Key Points
- Human composting or natural organic reduction
- Natural resources and sustainability
- Death rites and rituals
Have you ever thought about how you want your body disposed of after you die? Do you care? Or will you let your loved ones decide?
Choosing between burial and cremation is complex and deeply personal, especially considering that for many of us, neither option is particularly appealing. Unfortunately, they’re the only options we have. But perhaps not for long.
Alternatives to burial and cremation such as alkaline hydrolysis and promession (freeze-drying cremation) are disrupting the funeral industry all over the world, offering people more sustainable choices and hopefully contributing to a greener planet for future generations.
In this episode, we take a close look at natural organic reduction (NOR), a relatively new body disposal alternative fast gaining traction in the United States. Bodies are placed in a sealed vessel in a temperature-controlled room, covered with organic materials such as alfalfa and straw, and gently transformed into soil. LOTS of soil.
Families can come sit with their person, be with their loved one, be together in an environment in which you have 74 vessels surrounding you actively transforming people into soil.
We hear from NOR entrepreneur Micah Truman about what he has learned from mourners, and how he and his team are trying to save the world, one body at a time.
Links
Grave Matters is an SBS Audio podcast about death, dying and the people helping us understand both better. Find it in your podcast app such as the SBS Audio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or LiSTNR.
Hosts: Anthony Levin and Nadine J. Cohen
Producer: Jeremy Wilmot
Writers: Anthony Levin and Nadine J. Cohen
Art and design: Karina Aslikyan
SBS team: Max Gosford, Joel Supple, Caroline Gates
Guest: Micah Truman
If you'd like to speak to someone, you can reach a counsellor at Beyond Blue at any time, day or night, by calling 1300 22 4636 or visiting www.beyondblue.org.au. Also, Lifeline offers 24/7 crisis support on 13 11 14, and Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In an emergency call 000.
Transcript
Content Warning: This episode mentions death, suicide and other potentially difficult content. Please take care.
Anthony: Nadine Jumanji Cohen, hi.
Nadine: Anthony Levin, g'day.
So, Anthony, burial or cremation?
Anthony: Geez, buy a guy a drink first.
No look, I can't stomach ashes. They give me heartburn.
Nadine: You're going full dad for this episode, huh?
Anthony: Also, there's something something called the Holocaust. Have you heard about that?
Nadine: I have heard of it, yes.
Anthony: My grandma would be turning in her future grave if I got cremated. That would just be the final straw. Couldn't do it. So it's a hard no for me to cremation. I am pretty attached I think, in an unashamedly kind of egoistic way to my body. Like, I still find it really hard to separate my identity from my body. I imagine that's kind of common because we're all living in the meat suit over here.
Nadine: Please never say that again.
Anthony: And you know, like the body is a temple and you wouldn't cremate a temple, would you?
Nadine: No, probably not.
Anthony: The answer is no, no. So turn me into some soil, please. I always said I wanted to be a tree pod. That's the dream, you know. Put me in the ground in a little pod. Then I'll grow into a big oak tree or something.
Nadine: I've always seen you as oak.
Anthony: Oaky?
Nadine: Mm, you are definitely oaky, I have said that to people.
Anthony: Thank you.
Nadine: You're welcome.
Anthony: What about you?
Nadine: I would like a sea burial. I would like a bunch of orcas to eat me and then attack rich people's boats like they're currently doing off the coast of Spain.
Anthony: That is super weird, but I'm into it.
Nadine: It's no secret that both burial and cremation are problematic and unsustainable in unique ways. Thankfully, there are people all over the world creating and introducing alternative, climate-friendly methods for the disposal of bodies. Today's episode is all about one emerging alternative, natural organic reduction, and we meet a man who's dedicated the rest of his life to saving the world one dead body at a time.
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Nadine: Our guest today is American entrepreneur Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home. It's one of a new wave of companies disrupting the funeral industry with greener and more sustainable body disposal methods. Micah is determined to grow Return Home into an international phenomenon that makes the world a better place. He also loves bagels.
