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What happens when a cemetery goes out of business?
00:55:37
We're supposed to be buried there forever, right? Right??
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- [00:01]
PJ Vogt
This episode is brought to you in part by BILT PSA for anyone who rents. If you haven't heard of bilt, you're about to thank me. Earning points on rent is now a reality. When you pay your rent through bilt, you don't even have to check with your landlord to start earning points that you can use towards flights, hotel stays, fitness classes, and even your next rent payment. There's no cost to join bilt, and as a member you'll earn valuable points on rent and on your everyday spending. BILT points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world. You can redeem your BILT points toward points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only BILT members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, the question is why not start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to joinbuilt.com search that's J-O-I N B I L T.com search make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you jointbuilt.com search to start earning points on your rent payments today. Hello search engine listeners. I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I think you're going to love. It's the Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. You probably already know and love the insanely popular TV show Severance starring Adam Scott Trust, directed by Ben Stiller. On January 17th, Severance is back for season two on Apple TV and Ben Stiller and Adam Scott are recapping each episode of Season one every weekday before the Season two premiere. After that, they're recapping each episode of Season two every Friday. I am really excited for Season two. I really like Season one. I had a hard time remembering what happened in season one, so I just watched a 17 minute explainer. I should have just listened to the recap podcast anyway, Join Ben and Adam for in depth episode analysis, behind the scenes stories and fan questions alongside guests like Severance creator Dan Erickson, stars of the show Zack Cherry, John Turturro and Brit Lauer, and celebrity superfans Jon Stewart, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard. If you're watching Severance, you're going to love this Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. Follow the Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott on the free Odyssey app and everywhere else you get your podcasts welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small. This week, a question one of our listeners has been wondering about for nearly 15 years. A question about the dead. Hi, Lucas. How's it going?
- [03:09]
Lucas
Doing well. How are you doing?
- [03:10]
PJ Vogt
I'm doing good. What does your hat say?
- [03:13]
Lucas
Portland Buckaroos.
- [03:14]
PJ Vogt
Who are the Buckaroos?
- [03:16]
Lucas
They're just like an old hockey team. And what I love about the logo is it like it's a hockey playing cowboy.
- [03:25]
PJ Vogt
Oh, yeah. Is he on a horse? But also the horse has ice skates.
- [03:30]
Lucas
Yeah. And then he has ice skates also.
- [03:32]
PJ Vogt
It seems like overkill.
- [03:34]
Lucas
Well, I love it. It's like he knows that his horse might die.
- [03:38]
PJ Vogt
Oh, yeah.
- [03:38]
Lucas
And he'll need to have his ice skates.
- [03:40]
PJ Vogt
That's like your interpretation of your own hockey hat. Feels like a very morbid Rorschach test. Lucas, perhaps a fellow given to certain morbid wonderings, which was what had led him here today. His question stretched all the way back to 2011, back when Lucas was studying advertising in Texas. In one of his classes, he was given an assignment. Find an existing company that might need some help with their brand and copy. And so in his search, he would find himself wandering the world, noticing businesses more. The ways they presented themselves, the choices they made.
- [04:20]
Lucas
And one day I was driving by this cemetery that was the Muslim cemetery, and I was like, oh, that. You know, cemetery could be a cool thing to advertise for. So I went to their website, and it was like the most unhinged thing where they'd written the website in a first person narrative.
- [04:36]
PJ Vogt
What do you mean?
- [04:37]
Lucas
Like, I've got the website. I can read it to you if you want.
- [04:41]
PJ Vogt
Sure. Yeah.
- [04:42]
Lucas
Okay. Let me introduce myself. My name is Muslim Cemetery, and trust me, I'm your final destiny. I reside in dedon, along Highway 380 west, about 8 miles west of I35 North. My size is 11.5 acres, and I'm 20 years old. Being quite seasoned, you can imagine. At present, I am home to about 460 permanent residents, with the heart to accommodate 2,500 more. See how I cultivate a culture?
- [05:07]
PJ Vogt
So it starts out like that. An unusual piece of ad copy in that the business itself, the cemetery, is addressing you in the first person. But whatever. It's the next paragraph that marks the truly strange pivot. The cemetery, speaking to you on its website, begins to kind of berate you. The writing reads, I have a complaint.
- [05:27]
Lucas
That you folks are not taking due care of me.
- [05:29]
PJ Vogt
Whoa.
- [05:30]
Lucas
Because of the yeah. And because of that, Didin county twice threatened to shut me down. Isn't it ironic and unfortunate? With so much community around me, I'm still being neglected. Until few months ago, I did not have the funds even for my monthly maintenance. However, courtesy of a few law fearing folks who took the lead, they jumped in and rescued me. I hope you understand that I'm the only stable and risk free 401k investment option you have. Without fearing for any economic downturns.
- [06:00]
PJ Vogt
It's a kind of sales pitch that might be familiar to you if like me, you're a devoted public radio listener. The product you're using for some reason constantly reminding you that it will die unless you give it more money. It works well enough when it's your local radio host. It's a little weird when the business that's threatening to go out of business is your cemetery. And while I am not an ad critic, the reason this copywriting seems to be not optimal is because the last thing you want to think about as a consumer choosing your final resting place is the idea that the cemetery itself would go out of business. Because then what would happen to you, to your body? But this vivid copywriting, ineffective as a sales pitch, was effective in that it lodged this question in Lucas's mind. So much so that he found himself wondering about it many years later and decided to email us.
