Ep. 311 They Say We Die Twice with Pamela Prickett & Stefan Timmermans

Written By Cherie Marquez
Ep. 311 They Say We Die Twice with Pamela Prickett & Stefan Timmermans

Sociologists and co-authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans join The Stacks to talk about their book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels. The book follows four people whose bodies go unclaimed after their deaths, and how and why this happens. We also discuss how Pamela and Stefan think ethically about reporting and writing about the dead, why being claimed matters, and how they took care of themselves while spending eight years with this subject matter.

The Stacks Book Club selection for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss the book on March 27th with Elise Hu.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and today I am pleased to welcome two professors of Sociology, Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans to the podcast. Pamela and Stefan have written a book called The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels. It’s a narrative nonfiction story that focuses on for individuals that go unclaimed and what their experiences say about the broader system that leaves thousands unclaimed in America. We talk about the immense amount of research that went into the book, why they wanted to write about the dead and how they work together as a team to tell this story. As a reminder, the stacks book club pick for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss that book on March 27th with Elise Hu. Quick reminder, everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. And in case you missed it, I have a new substack. You can find me at Tracithomas.substack.com. It’s called Unstacked. I’m writing about books and pop culture and it’s amazing. Alright now it is time for my conversation with Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans.

Alright, everybody, I am so excited. Today I am joined by two authors who wrote a book called The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels. The authors are Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans. Thank you guys so much for being here. Welcome to The Stacks.

Pamela Prickett 2:16
Thank you so much for having us. And thank you for showing up at our book launch. We are deeply appreciative.

Traci Thomas 2:21
That was so fun, I was so excited I was able to come I have to tell you all this book in this cover, which I want to talk about, eventually, is exactly in my wheelhouse of shit that I’m into. It’s Los Angeles, it is dark, dark death, scary stuff. The cover is a photograph of a place with a tent on it. This is like all of my favorite things. So Roxanna Asgarian, who wrote We Were Once a Family, which was like my favorite book of last year, she blurbed this. And she posted when she was reading it on her Instagram, like, Oh, I’m reading this book. And I immediately went in her DMs and was like, do I have to read this? And she said, it’s very, which is a yes, I’m so glad she did. I had such a great time with this book. And that’s enough of me raving about it, I want you to tell folks in about 30 seconds or so just what the book is about.

Pamela Prickett 3:13
Well, the book is about people who die in Los Angeles without any next of kin willing or able to claim them. And then what happens when the county of Los Angeles kind of steps in to play the role of, of surrogate next of kin and organized disposition. And it follows four characters or I should say, for individuals who are at risk of going unclaimed and kind of looking at what happened in their lives to get to the point that they would be at risk of going unclaimed.

Traci Thomas 3:43
And Stefan, how did you all decide to work together on this project?

Stefan Timmermans 3:51
So I knew Pamela from UCLA, where she did a PhD. And you know, as PhD students, we launched them into the world. And she was launched very far, she went to Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam. But then she came back and asked to collaborate on this book. And it’s the intersection of both our interests. I’m a sociologist who’s very fascinated by bad deaths. So we have a script in society about what good dying is all about, you know, painless at the bedside, you know, following the wishes of the individual. I’m interested in all the deaths that fall outside that spectrum, and how we make sense of that. So I’m interested in violent that’s unexpected that that’s that people struggle with and this is another one of those instances where, you know, you die and the expectation is that somebody will organize your funeral and for centuries it has been the family who has had this responsibility but what happens when the family upon those two party and Pamela had a different way into this project.

Traci Thomas 5:02
Okay, Pamela, what was your way in?

Pamela Prickett 5:04
Yeah, so um, so I will tell your listeners that this is not a topic that I had any experience with or any knowledge of kind of just gone through life and, and taking this sort of idea for granted. And then, several years ago, I was doing that PhD research for my PhD at UCLA, and I was studying a mosque in South Central Los Angeles, where I had been in the community observing the community for many years. And one of the longtime members, they call women sisters and men brothers. So one of the sisters, a sister, Sherry, had passed away. And she was estranged from her family of origin. And she had really been relying on the mosque for decades as her main source of social support. And when she passed, there was during Ramadan, that the one night in the back of the prayer hall, I was sitting there, and the head of man got up and he said, you know, sister, Sherry has passed, and she’s on the verge of going unclaimed, which would mean she’d be cremated in the county of Los Angeles, which is against the religious communities belief. So he rallied the members, they organized a fundraiser to go to court to get the right to claim her body and then to provide a proper Muslim burial for her. And so it was after that, that I said, Okay, what what happens if you die in Los Angeles? With no family? And in this case, you know, I would say no religious community, what, what takes place? And that’s what started me down this journey.

