Speaker 1: Filo conspiracy realist. This classic episode is important, it is personal,
Speaker 1: and it touches on one of the unfortunately universal experiences
Speaker 1: of all living things.
Speaker 2: Death. Yeah, spoiler, Yeah, that's the end of this reality, right,
Speaker 2: this plane of existence? But hey man, who says it's
Speaker 2: the end? Is it just the beginning?
Speaker 1: Come on, and what happens when this is the thing
Speaker 1: that I know got us we're creating this episode. What
Speaker 1: happens at one of the most terrifying parts of your life.
Speaker 1: A loved one passes away, and now, in addition to grieving,
Speaker 1: you have to do all these other things. You have
Speaker 1: to file paperwork, you have to have a funeral, you
Speaker 1: have to hopefully trust the people and the professionals that
Speaker 1: are going to help you with that, and.
Speaker 2: You gotta come up with a whole bunch of money
Speaker 2: to make it happen.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission controlled decant most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: and you are for now here, and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. Fun fact, everybody
Speaker 1: in the studio today, as far as we know, is alive.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna die eventually, a lot of us.
Speaker 4: He started it with a glass half full scenario, Ben,
Speaker 4: and then Matt, you made it a glass half empty.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's some hope at the end of
Speaker 1: the tunnel. But maybe that's a show for a different day.
Speaker 2: If you think it's just the nature of the glass,
Speaker 2: it's really it was made, but it's gonna die.
Speaker 1: Sure so right now, with maybe one notable technical exception,
Speaker 1: dying is still the great equalizer. Dying is, for many
Speaker 1: of us listening inevitable, and here in the United States,
Speaker 1: dying is quite expensive. It's a burden that your loved ones,
Speaker 1: when they survive your demise, will often end up bearing themselves.
Speaker 1: As of twenty eighteen, the average funeral costs between seven
Speaker 1: thousand and ten thousand dollars. And that doesn't include everything, right,
Speaker 1: That includes some stuff, but like you know, it includes
Speaker 1: a viewing, burial, and balming. Hearse service transfer of remains
Speaker 1: a service fee, because everything has a service fee. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't include other things. It's like, awake, that's
Speaker 1: on you, Flowers that's on you. A million other things
Speaker 1: are on you. And typically when people are in this situation,
Speaker 1: it's one of the worst moments or periods of time
Speaker 1: in their life, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the grief associated with that moment causes a lot
Speaker 2: of these other things to be a little more acceptable unfortunately.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's almost like you want to do right by
Speaker 4: your deceased loved one, and surely that means forking out
Speaker 4: a bunch of money for an ostentatious casket, right.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: Often survivors fall prey to unscrupulous business practices. And it
Speaker 1: is a big business indeed, Given that everyone except where
Speaker 1: Henrietta Lax has so far died and Henrietta Lax is
Speaker 1: only technically kind of alive, this industry is an incredibly
Speaker 1: reliable source of income for people in every strata of
Speaker 1: the business. And given the incredibly, incredibly sensitive nature of
Speaker 1: this situation, it's no surprise that aspects of the funeral
Speaker 1: industry often come under fire. But this leads us to
Speaker 1: today's question, how much of this criticism is alarmist? How
Speaker 1: much of it is warranted, and ultimately, is the funeral
Speaker 1: industry crooked or corrupt?
Speaker 2: The old funeral industrial complex?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Kroner, remember Kroner from the sixteen under. They were
Speaker 4: like big funeral and they were pushing down the little
Speaker 4: mom and pops like.
Speaker 1: You know, the fishers, buying them out.
Speaker 4: Buying the mout left and right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is industrial burial complex? Better? Just spitballing here?
Speaker 1: I like funeral industrial I don't know, man, vote, how
Speaker 1: about you help us out? Listeners? What was the first
Speaker 1: one funeral industrial complex and the second one.
Speaker 2: Was burial industrial complex? I don't know. That's not as good.
Speaker 2: I like funeral. Let's go with funeral.
Speaker 1: I like big death, but that's probably some that's really good,
Speaker 1: really insufferable AKA musician's name, you know, de Eth?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, So what are what are the facts? Let's start there.
Speaker 1: Not only is it going to cost between seven to
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars on average just to bury someone, but
Speaker 1: that number indicates an increase, right, a trend.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Between two thousand and four and twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 2: median cost of an adult funeral increased twenty eight point
Speaker 2: six percent from five thousand, five hundred and eighty two
Speaker 2: dollars to seven thousand, one hundred and eighty one dollars.
Speaker 2: So that's over a ten year period, twenty eight almost
Speaker 2: thirty percent increase. That's pretty intense. And that's according to
Speaker 2: the National Funeral Directors Association or NIFTAH Yeah, NIFTA, NYFTE
Speaker 2: nift And that almost thirty percent might seem like a
Speaker 2: hugely steep rate of increase, but between nineteen eighty and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, just nine years, the average funeral costs
Speaker 2: rose by eighty seven percent, a lot of eighties in
Speaker 2: those numbers there.
Speaker 1: It's true, and it sounds it sounds quite precipitous, right,
Speaker 1: But what does that include? So let's say you pay
Speaker 1: slightly higher than average price for a funeral, what do
Speaker 1: you get for all that?
