External Exam - Faithful unto Death with Author, Dr. Paul Koudounaris - Mother Knows Death

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On this week's
External Exam, we will be speaking with Paul Kudnaris, who
has a PhD in art history from the University of

(00:25):
California and has written widely on European astuaries and Charnel
houses for both academic and popular journals. He is the
author of the Empire of Death, a cultural history of
ostuaries and charnel Houses, Memento Mori the Dead among Us,
Heavenly Bodies, Cult Treasures and Spectacular Stance from the Catacombs,

(00:47):
and a book about domestic felines called a Cat's Tail
that was also a Barnes and Nobles Book of the Year.
Paul is one of my great friends, and today I
will be talking to him about his new book called
Faithful unto Death, Pets, Cemeteries, Animal Graves and Eternal Devotion.
This book is available in the UK on September sixteenth

(01:07):
and in the USA on October first. Hi, Paul, Welcome
The Mother Knows Death.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Hi, Mom, how are you in to call?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
How are you? I haven't seen you in a couple
months in person, but we do talk on the phone
almost every single day, which is interesting. But let's get
started talking about your new book. I'm so excited for this.
I have my own copy right behind me. It's called
Faithful unto Death. Can you tell us a little bit
about what the book's about.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, it's about the history of pet cemeteries and animal burials,
and it focuses on you know, everyone's got this kind
of idea that we've had this relationship with animals, you know,
keeping them as pets since the ancient world, and it's
really not true. I mean, humans have always lived with animals,
but pets as we know them are really invented in
the nineteenth century. The way we live with them and

(01:58):
treat them as family, the way we but the way
we feed them, everything about the way we act we
react with them comes from the nineteenth century, from the
Industrial Revolution, when people were moving into the big cities
and taking these animals into their homes and in you know,
small domestic environments and bonding with them emotionally. Yet they

(02:18):
were not allowed to have a dignified death, even though
they had become members of the family. You know. It's
like normally, when you got rid of an animal in
the nineteenth century, you take it to a rending plant
and they would just kind of, you know, chop it
up and burn it down into fertilizer or for industrial
purposes like glue, or you know, you'd toss it in
the river. And it was emotionally, obviously very taxing for

(02:39):
anyone who cares about their animals. And so this book
is kind of the story about how some very rebellious
people in the nineteenth century decided to put their foot
down and say, no, we love these animals, they are
family members. Were not going to mistreat them at their death.
We're going to give them a death with dignity that
they deserved, just like any human family member.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
This book is is kind of different. I don't think
that there's really anything like it out there.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Right, No, there isn't. And that's part of it. I mean,
part of the masochistic nature of my personality is that
I like to do projects that no one has done before.
And when I first started looking into this, you know,
I was like, what about pet cemeteries? And I started
taking pictures in them and they were really touching and
really beautiful, and it's like, has anyone ever done a

(03:22):
book about this, and it was like, actually, no, I
guess it falls on me.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
The cool thing about this book is you wrote it,
but also you took all the photos in it. Where
how do you come across all of these pet cemeteries?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Well, because this took me eleven years. That's why, in
the process of doing this book, I had an entire
another book in the middle of it that I researched, wrote, photographed,
and even that book is now four years old. I've
been working a really long time. I've traveled across the world.
You know, I've gone and taken photographs of pet cemeteries
in Indonesia, in Bolivia. You know, I've gone all the

(04:01):
way down to New Zealand in order to photograph animals, graves,
and so it's just a matter of time.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Do people like contact you and say, hey, like how
I'm just curious of the process, like how you find them,
because I don't think with the exception of just like
seeing one in a friend's backyard once in a while,
I've never come across one that was dedicated to a pet.
But it's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, they're around and it's just a matter of research. Yeah,
I do have people contact me maybe I have too
many people contact me because it's like the book is
already done, and I'll get messages from people it's like, hey,
just so you knew, there's a little pet cemetery right
off the road in Pensacola, Florida. It's like on the way.

(04:46):
But yeah, they're around. It's just a matter of research
and looking them up. They really are everywhere, and especially
in the United States. This is a really American story.
There are more pet cemeteries in the United States than
the rest of the world combined, and there's a staggering
a of them. You know, in Alabama there's a pet
cemetery just for coon dogs. And you can't just claim
your dog as a raccoon hunting hound. You have to

(05:07):
you have to get like notarized documents from people who
have hunted with your dog to show that it's a
first coon dog. We have an amazing array of pet
cemeteries in the United States.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
When you came to Philly, did you go to the
University of Penn Museum, the Archaeology Museum.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I did. I've been there with at ams.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
So one cool thing that I always thought, even since
I was a little kid, is that they have mummified
cats or like their pets, and I thought that that
was really interesting.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Uh yeah, I mean, well there were so there's also though,
there's a little bit of a misconception about the mommified
cats in Egypt. I mean, because people will say to
me about Bubastis, which is the city of cats, and
I've been toasts that. It's like, well, isn't that like
a pet cemetery, because they'd momify the cats and it's fascinating.
But the answer is no, because a lot of those cats,

(05:57):
most of those cats, you know, if you X ray them,
you can see that first of all, they were very young.
Most of them were not of a mature age, meaning
that they were sacrificed, and you can see you know,
cut marks or you know, on the body or or
places where they broken their neck. Because back in Egypt, yes,
they did love their cats, they did love their animals.

(06:18):
People would be mummified with favorite animals and have those
animals placed in the tomb, which is really touching. But
the vast majority of those mummified animals were actually raised
by temples to be sacrificed to gods.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's really interesting. I never knew that there's So you know,
I have this website, The Grocerroom, and oftentimes I'll write
stories because animals do have such a close connection with people,
and sometimes it has to do with horrible accidents involving
animals where an animal gets killed or I even showed

(06:52):
one example of a forensic case where they used a
dog that was killed to help do ballistics for the
human that was killed at the scene as well. And
some of the feedback that I get from grocery members
is like, please, do not ever talk about dead animals.
I could look at dead animals and dead humans all
day long, but my heart breaks too much for any

(07:14):
dead animals. So do you think that this book is
still good for people that get really upset when you're
talking about animals dying.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, well, first of all, let me say that I
understand that because I get similar feedback because for years
now I've been picking up roadkill animals and making roadside
funerals for them, and I have. Probably it's ironic because
when I put those online, they're first of all, the
most popular category of posts that I do, and they've
also lost me more followers online than any of their

