Transcript
Speaker: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, Jennifer Muldowney, and today's episode, we learn all about the history of cremation.
Speaker: You might not have known you wanted to know about it, but you definitely want to know about it.
Speaker: Take it away.
Speaker: Okay, so welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast where we talk about life, love and loss with a massive input from the funeral industry because that is the world that I live in.
Speaker: All right, Jason, welcome to the Glam Reaper.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks so much.
Speaker: So glad to be here and it's amazing how we can
Speaker: get together and so distant you're all the way up in new york and i'm all the way down in austin texas and i love austin texas and the reason why and i know larry is listening to this is because larry who was also a guest on the glamourie for connected us and i met him in austin in texas for the first time at the nfd really yes oh in 2013 i think that was yeah and it's a friendship that's blossomed ever since
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I always have a place in my heart for Austin.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, very good.
Speaker: So Jason, tell us a little bit about what you do and then let's get into it.
Speaker: I have questions and I guess the main one I'd want to start off with other than what you do is cremation then and now.
Speaker: I mean, it's over a hundred years old.
Speaker: I think it's coming up on 150 years old or something.
Speaker: Yeah, 140.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: So
Speaker: I mean, that kind of blows my mind because it almost feels quite modern.
Speaker: And I guess that's coming from little old Ireland probably because we only accepted it, what, like 30, 40 years ago when the church decided it was okay?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: We'll get into the controversy of that just yet.
Speaker: But yeah, tell us a little bit about you, what you do right now, and then yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker: Sure, absolutely.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: So I am the historian for the Cremation Association of North America.
Speaker: And I am also the cremation historian for the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.
Speaker: So if you've not been to the Funeral History Museum there in Houston, that's definitely somewhere you're going to want to put on your list.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: There at the museum, about 80% of the History of Cremation exhibit is my personal collection and information that I've added.
Speaker: And we created that exhibit.
Speaker: It came to completion in 2018.
Speaker: It was a three-year planning going through.
Speaker: So I was very proud of it.
Speaker: And if you were to see it, you would understand why.
Speaker: So in the rest of my world, I am a licensed funeral director.
Speaker: I've been a practicing funeral director for many years, have spent my whole life since the time I was a teenager.
Speaker: Well, preteen, 12 years old, I started hanging out and spending time in local funeral homes and wanting to learn all about the business.
Speaker: So
Speaker: That's been my life.
Speaker: It's been an interesting experience being such a cremationist in a world of traditional funerals.
Speaker: And of course, that's changed a lot in the last couple of decades, but especially in the South.
Speaker: So I am a licensed funeral director.
Speaker: I am also, I'm now, my current position is I'm the director of customer experience for a company called UPD Earns.
Speaker: We are a, one of the country's largest cremation products provider.
Speaker: providers for funeral homes and cremation providers across the country.
Speaker: That's my real world that pays all the bills.
Speaker: I'm such a lucky guy that it all
Speaker: just blends and melds together and creates this unique world that I wake up in each day.
Speaker: Yeah, and you know, it's fascinating, Jason, because I've always thought that I was destined for what I do.
Speaker: And I know, of course, people love and, you know, mock the glam Reaper title that was given to me by the newspaper.
Speaker: I've always felt like I was kind of born into this.
Speaker: Because similar to you, well, I didn't start as early as 12 years of age.
Speaker: Well, I kind of did actually, because I used to practice my calligraphy for art class in school.
Speaker: And I actually used to write an epitaph.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Oh, Lord.
Speaker: I still remember to this day.
Speaker: And then when I was 15, and most Irish, you know, teenagers have to do, you had to get out and get a job.
Speaker: And so where did we go?
Speaker: To the local bar.
Speaker: So I actually worked in a bar called The Morgue.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I feel like I was destined.
Speaker: So tell us, how did you become so fascinated with the history of cremation specifically?
Speaker: My actual interest in cremation came about the same time that I was getting involved in funeral service.
Speaker: And it actually came from a very unlikely place.
Speaker: And that place is the world of professional wrestling.
Speaker: And I was a huge wrestling fan when I was a kid.
Speaker: But especially I was a fan of a professional wrestler called The Undertaker.
Speaker: And his manager was Paul Bearer, was his stage name.
Speaker: And I absolutely wanted to be Paul Bearer.
Speaker: That was my dream and my goal to be Paul Bearer.
