Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 318: Caitlin Doughty

Episode Date: December 23, 2018

Celebrate the holidays with [Caitlin Doughty,](http://caitlindoughty.com) author, mortician, and founder of The Order Of The Good Death. Caitlin is part of the "death positivity" movement. And her light hearted and compassionate approach to dealing with death is quite inspirational. This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site). This episode is also brought to you by [Eero.com](http://www.eero.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN for $100 off their best-selling combo kit).

He's wild, he's sweet, he'll shred your couch on a whim, then come crawling back to you purring happily at your feet. His behavior may be erratic, but he's still the world's best cat, who deserves nothing less than world's best cat litter. The number one natural and sustainable litter brand with no harmful chemicals or silica dust. Trade your clay today. World's best cat litter for the world's best cat.

This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Squarespace.com. Head over to Squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code DUNCAN to get 10% off your website or domain. And now, a stop drinking crow's milk Christmas special. Here to help us celebrate the holiday season is author, blogger, podcaster, and all-around amazing mortician, Caitlyn Doty. But first, some music and some wisdom from America's most beloved hobo singer, the great clown tramp himself, the wonderful folk singer and truly one of my favorite musicians of

all time, Fergus Blanders. Hello there, it's me, Fergus Blanders. Duncan asked me to come over here and do a little Christmas special for his. You can trust or whatever the fuck it is here, but it's a waste of time. Exhibitionism, sad monetization, sometimes it'd be up in a cave, in a cabin in Alaska, with a fire burning, these are black cats running around and they could rub it and pet in some juniper that he could burn so he could make contact with some entities. But okay, okay, who am I to judge?

Christmas is the time of the year, where the numb, dumb and full of cum gather around there and pretend to be happy. And many of us out there, find ourselves completely alone with numbers in our phone that don't work anymore because whoever we want to call is long gone, dead, lost. They judge us while they sit around the fire, feeling nothing, their souls have been extracted by their own ignorance. What about some Christmas music, Fergus? And so as you and me, you're not alone this Christmas, my friend, in fact.

You're with me, Fergus Blanders. Once, I met Santa, he was drinking in a bar in Atlanta. His arms had been blown off from a drone strike, the drone had been operated by the global elite who want to destroy Christmas and take away our guns, our wonderful holiday traditions. The banks repossessed a slave. He had lost his way, told me that he was sleeping and some rented Airbnb. So I bought him a whiskey and he sang this to me. If your heart ain't been broken, don't matter how many gifts you open, you'll never know

the meaning of Christmas time. And even if this unremitting pain that you're feeling in your heart and your feeling in your brain tricks you into thinking that it will never go away. Don't let your blindness hide your kindness, fake it until you make it and you will see that giving is living and love and life are really the same thing. Giving is living and love and life are really the same thing. He had been singing for a while, but I had sort of tuned out, I had been texting with my cocaine dealer, Larry Leno, he's still in Atlanta if you need some great blow, I

like to have a white Christmas, you know what I mean, I asked him what he'd been saying but the door was kicked in by the secret police and he was dragged into an unmarked car. I imagine they took him down to Peppermint Valley where all the elves and Mrs. Claus and all those who had something to do with Christmas are currently being interrogated, injected with high powered psychoactive chemicals along with larium, the malaria drug to destroy their identity. You see there is a war on Christmas being waged by the global elite and though I do suspect that Duncan has been compromised by the one percent using his podcast as a platform through

which he can spread propaganda lies, I'm grateful that he allowed me on the air because as many of you know I've been de-platformed from Patreon, YouTube, Instagram and America online for only speaking the truth which everyone knows the red pill so to speak which is that every woman has a small vibrating reptilian egg right beneath her neck and the right above her spine that sends evil thoughts into her mind which is why my wife left me for a chimney sweep I walked in his rod hammering into her mouth as she wept tears of orgasmic joy and I know that if I could at last be allowed one permanent that's all I need to get to Antarctica I can burn down the reptile colonies that are responsible not only for global warming

but for the power that has been given to the Clinton network which is this very moment in there. Too much agnog. This infiltration of every woman's mind is filling my mind with fear where are they? Fergus thank you so much. Ah I knew you were going to cut me off you've been compromised by the elite. What are you even talking about? There is no elite.

We're all just people. We're all just people. We're all just seven of the ones of us that aren't, the ones of us that turn into reptiles. You and all the others have been corrupted by the moon which is actually a salient satellite which is making the women on this very flat earth act like demons basically which is why I was de-platformed. Can we talk off mic for a second? Sure.

Yeah we can talk off mic I guess. Sure. You're not going to kill me are you? Of course not. Uh. Guys sorry about that we're going to take a very quick break and we will be right back. I know you think I'm good at this. If the internet's a mirror then your website is God's face.

Make it prettier by using Squarespace they're the best way to build a website. Make your dreams come true do what's right use Squarespace. I just bought StopDrinkingCrosemilk.com and I intend to use Squarespace to produce a beautiful website that no doubt will take down the entire crow's milk industrial complex. Squarespace it gives you everything you need to quickly create a beautiful website. They've got award winning templates that you can choose from for your business, for your pranks, for your invitations, for your art. As I said before I know someone who sells their socks online.

Now, go to Squarespace.com forward slash Duncan for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. That's Squarespace.com forward slash Duncan for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. All right, we are back friends. Unfortunately, Fergus was a little sick. He had too much eggnog and, you know, the thing about it is he seems to have brought

his, his own crow's milk to the house and it's just not good for you. It's one of those things that kind of creeps up on you. It starts off like any other thing and just you get that nice tang. You get that euphoric rush. Trust me, I felt it. I know what it's all about. And then, uh, and then the next thing you know, you kind of, you kind of, you kind of lose your way, you lose track and you can end up, well, you can end up drunk on crow's

milk, completely unable to reason. There's all kinds of crazy shit out there. You know, my take on it is this. Crow's milk is not good for you. Crow's milk has obviously, uh, done great damage to the planet. Uh, I'm sure I don't need to tell you about the horrific crow's milk spill that happened in the Gettysburg Bay in 1999 and, uh, was responsible for the death of Locloak, the, uh, seal, uh, when I was a kid, my parents would always take me to

see Locloak, you throw them donuts and he would like clap and flip backwards into the water and there was a huge crow's milk spill and he just dissolved. It was awful. I saw the, the, they've taken all the videos off of YouTube, but, oh my God, there's so sad to watch. Locloak, I'm sure you've, it's Christmas. I don't know why I'm getting so dark, but it was just seeing that wonderful seal rise up out of the crow's milk and, and, and just clap two times.

That kid throws the donut. He tries to reach for the donut, but something about the crow's milk and the water just completely dissolved Locloak and, uh, and, uh, and do a kind of just horrific slush, a slurry of donuts and seal and crow's milk. And it was just really fucking awful. I'm so glad they took that video down, but I will never forgive the crow's milk industry for killing beautiful Locloak. In 1999, the freighter, Lloria spilled over 6 million gallons of crow's milk into

the bay. The last surviving donut seal, Locloak, became extinct on that sad day. We will never get Locloak back. Nobody know where Locloak goes. Have you seen the seal today? Bag of donut is there for nobody to do the donut to where it low looks. He got the skin like seal. He's swim to the core and now if you're in grief, cut the crow's milk man,

made the seal go down Locloak served by the cold milk. Locloak, Locloak, Locloak, Tired of the King of the Sea. When will we see the justice for Locloak? Every day, over 7 million animals go extinct to the environmental impact of the crow's milk industry. We have lost Locloak, the last donut seal, and soon could lose the cherry tart otters of Bolivia and Lady Olivia, the hash brown squirrel. For only $10 a day, you can protect our planet's precious snacking otters.

Go to StopDrinkingCrow'sMilk.com to find out more. Stop drinking crow's milk today. And now a word from our sponsors. Whenever I try to download a star, all I get is black holes, I need an arrow. Much thanks to Iroh for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Iroh is a high tech, bad ass wifi system that I'm currently using. I live inside a massive maze and in the walls of the maze, there are trembling gelatinous sentient cubes that get in the way of my wifi signal,

which is why I'm really enjoying my Iroh wifi system. I had a one router upstairs. Now I've got routers in the upstairs and the downstairs of my house. It's a distributed system that makes it so that I can have fast wifi everywhere. My wifi is not degraded by the dark things living within my walls or by my walls themselves. You get total network protection with Iroh. It blocks malicious and unwanted content.

