Episodes

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. How have the people of Venice, Italy buried their dead over the centuries? Founded in the 5th century and spread over 118 small islands, Venice became a major maritime power in the 10th century. Some of these Ordinary Extraordinary Venetians were buried in a crypt beneath Basilica di San Marco, while others were relegated to burial grounds on two different islands; the Island of San Michele and t...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. New Orleans, Louisiana is famously known for its intricate above ground cemeteries, but what about the cemeteries that have been lost to time? In this episode Jennie and Dianne speak with returning guest, Ryan Seidemann, about the Ordinary Extraordinary cemeteries that have disappeared beneath the streets and buildings of the Big Easy; including Caesars Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints f...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne learn about some of the craziest phenomenons that happen in cemeteries, such as exploding casket syndrome and what happens when a body is too big for a casket. They also discuss how the American civil war transformed traditional coffins to the more ornate caskets we see today and they delve into the fear of being buried alive. This fear of being buried alive led ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie chat about their upcoming fundraiser, Beyond the Grave: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Dianne also gives an update about the raising and resetting of many of the old military stones that have sunk at Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. A casual cemetery chat for cemetery lovers everywhere on this episode of the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast. To learn more about the ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne learn about Francis Scott Key and his gravesite at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. Francis Scott Key was a complicated man who opposed war, but believed in the freedom of the nation. He fought for the freedom of black people while at the same time owning slaves himself that he never intended to offer freedom. He was a poet, a father, a lawyer. In an Ordinary Extrao...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Jan MacKell Collins, author of The Good Time Girls book series to discuss the Ordinary Extraordinary lives of dancehall girls and ladies of the night who made their living during the days of the Wild West into the early 20th century. They visit the gravesites of some of these sporting women across Colorado, Arizona, California, Alaska and more! Jan sh...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne explore Evergreen Cemetery in Juneau, Alaska. Founded in 1891, Evergreen Cemetery has become the final resting place to many of Juneau's pioneers. They share the ordinary extraordinary stories of two Tlingit women who were instrumental in preserving and continuing their native heritage, the stories of the co-founders of Juneau, and Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris, and a love st...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. "And those who have undergone [life in Alaska] claim that in the making of the world God grew tired, and when He came to the last barrowload, just dumped it anyhow, and that was how Alaska happened to be." - Jack London - Jennie is joined by special guest co-host Dave Johnson to discuss their recent visit to Gold Rush cemetery in Skagway, Alaska. Gold Rush Cemetery is Skagway’s oldest and most we...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne discuss the many cemeteries Jennie was able to visit while in Alaska. From the coastal town of Ketchikan to the center of the state in Fairbanks, learn about how life on the final frontier helped to create unique burial grounds and monuments to those ordinary, extraordinary souls who were brave enough to face harsh weather, extreme wildlife, and so much more in search or riches ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie share news of Oakland Cemetery in Little Falls, Minnesota, and how residents and the cemetery board are clashing when it comes to its care and maintenance. They also share some ordinary tales and extraordinary stories of Oakland's permanent residents: From relatives of Charles Lindbergh; to a lumber company lawyer; to a two-time Superbowl champion. Join them for this episode of ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In episode 87 Jennie and Dianne talked briefly about the Potter's Field that used to exist where a baseball field is now in Chicago's Lincoln Park. In this episode they delve deeper into the City Cemetery, why the city decided it should be dismantled and what happened to those who originally called Chicago's first city cemetery their final resting place. Join them for the Ordinary Extraordinary s...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by Jeffrey and Sarah, hosts of Salem the Podcast and two of Salem's best tour guides, to talk about the symbolism and other attributes of many of the cemeteries located in Salem, Massachusetts. From the death's heads and full body skeletons on gravestones in the Charter Street cemetery to the willow trees, urns and Victorian status of Harmony Grove cemetery, they guid...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Most cemeteries, both old and modern, contain a section often referred to as a Potter's field. In this episode, Dianne and Jennie discuss the history of Potter's fields and gravesites. From Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois to Hart Island in New York City, New York to quiet graves throughout England and Ireland, Many of these fields and gravesites have been forgotten with time as well as the poor...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Dianne and Jennie learn about one man's heartache and how it led him to build a magnificent mausoleum and gorgeous Victorian mansion. John Bowman built his wealth owning several tanneries and selling leather goods to the Union army during the civil war. However, his true happiness was the love he showered on his wife and daughters and when he lost them he he built the magnificent ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Just in time for Memorial Day, Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Andrew Bell, a former Sergeant-Major in the US Army and a veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars and a former Buffalo Soldier reenactor. Andrew shares not only the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and who they were, but how their nearly forgotten story was brought back to life in the 1960s. These fighting men represe...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie explore Chicago's Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery and learn about its inception due to Chicago's growing immigrant population at the turn of the 20th century. This cemetery is the final resting place for many who took vows of holy orders including several bishops, archbishops, and Cardinals. It is also the final resting place to some of the most notorious gangsters from the 1920s...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne chat about cemeteries in the spring and summer time! This is the time of year when many cemeteries offer tours and other events and they suggest ways to get involved with your local cemetery. They also talk about some of the appropriate ways to help care for grave sites and who to talk to when you want to get involved in restoration projects or even just basic clean up. Join the...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” that is exactly what Dan Fischer, founder of the One Last Wave Project has done. Dan sits down with Dianne and Jennie to share how he turned his devastating heartache from the loss of his dad, dog, and other loved ones in the past two years to one of hope and help for other...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne explore the Harvard Shaker "Lollipop" Cemetery located in Harvard, Massachusetts. The "lollipops" in the cemetery refer to the shape of more than 300 markers marking graves that date back to late 1700s belonging to members of 'The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing', more commonly known as the Shakers. They learn how the Shaker religion has been shaped and ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne learn about the April 25th tradition of ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army corps. ANZAC Day is a day that was originally begun to honor those soldiers who served during the first world war and specifically those who were part of the allied forces that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula. These became kn...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. What do a toothpick, a scarf and a banana peel have in common? This might sound like the beginning to a bad joke, but in this episode Jennie and Dianne share the stories of three artists who died under unusual circumstances. You will be introduced to writer and poet Sherwood Anderson, the mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan, and Roland Reed whose photography helped the world to better understa...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Avast ye, hearties! Jennie and Dianne take to the high seas to visit the world's only known pirate cemetery hidden away on Ile Sainte Marie, a thin strip of land off Madagascar’s northeast coast, where for more than a hundred years thousands of pirates called this place home when they weren't out plundering for booty. Then the ladies batten down the hatches and head back to America to the coast o...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Laurilea McDaniel to discuss three exceptional women who helped tame the wild west. All three were married to men whose names are well-known to history: Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and Horace Tabor; but we only hear the names of their wives in passing... until now. As Dolly Parton once said, “Storms make trees take deeper roots.” Elizabe...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by David Moffat, a Visitor Services Specialist & researcher at The House of the Seven Gables. David has done a lot of research into the life and work of Caroline Emmerton, the woman who saved the House of the Seven Gables by turning it into the museum we know today and using the funds from that museum to create a settlement house for thousands of immigrants who came t...