Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Today, I'm interviewing doctor Paul Kutinaris, who is the author
Speaker 2: of Memento Mori. Paul is one of my favorite people,
Speaker 2: and I'm friends with him. I met Paul years ago. Well,
Speaker 2: I actually will let him fill you in of how
Speaker 2: we actually met, but I'll tell you how I was
Speaker 2: introduced to Paul. At first, I was invited to this
Speaker 2: death salon that was being held at the Muder Museum
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia years ago, and I went and I didn't
Speaker 2: really know anybody that was going to be there, but
Speaker 2: I was invited there because I had the Instagram that
Speaker 2: was popular with death. And I showed up and just
Speaker 2: sat in the audience and watched a lecture by Paul,
Speaker 2: who I never had heard of, and I was kind
Speaker 2: kind of mind blown by how intelligent he was, obviously,
Speaker 2: but just he was just saying such cool stuff that
Speaker 2: resonated with me so much about how death is is
Speaker 2: a very He was saying there was a soft line
Speaker 2: with death in some cultures and there was a very
Speaker 2: hard line with death.
Speaker 3: And I think about.
Speaker 2: This photo that was in his lecture with it was
Speaker 2: like this guy with a white picket fence outside and
Speaker 2: there was a skull and he was like shaking hands
Speaker 2: with this, you know, this dead guy. It was really funny.
Speaker 2: But how in our culture, or at least in America,
Speaker 2: we have a very hard line with death. And I
Speaker 2: took like a bunch of notes after his lecture and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was super cool. And I don't
Speaker 2: exactly remember, Paul, how I I might have like stalked
Speaker 2: you on Instagram or something and how we started talking.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if you remember, Well, remember I
Speaker 3: met you.
Speaker 1: Through Adam Wallackott.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, so we have a mutual friend Adam
Speaker 2: And yeah, that makes sense. So that's and then we
Speaker 2: met in person then or something. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 2: Adam's the he makes the really cool octopus chandeliers and
Speaker 2: he's a really awesome artist in Tier Decorator.
Speaker 1: Adam is basically the de facto mayor of Philadelphia. For
Speaker 1: those who don't, it's like every every time I stay
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, I stay in Adam's house and there is
Speaker 1: no place I can go where at least twenty people
Speaker 1: don't know this guy. He is the mayor of Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're totally right about that. He does know everybody.
Speaker 2: That's how we met. And first, I guess, Paul the
Speaker 2: most hated question of all. Tell us, just tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about yourself with like, who are you,
Speaker 2: how'd you get here? Where where'd you come from? Just
Speaker 2: give us a little background about Paul.
Speaker 1: Well, where did I come from? It's probably at complicated,
Speaker 1: but the rest of it will do. I have a
Speaker 1: PhD in art history and from UCLA. I'm from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles originally, and I was always kind of, I guess,
Speaker 1: like the fox molder of the art history department, just
Speaker 1: studying these weird things that other people didn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: while while everyone else was studying Rembrandt, I was out
Speaker 1: looking at woodcuts of you know, wareholes and stuff. And eventually,
Speaker 1: when I finished my PhD, I was traveling through Europe
Speaker 1: and I had gone to a lot of the famous
Speaker 1: death related sites, you know, the Paaris Catacombs and all
Speaker 1: of these bone places, and eventually I started finding a
Speaker 1: lot of them that nobody had heard of, you know,
Speaker 1: because there are about four that are big popular sites
Speaker 1: like that, like tourist destinations, and then there's about a
Speaker 1: Hydrid that nobody's heard of, and nobody cares about me.
Speaker 1: You need special access to go into and I became
Speaker 1: really fascinated by that. I mean, I had just finished
Speaker 1: a PhD in art history with a specialty in Baroque,
Speaker 1: and here were all these old Baroque era bone rooms,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like a natural thing for me
Speaker 1: to start studying and writing about. You know, it was
Speaker 1: right up my alley, and the discovery of all this
Speaker 1: stuff was perfectly timed. So I had traveled around Europe
Speaker 1: for a couple of years and documented all these places
Speaker 1: and put out a book called The Empire of Death,
Speaker 1: which was the history of these bone rooms. In the
Speaker 1: process of doing that, I had discovered a bunch of
Speaker 1: old Baroque jeweled skeletons that everybody else seemed to have
Speaker 1: forgotten about, and I wrote a book about them called
Speaker 1: Heavenly Bodies. But in the process of doing those first
Speaker 1: two books, I had also been continually traveling the world,
Speaker 1: studying these places in other cultures in Asia and South America,
Speaker 1: and that's what led to that book Momentum Wory that
Speaker 1: we're talking about today, which was taking what I had
Speaker 1: been doing, you know, studying these death related sites on
Speaker 1: a microcosmic level, like only within one culture and with
Speaker 1: you within one era, and then just kind of expanding
Speaker 1: it to the entire world, you know, and taking a
Speaker 1: global look at these sites and the way the importance
Speaker 1: these sites have, these you know, bone decorated sites and
Speaker 1: with mummies, and the importance that these sites have in
Speaker 1: the spiritual lives of people throughout the world. How it's
Speaker 1: really a very universal thing. And what you had mentioned
Speaker 1: that I had been talking about originally in Philadelphia, you know,
Speaker 1: death as a boundary became something that was that was
Speaker 1: really important to me in understanding why in some cultures
Speaker 1: and in some eras of history this stuff is so
Speaker 1: okay and it's okay to interact with the dead and
Speaker 1: it's encouraged, and why we live in a culture where
Speaker 1: it's really discouraged. You know, it's considered kind of perverse,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep your relatives bones around or to
Speaker 1: keep your relatives mummy around, and it would be considered
Speaker 1: you know, perverse and almost kind of in some way evil,
Speaker 1: although no one could really define it as to why
Speaker 1: in some cultures. What I came up with, you know,
Speaker 1: after years of studying this stuff, I came up with
Speaker 1: something that was really simple that should have been obvious,
Speaker 1: but it took me a long time to figure it out.
Speaker 1: That dying is a biological condition. You know, dying is
Speaker 1: a biological act, just like being born. But death is
Speaker 1: not a biological condition. Death is a border between two
Speaker 1: different states.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Death is a boundary line between the living and the dead.
Speaker 1: So being dead is a biological state. Death has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with biological biology. Death has to do with
Speaker 1: where we place the border, and we tend to think
Speaker 1: of death as being fixed, but it's really not. In
Speaker 1: some cultures, you know, this boundary can be in what
Speaker 1: I called an open border, and in other cultures it's
Speaker 1: a close and in some cultures, in some periods of history,
Speaker 1: you know, death is this is this open border that
Speaker 1: provides access to those who have passed on, and those
Speaker 1: who passed on are invited to continue to have an
Speaker 1: important spiritual and social role. And in other places, like
Speaker 1: in the United States, now death is this very closed boundaries.
