Podcast appearances and mentions of Caitlin Doughty

This is the third in a series of episodes on HOW TO LIVE IN 2025, focusing on the thoughts, feelings, and actions we need to thrive, develop, create, and resist. At the end of each of these episodes, I'll offer an exercise - a thought exercise, spiritual exercise, or practical exercise - that brings an experiential dimension to what I and the shows guests talk about. This episode's theme is DIEand my guest is bestselling author and host of the Ask A Mortician YouTube channel, CAITLIN DOUGHTY.

Wrapping up someone's life is one of the strangest things we've ever done and no one made it more strange than the cable company. This shouldn't have been a surprise.  This month, we dive into the process of wrapping up someone's life after they have moved onto their next playing field. This isn't about funerals or last wishes – this is about removing someone's footprint from the planet. We also talk about ways we can aid those who will be tasked with wrapping up our lives. This is not something any of us want to think about, but it turns out we are not jinxing ourselves by staying silent about our inevitable demise. *** Nonsor: ⁠I'm Dead, Now What ⁠Use this book's comprehensive pre-printed prompts to record the information on your dependents, beneficiaries, pets, insurance, active accounts and memberships, passwords, location of documents, and other more. *** Mentions: ⁠Wrapping Up Someone's Life⁠ Jyl's blog on the same topic. ⁠Smoke Gets In Your Eyes⁠ by Caitlin Doughty.  ⁠The Order of the Good Death⁠ Caitlin Doughty's podcast. ⁠Keepsake Ornaments⁠ These are the ones Jyl used for those who wanted a portion of ashes. ⁠Nordpass⁠ Keep all your passwords in one digital place. Kathy does…her login is… ⁠EbidLocal⁠ An estate sale option that doesn't involve watching people rifle through your loved one's home. *** Can't get enough of us? Well, you're one of very few. Get to know us!  ⁠⁠⁠Jyl Barlow⁠⁠⁠ has all things Jyl! Also, it's pronounced, “jill.” ⁠⁠⁠Which Way's Up⁠⁠⁠ is Jyl's blog, home of weekly epiphanies and often overshares ⁠⁠⁠What to Expect When You Weren't Expecting⁠⁠⁠ is Jyl's best-selling memoir about her hilarious struggles as a (step)mother. Buy it online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and Target! ⁠⁠⁠Kathy Crowley⁠⁠⁠'s Thought for the Day (accessorized with a favorite timepiece and signature scent) can be found on⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠⁠. Watch videos of all our Nonsor products on⁠ ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠ or⁠⁠ ⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠! Wine & Whine is part of Bearlow Productions and is created Jyl Barlow and Kathy Crowley. 

Javier del Pino conversa con Caitlin Doughty, directora de funerarias, escritora y defensora de la reforma de la industria funeraria, con motivo de la publicación de su último libro: ¿El gato se comerá mis ojos? (editorial Capitan Swing)

SHOW SPONSOR SHGAPE & The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive EraI have never thought of funeral directors as the preservationists of Gilded Age architecture, but they are. Thanks to Dr. Dean Lampros's cross-disciplinary research on the cultural history of these residential funeral parlours we see the remnants of the Gilded Age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dean joins me to discuss his new book, and the amazing research he has compiled.Essential Reading:Dean Lampros, Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (2024).Recommended Reading:Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963). Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (2002).Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004).Gary Laderman, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (2005).Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (2008).Suzanne Smith, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010).Michael Rosenow, Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865 – 1920 (2015).Caitlin Doughty, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2018). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giddy-up folks, we are talking about everyone's favorite topic: DEATH. I loved talking with Kierston about all things death, funeral practices from around the world, grief, and love. Kierston is a library customer services supervisor and loves to read, especially books that teach her something new. You can follow her beautifully curated Instagram: @oursharedshelves For our discussion Kierston chose From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty, a mortician who is fascinated by death. There are so many different funeral and burial practices around the world and this book explores many of them. For our drink we went witha beer: the Rogue Dead Guy Ale, which is delicious and a great choice to go along with the title.In this episode:Ask a Mortician - Caitlin Doughty's YouTube Human Remains Project in Cullowhee NC (Correction: In the pod I misremembered this program being at UNC Pembroke - It's at Western Carolina University. Apologies to the entire UNC school system!)Congratulations! The Best is Over by R. Eric Thomas Celebrating Dia de los Muertos in Mexico

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory" by Caitlin Doughty is not your average memoir. It mixes life, death, gallows humor and world history to turn the funeral industry upside down. It may be the most though provoking discussion the Busy Girls have ever had.

A skeptic spends a year trying to find spiritual fulfillment by practicing modern Witchcraft in this fascinating memoir that's perfect for fans of A.J. Jacobs and Mary Roach. Diana Helmuth, thirty-three, is skeptical of organized religion. She is also skeptical of disorganized religion. But, more than anything, she is tired of God being dead. So, she decides to try on the fastest-growing, self-directed faith in America: Witchcraft. The result is 366 days of observation, trial, error, wit, and back spasms. Witches today are often presented as confident and finished, proud and powerful. Diana is eager to join them. She wants to follow all the rules, memorize all the incantations, and read all the liturgy. But there's one glaring problem: no Witch can agree on what the right rules, liturgy, and incantations are. The Witching Year is a “compelling memoir” (Frances Denny, author of Major Arcana) that follows in the footsteps of celebrated memoirs by journalists like A.J. Jacobs, Mary Roach, and Caitlin Doughty, who knit humor and reportage together in search of something worth believing. Diana Helmuth writes about urges: to travel, to be in nature, and to feel understood. Her first book, How to Suffer Outside, was a National Outdoor Book Award winner, and her freelance work can be found in various anthologies, travel guides, and humor magazines. She studied anthropology and Arabic at UC Berkeley, and can often be caught moonlighting in Silicon Valley's start-up land, or producing the occasional podcast. She was born and raised in Northern California.

Friends, Leftists and progressives more broadly are becoming increasingly aware of the lie of "loving what you do." And we're also becoming more aware of the ways corporations try to ameliorate real reflection and demands for higher wages via "perks" like organic cereal dispensers and "funny hat day" and other forms of glitzy dross. But conversations about all the above, as important as they are, can sometimes reduce fuller conversations to a political/rights dimension, which don't consider feeling, culture, the individual, or even economy. One of the sites of labor where this is evident is the "dream job." That's a category that includes YouTube "stars," writers, podcasters, adult performers, and more. My friend - regular AEWCH guest, the bestselling author and mortician and YouTube star of Ask A Mortician - Caitlin Doughty and I have been "making content" for over a decade. We talk about how the landscape has changed, where it's going, but mostly how this particular form of work is emblematic for the "dream job" that is at once elevated and belittled in our society, free and exhausting, life-giving and soul-killing. My hope is that you'll reflect on your own work and dreams as you listen. And that we'll all talk more about how to make our artistic efforts more free and easier to engage with, while at the same time dissolving the "grind" of it. Happy 250 episodes to this crazy, exhausting, fun, enlivening thing. Thanks for being along for the ride. XO CH

Brais Lamela, Premio El Ojo Crítico de Narrativa 2023, Genie Espinosa con su 'Tiburón blanco', la ciencia con Miguel Ángel Delgado y el Festival Periferias. Libros de hoy:*'No queda nadie' - Brais Lamela*'Tiburón blanco' de Genie Espinosa*'Este tráfago mortal' - Andrew Doig*¿El gato se comerá mis ojos? - Caitlin DoughtyEscuchar audio

Join Katie and Riley as they discuss memoirs and why they like them. Listen in as they talk about death, eels, families, ships, and more, so stay tuned. Books Mentioned The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah I'm A Terminal Cancer Patient, But I'm Fine by Hilnama I Want to Die, but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

New York Times bestselling author, Order of the Good Death founder, and Ask a Mortician creator Caitlin Doughty will talk with CDAS's former director and Death Studies Scholar-at-Large, John Troyer, about innovation and change in 21st Century Death World.

