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0:33

Graveyards, known

0:35

for being spooky, famous

0:38

for being gravy. Nobody

0:41

thinks much about them, so let's have some

0:43

fun. Let's find out why graveyards

0:46

are secretly

0:48

incredibly fascinating.

1:06

Hey there, folks. Welcome

1:09

to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast

1:11

all about why being alive is more interesting

1:13

than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt,

1:16

and I'm very much not alone because I'm joined by my

1:18

cohost, Katie Golden. Katie, hello.

1:20

Hello.

1:21

It's me, and I'm alive. I

1:24

am too, and our topic is about folks

1:27

doing the opposite of that. We're also joined by

1:29

a wonderful guest. You know him from

1:31

being an old pal of this show, also

1:34

a bestselling novelist and a top

1:36

TikTok creator. And his next novel

1:38

coming up is Zoe is Too Drunk

1:40

for this Dystopia, pre-order now

1:43

out in October. But we're very happy to be joined by

1:45

Jason Pargin. Jason, hey, welcome.

1:48

Hello. I have declared it to be Halloween.

1:52

Yeah. I don't know when this is going up. August

1:54

doesn't matter. It is Halloween

1:57

season. They have opened the spirit Halloween

1:59

in my. my nearest abandoned department

2:02

store. It is 117 degrees outside. Doesn't

2:05

matter. We're doing

2:08

a spooktacular episode because I

2:10

have declared it to be Halloween.

2:14

That's why they call it a ghost. That's

2:19

literally the origin. That's the origin

2:21

of the name.

2:23

It actually used to be a ghost.

2:27

You just have to shout it that way.

2:30

Caesar's successor Octavian is going to be so

2:33

mad. He's going to be so upset. Yeah.

2:36

Caesar's also a ghost. True.

2:39

They're all dead. I

2:42

feel like listeners fully did

2:44

that decision. This was chosen by many

2:47

people in the polls over at the Discord

2:49

and suggested by FMH Furlund.

2:51

Thank you FMH Furlund. A

2:53

friend of mine was posting on August 1st that

2:56

their target now has all the Halloween

2:58

stuff out. As we especially

3:00

discussed on a past episode about Halloween stores,

3:03

they just get that going right away. It's great.

3:05

It's earlier and earlier every year.

3:07

Got to roll out the 16-foot skeleton? Which

3:12

will instantly sell out to the $300

3:15

Home Depot giant skeleton. You

3:18

have to be there early to get it because otherwise

3:20

they're getting snapped up.

3:22

Well, luckily this podcast is all

3:25

about where you put your skeletons. Truly,

3:29

because the topic is graveyards.

3:33

And starting with Jason, what is your relationship

3:36

to this topic or opinion of it?

3:38

I do not get death

3:41

rituals, our death rituals at

3:43

all. I do, of course, understand

3:45

getting everyone together for a service to

3:48

talk about the departed. Obviously, sharing

3:50

our grief together, sharing memories. I get that

3:53

part. I do not understand. Graves,

3:55

graveyards, tombstones.

3:58

I realize I'm the one that's wrong. But

4:00

I love the idea of trying to understand

4:04

how this has evolved through various civilizations

4:06

and why we do it, because it is

4:09

alien to me. Yeah,

4:12

you do see its value. It's

4:14

just not a, it doesn't ring powerfully

4:16

for you.

4:17

Well, for example, there's in the latest

4:19

Indiana Jones film, like they kind of finally

4:22

addressed the whole thing of, well, this is kind

4:24

of grave robbing. Like you're, you know,

4:26

you're intruding on people's. And

4:29

I think that is a really interesting conversation

4:31

to have, because for example, if we

4:33

find bones of a cave man, we

4:36

don't still think of that as like their sacred burial

4:38

site. It's like, no, this is science

4:41

now. After a certain amount of time, I guess

4:43

after that person's friends and family have all gone,

4:45

it's okay to just dig it up

4:47

and put it in a museum. But

4:49

if some other civilization came

4:52

and conquered the United States, I would not

4:54

be okay with them digging up my mother's bones

4:57

and saying, look at their weird cultural practices.

4:59

I would have thought they had disturbed something

5:02

sacred.

5:03

So what's reasonable

5:05

for how long to not disturb

5:08

their resting site? I think that is a fascinating

5:11

question.

5:12

We are all sitting on top of bones,

5:15

right? Like statistically, you're

5:17

on top of somebody's bones. Yeah,

5:20

worldwide and especially in the United

5:22

States, but worldwide. Yeah. I

5:24

think about that a lot when like I'm eating

5:27

or drinking water. I'm like, did this

5:29

food used to be bones and did

5:31

this water used to be some ancient

5:33

person's pee pee? Because,

5:36

you know, I like to think it's been

5:38

a long time since it's been some

5:40

ghost pee pee, but it's really hard

5:42

to get over that.

5:44

Yeah, Katie, what is your relationship to this

5:46

topic beyond the a ghost

5:48

feeling about it? Absolutely.

5:51

Ah, ghosts. Because when I was a kid, I had a terrible,

5:54

terrible phobia of graveyards

5:57

and dead things in general.

5:59

had like, it was like a contamination

6:02

phobia. I didn't want to walk in

6:04

graveyards, didn't want to walk past

6:06

them. I'd like hold my breath walking

6:09

past a graveyard because I was scared of

6:11

breathing in graveyard air.

6:14

I've gotten over that now. I still don't like

6:17

graveyards. I don't go

6:19

to them for fun, but I can

6:21

deal with it. The

6:23

older the graveyard, also the less

6:26

grossed out I am by it.

6:28

When it is a new graveyard,

6:31

I'm thinking like there could be like

6:33

a fresh dead person in here and

6:36

I could catch something, right? I know

6:38

that's not true for

6:40

the most part. It is a sort

6:42

of irrational, instinctive response

6:45

that I have. It is a germophobic

6:47

kind of thing where it's like fear.

6:50

I think maybe I'm weird where I feel

6:52

good about the old ones and the new ones.

6:55

Cause the old ones it's just long enough ago

6:57

that it's all decayed and so it's sanitized that

7:00

way. And then the new ones, I just figure everything's

7:02

very professional. At least in the

7:04

US, you have to have licenses or whatever to

7:08

arrange and bury things.

7:09

Alex will just hang out with any corpse.

7:12

He doesn't discriminate. That's true. Hey,

7:15

dead listeners, swing by. And

7:19

this topic,

7:20

there have been many on the show where

7:22

I began researching and find how humongous

7:25

it is. And this one almost approached the

7:27

fermentation tier where it's too big. It's

7:29

kind of the topic of all human death ever. But

7:32

I think we have an amazing episode here about graveyards

7:34

and burials and a lot of the specifics there,

7:36

which is great.

7:38

On every episode, our first fascinating thing is

7:40

a quick set of numbers and statistics. And

7:42

this week that's in a segment called

7:45

all the stat things,

7:48

numbers, truth brings,

7:51

Alex will count

7:54

all of it out.

7:57

Always, I know you're.

8:00

learn from this show. Counting,

8:03

statsing, Sifpod

8:06

teaches things.

8:10

And that name was submitted by Colin Hammer. Thank

8:12

you, Colin. We have a new name every week. Please make a Massillion Wacking

8:14

Bays possible. Submit through the Discord or to sifpod

8:16

at gmail.com.

8:18

Speaking of graveyards, how old is that

8:20

song now? 1000 years.

8:23

I don't know. It's old. Yeah, that sounds about right.

8:28

The weirder thing is the fact that we cannot talk

8:30

about like the UFO news from

8:33

the US military and all that without mentioning

8:35

Blink-182 because it's

8:37

the Blink-182 guitarist who is one

8:40

of the major activists in that field

8:42

and is one of the reasons why that stuff

8:44

is in the headlines. Google

8:46

it. We do not have time to talk about it in the episode today,

8:49

but history

8:51

may remember him more for the UFO

8:54

stuff.

8:55

The first number this week is about burials,

8:57

and the first number is 63 feet

9:00

tall or more than 19 meters.

9:03

The biggest skeleton. Woo. Oh,

9:06

it's the Home Depot ad. Yeah.

9:10

The 63 feet is the modern height of the

9:12

largest Attawa mound.

9:15

And the Attawa mounds are a historically

9:17

marked cultural site in what's now

9:19

the US state of Georgia, because

9:22

from around 1000 AD all the way to 1550

9:25

AD, the Attawa mounds

9:27

were a city and gathering place for a large

9:29

group of Mississippian Native people. And

9:32

some of the mounds were large burial structures.