Speaker 4: Well, let's break it down for you. A nominal fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred dollars feet goes to the funeral director and the
Speaker 4: services that they provide. Casket cost approximately twenty three hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: But of course you can upgrade, you can pimp your
Speaker 4: casket embalming. I think that's probably pretty standard five hundred dollars,
Speaker 4: which seems reasonable to me. A lot of work that
Speaker 4: goes into that process and a lot of expertise. Cost
Speaker 4: for using the funeral home, which is more of like
Speaker 4: an event services kind of thing, five hundred bucks. I
Speaker 4: would think that that would be less than the embalming.
Speaker 2: See I thought it was going to be more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Really well, Also we have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: these prices can vary depending on the home.
Speaker 4: You go to, course not for Then you've got the
Speaker 4: cost of a grave site, which is one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I thought that was on the low side.
Speaker 4: It does seem on the low side. Is that Does
Speaker 4: that mean that's like the you own that land or
Speaker 4: are you renting it?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 4: How does that work?
Speaker 2: Upkeep? Baby, it's just upkeep.
Speaker 4: You got to pay, so you have to buy the
Speaker 4: land the plot first. This isn't even for the plot.
Speaker 4: This is just the upkeep. Uh.
Speaker 2: There's probably two costs of.
Speaker 1: That's the that would be the initial cost.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. Then you've got the the old grave
Speaker 4: diggers fee that's six hundred. Then you know that's a
Speaker 4: deep hole that's worth that. You know that's a lot
Speaker 4: of work. Then you've got the cost of a grave
Speaker 4: liner or outer burial container. So it's a casket for
Speaker 4: your casket, yeah, which which is brand a real thing
Speaker 4: that typically yeah.
Speaker 2: Very odd had no idea that this was real, didn't either,
Speaker 2: and I assume it would.
Speaker 4: It would be to keep the casket in pristine condition.
Speaker 4: So how would you get into that if you were,
Speaker 4: let's say, a grave robber, how would you crack into
Speaker 4: that outer? Is it like something that has a lid
Speaker 4: as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty inconvenient. You would have to break a
Speaker 1: seal part of it. Part of it also is meant
Speaker 1: to contain the dangerous chemicals in a corpse. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's been embalmed. And you said that that was one
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, right, a cool grand.
Speaker 4: And then you've got the headstone, which is fifteen hundred.
Speaker 4: Because that's a piece of custom masonry, right, you got
Speaker 4: to have someone that can carve it by hand. I
Speaker 4: gotta wonder. Do you think there are mass like factory
Speaker 4: produced gravestones that are a little cheaper.
Speaker 1: Yes, you see, Yeah, those would often be the things
Speaker 1: that have more like a plaque sort of situation, and
Speaker 1: they're embedded into the ground, but they don't stand up.
Speaker 1: In this example, which is a wonderful example, the total
Speaker 1: cost would approximate about nine thousand dollars. And again that's
Speaker 1: just for the main items. There could be additional charges
Speaker 1: for dozens of things. Placing the obituary in the newspaper
Speaker 1: that's not free, buying the flower that's not free.
Speaker 4: And just for comparison, the cost of at least in
Speaker 4: my experience, when I owned a house, putting a brand
Speaker 4: new roof, like stripping off the old roof, putting on
Speaker 4: a whole new roof with good material, about ten thousand
Speaker 4: dollars and that's supposed to last you ten to twenty years. Wow,
Speaker 4: So this is like I don't know, I just but
Speaker 4: this is forever. Yeah, but I don't know. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of very magical thinking that goes into this whole process.
Speaker 1: Well, also, there's not a situation with the roof salesman
Speaker 1: where they say, think about what your dead relatives would want.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: You know that changes the equation, It really does. So
Speaker 1: let's look at another thing on the rise. I hesitate
Speaker 1: to call it a hot trend. Cremation. According to NIFTA,
Speaker 1: the median cost of a funeral with cremation is a
Speaker 1: little bit cheaper at six thousand and seventy eight dollars
Speaker 1: that's fifteen percent cheaper than the median cost of a
Speaker 1: funeral with a burial. Some sources will put the average
Speaker 1: cost of a cremation even lower. They'll say you can
Speaker 1: find a deal for two thousand to four thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but that is still a lot of money for the
Speaker 1: average person.
Speaker 4: I think I may have said this on the episode
Speaker 4: we just did, the two parter are on secret burial
Speaker 4: sites and lost bodies. My father was cremated, and they
Speaker 4: also can up charge you on that because they try
Speaker 4: to make you buy a fancier receptacle.
Speaker 1: They call it a what do they call it an urn?
Speaker 4: An urn, but there's a name of a vessel.
Speaker 1: They call it a vessel.
Speaker 4: That's the funeral speak. And I think we went with something.
Speaker 4: We literally got it in like a I mean, don't
Speaker 4: judge me here. We got it like in a plastic
Speaker 4: box and with it in like a bag inside of it.
Speaker 4: And I still have some of that, it's in my closet.
Speaker 4: That's that's a little dark.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, No, you should be sorry.
Speaker 2: It's nice.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, but let's let's also remember that this we're
Speaker 1: looking at the average price for a one and done
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But almost one point eight million people
Speaker 1: are buried every year in this country alone. That amounts
Speaker 1: to a fifteen billion a year industry. And we have
Speaker 1: some interesting comparisons about what that means with the modern burials,
Speaker 1: not green burial or cremation.