This Episode has EVERYTHING!It's got:Creamy goodness!More attempted French!Ronnie Vino says hello!More poopy plane fun!Debagging??!!Steamy bathroom floor poo!Accident or on purpose? YOU DECIDE!Human garbage!STEWARDESS??!!  Wow...way to show your age, Dave!Kevin's flight attendant memories!Leonard!Paul's bitchiness!Throat punch with the sewers of hell!Leonard!!THEY SHOULD TRAIN YOU FOR THIS SITUATION!Secret knocks!Stranger underwear!Leonard!!!Kevin is a saint and deserves a raise, a medal, and a hand job!Jackson Pollock's "poop" phase!Macabre!Poop molecules! IN YOUR NOSE!!!Greedy bottom!Nasty dead body piles!The Rural Juror!Gamgam!Zombies! ZOMBEAVERS!Paul's low-key gummy fun!Adam West's incredibly important character name!It's BUB, DAMNIT!Judith O'Dea was delightful at the Zombie Jamboree!How cool to be a zombie extra in a Romero film?!Zombie Ninja Academy!But what about "Twilight of the Dead"??!!Zombeavers would be a better name!Episode Links (In Order):Ronnie Vino - It's Friday Night!EasyJet flight cancelled due to defecation incident!Colorado funeral home fun with dead bodies!Colorado funeral home provides potential fake cremated remains!Zombie movie trivia!"Day of the Dead" - Pig guts death scene!Music Credit!Opening music graciously supplied by: Shane Ivers Closing music graciously supplied by: https://audionautix.com/  Visit Our Patreon! Email Us Here: Disturbinglypragmatic@gmail.comWhere To Find Us!: Disturbingly Pragmatic Link Tree!

Welcome to this week's episode of "The Literary Lounge," where we dive into the world of books and explore their themes and ideas. Today, we are discussing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons From the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty.In this episode, we discuss some of the bizarre and eye opening stories the author shares about her experiences working in a crematory. We share the interesting facts we learned in this book, the author's dry sense of humor, and what we consider a “good death”.Tune in every Wednesday to hear honest perspectives on your favorite novels. Drinks in hand, we'll see you in the Lounge!Trigger Warning: discussion of deathInstagram: @TheliteraryloungemnYoutube: @TheliteraryloungeTikTok: @Theliteraryloungemn

Today I spoke to Grant and Maia from Well, I Laughed all about their journey with their podcast and finding the funny in everyday stories. Make sure to subscribe so you know when our next episode drops and rate and review if you like what we are doing. Socials Find Well, I Laughed on Instagram (@wellilaughed), TikTok (@wellilaughed), Spotify and YouTube. Find Sam's Socials on this link: https://linktr.ee/samuelobrien Find the Podcast's Socials on this link: https://linktr.ee/contentncapable - we have Facebook now too! Plugs and Mentions Plug: Sam plugged joining your union. Maia plugged Smoke Gets in your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty. Grant plugged The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton. Check out the other shows on the Deus Ex Media Network!

Season 2 of Undertaking: The Podcast kicks off with a tell-all podcast about...................... planning for the future, preparing for it and leaving a legacy that will last generations.  Joe, the mystery-person featured on the veil-lifting-death book, Smoke Gets In Your Eye by Caitlin Doughty, joins the show and he's go so much to offer.  Seaon 2 of Undertaking: The Podcast kick off with a tell-all podcast about........... planning for the future, preparing for it, and leaving a legacy that will last generations. Frank has the heart of an undertaker and when called upon, we're sure he takes of people. Support Caitlin's writing by buying her book here: https://amzn.to/3Yjc9mm Today's show is supported by an ad spot from three months ago for ASD Answering Service for Directors and their still answering Brian's phones and that's why they're's two ads for ASD.  Check them out: Ryan's YouTube Side Hustle - Subscribe to tell Ryan thanks

This podcast is a commentary and does not contain any copyrighted material of the reference source. We strongly recommend accessing/buying the reference source at the same time. ■Reference Source https://www.ted.com/talks/caitlin_doughty_a_burial_practice_that_nourishes_the_planet ■Post on this topic (You can get FREE learning materials!) https://englist.me/169-academic-words-reference-from-caitlin-doughty-a-burial-practice-that-nourishes-the-planet-ted-talk-2/ ■Youtube Video https://youtu.be/6mdCL7gSt8o (All Words) https://youtu.be/NAItTMhVOX8 (Advanced Words) https://youtu.be/BbS2BrjnWWo (Quick Look) ■Top Page for Further Materials https://englist.me/ ■SNS (Please follow!)

