Factually! with Adam Conover - You Are Going to Die with Caitlin Doughty

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

We know we’re going to die. So why don’t we act like it? This week, Adam is joined by Caitlin Doughty to discuss human composting, aquamation, green burial, how to reform the funeral industry, and how to finally accept the inevitable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show once again as I talk to an incredible expert from around the world of human knowledge about all the amazing shit that they know that I don't know and that you might not know.

Both of our minds are going to get blown today and we're going to have so much fun doing it. Now before we get going, I want to remind you that I'm going on tour once again this year. I have some brand new stand-up dates that I'm going to be able to announce very soon, but the first one, tickets are available now if you live in Austin, Texas. I hope you come see me at the Cap City Comedy Club from March 23rd through 25th. You can see my brand new hour of stand-up. You're gonna love it. I'll love to see you there. I do a meet and greet after every single show, up. You're going to love it. I'll love to see you there. I do a meet and greet after every single show. And if you want to support this show, just a reminder, you can do so on Patreon at patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of this podcast ad free. You

can join our community discord. We do a community book club. It's a really great time and I'd love to see you there. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Now, let's get to this week's episode. We got a fun one this week. This week, we're talking about death. Yeah, that's right, death. You're gonna be dead one day. Did you realize that? And so will everyone you've ever known

and everyone you have ever loved. At some day in the future, your body will slow down and then it will shut down. You will cease digesting, you will stop breathing, your blood will stop circulating, your heart will stop,. You will cease digesting. You will stop breathing. Your blood will stop circulating. Your heart will stop. And that will be all, folks. It'll be curtains for you.

And here's the thing. Even though we know that this is an immutable law of the universe intellectually, it's very hard for us to process it emotionally. It's hard for us to take it in and truly understand the fact that we are going to die And that's not just a problem for us personally It's also a problem for our entire society as a culture at least here in america We often don't even want to acknowledge that death exists at all And you can see that in the way we spend our money as a country We spend enormous resources trying to cheat and deny death. You know,

the billionaires are in a race to research their way out of the inevitable. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have funded that anti-aging company Calico Labs. Jeff Bezos has Alto Labs. And Peter Thiel has thrown money around as well. You know, these are the billionaires trying to freeze their heads. It's not going to work, but they will spend a fortune trying to cheat the most fundamental force in the universe. But look, it's easy to bash the billionaires. That's why I do it so often. The money that they spend still pales in comparison to what normal people spend collectively trying to keep our lives going every year. 10% of all care spending in America goes to extending life in the last year. That's $365 billion of relative utility spent every year. Because remember, these lives are not being saved.

This money is being spent in the last year of people's lives. Maybe just buying them a couple of extra days before finally succumbing to the inevitable. You have to imagine that we could spend at least some of that money a little bit better if instead of denying death, we accepted that it's on its way and spent that money helping those people be a little bit more comfortable on their way to, you know, their final resting place. And of course, when you hit that final resting place, there's an entire industry ready to take even more cash from your family. Until we did an Adam Ruins Everything episode on death, I never thought about the gigantic industry for funerals involving embalming caskets and putting people in the ground.

Why do we do it? Why do we spend so much money making up dead people, making them look nice, putting clothes in them, injecting chemicals into their bloodstreams and building gigantic stone plinths for them? And is there a better alternative? Is there a more healthy, accepting, better way to think about death? Well, on the show today, we have someone who has devoted her whole career to asking these

questions. She brings an incredibly thoughtful and critical perspective to how death is handled in our society. And she's one of my favorite guests we've ever had on Adam Ruins Everything or ever had on the podcast. Her name is Caitlin Doty. She's a mortician, an advocate, and a writer. And she's written a number of bestselling books, including From Here to Eternity, Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and other lessons from the crematory. I know you are going to love this interview. Please welcome Caitlin Doughty.

Caitlin, thank you so much for being on the show again. I'm back, baby. I think last time you were on the show, it was when it was called the Adam Ruins Everything podcast, which is technically a different podcast. We had you on that because you were on the very first season of Adam Ruins Everything, lo, so many years ago, six years, six or seven years ago now.

Time flies. You were on our episode about death. So some of the audience might remember you, but please, would you tell us a little bit, remind us what your deal is for those of you who don't know. What exactly is it that you do? Because I don't want to try to say it. I might fuck it up.

It's like a therapy session. Like, just please explain't want to try to say it. I might fuck it up. It's like a therapy session, like just please explain your deal to the people at home. My deal is that I have spent many years in the American funeral industry, and I am a licensed mortician, but I somewhat like a mole on the inside, my main issue is funeral industry reform and the fact that our funeral industry in America was founded actually quite recently, really in the early 20th century by capitalists to sell a certain type of funeral. And now that we are aware of that and we want different things, we should have the laws and regulations line up with our desires, both as consumers and people who are all eventually going to die. And so I do various

things to encourage that. And I am just kind of one of the public faces of funeral reform, the least sexy of the reforms. I mean, hey, everyone has their role in life, you know, and everyone has their role in death. Let's get to the funeral reform piece in a second. You also describe yourself as death positive or that you try to spread death positivity, right? And so let's talk about that overall philosophy first. What do you mean by that? Certainly most people don't think of death as a thing to be treated positively. They don't. And so what a provocative title it is, right? And honestly,

I was never married to the idea of death positivity. I originally proposed that term in a tweet, I think something like almost 10 years ago probably at this point. And what happened is that people just immediately latched onto it and said, yes, that resonates with me or that's how I see it. And the deal with death positivity as a movement is not like, oh, Adam, your mother died. You must feel absolutely amazing. Because obviously not. I think we can all say obviously that death is tough, cruel, difficult, capricious, difficult to take. Grief is real. It's all incredibly difficult to take on an existential level and incredibly threatening to us all. But there have been times throughout human history, there are times concurrent with our lives now in different countries and different

cultures where death is not so hidden, not so threatening. And the idea behind death positivity is that it is a net good, it is a net positive to have open conversations about death. It's positive to reform the funeral industry. It's positive to be interested in death. I think that to me is kind of the core tenant of death positivity is that it's okay to be really fascinated by the fact that you and everyone you love will be gone someday. That's what, what more is there that's interesting about our lives than the fact that they go away at some point. They just poof away into nothingness. Like that's really profound.

And the way that we use that in our culture, the way that we explore it in a culture, the way that our fear of death and our ultimate end affects laws that are made, affect policies that are made, all of these things working together and death and culture is what makes life kind of fascinating and interesting to live. And it's okay to engage those openly and honestly. Yeah. Wow. What a great answer.

