The New Science of Love & The Fascinating World of Death

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The New Science of Love & The Fascinating World of Death"

Title: Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers | OmniCast Media
Episode Release Date: July 3, 2025
Description: In this compelling episode, host Mike Carruthers delves into two profoundly important aspects of human existence—love and death. Through insightful interviews with experts Anna Machen and Caitlin Doughty, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the biological underpinnings of love and the intricate processes surrounding death in modern society.

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1. The Science of Love with Anna Machen

Introduction to Love as a Fundamental Need

Mike introduces the first segment by exploring how love transcends a mere emotion, positioning it as a fundamental human need essential for survival. He highlights the complexity of love and its various forms, from romantic to platonic relationships.

Love as Biological Bribery

Anna Machen, an evolutionary anthropologist at Oxford University and author of "Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships," offers a provocative definition of love:

"Love is biological bribery. It's a set of neurochemicals evolved to motivate and reward us for investing in critical relationships necessary for survival." (06:02)

She explains that love's evolutionary purpose is to foster long-term cooperation among humans, the most cooperative species on Earth. This cooperation is vital for survival, necessitating strong, enduring relationships.

Dimensions of Love: Biological and Sociological

Machen underscores that love encompasses both biological and sociological dimensions:

"Love has two key dimensions. It has the biological dimension, involving neurochemistry and genetics, and a sociological dimension, shaped by cultural norms and societal rules." (07:36)

This duality makes love a complex phenomenon without a one-size-fits-all explanation or formula.

The Necessity of Love for Health and Longevity

Delving into the health implications, Machen cites studies indicating that strong relationships can enhance mental and physical health significantly. She references Juliet Holt Lunstead's 2010 study, which found that robust social connections could improve longevity and recovery from illness by up to 50%, comparable to the benefits of quitting smoking or losing weight.

"Having good, strong relationships can improve your likelihood of survival and overall health by 50%, which is as significant as quitting smoking." (08:21)

Challenges in Maintaining Love

Machen discusses the difficulties in maintaining loving relationships, attributing them to the inherent challenges of cooperation and the complexities introduced by genetics, upbringing, and cultural expectations. She highlights how mismatched attachment styles can strain relationships:

"If you have an anxious attachment style paired with another anxious individual, it often leads to struggles within the relationship." (15:57)

Friendships and Platonic Love

Addressing the role of friendships, Machen emphasizes their critical importance, often sidelined in Western cultures. She notes that in many cultures, especially in Southern Mediterranean societies, friendships are central and provide essential non-judgmental support and relaxation.

"Friends are the neglected section of love. They bring non-judgmental support and a sense of freedom to be yourself." (19:35)

Love at First Sight and Monogamy

Machen expresses skepticism about the concept of love at first sight, distinguishing it from lust and emphasizing that genuine love develops over time through deeper psychological and neurochemical bonds. She also discusses the social construct of monogamy, explaining that while humans are not strictly monogamous by nature, societal norms heavily promote it.

"Monogamy itself is a social construct. Biologically, humans are slightly looser, and no species is 100% monogamous." (25:10)

The Phenomenon of "Broken Heart" Deaths

Exploring the tragic occurrences where individuals die shortly after the loss of a spouse, Machen explains the physiological and psychological impacts of profound grief:

"People who lose a spouse within the first six months are 50% more likely to die, likely due to a combination of psychological grief and increased physical stress." (25:52)

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2. The Fascinating World of Death with Caitlin Doughty

Introduction to Death and Cultural Attitudes

Transitioning to the topic of death, Mike introduces Caitlin Doughty, a mortician and bestselling author of "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" Doughty challenges the societal tendency to avoid open discussions about death, emphasizing the importance of building a relationship with it.

Modern Practices in Handling Death

Doughty critiques the professionalization and bureaucratic handling of death in contemporary society, describing the standard process from death to cremation or burial. She highlights the decline in traditional practices like open casket viewings and the rise of options like Aquamation and human composting.

"Death used to be a community affair, but now it's outsourced, making it seem dangerous and morbid." (34:13)

Legal Restrictions on Post-Mortem Body Handling

Addressing unconventional requests, such as keeping a deceased loved one’s skull, Doughty explains the legal complexities and societal norms that govern post-mortem body handling:

"Keeping a skull post-mortem is complicated and often illegal, as laws prevent the abuse of corpses based on societal standards." (35:10)

Cremation Trends and Environmental Concerns

Doughty traces the rise of cremation back to the 1960s, influenced by activists like Jessica Mitford, who criticized the funeral industry's practices. She notes that over 50% of the population now opts for cremation due to its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and environmental benefits.

"The shift towards cremation began in the 1960s with critiques of the funeral industry's high costs and has grown due to its environmental and economic advantages." (36:44)

Debunking Myths About Death

Doughty addresses common misconceptions about post-mortem changes, such as the appearance of hair and nails growing or bodies moving:

"Hair and nails appear to grow due to skin dehydration, and any body movements are caused by gas buildup or nerve reactions, not supernatural forces." (39:59)

Open Casket Funerals and Embalming Practices

Discussing embalming, Doughty explains that the process often results in an unnatural, mannequin-like appearance, which contributes to the decline in popularity of open casket viewings:

"Embalming smooths out the face and can create an 'uncanny valley' effect, making the deceased appear lifeless and inhuman." (41:39)

Alternative Funeral Practices

Doughty advocates for returning to more traditional, hands-on funeral practices where families take care of the deceased at home, fostering a more personal and respectful connection with death.

