Ologies with Alie Ward - Thanatology (DEATH & DYING) Updated Encore with Cole Imperi

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

As I round out my bereavement leave following your beloved Grandpod’s passing, we’re serving up a special updated Encore of an episode and an Ologist who changed my life. Hoooo boy. We get all up in death and dying's business and to my shock, it's not a bummer. Confront and perhaps OVERCOME existential anxiety as we discuss not only the science of death but the nature and goddang beauty of life. Everything from burial methods, the latest in eco funerals, what a funeral director hates most, how gnomes die, and how to regret less. Meet your new favorite thanatologist and oddly, get the guts to be the you you want to be. Life changing, this one. Cole Imperi's websiteFollow Cole on Instagram, Twitter and TikTokA donation was made to The School of American ThanatologyFollow The School of American Thanatology on InstagramSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesYou may also enjoy our episodes on: Desairology (MORTUARY MAKE-UP), Corvid Thanatology (CROW FUNERALS), Taphology (GRAVESITES), Osteology (SKELETONS/BODY FARMS), Fearology (FEAR & ANXIETY)Jarrett Sleeper’s 100 PoemsSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oligites. Okay, just a few more days until we're back in the swing of things and I'm back back with all new fresh episodes Starting with a brand new mini-soad that will serve as a companion to this encore But I've been saving this episode to replay for about five years The time is right. The guest has changed my life in so many ways Which is why we're doing that follow-up mini-soad with her with a bunch of updates and even some tips on what's helped me Your internet lady dad the last few months when processing The farewell of your grand pod my dad that'll be new and up in a few days But for now settle in this is one of the best episodes. We've ever done. It's time. It's time to rehear it

This was the sixth episode ever published back in 2017 when I was editing it myself and using $6 mic cables and I've learned some lessons. Okay Who boy wow, okay Here we go So from the moment I heard that this ology existed I knew I wanted to run as far away from it as humanly possible Which then made it obvious that I should dive into it sooner rather than later So in fact when I sat down with this week's guest the first thing I said was that I'm a little anxious about mortality

And she said she'd listen to other episodes and I picked up on that I was like, oh We have this locked and loaded She had my number Now I've wanted to do a project about ologies for over a decade and each time I write out ologies my computer Autocorrected to eulogies and I get a little shiver. I get a little scared and then the wind Whispers at me. Halley

One day Everyone you know and love will be eaten by a fungus and rotting back into the earth And so I guess guess why I don't like it even just the word eulogies He be jeebies Okay, I can tell you though after recording this episode. I Felt way better. It's weird So you're gonna have to listen to figure out how and why that worked. That's probably gonna be a long-ass episode I don't know. I haven't put it all together yet. I'm just starting to edit it

But it's gonna be worth it listen when you're like cleaning out the shed or I don't know baiting an elephant when you've got a lot to do or You can break it up and listen to the last half after but Listen the whole thing because it might seriously change the way you live. Okay first things first Thanatology etymology now the word straight up Greek mythology Thanatos just being the god of death and dying What a god apparently he was referred to often but seen

Seldom kind of like one of those weird exes that everyone talks about but you hope you never run into a brunch So not only was he the bringer of mortality, but he also he had Super shitty siblings like the whole family sucked Among them one sibling the god of old age Another the god of retribution the god of suffering the god of deception the god of doom Another sibling the god of strife and yet another one of his homies The god of blame So first off I come from a really big large Catholic family and that is still a lot of kids

Secondly, they sound awful So humans fear death much. I wanted to come to grips with it a few months ago I wound up doing some light Instagram stocking Of the hashtag Thanatologist and up popped the feed of this fresh faced Mohawked woman in Cincinnati and I followed her In case I ever wound up in Cincinnati and I wanted to talk about death Wouldn't you know it a few weeks before Halloween?

I flew in to shoot innovation nation, which is my other job And I was able to coerce this woman to meet me in the hotel lobby of a Hampton Inn at 9 30 p.m On a Tuesday where we chatted about mortality and the best way to be buried And what people regret on their deathbeds and why you shouldn't shit talk anyone in a hospital and why we're also scared but more importantly we talked about Just being alive and that's kind of where I was shocked because this guest in just over an hour Stripped a lot of the darkness from death and honestly helped me a shitload I felt like I should have paid her at the end of it. I didn't maybe I still should anyway

We talk about disposition methods. Do you get buried or do you fling yourself? Via catapults into a pile of burning mattresses, whatever But I didn't want to make this all about fear and gore of death You can get that somewhere else. This episode is about death and dying As much as it is about being alive now. It's getting released on Halloween. So I hope as you listen You remember that you are Sitting on a subway full of human skeletons and you are a big bag of blood And atoms in a skin suit and more importantly, you are alive

So please let your mind and heart get blown away by Vanatologist Cole and Perry All right, let's get right down to some real bare bones questions What is Thanatology? So first of all, it's the study of death and dying and to me death is the easy part The dying part is much more fascinating and rich and deep and intense than the actual death part. There is also no such thing as a

Job of like just being a Thanatologist. Okay, because I've looked and nobody will pay me to just walk around and know about death and dying So what I have found is Thanatology is an enhancer. It is something that enhances whatever you already are And that will help you with whatever your other job is like a school counselor. Who's also a Thanatologist something like that There's actually thousands of Thanatologists that are certified. I'm an intense and like a very intense individual So I had to get not only one Thanatology certification I had to get two which is all of them as far as I know. So So one of her certifications is an integrative Thanatology

But now she is triple certified possibly the only triple certified Thanatologist in the world And she also started her own school the school of American Thanatology So more on all the cool things she's been up to in the fresh 2022 mini-sode That'll be dropping in a few days But one of her certifications is integrative Thanatology and I did not know what that was We looked at in that program more of the like Um esoteric stuff funky stuff. What would you count as funky death stuff? Well, um, one of my most favorite pieces of that training program was about the use of

psilocybin and other hallucinogenics at the end of life because we're finding that those can help Your death like it can be great. Um, it can mitigate a lot of pain, but it can also help with things like um existential pain keyword Um existential pain if you don't know is something like where usually happens on your death bed It's when you're confronting all this stuff from your life like am I a good person? What is a good person or where do I go after I die? Those can be actually very very painful things to think about because they're all attached to all kinds of junk from the life That we lived religious stuff think about how you were raised religiously all the way to the end of your life

And all the baggage you pick up with that stuff What happens if you have those thoughts all day every day? Welcome to my life Yeah, um, I think about this stuff a lot and a lot of people do um One of the problems I see socially in the united states is that These big questions They're not uncommon, but the problem is we don't really have containers for them. It just doesn't exist and it's not

necessarily appropriate party conversation or water cooler conversation So we don't have a place for these big conversations to live So we end up keeping all that inside and I think that that is sad because Talking about death. It's one of the It's a great easy way to be really intimate with somebody and to really connect with someone on a deeper level And I find that when you talk about something like death and dying you leave feeling like way more connected to the world And it can actually be very positive and freeing Well, take me back a little bit to how you grew up

When did you have an interest in death and dying and when did you decide that you weren't terrified of it Yes, interesting question. So, um Growing up, I never had a crazy death experience as a child So I never had anything crazy happen But it is something that I've always been immensely comfortable with and really interested in and really enjoyed an interesting girl Anyway, uh several months ago the mother of my best friend in grade school Mailed me a card that I made for my best friend in third grade when her dog died

And it was full of me writing about the meaning of the loss and grief and it was really interesting to look back and see my thoughts and Stuff on death and dying as a child And I don't know where I picked that up because I didn't grow up in a funeral home I didn't grow up around around that at all. I just kind of entered the earth with that sort of like software expansion pack already in Do you think you carried it over from a past life?

