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SYSK Selects: How Cremation Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
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Speaker 1: Y s K Selex, I've chosen How Cremation Works. It
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Speaker 1: came out back in August of two thousand and ten,
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Speaker 1: and at the time, death was a very hot topic.
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Speaker 1: So please forgive us if we seem a little irreverent,
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Speaker 1: a little overenthusiastic when we're talking about this. But it's
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Speaker 1: a really interesting episode and I still stand by it today.
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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
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Speaker 1: with a full beard. Actually, yeah, do you know what
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Speaker 1: that would smell like if it caught fire? It would
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Speaker 1: smell like mayonnaise. It's It's smell worse than Mandaid's ever did.
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Speaker 1: Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell. Burning
1:00
Speaker 1: here or manx um burning Manis would be particularly bad
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Speaker 1: if you had hair on top of the burning. Harry
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Speaker 1: Manse the worst thing you can burn, So Chuck, hopefully
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Speaker 1: that will never happen while you're alive. It could possibly
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Speaker 1: happen um after you're deceased. If you're cremated like a
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Speaker 1: fellow named Ralph White. Who you know about? I've never
1:19
Speaker 1: heard of the guy you have to chuck. Do you
1:21
Speaker 1: remember that horrid webcast we used to have. There's a
1:26
Speaker 1: guy he was the president past president of the Adventurers
1:29
Speaker 1: Adventurers Club and not to be confused with the one
1:32
Speaker 1: from South Park. This guy, Um was a real life
1:35
Speaker 1: adventure and he was I think he was like a
1:40
Speaker 1: cameraman for UM a skydiving show called rip Chord National Geographic.
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Speaker 1: He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Ye Buddies
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Speaker 1: with the Jim Cameron, Yeah he was. He was second
1:52
Speaker 1: director I think on Titanic. Yeah, who was Jim Cameron
1:55
Speaker 1: was also in that club, the little Club in l A.
1:57
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I'll bet Ralph White got Jim Camer
2:00
Speaker 1: run in probably And are we calling him Jim now?
2:02
Speaker 1: I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis Jim
2:05
Speaker 1: or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was had a pretty
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Speaker 1: cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool
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Speaker 1: posthumous story, and that was he was cremated and his
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Speaker 1: friends were so dedicated and loyal to him that um,
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Speaker 1: whenever they go on to travel. Now, they take about
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Speaker 1: a tenth about a teaspoon or a tenth of a
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Speaker 1: teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains
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Speaker 1: and scatter him wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah, I
2:32
Speaker 1: think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um, he's
2:35
Speaker 1: in Lake Bacall. He went on a space flight. And
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Speaker 1: Ralph White's posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all the wonderful
2:44
Speaker 1: things you can do with a cremated body, which is
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Speaker 1: one of the reasons why people choose to be cremated.
2:49
Speaker 1: It's highly portable, right, and it's nothing new, Chuck. Cremation
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Speaker 1: has been going on for a very long time, hasn't it. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: we won't get into I mean, there's we could rattle
2:58
Speaker 1: off every country and when they started, but we really
3:01
Speaker 1: could because of this fine, fine article written by a freelancer, right,
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Speaker 1: Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but
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Speaker 1: was a really great article. Um, but it has been
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Speaker 1: around since prehistoric times. China has been doing it since
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Speaker 1: eight thousand BC. That's more than ten thousand years ago.
3:17
Speaker 1: More than ten thousand years ago. One part of the
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Speaker 1: history I did find interesting though and fitting since we did.
3:22
Speaker 1: Our Freemason cast was the Freemasons during the French Revolution
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Speaker 1: kind of push for cremation because it was the whole
3:28
Speaker 1: not anti religion, but just sort of mixing it up
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Speaker 1: with religion. No, they were anti Catholic Church, well, very
3:35
Speaker 1: much against the Church, and they were saying, if you
3:37
Speaker 1: have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb
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Speaker 1: up the because well because Catholic said you can't get
3:43
Speaker 1: cremated for a long time. Yeah, well it kind of
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Speaker 1: contradicts the whole resurrection thing. Yeah, you know, like the
3:50
Speaker 1: body's kind of gotta be intact. It's like the one
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Speaker 1: thing we can't do. You know. We can rise from
3:55
Speaker 1: the dead, but if your bird sorry, yeah, and you
3:59
Speaker 1: you don't want to come back and find that you're
4:01
Speaker 1: nothing but ashes, because you're going to be ticked off,
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Speaker 1: right right. Uh. The actual creamator, the cremation chamber, which
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Speaker 1: I like to call the cremator, even though it's not.
4:10
Speaker 1: It sounds like a crib star product from the Adventures
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Speaker 1: of Pete and Pete it does. It was invented in
4:15
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds by Professor Brunetti and Uh. It
4:20
Speaker 1: started in earnest in the United States in Pennsylvania in
4:23
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, when Pennsylvania is an non licensed state, still,
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Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Is it really Well, there's
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Speaker 1: a little bit of a scandal that we'll talk about
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Speaker 1: later that. Um. Apparently, the the crematory business, you either
4:37
Speaker 1: have fine upstanding people or like come of the earth, yeah,
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Speaker 1: running these places. Right, Yeah, let's talk about how this works,
4:46
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, Well I got a step for you
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Speaker 1: real quick though. As far as it's popularity, Um, in
4:51
Speaker 1: ninety three point six percent of bodies were cremated, and
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Speaker 1: just a few years ago that numbers at thirty and
4:58
Speaker 1: they expected to be half. Right. Well, there's a lot
5:01
Speaker 1: of a lot of reasons why, right, I mean, we're
5:04
Speaker 1: running out of land. Um. There's a lot of people
5:07
Speaker 1: who think that burials aren't so green, which is true. Yeah,
5:11
Speaker 1: um yeah, because they use like, you know, really nice
5:14
Speaker 1: woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining
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Speaker 1: the bodies, embalms, so it's going to eventually leak out
5:20
Speaker 1: all of those things. Right. We'll talk later about whether
5:23
Speaker 1: or not cremations green and the spoilers it's not sort
5:29
Speaker 1: of is, but it's not well it's not green, but
5:31
Speaker 1: it's definitely not green. It's not brown either, it's not black.
