Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selex, I've chosen How Cremation Works. It
Speaker 1: came out back in August of two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: and at the time, death was a very hot topic.
Speaker 1: So please forgive us if we seem a little irreverent,
Speaker 1: a little overenthusiastic when we're talking about this. But it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting episode and I still stand by it today.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
Speaker 1: with a full beard. Actually, yeah, do you know what
Speaker 1: that would smell like if it caught fire? It would
Speaker 1: smell like mayonnaise. It's It's smell worse than Mandaid's ever did.
Speaker 1: Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell. Burning
Speaker 1: here or manx um burning Manis would be particularly bad
Speaker 1: if you had hair on top of the burning. Harry
Speaker 1: Manse the worst thing you can burn, So Chuck, hopefully
Speaker 1: that will never happen while you're alive. It could possibly
Speaker 1: happen um after you're deceased. If you're cremated like a
Speaker 1: fellow named Ralph White. Who you know about? I've never
Speaker 1: heard of the guy you have to chuck. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that horrid webcast we used to have. There's a
Speaker 1: guy he was the president past president of the Adventurers
Speaker 1: Adventurers Club and not to be confused with the one
Speaker 1: from South Park. This guy, Um was a real life
Speaker 1: adventure and he was I think he was like a
Speaker 1: cameraman for UM a skydiving show called rip Chord National Geographic.
Speaker 1: He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Ye Buddies
Speaker 1: with the Jim Cameron, Yeah he was. He was second
Speaker 1: director I think on Titanic. Yeah, who was Jim Cameron
Speaker 1: was also in that club, the little Club in l A.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I'll bet Ralph White got Jim Camer
Speaker 1: run in probably And are we calling him Jim now?
Speaker 1: I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis Jim
Speaker 1: or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was had a pretty
Speaker 1: cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool
Speaker 1: posthumous story, and that was he was cremated and his
Speaker 1: friends were so dedicated and loyal to him that um,
Speaker 1: whenever they go on to travel. Now, they take about
Speaker 1: a tenth about a teaspoon or a tenth of a
Speaker 1: teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains
Speaker 1: and scatter him wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um, he's
Speaker 1: in Lake Bacall. He went on a space flight. And
Speaker 1: Ralph White's posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all the wonderful
Speaker 1: things you can do with a cremated body, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why people choose to be cremated.
Speaker 1: It's highly portable, right, and it's nothing new, Chuck. Cremation
Speaker 1: has been going on for a very long time, hasn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we won't get into I mean, there's we could rattle
Speaker 1: off every country and when they started, but we really
Speaker 1: could because of this fine, fine article written by a freelancer, right,
Speaker 1: Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but
Speaker 1: was a really great article. Um, but it has been
Speaker 1: around since prehistoric times. China has been doing it since
Speaker 1: eight thousand BC. That's more than ten thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: More than ten thousand years ago. One part of the
Speaker 1: history I did find interesting though and fitting since we did.
Speaker 1: Our Freemason cast was the Freemasons during the French Revolution
Speaker 1: kind of push for cremation because it was the whole
Speaker 1: not anti religion, but just sort of mixing it up
Speaker 1: with religion. No, they were anti Catholic Church, well, very
Speaker 1: much against the Church, and they were saying, if you
Speaker 1: have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb
Speaker 1: up the because well because Catholic said you can't get
Speaker 1: cremated for a long time. Yeah, well it kind of
Speaker 1: contradicts the whole resurrection thing. Yeah, you know, like the
Speaker 1: body's kind of gotta be intact. It's like the one
Speaker 1: thing we can't do. You know. We can rise from
Speaker 1: the dead, but if your bird sorry, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: you don't want to come back and find that you're
Speaker 1: nothing but ashes, because you're going to be ticked off,
Speaker 1: right right. Uh. The actual creamator, the cremation chamber, which
Speaker 1: I like to call the cremator, even though it's not.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a crib star product from the Adventures
Speaker 1: of Pete and Pete it does. It was invented in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds by Professor Brunetti and Uh. It
Speaker 1: started in earnest in the United States in Pennsylvania in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, when Pennsylvania is an non licensed state, still,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Is it really Well, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a scandal that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: later that. Um. Apparently, the the crematory business, you either
Speaker 1: have fine upstanding people or like come of the earth, yeah,
Speaker 1: running these places. Right, Yeah, let's talk about how this works,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, Well I got a step for you
Speaker 1: real quick though. As far as it's popularity, Um, in
Speaker 1: ninety three point six percent of bodies were cremated, and
Speaker 1: just a few years ago that numbers at thirty and
Speaker 1: they expected to be half. Right. Well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of reasons why, right, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: running out of land. Um. There's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who think that burials aren't so green, which is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, because they use like, you know, really nice
Speaker 1: woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining
Speaker 1: the bodies, embalms, so it's going to eventually leak out
Speaker 1: all of those things. Right. We'll talk later about whether
Speaker 1: or not cremations green and the spoilers it's not sort
Speaker 1: of is, but it's not well it's not green, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely not green. It's not brown either, it's not black.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere between. So chuckers, you're ready to talk. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: just the actual process is pretty gruesome. Um. Initially they
Speaker 1: store the body in a cool room just to keep
Speaker 1: it nice and fresh for the cremation. Um. It's usually
Speaker 1: examined by a coroner and they have to like sign
Speaker 1: off and say this is good to go, because you
Speaker 1: can't exhume the body later on if you need to.