- [06:51]
Lucas
It's always been in the back of my head this like lonely, sad, desperate cemetery that was out there clawing for help, you know, So I was wondering, like, what happens if a cemetery goes out of business? You know, like, do they disappear.
- [07:08]
PJ Vogt
Like if a cemetery goes out of business? Because like, if a television store goes out of business, we kind of know they like, the TVs are sold on discount and then maybe they're sent back to the manufacturer. If a cemetery goes out of business, like, what happens, right?
- [07:20]
Lucas
Like Spirit Halloween doesn't move in, like what happens to that land, right?
- [07:24]
PJ Vogt
And I mean my question would be what happens to the bodies in that land?
- [07:28]
Lucas
Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, when I was a kid, I watched Poltergeist and they're like building houses over graves and you know, that creates all kinds of problems. But you know, that's a movie like in real life, what happens to the bodies? Cemeteries are kind of a precious thing. It's a weird usage of land. So, you know, in Texas, I never thought about it because there's land everywhere and like, it's not unusual to run into like an abandoned cemetery where a church used to be. And there's just like eight headstones there. You know, I never thought about it, but this cemetery got me thinking about that more and more of like, well, what happens if a cemetery in prime area goes out of business?
- [08:03]
PJ Vogt
I think we can go answer these questions for you.
- [08:06]
Lucas
Happy hunting.
- [08:08]
PJ Vogt
After some ads Questions answered Where do we go when we die? Well, the cemetery usually, but we'll learn the history of the places we go when we die, and we'll find out what happens when those places run out of cash. All that after these ads this episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Rocket Money. You sign up for something, forget about it after the trial period ends, then you're charged month after month after month. The subscriptions are there, but you're not using them. In fact, 85% of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Or if you're me, you had several. Thanks to Rocket Money, I was able to see all my subscriptions in one place and cancel the streaming services. I can't remember signing up for Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year. When using all of the app's premium features, cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com search today. That's RocketMoney.com search Rocket Money surge Engine is sponsored by Vuori Vuori is a new perspective on performance apparel. It's perfect if you're sick and tired of traditional old workout gear. Everything is designed to work out in, but it doesn't feel or look like it. It's extremely comfortable. You'll want to wear it all the time. I promise you it is more comfortable than whatever you're wearing right now. The product is incredibly versatile. It can be used for just about any activity, running, training, swimming, yoga. But it is also great for my favorite form of exercise, which is lounging on a sofa. Also, Vuori is 100% offsetting their carbon footprint. They're using better, sustainable materials for their products. To empower your best active life, Fiori is an investment in your happiness. For our listeners, Fiori is offering 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet@viori.com PJsearch that's Vori V U O-R-I.com PJsearch not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over 75 bucks and free returns. Go to vuori.com pjsearch and discover the versatility of Vuori clothing. Welcome back to the show. How did you decide that you were going to spend many years of your life thinking about cemeteries?
- [11:44]
David Sloan
So the simple explanation, and it's not that simple, but I grew up in a cemetery.
- [11:50]
PJ Vogt
What?
- [11:53]
David Sloan
My father was superintendent of a 200 acre cemetery in Syracuse, New York. It's a great place to play as long as you're not doing anything too stupid. And your friends, as I say in the second book I wrote, we didn't have any sleepovers.
- [12:12]
PJ Vogt
This is David Sloan, professor at the University of Southern California and author of two books about cemeteries.
- [12:19]
David Sloan
He.
- [12:19]
PJ Vogt
He's been thinking about these places ever since the childhood he spent among the tombstones. How did you feel like, how did it shape your relationship to death as a kid?
- [12:29]
David Sloan
To me, it was just where I was. I was there from the time I was six weeks old. So I actually worked in the cemetery starting when I was 13 and all the way into my 20s. I buried babies. I was part of a crew that buried full bodies and cremations. I filled graves, you know, almost all the things that you would do in a cemetery. So I have a more intimate personal relationship with it. And then I began to create a professional relationship with my dissertation.
- [13:04]
PJ Vogt
When you work in a cemetery, does it make you, when you're confronted with the fact of death, which is something that most of us want to avoid, how does it shape your relationship to death? Does it make you more anxious about dying? Does it make you more accepting? Like, does it have an effect?
- [13:19]
David Sloan
You know, I think it in some sense made me more aware of the practicalities of death. And so I didn't really feel the way that most Americans feel where they felt a distance, an incredible distance from death. You know, I watch my father or listen to my father help grieving widows. You know, I've met with families when I was going to bury their baby. I mean, I wasn't in a position where I could be so far away that I could live the American way of death. I was much more, you know, the death is part of life. It's part of how we live and it's part of the natural cycle of this body of mine and yours. Nobody's been able to figure out a way not to die, even though tech pros are trying. They're in a long line of people who said, well, I'm going to be the first. And we're still waiting for one to show up.
- [14:15]
PJ Vogt
So you feel more acceptance of it?
- [14:16]
David Sloan
Yeah, I think so.