They've got advanced security. They've got content blocking so you can keep your darling kids out of the seething demonic wasps nest of certain areas of the internet and it's got ad blocking. So you can block pop ups and it's also got password management from one password. Antivirus software, a lot of other awesome things and I love it. It's also, and I know this probably has nothing to do with what many of you even care about, but it looks a lot better than the awful tarantula router. I had sitting in the corner of my living room.

It's sleek, beautiful, futuristic looking. And it's got night lights on all the routers, which is pretty awesome. You can go right now. They're offering you a hundred dollars off their base unit and two beacons package and one year of Iroh plus. All you got to do is visit Iroh.com forward slash Duncan and check out inner promo code Duncan. That's Iroh.com forward slash Duncan inner promo code Duncan.

Highly recommend this if you are having problems because your internet isn't making it through your house. They've got an awesome app that goes along with it too. It's really easy to use and they have great customer support in case you get confused when you're installing it. Thanks Iroh. Much thanks to my glorious Patreon patrons. I offer to you a thousand mudras, oblations, obeisances and gleaming smiles.

You are my master, my mistress, you lord over me. And I am grateful for your benevolent and merciful discipline and compassion. If you are tired of the commercials in the DTFH, if you have clenched your fist in rage every time you hear me promote this thing or that thing and long for just the interview, none of these intros, no more of this rambling, gab, just good, hard sports conversations, then head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH subscribe and you will have access to commercial free episodes of the DTFH along with at least once a month, an hour of me going pure deep

ramble just on and on and on. There's lots of stuff over there. There's some music. Soon I will be streaming to Patreon and of course there's a Discord server where you can interact, communicate, network and come home to your family. The DTFH family. Head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe. I live in a neighborhood where I like to know who my neighbors are and I'm sure

you're like that too. You don't want to just sleep next to strangers. You want to know the politics, philosophy, history, internet history, internet search history and the goings on of all the neighbors within a 10 mile radius of your home. Unfortunately, because we don't have the scanning technologies necessary for us to do a deep probe into our neighbors, we just can't know everything, but you can let your neighbors know something, which is you don't support the crow's milk

industry. Head over to dunkatrustle.com and click on the shop and you're going to find bumper stickers where you can proudly show your neighbors that you don't drink crow's milk and you could tell them the only sentence that matters these days, which is stop drinking crow's milk. You can stick it on your bumper sticker. You can stick it on your garbage cans. You could stick it on the side of your house.

We were hacked at the shop by the crow's milk lobby and they got into our design and we actually have some bumper stickers that say drinking crow's milk. Obviously, this is not an endorsement of the crow's milk industry. Do not put that on your car. People will think that you are pro crow's milk, which is sure to get you fired from any, any job or from any job you're applying to. And definitely you're not going to go on any dates that are going to work out for you and people are probably going to break your, your windshield when

you're outside of your car. Not that you would deserve that, but you just shouldn't drink crow's milk. Also, I've heard that some people are taking the drinking crow's milk and putting it under the stop and stop signs. Don't do that. I'm pretty sure that is probably a federal offense. You could very easily get executed by the state for doing something like that. But so don't do that, even though it would seem that you could just take

that drinking crow's milk and put it under the stop and a stop sign. And then anyone driving by would see stop drinking crow's milk. But that, that would be illegal. So don't do that. Please, please, please don't do that. I don't want you to get into trouble. And I certainly don't want to get into trouble. And as a staunch anti crow's milk person, I am 100% nonviolent

and against breaking any rules or laws given to us by the glorious state. I bow to our noble world leaders. All right, friends, we have for you today a wonderful conversation with someone who is an expert on a topic that over the past few years, I've become perhaps a little more familiar with than I might have liked to. If I was thinking about it growing up, but the familiarity with it has given me a kind of peacefulness and a kind of appreciation of life that I feel really lucky to have.

And in my encounters with death, you run into hospice workers and care workers and people who show up when someone is transitioning. And these people are like angels and they quite often have a very calm presence that is exactly what you need. If you're experiencing the fascinating and psychedelic and obviously very sad experience of saying goodbye to a loved one. Caitlyn Dodie is a mortician. She is an advocate in the death positivity movement.

She is part of the order of the good death, which is a wonderful group of experts in various fields who are really revolutionizing and modernizing the way we transition. And it's a really important and beautiful thing for people to be doing because for whatever reason in our culture right now, people are really scared of dealing with the reality of our impermanence. And I know what you're thinking, Duncan, you're an android, you're never going to die, this is true.

But that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the situation that you humans are in knowing that at any moment you can just slump over and that's it. I'm really lucky that my friend Connor Habib connected me with Caitlyn. And so without further ado, open your hearts. Radiate the great love of the 14 Templars of the highest sphere of the ninth aeon of Gorlax and send as much love as you can towards our wonderful guest, Caitlyn Dodie. You

way I can from the torture that I went through figuring something out. Isn't it a great gift? All about just that. What you just said, isn't that the summation of everything? Yeah, and you feel good too. Well, isn't that isn't the psychology that if you do the person who does something for you likes you more to so you're going to end up liking me more because you gave me this advice because I'm like, oh, thank you, Duncan.

I appreciate it. Oh, right. Yeah, I've heard that before, like some kind of thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard that before. I wonder what that is. What do you think that that is? I think it's the feeling. I don't know.

You just feel you know what it is because it's something that you know already, so you don't have to do any real work. You already have this knowledge. You've struggled for it. It's already exists in your wheelhouse. And then someone comes along who doesn't have it at all and goes, hey, do you have any idea about this? And you get to be like, oh, do I do I ever?

And you get to give them this hard one knowledge that doesn't. It isn't hard for you, but you feel good about yourself. But the knowledge you possess is, oh, by the way, welcome to the podcast. Oh, hi. So much for coming on the show. It is I've really, really enjoyed your videos just in your in your output from just a entertainment perspective. You're hilarious.

And it's thank you. I try so hard. So I appreciate it. You are amazing. But from as a person who's lost both his parents and has recently experienced death and has many friends who are I'm basically like a at this point, I'm a death lighthouse, like people who have death in their life. They contact me and I get to talk to them because I have some experience

with it and I am death positive. I do not find it to be a, I used to be death terrified. Now I'm death positive and watching someone like you, an expert in the field, putting the good energy and the love through this very scary thing for so many people, what a joy. So thanks for coming out. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

But what we need, I mean, we need more people like me, but we also need more people like you who have been through it. And I think a death lighthouse is the perfect example because people are so terrified. And if you can just be that one person in your community who knows basic shit about dying, like what a cremation is and how to get one, you know, or like even like how to contact a hospice or simple things that you think we should be part of our cultural vocabulary for the most part.

They're just not, what is that? What is that? Why we don't have it? Yeah. We don't have it. So the, the explanation that I always at this point sort of fall back on, but I, but I think it holds up and it's true is that a hundred years ago, you were dying at home, there weren't hospital structures the way there are now.

You were waking and taking care of the body home there were at home. There weren't funeral home structures the way there are now. You were killing all of your own animals at home. And now we have these big slaughterhouses that are kept at the edge of town that no one ever sees. So our lives used to be filled with death and now they're not. Wow. Right.

Gone. And we live in a world that, you know, there's a lot of controversy in the academic super semantic area of whether we're a death denial culture or not. And the reason there's debate is because we're filled with death in our culture, with murders, with war, with horror, with all of these different tropes of death that we've gone violence. Like it's just everywhere surrounding us. So we can't really be in denial of death, but what you don't see are realistic

everyday deaths. No. Because we get, you know, at our funeral home, I own a funeral home here in Los Angeles and we get, because we are younger women who run it, we tend to get younger people who die, a lot of suicides, gun deaths, et cetera. But most normal funeral homes, you get maybe one death like that a month. And most of your deaths are old people. Right.

