Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and this stuff you didn't
Speaker 1: know the podcast that's right. This is part of our
Speaker 1: ongoing death Suite, which is sweet. Yeah, we've covered death
Speaker 1: a lot because death is multi faceted. Sure you know.
Speaker 1: This reminded me of the I guess we covered green
Speaker 1: burial not in its own podcast, but in like different
Speaker 1: ways to what to do with the dead Bonnie. There
Speaker 1: you go, That's what I thought it was into. But
Speaker 1: I'm surprised we didn't do a podcast dedicated just to that.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should. Yeah, I looked up because I'm interested
Speaker 1: in that for myself. And uh, there are some lovely
Speaker 1: places right outside Atlanta to be buried greenly where you
Speaker 1: can just be wrapped in a shroud and buried in
Speaker 1: the field, which ripped to death by coyotes left in
Speaker 1: the field that they don't leave you enough. No, well
Speaker 1: they bury you in a shallow grave for the coyotes
Speaker 1: to come get you. Now. They said they don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with that. But I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: people that uh cares about that. Yeah, like about what
Speaker 1: happens to your body, Like I would do a sky burial.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't bother me for vultures to pick me apart.
Speaker 1: Like use the body if it would feed an animal? Great,
Speaker 1: why not donated to science? Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not precious about that my body after death. I'm
Speaker 1: not precious about my body in life. Why start then? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's funny. Yeah. So anyway, well a shroud, a shroud
Speaker 1: does kind of technically count as a coffin. Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back in the day if you didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money, right, um, or if you're into being picked
Speaker 1: apart by coyotes. Um. But the the whole point of
Speaker 1: a coffin or what constitutes a coffin is it provides
Speaker 1: a barrier between the body and the ground. And technically
Speaker 1: a shroud does that. It's a really really poor coffin.
Speaker 1: But that it's the whole point. It's that the body
Speaker 1: is encapsulated in something that just dropping a body into
Speaker 1: a grave is um undignified. You might say, even cremating
Speaker 1: a body without some form or fashion of a coffin
Speaker 1: is considered undignified. And you'll be hard pressed to find
Speaker 1: a crematorium that will let you just put your loved
Speaker 1: one on the conveyor belt and let them just kind
Speaker 1: of flop lifelessly toward the flames. I don't think they
Speaker 1: flop well, I mean, if they're jostle, they're gonna flop, okay,
Speaker 1: especially after rigors um the coffin, the word coffin. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna do any Merriam Webster stuff, because that's who
Speaker 1: would start an article like that or do it six
Speaker 1: times in an article. But we will say we like
Speaker 1: to get root words. And of course Greek and Latin
Speaker 1: are involved here with the Greek cofinos in Latin cofee nuts.
Speaker 1: They're always like, oh yeah, right, I'll change that cato
Speaker 1: a c and that otto a you remember, the Greeks
Speaker 1: happen exactly. So that's where the word coffin came from. Um.
Speaker 1: But here in the United States we generally referred to
Speaker 1: that vessel as a casket, whereas in places like England
Speaker 1: and Australia I'm sorry, Great Britain and Australia they might
Speaker 1: say coffin, even though a lot of people here think
Speaker 1: that's like a word you shouldn't use. Well, yeah, their
Speaker 1: casket still means a place to like keep your valuables right,
Speaker 1: your bubbles right. Yeah. Here in the US, if you
Speaker 1: go to a funeral directorium also called a funeral home,
Speaker 1: you're going to find that they'd never use the word coffin. No,
Speaker 1: and you know it's pretty subtle, but the language is definitely.
Speaker 1: They don't say, uh, we'd love to pick out for you,
Speaker 1: to pick out a coffin for your husband's dead body, um,
Speaker 1: and then we'll dig a grave over there and put
Speaker 1: it in the ground. They will say things like, we
Speaker 1: would like you to pick out a casket for your
Speaker 1: husband and from our display area, from the display area,
Speaker 1: and we will take you there in the casket coach,
Speaker 1: not a hearse and uh, and place him in internment
Speaker 1: space which is opened, and then we'll close afterward. Rather
Speaker 1: than filling or digging the grapes, they don't say where
Speaker 1: it's like digging and ground isn't anything that that brings
Speaker 1: to mind. Um, the guy from phantasm does the funeral
Speaker 1: industry avoids those words. Yeah, And of course we've ruined
Speaker 1: six feet under and the Fisher and Sons the boys,
Speaker 1: such a great show. Michael always did, such a great
Speaker 1: job of you know, being the proper funeral director and
Speaker 1: using all the all the words that you should use,
Speaker 1: like casket. He's good at it, and then he turned
Speaker 1: into a serial killer. No, well yeah, um, so there
Speaker 1: actually is a distinction beyond where you live with the
Speaker 1: word casket in coffin. There's a slight difference. Shape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's all. It's basically shape. A casket is a
Speaker 1: long rectangle and the top is usually split, so you
Speaker 1: can know that's a coffin. That's a casket. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a casket. Coffin is the hexagonal, right, a hexagonal box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that you know, back in the day you had
Speaker 1: the old pine box. Actually a lot of those were
Speaker 1: just rectangular. Um, but somewhere you know, had that familiar
Speaker 1: sort of keyhole shape. Well back in the day, in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, the person who was responsible for carrying
Speaker 1: out your funeral services and building your coffin was usually
Speaker 1: the local carpenter, and he undertook your funeral service, hence
Speaker 1: the word undertaker from what I understand, Um, but it
Speaker 1: was usually somebody who built wagons and kitchens and whatever.
