November 28, 2022 • 50 mins
You’ve probably seen it - dramatizations of search dogs, running through the woods, noses to the ground, looking for a missing person, or for human remains. We’ve got a weird fascination with this stuff in the media, but when it’s real life - well, if it’s your loved one those search dogs are looking for, it’s a whole different story.
What’s it like being the human half of a cadaver search dog team? Expert Cat Warren lays it all out this week.
In this episode we cover:
- What’s it really like to work a crime scene with your dog? Is it cool or creepy?
- How do we navigate fascination and respect when it comes to other peoples’ trauma?
- Why people were mad that Cat’s book was more about the dog than it was a “true crime” exposé
- The difference between resolution and closure
- How do first responders and search teams deal with so many unhappy endings and unanswered questions?
Notable quotes:
“True crime podcasts keep us at a safe distance. They allow us to enter into the sphere of death, but keep us far enough away from it that we don't need to experience any feeling of grief. Crime survivors don’t have that luxury.” - Megan Devine
About our guest:
Cat Warren is the New York Times bestselling author of What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World. The book tells the story of learning to work with her impossible young shepherd as a cadaver dog to find the missing and dead. It won critical acclaim and was long listed for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. She taught science writing, journalism, and creative nonfiction at North Carolina State University for 26 years before retiring in 2021.
Additional resources
All of Cat’s information is at her website
NY Times article on cadaver dogs and archaeology
African American burial grounds & cadaver dogs
The Collective for Radical Death Studies
Get in touch:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on IG, FB, TW, and @hereafterpod on TT
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s Okay That You're Not Okay and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I love working with dogs. They make my heart sing
when they're doing good work. And it's not true that
we always sit deep in grief when you know what
I'm working on these cases, These aren't my death. These
deaths belong to somebody else and my somehow, showing empathy
(00:25):
or taking on that heartbreak is both counterproductive, but it's
also kind of inhabiting something that's not mine to inhabit.
This is Here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine,
author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, we are talking real
(00:49):
true crime logistics with search dog expert Cat Warren. If
you have ever wondered what a real crime scene search
is like, or maybe a friend or a family member
has been the subject of one of those searches, you're
really going to appreciate what this week's guest has to say.
All coming up right after this first break. Before we
(01:16):
get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot
of emotional relational territory in our time here together, this
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
license mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, so you have probably seen it
or heard it described dramatizations of search dogs running through
(01:39):
the woods, noses to the ground, looking for a missing
person or for human remains. We've got a weird fascination
with this stuff. In the media are obsession with true
crime and with horror, real and imagined. Personally, I have
never gotten into that true crime obsession thing. I can't
not think out side the dramatized storyline, you know, like
(02:03):
that's somebody's person who died or went missing, and we're
just like casually consuming it with popcorn and ad breaks. Anyway,
there is something fascinating about search dogs, though I am
absolutely on team curious about dog searches. I first encountered
(02:25):
Cat Warren when she moderated a panel on pet loss
from the Collective for Radical Death Studies, which is a
super cool organization I will link in show notes. I
wasn't part of the panel myself, but my friend told
me that I had to meet Cat. Her work combines
so many things that I'm personally interested in, dogs and
nature and puzzles, and of course that weird aversion fascination
(02:47):
dance thing we have going on with death. Cat Warren
is the New York Times bestselling author of What the
Dog Knows sent Science and The Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive
the World. The book tells the story of her work
alongside her young German shepherd, working together as a cadaver
dog team to find the missing and the dead. Now
(03:08):
content note here there are no graphic details in this episode,
so you don't need to worry about that that we
are obviously talking about death Cat. Welcome to the show.
I am so excited to have you here. Your work,
both what you've done over the last fifteen and twenty
years and what you're doing now is like the intersection
of so many things that I'm into. You've got dogs,
(03:31):
you've got solving puzzles, you've got journalism, you've got being
out in nature, you've got history, and you have death. Right,
Like if that would be a fascinating remix, but like
that last one is kind of a weird calling card, right, yes,
And you know that question of like cock kill parties
(03:55):
and people ask what you do or it comes up
and then you know one of two reactions either fascination, right,
that can sometimes feel a little yellow media right, yellow
journalism this kind of gruesome fast, or the flip side
is just discussed and the why would you ever do that?
(04:19):
I'm super curious about this. So when you're out of
social gathering and somebody says, what what are you into?
What are you into? Cat? What do you say so
saying that one of my applications is searching for them
missing and presumed dead, right, using the dog. And I
(04:42):
think that I would say that two thirds of the
people are sort of deeply interested, right, And I think
it's partly Mayking. We're sort of that issue of dogs
are an entree into so many things. The can be
really difficult conversations and dogs can bridge so many of
(05:07):
those gaps. And I keep finding that that, even when
I think that people have a completely unrealistic notion of
what dogs can actually do or how big a role
they play in this mosaic, this complicated mosaic of of
trying to find somebody who's who's gone, you still can
(05:30):
have that conversation because if people like dogs, then they
want to know more. It's almost like it makes it safe,
safer territory. It does, I think it does. And what
was interesting with writing the book was that there was
a tiny portion of the audience who were deeply disappointed
(05:53):
that the book wasn't completely filled with adventure stories and
my talking about actual cases, right, that it wasn't a
combination of true crime and dog hero and that the
sort of the science and the history and even the
memoir aspect, right, we're shunt to decide. But there were
(06:14):
so many people where realizing that the dogs are just
one section of this bigger piece of the world. Those
people appreciated it. It's interesting that I remember reading that
in the book and also some of the articles where
you're talking about the book that like people, I guess
(06:35):
the term that I usually use as trauma tire kicking, right,
there's a sort of rubber necking. If you're at a
an event or at the grocery store and somebody's making
small talk and you say, I look for the missing
and presumed dead using a dog, there is either initial
or immediate fascination or immediate repulsion and changing the subject
(06:56):
and walking away from you. But often that fascination is
that sort of true crime. Give me all the details.
I wonder if people are interested in listening to this
particular episode because they're like, oh, I want to hear
all about this. But at the same time, I know
my audience, So like, can we can we talk about
(07:17):
that weird thing where you do something that is very
interesting two people who find search and rescue and recovery
and dogs really interesting. There is this really fertile ground
of fascination. But it's also the act of doing search
and recovery is very intimate. It is, so how do
(07:40):
we navigate that fascination and intimacy? I think it's really difficult.
I was with a trainer yesterday because she actually trains
service dogs for service people with PTSD. So one of
the things as we were sort of standing there figuring
out how to best work with the dogs and these
two new wonderful handlers who are going to have these
(08:01):
dogs in their lives. And I was talking about that
all the times when media would say, well, what I
want to do is come out on your next search,
and Lucy, who has been in this world as well,
that that sense of no, actually that is just so
(08:22):
terribly invasive. It is so terribly invasive, and it's very
easy to explain to the media, you know, this is
a criminal case. We're not able to have you do this.
We won't let you know afterwards how the search turned out. Right,
there's that, which is in some ways, you know, the
(08:44):
media is used to that. But going into a reading
and inevitably people want to know how many bodies solo found,
and it's it's sort of like like a numbers game, right,
And in a way it is that I understand it
(09:06):
from the point of view of people's exposure to this
kind of thing is mostly through media and through movies
and through fiction, and in a sense saying to that person,
it's a lot more complicated. Right, Nine out of ten
(09:29):
times you don't find somebody when you're going out on
a search, what you're doing is clearing the areas where
family or law enforcement I think they might be, right,
And all those places are imagined places of horror for
(09:51):
the family, right where they are in their minds eye
thinking about these places, right, the creek that get high
during flood and it's flooded, and all those places are
in some ways just as important, right, even when you
don't find that person. But that's not very dramatic, right,
(10:15):
It's clearing land in a way, And I think all
the people who do this find that it's really important
and really central, right. And I think that afterwards when
we talk about if we find somebody, or if somebody
else finds somebody and you are on the search, the
(10:36):
very first thing you do in a panic is you
go to your computer and you look at your maps,
and you look at the site where the person was
finally located, and you breathe a sigh of relief that
you were nowhere near that spot and you couldn't have
missed finding that person. Right. So these are the things
(11:00):
to me that it doesn't sound very dramatic, but it's
it's the stuff that makes your heart pound because sometimes
you're talking about years of people not having resolution. Did
I answer that question, Megan? You did? You answered it
(11:20):
beautifully because we started out talking about for people who
are sort of surface level fascinated with the idea of
cadaver searches, which is the proper term for it, but
you're looking for somebody who is dead or presumed dead.