Nadine: Welcome Micah from Return Home. Where are you joining us from?
Micah: I am joining you from my sofa in Seattle, Washington, on a smoking hot nine o’clock evening.
Nadine: Excellent! So Return Home facilitates a relatively new alternative to burial and cremation, known by many names including natural organic reduction, human composting, I think body composting and terramation.
So can I get you to just first explain what terramation is?
Micah: Sure. Terramation is a process by which, at least it Return Home, we gently transform human remains into compost, into soil, over a 60-day period, give or take - a bit longer for some and a bit shorter for others.
Nadine: And one question I've been asked, like by everyone when I've told them about this, is how much soil does a body create?
Micah: In our case about 250 pounds.
Anthony: In our case, that's 113 kilograms.
Micah: So we've developed a process, it's an in-vessel system, a terramation system. We use organics, which is alfalfa, straw and sawdust. We do it about a two or three-to-one ratio of organics to body weight. So let's say a 100-pound person would have 200 or 300 pounds of organics surrounding them, and over that 60-day period, they completely transform. And that's why, at the end of the day, we have such significant amounts of compost.
Nadine: And you do that within a vessel, within a controlled environment.
Micah: Yes. Think brewpub, if you will.
Anthony: Like a microbrewery?
Micah: Exactly. So think about it, right? So making beer, it's a bit stinky. It's a bit sticky, right? But they've somehow developed machinery that can do it while you sit with your friends and have hors d’oeuvres.
Now, while we're not exactly a hors d’oeuvres crew, families can come, sit with their person, be with their loved one, be together in an environment in which you do have 74 vessels surrounding you, actively transforming people into soil.
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Anthony (VO): To develop the terramation system, Micah assembled an Oceans 11-style crack team of scientists, engineers and body snatchers.
Nadine: He's kidding.
Anthony: But just as they were about to start work, COVID-19 struck.
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Micah: So what we originally had intended to be a very global crew had to be a group of people within a 20-minute drive of my chief scientist, John Paul's place. And he's a soil scientist, right? So he's the guy on YouTube going, you know, today we will be like composting steer, you know, and there's a big steer and you can see his horns like sticking out of the ground.
And he brought in this wild group of guys, truly. And so we realised, good Jewish guy that I am, that it was time to start working on pigs. And we composted pigs like crazy, like mad. And if you can compost a pig, you can compost a person.
Nadine: That's what I always say.
Micah: Right? Yeah, you've done the math. You know what I'm saying?
And then we married that with really quite a crew of electrical and mechanical engineers. So these were the guys who were both designing and physically building our machinery. And then, of course, we tied in funeral directors and death doulas. It was an incredible group of people, and they've built a truly phenomenal space.
Nadine: Yeah,I saw that you've done it with murals and with beautiful art and plants everywhere, and families can choose the music they want to play.
Micah: We actually screwed it up completely.
So in the beginning, right, we built a facility. Obviously, it was mechanically quite adept. It was very, you know, capable of transforming human beings into soil in that period of time. But it was really ugly and I didn't think it mattered.
I felt that our families would treat us like a crematorium, right? You ostensibly know us and trust us, but you don't set foot in our facility. You give us your loved one, we transform them into soil and give that soil back to you. But people were piling into our facility and it was quite difficult.
Because, you know, a mother would come to see her daughter and she wants to come every day and it looks like Costco in there. And we were really scrambling to try to figure it out because everything we designed was adaptable, but they were using it in a way we never conceived. And so we were pivoting like crazy.
And it was six or eight months in which we had to just tear the place apart and put it back together. Not just in terms of how it looked but in terms of how our families interacted with our technology because I didn't realise.
Nadine: I think that that's the stressful bit, but it's also the fun and lovely and super interesting bit of developing a product or a service. You can't preempt how people are going to use it. You can't, you know, you're never going to know. You're always going to learn things, and they might not use it how you wanted them to at all.