- [14:21]
PJ Vogt
As humans, we bury our debt. We've done it for so long that it feels strange to ask why. We know it's not purely for health reasons. Burial predates our understanding of germs. The CRO Magnons buried their dead. Even the Neanderthals did. The practice feels human, except research suggests that chimpanzees, elephants, and even termites have their own versions of this. What does seem to be uniquely human about our burials is our ability to attach meaning to them. Some of us believe in an afterlife or a soul, but even those of us who don't seem to agree that the body itself is sacred, maybe even more sacred after death, we just know this somehow. We know we have to do something with a dead body. And every culture solves the problem in its own way. In Tibet, there's a tradition of what the west calls sky burials. The body left on a mountain or some other elevated place for vultures to feast on. There they call it giving alms to the birds. In ancient Egypt, instead of practicing non attachment to the body, some pharaohs we know were entombed in pyramids. Tens of thousands of living humans working for years to mark the death of just one. The foray people of Papua New guinea once, in some circumstances, consumed their dead. But the practice, we know, seems to have died out. Americans, for the most part, we bury our dead underground, organized often in grids of tombstones that might remind us of the suburban and urban grids we spend our lives in. The cemetery itself. It might be attached to a house of worship. It might just be a pretty field. Like everything in America, it feels like it's always been like this. And like most things in America, it was all invented about 15 minutes ago in historical time.
- [16:04]
David Sloan
So in the 18th century, many small towns or larger towns in the United States had a civic cemetery that said government cemetery, a public cemetery, and then they had churchyards, and then they would actually have private, small, really small family cemeteries. And so you would have this mixture. It was a simple, say, quarter acre, half acre, and you just buried people in rows all the way along. It was a very functional, practical space. There wasn't a lot of greenery, There wasn't a lot of nature. It was mostly gravestones. And then in the late 18th century, as the cities grow, that begins to put pressure on the Churchyards and those older civic cemeteries. And so people begin to think about, how can we slightly suburbanize the dead to create more permanent places? And so, in 1796, James Hillhouse was a very popular guy, prominent guy in New Haven, says he went to a friend's farm where there was a little family cemetery. It was sort of being taken over by nature. And he goes, that's not good.
- [17:21]
PJ Vogt
James Hillhouse, an American senator from Connecticut. In America, he was the person to notice this problem that other people were noticing in other countries across the industrializing world. Industrialization meant more cities, more density, land being developed and redeveloped, including farms, family farms, where traditionally many people had been buried.
- [17:43]
David Sloan
Slowly, the city is expanding. The early farms, they might totally disrupt or take down all of the stones and the burials. So let's put everybody in one place where we can have a nonprofit organization that oversees the care of the dead.
- [18:02]
PJ Vogt
And so before him, the idea was, for most Americans, you die, you're buried, you get a tombstone. But then the idea that years later, if you're buried on the family farm, the family farm might get sold, and that spot might kind of just get overridden with someone else's new idea.
- [18:24]
David Sloan
Yeah, they might keep it forever, but they also might have all sorts of different ways that they handle that family farm.
- [18:32]
PJ Vogt
So he's the one who says, like, the cemetery should be a discreet and dedicated place where you buy a plot and you know your body will be undisturbed for if not eternity, at least a very, very, very long time.
- [18:47]
David Sloan
Very, very long time.
- [18:52]
PJ Vogt
Hillhouse creates the first modern American cemetery, the model for many others to come. He calls it the New Haven Burying Ground, the first private, nonprofit cemetery in the world. You can still visit it today. These days, they call it Grove Street Cemetery. It's actually sort of nestled in Yale's campus, which means being buried there is a great way to get into Yale if your SAT scores aren't otherwise good enough. David points out that these problems Hill House was solving. Other countries which had industrialized earlier, France, England, had already begun to contend with them. And they were modernizing their cemeteries for the same reasons we were. Not just urban displacement, but. But also public health reasons.
- [19:32]
David Sloan
Remember, in the early 19th century, mid 19th century, we don't have bacteriology.
- [19:37]
PJ Vogt
Right.
- [19:37]
David Sloan
That's going to come at the end of the century. And so people were very worried about what was known as a miasma. And a miasma was a sort of atmosphere above the city, and there was a sense that a disease could get into a miasma, and you could actually get that disease because you're in this miasma. And so how do you get that miasma? They thought it was from decomposing material. And so the dead are decomposing. So they became a threat that they would say, you died of smallpox or you died of cholera. Would you then decompose in a way that would allow cholera to go into this miasma and create a danger? So that's the first thing that happens.
- [20:24]
PJ Vogt
Okay.
- [20:25]
David Sloan
The second thing that happens is romanticism. And romanticism emerges in Europe and then moves through Britain into the United States. That nature is beneficial. It's beneficial for health reasons, beneficial spiritual reasons. It's beneficial for all sorts of things. So if you put those two together, then the idea becomes, if we suburbanize the dead in a larger place that we can protect and use for a very long time to bury the dead, we protect the living, we protect the dead, and we can use that space. Remember, before 1860, there's very few public parks in any city in the United States, so we can use that as a recreational area.
- [21:16]
PJ Vogt
Interesting. So at that moment, like, the idea, there's very little green space in the city where you are, and there's green space in the cemetery at that. Like, if I told my friends, you know, I'm gonna go throw a baseball around on Saturday at the cemetery, there's something like a little bit. It's okay. They're not gonna, like, worry about me. But there's something a little bit in there.
- [21:39]
David Sloan
A little bit creepy. Yeah.
- [21:40]
PJ Vogt
Yes. Would that have been more normal then?
- [21:43]
David Sloan
No.
- [21:43]
PJ Vogt
No, it would have still been weird.
