Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you 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. Chucker's 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 mandaise ever did.
Speaker 1: Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell of
Speaker 1: burning hair or mannix um. Burning mayonnaise would be particularly
Speaker 1: bad if you had hair on top of your burning
Speaker 1: hairy mannaise the worst thing you can burn, So chuck.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that will never happen while you're alive. It could
Speaker 1: possibly happen um after you're deceased, if you're cremated. Like
Speaker 1: a fellow named Ralph White, who you know about? I've
Speaker 1: never heard of the guy you have to chuck. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that horrid webcast we used to have. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a guy. He was the president past president of
Speaker 1: the Adventurers Adventurers Club and not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the one from South Park. This guy UM was a
Speaker 1: real life adventure and he he was I think he
Speaker 1: was like a a cameraman for UM a skydiving show
Speaker 1: called rip Chord National Geographic. He was there when they
Speaker 1: discovered the Titanic Buddies with the Jim Cameron. Yeah he was.
Speaker 1: He was second director I think on Titanic. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: was Jim Cameron was also in that club, the little
Speaker 1: Club in l A. That's right. Yeah, I'll bet Ralph
Speaker 1: White got Jim Cameron in. And are we calling him
Speaker 1: Jim Now? I didn't realize we were on that that
Speaker 1: friendly basis Jim or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was
Speaker 1: had a pretty cool post not post mortem. He had
Speaker 1: a very cool posthumous story and that was he was
Speaker 1: cremated and his friends were so dedicated and loyal to
Speaker 1: him that, Um, whenever they go on to travel now
Speaker 1: they take about a tenth about a teaspoon or of
Speaker 1: the teaspoon, some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated
Speaker 1: remains and scatter and wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um,
Speaker 1: he's in Lake but call. He went on a space
Speaker 1: flight and Ralph Whites. Posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all
Speaker 1: the wonderful things you can do with a cremated body,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why people choose to
Speaker 1: be cremated. It's highly portable, right, absolutely, and it's nothing new, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Cremation has been going on for a very long time,
Speaker 1: hasn't it. Yeah, we won't get into I mean, there's
Speaker 1: we could rattle off every country and when they started,
Speaker 1: but we really could because of this fine, fine article
Speaker 1: written by a freelancer, right, Michelle Kim. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of this person before, but it was a really great article. Um.
Speaker 1: But it has been around since prehistoric times. China has
Speaker 1: been doing it since eight thousand BC. That's more than
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago, more than ten thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: One part of the history I did find interesting though
Speaker 1: and fitting since we did our Freemason cast was the
Speaker 1: Freemasons during the French Revolution kind of push for cremation
Speaker 1: because it was the whole not anti religion, but just
Speaker 1: sort of mixing it up with religion. You know. They
Speaker 1: were anti Catholic Church, well, very much against the Church,
Speaker 1: and they were saying, if you have yourself cremated, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like sticking your thumb up because well, because
Speaker 1: Catholic said, you can't get cremated for a long time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it kind of contradicts the whole resurrection thing. You know,
Speaker 1: the body's kind of gotta be intact. It's like the
Speaker 1: one thing we can't do. You know. We can rise
Speaker 1: from the dead, but if you're sorry, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: you don't want to come back and find that you're
Speaker 1: nothing but asses, because you're gonna be ticked off, right right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The actual creamator, the cremation chamber, which I like to
Speaker 1: call the cremator even though it's not. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a crib star product from the Adventures of Pete and Pete.
Speaker 1: It does. It was invented in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: by Professor Brunetti, and uh, it started in Earnest in
Speaker 1: the United States in Pennsylvania in eighteen seventies six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when Pennsylvania isn't non licensed state still, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. Is it really Well, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a scandal that we'll talk about later that Um. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the the crematory business, you either have fine upstanding people
Speaker 1: or like some of the earth ye running these places, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how this works, all right. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I got a step for you real quick though. As
Speaker 1: far as it's popularity, Um, in n three point six
Speaker 1: percent of bodies were cremated, and just a few years
Speaker 1: ago that numbers at and they expected to be half right. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of reasons why right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're running out of land. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who think that burials aren't so green,
Speaker 1: which is true. Yeah, um, yeah, because they use like,
Speaker 1: you know, really nice woods and metals, and you have
Speaker 1: to pour cement lining the bodies and balms, so it's
Speaker 1: going to eventually leak out all of those things. Right.
