Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Coffins Work

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead? We'll bet you'll learn plenty - like the difference between a coffin and a casket - in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, it's Chuck here and Josh from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. We are back on the road in case you haven't heard doing our patented three shows at a time old man touring style. And we're going to DC, the Boston metro area, and Canada in Toronto, right? That's right, May 4th, 5th, and 6th, and you can get tickets by going to linktree.sysk and you'll get all your info and your tickets and your love right there. Can't wait to see you guys there! On the podcast Haunted Road, we examine the history of the world's most notoriously haunted sites and talk to people who've experienced the supernatural their first hand.

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I feel like we kind of came down a little bit hard on the funerary industry on this one, because coffins are expensive. Boy, oh boy, who wants to pay that kind of money once you're dead? Not me. I'm going to grind me up and plant me as a tree or something, or maybe just throw me out in the woods and let the worms take care of it. At any rate, that's my journey, not yours. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. If you want a big, fancy, mahogany coffin, go for it. The podcast is going to teach you all about him. Please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. This is part of our ongoing Death Suite, which is sweet. Yeah, we've covered death a lot, because death is multifaceted. You know, this reminded me of the, I guess, we covered Green Burial, not in its own podcast, but in different ways. What to do with the dead body? That's what I thought it was in too, but I'm surprised we didn't do a podcast dedicated just to that. Maybe we should. Yeah, I looked up because I'm interested in that for myself, and there are some lovely places right outside Atlanta. To be buried greenly, where you can just be wrapped in a shroud and buried in a field.

Which? Ripped to death by coyotes. Left in a field? They don't leave you in a field. No, well, they bury you in a shallow grave. For the coyotes to come get you. No, they said they don't have a problem with that, but I'm not one of those people that cares about that. About what happens to your body? I would do a sky burial. That wouldn't bother me for vultures to pick me apart. Use the body if it would feed an animal. Great.

Why not donate it to science? Yeah, maybe I'll do that. I'm not precious about my body after death. I'm not precious about my body in life. Why start then? Exactly. That's funny. A shroud does technically count as a coffin, Chuck. Yeah, back in the day, if you didn't have a lot of money. Or if you're into being picked apart by coyotes.

The whole point of a coffin, or what constitutes a coffin, is it provides a barrier between the body and the ground. Yeah. And technically, a shroud does that. It's a really, really poor coffin. Yeah. But that's the whole point. It's that the body's encapsulated in something that just dropping a body into a grave is undignified, you might say. Even cremating a body without some form or fashion of a coffin is considered undignified. And you'll be hard-pressed to find a crematorium that will let you just put your loved one on the conveyor belt and let them just kind of flop lifelessly toward the flames. I don't think they flop lifelessly.

Well, I mean, if they're jostled, they're going to flop. Okay. Yeah, especially after rigor's done. The coffin, the word coffin, we're not going to do any Merriam-Webster stuff because that's who would start an article like that. We'd do it six times in an article. But we will say we'd like to give root words, and of course, Greek and Latin are involved here with the Greek Kofinos and Latin Kofinas. They're always like, oh, yeah. Right.

I'll change that K to a C and that O to a U. And no one will ever even remember the Greeks happen. Exactly. So that's where the word coffin came from. But here in the United States, we generally refer to that vessel as a casket, whereas in places like England and Australia, I'm sorry, Great Britain and Australia, they might say coffin even though a lot of people here think that's a word you shouldn't use. Well, yeah, their casket still means a place to keep your valuables. Right.

Your baubles. Right. And yes, if you go to a funeral directorium, also called a funeral home, you're going to find that they'd never use the word coffin. No. And you know, it's pretty subtle, but the language is definitely, they don't say we'd love to pick out for you to pick out a coffin for your husband's dead body. And then we'll dig a grave over there and put it in the ground. So we'll say things like, we'd like you to pick out a casket for your husband from our display area, from the display area, and we will take you there in the casket coach, not a hearse, and place him in the internment space, which is not a grave.

Which we just opened, and then we'll close afterward rather than filling or digging the grave. They don't say words like digging and ground. Basically anything that brings to mind the guy from Phantasm, the funeral industry avoids those words. Yeah. And of course, we've ruined Six Feet Under and the Fisher and Sons, the boys. Such a great show. Yeah. Michael always did such a great job of being the proper funeral director and using all the words that you should use like casket.

