Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse storks dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, he and Jerry's over there. Jerry, for the
Speaker 1: first time, I just saw a meme that's been out
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. Yeah, that's that happened. That's
Speaker 1: like when you rolled me like two years after it
Speaker 1: was popular. You're like, isn't it the best? I was
Speaker 1: lying in Wait, yeah, I thought that happened. So and
Speaker 1: there's nothing more obnoxious than sending someone something and be
Speaker 1: like fill it two years ago. I'm so 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 mouth reporter? Maybe? Yeah, the lady who supposedly
Speaker 1: had a migraine but appeared to have had a stroke
Speaker 1: reporting from the Grammys 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, and she laughed terrible. Jerry. Um, I've
Speaker 1: got one for you. I've got a bit of an intro.
Speaker 1: It's not much, so get your hopes up. Um. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of the Population Reference Bureau? No, you have,
Speaker 1: because I've mentioned it before. I've mentioned this this article before.
Speaker 1: It's on PRB dot org. It's called how Many People
Speaker 1: Have Ever Lived on Earth? And I don't know what
Speaker 1: we've mentioned and it maybe the Population Episode or something.
Speaker 1: But it's a really cool little article by this demographer
Speaker 1: named Carl hobb h au b and he Um. There's
Speaker 1: even a video of him explaining it if you couldn't
Speaker 1: get what he was going with. But hobb um he
Speaker 1: reckons that modern humans, people who are virtually indistinguishable from
Speaker 1: you or me, aside from the fact that they're not
Speaker 1: wearing like any clothes really um showed up about fifty
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago. So hobb puts the population of
Speaker 1: humanity at two uh in fifty thousand BC. Okay, so
Speaker 1: from that point to two thousand eleven, he extrapolates, does
Speaker 1: the math, does this little demography thing, and hobb comes
Speaker 1: up with the number that one hundred and seven billion,
Speaker 1: six hundred and two million, seven hundred and seven thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred ninety one people have ever lived between fifty
Speaker 1: 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 now,
Speaker 1: or we're in two thousand eleven, right, so we're dying off.
Speaker 1: That's the point. All one hundred and seven billion, six
Speaker 1: hundred two million, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety
Speaker 1: one of those people had one thing in common, one
Speaker 1: thing aside from being humans, no, not even not even yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't have tax and in fifty BC they had
Speaker 1: running from sabretooth tigers and death. It was death. That's
Speaker 1: the one thing. All one hundred and seven billions, six
Speaker 1: d two millions, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety
Speaker 1: one of those people had in common. You know, when
Speaker 1: I was thinking of your intro driving here today, I
Speaker 1: thought that'd be funny if Josh was like, how long
Speaker 1: people been dying Chuck, And you know what, this wasn't
Speaker 1: that far off? Was like, he wouldn't do that. You're like,
Speaker 1: every way too boring. That's a good number. I like that.
Speaker 1: Hundred seven billion, six hundred two million, seven hundred one
Speaker 1: thousand 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? Yeah? Um, we've
Speaker 1: covered everything from autopsies, peak oil, what can be done
Speaker 1: with the dead body? Ninja's Yeah, well Ninja at least
Speaker 1: you should know better than that. Yeah. We really have
Speaker 1: danced around everything except just how dying works. And this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a sad podcast in many ways and
Speaker 1: gruesome in some ways. Yeah, because we're gonna touch on
Speaker 1: some of the stuff we hit on in like rigor
Speaker 1: mortis and autopsies and the actual dying process. Right, But
Speaker 1: I mean, so brace yourself. And I've mentioned this guy
Speaker 1: scores of times at least, but as the it's a
Speaker 1: Charles Man. You're thinking of the great psychologist Ernest Becker,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, shout out to our pal Joe Randazzo, who's
Speaker 1: like in the Becker Now, Ernest, there's Ernest, Ernest, you're
Speaker 1: thinking of Max Ernest. Okay. Ernest becker Um wrote the
Speaker 1: Denial of Death, seminal work that basically says, we're all
Speaker 1: just doing everything we came to think about our own demise,
Speaker 1: and there is some sort of health, whether it's spiritual, emotional,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of health or well being I think
Speaker 1: from facing the fact that you're going to die and
Speaker 1: talking about it. Yeah, so let's talk about death, baby,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you and me. Let's do it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Molly Edmonds Um, who used to be on Sminty
Speaker 1: Step Mom never told you we call it sminty Um
Speaker 1: wrote this one, and I think it is interesting. And
Speaker 1: I usually don't like it when articles say, like the
Speaker 1: definition of blah blah blah, but it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that in the first encyclopedia it was just the separation
Speaker 1: of the soul from the body, and now it's you know,
Speaker 1: thirty times that long in the encyclopedia, right, And that's
Speaker 1: just sort of indicative of how we used to think
Speaker 1: of it and how I don't know if it's ironic
Speaker 1: or not, but how medical science has complicated that over
Speaker 1: the years. Yeah, well it's definitely ironic because I mean,
Speaker 1: we used to be confident that we understood death. It's
Speaker 1: like that person isn't moving anymore. If you ask him
Speaker 1: what he wants to eat, he's not going to respond.
