Penn & Teller: Bull! 2x9

1. A big difference between humans and animals, like little Bon-Bon

2. here is that animals don't fret about what happens to them after they're dead.

3. They're interested in staying alive.

4. Bon bon here.

5. Does he even know enough to care what happens to him after death?

6. Because he doesn't even know he's going to die?

7. Humans don't just try to stay alive.

8. We worry about what.

9. Happens to our dead. Bodies.

10. We stick our marinated meat in caskets that cost as much as cars,

11. and we stash our ashes in marble urns and mausoleums.

12. Some people even sell themselves the idea that death is just an illusion

13. that will all come back, and everything will be just like

14. it used to be.

15. Now Bon Bon.

16. Knows the answer to life's great mystery.

17. While he was alive, he had the right idea.

18. Living is what matters. And the rest.

19. Will be bullshit.

20. Ha ha ha.

21. This has.

22. An. Boo

23. boo boo boo boo boo.

24. Who? Do you.

25. In America, we see death as almost optional.

26. We don't look at it.

27. We don't talk about it.

28. It's uncomfortable for us.

29. I think most people don't

30. even think about death.

31. I think that death has become,

32. a taboo issue over the years in this culture particularly.

33. It used to be something people dealt with in their homes.

34. It's been taken out of the home.

35. And it scares us and we don't want to look at it.

36. We don't want to know about it.

37. Partly, I think, because of the evil eye concept, that if you talk about it,

38. it might happen.

39. Well, tonight we're going to talk about it.

40. Until the beginning of the 20th century, people saw death all the time.

41. Cool.

42. You hoped and planned on dying at home.

43. Our own family cleaned and dressed our body and put it in the parlor.

44. That was the formal room where you celebrated serious occasions.

45. Your friends came by your home and paid their respects to your dead body

46. before they buried your family.

47. Kept you around long enough to give you a chance to wiggle if you weren't dead.

48. I mean, people back then were real pussies about being buried alive

49. when everyone was sure you were toast.

50. They planted you.

51. Then around 1910, fashion magazines started promoting a new style of home

52. decor.

53. They decreed that exhibiting dead bodies in the home was disgusting and even worse.

54. Old fashioned Ladies Home Journal said the traditional parlors should be banished

55. and replaced with a cozy, modern place called the Living Room.

56. The name itself is a big fuck you to dead people.

57. The PR worked.

58. Housewives threw away their heirlooms and bought a lot of fashionable new

59. furniture, and the funeral home business was born.

60. It's kind of a bummer.

61. Now we no longer see death in a familiar setting that makes it

62. less real, and makes some people more than a little crazy.

63. Like this whack job.

64. We buried a mind, body, and spirit convention in Los Angeles,

65. and for a few bucks, he'll tell you that he doesn't believe in death.

66. And he won't ever, ever, ever die.

67. I don't believe in death.

68. I will never, ever, ever die.

69. See, I told you money. We talked.

70. If you choose.

71. To be alive and you choose life, you get rid of all the death urges from your.

72. Body.

73. You'll never die.

74. Nobody can die unless he believes in death.

75. If we do another 40 or 50 seasons of bullshit,

76. we'll have the pleasure of proving him wrong.

77. Please show time.

78. Please, please, please.

79. You know, for science.

80. But he's not the only person claiming immortality.

81. I'm dark rose.

82. I'm down on the desk, and we're vampires. Yup.

83. But rescue and dark Rose.

84. They call themselves vampires.

85. They claim to embrace the death esthetic, and they found themselves

86. a whimsical dentist.

87. And I feel to embrace death is to embrace life.

88. If you're not afraid of death, if you know what's coming,

89. you can push the boundaries in life.

90. And why aren't they afraid of death?

91. They believe in reincarnation.

92. We're pretty sure that some sort of Buddhist thing.

93. But Buddhist clothes and teeth aren't nearly as sexy or cool.

94. If you're quite yourself with reincarnation.

95. There is an energy inside, inside you.

96. It's the life energy.

97. And when the body dies, the energy has to go somewhere else

98. or turn into something else.