Speaker: So Paul Bearer carried an urn around with him trying to find that urn because it was a real urn.
Speaker: I just knew it was because it looked like a real urn.
Speaker: But I looked everywhere trying to find that urn.
Speaker: And in that process, I got to learn about cremation, about all of those things.
Speaker: Not just that, you know, that was the kind of the final screw in the urn for sure.
Speaker: But the thing that really did it too was as a young man, my great grandfather was cremated and his remains were placed in a ceramic urn.
Speaker: And that always just fascinated me that my grandfather used to actually tell the joke, it was his father who passed away.
Speaker: He used to tell the joke, he's a pilot and he has a four seater Cessna, but he was that day that he carried his
Speaker: father to his rest in a city here in Texas, he had five passengers in the plane.
Speaker: The FAA would have flipped out if they knew he had five passengers in his plane.
Speaker: Aviation humor, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yes, it is definitely a dad joke for sure.
Speaker: In that case, a granddad joke.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, he's a dad to somebody.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: You don't lose it just because you go on a ferry.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: One step up.
Speaker: Great Grandfathers was created, so that's a long time ago.
Speaker: Well, I'm not that old, honey, now.
Speaker: Slow down, slow down.
Speaker: Bump the brakes.
Speaker: So that was in 1988.
Speaker: That was, you know, the 80s.
Speaker: Oh, that's a long time ago.
Speaker: yeah it wasn't wasn't wasn't that long ago i mean it was a little time but it wasn't yeah my grandparents died around then so that's why i immediately was like oh it's definitely good so tell me how what's okay well my i mean i obviously have lots of questions my biggest thing is 19 what is it 18 sorry 1876 was the first 1876 the first cremation what did that look like the discussion started in the the biggest driving factor that
Speaker: that started the discussion of cremation, you know, it can really be traced to a couple of years earlier in 1873 and then into 1874.
Speaker: And it was basically the discussion was purification and they, medicine was not a thing.
Speaker: Embalming was not a thing.
Speaker: It was all of these things that were starting to become discussed, but people were dying and people were being buried and the people being buried, their bodies were decomposing.
Speaker: And as the bodies were decomposing, it was polluting water systems and was creating illness in a lot of larger cities.
Speaker: So these larger cities and doctors in general, a lot of the medical profession is what truly started the cremation movement.
Speaker: In fact, very few cemeteries or funeral directors in the early years of cremation actually had crematories or were part of that practice.
Speaker: That was a huge part of it was the driving factor of burial reform.
Speaker: and namely purification, trying to purify the body so that it wouldn't pollute the earth and air and water.
Speaker: Let's see, what was it?
Speaker: Why hide reasons or affections' eyes?
Speaker: The grave pollutes, the furnace purifies.
Speaker: And that's basically, you could sum up the entire cremation movement from the first 30 years in that sentence.
Speaker: That was the discussion.
Speaker: Of course, it moved later into more of a business enterprise in a lot of ways.
Speaker: But as far as what did it look like, it looked like it was the very first of its kind.
Speaker: It was designed by an engineer.
Speaker: It was a small building, about 16 by 60 was about the size of the building.
Speaker: Very, very large room where they would gather for a service.
Speaker: That was the largest part of the building.
Speaker: And then a very small room that had the cremator.
Speaker: built as part of the structure.
Speaker: It wasn't like a machine like we think of now as a cremator that, you know, was placed inside the building.
Speaker: It was built as part of the structure, built of brick.
Speaker: And it was heated by a form of coal called coke.
Speaker: And it was the coke and wood had to heat up so much they got the cremation furnace on the inside to a little over 2,000 degrees.
Speaker: So
Speaker: It's more than what, again, what cremations take place with now.
Speaker: So yeah, it was a whole, it was an entire ordeal.
Speaker: It was covered in almost every major newspaper in the country.
Speaker: It was this gentleman who passed away in New York and his caretaker was the founder of the Theosophical Society.
Speaker: I don't know if you've ever heard of that, which is a religion and science-based group.
Speaker: Basically, it's called the Theosophists.
Speaker: It was founded in the 1870s by Helena Blavatsky, which was a mystic of the time.
Speaker: Anyway, she and Henry Steele Olcott founded this society, and one of the members wanted to be cremated.
Speaker: They all preached cremation.
Speaker: That was part of one of their religious ideals.
Speaker: So that being the case, they hired basically with the Lemoyne Crematory, this first crematory,
Speaker: He built the crematory for his own use.
