Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Hope you're having a good weekend. Here's a
Speaker 1: podcast about dying from September nine, two. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: My Stuff You Should Know. Select pick for the week
Speaker 1: How Dying Works. This is a tough one, but necessary
Speaker 1: and this may be as much or more so than
Speaker 1: any other show we've ever done. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback on on just understanding the process of dying
Speaker 1: literally physiologically. Has helped so many people over the years,
Speaker 1: over the past five or six years, when their own
Speaker 1: relatives are going through this kind of thing. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad it's help people out in the past and hopefully
Speaker 1: it will in the future. So, uh, enjoy maybe the
Speaker 1: wrong word, but I hope you learned something today with
Speaker 1: How Dying Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, How you do It? Hey, and Jerry's over there.
Speaker 1: Jerry for the first time, just saw a meme that's
Speaker 1: been out for a couple of years. Yeah, that's that happened.
Speaker 1: That's like when you rec rolled me like two years
Speaker 1: after it was popular. You're like, isn't that the best? Well,
Speaker 1: I was lying in Wait, yeah, I thought that happened. So,
Speaker 1: And there's nothing more obnoxious than sending someone something and
Speaker 1: be like sold it two years ago. Well, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I tried to show you something funny, right, you know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Jerry just saw the do we even say
Speaker 1: the mumble mouthed reporter maybe, Yeah, the lady who supposedly
Speaker 1: had a migraine but appeared to have had a stroke,
Speaker 1: reporting from the Grammy's in Los Angeles a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah. I still don't know whether it's okay
Speaker 1: to laugh at that, because I don't know really what
Speaker 1: happened to her. Well, we didn't laugh. We very solemnly
Speaker 1: showed Jerry. Yeah yeah, and she laughed terrible. Jerry Station, Um,
Speaker 1: I've got one for you. I've got a bit of
Speaker 1: an in show. It's not much, so get your hopes
Speaker 1: up all right. Um? Have you ever heard of the
Speaker 1: Population Reference Bureau? No? You have, big because I've mentioned
Speaker 1: it before. I've mentioned this this article before. It's on
Speaker 1: PRB dot org. It's called how Many People have Ever
Speaker 1: Lived on Earth? And I don't know what we've mentioned
Speaker 1: and maybe the population episode or something. But it's a
Speaker 1: really cool little article by this demographer named Carl Hobb
Speaker 1: h A U. B and he Um. There's even a
Speaker 1: video of him explaining it if you couldn't get what
Speaker 1: he was going with. But hobb Um he reckons that
Speaker 1: modern humans people who are virtually indistinguishable from you or me,
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that they're not wearing like any clothes.
Speaker 1: Really um showed up about fifty thou years ago. So
Speaker 1: hobb puts the population of humanity at two uh in
Speaker 1: fifty BC. Okay, so from that point to two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: he extrapolates, does the math, does this little demography thing,
Speaker 1: and hobb comes up with the number that one hundred
Speaker 1: and seven billion, six hundred two million, seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seven thousand, seven hundred nine people have ever lived between
Speaker 1: fifty thousand BC and two thousand eleven. See, that's pretty neat,
Speaker 1: it is. That's a lot of people. He says. That
Speaker 1: means about six point five of that are alive right
Speaker 1: now or were in two thousand eleven. Al Right, so
Speaker 1: we're dying off. That's the point. All one hundred and
Speaker 1: seven billion, six hundred two million, seven hundred seven thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred ninety one of those people had one thing
Speaker 1: in common, one thing aside from being humans, no, not
Speaker 1: even not even yeah, yeah, they didn't have tax and
Speaker 1: in fifty thousand BC they had running from sabre tooth
Speaker 1: tigers death. It was death. That's the one thing all
Speaker 1: one hundred and seven billions, six hundred two millions, seven
Speaker 1: hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety one of those people
Speaker 1: had in common. You know, when I was thinking of
Speaker 1: your intro driving here today, I thought that'd be funny
Speaker 1: if Josh was like, how long people been dying? Chuck,
Speaker 1: and you know what, this wasn't that far off. I
Speaker 1: was like, he wouldn't do that. You're like, it'd be
Speaker 1: way too boring. That's a good number. I like that.
Speaker 1: Hundred seven billion, six hundred two million, seven one thousand
Speaker 1: seven seven Yeah, yeah, and that includes you and me, Pal.
Speaker 1: You know what that means. You're gonna die. I'm gonna die,
Speaker 1: Jerry's gonna die at least two or three times. We're
Speaker 1: all gonna die. Yeah. This is our dying podcast, and
Speaker 1: we have covered just about every aspect of dying. Can
Speaker 1: you die from a broken heart? How rigor mortis works.
Speaker 1: What's the worst way to die? Um? Is there a
Speaker 1: best way to die? Did we do that? That was
Speaker 1: kind of in the is there was way to die? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: we've covered everything from autopsy, peak oil, what can be
Speaker 1: done with the dead body? Ninja's Yeah, well Ninja, at
Speaker 1: least you should know better than that. Yeah. We really
Speaker 1: have danced around everything except just how dying works. And
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a sad podcast in many ways
Speaker 1: and gruesome in some ways. Yeah, because we're gonna touch
Speaker 1: on some of this stuff we hit on in like
Speaker 1: rigor mortris and autopsies and the actual dying process. Right,
Speaker 1: But I mean, so brace yourself. And I've mentioned this
Speaker 1: guy scores of times at least, but as the it's
Speaker 1: a Charles Man. You thinking of the great psychologist Ernest Becker.
Speaker 1: Shout out to our pal Joe Randazzo, who's like in
Speaker 1: the Becker Now, Ernest, Ernest, Ernest, you're thinking of Max Ernest. Okay,
Speaker 1: Ernest Becker um wrote the Denial of Death seminal work
Speaker 1: that basically says, we're all just doing everything we came
Speaker 1: to think about our own demise, and there is some
Speaker 1: sort of health, whether it's spiritual, emotional. There's some sort
Speaker 1: of health or well being I think from facing the
Speaker 1: fact that you're going to die and talking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about death, baby, Let's talk about you
Speaker 1: and me. Let's do it. Okay. So Molly Edmonds Um
Speaker 1: who used to be on Sminty stef Mom never told
Speaker 1: you we call it sminty Um wrote this one, and
Speaker 1: I think it is interesting. And I usually don't like
Speaker 1: it when article's day like the definition of blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of interesting that in the first encyclopedia
Speaker 1: it was just the separation of the soul from the body,
Speaker 1: and now it's you know, thirty times that long in
Speaker 1: the encyclopedia, right, And that's just sort of indicative of
Speaker 1: how we used to think of it and how I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's ironic or not, but how medical
Speaker 1: science has complicated that over the years. Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: definitely ironic because I mean, we used to be confident
Speaker 1: that we understood death. It's like that person isn't moving anymore.
Speaker 1: If you ask him what he wants to eat, he's
Speaker 1: not going to respond. If you choose something for him
Speaker 1: to eat, like a block of cheese, it's not going
Speaker 1: to be swallowed like, yeah, that's death. And since there
Speaker 1: was perhaps a lot more religiousness associated with death and
Speaker 1: dying than there is today, um, that kind of underscored
Speaker 1: the belief and death. It's the soul departing from the body.
Speaker 1: And what what more do you want to know, egghead?
Speaker 1: It's death? Well yeah, and uh, way back, you know,
Speaker 1: a fe d years ago, you'd call him a priest
Speaker 1: and they they'd check the body, see if it's breathing,
Speaker 1: and say, yep, they're dead, and that was pretty much it.
Speaker 1: The doctor wasn't even involved at that point. Well, there
Speaker 1: may not have even been such a thing as doctors,
Speaker 1: and if there were, they were wearing like masks that
Speaker 1: made them look like crows to protect them from the plague.