He's good at it. And then he turned into a serial killer. No, well, on Dexter, yeah. So there actually is a distinction beyond where you live with the word casket and coffin. Sure. There's a slight difference. Shape? Yeah.

It's basically shape. A casket is a long rectangle, and the top is usually split so you can... No, that's a coffin. That's a casket. Oh yeah, that's a casket. A coffin is the hexagonal. Right. A hexagonal box.

Yeah. And that, you know, back in the day, you had the old pine box. Actually, a lot of those were just rectangular, but some were, you know, had that familiar sort of keyhole shape. Well, back in the day, in the 19th century, the person who was responsible for carrying out your funeral services and building your coffin was usually the local carpenter. And he undertook your funeral service, hence the word undertaker, from what I understand. Yeah. But it was usually somebody who built wagons and kitchens and whatever. They also built coffins, too.

And they built them to suit. That sounded to me like our first casket fact. Well done, Chuck. Wow. Yeah. Thank you, Jerry, for going the extra mile there. And if you like that, you're going to love this episode because this place is lousy with casket facts. We won't play the sound effect on this one, but I thought another interesting fact because, you know, I like origins of phrases and things.

If someone casts a pall over a room, a pall was actually a dark cloth that they would put over the casket to, I guess, cover, you know, block out the bad juju of having the dead body in there. Right. So you would cast a pall over the casket. Yeah. Or if you're me, you cast a pall over any room you enter. That's fun. No fun anymore, everybody. Can we talk a little bit about the funeral industry for a second?

Yeah. About the casket industry, I should say specifically. There's still some furniture companies that make caskets on the side. Like Lazy Boy? Yeah. I don't know if Lazy Boy does it, but they represent a very small segment of the casket industry. Because that's the ultimate Lazy Boy, you know? You're forever chair.

Right, exactly. Well, they actually have caskets for those people. It's called Goliath caskets. Oversize caskets built to order. Oversize caskets.com. Huh. Anyway. Of course, there's someone that does that because that's a common thing.

You know, caskets aren't, you know, some people of girth. Sure. That's pretty embarrassing, you know, when you can't fit in your casket. Right. And I went and looked and these are very dignified caskets. Of course, they're just larger. They're for the larger person. Double-wides.

Wow. There's also, okay. So one of the largest casket makers, Batesville, originally started out as a furniture company. Uh-huh. So there's like this whole origin of, yeah, I'll build your chair and I'll build your coffin for your uncle too. That makes sense. It's carpentry. Yeah.

And then that's kind of the way it went. There were some groups that started to consolidate and just make caskets around the late, the turn of the 20th century, the beginning of the 20th century. And, you know, that was fine. They kind of created the industry. And then it was like the 50s after the Korean War when metal caskets became like all the rage. Yeah, because that was mod looking and that was popular at the time. It was. And you'll also find in the funeral industry, it was easy to subtly exploit the grieving out of their money.

It was very cheap to mass produce metal caskets. Right. And so they were sold, sold, sold. There was a huge profit margin with them. And I think by the 70s, half of all caskets were metal. Yeah. Well, because what better way to protect your loved one from the elements and the harsh afterlife that they may encounter than with a good old solid metal encasing. Yes.

Exactly. Which also happens to have greater profit margins and is cheaper to produce. It is. It's cheaper to mass produce. The other aspect of a metal coffin and the rise of the metal coffin, it changed the casket making industry because it's really expensive to get into metal coffin making. Apparently it cost about a million dollars just for the dyes to make a standard metal coffin. Oh, really? Just for the dyes alone.

So this kind of consolidated the industry down to fewer and fewer companies that were making metal caskets. So it became a real industry at that point. Yeah. And then ultimately the casket industry started to suffer and decline thanks to advances in medicine. There were fewer deaths. So their profits dropped or their revenue dropped. And then starting in the 80s, people said, you know what? Maybe cremation isn't so bad.