Traci Thomas 6:31
Wow. Okay. So in the book we follow for individuals, who you all as researchers, sociologists, journalists, what you sort of wear all of those hats throughout the book, which is another thing that I love. You all meet these people after they’re dead, which is really interesting, because that’s not normally how these investigative journalism books work. Maybe if you’re investigating a murder, maybe, but in this case, everyone who’s central to the book, or like, the four central characters are all people you’ve come to after they’ve died. And because they’re unclaimed, you know, the assumption is sort of that they have maybe a smaller social circle, or that they have a smaller network of people for you all, to interview. And that was pretty much the case for two of them. And then two of them kind of had broader circles. But I’m wondering, when you get to writing this book, and you pick your four people, where do you go? What are you do? What questions are you asking? And who are you asking these questions to?

Pamela Prickett 7:36
Yes, that is a great question. So, you know, I should back up for just a second and say that we looked at more than 600 cases in depth. And, and so we selected these four cases from those 600. And we were really sort of looking for characters or individuals that would reflect larger patterns that we saw across the data, right. So that’s the sociology hat that we’re wearing, right. And once we decide on those four individuals, we then step into more journalist mode. And it was really kind of not your traditional social science ethnography in that you have one place that you go, or a couple places that you go, and you sit and observe people, right, because they had passed away, as you said, and so it really resulted in having to become both investigative reporters who were willing to go knock on doors literally knock on the doors of places where people had been living before they passed on the doors of their neighbors, calling family who, you know, had the county had located or who I had located with seven located and then you know, trying to kind of understand the decisions. And it also involved a lot of genealogy research. So that was one thing that I didn’t expect to to a hat I didn’t expect to be wearing. But we had some great kind of training, if you will, from professional genealogists like Megan smolenyak, who’s who started an organization called unclaimedpersons.org. And they kind of taught us what we needed to do and started using all the databases that we discovered the coroner’s office also uses to track down family. And so yeah, it was this, like, you know, kind of shifting the hats and then just any buddy we could talk to-

Stefan Timmermans 9:25
Well, it turns out, that’s what makes the unclaimed really fascinating. The fact that have been invisible in life and now are forgotten. And that makes them also really difficult to study them or to find them because we’re dealing with people where the family said we don’t have anything to do with them. We do not want to have their burial. So to go in there and find, find people willing to talk to us. We were really worried that this might not take off, this might fail, but in fact, we did find a lot of fat Emily’s very happy to give their side of the story. So it was a challenge. And so we took this, we chose these four characters, pretty much strategically in the sense that they reflected some of the broader patterns. But we didn’t know as much about them when we started. But it turns out that all four of them have fascinating lives. And all four of them were really interesting in their own way. And their stories would have gotten forgotten if we hadn’t been there. And so that makes us think in every year, let’s say just County, berries between 1000 502,000 unclaimed people in Boyle Heights. So the stick of other all the other stories that are just forgotten and buried there in a mass grave if the ashes commingled.

Traci Thomas 10:57
Right, I mean, I think that’s what’s so interesting about the book is like, everyone does have a really interesting story. And it is sort of like not to be too like, corny, but it’s sort of like we all are interesting people. Like we’re all worthy of having our stories told, which again, you know, I really resist the urge to like, do the Disney special on this one. But it did kind of have that vibe of it about the book. Like as we’re getting to know these people. And you mentioned you guys sifted through like 600, you had 600 options that you could have chosen from, and you narrowed it down to these four, how far into the process? Did you decide it? Was these four people? Like, how much did you know about them? When you were like, Okay, we’re going with Midge, like we’re going with David.

Pamela Prickett 11:42
Yeah. So a lot of that comes from at the point that we decided to work with Crown Publishing, and our amazing editor, Amanda cook. And so we tell this in the acknowledgments, I just want to kind of tell your listeners this funny story. So we kind of are shopping around this book during COVID, actually, in 2020. And we was it stuff and maybe eight or nine publishers, I can’t remember exactly who were interested eight, eight, who were interested in in the book, and all of them said, This is great go forward. And at that point, the proposal was kind of more of a big idea book, it wasn’t as kind of drawn into these, we didn’t have these for for folks. But they decided on. And Amanda came into the meeting, and she was the only person to say, you know, this is a good start. And so everyone else said, you know, we could publish this right away, as is. And she said, No, this is a good start. So we worked with Amanda, to sort of think about you what are the cases that could draw out larger points that we did see? I know Stephen said at that point, some of them, we didn’t know, we mean, we weren’t yet into the journey of really figuring out for example, David was just a challenge to learn about because he’s, he’s one of these, you know, more solo types who are living off the grid. But as we got into the process of learning, and just felt like, yeah, we picked the four best people that we could have to write about. And and I just want to say like, when I when I tell people and for the last couple of years, when I’ve been telling people what I’ve been writing about, they’ll always say, oh, unclaimed, so you’re writing about the homeless? Well, there are a lot of people who are homeless that are among the unclaimed, but there are many people who are unclaimed, that weren’t on housed, or living on the streets or dying on the streets, right. And so it was really important to us to also be able to show the kind of wide array of stories of people who are going unclaimed and kind of show you that it’s not who you expect.