I mean, I've often felt that way about death. I mean, even I remember just thinking as a kid and being like, oh, there's the whole question of what happens, you know, life after death. And I'm like, what's cool is you get to find out. I mean, or you get to not exist, and which is an answer to the question. You won't be there to appreciate the answer. You won't be going, oh, oh, okay, cool, non-existence. But who knows? You know, like there's a fact of the matter, and we get to pass through the veil. There's a fact of the matter, and we get to pass through the veil. It's like we will automatically, by virtue of living, have a direct experience of metaphysics in a way, of the deep questions of what is existence and what is non-existence.

Well, you're going to know, and that's awesome. I mean, it's fun to think about. Absolutely, and that's where the positive comes in, is it's fun to think about. Absolutely. And I mean, that's where the positive comes in, is it's fun to think about. And it's kind of essential to think about because that knowledge, something that makes humans unique, and there's evidence that other animals have some sense of mortality and some sense of their own death, but it's pretty rare in the animal kingdom. And so what makes humans so unique is the fact that we know what outer space is. We know what the deepest parts of the ocean are. We know like what heaven could be. We can imagine hell. We can just imagine all of these things in

all of these places. And just because you don't want to think about it or you think it's icky or scary or gross doesn't mean it isn't haunting your subconscious on a daily basis. It doesn't mean it isn't there. So you might as well do your little dance with it and engage it. And you might find that there's a lot of interesting things to be mined there. And often I think it's not so much that we individually don't want to think about it. I mean, some people have a genuine fear of death and it can be a difficult subject, et cetera, but there's also like a cultural push to not think about it, to sort of ignore it and shove it into the back alleys and the corners and sort of make it invisible. You know, there was,

there are these literary books, novels, I don't know what they are, by this author, Klaus One Nausgaard. Is that his name? He's like a Norwegian author. Oh, Karl Ove, yeah. Karl Ove, thank you. What did I say?

I don't even know. You say his name. What's his name? I think it's Karl Ove Knausgaard. Thank you. Wow, that was beautiful pronunciation. I believe. Look, come for me in the comments if that's not right.

So he's written these, I don't know, there's a series of literary autobiographical novels that I have not read, but I flirted with the idea of what if I read these? And I read the first 10 pages of one of them. Okay, and it was an audio book, all right? This is who I am. It's called My Struggle, by the way, so that's very on brand for what you're talking about here.

It's true. It is a struggle. But so the first 10 pages, he has this idea that always stuck with me. That was, he just starts asking, why is it that when someone dies, the first thing that we do is cover them with a sheet, you know, or cover them with something or whisk the body away. People sort of, you know, this person was a moment ago, say someone, you know, drops dead on the street, has a heart attack and dies. A moment ago, they were walking around and they were animated. Now that they're not animated, there's a horror of looking at them. And, you know, even before the ambulance comes, you want to get a tarp to cover them or something, right? And he just sort of asks, like, what is the why? Where does that come from? I don't know if he answers it because I stopped reading the book. But that sort of provocative question is exactly what I get when I talk to you as well,

sort of poking at, well, what is up with these very repressed cultural norms? You know, we've been through layers of sexual revolution in America where we're like, why are we so repressed about this? Why don't we talk about bodily functions? Why don't we talk about, you know, sex? But death is something that seems like we have not gone through that revolution on ever.

And we're still very repressed in the way that we treat it. Yeah, and I mean, it's interesting. I've read a couple of things recently about how Gen Z feel like trend pieces almost about how Gen Z feels about death and how they're using it to answer these provocative questions. Those articles are always like, I know two teenagers. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, like New York times knows two people who still smoke and this is a trend piece. Um, but, but it is sort of, it's like New York Times knows two people who still smoke, and this is a trend piece. But it is sort of, it's almost like to have Gen Z goths be like death, crazy, right?

It's like that does kind of reflect how repressed a culture is. If there's still, in a world where there's almost no more counterculture at all, we can consider death to still be counterculture. Or what I do or what I talk about niche in some way, or a very specific thing. But when it's obviously not, it's the fate of every human on the planet. There's nothing more general interest than death. And what's interesting about the idea of covering the body with a sheet and just immediately whisking it away, I was actually having this conversation this morning with a relative actually, and talking about how the time after death, when the body is just laying there, and it is not an emergency because the person's dead now, you know, the emergency is over, the deadness will continue. This is actually the

richest time, this transitional time when they are not on this earth anymore, but their body and their physical vessel is still here and it still looks like them, this is the absolute richest, most precious time for you to just be with the body and be present and not have any preconceived notions about how you're going to feel or what's going to happen. But I think it's probably the time, maybe other than birth, that we are most human as a species is when we are with the recently dead. And yet we try and completely squelch that. And as you said, throw the sheet over it, wrap it in a tarp, you know, the funeral director

screeches in like they're ambulance drivers and takes the body away. And why we do that, you know, well, that's a long answer, but it is part of the American death system. Yeah. I mean, just that experience of being present with the body strikes me as, yeah, it certainly is a rich area, but I'm not certain how I feel about it because sometimes I think I would feel, oh, well, my loved one, like, well, they're not there anymore. So there's an eeriness or uncanniness to the body because is it your loved one or is it not? It's somewhere in between. And I feel like a lot of, maybe that makes people unsettled to have that experience. Yeah, it does. Yeah. And that's the good stuff. That's it. Yeah, that's the part I like. I'm into that. Yeah, it is. That is the part I like because so much of our life, especially now,

is about mediating uncomfortable emotions by just diving into our phones or diving into our computer or our work or just something else. And when someone dies, the opportunity that it presents to sit there and have some uncomfortable emotions. And it may be absolutely a beautiful ritual where you're crying and holding your mother's hand and, you know, releasing things you never thought you'd release. It may be kind of uncanny valley. It may make you a little uncomfortable to see that they were once there and now they're not. It may bring up horrible feelings. You don't know, but that's those, being able to sit with those feelings is what's important and what we're often missing in 2023. Yeah. I mean, I, maybe folks listening will relate to this. I've had the experience of it's, it's, uh, you know, just the death of a pet,

but I've had the experience of going through a death that I found to be a very profound experience. You know, me and me and my partner's dog passed away a couple of years ago. And, you know, she had had some health issues. And then there was a morning where she was in a lot of pain. And Lisa was like, oh, this is the moment, you know, it's like this time. We took her to the vet and they, you know, gave her some sort of, you know, medication. And so, you know, she passed away in front of us. And it was like a really, it was very intense experience.

