cremation podcast. Yeah, well you
have to, like you can't find somebody who will just
let your but that can be it's super cheap, like
sometimes it's even cardboard. Well it's supposed to because it's
got to burn. Yeah, but I mean at the very
least would uh will also burn. But you can you
(10:14):
can spend a little bit more money, or you can
get a temporary encasing and outer encasing that is more
attractive to show the family and then when push comes
to shove, they shove that. They remove the outer casket
and shove you. And it's like a rental casket just
for the service. Yeah, and you can actually rent caskets period,
(10:35):
like even if you aren't being cremated, just for a
more showy experience and then they'll you know, then you
get the pine box treatment, right because nobody will loves you. Yeah,
it's expensive, man. People. A lot of people don't have
the money to pay for a big funeral, and it's
a lot of people really believe in that kind of thing.
It's really sad for them, you know. It is. Luckily
there's such a thing as Walmart and Costco. Both of
(10:57):
them sell caskets. Walmart has a casket for eleven one thousand,
it's the Lady of Our Lady of guadaloup Um casket model. Uh.
And then Costco Yeah okay, and then Costco has the
same same model for a hundred bucks more. Really. Yeah,
I was surprised that it's not exactly the same. But
(11:18):
it's nice to see that the big box retailers aren't
price fixing coffins. Yeah, it's great to see Walmart selling coffins.
But I mean it's like that you if you need
a coffin, and they're attractive looking coffins. I think they're fiberglass.
Have you ever laid down in a coffin? Probably not,
I haven't. I haven't either. I would just to see
what it felt like. They look comfy. Did you see
(11:40):
the thing about the six ft under club in San Francisco?
There is a club where it's like, hey, you and
you're UM partner, life part swinging partner, partner, what your
sex partner. Let's just call it what it is. UM
can write, can come lay down in our coffin and
we'll bury you and you guys can do it, and
(12:03):
we are going to watch you on a night vision
webcamp that's going to be projected on the walls of
the club above. Where's the San Francisco San Francisco six
Under Club and you can email in reserves space in
their coffin. Huh? Is there? I mean, is there any
room in the coffin that's pretty I would imagine it
would have to be a larger, but maybe a goliath
(12:23):
coffin double one. Huh. Well, I will never do that,
but it's interesting to know what's out there. It is
out there, Sisco options. Let's talk about the anatomy of
a coffin, Chuckers, Well, the you know, the most important thing,
of course, is that it is a barrier too, from
the body to the you know, the elements. No one,
(12:44):
Actually I don't care, like I already said, but most people,
most normal people, I don't want to think about their
loved ones bodies like decaying and being eaten by you know,
being worm dirt. But one thing they cannot tell you
is that it's illegal to say that we have a
casket that will permanently seal the body, Like it's against
(13:05):
the law to claim any sort of permanence. Um, even
if it's one of these new gasket coffins. What are
those called. Um, it's called the protective coffin, Yeah, which
actually has a rubber gasket so it feels much tighter.
But they still legally can't say like it will protect
them forever, right, because it will protect them from the elements.
But there is such a thing as decay, like your
(13:27):
your body is going to decay and nothingness. And apparently,
I guess the funeral industry was selling coffins based on
the idea that the body was going to survive forever
and with this impermeable seal that the protective coffins had,
I mean, it wasn't letting anything in, but it also
wasn't letting anything out, which is a problem. And in
an airtight um environment, anaerobic bacteria gets to work and
(13:53):
as they start putrefying the flesh, they expel methane gas
as a by product. And there's a thing called exploding
coffin syndrome which was most um apparent in mausoleums, where
a coffin would just blow up, and sometimes they would
blow up so much that it would blow the mausoleum
door open, like a huge methane explosion from the gas
(14:17):
built up from the decaying corps in this protective coffin.
So now they have ones that that don't let anything in,
but they burp gas out. They're called burping coffins, which
is a great name for a coffin. So but so
is exploding casket syndrome. Boy, could you imagine being a
cemetery worker and seeing a mausoleum door explode wide? Yeah,
(14:38):
you're just like I seen it all. I would quit
my job that day. Um, So it depends on where
you are in the world what you're gonna get with
your with your coffin and with regulations, you know, and
less developed countries obviously they're less regulated. Um, you could
still be wrapped in a shroud in some parts of
the world. Right here in the US, um, in the West.
(15:00):
You they're basically public health regulations, which is why that
that place for the green burial is designated a green
burial place. Yeah, so I'm sure you the body won't
come in contact with the groundwater, I think is what
they're trying to keep from happening. Yeah, that was in
the thank you. Yeah. So, um, that's pretty much the
whole public health regulation, and it's gotten to the point
(15:21):
where most most people are buried with cement and casement
around them, right, Oh is that what they do these days?
I think so? Yeah, I think I knew that. Actually,
it's so funny, like we're we're all still six year
old at our courts, like, dude, dead body cross, I
can't let they get in the water. Yeah, that stuffing
better me? Do you cant? Sadies? No not. I wouldn't
(15:41):
want to drink a dead body now, but seeing one,
I mean I'm the guy who poked a head floating
in a bucket, you know. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about
that story. I didn't poke it, but I mentally poked it.
It didn't me. Uh. If you are in the Western world,
you're probably gonna be dealing with wood or metal or fiberglass.
(16:02):
If you are live out in the desert, they may
use things like local products like clay or stone, which
is kind of interesting. I guess we got a lot
of wood here in the United States though, particle board. Yeah,
and like we mentioned the sad, sad cardboard cremation vessel, right, which, again,
if you're being you probably don't care. Yeah. I was
(16:24):
all set for cremation, and then I thought, I don't know,
is there anything that's in the green burial seems like
a good option. Sure, just become one with the dirt maybe,
but I like the idea being scattered as well, or
again helping somebody helping other people. Yeah, but they'll still
like if you don't your body to science, did they
(16:45):
not give you any sort of like, no, you can't
be embalmed or anything. I guess you probably could if like,
say you're going to the body farm, you wouldn't be
able to be involved. And I'm sure there's like memorial services,
but I don't. I don't as I understand it. That's
another thing that's eating into the casket industry profits is
body donation. Hey man, I think this is a perfect
time to have a message break from our sponsor, which
(17:08):
means they're jingle all right, So I think this is
actually a great time for a second gasket. Fact, I
like these already. Alright back in the day, in the
early nineteenth century, that was sort of a they called
(17:31):
it graves body snatching period, and people were into snatching
up bodies, digging up graves, exhuming people, if you will,
and basically selling bodies for money for medical research. It
was a way to make a buck or doing research
on your own. Medical College of Georgia was they found
dozens of skeletons. I was like, I don't think dozens
(17:54):
of skeletons of um people who were dismembered, and they
figured out that all of them had been and from graves.
Remember that. Of course, that wasn't in the early nineteenth century,
was it. It was in the nineteenth century. It so
they developed something well, various things to you know, protect
bodies like locked mausoleums and vaults. And then something I
(18:16):
think it's gonna net called the mort safe, which is
basically an iron cage put over the coffin. It's like
sunk into concrete. It's like what people used to protect
their air conditioners today. Yeah exactly, but over like a grave.
So that that was a mort safe and that kept
people out. They had guards sometimes stats guards. I think
(18:38):
then the caretaker doubles as a guard, but they had
people who they hired as guards and protect a specific grave.
I think if you had enough dough, you could have like, um,
you know the mausoleum with a guard. That's pretty cool.
