00:02:56.200However, I have been gone from the show since July, and I figured it's time to let you all,
00:03:02.920the listeners, in on some of what's been going on.
00:03:05.680this being a tech podcast, I swear there is a tech angle to what's been going on with me. But
00:03:11.740yeah, if this is your first time listening, welcome. We're so excited to have you.
00:03:16.420This might not be the one to start with. Yeah, I think that's probably good advice
00:03:20.100for people. It's going to be a little different. But Bridget, it's so nice to have you back here.
00:03:26.480Thank you for recording. And I got to ask, how have things been with you?
00:03:35.680If you watch Bravo's Real Housewives of New York, when Dorinda is asked, how are you doing? Not well, bitch. That's how I'm doing. Not well, bitch. Things have been terrible. Things have been very, very bad.0.99
00:03:52.240really all aspects of my life professionally personally socially in all the ways that one
00:04:00.760can be bad I am bad I feel like people listening are like what the hell is going on with her yeah
00:04:07.180it's not been a good I've not been a good summer not been a good fall yeah I know it's been very
00:04:12.100rough uh and I really commend you for wanting to get back on the mic talk to listeners about what's
00:04:19.660been going on with you. And I know a lot of listeners have written in with concern and
00:04:25.660expressing their support, which was very nice. But so where do you want to start? Do you want
00:04:29.540to just take us through chronologically or something else? I'll just jump in. So on the
00:04:38.5204th of July, I'll say on the 4th of July, I had a great 4th of July when kayaking celebrated all
00:04:44.880the stuff that people do, blah, blah, blah. The next day, I got a call from my mom saying that my
00:04:50.620dad had had a pretty bad fall down the stairs. People who have been following me for a while,
00:04:56.340like back in the Stuff Mom Never Told You days, might recall that my dad is disabled,
00:05:00.540has had a whole host of chronic health issues. He has had strokes in the past. So this was not
00:05:08.380wholly new territory for us as a family, but it was still pretty rough news. He had been on the
00:05:14.180stairs. My mom heard a loud crash, came downstairs. He was on the ground. She called 911. The whole0.99
00:05:20.380works. The day after that was my brother and sister-in-law. They were having a baby shower
00:05:27.160in Richmond, Virginia, because they're expecting twins. They've since have had these twins. So
00:05:31.680there are twin niece and nephew out in the world, which is great. So I came home. I was already
00:05:38.260planning on going to see my family to be at this baby shower. I went to the baby shower. It was a0.93
00:05:43.960lovely time, saw my mom there, my brother there, all my family there. After the baby shower was
00:05:49.660winding down, my mom got in her car to drive to the hospital to see my dad because he was still
00:05:55.500hospitalized from that fall. Maybe an hour later, I excused myself from the baby shower,
00:06:02.120also got in my car, drove to the hospital to meet my mom and my dad. Met up in my dad's hospital
00:06:08.680room you know my dad was you know he was in okay condition like was talking alert you know had had
00:06:16.940a had had some like medical stuff going on but like I was happy to see him and happy to see that
00:06:21.720he was like doing I thought like more or less fine spent a couple of hours visiting with him
00:06:28.000in the hospital my mom also my brother soon thereafter the baby shower wrapped up and he
00:06:33.660met us at the hospital so the entire family at the hospital all in all it was like a fairly
00:06:38.140normal day. And I remember thinking, wow, I was so worried about my dad and that fall,
00:06:44.700but he actually seems like he's going to be okay. He seemed pretty stable and solid.
00:06:49.360The next day I go visit my dad in the hospital. I was surprised that my mom had not made it.
