Go Your Own Way

On Becoming A Record Or Going To Space After Your Death

Hi friends - first episode of my new podcast Death Is Not The End is now online! I would love to hear what you think, and please feel free to share any comments, thoughts or suggestions that this episode evokes in the comments.

Listen to ‘Go Your Own Way’ episode here.

Learn more:

And Vinyly

Celestis Memorial Space Flights

Transcript:

Just remember that death is not the end.

Lo Carmen: Hi.

Despite the name of this podcast, Death Is Not The End, we all know that when confronted with death, of our own or of a loved one, it really is very final. And finding a way of accepting that and moving on is often tremendously difficult for many reasons.

Finding a special way to celebrate and send off our loved ones or planning for our own special future death care is one way to help us move through or towards this transition with more joy and positivity. Even something to become excited about.

In recent years, there's been an explosion of truly amazing things that you can do with cremated remains.

Cremains is the funeral industry term for cremated remains. Or what we, regular people generally call ashes.

They can now be grown into memorial diamonds. Yes, real diamonds. They can be used to make other kinds of memorial jewelry. Or glass paperweights. Or tactile stones that you can hold in your hand. Or they can be exploded in fireworks or bullets. The mind boggles with the amount of things that you can do. They can be used to create memorial reefs that help regenerate ocean life.

And approximately 16 years ago while sitting on the couch in the middle of the night with my small sleepless baby surfing the worldwide web. I first came across an article about a company called And Vinyly that would sprinkle your cremains into a vinyl record.

For those of you that don't know. I'm a musician and music is my life. So my immediate reaction was total relief with the recognition that yes, hallelujah, that's what I want done when I die. I want to be a record. The thought of that just filled me with a peace and joy and felt right. The idea of being buried or cremated or having my ashes scattered had just never really appealed to me. I didn't have any particular place that was important to me. I just couldn't come to terms with the idea of dying really. But as soon as I read about this whole record business, I knew I'd found the right thing for me.

And that made me feel quite positive. Almost excited about it all.

But honestly the whole concept of having ashes placed inside a record seemed so unimaginable as time went on I wondered if maybe I was so tired that I had just hallucinated the whole thing.

I've wondered about it off and on over all of these years, but I never got around to searching for it again. But when I first had the idea for this podcast, I looked And Vinyly up. And found it was real. It still existed. And Jason Leach was the name of the man behind it all. So Jason was the very first person that I reached out to and he kindly agreed to an interview.

I'm in Sydney, Australia, and he's in Scarborough, England. So because of our time differences, I spoke with him bleary-eyed around my 5:00 AM. He'd just finished work and was sitting down with a beer. We had the most wonderful conversation - talking about death seems to cut through superficial chit chat pretty quick and get straight to the heart of the matter.

 I could describe to you how And Vinyly works and how Jason came up with the idea. But I can guarantee you that listening to Jason is going to be far more enjoyable. So here we go.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: And Vinyly is now a company. It was originally an idea for something I wanted to do myself, where I got to the point in my life where I realized I was going to die. I wouldn't live forever. I was sure I would for quite a long time, very much later than I should have done.

I would refuse to admit it. And, my mum suddenly out of the blue, got a job at a funeral directors she's Swiss, so she's very straight up and organized and to the point, shall we say. And, I was in my, what was I, maybe about, I suppose, 35 or something like that, at that age.

And she was saying, look, there's lots of young men your age, young men, middle aged men, who are coming through here, and you need to get yourself, you know, you need to start thinking about what will happen. You know, I'm..

Lo Carmen: Right. So she wasn't suggesting it as a business idea. she was just saying, you need to think about your life…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: You need to think about what's going to happen, yeah, what's going to happen

Lo Carmen: Did you have a family at that point in time?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah, just very young, very, very young family. Um, and so she was saying, you know, you gotta, you gotta think about these things and stop pretending it's not going to happen. So that was going on.

Lo Carmen: What was your reaction to that?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, I mean, this is part of it. My reaction was I just didn't want to think about it. I was like, stop it. I don't want to talk about it. And afterwards I thought, you know, why am I like that? Why do I, why am I sort of palming it off? Why don't I want to talk about it or think about it? And it's obviously [00:06:00] because you're frightened about it and because you've not been faced by it. I, you know, I started thinking more and more about it.

And then when I spoke to my friends and peers, they were like I was, they didn't want to talk about it. I mean, literally they're like, oh God, downer, you know, we're, we're here at the pub. I was like, yeah, but I was just wondering, you know, what do you, and some people would actually get angry if I pushed a bit about what they thought about it, they just didn't want to think about it.

So, I started to get interested from that side.