This sort of proliferation of true crime podcast which I
(11:41):
really don't understand, but like whatever you like, what you like,
but there's this sort of surface fascination with it, Like
we like to flirt with the idea of death and drama,
but we really don't want to talk about it if
it's our own right. This is actually a complaint. This
is a complaint that I hear from a lot of
grieving people that y'all are so interested in true crime podcasts,
(12:05):
but my person was killed in a drive by shooting
or some other act of violence, and you won't even
talk to me, right, So we it's like a safe
distance allows us to enter into the sphere of death
but keeps us far enough away from it that we
don't need to enter into any feeling of grief. That's
(12:27):
exactly correct. It's exactly correct. And I think too that
in a sense, since people have no realistic notion, these
are always things that get resolved in forty five minutes
plus fifteen minutes of commercial right. So the idea that
(12:49):
these cases can drag on for years or that nationwide,
I think nationwide, the figures are like sixty people missing
and presume dead by law enforcement. I mean, the missing
are just like all over the United States. And in
many cases those deaths, they're never going to make a
(13:13):
podcast because I hate to say that they're mundane, right,
But it's actually sadly true that most crime is just
kind of stupid and brutal and predictable, right, And that
doesn't make for great television or crime novels. Right, we
(13:39):
don't write about those things or see those things. And
so I think that people imagine, I mean, they sort
of fill in what this stuff might look like, when
in some ways it is. It's retracing steps. So what
I hear you saying here is that the mundane details,
(14:03):
the small details, the relentless details, the search to connect
the dots and look for someone who is missing is
not sexy. If you wrote out all of the details
involved in a search and the end of a person's
life and what happens next, most of the work would
(14:25):
get edited out. Yes, yes, right, these mundane details, like
if we move away from death just for a second.
But like, these mundane details are what life is made of.
Our lives are made up of the little things, right,
All our lives are made up of those little things.
(14:45):
And so to me, it's those learning how to be
part of that and fitting me and a dog into
that picture. Right, we talk about the fact that you know,
loving to dogs and nature and and these things can
still sound pretty dramatic, But in a way, it's that
(15:07):
it was so easy to fit, to fit me and
him into that without being like a huge rock thrown
into a pond, right, it was just a little space
for us to come in. So two things about this
(15:32):
one one that I don't want to forget. You had
started out by saying, you know, dogs are the bridge
into what can be very uncomfortable territory. And I kind
of wonder if our need for drama, our need for
a big splashy rescue or discovery, is also a way
(15:54):
that we look for a bridge into this stuff, like
a way to tell ourselves that even though the person
is dead, for whatever reason, the bad guys were caught,
the reason was found. There is resolution, There is closure.
I noticed that when you were talking about the completion
(16:14):
of a search that you used the word resolution and
not closure, And that is such an important distinction. People
never get closure on this. Families never get closure. I mean,
that just doesn't happen. Our entire culture is built on
this extraordinary need for both resolution and closure, and we
(16:41):
see it every day when we read accounts where there's
a murder and a suicide. Right, so he basically shoots
for and then shoots himself. And the very first question
that people ask is what was the motive? Right? And
I absolutely no longer understand why we are still somehow
(17:06):
searching for motive in violence. Right, that that somehow if
we understand that there was a motive i e. A
rational reason for this explosion of violence, then once again
we can sort of distance ourselves because it's not random, right,
(17:31):
It's very targeted. And if we think about how people
talk about these mass shootings, which are so deeply, deeply random, right,
and they scare people, and instead of thinking about gun
regulation and you know, sort of truly addressing this, what
(17:54):
we all do is trying to figure out how we
are different than the victims, or how that person who
did that act had a motive as a disgruntled employee
or whatever it was, right, And and then we can
kind of we can move on because it really is
too scary to look at the things that happened suddenly
(18:17):
and without explanation, because that's mostly what happens. Yeah, it
gives us a chance to say, not me, right, this
is so cool because I feel like I spend a
lot of time trying to get people to understand that
not feeling intense emotions like grief is one of the
(18:38):
driving forces of especially Western culture. But but a lot
of a lot of the things we think of as
normal or more normative are really like trying to escape
big feeling, right, our fascination with violence in fiction, right
in movies, in storylines like it, lets play out things
(19:03):
in a way that lets us like I don't I mean,
I don't even know where I want to go with us,
because I know a lot of people have done some
really raising work on you know, our our need for
violence and entertainment and blah blah blah, all of this stuff.
But there really is something about can you make this story,
this news story, this random event that in some ways
(19:24):
the perpetrators are very predictable. Can you package that in
such a way that makes me feel safe and makes
me feel like my people are safe and if they
can't be safe, can you make it all turn out
okay in the end anyway? And it is? It is
so we do. It's what we do as a culture.
(19:46):
I mean, I do it with my husband late at night,
right when I am just in despair. I'll just say
to him, tell me it's all going to be okay,
Just tell me right. And I'm like a child because
I am in a childish state. I'm like a child saying,
(20:08):
let me know that the end is going to be great, when,
of course the question asked by me is because I
know it won't necessarily be all right in the end, right.
And this can be from mundane things to you know,
I mean climate change, like global warming, when it's absolutely
(20:29):
silly of me to say, tell me it's going to
be okay. And there's nothing wrong with needing stability and
needing to know that there is a path forward. So
when I sort of rant about our insistence on a
happy ending or on resolution so that we can like
you know, been there, dusted that where you know everything
is good, like needing to feel safe and stable is
(20:54):
not the same thing as things working out okay, right,
Like where do we find a stability and a safety
knowing that she does not always work out okay? And
what I hear you saying is that one of the
things that your career in journalism and your work on
endless searches with detectives and historians and being out there
(21:20):
in the field in that minutia of someone's life has
shown you that you can't believe in a happy ending,
that there is no resolution or no no tidy bow.
And where do we find safety, connection, beauty, joy, interest, fascination,
(21:40):
knowing all of those things that you know. It's something
that I've been thinking a lot about recently and also
talking with friends, partly because of our age. I'm sixty
six and really thinking about this sort of this last
section of my life. Should should I be so lucky?
(22:02):
And I think that for me, finding small resolutions is
what brings joy. And also, you know, people will ask
this question, how can you possibly do this work? What?
You know? What an amazing contribution that you're helping the community, right,
(22:25):
And I have to laugh because it's actually pretty selfish. Right.
The whole time I was doing it, I was very
aware of the fact that I got great joy out
of working a dog out in sometimes grim circumstances. And
it's never the case that these searches are upbeat. They
(22:52):
aren't ever, but there are these upbeat moments. There are
these moments when the dog is just doing his best work,
or there's some comic relief or something happens where you
just stop and appreciate the things that are happening. Right.
(23:14):
It simply should not exist, but it does because there
are these moments of real grace in all of this
work right, and it is self centered in a way
where I can't say I'm sorry. I can't pretend that
I'm out there to help the community or to let
(23:35):
people bring closure. I'm out there because it's hugely engaging.