5:35
Speaker 1: It's somewhere between. So chuckers, you're ready to talk. Yeah, Like,
5:40
Speaker 1: just the actual process is pretty gruesome. Um. Initially they
5:44
Speaker 1: store the body in a cool room just to keep
5:47
Speaker 1: it nice and fresh for the cremation. Um. It's usually
5:51
Speaker 1: examined by a coroner and they have to like sign
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Speaker 1: off and say this is good to go, because you
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Speaker 1: can't exhume the body later on if you need to.
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Speaker 1: So no accidental death that hasn't been fully vetted, like
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Speaker 1: I imagine, they wouldn't cremate like someone that was had
6:05
Speaker 1: any kind of relation to a crime or anything like that,
6:09
Speaker 1: at least not for a long time. Uh. And then
6:12
Speaker 1: what happens is they remove some things from your body.
6:15
Speaker 1: If you have the following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis,
6:25
Speaker 1: or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject
6:28
Speaker 1: into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser
6:32
Speaker 1: or a radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff
6:34
Speaker 1: is good for for cremation, so they remove that from
6:37
Speaker 1: your body. But there's some things that can't be removed well,
6:41
Speaker 1: they could remove it, but they tend not to each
6:44
Speaker 1: fillings mercury fillings, yeah, jewelry and glasses like some people want,
6:49
Speaker 1: like you would be buried with your glasses on. They
6:51
Speaker 1: want you cremated with your glasses. Right. But in some countries,
6:54
Speaker 1: I didn't look this up, so I don't know what
6:55
Speaker 1: countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
6:59
Speaker 1: from touch anything on the body, right, right, you gotta
7:02
Speaker 1: do it how you get it right, that's what they
7:04
Speaker 1: say on the shirt. So you can buy I think
7:06
Speaker 1: in the gift shop. Uh. And then they put the
7:09
Speaker 1: body once it's been removed, these things into a flammable
7:12
Speaker 1: box like a pine or cardboard box or one made
7:16
Speaker 1: of hairy man. They slide it into the incinerator is
7:21
Speaker 1: already preheated, by the way, yes, to at least degrees fahrenheight,
7:26
Speaker 1: which is five degrees celsius. I think, off the top
7:29
Speaker 1: of my head. Um, and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta
7:33
Speaker 1: be hot. But that's not like you don't just put
7:35
Speaker 1: the body in and then it just burns. It just
7:38
Speaker 1: catches fire. Right now, they actually shoot a column of
7:43
Speaker 1: flame at the torso like a jet engine. Yeah, basically,
7:47
Speaker 1: So once the body's in what's it called the retort,
7:50
Speaker 1: It's called a retort. They slide it in there on
7:52
Speaker 1: the old metal rollers and uh families. Sometimes you can
7:55
Speaker 1: watch this process through the window if you want, and
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Speaker 1: if you're hinder you and if it's a Hindu cremation,
8:01
Speaker 1: you can actually push go right. Yeah, I guess to
8:04
Speaker 1: start the column of flame, right you just like so long? Yeah?
8:09
Speaker 1: So here ant tina Hindu. Uh So the door is
8:16
Speaker 1: sealed up obviously. Um, like you said, they aim at
8:18
Speaker 1: your torso and then this is what happens. This is
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Speaker 1: the gruesome part um as you would expect when you
8:24
Speaker 1: have a jet engine jet flame shot at your torso.
8:30
Speaker 1: It ignites the container initially, obviously, your body starts to
8:33
Speaker 1: dry out all that water that's in your body pretty quick. Yeah.
8:37
Speaker 1: I would imagine your soft tissue tightens up, it burns up,
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Speaker 1: and it vaporizes. Your skin discolors and blisters and splits,
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Speaker 1: just like a broad worth on a grill. Yeah, exactly.
8:50
Speaker 1: The muscle chars, it flexes, and your limbs actually can
8:54
Speaker 1: extend like your limbs are moving. I looked all over
8:57
Speaker 1: the place to find the discussions of about this stuff
9:00
Speaker 1: about like a body sitting up. That's the closest thing
9:03
Speaker 1: I saw was does a body sit up? I think
9:05
Speaker 1: it was a wicky answer, so that it has zero credibility.
9:08
Speaker 1: But if you're if your muscles are contracting or tightening
9:11
Speaker 1: or doing anything like, yeah, your arms can go up.
9:14
Speaker 1: And I mean imagine the people eight and eight thousand
9:17
Speaker 1: BC in China. They're like, wait, they're not dead, They're
9:20
Speaker 1: like yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush one
9:23
Speaker 1: time and I put him in and he started swimming again,
9:26
Speaker 1: and then I'd put him back in the tank and
9:28
Speaker 1: he just floated. So it was just like the water
9:30
Speaker 1: most and those well, no, I didn't flush it like
9:33
Speaker 1: I would when I put him in the toilet. He
9:34
Speaker 1: started moving every single time. It was weird. That is weird.
9:37
Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced he was dead though. Are he was
9:41
Speaker 1: by the time I froze him in a block of ice?
9:42
Speaker 1: You'll find out when you get to heaven. That's right. Um,
9:45
Speaker 1: So your muscles have charred and tightened, and your limbs
9:48
Speaker 1: are flailing about, and your bones, obviously you're the last
9:52
Speaker 1: thing to go, and they are calcified and then kind
9:55
Speaker 1: of just flake off and crumble into little bone bits, yeah,
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Speaker 1: and chuck. Uh. The bone that are uh or the
10:01
Speaker 1: stuff that is left are these charred bones that are
10:05
Speaker 1: really it doesn't take a whole lot, I think to
10:07
Speaker 1: pulverize them, but it does take an extra step and
10:09
Speaker 1: they actually do hold their shape. So you go from
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Speaker 1: a body in a box to like a charred skeleton
10:15
Speaker 1: is what it ultimately comes down to. And you either
10:18
Speaker 1: rake or sweep the remaining like bone material into something
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Speaker 1: called the cremulator clemulator, and that is the that's a
10:26
Speaker 1: grinder that grinds up everything and pulverizes into this fine
10:30
Speaker 1: grainy actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah. They described it as
10:36
Speaker 1: like um ash is sort of a weird word because
10:38
Speaker 1: it's not like like charred ash from your fire. It's
10:41
Speaker 1: it's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits
10:43
Speaker 1: of gravel because it's pulverized bone. Right, um. And it
10:48
Speaker 1: usually takes about two to three hours, depending on the
10:51
Speaker 1: kind of uh creamatory I guess whatever machine you put
10:56
Speaker 1: it in. Yeah, there's different kinds, right, and how big
10:59
Speaker 1: your bones are to that has something to do with
11:01
Speaker 1: it too. But also um, I found that it depends
11:05
Speaker 1: on the level of Well, there's there's something called the
11:08
Speaker 1: um Entertech four. You should go on to Matthew's crematorium
11:15
Speaker 1: dot com. They have specs and it's just weird because
11:18
Speaker 1: these guys are like selling their crematorium. Uh, and here's
11:22
Speaker 1: all the specs for him. And this thing is like
11:24
Speaker 1: state of the art. Intertech four is um and it
11:27
Speaker 1: burns body and no more than seventy five minutes. Really,
11:30
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That must have been the modern ones
11:33
Speaker 1: that they say are all like automated. Now, well they
11:35
Speaker 1: also sell them ones that burn the body in four hours.