Sad news for all of us: producer Rachael Cusick— who brought us soul-stirring stories rethinking grief (https://zpr.io/GZ6xEvpzsbHU) and solitude (https://zpr.io/eT5tAX6JtYra), as well as colorful musings on airplane farts (https://zpr.io/CNpgUijZiuZ4) and belly flops (https://zpr.io/uZrEz27z63CB) and Blueberry Earths (https://zpr.io/EzxgtdTRGVzz)— is leaving the show. So we thought it perfect timing to sit down with her and revisit another brainchild of hers, The Cataclysm Sentence, a collection of advice for The End. To explain: one day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question—a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman's cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists—all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them “What's the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go. Featuring: Richard Feynman, physicist - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (https://zpr.io/5KngTGibPVDw) Caitlin Doughty, mortician - Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs (https://zpr.io/Wn4bQgHzDRDB) Esperanza Spalding, musician - 12 Little Spells (https://zpr.io/KMjYrkwrz9dy)  Cord Jefferson, writer - Watchmen (https://zpr.io/ruqKDQGy5Rv8)  Merrill Garbus, musician - I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (https://zpr.io/HmrqFX8RKuFq) Jenny Odell, writer - How to do Nothing (https://zpr.io/JrUHu8dviFqc) Maria Popova, writer - Brainpickings (https://zpr.io/vsHXphrqbHiN) Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist - The Gardener and the Carpenter (https://zpr.io/ewtJpUYxpYqh) Rebecca Sugar, animator - Steven Universe (https://zpr.io/KTtSrdsBtXB7) Nicholson Baker, writer - Substitute (https://zpr.io/QAh2d7J9QJf2) James Gleick, writer - Time Travel (https://zpr.io/9CWX9q3KmZj8) Lady Pink, artist - too many amazing works to pick just one (https://zpr.io/FkJh6edDBgRL) Jenny Hollwell, writer - Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (https://zpr.io/MjP5UJb3mMYP) Jaron Lanier, futurist - Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (https://zpr.io/bxWiHLhPyuEK) Missy Mazzoli, composer - Proving Up (https://zpr.io/hTwGcHGk93Ty)   Special Thanks to: Ella Frances Sanders, and her book, "Eating the Sun" (https://zpr.io/KSX6DruwRaYL), for inspiring this whole episode. Caltech for letting us use original audio of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The entirety of the lectures are available to read for free online at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.All the musicians who helped make the Primordial Chord, including: Siavash Kamkar (https://zpr.io/2ZT46XsMRdhg), from Iran  Koosha Pashangpour (https://zpr.io/etWDXuCctrzE), from Iran Curtis MacDonald (https://zpr.io/HQ8uskA44BUh), from Canada Meade Bernard (https://zpr.io/gbxDPPzHFvme), from US Barnaby Rea (https://zpr.io/9ULsQh5iGUPa), from UK Liav Kerbel (https://zpr.io/BA4DBwMhwZDU), from Belgium Sam Crittenden (https://zpr.io/EtQZmAk2XrCQ), from US Saskia Lankhoorn (https://zpr.io/YiH6QWJreR7p), from Netherlands Bryan Harris (https://zpr.io/HMiyy2TGcuwE), from US Amelia Watkins (https://zpr.io/6pWEw3y754me), from Canada Claire James (https://zpr.io/HFpHTUwkQ2ss), from US Ilario Morciano (https://zpr.io/zXvM7cvnLHW6), from Italy Matthias Kowalczyk, from Germany (https://zpr.io/ANkRQMp6NtHR) Solmaz Badri (https://zpr.io/MQ5VAaKieuyN), from IranAll the wonderful people we interviewed for sentences but weren't able to fit in this episode, including: Daniel Abrahm, Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Sandra Cisneros, Stanley Chen, Lewis Dartnell, Ann Druyan, Rose Eveleth, Ty Frank, Julia Galef, Ross Gay, Gary Green, Cesar Harada, Dolores Huerta, Robin Hunicke, Brittany Kamai, Priya Krishna, Ken Liu, Carmen Maria Machado, James Martin, Judith Matloff, Ryan McMahon, Hasan Minhaj, Lorrie Moore, Priya Natarajan, Larry Owens, Sunni Patterson, Amy Pearl, Alison Roman, Domee Shi, Will Shortz, Sam Stein, Sohaib Sultan, Kara Swisher, Jill Tarter, Olive Watkins, Reggie Watts, Deborah Waxman, Alex Wellerstein, Caveh Zahedi.EPISODE CREDITS Reported by - Rachael Cusick (https://www.rachaelcusick.com/)Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

First Friday is back!Strange & Unusual Books discussed:Celine by Peter HellerWhat Have We Done by Alex FinlayThe Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket Every Window Filled with Light by Shelia StovallThe Measure by Nikki ErlickSmoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin DoughtyWill My Cat Eat My Eyeballs by Caitlin Doughty  

A missing child is found. Brian checks in on his friends and wonders, is Caitlin Doughty right?  Today's show is sponsored by AP Lazer and Indiana Donor Network Have a story and want to be on the show? Connect with Ryan and Brian at: UndertakingThePodcast.com

I was first introduced to Caitlin Doughty through the Ask a Mortician YouTube channel in 2012. Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, advocate, and bête noire of the traditional funeral industry. In 2011 she founded the funeral reform collective The Order of the Good Death, which has spawned the death positive movement. Her educational web series "Ask a Mortician" has been viewed almost 200 million times and all three of her books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? were New York Times bestsellers. Caitlin was the first funeral director (and might I add first female funeral director) that I ever saw articulacy, honestly and publicly discuss the good, bad, and ugly about the death care industry while challenging the way we “do death” in this country. She was also the first person to encourage me to expand my blogspot.com blog into a YouTube page. Over the years I have watched not only her YouTube channel, but she and her career blossom. The thing that I respect most about Caitlin is that though she has amassed countless supporters through her books, social media, public speaking and non-profit, she seems to remain grounded while balancing the role of the observer and advocate. I recently interviewed Caitlin for the Death and Grief Talk Podcast and consider this episode to be Milestone for The Grave Woman because Caitlin is truly someone in this industry that not only look up to but respect. During our time together I connect with Caitlin heart to heart as she shares how she maintains the balance of her online success and real-life experience, practices self-care, avoids appropriating those that invite her into their sacred space of loss, grief, and celebration and much more. The greatest take away from our interview is that though speaking truth to power, advocacy, educating and speaking up for others can be exhausting, BUT the work that so many of us are doing in death care to create a more equitable, option focused and leveled environment for consumers and death care professionals alike is necessary and not without the reward of positive progressive change. Connect with Caitlin Online Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thegooddeath/ and https://www.instagram.com/ordergooddeath/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/OrderoftheGoodDeath Twitter https://twitter.com/OrderGoodDeathref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Website www.orderofthegooddeath.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/deathandgrieftalk/message

What is love? What is death? How do they walk hand in hand? Join me and my favorite mortician, Caitlin Doughty, to think about it all. Happy Valentine's Day!

We know we're going to die. So why don't we act like it? This week, Adam is joined by Caitlin Doughty to discuss human composting, aquamation, green burial, how to reform the funeral industry, and how to finally accept the inevitable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We know we're going to die. So why don't we act like it? This week, Adam is joined by Caitlin Doughty to discuss human composting, aquamation, green burial, how to reform the funeral industry, and how to finally accept the inevitable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The start of a new year is often a time of reflection and after the last few challenging pandemic ones, that might also mean dwelling on feelings of loss or grief. This week, Lale chats with the creator of a podcast called The Order of the Good Death. She's Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, the owner of a funeral home in Los Angeles, and an advocate of funeral reform. She's toured the world exploring death rituals—from Barcelona to Mexico to Indonesia to Bolivia to Japan—on a quest to discover where death has the most dignity, and what we can learn from it. Plus, we hear from a listener who traveled to Ireland and may, or may not, have encountered the spirit of a legendary Irish poet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jinkx welcomes mortician, author, and personality Caitlin Doughty to "Hi Jinkx!" They chat how she got into her profession, what Jinkx wants to do with her body, and so much more. Plus, Jinkx asks all the questions you want to know. So hit play! Listen to Hi Jinkx Ad-Free AND One Day Early on MOM Plus FOLLOW JINKX Website Instagram Twitter FOLLOW MOM PODCASTS HI JINKX! IS A FOREVER DOG AND MOGULS OF MEDIA (M.O.M.) PODCAST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In which Jo and Ethan reflect on this episode from 2020 and listen back. Here's how we described it then: In which Ethan and Jo begin by talking about their weeks and end up, as they inevitably do, talking about death. Jo name drops Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty during the episode and highly recommends that you check it out! Transcripts, when available, can be found at patreon.com/wthiap. Just search for the episode title. WHAT THE HELL IS A PASTOR HAS MERCH! https://www.bonfire.com/what-the-hell-is-a-pastor-theme-tee/ https://www.bonfire.com/wthiap-the-void/ Excited about WTHIAP OTR (What the Hell is a Pastor on the Road)? Support us over on Patreon to make that dream a reality: https://www.patreon.com/wthiap. Want to reach out? Email us at whatthehellisapastor@gmail.com. Like Twitter/facebook/instagram? We do too, we guess. Find us under the handle @WTHIAP.