Speaker 1: So no accidental death that hasn't been fully vetted, like
Speaker 1: I imagine, they wouldn't cremate like someone that was had
Speaker 1: any kind of relation to a crime or anything like that,
Speaker 1: at least not for a long time. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: what happens is they remove some things from your body.
Speaker 1: If you have the following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis,
Speaker 1: or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject
Speaker 1: into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser
Speaker 1: or a radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff
Speaker 1: is good for for cremation, so they remove that from
Speaker 1: your body. But there's some things that can't be removed well,
Speaker 1: they could remove it, but they tend not to each
Speaker 1: fillings mercury fillings, yeah, jewelry and glasses like some people want,
Speaker 1: like you would be buried with your glasses on. They
Speaker 1: want you cremated with your glasses. Right. But in some countries,
Speaker 1: I didn't look this up, so I don't know what
Speaker 1: countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
Speaker 1: from touch anything on the body, right, right, you gotta
Speaker 1: do it how you get it right, that's what they
Speaker 1: say on the shirt. So you can buy I think
Speaker 1: in the gift shop. Uh. And then they put the
Speaker 1: body once it's been removed, these things into a flammable
Speaker 1: box like a pine or cardboard box or one made
Speaker 1: of hairy man. They slide it into the incinerator is
Speaker 1: already preheated, by the way, yes, to at least degrees fahrenheight,
Speaker 1: which is five degrees celsius. I think, off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. Um, and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta
Speaker 1: be hot. But that's not like you don't just put
Speaker 1: the body in and then it just burns. It just
Speaker 1: catches fire. Right now, they actually shoot a column of
Speaker 1: flame at the torso like a jet engine. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: So once the body's in what's it called the retort,
Speaker 1: It's called a retort. They slide it in there on
Speaker 1: the old metal rollers and uh families. Sometimes you can
Speaker 1: watch this process through the window if you want, and
Speaker 1: if you're hinder you and if it's a Hindu cremation,
Speaker 1: you can actually push go right. Yeah, I guess to
Speaker 1: start the column of flame, right you just like so long? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So here ant tina Hindu. Uh So the door is
Speaker 1: sealed up obviously. Um, like you said, they aim at
Speaker 1: your torso and then this is what happens. This is
Speaker 1: the gruesome part um as you would expect when you
Speaker 1: have a jet engine jet flame shot at your torso.
Speaker 1: It ignites the container initially, obviously, your body starts to
Speaker 1: dry out all that water that's in your body pretty quick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would imagine your soft tissue tightens up, it burns up,
Speaker 1: and it vaporizes. Your skin discolors and blisters and splits,
Speaker 1: just like a broad worth on a grill. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The muscle chars, it flexes, and your limbs actually can
Speaker 1: extend like your limbs are moving. I looked all over
Speaker 1: the place to find the discussions of about this stuff
Speaker 1: about like a body sitting up. That's the closest thing
Speaker 1: I saw was does a body sit up? I think
Speaker 1: it was a wicky answer, so that it has zero credibility.
Speaker 1: But if you're if your muscles are contracting or tightening
Speaker 1: or doing anything like, yeah, your arms can go up.
Speaker 1: And I mean imagine the people eight and eight thousand
Speaker 1: BC in China. They're like, wait, they're not dead, They're
Speaker 1: like yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush one
Speaker 1: time and I put him in and he started swimming again,
Speaker 1: and then I'd put him back in the tank and
Speaker 1: he just floated. So it was just like the water
Speaker 1: most and those well, no, I didn't flush it like
Speaker 1: I would when I put him in the toilet. He
Speaker 1: started moving every single time. It was weird. That is weird.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced he was dead though. Are he was
Speaker 1: by the time I froze him in a block of ice?
Speaker 1: You'll find out when you get to heaven. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: So your muscles have charred and tightened, and your limbs
Speaker 1: are flailing about, and your bones, obviously you're the last
Speaker 1: thing to go, and they are calcified and then kind
Speaker 1: of just flake off and crumble into little bone bits, yeah,
Speaker 1: and chuck. Uh. The bone that are uh or the
Speaker 1: stuff that is left are these charred bones that are
Speaker 1: really it doesn't take a whole lot, I think to
Speaker 1: pulverize them, but it does take an extra step and
Speaker 1: they actually do hold their shape. So you go from
Speaker 1: a body in a box to like a charred skeleton
Speaker 1: is what it ultimately comes down to. And you either
Speaker 1: rake or sweep the remaining like bone material into something
Speaker 1: called the cremulator clemulator, and that is the that's a
Speaker 1: grinder that grinds up everything and pulverizes into this fine
Speaker 1: grainy actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah. They described it as
Speaker 1: like um ash is sort of a weird word because
Speaker 1: it's not like like charred ash from your fire. It's
Speaker 1: it's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits
Speaker 1: of gravel because it's pulverized bone. Right, um. And it
Speaker 1: usually takes about two to three hours, depending on the
Speaker 1: kind of uh creamatory I guess whatever machine you put
Speaker 1: it in. Yeah, there's different kinds, right, and how big
Speaker 1: your bones are to that has something to do with
Speaker 1: it too. But also um, I found that it depends
Speaker 1: on the level of Well, there's there's something called the
Speaker 1: um Entertech four. You should go on to Matthew's crematorium
Speaker 1: dot com. They have specs and it's just weird because
Speaker 1: these guys are like selling their crematorium. Uh, and here's
Speaker 1: all the specs for him. And this thing is like
Speaker 1: state of the art. Intertech four is um and it
Speaker 1: burns body and no more than seventy five minutes. Really,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That must have been the modern ones
Speaker 1: that they say are all like automated. Now, well they
Speaker 1: also sell them ones that burn the body in four hours.