"Traditionally, communities cared for the dead at home, which built stronger connections and made death less 'gross' or alien." (44:13)

Death on Airplanes and Public Encounters with the Deceased

Addressing scenarios like a death on a flight, Doughty explains the lack of preparedness and facilities to handle such events, highlighting the often overlooked presence of deceased individuals on commercial flights.

"Most planes lack special compartments for the deceased, so bodies are typically left in place until the plane lands. In reality, more deceased individuals are on flights than most realize." (46:09)

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3. Practical Takeaways

Reconnecting with Produce to Reduce Waste

In a practical segment unrelated to the main interviews, Mike shares a study suggesting that displaying fresh produce in clear, accessible containers encourages healthier eating habits and reduces food waste.

"Display your fruits and vegetables in clear containers at eye level to increase their consumption and minimize waste." (49:00)

Encouragement to Share Knowledge

Mike urges listeners to share the episode with friends and family to spread the valuable insights gained from the discussions on love and death.

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Conclusion

This episode of "Something You Should Know" offers a profound exploration of love and death, two universal aspects of human life. Through expert interviews, Mike Carruthers provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the scientific and cultural dimensions that shape our experiences and perceptions of these fundamental human experiences.

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Notable Quotes:

• Anna Machen:

  • "Love is biological bribery. It's a set of neurochemicals evolved to motivate and reward us for investing in critical relationships necessary for survival." (06:02)
  • "Having good, strong relationships can improve your likelihood of survival and overall health by 50%, which is as significant as quitting smoking." (08:21)

• Caitlin Doughty:

  • "Death used to be a community affair, but now it's outsourced, making it seem dangerous and morbid." (34:13)
  • "Hair and nails appear to grow due to skin dehydration, and any body movements are caused by gas buildup or nerve reactions, not supernatural forces." (39:59)

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Resources Mentioned:

• Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships by Anna Machen
• Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

Listeners are encouraged to explore these resources for a more comprehensive understanding of the topics discussed.

Transcript

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[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know why good ideas often come in the shower. Then just how important is it to have love and connection in your life? Probably more important than you think we.

[Anna Machen]

Are really re categorizing now. It's not an emotion. It's far too complex to be an emotion. It's a need. It's a need as fundamental to your survival as water, food, shelter. It should sit at that level. It's absolutely fundamental to you.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, if you throw a lot of produce away because it goes bad before someone eats it, you need to hear something. And a mortician explains some of the fascinating things that go on when people die.

[Caitlin Doughty]

For example, people ask me all the time, can I keep my dad's skull after he dies? It's probably one of the top questions that I'm asked and not really. That's gonna be pretty complicated all this.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Anna Machen]

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what is love? And the reason I want to start with that is because in your book you say that love is biological bribery. So that's a definition I've never heard before. So maybe start there.

[Anna Machen]

Okay, I will just say the answer to the question what is love? Has employed me for Nearly a decade and a half. So it's not a straightforward answer. However, one of the. One of the answers to it, if we look at the basic evolutionary answer to what is love is, it is biological bribery. It's a set of neurochemicals which evolved to motivators and then reward us for investing in our survival, critical relationships. Because humans are, I would argue, the most cooperative species on the planet. We cooperate with the largest range of individuals, we cooperate in the largest range of circumstances, and also for incredibly long periods of time, sometimes decades. And we do that because we absolutely have to to survive. The trouble with cooperation is it's incredibly hard. We all know how irritating our fellow humans can be, and we all know how difficult it can be. And sometimes it can be survival threateningly difficult. It might be that, you know, you have to do something for the good of the group rather than the good of you yourself on that particular day. And therefore, we've needed a little bit of help from evolution to make sure that we do do this investment in these cooperative relationships that are vital to us. And that's, that's basically why biological bribery, this set of neurochemicals evolved because it works really well at making sure we stick around and that we invest essentially in those relationships.

[Mike Carruthers]

That is such an unromantic anthropology kind of definition of love. But like with so many other things, love isn't just, you know, roses and chocolates. Love serves a real functional purpose.

[Anna Machen]

To put it very clearly, love has two key dimensions. It has the biological dimension, and that's where you find the neurochemistry and the neuroscience and the science, psychology and the genetics. But it also has a very strong sociological dimension as well, which is about, you know, the culture you're brought up in and the rules you've been taught about love and who you're allowed to love and who you're not allowed to love and all those sorts of things that we all sort of take in as we grow up. So actually, love is very, very complex. And there isn't a single answer to the question, and there certainly isn't a formula for it.

[Mike Carruthers]

I think we've all heard the expression, or variations on the expression that human beings need love. All you need is love. Is that true? Do we actually need love?