99. The energy can't die, can only be transformed.

100. I mean, an energy cannot, cannot die.

101. That's close to what Big Daddy Einstein said.

102. But he wasn't talking about you.

103. Man, it is tough to be a scary dark lord when you got that weird lisp.

104. But I guess you're supposed to have the Transylvania accent to cover that up.

105. I was just.

106. A lot of us have been to a funeral home,

107. usually during a very difficult time in our life.

108. It's normally a very painful, unhappy experience.

109. Yeah, it's pretty grim.

110. But let's take away the sad music and put on some happy,

111. happy music.

112. Gee, isn't that better?

113. Totally changes the mood.

114. And that coffin.

115. No guy with wacky teeth and a speech impediment in there.

116. It's just an overpriced box.

117. It would make a nice coffee table.

118. And here's the funeral director. See?

119. No hunchback.

120. He looks kind of like Andre Agassi.

121. Kinda.

122. This is the embalming room.

123. This is where we do the preparation of the body.

124. this is where we do the embalming.

125. the restorative artwork.

126. Looks kind of like the inside of the McDonald's kitchen.

127. This machine there that you see is is actually an embalming machine.

128. It's the ejection machine that we use when we do in the involving.

129. Looks a lot like a smoothie machine.

130. And look what's just arrived. A dead guy.

131. No big deal.

132. Hey. That guy. Want a smoothie?

133. Matt is coming back from a hospital with a, person who recently expired.

134. Because we're not going to be embalming.

135. We're going to be putting it into the refrigeration unit.

136. And locking him in

137. on the off chance that maybe he's not so dead.

138. Wait, aren't we going to get to see a dead body?

139. We got to see a dead body.

140. Most people haven't been around a dead body.

141. And there's a lot of, sort of fear and anticipation.

142. I'm Mary Roach, I'm the author of Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

143. The first time you have to see a dead body,

144. you're not sure how you're going to react.

145. And is it going to be creepy? Let's find out.

146. This is an actual dead body.

147. See? Nothing creepy here. Oh, okay.

148. It is a little creepy.

149. Where's our happy music?

150. Oh. It's much better.

151. Everyone knows they're going to end up dead,

152. but no one really wants to think about it.

153. And it's a very, visceral reminder that this is where everybody ends up.

154. The reality is, is

155. that being in denial doesn't stop death.

156. David Kessler, writer, teacher and counselor to the dying and their families.

157. In fact, I often tell families that if denial of death in America

158. kept people alive, we'd have a pretty crowded street to walk on.

159. But that's not the case.

160. 2.5 million Americans die every year,

161. and the average funeral costs nearly $10,000.

162. That means the funeral business is a $25 billion a year industry.

163. The biggest player in the field is Service Corporation International

164. in Houston, Texas.

165. They call him funeral Consolidators, who have been buying up

166. small mom and pop funeral homes for the last four decades.

167. And they have made huge, profits from,

168. from selling death, what they call death care.

169. This is Robert Bryce.

170. He's a journalist who's been investigating sky's business practices for years.

171. Service Corporation International is the biggest of all the funeral consolidators.

172. Right now, they have about 2400 funeral homes, 500 cemeteries

173. and about 200 crematoria in eight countries all around the world.

174. According to Bryce.

175. NCI has been sued over 350 times.

176. They had 100 law firms under contract just to protect them

177. from all the litigation from misplaced bodies,

178. Boston bombings, botched cremations.

179. What could possibly be a more painful, problem for a person

180. than to have the funeral of their loved one be mishandled?

181. Okay, that sounds pretty bad, but what's the state of the rest of the

182. funeral home industry?

183. Nearly every family is ripped off by nearly

184. every mortician in every community in the U.S..

185. Fuck.

186. I'm Henry Solecki, a Catholic priest for 40 years.

187. Father Henry has made a career out of crusading against the funeral industry.

188. How pissed is a priest have to be to appear on our show?

189. That is one angry due to the cloth.

190. It was about 20 years into my priesthood

191. when I figured out that

192. the morticians were ripping off every family we had.

193. This industry has a history and continues to do so today.

194. Of not really informing consumers of all of the options that they have.

195. Darryl Roberts,

196. former death care entrepreneur, turned death care consumer advocate.