Speaker 1: It's like imagineal line, this fortified line where you will
Speaker 1: not pass and to try to try sim that order
Speaker 1: and to try to understand what's on the other side,
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's considered kind of perverse.
Speaker 2: I think it's It's one of my favorite things about
Speaker 2: you is that the book is not only super informative,
Speaker 2: but it's it's so it's beautiful, and I love that
Speaker 2: you were interested in this and you not only learned
Speaker 2: about all of this, but you went to all of
Speaker 2: these places yourself, and you took all these photographs yourself.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious with your experience with that because I
Speaker 2: know that you actually have were able to interview people
Speaker 2: that live in these different areas and do these different cultures.
Speaker 2: But also if you have one that resonates with you
Speaker 2: the most, that's your your favorite kind of death tradition.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I can answer to that for sure. But
Speaker 1: I want to say something about what some of you
Speaker 1: you just mentioned that it is important to me that
Speaker 1: the books be both informative and to be attracted. I
Speaker 1: think you know, I'm certainly not the first guy who
Speaker 1: went out and studied bone room, or who went to
Speaker 1: Indonesia and studied some of these places with skulls and mummies.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of anthropologists have the bore, a
Speaker 1: lot of historians have the poor but they tended to
Speaker 1: create books that were very academic and not very visual,
Speaker 1: you know, And my approach was always this has to
Speaker 1: be informative, it has to have legitimate information, but it
Speaker 1: also has to have this kind of aspect of like
Speaker 1: a high quality art, so it can be tangible for
Speaker 1: normal people. Because to do this, you know, when I
Speaker 1: wrote this book about the jeweled skeletons, which are so
Speaker 1: visually beautiful, the only people who had covered them before
Speaker 1: me were doing them in academic circles. So you have
Speaker 1: these books talking about beautiful, broke jeweled skeletons with no
Speaker 1: pictures in them at all, you know, So it creates
Speaker 1: this closed circuit. So I appreciate saying that that was
Speaker 1: important to me. I'm not the first person who studied
Speaker 1: some of these things and gone to some of these places,
Speaker 1: but I was the first person to want to do it,
Speaker 1: to want to present this material in a way that
Speaker 1: crossed from from being strictly academic to something that would
Speaker 1: be tangible to popular culture. You know, that was extremely
Speaker 1: important to me, And I know that for you it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same way, because everything you have done,
Speaker 1: you've always wanted to take from medical pathology and place
Speaker 1: it in a room where it's tangible for normal people
Speaker 1: to understand and appreciate. But some of my favorite places, well,
Speaker 1: I would say for sure in South America. There's a
Speaker 1: festival called the Yesterday Lost Utitas in Bolivia. Then I
Speaker 1: went to for like twelve years in a row. It's
Speaker 1: every November eighth. I went there every year until the
Speaker 1: pandemic kind of shut down travel. But there are these
Speaker 1: people who adopt skulls, and they may know who the
Speaker 1: people were while they were alive, where they may not.
Speaker 1: They may be total strangers, but they'll acquire these skulls
Speaker 1: and they'll become the kind of the guardians or ten
Speaker 1: of these skulls. This is This is across the Altaplano
Speaker 1: and Bolivia, but it's mostly in the La Pause. It's
Speaker 1: an imar thing. Who are you know, the indigenous people
Speaker 1: of Bolivia, and they really have a very strong belief
Speaker 1: not just in the afterlife, but the ability of those
Speaker 1: who have passed on to continue to impact the lives
Speaker 1: of the living. And so these people who will acquire
Speaker 1: these nutitas. The name means locally, it's kind of a slang.
Speaker 1: It means the pugnos once and it refers to the
Speaker 1: shape of the skulls, and so they will adopt these skulls,
Speaker 1: and they will create shrines for them in their homes,
Speaker 1: and they will live with them as family members, you know,
Speaker 1: as as friends and family members or business partners or companions.
Speaker 1: And some people will acquire tremendous numbers of these skulls.
Speaker 1: I've met people who have like a hundred of them,
Speaker 1: and their houses are considered locally like shrines. Like if
Speaker 1: you're a believer in the power of the skulls and
Speaker 1: the power of the dead, and you don't have skulls,
Speaker 1: you might go to someone's house who has a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, and oftentimes they'll be arranged on shells, and
Speaker 1: there will be certain skulls that are good for certain things.
Speaker 1: So you know, if your kid is failing in school,
Speaker 1: there might be one of the skulls that the spirit
Speaker 1: is believed to have the ability to help with academia,
Speaker 1: and so you know, you'll send your kid and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go pray in front of that skull, make an
Speaker 1: offering in front of that skull, and you're going to
Speaker 1: pass that geography test, you know. Or there's another skull
Speaker 1: that might be good for marital problems anyway, these people
Speaker 1: who will own the skulls. Every November eighth, they'll have
Speaker 1: this party at the cemetery and they bring all the
Speaker 1: skulls back down to the local cemetery, the cemetery Hiner,
Speaker 1: all the big cemetery in Lapawnas and they'll have this
Speaker 1: massive part where you know, like ten twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: show up at the cemetery with skulls. It's the largest
Speaker 1: skull celebration or celebration of death in one place in
Speaker 1: the entire world. I mean, I'm seriously talking about like
Speaker 1: ten or twenty thousand people showing up carrying skulls and boxes,
Speaker 1: carrying them in little sedan chairs. They dress them up,
Speaker 1: they decorate them, and they take over the ground and
Speaker 1: you know, bands will come and play music for the skulls,
Speaker 1: and people will scroll scroll the grounds and offerings for them.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll they'll decorate the skulls with flowers. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible, beautiful celebration that is designed to thank the
Speaker 1: dead for what they do for the living and at
Speaker 1: the same time kind of recharge the energy of the dead,
Speaker 1: of those souls so they can continue to function for
Speaker 1: the living in the upcoming year. And uh yeah, and visually,
Speaker 1: of course, it's very powerful because it completely turns on
Speaker 1: and what we're used to with dealing with the dead.
Speaker 1: You know, I come from a culture where, you know,
Speaker 1: the dead are considered kind of horror film stuff. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, army of darkness or something, and there's some
Speaker 1: kind of thread and this is the exact opposite. You know,
Speaker 1: these are skulls and mumiflied heads that are decorated beautifully
Speaker 1: and covered with flowers, and people are coming up and
Speaker 1: talking to them and think. You know, it's a complete
Speaker 1: opposite of the way we have of what we've constructed
Speaker 1: with this kind of horror movie version of what happens
Speaker 1: when the dead and treat on the lives of the living.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. So now I just got another question
Speaker 3: at what you were just saying.
