December 18, 2008 • 15 mins
From transforming into a gem to being shot into space, modern technology has created a multitude of possible destinations for the bodies of the deceased. Go beyond the traditional funeral in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, I'm welcome to
the podcast this Stuff you Should Know? And I'm Josh.
And there's Chuck Nice Chuck good one. Hi Josh, alright, Hi,
(00:24):
I'm here. I understand here all right, Chuck. Um My.
One of my heroes, one of my idols of all time,
a guy named Dr Hunter Wis Thompson. I knew that's
where you're going. He actually stole one of my ideas
years and I'm not kidding years before. I don't know
if you actually stole it, but years before, Hunter Thompson
had his ashes um shot out of a cannon at
(00:45):
Woody Creek, Colorado. Too much fanfare? Have you ever seen
the video of it? Now? I'm really dying to see
that documentary. It's awesome. That's really great. Um. I want
my body, not ashes body shot out of a cannon
like a year I figured human cannibaal yeah, exactly, but
a lifeless one that just kind of goes in over
(01:06):
on like a prairie or a plane in like Kansas.
I figure, all I need is a really good attorney
and it really corrupt sheriff and I can get it
done right. Well, what's the idea that you get shot
out and just land on the ground and then let
the carrion crows take care of me? That's nice. Yeah,
it's a way to go. Um And you want to
hear some other ways again? Sure, okay. Apparently you can
(01:29):
do a lot with human cremaines, cremated remains. There's this
one company called life Jem and I actually think they're Swiss. Um.
They will take a certain measure of you think they're Swiss,
like they're not, like they claim to be German, but
actually I'm suspicious that they're not Swiss, maybe Jersey or something. Um.
(01:50):
They they will take a little portion of your loved
ones cremines and they compress it into a diamond. Actually wow, Yeah,
and it's actually fairly a real diamond. Yeah, you can
do well. I mean it's a synthetic compressed diamond. Real
diamond takes eons. This is like I guess maybe Cubics
(02:12):
are coming something like that. As far as they say
it's a diamond, the um I for a point to
nine carrot diamond. UM it's on. You just send them
some of your loved ones remains. And it also actually
is equally effective, um to keep an enemy in prison
for eternity. If you want to do that, you just
(02:33):
have to get your hands on some of their ashes.
You can wear them around like you own them. Yeah. Um,
that's that's another thing, totally totally well. You know what's
gonna happen to you after you die, you better not
die before me. Um. You can also have your ashes
shot into space. Timothy Leary had it done, actually exactly
again one of my heroes. Slightly yeah, yeah, I know,
(02:56):
slightly affordable, somewhat affordable, surprisingly affordable. How much um for
a I think a graham of your ashes to be
shot into space and then allowed to burn up in
in the atmosphere where you can sivably become part of
the carbon cycle or the rain cycle or something. It's
not bad. I wonder if they shoot you up there
(03:16):
that I'm sure they did with a bunch of other people.
Oh definitely. And there's a couple of different flights. One
it just goes up hit zero gravity and comes back
down and then they return it to you and you're like,
thanks a bunch that that would be appropriate for me,
because you know how much I hate to fly because
of being next to strangers. That would be my ultimate
horrible way to go is to be shot up into space,
(03:37):
crowded and surrounded by a bunch of other people's creamines.
No thanks, yeah, no, So we won't do that to you. No,
I don't have to worry about You'll be trapped in
a diamond in a ring on my finger. That's that's
your fate. I think I'd like to be cremated. It
definitely don't want to the old Southern traditional burial view
the body type of thing. Well, you know, there's there's
(03:57):
some other stuff you can do. You can actually put
a dead body to good use. That's what I hear. Yes,
bodies can actually be made to generate power after they die.
True in theory. Right. And this set up, this one
fascinates me the most because, um, it's actually am It's
a conceptual art project called the Afterlife Project. But basically, um,
(04:19):
these this, these two artists are an artist in a
designer I believe, came up with a way where you
you can put a microbial fuel cell beneath the remains
of a dead body, specifically underneath their stomach, and as
the body decomposes, these gastric juices that are produced are
eaten up by the bacteria in the anode of this
(04:41):
microbial fuel cell. And it's anaerobic, so there's no oxygen,
so it can't just be turned into water. So these
free floating electrons that are looking for something to bind
are basically turned. It converted into electricity. Now that is
actually shot up to like a say, a memorial statue
of the grave marker. Then the grave marker is actually
a battery charger. So you have a battery and it's
(05:04):
got like your name and your date of birth and
death on it, and your loved ones can power all
sorts of weird stuff with it. Normal stuff, but I
like the weird stuff better. Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder
if that is actually gonna come to fruition. And I
don't know, I don't know. Um some looking into it,
I didn't find a whole lot, Like you know sometimes
when conceptual arts done, it's done, and you know whatever.