[Anna Machen]

You certainly need love. And the time you critically, critically need love is when you're a very tiny baby and when those sort of, particularly those first two years of your life, it's absolutely fundamental that you have love and that you have loving attachments to your carers. As a child. And the reason for that is because we are born very, very underdeveloped compared to other primates. A lot of our brain development occurs on after we're born, which is, which is not seen in the other primates. And that's because we have such massive brains. And particularly the areas that are developing are the prefrontal cortex, which is where all your executive functions sit, all your social cognition sits, all those abilities such as empathizing and trust, and all those sorts of things happen. And we know if a child is brought up in an environment where they are attached securely to their carer, where their needs, their emotional, their physical, their practical needs are met, then we see this wonderful density of gray and white matter in that prefrontal cortex. We see the most wonderful levels of the bonding neurohormones. We see low levels of cortisol, which is the stress hormone. If a child is brought up in an unloving environment with an insecure attachment, possibly active neglect, we see neuronal death in those areas. And we see children who are much more likely to go forward in life to have antisocial behavior issues, drug dependence issues, issues with mental health, and an inability to form good attachments when they're older and going into adulthood. There is a very large body of evidence now that people who have loving, healthy, functioning relationships have much better mental and physical health than those who do not. It's known as your social capital. And there's many, many studies. The sort of the. The first in the field was in 2010 by. By Juliet Holt Lunstead, who was looking at longevity and, and recovery from serious illness. And she found that having those good, strong relationships in your life was the same as sort of improved your likelihoods of survival, of longevity, of good health by 50%. Now, that's similar to quitting smoking if you smoke, or much more than losing weight if you're obese, which is. Sits at about 30%. So it's an incredibly powerful thing. And we are really re categorizing love now. It's not an emotion. It's far too complex to be an emotion. It's a need. It's a need as fundamental to your survival is water, food, shelter, and it should sit at that level of need in our sort of needs hierarchy. It's absolutely fundamental to you.

[Mike Carruthers]

So help me understand this idea that when you say that people who have strong relationships, it improves their physical health. How, how does it. What's the matter? Because when someone stops smoking, okay, we know how that improves your longevity when Someone loses weight, we know that that reduces the strain on the heart and all kinds of other problems. But what's going on internally that love makes you live long?

[Anna Machen]

We're not quite sure yet. We've got several hypotheses to work on. The first is that simply by being embedded in a lovely strong social network means that you get the practical, the financial, the emotional support you need to help you through this period of illness. So it could be that people are going to care for you, they're going to take away the stress of you having to look after yourself. They might even help you to adhere to your new health plan, for example, by supporting you. So it might simply be you're in this wonderful supportive environment, and people who are in that wonderful, supportive environment tend to perceive their health to be much better than those who aren't. So it might just be partly sort of a placebo effect a little bit. It could be that the actual neurochemistry that you get released when you interact with somebody who you're close to, and obviously that's very particularly powerful if you're, if you're in a loving attachment with them, is good for your mental health. So it's all very positive. It's oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, beta endorphin, all of these produce very good positive mental health euphoria and they counteract the effect of cortisol. So it could be that that improves your mental health and that helps you physically recover as well, because mental and physical health are very tightly bonded to each other. Or, and this is the really interesting area, it could be that one neurochemical in particular, one hormone, beta endorphin, actually underpins your immune system. So that when you interact with people you're in love with, your immune system gets this bolstering effect, it gets this extra supportive effect, particularly when it comes to the white cells. And it could be that that's what's going on. So people have this much stronger immune system to fight illness and to fight infection. So it's not yet clear. It's probably a bit of all of that, to be honest. It's not yet clear which one's going to come out ahead. But there's defin something going on there in relation to the importance of social support.

[Mike Carruthers]

Some people do love really well and other people do love not so well. I mean, there are a lot of divorces. The lovers leave, hearts break. So if love is so essential, why. Why is it so difficult?

[Anna Machen]

Oh, for so many reasons. The most basic of which is cooperation is difficult. Being with other people is difficult. Love is not the same for everyone. It's not uniform. And that's partly as a reflection of its, its huge complexity, the number of factors that feed into your experience of love. But for example, on the biological side of things, as I've said, you know, during development, your upbringing will affect how your brain develops and that in itself will affect how you can handle relationships. When you're older, it could be that your genetics mean that you're either better fit or worse fit to be good at having relationships. So we know in particular the oxytocin receptor gene, for example, which comes in many, many different versions, it's highly polymorphic, has quite a strong influence on whether or not, for example, you're motivated to be in relationships, much reward you get from those relationships, how likely you are to work to maintain those relationships, even how empathetic you are. And that's the basis of relationships to, to have an understanding how the other person feels. So it could be that your genetics underpinning it aren't so great. It could be that your culture has made it difficult for you to maintain relationships. You know, I do think within the west, the romantic narrative has quite a lot to answer for in terms of what we expect, for example, romantic relationships to be like and, and maybe those, those stories we tell ourselves about, you know, butterflies and birds and it going to be perfect. And you found the one on your soulmates aren't necessarily helpful when you're battling the difficulties of being in a romantic relationship. So there are many things that feed into why some people might struggle.