(07:47):
kind of posts that because some people just can't take
it the idea that this animal has died and it's
sitting there on the road dead, even though you're trying
to do something beautiful and pay tribute to it. It
is painful. You know, the death of an animal is
a different kind of pain than the death of a
human because we have a different relationship to them. You know,
it's an intimate, nonverbal relationship to them, and when they die,

(08:08):
it just feels like the death of something very innocent,
and it can be very hard to take. Regarding this book,
there's look, there's no gore in it. This this book
is all pictures of graves, and it's all stories of
how people who love their animals have looked for ways
to pay tribute for them. So I think it's actually
a perfect book for these people. Of course, it talks

(08:30):
about dead animals, but there's nothing glory about it, and
the whole book is really it's a tribute to love.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Speaking of Instagram, do you ever do you ever get
like shit or get censored if you post these photos
of dead animals? Because I know for sure I do
with the humans, so are they as sensitive with the
rules of that, Because I'm sure people report it because
it upsets them.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
No what I get and this is the strangest thing
that Meta as a platform has has ever started doing.
I get passive aggressive miss messages from the platform. And
what I'll get is I'll put up something because they
have I guess they have these bots, and I've probably
had enough people complain. It's like, oh my god, you
know there's a there's a dead cat by the side

(09:15):
of the road, even though it is wrapped in a
funeral shroud, and you know, it's like covered in flowers,
and it's this it's this loving tribute. I've got enough
complaints about it. And I guess they're there. Their bots
are analyzing me and like watching me for this stuff.
And what I'll get is whenever they put up this photos,
I get an instant pop up that says, we're not
going to remove your photo because it does not violate

(09:39):
our rules, but we strongly recommend that you remove it
on your own or we're not going to let any
non followers see your posts. And you know, click click
accept or reject, and I'll just reject it. And this
is these are the messages that I get. I don't
know anyone else who gets these passive aggressive messages. It's weird.

(10:00):
They're asking me to censor myself, and I'll always just say,
you know, go to hell. I mean, this isn't this
isn't about meta, and it's not about my followers, and
it's not about me. It's about paying tribute to this
this fallen animal who is you know, who deserves some
one last memorial in this world. And the funny thing
about that is I had one of them recently. It
was these two dead dogs that had been dumped out

(10:21):
in the desert and left for dead, and I put
made this roadside tribute to them, you know, wrap them
up at funeral shrouds. And I got that message from
from Instagram saying and like, you know, please self censor
yourself and remove this. I said no. And then a
week later I got a message from Meda about that post,
another pop up message and say, hey, that post of
yours reached one hundred percent more one hundred percent more

(10:46):
accounts than any other posts that you've posted in the
last year. Good going do it again, something like that.
So they're telling yeah, so they were telling me to
censor myself or I could be in trouble. And then
they're telling me it's like, yeah, dead dogs, good, some more.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
I I can't even get started on all the I do.
I get that message too. So I know you said
that you that you don't know anyone that gets it,
but like I get the same one too. It's a
oh you you get the yeah on every single one.
I have a whole entire section of the Instagram to
go into, and it's basically like, we're not showing your

(11:22):
account to non followers until you delete these posts, but
we're not going to make you delete them because you're
not violating any terms. It's so it's so insane. It's
like this weird bullying tactic or something.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a passive aggressive yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
I can't stand it. So all right, So, speaking of this,
so you're saying that this book is good for people
that that might get upset about it because it's telling
these these stories of how animal owners we were attributing
to these animals and their death. Were there any that
that you had a connection with that either upset you

(11:59):
or made you feel happy? While because you've been writing
this for so long and came across so many different cases.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Well, yeah, I mean, honestly, the hardest thing about this book.
One of the reasons it took so long was because
imagine waking up every day and going to work and
reliving the grief of someone losing their animal, because that's
what I had to do. You know, I had to
go through all these stories about, you know, the death
of people's pets, and it was psychologically very debilitating. One

(12:30):
of my I don't know, maybe it's my favorite stories.
The one I think that touched me the most was
about a dog in Montana by the name of Shep,
and Shep's story is special. You know, there's this trope
about dogs more in their owners after their owners die,
and it's not just a trope because it's also a
real thing. It kind of started as a literary trope,

(12:51):
but then when people started looking, the dogs are doing it.
The most famous one is that dog in Japan, Hachi
or Chico, you know, the one who waited at the
train station for his owner who never came back for
many years. This is a similar story. It's about a
dog waiting at a train station for an owner who
will never come back. But it has this has a
couple twists to it that made it I think, really

(13:12):
emotionally powerful. First of all. It was set against the
American Depression, and it was set in the West because
it was in Montana, so it's kind of got this
wild West background, like the Wild West railroads, and it's
then the Depression. So you know, like this idea of
these humans who are really suffering too. And at the
same time, no one ever knew who his owner was.

(13:35):
And so that's something I found really touching. A dog
who refuses to forget a person that the rest of
humanity has forgotten because they never knew the owner's name.
They found him dead, they sent him on a train
headed east. They didn't know who he was. The dog
tried to get on the train and they blocked the
dog and he said, no way, you can't come on
this train. Get out of here, dog, And the dog

(13:56):
never left the station. The dog, for the rest of
his life stayed at that state and examined every passenger
whoever came off that train to see if his owner
was coming back. He was going to spend the rest
of his life mourning that owner and waiting for him
to return. But nobody knew who he was. And I
found that so touching. You know, it's like that with
the rest that you know, it's the depression and people

(14:16):
are suffering, and it's the wild West, and all of
humanity has forgotten the identity of this man. But this
dog remembers. This dog is the last witness and the
last testimony to this man. And I just found that.
I found that really touching also because you know, this
dog had become very famous for waiting at the train station,
and there were all these you know, like Ripley's Believe

(14:38):
It or Not wrote him up. He was in all
these newspapers like, you know, this emotionally touching story of
this dog who refuses to forget this guy. And so
people started to donate money for him, and you know,
it's like, hey, here's some money for that dog. We're
sending some money for the drugs. And of course the
dog doesn't want has any nothing to do with his money,
you know. And so in the end they had so
much money because the train station guys were feeding, he

(15:00):
didn't need more than food, and so in the end
they wound up with so much money that they started
what they called the Shep Fund, and all the money
went to the Montana School of Death and Blind to
buy those kids at the school Christmas presence. So these
were orphaned, deaf and blind kids and the only reason
they had Christmas was because this dog loved this man
so much and people were donating money for this dog.