- [21:45]
David Sloan
You wouldn't go jogging. You wouldn't throw baseballs. What they did is they got in their carriages and they rode around the cemetery. Flowers, trees, green grass. You know, they're like, this is great. And they might. They might in some cemetery, stop and have a picnic at the grave of someone they knew or someone who was famous. And so you would have this sort of celebrity culture.
- [22:09]
PJ Vogt
Oh, wow.
- [22:10]
David Sloan
And lots and lots of people did this over the course of a year. Tens of thousands of people would go visit Greenwood in Brooklyn or Mount Auburn in Cambridge.
- [22:21]
PJ Vogt
Honestly, it sounds really nice. I feel like one of the things we don't have so much right now is a way to publicly grieve. You know, like, you can go to a funeral, but if you just want to go to a place where everyone else might be grieving, separate things together, I don't know. I mean, obviously you can go to a cemetery. No one will stop you today. But you're describing A culture that is visiting death differently than the way we visit death now.
- [22:46]
David Sloan
So that really has to do with the 19th century believed in a closer relationship between living and dead, you know, all sorts of ways. I'll give you one very simple way. When a person died, often at home, they would snip pieces of locks of their hair, they would put them in these elaborate creations, and they would put them on the wall of their house. You know, you'd walk into a house and in the living room there'd be a little thing of the young daughter who had died. So starting in the 1920th century. Right. It happens as early as the latter part of the 19th century really takes off. In the middle of the 20th century, Americans begin to really distance themselves from the dead and from death.
- [23:33]
PJ Vogt
Why?
- [23:34]
David Sloan
Why? Well, cultural trends are one of the most difficult things to parse out.
- [23:41]
PJ Vogt
Yes.
- [23:42]
David Sloan
So part of it is we know that the number of dead is actually declining. Everybody knew somebody who had died in 1900. It's just part of the parcel of life. By 1950, 1960, not so much the infant mortality rate, for instance, and 1890s New York City is something like 130 per thousand. And by the 1960s, that's going to be in the low teens.
- [24:13]
PJ Vogt
Oh, it's very different. It's very different.
- [24:15]
David Sloan
So it's a really different thing. So it's easier to distance yourself.
- [24:20]
PJ Vogt
This is a totally unanswerable question and it's not fair for me to ask it, but my curiosity insists. Do you think that those people for whom death was more common, an experience and a shared experience, do you think that the way they felt grief or loss was different than the way we feel grief or loss?
- [24:39]
David Sloan
I think it was very intense.
- [24:40]
PJ Vogt
It wasn't less intense?
- [24:42]
David Sloan
No, it was very intense and very public.
- [24:44]
PJ Vogt
Tell me more about that.
- [24:46]
David Sloan
So the classic thing, Victoria, Victoria's beloved husband dies. She never wears anything but black for the rest of her life. Right. And this is not unusual in Italy or in England or in Italian neighborhoods in New York. It wasn't like you were a widow. So you were on the open market for marriage. You were grieving for at least a year or two years. There's whole etiquette books about how long you have to wear black and how you can then move to some parts are black and some parts aren't. I mean, this a really intimate relationship with death and with the dead.
- [25:26]
PJ Vogt
And why do you think it seems a bit counterintuitive? Because you would think that in a. In a milieu where death were More common, people would sort of hide, like. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:38]
David Sloan
But it's exactly the opposite. Where death becomes less part of your life, you hide more. And where death is really in your life, you actually embrace the realities of death more. Interesting. A quick example. The gay and lesbian community of the.
- [25:56]
PJ Vogt
1980S during the HIV AIDS crisis.
- [25:59]
David Sloan
Yeah, Right. I know people close to me who went to 50 funerals. Right. It becomes a different reality. When that's true, your relationship to that idea of death changes. Whereas if you're somebody just going along, stay born in the 70s, both your grandparents alive, both your parents are alive, your siblings are alive, your mom might have had a miscarriage, but basically everybody you know is alive. And they're alive for a really long time. Right. You know, there's lots of people who have grandparents today, and they're in their 30s and 40s. That's not going to be true as much in 1900.
- [26:41]
PJ Vogt
And with, for instance, say, in the 1980s, with the gay community, with HIV, AIDS, did you see people turning to sort of cultural ritual in a way that would remind you of, like, the 1920s or the 1910s in America, like, where.
- [26:57]
David Sloan
So they did different ones. They didn't do hair on the walls or anything like that. But we know of some of them. Right. With somebody like Cleve Jones deciding that everyone should have a quilt as part of the AIDS memorial quilt, that seems very 19th century.
- [27:17]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [27:17]
David Sloan
Because if you really think about how we mourn the dead in that period, say from 1950s and quite recently, it's really the family's gonna go to the funeral, people are gonna come, family's gonna go to the cemetery by themselves. They might have a reception, they might not have a reception, and then you move on. Right, Right. That's America's way of death.
- [27:45]
PJ Vogt
America's way of death is, put it away, come back to work.
- [27:47]
David Sloan
Yeah. Go back to work. You know, get a new husband. You're going forward, you're moving forward. By its very nature, that denies the death. The death is supposed to play very little role in your life. So grieving is really hard. Right. It's very hard to grieve in that situation because everybody's telling you, okay, we understand. Now can we talk about you going back to work?
- [28:13]
PJ Vogt
Yeah. Grieving. In American society, grieving death in particular, feels like you leave society and you're culturally permitted to leave society with the expectation that you'll return. But, like, I feel like that's the thing that anyone who has lost anybody relates to is that feeling that you just leave the world and the world does not join you in that place. And it's very strange to imagine that that experience is not that it's a cultural experience and that in a different culture, you might feel differently.