Our people's parents, our people's grandparents, our people who died on hospice or at the hospital or in a nursing home. And those are the actual deaths, but that's what we're in denial about. Those are the deaths that we don't see. Those are the logistical problems in our society that nobody is comfortable engaging in. Yeah. The news doesn't talk about that.

No, no, talk about, oh, another person went into hospice and passed away. Yeah. Cause it's, it's not very sexy. And I struggle with that all the time because I'm an advocate. I mean, I'm also a practitioner, but I'm primarily an advocate. I talk to people about death. I talked to people about the dead body. I talked to people about what dying is going to look like.

And getting young people to get excited about signing an advanced directive, saying what they want done with their organs and about how they feel about a vegetative state, that's not sexy. That's not fun advocacy. That's not, you know, you can't do a like rap song about that and be like, Hey kids, like let's get into the advanced directive. Like nobody wants to hear that. So it's hard advocacy.

And most of that's why most of the advocacy around it you see is very like a natural transition and flowers and brochures and a certain kind of, um, I don't know, not very, not inaccessible, but also not exciting or engaging. It's madness. It's to me, if you want the sign, you know, I have, I am a conspiracy theorist. I have friends who are conspiracy theorists. I'm a, how would you, I like being, I'm a conspiracy theorist in a sense that I like to imagine fantasies.

It's fun. I do. I believe the earth is flat. Hell no. Do I believe the earth is hollow? No, but I love to think about what it would be like if it were hollow or if it, if it were a flat earth, it's fun to imagine like, whoa, that would be cool. If the earth was flat and everything went on and on and on forever.

And we were sort of trapped here by an ice wall and we didn't know it. Cool. It's fun to think about. But I don't really believe it. And even if it were the case, I wouldn't really care because I'd still be in the same position. I certainly wouldn't be making an expedition out to the Arctic, but the real conspiracy to me or the place where there seems to be a real chin scratch or

happening is that I have a son coming and let me tell you, everybody wants to talk about the baby. People call about the baby. They want to come to see the baby. They want to give advice about the baby. They, they send wonderful gifts for the baby. I love it. But when it comes to dying, when my dad was dying, nothing, radio silence, nothing quiet,

nothing a whisper. That just got very ASMR. Yeah. Good. When your dad was dying, it was just crickets and the crickets, they were opening up. Cups and it made this wonderful sound and they were putting it on YouTube. They got so many. Oh my God, we're going to make so much money.

You and I straight to the top. Welcome to conspiracy ASMR with Duncan and Kaitlyn. This is the sound of the flat earth. This is the rustling of the reptilians. This is the rustling of the reptilian babies as they slither upon their heat rocks. I'm sorry. I don't know why my instinct with you being like, when my father died, everyone

was silent and I just jumped right into that. But I feel like you're comfortable. I already get the sense from you that you're comfortable because dissecting the experience in that way. Well, also because you, you are one of the allies and what happens is you. So what ends up happening is that you become completely isolated. Yeah. You have not, this is not in any way to say that people, people love you

and they want you to be okay, but they're just scared and they don't want to deal with it. And so they don't want to talk to you for a second and that's okay. But you end up being completely isolated, but then the allies come and the allies are you and you always know when they're there. You could look at each other in the eye and you know, oh, great. You're not going to act all heavy on about this thing. And I don't have to like comfort you because my dad died.

You know, that's, which is usually some version of that game starts happening where you find yourself comforting someone who'd never even met your dad or who you're, you're comforting. Which is okay. I'm okay. I'm going to be okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's such a fascinating skill set. I actually had a friend who had a baby and about, you know, six months into the baby's life, I finally come over and meet the baby and bring a present. And, you know, I'm like, Hey, baby, it's crying when it gets into my arms. And she's like, well, some of my friends were very supportive when the baby was born and, you know, sort of shading me a little bit. Like you weren't that supportive when the baby was born.

And I'm like, well, that's just not a lot of people love babies. You had a lot of people who were so stoked that you had this baby. Yeah. I'm the one who people call when their dad's on hospice. Yeah. Or when their dad's dying or when they're, you know, dad dies in a tragic boating accident. That's, that's where I come in.

And that's my skill set because I can, I like babies. They're cute, but I'm not thrilled with them. I'm not thrilled when your dad's dying, but I know it's something that I can do. And like you said, as a lighthouse, it's something that I have the capability of some knowledge and more than anything, the more that you do death work, the more that you can just be a normal person around someone who is experiencing death, either dying or, you know, caregiver or a close person to someone dying. That's right.

Because my sense of when people's, you know, when your dad dies, say in a tragic way, you want your friend there for support, but you also want your friend there to make you feel normal. You want to, you want to joke sometimes. Maybe you want to feel, maybe you want to talk about how he was kind of an asshole sometimes. Yes. Maybe you want to talk about some shared experience that you have.

Right. It doesn't all need to be gloom and doom. You're there to normalize things and just make them feel less alone. Like, like somehow they're going to be able to get back to normality someday. That's right. As like a preview of still feeling like part of the community. That's so cool. And if you can be the person, that's what I'm saying.

We need more people like you. Like if you've been through that and you feel like you can just show up for someone and be normal, God, that's like worth its weight in gold. It is. And there's, this is, I think I actually, I don't remember which, I don't know which clip it was I was listening to, but you, you were mentioning something about death doulas, you said this. And so now I have the sun coming and since I have, I have more experience

with death than birth at this point in my life. And it's great because all the death experience completely works with the birth experience. It's all the same thing. It's like, I know the way when people are dying. I know where my defense mechanisms kick in. I know how I try to evade the reality of the experience that is happening. I understand.

Similarly, with birth coming there, it's such an intense thing that you, you, if you don't watch yourself, you can kind of in small ways or big ways evade it, you know, try to like, like not look it in the eye and not be with it in the presence of it. Exactly. Whereas like the best thing you could possibly do for yourself in your entire life, I think is be super present for those moments, like a hundred percent in like sitting with the dead body or a hundred percent like sitting with the

placenta and the newborn, like mulling, covered in mucus, baby. Yeah. These are the moments of primal reality that we just don't get in our daily lives. Right. And these moments of primal reality are actively kept from us by an elaborate system. What is that system? This seems truly like the conspiracy nobody talks about. Yeah.

It's what it's one of my favorite conspiracies is like the death industrial complex. What is this? Can we talk about this? Why is there this this we can't show sex on TV. We can't show people having sex. We cannot show the creation of life. And we can show the usually the violent, violent deaths. But the deaths are actors, usually.

Usually they don't show like an actual death, maybe every once in a while on CNN. No one's afraid to show the Kennedy assassination for some reason. They show that night and day black and white, white. It's like a vintage vibe. Yeah. Yeah. There's something in it that's cool, almost like you just put some like cool sixties music to it and then all right, it's cool to watch.

It's really weird. But other than that, it's like there is a veil that has put over these two things for some reason and it's actively put over these two things. I want to know who's drawing the blinds and why are they drawing the blinds? Right. Well, I can I can tell you for death and I can tell you my my theories, which I don't even know if they're theories. I think they're facts.

I'm going to put them out there as facts. Cool. So what happened? It really happened around the turn of the 20th century. So you had and keep in mind, this is prime, the extent to which it happens is an American convention is a United States convention. Right. It happens to some degree in many other places in the world, but the US is

really the the king is the mafia don of this kind of cover up. Yes. So you had the American Civil War and during the American Civil War, you saw the rise of embalming, which is chemically treating the dead body to keep it fresh a little longer to stave off decomposition a little longer. Was this was this because the people were dying far away from home and they wanted to get exactly. So the history is that you had all these northern soldiers going down to

the south, dying on the battlefield. It was really important in the Protestant ethos of the time that you see the dead body. So the train conductors were getting all of these decomposing corpses on their train and they would go, nope, kick them out. We're not doing this anymore. You can't pile up your decomposing corpses in my train. So you had these enterprising young men who were in Bulmers who would follow

the battles, battlefield to battlefield, like ambulance chasers. Going to the battles and setting up their tents. They would prop up abandoned bodies that they had embalmed from the battlefield to show their work as little advertisements, like window advertisements for their skills. And you would pay them to basically at that time disembowel the body, put some arsenic in the, in the body to preserve the body. Arsenic's a preservative.