Speaker 1: So they weren't any better at its ascertaining death than
Speaker 1: a priest was. That's true. When doctors did come along
Speaker 1: and they invented things like the stethoscope, they could actually
Speaker 1: check and see if there was a heartbeat. Before that,
Speaker 1: there was bal force test, which I couldn't find out
Speaker 1: a lot about this other than you stick needles into
Speaker 1: the heart with little flags on it and see if
Speaker 1: the flags move. I think that's pretty straightforward. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's about it. I mean, that's the test.
Speaker 1: I'll buy that. And there were other tests that like
Speaker 1: a priest who may have come to say whether you're
Speaker 1: dead or not, would use like placing a feather above
Speaker 1: the mouth or around the mouth or knows to see
Speaker 1: if it moves. Um, the old mirror mirror trick that's
Speaker 1: still you know, useful, it is, but only if the
Speaker 1: mouth is still moist. If it's a dried mouth, it's
Speaker 1: probably not going to fog up a mirror. Well, if
Speaker 1: it's not breathing, it's not gonna fall up a mirror,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um. So I said that medical science has
Speaker 1: complicated it, and that's exactly what's happened over the years,
Speaker 1: because as we progressed with medicine, we discovered a lot
Speaker 1: of ways to actually reverse death, like bring people back
Speaker 1: from the dead, whether it's something as easy as CPR
Speaker 1: or as complicated as you know, machines to help you
Speaker 1: breathe and feed you. Right, And not only that, we've
Speaker 1: entered this really awkward period um in human medical history
Speaker 1: where the machines that can tell us whether someone is
Speaker 1: alive or not are more advanced than our machines that
Speaker 1: can bring a person back from death. Yeah. So we
Speaker 1: have ways to sustain the body, but not necessarily the
Speaker 1: the person, depending on your definition of death, like the
Speaker 1: faintest trace of a brain wave maybe right. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we went from holding a feather under somebody's mouth or
Speaker 1: knows to see if they're alive, to using MRI s
Speaker 1: to see whether there's electrical activity. And we're finding that
Speaker 1: all of these old signs, these old outward signs of
Speaker 1: death don't necessarily mean that the person is dead. And
Speaker 1: even if the person is dead, we have technology, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, to resuscitate them. The question is if
Speaker 1: we resuscitate them and they're still not talking, they still
Speaker 1: don't tell you what they want to eat. Yeah, are
Speaker 1: they alive? Well? Yeah, and we in this hasn't been
Speaker 1: that long, you know, I mean in the fifty two
Speaker 1: thousand years or whatever the people have been dying. It's
Speaker 1: only been the past you know, sixty something that we've
Speaker 1: had to come up with terms like persistent vegetative state
Speaker 1: and irreversible coma because of those machines that can resuscitate
Speaker 1: or sustain a body. And that was when the French
Speaker 1: neurologists describe the coma DePass, which was a state beyond
Speaker 1: coma basically uh, brain death, although that didn't come along
Speaker 1: until technically until nineteen when Harvard Medical School did UH
Speaker 1: basically defined it for the first time. Yeah, although they
Speaker 1: didn't even call it brain death at the time. What
Speaker 1: they call it just irreversible coma like you're not coming back.
Speaker 1: Brain death was attacked on later. Um. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: comma to pass umge, persistent vegetative state, brain death. Um,
Speaker 1: all these things would indicate again that you're dead. The
Speaker 1: problem is is we have these machines that can keep
Speaker 1: your body warm, and can keep your chest rising and falling,
Speaker 1: can keep your body going indefinitely. Um. But the thing
Speaker 1: is is there's something that's not there, and does that
Speaker 1: mean you're dead. There's been a lot of talk about, um,
Speaker 1: exactly what constitutes death. Defining death is a very very
Speaker 1: difficult thing to do, especially with through the advancement of
Speaker 1: medical technology. It's kind of changed every time you come
Speaker 1: with it. Okay, I got it. This is the definition
Speaker 1: of death. Medical technology can provide some picture of a
Speaker 1: state of consciousness or life that throws a wrench in
Speaker 1: the works, you know, yeah, and it's um. Actually, after
Speaker 1: it took one a presidential commission is when they finally
Speaker 1: in the United States wrote a paper called Defining Death, Medical,
Speaker 1: Legal and Ethical Issues and the Determination of Death. That
Speaker 1: was the basis for the Uniform Determination of Death Act,
Speaker 1: which basically rejected the Harvard idea that the higher brain,
Speaker 1: which is like when your personality and your memories are gone,
Speaker 1: the cortical brain that means you're dead. And they rejected
Speaker 1: that in favor of the whole brain, which includes the
Speaker 1: brain stem, which is what keeps you breathing and functioning. Um,
Speaker 1: they rejected in favor of that. So Harvard was like, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I I I don't know. I think I subscribed to
Speaker 1: the higher brain death definition of death. Yeah. Um, the
Speaker 1: brain stem, I'm yeah, it's pretty significant. Sure, Um, you
Speaker 1: can be born with just a brain stem. We talked
Speaker 1: about Mike the headless chicken before. Yeah, Um, he had
Speaker 1: his head cut off which included his brain. His brain
Speaker 1: stem still there and he's a chicken, so it didn't
Speaker 1: really matter. Um, but that is a there's a huge
Speaker 1: division between the two because there's a big difference between
Speaker 1: breathing and being able to swallow for yourself and making
Speaker 1: a conscious decision whether again what you want to eat
Speaker 1: right there, or having memories or just reacting to people
Speaker 1: aside from like you know, physical reaction. Right. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the one of the there's a whole
Speaker 1: article on brain death. Maybe we'll do that one. I
Speaker 1: thought we did that now I think we did it
Speaker 1: in the organ donation Procurement episode. We talked about brain
Speaker 1: death and testing for brain death like they shoot ice
Speaker 1: cold water in your ear canal. Definitely remember covering at
Speaker 1: some point. Yeah, I think it was in the organ
Speaker 1: donation moment where maybe living wills. Obviously we might have
Speaker 1: touched on it there. We did. We did wills, but
Speaker 1: we hit on living wills. But you know you mentioned organs.
Speaker 1: I don't think we said that. That was a big
Speaker 1: kind of a quandary. In the nineteen sixties. Um, in
Speaker 1: late I'm sorry, mid nineteen fifties, and then really in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties is when we went oregan transplant crazy.
Speaker 1: Um actually kind of not just the United States, all
Speaker 1: over the world. Doctors said, hey, we can actually give
Speaker 1: people a shot at life because we can now transplant
Speaker 1: kidneys and lungs and hearts. The problem was, and this
Speaker 1: is sort of one of the sad things that Molly
Speaker 1: points out, is that the definition of death kind of
Speaker 1: came about, was hurried along, maybe because we needed organs
Speaker 1: from these bodies that we're still technically alive, which is
Speaker 1: a very ghoulish proposition. I mean, it makes sense from
Speaker 1: a very utilitarian standpoint. It's like this guy doesn't even
Speaker 1: know he's laying there. Yeah, and he's got a great
Speaker 1: kidney that could go to his sister who knows that
Speaker 1: she needs a kidney or she's gonna die, and she's
Speaker 1: got kids that she wants to hang out with, and like,
Speaker 1: can put this kidney to good use, So let's let's
Speaker 1: figure this out. But um, as Molly says, like most
Speaker 1: developed countries have signed onto the brains where it's like
Speaker 1: you're brain can no longer keep you alive, like on
Speaker 1: your own, you can't swallow, you can't take a breath
Speaker 1: for yourself, so you're dead. Um. The problem is that's
Speaker 1: that's just that's different. That's a much m it's much more.
Speaker 1: It's a narrower definition of deaths. And I think that
Speaker 1: that probably rules out a lot of people who might
Speaker 1: otherwise be used to harvest organs harvest I know. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk about death itself. It's funny
Speaker 1: that you, well, it's not funny, but out of all
Speaker 1: the different ways people can die, I thought it seems
Speaker 1: simplified to break it down into three ways, but that's
Speaker 1: really kind of the three ways. Yeah. I think we
Speaker 1: talked about that in autopsies two. Right. Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: be an accident obviously. Um, that's called the UPSI death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the violent death, which is also an opsie. I guess, well,
Speaker 1: not an it's tragic, yeah, homicider suicide. So took, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what it's like to die from different types
Speaker 1: of death. You dug this upo, Yeah, because I really
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like what is it like to drown
Speaker 1: or to be burned alive? Yeah? And people have survived
Speaker 1: some of these things, didn't come back to tell the tale.