9:35

You know, we have lots of graveyard stuff to talk about,

9:37

but it would be strange to skip

9:40

over the enormous and extensive

9:42

and amazing burial practices of people

9:45

here in North America before colonizers

9:47

came through.

9:49

And when you mentioned something about like a large

9:51

burial structure, I

9:53

think instantly when most people instantly think

9:55

of like some sort of a pyramid or something.

9:57

So when you use the word mound, I also think

9:59

something like a pyramid.

9:59

of our listeners are just imagining a giant

10:02

pile of dirt, but these are

10:04

like eight or nine stories tall. So

10:06

what kind of structures were these? The

10:10

amazingness, I think, is different

10:12

from masonry stuff and architecture

10:14

stuff, that it's tremendous cultural

10:17

continuity.

10:18

One source this week is the book, The

10:20

American Resting Place by Stanford

10:22

University professor Marilyn Yalem.

10:25

Says that a lot of the construction went

10:27

this way, quote,

10:28

all were built from earth that had been carried

10:31

in baskets from barrow

10:33

pits and then piled over

10:35

the dead, the mounds increasing in

10:37

size as new bodies were added.

10:40

They would simply start burying

10:42

people in a mound and then grow

10:45

the mound as time went on. And

10:47

then also these would be central structures

10:49

in cities. And not

10:52

every Mississippian mound was for burials,

10:54

but I find it really amazing

10:57

and different from something like Egyptian pyramids

10:59

because instead of one

11:01

structure for one person and maybe

11:03

some of their things or maybe the rest of their family,

11:06

you just have an ongoing community

11:09

growth of

11:10

this site that reminds me of graveyards

11:12

and cemeteries. Like those will start

11:15

with a plot of land and then it fills in

11:17

and doesn't expand upward, but

11:19

expands as a community's generations pass

11:22

on.

11:23

I mean, the expansion upward is

11:25

pretty interesting because it is a very different

11:28

feeling, I guess, from burying downwards because

11:30

when you're burying downwards, it feels like

11:32

it's making it less noticeable

11:35

or sort of more, not so much to

11:37

like, oh, we don't, we don't want to see

11:39

where the memorial is, but it's like we

11:41

don't have as much of this sense of like there

11:43

is a body under here. It's just kind of like

11:45

discreetly buried underwears with a mound. It

11:48

gives you more of a feeling of like

11:50

the number of people that

11:53

are, have died in your community.

11:56

Also, I think that it gets into the concept

11:59

of. using your burial places

12:01

as something that's intended to last.

12:04

Like these are some of the only remaining

12:07

structures we have of that culture

12:09

that we know about, right? Like if you ask

12:11

any random person picture,

12:14

you know, ancient Egypt,

12:16

like there's exactly one structure that's

12:18

going to come to mind. Like these people did not all live

12:20

in pyramids, but the pyramids they built

12:22

for their rulers, that feels like

12:25

those were very much intended to last.

12:28

And it feels like the same thing here. Like you are putting

12:31

your dead into a structure that is designed

12:34

to remain. When

12:36

you're putting them into a mound, it's like we are

12:38

building something that is solid

12:41

and noticeable and that

12:43

will be here after we're gone.

12:46

It's a lot harder to build over a

12:49

mound like that than it is sort of

12:51

a graveyard. And I think a lot

12:53

of times people would build around

12:56

these structures. Although as we're

12:58

going to get into in a moment, in many

13:00

cases, we had no problem

13:02

building on top of these. They

13:08

are amazing, but also some people

13:10

were like, you know, what would be more

13:12

amazing? A

13:14

hardware store. Oh God.

13:17

Or whatever. I did not mean to impugn specifically

13:20

hardware stores, but Home

13:22

Depot is

13:22

haunted is what Jason is saying. I

13:26

hear it's full of skeletons. So they

13:28

did not stock those skeletons. They just appeared.

13:35

This whole culture too, it is something

13:38

that we're going to use pretty general names for

13:40

because unfortunately

13:42

a lot of records of them have been lost

13:44

other than some existing

13:47

mound sites and some

13:49

like artistic artifacts and cultural

13:51

artifacts that are nearby or in the mounds.

13:54

These Etowah mounds contain pieces

13:57

of art like copper jewelry. There

13:59

are marble.

13:59

statues of men and women. There's

14:02

a lot of amazing things in them,

14:04

but we generally

14:06

don't know a ton about these Mississippian

14:09

cultures. Even that name is just

14:11

something we're applying later to call them something.

14:15

The word Mississippi comes from French

14:17

translation of an Ojibwa word. Ojibwa

14:19

people were up in the Great Lakes. Most of

14:22

the Mississippians were in the Mississippi River Valley

14:24

or in the Southeast.

14:26

Unfortunately, colonizers in particular

14:29

from Spain visited the region

14:31

and then gave these people diseases that

14:33

killed at least 80% of them.

14:37

The remaining native people tended to not

14:39

continue mound building. Also,

14:42

either they didn't record that culture

14:45

or Europeans ignored and destroyed records

14:47

of it. We're really guessing

14:50

at a lot of things about these people other than their

14:52

burials.

14:53

Yeah, I mean, basically an apocalypse

14:56

happened in North America,

14:59

a pandemic apocalypse, pre-US

15:02

history. To the point that

15:04

a lot of what they were saying about how empty

15:06

and the land was, and it's like, wow,

15:08

it was just like this whole place is just gifted

15:10

to us. It's all open and empty.

15:13

Well, it wasn't. Yeah.

15:17

You're seeing the aftermath of something that

15:20

you didn't realize necessarily had happened.

15:22

One

15:23

of the few ways some Europeans

15:26

had to accept that there were people

15:29

there before is these mounds, especially

15:31

in the early US colonial period.

15:34

Farmers and city planners would either

15:37

ignore or flatten out a lot of these mounds.

15:40

There's even some poetry from

15:43

the time. In 1832,

15:46

poet William Cullen Bryant says, quote,

15:49

are they here the dead of other days? Let

15:51

the mighty mounds answer.

15:54

End quote. Because like before

15:56

a lot of US colonizing proceeded

15:59

across someplace,

15:59

There would be no people left,

16:02

but there would be mounds in the

16:04

Midwest and the Southeast. You

16:07

could pretend it's a hill, but

16:09

in some cases, especially at a site

16:11

like what we've called Cahokia or sites

16:14

like Attawa, it's just very obviously

16:16

people building monumental dirt structures

16:19

that were the centers of cities.

16:21

Just I guess, how would people know

16:24

whether it's a hill or a mound

16:27

until you started excavating into it? Would

16:30

it be based on, hey, this

16:33

is a flat area and this is the only mound

16:35

for many miles. It's probably manmade.

16:38

Yeah, it's that and humongousness

16:40

and also a lot of these mounds had

16:43

flat tops so that there could be structures

16:45

on top of them.

16:46

Some of the particularly

16:49

large ones like what's now Cahokia

16:52

mounds in present day Illinois, there's

16:54

a largest mound we call Monks Mounds that

16:57

UC Berkeley archeologist A.J. White says

16:59

was built across 14 different stages

17:02

of construction. It's really

17:04

huge and was one of about 120

17:06

mound structures in that place. Some

17:10

places like that have survived just because it was too

17:12

hard to ignore it or hard to not notice, but

17:16

many other

17:16

ones have been flattened out or removed.

17:20

The ones we have left are really significant.

17:23

We could tell ourselves

17:25

that maybe when they were flattening these out and

17:27

then they ran into hundreds and hundreds of human

17:30

bones

17:31

that they very carefully

17:33

and respectfully like

17:36

relocated them to some other place

17:39

for reburial.

17:41

Maybe some of them did that. Others

17:44

just built their hardware

17:46

store right there and just

17:48

needed the ground to be flat so they could sell

17:52

whatever, gold mining equipment.

17:54

Last thing to say about this fits in the humongousness

17:57

of this topic is that these mound

17:59

builders who, again, were just

18:02

kind of calling mound builders. There were probably various

18:04

names and cultures within that, but they

18:06

were pretty specific to one region. And so,

18:09

Native people's burial practices have varied

18:12

a lot across the Americas. And

18:14

a lot of people on the Great Plains

18:16

would just leave a body out in the elements,

18:19

but also in a ritual way. There

18:21

are also people in North America and Australia

18:23

who've practiced tree burials, where

18:26

the body is on a tree or up on a scaffold

18:28

in a ritual way. And

18:29

as we were prepping this, Jason pointed

18:32

out the sky burial practice of

18:34

many peoples in the Himalayas, which is

18:36

where a body is left out at a high

18:38

point for scavenging animals and bringing

18:41

it up there has ritual significance. So

18:44

there's many, many forms

18:46

of burial and these mounds struck

18:48

me as graveyard-like, but that's not

18:51

a, you know, Native people are not a monolith. That's not

18:53

the only thing they did. I

18:55

want a sky burial. It's

18:57

pretty cool. It's a good name too.