(15:23):
And it starts to feel like a feel good story too,
but it's not. And that's the other reason it was
emotionally powerful to me, because it's really it's such a
pratcheck's story because you know, you start to think, it's like, well,
this dog has so many friends. You know, people loved
this dog. It's like, but every day for this dog,
every single day, with every train was a new park
break because that dog wanted one thing and he expected

(15:45):
that man to be on that train every day, and
every day that man was not there. So every day
this dog's heart breaks again, but that dog never gives
up hope, Like every more, every every night that dog
goes to bed broken hearted again. Every morning that dog
whites up with new hope that maybe that man's coming back.
And I just found there are so many angles to
that that I thought made it emotionally such a powerful story.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, and it is. It's a and that's why I
do want to encourage people that might get sad talking
about dead animals because this is like such a good
story and it has it just makes you think of
the connection that you have with your pet, and like
it's it's even you know, you go on vacation or
you leave for a couple weeks or months, you know

(16:26):
this because you travel a lot and you have someone
else taking care of your animal, but ultimately they always
want you and they're happy when you're home, you know,
even though they're getting fed and taken care of.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, but whenever I get home, like cat's like a
point of paying no attention to me for one day,
Oh yeah, right, yeah, They're like, oh, you're back, as
if we care. Yeah, And then the next day it's okay.
You know, there are a lot of books about grieving
lost pads. I wouldn't recommend a single one of them.
Trust me, I read every single one of them all
I was preparing to read this book. Part of what

(17:01):
I wanted to do with this book was approached that topic,
but not not as a therapist, not tell people what
to do or how to grieve or how to mourn,
just show them examples of how other people have grieved
and mourned. And I think that itself is kind of
healing because it lets you know the grief that you're
feeling is justified and it's normal, and it lets you
know there are a full variety of ways you can

(17:24):
pay a fitting respect to your patent.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
So you're obviously an animal lover, in particular cat, your
cat dad. What has this has Preparing and writing this
book changed how you feel about how you would possibly
attribute to them after they pass on.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Probably not because I was already a guy who who
had buried a cat in his backyard. This is before
I started the book, And when I moved, dug the
cat up and took it with me and wound up
making a reliquary for it. So I think I've always
kind of been in of the mindset that they should
get a fitting tribute, And in the end I didn't

(18:04):
even abandon the one that was buried at my last house. No, No,
I don't think it's changing anything for me. I do
hear from a lot of people at when I tell
them that story, though, it's like I wish I had
done the same thing. I wish I had taken my
pet with me, because now it's stuck in some stranger's
yard because they moved.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, and that's something that I was going to ask you.
I know, every single person that I know that has
had a pet that's passed, they either bury it in
the yard, like you said, or they get it cremated
and they have their ashes in and earn in their house.
Have you when you were doing the research for this
book and anything, did you come across any unconventional ways
that people were or like what they were doing with

(18:44):
the pet's body after they died.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah. Well, the obvious one to talk about, which I
don't get into in the book because it's really a
tangent is cloning, because that is actually that's actually an
entire industry now, cloning your pet. It's all done in Korea,
or at least all the big labs that clone pets
were in Korea. I don't know if there are some
labs in China now that are doing it. There might be,

(19:09):
but it's a Korean thing. They started it. It's interesting
because well, first personally, I don't like it. I as
much as I love my particular cats, I would never
clone them, just because it's like you're bringing in this
you're you know, you'd be bringing in this this new
animal as a baby that's cloned from the old animal,

(19:30):
and I think there would be too much of a
tendency to expect the new animal to act like the
old one. It's like, well, wait a minute, you're you're
the clone of Fluffy? Why did you just piss on
the carpet? Fluffy never did that. You know, I would
not want to create that pressure that they should be
exactly the same. When I first started on this research,

(19:50):
I actually had looked into the animal cloning as maybe
that's something I should include in this book. And I
had contacted some of the labs in Korea and they
were very well and they were like, yes, if you
want to come out and talk about the cloning and
visit our lab and see what we're doing, we'd love
to host you. Please come out. I was just in
Korea a few weeks ago. I had a full day

(20:13):
in Soul on a stopover to Indonesia, and I tried
to contact the labs and said, day, do you remember
a few years back we talked about the animal cloning
and you invited me up. Nobody will talk to me
anymore about the cloning. I think they have got such
they've gotten such negative press, and there have been some
scandals around the cloning that I think they've just kind

(20:35):
of blocked themselves off to outsiders. There are there have
been some accusations that they're not actually cloning the animals.
Like the other website they give you, they give you
instructions on how to get the DNA after your pet
has died, and it's almost about the same as like
getting a stool sample or something, or just sticking a
thing and I guess and scooping out some genetic material

(20:57):
and mailing it to them At CREATA been accusations against
at least one of the labs that they're not actually
cloning the animals. They're just looking at a picture of
your cat or dog that you're left fing already you
know where I'm going. Yeah, they're just they're just going
out like okay, well that one looks just why I
get in it's a kit and just get this one
and mail it to Cleveland and tell them the guy

(21:19):
it's the clone. So And I don't know that that's true.
I mean, it's just accusations that have been made, but yeah,
that is that's really on. Like the outer realm of
the pet memorializing is the cloning. I have seen videos.
I have to give the caveat that these are videos
that usually the companies themselves are making, so you can decide,

(21:41):
you know, maybe they have a vested interest, but they're
interviews with people who have had their animals cloned, and
they're very happy with it, and they'll tell you things like,
oh my god, you know, we got the new dog
and it came in and sat down in the exact
same place in the house as the old dog. So
it's obviously a clone because it has his built in
memory or something. I don't know, but that's that's the
outer fringe to me, is the clone.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, that that's so outrageous. I imagine that it's a
huge business money wise, and it probably costs so much
money to even get something like I'm going to look
into this more when we get off here.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
I'm I'm animal cloning in Korea. Animal cloning in Korea.
The only I don't think it's being done in North
America at all. There is cloning in Canada. There's have
you ever heard of the Raelians? They're in Quebec. It's okay,
so our R A E L I A N S

(22:38):
And it's a UFO cult. But they like they all,
they all they're like they all kind of look like
members of Sticks but wearing white robes, and they're they're
in Canada, and it was founded by this guy who
used to be a Formula one race car driver, and
he's got this whole cosmology. But they're into the cloning,
and they were the proponents of cloning, the Raelians in

(22:59):
North America for a long time. Like I've been to
seminars in Los Angeles that the Raliens have done about
the ethics of cloning and the technology of cloning, and
they claim that they have successfully been cloning animals and
other things. But once again, I have no idea what
goes what goes on with the Raliens for real, But
they're the only ones I know of in North America

