Science Vs - The Best Ever Episode of Science Vs

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

This week – our episode that you voted as our BEST wild card episode!! You’ll have to listen to find out what it is.  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/SVBestEverEp In this episode talk to Brie Smith, Micah Truman, Katrina Spade and Thomas Bass.  This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell and Wendy Zukerman, with help from Meryl Horn, Michelle Dang, Rose Rimler, Courtney Gilbert and Disha Bhagat. Were edited by Blythe Terrell and Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design of this episode was by Bobby Lord. Mix and sound design of our original episode was by Sam Bair. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord, So Wylie and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all of the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr John Paul, Dr Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, Dr Muriel Lepesteur, Jean F. Bonhotal, Dr Mark Pawlett, Professor Komla Tsey, Dr Ruth McManus and Dr Julie Rugg. Special thanks to Jimmy Olson, Jonathan Goldstein, Julia Martin, The Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Wendy Zuckerman here. Our new season will be kicking off in just two weeks. That's right. Set the calendar. Just getting some finishing touches on it. But today we have something very special. So for the last month, we've been replaying our greatest hits, episodes that you guys voted for.

We've gone through the drugs category, the wellness category. But today is a very special day because we are announcing which episode was voted the best science versus episode of all time. And with me here is our editor, Blythe Terrell. Hi, Blythe. Hey, Wendy. So we tallied up the results and two episodes tied for the top spot again. We had another tiebreaker. One of them, I think, benefited from recent history bias

because it was drumroll. Did we predict the pandemic? Oh, really? Which we played last season. So I think that, although a very, very good episode could have benefited from the fact that we played it so recently. Surprise people like that. It was in people's minds.

It kind of like also freaked people the hell out. So I'm a little surprised that made the cut. Yeah, yeah, me too. So the other tiebreaker that we're going to call the winner of this competition. We're just making up the rules now. Well, you know, we just played the other one. If you want to go hear it and you haven't heard it, just scroll down. All right. So this is an episode that I think either, again, much like the pandemic one, I think people either loved it or they were like, nope, nope, no, no, no, no, no. Don't even want to listen to it.

Love a polarizing. Polarizing. Polarizing episode. Love it. And I'm here to congratulate you, Blythe, because you produced this episode. It is, in fact, composting human bodies. What? What?

What? Yes. That is surprising. Yes, our episode on whether you should die by composting your body. How do you feel, Blythe? Yeah. I mean, right. I'm afraid it's like that one Oscars where they say the wrong name

or they open the wrong envelope or whatever. No, this is real, Blythe. This is real. You're episode one. No, but that's really surprising. This episode, it had a huge impact on some of our listeners. So people said that after hearing it, they changed their minds about what they wanted to do with their own bodies after they died. Like one listener said, I've literally added this to my health directive as my preferred method once I've died. Like one listener said, I've literally added this to my health directive

as my preferred method once I've died. So, I mean, we've really changed people's afterlife. But I do love this episode. What did you love about this episode? I mean, this episode, so I, I mean, close listeners of this show will know that I do not routinely produce episodes. I'm usually more

behind the scenes helping the team produce their amazing episodes. But this topic, you know, Wendy, you sent me an article on it a few years back, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I was like, this is so interesting and so, like, how does composting human bodies work? Can you really do that? So I just, like, could not stop thinking about it. And I was like, we have to make this episode. And it was so fun. It was so fun to make it. It was so fascinating. And like the composting people like let us into their world. And we got to like really see things up close. And we basically just like got to go on this composting adventure and like sort of ask all the questions we had about it. And that was so fun. And so I'm very glad people liked it.

It definitely made me feel better about dying, weirdly. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is like a real reframe, a real glow up for getting… It's a real glow up of death. That's right. That's right. I love that. So let's jump in.

Yeah, let's play it. Let's do it. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan Eleven?

I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan Eleven. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is...

Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. All right. So, we're going to find the bodies, is that right? Yes. I'm driving through the outer suburbs of Seattle with my editor, Blythe Terrell. Blythe's been working on science verses for about five years.

And yet, still can't quite remember the theme song. Where we're driving, there's boarded up houses and wire fences. I guess it's like one degree off a spooky suburb, I think. If just one ghost walked past, I'd be like, this is scary. Yeah, I think that checks out. And this suburb, with its almost haunted houses, gave way to an industrial park, which is where we're headed, to look for one very specific warehouse.

Where is it? Then the destination is on your right. Oh, on our right. And then we see it. OK, here it is. This nondescript grey building. And inside it, people are doing something that some find very controversial.

And maybe even a little creepy. We're welcomed by a very friendly fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, an office shirt and a flannel vest that feels like he's ready for a tech conference. His name is Micah Truman, and he shows us around. shirt and a flannel vest that feels like he's ready for a tech conference. His name is Micah Truman, and he shows us around. It's this huge, echoey, industrial-looking space. Yeah, we're not playing wind in your wings here.

There's large machines whirring in the background. And all this farm stuff, like piles of straw and alfalfa. And they are going to go inside these containers that we see, which are about the size of a big fridge lying on its side. Yeah, the vessels are here. So what is it made of? It's made of a polycarbonate. It's a polycarbonate that is both incredibly insulating and incredibly strong. There's a rack of these vessels behind us,

stacked three high and about a dozen across. So picture a warehouse just full of these vessels. Oh, wow. And what's inside these vessels isn't just stuff like straw and alfalfa. For what's happening here to work, we're going to need one very key ingredient. Your body would rest up to about here.

Oh, that's right. Your body. Well, we're going to need a dead human body. Because inside these big vessels... There are people in them. What's happening here? They're composting human bodies. You know, like that thing that people do with leftover scraps at dinner?

But this time, they're doing it with us. Turning bodies into soil. And this whole process, it takes only a couple of months to get a full human body into tiny flecks of dirt. At this human composting facility, all of this was super intriguing. Like Micah showed me this spot on a composting vessel. It was a vent on the top of the box about the size of my fist. And he gave me a simple suggestion. Put your hand here. Oh, it's hot.

This is the body transforming into soil. And it's magic. It's an absolute miracle. It's crazy. When you feel that heat, what are you thinking about? Oh my gosh, safe journey to you. I think of it like you're transforming into a new thing, almost butterfly-esque.

I'm like, go, go, go. Go make your transformation. So this is what we're digging into today. Human composting. Why are we doing this? What exactly is going on in that hot vessel? And what happens when cold, hard science collides with our very complex feelings around death? When they walk out with the compost, what is it?

Is it still, to you, a human remains? Completely different. It's not a person. It's not at all. Composting humans is coming up just after the break. Welcome back. Today, we're sticking our science versus shovels into this wild idea, human composting. And the reason that this is kicking off now

is because it's part of this big push for us to deal with our dead in ways that are better for the environment and better for all of us. It's sometimes called the Green Death Movement. And we got to talking about all this with Bree Smith... Hello, hello, hello. How loud do you talk? I talk this loud. Talk, talk, talk, talk. ..who's worked in the funeral industry for more than a decade.

I do feel like you're quite measured. I think that's a trick of the trade, is to be even-keeled. But Bree has been around dead bodies her whole life. Her mum was a make-up artist, who was sometimes called to do prep for funerals. So she'd go down to the local morgue and put make-up on the dead. And little Bree would tag along, see what mum was up to. And I remember her curling old lady hair. I just like have distinct memories of her with like

little tiny curling irons. And I just saw her take them from looking dead to looking a lot less dead. And it was so beautiful. Bree grew up to be a funeral director, which meant she was now dealing with dead bodies all day, every day at work. And she told us that there are some definite downsides to how we typically handle them. Like, take cremation, which is super common in the US. Blythe asked her about it. How many people do you think you've cremated?