Speaker: It wasn't built as a public service or anything like that.
Speaker: He wanted to be cremated.
Speaker: There wasn't a crematory, so Dr. Lemoyne built the crematory himself.
Speaker: Henry Steele Olcott reached out to Dr. Lemoyne and said, hey, we want to do this cremation.
Speaker: Can you help it?
Speaker: So it was an entire process.
Speaker: There's so much culturally that can be discussed during that entire first year that the first cremation took place.
Speaker: The Baron died in May and the cremation didn't take place until December.
Speaker: And so there was discussion all throughout that time, scandal and stories and sensational headlines and all of those things from the very odd theosophist funeral that took place in New York in May to the agreement of the actual cremation taking place to the transportation and the cremation service itself.
Speaker: So there was this huge, you know,
Speaker: time that this actually took to plan everything and to get everything set up and organized and ready.
Speaker: So that's an entire podcast on itself, that story is.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: And I'm just curious, because honestly, when I kind of said the start of cremation, I almost imagined what still happens today, which was that people just decided instead of throw people in the ground, they threw them on a bonfire.
Speaker: And that does still happen today culturally.
Speaker: as we know, but it honestly, it's kind of so interesting to me that, because it's like every business idea starts with a want that one person has and either goes to create it themselves for themselves or thinks to themselves, other people will want this if I want it.
Speaker: And so, you know, this guy decided, obviously he's loads of money to turn one of the room for a particular house into a crematorium just for himself.
Speaker: Well, he built it on, so he actually offered to build it on the cemetery grounds for the cemetery, and the cemetery could be the trustees of it.
Speaker: And they said, no way.
Speaker: Again, there's not a precedent.
Speaker: There's not anything before this.
Speaker: Before it, which is interesting in and of itself.
Speaker: And as I started the conversation saying, you know, Ireland, the reason why cremation is only taking off in the last couple of decades is because it was the church and, you know,
Speaker: Catholic Church pretty much rules Ireland with an iron fist.
Speaker: And, you know, so I can imagine that the cemeteries were like, no, but then all of a sudden when they can make a quick book from it, of course, they're... Right.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Welcome also.
Speaker: Maybe I will do this.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: We need some more Gilded Chairs, guys.
Speaker: Let's do relations.
Speaker: I'm obviously teasing.
Speaker: Anybody out there that's legit, I'm obviously teasing.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Maybe a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, behind my back.
Speaker: Yeah, this is a podcast, so they can't see what I'm doing.
Speaker: But anyway.
Speaker: God, that's really interesting.
Speaker: I never actually, I never, honestly, I never really thought more enough about it because to me, a lot of the, and I don't know your thoughts on this, but to me, a lot of the industry is antiquated as it is.
Speaker: And so, you know, the fascinating thing that my next question is, is
Speaker: How a hundred, we're coming on 145 years, I guess this year, which is just madness.
Speaker: How has it evolved in that time?
Speaker: Like what's the difference to that oven, brick oven he basically had built?
Speaker: What's the difference then?
Speaker: They were using Coke.
Speaker: Not cocaine, people.
Speaker: It's a form of coal.
Speaker: As an Irish person who says, have the crack the whole time.
Speaker: Not that crack.
Speaker: So obviously it's gas lines now.
Speaker: Is it gas?
Speaker: I actually don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, so that's truly one of the most interesting things is that the process of cremation itself has not changed a lot in that time.
Speaker: You know, the technology that goes into it and the
Speaker: you know, making it more energy efficient and environmentally friendly and, you know, making, making things like that a little more.
Speaker: And of course, there's your guy on process.
Speaker: That man is the encyclopedia of running a cremator from start to finish.
Speaker: But as far as that process itself, that hasn't changed considerably.
Speaker: You know, the start is the same, the, the heat, the end is the same, the, the cremated remains.
Speaker: And the technology itself is the only thing that's changed with that.
Speaker: But, you know, even some of the timing, that hasn't changed considerably.
Speaker: So it's, you know, it's interesting to see.
Speaker: But what has changed is, number one, the business aspect of it, the way that people look at cremation as a business.
Speaker: And number two, the cultural aspect of it, the reason that people have started choosing cremation.
Speaker: So it went, as far as culturally, it went from being a
Speaker: you know, something that people chose because of sanitation necessity.
