Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

[SeanBannister]

I'm gonna take a wild guess and presume she likes magic mushrooms.

[superdiza]

it used to be "be afraid of someone who has a pig farm", now it's "be afraid of someone who has mushroom suits"...

[Spasatcom]

Good Video, Very Infomative..

[Pangolinx1]

If you get buried with ~60 lbs of charcoal grit and 20 lbs of kelp powder you could end up as a very productive patch of Terra Preta Nova soil for several thousand years. Add an acorn and you get to feed an oak tree for the first few hundred years of that period.

[TheSweetestVegan]

Who laughs like that in the middle of a speech

[twoshedsjohnson]

@TheSweetestVegan Someone who thinks she's a retard.

[samdon815]

Fungi are already eating us , alive . Athletes foot , jock itch , scalp itch are all types of fungus infections at work digesting us , even as we "speak".

[amirtalai]

i love that the audience literally goes from laughing at her to giving her a standing ovation.

[drewt6768]

Never once failed a mission they kill all who attempt to stop them ...

No mercy No regret And No surrender

They are... 5:00 The death squad

[TheRonMorales]

I love this idea & the "decompinaut" @ 6:25 is similar to the "body farm" set-up, albeit more dignified & less concerned w/ forensic research. But there are only 5 such facilities in the U.S. T'would be convenient if there's one here in the Phils.

[annemuryo]

Are you taking pets?

[Nullfactory]

This is all good till some of them get into the air and turn into living human eating fungi.

[JesusChristforall]

I think it is a brilliant idead

[dwakeutube]

Beautiful! It might look far out there depending on where we look from, but I think it's right in the middle.

[HunHare]

SIGN ME UP!!!

[zlyable]

lol thats one crazy bitch

[fnord847]

Did she actually explain how the mushrooms eliminate the toxins from the body?

[BrotherOrchid]

She needs to get laid, too much time on her hands.

[Zotov13]

Her web-site has a page dedicated to the project named "Alternatives for Urination"... :/

[Soalreaper44]

MARIO! Youre first.

[seffapotamus]

"a few people have offered to donate their bodies to the project, to be eaten by mushrooms" lololol

[Melancholydreamer]

Wow, very unique and interesting idea! I shall consider this...

[wahkeena]

this is totally brilliant!!

[SezSays]

Love it!

[Zennofobic]

I want my infinity mushrooms to be hallucinogenic so that my friends and loved ones can show up at my memorial and remember me by tripping together on the shrooms that my carcass has created

[SDTPW]

lmao @ 6:01-6:08

[FurkanKhan100]

she is going to face alot of ethnical controversies

[jessomglol]

How do I sign up?

[Gabriel1o1]

That's the bigining of a horror movie;

"And 300 hundred years later the mushroom rule over the planet....now JOHN AHMED LEE leader of the RECOMPICULTUR militia group and decendant of the artist who created the mushroom begun his quest to exterminate the PsycoAnthropophagic muchrooms " loooooooool

good idea though

[AlokanandaJi]

Far out, but AWESOME

[TheJovanist]

So we are going to leave the dead bodies out in open air? Mushrooms don't grow underground lol.

[AmethystEyes]

So is it not good to eat a mushroom? like it isn't good to eat liver?

[ImDrizzt]

Cool stuff

[LittleBabyBum]

mushrooms can save our planet in so many ways ie cleaning up oil spills.

[ufuckmegr8]

GENIUS!!!

[MondaysHater90]

the meaning behind it is good, but she hasn't thought very much about the problems... fungi need air, and there isn't much air 6 feet under, and if you bury it closer to the surface the toxins will much more easily get out to the atmosphere...

[illywacker1]

Fantastic, humans have spent too much time on changing the environment to their needs. Now we get a chance to change ourselves according the environment's needs. I'd go for a suit.

[TITOR002]

One step closer to using humans as batteries like in matrix... <33

[THINKER43]

Will the mushroom really speed up the decomposition of a body, if that is what you want then surly there is a better way of doing it.

[4230020]

@THINKER43 I am not sure speed is the point.

[jessomglol]

@THINKER43

It's not about speeding up the decomposition of the body. The mushrooms consume toxins in the body so they aren't released into the ground/water.