This week, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson discuss Raphael Warnock beating Herschel Walker, and oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the anti-gay marriage website designer case and the “independent state legislature” election case.   Here are some notes and references from this week's show: Fr. James Martin, S.J. for Outreach: “When Is Religious Liberty A Fig Leaf For Homophobia?” Ian MacDougall for ProPublica: “What's Really at Stake in a Politically Charged Supreme Court Case on Elections” Jed Sugarmen's thread on oral arguments in Moore v. Harper. Kevin Roose for The New York Times: “The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT” Here are this week's chatters: John: Associated Press: “HBO To Air Nancy Pelosi Doc Shot By Daughter Alexandra”; Pelosi in the House November 28, 2022 Emily: The Janes David: Tour Fort DeRussy with David; City Cast Portland has launched; Caitlin Doughty for The New York Times: “If You Want to Give Something Back to Nature, Give Your Body”  Listener chatter from Adam Barhamand: Karen Bakker for Noema: “How To Speak Honeybee” For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment Emily, David, and John discuss ChatGPT. Tweet us your questions and chatters @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Research by Bridgette Dunlap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson discuss Raphael Warnock beating Herschel Walker, and oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the anti-gay marriage website designer case and the “independent state legislature” election case.   Here are some notes and references from this week's show: Fr. James Martin, S.J. for Outreach: “When Is Religious Liberty A Fig Leaf For Homophobia?” Ian MacDougall for ProPublica: “What's Really at Stake in a Politically Charged Supreme Court Case on Elections” Jed Sugarmen's thread on oral arguments in Moore v. Harper. Kevin Roose for The New York Times: “The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT” Here are this week's chatters: John: Associated Press: “HBO To Air Nancy Pelosi Doc Shot By Daughter Alexandra”; Pelosi in the House November 28, 2022 Emily: The Janes David: Tour Fort DeRussy with David; City Cast Portland has launched; Caitlin Doughty for The New York Times: “If You Want to Give Something Back to Nature, Give Your Body”  Listener chatter from Adam Barhamand: Karen Bakker for Noema: “How To Speak Honeybee” For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment Emily, David, and John discuss ChatGPT. Tweet us your questions and chatters @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Research by Bridgette Dunlap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mortician & author Caitlin Doughty joins to dose us on death and the funeral industry. FOLLOW Caitlin's work @TheGoodDeath & OrderOfTheGoodDeath.com WATCH her at https://youtube.com/c/AskAMortician Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Episode Description Our future corpses have more options than ever, with eco-friendly processes like aquamation and composting being legalized across the U.S. and Canada. Find out the nitty-gritty truths on what goes into making these death alternatives a reality where you live.  Host, Caitlin Doughty talks to Recompose founder, Katrina Spade who has been the driving force behind legalization efforts, and Order of the Good Death Executive Director, Sarah Chavez.  Episode Resources Stay up to date with efforts to legalize composting in your state By signing up for the Recompose newsletter. (https://recompose.life/who-we-are/#public-policy) Learn more about the composting in the Order's Resource guide. Episode Credits: Hosted by Caitlin Doughty Produced by the Order of the Good Death: Sarah Chavez and Lauren Ronaghan Edited by Alex de Freitas Music by Kissed Her Little Sister Podcast artwork by Jessica Peng The Order of the Good Death (https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com) Is supported by listeners like you. Support the Order by becoming a member (https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/donate?)

One more throwback while the boys are on vacation! What consists of a good death? According to Caitlin Doughty, it is staring down your death fears—whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety of modern culture is not. Caitlin is a mortician, activist, and funeral industry rabble-rouser. We dive deep into the different ways in which the world deals with death. From raking hot bones out of an oven to vultures ceremoniously eating human remains to wrapping bodies in a shroud and burying it three feet under the earth, there are many options for us to plan our death. This episode is not to be missed!

One more throwback while the boys are on vacation! What consists of a good death? According to Caitlin Doughty, it is staring down your death fears—whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety of modern culture is not. Caitlin is a mortician, activist, and funeral industry rabble-rouser. We dive deep into the different ways in which the world deals with death. From raking hot bones out of an oven to vultures ceremoniously eating human remains to wrapping bodies in a shroud and burying it three feet under the earth, there are many options for us to plan our death. This episode is not to be missed!

Death is something that we all have in common, but what happens to our remains can vary. In this episode, RTN favorite Tanya Marsh breaks down the origins, legal peculiarities and cultural specificities of the American death care system, and how recent developments in the industry are leading many of us to reimagine the afterlife of our physical remains.   Tanya Marsh is Professor of Law at Wake Forest University and one of the foremost experts on Mortuary Law and the history of cemeteries in the United States. She has published three books in her field of expertise, including The Law of Human Remains (2015) & Cemetery Law: The Common Law of Burying Grounds in the United States (Co-authored w/ Daniel Gibson, 2015). You can follow her on twitter at @TMAR22. If you enjoyed this episode, check our first conversation w/ Tanya in episode #76 and Tanya's special guest host appearance in episode 148 The Bizarre Life of American Death w/ Caitlin Doughty. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

With nearly 250 million views on YouTube and three successful books, millennial mortician Caitlin Doughty has launched what she calls a “death positive” movement through her series, “Ask a Mortician.” With videos such as “Can I Keep My Parents' Skulls and Tattoos” and “Morbid Minute: Coffins vs. Caskets,” Doughty hopes to help people understand that death is a part of life and we should be comfortable talking about it. She tells host Giselle Fernandez that embalming or cremating a body is bad for the environment, and she encourages people to consider more environmentally friendly options. In 2011, she founded the Order of the Good Death to create a national dialogue around the funeral industry and both the financial and emotional burdens many funerals put on families.

What happens if you pass away in the Arctic, or in outer space? How do people in Thailand or India mourn their dead differently than people in the U.S.? We answer these questions and more with the help of mortician Caitlin Doughty. Learn More: https://viewpointsradio.org/discovering-death-answers-from-a-mortician/

Burying Green: Eco-Friendly Death Care On The Rise Dying, it turns out, isn't carbon neutral. Like many of the choices we make in our lifetimes, the choice to cremate or preserve our bodies after death comes with tradeoffs as well. With preservation and burial, there's the carbon cost of cemetery space, the materials to make a coffin, and the chemicals required to prevent decay. With cremation, the body's carbon is released into the atmosphere through the burning of natural gas. This is one of the reasons why companies are starting to offer more eco-friendly options, such as water-assisted cremation. Composting human bodies is another option, allowing our carbon to be sequestered in the soil, and providing nutrients for ecosystems or gardens. But in the United States, these lower-carbon funereal options are often against the law. Now, that's slowly changing, with pressure from people who wish to use those options for themselves when the time comes. Producer Kathleen Davis discusses these issues and more with mortician Caitlin Doughty and Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose, a company that has pioneered the practice of human composting. Plus, the relationship between grief, ritual, and the choices we have for our mortal remains.   This Brain Prosthesis Could Improve Memory Loss When people hear the word “prosthetic,” they'll probably think of an arm or a leg. But what about a prosthetic for the brain? A team of neuroscientists is designing a device that could “zap” the brain into remembering information better, and it's targeted for people with memory loss. They're doing so by studying the electrical patterns involved in memory, then mimicking them with electrodes implanted in the brain. Ira speaks with Dr. Robert Hampson, neuroscientist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who is working on the implant.     Making a Meal Fit For An Astronaut Life on the International Space Station throws some wrenches into how food and eating work. There's very little gravity, after all. And there are big differences between nutritional needs on Earth and in space. Astronauts must exercise two hours each day on the International Space Station to prevent bone and muscle loss, meaning daily caloric intake needs to be somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 calories. Sodium must also be reduced, as an astronaut's body sheds less of it in space. Astronauts also have an increased need for Vitamin D, as their skin isn't able to create it from sunlight as people on Earth do. So, how do all these limitations affect the food astronauts eat? Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to answer these gustatory questions is Xulei Wu, food systems manager for the International Space Station in Houston, Texas. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Mortician Caitlin Doughty talks with paranormal investigator John E.L. Tenney + therapist Chris Donaghue talks with religion critic and journalist Caelainn Hogan as I kick off my 3 part series celebrating 200 episodes of AEWCH 200!