Speaker 2: What So if you're living in Bolivia and you just
Speaker 2: decide that you want to start collecting these skulls, where
Speaker 2: where do you? Where does one go to? Boy, because
Speaker 2: you're saying they might know them or they might not.
Speaker 2: Do they do they get donated or they purchase So.
Speaker 1: So a couple of questions obviously arise in addition to
Speaker 1: where they get the skulls, Like if they don't know them,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, why do they have the skull?
Speaker 1: And and you know, what is their connection to someone
Speaker 1: they didn't know? They know? The Imara a spiritual system
Speaker 1: which I think is really wonderful, beautiful, actually it's very
Speaker 1: it's much more sophisticated than ours. I think it makes
Speaker 1: our you know, kind of Judeo Christian idea of the
Speaker 1: soul look pretty primitive, because for us, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a one to one relationship, one soul, one person.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They believe that there can be up to seven different entities,
Speaker 1: and not in a schizophrenic way, you know, just seven
Speaker 1: different entities that congeal to make a person. So you know,
Speaker 1: within every man there's you know, there is a woman,
Speaker 1: then every woman there's a man with then every old
Speaker 1: person there's a child. You know what I mean. That
Speaker 1: all congeal as the recipe that creates who you are
Speaker 1: in different portions, you know. And then when you die,
Speaker 1: to believe that one of these spirits, you know, they'll
Speaker 1: all kind of disperse, they'll go to Pachamama, they'll go
Speaker 1: to the you know, the mother goddess, and one of
Speaker 1: them will come back and use the skull as a focus. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I might die, but maybe it's a you know,
Speaker 1: I might die as an old man, but maybe there's
Speaker 1: some child who comes back and inhabits my skull, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So I like their spiritual system
Speaker 1: because it provides for you know, these real subtleties are
Speaker 1: going the individuals. But for that reason, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter if you knew the person in life, because someone
Speaker 1: else might be coming back to the skull in terms
Speaker 1: of where they get them. Understand that because and I
Speaker 1: think it's largely because of our great phobia with death
Speaker 1: skulls in the United States and Europe. Human bones in general,
Speaker 1: and human remains are very hard to come by, you know,
Speaker 1: they're very regularly. They really don't want you to have
Speaker 1: considered somehow disrespect of them, which is which is another
Speaker 1: debate we could have. Is it really truly disrespectful to
Speaker 1: have someone's remains, especial if you care.
Speaker 3: For them, if they don't even want us to have them?
Speaker 3: In medical school?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know, and I know you get this
Speaker 1: a lot for sure, because I get it. Sometimes people
Speaker 1: will ask me, Hey, you know, my father died, I
Speaker 1: would like to be able to have a skull. How
Speaker 1: can I do that? And it's I'm sorry, it's not easy.
Speaker 1: You can't just do that, you know. But in those
Speaker 1: cultures you can. Where the skulls come from, it depends
Speaker 1: they have a different type of cemetery system than we do.
Speaker 1: First of all, so a lot of them come from
Speaker 1: the cemetery. When you die will pause, like if you
Speaker 1: walk around that cemetery, you will in the cemetery in
Speaker 1: real you will see a lot of graves have little
Speaker 1: white notices paced to them that are actually evictions that
Speaker 1: you're renting grave. You don't have it permanently, and so
Speaker 1: people have to keep kind of paying the rent on
Speaker 1: the grave. And at some point in time, you can
Speaker 1: assume that unless they have created some kind of trust
Speaker 1: fund that pays out for their grave and propetuity, everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna get evicted from their grave, right because at some
Speaker 1: point in time someone's gonna say it's like, whose grave
Speaker 1: are we paying it on? I never even meant that,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, so at some points everyone's going
Speaker 1: to get evicted from their grave. And they have a
Speaker 1: kind of massive pit burial area in the back of
Speaker 1: the cemetery where they're supposed to put the bones, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to tamble too much. But let's say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a cemetery worker. You're not making that
Speaker 1: much money. I'm I mean, I've had skulls offered to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's different now because a lot more
Speaker 1: Americans go down there, and a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are kind of oddities dealers.
Speaker 3: Which is nice to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate because I don't want these
Speaker 1: things to be collected as audities. I want them bus
Speaker 1: to affected, right. But I had a guy offer me
Speaker 1: four skulls for twenty dollars. Oh wow at one point,
Speaker 1: and this was well, this was many years ago, but
Speaker 1: I had a guy offered four for twenty bucks. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not that hard to it has traditionally not been
Speaker 1: been not that hard to get them. Another place they
Speaker 1: can come from is archaeological sites. So you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an area with a great ancient history, and
Speaker 1: so skulls are often found in archaeological sets. I have
Speaker 1: found in the end these plenty of old tombs that
Speaker 1: are filled with bones. I mean, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give the location away on this one. But I found
Speaker 1: an old burial site that had plenty of elongated skulls in.
Speaker 1: It's several, and those are worth a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: money to outsiders. You know. Skull bind Yeah, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: up in the Andes and and so, you know, some
Speaker 1: of them come from archaeological sites. Again, whether or not
Speaker 1: that's ethical or whether they should be going to a
Speaker 1: museum is another question. But people will often take them
Speaker 1: from archaeological sites, and maybe they have a right to them. Really,
Speaker 1: if you're Eyemura and these are your relatives, maybe you
Speaker 1: have more of a right to them than than a
Speaker 1: museum does. Skulls that come from archaeological sites, because of
Speaker 1: their antiquity and that history, are are felt to be
Speaker 1: especially spiritually powerful. Another place they will come from are
Speaker 1: med schools and dental schools. The dental schools often use
Speaker 1: real skulls down there. I have a I remember I
Speaker 1: was down there once and a guy had this skull
Speaker 1: he was proudly displaying. And this skull had a great
Speaker 1: set of teeth, which is unusual down there because dentistry
Speaker 1: is you know, the dentistry is not top notch in
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of Bolivia, and
Speaker 1: this skull had far nicer teeth than I did. I
Speaker 1: was like, this skull really has great teeth. And the
Speaker 1: guy smiled and said, oh, well, that's because I'm a
Speaker 1: dentist and this was my skull in dental school and
Speaker 1: he helped me get through school. And so I made
Speaker 1: sure that his you know, I made sure to give
Speaker 1: him dental implants and he has the greatest teeth. You know,
Speaker 1: Schill's playback, payback, you know, for helping this guy go
Speaker 1: through dental school. So they can come from med schools,
Speaker 1: they can come from dental schools. They can even come
Speaker 1: from the police. Because the police even have these skulls.
Speaker 1: In the homicide department in al Alto, which is the
Speaker 1: largest barrio of La Paus, they have had some of
Speaker 1: these skulls. Well, they have two in particular, one Eto
Speaker 1: and Wanita. They have two skulls Enshrine and the homicide
Speaker 1: department that are the longest serving detectives in the pause.
