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

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

Hoooo boy. We're all up in death and dying's bizness and to Alie's 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 goddamn 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.For more on Cole ImperiMore episode resources & linksTees, mugs, totes available at ologiesmerch.comFollow @ologies on Twitter and Instagram Follow @alieward on Twitter and Instagram Support the show on PatreonMusic by Nick ThorburnProduction by Steven Ray Morris

Oh boy, wow, okay, here we go. So from the moment I heard that this allergy 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... Um, I picked up on that and I was like, oh, we have this locked and loaded. She had my number.

Now I've wanted to do a project about allergies for over a decade, and each time I write out allergies, my computer auto-corrects it to eulogies, and I get a little shiver, I get a little scared, and then the wind whispers at me, Halle, 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, hee-bee-jee-bees. Okay, I can tell you though, after recording this episode, I felt way better. It's weird. So you're going to have to listen to figure out how and why that worked.

It's probably going to 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 going to be worth it. When you're like cleaning out the shed or, I don't know, bathing 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 stalking 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 and 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 van etologist Cole and Perry. OK, 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. Anyway, there is also no such thing as a job of like just being a Thanatologist, OK, 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. No, I don't know what that was. Apparently we looked at in that program more of the like esoteric stuff, funky stuff. What would you count as funky death stuff?

Well, 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. It can mitigate a lot of pain, but it can also help with things like existential pain, keyword existential pain. If you don't know is something like where usually happens on your deathbed. 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, I think about this stuff a lot and a lot of people do.

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. 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. Anyway, 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. So in short, womp, womp, says science shrug, say some other folks. Anyway, 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, is to grow, is 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? So 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 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 a funeral planning or a bombing or speaking to the public? Like, what kind of stuff do you do? OK, 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. Cole also travels overseas speaking about death and death care and also oversees a local cemetery making cool events like movie screenings. I imagine there's a lot of cute hipsters was really, really good picnic game. Are you afraid of dying or are you excited about it to see what happens?

So OK, 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 caused 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 is evidence to suggest that there's a burst of brain energy as someone dies.

I was 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 doesn't 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. Now, 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. Other times we talk about our kitties. Yeah, what happens? OK, so what happens when you're actively dying from sort of a medical viewpoint? 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 going to hurt? And I always ask, I'm like, you know, I haven't died, so I can't tell you. But I'll ask, do you remember your birth? Did it hurt when you were born? They'll be like, well, no, no. 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. There are people who would argue probably that they do. But 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. And your sense of feeling is kind of like, OK, 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 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, which not everybody has that. That's a disclaimer, but that's kind of how it kind of can go. So you should never talk to someone while they're on their deathbed. That is right, because they can hear. Dang. 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 and that can be really scary for people to hear who are not dying because it's like, oh, this is getting real.

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, you're like, are you going? Am I going? Yeah. Who's going first? Is this OK? 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 in my work, so I am not I'm not a counselor. I'm not like a medical professional, but I do have the opportunity to be brought into or involved with specific death situations and scenarios. Man, humans can die in all kinds of ways. Statistically, and I brought some numbers, 20 percent of all people will die in an ICU, an intensive care unit. Really? Yes.

But 90 percent 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. 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.

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,

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 an 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 short term stint at a theme park. You know, it's going to 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.

I am so grateful for my life day to day, but it's made me hyper aware that it ends because I've seen people on their deathbed 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 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?

And sometimes it's more painful to see someone who's dying, grappling with those questions than it is to see someone who's dying in physical pain, to be honest. The anguish emotionally is worse than the pain. Yes. Wow. Deep. We're getting heavy. I'm really 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 I was walking through a graveyard and and coffins were overturned and I had a crippling 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 cemeteries. And I also grew up Catholic, so we had open casket 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, OK, 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 going to 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 going to be judged if you're good or you're bad. So, yeah, I was like, you're it was like Santa almost.

Like someone's going to 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 going to go to hell. I'm pretty sure like and just being really like a conservative. Anyway, at the end of life, depending on how someone was raised, 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. I have OK, 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 at 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 don't know what a testament is. OK, will versus testament, same Z's, roughly the same thing.

Now, they started at about sixty nine dollars if you want to get them through the 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 look 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, verbatim. 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. There are also a few different flavors of wills and their names sound like 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 that'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, Cole is covered on this front. I mean, duh. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sitting here in a hotel being interviewed about my expertise in death and dying, and I don't have a will.

Why don't you have one? I just, I'm not kidding. 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 it'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. Also, FYI, what you want to happen with your funeral? 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 tell your loved ones, like shoot me out of a cannon or plant my ashes in a pumpkin patch or something. 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? So I actually at this point, because it's changed over the last 10 years, because I see everything death 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.

