Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Today, I'm interviewing doctor Paul Kutinaris, who is the author of Memento Mori. Paul is one of my favorite people, and I'm friends with him. I met Paul years ago. Well, I actually will let him fill you in of how we actually met, but I'll tell you how I was
introduced to Paul. At first, I was invited to this death salon that was being held at the Muder Museum in Philadelphia years ago, and I went and I didn't really know anybody that was going to be there, but I was invited there because I had the Instagram that
was popular with death. And I showed up and just sat in the audience and watched a lecture by Paul, who I never had heard of, and I was kind kind of mind blown by how intelligent he was, obviously, but just he was just saying such cool stuff that resonated with me so much about how death is is a very He was saying there was a soft line with death in some cultures and there was a very hard line with death.
And I think about.
This photo that was in his lecture with it was like this guy with a white picket fence outside and there was a skull and he was like shaking hands with this, you know, this dead guy. It was really funny. But how in our culture, or at least in America, we have a very hard line with death. And I took like a bunch of notes after his lecture and stuff,
and I thought it was super cool. And I don't exactly remember, Paul, how I I might have like stalked you on Instagram or something and how we started talking.
So I don't know if you remember, Well, remember I met you.
Through Adam Wallackott.
Okay, so yeah, so we have a mutual friend Adam And yeah, that makes sense. So that's and then we met in person then or something. I'm not sure, but Adam's the he makes the really cool octopus chandeliers and he's a really awesome artist in Tier Decorator.
Adam is basically the de facto mayor of Philadelphia. For those who don't, it's like every every time I stay in Philadelphia, I stay in Adam's house and there is no place I can go where at least twenty people don't know this guy. He is the mayor of Philadelphia.
Yeah, You're totally right about that. He does know everybody. That's how we met. And first, I guess, Paul the most hated question of all. Tell us, just tell us a little bit about yourself with like, who are you, how'd you get here? Where where'd you come from? Just give us a little background about Paul.
Well, where did I come from? It's probably at complicated, but the rest of it will do. I have a PhD in art history and from UCLA. I'm from Los Angeles originally, and I was always kind of, I guess, like the fox molder of the art history department, just studying these weird things that other people didn't like, you know, while while everyone else was studying Rembrandt, I was out
looking at woodcuts of you know, wareholes and stuff. And eventually, when I finished my PhD, I was traveling through Europe and I had gone to a lot of the famous death related sites, you know, the Paaris Catacombs and all of these bone places, and eventually I started finding a lot of them that nobody had heard of, you know, because there are about four that are big popular sites like that, like tourist destinations, and then there's about a
Hydrid that nobody's heard of, and nobody cares about me. You need special access to go into and I became really fascinated by that. I mean, I had just finished a PhD in art history with a specialty in Baroque, and here were all these old Baroque era bone rooms, and it just seemed like a natural thing for me to start studying and writing about. You know, it was right up my alley, and the discovery of all this
stuff was perfectly timed. So I had traveled around Europe for a couple of years and documented all these places and put out a book called The Empire of Death, which was the history of these bone rooms. In the process of doing that, I had discovered a bunch of old Baroque jeweled skeletons that everybody else seemed to have forgotten about, and I wrote a book about them called
Heavenly Bodies. But in the process of doing those first two books, I had also been continually traveling the world, studying these places in other cultures in Asia and South America, and that's what led to that book Momentum Wory that we're talking about today, which was taking what I had been doing, you know, studying these death related sites on a microcosmic level, like only within one culture and with you within one era, and then just kind of expanding
it to the entire world, you know, and taking a global look at these sites and the way the importance these sites have, these you know, bone decorated sites and with mummies, and the importance that these sites have in the spiritual lives of people throughout the world. How it's
really a very universal thing. And what you had mentioned that I had been talking about originally in Philadelphia, you know, death as a boundary became something that was that was really important to me in understanding why in some cultures and in some eras of history this stuff is so okay and it's okay to interact with the dead and it's encouraged, and why we live in a culture where
it's really discouraged. You know, it's considered kind of perverse, you know, to keep your relatives bones around or to keep your relatives mummy around, and it would be considered you know, perverse and almost kind of in some way evil, although no one could really define it as to why in some cultures. What I came up with, you know, after years of studying this stuff, I came up with something that was really simple that should have been obvious, but it took me a long time to figure it out.
That dying is a biological condition. You know, dying is a biological act, just like being born. But death is not a biological condition. Death is a border between two different states.
You know.
Death is a boundary line between the living and the dead. So being dead is a biological state. Death has nothing to do with biological biology. Death has to do with where we place the border, and we tend to think
of death as being fixed, but it's really not. In some cultures, you know, this boundary can be in what I called an open border, and in other cultures it's a close and in some cultures, in some periods of history, you know, death is this is this open border that provides access to those who have passed on, and those who passed on are invited to continue to have an important spiritual and social role. And in other places, like in the United States, now death is this very closed boundaries.