Lo Carmen: So, would you literally be saying things like, have you thought about what you want to do when you die?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah, I started saying, well, my mum’s been telling me that there's loads of people our age, you know, the shocking amount actually that are coming in, people who just hadn't considered it and thought about it and it becomes a problem, you know, and you know, what do you, what are you going to do? And people just didn't want to think about it. They didn’t. And, you know, we've grown up, you know, without being exposed at all to it, our grandparents and [00:07:00] great grandparents lived in villages. My mum's from the Swiss, I just mentioned that, but yeah, they were surrounded by it, really. Regularly, there'd be somebody they knew who passed away or died. So, it wasn't something that they were pushing to the back of their mind. And, so I started thinking why, wow, this is weird. And this was in about 2005, 2006. So yeah, 35, 36 I was. And around that time, I think I saw on the news, Hunter S Thompson had put his ashes in fireworks, and I thought, wow, that's really cool… so long as it's not raining like it does here all the time. ..

Graham Norton: When he died, the ashes thing. Was that your idea? Were those his wishes? Was that his will?

Johnny Depp: That was his last wish. What he, what Hunter wanted was to be, um, blown out of a 150 foot cannon.And shot into the stratosphere. And, uh, I think [00:08:00] he knew that I was the only one stupid enough to make that happen. And I did.

Graham Norton: Did it work?

Johnny Depp: Oh yeah. Very well.

Lo Carmen: That was Johnny Depp talking about his friend Hunter S Thompson's funeral on the Graham Norton show. Johnny paid $3 million to make Hunter's dreams come true to be shot out of a giant red, white, and blue fist shaped cannon.

This is what that sounds like.

Hunter S Thompson Funeral: Yeah! Red, white, and blue. Yeah! Yeah!

Breathe deep. Breathe deep. Here we go, folks. There's Hunter. That's it. [00:09:00] That was 13.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: That's really good, I do like that because it's kind of, you know…

Lo Carmen: Mm

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: It's something you can plan and it's fun and people who can get it and they can watch what something happen. Um, so I kind of liked that idea and I was just thinking about, I thought, well, you know, I'd like to, you know, I'd like to, I'd like my great, great grandchildren to be able to play a record, hear my voice, hear what I was thinking at the time, what was important to me maybe, what music I liked, maybe a joke at the time, I don't know, anything like that.

I thought, you know, I want to be in a record. So, I started a website with a friend of mine and really it was, it was fun. it was it was full really bad puns, um, which are still, some of them still last, like live on from beyond the groove and R. I. V. and rest in vinyl.

Lo Carmen: You do have some great ones on the website. I'd like to see all the outtakes as…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah [00:10:00] really, I wish, our Flash site is gone now, but the original site is, was, I mean, it wasn't really, like I say, it was not a business. It was not meant to be. It was really me sort of coming to terms and sort of dealing with this. And you know, we even had like a rave yard where there were tombstones with my different labels and they were all flashing in different colors, like a disco. So it was..

Lo Carmen: You could probably, uh, have a huge meme business  now…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, well, I think that I think the website before they existed, every page was one, probably, not that I know exactly what that, what that one is, to be honest, I always ask people, what does that mean? What is it?

Lo Carmen: Your kids would know.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah, they know. And we had these skeletons come down with the t shirts on and then a big flashing sign saying sold out, you know, spelled S O U L D and goodbyes, goodbyes with, you know, as I'll see you later, but a goodbye and we never saw, it was never sort of to sell any, it was just fun, you know, fun with a sort of dark [00:11:00] humor.

Lo Carmen: Irreverent.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yes, and we had 10 steps to immortality with the first step being dying. So that's how it started, but it got huge coverage in the press just from being there and people spotting it. And then just people passing it around. This is very - not very early days of the internet, of course, but it's still, it was well before things like Twitter and things like that.

Lo Carmen: Yeah. Before everyone was 24 hours a day connected.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Exactly. Yeah. So, we were getting lots and lots of people contacting us from magazines and newspapers and radio shows talking about it. And then I started getting people saying, and I put the price just sort of phenomenally high at the time 'cause I didn't want to … it was never meant to be a business. And at the time I was trialling, you know, using ashes from fires and things like that and trying to make records and see how I can make [00:12:00] them work for myself, because that's what I'd put in my will. That's what I wanted to happen to me.

Lo Carmen: Right. So you wanted to see how ashes in vinyl work because people put all kinds of crazy things in vinyl, don't they?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, they can do, you can …

Lo Carmen: …like paint and what other kinds of things?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: You can get colored vinyl and you can get, I mean, I mean, there's all sorts of things that can be done. Ashes, it was a bit of a funny one, depending on what it is. The ashes are … they can be quite gritty or sometimes they're soft and that's fine. So, you've got to make sure it's going to work, you know, it's going to play.

And I got more and more pressure. And then I thought, you know, I was struggling along my music. Vinyl at the time was very much, very unpopular. Like I said, and I felt like it might be on its way out. I actually started a record label at a time called Death to Vinyl, which was, you know, sort of ironic, really, because I love vinyl, but I was sort of thinking, well, you know, it's probably on its way out. Um, more and more pressure [00:13:00] and ended up doing it and I'm now I'm doing it regularly and I've got arrangements set up around the world with funeral directors who are open minded enough to want to offer it.