[Mike Carruthers]

There also has to be something about the chemistry between the people. We can't love just anybody. There are certain people that we're attracted to and certain people we can get along with and other people we're not attracted to and we don't get along with. So there's something to that attachment profile.

[Anna Machen]

So we all have a different attachment profile and that's related to, again, the strongest influence on that is how you were brought up when you're a child. So let's say if you had a secure attachment to your carers, you're much more likely to be a secure attachment to any romantic partners you have. If you had a difficult childhood, it might be that you're more anxious in adult relationships because you're worried about abandonment or you find intimacy difficult. And we know, for example, that certain ones of those attachment relationships are more common compatible than others. So for example, if you are an anxious attachment style, going ending up with another anxious attachment style is not a good idea because it's much more likely that you will struggle in that relationship because you're both so preoccupied with your anxiety and with the possibility of abandonment. But put a, put an anxious person with a secure person and you've got a really good chance because that secure person is going to buffer that anxiety and prove to that anxious person actually that this is not going to happen. So there is so much that goes into why a relationship works and why some people just seem to be better at them than other people.

[Mike Carruthers]

The Science of Love is what we're talking about today, and we're speaking with Anna Machen. She is an evolutionary biologist and author of the book why we the New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships. Have you ever had that experience? Well, everyone's had this experience. You buy some clothes online, they get delivered, you open it up and then there's that wave of disappointment. The quality's poor or it doesn't fit or the fabric's not what you thought. It's such a letdown. Well, that has never happened. When I or my wife order clothes from Quince, Quince has the kind of stuff you'll actually wear on repeat, like breathable flow knit polos, crisp cotton shirts, and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for every occasion. And the best part, everything with Quints is half the cost of similar brands. You see, by working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint's gives you luxury clothes without the markups. Now, since I started buying clothes from Quince, I really I haven't bought clothes from anywhere else. And each time the clothes arrive, I'm always delighted and never disappointed. And you know something weird? When I tell people about how great Quince is and how I love buying clothes from them, I often hear back, oh, Quince. Yeah, I shop there. I love them. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quince. Go to quince.comsysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.comsysk to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comsysk I know several people who sell stuff online. They have an online store, so I've heard the stories of how complicated it can get. But the people who use Shopify, they tell a different story. Shopify is the e commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. In fact, 10% of all E commerce in the US is handled by Shopify from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting off the ground. Shopify is so popular because they have already dealt with or anticipated any question or potential issue you could have. Like their intuitive design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates to build you a beautiful online store. And Shopify has these great AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, even enhance your product photography. All the things that would take you a ton of time. And of course you've got to get customers to your store. So Shopify makes it easy to create email marketing and social media campaigns to bring you new customers and they can help with things like managing inventory, international shipping and processing returns. Turn your big ideas into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com sysk go to shopify.com sysk shopify.com sysk so Anna, what what about friends? Does friendship count in terms of the love we have in our life?

[Anna Machen]

Oh good heavens, yes they do. Friends are the neglected section of love, I think. And I think in the west, maybe particularly, you know, Americans, British people, this sort of Northern European view of friends, I quite often, I interviewed a lot of people about the love of their dogs. And at the same interview I'd also ask them, for example, about the other loves in their lives, including their friends. And I would say to them, you know, do you love your dog? Oh God yeah, I love my dog. My dog is just the best thing. And then I say to them, do you love your friend? Oh, oh, I'm not sure about that. Do I love my friends? You know, and this, this hesitancy to say we love our friends. Whereas if you ask sort of southern Mediterranean people, oh yes, they love their friends. Their friends are the center of their life and friendship. Love is really, really critical because actually they are the only platonic relationships you choose in your social network. And you tend to have quite a few of them. And they we know from a study we did at Oxford very, very early on that your friends are a particular type of relationship which is really special to both men and women. And it's a relationship that brings non judgmental support. It brings a sense of relaxation and freedom where you can really be yourself. And this is comparing it to romantic relationships and in particular for women. For example, women tend to be more emotionally intimate, more emotionally vulnerable in front of their female friends than they would be in front of their male lover, for example. And men tend to find it a really relaxing, supportive, often jokey atmosphere to be with their, with their best male friends. So Friends are really, really critically important. And I think in a world actually where we're looking at an increase in the number of single people, for many people, their friends are actually becoming their key survival critical relationship. For, for those people who are coupled up, that would probably be their romantic partner. But we're seeing this increase. You know, 6% of the UK population is probably going to be single its entire life. That's a really, really big number. And therefore they're going to be turning to other people and it's probably their friends who will do that for them. So our friends are really, really special. They're there for a reason and they've evolved for a reason. There aren't actually many species that have friends. There are a few primates, some of the higher mammals have friends. But we've really taken it to the next level. You know, we've extrapolated all this neurochemistry from romantic love and from reproductive love and we pushed it into our friendships and that's because we need them.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about cross species love, meaning basically your pet, I mean, is the love of a dog or a cat, is that on the. Well, what is that?