Speaker 1: That's obviously the only way we're going to find this
Speaker 1: stuff out or from lucky people. Um, drowning, I've always
Speaker 1: heard drowning is a good way to go because it's
Speaker 1: not so painful. Yeah. And then like the brain supposedly
Speaker 1: releases endorphins at the end. Yeah, same with freezing I've
Speaker 1: heard too. Maybe true. Um, although uh, drowning victims have
Speaker 1: reported uh aside from the panic, a tearing and burning
Speaker 1: sensation when your water starts filling with lungs and quickly,
Speaker 1: hopefully really quickly after that is the feeling of calmness
Speaker 1: that overcomes in tranquility. Yeah. Um, heart attack. You've got
Speaker 1: the squeezing chests, pain in your chest or your left arm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I weight on your chest. Um. What I didn't
Speaker 1: know is that because of the heart not delivering oxygen
Speaker 1: to the brain any longer, you can lose consciousness. Um,
Speaker 1: within like ten seconds. Um, I didn't realize that. I
Speaker 1: thought like it was there's a lot more to it. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends. You know, everyone has their own signature heart
Speaker 1: attack as well. Um. If you bleed out, I imagine
Speaker 1: this is not one of the best ways to go. Um.
Speaker 1: After about a liter and a half of blood, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be thirsty and weak and anxious. Anything over too,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be pretty confused and dizzy and probably lose
Speaker 1: consciousness pretty soon after. And all of that would be
Speaker 1: that would relate to how fast you're losing blood, and
Speaker 1: it would probably be very unpleasant depending on how you're
Speaker 1: losing blood, Like why because you would imagine that if
Speaker 1: you're stabbed in the gut or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got the attendant pain in addition to this dying
Speaker 1: from loss of blood or like man reservoir dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like one of the most are ways to
Speaker 1: open a movie or not open. But they cut right
Speaker 1: to that scene after the diner scene, right after the
Speaker 1: walk Yeah. Yeah. Um. Electrocution. Um, if you're in your
Speaker 1: house and you get electrocuted, could stop your heart right
Speaker 1: then and there. And if you're in an electric chair,
Speaker 1: you may have actually heated your brain up to the
Speaker 1: point where you die or suffocated to death. Right. But
Speaker 1: the there's indications that being electrocuted with enough voltage that
Speaker 1: instantly you lose consciousness. That's the idea probably with the
Speaker 1: quote un quote humane I'm sorry quote humane end quote.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop doing that. I'm going back to quote
Speaker 1: unquote what if you fall from a height. If you
Speaker 1: fall from a height, supposedly time slows, which is awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you're gonna experience all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh. Yeah, the idea that you that you really
Speaker 1: can take it all in. That's really awful. So they've
Speaker 1: they did a study of UM jumpers from the Golden
Speaker 1: gate Bridge, which is seventy five ms what is that
Speaker 1: two hundred thirty ft it's high enough, and they they
Speaker 1: found evidence that a lot of them died from exploded lungs,
Speaker 1: exploded hearts, um. Their organs were all cut up from
Speaker 1: their ribs, which would indicate death was pretty much instantaneous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about that on something too recently, I think,
Speaker 1: or maybe I heard it someone else talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad way to go. What the Golden gate
Speaker 1: Bridge or just just falling dying from a height? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I was talking to about jumping in
Speaker 1: the water. I was like, what actually kills you when
Speaker 1: you jump in the water from the eye and it
Speaker 1: was like your organs smashed into each other and explode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess from any height. Yeah, when you when you
Speaker 1: die from that would be from organ explosion or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know the brain obviously if you go ahead first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's UM. The long drop back in the day with
Speaker 1: although they still you can get hung in certain states
Speaker 1: if you choose really yeah, Washington State, and now you
Speaker 1: can huh. Um, you can choose that as your method,
Speaker 1: they'll build you the gallows and uh. The idea that
Speaker 1: there is you want your neck to snap, otherwise he
Speaker 1: died slower and you know, suffocate. The problem is there's
Speaker 1: a study of thirty or four prisoners that found four
Speaker 1: fifths of them died partly from asphyxiation. Really, that's the
Speaker 1: wrong way to hang somebody, if you if you don't
Speaker 1: snap their neck or they don't lose consciousness immediately, Um,
Speaker 1: they sit there and hang and die of asphyxiation. That's
Speaker 1: a bad way to go. Uh. And speaking of bad,
Speaker 1: I think being burned to death maybe one of the worst.
Speaker 1: And then what we came up with on the I
Speaker 1: think so because you feel it, and you'd think, like
Speaker 1: your nerve endings, that's what I thought, like, Oh, your
Speaker 1: nerve endings are probably like stop responding quickly. But apparently
Speaker 1: that's not the case. No, not only is that not
Speaker 1: the case, apparently you're fire further sensitizes your nerve endings,
Speaker 1: so you feel even more pain. Yeah, but luckily most people,
Speaker 1: I think the vast majority of people who die in
Speaker 1: fires actually die from smoke inhalation before they ever feel
Speaker 1: pain from fire. Yeah, that are well, I don't know
Speaker 1: about before they feel pain, but hopefully quick enough. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, carbon monoxide sinks, so like well there's a
Speaker 1: lot of smoke you are download to the ground and
Speaker 1: that's where the carbon carbon monoxide is. So you're annailing
Speaker 1: mostly that, So it's possible it's before it's true. And
Speaker 1: then the natural death which is uh passing of old
Speaker 1: age or disease. And here in this country we have
Speaker 1: kind of whipped up a lot of the disease over
Speaker 1: the years into into they've sniffed them off the case right, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends like some of the ones that like kill
Speaker 1: undeveloped countries, like diarrheal disease like dying from diarrhea. UM,
Speaker 1: you don't have that much in the US, but we
Speaker 1: have chronic disease like obesity and diabetes and UM cardio
Speaker 1: pulmonary disease. UM, we have that downpat. I've got the
Speaker 1: top five here. Actually, I think they're all in there,
Speaker 1: aren't they. UM Heart is number one, Cancer is number two, UM,
Speaker 1: lower respiratory is number three, strokers for an accidents or
Speaker 1: five and it's a huge drop. Cancer and heart are
Speaker 1: close to six. Hundred thousand, and then number three at
Speaker 1: lower respiratories only a hundred and thirty eight thousand. So
Speaker 1: that shows you what cancer and heart disease are doing
Speaker 1: in the United States at least. And the upshot of
Speaker 1: all this is that most of us are not going
Speaker 1: to die suddenly, um, either by accident or by violent death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dying of old days didn't used to be a thing. No,
Speaker 1: it was like, like a lot of ways to die,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't one of them. You ticked off some
Speaker 1: traveling night, or there is a dispute over grazing rights. Plague, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you walked into a bear cave. Yeah, the plagues another
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, old ages. It's kind of a new thing.
Speaker 1: But it's one of the most um prevalent forms of
Speaker 1: death in developed countries. It actually has its own name, frailty, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is great. It's sad, but it's great that now
Speaker 1: we can live out our lives and and we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But sometimes the body, just like
Speaker 1: any other machine, just stops working. It's not designed to
Speaker 1: keep going indefinitely, and ultimately the system shuts down as
Speaker 1: its subsystems shut down. Dude is shutting down every second
Speaker 1: right right now are shutting down very slowly and for
Speaker 1: that reason because you and I are both dying. I
Speaker 1: guess once you're born, you start dying, or after you
Speaker 1: stop growing, you start dying, right Is that just the
Speaker 1: positive outlooker? But I mean like you're shedding sails and
Speaker 1: like this is like the dying. We're in the midst
Speaker 1: of the dying process. Just this natural system is in
Speaker 1: the winding down, although it takes decades and we still
Speaker 1: have plenty to do. Like you said, you're dying, I'm dying.