And a few sort of intermediate parties that offer different things you can do with ashes. And so yeah, we're doing it sort of globally now. And it's something that I'm doing regularly on a regular basis from day to day. I'm working on it sort of pretty much all the time. So it's a crazy, crazy situation really. Because like I say, it was not planned, but it's just ended up being the case.

Lo Carmen: Wow. So people can send you ashes from all around the world, is that right?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah. I mean, the thing is when we make a record, all we use, is about a teaspoon a record. You can't put too much in because it won't play or you risk it not playing. And you want to put enough in so you can see it. Most of our vinyls are clear vinyl or a colored [00:14:00] clear because you really want to be able to see the ash in there.

Lo Carmen: It's very pretty isn't it? It kind of looks like a firework…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: yeah, it's sort of, it's sort of spreads out so it looks, it looks quite good and everyone's different, every single one. Obviously, it's sort of random because it's going through a pressing process so you can't plan how it will come out.

It's not the whole urn, so it's not restricted. You've gotta always check what the rules are in your areas, but generally, if you're trying to send an entire urn, you've got a lot of red tape in most countries and you know, sending it through customs and there's quite a lot involved, some countries more than others. But we're not dealing with that. We're dealing with a very small amount. Generally, most people have between one and well, we tend to, we used to give costs for up to 30 because we never got asked for more than that. Sometimes we do, but generally 10 or 12 is about the maximum, maybe 20 and often [00:15:00] it's one or three or four, you know, that people want.

So, it's a very small amount and those can tend to be sent, you know, they get sent and labelled as what it is on a, on a good courier service it's recorded. So that's how they're sent or sometimes people bring them. You know, I've met customers before.

When we make And Vinyly records, we need to stop all the other productions, we need to because you keep anything like dust and. you know, anything like that away from the process.

Lo Carmen: You want to keep it out!

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yes, you don't, you don't want it in the vinyl, unless you're, making an And Vinyly…

Lo Carmen: But so, with this, do you individually drop…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yes. Yeah. So, we've got, we've got a method of doing it, which we sort of developed, we have a press, which normally they work in series, so you have a number. Records are normally made in thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even.

So, there'll be a lot of presses in a row and they'll all be working at the same time churning them out. [00:16:00] It's quite rare to have a single press that that that works one at a time and that's why we can do this, sort of add these few sort of stages into the process to get the ashes in to the record. So that's how we do it.

Lo Carmen: How did your first customer come about?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: My first customer was an artist called Francesca Grilli and she had, she'd seen the original website and, basically she filmed I think it was a four piece, a quartet, a violin, a cello and something, you know, different, string instruments.

And had some music written and then she was filming them while their instruments and the music was on fire. And then sent me the ashes and then we cut the music that had been played and pressed the ashes in - and we've done a few with her actually, we've done a few different things with her. So that was..

Lo Carmen: People were playing flaming [00:17:00] instruments! What were they wearing?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: They were just looking very serious, as though nothing was going on. It was quite cool. And we've done other art ones as well. But I mean, that was the first one we did. And the first one we did with human ashes was a French lady whose husband had passed away. He was actually younger than me. It was quite sad. And often it is, you know, they're often very touching stories.

Lo Carmen: Mm.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: But they're really cool people often because, you know, to like the idea, they're obviously of a certain ilk, you know. And, I think actually he'd seen the website. He was unwell and he said, that's what I want to do.

And she was one of the ones, I mean, we're in, we're in the UK and she's in France. So, she actually came over with some friends they got the ferry and I met them and picked the ashes up. And then we did the records and then we met them again and gave her the rest of the ashes. So, we did that one sort of like that, very much hands on.

That was the first one we [00:18:00] did. So it was quite nerve wracking because obviously, like I said, I…

Lo Carmen: … handling human ashes for the first time?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Not so much that it was that I hadn't, because it wasn't meant to be a business, I hadn't, you know, I hadn't thought, right, well, if I'm going to be doing this, I've got a responsibility to deal with people who will be mourning and etc. And it sounds sort of bad to say, but I'm very pleased, relieved and proud to say that, you know, I've managed to deal with it very well and everybody so far has been very, very happy. I mean, more than - when we get friends and family of people who just say, thanks so much, we've got this particularly, from sort of friends and extended family, maybe who wouldn't normally have something to remember them by. These are great because they, they might mean more to a friend who's spent the last 20 years with them than maybe their mum or something like this. The mums [00:19:00] obviously, and they're very close family, it's a very different situation and the vinyl might not mean anything to them. They might still have the vast majority of the ashes that they either keep or they've sprinkled or whatever. But for friends and maybe extended family who spent more time socializing with them more latterly, they're very…. yeah.