Stefan Timmermans 13:50
And that’s the sense in which Midge is, for instance, extraordinary interesting, because from the outside, if you would have passed her in her last years of life, you would see this tiny woman living in a van with cats. That’s that’s probably what you would have noticed. But once we start peeling back the layers of her life, she was really ingrained in this wider church family, who rallied for her she was contributors to their community lives. She was involved in summer camps with the church, she did outreach with some of the church people. And so none of that would be visible. But so she, at first sight, she is a homeless person living in a pan, but if you start digging a little deeper, she’s deeply embedded in a social community.

Traci Thomas 14:41
Yeah. And I think what I found really interesting and maybe upsetting about the book is that a lot of these people did have people in their lives who would have claimed their bodies and would have given them a quote unquote, proper burial. I think maybe Just like the most obvious example, because she had this church community, who towards the end of her life, not only did they you know, not only did the church allow her to live in her van on their property, but eventually they rallied money to have one set of parishioners remodel their garage to make it their like to make it an apartment for her to live in, like they took her to her dialysis. They were caring for her in the ways that family cares for people. But when it came time when she died, and it came time for arrangements to be made, they offered to do it and the county found kin they found next of kin, they found family, at which point those people become the people who are responsible. But those people hadn’t been around her she had left town she had moved away because she had maybe some traumatic experiences. And she had created her own life and her own people. And because she didn’t have a will. That was who the responsibility was left to the family members. And so she ends up being an unclaimed person. And I just found that to be so upsetting, because it feels like the county just got in the way of marriage like she had done. She had figured it out, she had made herself a life that she was happy to be living in and found people who were happy to be living in her life with her. And then after she died, it was like, Nope, that doesn’t matter to us. We want this the county wants you to be buried by family. So I guess the question is, is the only way to avoid for sure being unclaimed for the most part like having it in your will who you want to bury you.

Stefan Timmermans 16:36
So first of all, I want to reiterate, what you just said is that, indeed, the county can stand in the way the county doesn’t necessarily pay attention to the quality of the relationship between the decedent and the people in their lives and their social circle. But the county looks for next of kin legally defined. And so unless you appoint somebody, it is the there’s like a scheme where it goes from different relatives. And whoever comes up first in the boxes, that’s the next of kin. And that person is done saddled with the task of burying the decision. And so what we see is that some people are given this task to are completely inappropriate people have been estranged. And then other people could have been happy and willing to do to organize a funeral, but they’re not asked. So the quality of relationship is being ignored. And indeed, like if you think about it from an individual level, one of the ways that you can avoid going unclaimed is appointing somebody putting your affairs in order in order talking to your relatives. And this can be a gift because then they don’t have to figure out who’s going to do it. And what so if you have these conversations in advance, it can make a real difference. The reality, unfortunately, is that very few people have these kinds of conversations in advance. And it’s also sort of putting the responsibility for the burial on the individual. And so the deeper underlying causes of people going out claim is more estrangement as social isolation. And so what the phenomenon of unclaimed and the rising figure sort of prompts us to think about is, do we want to be in a society where people end up going unclaimed? Or is there something more systemic that we can do? Can we address social isolation? Can we start to talk about how widespread estrangement is? And so if he may be changed the conditions that lead people to going unclaimed? We don’t necessarily have to show that individual with this responsibility. But we live in a society where that becomes just very rare.

Traci Thomas 18:54
Yeah, this is okay. This is a really me kind of question. Okay. This is I don’t know if anyone else has asked you guys this yet. I doubt it. It’s sort of weird. But one of the things I was thinking about when reading the book, I understand that like, socially, we are told and like, historically, we are told that like to bury someone, and to like have a funeral is really important. And it’s a nice thing to do to claim someone and bury them. But is there really anything wrong with being unclaimed? Is there really anything wrong with being buried amongst other people of your city? You know, obviously, if you have religious beliefs around being cremated or not, maybe there is but like, I feel like the burial industry has become such an industry. And when I was thinking about it, I was sort of like, you know, what if we just were okay with saying if you died this year, you are amongst the people who lived and died this year. And we all just like end up in these you know, places together is that is that the end of the world am I like missing something? Am I terrible?