Speaker 1: If you choose something for him to eat, like a
Speaker 1: block of cheese, it's not going to be swallowed like
Speaker 1: that's death. And since there was perhaps a lot more
Speaker 1: religiousness associated with death and dying than there is today, um,
Speaker 1: that kind of underscored the belief and death. It's the
Speaker 1: soul departing from the body, and what what more do
Speaker 1: you want to know, egghead, it's death. Well yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: way back, you know, a few d years ago, you'd
Speaker 1: call it a priest and they they checked the body,
Speaker 1: see if it's breathing, and say, yep, they're dead, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty much it. The doctor wasn't even involved
Speaker 1: at that point. There may not have even been such
Speaker 1: a thing as doctors, and if there were, they were
Speaker 1: wearing like masks that made them look like crows to
Speaker 1: protect them from the plague. So they weren't any better
Speaker 1: it's ascertaining death than a priest. Was true. When doctors
Speaker 1: did come along and they invented things like the stethoscope,
Speaker 1: they could actually check and see if there was a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: Before that, there was bal force test, which I couldn't
Speaker 1: find out a lot about this other than you stick
Speaker 1: needles into the heart with little flags on it and
Speaker 1: see if the flags move. I think that's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I think that's about it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the test by that, And there were other tests that
Speaker 1: like a priest who may have come to say whether
Speaker 1: you were dead or not, would use like placing a
Speaker 1: feather above the mouth or around the mouth or knows
Speaker 1: to see if he moves. Um, the old mirror mirror
Speaker 1: trick that's still you know, useful, it is, but only
Speaker 1: if the mouth is still moist. If it's a dried mouth,
Speaker 1: it's probably not gonna fog up a mirror. Well, if
Speaker 1: it's not breathing, it's not gonna fall right exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: So I said that medical science has complicated it, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's happened over the years, because as we
Speaker 1: progressed with medicine, we discovered a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: actually reverse death, like bring people back from the dead,
Speaker 1: whether it's something as easy as CPR or as complicated
Speaker 1: as you know, machines to help you breathe and feed you. Right,
Speaker 1: And not only that, we've entered this really awkward period
Speaker 1: um in human medical history where the machines that can
Speaker 1: tell us whether someone is alive or not are more
Speaker 1: advanced than our machines that can bring a person back
Speaker 1: from death. Yeah, so we have ways to sustain the body,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily the the person, depending on your definition
Speaker 1: of death, like the faintest trace of a brain wave
Speaker 1: maybe right. Yeah, So we went from holding a feather
Speaker 1: under somebody's mouth or who knows to see if they
Speaker 1: were alive, to using the m r I s to
Speaker 1: see whether there's electrical activity. And we're finding that all
Speaker 1: of these old signs, these old outward signs of death
Speaker 1: don't necessarily mean that the person is dead. And even
Speaker 1: if the person is dead, we have technology, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, to resuscitate them. The question is, if we
Speaker 1: resuscitate them and they're still not talking, they still don't
Speaker 1: tell you what they want to eat, are they alive? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we in this hasn't been that long you know,
Speaker 1: I mean in the fifty two thousand years or whatever
Speaker 1: the people have been dying. It's only been the past
Speaker 1: you know, sixty something that we've had to come up
Speaker 1: with terms like persistent vegetative state and irreversible coma because
Speaker 1: of those machines that can resuscitate or sustain a body.
Speaker 1: And that was when the French neurologists describe the coma
Speaker 1: deposs which is a state beyond coma basically, uh, brain death,
Speaker 1: although that didn't come along until technically until nineteen when
Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School did uh, basically defined it for the
Speaker 1: first time. Yeah, and although they didn't even call it
Speaker 1: brain death at the time, what they call it just
Speaker 1: irreversible comma like you're not coming back. Brain death was
Speaker 1: kind of tagged on later. Um. So yeah, so comma
Speaker 1: to pass um, vegetive, 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, you can keep your chest rising and falling,
Speaker 1: can keep your body going indefinitely. Um. But the thing
Speaker 1: is there's something that's not there, and does that mean
Speaker 1: 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 through the advancement of medical technology.
Speaker 1: It's kind of changed every time you come with the Okay,
Speaker 1: I got it, this is the definition of death. Medical
Speaker 1: technology can provide some picture of a state of consciousness
Speaker 1: or life that throws the wrench in the works, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's um. Actually, after night it took one presidential
Speaker 1: commission is when they finally in the United States wrote
Speaker 1: a paper called Defining Death, Medical Legal and Ethical Issues
Speaker 1: and the Determination of Death. That was the basis for
Speaker 1: the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which basically rejected the
Speaker 1: Harvard idea that of the higher brain, which is like,
Speaker 1: when your personality and your memories are gone the cortical brain,
Speaker 1: that means you're dead. And they rejected that in favor
Speaker 1: of the whole brain, which includes the brain stem, which
Speaker 1: is what keeps you breathing and functioning. Um, They're rejected
Speaker 1: 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 the definition of death. Um, the
Speaker 1: brain stem. I'm yeah, that's pretty significant. Um, you can
Speaker 1: be born with just a brain stem. We talked about
Speaker 1: Mike the headless chicken before um he had his head
Speaker 1: cut off, which included his brain, but his brain stem
Speaker 1: was still there and he's a chicken, so it didn't
Speaker 1: really matter. Um. But the that is a there's a
Speaker 1: huge division between the two because there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between breathing and being able to swallow for yourself and
Speaker 1: making a conscious decision whether again what you want to
Speaker 1: eat right there, or having memories or just reacting to
Speaker 1: people aside from like you know, physical reaction. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the one of the there's a
Speaker 1: whole article on brain death. Maybe we'll do that one.