Speaker 1: And when the detectives can't find a clue, they will
Speaker 1: go and make offerings to these skulls and they will ask,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, please send us a clue you know,
Speaker 1: you're dead. You have this ability to see things we
Speaker 1: don't see, and they will often take they'll often take
Speaker 1: suspects in who won't can best and they will make them,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll try to force them to confess before
Speaker 1: the skulls. And the questions come from that too. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well do they really believe that these skulls have this power?
Speaker 1: And I asked the colonel who was in charge of
Speaker 1: homicide about that, the colonel who used to be in
Speaker 1: charge of homicide there, and he gave me a great answer.
Speaker 1: He's like, I can't really say, you know, we've had
Speaker 1: these skulls that you Juan Itito has been on the
Speaker 1: force for one hundred years and people have believed in
Speaker 1: him for a hundred years. I can't really say if
Speaker 1: the skulls really send us clues, or if it's a
Speaker 1: psychosomatic thing. You know, if if believing in the skulls
Speaker 1: allows our detective to work harder and more creatively, you know,
Speaker 1: just just just a psychosomatic instance of believing that the
Speaker 1: skull is helping them. I can't really say if the
Speaker 1: skull is forcing a guy to confess, or if the
Speaker 1: guy is so intimidated by seeing this skull that's been
Speaker 1: in the police for one hundred years that he breaks
Speaker 1: down and confesses. All I know is that whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, magic or psychology or spirituality, when we use
Speaker 1: the skulls, we solve cases. So we use the skulls.
Speaker 1: That's all I need to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you know what's interesting.
Speaker 2: You just made me think, like of my Italian family
Speaker 2: and all the medallions that we have, uh for you know,
Speaker 2: you put one in your car to keep you safe
Speaker 2: in your car, and there's there's a saint for this,
Speaker 2: and there's a saint for that kind of thing. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's like, you believe in this thing that you're
Speaker 2: going to be protected from your religion kind of thing, and.
Speaker 1: It creates itselful billing prophecy. So I thought that was
Speaker 1: a great answer that he gave me when I asked
Speaker 1: him about the skulls and police work. Yeah, you really
Speaker 1: do they really work? You know? I was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we use them, and we saw the rhymes. I don't
Speaker 1: need to know whether I don't need to know whether
Speaker 1: it's magic or spirituality or psychology. We use them and
Speaker 1: we solve crymes, so we use them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean that's how if it's in the
Speaker 2: same area, that's how the people grew up thinking that
Speaker 2: you Yeah, that's cool. So I don't You don't really
Speaker 2: need to get into how Little Paul is raised religiously
Speaker 2: or anything. But throughout your travels and just learning about
Speaker 2: all these different cultures do you have Have you changed
Speaker 2: your perception from when you started until now as far
Speaker 2: as what you personally personally believe happens to you after
Speaker 2: you die.
Speaker 1: Not really. My spirituality has always been very ambiguous and abstract,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that that you transcend in a
Speaker 1: physical body to a physical place, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: like an allegian field. That's a new Eden. That's never
Speaker 1: really worked for me because, like I say, I tend
Speaker 1: to think of things in more abstract terms and more
Speaker 1: I would say, I gravitate more towards like a concept
Speaker 1: of a nirvana where everything is is reunited at a
Speaker 1: more abstract level. The thing that actually, and you may
Speaker 1: not know this about me, the thing that actually changed
Speaker 1: everything for me, that probably pushed me towards this in
Speaker 1: the first place, was that about twenty years ago I
Speaker 1: was run over by a truck.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: No, I yeah, And I was run over by a
Speaker 1: truck in my core. I was on the freeway. I
Speaker 1: was taking my cat to the vet and the it
Speaker 1: was a it was a Toyota Celica and something. I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened. Maybe maybe I was distracted by
Speaker 1: the cat and I hit some some something in the road.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. All I know is the
Speaker 1: car started spinning around in circles in the three way
Speaker 1: and I looked over my shoulder and I saw this
Speaker 1: grilla a truck and that was the last thing I
Speaker 1: saw and the next thing I knew. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the cat survived too. And I knew then that I
Speaker 1: was a good cat dad, because when they woke me
Speaker 1: up and they were cutting me out with the jaws
Speaker 1: of life, I remember not knowing who I was, because
Speaker 1: I didn't at the time. They asked me my name,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea, but I knew that there
Speaker 1: was a cat in the box. The carrier next to
Speaker 1: me said, I don't know, but there's a cat in
Speaker 1: the box. Get the cat. Make sure the cat's okay.
Speaker 1: So I knew then I was like, I'm an a
Speaker 1: plus cat there, right, but yeah, I remember not knowing
Speaker 1: who I was. They took me and the cat to
Speaker 1: a hospital where they had to screw my pelvis back together.
Speaker 1: I had deflated long, I had several broken ribs. I
Speaker 1: was a mess, and I had to I had to
Speaker 1: learn to walk all over again. And you know, now
Speaker 1: I'm going but it was a very bad accident. Someone
Speaker 1: told me in the hospital that they didn't believe that
Speaker 1: anyone could have survived. Both the cat and I survived
Speaker 1: that accident together. That is what really changed a lot
Speaker 1: for me, Not so much spiritually, but in terms of
Speaker 1: appreciating wife, you know, appreciating even the little things in life.
Speaker 1: Because I remember how to, you know, learn to walk again.
Speaker 1: And I remember I had learned to walk on a
Speaker 1: cane and I was able to walk up the hill
Speaker 1: and get this bowl of chelmine at this horrible Chinese restaurant,
Speaker 1: like the worst cholmine you've ever eaten, just like nothing
Speaker 1: but noodles and Greece. It was awful. It just tears
Speaker 1: streaming down my face because I was so happy that like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I've come to a point in life
Speaker 1: where I can go out and choose a horrible belt
Speaker 1: bowl of chowmaine. I I want to, you know. And
Speaker 1: so that really changed a lot for me in terms
Speaker 1: of appreciating life on just a daily and a minute basis.
Speaker 1: And I think that is what helped me really be
Speaker 1: able to understand death. You know, when we talk about
Speaker 1: met Maury, we're talking about a reminder of death without
Speaker 1: realizing that every memento Mary is also a menta vita.
Speaker 1: Every reminder of death is also a reminder of life.
Speaker 1: And that's something that I think I learned from that accident.
Speaker 2: That's that's really interesting. I think that a lot a
Speaker 2: lot of people say that haven't like a near death experience.
Speaker 2: They they feel that they get this whole other perspective
Speaker 2: on death.
Speaker 1: Not If you have an experience like that, you cannot
Speaker 1: come away from it without a better perspective. It can
Speaker 1: make you a better person, or it can make you
Speaker 1: a worse person, because I've seen people who have a
Speaker 1: similar accident fall into this like victim syndrome. You know,
Speaker 1: but uh, it can't. It has to change in you.
