Today’s episode is all about body farms with Steven Ray Morris! ("The Purrrcast", "My Favorite Murder", "Mother, May I Sleep With Podcast"). Body farms are facilities used for the study of decomposition of human remains. Steven and Cassi talk about the history of how body farms got started with the first body farm, also called anthropological research facility, back in 1971 with anthropologist William M. Bass. There are now six in the United States and one just opened in Amsterdam in 2016. The aim of these farms is to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process and for forensic purposes, to permit the development of techniques for extracting information (such as the timing and circumstances of death) from human remains. Pretty cool right?!

And if that’s not dark enough for you Cassi goes through the process of how the body decomposes while Steven and Cassi both drink some whiskey to help take in such realities of when the body dies, the blood stops circulating and solidifies, the skin changes color, organs decompose, there’s bloating, blistering and gases inside erupt and everything liquifies eventually leaving behind a skeleton. Fun!

But don’t worry, that’s not all they talk about! They also talk about Dr. Pimple Popper, Steven’s hot tips on how to tell a New Zealand accent from an Australian one, the process of getting verified on Twitter, feminist writers like Zelda Fritzgerald, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf and which one you would want to go out as, the famous and possibly haunted Comedy Store and how our cats would eat us if we dropped dead in our house. Yeah, the conservation always finds it way back to dead bodies. Steven and Cassi talk fondly about crazy stories of people dying in their home and not being found for more that a year or longer like Joyce Vincent and Yvette Vickers. They also talk about the murder of Skylar Neese and contemplate what it would be like if hospitals microchipped us so as soon as we died, they would be notified and would be able to find our body quickly after death. Cassi and Steven also take time to talk fondly of people they have lost in their lives.

It’s a deep and as lighthearted-as-it-can-be episode. Enjoy!

 

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