Speaker 1: We'll talk later about whether or not cremations green and
Speaker 1: the spoilers it's not. Sort of is, but it's not.
Speaker 1: Well it's not green, but it's definitely not green. It's
Speaker 1: not brown either, it's not black. It's somewhere between. So chuckers,
Speaker 1: you're ready to talk. Yeah, Like, just the actual process
Speaker 1: is pretty gruesome. Um. Initially, they store the body in
Speaker 1: a cool room just to keep it nice and fresh
Speaker 1: for the cremation. Um. It's usually examined by a coroner
Speaker 1: and they have to like sign off and say this
Speaker 1: is good to go, because you can't exhume the body
Speaker 1: later on if you need to. No accidental death that
Speaker 1: hasn't been fully vetted, like I imagine, they wouldn't cremate
Speaker 1: like someone that was had any kind of relation to
Speaker 1: a crime or anything like that, at least not for
Speaker 1: a long time. Uh. And then what happens is they
Speaker 1: remove some things from your body. If you have the
Speaker 1: following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis, or cancer seeds,
Speaker 1: the little radioactive seeds that they inject into a tumor
Speaker 1: and then be shoot with like a laser or a
Speaker 1: radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff is good
Speaker 1: for for cremation, so they remove that from your body.
Speaker 1: But there's some things that can't be removed. Well, they
Speaker 1: could remove it, but they tend not to. Easy fillings,
Speaker 1: mercury fillings, jewelry, and glasses like some people want, like
Speaker 1: you would be buried with your glasses on. They want
Speaker 1: 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 touching anything on the body. Right, you gotta do
Speaker 1: it how you get it right, that's what they say
Speaker 1: on the shirts. So you can buy, they can get shop. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they put the body once it's been removed,
Speaker 1: these things into a flammable box like a pine or
Speaker 1: cardboard box or one made of hairy mannaise. They slide
Speaker 1: it into the incinerator is already preheated, by the way, yes,
Speaker 1: to at least eleven hundred degrees fahrenheight, which is five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. I think off the top of my head. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta be hot. But that's
Speaker 1: not like you don't just put the body in and
Speaker 1: then it just burns. It just catches fire. Right now.
Speaker 1: They actually shoot a column of flame at the torso
Speaker 1: like a jet engine. Yeah, basically, So once the body's
Speaker 1: in what's it called the retort. Uh, it's called a retort.
Speaker 1: They slide it in there on the old metal rollers
Speaker 1: and uh. Families. Sometimes you can watch this process through
Speaker 1: the window if you want, and if your Hindu, and
Speaker 1: if it's a Hindu cremation, you can actually push go right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess to start the column of flame. Right you
Speaker 1: just like so long? Yeah, so here aunt Tina. Uh
Speaker 1: so the door is sealed up obviously, Um, like you said,
Speaker 1: they aim at your torso and then this is what happens.
Speaker 1: This is the gruesome part um as you would expe
Speaker 1: when you have a jet engine jet flame shot at
Speaker 1: your torso, it ignites the container initially. Obviously, your body
Speaker 1: starts to dry out all that water that's in your
Speaker 1: body pretty quick. Yeah. I would imagine your soft tissue
Speaker 1: tightens up, it burns up, and it vaporizes. Your skin
Speaker 1: discolors and blisters and splits, just like a broad Worth
Speaker 1: on a girl. Yeah, exactly. The muscle chars, it flexes,
Speaker 1: and your limbs actually can extend like your limbs are moving.
Speaker 1: I looked all over the place to find the discussions
Speaker 1: about this stuff about like a body sitting up. That's
Speaker 1: the closest thing I saw was does a body sit up?
Speaker 1: I think it was a wicky answer so that it
Speaker 1: has zero credibility. But if you're if your muscles are
Speaker 1: contracting or tightening or doing anything like, yeah, your arms
Speaker 1: can go up. And I mean imagine the people eight
Speaker 1: and eight thousand BC in China, they're like, wait, they're
Speaker 1: not dead. Yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush
Speaker 1: one time and I put him in and he started
Speaker 1: swimming again. And then I put him back in the
Speaker 1: tank and he just floated. So it was just like
Speaker 1: the water most and those Well, now I didn't flush
Speaker 1: it like I would when I put him in the toilet.