Science people I was kidding. Actually, what does science say about the afterlife? Well, I read a whole article by lauded cosmologist and physics professor Sean Carroll He said the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood And there's no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains To persist after we die and a fun note the week after this episode went up in 2017 Dr. Carroll tweeted out his writings on it and added Quote of course nothing is impossible or proven wrong. That's not how science works But some things are so unlikely. We shouldn't take them seriously and it's obviously hotly debated and

In my mind it is the most exciting mystery about life itself And more on historical thoughts on the soul and the afterlife a bit later in this episode. Anyway Um Looking into death and dying opens up thoughts and ideas and Just it makes you question so many of the things that you think that you know And it's only when you're pushing yourself to these different areas where things are uncomfortable that you can really

Grow and that's the purpose of life, right? Just to grow just to just continue to expand Until you die until you die. What about What about your schooling at what point did you start steering your Your like academics toward death and dying? I don't know. I've always kind of Been into it. I mean even in high school I wrote about death and dying a lot and I had it in a bunch of my papers. So I've always had it in there my purpose in life

Is to positively change the way that we die in the united states in my lifetime That's my goal just putting it out there and I have felt that way for a very very long time and um There's no magic thing I can say that was like, oh like I almost died and then this thing happened It's like no, I've just this is what I'm supposed to do. So I'm trying to do it. It's hard though What does your job entail like what's a typical day like or typical week like for you? Are you involved with like If funeral planning or bombing or speaking to the public like what kind of stuff do you do? Okay, so I do not have a traditional nine to five job

I own a small consulting firm called doth and We specialize in death care So one of the ways that i'm changing the way that we die is people like funeral homes cemeteries crematories those businesses I know those businesses really well how they work and they'll hire my company to help make them better She also travels all over the country giving keynote speeches on death and grief and dying And in the five years since this first aired She opened the school of american thanatology. Uh, she's also in the new netflix series the future of she's in the episode life after death She's so good in it. Uh, we're gonna go over more updates in the upcoming minute. So oh and her hair was purple when we recorded this

But her signature elegant Pompadour with the shaved sides and back is now shades of ochre and green I called it a mohawk in 2017, but that's not really accurate and also that term and the style is considered Reserved for indigenous cultures. So forgive my 2017 misnomer, but yes, she has awesome hair Let's get back to death Are you afraid of dying or are you excited about it to see what happens? so Okay, let's talk about death and dying right so death death is like just when you die like you're you're dead

The light switches off the dying process leading up to the death That is the thing that I am most concerned with and the thing that tends to be cause the most issues for people because You can be dying for months or years and then there's this whole question about When do you start dying? I mean some would argue you start dying at birth Technically, right, but then you get into actively dying which is when your body is in the shutdown process Which there is kind of an order of things that happen First let's get all up in death's business and define it death is the cessation of all vital functions of the body including the heartbeat

Brain activity including the brainstem and breathing some researchers say that there's evidence to suggest that there's a burst of brain energy as someone dies Is reading this article about near-death experiences and about 18 percent of people who had him Reported being able to recall some portion of what happened when they were clinically dead So according to some researchers the conditions that make you have Near-death experiences like low oxygen and low blood flow and low blood sugar Those can kill your brain cells and then the brain just does know what to do

it responds by having this flood of chemicals and It's apparently very similar to the drug ketamine And that is what they think produces out-of-body sensations and hallucinations and all the cool shit that happens when you die This info was from an article written by author and science journalist Jennifer Willett Now remember that physicist Sean Carroll I mentioned earlier. They're married That is a lot of good brains in one relationship I went ahead and emailed them both and I said hey Do you guys talk about cool stuff like this over dinner while you're grocery shopping?

Jennifer wrote me back and said we actually do talk about things like this, but not always And there's times we talk about our kitties Um, yeah, what happens? Okay. So what happens when you're actively dying from sort of a medical viewpoint? Um Your body shuts down it has a process And there's kind of an order that it follows just like when you're born Birth and death are actually very very similar and a lot of people ask me like Oh, I'm so afraid to die like is it gonna hurt and I always ask I'm like, you know I haven't died so I can't tell you but I'll ask um, do you remember your birth?

Did it hurt when you were born? They'll be like well, no, you know the word on the street is it's pretty similar So the last sense that remains because your senses will shut down Oh, they go in hearing they go in order. They don't necessarily go in order. Um, There are people who would argue probably that they do but um, I'm also a hospice volunteer I've been with people as they're dying and everybody's death is different As you're actively dying hearing tends to be the last sense that is there So like imagine that you're the dying person. You can't see you can't smell you can't taste in your sense of feeling

Is kind of like a man. Okay. Have you ever gone to the dentist and they put that lead thing over top of you? And you get x-ray like imagine that that is the feeling that you have That's kind of a good way to describe when you start to lose your sense of feeling So everything's dark. You you can't talk but all you can do is hear That's kind of Where you go plus your foggy. That's a good way that I can kind of Describe the shutdown process. Um, which not everybody has that that's a disclaimer But that's kind of how it kind of can go

So you should never shit talk someone while they're on their death bed. That is right because they can hear Yes, they can yep And that's why one of the things that if you're ever with someone who's dying You need to always talk to them and say what you're doing Their body may be reacting in a way that makes you think that they're long gone But they may not be because a lot of times when you're dying you lose control But you're still hearing but we know that the hearing is there another sign of active death is It's often called the death rattle

But it has to do with usually when you're actively dying your mouth is open and you're breathing out of your mouth and it's Like it sort of congestion. Um, and that can be really scary for people to hear who are not dying because it's like Oh, this is getting real. Um, but it's not something that the dying person necessarily Feels or is aware of because remember they're kind of shutting down I feel like that would be scary to hear even if you were another dying person They'd be scared to hear if you're not dying and as well if you are Happened to be dying next to them be like, are you going? Am I going? Yeah, who's going first? Is this okay? Is a lot of the work you focus on in terms of dying

Usually the death as a result of an illness or what about traumatic deaths or more sudden perishing So um in my work, so I am not um, I'm not a counselor I'm not like a medical professional, but um, I do have the opportunity to be brought into or involved with specific death situations and scenarios. Um Man humans can die In all kinds of ways statistically And I brought some numbers 20 of all people will die in an ICU an intensive care unit

Really? Yes, but 90 of americans want to die at home So keep that in mind you want hospice. It is good. It is next level care But the problem in the united states is we don't deal with death. We don't like to think about it or talk about it So we will do these last ditch efforts like things that put you in an intensive care unit When we know the outcome is you're going to die from this when you really should have just Gotten on hospice and just rode out the last few months really comfortably not in pain and not with tubes and all kinds of junk coming out of your body 2022 alley here as a person who has just spent the last several months bedside with someone in hospice at home

Who died peacefully during his afternoon snooze? I can confirm It is filled with so much quality time and care So if you die at home in hospice with friends or family caring for you What a lovely way to say farewell, but what if you're not lucky? If you're wringing your hands convinced that you're going to be eaten by a shark Let's look at statistically what causes deaths At least in the united states number one heart disease two cancer three Respiratory disease four is accidents and that kind of threw me off because I thought it would be another

Illness, but who knew essentially the fourth biggest threat to each of us is just gravity In a nutshell, I mean brush up on physics Make sure you wear a bike helmet. Maybe don't climb the roof on a snowy day Trying to hang like an illuminated candy cane or something. It's not worth it also 2022 update things have changed a little and the third leading cause of death Covid according to the journal of the american medical association. So there is that So that's most likely probably going to be what you die of so not of embarrassment like I've often times thought Would be the cause of my death. Yes

And from all my work with death and dying and seeing all kinds of stuff over the years The thing that makes life Life that makes it special that makes it meaningful is the fact that we die if we didn't die It like the whole reason it means anything is because it ends and so It's difficult for me to I mean, it's awesome because for science. We need to understand what makes us die what makes us live, but Death is very important and it's critical and it's important life cycle event that happens to all of us

And it is what makes life meaningful I guess if you lived at disneyland, you wouldn't be as excited about going to disneyland. You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah life is kind of like a um a short term stint to the theme park You know, it's gonna end so you better enjoy it. I suppose yes, but in you you personally How is your work and your focus on death and mortality changed the choices that you make on a day to day basis? Just being exposed and around even just stories and things like that. Um I am so grateful for my life day to day But um, it's made me hyper aware that it ends because I've seen people on their death bed who

