Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: I'm Julie Douglas. Tell me, Julie, you've encountered people using
Speaker 1: the word literally incorrectly before? Right? Oh yeah, I'm definitely
Speaker 1: I'm someone who's used it incorrectly before. Yeah, like uh,
Speaker 1: like like us it incorrectly in a sense I am
Speaker 1: literally starving to death, all right, or or the famous
Speaker 1: sports line he literally took his head off. And but
Speaker 1: the thing is generally you're not You're generally not starving
Speaker 1: or and uh and and then uh, sports people generally
Speaker 1: are not decapitated on the field hopefully. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to actually dive into the scientific world and
Speaker 1: look for examples where people's heads can literally explode, because
Speaker 1: people will use this like like, oh man, I've read
Speaker 1: that are iCal and nature and made my head explode,
Speaker 1: or you know, or I went to math class and
Speaker 1: you know, my head totally exploded. So we'd we're seeking
Speaker 1: to answer the question can your brain your skull literally explode? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And if so, how But I think I think we
Speaker 1: may need to go back in the time machine a
Speaker 1: bit too, Yeah, to look at a good instance of
Speaker 1: splattering of the brains, so to speak, because we felt
Speaker 1: we have evidence from around d a little place called
Speaker 1: Herculaneum near Mount Vesuvius, where where archaeologists have found these
Speaker 1: skulls from the victims of people who died when this
Speaker 1: is volcano erupted and the skulls like completely cracked open
Speaker 1: like an egg that's been shattered brutal. Yeah. So they're
Speaker 1: thinking that now that they've got more evidence that it
Speaker 1: had to do with a pyroclastic flow, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the pyroclastic flow is is pretty uh mind blowing. Uh.
Speaker 1: When a volcano erupts, all the stuff coming out the
Speaker 1: top is uh, of course, it's not just not merely smoke.
Speaker 1: It's it's ash, it's um, rock and mud. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all just pulverized by this rapid release of gas from
Speaker 1: the inner earth. Okay, So all that stuff comes back
Speaker 1: down again, and it can it can end up forming
Speaker 1: to this thing called a pyroclastic flow, which is essentially
Speaker 1: a just mass of ash, gas, rock fragments all traveling
Speaker 1: at It speeds up to like a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five per hour, So just speeding along, and the temperatures
Speaker 1: in this thing are pretty amazing, like degrees fahrenheit. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen it. Seen it ranged from like seven fifty
Speaker 1: two to yeah, thousand, four seventy two degrees fahrenheit, which
Speaker 1: is pretty hot. Yeah. Okay, so let's set the stage.
Speaker 1: Ves erupts. Right, there's this column of gas, this roiling mixture,
Speaker 1: and if you're unlucky enough to live in Pompeii, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna get buried in a bunch of ash, right,
Speaker 1: which is I think what we normally think about when
Speaker 1: we think about vesuvious. We think about the inhabitants of Pompeii.
Speaker 1: But if you're in the little fishing village of Herculaneum,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be far worse. You're you may even be
Speaker 1: Let's stay down wind of that pyroclastic flow. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again it's just like this wall of of what looks
Speaker 1: like smoke, and you know, this wall of just rolling ash,
Speaker 1: just just coming down the side of the of the hills,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And so that you see that, you
Speaker 1: see them the volcano erupt Ten minutes later, you're you're
Speaker 1: trying to evacuate something, You're running down the street and
Speaker 1: like you said, you've got this cloud mushrooming out. You
Speaker 1: add nikes degrees fahrenheit. I mean that what is that
Speaker 1: going to do to you? Well? Uh, the scientists believe
Speaker 1: that what happens is when it when it first hit you, Um,
Speaker 1: it's going to basically vaporize your soft tissues on the
Speaker 1: like on the extuse exterior of your body. But then
Speaker 1: the heat is it's also so intense that it like
Speaker 1: cracks the enamel of your teeth and uh. And actually
Speaker 1: that they've discovered also the insides of the skull were
Speaker 1: kind of blackened, so the brains are essentially boiling in
Speaker 1: there just like in a split second. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like being it's like some of the from a sci
Speaker 1: fi novel or something where someone's like hit with a
Speaker 1: ray gun. It's like suddenly brains boiling and uh and
Speaker 1: what happens if something is suddenly boiling inside an enclosed
Speaker 1: space like the cranium? Yeah, that so thinking and it's
Speaker 1: it seems so sci fi. Something that's just incinerating before
Speaker 1: your eyes and in the poor brain is boiling and
Speaker 1: just pops. And I think you had written a article
Speaker 1: about volcanic ash, and you actually had a good explanation
Speaker 1: for that. I think you likened it to an egg
Speaker 1: and water. Yeah. Yeah, it's boiling. And if you think
Speaker 1: about it as like a molten goo that your brain
Speaker 1: is in, yeah, it's uh. Another way to think of
Speaker 1: it is if you've ever been been camping and you
Speaker 1: had like a hand of beans or something can't of
Speaker 1: soup and you're kind of like heating it up hobo style,
Speaker 1: you know, like, you know, like the stupidest thing you
Speaker 1: could possibly do would be to throw an entire can
Speaker 1: of soup into a fire, because what's gonna happen. It's
Speaker 1: gonna blow up, right, it's gonna blow up. You gotta
Speaker 1: poke holes and that can of course. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: the it's like a similar thing occurring in a split
Speaker 1: second with these uh, these poor you know, fisherman's skulls.
