Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: On today's episode we're interviewing Jack who is the brand new president of the National Funeral Directors Association.
Speaker: So we saw him get his honor in Baltimore at the NFDA, their
Speaker: month or so ago and so we are talking to him about his plans for the year ahead and also some tidbits about Baltimore and why it was such a special spot for him and yeah let's get into it
Speaker: Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host Jennifer Muldaney aka the Glam Reaper herself.
Speaker: On today's episode I am very privileged, I feel like I should curtsy or something.
Speaker: We have one of my dear friends, the president, the new president of the NFDA, Jack.
Speaker: Jack Mitchell, welcome.
Speaker: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker: No curtsy necessary at all.
Speaker: Well, I don't think virtually it works quite as well.
Speaker: Otherwise it's just me going off camera.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So welcome.
Speaker: So tell everybody who you are, first of all, before you, you are president.
Speaker: And yeah, give us a little bit of backstory and even how you and I met.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, my family goes back many generations in funeral service, six generations to be exact, back to 1837.
Speaker: all of it in Baltimore.
Speaker: And I decided somewhere probably through my college years that I would, would go on into the family business.
Speaker: And I've been able to work alongside with my father for all these years.
Speaker: He, he still comes into the funeral home at the age of 83.
Speaker: Um, and I got involved with the Maryland Funeral Directors Association and served as president.
Speaker: And then ultimately, uh, with national, with NFDA, um,
Speaker: And when the convention was in Baltimore back in 2000, I just kind of made some connections with people who at the time I didn't even realize they were like board members on their way up to being president.
Speaker: They were just people who were looking around for a place to go, a bar or whatever.
Speaker: And I said, well, this is my hometown.
Speaker: I can help you out.
Speaker: And we ended up making connections.
Speaker: And, you know, I ended up getting involved with NFDA as well.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: ran for office a couple times, first for the board and then for secretary.
Speaker: And I was
Speaker: fortunate enough to be elected.
Speaker: And now I've reached the busiest seat in the boardroom, that of president.
Speaker: It's only been a month, but it's never a dull moment.
Speaker: Well, thank you very much for squeezing me slash us in.
Speaker: You're very good.
Speaker: So tell me, that's amazing.
Speaker: So it started in the 1800s.
Speaker: I mean, that's wild, especially in America, because, you know, history, obviously being from Ireland, history is huge and it's
Speaker: we've so much of it here it's quite fresh so to when you have that you know even a small bit of history it's super important to sort of hang on to and stuff but out of curiosity you know going into the funeral business even if that was your family business did it ever seem foreign to you or strange or like there was another route road for you to follow or it was just no this is what's gonna happen
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, I definitely wasn't influenced.
Speaker: You know, my father didn't lean on me and say, you know, you will go into the family business or anything like that.
Speaker: But there was just never anything that really interested me so much more so than the family business.
Speaker: But I think part of that was because even at a young age, before I worked at the funeral home, I started to have an appreciation for what funeral directors do for people and how helpful they are to people in a way that's really more
Speaker: more intimate, you might say, than most other facets of life, jobs, professions, what have you, where you can really be that helpful to people.
Speaker: So I think it was more of a question of, will I be able to handle it emotionally?
Speaker: And if so, then yeah, this is definitely what I want to do.
Speaker: And it's just worked out that way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's amazing trajectory as well from, you know, starting in a family business.
Speaker: I'm sure your dad's super proud.
Speaker: I mean, you know, moving all the way up to president of the National Funeral Directors Association, that's a pretty big deal.
Speaker: You know, it's not president of the world or of America.
Speaker: It's president of our little world, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's pretty, pretty impressive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When, when,
Speaker: I mean, my father always loved going to the national convention.
Speaker: It's such an incredibly huge event.
Speaker: You know, there are thousands of funeral directors there.
Speaker: So there's networking to be done.
Speaker: There's the educational opportunities where you can keep up on trends and things of that nature.
Speaker: So he always just got a charge out of going to the national convention.
Speaker: And when I started going, after I started working at our funeral home, I can remember during the opening session of the convention,
Speaker: they would introduce the past presidents one by one.
Speaker: And my father, almost every one of them, he could name where they were from.