Are facing a lot of regrets about the stuff they didn't do not the stuff they did It's all the stuff they didn't do really like what just businesses that they didn't start or or girls They didn't chase after or the kids that they didn't have or the risks that they that that they didn't take It's the stuff that you didn't do right um and and Some it's more painful to to see someone who's dying Grappling with those questions than it is to see someone who's dying and in physical pain To be honest the anguish emotionally is worse than Yeah than the pain. Yes

Wow deep we're getting heavy. I'm real sorry about that. I tend to bring that with me wherever I go I mean, this is about death and dying. I think about this stuff Like all day every day. I'm I used to have nightmares about graveyards I had this recurring nightmare that um, I was walking through a graveyard and and coffins were overturned and I Had a fear of graveyards where I would get I would start panicking when I was a kid just driving past them so I've always been really really spooked by by dead bodies by morgues by

Cemetery's and I also grew up catholic. So we had open gasp at funerals. So they were like go kiss your dead great grandma and you're like I'm eight. No But here we go So I mean, do you find that That death is something people can accept over time or are there people who can deal with it and people who can't there well

That multifaceted look at that like so, um, okay people who tend to be more religious statistically By some studies also tend to be more afraid of dying Why interesting, right? Well, because and it's interesting because like my mom's side is catholic and I went to catholic school And there was always this talk of like When you die, you're either gonna go up or down. I mean, I feel like we had to bring this up every single day Yeah, I feel like is a growing up catholic that was always talked about But we don't it was never talked about in any depth beyond that

It was just like you're gonna be judged if you're good or you're bad It was like santa almost like someone's gonna decide if you're on the good list or bad list And you might go to an after party in the sky or you might have hellfire forever Yes, which you're like Death is terrifying because you're like, what happens if like I I steal someone's parking space And then I get hit by a bus five minutes later. Where am I going? Yes Yeah, I remember as a kid like being anxious about like, oh

I like took a piece of paper from my best friend Becky and now I'm gonna go to hell. I'm pretty sure like And just being really like a conservative that anyway at the end of life depending on how someone was raised Um, just religious values or just cultural values that really goes a long way in impacting How well or not well they're able to talk about or deal with death and dying um I have okay This is if you are listening to this and you know someone in your family who is avoiding death or who needs to talk about Or you need to talk about it with them

Talking about death is like trying to approach a deer in the woods You cannot go directly at a deer because it will run away But if you go around the side and curve around some trees and come up and be like, hey You know, then you can get close to it and then you might be able to actually touch it So talking about death usually directly doesn't work well for I'd say sometimes most people But coming at it from the side, you know and kind of easing around it that tends to be much more effective in getting there are you

What age should people have a will because I'm realizing I'm sitting here We're sitting in a hotel conference room in Cincinnati and I'm like, I don't have a will I don't have a Do I I don't know what a testament is Okay will versus testament same z's roughly the same thing now They started about $69 if you want to get them through like legal zoom who is not sponsoring this podcast So you're welcome legal zoom. There's also a book and it's called I'm Dead now what and it is a planner you can put like your passwords what to do with your pets

What you want them to do with your body etc in it? I looked this up on amazon and there are a few reviews that are like helpful book not feeling the title and there's a competing book and I looked at it same table of contents for betham And it's published by the same company, but there's I'm dead now What and then they make an identical book called a peace of mind planner Know your demo people Know your brand now wills. Do they all have to be notarized?

I thought so but not necessarily I thought you had to sign them in blood and a priest had to put like a special stamp on them Not so it does depend on your state. So check first um There are also a few different flavors of wills and their names sound like uh race horses Or they sound like smoothies at like a really obnoxious Juicery There's the holographic will this just means it's in your handwriting. That's convenient

There's mystic will which is sealed until your demise A will in solemn form. That's a legit one. It's signed by you and some witnesses and then there's a living will And that is a directive for your medical care if some shit goes down pretty much like when to pull the plug That's totally different than a will living will totally different thing. Now, of course coal is covered on this front Naturally Yeah, well, I mean I'm sitting here and I was all being interviewed about my expertise in death and dying and I don't have a will Why don't you have one? I'm just too busy working on death and dying to do my own will. I mean

Here's the deal. Yes, you should have one. I mean When you're an adult, you should have you should have you should have one you should have something I did Write up a sheet about like some things like if I died and my husband died Who would take my beagles like who I would want them to go to and that's like in an email So, you know, having that's better than nothing But the problem is when we die a lot of times wills or these like Notes usually aren't found until after the funeral because when someone dies

Then it's like all hands on deck to get the person, you know Buried or cremated or whatever and that stuff isn't looked at till after the fact Um, also fyi what you want to happen with your funeral Um, a lot of times if you put it in your will depending on state law, it's not Like valid or enforceable So you have to sell your loved ones like shoot me out of a cannon or or plant my ashes in a pumpkin patch or something Yes, your best bet is to tell the people who will be the ones Making decisions about what happens to you like while you're alive and be real clear about it

What do you want to have happen to you when you die? Um, so I actually At this point because it's changed over the last 10 years because I see everything deaf and dying all the time Right now I would like to be buried In a sort of green cemetery and then just wrapped in a shroud. It's called a shroud. It's like not actually like a full-on casket or coffin. Um, you're kind of wrapped in fabric like swaddled It's like a little death swaddle. I was gonna say it's like a like a death pashmina of sorts. Yes, mine will be stylish Um, it might be purple so And so the ways of being

Disposed of let's say I hear you can get planted underneath some tree roots. You can get cremated like What is the best for the planet? Yes, okay, so Disposition method is the lingo for what you do with your dead body Just in case you want to know about that. Um, so the two most common disposition methods in the united states are burial or cremation and About one in every two bodies in the united states is cremated now It was not like that half half. Yeah, wow cremation just went over the 50 mark Very exciting time. Do you have like a you have a scoreboard in your office? Yep. Yep. Yep. I got a ticker. So

Um, and what's interesting is like state by state it really varies. So like Kentucky, which is where I live We're I think a bottom five state for our cremation rate Like we're a burial state, but if you go out to like Nevada or Arizona Like a washington state. I think is like 80 90 percent cremation rate. Really? Yeah, so you can go all over the country and what you do with your body Differ significantly. Okay A side to this aside. I'm sorry for a side-ception, but Since this was recorded coal no longer lives in Kentucky more on that in a bit

I just looked up a map of the united states colored state by state according to the popularity of cremation Then I looked up red states versus blue states and they are almost the same map So this is a two main. Um, there's also something called alkaline hydrolysis, which is legal I believe in 13 states now only and It's like your body plus water plus lye Which lye is also I learned how to make soap this past year And so you use lye and soap making just like you do when you want to alkaline hydrolyze yourself So at the end of I sometimes they'll call it like liquid cremation or water cremation. That's just kind of the word they use

But at the end of that process, you know how when you're cremated cremated remains are left At the end of alkaline hydrolysis. It's basically the same End product except you're there's not fire that does it to you. It's like water technically or this chemical reaction But is it is it moist? No, it's dry. Um, all the liquid and stuff Goes into the drains. Can you imagine if someone just handed you a bucket of grandpa and you're like, thank you. It's moist Okay, I'm going to give you the quick rundown on how Alkaline hydrolysis works. I'm going to just tell you like it's a recipe. Okay, you take one human body

Not living and you add 92 gallons of water four gallons of lye essentially you put it into a big chamber Uh preheated to around 350 360 degrees Let simmer under pressure for four hours and then you just drain off the excess which is kind of um The texture of motor oil and then what's left are some well-cooked bones That's easy Is this kind of like what happened in the um in the very beginning of breaking bad Didn't they try to dispose of a body in a bathtub that way? You see hydrofluoric acid won't eat through plastic It will however dissolve metal

rock glass ceramic So there's that That was an acid bath. This is an alkaline bath. Also. Don't diy either of these ever Okay Now some other Disposition methods are buried at sea. Uh, there's also