(05:27):
But they proved it, it it can it can't happen. I
actually do think that they created a model for it,
and and the science is there for sure, but they
were saying that they did this to UM provide proof
to people who are spiritually disconnected or require proof that
there is a life after death, because really they're taking
energy that was there before and putting it out into small,
(05:51):
handheld battery powered devices. It really is. It's a great idea,
that's the afterlife project. So you can't you can't put
bodies to use this. It's a good thing, but that
actually is kind of part of a growing trend of
green burials, or depending on where you come from, green burials. Yeah,
(06:12):
it depends on who you ask. I've got a staff
for you. I love you know, I love your stats.
I know. Uh. There was a study UM performed by
the I'm sorry with the American Association of Retired Persons
and in two thousand seven of people over the age
of fifty were interested in green burials. That makes sense
because that's like, that's my dad's generation, and they're the
(06:35):
ones who got like the recycling kai Bosh put on
their heads, Like my dad recycles religiously, and I think
his age group really bought into that in like the
early nineties, So I'm not surprised, not bad. I think
the other sevent said get off my lawn, so probably
got wicker snapper kind of thing. Well, the thing is,
it makes sense. It may seem a little wacky, a
(06:56):
little ego conscious to the nth degree, I disagree, but well,
you know, traditional burials actually are really harmful environmentally. Yeah,
they don't make a lot of sense. It's I think
it's a to me, this is my opinion. I think
it's a little bit of an outdated thing to load
the body up with formaldehyde and put it in a
very expensive casket and sink it into the ground. It's uh,
(07:17):
it doesn't make much sense to me. That's just chuck talking. Well,
I mean it's it's been done clearly because people need
that kind of closure. You have to take a few
days to really kind of get over it. You know,
in the nineteenth century, people used to sit up around
their their dead loved one which is propped up on
chairs in like the living room for days. That meals
(07:38):
around it, that kind of thing. Um, And this is
before embalming was used, I believe, So I imagine it
got pretty gamy. But so we come up with embalming
and now you know, a mortuary putty, and all of
a sudden we can you know, hang out with our
loved one until we're ready to plan them in the ground.
But even when we plan them in the ground, that
embalming fluid, you know, it may make cigarettes pop, but
(08:01):
really it's not good for you at all. No, it's not,
and it's not good for the environment. UM. But you
don't you know, if you're interested in green burial that
you don't think it has to be some of these
more radical ones that were about to mention. UM. If
you do want a sort of a traditional casket type
of deal, uh, you can get biodegradable caskets these days, um,
made of bamboo, sustainable bamboo. You can get an eco pod,
(08:25):
which is basically a pod made from recycled newspaper. It's
kind of like paper machee. Yeah. Yeah, so you just
kind of it dissolves along with you into the earth. Uh.
For go the formalde hyde um you can use. Apparently
they use dry ice and refrigeration instead, which makes sense
to me, and and it makes perfect sense. You just
(08:48):
have to You're limited then in where a cemetery can be, right, Like,
you can't be near the the watershed or the water
table or else some naw stiness could really get into
the into the waters and polluted. Although I guess if
you're not using embombing fluide or any other kind of
hazardous materials, would decomposing body be that much threat? And really, honestly,
(09:10):
how much decomposing bodies do we drink every day just
from tap water? I don't have that staff probably a
significant amount, you think, sure, I guess. So, Okay, a
lot of people buried out there, you know, sure, but
not me. Think dead fish, dead squirrels, dead um, raccoons,
pretty much any woodland animal that's dead. It's a good point.
(09:31):
We've probably drank before. Why not humans? And of course
there's always good old cremation, which is supposedly a green
burial because you know, also the caskets that are usually
used used like a mahogany casket that's like an old
growth forest wood, and you know it's being cut down
so it can be planted in the ground with you,
(09:52):
and it's probably laminated using some horrible kind of lacquer.
It's not it's it's just not good. So cremation that's great,
there's no there's no even though there is a cast
get involved, it's not degrading. It's actually being burned up. Um.