Speaker 1: So it's like low end to high end. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Pay for what you get UM.
Speaker 1: And at the end of this whole process, you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up with about three to nine pounds of ash.
Speaker 1: And that's actually that's where it depends on your bones.
Speaker 1: They say it doesn't matter like how fat you are,
Speaker 1: because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would think. So it's like your bone structure. Yeah, bones
Speaker 1: tough to burn, I guess. So, so chuck. These things.
Speaker 1: We said that they are preheated to about degrees right,
Speaker 1: but they get up to about two thousand. So you
Speaker 1: can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner
Speaker 1: tech or whatever you're building out of UM regular brick
Speaker 1: or somement or something like that. I think it explode
Speaker 1: the first time you tried to do this. So they
Speaker 1: specialized composite brick material. And actually, over time the interior
Speaker 1: will be eaten away by the heat and the expansion
Speaker 1: and contraction will actually lose surface. So apparently what's recommended
Speaker 1: is after UM the bricks lose about half of their width,
Speaker 1: they have to be replaced. Yeah, and it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of crude, but the way it's described in the article,
Speaker 1: and the way I've heard it described is it's it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a pizza oven. Yeah, they're made of
Speaker 1: similar things. Cooka pizza, cookad body, cooka body. So these
Speaker 1: things go for a two fifty thousand something like that. UM,
Speaker 1: and they use natural gas or propane or um propane
Speaker 1: accessories or diesel. I've seen UM. But they used to
Speaker 1: burn coal, and I imagine that was a real pain
Speaker 1: in generated body. Back in the sixties. I think they
Speaker 1: were still using coal. Gotta keep stoking that fire. Right.
Speaker 1: Another thing I thought was cool was UM, and I
Speaker 1: started thinking too. When you when you burn a fire,
Speaker 1: obviously you see ashes kind of floating all over the place,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, surely they've got a you know,
Speaker 1: account for that when you're burning a body, and they do,
Speaker 1: they ignite a second flame in a side chamber and
Speaker 1: that burns off dust that's trying to escape the retort,
Speaker 1: and some of them even shoot water at the top
Speaker 1: to make sure none of the dust escapes out of
Speaker 1: the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing.
Speaker 1: Wet scrubbing. What else do we do? Oh, that was
Speaker 1: the a fluoride thing, right, keepscrubbing the inside of the
Speaker 1: and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah, my brain is getting too
Speaker 1: full these days. I too. We need to stop doing
Speaker 1: the show. And after it's all done, you can actually
Speaker 1: get remains, cremated remains. And I found that they say
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't call them cremaines. That's what the the
Speaker 1: c A n A says. Why they just say, it's
Speaker 1: sort of a crude thing that people non industry people say,
Speaker 1: let's just shorten it. And they're like, they think it's disrespected,
Speaker 1: so we won't say the word cremains. But you can
Speaker 1: have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if
Speaker 1: you want, but that's it in the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't do it via FedEx or up Yes, or
Speaker 1: you can't if they know what's in the box. Um,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find out why. There's no explanation on
Speaker 1: ups IS or fedexercite. They just say you can't, we
Speaker 1: won't ship that. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well,
Speaker 1: thank goodness for that, I guess. But um, the only
Speaker 1: thing I could the only suggestion I could find why
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do this, You can't ensure cremated remains. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably it, which I imagine they ensure everything somehow,
Speaker 1: and they want to get hit with a lawsuit, right
Speaker 1: because people get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so.