[Anna Machen]

I think it's difficult to argue that the love of a pet is necessarily as powerful as the love of a child or the love of a partner. But I'm willing to be disproved. However, we do love our pets. We know that from, from scanning studies, we know that from neurochemical studies, we know that pets bring the health benefits or some of the health benefits of having human to human love relationships. So we know that they are incredible and we know therefore that when they die, we grieve. And again, if you identify very, you know, if your dog is the key person in your life, key person, there we go. There's a slip but key being in your life, let's say you don't really have anyone else. The dog is the person you wake up with, you talk to, you take for a walk. They're main, you know, outlet for your social connections. During the day, for example, it's going to feel pretty awful when they go because again, that bit of your identity has disappeared, that mechanism for getting out in the world has disappeared. So it is a very powerful bond and it's actually a two way bond. So we know now from some wonderful work done at Emory University that dogs love us back. So it's not just that they love us because we're the source of food, it's that they love us because they're attached to us and we are attached to them. And therefore it is in the same league as a human to human relationship. It might not be as intense for some people, but it's certainly in the same league.

[Mike Carruthers]

What do you think when you, since you've done the research, do you believe in love at first sight?

[Anna Machen]

No, I don't think so. It depends how you define love. There is lust at first sight, most definitely. So, you know, you can get that absolute wham between the eyeballs chemical coming together. When you see somebody, you can certainly experience that, you know, unbelievable, intense attraction to somebody. But love is a. Is a much more complex thing than lust. And love comes later. It's underpinned by a slightly different balance of neurochemistry and it's expressed in a much more deeper psychological attachment. It involves different areas of the brain and it's just a very different thing to those early stages of attraction when people say they fell in love at first sight. Often it's one of two things. It's either that it's just a coincidence that that particular time when they saw their friend half an hour later and said, I've met the person I'm going to marry, it happened to happen. And they probably. Lots of people say that and it doesn't happen, or it's that wonderful thing, you know, of, of hindsight and the sort of the lack of reliability of the human memory that we can go back and go, oh, yes, and sometimes people say it because it bolsters the relationship they're in, that, oh, yes, it was love at first sight. We knew that we loved each other, other. So I personally do not believe that love at first sight exists. I think we're talking about something very different because love is a. Is a profoundly different thing which can underpin an attachment between two people for their entire lives, which lust and attraction cannot.

[Mike Carruthers]

What does the research say about monogamy? I mean, are humans meant to be monogamous? Are we built that way? Or is that something that we've created culturally and it just becomes the rule?

[Anna Machen]

We aren't, as a species, 100 monogamous. There's actually no 100 monogamous species in the world in terms of the biological definition. You know, all those species who we thought were monogamous, let's say the gibbons, which I, you know, was involved in studying very early on in my career, they were off having sneaky matings behind rocks all the time. So there is no such thing as pure monogamy. We are obsessed by monogamy, particularly in the west, because it is our social Lesson, it's what most religions argue, it's what the law is based upon. It's what most of us have been brought up within. So monogamy itself is a social construct in many ways, and actually what we are as a species is slightly looser than that.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about that phenomenon that happens in very long term relationships where one of the people in a couple who've been together for decades dies and the other one dies shortly after, almost as if it's a broken heart.

[Anna Machen]

People who lose a spouse with whom they have a strong attachment and a long relationship within the first six months after the spouse has died are 50% more likely to die. And it's thought that it's probably a mixture between psychological grief in terms of losing that, but also the influence of stress on the heart and the fact that the heart seems to experience much, much more stress and therefore they're much more likely to die very close to the spouse.

[Mike Carruthers]

Dying of a broken heart.

[Anna Machen]

Yeah, it's a real thing.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about puppy love? You know, people tend to dismiss it, but who doesn't remember, like their first crush? It seems to me anyway, that puppy love can be very profound.

[Anna Machen]

Puppy love is an important developmental stage in any person's life. It often happens, you know, sort of late childhood, during adolescence. And it's a really important training ground for you as an individual to work out your sexuality, for example, who you are, who you think you'll love, what you like in another partner without really risking too much in terms of going out and having a full blown relationship. It's a really important developmental stage. In a way, it's partly what adolescence is for, to enable you to find out who you are in relation to who you will romantically and sexually love. And we know that, that some of these relationships are really profound, really, really intense. So I don't think we should dismiss this. And certainly with children and adolescents, I think, yeah, maybe when you're an adult you think, oh, for heaven's sake, you know, you're a child, you can't possibly know what the pain of a broken heart is. Actually, I, I think we dismiss it at our peril because it's actually developmentally incredibly important and feels very real.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, you've certainly confirmed in great detail how complicated love is and how necessary it is for all of us to have it in our lives. Anna Machen's been my guest. She's an evolutionary anthropologist at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, and the name of her book is why we the New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships. And you will find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks Anna.

[Anna Machen]

Thanks Mike. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you.

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[Mike Carruthers]

While death may not be the cheeriest of topics, it is fascinating since we all die and we all witness death to some degree in our lives. I guess there's something of a morbid curiosity about death. And someone who knows a great deal about the topic is Caitlin Doughty. Caitlin is a mortician. She owns a funeral home in Los Angeles and is a best selling author on the topic of death. Her latest book is called Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs. Well, welcome Caitlin.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let's start by explaining your interest in the topic, because I find that while parts of it are interesting, most of us like to avoid thinking too much about death. And yet you dove right in and became a mortician. So what is it about death that intrigues you?