It's like imagineal line, this fortified line where you will not pass and to try to try sim that order and to try to understand what's on the other side, Like I said, it's considered kind of perverse.
I think it's It's one of my favorite things about you is that the book is not only super informative, but it's it's so it's beautiful, and I love that you were interested in this and you not only learned about all of this, but you went to all of these places yourself, and you took all these photographs yourself. And I'm curious with your experience with that because I know that you actually have were able to interview people that live in these different areas and do these different cultures.
But also if you have one that resonates with you the most, that's your your favorite kind of death tradition.
Well, yeah, I can answer to that for sure. But I want to say something about what some of you you just mentioned that it is important to me that the books be both informative and to be attracted. I think you know, I'm certainly not the first guy who went out and studied bone room, or who went to Indonesia and studied some of these places with skulls and mummies.
You know, a lot of anthropologists have the bore, a lot of historians have the poor but they tended to create books that were very academic and not very visual, you know, And my approach was always this has to be informative, it has to have legitimate information, but it also has to have this kind of aspect of like a high quality art, so it can be tangible for
normal people. Because to do this, you know, when I wrote this book about the jeweled skeletons, which are so visually beautiful, the only people who had covered them before me were doing them in academic circles. So you have these books talking about beautiful, broke jeweled skeletons with no pictures in them at all, you know, So it creates this closed circuit. So I appreciate saying that that was
important to me. I'm not the first person who studied some of these things and gone to some of these places, but I was the first person to want to do it, to want to present this material in a way that crossed from from being strictly academic to something that would
be tangible to popular culture. You know, that was extremely important to me, And I know that for you it's kind of the same way, because everything you have done, you've always wanted to take from medical pathology and place it in a room where it's tangible for normal people to understand and appreciate. But some of my favorite places, well, I would say for sure in South America. There's a festival called the Yesterday Lost Utitas in Bolivia. Then I went to for like twelve years in a row. It's
every November eighth. I went there every year until the pandemic kind of shut down travel. But there are these people who adopt skulls, and they may know who the people were while they were alive, where they may not. They may be total strangers, but they'll acquire these skulls and they'll become the kind of the guardians or ten of these skulls. This is This is across the Altaplano and Bolivia, but it's mostly in the La Pause. It's
an imar thing. Who are you know, the indigenous people of Bolivia, and they really have a very strong belief not just in the afterlife, but the ability of those who have passed on to continue to impact the lives of the living. And so these people who will acquire these nutitas. The name means locally, it's kind of a slang.
It means the pugnos once and it refers to the shape of the skulls, and so they will adopt these skulls, and they will create shrines for them in their homes, and they will live with them as family members, you know, as as friends and family members or business partners or companions. And some people will acquire tremendous numbers of these skulls. I've met people who have like a hundred of them,
and their houses are considered locally like shrines. Like if you're a believer in the power of the skulls and the power of the dead, and you don't have skulls, you might go to someone's house who has a bunch of them, and oftentimes they'll be arranged on shells, and there will be certain skulls that are good for certain things.
So you know, if your kid is failing in school, there might be one of the skulls that the spirit is believed to have the ability to help with academia, and so you know, you'll send your kid and say, yeah, you go pray in front of that skull, make an offering in front of that skull, and you're going to pass that geography test, you know. Or there's another skull that might be good for marital problems anyway, these people
who will own the skulls. Every November eighth, they'll have this party at the cemetery and they bring all the skulls back down to the local cemetery, the cemetery Hiner, all the big cemetery in Lapawnas and they'll have this massive part where you know, like ten twenty thousand people show up at the cemetery with skulls. It's the largest skull celebration or celebration of death in one place in
the entire world. I mean, I'm seriously talking about like ten or twenty thousand people showing up carrying skulls and boxes, carrying them in little sedan chairs. They dress them up, they decorate them, and they take over the ground and you know, bands will come and play music for the skulls, and people will scroll scroll the grounds and offerings for them.
You know, they'll they'll decorate the skulls with flowers. It's an incredible, beautiful celebration that is designed to thank the dead for what they do for the living and at the same time kind of recharge the energy of the dead, of those souls so they can continue to function for the living in the upcoming year. And uh yeah, and visually, of course, it's very powerful because it completely turns on and what we're used to with dealing with the dead.
You know, I come from a culture where, you know, the dead are considered kind of horror film stuff. It's like, you know, army of darkness or something, and there's some kind of thread and this is the exact opposite. You know, these are skulls and mumiflied heads that are decorated beautifully and covered with flowers, and people are coming up and
talking to them and think. You know, it's a complete opposite of the way we have of what we've constructed with this kind of horror movie version of what happens when the dead and treat on the lives of the living.
That's really interesting. So now I just got another question at what you were just saying.
What So if you're living in Bolivia and you just decide that you want to start collecting these skulls, where where do you? Where does one go to? Boy, because you're saying they might know them or they might not. Do they do they get donated or they purchase So.