And that's you know, that's if you're rich and wealthy. Um.
There are also if you weren't wealthy, other ways to
to thwart grave robbers, just to put heavy planks um
(19:01):
to backfill the grave with rocks instead of dirt, which
might not have kept somebody out, but they would have
made quite a bit of noise digging you up. And
uh yeah, have you ever been to um Oakland Cemetery. Yeah?
I go all the time, well not all the time,
but I go. It is beautiful all the times. A year. Yeah,
you mean, and I went and just did like this,
just walked around like there's some there's some ausoleums there
(19:24):
that like there's no way you could have gotten into. Yeah.
For those uh people that haven't been to Atlanta, that
is what are probably oldest in like cemetery. It is
our Parade de Lache. Yes, I've been to that one
to actually the one in Paris. What parade is it?
The one with Jim Morrison. Yeah, of course, and uh,
(19:47):
I think Oscar Wilde is there and Chopin, but you know,
Morrison's the one that you go by and there's like
joints on the ground and like tabs of acid and stuff.
And then you always like the random guy kind of
hanging out like waiting for everyone to turn their back.
A bunch of dirty hippies basically uh in Ghana and
(20:10):
other parts of Africa. It is kind of cool because
they will They have a very um, sort of a
joyous way of celebrating death with their bright colored coffins
and even odd shapes that would pay honor to what
this person loved in life. Um. I saw one that
was like a giant shoe and this guy this uh,
(20:32):
this Aprican dude was just like, you know, it must
have been as relative and it was just so proud
to show that they were bearing him in a giant shoe.
So it's like it's like to the dead in Ghana
what a pinionta is to like a kid in Mexico. Really, yeah,
they have like pinionas that are like shape for their
different specific Yeah, there was just a b there's like
(20:55):
lets of hello kiddies and like really yeah, yeah, there's
there's some great pinontas out there. Um. And then the
other example they gave in here is like if it
was a businessman, he might be buried in something that
resembled his luxury car. Or a fisherman, it might be
a fish shaped the fish finally got him back. He's
in the belly of it. So chuck, you you mentioned
(21:18):
things that coffins may be made out of. You mentioned
like wood, fiberglass, um, oak, hardy woods, bronze is still
used on occasion, yeah sure, um. And that's the shell
of the coffin yeah, um. And then the inside you'll
find the lining, usually some sort of rich fabric like
tafida or velvet or something that looks like that. Maybe
(21:40):
volure if if they like juicy clothes that kind of thing,
silk maybe, Yeah, and it's stuffed with batting to keep
the corpse nice and comfortable. And uh, that's pretty much it.
You've got hardware on the outside and that's a casket. Yeah,
it's probably gonna be warm. Colors here in the Western world, Um,
it's not gonna You're not gonna see a lot of
brightly painted coffins and stuff like that. No, but also
(22:02):
they kind of avoid like, um, you're probably I can
see a black coffin anywhere. Yeah. Those are called um
receding colors. They're they're dismal in of desperation and despair.
I feel like I've seen a lot of like light
gray and things like that, or just would color. If
you get like a really nice wood like cherry, sometimes
it will just be in that. You know that that
(22:24):
will be the outer shell. And those are pricing, Yes,
they are um that. As a matter of fact, the
average cost of a funeral in the US and two
thousand nine was six thousand, five hundred and sixty which
is less than I thought. I think a green barrels
about half that. Yeah, I can see that. I think
they're like two or three grand because the coffin um
in the average funeral was two thousand, two hundred and
ninety five dollars the average cost of a metal coffin
(22:46):
in two thousand nine UM which in two thousand and seven,
funeral homes and crematories pulled in eleven point nine five
billion dollars, And one of the ways they pulled in
that much was from casket sales. Yeah. And I don't
know if even should say this out loud because it
sounds like an unfounded accusation that cheap coffins are purposely
(23:06):
made ugly so they can up sell. Do you think
that's true? Uh, it's probably true. Well, I know, I've
I've read that the the funeral home industry marks up
caskets that they buy, they resell them for more than
they paid for them. Well, it's a business, and that's
their product, you know it is. It's a business in
(23:28):
the Uh, the customers are in a really um, really
easily exploited place. Yeah, I just I don't know though.
I just think it is a business. And because it
deals with death, it's very easy for someone to say, like,
you're exploiting these people, are taking advantage of them when there.
(23:49):
I just don't think that's true. It's well, I think
that you can't cast that net across the entire industree.
I think that that's that's there's But they're also for everybody,
you know, bad apples Josh. Well, you know, we we
have a lot of opulence here in the United States.
Some people get into that, but apparently in Australia and
Great Britain they're a little more reserved with what they'll
(24:09):
spend on a casket. In some cultures, like the Jewish faith, Um,
it's very common to to not have any sort of
garish thing. It wants you to be burying something very plain,
so you're not distinguished as to your place in life,
you know. Yeah, apparently they'll even the hardware that they
used to carry is removable, so like when you're buried,
(24:31):
you're buried in a plane box. Yeah like that. That's yeah,
that's cool. Um. Do you want to talk about the
Bow people? The hanging coffins of the Bow not to
be confused with the Hell of the upside down centers
in Big Trouble in Little China, although this is in
Sechuan Province of China. The Bo people are an ethnic
(24:52):
group that populated the area, and they had this really
neat tradition of putting the cough finds of their deceased
up on like three hundred foot cliffs, just craigs, little caves,
and for centuries, no one has had any idea how
they got them up there. Yeah, at one point they
(25:13):
had close to three hundred and now it's only about
a hundred and three hundred and fifty four hundred feet
And you've seen did you see pictures? It's crazy. I
mean they're like, I don't see how they did it.
They think now they might have lowered them down, but
they still you know that they're on It looks like
they're on wood planks that are sticking out of the cliffs.
So how they do that, I don't can't figure it out.
(25:35):
It's pretty neat. It's like a little village of coffins
is kind of clustered on this cliff side. Yeah, with
the idea that having your relatives higher up um is
a place of greater respect to be looking up at
them because that's where the deities were at the tops
of mountains, and that would placed them closer to the deities. Yes,
you go up here now, Yeah, because you're dead. Yeah,
(25:56):
it's very interesting. Um. What about the Egyptians, They had
the money coffin and if you ask me, yeah, and
we covered this with Tutt obviously the big sarkofa guy. Um.
But they didn't they believe that you would just be
sent to your you know, all this stuff would go
with you. Yeah, you need it in your afterlife for
your journey to the after world, the underworld. Um. And
(26:18):
I guess the whole it was the opposite of what
the Jews think. It was. The more socioeconomic status you
can bestow upon a grave, the better off the person
is going to be in the next life. You have
a be jeweled casket, You're you're in our You're okay
in our book. Yeah. But they actually had texts what
(26:39):
we know called the Egyptian Book of the Dead and
was originally um called the uh. It grew out of
what it called the Egyptian Coffin texts, and there were two.
The Book of the Dead, um. The Coffin text that
became the Book of the Dead was for everybody, regardless
of your socioeconomic status. And it it told you how
to be buried. And we've done how mummies work, so
(27:01):
We got into that a lot, and that's basically what
we relied on. But there was also one for the pharaohs,
the kings, the that the elite, and those are the
Pyramid texts, yes, and that's the one that later evolved
through the Book of the Dead, right, the Pyramid Text.