11:39
Speaker 1: So it's like low end to high end. Okay, you
11:41
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Pay for what you get UM.
11:43
Speaker 1: And at the end of this whole process, you're gonna
11:45
Speaker 1: end up with about three to nine pounds of ash.
11:48
Speaker 1: And that's actually that's where it depends on your bones.
11:51
Speaker 1: They say it doesn't matter like how fat you are,
11:53
Speaker 1: because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I
11:55
Speaker 1: would think. So it's like your bone structure. Yeah, bones
11:58
Speaker 1: tough to burn, I guess. So, so chuck. These things.
12:34
Speaker 1: We said that they are preheated to about degrees right,
12:38
Speaker 1: but they get up to about two thousand. So you
12:41
Speaker 1: can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner
12:43
Speaker 1: tech or whatever you're building out of UM regular brick
12:48
Speaker 1: or somement or something like that. I think it explode
12:50
Speaker 1: the first time you tried to do this. So they
12:52
Speaker 1: specialized composite brick material. And actually, over time the interior
12:58
Speaker 1: will be eaten away by the heat and the expansion
13:01
Speaker 1: and contraction will actually lose surface. So apparently what's recommended
13:05
Speaker 1: is after UM the bricks lose about half of their width,
13:08
Speaker 1: they have to be replaced. Yeah, and it sounds kind
13:11
Speaker 1: of crude, but the way it's described in the article,
13:13
Speaker 1: and the way I've heard it described is it's it's
13:15
Speaker 1: sort of like a pizza oven. Yeah, they're made of
13:17
Speaker 1: similar things. Cooka pizza, cookad body, cooka body. So these
13:23
Speaker 1: things go for a two fifty thousand something like that. UM,
13:29
Speaker 1: and they use natural gas or propane or um propane
13:33
Speaker 1: accessories or diesel. I've seen UM. But they used to
13:37
Speaker 1: burn coal, and I imagine that was a real pain
13:41
Speaker 1: in generated body. Back in the sixties. I think they
13:43
Speaker 1: were still using coal. Gotta keep stoking that fire. Right.
13:46
Speaker 1: Another thing I thought was cool was UM, and I
13:49
Speaker 1: started thinking too. When you when you burn a fire,
13:51
Speaker 1: obviously you see ashes kind of floating all over the place,
13:53
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, surely they've got a you know,
13:56
Speaker 1: account for that when you're burning a body, and they do,
13:58
Speaker 1: they ignite a second flame in a side chamber and
14:03
Speaker 1: that burns off dust that's trying to escape the retort,
14:07
Speaker 1: and some of them even shoot water at the top
14:10
Speaker 1: to make sure none of the dust escapes out of
14:12
Speaker 1: the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing.
14:15
Speaker 1: Wet scrubbing. What else do we do? Oh, that was
14:18
Speaker 1: the a fluoride thing, right, keepscrubbing the inside of the
14:22
Speaker 1: and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah, my brain is getting too
14:27
Speaker 1: full these days. I too. We need to stop doing
14:29
Speaker 1: the show. And after it's all done, you can actually
14:33
Speaker 1: get remains, cremated remains. And I found that they say
14:37
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't call them cremaines. That's what the the
14:39
Speaker 1: c A n A says. Why they just say, it's
14:42
Speaker 1: sort of a crude thing that people non industry people say,
14:46
Speaker 1: let's just shorten it. And they're like, they think it's disrespected,
14:49
Speaker 1: so we won't say the word cremains. But you can
14:51
Speaker 1: have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if
14:54
Speaker 1: you want, but that's it in the United States. Yeah,
14:57
Speaker 1: you can't do it via FedEx or up Yes, or
15:00
Speaker 1: you can't if they know what's in the box. Um,
15:04
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find out why. There's no explanation on
15:07
Speaker 1: ups IS or fedexercite. They just say you can't, we
15:10
Speaker 1: won't ship that. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well,
15:15
Speaker 1: thank goodness for that, I guess. But um, the only
15:18
Speaker 1: thing I could the only suggestion I could find why
15:20
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do this, You can't ensure cremated remains. Oh yeah,
15:24
Speaker 1: that's probably it, which I imagine they ensure everything somehow,
15:28
Speaker 1: and they want to get hit with a lawsuit, right
15:30
Speaker 1: because people get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so.