[Caitlin Doughty]

Over the years I really realized that I was just fascinated by by how much we ignore death in our culture and the way that we're not allowed to openly talk about it and engage it.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so you got a job at a crematorium at a pretty young age. What is it about that job that pulled you into the death industry? And what is it that was so fascinating about that?

[Caitlin Doughty]

I think what truly fascinated me about it was how hidden it was. So I was back there cremating six bodies a day and I was by myself most of the time. Every once in a while a family would come in and Join us for what's called a witness cremation, which is when the family comes and watches the body be loaded into the cremation machine with us and they push the button to start the machine. But for the most part it was just this 23 year old, this random 23 year old girl who was cremating all the bodies. And I'm not saying that everybody needs a. I guess, no, you know what, I am saying that I think that we do need a relationship with death. And through tens of thousands of years of human culture, the way that we got to understand creatures that would someday die was because people died in our community and we took care of those bodies. And that's not really the case anymore. We hire professionals, we outsource it to the 23 year old at the crematory. And that's what really got me so interested long term in how we can change the funeral industry.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I think people are fascinated by death, I guess, because, you know, we're all headed there one day and we've all had family members who have died. But what happens when you die?

[Caitlin Doughty]

What goes on, what happens is normally someone will be picked up as if it's an emergency, which is kind of ludicrous if you think about it, because once someone's dead, the emergency is over. You know, they're going to be dead two days from now, they're going to be dead two weeks from now. And so we treat it now, especially in this new system from the last hundred years or so where death is all professionalized. We treat it as something to be rushed in, like we're an ambulance to come immediately pick up the body from the hospital or the nursing home or the hospice and we bring it back to our facility. And in a lot of places in the United States, the body is still chemically embalmed, although that is falling. Interest in chemically preserving the dead body is falling pretty rapidly in a lot of places. I think Time magazine listed it as one of the top disappearing middle class careers. And as we turn much more toward cremation, which is well over 50% of our population, now chooses cremation. And so it's a bureaucratic process from then on where a death certificate is filed and at that point the body is maybe given a funeral, if that's what the family wants. And then it is taken to either be buried, cremated, or perhaps a new technology, a greener technology like Aquamation or perhaps human composting.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it's interesting to hear you describe that because in my perception, if there's any industry that doesn't change very much. It's the death industry. It's someone dies, they go to a funeral home, they are embalmed and they're buried. And that's not what you're saying. That's not the way it really is so much anymore.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Yeah, and that does still happen. But just like a lot of the new funeral directors aren't coming from generations of family funeral homes. A lot of the practices that people are choosing for many reasons, reasons of changing in religious traditions or lack of religious traditions, or because that kind of embalming, casket, burial, headstone, etc. Just doesn't mean as much to people anymore. It's not giving them the sense of ritual and community than it maybe once did. It's wildly expensive. You know, it's $10,000 for a funeral or much, much more expensive than that. And that's just too expensive for a lot of families. And so there's a lot of reasons that. That people are looking for more simple, less expensive, more environmentally friendly ways to die.

[Mike Carruthers]

So it seems like there are a lot more options than there used to be. But. But still there are rules. There are laws about what can happen to a body after someone dies. Right.

[Caitlin Doughty]

You are legally bound. And I say that most of the things that we do with our dead bodies or want to do with our dead bodies, they're kind of guilty until proven innocent. So there may be something that you want to do with your body. For example, people ask me all the time, can I keep my dad's skull after he dies? And not really. That's gonna be pretty complicated. It's hard to find someone to essentially deflesh your father's head and return the skull to you. And even then, it's. It's breaking. Breaking certain laws which say that you're not supposed to abuse the corpse because, you know. And why is defleshing dad skull abusing the corpse and cremating him not abusing the corpse? That's entirely just up to kind of law and standards that we have in our particular country at any given time.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wait a minute. People actually ask you if they can keep their father's skull? And this comes up frequently.

[Caitlin Doughty]

It's probably one of the top questions that I'm asked.

[Mike Carruthers]

And what is it they plan to do with it?

[Caitlin Doughty]

I think they have a sense of that it's going to be on their mantelpiece and they'll look up and say, father, I think of you often, or something. I mean, I don't think they think it's through that much. And it may not be something that they actually want, but I think more than actually wanting it, it's something that people want to know that they can do. They want to know that they have this option available to them.

[Mike Carruthers]

You say that 50% or more of people elect to be cremated, and that is a surprising number to me. My perception is that if it is that high, that's happened fairly recently because it seems like it wasn't that long ago that cremation was unusual.

[Caitlin Doughty]

So the groundwork for this was really laid in the 1960s. Some people may remember Jessica Mitford, who was English but living in the United States and was this crusader who wrote the American Way of Death. And her thing was, funeral homes are charging you an arm and a leg. They're corrupt. They do this weird embalming thing. What's going on there? And it was this massive, massive bestseller. And really, from that era, you get the talking points that a lot of your, you know, friends or people that, you know in your community probably say today, which is something like, oh, just cremate me. Don't go to all the trouble. It's probably better for the environment. Keep it simple. I don't even need a funeral. That all really started in the 1960s, but took many decades to take root and be the kind of main idea that people have about what they want today.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let me ask you a couple of questions from the book because. And since the title is Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs, I assume that means, like, if you die and nobody finds you for a while and your cat's with you, would your cat eat your eyeballs? Is that what you mean?