I think the Coffin texts. I know, Hey, it's the
Pyramid Text. Yeah, the Pyramid text is separate. That's the
(27:24):
one for the for the elite, right, and that's what
evolved through the Book of the Dead. Um. But I
think what was in the Coffin Text was contained within
the Pyramid text, right, Yeah, I think the Coffin Text
was an umbrella that gave birth to both. It was
the original one and it actually had the first described
cosmology ever recorded. Yes, the Book of Two A's within
(27:46):
the Egyptian Confin Text was the first time they basically said,
here's what happens to you after death could happen to you,
And it's basically you cross from one part of the
sky into a lake of five and then across into
another part of this guy. Yeah, and the Coffin texts
have spells and things to help you out as well
in your journey like check out my bejeweled casket. I'm okay.
(28:11):
In your book, Chuck, we couldn't talk about um coffins
if we didn't talk about a really interesting and neat
trend of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, maybe even seventeenth,
but I think eighteenth and nineteenth century called safety coffins. Yeah,
it was. It's a common fear for people to It's
(28:34):
called tafa phobia, tafo phobia, and um, that's the fear
of being buried alive. Yeah, and that it's a real thing.
And people had it then and they have it now. Well,
they had good reason to have it back then, because
it happened. Yeah. There there was a book called Premature
Burial and How It May Be Prevented in book by
a social reformer named William teb and a couple of
(28:55):
co authors, and actually one of the co authors was
a doctor who himself had been premat truly buried. Yeah.
They went over like account after your account, and they
even had a chapter called Dubious Accounts. But they basically
came up with two hundred and nineteen instances of narrow
escape from premature burial, a hundred forty nine cases of
actual premature burial, ten cases of vivisection before death, so
(29:19):
the person they thought was dead they started to cut
open and they weren't dead. And then and then two
cases of embalming before death, so like it happened before embalming.
It was like there was no way to tell you
were dead. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's that was
the problem. Is medical science had advanced to the point
(29:40):
where you could always tell if someone was dead exactly.
And there was such thing as cholera, which apparently gives
you the appearance of being dead even when you're not,
so there was good reason to fear being buried alive
and as a resultless thing called the safety coffin um
came up. Yeah, and there were I'm sure you've done
some other research on this. There were all different sorts
of methods that they had from a vault that had
(30:05):
like a little window and uh a wheel you could
turn on the inside to let yourself out, which would
be nice. Sometimes it was just a breathing tube. Yeah,
the the one that was patented in by a guy
named Count Carnice car Nicky, which is awesome. Uh. He
had something that was there was a tube with a
(30:25):
spring going all the way to six ft down. Um,
and there was a little glass ball at the end
of the tube and it rested on the deceased chest.
And if any movement of the chest happened, like you
took one breath anything like that, it would trip the spring.
And some this passageway would fly open to let air
in and a flag would rise up above your grades
(30:46):
they were still alive. So UM, that one was one
of the most well known safety coffins and actually in
premature burial and how it may be prevented. Uh, there's
a whole little chapter dedicated to it. And actually you
can find the full text of that online for free.
It's really interesting. Uh. There were also things that would
trigger like a bell ringing. Uh. One that even had
(31:08):
a long fuse firecracker that I guess you could set off.
I mean, that'll be the attention to somebody. Um. In
that book, Teb and his friends they endorse to prevent
premature burial, either safety coffin or cremation, whether like even
if you are dead, then even if you're not dead,
(31:29):
you're going to be dead afterwards. So if we guarantee
you won't be buried alive, exactly, because you'll be right,
we're not even going to bury the ultimate safety coffin.
And there's this guy named Dr Timothy Clark Smith In.
He died in Middlebury, Vermont, and he's buried to this day,
which is customary in Evergreen Cemetery, and um, if you
(31:51):
go to his burial mound, there's a fourteen by fourteen
inch of plate glass that opens up onto what was
once his face six down so that people could come
check on him and make sure he was dead. Because
he had half a phobia. It was very, very much
afraid of that fate. That's got to be tied to
claustrophobia somehow. Well, yeah, they think the a P A
(32:13):
being They think that, um, you've had some sort of
early childhood encounter with an enclosed space and either you
developed half a phobia or you become the batman. Oh
that's their that's their judgment that you know what that
sounds like. That sounds like a casket. Fact, let's hear it,
(32:35):
ah man, that's a sweet actor. Uh let's see what else.
I got a couple more things? You got anything else?
I got nothing else? So you can we said that
the average coffin is like you can also shell out
thirty thousand dollars. Batesville UH Casket Company makes the Promethean
(32:55):
Um and it is the coffin that Michael Jackson and
James Brown were buried in separately. They of their own coffins. Yeah,
what's the deal was it? Just like it is nice looking, rich, luxurious,
like navy velvet interior. You're lining this, it looks it
must be gold but polished at this high shine. It's
a beautiful casket. I have to say, there's no reason
(33:17):
in the world for anyone ever to be buried in
a casket like this. But it's out there. Um, if
you want to go the other way, you can go
to d I y coffin dot com and there are
schematics to build your own very plain coffin. I saw that.
I thought about that it might be a nice thing
to do, build your own coffin that King of the Hill.
There's a king that where Hank builds his own coffin.
(33:39):
He's talking about how he started. He's like, well, I
looked into it and long story short, I got the bug.
Now he's made. He made. He made. His first try
was terrible, so he gave that to Peggy and then
his second try, it's really nice. He's gotten it down
pat and he Peggy gets the one where like the
top doesn't close all the way right, That's what mine
would look. It's a good episode. I'm not a skilled craftsman,
(34:02):
but I enjoy it. Yeah. And then lastly, you mean,
I saw Mike Tyson do his little love his little
spoken word thing. But we saw him d C. It
was great, um, And he talked about it was really
sweet because I'm really ambivalent about him because you know,
it's just he's a really there's a lot to him,
you know what I'm saying. Um. And but one of
(34:23):
the things that he said he did was his mother
was buried in a potter's field with an unmarked grave
and like a just a cheap box. And he said
the first time he made money, he had her exhumed
and bought like the most expensive headstone in the most
expensive casket he could find, and had her buried in
like this other nights cemetery. You know, there's a pauper's
(34:43):
grave over by the drive in movie theater here in Atlanta.
M Yeah, is that right? Yeah, it's just yeah, it's
a pauper's grave and lots of like bad stuff goes
on there now apparently what oh like and stuff like that.
It's the way where drugging. Yeah, I'm sure some teams
are drinking and that's probably not a good tafe place
(35:05):
to do that. No, I wouldn't think so. Um. Yeah,
And there's also Potter's Field Pauper's Grave in uh Oakland Cemetery.
Oh yeah, which it's basically like a big expansive grass.
You have a bunch of people who we're poor, we're burying. Yeah.
I did Mountain Vernon when I was up there, you
know George Washington's place. Is it cool? Yeah, it's really
neat because they still do stuff the old fashioned way,
(35:28):
you know, like if they need a room painted, they
grind up die and mix it with water and all
that stuff. But um, you know there is like you know,
he and Martha are buryed in this like beautiful mausoleum.
And then there's also like the slave you know grave sites,
and it's just you know, definitely like he freed all
his slaves and his will, which was a good thing
(35:49):
to do, I guess. But anytime you go to one
of those plantation type things and you see like the
opulence of his thing, and then this other little side
area where the slaves are buried. It's just sort of like, yeah, yeah,
all that happened. That's a sad reminder, it is. And
no one was visiting like the slave areas much even
and I was just sort of like that kind of
rubbed me a little bit. Did you go over there
(36:11):
and visit it? Yeah? Absolutely good for you. Ye, So
you got anything else? I got nothing else. That's coffins.