Anglo-American attitudes toward burial have changed significantly over the past half century: today, most people choose to be cremated, and alternatives like natural burials and human composting are on the rise. Margareta Magnusson's The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, about the importance of getting your affairs in order, was a surprise bestseller, and American mortician Caitlin Doughty is but one of several popular YouTube personalities who speak about death. But largely absent from the conversations at so-called Death Cafes (coffee, crumpets, and the inevitable!) is any discussion of the people who devote their lives to caring for the dead. These death workers are the focus of Hayley Campbell's new book, All the Living and the Dead. Campbell speaks to people doing jobs we tend not to consider: embalmers and executioners, of course, but also crime scene cleaners, mass fatality investigators, bereavement midwives, and others. What makes these people choose to surround themselves with death tells us a lot about what the rest of us lose when we relegate death to the shadows. Go beyond the episode:Hayley Campbell's All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's WorkRead more about the Order of the Good Death, an organization of funeral professionals working to change attitudes about deathYou can join the conversation at your nearest Death CafeWatch Caitlin Doughty's series on your death rights (and listen to our interview with her about funerary practices around the world)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever noticed how great ideas and solutions often come to you in the shower? This episode begins with an explanation as to why that often happens to so many people. https://www.headspace.com/articles/shower-epiphanies Is love an emotion? Not according to Anna Machin an evolutionary anthropologist at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, and author of the book Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships (https://amzn.to/3SzC8mp). Anna believes love is a need - as essential as food and water. Listen and discover why humans need love in their lives, what purpose it serves, how it improves your health and longevity and why some people are better at love than others.  Death happens all around us. And one day we too will die. Still, it is a difficult topic for many of us to discuss. But not for Caitlin Doughty. Caitlin is a mortician, funeral home owner and best selling author. She joins me to discuss some of the fascinating things about death like; what happens if the guy next to you on an airplane dies? Why are bodies embalmed? Do hair and fingernails continue to grow after death? Can you keep your father's skull after he dies? And so much more. Caitlin's latest book is Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (https://amzn.to/3SArg7C). Where do you put your fruits and vegetables? It seems that the produce drawer in your fridge is where a lot of food goes to rot and die. There is a better place to keep produce so it actually get eaten. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430140027.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Start hiring NOW with a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING  Offer good for a limited time. With Bambee get access to your own dedicated HR Manager starting at just $99 per month! Visit https://Bambee.com/something right now.  Helix Sleep is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at https://helixsleep.com/sysk.  Go to Amazon and search for Conair Turbo Extreme to get your 2-in-1 steam and iron steamer today! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features! The magic is waiting! Download Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, for free, from the iOS App Store or Google Play today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Topics: Smith Street Pizza, trip to Rhode Island, Fox Farm Brewery, Little Narragansett Bay boat ride, illness in house, I Get Wild + Stuart Bogie at Littlefield 7/29/22, trip to Maine, Marlborough, MA hotel, Biddeford Mills Museum, Back Cove Trail, The Holy Donut, Crescent Beach, Kennebunkport, Old Orchard Beach, Palace Playland, Bissell Brothers Brewing, spreading ashes, Maine Beer Company, LL Bean, Scales, Tree House Brewing, Barker Character, Comic, and Cartoon Museum in Cheshire, CT, Modern Apizza in New Haven, Holy Diver by DIO, Logger Hero by Wu-Lu, From the New World by Alan Parsons, The Other Side of Make-Believe by Interpol, Earl's Closet: The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath 1970-1980, Birds in the Ceiling by John Moreland, Waiting For Columbus by Little Feat, Into the Groove by Mickey Hart/Planet Drum, Old-Time Folks by Lee Bains and the Glory Fires, Build by Tony Fadell, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman.

I talk about horror, fiction, and transhumanism with Catilin Doughty and Mark O'Connell live in Dublin + Offer a contemplation on the podcast and the value of novels (including Hawk Mountain!)

Caitlin Doughty has devoted her life to death. She is a mortician, funeral home owner, and writer of three bestselling books. Her work has spawned the death-positive movement, which believes that open conversations about death and dying are the cornerstone of a healthy society. In this playback of our conversation a few years ago, Caitlin talks about why she became so interested in death and her desire to reform how Western society thinks about it. She also talks about her Anthony Bourdain-like journeys across the world to witness how other cultures practice more life-affirming funerals, unburdened by fear and morbidity. To support Write About Now and get bonus material, become a Patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/writeaboutnowpodcast

In every episode of Pressed Pages, we'll be going over the books we read during the month and pick a book of a random genre to discuss. April's random pick is... Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons From The Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. Buddy read with us!Check out our socials: Dani's Twitter and Goodreads, Azalea's Twitter and Goodreads. BOOKS MENTIONED:Luster by Raven LeilaniUprooted by Naomi NovikHook, Line and Sinker by Tessa BaileyDelilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring BlakeMagic For Liars by Sarah GaileyThe Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. JamesThe Duke and I, The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia QuinnA Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

This Book Club we read Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, a memoir about working in the death industry. A fascinating read and discussion. Thanks for listening !

On this slightly different (!) episode of A Good Cry, Michael talks with mortician and advocate Caitlin Doughty (Ask A Mortician, Order Of The Good Death).  They talk about sitting with the dead, sky burials, and bomb-ass funerals.  Email Michael with questions, comments, or compliments at agoodcry@theradiopoint.com Follow Michael Cruz Kayne: Twitter: @CruzKayne Instagram: @cruzkayne Advertise on A Good Cry via Gumball.fm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the unedited conversation with Max Walling about Caitlin Doughty's book "From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death."

A conversation with Max Walling about Caitlin Doughty's book "From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death."