18:59

I want to be eaten by birds. Just put

19:01

me up somewhere high. Cause that can't, there can't

19:03

be any laws against that, right? Why would there

19:06

be?

19:06

Wherever, wherever there are buzzards or

19:09

whatever, just just drag me up somewhere and let

19:11

the birds eat me. I guess, yeah,

19:13

I feel like it's legal and you just want

19:15

to make sure nobody mistakes it for

19:17

your loved ones, like dumping a murdered body,

19:20

you know, that would be the only thing.

19:22

I'm guessing the reason it's illegal

19:24

is that birds would be dropping limbs

19:27

that were too heavy for them to carry on. They

19:29

would just, they would be landing, landing on nearby

19:31

playgrounds and everywhere else. Still,

19:34

I like still, that's not any

19:36

weirder than what we do.

19:39

I

19:43

don't know too much about sky burials, but I think

19:45

in modern sky burials, often

19:47

like the body that is prepared

19:50

is sort of, they, they pre

19:53

dissect the body such that it

19:55

is a faster process

19:57

where the, the vultures

19:59

will eat.

19:59

the body a little faster and

20:02

you know you won't have sort of a you

20:05

won't have like say like a whole arm just

20:08

kind of left or something like that. Yeah

20:11

and I feel like that makes it more of

20:13

a ritual in a positive way like if you need to bother

20:16

to do that it it is that

20:18

committing of time and attention that

20:21

seems to help us as people.

20:22

Yeah exactly. And the

20:25

the next number here is a very quick

20:27

number it is two

20:29

because two is the number of words

20:31

we ought to define in the context of European

20:33

graveyards. It turns out it's

20:35

not a hard and fast rule but there's a distinction

20:37

between graveyards and cemeteries.

20:41

A graveyard usually means a

20:43

burial place that's attached to a church

20:45

or to a house of worship and then

20:47

a cemetery is a burial place where

20:49

that's the main thing going on like

20:52

a cemetery is a piece of land

20:54

that mainly operates for burials and

20:57

then a graveyard it's more of

20:59

a spare piece of property

21:01

that's part of a church and part of the community

21:03

and rituals of a church.

21:05

Definitely did not know that those two words had different

21:08

definitions until today but it makes

21:10

perfect sense with the terminology like the graveyard

21:12

it's like on the grounds this

21:15

is the yard where the graves are and

21:17

here's the part where the church is and here's the

21:19

lawn. You see like like you're designating

21:21

just a part of the property that happens to have

21:23

the graves on it where cemeteries like know that's all there

21:25

is.

21:26

Well in Once Upon a Time people would bury their dead

21:28

on their own property like you know you go

21:30

to these old estates where they've got a little section

21:33

of the yard where you know you've got five generations

21:36

of people that have been buried out there so Once

21:38

Upon a Time you would have your own graveyard

21:40

on your land. I

21:42

actually visited that one for my

21:45

ancestors when I was like 12. Oh

21:47

wow. I was

21:49

horrified so my mom my mom

21:51

dragged us there because like she was

21:53

very interested in our family history. I think

21:56

that this was like the Crandall's graveyard

21:59

in Rodeau.

21:59

Island and she

22:02

wanted to visit the old sort of Crandall

22:04

estate. It was basically this rundown

22:07

farm at that point. It was pretty

22:10

overgrown. There was one guy

22:12

that we met there. At first he

22:14

was pretty confused why we were trespassing

22:18

and he was actually very nice. I

22:20

was so scared he was going to murder

22:23

us though because he was this old guy who was missing

22:26

several fingers. I think he had one

22:28

tooth so as a child

22:30

you don't understand. That does

22:32

not mean the person is evil.

22:35

I hid in the car while the rest

22:37

of my family went and checked it out because I was certain

22:40

it was either haunted or we were

22:42

going to get murdered. When my mom asked

22:45

the guy who still lived there, can we see

22:47

your cemetery? He said, oh, it's not my

22:49

cemetery. It's all of your cemetery

22:51

because we're all in the same family. I

22:53

was like, he's going to kill us and he's going to bury

22:55

us there and that is going to be an ironic

22:58

statement later. I was so scared.

23:00

Nothing happened. He was a lovely man.

23:03

But yeah.

23:06

Pop culture has definitely told us that the graveyards

23:08

and cemeteries are spooky and New England specifically.

23:12

That makes sense that a Rhode Island one was

23:14

creepy even though it's not. There

23:17

was a rusted tractor next to it.

23:19

I was convinced we were going to be killed

23:21

and turned into like zombies. It

23:24

says all of these people were executed

23:26

for witchcraft one

23:28

after another.

23:31

Over here is a separate

23:33

cemetery of all of the victims

23:35

of their witchcraft

23:37

because it turned out it was true. Yeah,

23:42

Katie, your ancestors are witches, right? Like all of

23:44

them? Oh, well, you know, probably. Sure.

23:47

Yeah, cool. Yeah. And

23:50

this distinction, it's not quite a law

23:52

that you have to use one word or the other,

23:55

but it turns out it's a super common thing

23:57

that I now just notice all the time. Like I notice.

23:59

that I have relatives in a Catholic cemetery

24:02

because it's not the yard of a Catholic church.

24:05

This cemetery system also can

24:08

often be much more humongous than the little

24:10

graveyard of a church. One amazing

24:12

number there is more than five million

24:14

because more than five million is the

24:17

dead population of Wadi

24:19

al-Salam, which is maybe

24:21

the largest cemetery or graveyard in the world.

24:24

It's a Shiite Muslim holy city

24:26

called Najaf in modern Iraq. They have

24:29

more than five million people estimated to be

24:31

there.

24:32

How big is the cemetery?

24:36

Apparently it's so big it comprises

24:38

more than 13% of the entire area

24:40

of the city. Wow. A humongous

24:43

cemetery that began around the 600s

24:47

AD because that's when people

24:49

built a mausoleum for Ali

24:51

bin Abi Talib who was

24:53

a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.

24:56

The first Shia Imam, sort of the beginning

24:58

of the Shiite denomination of Islam.

25:01

And then people said, hey, this

25:04

mausoleum is important. Let's build

25:06

out a cemetery around it. And over the past 1300

25:09

years, an estimated five

25:11

million or more people have been buried there.

25:13

There's also domed family crypts. There's

25:16

underground burial vaults. There's

25:18

just a lot of amazing architecture and structures

25:20

to fit that many people there.

25:23

This is the kind of thing that as an American,

25:25

I have absolutely no context

25:28

for. The idea of a

25:30

place like that that has continuity

25:33

over the last 1300 years. And it's

25:35

like, this has been a burial site

25:38

and a grave site that is still in operation.

25:40

It's not an archeological find. People

25:43

have been visiting this spot for the same

25:45

reason for 1300 years.

25:48

I don't have

25:50

any mental context for that

25:53

in the United States where an old house

25:55

is 150 years old. We

25:57

see that as ancient and...

25:59

sacred or whatever, the idea of something

26:02

that goes back that long, I don't

26:05

have that in my life. Same.

26:08

Again, like we kind of like, overwrote

26:11

a lot of North America's history. And

26:14

so our old, you

26:17

know, is not, it

26:19

feels pretty, pretty young. And I think that Europeans

26:22

and other people who come from countries

26:25

where there truly is just like history

26:27

going back thousands of years. They're like, oh

26:30

yeah, America is a little baby

26:32

nation. And they can't imagine us thinking

26:35

of anything in the US as being old buildings

26:37

or something like that.

26:38

Yeah. Or that in England

26:41

that they have pubs that have been open for 300 years.

26:45

Right. It's like this place has been open since 1724. It's

26:49

like, that's not, that's

26:51

not a, that's not a thing here. That

26:54

also brings us into a takeaway that'll

26:56

have numbers in it too, because takeaway

26:58

number one, the history

27:03

and future of US graveyards is

27:06

a battle between maintaining permanent

27:08

graves and relocating or

27:10

reusing those spaces. And

27:13

we've referred to this a bit earlier in the show,

27:15

but I was surprised to learn the US

27:17

is a little of an outlier when it comes

27:19

to graveyards. It turns out

27:21

we tend to put one person in one place

27:24

forever.