Speaker 2: So there's enough embalming fluid that gets buried every year
Speaker 2: to fill eight Olympic size pools. M there is more
Speaker 2: steel used in caskets alone than was used to build
Speaker 2: the Golden Gate Bridge every year. We're talking on a
Speaker 2: yearly basis here, and enough reinforced concrete to construct a
Speaker 2: two lane highway from New York City to Detroit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boggles the mind. That's every year. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: just to be very very clear here, we're not being
Speaker 1: glib or disrespectful to those who have passed on. This
Speaker 1: industry has problems, right, And I love that we got
Speaker 1: to the six feet under example, because that's one of
Speaker 1: the big plots of the show. What was it started
Speaker 1: with a sea? What was the name of the Boner,
Speaker 1: so Kroner. This isn't spoiling six feet under, which is,
Speaker 1: however many years old. Now this is not important to
Speaker 1: the character development of the show, but it does paint
Speaker 1: this alarming picture. It makes us think maybe of other
Speaker 1: industries wherein monopolies have taken over, right, maybe something like
Speaker 1: Amazon now, or maybe Walmart with supermarkets yeah.
Speaker 4: Or like internet service providers.
Speaker 1: Yeah ect I was thinking the same thing right. Luckily,
Speaker 1: if you're an opponent of trust and monopolies, you will
Speaker 1: be glad to learn that in the United States, at
Speaker 1: least for now, most of the nineteen five hundred or
Speaker 1: so funeral homes in the country are still small, mom
Speaker 1: and pop, family owned, family owned operations that have been
Speaker 1: in the family for multiple generations. For now, at least,
Speaker 1: We'll be back after a word from our sponsor. Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Don't even let yourself be fooled by this idea that
Speaker 2: these small funeral homes are gonna be there forever. McDonald
Speaker 2: AND's sons and all the other ones. Big business wants
Speaker 2: a piece of this pie. They want this industry in
Speaker 2: their grasp, and large companies have been making some serious inroads.
Speaker 2: Here are some of the biggest companies that control currently
Speaker 2: the death industry, Big.
Speaker 1: Death, oh Man or the funeral funereal industrial companies. Oh
Speaker 1: I like that funeral different, Walmart, Walmart might not be
Speaker 1: a big surprise. Walmart sells a ton of stuff. They're
Speaker 1: the world's largest retailer brick and mortar. At least they
Speaker 1: helped begin the trend of selling low priced caskets online.
Speaker 4: Wait do they still do this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I believe so. Really Yep, there's a The name
Speaker 1: seems kind of ghosh, But one they came out with
Speaker 1: was nine hundred ninety five dollars casket called the Dad
Speaker 1: Remembered Steel Casket with eighteen gage steel high gloss silver
Speaker 1: blue finish. That model may not be around anymore, but
Speaker 1: they are still selling caskets.
Speaker 2: I just found it at Sky Caskets.
Speaker 4: I have found it on walmart dot com. This one's
Speaker 4: called funeral casket. It's called the Briar Rose.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I just feel like Dad Remembered is a terrible name.
Speaker 2: I read it as Dad remembered steel, like Dad remembers
Speaker 2: his steel, he knows.
Speaker 1: I read it kind of as Dad Comma remembered.
Speaker 2: Yes not, that's that's what it should be. But there's
Speaker 2: no punctuation.
Speaker 1: I feel like for that much, for that much money,
Speaker 1: there should be some proof reading involved.
Speaker 4: Why am I so blown away that I was just
Speaker 4: able to pull up like a catalog page on Walmart
Speaker 4: with like browsing caskets. It never occurred to me that
Speaker 4: you can buy caskets from Walmart.
Speaker 2: How about overstock dot com?
Speaker 1: Yep, Walmart's taking his share of the death care industry
Speaker 1: away from those traditional manufacturers and funeral homes. And according
Speaker 1: to the various trade groups in the casket industry, the
Speaker 1: impact of these brick and mortar stores is still kind
Speaker 1: of small, but it's definitely growing.
Speaker 2: It's good that it's there.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, that's what a lot of people say
Speaker 1: about Amazon.
Speaker 2: Yep, Amazon, enter you Amazon, old Bezos.
Speaker 1: He's uh old Bezos.
Speaker 2: Old Bezos.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he hunts a gigantic white whale.
Speaker 4: It sounds it also sounds like some kind of thing
Speaker 4: you'd put in a soup.
Speaker 2: Just hit it with a dash of that Bezos old
Speaker 2: Bezos basil.
Speaker 4: It's like creole wow.
Speaker 2: Okay. So Amazon has this thing it's called revenue, and
Speaker 2: they've got seven point six billion of it. Uh that's
Speaker 2: in US dollars. And it's often said that you know
Speaker 2: they sell everything. Well, guess what if Walmart sells caskets,
Speaker 2: you gotta believe Amazon's all over there.
Speaker 4: No, I just searched. I couldn't find any. You're kidding me,
Speaker 4: I'm not kidding you caskets. I found a lot of movies.
Speaker 4: That's one called Help, I'm Possessed, The Closer, the complete
Speaker 4: third season, and of course Six Feet Under season's one
Speaker 4: through completion. But no, I can't buy I don't see
Speaker 4: any Amazon caskets.
Speaker 2: My man, it would be fun to watch a group
Speaker 2: of drones trying to deliver one of them.
Speaker 4: You know what else? Amazon doesn't sell sex toys? WHOA, yeah,
Speaker 4: they they they've got they've got their their boundaries.
Speaker 2: All right. You got to go to Adam and Eve
Speaker 2: dot com for that.
Speaker 4: Not brought to you by Adam and Eve.
Speaker 1: It looks like now they've they've taken those off the
Speaker 1: market and they just have pet caskets, oh, which I
Speaker 1: imagine was somewhat less offensive maybe or somewhat less problematic
Speaker 1: from a shipping standpoint. That's probably the closer answer.