00:06:56.760So I'm sort of like waiting around for her, like, where's mom? Where's mom? And I tell my dad that
00:07:03.560I, you know, I was like, oh, I haven't heard from mom all day. He's like, that's unusual. You should
00:07:07.440have your brother go check on her. And he did go check on her and she had passed away. She died
00:07:14.620very unexpectedly. The last time I saw her was we were in the hospital with my dad and I had
00:07:22.180walked her to her car. And I guess I feel sort of grateful that the last thing I said to her,
00:07:30.740I remember the moment, like very clearly, it's like very much burned into my memory,
00:07:34.780that the last moment that she had with my dad was quite tender like they hugged and they kissed and
00:07:41.680you know embraced and that I walked her to her car and that our last moment was was was tender
00:07:47.680like I think I said I love you and I'm grateful that that's what I said as the last thing
00:07:52.640because I certainly have no idea that that was going to be the last time that I ever saw her
00:07:57.480alive you know that's obviously so so terrible uh i think to be with your dad in the hospital
00:08:07.760you know a very concerning fall like he was in the hospital and then to lose your mom unexpectedly
00:08:16.440like two days later uh that's like a level of tragedy that i think many if not most people
00:08:25.120never experienced so much. And so I just wanted to ask for the listener's benefit. Did your mom
00:08:33.900have a lot of health problems? Was this something that was kind of expected or was it more out of
00:08:41.200the blue? Completely out of the blue. My mom had just turned 70, which was a big milestone
00:08:48.420birthday for her. But in the scheme of things, 70 is quite young. And so she didn't have major
00:08:53.860health complications. I will say the day, the last day that we spent together, the day of my
00:08:59.680brother's baby shower was like a, just a horribly hot day in Virginia. Um, it was like triple
00:09:08.100digits. You know, I was having difficulty, um, being out and about that day. I remember, I remember
00:09:15.960notably, it was like the hottest day of the summer and it was so hot. And I remember thinking like,
00:09:19.860i wonder if they're gonna cancel the baby shower because it's so hot unfortunately it's a long
00:09:24.780story but we were unable to do an autopsy so i will never really know what happened which you
00:09:31.900know was difficult for me to accept that but in some ways it doesn't matter i guess i've come to
00:09:40.460sort of that conclusion that i'm definitely the kind of person who would really like perseverate
00:09:47.560is that the right word, perseverate on the details and the why and the how and the like,
00:09:52.380could this have been prevented? And that's definitely like a way that I cope. And in some
00:09:58.720ways, it's okay that I, I mean, it has to be okay. I've had to have made peace with the fact
00:10:04.920that I'll never know what happened. And, you know, that is how it has to be. But when I say
00:10:11.240it was unexpected like my mom she had like a ring camera even though you know we tell how much do i
00:10:19.860rail against those my mom didn't listen to the show so she didn't hear what we had to say about1.00
00:10:24.040ring so she had one and the last thing that she did was that she called to order delivery like0.99
00:10:32.300dinner, delivery, food. And, you know, she calls the order in, on her phone, because we now have
00:10:40.920that, you see the delivery driver come to her door, knock on the door, you know, wait around,
00:10:47.580knock again, wait around. She doesn't answer. So in between her calling to order food,
00:10:54.660when she got home after the last night that I saw her at the hospital, she, you know, that passed.
00:11:02.300And, you know, as horrible as it was, I guess the way that I'm trying to cope is really look for the bright sides and the positive because the situation was so horrible that it's the only thing I can do.
00:11:16.500And so, yeah, there are positives, you know, that she spent her last day with her whole family. You know, she did not appear to have been in any pain. Like, it's not like she had a fall. She was in her in her favorite chair.
00:11:33.500Like, when we found her, at first, you know, it looked like she was just asleep. So she wasn't, you know, it wasn't like she was like face down on the floor or something, which is something that I've sort of been clinging to. But yeah, was very deeply unexpected.
00:11:51.900I was informed of this by my brother at the hospital.
00:12:10.600But yeah, my dad's nurse was like, oh my God.
00:12:14.220I collapsed in the hospital hallway and she held me and helped me get up.
00:12:19.260and was like she was like don't tell your dad just go rushed home found her i don't know if
00:12:26.280anybody out there has ever found a loved one dead but it sticks with you i guess i'll just put it
00:12:34.380that way it's very difficult it's not something i wish on i would ever wish on my worst enemy
00:12:39.080it's really hard it's not something you ever like forget yeah i i can't imagine uh how difficult
00:12:48.880That must have been, you know, I think your focus on like trying to focus on some of those positive things that I mean, I have no idea, but that seems seems like a positive thing to think about.
00:13:02.680And, you know, the fact that it sounds like she went quickly without pain, you know, I think that is something that when I've had people close to me die, often they haven't had that.
00:13:32.620I'm that special that if you've ever wondered, like, well, would I rather have my loved one die unexpectedly without any pain in her sleep very quickly or have them fade away from a disease for which there is no cure slowly bit by bit?
00:13:50.580Spoiler alert for how terrible the last few months have been.