Micah: Yeah, I mean, it was immensely stressful. And to some extent, in my case, Katey and Brie, I think ran a little more linear. But for me, I found it really sometimes a bit terrifying. To a point where they had to fire me, they had to remove me. Or I consciously removed myself from specific decisions because I probably was gonna say no. And I was the wrong guy for that job.
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Anthony (VO): By Katey and Brie, Micah means Katey Houston and Brieanna Smith, Return Home‘s Services Manager and Chief Operating Officer. Both are licenced funeral directors and embalmers with extensive experience in the death sector, which is not quite the case for Micah.
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So I came from, I lived most of my life - adult life - in China. I worked primarily in a finance role, raising capital in China and deploying it to large real estate projects in America. It actually prepared me perfectly for the job that I'm currently doing now. Said nobody, ever.
You know we've hired a really competent group of funeral professionals. You've got to have folks that are incredibly seasoned professionals, accomplished. And we have that, with the exception of yours truly.
Nadine: On that point, can you tell us how you did end up going from international real estate
Micah: Well, Washington state was the first place to legalise terramation, right? I really didn't believe they'd do it. But the news began to report that these guys really might, our local legislators might do it.
And I was sitting with my mother and I said, you know, this is crazy. Like, look at these guys doing this. And she said, you know, I don't find that crazy at all. And she had two friends with her from New York and they said, you know, you make sure, obviously, if we die, that you ship our bodies here because we’d do it.
And you know that wasn't your normal conversation, a bunch of Jewish folks sitting around eating bagels.
Nadine: Hey, you're preaching to the choir.
Micah: Right? So it's like I'm, uh, you know, it wasn't what I was waiting for. I think what we find is as we talk about this, we might like it or hate it, but it lives in our head rent-free. It sticks with us; it doesn't leave us. It certainly was the case for me.
And at my age, I'd done some things that you know, I didn't need to work, but I hadn't done anything that mattered in the slightest. Vaguely. I mean, when I stopped that job, someone else did that job after me, maybe did it better than me? You don't know. I did that job. And you don't know the guy who did the job after me. Ergo, it doesn't really matter.
And so how is it that we do something? How is it we build companies? I love this - we - me and my evil twin skippy. I was taught to build and scale companies and the infinite growth in a finite environment is madness - if we have X in terms of resources and we consistently consume X + one, the end is nigh. And I challenge you to change that.
So how is it we use our dark arts for the light? How is it that we take these skills we have and create a company that, no bullshit, the bigger it gets, the better off the world is for it. And that's a very big challenge, right?
Because we see two flavours of company: one an environmental company. It's gorgeous. The products it creates are phenomenal, in a developing nation in a fair trade town, making paper towels that are handmade. They're $14 a roll and they're gorgeous, and no one buys them, right? So there's option number one - a phenomenal environmental product that's a terrible business. It can't scale.
And then the opposite, phenomenal businesses, oil companies come to mind, that greenwash their products, grow like mad and consistently fabricate everything throughout.
Can't we match those two? Can't we be that company? Can't we be that environmental? Can't we do the right thing and can't we grow like a weed? Can we do that?
And that's been the journey.
Anthony: So, Micah, in your vision, do you see your company growing like a weed in that way?
Micah: It will, it will grow. This is going to completely - again, it's not like I say Return Home is going to completely turn the funeral industry upside down. But terramation, human composting and the resulting businesses that spring from it, guaranteed will. We're looking at the biggest seismic shift in the funeral industry since our grandfather - and I'm older than you guys - my grandfather was young.
It's absolutely going to go at unbelievable speed. It's going to start in America and it's going to rocket through the rest of the world at unbelievable pace.
Nadine: And is the plan to have multiple terramation centres throughout the US?