Promession which is a technique invented by the swedish biologist. This process she invented Uh, it's where your freeze dried kind of like astronaut ice cream And then you are vibrated into dust and it's said to be pretty eco-friendly You can also be a tree pod. This is a thing invented in italy. It's called Capsula mundi and it means world box And it looks like a huge dusty easter egg and they pose your body in the fetal position Then they pop you in the ground and they plant a tree of your choosing as long as it's

Indigenous to the region on top of you and then the tree kind of slowly eats you and you become the tree Side note not legal in italy yet There's also viking funerals. I think a lot of people want to go out this way This is where you set a boat on fire with flaming arrows And I went down a rabbit hole watching mortician and founder of the death positive movement Caitlyn Dodie's she's got a youtube channel called ask a mortician Very good. And I wanted to figure out if viking funerals were legal. Yeah, that's that's a big no on that

They are not only illegal, but they're also ineffective. They're not hot enough for long enough So you would be kind of like a floating burned chicken, which is super bummer Now sky burial. This is where it's at fam I did not know what this process was called. So I googled funeral mongolia eaten by birds and zip-zop zoom right to the wiki for sky burial now in Tibet and inner mongolia The ground is too rocky to dig you a hole. So they feed you to carry and eaters. Okay. I'm looking at this right now Okay, wow

all right Just pulled up some images All right. Okay. I thought That maybe this would be like a lonely mountaintop situation With maybe birds taking a nibble here and there um But the birds are pretty hip to the process I don't want to go into too much detail. I'm just going to ask that you envision

this instead This is this is a parallel So picture a european town square cobblestone cloudy day a large flock of pigeons Bustles nearby and onto the stone you lay one steaming hot Aromatic everything bagel Picture what would happen now? That is the type of eager consumption involved With a sky burial where your body is fed to vultures now if your goal in life was ultimately

Just to be wanted then then sky burial is clutch folks I regret Learning as much about that as I just did Sometimes when I get weird and sad about death I think it's cool that all of our molecules are just recycled. Yep, and hopefully There's part of me that used to be a frog and it would be cool if Part of my body now went on to become somehow a frog. I don't know why a frog. Yeah, but like

I guess if you eat a frog then part of your body becomes a frog but The idea or rather Part of a frog becomes your body. You know what I'm saying. I'm not on psilocybin But becoming another living animal Sounds like less harsh for some reason. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um You what makes you you all of your parts and pieces Has been around long before you were in you and you will continue to be around in different forms I believe that. I mean, that's just science, right?

The you that is sitting there knitting while listening to this or driving or Putting a stamp on a birthday card to your mom is made out of Dying stars stars die and implode and the atoms change and it lands on a planet And it's rearranged to become you now astronomer astrophysicist and beloved turtle neck aficionado Carl Sagan is known for saying the nitrogen in our dna the calcium in our teeth the iron in our blood the carbon In our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars We are made of star stuff So if someone didn't return your text or you thought you'd get more likes on a selfie than you did

It does not matter. You are a walking tetris fortress of exploding star shit And no one can fuck with that and it's great Okay, so Cole gets personal with me here Let me ask you this with you you say you think about death and dying right what What scares you about that or like what is the thing that like Makes you sad or you know, I think about my own death what freaks me out is the

The like surprise of it is the not knowing when it's coming Like if it feels like walking around all day in white pants and someone's like you're gonna get your period at some point today And you're like god damn it And so it's just this idea that like this thing is gonna happen But you won't have any control over it. It could be tomorrow It could be when you're 80 But you don't get to decide And it's the biggest moment of your life and you don't get to decide when or how or or where

You know what I mean? Yes so First of all our own deaths like usually It just like happens to us usually we have to deal with death only when other people are dying And that can also More often than not be be the harder the harder one to choose because you don't get to pick when Your sister dies or your brother dies, but it'll happen You get the call and then you got to jump in or drop everything and deal with it, right?

And your whole life can be like, yeah Discombobulated with our own deaths. No, we we don't know when they're happening But we know it is happening guaranteed and um If we spend too much time in the future which is worry or too much time in the past which is ruminating We end up missing out on the present And you know what we regret when we die like when everything flashes before you it's all those present moments that we Just skipped out on I mean, how much of your I think about when I'm on my freaking cell phone And I pick it up without it

Have you ever been in line and you look at instagram? And then you get to the front of the line and you pull your phone up again to look at instagram Like i'm not actually like doing anything worthwhile with my life and at my end of life How am I going to feel about the number of times that I checked instagram? Do you know what I mean, right? So the best way to combat this this death anxiety is what I would call that is this idea of being like freaked out about Oh my god, I'm going to die and I have no idea when and where and how that's going to happen Is to be as present in your day-to-day life as possible?

And humans we are wired all animals are to seek out stability safety shelter and comfort, right? Well not knowing what's going to happen Causes anxiety and is the opposite of that So there are one of the most powerful things anybody can do is to work hard to get really clear about what your purpose and life is Or why you're here or what you are most passionate about Like for me when I um, I had a real hard time coming to terms with like that I love death and dying Because just how I was raised and where I grew up what part of the country I grew up like I should

I felt a lot of like pressure to like man. I should be a nurse I should get married and have a bunch of kids and like homeschool them maybe but like baked cookies regularly too Like all these pressures and it was real hard for me to come to terms with like, okay This is what I'm here to do um And a lot but that's how it is for a lot of people with what their purpose and life is A lot of times it's the thing that you have a hard time accepting that that's what you're good at and that's what you're meant to do So anyway being clear about that can really help reduce death anxiety and also help you like

Do stuff with your life like accomplish things so that you're not kind of spinning your wheels Do you take more risks in your life like creatively or personally? keeping that in mind Like like you have amazing hair. You have like almost a purple mohawk Like is there a part of you that's just like, you know what? I want to live my life with a purple mohawk and i'm not going to worry about what anyone wants me to You know like, you know have a blonde bob or anything like I'm gonna Do what I want to do and be who i'm gonna be because you have end of life on mind like in mind

Absolutely without a doubt has taught me over the years. It's always better to be myself and um Apparently I'm a purple-haired person when I'm myself I have more I have met more people and had more people in my life Since I've had a haircut that I just really enjoyed. Yeah, then when I was Having one that you know, right wasn't this right um And it is very freeing and liberating to be who you are But it's also real hard to be who you are You have to it's like yeah to accept who you are. Yeah, that's the step number one

But once you start to do that you can start to Your outside shows who are on the inside I know we're like talking about all this like life meaning stuff But all of this is like directly related to death and dying Did you have a moment where you realized that you weren't being yourself and that you wanted you kind of had a pivot? Or do you think it was like a gradual Kind of um bolstering of your own self-esteem and and confidence and sense of self Or did you have a moment where you were like, you know what fuck this and then you just started doing what you wanted?

You know, I did um In the last few years So currently online there's all this um posts about like me too me too, right? Right, right, right? So I was assaulted several years ago And I actually pressed charges and I did the whole deal that like I mean I took it all the way and um Going through an experience like that, which is another thing that you don't have control of You don't know if someone's going to mug you You don't know if you're going to be the victim of some

Random thing. Yeah, I mean, we're all afraid of dying, but there's all kinds of other crazy stuff that can happen to you Um, I'm so sorry. And if uh, you know what? It Sucks and I still am dealing with it all these years later. Mm-hmm, but but That horrific experience Connects me to so many people that I would not be able to be connected to without it And for that I'm grateful because the worst thing in life is to be alone

Yes to feel like you're alone and even when something terrible happens to you You can feel so alone when it happens, but you know what? It doesn't take very long and you find a bunch of other people that had been there too and just It sucks But the there is some level of good there and I find that with my work in death and dying like when people are actually on their deathbeds and things What people remember is like the things that made you weird or distinct or the the crazy experiences that happen to you That's what sticks around. Yeah, not that you dotted all your eyes and crossed all your t's and you responded to every email in your inbox

That doesn't matter at the end of your life And when you look back over what you did what matters is like what where are the explosions in your life? You know, where was the crazy stuff? That's Yeah, that's life. I mean, I feel like death is salt death is the salt of life And you live your whole lives and every day every week you're putting ingredients in that soup and then when you die Death comes in now. It's the salt And your death is a reflection of how you lived And so if you were a bitter angry closed off person your whole life who always had a chip on the shoulder and an ax to grind