Speaker 1: They also built coffins too, and they built him the suit.
Speaker 1: That sounded to me like our first casket fact. Well done, Chuck, Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you Jerry for going the extra mile there. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you like that, you're going to love this episode
Speaker 1: because this place is lousy with casket facts. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: won't play the sound effect on this one. But I
Speaker 1: thought another interesting fact, because you know, I like origins
Speaker 1: of phrases and things. If someone casts the pall over
Speaker 1: a room, Paul was actually a dark cloth that they
Speaker 1: would put over the casket too. I guess cover you know,
Speaker 1: block out the bad juju of having the dead body
Speaker 1: in there, right, so you would cast a pall over
Speaker 1: the casket. Yeah, or if you're me, you cast a
Speaker 1: pall over any room you enter. That's fun, no fun anymore? Everybody?
Speaker 1: Can we can we talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: funeral industry for a second. About the casket industry has
Speaker 1: to say specifically, there's still some furniture companies that make
Speaker 1: caskets on the side, like Lazy Boy. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Lazy Boy doesn't, but there's they represent a
Speaker 1: very small shape of the caskets ultimate Lazy Boy, you
Speaker 1: know you're You're forever chair exactly. Well, they actually have
Speaker 1: caskets for those people. It's called um, goliath caskets, oversized caskets,
Speaker 1: order oversized caskets. Calm huh. Anyway, of course there's someone
Speaker 1: that does that because that's a common thing. You know,
Speaker 1: caskets aren't you know some people of of girth. That's
Speaker 1: pretty embarrassing now when you can't fit in your casket, right,
Speaker 1: And I went and looked, and these are very dignified
Speaker 1: caskets there for the larger person. Um uh wow Um.
Speaker 1: There's also uh okay, so when the largest casket makers.
Speaker 1: Batesville originally started out as a furniture company. So there's
Speaker 1: like this whole origin of yeah, I'll build your chair
Speaker 1: and I'll build your coffin for your uncle too. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's carpentry. And then um, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the way it went. There was some some groups that
Speaker 1: that started to consolidate and just make caskets around the
Speaker 1: late the turn of the twentieth century the beginning of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and you know, that was fine. They
Speaker 1: kind of created the industry. And then it was like
Speaker 1: the fifties after the Korean War, when metal caskets became
Speaker 1: like all our age. Yeah, because that was mad looking
Speaker 1: and that was popular at the time it was. And
Speaker 1: you'll also find in the funeral industry it was easy
Speaker 1: to um subtly exploit the grieving out of their money. Um,
Speaker 1: there was that it was very cheap to mass produce
Speaker 1: metal caskets and so they were sold, sold, sold. There
Speaker 1: was a huge profit margin with them, and I think
Speaker 1: by um the seventies, half of all caskets were um
Speaker 1: we're metal. Yeah, Well, because what better way to protect
Speaker 1: your loved one from the elements and the harsh afterlife
Speaker 1: that they may encounter than with a good old solid
Speaker 1: metal in casing. Yes exactly, um, which also happens to
Speaker 1: be I have greater profit margins and it's cheaper to produce,
Speaker 1: so it is it's cheaper to mass produced the other
Speaker 1: aspect of a metal coffin. In the rise of the
Speaker 1: metal coffin, it changed the casket making industry, UM because
Speaker 1: it's really really expensive to get into metal coffin making.
Speaker 1: Apparently cost about a million dollars just for the dies
Speaker 1: to make a standard metal coffin just for the dies alone.