Speaker 1: That's why they have a more specific definition of death,
Speaker 1: which is um called active dying. Like you and I
Speaker 1: are not actively dying right now. No, no, uh. Instead,
Speaker 1: if we are actively dying, we're in the midst of
Speaker 1: the dying process. Yeah, it has started. The dying processes started.
Speaker 1: The descent, if you will, has started, right. So, Um,
Speaker 1: all this kind of happens since different types of cells
Speaker 1: die at different speeds, that's what it is. It's cell death.
Speaker 1: Cellular I don't want to let the cat out of
Speaker 1: the bag, but oxygen doesn't happen to different parts of
Speaker 1: the body. Your cells are gonna die exactly, um, And
Speaker 1: so as the cells die at different speeds, different systems
Speaker 1: are going to shut down. But just from watching frail
Speaker 1: people die of old age, um, they kind of have
Speaker 1: like this, the the order in which it happens kind
Speaker 1: of downpad. So there's the UM, there's the pre active
Speaker 1: dying phase, which can take about three weeks, starts about
Speaker 1: three weeks before death, two or three weeks. And then
Speaker 1: there's the active dying phase, which can take a few days.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's not set in stone. None of this
Speaker 1: is set in stone, but this is all just um
Speaker 1: kind of cumulative knowledge from observations of people dying in
Speaker 1: like hospice and things like that. So you've got the
Speaker 1: pre active phase of dying UM, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it starts a couple of weeks ahead of the actual
Speaker 1: death because we have this is a big deal right now,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, Like it's becoming very clear, um,
Speaker 1: in our modern age, that death is not an instant,
Speaker 1: it's not a moment. There's a process. Yeah, well unless
Speaker 1: it isn't an instant. But yeah, old age die, yes,
Speaker 1: or like other kinds of dying. But how about non
Speaker 1: accidental dying. Okay, we'll call it that, because that's like
Speaker 1: the instantaneous thing, right, and even sometimes in a very
Speaker 1: short scale that can follow some of these you know,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I forgot it's audio, yes, nodding my head.
Speaker 1: So the preactive phase of dying, Chuck, what do we got? Well, Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna start sleep, You're gonna get sleepy, You're not
Speaker 1: gonna have much energy. You're gonna start sleeping more and more. Uh,
Speaker 1: your skin might become cooler to the touch, might turn
Speaker 1: a little bluish gray. Yeah, cyanosis. So what that's called
Speaker 1: I was with us, it's just becoming oxygen deprived. Like
Speaker 1: apparently your body's like, Okay, don't really need to use
Speaker 1: the legs anymore because we're bedridden. So I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: focusing more of the circulation on the inner organs. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, well that probably causes the modeling too,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, your your skin can become sort of
Speaker 1: reddish like splotchy, with reddish blue splotches as well. Right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna, um, you're gonna be a little restless probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna possibly come off as confused. Um, You're you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be hungry. No, you're gonna probably withdraw from um,
Speaker 1: social activities. You're gonna become a little a little withdrawn. Um.
Speaker 1: You might wanna settle unfinished business with family. You might
Speaker 1: request family come visit you for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, the non physical parts. That's definitely something you'd
Speaker 1: be interested in doing. Right, But that's like, um, apparently
Speaker 1: something that that people intuitively know like they need to.
Speaker 1: Apparently patients know when they're dying. I've seen that happen.
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the signs from UM
Speaker 1: that's mentioned in hospice care palliative care UM is that
Speaker 1: the patient may even state I'm dying, like I started,
Speaker 1: it's coming. That's pretty common. Um. Yeah, and that's sad
Speaker 1: that when you realize like, all right, this is this
Speaker 1: is it, Like I feel myself, I'm gonna be gone soon.
Speaker 1: But that's neat though, especially if you yeah, if you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put everything in order then die happy or peacefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's neat that you have that that time to to
Speaker 1: take care of that. Yeah, if you're fortunate enough to
Speaker 1: go that way for sure. Back to physically, UM, you
Speaker 1: you won't be able to heal from a wound or
Speaker 1: and infection any longer. Yeah, you might um lose control
Speaker 1: of your bladder and your bowels over the course of
Speaker 1: some time. Um, you might be in pain, but chances
Speaker 1: are here in the modern world they're gonna take care
Speaker 1: of you in that respect, right. And again that's called
Speaker 1: palliative care, where at some point it's very obvious that
Speaker 1: you're going to die, um, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: can be based on what you want, even even um,
Speaker 1: without your wishes. There's probably a point in time where
Speaker 1: medical science says, there's nothing we can do for you. Um,
Speaker 1: we just want to make you comfortable, exactly, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you pain meds. We're gonna like your your
Speaker 1: care is being transferred over from a physician to who's
Speaker 1: you know, wants to save your life and keep you
Speaker 1: going to hospice workers, health care professionals who are trained
Speaker 1: to just keep you as comfortable as possible for the
Speaker 1: for the duration of your life. Right, Man, hats off
Speaker 1: to those people. Yeah, like all health care professionals, of course,
Speaker 1: but man, hospice nurses as tough stuff. You've got to be, like,
Speaker 1: you've got to be made of the right qualities as
Speaker 1: a human to be able to tackle something like that
Speaker 1: and still get up and go to work every day
Speaker 1: like they're literally in the business of dying. I mean,
Speaker 1: very valuable, valuable service people provide. So that's the Um,
Speaker 1: that's the preactive phase. That's the I'm getting ready to die.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of weeks and all of my
Speaker 1: systems are starting to wind down. In the active phase,
Speaker 1: the systems are starting to shut down. Um, you may
Speaker 1: not have consciousness, and if you do, you may. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you are able to be aroused from conscious from unconsciousness,
Speaker 1: you're gonna slip right back into it again. Possibly. Um,
Speaker 1: you are probably and apparently families find this very disconcerting.
Speaker 1: You're probably going to talk about people who are dead
Speaker 1: as if they're in the room or you can see
Speaker 1: them or hear them. Yeah, it's just just the mind slipping.
Speaker 1: They don't know. Um. Hospice workers, from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: tend to just treat it like it's real, treated on
Speaker 1: its own terms. They're not saying it's real or it's
Speaker 1: a hallucination or something like that, And they advise families
Speaker 1: not to treat it like a hallucination, just to not
Speaker 1: to correct them. Yeah, that makes sense, because you're there
Speaker 1: to provide comfort, not say no, Grandpa, grandma has been
Speaker 1: gone for years. Exactly why would you want to do that.
Speaker 1: There is an exception to that. You would want to
Speaker 1: do that if they're fearful from their visions, then you
Speaker 1: can say that's it's not real. It's just you your brain,
Speaker 1: that's not real or whatever. Again, all about comfort, yes,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to contradict them if they're happy
Speaker 1: or even saying it in a neutral tone. It's only
Speaker 1: if they're they're fearful that you want to say that.