You're gonna soup's gonna be nasty at the end of life And no one's gonna want to have any of it and no one's gonna want to know what the recipe was But if you die and you are happy and you put good in the world And you embrace as much as you could even the really terrible stuff. Yeah, people are gonna want to know the recipe Right, that's amazing. And that's how you live. Yeah. Do you have to use in your experience? That what you you know things that you've been through And also in your work in death and dying. Do you Look at the grieving process

Do you apply the grieving process to things that you've encountered in your own life? Or do you think it's grieving process is really specific just to death? So we I I kind of believe We're grieving our whole lives and there's something called a big death and a little death Which is just like my own terminology. We all know little death is also a term for right So but like a little death is something like I would call like when I was assaulted That was a little like a death That was actually a huge death for me because it was like my sense of like safety and security and just like

That died like I will never be the same moving forward. I mean it permanently alters you and so I had to grieve The loss of like the way life was before that happened Little deaths can be like when you have a miscarriage or um, you get fired I mean you grieve that stuff a big death is one like a human or an animal that you knew or loved dies Okay, and a lot of times the big deaths are easier to deal with and get through because You have a dead body somewhere It's harder to deal with the deaths in life that like don't have a corpse involved Like you know divorce or your best friend just ghosted you or something. I mean that can be

Horrific to go through those things Little update. So Cole has since coined the perfect term for this. She calls it shadow loss those little deaths and those events That insight overlooked grief. She's done a TEDx talk about it She's written extensively on the topic of shadow loss and if you were like woman, please write a book on this She's on it. Also Any publishers listening to this call is repped by Erin Malone at william morris endeavor in case you want to talk about Getting dibs on her book How how does the grieving process in a healthy way help you through those things?

What are the real cornerstones of the grieving process of getting through stuff like that? so First of all the grieving process is a roller coaster Elizabeth coogler ross is known for her five stages of grief The five pack denial anger bargaining depression and finally acceptance But that's often portrayed as it goes in order And it doesn't like you'll wake up one day and be angry and then the next day you'll be like Oh, you know, it's cool. I get it and then the next day you're in denial about it

Um, so you kind of flip around. I believe that you can grieve non-deaths Divorce all this other kind of hard stuff and it puts you in the same vulnerable position. How many Have you ever had something that you've dealt with in your life that wasn't a death? But it like threw you off your rocker and you like missed meetings and just things were just all kerfluffled. Yeah You're like it's the bereaved brain. It's it's a real thing and it It's real And what about other animals? Are you fascinated by how elephants or primates grieve as well? Oh, yeah, and if anything it makes me sad sometimes because i'm a big animal lover and um

Animals have in my opinion the same depth of emotion that humans do Evidently until 1980s the notion that animals had emotions was schmaltzy people weren't into it and then using Imaging researchers started looking at brain activity of animals and we're like oopsie in 2012 a group of neuroscientists attended a conference on consciousness in human and non-human animals And together they signed the cambridge declaration on consciousness in non-human animals, which says hey assholes Animals are conscious and their brains can feel shit We're all on the same page with this

Get on our level Just to be clear that wasn't that wasn't verbatim Humans are not that different than animals. We we we really are not. Um, we all get sad We all grieve with looking at thanatology. You'll see how deeply connected death is to life Then why is death so sad? I know that that is like such a general question, but why do we cry at funerals? Why do we cry at movies? What do you think that sadness is?

So if I was gonna be like Scientific or analytical about this response only and have that hat hat on I'd say it's because of change Humans don't like change because we're Built to seek out stability and safety, right? And what is change? Not safety, right? So I need to so death forces a change and usually a death is not just like Oh so and so isn't in my life anymore Okay, like when my grandma died my grandpa died first and my grandma died on my mom's side When she died the hierarchy of the family kind of shifted because then it wasn't holidays at grandma's house anymore

It kind of branched down and then like the aunts and uncles started hosting their own holiday events, right? so A death is never just the body is gone. It's like All this other stuff attached to it and it's Change and that's what makes it so hard and why I think sad and all those kinds of emotions If I was putting on my like more touchy-feely side, I'd say it's so sad when something dies because of love because we love because that's what people do and

It's hard to shift from loving somebody who Um, you know, it's a two-way street when you have a relationship But when they die you then are left having to send your love Into someone that's not there anymore And that is can be so hard because you're not getting the feedback So then you have to convert to how Where do I put all this love that I was giving to grandma or that I was giving to my husband or whoever, right? And and that's the hard part

and now Speaking of husbands, you work with yours. Your husband is your business partner as well So Cole's husband Victor and Perry is tall with bookish glasses and a very rye sense of humor And he was actually sitting a few feet away during this entire recording because you know what? It's weird to go to a Cincinnati Hampton Inn at 11 p.m. On a Tuesday to hang out with a stranger to talk about corpses. I get it And a few years ago this little paracutes recreated the painting American Gothic for the cover of a magazine A magazine called American Funeral Director. They are warm

Wonderful, and they are ferocious Pickleball players beware. I love them. Did you guys meet through death and dying? No, no, not at all My business was sort of growing and my calling is death and dying and I'm very fortunate that I have a partner who Supported that so for several years. He had a full-time job. Then we grew the business. He was able to leave it We traveled together. We're often booked to speak together. Are there any movies about death or dying that You particularly love that seems to strike a chord with you David the gnome

I don't know it. Okay. David the gnome was like a really popular A cartoon series when I was a kid and it came from Japan and came to the u.s And was on like pbs and like the early 90s late 80s and David the gnome and his wife, Lisa So the whole series is just like gnome stuff basically in the last episode They're just like So gnomes only live to be 400 years old, but they know they're gonna die on their 400th birthday So he and Lisa gnomes go up to a hill

They're like weeping and then like swirls come And they die. Oh man turn your trees and they had a pet fox The fox comes up there and sees his mom and dad are now trees and are dead And then he was left and he had to walk back home Was two dead parents and that was the last episode and um Yeah, that's a real clincher. Yeah, I you know what it's probably not actually helpful to see that Oops, I watched it and cried And if you want to watch this, uh, it's on youtube

The title of the clip is just David the gnome kicks the bucket So How do you feel about how death and dying are portrayed in popular culture? In real life when something when somebody dies It is messy afterwards because you're like whole life is discombobulated and you know, everything is just off kilter But I think that is a contributing factor because we don't have exposure to Um examples of good coping skills

Really in other parts of your life unless you grew up around it You know or you grew up in a family that talked openly about death and dying and I'm an instructor at a mortuary college And I teach thanatology for a bachelor program. So all of my students are funeral directors Or I'm bombers Really interesting crowd to be able to teach because you know, I'm thinking okay They want to learn i'm teaching them thanatology But they work day in and day out with death and dying And one of the first assignments in the course is they have to tell me about their upbringing and how they deal with death and dying

And a lot of them even the ones who grew up in funeral homes never actually talked Or talked about death and dying with their families There'd be dead bodies downstairs in the funeral home But they never really like really talked about it And that I think is the most healthy thing that any family can do is just have a real conversation About death and dying whatever comes up you talk about instead of it just being Grandma died the funerals on wednesday Done

Please kiss her. Yes, if it's open casket on the hand. Um, she will be cold and hard But it's still your grandma. So put your mouth on her. Yeah Just to rewind when you say funeral home and the bodies are downstairs. I'm sorry Is that actually a home if you live there and then do people in funeral homes live there and then the bodies are downstairs Not all funeral homes, but some funeral homes. Um, it's very common And this it gives a message of like history sort of but like it'd be very normal for the undertaker in town To have a home and he was also the undertaker, but he had his family there Um currently today and I know a lot of even my like students. They're living

On like the third floor of the funeral home and like the little apartment And then the funeral home is on the main floor and then the basement usually has like body storage and the And all that stuff. Um, so but I'll tell you what so I go to a lot of the conventions and stuff in death care And there's just some wonderful wonderful stories about a lot of these Couples funeral director couple couples that like, you know first date or second date And we're going back to my place and I have to tell my date that I live in a funeral home Oh and um, it's just it's just different. It's just interesting. I think it's fascinating. I think it's also lovely It's a great way to weed out people who can't tolerate your life

