This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 845, one taboo topic that Americans avoid.
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How do Americans view death?
Find out today in our traditions, our phrases, and our awkward conversations.
And come back to our blog to tell us about your culture.
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How's it going, Michelle?
Hey, Lindsay.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
How are you?
Well, I'm doing well today.
This episode's coming out on November 16th, but today is actually November 1st which, I believe, which is the day after Halloween.
And I believe it's also a big day.
Isn't it the Day of the Dead in Mexico?
Is that right?
I...
I think it is.
Is it today or is it also the 31st?
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm just doing a little Wikipedia.
You guys can correct us if we are wrong.
It's somewhere around October 31st, November 1st, November 2nd, the day of the Deda holiday celebrated throughout Mexico.
So if you guys are from Mexico, let us know.
But today we're talking about the topic of death.
Geez, big topic, huh.
Lots of fun to talk about this one.
No, but it's an interesting topic for sure.
It's interesting.
Don't worry, guys.
It won't be too much of a downer.
But we're going to start on a more positive note by talking about our reviews, saying thank you to our reviewers.
So thank you to Teng Luo from the USA, Chaba14 from Spain, Marcelo Velasquez from Mexico.
Mr. Pepe TH from Australia, Muslima Min Canada from Canada.
And who else, Michelle?
Ali48Malik from Saudi Arabia.
And thank you to Lila Jane from the USA.
And thank you to Joe Manozo from the Philippines.
Thank you to Ondrej CZ from Czech Republic.
And thank you to Salvageddon from Mexico.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you guys for reviewing us.
We love your reviews.
If you haven't reviewed us, go on over.
And again, pretty soon you're going to be able to review us in the app, in the app store.
And that's going to help us a ton to get this app moving.
But for now, just review us in the iTunes store.
Okay, very cool.
So Michelle, I have a question for you.
Are you ready?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Big question.
Do you remember attending a funeral when you were a kid?
Did you ever attend any funerals?
Yeah, I did.
How about you?
Well, I did.
I remember attending one.
I guess my great aunt, someone I never knew.
And I just have vague memories of it just being weird.
And no one really talked to me about what was going on.
Yeah, I remember my grandparents' funerals.
Yeah.
And yeah, I remember it was pretty awful.
Yeah.
So it's tough for a kid because kids really don't understand death.
I don't even know if adults do.
No, I don't think so.
Yeah.
Well, how do you think that Americans view this concept?
There's not a concept, this reality of death concept.
I wish it were a concept.
Yeah.
Not a reality.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think it's uncomfortable.
I think, yeah, when you bring it up, it's like, oh, I don't want to talk about that.
Right.
I know.
We don't want to talk about it.
And it's also a little bit of a taboo, I think, in our culture, in our conversation.
It's like, if you bring up death, it's kind of a downer.
Even bringing it up on this podcast, I wonder, are we going to just depress everyone?
But I think today's going to be interesting because we're going to get a little bit of a glimpse into how Americans look at death.
And we want to know about your cultures because it's different.
It's not the same everywhere.
Right, right, right.
Does it depend on anything else, the way we look at death?
I mean, I guess it depends on your family, right?
So different families are just going to think differently about it.
And you know, maybe one family is open to talking about it and another one doesn't want to bring it up, and you know.
Yeah, no, exactly.
And it's interesting like if we look at even different religions.
I don't have much experience with any religions, to be honest.
I never went to church when I was growing up, but I'm into Buddhism these days.
I go to a Dharma center and I know in the Buddhist tradition at least in my lineage of the Buddhist tradition some people who are like, very strong in their practice.
One practice is to contemplate death every day.
So that sound if you tell that to an American person, that sounds ridiculous and depressing, but it's actually just the opposite.
The point of that practice is actually to have a more rich life.
Yeah,
My phone is ringing again.
Okay.
You're trying to get out of this episode, Michelle, aren't you?
It's my house phone that never rings.
Oh, no.
Michelle, did you just text your husband and ask him to call to get out of the episode?
I think you did.
Just get out.
I don't want to talk about death.
Someone please call me.
Someone please call me.
No, no, no.
Sorry about that, guys.
All right.
It's over.
That's okay.
So, Michelle, let's dive in.
We have a question from a listener.
We And that's why we're actually talking about this today, right?
So a listener wrote in with a good question.
Would you mind reading the question for us?
Sure.
All right.
Hi, Lindsay and Michelle.
Thanks so much for your amazing podcast.
You have brought me so many insights about American culture.
You truly helped me a lot in adapting to life in North America.
Thank you for listening.
I'm so happy to hear that.
I am from China and I've been living in Canada for over three years.
It recently came to my attention that the houses and condos which were built around the funeral homes or graveyards tend to gain some popularity among locals.
But much to my surprise in my culture, anything relating to death is regarded as taboo.
Taboo as well.
People definitely don't choose to live near funeral homes or graveyards.