Speaker 1: I thought we did that now I think we did
Speaker 1: it in the organ donation Procurement episode. We talked about
Speaker 1: brain death and testing for and death like they shoot
Speaker 1: ice cold water in your ear canal. Definitely remember covering
Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, I think it was in the
Speaker 1: organ donation moment or maybe living wells. Obviously we might
Speaker 1: have touched on it there. We did. We did wills,
Speaker 1: but we hit on living wills. But you know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned organs. I don't think we said that. That was
Speaker 1: a big kind of a quandary in the nineteen sixties. Um,
Speaker 1: in the late I'm sorry, mid nineteen fifties, and then
Speaker 1: really in the nineteen sixties is when we went organ
Speaker 1: transplant crazy. Um actually kind of not just the United States,
Speaker 1: all over the world. Doctors said, hey, we can actually
Speaker 1: give people a shot at life because we can now
Speaker 1: transplant kidneys and lungs and hearts. The problem was, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of one of the sad things that
Speaker 1: Molly points out, is that the definition of death kind
Speaker 1: of came about was hurried along, maybe because we needed
Speaker 1: organs from these bodies that were still technically alive, which
Speaker 1: is 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, and he's got a great kidney
Speaker 1: that could go to his sister, who knows that she
Speaker 1: needs a kidney. She's gonna die, and she's got kids
Speaker 1: that she wants to hang out with, and like, can
Speaker 1: put this kidney to good youth. So let's let's figure
Speaker 1: this out. But um, as Molly says, like most developed
Speaker 1: countries have signed on to the brain stem where it's
Speaker 1: like you're brain can no longer keep you alive like
Speaker 1: on your own. You can't swallow, you can't take a
Speaker 1: breath for yourself, so you're dead. Um. The problem is
Speaker 1: that's that's just that's different. That's a much much's much more.
Speaker 1: It's a narrower definition of death, I guess. And I
Speaker 1: think that that probably rules out a lot of people
Speaker 1: who might 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 death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the violent death, which is also an opsie. I guess, well,
Speaker 1: not an it's tragic homicide or suicide. So check. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what it's like to die from different types
Speaker 1: of death. You dug this up, yeah, because I've really
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, what is it like to drown
Speaker 1: or to be burned alive? Yeah? And and people have
Speaker 1: survived some of these things and come back to tell
Speaker 1: the tale. That's obviously the only way we're going to
Speaker 1: find this stuff out or from lucky people. Um, drowning,
Speaker 1: I've always heard drowning is a good way to go
Speaker 1: because it's not so painful. Yeah, and that like the
Speaker 1: brain supposedly releases endorphins at the end. Yeah, same with freezing,
Speaker 1: I've heard too. Maybe true. Um, although 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, a heart attack. You've
Speaker 1: got the squeezing chests, pain in your chest or your
Speaker 1: left arm, Yeah, like a weight on your chest right. Um.
Speaker 1: What I didn't know is that because of the heart
Speaker 1: not delivering oxygen to the brain any longer, you can
Speaker 1: lose consciousness. Um, within like ten seconds. Um, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that. I think, like it was, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to it. Well, it depends. You know, everyone has
Speaker 1: their own signature heart attack as well. Um, if you
Speaker 1: bleed out, I imagine this is not one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to go. Um, after about a liter and
Speaker 1: a half of blood, you're gonna be thirsty and weak
Speaker 1: and anxious. Anything over too, you're gonna be pretty confused
Speaker 1: and dizzy and probably lose consciousness pretty soon. Now, and
Speaker 1: all of that would be that would relate to how
Speaker 1: fast you're losing blood, and it would probably be very
Speaker 1: unpleasant depending on how you're losing blood. Like why because
Speaker 1: you would imagine that if you're stabbed in the gut
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, you got the attendant pain
Speaker 1: in addition to this dying from loss of blood or
Speaker 1: like man reservoir dogs. Yeah, it's like one of the the
Speaker 1: most hardcore ways to open a movie or not open.
Speaker 1: But they cut right to that scene after the diner scene,
Speaker 1: right after the walk Yeah. Um. Electrocution. Um, if you're
Speaker 1: in your house and you get electrocuted, could stop your
Speaker 1: heart right then and there. And uh, if you're in
Speaker 1: an electric chair, you may have actually heated your brain
Speaker 1: up to the point where you die or suffocated to death. Right.
Speaker 1: But the there's indications that being electrocuted with enough voltage
Speaker 1: that instantly you lose consciousness. That's the idea probably with
Speaker 1: the 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 UM time slows, which is awful.
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 what is that two
Speaker 1: hundred thirty it's high enough, and they they found evidence
Speaker 1: that a lot of them died from exploded lungs, exploded hearts, UM.
Speaker 1: Their organs were all cut up from their ribs, which
Speaker 1: would indicate death was pretty much instantaneous. Yeah. We talked
Speaker 1: about that on something too recently, I think, or maybe
Speaker 1: I heard it someone else talking about it. It's pretty
Speaker 1: that way to go. What the Golden Gate Bridge or
Speaker 1: just just falling diving from a height. Yeah, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I was talking to about jumping in the water. I
Speaker 1: was like, what actually kills you when you jump in
Speaker 1: the water from the eye, and that was like your
Speaker 1: organs smash into each other and explode. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: from any height. Yeah, but when you when you die
Speaker 1: from that would be from organ explosion or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know the brain obviously if you go head first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's um, the long drop back in the day would
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's
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 or they don't lose consciousness immediately, Um, they
Speaker 1: sit there and hang and die of asphyxiation. That's a
Speaker 1: bad way to go. Uh. And speaking of bad, I
Speaker 1: 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, cover monoxide thinks, so like, well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of smoke you are download to the ground and
Speaker 1: that's of the carbon carbon monoxide is so you're entailing
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 sniff 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 cardiopulmonary disease. Um,
Speaker 1: we have that downpat. I've got the top five here. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think they're all in there, aren't they. Um, heart
Speaker 1: is number one, cancer is number two. UM, lower respiratory
Speaker 1: is number three. Strokers for an accidents are five. And
Speaker 1: it's a huge drop. Cancer and heart are close to
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand, and then number three at lower respiratories
Speaker 1: only a hundred and thirty eight thousand. So that shows
Speaker 1: you what cancer and heart disease are doing in the
Speaker 1: United States at least. And the upshot of all this
Speaker 1: is that most of us are not going to die suddenly. Um,
Speaker 1: either by accident or by violent death. Yeah. Dying of
Speaker 1: old age didn't used to be a thing. No, it
Speaker 1: was like like a lot of ways to die, but
Speaker 1: that was one of them. You ticked off some traveling night,
Speaker 1: or there's a dispute over grazing rights. Ye. 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. It's not designed to keep
Speaker 1: going indefinitely, and ultimately the system shuts down as its
Speaker 1: subsystem shut down. This shutting down every second right right now,
Speaker 1: are shutting down. And for that reason, because you and
Speaker 1: I are both dying. I guess once you're born, you
Speaker 1: start dying, or after you stop growing, you start dying,
Speaker 1: right Is that just the positive outlooker, But I mean,
Speaker 1: like you're shedding cells and like this is like the dying.