[Caitlin Doughty]

That is what I mean. And these questions are from children, by the way, so I mostly deal with adults. But I decided to take questions from children. And. And the title comes from a kid in the audience at a talk I did in Australia who raised their hand and boldly said, if I die, will my cat eat my eyeballs? Meaning, like, eat my body. And the answer to that question is, yes, they will. And unfortunately, well, depending on how you look on it, whether you're a cat or dog person, your cat is more likely to eat you than your dog.

[Mike Carruthers]

I love this question that if you ate popcorn and then were cremated, would the popcorn pop? I've got to hear the answer to that.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Well, that. That actually comes from a meme which I started seeing everywhere that said, you know, basically that. That when I die, my kind of prankster thing is, I'm gonna swallow a whole bag of popcorn. And won't the crematory operator be surprised when they open the. The chamber and it's popcorn at everywhere. And unfortunately, I had to debunk that, which is to say that that the average temperature for popping popcorn, I think, is in the sort of three hundreds, is what you want to. To keep the oil at and to keep it popping and get the nice fluffy white kernels that you want. But a cremation machine, we start at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, and then throughout the cremation, it goes to 1800 degrees or even 2000 degrees degrees. And so you're blasting that popcorn out of existence almost immediately.

[Mike Carruthers]

We hear stories about people after they die. We hear things like, you know, their hair continues to grow, their fingernails continue to grow, their body will move. What about that stuff?

[Caitlin Doughty]

Most of those things have a very easy to understand, once you know it, biological reason behind them. So fingers and hair, for example, that really has to do with dehydration. Once you die, you become dehydrated, and your skin on your fingers starts to shrivel up and pull back. The skin on your scalp starts to shrivel up and pull back. And it's not so much that your nail and hairs are growing, it's that they're being revealed more as the dehydration sort of shows them more. And the same thing with making noises after death. Yes. Sometimes when you move a body or it's just lying there, it can kind of go. But that's not because the ghostly spirit is finally being released. It's because gas is probably building up after a certain amount of time in the stomach and air is being pushed from the lungs. And if the body moves, it's probably a nerve reaction. So even though these things are spooky and you can absolutely see why, before we had the science, it was quite terrifying for someone in the 18th century or 17th century to see this happening. It really can be pretty easily explained by what we now know scientifically.

[Mike Carruthers]

I remember the first time, and really every time since that I've been to an open casket funeral. I think most people have this perception that the body in the casket, the face looks very mannequin like. It doesn't look like Aunt Rose, it looks like a mannequin of Aunt Rose.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Right. And I do think that's probably one of the reasons why embalming is falling in popularity somewhat, because so many people for so many years have had that same response to actually seeing someone in a casket. And the embalming process initially, which is essentially for those who don't know, it's the draining of the blood out of the circulatory system and replacing it with a, with a fixation chemical like a formaldehyde to keep the tissues fixed. But unfortunately, what that does is it smooths out the face. And for some people, it's like, oh, mom looks so much younger than she did. And for other people, that kind of poofing and smoothing out and hardening of the skin, it's like, like she looks like a wax and figure version of who she was. And then when they put makeup on, especially when they put makeup on, potentially your grandfather and there's kind of a red tint to his lips and his. His cheeks, it becomes even more, I would call it, uncanny valley to see. And so, you know, my personal advocacy is I think dead people should look dead. And so I personally would not want to be embalmed, because when people come and see my dead body, it shouldn't look like a mannequin, it should look dead.

[Mike Carruthers]

However, these traditions, though, they do kind of come and go. I remember when my grandmother died and her sister died, an open casket funeral wasn't a discussion. That's just what you did. And then that seems to have really fallen out of favor. I mean, it still happens, but it doesn't happen as often.

[Caitlin Doughty]

I mean, many people still do it and many cultures still do it. So I don't mean in any way to say it's fuddy duddy. And in fact, a lot of what we're seeing now is a return to traditions that are even older than the open casket wake, to just having the body at home and taken care of by the family, so really bypassing the funeral industry altogether. And if your mom dies at home, say under hospice, just keeping her body there and washing her hair, perhaps putting on her favorite sweater, singing songs, being present with her until such a time that maybe you decide to call the funeral director to come pick her up. And traditions like that are even older than the kind of embalmed open casket wake.

[Mike Carruthers]

For a lot of people, the idea of keeping a body and washing its hair, that's just too gross to imagine. I mean, it's just something you would never think to do.

[Caitlin Doughty]

You wouldn't think to do it. But that is such a. Such a recent thing. You know, up until 100 years ago, 150 years ago, that is what you did. That's what every community did. And that was the universal human experience. And it's really only been since the turn of the 20th century when this became Kind of a capitalist outsourced process that was professionalized, that we lost our connection to it and it became gross. And we decided that dead bodies are dangerous or dirty or morbid or gross. That very, very recent. So yes, you may feel that way and it's absolutely fine if you feel that way. But until very recently, that was not how we dealt with our dead.