27:25

And the big exception is city

27:27

graveyards because those space constraints

27:30

are kind of the main reason there are large US

27:32

cemeteries today.

27:34

And a lot of our biggest cemeteries are

27:36

where I am, New York city. A

27:38

number there is about 3 million, not

27:41

what he also lamb level, but about 3 million.

27:44

That's the number of people at Calvary cemetery

27:47

in the Queens borough of New York, which

27:49

is the most graves in any one US cemetery.

27:53

I

28:00

guess not the size, New York is big, but the density

28:02

of New York. I think all of

28:04

the listeners are asking the same question as are

28:07

these truly 3 million

28:09

people who each have their own permanent spot

28:12

that's forever a single coffin,

28:15

or how can I put

28:17

this delicately? Are they being layered

28:19

in some ways that maybe they don't

28:22

talk about? Like it, it feels implausible

28:25

that they have perfectly respected that

28:27

everybody gets their own exact,

28:30

I don't know.

28:31

It's the second thing. And it's also,

28:34

they're basically keeping Calvary expanding

28:36

two ways. One is that physical creativity,

28:40

either building up, digging down, or

28:43

cremating people, and then that's a less

28:45

large body. But

28:47

then the other solution is land acquisition.

28:50

There are currently four administratively

28:52

connected sections that make up Calvary.

28:55

And the first section of Calvary cemetery

28:57

was declared full in 1867.

29:01

So, you know, back to Ulysses

29:04

S. Grant times, they said, we're out

29:06

of space. And they solved it by adding

29:08

three more cemeteries to the cemetery.

29:11

In some ways, it's kind of like

29:14

what I call the birthday

29:16

card dilemma. When

29:18

somebody sends you a birthday card, how long

29:21

do you keep it before it's okay

29:23

to throw it away? Because

29:26

it feels rude to immediately throw

29:28

it away. And so you want to treat

29:30

it as a kind of sacred object

29:32

because this was a thoughtful thing, a family member

29:34

dead. But how long

29:37

am I required to keep this thing? What's

29:39

kind of the same thing? We do not

29:42

have a specific number in mind

29:44

for how long a grave is to remain.

29:47

Undisturbed. And to some degree,

29:49

it depends on how famous you

29:51

were or how wealthy you were, or do you still

29:54

have people around who will complain

29:56

on your bath? Because obviously

29:58

moving, you know.

29:59

whatever Elvis's grave would

30:02

be very, very different from

30:04

any of his contemporaries who may have been buried

30:06

in some very poor part of town

30:09

that has since been built up by

30:11

developers. And I personally

30:13

believe when it came time to move those

30:16

graves of those non Elvis people,

30:18

they may have just moved the

30:20

headstones.

30:22

Yeah. Like I have trouble believing that

30:24

if they, you're tasked with moving 20,000 graves,

30:27

that they went through 20,000 sets of remains

30:29

and carefully reburied them if these were

30:31

not people who still had prominent family

30:34

or advocacy groups around to

30:37

complain and make demands that otherwise

30:39

it's kind of like, well, you

30:41

know, uh, it's a birthday card

30:43

from six months ago, surely

30:46

it's okay to put

30:49

a home Depot here and maybe

30:52

not maybe just kind of ignore

30:54

the fact that they're still under the,

30:56

under the tool section. Yeah.

30:59

I actually had a similar

31:01

thought. I just recently visited the

31:03

Pantheon in Rome, which is this, you

31:05

know, ancient, uh, really cool

31:08

domed structure. And there are,

31:10

there are some remains there. And one of the remains

31:13

is the painter Raphael, and

31:15

he gets this nice tomb,

31:17

this nice like sepulchre. You can look at it.

31:19

It's above ground. And he

31:22

requested this and he's got like

31:24

a statue of Mary and Jesus

31:26

above it. And then the, the ring

31:28

in the middle of the dome,

31:30

the Oculus shines light down

31:33

onto his, uh, his sepulchre.

31:36

Like, as I got the end

31:38

of the day, it's like the longest amount

31:40

of light there. And it's like, well, this is really lovely

31:43

for Raphael. And then I started

31:45

thinking about like, man, there are like millions

31:48

of people who lived in Rome who do

31:50

not get this kind of nice

31:53

treatment when you die. And, uh,

31:55

it's, it's, most people do not get that

31:57

kind of treatment.

31:59

Yeah. At minimum. four of the turtles should

32:01

get it. Right. I know Raph is the leader, but come

32:03

on. Like, geez. Donatello

32:08

wants to be buried in pizza. I know that.

32:14

But I don't mean to step on that with the joke.

32:16

It is a really amazing insight because, yeah,

32:19

I'll never I'll never critique a turtle

32:21

joke. So don't worry about that. You

32:23

know, a rural church can

32:25

kind of just theoretically keep

32:28

up or leave that graveyard as it is. But

32:30

Jason, that birthday card dilemma you mentioned,

32:33

that is the reason Calvary Cemetery

32:35

exists, is that people in Manhattan

32:38

said the birthday card expiration

32:40

is up for Manhattan church graveyards. And

32:42

we need to move a bunch of these. And

32:45

there's a few that have achieved that, like, historical

32:47

status. And that becomes

32:50

a different way they're kept up.

32:51

But when New York City was just Manhattan,

32:54

you know, it's dead, got buried in Manhattan's church

32:56

graveyards. I don't know if people know

32:58

that there are four other boroughs of New York

33:01

City because the population expanded

33:03

and also went to new locations

33:06

for cheaper land and more space. And

33:09

so, you know, as Manhattan's

33:11

island fills up with living people and the burial

33:14

sites fill up with dead people, the

33:16

solution was cemeteries in places

33:18

they considered rural. And so Manhattan's

33:21

Catholic churches bought land to create Calvary

33:24

Cemetery with help from

33:26

a New York state law in 1847 called

33:29

the Rural Cemetery Act, because

33:32

at the time, they considered what's now Queens

33:34

to be rural. And then the

33:37

really fun one like that is 1838, rich New Yorkers

33:41

just set up their own country

33:43

rural cemetery. But

33:45

this now a place called Greenwood Cemetery,

33:48

and it is surrounded by prime

33:50

Brooklyn, New York real

33:51

estate, and is basically a

33:54

park because now

33:56

there's living people around it and maybe

33:58

eventually Greenwood and

33:59

and elsewhere, we'll have to repeat

34:02

this cycle and find a even more

34:04

quote unquote rural place where we send people

34:06

next.

34:08

Personally, like if I was buried

34:10

somewhere, I would feel better about it being

34:12

somewhere where people go and just picnic

34:15

there, like versus just a

34:17

lonely cemetery where it is

34:20

desolate and no one is there, just

34:22

not even mourning, just enjoying life.

34:25

And another way we don't know how

34:27

the dead would feel about it is with

34:29

big city cemeteries, a lot

34:31

of their occupants are dead people who,

34:34

when they were living, selected a plot in

34:36

a different place and then have been

34:38

relocated there. That's a big thing

34:40

in New York. And another big example

34:42

is the Bay Area of California. There's

34:46

a town called Colma that

34:48

there's an amazing 99% invisible episode

34:50

about because now 73% of the land

34:52

in Colma is graves. The

34:56

city of San Francisco and nearby

34:58

places like Oakland kind

35:00

of ran out of graveyard space. Like they ran

35:03

out of a lot of land and then just built

35:05

huge purpose built cemeteries in

35:08

this whole nother place and started moving

35:10

the existing dead people and putting the new

35:12

dead people into that new place.

35:15

There's a word we've come up with that

35:18

is a wonderful word

35:20

for a city of the dead,

35:22

a necropolis. Yeah,

35:25

it's cool. I want to be buried in

35:27

a necropolis. I want to be buried in, forget

35:30

the sky burial thing I said earlier, I want to be buried

35:32

in a giant city of the dead. I want

35:34

people to drive past a sign that

35:37

says you are now entering the

35:38

necropolis.

35:40

I think necropolis, since it

35:43

does have city in the word,

35:45

it does feel more, I don't

35:47

know, lively, no pun intended,

35:51

than like a cemetery, right? Like

35:53

a necropolis, it sounds exciting. It

35:55

sounds like it's the place where dead

35:57

people with things to do go.