So a couple of questions obviously arise in addition to where they get the skulls, Like if they don't know them, I'm like, you know, why do they have the skull? And and you know, what is their connection to someone they didn't know? They know? The Imara a spiritual system which I think is really wonderful, beautiful, actually it's very
it's much more sophisticated than ours. I think it makes our you know, kind of Judeo Christian idea of the soul look pretty primitive, because for us, it's kind of a one to one relationship, one soul, one person.
Right.
They believe that there can be up to seven different entities, and not in a schizophrenic way, you know, just seven different entities that congeal to make a person. So you know, within every man there's you know, there is a woman, then every woman there's a man with then every old person there's a child. You know what I mean. That all congeal as the recipe that creates who you are
in different portions, you know. And then when you die, to believe that one of these spirits, you know, they'll all kind of disperse, they'll go to Pachamama, they'll go to the you know, the mother goddess, and one of them will come back and use the skull as a focus. So, you know, I might die, but maybe it's a you know, I might die as an old man, but maybe there's some child who comes back and inhabits my skull, you
know what I mean. So I like their spiritual system because it provides for you know, these real subtleties are going the individuals. But for that reason, it doesn't really matter if you knew the person in life, because someone else might be coming back to the skull in terms of where they get them. Understand that because and I think it's largely because of our great phobia with death
skulls in the United States and Europe. Human bones in general, and human remains are very hard to come by, you know, they're very regularly. They really don't want you to have considered somehow disrespect of them, which is which is another debate we could have. Is it really truly disrespectful to have someone's remains, especial if you care.
For them, if they don't even want us to have them? In medical school?
Yeah, and I know, and I know you get this a lot for sure, because I get it. Sometimes people will ask me, Hey, you know, my father died, I would like to be able to have a skull. How can I do that? And it's I'm sorry, it's not easy. You can't just do that, you know. But in those cultures you can. Where the skulls come from, it depends they have a different type of cemetery system than we do. First of all, so a lot of them come from
the cemetery. When you die will pause, like if you walk around that cemetery, you will in the cemetery in real you will see a lot of graves have little white notices paced to them that are actually evictions that you're renting grave. You don't have it permanently, and so people have to keep kind of paying the rent on
the grave. And at some point in time, you can assume that unless they have created some kind of trust fund that pays out for their grave and propetuity, everyone's gonna get evicted from their grave, right because at some point in time someone's gonna say it's like, whose grave are we paying it on? I never even meant that, you know, you know, so at some points everyone's going
to get evicted from their grave. And they have a kind of massive pit burial area in the back of the cemetery where they're supposed to put the bones, and I don't want to tamble too much. But let's say, you know, you're a cemetery worker. You're not making that much money. I'm I mean, I've had skulls offered to me, and I'm sure it's different now because a lot more Americans go down there, and a lot of them, you know, a lot of them are kind of oddities dealers.
Which is nice to you.
Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate because I don't want these things to be collected as audities. I want them bus to affected, right. But I had a guy offer me four skulls for twenty dollars. Oh wow at one point, and this was well, this was many years ago, but I had a guy offered four for twenty bucks. I mean, it's not that hard to it has traditionally not been been not that hard to get them. Another place they
can come from is archaeological sites. So you know, I mean, this is an area with a great ancient history, and so skulls are often found in archaeological sets. I have found in the end these plenty of old tombs that are filled with bones. I mean, I'm not going to give the location away on this one. But I found an old burial site that had plenty of elongated skulls in. It's several, and those are worth a tremendous amount of
money to outsiders. You know. Skull bind Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, up in the Andes and and so, you know, some of them come from archaeological sites. Again, whether or not that's ethical or whether they should be going to a museum is another question. But people will often take them from archaeological sites, and maybe they have a right to them. Really, if you're Eyemura and these are your relatives, maybe you have more of a right to them than than a
museum does. Skulls that come from archaeological sites, because of their antiquity and that history, are are felt to be especially spiritually powerful. Another place they will come from are med schools and dental schools. The dental schools often use real skulls down there. I have a I remember I was down there once and a guy had this skull
he was proudly displaying. And this skull had a great set of teeth, which is unusual down there because dentistry is you know, the dentistry is not top notch in you know, a lot of a lot of Bolivia, and this skull had far nicer teeth than I did. I was like, this skull really has great teeth. And the guy smiled and said, oh, well, that's because I'm a dentist and this was my skull in dental school and he helped me get through school. And so I made sure that his you know, I made sure to give
him dental implants and he has the greatest teeth. You know, Schill's playback, payback, you know, for helping this guy go through dental school. So they can come from med schools, they can come from dental schools. They can even come from the police. Because the police even have these skulls. In the homicide department in al Alto, which is the largest barrio of La Paus, they have had some of these skulls. Well, they have two in particular, one Eto
and Wanita. They have two skulls Enshrine and the homicide department that are the longest serving detectives in the pause. And when the detectives can't find a clue, they will go and make offerings to these skulls and they will ask, you know, it's like, please send us a clue you know,
you're dead. You have this ability to see things we don't see, and they will often take they'll often take suspects in who won't can best and they will make them, you know, they'll try to force them to confess before the skulls. And the questions come from that too. It's like, Okay, well do they really believe that these skulls have this power? And I asked the colonel who was in charge of homicide about that, the colonel who used to be in charge of homicide there, and he gave me a great answer.