But the problem is there's all sorts of horrible byproducts
from burning you know, a human body. Right. It takes
a lot of energy too, Yes, it does. But that
(10:14):
energy can be harnessed, can it. Well, yeah, that's one
cool thing. And this is in Sweden. Our friends in
Sweden are always ahead of the curve. It uh, crematoriums,
they're they're harnessing that heat that it takes. I think
it's over eight d degrees fahrenheit um, which is a
thousand degrees celsius for you in Sweden, right. Uh. So
they're harnessing that heat and actually turning into energy. And
(10:35):
there's a town in Sweden that actually gets ten percent
of its home heating energy from crematoriums from the dead. Yeah,
pretty cool heat for the home. Yeah, that is very
very cool, very cool. It's also a little creepy, but
it's it's very cool, right, But that is not the
coolest one in my opinion. Are you talking about alkaline hydrolysis? Oh? Yeah, man,
that is awesome. So you want to tell them you
(10:56):
want me to go ahead? Okay, So basically all these
animals they experimented on, like you know, we couldn't have
come up with a bola without sacrificing a few animals.
But you don't just toss those kind of things into
the into the garbage. This is a biohazard. There's a
process that that was created where you dissolve a body
(11:17):
in lie uh and heat it to about three hundred
degrees hundred forty nine degrees celsius um, and you apply
about sixty pounds of pressure per square inch to the body.
So I imagine it's in some little kind of box
or something with like a card cruncher kind of thing, right,
um and uh. After a certain amount of time, the
body dissolves and it turns into like this coffee colored good.
(11:42):
That's that's like, Um, it's the consistency of motor oil
and it's sterile. So what do you do with it?
Down the drain, down the drain. I can't think of
any less sentimental way to dispose of human body than that, right. Yeah.
A lot of people don't like this though, I mean
they don't they do this on cadet evers and like
you said, research animals, they don't do this. It's not
(12:02):
in practice yet. Well, they're trying to personally. I can't
remember where the town is chucked. It's in New York. Um.
And there was a funeral director who's trying to get
it this process legalized because apparently you can't do that
with human remains illegal um. And the Roman Catholic Diocese
came out against it and and basically got it dubbed
(12:23):
the Hannibal Lector bill. I don't get think any bill.
I don't get that. What is I think they're just
trying to play off the creepiness in the complete disregard
for the sanctity of humanity or anything. Terrible example, because
it worked because everybody's heard of Hannibal Lector and the
bill got sunk. So uh And frankly, I don't know.
I need slightly more pomp and circumstances. I need more
(12:45):
cannons and Kansas planes, you know, than you can have
a ceremony. Um. I don't think it necessarily has to
be your wife, you know, in a darkened room, just
pouring you down a drain. You have a big party,
in a big ceremony, you can still have all the fanfare.
And it's true and technically, I guess is not that
much different from cremation, right, sure, yeah, or you could
put the syrupy goo and into a balloon and drop
(13:07):
it from the Empire State Building. That'd be kind of cool.
That would be very cool. Canon. Yeah, what is the
syrupy goo? I'm covered with some poor guy with like
a Fannie pack and the camera and then he's covered
with Josh. Ironically he's from Kansas. Yes, So that's there's
a lot of things that are in the works that
it looks like the funeral industry is going to be
(13:28):
turned over eventually. Even even Nate Fisher from six ft
Under he had a green burial just wrapped in like
a canvas sack and planted in the ground. Well, there's
only so much land mass out there and it can't
well go to cemetery. What's well, I think is cool
about the green burial movement is they use these cemetery
plots as land easemants so that they're protected in perpetuity
(13:50):
because there's a person there. And basically you rather than
getting spending the money on a plot in a traditional cemetery,
you um basically buy a piece of lane and it's
protected forever. So it's protected land it can never be
developed on. So that's another kind of UM. Subtle aim
of the green burial movement is land conservation by you know, death,
(14:11):
And there's also a burial at sea UM. The new
green way to be buried at sea is to have
your cremains mixed with concrete and become part of artificial
coral reef and be tickled by fish for the rest
of eternity. So yeah, that's green burial. And actually you
can find more on this uh on the site. It's
called can My Body Generate Power After I Die? And
(14:34):
before we let you go, Chuck and I wanted to
point out another article about death that we think you'll enjoy.
It's called the fifteen most Common Causes of Death in
the World. Fantastic greed combined with can my Body Generate
Power After I Die? It'll have you rolling in stitches.