Pamela Prickett 20:00
You know, we have gotten this question a couple times. And I love that you asked it because I think it’s worthy of a conversation. You know, I think Stephen and I have our view definitely after, after this book, which, which I’m going to talk about. But I just want to preface by saying, you know, it’s it’s a question that’s worthy of much wider discussion. And we do hope to generate more conversation among, among the public, you know, among, among folks about these sorts of questions, I mean, the first thing I would say to you is that, if that’s the choice we make as a society, that is a historic shift. I mean, for as long as human beings have existed, even our ancestors in the Paleolithic and Neolithic period, you know, went to great efforts to bury their dead right to ritualize, the burial. If you look at ancient Greek tragedies, if you look at German philosophers and across history in time, you will see tremendous focus in thinking about what the role of burial does to distinguish us from other species. And so it is it’s, you know, it’s really kind of a, if that’s where we’re going as a society that is a really historic shift. And I think it’s one that should we should pause and have a conversation about. So we don’t just move forward and think, Oh, this is just, you know, how how, how can happen? The other thing I would say is that I don’t think anyone grows up saying, I really would like to go unclaimed when I die, I hope there’s nobody there. For me, I think it really goes against what we sort of imagine when we’re growing up when we think about a life well lived, right? So there’s this expression proverb, it’s attributed to many different cultures and times and places. But it’s essentially says, they say, We die twice, once when the breath leaves our body. And the second time when the last person we know says her name, or the last person says her name. And so I think it’s this idea that you know, you live on through the memories of others, right, the impact that you had, and the unclaimed. So to put into question, you know, what does it all mean? If there isn’t somebody there, saying your name, and in some cases in the book, you know, quite honestly, there were people whose names were not being spoken long before. They had, you know, stopped breathing. And, you know, so and the last thing I want to say is just like when, when folks read the book, I think what they’ll encounter is a really beautiful ceremony in Los Angeles, for the unclaimed. But by and large, what happens in the United States, and what happens around the world is a really different outcome. And so, while you can look at the burial in Boyle Heights and say, this beautiful interfaith ceremony is gorgeous, and why not be buried alongside many other Angelenos? You know, in many places throughout the United States, you know, people are cremated, their ashes are left in a drawer somewhere, or they’re buried without any sort of recognition, or moment of honoring them. So it’s, you know, that’s, that’s where Los Angeles kind of becomes the sort of best case scenario in this situation.

Traci Thomas 23:07
Yeah, I think I was maybe persuaded by the ceremony a little bit that I was like, this isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. I think when I picked up the book, I was like, This is the worst thing possible. But I also think that maybe like, you know, I don’t know, I think that may be like the worst thing possible. Maybe my imagination is not great.

Stefan Timmermans 23:25
Well, so another thing that happens to unclaimed bodies that we actually have never talked about is that they’re sort of the default for dissection in medical schools, and in mortuary school. So even in Los Angeles at this artists time, the mortuary school Cypress College gets its bodies from unclaimed cases. So if that’s the, you know, that further underscores the the marginalization of that’s not really something people aspire to. Because before unclaimed bodies, the default for bodies to be used in medical schools, were the bodies of combat people condemned to that. Yeah, you know, after they’re being executed.

Traci Thomas 24:07
Yeah, I want to ask you as a little bit about sort of the ethics of this book, because I know that that’s something you you talk about, I mean, the beginning of the book starts where you’re, you say that you’re going to use people’s real names, which, you know, in these kinds of books, sometimes people do sometimes people don’t. But I think also because the, the main focus of your book, the four individuals are dead before you ever meet them, you know, they can’t consent to this, like how much of their lives are you going to share with the world? How did you all sort of negotiate that with like, wanting to tell the story, wanting to use their names because you wanted to remember them and because you wanted to make sure that their stories lived on, but also feeling this obligation of like being the keeper of these people’s lives that you’ve, you know, sort of dug into their their histories in a way that many people in their own lives didn’t even know. So I’m just wondering what those conversations for the two Have you ever sort of like?

Pamela Prickett 25:02
Yeah, so that’s a really fair question. And as you say, one that we address at different points in the book at the beginning and later towards towards the end, you know, we thought about this a lot. We thought about this in terms of when we were selecting those four individuals, from the many cases sort of thinking about, you know, how much does one reveal, in many cases, we, you know, we came to learn more about the descendants of their lives than even the people who had known them. And so you’re holding some really powerful knowledge, right. And we had to be incredibly careful and and judicious in terms of how we thought about that, and how we negotiated it. As you said, sort of having these conversations with each other and our editors. One thing that sort of assuage my concerns about this was as we started talking to friends and family, and they were often both willing to talk to us much more than you would maybe think, right. In terms of the topic, you know, they wanted their perspectives known and shown. And then I think the people who cared so much for Bobby, Lena, Midge and David really wanted those stories told didn’t want to be thought that their friends, their loved ones, you know, their stories were just sort of fading into the dirt, right, with the grave in Boyle Heights and to draw attention. And so while there’s some, you know, fair discussions to be had in questions, and, you know, we appreciate being when folks kind of ask these questions and push back. But there’s also a recognition in the value, and the obligation to tell stories that might not otherwise be known for people, just the fact that they go unclaimed, brings up a lot of stigma, and stereotypes that, frankly, we’re trying to show are just not accurate.

Stefan Timmermans 27:02
And I think that’s also sort of the ethical momentum of this book is that because these people are forgotten, we have a responsibility, you know, to tell their stories, and we want to bring this phenomenon of unclaimed to the world. And so you will need to dig into these particular kinds of stores. But we have been judicious in the way that we have told the stories we know, as Pamela said, We know more about his people than than many others. And a lot of it stayed on the cutting room floor.