15:34
Speaker 1: The other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that
15:36
Speaker 1: they make sure to point out that it's got to
15:38
Speaker 1: be a sift proof box. You don't want like ashes
15:40
Speaker 1: leaking out the side, and you have to have like
15:42
Speaker 1: somebody's got a sign for it. Right. So usually if
15:44
Speaker 1: you don't get an urn or whatever, when when you
15:47
Speaker 1: get your cremated remains, Um, the crematorium will have them
15:52
Speaker 1: in like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic
15:55
Speaker 1: line box designed to hold this kind of thing, right, Yeah,
15:59
Speaker 1: and they're maybe just like very small remnants of other
16:03
Speaker 1: people with your remains. Like they do the best job
16:06
Speaker 1: they can. They burn one body at a time. Um,
16:08
Speaker 1: like you know, if you're on the up and up,
16:10
Speaker 1: as a good cremator should be. But inevitably, when you're
16:14
Speaker 1: talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might
16:16
Speaker 1: be a little bit of Joe mixed in with Harry,
16:18
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. Well, I know what
16:20
Speaker 1: you mean, so chuck it. Also, I guess the industry
16:24
Speaker 1: standard is just like you don't want to switch babies
16:27
Speaker 1: in the hospital at the other end of life, you
16:30
Speaker 1: don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. So
16:34
Speaker 1: apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like a
16:37
Speaker 1: metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your person
16:40
Speaker 1: so that when you're when you're melted down, this thing
16:43
Speaker 1: is still there so you can be identified. Um, you've
16:46
Speaker 1: got paperwork that goes with you from the moment you
16:49
Speaker 1: come to the crematorium of the moment you leave. That's
16:51
Speaker 1: supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
16:56
Speaker 1: and there's basically all this is supposed to avoid a
16:59
Speaker 1: mix up, right, You're supposed to It doesn't always, especially
17:03
Speaker 1: when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the up
17:08
Speaker 1: and up, as you said. And there's been plenty of
17:10
Speaker 1: examples of that, haven't there been. Yeah. I was a
17:12
Speaker 1: little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes on
17:16
Speaker 1: in some states. Yeah, only until the Tri States tri
17:19
Speaker 1: state crematorium scandal of I think two. Did Georgia close
17:26
Speaker 1: its loopholes and now all crematoriums have to be licensed
17:29
Speaker 1: by the state. Yeah, in Georgia. But and and I
17:31
Speaker 1: actually got a different number here she said, twenty three
17:34
Speaker 1: of the fifty states license, I've actually got only eight
17:37
Speaker 1: do not license, is what I found. Oh well, that's
17:40
Speaker 1: that's cuttering. But if you look all of these, um,
17:44
Speaker 1: the examples in this article are in the two thousands.
17:48
Speaker 1: So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
17:52
Speaker 1: and crematorium regulation reform. I would say so because if
17:56
Speaker 1: you what happened in Georgia will tell you a sec
17:58
Speaker 1: But if you see this on the news and you're
18:00
Speaker 1: in like Pennsylvania, they don't want that kind of news.
18:04
Speaker 1: Hitting their state, so I would imagine it probably spurred
18:07
Speaker 1: some some action Pennsylvania, Bud I did. We'll talk about
18:11
Speaker 1: the Georgia guy first, Mary Brent Marsh, Yeah, pleaded guilty
18:16
Speaker 1: and apologized. Yeah, he he owned a CREMATORI UM in
18:21
Speaker 1: Noble Georgia, and neither Chuck Nora, I know where that is,
18:24
Speaker 1: so don't ask. UM. I think it's a probably in
18:28
Speaker 1: the north west, because it's where Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama
18:33
Speaker 1: come together, which is why you call it try state crematorium.
18:35
Speaker 1: He was serving all three states, UM, and in all
18:38
Speaker 1: three states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically
18:43
Speaker 1: half buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke
18:48
Speaker 1: down and they just never got it fixed. Yeah, the
18:50
Speaker 1: incinerator broke and so I think three d and thirty
18:54
Speaker 1: six bodies in total were found and UM I found
18:59
Speaker 1: the Originally they could only charge him with accepting money
19:04
Speaker 1: and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no
19:07
Speaker 1: there was no law in the books. They hit him
19:08
Speaker 1: with some other stuff though I think it must have
19:11
Speaker 1: come out after this article. He was actually charged with
19:13
Speaker 1: almost eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse,
19:18
Speaker 1: so they actually charging with stealing these corpses. You don't
19:21
Speaker 1: want to go to prison within an abuse of a
19:23
Speaker 1: corpse wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah,
19:26
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to eight thousand years in prison
19:29
Speaker 1: and UM plea bargain that down to twelve years. Somehow
19:34
Speaker 1: did you say eight thousand years? That was almost a
19:37
Speaker 1: spit take that you were drinking your deep drink and
19:41
Speaker 1: you almost fit it out. Uh So yeah, eight thousand
19:44
Speaker 1: down to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him.
19:47
Speaker 1: Um there was a thirty six million dollar settlement from
19:50
Speaker 1: fifty eight funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky,
19:53
Speaker 1: so they sued the funeral homes and then they brought
19:56
Speaker 1: a suit, an eighty million dollar civil suits settlement against um,
20:01
Speaker 1: this guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't
20:04
Speaker 1: have that kind of does, so they're probably gonna do
20:06
Speaker 1: what happens when that happens, which is you go after
20:08
Speaker 1: the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
20:11
Speaker 1: guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
20:15
Speaker 1: He didn't have eighty millions. He's got three bodies in
20:19
Speaker 1: his backyard. But yeah, so he's uh he's in jail
20:22
Speaker 1: right now. As far as yeah, almost for eight thousand years.
20:26
Speaker 1: That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that
20:28
Speaker 1: to happen. Probably it did. In two thousand five. What
20:32
Speaker 1: happened there There was a guy who ran a crematorium
20:35
Speaker 1: and he had a he had a deal with the
20:37
Speaker 1: local women's hospital to cremate the remains of pre term babies,
20:43
Speaker 1: basically aborted fetuses. This guy's job was to incinerate him.
20:47
Speaker 1: It's probably not a fun contract to sign. No, even
20:50
Speaker 1: if that's the way you make your money, you can't
20:52
Speaker 1: feel great about like closing that deal, right, yeah, yeah,
20:55
Speaker 1: you don't go out for a big fat steak um
20:58
Speaker 1: the thor and he's I guess we're tipped off. And
21:01
Speaker 1: they went into his garage and found in boxes the
21:04
Speaker 1: remains of three hundred fetuses. Actually nineteen of them were
21:09
Speaker 1: post term really, so they were born children um that
21:14
Speaker 1: he was supposed to cremate, and he didn't. But he
21:16
Speaker 1: could only get them on nineteen counts because they're unborn,
21:20
Speaker 1: so he couldn't. They weren't technically human beings under the
21:24
Speaker 1: eyes of the loss, so he didn't get anything for those.