And it was very sad. Of course, I grieved. But I also had the experience of feeling like I'm really glad I went through that, you know, especially for me and Lisa's relationship to have experienced it together, you know, and to have had sort of like a moment of catharsis. And, you know, like there was a moment at which it felt like she said goodbye to us, you know, where she like gave us some sniffs

right before, you know, everything happened. And, you know, and again, that's just a pet. Like, you know, I have not had that experience, gone through that experience with a very close family member. But I do think about it. But a pet, to be clear, a pet death is also extremely valid in the pantheon.

Oh, yeah. I know. Because they live with you every day and love you unconditionally. Yeah. I know it's valid. I know it's valid. I'm just trying to say, hey, if someone's mom, if someone had this experience with their mom, I'm not trying to say, oh, yeah, that happened to me too. No, I don't think. No, no, no, no. I know. That's a good caveat. But I think that you are well within your right to have experience.

Yeah. Well, so there is a there's I understand what you mean about there being a real a real depth to the experience. And I also relate to what you say about even when something is uncomfortable or weird, that can be a good experience to reflect on because there's profundity to it and you can get something from it. Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like you did that. And the thing is, is that I wouldn't continue. I've been publicly advocating for this stuff for, oh God, probably, probably a dozen years now and working in the funeral industry for longer. And I would not keep advocating for what I advocate for in the way I advocate for it if along the way even say 0.4% of the people said,

you know what, I wish I hadn't done any of this. I sat with my mom's body and it was just an absolutely shitty experience and made me feel bad and it was gross and I didn't like it and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. If anybody really in earnestly said that, I would probably have to really reflect on what I was advocating for. But that just usually never happens. And you hear people, you hear stories of people who go to a funeral home and after the body has been mediated in some way after it potentially has been chemically embalmed or put makeup on or dressed up or

presented in a, in a different way, people sometimes have negative reactions to that. But as far as just. That happened to my family, my grandfather passed away a couple of years ago. And I don't know if I, I don't recall if I looked inside the casket, actually, there was a viewing. And I remember my relative saying that doesn't look like him. That doesn't look like him. And they, and they just, it wasn't a strong reaction. They were just like, I don't like that. I don't like it. Yeah. Right. Which does, which does often happen in, um, you know, seeing an embalmed body. But where it doesn't happen is if you were there right before the person died and then you see them 20 minutes after they died, they look essentially the same. Although there are some differences.

Some slight things have changed. The person has relaxed. They're not breathing heavily. They're not in the act of dying. They are essentially at peace. And seeing that, it certainly looks like them, but you can tell the light has gone out in some way. And being present for, even being present for the death can sometimes be difficult, but being present with the body

after the person has died, that is something that I just rarely ever hear people who do it say, that I just rarely ever hear people who do it say, ugh, wish I hadn't done that. Yeah, and a lot of people describe, oh, at that moment, their loved one is free from pain if they were experiencing pain beforehand and et cetera. Well, actually, let's take a really quick break. When we come back, I want to find out what you feel the funeral industry does incorrectly.

So we'll take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Caitlin Doughty. Okay, we're back with Caitlin Doughty. So, yeah, I told you about that experience that my family had with my grandfather at a traditional funeral home. And I'm pretty sure he had the works. You know, he was like, this is, you know, UP Michigan, old-fashioned funeral home. And I'm pretty sure he had the works, you know, he was like, this is, this is, you know, UP Michigan, old fashioned funeral home. They did probably been doing it the same way since the fifties, probably, you know what I mean? What, what do you feel that that industry

has taken from us or what, what experiences is it not allowing us to have or what mistakes is it not allowing us to have? Or what mistakes is it making? Well, you know, if you are from a small town, say in the Midwest or the South, and funerals like that, big public funerals with the open casket, the embalmed body, the purse, the ceremony, the funeral, the grave, all of that means a lot to you and it's a time to get together and is moving. By all means, it is not my place to say, don't do that with your grandfather. But I think that a lot of people, especially when we get down to younger people at this point, it just ritually, emotionally is not doing a lot for them anymore. And the question of as to whether it ever did that much for Americans is up for debate because we've had these issues and these questions around, is it too expensive? Does it distance us from death? You know, this goes

back to Jessica Mitford's critique in the 1960s and the American way of death, saying essentially, we got to get rid of all this stuff and just focus on cremation. And so this critique has been going on for a really long time. But essentially, if you look at the main critiques of the funeral industry, it would be that in the early 20th century, the industry was built up around the idea that one, the body has to be embalmed, that it's somehow dangerous and unsanitary to not embalm a dead body. And that for those who don't know, that's draining the blood and replacing the blood with chemicals and, you know, potentially other things as well to raise up the skin, hydrate the skin, makeup, suit, etc. raise up the skin, hydrate the skin, makeup, suit, et cetera. And, you know, I say it's essentially it's taking the body and it's selling it back to the family as a product.

Because that is what happens when they take the body and they do the embalming. And there's expensive caskets to be brought. There's also mythos around all of these things. There's ideas of this casket is going to protect you. This casket is keeping mom be brought. There's also mythos around all of these things. There's ideas of this casket is going to protect you. This casket is keeping mom sanitary. It's keeping her safe from the elements. There's vaults in the cemetery that that keeps her safe further. When in reality, all of these things are to protect the dead body, but they serve not only to make money for an industry, it also leads us on a quest for protection that doesn't really have a basis in reality or in human emotion or desire. So yes, of course, we want to protect grandma in theory,

but is placing these chemicals in her and placing her very, very far from the dirt. So she becomes essentially this sort of wax and mummy underground. Is that really what brings us comfort? And according to the funeral industry, that it would be yes, that that is the number one thing that brings us comfort. And what you have now is a large movement of people who are finally saying, I don't think that brings me comfort. And actually, you charged us $20,000 for that. And we didn't have any other options. And it wasn't really presented to us with any other options. And I feel like surely there must be another way and there is especially when people are in this position that again because we culturally do not discuss death we you know no one has thought about what

the different options are beforehand you know of people are i mean sometimes people are like i want to be in the crypt next to mom or whatever i won't be creamy i have my ashes but a lot of the time it's just like hey i mean somebody died i guess you call the funeral home, because that's the funeral, you got a fire, you call the fire department, you got a dead guy, you call the funeral home, you know, and then where the funeral home tells you goes, but then, yeah, this whole product they're selling you, it's not even clear what the purpose is, like, what is the purpose of the mummy in the box underground, like, who, sure, hey, that's for you to keep your mom sick. Well, why, what, what difference was, you know, right. The purpose was American capitalism always front and center. And that's

where it came from. And so that's the thing that I think it's important for people to know when it comes to like, why, you know, why is this this important ritual that why do we do this? Well, we do it because it was to make money. That doesn't mean all rituals come from somewhere. You know, the diamond rings come from the diamond industry. You know, these these things. Oh, I mean, I think that's your gig. I think you've got a nine million examples of this. Right. So all of these traditions come from somewhere. It's just whether or not do these traditions that came from potentially a capitalist lens, do they still mean something to you? And if they don't mean something to you, do you have the ability to opt out or go in a

different direction? And because of the way that lobbying has worked over the 20th century into the 21st century, lobbying, regulations, licensing regimes around the funeral industry have worked. It makes it extremely difficult for families to go in a different direction unless they really plan it out beforehand and they know why they don't want to do it and they know they want to make different choices. You won't just fall in to a more environmentally friendly, much less costly, more family-involved funeral. That's something that you really have to decide in advance.

