Death And Cryonics (with James Arrowood)

[00:00:01] Everybody talks about raising the dead. So I want to clear ignorance. That's why I was hired at Alcor, was to clear the messaging and ignorance that had unfortunately infected the public discourse on this. Death and Cryonics.

[00:00:29] Hi everyone, I'm Victor M. Sweeney, the host of this lovely podcast, Death And. I'm a licensed undertaker, mortician, enthusiast, really, of life. Today we have a very interesting guest. His name is James Arrowwood. He's the CEO of Alcor. They're a company who specializes in cryogenically freezing bodies or body parts, as we will find out.

[00:00:58] I want you to just hold off on any preconceived notions you might have. I came into this with a couple and some very serious reservations. And honestly, in my discussion, in our discussion with James, I think you will see some of those dissolve.

[00:01:23] Not only based around money and bioethics, but also around just the simple weirdness of reanimation and finding out what they're actually trying to do. There's a lovely distinction to draw, but also some commonalities that I think we really play off of together as two people who are working in the death industry.

[00:01:52] Granted, on very different ends of the spectrum. We've invited James into the studio today, and I'm so glad he said yes. I think initially there were some hesitations because giving interviews when you are in a peculiar industry like my own, the reservations are there.

[00:02:12] Okay, I admit what I do for a living can be construed as a little strange, but really the goal of, honestly, my life's work and of this podcast is to put a human face on the great stalking spectrum of death. And I think James does a nice job with that, too. You'll see as we go, things loosen up and we get to know each other a little better. And I want to bring you along for the ride.

[00:02:40] Part of the ride every week, of course, is answering your questions. It's one of the delights, really, of my career thus far to find myself in a position where people are coming to me. I mean, I'm a bonehead. I'm a nobody, an undertaker from the middle of nowhere, but coming to me, asking me my thoughts on this or that. So we have some lovely audio questions this week and I want to thank you in advance for those of you who sent them over.

[00:03:09] It's always a pleasure to hear your voices here on the podcast. So let's see what we've got. Here comes a question from Sergeant Brandy. Hi, Victor. You speak about having lots of friends and I would imagine in your line of work, you have so many acquaintances. You've turned into friends. How do you make that transition?

[00:03:36] I've had the hardest time and I'm in sales, so I talk to people all day long, transitioning acquaintances, coworkers into actual friends outside. And it's honestly at 41 becoming a bit of a bummer. Just wanted to see your take. All right. Brandy. This is actually a really good question. So I, there was a piece of advice that I, I don't know. It's contradictory. I think I still believe it. Maybe I don't. Maybe I do. I got it from one of my middle school teachers, Mr.

[00:04:05] Keegan. And he was complaining at the middle school girls. He was like, you girls, you think you have so many friends. He goes in this life, you only have two great friends, maybe three if you're lucky. And for a long time I believed that, right? That you have a couple friends and then everybody else is an acquaintance. And I'm torn about that because I, the thing is when you go through something like death, right?

[00:04:34] This very emotional, hard experience. And then you have someone like me who just walks in that world every day and just helps you out. So you do form these relationships. And I think they're formed in like this just crucible of pain and suffering. And you learn to suffer alongside one another. That's part of honestly what I think is, if I had a ministry, let's say. Um, the ministry is honestly just learning to suffer alongside another person.

[00:05:02] And so, uh, with that, I think that's what forms these friendships. It's just the simple fact that I was never afraid to walk with them. Because they're going to walk through suffering and they're going to walk through death and they're going to walk through grief. And I'm just going to be there, right? Suffering in my own way from maybe having to, uh, repair an injury on their mother or something.

[00:05:29] But the fact is being that we walk alongside each other, that is where the relationship is formed. Uh, so yeah, I, I think I have a lot of friends now and I think vary in degrees, right? Of course, that's how relationship works. Okay. There are people that I feel substantially more affectionate for, uh, than some of my friends, but they're also deeper than acquaintances. At least from what I can tell. I mean, hey, I, I'm not the world's best advice giver. Okay.

[00:05:55] Um, but I think being in sales puts you in a tricky position, uh, because it's, you know, like me, right? Money has to change hands. My kids got to eat. Okay. And that is the sales part is my least favorite part of my job. Um, but you might be at the disadvantage in some ways, Brandy, because, uh, you don't also have this emotional bonding and, and it's not manipulation. Okay.

[00:06:20] Um, but, but you don't, there's not the same suffering alongside each other that you would have to do as a salesperson of X, Y, Z, you know? Um, so I don't, I don't know what the answer is. Making friends is hard. And some people, I, I have people in my life who struggled deeply to make friends. Um, and some people who are, it just comes very naturally. I'd say, you know, the old cliche advice of being yourself is really good. Uh, I, I am myself all the time.

[00:06:50] Just is what it is. And you get what you get. And sometimes people don't like me and that's just, that's their problem. That's not my problem. I'm just myself. Uh, so sometimes we, in my family, we call it Sweeney pride. Uh, and it's the particular type of pride in which, uh, so let's say someone doesn't like you or they say you're wrong or whatever. And your response is, well, too bad. I, I still am what I am. Uh, so maybe get a little bit of that, see how it rubs off.

[00:07:18] But it's, it is a hard thing to learn and it takes a great deal of, uh, humiliation at regular intervals to pull it off. So good luck, Brandy. And thanks for calling. All right. Here's a question incoming from Jillian. Let's see what she has to say. Hi, Victor. My name is Jillian and I'm from East Tennessee. First, I want to say congratulations on your new book and thank you for your contributions to the world. You've helped me tremendously. So I appreciate the work that you're doing.

[00:07:46] My question for you is, as both a mortician and a believer, what are your thoughts on eternity? What does that wrestle look like for you? And how do you handle the idea of it? Thanks. Lovely question. Okay. One, thanks for, thanks for thanking me for my book. It is a weird thing to, uh, blast your thoughts out into the world and see how people, uh, take them, appreciate them, or hopefully moved by them.

[00:08:16] How do I wrestle with the idea of eternity? Well, I, I gotta be honest with you. It doesn't really bother me at all. Um, I think it's honestly just the, the flip side of seeing that life is extremely temporary. You know, I, I'm 35 years old. I'm about halfway done with my life. If statistics are to be believed halfway done.

[00:08:42] And, uh, and then I see bodies come through my building that are 50 and 60 and 70 and 80 and 90. And that doesn't seem that far away. It used to, it used to when I was, when I was 23 and newly licensed, it seemed a long way away. Uh, so knowing that it's temporary and seeing that, that very, very tangible, uh, aspect of our temporality, the dead body every day.

[00:09:11] Like I also have a body. I am also going to be temporary. Um, I think it informs my belief in the afterlife in eternity because everything I've seen about how temporary life is, like there are so many other things that seem to transcend the natural world. I usually like to use the example of love. You can love someone you've never met. You can love someone who's been dead a long time.