Thousands, probably. I mean, at least over a thousand, yeah. I really don't like cremation. I would do anything to any of my loved ones besides that. One of the reasons that Brie doesn't like it is because cremation isn't good for the planet. When we burn bodies, the carbon inside us goes up into the air. It's estimated that in the US, cremation emits about a billion pounds of CO2 each year.

Metals in our body, like mercury tooth fillings, they also go up in smoke. Sometimes I would be cremating and black smoke would start coming out of the fluke. So I felt very uncomfortable. And then there's embalming, which Americans often do to bodies before burying them. Embalming involves injecting formaldehyde into a corpse to preserve it. But formaldehyde can be dangerous. It's classified as a carcinogen.

And embalmers are at a higher risk of some cancers, like leukemia and pancreatic cancer, compared to the rest of the population. And Brie, she inhaled this stuff for years. When you embalm formaldehyde, vapors will come up. And I would walk out of the prep room room and my nose hairs would be stiff from like. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, and that is actually. The embalming fluid went up into your nose.

It was like in your nose and you would go home and you'd be like, it'd be dinnertime and you could still kind of smell the embalming fluid. So a lot of what we're doing now to our dead bodies, it isn't great. Enter greener and less chemical-y options. Because you see, more and more people are wanting things like a natural burial, which is where you get buried often in a graveyard,

but without chemicals, which is something that get buried often in a graveyard, but without chemicals, which is something that's always been common in some cultures. And it is a good idea, particularly if you're worried about the environment. But what makes people excited about human composting is that instead of taking perhaps years for a body to decompose, this could be done in just a few months. And then you could take that soil,

which is full of nutrients from our body, and use it wherever you like, to grow a garden or restore degraded land. When Bree started really thinking about human composting, she was excited. And she ended up joining Micah's team, who we met at the start of the show. Every little bit of scientist inside of me was enthralled with that entire process. excited. And she ended up joining Micah's team, who we met at the start of the show.

Every little bit of scientist inside of me was enthralled with that entire process, you know, trying to figure out how. This takes us to our next question. How does it happen? How do you turn a stiff into soil in just a couple of months. Well, the brains behind this whole human composting push is Katrina Spade. So Blythe and I met Katrina at a park in Seattle... Hello, ducky. ..where we found out the details of how we are composting humans. Hello. Hello.

We found a cosy little spot to sit in. Is that a dead rat? I got to chatting. So about a decade ago, Katrina, who's trained as an architect, started thinking about what she's going to do with her body when she eventually dies. And she started looking into those options of burial and cremation and was like...

This stuff hasn't changed in, like, 100 years. Why? Is this the best we can do? And she keeps thinking about it and talking to her friends about it, including one mate who was into composting. And she asked me if I'd heard of the fact that farmers compost whole cows. And I will say that it was kind of like a lightbulb, because if you can compost a

cow, you can probably compost a human being. Yeah, some farmers compost animals like pigs, cows, and chickens. This happens for a few reasons, like sometimes if the animal is sick and can't be eaten. And this was Katrina's jumping off point. She was like, if we know that we can do this for farm animals, how do we do it for human animals? Katrina starts reading into it, and she finds out that the science of all this is actually pretty fun. So to start with, the real heroes of composting are microbes. The microbes come from the air

and they're on us right now as we speak and they're on the dead people. I talked to Micah Truman about this too. It's gorgeous, right? And so these microbes kick in and they begin the transformation process. They love heat and moisture and oxygen. These teeny tiny microbes,

mostly bacteria, but also other stuff like fungi, basically get unleashed after we die, oozing out chemicals that break down organic stuff, like a dead cow or a corpse. Then what comes out the other side is soil. But to do their jobs, microbes need just the right environment. Like what Micah said, they love heat, moisture and oxygen. That oxygen encourages the right kind of microbes to thrive so that you really get the compost going. What we also are going to need here is the right balance of carbon and nitrogen. Humans, horses and pigs, well, we're all nitrogen rich.