Lo Carmen: Listening to music together or making music together…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Exactly. So they're a bit more of the moment.

They’re often, you know, it happened to me… I've had two friends who I've made music with pass away in the last sort of 10 years. And one of them particularly, I'd spent the last sort of 20 odd years, almost literally we lived above each other. We went to gigs and touring together and spent every minute of every day for 20 years, but I didn't know his family. You know, it's a hard job to even get along to the service that was offered, you know, because - they didn't know, it wasn't their fault, but they didn't know - I'd never gone and met them I'd never spent any time at his [00:20:00] home. So of course I wasn't actually invited so you who've spent very a lot of time with somebody passed away in the last 20 years might not even go to the service or be able to be part of sort of the farewell, as it were, but so when contact from friends who maybe don't know a close family of someone, they're so appreciative of having something that they can keep.

And, you know, to remember their very close friend by, you know, so these are things that I didn't expect, which we're learning about, you know, as we've, we've been doing what we do.

Lo Carmen: Yes. Right. Oh, that's a really nice kind of side line to it, isn't it? Bringing people together.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah. Well, I really like that. Yeah. Particularly when you discover them and you weren't expecting it, you know, and there are things that you think, wow, it's really, it's good like that. Especially when you've sort of firsthand had experience of that, things like that, that happen all the time.

Lo Carmen: Yeah. Have you [00:21:00] ever worked on somebody that you know, like made a record for someone you know?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, the other, the other person that I made music with Kit, he was -  I mean, Phil was, well, he was almost 60, I think when he died, that's still too young, but Kit was only, I dunno, 34 or something. So, he's way too young. But yeah, I knew his half-brother. I knew lots of his family. We'd all sort of grown up around the same area and they all chipped in to get a record made and we all sort of did it together. So yeah, we did one for Kit, which was great. And he knew about it and was, you know, helped a lot when I was, you know, even when it first started, he initially helped me out, you know, whether it just be sort of coming with me to the record plant to pick them up or make sure that they've been done right or whatever. He was often there because I was yeah playing with him a lot. So, you know, it was, that was [00:22:00] one where yeah, I did with a very close person who I made music with, a friend all my life. So yeah, I've done that too. Yeah.

Lo Carmen: Did you have any kind of mentor to help you with dealing with the death side when you started?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, no…

Lo Carmen: Was it your mum?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Well, no. I mean, I think my mum inadvertently just by the way she is and the fact that she would, she'd come back and no holds barred, just tell me about what was going on in there and the fact that she could deal with it. And like …

Lo Carmen: What was her job there? Was she dealing with the customers?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: She dealt directly with the customers and, you know, sort of was involved sort of right through the of funeral directors business. So I was always very, you know, once she started pushing me about thinking about this, as I said, and then I was just sort of really, sort of really respected her for being able to do it, but then thought, well, it makes sense.

She's, you know, by the way, my mum is, she's so great, you know, and she'd get [00:23:00] the fantastic feedback from families just thought she was great. Cause she could cut through the, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all false, but it was, it was compassionate enough, but, but honest. Yeah. Straight up practical. You know, just, you know, not wasting people's time. I guess I've, I kind of, I kind of naturally got a bit, but also recognize how cool she is in that way and probably sort of use that myself. So, without …  I, you know, I didn't ever have a mentor in particularly, but, and I've said, like I said, I suddenly found myself in a position of responsibility, but I am very sort of - what's the word? -compassionate, sensitive. I am like, you know, I'm aware of these things. If someone's not happy, I can tell. If someone's happy, I can tell as well. And so, yeah, I was, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was pretty good at doing that. And [00:24:00] if anything, I probably, if I'm a bit uncertain, I think about how my mum would deal with it and that would help. That would help me out.

Lo Carmen: Right. That's lovely. What kind of things do people put on the records? Them talking?

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: All sorts of things. Yeah, all sorts, from … it might be them singing a song at Christmas somewhere. It might be their answer phone message. It might be their favorite song. They might be a musician. It might be their music. It might be recordings that were taken maybe when they're recording their children, for example, but they happen to be in the background. They're often very good ones because they weren't thinking of recording themselves. You really get somebody then.

We encourage these sorts of things as well. Like with the sound that if someone really liked I don't know, let's say fishing, for example, we'd say, well, look, go where they like going, record the sound of it.

You know, even if the wind's blowing on their microphone, you know, things [00:25:00] like that, I think are great because it's really good to think about what would mean something to your great, great, great grandchild and, you know, definitely your voice moving the air in a room is. a beautiful thought. You know, I think probably the closest we'll get to time travel, at least for a few hundred thousand years.