35:59

Right. Like, have you been to the downtown

36:02

shopping district of necropolis? Oh,

36:04

it's fantastic. There's skeletons looking

36:06

at purses and dresses and stuff. Yeah.

36:08

That'd be nice.

36:09

And yeah, and in general, other

36:12

places in the US might start

36:14

facing a lot of this decision that New York

36:16

and San Francisco made before, because

36:19

the US is an outlier

36:21

about often legislating at

36:23

a state level that you can't throw the birthday card

36:25

out. According to NPR's show

36:28

Planet Money, in the US,

36:30

a lot of states have laws mandating

36:32

that graveyards and cemeteries keep up those

36:34

graves forever.

36:36

And that's very different from especially

36:38

modern European countries, where people

36:40

are either given a free public grave for

36:42

a short period of time, or

36:45

purchase more time.

36:46

But either way, the bones have a set amount

36:49

of time and then get removed and put in a bone

36:51

house. And it's because

36:53

a lot of European graveyards are

36:55

much older. There was continuity there and

36:58

they are out of space and have to do that.

37:01

Don't want to be crude or disrespectful, but I've

37:03

now decided that I want to be buried in

37:05

a bone house. That

37:09

I want to spend eternity in, in the

37:12

bone house. And when people go to visit

37:14

me, they say, yes, it's the

37:16

anniversary of his death. We're all going down to

37:18

the bone house to see

37:20

him. Jesus, we'll do a power rankings

37:23

at the end of the episode, like number

37:25

one, bone house. And then Sky Burials

37:27

is up there. And yeah, if we

37:29

could just if there

37:32

was an entire sort of region of

37:35

bone houses and it was

37:37

all sort of the city zoning was just for

37:39

bone houses, you could call it the

37:41

bone zone. Go on,

37:43

go on, go

37:46

on. You

37:48

get threatened people be like, hey, if

37:50

you don't, if you don't get out of my face, you and

37:53

I are going to the bone zone. And

37:55

then it's like, wait,

37:58

do I want that? It's starting

38:00

to sound like... I might. Maybe this is a

38:02

wake up something. I don't know. Let me

38:04

think about this. Yeah.

38:08

This, to be serious, this makes way more

38:10

sense to me that you have a specific time

38:12

where it's considered courteous. Like look,

38:14

as a practical issue, we're going

38:17

to leave the grave there. You can visit it.

38:19

You've got a place, but, but you

38:22

do not have a right to claim

38:24

that plot of land for all of eternity.

38:27

Like the living need

38:29

the land. Yeah. It's

38:31

interesting to me that in the United

38:33

States, which is a heavily Christian country, you

38:36

know, probably more so than large parts

38:38

of Europe, where it is explicit

38:41

in our beliefs that

38:42

the spirit is not in the body,

38:45

which is a different belief system than, you know,

38:47

previous cultures and hunter-gatherers that

38:50

believe that, you know, that the ancestors

38:52

still resided in their bones and in their

38:54

remains, or the ancient Egyptians who

38:56

believed that the body would be escorted into

38:58

the afterlife. Like America is explicitly

39:00

about the spirit has flown

39:03

from the body and this is just ash,

39:05

ash to ash, dust to dust.

39:08

That it's here where we are so

39:10

insistent on, no, this needs

39:12

to remain like these remains need

39:14

to remain undisturbed forever,

39:17

where there's other cultures have

39:19

a more practical approach. So that I've

39:21

ever found a satisfactory answer as to

39:24

why the

39:25

like, it seems to run so counter

39:28

to our religious beliefs. And I just believe that

39:30

we inherited it from pre-Christian

39:33

cultures. Yeah.

39:34

And I think

39:36

with the United States as a country, a lot

39:39

of it must just come from the belief that our

39:41

land is endless because they know

39:43

it's not in Europe. And like

39:45

the BBC says that the city of London

39:47

cemetery finally started reusing

39:49

graves in 2011 new cutoff

39:52

is 75 years time, but many

39:54

other European places did it sooner. There's

39:57

even so much turnover in parts

39:59

of.

39:59

Norway that

40:01

the Guardian says one Norwegian cemetery

40:03

worker tried to invent a solution

40:06

to Norwegian cemeteries needing to pull

40:08

the bodies out before they've decomposed all the way

40:10

on their sanitation issues. So

40:13

he developed the process of injecting a

40:15

lime solution into new bodies to

40:17

make them decompose faster. They're

40:20

dealing with turnover in a way that the US

40:22

has chosen not to.

40:24

The one very American thing

40:27

about it is the capitalism.

40:29

US states have state laws mandating

40:31

the upkeep of these cemeteries and graveyards.

40:34

But then also the one

40:37

way you can remove one without anybody

40:39

stopping you is if the

40:41

graveyard loses its active maintenance

40:44

and that's usually an issue of money. It turns

40:46

out that some states legally require funds

40:49

be set aside from new burials to

40:51

keep up old burials. And

40:54

then also if that falls into disrepair

40:56

or if a cemetery goes bankrupt

40:59

because financially a cemetery can go officially

41:01

bankrupt, then that allows

41:04

a town or a city to pretty much just

41:06

take all of it out. Then it's

41:08

suddenly not legally protected. I

41:11

mean. Well, I mean,

41:14

you can tell a lot about a culture by their burial

41:16

practices. So

41:18

it's appropriate. We

41:23

have a fee based system.

41:26

Yeah. Yeah. Just

41:28

like eventually it'll be a thing where

41:30

the tombstone comes with

41:32

a little card reader and

41:35

your your,

41:37

you know, remaining relatives have to

41:39

keep re-upping your tombstone. Otherwise

41:41

it like gets rid of your name, dumps your

41:43

body and someone else can rent that spot.

41:46

It's a little animation of your soul going

41:48

into hell because you did

41:50

not pay to keep their spirit at

41:53

rest. But in the future, again,

41:55

you know, I don't know how history will

41:57

remember the United States.

41:59

that when they talk about our culture and our

42:02

religion, they will see a

42:04

lot of gravestones that have religious slogans

42:06

on them, but they will also notice that the largest

42:09

stones were wealthy

42:12

people. So it's

42:14

like, okay, so the large

42:16

stones did not go to their high

42:19

priests, unless they were very

42:21

wealthy priests who had TV shows.

42:23

It went to the people who had

42:26

cashed. So what was their

42:28

religion? It seems

42:31

they worshiped a god called 401k.

42:38

The near future of US, especially

42:40

graveyards for churches, a lot

42:42

of it might depend on whether churches remain

42:45

popular and go in. The

42:48

Pew Research Center says the number of Americans

42:50

who identify as Christian is rapidly declining.

42:52

And then for a graveyard's purpose,

42:55

the graveyard needs people to not just identify as

42:57

Christian, they need to be at church most weeks

43:00

and interested in the building and the graveyard

43:02

attached. So we're

43:05

more and more into a future where graveyard

43:08

maintenance is a question for everybody.

43:11

Will the graves be relocated or

43:13

built over or maintained as

43:15

a historical site or will a church continue

43:18

being an institution?

43:20

It's almost like the

43:23

continuity of our burials in our

43:25

monuments

43:27

are a way that we signal whether

43:29

or not our culture has remained

43:32

dominant. Hey, yeah,

43:34

how about that? That that's what happens when

43:36

your culture gets overwritten by a new

43:38

one. The first thing that happens is that they erase

43:41

your graves. And it kind of seems like that

43:43

practice of making some sort of a

43:46

permanent marking spot for your dead

43:48

is almost a way to symbolize like, hey,

43:51

our culture is still capable of defending

43:53

this land.

43:56

I think the lesson here is that

43:58

if you want people to

44:00

respect your system of

44:03

graveyards, you gotta do a giant

44:06

three-dimensional triangle.

44:08

That's the only way we're gonna keep

44:11

it. Something that is such

44:13

a pain in the ass to move that

44:15

even conquerors just like, just leave it.

44:18

Right. Yeah. Just like,

44:20

put a bunch of booby traps. Like, you

44:23

know, release some spikes or some bees

44:25

when people try to drive

44:28

over your graveyard. Swarm of beetles,

44:31

always good. Scarab beetles. Yeah.

44:33

Yeah. Beetles that burrow

44:35

under your skin, some kind of like curse.

44:40

This idea of this continuity

44:42

and more that leads into the couple other big takeaways

44:45

for the main episode. And we're gonna hit those after

44:47

a short break. See you in a sec.

