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Short Stuff: Modern Funerals · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry's floating around out there somewhere, and Dave c is
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: here in spirit. So the gang is all ready to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: go with short Stuff. Let's talk about funerals, baby, Let's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: talk about you being dead. Let's talk about all the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: good things and the bad things happened to your head
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: after you die. Yeah. Man, we should just stop and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in this episode because it will be the best episode
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: in the history of the show. All right, Well that's
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: it for short Stuff. Everybody, Short Stuff is out. Oh wait,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: we gotta stop for an head break. Oh yeah, that's right.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So we're talking about funerals, and we've talked
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a little bit about this stuff over the years in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: our Death Suite, and I think we actually did one
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: on things to do with the dead body way back
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: in the day. Oh yeah, we've talked a lot about
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. But the notion that we're tackling
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: today is that since the nineteen sixties and up until
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, Americans, uh and especially American Christian people
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: had one kind of funeral and that was largely dictated
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: um a k A. Shoved down our throats by the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: funeral industry. If you wanted to fit in in America,
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  Speaker 1: you had to to be presented upon your death in
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a certain way. That meant being embalmed, put in a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: suit or dress, whatever your preference was, um, and be
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: presented in a casket usually open for like your friends
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and family to dress in black and come kind of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: grieve over you. And it's very solemn, unhappy affair. What
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: was it When was the last time, not to get
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: too personal, but that you had to go to an
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: open cast it cast GT scene. I I don't remember, honestly. Um,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: it's been a while for me. Yeah, I genuinely don't
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: remember because it is kind of like old school, you know,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: but you know, it still happens every once in a a while.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember, Chuck, But I mean I have been
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: ever since I was a little kid. My mom was like,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: it's time for you to learn about death, and I
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: was like, I'm only two. She's like, yeah, it's a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: little late. Frankly. Yeah, all I know is the last
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: few that I've been to, and in fact, most that
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I've ever been to, which I haven't been that many.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I have always just been like, you know, like, do
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: you want to go up and take good by to
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: your grandmother? And I've always been like, no, I've done
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that in my head in my heart, so I do
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: not need to go see that weird, powdery, waxy figure
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that looks nothing like her in real life. Do you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: want to go smell Grandma's hair one last time? God? Yeah,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I've never been into it, and we're both kind of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: on record with that over our shows over the years.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: But uh, this whole thing started to kind of change
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  Speaker 1: with a book in nineteen sixty three that I kind
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of want to read now from Jessica Mitford called The
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: American Way of Death, where she really kind of exposed, um,
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  Speaker 1: the US funeral home industry is being not so great. Yeah,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Basically she she portrayed it as an entire industry built
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: around taking um advantage of people in a really predatory
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: way during a really um vulnerable moment, when they're grieving,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: when they're at their weakest. These these skills come in
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and start being like, well, of course you need this,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and the deceased would want that, and the platinum packt
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: ching cho ching cho ching, right, they got like the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the cash registered dollars signed cartoon wolf Eyes. Um. That's
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: basically how she portrayed and it was a really UM.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I think she wrote an article at first and it
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: got very little attention, and then it was turned into
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a book. I think she went on TV and it
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: ended up becoming a book and really had a huge
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: effect on how people viewed funerals from that point on. Yeah,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and I guess maybe we should just caveat this now
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  Speaker 1: and say, if we have listeners that work in the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: funeral industry, we're not coming after you. Here. This was
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a book that was written in the nineteen sixties, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: we realize it's a business for profit business, and up
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: selling is part of that business, and it takes on
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: a bit of a I guess, sort of an untoward
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: feeling when it's dealing with people while they're grieving. But
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  Speaker 1: that's also the business you're in. So I'm not just
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not slamming you if you work for If I
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: have one across the street, they're very nice people. I
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: live across from a funeral home. That's lovely. But um,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: having said that, stop it. No, things have changed a
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  Speaker 1: lot over the years. In the nineteen sixties, the cremation
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  Speaker 1: rate was three percent and which is astounding. And now
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  Speaker 1: it's fifty one percent, and it's going to go up
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  Speaker 1: to about fifty seven or fifty eight percent by two.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: It seems like yeah, and that that was a big
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  Speaker 1: effect that Mitford had with her book The American Way
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  Speaker 1: of Death. It was like like, you just did not
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  Speaker 1: get cremated before then, and then all of a sudden
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and she by the way, she she had a very
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: cheap funeral, including being cremated. UM. I read that she
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: spent less than I think eight hundred dollars in today's
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: dollars um on her own funeral role um. But but
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: because of this, it kind of made it like okay
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to not go through all this rigm roll and to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: not even like preserve the body. And I was reading
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: about that preserving the body, like there's this idea that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: um that had been around for a really long time.
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  Speaker 1: Like I don't know if it was so that you
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: looked your best when when God teld told everybody's staying
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: up in their graves and be judged or apparent Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But apparently it was Abraham Lincoln that really kicked off
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the American trend for embalming. UM. He had his son embalmed.