Right. So in 1985, I think 15% of people opted for cremation. And then by 2000, I think, no, 2011, it's like 45%. Oh, really? Yeah. And every time somebody gets cremated, the coffin industry dies a little bit. Yeah. Although, you know, like you said, you can still have a casket to be cremated in.

I know we covered this in the cremation podcast. Yeah. Well, you have to. Like you can't find somebody who would just let your... That can be super cheap. Like sometimes it's even cardboard. Well, it's supposed to be because it's got to burn. Yeah.

But I mean, the very least would will also burn, but you can spend a little bit more money or you can get a temporary encasing, an outer encasing that is more attractive to show the family. And then when push comes to shove, they shove, they remove the outer casket and shove you in. It's like a rental casket just for the service. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a rental casket, period. Like even if you aren't being cremated, just for a more showy experience.

And then they'll, you know, then you get the pine box treatment. Right. Because nobody loves you. Yeah. And it's expensive, man. A lot of people don't have the money to pay for a big funeral. And it's... Yeah.

A lot of people really believe in that kind of thing. It's really sad for them, you know? It is. Luckily, there's such thing as Walmart and Costco. Yeah. Both of them sell caskets. Walmart has a casket for $11.99, $1,199. It's the lady of, our lady of Guadalupe casket model.

And then Costco. Guadalupe. Yeah. Okay. And then Costco has the same model for $100 more. Really? Yeah. I was surprised that it's not exactly the same.

But it's nice to see that the big box retailers aren't price fixing coffins. Yeah. It's great to see Walmart selling coffins. But I mean, it's like, if you need a coffin and they're attractive looking coffins, I think they're fiberglass. Have you ever laid down on a coffin? Probably not. I haven't.

I haven't either. I would, just to see what it felt like. They look comfy. Did you see the thing about the six feet under club in San Francisco? Uh-huh. There is a club where it's like, hey, you and your partner. Uh-huh. Swinging partner.

Sure. Partner. Whatever you're into. You know what I mean? Yeah. Your sex partner. Yeah. Right.

Can come lay down in our coffin and we'll bury you and you guys can do it. And we are going to watch you on a night vision webcam that's going to be projected on the walls of the club above. Where's the San Francisco? San Francisco. That was wacky. Six feet under club. And you can email and reserve a space in their coffin.

Huh. I mean, is there any room in the coffin this week? I would imagine it would have to be a larger, but maybe a Goliath coffin. Yeah, double one. Huh. Well, I will never do that, but it's interesting to know it's out there. It is out there in San Francisco. Six feet under club.

I like knowing my options. Well, let's talk about the anatomy of a coffin, Chuckers. Uh-huh. Well, you know, the most important thing, of course, is that it is a barrier to, from the body to the, you know, the elements. No one, or actually I don't care, like I already said, but most people, most normal people, don't want to think about their loved ones' bodies like decaying and being eaten by, you know, being worm dirt.

Right. But one thing they cannot tell you is that it's illegal to say that we have a casket that will permanently seal the body. Like it's against the law to claim any sort of permanence, even if it's one of these new gasket coffins, what are those called? It's called a protective coffin. Yeah, which actually has a rubber gasket. So it's sealed much tighter, but they still legally can't say like it will protect them

forever. Right, because it will protect them from the elements, but there is such a thing as decay, like your body's going to decay into nothingness, and apparently, I guess the funeral industry was selling coffins based on the idea that the body was going to survive forever. And with this impermeable seal that the protective coffins had, I mean, it wasn't letting anything in, but it also wasn't letting anything out. Which is a problem. And in an airtight environment, anaerobic bacteria gets to work, and as they start putrefying

the flesh, they expel methane gas as a byproduct. And there's this thing called Exploding Coffin Syndrome, which was most apparent in mausoleums, where a coffin would just blow up. And sometimes they would blow up so much that it would blow the mausoleum door open, like a huge methane explosion from the gas built up from the decaying corpse in this protective coffin. So now they have ones that don't let anything in, but they burp gas out. Yeah.

They're called burping coffins. Which is a great name for a coffin. Yeah. But so is Exploding Casket Syndrome. Yeah, boy, could you imagine being a cemetery worker and seeing a mausoleum door explode wide open? Yeah. You're just like, I've seen it all.

