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Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: For the weeks in between episodes, we look at the
Speaker 1: stories that, for one reason or other, didn't make it
Speaker 1: into the show. In last week's episode, Here Is Always
Speaker 1: Somewhere Else, we looked at the beguiling story of Shanty Devi,
Speaker 1: a young girl from Delhi, India, who believed she had
Speaker 1: once lived another life. Devi's claim was considered so convincing
Speaker 1: it was investigated by a number of journalists and dignitaries,
Speaker 1: many of whom were left in no doubt that it
Speaker 1: was true. When researching his first book in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, psychiatrist doctor Ian Stephenson, who dedicated much of
Speaker 1: his life's work to investigating the possibility of re incarnation,
Speaker 1: traveled to India for part of his study. In just
Speaker 1: four weeks, he was said to have found twenty five
Speaker 1: individuals with compelling claims of a past life. Critics of
Speaker 1: the book argued that such an overabundance of Indian based
Speaker 1: stories revealed the folly of his work. That so many
Speaker 1: people would claim to be reincarnated, they argued, was evidence
Speaker 1: of a clear cultural bias that readily accepted the apparent
Speaker 1: phenomena as fact, Stevenson argued in response, it was precisely
Speaker 1: because it was more widely accepted that possible incidences of
Speaker 1: reincarnation were recorded, when those from other cultures would instead
Speaker 1: dismiss the evidence as merely a coincidence or the result
Speaker 1: of a subconscious absorption of information. Regardless of what you believe,
Speaker 1: there is no doubt something fascinating at play at the
Speaker 1: heart of all carnation stories, which is the notion of
Speaker 1: what it is exactly that is apparently being reincarnated. For some,
Speaker 1: the idea that Shanti Devi had once lived as a
Speaker 1: young woman named Lugdi Bai has us trying to imagine
Speaker 1: the experience for ourselves, dying one day only to re
Speaker 1: emerge in the mind of a young child the next.
Speaker 1: For those more familiar with the Hindu and Buddhist concept
Speaker 1: of reincarnation, however, the process is not apparently that lugdu
Speaker 1: Bai was reborn, but rather that a central, nameless essence,
Speaker 1: once contained in the body of lug Du Bai but
Speaker 1: very much distinct from what we might ordinarily consider to
Speaker 1: be her, later re emerged in the body of Shanti Devi.
Speaker 1: Either way, it is almost impossible to conceive of such
Speaker 1: a thing without thinking of it in terms of the self.
Speaker 1: Most of us, regardless if we believe in a soul
Speaker 1: or not, will tend to uphold the importance of the self,
Speaker 1: that thing which we feel makes us who we are,
Speaker 1: individual and distinct from others. It might be surprising, therefore,
Speaker 1: to learn that, despite how firm your sense of self
Speaker 1: might be, that seemingly solid idea of you could well
Speaker 1: be nothing but a useful fallacy. Are you always taking
Speaker 1: care of your family? Do you often take care of
Speaker 1: others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care
Speaker 1: of yourself, to make time for you you deserve it.
Speaker 1: Tell adoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to
Speaker 1: help you get back to feeling your best to feeling
Speaker 1: like yourself again. With telladoc, you can speak to a
Speaker 1: licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are available
Speaker 1: seven days a week from seven a m. Nine pm
Speaker 1: local time. If you feel overwhelmed sometimes, maybe you feel
Speaker 1: stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you might be
Speaker 1: struggling with a personal or family issue, teledoc can help.
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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast. On thirteenth September eighteen forty eight, construction workers
Speaker 1: just south of the town of Cavendish in Vermont, USA.
Speaker 1: We're busy blasting through rock to make way for a
Speaker 1: new railroad. It had just gone four thirty pm when
Speaker 1: twenty five year old foreman Phineas Gage began preparing for
Speaker 1: the next blast. It was a fairly rudimentary but highly
Speaker 1: dangerous procedure that involved first boring a deep and narrow
Speaker 1: hole into the rock before filling it part way with
Speaker 1: explosive powder. The mix would then be topped off with
Speaker 1: sand and all compacted down with a three and a
Speaker 1: half foot long iron rod. Gage was just packing the
Speaker 1: explosives when, having been distracted by a coworker, he accidentally
Speaker 1: scraped the rock as he brought the iron rod down
Speaker 1: onto the powder. In an instant, sparks flying off the
Speaker 1: rod ignited the powder and caused a catastrophic explosion. The rod,
Speaker 1: one and a quarter inches in diameter, was rocketed into
Speaker 1: the air straight into Phineas's face, penetrating just under the
Speaker 1: cheek bone. It dismantled the left eye socket before shooting
Speaker 1: through the left side of his brain and out through
Speaker 1: the top of his head. Gage, in turn, was thrown
Speaker 1: to the floor, where he lay on his back convulsive,
Speaker 1: his left eye bulging out of its socket as the
Speaker 1: blood poured freely from the giant, gaping hole in his head.