It's a fun weekend. You can find both of those
(14:54):
by typing some words into the search bar at how
stuff works dot com m For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
m HM brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, I'm welcome to
the podcast this Stuff you Should Know? And I'm Josh.
And there's Chuck Nice Chuck good one. Hi Josh, alright, Hi,
(00:24):
I'm here. I understand here all right, Chuck. Um My.
One of my heroes, one of my idols of all time,
a guy named Dr Hunter Wis Thompson. I knew that's
where you're going. He actually stole one of my ideas
years and I'm not kidding years before. I don't know
if you actually stole it, but years before, Hunter Thompson
had his ashes um shot out of a cannon at
(00:45):
Woody Creek, Colorado. Too much fanfare? Have you ever seen
the video of it? Now? I'm really dying to see
that documentary. It's awesome. That's really great. Um. I want
my body, not ashes body shot out of a cannon
like a year I figured human cannibaal yeah, exactly, but
a lifeless one that just kind of goes in over
(01:06):
on like a prairie or a plane in like Kansas.
I figure, all I need is a really good attorney
and it really corrupt sheriff and I can get it
done right. Well, what's the idea that you get shot
out and just land on the ground and then let
the carrion crows take care of me? That's nice. Yeah,
it's a way to go. Um And you want to
hear some other ways again? Sure, okay. Apparently you can
(01:29):
do a lot with human cremaines, cremated remains. There's this
one company called life Jem and I actually think they're Swiss. Um.
They will take a certain measure of you think they're Swiss,
like they're not, like they claim to be German, but
actually I'm suspicious that they're not Swiss, maybe Jersey or something. Um.
(01:50):
They they will take a little portion of your loved
ones cremines and they compress it into a diamond. Actually wow, Yeah,
and it's actually fairly a real diamond. Yeah, you can
do well. I mean it's a synthetic compressed diamond. Real
diamond takes eons. This is like I guess maybe Cubics
(02:12):
are coming something like that. As far as they say
it's a diamond, the um I for a point to
nine carrot diamond. UM it's on. You just send them
some of your loved ones remains. And it also actually
is equally effective, um to keep an enemy in prison
for eternity. If you want to do that, you just
(02:33):
have to get your hands on some of their ashes.
You can wear them around like you own them. Yeah. Um,
that's that's another thing, totally totally well. You know what's
gonna happen to you after you die, you better not
die before me. Um. You can also have your ashes
shot into space. Timothy Leary had it done, actually exactly
again one of my heroes. Slightly yeah, yeah, I know,
(02:56):
slightly affordable, somewhat affordable, surprisingly affordable. How much um for
a I think a graham of your ashes to be
shot into space and then allowed to burn up in
in the atmosphere where you can sivably become part of
the carbon cycle or the rain cycle or something. It's
not bad. I wonder if they shoot you up there
(03:16):
that I'm sure they did with a bunch of other people.
Oh definitely. And there's a couple of different flights. One
it just goes up hit zero gravity and comes back
down and then they return it to you and you're like,
thanks a bunch that that would be appropriate for me,
because you know how much I hate to fly because
of being next to strangers. That would be my ultimate
horrible way to go is to be shot up into space,
(03:37):
crowded and surrounded by a bunch of other people's creamines.
No thanks, yeah, no, So we won't do that to you. No,
I don't have to worry about You'll be trapped in
a diamond in a ring on my finger. That's that's
your fate. I think I'd like to be cremated. It
definitely don't want to the old Southern traditional burial view
the body type of thing. Well, you know, there's there's
(03:57):
some other stuff you can do. You can actually put
a dead body to good use. That's what I hear. Yes,
bodies can actually be made to generate power after they die.
True in theory. Right. And this set up, this one
fascinates me the most because, um, it's actually am It's
a conceptual art project called the Afterlife Project. But basically, um,
(04:19):
these this, these two artists are an artist in a
designer I believe, came up with a way where you
you can put a microbial fuel cell beneath the remains
of a dead body, specifically underneath their stomach, and as
the body decomposes, these gastric juices that are produced are
eaten up by the bacteria in the anode of this
(04:41):
microbial fuel cell. And it's anaerobic, so there's no oxygen,
so it can't just be turned into water. So these
free floating electrons that are looking for something to bind
are basically turned. It converted into electricity. Now that is
actually shot up to like a say, a memorial statue
of the grave marker. Then the grave marker is actually
a battery charger. So you have a battery and it's
(05:04):
got like your name and your date of birth and
death on it, and your loved ones can power all
sorts of weird stuff with it. Normal stuff, but I
like the weird stuff better. Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder
if that is actually gonna come to fruition. And I
don't know, I don't know. Um some looking into it,
I didn't find a whole lot, Like you know sometimes
when conceptual arts done, it's done, and you know whatever.