- [28:40]
David Sloan
Totally different, huh?
- [28:45]
PJ Vogt
Before our culture changed, back in the 1900s, the 1910s, if you walked through an American cemetery, you might have seen lots of mourners. On any given day. They wouldn't necessarily have been mourning the same person. They wouldn't have necessarily known each other, but they might have felt a sense of connection even without talking. They might have been reminded that the world is always losing people and leaving others behind. And they could have gotten to mourn without that feeling of exile. The modern grief carries the discomfort we feel when we've left the funeral but are not yet ready to go back to the office. Of course, the nice part of our modern relationship to death is that when we lose someone we love, while we might feel pressured to return to normal, at least we don't feel pressure to stay in the grave. You don't have to wear black for the rest of your life. You can remarry. Time can move on, even if we're not always sure we want it to. Our modern death culture, move on culture, it was already emerging by the 1930s. And David says today the cemetery business is one where if you run a cemetery, you can pretty much predict the few days of the year when visitors will show up.
- [29:54]
David Sloan
Memorial Day, Easter, Christmas, somebody's birthday. Those are the big days where people will show up and fix the grave, put out flowers, do things.
- [30:04]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [30:04]
David Sloan
The rest of the time, there's the regulars. People will come on a weekly or bi weekly basis and they'll sit and talk to their loved ones. They're sort of out of that older culture, but that newer culture is, oh, let's take the grandkids and see grandmother at the cemetery. Because they met the grandmother, but now she's passed away and we'll go on her birthday.
- [30:26]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [30:27]
David Sloan
And we won't go back for another year or we won't go back at all.
- [30:31]
PJ Vogt
So this sort of leads into. One of the things that I was curious about is I was hoping you just sort of paint a picture for me in our time, like now, the way you're describing it, like, I have friends who have culture jobs where they, like, I have a friend who has a roller skating rink. I have friends who, like, who do things for a living where they're like, this time of the year is hot, this time of the year is cold. This is where we make all of our money. This is where we kind of struggle through the cemetery just as a business, not as a cultural space of grief. What are the basic economics of running a cemetery as a business?
- [31:05]
David Sloan
So of course it's changed. I wrote a book in 2018, is the Cemetery Dead.
- [31:10]
PJ Vogt
Good title?
- [31:11]
David Sloan
I have to say it is a good title. And the reason that I wrote it with that title was there's all these pressures.
- [31:20]
PJ Vogt
The first pressure, David says, is the cremation trend. Your grandparents probably would have felt very uncomfortable with the idea of burning bodies up into ash instead of burying them in a casket. It just wasn't a cultural norm. Partly because the Catholic church had issued a formal ban on cremation, A ban that was only lifted in 1963. The lifting of that ban, very bad news for the professional person barrier.
- [31:46]
David Sloan
In 1960, it's very different than today because very few people were cremated and most people who died had a full body burial. And so there's a considerable amount of money at any period for a full body burial. And cremations are much less money. So it really changes the business side of the cemetery.
- [32:10]
PJ Vogt
Cremation is like Napster for cemeteries. It's just like a horrible new thing that's ruining everything.
- [32:16]
David Sloan
It is. I don't know if we go that far, but it causes a lot of disruptions in the business. You know, cremation rate in 1960 is less than 5%. By 2035, people are arguing it's going to be over 70%.
- [32:32]
PJ Vogt
And so in the pre cremation world, and I guess in the post cremation world, just for the cemeteries part of this business, essentially, like what they're doing is they're selling very small plots of land. Right. Like that's the revenue.
- [32:44]
David Sloan
So in the old days, you would try to sell a very large plot of land. So in the 19th century, families would buy a pot of land that might have 30 graves on it. Because you're buying a plot of land for the generations that follow you.
- [32:57]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [32:58]
David Sloan
By the middle of the 20th century, most of the time, people would buy four. Two for them and two for a kid. Unmarried kids. And so the way that the business worked changed from these very large lots to much more medium sized or small.
- [33:17]
PJ Vogt
And how did the business change?
- [33:18]
David Sloan
You don't get as much money if you buy a 30 grave lot. They pay for all those 30 graves?
- [33:24]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [33:24]
David Sloan
If you buy two, you get paid for two. Now a big cemetery can react to that. They can put it in a scattering field, they can create walls where you can have Your name on it, your barrier that remains, all as collectively, they can do all sorts of things. But if you're a small cemetery and you are largely dependent upon full bodies, quite quickly, you can either run out of land or your business can suffer one of the two.
- [33:55]
PJ Vogt
The second pressure on the American cemetery, the thing pushing them in the direction of going out of business has to do with how many people feel these days about the idea of legacies.
- [34:06]
David Sloan
Now there's a whole bunch of people that don't believe in cemeteries anymore. They don't want to be remembered.
- [34:10]
PJ Vogt
I spoke to someone recently who was going on this whole thing about how he didn't want to be remembered. And when it was over, it was over. I didn't realize this was like, a common feeling, that it was.
- [34:19]
David Sloan
Even common's too strong, but it's growing. I mean, this has two ways it goes. One, people say, I don't want anything. Throw them in the trash. You know, who cares? And then there's those who say, well, I want it to be natural.
- [34:30]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [34:31]
David Sloan
And I don't think the modern cemetery is natural. So I'm gonna get buried in a natural burying ground, in a green burial ground. And so both those are happening.