[00:09:39] Someone being dead 20 years ago actually does not change the amount of love you have for them one bit, as it turns out. So love is not something that is bound by time. And I would have to believe that the part of us that recognizes love, that receives love, that gives love, the animus, the soul, if you wanted to call it that, the animating principle.

[00:10:02] That also, if, if it like, if it recognizes love that is immortal, eternal, infinite, then so too must our spirits be. Because the things, uh, that need food, like our stomachs, like those stomachs will, if they are embalmed, one day be punctured by the trocar and have the last meal sucked out and replaced from the balming fluid. It very well will happen to me someday. It's two sides of the same coin.

[00:10:32] I don't struggle with infinity at all. I want to thank you all for those questions. It's, it is, it's such a pleasure. And, uh, if you are feeling brave, like these lovely people who sent in their questions, I would invite you to go to deathandpodcast.com and leave us a voice memo.

[00:10:59] You can also type in a message or you can send an email to deathandpodcast at gmail.com. Uh, if you were interested in more of the philosophical, which I, I think we do well to touch on this episode, I would really invite you, if you haven't already, to pick up a copy of my book, Now Departing, A Small Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between. As, uh, I had someone ask me, they're like, what's the elevator speech? And I had to figure out what an elevator speech was.

[00:11:28] Uh, but the elevator speech of my book is this. It's a book of memoir and soft philosophy wrapped up in storytelling. So, storytelling from me, your resident, uh, earful storyteller and question asker. And, uh, I think it details nicely life in my little town, but really life working with a foot in both worlds. And that of the very, very living and the also very dead.

[00:11:57] Without further ado, let's jump into our discussion today with James Arrowwood, CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Here we go. Today, our guest is James Arrowwood.

[00:12:24] He is the CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. They're a nonprofit organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona that specializes in cryonics, the preserving of remains of humans and pets for potential reanimation later. Would that, would that be tough? James, fill me in because I got to tell you, I've done only the mildest research. Tell us, tell us what we're talking about today.

[00:12:51] So Alcor is a nonprofit and truly a nonprofit. We're not, you know, there's no Ferraris in the parking lot or anything like that. Uh, we are the only nonprofit that's fully nonprofit in the space of cryopreservation. And we were granted that back in the, I think, seventies or early eighties. And then the IRS essentially decided it was going to be too difficult to track and didn't grant it to anybody else since. So we're kind of grandfathered into this unique space.

[00:13:20] But that's relevant because everybody associates us on a cursory search. And I understand why they do. It's poor messaging by our scientists back in the eighties and nineties. But, you know, everybody talks about we're raising the dead. And if, if you think that, then in the science terms, you're, you're frankly ignorant. Um, so I want to clear ignorance. That's why I was hired at Alcor was to clear the messaging and ignorance that had unfortunately infected the kind of the public discourse on this.

[00:13:47] Because the whole point of the exercise is to maintain viability of cells at the time of death. Meaning viability means living. So you're never reviving the dead. You're resuscitating living cells. That's the ultimate goal. That's yeah. And the aspirational goal would be, of course, the brain and what have you. But in the meantime, there are all these like 10% steps that never get talked about, which are incredibly significant to science and medicine and to individuals.

[00:14:15] And because it involves death, I think people have this visceral response of, oh, it's bad or it's, it's negative. And I understand that. But we're all adults, right? We're all hopefully intelligent people that can kind of dig beyond that. And that's what I'm here to do is educate people and kind of get rid of some of the media ignorance that's been out there. So thank you for the opportunity to do that.

[00:14:37] See, and this is interesting because in, in my given profession, which I, I, I think touches very, uh, in a lot of, in a lot of ways on yours too, right? They're, they're, we, we meet each other in a lot of different ways. And, um, in my profession, there is the knee jerk reaction that, oh, this is bad. Um, or worse, you are taking advantage of the living because you have possession of the dead.

[00:15:04] Um, like there's, there's been talk for ages, right? When, when funerals moved out of the home, right? That's why, that's why it's called a funeral parlor, right? It took place in your own parlor and you had the dead and they stayed in your home until you brought them to the church and your family dug the grave and they put them in the ground. It was all, it was very communal, but it was also very familial.

[00:15:27] And when that started to change, when we moved to the funeral home, the funeral parlor, uh, there did, you know, there was this business aspect, right? Like I, I need to, I need to have capital to make the, the rest of the funeral home run so I can be here for other people.

[00:15:41] Um, but when we moved into that kind of business space, um, where we took the dead from their own homes out into a different facility, um, there is kind of, I think even still that knee jerk reaction that you are taking the dead away and you are, you know, you're making a living on it. You're profiting, but profiting, use the word profit because that's the misceral, like you must be immoral to profit.

[00:16:11] Right. And so here's the thing. I mean, I, you know, I have, I have my own reservations about capitalism as it's worked today. Right. Um, but the stark reality is within a couple of years here, I'm going to be a business owner. So I'm going to need to concern myself with profits, even though that it's like the least important part of my job.

[00:16:30] So it is, it is notable actually that you are a nonprofit. Um, so how, how does this just, let's start at the, at, at stage one, like grandpa dies. Then what? Well, as far as you're concerned, we have a real world example from a week ago. And I, you know, I wish I had thought of this, but we had brought in for an international training.

[00:16:58] It's called DART deployment recovery teams. We brought in funeral directors from around the world. So we had somebody from Israel, somebody from Germany, one of the most prominent funeral directors in all of Europe was at Alcor facility a week ago. And I mentioned that because grandpa died at meaning one of our oldest staff members at Alcor 37 year staff member named Mike Perry, Dr. Perry. We were training with funeral directors and with a deployment specialists, which are special forces and nurses and medical people.

[00:17:29] And he got hit by car. So this is a real life example. Now, mind you, this is one of the closest people to all of us at Alcor because he was kind of the grandpa of Alcor. You walk in Alcor, you know, he was in his late seventies, almost 80, I think. And all of a sudden this training exercise is the real deal. And it's for one of our closest people.

[00:17:51] So, so, so, you know, now it becomes this whole thing where you have to do your job, but of course you're upset. Because it's personal and, and, you know, that is, so that's, you know what? And that's honestly probably the closest thing that you and I could talk about.

[00:18:10] Um, because I, I bury friends and people that I know very well all the time. What's that? Okay. Walk, walk me through the, the recovery part, but I mean, how do you, how does that, how does that happen when it, when it just strikes at home? Well, first of all, you know, you have to be a member for the most part. We do do last minute third party postmortem it's called. So you weren't a member in your lifetime and we will pick up the body if you add kind of this checklist of things.