21:26
Speaker 1: But for the nineteen he he got in some trouble
21:29
Speaker 1: in his body. I don't know, but he had him
21:31
Speaker 1: in boxes in his garage to which is apparently the
21:33
Speaker 1: m O of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah, I hope
21:37
Speaker 1: they threw the book at him. Oh yeah, I'm sure
21:39
Speaker 1: they did. That makes me angry. Uh can't you tell
21:41
Speaker 1: how angry at him? Um? In Lake Elson or California,
21:44
Speaker 1: Josh in two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was
21:48
Speaker 1: selling body parts for medical research, like heads to people,
21:53
Speaker 1: which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
21:57
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison and
22:00
Speaker 1: does say just say Prisson. And then in Mississippi, Uh,
22:04
Speaker 1: there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who
22:09
Speaker 1: was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
22:13
Speaker 1: them into trash bends. And he was found guilty and
22:15
Speaker 1: put in jail to Yeah did you say that, um Marie,
22:18
Speaker 1: Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement. I
22:22
Speaker 1: didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah,
22:24
Speaker 1: Because I mean it's not like he was just like,
22:25
Speaker 1: oh I got nothing and they burned up entirely. He
22:28
Speaker 1: was like, here's some cement. And an urn. Thanks for
22:31
Speaker 1: the money. Yeah, I understand that guys incinerator burning and
22:34
Speaker 1: maybe not having the money to fix it, But I
22:36
Speaker 1: bet you anything he may have made enough money to
22:40
Speaker 1: get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm
22:41
Speaker 1: kind of onto something here. We don't actually have to
22:44
Speaker 1: do this pure profit exactly, So Chuck, before we get
22:48
Speaker 1: into things that you can do with um, the remains
22:52
Speaker 1: of a loved one, right, can we talk about it
22:55
Speaker 1: whether or not it's green? I got a couple of
22:57
Speaker 1: stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a
22:59
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
23:01
Speaker 1: regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
23:05
Speaker 1: between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
23:09
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
23:11
Speaker 1: is biocremation is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before.
23:16
Speaker 1: What you can do with the dead body, Remember, it
23:17
Speaker 1: turns you into oil that's poured down the drain. That's
23:20
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, it is. So this has to be something
23:22
Speaker 1: in between though, right for the conscientious person who maybe
23:27
Speaker 1: kind of believes in and afterlife, wants to do more
23:30
Speaker 1: with this body that do you kind of believe in
23:32
Speaker 1: afterlife it's a vague knowledg. I wonder where you end up.
23:36
Speaker 1: You're trying to believe it's like a tick sucking like
23:39
Speaker 1: a hot dog pack. God. So, in two thousand nine,
23:43
Speaker 1: Reuters just doing this article on biocremation. They were talking
23:46
Speaker 1: about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green
23:49
Speaker 1: at all, Like you think about it. You're using tons
23:52
Speaker 1: of natural gas, not tons, it's hyperbolic, but you're using
23:55
Speaker 1: a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're
23:57
Speaker 1: using a lot of electricity oowth um. So apparently it
24:03
Speaker 1: releases a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty
24:06
Speaker 1: pounds of c O two just one body, and that's
24:10
Speaker 1: the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically
24:14
Speaker 1: power a five hundred mile road trip. Really so not
24:18
Speaker 1: not one and the same, Like these are two separate things.
24:21
Speaker 1: So it uses the energy to get you across country
24:24
Speaker 1: five miles and its depending on the size of your country.
24:28
Speaker 1: And it releases eight d eighty pounds of CEO two
24:30
Speaker 1: into the air. I wonder what that compares to footprint
24:33
Speaker 1: wise to standard burial. I think it's I think I
24:39
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I think it's just an entirely different ways,
24:43
Speaker 1: where I think maybe a natural or a regular traditional
24:46
Speaker 1: burial is more it's more polluting, like directly polluting into
24:51
Speaker 1: the into the ground and that kind of thing, and
24:53
Speaker 1: it's using up resources, where um, a cremation has less
24:58
Speaker 1: of an impact over time, but immediately it's a lot
25:01
Speaker 1: of input. It requires a lot of input. Gotcha, that's
25:04
Speaker 1: my concept of it, right. I wouldn't mind being burned,
25:07
Speaker 1: but I like the um. Which country was it where
25:10
Speaker 1: they like burn you on top of the wood by
25:12
Speaker 1: like the banks of the river. That's India. Yeah, I
25:15
Speaker 1: like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy,
25:17
Speaker 1: if you live in Indian and you're a Hindu, that's
25:19
Speaker 1: exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect
25:22
Speaker 1: seguated religion. And I guess so. Uh you said Hindu
25:25
Speaker 1: is a mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only only religion
25:29
Speaker 1: that does. Yeah, and it's uh, it's called um. I'm
25:31
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and give it a whirl here, uh
25:33
Speaker 1: antim sankar which is last right? Nice? You want to
25:37
Speaker 1: hit the other one? Uh antsd Yeah? Antist I think
25:42
Speaker 1: which is last sacrifice? Yeah, and that is those are
25:45
Speaker 1: one of the sixteen life rituals. I guess it would
25:49
Speaker 1: be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be corrected there
25:51
Speaker 1: maybe one after that, the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe,
25:55
Speaker 1: But though the I guess the smoke gets the body
25:59
Speaker 1: to the next life. I bet it's one of the
26:01
Speaker 1: last four. I bet it is a wager on that. Uh.
26:04
Speaker 1: And they, yeah, like you said, it's their hindu So
26:07
Speaker 1: they say, you dispose of this body and it ushers
26:09
Speaker 1: you and helps you be reborn into the next life
26:12
Speaker 1: when you're cremated. And while Hinduism is the only religion
26:15
Speaker 1: that mandates you have that's how you that's how your
26:18
Speaker 1: body is disposed of. Um. Sikhism and Jainism are both
26:24
Speaker 1: kind of strongly adorse it, although they don't require it
26:26
Speaker 1: right And Um, you were saying that they cremate people
26:31
Speaker 1: in India along the banks of the river. Most of
26:34
Speaker 1: their cremations from what I understand, our open air cremations.
26:37
Speaker 1: I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which
26:40
Speaker 1: is apparently is the holy city to be cremated in,
26:43
Speaker 1: and you are cremated out and open along the banks
26:46
Speaker 1: of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice, But they do have
26:49
Speaker 1: an electric crematorium. But since there's a billion people who
26:52
Speaker 1: live in India and all of the one electricity this
26:55
Speaker 1: place suffers power outages. Man, that's sad. If you are
27:00
Speaker 1: a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
27:05
Speaker 1: upon it because or outright prohibited, depending on which religion
27:08
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, Islam prohibits it. Yeah, They like they
27:11
Speaker 1: want you buried that day, the same day you die, preferably, right.