Speaker 1: You can't remain the same afterward. I always say this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not joking. I think in many ways. It
Speaker 1: was probably the best and most important thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened to me, Which doesn't mean that I want it
Speaker 1: to happen again. You know, there was just there were
Speaker 1: a lot of there were a lot of things I
Speaker 1: need to learn about myself and about the world and
Speaker 1: just about the process of living. And I learned them
Speaker 1: at that time. I learned them in a much harder
Speaker 1: way than I ever wanted to, but I needed to learn. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I find that just people that go through really horrible experiences.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it builds resiliency, and you a
Speaker 2: lot of people that are doing really awesome things have
Speaker 2: went through some really shitty things.
Speaker 3: Based that's what I think anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I agree with you. Uh, Like I said,
Speaker 1: it can't it can't not change you. It's just a
Speaker 1: question you will learn. It's just a question of the
Speaker 1: lessons you choose to take away from.
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Speaker 2: Join the grosserroom dot com today. So a lot of
Speaker 2: people ask me this question, what do I want done
Speaker 2: with my body when I die? Or something right? And
Speaker 2: I always my answer is always, I don't when I die.
Speaker 2: It's up to my kids and my husband what they
Speaker 2: want to do, because when I'm dead, I'm dead. Like
Speaker 2: I look at a dead person as being a dead person.
Speaker 2: So I don't care if you want to bury me creamate.
Speaker 2: I don't have anything in writing. It's just kind of
Speaker 2: like whatever my family wants to do to get over
Speaker 2: my death. And now that you've seen all these different things,
Speaker 2: you know, having a skull on display or a mummy
Speaker 2: inside of a room, do you have any specific wishes
Speaker 2: or do you not really care?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm with you one hundred percent on this. Actually,
Speaker 1: I believe that the way we process the dead is
Speaker 1: for the life. It's for the benefit of the living.
Speaker 1: So I would say yeah, And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: if someone has a preference, I don't think that's important.
Speaker 1: If someone has a preference and it stated it, I
Speaker 1: think it should be followed and that it should be respected.
Speaker 1: But for me, because I think the way we process
Speaker 1: and deal with the dead, uh is for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the living. I feel the same way. It's just
Speaker 1: let my friends decide, you know, if they want to
Speaker 1: dump me in the desert and let the crows eat me,
Speaker 1: oh flar it. You know, if they want to put
Speaker 1: me in a suit of armor and set me on
Speaker 1: a horse and let me ride until my body falls
Speaker 1: off somewhere go, it's I think it's I think it's
Speaker 1: it's up to them because ultimately that final act for me,
Speaker 1: the way of all I've always viewed it, that final
Speaker 1: act is a final act to commemorate that person's.
Speaker 2: Exactly. That's how I feel too. So you're not like
Speaker 2: my because my dad is very specific, like.
Speaker 3: Don't let them put makeup on me and touch my hair.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be he's and we're just like Dad,
Speaker 2: We're gonna like mess up your hair and everything, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna put.
Speaker 1: You on this. We're gonna make you a drag clean Yeah.
Speaker 3: Exactly, It's so funny. Okay. In the German oscar called Oppenheim,
Speaker 3: is that what it's called?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: You mentioned that one of the skulls was painted gold
Speaker 2: for a movie production.
Speaker 3: Do you have any more information on that, like, do
Speaker 3: you know what movie? Do you know anything like that?
Speaker 1: I wish I did. Yeah, that's a great question. I act.
Speaker 1: I tried really hard as a historian. I hate when
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer. I despise that, and I
Speaker 1: never got a clear answer on that. It was a
Speaker 1: German production, I think for sure, not a Hollywood production.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what they told me because I went.
Speaker 1: You know, when I went there was like, whoa this skull,
Speaker 1: this skull is goal? What's the story? This supposed to
Speaker 1: be a very very important So they're like, somebody did
Speaker 1: that for a movie, and then they just left it
Speaker 1: that way. And I asked everybody at the church. Nobody
Speaker 1: at the church was working there when whatever movie was made.
Speaker 1: All they know was from a movie. And I wish
Speaker 1: I had that answer. I tried, and I never came
Speaker 1: up with the answer to that question.
Speaker 2: Do you do you think that just have you were
Speaker 2: there and everything and you saw it, do you think
Speaker 2: it's kind of I mean, I'm assuming that assuming probably
Speaker 2: isn't correct to do, but I'm assuming that they got
Speaker 2: permission from someone to do that, But do you think
Speaker 2: that kind of messes with the history of that place
Speaker 2: and is kind of disrespectful in a way.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so more background. You you know this about me,
Speaker 1: I think that I'm from la and so you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a Hollywood environ and you know,
Speaker 1: when I was living in Echo Park, pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: on my street from me worked in what they call,
Speaker 1: you know, the bids. So I've been surrounded by Hollywood people.
Speaker 1: So first of all, this did not surprise me at
Speaker 1: all because I'm so used to dealing with movie and
Speaker 1: TV people that they would go in and do that.
Speaker 1: To a normal person, you would say, as you've said,
Speaker 1: it's like, well they must have gotten permission, right, It's
Speaker 1: like the house on it people, I know how they are.
Speaker 1: Do I find it? Do I find it disrespectful that
Speaker 1: they did that? Yeah, I think it's disrespectful to the
Speaker 1: church itself that they did that and left it that way.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you know, I'm sure the church
Speaker 1: needed the money. I don't know what they paid them.
Speaker 1: Does it mess with the history of the place. The
Speaker 1: easy answer is yes, But that's not necessarily the right
Speaker 1: because one thing about these places, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this we we have this nostalgia that you know, nostalgia's
Speaker 1: a really insidious forsum that things need to be the
Speaker 1: way they were, the way they're supposed to be. Is
Speaker 1: if there're this one golden moment that defines a place.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, well, we don't like what's happening
Speaker 1: to that neighborhood because it's changing the traditional character of
Speaker 1: that neighborhood. It's like, okay, but when is the golden
Speaker 1: moment when that neighborhood is exactly what it was, what
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be January first, nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: you know, seventeen seventy one. What about when many of
Speaker 1: us lived there and it was all Native Americans. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's the way it's supposed to be. There is no
Speaker 1: you know, things have an evolution. There's not one defining moment,
Speaker 1: and everything that happens within that astuary is part of
Speaker 1: creating the living history. Do you see where I'm going
Speaker 1: with this? Like I went to there's a very famous
Speaker 1: oshuary in Portugal, ever, and you go around and like,
Speaker 1: now you are absolutely not supposed to touch the skulls
Speaker 1: right into anything on them. That's considered defilement. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the skulls very carefully, you'll see that
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of people who visited and carve
Speaker 1: the names on the skull. I found Alexander Dumas's name,
Speaker 1: you know, the famous fridgif. I found Alexander Dumos's name
Speaker 1: carved into the one of the skulls. It's like, what
Speaker 1: an amazing living piece of the history that Alexander Dumas
Speaker 1: has come and put his name on the skull. So
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily saying we should go in and graffiti
Speaker 1: these places and make a miss out. You know. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure we should send guys in with spray paint
Speaker 1: canth and tag them. I don't want that. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, we have to remember that everything that
Speaker 1: goes on in there is a living part of the history.