Speaker 1: So this kind of consolidated industry down to a fewer
Speaker 1: and fewer companies that were making metal caskets, UM, so
Speaker 1: it became a real industry at that point. UM. And
Speaker 1: then ultimately the casket industry started to suffer and decline
Speaker 1: thanks to advances in medicine. There were fewer deaths, so
Speaker 1: their profits dropped or the revenue drop. And then starting
Speaker 1: in the eighties, people said, you know what, maybe cremation
Speaker 1: isn't so bad, and so in I think of people
Speaker 1: opted for cremation, and then by two thousand, um, I think, no,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, it's like yeah, and every time somebody
Speaker 1: gets cremated, the coffin industry dies a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although you know, um, like you said, you can um
Speaker 1: still have a casket to be cremated in and we
Speaker 1: can over this in the Cremation podcast. Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: have to, like you can't find somebody who will just
Speaker 1: let your but that can be it's super cheap, like
Speaker 1: sometimes it's even cardboard. Well it's supposed to because it's
Speaker 1: got to burn. Yeah, but I mean at the very
Speaker 1: least would uh will also burn. But you can you
Speaker 1: can spend a little bit more money, or you can
Speaker 1: get a temporary encasing and outer encasing that is more
Speaker 1: attractive to show the family and then when push comes
Speaker 1: to shove, they shove that. They remove the outer casket
Speaker 1: and shove you. And it's like a rental casket just
Speaker 1: for the service. Yeah, and you can actually rent caskets period,
Speaker 1: like even if you aren't being cremated, just for a
Speaker 1: more showy experience and then they'll you know, then you
Speaker 1: get the pine box treatment, right because nobody will loves you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's expensive, man. People. A lot of people don't have
Speaker 1: the money to pay for a big funeral, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people really believe in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's really sad for them, you know. It is. Luckily
Speaker 1: there's such a thing as Walmart and Costco. Both of
Speaker 1: them sell caskets. Walmart has a casket for eleven one thousand,
Speaker 1: it's the Lady of Our Lady of guadaloup Um casket model. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Costco Yeah okay, and then Costco has the
Speaker 1: same same model for a hundred bucks more. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was surprised that it's not exactly the same. But
Speaker 1: it's nice to see that the big box retailers aren't
Speaker 1: price fixing coffins. Yeah, it's great to see Walmart selling coffins.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's like that you if you need
Speaker 1: a coffin, and they're attractive looking coffins. I think they're fiberglass.
Speaker 1: Have you ever laid down in a coffin? Probably not,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't either. I would just to see
Speaker 1: what it felt like. They look comfy. Did you see
Speaker 1: the thing about the six ft under club in San Francisco?
Speaker 1: There is a club where it's like, hey, you and
Speaker 1: you're UM partner, life part swinging partner, partner, what your
Speaker 1: sex partner. Let's just call it what it is. UM
Speaker 1: can write, can come lay down in our coffin and
Speaker 1: we'll bury you and you guys can do it, and
Speaker 1: we are going to watch you on a night vision
Speaker 1: webcamp that's going to be projected on the walls of
Speaker 1: the club above. Where's the San Francisco San Francisco six
Speaker 1: Under Club and you can email in reserves space in
Speaker 1: their coffin. Huh? Is there? I mean, is there any
Speaker 1: room in the coffin that's pretty I would imagine it
Speaker 1: would have to be a larger, but maybe a goliath
Speaker 1: coffin double one. Huh. Well, I will never do that,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting to know what's out there. It is
Speaker 1: out there, Sisco options. Let's talk about the anatomy of
Speaker 1: a coffin, Chuckers, Well, the you know, the most important thing,
Speaker 1: of course, is that it is a barrier too, from
Speaker 1: the body to the you know, the elements. No one,
Speaker 1: Actually I don't care, like I already said, but most people,
Speaker 1: most normal people, I don't want to think about their
Speaker 1: loved ones bodies like decaying and being eaten by you know,
Speaker 1: being worm dirt. But one thing they cannot tell you
Speaker 1: is that it's illegal to say that we have a
Speaker 1: casket that will permanently seal the body, Like it's against
Speaker 1: the law to claim any sort of permanence. Um, even
Speaker 1: if it's one of these new gasket coffins. What are
Speaker 1: those called. Um, it's called the protective coffin, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: actually has a rubber gasket so it feels much tighter.
Speaker 1: But they still legally can't say like it will protect
Speaker 1: them forever, right, because it will protect them from the elements.
Speaker 1: But there is such a thing as decay, like your
Speaker 1: your body is going to decay and nothingness. And apparently,
Speaker 1: I guess the funeral industry was selling coffins based on
Speaker 1: the idea that the body was going to survive forever
Speaker 1: and with this impermeable seal that the protective coffins had,
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't letting anything in, but it also
Speaker 1: wasn't letting anything out, which is a problem. And in
Speaker 1: an airtight um environment, anaerobic bacteria gets to work and
Speaker 1: as they start putrefying the flesh, they expel methane gas
Speaker 1: as a by product. And there's a thing called exploding
Speaker 1: coffin syndrome which was most um apparent in mausoleums, where
Speaker 1: a coffin would just blow up, and sometimes they would
Speaker 1: blow up so much that it would blow the mausoleum
Speaker 1: door open, like a huge methane explosion from the gas
Speaker 1: built up from the decaying corps in this protective coffin.
Speaker 1: So now they have ones that that don't let anything in,
Speaker 1: but they burp gas out. They're called burping coffins, which
Speaker 1: is a great name for a coffin. So but so
Speaker 1: is exploding casket syndrome. Boy, could you imagine being a
Speaker 1: cemetery worker and seeing a mausoleum door explode wide? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just like I seen it all. I would quit
Speaker 1: my job that day. Um, So it depends on where
Speaker 1: you are in the world what you're gonna get with
Speaker 1: your with your coffin and with regulations, you know, and
Speaker 1: less developed countries obviously they're less regulated. Um, you could
Speaker 1: still be wrapped in a shroud in some parts of
Speaker 1: the world. Right here in the US, um, in the West.