You're kind of wrapped in fabric, like swaddled. It's like a little death swaddle. I was going to say, like a like a death pejmina of sorts. Yes, mine will be stylish. It might be purple though. 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. OK. So disposition method is the lingo for what you do with your dead body. Just in case you want to know about that. 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 one over the 50 percent mark. Very exciting time. And do you have like a scoreboard in your office? Yes. Yep. Yep. I got a ticker. So it was 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 differs significantly. OK. 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 as a two main, 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. Yeah. 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. OK. 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. OK, 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. OK, 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 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 the texture of motor oil. And then what's left are some well-cooked bones. It's easy. Is this kind of like what happened in the

in the very beginning of Breaking Bad? Didn't they try to dispose of a body in a bathtub that way? That was an acid bath. This is an alkaline bath. Also, don't DIY either of these ever. OK, now some other disposition methods are buried at sea. There's also Promession, which is a technique invented by the Swedish biologist.

This process she invented. It's where you're 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 the thing invented in Italy. It's called Capsulamundi. 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, Caitlin Dodie's. She's got a YouTube channel called Ask 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 zips up 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 an eaters. OK, I'm looking at this right now. OK, well, all right. Let's pull up some images.

All right. OK, I thought that maybe this would be like a lonely mountaintop situation with maybe birds taking a nibble here and there. 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 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 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. 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 stars. And no one can fuck with that and it's great. OK, so Cole gets personal with me here. Let me ask you this with 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 going to 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 going to 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 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 don't know when they're happening, but we know it is happening guaranteed. And 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? 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 in life is or why you're here or what you are most passionate about. Like for me, when I 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, OK, this is what I'm here to do. And a lot of that's how it is for a lot of people with what their purpose in 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 going to do what I want to do and be who I'm going to be because you have end of life on my like in mind. Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt has taught me over the years. It's always better to be myself. And 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, isn't this right? 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, I 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 bolstering of your own self-esteem 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 in the last few years. So currently online, there's all this post about like me too, me too. Right. Right. Right. So I was assaulted several years ago and I actually press charges and I did the whole deal of like, I mean, I took it all the way. And 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. I'm so sorry. You know what, it sucks. And I still am dealing with it all these years later. 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 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 crazy experiences that happen to you. That's what sticks around. 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 and adds 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 their shoulder and an axe to grind, you're going to see it's going to be nasty at the end of life. And no one's going to want to have any of it. And no one's going to 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 going to 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 the 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 processes really specific just to death? So we 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. I 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 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.

OK. 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. 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 Kubler 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. 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 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, oh, shit, y'all. 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 really are not.

We all get sad. We all grieve. With looking at the ontology, 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 are we so why do we cry at movies? Like why? What do you think that sadness is? So if I was going to be like scientific or analytical about this response

only and have that 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 know death forces a change. And usually a death is not just like, oh, so and so isn't in my life anymore. OK, 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, 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 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. Cole's husband, Victor and Perry, was actually sitting a few feet away during this whole recording because, you know what, it's weird to hang out alone with a stranger in a Cincinnati Hampton Inn at 11 p.m. I mean, I get it. 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. Victor is tall with bookish glasses. And a few years ago, these little cuties recreated the American Gothic painting for the cover of American Funeral Director. It's adorable.

It's a stupid question, but 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. OK, David the Gnome was like a really popular cartoon series when I was a kid and it came from Japan and came to the US and was on like PBS in like the early nineties, late eighties and David the Gnome and his wife, Alisa. So the whole series is just like gnome stuff, basically. On the last episode, they're just like,

so gnomes only live to be four hundred years old, but they know they're going to die on their four hundredth birthday. So he and Lisa Gnome go up to a hill. They're like weeping. And then like swirls come. And they die and they turn out 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 with two dead parents. And that was the last episode. And yeah, that's a real clincher. Yeah, 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, 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 your 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 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, you know, I'm a I'm an instructor at a more Troy College and I teach thenatology for a bachelor program. And so all of my students are funeral directors or bombers. Really interesting crowd to be able to teach because, you know, I'm thinking, OK, they want to learn I'm teaching them thenatology, 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 talk 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, she will be cold and hard. But it's still your grandma. So put your mouth on her. Yeah. And just to rewind, when you say funeral home and the bodies are downstairs, I'm sorry, is that actually a home? Did 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. It's very common in this is a vestige 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. 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 all that stuff. 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 doctor couples, 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 and 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 in it. 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, 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 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 will 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 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. So that's a party fell. I don't know why I was talking about this. See, this is the problem. Ghost. I just got ghosts. So Tibetan Buddhists, it's about getting the soul out and then. But there's a 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 pizza 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. OK, 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? This gal, 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 sudden that I expected. So I always recommend books that are written by people that have had like whoa. 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. 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 Megery Anderson. OK. OK, super important scientific question. If you could become a ghost, would you become a ghost? I'm like thought of. I'm like, I'm going to 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 I love this question because this is where

religious and cultural and social beliefs intersect with 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. The soul, 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 Benicio del Toro's in it needing a makeover. But this original idea stemmed from the scientific experiments of a fellow named MacDougall, 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, MacDougall, 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 waning out rigor mortis

before shaping you into a fetal ball and putting you into the biodegradable egg. Let the woman win some Oscars. Why are you got a hate on her? 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 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 key word, 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 in actual life because you're not a full life until you have body plus soul.