27:15
Speaker 1: So Um in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted.
27:20
Speaker 1: I think you can if you want to. But the
27:23
Speaker 1: among Orthodox and conservative Jews, the memory of the Holocaust
27:28
Speaker 1: sure still understandably smarts to the point where they're like,
27:33
Speaker 1: why would you want to be cremated? This is you
27:35
Speaker 1: know this, it's there's legacy is still around. So there's
27:39
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of Jews who don't
27:41
Speaker 1: want to be cremated, even though their religion doesn't prohibit it,
27:44
Speaker 1: right understandably, Um, Protestants, actually is where you're gonna be
27:48
Speaker 1: find some more open minds to cremation. They don't, you know,
27:52
Speaker 1: have any literature that says you should do this, but
27:54
Speaker 1: they're definitely more understanding about it. Than other religions, right,
27:57
Speaker 1: And we talked about the Catholic Church having a them
28:00
Speaker 1: with it because of its association with subversiveness towards the church.
28:04
Speaker 1: But in the sixties, the Catholic Church said, hey, we've
28:08
Speaker 1: never really prohibited it. You can't get cremated if you want,
28:13
Speaker 1: and apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger
28:15
Speaker 1: people really catered to the Catholics in the sixties. I
28:19
Speaker 1: found Canada says that of Catholics are cremated now, so
28:23
Speaker 1: that's quite a boost. I would say. Um. The Mormons also,
28:27
Speaker 1: they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it.
28:30
Speaker 1: And in countries where um it's traditional, they're like, yeah,
28:34
Speaker 1: please go ahead, But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
28:39
Speaker 1: yeah yet good point. Thanks. Um, Where are we now
29:17
Speaker 1: with some Can we talk about finally what you can
29:20
Speaker 1: do with your remains? I think it's high time to
29:23
Speaker 1: not what you can do with your remains, because you
29:25
Speaker 1: clearly can't do anything. But it's not what you can
29:27
Speaker 1: do with your remains, but what your friends and family
29:29
Speaker 1: can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to
29:34
Speaker 1: um keep you in and urn and they have these
29:35
Speaker 1: little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium, and they just
29:40
Speaker 1: hold ashes from what I understand, like your urn. Yeah,
29:43
Speaker 1: it's like a vault. So some people choose that that
29:45
Speaker 1: cost him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about
29:48
Speaker 1: your hero. I know you want to mention that who
29:51
Speaker 1: Hunter t Yeah, yeah, he was mixed with firework and
29:55
Speaker 1: shot out of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three
29:58
Speaker 1: ft cannon also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it's
30:03
Speaker 1: It was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this,
30:07
Speaker 1: and every anybody can do it, and Johnny Depth paid
30:10
Speaker 1: for the whole party, right, Yeah, And from what I
30:12
Speaker 1: saw it was if it was this British company, he
30:15
Speaker 1: would have paid about the equivalent of three thousand U s.
30:18
Speaker 1: Dollars for a large fireworks display. That's what they charged.
30:22
Speaker 1: As Susan mentioned money. Actually I did see the average
30:24
Speaker 1: cremation cost is about six bucks. Yeah, and the average
30:28
Speaker 1: funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand.
30:33
Speaker 1: Decided we'll say somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars.
30:35
Speaker 1: Let's but back to things you can do. We would
30:38
Speaker 1: be remiss um if we didn't mention to our nerd
30:41
Speaker 1: friends that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek fame
30:45
Speaker 1: was everyone knows this. He was shot into space. So
30:48
Speaker 1: was Timothy Leary. Oh yeah, that's right by the same company, Celestis.
30:52
Speaker 1: And they're still in business as far as I know.
30:54
Speaker 1: I bet they are. And then you get life Jim.
30:57
Speaker 1: If we've talked about I think again on the webcast.
31:01
Speaker 1: You can take your cremated remains and have them compressed
31:05
Speaker 1: into a synthetic diamond. You can have your remains mixed
31:08
Speaker 1: into paint. And I guess that's not so much you
31:11
Speaker 1: can have, but you can probably just do that. It depends,
31:15
Speaker 1: like there's there's there's actually a guy who does something
31:18
Speaker 1: called ash portraits and he does it just with the
31:23
Speaker 1: person's ashes, but he'll also mix it in with oil
31:26
Speaker 1: or whatever. Interesting, but he does portraits of the deceased.
31:30
Speaker 1: I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That
31:33
Speaker 1: would be pretty all. That's what I want to would
31:35
Speaker 1: be really cool. Uh what else can you do? Um?
31:39
Speaker 1: You can, Oh, you can become part of the coral reef.
31:41
Speaker 1: I know there's companies that do that. There's a company
31:44
Speaker 1: called Eternal Reefs I think is the big one. This
31:48
Speaker 1: is pretty obvious name, don't you know. And well they
31:49
Speaker 1: actually they make different sized reefs and what they do
31:53
Speaker 1: is they mix your remains in with cement and like,
31:56
Speaker 1: so the big one, it can accommodate up to four
31:59
Speaker 1: family members. So if your family went down in a
32:01
Speaker 1: plane and just feel like showing out for one, you know,
32:04
Speaker 1: coral reef, right, they've got you cover. It's like seven
32:07
Speaker 1: grand uh huh, and it's pretty big size and it's
32:10
Speaker 1: cool looking. I mean it looks like an artificial reef.
32:12
Speaker 1: And then you take it out and dump it overboard. Yeah,
32:14
Speaker 1: fish live amongst your your family members. Who I really
32:18
Speaker 1: really hope loved scuba diving exactly. Do you remember Keith
32:21
Speaker 1: Richards a couple of years ago, he's still alive, well
32:25
Speaker 1: now his dad passed away, and he said that he
32:27
Speaker 1: snorted his father with cocaine and then I mean apparently
32:31
Speaker 1: said this interview. Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
32:34
Speaker 1: no, no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
32:36
Speaker 1: I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
32:39
Speaker 1: I think he did too. The sounds like um episode
32:43
Speaker 1: where this these people snort the remains of this girl yeah,
32:46
Speaker 1: I remember that one. I do have some stats for you, though,
32:49
Speaker 1: what people seem to like to doty percent to keep
32:53
Speaker 1: the ashes at their home, thirty seven percent burry the ashes.
