Stuff You Should Know - How Embalming Works

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

The Death Suite continues! In this installment, Josh and Chuck go over what it takes to preserve a human body using chemicals and whether that’s such a good thing to do as far as the environment is concerned. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Part of the famed and legendary Death's Suite, which just rambles on. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this in a couple of them, but I'm surprised of two things that we haven't covered this in full yet. Me too. And that you managed to find an article on our old, our old pal's website, HouseToForks.com, that we hadn't used or written. Dude, I scour the site frequently and every once in a while. Do too. Yeah, sometimes you can find one. You're like, how did this slip by? That's why it just keeps you going, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's hard to believe. We still get a lot of our

shorties ideas from there, which is great, but it has been a while, I think, since we were able to find something. It's just hiding in there, hiding in the blood vessels of the body. Very nice. And speaking of bodies, Chuck, I don't remember where we talked about this before, but I do remember that we talked about the death of Abraham Lincoln. Yes. And how he was one of the first presidents to, oh, it must have been lying in state. I'll bet it was the short stuff on lying in state, because I think he was one of the first presidents to lie in state in different places. And the reason he was able to do that is because he was embalmed. He was subject to some modern chemical embalming techniques that had recently

been introduced by a guy named Dr. Thomas Holmes. And it allowed Abraham Lincoln to take a very leisurely 19 days to make it from Washington, D.C., to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, for burial, which is a long time for a corpse in the 19th century to be above the ground. And yet, he was still fairly presentable by the time he got to Springfield when he was buried. And it was all thanks to that embalming process. Yeah. And we'll get to Holmes more in a minute, but this was during the Civil War. So great timing for Lincoln, also terrible timing for Lincoln, just in general. But as far as going on display, great timing. Previous to this, he would have been literally on ice when you hear

like, you know, the body's on ice. That's how they used to do it. It was the only way they could do it. Yeah, I have to say, you mean I went to this thing called the Merchant's House Museum in New York. It's the oldest house in New York. And it was owned by a sea merchant named Seabury Treadwell, if I'm not mistaken, one of the great names of all time. And we just happened to go at a time when they were recreating what the house would have been like for the funeral of Seabury Treadwell. And they had like a casket set up and everything in the living room. They had lilies everywhere, just stunk of lilies, which is one of the things they used to mask the smell of decay. And then they also had a little soundtrack playing of water dripping because

he would have been on huge blocks of ice to kind of keep him to keep his body cold. But it's one of the cooler things I've ever seen in my life. And, you know, walking around the museum, even when they don't have something like that going on, it's pretty cool. It's definitely worth the visit. What part of town? Downtown. Somewhere in Manhattan. I don't remember exactly where. All right. But I'm pretty sure it's lower. I don't know if it's east side or west side. It's got to be. I mean, that was early New York. Yeah, but it's super cool. The Merchant House Museum, if I'm not mistaken. Fantastic. And while you're down there, check out the Tenement Museum. Yes, which we have not, I've not been to. You've been there, I guess?

Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. It's great. Okay. Yeah, it's very cool. I mean, if you like old New York and seeing how things used to be. Right. And then going downstairs and having some tapas. Oh, man, you had me a tapas. Tapas or sushi. But this is embalming, however, is not something that was invented during the Civil War. That was just sort of using more modern chemicals. This is something that people have been doing since ancient times. The word itself and balm just means to put on a balm. And that comes from the fact that in ancient times, like we're talking thousands and thousands of years ago, they would put spices and perfume things, kind of anything that they could think of to keep that body from becoming bones.

Yeah. And apparently, Thomas Holmes was inspired by some Egyptian mummies that he'd been studying and realized like they had done a really great job of embalming techniques. So he started coming up with his own embalming concoctions. I believe his was arsenic that he was using, which became into wide use in the 1860s until the 1910s, I think. But his introduction of the chemical embalming to the US, it just changed funerals in the United States to this day. We still have things like viewings where you basically say, come see the dead body with your own eyes before the funeral, the night before the funeral, wakes. Just things that we wouldn't have done otherwise or wouldn't have been able to do. Delaying funerals until the weekend

when everybody's available. All of the modern trappings of an American or Canadian or it turns out New Zealand funeral are based on the fact that Thomas Holmes introduced chemical embalming in the 1860s and that allows us to do things like that now. That's right. If you want to go back through time and look at the beginnings, you could go all the way back about 5,000 years ago to Spain. There were cadavers found there in La Vellaia. Very nice. That's where I would go with sure. All right. This is in Spain and they were found to be covered in hundreds of pounds of ground-up cinnabar, which is the most delicious way to be involved. Right. Although I don't know, honey. Don't forget honey. Yeah, that's true. Oh, it's not cinnabon. I thought it was cinnabon.