Speaker 1: Those skulls and open a lot of them. If you
Speaker 1: look at them carefully, they have rubbed out marks on
Speaker 1: the foret. And the reason they have these rubbed out
Speaker 1: marks is people would come back in the day and
Speaker 1: they would pray and they would rub really fard on
Speaker 1: the ford rest on the board while they were praying
Speaker 1: to commune with the dead. So you know the I
Speaker 1: don't really like the gold skull in there. I think
Speaker 1: it's terrible that a movie company would go in there
Speaker 1: and do that. But does it mess with the history.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It becomes part of the history, does that make it?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, I agree with you too.
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of times people think you're
Speaker 2: being disrespectful or something. And agreed, like, now, I mean,
Speaker 2: this gives you an awesome story to tell kind of
Speaker 2: about it and that you know, oh a movie was
Speaker 2: film heare and we did this and that, And I
Speaker 2: agree that it shouldn't be you know, give people sharpies
Speaker 2: at the entrance and just let them graffiti all over
Speaker 2: the place. But it is cool for that purpose.
Speaker 1: You're the history, you know. And and I don't like
Speaker 1: these things being it's like, okay, this is frozen and
Speaker 1: telling from three hundred years ago, and that's the way
Speaker 1: it was, you know, as if it's as if it's dead,
Speaker 1: we're coult off with it. If nothing else, that gold
Speaker 1: painted skull creates a bridge from us to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting, And this is a completely this
Speaker 2: is a completely different story that has really nothing to
Speaker 2: do with this, but it just reminded me of this.
Speaker 2: My friend's dad had a nineteen seventy gto and he
Speaker 2: was like the original owner of it, right, And when
Speaker 2: when the dad was dating the mom, they got in
Speaker 2: some kind of a fight and because there was jealousy
Speaker 2: over another girl, and this girl came up to the
Speaker 2: car and keyed the car. And it was brand new
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy and they still have the car and
Speaker 2: the family to this day. And the dad never removed
Speaker 2: the key mark because he wanted to be able to
Speaker 2: like retell that story of this jealous girl that keyed's
Speaker 2: car when he was dating the mom. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's so cool to like, the car is in
Speaker 2: car shows all the time, and he shows it off
Speaker 2: and it's got this obnoxious scratch across it. But it's
Speaker 2: such a good story. And it's not perfect, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a.
Speaker 1: Living piece of the history. And sometimes things being worn
Speaker 1: or things being tattered, or things being imperfect create something
Speaker 1: that's really more perfect in a way, you know, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it shows a personality rather exactly rather than simply
Speaker 1: creating an image.
Speaker 2: That's cool, all right, So this is just more of
Speaker 2: I don't really know if it's necessarily a question, but
Speaker 2: just to comment, we thought it was really cool that
Speaker 2: the Thai culture seems to they had on display all
Speaker 2: of these skulls of unknown people and kind of gave
Speaker 2: them more dignity in their death than just kind of
Speaker 2: throwing them in a hole.
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on that, Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a much more complex. In Bangkok, there's
Speaker 1: a foundation called Room Katana and it's actually an emergency
Speaker 1: ambulance service and there are not there's not good ambulance
Speaker 1: service in Bangkok and and so they are so what
Speaker 1: happens are there are these volunteer ambulance services, like it's
Speaker 1: a good Samaritan thing. You kind of make your own
Speaker 1: ambulance service to help people. And the Room Katani Foundation
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, so a lot of people
Speaker 1: because there's not good ambulance service, a lot of people
Speaker 1: might die before getting to a hospital traditionally. And they
Speaker 1: kept the first skulls of these deceased people that had
Speaker 1: been in their tear and they painted the guilded them
Speaker 1: and they created a shrine for them as kind of
Speaker 1: like their board of directors and Room Katani doesn't just
Speaker 1: operate this emergency ambulance service. They also operate kind of.
Speaker 3: Like a.
Speaker 1: Charity funeral service. So if you die as a poor
Speaker 1: person with no one to take care of you, they
Speaker 1: will take the body and they will provide a coffin
Speaker 1: and they will bury you. And these skulls are a
Speaker 1: reminder not just of dead people that they've they've attempted
Speaker 1: to help, but like you say, they're guilded in the shrine.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like a board of directors, and they
Speaker 1: have they have an actual function because spiritually, it is
Speaker 1: believed that you know that someone who dies a violent
Speaker 1: death in an auto accident or someone or someone who
Speaker 1: dies alah you might stick around, you know, if they
Speaker 1: have a bad death, they might stick around as an
Speaker 1: angry ghost. And so while they're while they're human representatives,
Speaker 1: their living representatives, are going out to find people and
Speaker 1: provide assistance. It's believed that the spirits of these skulls,
Speaker 1: the first ones who died, are also going out to
Speaker 1: find the spirits of these people and help them pass
Speaker 1: on and not you know, not have a bad death
Speaker 1: and not stick around as an angry ghost, you know,
Speaker 1: help them pass on to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's really interesting because it seems that
Speaker 2: they they have they have respect, a lot more respect
Speaker 2: for each individual life regardless of yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, well this gets into a complicated question too,
Speaker 1: because you also then get into a lot of cultures
Speaker 1: that have caste systems, you know, and and so so
Speaker 1: it does get complicated. But on that level, on the
Speaker 1: level we're talking about, yes, there is this incredible respect
Speaker 1: for the dignity of people when they're passing.
Speaker 2: That's that's cool because I feel like I feel like
Speaker 2: that needs to because for example, in the American hospital system,
Speaker 2: there's people that are unclaimed, right like, they go to
Speaker 2: the hospital, they don't have any family, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: we've had bodies in the fridge for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and then eventually, if nobody comes and picks them up,
Speaker 2: we send to the medical examiner's office and then they
Speaker 2: stay there for a couple of years, and then I
Speaker 2: guess eventually they have you know, they get cremated or whatever.
Speaker 2: But it's just kind of it's kind of sad to
Speaker 2: think that people that either don't because sometimes even someone's
Speaker 2: dad might die or something.
Speaker 3: But if you go to a funeral home.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's like a minimum five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: to even do to get a cremation right, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's sad for people that don't have means like that.