Speaker 1: You they're basically public health regulations, which is why that
Speaker 1: that place for the green burial is designated a green
Speaker 1: burial place. Yeah, so I'm sure you the body won't
Speaker 1: come in contact with the groundwater, I think is what
Speaker 1: they're trying to keep from happening. Yeah, that was in
Speaker 1: the thank you. Yeah. So, um, that's pretty much the
Speaker 1: whole public health regulation, and it's gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where most most people are buried with cement and casement
Speaker 1: around them, right, Oh is that what they do these days?
Speaker 1: I think so? Yeah, I think I knew that. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's so funny, like we're we're all still six year
Speaker 1: old at our courts, like, dude, dead body cross, I
Speaker 1: can't let they get in the water. Yeah, that stuffing
Speaker 1: better me? Do you cant? Sadies? No not. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to drink a dead body now, but seeing one,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm the guy who poked a head floating
Speaker 1: in a bucket, you know. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about
Speaker 1: that story. I didn't poke it, but I mentally poked it.
Speaker 1: It didn't me. Uh. If you are in the Western world,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna be dealing with wood or metal or fiberglass.
Speaker 1: If you are live out in the desert, they may
Speaker 1: use things like local products like clay or stone, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I guess we got a lot
Speaker 1: of wood here in the United States though, particle board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like we mentioned the sad, sad cardboard cremation vessel, right, which, again,
Speaker 1: if you're being you probably don't care. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: all set for cremation, and then I thought, I don't know,
Speaker 1: is there anything that's in the green burial seems like
Speaker 1: a good option. Sure, just become one with the dirt maybe,
Speaker 1: but I like the idea being scattered as well, or
Speaker 1: again helping somebody helping other people. Yeah, but they'll still
Speaker 1: like if you don't your body to science, did they
Speaker 1: not give you any sort of like, no, you can't
Speaker 1: be embalmed or anything. I guess you probably could if like,
Speaker 1: say you're going to the body farm, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to be involved. And I'm sure there's like memorial services,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't as I understand it. That's
Speaker 1: another thing that's eating into the casket industry profits is
Speaker 1: body donation. Hey man, I think this is a perfect
Speaker 1: time to have a message break from our sponsor, which
Speaker 1: means they're jingle all right, So I think this is
Speaker 1: actually a great time for a second gasket. Fact, I
Speaker 1: like these already. Alright back in the day, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, that was sort of a they called
Speaker 1: it graves body snatching period, and people were into snatching
Speaker 1: up bodies, digging up graves, exhuming people, if you will,
Speaker 1: and basically selling bodies for money for medical research. It
Speaker 1: was a way to make a buck or doing research
Speaker 1: on your own. Medical College of Georgia was they found
Speaker 1: dozens of skeletons. I was like, I don't think dozens
Speaker 1: of skeletons of um people who were dismembered, and they
Speaker 1: figured out that all of them had been and from graves.
Speaker 1: Remember that. Of course, that wasn't in the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: was it. It was in the nineteenth century. It so
Speaker 1: they developed something well, various things to you know, protect
Speaker 1: bodies like locked mausoleums and vaults. And then something I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna net called the mort safe, which is
Speaker 1: basically an iron cage put over the coffin. It's like
Speaker 1: sunk into concrete. It's like what people used to protect
Speaker 1: their air conditioners today. Yeah exactly, but over like a grave.
Speaker 1: So that that was a mort safe and that kept
Speaker 1: people out. They had guards sometimes stats guards. I think
Speaker 1: then the caretaker doubles as a guard, but they had
Speaker 1: people who they hired as guards and protect a specific grave.
Speaker 1: I think if you had enough dough, you could have like, um,
Speaker 1: you know the mausoleum with a guard. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, that's if you're rich and wealthy. Um.
Speaker 1: There are also if you weren't wealthy, other ways to
Speaker 1: to thwart grave robbers, just to put heavy planks um
Speaker 1: to backfill the grave with rocks instead of dirt, which
Speaker 1: might not have kept somebody out, but they would have
Speaker 1: made quite a bit of noise digging you up. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, have you ever been to um Oakland Cemetery. Yeah?
Speaker 1: I go all the time, well not all the time,
Speaker 1: but I go. It is beautiful all the times. A year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mean, and I went and just did like this,
Speaker 1: just walked around like there's some there's some ausoleums there
Speaker 1: that like there's no way you could have gotten into. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For those uh people that haven't been to Atlanta, that
Speaker 1: is what are probably oldest in like cemetery. It is
Speaker 1: our Parade de Lache. Yes, I've been to that one
Speaker 1: to actually the one in Paris. What parade is it?
Speaker 1: The one with Jim Morrison. Yeah, of course, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think Oscar Wilde is there and Chopin, but you know,
Speaker 1: Morrison's the one that you go by and there's like
Speaker 1: joints on the ground and like tabs of acid and stuff.
Speaker 1: And then you always like the random guy kind of
Speaker 1: hanging out like waiting for everyone to turn their back.