Because if you just wait until the dad's death happens, you're going to fall into this more traditional system still. Yeah. It's such a strange thing. It reminds me of being a kid and learning about, you know, Egyptian mummies in school. And like, oh, they, I don't know how much of it's true even. Oh, they pull out the brain through the nose with a hook and all that kind of thing. And no one tells you that. They did actually pull out the brain with a hook.

They didn't really do that. Yeah, that's a thing. That's a thing I remember being told when I was in like third grade or whatever. It's a cool fact. You go to the history museum and they tell you this. But no one tells you that they do way to the history museum and they tell you this. But no one tells you that they do way weirder stuff to you when you die. Yeah, we have our own version of that.

And you know, it's tough for me. So right now I'm working on, I've had a little bit of a slight change of heart here. I'm going through a change of heart because I'm talking about human composting. That's a new disposition or way of doing something with the dead body. That is, we're working very hard on legalizing in all of the states, which we have to do individually. And it makes me think about how the way that people go, ew, that's gross, that's disgusting, I would never want that for my dad. It makes me want to be more careful about the way that I talk about embalming and burial.

Because from my perspective, from my reform perspective, I want to come in barn burner and be like, listen, do you know what they're doing to your mother behind the scenes? Do you know how she's being buried? Do you know what happens to a embalmed body in a rubber gasketed sealed casket underground? You know, I have these, I want to make these descriptions, but at the same time, I don't want to demean anyone's choices. But at the same time, what I find again and again, as I do this this work is it's extremely rare for someone to say, oh, I just can't wait to be embalmed. I just can't wait to be embalmed. I can't wait to have my blood drained

and filled with cancer-causing chemicals and be put in my prettiest dress. People may have an idea that they want to be, you know, dressed a certain way at their viewing. You know, they want to have a certain hat on, they want to have certain lipstick on, but they rarely romanticize the process of embalming because most people don't actually know what goes on with it. And most people don't actually understand what's happening with the casket or why it's, you know, lined with satin inside and why it costs so much. They don't have a lot of sense of this. And it's not deeply, deeply meaningful to them. I actually had one time where someone was saying, you know, I don't want you talking like this. It's bad that you're talking like this because

you're really dismissing people's religion. And I went, their religion? What are we talking about here? And they're like, you know, all of this is Christian. And I went, no, no, no, no, it's not. Once again, it's early 20th century capitalism. It's not connected to Christianity at all either. So I have sort of had a change of heart about how I talk about it, and I don't want to be too dismissive of it. But at the same time,'s uh beholden of me to actually explain what is happening there and the reality of how it got there and the reality of how we got to where we are today yeah and it's funny that it's this part that nobody sees you know even if people like well i don't want my dad to be cremated because i want to i want to have a grave i can go visit you know or even if they're like hey i want I want to, you know, someone's like, when

I die, I want a giant crypt with my name on it, you know, a big family crypt, right? That's like the sort of maximal version of this. Like, yeah, sure, those things are good, but you don't see the body even in those cases. Like, the embalming and all of that doesn't even come up in those situations. I was just in France last year and walked around the big famous cemetery in Paris. I don't remember the name. I'm sure you do.

Thank you very much. And you know, it's a beautiful, I'll just go to you for pronunciation for every episode from now on. But yeah, it's a, it's a gorgeous cemetery. You're not seeing bodies.

You're seeing beautiful stonework, you know? And so that part of it is still, it's very, very strange because it is the part that people pay the most money for. But it's the part that nobody thinks about before it happens and no one engages with it after it happens. So it's truly, once you start looking at all the different pieces of what death means to people and what the rituals mean to people, you're like, why are we doing this if nobody cares about this part at all? positions that I'm advocating for and working on legalization for essentially obliterate the dead body and are not as focused on forever memorialization in the way older cemeteries are, like your forever plot that your big name and headstone goes on. I still love old cemeteries. I love walking through a pair of liches. I love seeing those old things. But I will say that with the advent, the real advent of the American funeral industry in its current form, especially back to the early 1900s, we really don't have, we have 19th century cemeteries that are absolutely gorgeous and lots of rural cemeteries that still have interesting things going on. But we really, in America, adopted the pretty flat to the ground, just headstone that's a rectangle that says a name and the dates and we love you, Papa. And that's all that's on there. And I still love walking through those cemeteries,

but I don't think people have a, it's not like you go to a cemetery the way that you would a Père Lachaise and there's, you know, beautiful different headstones and each one's an artistic reference to the person's life. And, you know, you go someplace like Russia, I have the background of my phone actually is a picture of this, a headstone of these big granite hands, two big granite hands coming out of the ground, and a giant clear red stone sitting on top of them. And it was the headstone of a heart surgeon. And just perfectly represented the person he was and his career. And we don't really do that in the United States. So I feel like the funeral industry is also missing this opportunity for better branding in the sense of like a meaningful way. If we want to keep cemeteries going, why do we have cemeteries? What are they offering us? Are they really offering us memorials

that people want to come back to, that people, even if you don't know the dead people, that you want to interact with them? I would argue that not really at this point. Yeah. I mean, you know, the closest thing we have to a cemetery like that in Los Angeles is we have places like forest lawn, which is like a huge amount of land in LA, um, that I presume there's a lot of people buried there. Nobody like goes there. People probably go to visit their, their loved ones graves if they've paid to have one, but it's not like a, a nice sort of park-like environment where you are like, oh, look who that is. Look at that. You know what I mean? And you go to their website. I'm like, oh, it's a for-profit business. And it has an enormous amount of land. And in Los Angeles, a place where we're starved for housing.