It is hugely challenging. I love working with dogs. They
make my heart sing when they're doing good work. And
it's not true that we always sit deep in grief
(23:59):
when you know, when I'm working on these cases, these
aren't my depth. These deaths belong to somebody else and
my somehow, showing empathy or taking on that heartbreak is
both counterproductive, but it's also kind of inhabiting something that's
(24:23):
not mine to inhabit. And so I don't know. This
is a very roundabout way of saying that doing this
kind of work, that you are always thinking about death
and violence at times, but you are not doing this
out of a sense of heroism or the need to
(24:48):
contribute to the community. I'm also doing it because, first
of all, because I can do it, so I'm fortunate
that way, and because that part killer skill set is
something that feels really like a super good fit for me. Yeah,
that there is joy in the work and satisfaction in
(25:11):
the work, knowing that the work sits inside somebody else's heartbreak.
That is a nuance that people on the outside don't
always understand. I think we have such a such a
deeply ingrained hero thing where like I want to be
the one, like I'm in there bringing closure to the fact,
(25:33):
like you know, I'm the one who did this, and
so so much of this is like one not about
you and also aided by you, which is a really interesting, nuanced,
complex place to live. I love that you said, and
it will be more specific when when I go back
and listen. But you said something about like I'm in this,
(25:54):
but I don't inhabit it right, Like I'm in this,
I am one piece of this person's life and the
connections and the families and the lack of families and
the web that they lived in. I am one tiny
piece in this, and I may be an important part
of this, but this is not about me, and it's
(26:15):
not about the dog, right. I mean, I will say
that one of the things I write about and it
was so incredibly hard to write about. And I know
how you feel about this having written it's okay that
you're not okay, but writing about my father's death, which
happened right at the beginning of my becoming very serious
(26:39):
about this work and his cancer diagnosis, and then sort
of seven weeks later he was gone, and the degree
to which I really I had to stop training solo
during that time period. It was too hard. There was
such an overlap. But between my own grief about Dad
(27:03):
and the kind of details about doing cadaver searches that
made it temporarily not a good fit at all, it
made me even more aware, if that makes sense, going forward,
what grief feels like from people who are experiencing it
(27:23):
when their loved one is missing, versus my role in
any of that. Right, It just it was just so
crystal clear another lesson from my father. What I just
heard you say was such a good a good example
of something that I feel like we've been talking about
but also I talk about quite a bit, which is
like when you are newly ripped open when a death
(27:50):
or another kind of loss has entered into your life,
it's like you you have no buffer zone, and you're
suddenly alive and alert to all of the pain in
the world. Right there's there's no distance possible anymore so
going into experiencing your dad's death and feeling all of
(28:12):
those emotions. Going back out into the field made you
that acutely aware of oh my gosh, grieving people are
all around me, right, and feeling even a tiny corner
of what somebody else feels is really one of the
reasons that we shut down in the face of other
people's pain and suffering, right, because those are very big
feelings and they're too big, and there's not enough contest
(28:35):
and not enough of a container. And you were able
to step back from doing cadaver work with solo because
you knew that you couldn't have that. What did you
say in the book? You said something like, um, disinterested
but not uninterested, right, that there is a professional distance
(28:55):
that you need to have to be able to do
this work, and when you are deep in your own emotions,
that distance is impossible, yes, yes, to maintain no. And
and this is I mean in therapy we have that
term transference, right, And there was a time when the
overlap was so great that I couldn't countenance it. And
(29:20):
you know, to just give an example, this is just
a really concrete example, you know, training with teeth and
looking at those teeth and not being able to see
those teeth is simply teeth. Those teeth were a part
of my father. Right. As much as my mind didn't
want to do that, as much as my rational mind
(29:43):
said there's no connection, it was just so clear. It's like, no,
I'm not going to get a lot done there. Yeah,
there's something very visceral about grief, right, And even if
we took out the cadaver search part of it. I
remember when Matt ide and if I went to a
yoga class and the instructor was like, focus on your breath,
(30:04):
all I could think of was, Matt has no breath anymore,
and he never will again. There's something about the visceral
nature of bodies and death that there doesn't have to
be a quote unquote logical connection. Right. You're talking about
doing teeth work with training your dog and looking at
teeth and thinking about bodies, thinking about my father, right,
(30:27):
this this is what the emotional body does, right, And
and to be able to recognize that, and to be
able to take a step back and say, actually, I
can't show up in the ways that I need to
show up. And I also love that you brought in
here is another facet of how I understand my work
because having had this experience. I don't know what it's
(30:50):
like to be a family member who was waiting for
search and recovery teams to find my person, But I
know what intense loss has felt like to me, and
I can sort of bow in respect too how much
I don't know about what it's like for this family.
In the introduction, you're you know, the we were talking
(31:11):
about how when you would say what you do and
people would be like, Ah, isn't that terrible? And isn't
that depressing? And I was thinking about this while you
were describing sort of being a cog in the machine
of a search, right, And you say, sure, some of
it is dark, but gradations of light filter through. There's tragedy,
there's incompetence and cruelty. Those things are all part of it,
(31:34):
but they don't shine what occupies the most brain space
or the other humans and the dogs. Basically what you're
talking about. They are the communities of people and animals
who have come together to look for clues for this
singular mystery. Yes, there is something very beautiful and heartening
(31:55):
set inside a truly horrible experience for those who are
intimately affected. And I think we have that, you know,
we have this binary so deeply embedded in us that
it can't be both things. It can't be a beautiful
moment of dogs and humans working together at things they
are very very good at at the same time that
(32:16):
it is a truly horrible thing for the people whose
person you're looking for. It reminds me of, you know,
when Matt disappeared into the river. We had, you know,
there were search teams, there were helicopters and divers, and
I remember the moment when it when it shifted from
(32:37):
rescue to recovery. I remember that I knew what that meant,
and I remember the individual humans. I remember marveling at
the fact that divers were going into that water that
took Matt and nearly took me and nearly took our dog,
(33:01):
right that there were people who chose to do that
every day. I remember marveling at, and not in a
good way, the journalists who were up on the bridge
zooming in on me and filming me, which I didn't
I didn't realize because I was, you know, occupied. But
there was somebody who was like a volunteer with the
(33:21):
fire department. She came to me, and she said, you know, normally,
she pointed at the news crew and she said, normally,
I help those people get as close to the victims
quote unquote victims. I helped them get as close to
them as possible. But I can't do that today, and
I don't know that I'm ever going to be able
to do that again. You know, you and I have
(33:43):
been talking about the disconnected is the wrong word, but
the distanced beauty and joy and connection that happens when
you are doing this kind of work for a living
or as a volunteer, That community that gets built, and
that pleasure in seeing humans and dogs do things that
(34:08):
they're very very good at, the people whose tragedy that
is we notice, We notice the skill, we notice the community.
And speaking only for myself here, I noticed and was
thankful for the distance. This brings back a memory and
it had happened I think more than once when I
(34:30):
was a journalist. But this is still sort of painful
to me. But I was at the Hartford Current and
I was on the site of a collapse of of
a two twin buildings plaza that we're using lifts slack construction,
and because one of the pumps gave out on the corner.
(34:52):
Everything twisted and collapsed, and workers that weren't blown free
from the sides were inside just the s right. And
of course I was there as a journalist, and I
was tasked to talk to the big victims families as
(35:12):
they're waiting two have their loved ones brought out. Since
I'm no longer a journalist, I lied to the editors.
I didn't approach anybody. It's sort of like now. I
did approach some of the investigators, who are already hugely frustrated,
(35:33):
what with What they thought was why we're workers still
inside that building while they were lifting these labs of concrete? Right?
Why was anybody there? But in a sense, this this
ethical issue of how close what's the right of people, right,
(35:55):
what's the right of journalists to intrude on a private grief?
Or when does a private grief become public? When is that?
And it's it's such a thorny question, Megan, But in
cases like this, this is what people seem to want
(36:17):
access to with true crime podcasts, right, this is a
way for them to access that, and it just it
kind of makes me ill to think about that role.
I remember working a scene that was so high profile
that there was a picture of Solo searching along the
(36:42):
end of the log and it was you know, and
they ran it and it was you know, it was
this huge picture. And I was amused in that case,
first of all because this was not my tragedy. I
was doing the search, but also because they sort of
made up the hotline about you know, the dogs are
along the log when he had actually finished the search
(37:03):
and he was looking for a place to lift his leg.