Speaker 1: We're in the midst of the dying process. Just this
Speaker 1: natural system is in the winding down, although it takes
Speaker 1: decades and we still have plenty to do. Like you said,
Speaker 1: you're dying, I'm dying. That's why they have a more
Speaker 1: specific definition of death, which is um called active dying.
Speaker 1: Like you and I 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. 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 gonna shut down. But just from watching frail people
Speaker 1: die of old age, UM, they kind of have like
Speaker 1: this the the order in which it happens kind of downpad.
Speaker 1: So there's the UM, there's the preactive dying phase which
Speaker 1: can take about three weeks, starts about three weeks before death,
Speaker 1: two or three weeks. And then there's the active dying phase,
Speaker 1: which can take a few days. And obviously that's not
Speaker 1: set in stone. None of this is set in stone.
Speaker 1: But this is all just um kind of accumulative knowledge
Speaker 1: from observations of people dying in like hospice and things
Speaker 1: like that. So you get the preactive phase of dying UM.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it starts a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ahead of the actual death. Because we have this is
Speaker 1: a big deal right now, what we're talking about, Like
Speaker 1: it's becoming very clear, UM in our modern age that
Speaker 1: death is not an instant, it's not a moment, there's
Speaker 1: a process. Yeah, well unless it isn't an instant, but yeah,
Speaker 1: old age dying, yes, or like other kinds of dying.
Speaker 1: But how about non accidental dying. We'll call it that
Speaker 1: because that's like the instantaneous thing, and even sometimes in
Speaker 1: a very short scale that can follow some of these
Speaker 1: you know, Oh yeah, I forgot it all to you, yes,
Speaker 1: nodding my head. So the preactive phase of dying, Chuck,
Speaker 1: what do we got? Well, Um, you're gonna start sleep,
Speaker 1: You're gonna get sleepy, You're not gonna have much energy,
Speaker 1: You're gonna start sleeping more and more. Uh, your skin
Speaker 1: might become cooler to the touch, might turn a little
Speaker 1: bluish gray. Yeah, cyanosis, So that's called it's just becoming
Speaker 1: oxygen deprived. Like apparently your body's like, okay, don't really
Speaker 1: need to use the legs anymore because we're bedridden, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start focusing more of the circulation on the
Speaker 1: inner organs. Yeah. Well that probably causes the modeling too,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, your your skin can become sort of reddish,
Speaker 1: like splotchy with reddish blue splotches as well. Right, you're gonna, um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a little restless. Probably, you're gonna possibly
Speaker 1: come off as confused. Um, You're you're not gonna be hungry. No,
Speaker 1: you're gonna probably withdraw from UM social activities. You're gonna
Speaker 1: become a little a little withdrawn. UM. You might wanna
Speaker 1: settle unfinished business with family. You might request family come
Speaker 1: visit you for that kind of thing, the non physical parts.
Speaker 1: That's definitely something you'd be interested in doing. Right, But
Speaker 1: that's like, UM, apparently something that that people intuitively know
Speaker 1: like they need it. Apparently patients know when they're dying.
Speaker 1: I've seen that happen. And one of the one of
Speaker 1: the signs from UM that's mentioned in hospice care palliative
Speaker 1: care UM is that the patient may even state I'm
Speaker 1: dying like I started, it's coming. That's pretty common um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's sad that when you realize like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is this is it, Like I feel myself, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be gone soon. But that's neat though, especially if
Speaker 1: you yeah, if you're like, okay, I'm gonna put everything
Speaker 1: in order then die happy or peacefully. Yeah, that's neat
Speaker 1: that you have that that time to to take care
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, if you're fortunate enough to go that
Speaker 1: way for sure. Back to physically, Um, you you won't
Speaker 1: be able to heal from a wound er and infection
Speaker 1: any longer. Yeah, you might um lose control of your
Speaker 1: bladder and your bowels with the course of some time. Um,
Speaker 1: you might be in pain, but chances are here in
Speaker 1: the modern world they're gonna take care of you in
Speaker 1: that respect. Right and again that's called palliative care, where
Speaker 1: at some point it's very obvious that you're going to die. Um,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it can be based on what
Speaker 1: you want, even even um without your wishes, there's probably
Speaker 1: a point in time where medical science says, there's nothing
Speaker 1: we can do for you. Um, we just want to
Speaker 1: make you comfortable, exactly, so we're gonna give you pain meds.
Speaker 1: We're gonna like your your care is being transferred over
Speaker 1: from a physician to who's you know, wants to save
Speaker 1: your life and keep you going to hospice workers, health
Speaker 1: care professionals who are trained to just keep you as
Speaker 1: comfortable as possible for the for the duration of your life.
Speaker 1: Right man, hats off to those people, like all health
Speaker 1: care professionals of course, but man, hospice nurses, that's tough stuff.
Speaker 1: You've gotta be like, you've got to be made of
Speaker 1: of the right qualities as a human to be able
Speaker 1: to tackle something like that and still get up and
Speaker 1: go to work every day. Like they're literally in the
Speaker 1: business of dying. I mean, very valuable, valuable service people provide.