44:59

Hey folks, I have very nice quick anniversary

45:01

news. We commissioned a gift

45:04

poster for people who support this show

45:06

to celebrate episode 150. It's art

45:08

by artist Adam Coford. There is a

45:11

character for each and every episode from 101

45:13

to 150. So it is a

45:15

very fun feast for the eyes. As

45:17

you explore, I really

45:19

enjoyed writing the characters of this

45:21

poster. I wrote jokes for all the characters

45:24

and then Adam drew them brilliantly and added stuff

45:26

too. He's awesome.

45:27

That digital poster is only for supporters

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45:32

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And if you're not a supporter yet, please

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get you set up. It's easy and it's fun.

46:27

So hope you enjoy and here's

46:30

to another 50 episodes that we're

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on the way toward. I'm

46:35

Yucky Jessica. I'm Chuck

46:37

Crudsworth. And this is Terrible.

46:40

A podcast where we talk about things we

46:42

hate that are awful. Today we're

46:44

discussing Wonderful, a podcast

46:47

on the Maximum Fund Network. Host

46:49

Rachel and Griffin McElroy,

46:51

a real life married couple.

46:54

Yuck! It's a wide range of topics,

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stuff. I know you do Yucky Jessica.

47:04

It comes out every Wednesday, the worst

47:06

day of the week, wherever you download your podcasts.

47:09

For our next topic, we're talking Fiona

47:11

the baby hippo from the Cincinnati

47:13

Zoo. I hate this little hippo.

47:16

Hey, when you listen to podcasts,

47:18

it really just comes down to whether or not

47:20

you like the sound of everyone's voices. My

47:23

voice is one of the sounds you'll hear on the

47:25

podcast Dr. Game Show. And this

47:27

is the voice of co-host and fearless

47:29

leader Joe Firestone.

47:31

This is a podcast where we play

47:33

games submitted by listeners and we

47:35

play them with callers over Zoom we've

47:38

never spoken to in our lives. So that is

47:40

basically the concept of the show. Pretty

47:42

chill.

47:43

So take it or leave it, bucko.

47:45

And here's what some of the listeners have

47:47

to say. It's funny, wholesome, and

47:49

it never fails to make me smile. I just

47:52

started listening and I'm already binging

47:54

it. I haven't laughed this hard in ages. I

47:56

wish I discovered it sooner. You can find

47:58

Dr. Game Show on Maximum.

48:02

And we're back at a couple more astounding

48:05

takeaways here. One last number to bring

48:07

us into it. The number is at least 2,000

48:09

years old. At least 2,000 years old is

48:12

the age of a

48:15

tree

48:16

in Scotland. Trees can be thousands

48:18

of years old. And this tree is called the

48:21

Fortingall yew. It is

48:23

a yew tree in Perthshire

48:25

in Scotland. And it

48:27

could be as many as 5,000 years old. But

48:29

it's at least 2,000. And if it's way

48:32

beyond that, it's probably the oldest living

48:34

thing in all of Europe.

48:37

Wow. I was going to make a

48:39

joke about the queen being the oldest

48:41

living thing in Europe. And then,

48:44

yeah, the podcast is like, I don't know, a year

48:46

too late for that.

48:48

Yeah. Because

48:50

while I have trouble seeing

48:52

like graves and gravestones as being sacred,

48:55

a tree that has managed to survive for 5,000

48:58

years,

48:59

that is sacred. Yeah. That

49:01

tree is sacred. Like I look

49:03

into that thing, it's like I have been here as

49:06

empires and entire cultures have risen

49:08

and fallen one after another. And still, I have

49:11

been here this whole time and nobody has been able to

49:13

cut me down or anything. That

49:15

is magic. That's amazing.

49:18

Yeah, I do feel like that's pretty

49:21

universal, if anything is. And

49:23

that leads us into an amazing takeaway because

49:26

takeaway number two. Some

49:31

of the first Christian graveyards got

49:34

built on the local land that was most significant

49:36

to pagans.

49:37

And we partly know that from one old Scottish

49:40

tree. Because

49:42

there's a really interesting

49:44

thing here where early

49:46

Christians did a lot of their burials

49:48

in the yards of churches. And

49:51

the question there is why?

49:54

We take it for default, but why bury

49:57

people by the church?

49:58

Like part of the existence.

49:59

of the Wadi al-Salam cemetery we talked

50:02

about in the previous half is

50:04

that in Islam you generally don't

50:06

bury people in or around mosques,

50:09

you keep it separate. That's just the practice

50:11

there. It seems like early

50:13

Christians decided that church land was

50:15

already consecrated for worship and

50:18

for ceremonies like baptisms, so why

50:20

not use the yard because

50:22

it's near consecrated land

50:25

or is consecrated too? And then

50:27

on top of that a lot of churches got built

50:30

in places that were already significant to pagans

50:32

because of stuff like ancient trees.

50:34

I mean I know pagans love a tree because

50:38

the Christmas thing you bring in a tree

50:40

that was a pagan thing I think before

50:42

the Christian

50:43

sort of co-opted Christmas. Germans,

50:46

yeah. Yeah, but with so

50:48

what was the significance of the tree in

50:51

terms of like burying people next to a tree

50:53

in the old pagan religion?

50:56

That's a great question and it turns out

50:59

pagans seem to be aware how

51:01

old these trees are like over human

51:04

generations, especially yew trees

51:06

they would say we notice that this tree

51:08

just keeps living and so it must be significant

51:12

and Atlas Obscurus says in some

51:14

cultures the yew tree was worshiped

51:16

as a long living plant and

51:19

I just didn't know this about yew trees they would be a good topic

51:22

I guess because the UK woodland

51:24

trust says they commonly live 400 to 900

51:27

years occasionally more than a thousand

51:30

years and the fording

51:32

gall yew and a few others in the world

51:34

have just outstripped that and kept

51:36

on going.

51:37

Not to be too uh

51:41

reductions or whatever but one thing that's

51:44

magical about the way human civilization

51:46

works is that we figured out that if you can find

51:49

a thing and that we all agree that

51:51

that thing is sacred

51:53

it's like a really clear and

51:55

easy way to organize people because

51:58

it's like

51:59

we may disagree

51:59

and me, we may want to fight

52:02

over this piece of land or this practice or whatever.

52:04

We all agree that this rock

52:06

is sacred. Right? And

52:09

as long as we all agree that the rock is sacred

52:11

or this tree is sacred, or that the sun is

52:13

sacred, as long as we all agree on that,

52:16

then we don't kill each other. A

52:19

tree where your great, great, great grandparents

52:21

remember that tree being in that spot, that is as good

52:24

of a thing

52:25

to declare sacred

52:27

as any.

52:28

Yeah. Why not? Of the things to declare

52:31

sacred where like in America, you

52:33

know,

52:34

the celebrities are what we declare sacred

52:36

mostly. And

52:38

then of course, Christianity comes along more

52:41

than we like to admit, just borrows what

52:43

was already sacred

52:44

and just swallows it up like the Borg.

52:47

It's like, yeah, fine. This is also,

52:49

this is where we're going to bury our dead. Whatever magic

52:51

was here, we don't believe in magic. We don't

52:53

believe, there's nothing in our Bible that says

52:55

that soil is, you know, blessed by

52:57

God than another. It was all made by God. But,

53:00

but if these people

53:02

thought this place was magic,

53:05

why not? Who knows?

53:07

Yeah, there's a recent bonus show of the podcast

53:09

about octopuses where we talked about a

53:12

Protestant church built in Polynesia,

53:15

probably on the location of former

53:17

worship of an octopus god, you

53:19

know, and this is kind of like

53:22

that. It's believed that Scottish pagans

53:24

worshiped at this ancient Yew tree. And

53:26

so then when Christians moved into the area

53:29

and converted people, they said,

53:31

this is a great site that people like, let's use

53:33

it. Like, why not? It also

53:35

is something that may go away

53:38

if we treat the tree poorly, which

53:41

also feels fair to me. I guess we should lose the

53:43

spot if we're mean to the tree. But

53:46

science writer Sabrina Embler says that in

53:49

recent centuries, people have damaged

53:51

the tree to basically take pieces

53:53

of souvenirs.

53:54

Oh, come on. Like in, in 1833,

53:57

vandals cut down whole

53:59

branches to make drinking cups

54:02

and other fun things they thought. Tourists

54:05

to this day will take twigs or leaves. Apparently

54:08

the trees under enough stress that it partially

54:11

changed sexes,

54:13

which a conifer tree

54:15

can do.