(05:27):
But they proved it, it it can it can't happen. I
actually do think that they created a model for it,
and and the science is there for sure, but they
were saying that they did this to UM provide proof
to people who are spiritually disconnected or require proof that
there is a life after death, because really they're taking
energy that was there before and putting it out into small,
(05:51):
handheld battery powered devices. It really is. It's a great idea,
that's the afterlife project. So you can't you can't put
bodies to use this. It's a good thing, but that
actually is kind of part of a growing trend of
green burials, or depending on where you come from, green burials. Yeah,
(06:12):
it depends on who you ask. I've got a staff
for you. I love you know, I love your stats.
I know. Uh. There was a study UM performed by
the I'm sorry with the American Association of Retired Persons
and in two thousand seven of people over the age
of fifty were interested in green burials. That makes sense
because that's like, that's my dad's generation, and they're the
(06:35):
ones who got like the recycling kai Bosh put on
their heads, Like my dad recycles religiously, and I think
his age group really bought into that in like the
early nineties, So I'm not surprised, not bad. I think
the other sevent said get off my lawn, so probably
got wicker snapper kind of thing. Well, the thing is,
it makes sense. It may seem a little wacky, a
(06:56):
little ego conscious to the nth degree, I disagree, but well,
you know, traditional burials actually are really harmful environmentally. Yeah,
they don't make a lot of sense. It's I think
it's a to me, this is my opinion. I think
it's a little bit of an outdated thing to load
the body up with formaldehyde and put it in a
very expensive casket and sink it into the ground. It's uh,
(07:17):
it doesn't make much sense to me. That's just chuck talking. Well,
I mean it's it's been done clearly because people need
that kind of closure. You have to take a few
days to really kind of get over it. You know,
in the nineteenth century, people used to sit up around
their their dead loved one which is propped up on
chairs in like the living room for days. That meals
(07:38):
around it, that kind of thing. Um, And this is
before embalming was used, I believe, So I imagine it
got pretty gamy. But so we come up with embalming
and now you know, a mortuary putty, and all of
a sudden we can you know, hang out with our
loved one until we're ready to plan them in the ground.
But even when we plan them in the ground, that
embalming fluid, you know, it may make cigarettes pop, but
(08:01):
really it's not good for you at all. No, it's not,
and it's not good for the environment. UM. But you
don't you know, if you're interested in green burial that
you don't think it has to be some of these
more radical ones that were about to mention. UM. If
you do want a sort of a traditional casket type
of deal, uh, you can get biodegradable caskets these days, um,
made of bamboo, sustainable bamboo. You can get an eco pod,
(08:25):
which is basically a pod made from recycled newspaper. It's
kind of like paper machee. Yeah. Yeah, so you just
kind of it dissolves along with you into the earth. Uh.
For go the formalde hyde um you can use. Apparently
they use dry ice and refrigeration instead, which makes sense
to me, and and it makes perfect sense. You just
(08:48):
have to You're limited then in where a cemetery can be, right, Like,
you can't be near the the watershed or the water
table or else some naw stiness could really get into
the into the waters and polluted. Although I guess if
you're not using embombing fluide or any other kind of
hazardous materials, would decomposing body be that much threat? And really, honestly,
(09:10):
how much decomposing bodies do we drink every day just
from tap water? I don't have that staff probably a
significant amount, you think, sure, I guess. So, Okay, a
lot of people buried out there, you know, sure, but
not me. Think dead fish, dead squirrels, dead um, raccoons,
pretty much any woodland animal that's dead. It's a good point.
(09:31):
We've probably drank before. Why not humans? And of course
there's always good old cremation, which is supposedly a green
burial because you know, also the caskets that are usually
used used like a mahogany casket that's like an old
growth forest wood, and you know it's being cut down
so it can be planted in the ground with you,
(09:52):
and it's probably laminated using some horrible kind of lacquer.
It's not it's it's just not good. So cremation that's great,
there's no there's no even though there is a cast
get involved, it's not degrading. It's actually being burned up. Um.