Speaker 1: A bunch of dirty hippies basically uh in Ghana and
Speaker 1: other parts of Africa. It is kind of cool because
Speaker 1: they will They have a very um, sort of a
Speaker 1: joyous way of celebrating death with their bright colored coffins
Speaker 1: and even odd shapes that would pay honor to what
Speaker 1: this person loved in life. Um. I saw one that
Speaker 1: was like a giant shoe and this guy this uh,
Speaker 1: this Aprican dude was just like, you know, it must
Speaker 1: have been as relative and it was just so proud
Speaker 1: to show that they were bearing him in a giant shoe.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's like to the dead in Ghana
Speaker 1: what a pinionta is to like a kid in Mexico. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have like pinionas that are like shape for their
Speaker 1: different specific Yeah, there was just a b there's like
Speaker 1: lets of hello kiddies and like really yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's some great pinontas out there. Um. And then the
Speaker 1: other example they gave in here is like if it
Speaker 1: was a businessman, he might be buried in something that
Speaker 1: resembled his luxury car. Or a fisherman, it might be
Speaker 1: a fish shaped the fish finally got him back. He's
Speaker 1: in the belly of it. So chuck, you you mentioned
Speaker 1: things that coffins may be made out of. You mentioned
Speaker 1: like wood, fiberglass, um, oak, hardy woods, bronze is still
Speaker 1: used on occasion, yeah sure, um. And that's the shell
Speaker 1: of the coffin yeah, um. And then the inside you'll
Speaker 1: find the lining, usually some sort of rich fabric like
Speaker 1: tafida or velvet or something that looks like that. Maybe
Speaker 1: volure if if they like juicy clothes that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: silk maybe, Yeah, and it's stuffed with batting to keep
Speaker 1: the corpse nice and comfortable. And uh, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: You've got hardware on the outside and that's a casket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be warm. Colors here in the Western world, Um,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna You're not gonna see a lot of
Speaker 1: brightly painted coffins and stuff like that. No, but also
Speaker 1: they kind of avoid like, um, you're probably I can
Speaker 1: see a black coffin anywhere. Yeah. Those are called um
Speaker 1: receding colors. They're they're dismal in of desperation and despair.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen a lot of like light
Speaker 1: gray and things like that, or just would color. If
Speaker 1: you get like a really nice wood like cherry, sometimes
Speaker 1: it will just be in that. You know that that
Speaker 1: will be the outer shell. And those are pricing, Yes,
Speaker 1: they are um that. As a matter of fact, the
Speaker 1: average cost of a funeral in the US and two
Speaker 1: thousand nine was six thousand, five hundred and sixty which
Speaker 1: is less than I thought. I think a green barrels
Speaker 1: about half that. Yeah, I can see that. I think
Speaker 1: they're like two or three grand because the coffin um
Speaker 1: in the average funeral was two thousand, two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five dollars the average cost of a metal coffin
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine UM which in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: funeral homes and crematories pulled in eleven point nine five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, And one of the ways they pulled in
Speaker 1: that much was from casket sales. Yeah. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if even should say this out loud because it
Speaker 1: sounds like an unfounded accusation that cheap coffins are purposely
Speaker 1: made ugly so they can up sell. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's true? Uh, it's probably true. Well, I know, I've
Speaker 1: I've read that the the funeral home industry marks up
Speaker 1: caskets that they buy, they resell them for more than
Speaker 1: they paid for them. Well, it's a business, and that's
Speaker 1: their product, you know it is. It's a business in
Speaker 1: the Uh, the customers are in a really um, really
Speaker 1: easily exploited place. Yeah, I just I don't know though.
Speaker 1: I just think it is a business. And because it
Speaker 1: deals with death, it's very easy for someone to say, like,
Speaker 1: you're exploiting these people, are taking advantage of them when there.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that's true. It's well, I think
Speaker 1: that you can't cast that net across the entire industree.
Speaker 1: I think that that's that's there's But they're also for everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, bad apples Josh. Well, you know, we we
Speaker 1: have a lot of opulence here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Some people get into that, but apparently in Australia and
Speaker 1: Great Britain they're a little more reserved with what they'll
Speaker 1: spend on a casket. In some cultures, like the Jewish faith, Um,
Speaker 1: it's very common to to not have any sort of
Speaker 1: garish thing. It wants you to be burying something very plain,
Speaker 1: so you're not distinguished as to your place in life,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, apparently they'll even the hardware that they
Speaker 1: used to carry is removable, so like when you're buried,
Speaker 1: you're buried in a plane box. Yeah like that. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Um. Do you want to talk about the
Speaker 1: Bow people? The hanging coffins of the Bow not to
Speaker 1: be confused with the Hell of the upside down centers
Speaker 1: in Big Trouble in Little China, although this is in
Speaker 1: Sechuan Province of China. The Bo people are an ethnic
Speaker 1: group that populated the area, and they had this really
Speaker 1: neat tradition of putting the cough finds of their deceased
Speaker 1: up on like three hundred foot cliffs, just craigs, little caves,
Speaker 1: and for centuries, no one has had any idea how
Speaker 1: they got them up there. Yeah, at one point they
Speaker 1: had close to three hundred and now it's only about
Speaker 1: a hundred and three hundred and fifty four hundred feet
Speaker 1: And you've seen did you see pictures? It's crazy. I
Speaker 1: mean they're like, I don't see how they did it.