54:16

Apparently a male conifer tree makes

54:18

pollen, a female makes berries,

54:21

and then in 2015 one branch of the

54:23

fording gall ewe switched

54:25

to berries instead of pollen. That's

54:27

one of a few recorded examples of a conifer

54:30

changing gender in part of its structure

54:33

over we believe due to stress.

54:36

A tree can feel stress and that's why.

54:38

Yeah, I mean the thing with the

54:41

tree is it's not like it's not just a

54:43

structure made out of wood. It

54:45

needs that stuff. It needs the

54:48

leaves. It needs the branches. You

54:52

can't just keep taking stuff off of a tree.

54:54

I think there was a book about that

54:56

called the Giving

54:59

Tree where it's like some kid killed

55:01

a tree. And

55:04

you could say that the idea

55:06

of this thousands year old organism

55:09

finally succumbing to the force of tourists

55:12

that there's something symbolic in that. But I don't

55:14

think it's symbolism. I think it's just an actual

55:16

thing that's happened.

55:18

Yes. I don't think it's a symbol at that point.

55:20

I think it just is.

55:22

And then in terms of how we feel about these places,

55:24

there's one more main takeaway for the main

55:26

show, which is takeaway number three.

55:31

Graveyards might be our most

55:34

underutilized green spaces

55:37

and a lot of our green spaces are

55:39

secretly graveyards.

55:41

I think there's two pieces of really good news here.

55:44

One is that

55:45

we can use graveyards

55:47

as a space to be and to have green

55:50

area, but also that we

55:52

are already doing that with our regular

55:54

parks in many cities, if not

55:57

most cities. They happen to be on

55:59

top of former. graveyards. It's just not

56:01

talked about or marked all of the time. One

56:04

of the most famous examples is plague

56:06

pits in European cities, especially

56:08

London. It turns out some

56:11

victims of bubonic plague in the 1300s

56:14

did get individual burials, but many

56:16

others were piled in mass graves. And

56:19

so we'll link a map of plague pits in London

56:22

where standard graveyards could not contain

56:24

the dead. And many of those are now public

56:26

squares or yards or green spaces in

56:28

that city. You know, just

56:30

nobody wants to really dig it up. And also

56:33

it has been open for a while and other

56:35

buildings got built around it.

56:37

I mean, it would be a hard sell to call

56:40

something plague pit park. Yes.

56:43

Plague pit park. It's

56:45

a time twister. Nothing else, you know, forget it. I can't

56:48

do it. Plague pit park. Am

56:50

I warming up for high school theater? No way.

56:53

Right. Right next to the bone house.

56:55

Yeah, I

56:57

mean, I think that there's

57:00

enough time has gone by. It might

57:02

be disconcerting to people. And

57:04

then many US cities have also

57:07

done this with epidemics or just with large

57:09

graves. It turns out that in Manhattan,

57:12

again, New York, Washington

57:14

Square Park is a really beloved

57:16

park with a fountain and an arch and everything. It's

57:19

built on more than 20,000 bodies

57:22

buried there after yellow fever epidemics

57:25

in the late 1700s, early 1800s. The

57:28

children's playground at Madison Square Park is

57:30

on a Potter's field of unmarked graves from the

57:33

1790s. And

57:35

probably better known part of Central Park is on

57:37

the site of Seneca Village, which was a whole

57:40

black American community that

57:42

had all the parts of community, including a graveyard.

57:44

And then that community got displaced.

57:46

The few graves there got turned into park

57:48

lands without moving the bodies. And

57:51

then many California cities like Ventura

57:53

and San Diego have turned graveyards

57:56

into parks after a 1957 California state law. permitted

58:00

cities to remove tombstones of abandoned

58:02

graveyards and in the way we talked about before

58:05

with bankrupt cemeteries and graveyards.

58:08

I'm so glad you didn't say that

58:10

to like 12-year-old me. I would never leave

58:12

my house. You'd just grow up

58:14

being like, what are swing sets? Never heard of

58:16

it. Uh... I

58:19

don't play.

58:20

And then this might be the darkest

58:23

U.S. park origin story of the mall,

58:26

and it's about Denver, Colorado. This

58:29

Vice News covering it, quote, in

58:31

the 1890s, Denver decided

58:33

to turn a cemetery into the

58:35

sprawling Cheeseman Park.

58:38

Denver paid Undertaker E.P. McGovern $1.90

58:42

for each body he and his crew removed.

58:45

McGovern split up the bodies

58:48

and put the parts into several child-sized

58:51

caskets to make more money.

58:55

Rather than hire someone new to finish the job, the

58:57

city fired McGovern and leveled the land

58:59

by current estimates at least 2,000 bodies remain,

59:03

end quote. That is, the

59:06

grift was so strong. The grift

59:08

was so good. They're like, we just, we

59:10

gotta close this loophole. It's gonna be haunted.

59:12

Sorry, guys, it's gonna be haunted. Right.

59:15

We can think of no other way to prevent

59:17

the grift from happening.

59:19

Yeah. Oh, Lord. And

59:22

it's just, that's just kind of going on

59:24

a lot of places as cities

59:26

have said, this is green space because

59:29

it's a graveyard. It can be a park. And,

59:32

you know, Denver was trying to relocate the bodies,

59:35

but

59:35

the scammiest dude in the history of

59:38

U.S. graveyards was doing it, so

59:40

they couldn't.

59:41

They can promise you that he is not the scammiest

59:43

dude in the history of the burial and

59:45

funeral industry. That is, you

59:48

can have a separate episode about some of the grift

59:50

that occurs there, because you have grieving people

59:52

who will pay any amount of money and

59:55

also the customers are

59:57

dead. So what you do with them.

59:59

uh, and the corners you cut,

1:00:02

yeah, a good chance nobody's going to notice. There

1:00:05

is many horror stories. We wanted

1:00:08

to totally bum out the listeners so we

1:00:10

could share. Uh, but

1:00:12

yeah, there

1:00:12

was a recent story, I think in the U

1:00:14

S of someone who had, who's loved

1:00:17

one passed away and the,

1:00:19

their body, according to their will was donated

1:00:22

to, to research. Well,

1:00:25

it turns out somehow the

1:00:27

body got into the hands of the U S military

1:00:30

who used it for explosion

1:00:32

research on like, Hey, how close can

1:00:34

someone be to this explosion?

1:00:37

And so like exploded this body.

1:00:40

And when the person's loved ones

1:00:42

found out, they were not happy.

1:00:44

Right. That's how I,

1:00:46

that's how I want to be. That's how

1:00:48

I want my body treated. I'm going to want to

1:00:50

end explosion research. That's

1:00:53

what I want. Forget the other stuff I said. What

1:00:55

if, what if we explode the bone

1:00:58

zone?

1:01:01

I feel like the spirit of fun is the

1:01:03

closing thing here. Cause in addition

1:01:06

to a bunch of existing city parks being

1:01:08

former or current graveyards, we

1:01:11

can use things that are actually considered

1:01:13

graveyards as green spaces to

1:01:15

be. And there are

1:01:17

a lot of big city cemeteries like Greenwood

1:01:20

cemetery in Brooklyn and Hollywood forever

1:01:22

cemetery in Los Angeles that hosts

1:01:25

year round entertainment programming and tours

1:01:27

and Hollywood forever is famous for movies

1:01:30

being screened on the side of mausoleums. And

1:01:32

then also there are people who just check

1:01:34

the local or individual cemetery

1:01:37

laws and do picnicking and do time

1:01:39

spent there that is considered respectful.

1:01:42

And I also want to point out a game

1:01:44

people developed. This is from a really

1:01:46

cool book called reality is broken by

1:01:49

a futurist named Jane McGonigal. She

1:01:51

says that there are groups playing what's called cemetery

1:01:54

poker,

1:01:55

which is an outdoor game where

1:01:57

you give people a set amount of time

1:01:59

to

1:01:59

to build the best simulated

1:02:03

hand of cards by finding interesting

1:02:05

tombstones. One group played

1:02:07

a version where the last digit of death

1:02:09

dates on tombstones can be the number

1:02:11

of the card. And then if there's

1:02:13

multiple names on a grave that counts

1:02:16

up to various face cards, there's also

1:02:18

suits from tombstone shapes, like

1:02:21

a flat top is a diamond, a pointed top

1:02:23

is a spade, a round top is

1:02:25

a heart, a statue on top is a club.

1:02:28

This is a very specific example

1:02:31

of gamifying a cemetery, but that

1:02:33

kind of thing is available to us. Not only

1:02:36

are these green spaces, but they are packed with

1:02:39

artwork and with history and with

1:02:41

individual people with stories in

1:02:43

a way where it's a really engaging place

1:02:45

to spend your time.