Speaker 1: So that's the um, that's the preactive phase. That's the
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to die. I got a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and all of my systems are starting to wind down.
Speaker 1: In the active phase, the systems are starting to shut down. Um,
Speaker 1: you may not have consciousness, and if you do, you
Speaker 1: may Uh. If you are able to be aroused from
Speaker 1: conscious from unconsciousness, 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. It just to
Speaker 1: not to correct them. Yeah, that makes sense, because you're
Speaker 1: there to provide comfort, not say no, Grandpa, grandma has
Speaker 1: been gone for years. 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
Speaker 1: brain 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, crazy,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's a it's a natural part of
Speaker 1: the active dying process. Breathing is gonna become really weird. Um,
Speaker 1: the patient's gonna stop breathing for disconcertingly long periods of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called Cheney strokes respiration stokes sorry, Cheney Stokes name
Speaker 1: for John Cheney and William Stokes. Obviously, the first dudes
Speaker 1: who described it, Let's get all the press quick deep breaths,
Speaker 1: sometimes very slow ones like you said, sometimes stopping altogether. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is caused by receptors in the heart and
Speaker 1: brain stem basically being too sluggish to respond two different
Speaker 1: amounts of oxygen and CEO two and it's just kind
Speaker 1: of lagging behind. Again, think of it as a machine
Speaker 1: that's just slowing down and those receptors can't pick up
Speaker 1: on it in times, So it's it doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to tell you to breathe basically like at a steady rate. Um,
Speaker 1: we should say that there isn't evidence that that is
Speaker 1: physically painful again, like awful for the healthy person in
Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, yeah, for the family watching it, you
Speaker 1: think that the person is suffering, there's not evidence that
Speaker 1: they are in fact suffering. Yeah, but it seems like it.
Speaker 1: And that from what I understand with palliative care, UM,
Speaker 1: not only making the patient comfortable is one of the priorities.
Speaker 1: Making the family comfortable as a priority as well, because
Speaker 1: how you die has a very lasting impact on the
Speaker 1: people who are there to witness your death. For family,
Speaker 1: so um, explaining that they're not suffering, Uh, is helpful,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily enough. Yeah, and I think actually this
Speaker 1: podcast itself could help like some people, because I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people do this sort of research
Speaker 1: when they go into a hospital room in the last
Speaker 1: hours of a loved one's life. Yeah, and they may
Speaker 1: not be told. They may even if it is explained
Speaker 1: to it, it it might not sink in what they're being
Speaker 1: told because you know, seeing somebody gasping for breath and
Speaker 1: then being told that they're not really suffering, those two
Speaker 1: things might not jibe. Well, yeah, You're you're instinct is
Speaker 1: probably trying to get help, like they can't breathe clearly,
Speaker 1: let's get a nurse in here, and the nurses like, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's part of it. Yeah. Another one that's
Speaker 1: very just concidering. Another sign of active dying is the
Speaker 1: death rattle. And ye I did a I guess it.
Speaker 1: Don't be dumb on death rattles. And basically, either you
Speaker 1: have fluid in the lungs or like you know, when
Speaker 1: you clear your throat like I just did, that's a
Speaker 1: normal ability you have until you start dying. You can't
Speaker 1: clear your throat anymore. Those are your laryngeal muscles, right,
Speaker 1: basically spasming, 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 agonal phase of death and it's Greek for struggle,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's sort of just encapsulates it. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably why they call it the active phase of
Speaker 1: death now rather than agonol. Oh do they don't even
Speaker 1: call it that anymore? I mean I think some people do,
Speaker 1: but I think the active and agonol are the same
Speaker 1: one and the same. It's just you know, they're in
Speaker 1: the agony faith, right, or they're in the active faith. Uh.
Speaker 1: Your muscles, aside from your vocal cords, UM might start
Speaker 1: convulsive and spasm ng. Um. You can get all you know,
Speaker 1: herky jerky and do things that wouldn't seem like you
Speaker 1: should be able to do in your state, like um
Speaker 1: card tricks. I don't know if you could do cards
Speaker 1: shuffling card tricks from one hand to the other, and
Speaker 1: Grandpa never could. Before I knew he gets something. We're
Speaker 1: in here somehow. Um what else? Uh, well, let's see. Um,
Speaker 1: your blood pressure is gonna drop, your jaw is gonna drop,
Speaker 1: you might end up in a really weird rigid position. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh you're I think we said your extremities are
Speaker 1: going to be cold to the touch. Yeah. Actually, the
Speaker 1: the death rattle as a result of the spasming of
Speaker 1: your laryngeal muscles that can also produce um, what was
Speaker 1: described in what I read as a barking sound. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've never I didn't search that out to see
Speaker 1: if that was recorded anywhere. But I'm curious what that
Speaker 1: sounds like. I've heard everything from gurgling like gurgle too.
Speaker 1: 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: the rule of thumb, apparently among hospice workers, is once
Speaker 1: the death rattle comes, it's a sign that they got
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours or less left to live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and 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 with finding out you know,
Speaker 1: in forensics, I think we pointed out plenty of times
Speaker 1: at the time of death, depending on the various things
Speaker 1: that happen 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. 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 another very important point
Speaker 1: that hospice workers make is never ever talk about the
Speaker 1: patient like they're not there, because they can hear you
Speaker 1: up until the end. Like hearing is kept so long
Speaker 1: as the person could hear before then there's not any
Speaker 1: damage from you know, during the act of dying period. Um,
Speaker 1: they can hear you until the moment they die, and
Speaker 1: you need to be careful what you said. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that's a really nice thing that the last
Speaker 1: things that you can experience are the touch of a
Speaker 1: loved one or the voice of a loved one. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, you 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 you raise a
Speaker 1: good 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 your dad's around it?