(23:19):
that apparently have a developed process for cloning animals.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
It's actually a very weird thing that people would want
to do that because you're physically just getting an animal
that has I mean, really, it's no different than getting
the animal off the street that looks like the other animal,
because I imagine with animals it's the same as humans that
are animals that your entire personality is based upon. I mean,

(23:45):
some of it is genetic, and some of it is it's.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Based upon conditioning. It's based upon conditioning. Yeah, personality, I think.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
So all your life experiences, it's the same with the animal.
Like maybe when I adopted my cat, she was already
like seven months old, but she lived in the streets
of West Philly, so like that kind of formed her
early personality. You know, she wouldn't be the same if
I got her as a brand new kitt It just.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right, Well, I think I think it also depends if
you're a person who believes that there's like there's a
certain inherited memory, Like if you really believe that that
there is inherited memory that will come with the cloning,
maybe that makes it more attractive to you because you

(24:33):
believe that you know, this animal you're getting back already
has inherited you know, the memory or of the behavioral
tendencies of the original animal. On a spiritual level, of course,
it's whacked out because you know, then you get if
you're a spiritual person, I don't see how you can

(24:56):
possibly be okay with the cloning because of your spiritual
person And then there are some really troubling questions about
you know, creating you know, man creating life rather than
life being divined. If there's a soul, will the soul inhabit?
Will the soul deign to come back and inhabit the clone?

(25:17):
And if not, you know what do you have? You
basically have a robot.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
This episode is brought to you by stink Bomb.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
This product, stink Bomb, is awesome for medical students who
are taking gross anatomy because the smell of gross anatomy
is terrible. But and it's not like gangarine smell. It's
more like weird, embalming chemical smell. But it's very very strong.
And working in the hospital, being a nurse especially, you
just smell people and all of their and all their

(25:53):
nasty fluids and cheese coming out of there in between
their skin folds and everything like that. So this product
is really awesome. This is my particular favorite right now
I'm holding it up. It is the coffee scent, so
it's really nice to just put it right underneath your
nose and smell straight up coffee instead of straight up gangerine.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
If you guys want to check out stink Bomb, you
can go to stinkbombodorblocker dot com and you could use
code MKD fifteen and get fifteen percent off of all products,
thanks stink Bomb.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Obviously, there's like levels of people's attachment to pets, and
then there's normal, and then there's just like this extra
I'm gonna get my pet cloned, and then there's just like,
you know, normal people or whatever. What about do people
have you ever come across like people demanding to get
buried with their pets? Like can a person be in

(26:49):
a pet cemetery?

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Sure they can. And it's funny because so it is
okay people can be buried in pet cemeteries. Not every
pet cemetery will do it. Of course, every pitts and
is going to govern themselves the way they want to
be governed. There's there's not necessarily in most jurisdictions, there's
not necessarily a problem with it because human ashes are

(27:12):
usually no longer considered like organic material. That's why you
can go out, like I can go out and I
can spread someone's ashes in the desert. I can't go
out and take the corpse and chop it into pieces
and spread it into the desert. There's a big difference
when it comes to the ash. So people can be
buried in pet cemeteries the pit cemeteries who do it
are not allowed to advertise it, which I don't think

(27:32):
is any kind of moral issue. I think it's just
I think the big cemeteries, you know, the big cemetery chains,
don't want the competition, you know, because they think it
would be really appealing to people to say it's like, well,
wait a minute, I don't have to pay ten thousand
dollars or a burial at forst Wan. I can just
have my ashes put in what next to Fwaffee and
the pit cemetery, let's do that.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
It's because it's also a much cheaper option, so they're
not allowed to advertise it. Many of them do it.
There's a very interesting story that the pet cemetery with
this happened at I did not include this in the
book because they didn't want they didn't want their name
to be It's not that what happened wasn't their fault,
but they didn't want to be involved in their name
too by consequence be somewhat besmirged. But there was this

(28:14):
very wealthy guy and he had commissioned actually this huge,
huge tomb sculpture of his cats. And he had four cats,
and they had all died and he had buried them
in this pet cemetery, and then he had made provision
after he died to be buried his ashes to be
cremated and his ashes put alongside his cats so they

(28:34):
could be together forever. And so he dies, the cats
are already buried, and they get a message from the
guy's sister. It's like, yeah, you know, my brother has died.
We want to bring the ashes to you so it
can be interred alongside the cats. So they had a
funeral forum at the pet cemetery, buried, buried the ashes
alongside the cats. And then about a year later, the

(28:56):
pet cemetery gets the message from the guy's of state attorney,
because nobly the rich guy got a high powered attorney
handling of the state affairs. And the attorney says, it's like,
you know, I've never heard from anyone on your end.
You know, I have the guy's ashes and we've been
waiting to bury them. You know, how do we arrange
this because this is you know this this these are
the terms of his will that he's buried alongside his cats.

(29:16):
And they told the attorney it's like, well, we already
did it. We already had a funeral for Hm and
buried the ashes, and the attorney says, no, you didn't,
because I've had the ashes all along. I'm the one
who picked up the ashes from the crematory. You know,
I've had the ashes in my possession ever since he died.
And they're like, well, we had a funeral with his
family and they buried the ashes, and those are not

(29:38):
his ashes. I guarantee you those are not his ashes.
So you can't see why the pet cemetery didn't want
to be named, because it's not their fault at all.
But you know, so they wound up not they didn't
know what to do, so no one knows to this day,
no one knows. And they wound up taking the other ashes,
opening up the Great Beginning and putting putting the second

(30:02):
set of ashes in with the first set of ashes,
and the cats. So there's four cats. They're owner's ashes,
and a complete stranger that someone picked up from the crematory,
and no one knows who it is. I can imagine too,
like you know the cats down there, like you know,
when they when they put the original set of ashes
down there, I'm sure the cats are like, who the

(30:23):
hell is this? Guy, get out of our gray. You're
not our person. Get out of here. So some guys
trap down there with four cats.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Oh my god. Yeah, that's definitely a problem with the crematorium.
And then somebody's missing their family member, I guess, which is,
oh god, what a mess. All right, So, speaking of
you were talking about cloning, which I think is probably
the most outrageous thing you could do when a pet dies.
But this is also up there, I know. So I

(30:53):
wanted to talk to you about this place that used
to live near. When I first met you, you were
living in California and and you moved over to the
desert and you were in Arizona for a while. Yeah,
and there's a place there that practices cryonics, which is
when they freeze your dead body with the intention of
restoring it back to good health in the future when

(31:13):
that technology is available. Have you ever heard of this
place or know anything about it?