Speaker: He'd sit there and he'd be like Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, you know, almost everyone.
Speaker: And to me back then they were all like larger than life.
Speaker: And thinking of it almost from my father's perspective, now that I get up on that stage as president,
Speaker: You know, from Maryland and and the only other president we've ever had from Maryland was Mike Noonan, who was one of my father's best friends.
Speaker: He was president back in the 90s.
Speaker: So now I've kind of followed in his friend's footsteps as a president for Maryland.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, just thinking of it from where my father and where my parents sit, I know they're quite proud.
Speaker: And of course, that's just an incredibly wonderful, wonderful feeling.
Speaker: Of course, of course.
Speaker: Now, the convention, so I was at the convention, and it was amazing, as always, and it's always great.
Speaker: COVID was just such a, in the world, but particularly in the funeral industry, because, you know, we were just, we had to deal with the aftermath of everything.
Speaker: And as we keep saying, the final responders, but
Speaker: It was so wonderful and has been to gather together again, which is amazing.
Speaker: But for you, for you to be deigned president in the NFDA annual convention in your hometown of Baltimore, that is stars aligning and that is pretty awesome.
Speaker: I mean, you and I had a whole conversation about this.
Speaker: I mean, that would be as exciting as if I got it in Dublin, Ireland, which is never going to happen.
Speaker: Unfortunately.
Speaker: I'll see if I can use my influence to take one out overseas for a convention.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: I mean, because all your friends could have been there and it was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it had a lot to do with COVID because the way it works, like airborne like most, you're elected to kind of the first level position of secretary and you essentially move up the line secretary, treasurer, president, elect president.
Speaker: But there was a year with the pandemic where those of us on the board, we didn't do a lot of what we normally do, go to the other state conventions as a liaison because there were no state conventions and we had no national conferences and things like that.
Speaker: So we basically did a do-over year.
Speaker: We all stayed in office.
Speaker: We didn't move up one year.
Speaker: And it's because of that.
Speaker: that I ended up going in as president in Baltimore rather than a year earlier in Nashville.
Speaker: And my mother doesn't fly.
Speaker: We couldn't figure out how we were gonna get her to Nashville, but they live about 20 minutes from the Baltimore Convention Center.
Speaker: So like you talk about stars aligning, I mean, it really totally was.
Speaker: So, and I had a lot of friends, clergy that I've worked with for years and years, people I went to school with, it was truly special.
Speaker: Good, good.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: It was great to witness it.
Speaker: And Baltimore in and of itself was a very interesting city to have the convention in.
Speaker: And obviously that it's got a lot of ties and obviously being the celebrant that I am.
Speaker: The service of remembrance in each NFDA is super important to me.
Speaker: And so I always make sure and attend that to see, you know, what we're doing as a collective and obviously, you know, mourning the passing of people in our community.
Speaker: And I found this year's one...
Speaker: Extra interesting and apologies for the construction noise, if you can possibly hear it.
Speaker: But the we move on regardless.
Speaker: But the service remembrance this year, I thought was really, really interesting because it had a really strong military hold.
Speaker: I mean, they effectively it was how we treat military members when they come back.
Speaker: um you know having passed away in service and it was i mean i got super emotional um and you know with the anthem obviously being from ireland the you know u.s national anthem isn't my national anthem so i don't tend to get emotional i get emotional with my own one um so i don't have that tie to it but i found the service of remembrance at this particular one i even wrote about it
Speaker: in the Funeral Times magazine that I write for.
Speaker: To me, it was, yeah, it was super emotional that service of Remembers.
Speaker: I thought it was done very, very well.
Speaker: Yeah, well, we have a theme to the service of remembrance every year, and the president really decides on what that will be.
Speaker: Now, that was my predecessor, Randy Anderson.
Speaker: And Baltimore, it is kind of a natural because we're not 40 minutes from Annapolis, where the U.S. Naval Academy is.
Speaker: We're about an hour from Arlington National Cemetery.
Speaker: And of course, as you mentioned, it's where Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem during the Battle of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
Speaker: So those those factors, I think, was what gave Randy the idea that it would only only be appropriate for the theme this year to be a military military type service.