00:13:55.600yeah so i i definitely want to come back to your mom because uh i've had i had the opportunity to
00:14:02.880meet her she was an amazing person and i uh loved you by the way oh uh so i definitely want to come
00:14:11.980back to her but let's complete the story so like what are you talking about that you've gotten to
00:14:19.140experience both well as i mentioned my dad was in the hospital when this happened and when i left
00:14:27.140his room i did not tell him that my mom had died because it sounds wild to say but i genuinely did
00:14:33.620not believe it it was not until i saw her that i started to believe it and believe it or not even
00:14:38.860a little bit after i like wasn't sure i was like maybe something will happen once she was like
00:14:43.520in a casket i was like okay she probably this probably is what's happening but like that but
00:14:48.680like that is how unexpected this was to me. So, you know, I went home, was talking to my family
00:14:55.560and we decided that we had to go back to the hospital the next day and break the news to my
00:15:02.760dad. And as hard as it was for me, my dad had it worse. I really feel for my dad. So we had to break
00:15:12.560the news to him in the hospital that he'd seen my mom for the last time. And from there, it was
00:15:21.500like something turned off in him. And maybe people who have been through something like this can
00:15:28.660chime in and let me know, because apparently it is not uncommon. But it was like a light somewhere
00:15:36.140Aaron, my dad, turned off. And since my mom passed away, my dad has continued to get worse and worse.
00:15:45.520He, since that day that he was admitted to the hospital on the 4th of July, he has not walked
00:15:51.380since then. He has been in either a hospital or a rehab facility, back to hospital, back to rehab,
00:15:58.520back to hospital he has not gone home he has not spent a single solitary moment not in a facility
00:16:05.720of some kind since then and so just just to chime in uh so we're recording this on november 1st and
00:16:14.340he entered on july 4th so that's that's right months and to give you a sense like a week before
00:16:21.100my dad was hospitalized in july i had had lunch with him in fredericksburg virginia and so he got
00:16:27.920into his car drove himself the hour and change away to Fredericksburg walked into the restaurant
00:16:33.960we had a totally normal you know no flags were raised it's not like so my dad went from like a
00:16:39.940pretty independent person who had chronic health challenges had this fall and then it was like
00:16:48.920once once he heard about my mom it was yeah I just the only way I can describe it is like
00:16:55.000something turned off in him. And so he has continued to get worse and worse and worse.
00:17:01.480He is currently hospitalized. I have really spent most of my time since July with him.
00:17:10.260It's just, yeah, it's just been hard. So like, I'm still very much in this. And, you know,
00:17:16.680my mom has passed away. My dad is not doing well. I have been living in kind of various hotels and
00:17:27.320Airbnbs in Virginia to be with him. Shout out to an amazing nonprofit in Richmond, Virginia called
00:17:35.000Doorways because they provide low cost, accessible housing that is near where my dad is hospitalized.
00:17:41.800If not for them, I don't know what I would do. I've spent all my money trying to be in Richmond to be with him because he can't walk, can't really speak, needs someone to be advocating for him. And that person is me.
00:17:58.520And so, yeah, it's been, that's really been my life for the last few months.
00:18:05.880But I do want to back up because I said that this story had a tech angle and I meant it.
00:18:57.560And it makes sense that you would be thinking that, but that is not what happened.
00:19:00.900So, less than 12 hours after we found my mom's dead body in her house, before we had ever even informed my own father, comma, her husband, comma, her next of kin of her death, imagine my surprise.0.86
00:19:19.220When a scammy, AI, obituary, pirate, piece of shit, media, whatever you want to call it, website, publishes a badly written, hacky, full of errors, full of insidious ads, obituary for my mom.
00:19:38.840This was before we had a chance to go to the hospital to talk to my dad.0.96
00:19:43.080This was before we had informed the entirety of our family.
00:19:46.380This was truly even before I had really like internalized what had happened.
00:19:52.000This had already gone viral on Facebook.
00:19:55.040Now I should say, I would call my mom kind of a local celebrity in our town.0.90
00:19:59.740My mom was a really respected and distinguished pediatrician.
00:20:06.140And basically, if you were like a Black person in Richmond, she was probably your pediatrician
00:20:10.700or you knew somebody who she was their doctor.