It, yeah, it's a preservative. They don't use it anymore because it's terrible, but it's now they use formaldehyde, but at the time they used arsenic. And then so there was a dangerous job. It was a dangerous job. And that would, they would send the body back up north and it would preserve it for that, that period of travel, which it was an interesting innovation. But wait, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry. I just, this is a lot of information and it's really cool information. That's the intro. We haven't even gotten to the explanation yet. Okay. Okay. So you would get your, your uncle would come in a train. Yes.

Stuffed with arsenic. Just not stuffed with sawdust. Actually, they, the, the, at the time the embalming was they would disembowel you, meaning they would remove all your internal organs, cause that's really where decomposition happens is in the gooey middle part of your body. So they would disembowel all your organs. They would stuff you with sawdust or something to keep you, um, you know, your stomach extended and then they would fill your, your body, your

circulatory system with some kind of preservative. Were they using pumps to get the, how did they pump it in there? Yeah. So now it's a difference between how they did it. Then, then they had mostly something called gravity embalming, which means that it would just kind of, um, come from a higher place above the body. And then that would drain. So you want to drain from the vein and push in through the artery.

So if it's, it basically, if you cut open the vein and the artery, if you're pushing a fluid in through the artery, that will displace the blood that's in the vein. Okay. So it's pushing out the, whoa, okay. Got it. So that's basically, I mean, that's not too different from what embalming is now. Yeah.

It's like slightly more high tech, but not by a long shot. Okay. So they're doing this and this actually is, is sort of a sensible innovation for the time, you know, people want their dead sons back and they get their dead sons back because of this process. Yes. But what happens is that these same men are going, wait a second, the war is over now, but this is my business.

This is what I do now. We have to convince the rest of the country that embalming is the way to go. And so these men set out, they go across the country. They're selling their wares. They're kind of like Amway salesmen at first. They're going town to town, holding three day embalming courses saying, come on down, learn how to embalm. And then the real, the real trick of it, the real thing that really worked is at

the turn of the 20th century, they really started to push the idea based on now very bad science. And honestly, it was all already bad science at the time is that the dead body is dangerous in some way. That's what I thought. Yes. No, not true. If not, like this is, I'll tell you what I thought, uh, and up until this day,

to some degree, and I knew it was superstitious. Like I had a suspicion it was just based on hogwash, but for real, this is my thought, the moment, the dead, the dead body itself, to just touch it, some kind of unknown, I don't know what, something that must have been in their stomachs, running all over their body. Now it's like some kind of terrible, like Trojan horse of this disease. Oh, it's dead. So let's spring out and just completely cover the body.

And if you touch it, that gets on your hands and then I don't even know what would happen after that. Well, let's break that down. First of all, the death industrial complex has worked on you as it has on most people. So unless the person who died had Ebola or avian bird flu, or some one of these incredibly rare, wildly infectious diseases, in which case, in which case the CDC would come collect them immediately and take them for cremation. They wouldn't be going to a normal safe and money that way.

Yeah, you know, did your dad have Ebola? That sucks. But good news, government's going to take care of it. So unless that's the case, your body almost instantly becomes far more safe, the second that it dies, because not only are the viruses and the bacteria dying off pretty quickly, those don't live in your body that long. Also, the things that are infectious about a sick person or a dying person are what coughing, sneezing, bleeding, all of these things that are that get you.

Yeah, doing that when they were dead. So that's a positive. That's a group, you know, as far as keeping your safety intact. Wow. But if you're able to say, keep your dad under hospice and wash him and dress him and do all these things, he's, you know that he's completely safe. Right. And he does nothing changes when he dies.

It's the same thing. It's the same thing, if not safer. So it's like, oh my God, that is so creepy. And you know, keep in mind humans were doing this, taking care of their own dead in this way for tens of thousands of years of human history. This is just the norm. It's only been in the last, honestly, a hundred, 120 years that what happened is that these embalmers, these same men we were talking about, were really able to

push the idea that what they were doing by embalming the body is making it safe. For the family, disinfecting it, making it acceptable and safe for the family to see. So whereas before it was mostly women who were in the home, just washing the body and waking the body and laying it out. Now all of a sudden you have men coming in who aren't part of the family, who are different professionals saying, it's not safe for you to do it. We're going to need to come get the body, prepare it through this process

of embalming and charge you for it. Holy shit. So what did you say? Waking the body? Waking, meaning like viewing the body, laying it out for the family to come around and hang out with it, basically. So all of a sudden it now starts to, in the early 20th century, move towards this, this financial model, this, this capitalist model of death, where you

have to turn your body over to a funeral home to take it, drain the blood, put in the chemicals, put on the makeup, put them in a suit, and essentially sell your dad back to you. Wow. Wow. And they can't necessarily let people know. And what I do primarily is I advocate for something called home funerals, which is not that complicated.

It's just you taking more initiative with the death. So say your dad dies at home on hospice, you don't have to call anyone right now. It's not an emergency. Nothing's, he's not decomposing immediately. He's not getting dangerous. He's dead now. He's going to be dead two hours from now. Everything is okay.

It's not an emergency. And just to the degree that you feel comfortable sitting with that primal reality, as we said, sitting in that moment, feeling the feelings that come out and only calling a funeral home when you feel ready. This is so great. I, it's too late for me. You know, both time, both parent. Wow.

Both parents passing. It was just very, it was not like this, that no one sat. Interestingly, no one sat with us. I was like, listen, the body's not diseased. No, no one would sit with, no, no one would tell you this. No one. The body, you could just hang out with, you probably should hang out with her or him for a while and just sit with him.

It's okay. No one said that. And also it's not like there is some great desire in people to hang out with a dead body. Well, you know, that's complicated. And that's something that I'm always thinking about and negotiating because the people who do it, the people who are given, who have some inkling that they might want to do it, but aren't sure.

And then they're given the permission. They end up having this magical transformative experience. I say it's like chocolate and puppies. Like that's the kind of feedback that you get. It's people love it. And I wouldn't keep doing this work if I didn't keep hearing that. Okay. Let's talk about that experience.

What do you think that is? I think, I think there's a lot of things going on. I think that first of all, especially now, when is it that we're giving ourselves honestly any quiet time or space in our lives, period, right? And having a dead body sitting there. And first of all, like if I brought a random corpse into this room right now and are like, we're going to sit with it. That's horrifying.

That's a horror movie, right? Or a great podcast or a great podcast. In fact, let's go out to my trunk right now. I was, I had to test the waters, but I think you're ready. But a random corpse is scary. But like this is, you know, your wife, your parent, you know, your child, God forbid. Like this is, this is something someone who meant so much to you. Yes.

In your life. So that, that change, it adds this sacred tenor to the whole thing. And I've been, I've worked on thousands of dead bodies in my career, but there's still something so magical about a dead body, even after seeing so many of them. Yes, they're very dead, but they're these like, it's so uncanny valley. It's the shell of a person, but they were once, they were once animated. And so it's, it's almost like, you know, I know that you talk about magic and think about magic.

So the idea of having some sort of talisman or object that like at one time was like very pregnant with meaning. And then it's not anymore, but like it's still radiating that energy. Yes. That's what I think of of a dead body. What's that energy? I don't know, because I'm, I'm pretty secular. I'm a pretty secular person.

So I don't, I don't read it in those terms, but I, I say this all the time. I have to borrow sacred language for it. I'm a secular person who has to borrow sacred language because that's what. What do you mean by secular? I'm a secular. I mean, I mean that I think that the soul or whatever was animating the body has left the building when death occurs. So I think it's left the building and I personally don't believe that it's gone

somewhere or transitioned to some other state. Do you believe it was ever in the building? I believe that there is, there are things that animate a person. I believe that there, I believe that the brain is magic in my, I mean, that's not like, you know, a profound quote, but I, I do believe that there is a, a sort of magic to, to animation in a human. Yeah. But I think, but I, I guess I'm more interested in what's left over when someone

dies personally. That's, that's my area. That's my space. That's my, my, my passion is, is thinking about what happens to, especially the people who are still alive when they're in the presence of the dead body. Because that, that to me is like, okay, you're sitting there. You're looking at, you're looking at dad. He's dead.