197. My name is.

198. For 35 years, Darryl Roberts owned 27 cemeteries and five funeral homes.

199. Now he's working on the other side to make funeral homes behave.

200. He's probably just flip to get on Bullshits good side.

201. And I can appreciate that you don't want your prices published, but it's the law.

202. Now it's time for us to do some digging on our own.

203. After all, we're not going to just

204. trust the whistleblower and some tough talking priest.

205. There's so many tricks of the trade to the funeral industry.

206. today, as we go undercover, we'll probably see a few consumer advocate.

207. Karen Leonard

208. helped us put a funeral home investigation together with her friend Jane.

209. What I try to do is investigate complaints that people have,

210. and we try to find the good guys from the bad guys and expose them.

211. Nope.

212. Nothing wrong with your TV.

213. My lawyer made us do this.

214. He said 72 lawsuits were enough, and we were hoping

215. to have more than C.I..

216. One of the funeral industry's most lucrative tricks

217. is selling expensive caskets with huge markups to.

218. Okay, okay.

219. If we were 60 minutes, we'd have a better sound guy.

220. They'll have 2 or 3 low priced caskets that really don't look good

221. and maybe even a little damaged.

222. They put them in a dark corner

223. and then they only put the more expensive caskets are better lit,

224. and they're shown in a way that encourages the consumer to buy them.

225. It's no different than going to a car dealership from across

226. the country to hear someone say to you,

227. do you want the $500 standard plain casket?

228. Or do you want the eternal love model that we have for $5,000?

229. That's wrong to do that to someone who's emotionally fragile.

230. Morticians were making three four, or $5,000 on caskets

231. that wholesale for less than $1,000.

232. But money is the last thing they want you to think about.

233. Listen to what this weaselly funeral director said when he gave us

234. the price list.

235. I find that you don't really want to say this.

236. Only it's like a bloody weasel.

237. And we're making him sound like a cartoon chipmunk.

238. Let the punishment fit the crime

239. on their price list.

240. You can see they sell something called the silver Pearl casket for $3,095.

241. On the worst day of your life.

242. The thing you're not going to do is go price shopping.

243. Well, it isn't the worst day of our lives, so that's what we did.

244. We found the same casket for 33% less on the internet.

245. To be fair, we found the same online discounts for ceiling fans.

246. Man, the fucking internet is great.

247. Grieve in the way that makes you happy.

248. Sounds whacked, but it isn't.

249. The funeral isn't for the dead.

250. It's for the living.

251. We thought it'd be nice.

252. We die for you all to get some fun out of it.

253. So we bought a grave plot, the Forest Lawn Memorial

254. Park in the Hollywood Hills, and we set up a grave marker.

255. Take some serious scam.

256. And to get a grave when you're not dead.

257. But you're not playing with fucking kids here.

258. We're Penn and Teller.

259. We did all the hard work.

260. And here's how you use it.

261. Take a friend, a pen, an envelope, any pack of cards.

262. And the camera to Hollywood.

263. As you plan your day of sightseeing, make sure you stop for something to eat

264. because you'll be doing a lot of walking later

265. when your pal isn't looking.

266. Take the three of clubs out of your pack and put it face down

267. under the envelope you've brought.

268. Now hand your friend the pack of cards and say, hey, what is he, a card trick?

269. Bribe him if you have to.

270. Tell your dear sucker to shuffle to his heart's content

271. because you really, really want a random card.

272. Have him deal cards face down

273. till he feels the impulse to stop, or he just wants to get the trick over with.

274. Now you're going to distract him while you do the dirty business.

275. Hand in the pen and simultaneously ask him what time it is

276. while he's fucking with the pen and checking his watch.

277. You drop the envelope with a card under it onto the top of his pile.

278. Get it?

279. Get it.

280. The top card of the random pile is now the three of clubs.

281. Yeah, you're doing a magic trick.

282. Tell your pal to write the date and the exact time on the outside of the envelope.

283. Then have him put the last card, delve into the envelope,

284. seal it and stick it in his pocket.

285. Promise him you'll finish the trick later.

286. The hard part is done.

287. It's clear sailing from here on in.

288. Make sure you put Forest Lawn Memorial

289. Park in the hills of Burbank on your sightseeing agenda.

290. Check out the graves of some of the great old time movie stars buried there.

291. You know, Laurel and Hardy and ship.

292. Then find your way past the Old North Church to the second tiered garden.

293. Our grave is about halfway down the left

294. as you walk down the path.