Speaker 1: They think now they might have lowered them down, but
Speaker 1: they still you know that they're on It looks like
Speaker 1: they're on wood planks that are sticking out of the cliffs.
Speaker 1: So how they do that, I don't can't figure it out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. It's like a little village of coffins
Speaker 1: is kind of clustered on this cliff side. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: the idea that having your relatives higher up um is
Speaker 1: a place of greater respect to be looking up at
Speaker 1: them because that's where the deities were at the tops
Speaker 1: of mountains, and that would placed them closer to the deities. Yes,
Speaker 1: you go up here now, Yeah, because you're dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. Um. What about the Egyptians, They had
Speaker 1: the money coffin and if you ask me, yeah, and
Speaker 1: we covered this with Tutt obviously the big sarkofa guy. Um.
Speaker 1: But they didn't they believe that you would just be
Speaker 1: sent to your you know, all this stuff would go
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, you need it in your afterlife for
Speaker 1: your journey to the after world, the underworld. Um. And
Speaker 1: I guess the whole it was the opposite of what
Speaker 1: the Jews think. It was. The more socioeconomic status you
Speaker 1: can bestow upon a grave, the better off the person
Speaker 1: is going to be in the next life. You have
Speaker 1: a be jeweled casket, You're you're in our You're okay
Speaker 1: in our book. Yeah. But they actually had texts what
Speaker 1: we know called the Egyptian Book of the Dead and
Speaker 1: was originally um called the uh. It grew out of
Speaker 1: what it called the Egyptian Coffin texts, and there were two.
Speaker 1: The Book of the Dead, um. The Coffin text that
Speaker 1: became the Book of the Dead was for everybody, regardless
Speaker 1: of your socioeconomic status. And it it told you how
Speaker 1: to be buried. And we've done how mummies work, so
Speaker 1: We got into that a lot, and that's basically what
Speaker 1: we relied on. But there was also one for the pharaohs,
Speaker 1: the kings, the that the elite, and those are the
Speaker 1: Pyramid texts, yes, and that's the one that later evolved
Speaker 1: through the Book of the Dead, right, the Pyramid Text.
Speaker 1: I think the Coffin texts. I know, Hey, it's the
Speaker 1: Pyramid Text. Yeah, the Pyramid text is separate. That's the
Speaker 1: one for the for the elite, right, and that's what
Speaker 1: evolved through the Book of the Dead. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think what was in the Coffin Text was contained within
Speaker 1: the Pyramid text, right, Yeah, I think the Coffin Text
Speaker 1: was an umbrella that gave birth to both. It was
Speaker 1: the original one and it actually had the first described
Speaker 1: cosmology ever recorded. Yes, the Book of Two A's within
Speaker 1: the Egyptian Confin Text was the first time they basically said,
Speaker 1: here's what happens to you after death could happen to you,
Speaker 1: And it's basically you cross from one part of the
Speaker 1: sky into a lake of five and then across into
Speaker 1: another part of this guy. Yeah, and the Coffin texts
Speaker 1: have spells and things to help you out as well
Speaker 1: in your journey like check out my bejeweled casket. I'm okay.
Speaker 1: In your book, Chuck, we couldn't talk about um coffins
Speaker 1: if we didn't talk about a really interesting and neat
Speaker 1: trend of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, maybe even seventeenth,
Speaker 1: but I think eighteenth and nineteenth century called safety coffins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It's a common fear for people to It's
Speaker 1: called tafa phobia, tafo phobia, and um, that's the fear
Speaker 1: of being buried alive. Yeah, and that it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: And people had it then and they have it now. Well,
Speaker 1: they had good reason to have it back then, because
Speaker 1: it happened. Yeah. There there was a book called Premature
Speaker 1: Burial and How It May Be Prevented in book by
Speaker 1: a social reformer named William teb and a couple of
Speaker 1: co authors, and actually one of the co authors was
Speaker 1: a doctor who himself had been premat truly buried. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They went over like account after your account, and they
Speaker 1: even had a chapter called Dubious Accounts. But they basically
Speaker 1: came up with two hundred and nineteen instances of narrow
Speaker 1: escape from premature burial, a hundred forty nine cases of
Speaker 1: actual premature burial, ten cases of vivisection before death, so
Speaker 1: the person they thought was dead they started to cut
Speaker 1: open and they weren't dead. And then and then two
Speaker 1: cases of embalming before death, so like it happened before embalming.
Speaker 1: It was like there was no way to tell you
Speaker 1: were dead. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's that was
Speaker 1: the problem. Is medical science had advanced to the point
Speaker 1: where you could always tell if someone was dead exactly.