That's coffins. I was going to write this article a
couple of years ago because it didn't exist, because I
wanted to do this. Oh good, I'm glad it came along.
I think that's just a lesson kids. If you wait
around long enough, somebody else might do. Well. Then, since
(36:32):
Chuck gave wait, I think Chuck, that might be a
casket fact. What is that the last casket back? Okay, well,
since we had our last casket fact? Um, oh yeah,
I gotta say. If you want to read this article
on coffins, you can go to how stuff works dot
com and you can type in that word ce F
(36:54):
F I N in the search bar, and that means
it's time now for a listener. Mail, Josh, I'm gonna
call this very manipulative email from a Georgia tech fan.
Here we go, Peter in Virginia. He knows it's coming.
I want to tell you, guys, how your podcast made
a difference in my life. I recently found out that
I have UH diffuse large B cell lymphoma. As a
(37:17):
part of the testing process to determine what stage you are,
they shoot you full of barium and then perform a
CT scan. Cancer cells divide rapidly, so based on how
much the barium glows during the CT will tell them
how much your cancer has spread. As part of the process,
you have to remain as still as possible for an
hour prior to the ct UH so as there's uh
(37:38):
as little circulation in the blood and barium as possible.
Then you sit for another hour, also as still as possible,
getting the body scan. Needless to say, you feel very
woozy after the barium, and it's very anxious time. Your
mind wants to wander into numerous worst case scenarios while
you were alone UH in a cold dark room. However,
I was overjoyed when the nurses said I could listen
(37:59):
to um My m P three player. I am glad
you that I spent both of those hours listening to
your podcast. Actually, I even got one of the nurses
to tape my phone next to my head during the
scanning process to ensure I would hear it. Uh provided
a great distraction and really took my mind off what
certainly would have been very gruesome two hours. Also, the
(38:21):
doctor said that beating cancer certainly is partly mental, and
the attitude in response from the treatment have a large
part to do with your response. And I'm a graduate
from Georgia Tech, and if I could hear Go Jackets
on the air, seriously make my weak and increase my
odds of survival. Goodness. I know you both went to
U g A. However, I'm hopeful that we can put
(38:41):
aside of differences and come together to rally behind something
like cancer. And I email Peter back and said, you're
very manipulative human being and he laughed and thought that
was really funny, and UH gave me and you a
go dogs and the email and he thought that might
be the like a carbon offset. So Peter, obviously, go Jackets.
(39:02):
Buzz Buzz buzz, Go Jackets. Go Jamblin wreck from Georgia Tech,
et cetera. And that's where it ends, my friend. Yeah,
and we wish you all the best obviously in uh
in your treatment and let us know how it's going.
We'll be thinking about you. Thank you, Peter, hanging there, buddy,
good luck and keep us posted. And we're never gonna
say go jackets again. That's right. That's your one shot. Um.
(39:24):
If you want to try to manipulate me and chuck
into doing something we don't want to, you can give
it a shot. You can tweet to us at say
s k podcast that was a hy by the way,
You can go to Facebook dot com slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
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at our home on the web that is Stuff you
(39:44):
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instant access at jack threads dot com, slash Kate and
o W stuff that's jackthreads dot com, slash no Stuff
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and this stuff you didn't
know the podcast that's right. This is part of our
ongoing death Suite, which is sweet. Yeah, we've covered death
(00:24):
a lot because death is multi faceted. Sure you know.
This reminded me of the I guess we covered green
burial not in its own podcast, but in like different
ways to what to do with the dead Bonnie. There
you go, That's what I thought it was into. But
I'm surprised we didn't do a podcast dedicated just to that.
Maybe we should. Yeah, I looked up because I'm interested
(00:45):
in that for myself. And uh, there are some lovely
places right outside Atlanta to be buried greenly where you
can just be wrapped in a shroud and buried in
the field, which ripped to death by coyotes left in
the field that they don't leave you enough. No, well
they bury you in a shallow grave for the coyotes
to come get you. Now. They said they don't have
a problem with that. But I'm not one of those
(01:06):
people that uh cares about that. Yeah, like about what
happens to your body, Like I would do a sky burial.
That wouldn't bother me for vultures to pick me apart.
Like use the body if it would feed an animal? Great,
why not donated to science? Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
I'm not precious about that my body after death. I'm
not precious about my body in life. Why start then? Exactly? Yeah,
(01:30):
that's funny. Yeah. So anyway, well a shroud, a shroud
does kind of technically count as a coffin. Chuck, Yeah,
back in the day if you didn't have a lot
of money, right, um, or if you're into being picked
apart by coyotes. Um. But the the whole point of
a coffin or what constitutes a coffin is it provides
(01:52):
a barrier between the body and the ground. And technically
a shroud does that. It's a really really poor coffin.
But that it's the whole point. It's that the body
is encapsulated in something that just dropping a body into
a grave is um undignified. You might say, even cremating
a body without some form or fashion of a coffin
(02:14):
is considered undignified. And you'll be hard pressed to find
a crematorium that will let you just put your loved
one on the conveyor belt and let them just kind
of flop lifelessly toward the flames. I don't think they
flop well, I mean, if they're jostle, they're gonna flop, okay,
especially after rigors um the coffin, the word coffin. We're
not gonna do any Merriam Webster stuff, because that's who
(02:37):
would start an article like that or do it six
times in an article. But we will say we like
to get root words. And of course Greek and Latin
are involved here with the Greek cofinos in Latin cofee nuts.
They're always like, oh yeah, right, I'll change that cato
a c and that otto a you remember, the Greeks
happen exactly. So that's where the word coffin came from. Um.
(03:01):
But here in the United States we generally referred to
that vessel as a casket, whereas in places like England
and Australia I'm sorry, Great Britain and Australia they might
say coffin, even though a lot of people here think
that's like a word you shouldn't use. Well, yeah, their
casket still means a place to like keep your valuables right,
(03:21):
your bubbles right. Yeah. Here in the US, if you
go to a funeral directorium also called a funeral home,
you're going to find that they'd never use the word coffin. No,
and you know it's pretty subtle, but the language is definitely.
They don't say, uh, we'd love to pick out for you,
to pick out a coffin for your husband's dead body, um,
(03:43):
and then we'll dig a grave over there and put
it in the ground. They will say things like, we
would like you to pick out a casket for your
husband and from our display area, from the display area,
and we will take you there in the casket coach,
not a hearse and uh, and place him in internment
space which is opened, and then we'll close afterward. Rather
(04:05):
than filling or digging the grapes, they don't say where
it's like digging and ground isn't anything that that brings
to mind. Um, the guy from phantasm does the funeral
industry avoids those words. Yeah, And of course we've ruined
six feet under and the Fisher and Sons the boys,
such a great show. Michael always did, such a great
(04:27):
job of you know, being the proper funeral director and
using all the all the words that you should use,
like casket. He's good at it, and then he turned
into a serial killer. No, well yeah, um, so there
actually is a distinction beyond where you live with the
word casket in coffin. There's a slight difference. Shape. Yeah,
(04:48):
it's it's all. It's basically shape. A casket is a
long rectangle and the top is usually split, so you
can know that's a coffin. That's a casket. Oh yeah,
that's a casket. Coffin is the hexagonal, right, a hexagonal box. Yeah,
and that you know, back in the day you had
the old pine box. Actually a lot of those were
just rectangular. Um, but somewhere you know, had that familiar
(05:12):
sort of keyhole shape. Well back in the day, in
the nineteenth century, the person who was responsible for carrying
out your funeral services and building your coffin was usually
the local carpenter, and he undertook your funeral service, hence
the word undertaker from what I understand, Um, but it
(05:32):
was usually somebody who built wagons and kitchens and whatever.