295. Ask your friend if he heard about how Penn and Teller were beaten to death

296. by vengeful chiropractors, water bottlers, and drunks pointing to the grave.

297. Look puzzled. Wait.

298. Let your friend get the idea to check the card in the envelope

299. as he opens it.

300. Camera ready?

301. It's the best photo op in the Hollywood Hills.

302. Up here is a map of exactly where our grave is.

303. If you haven't recorded this show, just pick up a copy of show.com.

304. Incidentally, we're not actually dead yet. We.

305. We recorded this show before we aired the animal rights show.

306. Please do us one favor.

307. Remember, this is a real cemetery.

308. Some of the other folks here. Honestly, no kidding in mourning.

309. So don't cackle too loudly when the punchline hits.

310. Remember, grieve in the way that makes you happy.

311. Death doesn't always have to be morbid and sad.

312. I don't think death is as bad as we all make it out to be.

313. That's Toni Reese.

314. She was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago.

315. In my medical records, it says I'm incurable.

316. I became incensed when I looked at my medical records,

317. and I went to my doctor and I said, I want this changed.

318. And he goes, what do you want me to put?

319. I said, I want you to write Incurably Alive.

320. If I go out, I'm going out laughing.

321. I'm not about to let cancer get the better of me.

322. So I'm going to make jokes

323. about my body, about jokes about my surgery, jokes about my death.

324. And that's exactly what I do on a day to day basis.

325. But despite her positive attitude,

326. even Tony has had her run ins with the death mongers.

327. I wanted to know about things like embalming

328. and you know how they were going to put me in the casket

329. and it know what happens to a person when they die, you know?

330. How do you treat them? You know?

331. How do you dress them?

332. And they were appalled that I would ask such questions.

333. They actually got really defensive on me.

334. And they kept saying, well, you don't understand.

335. You're going to be dead.

336. And I said, no, I understand perfectly.

337. I'm going to be dead.

338. But you're putting these priceless out at me.

339. Why can't I ask you what it is you're going to do to me?

340. Okay.

341. Tony may be a hoot, but not as big as these two hooters.

342. Here's a poem dark Rose wrote about death.

343. We give relief and renewal to weary souls.

344. The darkness of death is our domain.

345. The joy of rebirth is our gift.

346. We are the eternal spirit. Yep.

347. She's embraced all the trappings of death.

348. Even better, she sucks blood.

349. Oh, this is really sexy.

350. I mean, creepy but sexy and creepy.

351. And, well, it's really sexy, you know?

352. Sexy and creepy.

353. Of. Meanwhile, back on our investigation,

354. we discovered another bit of dubious marketing involves cremation.

355. You're directly mentioning that without all that starts at $1,205.

356. Here in the Phoenix area, cremation ranges from $339

357. to 3800 for the same thing.

358. Holy shit.

359. In other words, you get burned twice.

360. But whatever you pay, at least you can be sure that your loved one

361. is being taken care of by highly paid and skilled professionals

362. who take pride in their work.

363. Some people say, how?

364. How can I make sure that I get my husband's ashes back

365. if I have him cremated?

366. And I tell them there's no way they may be paying

367. some minimum wage people to run the oven, and

368. they may just think it's kind of a joke to mix up bodies.

369. And that's a fine job.

370. Just not at that price.

371. Inside the funeral home.

372. Here's what we were told about.

373. Cremation has made a California sex a full body.

374. The price paid to hold our tiny

375. container it to extremely.

376. Meaning it can't be burned up unless they put you inside something first.

377. So you'd probably want some kind of cardboard box, right?

378. I mean, who cares?

379. It's just going to get burned up anyway.

380. Inside the container.

381. But the suspected that they make a left have now kind of container,

382. which is a little sturdier.

383. What's happening with $45?

384. You have the ceramic bowl and then you put in some medium

385. and then it's a light toy which is a little more expensive.

386. 1350 bucks.