Speaker: And it transformed into, you know, after embalming became more popular with, you know, with that advent, with the advent of medicine into everyday life, with the advent of, you know, germ theory and being able to truly understand what causes sickness.
Speaker: Also think about, you know, burial vaults and all of these things that help to encapsulate and encase the remains of,
Speaker: so that there's not this threat of decomposition causing environmental issues.
Speaker: So they started to look for other reasons to qualify the need for cremation.
Speaker: And that truly transformed into an era that where cremation memorials, the idea of a cremation memorial is what truly got people to look toward cremation.
Speaker: And that was the timeframe in cremation's history
Speaker: that lasted and built cremation.
Speaker: That's the time that built it and actually set the foundation for it and got the movement started, especially on the West Coast and then the Northeastern part of the country as well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And what percentage is it in the U.S.?
Speaker: Are we asked 60% yet?
Speaker: Currently?
Speaker: Oh, not quite.
Speaker: No, not quite.
Speaker: I think it was 56 last year.
Speaker: I should have had that handy.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: No, no, you're totally fine.
Speaker: Last year, actually, and there's a couple of things I want to touch on in that you mentioned there because they're quite hot topics.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, we have to come back to that.
Speaker: Just while we're on it last year, obviously COVID, I know from my experience, a lot of people, in fact, the majority of people, and I'd say across the country, across the world,
Speaker: Couldn't have funerals, as we all know.
Speaker: And so they were choosing direct cremation as opposed to burial, because I think burial is almost associated now more with tradition and with church and with a funeral.
Speaker: And I have, you know, and obviously...
Speaker: I know I do memorials and I have a cremation jewelry line, so I'm a bit biased on certain things.
Speaker: But I do think that, I personally think that the trend is going to keep going towards cremation.
Speaker: Well, I have to tell you some interesting facts here that you probably don't know.
Speaker: And I'm pulling up some, pulling up the information so that I have it handy here.
Speaker: I love the, I love computers.
Speaker: Just makes us...
Speaker: It makes us so much more.
Speaker: I thought you were going to say, I love the World Wide Web.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, that sounds so old-fashioned.
Speaker: Because that's part of the way I thought you were going to say that.
Speaker: The inner webs.
Speaker: The inner webs.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: As my dad says, he's like, hold on, it's gone into the cloud.
Speaker: Let me go out and grab this.
Speaker: Let me grab this from the cloud.
Speaker: Here's the interesting thing.
Speaker: And this is every year the Cremation Association of North America puts out the statistics of the previous year and what that looks like.
Speaker: Here's something that's going to blow your mind, okay?
Speaker: The rate of cremation in 2019 was 54.6%, okay?
Speaker: The typical increase each year is about 1.8% to about 2.5% increase.
Speaker: Depending on the year, it's changed a little bit.
Speaker: 2020, the cremation rate was 56.1%.
Speaker: So no different other than the incremental increase.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: The difference comes in the fact that in 2019, there were 2.8 million deaths in the U.S. And then in 2020, there were 3.3 million.
Speaker: So 500,000 more deaths above the standard usual increase.
Speaker: Actually, probably about
Speaker: 400,000 above the standard increase.
Speaker: But it still stuck to its trend, trending.
Speaker: Still stuck to its trend.
Speaker: The rate of cremation did not increase, even though it seemed like there was a lot more people choosing cremation.
Speaker: There were, but not in relation to the... Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: It was a larger number, but not a larger percentage.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker: Going back to, I guess, in some ways, what it originally started with, which was the purification, you know, that idea of purification, because that was, to me, what I assumed was that trend of direct creation, that it was just seen as...
Speaker: Easier, quicker, smoother, person passes away, don't contaminate anybody else with COVID, you know, swiftly move along.
Speaker: And obviously we couldn't have funerals.
Speaker: So, you know, that took that away from a lot of people.
Speaker: In terms of the other aspects of cremation, because we've talked about burial and burial.
Speaker: And I even know this from, from even a glass cemetery back home in Ireland, you know, and the plague and, you know, all the typhoid and, you know, those mass graves, it was lethal, the poison that was, you know, it was killing people around them.
Speaker: And I think even actually here in New York, Heart Island, isn't there a, you know, isn't there a million bodies buried there or something?
Speaker: I think, I think that's, it's something like that.
Speaker: And it's,
Speaker: But there were, you know, there were a number of those quarantine islands, you know, off in the coast of New York there in the harbor.