Yeah, you know when you're you know how people are like, oh basements are so scary and you're like, oh mine's an actual morgue Yes, I actually have dead bodies And it's yes, have you ever seen anything creepy or is your exposure and your familiarity with death and dying like Kind of let you Understand that like there's nothing creepy ghosts aren't real like there's there's no bumps in the night Yeah, um, it's yeah, I mean regularly I'm around Dead people and it doesn't bother me and it really never has and in terms of like Being scared of stuff

Actually I'm not afraid of ghosts, but like I'll be home by myself sometimes and I'll like hear a noise and I'll be like Oh my god, the demons are coming into my home because I'll have just read some book about like demonology within some like Weird ass like tradition or something and I'm like That demon is here It found me because I summoned it because I read its name out loud So I'll freak I am I am the most successful at freaking myself out But I am not like I don't like the ghost thing or whatever although

I've been studying quite a bit about Tibetan Buddhism in particular and their traditions and Tibetan Buddhists Do not play when it comes to death and dying Like when you die if you're a Tibetan Buddhist and you believe that They'll do like a like kind of like a horoscope at the time of your death To figure out according to the stars when like how long your body should be left out So that they can identify when the soul actually leaves your body because you do not want to bury or cremate someone When the soul is still in there. That's what you're trying to avoid. Oh, so um, that's a party fell I don't know why I was talking about this. See this is the problem ghost. I just go ghost. So

Tibetan Buddhists it's about getting the soul out and then but there's whole field of study within that about what happens If your soul isn't doing what it's supposed to do and it's left behind And I have read some pretty compelling stuff over the years about Those kinds of things and I'm not saying that it's real or it's not real I'm just saying that those accounts exist and are very thorough and like documented and all that kind of stuff So I'm alone in my apartment Saturday night and I'm looking up Tibetan ghosts for this episode and I'm like reading about a type of spirit that is just Next level bummed out ghost. It's called a hunger ghost

They have a tiny throat and a huge stomach and they can never be satisfied They're said to arise with traumatic deaths. Anyway, right as I'm reading about this This happened I quickly I turned on my phone to record it Hi there, how are you? Good Thank you so much Oh sweet That was the sound of a man coming up to my door

Delivering an extra large pizza to me just me Reading about hungry ghosts. I'm eating an extra large piece of by myself But you know what? It's vegan and gluten-free because I live in Los Angeles and I'm the worst And I don't want to die of any of those causes of death that don't involve falling off a roof. Okay Let's get back to it Do you have a book or a resource that you recommend to people who are just going through the throes of like a grieving process? The scowl her name is Joanne Fink and she has a book because one day she woke up and her husband did not wake up with her It's very sad and unexpected. Um, so I always recommend books that are written by people that have had like

Whoa, um, and she has this little book and I actually buy this book And this is what I give out to people when they've had a loss and it's called when you lose someone you love by Joanne Fink Um, I have a book that I recommend for people who like if you Are going to be around someone who is like dying like actively dying like so that you know what to do It's called attending the dying and that's by megary anderson. Okay. Okay. Super important scientific question If you could become a ghost, would you become a ghost? I'm like, I'm like, I'm gonna be honest. I looked into this Really? Yeah, of course I did. I will look into anything. Do not check my search history because I guarantee you it is like probably offensive

in some way But that all that information is out there and that probably makes me sound very hippie-dippy But if anything I've learned over the years, it's like I don't I don't make assumptions about anything anymore What does science say about the soul? Leaving the body. Yes. So, um I love this question because this is where religious and cultural and social beliefs intersect with the science and it's where we hit the big Question mark and the big conflict about our physical bodies. So there is nothing

scientifically that I'm aware of That's like, oh, this is where your soul is. So this idea of soul is informed by the non physical science side of things and it comes down to what do you believe? So there's this whole mess of people who think that the soul is a thing and it weighs 21 grams partly because of the 2003 blockbuster 21 grams Now from the trailer that I just watched on youtube it seems to be about a bunch of sad people

And banisho del Toro's in it needing a makeover But this original idea stemmed from the scientific experiments of a fellow named mcdougal Who in the early 1900s had this idea to wait around like a really eagle-eyed umpire near the dying and then Scoot them over to a big scale at their big moment to see if they lost any weight as they passed And he measured a bunch of folks And ignored most of the numbers But he did report a small handful who lost about 21 grams of weight as they died

He also tried this on dogs He wanted to at least but he couldn't find any super sick dogs But then suddenly he had a bunch of data on dogs and people were like mcdougal Did you poison the dogs and he was like huh what no Nobody believed him in general people didn't believe him because that 21 grams of weight loss Wasn't a consistent figure anyway, and also because that could just be due to sweat loss Can I just say that when I was looking up the trailer for 21 grams youtube suggested a video about why Hollywood doesn't care about hillary swank anymore, and I was like, yeah, I'll click that I'll take the bait

I found that video to be more depressing than the part Of the website about pod coffins that detailed waiting out rigor mortis before shaping you into a fetal ball And putting you into the biodegradable egg Let the woman win some Oscars. Why you gotta hate honor? So some people believe in souls some people don't Because this is the thing that impacts the way that you are going to live your life or approach your life Because if you believe that your soul is a real deal thing

That's probably going to impact some of this like your decision-making process But if you don't believe it or if you've never heard of this concept before, you know You may make decisions differently. There's this thing called insolment another keyword a learning word insolment is Discussed in every religious tradition that I know of and it discusses when does the soul enter the body? Because religious traditions Look at that point to decide when you are an actual life because you're not a full life until you have body plus soul

So you become a life in different points. Um, so in Judaism, it's the 40th day of gestation That's when your life. So um and in Judaism Well traditional, I guess is the way to say if you have like a miscarriage You technically There's no grieving In quotes because it wasn't actually a life And then that is something called disenfranchised grief keyword disenfranchised grief is something that happens

When like let's say you have a miscarriage and you people be like, oh, at least it wasn't a real baby and you're like, I'm still sad I'm still devastated. That's disenfranchised grief. It's when you're grieving But society or cultural norms will say Oh, but you're not entitled to those dealings So it's other people being bitchy about your grief. Yes, also It is disenfranchised people are dicks. Yes. So you can you are a certified Crematory operator. Yes. Okay. Sorry to jump back to cremation But it's growing in popularity and I just I felt hazy on the details

So like a lot of states now require that for someone to like operate the crematory That you need to have the sort and it's really like just like a little look simple test I mean just you need to not be an idiot. So I mean to not be an idiot Don't throw your car keys in with the body. Yep. Yeah, like don't like get in there for fun because it's not yeah Forget my ignorance when they when someone is cremated They're cremated in a casket, right? Um, or no a lot of times. Okay, so okay cremation

Um, so I believe all states in the united states require you to be cremated in a cardboard Outer container at a minimum. So that's basically a cardboard box and It's like basically body cardboard, right and you get it slid in um People also will buy like wood caskets. So let's say that like cold eyes Husband buys me a beautiful casket cherry wood and then I'm just I'm laid out and there's like a visitation And then I get cremated in the in that same casket. So it'll burn up the wood, right?