Speaker 1: But apparently families are kind of like, oh god, they're
Speaker 1: gone crazy, you know. But it's a it's a natural
Speaker 1: part of the active dying process. Breathings can to become
Speaker 1: really weird. Um, the patient's gonna stop breathing for disconcertingly
Speaker 1: long periods of time. Yeah, that's just called Cheney strokes
Speaker 1: respiration stokes sorry, Cheney Stokes name for John Cheney and
Speaker 1: William Stokes obviously the first dudes who described it. Let's
Speaker 1: get all the press quick. Deep breaths, sometimes very slow ones,
Speaker 1: like you said, sometimes stopping altogether. Uh, And that is
Speaker 1: caused by receptors in the heart and brain stem basically
Speaker 1: being too sluggish to respond two different amounts of oxygen
Speaker 1: and CEO two, and it's just kind of lagging behind. Again,
Speaker 1: think of it as a machine that's just slowing down
Speaker 1: and those receptors can't pick up on it in times,
Speaker 1: so it's it doesn't know how to tell you to
Speaker 1: breathe basically like at a steady rate. Um, we should
Speaker 1: say that there isn't evidence that that is physically painful again,
Speaker 1: like awful for the healthy person in the room. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for the family watching it, you think that the person
Speaker 1: is suffering. There's not evidence that they are in fact suffering,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it. And that from what I
Speaker 1: understand with palliative care, UM, not only making the patient
Speaker 1: comfortable is one of the priorities. Making the family comfortable
Speaker 1: as a priority as well, because how you die has
Speaker 1: a very lasting impact on the people who are there
Speaker 1: to witness your death for family, so UM, explaining that
Speaker 1: they're not suffering, uh is helpful, but not necessarily enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think actually this podcast itself could help like
Speaker 1: some people, because I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: do this sort of research. When they go into a
Speaker 1: hospital room in the last hours of a loved one's life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they may not be told. They may even if
Speaker 1: it is explained to it might not sink in what
Speaker 1: they're being told because you know, seeing somebody gasping for
Speaker 1: breath and then being told that they're not really suffering,
Speaker 1: those two things might not jibe. Well, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: instinct that's probably trying to help. Yeah, Like they can't
Speaker 1: breathe clearly, let's get a nurse in here. And the
Speaker 1: nurse is like, no, that's that's that's part of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another one that's very disconcerting. Another sign of active dying
Speaker 1: is the death rattle. And uh, I did a I
Speaker 1: guess it. Don't be dumb on death rattles. And basically
Speaker 1: either you have fluid in the lungs or like you know,
Speaker 1: when you clear your throat like I just did. That's
Speaker 1: a normal ability you have until you start dying. You
Speaker 1: can't clear your throat anymore. Those are your laryngeal muscles, right,
Speaker 1: basically spasm NG what clearing your throat? No, the death rattle. No,
Speaker 1: the death rattle is just breathing through the mire. It's
Speaker 1: both it's it's either liquid or it's the muscle spasms. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so did you find that that's painful, because I found
Speaker 1: that it's it doesn't cause pain, it's just it sounds
Speaker 1: terrible again to the people in the room exactly. And
Speaker 1: this is uh, I don't think we pointed out this
Speaker 1: is the egonal phase of death and it's Greek for
Speaker 1: struggle and agony. Yeah, that's sort of just encapsulates it.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably why they call it the active
Speaker 1: phase of death now rather than agonal. Oh do they
Speaker 1: don't even call it that anymore. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: some people do, but I think the active and agonol
Speaker 1: are the same one and the same. It's just you know,
Speaker 1: they're in the agony phase, right or they're in the
Speaker 1: active phase. Uh. Your muscles, aside from your vocal cords,
Speaker 1: um might start convulsive and spasm ng. Um. You can
Speaker 1: get all you know, herky jerky and two things that
Speaker 1: wouldn't seem like you should be able to do in
Speaker 1: your state, like um, card tricks. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you could do cards shuffling card tricks from one hand
Speaker 1: to the other, and Grandpa never could. Before I knew
Speaker 1: we could get some humor in here somehow. Um what else? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's see, your blood pressure is gonna up, your jaw
Speaker 1: is gonna drop, you might end up in a really
Speaker 1: weird rigid position. Um and uh you're I think we
Speaker 1: said your extremities are going to be cold to the touch. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: the the death rattle as a result of the spasming
Speaker 1: of your laryngeal muscles that can also produce um. What
Speaker 1: was described in what I read as a barking sound.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, And I've never I didn't search that
Speaker 1: out to see if that was recorded anywhere, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious what that sounds like. I've heard everything from gurgling
Speaker 1: like gurgle to it sounds like there's marbles in your throat. Uh, barking.
Speaker 1: That's a new one. But it makes I think everybody
Speaker 1: has their own signature death rattle, you know. But they
Speaker 1: rule of thumb, apparently among hospice workers is once the
Speaker 1: death rattle comes, it's a sign that they got about
Speaker 1: forty eight hours or less left to live. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: all of these are tells, really, and all of them.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about what happens after the body is
Speaker 1: dead too, and that helps finding out, you know, in forensics,
Speaker 1: I think we put it out plenty of times at
Speaker 1: the time of death, depending on the various things that happen,
Speaker 1: you know, when they find you. But all all of
Speaker 1: these are almost like like markers on a clock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're in hospice care, you know these things
Speaker 1: like oh this is this means this? Well, there there
Speaker 1: are signs and symptoms of the system shut down that
Speaker 1: the person's body is going through, you know. Yeah. So, Um,
Speaker 1: the senses apparently also are lost in a healthy person
Speaker 1: or a person who has all five senses. Um, they're
Speaker 1: lost in a certain order, and touch and hearing are
Speaker 1: the last to go. And another that's kind of nice.
Speaker 1: Another very important point that hospice workers make is never
Speaker 1: ever talk about the patient like they're not there, because
Speaker 1: they can hear you up until the end. Like hearing
Speaker 1: is kept so long as the person could hear before
Speaker 1: then there's not any damage from you know, during the
Speaker 1: act dying period. Um, they can hear you until the
Speaker 1: moment they die, and you need to be careful what
Speaker 1: you say. Yeah, and I think that's a really nice
Speaker 1: thing that the last things that you can experience are
Speaker 1: the touch of a loved one or the voice of
Speaker 1: a loved one. Needs to see him. You may not
Speaker 1: even be able to respond to that, but you can
Speaker 1: still hear that's true. I would definitely pick that over sight.
Speaker 1: I'd rather hear someone's words as I pass rather than
Speaker 1: having silence and just seeing their faces staring at me,
Speaker 1: so long as the words aren't. Wait, one more thing,
Speaker 1: I think it would be almost cruel to be able
Speaker 1: to see and not here at the end. You know,
Speaker 1: like he wants to see your family upset. You want
Speaker 1: to hear feel them hold your hand and say everything's
Speaker 1: gonna be right. So you so you raise a good
Speaker 1: issue like there's if you have a dying family member,
Speaker 1: especially if they're dying a frailty or they're just dying,
Speaker 1: like they're in the dying process, so they're about to
Speaker 1: enter the dying process. Um, you could do worse things
Speaker 1: than to go online and educate yourself on how to
Speaker 1: be around them. I think people don't intuitively know how
Speaker 1: to be around a dying person, and there's certain things
Speaker 1: that you should do, certain things you shouldn't do, like,
Speaker 1: for example, um, they say that you should talk to
Speaker 1: the person, not the condition, So don't treat them like
Speaker 1: they're frail or dying, like treat them like they're your
Speaker 1: old friend who they are. Um, it's extremely important to
Speaker 1: make sure that they're in a peaceful, calm environment. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like maybe yelling at somebody over the will is a
Speaker 1: really bad idea. They seem like no brainers. But I
Speaker 1: guess some people need to be told this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean think about it, like it can put
Speaker 1: you on edge being around a dying person, like do
Speaker 1: you mention the fact that they're gonna die or do
Speaker 1: you you know? I mean like do you dance around
Speaker 1: it if they make a joke or something like can
Speaker 1: you laugh or do you laugh too hard? Do you
Speaker 1: not laugh enough? Like there's I think it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: like yeah, I think it's it's just put you on edge.
Speaker 1: Not everyone is as sensitive to So you're going to
Speaker 1: add one. Don't bring your laptop in there and watch
Speaker 1: reruns of the Office. No, yeah, are you speaking from experience?
Speaker 1: I'm just going to add that. Okay, that's all my list. Okay,
Speaker 1: get off your cell phone. Yeah, pay attention to them. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what you're there for. That, as hospice
Speaker 1: workers put it, you're giving them a very heartfelt gift
Speaker 1: by being there with them while they're dying and maybe
Speaker 1: receiving a gift, you know, and many religions and cultures,
Speaker 1: it's very uh much an honor to be a part
Speaker 1: of this whole thing. And even if you're not religious,
Speaker 1: that you could just feel that way spiritually is a
Speaker 1: human you know. Okay, uh, well, let's pause here because Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's time for a message break and we're back. Okay,
Speaker 1: So are we dead yet? Are we at that point? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The the person has passed. It just sounded very cheery.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I mean like we've rattled off
Speaker 1: some pretty what seems like suffering, but now the suffering
Speaker 1: is over. If there was any other person is dead.