But the problem is there's all sorts of horrible byproducts
from burning you know, a human body. Right. It takes
a lot of energy too, Yes, it does. But that
(10:14):
energy can be harnessed, can it. Well, yeah, that's one
cool thing. And this is in Sweden. Our friends in
Sweden are always ahead of the curve. It uh, crematoriums,
they're they're harnessing that heat that it takes. I think
it's over eight d degrees fahrenheit um, which is a
thousand degrees celsius for you in Sweden, right. Uh. So
they're harnessing that heat and actually turning into energy. And
(10:35):
there's a town in Sweden that actually gets ten percent
of its home heating energy from crematoriums from the dead. Yeah,
pretty cool heat for the home. Yeah, that is very
very cool, very cool. It's also a little creepy, but
it's it's very cool, right, But that is not the
coolest one in my opinion. Are you talking about alkaline hydrolysis? Oh? Yeah, man,
that is awesome. So you want to tell them you
(10:56):
want me to go ahead? Okay, So basically all these
animals they experimented on, like you know, we couldn't have
come up with a bola without sacrificing a few animals.
But you don't just toss those kind of things into
the into the garbage. This is a biohazard. There's a
process that that was created where you dissolve a body
(11:17):
in lie uh and heat it to about three hundred
degrees hundred forty nine degrees celsius um, and you apply
about sixty pounds of pressure per square inch to the body.
So I imagine it's in some little kind of box
or something with like a card cruncher kind of thing, right,
um and uh. After a certain amount of time, the
body dissolves and it turns into like this coffee colored good.
(11:42):
That's that's like, Um, it's the consistency of motor oil
and it's sterile. So what do you do with it?
Down the drain, down the drain. I can't think of
any less sentimental way to dispose of human body than that, right. Yeah.
A lot of people don't like this though, I mean
they don't they do this on cadet evers and like
you said, research animals, they don't do this. It's not
(12:02):
in practice yet. Well, they're trying to personally. I can't
remember where the town is chucked. It's in New York. Um.
And there was a funeral director who's trying to get
it this process legalized because apparently you can't do that
with human remains illegal um. And the Roman Catholic Diocese
came out against it and and basically got it dubbed
(12:23):
the Hannibal Lector bill. I don't get think any bill.
I don't get that. What is I think they're just
trying to play off the creepiness in the complete disregard
for the sanctity of humanity or anything. Terrible example, because
it worked because everybody's heard of Hannibal Lector and the
bill got sunk. So uh And frankly, I don't know.
I need slightly more pomp and circumstances. I need more
(12:45):
cannons and Kansas planes, you know, than you can have
a ceremony. Um. I don't think it necessarily has to
be your wife, you know, in a darkened room, just
pouring you down a drain. You have a big party,
in a big ceremony, you can still have all the fanfare.
And it's true and technically, I guess is not that
much different from cremation, right, sure, yeah, or you could
put the syrupy goo and into a balloon and drop
(13:07):
it from the Empire State Building. That'd be kind of cool.
That would be very cool. Canon. Yeah, what is the
syrupy goo? I'm covered with some poor guy with like
a Fannie pack and the camera and then he's covered
with Josh. Ironically he's from Kansas. Yes, So that's there's
a lot of things that are in the works that
it looks like the funeral industry is going to be
(13:28):
turned over eventually. Even even Nate Fisher from six ft
Under he had a green burial just wrapped in like
a canvas sack and planted in the ground. Well, there's
only so much land mass out there and it can't
well go to cemetery. What's well, I think is cool
about the green burial movement is they use these cemetery
plots as land easemants so that they're protected in perpetuity
(13:50):
because there's a person there. And basically you rather than
getting spending the money on a plot in a traditional cemetery,
you um basically buy a piece of lane and it's
protected forever. So it's protected land it can never be
developed on. So that's another kind of UM. Subtle aim
of the green burial movement is land conservation by you know, death,
(14:11):
And there's also a burial at sea UM. The new
green way to be buried at sea is to have
your cremains mixed with concrete and become part of artificial
coral reef and be tickled by fish for the rest
of eternity. So yeah, that's green burial. And actually you
can find more on this uh on the site. It's
called can My Body Generate Power After I Die? And
(14:34):
before we let you go, Chuck and I wanted to
point out another article about death that we think you'll enjoy.
It's called the fifteen most Common Causes of Death in
the World. Fantastic greed combined with can my Body Generate
Power After I Die? It'll have you rolling in stitches.
It's a fun weekend. You can find both of those
(14:54):
by typing some words into the search bar at how
stuff works dot com m For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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