Micah: Yes, we're going to open across the country. Like I said jokingly, but not. When you first talk about this, this is cuckoo bird, right? But only when you sit, come see us, talk to us, see it. See that we have millions of dollars of technology and that we've put so much heart and care into it, right?
Once we start to really do this on scale, then it normalises. But it only normalises if we're not a boutique. And we can't change the world if we do it on a small scale.
Anthony: How long do you think it takes for it to spread? Because currently, it's not expressly prohibited in Australia, but it's also not explicitly legal either. And it's not being done anywhere here and you know, Australia is a country that tends to follow trends like that. What makes you think that it's going to spread and on what time scale do you think that might happen?
Micah: I can kind of answer it but not really. Let me try to answer. What I can't do, of course, is to talk about the human heart and how fast we're going to adopt it. But what I can talk about are the numbers in the United States.
65% of people surveyed in the United States said they would prefer a green or would consider a green burial option. That's quite remarkable given that we don't even know what a green burial option is. People want it so bad that they're actually voting for a figment of their imagination.
We've been given two options. They both suck. Ready? I'm going to give you two choices. I'd like to take the blood out of your body, pour it down a sink, fill you with embalming fluid, throw you in a gasketed coffin inside a rebar, cement-lined hole. There's door one.
Door two: 30 gallons of fuel, 540 pounds of CO2. Blow everything your body could give the earth into the air, call it ash but grind your bones in a blender and hand them to your family in a bag.
Those are our two options. Why don't we wanna not do that? Because we're afraid. Because in order to talk about this, we have to think about this. To do that, we have to think I'm going to die, and harder yet, the people I love are. Can't we just? I don't know. What's the sport you guys like Australian Rules football? We like the NFL. Can't we just do that instead?
If this was cars or food, we'd have talked about it, but it's dying.
So I guess my answer to the first part is we have an unworkable system and it needs desperately to be changed. And the second part is how do human beings confront their fear of death long enough to actually affect that change? I guess your guess is as good as mine.
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Nadine (VO): In the US, seven states have now legalised terramation. Four have blocked it and another two are soon to vote on proposed legislation. Here in Australia, advocates are pushing for laws to enable it, but it's a matter for each state and territory, and that could take some time.
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Anthony: So Micah, who are your customers? The early adopters? Are you seeing particular groups embrace terramation faster than others?
Micah: So I thought in the beginning when we first started that this was going to be a largely Caucasian tree-hugger type business. And not to say it's not, but we have people of very different political stripes coming to us from all across the country.
I see very little that will stop this save doctrinaire religion. And doctrinaire religion is interesting, right? Catholics, I hear 17% of them actually follow the dictates of the Pope. We're Jewish, right? But we're not Hasids, right? I assume you're Reform, if that right? You're Jew-das-ish, right? We're not doctrinaire, even though we might have an air or an aspect of religion in our lives. And those folks are absolutely up for doing this. We have rabbis coming to us, we had a priest running a service last week, we had another one in a church the week before.
Nadine: That was actually my question. Specifically, you know, for our listeners, the idea, I believe the idea, of Jewish burial, is the body should go into the earth as it came into life, and it should be as natural as possible. And so I have been wondering how it would sit with the more Orthodox or, you know, devout of our people?
Micah: Doesn't matter if it's Jewish or Catholic, right? If you're Hasidic, if you're Orthodox, if you are a very close follower of the Pope, probably this is not something you're going to be necessarily doing. But it has been very interesting to get into these discussions.
So, for example, when I was sitting with a very devout Catholic and he was explaining that the reason that he didn't think that this was viable is it didn't show reverence. And I said, OK, what's reverence? And it was really interesting to realise at a certain point it just meant he didn't feel good about it.
I think what happens is, is we often couch our disagreement or dislike in terms that somehow sound empirical, but that's crap. It's just what our heart feels and I think we should say that. I think I'd be a lot better off if people said I just feel uncomfortable and I feel worried. Cool, I can manage that. But irreverent, I don't know.