Speaker 1: So once you immediately immediately after you die, your pupils
Speaker 1: are going to dilate because the muscles controlling the iris
Speaker 1: or you know, gonna have their final rest. So your
Speaker 1: pupils are going to dilate. And then have you heard
Speaker 1: of the terminal tier or the lachrima mortis? No, this
Speaker 1: is a usually in the right eye, and there's no
Speaker 1: real explanation for it, but um, it is a final
Speaker 1: tier that you shed. Wow, And um it doesn't always
Speaker 1: happen right after you die, although it can. They did
Speaker 1: a study in the early nineties in New Zealand and
Speaker 1: out of a hundred deaths, fourteen of them right at
Speaker 1: the time of death had the lacrymamortists here and uh
Speaker 1: thirteen of them in the final ten hours. And they
Speaker 1: say uh to to look out for that if you're
Speaker 1: the family, because it can be a sign. And also
Speaker 1: they try to talk you into the fact that it's
Speaker 1: a comforting thing to see that tier being shed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And since we're on eyes, you know the old thing
Speaker 1: where you close someone's eyes after they die, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: or you put silver dollars on if it's it's the
Speaker 1: old West. Um. I guess people do that too. So
Speaker 1: you're not having someone a dead body staring at you, right,
Speaker 1: because if they're looking dead forward, straight forward there like
Speaker 1: following you all through out there. Yeah, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: a movie trope. But if you don't close the eyes.
Speaker 1: And I never knew this um something called t a
Speaker 1: c h E. Noir. I don't know if it's tash
Speaker 1: or taste more as a black a dark reddish brown
Speaker 1: strip that forms horizontally over your eyeball. And I guess
Speaker 1: it's just you know, your eyeballs dry out and has
Speaker 1: the air. So if you don't close your eyes, and
Speaker 1: I looked it up, you're gonna see this weird horizontal
Speaker 1: stripe across your eye. There's a plus the effect that
Speaker 1: has in the living, the difference between seeing a dead
Speaker 1: body with their eyes closed and a dead body with
Speaker 1: their eyes open, And it's just it's like a galaxy
Speaker 1: between the two as far as discomfort goes. Yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: should edit together the like every time that's ever been
Speaker 1: done in a movie. Yeah, there like super fast alright,
Speaker 1: So that's all I got on the eyes. Um, so Chuck,
Speaker 1: I want to alarm you right now. Boy, you have
Speaker 1: living in your guts right now, the very organisms that
Speaker 1: are going to decompose your body when you die, they're
Speaker 1: just sitting around waiting, waiting for action, waiting for the
Speaker 1: signal yep um. When you die, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that's still alive, that's still going on even though
Speaker 1: your brain dead, whole brain, higher, brain, heart dead, your
Speaker 1: heart stopped dead. That's another definition of death. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we mentioned heart. Your heart is not beating anymore.
Speaker 1: You're dead, yes, Um, there's no bringing you back. You've
Speaker 1: been in your heart hasn't your brain hasn't had oxygen
Speaker 1: for a while. You died of hypothermia, uh, and they
Speaker 1: warmed you up. So now you're officially dead. You're gone, right,
Speaker 1: But there's still a lot of stuff. Remember the Poop
Speaker 1: Shake episode we can forget, we talked about the microbio
Speaker 1: and we have this whole other, like part of our
Speaker 1: life are living organism that's still around, that's still operating,
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff living within us, including part
Speaker 1: of our microbiome. They're still carrying on processes like apparently
Speaker 1: you can harvest skin cells for twenty four hours and
Speaker 1: and there's still alive. Just use them, yeah, for all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. Yeah, you can harvest them. And then
Speaker 1: of course inside your intestines there's a little tiny organisms
Speaker 1: that are still living and are gonna help do the
Speaker 1: work that comes next, starting a couple of days after death.
Speaker 1: Like if you just fell over in the woods and
Speaker 1: no one was around. I always loved the setting, right, um,
Speaker 1: and you're just left there. Within about three days, these
Speaker 1: organisms of micro flora is going to go to work
Speaker 1: on you, starting in your intestines. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: after the various mortises correct, Yes, which I guess we
Speaker 1: should kind of go over it. But I would recommend everybody,
Speaker 1: um go listen to what causes rigor mortis? Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: it's on the website. You can go to stuff you
Speaker 1: should know dot com, slash podcasts, uh slash what hyphen
Speaker 1: causes hyphen rigor hyphen mortis. Um, we'll just run through
Speaker 1: the mortis is real quick. Then um, algor mortis, or
Speaker 1: the death chill, that's the first first thing that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: That's where your body starts dropping in temperature about a
Speaker 1: degree and a half fahrenheit per hour, until you are
Speaker 1: just like a nice red wine at room temperature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually that's not quite true. Red wines like sixty four
Speaker 1: degrees from you. I guess it dep into what kind
Speaker 1: of room you're in. Yeah, if you're in a sixty
Speaker 1: four degree it's perfect, all right. What else? Well, after
Speaker 1: alger mortis, um, you get rigor mortis a couple of
Speaker 1: hours after death where the body um settles into a
Speaker 1: stiff state. Uh. And that lasts for what like twenty
Speaker 1: four hours? I don't remember. We talked about it. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Um, And then between those you have
Speaker 1: live remortis or subdulation. That's where like all the blood
Speaker 1: coagulates at the Yeah, basically that your red blood cells
Speaker 1: are pretty heavy and they just sink and Um it's
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes to three hours after death is when
Speaker 1: you're going to be in live remortis, and then after
Speaker 1: that is rigor. That's right, Okay, so not back to
Speaker 1: putrification right, Well, that's the best thing to talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically like cure. These organisms going to work
Speaker 1: breaking down your body, and they do it pretty quick. Um.
Speaker 1: The pancreas apparently has so many in there that it
Speaker 1: just itself eats itself. The pancreas consumes itself. It's pretty efficient. Um,
Speaker 1: your other organs are gonna eventually eventually be consumed in
Speaker 1: turned into liquid. You're liquefied from the inside out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna turn colors in this order green than purple,
Speaker 1: than black, which is just like a like a black eye,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, in that the same stage. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: it never fully heals explodes. Um you uh, within a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, you're going to be liquid inside. Uh.
Speaker 1: The organisms that are eating you produce a gas as
Speaker 1: a byproduct from their consumption. So you're going to be bloated.
Speaker 1: Your tongue is going to stick out, it's gonna turn
Speaker 1: dark to your tongue. Yeah, and that gas really stinks.
Speaker 1: Your eyes are going to protrude. Yeah. Um. There's something
Speaker 1: called purge fluid that is a putrid, reddish brown fluid
Speaker 1: that can be expelled through just everywhere you've got an opening. Right,
Speaker 1: you can come out of your mouth, your nose, your vagina. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can be mixed with feces and come out of
Speaker 1: your rectum. Another. Um, there's something else I can come
Speaker 1: out of your vagina too. Yeah, this is maybe the
Speaker 1: worst thing I've ever heard. I just I had no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. You know, I know all about
Speaker 1: death and all that, and it's like interests me. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of this before. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. You don't either. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: type it into the computer and make the computer say it.
Speaker 1: Do we have that ability? Oh wow, that's pretty good, Chuck.
Speaker 1: That's a good computer impression. So wait, that's what you
Speaker 1: do when you don't want to say something yourself. You
Speaker 1: pretend you're a computer. Yeah, that Emily and I. Most
Speaker 1: of our fights are like that. Really, Yeah, it's pretty cute.
Speaker 1: I go into a war games mode. What was it again, computer? Uh?
Speaker 1: Cof coffin birth. So basically those gases that, um, this
Speaker 1: is a real thing. We're not making this up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but post mortal fetal extrusion is another name for it.