It's our number two. He's starting to get cold. Yeah. His eyes are starting to sink a little bit. He looks different. This is your dad. You remember him running and playing and talking and whatever he did in his life. Or even if you had a terrible relationship, you imagine him beating you up.

You have these terrible memories, whatever sort of relationship you had with this person, it's slowly becoming clear that it's over now, that you can see him changing and you can see this whole universe that you live in changing. And you're also looking at him and you're like, wait, death is real. Oh shit. Like this is a corpse now. This is going to be me. Am I going to be a corpse?

Like spoiler? Yes, you are. What does that mean? What does that mean? Yeah. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for how you're living, for how you're existing, for how you're interacting with the world?

Yeah. And then you're also thinking about, okay, I have this time. I'm not on my Twitter. I'm not like, you know, on the internet, I'm not, I'm just existing in this world. What are other feelings that I have been having that I've been suppressing? Right. And there's nothing better to bring out feelings than hanging out with dead body, I think, because it's this, it's again, it's this time out of life that

most people don't give themselves. And you can give it to yourself because no one's going to fault you for having a wake with your dad. No, no one's going to fault you for taking some time and sitting with no, your body and having that. Um, so I just think it's an incredible opportunity. Just like being at a birth is an incredible opportunity that we're not giving ourselves or the establishments around them, the, you know, the systems around

them don't necessarily want us to. That's right. Yeah. I, that, that, the energy that you're talking about in particular, um, I want to hear some of the sacred language you use to describe it. Well, okay. So you mentioned death doulas earlier. Yeah.

A lot of death doulas are far. So you have funeral directors and morticians, which is what I am. I came through the, you know, do I have, do I take that much stock in this arbitrary label? Not really, but it is still more of a like, you go to mortuary school, you take the tests, you do that. Doulas generally exist outside of the funeral system. Right.

They are people who train amongst themselves in their own grouping. They are there to be in many ways, spiritual advisors for you as you are going through the dying process. What's the difference between a death doula and hospice? A hospice is going to be, well, there is some overlap. A hospice is going to be like nurses who are actually there to do your medicalized dying. Yes.

Um, doulas are there to do your comfort care and your spiritualized. I mean, it's sort of similar to a birth doula. You know, you have your actual nurses at the hospital, but then you have your doula, who's your advocate, who's explaining things in detail to you, who's rubbing your feet, who's, you know, giving you ice chips, who's talking you through everything. It's, it's a sort of different thing. But some doulas take the spiritual aspect of it very seriously.

And the one that I, who actually would be probably great for your show is Alua Arthur, who I work with. Um, and she, we're such a fascinating pair. I think the two of us, because we're both experts in our way and we're both, she's an incredibly powerful woman. And she does have a much more spiritual way of looking at the transition from death into life or life. Well, death into life, Freudian slip, perhaps.

And I think, you know, she was doing a sort of, for a video that I did, she was doing a pseudo deathbed experience on me, just to sort of give people a sense of what it would look like. And while I was there, while she was doing the frankincense and the singing bowls and, and talking me through these things, even as a more a religious person, I was like, bring it on. This is great. I love this.

It's comforting. It smells nice. It sounds nice. It feels nice. Like, why not? Bring it on. Yeah. You know, and, um, I think that I am in the, in a place where my

interest is the dead body. It's not that I don't care about dying, but I think doulas have this real interest in dying and not so much the dead body. Whereas I am like, you know, bring it to me once it's a corpse. That's what I'm, that's what I'm interested in. And, you know, but, but at the same time, it does have to be this continuum. It has to be to really make effective change in how we're looking at death and dying.

It has to be, you have to start out having this great conversation with your doctor, where your doctor doesn't tell you that they're going to valiantly fight no matter what stage of cancer you have, even if there's no hope. Yeah, you need to have, you need to be able to express to your doctor. Here's how much pain I'm willing to be in. Right. This is when you got to give me the morphine. That's right.

This is when I want to go home, no matter what. Amen. You just, when you have to be able to say it, that's right. Then you have to go to a palliative care team or a hospice team that is supporting you. That's right. The decisions you've laid out. Yep.

That doesn't separate you from your animals. That's right. Put you somewhere you don't want to be. Yes. Then you have to have a, maybe a doula or a funeral home that says, listen, you call us when you need us. There's no emergency. When the death happens, we do things all the time at my funeral home called the

delayed removal, which just means give us a call when you're ready. That's so great. Like, oh, your dad died. I'm so sorry to hear that. You let us know. Wow. You know, if you have any questions, let us know. But other than that, we're going to leave you alone.

Goosebumps. And just leaving people alone is because people need, people need that initial permission. Such compassion. But there's nothing, you know, it's not, it's sort of intuitive. Like there's nothing I really need to tell you about sitting with your dad. What's the name of your funeral home? It's called Undertaking LA.

I'm going to have to bring my dad back to life so we could do it again. Yeah, I don't know if you need that experience again, but, you know, we're here for you in your time of need, Duncan, whatever you need. It's so, so compassion net. It's so compassionate. This, what you're talking about, no one wants to talk about. No one wants to broach. And here's what happens to so many people.

By the time the dying person is ready to start talking about it, their mind is disintegrating. Yes. So they can't talk about it. They're not able to articulate exactly what it is they want. They, because they had been hypnotized by movies. Man, I just watched and it's a tear. I thought it was so good when I was in college and it's just such an embarrassing

movie. I watched The Razor's Edge recently. Have you seen, you know, that movie with Bill Murray? I don't know that I've seen it recently, but. Oh boy. It's like one of those movies you see when you're like, and you're like, God, that's what spirituality looks like. You know, when people become spiritual, they just kind of become like, they stop. They just basically become ambivalent.

Mind blown. No, not mind blown ambivalent. So like Bill Murray portrays this sort of like ambivalent. It reminds me of some sort of like existential hero. This sort of like ambivalent, unmoved by reality, non-passionate being. That's like, it seems to be some interpretation of something without any kind of experience, experience behind it or something. But there's a death scene in this movie and it is the most absurd death

scene of all time to watch this now. Spoiler spoiler. There's a death scene out of the protagonist's friends with this wealthy guy lives in Paris and the guy is laying in bed. He looks great. Yeah. He this guy, he looks healthier than most people you run into on the street. Like this is.

Well, that's the problem with Hollywood corpses in general. You know, you have a CSI or any crime show. It's just some 20 year old trying to get some IMDb credit. That's right. And some blue makeup. Yeah. Like they have fan of corpse. That is not a corpse. No, that's a healthy young person.

Yeah. And people like you and I, I guess I shouldn't be proud of the fact that I'm able to I've had that now when I'm watching movies. I'm like, yeah, right. Give me a fucking break. Oh, really? You look like you just ran a marathon. What is happening here is the pink cheeks, sparkly eyes. What is going on here?

So this gentleman is passing away and he's laying in bed. Clear as a bell, clear as a bell. He's talking to Bill Murray. They have this, you know, Bill Murray. This is the worst thing I've ever seen. Truly, it just like just a disease. It's a disease because people watch this and they go, oh, that must be what it's like. So in this moment, spoiler, if you go watch the Razor's Edge and start this again,

don't go watch the Razor's Edge. It sucks. But in this in this scene, Bill Murray has fabricated some kind of invitation to a fancy ball and is lying to this dying person to make him feel better, that he's been invited to some royal ball in the dying person. No, so that's number one lie to the. Is this a comedy?

No, it's a series. It's based on a book by Somerset. Yes. And the book is like this is like sort of, I guess, in the, I don't know, the genre of Steppenwolf. Who wrote Steppenwolf? Herman Hussey. Yes, it's like this kind of like spirit.

What when the East came to the West kind of spiritual. But in its, you know, it's wonderful, but it's terrible because it ends up getting all like way too dry. And the idea of the spiritual person becomes a person who is devoid of feeling or somehow just is like numb, numb. Somehow when it came to the West, people read in a book, the wise more neither for the living nor for the dead. That's from the Bhagavad Gita.

