- What is your favorite organ
to handle in the human body? - Oh, the brain, obviously. - Really? What happens when you go six feet under? Well, I'm talking about that today, while watching "Six Feet Under," with the special guest, Caitlin Doughty. Let's do it. Ask a mortician. Be-woo! Tell me how you found yourself in this very unique career position. What drew you to this field? - (laughs) I was always
interested in death. I went to college at the
University of Chicago. I was a medieval history major. There was a lot of death
in the Middle Ages, and that was kind of my focus. But I wanted to see what
happened in real 20th century, 21st-century American death. Got a job at a crematory, and I've been doing this for 13 years now. And have never left.
- Wow. Oftentimes, the subject of
death is a very taboo subject. How did you decide to start
a YouTube channel on it and also approach it with a respectful yet lighthearted manner? Which I do with medicine all the time. It's very different when you're talking about strictly death. How did you find yourself here? - Well, I think it's
probably some of the same struggles that you have, which is knowing that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You want to create a cone of safety around what you're doing, so when they're watching
your channel, people go, "Oh, wait a second. It's not
weird to have these questions. "It's not wrong to have
these questions, or morbid, "or hypochondriac to
have these questions." - Here we go. Our first scene. (tray scraping) (zip rasping) - Well? - Pretty good corpse, I have to say. I have a lot of opinions about bad corpses in television shows. This one I would say the blood, the kind of sallow skin, the
sinking of the skin already, I think it's looking pretty... I don't know how many corpses you see? - (laughs) That's so
funny that you asked that because I feel like I work on preventing people from becoming corpses. And then, unfortunately,
once they become corpses, I don't have much dealings with them. So I have less experience. And I'm gonna look for you to guide me on what would be a realistic corpse. - Oh, I am so here. I am here for you. - [Announcer] Top morticians rely on Living Splendor embalming fluid. Living Splendor.
- Wow. - [Announcer] Only real life is better. - (laughs) Is this an
infomercial within the show? - It's an infomercial within the show. I think these infomercials within the show are trying to explain the
modern funeral industry, a little bit, and this
actually does a fantastic job. There are embalming fluids
and humectant fluids called things like Living Splendor. The way that they could sell embalming and preservation to a
family was by saying, "It's not only gonna preserve them, "it's gonna keep you safe, "and it's gonna offer
a lifelike appearance." Which I happen to not agree with. I think a dead body, you should
look dead because, you know, spoiler, that's what they are. If you don't do anything to the body, the body has eyes up, sort of like a.... Would be my demonstration of that. Like... (tense music) That's a trocar. Do you know what that does?
- No. - In the embalming
where you need to remove all of the cavity and organ fluid, you stab it in, down by the belly button, and it has a sucking function. So you're stabbing and it's sucking, and out your fluid comes. And then it's replaced with a
strong preservative chemical. - What is the strangest
thing you've ever removed from the inside of a patient's body? - I can't think immediately of something that I've pulled out from
inside a body that was strange. It's more after a cremation. I would say that something that
even that's sort of normal, but it still gets me every
time is titanium hips. After they come out of
a body, and a cremation, they have this like beautiful
bluish-green patina. They almost look like
glamorous sockeye glasses. - What happens to the titanium hip? - You can ask for it back. That rarely happens, but I love it when a
family asks for it back. I'm like, "Yes, you've
come to the right place. "We will do that for you." Oftentimes, it's recycled.
It goes to recycling. Sometimes it's made into airplane parts. It's made into street signs. - [Rico] Nate! What's up!
- This is Rico. Okay. Rico is fantastic. Rico went to the same
mortuary college that I did. - Oh, wow.
- He's they're young embalmer and he's very enthusiastic about being a restorative specialist. There are certain embalmers that have a real deep appreciation for what are called hard cases. Someone's been shot in the head. Someone hasn't been found for five days. And their job is through wax
and through little gizmos and gobits and potions and creams. And not really make them
look like themselves, but can kind of put Humpty
Dumpty back together again and bring them into some
resemblance of themselves so the family can see them. - Ready? One, two, three. (both groaning)
(body thuds) - Whoa. - Angel lust. - Does that happened a lot? - Yeah. Fair amount. (chuckles) You can be dead, but
you're never really dead. - No. No, no, no, no, no, no.
- (laughs) You're like, "No! "You can be really dead."
- Yeah. The idea of angel lust, which
has a post-mortem erection, is very specific to extremely
rare traumatic deaths. Like, you're suddenly shot in the head, or you're suddenly strangled, or you suddenly have some
sort of traumatic death. But I personally have never
seen it in an older man at a nursing home. - So basically, it's like decapitation in the midst of intercourse.
- (laughs) Right. Or maybe like autoerotic asphyxiation. - What's that's smell? It's like a...
- Disinfectant, burnt coffee. Embalming fluid. - Yum.
- The smell that I always remember from when I was in my anatomy cadaver
lab was formaldehyde. Is that something you guys use a lot? - It is. But actually, the formulant that they use in anatomy cadaver labs is
actually even more intense than what we use in an
average funeral home. That really- - Potent.