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Visited this place? Yeah, So it's called Alcore. Alcore is
one of only two cryonic facilities in the United States
that actually stores bodies. And I was living in Tucson
and Alcre's in Scottsdale, and I visited al Cord. If
you call alcore and ask them very very nicely and
kind of pretend that you're interested in having your body frozen.

(31:44):
They will give you a tour, they will let you
in there and let you walk around, and it's very
it's very interesting. It really in some ways it kind
of it kind of mirrors the talk about cloning, because
it's really one of those like out there fringe. It's
really want to those out there fringed things that has
a lot of weird and ethical questions that come. So

(32:05):
the idea is that you know you've died, you've died
of cancer, and you're eighty six years old and your
body can't continue, and so they're going to freeze you
and put you in this deep freeze. It's like some
kind of it's like a I think it's a nitrogen
liquid nitrogen solution or something like ultimate deep freeze, and
they're going to freeze your body and then at some
undetermined point in the future, when and if we ever

(32:28):
get to the point that we can cure cancer, they're
going to take you out of the deep freeze, take
your DNA material and basically do do cloning and clone
a new body and grow you your own new body
as a young person and then put the brain inside
the body, and so you'll get to you know, you'll
get to start again in the prime of life. And

(32:52):
they have these big storage containers. There's some there're giant tubes,
and within each tube there are five seconds, five little
tubes within each tube. And so there are four tubes
on the outside for full bodies and they just PLoP
them in and then there's a center tube, a center
column for just heads. And so because if you can't,

(33:12):
if you can't afford full body freezing, what they'll do
is they'll just chop your head off and they'll put
it in the center column. Because which sounds really I mean,
you know, it sounds pretty far fetch. It's like, oh,
what now, you're just saving my head. But you know,
it's like, if we can get to the point where
we can clone an entire body and download your brain,
we're probably at a point where we can do it

(33:33):
just from the head alone rather than the body itself.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
It's so I feel like I about this one, and
then also the cloning, that it's just this science that
they just prey on people because it's so much money.
I was looking it up as far as because they
do it with animals too, Apparently they can.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, they've started doing that. When I was there, I
remember they showed me a cab, so they do have
some animals in.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
There, and it's like, okay, you could just freezing an
animal then we're not even talking about human but just
freezing an animal's brain can range anywhere from five thousand
to thirty two thousand dollars and then you have to
pay storage fees every month.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
To Well that's the thing because it's, first of all,
it's a it's a very expensive process because think about
the technology involved to permanently freeze a body and to
keep it frozen for you know, you might have to
be frozen for five hundred years. But well, seriously, I mean,
how long is it going to take if we ever
get to the point that you know, we can we

(34:40):
can revive these people. It's the The facility is interesting
because they showed me like the workshop where they cut
off the heads and it's a home depot saw. It's like,
nothing special, It's just like a saw that someone has
gone down to home depot and bought.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
So if but listen, some of my some of my
best topsy tools are from home depot.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
So okay, all right, fair enough. I mean I go
to Low's, but you can do it. The most famous
person who has ever been chronically suspended, and by the way,
a lot of people call this cryogenic, but I was
told at the facility themselves that the proper term is cryonic. Cryogenic. Technically,

(35:23):
I guess it means freezing them on like a microscopic level.
Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, they're they're very stingy about the terminology between the
both of them, and they want to distinguish that they
are different.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
It's cryonic, Yeah, it's cryonic. The most famous person so
there were rumors that Walt Disney was put into cryonic suspension,
but they do not have him there. If he isn't
cryonic suspension, it's there. The most famous person ever put
into suspension is do you know who Ted Williams is?
He was a famous old baseball player. Yeah, okay, so
Ted Williams is there. The lady told me that they

(35:57):
often have people who will like pull up like a
pickup truck and they'll jump out with like an autograph
Ted Williams baseball or baseball card, just take a selfie
out in front of like the Alcore sign to show
that they had like it's their version for Ted Williams
fans of visiting his grave. Oh my god, there is
a pendant to this story about Alcore, which is which

(36:18):
is really weird and I cannot vouch for it. You can,
you can decide what you want. Do you know who
Paul Allen is? He was one of the co founders
of Microsoft.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, I feel like I've heard of him before.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Okay, So Paul Allen was a successively wealthy man who
is one of the co founders of Microsoft, and he died.
He owned a property just south of there, around a
place called Madera Canyon. It's about an hour and a
half to the south of where Alcore is. And the
rumor is that the re he bought that towards the
end of his wife. And the rumor is the reason

(36:51):
he bought that property is he was setting up his
own chronic lab in Arizona at that property so he
could be frozen in like his billionaire her friends would
be frozen with him, and it should be serviced by Alcorbet. Again,
I can't. I can't promise you if this is true
or not rumor. I do a lot of hiking, and
I do a lot of exploring, and I've been in
those canyons. So when I lived in Arizona, that's all

(37:12):
I did was, you know, just explore and go hiking
and look for weird things. I've looked at that I've
looked at that property from a satellite and it is weird.
It doesn't look like a normal house. But you can't
approach it. I know one girl who tried to go
in there because she was really curious, and she tried
to access the property and she said a bunch of
guys came out like little golf carts with guns and

(37:33):
chased her away. So but but this is the story. Again,
I can't baucher this, but this is the story that
supposedly Paul Allen bought this property to create like a
billionaire's boys club croatic lab so they could have their
own storage pods.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
My question, I guess with the cryonics is like, let's
say you're eighty five, and the whole process of it
is very weird because they want to freeze you as
soon as possible when you die.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yes, well, yeah, to preserve the brain.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, And I under and I understand that, but it's
like someone from that facility kind of has to be
on standby waiting like that happened one time. I wasn't
doing anything with that, but one time I had to
do an autopsy. They wanted to have look at a
brain of someone that had MS that died, and they
wanted it like as soon as she died, and I
had to be like on call to take her brain out.