00:20:13.460she has been in private practice for decades and so generations and generations and generations
00:20:21.240of people have been treated by her i would say that she is kind of a town hero like when i would
00:20:27.060go out to dinner with her go to the mall with her people i'm i'm not kidding and this is not
00:20:32.240this is not just like the rosy sheen that i'm putting on her because she was my mom this is
00:20:37.020literally, people would run out of shops to hug her for saving their lives. I've seen this happen
00:20:45.500multiple times on multiple different outings. People have run from inside shops to hug her
00:20:51.280and say, you saved my daughter's life. You saved my son's life. You saved my sister's life. So my
00:20:56.340mom, was she a public figure? I think it's a little debatable. However, she was somebody that
00:21:02.560had a profile in my town. I'll put it that way. And so here's what I think happened from the
00:21:08.600technical side. So my mom was a doctor who was known for never canceling appointments. She loved
00:21:16.560what she did. She was a really hard worker. I think that when waves and waves of appointments
00:21:21.780started getting canceled, rumors start flying that something has happened to her because the
00:21:28.240demographic that she serves in richmond is also a demographic that is like heavy on facebook
00:21:33.220if you searched my mom's name on facebook it is like thousands and thousands and thousands of
00:21:38.760people who are being like what's going on with with my mom what's going on with her what's going
00:21:42.820on with her you know is she alive is she okay i've done a lot of a lot of looking into this
00:21:46.440here's what i think is going on from a technical standpoint i think that people who are running
00:21:51.240scammy AI obituary shops online are clogging it when someone's name is enjoying a boost from
00:22:02.540search, when people are searching for someone's name a lot, when people are using someone's name
00:22:05.880a lot on social media. And that's how they determine, we're going to cook up an AI-generated
00:22:12.320obituary for this person. And that is exactly what they did. So I'm not kidding. I knew she
00:22:17.260was gone for less than 12 hours when this piece was published. And when it was published, it went
00:22:23.340wildly viral on Facebook to the point where people that I had not spoken to in years, people I
00:22:29.180certainly didn't tell what was going on, were texting me, sending me the link to the obituary
00:22:34.200being like, oh my God, I heard about your mom. I'm so sorry. Right. And so mind you, we hadn't
00:22:39.520talked to my dad yet. I mean, I guess like depending on how you look at it, luckily my dad
00:22:44.300was not in a position where he could be scrolling his phone. Had my dad had his phone, he absolutely
00:22:49.420would have heard the news about the death of his wife from Facebook. There's no way that he would
00:22:53.760not have. The saving grace is that my dad in his state was not able to have his phone and be looking
00:22:59.840at his phone. Had he had access to his phone, that is how he would have found out about his wife
00:23:03.660passing away, not from his kids, not from his family. I have to pause there because even talking
00:23:10.220about it now, it makes me want to vomit. It fills me with such rage and disgust for my fellow human
00:23:17.940that it makes me, I mean, you report on tech harms for four years and then they happen to you and
00:23:25.340you can't believe the depravity and the depths that people will go for to generate a quick buck
00:23:31.740online. Yeah, it's truly despicable. I think there are a lot of different perspectives in
00:23:39.320society people have different values but i think one thing that pretty much every human i've ever
00:23:45.100met like has in common is that everybody recognizes that when you lose a close member of your family
00:23:51.660that's hard and there should be some respect given and uh to take that kind of event and just turn it
00:24:01.440into more SEO chum to drive clicks or whatever the scam was to monetize this event that to you
00:24:11.880was like one of the most difficult things you've ever been through. And to them is just like
00:24:16.140another data point to monetize. It really is despicable and highlights like the worst of
00:24:24.760the ways that technology can harm us this was the worst day of my life was the day that i found my
00:24:32.260mom's dead body in her house every day since then has been a living nightmare from which there is
00:24:38.520no waking up and i will not rest until the people who have monetized this day of mine0.88
00:24:45.480lose everything this is like it's fucking war with me i will never be over this it will be0.95
00:24:52.700I will go to my grave shaming these people and talking about this and speaking about this.0.99
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00:26:02.420That's iHeartAdvertising.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine
00:26:09.700months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
00:26:16.080them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting
00:26:23.640voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live
00:26:31.480through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started
00:26:38.700feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted
00:26:46.520stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them
00:26:52.380they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with
00:26:58.400elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:27:04.260If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:27:11.140This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:27:23.300I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:27:30.440I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:29:52.260She worked her way up, was at the top of her school in college, top of her classes in med school, became probably the top-rated pediatrician in our town, right?
00:30:04.780The day that she died, the week after that, the whole family was meant to be going to Virginia Beach to watch her get a massive award for pediatrics, right?