Speaker: It was, you know, the first, one of the first crematories in the country was actually built on Swinburne Island, which was the quarantine island.
Speaker: And there were a lot of people that were cremated there that were basically, they had come in on ships that were, and they had some sort of illness, typhoid and cholera and that sort of thing.
Speaker: That's the Irish bringing it in.
Speaker: Joke.
Speaker: Thanks a lot.
Speaker: We just broke in.
Speaker: Thanks a lot.
Speaker: Well, we broke, guys.
Speaker: No bad.
Speaker: But something to consider, though, along the line of that discussion, the difference in then and now with regard to cremation early on, the only thing that cremation changed was they went to a crematory instead of going to a cemetery.
Speaker: There was still a funeral.
Speaker: There was still a service, typically at the home of the deceased.
Speaker: And then instead of going to the cemetery, they went to the crematory.
Speaker: Now, mind you, this is, you know, we're talking a very small number.
Speaker: I remember reading a newspaper article because I sit around and read newspapers from 1910 because that's who I am as a person.
Speaker: So I'm reading this article and it's the headline is, you know, it's got this really fascinating graphic on it too.
Speaker: That's the Chicago Tribune.
Speaker: And it says, is man's last earthly right to be the purifying flame?
Speaker: More than 50,000 people have chosen this method of cremation or this method of disposition.
Speaker: 50,000.
Speaker: So that's from 1876 to 1910.
Speaker: A total of 50,000 people.
Speaker: That's an impressive headline.
Speaker: I like that headline.
Speaker: Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: And you should see the graphic that's with it.
Speaker: You know, it's got the torch and the urn.
Speaker: I think that's got to be your promo for this podcast for George.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: That is amazing.
Speaker: You know, that's interesting to see that, you know, that that's the case, that it's a few people.
Speaker: Think about, you know, just last year in our discussion that we were just talking about, how many people have been, you know, have chosen cremation,
Speaker: It's in the millions, you know, it's one, I think 1.6 million, something like that, that again, I closed my.
Speaker: close my graphic.
Speaker: But that's for a year.
Speaker: So, okay, actually on that figure, it kind of brings me back.
Speaker: Actually, I like this.
Speaker: You're looping back on the own red spots that I was like, we've got to talk about that, is the controversy around the toxins that crematoriums put out.
Speaker: Like nobody wants councils back home in Ireland and in the UK, you know, will fight against
Speaker: crematorium getting built in the middle of a field or you know new york won't allow one in within its city walls in london they talk about your breathing in the dead like talk to me about you know what is the amount of co2 that it's expelled what is the dangers and i know we have the abatements and stuff but nearly if you can talk to me touch on pre pre the the new you know the environmental the epa the agency i know has i can't i can't tell you because it wasn't it wasn't measured
Speaker: There wasn't discussion.
Speaker: That didn't become a discussion until the 70s when the environment started becoming.
Speaker: But not just that, but you have to realize that such a smaller number of, you know, the cremation rate didn't exceed 10% until the 1970s.
Speaker: So, you know, we're talking again about it's not a massive number.
Speaker: That number wasn't discussed, you know, in the days past.
Speaker: That impact on the environment
Speaker: was not discussed.
Speaker: It wasn't even a discussion because again, number one, so few people were choosing cremation and number two, that it wasn't a hot topic.
Speaker: It wasn't a talking point for anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of like how, I don't want to make it so blasé, but it's kind of like how mental illness and obesity are such trendy topics now where I know growing up,
Speaker: in the 80s you know were we you know did we go for McDonald's yes there is McDonald's in Ireland by the way for anybody who's you know we did we did have that but that was like our treat and we did have a treats cupboard and stuff but we ran around and we did things whereas now obesity is such a hot topic especially in children and
Speaker: especially over here, it's huge.
Speaker: And then mental illness is an absolutely massive topic.
Speaker: But again, we didn't know about it.
Speaker: And so who's to say what happened before, were things measured?
Speaker: We can only go by what was recorded in history, I guess.
Speaker: And that's the thing that is difficult too.
Speaker: These are all topics that are very, very culturally significant for us now when we look at history.
Speaker: it was a very different experience, you know, the, the, the world, but you also, you know, you think about all these things and this is, you know, this is the tangent that I warned you about earlier.
Speaker: The world is a different place.
Speaker: You know, we're not, we're not the same people that we were then.
Speaker: We may be the same human beings, but we're not the same society that we were in, in, in, in many, many ways.