Speaker 1: The other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that
Speaker 1: they make sure to point out that it's got to
Speaker 1: be a sift proof box. You don't want like ashes
Speaker 1: leaking out the side, and you have to have like
Speaker 1: somebody's got a sign for it. Right. So usually if
Speaker 1: you don't get an urn or whatever, when when you
Speaker 1: get your cremated remains, Um, the crematorium will have them
Speaker 1: in like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic
Speaker 1: line box designed to hold this kind of thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're maybe just like very small remnants of other
Speaker 1: people with your remains. Like they do the best job
Speaker 1: they can. They burn one body at a time. Um,
Speaker 1: like you know, if you're on the up and up,
Speaker 1: as a good cremator should be. But inevitably, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might
Speaker 1: be a little bit of Joe mixed in with Harry,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. Well, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean, so chuck it. Also, I guess the industry
Speaker 1: standard is just like you don't want to switch babies
Speaker 1: in the hospital at the other end of life, you
Speaker 1: don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. So
Speaker 1: apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like a
Speaker 1: metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your person
Speaker 1: so that when you're when you're melted down, this thing
Speaker 1: is still there so you can be identified. Um, you've
Speaker 1: got paperwork that goes with you from the moment you
Speaker 1: come to the crematorium of the moment you leave. That's
Speaker 1: supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's basically all this is supposed to avoid a
Speaker 1: mix up, right, You're supposed to It doesn't always, especially
Speaker 1: when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the up
Speaker 1: and up, as you said. And there's been plenty of
Speaker 1: examples of that, haven't there been. Yeah. I was a
Speaker 1: little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes on
Speaker 1: in some states. Yeah, only until the Tri States tri
Speaker 1: state crematorium scandal of I think two. Did Georgia close
Speaker 1: its loopholes and now all crematoriums have to be licensed
Speaker 1: by the state. Yeah, in Georgia. But and and I
Speaker 1: actually got a different number here she said, twenty three
Speaker 1: of the fifty states license, I've actually got only eight
Speaker 1: do not license, is what I found. Oh well, that's
Speaker 1: that's cuttering. But if you look all of these, um,
Speaker 1: the examples in this article are in the two thousands.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
Speaker 1: and crematorium regulation reform. I would say so because if
Speaker 1: you what happened in Georgia will tell you a sec
Speaker 1: But if you see this on the news and you're
Speaker 1: in like Pennsylvania, they don't want that kind of news.
Speaker 1: Hitting their state, so I would imagine it probably spurred
Speaker 1: some some action Pennsylvania, Bud I did. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: the Georgia guy first, Mary Brent Marsh, Yeah, pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: and apologized. Yeah, he he owned a CREMATORI UM in
Speaker 1: Noble Georgia, and neither Chuck Nora, I know where that is,
Speaker 1: so don't ask. UM. I think it's a probably in
Speaker 1: the north west, because it's where Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama
Speaker 1: come together, which is why you call it try state crematorium.
Speaker 1: He was serving all three states, UM, and in all
Speaker 1: three states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically
Speaker 1: half buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke
Speaker 1: down and they just never got it fixed. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: incinerator broke and so I think three d and thirty
Speaker 1: six bodies in total were found and UM I found
Speaker 1: the Originally they could only charge him with accepting money
Speaker 1: and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no
Speaker 1: there was no law in the books. They hit him
Speaker 1: with some other stuff though I think it must have
Speaker 1: come out after this article. He was actually charged with
Speaker 1: almost eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse,
Speaker 1: so they actually charging with stealing these corpses. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go to prison within an abuse of a
Speaker 1: corpse wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to eight thousand years in prison
Speaker 1: and UM plea bargain that down to twelve years. Somehow
Speaker 1: did you say eight thousand years? That was almost a
Speaker 1: spit take that you were drinking your deep drink and
Speaker 1: you almost fit it out. Uh So yeah, eight thousand
Speaker 1: down to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him.
Speaker 1: Um there was a thirty six million dollar settlement from
Speaker 1: fifty eight funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky,
Speaker 1: so they sued the funeral homes and then they brought
Speaker 1: a suit, an eighty million dollar civil suits settlement against um,
Speaker 1: this guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't
Speaker 1: have that kind of does, so they're probably gonna do
Speaker 1: what happens when that happens, which is you go after
Speaker 1: the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
Speaker 1: guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
Speaker 1: He didn't have eighty millions. He's got three bodies in
Speaker 1: his backyard. But yeah, so he's uh he's in jail
Speaker 1: right now. As far as yeah, almost for eight thousand years.
Speaker 1: That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that
Speaker 1: to happen. Probably it did. In two thousand five. What
Speaker 1: happened there There was a guy who ran a crematorium
Speaker 1: and he had a he had a deal with the
Speaker 1: local women's hospital to cremate the remains of pre term babies,
Speaker 1: basically aborted fetuses. This guy's job was to incinerate him.
Speaker 1: It's probably not a fun contract to sign. No, even
Speaker 1: if that's the way you make your money, you can't
Speaker 1: feel great about like closing that deal, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't go out for a big fat steak um
Speaker 1: the thor and he's I guess we're tipped off. And
Speaker 1: they went into his garage and found in boxes the
Speaker 1: remains of three hundred fetuses. Actually nineteen of them were
Speaker 1: post term really, so they were born children um that
Speaker 1: he was supposed to cremate, and he didn't. But he
Speaker 1: could only get them on nineteen counts because they're unborn,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't. They weren't technically human beings under the
Speaker 1: eyes of the loss, so he didn't get anything for those.