00:30:17.020My mom has been on National Spotlight.
00:30:19.500She's been on the Today Show talking about the work that she's done for childhood literacy.
00:30:24.080She is an amazing person who has had a dynamic and multifaceted life story.
00:30:31.140anybody who has met her could tell you what a colorful person she was what a smart person she
00:30:39.680was what a funny person she was what a warm person what she was what a passionate person she was what
00:30:45.700an opinionated person she was like she was a person who lived in full color right the thing
00:30:51.840that pisses me off the most about this ai obituary that they published about her is that it's so
00:30:57.980generic and so flat. They say, oh, she was a pediatrician who specialized in children's
00:31:05.820medicine. Well, what the fuck else would a pediatrician specialize in? That's like saying,0.98
00:31:09.680oh, he was a firefighter who specialized in flames. Obviously, she specialized in children's
00:31:14.120medicine. The way that it's written, it's just the most AI generated flat piece of bullshit I1.00
00:31:20.400have ever read in my life. And it is so deeply offensive to me. If a human was sitting down to1.00
00:31:25.300write an obituary about my mom. There are so many things that you obviously would have included.
00:31:30.120The first obituary that was published, because there was a handful of them,
00:31:33.980did not include one single detail. It was all vagaries.
00:31:39.300Yeah. And, you know, I know we have a lot of younger listeners who maybe have not yet had
00:31:44.760the experience of having a close loved one die. And to you, I say, congratulations. Keep riding
00:31:50.280that wave as long as you can. But it is coming. And when it does, you will realize that obituaries
00:31:57.420are important. I don't know. I personally didn't really think much of them until
00:32:05.280my grandparents passed a few years ago. And I was very close with them. I personally wrote
00:32:12.280their obituaries. And it was a really meaningful thing for me and I think something meaningful for
00:32:16.500my family. And it just really, like, it means a lot to have an obituary that does reflect who
00:32:24.440the person was in their life. And the sting of having that taken away, it would make my blood
00:32:30.860boil. Oh, my blood is boiling, my friend. My blood is boiling. And it is even worse that I am not
00:32:37.760alone. So it turns out that this kind of practice is actually commonplace and has been going on for
00:32:45.020a while. It has been made worse by the proliferation of AI. Funeral homes have actually been fighting
00:32:52.440obituary scam, obituary pirates, whatever you want to call it, for 15, 20 years, but it's really
00:32:59.700taken off with technology. I actually was interviewed for an article in Fast Company
00:33:06.360after this happened. The article, I'll link it in the show notes, but it's almost difficult for me
00:33:11.380to read because when I was interviewed, I was still very much, I mean, I'm still in the thick
00:33:16.740of it now, but I was like really in the thick of it then. And in the interview, I feel like I come
00:33:23.380off as like unwell and I was unwell. Like I really was, you know, I had just buried my mom.
00:33:30.760I had, and this was totally unexpected. I was literally sleeping in my dad's ICU room for a
00:33:39.400month. So like his room has a couch in it. I was just curling up on the couch and that's where I
00:33:44.860was living for a literal month. I was dealing with all of his health stuff, talking to doctors every
00:33:50.800day, trying to figure out how to, you know, you know, my mom died unexpectedly. So trying to
00:33:56.100figure out all of her like estate stuff, her will, like all of this like incredibly complicated stuff,
00:34:02.160funeral arrangements, stuff that we had never talked about, which we'll get into that in a
00:34:05.920it, but I was just struggling. I was unwell. So it's almost hard for me to go back and read that
00:34:10.680article because I'm like, oh my God, I was really in it. But yeah, when someone is going through
00:34:18.160one of the most difficult times, for me, it wasn't just one of the most, it was the most
00:34:23.180difficult time of my entire life. Having there be obituary pirates who are capitalizing off of that
00:40:50.440There's no hint of emotion or acknowledgement that they're discussing someone's greatest tragedy.
00:40:55.640And as you said, Mike, this is not new.
00:40:58.260Funeral homes have been dealing with obituary aggregator sites for 15 or 20 years.
00:41:02.480This is from Courtney Miller, chief strategy officer at MKJ Marketing, who specializes in funeral services.
00:41:08.420She says that the site's trawl news articles and local funeral home websites looking for an initial death announcement that has basic details like name, age, and where a service might be held.