Speaker: Thank goodness, you know, what a mess the world was in a lot of places.
Speaker: but ignorantly did not know any better.
Speaker: So, and especially here in the US in a lot of ways.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Cremation today, in your opinion, and I did talk to Larry about this as well, we do have the abatement.
Speaker: There is restrictions to a certain extent on crematoriums.
Speaker: Do you think it's enough?
Speaker: Do you think we should be doing more?
Speaker: Should the funeral industry be more responsible for the environment?
Speaker: It is such a hot topic now.
Speaker: It's like asking McDonald's to be responsible for obesity, but it is the funeral industry.
Speaker: It's such a sensitive topic and industry that sometimes I do wonder, are we getting away with murder?
Speaker: Forgive the phrase, but when it comes to pollution and things like that, like burial is...
Speaker: you know, going to keep going lower and lower, I think, as we you've just said, cremation is incrementally creeping and getting closer to that 100%.
Speaker: Whether it'll ever get there, I don't know.
Speaker: But, you know, in your opinion, I don't think it'll get there.
Speaker: But yeah, so so I will tell you opinions.
Speaker: This doesn't reflect my the cremation association stance, necessarily.
Speaker: I mean, it may be may be very similar in a lot of ways.
Speaker: But
Speaker: You know, we can always be better.
Speaker: We can always do better.
Speaker: We can always make better choices with regard to our industry and do what our part is to help to make the world a better place.
Speaker: I will personally say that I think that there are other parts of society that could do a whole lot more.
Speaker: And the impact of their little bit that they could do would be an entire change of the funeral industry, you know?
Speaker: I don't have numbers on things, but I don't.
Speaker: I think that if we were to change so much of the things that need to be changed, that's going to be, here's the truth, okay?
Speaker: The hardest things that people find to change have to do with the things that make them feel like they're comfortable.
Speaker: And the things that we do at death, though they're changing a lot, they want to be comfortable.
Speaker: It may be in the back of their mind, consumers' minds, that we need to be environmentally friendly and we want to think about the feelings of others.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, what makes them feel comforted is what's going to be the paramount.
Speaker: And the truth of it is that that doesn't change.
Speaker: And if you think about how slowly the cremation rate alone has changed,
Speaker: You know, this is something that's 145 years old, yet here we are and, you know, we just hit 50%.
Speaker: Just half of the people who die in the U.S. are cremated.
Speaker: I mean, if you think about that, that is such a slow tradition.
Speaker: Death is such a slow tradition to change.
Speaker: And therefore, funeral directors are the slowest people.
Speaker: The funeral profession in general are the slowest people to make changes to.
Speaker: It's simply because we as funeral professionals experience on a day-to-day basis the fact that people return to tradition.
Speaker: People return to the things that they feel are traditional things that need to be done at a time of death.
Speaker: And there are so many people who are changing that the way that they think and consumers are changing the way that they think.
Speaker: And that's fantastic.
Speaker: But at the same time, you know, we need to realize that this is a slow process.
Speaker: That being the case, I feel like there are so many things in other parts of the world and the other parts of the country that could make much bigger impacts with much smaller changes than the funeral profession.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, you know, you pointed out that it hasn't...
Speaker: changed a lot in 145 years, but it has changed somewhat.
Speaker: I mean, from your first description of that brick and mortar crematorium, it's no longer brick and mortar.
Speaker: It's no longer that.
Speaker: It's more of a unit.
Speaker: It's like typically a machine now, right?
Speaker: Is there any brick and mortar still going?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: The entire inside is brick and mortar.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the
Speaker: That's the thing is that part hasn't changed.
Speaker: If you were to look at the inside of a cremation chamber now and look at the inside of the first cremation chamber in the country, it hasn't changed.
Speaker: Size has changed as always.
Speaker: And the technology around it has changed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's still, well, it's not coal, as we said.
Speaker: It's gas now.
Speaker: But there is electrical, right?
Speaker: So there is machines now, no?
Speaker: Yeah, they are machines.
Speaker: And the electronic part isn't, you know, that doesn't have to do, that runs the machine.
Speaker: I bet you didn't know any of that about cremation.
Speaker: I personally found this conversation really fascinating, but that was only part one.
Speaker: We've got part two coming up next week, so stay tuned.
Speaker: And as always, any comments, feedback, or questions, send them to glamouryperpodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: We'll see you next week.