[00:18:38] But yeah, no people, first of all, have to understand this is a science experiment. We're not actually promising or guaranteeing this is ever going to work for your revival. And it's kind of not the point. It is the point, but it's not the point. Meaning you're donating your body under what's called the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which you're probably familiar with. By the time they get to you. I, I worked in a whole body donation lab at the University of Minnesota. So I know all about the Anatomical Gift Act.

[00:19:03] And you know, and Minnesota is big in this space right now. Bischoff at University of Minnesota is a preeminent professor in cryobiology. And he's recently printed some, some articles about proof of concept for this working, meaning working on small organs, because it has worked, meaning conceptually it's worked on kidneys in rabbits and rats, meaning kidneys were cryopreserved at liquid nitrogen temperature, thawed, transplanted and functioned. No way.

[00:19:29] That's remarkable for human history, for medicine, if we can get it to human scale. That's what Alcor has been working on for the last 50 years. Right. And that's the part of the story I want to, want to emphasize because that's valuable to all of us right now. Okay. Not like a future aspirational goal, but in this case, uh, Dr. Perry, we get a call. He'd been hit by a car. Okay. And he was close to 80 and I use them as an example because frankly he would want this. Like he was dedicated to the cause. All right.

[00:20:00] And gave his life to the research, but we get a call. The first thing we do is we have what's called a standby list and there's a one 800 number. You actually wear a necklace and this is like a dog tag or a brace. Yeah. This is mine. If I have a heart attack and 9-1-1 comes or something, we want them to call this number. When you call the one 800 number, it's a 24 seven, 365 notice our, that triggers a whole response at Alcor.

[00:20:28] So that triggers a medical response director who's a qualified medical person who determines how close to death you might be. I know that sounds strange, but you can look at vitals and you can, you know, kind of dictate based on the injuries or whatever.

[00:20:44] So we get this call, I think about six in the morning that Mike's been hit by a car. He's going in for a surgery, but of course at his age, you know, there's substantial risk and there's traumatic injury. Yeah. So, so everything stops at Alcor when we get, it doesn't matter. You know, obviously it was Mike, it was grandpa kind of Mike of our, of our facility, but it doesn't matter if you're a member in Canada, it's going to be the same process.

[00:21:10] Um, so we get the call and then you hear it's Mike and you're like, Oh shit, I'm really sad, but we have to compartmentalize in silo. Yeah. And you, and you go into work mode because that is exactly, that's how it happens in my town. Right. And now of course you don't know if they're going to die or not. So he goes into the procedure. We already deploy a team. So there's, there's actually what are called deployments and there's level one and level two and level three.

[00:21:37] So this is actually based upon trauma and emergency medicine and military special forces models. So we just use those models to, to deploy a team. And in this case we had our best people in the whole world happened to be training at Alcor that day. So we had the most advanced people in the world from all over the world, from Canada, uh, the UK, we had as special forces SAS from the UK.

[00:22:03] We had joint task force Canada, which is their special forces. Um, and we had Navy SEALs of course, who are on staff. Uh, and, and people wonder why that level is needed. Well, you have to get to a body before you lose viability. Ideally, meaning cells only live for six to 12 hours. And this may weird people out, but like your brain doesn't just flip a switch.

[00:22:27] When a doctor declares you dead, your brain isn't just all of a sudden dead. Like it doesn't work that way. Medically, um, your brain cells can be biopsied in, in essentially grown in a Petri dish for hours after legal deaths been declared. Right. So the urgency is to get to your body in time to harvest those sorts of things, right? Um, organs in the brain and whatever. Cause you can be just called a neuro, which is just your head. And that's where people get weirded out is you're removing the head.

[00:22:56] Yeah. I was, I was going to say it has a Futurama vibes written all over it. I get it. I get it. But we were here first. Futurama came from us, not, you know, us came from them. Like, let's get the story straight in the order here. Um, and, and look, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, that was terrible for the science. Right. Because it positioned this as some sort of, uh, inhuman zombie type thing, which it's not. Although if you go deeper on that story, it's actually the opposite of that. It's about the inhumanness of humanity.

[00:23:24] Of humanity. Yeah. Right. So it's, no, it's, it's a great book. Everybody who has ever seen Frankenstein's monster should read the book. Uh, because yeah, it does paint actually the exact opposite picture. Although to be fair, Mary Shelley was also the one who kept her husband's heart like in a cloth in her desk. So she was, she was a little different, but no, no, the, the point of the book still stands for sure.

[00:23:47] Well, if you've ever been to a dentist, they've worked on a cutoff human head, like your dentists have done that. So, and you're in the industry where you have to wire the jaw. Actually, I've, I've, I've got one more for you. So when I was working at the university of Minnesota in the cadaver lab, they had a new, uh, they had a new, uh, MRI machine and they needed to test it on heads.

[00:24:09] So actually one of my jobs one week is we had embalmed bodies and we cut off the heads with a skill saw. And then we injected different colored silicones down the arteries and veins. And then I had like 30 heads in rubber made tubs that I then carted across the university to the hospital building. And then was the one who had to, nobody else wanted to touch them as it turned out, uh, and place them into the machine one by one by one. Well, so I've done that been there, done that.

[00:24:39] That is the ending of Mike's story, by the way. Really? Yes. It's crazy. You mentioned that because I'll hire you if you need a job here when I explain what happened. I mean, so, so Mike in, you know, and not to make light of it at all, this was, this was just so difficult for our staff. But the point is Mike goes in the operation. This is now about 10 in the morning and he, he, you know, he codes, he bleeds out. He's not going to make it. Our staff is there.

[00:25:09] They immediately, well, I say immediately within the time allotted, you know, he gets declared. They start pushing medications. Now people don't understand this. They're like, why are you putting medications in a dead body? Well, the circulatory system collapses after a certain number of minutes or hours. And you need to keep that open to perfuse it with this very expensive chemical that we use, which is what preserves the cells. And so we start both CPS. It's not CPR. It looks like CPR, but we're pumping the heart. Okay.

[00:25:37] And yeah, because we want to oxygenate the brain. So we're venting, we're pumping the heart and we're pushing meds. And that makes people think we're trying to revive a dead person, which is another part of where the kind of mythology comes from. No, but it's, but it's smaller. You're simply wanting to keep the cells alive. Right. We're preserving viability as much as possible wherever we can in the body. I see. Because you very often die from something that, you know, is a fraction of your body. Right. Right?

[00:26:07] It's not the whole body. It's not a light source that all the cells turned off or anything. And then something called ischemic damage starts to occur, which is decay. Embalming fluid is designed to essentially prevent the decay or chemically fixate the cellular structures so they don't decay and aren't subject to bacteria. Would totally ruin what you're trying to do, though. Well, there's arguments. You talk about the philosophy. There is a philosophy that chemical fixation can preserve the mapping of the brain.