And the interpretation when you read it and don't experience what that really means. Yes. And even stoicism, I don't think is ambivalence. I don't even know at all. So anyway, so they realize this poor dying. And then the dying guy just dot, just goes, it's like, all right, see you later.

Kind of like looks over to the. Sorry, I won't be able to make it to the ball out of I'm out of the universe. Not even just literally like, oh, God, God, like insane, insane. Yeah. So people see that shit and they just assume, oh, you know, I'll start planning for this thing when I start getting sick, you know, is when I'll start planning, you know, based on the statistical probability of my death, I've got some amount of time left to plan for the thing.

This is absurdity. And so then what ends up happening is they. Start dying. And right away, your mind goes like your mind is out of here, man. You're like fluctuating through the past, present. You're just going into the past. You're talking to your husband who died 20 years ago. That's right.

You're doing. Yeah, you were. You have amnesia. And you might have some moments of clarity, but when you have moments of clarity, your family wants to talk to you about how you are in the past. They don't want to talk to you about what your death plan is. And if you want to be cremated, this was the cool thing about my dad, because when he was dying, he.

Man, it was wild. If sometimes he would. What is your dad diet? COPD. Oh, wow. So when he was dying, he he sometimes he would recognize me. Sometimes he thought that I was someone who was with him in Vietnam. Like he thought I was like working for the military beard.

He would be like, who who is your commanding officer? He would say things like that was really interesting. But and so I, you know, I was thinking, well, I probably won't see him again. Like right now what I'm seeing is this sort of like sleepwalker. I don't know that I'll see my dad again. And then pop back up. He popped right out of it. There he was.

And he and he was any and because I have been taught to be honest when the with dying people, thank God. Good. When he's he would he would he said, what's happening? And I'm like, oh, you're dying. And then he's like, oh, OK, OK, better go get a pen and a piece of paper. And then he starts telling me, you know, what to, you know, what to say to people. It was beautiful.

It was wonderful, you know, including things which I still haven't done. I've got to do this. You know, like send a lunch platter to the hospice, all these beautiful instructions. It was what I got lucky that he did this. You should send a lunch platter to the hospice. They love that. I'm going to I'm going to do it. Dad, wherever you may be in the past, present or future, it's happening. I'm sorry. A little distracted, got a baby coming.

That's not a good excuse. Easy to send a lunch platter. But he was there for a second. And but this doesn't always happen. And so I think both family members or any human being has this ridiculous concept of this process. And within it, there's some clarity of mind. And it's like, this is not how it works, man, which is why I really love your advocacy,

because in one of the clips I watched, you were giving instructions for the holidays because you're going to be around your family and here's a perfect time to come up with a plan for when it happens. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. Well, something that so the the original advocacy group that I founded is called the Order of the Good Death. And recently, I think mostly this year, there's been talk of why are we using the term the good death at all?

Isn't that too, you know, what about all of the bad deaths? You know, does that mean that you can never have a good death if you've been shot or if you're a trans victim of violence or if you have, you know, isn't that isn't that ignoring those people? And my contention is so many people have bad deaths now. And the fact is, unless you have some kind of plan for a good death, you're not getting anywhere near it. Yeah. And you have to if a good death or just even like a simple,

a calm death is your goal, that takes so much work. That's right. In our culture. That's right. It takes so much work. The forms, the forms alone, the forms alone. Yes. And the logistics, the logistics after you die are huge. No one knows about this. Nobody knows about it. No. It's and people will say, you know, like, oh, how do you know? Like I've been on the phone with this, you know, Verizon for two days. Yeah. Welcome to somebody dying.

You know, think about how annoying just having Verizon miss a digit on your social security number or something in life. Imagine trying to get off a phone plan when someone dies. Right. You know, it's near. It's it's it's crushing. So you have to have you have to have the right people working with you. You have to have the right ideas. You have to have the right logistics set out or it's just going to be a nightmare.

So when I say good death, I don't mean that like everyone should have a mandolin playing next to the dying person and their soul should ascend in magic and everybody's going to have the most privileged death in the world. Right. By good death, I mean just something resembling that which you want, what the dying person wants, what their family wants, at least have around you what you might want. If you were going to take a comfortable nap, how about that?

Just a nice situation where it's just a nice situation. You know, what is that going to look like? How is that going to happen? And the only way to do that, the number way to not accomplish that is to pretend it's not happening. That's right. Or to pretend that mom is sick, like mom is not sick. She's dying. Yeah. And it's like everyone has basically told you that.

But and mom has tried to talk to you. That's right. You were the daughter and you were the next of kin and you don't want to hear it. That's right. Or mom is dying and she doesn't want to hear it. That's right. Someone or it's somehow you both want to talk about it, but it's gotten mixed up in this conversation. And what the thing that I've found, if you really want, if you're dying or your mom is dying, or even if you're just it's in the future

and you're trying to plan for it, is you have to appeal to emotions rather than logic. Because it seems like what I just told you, of course, what you want to appeal to is logic, right? There are all of these logistics to be taken care of. You want to appeal to logic, but that doesn't work because that can always be deflected. That can always be like, oh, that's morbid. Oh, we don't want to talk about that now. Oh, that's too early. Not during Christmas.

Not during Christmas. We don't need this right now. This is too much. But what you have to say is, listen, mom, I know that you have cancer right now and that you it's hopefully it's going to get better. But if it doesn't, I am terrified that you are going to die and I'm not going to know what you want. That's right. And the thought of being left alone without you, who's always told me what to do and always told me how to figure out my life and given me structure.

If you're gone and I'm alone and I'm trying to do all this, that makes me sick at night. That makes me so afraid. That's right. And if you could just help me lay a few things out, that would make me feel so much safer and so much better. Yeah. And she can't escape that. You know, we're not trying like in some ways I am trying to trap your death denier relatives into these conversations. Yeah. You know, I could I could lie and say, I'm not trying to force anybody

to have a conversation they don't want to have. I sort of am because, you know, they may be able to say no then, but it's going to seep into their mind and it's going to they're it's going to slowly break down their barriers. Yep. And they're going to be more willing to have it. You only have to have this conversation a couple if you're if you're organized and you know what to ask, you don't have to have it over and over. It can be an uncomfortable couple of hours.

That's all it has to be. It might be a little longer than that. It might be like a work day or something, but you need to do this. This this. Is the most compassionate thing you can do when you're passing, you know, it's it's because it's kind of like, and you feel good when you're done. That's when you when you send that lunch platter to the hospice, you're going to feel so good.

Oh, you're right. I got to do that. You got. Well, well, this is, you know, I think of it in terms of like a high dive. It's like, do you want a belly flop out of this universe? You don't have to. You don't have to. You can really do some incredible acrobatics as you are transitioning. And I think it's an indication and also because if not, someone's going to come up behind you and push you.

That's right. That's right. That's when you belly and you belly flop and you're yelling and you smash into the water and it's very confusing to say the least. You had two months standing up there on the high dive. Yeah. And finally, someone is like, OK, your time is up. I'm going to push you from behind. That's right. And to give your loved ones the gift, this wonderful gift of just an organized plan that has no mystery in it.

Here's my social security number. Yes. Yeah. Just simple thing. Here's my bank account number. Here's who I'm leasing the car from. I've contacted them. They're expecting your call. All of these things. So there's you can make a list of 15 things. And there's so many romantic mysteries about someone's past,

but like their mother's maiden name, which you need for the certified deserter to get into that one of them. Yeah, that's right. You need that's not the romantic mystery about dad that we need. And also, I think within this conversation, a lot of beauty can start happening. Oh, sure. Like what an amazing like, you know, you have all those talks about mom's maiden name

and then it becomes what hasn't been said all of a sudden. That's right. And that is why I would add one thing to this. If you could do it with consent and it and you would be comfortable doing this for your own self, record it, record it. Because you might miss some data, but also you're going to have an eternal conversation forever. You will have this.

And, you know, this, this over time will be a thing that you at first, you'll never want to listen to it. You won't want to touch it. You'll put it in a drawer. You won't even listen to it. But at some point, maybe you'll never listen to it, but maybe your child will want to listen to it or their child. And so in this way, an echo of the life force of this being can continue to sort of reverberate out into this realm. And so I think that's a very I would just add that to the conversation.