I would quit my job that day. So it depends on where you are in the world, what you're going to get with your coffin and with regulations. And less developed countries, obviously, they're less regulated. You could still be wrapped in a shroud in some parts of the world. Right. Here in the US, in the West, there are basically public health regulations, which is why that place for the green burial is designated a green burial place.

Yeah. So the body won't come in contact with the groundwater, I think, is what they're trying to keep from happening. Yeah. That was in their FAQ. Yeah. So that's pretty much the whole public health regulation. And it's gotten to the point where most people are buried with cement encasement around them,

right? Oh, is that what they do these days? I think so. Yeah. I think I knew that, actually. It's so funny. We're all still six-year-olds at our courts, like, ew, dead body, gross, I can't let that get in the water.

Yeah, that stuff doesn't bother me. Do you guys have bodies? No, not, I wouldn't want to drink a dead body now, but seeing one. I mean, I'm the guy who poked a head floating in a bucket, you know, in the hospital at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that story. I didn't poke it, but I mentally poked it.

It didn't bother me. That is grotesque. If you are in the Western world, you're probably going to be dealing with wood or metal or fiberglass. If you live out in the desert, they may use things like local products, like clay. Or stone, which is kind of interesting. I guess we got a lot of wood here in the United States, though. Particle board.

Yeah. And like we mentioned, the sad, sad cardboard cremation vessel. Right, which, again, if you're being cremated, you probably don't care. Yeah. I was also up for cremation, and then I thought, no, I don't know. Is there anything that's, and the green burial seems like a good option? Sure. Just become one with the dirt?

Maybe. I like that you're being scattered as well. Or again, helping somebody, helping other people. Yeah. But they'll still like, if you donate your body to science, did they not give you any sort of like... No, you can't be embalmed or anything. I guess you probably could. If say you're going to the body farm, you wouldn't be able to be embalmed.

Sure. And I'm sure there's like memorial services, but I don't, as I understand it, that's another thing that's eating into the casket industry's profits is body donation. Hey, man, I think this is a perfect time to have a message break from our sponsor, agreed, which means our jingle. Stuff you should know. Mi gente, it's Amara, la negra of the Exactly Amara podcast. I have some huge news.

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All right. So I think this is actually a great time for a second casket fact. Oh, I like these already. All right, back in the day in the early 19th century, that was sort of a, they called it a grave body snatching period. And people were into snatching up bodies, digging up graves, exhuming people, if you will, and basically selling bodies for money for medical research. It was a way to make a buck or doing research on your own.

Medical College of Georgia was, they found dozens of skeletons. I was like, I don't think it was hundreds, dozens of skeletons of people who were dismembered and they figured out that all of them had been stolen from graves. I remember that. Yeah. Of course, that wasn't in the early 19th century, was it? It was in the 19th century, not the early, but it was in the 19th century. So they developed something, well, various things to protect bodies like locked mausoleums

and vaults, and then something, I think it's kind of neat, called a mort safe, which is basically an iron cage put over the coffin. It's like sunk into concrete. It's like what people used to protect their air conditioners today. Yeah, exactly. But over like a grave. So that was a mort safe and that kept people out. They had guards sometimes, staff guards.

I think the caretaker doubles as a guard, but they had people who they hired as guards to protect a specific grave? I think if you had enough dough, you could have like the mausoleum with a guard. That's pretty cool. And that's if you're rich and wealthy. There also, if you weren't wealthy, other ways to thwart gray robbers was to put heavy planks, to backfill the grave with rocks instead of dirt, which might not have kept somebody out, but they would have made quite a bit of noise digging you up.

And yeah, have you ever been to Oakland Cemetery? Oh yeah, I go all the time. Well not all the time, but I go, it is beautiful, a couple of times a year. Yeah, you and me and I went and just walked around, like there's some mausoleums there that like there's no way you could have gotten into. Yeah, those people that haven't been to Atlanta that are probably oldest and like most famous cemetery. Yeah.

It is our Parade de la Che. It's a, yes, it's our Nicholas Che. I've been to that one too actually, the one in Paris. What? Parade de la Che. The one with Jim Morrison? Yeah, of course. Nice.