- Has to have a high index. - I really appreciated being
able to study the human bodies. That's what got me into science. But what I will say was not the easiest, was Friday before a Monday exam I would be in the cadaver
lab by myself at midnight. Nighttime, sounds of
happening, things moving, maybe my imagination playing tricks. Scary, scary stuff, but I managed to get through
it and do well on the test. - That was probably the first time you had any meaningful
interaction with a dead body. I mean, this is kind of
the American condition, in some ways, is that
we go our whole lives until all of a sudden our mom dies. Most of us, if you're not
a mortician or doctor, all of a sudden you're
faced with this corpse and you have to figure out
what that means to you. In an existential way. Is it spiritual? Is it a ghost? What is it? And you're having all these
reckonings with what it is at the worst time of your life. - You know, it's interesting because I, unfortunately, did lose my mom right in the middle of med school, when I was in the cadaver labs. I will say it's a very
different experience looking at a body of
someone who you don't know versus someone who is close to you. You expect to feel certain things when you're looking at the
body of a family member that may not come because
it looks different. Like, you know the person
based on their facial features, their structure, their little intricacies of how they react to the way you speak. And when that's not there,
it almost feels unfamiliar. Have you ever seen that
happen with family members or perhaps, yourself?
- Absolutely. That to me is actually
the most important reason to be with the body. It can actually be healthy
to look at the body and go, "That's not Mom anymore.
That's a shell of her. "And I see that she's
not suffering anymore "'cause she's not all
grimaced up in pain," and that can be comforting
for some people. And then for other people, that may say, "Wait, she looks exactly
like she did in life. "She just looks like she's sleeping "and that's comforting to me." I sort of encourage
people to just sit there and let what happens happen, and not put too much pressure on yourself to feel a certain way when
you're with a dead body because you're grieving. And what you really want is just to make sure that
the only way out is through. - "For the velvety look and
feel of actual living tissue." No way. (laughs) - You do not even wanna know. They have these plastic,
like, screws, only bigger, that they, like, stick
into people's orifices so stuff won't spill out. - Tell me about the screws.
(Caitlin laughing) - I was like, "Are you
gonna let me get away "without responding to that?" They're called A-V plugs, and the A and the V
stand for anal-vaginal. They do kind of look like butt plugs. A plastic kind of swirly butt plug. After a embalming, because there's such pressure in the body, there's always a chance that the body will purge a
little bit or leak a little bit out of whatever open orifices there are. So you basically get
something like a butt plug after you die. - What is your favorite organ
to handle in the human body? - Oh, the brain, obviously. - Really? Okay.
- Yeah. - Why the brain?
- Because it feels like you are holding the seat of the soul. Because you're really like
holding who the person was and their personality and
the seat of their intellect. - Wow.
- Even if it's just while you're transferring it to sow up the head properly
or whatever you're doing. It just feels like a real privilege to me. - Hepatitis', syphilis. Ooh, positive for gonorrhea. - What? - Have you ever gone, "Ooh," before giving someone a test result? Have you ever gone, "Good, good, good! "Ooh."
- Ooh. I don't and for this one reason. I don't let anything
surprise me in the room. I review things before
I speak to the patient, or I review them before
I called the patient. 'Cause a lot of results
are given by phone. If I'm gonna be giving a result that's life-changing in a way, I will usually ask the patient
to come in to discuss it. - How do you psych yourself
up to make that call? If I knew I had to deliver potentially life-changing difficult medical news, I would just put that off
till the end of the day. - I don't like to put it
off to the end of the day 'cause it becomes harder. I like to do it as quickly as
possible, meeting as early on, and as forthcoming. The more you sort of
bounce around the point, the more it causes tension
between you and the patient. So I try to be a straight
shooter, if you will. Layout all the facts, get
them to ask questions, say the news back to me so they understand exactly what's going on,
then offer just comfort. So sometimes that could be silence. Sometimes that could
be answering questions. It really depends on
the news you're breaking and an individual's personality
that's hearing the news. - Oh, I want you to give
me my terminal diagnosis when the time comes. - Tell us where my viewers
can learn more about the things you're involved in. - You can just Google Caitlin mortician or Caitlin Doughty and find me. I have a YouTube channel,
Instagram, Twitter. All the usual things. And if you need a funeral,
Clarity Funerals & Cremation, in Los Angeles, California.
- Oh, links down below! Hashtag not sponsored.
- No, we're not. Yeah, not sponsored by my
very small funeral home. - Does chocolate cause acne or pimples? Click here to find out. Or see what happens when you
hold your pee for a long time. Right here or right here. And as always, stay happy and healthy. (upbeat music)
Caitlin AND Six Feet Under?!? Yes!!!
That show is phenomenal
OMG this beats every crossover there is.
Man, this is the collab I didn't know I needed. I wish it was twice as long, or I hope they do more!
This is what got me to her YouTube channel, where I’ve been binging. And now I’m here. 👋🏼