Traci Thomas 27:35
Right? I just want to read from the end of your book where you all talk a little bit about your research process, because I was really just blown away. So I’m just gonna read this is in the about this project section, because I just want folks to understand how much research and work you did because I was really like whoa. So this is what you say in this paragraph. There’s one paragraph it says when all was said and done, we conducted 23 interviews directly observed 15 Death investigations reviewed in detail more than 600 additional deaths between the medical examiner’s files and court records of public administrator cases examined lengthy conservatorship cases for another 26 people logged more than 20 visits to the county crematorium attended 37 funerals and ceremonies for unclaimed dead recorded more than 200 hours of video and audio, including nearly 40 hours of ceremonies, consulted more than 8500 pages of official records and quantitatively analyzed more than 16,000 unclaimed deaths. That’s, uh, wow, there’s a lot. I mean, the question is, how, how, how long did it take? How did you do it? Talk about it.

Pamela Prickett 28:47
Yeah, so that’s why it took eight years, right? Yeah, and it goes back to Yeah, it goes back to sort of what we talked about a little bit earlier in the sense of like, this is not an easy, you know, kind of group of individuals to study and to try to draw out information on and so it took a lot of time, it also was an ethical choice to be careful, and to take the slow path, to build rapport, to really show and demonstrate to individuals who we were talking to about their loved ones that we had, you know, we were taking these stories with with a serious and with reverence. And then I just want to point out that, you know, part of it was just, there’s a tremendous amount of bureaucracy here that we had to navigate as well. And so that was, you know, we kind of had to fight the bureaucracy to get the information and often work around the bureaucracy to get information.

Traci Thomas 29:47
Right. How did you know when you were done? How did you know at the end of seven or eight years that this was it like there was no more to be done?

Pamela Prickett 29:55
We had a contract.

Stefan Timmermans 29:58
But it’s actually we had contact with a relative of one of the people we discuss in the book after the manuscript was finished. So it just things keep popping up. And there’s more to to talk about that at some point, you just have to put some boundaries on this situation. And, you know, there’s the, we talk in social sciences about data saturation. And at some point, you feel like you’ve got a story and more variations might emerge. But they’re not really moving the goalposts, they sort of giving you an overall sense of what you already know. And they can add more color maybe, or a slight switch somewhere else. And at some point, you really know how these organs or these bureaucracies work, what happens in people’s lives. And you have a good idea. Actually, I was at a dinner party, and I was talking about this unclaimed to somebody who had didn’t know anything about this book. And she said, Actually, I knew somebody who went unclaimed, I worked in women’s homeless shelter. And she said, I know what really was behind it. And she said he was estrangement. Yeah, that’s exactly what we’d be writing about for all associated read the book, but she came up with his treatment. And once you get those kinds of signals, you know, you’ve got the story. And then you can just, you know, write it up.

Traci Thomas 31:30
Was there anything that is not in the book that you wished could have been?

Stefan Timmermans 31:36
Well, one of the things that I really wish we could have done but of course, it’s it’s logistically, almost impossible is we would we could have followed people before known them before they went unclaimed, and then actually get their side of the store. So one of the limitations of coming in after people die, and they’re estranged is that we get the perspective of their family, or we get the specter of their neighbor when we don’t have their own voices and their own interpretation. So that to me, is a limitation. But it’s almost impossible to follow up. And it’s kind of more of its to follow people around us if you’re going to go I’m playing Let’s so we never had we got very attached to Barbie to to pitch to David and to Lena, but we never met them. And we feel we know them. But we don’t have their voices and having their side of the story. They have their families, their neighbors, their friends perspective of.

Traci Thomas 32:35
Pamela, do you want to share what you wished?

Pamela Prickett 32:38
Yeah so one of the things we haven’t talked much about yet is the kind of volunteers the groups of people who are coming together to mourn the unclaimed, right? Certain students. So we talked about Boyle Heights, right? So people showing up at the ceremony every year. There’s also two organizations we write about in the book, one that’s working to bury unclaimed veterans, and another that’s working to bury abandoned babies. Now there is a third kind of group of volunteer mourners. That didn’t, it didn’t work to get into the book, because it was it was outside. We discovered later, we sort of intentionally intentionally decided that it didn’t work. Because the circumstances were really different. But that’s the number of tremendous number of organizations and volunteers who are working on behalf on behalf of missing migrants, people who are dying at the border, while trying to trying to come in from Mexico or Central America. And you know, just the tremendous efforts to sort of get those bodies identified and to notify their families. And we didn’t include it because we came to see it as not the same sort of story. They weren’t unclaimed, they were unclaimed bubble, right as a result of immigration policies and choices as to how we allocate resources. So that’s something where I felt we decided it didn’t work. It didn’t fit in the book. But it’s something that I wish people knew about. Right, really understood that there is a there’s a crisis in this sense at the border. That’s what I would say is the real crisis at the border is the way that we’re allowing people to go intentionally be unclaimed by virtue of not identifying them.