32:59
Speaker 1: Do the scatter popular? I thought it'd be more popular
33:02
Speaker 1: than that, though. The most popular one is water scattering
33:06
Speaker 1: and number two is scattering somewhere on family property. Not
33:09
Speaker 1: really three percent are put in the columbarium. And you
33:14
Speaker 1: might notice, Josh that adds. Yeah, there's one percent that
33:19
Speaker 1: go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad, and I apparently
33:23
Speaker 1: that people who own crematoriums find it sad too, because
33:26
Speaker 1: even though after a set period of time and states
33:29
Speaker 1: that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we say
33:31
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal oversight
33:36
Speaker 1: for any crematorium comes out of the state. Um but
33:39
Speaker 1: in states where there are regulations, they still say you
33:42
Speaker 1: can throw these out after a set period of time.
33:45
Speaker 1: But most crematoriums, the up and up ones, will hang
33:48
Speaker 1: onto these things for decades because again it's a small box.
33:51
Speaker 1: But I mean they don't want to just throw it away.
33:53
Speaker 1: It's person and it's only one percent, so I don't
33:56
Speaker 1: imagine they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
34:00
Speaker 1: But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
34:03
Speaker 1: about some of the laws about scattering, because you can't
34:07
Speaker 1: just scatter anywhere. No, the National Park Service has no
34:12
Speaker 1: official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to
34:16
Speaker 1: each individual park. But most of the parks say unless
34:19
Speaker 1: there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
34:23
Speaker 1: you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
34:26
Speaker 1: kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
34:29
Speaker 1: goes on, and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
34:33
Speaker 1: are like how are you going to tell the difference
34:35
Speaker 1: between that and like a fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um.
34:40
Speaker 1: But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
34:44
Speaker 1: doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
34:46
Speaker 1: would probably want to go, like avoid the National park
34:48
Speaker 1: and just stay in the National Forest or go to
34:51
Speaker 1: your state park that was a beloved state park, because
34:53
Speaker 1: they're a little more lax than the national parks. Right.
34:56
Speaker 1: The if you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, um,
35:00
Speaker 1: the e p A says you've gotta be three miles
35:02
Speaker 1: away from the coastline, right, very prudish. California is like,
35:06
Speaker 1: that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
35:09
Speaker 1: it's five feet right yeah, pretty close. Um. And people
35:14
Speaker 1: don't always follow regulations, right Yeah. So you want to
35:19
Speaker 1: tell about the Cubs fan. Yeah, this is kind of
35:22
Speaker 1: a nice story. Um. Steve Goodman died of lukemi in
35:26
Speaker 1: die hard Cubbies fans sadly did not get to see
35:28
Speaker 1: the Cubs winner World Series as likely neither will you
35:32
Speaker 1: and I? Um, And four years later he his buddy
35:36
Speaker 1: snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into
35:39
Speaker 1: the wind out over the field. Pretty cool. That is
35:42
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story?
35:45
Speaker 1: His body was stolen? Right yeah? His friends, Um, he
35:48
Speaker 1: said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on
35:51
Speaker 1: cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park, right. Um, and
35:55
Speaker 1: his parents found out he was dead and had his
35:57
Speaker 1: bodyship back for a private funeral, and his friends found
36:01
Speaker 1: out that they weren't going to be invited, so they
36:03
Speaker 1: stole him, right and uh took him out to Joshua
36:08
Speaker 1: Tree and opened the casket through some gasolene on him
36:10
Speaker 1: and set him on fire five gallons of gas right
36:13
Speaker 1: and it didn't work because we've said what it takes.
36:17
Speaker 1: So he was half cremated by the time the cops
36:20
Speaker 1: showed up. He's sort of melty and just like Georgia.
36:22
Speaker 1: Back then, there was nothing about There were no penalties
36:26
Speaker 1: for stealing a corpse, so they got them for theft
36:28
Speaker 1: of a casket. I think that was Did you see
36:30
Speaker 1: that movie? Johnny Knoxville played the guy that his buddy.
36:34
Speaker 1: It's not very good. I did stay in that hotel though,
36:36
Speaker 1: Actually I mentioned meant to mention that in the room
36:38
Speaker 1: sixty six. Yeah, the Joshua tree in cool. Not in
36:41
Speaker 1: his room though. And before we move on from Scattering
36:44
Speaker 1: josh we have to mention, because we like to mention
36:46
Speaker 1: our movies. The excellent, excellent scene from The Big Lebowski,
36:50
Speaker 1: the scattering scene in the end of the thing when
36:53
Speaker 1: all of them just blew back all over them. But
36:56
Speaker 1: John Coodman, it was Steve assuming that died, right, I think,
36:59
Speaker 1: and he he threw him out in the window back
37:02
Speaker 1: in their faces over the ocean. It was good. It's
37:04
Speaker 1: very good, Uh, Chuck. If I am dead and I'm
37:09
Speaker 1: being cremated and I'm part of of the population, what
37:13
Speaker 1: country am I am? Uh, Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland. I've been cremated,
37:20
Speaker 1: and I am part of just a meager three percent
37:24
Speaker 1: of the population. What country am I in? Ghana? That's right,
37:28
Speaker 1: that's right, and in between are actually higher than that.
37:32
Speaker 1: Hong Kong is places like the Czech Republic in Singapore
37:37
Speaker 1: and the UK are sort of mid to high seventies.
37:40
Speaker 1: China and the the Netherlands are about half, and Italy, as
37:45
Speaker 1: far as European countries was I'm sorry, Ireland was six percent,
37:50
Speaker 1: in Italy was seven percent. And I bet that has
37:51
Speaker 1: something to do with the Catholic thing, I would think so.
37:53
Speaker 1: For sure they think the US is about thirty right, Yeah,
37:59
Speaker 1: thanks for a large Protestant population and Hindu. And there's
38:04
Speaker 1: also pet cremation. Yeah, if you if you want to
38:06
Speaker 1: get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much
38:10
Speaker 1: nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries the
38:14
Speaker 1: latest stat get into pet cremation. And the people at
38:19
Speaker 1: um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
38:25
Speaker 1: They do humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
38:30
Speaker 1: different types. So when you could fit a horse in
38:32
Speaker 1: two and one are made for like dogs or something right.
