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What can be done with a dead body? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
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  Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, I'm welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast this Stuff you Should Know? And I'm Josh.
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  Speaker 1: And there's Chuck Nice Chuck good one. Hi Josh, alright, Hi,
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  Speaker 1: I'm here. I understand here all right, Chuck. Um My.
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  Speaker 1: One of my heroes, one of my idols of all time,
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  Speaker 1: a guy named Dr Hunter Wis Thompson. I knew that's
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  Speaker 1: where you're going. He actually stole one of my ideas
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  Speaker 1: years and I'm not kidding years before. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: if you actually stole it, but years before, Hunter Thompson
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  Speaker 1: had his ashes um shot out of a cannon at
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  Speaker 1: Woody Creek, Colorado. Too much fanfare? Have you ever seen
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  Speaker 1: the video of it? Now? I'm really dying to see
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  Speaker 1: that documentary. It's awesome. That's really great. Um. I want
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  Speaker 1: my body, not ashes body shot out of a cannon
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  Speaker 1: like a year I figured human cannibaal yeah, exactly, but
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  Speaker 1: a lifeless one that just kind of goes in over
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  Speaker 1: on like a prairie or a plane in like Kansas.
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  Speaker 1: I figure, all I need is a really good attorney
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  Speaker 1: and it really corrupt sheriff and I can get it
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  Speaker 1: done right. Well, what's the idea that you get shot
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  Speaker 1: out and just land on the ground and then let
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  Speaker 1: the carrion crows take care of me? That's nice. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's a way to go. Um And you want to
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  Speaker 1: hear some other ways again? Sure, okay. Apparently you can
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  Speaker 1: do a lot with human cremaines, cremated remains. There's this
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  Speaker 1: one company called life Jem and I actually think they're Swiss. Um.
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  Speaker 1: They will take a certain measure of you think they're Swiss,
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  Speaker 1: like they're not, like they claim to be German, but
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  Speaker 1: actually I'm suspicious that they're not Swiss, maybe Jersey or something. Um.
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  Speaker 1: They they will take a little portion of your loved
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  Speaker 1: ones cremines and they compress it into a diamond. Actually wow, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and it's actually fairly a real diamond. Yeah, you can
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  Speaker 1: do well. I mean it's a synthetic compressed diamond. Real
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  Speaker 1: diamond takes eons. This is like I guess maybe Cubics
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  Speaker 1: are coming something like that. As far as they say
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  Speaker 1: it's a diamond, the um I for a point to
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  Speaker 1: nine carrot diamond. UM it's on. You just send them
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  Speaker 1: some of your loved ones remains. And it also actually
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  Speaker 1: is equally effective, um to keep an enemy in prison
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  Speaker 1: for eternity. If you want to do that, you just
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  Speaker 1: have to get your hands on some of their ashes.
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  Speaker 1: You can wear them around like you own them. Yeah. Um,
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  Speaker 1: that's that's another thing, totally totally well. You know what's
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  Speaker 1: gonna happen to you after you die, you better not
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  Speaker 1: die before me. Um. You can also have your ashes
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  Speaker 1: shot into space. Timothy Leary had it done, actually exactly
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  Speaker 1: again one of my heroes. Slightly yeah, yeah, I know,
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  Speaker 1: slightly affordable, somewhat affordable, surprisingly affordable. How much um for
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  Speaker 1: a I think a graham of your ashes to be
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  Speaker 1: shot into space and then allowed to burn up in
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  Speaker 1: in the atmosphere where you can sivably become part of
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  Speaker 1: the carbon cycle or the rain cycle or something. It's
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  Speaker 1: not bad. I wonder if they shoot you up there
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  Speaker 1: that I'm sure they did with a bunch of other people.
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  Speaker 1: Oh definitely. And there's a couple of different flights. One
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  Speaker 1: it just goes up hit zero gravity and comes back
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  Speaker 1: down and then they return it to you and you're like,
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  Speaker 1: thanks a bunch that that would be appropriate for me,
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  Speaker 1: because you know how much I hate to fly because
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  Speaker 1: of being next to strangers. That would be my ultimate
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  Speaker 1: horrible way to go is to be shot up into space,
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  Speaker 1: crowded and surrounded by a bunch of other people's creamines.
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  Speaker 1: No thanks, yeah, no, So we won't do that to you. No,
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  Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about You'll be trapped in
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  Speaker 1: a diamond in a ring on my finger. That's that's
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  Speaker 1: your fate. I think I'd like to be cremated. It
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  Speaker 1: definitely don't want to the old Southern traditional burial view
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  Speaker 1: the body type of thing. Well, you know, there's there's
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  Speaker 1: some other stuff you can do. You can actually put
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  Speaker 1: a dead body to good use. That's what I hear. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: bodies can actually be made to generate power after they die.
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  Speaker 1: True in theory. Right. And this set up, this one
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  Speaker 1: fascinates me the most because, um, it's actually am It's
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  Speaker 1: a conceptual art project called the Afterlife Project. But basically, um,
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  Speaker 1: these this, these two artists are an artist in a
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  Speaker 1: designer I believe, came up with a way where you
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  Speaker 1: you can put a microbial fuel cell beneath the remains
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  Speaker 1: of a dead body, specifically underneath their stomach, and as
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  Speaker 1: the body decomposes, these gastric juices that are produced are
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  Speaker 1: eaten up by the bacteria in the anode of this
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  Speaker 1: microbial fuel cell. And it's anaerobic, so there's no oxygen,
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  Speaker 1: so it can't just be turned into water. So these
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  Speaker 1: free floating electrons that are looking for something to bind
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  Speaker 1: are basically turned. It converted into electricity. Now that is
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  Speaker 1: actually shot up to like a say, a memorial statue
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  Speaker 1: of the grave marker. Then the grave marker is actually
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  Speaker 1: a battery charger. So you have a battery and it's
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  Speaker 1: got like your name and your date of birth and
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  Speaker 1: death on it, and your loved ones can power all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of weird stuff with it. Normal stuff, but I
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  Speaker 1: like the weird stuff better. Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder
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  Speaker 1: if that is actually gonna come to fruition. And I
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  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. Um some looking into it,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't find a whole lot, Like you know sometimes
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  Speaker 1: when conceptual arts done, it's done, and you know whatever.
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  Speaker 1: But they proved it, it it can it can't happen. I
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  Speaker 1: actually do think that they created a model for it,
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  Speaker 1: and and the science is there for sure, but they
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  Speaker 1: were saying that they did this to UM provide proof
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  Speaker 1: to people who are spiritually disconnected or require proof that
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  Speaker 1: there is a life after death, because really they're taking
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  Speaker 1: energy that was there before and putting it out into small,
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  Speaker 1: handheld battery powered devices. It really is. It's a great idea,
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  Speaker 1: that's the afterlife project. So you can't you can't put
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  Speaker 1: bodies to use this. It's a good thing, but that
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  Speaker 1: actually is kind of part of a growing trend of
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  Speaker 1: green burials, or depending on where you come from, green burials. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it depends on who you ask. I've got a staff
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  Speaker 1: for you. I love you know, I love your stats.
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  Speaker 1: I know. Uh. There was a study UM performed by
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  Speaker 1: the I'm sorry with the American Association of Retired Persons
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  Speaker 1: and in two thousand seven of people over the age
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  Speaker 1: of fifty were interested in green burials. That makes sense
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  Speaker 1: because that's like, that's my dad's generation, and they're the
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  Speaker 1: ones who got like the recycling kai Bosh put on
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  Speaker 1: their heads, Like my dad recycles religiously, and I think
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  Speaker 1: his age group really bought into that in like the
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  Speaker 1: early nineties, So I'm not surprised, not bad. I think
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  Speaker 1: the other sevent said get off my lawn, so probably
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  Speaker 1: got wicker snapper kind of thing. Well, the thing is,
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  Speaker 1: it makes sense. It may seem a little wacky, a
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  Speaker 1: little ego conscious to the nth degree, I disagree, but well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, traditional burials actually are really harmful environmentally. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they don't make a lot of sense. It's I think
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  Speaker 1: it's a to me, this is my opinion. I think
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  Speaker 1: it's a little bit of an outdated thing to load
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  Speaker 1: the body up with formaldehyde and put it in a
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  Speaker 1: very expensive casket and sink it into the ground. It's uh,
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't make much sense to me. That's just chuck talking. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I mean it's it's been done clearly because people need
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  Speaker 1: that kind of closure. You have to take a few
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  Speaker 1: days to really kind of get over it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, people used to sit up around
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  Speaker 1: their their dead loved one which is propped up on
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  Speaker 1: chairs in like the living room for days. That meals
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  Speaker 1: around it, that kind of thing. Um, And this is
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  Speaker 1: before embalming was used, I believe, So I imagine it
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  Speaker 1: got pretty gamy. But so we come up with embalming
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  Speaker 1: and now you know, a mortuary putty, and all of
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  Speaker 1: a sudden we can you know, hang out with our
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  Speaker 1: loved one until we're ready to plan them in the ground.
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  Speaker 1: But even when we plan them in the ground, that
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  Speaker 1: embalming fluid, you know, it may make cigarettes pop, but
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  Speaker 1: really it's not good for you at all. No, it's not,
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  Speaker 1: and it's not good for the environment. UM. But you
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  Speaker 1: don't you know, if you're interested in green burial that
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  Speaker 1: you don't think it has to be some of these
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  Speaker 1: more radical ones that were about to mention. UM. If
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  Speaker 1: you do want a sort of a traditional casket type
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  Speaker 1: of deal, uh, you can get biodegradable caskets these days, um,
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  Speaker 1: made of bamboo, sustainable bamboo. You can get an eco pod,
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  Speaker 1: which is basically a pod made from recycled newspaper. It's
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  Speaker 1: kind of like paper machee. Yeah. Yeah, so you just
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  Speaker 1: kind of it dissolves along with you into the earth. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: For go the formalde hyde um you can use. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: they use dry ice and refrigeration instead, which makes sense
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  Speaker 1: to me, and and it makes perfect sense. You just
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  Speaker 1: have to You're limited then in where a cemetery can be, right, Like,
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  Speaker 1: you can't be near the the watershed or the water
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  Speaker 1: table or else some naw stiness could really get into
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  Speaker 1: the into the waters and polluted. Although I guess if
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  Speaker 1: you're not using embombing fluide or any other kind of
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  Speaker 1: hazardous materials, would decomposing body be that much threat? And really, honestly,
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  Speaker 1: how much decomposing bodies do we drink every day just
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  Speaker 1: from tap water? I don't have that staff probably a
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  Speaker 1: significant amount, you think, sure, I guess. So, Okay, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people buried out there, you know, sure, but
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  Speaker 1: not me. Think dead fish, dead squirrels, dead um, raccoons,
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  Speaker 1: pretty much any woodland animal that's dead. It's a good point.
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  Speaker 1: We've probably drank before. Why not humans? And of course
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  Speaker 1: there's always good old cremation, which is supposedly a green
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  Speaker 1: burial because you know, also the caskets that are usually
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  Speaker 1: used used like a mahogany casket that's like an old
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  Speaker 1: growth forest wood, and you know it's being cut down
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  Speaker 1: so it can be planted in the ground with you,
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  Speaker 1: and it's probably laminated using some horrible kind of lacquer.
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  Speaker 1: It's not it's it's just not good. So cremation that's great,
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  Speaker 1: there's no there's no even though there is a cast
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  Speaker 1: get involved, it's not degrading. It's actually being burned up. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But the problem is there's all sorts of horrible byproducts
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  Speaker 1: from burning you know, a human body. Right. It takes
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  Speaker 1: a lot of energy too, Yes, it does. But that
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  Speaker 1: energy can be harnessed, can it. Well, yeah, that's one
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  Speaker 1: cool thing. And this is in Sweden. Our friends in
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  Speaker 1: Sweden are always ahead of the curve. It uh, crematoriums,
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  Speaker 1: they're they're harnessing that heat that it takes. I think
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  Speaker 1: it's over eight d degrees fahrenheit um, which is a
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  Speaker 1: thousand degrees celsius for you in Sweden, right. Uh. So
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  Speaker 1: they're harnessing that heat and actually turning into energy. And
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  Speaker 1: there's a town in Sweden that actually gets ten percent
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  Speaker 1: of its home heating energy from crematoriums from the dead. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: pretty cool heat for the home. Yeah, that is very
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  Speaker 1: very cool, very cool. It's also a little creepy, but
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  Speaker 1: it's it's very cool, right, But that is not the
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  Speaker 1: coolest one in my opinion. Are you talking about alkaline hydrolysis? Oh? Yeah, man,
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  Speaker 1: that is awesome. So you want to tell them you
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  Speaker 1: want me to go ahead? Okay, So basically all these
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  Speaker 1: animals they experimented on, like you know, we couldn't have
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  Speaker 1: come up with a bola without sacrificing a few animals.
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  Speaker 1: But you don't just toss those kind of things into
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  Speaker 1: the into the garbage. This is a biohazard. There's a
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  Speaker 1: process that that was created where you dissolve a body
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  Speaker 1: in lie uh and heat it to about three hundred
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  Speaker 1: degrees hundred forty nine degrees celsius um, and you apply
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  Speaker 1: about sixty pounds of pressure per square inch to the body.
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  Speaker 1: So I imagine it's in some little kind of box
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  Speaker 1: or something with like a card cruncher kind of thing, right,
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  Speaker 1: um and uh. After a certain amount of time, the
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  Speaker 1: body dissolves and it turns into like this coffee colored good.
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  Speaker 1: That's that's like, Um, it's the consistency of motor oil
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  Speaker 1: and it's sterile. So what do you do with it?
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  Speaker 1: Down the drain, down the drain. I can't think of
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  Speaker 1: any less sentimental way to dispose of human body than that, right. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of people don't like this though, I mean
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  Speaker 1: they don't they do this on cadet evers and like
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  Speaker 1: you said, research animals, they don't do this. It's not
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  Speaker 1: in practice yet. Well, they're trying to personally. I can't
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  Speaker 1: remember where the town is chucked. It's in New York. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And there was a funeral director who's trying to get
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  Speaker 1: it this process legalized because apparently you can't do that
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  Speaker 1: with human remains illegal um. And the Roman Catholic Diocese
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  Speaker 1: came out against it and and basically got it dubbed
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the Hannibal Lector bill. I don't get think any bill.
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  Speaker 1: I don't get that. What is I think they're just
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  Speaker 1: trying to play off the creepiness in the complete disregard
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  Speaker 1: for the sanctity of humanity or anything. Terrible example, because
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  Speaker 1: it worked because everybody's heard of Hannibal Lector and the
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  Speaker 1: bill got sunk. So uh And frankly, I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I need slightly more pomp and circumstances. I need more
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  Speaker 1: cannons and Kansas planes, you know, than you can have
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  Speaker 1: a ceremony. Um. I don't think it necessarily has to
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  Speaker 1: be your wife, you know, in a darkened room, just
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  Speaker 1: pouring you down a drain. You have a big party,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in a big ceremony, you can still have all the fanfare.
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  Speaker 1: And it's true and technically, I guess is not that
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  Speaker 1: much different from cremation, right, sure, yeah, or you could
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: put the syrupy goo and into a balloon and drop
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  Speaker 1: it from the Empire State Building. That'd be kind of cool.
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  Speaker 1: That would be very cool. Canon. Yeah, what is the
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  Speaker 1: syrupy goo? I'm covered with some poor guy with like
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  Speaker 1: a Fannie pack and the camera and then he's covered
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  Speaker 1: with Josh. Ironically he's from Kansas. Yes, So that's there's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things that are in the works that
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  Speaker 1: it looks like the funeral industry is going to be
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  Speaker 1: turned over eventually. Even even Nate Fisher from six ft
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  Speaker 1: Under he had a green burial just wrapped in like
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  Speaker 1: a canvas sack and planted in the ground. Well, there's
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  Speaker 1: only so much land mass out there and it can't
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  Speaker 1: well go to cemetery. What's well, I think is cool
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  Speaker 1: about the green burial movement is they use these cemetery
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  Speaker 1: plots as land easemants so that they're protected in perpetuity
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  Speaker 1: because there's a person there. And basically you rather than
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: getting spending the money on a plot in a traditional cemetery,
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  Speaker 1: you um basically buy a piece of lane and it's
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  Speaker 1: protected forever. So it's protected land it can never be
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  Speaker 1: developed on. So that's another kind of UM. Subtle aim
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  Speaker 1: of the green burial movement is land conservation by you know, death,
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  Speaker 1: And there's also a burial at sea UM. The new
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  Speaker 1: green way to be buried at sea is to have
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  Speaker 1: your cremains mixed with concrete and become part of artificial
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  Speaker 1: coral reef and be tickled by fish for the rest
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of eternity. So yeah, that's green burial. And actually you
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: can find more on this uh on the site. It's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: called can My Body Generate Power After I Die? And
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: before we let you go, Chuck and I wanted to
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: point out another article about death that we think you'll enjoy.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It's called the fifteen most Common Causes of Death in
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the World. Fantastic greed combined with can my Body Generate
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Power After I Die? It'll have you rolling in stitches.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: It's a fun weekend. You can find both of those
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: by typing some words into the search bar at how
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com m For more on this and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: m HM brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
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  Speaker 1: twelve camera. It's ready, are you