[Shocker9]

What is wrong with put putting the body in ground?

Also does she keep reading notes from an iphone or something?

[jessomglol]

@Shocker9

The problem is with all the toxic chemicals used to process the dead body for viewing, which then go into the ground once the casket eventually decomposes (which takes way too long as well and obviously the caskets are made with paint, etc that isn't good for the earth either)

[JanMarie1007]

Yes!!!

[a575981735977018]

Also, one other, slightly simpler solution could be to throw the dead in an old lead mine.

[Sparkythedog2008]

If I go the mushroom route, then I'm gonna have a Super Mario themed funeral...just sayin'.

[inshepherdswetrust]

@Sparkythedog2008 lmao

[LuckyMarketGameplay]

But will it blend?

[MrIntelligenius]

genius..simply genius

[BigBairdNE1]

Hmm... for persistent pollutants the mushroom will only take up these toxins, they still exist in the mushroom. So what do you then do with the toxic mushrooms? This is no different to a green/eco funeral.

[guidc]

1. Hope she doesnt breed a mutant mushroom race that will decompose everything in the whole planet.

2. If it gets prooved that it works, I would do it.

3. I also would do her and the suit. lol

[YouLoveBeef]

What a horrible bad mannered audience. Go watch stand up comedy if you are so desperate for a laugh

[InfestedChris]

She has a iphone

[Shaunt1]

As long as our lives are improving we don't have to worry much about our impact on the environment it's in our best interest to impact it in a way that's good for us.

[akazombie]

Presentation... eh... Her main point should have been to guilt us into it. She almost had it.

We've spent our whole lives polluting the planet, now we can make up for a part of that after death.

[achickensandwich]

Once again, an artist with a speech that is stupid and stupid.

[TheCraich]

Perhaps if greedy corporations stopped putting the toxins there in the first place...

[tjdoss]

It's a lot embedded in the western society to fear death as an end. So I can see a lot of people who want to live forever to use iPhone100... But for those people who accept death as part of the process... this would be a great view. Thanks.

[Adrenaline552]

cool. i know this is a dumb question but whet if these mushrooms were paced on a live body. would the mushroom feed of it?

[jeaumiew]

@Adrenaline552 i think the kinds she used only 'fed' on decaying organic matter, so i don't think so. 

[Amathos]

@Adrenaline552 I'm a little concerned as well, what if over time the mushroom adapts and start feeding off of live non decaying matter. Than it would just feed on life, and we would have to make some kind of antibiotic to stop it from killing us. nullifying the whole mushroom concept.

Is it possible? I don't think mushys would eat live tissue or heard of any that do, but still i'm a little cautious that they may evolve.

[AndreisEntaro]

@Amathos If it adapted to feed on things that are still alive, then we would have yet another strain of pathogenic fungi which may cause something analogous to athlete's foot or ring worm in humans. There are actually a number of fungi can survive on living organisms. Most are not too dangerous since your skin regularly gets a decent amount of sunlight, is relatively dry most of the time, and your immune system will attack fungal infections.

[Amathos]

@AndreisEntaro ooo thank you for that andre, yah i didn't realize.

[ftcagents]

@Adrenaline552

Yes, the mushrooms would feed on the live body. Fungi does not, and can not, distinguish between living and non-living tissue. Think of ringworm & athletes foot. So she is growing pathogens. And while there might be a chance that the PCB's will be decomposed by the mushrooms, as they contain carbon, the heavy metals (lead & mercury) will not. So IF the metals are passed from the body to the fungi, maybe the fungi could be harvested and the metals extracted. Not a job I want.

[Ahasuer]

Hahahaha

This is awesome.

[Zeem321]

decompinaut, ahahahaha

[ybra]

How exactly does a mushroom remove toxins? I mean if you got lead in you body and the mushrooms 'eat' you body, the lead is either gonna end up in the mushrooms, in the ground or in the air. So what then is the difference from a normal burial?

[xjustamem0ryx]

@ybra

the difference is now you can get high on shitshrooms!

[Farfromhere001]

@ybra No it actually breaks down toxins and removes them from the environment, they're gone! Look up Paul Stamets and listen to his stuff here on youtube!

[yavanna1969]

utter BS - get buried or cremated - return to the earth.....

