Stuff You Should Know - What can be done with a dead body?

Episode Date: December 18, 2008

From transforming into a gem to being shot into space, modern technology has created a multitude of possible destinations for the bodies of the deceased. Go beyond the traditional funeral in this podcast from HowStuffWorks. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. This is Stuff You Should Know, and I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. Nice, Chuck. Good one. Hi, Josh. All right. Hi. I'm here. I just got here. All right, Chuck.

My, one of my heroes, one of my idols of all time, a guy named Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I knew that's where you were going. He actually stole one of my ideas, years, and I'm not kidding. Years before, I don't know if you actually stole it, but years before, Hunter Thompson had his ashes shot out of a cannon at Woody Creek, Colorado. Too much fanfare. Have you ever seen the video of it? No. I'm really dying to see that documentary. It's awesome. It's really great. I want my body, not ashes, body shot out of a cannon. Like you're in a circus, like a human cannonball. Yeah, exactly. But a lifeless one. It just kind of goes in and over. It's really creepy. On like a prairie or a plane in like Kansas. I figure all I need is a really good attorney

and a really corrupt sheriff, and I can get it done. Right. Well, what's the idea though? You get shot out and just land on the ground and then let the carrion pros take care of me. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it's a way to go. And you want to hear some other ways again? Sure. Okay. Apparently, you can do a lot with human cremates, cremated remains. Yes, you can. There's this one company called Lifegem, and I actually think they're Swiss. They will take a certain measure of... You think they're Swiss like they're not? Like they claim to be German, but I actually think they're Swiss. Right, yes. I'm suspicious that they're not Swiss. Sorry. Maybe Jersey or something. They'll take a little portion of your loved one's cremates and they compress it into a diamond,

actually. Wow. Yeah. And it's actually fairly... A real diamond? Yeah. You can do that. Well, I mean, it's a synthetic, compressed diamond. A real diamond takes eons to form. Well, that's what I thought. This is like... Oh, it's a dimonoid. I guess. Maybe cubic or cone or something like that. As far as they say, it's a diamond though. Sure. For a.29 carat diamond, it's only $2,500. You just send them some of your loved one's remains. Yeah, that's no diamond. And it also actually is equally effective to keep an enemy in prison for eternity if you want to do that. You just have to get your hands on some of their ashes. You can wear them around. Oh, right. Like you own them. Yeah. That's another thing. That's a power trip. Totally.

Totally. Well, you know what's going to happen to you after you die. I know. You better not die before me. You can also have your ashes shot into space. Timothy Leary had it done, actually. Exactly. Again, one of my heroes. Slightly, yeah, I know. Slightly affordable, somewhat affordable, surprisingly affordable. How much? For a, I think, a gram of your ashes to be shot into space and then allowed to burn up in the atmosphere where you conceivably become part of the carbon cycle or the rain cycle or something. $2,500. That's not bad. I wonder if they shoot you up there. I'm sure they do with a bunch of other people. Oh, definitely. And there's a couple of different flights. One, it just goes up, hits zero gravity and comes back

down and then they return it to you and you're like, thanks a bunch. That would be appropriate for me because you know how much I hate to fly because of being next to strangers. Yes. That would be my ultimate horrible way to go is to be shot up into space, crowded and surrounded by a bunch of other people's cremains. Right. No, thanks. Yeah. No, so we won't do that to you? No. You won't have to worry about it. You'll be trapped in a diamond in a ring on my finger. That's your fate. I think I'd like to be cremated. I definitely don't want to, the old Southern traditional burial view the body type of thing. Well, you know, there's, there's some other stuff you can do. You can actually put a dead body to good use. That's what I hear. Yes. Bodies can actually be made to generate

power after they die. True. In theory, right? And this setup, this one fascinates me the most because it's actually a, it's a conceptual art project called the afterlife project. Right. But basically these, these, these two artists or an artist and a designer, I believe, came up with a way where you, you can put a microbial fuel cell beneath the remains of a dead body, right? Specifically underneath their stomach. And as the body decomposes, these gastric juices that are produced are eaten up by the bacteria in the anode of this microbial fuel cell. Right. And it's anaerobic. So there's no oxygen. So it can't just be turned into water. So these free floating electrons that are looking for something to bind are basically turned, converted