Anyway, the rabbis came in. The priests have come. And it has been interesting with the Jewish rabbis, their position was this is not, you know, Jewish burial tradition. That's tradition. Tradition is not the word of God. Tradition is exactly that. We've done it for a really long time. And before that, the Jews were taking bodies, burying them, pulling the bones out and sticking them in a cave. And that worked real well for a while as well.
Nadine: That’s my preferred way to go.
Micah: Hey, I don't judge. That sounds solid.
But my point is only that our traditions too have morphed over time and they are not transcribed, they're not written down by God. And therefore we do, however, have an obligation to the earth from the Tanak - from it we came, to it we return and we have to protect it. And that is the word of God.
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Anthony: Micah, you've said, quote: “It's our great privilege to ensure that our last act on this planet is to give back to it”. So on that, what can people do with the soil once their person has been fully transformed?
Micah: So if we think about it, we're talking about a disposition, right? That is what we do with our bodies when we die. And that of course, is what we at Return Home would like to give the world, to give America. This is a choice. It's yours, if you would like it. That's the disposition. And that's the transformation of, for example, my body into soil. But after that, it's fair game.
What would I like to do? I would like to put it in my backyard. Fine. I'd like to put it in a cemetery. Fine. I'd like to do it in a public park if I was given permission. Fine. Again, my point is only we don't see that. Once you have your body transformed, what you do with it can be highly flexible and we're not here to judge. If someone would like to use the cemetery, is that my choice? No. But do they? Someone who wants to memorialise their person, Is that legitimate?
Nadine: I take it there are some restrictions on where the soil can be used. Is it like ashes?
Micah: It is identically positioned to ashes in our law. So we literally just added natural organic reduction to cremated remains, just added the second clause so it can be put anywhere. The only thing we're not allowed to do, of course, you need permission from the land owner or controller.
So if you're putting it in a park, the Ranger needs to say yes. If you put it at someone's house, the owner has to say yes. You're not allowed to commercially grow food with it. But with that exception, it's fair game.
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Anthony: Maybe that's a good point to ask you a question about the laying-in ceremony, cause we can't visit.
Nadine: We're going to, though! I'm definitely coming.
Micah: Let's go.
Nadine: I would love to see the terramation centre.
Micah: You're so welcome.
Nadine: Amazing.
Anthony: But until that happens, until we turn up on your doorstep and with our, you know, sleeping bags and bagels, what Is a laying-in ceremony? And what is the average experience for a family who participates in that?
Micah: OK, so in the very beginning, what happened is Brie began to ask families, a mother or a wife who lost her wife you want to come in and wash your loved one’s hair? Would you like to help get her ready? And their answer is absolutely not. Of course I don't. No, I'm not going to do that.
And then they call the next morning and they go yeah, I would, I would like to come see it but you do it and I'll watch. And then, of course, you know, it's it's her wife. and they're 31 years old, and it's her last chance to say goodbye. And she's like, get out of my way, I'm gonna wash her hair. I'll do it. So that became the first part.
Then the next part began where the body would go in the vessel and someone would say can I put flowers in, since you're using organics? And they would say sure, how about a letter? How about some bad scotch? How about a piece of wedding cake that's been frozen in the freezer for the last two decades? No one's going to eat that, right? And suddenly people began to sit there and really take part in it.
We've lost a lot of kids, you guys. And we don't do that for a charge under 18. And so, you know, it was amazing to watch what the kids did. So they'd be like, all right, LED lights, I want you to stick LED lights all over the outside of this thing. I want you to draw pictures. Here's some sticky tack. I want you to put up whatever you're doing. And so that became a thing.
Nadine: That's amazing that you do it for free for children. Making at least one thing easy for the most horrible thing anyone will ever have to go through.
Micah: And so all these things developed over time, but you need to understand, I had no inkling that any of that was going to happen, yeah? And it did.