This week, we start by assessing Classic FM's “21 Petrifying Phrases to Tell a Classical Musician This Halloween” then we present the pilot episode of “Gesualdo: The Podcast” and finally, we talk to YouTuber, author, and deathfluencer Caitlin Doughty about the true crime genre and what it means for classical music and the good death.The Order of the Good Deathhttps://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/ CLASSICAL MIXTAPEThe full playlistCaitlinBerlioz, Symphonie fantastique, movement 5: Songe d'une nuit du SabbatKenshoKaija Saariaho, 7 Papillons WillEduardo Antonello, The Black Plague's DanceTiffanyJohn Williams, “Hedwig's Theme”THINK YOU CAN STUMP US? GO AHEAD AND TRY!Google Form for “Name that Tune: Stump the Hosts Edition” You can reach us at classicalgabfest@gmail.com and on social media:FacebookTwitterInstagram

A Gift from the Dying: https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2018/10/07/a-gift-from-the-dying/?fbclid=IwAR3bJs7PVCSeK6UgNLJqki7a_qdlxRSxHo0pO1_-tgQcIgbWrKKwJjPWE1E   S2E38 TRANSCRIPT ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Mark.  Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are going to talk about death And decomposition, especially the latter part. It's a it's Halloween season, Hallows, samhain season. And so we're going to talk about that aspect of the life cycle. That includes the the disassembly of. Organisms after they are no longer functioning as alive. Yucca: And I'm very excited for this topic today because this is one that I really like to nerd out on. So I look forward to getting into some of those details. But why don't we start with. The death side. And we did an episode about this last year. Let's start with talking about death and the, the pagan approach to it, which is a little bit different than we see in mainstream culture. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I really appreciate about pagan culture in which was one of the things that attracted me early on to pig And, culture is that it was very unflinching about looking at the fact that we die. We're all going to die. and it has a time of the year to reflect on that fact and to. Do whatever preparation we can in order for things to be better for those that survive us. And just to really reflect on people that have gone before us and have died and just to be aware of that whole very key pivotal section of the cycle of living. Yucca: Yeah. And, and although it is fun to do this, you know, the spooky stuff and all of that, but to also just to honor death in as a, as a beautiful part of the whole cycle as part of life, that that life requires death. And it requires an awful lot of death for there to be any life. Mark: It does. When, when you think about it, when you think about what you eat, and this is true, if you're a vegan or if you're a carnivore or if you're an omnivore, it's true. In all cases, what you eat involves a lot of death. The it's all made of living cells and those living cells die within you and are converted into energy and nutrients for us to survive on. And that's a beautiful thing about the nature of the biosphere, actually, that it's able to produce this abundance of life. that can then support more complexity.  Yucca: Yeah. We are part of that process. Not only in that we are consumers who are eating other living things and things that could only live because this cycle has been happening for literally billions of years, but that we also are what gets consumed  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: already. Right? Eventually we're all going to die. Right? Where. The, the person that is me, the person that is you, we will die. We will cease to function, but they're still all of the material that was part of us that already has died, which has already been consumed and eaten and incorporated into new life. Mark: Yeah. One of the things about being a human is that we operate at a particular scale. And so we tend to be, we tend to think of ourselves as these very encapsulated sort of enclosed being. But if you look a little closer, we are radiating. I mean, I'm not only talking about, you know, direct excretion. We are radiating flakes of skin and hair and fingernails and toenails and just all of this stuff  Yucca: Photons to  Mark: Oh. And photons.  Yucca: literally light. Mark: That is coming off us all the time. And all of that stuff gets digested by decomposers. All of that stuff gets reabsorbed into the biosphere and incorporated into new stuff. And the key point that we were talking about before we started recording on that is to really get, these are the same atoms. They're exactly the same atoms. You know, your body is made up very like. Of atoms that were incorporated into other people right now. Not, not just animals and plants, but other people as well, because we've been around for a very long time. We've got a lot of matter floating around, out there, ready to be incorporated into a living being.  Yucca: Yeah. love to, just to visualize, to just think about the earth going back four and a half billion years ago, forming the creating out of this swirling disc of material around the young star, around our young son and that material that clumped up little by little. It grew from a few grains of sand up to pebbles and pebbles up to rocks to boulders to the earth. It's the same stuff. That same stuff has just been used over and over it. Yeah. A little bit falls down from space every year, but basically all of that over and over and over again, it's gone through the bodies of the, of the earliest you know, relatives of Luca into our cyanobacteria that caused snowball earth all the way to now. And just as mark was saying, other human beings, so same carbon atoms. So same. Oxygen and hydrogen and, and they've been rearranged. They're broken apart, like Legos, right? We're just like little Legos that we get broken apart, put back into, into things. And you know, here we go. Here's some going to pass some Legos out right now. We're, we're all breathing out. Right. We're breathing out carbon dioxide and that carbon, well that's being released from. To our lungs from our blood and our blood picked it up as a waste product from ourselves. But ourselves got that from the food that we ate that was in trees and that was in the air and just on and on and on. And it's just, I mean, it's just so much fun to just think about. Mark: It, it is. And, and it's so important to think about it in a holistic sense, including all of the aspects of that cycle, because I. Talking about. this before we started recording. In some ways you can think of a multicellular organism or any organism, really as kind of a, a sustained reaction, right. A very, very complex chemical reaction. And in that sense, it's like a simple. Chemical reaction like a fire, for example, which uptakes carbon and it uptakes oxygen. And it causes a reaction that makes all this heat and light. And then after a while, when it's exhausted all of that, then it goes out and we go out to, and when we do the decomposers are there to disassemble us into those component pieces so that we can get cycled back into the circle of life.  Yucca: Yep. And this is how it's, this is how it's been, right. This is just when, when that happens and again, it's a win then what is our body just returned? What it was before, right. Which is just part of this planet, part of the biosphere, the living part of this planet. Mark: Right. So let's talk a little bit about the details of that, about the specifics of how decomposition works and, and what the players are, Because we were talking about this as well. One of the things that we find is that because humans are kind of hardwired to have a revulsion at things that are rotting mostly. Yucca: Because we're not scavengers in  Mark: we're not scavengers and we can't eat it. So we have this sort of automatic sort of gag reflex when we're confronted with stuff that's wrought because it's not something that we can eat and we need to stay away from it  Yucca: Right. And we don't want to get sick too. Like, you know, if there's another body like, okay, well, did that body die from an infectious disease? Right. We don't want to get, we instinctually know to keep away so that we don't get that disease as well.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So that being the case, we tend to shy away from looking very closely at the decomposition process. Yucca was mentioning that even when she looks at her school textbooks, her biology textbooks, they really kind of give short shrift to the decomposition process, which is a shame because it's really super cool.  