He's like, I can't really say, you know, we've had these skulls that you Juan Itito has been on the force for one hundred years and people have believed in him for a hundred years. I can't really say if the skulls really send us clues, or if it's a psychosomatic thing. You know, if if believing in the skulls allows our detective to work harder and more creatively, you know, just just just a psychosomatic instance of believing that the
skull is helping them. I can't really say if the skull is forcing a guy to confess, or if the guy is so intimidated by seeing this skull that's been in the police for one hundred years that he breaks down and confesses. All I know is that whether it's you know, magic or psychology or spirituality, when we use the skulls, we solve cases. So we use the skulls. That's all I need to know.
Yeah, that's you know what's interesting.
You just made me think, like of my Italian family and all the medallions that we have, uh for you know, you put one in your car to keep you safe in your car, and there's there's a saint for this, and there's a saint for that kind of thing. It's it's it's like, you believe in this thing that you're going to be protected from your religion kind of thing, and.
It creates itselful billing prophecy. So I thought that was a great answer that he gave me when I asked him about the skulls and police work. Yeah, you really do they really work? You know? I was like, Hey, we use them, and we saw the rhymes. I don't need to know whether I don't need to know whether it's magic or spirituality or psychology. We use them and we solve crymes, so we use them.
Yeah, And I mean that's how if it's in the same area, that's how the people grew up thinking that you Yeah, that's cool. So I don't You don't really need to get into how Little Paul is raised religiously or anything. But throughout your travels and just learning about all these different cultures do you have Have you changed your perception from when you started until now as far as what you personally personally believe happens to you after you die.
Not really. My spirituality has always been very ambiguous and abstract, you know, the idea that that you transcend in a physical body to a physical place, you know, like you know, like an allegian field. That's a new Eden. That's never really worked for me because, like I say, I tend to think of things in more abstract terms and more I would say, I gravitate more towards like a concept of a nirvana where everything is is reunited at a
more abstract level. The thing that actually, and you may not know this about me, the thing that actually changed everything for me, that probably pushed me towards this in the first place, was that about twenty years ago I was run over by a truck.
Oh my god, I didn't know that.
No, I yeah, And I was run over by a truck in my core. I was on the freeway. I was taking my cat to the vet and the it was a it was a Toyota Celica and something. I don't know what happened. Maybe maybe I was distracted by the cat and I hit some some something in the road. I don't know what happened. All I know is the car started spinning around in circles in the three way and I looked over my shoulder and I saw this grilla a truck and that was the last thing I
saw and the next thing I knew. And by the way, the cat survived too. And I knew then that I was a good cat dad, because when they woke me up and they were cutting me out with the jaws of life, I remember not knowing who I was, because I didn't at the time. They asked me my name, and I had no idea, but I knew that there was a cat in the box. The carrier next to me said, I don't know, but there's a cat in the box. Get the cat. Make sure the cat's okay.
So I knew then I was like, I'm an a plus cat there, right, but yeah, I remember not knowing who I was. They took me and the cat to a hospital where they had to screw my pelvis back together. I had deflated long, I had several broken ribs. I was a mess, and I had to I had to learn to walk all over again. And you know, now I'm going but it was a very bad accident. Someone told me in the hospital that they didn't believe that anyone could have survived. Both the cat and I survived
that accident together. That is what really changed a lot for me, Not so much spiritually, but in terms of appreciating wife, you know, appreciating even the little things in life. Because I remember how to, you know, learn to walk again. And I remember I had learned to walk on a cane and I was able to walk up the hill and get this bowl of chelmine at this horrible Chinese restaurant, like the worst cholmine you've ever eaten, just like nothing
but noodles and Greece. It was awful. It just tears streaming down my face because I was so happy that like, oh my god, I've come to a point in life where I can go out and choose a horrible belt bowl of chowmaine. I I want to, you know. And so that really changed a lot for me in terms of appreciating life on just a daily and a minute basis. And I think that is what helped me really be
able to understand death. You know, when we talk about met Maury, we're talking about a reminder of death without realizing that every memento Mary is also a menta vita. Every reminder of death is also a reminder of life. And that's something that I think I learned from that accident.
That's that's really interesting. I think that a lot a lot of people say that haven't like a near death experience. They they feel that they get this whole other perspective on death.