How do American people treat the topic of death?
Could you help me to clear it up?
Warm regards, Jean.
That's really interesting.
Yeah, what are your thoughts just in regards to her question?
What do you think you saw?
I mean, I actually had an experience where we went to look at a house once just for fun.
And there was like a little cemetery right near it.
Or was it a funeral home?
I can't remember.
I think it was an actual cemetery.
And I was like, I just could never do that.
And I remember when we were looking at wedding venues, when we were deciding where to get married, there was this beautiful venue.
But right next to it, like where the ceremony would be, there was a cemetery.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
So did you feel like it would be bad luck or would just be kind of freaky, kind of weird?
Just kind of freaky.
It's just like, I don't want to be, you know, like, I don't know.
How would that make you feel like with the... you know, for a house or anything like that?
I wouldn't want it.
I mean, some people would just say, oh, it's no big deal.
It's nice.
It's beautiful.
It's historical.
But I wouldn't want to live near a graveyard.
So I'm actually a little bit surprised that someone told this person that that was the case about, because I think most people would say they don't want to have anything to do with that.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I think.
I actually, I'm surprised.
I would have thought that places near a graveyard are cheaper.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
I would think that maybe that's true.
I'm not sure.
But anyways, so let's dig into this question a little bit more.
So the answer for Jean, the short answer is yes.
Most people wouldn't agree with that idea that they would want to live near a cemetery because it's the nearest place to heaven.
But let's dig into this a little bit more, this idea of death in American culture.
You know I mean.
So I grabbed a quote that I think kind of sums up a really good summary of the way Americans think about death.
And this is from Lawrence Samuel.
He's a PhD and it came from psychology yesterday.
Yeah.
And so I'll read the first part of the quote, and then Michelle, you can jump in, and then we'll talk about it.
Here we go.
You ready?
Give me a drum roll.
Drum roll, please.
Okay, so this is what Samuel Lawrence says.
He says, You wanna read the next sentence?
Sure.
The rise of the self has made it increasingly difficult to acknowledge the fact that our individual selves will no longer exist.
Death and dying became almost unmentionable words over the course of the last century, topics not to be brought up in polite conversation.
Yeah, interesting.
So that's just a tidbit from from looking at, you know, how Americans view death.
And then the article also goes on to say that in recent years the topic of death has become a little bit less taboo, because we're kind of getting in touch with the touchy, feely things in life a little bit more.
But we still have a lot of work to do to not like push it away as a culture.
I mean...
So I mean, would you agree with that Michelle, that Americans are just not that in touch or that comfortable with death?
Yeah, I would.
I would agree with that.
I mean, I can't speak for everyone, of course, but like yeah, I mean just among my group of friends.
I don't think that we spend a lot of time talking about it, nor would we want to.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Because, you know, what are the things that kind of makes our culture tick?
Like, what are the values of our culture?
I mean, what are the things that we aspire to?
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T-S.
Well, you know, we really, I mean, youth is highly valued, right?
And beauty and energy, ambition, things like that.
So death is not something that really fits into those categories.
Yeah, that's right.
And also aging doesn't fit into it either.
And that's a whole other topic of how we treat our elders.
Yeah. in the US versus other countries.
So but we don't have to go too much into it today.
That could be another episode.
But I think that we don't respect our elders in the same way.
I mean we might individually Yes, but I think in general, as a culture, we don't respect our elders in the same way that people do in other parts of the world.
But yeah, I mean going back to this concept of death.
You know, for example wills, writing a will.
I mean, like, just looking a little bit below the surface about how we deal with this topic.
Do you think that people, like, everyone writes a will, Michelle?
Yeah.
Um, I think everybody should write a will.
But no, I probably probably most people don't.
Yeah, I feel like most people probably procrastinate on it.
Don't do it until much later.
Yeah.
And, and there's also I was trying to think about like how wills are talked.
What is a will first of all, for our listeners?
It's basically a document that says what of your possessions will go, like.
Where will your possessions go?
Like, who will they go to?
So money and other things, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And there's at least in my family there's a little bit of a taboo around talking about what's in the will.
So my parents, you know, wrote a, they updated their will, like a few years ago, and And they won't tell us who's getting what.
And I think that part of that has to do with just the fairness of it, but part of it has to do with our weirdness around death.
What do you mean they won't tell you?
Is that something that you ask?
I wouldn't think to ask, and that's part of it too, that we wouldn't think to ask.
Like there's this privacy, it's this whole topic is like kind of a taboo.
I'm just trying to highlight this, the way that, like we just step away from it.
It's just like the, not the not talked about things.
Yeah, I think I think part of that comes back to to American culture and this topic.
It's interesting.
I don't know.
I think it's just fun sometimes to step back and get a little bit more philosophical, like examine the way we look at things.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
No, it's definitely an uncomfortable thing to talk about.
I think people maybe are a little superstitious.