Anthony: Is there anything you had to say no to?
Micah: If someone stands in front of you who's lost their 15-year-old daughter to suicide and she says I'd like to put her in the vessel with my hands. My answer is I don't think we can do that. I'm thinking of the safety of all of us. I want to make sure that no one gets hurt because we're not equipped to do it. I want to make sure that her beautiful daughter isn't dropped. I mean, I don't know where to go.
So we set a couple of rules. It goes: Does it show love? Is it safe? And does it work? And if the answer is yes to all three, to the best of your ability to a question you've never answered before, I don't really care where in the company you are, make the call.
We had to change our systems for how we ran the company, so that's led to all kinds of things. That's led to a parent being able to put their child in. It's led to the parent being able to sit next to their child in the vessel.
We have two phases, so we'll place the body in the vessel, right? And you'll put your flowers and your letters and all those things. And when that's done, we will take the vessel to the back of house and fill the rest of the vessel up with organics. It's really nice, right? But I had this division in my head and I said that's just going to get done in the back. That's none of anyone's business. That's ours. We'll do it and then we'll bring it back.
Well what happens when a mother says I want to cover my son's face with my own hand? And of course, Katey and Brie, these are very, very remarkable people. And their answer is yes.
So what we find is the things that we wall off, the things that we hide don't need hiding. It's just that I'm afraid and it's raw and it's hard and it seems like that's because those process-driven things that you thought were going to be in the backroom are actually the most intimate parts that create the most meaning during the grieving process for the family.
Here's the thing, it's one thing to have your loved one in a casket and they place them in a hole and you take the first shovel full of soil and you put it on top. But when you do this in our facility, you're covering their face with your hands, and it's very different. And it's absurdly powerful. And I think I avoided it because I was afraid of that. Not that I was afraid that it shouldn't be done or we did something wrong, but that it was too much to ask of another human being. But that shows a lack of thought and humility.
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Nadine: Can I ask what your personal experience was with death and with dead bodies when you founded Return Home?
Micah: Almost none.
So when the first day came in - I've experienced loss in my family, but I was prevented when I was a child from seeing that - but when the first person came to us, I remember Brie coming in and saying, OK, we've got Laura. Now, you know, we've got our first person and walking in and there she was. I cried for the first six months.
And it's weird, right? Because I'm like, a 50-year-old guy and I did not come from a world where that was the right thing to do. But when you're surrounded by these things, what else was there? What else could you do?
So for me, it was very transformative and to be drafting behind my team who are 20 years younger than me has been the most amazing thing.
Nadine: Yeah, that's incredible. And I think that apart from like, regardless of the method of disposition, whether it's terramation or it's burial or cremation - I know that here as well as in the States and around the world, the reclaiming and repersonalisation of death is happening in very many ways. And people are getting more intimate with the bodies.
Micah: That's true. And I think what's happened is we've been so separated for so long - if you don't even know that those options exist, how do you even begin to ask yourself those questions?
We don't even have an internal language to express what it is we want to a point where something normal, like, would you like to hold your person's hand and say goodbye to them? Like that, at the face of it is deeply sensible yet the typical response to that would be that's stupid.
Nadine: Yeah, we've made bodies gruesome. We've made dead bodies a gruesome thing, which they just absolutely are not.
Micah: That they are not. But it's also so impractical. You have one last shot and we're going to call it morbid? And then you just don't. It's your last chance. And so that's been obviously something that's been really unbelievable.
Nadine: I'm really interested in that. Like I understand how what you said about they said no and then the next day they came back. I'm really interested in that because I think that that to me makes sense.
You’re just immediately going to like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to touch it. And then you sit with it and then you challenge yourself as to why? Why not? That little space is very interesting to me.