1:02:47

I remember when Pokemon Go was a big

1:02:49

thing. There were so many stories

1:02:51

about people finding Pokemon in

1:02:54

the graveyard or in the cemetery

1:02:57

and going in there. And people

1:02:59

found it disrespectful.

1:03:01

There should be some respect, but like having

1:03:03

it be used by people feels

1:03:06

nicer than having

1:03:08

it just be mostly empty

1:03:11

all the time. It feels so lonely

1:03:13

to me. And I also like

1:03:15

the idea of

1:03:17

having a culture where there's

1:03:19

more acknowledgement of

1:03:21

death in day-to-day life. Death is

1:03:24

making death less of just this taboo.

1:03:27

For me, I like the idea of

1:03:29

sort of having more, obviously

1:03:32

with respect. And there are certain sites,

1:03:35

grave sites where you may not want that, like

1:03:37

the sites of atrocities or something where

1:03:40

you, I think that it is, the somberness

1:03:42

is definitely warranted. But for

1:03:44

a graveyard for people

1:03:47

who

1:03:47

have died, it

1:03:49

seems nice to have, there

1:03:53

be some connection that communities

1:03:55

have to those graveyards in normal

1:03:57

life. one

1:04:00

summary or closing thought is that I would

1:04:02

like this to always serve the purposes

1:04:05

of the living and

1:04:06

not the dead.

1:04:08

Whether it's for memorial purposes

1:04:10

or for something else, like marking the site

1:04:12

of an event you do not want people to

1:04:14

forget, but that's for the living.

1:04:18

It's not for the dead, it's for the people who are still

1:04:20

here.

1:04:21

Yeah. And I just like

1:04:24

knowing about these places in a bigger way.

1:04:26

When you try to find out what graveyards do

1:04:28

today, it turns out

1:04:30

that they're hugely helpful for all the other

1:04:32

species that are alive.

1:04:34

Scientific American index some studies,

1:04:36

they said that we've found rare

1:04:38

orchids in a cemetery in Turkey. We

1:04:41

found a range of medicinal plants

1:04:43

doing well in a graveyard in Bangladesh,

1:04:46

ancient burial mounds in Ukraine that have

1:04:48

rare steppe grassland plants,

1:04:51

and the flowering plants support pollinators.

1:04:55

If it's a quiet green space that helps animals

1:04:57

that like to communicate like birds. So

1:05:00

let's be like our animals. Let's go thrive in these

1:05:02

graveyards. It's great.

1:05:04

And if anybody out there has a problem with that, you

1:05:07

can come meet us in the bone house. We'll

1:05:13

explode your bone zone. And

1:05:16

if you like that or don't, either way,

1:05:18

swing by. Hey

1:05:30

folks,

1:05:30

that is the main episode for this

1:05:33

week. Once again, want to thank Jason

1:05:35

Pargin, very special guest for me and Katie. And

1:05:37

again, his new novel is Zoe

1:05:40

is Too Drunk for This Dystopia. It's the next

1:05:42

book in the Zoe Ash series. Also you can

1:05:44

jump in at any point. It's funny

1:05:47

cutting edge sci-fi thriller. All

1:05:49

put together all of those things all at once and really

1:05:51

unique and awesome.

1:05:53

And please don't wait if you're going to read it. Please

1:05:55

go ahead and preorder because preorders are what

1:05:57

make an artist's whole situation go

1:05:59

on the.

1:05:59

Business End of Publishing.

1:06:01

Welcome to the outro, with fun features for

1:06:03

you such as help remembering this episode,

1:06:06

with a run back through the big takeaways.

1:06:12

Takeaway number one, the history

1:06:15

and future of US graveyards

1:06:17

is a battle between maintaining permanent

1:06:19

graves and relocating or reusing

1:06:21

those spaces.

1:06:23

Takeaway number two, some of the first Christian

1:06:26

graveyards got built on the local

1:06:28

land most significant to pagans,

1:06:30

and we partly know that from one old

1:06:33

Scottish tree.

1:06:35

Takeaway number three, graveyards might

1:06:37

be our most underutilized

1:06:39

green spaces, and a lot of

1:06:41

our green spaces are secretly graveyards.

1:06:44

Plus a ton of numbers about what qualifies

1:06:47

as a graveyard versus a cemetery, the

1:06:49

biggest cemeteries in the world, the

1:06:51

burial mounds of North America, and

1:06:53

more.

1:06:57

Those are the takeaways. Also,

1:06:59

I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly

1:07:02

incredibly fascinating stuff available

1:07:04

to you right now if you support

1:07:06

this show at MaximumFun.org.

1:07:09

Members get a bonus show every week

1:07:11

where we explore one obviously

1:07:13

incredibly fascinating story related

1:07:16

to the main episode.

1:07:18

This week's bonus topic is the oldest

1:07:20

grave in North America, and

1:07:23

a couple of astounding and positive stories

1:07:25

behind it. Visit SIFPod.fun

1:07:27

for that bonus show, for a library of more

1:07:30

than 13 dozen other secretly incredibly

1:07:32

fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog

1:07:34

of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's

1:07:37

special audio, it's just for members. Thank

1:07:39

you for being somebody who backs this podcast

1:07:42

operation.

1:07:43

Additional fun things, check out our research

1:07:46

sources on this episode's page

1:07:48

at MaximumFun.org.

1:07:51

Key sources this week include the book

1:07:53

The American Resting Place by Stanford

1:07:56

University Professor Marilyn Yalem.

1:07:58

Another book called Reality...

1:07:59

is broken why games make

1:08:02

us better and how they can change the world by

1:08:04

futurist Jane McGonigal.

1:08:06

Also a pretty astounding amount of digital resources

1:08:09

I would say we look to UNESCO,

1:08:11

UC Berkeley, Reuters, NPR's

1:08:13

show Planet Money, the BBC,

1:08:16

The Guardian, the Pew Research Center,

1:08:18

Atlas Obscura, the UK Woodland Trust, Vice

1:08:21

News, Untap New York Smithsonian Magazine,

1:08:23

and Scientific American to name

1:08:25

a few. That

1:08:26

page also features resources such as native-land

1:08:29

dot ca. I'm using those to

1:08:32

acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional

1:08:34

land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples.

1:08:36

Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy.

1:08:39

Jason taped this on the traditional land

1:08:41

of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee,

1:08:43

and Sa'atza Yaha peoples. And

1:08:45

I want to acknowledge that in my location, Jason's

1:08:48

location, and many other locations

1:08:50

in the Americas and elsewhere, native

1:08:52

people are very much still here.

1:08:55

That feels worth doing on each episode and

1:08:57

join the free SIF Discord where we're

1:08:59

sharing stories and resources about native

1:09:01

people and life. There is a link in this

1:09:03

episode's description to join the Discord

1:09:06

and we talked a lot in this episode about Mississippian

1:09:09

people in particular. There's a lot of just

1:09:11

research links as well if you look in the episode

1:09:13

links. We're

1:09:14

also talking about this episode on the Discord

1:09:16

and hey, would you like a tip on another

1:09:18

episode? Because each week I'm finding you

1:09:20

something randomly incredibly fascinating

1:09:23

by running all the past episode numbers through

1:09:25

a random number generator. This

1:09:28

week's pick is episode 79. That's about

1:09:30

the topic of the Legend of Zelda franchise,

1:09:32

one of the more obviously incredibly fascinating

1:09:35

topics we've ever done. And yet most

1:09:37

people don't know that fun fact, Nintendo's

1:09:39

long time head of the Zelda franchise is

1:09:42

a marionette maker who joined the company

1:09:44

before he had ever played video games.

1:09:47

So I recommend that episode. I also recommend

1:09:49

my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast

1:09:52

Creature Feature about animals and science

1:09:54

and more.

1:09:55

Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven

1:09:57

by the Budos band, our show logos by artist

1:10:00

Bert and Durand, special thanks to Chris Sousa

1:10:02

for audio mastering on this episode. Extra

1:10:05

extra special thanks go to our members and

1:10:07

thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled

1:10:09

to say we will be back next

1:10:12

week with more secretly incredibly

1:10:14

fascinating. So how

1:10:16

about that? Talk

1:10:19

to you then.

1:10:37

Maximum Fun. A worker owned

1:10:39

network of artists owned shows supported

1:10:43

directly by

1:10:44

you.