Speaker 1: It's just suddenly heat hits them and whammo, top of
Speaker 1: the skull cracks, instant literal blowing of the mind. Correct,
Speaker 1: right there. And I think what's so cool about that
Speaker 1: is that they actually tried to replicate these results. Well
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that's what's so cool about I think
Speaker 1: it's cool that they went to the trouble of trying
Speaker 1: to find out exactly how this is because again, before
Speaker 1: the before they got this sort of recent information, everybody
Speaker 1: was under the assumption that people had died from suffocation
Speaker 1: from the gases and volcanic ash and everything else raining
Speaker 1: down upon them. So now they know it was really
Speaker 1: the heat that was the element that wiped out the
Speaker 1: village and Pompeii. And you have a bunch of scientists
Speaker 1: basically in a lab taking animal and human bones and
Speaker 1: exposing them to certain degrees of heat and finally being
Speaker 1: able to replicate this degree of charred nous um, and
Speaker 1: and also looking at the schools as you had mentioned,
Speaker 1: and seeing that there are parts of the school missing,
Speaker 1: and hey, here's our conclusion. That got up to uh
Speaker 1: to degrees so hot that it could just make your
Speaker 1: brain pop. Yeah, I believe the They believe it got
Speaker 1: up in her in herculaneum got up to around n
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheg. Yeah, And it was a big I mean,
Speaker 1: this wasn't just a paraclastic flow. I mean it was
Speaker 1: that as well, but the paroclastic clouds so it hung around.
Speaker 1: So even if you were ensconced away in some building
Speaker 1: and you thought you were hiding from it, the heat
Speaker 1: was eventually going to get to you anyway. No insulation
Speaker 1: of the time was going to save you from that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's really horrific when you think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But luckily, like I said, I think, I think it
Speaker 1: would have been over pretty quick, you know. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is true. Like you said, I mean, it's I mean
Speaker 1: sort of instant vaporization. So I as far as ways
Speaker 1: to go, that's I think not too bad. Not having
Speaker 1: experienced it myself, I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't seek
Speaker 1: it out. Now, what is the Another interesting aspect of
Speaker 1: the of the whole situation with Vesuvius was the posture
Speaker 1: of the bodies. Yeah. Yeah, they called the garden and
Speaker 1: Fugitives because they found a bunch of different people who, uh,
Speaker 1: they assumed were, um, we're suffocating to death because a
Speaker 1: lot of them had their hands up to their noses
Speaker 1: and an apostures if like they were choking or whatnot.
Speaker 1: And they found it to actually be something called a
Speaker 1: cadaveric spasm. And this only happens with nuclear explosions and
Speaker 1: volcanic eruptions. So this is something that is instantaneous muscular stiffening.
Speaker 1: So it's an instantaneous death mask, if you will. And
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's pretty shocking if you think about it.
Speaker 1: They actually this is kind of interesting too, that a
Speaker 1: lot of the researchers had looked at the different postures
Speaker 1: and they categorize them and some were called lifelike and
Speaker 1: somewhere called sleep like, and somewhere called hugilistic attitude, which
Speaker 1: I really like. Oh and this is the one where
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like they're boxing. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like like as if they were. And the conclusion
Speaker 1: was is that they were sort of boxing at the elements,
Speaker 1: trying to get away from you know, the volcanic ash
Speaker 1: or something. Um, you know, man versus nature. Uh. But
Speaker 1: I just love that it's called pugilistic attitude. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start saying that you have a really pugilistic attitude it um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds kind of like almost kind of
Speaker 1: snobby on the part of the archeologist if they kind
Speaker 1: of like they're thinking, hey, look these you know, primitive
Speaker 1: people from the past. They thought they could box away
Speaker 1: the you know, the the volcanic eruption or fight it
Speaker 1: off with their hands, and I don't know. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: think about how long we've had access to Pompeii and
Speaker 1: what our thoughts when we were first discovering that. Um.