Micah: I always close my eyes and I think of her. She said bye to her wife. They're 31 years old. She's absolutely devastated. She's offered to wash her wife's hair. She says no, she hangs up the phone and sits there. And you know what she's doing, right? She's going. I don't know why but I know that's not right. You know what I mean? Wait a minute. Hang on. What now? Why do I feel so damn devastated? What do I need to do?
And you know, a quick one, that one person who covered her son with organics with her own hands. That was on a TikTok we did because she asked that it be filmed and it was seen 53,000,000 times.
And what was really interesting about it is, as she was covering her son, she was so joyful. And she was explaining why she was so happy - and it was really cognitively dissonant, and everyone was trying to figure out why. But the reason was is it was her son's last request of her. And if you think of it from that point of view, of course that would make sense.
And so it really is interesting looking at these people. And when we asked her why she wanted to do that and why she wanted to make sure the world saw that, she said because the next mother who loses her kid, I want her to know that she could also do this and that way she wouldn't be alone either.
Nadine: Oh my God, I'm I'm tearing up. I’m actually tearing up here. I'm a big softy.
Micah: So these are the things, yeah.
Anthony: It just reemphasizes in a way, that joy and grief are really two sides of the same coin, especially at these pivotal life moments. You know when you're saying goodbye to someone, but you're also celebrating their life and their last wishes.
Micah: That's right.
Anthony: What an incredible experience. I mean, no wonder you cried for the first six months because this just would have opened you up like nothing else.
Micah: Oh yeah. But what also happens when you've opened yourself up to the human experiences, any day can be anything. People will do any possible thing and you've just got to have enough faith to realise it's all going to work out.
And in a weird way, what we built that I thought was going to go one way has turned out to be a place that people can express themselves however they wish and all we have to do is stand there and go, go get it. Go do it. We'll do anything. Not anything but however we can be of service to you, we'll do our best.
Nadine: I love the idea that every day is a learning experience; every day someone does something new; every new body is a whole new experience with a whole new family who want whole new things. And that's beautiful to me. And that would bring so much comfort, I think, to so many people.
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Anthony: We've touched a little on this, Micah, but I'm wondering about, in terms of your grand plan, what are the barriers to change in the industry?
Micah: Yeah, I think that the biggest barrier is public sentiment about thinking through the options, talking about it and choosing ones that are sensible instead of avoiding it. The moment we avoid, we'll be given the same two options we've always had.
So it's it's changing these, moving these tectonic plates of consumer fear towards the death process, towards the death industry. If people ignore it, they'll die and probably someone will call and get them cremated. So I think that that's the first really big one.
The second really big one is legalisation and it's going to have to sweep not just the United States, but of course the rest of the world. What we find in America is once the first domino falls, the rest go quickly.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if someone managed to set up a place in Australia, how fast the rest happens because of word of mouth. This is the baby powder model you guys, right? You know the baby powder model. So I could put up a billboard, right? And it says baby powder, it's the best and it's got a really happy baby on it. But no one's going to buy it until one parent calls another parent and goes this one's going to fix your baby and they go yikes, give me a give me a bucket of that.
Right? Same thing with this. You know, I lost my spouse; I lost my child; I lost my mother. This happened and I'm telling you, it was transformational. It was like nothing I've ever done. That will then spur the change. You need a first lemming to jump, I guess is what I'm saying. And we hope that happens soon for you guys.
Anthony: You also said that you've got multi-million dollar machines that enable this process to happen. So I wonder how accessible this is outside of the global north?
Micah: We have. Remember that there are a number of ways to do this. We made a decision. Our decision was a facility - approachable, indoors. You can sit next to your vessel. Computer controlled, a very, very considered technical attractive environment.
There are other folks that are doing it where it's what we'd call just the direct model, where they simply have vessels there. You know behind the door, you don't really need to see them. It's easier, quieter, cheaper. And you could do it that way. We have people that have hand-built wooden vessels and they have them outside. That's really cheap.
And all these things are things that have to be weighed and there will be different ways of doing it. We've taken our way, others will do it theirs. So it is very economical to do it in certain ways, it just has certain consequences.