And it starts to seem sort of like, what's the point of this? It's not for anybody. It's not for the the point of this? It's not for anybody. It's not for the people in the ground. It's not for the life of the city. It's not really honoring the people that well. You know, it probably provides a benefit to folks who want a place to go visit a particular grave, but, you know, it starts to, like,

once you start to look at it, it looks really, really weird. So what do you, let's talk more about what you propose. When you were on Adam Ruins Everything, we talked about natural burial, where you're just buried in a shroud in the earth and you sort of decompose in, I suppose, either what, a cemetery or maybe a natural area or something like that. That was a number of years ago, though, and I'm sure you're working on exciting new ways for your uh, for your body to be disposed of. And you mentioned human composting. I want to know more about what you mean by that.

I would love to define human composting for you, but first I just want to let people know that forest lawn is actually fascinating. Oh, okay. Forest lawn in LA is kind of ground zero for the new American way of death. So it was,

it was taken over in the early 1900s. You're seeing a pattern here of when this really started to go down. And there was stuff obviously happening in the late 1800s, but early 1900s, I would argue, was when it pops off. And there was a man named Hubert Eaton who took over Forest Lawn and made it Forest Lawn. And he was actually the one who had created the kind of flat headstone concept. And the idea that it would just be rolling hills and we no longer would have these drab, upright headstones, aka the things that make each grave unique and interesting in my personal estimation. But he also was the one that, if anyone has ever read the book The Loved One or seen the movie The Loved One, the idea of the slumber room and father is reposing in the slumber room and he is passed on.

And all of the euphemisms that we associate with death and with the funeral director really sort of centered around the founder, as they called Hubert Eaton. Wow. director really sort of centered around the founder as they called Hubert Eaton. And he created the Garden of Memories and the Children's Quacky Duck Garden or something. It's a better name than that, but you know, like that sort of thing. And that was very much an important moment in American. That sounds like the Walt Disney of death in a way. He was the Walt Disney of death. They were good friends. Walt Disney,. Walt Disney, I believe, was supposed to be, I believe the story is that Walt Disney was supposed to be a pallbearer at Hubert Eaton's funeral, but he was so terrified of death himself

that I think he didn't want to do it. Wow. Walt Disney is also his, was not cryogenically frozen. Okay, famous urban legend. But I believe, yeah, famous urban legend. Yeah, famous urban legend, but I believe is actually buried at Forest Lawn or cremated and then buried at Forest Lawn. And they, yeah, I mean, the one reason that people do like Forest Lawn is there are a lot of celebrities buried there. But I think it has a strange, strange history and you're absolutely right the the huge huge amount of land right in the smack in the middle of valuable land in los angeles is is an interesting question empty hills that by the

way are quite green like you know most of like it's it's literally a lawn so here in california we we have we're slowly getting the message lawns bad you You know, it takes lots of water, which we don't have. And it's certainly not the natural, you know, what these natural hills would be. But this is a, it's a hillside that's nothing but lawn. It's like multiple hillsides. You can see it from far away. There's a big crucifix on top going like,

what the hell is that? I finally, oh, that's Forest Lawn Cemetery. But unlike most city cemeteries where people say, oh yeah, that's the cemetery, I go jogging there or something. Or at least say in New York, that's the way people would treat the various cemeteries.

Nobody talks about it. It's not a place, at least not in my experience. They don't keep it light and fun there, I would say. Unlike some place like a Hollywood Forever, which to their credit are really trying to do. They do movies. They do Dia de Muertos celebrations.

They do art exhibits. Like they really are trying to bring back the idea, which original cemeteries, I will say that original cemeteries much earlier in U.S. history where overcrowded cities were, there just wasn't enough places in urban graveyards to bury bodies anymore, they created this idea of the garden cemetery outside. And Père Lachaise actually in Paris was one of the first examples of this. But you have places like Mount Auburn or Greenwood in Brooklyn, Mount Auburn in Boston, where they put the dead, or Greenwood in Brooklyn, Mount Auburn in Boston, where they put the dead, what was sort of like a suburb or outside the city at the time, but now is really in the city. And the big sprawling areas,

but they were also places of social engagement. You were supposed to go there and stroll with your lava, you know, hand in hand with your parasol. You were supposed to take carriage rides and, you know, have picnics and do all of that. And I do think that cemeteries, because I believe that they feel like they want to stay relevant and part of their community, which cemeteries should do, I think, they are trying to do these things like movies, like historical presentations, like meditations, you know. And I love when a city is part of or a cemetery is part of a city and part of city life and part of the living. But I think that Forest Lawn, because of the celebrities buried there, because of their strange history, I think is not as open to that.

It's like a it's like a sort of a private golf course of death. It is. It has, it has that vibe. And I don't, I don't think that they, I don't think they love me. I would say that Forest Lawn, I've heard that Forest Lawn is maybe not my personal biggest fan. I don't think they're LA let's go together and see if they recognize you and see if, see how long you can stay on the premises before they kick you out. I do sometimes wonder if I tried to drive in, if there's like in the Quonset hut at the opening, if there's like a little picture of me that says wanted, do not enter. It's her. No, I bet you'd have a lot of people coming up to you going, you know what? I

think you're right just between you and me. I i i get oh that certainly happens that certainly happens tell me tell me what you advocate for instead instead of being embalmed having all my organs taken out filled with chemicals put into satin inside a twenty thousand dollar box in a hole in the ground in a golf course uh on private land in on a hillside in Los Angeles, to be watered to the end of my days, what instead might I consider when I die? Well, what most people have now turned to is cremation. And listen, I owned funeral homes for many years in Los Angeles before I moved and I offered cremation. That was mainly what we did because that's what people do in're going to choose if it's also in line with your values. But cremation is no perfect solution, I would say. There's a lot of carbon emission from cremation. There's mercury that's released and particulates that are released into the

atmosphere. It uses a lot of natural gas. One cremation is about the equivalent of a 500 mile car trip. Wow. And there's also, I would say experientially, there's a somewhat of an intensity to cremation. And I think even cultures that traditionally choose cremation would agree that there is an intensity to Western cremation and the idea of these cremation machines. Because if you look at places like India or Buddhist cultures that have open-air cremation pyres, and there's a loveliness, although all that wood is an issue as well, but there's a loveliness to putting the body on an open-air pyre.