Speaker 1: Was it in the eighteen hundreds? Correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But it seems like that's when UM when people became
Speaker 1: aware of it and really started to look at explanations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're boxing off elements. I remember becoming aware
Speaker 1: of it through my father's National Geographic subscription because I
Speaker 1: just like they had all these like really gnarly um
Speaker 1: you know, illustrations of all the bodies and the skulls,
Speaker 1: you know, and all those weird poses and it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: In fact, the PBS special I think it's called Secrets
Speaker 1: of the Dead is fascinating because it looks at all
Speaker 1: the different things they can find out now through science,
Speaker 1: and particularly with herculaneum. That's that's somewhat new in the
Speaker 1: discoveries that they've found there. So it's cool stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: In in researching the possibility of one skull literally exploding,
Speaker 1: I ran across another interesting tidbit um, and this had
Speaker 1: to do with giraffes. I don't know if you happen
Speaker 1: to come across this one as well. But draft giraffe's
Speaker 1: hearts that the heart of a giraffe produces a very
Speaker 1: um high pressure to force the blood yeah, up to
Speaker 1: the head. So um. I found the an instance where
Speaker 1: online where some people were asking, well, how come the
Speaker 1: when the giraffe like leans down to get you know,
Speaker 1: moves and leans its head down. Um, then you know,
Speaker 1: cranes its neck forward. How come the pressure doesn't make
Speaker 1: the giraffe's head explode. Come, Well, it's because the giraffe
Speaker 1: has this thing called a and I'm probably going to
Speaker 1: mispronounce this, but rete mirable, which is Latin for wonderful net.
Speaker 1: And it's a cluster of arteries and veins that diverts
Speaker 1: blood flow and uh, and changes actually equalizes blood pressure
Speaker 1: so that when the animal lowers its head, it kind
Speaker 1: of serves as like a natural pressure relief system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think they get dizzy? Nonetheless, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like apparently it's the same thing that like it keeps
Speaker 1: dogs when dogs get really hot, keeps their their brains
Speaker 1: from overheating. Uh. It helps regulate like where the blood
Speaker 1: is going into penguin to keep the penguin from getting
Speaker 1: to its extremities, you know, cooling cooling down blood too
Speaker 1: much and also helps like whales and other diving mammals
Speaker 1: when they're going down to different pressures, you know, higher
Speaker 1: pressure portions of the water. So very cool. Yeah, that way.
Speaker 1: I found that on the Happy Scientist Robert Krapp's website.
Speaker 1: So yeah, everybody needs some happy science. That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you. Has your head ever exploded?
Speaker 1: Not literally, not literally, but there is something called exploding
Speaker 1: head syndrome. Okay, it sounds pretty severe. It does sound severe. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I actually have experienced that, okay, So that is
Speaker 1: something that you you're feeling side of your brain or
Speaker 1: you perceive inside of your brain. So, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: been a couple of nights that I've woken up in
Speaker 1: the middle of night and thought, oh my god, I've
Speaker 1: just heard this gigantic, really loud, slamming sound in my
Speaker 1: in what I thought was my environment, and freaked out
Speaker 1: and got up and made sure that you know, the
Speaker 1: mafia wasn't coming from and I don't know why I
Speaker 1: thought it was the mafia, but um, you know, and
Speaker 1: then checked everything out and said, okay, that's fine, and
Speaker 1: it's happened enough so that when I actually read about
Speaker 1: explaining exploding brain syndrome, I thought to myself, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I've had that, No big deal. Um, So
Speaker 1: it sounds really dramatic, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's it's really just um, the person experiencing this sound,
Speaker 1: and there's no pain. It's just a sense of alarm
Speaker 1: and of course a surgeon adrenaline. Right. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: like in different uh like different people experience that is
Speaker 1: is more like a gunshot. Yeah, it's noise. Others it's
Speaker 1: like an explosion. Sometimes people apparently experience kind of a
Speaker 1: flash of light with it. Yes, yeah, and um it's
Speaker 1: best that can tell. It's thought to be uh about
Speaker 1: it's thought to be caused by delay in the reduction
Speaker 1: of activity and selected areas of the brainstem. Um, what
Speaker 1: do you think about my brainstem that it's it's not working, right,
Speaker 1: I guess it's making you wake up in the night
Speaker 1: to imagine it sounds. But but when when I first
Speaker 1: found out about this one, I was like, oh my,
Speaker 1: like actually, like even when I first started reading about it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, because initially, like exploding head syndrome that sounds insane,
Speaker 1: and then you read a little about it, like an
Speaker 1: initial um explanations of it online are kind of like
Speaker 1: people are waking up in the night holding you know,
Speaker 1: you could just picture people waking up clutching their head
Speaker 1: like screaming and thinking that their heads about to explode.