[00:26:35] I don't personally subscribe to that. But there is a company out there that does that. We don't do that. So I'm just saying. Yeah. But for our purposes, we want to go with kind of the straightest line, you know, between A and B, which is, hey, just preserve the viability because we know that works. Like, you know, there's worms that were in the tundra that are supposedly 20,000 years old and they thaw them out and then they still move. Look at look at like frogs every look at frogs every spring. They freeze solid. I found one.

[00:27:04] There was one actually right by the by the back door of our house that froze before the first snow. We have weird weather up here. And so it's a little like a rock hard frog and not there today. Just move, you know, woke up and hopped on. Right. Well, that's that is the perfect example of where our science actually comes from is it's a derivative of the synthetic. Well, it's synthetic proteins made by the frog, essentially.

[00:27:30] So it's just like any science, you know, science is quackery. I mean, medical science 150 years ago was quackery. I mean, doctors had snake oil and they weren't they weren't really looked highly upon. They weren't high members of society. Right. Right. And then, of course, the profiteering, you should give health care for free because you should heal the sick and the wounded. And of course, that doesn't work either because you got to live.

[00:27:53] But the point of it is, is that that the wood frog, that derivative, that synthesized protein is the origin of what we're trying to do. We're trying to mimic what nature does in the wood frog and apply it to humans so that if you were injured from something, you're not just throwing your brain out because, you know, your liver got cut in a car accident and we can't fix it today. Okay, well, let's let's pause you in an essentially a medically induced coma using temperature instead of drugs.

[00:28:22] That's a good way to think about it. So now what is like explain to me what is what is the what is the telos like what is what is the end game? What are you so if if if we have grandpa and we've you know, we've stabilized his tissues to make them viable. Like what is the end game? What what can be done? Here's a question.

[00:28:46] Is is what you're doing done for the sake of somebody else or is it done for the sake of the deceased? Great question. It's actually somewhat gender based. Okay. Go figure, right? I actually had you know, when I came in about two and a half, three years ago at Alcor, I first of all, I'm not like a native cryonist. I didn't know about this when I was a kid, like many people and kind of dreamed of the science fiction applications of it. I'm an attorney by trade in high tech and emerging technology and health care.

[00:29:16] And so when I came in, I wanted to know the end game as well. And it turns out that there's multiple end games and women. This may shock you, but men are more egocentric and are more interested in preserving themselves. That does not shock me at all. Okay. Well, for your audience, they shock you, but the men are of the mindset that they want to explore the future, perhaps, and hope that it works for them. I'm just talking about an average kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:45] And women tend to be more interested in the application of the science to preserving their genetic kind of archaeology. Meaning, if you have a genetic condition, your great-great-grandchildren, they have no access to your great-grandparents' genetics. I mean, it doesn't exist today. Even if you did 23andMe, I mean, I think they went out of business, right? But if you had a biological kind of cemetery where you could absolutely, with certainty, biopsy those remains and then see a whole genetic tree,

[00:30:14] you could actually extrapolate any number of things in genetic science to probably fix things with CRISPR and new modalities of science. You know, so if they are having a baby and now they know their great-great-grandparent was subject to sickle cell anemia or something, and they don't know if they're going to have it, even if their own profile, you know, is like 50-50.

[00:30:35] Well, you can go back in time, essentially, biologically, and restructure things now with an embryo to prevent or get rid of some of these genetic conditions. And that's actually personally relevant to me. I mean, that's one of the reasons I took this job is I have a late-appearing genetic condition that's shortened my lifespan greatly. So this genetic archaeology component of this is of great interest to me. But that's one reason to do it.

[00:31:00] Another reason is everybody says all these rich people, the billionaires, they want to come back, and it's all so they can control the world. You know, maybe they do. I've read that science fiction book, by the way. Right. Well, there's several. There's several. But look, I've actually met with these people. I've talked to them. And I think the closest analogy is the first person who had a heart transplant. Okay, so there was this guy back in, I think, 1956 or so.

[00:31:28] You know, they knew it wasn't going to work long-term, but he essentially volunteered to be the first person to get a heart transplant because it could help, you know, in 20 years. Maybe it helps his kids or his grandkids if they ever needed that procedure. And he did it. He lived a week. So he did live a little longer, but ultimately he died. And yet now, a heart transplant, people are living full lifespans. I mean, they're living 30, 40 years with, you know, donated transplanted hearts.

[00:31:56] So I think all of our membership, well, not all, I can't say that about all of it, but we have about 1,500 members worldwide. The vast majority of them recognize that this is an experiment that may not work for them, but that even if it doesn't work for them, they're contributing to the advancement of the science. Yeah, it's a pioneer mindset then.

[00:32:18] The explorer, the pioneer mindset, and they're crowdfunding it, meaning everybody pays for their crowd preservation, including myself. I don't get it for free. I have to assign a portion of my life insurance. That's how most people pay for it, by the way, is life insurance. Sure, sure. And actually, we're working with funeral directors to offer this as what we call the third way through funeral homes. I was going to ask about this because that is a very interesting trademark or at least an attempt at it. It's very interesting.

[00:32:48] Well, it makes total sense because at the worst case, when you pay for your life insurance like what I have, it's a whole life policy. By the time it's paid up, it's about $30,000. Now, a nice funeral, you know, can run you $20,000 to $30,000 by the time you get the plot, get the casket, do the celebration of life and everything else. Sure, sure, sure. The difference is, is that my body will go, I'm a neuro, so my head will go in a 24-7 protected facility, okay?

[00:33:18] It's got tons of money for long-term care. It's not going away anytime soon. It's basically a high-tech cemetery or mortuary or mausoleum at its worst case. But my brain will be scanned. We actually do the CT scan. So the heads you're talking about? Oh, sure. Mike Carey, so our scientist who passed, became the first human being who was ever perfused in real time in a CT scan machine after death with viability. His brain was in great shape. Yeah, it was remarkable.

[00:33:48] And so our whole team is there, our whole science team, engineers, scientists, a PhD, molecular biologist, a brain engineer. And they're witnessing this occur. Our engineers had built a machine that could go into the CT scan machine, and Mike was a neuro. That's really hard. You know, our staff has to do, you know, separate the head. So they do that. They put him in the CT scan machine. And for the first time in scientific history, like this will be published, this will be an article.

[00:34:16] We were perfusing the frog proteins, essentially, into the brain, but witnessing it as it perfused through the brain. Because remember, the vasculature is all still open. Right. Interesting. And so here's a question. So just from my experience. I'm 30. Yeah. Well, so here's the deal. So in my experience in the cadaver lab, so I'm an embalmer, pretty good embalmer. Right. But when I was in college, was doing, you know, a number a day, but for anatomical study.