(38:24):
You know, it's just for research, it makes sense, but
for this it's just it's kind of weird. And then
they profuse your body with these certain chemicals that are
supposed to preserve it so it won't they won't like
get damage from the intense freezing and stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, but they don't want I mean again, I'm no
proponent of freezing some people, but I understand what they're
trying to do with getting you in the deep freeze
as soon as possible because they don't want to lose
any information from the brain or have you suffer any
cellular degeneration because they want, you know, because in theory,

(39:00):
they need to bring you back, so they need the
you know, they need the optimal material to work. But
there is one thing about this about the cryonics that
I think is really interesting now because we are at
the point, well, we can talk about this from a
completely different context than the way it was intended. Because

(39:21):
when it was intended, and by the way, they have
there as a relic, they have the first tube of
anyone who ever was put into cryonic suspension. It was
a guy in California who had built his own tube
and had suspended himself and like basically he invented it,
and he invented the technology and in his garage and

(39:41):
he had himself frozen in his garage. He like had
his his relatives do this, and this was the foundation
of Alcore, this cryonic suspension thing, and so they they
later took him out of that and put him in
one of their tubes. But they have that guy and
they have his his like primitive you know, home Debot
style tube you know, on display there as a kind

(40:02):
of relic. But originally it was really literally intended to
be Okay, you're gonna die, and you know, we're gonna
we're gonna fix your body, we're gonna or we're gonna
grow you nobody, and we're gonna put your memory in
it and your brain in it and you're gonna live again.
But now there is a more legitimate option, which is
that okay, maybe it's possible to take your brain and

(40:26):
use it as a hard drive and download the information
and let you live as you know, a cyborg, or
to let you live again as a computer program. And
that's a discussion now that people who are into croyonics,
that's a discussion they have to have with potential clients.
It's like, you know, they have to ask them on
the forms. It's like are you okay with living again virtually?

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Or you know, do you have to do you have
to live? Yeah, it's a weird discussion. Well unless you're
into like simulation theory theory and you think the entire
universe is a computer program, in which case maybe it
makes perfect sense and it doesn't bother you. But that's
a discussion now that people who are interested in chronics
have to have. It's like, do I need to live
again in an organic body or am I okay living

(41:11):
in you know, as an android? Or am I okay
living again as a computer program? Because that the idea.
I still think the idea that they're just going to
get get you a new body and you know you're
going to live again as a young man with all
your memories. I still think that's really far fetched. But
the idea that they might be able to tap into
your brain and you know, upload you to a computer,

(41:33):
that doesn't seem so far fetched anymore to me.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
No, it really doesn't. With technology and everything that the
way it is, it would just be some kind of
like high level AI thing or something like so weird.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah yeah again, but it also brings up a lot
of questions, uh, thought provoking and disturbing ones again and
mostly the question about spirituality. You know, it's like, because
you know you, if you're a spiritual person, you can't
go for it because you'd be denying that spiritual as
even exists if you're just going to live as a
computer progroom.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
I wonder too with these like who pays for all this?
If you're eighty years old and you want to die
and do this, that's fine, but you don't have, like
you can't have like your credit card lick linked up
to a subscription for the monthly fee, so once you die,
you have family, Like you're kind of putting this burden
on everybody else, Like how's that work?

Speaker 2 (42:26):
I think the way to do it and I've never
gotten into the financing, but I think the way to
do it, and the way I understand it is you
set up kind of a trust fund. Oh so, you know,
let's say it's like you have a house and it's
worth a million dollars, so maybe you sell that. You know,
you take the money from the house, and instead of
giving it to a relative, instead of letting a relative

(42:46):
inherit the house, you basically you're giving the house to
the cryonic facility and the you know, the cryonic facility.
Maybe they liquidate the house, they get a million dollars
in cash, they put it in a fund under your name,
and then you know, the yearly income, the yearly interest
from the investments winds up paying your storage fee and
then I guess if there's anything left over when you're revived,

(43:10):
maybe maybe you get a check at the end. You know,
this is nuts.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
This is like like a rich people problem. It's just
like something would never be on my radar. All right,
So earlier you were talking about that you went to
Korea to see you know, you stopped by there, but
but you were there over there a couple of weeks
ago because of Indonesia, Why don't you tell everybody why
you were in Indonesia.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
So there's a festival in Indonesia called Minine. It's not
it's not well, I should say. On the island of
Sula Wasi, in the area known as Tona Taraji. Ton
of Taraja is a separate culture on the island of Sulawesi,
and you can google this. Ma apostrophe is an accent
mark and E n E is usually how it's spelled.

(43:57):
And it's a mummy festival. And the people, the people
who live in the mountains of Taraja, they don't permanently
bury their dead when someone dies. It's a different culture.
And the big thing in live in Taraja is dead.
Like a funeral is way bigger than a wedding. Like
it can take years to get enough money even for

(44:17):
the funeral to say goodbye to someone. It's the funeral
is a big deal. And when someone dies, they don't
bury the body and they don't cremate it. They'll go. Nowadays,
they used to use natural tannins. Nowadays they inject it
with formaldehyde to try to preserve it, and they make
a mummy out of it and they put it in
family crypts. You know these above ground tombs and in August,

(44:40):
which is after the crops come in, you know, the
rice crops come in August, so they have time to
do different things. So now they have free times, so
they don't have to till the ground anymore. In August
kind of like late August becomes the time of the dead,
and so people will start thinking about what dead ancestors
they want to see, and it's like, you know, do
you want to see Mom this year? Yeah, let's see Mom.
Let's pull Mom at it. And so they'll take Mom out,

(45:00):
and you know, they'll unwrap the mummy because they're in
they're in a coffin and they're wrapped up in clothing
and fabric. So they'll take Mom out and they'll undress her.
They'll they'll clean her off, so they'll get you know,
little soft brushes and they'll clean all the dust off
the mummy and then they'll redress her again, and so
you know, they'll get her new clothes and they'll stand
her up and everybody takes a family portrait with you know,

(45:21):
the dead mother, and and you know, they'll sometimes they'll
even walk them around the villages. They'll talk to him.
It's a really loving thing. From a Western perspective, it
sounds like something from a bizarre horror movie, but you
know it's all done with love. It's you know, in Taraga,
the dead aren't dead the way they are here. They
still have some you know, spiritual and social role in

(45:41):
the family. And so they'll undress the mummy, they'll clean
it off, they'll redress it, they'll talk to it, everyone
will post her a picture with it, and then they'll
put it back in the coffin, and you know, and
maybe next year they'll take our dad or something. But
this happens in villages all around Taraja. I should also
point out that, you know, before the funeral, before the
official goodbye, they'll just keep the mummy in the house too.

(46:05):
So this trip I was able to visit a home
in Taraja where they have their mother grandmother. It's a
family compound. Who was the oldest woman ever recorded in Taraja.
She died two years ago at the age of one
hundred and four. And so this very old lady is
mummified in their house and she's just in there in

(46:26):
a coffin in their front room. And I was able
to go over and visit. You know, they're like, yeah,
can you bring a package of eggs. It's like, why
are we making mom let? They're like, no, it's for mom.
She likes she liked eggs. It's like a nice tribute
for so like we brought some gifts. We are some
eggs for the dead mother, grandmother. We were allowed to
go in there and talk to her and meet her.