00:41:17.500They then scrape and republish that content at scale using templated formats or today, increasingly, AI tools.
00:41:25.840So basically, these people are just exploiting SEO and like Google Trends and things like that.
00:41:31.580SEO expert Chris Silver Smith says there's a whole new strategy in search rankings, and I believe it's based off of getting information that someone has died and seeing there's a little spike in traffic, perhaps in a specific region, for that person's name.
00:41:43.820and rapidly optimizing and publishing articles about the person to get these dribbles of search
00:41:48.700traffic. Dribbles of search traffic is such a, like, diminutive term, but that feels correct
00:41:58.380here. Like, it's hard to imagine that they're making any sort of serious money off any individual
00:42:04.120obituary. And I guess it's really, like, the scale of it that allows this to be a fruitful
00:42:11.320enterprise for these scammers to take people's lives and flatten them down in this way to almost
00:42:19.180like turn people's death into a commodity. Like what is the business model there? Is it that?
00:42:24.380Well, it's pretty much exactly that. They just are playing on the surge of interest in keywords
00:42:29.480related to deaths, like my mom's name, and they just pump out low effort content to try to
00:42:35.280capitalize on that flow of web traffic. It's really a numbers game. And I think that's why
00:42:39.880it kind of like has to be so low effort because I don't think that anybody was making a lot of
00:42:45.820money individually from my mom's AI BS obituary. But if you do it for enough people, if you crank
00:42:52.980them out and crank them out and crank them out, in aggregate, you can probably make some money.
00:42:57.780And obituaries really are big business. A Wired piece called The Morbid War Over Online Obituaries
00:43:04.520from 2021, describes this company, Echo Vita. These people are basically a ring of obituary
00:43:11.480scammers. So companies like Echo Vita, they take this scam a step further. So Echo Vita was sued
00:43:17.980by Service Corporation International, which is like a conglomerate of 1,500 funeral homes.
00:43:23.680And they allege that the company was scraping details from obituaries written by family members
00:43:29.100from funeral home websites and just republishing them. Quote, mining people's personal data at the
00:43:35.120lowest point in their lives is disappointing, a spokesperson for the funeral conglomerate told
00:43:39.960Wired in an email. So Echo Vita makes money through purporting to connect mourners with
00:43:45.860flower delivery services or other like funeral services that they then profit from. But wait,
00:43:51.640I'm sorry, did I give these fucking ghouls permission to profit financially from my mom's0.99
00:43:57.000Steph? No, I fucking didn't. I've never talked to these people. I don't know these people.1.00
00:44:01.940And yet, when I search their scam enterprise website, what do you know? There's my mom's
00:44:07.580name. There's my mom's information. Next to these insidious, scammy pop-up ads that are like,
00:44:14.580oh, for $30, you can plant a tree in honor of my mom. Also, side note, my mom would have hated
00:44:22.220that. She would have thought that was so hacky. She would have never approved that. I didn't
00:44:26.640to prove that. Yet on their website, these ghouls are making money off of my dead mother without
00:44:33.260anybody in my family's permission. So terrible. And like big money, like you said. Right. So
00:44:39.760according to a piece about another lawsuit against Ecovita, the company has an option for people to
00:44:45.280claim an obituary, right? So I could provide documentation to Ecovita proving that my mom is
00:44:52.260my mom. And if I did that, I could then take a cut of whatever profit they make from flowers
00:44:58.560and candles or whatever else. But I'm sorry, that is just gross. Why should I have to prove to you
00:45:05.020that I am my mother's daughter, you a stranger that I have not provided to have anything to do
00:45:10.440with me or my family? Why do I need to provide documentation to you to prove anything? Who gave
00:45:16.780you permission to have my mom's name on your scam website. And how generous of them to give you
00:45:22.780some undefined cut of their tchotchke sales. I'm not even sure that people would actually
00:45:27.740get the flowers or the tree is actually planted because according to the Trustpilot reviews of
00:45:32.760Echo Vita, the flowers that people are sending the money to buy might not even show up and the
00:45:38.820company is just like pocketing the money. Here's one review from Trustpilot. Quote,
00:45:43.460These are leech companies that take obituaries from legitimate funeral home site and post them on their own sites to profit from.
00:45:52.320They are just trying to sell trees, et cetera, without permission or authorization from their families.
00:45:56.880They just did this to us on the loss of my 14-year-old grandson.