But not in like a metal casket. No. Yeah So some of the ashes might also be casket ashes. Um, yes. Okay. Because carbon is well. No because at that temperature okay, so the wood Goes completely away because you're cremated between 16 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Whoo. It's very hot um When the body is cremated all that is left if the cremation is done to completion like If it's done, right is calcium

bicarbonate That's what's left and there is no genetic material left So like you let's say that I was just a bunch of cremated remains and you wanted to dna test it to see like Oh, let's see if that's actually cold if you're cremated appropriately There's no genetic material left at all to be able to test that and I understand that there's a pretty good chance That you might get a couple of flakes of dust from somebody else in there too. Yeah, I mean, um That that absolutely happens There's no way to get 100 percent of everything out of the

Retort the cremation chamber because think about what happened. Okay. You have a bonfire What happens when it gets really hot right swirls it swirls around and you get like Hot wind that happens inside the cremation chamber and the cremation chamber is much bigger than the size of a body And so you get all these little parts and stuff that fly around and there's things like static electricity that can hold things up And yeah, so and what about embalming and Uh body preparation. Do you do any of that or are you like nasty? I'm a big I am not a licensed embalmer. Um, however, I have Witness them and know about them and I deal with that in my

Job, um pretty you know pretty regularly. So it's interesting to quite a few of my students all they want to do Morning tonight is embalm. That's it. That's all they want to do And just like I am like I love working with death and dying. I'm into it. They're like, I love embalming They love it. Why? Yeah, that's just what they you know I mean, there's there's got to be somebody and there are a lot of families and people who Embalming is part of their family tradition or their religious tradition and it's important to them So for more on this and the science and the art of funeral makeup Listen to the october 2020 episode on

Deserology with Monica Torres who is a treasurer. Okay, cool Do you think that people who are in the death and dying industry are a certain Personality type or do that really does it totally run the gamut? Like do does your stereotype of what a mortician is like, you know, kind of stoic and Um and quiet is that does that is that completely untrue? So this is like Love talking about this because in death care currently in the united states We are having a huge shift in who are like quote unquote typical

Funal director is so 20 years ago. It was by far male dominated And like men men men men now it's female dominated Most of the students enrolled in mortuary school are women and I believe that's nationwide now Really? Yeah. So, you know how like the nursing profession Was male dominated and then it became like women Now we're having that happen in death care And I'm personally very excited about that because I feel like the role of the funeral director is shifting in the united states right now Also within death care the profession

We're starting to see an increase in our educational standards You know, I'm teaching a bachelor part of a bachelor funeral service degree Because the standard now has been a two-year associates degree Oh to become a funeral director or an embalmer and not all states require that Whoa, and it varies state to state. So in colorado, for example, there's no requirement for education to become a funeral director What? Whoa, but like um, I love that you're like I could buy a dime bag in the grocery store weed I can just I can be a funeral director like colorado

Wild west. Yes. I hope that all funeral directors are required to have a four-year degree in the future You ready for some questions from listeners? Oh, yes. Oh my gosh We got some questions other than I feel like I have a million questions to ask you just because I'm like What's gonna happen when I die? Should I be afraid? What am I doing? Okay Okay, but first a quick break with words about our sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to a cause And this week I'm choosing it to go to the school of american thanatology, which was founded by colin perry So the school of american thanatology offers education in thanatology

death work and more so that more people can expand personally and professionally And there are courses on writing death and spirituality and Thanobotany, which is another term that colcoined to describe the way that plants are used in death care and dying and aggrieving So yes, learn more about the school at american thanatology.com. That'll be linked in the show notes Thank you to sponsors for allowing us to make that donation Okay, I'm living for your questions Aaron wants to know how accurate is the expression le petit more in describing an orgasm

He said I won't be mad if you don't ask this Well, actually, let me talk about this for a second So in many eastern traditions in that world the eastern tradition teaches that when you're asleep It is one sixtieth of death And so we actually take yoga to practice death We leave that out in america because americans don't believe they're gonna die But that's why you do the physical practice of yogas to become more comfortable with it When it comes to orgasming different traditions teach that you are between death and full life

Like you drop into like this sort of in-between state and you become more closer to death At that point really, so I mean like yeah So that's an actual thing. That's not just the french being french and dramatic. No, I mean Yeah, I mean, yeah, good question. Good question. Okay points John wants to know what did your parents say when you told them you wanted to study death and death is in all caps I just want you to know it's because it's scary. So and you should fear it Um, I never asked them. I just kind of did it. So There you go. Yeah

um Mark wants to know through science it Might it be possible for human death to be permanently postponed? Is that something we should strive for and if so, how will that change us? I think that that would make us bigger dicks Yes, yes, it would and dicks for the wrong reasons. Right like I think from a scientific viewpoint It's great to be able to understand the dynamics of that process and like how that actually works How you turn it on turn it off, but I don't think for the good of society or the world that Having a deathless world is good. Hey, that's bad too many people

And I'm sure I have people who would be like, oh you're wrong But that's what I believe and I've worked with death and dying a lot right We I I feel like humans are kind of like a a cockroach plague on the earth a little bit Yeah, we're dirty or messy. We don't leave things better than when we found them Yeah, you gotta we gotta die off or else we can't make room for new people. That's right. Um Phoebe wants to know cell death being what it is Is there a layman's terms a short version of how the chemicals used in funerary prep Postpone the decomposition process till after our weird open casket funeral rites. Yeah, so she's asking with cell death

How do the chemicals postpone decomposition? How do they do that? So it's it's chemistry basically so Okay, so when you die like your skin and all that stuff like dehydrates, okay Like if you're doing a bombing your blood is drained out and it goes down the drain Okay into the sewer just like your pee and your poop does really? Yeah And the water treatment plants process all that out just like they process out pee and poop and Whatever the heck else you flush down there. There's also blood right guts. Yep So that's step one step two then depending on how you died So like if you if you were jaundiced when you die, you're gonna have yellow cast to your skin

well, there's and bombing chemicals and Ingredients that are designed to counteract that so that you don't look yellow when you were In your casket, right because you got to look good. That's the last time some of these people are gonna see you That's right because we are vain even when we're not aware that we're vain We just know that we want to continue that You go time. Yeah So this mixture is made in the mixture. It's a chemical reaction, but it rehydrates the skin so that it Doesn't so you don't look dead

And then it also corrects it can like do things like color correct or counteract Whatever made you be dead. Whatever made you be dead? Cause of death the thing that made me be dead. Yeah Um, let me see Oh, jennifer is a great question jennifer I keep hearing that when you die the same chemical in ayahuasca is released into your body by your brain Are we really all tripping when we die? Dimethyl tryptamine aka DMT, right? Um, so ayahuasca. Is that how you say it?

ayahuasca That has DMT in it plus other stuff. Right now. Um, the pineal gland in the brain It makes DMT basically like we make a little bit of that and then that's what makes us dream Wow Next level our bodies are When you die As far as i'm aware and i'm sure someone would will post to correct me if i'm wrong

You your body does release DMT Okay, and other stuff like there's other chemical things that happen Um, so this idea of if you're like, are you tripping when you die? Well, keep in mind that all of your senses have probably if you're dying sort of naturally, um, your senses will have shut down So if you have ever tripped as a living person, you know, you have you had sensory input happening When you're dying and at the moment of death You're not going to be physically where you were when you were Tripping and alive, so it's not going to be the same thing. It doesn't function the same way

Does that make sense right because you're not at bonnaroo? Using all of your faculties. Yes, you're somewhere much more quiet without those faculties So I get it So it's kind of like if you had a kaleidoscope, but you had less input into the kaleidoscope You know and the thing is that we don't really know What's happening there? But I look at that and I keep in mind that like our bodies are not functioning the same way that they normally do So it's going to be different. Okay

You're not like a burning man. You're definitely not a burning man Blake wants to know is there any truth to involuntary body movements after death like bodies sitting up and Muscle twitching and groaning and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, okay like the sitting up thing I've never heard of that actually happening, but like a like a like a Like a pressing that that happens. That's not uncommon Because depending on how you die or what you die of there can be like a pocket of air or something that Comes out, but it's not I mean, it's just like sometimes it's the result of just moving the body around or shifting it okay, so

yeah, I've never heard of like somebody sitting up In actuality and I hang out with a lot of funeral directors. So You've got the scoop. Yeah, you got the goods. I did hear that that uh, a friend of mine and her Fiancee were at his grandmother's funeral and they went up to the casket and they both swear They heard her breathe like a Interesting. I don't know

I am 100 not a doctor, but I'm gonna guess That this sound is kind of akin to the breeze Passing through a flute just the gentle song of happenstance And Stephanie had a question she wanted to know if And this is funny because I know her and her birthdays on Halloween She wants to know if you find the halloween like kind of Not irritating but what your stance is on halloween because it's such a like macabre holiday