Traci Thomas 34:14
Right. I want to talk about the cover. Were you all involved in this process at all? I love it. It’s already top contender for favorite cover of 2024. It’s vary. But I’m just curious if you all had any input on it, or if that was the crown team kind of just working their magic.

Stefan Timmermans 34:37
Pamela had strong opinions.

Pamela Prickett 34:40
We were asked to sort of present some ideas. But then I have to tell you, the designers came up with three possibilities. This was one of them. Everybody on the team agreed. This has to be it. I mean it just like you said there’s this haze over the skyline and the book opens in a time in which Los Angeles was experiencing wildfires and the air was just, you know, it had its own haze. And so to me, it just felt like the designer. And it did just such an amazing job of capturing what this book is. And so yeah, that was and I have to say like, at first I was like, whoo, yellow. That’s, that’s bright. But then I thought like I, you know that Oh, for people who organize their books, by color, I love is a great addition.

Traci Thomas 35:29
I love it. Yeah, this is very much me. I just I love I just love this. This is again, my favorite kind of cover a photograph for like a nonfiction book cover. I just, I love it. It’s bright. It’s great. I mean, the tag of the whole thing. It’s an A plus cover for me. Okay, here’s what I want to know. How do you write how many hours a day how often music or no snacks and beverages renewals? I know that Pamela, you were in Amsterdam, Stefan, you’re here in Los Angeles. So just, you know, set the scene for me how each of you like to write.

Pamela Prickett 36:07
Okay, I’m going to start this one, Stefan, because the first thing I have to have is coffee. How do you take it black filter, pour over ideal, okay. And I have to tell you this story, I’m going to tell the story to your listeners that nobody knows. So Stephen here had never been a coffee drinker. And even in the syrup for several years, when we’re doing a lot of the research for this book, he was just looking at me like, I better get you a coffee, but I just don’t get you. And this obsession you have with coffee. And then a few years ago, I gave him a challenge. Because we had to do some fun things on the side, we have to give each other some fun challenges, right? Because this is a heavy book. So I challenged him, you know, I want you to go out and just try every kind of coffee on the menu at some like, you know, hipster coffee place. Start with a mocha, because it’s like in basically hot chocolate and work your way to the pourover. And he was sort of he was gaming for the challenge. And then once he got to the pour over, he was like he was he was a convert. Wow, he has taken it to a whole new level. And so so all of that is a long winded way of saying like we start with coffee. Okay, regardless of what continent we’re in, alright, Stefan?

Stefan Timmermans 37:21
Yes. So, mocha was the gateway drug?

Pamela Prickett 37:27
Yeah, yeah. And then it was sort of, for the years of doing, you know, the research. Social Scientists call it the field work, which is this first or strange term to continue to be using in this day and age. But I would be coming to Los Angeles quite often from Amsterdam. So I do apologize to mother nature for my carbon footprint. It’s, it’s a bad one. And we would sort of when we were together always say, oh, my gosh, it’s so different when we’re riding together versus apart. But how can we manage have a lot of honest conversations? Like where are our strengths? How do we make this nine hour time difference work. And so it was really nice to have a collaboration where, you know, I could work during the day. And then at the end of my my work day, I sort of close the file and hand it off to Stefan who’s just beginning the start of his workday, and then he would push it through. And so when we’re writing, it was nice to be able to send it back and forth. And because there was so much that had to be done in person, I kept coming back to Los Angeles. And so once we got a little bit further along, in the writing process, it was nice to be able to sort of go over and have conversations. And this is a nice little tidbit. For anybody who’s interested in writing narrative nonfiction, we took on post it notes and wrote every scene, every point we wanted to make, and then we would map it out on the wall, and sort of move post it notes around. And that was the kind of thing where we made the most of when I was in Los Angeles. And we had these, you know, to do this together and have conversations and really think about okay, how, how do you want to end a chapter? How do you want to start a chapter? So yeah, it was it was a lot of a lot of conversation, a lot of honest conversation about what our strengths are in writing. And I’m playing to those strengths. That’s one of the things Stephen always says, You got to play to your strengths.

Traci Thomas 39:26
Right? Right. That’s very smart, very, very Professor like to say something. I feel like I’m back in college!

Stefan Timmermans 39:35
We have different strengths. So I’m pretty good at throwing a whole bunch of words on the page. And then Pamela is very good at rewriting it and sort of building the sequences and that the timing and the beats, often by cutting, you know, 70 80% of what I’ve written, but then the remaining 20% Is is really good rough draft, and I have to write in the morning so I need to get up first, almost immediately sit behind the computer with the coffee now, since I’ve now developed an addiction, and then I need to have music in the background, what kind of TV, anything that is not distracting me. So it’s sort of like really background noise that that puts me in a particular kind of writing mode. And then it’s an issue of, to me, the writing process is like writing until you bump into a barrier, then it’s like going for walks and biking and just thinking sitting with it being really frustrated, and not seeing a way out, then writing that out. And then of course, you bump into new barriers. So it’s all this process of moving and stopping and moving again. And it’s really nice to have a co author to run this by and don’t just talk it out. But the passing the draft back and forth was really great. Because when you were sleeping, the other person was working on it. And it’s as if in your sleep, you moved the manuscript ahead.

Traci Thomas 41:09
Love that. It’s like, oh, I’m amazing. Look what I did. This is the question, this is the answer to how do you get more hours in your day, you just have a partner working on it nine hours ahead or behind you, and then when you sleep? magic happens. Okay, seven, I have to ask you in the book, there’s a mention, I think this is towards the end, like in the afterword, or whatever, were maybe about this book where the phrase social hierarchy of mourning comes up. Okay. And that’s, that’s your work? Right? That’s, that’s the work that you were doing. You talked about bad deaths. But can you just tell us what social hierarchy of mourning means and why that’s something that you are interested in.

Stefan Timmermans 41:48
So I’m fascinated by the fact that some deaths bring the entire world together, like the death of Princess Diana, it’s like a marker in collective world history. And people who’ve never met British royalty, you know, lived through the funeral of and to that event, and might still be deeply touched and have still opinions about that. And then just sort of have you go down in terms of how much of a mark we leave on the world. And then you have these people at the bottom, the people that we’re talking about who were almost forgotten before they even dies. And so I’m interested in how do you have this, this stratification of social value that is apparent through morning practices like the because it’s not really something that somebody gets paid to be remembered, it’s a way that these debts resonate. And you have debts that bring communities together, but you also have debts that sort of like, evaporate even before the body is cold. And so as a social scientist, is something really interesting about how there’s an element of social status being enacted in an implicit way, in who we mourn, and how much we remember them, and how much we’re willing to, to participate in remembering.

Traci Thomas 43:18
Does that also work for like, larger scale deaths? Like, I’m just thinking about, like house in certain, like certain wars, we become very obsessed with like the people who are killed, whereas other wars like we, we don’t I mean, like, Is that also part of it?

Stefan Timmermans 43:36
Exactly. And even there in the in certain of the wars, the violation of the bodies is like, adding post mortem injury to the death to the living because then they they’re not allowed to more, they’re not allowed to retrieve the body. When that comes back to your question of, you know, who cares about going unclean, people care very deeply that they can bury their debt in a war situation. And so, one of the war tactics is actually trying to avoid trying to obstruct this this kind of mourning. Yes. So it definitely goes. And there’s this iconic images of debts that sort of start to resonate, but then we know that there’s probably hundreds, if not 1000s, more that nobody notices. And again, there’s some kind of sorting out of which debts count, and for whom do they count? And how did they galvanize public opinion in favor or against the war? Against the War?

Traci Thomas 44:33
Okay, and you’ve written a book about this. Not yet. Okay, well, can you let me know when you do I want to read that I’m like, I need the sequel of the unclaimed called the social hierarchy of mourning. I’m like so fascinated, okay, you’re both very smart people. You are professors. You are fancy, fancy people. What is the word that each of you cannot spell correctly on the first try?

Pamela Prickett 44:59
Half of them in the book.

Stefan Timmermans 45:03
I wasn’t gonna say that but that’s actually true.

Traci Thomas 45:05
Pamela is a bad speller. Welcome to the club. Pam. I’m a terrible speller.

Pamela Prickett 45:10
Terrible genealogy. I can never get it right.

Traci Thomas 45:13
I there’s an A in there, right? Somewhere floating.

Stefan Timmermans 45:18
So here is how it works. Pamela is not the best speller, but she has an amazing memory. So I can sort of, you know, forget some of the details, but my spelling is usually five. The so that’s how we are complimented. Would you say some clever?

Pamela Prickett 45:37
I think that’s absolutely fair.

Traci Thomas 45:39
So you can spell every word Stefan. That’s what you’re telling me?

Stefan Timmermans 45:43
I can spell most words, or of course, I mean, you know, the word processing program helps you to get it.

Traci Thomas 45:52
That’s called cheating. And even such a bad speller, that sometimes the word processing app is like, we don’t we don’t know. We know that’s wrong. But we don’t know what you’re trying to do. Like we are so far gone today. So for people who love the unclaimed, what are some books you might recommend to them that are in conversation with what you all have done? I know last night at the event. Pamela, you mentioned that there were no even articles about this until 2016. So I know that perhaps there’s not going to be stuff that’s exactly the same conversation, but sort of, you know, in the same world, maybe same style, whatever, whatever conversation means do you do?

Pamela Prickett 46:32
Yeah no, I love that question. So one book that immediately comes to mind is by a British writer, who is also works for a local council in England, who handles public health funerals. So in the UK, because they have the National Health System, they actually have a means to provide public health funerals, so for funerals for people who would be unclaimed otherwise, and the book is from ashes to admin by EV King, EV i e, King. And I think that’s one’s really nice, because it’s the perspective of somebody right? Who’s in the system, and trying to do this work and bring dignity to the dead through through a bureaucratic kind of perspective. So I think that’s a really complimentary book to this. You know, you mentioned Roxanne as book, we were once a family. And, you know, I think it’s just a beautifully written book. It’s, it’s, it was one that I had to read, I just shut out the rest of the world. And I had to finish it basically, in one sitting. But what I think there is, is also sort of resonates with our book is this notion of family and kin, and how, you know, what her story tells is, you know, this really broken foster care system in the United States and how families are sundered by the government. And you know, so I felt like that was a book she you know, that just as I was writing the unclaimed and reading hers, I thought this is another kind of perspective on what happens when government gets involved in family. So those are two that immediately come to mind. For me.

Stefan Timmermans 48:09
I would like to add Katie Doughty’s books. She has this book called Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, she is one of the proponents of the positive, that movement. And what she’s really good at pulling off is that she can be really funny, like, hysterically funny about that and dying, but not irreverence. So she’s she really finds that balance, as she’s like a role model in how she spreads the word about dying. Well, thinking about your team mystifying it’s sticky about green funerals. So it’s very hard, very strongly recommends her,

Traci Thomas 48:46
I love that you just have two questions. One is just about both of your sort of mental emotional states as you were working on such a complex book that has so many deep topics and is, you know, haunting in some ways, how were you each kind of preserving or tapping into your own creativity? Like how were you able to not only take in all this information, but then still turn around and like, turn out a book like to write out of it?

Stefan Timmermans 49:15
Well, I think the challenge of this book was actually it’s it’s a you would expect it to be the subject matter that it’s like heavy, it’s people who are being abandoned by their family and by the community. But it’s not actually more Finding Hope in the stories and that’s what we do at the end of the book when we talk about the ceremonies where strangers come together to bury strangers and you you the emotional ups, the highs that are part of the ceremonies, you carry them with you get bounce out some of the abandonment and sadness. But in generally what I do is I go to the beach and I walk on the sand and we’ve got I’m on the boardwalk with my dogs. And that just really calms me down and puts everything back in perspective. And I think Pamela has similar kind of rituals that she used.

Pamela Prickett 50:12
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that’s true. Lots of walks along the canals of Amsterdam, which is a different view, especially in winter. But I think Okay, so in that sense, I think just, at times, just shutting off, and focusing on the moment, and being with my daughter, for example, and really just sort of savoring, and cultivating a strong relationship with her husband, really, the the saving grace for me, throughout this process, and, you know, she’s been there all along the way, you know, and, you know, has kind of grown up with this book in the background, and sometimes in the foreground, for her life. And she is the fiercest cheerleader, of this book and of me, and so just like, you know, wanting to make her proud, I think is one thing that has definitely motivated me and kept me going throughout this process.

Traci Thomas 51:08
I love that. I do have to say before I asked last question, there are two gentlemen in the book who worked for the county who do the cremations. And I am so glad that you all included them in the book, because I think that they were such they’re such like unsung heroes of this story. And I wish that I had, we had more time because I would have loved to talk about them more. But I just I felt they were so special to me in the reading process of this book as that because they keep sort of coming up throughout the book, we kind of start with them. And we keep going through and I just I just really loved them. So thanks to them for their work, but also thanks to you all for highlighting them. And here’s my last question. If you could have one person dead or alive read this book. Who would you want it to be?

Pamela Prickett 51:54
Okay, selfishly, Oprah.

Traci Thomas 51:59
Oprah and Obama are the two are the only two correct answers. But other people give, like different answers that I’m like, Wow, that’s nice. But it’s Oprah and Obama.

Stefan Timmermans 52:09
I’ll just be real honest. I want Oprah to read this and love it. Okay. I was actually thinking about Obama. And a second choice would be our current Surgeon General was very concerned about social isolation. So thick, Bertie. But Obama would be a treaty work to be able to read this book.

Traci Thomas 52:32
You both passed the test. That’s a real test right there. That’s that’s how you got I know you have PhDs because you use your noggin. Everybody at home, you can get the unclaimed it is now out in the world. I loved it so much. If you like what we around here calls sort of micro histories or deep dives into really specific topics. This is for sure your book. Stefan and Pamela, thank you both so much for being here.

Stefan Timmermans 52:58
It was a tremendous pleasure.

Traci Thomas 53:01
And everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

Alright, y’all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans. For being my guests. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to Mary Moates and Lindsay Cook for helping to make this interview possible. Remember next week is our March book club episode at least you will be back to discuss Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu with us on Wednesday, March 27. If you love the show, and you want insight access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks and join the stacks pack. If you want to read when I’m writing, check out my sub stack called unstacked at Tracithomas.substack.com Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple podcasts, leave us a rating and a review. For more from the stacks follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram threads and tick tock and thestackspodunderscore on Twitter, you can check out my website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin MacWrite and the theme music is from the Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Cherie Marquez https://www.cmediacollective.com/
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