Speaker 1: If they make a joke or something like can you
Speaker 1: laugh or do you laugh too hard? Do you not
Speaker 1: laugh enough? Like there's I think it's not necessarily like yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's just put you on edge or
Speaker 1: not everyone is as sensitive to that. Don't bring a
Speaker 1: laptop in there and watch reruns of the Office. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: are you speaking from experience. I'm just gonna add that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's on my list. Get off your cell phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pay attention to them. Sure, yeah, I mean that's what
Speaker 1: you're there for. The as hospice workers put it, you're
Speaker 1: giving them a very um heartfelt gift by being there
Speaker 1: with them while they're dying and maybe receiving a gift,
Speaker 1: you know, and many religions and cultures, it's very uh
Speaker 1: much an honor to be a part of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and even if you're not religious, that you could just
Speaker 1: feel that way spiritually as a human, you know. Okay, uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's pause here because Chuck, it's time for a message
Speaker 1: break and we're back. Okay, So are we dead yet?
Speaker 1: Are we at that point? Yeah? The the person has passed.
Speaker 1: It just sounded very cheery. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean like we've rattled off some pretty what seems like suffering.
Speaker 1: But now the suffering is over. If there was any
Speaker 1: other person is dead. So once you, immediately immediately after
Speaker 1: you die, your pupils are going to dilate because the
Speaker 1: muscles controlling the iris or you know, gonna have their
Speaker 1: final rest. So your pupils are going to dilate. And
Speaker 1: then have you heard of the terminal tier or the
Speaker 1: lacrima mortists? This is a usually in the right eye,
Speaker 1: and there's no real explanation for it, but um, it
Speaker 1: is a final tier that you shed. And um, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always happen right after you die, although it can.
Speaker 1: They did a study in the early nineties in New
Speaker 1: Zealand and out of a hundred deaths, fourteen of them
Speaker 1: right at the time of death had the lacryma mortists
Speaker 1: here and uh thirteen of them in the final ten hours.
Speaker 1: And they say uh to to look out for that
Speaker 1: if you're the family, because it can be a sign.
Speaker 1: And also they try to talk you into the fact
Speaker 1: it it's a comforting thing to see that tier being shed. Wow. 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. That is a black, a dark reddish
Speaker 1: brown strip that forms horizontally over your eyeball. And I
Speaker 1: guess it's just you know, your eyeballs dry out and
Speaker 1: has the air. So if you don't close your eyes,
Speaker 1: and I looked it up, you're gonna see this weird
Speaker 1: horizontal stripe across your eye. But there's a plus the
Speaker 1: effect that has in the living, the difference between seeing
Speaker 1: a dead body with their eyes closed and a dead
Speaker 1: body with their eyes open, and it's just it's like
Speaker 1: a galaxy between the two as far as discomfort goes.
Speaker 1: Somebody should edit together the like every time that's ever
Speaker 1: been done in a movie, just like super Fast. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's all I got on the eyes, Um said 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's 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 or your brain hasn't had
Speaker 1: oxygen for a while. You died of hype thermia. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they warmed you up. So now you're officially dead.
Speaker 1: You're gone, But there's still a lot of stuff. Remember
Speaker 1: the poop Shake episode who Can Forget? We talked about
Speaker 1: the microbio and we have this whole other like part
Speaker 1: of our life are living organism that's still around, that's
Speaker 1: still operating, and a lot of stuff living within us,
Speaker 1: including part of our microbiome. They're still carrying on processes
Speaker 1: like apparently you can harvest skin cells for twenty four
Speaker 1: hours and and they're still alive. Just use them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for all sorts of stuff. Yeah, you can harvest them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course inside your intestines there's a little
Speaker 1: tiny organisms that are still living and are gonna help
Speaker 1: do the work that comes next, starting a couple of
Speaker 1: days after death, like if you just fell over in
Speaker 1: the woods and no one was around. I always loved
Speaker 1: the setting right, Um, and you're just left there. Within
Speaker 1: about three days, these organisms of micro flora is going
Speaker 1: go to work on you, starting in your intestines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is after the various mortises. Correct, Yes, which
Speaker 1: I guess we should kind of go over it. But
Speaker 1: I would recommend everybody, um go listen to what causes
Speaker 1: rigor mortis? For sure. It's on the website. You can
Speaker 1: go to stuff you should know dot com, slash podcasts,
Speaker 1: uh slash what hyphen causes hyphen rigor hyphen mortis. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll just run through the mortis is real quick. Then, Um.
Speaker 1: Algor mortis, or the death chill, that's the first first
Speaker 1: thing that's gonna happen. That's where your body starts dropping
Speaker 1: in temperature about a degree and a half fahrenheit per
Speaker 1: hour until you are just like a nice red wine
Speaker 1: at room temperature. Yeah, actually that's not quite true. Red
Speaker 1: wines like sixty four degrees for you. I guess it
Speaker 1: depends what kind of room you're in. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: in a sixty four degree it's perfect, all right. What else? Well,
Speaker 1: after algor mortis, um, you get rigor mortis a couple
Speaker 1: of hours after death, where the body um, settles into
Speaker 1: a stiff state. Uh, and that lasts for what like
Speaker 1: twenty four hours? I don't remember, we talked about it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, I think so. Um, and then between
Speaker 1: those you have live remortis or subdulation. That's where like
Speaker 1: all the blood coagulates them. Yeah, basically that your red
Speaker 1: blood cells are pretty heavy and they just sink and um,
Speaker 1: it's about twenty minutes to three hours after death is
Speaker 1: when you're going to be in live remortis, and then
Speaker 1: after that is riggor that's right. Okay, so not back
Speaker 1: to putrification right, Well, that's the best thing can talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically like you're these organisms go into 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, uh in this order green than
Speaker 1: purple than black, which is just like a like a
Speaker 1: black eye, I guess. Yeah, in that the same stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except it never fully heels explodes. Um you Uh, within
Speaker 1: a 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. He'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.