I don't know. Recording a minute or two of silence is quite an interesting concept because what is silence but you know just playing silence and just listening to the grooves and the slight little pops and crackles that might well be there on vinyl but might be slightly accentuated by their ash being in because that's them and maybe a bit of a period of, a little moment of thought about the person. We literally had, people left their message they left on their phone, you know, about leaving a message, things like that are quite, quite good. And, you know, they're profound, really, when you, you hear that on a vinyl,

Lo Carmen: Very much.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: You mentioned about planning for yourself. Well, [00:26:00] that's, that's actually, like I said, that's what the, where the whole idea came from, is about me planning for it for myself. That's what the whole original site was about.

Lo Carmen: So, do you have people contact you and say I just want to plan…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're working on quite a few and it's one of those things. It's like people always say, well, what are you going to have on yours? And it's like, well, it's an ever changing compilation, which will be whatever it is when the time comes, because it will never be right. I'll always, if you can look back, God, I wish I hadn't put that on there or whatever, but it's too late for that.

And every, you know, you'll get something will change in your life and this is what I liked about the idea is it's like, well, what do you want to leave? And just thinking like that kind of changes the way you live for the better because you're like, well, how do I want to be remembered?

And what, what do I want to leave? And cause there's nothing, what some weird [00:27:00] Gabber tune from the early nineties or something, you know, you know what, crikey, I better get on with something that I'm proud to leave, you know? So, so the thought of it's quite cool. And the beauty of it is you can design your artwork and design your label. You can decide what audio is going to go on there, and if you've got to that point, which like I say, I don't think I ever will, you can actually, we'll make everything, we'll print the labels, print the sleeves, we'll even make records that are playable, so you'll have finished copies of exactly what you will be in. And you'll have everything ready. The plates will be done. All the cost is done. So, all that needs to happen is to press the records with the ash in, with your involvement as it were ,at the end. So, we can plan them. They're really good in that regard. And people really enjoy the process of planning it, designing the sleeves and doing it is a kind of a good, it's a real nice way of, [00:28:00] um, sort of considering and facing the inevitable. Yeah. And I'm actually working with a, there's a guy used to work for, I used to play for in Switzerland, a really good club there, Bikini Test it was called, and he used to organize the party, he always used to work at an old people's home, and he works there full time now, and he's actually working there, planning something like six or seven And Vinylys with these old people who just love it, because it's giving them something to, you know, think about and they're choosing what goes on and they're looking through their photos and I want this one on there with me and these are people who are sort of, you know, being looked after really in homes.

They might not have family left or they might have some but they can't help them or whatever. So, he's getting really good, he's really enjoying doing that. And the people in there are loving doing it because…

Lo Carmen: I bet. That's beautiful.

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: …where they've obviously grown [00:29:00] up with vinyl so they, so they are really enjoying thinking about, right, what would go on the cover.

Lo Carmen: It would never have occurred to them that they could become a record…

Jason Leach/ And Vinyly: No, exactly. Yeah. In there. So, so they really enjoy that. And I'm loving what I get back from him because he's just saying, they just, I was going, wow, you know, I was going, saying, so well played, because it's a bit risky as someone working there, sort of suggesting it, but they just, they all just love it. It gives them something to sort of focus on enjoy creating really. And so, he's like recording them now and asking them about what they did and memories and things. So, all sorts of things will come out of the woodwork. I'm sure.

My favorite ones are the ones where there's a lot of personal sort of spoken words or environments or those ones I think are amazing because they're going to mean a lot to, you know, I often think, God, I'd love to have my great, great, great granddad's from, you know, [00:30:00] 1700s, you know, and I'm going to be able to leave something that won't rot away.

It will last. Doesn't take up too much space. There's always going to be a record player and someone in 200 years, who's one of my descendants will be able to put me on and play me - it’s pretty cool.

Brandy Clark (sings): … Your life is a record. I'll be the sad song, your good love gone bad song. Part of your heart that's bittersweet. Couldn't be your happy song, but at least we had a song. I'll be the sad song you sing….

Beautiful words from Brandy Clark.

But maybe becoming a record is not [00:31:00] for you. Maybe there's something else that you'd like to do with yourself or with the remains of the person that you love.

Timothy Leary, the American psychologist, futurist writer, researcher and advocate of psychedelic experiences, faced death with an inspiring kind of vigour and sense of adventure.

Before his death, he wrote “Let us have no more pious wimpy talk about death. The time has come to talk cheerfully and joke sassily about personal responsibility for managing the dying process”. And he wrote about finding “creative alternatives to going belly up clutching the company logo of the Christian Cross Blue Cross or Crescent Cross, or the eligibility cards of the Veterans Administration”. He described this kind of approach as “designer dying” and said “it's a hip chic vogue thing to do. It's the most [00:32:00] elegant thing you can do. Even if you've lived your life, like a complete slob, you can die with terrific style.”

One of my favourite things that he said was that “you've got to approach your death the way you live your life. With curiosity, with hope, with fascination, with courage and with the help of your friends”.

I agree, 100% with that. And I find it very beautiful. So, what did Mr. Timothy Leary choose to do when he died?