Speaker 1: He started moving every single time. It was weird. That
Speaker 1: is weird. I'm pretty convinced he was dead though, are
Speaker 1: he was by the time I froze him in a
Speaker 1: block of ice. And you'll find out when you get
Speaker 1: to the the heaven. That's right. Um, So your muscles have
Speaker 1: charred and tightened, and your limbs are flailing about and
Speaker 1: your bones obviously you're the last thing to go, and
Speaker 1: they are calcified and then kind of just flake off
Speaker 1: and crumble into little bone bits. Yeah, and chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: The bones that are or the stuff that is left
Speaker 1: are the charred bones that are really doesn't take a
Speaker 1: whole lot, I think to pulverize them, but it does
Speaker 1: take an extra step and they actually do hold their shape.
Speaker 1: So you go from a body in a box to
Speaker 1: like a charred skeleton is what it ultimately comes down
Speaker 1: to and you either rake or sweep the remaining like
Speaker 1: bone material into something called the cremulator cremulate, and that
Speaker 1: is the that's a grinder that grinds up everything and
Speaker 1: pulverizes into this fine, grainy actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They described it as like um ash is sort of
Speaker 1: a weird word because it's not like a like a
Speaker 1: charred ash from your fire. It's it's more like gravel,
Speaker 1: they said, like little tiny bits of gravel because it's
Speaker 1: pulverized bone. Right, um. And it usually takes about two
Speaker 1: to three hours, depending on the kind of uh crematory.
Speaker 1: I guess whatever machine you put it in. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: different kinds, right, and how big your bones are too,
Speaker 1: that has something to do with it too. But also UM,
Speaker 1: I found that it depends on the level of well,
Speaker 1: there's there's something called the um enter Tech four. You
Speaker 1: should go on to Matthew's crematorium dot com. They have
Speaker 1: specs and it's just weird because these guys are like
Speaker 1: selling their crematorium uh, and here's all the specs for them.
Speaker 1: This thing is like state of the art. Interchech four
Speaker 1: is um and it burns a body and no more
Speaker 1: than seventy five minutes. Really, that's pretty good. That must
Speaker 1: have been the modern ones that they say are all
Speaker 1: like automated. Now, well they also sell them ones that
Speaker 1: burn a body in four hours. So it's like low
Speaker 1: end to high end. Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Pay for what you get um. And at the end
Speaker 1: of this whole process, you're gonna end up with about
Speaker 1: three to nine pounds of ash. And that's actually that's
Speaker 1: where it depends on your bones. They say it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter like how fat you are because that I think
Speaker 1: that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I would think. So
Speaker 1: it's like your bone structure. Bones tough to burn, I guess. So,
Speaker 1: so chuck these things. We said that they are preheated
Speaker 1: to about eleven degrees, right, but they get up to
Speaker 1: about two thousand. So you can't just build this thing.
Speaker 1: You can't build an inner chech or whatever you're building
Speaker 1: out of um regular brick or cment or something like that.
Speaker 1: I think it explode the first time you tried to
Speaker 1: do this. So these specialized composite brick material and actually
Speaker 1: over time the interior will be eaten away by the
Speaker 1: heat and the expansion and contraction will actually lose surface.
Speaker 1: So apparently what's recommended is after UM the bricks lose
Speaker 1: about half of their width, they have to be replaced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it sounds kind of crude, But the way it's
Speaker 1: described in the article, and the way I've heard it
Speaker 1: described is it's it's sort of like a pizza oven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're made of similar things. Cooka pizza, cooka body, cookade body.
Speaker 1: So these things go for a two and fifty thou
Speaker 1: something like that. UM, and they use natural gas or
Speaker 1: propane or um propane accessories or diesel. I've seen UM.
Speaker 1: But they used to burn coal, and I imagine that
Speaker 1: was a real pain in body back in the sixties.
Speaker 1: I think they were still using coal. I gotta keep
Speaker 1: stoking that fire, right. Another thing I thought was cool
Speaker 1: was UM And I started thinking too, when you when
Speaker 1: you burn a fire, obviously you see ashes kind of
Speaker 1: floating all over the place, and I thought, well, surely
Speaker 1: they've got a you know, account for that when you're
Speaker 1: burning a body, and they do. They ignite a second
Speaker 1: flame in a side chamber, and that burns off dust
Speaker 1: that's trying to escape the retort, and some of them
Speaker 1: even shoot water out the top to make sure none
Speaker 1: of the dust escapes out of the top of the plume.