387. And you chucked it into the fire.

388. How does it seem so serene?

389. And listen as the funeral director pitches some more high priced kindling.

390. So people can come out of that processed wood.

391. A thicker pillow, just in case your loved one isn't all the way dead.

392. You want that extra comfort.

393. It's tossed into the fire.

394. Talk about a colossal waste of your inheritance.

395. You might as well just set up big pile of money on fire in their honor.

396. If the consumers were not operating under such an emotional stress,

397. they would probably make different decisions.

398. Yeah, when we're emotional, we make bad financial decisions.

399. Same thing when we're horny.

400. But that's another show.

401. There are very few bad decisions more expensive than cryonics,

402. which is the process of freezing dead people

403. so that maybe they can be restored to life at a later time.

404. But before we totally dismiss the science of turning humans

405. into popsicles, let's take a serious look at it then.

406. And only that, we have gathered all the relevant facts.

407. Will we piss all over it?

408. Okay, here's cryonics in a nutshell die.

409. Get frozen. Maybe. Possibly. Unfucking likely.

410. Could find some time in the future when doctors have a cure for what killed him.

411. Why the chance to come back to life?

412. You have the chance if you're buried, if you cremated.

413. There's no possibility you're going.

414. You're coming anywhere.

415. Hi, I'm John Siegel, president of Trans Time Incorporated.

416. Trans time is a cryonics company in San Francisco.

417. We want to do

418. the interview at their office, but they insisted we meet at this hotel.

419. Well, Mr.

420. Perez, how does cryonics work? Yes. When you.

421. When you stop living,

422. we get you, we get we have a response team that comes out.

423. They get ice on your body.

424. They, you know, they want you to happen to stop the blood

425. from clotting and so forth.

426. And again, Mark is, is is is a better scientific person at this line.

427. Who's Mark.

428. Oh here he is.

429. He's a real scientist on Trans Times board of directors.

430. They get your body ready, they get antifreeze ready?

431. Sure. Antifreeze.

432. What else would it be? You know. I'll let him.

433. I'll. I'll let him explain the exact part of that,

434. because that's an important thing.

435. Maybe we should hear from Mark.

436. How the physical process of cryonic suspension,

437. involves taking a person that wants to be suspended,

438. and as soon as they are declared legally dead,

439. lowering their body temperature, ultimately to cryogenic temperatures,

440. which is 321°F below zero, very, very cold.

441. Mark is better.

442. This he knows.

443. 321 below is very, very cold. There.

444. Put in a large thermos bottle, a stainless steel insulating container

445. until perhaps they can be revived and reanimated to health.

446. And who is going to bear the expense of the reanimation?

447. The most likely candidate is some future evil scientist

448. looking for untraceable slave labor.

449. As of today, only one person is trusted.

450. Trance. Time to cryogenically freeze them.

451. It's the oldest brother who died unexpectedly in 2003.

452. Oh, and to be fair, Trans Time is another frozen client.

453. The owner's brothers dog.

454. I think you know what, Mark would be probably better to go

455. through the whole medical part of that fuck Mark.

456. Okay, suppose I decide to do this?

457. Does it work?

458. Is it a guarantee? No, there's no guarantee.

459. Cryonics is an untested science.

460. No guarantee I'm tested.

461. No. Smart, unwise.

462. Chronic is a problem because they can't deliver.

463. Wallace Sampson, editor in chief, scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.

464. They're banking on.

465. Someone in the distant future.

466. Solving the problem. Of,

467. falling

468. and the problems of the degeneration.

469. Of proteins that are damaged by ice crystals.

470. All you have on thawing is mush.

471. And how much does it cost to be filled with antifreeze?

472. Put in a giant thermos,

473. have my proteins damaged by ice crystals and turned into mush.

474. When I fall. Between 100 and 30150,000.

475. Icy mama, that's a lot of bags of ice.

476. Penn and Teller present the whole cryonics kit.

477. Is your pet looking a little old and tired,

478. worried that squeaky won't make it to the next millennium.

479. Maybe you can save him.

480. The cryonics home kit comes with a quart of liquid nitrogen

481. and a -321°F.