That that you would have. And also the other thing about it is in my training, which is not secular, the idea is that the energetic state of the dying person, that momentum of dying, the momentum of dying, it's not like it smashes into some kind of. Wall and is annihilated. It's not as though suddenly that energy is like goes against all the laws of physics as we understand it.

It's not as though suddenly whatever that is just is gone. This is from a one to a zero. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I feel. So the other part of my advocacy is natural burial, which means just because the traditional burial now in America is you dig a deep hole deep into the earth. You put a big concrete vault. Yeah. Into the ground.

You then put the embalmed, chemically altered body in a sealed cast. Keep them safe. End is safe down there. You never know what's down there. Some airbags in that thing. Exactly. What if there's a earthquake? Well, what if the backhoe and the cemetery drives over it

and pops it all open, which happens often? I'm sure it goes into the vault and that body isn't coming anywhere near the earth at all. So a natural burial is just, you know, what other cultures would call burial, which is a hole in the ground, very shallow body goes into it. Decomposes naturally just in a simple shroud or simple decomposing garment of some kind. And when you talk about the energy in the matter, not hitting a wall, but moving forward, I feel that so strongly with the actual matter of my dead body.

So if I had any spirituality at all, I would say it resides in the idea of my body decomposing. It brings me so much comfort to think of my body decomposing. I don't want to be cremated. I don't want it because when you cremate a body, you skip over that decomposition. You were the it heats up your body to the point that all of the organic material just kind of floats out through the smokestack. And then you're left with inorganic bone fragments.

That's right. If you're embalmed, you're preserving your body to the point that it essentially mummifies beneath the earth. But if you have your body in very rich soil, it's expertly designed to break down the body quickly in a matter of one or two months, breaking down the body and sending your atoms back into the universe to do their work to continue. That's where I see reincarnation.

Oh, I see. That is in the matter, the physical matter of my body being allowed to decompose. Well, I mean, here the good news about whether there is this reincarnation in that way or reincarnation in some other way is we don't need to worry about it. Yeah, that's taking care of. Yeah, but it helps me. And this is what I tell people all the time is like, think about what makes you feel you're not going to feel good about dying.

But when you think about people are like, oh, it doesn't matter what happens to my body. It does because when you think about where your body is going to go, it can give you a lot of clarity on how you feel about death. You know, if you think about your body being trapped in a wall crypt somewhere, does that freak you out? Do you feel claustrophobic? What do you think about your body being cremated? Does that feel toasty and spiritual?

Or does it feel like you're in the flames of hell? You know, when you think about your body decomposing naturally in the ground, is that worms tearing at your flesh? Or like for me, is it like, oh, take me, sweet earth. You know, the cool sweet earth to consume me. You know, what, where is that for you? And if you can meditate on that a little bit, I think that really helps your dying process.

I like take me, sweet earth, and I think that that's a wonderful mantra. But I think the mantra doesn't have to, I think that's, that's what's happening now. You know, it's the decomposition process starts the moment you're born. And that the in this, in this, in this, maybe you could say that the. The thing which animates the corpse is the fire and that the. That is decomposing or aerosolizing or shifting or moving atoms into nature, even now, you know, and so now we're decomposing, now we're buried. In fact, we are dead.

We're a dead thing that has a flame that's sentient, sort of moving through it in this beautiful way. So I like that, you know, that as I've been taught and is that is. Logistically prepare for death, definitely. And then. Ask yourself. Am I alive? Yeah, that's a good question. Not many people ask themselves that it's a good question.

And if you, if you're the answer is like, well, yeah, of course I'm alive. I mean, I have a pulse, I have a heartbeat, I'm alive. Then, then, then ask, OK, but are you alive? Yeah, are you touching reality? Are you here? Where are you? Are you really alive? Are you touching things here?

Have you felt anything for a while? And so these moments of birth and death, as you're discussing, when this, in fact, in Buddhism, there's a practice. I'm sure you've heard of this, where the monks sit at the edge of a. Of a tunnel. Yes, and watch the decomposing corpse and meditate by the decomposing corpse. And they do advise as you're looking at the discoloration of the skin and the way the eyes are sinking in.

And then the advice given is understand that's you. That's you now, you, you. That's going to be you and is you and is happening now. And this is a wonderful exercise. It really is. When I first started, I started my work in a crematory as just a entry level crematory operator 10 years ago now. And I was in there every day cremating the bodies.

And because I have this academic interest in death, I was also reading about these customs and these ideas and these traditions. And not only was I thinking about, you know, the Buddhist idea of meditating on a charnel ground of decomposing bodies. I was also going to work every day and opening up a cremation container. And there's a decomposing body doing it in the container. Yes. And God, what a wonderful year that was. Yeah. And then, you know, those those first years, first couple of years,

I still love what I do so much and I believe in it so much. But those first couple of years of discovery, of working in the funeral industry and discovering what it means to be alive. Like, yes, I was in my, you know, early 20s, so it was filled with angst. Yes, sure. But it was also filled with discovery and life and truly defining for myself what being alive was. And if if I could go back to that first year in the crematory

and do it again, I think I would. Well, not to repeat anything, but just to just to feel those feelings again. And any time you start that journey, it's going to be the hardest, most wonderful year of your life. Let's talk and I've got 15 more minutes. It's two 16 right now. I know. OK. Well, that went fast. Yes, it did.

And so does life. Yeah. Now, I would like to ask you a strange question in the podcast. And so forgive me, because it's kind of like esoteric and weird. OK. If death is a mirror, what is it reflecting? Oh, my God. OK. There are so many ways I could answer that. That is a good question.

I think it's reflecting the fact that no matter how good we get at gamifying and using technology and creating these perfect experiences for ourselves and these perfect images of ourselves online or in our lives or these perfect content generators or these perfect spiritual people or beings, ultimately, we will end up as decomposing flesh. Ultimately, we will end up wildly imperfect in this really amazing way.

So. I'm sorry, may I stop you there? Yeah, yeah. Well, is it really imperfect, the decomposition process? Would you call that an? Isn't it? No, no, no, I call it. I guess I wouldn't call it imperfect, but I would call it messy in a way that's delightful to me, because so much. I think that our current funeral system in the United States,

especially reflects societal values. So our values are when someone dies, we want them to be immediately taken away in a white van that you cannot tell that as a dead body in it. Yeah, we want it to be taken to behind the scenes of the funeral home. Everything to be cleaned up for heavy, heavy makeup and restorative putty and injections in their face. So they look like a wax inversion of who the person that was

and then put them out in a pretty basic chapel and everyone comes up and taps them awkwardly on the hand and walks away. And that's what we want. We want that mediated experience. Yes, sure. But I think that the reason that people are wanting that less and less, they just did a survey that said only one third of Americans want that kind of funeral, which is devastating for the funeral industry.

Because their entire model is built on the entire system of laws and regulations is built on the presumption that people want that kind of funeral. Yes, people don't want that. They want they're turning to these greener, natural burials. They're turning to these home funerals. They're turning to these messy experiences. And I mean, messy. I mean, if you keep your dad at home and you're trying to dress him,

he might poop on you a little bit or purge a little bit. Yeah, sure. If you get put dad in the ground, he is going to his flesh is going to rot off of his body in spectacular fashion. This is a messy, this is gross, but it is it is real. It is reality. And it's hard to just it's such a gift to think about those things because if you're worried about like, oh, was the language of that tweet I sent, right?

It's like, OK, it's that or cleaning your dad's shit off your hands and being fine with it because it's truth and reality. And you're in the moment. Like think about the like the huge difference between those two experiences. That's right. Yes. And and how much we have to gain from a lot more of the latter. Yeah. Yeah. So what I want to what I think about death is reflecting is that you can't

you can't Silicon Valley death. So many people in Silicon Valley are trying to upload your brain into the crowd cloud trying to into the crowd. Also a friend trying to extend your life. Sure. And like, why I don't I mean, I know I know some transhumanists and I know why I know what their argument is. But to me, everything that is beautiful about life comes from death. Everything that is beautiful about life comes from the deadlines that are

imposed by death. Would we be here today if you were never going to die? You know what this reminds me of all this. We wouldn't do this. Have you ever heard this term before? It's really a quite interesting. And Buddhism, they say Samsara and Nirvana are intertwined. Or another way to put it would be confusion is a condition of enlightenment. So to achieve realization, there would have to be confusion first.