So to get a good compost, you need to add stuff with a bunch of carbon in it. Think wood chips, alfalfa or straw. So Katrina's reading all this and she's like, huh, we could totally do this with people. There was no question if we could make a human body compost, right? There's no question. I'm not kidding when I say if you can compost a cow, you can compost a human. But now, Katrina had to figure out exactly how she was going to make this work in people. Because when farmers compost a bunch of, say, chickens,

they can just pile them on top of each other with some wood chips or whatnot. And at first, Katrina was like, maybe we could do something like that. Well, early on, I had a vision in architecture school for a large collective core composter. It was a big building in which all the bodies would go together. I had a vision in architecture school for a large collective core composter. It was a big building in which all the bodies would go together. But Katrina thought about it a touch more and was like, well, humans are sentimental creatures.

We like to respect our dead. If you're saying like, we're going to make a giant building where you put all the bodies together, it starts to sound kind of scary. That's gross. No. But if you're like, you, when you die, you will be laid to rest in this one vessel. Consider it a hotel for the dead. It's just for you. And your body will stay there for about 30 days with us. And then you'll be soil. That's a much better pitch. Katrina decided to try it out. She joined forces with a team of nerds at Washington State University to help her iron out the details.

And together, they concocted a mix of alfalfa, straw, and wood chips to tuck around people's bodies in individual vessels. And in 2018, they started a pilot study to test this all out in humans. So now, they started a pilot study to test this all out in humans. So now they just needed some humans willing to be guinea pigs for all this. The first people to boldly go into their hotel for the dead and be composted. And it turned out finding them wasn't too hard. Look at this lady. She was so great.

Oh, can you describe what we're looking at? Yeah, this is a picture of Darby sitting in her living room in her wheelchair. On the side of the wheelchair is a bumper sticker that says, War is the Real Enemy. And she's smiling very broadly. Darby was 93 when she died. And towards the end of her life life she read about Katrina's work from

an article in the paper and she loved the idea it was perfect for her to be one of the first she in fact would call me on the phone and she'd be like why is it taking you so long this was obviously before she died and at one point I was like, you know, Darby, I know that you mean well, but I'm working really hard. Like, I'm doing my best here. So if you could just be a little gentler. Darby joined Katrina's pilot study. She became one of six people who donated their bodies for it. They were all placed in these big cylinders that were black and plastic.

And to balance out Darby's nitrogen-rich body, they carefully added in that mix of carbony stuff. We had laid a bed of alfalfa, straw and wood chips into this vessel and then placed her body onto it with some, you know, a couple of us adults, because a body can be hard to maneuver, and laid her on this bed. And then we covered her with more of the same. I think at that point we were using pitchforks, really farm-esque, you know? And so covered her with more, and then finally covered her face, and then that was it.

And kind of, I know I did read a poem. Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride. On the day when we actually laid her body into a vessel, this is going to sound so cheesy, there was a double rainbow. I was like, of course, Darby, of course. Over the coming weeks, the researchers in the study carefully managed the compost vessels, adding air so it had enough oxygen,

making sure the moisture levels and the temperature was just right, and then regularly rotating them to mix it all up. After over a month, Katrina came back to see Darby, and where there had been a body and a bunch of alfalfa, straw, and wood chips. Now there was mostly dirt. Katrina grabbed a handful. It just was a really nice way to complete her journey. But yeah, I mean, it was really powerful to see that it worked.

It wasn't just soil in these bins. Even seven weeks into the process, there were some large bone fragments. Our bones are tougher for microbes to break down than our fleshier, gooier bits. Katrina decided that in the future, she could break the bones down using a similar machine to what crematories use

and then return them to the vessel future, she could break the bones down using a similar machine to what crematories use, and then return them to the vessel so that the microbes could have another go at them. Overall, Katrina was feeling pretty good about all this. Do you think that you were the first people to kind of intentionally compost a human body in this way? I think so. How does that feel? It's really, it's really, it's so satisfying. It feels amazing. Yeah, it's really kind of moving to me. So everything seems to be going to plan, except that somewhere in the midst of all this sciencing, Katrina ran into a bit of a snag. She got an email from a law professor telling her, I like what you're trying to do, but you should know it's totally illegal. Damn it.