Speaker 1: It's also well, and there's a big difference because we
Speaker 1: refuse to we refuse as a culture to treat the
Speaker 1: dead on a spiritual level. That is, you know, for
Speaker 1: us culturally, that is simply that is only under the
Speaker 1: auspices of a church or something. But you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with room can tell you it's something
Speaker 1: very different than we would have in the United States,
Speaker 1: where we have basically a public group that is trying
Speaker 1: to treat the dead not just on a physical level,
Speaker 1: but on a spiritual And that's what's really left out.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about leaving a body locked and you know,
Speaker 1: locked in deep breeze for a couple of years. You're
Speaker 1: not treating them on spiritual But this is also a culture,
Speaker 1: you know, to expand our discussion a little bit, because
Speaker 1: I've been working for a long time about a book
Speaker 1: on the history of pet cemeteries, this is also a
Speaker 1: culture where overall they really do have this respect for
Speaker 1: the spirituality of life, because you know, Bangkok, for instance,
Speaker 1: I was just writing something up about this last night.
Speaker 1: I've gone to many temple. There are several temples in
Speaker 1: Bangkok where they perform animal funerals, and you know the
Speaker 1: one that I'm most familiar with where I photographed a
Speaker 1: bunch of times. It started about twenty years ago with
Speaker 1: them performing funerals for stray animals or for street dogs
Speaker 1: and cats that were unowned, to cremate them and give
Speaker 1: them a respectful end so that their spirit would be
Speaker 1: able to transition, you know. So no, we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about the spirit of humans. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: spirit of animals. And then it kind of expanded into
Speaker 1: the temple offering you know, funerals for pets and entire
Speaker 1: rituals where you know, like a person, they'll do like
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty a day, because I spent an entire
Speaker 1: day there observing funerals and photographing them for animals, and
Speaker 1: people will come in with their dead dog or cat,
Speaker 1: and they'll come into the temple and they'll go with
Speaker 1: the monk, and you know, like the bunk will provide
Speaker 1: an operation and the temple will provide offering. Then they
Speaker 1: will do a cremation, because this temple even has a
Speaker 1: crematory now for animals, and then they will take the
Speaker 1: ashes of the animal, and they have an oxy at
Speaker 1: the end to go with a monk out onto the
Speaker 1: river on a boat and release the animal's ashes onto
Speaker 1: the river, and you know, really like provide closure for
Speaker 1: the owner and help the spirit of the animal to
Speaker 1: pass on it. And that is something when you think
Speaker 1: about an equivalent to the United States, it just doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: It would be like walking into a Catholic church and
Speaker 1: finding a crematory for animals and find, you know, a
Speaker 1: Catholic priest, because we're talking about a temple with monks.
Speaker 1: It would be like walk can get to your local,
Speaker 1: you know, Saint Joe's Catholic church and finding them performing
Speaker 1: funerals for dogs and cats, you know, and having a
Speaker 1: animal crematory. And so it just doesn't exist in Western culture.
Speaker 1: We just don't think that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's interesting. I guess that brings me to
Speaker 3: my next because I was going to ask you if.
Speaker 2: You've clearly written other books that are awesome and beautiful too,
Speaker 2: So what you know, if someone really liked this particular
Speaker 2: book for this this month's book club. Do you what
Speaker 2: other books have you written that you suggest to them?
Speaker 2: And then I want you to talk about your most
Speaker 2: recent book about the history of cats.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so I already mentioned that I wrote two
Speaker 1: other death related Booksmntumory is the last, and it's the
Speaker 1: more global version of it. Heavenly Bodies is the second one,
Speaker 1: and to me it's kind of I honestly think it's
Speaker 1: really the best one because it deals with only one
Speaker 1: particular thing, which is Baroque era jeweled skeletons. But they're
Speaker 1: the most beautiful dead people I've ever seen. They're just extraordinary.
Speaker 1: I also wrote that book Empire of Death, about about
Speaker 1: the European charnel houses, and then I wrote a book
Speaker 1: about the history of domestic felines. It seems like an
Speaker 1: oddball project compared to the rest, but if you really
Speaker 1: get into cats, now there's a whole mythology connecting them
Speaker 1: to death, I suppose. But I happened to have a
Speaker 1: cat Baba, who is a kind of a really well
Speaker 1: known feline cosplay artist, and so I was doing all
Speaker 1: these costume photos with their like She's just a magnificent
Speaker 1: mon al and at the same time, after I wrote
Speaker 1: Momento Maury, I mentioned that I've been working for a
Speaker 1: long time a book about the history of pet cemeteries.
Speaker 1: I've gone back to that project. But originally after Ramnta Mauri,
Speaker 1: the follow up was supposed to be a book about
Speaker 1: the history of pet cemeteries. In the process of doing
Speaker 1: that book, I started to you know, to learn about
Speaker 1: pet cemeteries, they have to learn about the animals buried there.
Speaker 1: And I had found all these incredible stories about cats
Speaker 1: that nobody knows about or that just had just been
Speaker 1: pushed aside because you know, we consider dogs to be
Speaker 1: the heroic an, you know, it would consider cats to
Speaker 1: kind of be the domestic animal. But cats can be
Speaker 1: just as heroic as dogs. It's like, these are incredible
Speaker 1: stories that have really never been told, or they haven't
Speaker 1: been told properly. And at the same time, I had
Speaker 1: this cat who was this you know, cosplay artist, and
Speaker 1: I had this idea. Gave me this idea for a book. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: why don't I write the history of cats but from
Speaker 1: a cat's perspective, and it'll be illustrated with pictures of
Speaker 1: my cat dressed as people from the era were talking
Speaker 1: about and let a cat replay history but from a
Speaker 1: cat's perspective and retell the stories of the famous cats
Speaker 1: who lived in those eras. So that was that wound
Speaker 1: up as my last book, and now I'm back to
Speaker 1: working on this book about the history of pet cemetery.
Speaker 2: That's so awesome. There's a museum near US University of
Speaker 2: Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. There's there's mummies on display,
Speaker 2: and there's cat mummies, which is super cool. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's really it's really cool that you know, there's a
Speaker 2: long history with that. So I think, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: a cat person and I love that book too, so
Speaker 2: and I think that you know, we have a bunch
Speaker 2: of people in the gross room that would be interested
Speaker 2: in that as well. What you're doing is just so great,
Speaker 2: I think not only for people like me, but all
Speaker 2: people in the gross room, because it makes us feel
Speaker 2: like more normal that we have a connection, more of
Speaker 2: a connection and interested with death than most people do.
Speaker 2: I know, I have a ton of skulls and bones
Speaker 2: and everything, not only of animals but humans too, because
Speaker 2: I like the connection of it to be able. I
Speaker 2: don't want to look at a plastic skull. I want
Speaker 2: to look at a real skull, to look at the
Speaker 2: real anatomic features, And I guess I just wanted to
Speaker 2: know if if you had any of your own like
Speaker 2: Memento Mori collection.