Here's your story, your story. His dog searched a long
and hard and really needed a place to pee. And
all of this is connected right with what we get
as a news bite. Is sometimes, as with the case
(37:23):
of the photo of Solo looking for a place to pee,
like it's very curated for a very specific emotional aim,
and it's not even a corner of the whole story,
and it's you know, it's it's hard because you've got
like the way that our brains work as relational mammals
is that we need to feel something for an issue
(37:46):
in order to care enough about it in order to
agitate for change or bring attention to it. Like we
have to have our emotional circuits firing in order to care,
and what journalism and media and and other things do
is like sort of bastardize that into just like this
this drama junkie thing, right, and we don't. I mean,
(38:07):
part of part of the cascading horrors of now is
that we don't have time to feel any of these
things before the next horror happened. So one of the
episodes this season, actually the first episode of the season,
is with Nolbe Marquez Green, whose daughter was killed at
Sandy Hook, and we talked a lot about you know,
(38:27):
she works with survivors, but also what we demand of
survivors in order to make public space spaces safer, make
schools safer, like to stop you know, random public shootings
and gun control. She's like, who do we destroy in
the service of our goals? Yeah, it's astonishing how much
(38:49):
we suck from people who are using all their resources
just to get from day to day, and it somehow
becomes their responsibility so that we can do our public mourning.
And if we do our public mourning properly with all
of this in place, then change can happen. Right. That
(39:13):
that's somehow is going to be. That's the chain of
events that needs to happen over and over and over,
and yet it doesn't in some of these cases. This
is a really good conversation for a different day. But
thinking about you know, assessment, right, Like, here's the thing
that we do. We splash survivor stories in the media.
(39:37):
We're because we're trying to get you to feel so
that you are then motivated to take action for change. Okay,
if that is our experiment, let us look at the results.
Is it working? You know? I was thinking the other
day like, do you know what we need? Is we
need whoever was in charge of that campaign back in
(39:57):
the eighties, for like cutting apart the plastics six pat
containers so that sea turtles don't get tangled in them?
Like I can't seriously, if I see a plastic six
pat container on the ground, I will pick it up
and put it in my pocket to cut it apart
at home. Because that campaign worked, wonders right, So like
I feel like, hmm, maybe we should run some different
(40:19):
experiments on how how we get people to care so
that change can happen. And this is of course true
across a whole bunch of issues that are like constantly
unfolding all over the place. And and this is like,
this is you know, like the pull one dark string
in the whole world snaps into place. Thing we started
out talking about working with dogs, and how like pulling
(40:42):
the dog card, talking about dogs makes a conversation about
cadaver searches and recovery searches approachable for people because dogs
are a great thing that you know, a lot of
people love and are interested in and have in common,
and there's a fascination. And this is how we get
into this. And then we've gone through so much territory
(41:05):
around distance and nuance, and this work is not sexy.
This work is not flashy, and it means something very
specifically to a very specific group of people whose names
you will never know, and whose intimate daily lives you
will never know. And this is true just for so
(41:28):
much of life, Yes, so much going on underneath the
surface that we just don't think about. That's so beautifully said.
And I think those of us who right like as
you do and as I do, and how writing is
(41:50):
something that we do to help make sense of the world,
to make sense of things. Sometimes I'm not even sure
what I'm feeling about something until I can articulate it
in writing, Right, I learned what it is. I think
it feels sometimes just so difficult because we want stories
(42:16):
to make a difference, right, That's why I mean making
meaning through stories is what we use humans do. And
yet we look at all of these kinds of ways
that we tell stories and it's so deeply worrying, right,
because so many of the stories that we're telling in
(42:38):
this culture not only are not helping, they're actually contributing
to a kind of deadening of things, of caring of
right that we it is just part of the stories
get reduced to formulas. Yeah, Like the way that we
deal with with all of the nuance and all of
(42:58):
the complexity is by trying to make a neat and
tidy story out of it to serve that machinery that
needs a neat and tidy story. And what we've been
talking about this whole time is like, how does that
complexity make you curious? How does that complexity make you
look at the detail, make you look at the way
that the sunlight comes through those trees? Yes, while your
(43:20):
dog is searching for somebody who's missing. What is that
complexity make you wonder about the story behind the flashy
headline or those people whose stories don't make it to
the true crime podcast, Like, can we use the complexity
to lean into connection and curiosity instead of searching for
that next dopamine hit of a a sexy, dramatic headline.
(43:44):
I think this is a really interesting point to to
come to as we sort of wind down here. Is
there's no such thing as a simple story, and we
aren't really built to absorb not only every terrible thing,
but every beautiful thing all at once. Right, Like you
you have to, I mean this comes this is this
(44:07):
is a great tie in here for search dogs, right is,
like you have to be able to filter out what
is not important in this moment in order to really
serve what is important in this moment. And by its
very nature that means that some very important things are
not your piece of the puzzle. Yes, like with the
(44:29):
six pack plastic rings, where you can make a small
but appreciable difference. It's a beautiful thing. This is the
horrible and cliche you know, it is better to light
one small candle, right you know which I hate that saying.
And yet and yet yeah, I come back to it.
(44:53):
Right is that there are these little candles here and
there that I think make us hopeful. Yeah, that there
is is hope in choosing this one small thing, right,
But yeah, I think I think like we can't. We
can never get away from the complexity, and we can
(45:15):
also choose which part of that monstrous, beautiful, terrible complexity
is ours, and that there is hope in that somehow. Yeah,
I think that's a really beautiful place for us to
end our time here together. Cat, thanks so much for
being here. We're going to put a link to your
(45:35):
website and your book in the show notes. I think
we have a few articles about your recent work too,
will put those in there. Stay tuned, everybody. I'll be
right back with your questions to carry with you after
this break. Each week I leave you with some questions
(45:56):
to carry with you until we meet again. You know
what really struck me in my conversation with Cat was
her insight into boundaries. If you know me, you know
the boundaries are always my my favorite thing. But I
love how she said it's not cool for her to
show her grief for the person or show her grief
to the families related to the person that she's searching for.
That being affected personally by the job at hand would
(46:19):
be as she said, inhabiting a grief that isn't hers
and that that is disrespectful. I think that kind of
sums up for me my aversion to the dramatization of
other people's tragedies. You know that there's comfort we can
provide by being calm, clear participants, doing our job and
doing it well, but not putting our own emotions into
(46:42):
the mix, and not letting our voyeurism, our curiosity violate
our own boundaries of respect and kindness. I love that.
I also really appreciated how she said, but that when
her father died, it was really hard to maintain that
respectful distance from other people's grief. That is such a
(47:03):
big one everybody. Now, you might have noticed that I
didn't ask Cat what hope looks like for her in
this show, but I did. I did actually ask her
what hope looks like for her in our conversation. Her answer, though,
brought us into a long conversation about her work looking
for abandoned black and Indigenous burial grounds. It's an important
(47:25):
and fascinating conversation, so we pulled that part of our
conversation into a bonus episode. We didn't want to leave
it out, but It also made today's episode just extra
extra long, So look for that bonus episode coming out
this week and let me know what parts of today's
conversation stuck with you. What made you think about your
(47:45):
own life or the media you consume, or maybe just
the coolness of the natural world and how rad dogs are.
Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but
I do hope you found something to hold onto. If
you it, I want to hear about it. Check out
Refuge in Grief on Instagram or here after Pod on
TikTok to see video clips from the show and leave
(48:07):
your thoughts in the comments on those posts. Be sure
to tag us in your conversation starting posts on your
own social accounts. Use the hashtag here after Pod on
all the platforms. That's how we'll find you and we
love to see where this show takes you. Also, please
remember to subscribe and leave a review and tell your
friends about the show. That helps more than you could
(48:29):
ever know. If you want to tell us how today's
show felt for you, or you have a request or
a question for upcoming conversations with interesting people about difficult things,
give us a call at three to three six four
three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If
you missed it, you can find the number in the
show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If
(48:50):
you'd rather send an email, you can do that too.
