Human Composting: A New Way to Deal with Death? (Kristoffer Hughes)

Gabriel Gatehouse (0:00)

Hello, before we begin, a quick word about next week's show. For decades, the word prepper has conjured up images of wild-eyed survivalists stocking up on supplies, getting ready for the apocalypse, possibly wielding a gun and wearing a tinfoil hat. But now, the British government is urging us all to stock up on supplies of food and water in preparation for extreme weather. And the National Audit Office is telling us that our supply chains are vulnerable to disease and cyberattacks. So are the preppers right? Should we all be digging bunkers in our backyards? We're going to be speaking to a prepper on the programme, so please send us your questions, which will feature in our bonus Q&A podcast after the main show. You can leave us a WhatsApp voice note on plus 44 330 123 9480, or you can email us. The address is radical at bbc.co.uk.

Anyway, let's get on with this week's show.

Hello and welcome to Radical, conversations about the underlying forces reshaping our world and the radical ideas that could define the future. I'm Gabriel Gatehouse, and this week I'm joined by someone who wants to overhaul the way we deal with death by doing something very different to our bodies once we've died.

When the time comes, most of us, at least in this country, face a choice basically between burial and cremation. It's been that way for centuries, but things are starting to change. Other methods are not just being talked about, they're actually taking place in some parts of the world. One idea is called tarimation. It's from the Latin terra, meaning earth, and in this process, the body is turned into soil. Soil that you might be able to put in a plant pot or scatter in your garden. It's human composting basically. It's not legal in the UK, not yet, but my guest wants to change that. Kristoffer Hughes was a mortuary technician for more than 30 years. He worked for coroners around the UK. He's also traveled the world, looking at different cultures and their approaches to death. And now he's become a passionate advocate of teramation and he wants to set up the UK's first human composting service. Is it a radical idea? Well, he thinks so. He thinks it could transform not just how we mourn and grieve and celebrate our loved ones, but also our attitude to death itself.

As you might expect, there are question marks about safety, sensitivity and scale. As always on this podcast, we approach the subject with an open mind and a critical lens. Obviously, this is a conversation about death, and it does include some quite graphic detail sometimes about what happens to the human body after you've died. So just to be aware of that and a little warning before we start. But I hope you enjoy my conversation with Christopher Hughes.

Christopher Hughes, welcome to Radical.

Kristoffer Hughes (3:18)

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:20)

It's great to have you in the studio. Could we start by just outlining your Radical idea in a sentence?

Kristoffer Hughes (3:29)

My Radical idea is that deceased human bodies should be turned into life-giving compost.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:35)

Human composting.

Kristoffer Hughes (3:36)

Yes, human composting.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:38)

Okay. Like the little bin you have in your kitchen.

Kristoffer Hughes (3:41)

Slightly larger, but the same technology.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:43)

Okay. Well, we'll get into it. We'll get into it.

But first of all, I want to know how you got into it. What led you here? Tell me about yourself.

Kristoffer Hughes (3:52)

Oh, my word. It's quite a story, really. For the last 32 years, I worked for His Majesty's Coroner, various autopsy and bereavement centers throughout the United Kingdom.

I've always had an association and a direct relationship with the dead and the bereaved. I genuinely didn't think that there was anything left to surprise me in that industry having become so intimately familiar with it. In 2021, I retired from the coroner service and I'd already dabbled in television. But as soon as I left S4C, the Welsh national language television broadcaster, were onto me straight away saying, we'd like to do a documentary about how we deal with death. They didn't want an off the shelf presenter. They wanted somebody who had at least some understanding of the industry and of the anthropology of it. I agreed we traveled the world filming a documentary called Maru, which is just the Welsh word for death.

It was a remarkable life changing journey, which I didn't expect it to be. You're just doing a gig, right? It's just a job. You don't expect it to have such a profound impact on your life. Whilst Mexico was incredible, Indonesia and the Sulawesi people were absolutely mind-blowing in the manner by which they deal with their dead. But the biggest surprise came from the United States of America, which I didn't expect at all. I'd worked in America. I worked for the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office. We went to film the ridiculous side of death.