[00:34:45] So we were, I mean, just filling them to the brim with preservative to keep them for two years or more instead. Right. One of the things they found shortly before I got there, as I said, we were having trouble with brain preservation because when we opened the cranium, two years later, we were having decay, rot, these kind of things. So what they did actually is when I, right before I got there, we started drilling into the, right below, there's like this occipital protuberance.

[00:35:13] If you feel in the back of your head, if you drill right below that, you can hit the dural sinus where all the blood vessels meet in the back of the head. And so we are actually drilling right through the bone, puncturing that. And then as we injected up into the head, the drainage out of it was immense. But that actually really promoted the distribution of those fluids. I don't know if that would be applicable in what you're doing because obviously you want things to stay contained.

[00:35:38] But I was curious if your scientist drained the dural sinus because that was something that we found was very effective in the preservation side of things. What's interesting is we do drill burr holes, but we do that in part for the reason you're mentioning, which is we can actually tell if the brain's been saturated well by the effusive M22.

[00:36:01] So the extra fluid that puts pressure on the brain once it's kind of been filled, once it starts kind of coming through the burr hole, then you know that the brain has been perfused, essentially. Yeah. Right. But the difference for what you're saying is accessing it here, I think you're just doing more of a, correct me if I'm wrong, but based on what you're telling me, I think the fluid just kind of is generally there,

[00:36:27] whereas we're trying to access through the carotids in the actual vascular system. Yep. And that's what we were doing. Okay. Up the carotids. But then, you know, what happens like with embalming, and I'm sure you know, right, it pushes into the arterial system and then at some point it meets in the capillary and then moves into the venous system. Right. And, but see, it's interesting. So then what you're... Listen, come to Alcor, meet with our brain engineer, our funeral. We have a funeral director person.

[00:36:56] I mean, we have all these people. And like the training was literally raising the carotids and see who can raise the carotids. I can do it. I can do it without even looking. Like blindfolded. Yeah. I would bet you money I could do it blindfolded. Yeah. Like without a tool, I could just feel where it was and do it. Yeah. Well, we have, I mean, it sounds weird, but we, you know, we have multiple people that think they're the best at raising the carotids. It's a little bit competitive.

[00:37:25] Well, actually the truth of it is whenever you walk, whenever you talk to a funeral director or an embalmer, they are the best one that's ever lived. So you're with me now. So I'm the best there ever was. I mean, you want the person handling that stuff to have that kind of confidence. I think, you know, I mean, look, you're, you're, you're, you're handling people's body or their children's body or their spouse's body. I mean, there's this incredible responsibility and reverence and seriousness of the moment.

[00:37:52] But to, to cope with it, I think you have to have a little bit of this gallows kind of, I don't know, humor, but at least pair, pair. No, no, no. No, because, because that's the thing is it, is it bounces like you're, you've got a foot in both domain. You know, you are, you are in like the real tangible, tangible, physical, but also in the spiritual side.

[00:38:14] My, my question on the spiritual side was as far as, as Mike goes, like, did his family have a service? Cause what do you, you know, what do you, does the rest of the body go to a funeral home for, you know, burial or cremation or like how, what happens to the rest? And then what, what do families do when really like the most identifiable part of their loved one is in your care?

[00:38:40] Sure. Well, look, it, if the whole body's at Alcor, then there is no casket, right? Right. But we just, have you heard, I think it's Alan, Alan Welfeld. Oh yes. Oh yeah. He's, he's, he's the big dog in D in grief in the country. I just had lunch with him a month or so ago to talk about how we can move from kind of being this sterile science lab, which is ultimately what we do.

[00:39:07] But there's this human component like you're talking about, and we're actually working hard to improve access to great, you know, books on grief or to provide a kind of a, an urn as it were. It's a doer, a little doer, but something tangible that people can have. Number one, number two, I just engaged with architects to rebuild part of Alcor's facility to create a memorial space where you can have a service. Essentially.

[00:39:37] I was going to ask because you, you, you said it's, it's in some ways a perpetual, I mean, every cemetery is kind of a perpetual cemetery when it comes down to it. But, um, you know, it being a cemetery, like is, is there a way I can go visit grandpa Mike's remains that are in your care? Families are invited to tour. You set up an appointment. We don't identify because there's some very famous people and you don't want people trying to get DNA or anything, which is weird in and of itself. That's a whole weird dynamic.

[00:40:07] Uh, it's, there's all kinds of weird going on. I'll tell you right now with what we're doing because there's this science, there's this commercialization component. Some of this stuff's immensely valuable. Like I'm just talking about immensely valuable. Of course it is. You know, but, but you, I mean, there's people trying to like steal IP and technology and this and that, but then these are people's bodies and we honor people. You know, we put photos on the wall, you can elect to be confidential or public.

[00:40:36] We'll, that's kind of nice. Mike, Mike, we're doing a whole, like a four hour day in June. I think we're, we're, you know, the good news is, is you know where they're at. And so you can kind of plan it in a month later or something. So people can travel. Uh, but we, yeah, we, we offer that option, but we're not built for that right now. And so I want to roll that in at the advice of funeral directors.

[00:41:01] I'm actually talking to multiple funeral directors about what that space should look like and what should it entail. Um, but these kinds of celebration of life spaces, that's a better way to put it in our, in our context. That would be, you know, if I had one great reservation, um, from what you've told me, some of my reservations are assuaged.

[00:41:30] You know, I think like the reanimating part is, uh, the terrifying part, but if, if that's out of the picture, if, if we're just talking, you know, merely cellular viability, you know, my greatest reservation would be, well, like this all of a sudden becomes something. Like in private domain. And grandpa's head is here. I mean, even like, so for myself, my, my grandpa was cremated. I'm not like the biggest fan of cremation. Neither am I. I never want a cremation.

[00:41:58] But so grandma, grandma's like, Hey, I had part of grandpa's ashes made into this beautiful paperweight. And it's a beautiful paperweight. Um, but knowing what I know, I'm like, ah, this is actually like my grandfather's bones. And if, if my grandfather's tibia was sitting on a shelf, I would want that to be with the rest of him. Right.

[00:42:19] And so when the time comes, not only will I have to find my grandpa's urn and my grandma's house, uh, I'm going to find that paperweight and I'm going to smash into a million pieces and put it, put it with it. Uh, because like it is, it is something of value, you know? Um, so that, yeah. So that, that's the question. I think if you're addressing that aspect of our, you know, honestly, our caveman need to remember, memorialize our debt. I can't see that as anything but a positive.

[00:42:47] I think Alcor has not addressed it well in the past because Alcor was run by scientists and the emotional intelligence component there is, is lacking. I think what you're talking about is an emotional need in real terms. I don't know of a better facility for remains because it's, it's very secure. We have multiple cameras, alarms, we have special forces walking around.