Speaker 1: 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, and you want to
Speaker 1: talk about you don't either. Maybe we should type it
Speaker 1: into the computer and make the computer say it. Do
Speaker 1: we have that ability? Oh? Wow, that's pretty good. That's
Speaker 1: a good computer impression. So wait, that's what you do
Speaker 1: when you don't want to say something yourself. You pretend
Speaker 1: you're a computer. Yeah that, Emily and I most of
Speaker 1: 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: Coffin birth. So basically those gases that, um, this is
Speaker 1: a real thing. We're not making this up. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: post mortal fetal extrusion is another name for it. So
Speaker 1: the gases that build up in the body before the
Speaker 1: body ruptures um, which comes a little later, can become
Speaker 1: so pressurized that a pregnant woman who has died with
Speaker 1: the feet is still in utero can actually the gases
Speaker 1: can push the fetus out of the vagina um, which
Speaker 1: is 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 the eighteenth century medical literature. You know, it
Speaker 1: just drove them crazy to she was obviously alive for
Speaker 1: weeks afterward. Yeah, and archaeologists apparently too, or I have
Speaker 1: to rethink sometimes when they find because sometimes you would
Speaker 1: die during childbirth, but the um they have buried the
Speaker 1: the baby with the mother, and so you would find
Speaker 1: the bones like cradling each other almost. But then they
Speaker 1: go back, they've had to go back and look at
Speaker 1: somewhere they find the you know, between the legs, the
Speaker 1: bones of the baby, and they think that might be
Speaker 1: the case, like of a coffin birth. Right, So there's
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world. Yeah, Um, there's probably
Speaker 1: death male 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 it called where they're the fluids coming
Speaker 1: out a little orifice is here, they're purge fluid. Okay.
Speaker 1: So once it's like enough with the purge fluid, the
Speaker 1: we're just gonna tear the sucker open. Your body ultimately ruptures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, your skin has 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. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the old d gloving which we talked about before,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about that, remember that? Yeah? Where
Speaker 1: the that can upen 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 just straight up
Speaker 1: noon noon. 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: and then 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: the gloving for a reason. I don't think we need
Speaker 1: to explain that it makes perfect sense. Or de socking sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, can happen to your feet. And well I
Speaker 1: hadn't 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 have to
Speaker 1: use that from now on. That might be a new thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So the body, once it once ruptures, your organs are
Speaker 1: already liquid um, and all that's left is a skeleton
Speaker 1: which will eventually turn to dust too. Can I be done? No, wait,
Speaker 1: we can't be done, because we do need to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about assisted suicide. Yeah, I just eat
Speaker 1: that up for you. You should. Um, that's quite a
Speaker 1: controversial subject, like we said, Um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I said or not. Like this has just been such
Speaker 1: a huge whirlwind of input of information in my head
Speaker 1: the last like thirty six hours studying for this um
Speaker 1: that I don't know what I've said yet or not,
Speaker 1: or what we talked about in another podcast, but so
Speaker 1: we talked about dying of frailty of old age and
Speaker 1: that it's increasing. Supposedly five out of ten people in
Speaker 1: the United States will die in the intensive care unit.
Speaker 1: And I saw this Ted talk from Newcastle, Australia with
Speaker 1: this guy I can't remember what his name is, but
Speaker 1: it's it's about dying. I think it's called it can
Speaker 1: we talk about dying or something, And his point was,
Speaker 1: you're going to die in the I see you, whether
Speaker 1: you want to or not, if you die of a
Speaker 1: degenerative disease or frailty, unless you say you don't want
Speaker 1: to die there, because the way medical science is currently
Speaker 1: set up, you are going to be treated most of
Speaker 1: the time up until a bitter end with life saving measures,
Speaker 1: and you're going to die in the I see you
Speaker 1: with tubes hooked up and things be being and like
Speaker 1: other people having crash carts taken in and out of
Speaker 1: their room and people making a big ruckus up until
Speaker 1: the point you die unless they give you palliative care
Speaker 1: or or you say, I don't want to be sustained
Speaker 1: like that, I don't want to go to the i
Speaker 1: c U. And this point was, if half of Americans
Speaker 1: are gonna die in the i c U, you have
Speaker 1: to assume that maybe not all of them would want
Speaker 1: to die in the i c U. And therefore they
Speaker 1: need to think of things like I wanted an advanced directive,
Speaker 1: a living will, I want a living power of attorney
Speaker 1: to somebody to say no, no, do not put them
Speaker 1: on a ventilator, do not put them in feeding tubes.
Speaker 1: Like they don't want that. They just want to die,
Speaker 1: or they want to go to hospitals. They want to
Speaker 1: go back home. That's another big one, like they don't
Speaker 1: let you go back home, especially if you can't speak
Speaker 1: for yourself, like to medical science these days, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: You don't leave the hospital when you know you're dying.
Speaker 1: You stay in the hospital and and we keep doing
Speaker 1: stuff until you die. That's not the way it drives
Speaker 1: with a lot of people. But if you don't stop
Speaker 1: and think about it and then write it down or
Speaker 1: tell somebody who can speak for you, that's you're not
Speaker 1: going to go home. You're not going to get to hospice.