Speaker 1: Like that was the vision. You know, It's like totally
Speaker 1: like scanners. That was what I was thinking. So when you,
Speaker 1: like when I asked you, you mentioned it this morning,
Speaker 1: you're just very nonchalant, like, yeah, I think I've had
Speaker 1: exploding head syndrome. I was like, whoa, how could you
Speaker 1: you just think you have it? Or or how could
Speaker 1: you have not realized you had it before? But it's
Speaker 1: uh um, Exploding head syndrome more e h S as
Speaker 1: they call it, apparently is not really that severe. Like
Speaker 1: they're right right, like if you experience it, don't go
Speaker 1: to your doctor and ask for you know, tell me
Speaker 1: you need medication because he's just gonna laugh at you.
Speaker 1: Well he's probably not gonna laugh at you, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or you might get some medication that you don't necessarily need.
Speaker 1: It depends. We have a non judgment zone if you
Speaker 1: if you need to do that, it's fine, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: generally you don't need to and that that's kind of
Speaker 1: I think why my reaction was so boss a about
Speaker 1: it because I was like, well, yeah, so I heard
Speaker 1: this slaming sound in my in my head and sometimes
Speaker 1: that happens every once in a while. But yeah, no
Speaker 1: mafia people in my living room. So allways, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I believe it. It It tends to occur like in
Speaker 1: the early phases of sleep, right when you're sort of
Speaker 1: you're not really completely awake, can you not really sleep yet? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's before you take the deep dive into sleep,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes it occurs after the deep dive. So
Speaker 1: it's and that's the twilight stage, I think they call it.
Speaker 1: So note to myself, I need to need to get
Speaker 1: my brain stem worked on. Well, I think there's a
Speaker 1: there's a kid you can get online where it's just
Speaker 1: just like self repair. Yeah. Yeah. This presentation is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow so um. In
Speaker 1: researching this, we also ran across some some stories that
Speaker 1: are completely not true about exploding heads. Um, but kind
Speaker 1: of wonderful because I think we both got excited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there was one, um about the chess player whose
Speaker 1: head exploded. Yeah, and we but I think we both
Speaker 1: had the same experience where we ran across the article
Speaker 1: and then we're like, oh my goodness, gold this is
Speaker 1: we're totally going to talk about this one. And then
Speaker 1: we we saw the source Weekly World. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it started out kind of strong, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still sort of impossible, but still it starts out kind
Speaker 1: of strong. And then as it goes on, um, you
Speaker 1: start thinking, I don't know about that. It just seems
Speaker 1: like it's just not possible. And then at the very
Speaker 1: end of the story it says, you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is more common than you think it is. And
Speaker 1: here are some signs that you may be in dangerer
Speaker 1: of your head exploding, which is like my favorite thing
Speaker 1: about this article. Um, and I won't read all of them,
Speaker 1: but there's here's one which was does your head sometimes
Speaker 1: ache when you think too hard? Yeah? Okay, well you
Speaker 1: could your your brain might explode. Yeah. Oh and here's
Speaker 1: another one. Do you tend to analyze yourself too much? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that there there are many more, like if
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time balancing your checkbook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. But I think the I think the
Speaker 1: theory behind that that they tried to posit in the
Speaker 1: story was that there was too much electrical activity happening
Speaker 1: in the brain. It was like an overload of the circuitry.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, how about the trumpet guy, because that
Speaker 1: was another story. Oh yeah, there's a trumpet player. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was in the National Enquiry, so obviously, like you
Speaker 1: see that, you okay, this is right next to that
Speaker 1: boy um Hugo Slari was playing the Impossible Dream on
Speaker 1: trumpet when his head swelled and burst quote like a balloon.