News Report: Carole Rosin: “Timothy pointed to me and said, I want you to get me into space.” Reporter: And so, 24 families are the first to do something quite extraordinary for their dearly departed loved ones. We're looking at the first launch ever to take cremated remains into space. That's right. Monday, over the Canary Islands, this jetliner launched a Pegasus rocket, which carried those ashes, each in a lipstick sized [00:33:00] vial, into space.

Something this mission's promoters hope will become a new commercial venture. We're right now, uh, taking, uh, contracts for our next mission. The late Gene Roddenberry is the most famous passenger aboard. His widow, Madgell, explains why she took this step. He would have given anything to have been able, just once, to, you know, take that trip or go up into space.

We have ignition and liftoff of Atlantis. Like Roddenberry, all of the others wanted to travel to space while they were alive. Now, for 4, 800, their families made dreams of space come true. My father was an astronaut. He was a dreamer. And, uh, you know, today, his dreams are being realized.

Lo Carmen: That voice we heard at the beginning, there was Carol Rosin. A great friend of Timothy Leary's, who was beside him as he died and reported that his last words were. “Why not. Why not. Why not”. [00:34:00]

Though determined to find a way, she had no idea how to make his space dreams come true, until she heard about Celestis Memorial Space Flights and signed him up for that inaugural launch in April 1997.

Since then Celestis has sent the remains of more than 1700 people into space. They call their customers ‘ashtronauts’. So for many people who've spent their lives looking at the stars and wondering what's out there, it's not only a thrilling way to go, but a dream come true. And a spectacular celebration of life for those left behind. In a 2023 New York Times article that had interviewed people who had opted for what is sometimes called space burial, even though it's actually only a small portion of ashes or DNA that go to space, a pharmacist named Kathleen is quoted as saying, “I love new things. I love trying [00:35:00] new things. To me. It doesn't really feel like an end”.

Another person who said “I'm interested in looking into the unknown, going into the unknown. This is another adventure” explained that they didn't want to “end up underground further inside the planet” when they died. That “that seemed like the wrong direction to go”.

I reached out to Charles Chafer, the CEO of Celestis and asked him if he could break it all down for us.

Charles Chafer: We launch a symbolic portion of cremated remains, humans or pets, or DNA samples into space. And we do that to four different destinations in space. We have a suborbital service that flies to space and returns the individual capsules, creating a flown keepsake. We fly to Earth orbit. We fly to the moon, and we also fly to deep [00:36:00] space. And our service includes a three day activity at the launch site where families from around the world converge. And we conduct a number of activities including launch site tours, memorial services, and then, of course, ultimately witnessing and watching the launch of a loved one into space on a final journey.

Lo Carmen: Sounds incredible. How did you begin your involvement with it? Was it your concept?

Charles Chafer: I traced the idea back to science fiction, at least the 1800s, which isn't surprising given that as you think about humans traveling into space, inevitably you think about, well, people are going to pass away. What do you do? And that was the source of some science fiction.

But the idea really came to us in the mid 1980s from a group in [00:37:00] Florida that had the idea. I was in the rocket business then, launching satellites and everything else, and this group came to us and said, we have this idea to create space funerals. And ultimately, they weren't successful, but in the mid 1990s, I was looking for something that I thought would be interesting to do that would advance humanity into space, and that would be a good business to be in, so a partner and I founded the company in 1994.

Lo Carmen: I can't imagine at that time that there was very many alternative burial options was there?

Charles Chafer: Uh, that's true. I think we were one of the very earliest of what is now a tsunami of alternative options out there. But, you know, we were almost even before the internet when we got, I think we had probably one of the first e commerce websites in history as well.[00:38:00] so yes, you know, we've seen, well, all of the various alternatives that, that are growing rapidly now and we just happened to get out in front of that trend.

Lo Carmen: Was there resistance to the idea of people using cremated ashes to memorialize their loved ones to begin with?

Charles Chafer: Some, yes. I think probably any new idea has people that are doubters, but I think at the time, the cremation rate in our country was only 13, 14 percent, so there were a lot of people that thought cremation was bad, even at that point.

When you get past that, then there were some level of religious objections, not a great amount, and then just other people going, ‘I don't get it’. And of course, we've never said our service is for everyone, but for every person that wondered ‘What are you doing?’ there were at least [00:39:00]another person saying ‘that's the coolest thing I've ever heard of and that's, that's how I want to celebrate my loved one's life’.

Lo Carmen: Yeah. Do you have a lot of people that sign up themselves prior to their deaths?

Charles Chafer: Yeah, in the language of funeral service it’s called prearrangement. And we actually have offered that service where people make a decision ‘This is what I want. I want to take the burden off my family. When I pass away, I want to make sure that it's done the way I want it to be done’.

And so, they sign a contract with us and we have a trust account where we put the majority of the funds that they send us into a trust account so that everybody knows when the time comes, the funds will be there to perform the service. And that's actually been growing, fairly significantly in the last two or three years.