Not If you have an experience like that, you cannot come away from it without a better perspective. It can make you a better person, or it can make you a worse person, because I've seen people who have a similar accident fall into this like victim syndrome. You know, but uh, it can't. It has to change in you. You can't remain the same afterward. I always say this,
and I'm not joking. I think in many ways. It was probably the best and most important thing that ever happened to me, Which doesn't mean that I want it to happen again. You know, there was just there were a lot of there were a lot of things I need to learn about myself and about the world and just about the process of living. And I learned them at that time. I learned them in a much harder way than I ever wanted to, but I needed to learn. Yeah.
I find that just people that go through really horrible experiences. I mean, it's just it builds resiliency, and you a lot of people that are doing really awesome things have went through some really shitty things.
Based that's what I think anyway.
Well, yeah, I agree with you. Uh, Like I said, it can't it can't not change you. It's just a question you will learn. It's just a question of the lessons you choose to take away from.
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Join the grosserroom dot com today. So a lot of people ask me this question, what do I want done with my body when I die? Or something right? And I always my answer is always, I don't when I die. It's up to my kids and my husband what they want to do, because when I'm dead, I'm dead. Like I look at a dead person as being a dead person. So I don't care if you want to bury me creamate. I don't have anything in writing. It's just kind of like whatever my family wants to do to get over
my death. And now that you've seen all these different things, you know, having a skull on display or a mummy inside of a room, do you have any specific wishes or do you not really care?
Well, I'm with you one hundred percent on this. Actually, I believe that the way we process the dead is for the life. It's for the benefit of the living. So I would say yeah, And that doesn't mean that if someone has a preference, I don't think that's important. If someone has a preference and it stated it, I think it should be followed and that it should be respected. But for me, because I think the way we process and deal with the dead, uh is for the benefit
of the living. I feel the same way. It's just let my friends decide, you know, if they want to dump me in the desert and let the crows eat me, oh flar it. You know, if they want to put me in a suit of armor and set me on a horse and let me ride until my body falls off somewhere go, it's I think it's I think it's it's up to them because ultimately that final act for me, the way of all I've always viewed it, that final act is a final act to commemorate that person's.
Exactly. That's how I feel too. So you're not like my because my dad is very specific, like.
Don't let them put makeup on me and touch my hair.
I don't want to be he's and we're just like Dad, We're gonna like mess up your hair and everything, and we're gonna put.
You on this. We're gonna make you a drag clean Yeah.
Exactly, It's so funny. Okay. In the German oscar called Oppenheim, is that what it's called?
Uh?
You mentioned that one of the skulls was painted gold for a movie production.
Do you have any more information on that, like, do you know what movie? Do you know anything like that?
I wish I did. Yeah, that's a great question. I act. I tried really hard as a historian. I hate when I don't have an answer. I despise that, and I never got a clear answer on that. It was a German production, I think for sure, not a Hollywood production. And that's that's what they told me because I went. You know, when I went there was like, whoa this skull,
this skull is goal? What's the story? This supposed to be a very very important So they're like, somebody did that for a movie, and then they just left it that way. And I asked everybody at the church. Nobody at the church was working there when whatever movie was made. All they know was from a movie. And I wish I had that answer. I tried, and I never came up with the answer to that question.
Do you do you think that just have you were there and everything and you saw it, do you think it's kind of I mean, I'm assuming that assuming probably isn't correct to do, but I'm assuming that they got permission from someone to do that, But do you think that kind of messes with the history of that place and is kind of disrespectful in a way.
Well, okay, so more background. You you know this about me, I think that I'm from la and so you know, I grew up in a Hollywood environ and you know, when I was living in Echo Park, pretty much everybody on my street from me worked in what they call, you know, the bids. So I've been surrounded by Hollywood people. So first of all, this did not surprise me at all because I'm so used to dealing with movie and TV people that they would go in and do that.
To a normal person, you would say, as you've said, it's like, well they must have gotten permission, right, It's like the house on it people, I know how they are. Do I find it? Do I find it disrespectful that they did that? Yeah, I think it's disrespectful to the church itself that they did that and left it that way. At the same time, you know, I'm sure the church needed the money. I don't know what they paid them.
Does it mess with the history of the place. The easy answer is yes, But that's not necessarily the right because one thing about these places, you know, we have this we we have this nostalgia that you know, nostalgia's a really insidious forsum that things need to be the way they were, the way they're supposed to be. Is if there're this one golden moment that defines a place.