[nxji]

who really cares

[ohmkizawa]

but what if people in the future wants to bring me back to life

[turuanu]

Uhm... it is brilliant, but it only addresses the effect. What about making people understand that they should change their eating habits?

[TRISTANizaZOMBIE]

I'm all for it!

[WarVideo]

this isnt art

[mookie9439]

Preety

[CAJames902]

I really like how the ideas expressed in these videos, no matter how "far fetched", are expressed nonetheless. I know if someone came to my town talking about this stuff, they'd be boo'd and laughed off stage within minutes because many people (especially the hicks around here) aren't open-minded enough to listen to anything that's not played over a 24dB bassline with under 6dB Treble peak.

[Dudekahedron]

"Mercury" won't be 'decomposed' by mushrooms.. Common, the mushrooms will only further concentrate elemental toxins in our bodies. We'll be eating mercury from dead people, then dying ourselves so our natural intake + mushroom intake will grow each generation. Think people, this is bull

[jmm1233]

the most pointless presentation to sale overpriced suits to corpses using the enviromental scare tactic when all a corpse needs is a hole in the ground and buried , there is more toxins released in general household dump sites then crematoriums

[lancelottodd]

This is pseudoscience.. not surprising because we're talking to an artist. Just dump your body in a hole somewhere, something will come along and decompose you.

If growing mushrooms helps her accept that she will die one day, that's all good.. I don't think it warrants an 8 minute speech.

[xjustamem0ryx]

cremation.

[Epydemic2020]

@xjustamem0ryx

did you make it to 1:36?

[xjustamem0ryx]

@Epydemic2020

I fell asleep ;)

[Valca000]

Having mushrooms growing on your body is the easy part.... convincing society not to spend a fortune, travel long distances and preform resource guzzling rituals on dead people is the tough part. That will impact the environment the most.

[inshepherdswetrust]

@Valca000 ah...the tough part is making travel efficient to the point that we wont have to worry about whether or not people do, and they can practice their right to freedom of religion without any atheist environmentalist hecklers.

[misterbee180]

@Valca000 Yea but at least the money stays in the economy that way, to possibly be spent on some other crazy idea in the future. The alternative is the money doesn't move around and that gets us no where as well.

[srgwarcock]

@Valca000 All things are changing in the consience of our youth, in my jounior class kids brought up the same point as to why we do such burial rituals, they all agreed that they wanted to be fertilizer when they die than to be presevred underground uselessly.

[DrMorbid]

I love it. I'd love to be burried this way.

I'm so glad that here in Europe we don't have the tradition of using cosmetics to make a dead body look like "sleeping" and then showing it at a funeral like some kind of museum artifact. It's so immoral and morbid (nevermind my nickname, lol)! It really disgusts me. I can't understand anyone claiming it to be OK and this idea to be wrong.

[ThanksgivingWalk]

Jae ,

Thank you so much for having the courage to speak publically about this very uncomftable topic. What a very loving and natural way to give back as we've spent a life time consuming from the earth. There is also a place called "The Body Farm" (I think) where people donate their bodies for forensic studies. Resources for burail site and legality?

TGW - USA - Louisiana

[chr1st1an20061]

magic mushrooms ! now that would be an interesting ceremony ;)

[YouGinTube]

Old people in the audience are not happy and will not eat mushroom anymore after hearing this speech. :p

[bersaba]

Wonder how many volunteers she'll get for eating the mushrooms afterwards?

[TheDaftMonk]

Paul Stamets would be proud.

[leonshroomz]

@TEDtaIksDirector Condolences.

[Mrmoc7]

@leonshroomz

That guy is an impostor.

[str8out]

@leonshroomz Why?

[amoonavidtanha]

I dont know why TED Does Not change the intro or at least its volume.

Is It Because It does not give a damn about Us and our opinion or something else? What the hell is your reason?

[58jtaylor]

my mushroom tip, as in penis ahaahhaah

[LXBalla4414]

does it decompose my nutsack too?

[ehpl]

Interesting idea – it seems that no matter what the average person does to preserve the environment the psychopaths will continue to destroy everything with their inherent desire for power and gore. If we continue to follow these messed up ‘leaders’ people we will be in no fit state to be eaten by anything.