(46:48):
They've got her, you know, in an open faced coffin,
and people will just come in and talk to her.
They'll leave little notes for her. There was like a
couple of little notes sitting by her coffin to tell
her things. And I was like, well, what does this
note say? And the guy's like, oh, oh, it's an
apology because we had to use the rest of her soap.
But I mean, like I said, from a Western perspective,
it sounds whacked out, but these people are also they

(47:09):
have a great attitude about death. They're not they're not grieving,
they're not crying, they're not angry. Because the dead continue
to have this role. People will always ask it's like,
you know what you're saying, there's there's been a dead
person in their front for two years. It must smell.
It doesn't smell. First of all. After two years, she's
basically like shoe leather anyway. And actually she looks really

(47:29):
good for considering she was one hundred and four. She's
been dead for two years. She looks great.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
It doesn't smell like, there's no smell. You don't smell
like even chemical or nothing.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
There's just like no, no, no, no. They use they
use formaldehyde and whatever else they're doing. It takes away
the smell, so there's no smell. It just smells a
little musty. That's about it. Because this is a woman,
you know, who's just been sitting there, not moving for
two years. It's just a little bit musty in there,
that's about it. The last time I was in Taraja,
it's because you know, in the United States, this would

(48:04):
be scandalous and it would be like front page news.
It's like family keeps family keeps mummified mother in their
front room for two years.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
It actually happened sometimes sometime this year. I remember we
did a story on Mother Knows Death about some guy
that was living with his wife's dead body for a
very long time.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it's scandalous and it's a sign of mental illness,
you know. And here they do intend to have a
funeral for her and to put her in a tomb.
It's just it's gonna take them a little while because
they have to you know, you got it. First of all,
you have to get buffaloes because you have to sacrifice
a buffalo, and you have to you know, build the
structures for the funeral in a buffalo. And Taraja and money,
it's like buying a sports car, you know, So like

(48:45):
the whole family's gonna have to agree. It's like, okay,
now we have enough money, and you know, now we're
now we're going to do things. So they said maybe
next year or maybe maybe by the end of this year.
Though the funeral four The last time I was in Taraja,
though they're so casual about this that I was. The
last time I went to this festival, I was staying
in a village in like, you know, a hut in

(49:05):
a village, and I had been going around to other
little villages in the area, taking pictures of the mummies
and you know, people cleaning their relatives and redressing them.
And the last day I was in this village, a lady,
a girl walks in and you know, cause I had
gotten to know the family of staying in a family house.
It's like a home stay and you know, eating with

(49:26):
them and just hanging out with them. And she comes
and she's like, oh, yeah, so you're really into this
death stuff, right. It's like, yeah, yeah, it seems like it.
I mean, that's why I'm here. She's like, did we
forget to tell you that our grandmother is dead in
the hut next to you? I was like, no, you
never mentioned that, which is just like a strange thing
to forget to mention. It's like, would you like to

(49:46):
meet her? It's like, yeah, yeah I would. Let's go.
Let's go meet granny. And so we went in there.
She was just in shake it. She looked great. She
had been there for a while. They would come in
and you know, it's really cute because they really respect
these people. Like I said, be dead in Taraja isn't
like being dead here. Like they'll knock on the door
first and like Grandma, Grandma, we're coming in? Is that okay?

(50:07):
We're coming in. We have a visitor for you. You know,
they'll let her know so we don't just barge in
and stuff. It's at quite.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Did just thinking about you going there? Like I mean,
they they can speak English to you, like, how do
you tran how do you speak with them?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
No, A lot of people there speak broken kind of
pigeon English English. You know, you got to remember that
English is the new Esperanto kind of because of with
you know, with with music, with movies, and with television.
It's really hard to find a place where they can't
put together a couple of sentences of English. And also

(50:45):
when I go there, I hire a driver and they
don't mean a car, it's like a it's like kind
of like a dirt bike. Because the roads there are
really muddy. I had tried to rent my own motorcycle
there and the guy watched me go down one street
and flag me down and said, no, you you don't
drive a motorcycle in Taraja. You're going to get killed
on these roads. You're you're driving with this guy. So
I just pay a guy. I had a guy, a

(51:07):
great guy, on the last trip. His name was Arwin Uh.
He knew all the villages, he spoke, he spoke fluent English,
and so I would just ride on the back of
his motorbike and we'd go from from city to city
and he'd translate everything for me.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
It's really cool that they just they don't have a
problem with with foreigners coming in and watching what they're
doing like there, and they actually seem like they want
to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
They like it, they like it, but they're also not
they're also not burdened with it. There's not a lot
of tourism in Taraja like I would uh, you know.
I talked to Erwin one day and it's like, Okay,
were we going to that village. He's like, yeah, but
I heard from my friend who's up there that there's
a lot of tourists. All the tourists are there. I
was like, well, let's check it out anyway, and you
go there, there's like twenty five you know, that's not

(51:52):
a lot of tourists. It's not like showing up in
Paris in the middle of the summer, you know. You know,
I live in Las Vegas. It's like there are more
more tourists here at any time than residents. So it's
not a high degree of tourism. And when you get
further along, like if there were too many people like
at one of the villages, you know, and like trying

(52:14):
to take photos and trying to stick their nose into things.
I would just tell ar one's that good for another village,
and so we would just get on the motorbike and
go look for another village that was during the ummy.
Then always when we got to the next village there
was nobody there. It was just me as the only outsider.
So there's not a lot of tourism. They genuinely seem
to appreciate the fact that we're interested in them and
learning from them. Obviously, it helps if you treat them

(52:37):
with respect. And at this point, no one's going to Taraja,
I think unless they're genuinely interested in it, because you know,
it's it's a long way to go and it's hard
to get to. It also helps if you try to
understand some of the local customs. Like I would always
bring like a big pack of cigarettes, you know, and
the cigarettes aren't for the living, there for the dead,

(52:58):
you know. And I actually took some pictures like they'd
like a cigarette and show shoved in one of the
Mummy's mouths, just like you know, give him a sig.
I can't hurt him now, you know. So you know,
we would bring cigarettes or like I there was a
really touching series of photos and it's one of the
ones that I put on on social media, just this
father redressing his son. His son had died young of

(53:22):
sepsis this little boy, and he had died a couple
of years ago, and so this was the first time
the father had opened up the casket to look at
the son's army and redress him. And so it was
really very touching, like the tenderness with which he is
approaching his son. And they had buried his son, like
they had put some money in his hands, like some
bolded up bills in his hands as an offering, and

(53:42):
the bills had become really tattered. So I walked up
to the father and this isn't even a lot of
money in American terms, It's just a couple of dollars.
But I pulled out some new bills. It's like, can
I give you some new bills to replace those? And
the father was, you know, he was he was flattering.
He was very flattered by it. He appreciated that and
it made things good. You know, He's like, thank you.
And so he took the money that I had given him,
and he had, you know, put it in the sun's hands.

