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Short Stuff: Père-Lachaise Cemetery · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck Dave's here in spirit, and Jim Morrison's here in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: spirit too. The Lizard King, Yeah, the very lizard King
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: do they call him?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: That's so lame he called himself that.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Come on, Jim, Sorry, Josh, I think he was super cool,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: but that's just lame.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I agree, And well we'll slam Jim Morrison at the end.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, the reason we bring up Jim Morrison's
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: because we're talking about Perry Lache's cemetery, one of arguably
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the most famous cemeteries in the entire world, in no
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: small part because Jim Morrison's buried there.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a ton of famous people who will
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: go over in a minute. But have you ever been there?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: No? Never have?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, I have a couple of times. Both my
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: trips to Paris, my buddy Brett and I walked around
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: and went to Jim Morrison's grave as well. Quite a
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: few others did not leave any trinkets or anything, but
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: there were quite a few trinkets and marijuana cigarettes, jazz
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: cigarettes and all sorts of stuff like that, and a
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: bunch of hippies. But it's just a beautiful, beautiful stroll
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: because it's a beautiful cemetery.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently it is the cemetery that kicked off the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: gardener landscape cemetery craze, where they went from the old
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: medieval churchyards where they literally buried people on top of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: other people for centuries to building a cemetery that's super
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: spread out, that's laid out with like nice shrubs and
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: trees and flowers and winding paths and places to sit.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Even like it was a radical departure from what people
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: had been doing in Europe all the way up to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: that time. And it was I think first built in
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: eighteen oh four by Napoleon correct. I mean he built
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: it himself in.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: His spare time. He got a shovel, that's true. Should
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: thank our old friends at how stuffworks dot com and
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Nathan Chandler for some of this and then some other
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: websites we went to. But we Yeah, Napoleon eighteen o four,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: he said, you know what, let's let's build this thing.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It's it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be vast.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: The pads are even going to have little street signs
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: on them. It's going to feel like a little miniature city,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and that's kind of what feels like when you're walking around.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It's the largest one in Paris, I say, obviously, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: if you've never been there, then you may not understand.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: When you're in there, you realize just how big it is.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: But it's more than one hundred acres large and has
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: over a million interments.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. That's per a guy named Keith
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Egener who's a professor at the University of Oregon who
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: how stuff works talk to about it. He just happens
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to be an expert in cemeteries, including pair Lach's Cemetery.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that that I think you
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: kind of hit on that's worth saying is it has
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a kind of like feel to it, so much so
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: that like the place is segregated essentially into neighborhoods.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: It is, and segregated by religion too. I don't know
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: if this is something they still do. It seems like
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: an outdated thing, but maybe they still do it because
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: of history.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I have a feeling you get in where you
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: fit in in Pariloches because the cemeteries in Paris are
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: so full. Yeah, I saw that there's about five thousand
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: requests to be buried in any of Paris's fourteen city cemeteries.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, but only one hundred and.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Fifty plots available per year among all fourteen, not just Pariloches,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: but Parloches is probably in demand more than any other.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: The problem is is that means that the price of
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: those plots has risen commensurate to that demand, and Paris
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: is very frequently chastised for basically making it seem like
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it only wants the wealthiest citizens buried in its cemeteries.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I wonder if it's a case where you can just
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: out bid for these or what that process is like,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: or if it's like, sorry, you know, you know that
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: you're on a list and you can't buy your way
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: up that list.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Or you go to the trouble of poisoning your direct
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: competitor and didn't think it through because now he got
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the plot because he died before you did.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: That wouldn't be too hard in Paris, because you just
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: throw it in a croissant. Yeah, someone will eat it.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So who are the people that are buried there? Chuck,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: give us a few names.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Well, how about a cliffhanger. We'll take a sort of
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: an early break here, because you know everyone's dying to know.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk about some of those names right after this.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: All right, everyone, if you've been there, then you know
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you can see Jim Morrison, the graves that I went to.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: How about this, I'll read the ones that I went
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: to and then you can fill in the rest. But
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I stopped by Oscar Wilde's grave, very nice. I stopped
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: by Chopin. I love Chopin is in Frederick, I like,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, oh sure, let me see what other ones? Oh?