00:46:01.020Our funeral director has made several attempts to stop this, but always hits a dead end.
00:46:05.180I have warned everyone we shared our obituary with, and I am writing a letter to the Secretary of State.
00:46:09.560It's kind of surprising that they are still doing this with impunity, given stories like that from a grandmother who sounds like she's pretty mad listening to you. Sounds like you're pretty mad. I wouldn't want to be the focus of that ire.
00:53:46.000So you might be wondering, how did Ecovita come to be?
00:53:48.700Well, before Ecovita, there was a company called Afterlife that was shuttered after a ruling, a $20 million ruling against them for pirating the obituaries and pictures of dead people in order to profit from grieving families.
00:54:02.820I have to say the judge in this case, federal court judge Catherine Kane, really laid down the law and she said that the reason she was being so intense was because she thought that their behavior was high-handed, reprehensible, and marked a departure from standards of decency.
00:54:19.260And so she was like, I need to make an example of them so they will never do this again. Get a load of this quote that Paco gave to the Globe after the judge's ruling on Afterlives.
00:54:29.160So Afterlives, unlike Echo Vita, Echo Vita at least uses AI to kind of Frankenstein the obituaries just enough so they sound a little bit different.
00:54:39.340So it's like not totally just explicitly copy and pasting.
00:54:43.080Afterlives was just that touching obituary that you wrote for your grandfather, Mike.
00:54:48.240They would just throw a copy paste on that bad boy, steal a picture of your grandfather from your Facebook, put it up there, add a link to buy a tree that maybe between you and me nobody would ever get.0.98
00:54:59.160pocket the money and fucking profit and then bounce to the next one.0.95
00:56:43.980As a little experiment, I asked ChatGPT to write me a 500-word obituary for a beloved pediatrician from Richmond, and it was almost identical.
00:56:53.980That flattening that you talked about, I think, you know, this phenomenon does highlight a lot of the tech stuff that we've talked about for years.
00:57:02.900And I think one of them is how technology has this tendency to just flatten us.
00:57:08.140And like you said, for these obituaries, just harvest what's available, make up what isn't, and then just churn out some chum.0.53
00:57:46.480are for humans. They're for the living to grieve people that we loved. They are a record for
00:57:53.460how we lived, who we were, how we loved, who loved us, who knew us. Writing an obituary for
00:58:00.760somebody is an intimate, special act. It is adding to the public record of who they were.
00:58:06.520I don't want to live in a world where it's just another way for a tech douche to make money.
00:58:13.640I don't want to live in a world where my mom's beautiful, colorful, full, dynamic, crazy life is just flattened out so people like Paco Leclerc can get a nickel in their bank account.
00:58:31.940That is not the world I want to live in.
01:02:08.220This might be a permanent change for me. And yeah, it's just as hard as everything was, I think the feeling of having my grief be exploited, like I don't think I ever really got to privately grieve my mom and grieve my dad, to be honest with you, and like really sort of grieve what happened to my family.
01:02:35.320There's been a real lack of intimacy. I can't quite describe the feeling of being in a digital fishbowl while you're going through something as hard and intimate as grief. It was really invasive. I have to say, I really kind of shut down.
01:02:52.420you know, when those AI obituaries hit social media, I was not yet ready to talk about what
01:02:58.640was happening. And I had to talk about it because people were texting me about it and asking me
01:03:04.100about it because of these obituaries. And so like, I didn't even want to post my own kind of private
01:03:10.580tribute to my mom because of all of this. Like, I really still haven't because the time that I
01:03:18.780would have done that, I was dealing with this, right? I was like trying to find where these
01:03:26.380AI obituary pirates were based and trying to get things taken down off of the internet and all of
01:03:32.260that, right? So I felt very exposed and it was very hard. I am still very much in it. So this
01:03:40.420is not the sort of like ending of like, and now everything's okay. Everything is terrible for me
01:03:45.620And I don't know when it's going to get better. But I would say the thing that I have learned from all of this is that when we talk about things like AI, it really does matter, right? Like obituaries matter. Some things are for humans. Some things are, there are things that connect us to our humanity. There are things that connect us to the experience of being human. All of us is going to die.
01:04:09.940I'm so sorry to say this, but everyone listening right now, if you have not already, you are going
01:04:15.240to be burying a parent or someone that you know and love. And that is a universal, that is a thing
01:04:20.420that connects us and makes us all human. And so we got to decide whether this thing that connects us
01:04:27.640to our humanity is a thing that we are going to allow tech companies and tech leaders to exploit
01:04:32.760to make money for themselves against our will.