Speaker: And those are always, you know, when you experience them firsthand,
Speaker: They're very moving, you know, because just everything, it's military.
Speaker: It's, you know, you're not rounding up the pallbearers and trying to explain to them what they need to do and all that.
Speaker: I mean, everything is just absolute detail.
Speaker: And that is just so, that's all about being so respectful to the deceased.
Speaker: And, you know, they're just very impressive services.
Speaker: So I was glad that Randy chose that for the service this year.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I have to say I was surprised myself.
Speaker: It's interesting, a lot of people who either don't know me as well as, you know, or they're not in the community and stuff, they kind of assume that I'm, because I'm working in this, that I have a heart of stone or that I, you know, don't.
Speaker: Like, I'm the opposite.
Speaker: Like, I see a puppy on the street and I'm like, oh my God.
Speaker: And I think that's so important and I always...
Speaker: I always say to my family, the day I don't feel anything is the day I need to hang my hat up because a part of what we all do as a community is we're there for each other.
Speaker: It's a human experience and we're all going through it together.
Speaker: So, yeah, I was particularly moved, I have to say, by this service.
Speaker: Now, I do have a potentially controversial question.
Speaker: I've kind of touched on this with you before, but with the service of remembrance, in my experience, it has predominantly been clergy who have
Speaker: emceed it I guess, officiated the services.
Speaker: I know there's a lot of other elements.
Speaker: Do you think with the rise of celebrants that it'll be something you might try or it'll be further down the line and how does that equally going back to the clergy for people who don't necessarily believe in
Speaker: Catholicism or whatever, you know, how to, how have you any experience with that or thoughts on that?
Speaker: Well, I, I can see that coming probably in the near future, um, because NFDA actually puts on your, and you're aware, I think of celebrant training, you know, at the convention every year, you know, any attendees are invited to come in a day early and become certified as celebrants.
Speaker: So, you know, NFDA is, is very much in line with this, this
Speaker: progression into, you know, kind of a different way of doing things.
Speaker: So, you know, we definitely are good with celebrants.
Speaker: You know, like I said, we're doing our own certified celebrant training.
Speaker: So I can see for one of our own service of remembrance in the future, having a celebrant.
Speaker: Next year, again, I'm thinking, what am I going to do as a theme when it's in Las Vegas?
Speaker: You know, we just talked about how Baltimore lent itself to military.
Speaker: And I'm like, am I going to have a funeral of Elvis's?
Speaker: I was about to say, I have plenty of ideas, Jack.
Speaker: I can see.
Speaker: Maybe not me necessarily, but I think we should get a celebrant and feathers in a frequent dress with Elvis by our side.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Cirque du Soleil performers and showgirls.
Speaker: Elvis is the Paul Bears.
Speaker: I mean, you're right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yeah, potentially I can see.
Speaker: You and I will work on that.
Speaker: I'll give you some ideas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, that's, it's definitely, cause I know the ICCFA is in Vegas every year.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of the last time the NFDA was in Vegas.
Speaker: We were in Vegas before.
Speaker: But it's been a while.
Speaker: It has been a while.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So next year will be twice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to say 2008 or 2009, maybe since we were last in Las Vegas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, anyway, regardless, I'm sure it'll be a wonderful service of remembrance and you know where to come if you need any ideas.
Speaker: Keep that in mind.
Speaker: No, but just on because exactly that, as you said, like the NFDA does its own certified training of celebrants.
Speaker: And I just think the concept is.
Speaker: is has really taken off and you know obviously I know I'm a little bit biased but I was raised Catholic myself so it's not like I'm allergic to clergy or anything but it's just it's really to me it's all about more diversification and inclusion and like that's what we're all supposed to be about and should be about um now and so I really yeah I just really want to see our kind of community keep going in that direction so um which I know they will with you at the helm I know that they will during good times
Speaker: Well, people are becoming less and less churched, so to speak.
Speaker: You know, not specific, having anything specific to do with funerals or memorial services, but people are just generally speaking less religious.
Speaker: But when it comes time to memorialize a loved one, they do kind of look at each other and say, okay, is someone in the family just going to lead this whole service?
Speaker: You know, what are we going to do?