Cinnabar. Sorry about that. We've talked about cinnabar before. No, cinnabon will put you in the tomb. Am I gonna embalm you from the inside out and actually know that I think about it if you ate enough? Yeah, probably so. I haven't had one of those in a long time. And this is like a suspected case, basically. If you want to know for sure that they were purposely embalming people, you can go back to 4,000 BC with the Egyptians that you were talking about. People would be wrapped in cloth. They would sometimes be buried with charcoal and sand. They would be buried away from the Nile River or anywhere where the Nile River could reach via flooding. And the idea here is that in the afterlife, you were going to be physically

resurrected at some point and immortal. So your body needed to be recognizable. So the soul and the shadow and the heart and the name of the individual could lure it back. They embalmed about 730 million people. So it was a very common practice, even though the methods that we're gonna talk about here in a sec would be different depending on what status you were. And just keep in mind, this isn't like modern day embalming that you would think, like that kind of preservation. It's the kind of preservation to where you don't just rot into bones and eventually just dust. You've seen these embalmed and tomb bodies. They look like sort of baseball gloves at that point, but it's still recognizable as a human body. Exactly. Which in and of itself is a triumph

of embalming because without any embalming, a human body, depending on the climate, is going to skeletonize, which is just decay into nothing left but a skeleton, and anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. So the idea that, like you said, it's still a recognizable human with tissue still intact and sometimes hair and things like that, that was a successful embalming and then some. Oh yeah, big time. We even have a description thanks to a historian from Greece named Herodotus who described how they did it. And it makes sense considering what we know now. Like if you hunt an animal and if you're into that kind of thing, the first thing that you do when you're field dressing that animal is you take those organs

out because that keeps the body very hot and warm and that is going to really just speed up the bacteria and the decay. So the first thing that they did was remove the vital organs to cool that body down, remove the brain, wash it in palm wine, and then you have all these different vases, you know, at the time they didn't have these modern chemicals. They had herbs and stuff like that. They had these canopic jars filled to the top with all these various herbs that they used. Yep. Then they would basically take the body and fill it with some myrrh or other resins, perfumes, that kind of stuff, stash it in some potassium nitrate for, I believe, 70 days to kind of desiccate it. And then after that is when they would put it in those famous bandages, wrap

it up like what we understand as a mummy, and then put it in the coffin and inside a tomb. We did a whole episode on mummies. So if you're just like, I want to know more, tell me some more about mummies. We're going to take our leave for mummies here, but you can pause this one, go listen to the mummy's episode, maybe have a sandwich, and then come back and listen to the rest of this episode, and you will be chock full of embalming. Yeah, and then maybe top it off with our cremation episode just for a full day. Oh, that's a good one, Chuck. Nice. Since you had the sandwich. Yeah. So this process was, you know, kind of with all the bells and whistles was for people with a lot of money, maybe the royal family, even of the time, you know, the kind of the further

you went down the social ladder, the less complicated it got as far as having access to some of this stuff. So, you know, one thing they might do if you were sort of maybe middle class was inject it with cedar oil, store it in that potassium nitrate for the same amount of time, and then withdraw that oil. And I got the feeling that that just kind of pulls out a lot of the stuff with it. And then you've got skin and bones. And then if you really were sort of at the top of the totem pole, they would pull the intestines and then just cover the body and that potassium nitrate and probably not even for 70 days. Very nice. That was a beautiful early SYSK reference, too. I know. Can't wait to get emails. Oh, I got that wrong. In fact, I'm right.

Right. We'll be like, you need to go further back in the catalog, friend. Yes, exactly. Do you want to keep going and talking about the ancient world or take a break first? Oh, I got a sandwich. So, let's take that break. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. And we're going to talk about, you guessed it, more ancient world embalming. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do,

you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck.

So the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians do get a lot of the glory and credit for embalming techniques. And rightfully so. I mean, they got really good at it. Uh, apparently the peak of their embalming prowess came from the new kingdom from 1570 to 1075 BCE. Um, but you know, that's kind of where people, people's minds go when they think of embalming. What's interesting though is there were other cultures that were totally detached from Egyptians at the time. They're the Egyptian influence and culture would not possibly have spread to these areas that were doing very similar things. In some cases, even predating the Egyptian embalming process. There was a group called the Chinchoros who were in, I believe, modern day Ecuador and Chile. I'm sorry, they were in Chile.

And about 7,000 years ago, they were disassembling bodies, treating the body parts with embalming, um, uh, I guess fluids, um, resins, that kind of stuff. And then reassembling them with wooden structures so that they could still, I guess, move around, do the robot and stuff like that. Covering them with clay and painting them. This is 7,000 years ago. So it's clear there's a real impulse, uh, among humans to like kind of preserve bodies. It's not a new thing. It's a really ancient impulse. It is. Uh, you mentioned honey earlier. I think it was the Assyrians that were using honey. Uh, Persians were using wax. I believe the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, the, uh, Gwanchis is the way Google told me to say it. Actually, look that one up. Good job.