Yucca: It is. Yeah. And some of that, I think part of that is some of that, that phobia. That we have of death and dying. And some of it is just biophilia in general, but some of it's also what you were talking about with scale. This is happening on a scale that is outside of our normal scale. And we as humans and actually animals in general, we live in a very unusual scale for life and in the universe too. So. normal to us because it's what we experienced, but we are really weird compared to most life. Most life is really, really tiny. Just, I mean, it's, it's hard to even communicate how tiny and comparison. To us this life is, and some of the decomposers or the first steps in decomposition are on scales that we can relate to. If we start to talk about worms or termites or things like that, we can see them. We don't usually think about them very much, but those are probably the things that come to mind when we first think of a decomp of a, of a decomposer decomposition. It's all life. And so why don't we actually let's step back before going there and talk about what, what life needs to do to be life. So we can really broadly separate things into two huge categories. We can say we've got bias. Which are things that are alive are made by living things. They might not be alive anymore. Like say your book, your books made of paper, right. That's biotic. And then we've got our Abe biotic, which is the opposite. It's the things that aren't life and life needs. At least the life. As we know it here on earth needs very specific arrangements of matter to be able to work. So we've got producers and what they do is they take that abiotic. it into a form that's biotic. And what we're used to for that would be our photosynthesizer turns out there are way more strategies to do that, but we're usually familiar with our plants and our algae, like our cyanobacteria. They take the sun. So photons, they take carbon from the air, so they take water, they rearrange it and then make an organic compounds. And then that's what goes into the food chain and that's what we're eating. So, and then we attach little other things to it, like, oh, let's attach some iron, let's attach some copper and all of that. And, and that's how it travels through our bodies. As we eat it, they eat it, they eat it. But what life is really, really good at. Is taking these little pieces and making more and more complex and complicated structures. So we ended up making these huge molecules, but those molecules are usually only useful to the organism that is. Using it, right? So the plant is going to make cellulose and the tree is going to make some lignin or something like that. Or, or we're going to end up on a larger level yet we're making bone and all of that. But when somebody else needs to use that, they don't need the whole cellular. They need it broken down into simple sugars. So we take it apart and then we put it back together into something bigger. So this is constantly ripping it apart, putting it back, ripping apart, putting it back and that breaking it down, breaking it into pieces. That's what digestion. So big things like us, we digest on the inside. That's what we're doing. When we eat, we take the food, we chew it up to us. We that's the mastication. Right. And then it goes into our stomach and in our stomach, we have acids and enzymes that, break it apart, and then we can redistribute it through our body and use it the way we. So decomposers are also breaking things down, but for the most part, they aren't doing it inside of their body. They're doing it on the outside. So they're releasing enzymes into the environment to break those things down. So our, and it's mostly our bacteria and fungi are though archaea are a little bit involved with that. And for organisms that are bigger than we think of as decomposers like worms. Well, it's not actually the worms who are doing the decomposition. It's the microbes living in their bodies that are doing it. They're just big micro factories basically. And this is the same inside of our bodies or the body of, of cattle or anything like that, too. We've got lots of microbes living in us that with. Our bodies wouldn't work, right. We're working in as a team. So our, our decomposers, they are releasing enzymes into the environment, around them to break down those more complex molecules into smaller forms that they can then directly absorb into their bodies and different. Organisms are specialized in different types of material. So our fun guy are typically really, really good at breaking down Woody material and that had to evolve. I think we talked about this, a few episodes back about the Carboniferous and how, yeah. For a while. Life hadn't figured out how to break down all that Woody stuff and it built up and it built up and it caused all kinds of fires. And that's where our coal comes from today and all of that. But they release those enzymes into the environment. It breaks it down into these simple forms that then life can, can take up again and it can go back into that food web. So the bacteria breaks it down and then. They eat some of that. And then the protozoan, which are larger microbes there, you carry it. So they're like us, they come and eat it and then the nematodes eat them. And then the nematodes are eaten by micro arthropods and up and up and up. But if it hadn't gotten digestive, hadn't gotten broken down, this material would just build up and there would be nothing for us to then be making our bodies from now. And I'm not just talking about us as a humans. Life right. Surface, terrestrial life. And this process, we talk about it from, from our perspective as terrestrial organisms, but it's happening in aquatic systems. It's happening, it's different players, but it's happening at the hydrothermal vents. It's happening deep in the crust of the earth, everywhere that we find life. We see this basic process happening to them. Somebody eats it and turns it into a form that someone else can use to eat and on and on it goes. Mark: Right. Right. And it's important to recognize that this is, it's not just that this is a good idea. From the standpoint of our being able to eat, it's also. The world, if we were to suspend the decomposition process and survive that even after one winter's worth of leaves, we would be up to our knees and leaves and decomposition is what turns those Woody's those, those Woody cellulose. Dead leaves into soil, into, into stuff that can then be used by living creatures, living plants in order to to survive. So it's the, the sheer volume of stuff that is subjected to this decomposition process at all times is really overwhelming.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's it is such an important part of the cycle. Without it, we simply couldn't be here and life, as we know it couldn't work.  Yucca: Yeah. And, and life like us to use an old image where the tip of an iceberg, right? The big stuff like us, plants and animals, most of the life or the micro. Right there that the vast amount, and there they're the ones doing the decomposition on the outside. They're the ones in our bodies doing the decomposition we're full of them. This, this process isn't just happening in the soil. This is happening everywhere. Now this time of year in temperate environments, this there's it's kicking up. This is when the fun guy are getting really, really active because those Leafs you just talked about, they dropped down and it's time for the fun guy to grow. They just start eating that up and converting it into forms that then are going to be taken back up by the plants. And by not just the plants, we usually talk about plants and animals because those are who we're most familiar with. They exist on our scale, but our bacteria and archaea and, and fungi and, and all of those other things too. So that don't fit nicely into one category or the other that we're still kind of trying to figure out how to, how to categorize those.  Mark: Right,  Yucca: So. Mark: Yeah. As you say, this is the season when that gets going. One implication of this is that we encourage you if at all possible not to rake your yard.  Yucca: Yes. Mark: Because what you're doing is you're suspending of the necessary decomposition process. That turns all of that leaf cover into nourishment for your lawn. You know, if, if you have a lawn or some other sort of bare area that ends up covered with leaves, leave him, leave him and let them decompose because that's actually the healthiest thing you can do for the environment. There.  Yucca: It really is. Yeah. And, and any place that you can keep the Sarah, the soil, not bear is really, really helpful because these decomposers that we're talking about, they need water. All microbes are. All of them. They exist on very different scales, so they live in a little tiny drop. Right. But when you dry out. That soil. That's how you start to turn it into dirt from an agricultural perspective, right? Soil is the living thing. Soil has got all of that life in there. It's got the, the water, it's got the, the organic material, the dead broken down stuff that the microbes have been working on. Just turning into basically this wonderful. Soft. So it's like cake, it's just this and the air pockets. And when we rake away the leaves or we carry, we, we move away all the, the, the detritus and, and all of that. We're exposing that to dry. And so it starts to kill all of those things. And then you're left behind with the minerals and the minerals are important, right? Life's got to get in there and convert those minerals into a form that we could use, but life has to have certain conditions to be able to do that.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: When it's there, when the life's there to do it, it does a great job. There's a, there's so much life. If you have a light microscope and these are really, really inexpensive, you can. Really good light microscope for like $40. Right? If you're thinking about getting your kid on microscope, the like kid Microsoft sets, like don't even bother with that, just get them a real microscope because they cost the same amount and you'll be able to do so much more with a real one. But with just a real one, you can take a tiny drop of soil, put it on a slide. Look at it. Put a little drop of water in there as well. And you can spend hours looking at the literal billions of organisms who are in there. Even if you're in an area that's got pretty poor soil. It's just, I mean, it's, it's one of those wow. Things just to go, whoa, there's so much life they're busy as it can be just breaking things down, eating each other. And then this is a topic for another time, but we can start, we can talk at another time about how the plants and the. Soil microbes have a, basically this really complex communication network in which the plants can ask for what they need. They can be like, I need some more calcium and they send out exit dates that, that encourage the growth of specific bacteria that are going to start to accumulate that calcium. And then the plants can get that. And so there's just this amazing communication. How.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: But let's come back to that one in the spring, because this is, this is talking more about the let's let's get that eating happening, that breaking down. And we, we got onto this with saying that this is when a lot of the fun guy are really coming into their season and they're working below, below that leaf litter. They're working below the ground and transforming. The previous year's material back into a form that could be used again. Mark: And that's what they do to us.