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Nadine: One thing that we've been talking to everyone about, the concept of a good death is something that we were brought into when we started researching this podcast. What's a good death to you?
Micah: Sure. Can I say what I think a bad death is?
Anthony: Please.
Micah: A bad death means that someone has told me quantity is better than quality and I believed it. Someone told me that if they give me this drug or if they give me this whatever, that I might get an extra four months.
But no one ever told me what 4 months means. No one ever asked me what they meant by what my life needed to be, especially when it was limited. So I accepted quantity and I lost quality and I lost my time. I lost my dignity. I lost my connection. And that for me probably is my second biggest fear trumped only by dying alone. So those are my two.
So having defined a bad death, a good death would be surrounded by people I love in a context by which I chose quality over quantity and that obviously pain would be minimised. But let's get really to the important part, right? When I die, I would like to be turned into 100 bags of soil with clear instructions that everyone who I love is to receive a bag. And if someone feels left out, divide the bags and give them an extra one. And they are to have an adventure and put it somewhere that's incredibly cool and come back and tell the story. And that to me would be a worthwhile death.
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Micah: I think the last thing that I would like to say is this. No one ever says or calls and says I'm dying, my cremations coming up and it gives me hope. We literally have people calling and saying it's the one thing that makes me feel hopeful that I can go back to the earth, that I can restart the cycle of life. I want to be a tree; I want to be a flower; it's what I want to do.
We get those calls all the time and it's that I think that gives me the most hope and it's that that makes me think we're onto something that is absolutely gonna turn our world upside down. It matches our heart. We all want to go home and this is it. And that's it.
Nadine: And on that beautiful note.
Micah: Alright, then.
Nadine: Thank you.
Micah: Thank you
Nadine: Thank you so much.
Micah: Really appreciate it.
***
Nadine: So that was Micah Truman and Anthony, since we recorded that wonderful interview, you have been to Return Home, Micah's facility, and I am dying of jealousy.
Anthony: I have. I'm really sorry, Nadine.
Nadine: Are you though?
Anthony: No. I did visit their facility in Auburn, Washington. Even though Micah wasn't there, I got to meet the wonderful Katey Houston, who's the Services Manager. She took me around and it was just mind-blowing. They have 74 vessels stacked to the ceiling of this warehouse facility and getting to see the bags of soil that were waiting to be collected and some of the soil in one of the vessels, in the most respectful way possible. It just was unbelievable.
I cannot imagine that there won't be an appetite for this here in Australia if someone has the capacity to build the same thing. So I really hope it happens. And what about you, Nadine? What did you take away?
Nadine: I mean, you've got to admire his conviction. And his ambition. And I took away that, like, awesome, if he can do it. But also the idea of, if you don't have to work and you don't need to earn income, dedicating yourself to something that can help both the Earth and humanity is a wonderful thing.
So we'll see if he can pull it off.
Anthony: Yeah, it really amplifies the impact. And I I hope it happens in Australia, I really do.
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Nadine: So thanks again to Micah Truman from Return Home.
Next episode we'll be talking to death doula and funeral director Mariam Ardati about her work transforming the way we care for our dead and dying.
Mariam: I have never had a person, in 17 years of doing this, come to me and say I'm worse off now that I've been a part of this experience. It's been the exact opposite. I get messages constantly on social media saying I remember you, you were there for my mum when she passed away and I'll never forget what you taught me.
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If this episode has raised issues for you and you'd like to seek mental health support, you can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636 or visit beyondblue.org.au.
Also, Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Visit embracementalhealth.org.au for 24/7.
For crisis support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or in an emergency, please call 000.
Grave Matters is an SBS podcast, written and hosted by Anthony Levin and Nadine J. Cohen and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Caroline Gates, Joel Supple and Max Gosford. If you'd like to get in touch, e-mail audio@sbs.com.au.
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