Write on the website Megan Divine dot c OH. We
want to hear from you. I want to hear from you.
This show, this world needs your voice. Together, we can
make things better even when they can't be made right.
(49:12):
Want more Hereafter. Grief education doesn't just belong to end
of life issues. As my dad says, everyday life is
full of grief that we don't call grief. Learning how
to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or
accidentally dismissive statements is an important skill for everybody. Find trainings,
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
(49:33):
You're Not Okay at Megan Divine dot c O. Hereafter
with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fossio.
Logistical and social media support from Micah, Edited by Houston Tilly,
Music provided by Wave Crush, and today's background noise provided
(49:56):
by Luna and the wee little birds nesting in the
lemon tree outside my window.
I love working with dogs. They make my heart sing
when they're doing good work. And it's not true that
we always sit deep in grief when you know what
I'm working on these cases, These aren't my death. These
deaths belong to somebody else and my somehow, showing empathy
(00:25):
or taking on that heartbreak is both counterproductive, but it's
also kind of inhabiting something that's not mine to inhabit.
This is Here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine,
author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, we are talking real
(00:49):
true crime logistics with search dog expert Cat Warren. If
you have ever wondered what a real crime scene search
is like, or maybe a friend or a family member
has been the subject of one of those searches, you're
really going to appreciate what this week's guest has to say.
All coming up right after this first break. Before we
(01:16):
get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot
of emotional relational territory in our time here together, this
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
license mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, so you have probably seen it
or heard it described dramatizations of search dogs running through
(01:39):
the woods, noses to the ground, looking for a missing
person or for human remains. We've got a weird fascination
with this stuff. In the media are obsession with true
crime and with horror, real and imagined. Personally, I have
never gotten into that true crime obsession thing. I can't
not think out side the dramatized storyline, you know, like
(02:03):
that's somebody's person who died or went missing, and we're
just like casually consuming it with popcorn and ad breaks. Anyway,
there is something fascinating about search dogs, though I am
absolutely on team curious about dog searches. I first encountered
(02:25):
Cat Warren when she moderated a panel on pet loss
from the Collective for Radical Death Studies, which is a
super cool organization I will link in show notes. I
wasn't part of the panel myself, but my friend told
me that I had to meet Cat. Her work combines
so many things that I'm personally interested in, dogs and
nature and puzzles, and of course that weird aversion fascination
(02:47):
dance thing we have going on with death. Cat Warren
is the New York Times bestselling author of What the
Dog Knows sent Science and The Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive
the World. The book tells the story of her work
alongside her young German shepherd, working together as a cadaver
dog team to find the missing and the dead. Now
(03:08):
content note here there are no graphic details in this episode,
so you don't need to worry about that that we
are obviously talking about death Cat. Welcome to the show.
I am so excited to have you here. Your work,
both what you've done over the last fifteen and twenty
years and what you're doing now is like the intersection
of so many things that I'm into. You've got dogs,
(03:31):
you've got solving puzzles, you've got journalism, you've got being
out in nature, you've got history, and you have death. Right,
Like if that would be a fascinating remix, but like
that last one is kind of a weird calling card, right, yes,
And you know that question of like cock kill parties
(03:55):
and people ask what you do or it comes up
and then you know one of two reactions either fascination, right,
that can sometimes feel a little yellow media right, yellow
journalism this kind of gruesome fast, or the flip side
is just discussed and the why would you ever do that?
(04:19):
I'm super curious about this. So when you're out of
social gathering and somebody says, what what are you into?
What are you into? Cat? What do you say so
saying that one of my applications is searching for them
missing and presumed dead, right, using the dog. And I
(04:42):
think that I would say that two thirds of the
people are sort of deeply interested, right, And I think
it's partly Mayking. We're sort of that issue of dogs
are an entree into so many things. The can be
really difficult conversations and dogs can bridge so many of
(05:07):
those gaps. And I keep finding that that, even when
I think that people have a completely unrealistic notion of
what dogs can actually do or how big a role
they play in this mosaic, this complicated mosaic of of
trying to find somebody who's who's gone, you still can
(05:30):
have that conversation because if people like dogs, then they
want to know more. It's almost like it makes it safe,
safer territory. It does, I think it does. And what
was interesting with writing the book was that there was
a tiny portion of the audience who were deeply disappointed
(05:53):
that the book wasn't completely filled with adventure stories and
my talking about actual cases, right, that it wasn't a
combination of true crime and dog hero and that the
sort of the science and the history and even the
memoir aspect, right, we're shunt to decide. But there were
(06:14):
so many people where realizing that the dogs are just
one section of this bigger piece of the world. Those
people appreciated it. It's interesting that I remember reading that
in the book and also some of the articles where
you're talking about the book that like people, I guess
(06:35):
the term that I usually use as trauma tire kicking, right,
there's a sort of rubber necking. If you're at a
an event or at the grocery store and somebody's making
small talk and you say, I look for the missing
and presumed dead using a dog, there is either initial
or immediate fascination or immediate repulsion and changing the subject
(06:56):
and walking away from you. But often that fascination is
that sort of true crime. Give me all the details.
I wonder if people are interested in listening to this
particular episode because they're like, oh, I want to hear
all about this. But at the same time, I know
my audience, So like, can we can we talk about
(07:17):
that weird thing where you do something that is very
interesting two people who find search and rescue and recovery
and dogs really interesting. There is this really fertile ground
of fascination. But it's also the act of doing search
and recovery is very intimate. It is, so how do
(07:40):
we navigate that fascination and intimacy? I think it's really difficult.
I was with a trainer yesterday because she actually trains
service dogs for service people with PTSD. So one of
the things as we were sort of standing there figuring
out how to best work with the dogs and these
two new wonderful handlers who are going to have these
(08:01):
dogs in their lives. And I was talking about that
all the times when media would say, well, what I
want to do is come out on your next search,
and Lucy, who has been in this world as well,
that that sense of no, actually that is just so
(08:22):
terribly invasive. It is so terribly invasive, and it's very
easy to explain to the media, you know, this is
a criminal case. We're not able to have you do this.
We won't let you know afterwards how the search turned out. Right,
there's that, which is in some ways, you know, the
(08:44):
media is used to that. But going into a reading
and inevitably people want to know how many bodies solo found,
and it's it's sort of like like a numbers game, right,
And in a way it is that I understand it
(09:06):
from the point of view of people's exposure to this
kind of thing is mostly through media and through movies
and through fiction, and in a sense saying to that person,
it's a lot more complicated. Right, Nine out of ten
(09:29):
times you don't find somebody when you're going out on
a search, what you're doing is clearing the areas where
family or law enforcement I think they might be, right,
And all those places are imagined places of horror for
(09:51):
the family, right where they are in their minds eye
thinking about these places, right, the creek that get high
during flood and it's flooded, and all those places are
in some ways just as important, right, even when you
don't find that person. But that's not very dramatic, right,
(10:15):
It's clearing land in a way, And I think all
the people who do this find that it's really important
and really central, right. And I think that afterwards when
we talk about if we find somebody, or if somebody
else finds somebody and you are on the search, the
(10:36):
very first thing you do in a panic is you
go to your computer and you look at your maps,
and you look at the site where the person was
finally located, and you breathe a sigh of relief that
you were nowhere near that spot and you couldn't have
missed finding that person. Right. So these are the things
(11:00):
to me that it doesn't sound very dramatic, but it's
it's the stuff that makes your heart pound because sometimes
you're talking about years of people not having resolution. Did
I answer that question, Megan? You did? You answered it
(11:20):
beautifully because we started out talking about for people who
are sort of surface level fascinated with the idea of
cadaver searches, which is the proper term for it, but
you're looking for somebody who is dead or presumed dead.