In India, there's a moment where the skull cracks open and that's the point where the soul is released. But when it came to the United States, when it came to Europe, we built these big industrial cremation machines, which are essentially large ovens. And modern crematories now, especially ones that do thousands of cremations a year, are essentially warehouses with big industrialized machines in them. And that's why it can be so inexpensive. And if cost is the most important to you, cremation is still a very, very good option. But I think that there are a lot of people who are saying, is there a way that we can improve this, make it more environmentally friendly, make

it a little more, more gentle somehow than, than what we have now with cremation. And the two, there's a couple of options. I'm going to say there's sort of three options that very much depend on things like your price point and location. So the simplest option, if you live in a more rural area or suburban area that has one of these, would be just a natural burial, a green burial, which is just a hole in the ground and we put your body in it. Ideally, if it's possible with the soil we hand dig a grave you put a cotton shroud around you and in the hole you go and i like that option that actually i think if i died right now that would probably actually be what i do would just be this seems like this body in the hole this is good enough for billions of humans for many millennia just for tens of tens of

thousands of years of human history. Yeah, hole in the ground, body goes in. Absolutely, a classic. And what happens to you in that situation? Your body decomposes, I assume. Yes, and if you have—so, for example, when I had my funeral home, we would—our best option natural burial ground was out in Joshua Tree. And that soil is, it's beautiful out there. There's, you know, you get to be buried literally next to a Joshua Tree.

How lovely. And, you know, there's a spiritual essence to the desert, which can be quite lovely. But it takes longer for your body to decompose in that kind of sandy soil versus, you know, you get a really rich farming Midwest soil, you put the body in there, you know, we're talking about a couple months to completely decompose. Wow. Bones and all.

Yeah. Yeah. In some places. Absolutely. And that soil is just really artfully designed, especially since most green burials are not dug that deep down because they're only the richest soil is really near the surface. So you want to. I can see a problem, though, because, you know, you get buried there, then it becomes farmland. There's you know, they're they're plowing clank. They hit

something. Oh, it's your knee replacement. It was it was sitting there in the ground and it fucked up some poor guy's John Deere tractor. He's going to have to pay through the nose through repairs, right? Isn't this a problem? This is a great point and a segue to talk about something called conservation burial. And what conservation burial is, is the idea that because we value so much in the United States, our forever grave, which by the way, is an extremely unique to the United States process. The idea of having one grave that's going to be there forever. One grave forever and ever, perpetual care, you know, this is it. With conservation burial, the idea is because those laws are in place, if you can bury, plant some bodies in a green burial way, just a corpse in the ground,

in a piece of land, through conservation easement, you're essentially preventing that land from being developed on. You're not having the situation of the farmer come and clank over you or they build a target on you because we've planted some corpses there and that land is done. And of course you hear these terrible stories about building a target or something and finding a black burial ground or an indigenous burial ground or those things. But those come from old laws, old ideas. Like nowadays you can't just plow over a cemetery. Yeah. And especially if we know who everybody is and it's registered.

So having conservation burial is actually a really good way to protect land. But something that, and I'll talk about a second option here, which is the idea of composting the dead, something that has been a little frustrating for me, I admit, as I'm working towards legalizing composting of the dead body, is that you have green burial. People say, but we just have green burial. You don't need that. And it's a little frustrating for me because especially having lived in a really big city, the number of advocates who I agree with 99.9%, but live in a much more rural area and talk about this absolutely magical world where

I just took dad's body on the back of my old Ford truck or in a horse-drawn carriage, and we drove through the center of town. And I just, I hopped out at the death certificate registration office and I signed a piece of paper and I took them to the magical green burial ground where the plot was $1,500 and I put them in the ground. It's like, that's absolutely gorgeous. I am green with jealousy. Like absolutely filled with jealousy. None of that. Absolutely none of that. Absolutely none of that. So the idea of composting the dead originated from

an idea that I've been writing about and following from the beginning called the Urban Death Project, now known as Recompose, which was started by a woman named Katrina Spade. And the idea being that if you live in an urban area and you still want the idea of becoming a tree, you still want what's created by a green burial, you still want to become soil, can you mimic that in a way that's actually closer to cremation? So can you have these big vessels where you put, you know, the ideas of browns and greens of composting, you have the browns, which are wood chips and alfalfa. And with just putting the dead human body in it, over a period of about six to eight weeks, it transforms into soil. And your body completely over the course of this time will decompose entirely into the soil.

Your bones as well will over time become soil. And what you have is basically a truck bed of soil to work with. And that soil can either go to, you know, your own trees at home. Or often what people do is they, there's a place that I was able to visit called Bell's Mountain Conservation, where they're doing, you know, was completely blighted by logging. And they're trying to reintroduce these native species of trees. And that composted soil is what is being used for that. So you're actually quite going to a really lovely thing. So green burial is almost like, I want to become a tree, whereas composting, you can be like, I want to become a forest.

Use my soil, wherever is helpful. And for me, there's a real return to a humility there that, of course, is wildly different than the idea of, this is my special burial ground, put my body in this special box, put it in this special vault. I'm going to be there like a pharaoh forever. And then the third option would be even more of a direct replacement for cremation, which is something called aquamation or water cremation. And the idea there is to use very high heat water and potassium hydroxide to essentially flash,

decompose the body down to bones. So the end product is very similar to cremated remains. You can still scatter them, but you're not using natural gas, you're not having emissions. And so it's just, you're using water, of course, but it's overall a better, and environmentally more sound cremation. Yeah. So the composting burial is it's similar to green burial in some way, but it's happening.

Basically, it sounds like when like one of my friends has like a composter in her backyard that she turns her food scraps into dirt. It's like basically that where it's happening in a in a container of some sort. It's essentially that I mean, they're happening at licensed facilities. No, not in anybody's backyard. Not in anyone's backyard. Although, listen, some of us real self-reliant folks would not be against that, but that's not, in fact, the law. So, yeah, they happen in the ones that recompose. And there are now several companies that are doing this as it becomes increasingly legal.

They look to me, they look kind of like Japanese capsule hotels, big white circles in front, and they're all vessels that this is happening. Each one has a human body in it that is becoming soil. I love the end of that because I think people enjoy the scatter the ashes ritual or request. That's why it's in so many movies and TV shows, you know, as it's a it people really like that as a gesture. How much better is that to have something nourishing? It's not ashes. It's soil. Like you could say, hey, please, you know, I'd like this kind of burial. And then please, you know, plant me somewhere or plant me at this place that's important to me, or just take a little bit of soil and sprinkle

it in the garden or whatever it is. That's like the imagery of that is really beautiful. Exactly. And it's actually versus cremation. People often say, I want my cremated remains to grow a tree. And that's a lovely thought, but it's inorganic material because the high heat of the cremation renders it inorganic. I want to become climate change. That's what you're... Yeah. Well, you know, and it's like, here's the deal. It's like, you know, composting is not fixing climate change, nor is cremation causing climate change. You know, we're talking about a somewhat lower level

of responsibility here. But I do think metaphorically, there's so much, if you are willing to not have your very special legacy, embalmed body, under the ground, special piece of land forever, if you are willing to see yourself as somebody that gives your body up to a larger project of the organic life cycle after death that's a really important existential way that we should probably be looking at our roles in the world and that's something that a lot of people want. I want to be returned to the earth.