Speaker 1: So the gases that build up in the body before
Speaker 1: the body ruptures um, which comes a little later, can
Speaker 1: become so pressurized that a pregnant woman who has died
Speaker 1: with the fet is still in utero can actually the
Speaker 1: gases can push the fetus out of the vagina um,
Speaker 1: which is coffin birth. Yeah. And this doesn't happen much anymore, thankfully,
Speaker 1: because we take care of dead bodies pretty quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: Although they did find evidence of it in a case
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight where this woman was found like
Speaker 1: in the woods, but um, it was described a lot
Speaker 1: in like six to eighteenth century medical literature. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: it just drove them crazy. To she was obviously alive
Speaker 1: for weeks afterward. Yeah, And archaeologist apparently to or are
Speaker 1: have to rethink sometimes when they find because sometimes you
Speaker 1: would die during childbirth. But the um they would buried
Speaker 1: the the baby with the mother, and so you would
Speaker 1: find the bones like cradling each other almost. But then
Speaker 1: they go back, they've had to go back and look
Speaker 1: at somewhere they find the you know, between the legs,
Speaker 1: the bones of the baby, and they think that might
Speaker 1: be the case, like of a coffin birth. So there's
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world. Yeah, Um, there's probably
Speaker 1: death metal band with that name. If there's not, there
Speaker 1: is now. Um. So the gases ultimately, eventually, once they start,
Speaker 1: once they really get down to business, and they're no
Speaker 1: longer just what's the call where they're the fluids coming
Speaker 1: out a little orifices here, they're purge fluid. Okay. So
Speaker 1: once it's like enough with the purge fluid, the we're
Speaker 1: just gonna tear the sucker open. Your body ultimately ruptures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, your skin is already blistered
Speaker 1: at this point. Um, your hair, nails, and teeth have
Speaker 1: fallen out. They don't keep growing. No, it's your skin
Speaker 1: receding from drawing out from desiccating. So pass that around
Speaker 1: in school kids. When someone says that your fingernails keep
Speaker 1: going after death, you set him straight. Tell him Josh saying,
Speaker 1: oh god, I just realized there's kids listening to this. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the old d gloving, which we've talked about before.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about that, remember that? Yeah? Where
Speaker 1: the that can happen to you? If you drive at
Speaker 1: ten and two and you have an air bag, the
Speaker 1: gases that expand the air bag out of your steering
Speaker 1: wheel are very hot. And if you're not driving at
Speaker 1: nine and three and you have your hands at like
Speaker 1: ten and two or something like, you're going to be
Speaker 1: de gloved alive. Yeah, but your skin is just burned
Speaker 1: right off your hands, or it's burned and separated and
Speaker 1: then eventually comes off. So ten and two is not
Speaker 1: how you should drive it on. Really, That's what I've learned. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I drive it either just a straight up six o'clock
Speaker 1: with one hand or a nooner, just a straight up
Speaker 1: noon nude. I rarely have two hands on the wheel.
Speaker 1: You don't drive with like your knees, with your hands
Speaker 1: behind your head relaxing occasionally if i'm you know, relaxing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're playing the guitar or something. Yeah, de gloving is
Speaker 1: I know we talked about this in the probably rigor mortis.
Speaker 1: But that's when your body farms. Maybe yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: basically your skin is removed, still attached to things like
Speaker 1: fingernails and things like that. And it's they call it
Speaker 1: de gloving for a reason. I don't think we need
Speaker 1: to explain it makes perfect sense. Or de socking sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, can happen to your feet. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard of that one. Did you just make that up? Well,
Speaker 1: they said gloves or socks if it's your feet, But
Speaker 1: I did make up the socking. Well, I don't have
Speaker 1: to use that from now on. That might be a
Speaker 1: new thing. Um. So the body once it, once it ruptures,
Speaker 1: your organs are already liquid um and all that's left
Speaker 1: is a skeleton, which will eventually turn to dust too.
Speaker 1: Can we be done? No, wait, we can't be done,
Speaker 1: because we do need to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: UM assisted suicide. Yeah, I just eat that up for you.
Speaker 1: You should. Um, that's quite a controversial subject, like we said, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I said or not, Like this
Speaker 1: has just been such a huge whirlwind of input of
Speaker 1: information in my head in the last like thirty six
Speaker 1: hours studying for this UM that I don't know what
Speaker 1: I've said yet or not, or what we talked about
Speaker 1: in another podcast, but so we talked about dying of
Speaker 1: frailty of old age and that it's increasing. Supposedly five
Speaker 1: out of ten people in the United States will die
Speaker 1: in the intensive care unit. And I saw this Ted
Speaker 1: talk from Newcastle, Australia with this guy I can't remember
Speaker 1: what his name is, but it's it's about dying. I
Speaker 1: think it's called it can we talk about dying or something,
Speaker 1: And his point was, you're going to die in the
Speaker 1: I see you, whether you want to or not, if
Speaker 1: you die of a degenera, nrative disease or frailty, unless
Speaker 1: you say you don't want to die there, because the
Speaker 1: way medical science is currently set up, you are going
Speaker 1: to be treated most of the time up until a
Speaker 1: bitter end with life saving measures, and you're going to
Speaker 1: die in the i c U with tubes hooked up
Speaker 1: and things beeping, and like other people having crash carts
Speaker 1: taken in and out of their room and people making
Speaker 1: a big rucus up until the point you die, unless
Speaker 1: they give you palliative care or or you say I
Speaker 1: don't want to be sustained like that. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to the i c U. And this point was,
Speaker 1: if half of Americans are going to die in the
Speaker 1: i c U, you have to assume that maybe not
Speaker 1: all of them would want to die in the i
Speaker 1: c U. And therefore they need to think of things
Speaker 1: like I wanted an advanced directive, a living will, I
Speaker 1: want a living power of attorney to somebody to say no, no,
Speaker 1: do not put them on a ventilator, do not put
Speaker 1: them on feeding tubes. Like they don't want that. They
Speaker 1: just want to die, or they want to go to hospice.
Speaker 1: They want to go back home. That's another big one,
Speaker 1: like they don't let you go back home, especially if
Speaker 1: you can't speak for yourself. Like to medical science these days,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. You don't leave the hospital when you know
Speaker 1: you're dying. You stay in the hospital and and we
Speaker 1: keep doing stuff until you die. That's not the way
Speaker 1: it jobs with a lot of people. But if you
Speaker 1: don't stop and think about it and then write it
Speaker 1: down or tell somebody who can speak for you, that's
Speaker 1: you're not going to go home, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get to hospice. You have to do this ahead of time.