And I think Oscar Wilde is there and Chopin, but you know, Morrison's the one that you go by and there's like joints on the ground and like tabs of acid and stuff. And then you always see like the random guy kind of hanging out, like waiting for everyone to turn their back. That's funny. A bunch of dirty hippies, basically. Change jackets. Give me a break.

In Ghana and other parts of Africa, it is kind of cool because they will, they have a very sort of a joyous way of celebrating death with their bright color coffins and even odd shapes that would pay honor to what this person loved in life. I saw one that was like a giant shoe and this guy, this African dude was just like, you know, it must have been his relative and he was just so proud to show that they were wearing him in a giant shoe. So it's like to the dead in Ghana, what a pinata is to like a kid in Mexico. Really?

Yeah, they have like pinatas that are like shaped for, they're like different stuff. They're specific? Yeah. It's not always just a cuckaburo? No. Oh, okay. There's like lots of hello kitties and like, oh yeah, there's some great pinatas out there. And then the other example they gave in here is like if it was a businessman, he might

be buried in something that resembled his luxury car or a fisherman, it might be a fish shaped coffin. It's like the fish finally got him back. I guess so. He's in the belly of it. So Chuck, you mentioned things that coffins may be made out of. You mentioned like wood, fiberglass, oak, hardy woods, bronze is still used on occasion? Yeah, sure.

And that's the shell of the coffin. Yeah. And then inside you'll find the lining, usually some sort of rich fabric like taffeta or velvet or something that looks like that, maybe velour if they like juicy clothes, that kind of thing. Yeah, silk maybe. Yeah, and it's stuffed with batting to keep the corpse nice and comfortable. And that's pretty much it.

You've got hardware on the outside and that's a casket. Yeah, it's probably going to be warm colors here in the Western world. It's not Ghana, you're not going to see a lot of like brightly painted coffins and stuff like that. No, but also they kind of avoid like, you're probably not going to see a black coffin anywhere. Yeah. Those are called receding colors. They're dismal and of desperation and despair.

I feel like I've seen a lot of like light gray and things like that. Yeah. Or just wood color. If you get like a really nice wood like cherry, sometimes it'll just be in that, that'll be the outer shell. Right. And those are pricey. Yes, they are.

And as a matter of fact, the average cost of a funeral in the U.S. in 2009 was $6,560, which was less than I thought. I think a green barrel is about half that. Yeah, I can see that. I think they're like two or three grand. Because the coffin in that average funeral was $2,295, the average cost of a metal coffin in 2009, which in 2007, funeral homes and crematories pulled in $11.95 billion. And one of the ways they pulled in that much was from casket sales.

Yeah. And I don't know if we even should say this out loud, because it sounds like an unfounded accusation that cheap coffins are purposely made ugly so they can upsell. Yeah. Do you think that's true? It's probably true. Well, I've read that the funeral home industry marks up caskets that they buy. They resell them for up to 500% more than they paid for them.

Well, it's a business and that's their product, you know? It is. It's a business and the customers are in a really easily exploited place. Yeah. I don't know though. I just think it is a business and because it deals with death, it's very easy for someone to say like, you're exploiting these people or taking advantage of them when they're... Right.

I just don't think that's true. It's like... No, I think that you can't cast that net across the entire industry. Agreed. I think that that's terrible. I'm sure there's some shysters. But they ruin it for everybody, you know? Bad apples, Josh.

Well, we have a lot of opulence here in the United States. Some people get into that but apparently in Australia and Great Britain, they're a little more reserved with what they'll spend on a casket. In some cultures like the Jewish faith, it's very common to not have any sort of garish thing. They want you to be buried in something very plain so you're not distinguished as to your place in life. Yeah.

So they'll even... The hardware that they use to carry you is removable. So when you're buried, you're buried in a plain box. Yeah. I like that. That's nice. Yeah, that's cool. You want to talk about the bow people?

The hanging coffins of the bow. Not to be confused with the hell of the upside down sinners in big trouble in little China. Although this is in Sichuan province of China. The bow people are an ethnic group that populated the area and they had this really neat tradition of putting the coffins of their deceased up on like 300 foot cliffs. Yeah. They were just crags, little caves. And for centuries, no one has had any idea how they got them up there.

