OQ08: Life eternal, Part 2 (EN)

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Episode description:

In the second part of the two-part conversation, Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak shares the ideas she had in mind when designing the  technology of promession.  She hopes that the method, that allows the dead body to become part of life again, will also contribute to how we in the West relate to death and dying.

Susanne then reflects on the importance of studying nature by being in nature, observing and listening to the ways it works. In the concluding part of the conversation Susanne talks about the growing support for promession outside Sweden’s borders, while the Swedish authorities have been stalling the decision that would allow Promessa to start providing the service. Individuals and groups of people from over 60 countries contacted Susanne and Peter and expressed their interest in promession.

Episode references:

Promessa Organic AB

Promessa in UK, Cambridge

Carl Linneus’ biography at the Swedish Museum of Natural History website

OQ7: Life eternal, Part 1 (EN)

Listen to the episode:

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Episode description:

This episode is the recording of Irina’s conversation with Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, biologist and founder of Promessa Organic, who was in Uppsala to participate in Uppsala Eco Fair.

Susanne started looking for ways to reduce the damage humans bring to the environment at the age of seventeen. In part 1 of this two-part conversation she shares about her path from composting the food remains and turning them into a well-smelling soil to the insight that humans, too, needed and could be included in nature’s cycle of life even after their death, which is impossible with the two currently predominant in the West burial methods. Susanne then talks about how this insight and her passion for gardening and composting combined with the engineering experience lead her to developing the technology of promession, an ecologically-conscious modern burial method, that more and more people in the West find appealing as it supports life even after our death.

Episode references:

Promessa Organic AB

Sky burial 

Zoroastrian burial (Tower of Silence)

Stiff : The Curious Life of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

(SWE)  Kroppens sällsamma liv efter döden : likets kulturhistoria av Mary Roach