Speaker 1: His co workers rushed to help, but naturally feared the worst,
Speaker 1: so it was with great surprise when moments later Gage
Speaker 1: began to talk. Realizing he was still alive, the men
Speaker 1: dragged him to the nearest ox cart, sat him on
Speaker 1: his back, and had him taken to Cavendish Town, three
Speaker 1: quarters of a mile away. When they arrived at the
Speaker 1: town's hotel, Phineas walked out of the cart himself and
Speaker 1: was even able to walk up the stairs to a
Speaker 1: nursing room, where he waited patiently for the arrival of
Speaker 1: the doctor. When physician Edward Williams arrived twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: he was shocked and horrified by what he found. Perhaps
Speaker 1: most surprising, however, was that not only did Phineas recognize him,
Speaker 1: but that he seemed completely self aware, uttering the famously
Speaker 1: understated line, doctor, here is business enough for you. As
Speaker 1: Gage recounted the details of the accident, Williams watched incredulous
Speaker 1: as what was left of his brain pulsated from within
Speaker 1: his skull. Moments later, Gage got up to vomit, causing
Speaker 1: half a tea cupful of his brain to fall on
Speaker 1: to the floor. Soon after, they were joined by doctor
Speaker 1: John Harlowe, who, together with Williams, worked fast to clear
Speaker 1: the extensive wound, pulling large fragments of bone and brain
Speaker 1: from out of Gage's skull. After only staunching the flow
Speaker 1: of blood, Harlowe made a final examination for more bone,
Speaker 1: finding that he was able to place the entirety of
Speaker 1: his index finger through the three and a half inch
Speaker 1: hole without meeting any resistance. The next few weeks proved
Speaker 1: to be a fraught period of convalescence, as the wound
Speaker 1: became infected and Gage drifted in and out of delirium
Speaker 1: and consciousness, but by the twentieth of October, with the
Speaker 1: infection having cleared up, Gage was able to get himself
Speaker 1: in and out of bed. Within weeks, he was taking
Speaker 1: walks into town, and on November twenty fifth, only ten
Speaker 1: weeks after the accident, he was permitted to return to
Speaker 1: his parents' home in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Incredibly, despite losing
Speaker 1: a significant part of his left frontal lobe, Gage's memory
Speaker 1: seemed completely unaffected by the injury, and by eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: according to Henry Biggelow, professor of surgery at Harvard University,
Speaker 1: he appeared to be quite recovered in faculties of body
Speaker 1: and mind. According to Phineas's friends, however, something fundamental had
Speaker 1: been lost. Though there has been much speculation as to
Speaker 1: how exactly the injury affected Gage. According to Bigelow, it
Speaker 1: had turned the apparently wants composed and benevolent man into
Speaker 1: something far more fitful and irreverent, who was now prone
Speaker 1: to indulging in the grossest profanity. Friends apparently found him
Speaker 1: so radically changed that they no longer considered him to
Speaker 1: be Phineas Gage. We can only speculate as to how
Speaker 1: much Gage himself thought he had changed from the man
Speaker 1: he was prior to the accident, or if he was
Speaker 1: even aware of having changed. At all. But certainly, if
Speaker 1: we were to swap the fundamental characteristics we hold most
Speaker 1: true to ourselves with completely opposite characteristics, there are few
Speaker 1: who wouldn't consider their sense of self to be radically changed.
Speaker 1: Such an analysis, however, might say far more about what
Speaker 1: we believe personal identity to be than it does about
Speaker 1: the truth of who any of us actually are. According
Speaker 1: to philosopher Daniel Dennett, the fact we have any sense
Speaker 1: of self at all is merely a useful fiction, a
Speaker 1: notion best understood by considering the self a center of
Speaker 1: narrative gravity, just as an object's center of gravity might
Speaker 1: be thought of as a physical property, It is nonetheless
Speaker 1: an abstraction. Though we might be able to calculate its location,
Speaker 1: there is no tangible reality to it at all. As such,
Speaker 1: we find in a similar way, the self is not
Speaker 1: a solid single thing, but rather a number of separate
Speaker 1: neurological functions that the brain attempts to order around what
Speaker 1: is effectively an illusory narrative center. That many of these
Speaker 1: functions are enacted before we have even become aware of
Speaker 1: them confirms this process as something that is completely beyond
Speaker 1: our control. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore notes, any subsequent
Speaker 1: notion of self arises only when we look for it,
Speaker 1: driven by the arbitrary conviction that we should reduce our
Speaker 1: various experiences into a singular entity, and the illusion of
Speaker 1: continuity created by the linear sequencing of memory memories, which
Speaker 1: incidentally are likely to be only a loose rendering of
Speaker 1: the complete truth of what it is that you think
Speaker 1: you are remembering. As Dennett also notes, in theory and
Speaker 1: possibly in practice if we consider, for example, the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of multi personality disorders, such a notion suggests there is
Speaker 1: no reason why our sense of self couldn't be multiple selves,
Speaker 1: or even divided into fractions of selves to be shared
Speaker 1: out with others. Nor would there be anything to prohibit
Speaker 1: two or even infinite, seemingly separate selves converging into one
Speaker 1: singular identity. And if you find all of that a
Speaker 1: little disconcerting, you might at least take comfort in the
Speaker 1: notion that if there really is no fixed you, then
Speaker 1: every passing moment is but another blank canvas on which
Speaker 1: to imagine who it is you are going to be next.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to
Speaker 1: help support us, you can now go to Unexplained Podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward Slash support. All donations, no matter how
Speaker 1: large or small, are massively appreciate. All elements of Unexplained
Speaker 1: are produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate the show on night Tunes. Feel free to get
Speaker 1: in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories
Speaker 1: you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation
Speaker 1: of your own you'd like to share. You can reach
Speaker 1: us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Unexplained pod Now. It's time to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: To make time for you, Tell a doc gives you
Speaker 1: access to a licensed therapist to help you get back
Speaker 1: to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by
Speaker 1: phone or video any time between seven am to nine
Speaker 1: pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is
Speaker 1: available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or
Speaker 1: visit teledoc dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast Today to
Speaker 1: get started. That's t e ladoc dot com Slash Unexplained
Speaker 1: Podcast