You know, it's like, well, we don't like what's happening to that neighborhood because it's changing the traditional character of that neighborhood. It's like, okay, but when is the golden moment when that neighborhood is exactly what it was, what it was supposed to be January first, nineteen thirty six, you know, seventeen seventy one. What about when many of us lived there and it was all Native Americans. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. There is no
you know, things have an evolution. There's not one defining moment, and everything that happens within that astuary is part of creating the living history. Do you see where I'm going with this? Like I went to there's a very famous oshuary in Portugal, ever, and you go around and like, now you are absolutely not supposed to touch the skulls
right into anything on them. That's considered defilement. But if you look at the skulls very carefully, you'll see that there are all kinds of people who visited and carve the names on the skull. I found Alexander Dumas's name, you know, the famous fridgif. I found Alexander Dumos's name carved into the one of the skulls. It's like, what an amazing living piece of the history that Alexander Dumas has come and put his name on the skull. So I'm not necessarily saying we should go in and graffiti
these places and make a miss out. You know. I'm not sure we should send guys in with spray paint canth and tag them. I don't want that. But at the same time, we have to remember that everything that goes on in there is a living part of the history. Those skulls and open a lot of them. If you look at them carefully, they have rubbed out marks on
the foret. And the reason they have these rubbed out marks is people would come back in the day and they would pray and they would rub really fard on the ford rest on the board while they were praying to commune with the dead. So you know the I don't really like the gold skull in there. I think it's terrible that a movie company would go in there and do that. But does it mess with the history.
I don't know.
It becomes part of the history, does that make it?
Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, I agree with you too.
I think that a lot of times people think you're being disrespectful or something. And agreed, like, now, I mean, this gives you an awesome story to tell kind of about it and that you know, oh a movie was film heare and we did this and that, And I agree that it shouldn't be you know, give people sharpies at the entrance and just let them graffiti all over the place. But it is cool for that purpose.
You're the history, you know. And and I don't like these things being it's like, okay, this is frozen and telling from three hundred years ago, and that's the way it was, you know, as if it's as if it's dead, we're coult off with it. If nothing else, that gold painted skull creates a bridge from us to them.
Yeah, that's right.
You know what's interesting, And this is a completely this is a completely different story that has really nothing to do with this, but it just reminded me of this. My friend's dad had a nineteen seventy gto and he was like the original owner of it, right, And when when the dad was dating the mom, they got in some kind of a fight and because there was jealousy over another girl, and this girl came up to the
car and keyed the car. And it was brand new in nineteen seventy and they still have the car and the family to this day. And the dad never removed the key mark because he wanted to be able to like retell that story of this jealous girl that keyed's car when he was dating the mom. And I think that that's so cool to like, the car is in car shows all the time, and he shows it off and it's got this obnoxious scratch across it. But it's such a good story. And it's not perfect, you know, it's a.
Living piece of the history. And sometimes things being worn or things being tattered, or things being imperfect create something that's really more perfect in a way, you know, exactly, Yeah, because it shows a personality rather exactly rather than simply creating an image.
That's cool, all right, So this is just more of I don't really know if it's necessarily a question, but just to comment, we thought it was really cool that the Thai culture seems to they had on display all of these skulls of unknown people and kind of gave them more dignity in their death than just kind of throwing them in a hole.
What are your thoughts on that, Well.
Yeah, this is a much more complex. In Bangkok, there's a foundation called Room Katana and it's actually an emergency ambulance service and there are not there's not good ambulance service in Bangkok and and so they are so what happens are there are these volunteer ambulance services, like it's a good Samaritan thing. You kind of make your own
ambulance service to help people. And the Room Katani Foundation a lot of you know, so a lot of people because there's not good ambulance service, a lot of people might die before getting to a hospital traditionally. And they kept the first skulls of these deceased people that had been in their tear and they painted the guilded them and they created a shrine for them as kind of like their board of directors and Room Katani doesn't just
operate this emergency ambulance service. They also operate kind of.
Like a.
Charity funeral service. So if you die as a poor person with no one to take care of you, they will take the body and they will provide a coffin and they will bury you. And these skulls are a reminder not just of dead people that they've they've attempted to help, but like you say, they're guilded in the shrine.
That's kind of like a board of directors, and they have they have an actual function because spiritually, it is believed that you know that someone who dies a violent death in an auto accident or someone or someone who dies alah you might stick around, you know, if they have a bad death, they might stick around as an angry ghost. And so while they're while they're human representatives, their living representatives, are going out to find people and
provide assistance. It's believed that the spirits of these skulls, the first ones who died, are also going out to find the spirits of these people and help them pass on and not you know, not have a bad death and not stick around as an angry ghost, you know, help them pass on to them.
Yeah, and that's that's really interesting because it seems that they they have they have respect, a lot more respect for each individual life regardless of yeah, I mean.
You know, Okay, well this gets into a complicated question too, because you also then get into a lot of cultures that have caste systems, you know, and and so so it does get complicated. But on that level, on the level we're talking about, yes, there is this incredible respect for the dignity of people when they're passing.
That's that's cool because I feel like I feel like that needs to because for example, in the American hospital system, there's people that are unclaimed, right like, they go to the hospital, they don't have any family, and it's you know, we've had bodies in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and then eventually, if nobody comes and picks them up, we send to the medical examiner's office and then they stay there for a couple of years, and then I
guess eventually they have you know, they get cremated or whatever. But it's just kind of it's kind of sad to think that people that either don't because sometimes even someone's dad might die or something.
But if you go to a funeral home.