38:35
Speaker 1: You know, I would support or I would I would
38:37
Speaker 1: be more likely to go into one of those because
38:40
Speaker 1: they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are
38:43
Speaker 1: a little um dodgy. Yeah, they're totally unregulated. Yeah, so
38:47
Speaker 1: they're just like burning your pets together and you don't
38:51
Speaker 1: know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
38:54
Speaker 1: enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, and
38:56
Speaker 1: then you probably want your pets ashes, right, so you
38:59
Speaker 1: can handle cremation at home. Just dig a shallow hole
39:02
Speaker 1: in your backyard to serve as a firebreak, and do
39:05
Speaker 1: your neighbor is a favor and shave your pet first
39:08
Speaker 1: before you set it on fire. We buried my animals
39:11
Speaker 1: growing up, my pets, you know, we have I think
39:14
Speaker 1: in my old house we probably had like four or
39:16
Speaker 1: five pets buried out in the woods. But we lived
39:18
Speaker 1: on like two acres in the woods. It wasn't like
39:20
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood. You didn't set any on fire. No, no, no, no,
39:23
Speaker 1: Well that's it for cremation. Um, thanks for joining us
39:27
Speaker 1: for that one, right, Chuck. I think we've covered pretty
39:30
Speaker 1: much everything in there. Um, But if you want it's
39:33
Speaker 1: a good, good article, high caliber. How stuff Works article,
39:37
Speaker 1: not like the rest of these stinkers. Just typing cremation
39:40
Speaker 1: in the search bar the jazzy search bar at how
39:43
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com jazzy. I'm just Chinese stuff. We've
39:46
Speaker 1: been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I like
39:49
Speaker 1: Ubiquity search bar and it's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though,
39:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but it's Yeah,
39:55
Speaker 1: you're right, so uh, I guess it's time for listener
39:58
Speaker 1: mil Yeah, buddy. I got a couple of today, A
40:02
Speaker 1: couple of short ones. Um. The first one is from
40:05
Speaker 1: the Sonic cast and and it's a little old, but
40:06
Speaker 1: a promise this guy would read it. This is from
40:09
Speaker 1: Mark in Eastern m D. I know you guys won't
40:14
Speaker 1: read this on a podcast. Those are usually the ones
40:17
Speaker 1: I read. But I just thought i'd write to tell
40:19
Speaker 1: you what happened to me this morning and my frantic
40:20
Speaker 1: rush to get my daughter Ellie to a summer camp
40:23
Speaker 1: on time. I had to run out of the house
40:26
Speaker 1: without having breakfast. That caused me to have to stop
40:28
Speaker 1: at a fast food joint get one of those gross,
40:30
Speaker 1: greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's bad enough, but
40:34
Speaker 1: it gets worse. As I drive from the driveway, I
40:36
Speaker 1: pushed play on the iPad and start listening to the
40:38
Speaker 1: Show and Saunas, where I started hearing about butt funk
40:42
Speaker 1: Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and having to visualize
40:46
Speaker 1: a naked Vigo Mortensen fighting in a sauna made my
40:49
Speaker 1: otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things one for the books.
40:54
Speaker 1: By the way, the podcast that I queued up next
40:56
Speaker 1: was all about Taste Buds, so now I know how
40:58
Speaker 1: I was able to taste my sandwich in the first place.
41:01
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, guys. That's from Mark. If you do
41:03
Speaker 1: happen to read this on the on the air, would
41:06
Speaker 1: you would make Ellie and Lydia's day? And those are
41:08
Speaker 1: his daughters, Hey, Ellie and Lydia, So Mark, that is
41:11
Speaker 1: for you, my friend. And then this one I didn't
41:14
Speaker 1: you think about, but it's kind of fitting. Do you
41:16
Speaker 1: remember when I told you about the little girl in Kent,
41:19
Speaker 1: Washington who named her Beta Fish Chuckers Jr. I saw
41:22
Speaker 1: this one. Chucker's Junior is no more. Monday night, I
41:26
Speaker 1: put Chuckers Junior inside his small bowl so I could
41:29
Speaker 1: clean his bowl in the morning. Yesterday morning, I went
41:31
Speaker 1: to make my breakfast in front of his bowl as usual.
41:34
Speaker 1: But I to make my breakfast, I thought she had
41:37
Speaker 1: might make his, which would be pretty cute. I felt
41:40
Speaker 1: something sticky on my foot and I looked down into
41:43
Speaker 1: my horror. I saw Chucker's junior stuck to my foot,
41:46
Speaker 1: all dried out, and that it's horrible. Apparently Beta's had
41:49
Speaker 1: been known to jump out of their bowls, and I
41:51
Speaker 1: guess Chucker's junior jump pretty far because his bowl was
41:53
Speaker 1: a good foot away from the edge of the counter.
41:56
Speaker 1: Yet he still ended up on the floor. My theory
41:58
Speaker 1: is that he probably flopped around something onto the floor. Um,
42:03
Speaker 1: can't you just let the little girl think her Beta
42:06
Speaker 1: fish is special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's Junior special. Katie. Also,
42:10
Speaker 1: I found out that the bowl that he was in
42:12
Speaker 1: had only a centimeter from the centimeter. Where is she from, Liberia? Yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: she's from Kent, Washington. Um, she said, you're usually supposed
42:20
Speaker 1: to leave about an inch between the top of the thing.
42:23
Speaker 1: I guess to make it harder to jump out. It's
42:25
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, One centimeter equals one inch, I think,
42:27
Speaker 1: so she she ends with this. At least Chucker's junior
42:32
Speaker 1: died a healthy fish. That's from Katie Thirt in Kent, Washington.
42:37
Speaker 1: Well thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent. I'm sorry
42:41
Speaker 1: about your breakfast sandwich, although I'm hungry now. It wasn't Kent,
42:45
Speaker 1: it was Marked. She was from Kent. Oh. Yeah, that's
42:47
Speaker 1: all right though, Mark, sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Can't.
42:50
Speaker 1: I have no idea who you are. If you have
42:52
Speaker 1: a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
42:55
Speaker 1: so wrap it up in an email and send it
42:57
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
43:05
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
43:08
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
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Speaker 1: our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home
43:14
Speaker 1: page