Speaker 2: Didn't they have some kind of I don't know, agreement
Speaker 2: with another company or something. Maybe that's why they were
Speaker 2: temporarily selling them.
Speaker 1: They used to sell more than fifty different varieties of
Speaker 1: caskets or coffins and they sold a steel embalming table,
Speaker 1: they sold pet eurns and oh yeah yeah, they had
Speaker 1: a partnership with Best Price Caskets dot Com.
Speaker 4: And then it went south.
Speaker 1: Must I guess that deal is pushing up daisies.
Speaker 4: Pet caskets are pretty posh. This one's called Pause Rest
Speaker 4: Premium pet casket Comma small. How much is it about
Speaker 4: three eighty nine?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Which you know, again, when a pet passes, it's still
Speaker 1: in many cases just as damaging.
Speaker 4: Is I love that absolutely Again, For some reason, the
Speaker 4: idea of a pet casket I find comical.
Speaker 2: My cousin. My cousin has the most tasteful burial plots
Speaker 2: for her cats. It is incredible it. If anyone would
Speaker 2: ever spend that much care on me, I die, I
Speaker 2: would be. I mean, I wouldn't be, but I think
Speaker 2: everybody else would be really happy about it and moved
Speaker 2: by it. Yeah, it's incredible. She cares. She loves those
Speaker 2: cats so much so that she like makes these beautiful
Speaker 2: almost it's almost like I don't even know how to
Speaker 2: describe it. It's it's almost like having a tribute landscaping and.
Speaker 4: Beautiful that is levely and in your backyard. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm all about that. That's a place you can, you know,
Speaker 4: wander through and go and visit. And I mean, I
Speaker 4: I have no problem with the idea of burial of
Speaker 4: humans of loved ones at all. The part that I
Speaker 4: get hung up on is the exorbitant cost and the whole,
Speaker 4: you know, Because I was gonna mention off Mike that
Speaker 4: I had heard a piece on Hidden Brain actually where
Speaker 4: I was talking about lifestyle choices and the idea of
Speaker 4: being an influencer and this, that and the other, and
Speaker 4: one of the segments was about funerals, and I said
Speaker 4: out loud to my girlfriend, I said, I bet poor
Speaker 4: people spend more money on funerals than rich people. And
Speaker 4: that's exactly what the stat was, on average, on average
Speaker 4: in this country.
Speaker 1: Well. Also, there's a privatized insurance industry that springs up
Speaker 1: around this, and the same things that occur in medical
Speaker 1: billing occur in the in the in the funeral industry,
Speaker 1: paying for it forever. A lot of the major players
Speaker 1: in this industry also have very very innocuous names. Carriage
Speaker 1: Services Incorporated. Does it sound like the maybe the company
Speaker 1: that has the horse drawn carriages in downtown.
Speaker 2: Areas Exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Does it sound like maybe they repair transmissions or something
Speaker 1: in fleets of commercial vehicles.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, they were the fourth largest publicly traded
Speaker 1: entity in the death care industry. They operate. As of
Speaker 1: that time, they operated one hundred and forty seven funeral
Speaker 1: homes in twenty five states, thirty three cemeteries in twelve states.
Speaker 1: They make a lot of money in what are called
Speaker 1: pre funded funeral and burial services. This is where you
Speaker 1: plan ahead. Let's say ten thousand a pop is too much,
Speaker 1: but you kind of put your death ritual on layaway.
Speaker 1: It's called like.
Speaker 4: Pre need pre need, that is what they call it
Speaker 4: in Six Feet Under. I know all these terms from
Speaker 4: watching that show. The pre need.
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean, I guess that's smart.
Speaker 4: You do it in advance. Yeah, they don't have to
Speaker 4: worry about it. It's almost like doing a living will
Speaker 4: or something like that. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Can I tell you guys a quick quick story please.
Speaker 2: So it's no secret my wife's family is not that
Speaker 2: well off, but they have lots and lots of family
Speaker 2: in there. They're just wonderful, awesome they have they have
Speaker 2: wonderful communities like connection. I guess right. So when my
Speaker 2: wife's grandfather died, all of these people showed up, almost
Speaker 2: every single person showed up with a roll of cash
Speaker 2: and just handed it to my wife's grandmother and they
Speaker 2: were all paying for the funeral. In that moment with cash,
Speaker 2: everybody together is amazing. And that's another part of the
Speaker 2: hidden brain stap. The reason that people typically with less
Speaker 2: money spend more on funerals is because it becomes this
Speaker 2: community thing. Yeah, whereas rich people it's a much more segmented,
Speaker 2: small affair they might just do because you know, they
Speaker 2: don't They're not bringing people in from far and wide
Speaker 2: for this funeral. It's much more of a they like
Speaker 2: their privacy or whatever. Whereas people with less money they
Speaker 2: make it an event where the family comes in from
Speaker 2: all over and it's an excuse to get everyone back
Speaker 2: together again, you know.
Speaker 1: Again specifically in the US, right, absolutely, absolutely. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting too because a lot of families that come from
Speaker 1: generational wealth, which happens quite often here in the States,
Speaker 1: a lot of those families will already have dedicated, older plots,
Speaker 1: so they actually may have fewer upfront costs. It's expensive,
Speaker 1: it's expensive to be impoverished in this country. Right, there's
Speaker 1: another company called Hill and Brand Incorporated. I like, I
Speaker 1: if we're just making up things based on the name,
Speaker 1: I would like to think that they sell those gift
Speaker 1: baskets with summer sausage and different cheeses and maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of chocolate if.