into electricity. Now that is actually shot up to like a, say a memorial statue of the grave marker. Right. And the grave marker is actually a battery charger. So you have a battery and it's got like your name and your date of birth and death on it. Yeah. And your loved ones can power all sorts of weird stuff with it or normal stuff, normal stuff, but I like the weird stuff better. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I wonder if that is actually going to come to fruition. I don't know. I don't know. Some looking into it, I didn't find a whole lot like, you know, sometimes when conceptual arts done, it's done and you know, whatever, but they proved it can, it can happen. I actually do think that they created a model for it and the science is there

for sure. But they were saying that they did this to provide proof to people who are spiritually disconnected or require proof that there is a life after death because really they're taking energy that was there before and putting it out into, you know, small handheld battery powered devices. That's mind blowing. Truly. It really is. It's a great idea. It is. That's the afterlife project. So you can't, you can't put bodies to use this. It's a good thing. But that actually is kind of part of a growing trend of green burials. Yeah. That's a big thing. Or depending on where you come from, green burials. Burials. Yeah. It depends on who you ask. I've got a stat for you. You know, I love your stats. I know. There was a study performed by the, I'm sorry, with the American

Association of Retired Persons and 21% in 2007 of people over the age of 50 were interested in green burials. That makes sense because that's like, that's my dad's generation. Yeah. And they are the ones who got like the recycling kibosh put on their heads. Yeah. Like my dad recycles religiously. And I think his age group really bought into that in like the early 90s. So I'm not surprised by that. 20% is not bad. I think the other 79% said get off my lawn. So probably you've got that kind of thing. Well, the thing is it makes sense. It may seem a little wacky, a little eco conscious to the nth degree. I disagree. But yeah, well, you know, traditional burials actually are really harmful environmentally. Yeah, they don't make a lot

of sense. I think it's a, to me, this is my opinion. I think it's a little bit of an outdated thing to load the body up with formaldehyde and put it in a very expensive casket and sink it into the ground. It doesn't make much sense to me. That's just Chuck talking. Well, I mean, it's been done clearly because people need that kind of closure. You have to take a few days to really kind of get over it. Sure. You know, in the 19th century, people used to sit up around their dead loved one, which is popped up on chairs in like the living room for days. They'd eat meals around it, that kind of thing. Yeah. And this was before embalming was used, I believe. So I imagine that got pretty gamey. But so we come up with embalming and now, you know, a mortuary

putty and all of a sudden we can hang out with our loved one until we're ready to plant them in the ground. But even when we plant them in the ground, that embalming fluid, you know, it may make cigarettes pop. But really, it's not good for you at all. No, it's not. It's not good for the environment. But you don't, you know, if you're interested in a green burial, you don't think it has to be some of these more radical ones that were about to mention. If you do want a sort of a traditional casket type of deal, you can get biodegradable caskets these days made of bamboo, sustainable bamboo. You can get an eco pod, which is basically a pod made from recycled newspaper. It's kind of like paper mache. Yeah, yeah, sort of. So you just kind of, it dissolves along with

you into the earth. Sure. Forgo the formaldehyde. You can use apparently these dry ice and refrigeration instead, which makes sense to me. Sure. And it makes perfect sense. You just have to, you're limited then in where cemetery can be. Right. You can't be near the water shed. Right. Or the water table. Or else some nastiness could really get into the, into the waters and pollute it. Yeah. Although I guess if you're not using embalming fluid or any other kind of hazardous materials, would a decomposing body be that much threat? And really honestly, how much decomposing bodies do we drink every day just from tap water? I don't have that stat. Probably a significant amount. You think? Sure. I guess so. Okay. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and

corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God, talking about walking into the devil's den, the car sales, they just killed everybody that was home. They start pulling out pictures of Clay Williams' body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot, by the name of Lamar Chester, he never ran anything but grass until I turned over that load of coke to him on the island. Chester would claim he did it all for this CIA. Pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation. So, Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered?

Oh, no, not by a long shot. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami. Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like, he was a god. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life?

Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of people buried out there, you know? Sure. But I mean, dead fish, dead squirrels, dead raccoons, pretty much any woodland animal that's dead. That's a good point. We've probably drank before. Why not humans?