Unsurprisingly, states in the U.S. have very strict rules about the things you can and can't do with a dead body. And at the time, you couldn't compost one. So Katrina headed to the capital of Washington state to try to change that. And she brought along some props. A little baggie of cow compost. Like a party favor. Like a party favor. It was really cute.

And then we would bring them to Olympia and then kind of walk the halls. And any legislator who wanted could have a little box of this stuff and take a look at it. And some would say like, thanks, but no thanks. And then some people would be like, can I smell it? And I'm like, of course you can smell it. It smells great, like soil. As a side note, that earthy smell is called geosmin. And rather wonderfully, it's made by some happy microbes that are in the compost pile,

releasing little baby spores into the soil. That's what makes soil smell so nice. And so, just a few years ago, in 2019, Katrina watched as her own little baby, human composting, became legal in Washington. The day that the governor signed the bill, I had my kids in little suits. I was in a suit.

My girlfriend was there with me. And we're standing, like, you get your official picture with the governor as he was signing the bill, and we're just, like, grinning. Like, the picture was, like, we're just, all of us are just, like, beaming. So that was kind of, like like the pinnacle right there. And now when someone dies, they can be composted.

And it's not just in Washington, but other states have started approving this too. It costs about as much or even less than getting cremated. You send your body in, they put you in a container, add things like alfalfa and straw, and away you go. And once it's done, your family will end up with all this soil. But as this has started to take off, a couple of concerns have come up. And a big one that scientists are pondering is whether this human compost is safe. Because a compost pile is full of bacteria, right?

And if a person dies of some nasty disease, could that be in the compost? After the break, we follow the journey of more than a million composted chickens to find out. Welcome back. So, we just found out how to compost a human. A bit of alfalfa, straw and wood chips. Bada bing, bada boom.

But now we want to know, is this bacteria-stuffed pile of dirt actually safe to take home? So to find out, we called up Thomas Bass at Montana State University. Casually go by Tommy, which is just fine here. Tommy knows a lot about what happens to nasty pathogens inside compost heaps because he works with farmers. And as part of his job, when farmers get an outbreak of some disease like bird flu, he's part of the team that works out out what are we going to do here? And kind of surprisingly, Tommy told us that a lot of the time these farms are turning to

composting their infected animals to deal with the outbreak. And that's because composting can actually kill pathogens. Like Tommy told us about this huge chicken farm with over a million chickens. Bird flu broke out and all the chickens were to be composted. And so how much compost would that make? A lot. We did wind rows, which are long compost piles that are maybe 10 to 12 feet wide, six feet high, and hundreds of feet long. It was roughly the size of a football field. They laid the carbon-rich materials down, like wood chips, and then all those dead chickens went in the pile. Some of my colleagues call it a Twinkie or whatnot. You have then a mix of the potentially infected material. Oh, that's the cream?

That's the cream of the Twinkie? The infected chicken? The filling, if you will. And what's pretty remarkable here is that this compost Twinkie is going to become a virus-killing machine. And here's a big reason why. When the microbes get to work,

it can get hot in that compost pile. When those microorganisms start doing their work and metabolising and ripping apart carbon bonds and whatnot. How hot does it get in a big carcass compost pile? Generally, within a couple of days, you'll see temperatures 130, 140, you know, 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. That is cool that that is just the microbes hard at work.