I feel like it's like a minimum five thousand dollars to even do to get a cremation right, and it's just it's sad for people that don't have means like that.
It's also well, and there's a big difference because we refuse to we refuse as a culture to treat the dead on a spiritual level. That is, you know, for us culturally, that is simply that is only under the
auspices of a church or something. But you know what I'm talking about with room can tell you it's something very different than we would have in the United States, where we have basically a public group that is trying to treat the dead not just on a physical level, but on a spiritual And that's what's really left out. And you're talking about leaving a body locked and you know,
locked in deep breeze for a couple of years. You're not treating them on spiritual But this is also a culture, you know, to expand our discussion a little bit, because I've been working for a long time about a book on the history of pet cemeteries, this is also a culture where overall they really do have this respect for the spirituality of life, because you know, Bangkok, for instance, I was just writing something up about this last night.
I've gone to many temple. There are several temples in Bangkok where they perform animal funerals, and you know the one that I'm most familiar with where I photographed a bunch of times. It started about twenty years ago with them performing funerals for stray animals or for street dogs and cats that were unowned, to cremate them and give them a respectful end so that their spirit would be able to transition, you know. So no, we're not just
talking about the spirit of humans. We're talking about the spirit of animals. And then it kind of expanded into the temple offering you know, funerals for pets and entire rituals where you know, like a person, they'll do like fifteen or twenty a day, because I spent an entire day there observing funerals and photographing them for animals, and people will come in with their dead dog or cat, and they'll come into the temple and they'll go with the monk, and you know, like the bunk will provide
an operation and the temple will provide offering. Then they will do a cremation, because this temple even has a crematory now for animals, and then they will take the ashes of the animal, and they have an oxy at the end to go with a monk out onto the river on a boat and release the animal's ashes onto the river, and you know, really like provide closure for the owner and help the spirit of the animal to
pass on it. And that is something when you think about an equivalent to the United States, it just doesn't exist. It would be like walking into a Catholic church and finding a crematory for animals and find, you know, a Catholic priest, because we're talking about a temple with monks. It would be like walk can get to your local, you know, Saint Joe's Catholic church and finding them performing funerals for dogs and cats, you know, and having a
animal crematory. And so it just doesn't exist in Western culture. We just don't think that way.
Yeah, that's that's interesting. I guess that brings me to my next because I was going to ask you if.
You've clearly written other books that are awesome and beautiful too, So what you know, if someone really liked this particular book for this this month's book club. Do you what other books have you written that you suggest to them? And then I want you to talk about your most recent book about the history of cats.
Well, okay, so I already mentioned that I wrote two other death related Booksmntumory is the last, and it's the more global version of it. Heavenly Bodies is the second one, and to me it's kind of I honestly think it's really the best one because it deals with only one particular thing, which is Baroque era jeweled skeletons. But they're the most beautiful dead people I've ever seen. They're just extraordinary.
I also wrote that book Empire of Death, about about the European charnel houses, and then I wrote a book about the history of domestic felines. It seems like an oddball project compared to the rest, but if you really get into cats, now there's a whole mythology connecting them
to death, I suppose. But I happened to have a cat Baba, who is a kind of a really well known feline cosplay artist, and so I was doing all these costume photos with their like She's just a magnificent mon al and at the same time, after I wrote Momento Maury, I mentioned that I've been working for a long time a book about the history of pet cemeteries. I've gone back to that project. But originally after Ramnta Mauri, the follow up was supposed to be a book about
the history of pet cemeteries. In the process of doing that book, I started to you know, to learn about pet cemeteries, they have to learn about the animals buried there. And I had found all these incredible stories about cats that nobody knows about or that just had just been pushed aside because you know, we consider dogs to be the heroic an, you know, it would consider cats to kind of be the domestic animal. But cats can be
just as heroic as dogs. It's like, these are incredible stories that have really never been told, or they haven't been told properly. And at the same time, I had this cat who was this you know, cosplay artist, and
I had this idea. Gave me this idea for a book. Okay, well, why don't I write the history of cats but from a cat's perspective, and it'll be illustrated with pictures of my cat dressed as people from the era were talking about and let a cat replay history but from a cat's perspective and retell the stories of the famous cats who lived in those eras. So that was that wound up as my last book, and now I'm back to working on this book about the history of pet cemetery.
That's so awesome. There's a museum near US University of Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. There's there's mummies on display, and there's cat mummies, which is super cool. Yeah, it's it's really it's really cool that you know, there's a long history with that. So I think, I mean, I'm a cat person and I love that book too, so and I think that you know, we have a bunch of people in the gross room that would be interested
in that as well. What you're doing is just so great, I think not only for people like me, but all people in the gross room, because it makes us feel like more normal that we have a connection, more of a connection and interested with death than most people do. I know, I have a ton of skulls and bones and everything, not only of animals but humans too, because I like the connection of it to be able. I
don't want to look at a plastic skull. I want to look at a real skull, to look at the real anatomic features, And I guess I just wanted to know if if you had any of your own like Memento Mori collection.