So you become a life in different points. So in Judaism, it's the 40th day of gestation. That's when your life. So and in Judaism, while 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. OK. Sorry to jump back to cremation, but it's growing in popularity. And I've 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 of and it's really like just like a little simple test.

I mean, just you need to not be an idiot. So you need to not be an idiot. Yeah, throw your car keys in with the body. Yeah. Yeah. Like don't like get in there for fun because it's not. Yeah. And this is such a stupid question. But when they when someone is cremated, they're cremated in a casket, right? Or not a lot of times.

OK, so OK, cremation. 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 you get slid in. People also will buy like wood caskets, like so let's say that like coal dies. 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. Yes. OK. Because carbon is well, no, because at that temperature. OK, so the wood goes completely away because you're cremated between 16 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's very hot 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 coal. 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, 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. OK, 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 body preparation? Do you do any of that?

Or are you like, no, that's not my bag. I am not a licensed embalmer. However, I have witnessed them and know about them. And I deal with that in my job pretty, you know, pretty regularly. So embalming is so it's interesting, quite a few of my students, all they want to do morning to night 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 what's 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. 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, does your stereotype of what a mortician is, you know, kind of stoic and and quiet is 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 funeral 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 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, I love that you're like, I could buy a dime bag at the grocery store, a weed 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 going to happen when I die? Should I be afraid? What am I doing? OK, Aaron wants to know how accurate is the expression Lepidymor 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 going to die. But that's why you do the physical practice of yoga is 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? Oh, 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. OK, 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.

I never asked them. I just kind of did it. So there you go. 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. Right. 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 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. Oh, yeah.

You got to we got to die off or else we can't make room for new people. That's right. 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 OK, so when you die, like your skin and all that stuff, like dehydrates, OK? And so when the chemical and so after like if you're doing a bombing, your blood is drained out and it goes down the drain. OK, 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 is 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 going to have yellow cast to your skin. Well, there's embalming 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've got to look good. That's the last time some of these people are going to 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've got to look fine. 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. Right. 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. Yeah, cause of death, the thing that made me be dead. Yeah. 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? Dymethyltryptamine, aka DMT. Right. So ayahuasca, is that how you say it? Ayahuasca, that has DMT in it plus other stuff. Right.

Now, the pineal gland in the brain 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 will post to correct me if I'm wrong. You your body does release DMT. OK, and other stuff like there's other chemical things that happen.

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, 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. So it's probably not going to be like you're in Joshua Tree, like in a weird trippy orgy. OK, 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, OK, 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. OK. 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 good. I did hear that that 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 percent not a doctor, but I'm going to guess

that this sound is kind of akin to the breeze passing through a flute. Just a gentle song of happenstance. And Stephanie had a question. She wanted to know if, and this is funny, because I know her and her birthday is 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 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 give it a C plus in terms of holidays

and my like calendar of events. What's your A plus holiday? So I love Yom Kippur. I'm Jewish and that's the day of atonement. So where 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 Yom Kippur. Anyway, Halloween 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 Ubergoth. 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. 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 Cole 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. Like 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, honey, I'm not going to die. Forever. And I'm also going to win the lottery. And we're all we're all we're all a lot of people just are like waiting for the thing to discover them. Right. And it doesn't work that way. And death and dying is not to be feared.

It's the living like fear, your life choices. That's where the fear can come from, you know, and the fear of 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 true. Oh, it to yourself to do that. And you owe it to the everyone that came before you to do that. You owe it to the world.

You owe it to us to be who you're supposed to be. And what is your will go least favorite to favorite? Your least favorite thing about your job? And it could be anything. It could be like an early hours could be being on call. Anything. Not a fan of email. Not a fan of email. OK. 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. OK. 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? 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. 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.

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 and 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 thenatology 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'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, I'm probably going to end up super scared and balling.

And I'm not. I'm like, oh, I just had to live instead of fearing death. Yeah, I just have to get more excited about actually being alive. Yeah. 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 going to be America's favorite vanatologist. That's the goal, at least the only purple-haired one that I know of. As she left, Cole 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. Now to gently stalk Cole and Perry and be her friend, check out her website, HelloCole.com. She's on Instagram as just in Perry. She's on Twitter as Cole and Perry. 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. Now if you want to wrap allergies, allergies merch has shirts and hats and t-shirts. And now are you ready for this? Pins, enamel pins with the first four allergies are up and they are so incredible. So thanks

Shannon Feltas for the design and Bonnie Dutch for the merch help. These pins are awesome and they're limited edition. So if you want them, get them sooner rather than later. And now more than ever ask smart people all the dumb questions you want when you're still romping around on earth as a bucket of freaky stardust. Next week, I'm honestly not sure which episode it'll be. It might be entomology. It might be cosmos. I'm not sure. I don't know. Stay tuned. It'll be something now. Neuropathology, nephology, seriology, selenology.