They also built coffins too, and they built him the suit.
That sounded to me like our first casket fact. Well done, Chuck, Wow, Yeah,
thank you Jerry for going the extra mile there. And uh,
(05:54):
if you like that, you're going to love this episode
because this place is lousy with casket facts. Yeah, we
won't play the sound effect on this one. But I
thought another interesting fact, because you know, I like origins
of phrases and things. If someone casts the pall over
a room, Paul was actually a dark cloth that they
would put over the casket too. I guess cover you know,
(06:17):
block out the bad juju of having the dead body
in there, right, so you would cast a pall over
the casket. Yeah, or if you're me, you cast a
pall over any room you enter. That's fun, no fun anymore? Everybody?
Can we can we talk a little bit about the
funeral industry for a second. About the casket industry has
to say specifically, there's still some furniture companies that make
(06:38):
caskets on the side, like Lazy Boy. Yeah. I don't
know if Lazy Boy doesn't, but there's they represent a
very small shape of the caskets ultimate Lazy Boy, you
know you're You're forever chair exactly. Well, they actually have
caskets for those people. It's called um, goliath caskets, oversized caskets,
(06:58):
order oversized caskets. Calm huh. Anyway, of course there's someone
that does that because that's a common thing. You know,
caskets aren't you know some people of of girth. That's
pretty embarrassing now when you can't fit in your casket, right,
And I went and looked, and these are very dignified
caskets there for the larger person. Um uh wow Um.
(07:22):
There's also uh okay, so when the largest casket makers.
Batesville originally started out as a furniture company. So there's
like this whole origin of yeah, I'll build your chair
and I'll build your coffin for your uncle too. That
makes sense. It's carpentry. And then um, that's kind of
the way it went. There was some some groups that
(07:44):
that started to consolidate and just make caskets around the
late the turn of the twentieth century the beginning of
the twentieth century, and you know, that was fine. They
kind of created the industry. And then it was like
the fifties after the Korean War, when metal caskets became
like all our age. Yeah, because that was mad looking
(08:04):
and that was popular at the time it was. And
you'll also find in the funeral industry it was easy
to um subtly exploit the grieving out of their money. Um,
there was that it was very cheap to mass produce
metal caskets and so they were sold, sold, sold. There
was a huge profit margin with them, and I think
(08:24):
by um the seventies, half of all caskets were um
we're metal. Yeah, Well, because what better way to protect
your loved one from the elements and the harsh afterlife
that they may encounter than with a good old solid
metal in casing. Yes exactly, um, which also happens to
(08:46):
be I have greater profit margins and it's cheaper to produce,
so it is it's cheaper to mass produced the other
aspect of a metal coffin. In the rise of the
metal coffin, it changed the casket making industry, UM because
it's really really expensive to get into metal coffin making.
Apparently cost about a million dollars just for the dies
to make a standard metal coffin just for the dies alone.
(09:10):
So this kind of consolidated industry down to a fewer
and fewer companies that were making metal caskets, UM, so
it became a real industry at that point. UM. And
then ultimately the casket industry started to suffer and decline
thanks to advances in medicine. There were fewer deaths, so
their profits dropped or the revenue drop. And then starting
(09:31):
in the eighties, people said, you know what, maybe cremation
isn't so bad, and so in I think of people
opted for cremation, and then by two thousand, um, I think, no,
two thousand eleven, it's like yeah, and every time somebody
gets cremated, the coffin industry dies a little bit. Yeah,
(09:52):
although you know, um, like you said, you can um
still have a casket to be cremated in and we
can over this in the Cremation podcast. Yeah, well you
have to, like you can't find somebody who will just
let your but that can be it's super cheap, like
sometimes it's even cardboard. Well it's supposed to because it's
got to burn. Yeah, but I mean at the very
least would uh will also burn. But you can you
(10:14):
can spend a little bit more money, or you can
get a temporary encasing and outer encasing that is more
attractive to show the family and then when push comes
to shove, they shove that. They remove the outer casket
and shove you. And it's like a rental casket just
for the service. Yeah, and you can actually rent caskets period,
(10:35):
like even if you aren't being cremated, just for a
more showy experience and then they'll you know, then you
get the pine box treatment, right because nobody will loves you. Yeah,
it's expensive, man. People. A lot of people don't have
the money to pay for a big funeral, and it's
a lot of people really believe in that kind of thing.
It's really sad for them, you know. It is. Luckily
there's such a thing as Walmart and Costco. Both of
(10:57):
them sell caskets. Walmart has a casket for eleven one thousand,
it's the Lady of Our Lady of guadaloup Um casket model. Uh.
And then Costco Yeah okay, and then Costco has the
same same model for a hundred bucks more. Really. Yeah,
I was surprised that it's not exactly the same. But
(11:18):
it's nice to see that the big box retailers aren't
price fixing coffins. Yeah, it's great to see Walmart selling coffins.
But I mean it's like that you if you need
a coffin, and they're attractive looking coffins. I think they're fiberglass.
Have you ever laid down in a coffin? Probably not,
I haven't. I haven't either. I would just to see
what it felt like. They look comfy. Did you see
(11:40):
the thing about the six ft under club in San Francisco?
There is a club where it's like, hey, you and
you're UM partner, life part swinging partner, partner, what your
sex partner. Let's just call it what it is. UM
can write, can come lay down in our coffin and
we'll bury you and you guys can do it, and
(12:03):
we are going to watch you on a night vision
webcamp that's going to be projected on the walls of
the club above. Where's the San Francisco San Francisco six
Under Club and you can email in reserves space in
their coffin. Huh? Is there? I mean, is there any
room in the coffin that's pretty I would imagine it
would have to be a larger, but maybe a goliath
(12:23):
coffin double one. Huh. Well, I will never do that,
but it's interesting to know what's out there. It is
out there, Sisco options. Let's talk about the anatomy of
a coffin, Chuckers, Well, the you know, the most important thing,
of course, is that it is a barrier too, from
the body to the you know, the elements. No one,
(12:44):
Actually I don't care, like I already said, but most people,
most normal people, I don't want to think about their
loved ones bodies like decaying and being eaten by you know,
being worm dirt. But one thing they cannot tell you
is that it's illegal to say that we have a
casket that will permanently seal the body, Like it's against
(13:05):
the law to claim any sort of permanence. Um, even
if it's one of these new gasket coffins. What are
those called. Um, it's called the protective coffin, Yeah, which
actually has a rubber gasket so it feels much tighter.
But they still legally can't say like it will protect
them forever, right, because it will protect them from the elements.
But there is such a thing as decay, like your
(13:27):
your body is going to decay and nothingness. And apparently,
I guess the funeral industry was selling coffins based on
the idea that the body was going to survive forever
and with this impermeable seal that the protective coffins had,
I mean, it wasn't letting anything in, but it also
wasn't letting anything out, which is a problem. And in
an airtight um environment, anaerobic bacteria gets to work and
(13:53):
as they start putrefying the flesh, they expel methane gas
as a by product. And there's a thing called exploding
coffin syndrome which was most um apparent in mausoleums, where
a coffin would just blow up, and sometimes they would
blow up so much that it would blow the mausoleum
door open, like a huge methane explosion from the gas
(14:17):
built up from the decaying corps in this protective coffin.