Or you would already have realization. So the confused state is actually a preliminary phase of the realized state. Similarly, when it comes to death and life, so to speak, these two things are like actually the same thing. If you ask me, it's the same thing. And this part of the process that we're in right now where we're animated in this particular incarnation has a boundary. I cannot drink water unless I have something to put the water in.

We must have the water. There must be something there for there to be form. And death is the cup from which we drink the water of life. Yeah, no, I agree with you. And why would you want the idea of being granted immortality right now? It sounds horrifying to me, absolutely horrifying. The idea of that I would walk around in this same flesh sack forever. All of my desire to achieve and change and create would be gone in an instant.

I have some bad news for you, and I am so sorry to say this because I think it's a philosophical disagreement that we have, but you are making a very intense assumption. And the assumption is that you are not immortal. And this is heaven, of course. Like if you think that you are annihilated upon it. But also, is your assumption of immortality that we can? So I'm talking about transhumanism.

I'm talking about extending life in this body. Oh, the transhumanists are just, you know, technology replicates natural forms, you know, the blockchain replicates. It seems to be that the blockchain is replicating some kind of like energetic state, a sort of metaphysical quality to the universe, Prana or whatever. They figured out a way to, in some weird way, shift some spiritual energy into some form and then turn that into money. It's a kind of like very, very complex, confusing, led into gold situation.

So I think technology is like when you throw pain on the invisible man. It reveals forms that are already there. So these technologists, imagine they're the ones who are doing the thing. But I think it's more that these forms already exist, but they're like showing up around us when we couldn't see them before, because technology is like allowing us to like scrubbing some things and we see it. But I guess my question to you is, do you feel like you would be doing the same things you are doing now?

You would be having the same work, the same child, the same life that you currently have if you believe that you were going to live to be 200 years old. Oh, oh, well, I think that, yeah. I think if there was some guarantee of like, oh, listen, you are definitely 100 percent. No argument about it going to live for a thousand years or something like that. Then potentially there could be a the needle could go in one direction or the other. It could either go to the direction of like where you just become a kind of temporal trust fund kid, I guess.

Like that's what that's what I believe would happen. That's what I strongly believe would happen, right? Is that our motivation is based on deadlines, right? Well, this mystery here is good, I guess. But the bad news, I think for people who if you think that there is annihilation, if you think there's annihilation, true annihilation, as in like Shiva level, gone, gone beyond the gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone somehow, like beyond paper shredder, gone.

Like we're talking like gone, gone, somehow a miracle occurs. And you are given full relief from what it is to incarnate. Or as Richard Dawkins says, death is the anesthesia that saves us from the pain of life. If this is true, then we are all so lucky because it means that it's parent. That is paradise. That is that is such, such perfection beyond perfection, if that is true. Unfortunately, I do not think it is true.

I'm afraid that there is a momentum. So you, so you think that when I believe myself to be annihilated at death, which something that brings me great comfort, you think that I am lying to myself? Well, no, I would say that it's similar to not lying to yourself. I would say that it is a, what, first of all, wonderful. If this is the case, wonderful. It is from my perspective, so we seem to agree on that. You just think that it's not the case.

And I think that it is. Well, yeah, I think that it's, we agree on the premise. We just don't agree on the reality. It would be similar to me saying everyone goes to heaven. And it, but in my, you know, it's, it's like, I don't mind if other people go to heaven, I just don't want to go to heaven. No, no, no. I mean what you're describing is heaven, annihilation is heaven.

So you think we're not granted that. You think we're not granted annihilation. I think that if the universe, I think that there is the possibility for annihilation, but it's not related to the death of the physical body. I think that we can be annihilated by a practice and that through that, there can be a, a, a remembrance or a connection with what we fundamentally are, which is emptiness, but I think that. Okay.

So tell me what, tell me my, my plan, tell me what I need to do. What's my, my 10 step plan to achieve annihilation? Ha ha ha ha ha. Another podcast, I'm afraid. I'm ready. Sign me up. The good news is this, here's the good news. Okay.

The good news is we aren't simultaneously annihilated and not annihilated. The bad news is, is that there could be the possibility that the momentum that we have here in this incarnation continues forward, meaning that this thing that we are called the animated, the, the, the thing that you see that animates the corpse, that thing is a sort of momentum. What you're looking at really, I guess you could say is like, when we put one of those awesome acoustic plates and sand on it and play a tone underneath it, it'll make a form.

It's really interesting. Similarly, I think what we're seeing in people is a, people are like acoustic plates through which a kind of karmic vibration is playing. And instead of creating a form and sand, it's creating a personality. And so when the body extinguishes the, that sort of pattern, just what we call death vanishes, but to, unfortunately, the vibratory force that was creating the pattern, it will find another little bit of sand to make that pattern. So you think that I am going to, on my deathbed, I am going to, my physical

body will be extinguished and then my, I will, I will believe, ah, sweet denihilation comes to me, but actually my vibrations are going to go to another place and I'm going to be like, God damn it. Yeah, that's kind of the, what happens, it's a little bit like you're a radio that thinks that when the batteries run out, the transmission stops. Well, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. You sound like the Buddha. Oh, I've often been said, yeah.

God bless you for your work in this world. And I apologize if what I just did seemed challenging in some way or no, not at all. I love the philosophical discussion of it. And, and I, you know, I love, I love, it's so rare. I, in my practice, because I want to be so, I want to be accessible to everyone. I don't usually say, you know, I have no desire to say like, I'm not going anywhere and none of you are either.

Like I, I wouldn't ever presume to say that. I, as I said, I think other people should go wherever they want and I'll just flip off into nothingness. That sounds great to me. But I love the challenge, which is so rare of I don't think that is going to happen to you, you know, because you see, you hear, I'm not an atheist, but you hear atheists say like, you don't know, you're going to, like this is going to happen to you no matter what, like you're getting nothing no matter what.

But I love the challenge of sort of the flip of that, which is me saying like annihilation and someone saying like, I don't think so. Well, maybe some hope I could offer you is that you don't have to die for that to happen. Your impulse to want this flip off to happen is, is the impulse towards realization. It's just that you've created a situation where your body has to die for that to happen.

And that's enough. That's a little bit of a, um, that's sort of like putting off dessert for a long time, you know, I'm open to it. Whenever, whenever grand, this is why I'm not an atheist. Whenever grand, like spiritual realization and integration wants to show up and, you know, I'm, I'm here. Oh, it's there. I am a funnel.

Let me tell you, you are a funnel. And it's just the, you are funneling such love and compassion into this world. And we are so lucky for the work that you're doing. Thank you so much for taking time. Thank you for having me. I'm so grateful. And, uh, how can people find you? Um, uh, please let the listeners know.

I know lots of people have questions for you and love to connect. Sure. Um, I have a, um, series called ask a mortician on YouTube, which has a lot of sort of basic questions and answers and, and insights into questions you have. I also have a website called the order of the good death, which has a big resource section. So if you're, have questions about home funerals, green funerals, hospice, all the things we talked about, there'll be robust resource guides for you there. And from there, you know, if you just Google mortician, you'll find me.

Ah, thank you so much. Um, I hope you will come back on the show one day. Yeah, I love it. Howdy, Christian. Thank you. That was great. Thank you so much. Next time we'll talk.

That was Caitlyn Doty, everybody. If you want to contact her or get in touch with the order of the good death, all the links you need will be at Duncan, Trussell.com. Thank you all so much for listening to the DTFH. I wish you a very happy holiday. If you like us, subscribe, give us a nice rating on iTunes. And most importantly, give yourself a nice rating in the universe, because you are the universe and I love you until next time.

Howdy, Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JC Penney, family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford and J. Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids.

Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JC Penney. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JC Penney, family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting and plenty of color to play with.

Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford and J. Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JC Penney.