- [34:41]
PJ Vogt
And so do the cemeteries, like, are they pushing back, or are they on, like, a PR Offensive to.
- [34:47]
David Sloan
So most cemeteries have tried to become more natural.
- [34:50]
PJ Vogt
Right.
- [34:51]
David Sloan
And they remind people that until we started embalming, and even then, relatively few people were actually embalmed until the 20th century.
- [35:00]
PJ Vogt
Because if you don't embalm somebody, they will decompose so that you can just keep throwing bodies in the ground. It's fine. It's only when you embalm that you have this problem of the cemetery is permanently taking up irreplaceable land.
- [35:12]
David Sloan
Well, it's not that simple, because those old cemeteries, even if they weren't embalming, they dedicated that space to that person. Americans are not Europeans. So if you're in Germany, when you have someone die, you put that person in the grave space, you rent it. You can rent it for 25 years, or you can rent it for 99 years, but you rent it. And after 25 years, if you don't pay, the body comes up, goes in an ossuary, and they resell it.
- [35:40]
PJ Vogt
Wait, so they just. In Germany, they're evicting their dead?
- [35:44]
David Sloan
Yeah. That's part of how they view the relationship of living and dead and their idea of what is debt.
- [35:50]
PJ Vogt
It's weird, because I feel like that feels wrong to me, but I'm like, well, why does it feel wrong? What do you have to believe to believe that that's wrong? I'm not sure it's wrong. Like it just, it feels wrong.
- [36:01]
David Sloan
Well, most European countries do it. It's only England that stood out. So England began to do permanent grave sites. And that is the policy that came to the US and so in the US almost all grave sites are permanent. You can't rent that I know of anywhere.
- [36:21]
PJ Vogt
So that's pressure too. Pressure number three, afflicting the modern cemetery has to do with migration. Essentially. Not enough of us live and die in the same small towns as our parents the way we once did.
- [36:33]
David Sloan
It's a really big issue. If you lived in Syracuse, New York or Los Angeles for a long time, you can actually go to the cemeteries where your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your great grandparents are buried. You and I. I don't have anybody buried in Los Angeles.
- [36:53]
PJ Vogt
Yeah, I don't have anybody buried in New York.
- [36:54]
David Sloan
You know, my great grandparents were buried in Ironton, Ohio, then Youngstown, Ohio, then Syracuse. And my connection to those cemeteries obviously is greater than most people's because my family. But I can imagine how it's quite easy to, oh, we can't go to grandpa's grave site because it's in Ohio. And so it's not connecting. We don't connect in the same way to the cemetery. And this is what Greenwood and Mount Auburn and places in the Midwest have tried to do is to give you a new way to connect.
- [37:34]
PJ Vogt
David says that cemeteries that are thriving. A weird phrase, but let's go with it. Cemeteries that are thriving tend to be the innovators in America. A lot of the innovation is about cultural programming. Hollywood Forever, a 62 acre cemetery in Los Angeles, has concerts. They show movies on the side of the mausoleum in the summer. Their business is in part about finding creative ways to get people who are still alive back into the cemetery more often. Which if you want Americans to have a less arm's length distance to death, that sounds worth celebrating. There are also architectural innovations happening. Traditional cemeteries can only fit so many bodies. And so as cemeteries run out of space, some will start to stack caskets on top of each other. You can find double depth burial plots all across the country, often smaller older cemeteries or veteran cemeteries. More rarely, you can find triple or even quadruple depth burials, but that's about the limit. You can't really stack more than four caskets underground. You start to run into issues with soil stability or the water table, depending on where you're buried. So These days, some cemeteries have begun to build up mausoleums that are somewhat high rise, inspired with multiple levels, a way of putting way more bodies into the same amount of land. It's like a yimby movement, but for the dead. But despite innovations such as these, the bottom line is that the pressures that are pushing against cemeteries are real. And more cemeteries are facing down a hard business reality than back in the 1910s when Americans hung out with their dead and cremation was still considered a bizarre practice. Which leads us to the question that has brought us here. When a modern cemetery dies, not a person in a cemetery, but the business of the place itself, what happens? The answer after some ads this episode is brought to you in part by NerdWallet listener a new year is finally here, and if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Habits to build, travel plans to make, mocktail recipes to perfect. Good thing our sponsor, NerdWallet is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the Best financial products introducing NerdWallet's best of awards List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts, and more. The nerds have done the work for you, researching and reviewing over 1100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. Or a bank account with the top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that too. Know you're getting the best products for you without doing all the research yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com awards to find the best Financial products today if you have health insurance, you might be able to see a personal dietitian for $0. Out of pocket nourish connects you with a dietitian that fits your needs covered by your insurance. Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans and 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Meet with your dietitian online and message them anytime through the Nourish app. With hundreds of five star reviews from real patients, you know you're in good hands. Find your dietitian@usenourish.com that's usenourish.com welcome to Nadia Yada island next on Metro's Nadiata island podcast. I almost fainted when the four bombshells arrived. Four free Samsung Galaxy A16. 5G phones at Metro?
- [41:47]
David Sloan
No way.
- [41:48]
PJ Vogt
And finding out the fourth line is free. Oh, thanks God. He did. That's wild.
- [41:52]
David Sloan
Join Metro and get four free Samsung.