Speaker: So if you can offer them a celebrate, you know, somebody who can
Speaker: You know, it is almost like an emcee.
Speaker: And they can, you know, a celebrant who who is a good celebrant can incorporate religious aspects into it, you know, whatever whatever family wants.
Speaker: But it can cater more to what more and more of today's families are comfortable with.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I actually just got off the phone, which is why I was late to our chat with a family who like that they wanted a minister to do the service and the minister wasn't available.
Speaker: And so I even joked with them on the phone.
Speaker: I said, so you got landed with me.
Speaker: I apologize.
Speaker: But even, you know, making that little joke, you know, it's lightened it up and the conversation and like that I can include prayers.
Speaker: And so once they kind of realized that it softened them and it made them way more open to the opportunity.
Speaker: And I even know myself, I mean, when I got into this business 15 more years ago, half of it was because I was sitting in my friend's funeral.
Speaker: And he was only 28 and he was atheist.
Speaker: I mean, he was absolutely atheist.
Speaker: And here we were sitting in a church.
Speaker: I mean, and that's classic Ireland or, you know, I know since my book came out and since more press has more spotlight has been on on the industry as a whole, that has changed.
Speaker: But, you know, to me, that just felt so wrong back then.
Speaker: And as I said, I grew up Catholic.
Speaker: It doesn't take away from.
Speaker: any part of that by having somebody as you said emcee the service it's just about including all facets of jennifer as opposed to this one tiny part that she never went to church but she happens to be catholic and was gorgeous in her communion dress and you know um so yeah it's just really about it including all facets of people i think um is what celibate they're great at but
Speaker: But anyway, so tell me, do you have any sort of goals or objectives as to what you plan to bring to the community of the National Funeral Interactors Association in the coming year?
Speaker: Well, I can't say that there's any new reinventing the wheel kind of things, but there are some initiatives that we've had underway for some time that we're looking to expand upon.
Speaker: The number one thing above all others that our members are telling us is their challenge right now is simply getting good funeral directors.
Speaker: That's risen to the top because we do send out member surveys every year.
Speaker: And we have, I'm sure you're familiar with the Journey to Serve initiative to try to recruit almost military servicemen and women who have retired into a career in funeral service
Speaker: we're really looking to expand upon that effort in general, just to simply market ourselves because we really don't do that.
Speaker: We don't market ourselves or brag on ourselves.
Speaker: We take care of families and that's what we do.
Speaker: And people are very appreciative of what we do and we just say thank you and that's it.
Speaker: But we're really looking to try to just market our business
Speaker: profession or, you know, just market funeral service is a great way to spend a career, you know, helping people.
Speaker: And I think there are a lot of people that don't really like where they might turn their nose up at that prospect is the thought of the embalming.
Speaker: And, you know, that's what people have asked me my whole life, especially when I was younger, when I told them I was a funeral director, dude, you touch dead bodies, you know, but, you know, more and more states now are, are having, you
Speaker: where you can be licensed just as a funeral director and not do the mortician part, so to speak.
Speaker: So that might be, and there are cases for and against that whole split license arrangement.
Speaker: I know a lot of funeral directors don't like it, but in terms of getting people to come into funeral service, to be funeral directors,
Speaker: that might open some more doors because of the people who would really rather, they really want to take care of families.
Speaker: They want to sit down and take care of families and do the funerals, but really don't want to do the embalming portion of it.
Speaker: That can help to facilitate those people into funeral service.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting that you brought that up because I 150% completely and utterly agree with that.
Speaker: And I completely know what you're saying.
Speaker: It is very received very differently.
Speaker: I to me, it makes total sense.
Speaker: It doesn't make total sense to anybody else.
Speaker: But I look at it like during Covid, for example, I absolutely wanted to help my colleagues and friends, but I'm not a licensed funeral director here in New York, so I couldn't.
Speaker: You know, and I feel like there are so many people out there who would make amazing counsellors.
Speaker: and work really, really well with families and are so patient and so empathetic.
Speaker: And then there are so many people who aren't good with people, but are amazing in solitude and
Speaker: you know, working with bodies and are more methodical and more sort of into the medical side of it, dealing with the body and stuff like that.