I think as, as we mentioned, now that there are [00:40:00] several demographic factors. The cremation rate in this country is now in most places over 50%. And it will be, people predict 80 percent within a decade. So that's a trend. Then there's the trend of baby boomers and making decisions differently than say their parents.

So, the notion of, you know, bury me next to grandma and the family plot in the church cemetery, that's not as popular with, with people now as, as, hey, I want to do something that's meaningful to me and I have that option and that's the third change is all of a sudden there are options to do things differently.

So, you put all three of those things together. It's, I think, quite predictable in hindsight, obviously, but we also saw it coming, that the service would, would appeal to people. I say, you know, it appeals to anybody that walks out on a starry night [00:41:00] and looks up and says, that's where I want to be.

Lo Carmen: I think it's also such a beautiful thing when, you know, kids look up to the sky all the time and go, there's grandma, it makes that very real.

Charles Chafer: Yes, it does. I think, I think that's a big motivation for people. Because, you know, funerals are for the living, after all. And so, uh, the fact that people gain comfort. And I, you know, our launch events are really pretty amazing. And if you've never been to one, it's hard to put into words, but I tell people you don't ever see as much cheering and high fiving at a funeral as you do at one of our services.

Because there's a genuine thrill of, you know, mom's going to orbit kind of thing and we can all be there to, to wish her off, which you just don't get in the more traditional choices.

Lo Carmen: It must change the focus so much from - I mean, obviously there's still sadness, but it must add such a celebratory angle to [00:42:00] it.

Charles Chafer: Exactly. You know, we can't get rid of grief. Grief is still a part of what everybody goes through, but we bring a lot of joy and fulfillment to the ceremony, and that makes everybody feel good, and I think that's why people choose it.

Lo Carmen: Yeah, that makes complete sense. Who were the early adopters? What kind of people? Was it people that were fascinated by science fiction and space?

Charles Chafer: Yeah, the people that have always been interested in the space program. Same people that make the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum here in America, the second most visited museum in the world, certainly those folks, we’re a natural for airplane pilots. We all call each other space geeks, because I'm one. There are the people that have followed Star Trek and science fiction and that all their lives. And that's a pretty big group also. And then there's just [00:43:00] the folks I call the New Agers, which are just the folks that, that say that, you know, that's where I belong.

Lo Carmen: There's a connection between death and space in that they're both so unknowable and mysterious and they kind of go beautifully together, don't they?

Charles Chafer: I think so, yeah. And, you know, there's the infinite frontier and the sort of opportunity to just be a part of something, that's infinite. That appeals to folks also.

Lo Carmen: To become part of the cosmos.

Charles Chafer: Right. It's, it's very similar to, in some ways, to people that want to be scattered at sea. It's the same sort of feeling of being part of something, that's, organic and larger than you and not necessarily being under the ground somewhere. I think those are all elements that the folks that do choose our service, I think that's pretty universally true.

Lo Carmen: Mm, a great [00:44:00] sense of release and being at one with the universe.

Charles Chafer: Right, exactly, yeah.

Lo Carmen: Can people do it like years after somebody's died with the ashes? Does that happen?

Charles Chafer: Oh, sure. Yeah, in fact, when we first put our business plan together, we, you know, we had built all of these assumptions and, that it would be, you know, white, male, aerospace people living on the coast. And the first person that bought our service was a woman in Nebraska who had her father in an urn for 10 years and she heard about us and said that would just be perfect for dad. So, he never knew that that was what was going to be but it really appealed to his daughter and you know, ten years later he went to space!

Lo Carmen: Must have been very tricky setting up your business plan and getting it in place with nothing to go on.

Charles Chafer: [00:45:00] It was, I guess something you do when you're the age that I was when we did it. But also remember that there had been that earlier attempt when that group came to us. And I saw how popular it was. Even though those, that group didn't make it. I think they were a little early. There wasn't as much ability to get to space back then as there is now. And so, we knew sort of viscerally that it would appeal to people. But understanding all of the ins and outs, the regulation or lack of regulation, the processes all had to be set up.

We had to convince aerospace companies, which next to funeral service companies are among the most conservative companies out there, to take our money, you know, that, that was not always easy in the early days either. So, there were, there were some, some challenges and then [00:46:00] getting known. And fortunately, our very first mission was ended up being very high profile.

We had The Star Trek creators, Gene Roddenberry's, ashes, and we had, the 60s icon Timothy Leary's ashes on board. And when we did the launch, we actually flew out of the Canary Islands and, it caught the world's imagination. we really had a lot of media coverage. We were on the front page of the New York Times.

CNN covered it live around the world. And so, being able to kind of get noticed early on really helped the process also.