Speaker 1: Ok Yeah. And what I love about this story is
Speaker 1: that they've just got um, they've got all these people
Speaker 1: talking about the event, all these onlookers, and they have
Speaker 1: these descriptions about how there was a blonde in the
Speaker 1: front row and she got brains in her blonde hair,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's pretty good stuff. Yeah, though I
Speaker 1: can't imagine, like even like how would the brain explode
Speaker 1: from playing Like it's just I don't buy it as
Speaker 1: as as easily as I buy the chess player. I
Speaker 1: don't know it was the Impossible Dream. I've never played
Speaker 1: on trumpet, like and and when, why am the impossible dream?
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking like fly to the Bumblebees would probably
Speaker 1: do it. I don't know. I think it's just something
Speaker 1: from the Man of La Mancha. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's I'm gonna have to listen to it again. But
Speaker 1: that was a good one, I thought. And then there's
Speaker 1: this this idea too that if you were somehow flung
Speaker 1: out into space you would explode. Yeah, this one is
Speaker 1: one you can. I believe we mentioned the the Sean
Speaker 1: Connery sci fi movie Outland in like the last podcast
Speaker 1: or the one before it, But that was the movie
Speaker 1: where the guys are suddenly outside the spaceship and oh
Speaker 1: their head swells up and burst like a big bloody balloon. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily going to happen. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: even not necessary. It's literally not going to spend Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and you can like like NASA is pretty
Speaker 1: open about this, like they really want everybody to know
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna explode. Um like like basically you're
Speaker 1: not even necessarily going to be injured. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: you might get kind of flight like for like a
Speaker 1: brief exposure to the void kind of like what happens
Speaker 1: And I think two thousand one yea and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they ripped it off in various other
Speaker 1: films um later on, like I think they do the
Speaker 1: same thing and like Firefly and of then Horizon. But um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like if you exhale all the all the air,
Speaker 1: you know, and you don't have like you're not holding
Speaker 1: your breath like an idiot, then you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: not going to be injured in that regard. Um, you
Speaker 1: might get some sort of like mild like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like the Bin's kind of situation. You might
Speaker 1: have some like mild even like non painful and reversible
Speaker 1: swelling of the skin. But but the one thing they
Speaker 1: really stress is that like your your skin is like
Speaker 1: a really good system, Like it's it's really great at
Speaker 1: containing you know, it's a barrier. It's a it's a barrier,
Speaker 1: and it's not you know, it's not ideal for space walking.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't you know, depend on it entirely. No, you
Speaker 1: could get some burned pretty badly, right, But when push
Speaker 1: comes to shove, and especially when the shove is out
Speaker 1: of a space airlock, you know you're probably gonna be
Speaker 1: okay for you know, a very brief period of time
Speaker 1: before any other you know causes can can jump in
Speaker 1: there and kill you. Yeah. I think a minute or
Speaker 1: two and then the loss of oxygen and you're out.
Speaker 1: It's a very uh unhistoryonic sort of death that you
Speaker 1: would experience. There would be no explosions. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: just in case that was something you were worried about,
Speaker 1: you know, don't worry. You would not explode in space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If anybody out there was on the fence about getting
Speaker 1: that Virgin Galactic ticket, yeah, feel feel free to go ahead,
Speaker 1: go and buy it. Push yeah, push purchase you could,
Speaker 1: or well, I guess you or you can also just
Speaker 1: you can reserve it. What is it I think to
Speaker 1: reserve two hundred thousand for the ticket? Oh yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I didn't even look at my paperwork. I just signed it,
Speaker 1: take it on my bank account. So I guess that's
Speaker 1: about it. For exploding heads, that's not literally it isn't
Speaker 1: it might be. It might literally be it unless anybody
Speaker 1: out there has uh something we've overlooked or you know, indeed,
Speaker 1: have any stories about their own head seeming to explode
Speaker 1: in the night due to large and loud noises. And
Speaker 1: you can also check out more on the how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com website where we have I this is
Speaker 1: where I actually wrote an article on how is a
Speaker 1: volcanic ash made? Which goes into pyroclastic flow and uh
Speaker 1: and and all that and the egg analogy, yeah, the
Speaker 1: egg analogy in other ways, that volcanic ash can really
Speaker 1: mess with human life and and just you know, getting
Speaker 1: about town. And then we also have an article about
Speaker 1: the whole going out into space without a space suit thing.
Speaker 1: Marshall Brain, the site founder, wrote one called what if
Speaker 1: an astronaut went on a space walk without a space suit?
Speaker 1: What if? Yeah, no explosions in there, but a lot
Speaker 1: of cool data about the about how it would affect
Speaker 1: your body. All right, Well, thanks for listening. You can
Speaker 1: find those articles and many more every day on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. The house stuff Works dot com
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