I want to, uh, people love the idea of like, you know, Oh, I'm eating dinosaurs right now. You know, just like that sort of,

uh, vision of a cycle. And people love the idea of being returned to that cycle. And these are all ways that, that accomplish that to one degree or another. Exactly. But the, the issue right now is that each of these,

both water cremation, so green burial is legal anywhere. And if you go to a cemetery and they don't have green burial as an option, they say, no, you got to have the vault, you got to have the casket. That's their policy. That's their own individual policy. A lot of them do it because they don't,

the big concrete vaults under the ground make it so much easier for them to landscape for them to run the big backhoes and mowers over without the graves. That's why they don't have the graves. It's for the lawnmowers. Exactly. Exactly. Come on.

You want me to not have a standing up grave just to make it easier for you to like, you don't have to pay the lawn mowing guy as much. You can that that fucking sucks. Now I'm mad. Now. Yeah. Oh, I finally got you.

I threw out all of these like longstanding funeral issues. And you're like, this is the one that I cannot abide. But but they so that so if a cemetery that where you live doesn't have green burial, it's entirely their policy. They have not been willing to set aside a section to have this type of burial. Whereas something like aquamation, the water cremation, or composting has to be legalized state by state by state, which is a long and arduous process, which I seem to have somehow gotten myself very involved in. And, uh, but I will say is that especially with composting, which started later, um, than aquamation in the legalization process. So where I, I believe it changes, but it's, you know, roughly 25 to 30 States for aquamation and six states now for composting. The composting

is going pretty quick. It's really like we were expecting because it's hard to change funeral laws. They're very entrenched. People don't want, you know, it's not again, it's not like a sexy legislation. You go meet with the politicians and they're like, you want to do what now? What? Yeah. What now? You have to explain so much to them. You do, but I do think there's a real public mandate for it. People, I mean, at this point, the desire for it is so much more than even the sheer number of people who have been composting, because we've really only been composting the dead for two, three years now. We've really only been composting the dead for two, three years now. And there was experiments going on to prove the process before that.

But sheer number of people do not equal the number of people who really want it. It's sort of like once they've been awakened to the possibility, people our age, yeah, okay, we don't particularly want it right now because we're alive, which is a good reason to not want it. We don't want it for ourselves, but we want it for ourselves 40 years from now when we die and we got to make sure it's legal. So let's get her done. So there's been a real, you know, outpouring of public mandate of people who want this. And that's, that has really helped the process move through because once you find the right politicians who are like, Hey, I, even I want this for myself, this is personal for me. And then you have, anytime it stalls in a committee, you have, you know, 400 people sending letters saying, Hey, so, you know, I want this. Yeah. Please, please vote this through.

It's been more successful than we could have anticipated. That's truly incredible. Well, we have to take another really quick break. We'll be right back with more Caitlin Doughty. Okay, we're back with Caitlin Doughty. We've been talking about death all day so far. It was a little bit uncomfortable, but I do find that, you know, I find it strange how little I think about my death in my everyday life. And as someone who, you know, deals with it every single day of your life, I'm wondering, do you, what do you feel the benefits are of keeping your own death foremost in your mind? Is that, I mean, do you walk around every day going like, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die.

And how does that change your life? You know, I don't live in a perpetual state of I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. Although I would argue that that's like kind of running through everyone's mental landscape at a very subconscious level, whether they know it or not. But all the work I do to get people to die better and have better options for their dead bodies doesn't necessarily put me into a constant state of like, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I can, I can live most days, um, without that. But I would say that, that death

gives me such an incredible sense of purpose. And even when I'm burnt out and Lord knows there have been times that I have been burnt out just like the rest of us. I really always come back to doing this work around death and doing this work around death acceptance and helping people understand death because it's just so meaningful. And what we can do and what we still have to do around death. And the idea that we're in this place right now where we're legalizing two new ways of taking care of the dead body that we've never really done before. Not like this. And that people are coming together to want it and to engage it. It's just such a rich time to be involved in this work and such an exciting time to be involved in this work. And if it's something that you care about, you know,

talk about death positive. If you care about this, if you've made it to this point in the episode and you're still around, something about this resonates with you. And I would just say, now it's starting to get a little creepy. I'm like, join us. But I mean, I do mean that. Like, join us. Be a part of this movement. Talk to your friends and family.

Tell people that you care about this stuff. posting, something like green burial, something like these topics that are a little more interesting or easy to access and have the conversation about, you would be surprised how talking about how you're interested in those things leads you to conversations that are not surface level with your family or with your loved ones or with your friends, but are meaningful, are deep, are rich. It just leads you to a life, in summation, it leads you to a life that's not surface level. It leads you to a life that's six feet under emotionally. Well, starting to have the conversation can lead you to some incredibly rich places and is incredibly important. One of, one of the other books that we drew from for our Adam Ruins death episode many years ago was Atul Gawande's book, Being Mortal, which is,

you know, the main thesis of that book is sort of trying to figure out, I think less for after death, but more of the moments before death, the years before death or the years of disability or sort of his profound disability at the end of death or at the end of one's life, what a good version of that looks like to people. And what he keeps hitting you with is you sort of need to figure out what that is for you and have a conversation, have a plan about it, because a lot of people don't. A lot of people say, I'm going to live in my house forever until they fall and break a hip and then they don't have any choices suddenly they might have to go someplace that they would not prefer because they did not you know talk to their loved

ones or didn't even have the conversation with themselves um and uh i know from that episode and from conversations i've had about it with friends that like you know people like just enough friends have said to me like oh i've yeah i had a conversation with my parents about that after reading that book or seeing that episode or whatever. And we figured some stuff out. It's like, oh, this is like a very easy step to take that we're just sort of always nudged away from, you know, like there's no part of our life where someone says like, hey, you should probably think about this, you know, in a regular American life. Absolutely. And what I say is that there's no guarantee, even if you have these conversations, there's no guarantee you're going to have a beautiful, spiritually wonderful, magical death or a ritual that's absolutely moving and beautiful after the death occurs.

None of that is guaranteed. But if you don't have those conversations and you don't make those plans, I can guarantee you that it's not going to happen. Even at this point, you are not going to stumble in to a meaningful, beautiful dying experience, an after-death experience, if you don't be bold and and you know step up to the plate i don't know why i'm using a sport sports metaphor but you know step up to the plate of your fears and and have these conversations with the people that are closest to you and the people that are going to experience this with you and there's it's really just an important thing that you can do that will change the tenor of your grief, and it will change the tenor of how you mourn, and the death, how it happens, and it will about your approach is a lot of what you advocate in terms of burial and things like that are, as opposed to, you talked about the American vision of the forever grave where you're sort of, your cemetery plot and your headstone is cared for forever. That approach to me strikes me as fundamentally death-rejecting, because the lesson of death, to accept death, is to accept the temporality, the finite nature of a life, the fact that nothing lasts, which is a deep truth about the universe.