[00:43:11] I mean, it's a secure space and that there's a separate trust, by the way, a lot of people say, oh, well, they're going to run out of money and there's going to shut it down. And that's happened with every for-profit that's ever been in cryonics. That has happened. You can't make money at this. It's not a 60% of our revenue is from donors that donate to the science research. Okay. I mean, and you're, and see, the thing is, you know, so I, I know for instance, like with organ donation, immense amounts of money change hands.

[00:43:41] Like I, I'm aware. Okay. Right. You can't, you can't fool me and tell me, you know, your family gets a wristband for donating grandpa's organs in there. Someone's making a lot of cash down the way, but, but, uh, but I mean. But not us, if, well, that's the thing. Cause if, so if, if funds, if funds are coming in as donation, I mean, I, when you're talking about that dart team, right? The recovery team.

[00:44:03] I mean, I'm just seeing, I'm seeing dollar signs, but if, if your funds are outside and you're operating as a nonprofit, actually, that is like, while that is something that I think is still very weird. Like there, there, there, there's, there's something that's a little comforting knowing that actually this is, this is something that is for the benefit, not of reanimating, you know, Mr. Burns head, but rather like. I don't want to take that away. Yeah. Like that's, but that's the aspirational goal.

[00:44:33] That's the Jetsons flying car. Yes. We're not there yet. But more, but more like boots, boots on the ground. It's more about like, can this be done for an altruistic purpose? Right. And I, and I like that a lot more. Well, sure. And, and, and again, that's where James coming in to help with the messaging at a company that's made it 50 plus years, but has been this sort of social and scientific pariah in the industry because. You don't, you don't really fit in either camp. No, no.

[00:45:03] And it's been a major hurdle to the advancement of the science because, you know, for instance, the cryobiologists are like, oh, they're pseudoscience. Well, medicine was pseudoscience a hundred years ago. It really was. Transplant medicine was pseudoscience. Flying aerodynamics. The people we think are brilliant rocket scientists who are the top of the heap. In 1912 or whatever it was, 1916. You know, the, the New York times said it manned flight will never be possible.

[00:45:31] It's physically, you're breaking the laws of physics. And then the Wright brothers pulled it off within a couple months. Yeah. Yeah. A couple months. So it's just things like that, where it's like, you just lack the vision and understanding your ignorance about the science and the science we're working on. And by the way, we deal with the literal top scientists in the world. And some of them will deny that they work with us or talk to us publicly. I can see why. Oh, it's my mind though.

[00:45:58] It's so frustrating because I'm like, that's like, that's like dating a girl, but you never take her on a date because you don't want to be seen with her. Like, or guy, whatever you date, I don't know, but a person and then saying, you're not going to acknowledge him. Like, I'm never, I don't want that relationship, you know, but the point. And see, and I, I can see, you know, now that we've talked about this, like I can just see even the small scale where, yeah, maybe, maybe the neuro comes to, to not, but like, maybe someone loses a limb.

[00:46:26] You can keep that viable until such a time as like physical therapy can take place. You know, all these, you can stabilize them before, you know, reattaching a limb, which we know works, right? Like you've, you've heard about the guy whose arm is in the, you know, in the cooler. Um, but I could, I mean, there is probably a lot to be learned and actually maybe, yeah. Like it's, is it freaky? Yes. But also like, let me acknowledge, but let me acknowledge like what I do.

[00:46:53] If you, if you peeked behind the curtain, you would say, whoa, that's really freaky. Uh, but in the right context, you know, I can see what I do. You know, I, I drain a blood, I drain all the blood from a body, right? I set their face. I wire their jaw closed. I close their eyes. Um, and these things are a little freaky. It's, it's weird that just some. You seem like a nice, normal guy. We're talking, you don't. Yeah. Not like a weird, you know, freak. I don't, I don't think so.

[00:47:23] But so, so this, this happens, but this happens behind closed doors. Sure. But then, but then, but then I do the thing and I go, ah, there's the good. I get to see the tangible good that comes from being with our dead all the time. Now you are, I suppose you're at the disadvantage. You've got the closed door. Um, you know, you've got the privacy, you've got the proprietary things going on that I don't have, but it's there. Like, like the, the good might be there, but it's just further down the road.

[00:47:51] It's not, you know, for me, I can, I can prepare a body. I get to see the good in one week's time. Like that's real time. Right. Right. You, you might, you might never live to see the good, uh, or it might never appear or maybe it will. Well, we are really close. I mean, I'm talking like five yard line close on some of the Oregon stuff. It is remarkable. The results we're seeing in the lab, but see, this is where people say,

[00:48:17] Oh, if you're seeing that, just go put it in the public, save people that it doesn't work that way. Like emerging tech does not work that way. Even if you see something that's amazing in science, you have to validate it a hundred or a thousand times before the government or the scientists allow that to even be talked about publicly. Well, and then, and then you have to wrestle with the bioethics of it. Cause I mean, there, there is, I mean, there's the thing is, you know, people talk about

[00:48:46] exploitation and there, I mean, there is exploitation every which way you turn. I actually, uh, my, my parents just redid their estate and they put me as their, they put me as their healthcare agent on their healthcare directive. And so I look at the stock wording on there. Have you read a healthcare directive lately? Oh, well, I don't know lately, but I've looked through a million of them in my career. So the thing is you, you look at the stock, the, just the stock wording from the lawyer.

[00:49:11] And it's like, if some doctor deems me terminable, you know, terminal withhold food and water, like, nah, that, that doesn't sound reasonable. Um, or, or it's like, get rid of this, get rid of this. Let me die of malnutrition. Unless my organs are good, then take those. And I'm like, Hey, who, who wrote the stock wording on this? Uh, cause, cause it sure as hell wasn't me like this, this actually is not advantageous for my mom and dad. This is advantageous for somebody else.

[00:49:37] So it's, it's interesting, like those, those sorts of those kind of built in, um, I don't want to say coercions. I mean, but they're, they're everywhere. Like, like when we talk about bioethics, it's just, it's ever present. You're not going, you're not going to escape it. Um, so no, I, I even just this week, like, well, what you consider okay to do with your body, it derives from your cultural traditions or religious background, you know, a number of

[00:50:06] things like self-immolation or immolation of meaning creation, zero interest for me, but you go to certain cultures where they had limited land and that's all they could do for public health reasons. Embalming wasn't done in Germany, you know, until 50 years ago or 30 years ago, really. And, and yet now it is. And so, so I think the, the issue you have with the bioethics of things is what I want

[00:50:31] to say about Alcor is that at Alcor, when you sign up, you sign like 60 or 70 pages of anatomical gift and legal stuff and everything else, because we want to make so abundantly clear to your family, to anybody around you that this was your personal choice. I'm not selling this. We were nonprofit. We don't get a bonus if you sign up or anything else does not work that way. Um, again, most of our majority, I should say most majority of our funding come from

[00:51:00] donors. It's not the people's revenue from the life insurance. And that's, and that's huge, but that's, that is just, that's a big deal. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, I, uh, no, I just, so don't like Reagan trust, but verify as a nonprofit, we're actually independently audited every other year, massive pain in my ass operationally costs a fortune, but we're audited and our financials are public. You can actually go and really at our nine nineties.