This sort of proliferation of true crime podcast which I
(11:41):
really don't understand, but like whatever you like, what you like,
but there's this sort of surface fascination with it, Like
we like to flirt with the idea of death and drama,
but we really don't want to talk about it if
it's our own right. This is actually a complaint. This
is a complaint that I hear from a lot of
grieving people that y'all are so interested in true crime podcasts,
(12:05):
but my person was killed in a drive by shooting
or some other act of violence, and you won't even
talk to me, right, So we it's like a safe
distance allows us to enter into the sphere of death
but keeps us far enough away from it that we
don't need to enter into any feeling of grief. That's
(12:27):
exactly correct. It's exactly correct. And I think too that
in a sense, since people have no realistic notion, these
are always things that get resolved in forty five minutes
plus fifteen minutes of commercial right. So the idea that
(12:49):
these cases can drag on for years or that nationwide,
I think nationwide, the figures are like sixty people missing
and presume dead by law enforcement. I mean, the missing
are just like all over the United States. And in
many cases those deaths, they're never going to make a
(13:13):
podcast because I hate to say that they're mundane, right,
But it's actually sadly true that most crime is just
kind of stupid and brutal and predictable, right, And that
doesn't make for great television or crime novels. Right, we
(13:39):
don't write about those things or see those things. And
so I think that people imagine, I mean, they sort
of fill in what this stuff might look like, when
in some ways it is. It's retracing steps. So what
I hear you saying here is that the mundane details,
(14:03):
the small details, the relentless details, the search to connect
the dots and look for someone who is missing is
not sexy. If you wrote out all of the details
involved in a search and the end of a person's
life and what happens next, most of the work would
(14:25):
get edited out. Yes, yes, right, these mundane details, like
if we move away from death just for a second.
But like, these mundane details are what life is made of.
Our lives are made up of the little things, right,
All our lives are made up of those little things.
(14:45):
And so to me, it's those learning how to be
part of that and fitting me and a dog into
that picture. Right, we talk about the fact that you know,
loving to dogs and nature and and these things can
still sound pretty dramatic, But in a way, it's that
(15:07):
it was so easy to fit, to fit me and
him into that without being like a huge rock thrown
into a pond, right, it was just a little space
for us to come in. So two things about this
(15:32):
one one that I don't want to forget. You had
started out by saying, you know, dogs are the bridge
into what can be very uncomfortable territory. And I kind
of wonder if our need for drama, our need for
a big splashy rescue or discovery, is also a way
(15:54):
that we look for a bridge into this stuff, like
a way to tell ourselves that even though the person
is dead, for whatever reason, the bad guys were caught,
the reason was found. There is resolution, There is closure.
I noticed that when you were talking about the completion
(16:14):
of a search that you used the word resolution and
not closure, And that is such an important distinction. People
never get closure on this. Families never get closure. I mean,
that just doesn't happen. Our entire culture is built on
this extraordinary need for both resolution and closure, and we
(16:41):
see it every day when we read accounts where there's
a murder and a suicide. Right, so he basically shoots
for and then shoots himself. And the very first question
that people ask is what was the motive? Right? And
I absolutely no longer understand why we are still somehow
(17:06):
searching for motive in violence. Right, that that somehow if
we understand that there was a motive i e. A
rational reason for this explosion of violence, then once again
we can sort of distance ourselves because it's not random, right,
(17:31):
It's very targeted. And if we think about how people
talk about these mass shootings, which are so deeply, deeply random, right,
and they scare people, and instead of thinking about gun
regulation and you know, sort of truly addressing this, what
(17:54):
we all do is trying to figure out how we
are different than the victims, or how that person who
did that act had a motive as a disgruntled employee
or whatever it was, right, And and then we can
kind of we can move on because it really is
too scary to look at the things that happened suddenly
(18:17):
and without explanation, because that's mostly what happens. Yeah, it
gives us a chance to say, not me, right, this
is so cool because I feel like I spend a
lot of time trying to get people to understand that
not feeling intense emotions like grief is one of the
(18:38):
driving forces of especially Western culture. But but a lot
of a lot of the things we think of as
normal or more normative are really like trying to escape
big feeling, right, our fascination with violence in fiction, right
in movies, in storylines like it, lets play out things
(19:03):
in a way that lets us like I don't I mean,
I don't even know where I want to go with us,
because I know a lot of people have done some
really raising work on you know, our our need for
violence and entertainment and blah blah blah, all of this stuff.
But there really is something about can you make this story,
this news story, this random event that in some ways
(19:24):
the perpetrators are very predictable. Can you package that in
such a way that makes me feel safe and makes
me feel like my people are safe and if they
can't be safe, can you make it all turn out
okay in the end anyway? And it is? It is
so we do. It's what we do as a culture.
(19:46):
I mean, I do it with my husband late at night,
right when I am just in despair. I'll just say
to him, tell me it's all going to be okay,
Just tell me right. And I'm like a child because
I am in a childish state. I'm like a child saying,
(20:08):
let me know that the end is going to be great, when,
of course the question asked by me is because I
know it won't necessarily be all right in the end, right.
And this can be from mundane things to you know,
I mean climate change, like global warming, when it's absolutely
(20:29):
silly of me to say, tell me it's going to
be okay. And there's nothing wrong with needing stability and
needing to know that there is a path forward. So
when I sort of rant about our insistence on a
happy ending or on resolution so that we can like
you know, been there, dusted that where you know everything
is good, like needing to feel safe and stable is
(20:54):
not the same thing as things working out okay, right,
Like where do we find a stability and a safety
knowing that she does not always work out okay? And
what I hear you saying is that one of the
things that your career in journalism and your work on
endless searches with detectives and historians and being out there
(21:20):
in the field in that minutia of someone's life has
shown you that you can't believe in a happy ending,
that there is no resolution or no no tidy bow.
And where do we find safety, connection, beauty, joy, interest, fascination,
(21:40):
knowing all of those things that you know. It's something
that I've been thinking a lot about recently and also
talking with friends, partly because of our age. I'm sixty
six and really thinking about this sort of this last
section of my life. Should should I be so lucky?
(22:02):
And I think that for me, finding small resolutions is
what brings joy. And also, you know, people will ask
this question, how can you possibly do this work? What?
You know? What an amazing contribution that you're helping the community, right,
(22:25):
And I have to laugh because it's actually pretty selfish. Right.
The whole time I was doing it, I was very
aware of the fact that I got great joy out
of working a dog out in sometimes grim circumstances. And
it's never the case that these searches are upbeat. They
(22:52):
aren't ever, but there are these upbeat moments. There are
these moments when the dog is just doing his best work,
or there's some comic relief or something happens where you
just stop and appreciate the things that are happening. Right.
(23:14):
It simply should not exist, but it does because there
are these moments of real grace in all of this
work right, and it is self centered in a way
where I can't say I'm sorry. I can't pretend that
I'm out there to help the community or to let
(23:35):
people bring closure. I'm out there because it's hugely engaging.
It is hugely challenging. I love working with dogs. They
make my heart sing when they're doing good work. And
it's not true that we always sit deep in grief
(23:59):
when you know, when I'm working on these cases, these
aren't my depth. These deaths belong to somebody else and
my somehow, showing empathy or taking on that heartbreak is
both counterproductive, but it's also kind of inhabiting something that's
(24:23):
not mine to inhabit. And so I don't know. This
is a very roundabout way of saying that doing this
kind of work, that you are always thinking about death
and violence at times, but you are not doing this
out of a sense of heroism or the need to
(24:48):
contribute to the community. I'm also doing it because, first
of all, because I can do it, so I'm fortunate
that way, and because that part killer skill set is
something that feels really like a super good fit for me. Yeah,
that there is joy in the work and satisfaction in
(25:11):
the work, knowing that the work sits inside somebody else's heartbreak.