[Panjaquomi]

@ehpl Off-topic much? We're talking about mushroom-aided decomposition, not psychopathic leaders!

[Yobirinsan]

@Panjaquomi You seem to have missed the point he was making. Corporations reap commercial profits from the planet's resources and relentlessly destroy natural ecosystems worldwide and will continue to do so long as it benefits their economy (which I feel I should point out only exists to facilitate power over the masses). Any so called green initiative is too little and always too late - ironically more often than not it's also another scheme to make somebody more money.

[Yobirinsan]

@Panjaquomi Surely the solution then is to attack the root cause of our species' damage to the planet...the parasitic corporations and extremely wealthy individuals who are essentially in control, and so follows, the entire monetary system which facilitates that control.

[cuervotaylor]

yayy now i know just how i wanna die, bring it to colombia south america :D

[pablotrobo]

how far can mushooms clean toxins? I like it, hurry up and I,ll give you this meat sack

[indusdolphin]

Sign me in, use my body.

[pablotrobo]

how far can mushooms clean toxins?

[twistedbass15]

Pure Genius !!!!!!!!!!!!

[manonthemount]

Toxins concentrate in an ecosystem's pinnacle predators - sharks, tigers, raptors, etc.

Why would we expect earth's pinnacle predator to avoid the toxins we pump into the food chain?

[meotaku2]

Think of the land this would free up to build more houses !

[spanishprisoner]

@meotaku2 in 2045 you don't need that anymore. You conscious will be virtualized... your house is virtual... welcome to singularity... time.com/time/magazine/article­/0,9171,2048299,00.html

[thenoller]

If your'e listening to TED's while eating. Skip eating at this one. You're welcome...

[yubowenx]

incremation is bad for the environment

[artkozak]

I totally agree that the way human corpse are disposed shouldn't involve extra chemicals.

However, she talks about mercury... I don't see how the mushrooms will help with mercury.

And what's the difference between letting an untreated corpse decay naturally and feeding mushrooms? The mushrooms will only act as a limited storage, will then die and liberate the toxins back into the earth. Mercury is an element that cannot be modified.

Solutions? Stop using mercury fillings.

[nachoijp]

@artkozak I don't know about mercury, but mushrooms and other micro-organisms break the toxic molecules we store and release only neutral to the environment, is kind of like recycling... if she finds a good super-mushroom it may be able to clean everything :D

[artkozak]

@nachoijp Mushrooms are already present underground. The only thing she brings is a provocation to reflect on the way we dispose of human corpse.

[nachoijp]

@artkozak yes, I agree that's her main point, but don't forget she's trying to cultivate new mushrooms for the toxins they don't do digest (?) naturally, also the suit is useful if we think that natural mushrooms don't get to our corpses very easily through the coffin...

[artkozak]

@nachoijp wouldn't it be easier to make a few holes in the coffin? Or just not use a coffin? I agree that there is improvement to be brought to the way we dispose of bodies. But the mushroom suits brings no value. Or is it meant as an alternative way of hiding the decay of the body during the ceremony? Actually I think the suit could be usefull, because it would make it easier to stop preparing bodies for ceremonies the way we do... but i prefer to beried with no coffin and no suit

[nachoijp]

@artkozak indeed, but the problem of the toxins that don't degrade naturally remains, and they'll build up in the graveyard and probably leak into the ground water... maybe a bag with something that eliminates those toxins (not a suit, just a bag) would solve all those issues, though eating healthy food is the best way to go obviously :P

[artkozak]

@nachoijp there are toxins you can't degrade. When it comes to mercury, it's only a question where it is. Maybe we have to come to terms with the recycling of toxic elements in cemeteries, or maybe we have to come to terms with the fact that there are toxiv elements in cemeteries, I would like to point out that this pollution is insignificant in comparison with the rare earth industry, maybe it is time to sort out priorities.

[nachoijp]

@artkozak oh yes, of course, I won't argue you about that, I was just talking about the topic on the video, but if we look to other issues this is really small in comparison... so many things to fix!!! :O

[subliminalvibes]

I like the idea of the suit, but she shouldn't refer to the mushrooms as 'edible mushrooms' as I can tell a lot of people will take that all sorts of ways.

But its all a great idea and one which I'm sure some people will go with.