01:05:40.300So, yeah, Bridget, thanks for coming and recording this.
01:05:43.940I know listeners will, I don't want to say be happy to hear from you given the subject matter, but listeners have been asking.
01:05:53.120And so it's and I know it was difficult, but I do really hope that, I don't know, recording this episode maybe helps you start to feel a little bit normal.
01:06:05.660You know, you mentioned that you don't know if you're ever coming back and, you know, we're always changing all the time and something like this, I'm sure would profoundly change a person.
01:06:17.440But you'll get through it. And I hope that, you know, we can all get through it together. And I know you're not planning. We're not coming back into regular production right now. But hopefully, hopefully we'll get back there when you're ready.
01:06:34.240Yeah. Thanks for going on this journey with me, Mike. My mom loved you.
01:06:38.560and there were so many things about your mom. I maybe got to know like 1% of things about your
01:06:43.900mom, but the first time that we met, uh, you know, this is the public health nerd in me.
01:06:48.420We talked about childhood lead exposure because, uh, that is, uh, some research that I did while
01:06:53.920I was in grad school. Um, and it turned out that throughout her career, she had worked with, uh,
01:07:02.000the state of Virginia or the Virginia department of public health to really advocate for and get
01:07:08.560enacted a set of programs to reduce the prevalence of childhood lead exposure for kids in the state
01:07:17.860of Virginia, which is so important. And, you know, I'm sure that that made a huge difference in the
01:07:26.080lives of hundreds of thousands of children. So, you know, just just one little detail of this
01:07:33.440amazing woman. And I'm I really feel grateful that I got to meet her. I thought you were going to
01:07:37.020tell the egg story so like mike knows i love eggs i'm obsessed with eggs and my mom also really
01:07:42.860loved eggs and we go to dinner so it's like i think it was just was it you me and her we were
01:07:50.360at dinner and she ordered like 10 plates of deviled eggs they were good and she just kept
01:07:56.560ordering more plates of deviled eggs and we kept eating them so like eating them just kept eating
01:08:02.500eggs i was in heaven i i and i didn't think anything was weird because my i love eggs and
01:08:08.100i know my mom loves eggs so like had you not said something i would be i was like what do you mean
01:08:11.860it's not normal to eat 12 deviled eggs in a city god my mom also was real i'm now i don't want
01:08:19.180there will be if it's just like a free-for-all with me telling stories of my mom i could i could
01:08:22.660do it for my dad too but like she really was like a great person she had a great laugh i there was
01:08:29.040god I would kill to hear my mom's laugh again like it was like music she had a really and she
01:08:35.320was easy to laugh that was my favorite quality about my mom is that she was really smiley easy
01:08:40.040to laugh it's something I aspire to and I I hope it's something that I carry in her and she another
01:08:47.400thing about her is that she loved her granddaughter it is such a tragedy that she did not get to meet
01:08:54.540her newest grandkids because my brother and his wife had twins so there's two new ones out there
01:09:00.260but she had a really special relationship with my niece and she spent a lot of time with her
01:09:07.640and my niece will will laugh in a way that my mom did that kind of gets me I see a lot of my mom
01:09:15.900in my niece and she's only four but she'll say things or she'll laugh in a kind of way and I
01:09:19.720really it's like almost scary how i can see my mom shining through my niece and uh i hope she
01:09:28.780i know what sounds weird i hope she haunts me i just like would do anything to just talk to her
01:09:33.300like just one more time so yeah like i know people have all different kinds of relationships
01:09:42.140with their family but you know it's hard it's very hard to lose them and whether whether you
01:09:52.720lose them because they pass away or you lose them because they're not in your life for another
01:09:57.720reason or whether you lose them because they're like my dad dealing with dementia and you you've
01:10:02.880kind of lost them even though they're still here it's just so hard so yeah um I hate to end it on
01:10:10.300a bummer but this is what it means to be a human and everybody has to go through this i'm not the
01:10:18.040first person to go through this people listening will all go through this in some capacity and
01:10:21.640you know as hard as it is we don't have to tolerate it being made harder in these ways that
01:10:29.520pull us apart from who we are as humans like this is human this is grief it's ugly it's horrible
01:10:35.740it's messy already, it doesn't also have to be a way that we get exploited.