Yeah. At one point, they had close to 300. Now it's only about 100 and 350 to 400 feet. And you've seen, did you see pictures? Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, they're like, I don't see how they did it. They think now they might have lowered them down, but they still, you know, that they're

on, it looks like they're on wood planks that are sticking out of the cliff. So how'd they do that? Yeah. I don't know. I just can't figure it out. It's pretty neat. It's like a little village of coffins is kind of clustered on this cliff side. Yeah.

With the idea that having your relatives higher up is a place of greater respect to be looking up at them because that's where the deities were at the tops of mountains and that would place them closer to the deities. Yes. You go up here now. Yeah. Because you're dead. Yeah.

It's very interesting. What about the Egyptians? They had the money coffins, if you ask me. Yeah. And we covered this with Tut, obviously, the big sarcophagi. But they, didn't they believe that you would just be sent to your, you know, all this stuff would go with you? Yeah.

Your afterlife for your journey to the after world, the underworld. And I guess the whole, it was the opposite of what the Jews think. It was the more socioeconomic status you can bestow upon a grave, the better off the person's going to be in the next life. Sure. Oh. You have a bejeweled casket that you're in our, you're okay in our book. Pedastal.

Yeah. But they actually had texts. What we now call the Egyptian book of the dead was originally called the, it grew out of order called the Egyptian coffin texts. Yeah. And there were two, the book of the dead, the coffin text that became the book of the dead was for everybody, regardless of your socioeconomic status. And it told you how to be buried.

And we've done how mummies work. So we got into that a lot. Yeah. And that's basically what we relied on. But there was also one for the pharaohs, the kings, the elite, and those are the pyramid texts. Yes. And that's the one that later evolved to the book of the dead, right?

The pyramid text. I think the coffin texts, I don't know, yeah, it's a pyramid text. Yeah. The pyramid text is separate. That's the one for the elite. Right. And that's what evolved to the book of the dead. Oh, it did?

Okay. Yeah. But I think what was in the coffin text was contained within the pyramid text, right? Yeah. I think the coffin text was an umbrella that gave birth to both. It was the original one. And it actually had the first described cosmology ever recorded. Yes.

The book of two ways within the Egyptian coffin text was the first time they basically said, here's what happens to you after death. Yeah. Pretty cool. Or could happen to you. And it's basically you cross from one part of the sky into a lake of fire and then across into another part of the sky. Yeah, and the coffin texts have spells and things to help you out as well in your journey.

Like check out my bejeweled casket. I'm okay in your book. Chuck, we couldn't talk about coffins if we didn't talk about a really interesting and neat trend of the 18th and 19th century, maybe even 17th, but I think 18th and 19th century called safety coffins. Yeah. And it's a common fear for people to... It's called taffophobia, taffophobia.

That's the fear of being buried alive. Yeah. And it's a real thing. And people had it then and they have it now. Well, they had good reason to have it back then because... Because it happened. Yeah. There was a book called premature burial and how it may be prevented.

It's an 1896 book by a social reformer named William Tebb and a couple of co-authors. And actually one of the co-authors was a doctor who himself had been prematurely buried. Oh, really? Yeah. They went over like account after account and they even had a chapter called dubious accounts, but they basically came up with 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial, 10 cases of vivisection before death. So the person they thought was dead, they started to cut open and they weren't dead.

Yeah. And then... And then 2 cases of embalming before death. Wow. So like it happened. Before embalming, it was like there was no way to tell you were dead. Yeah. I mean, I guess that was the problem is medical science had an advance to the point where

you could always tell if someone was dead. Exactly. And there was such a thing as cholera, which apparently gives you the appearance of being dead even when you're not. So there was good reason to fear being buried alive and as a result, this thing called the safety coffin came up. Yeah. And there were...

I'm sure you've done some other research on this. There were all different sorts of methods that they had from a vault that had like a little window and a wheel you could turn on the inside to let yourself out, which would be nice. Sometimes it was just a breathing tube. Yeah. The one that was patented in 1896 by a guy named Count Karnice Karnicki, which is awesome. He had something, there was a tube with a spring going all the way to the six feet down

and there was a little glass ball at the end of the tube and it rested on the deceased chest. And if any movement of the chest happened, like you took one breath, anything like that, it would trip the spring and this passageway would fly open to let air in and a flag would rise up above your grave to be like, it was still alive. So that one was one of the most well-known safety coffins and actually in premature burial and how it may be prevented, there's a whole little chapter dedicated to it. And actually you can find the full text of that online for free.