Speaker 4: You upsell Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Speaker 1: But unlike Pepperidge Farm, Hill and Brand sells forty five
Speaker 1: percent of all the caskets in the US, or they
Speaker 1: did as of twenty eleven. They sell more than eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand and the one point eight million sold each year.
Speaker 1: They also sell cremation containers, vessels, earns, and they sell
Speaker 1: all these products, though not under Hill and Brand. They
Speaker 1: sell it under Batesville Casket Company brand. It kind of
Speaker 1: how that brand was founded in nineteen oh six. It's
Speaker 1: similar to how a few food manufacturers may make a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff and some of its build is organic
Speaker 1: and some of it. It's kind of like how McDonald's
Speaker 1: owns Chipotle, if we're.
Speaker 2: Being honest totally, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And in recent years, Hill and Brand has become an
Speaker 1: entity that makes more of its money off of manufacturing
Speaker 1: non death related things. So they got a boost from that,
Speaker 1: and they're expanding out. It's you know, capitalism Vegas baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean. You gotta get in
Speaker 2: there while you can with these companies. And also, you know,
Speaker 2: you do what you can to represent your company in
Speaker 2: a the best way, best forward facing way.
Speaker 1: Right now, if there were one company that would be
Speaker 1: named as a monopoly in this unfortunate industry, if there
Speaker 1: were one company that would closely resemble the big corporate
Speaker 1: bad of six feet under fame, it would be something
Speaker 1: with the name Service Corporation International. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that name. Service Corporation International.
Speaker 1: Could literally be any thing that happens internationally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a service and not a specific good necessarily. Well,
Speaker 2: let's just say this Service Corporation Internationally deals with death
Speaker 2: and that's how they make their money death.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is entirely a company making money off of
Speaker 1: those services. It was founded in nineteen sixty two by
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert L. Waltrip. He grew up in
Speaker 1: the funeral business. He was from one of those mom
Speaker 1: and pop outfits. As of twenty seventeen, this company owned
Speaker 1: oney four hundred and eighty eight funeral homes and four
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy three cemeteries across the US and Canada.
Speaker 1: It makes them the largest funeral and cemetery services company
Speaker 1: in the entire world. They also own facilities in eight
Speaker 1: European countries England, France, Germany, and additionally they conduct business
Speaker 1: in Singapore. They provide services like embalming, burial cremation, prearranged
Speaker 1: or pre need funeral packages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their products cover every aspect of the funeral everything
Speaker 2: we were talking about, caskets, burial balls, flowers, cremation, funeral options,
Speaker 2: burial garments, and as of twenty eighteen, it's estimated that
Speaker 2: their share of all just the total funeral and cemetery
Speaker 2: market in North America is fifteen percent. Now, that doesn't
Speaker 2: sound that high, ben fifteen percent.
Speaker 1: It doesn't, does it.
Speaker 2: It really doesn't. And why is that?
Speaker 1: Well, you see SCI keeps growing, Matt as we're recording this,
Speaker 1: And there's something that Service Corporation International does not want
Speaker 1: you or your loved ones to know. This company is
Speaker 1: largely made up of other small businesses. Overwhelmingly the funeral
Speaker 1: homes that are SCI. Funeral homes are things that it
Speaker 1: acquired from these smaller outfits, these mom and pop things,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want these homes to be less profitable,
Speaker 1: so they didn't want them to seem like some giant,
Speaker 1: faceless funeral corporation, right, So instead they take over relatively
Speaker 1: in secret, and the mom and pop businesses keep their
Speaker 1: name on the things, so it's still like Paul Decant
Speaker 1: and Cousins Funeral Home or whatever.
Speaker 4: This is literally the plot of six ft under, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: because six f under is based off absolutely. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: was not aware. This is really really fascinating. So it
Speaker 4: makes sense. Yeah, because it's such a comfort industry. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't want to feel like you're doing business with
Speaker 4: like big death, right. You want to feel like you're
Speaker 4: doing business with someone who understands your community and your
Speaker 4: plight and is there for you as a as a
Speaker 4: helping hand and a friendly.
Speaker 1: Face, and as their family has provided memorial services for
Speaker 1: your family generations and generations back.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it makes sense that they would want to
Speaker 1: grow in this way because they already have a lot
Speaker 1: of the economy of scale at work.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They're they're getting I'm sure, massive discounts on different supplies
Speaker 1: they run a couple of logistics chains. So a typical
Speaker 1: funeral home that is owned by SCI will not contain
Speaker 1: any advertisements or any logos for SCI, with the exception
Speaker 1: perhaps of one thing, a little employee pin on the
Speaker 1: on the lapel of people who work there. Interesting.
Speaker 2: I think I've seen this before, but I'm I can't.
Speaker 2: I looked at a picture of one of one of
Speaker 2: the lapels that actually has it on there, and it
Speaker 2: looks so familiar. Now I'm I'm questioning how many of
Speaker 2: these funeral homes I've been to. I've been to that
Speaker 2: many funerals, but I've been in a share and I
Speaker 2: think I've seen it. Here's me out.
Speaker 4: But here's a question, though, Why why? Why is this
Speaker 4: so disturbing? It's business. It makes sense. It benefits the
Speaker 4: mom and pops theoretically, theoretically they get to keep doing
Speaker 4: this and being where they always have been. Is it
Speaker 4: insidious just because it's this kind of the nature of
Speaker 4: the industry makes us feel like it's gross to make
Speaker 4: money anyway? But aren't the mom and pops already doing that? Ah?
Speaker 1: Yes, excellent foreshadowing. Let's let's walk down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: a little bit further. So SCI does have one thing
Speaker 1: that you can easily use to discern them. They place
Speaker 1: emphasis on a number of different brands. One is Dignity Memorial,
Speaker 1: and the Dignity logo can be seen on their homes
Speaker 1: and their funeral homes and in cemeteries and paperwork and
Speaker 1: so on. They have other brands too, but that's one
Speaker 1: of the most popular ones. And right now SCI has
Speaker 1: not consumed the entire industry by any means, but its
Speaker 1: recent acquisitions have observers concerned. The FTC is getting involved,
Speaker 1: which is something I didn't think happened in the funeral industry,
Speaker 1: or I just never thought about it. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, they wanted to merge with something called the
Speaker 1: alder Woods Group, its nearest competitor, and the FTC said,
Speaker 1: this is going to create a monopoly, this is going
Speaker 1: to break antitrust laws. Eventually they allowed the merger to continue,
Speaker 1: which you know, was a huge boon to SCI's growth.
Speaker 1: They tried to purchase an outfit called Keystone North America
Speaker 1: for two hundred and eight million in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: and they got they got it. It slid through somehow.
Speaker 1: These guys have a lot of a lot of grease,
Speaker 1: as we're going to find out too. They have a
Speaker 1: lot of juice, you would call it on the streets.
Speaker 1: In May twenty thirteen, they signed another deal, one point
Speaker 1: four billion dollar deal to purchase Stuart Enterprises, the second
Speaker 1: largest what they call deathcare company, and the FTC this
Speaker 1: in this acquisition said Okay, we're keeping an eye on you.
Speaker 1: You can do this, but there need to be some
Speaker 1: rules in place. So here's where we get to your question.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, the company's penchant for pretending to be
Speaker 1: a local shop is miss but what's the big deal?
Speaker 1: What gives It's not illegal to do that? And if
Speaker 1: that's all the company is doing, then we could say,
Speaker 1: we could argue, if we're going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit cold about it, that it does not particularly matter
Speaker 1: how we feel about the practice itself, so long as
Speaker 1: the locations still offer the same services. The people who
Speaker 1: got bought out often still work there as management. Their
Speaker 1: jobs don't change. They just become a franchise. For lack
Speaker 1: of a better term, However, that's not the case. As
Speaker 1: it grows, SCIS become the subject of more and more controversy.
Speaker 1: One of the things is cost This company is known
Speaker 1: for having slashed its overhead and raised prices dramatically, in
Speaker 1: some cases, much higher than independent funeral home operators, which,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, is the opposite of what
Speaker 1: you might expect, because usually the way that Walmart's will
Speaker 1: drive out small businesses will be to operate at a
Speaker 1: loss for months or you know, years in certain departments
Speaker 1: so that the smaller places can't compete. These guys are
Speaker 1: doing the opposite. There's an issue of Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: that was published in October twenty fourth, twenty thirteen, where
Speaker 1: a guy named Paul M.
Speaker 4: Barrett.
Speaker 1: I say, a guy, a journalist named Paul EM Barrett
Speaker 1: quoted different different stats and he found that at the time,
Speaker 1: SCI's on average charge was and fifty six bucks without
Speaker 1: the plot and without the casket, just the other stuff.
Speaker 2: That seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: It is it is a lot.
Speaker 4: Is that because they have an effective monopoly and so
Speaker 4: they can basically fix their own prices and there's no
Speaker 4: competition anymore.
Speaker 1: Is that the issue here in some areas that very
Speaker 1: well could be. I mean, that's almost fifty percent higher
Speaker 1: than the real mom and pop shops.
Speaker 2: Right, geez? And uh, lest we forget that's bad enough, Like,
Speaker 2: just knowing that you're operating, you could be saving people
Speaker 2: a lot of money on their funerals if you wanted to, maybe,
Speaker 2: but you wouldn't have the prophecy you're getting. But what
Speaker 2: about something called funeral gate?
Speaker 1: Yes, funeral gate? Have you heard of this? Have you
Speaker 1: guys ever heard of this?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you were familiar with this before? Right, Matt?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, this is this is weird and lack of
Speaker 1: a better term, this is this is fascinating. Has to
Speaker 1: plot twist that this is a controversy that occurred in Texas.
Speaker 1: And according to Fox News, sci Service Corporation and International,
Speaker 1: which was doing business as Dignity Memorial under a different
Speaker 1: name and then under dozens of other different names. Right,
Speaker 1: they were recycling graves. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were taking the bodies they were originally like
Speaker 2: meant to go in. They were throwing them in the
Speaker 2: woods to use the space to house new customs. Two
Speaker 2: Jewish cemeteries in Florida. So they're taking people out that
Speaker 2: they were going to bury and just throwing them in
Speaker 2: the woods.
Speaker 1: And there was a Texas official who was tasked with
Speaker 1: watching over these sorts of behaviors or preventing these sorts
Speaker 1: of behaviors and watching over the funeral business. Who alleged
Speaker 1: that she was fired in retaliation for whistleblowing, and that
Speaker 1: she was fired by the administration of then Governor George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush had received campaign contributions from the Waltrip family,
Speaker 1: the founders of Scirops, the Wall Troops. They are based
Speaker 1: in Texas. It's not unusual to be loved by anyone
Speaker 1: campaign finance wise, you know what I mean, Like a
Speaker 1: it's not unusual to be bribed by anybody else. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm it's a bad joke, but it really
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, you know, if you
Speaker 1: are running for a position at that level of government,
Speaker 1: a ton of large businesses are going to want to
Speaker 1: donate to your campaign. That's just how it works here, right,
Speaker 1: So that's not necessarily corrupt. But the person who said
Speaker 1: they were ousted did say it was. They did allege corruption,
Speaker 1: and they said that the governor had been essentially paid
Speaker 1: off by the Waltrip family to make this scandal go away.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush was subpoena to testify about this in
Speaker 1: court in nineteen ninety nine, but he refused to do so,
Speaker 1: and on August thirtieth, nineteen ninety nine, a Texas judge
Speaker 1: ruled that he could not Bush that could not be
Speaker 1: forced to testify. So it all sort of went away
Speaker 1: for twenty years.
Speaker 2: Now, something happened around that year in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: where he became an even more powerful governor of sorts.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what happened exactly.
Speaker 1: Right lead up to the election, Yeah, absolutely right, And
Speaker 1: so people who alleged that there was some corruption there
Speaker 1: will we'll see this as just one of many smoking guns, right,
Speaker 1: and other people will say, well, meritless claims happen against
Speaker 1: a state official all the time. Yeah, right, Like there's
Speaker 1: probably some comptroller right now who is getting just they're
Speaker 1: my favorite example, who is getting some sort of strange,
Speaker 1: ludicrous lawsuit thrown at them. Right. So the question is
Speaker 1: it really it depends on your personal take. But the
Speaker 1: legal opinion was that he did not have to testify.
Speaker 2: Look, if you are a politician of any sort and
Speaker 2: you're not getting bribes thrown at you left and right,
Speaker 2: you're doing something wrong. And I'm not saying you're taking
Speaker 2: those bribes. But if nobody wants to bribe you. I
Speaker 2: don't know. That's a bad look.
Speaker 1: Did he ever do an episode about lobbying?
Speaker 2: We did videos about it.
Speaker 1: I don't think we have not an audio places the kind.
Speaker 4: Of thing where it figures into other topics. Maybe we
Speaker 4: haven't a solo.
Speaker 1: Yacas because I think for all of us who are
Speaker 1: listening from someplace outside of the United States, lobbying just sounds.
Speaker 2: Heinous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, heinous is a fantastic words. It seems counterintuitive, it
Speaker 1: seems illegal. How is bribery illegal in this country? But
Speaker 1: lobbying is fine? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Because semantics bro.
Speaker 1: We had to have talked about at some point anyhow.
Speaker 1: So that's funeral gait, and that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: controversies that hit SCI's reputation. But the people largely forgot
Speaker 1: about as time went on. But they were active in
Speaker 1: other states. In Virginia there was evidence of improper storage
Speaker 1: of bodies and various states of decay. We're talking two
Speaker 1: hundred something in makeshift gurneys in a just routing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a good look or smell.
Speaker 1: Well, what happened in Florida?
Speaker 2: Oh it's even better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true. In two thousand and one, it was
Speaker 4: reported that employees of the Memorial Gardens Cemetery near Fort
Speaker 4: Lauderdale had oversold the cemetery, so bodies were buried in
Speaker 4: the wrong places, separating husbands and wives. Vaults were cracked
Speaker 4: open by a back hoe, bodies were exhumed with bone
Speaker 4: skulls and shrouds thrown into the woods. Again, bodies were
Speaker 4: stacked on top of each other, and remains were relocated
Speaker 4: without notifying any of the relatives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a huge deal for anyone. This
Speaker 1: is especially egregious and horrific thing for members of the
Speaker 1: Jewish community because for more religiously observant families and customers,
Speaker 1: traditional Jewish law requires bodies to be buried completely intact
Speaker 1: and prohibits disturbing the dead. So SCI reached an agreement
Speaker 1: with the Florida Attorney General's Office in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and they said, we'll give you fourteen million dollars. We'll
Speaker 1: repair the plots, reorganize the cemeteries, properly mark all the graves,
Speaker 1: and the grounds will be able to accommodate all plots soulds,
Speaker 1: so we'll stop over selling stuff. And then they had
Speaker 1: to settle a separate class action lawsuit on behalf of
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty families for one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: That sounds about right. I'm surprised it's actually not more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. And there's another Jewish cemetery that was
Speaker 1: mishandled in California.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's go back to September fourteenth, two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine. There was this class action lawsuit. It was
Speaker 2: filed against SCI in this place called Eden Memorial Park.
Speaker 2: It was a Jewish cemetery managed by SCI in Mission Hills. Now,
Speaker 2: this class action lawsuit charged that this group SI and
Speaker 2: Memorial Park they were destroying graves to make room for
Speaker 2: new internments. And in February twenty fourteen there was another settlement,
Speaker 2: this time to the tune of eighty million dollars. Wow.
Speaker 2: They are spending a lot of money on these lawsuits.
Speaker 1: Right, and this is only scratching the surface. This is
Speaker 1: not a hit piece. You can check into each one
Speaker 1: of these stories, and while you're checking you will find
Speaker 1: other stories of similar situations, many of which have been
Speaker 1: completely forgotten. Yeah right, you have to dig a little
Speaker 1: to find them. Now, this may simply be a situation
Speaker 1: where in a corporation as large as SCI because of
Speaker 1: the way it acquires different smaller businesses. This may be
Speaker 1: a situation where it's just not able to keep an
Speaker 1: adequate eye on every single thing.
Speaker 2: Right, right, That seems like a valid argument to me.
Speaker 2: I think that is, you know, you do have local
Speaker 2: I guess the families. If it's still run by these groups,
Speaker 2: they're there on the ground all the time.
Speaker 1: Right, and they're they're observing this stuff. So is there
Speaker 1: is it valid to say that maybe these cases get
Speaker 1: more attention because they're attached to s CI, which has deeper.
Speaker 2: Purse strings, or they all become associated as if they're
Speaker 2: all happening by the same people, when in fact it's
Speaker 2: all individual groups that are just under the same letterhead, essentially.
Speaker 1: Right, like the way Rome conquered different countries and empires.
Speaker 1: I also want to want to point out I should
Speaker 1: have said deeper pockets, deeper purse strings doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I dig it.
Speaker 4: It was really longer.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the last time I saw a purse string.
Speaker 4: That's just the strap that goes over your shoulder.
Speaker 1: No, the strings are like the draw strings, right for
Speaker 1: a pouch.
Speaker 4: You know what though some of them do, some of
Speaker 4: those fancy ones that they're woven in. They've got little
Speaker 4: eyelids and you know, you pull the thing on the
Speaker 4: one side, cinches it right up.
Speaker 1: For a guy who doesn't own any purses, I'm somewhat
Speaker 1: aware of this industry.
Speaker 2: You don't know any purses.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. I feel like I feel like it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing.
Speaker 4: I feel, you know, back to what you said, Ben,
Speaker 4: I feel like that's what a gentleman would have called
Speaker 4: his purse his pouch. His purse is his pouch. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's like an old timy leather gold bag.
Speaker 2: Sounds about right to me.
Speaker 1: I was I was somewhere. I think it was williams Berg,
Speaker 1: and I saw I saw a guy walking with a
Speaker 1: with a bendle, with a stick and bendle and some pouches.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know, I don't know where he's going.
Speaker 4: That bendle was probably full of certified deposits from his daddy.
Speaker 2: Oh see, In my opinion, you always need to have
Speaker 2: a few pouches to put your reagents in there if
Speaker 2: you're gonna cast in vos manny. I don't know, corpoor.
Speaker 2: Maybe there are certain spells that you have to cast
Speaker 2: that you really need to make sure your reagents are on.
Speaker 4: You don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna just let it right out, Okay, cool
Speaker 1: dig it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, uh, voss flamm this is very important.
Speaker 2: Voss costs a significant number of reagents. And you need
Speaker 2: the Maana too.
Speaker 4: You gotta costs damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And also if like you're saying,
Speaker 2: if you know have your bendle, then that has all
Speaker 2: the manipotions. And how the heck are you going to
Speaker 2: continue to cast all the spells. I mean, you can't
Speaker 2: paralyze everybody.
Speaker 4: That has been our show. These are the real shows.
Speaker 4: I'd like to thank well. It would have been funny though,
Speaker 4: if we've done credits and that just continued. Yeah, doing
Speaker 4: this nerd talk, which I love.
Speaker 1: What is that from?
Speaker 2: That's all ultimate online?
Speaker 1: Okay. I didn't know if you were just winging it,
Speaker 1: but that was great, man, that was great.
Speaker 4: Let's go.
Speaker 1: You know what, I know, when your birthday is you
Speaker 1: might end up with some batches.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Why did that feel like a threat in my head?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 1: So, so here we are you know, we I think
Speaker 1: we're being very fair to s ci when we're saying
Speaker 1: these are the these are the things that could be
Speaker 1: arguments made in their defense. But when we go to
Speaker 1: the question of what happens now, we see some scary
Speaker 1: stuff ahead. At least here in the United States, an
Speaker 1: aging population and a lower birth rate point towards some
Speaker 1: disturbing trends. According to the US Census, older adults will
Speaker 1: outnumber children for the first time in this country's history
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty five, and citizens over sixty five will
Speaker 1: account for seventy eight million of the population. Children under
Speaker 1: eighteen will account for seventy six point four million. The
Speaker 1: baby boomer generation is one of the largest generations in
Speaker 1: our country. We're not seeing a burst in population. We're
Speaker 1: seeing people have fewer children than maybe boomers, which means
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are going to pass away
Speaker 1: in a smaller frame of time. This means that this
Speaker 1: business will boom or the growth will continue, and the
Speaker 1: next time you find yourself dealing with the loss of
Speaker 1: a loved win or a need to engage the services
Speaker 1: of a funeral home or memorial home, you have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself who really owns it, and is that information
Speaker 1: something they don't want you to know. We didn't even
Speaker 1: get into the unscrupulous sales tactics. We talked about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's that's something else I would There's a fantastic
Speaker 1: Reddit thread where in a funeral director describes some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that they do. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: are listening and you are in this industry, please know
Speaker 1: that we're not We're not saying one bad apple spoils
Speaker 1: the bunch. We're just saying that this is something a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have too much experience with, thankfully, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one would hope that continues to be the case.
Speaker 1: But you have to be aware that things are not
Speaker 1: always what they appear to be in the strangest of places.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And that's the end of this classic episode. If
Speaker 2: you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
Speaker 2: can get into contact with us in a number of
Speaker 2: different ways. One of the best is to give us
Speaker 2: a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, you can send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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