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's, that's an important consideration. I mean, my feeling, I, personal feeling around this is that there's sort of a moral component to this in that, you know, I've used all these materials and I've consumed all these living things for all this time. I feel like. It's it's my obligation to give the assembly of my body when it no longer works back into this cycle so that it can be created in, in different ways. And that's very different than the sort of mainstream interest in involving and stuff like that. We'll talk in a few minutes about alternatives to, to some of the death practices that are popular in the over culture. But I just feel like, Yeah. This is it's the price of the ticket, you know, you you gotta pay it back, Yucca: Yeah. No matter how hard you try not to eat, you're going to be decomposed anyways.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: why not doing it in a way that's going to be, that's not going to poison things in the meantime. Right. Which is what a lot of those embalming practices will end up doing. Right.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: And it's uncomfortable to think about, because we don't like to think about our own. Death, right. It's it's really it's. We have a deep primal fear of that. Because we're trying to avoid it as living things. We're trying to avoid it as long as possible. Right. But that's one of the really nice things about this year is that this time of year is that we can come back to that and have the time to think about it and to try and be present with it. Mark: Yes. And what I find is that having, having been a pagan now for more than 30 years I am a lot more comfortable with the idea of my death than I used to be. I mean, I don't want it to be anytime soon, unless I'm, you know, very uncomfortable and unable to have a quality of life, in which case send me off I'm I'm done. I'm okay with the idea that it's going to happen. And that is kind of contrary to what seems to be the implicit conventional wisdom in the mainstream culture, which is, don't think about it. Don't talk about it because that might make it happen somehow. There's this sort of superstitious. Idea about, you know, thinking or talking about death, that it's sort of bad luck in some way. And what I find is that I come to a much more peaceful coexistence with the fact of my own mortality, because I do these rituals every year at this time. And I contemplate these things every year at this time. You know, I, I, I think, I mean, Halloween has been commercialized so terribly, but it still contains grains of. You know, the fear and yet the excitement, the sort of morbid fascination, you know, all those sorts of pieces that I think it's very healthy for a culture to contain ironically, you know, the, because decomposition is not just a good idea, it's the law it's going to happen to you. Right. It's going to happen to everybody and we, Yucca: And if it stopped, that would be the end of life. Right? If you take death away, there is no more life. Mark: that's right. That's right. And so death is, is what life is built on. You know, we are these assemblies, these biological assemblies. And when we stop functioning, we get disassembled, as I said before, and that kind of brings me to. Talking about decomposition and you the listener we have a lot of, kind of messed up ways of looking at death in our mainstream culture. You know, we're so avoidant we give our dead people to strangers at funeral homes to process them and, you know, pickle them in. Carcinogenic formaldehyde and, you know, hide them away in ridiculously expensive boxes so that they can be buried and can become a pollutant to the water table. And you know, we're talking about millions and millions of gallons of formaldehyde going into the water table just in the United States every year. And that's. I mean it, and it's a problem. Not only environmentally from a scientific standpoint, it's a problem, culturally, because if we had a more healthy relationship with death, we would be a happier and more contented people. People are phobic about dealing with dead bodies. They, they, you know, when someone dies, suddenly they go from being, you know, my beloved relative to becoming this. Terrifying object that we have to get away from us as quickly as possible. And the truth is that until around the 1850s in the United States 1860s, actually during the civil war when embalming to ship bodies back from the war to their loved ones, became commonplace until then most funeral arrangements were made at. There would be a viewing of the body with a wake and or some other kind of, you know, acknowledgement in the home. And then the body would be buried with a minimum of any kind of preservative treatment, you know, nothing for that purpose in a simple wooden box. And that was how it was done. And. The thing that many people don't know is that that's still perfectly legal, even though a funeral home may lie to you and tell you that it's not, it is perfectly legal in every state, in the United States. And, and I am unaware of a country anywhere in the world that requires you to use a funeral home, or that requires you to be involved unless you're going to be shipped over a vast distance. You can do this for your loved ones at home. And there's a lot of work being done to transform the deaf industry right now. Caitlin Doughty of the ASCA mortician YouTube channel has written several books on this, and she's really kind of a, a leader on this the natural burial home funeral movement. And I really encourage you to look into her, her materials. She's very funny. So it's, it's very entertaining stuff to watch but it also answers and demystifies questions. She's the mortician herself and has a kind of an alternate funeral home in the Los Angeles area. So. This, you know, this is the time of year. When you get to think about your own decomposition and. Right down, hopefully provide some written instructions to the people that love you about how you would like your body disposed of, let them know that, let them know where this document is, get your will together. And you're, you know, maybe a farewell letter that you'd like to say to the people that love you or a video or something like that. You can A health directive so that people know when you no longer want heroic measures to keep you alive. There is a there's a workbook that you can download from the atheopagan ism website that we'll put a link to in the. Episode notes that we'll kind of walk you through all the stuff that you need. Once he filled out this workbook, it really gives you everything that you need to have a death packet that will help your loved ones. Through that time, there is a very real phenomenon called grief brain. When people are grieving, they go into this kind of fog and it becomes very, very difficult for them to do the sort of. Dealing with insurance and dealing with, you know, putting obituaries in the newspaper and, you know, figuring out about  Yucca: There's just so much. And, and you're just dealing with, yeah, you've got your feelings of what's going on here. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So, you know, do your, do your loved ones, a favor and yourself a favor, because it really does take a big weight off your mind, download that workbook and go through it and, you know, do some preparation for your death. And you may think to yourself, well, I'm only 35. I, I don't need to worry about this. That's not the way the world works.  Yucca: Hopefully you'll make it to a hundred. Right. We're shooting. We're all shooting for that, but, but.  Mark: That's Right. We we  Yucca: know, you know, there could be a car crash or whatever, or a diagnosis, or we just don't know. Mark: we don't know. And the, the good thing about that about really embracing the fact that we don't know. and that our mortality is real, is that it helps us to live well.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It helps us really to embrace this life because. It's an amazing journey and it's a finite journey. It's not going to last forever. And being aware of that really helps you to take the time to smell the flowers. Look at the sunset, look at the stars, watch the moon come up. All those things that are so, that, that make our lives so rich and.  Yucca: Well, mark. Thank you. I think this is a, I think that's a perfect note to finish today up on.  Mark: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for saying so we wish you, of course, the very best of the hellos cell and see. And we'll be back with more sort of seasonally appropriate stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks. And Thank you for listening as always. We really appreciate her and listeners. So take good care. Yucca: Thank you all. 

Welcome back everyone! This week, Evie is ready to take on the supernatural world with her pink bedazzled taser and her stiletto boots. The only thing she isn't prepared for is Lend: the slippery paranormal boy who slides his way into Evie's heart (and her surrogate mother's skin). Featuring vampire slander, copyright questions, and some very questionable fairy management. (Seriously, everyone should be way more concerned about the fairies.) CW: Death Thank you to anyone who donated to Black Lives Matter or Pride organizations! It's never too late to send us your receipts in exchange for our buckwild vampire bonus episode. If you like The Worst Thing We Read, help us grow by spreading the word! You can support us by leaving a 5-star review on Apple iTunes. Follow us on Instagram @worstthingweread, Twitter @worstthngweread, or email us at worstthingweread@gmail.com. Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/102293261-kaitlyn-burton https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12635391-savanah-tiffany Book rec: The Martian, Adam Weir. Also-book rec: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty.