Death, et seq.

On this week’s episode, I FINALLY talk to my friend Katrina Spade, the pioneer of natural organic reduction, also known as human composting, in the United States, and the founder of Recompose, a Seattle-based funeral home that focuses exclusively on natural organic reduction. Katrina and I first met about ten years ago, when she was still doing research and the leg work to make her idea a reality. I’m still astonished by how quickly she was able to accomplish such fundamental change to the American death care space. I’m sure I was very cautionary in the beginning – don’t expect too much, too fast, people don’t change death care practices that quickly, state legislatures will need years to get comfortable with the idea. Boy was I wrong. First legalized in Washington State in 2019, NOR Is now legal in 14 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state. Recompose isn’t the only funeral home offering NOR – there are several companies offering this method of disposition. The proof of concept is so strong that venture capital has even gotten involved with one company. Even if NOR isn’t legal in your state, having a local funeral home send your body to a provider like Recompose is always an option, in fact a significant percentage of cases at Recompose and other providers are from out of state clients. It isn’t just the United States that is embracing Katrina’s idea – after recording this episode, we learned that the legislature of New South Wales in Australia has legalized NOR! The story of Katrina Spade and the founding of NOR is really an amazing one, and I’m so happy to have her as my guest today.

Today we're talking about something that sits in closets, on mantels, and even on kitchen counters across the country: urns holding the cremated remains of people we love, often with no plan for where they will finally rest. By one estimate, 25 million homes in the United States have an urn in them. My guest today calls that a crisis, and after our conversation, I think you'll see why.

My guest is Honnolora Hubbard and we’ll be talking about National Cremation Placement Day. This year it falls on October 17, and it will always be held on the third Saturday in October. The idea is simple: give families who have chosen cremation the information and encouragement to think about a permanent home for their loved ones. In Honnolora's view, the core problem has been a lack of education. For decades, families were told to pick up the urn, and often that was all they were told. Many people who no longer have a relationship with a funeral home or cemetery won't get that information there. So the effort has to meet people where they are.

To be clear, this isn't about telling anyone what to do. As Honnolora puts it, cremation gives us the freedom to choose how we're remembered. What matters is having a plan, so our loved ones don't end up abandoned or forgotten.

In this episode, we discuss how 25 million households ended up in this situation. We also cover the difference between permanent placement and memorialization. Honnolora shares some of the the options that cemeteries offer and we talk about some of the options outside the cemetery.

So whether you work in death care, are planning a funeral, or simply have an urn at home and aren't sure what comes next, we hope you find something useful or interesting in this conversation.

Today, more than 90% of mortuary school students are first generation funeral directors. Three out of four of them are women. And increasingly, there are people in mortuary school who are in the middle of their lives, coming to this work as a second career because something about it called to them. But at the same time, people are leaving the funeral profession through retirement and burnout. Recruitment and retention of quality employees are some of the biggest challenges facing funeral homes. In this episode, we talk to Jon Raper, recent mortuary school student, about the challenges of entering this profession and, ultimately, why good people leave funeral service.

On this week's episode, Caitlin Doughty discusses the most recent scandal in the funeral industry and what regulatory structures could be used to prevent this from happening again. On August 7th, Chicago police, acting on a tip, entered a funeral home on the Far South Side called South Chicago Chapel, at 2939 East 95th Street in the South Deering neighborhood. What they found inside was the stuff of nightmares. Fifty-six bodies, unrefrigerated, in various states of decomposition, spread throughout the building. The funeral home was operated by Clark and Johanna Morgan. Astonishingly, this was not the first time the Morgans had been caught doing something like this. The Morgans previously ran a crematory called Heights Crematory in Chicago Heights, where authorities found improperly stored bodies — roughly a hundred of them — stacked on top of each other, unrefrigerated, partially exposed. The comptroller's office permanently shut Heights Crematory down in 2025. Clark Morgan's funeral director license had already been revoked back in 2024 for practicing with an expired license and what the state called "unprofessional conduct". And yet here they were, two years later, running a funeral home and doing the exact same thing. We have a lot to unpack in this episode — why these things keep happening, why our regulatory systems keep failing to catch them, and what, if anything, can actually be done about it.

On today’s episode, I’m joined by Anna Jordan. Anna is a funeral director and a certified life cycle celebrant and a member of the board of the Home Funeral Alliance. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Anna on a couple of projects with the Home Funeral Alliance. For the past couple of years, a group of students at Wake Forest Law School have researched and assembled state statutes relevant to home funeral families and complied state by state legal guides that are posted on the Home Funeral Alliance website. Anna and I have been on several calls discussing what research would be most useful to those families. More recently, Anna shared with me the curriculum for a new program she’s launching on behalf of the Home Funeral Alliance – a Home Funeral Proficiency Certification. This online program is aimed at funeral directors to help them better understand and assist home funeral families, and she’s running a pilot this summer. In today’s conversation, I talk to Anna about that project, and about her unique path to and role in funeral service.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard from a lot of what I’ll characterize as “progressive” or “new” entrants in the death care space. We’ve had episodes on green burial, death doulas, natural organic reduction, home funerals, and more. The conventional wisdom that I hear a lot from critics of the funeral industry is that “traditional” funeral directors are rigid and uninterested in change. That’s certainly true of some folks in the industry – they’re hanging on to the way they’ve always done things until they retire. But I’ve also found that some people that you assume will be super conservative are actually really open to giving funeral families what they need, whether that fits the traditional model or not. One case in point is today’s guest, Tim Schramm, Owner and CEO of Howe-Peterson Funeral Home & Cremation Services with locations in Dearborn and Taylor, Michigan. Tim is also a spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association.

Anatomical dissection is a fundamental part of medical education. In this episode, medical student Emma Sherman walks us through the use and treatment of donor bodies in medical education in the United States.

Sam Perry is an Associate Lecturer at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, teaching in the Mortuary Science and Funeral Science program. He is also the President of the Green Burial Council International, 501(c)(3).