[Mike Carruthers]

One of the questions that you have in the book that you were asked was, and I've often wondered about this, say you're traveling on an airplane and the person in the seat next to you dies.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Well, then what happens if you die in a plane? Basically, they for the most part will just leave you there. And the hope is that there's an extra seat somewhere maybe in first class that they can put you by yourself. But if they can't, somebody's got to sit next to someone who died basically and just hopefully like put a blanket over them. And you would think, don't they have a special compartment in the plane for this? And I think it was Singapore Airlines at one point did design corpse cupboards, especially since they had such long haul flights. But most planes do not have that. And really they just have to find some place like in the galley or in some seat. They can't put them in the bathroom because the body might flop over and make it impossible to open the bathroom. So they just have to find someplace in the plane to. To put the person until they can get them off the plane.

[Mike Carruthers]

I wonder how often that happens, that people die on planes.

[Caitlin Doughty]

I've never been on a plane where that's happened, at least that I know of. But I've always thought that because of my experience and you know, being a mortician, that I should be the one that volunteers to sit next to the dead body. Yeah, I think, you know, just like normally a doctor would be like, oh, I can help. I can't really help, but I could would be the one who was comfortable sitting next to the dead body or.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, you wouldn't be as grossed out as a lot of other people.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Yeah, so it's one, it's one very small skill, but I bet it.

[Mike Carruthers]

I wouldn't be surprised if it happened because they're not going to get on the Pago. This is your captain speaking. We have a dead body in row seven. Exactly.

[Caitlin Doughty]

No, they are certainly not. No. And what most people don't realize is that there's very, very often dead people flying on your plane because they take normal flights. So when somebody dies, you know, come to our funeral home. And they need to go to, say, Kansas. We book a commercial flight for them. We book them through Delta or United and then bring their casket to the airport and it's loaded in with your baggage onto the plane. So more often than you know, you are probably flying with a dead person on your flight.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know what's so, so weird is that we, we want to know about this, but we don't want, we don't want to know too much about this. We don't want to because one day we'll be there.

[Caitlin Doughty]

And this is not a niche topic that just I am interested in and morbidly interested in. This is something that's going to happen to us all and it's okay to be interested in what's going to happen to you. It's extremely natural to be interested and I hope I can help you out a little bit by, by taking you through the weeds.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I like the way you talk about this because you make it, I don't know, you just make it not quite so scary, even though it's still kind of scary. But the way you talk about it, I'm more open to hearing it. So thanks. Caitlin Doughty has been my guest. She is a mortician, she owns a funeral home in Los Angeles and she is a best selling author. The latest book is called Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for explaining all this, Caitlin. I really appreciate it.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Yes, thank you, Michael.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know those produce drawers in your refrigerator? It's probably the worst place to keep your produce. You see, fruits and vegetables shouldn't be crammed or stacked together out of sight. That just increases the odds that they'll spoil faster and that you'll forget about them altogether. In a study, college students reached for the most produce when it was displayed in clear, uncovered containers within arm's reach. So if you want your family to reach for the healthy food, first location and presentation is everything. The best spot for fresh, healthy produce is front and center. Keeping them in clear glass bowls either on the counter or eye level in the fridge will almost guarantee that they will be seen and they will be eaten. And if you make sure they're washed and ready to eat, a lot less will go to waste. And that is something you should know. Now, having just heard this fascinating episode about love and death, I'm sure you're going to want to share it with someone you know so they can hear it too. So please kindly share this podcast with one or two or three of your friends. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to something you should know.

[Grim Grimmer Grimmest Advertiser]

You might think you know fairy tales and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring, but the real Grimm fairy tales were not cute at all. They were very dark and they were often very grim. On Grim Grimmer Grimmest, we tell a grim fairy tale to a bunch of kids. Perfect for car rides or screen free entertainment. Grim Grimmer Grimmest activates kids imaginations and instigates fun conversations because fairy tales speak to all of us at a very deep, primal level and they raise interesting topics and questions that are worth chewing over together as a family. Every episode is rated Grim, Grimmer or Grimmest so you, your kids, your whole family can choose. What is the right level of grim for you? Though, if you're listening with Grandma, she's just gonna go for Grimmest.

[Caitlin Doughty]

Trust me on this one.

[Grim Grimmer Grimmest Advertiser]

Tune in to Grim, Grimmer Grimmest and our new season.

[Cruising Beyond the Bars Advertiser]

Available now from the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time, through the sapphic history that shaped them, comes a brand new season of Cruising beyond the Bars. This is your host, Sarah Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more.

[Mike Carruthers]

For 11 years, every night women slept illegally on the Common.

[Anna Machen]

We would move down to the West Indies to form a lesbian nation. Meg Kristen coined the phrase women's music, but she would have liked to say it was lesbian music. And that's kind of the origins of the Combaheever Collective.

[Cruising Beyond the Bars Advertiser]

You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Notify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday starting February 4th.