It's really interesting reading. That's cool. There were also things that would trigger like a bell ringing, one that even had a long fused firecracker that I guess you could set off. Yeah. I mean, that'll give the attention to somebody. I guess so. In that book, Teb and his friends, they endorse to prevent premature burial, either safety

coffin or cremation, where they're like, even if you are dead, or even if you're not dead, you're going to be dead afterward. All right. So we guarantee you won't be buried alive. Exactly. Because you'll be cremated. Right. We're not even going to bury you.

The ultimate safety coffin. And there's this guy named Dr. Timothy Clark Smith in 1893. He died in Middlebury, Vermont, and he's buried to this day, which is customary, in Evergreen Cemetery. And if you go to his burial mound, there's a 14 by 14 inch of plate glass that opens up onto what was once his face, six feet down. So that people could come check on him and make sure he was dead because he had taffophobia. And was very, very much afraid of that fate.

That's got to be tied to claustrophobia somehow. Well, yeah, they think the APA being they think that you've had some sort of early childhood encounter with it in enclosed space. And either you develop taffophobia or you become the Batman. That's their judgment. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like a casket fact. Let's hear it.

Oh, man. That's sweet nectar. Let's see what else. I got a couple more things. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Go ahead. So you can, we said that the average coffin is like $22, $2300.

You can also shell out $30,000. Of course you can. Batesville casket company makes the Promethean. And it is the coffin that Michael Jackson and James Brown were buried in separately. They had their own coffins. Oh, sure. Yeah. What's the deal?

It's a nice looking, rich, luxurious, like navy velvet interior lining. It must be gold, but polished to this high shine. It's a beautiful casket, I have to say. There's no reason in the world for anyone ever to be buried in a casket like this, but it's out there. If you want to go the other way, you can go to diycoffin.com and there are schematics to build your own very plain coffin. I saw that.

I thought about that. It might be a nice thing to do. There's a king of the coffin under that king of the hill. There's a king of the hill where Hank builds his own coffin. He's talking about how he started. He's like, well, I looked into it and long story short, I got the bug. His first try was terrible, so he gave that to Peggy and then his second try is really nice.

He's gotten it down pat and Peggy gets the one where like the top doesn't close all the way. Right. That's what mine would look like. It's a good episode. It's a skilled craftsman, but I enjoy it. Then lastly, you mean I saw Mike Tyson do his little spoken word thing. Was that good?

We saw him in DC. It was great. He talked about it was really sweet because I'm really ambivalent about him because he's a lot to him. One of the things that he said he did was his mother was buried in a potter's field and unmarked grave in just a cheap box and he said the first time he made money, he had her exhumed and bought the most expensive headstone and the most expensive casket he could find and had her buried in this other nice cemetery.

That's sweet. Yeah. There's a pauper's grave over by the Drive-In Movie Theater here in Atlanta. Mm-mm. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. It's a pauper's grave and lots of bad stuff goes on there now, apparently.

What? Like prostitution and stuff like that. It's way worse. Drugging. Yeah. I'm sure some teens are drinking. That's probably not a good safe place to do that. No, I wouldn't think so.

Yeah. And there's also a potter's field, pauper's grave in Oakland Cemetery. Oh, yeah. That's right. It's basically like a big expanse of grass for a bunch of people who were poor were buried. Yeah. I did Mount Vernon when I was up there, George Washington's place.

Is it cool? Yeah. And because they still do stuff the old-fashioned way, like if they need a room painted, they grind up dye and mix it with water and all that stuff. Nice. Wow. But there is like, he and Martha are buried in this beautiful mausoleum and then there's also like the slave grave sites and it's just definitely, like he freed all his slaves

and his will, which was a good thing to do, I guess. But anytime you go to one of those plantation type things and you see like the opulence of his thing and then this other little side area where the slaves are buried, it's just sort of like, yeah, all that happened. That's a sad reminder. It is. And no one was visiting like the slave areas much even and I was just sort of like, that kind of rubbed me a little bit.