News Report: LSD Guru Timothy Leary's final trip began on a flight from the Canary Islands. The plane bore a rocket containing his ashes, along with those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, [00:47:00] and 22 other people. At 37, 000 feet, the rocket detached from the jet and blasted into the heavens. It was a flawless start to the world's first space funeral.

The successful launch ensured that Leary, who famously told young Americans in the 60s to Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Got his dying wish to travel the universe. Seconds after it detached, the rocket's engine ignited, catapulting it and its precious cargo into outer space. The company which arranged the funeral and Spanish space agency officials watching from Earth were delighted.

And arrangements are underway for another space funeral in September.

Lo Carmen: Is it something that you will do for yourself?

Charles Chafer: Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm, I fit all of our models. I've been interested in space my whole life. I've been in the space industry my whole life. I've definitely chosen cremation as my [00:48:00]final disposition, and I can't imagine a more appropriate service, even if it wasn't my company. I'm sure I would seek it out and do it.

Lo Carmen: How often do space flights happen? Do you have to plan way in advance?

Charles Chafer: We're what always fly – it’s what's called a secondary payload. And what that means is we are not the primary reason that anybody's doing a launch. And so, we kind of have to recognize our spot in line. And we therefore have to have everything prepared and ready to go months, six months, seven months, eight months in advance of the launch. And then once we've turned it over to the provider, be it a satellite or a launch vehicle, then we have to do a fair amount of preparation for the three day events that we hold at the launch site.

And of course, launches move around, and we don't dictate when the launch goes. We have to, [00:49:00] it goes whether we're ready or not, or sometimes it goes after we're ready.

If you're looking for a guaranteed time that this is going to launch into space, you need to look elsewhere. You need to have a whole lot more money.

Lo Carmen: How does it work? Do you put the DNA or the ashes in a small, like test tube size capsule?

Charles Chafer: Yeah. Yes. Pretty close to that. So, each person gets an individual, what we call flight capsule, and now we do have a service where two can fly together, husband and wife want to fly together, intermingled, whatever, we do offer that.

But typically, it's in a capsule that ranges in size and people decide, because we only launch a small portion of the ashes, it's more memorialization than final disposition. People decide if they want the what I would call a fat watch battery size, ranging up to a lipstick container size. [00:50:00] And once they've selected that we'll engrave the name or names on that capsule, seal it, and then we aggregate however many people are on that flight. And that's then turned over to whoever is doing what's called the integration. And that's the attachment of our capsules either to a satellite or directly to a rocket. We do both. And, then the long, you know, from there on it's, it's, we have nothing to do with it.

We, we're not allowed to touch the machinery. The head of that, the satellite company came out and said, ‘we don't consider your loved ones as passengers. We consider them as crew’ and the reason for that is because they use the weight of the, whatever we provide, to help balance the spacecraft. Spacecrafts have to spin and they have to be properly balanced.

And so, they often [00:51:00] actually put extra weight on to make sure everything is balanced. In this case, our folks were serving the function of balancing the spacecraft. And families love that because not only are their loved ones going, but they're an integral part of a real mission.

Lo Carmen: There's nothing nicer than to be of use is there?

Charles Chafer: Yeah, that's right.

Kacey Musgraves (sings): So you can have your space, cowboy, I'm not gonna fence you in. Go and ride away, in your Silverado, I'll see you around again….

Lo Carmen: So there you have it.

William Shatner: I wanted to go into space. I wanted to feel the essence of space and see what weightlessness was. And then I picture myself looking down at Earth. The blue orb.[00:52:00]

Down here, and then right down here. Who said it? Alan Shepard. That's right. He said, let's light this candle. Oh, let's light this candle. And that's what you're going to be feeling when you're sitting in that capsule. Oh, let's light this candle. Let's light this candle. Oh, how I wanted there to be a rocket.

Let's light this rocket.

Lo Carmen: That little excerpt of William Shatner speaking was from his documentary You Can Call Me Bill a documentary that he calls his way of reaching out after his death.

And what I've learned from exploring the wonderful world of things that you can do with cremains is, that the only way to go, is to go your own way.

Hope to see you next time. On Death Is Not The [00:53:00] End.

If you want to talk with some other interested listeners, you can head on over to my Substack newsletter, that is locarmen.substack.com. There's a section there called Death Is Not The End where I will be opening up the conversation. And if you have anything that you'd like to add or suggest or share, or just want to put some ideas out there and communicate with some other people that might also be curious, please head on over.

You can look in the show notes for further information about how to get in touch with anyone that we've heard from in an episode, and you can read more about anything that we might've discussed in today's episode.

The theme music for Death Is Not The End was composed and performed by Peter Head. The artwork was created by Craig Waddell. Death Is Not The End is a Black Tambourine Productions production. It was written and recorded and edited by [00:54:00] little old me. All conversations have been edited for clarity and time. And the repertoire on this recording was licensed by Apra Amcos

This beautiful instrumental version of Go Your Own Way was performed by William Tyler. Check him out. He's fantastic. Bye.