That is a nuance that people on the outside don't
always understand. I think we have such a such a
deeply ingrained hero thing where like I want to be
the one, like I'm in there bringing closure to the fact,
(25:33):
like you know, I'm the one who did this, and
so so much of this is like one not about
you and also aided by you, which is a really interesting, nuanced,
complex place to live. I love that you said, and
it will be more specific when when I go back
and listen. But you said something about like I'm in this,
(25:54):
but I don't inhabit it right, Like I'm in this,
I am one piece of this person's life and the
connections and the families and the lack of families and
the web that they lived in. I am one tiny
piece in this, and I may be an important part
of this, but this is not about me, and it's
(26:15):
not about the dog, right. I mean, I will say
that one of the things I write about and it
was so incredibly hard to write about. And I know
how you feel about this having written it's okay that
you're not okay, but writing about my father's death, which
happened right at the beginning of my becoming very serious
(26:39):
about this work and his cancer diagnosis, and then sort
of seven weeks later he was gone, and the degree
to which I really I had to stop training solo
during that time period. It was too hard. There was
such an overlap. But between my own grief about Dad
(27:03):
and the kind of details about doing cadaver searches that
made it temporarily not a good fit at all, it
made me even more aware, if that makes sense, going forward,
what grief feels like from people who are experiencing it
(27:23):
when their loved one is missing, versus my role in
any of that. Right, It just it was just so
crystal clear another lesson from my father. What I just
heard you say was such a good a good example
of something that I feel like we've been talking about
but also I talk about quite a bit, which is
like when you are newly ripped open when a death
(27:50):
or another kind of loss has entered into your life,
it's like you you have no buffer zone, and you're
suddenly alive and alert to all of the pain in
the world. Right there's there's no distance possible anymore so
going into experiencing your dad's death and feeling all of
(28:12):
those emotions. Going back out into the field made you
that acutely aware of oh my gosh, grieving people are
all around me, right, and feeling even a tiny corner
of what somebody else feels is really one of the
reasons that we shut down in the face of other
people's pain and suffering, right, because those are very big
feelings and they're too big, and there's not enough contest
(28:35):
and not enough of a container. And you were able
to step back from doing cadaver work with solo because
you knew that you couldn't have that. What did you
say in the book? You said something like, um, disinterested
but not uninterested, right, that there is a professional distance
(28:55):
that you need to have to be able to do
this work, and when you are deep in your own emotions,
that distance is impossible, yes, yes, to maintain no. And
and this is I mean in therapy we have that
term transference, right, And there was a time when the
overlap was so great that I couldn't countenance it. And
(29:20):
you know, to just give an example, this is just
a really concrete example, you know, training with teeth and
looking at those teeth and not being able to see
those teeth is simply teeth. Those teeth were a part
of my father. Right. As much as my mind didn't
want to do that, as much as my rational mind
(29:43):
said there's no connection, it was just so clear. It's like, no,
I'm not going to get a lot done there. Yeah,
there's something very visceral about grief, right, And even if
we took out the cadaver search part of it. I
remember when Matt ide and if I went to a
yoga class and the instructor was like, focus on your breath,
(30:04):
all I could think of was, Matt has no breath anymore,
and he never will again. There's something about the visceral
nature of bodies and death that there doesn't have to
be a quote unquote logical connection. Right. You're talking about
doing teeth work with training your dog and looking at
teeth and thinking about bodies, thinking about my father, right,
(30:27):
this this is what the emotional body does, right, And
and to be able to recognize that, and to be
able to take a step back and say, actually, I
can't show up in the ways that I need to
show up. And I also love that you brought in
here is another facet of how I understand my work
because having had this experience. I don't know what it's
(30:50):
like to be a family member who was waiting for
search and recovery teams to find my person, But I
know what intense loss has felt like to me, and
I can sort of bow in respect too how much
I don't know about what it's like for this family.
In the introduction, you're you know, the we were talking
(31:11):
about how when you would say what you do and
people would be like, Ah, isn't that terrible? And isn't
that depressing? And I was thinking about this while you
were describing sort of being a cog in the machine
of a search, right, And you say, sure, some of
it is dark, but gradations of light filter through. There's tragedy,
there's incompetence and cruelty. Those things are all part of it,
(31:34):
but they don't shine what occupies the most brain space
or the other humans and the dogs. Basically what you're
talking about. They are the communities of people and animals
who have come together to look for clues for this
singular mystery. Yes, there is something very beautiful and heartening
(31:55):
set inside a truly horrible experience for those who are
intimately affected. And I think we have that, you know,
we have this binary so deeply embedded in us that
it can't be both things. It can't be a beautiful
moment of dogs and humans working together at things they
are very very good at at the same time that
(32:16):
it is a truly horrible thing for the people whose
person you're looking for. It reminds me of, you know,
when Matt disappeared into the river. We had, you know,
there were search teams, there were helicopters and divers, and
I remember the moment when it when it shifted from
(32:37):
rescue to recovery. I remember that I knew what that meant,
and I remember the individual humans. I remember marveling at
the fact that divers were going into that water that
took Matt and nearly took me and nearly took our dog,
(33:01):
right that there were people who chose to do that
every day. I remember marveling at, and not in a
good way, the journalists who were up on the bridge
zooming in on me and filming me, which I didn't
I didn't realize because I was, you know, occupied. But
there was somebody who was like a volunteer with the
(33:21):
fire department. She came to me, and she said, you know, normally,
she pointed at the news crew and she said, normally,
I help those people get as close to the victims
quote unquote victims. I helped them get as close to
them as possible. But I can't do that today, and
I don't know that I'm ever going to be able
to do that again. You know, you and I have
(33:43):
been talking about the disconnected is the wrong word, but
the distanced beauty and joy and connection that happens when
you are doing this kind of work for a living
or as a volunteer, That community that gets built, and
that pleasure in seeing humans and dogs do things that
(34:08):
they're very very good at, the people whose tragedy that
is we notice, We notice the skill, we notice the community.
And speaking only for myself here, I noticed and was
thankful for the distance. This brings back a memory and
it had happened I think more than once when I
(34:30):
was a journalist. But this is still sort of painful
to me. But I was at the Hartford Current and
I was on the site of a collapse of of
a two twin buildings plaza that we're using lifts slack construction,
and because one of the pumps gave out on the corner.
(34:52):
Everything twisted and collapsed, and workers that weren't blown free
from the sides were inside just the s right. And
of course I was there as a journalist, and I
was tasked to talk to the big victims families as
(35:12):
they're waiting two have their loved ones brought out. Since
I'm no longer a journalist, I lied to the editors.
I didn't approach anybody. It's sort of like now. I
did approach some of the investigators, who are already hugely frustrated,
(35:33):
what with What they thought was why we're workers still
inside that building while they were lifting these labs of concrete? Right?
Why was anybody there? But in a sense, this this
ethical issue of how close what's the right of people, right,
(35:55):
what's the right of journalists to intrude on a private grief?
Or when does a private grief become public? When is that?
And it's it's such a thorny question, Megan, But in
cases like this, this is what people seem to want
(36:17):
access to with true crime podcasts, right, this is a
way for them to access that, and it just it
kind of makes me ill to think about that role.
I remember working a scene that was so high profile
that there was a picture of Solo searching along the
(36:42):
end of the log and it was you know, and
they ran it and it was you know, it was
this huge picture. And I was amused in that case,
first of all because this was not my tragedy. I
was doing the search, but also because they sort of
made up the hotline about you know, the dogs are
along the log when he had actually finished the search
(37:03):
and he was looking for a place to lift his leg.
Here's your story, your story. His dog searched a long
and hard and really needed a place to pee. And
all of this is connected right with what we get
as a news bite. Is sometimes, as with the case
(37:23):
of the photo of Solo looking for a place to pee,
like it's very curated for a very specific emotional aim,
and it's not even a corner of the whole story,
and it's you know, it's it's hard because you've got
like the way that our brains work as relational mammals
is that we need to feel something for an issue
(37:46):
in order to care enough about it in order to
agitate for change or bring attention to it. Like we
have to have our emotional circuits firing in order to care,
and what journalism and media and and other things do
is like sort of bastardize that into just like this
this drama junkie thing, right, and we don't. I mean,
(38:07):
part of part of the cascading horrors of now is
that we don't have time to feel any of these
things before the next horror happened. So one of the
episodes this season, actually the first episode of the season,
is with Nolbe Marquez Green, whose daughter was killed at
Sandy Hook, and we talked a lot about you know,
(38:27):
she works with survivors, but also what we demand of
survivors in order to make public space spaces safer, make
schools safer, like to stop you know, random public shootings
and gun control. She's like, who do we destroy in
the service of our goals? Yeah, it's astonishing how much
(38:49):
we suck from people who are using all their resources
just to get from day to day, and it somehow
becomes their responsibility so that we can do our public mourning.