Speaker 1: I guess it's called what scrubbing, wet scrubbing? What what
Speaker 1: else do we do? Oh? That was the a fluorid thing, right,
Speaker 1: descrubbing the inside of the and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my brain is getting too full these days, I do
Speaker 1: we need to stop doing the show. And after it's
Speaker 1: all done, you can actually get remains cremated remains. And
Speaker 1: I found that they say that you shouldn't call them creamines.
Speaker 1: That's what the the c A n A says. Why
Speaker 1: they just say it's sort of a crude thing that
Speaker 1: people non industry people say, let's just shorten it. And
Speaker 1: they're like, they think it's disrespected, So we won't say
Speaker 1: the word cremains. But you can have your cremated remains
Speaker 1: mailed to you via USPS if you want. But that's
Speaker 1: it in the United States eights. You can't do it
Speaker 1: via FedEx or ups or you can't if they know
Speaker 1: what's in the box. Um and I couldn't find out
Speaker 1: why there's no explanation on ups IS or FedEx this site.
Speaker 1: They just say you can't. We won't ship that. They
Speaker 1: also won't ship a disinterred body. Well, thank goodness for that,
Speaker 1: I guess. But um, the only thing I could the
Speaker 1: only suggestion I could find why they wouldn't do this,
Speaker 1: You can't ensure cremated remains. Oh yeah, that's probably it,
Speaker 1: which I imagine they ensure everything somehow, And they do
Speaker 1: want to get hit with a lawsuit, right because people
Speaker 1: get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so. The
Speaker 1: other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that they
Speaker 1: make sure to point out that it's got to be
Speaker 1: a sift proof box. You don't want like ashes leaking
Speaker 1: out the side, and you have to have like somebody's
Speaker 1: got a sign for it. Right. So usually if you
Speaker 1: don't get an urn or whatever, when when you get
Speaker 1: your created remains, um, the crematorium will have them in
Speaker 1: like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic line
Speaker 1: designed to hold this kind of thing, right yeah, and
Speaker 1: there may be just like very small remnants of other
Speaker 1: people with your remains. Like they did 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. Right.
Speaker 1: So apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like
Speaker 1: a metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your
Speaker 1: person so that when you're when you're melted down, this
Speaker 1: thing is still there so you can be identified. Um,
Speaker 1: You've got paperwork that goes with you from the moment
Speaker 1: you come to the crematorium to the moment you leave.
Speaker 1: That's supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: And there's basically all of this is supposed to avoid
Speaker 1: a mix up, Right, You're supposed to. It doesn't always,
Speaker 1: especially when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the
Speaker 1: up and up, as you said, And there's been plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of that, haven't there been. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: a little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes
Speaker 1: on in some states. Yeah, only until the Tri States
Speaker 1: Tri State crematorium Candle of I think two to Uh.
Speaker 1: Did Georgia close its loopholes and now all crematoriums have
Speaker 1: to be licensed by the state. Yeah, in Georgia. But
Speaker 1: and and I actually got a different number here she said,
Speaker 1: twenty three of the fifty states license, I've actually got
Speaker 1: only eight do not license, is what I found. Oh well,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's bettering. 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: or crematorium regulation reform. So, because if you what happened
Speaker 1: in Georgia will tell you a sec But if you
Speaker 1: see this on the news and you're in like Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: they don't want that kind of news hitting their state.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine it probably spurred some some action
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and Budd we'll talk about the Georgia guy first,
Speaker 1: very Brent Marsh Yeah, pleaded guilty and apologized. Yeah he
Speaker 1: uh he owned a CREMATORI um in noble Georgia, and
Speaker 1: neither Chuck Nora, I know where that is, so don't
Speaker 1: ask um. I think it's a probably in the north
Speaker 1: west because it's where Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama come together,
Speaker 1: which is why you call it tried state crematorium. He
Speaker 1: was serving all three states, UM and in all three
Speaker 1: states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically half
Speaker 1: buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke down
Speaker 1: and they just never got it fixed. Yeah, the incinerator
Speaker 1: broke and so I think three hundred and thirty six
Speaker 1: bodies in total were found and UM I found they
Speaker 1: originally they could only charge him with accepting money and
Speaker 1: fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no there's
Speaker 1: no law in the books. They hit him with some
Speaker 1: other stuff though I think it must have come out
Speaker 1: after this article. He was actually charged with UM almost
Speaker 1: 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 spit.