So now they have ones that that don't let anything in,
but they burp gas out. They're called burping coffins, which
is a great name for a coffin. So but so
is exploding casket syndrome. Boy, could you imagine being a
cemetery worker and seeing a mausoleum door explode wide? Yeah,
(14:38):
you're just like I seen it all. I would quit
my job that day. Um, So it depends on where
you are in the world what you're gonna get with
your with your coffin and with regulations, you know, and
less developed countries obviously they're less regulated. Um, you could
still be wrapped in a shroud in some parts of
the world. Right here in the US, um, in the West.
(15:00):
You they're basically public health regulations, which is why that
that place for the green burial is designated a green
burial place. Yeah, so I'm sure you the body won't
come in contact with the groundwater, I think is what
they're trying to keep from happening. Yeah, that was in
the thank you. Yeah. So, um, that's pretty much the
whole public health regulation, and it's gotten to the point
(15:21):
where most most people are buried with cement and casement
around them, right, Oh is that what they do these days?
I think so? Yeah, I think I knew that. Actually,
it's so funny, like we're we're all still six year
old at our courts, like, dude, dead body cross, I
can't let they get in the water. Yeah, that stuffing
better me? Do you cant? Sadies? No not. I wouldn't
(15:41):
want to drink a dead body now, but seeing one,
I mean I'm the guy who poked a head floating
in a bucket, you know. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about
that story. I didn't poke it, but I mentally poked it.
It didn't me. Uh. If you are in the Western world,
you're probably gonna be dealing with wood or metal or fiberglass.
(16:02):
If you are live out in the desert, they may
use things like local products like clay or stone, which
is kind of interesting. I guess we got a lot
of wood here in the United States though, particle board. Yeah,
and like we mentioned the sad, sad cardboard cremation vessel, right, which, again,
if you're being you probably don't care. Yeah. I was
(16:24):
all set for cremation, and then I thought, I don't know,
is there anything that's in the green burial seems like
a good option. Sure, just become one with the dirt maybe,
but I like the idea being scattered as well, or
again helping somebody helping other people. Yeah, but they'll still
like if you don't your body to science, did they
(16:45):
not give you any sort of like, no, you can't
be embalmed or anything. I guess you probably could if like,
say you're going to the body farm, you wouldn't be
able to be involved. And I'm sure there's like memorial services,
but I don't. I don't as I understand it. That's
another thing that's eating into the casket industry profits is
body donation. Hey man, I think this is a perfect
time to have a message break from our sponsor, which
(17:08):
means they're jingle all right, So I think this is
actually a great time for a second gasket. Fact, I
like these already. Alright back in the day, in the
early nineteenth century, that was sort of a they called
(17:31):
it graves body snatching period, and people were into snatching
up bodies, digging up graves, exhuming people, if you will,
and basically selling bodies for money for medical research. It
was a way to make a buck or doing research
on your own. Medical College of Georgia was they found
dozens of skeletons. I was like, I don't think dozens
(17:54):
of skeletons of um people who were dismembered, and they
figured out that all of them had been and from graves.
Remember that. Of course, that wasn't in the early nineteenth century,
was it. It was in the nineteenth century. It so
they developed something well, various things to you know, protect
bodies like locked mausoleums and vaults. And then something I
(18:16):
think it's gonna net called the mort safe, which is
basically an iron cage put over the coffin. It's like
sunk into concrete. It's like what people used to protect
their air conditioners today. Yeah exactly, but over like a grave.
So that that was a mort safe and that kept
people out. They had guards sometimes stats guards. I think
(18:38):
then the caretaker doubles as a guard, but they had
people who they hired as guards and protect a specific grave.
I think if you had enough dough, you could have like, um,
you know the mausoleum with a guard. That's pretty cool.
And that's you know, that's if you're rich and wealthy. Um.
There are also if you weren't wealthy, other ways to
to thwart grave robbers, just to put heavy planks um
(19:01):
to backfill the grave with rocks instead of dirt, which
might not have kept somebody out, but they would have
made quite a bit of noise digging you up. And
uh yeah, have you ever been to um Oakland Cemetery. Yeah?
I go all the time, well not all the time,
but I go. It is beautiful all the times. A year. Yeah,
you mean, and I went and just did like this,
just walked around like there's some there's some ausoleums there
(19:24):
that like there's no way you could have gotten into. Yeah.
For those uh people that haven't been to Atlanta, that
is what are probably oldest in like cemetery. It is
our Parade de Lache. Yes, I've been to that one
to actually the one in Paris. What parade is it?
The one with Jim Morrison. Yeah, of course, and uh,
(19:47):
I think Oscar Wilde is there and Chopin, but you know,
Morrison's the one that you go by and there's like
joints on the ground and like tabs of acid and stuff.
And then you always like the random guy kind of
hanging out like waiting for everyone to turn their back.
A bunch of dirty hippies basically uh in Ghana and
(20:10):
other parts of Africa. It is kind of cool because
they will They have a very um, sort of a
joyous way of celebrating death with their bright colored coffins
and even odd shapes that would pay honor to what
this person loved in life. Um. I saw one that
was like a giant shoe and this guy this uh,
(20:32):
this Aprican dude was just like, you know, it must
have been as relative and it was just so proud
to show that they were bearing him in a giant shoe.
So it's like it's like to the dead in Ghana
what a pinionta is to like a kid in Mexico. Really, yeah,
they have like pinionas that are like shape for their
different specific Yeah, there was just a b there's like
(20:55):
lets of hello kiddies and like really yeah, yeah, there's
there's some great pinontas out there. Um. And then the
other example they gave in here is like if it
was a businessman, he might be buried in something that
resembled his luxury car. Or a fisherman, it might be
a fish shaped the fish finally got him back. He's
in the belly of it. So chuck, you you mentioned
(21:18):
things that coffins may be made out of. You mentioned
like wood, fiberglass, um, oak, hardy woods, bronze is still
used on occasion, yeah sure, um. And that's the shell
of the coffin yeah, um. And then the inside you'll
find the lining, usually some sort of rich fabric like
tafida or velvet or something that looks like that. Maybe
(21:40):
volure if if they like juicy clothes that kind of thing,
silk maybe, Yeah, and it's stuffed with batting to keep
the corpse nice and comfortable. And uh, that's pretty much it.
You've got hardware on the outside and that's a casket. Yeah,
it's probably gonna be warm. Colors here in the Western world, Um,
it's not gonna You're not gonna see a lot of
brightly painted coffins and stuff like that. No, but also
(22:02):
they kind of avoid like, um, you're probably I can
see a black coffin anywhere. Yeah. Those are called um
receding colors. They're they're dismal in of desperation and despair.