I'd prefer they just stop putting that crap in our food in the first place.

[junepyo]

topic is interesting but her delivery is really distracting. why is she constantly consulting her iphone? did she not prepare for the talk?

[stutek]

@junepyo

I think that device is used to control the slides behind her. Many of the TED talkers use it.

[junepyo]

@stutek yes, but why does she keep looking at it?

[garethlott]

@junepyo It has her speech notes on it!!

[DigitizedSelf]

Hm, would have liked to hear how/whether these mushrooms actually remove the toxins - this seems to be mostly focused on whether the mushrooms can grow and decompose the body, not the actually cleaning :-/.

Nice talk - funny and inspiring in its radically different perspectives. Was expecting it to be bad but found myself pleasantly surprised.

[meotaku2]

Decomposing humans using mushrooms may be the extreme. How about starting smaller and making other things biodegradable first using mushroom spores ?

[solojam]

@meotaku2 like i said waste of time, toxins are redundant, spend your time on more useful things like solving cancer

[meotaku2]

Wonderful

[MonkayMan]

i bet she thought of that while on shrooms

[solojam]

what a waste of time, your body will degrade just fine in any earth

[chrisinsocalif]

@solojam You obviously didn't watch the video, its not that our bodies have problems decomposing, its the reintroduction of toxins from decomposition back into the atmosphere. If you use mushrooms to assist in decomposition, then the toxins will not be re-introduced into the atmosphere.

[Jackmyster99]

@intrepgun Haha pretty much mate. Here in Melbourne though, we're lucky to be plagued with potent wood chip P.Subaeruginosa mushrooms that grow in nearly every park with wood chip during Autumn / Winter.

[messinjure]

what if she ate one by accident?

[a11m0n]

It would be nice to be buried in a forest and have a California Red Wood planted over me.

[openuniverse2003]

Would you fuck this bint? Vote THUMBSUP for YES!!!

[Geo877]

5:59 The one manic laughing guy in the background when she says they'll eaten by mushrooms.

[adracamas]

In Soviet Russia....

[madbenbro]

Mario : "Hey Luigi. Tonight, We kidnap this lady"

[YawnGod]

Finally, an artist with a speech that isn't stupid and egotistical.

[smqzbq]

@YawnGod great idea!... lets train something that can eat us faster and someday will eventually evolve intro parasite or something similar.

[Mrmoc7]

I only have two requests for my dead body: A mushroom burial suit, and a mango tree!

[jcvc2011]

If the science holds up, this is a really cool idea.

[profjaykay]

I think this is what i want for my body

[aimezmoi13]

hehe her outfit xD

[jaimerigada]

if she would have been a boilogist instead of an artist i would have taken her seriously but as an art proyect i think is silly and seeks no other goal but to feed the artist ego... no true art concept at the core

nice science proyect though and cool pijamas

Look for PAUL STAMETS for true scientific insight about mushrooms. Awesome!

[Noemro]

@jaimerigada how did you misspell project as proyect twice?

[smoothbald]

@Noemro I'm guessing he is latino, and english is at least his second language. In some countries in Latin-america the "Y" is pronounced like "J" in "project", I think is completely understandable. Cheers. 

[Noemro]

@smoothbald he shoulda said "piyamas" then. I understand though rofl

[mrslair]

Fantastic, I love your project. Where does one volunteer?

[shango02005]

This is really a great idea! 

[lemonrind]

I don't trust mushrooms. I once lived in a house infested with mushrooms that grew out of the walls and started controlling my mind.

[evgeniy13]

When I will achieve immortality through mind-uploading and ageing reversal, I will decrease humus-sapience population tenfold using chemtrails. Deathists accept their death of ageing already - eventually they accept me killing them as I see fit and accept me as their god and rationalise me killing them - humus-sapience brain does that easy.

[slaughtz]

@evgeniy13 Well, when you become a force-a-nature, killing people, just look out for others that would try to steal your intelligence.

[evgeniy13]

@slaughtz watch?v=8mPFqvxkOTg

[evgeniy13]

@holyscythe

Nope, I'm just an ordinary immortalist.

Did you remove your comment yourself, or secret service of your lab did that? Are you all right, pal?

[slaughtz]

@evgeniy13 Your message conflicts with his.