They don't want to talk about it too much, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I can even feel like right now there's some discomfort between the two of us, like talking about it.
Yeah, we're like, uh.
Yeah, it's hard.
It's hard to talk about.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I think that you know when it.
But I think it's interesting that Americans, at the same time we are obsessed with crime shows.
We're obsessed with them.
That's true.
So that's fascinating.
I think it probably feeds into this weird relationship that we have with death.
I mean, what do you think, Michelle?
What do you think about that?
The fact that we're obsessed with crime shows.
Law and order.
Yeah.
Well, maybe it's like...
Yeah, I don't know.
Why are we interested in it when we don't want to talk about the reality of it?
I don't know.
Um...
That's a really good question.
Just maybe it's just like oh, when you know that idea, when they say like when you're watching a horror movie right,
And you don't want to look, but you're kind of peeking through your fingers.
It's kind of reminds me of that idea.
Yeah.
So I wonder I mean, with that in mind, I wonder if death were like a little bit less of a taboo, that if crime shows would still be as interesting as they are.
I don't know.
But yeah, our culture is totally and we would like to hear from you guys like, in your culture are people obsessed with crime shows?
I mean they're, they are always at the top of the charts in terms of like, netflix watch people you know numbers watched and people always have their favorite crime show.
I think it's so funny, yeah.
And then what is some of the terminology around death, Michelle?
I mean, what do we say?
Like, we don't always use the word this person died, right?
What do we say instead?
Well, a nicer way to say it is past this person passed or this person passed away.
Right.
I think.
I mean it's supposed to sound a little bit less intense, but I mean everybody knows what it is.
Everybody knows what it is.
Right.
Right.
Or, you know, if it's like a joke in the conversation, you could say kick the bucket.
Yeah, exactly.
That's kind of joking about something rather.
And then you know if we, if we're talking about an uncle who is no longer around, we don't say my dead uncle.
Right.
We say my uncle who passed away.
Right.
Last year.
Do you ever use the term late like my late uncle?
I don't know that I would that I would use it to describe someone, but I hear it a lot.
I mean, maybe it sounds a little bit more like formal, maybe like something that would be written in an article or something like that, or maybe on the news.
But I wouldn't say my late uncle, would you?
Yeah, it sounds a little too formal.
I think my my my uncle who passed away.
That's what I would say, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then when it comes to like you know how to talk to someone about death, like if someone's lost someone, like what's that about in our culture?
I mean, is that does that feel awkward sometimes?
Yeah.
I mean people typically when they have a friend who's lost someone, they don't know what to say, right?
You might say the wrong thing or make the person even more upset, or you don't know if the person wants to talk about it or not.
Talk about it.
It's a very uncomfortable situation and you want to help, but you don't know how.
There's really nothing you can do.
I mean, you can listen, but, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah, I would just.
I think today's episode is really about like just teasing out our perspective on it.
And then we'd like to hear from you guys.
I mean, I know that there are other cultures that are more open about death, even more lighthearted about death, around ceremony more of a celebration of life, rather than having it be this taboo and this thing that we just hush-hush and we don't talk about and we get weird about.
So we would like to hear from you guys.
What's today's episode number, Michelle?
Today is episode...
845.
So if you could come back to the blog guys, come back to allearsenglishcom and type in 845 in the search bar and write what your thoughts are.
You know, did you feel uncomfortable with today's episode?
Did you sense discomfort for us?
And how does your culture treat death?
I mean, and what's the takeaway today, Michelle?
Well, and I just want to say something.
There's also, I think in the US, there are different, you know, places that feel differently.
Like I know in New Orleans, I'm pretty sure that their funerals are more like a party, like with bands and stuff like that.
I mean, I don't know for sure, but I think, just like there are parts of the country that treat it a little bit differently.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And that would be you know, based on you know cult, subcultures and cultures, origins of those areas.
You know, there's a lot of French influence in the New Orleans area.
Right.
And I'm even imagining, like out west, where we have a lot of like Native American groups, there might be a completely different attitude towards it.
That's another example.
But that's a good point, Michelle.
It's not all just one way of looking at it, right?
Right, right.
Yeah.
And what do we want to come away with today?
Yeah, just realize that the attitudes for death are different everywhere, right?
So, even if we aren't aware of it, you know there are cultural programs, just you know that are running underneath the surface and thing like.
Like you said Lindsay, there is just different all around right.
Just be aware and observe and don't be afraid to ask if you have a question.
Yeah, I love that.
So interesting.
Okay, cool.
Well, Michelle, thanks for humoring me here and talking about this topic.
I thought it would be fun to try something a little different.
And once in a while, it's good to break into stuff that makes us uncomfortable, right?
That's good.
For sure.
Yeah, exactly.
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All right.
Very cool.
All right.
We're out of here for today, Michelle.
Thanks for hanging out.
Take care.
All right.
Thanks, Lindsay.
Bye.
Talk soon.
Bye.
Bye.
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