Speaker 1: And part of that that's kind of come out of
Speaker 1: this idea is okay, Well, if we have autonomy to
Speaker 1: say I don't want you to intibate me, why don't
Speaker 1: we have the autonomy to say, I want you to
Speaker 1: give me some stuff that's going to painlessly end by life,
Speaker 1: because it's either that or facing a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: pain and suffering through this degenerative disease. Basically saying I'm Eddie,
Speaker 1: I am ready, it is my life. It's like the
Speaker 1: Richard Dryfist movie from the eighties. Uh, covertis whose life
Speaker 1: is anyway? I think I have no idea what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, I think so. It was a movie
Speaker 1: about assisted suicide and do you should you have the
Speaker 1: right to be able to You know, it's a hot
Speaker 1: button issue for sure, but apparently most Americans or the
Speaker 1: majority of Americans actually support it until you start using
Speaker 1: a word like suicide. Right when you pull them and
Speaker 1: say do you are you in favor of doctors helping
Speaker 1: someone painlessly in their life or something at the end
Speaker 1: of life? They yeah, And then they're like, okay, so
Speaker 1: you're in favorite physician assisted suicide? No? No, no, h um,
Speaker 1: what's that word? You know? And and the doctors who
Speaker 1: are in favor of youuthan Asia is another term for it. Um, say,
Speaker 1: look at palliative care, it's like half of a step
Speaker 1: away from physician assisted suicide. Like you're keeping somebody if
Speaker 1: they requested and knockdown on morphine of the rest of
Speaker 1: their life so they're never gonna regain consciousness. Um. There's
Speaker 1: this you you dug up this one article by a
Speaker 1: British physician who argues that, um, that agonal um gasping reflex. Apparently,
Speaker 1: when part of the apnea is that your body has
Speaker 1: a reflex where you gasp for air and it's really
Speaker 1: disconcerting to family members. Even though they don't think that
Speaker 1: you're suffering, it looks like you're suffering. And this doctor argued, well,
Speaker 1: we have drugs that can block this response so that
Speaker 1: the person can't gasp for air, and what it's going
Speaker 1: to cost them their last couple of breaths. But these
Speaker 1: last couple of breaths make it appear like they're suffering,
Speaker 1: and the family remembers that their kids suffered. Um, so
Speaker 1: why wouldn't we do that? And there's this conversation that's
Speaker 1: taking place more and more and more that ultimately it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, who is somebody to say that somebody
Speaker 1: can't choose to end their own life painlessly through the
Speaker 1: use of like drugs or like Hunter Thompson didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's another way to go, and you anybody
Speaker 1: can do that, sure, but there are some people out
Speaker 1: there who don't want to die violently. They want for
Speaker 1: their family. Like that's the part that I was upset
Speaker 1: about with that was his wife, like finding him and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his wife and his son. And it was like, not
Speaker 1: only that he did it in his own basement, which
Speaker 1: I can understand doing it at home, but he left
Speaker 1: quite a mess in his own basement for his family
Speaker 1: to clean up. But if he had other options these days,
Speaker 1: like doctor assisted suicide, he might not have had to
Speaker 1: make a mess in his basement for his families. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and chuck, uh, we know that Hunter Thompson is far
Speaker 1: from the only person to make his own exit his
Speaker 1: own way. Another very famous person, uh, Sigmund Freud did too.
Speaker 1: Huh oh yeah, yeah, you know that assisted suicide. Yeah, literally,
Speaker 1: physician assisted suicide. He was um diagnosed with cancer of
Speaker 1: the palette because he smoked tons of cigars, which were
Speaker 1: some times just a cigar and uh. For sixteen years
Speaker 1: he lived with that diagnosis and finally, towards the end,
Speaker 1: he asked his surgeon, his physician, go ahead and hit
Speaker 1: me up with I think five grams of morphine, like
Speaker 1: just a ton of morphine. And he died three hours
Speaker 1: after the injection of it, but which was more than
Speaker 1: his usual two grams of morphine right or cocaine he
Speaker 1: loved cocaine um, but he had um developed what was
Speaker 1: called todden angst totin angst as German, which is a
Speaker 1: dread of death. So and so he lived with that
Speaker 1: for sixteen years. But he finally he decided along the way,
Speaker 1: like I fear this, but I'm going to take it
Speaker 1: into my own hands. Physician assisted suicide. And there's definitely
Speaker 1: more than one side to this coin. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people. There's very strong opinions on either side. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a at the very least, even if
Speaker 1: you remove a motion from it's an extremely interesting conversation
Speaker 1: and that it reveals so much about our attitudes toward
Speaker 1: death total and autonomy, and like who's who has the
Speaker 1: right to decide whether they're going to die or who
Speaker 1: has the right to tell somebody that they can't do that.
Speaker 1: Whose life is it anyway, Richard Dreyfuss, Uh, and then
Speaker 1: chuck one. One other thing that we want to hit
Speaker 1: on is um regret. Yeah. I actually saw this a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, just by chance, and then you sent
Speaker 1: it to me. Um. I think it was in England
Speaker 1: hospice nurse spent a lot of time researching life regrets
Speaker 1: over the course of a certain amount of time and
Speaker 1: came up with the five most common life regrets. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think this is like a good way to end it,
Speaker 1: you know. Number one, I wish I had the courage
Speaker 1: to live a life true to myself and not the
Speaker 1: life others expected of me. That was the number one regret.
Speaker 1: Number two was I wish I didn't work so hard.
Speaker 1: That doesn't surprise me at all. Number three I wish
Speaker 1: I had the courage to express my feelings. Number four
Speaker 1: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Speaker 1: It's very sad. Had one and I wish I'd let
Speaker 1: myself be happier. There's number five. Yeah, like that. She
Speaker 1: was saying that they didn't realize towards until the end
Speaker 1: of their life that happiness is a choice that you make.
Speaker 1: It's not something that happens to you. It's something you
Speaker 1: go search out. It's a state of mind that you
Speaker 1: strive for and to figure that out like at the
Speaker 1: end that that's a regret. Yeah, so call to action people, Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: like you think about the stuff. You don't have to
Speaker 1: wish these things on your deathbed if you start doing
Speaker 1: something about it. Now, dying, Chuck, you know what we
Speaker 1: might have just done. We might have just finished the
Speaker 1: death of the Death Suite. I bet there's something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only time can tell. But I don't know how much
Speaker 1: more aspects of death we can cover. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what. I'm gonna put all of them together in
Speaker 1: a blog post the Death Suite, so everybody can go
Speaker 1: listen to all things death via stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to look up more
Speaker 1: about dying, just type dying into the search bar. How
Speaker 1: stuff works. I think it has its own channel. Um,
Speaker 1: there's so much to it. Uh. And since I said
Speaker 1: search bar, it's time for a listener mail. This is
Speaker 1: a nice one. Um. We don't normally do shout outs,
Speaker 1: but this was a nice one, and I thought, what
Speaker 1: better way to end such a depressing show. Uh. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: and Jerry loved the podcast. Josh, I have to thank
Speaker 1: you for teaching my fiance, Danny and me about the
Speaker 1: flashlight trick to see spiderizer. Yeah. I still haven't done it, man,
Speaker 1: I never think about it at night. Jerry, you said
Speaker 1: you tried it right and it worked. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: need to do it. I need to set a reminder.
Speaker 1: And my my response to people who have been like,
Speaker 1: can you can you explain it again? Practice That's my explanation.
Speaker 1: Just practice, Just try it from a different angle. Just practice.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing. It's not a trick. It is
Speaker 1: completely amazing. And this is from Peache by the way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's wonderful and frightening at the same time. But
Speaker 1: the problem now is that whenever we walk our dogs
Speaker 1: at night, I just can't have my normal fiance. I
Speaker 1: have this dude with the flashlight stuck to his forehead
Speaker 1: stopping at every field to let me know just how
Speaker 1: many spiders are dogs are stepping on and how we
Speaker 1: are always surrounded. Thanks for the show, and now for
Speaker 1: a shameless request. I know you don't often give shout outs,
Speaker 1: but it would be the most amazing thing ever, if
Speaker 1: you could give a shout out to Danny on the
Speaker 1: podcast The Airs sometime before our wedding on oct let
Speaker 1: him know that I love him more than anything, and
Speaker 1: then I'm excited to share my life with him, even
Speaker 1: if he does have a flashlight stuff to his forehead,
Speaker 1: with the rest of our lives walking our dogs together.
Speaker 1: I know this is totally blown away. And I would
Speaker 1: even let him listen to that podcast first. So thanks
Speaker 1: to Jerry. Thanks guys. That is from Peachy in Thousand Oaks, California.
Speaker 1: I think Peachy just expressed it very nicely. Yeah, so Danny, Peachy, congratulations, Uh,
Speaker 1: best of luck, best witches from us. I told her
Speaker 1: listen up for it on that Dying podcast and he
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of funny, and it's like great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Danny, um, maybe put down with five slight once
Speaker 1: in a while, yeah, wife, Uh and Peg, don't use
Speaker 1: the word fiance so much. Okay, that's a life lesson
Speaker 1: from Chuck right there. No would likes to hear that. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to see if you can talk Chuck
Speaker 1: into a shout out, take your best shot. You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y S k podcast. You
Speaker 1: can talk to him directly on Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. That's where he spend all of
Speaker 1: this time. UM. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and you
Speaker 1: can join us at our website, our very own website.
Speaker 1: It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff
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