I feel like I've seen a lot of like light
gray and things like that, or just would color. If
you get like a really nice wood like cherry, sometimes
it will just be in that. You know that that
(22:24):
will be the outer shell. And those are pricing, Yes,
they are um that. As a matter of fact, the
average cost of a funeral in the US and two
thousand nine was six thousand, five hundred and sixty which
is less than I thought. I think a green barrels
about half that. Yeah, I can see that. I think
they're like two or three grand because the coffin um
in the average funeral was two thousand, two hundred and
ninety five dollars the average cost of a metal coffin
(22:46):
in two thousand nine UM which in two thousand and seven,
funeral homes and crematories pulled in eleven point nine five
billion dollars, And one of the ways they pulled in
that much was from casket sales. Yeah. And I don't
know if even should say this out loud because it
sounds like an unfounded accusation that cheap coffins are purposely
(23:06):
made ugly so they can up sell. Do you think
that's true? Uh, it's probably true. Well, I know, I've
I've read that the the funeral home industry marks up
caskets that they buy, they resell them for more than
they paid for them. Well, it's a business, and that's
their product, you know it is. It's a business in
(23:28):
the Uh, the customers are in a really um, really
easily exploited place. Yeah, I just I don't know though.
I just think it is a business. And because it
deals with death, it's very easy for someone to say, like,
you're exploiting these people, are taking advantage of them when there.
(23:49):
I just don't think that's true. It's well, I think
that you can't cast that net across the entire industree.
I think that that's that's there's But they're also for everybody,
you know, bad apples Josh. Well, you know, we we
have a lot of opulence here in the United States.
Some people get into that, but apparently in Australia and
Great Britain they're a little more reserved with what they'll
(24:09):
spend on a casket. In some cultures, like the Jewish faith, Um,
it's very common to to not have any sort of
garish thing. It wants you to be burying something very plain,
so you're not distinguished as to your place in life,
you know. Yeah, apparently they'll even the hardware that they
used to carry is removable, so like when you're buried,
(24:31):
you're buried in a plane box. Yeah like that. That's yeah,
that's cool. Um. Do you want to talk about the
Bow people? The hanging coffins of the Bow not to
be confused with the Hell of the upside down centers
in Big Trouble in Little China, although this is in
Sechuan Province of China. The Bo people are an ethnic
(24:52):
group that populated the area, and they had this really
neat tradition of putting the cough finds of their deceased
up on like three hundred foot cliffs, just craigs, little caves,
and for centuries, no one has had any idea how
they got them up there. Yeah, at one point they
(25:13):
had close to three hundred and now it's only about
a hundred and three hundred and fifty four hundred feet
And you've seen did you see pictures? It's crazy. I
mean they're like, I don't see how they did it.
They think now they might have lowered them down, but
they still you know that they're on It looks like
they're on wood planks that are sticking out of the cliffs.
So how they do that, I don't can't figure it out.
(25:35):
It's pretty neat. It's like a little village of coffins
is kind of clustered on this cliff side. Yeah, with
the idea that having your relatives higher up um is
a place of greater respect to be looking up at
them because that's where the deities were at the tops
of mountains, and that would placed them closer to the deities. Yes,
you go up here now, Yeah, because you're dead. Yeah,
(25:56):
it's very interesting. Um. What about the Egyptians, They had
the money coffin and if you ask me, yeah, and
we covered this with Tutt obviously the big sarkofa guy. Um.
But they didn't they believe that you would just be
sent to your you know, all this stuff would go
with you. Yeah, you need it in your afterlife for
your journey to the after world, the underworld. Um. And
(26:18):
I guess the whole it was the opposite of what
the Jews think. It was. The more socioeconomic status you
can bestow upon a grave, the better off the person
is going to be in the next life. You have
a be jeweled casket, You're you're in our You're okay
in our book. Yeah. But they actually had texts what
(26:39):
we know called the Egyptian Book of the Dead and
was originally um called the uh. It grew out of
what it called the Egyptian Coffin texts, and there were two.
The Book of the Dead, um. The Coffin text that
became the Book of the Dead was for everybody, regardless
of your socioeconomic status. And it it told you how
to be buried. And we've done how mummies work, so
(27:01):
We got into that a lot, and that's basically what
we relied on. But there was also one for the pharaohs,
the kings, the that the elite, and those are the
Pyramid texts, yes, and that's the one that later evolved
through the Book of the Dead, right, the Pyramid Text.
I think the Coffin texts. I know, Hey, it's the
Pyramid Text. Yeah, the Pyramid text is separate. That's the
(27:24):
one for the for the elite, right, and that's what
evolved through the Book of the Dead. Um. But I
think what was in the Coffin Text was contained within
the Pyramid text, right, Yeah, I think the Coffin Text
was an umbrella that gave birth to both. It was
the original one and it actually had the first described
cosmology ever recorded. Yes, the Book of Two A's within
(27:46):
the Egyptian Confin Text was the first time they basically said,
here's what happens to you after death could happen to you,
And it's basically you cross from one part of the
sky into a lake of five and then across into
another part of this guy. Yeah, and the Coffin texts
have spells and things to help you out as well
in your journey like check out my bejeweled casket. I'm okay.
(28:11):
In your book, Chuck, we couldn't talk about um coffins
if we didn't talk about a really interesting and neat
trend of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, maybe even seventeenth,
but I think eighteenth and nineteenth century called safety coffins. Yeah,
it was. It's a common fear for people to It's
(28:34):
called tafa phobia, tafo phobia, and um, that's the fear
of being buried alive. Yeah, and that it's a real thing.
And people had it then and they have it now. Well,
they had good reason to have it back then, because
it happened. Yeah. There there was a book called Premature
Burial and How It May Be Prevented in book by
a social reformer named William teb and a couple of
(28:55):
co authors, and actually one of the co authors was
a doctor who himself had been premat truly buried. Yeah.
They went over like account after your account, and they
even had a chapter called Dubious Accounts. But they basically
came up with two hundred and nineteen instances of narrow
escape from premature burial, a hundred forty nine cases of
actual premature burial, ten cases of vivisection before death, so
(29:19):
the person they thought was dead they started to cut
open and they weren't dead. And then and then two
cases of embalming before death, so like it happened before embalming.
It was like there was no way to tell you
were dead. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's that was
the problem. Is medical science had advanced to the point
(29:40):
where you could always tell if someone was dead exactly.
And there was such thing as cholera, which apparently gives
you the appearance of being dead even when you're not,
so there was good reason to fear being buried alive
and as a resultless thing called the safety coffin um
came up. Yeah, and there were I'm sure you've done
some other research on this. There were all different sorts
of methods that they had from a vault that had
(30:05):
like a little window and uh a wheel you could
turn on the inside to let yourself out, which would
be nice. Sometimes it was just a breathing tube. Yeah,
the the one that was patented in by a guy
named Count Carnice car Nicky, which is awesome. Uh. He
had something that was there was a tube with a
(30:25):
spring going all the way to six ft down. Um,
and there was a little glass ball at the end
of the tube and it rested on the deceased chest.
And if any movement of the chest happened, like you
took one breath anything like that, it would trip the spring.
And some this passageway would fly open to let air
in and a flag would rise up above your grades
(30:46):
they were still alive. So UM, that one was one
of the most well known safety coffins and actually in
premature burial and how it may be prevented. Uh, there's
a whole little chapter dedicated to it. And actually you
can find the full text of that online for free.
It's really interesting. Uh. There were also things that would
trigger like a bell ringing. Uh. One that even had
(31:08):
a long fuse firecracker that I guess you could set off.
I mean, that'll be the attention to somebody. Um. In
that book, Teb and his friends they endorse to prevent
premature burial, either safety coffin or cremation, whether like even
if you are dead, then even if you're not dead,
(31:29):
you're going to be dead afterwards. So if we guarantee
you won't be buried alive, exactly, because you'll be right,
we're not even going to bury the ultimate safety coffin.
And there's this guy named Dr Timothy Clark Smith In.