And to accept that, well, hold on a second, when I die, my body's not actually going to be around that long. Someone's going to pave over the cemetery eventually. Even Forest Lawn is not going to be there, you know, 500 years from now. I would bet it won't be. And so having, like, really truly accepting death means accepting, like, that there's not going to be a forever for you in any sense. Like, it really is going to end. And so you might as well let go of that and become dirt. And I find that kind of reassuring.

That's like, yes, everything's pointed in the same direction, you know, which is non-existence. Yeah, I do too. And as I said, the humility of seeing yourself as part of a life cycle is something we have profoundly been missing since the start of, I would say, the Industrial Revolution. We've really lost sight of ourselves as just part of a cycle of life and death. But instead, it's something that can be, there can be barriers put up to prevent, I mean, even to the men in Silicon Valley who think we're going to stop death from happening. Yeah.

And that that would be a positive thing. Yeah. And that, you know, the idea is we have our special bodies uploaded to the cloud, and then our bodies go into this special hyperbaric chamber, or they're cryonically frozen, or whatever happens to them. You know, these ideas of preventing ourself from being part of the cycle, it also really absolves you from responsibility of your legacy being just how you treat people in the here and now and how you treat the environment and

each other in the here and now. And, you know, I'm going to do the best I can while I'm here and then recycle me, compost me. Yeah. Put me in the dirt. Yeah. Help me be a little bit useful, and if there's a legacy beyond that, there's a legacy beyond that. If not, not.

Yeah. But I'm not going to try and make up for it. I'm not going to try and frantically get extra credit at the very end. I know. Just take a rest. Take a break. Your time's done. Why do you got to have a crypt hanging around?

I hope people remember me. Is everyone remembering? No, just you're going to be forgotten. Are you still remembering me? Yeah. Exactly. You're going to be forgotten. So get busy being dead, you know, and you did your bit.

Take a nap. You know, it's not your problem anymore. Let the world keep spinning man they could take a nap decompose and let your atoms be useful in some way caitlin thank you so much for coming on the show it's always a always a delight to have you i'm sure anybody would be so lucky to be buried in any uh plot that you or or compost box that that you have uh custodial custodian services over. Where can people find out more about you and your work and all your wonderful books? Well, if you're interested in the legalization process, Order of the Good Death is our

nonprofit that's working on that. And other than that, Ask a Mortician on YouTube. I have three books. Caitlin Doty, if you Google mortician, much to the chagrin of the funeral industry, if you Google mortician, you'll get a lot about me. So that's an easy way to do it. Keyword mortician. And of course, Caitlin's books will be available on our bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books. Caitlin, thank you so much for being here. Oh, great to see you. Thanks for having me back. Well, thank you so much for being here. Oh, great to see you. Thanks for having me back. Well, thank you so much to Caitlin for appearing on the show. Before we go, though, I want to leave you guys with one final thought. After I recorded this interview,

I received an email from a fan that really underlined for me how important it is to have these conversations about death before they become crises, you know, to have them in times of calm and wellness so that you can make your plans with your loved ones for what you want. I got permission from her to share a portion of this email, and I think you'll understand why once I've read it. Here it is. She writes that, you know, she and her boyfriend were big fans of Adam Ruins Everything and that after finishing the death episode, we spent a bit talking about what our wishes were in the event of either of our deaths.

The episode made it seem less scary to think about. Plus, it seemed like something abstract and far off. It wasn't like talking about it and knowing each other's wishes would make it happen. Seeing it discussed on the show, we were both very into the idea of a green burial and made it clear to each other that that was our first choice in the unlikely event of anything happening. Almost exactly two months shy of our fourth anniversary,

my boyfriend died suddenly and unexpectedly after a brief illness. In the shock and daze of the days that followed, I completely forgot that we had discussed this previously. He didn't have a will, so no wishes were explicitly outlined in writing. By the weekend, his aunt called me to tell me what the plans for the funeral were. We went back and forth on it a bit, she said, but we've decided to go with a green burial. That's when I remembered,

and I told her that we had actually had this discussion and that was exactly what he wanted. I've never heard relief in anyone's voice like I heard in hers. That's amazing, she said. We had no idea that he talked about it with anyone. That's wonderful to know. The relief and comfort that his family felt knowing that they made exactly the correct choice was a direct result of that episode inspiring us to have that uncomfortable conversation. I don't believe it was a conversation we would have had otherwise. When I go visit him, I don't have to go to a traditional

cemetery feeling like I have to cut it short because I'm inherently unsettled by where I am. I get to follow nature trails surrounded by native flora and fauna of his home in the Smoky Mountains. I eventually have to leave and he stays in the same place, but while I'm there, it's comforting to know that at some place we would have enjoyed being together. A hard lesson I've learned over the past year is that there's no rule book for the correct way to handle the death of someone you're closest to in the world, especially when they're so young and it's so unexpected. I've had to learn to live with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of feelings I don't know how to handle, but this has been one thing I can point to that's certain. So this has all been a very loquacious way of saying thank you. I mean, wow. Obviously, this email touched me incredibly deeply. It's all I could

hope for as a communicator to be able to help people in their lives with the messages that I boost. But I mostly wanted to share it with you to, to remind you how important it is to have these conversations with your loved ones while you can, when, when you're healthy and when you have the moment to do it. So I really want to thank Dusty is the, is the pseudonym I'll use for writing in and sharing your memory of your boyfriend with us and for

allowing me to read it on this show. It really was so meaningful to me. And I hope that it is for people listening as well. And just, you know, once again, I don't think that's often enough. Thank you to all of you for listening to this show. The community that we've built around it is really wonderful. And thank you so much for being here. And I always love your emails when you get in touch with me. And if you want to write to me, you can reach me at factually at adamconover.net. And I really do read every email and treasure them all so much. I want to thank, of course, our producer, Sam Radman, our engineer, Kyle McGraw, Andrew WK for our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building the incredible custom gaming PC that I record every episode of this show on.

Once again, if you want to support the show, head to patreon.com slash adamconover and head to adamconover.net for all my most recent stand-up tour dates. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week on Factually. I don't know anything. Starbends Audio, a podcast network.

That was a HeadGum Podcast.