Yeah, yeah. One scientist told us that it got so hot in his compost pile that he actually cooked a roast dinner in there, like just for fun. He said it was delicious. But the point is that we have data that shows that when it gets hot enough over a certain period of time, lots of different dangerous pathogens struggle to survive. You know, it destroys such a wide range of pathogens, foot and mouth disease, avian influenza, plenty of bacteria, salmonella. According to the USDA,

if your compost pile is around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, which is roughly 55 Celsius, and it stays that way for at least three days, your avian flu should be a cock. And Katrina says that at her human composting facility, the vessels do get that hot. If you have that environment so tuned that the microbes are so happy that you're seeing temperatures, which is the indication of happiness for those microbes, at, like, we see the temperatures jump to 150 sometimes on day two.

Wow. From cool. But although compost piles can kill a bunch of different pathogens, they're not John Wick. You can have some survivors. Because certain kinds of nasties, they can handle the heat of a compost pile. Like researchers have found that the bacteria that causes tuberculosis,

that can survive. So can prions, those sturdy bastards that cause mad cow disease. And because of this, the law in Washington and other states says that at places like Katrina's, they're not allowed to compost people who have died from particular diseases. They've also got to test the compost for certain bacteria. And big picture, Tommy says that even if human composting got really big, like thousands of people getting composted, tons of this stuff strewn across the landscape, as long as these companies are hitting those temperatures that we talked about

and regularly testing their heap for nasty bacteria, then he feels pretty good about it. So, you know, we're not seeing, you know, all the millions of tons of agricultural and food waste, including whole animals that has been composted, you know, forever. There's not evidence that it's posing a significant risk. Right. So in that, you know, football fields sized compost that you helped build for that huge chicken farm, all that compost then would have been used somewhere, right? And did that start an outbreak of avian flu? Right. It did not. And bottom line, Tommy told us that if he was given some burlap bags full of human compost, he'd gladly put them over his flowers.

Yeah, we've got some Gerber daisies that come back and we've got sunflowers we'll replant. So you'd put it on the daisy? Yeah, and that just seems nice, right? And I just don't know that I'd put it on the tomatoes. It's almost like a, it would be like communion, right? Like, all right, kids, here's the tomatoes, and there's a little bit of grandpa in there. So he has to tell me, so why wouldn't it go on the tomatoes

other than the slight creep factor? That's the only reason, just like... Oh, really? It's not because you're worried about pathogens, just the creep factor? No, no. It's safe, you know, but there's always, I feel like, a leap of faith in science.

We look at the body of evidence. Nothing is ever certain in science, but, you know, I believe it to be very, very safe. Some other academics that we talked to about this were also pretty confident that it would be safe, but some were like, maybe don't put human compost on stuff that's going to go in your mouth. Would you do this for yourself? Would you get human composted? Yeah, I would. And I talked to my wife a little bit about it. All of our carbon can be sequestered back into the earth and all of our proteins and nitrogen

and nutrients, calcium and phosphorus are valuable to healthy soils. And to me, it's a nicer idea than a super expensive velvety coffin in a cemetery. One of the most expensive pieces of furniture anybody will ever buy to be put in a vault six feet under. We don't know if human composting is the most environmentally friendly way to deal with our dead. It's just so new. But we do know that by putting our carbon in the earth, we're not pumping it into the atmosphere like we do with cremation. After all of this, Blythe and I just really wanted to know what this compost looked like,

smelled like. So while we were at the composting place that Micah runs, we asked if we could see it. And he said yes. Yeah, why don't we open it just so you can take a sniff of what we have. Okay. Micah and the team pulled out a blue container about the size of those big blue recycling bins. And inside it is a human.

Well, it was a human just a few weeks ago. Now it's compost. It came from a person whose family had agreed that it could be shown this way. So we're just slowly pulling out one of the vessels. Oh, wow. Is it? This is it. Isn't they're beautiful it is amazing so how about the smell like the forest after a rain and it's like this very beautiful like sort of auburn color

almost like a really rich brown with you know sort of flecks of different colors in it, like sort of darker chips and lighter chips. Yeah, I mean, it looks really, I keep thinking of the word healthy, which feels really weird because we're sort of speaking of somebody who's past. Can I touch it? Look at your face. Okay, so I'm touching it now. Wow, it's just like nothing I've ever felt before.