Speaker 1: And there was such thing as cholera, which apparently gives
Speaker 1: you the appearance of being dead even when you're not,
Speaker 1: so there was good reason to fear being buried alive
Speaker 1: and as a resultless thing called the safety coffin um
Speaker 1: came up. Yeah, and there were I'm sure you've done
Speaker 1: some other research on this. There were all different sorts
Speaker 1: of methods that they had from a vault that had
Speaker 1: like a little window and uh a wheel you could
Speaker 1: turn on the inside to let yourself out, which would
Speaker 1: be nice. Sometimes it was just a breathing tube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the one that was patented in by a guy
Speaker 1: named Count Carnice car Nicky, which is awesome. Uh. He
Speaker 1: had something that was there was a tube with a
Speaker 1: spring going all the way to six ft down. Um,
Speaker 1: and there was a little glass ball at the end
Speaker 1: of the tube and it rested on the deceased chest.
Speaker 1: And if any movement of the chest happened, like you
Speaker 1: took one breath anything like that, it would trip the spring.
Speaker 1: And some this passageway would fly open to let air
Speaker 1: in and a flag would rise up above your grades
Speaker 1: they were still alive. So UM, that one was one
Speaker 1: of the most well known safety coffins and actually in
Speaker 1: premature burial and how it may be prevented. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a whole little chapter dedicated to it. And actually you
Speaker 1: can find the full text of that online for free.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Uh. There were also things that would
Speaker 1: trigger like a bell ringing. Uh. One that even had
Speaker 1: a long fuse firecracker that I guess you could set off.
Speaker 1: I mean, that'll be the attention to somebody. Um. In
Speaker 1: that book, Teb and his friends they endorse to prevent
Speaker 1: premature burial, either safety coffin or cremation, whether like even
Speaker 1: if you are dead, then even if you're not dead,
Speaker 1: you're going to be dead afterwards. So if we guarantee
Speaker 1: you won't be buried alive, exactly, because you'll be right,
Speaker 1: we're not even going to bury the ultimate safety coffin.
Speaker 1: And there's this guy named Dr Timothy Clark Smith In.
Speaker 1: He died in Middlebury, Vermont, and he's buried to this day,
Speaker 1: which is customary in Evergreen Cemetery, and um, if you
Speaker 1: go to his burial mound, there's a fourteen by fourteen
Speaker 1: inch of plate glass that opens up onto what was
Speaker 1: once his face six down so that people could come
Speaker 1: check on him and make sure he was dead. Because
Speaker 1: he had half a phobia. It was very, very much
Speaker 1: afraid of that fate. That's got to be tied to
Speaker 1: claustrophobia somehow. Well, yeah, they think the a P A
Speaker 1: being They think that, um, you've had some sort of
Speaker 1: early childhood encounter with an enclosed space and either you
Speaker 1: developed half a phobia or you become the batman. Oh
Speaker 1: that's their that's their judgment that you know what that
Speaker 1: sounds like. That sounds like a casket. Fact, let's hear it,
Speaker 1: ah man, that's a sweet actor. Uh let's see what else.
Speaker 1: I got a couple more things? You got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? So you can we said that
Speaker 1: the average coffin is like you can also shell out
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars. Batesville UH Casket Company makes the Promethean
Speaker 1: Um and it is the coffin that Michael Jackson and
Speaker 1: James Brown were buried in separately. They of their own coffins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the deal was it? Just like it is nice looking, rich, luxurious,
Speaker 1: like navy velvet interior. You're lining this, it looks it
Speaker 1: must be gold but polished at this high shine. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful casket. I have to say, there's no reason
Speaker 1: in the world for anyone ever to be buried in
Speaker 1: a casket like this. But it's out there. Um, if
Speaker 1: you want to go the other way, you can go
Speaker 1: to d I y coffin dot com and there are
Speaker 1: schematics to build your own very plain coffin. I saw that.
Speaker 1: I thought about that it might be a nice thing
Speaker 1: to do, build your own coffin that King of the Hill.
Speaker 1: There's a king that where Hank builds his own coffin.
Speaker 1: He's talking about how he started. He's like, well, I
Speaker 1: looked into it and long story short, I got the bug.
Speaker 1: Now he's made. He made. He made. His first try
Speaker 1: was terrible, so he gave that to Peggy and then
Speaker 1: his second try, it's really nice. He's gotten it down
Speaker 1: pat and he Peggy gets the one where like the
Speaker 1: top doesn't close all the way right, That's what mine
Speaker 1: would look. It's a good episode. I'm not a skilled craftsman,
Speaker 1: but I enjoy it. Yeah. And then lastly, you mean,
Speaker 1: I saw Mike Tyson do his little love his little
Speaker 1: spoken word thing. But we saw him d C. It
Speaker 1: was great, um, And he talked about it was really
Speaker 1: sweet because I'm really ambivalent about him because you know,
Speaker 1: it's just he's a really there's a lot to him,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Um. And but one of
Speaker 1: the things that he said he did was his mother
Speaker 1: was buried in a potter's field with an unmarked grave
Speaker 1: and like a just a cheap box. And he said
Speaker 1: the first time he made money, he had her exhumed
Speaker 1: and bought like the most expensive headstone in the most
Speaker 1: expensive casket he could find, and had her buried in
Speaker 1: like this other nights cemetery. You know, there's a pauper's
Speaker 1: grave over by the drive in movie theater here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, is that right? Yeah, it's just yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a pauper's grave and lots of like bad stuff goes
Speaker 1: on there now apparently what oh like and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's the way where drugging. Yeah, I'm sure some teams
Speaker 1: are drinking and that's probably not a good tafe place
Speaker 1: to do that. No, I wouldn't think so. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's also Potter's Field Pauper's Grave in uh Oakland Cemetery.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which it's basically like a big expansive grass.