Speaker: So I personally absolutely think that if it could be divided by, you know, I think divide and conquer, as they say, I really, really do believe, especially after COVID, that really proved it to me because like I just felt useless.
Speaker: I mean, my two jobs that I do as a memorial planner and event planner,
Speaker: and then Celebrant.
Speaker: And of course, Celebrant I could still do because we could do virtual services, but the memorial planning, we weren't allowed, you know, any more than what, 10 people in a room.
Speaker: So I was left with, you know, not being able to help my colleagues who were just inundated and flat out.
Speaker: And yeah, it was just kind of heartbreaking because of, I don't want to say silly laws.
Speaker: There are a lot of silly laws out there.
Speaker: Don't tell Chris Farmer I said that.
Speaker: But, you know, it is, it's, it's,
Speaker: I think it needs to change.
Speaker: And I know there's a lot of talk at the moment with the new funeral rule.
Speaker: You know, we won't necessarily get into that.
Speaker: There doesn't need to be, you know, it's just price transparency and stuff like that, unless you want to talk about it.
Speaker: But yeah, it's, I just think as a, as an industry, as a whole, as a business, I think we need to evolve a little bit more and we are, we're getting there.
Speaker: It's slow, but we're getting there.
Speaker: And I think,
Speaker: I think nominating people like you as president, I think helps.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it's it's you're open to conversations.
Speaker: And I've you know, I'm only over here seven years now really doing this.
Speaker: And I've had a lot of conversations with people who are not open.
Speaker: Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker: I'm like, that's fine that that's the way you always did it.
Speaker: But at least be open to ideas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's and it's changing.
Speaker: As you probably know, 70 percent of the students in the mortuary science schools are female now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I can remember at a convention many years ago, probably over 20 years ago, a gentleman just randomly came up to me and said, so I heard in Maryland, your president right now is a woman.
Speaker: I said, I said, yeah.
Speaker: And the one after her, we're going to have another woman like two in a row.
Speaker: And he's just shaking his head like, I mean, you got a female president of your of your state funeral directors.
Speaker: And so, you know,
Speaker: like that was such a bad thing well fast forward a few years about 70 percent of them are going to be female you know yes that's it is yeah it is wild um there's there's stripes i mean even in little ireland i'm always massively proud of there's there's sometimes things i'm not proud of but even in ireland you know we had our first female president really early on and then our second and then
Speaker: Our Prime Minister, we call it a Taoiseach.
Speaker: He was an Indian gay gentleman.
Speaker: For a little island like Ireland, and the legalising gay marriage, it's incredible to see that.
Speaker: It makes me so proud.
Speaker: I cried so hard the day the gay marriage happened because it was just such a progressive move forward for us.
Speaker: And for just a little Catholic country that was so...
Speaker: we were in a little box and we weren't, you know, we were under somebody's boot and we weren't moving out.
Speaker: So to see that and to be from a country like that, it sometimes does, it's disheartening and sometimes does make me question, you know, the United States, it's supposed to be freedom.
Speaker: It's supposed to be all of these progressive things.
Speaker: And yet, you know,
Speaker: Yeah, you expect America to be kind of in the forefront, the leader for all those kinds of issues.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it'll get there.
Speaker: It'll get there.
Speaker: And we won't talk about the midterm election yesterday.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It actually annoys me, but it frustrates me because people ask me about it and I'm like, I can't vote.
Speaker: I can't vote yet.
Speaker: Stop, because the power is not within me.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But hopefully everybody listening did vote.
Speaker: Police made their voice heard.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for coming on the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I don't know if there's anything else you want to tell listeners before we bid you adieu.
Speaker: Well, I'll just say that, you know, I've been in the president's seat for about a month now, and it really is a different level of,
Speaker: of obligation from a time standpoint and just focus on the work of the association.
Speaker: And having been on the board for six years now, we always respect the president, just knowing that we have a lot of, again, time obligation, but we know the president really has so much more.
Speaker: And it is now pretty much daily communications with Christine or the staff or whomever.
Speaker: And it, it's hard to describe, but it's really just such a great feeling, um, that, that, that kind of trust has been bestowed upon me by our members and by the board.
Speaker: Um, it, it's a lot, it's, it's never boring, but, um, but it's really not like anything I've ever experienced.