Speaker 1: Well, well, first of all, don't ever feel abnormal for
Speaker 1: liking that stuff, because it's not. You know, I've always
Speaker 1: said that when you really get into this history and
Speaker 1: you look around the world, you'll find out that the
Speaker 1: weird ones, you know, the weird thing is where we
Speaker 1: are now creating that hard boundary of death. Because throughout
Speaker 1: history and cross culturally you have act all the way
Speaker 1: to prehistoric times, you'll find that it was always a
Speaker 1: soft boarder. You know. One of the oldest cities in
Speaker 1: the world is Jericho in the Middle East, and what
Speaker 1: they found in the old archaeological remains were decorated skulls,
Speaker 1: like secondary burial, where people had been taking the skulls
Speaker 1: and decorating them and keeping them around in the living area.
Speaker 1: So there's absolutely nothing weird at all about this. We've
Speaker 1: just been made to feel weird over time after Western
Speaker 1: culture kind of perverted everything that had been going on
Speaker 1: for centuries. I have a lot of stuff when I
Speaker 1: lived in Los Angeles. I had a huge collection of
Speaker 1: taxi dermy bones, and so before I've got a lot
Speaker 1: less of it now, just because when I when I
Speaker 1: finally gave up on California, I also kind of gave
Speaker 1: up on stuff to an extent. I wound up having
Speaker 1: a free garage sale, which is the story in and
Speaker 1: of itself, because you know, I had entire taxidermy lions
Speaker 1: at that house. And I decided, you know, because I
Speaker 1: loved these things. I didn't get into taxidermy like a
Speaker 1: big game hunter. I got into these things. I got
Speaker 1: into collecting these things because I felt terrible for them
Speaker 1: because they had been killed and discarded.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, this is terrible that someone's hunted
Speaker 1: you and didn't even keep you. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a home, and I'm going to refurbish you and
Speaker 1: make you look good to get. And so I had
Speaker 1: this huge collection stuff, and when I moved, I just
Speaker 1: wanted everything to go to people who would appreciate it,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than reselling it. I didn't want money
Speaker 1: for the stuff because I I loved this stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get rid of it. And so
Speaker 1: I decided to have a kind of free garage sale,
Speaker 1: and I mean invited just my friends. I made a
Speaker 1: Facebook group that was like, Hey, I'm finally leaving out
Speaker 1: of California. I'm not taking that much stuff with me,
Speaker 1: you know, all the junkits in my house and giving
Speaker 1: it all away on this day, you know, show up
Speaker 1: at eight am and anyone can take anything they want.
Speaker 1: Thinking in my head that this was going to be
Speaker 1: like a reasonable process, and it really it turned into
Speaker 1: insanity because then it's like I had people like renting
Speaker 1: trucks and hiring day laborers to come to my house,
Speaker 1: and because I had so much step to just take
Speaker 1: this stuff away, Like there were people hiring trucks because
Speaker 1: they were going to redecorate their entire house with my stuff.
Speaker 1: And I had people calling from around the country wanting
Speaker 1: to come to this event, and so I had to
Speaker 1: like I eventually had to post something and said, Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: this is turning into something. And I didn't want I'm
Speaker 1: gonna my doors going to be closed until eight am,
Speaker 1: because then I had all my all these people were
Speaker 1: calling me. It's like, hey, can I just come all
Speaker 1: over a day early? Actually have trouble on the day,
Speaker 1: Holy no, because I know what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1: You're trying to take that skeleton. I know what you're
Speaker 1: up to. And so I had to host this message saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is only for people I know, and this is
Speaker 1: a private event, and my door is going to be
Speaker 1: locked until eight am, and don't knock and don't bug me.
Speaker 1: And by seven am, an hour before, there was a
Speaker 1: line around the block because all my these people know
Speaker 1: we're out there, like I say, a lot of them
Speaker 1: bringing day laborers, and and my neighbors were flipping out
Speaker 1: because they had no idea what was on. You know,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like a Walmart sale from
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it was like Black Friday
Speaker 1: from hell. And and then I opened my door and
Speaker 1: they just stormed in and there were people running out
Speaker 1: into the street with like moose heads floating like tire
Speaker 1: goats and stuff, you know, like people running out on
Speaker 1: the street waving these bones around and throwing them in
Speaker 1: cars and trucks. It's absolutely not a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who was there said it was the fastest home clean
Speaker 1: out he had ever seen because they took everything. But
Speaker 1: that's what happened to all that stuff. I gave it
Speaker 1: all the way free, and it was I will never
Speaker 1: forget that day. I mean, I couldn't stop laughing because
Speaker 1: there were a couple people like good friends of mine,
Speaker 1: like Adam. We talked about who wanted certain things, like
Speaker 1: he wanted this taxidermy monitor and it was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was an maybe it was a big o
Speaker 1: one I forget and I said, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put that aside for you, and I put a name
Speaker 1: on it. You know, I said, do not touch this
Speaker 1: because this is going to my friend. At Pennsylvania. It
Speaker 1: was gone with intensity someone Oh wow. Yeah. They were
Speaker 1: just taking everything, whether it had a note on it
Speaker 1: or not, and people were putting stuff. They were like
Speaker 1: grabbing piles and things and putting things down, and someone
Speaker 1: else would come over and grab this taxidermy's head out
Speaker 1: of their pile and go running down the streets. And
Speaker 1: then they'd come to me like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: put that head in my pile and this car I
Speaker 1: grabbed it, and RANT was like, don't ask me. Whoever
Speaker 1: gets it out the door first owns it. Oh, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what happened to all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, I see that you still have a couple things,
Speaker 3: so that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you but mostly it's gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's and that is that when you sent me
Speaker 2: didn't used to send me like a wild board. He
Speaker 2: he sends me a text message like hey, do you
Speaker 2: want this wild borehead And I was like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did send you that because I was trying
Speaker 1: to Yeah, that's right. I was trying to piece out
Speaker 1: a few things to people I knew from around the
Speaker 1: country can come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we still have that, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: Do you want to tell them where they I mean,
Speaker 2: they could obviously find you on Instagram if they want to,
Speaker 2: you know, follow what you're doing and keep up with
Speaker 2: your stuff. Do you have a website and everything?
Speaker 1: My my user name is h e x E M
Speaker 1: k U l T, so, uh, that's a place to
Speaker 1: follow me. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to mother nos Death. As a reminder,
Speaker 2: my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
Speaker 2: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
Speaker 2: I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed
Speaker 2: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
Speaker 2: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
Speaker 2: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
Speaker 2: on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
Speaker 2: healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
Speaker 2: that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
Speaker 2: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
Speaker 2: subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
Speaker 2: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
Speaker 2: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
Speaker 2: care center, emergency.
Speaker 3: Room, or or hospital.
Speaker 2: Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
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Speaker 3: Thanks