Well, well, first of all, don't ever feel abnormal for liking that stuff, because it's not. You know, I've always said that when you really get into this history and you look around the world, you'll find out that the weird ones, you know, the weird thing is where we are now creating that hard boundary of death. Because throughout history and cross culturally you have act all the way to prehistoric times, you'll find that it was always a
soft boarder. You know. One of the oldest cities in the world is Jericho in the Middle East, and what they found in the old archaeological remains were decorated skulls, like secondary burial, where people had been taking the skulls and decorating them and keeping them around in the living area. So there's absolutely nothing weird at all about this. We've just been made to feel weird over time after Western culture kind of perverted everything that had been going on
for centuries. I have a lot of stuff when I lived in Los Angeles. I had a huge collection of taxi dermy bones, and so before I've got a lot less of it now, just because when I when I finally gave up on California, I also kind of gave up on stuff to an extent. I wound up having a free garage sale, which is the story in and of itself, because you know, I had entire taxidermy lions at that house. And I decided, you know, because I loved these things. I didn't get into taxidermy like a
big game hunter. I got into these things. I got into collecting these things because I felt terrible for them because they had been killed and discarded.
You know.
I was like, Wow, this is terrible that someone's hunted you and didn't even keep you. I'm going to give you a home, and I'm going to refurbish you and make you look good to get. And so I had this huge collection stuff, and when I moved, I just wanted everything to go to people who would appreciate it, you know, rather than reselling it. I didn't want money for the stuff because I I loved this stuff, you know, I just wanted to get rid of it. And so I decided to have a kind of free garage sale,
and I mean invited just my friends. I made a Facebook group that was like, Hey, I'm finally leaving out of California. I'm not taking that much stuff with me, you know, all the junkits in my house and giving it all away on this day, you know, show up at eight am and anyone can take anything they want.
Thinking in my head that this was going to be like a reasonable process, and it really it turned into insanity because then it's like I had people like renting trucks and hiring day laborers to come to my house, and because I had so much step to just take this stuff away, Like there were people hiring trucks because they were going to redecorate their entire house with my stuff.
And I had people calling from around the country wanting to come to this event, and so I had to like I eventually had to post something and said, Okay, guys, this is turning into something. And I didn't want I'm gonna my doors going to be closed until eight am, because then I had all my all these people were calling me. It's like, hey, can I just come all over a day early? Actually have trouble on the day, Holy no, because I know what you're trying to do.
You're trying to take that skeleton. I know what you're up to. And so I had to host this message saying, Okay, this is only for people I know, and this is a private event, and my door is going to be locked until eight am, and don't knock and don't bug me. And by seven am, an hour before, there was a line around the block because all my these people know we're out there, like I say, a lot of them bringing day laborers, and and my neighbors were flipping out
because they had no idea what was on. You know, it was like it was like a Walmart sale from It was like, you know, it was like Black Friday from hell. And and then I opened my door and they just stormed in and there were people running out into the street with like moose heads floating like tire goats and stuff, you know, like people running out on the street waving these bones around and throwing them in
cars and trucks. It's absolutely not a friend of mine who was there said it was the fastest home clean out he had ever seen because they took everything. But that's what happened to all that stuff. I gave it all the way free, and it was I will never forget that day. I mean, I couldn't stop laughing because there were a couple people like good friends of mine, like Adam. We talked about who wanted certain things, like he wanted this taxidermy monitor and it was absolutely beautiful.
Maybe it was an maybe it was a big o one I forget and I said, all right, I'm gonna put that aside for you, and I put a name on it. You know, I said, do not touch this because this is going to my friend. At Pennsylvania. It was gone with intensity someone Oh wow. Yeah. They were just taking everything, whether it had a note on it
or not, and people were putting stuff. They were like grabbing piles and things and putting things down, and someone else would come over and grab this taxidermy's head out of their pile and go running down the streets. And then they'd come to me like, oh my god, I put that head in my pile and this car I grabbed it, and RANT was like, don't ask me. Whoever gets it out the door first owns it. Oh, anyway, that's what happened to all that stuff.
Well, I see that you still have a couple things, so that's cool.
Yeah, you but mostly it's gone.
Yeah, that's and that is that when you sent me didn't used to send me like a wild board. He he sends me a text message like hey, do you want this wild borehead And I was like, okay, yeah.
Yeah, I did send you that because I was trying to Yeah, that's right. I was trying to piece out a few things to people I knew from around the country can come.
Yeah, and so we still have that, which is awesome. Do you want to tell them where they I mean, they could obviously find you on Instagram if they want to, you know, follow what you're doing and keep up with your stuff. Do you have a website and everything?
My my user name is h e x E M k U l T, so, uh, that's a place to follow me. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram.
Thank you for listening to mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge of those subjects at the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency.
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