Speaker 1: Take that. Yeah, you were drinking your deep drink and
Speaker 1: you almost fitted out. Uh so, yeah, eight thousand down
Speaker 1: to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him. Um
Speaker 1: there was a thirty six million dollar settlement from fifty
Speaker 1: eight funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky, So
Speaker 1: they sued the funeral homes and then they brought a suit,
Speaker 1: an eighty million dollar civil suits settlement against um, this
Speaker 1: guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of dose, so they're probably gonna do what
Speaker 1: it 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 does, he's got three bodies in his backyard. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's uh, he's in jail right now as far
Speaker 1: as yeah, almost for eight thousand years. And you said
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania didn't want that to happen, Probably it did. In
Speaker 1: two thousand five. What happened there there was a guy
Speaker 1: who ran a crematorium and he had a he had
Speaker 1: a deal with the local women's hospital to cremate the
Speaker 1: remains of pre term babies. Basically aborted fetuses. This guy's
Speaker 1: job was to incinerate him. It's probably not a fun
Speaker 1: contract to sign. Even if that's the way you make
Speaker 1: your money, you can't feel great about like closing that deal, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't go out for a big fat st Um
Speaker 1: the authorities, I guess we're tipped off. And they went
Speaker 1: into his garage and found in boxes the remains of
Speaker 1: three hundred fetuses. Actually nineteen of them were post term really,
Speaker 1: so they were born children. Um that he was supposed
Speaker 1: to cremate and he didn't. But they can only get
Speaker 1: them on nineteen counts because they're unborn, so he couldn't.
Speaker 1: They weren't technically human beings under the eyes of the loss,
Speaker 1: so he didn't get anything for those, But for the
Speaker 1: nineteen he he got in some trouble, but he set
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 did 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? And like Elsinore, California, josh
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was selling
Speaker 1: body parts for a medical research like heads yeah too people, Yeah,
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: did I say just say prison? And then in Mississippi, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a really nice guy named Mark Sieep 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 too. Yeah did you say that, um
Speaker 1: Marie Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did,
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 guy's 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 as pure profit exactly, So Chuck, before we
Speaker 1: get into things that you can do with um the
Speaker 1: remains of a loved one, right, can we talk about
Speaker 1: it whether or not it's green. I got a couple
Speaker 1: of stats here that I think are important. 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 bio cremation, which is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about
Speaker 1: that before, and what you can do with the dead body. Remember,
Speaker 1: it turns you into oil that's poured down the drain.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome, it is. So this has to be
Speaker 1: something in between though, right for the conscientious person who
Speaker 1: maybe kind of believes in and afterlife and wants to
Speaker 1: do more with this body that do you believe in afterlife?
Speaker 1: It's a vague noise. I wonder where you endure trying
Speaker 1: to believe. It's like a tick sucking like a hot
Speaker 1: dog pack. So in two thousand nine, Reuters just doing
Speaker 1: this article on biocremation, they were talking about how green
Speaker 1: is regular cremation, and it's not green at all like
Speaker 1: you think about it. You're using tons of natural gas,
Speaker 1: not tons OF's hyperbolic, but you're using a lot of
Speaker 1: natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're using a lot
Speaker 1: of electricity. It takes both. Um, So apparently it releases
Speaker 1: a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty pounds
Speaker 1: of CEO two just one body, and that's the big enemy.
Speaker 1: And it uses enough energy to basically power a five
Speaker 1: hundred mile road trip, so not not one and the same,
Speaker 1: like these are two separate things. So it uses the
Speaker 1: energy to get you across country five miles and it
Speaker 1: depending on the size of your country, and it releases
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty pounds of CEO two into the air.
Speaker 1: I wonder what that compares to footprint wise to standard burial.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think I don't know, and I
Speaker 1: think it's just entirely different ways. Where I think maybe
Speaker 1: a natural or a regular traditional burial is more it's
Speaker 1: more polluting, like directly polluting into the into the ground
Speaker 1: and the kind of thing, and it's using up resources,
Speaker 1: where um, a cream nation has less of an impact
Speaker 1: over time, but immediately it's a lot of input. It
Speaker 1: requires a lot of input. Gotcha, that's my concept of it, right.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind being burned, but I like the um.
Speaker 1: Which country was it where they like burn you on
Speaker 1: top of the wood by like the banks of the river.
Speaker 1: That's India. Yeah, I like that. That's what how I
Speaker 1: would want to go. Well, buddy, if you live in
Speaker 1: India and you're a Hindu, that's exactly how you have
Speaker 1: to go. That was a perfect segrete of religion. And
Speaker 1: I guess so. Uh you said Hindu is a mandate cremation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're the only only religion that does. Yeah, and it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's called um. I'm gonna go ahead and give it
Speaker 1: a whirl here. Uh antem sandcar? Which is last? Right?