Sure. And of course, there's always good old cremation, which is supposedly a green burial, because also the caskets that are usually used, used like a mahogany casket, that's like an old growth forest wood. And it's being cut down so it can be planted in the ground with you, and it's probably laminated using some horrible kind of lacquer. It's just not good. So cremation, that's great. There's no, even though there is a casket involved, it's not degrading, it's actually being burned up. But the problem is there's all sorts of horrible byproducts from burning a human body. Right. And it takes a lot of energy too. Yes, it does. But the energy can be harnessed, can it? Well, yeah, that's one cool thing. And this is in Sweden. Our friends in

Sweden are always ahead of the curve, it seems like. Hello, Sweden. The crematorium is there. They're harnessing that heat that it takes. I think it's over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is 1,000 degrees Celsius for you in Sweden. Right. So they're harnessing that heat and actually turning it into energy. And there's a town in Sweden that actually gets 10% of its home heating energy from crematoriums. From the dead. Yeah, pretty cool. They provide heat for the home. Yeah, that is very, very cool. That is super cool. It's also a little creepy, but it's very cool. Right. But that is not the coolest one, in my opinion. Are you talking about alkaline hydrolysis? Oh, yeah, man. That is awesome. So you want to tell them you want me to? Go ahead. Okay,

so basically, all these animals they're experimented on, like, you know, we couldn't have come up with Ebola without sacrificing a few animals. But, you know, just toss those kind of things into the garbage. This is a biohazard. There's a process that was created where you dissolve a body in lye and heat it to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, 149 degrees Celsius. And you apply about 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to the body. So I imagine it's in some little kind of box or something with like a card cruncher kind of thing, right? And after a certain amount of time, the body dissolves and it turns into like this coffee colored goo. Yeah, survey. That's like, it's the consistency of motor oil and it's sterile. So what do you do with it? Down the drain.

Pour it down the drain. I can't think of any less sentimental way to dispose of a human body than that. Right. Yeah, a lot of people don't like this though. I mean, they don't, they do this on cadavers and like you said, research animals, they don't do this. It's not in practice yet. Well, they're trying to. Right. There's a, I'd be all for it personally. I can't remember where the town is Chuck. It's in New York. And there was a funeral director who's trying to get it, this process legalized because apparently you can't do that with human remains, right? The legal and the Roman Catholic diocese came out against it and basically got it dubbed the Hannibal Lecter Bill. Yeah, I don't think any bill. I don't get that. What is, I think they're just trying to play

off the creepiness and the, the complete disregard for the sanctity of humanity or anything. May a terrible example. It works, but it works because everybody's heard of Hannibal Lecter and the bill got sunk. So, uh, and frankly, I don't know. I need slightly more prominent circumstance. I need more cannons and Kansas planes, you know, then. Well, you could have a ceremony. I don't think it necessarily has to be your wife, you know, in a darkened room, just pouring you down a drain. You have a big party and a big ceremony. You can still have all the fanfare. It's true. And that is true. And technically, I guess it's not that much different from cremation, right? Sure. Yeah. Or you could put the Serpigu into a balloon and drop it from

the Empire State Building. That'd be kind of cool. That would be very cool. It's no cannon. Yeah. What is a Serpigu? I'm covered with some poor guy with like a fanny pack and the camera. And then he's covered with Josh. Ironically, he's from Kansas. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, that's, there's a lot of things that are in the works that it looks like the funeral industry is going to be turned over eventually. Yeah. Even, even Nate Fisher from six feet under, he had a green burial. Right. Just wrapped in like a canvas sack and planted in the ground. Well, there's only so much land mass out there and it can't, you know, agreed. Well, I'll go to cemeteries. What's, well, I think is cool about the green burial movement is they use these cemetery plots as land easements

so that they're protected in perpetuity because there's a person there. And basically you, rather than getting, spending the money on a plot in a traditional cemetery, you basically buy a piece of land and it's protected forever. So it's protected land. It can never be developed on. That's another kind of subtle aim of the green burial movement is land conservation by, you know, death. Right. And there's also burial at sea. The new green way to be buried at sea is to have your remains mixed with concrete and become part of an artificial coral reef. And be tickled by fish for the rest of eternity. That'd be awesome. So yeah, that's green burial. And actually you can find more on this on the site. It's called can my body generate power after I die. And before

we let you go, Chuck and I wanted to point out another article about death that we think you'll enjoy. It's called the 15 most common causes of death in the world. Fantastic green combined with can my body generate power after I die. It'll have you rolling in stitches. It's a fun weekend. You can find both of those by typing some words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for

what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison during two decades in reality TV. Chris saw it all and now he's telling all it's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.