Speaker: And I just, uh,
Speaker: It just makes me that much more committed to just absolutely doing as much as I can for every funeral director in the country and all of our families.
Speaker: It's just a great privilege.
Speaker: Well, we wish you the best of luck.
Speaker: We congratulate you again.
Speaker: We wish you the best of luck for the next 11 months, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If we're one month in.
Speaker: And yeah, you'll be fine.
Speaker: You'll rock it.
Speaker: You've got the look of the Irish with you now.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I've got you behind me.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: I did the Ancestry.com DNA spitting the thing and found out that I'm 5% Irish.
Speaker: I never knew that.
Speaker: 5% only?
Speaker: I would have actually guessed higher.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I don't, I shouldn't mention that my father's English.
Speaker: Oh, I did not know that.
Speaker: Oh, dear.
Speaker: We don't.
Speaker: There's no there's no hate on this show.
Speaker: So we will embrace them.
Speaker: Before we sign off, I actually will tell my listeners and you this interesting story about Ancestry.com that I found out from a family I'm working with just now.
Speaker: And I think this is fascinating.
Speaker: So Ancestry.com, for anybody who doesn't know, is an
Speaker: mostly utilized in America because I've never done it I think I will now um try it but you basically as you said spit in something I didn't even know you did that okay so you spit in something send it off DNA gets housed in this warehouse and um you get to follow your lineage and sort of see um who who who you belong to who does what but you could um
Speaker: sort of send it off 20 years ago and you could get notification 10, 20 years of somebody else who happens to put in their DNA and how it's connected, right?
Speaker: So this family I'm working with, this gentleman passed away and he found out that he had a daughter he didn't know about through Ancestry.com.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: So Jack, you better be careful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: How wild is that?
Speaker: Well, as I was saying to his gorgeous wife that I was talking to, I was like, well, that's a rarity for us women to, but we think we kind of might have known a little bit.
Speaker: So, but for men, so this, you know, I think it happened in the 70s.
Speaker: He had a fling, didn't think anything of it.
Speaker: She moved away.
Speaker: Nothing, you know, she just disappeared.
Speaker: Oh, you know that she was with child, whatever.
Speaker: She obviously clearly went on, had the child.
Speaker: What's interesting is the child then was adopted by folks that lived in the same vicinity as him here in New York.
Speaker: So he grew up or he grew up, he was already grown up, but he sort of got older with his daughter that he didn't know about.
Speaker: Now they didn't know each other, but just in the block from him also growing up.
Speaker: How wild is that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only reason they found out is because she had put in her, she'd gone into Ancestry.com, I think, as a last sort of resort.
Speaker: You know, she tried to find her birth father.
Speaker: She put it in and then his actual daughter put in her.
Speaker: she was into ancestry and she put in her DNA and it traced that they were related.
Speaker: And so then, you know, she was like, what's this?
Speaker: This is wild.
Speaker: Like, because it tells you how close the DNA is as in this could be your sibling type thing.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: I thought that was... Well, I just...
Speaker: I would advise every man I know who's had any sort of flings to go on Ancestry.com, just in case.
Speaker: I was just hoping to find that I had some Irish in me.
Speaker: I didn't know what the risks were.
Speaker: Well, there you go, so be careful.
Speaker: Be careful, Jack.
Speaker: In 20 years' time, you might get a boop.
Speaker: You have a connection.
Speaker: Jeez.
Speaker: Well, I think that's a good way to sign off from today's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Jack.
Speaker: We're going to curtsy as we leave you.
Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker: And we'll hopefully talk to you again soon when your tenure maybe is up and you can tell us how it all went.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Thank you, Jennifer.
Speaker: It was a pleasure.
Speaker: So that was our episode with Jack, the lovely Jack.
Speaker: So looking forward to maybe having a chat with him a year from now and seeing if he accomplished everything that he wanted to do.
Speaker: And if he's not exhausted by the end of the year, by the sounds of it's going to be a very, very busy 12 months ahead.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Give us some ideas.
Speaker: If you have a guest that you'd like us to speak with or you would like to share your story, get in touch at glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com and we'll talk to you soon.