Walkishaw. They would say what? Walkishaw. Oh boy. Uh, they would remove the soft internal organs and then, uh, it's kind of like food preservation techniques in some cases. They'd fill it with salt and vegetable powder and the same goes true, uh, for the Hivato and Ecuador and Peru, they were, they took their, their tribal chiefs and what it said here, they would slow roast them over a fire. Uh, I think they were kind of smoking them. Yeah. For preservation. There's really no other way to put it. And there was probably some part of the people around their brain who's like, that sounds really good. You think so? There's just no way. There's also, uh, instances of, um, Buddhist monks, uh, being preserved, which is a little interesting because, um, Buddhism usually

calls for cremation, although I don't believe there's any prohibition on embalming. Um, and they would pack the, uh, body and salt for a few months. Yeah. And there was a pretty famous case of a, a, uh, Tibetan monk, um, being discovered accidentally this way when somebody for some reason x-rayed a, uh, Buddha statue, a sitting Buddha. They found out that there was a mummified monk inside. Whoa. Isn't that neat? That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, imagine being the guy to figure that out and just, you know, surprising that would be, you know, and by guy, of course, that there was gender neutral guy. Sure. Uh, not all cultures got into this though. I think you mentioned Buddhists generally don't. Um, back in the day, Sumerians and Babylonians and Jewish people, uh,

did not often use embalming. And these days, uh, if you're Muslim or Jewish, uh, you know, and if you're, if you're strict about it, they prohibit that. And I think, uh, it's pretty rare if you're Hindu as well because they usually cremate just pretty quickly. Yeah. There's not like a prohibition on it. It's just, yeah, it, it doesn't come up. Right. You know? Um, so from what I can tell Chuck's going back to today for a second, the, the countries that have far and away the highest rates of embalming are the US, Canada, and like I said, New Zealand. And I saw Australia somewhere and I double checked and it said, no, it's not very common in Australia. So maybe listeners in Australia can let us know one way or the other. And then apparently it's also not common in the UK,

but it's common enough that the funeral industry is very much interested in keeping embalming processes as they are. Um, so I guess some people get embalmed in the UK, but I guess America is the world leader in embalming corpses. Now, what do you mean as they are? Like they just don't want to be bothered and regulated or something? I don't know. I don't understand. I think I get, I can't tell if they just are being resistant to change or if they're genuinely isn't an alternative and they're like, we actually need these techniques to preserve people for people who want to be embalmed. I can't quite tell, but we'll talk about any controversy a little further down the road. All right. Uh, there have

been some, you know, aside from, uh, King Tut, there have been quite a few famous people throughout antiquity that have been embalmed, uh, including, but not limited to Alexander the Great, uh, Charles the Great, aka Charlemagne, aka CEO of the Holy Roman Empire, CEO of the HRE. That's right. Uh, he was embalmed and placed in a sitting position in his tomb, which is super cool. Yeah. Uh, and we know that because a couple of hundred years after he died, the, the then ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Otto III, cracked his tomb open and went inside and he said, he's sitting up super unsettling. Yeah. He's watching me. So they're using herbs and they're using salt and they're using smoke and they're using things that, uh, they could find at

the time, kind of like I said, how you would preserve, um, an animal if you were to, to kill and want to eat that animal. And cause that's all we are anyway, right? And it started to decline in the middle ages. It was costly. Um, these herbs were expensive, uh, unless you were super upper class or even royal, then you couldn't afford it to begin with. Uh, and then religious opposition kind of starts to pop up in the middle ages. And it was sort of during this pause that they actually, um, took, took a leap forward, I guess you could say. And the Renaissance, when all of a sudden people like, Hey, science is awesome. Art is cool. Uh, the body is great. Let's investigate it more. Yeah. And it was Da Vinci himself that actually developed was the, as far as I can tell, one of

the first to, or the first to develop an injection method, uh, which is sort of, um, not sort of, it's exactly how we do it today. When instead of like putting things inside the body cavity, you would actually inject something into the bloodstream. Right. And if you've ever been in an embalming room, um, you know that they use exactly the same invention Da Vinci came up with, with wooden gears to power the pumps and a flying machine that goes around the, uh, room that I can't quite put my finger on what it does. I think it's mostly for show. I think so too. So, um, the French and the Italians really were the ones we talked about, um, uh, Thomas, uh, Holmes, um, in the United States. And, you know, we do that because he was an American and this is

America, uh, an American podcast. Um, but prior to him, the French and the Italians in the 19th century, um, really kind of got into figuring out how to preserve, um, corpses. And the reason why is it had nothing to do with funerals. It had to do with, um, the advancement of medical science to where all those grave robbed corpses that were used by med students needed to be preserved somehow. And so that really kind of pushed chemical embalming to advance, uh, by leaps and bounds. And we have our French and Italian brothers and sisters to thank for that. That's right. And we also have a great live episode on, uh, grave robbing. Live from London. Yeah. Live in London. It was, that was one of the most fun trips we've

ever done. That was a good tour for sure. It was a great tour. Remember that we'd performed in a church in London. It was just one of the, I can't believe they let us in that place. I know. I felt like really like, I can't curse here. And that just went out the window really quick after a couple of gene teas. Uh, and here's a little hint, uh, London crowds. It wouldn't kill you to make a little more noise and, uh, you know, like, ham it up a little bit. Sure. Because when you're on stage, you can't tell that, uh, people are enjoying it. No, but that was really the, the big problem was man to settle more than London. Yeah, that's true. But then when we talked to everyone, they're like, no, we loved it. We just

don't, uh, we don't express ourselves like Americans. Yeah. All right. Get over yourself. Uh, all right. So where are we? We are in Italy. We are in France. Things are moving along. They are using chemicals now like arsenic, like you mentioned, copper sulfate, zinc chloride, potassium carbonate. They're basically trying everything. Sure. My chloride of mercury. Is this a deadly chemical? Yes. Well, then let's use it for embalming and see what happens. Let's give it a shot. Yeah. Uh, and then in the U S is finally when we come back to Dr. Thomas Holmes introduced on the battlefield of World War II, uh, because basically people, you know, families wanted to go out and see their loved ones and they had to preserve them because it took a while to get to

these battlefields in these places and these hospitals, uh, like field hospitals. Yeah. And in fact, I guess the, the union army hired and trained embalming surgeons to go out on the battlefields. They paid $80 for an embalmed body of an officer and $30 for an embalmed body of a soldier. And, um, it was a big deal for families to be able to come and claim their, their, their dead relative and bring them back home. Sure. Which is, yeah, again, that just changed funerals in the United States, that process. Changed everything. Um, and it has changed since then, which we'll get to, but one of the things that they needed to change was some of this stuff that they were using, like you were talking about these dangerous chemicals, uh, arsenic,

um, not the least of which is very dangerous, uh, when these, you know, the body eventually does decompose and then that wooden box that they're buried in decomposes. And all of a sudden you've got arsenic, which doesn't decompose, just leaching into the soil. So if you lived near a cemetery and if that cemetery was near groundwater, um, you had some trouble going on back in the day. You did. Now it's all fine. It's probably not still, right? I don't live near a civil war cemetery, but it's probably not great. No, um, I, I did not see the threat of arsenic poisoning from cemeteries still today, um, anywhere, but I think it's, I mean, I don't know. It's possible. We put a lot of stuff into the ground.

We bury somebody and it's not, not all good as we'll see. I was being totally facetious that it's all fine today though, because we're still doing the same process. We're just using different chemicals. That's right. And I guess that's where we are. It's sort of the more modern process. Uh, if you are, uh, if you work in the, in the funerary industry, if you're, uh, I don't know, even know the words that they call themselves these days. Funerals. Now, like they probably don't call themselves morticians anymore. No, I think they're, um, funeral directors. You can be a funeral director, but if you're, you know, in the basement, getting your hands dirty, uh, like Arthur on six feet under, then like, what is, what is that title even?

Embalmer? Embalmer. Okay. And there's, you know, if you were a, uh, a funeral director, you probably are also an embalmer. Um, but there's also such things as trade embalmers, people whose job it is to embalm. They're not like the, they don't hang with the families or play in the funeral or anything like that. They just embalm the body. Right. There's one other thing though that, um, I didn't realize about embalmers and that it's way more than just, their job's way more than just embalming the body. Like embalming entails a lot of different, um, components to where you basically take a corpse and turn it into a, to a presentable version of a corpse. Yeah. I have a feeling if you sit down in a funeral home, they would say

something like one of our restorative artists would take care of that process. Yes. I don't know if they call them that, like in the building. No. I have a feeling that's the, the terminology they probably use. I don't know if you want to just kind of, you know, keep it legit. You might just use that all the time. I could see it, but yes, I think, I think you might be onto something Chuck. But these people are, you know, even though I am on record is not, not being down with this process. Uh, it is, and we'll talk about, you know, the real value if there is any for people to be able to view the body. Um, it is still very valuable to a lot of people and the people that do this do perform a great service for a fee, but they perform a great service and are very talented

at what they do. And it's, uh, I'm sure not the easiest job to, to, to perform. No. And I was thinking about what it takes to perform that job and not be freaked out, not to have nightmares, not to be, um, you know, profoundly affected in ways where you just can't keep doing it. And I, I don't know. I think you're just maybe born a certain way. You're just a certain kind of person, you know, like if you watch six feet under, it's, uh, it's just a job, you know, it's a very common place. I don't remember which one was Arthur. I haven't seen it in a long enough time. He was Dwight from the office. Oh, wow. I didn't remember him being on there. Rain Wilson. Yeah. Rain Wilson was right there. Wow. I have no recollection of that whatsoever. I got it. Yeah,

he was just on at least one season, maybe two, but he lived in the Fisher home and, uh, as a tenant and was there in Balmer and was sort of an oddball. He ended up having this weird sort of relationship with the mom, uh, that bordered on sexual, but not quite. Though the, um, Balmer, I remember is Ileana Douglas. Yeah. Yeah. She was great early on. She just kind of worked at the Fisher house for a little bit. But she was fantastic. I'm a big fan of hers, but you know, the main in Balmer was usually, uh, was usually Michael. If you loved her in six feet under, you would love her in the intro video to the Aerosmith ride at Disney Hollywood Studios. I think she's great. It's one of the

most bizarre cameos you will ever see. And before I retired movie crush, I was, I know I mentioned it before, but if you were a six feet under fan, please go listen to my great, great interview with Alan Ball for the 20th anniversary of six feet under. For sure. It was a lot of fun. So, um, okay. So we're talking about the modern process. Like if you're an in Balmer, if you're a restorative artist, whatever you are, if you're Ileana Douglas, um, you have certain steps that you're going to follow. And apparently everybody is different, which is not really surprising, but I think it's worth pointing out. Like people die in all sorts of different ways and they arrive at a funeral home in all sorts of different states and different sizes. Yep. And because of all

of these differences, how you're approached in the stuff that is, um, like the measures taken and the steps undertaken to get you back to, um, something like a peaceful, lifelike presentation, um, they're just going to be different for every person, but there are some general steps and categories that everything's going to fall into. Yeah. My favorite part of this article was when it, um, the, um, they interviewed someone who did this and they said, there isn't a standard amount of time it takes. An embalming takes as long as it takes. And I was like, nah, it takes about a third of an episode of six feet under. That's how long it takes. I'm a specialist. So the first things, uh, and again, it's going to differ, but generally speaking, um, if any, you know, because

hair can still grow some, if you had any facial hair grow after you passed away, uh, or we're just unshaven and are typically clean shaven, uh, they will shave that hair off. If you have a beard or mustache or something, they're going to leave that obviously, but, um, sure. You don't want to like change radically your appearance on your wedding day or your funeral day. Yeah. That's a big, if you're planning on getting married, don't let anyone talk you into shaving whatever you have on your face just because it's your wedding day. I mean, both of those are times you want to look like yourself, look, recognize yourself. Yeah. I do whatever you want. It's your life. Don't want to yuck. Anyone's young. Sure. But feel, feel, you should feel comfortable

in looking like yourself. I got a, a cheesy 15 year ago goatee on my wedding day that I now look back on. I'm like, oh, why was I wearing that stupid goatee? Yeah. You were in that and some Oakley's backward on the back of your head. Uh huh. Yeah. But I was weird look for you. You know, you're like chewing gum talking like this. Yeah. My fly was down. That's just me. So you shave that face. If the, and I imagine the family has, you know, some say so, if they're like, no, like, you know, they always had a five o'clock stubble and that was their favorite thing. He's super into George Michael. Exactly. RIP. Uh, so you close the eyes, but those eyes have got to stay closed. Yeah. Sure. So they would, sometimes they'll use a skin glue. Sometimes

they use something called an eye cap. It's like a little fleshy oval shaped kind of like your eye that sits on the eye and secures that eyelid in place because you want those eyes stay closed. Another thing you want to stay closed is the mouth. You don't want it suddenly falling open as if the cadaver is now going to address everybody at the viewing. No. And so they'll do like pretty scary stuff to it, like wiring the jaw shut if it really wants to stay open. Or if it's just kind of like, you just want to make sure it doesn't cut us to come open, you can just sew it shut. And there's all sorts of sewing techniques, but either way, the mouth is going to stay shut. And then once you have it shut like that, you can kind of

manipulate it into doing whatever you want, like kind of resting peacefully, smiling a little bit, blowing into a saxophone, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think a lot of times they'll put cotton in the mouth before they sew or wire it shut because I think that just fills it out a little bit. You know, like Marlon Brando style. Yeah. He actually had a piece made for the godfather, but did he? I think he auditioned with cotton. Yeah. What a great idea. Like it just made him that character and not Marlon Brando, even though it's still Marlon Brando. It's one of those really weird times where you can watch it and you're like, I'm watching Brando, but you're also totally buying the character. Yeah. I think he was in his 40s when he made that dude. Wow. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, that's a good movie. I mean, they aged him up, obviously, but it's one of those, that's one of those things where you realize you're older. If you're older than like something in pop culture. Oh yeah. Oh boy. I remember when it hit me when I started watching baseball one season and realized that I was older than like all of the team. Yeah. That was the first time I ever felt old and I was only like 22, but they were all like 19 at the time, you know? Or when one of your favorite players, like you're watching their kid play later. Oh yeah. Or your favorite player is a manager. It's like, wait, when did that happen? Yeah. Totally. It's the pits for sure. The other one too that was going around the internet for a while

was when something about, you know, that moment you realized that you're older than all of the traveling willburies were when they made that alpha. Wow. They seemed so old. They did. They seemed like they were 60. Easily. They were in their 40s, I think. Were they really? I mean, I think Orbison was a little older, but maybe not. I don't know. Okay. I meant to do that research for this article, for this episode, but I forgot. Well, I'll tell you some research I was doing. I talked about blowing into a saxophone with the mouth. I looked high and low for stories like that because surely somewhere, somebody was buried, some sax guy was buried with a sax. And I couldn't find some like true tales of a mortician, you know, saying like, yeah, I did that once or anything

even remotely like it. So if you're a mortician or a restorative artist or an undertaker, I would love to hear any story like that. Who was the saxophonist from Bleeding Gum's Murphy? Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah, buried with a saxophone, playing a saxophone and wearing sunglasses and sandals. All right. So you got the mouth shut. You got the eyes taken care of. And it's right here that we're going to take a break and leave you in suspense on what happens with the rest of the body. How about that very nice? Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think

to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the

iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So the mouth is shut. Eyes are shut. They're going to stay that way. I'm actually going to read this part, if I may, because I found a great interview with someone who does this for a living. I think from the Guardian. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. And it has a little more detail than the article that we used. And it's just sort of lays it all out there. So thank you to the Guardian for this interview. They said they use a scalpel to make an incision near the right collar bone. And then there, they're looking for the carotid artery and the internal jugular vein. And they make a little and they make a little nick in each of those. And they put these arterial tubes in the artery and you

point one towards the heart. And then you do another one towards the head. And then you have a drain tube, aka angled forceps. And you put that in the vein to facilitate that drainage of the blood because that blood's got to come out. That's what you're doing, basically, is you're pumping in embalming fluid, which we'll get to what that is in a sec. And you're removing all the blood. And that is connected to a machine that no longer is like a foot pump type of thing. It's it's powered by electricity. He uses wooden gears. He uses wooden gears still, though. And then that's connected to the arterial tube directed toward the heart. And then you regulate your pressure and all that stuff and get you the rate of flow going that you need. And you're kind of

adjusting everything depending on who it is and like the body size and how things are going, because every case is different. And then that fluid starts going through the hose and it pushes through the arterial system and the blood is forced out through the jugular vein and then it is washed down the drain and you eventually drink it. Don't they have to sequester that stuff? Is it really washed down the regular drain away? Just like your poop and pee blood goes down the drain into the into the waste system. Poop and pee goes down the drain. We did a whole episode on it. Blood too, really? Yeah. I mean, obviously you have to dispose of the embalming fluid and stuff in a different way, but you were you were literally just draining that blood down the drain.

Well, I remember one of our episodes, what can be done with the dead body? One of the things they were talking about was using autolysis so that it turned you into a goo that could legally be poured down the drain. I didn't realize your blood could be. That's insane. Wow. Yeah, there's one six feet under episode where they have a clog in their system. Oh, yeah. I remember the blood all comes up to the floor. It's like a horror movie. So that embalming fluid is pretty special stuff. Most people associate it with formaldehyde and it definitely does contain formaldehyde, but it also contains some other stuff too. And when you put it all together, the body is not only preserved, but it's also disinfected,

which is not something you would think about. But if say, you know, somebody died of a contagious disease and you're sitting there kneeling on a little kneeler in front of their coffin talking quietly to them, if they hadn't been embalmed, you could conceivably catch that infectious disease because it would still be present in their body. Embalming takes care of that. The formaldehyde that's in the embalming fluid actually hardens and dehydrates the blood vessels that it's put through. And then some other stuff like glutealdehyde, I believe is one, is a disinfectant and it actually kills bacteria in the body and prevents it from coming back. So it's preserved and it's also disinfected too. And that was just

the arterial that you talked about. There's another part of the body, the abdominal cavity that requires a separate additional procedure, right? Yeah. And you know, we should note that like they're, again, not to bring up six feet under again, but they really were pretty accurate in how they did it. They're doing like a soapy, gentle massage on the body. They're bending the knees and the legs and the elbows and sort of the limbs. And this all just sort of helps facilitate the flow through the body. It also restores movement to the body again, where after rigor, they set in too. But yeah, they also sometimes I saw add into embalming fluid dyes that kind of tint the skin a healthier color again. Less blue, I guess. Less blue, more peach. Right, that's what

you want to see. Or rose. Yeah, that's really not, but sure. Yeah, so the cavity, and this is from the same Guardian article, they suction out the fluid from the hollow organs with something, well, it's something called a trocar, which you might remember from our episode on the video game. What was it? Nitrope. Nitrope. Look out behind you. So they use an actual trocar and then what he called a very high index fluid, which is the stuff that we're talking about. I think even more high index than what goes through the arteries and the blood vessels. Mm-hmm. And then the incision is closed with a little circular plastic button called a trocar button. Yeah, that came from a Verge article about a, there's supposedly a woman in Russia

who was embalmed alive and they got in touch with an actual embalmer, like a third or fourth generation funeral home person and got kind of the skinny on the embalming process. And his name escapes me right now, but if you look up Russian woman embalmed alive on the Verge, you will find the interview with him. It was really enlightening. Interesting. And what did that reference? The button? Yeah, that was the person who was talking about the trocar and the trocar button. Oh, from the Guardian article? No, from the Verge article. Okay. Well, I was talking about the guy from the Guardian article.

Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. I'm talking about a different guy. Okay. Good for that person too. We should have an embalm off with our two different embalmers. See who wins. That's why I couldn't figure out what you're talking about. You're like, that's from the thing. I was like, no, it's not. What are you talking about? It's from the other thing. You're like, no, it's from the other thing. They say in general, although again, everybody's different, every process differs, but roughly about a gallon of embalming solution per 50 pounds of body weight is what it's going to take. Yeah. And depending on whether it's the arterial solution, which is pretty low index, it

could be one and a half to 5% formaldehyde, or if it's high index, it could be 50% formaldehyde for the abdominal cavity, which you said something earlier when we were talking about canopic jars about getting the innards out. And it would make sense you would want to use higher index formaldehyde embalming solution in the abdominal cavity because that's just basically a bag of bacteria in there. So I would guess that's where your decomposition really starts to take off and center from is in your gut, wouldn't you? I would think so. But that's just so mean to the microbiome that's kept you alive from now. And now finally, they get their great reward at the end and then they're wiped out by formaldehyde. Yeah. Doesn't seem fair. I know. Humans. Yeah.

Yeah. Forget about the little guy. I guess we should talk about the pros and cons of embalming. You know, we already mentioned that, even though I'm not into it, that people still in America these days, and I guess in Canada and I guess New Zealand want to see the body and it can bring people peace and closure and all the things that we've talked about in all of our other funerary podcast episodes. And that's really the main purposes are to disinfect this body, preserve it, and restore it so people can look at it. So there's a question though, Chuck, like, do people actually need to see the body for closure or is that kind of like a funeral industry hustle?

I mean, I can only speak personally in saying I do not. And I think it is personal. I don't think it's kind of thing you can quantify, although I know that you did find a study and there's not a lot of studies like this, but you did find one that followed people after sort of a big tragedy and found that people that saw the body had better outcomes, but it didn't really say what that meant. I guess happier or more content? I believe less regret was one of the qualifiers that they felt less stuck in the grieving process. But it's like you said, it does seem to be personal. And what they found, interestingly, was that people who decided not to see the body and people who decided to see the body,

and this includes bodies that were presented long before they ever made it to the funeral home, like through people who had to ID like a family member at the morgue. So they were in like the worst possible state that both of them, both groups expressed, like almost none expressed regret for their decision. So the impression I got is like, whatever your gut is telling you, you should probably go with it. Like if you just have a gut instinct that you, yes, you need to see the body, even if people try to talk you out of it, and apparently they will, you need to just follow through on it. It's your right to see a deceased loved one, not necessarily to touch it or to be alone in a room with your deceased loved

one, but you have a right to see them. And if you want to, you should be insistent on that, because you could regret not being able to or not deciding not to because you were talked out of it. In the same way, some people will tell you like you need to see the body for closure. And if your instincts are telling you should not see this body, go with that. That's from what I saw in this British Medical Journal survey of people who had seen or not seen a body of a loved one, that seemed to be kind of like the through line, like trust your gut and just know you made the right decision one way or the other. Yeah. And there's more than one six-feet under episode where they tackle that very issue of either people not wanting to get embalmed or, you know,

it's not a comedy. You keep laughing every time I mention it. But it's just so funny. Rain Mostner is just such a goofball. It is really accurate though, as far as I think they tackle so many real situations because there are episodes where people don't want to get embalmed and they're trying to talk them into it and the reasons why. And, you know, I don't see it so much of a hustle as, you know, this is their job and they are salespeople. They're selling their service. Right. So they're going to do that. I don't want to be embalmed. And I'm not going to be if it's up to me and my rights being respected. But I just want to be cremated as soon as possible. I don't want to be filled full of stuff. If you die with your beard, you want your beard left on, right?

Yeah. You burn it up. Although now they, I think they're using, I think they're dissolving people more. That auto-licence thing? Yeah. Not more than in numbers, the cremation. More than they used to dissolve people? Yeah. More than they used to. Well, that's, so that's the thing. So the auto-licence process, again, go listen to what can be done with the dead body episode. But it's where you basically sterilize the body into a goo that couldn't, like I said, be poured down the drain. But even if you're cremated, Chuck, there's a, there's a good chance that if you're cremated in the United States, Canada or New Zealand, you were also embalmed too. And one of the big push backs... Unless you don't want to be. That's true. Right. But I'm saying like, if you didn't

state otherwise and your family gave permission, you might have been embalmed, gone through the whole funeral process. And then at the end of it, rather than being buried, you were cremated. And the, one of the big concerns aside from religious reasons that people usually have in opposing embalming is the environmental impact on it. Because we talked about arsenic, you know, leaching into the groundwater. Well, there's a good chance that all the formaldehyde and glued aldehyde and methanol and ethanol and everything else that was pumped into your body is going to make it into the ground too. And it's not an insubstantial amount of embalming fluid that is put into the ground through burials every year. I think there is enough to fill eight

Olympic-sized swimming pools just in America alone every year. That's how much embalming fluid is committed to the ground in the bodies of people who were embalmed. But then it also can affect the air quality too, right? Because people can be embalmed and then cremated and then all that stuff gets released into the air from the cremation process. Sure. And you're also working around it if you work in that industry. I think the EPA, the United States and the World Health Organization list formaldehyde as a probable carcinogen and mutagen. So, you know, they take great precautions to do it safely, but you are working around very dangerous materials. And like you said, you were burning that stuff into the air or eventually it will go into the ground.

So, it's not like the old wooden box caskets of old as far as how quickly they deteriorate, but like eventually those things will deteriorate too, right? Yeah. I mean, eventually or the concrete will crack and it'll leach out. Like if it's not an immediate problem now, it's not like it's never going to be. You know what I mean? Right. Yes. And we're running out of space. Yeah. That's another one too. So, all good reasons to be cremated, I guess. To turn into cremated remains, not cremains. No, not cremains? No. Remember, I think in our cremation episode we said that that was not classy. Oh, I don't remember that.

So, a couple of things. You got anything else? I got nothing else. A couple of things that Funeral Director was named Caleb Wilde, the guy who was interviewed in The Verge. I want to give a shout out to him. I also want to give a shout out to who was widely believed to have been the best embalmed body of all time, a Chinese noble woman named the Lady Dai. That wasn't her name. That's her nickname. She died in 145 BCE. And you've probably seen pictures of her on the internet, kind of on like an examination table with cloth strapped over her breasts and genitals for modesty, but other than that, hanging out. And for being 2200 years old, she's in a ghastly state, but she's still, like her skin's still there. It still has kind of some

color to it. Her hair's still there. It's pretty amazing. So, look up the Lady Dai, if you dare, but she's one of the best preserved bodies of all time. Amazing. And I do have more more things. Since you looked up your person, I felt like I had to look up my person. Okay, fair enough. And from the Guardian, that is Jin Park Moustachio. Oh, nice. Working as a Funeral Director and embalmer, at least at the time of this riding in New Jersey. Okay. I think that's great. We did a great job here. If you want to know more about embalming, well, ask a restorative artist and see if they look at you weird for calling him a restorative artist. And since I said that,

it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this email from Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec. Hey, guys. I've been listening to you for years and love your podcast. You always deliver interesting topics and fun ways. But I got to say, on the latest podcast about Les Paul and Leo Fender, you mispronounced the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin. And boy, we've heard it today, right? And we're going to for months to come. But this is one of those good people of Wisconsin are not having it. No, they're not. They definitely are kind of up in arms about it. What do we say, Waukesha? And it's Waukesha. Yeah. Well, I think we even made a nod to Kesha and said Waukesha. Oh, did we? I think so. Oh, brother. You're like, at least I meant to.

Right. That was the intention. We heard from a lot of folks already. And it just got dropped like, you know, hours ago. I only emailed this correction because I'm a resident of Waukesha and even work for Waukesha County. And I'm used to hearing it pronounced the incorrect way a lot. So it also gave me an excuse to finally email you guys to say I'm such a big fan. Keep up the great work. That is from Ron Swanson, who works at, believe it or not, at the Parks Department of Waukesha County. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Ron. That is quite a coincidence. And I'm sure Ron has to hear that all the time. Yeah. Wait, why? Who? What's a coincidence? What's a coincidence? Ron Swanson, the name sounds very familiar. Is that

Parks and Rec, the TV show Nick Offerman's character was Ron Swanson. No. So this guy's Ron Swanson actually works for the Parks Department. No. That's insane. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, pretty great. Great. Well, great. Thanks for writing in Ron Swanson, if that is your real name, and if it is, that's pretty great. And if you want to be like Ron Swanson and be an amazing coincidence, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.