- [41:55]
PJ Vogt
5G phones only at Metro plus tax. Bring four numbers and an ID and sign up for any Metro Flex plan not available currently AT T Mobile or been with Metro in the past 180 days. Welcome back to the show. The thing that had led me to this conversation with you is that we had a listener to our show who found themselves wondering what happens when a cemetery goes out of business, which obviously has to happen some of the time and must be happening still with some of these smaller cemeteries. Like, what does it look like when a cemetery just runs out of money?
- [42:36]
David Sloan
So there's really three things that can happen.
- [42:40]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [42:41]
David Sloan
One, they can either get bought up by somebody who wants the cemetery for some reason and they can become part of a larger enterprise and they'll build a mausoleum on land that they didn't think they could use, et cetera.
- [42:54]
PJ Vogt
Our listener also wanted to know if there's a market for. The phrase I think he used was gently used cemeteries like, there's not a world like in my dying industry, which is media, you have private equity companies just like buying up, failing or not quite failing media organizations and just running them in a ruthless, private driving way that's bad for the thing itself, but lets them kind of just take a little bit of extra money out of it. That doesn't happen in the cemetery business, I'm assuming.
- [43:18]
David Sloan
Sure.
- [43:19]
PJ Vogt
Oh, it does.
- [43:19]
David Sloan
Right. There are big corporations who have bought up dozens and dozens of funeral homes.
- [43:25]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [43:25]
David Sloan
And now control much of the funeral market in the United States. And they started to buy cemeteries. But most cemeteries are not private enterprises. Most cemeteries are nonprofits or they're public. And so it didn't go as well. It's not like they have as expansive a set of holdings. They do have a considerable number of cemeteries. But what they bring to it is they bring. The mowers you're going to use can be cheaper because you're going to get them from them. The trimmers. The same thing. If they own three cemeteries, they can have one gang of mowers that go from one to the other to the other. And so they try to do cost cuts that are not negative to the business.
- [44:10]
PJ Vogt
Yeah. So the first thing that can happen when a cemetery runs out of business is conglomeration. The big guy buys up the struggling smaller guys. But the second outcome, it's almost the opposite of that, an outcome that's less corporate, more communitarian.
- [44:27]
David Sloan
Second is that the people who own the cemetery or manage the cemetery, Reach out to the people who have people buried there. And they say, we need your help because we no longer have the funds to maintain the cemetery. And so there's groups that started to be created, say, in the 80s and 90s called friends organizations of Cemeteries.
- [44:51]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [44:51]
David Sloan
And they will often in smaller cities or smaller cemeteries, they'll become really the maintenance crew. They'll bring their own mowers. They'll tend the graves. They'll make everything happen. And so that happens. And that's happened quite a lot. But the most prominent is that the state is told the cemetery is no longer functioning and that the certificate by which they are a commercial business or a nonprofit should no longer be held up because they have no money.
- [45:26]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [45:26]
David Sloan
So it becomes a war to the state.
- [45:28]
PJ Vogt
And so the state will step in and just take it over to prevent calamity.
- [45:33]
David Sloan
Basically, yes. But the states are really bad at it.
- [45:37]
PJ Vogt
Oh.
- [45:38]
David Sloan
So what happens typically is the states say, okay, we'll take it. We'll do what we can. But, you know, we're busy. We don't have that much money. And so we'll get to it when we can get to it. And so people will complain every three months or six months or nine months, and the state will send in a set of mowers and leaf blowers and et cetera. They'll clean it up. Then they'll come back nine months later or six months later. I mean, there's some places that are very good about it, and they're very careful with the ones that they take over. But many are derelict.
- [46:13]
PJ Vogt
So the most like, the worst case scenario for if you are a body and your cemetery goes out of business, is that it goes out of business, the state takes it over. And then the state is just maintaining the plot at the speed of outrage, which is slow and long.
- [46:33]
David Sloan
They do minimal amounts of work. Yes.
- [46:35]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [46:35]
David Sloan
And this is a big problem, because once a cemetery has grass that's three feet tall and it has clear signs it's not being taken care of.
- [46:44]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [46:44]
David Sloan
That's when the kids show up and start knocking monuments over and doing things. Now, that can happen in any cemetery. But in a cemetery that is derelict, it's more open.
- [46:55]
PJ Vogt
Yeah. I think it's funny, you know, we get all these wonderful questions from different people, and we have to decide which ones to ask. And I think the thing that had appealed to me about wondering about cemeteries going out of business, one thing was just I'd never thought about it, but the other was that when I Started to think about it, I thought, well, every cemetery goes out of business eventually.
- [47:19]
David Sloan
No, no. So someplace like Mount Auburn Cemetery has an endowment in the. I don't know, somewhere above $50 million. And I don't know the number. And so it's not going to go out of business.
- [47:35]
PJ Vogt
Is it hard to get in?
- [47:36]
David Sloan
Yeah.
- [47:37]
PJ Vogt
Who do you have to know?
- [47:40]
David Sloan
You don't have to know. You have to buy a lot. They don't have a huge number of lots, so it's quite expensive. They have a growing cremation niche business. They actually have built. They built a pretty bad mausoleum, but now they have a really nice mausoleum. And so they're been responding to their limits of their land. They still have a bunch of land, and so it's not like you can't get in, but you just have to pay.
- [48:06]
PJ Vogt
So if you want to be buried somewhere where you know that you won't be disturbed. I feel like this is like a consumer advice thing now, but, like, try to find an old cemetery with a good endowment.