And if we do our public mourning properly with all
of this in place, then change can happen. Right. That
(39:13):
that's somehow is going to be. That's the chain of
events that needs to happen over and over and over,
and yet it doesn't in some of these cases. This
is a really good conversation for a different day. But
thinking about you know, assessment, right, Like, here's the thing
that we do. We splash survivor stories in the media.
(39:37):
We're because we're trying to get you to feel so
that you are then motivated to take action for change. Okay,
if that is our experiment, let us look at the results.
Is it working? You know? I was thinking the other
day like, do you know what we need? Is we
need whoever was in charge of that campaign back in
(39:57):
the eighties, for like cutting apart the plastics six pat
containers so that sea turtles don't get tangled in them?
Like I can't seriously, if I see a plastic six
pat container on the ground, I will pick it up
and put it in my pocket to cut it apart
at home. Because that campaign worked, wonders right, So like
I feel like, hmm, maybe we should run some different
(40:19):
experiments on how how we get people to care so
that change can happen. And this is of course true
across a whole bunch of issues that are like constantly
unfolding all over the place. And and this is like,
this is you know, like the pull one dark string
in the whole world snaps into place. Thing we started
out talking about working with dogs, and how like pulling
(40:42):
the dog card, talking about dogs makes a conversation about
cadaver searches and recovery searches approachable for people because dogs
are a great thing that you know, a lot of
people love and are interested in and have in common,
and there's a fascination. And this is how we get
into this. And then we've gone through so much territory
(41:05):
around distance and nuance, and this work is not sexy.
This work is not flashy, and it means something very
specifically to a very specific group of people whose names
you will never know, and whose intimate daily lives you
will never know. And this is true just for so
(41:28):
much of life, Yes, so much going on underneath the
surface that we just don't think about. That's so beautifully said.
And I think those of us who right like as
you do and as I do, and how writing is
(41:50):
something that we do to help make sense of the world,
to make sense of things. Sometimes I'm not even sure
what I'm feeling about something until I can articulate it
in writing, Right, I learned what it is. I think
it feels sometimes just so difficult because we want stories
(42:16):
to make a difference, right, That's why I mean making
meaning through stories is what we use humans do. And
yet we look at all of these kinds of ways
that we tell stories and it's so deeply worrying, right,
because so many of the stories that we're telling in
(42:38):
this culture not only are not helping, they're actually contributing
to a kind of deadening of things, of caring of
right that we it is just part of the stories
get reduced to formulas. Yeah, Like the way that we
deal with with all of the nuance and all of
(42:58):
the complexity is by trying to make a neat and
tidy story out of it to serve that machinery that
needs a neat and tidy story. And what we've been
talking about this whole time is like, how does that
complexity make you curious? How does that complexity make you
look at the detail, make you look at the way
that the sunlight comes through those trees? Yes, while your
(43:20):
dog is searching for somebody who's missing. What is that
complexity make you wonder about the story behind the flashy
headline or those people whose stories don't make it to
the true crime podcast, Like, can we use the complexity
to lean into connection and curiosity instead of searching for
that next dopamine hit of a a sexy, dramatic headline.
(43:44):
I think this is a really interesting point to to
come to as we sort of wind down here. Is
there's no such thing as a simple story, and we
aren't really built to absorb not only every terrible thing,
but every beautiful thing all at once. Right, Like you
you have to, I mean this comes this is this
(44:07):
is a great tie in here for search dogs, right is,
like you have to be able to filter out what
is not important in this moment in order to really
serve what is important in this moment. And by its
very nature that means that some very important things are
not your piece of the puzzle. Yes, like with the
(44:29):
six pack plastic rings, where you can make a small
but appreciable difference. It's a beautiful thing. This is the
horrible and cliche you know, it is better to light
one small candle, right you know which I hate that saying.
And yet and yet yeah, I come back to it.
(44:53):
Right is that there are these little candles here and
there that I think make us hopeful. Yeah, that there
is is hope in choosing this one small thing, right,
But yeah, I think I think like we can't. We
can never get away from the complexity, and we can
(45:15):
also choose which part of that monstrous, beautiful, terrible complexity
is ours, and that there is hope in that somehow. Yeah,
I think that's a really beautiful place for us to
end our time here together. Cat, thanks so much for
being here. We're going to put a link to your
(45:35):
website and your book in the show notes. I think
we have a few articles about your recent work too,
will put those in there. Stay tuned, everybody. I'll be
right back with your questions to carry with you after
this break. Each week I leave you with some questions
(45:56):
to carry with you until we meet again. You know
what really struck me in my conversation with Cat was
her insight into boundaries. If you know me, you know
the boundaries are always my my favorite thing. But I
love how she said it's not cool for her to
show her grief for the person or show her grief
to the families related to the person that she's searching for.
That being affected personally by the job at hand would
(46:19):
be as she said, inhabiting a grief that isn't hers
and that that is disrespectful. I think that kind of
sums up for me my aversion to the dramatization of
other people's tragedies. You know that there's comfort we can
provide by being calm, clear participants, doing our job and
doing it well, but not putting our own emotions into
(46:42):
the mix, and not letting our voyeurism, our curiosity violate
our own boundaries of respect and kindness. I love that.
I also really appreciated how she said, but that when
her father died, it was really hard to maintain that
respectful distance from other people's grief. That is such a
(47:03):
big one everybody. Now, you might have noticed that I
didn't ask Cat what hope looks like for her in
this show, but I did. I did actually ask her
what hope looks like for her in our conversation. Her answer, though,
brought us into a long conversation about her work looking
for abandoned black and Indigenous burial grounds. It's an important
(47:25):
and fascinating conversation, so we pulled that part of our
conversation into a bonus episode. We didn't want to leave
it out, but It also made today's episode just extra
extra long, So look for that bonus episode coming out
this week and let me know what parts of today's
conversation stuck with you. What made you think about your
(47:45):
own life or the media you consume, or maybe just
the coolness of the natural world and how rad dogs are.
Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but
I do hope you found something to hold onto. If
you it, I want to hear about it. Check out
Refuge in Grief on Instagram or here after Pod on
TikTok to see video clips from the show and leave
(48:07):
your thoughts in the comments on those posts. Be sure
to tag us in your conversation starting posts on your
own social accounts. Use the hashtag here after Pod on
all the platforms. That's how we'll find you and we
love to see where this show takes you. Also, please
remember to subscribe and leave a review and tell your
friends about the show. That helps more than you could
(48:29):
ever know. If you want to tell us how today's
show felt for you, or you have a request or
a question for upcoming conversations with interesting people about difficult things,
give us a call at three to three six four
three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If
you missed it, you can find the number in the
show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If
(48:50):
you'd rather send an email, you can do that too.
Write on the website Megan Divine dot c OH. We
want to hear from you. I want to hear from you.
This show, this world needs your voice. Together, we can
make things better even when they can't be made right.
(49:12):
Want more Hereafter. Grief education doesn't just belong to end
of life issues. As my dad says, everyday life is
full of grief that we don't call grief. Learning how
to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or
accidentally dismissive statements is an important skill for everybody. Find trainings,
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
(49:33):
You're Not Okay at Megan Divine dot c O. Hereafter
with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fossio.
Logistical and social media support from Micah, Edited by Houston Tilly,
Music provided by Wave Crush, and today's background noise provided
(49:56):
by Luna and the wee little birds nesting in the
lemon tree outside my window.
Host
Megan Devine
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