(54:03):
So you know, if you show the respect show that
you understand, you know some of the local customs, and
it helps, obviously it helps if you're making the offerings
and stuff. Uh, no one has any problem with having
your ound, No one that I've met.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
I think I now that you're saying that, especially with
the loss of a child and stuff, I don't actually
think it's as weird because I think in most cases,
especially if you lose any kind of loved one, it's
like once they're cremated or even buried, especially when they
go to a cemetery, it's kind of like an out
of sight thing and you just have memories of them

(54:37):
and you don't really ever get to have contact with
their physical body anymore. And it almost just to like
hug someone, even though it sounds crazy because they're it.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Doesn't sound crazy because they're doing it and it works.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's just I totally see that. And
speaking of your Instagram, I did want to push people
over to that it is it's your handle is at
hex and colt, so it's h e x E n
k U l T, and I want people to go
over there so they could see because you just took
pictures of all of this stuff. And yes, talking about

(55:15):
it is one thing, but actually seeing it is because
you're describing one hundred percent of what you saw. But
to see photos of people holding their dead children and
parents and everything like that is just really it's.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
It's the guy that I mentioned, there's a photo series
of him with the kid on Instagram. The one hundred
four year old woman mummy that I mentioned, she's on
there tube. The thing about the guy with the kid
that really touched me. That made it emotionally powerful for me,
because when I got to that village, there were a
bunch of people doing it and immediately gravitated towards the

(55:51):
guy with the kid. I was like, I just want
to sit here with this guy and understand what he's
doing and be at his side as he does this,
because this is this is the one for me. Part
of it was that that kid had not been prepared,
He had not been prepared with chemicals, He was not
in good condition. That kid's mummy was falling apart already
after only two years. But there was no sign of

(56:13):
revulsion on the part of the father. You know, the
father loves the kid and that's all that matters. It
doesn't matter that his skin is peeling away like a
zombie from for a movie. It doesn't matter to him
because love overrides that. That was one of the things
that was so powerful to me about that particular one
is specifically because the mummy wasn't in good condition and

(56:33):
it didn't detern father.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Yeah, it is I really could see that because that
I feel like that. I always think that that's one.
I mean because I have little kids and you're just
like that could that would just be the worst thing
ever to ever. Like you always think about how to
these people that lose children like live their life after that,
and I think that connection might be. I mean, you

(56:57):
couldn't do that in America for sure. No.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
But also the thing that I have to point out
about this in Indonesia is that the thing that gets
lost unless you're really there is the amount of humor
they approach it with, because like you start to describe
this and it sounds so somber, you know, so like
this somber, sacred thing, but they but they find it's
it's a joyful thing, you know, Like I said, you
know they were they were lighting cigarettes and putting them

(57:21):
in some guy's mouths, you know, like they were putting
funny hats on them and stuff. Like I remember the
last time I was there, someone came and like, you know,
there was this mummy of his kid just sitting there
in really bad shape, and the guy just stuck his
finger in the mummy's eyesock it, just stuck his finger
in the goo and just started laughing. You know. It's
like there's a there's an amount of humor with it

(57:42):
that we can't that's hard for us to fathom because
the dead are so dead here.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
It's really cool how we just live in this world
and how things are just so vastly different from one
country to another as far as how how we handle death.
But yeah, that I mean, when you talk about this way,
it's kind of like it's there's not I think that's
why everyone, especially Americans, are so they fear death so

(58:08):
much because it's very final and.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Well because we've hit it from them. Yeah, yeah, because
we've hidden it from But but you know, I think
there's I've always thought there are two ways to travel.
You can and this is why you go to Tragia.
You can go to you can travel to see how
much similar the rest of the world is to us,
or you can travel to find out how different the
world is from the rest of us. I don't care
how similar the world is to us. I want to

(58:32):
find out how it's different because I want to learn.
And that's why I go to places like that. And
there are plenty of places like that where things.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Are I mean your trips. I'm jealous of your trips. Well, come,
I'm I'm considering it. I would like to go like
next year if I could for real. I was telling Gabe.
I was like, Yo, we got to go on this
trip with Paul.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Well, Gabe would love this. Gabe would love this.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, he really would. So with your book, your So,
your book's coming out soon here, It's coming.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Out October first and September sixteenth in the UK. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
So you have a bunch of events and stuff coming up.
Do you want to tell everybody where they can see you.
You're going to do talks and stuff for just signings.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Yeah, yeah, I'm doing talks. I'm trying to set up
a link tree on this. My entire month of October
is basically taking up October second, Redlands, California, October third,
Los Angeles October fourth, twuson October fifth, Las Vegas October sixth, Phoenix,
October seventh, Salt Lake City. Then I get a little
bit of a rest spit well, not much at the

(59:35):
tenth in New York. The eleventh, I am coming to
Philadelphia finally. Then the sixteenth, I'm doing it online with
Mark Twainhouse. The seventeenth three No Nevada, the twenty second
wid Be England, the twenty third London, and then I
come back the twenty sixth at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California,

(59:56):
and the twenty seventh in Pomona, California.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Thanks so much for in here. I just I want
to mention too that people can pre order your book,
and they should because they could go right on Amazon
and do it. It's it's real easy right there. Yes, And
we'll put the links to all that in our newsletter
and on our Instagram and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Thanks for being here today, Thanks Nicole, Thank you for
listening to Mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training
is as a pathologists assistant. I have a master's level
education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am

(01:00:39):
not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed or treated
anyone dead or alive without the assistance of a licensed
medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts
are designed to educate and inform people based on my
experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions
regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science

(01:01:03):
is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this
episode are based on my knowledge of those subjects at
the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem,
have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please
contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room,
or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows

(01:01:27):
Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Thanks

All Episodes

External Exam - Faithful unto Death with Author, Dr. Paul Koudounaris

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Nicole Angemi

Maria Q. Kane

Popular Podcasts

Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}External Exam - Faithful unto Death with Author, Dr. Paul Koudounaris