- [48:16]
David Sloan
Yes. I mean, there's two answers to that. The first is an old cemetery with a good endowment. But the second one is if you live somewhere where there's a small cemetery, a village cemetery, a community cemetery, a public cemetery, a town cemetery, those can be really quite lovely. I used to live in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Hanover, New Hampshire, had a public cemetery, the Hanover Cemetery, and they had sufficient funds, because the town is actually pretty wealthy, had sufficient funds to keep it up. And it's in really gorgeous shape. And so being buried there is also a way to go.
- [48:56]
PJ Vogt
So the answer to our listener Lucas's question this week. What happens when a cemetery goes out of business? It can get taken over by a corporation. It can get taken over by volunteers or by the state. But in America, the cemetery remains a cemetery. The bodies stay in the ground. Because in America, graves are permanent, unlike much of the rest of the world, where your grave is just the last thing you rent. I think the last thing I'm curious about, and if this is too personal, obviously don't answer it, but have you decided what you want to do?
- [49:34]
David Sloan
So. Yes and no. For a long time, I wanted to be cremated. My first wife is interred in a niche in Mount Auburn.
- [49:45]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [49:46]
David Sloan
Because she grew up in Boston, and she loved going to Mount Arbor. She loved to take her nephews there, and they all live in Boston, so she really wanted to be part of that. And we actually have a double urn. But recently, someone else asked if they could. Her sister asked if she could be interred there with her beloved sister when she dies.
- [50:09]
PJ Vogt
She's still alive in that double urn.
- [50:12]
David Sloan
Yeah.
- [50:12]
PJ Vogt
Oh.
- [50:13]
David Sloan
And I was touched by her emotion and her relationship to her sister, so I said yes. So that meant I was afloat and have to think about what I'm going to do. And I made a trip to the first natural burying ground in America in the west side of South Carolina. Beautiful place. And they run it gorgeously. They do a great job. And I was like, huh, how about that as an option? Now, natural burial grounds are slowly growing all over the country, and maybe I could do that. And then there's the part of me that says, david, just get cremated. Let your wife figure it out. Let's see what happens.
- [50:59]
PJ Vogt
So you're still deciding?
- [51:00]
David Sloan
Yeah, I'm undecided. What about you? What are you gonna do?
- [51:04]
PJ Vogt
Oh, right now, I was very sure that I knew, and I had decided that I wanted to be cremated and I wanted to be put in the water near where I used to go to the beach as a kid.
- [51:17]
David Sloan
Yeah.
- [51:18]
PJ Vogt
And then my partner, we talked about it, and she told me she wanted to be put in the water near where she used to go as a kid, which is very far away. And I realized we have a problem which I have not figured out how to solve.
- [51:31]
David Sloan
Well, I will suggest to you a way that you can do both. Right. And that is you could actually buy in some cemeteries. It's not that typical, but you can actually buy a name, a place to put your name in some cemeteries that do scattering.
- [51:48]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [51:49]
David Sloan
And you just say, okay, I'm not going to scatter, but I want to put my partner and Maya's name here so that if there's someone who wants to come visit us, they'll have a place to visit.
- [52:01]
PJ Vogt
Because that's really what you're doing, is you're trying to give the people who miss you a place to go.
- [52:05]
David Sloan
That's really what it is. I'll tell you one really quick story. Please.
- [52:10]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [52:10]
David Sloan
I moved to California, and I was going to Santa Barbara to see somebody, and I talking to my father, he said, well, you can go visit your grandmother. Both of my grandmothers died before I was born, so I never knew a grandmother. And it turned out that she was buried in the Santa Barbara cemetery. So on the way up, my wife and I took a detour, and I found the grave, and I just burst into tears because I never got to go to grandmother's house, because I never had a grandmother. And so it was a very emotionally effective moment for me. And my wife has now drifted away. She had comforted me at the beginning and said, okay, I'm going to go walk around. And she comes back and she's smiling. I'm like, hey, I'm having a moment here. Should you be serious?
- [53:02]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [53:04]
David Sloan
If you walk to the edge of the cliff, below it is a nude beach. Now, your grandmother wanted to be buried there because she wanted to look at the ocean, which you can do. She wanted to look at the mountains, which you could do. But, you know, maybe she wanted to look at the nude beach, too. You know what?
- [53:25]
PJ Vogt
It makes me understand, and I didn't think that I would get to clarity on this, and I didn't think I needed to too quickly. But you should be buried somewhere where when the people who miss you go there, they'll have an experience that you want them to have. And you got to have an experience of mirth and grief. And that's perfect.
- [53:43]
David Sloan
Yeah, it is. And that's why the cemetery isn't dead.
- [53:48]
PJ Vogt
David, so nice to talk to you about this. Thank you.
- [53:50]
David Sloan
It's my pleasure. Really fun.
- [53:57]
PJ Vogt
David Sloan is a professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis with the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. His latest book is called Is the Cemetery Dead? Go check it out. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pimineni, and it's produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact checking by Holly Patton. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Additional production support from Sean Merchant and Kim Kubol. If you'd like to support our show, keep it alive, stop it from going out of business and get ad free episodes, zero reruns and the occasional bonus audio. Please consider signing up for Incognito Mode. You can learn more at Search Engine Show. Incognito Mode subscribers get to stay and their graves forever undisturbed. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Rees Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Borrello and John Schmidt and the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Scheff. Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at uta. Follow and listen to Search Engine for right on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.