482. It's very, very cold, so your pet will be frozen in an instant.

483. Oh, he's an eager customer.

484. He's now becoming, boss of the future.

485. Maybe in your lifetime, we'll solve the problems of mouse aging.

486. Then, for a reasonable fee to be determined at the time,

487. Penn and Teller will bring your mouse back from the.

488. I'm sorry, teller.

489. I just wanted to suggest that one of the bigger problems with cryonics.

490. Good thing that wasn't a real mouse.

491. See where we're kidding?

492. We would never freeze alive.

493. 000, now,

494. that mouse also knows the answer to life's great misery.

495. When someone figures out a way to bring that mouse back,

496. then you might want to get in line to freeze your head.

497. Until then, if you've got too much money and you feel like you're close to dying,

498. well, hookers is always a good answer.

499. Okay. Hey.

500. Okay, let's get back to our investigation.

501. The most egregious thing that the industry does is to sell

502. sealer caskets or, quote, protective caskets.

503. The sealer casket has a small rubber gasket around the perimeter of the lid.

504. Once you put a dead guy

505. in one of these, the theory goes he can't be harmed by anything.

506. And it cost two, three, $500 more

507. than the very same casket without this protective seal.

508. You're dead. So it's already a stupid idea.

509. But obvious. Stupid aside, guess what?

510. It doesn't work.

511. Putting the gasket on does absolutely nothing

512. to prevent the ordinary decomposition of the human body.

513. But they can sell it by

514. saying you would like to have your loved one protected, wouldn't you?

515. And that's exactly what we were told.

516. Was the seal for the postmaster.

517. Maybe.

518. So what she didn't mention is what the gasket keeps em.

519. This turns the casket into a pressure cooker.

520. And you know why you use pressure cookers?

521. You're trying to tenderize the meat.

522. Get this.

523. When you spring for the extra gasket to seal up your casket.

524. The digestive enzymes and bacteria that normally

525. inhabit humans every day continue their work.

526. Instead of digesting your food, they digest you.

527. Your internal organs liquefy within two weeks of death.

528. All of this digested bloody goo comes out.

529. Any opening in your body, the gases inside of your body

530. that don't make it out of your nose here to build up until your body splits

531. open, spilling your mostly digested insides into the coffin.

532. So much for that extra comfort padding

533. when the gases build up well, a casket is structurally sound

534. is, say, a champagne bottle, so sometimes they just explode.

535. What do you think?

536. Worth the extra 300 bucks?

537. We think so.

538. The gases inside the casket, since they cannot escape

539. in some instances, will absolutely explode, blowing the casket apart.

540. And your arms, which are now mush squirt out of the casket.

541. Toughen up Padre, it's just rotting meat.

542. We're digging this.

543. Hey, do you have, do you have another shot of that, sucking

544. hot vampire?

545. Oh. Thank you.

546. Okay, so we've heard the cool horrors.

547. What do you do about it?

548. First, remember the happy music?

549. That's good.

550. Next, plan ahead.

551. Tell someone what you want in a funeral before you die,

552. and make it clear the details aren't that important.

553. If you really want that silver pearl coffin,

554. find it yourself and leave the web address in your will.

555. Third, shop around.

556. Buying a funeral is a lot like getting a prostitute.

557. If you keep looking, you'll eventually find one

558. or do what you want for the price you can afford and forth.

559. When you're planning a funeral for a loved one,

560. go with a third party who's not emotionally involved.

561. And for Christ's sake, listen when they say your grandpa doesn't need

562. a painting of the Last Supper on his casket.

563. Oh, and you might try taking the advice of our vampires.

564. I mean, if you're scared to death of death,

565. you know you're just going to sit in your house

566. and, you know, underneath the covers

567. and not enjoy anything that life, you know, does have to offer.

568. There's so many things in life

569. that people overlook because they are walking around scared,

570. just really embrace life and do what you want to do.

571. It may be hard to admit, but the dead are dead.

572. Nothing you can do will please them.

573. Ashes don't know if you're in a marble urn or an old Starbucks cup.

574. The time to treat people right is when they're alive.

575. A ham sandwich, a soda, and a joke now

576. mean more to your loved ones than a $10,000 coffin after they're dead.

577. Okay, which brings to mind one more thing.

578. If you're still lucky enough to be able to do it, call your mother.

579. Yeah.

580. Right now,

581. you don't know anyone in the credits, and they'll be pretty much the same next

582. week. So?

583. So call your mom now.

584. Pay cash.

585. Back.

586. You know.