[00:51:29] They're published on our website, I think, but also the IRS or wherever. So, so, you know, you get all these people are like, Oh, he's saying this. Let's put that link in the show notes just to be, just to be provocative. Let's put it in there. Make it open. I don't care. I don't, I don't have it. No, I like that. Okay. I like that. Well, I mean, it's, I, it's, I believe it's, it should be on our website actively. Um, but my point in telling you that is, is first of all, there's a bunch of people coming into the space right now and they're trying to do it on a for-profit basis.

[00:51:57] They hear that it's 200,000, you know, 220 for the body or they're like, Oh, I'll just buy some liquid nitrogen and slap them in a tank and lock it a hundred grand. These are disasters. And I, I care because when they go bad, Alcor gets the call to clean it up. Because the government doesn't know what to do with liquid nitrogen. That's right. And then we have to absorb the cost or they threaten to shut us down or regulate us. I can't win. No.

[00:52:23] And that is, I think that is the, the great, the great hurt of anybody that works in any kind of death care is that any bad actor, I mean, it's like anything, but, but especially when we, like we said at the beginning, we talk about death, it gets really, really, really hard. And people, their hackles get up and the emotions are raw and everybody who've ever died, like you've ever had die comes to mind. And, and so, yeah, when there's a bad actor like that anywhere that reflects on me.

[00:52:52] And when there's a bad actor anywhere, it reflects on you. And I, I guess I understand that. And I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty sympathetic. Good. Because, uh, people wonder why I'm so intense about kind of clearing the field. You know, if people think that this is a money thing, they, they're just so poorly understanding of the finances of what's involved here.

[00:53:19] Uh, most of my staff, I think probably, yeah, almost all my staff could get paid a lot more money elsewhere in a private sector. Uh, myself included, you know, as a, yeah, this, I mean, look, we have to get paid, but money is only a single motivator and not a primary motivator. I think for the scientists, for myself, uh, we're not stupid. Obviously there's potential commercial stuff down the road or something. For instance, trauma care, trauma medicine.

[00:53:47] That's exactly where my mind goes. Well, look, I'm not stupid. I come from that background. If you can perfuse somebody with, with ultra cold fluids, essentially I'm grossly oversimplifying. So scientists don't get mad. But, but if, if you can perfuse them, there's a lot of injuries that would kill you. That wouldn't kill you. Um, paralysis can be prevented in many, many instances because paralysis is actually swelling around the spinal cord that crushes the spinal cord.

[00:54:15] If you can stop that in time, then the person never gets paralyzed in the first place. Um, but you have to do it without killing somebody and you say, but James, that's not possible sign. Yes, it is. The kid felt falls in the frozen Lake. That's right. And it's been there an hour and gets pulled out and has no brain damage and survives. Why? It's a question of finding the answer. It's not a question of saying, it's not possible. We should never try. I absolutely, excuse me. Can I, can I cuss a little? Yeah, you can say it. We'll just bleep you out.

[00:54:44] Well, well, it just, it just pisses me off to no end. The people that exist that say, well, we shouldn't try. Why? And I'm not talking about like, you know, James growing wings and flying to the moon. I'm talking about stuff that doesn't violate the laws of physics or biology. Right. Because it, because it is, it's, it's already in place. It's just a matter of, of sussing it out. We know it works. Isolating it. It's a question of scale or extrapolating to human use, like controlled use.

[00:55:13] It, it, it works already. There's, there's unequivocal proof that it works. And as a lawyer, you go into a, you know, a case in a court and you have to show facts to support your argument. All right. Your feelings don't matter. Like the feelings, how you feel doesn't matter. It's all factually dependent. And when you see as a matter of fact that people can, can be frozen or get, you know, their body temperature lowered.

[00:55:42] There was, there was a gal in Minnesota. I think, no, it was New York some years ago. She froze solid. Yep. And she warmed her up. Yeah. And they're seeing like maybe 10% or less cognitive decline, um, that gets repaired. And, and so, so these are things that nature is telling us are possible. And the game or the game is, can you figure it out? It's a riddle. Yeah. Figure it out. Right.

[00:56:11] Figure out the application of humanity. That's what, this is intellectual stimulation for myself and my staff to connect those dots and be the first to get there. Now I won't get it, but if we solve it, like it's a Nobel prize for the scientists. No joke. Yeah. Because you can organ bank now. These kidneys that get tossed, you know, this 60% get tossed, the 40% get used and half of them get rejected in two years.

[00:56:36] Imagine if you do DNA perfect matching that you can go to a nitrogen storage tank, say number two, two, three, two is a perfect DNA match. And it's been there for six months or a year and you just match it. You set up the surgery. It's not an emergency. And you're not on mega anti-rejections for the rest of your life. Exactly right. But here's the thing, Victor, who doesn't want this to work? Think about it.

[00:57:03] Multi-billion dollar industries, huge industries, some of whom I've represented in my legal career. Right. But you, I mean, how much is dialysis as an industry in this country every year? Right. I can't even imagine. Huge money. So then you have, in our position, you actually have forces that are working on the regulatory or political side to prevent the advancement of this science. And you think, oh, that would never happen.

[00:57:33] Nobody would ever do something that wicked. It's not, it's the people that make those choices. I know because I've been the lawyer in the back room. Okay. Yeah. I literally have seen this firsthand. They don't wake up that day saying, hey, they're going to prevent 80,000 people from getting a kidney. They wake up and they think, well, it's so unlikely to happen anyways. You know, who cares if I slow it down a little bit because I need to live a good life and I want to make the money from this and I'll let it be somebody else's problem.

[00:58:01] So, so they, they marginalize and they simplify and then that justifies their actions. And then you put that in an organization that has money and lobbying behind it. And it gets very difficult to fight that. So I believe it. That's the real story about how this works in the, in the big med device, pharmaceutical industries and everything else in this country. It doesn't work necessarily the same way in Europe, for instance. And we're trying to go into Europe heavily.

[00:58:29] Uh, that should, should give us some opportunities to explore more of the science and research. And again, people say, but James, if you know all this, uh, why would you do this job when you can see this and go make a bunch of money? If you make it come, you know, some other way it's because I have, I'm on a clock myself. You know, I have this condition, my lifespan's grossly shortened and you know, at some point you don't, I don't, you, do you see death a lot that there? I don't know.