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  Speaker 1: He was a big devotte of embalming. And then when
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: he was embalmed and he made a whistle stop tour
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: after death, that was like the first time a lot
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: of Americans ever saw an embalmed body, and like it
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: basically started this trend that lasted for a good century
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: or more. Yeah, so let's take a break and we'll
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: talk about kind of how this cultural shift fit in
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: with all the other cultural shifts that were happening in
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties right after this. Now I'm not large
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: sk alright, so nineteen sixties come along. This book is
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: written in the early sixties, the countercultural counterculture arrives, People
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: start doing drugs, start exploring different kinds of spirituality, uh,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: including what they think about the afterlife, and sort of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: one of the natural things that happened was funerals started
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to change a little bit to compare, you know, to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: kind of lean towards more what we think of them
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: uh today in today's terms. Yeah, that was a big
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  Speaker 1: part of it. You know, this this idea of um,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you know, taking acid and thinking about being embalmed is
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: not they don't really go hand in hand, you know
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying it's a really easy way to decouple
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: yourself from the traditional ideas of funerals is to take LSD.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I only inject heroin into my body band exactly. So UM,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that was a big part of it. In addition to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Mitford's book, I think her book came at a really
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: like good time. I think it had an impact because
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the general um awakening of people in the movement away
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: from religion in a lot of ways, not necessarily away
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: from spirituality. But um, you know, there's this guy that's
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: interviewed in this house Stuff Works article who is the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: UM I think, the dean of religious studies at Emory University.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: So he's like, big Wood, you know what I'm saying,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Gary Lotterman, And he points out that, UM that if
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you are talking about religion, like religions bread and butter,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: it's basic business is death in the afterlife. So it
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: has all sorts of UM ideas and and um very
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: clear guidelines about how you're supposed to behave upon death
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: and how your body is supposed to be treated upon death,
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  Speaker 1: and if you're religious, you follow those. But if as
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  Speaker 1: a country America started to get less and less religious,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: those kind of constrictions fell away too. Yeah, and you
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: know the idea that, um. The other thing a big
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: thing that's changed and changed things funeral wise, is it
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: used to be very vague in your will, Like funerals
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  Speaker 1: were just kind of done one way, so when you die,
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  Speaker 1: that was expected. And starting in the sixties and definitely
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  Speaker 1: in the past couple of decades, people have gotten way
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: way more specific and they're what they want, like for
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: their own funeral arrangements, and it's leaned more toward and
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  Speaker 1: they've even changed the nomenclature from funeral surface uh to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: memorial service and then eventually the celebration of life, and
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: things have just gotten a lot less rigid, a little lighter,
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  Speaker 1: and more celebratory. I don't wear black, I want you
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to lay you know, uh, craft work, and I want
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: alcohol served. And I wanted to be outdoors and scatter
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: my ashes in my favorite dog park and then chuck.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're if you're running a funeral home these days,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: you're trying to keep up with this crazy changing wacko
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  Speaker 1: time um for how funerals are carried out or sorry,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: celebrations of life are carried out. Um, you you have
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: to kind of get more creative now than you you
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: did before. And I came across a blog post on
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: funeral one dot com or funeral alone dot com, depending
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: on how you want to say it, and it's I
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  Speaker 1: think like twenty something creative ideas for a funeral, and
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  Speaker 1: one of them, number ten, really sticks out to me.
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  Speaker 1: They now they point out, as long as it wasn't
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a tragic death, you can insert a bit of humor
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  Speaker 1: by um passing out mad libs for people to creative
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: out the about the deceased. And I think it's smart
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of them to caveat that as long as it was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a tragic loss, because that definitely does kind of change
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the tone of something even today, even in today's you know,
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  Speaker 1: whacked out alcohol fueled celebrations of life, if it's a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: tragedy that that led to the death, it's it's still
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: going to be pretty somber. This is typically for things like, um,
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  Speaker 1: you know somebody who, um, I don't know where their
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: death wasn't wasn't a tragedy. I don't think there's really
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: any other way to put it or create create Number fourteen,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: create a memorial hashtag. Okay, so they give an example
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: hashtag remembered Grandma Smith, but they've shortened Grandma to g
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: M A so it could also be remembered good Morning America.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I think it we settled on. I know you've changed
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: your mind since then, but you were going to be
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: shot out of a cannon or something. Yeah, And then
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I was always into this guy Burial, and Emily was
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: just like, I'll make you into a tree, but I
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: don't want to want vultures eating you. For God's sakes,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Guy Burial is pretty hardcore man for sure. Um. Yeah,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I used to to really be into myself, so I
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to be shot out of a can, and now
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I think I just rather be cremated and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: spread somewhere nice. Okay, So I've got one more for you.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: What you got um Number seventeen Celebrate Life fun with bubbles.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So you know, basically, what they're saying is the funeral
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: industry has gone into the wedding industry, wedding reception industry,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and said we could translate a lot of these to
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: these celebrations of life because they're both celebrations, and that's
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: kind of where we're at with funerals right now. That's right,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: there's no wrong way to do it. If you are
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: still into an open casket and that traditional funeral service,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: there certainly um businesses that can accommodate that. And we're
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: not gonna yuck anyone's yum even in death. No, we're not,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: unless unless you fall for number eighteen, which is to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: host icebreaker games, which it doesn't matter whether it's a
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: corporate function, a wedding or funeral. Icebreaker games are horrible.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Everybody across the board just don't do that. No one
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: wants you to go out like that. Well, since Chuck
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: said we'll judge you for that, that means that short
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: stuff is done and short stuff is out. Stuff you
• 12:26
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• 12:29
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• 12:34
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