Smoke Gets in Your Eyes And Other Lessons from the Crematory

We can do our best to push death to the margins, keeping corpses behind stainless steel doors and tucking the sick and dying in hospital rooms.

The first time I peeked in on a cremating body felt outrageously transgressive, even though it was required by Westwind's protocol. No matter how many heavy metal album covers you've seen, how many Hieronymus Bosch prints of the tortures of hell or even the scene in Indiana Jones where the Nazis face melts off, you cannot be prepared to view a body being cremated.

One thing I will say in favor of dead bodies is that they are incredibly profound. Just by sitting there doing nothing, they are almost transcendent because they are such a profound reminder that we too will someday die.

Dying in the sanitary environment of a hospital is a relatively new concept. In the late 19th century, dying at a hospital was reserved for indigents, the people who had nothing and no one. Given the choice, a person wanted to die at home in their bed, surrounded by friends and family.

In writing The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford wasn't trying to improve our relationship with death. She was trying to improve our relationship with the price point. That is where she went wrong. It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money.

the next book we're doing is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty.

She is a mortician and self-described funeral industry rabble rouser.

It is a fascinating book and a great episode.

You're going to love it.