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I went by Edith Piaff's grave, and I think there
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: was one more on this list, Proust Marcel Proust, yep.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I went by that one. I don't think I saw any.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, I may have walked by and not realized
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: in my early twenties. Who is a door Duncan was
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: or something? But those are the ones that I made
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: a point to go see.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Is a door Duncan was a famous writer? She held
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Paris Salon's eves Montan eve Montane is there. He's an actor.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Marcel Marceau, the famous mime, is buried there. In his
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: head sown is a three dimensional bust of him. Locked
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in a permanent scream of terror.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Of course silent. Of course I've seen that one too. Actually,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: that sounds.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Familiar Marcel Marceau's Yeah, I just made that up. Though
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: he's not really screaming on his headstone.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Oh he's not. Okay, then I didn't see it. What
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: have I seen like that though? Or did I just
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: have like an implanted memory.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think maybe you did pick up
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: one of those jazz cigarettes from Morrison's grave and walked
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: around with it.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I've held it all this time. It's vintage.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Another person there is Moliere, who was a very famous
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: actor from the seventeenth century, very beloved actor in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: seventeenth century, and he was one of the people who
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: kicked off the Perilochet Cemetery because at first it was
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: such a radical departure from the type of burials that
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: people were used to in Paris that it was not
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: immediately popular. The other problem is that when it was built,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it was built at the edge of Paris, so it's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: kind of hard to get to. So to get people interested,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: they actually found Moliere's remains. Allegedly it made a big
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: deal out of burying him there to just kind of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: get some attention for it.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think your choices before then you mentioned
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: those churchyards, and they always had well not always, but
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: even back then they had burial space issues because at
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: those churchyards they were just burying people on top of
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: one another, and they wouldn't necessarily bury your family together.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And it just seems like burial has always been a
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: problem in Paris for one reason or another. I guess
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: space for sure.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the other reasons that it's so tight
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: right now is because in the churchyards they just bury
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: people on top of people. We were saying. But in
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Parloches and the other city cemeteries that followed, you could
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: buy a plot for eternity essentially, why they started to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: run out of plots.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: That makes sense. Here's a couple more names. Gertrud Stein.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: We didn't mention gertrud Stein. How could we not? Or
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Sarah Bernhardt. Yeah, it's another big one. Who is George
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Sarah Sarah?
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: He was an Impressionist painter along with the.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Delac Oh, okay, yeah, he's.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Also buried there. And I misspoke. I said Isidore Duncan
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: was held the Paris salons and it was an author
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and art collector. That was Gertrude's Gertrude Stein Isidore Duncan
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: was a beloved dancer in.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Paris, m and that was it was that after I
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: know they were both after the break. I just wonder
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: how many people just said, I'm done with this show.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So the name itself, though, pear Lachaise comes from King
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth Confessor.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Right, that's right, father, Oh boy, you need to take
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: this one, father Francois.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: And now you die de la chaise.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: That's die d ai exit. That's how that's pronounced die. Ok.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So his name father is pair is father like as
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in a priest also is a dad, but in French
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and Lachaise means the chair, so his name is pair
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the chair.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: It's pretty good.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I think I'm the first person in history to turn
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that up.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: To make that joke.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but it's a research based joke.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, like all of our jokes. Sure, it's a
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: big tourist attraction. Now, like I said, obviously, you know
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of people go because it's it's not only
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: a place where you can go see Oscar Wilde and
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: kirchard Stein and pay your respects at their headstones. But
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: it is a as all urban cemeteries are. It's it's
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: a bit of a respite. It's a bit of a
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: break from the hustle and bustle to stroll around this shady,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: beautiful park almost with dead bodies all over the place.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing, because yeah, I think how many people
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: visit a year? Do?
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: They say about four million people every year? That is
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: a lot. I mean, there's it's definitely, I mean it's large,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: but it's not like you're going to stroll for three
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: hundred feet without seeing another person. People all over.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you wanted to get there, you would
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: go to sixteen Rue de Repos, which means repose, which
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: means rest. It's very appropriate name for a city cemetery
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: street that it's on, right, And one other thing about
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it that really stuck out to meet Chuck was that
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: they also buried eb Lard and Heloise, who were definitely
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: worth looking into and I think we should actually do
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a short stuff on them. But they were one of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the most famous couples of the medieval era, maybe of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: all time, like a real life Romeo and Juliet, right
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and quite the same, but was still very tragic, but
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: they wrote letters to one another. I feel like we've
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: talked about them before. They wrote letters to one another
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: that were preserved, and these love letters are just so
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: amazing that people still read them today.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And that was another case of they were kind of
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: putting that out there too, like, oh, they're buried here
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: as well, to try and pump up interest.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. They brought them together in the afterlife by
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: reburying them together in a specially designed crypt.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: That's really nice. I would say that, I know we
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: did Hollywood Forever or did we do the other one
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: in la.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: We didn't do.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we did both.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, I said we didn't. Okay,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: just for us lawn, Yeah, that's my understanding.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, all of these We have Oakland Cemetery
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: here in Atlanta, which is very nice as well, and
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: all of these places are great, but none of them
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: hold a candle to that little cemetery in Woodstock, New
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: York where you can go see Levon Helm and Rick
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Danko's gravestones from the band. Okay, fair enough, my favorite cemetery.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I've got nothing to top that. So I think that short.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Stuff is out.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Stuff.
• 11:48
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• 11:51
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• 11:55
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