Did you go over there and visit it? Yeah, absolutely. Good for you. Yeah. Nice. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. That's coffins.

That's coffins. I was going to write this article a couple of years ago because it didn't exist because I wanted to do this. Oh, good. I'm glad it came along. I think that's just a lesson, kids. If you wait around long enough, somebody else might do that. Well, then since Chuck gave, wait, I think Chuck, that might be a casket fact.

What is that? The last casket fact? Yeah. It's Amara, La Negra of the Exactly Amara podcast. I have some huge news. Los Quieren Vitar to an all new season of my podcast, Exactly Amara. I am so excited to share even more of my life y lo vamos a hacer todo just how I like it. Let's have Latin get personal each week as I share with you my new life as a single mom

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Welcome to the Professional Home Girl Podcast, I'm your host, Ebony and every Tuesday I interview women of color from all walks of life and all of my guests are anonymous. So you're here to story some survivors. The first shot that I feel, it goes to my face. I got shot in the back of the head as well, but since my wig and the braids under there, the bullet got stuck. Then one of the guys that was shooting at us, he got shot too. So we all ended up at the hospital at the same time.

The police, they not putting this all together. Like this is still unsolved. To spirituality, to me, you know, it's really about having to get from God. You can sense things. This is about helping people. It's not about breaking them down. And family secrets. I don't know what's going on in everybody's family.

People are a little less likely to talk about it open. Listen to the Professional Home Girl Podcast with Ebony every Tuesday presented to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, well since we had our last casket packed, oh yeah, I gotta say, if you want to read this article on Coffins, you can go to HowStuffWorks.com and you can type in that word, C-O-F-F-I-N in the search bar. And that means it's time now for Listener Mail.

Josh, I'm going to call this very manipulative email from a Georgia Tech fan. Here we go. Peter in Virginia. He knows it's coming. I want to tell you guys how your podcast made a difference in my life. I recently found out that I have diffused large B-cell lymphoma as a part of the testing process to determine what stage you are. They shoot you full of barium and then perform a CT scan.

The cancer cells divide rapidly, so based on how much the barium glows during the CT, we'll tell them how much your cancer has spread. As part of the process, you have to remain as still as possible for an hour prior to the CT. So, as there's as little circulation in the blood and barium as possible, then you sit for another hour, also as still as possible, getting the body scanned. Jesus. Needless to say, you feel very woozy after the barium and it's very anxious time.

Your mind wants to wander into numerous worst case scenarios while you were alone in a cold dark room. However, I was overjoyed when the nurses said I could listen to my MP3 player. I am glad you replaced that. I spent both of those hours listening to your podcast, actually. I even got one of the nurses to tape my phone next to my head during the scanning process to ensure I would hear it, provided a great distraction and really took my mind off what certainly would have been very gruesome two hours.

Also the doctor said that beating cancer certainly is partly mental and the attitude and response from the treatment have a large part to do with your response. And I'm a graduate from Georgia Tech and if I could hear a go jackets on the air, seriously make my week and increase my odds of survival. Oh my goodness. I know you both went to UGA, however, I'm hopeful that we can put aside our differences and come together to rally behind something like cancer. And I emailed Peter back and said, you're very manipulative human being.

And he laughed and thought that was really funny and gave me and you a go dogs in the email. Oh, okay. And he thought that might be like a carbon offset. So Peter, obviously, go jackets. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Go jackets. Go jackets.

Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, et cetera. And that's where it ends, my friend. And we wish you all the best, obviously, in your treatment and let us know how it's going. We'll be thinking about you. Thank you, Peter. Hang in there, buddy. Good luck. And keep us posted.

And we're never going to say go jackets again. That's right. That's your one shot. Yep. If you want to try to manipulate me and Chuck into doing something we don't want to, you can give it a shot. You can tweet to us at SWK podcast. That was a Y, by the way.

You can go to facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can join us at our home on the web that is stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey everybody, Chuck and Josh here from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. And we are hitting the road to continue our 2023 tour in three great cities, right? Yep.

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