Speaker 1: You wanna hit the other one? Uh? Antsd? Yeah? Antist?
Speaker 1: I think? Which is last sacrifice? Yeah? And that is
Speaker 1: those are one of the sixteen life rituals. I guess
Speaker 1: it would be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be
Speaker 1: corrected there. Maybe one after that the whole rebirth and
Speaker 1: all that. Maybe, but the the I guess the smoke
Speaker 1: um gets the body to the next life. I bet
Speaker 1: it's one of the last four. I bet it is.
Speaker 1: I'll wager on that. Uh. And they yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's their Hindu. So they say you dispose of this
Speaker 1: body and it ushers you and helps you be reborn
Speaker 1: into the next life when you're cremated. And while Hinduism
Speaker 1: is the only religion that mandates you have that's how
Speaker 1: you that's how your body is disposed of. Um, Sikhism
Speaker 1: and Jainism are both kind of strongly adorse it, although
Speaker 1: they don't require it. Right And Um, you were saying
Speaker 1: that they cremate people in India along the banks of
Speaker 1: the river. Most of their cremations from what I understand
Speaker 1: our open air cremations idea, there's a city called Varanasi,
Speaker 1: which is apparently is the holy city to be cremated
Speaker 1: in and you are cremated out and open along the
Speaker 1: banks of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice. But they do
Speaker 1: have an electric crematorium. But since there's a billion people
Speaker 1: who live in India and all of one electricity, this
Speaker 1: place that suffers power. 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,
Speaker 1: preferably right. So Um in Judaism, Chuck Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's actually restricted. I think you can if you
Speaker 1: want to. But the m among Orthodox and conservative Jews,
Speaker 1: the memory of the Holocaust sure still understandably smarts to
Speaker 1: the point where they're like, why would you want to
Speaker 1: be cremated? This is you know, that's it's there's legacy
Speaker 1: is still around. So there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Jews who don't want to be cremated, even
Speaker 1: though their religion doesn't prohibit it, right understandably, Um, Protestants,
Speaker 1: actually is where you're gonna be find some more open
Speaker 1: minds to cremation. They don't, you know, have any literature
Speaker 1: that says you should do this, but they're definitely more
Speaker 1: understanding about it than other really, right. And we talked
Speaker 1: about the Catholic Church having a problem with it because
Speaker 1: of its association with subversiveness towards the church. But in
Speaker 1: the sixties the Catholic Church said, hey, we've never really
Speaker 1: prohibited it. You can't get cremated if you want, and
Speaker 1: apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger people
Speaker 1: really catered for the Catholics in the sixties. I found
Speaker 1: Canna says that of Catholics are cremated now, so that's
Speaker 1: 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: you not what you can do with your remains, because
Speaker 1: you clearly can't do anything. But that's not what you
Speaker 1: can do if your remains, but what your friends and
Speaker 1: family can do with your remains. And sometimes they like
Speaker 1: to um, keep you in and urn and then they
Speaker 1: have these little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium. And
Speaker 1: they just told ashes from what I understand, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a vault. So some people choose that that cost
Speaker 1: him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about your hero.
Speaker 1: I know you want to mention that who Hunter t Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, he was mixed with fireworks and shot out
Speaker 1: of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three foot cannon
Speaker 1: also called a memorial tower, and apparently it's it was
Speaker 1: an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this, and
Speaker 1: every anybody can do it. And Johnny Depth paid for
Speaker 1: the whole party, right, Yeah, And from what I saw
Speaker 1: it was if it was this British company, he would
Speaker 1: 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: Don't mention money. Actually I did see the average cremation
Speaker 1: cost is about six d bucks. Yeah, and the average
Speaker 1: funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand. Decided,
Speaker 1: let's say somewhere between five and ten dollars. But back
Speaker 1: to things you can do. We would be remiss um
Speaker 1: if we didn't mention to our NERD friends that Gene Roddenberry,
Speaker 1: the creator of Star Trek fame, was everyone knows this.
Speaker 1: He was shot into space. So was Timothy Learry. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, by the same company, Celestis. And they're still
Speaker 1: in business as far as I know. I bet they are.
Speaker 1: And then you got life, Jim. If we've talked about
Speaker 1: I think again on the webcast. You can take your
Speaker 1: cremated remains and have them compressed into a synthetic diamond.
Speaker 1: You can have your remains mixed into paint, and I
Speaker 1: guess that's not so much you can have, but you
Speaker 1: can probably just do that. It depends. Like there's there's
Speaker 1: there's actually a guy who does something called um Ash
Speaker 1: portraits and he he does it just with the person's ashes,
Speaker 1: but he'll also mix it in with oil or whatever. Interesting,
Speaker 1: but he does portraits of the deceased. All right, change
Speaker 1: my mind. I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker.
Speaker 1: That would be pretty off, That's what that would be
Speaker 1: really cool. Uh what else can you do? Um? You can, Oh,
Speaker 1: you can become part of the coral reef. I know
Speaker 1: there's companies that do that. There's a company called Eternal Reefs.
Speaker 1: I think is the big one. This is pretty obvious name,
Speaker 1: don't you know. And and what they actually they make
Speaker 1: different sized reefs and what they do is they mix
Speaker 1: your remains in with cement and like so the big one,
Speaker 1: it can accommodate up to four family members. So if
Speaker 1: your family went down in a plane and you just
Speaker 1: feel like showing out for one, you know, coral reef
Speaker 1: they've got you cover. It's like seven grand uh huh,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty big size and it's cool looking. I
Speaker 1: mean it looks like an artificial reef, and then you
Speaker 1: take it out and dump it overboard. Fish live amongst
Speaker 1: your your family members, who I really really hope loved
Speaker 1: scuba diving exactly. Do you remember Keith Richards a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, he's still alive, well now, his dad
Speaker 1: passed away, and he said that he snorted his father
Speaker 1: with cocaine and then I mean apparently said the Center interview.
Speaker 1: Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: 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 Sound 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 bury the ashes.
Speaker 1: Do the scatter very popular? I thought it'd be more
Speaker 1: popular than that though. The most popular one is water
Speaker 1: scattering and number two is scattering somewhere on family property.
Speaker 1: Not really three percent are put in the columbarium. And
Speaker 1: you might notice, Josh that adds, Yeah, there's one percent
Speaker 1: that go on claimed, so sad. It is sad, and
Speaker 1: I apparently the people who own crematoriums find it sad too,
Speaker 1: because even though after a set period of time and
Speaker 1: stay that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we
Speaker 1: say the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal
Speaker 1: oversight for any crematorium comes out of the state. Um
Speaker 1: but in states where there are regulations, they still say
Speaker 1: you 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 and it's only one percent, So I don't imagine
Speaker 1: 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 park 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: os 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 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 them.
Speaker 1: 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 Cuvees fan sadly did not get to see
Speaker 1: the Cubs winn 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. Nice. Pretty cool. That
Speaker 1: is 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 and uh took him out to Joshua Tree
Speaker 1: and opened the casket through some gasoline on him and
Speaker 1: set him on fire five gallons of gas right, and
Speaker 1: it didn't work because we've said what it takes. So
Speaker 1: he was half cremated by the time the cops showed up.
Speaker 1: He's sort of melty and just like Georgia. Back then,
Speaker 1: there was nothing about there were no penalties for stealing
Speaker 1: a corpse, so they got them for theft of a casket.
Speaker 1: I think that was Did you see that movie? Johnny
Speaker 1: Knoxville played the guy that his buddy It's not very good.
Speaker 1: I did stay in the hotel though. Actually I meant
Speaker 1: to mention that in the Root sixty six. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Joshua tree in not in his room though. And before
Speaker 1: we move on from Scattering josh we have to mention,
Speaker 1: because we like to mention our movies, the excellent, excellent
Speaker 1: scene from The Big Lebowski, the scattering scene in the
Speaker 1: end of when all of them just blew back all
Speaker 1: over them John Codman. Uh, it was Steve assuming that died, right,
Speaker 1: I think, and he he threw him out in the window,
Speaker 1: back in their face over the ocean. It was good.
Speaker 1: It was very good. Uh, Chuck. If I am dead
Speaker 1: and I'm being cremated and I'm part of se of
Speaker 1: the population, what country am i am? Uh? Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland,
Speaker 1: I've been cremated and I am part of just a
Speaker 1: meager three percent of the population. What country am in? Ghana?
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right? And in between are actually higher
Speaker 1: than that Hong Kong is. Places like the Czech Republic
Speaker 1: in Singapore and the UK are sort of mid to
Speaker 1: high seventies. China and the the Netherlands are about half and uh,
Speaker 1: Italy as far as European countries was I'm sorry Ireland
Speaker 1: was six percent, in Italy was seven percent, and I
Speaker 1: bet that has something to do with the Catholic thing,
Speaker 1: I would think, so for sure, the US is about
Speaker 1: thirty right, yeah, thanks for a large Protestant population and Hindu.
Speaker 1: And there's also pet cremation. Yeah, if you if you
Speaker 1: want to get into a burgeoning industry that went from
Speaker 1: pretty much nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries.
Speaker 1: The latest that get into pet cremation and the people
Speaker 1: at um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
Speaker 1: They did 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, then
Speaker 1: you probably want your pets ashes, right, so you can
Speaker 1: handle cremation at home just dig a shallow hole in
Speaker 1: your backyard to serve as a fire break, 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. Yeah, we have. I think at
Speaker 1: my old house we probably had like four or five
Speaker 1: pets buried out in the woods. But we lived on
Speaker 1: like two acres in the woods. It wasn't like in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood. You didn't set any 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 sninkers. Just type in
Speaker 1: cremation in the search bar the jazzy search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Jazzy. I'm just Chinese stuff.
Speaker 1: We've been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I
Speaker 1: like ubiquitous 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 mail. Yeah, buddy,
Speaker 1: I got a couple of today, A couple of short ones. Um.
Speaker 1: The first one is from the Soniccast and it's a
Speaker 1: little old, but I promise this guy would read it.
Speaker 1: This is from Mark and Eastern m D. I know
Speaker 1: you guys won't read this on a podcast. Those are
Speaker 1: usually the ones I read, but I just thought i'd
Speaker 1: write to tell you what happened to me this morning.
Speaker 1: In my frantic rush to get my daughter Ellie to
Speaker 1: a summer camp on time, I had to run out
Speaker 1: of the house without having breakfast. That caused me to
Speaker 1: have to stop at a fast food joint get one
Speaker 1: of those gross, greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's
Speaker 1: bad enough, but it gets worse. As I drive from
Speaker 1: the driveway, I pushed play on the iPad and start
Speaker 1: listening to the show and Saunas, where I started hearing
Speaker 1: about butt funk Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and
Speaker 1: having to visualize a naked Vigo Mortensen fighting in a
Speaker 1: sauna made my otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things
Speaker 1: one for the books. By the way, the podcast that
Speaker 1: I queued up next was all about Taste Buds, so
Speaker 1: now I know how I was able to taste my
Speaker 1: sandwich in the first place. Thanks a lot, guys. That's
Speaker 1: from Mark. If you do happen to read this on
Speaker 1: the on the air, would you would make Ellie and
Speaker 1: Lydia's day? And those are his daughters. Hey, Ellien, Lydia.
Speaker 1: So Mark, that is for you, my friend. And then
Speaker 1: this one I didn't you think about, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of fitting. Do you remember when I told you about
Speaker 1: the little girl in Kent, Washington who named her Beta
Speaker 1: Fish Chuckers Jr. I saw this one. Chuckers Jr. Is
Speaker 1: no more. Monday night, I put Chuckers Jr. Inside his
Speaker 1: small bowl so I could clean his bowl in the morning.
Speaker 1: Yesterday morning, I went to make my breakfast in front
Speaker 1: of his bowl as usual. But I to make my breakfast,
Speaker 1: I thought she had might make his, which would be
Speaker 1: pretty cute. I felt something sticky on my foot and
Speaker 1: I looked down into my horror. I saw Chucker's junior
Speaker 1: stuck to my foot, all dried out, and now it's horrible.
Speaker 1: Apparently Beta's had been known to jump out of their bowls,
Speaker 1: and I guess Chucker's junior jump pretty far because his
Speaker 1: bowl was a good foot away from the edge of
Speaker 1: the counter, yet he still ended up on the floor.
Speaker 1: My theory is that he probably flopped around or something
Speaker 1: onto the floor. Um, can't you just let the little
Speaker 1: girl think 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 time. 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
Speaker 1: think so and so degrees below she She ends with this,
Speaker 1: at least Chuckers Jr. Died a healthy fish. That's from Katie,
Speaker 1: age thirteen in Kent, Washington. Well thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry about your breakfast sandwich, although I'm hungry now.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Kent, it was Marked. She was from Kent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sor right, Mark. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich, KNT.
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 at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, does it
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