I'm a little overwhelmed. I just can't believe it that this was a human a month ago. It's just incredible. You can't stop running your fingers through it. I can't stop running my fingers through it. I know. I just want to keep putting my hands in it. So we felt this weird awe as we were putting our hands in this human compost. But this was just a stranger to us. And we wondered, how would you feel if it was your loved one and you were putting your hands through them?

So Blythe and I asked Brie about it. I guess I just, I have a really distinct memory. Brie told us about this woman who knew she was dying from cancer and wanted to be composted. After the process was all done, there were these big burlap bags of soil. And the woman's parents came to pick them up. And while the woman who died had wanted this for herself, her parents were clearly struggling with this whole idea. And when they came in, I could see the discomfort.

I could really see the hesitation and the discomfort. Because when I saw that family come in and they saw these big bags of compost, you know, I saw their wheels turning and them not being able to kind of take it in that moment. I decided to open a bag. I was like, I just think that this is going to be the way that we get through to them. And then the mother didn't even speak a word of English and walked over and just dug her hands in. And I saw the hesitation and the discomfort turn to her being comfortable and her really accepting it and them hugging and her hugging me. And it was just the swing of emotions was extraordinary. Micah Truman, who owns this place, has been really surprised about how people are reacting to it. He told us stories of someone who poured Baileys inside the vessel

before it closed. It was their person's favourite alcohol. People put photographs over the composting vessel and many just wanted to sit beside their person as they were composting. Sometimes they'd bring a cup of coffee for them and just put it on top of the vessel. Holy cow, I wasn't ready for that. I saw one guy take his mother's soil and I saw him, he took the bag and he put it in the front seat and then I saw him put the seatbelt on it.

And when you do this with all the wood chips and straw and alfalfa, you end up driving home with quite a lot of compost. Micah says it's about 250 pounds or a dozen big burlap bags. As Blythe and I were winding up our trip, our last stop was to see how some people were using their compost. We drove up to visit some land that Micah's company had bought to help restore. It was out on a country road.

It felt like it was kind of in the middle of nowhere. Hey, this is nice. It's like up on a hill in the wilderness. At the entrance was this big moss-covered tree. Ooh, slug. A dead slug there, Anne. I don't know. Slug's on the move.

Slowly. Life was all around this area. It was just really green, tons of trees. But then there was this clearing where there were no plants. It was kind of like a gravel driveway. And then over to one side we saw where someone had carefully placed some compost. What we're seeing is just sort of this very thin layer of compost and then little shoots, plants, lots of different kinds popping up.

You know, I'm like imagining sort of all the little microbes working their way through the soil and making it healthier. Like your little microbes are set free to sort of live on and like do good work and do their little microbe thing and like make the earth better i think that seems very lovely i mean this is beautiful to that to think that your remains could create a beautiful little garden that is lovely put me under some gum tree some kang kangaroos, I assume, digging around the base of the tree. Exactly, crapping on my composted remains.

It's just really such a beautiful image you've painted. That's Science Versus. So that was human composting, the winner of the People's Choice Best Science Versus episode competition. Thank you so much for listening and helping us to find out what episodes of Science Versus you loved. We loved reading all of your comments. It was really special. We have a brand new season of Science Versus coming just around the corner in just a few weeks. In the meantime, if you miss us, you can come see what silly things I'm doing on TikTok. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. This episode had 61 citations in it.

And if you'd like to read them, head over to our show notes and click on the link to the transcript. You'll also see the credits for this episode in there. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you are listening on Spotify, then follow us and tap the bell icon. So that way you'll get notifications when new episodes pop up. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. Okay. Hello, hello, hello. All right.

We're just having a quick break, a quick banana. But I realized I didn't wash my hands. After you ran your hands through the compost, you didn't wash them yet? No, did you? I snuck some sanitizer, but I can still see some flecks. Yeah, I still have flecks too. Do you want to go back inside and wash your hands? No, it's all right.