Speaker 1: But for the nineteen he he got in some trouble
Speaker 1: in his body. I don't know, but he had him
Speaker 1: in boxes in his garage to which is apparently the
Speaker 1: m O of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: they threw the book at him. Oh yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they did. That makes me angry. Uh can't you tell
Speaker 1: how angry at him? Um? In Lake Elson or California,
Speaker 1: Josh in two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was
Speaker 1: selling body parts for medical research, like heads to people,
Speaker 1: which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison and
Speaker 1: does say just say Prisson. And then in Mississippi, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who
Speaker 1: was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
Speaker 1: them into trash bends. And he was found guilty and
Speaker 1: put in jail to Yeah did you say that, um Marie,
Speaker 1: Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement. I
Speaker 1: didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because I mean it's not like he was just like,
Speaker 1: oh I got nothing and they burned up entirely. He
Speaker 1: was like, here's some cement. And an urn. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the money. Yeah, I understand that guys incinerator burning and
Speaker 1: maybe not having the money to fix it, But I
Speaker 1: bet you anything he may have made enough money to
Speaker 1: get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of onto something here. We don't actually have to
Speaker 1: do this pure profit exactly, So Chuck, before we get
Speaker 1: into things that you can do with um, the remains
Speaker 1: of a loved one, right, can we talk about it
Speaker 1: whether or not it's green? I got a couple of
Speaker 1: stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
Speaker 1: regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
Speaker 1: between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
Speaker 1: is biocremation is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before.
Speaker 1: What you can do with the dead body, Remember, it
Speaker 1: turns you into oil that's poured down the drain. That's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, it is. So this has to be something
Speaker 1: in between though, right for the conscientious person who maybe
Speaker 1: kind of believes in and afterlife, wants to do more
Speaker 1: with this body that do you kind of believe in
Speaker 1: afterlife it's a vague knowledg. I wonder where you end up.
Speaker 1: You're trying to believe it's like a tick sucking like
Speaker 1: a hot dog pack. God. So, in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: Reuters just doing this article on biocremation. They were talking
Speaker 1: about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green
Speaker 1: at all, Like you think about it. You're using tons
Speaker 1: of natural gas, not tons, it's hyperbolic, but you're using
Speaker 1: a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: using a lot of electricity oowth um. So apparently it
Speaker 1: releases a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: pounds of c O two just one body, and that's
Speaker 1: the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically
Speaker 1: power a five hundred mile road trip. Really so not
Speaker 1: not one and the same, Like these are two separate things.
Speaker 1: So it uses the energy to get you across country
Speaker 1: five miles and its depending on the size of your country.
Speaker 1: And it releases eight d eighty pounds of CEO two
Speaker 1: into the air. I wonder what that compares to footprint
Speaker 1: wise to standard burial. I think it's I think I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I think it's just an entirely different ways,
Speaker 1: where I think maybe a natural or a regular traditional
Speaker 1: burial is more it's more polluting, like directly polluting into
Speaker 1: the into the ground and that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: it's using up resources, where um, a cremation has less
Speaker 1: of an impact over time, but immediately it's a lot
Speaker 1: of input. It requires a lot of input. Gotcha, that's
Speaker 1: my concept of it, right. I wouldn't mind being burned,
Speaker 1: but I like the um. Which country was it where
Speaker 1: they like burn you on top of the wood by
Speaker 1: like the banks of the river. That's India. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy,
Speaker 1: if you live in Indian and you're a Hindu, that's
Speaker 1: exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect
Speaker 1: seguated religion. And I guess so. Uh you said Hindu
Speaker 1: is a mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only only religion
Speaker 1: that does. Yeah, and it's uh, it's called um. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and give it a whirl here, uh
Speaker 1: antim sankar which is last right? Nice? You want to
Speaker 1: hit the other one? Uh antsd Yeah? Antist I think
Speaker 1: which is last sacrifice? Yeah, and that is those are
Speaker 1: one of the sixteen life rituals. I guess it would
Speaker 1: be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be corrected there
Speaker 1: maybe one after that, the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But though the I guess the smoke gets the body
Speaker 1: to the next life. I bet it's one of the
Speaker 1: last four. I bet it is a wager on that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they, yeah, like you said, it's their hindu So
Speaker 1: they say, you dispose of this body and it ushers
Speaker 1: you and helps you be reborn into the next life
Speaker 1: when you're cremated. And while Hinduism is the only religion
Speaker 1: that mandates you have that's how you that's how your
Speaker 1: body is disposed of. Um. Sikhism and Jainism are both
Speaker 1: kind of strongly adorse it, although they don't require it
Speaker 1: right And Um, you were saying that they cremate people
Speaker 1: in India along the banks of the river. Most of
Speaker 1: their cremations from what I understand, our open air cremations.
Speaker 1: I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which
Speaker 1: is apparently is the holy city to be cremated in,
Speaker 1: and you are cremated out and open along the banks
Speaker 1: of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice, But they do have
Speaker 1: an electric crematorium. But since there's a billion people who
Speaker 1: live in India and all of the one electricity this
Speaker 1: place suffers power outages. Man, that's sad. If you are
Speaker 1: a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
Speaker 1: upon it because or outright prohibited, depending on which religion
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, Islam prohibits it. Yeah, They like they
Speaker 1: want you buried that day, the same day you die, preferably, right.
Speaker 1: So Um in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted.
Speaker 1: I think you can if you want to. But the
Speaker 1: among Orthodox and conservative Jews, the memory of the Holocaust
Speaker 1: sure still understandably smarts to the point where they're like,
Speaker 1: why would you want to be cremated? This is you
Speaker 1: know this, it's there's legacy is still around. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of Jews who don't
Speaker 1: want to be cremated, even though their religion doesn't prohibit it,
Speaker 1: right understandably, Um, Protestants, actually is where you're gonna be
Speaker 1: find some more open minds to cremation. They don't, you know,
Speaker 1: have any literature that says you should do this, but
Speaker 1: they're definitely more understanding about it. Than other religions, right,
Speaker 1: And we talked about the Catholic Church having a them
Speaker 1: with it because of its association with subversiveness towards the church.
Speaker 1: But in the sixties, the Catholic Church said, hey, we've
Speaker 1: never really prohibited it. You can't get cremated if you want,
Speaker 1: and apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger
Speaker 1: people really catered to the Catholics in the sixties. I
Speaker 1: found Canada says that of Catholics are cremated now, so
Speaker 1: that's quite a boost. I would say. Um. The Mormons also,
Speaker 1: they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it.
Speaker 1: And in countries where um it's traditional, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: please go ahead, But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
Speaker 1: yeah yet good point. Thanks. Um, Where are we now
Speaker 1: with some Can we talk about finally what you can
Speaker 1: do with your remains? I think it's high time to
Speaker 1: not what you can do with your remains, because you
Speaker 1: clearly can't do anything. But it's not what you can
Speaker 1: do with your remains, but what your friends and family
Speaker 1: can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to
Speaker 1: um keep you in and urn and they have these
Speaker 1: little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium, and they just
Speaker 1: hold ashes from what I understand, like your urn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a vault. So some people choose that that
Speaker 1: cost him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about
Speaker 1: your hero. I know you want to mention that who
Speaker 1: Hunter t Yeah, yeah, he was mixed with firework and
Speaker 1: shot out of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three
Speaker 1: ft cannon also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it's
Speaker 1: It was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this,
Speaker 1: and every anybody can do it, and Johnny Depth paid
Speaker 1: for the whole party, right, Yeah, And from what I
Speaker 1: saw it was if it was this British company, he
Speaker 1: would have paid about the equivalent of three thousand U s.
Speaker 1: Dollars for a large fireworks display. That's what they charged.
Speaker 1: As Susan mentioned money. Actually I did see the average
Speaker 1: cremation cost is about six bucks. Yeah, and the average
Speaker 1: funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand.
Speaker 1: Decided we'll say somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Let's but back to things you can do. We would
Speaker 1: be remiss um if we didn't mention to our nerd
Speaker 1: friends that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek fame
Speaker 1: was everyone knows this. He was shot into space. So
Speaker 1: was Timothy Leary. Oh yeah, that's right by the same company, Celestis.
Speaker 1: And they're still in business as far as I know.
Speaker 1: I bet they are. And then you get life Jim.
Speaker 1: If we've talked about I think again on the webcast.
Speaker 1: You can take your cremated remains and have them compressed
Speaker 1: into a synthetic diamond. You can have your remains mixed
Speaker 1: into paint. And I guess that's not so much you
Speaker 1: can have, but you can probably just do that. It depends,
Speaker 1: like there's there's there's actually a guy who does something
Speaker 1: called ash portraits and he does it just with the
Speaker 1: person's ashes, but he'll also mix it in with oil
Speaker 1: or whatever. Interesting, but he does portraits of the deceased.
Speaker 1: I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That
Speaker 1: would be pretty all. That's what I want to would
Speaker 1: be really cool. Uh what else can you do? Um?
Speaker 1: You can, Oh, you can become part of the coral reef.
Speaker 1: I know there's companies that do that. There's a company
Speaker 1: called Eternal Reefs I think is the big one. This
Speaker 1: is pretty obvious name, don't you know. And well they
Speaker 1: actually they make different sized reefs and what they do
Speaker 1: is they mix your remains in with cement and like,
Speaker 1: so the big one, it can accommodate up to four
Speaker 1: family members. So if your family went down in a
Speaker 1: plane and just feel like showing out for one, you know,
Speaker 1: coral reef, right, they've got you cover. It's like seven
Speaker 1: grand uh huh, and it's pretty big size and it's
Speaker 1: cool looking. I mean it looks like an artificial reef.
Speaker 1: And then you take it out and dump it overboard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fish live amongst your your family members. Who I really
Speaker 1: really hope loved scuba diving exactly. Do you remember Keith
Speaker 1: Richards a couple of years ago, he's still alive, well
Speaker 1: now his dad passed away, and he said that he
Speaker 1: snorted his father with cocaine and then I mean apparently
Speaker 1: said this interview. Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
Speaker 1: I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
Speaker 1: I think he did too. The sounds like um episode
Speaker 1: where this these people snort the remains of this girl yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that one. I do have some stats for you, though,
Speaker 1: what people seem to like to doty percent to keep
Speaker 1: the ashes at their home, thirty seven percent burry the ashes.
Speaker 1: Do the scatter popular? I thought it'd be more popular
Speaker 1: than that, though. The most popular one is water scattering
Speaker 1: and number two is scattering somewhere on family property. Not
Speaker 1: really three percent are put in the columbarium. And you
Speaker 1: might notice, Josh that adds. Yeah, there's one percent that
Speaker 1: go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad, and I apparently
Speaker 1: that people who own crematoriums find it sad too, because
Speaker 1: even though after a set period of time and states
Speaker 1: that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we say
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal oversight
Speaker 1: for any crematorium comes out of the state. Um but
Speaker 1: in states where there are regulations, they still say you
Speaker 1: can throw these out after a set period of time.
Speaker 1: But most crematoriums, the up and up ones, will hang
Speaker 1: onto these things for decades because again it's a small box.
Speaker 1: But I mean they don't want to just throw it away.
Speaker 1: It's person and it's only one percent, so I don't
Speaker 1: imagine they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
Speaker 1: But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
Speaker 1: about some of the laws about scattering, because you can't
Speaker 1: just scatter anywhere. No, the National Park Service has no
Speaker 1: official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to
Speaker 1: each individual park. But most of the parks say unless
Speaker 1: there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
Speaker 1: you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
Speaker 1: kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
Speaker 1: goes on, and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
Speaker 1: are like how are you going to tell the difference
Speaker 1: between that and like a fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
Speaker 1: doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
Speaker 1: would probably want to go, like avoid the National park
Speaker 1: and just stay in the National Forest or go to
Speaker 1: your state park that was a beloved state park, because
Speaker 1: they're a little more lax than the national parks. Right.
Speaker 1: The if you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, um,
Speaker 1: the e p A says you've gotta be three miles
Speaker 1: away from the coastline, right, very prudish. California is like,
Speaker 1: that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
Speaker 1: it's five feet right yeah, pretty close. Um. And people
Speaker 1: don't always follow regulations, right Yeah. So you want to
Speaker 1: tell about the Cubs fan. Yeah, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a nice story. Um. Steve Goodman died of lukemi in
Speaker 1: die hard Cubbies fans sadly did not get to see
Speaker 1: the Cubs winner World Series as likely neither will you
Speaker 1: and I? Um, And four years later he his buddy
Speaker 1: snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into
Speaker 1: the wind out over the field. Pretty cool. That is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story?
Speaker 1: His body was stolen? Right yeah? His friends, Um, he
Speaker 1: said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on
Speaker 1: cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park, right. Um, and
Speaker 1: his parents found out he was dead and had his
Speaker 1: bodyship back for a private funeral, and his friends found
Speaker 1: out that they weren't going to be invited, so they
Speaker 1: stole him, right and uh took him out to Joshua
Speaker 1: Tree and opened the casket through some gasolene on him
Speaker 1: and set him on fire five gallons of gas right
Speaker 1: and it didn't work because we've said what it takes.
Speaker 1: So he was half cremated by the time the cops
Speaker 1: showed up. He's sort of melty and just like Georgia.
Speaker 1: Back then, there was nothing about There were no penalties
Speaker 1: for stealing a corpse, so they got them for theft
Speaker 1: of a casket. I think that was Did you see
Speaker 1: that movie? Johnny Knoxville played the guy that his buddy.
Speaker 1: It's not very good. I did stay in that hotel though,
Speaker 1: Actually I mentioned meant to mention that in the room
Speaker 1: sixty six. Yeah, the Joshua tree in cool. Not in
Speaker 1: his room though. And before we move on from Scattering
Speaker 1: josh we have to mention, because we like to mention
Speaker 1: our movies. The excellent, excellent scene from The Big Lebowski,
Speaker 1: the scattering scene in the end of the thing when
Speaker 1: all of them just blew back all over them. But
Speaker 1: John Coodman, it was Steve assuming that died, right, I think,
Speaker 1: and he he threw him out in the window back
Speaker 1: in their faces over the ocean. It was good. It's
Speaker 1: very good, Uh, Chuck. If I am dead and I'm
Speaker 1: being cremated and I'm part of of the population, what
Speaker 1: country am I am? Uh, Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland. I've been cremated,
Speaker 1: and I am part of just a meager three percent
Speaker 1: of the population. What country am I in? Ghana? That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right, and in between are actually higher than that.
Speaker 1: Hong Kong is places like the Czech Republic in Singapore
Speaker 1: and the UK are sort of mid to high seventies.
Speaker 1: China and the the Netherlands are about half, and Italy, as
Speaker 1: far as European countries was I'm sorry, Ireland was six percent,
Speaker 1: in Italy was seven percent. And I bet that has
Speaker 1: something to do with the Catholic thing, I would think so.
Speaker 1: For sure they think the US is about thirty right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for a large Protestant population and Hindu. And there's
Speaker 1: also pet cremation. Yeah, if you if you want to
Speaker 1: get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much
Speaker 1: nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries the
Speaker 1: latest stat get into pet cremation. And the people at
Speaker 1: um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
Speaker 1: They do humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
Speaker 1: different types. So when you could fit a horse in
Speaker 1: two and one are made for like dogs or something right.
Speaker 1: You know, I would support or I would I would
Speaker 1: be more likely to go into one of those because
Speaker 1: they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are
Speaker 1: a little um dodgy. Yeah, they're totally unregulated. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're just like burning your pets together and you don't
Speaker 1: know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
Speaker 1: enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, and
Speaker 1: then you probably want your pets ashes, right, so you
Speaker 1: can handle cremation at home. Just dig a shallow hole
Speaker 1: in your backyard to serve as a firebreak, and do
Speaker 1: your neighbor is a favor and shave your pet first
Speaker 1: before you set it on fire. We buried my animals
Speaker 1: growing up, my pets, you know, we have I think
Speaker 1: in my old house we probably had like four or
Speaker 1: five pets buried out in the woods. But we lived
Speaker 1: on like two acres in the woods. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood. You didn't set any on fire. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Well that's it for cremation. Um, thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: for that one, right, Chuck. I think we've covered pretty
Speaker 1: much everything in there. Um, But if you want it's
Speaker 1: a good, good article, high caliber. How stuff Works article,
Speaker 1: not like the rest of these stinkers. Just typing cremation
Speaker 1: in the search bar the jazzy search bar at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com jazzy. I'm just Chinese stuff. We've
Speaker 1: been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I like
Speaker 1: Ubiquity search bar and it's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but it's Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, so uh, I guess it's time for listener
Speaker 1: mil Yeah, buddy. I got a couple of today, A
Speaker 1: couple of short ones. Um. The first one is from
Speaker 1: the Sonic cast and and it's a little old, but
Speaker 1: a promise this guy would read it. This is from
Speaker 1: Mark in Eastern m D. I know you guys won't
Speaker 1: read this on a podcast. Those are usually the ones
Speaker 1: I read. But I just thought i'd write to tell
Speaker 1: you what happened to me this morning and my frantic
Speaker 1: rush to get my daughter Ellie to a summer camp
Speaker 1: on time. I had to run out of the house
Speaker 1: without having breakfast. That caused me to have to stop
Speaker 1: at a fast food joint get one of those gross,
Speaker 1: greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's bad enough, but
Speaker 1: it gets worse. As I drive from the driveway, I
Speaker 1: pushed play on the iPad and start listening to the
Speaker 1: Show and Saunas, where I started hearing about butt funk
Speaker 1: Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and having to visualize
Speaker 1: a naked Vigo Mortensen fighting in a sauna made my
Speaker 1: otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things one for the books.
Speaker 1: By the way, the podcast that I queued up next
Speaker 1: was all about Taste Buds, so now I know how
Speaker 1: I was able to taste my sandwich in the first place.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, guys. That's from Mark. If you do
Speaker 1: happen to read this on the on the air, would
Speaker 1: you would make Ellie and Lydia's day? And those are
Speaker 1: his daughters, Hey, Ellie and Lydia, So Mark, that is
Speaker 1: for you, my friend. And then this one I didn't
Speaker 1: you think about, but it's kind of fitting. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when I told you about the little girl in Kent,
Speaker 1: Washington who named her Beta Fish Chuckers Jr. I saw
Speaker 1: this one. Chucker's Junior is no more. Monday night, I
Speaker 1: put Chuckers Junior inside his small bowl so I could
Speaker 1: clean his bowl in the morning. Yesterday morning, I went
Speaker 1: to make my breakfast in front of his bowl as usual.
Speaker 1: But I to make my breakfast, I thought she had
Speaker 1: might make his, which would be pretty cute. I felt
Speaker 1: something sticky on my foot and I looked down into
Speaker 1: my horror. I saw Chucker's junior stuck to my foot,
Speaker 1: all dried out, and that it's horrible. Apparently Beta's had
Speaker 1: been known to jump out of their bowls, and I
Speaker 1: guess Chucker's junior jump pretty far because his bowl was
Speaker 1: a good foot away from the edge of the counter.
Speaker 1: Yet he still ended up on the floor. My theory
Speaker 1: is that he probably flopped around something onto the floor. Um,
Speaker 1: can't you just let the little girl think her Beta
Speaker 1: fish is special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's Junior special. Katie. Also,
Speaker 1: I found out that the bowl that he was in
Speaker 1: had only a centimeter from the centimeter. Where is she from, Liberia? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's from Kent, Washington. Um, she said, you're usually supposed
Speaker 1: to leave about an inch between the top of the thing.
Speaker 1: I guess to make it harder to jump out. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, One centimeter equals one inch, I think,
Speaker 1: so she she ends with this. At least Chucker's junior
Speaker 1: died a healthy fish. That's from Katie Thirt in Kent, Washington.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about your breakfast sandwich, although I'm hungry now. It wasn't Kent,
Speaker 1: it was Marked. She was from Kent. Oh. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all right though, Mark, sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Can't.
Speaker 1: I have no idea who you are. If you have
Speaker 1: a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
Speaker 1: so wrap it up in an email and send it
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
Speaker 1: our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home
Speaker 1: page