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of people who we're poor, we're burying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did Mountain Vernon when I was up there, you
Speaker 1: know George Washington's place. Is it cool? Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: neat because they still do stuff the old fashioned way,
Speaker 1: you know, like if they need a room painted, they
Speaker 1: grind up die and mix it with water and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But um, you know there is like you know,
Speaker 1: he and Martha are buryed in this like beautiful mausoleum.
Speaker 1: And then there's also like the slave you know grave sites,
Speaker 1: and it's just you know, definitely like he freed all
Speaker 1: his slaves and his will, which was a good thing
Speaker 1: to do, I guess. But anytime you go to one
Speaker 1: of those plantation type things and you see like the
Speaker 1: opulence of his thing, and then this other little side
Speaker 1: area where the slaves are buried. It's just sort of like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all that happened. That's a sad reminder, it is. And
Speaker 1: no one was visiting like the slave areas much even
Speaker 1: and I was just sort of like that kind of
Speaker 1: rubbed me a little bit. Did you go over there
Speaker 1: and visit it? Yeah? Absolutely good for you. Ye, So
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else. That's coffins.
Speaker 1: That's coffins. I was going to write this article a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago because it didn't exist, because I
Speaker 1: wanted to do this. Oh good, I'm glad it came along.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a lesson kids. If you wait
Speaker 1: around long enough, somebody else might do. Well. Then, since
Speaker 1: Chuck gave wait, I think Chuck, that might be a
Speaker 1: casket fact. What is that the last casket back? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: since we had our last casket fact? Um, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say. If you want to read this article
Speaker 1: on coffins, you can go to how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and you can type in that word ce F
Speaker 1: F I N in the search bar, and that means
Speaker 1: it's time now for a listener. Mail, Josh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this very manipulative email from a Georgia tech fan.
Speaker 1: Here we go, Peter in Virginia. He knows it's coming.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you, guys, how your podcast made
Speaker 1: a difference in my life. I recently found out that
Speaker 1: I have UH diffuse large B cell lymphoma. As a
Speaker 1: part of the testing process to determine what stage you are,
Speaker 1: they shoot you full of barium and then perform a
Speaker 1: CT scan. Cancer cells divide rapidly, so based on how
Speaker 1: much the barium glows during the CT will tell them
Speaker 1: how much your cancer has spread. As part of the process,
Speaker 1: you have to remain as still as possible for an
Speaker 1: hour prior to the ct UH so as there's uh
Speaker 1: as little circulation in the blood and barium as possible.
Speaker 1: Then you sit for another hour, also as still as possible,
Speaker 1: getting the body scan. Needless to say, you feel very
Speaker 1: woozy after the barium, and it's very anxious time. Your
Speaker 1: mind wants to wander into numerous worst case scenarios while
Speaker 1: you were alone UH in a cold dark room. However,
Speaker 1: I was overjoyed when the nurses said I could listen
Speaker 1: to um My m P three player. I am glad
Speaker 1: you that I spent both of those hours listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast. Actually, I even got one of the nurses
Speaker 1: to tape my phone next to my head during the
Speaker 1: scanning process to ensure I would hear it. Uh provided
Speaker 1: a great distraction and really took my mind off what
Speaker 1: certainly would have been very gruesome two hours. Also, the
Speaker 1: doctor said that beating cancer certainly is partly mental, and
Speaker 1: the attitude in response from the treatment have a large
Speaker 1: part to do with your response. And I'm a graduate
Speaker 1: from Georgia Tech, and if I could hear Go Jackets
Speaker 1: on the air, seriously make my weak and increase my
Speaker 1: odds of survival. Goodness. I know you both went to
Speaker 1: U g A. However, I'm hopeful that we can put
Speaker 1: aside of differences and come together to rally behind something
Speaker 1: like cancer. And I email Peter back and said, you're
Speaker 1: very manipulative human being and he laughed and thought that
Speaker 1: was really funny, and UH gave me and you a
Speaker 1: go dogs and the email and he thought that might
Speaker 1: be the like a carbon offset. So Peter, obviously, go Jackets.
Speaker 1: Buzz Buzz buzz, Go Jackets. Go Jamblin wreck from Georgia Tech,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And that's where it ends, my friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we wish you all the best obviously in uh
Speaker 1: in your treatment and let us know how it's going.
Speaker 1: We'll be thinking about you. Thank you, Peter, hanging there, buddy,
Speaker 1: good luck and keep us posted. And we're never gonna
Speaker 1: say go jackets again. That's right. That's your one shot. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to try to manipulate me and chuck
Speaker 1: into doing something we don't want to, you can give
Speaker 1: it a shot. You can tweet to us at say
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