But you deal with a lot of the themes that we explore one day a year in your daily life Like how do you feel about halloween and and how macabre it is? I mean, I enjoy halloween A lot of people within The death and dying world whether they work in like the funeral side or they're like even like hospice workers or something There's a lot of people that like love it and they live for halloween And I appreciate that and I like halloween, but i'm not obsessed with it Like honestly, it's just like a I give it a c plus in terms of holidays in my like calendar of events

What's your a plus holiday? So Um, I love y'all. I'm kipor. Um, i'm jewish And that's the day of atonement So it's where you like think about what you did and obviously because I deal with death and dying I really enjoy the opportunity every year to like really think about What I did also I'm a little bit intense. So I love y'all kipor Anyway, halloween, um, and what's interesting probably if you met me because you only are hearing me

I I do not like dress in all black and I'm not like like You're not uber goth. You probably wouldn't look at me and know that I'm like Death person or whatever. So I would think you're a graphic designer or an artist like a design person. Yeah Um, so yeah, I like and appreciate halloween However, it is not my number one So what's scarier than halloween is being a pansy now here is where I casually shower coal with wonder and praise About all the things she's gotten done in her life. I do feel like knowing your life

You have you're getting you have gotten the most out of it I think that if anything your your proximity to death and dying Shows in how you choose to live your life and all the things that you're so passionate about and what you've learned and what you've done And and you know, that's a lot of people I don't think would take that risk probably because they're just like, huh me I'm not gonna die. I'm gonna live forever and I'm also gonna win the lottery and we're off We're off or a lot of people just are like waiting for the thing to discover them Right and it doesn't work that way and doesn't dying is not to be feared It's the living like fear your life choices. That's where the

The fear can come from you know and the fear of like like not like what happens if you don't do the thing That you've been wanting to do. Oh, that's so real Yeah, like you you owe it to yourself to do that and you owe it to the everyone that came before you To do that you you owe it to the world you owe it to us to be who you're supposed to be And what is your we'll go least favorite to favorite your least favorite thing about your job And it could be anything it could be like a Early hours could be being on call anything not a fan of email Not a fan of email. Okay. It's like real hard for me to just I just because it's like I want to be talking to people

And I just I really don't like email. I don't appreciate it. I don't enjoy it. I don't want it in my life Okay, so I love it as someone who deals with corpses The worst thing is email. Yeah What's your favorite thing about the job or favorite moment on a job or or the thing that really gets you out of bed in the morning um a lot of times it's I don't know what it is. I think I have radar or something or like a beacon that is sending out but I can be in an immediate deep

intense Conversation involving tears with somebody I just met in a heartbeat and it is because of my work in death and dying um One time I was in I took out the name of the museum at Cole's request just In case just to keep identities private Also small content warning it does involve the mention of dying by suicide Which side note in the last five years dying by suicide has become the preferred expression over the one that we used previously

But yes, so let's pretend For the sake of anonymity that she was at the British Lawnmower Museum Which is a real place which is a fantastic museum And I got my ticket and I went to go upstairs and the guy that takes the tickets He was like, oh, he's like you have interesting hair. Are you an artist? I'm like, no and I was trying to go upstairs. He's like, who are you and what do you do? And I was like, oh, I actually work in death and dying and he

like Stone cold face all of a sudden he goes My best friend committed suicide recently And I almost didn't come to work today because I've been struggling And I was able to immediately talk to this individual for Well over 30 minutes But I wouldn't have had that wonderful opportunity

To connect with that gentleman who was feeling very alone If I didn't work in death and dying and have this training and thanatology and all this kind of stuff And for that I'm incredibly grateful because being alone is the worst thing in the world for anybody And a lot of times people feel alone with stuff related to loss And there's so few people in the world that are equipped or comfortable To be present for that You know, we want to push it away. So That's an example of something I love which is intense and sad, but overall great

It's funny because I I'm leaving this conversation much more cheerful than I thought I would be Yeah I was like I was ready to start. I was like, no, I'm probably gonna end up super scared and bawling and I'm not I'm like Oh, I just had to live Instead of fearing death. I yeah, I just have to get more excited about actually being alive Yep, every time you encounter death in some way it is an opportunity to choose to live It really is I have a feeling you're gonna be america's favorite thanatologist. That's the goal

At least the only purple-haired one As she left coal Handed me a ziploc bag and in it were five freshly baked fucking delicious Sugar cookies and she said I can't help it. I'm midwestern She also gave me a pen that she had specially printed with type Inspired by vintage gravestone fonts and it's just a simple black clicky click pen bearing the words

I don't have time for bullshit We parted ways and I went upstairs to my room I ate more than one of the cookies and then I just I wished this chick lived in california 2022 update so this chick moved to california a few months ago We lured her out here for a visit for our wedding last july and she and victor dug it so much She called me up to be like I have to tell you something and I was like what happened. What happened. She's like we're moving out to la I lost my mind. I screamed into the phone so loud. They moved west people it rules

She also started a pickleball league here of which I am a member. I love her so much So listen to the minisode coming out in a few days for more on all of that and what she's been up to And what it was like to lower her to a different state and make her be my friend to befriend her digitally and learn about her school You can see americanthanatology.com I will put more links up on my website at alley word.com slash allergies Slash Thanatology on core that link is right in the show notes. You don't have to write anything down Along with links to coles work and social media handles so much more check out her website

Hello, cole.com. She's on instagram as just in parry. She's on twitter as cole and parry So I hope as you listen to this that you walked away with some kind of new appreciation for being not dead I mean confront death Plan for it talk about it accept it But don't fear it. It doesn't make our lives any better while we're living them So thanks for listening. Thank you to everyone supporting on patreon. I appreciate every single one of you You make this self produced passion of mine a reality and if I had died without doing it My life would have been dimmer and I would have choked on regret

So thank you for making allergies real It changes my life on a daily basis 2022 me again. Thank you so much for listening Thank you, erin talbert for admitting the ology's podcast facebook group with assist from bonnie dutch And shannon paltes of the podcast. You are that thank you bonnie and shannon for the extra help In the facebook group as erin mourns the loss this week of her brother and lost scott So he's in our thoughts too And thank you to susan hale for handling merch and so much more

Thank you newell dillworth for all the scheduling help Kelly our Dwyer makes our website can make yours too. Emily white of the wordery handles our professional transcripts and Kayla patent bleeps them and those are up for free at our website at alley word.com slash ology's slash extras That's also linked to the show notes. Uh, we have free kid friendly all ages friendly episodes called smologies in this main feed You can download them all you can listen with all ages Thank you. Zeke red rigas thomas and mercedes meetland of mind jam media for heading that up with assist from steven remorse And to the man who has got me through the last few months And also edits the episode jarrett sleeper

Thank you for everything nick thorburn made the music and if you listen for the end of the show I tell you the secret This week the secret is I really do not know what this grief and death experience would have been like without having call in my life I cannot imagine it Her work is so important. I just i'm so lucky The minisode will have a lot of advice if you're going through something similar or if you're grieving or if you're anticipating that So i'm going to spill my soul out in that in hopes that it helps you a wee bit Some things that I learned some things that i'm glad that I went through another secret is that the last few weeks of bereavement leave

I took was the least I've worked in the past 20 years and You know, even though it was filled with obituary writing and funeral arrangements and crying into the darkness and Having to take care of some other work things on the side The whole thing has really inspired me more than ever just to have a better life work balance because Even if you were doing your dream job, which I am times a thousand I would like to do this job until I am in the earth

But you still have to live a little while you're on this side of the grass as my dad used to say Because we're all going to die one day. So you got to enjoy it a little bit and just Fuck off and do stupid stuff and make collages out of old magazines and pot some plants in the backyard and stuff So text your crush I did I ended up marrying him and you know what cut bangs Do what you got to do. I followed my own advice on that last night and you know what I cut some bangs I'm loving them. Okay more grief advice and updates in the mini-soat including my tips on how to handle balling in a funeral

And saying no to people who want you to do things when you can't Um, but you are great. Go enjoy the breeze or a sunset Or have a tiny ice cream cone and toast to grand pod. He loved those. Okay. Bye. Bye