[00:58:59] Are you there? Uh, I'm usually there like a half hour after someone actively dies. So how many, how many people have you like been involved in their palliative or close to death care or talk to them? I mean a lot. I go visit a lot of people on their deathbeds. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So, so that's important, right? For this conversation, because you and I possess a perspective that's frankly quite, I think important.

[00:59:27] And I don't want to overstate mine, but you in particular, you've seen probably more than me, but, uh, when people are close to death and you can pick, you know, 40 years old, 60 years old, whatever. Look, I've, I've never seen one of these billionaires say, call their banker. You know, like, okay, I've got a day to live. Did I win? Like, am I richer than the next guy? Like it never happens. They never say, oh, let me go look at my car collection one more time. I mean, really, it just doesn't happen.

[00:59:57] I've, I've seen a lot of people regret that. I've, I've seen it work the other way where it's like, oh boy, I wasted a lot of time doing that. Right. For what? Right. And, and so my point is when you boil it down, it comes down to, in my opinion, and what I've seen, and you can add to this, but it comes down to two kinds of things, which is relationships. People don't want to die alone. They are. They want to know that people care that they're dying, that somebody is going to take care of their body.

[01:00:25] Those are all really emotional, intense end of life things. Um, so family, friends, whatever. And then they care about their legacy. Meaning that the most common thread is if they're cogent and conscious, they're, they're like replaying their life a little bit and thinking, what did I do? Yeah. What do I leave? Yeah. What do I leave behind? Yeah, that is, no, it's, I'll tell you what, I mean, it's, it's at the heart of my business. Surely that's, that's why it exists.

[01:00:54] Um, you know, it's, it's the, it's, it's actually the two same things that you're handling. It's, it's the retrospective part, the legacy part. Um, but it's also very much, you know, I find the looking forward. So there is a, there was a priest who gave me a great bit of advice and I, I use this as my, my North star when I'm planning funeral events. But he said, Victor, he said, the wake the night before is for looking backwards. He said, but the day of the funeral is for looking forwards. I love that.

[01:01:24] You have to have, and you have to have both. And so I think it's interesting that you are actually, you are right. As well in this liminal space where you have people talking about legacy. What do I leave behind? Do I leave behind an organ, a limb, you know, whatever it is. Uh, but then there's also the looking forward of what is this going to do for ideally someone else in the future? So no, I, James, this has been honestly just a, a really lovely discussion.

[01:01:50] I, I didn't honestly know where we were going to go with it at the beginning, because there are, as you say, uh, a lot of built-in reservations, but I'm glad, I'm glad that both you and I have a lot of, uh, those same sorts of, I don't know, people have the same hesitations, uh, around my business and yours. And so I'm glad we can just like overcome that same wall or walk on the same wall or whatever, whatever kind of metaphor you want to use. I'm, I'm glad we can do it together. So thank you.

[01:02:20] Thank you for being here today. Sure. And, and listen, I want to invite you out. Come in. I say that because we do, we, you talk earlier about kind of behind the curtain. I'm trying very hard to make what we do more transparent. I believe that we need to have transparency to the public. And when you come see it, it makes so much more sense. When you hear about it in the abstract, even what you do, I mean, it's hard to imagine,

[01:02:46] you know, wiring a jaw to make it look right or something, but it ain't pretty. It's probably not pretty, but the result, like you said, is, is pretty. It's important for the family. It's important for the memory of the person. And when you come to Alcor and you, you talk to the scientists or the funeral people or the, or, and you see that it's actual science, it's not just some pie in the sky stuff. Um, let me, let me give you another example. Many critics. Yeah. When I confront them and say, have you ever been to the lab? You know, no.

[01:03:15] They come to the lab, they leave and they're like, okay, I, maybe I don't think it'll work, but I can see the value. I like that. I like that. Well, that's, I mean, and that is essentially what we're doing here at death. And is where we're having kind of odd discussions. Yes. But we're pulling back the curtain on some of these challenging things that, I mean, not everyone is going to have to face cryonics, but everyone's going to have to face death. Yeah. And for you, you're doing it with young people, which I, I was, we have several staff that are just out of college.

[01:03:44] And they said, you have to do this show. You have to talk to this guy, Victor. I'm like, what? Like he has a podcast about funeral stuff and death. And they're like, oh, all the young people know this guy. And I'm like, wow. Well, I guess the culture has changed because young people didn't ever try to think about it. They never thought about their mortality. And you're like this voice for that generation, which is incredibly important for us too. We want everybody to understand. And again, I'm not selling it. Don't sign. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Like I don't. That's right. I don't. I mean, I care, but I don't care.

[01:04:14] Like it's what the anatomical gift act is all about. Yeah. It, it, we need the bodies to do the research. It's that simple. That's it. Yeah. James, a million. Thanks. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having her. After our discussion today, the thing that I am really ruminating on is what James calls the riddle, the riddle.

[01:04:41] How do we square what we know about the peculiarities of life and death? How do we square that with the advances we can make in science? Isn't that the crux of the whole discussion? What might science be able to achieve if there are a few brave pioneers?

[01:05:08] And how does that mesh with those things we do know about people that freeze and come back about the proverbial finger in the cooler that can be reattached? There's, there's something very thought provoking in there, isn't it? And I, and you know, after having my initial fears and presumptions kind of met head on,

[01:05:36] it makes me consider more about what are the actual applications. It doesn't seem to me after this discussion that it's simply preserve the head in the jar so we can attach it to another body someday. It actually does not sound like Frankenstein at all, really. It sounds like something more akin to my work, something mechanical, albeit a little gruesome, that could lead to something good.

[01:06:05] I see it in my work all the time. I do the unthinkable and I lead a family through the impossible, burying their loved one, burying their spouse, burying their child, their parent, the impossible, the thing we maybe fear our whole lives. I do something unthinkable. I prepare the body and it isn't pretty.

[01:06:36] And I lead the family who's grieving and that isn't easy by any stretch, but then there's the good that follows, the telos, the end game. What's the point? And I find upon reflection that James's vision in my own actually do have some commonality.

[01:07:05] And it's all the more delightful that I did not expect that to be the case at all. I expected science fiction and nonsense and sales tactics. And instead, I see something that's a little more outward looking, beautiful episode, a lot to think on, a lot to chew on.

[01:07:29] Maybe it isn't going to be the third way, trademark, that they're thinking, but it sounds much more wholesome than I initially imagined. Thank you everyone for coming on this journey with me. It's a delight every week to simply talk to someone that I've never met, usually, and go on this journey.

[01:07:57] Discover things that I did not understand before. Talk about things I never thought I'd have to discuss, being an undertaker in the middle of nowhere. It's a pleasure. And it's a pleasure to have you here along with me. So thank you for joining us again on Death And. I am your very humble and grateful undertaker, Victor M. Sweeney.