He died in Middlebury, Vermont, and he's buried to this day,
which is customary in Evergreen Cemetery, and um, if you
(31:51):
go to his burial mound, there's a fourteen by fourteen
inch of plate glass that opens up onto what was
once his face six down so that people could come
check on him and make sure he was dead. Because
he had half a phobia. It was very, very much
afraid of that fate. That's got to be tied to
claustrophobia somehow. Well, yeah, they think the a P A
(32:13):
being They think that, um, you've had some sort of
early childhood encounter with an enclosed space and either you
developed half a phobia or you become the batman. Oh
that's their that's their judgment that you know what that
sounds like. That sounds like a casket. Fact, let's hear it,
(32:35):
ah man, that's a sweet actor. Uh let's see what else.
I got a couple more things? You got anything else?
I got nothing else? So you can we said that
the average coffin is like you can also shell out
thirty thousand dollars. Batesville UH Casket Company makes the Promethean
(32:55):
Um and it is the coffin that Michael Jackson and
James Brown were buried in separately. They of their own coffins. Yeah,
what's the deal was it? Just like it is nice looking, rich, luxurious,
like navy velvet interior. You're lining this, it looks it
must be gold but polished at this high shine. It's
a beautiful casket. I have to say, there's no reason
(33:17):
in the world for anyone ever to be buried in
a casket like this. But it's out there. Um, if
you want to go the other way, you can go
to d I y coffin dot com and there are
schematics to build your own very plain coffin. I saw that.
I thought about that it might be a nice thing
to do, build your own coffin that King of the Hill.
There's a king that where Hank builds his own coffin.
(33:39):
He's talking about how he started. He's like, well, I
looked into it and long story short, I got the bug.
Now he's made. He made. He made. His first try
was terrible, so he gave that to Peggy and then
his second try, it's really nice. He's gotten it down
pat and he Peggy gets the one where like the
top doesn't close all the way right, That's what mine
would look. It's a good episode. I'm not a skilled craftsman,
(34:02):
but I enjoy it. Yeah. And then lastly, you mean,
I saw Mike Tyson do his little love his little
spoken word thing. But we saw him d C. It
was great, um, And he talked about it was really
sweet because I'm really ambivalent about him because you know,
it's just he's a really there's a lot to him,
you know what I'm saying. Um. And but one of
(34:23):
the things that he said he did was his mother
was buried in a potter's field with an unmarked grave
and like a just a cheap box. And he said
the first time he made money, he had her exhumed
and bought like the most expensive headstone in the most
expensive casket he could find, and had her buried in
like this other nights cemetery. You know, there's a pauper's
(34:43):
grave over by the drive in movie theater here in Atlanta.
M Yeah, is that right? Yeah, it's just yeah, it's
a pauper's grave and lots of like bad stuff goes
on there now apparently what oh like and stuff like that.
It's the way where drugging. Yeah, I'm sure some teams
are drinking and that's probably not a good tafe place
(35:05):
to do that. No, I wouldn't think so. Um. Yeah,
And there's also Potter's Field Pauper's Grave in uh Oakland Cemetery.
Oh yeah, which it's basically like a big expansive grass.
You have a bunch of people who we're poor, we're burying. Yeah.
I did Mountain Vernon when I was up there, you
know George Washington's place. Is it cool? Yeah, it's really
neat because they still do stuff the old fashioned way,
(35:28):
you know, like if they need a room painted, they
grind up die and mix it with water and all
that stuff. But um, you know there is like you know,
he and Martha are buryed in this like beautiful mausoleum.
And then there's also like the slave you know grave sites,
and it's just you know, definitely like he freed all
his slaves and his will, which was a good thing
(35:49):
to do, I guess. But anytime you go to one
of those plantation type things and you see like the
opulence of his thing, and then this other little side
area where the slaves are buried. It's just sort of like, yeah, yeah,
all that happened. That's a sad reminder, it is. And
no one was visiting like the slave areas much even
and I was just sort of like that kind of
rubbed me a little bit. Did you go over there
(36:11):
and visit it? Yeah? Absolutely good for you. Ye, So
you got anything else? I got nothing else. That's coffins.
That's coffins. I was going to write this article a
couple of years ago because it didn't exist, because I
wanted to do this. Oh good, I'm glad it came along.
I think that's just a lesson kids. If you wait
around long enough, somebody else might do. Well. Then, since
(36:32):
Chuck gave wait, I think Chuck, that might be a
casket fact. What is that the last casket back? Okay, well,
since we had our last casket fact? Um, oh yeah,
I gotta say. If you want to read this article
on coffins, you can go to how stuff works dot
com and you can type in that word ce F
(36:54):
F I N in the search bar, and that means
it's time now for a listener. Mail, Josh, I'm gonna
call this very manipulative email from a Georgia tech fan.
Here we go, Peter in Virginia. He knows it's coming.
I want to tell you, guys, how your podcast made
a difference in my life. I recently found out that
I have UH diffuse large B cell lymphoma. As a
(37:17):
part of the testing process to determine what stage you are,
they shoot you full of barium and then perform a
CT scan. Cancer cells divide rapidly, so based on how
much the barium glows during the CT will tell them
how much your cancer has spread. As part of the process,
you have to remain as still as possible for an
hour prior to the ct UH so as there's uh
(37:38):
as little circulation in the blood and barium as possible.
Then you sit for another hour, also as still as possible,
getting the body scan. Needless to say, you feel very
woozy after the barium, and it's very anxious time. Your
mind wants to wander into numerous worst case scenarios while
you were alone UH in a cold dark room. However,
I was overjoyed when the nurses said I could listen
(37:59):
to um My m P three player. I am glad
you that I spent both of those hours listening to
your podcast. Actually, I even got one of the nurses
to tape my phone next to my head during the
scanning process to ensure I would hear it. Uh provided
a great distraction and really took my mind off what
certainly would have been very gruesome two hours. Also, the
(38:21):
doctor said that beating cancer certainly is partly mental, and
the attitude in response from the treatment have a large
part to do with your response. And I'm a graduate
from Georgia Tech, and if I could hear Go Jackets
on the air, seriously make my weak and increase my
odds of survival. Goodness. I know you both went to
U g A. However, I'm hopeful that we can put
(38:41):
aside of differences and come together to rally behind something
like cancer. And I email Peter back and said, you're
very manipulative human being and he laughed and thought that
was really funny, and UH gave me and you a
go dogs and the email and he thought that might
be the like a carbon offset. So Peter, obviously, go Jackets.
(39:02):
Buzz Buzz buzz, Go Jackets. Go Jamblin wreck from Georgia Tech,
et cetera. And that's where it ends, my friend. Yeah,
and we wish you all the best obviously in uh
in your treatment and let us know how it's going.
We'll be thinking about you. Thank you, Peter, hanging there, buddy,
good luck and keep us posted. And we're never gonna
say go jackets again. That's right. That's your one shot. Um.
(39:24):
If you want to try to manipulate me and chuck
into doing something we don't want to, you can give
it a shot. You can tweet to us at say
s k podcast that was a hy by the way,
You can go to Facebook dot com slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
podcast at Discovery dot com and you can join us
at our home on the web that is Stuff you
(39:44):
Should Know dot com. Jack Heards has quickly become the
online shopping destination for guys. Here's why everything on the
site is up off as a listener of Stuff you
Should Know, you can skip the membership waitlist and get
instant access at jack threads dot com, slash Kate and
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