Speaker 1: You have to do this ahead of time. And part
Speaker 1: of that that's kind of come out of this idea
Speaker 1: is Okay, well, if we have autonomy to say I
Speaker 1: don't want you to intibate me, why don't we have
Speaker 1: the autonomy to say, I want you to give me
Speaker 1: some stuff that's going to painlessly end by life, because
Speaker 1: it's either that or facing a tremendous amount of pain
Speaker 1: and suffering through this degenerative disease. Basically saying I'm ready,
Speaker 1: I am ready, it is my life. It's like the
Speaker 1: Richard dryf this movie from the eighties, Uh covertus, whose
Speaker 1: life is anyway? I think I have no idea what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Think it was a movie about assisted
Speaker 1: suicide and do you should you have the right to
Speaker 1: be able to You know, that's a hot button issue
Speaker 1: for sure, but apparently most Americans or the jority of
Speaker 1: Americans actually support it until you start using a word
Speaker 1: like suicide. Right when you pull them and say do
Speaker 1: you are you in favor of doctors helping someone painlessly
Speaker 1: in their life or something at the end of life? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they're like, okay, so you're a favorite physician
Speaker 1: assistant suicide. Um, what's that word? You know? And and
Speaker 1: the doctors who are in favor of euthanasia is another
Speaker 1: term for it. Um, say, look at palliative care, it's
Speaker 1: like half of a step away from physician assisted suicide.
Speaker 1: Like you're keeping somebody if they requested and knockdown on
Speaker 1: morphine for the rest of their life, so they're never
Speaker 1: going to regain consciousness. Um. There's this you you dug
Speaker 1: up this one article by a British physician who argues that, um,
Speaker 1: that agonal um gasping reflex. Apparently when part of the
Speaker 1: apnea is that your body has a reflex where you
Speaker 1: gasp for air and it's really disconcerting to family members.
Speaker 1: Even though they don't think that you're suffering, it looks
Speaker 1: like you're suffering. And this doctor argued, well, we have
Speaker 1: drugs that can block this response so that the person
Speaker 1: can't gusp for air. And what it's going to cost
Speaker 1: them their last couple of breaths. But these last couple
Speaker 1: of breaths make it appear like they're suffering, and the
Speaker 1: family remembers that their kids suffered. Um, so why wouldn't
Speaker 1: we do that? And there's this conversation that's taking place
Speaker 1: more and more and more that ultimately it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: who is somebody to say that somebody can't choose to
Speaker 1: end their own life painlessly through the use of like
Speaker 1: drugs or like Hunter Thompson did. Well, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: another way to go, and you anybody can do that, sure,
Speaker 1: but there are some people out there who don't want
Speaker 1: to die violently for their family. Like that's the part
Speaker 1: that I was upset about with that was his wife,
Speaker 1: like finding him and stuff, his wife and his son,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, not only that he did
Speaker 1: it in his own basement, which I can understand doing
Speaker 1: it at home, but he left quite a mess in
Speaker 1: his own basement for his family to clean up. But
Speaker 1: if he had other options these days, like doctor assisted suicide,
Speaker 1: he might not have had to make a mess in
Speaker 1: his beast My first families and chuck, uh. We know
Speaker 1: that Hunter Thompson is far from the only person to
Speaker 1: make his own exit his own way. Another very famous person, uh,
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud did too. Huh oh yeah, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that assisted suicide. Yeah, literally, physician assisted suicide. He was
Speaker 1: um diagnosed with cancer of the palette because he smoked
Speaker 1: tons of cigars, which were sometimes just a cigar and UH.
Speaker 1: For sixteen years he lived with that diagnosis and finally,
Speaker 1: towards the end, he asked his surgeon, his physician, go
Speaker 1: ahead and hit me up with I think five grams
Speaker 1: of morphine, like just a ton of morphine. And he
Speaker 1: died three hours after the injection of it, but which
Speaker 1: was more than his usual two grams of morphine right
Speaker 1: or cocaine. He loved cocaine um, but he had um
Speaker 1: developed what was called todden angst todin angst as German,
Speaker 1: which is a dread of death. So and so we
Speaker 1: lived with that for sixteen years. But he finally he
Speaker 1: decided along the way like I fear this, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to take it into my own hands. Physician assisted suicide.
Speaker 1: And there's definitely more than one side to this coin.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people. There's very strong opinions on
Speaker 1: either side. But I think it's a at the very least,
Speaker 1: even if you remove a motion from it's an extremely
Speaker 1: interesting conversation and that it reveals so much about our
Speaker 1: attitudes towards death and autonomy and like who's who has
Speaker 1: the right to decide whether they're going to die or
Speaker 1: who has the right to tell somebody that they can't
Speaker 1: do that? Whose life is it anyway, Richard Dreyfus. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then chuck one. One other thing that we want
Speaker 1: to hit on is um regret. Yeah, I actually saw
Speaker 1: this a few weeks ago, just by chance, and then
Speaker 1: you sent it to me. Um. I think it was
Speaker 1: in England hospice nurse spent a lot of time researching
Speaker 1: life regrets over the course of a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time and came up with the five most common life regrets.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think this is like a good way
Speaker 1: to end it, you know. Number one, I wish I
Speaker 1: had the courage to live a life true to myself
Speaker 1: and not the life others expected of me. That was
Speaker 1: the number one regret. Number two was I wish I
Speaker 1: didn't work so hard. That doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 1: Number three I wish I had the courage to express
Speaker 1: my feelings. Number four I wish I had stayed in
Speaker 1: touch with my friends. It's a very sad one. And
Speaker 1: I wish I'd let myself be happier. There's number five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that she was saying that they didn't realize towards
Speaker 1: until the end of their life. That happiness is a
Speaker 1: choice that you make. It's not something that happens to you.
Speaker 1: It's something you go search out. It's a state of
Speaker 1: mind that you strive for and to figure that out
Speaker 1: like at the end, that that's the regret. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: call to action people, Yeah, really, like you think about
Speaker 1: the stuff. You don't have to wish these things on
Speaker 1: your deathbed if you start doing something about it now
Speaker 1: exactly dying, Chuck, you know what we might have just done.
Speaker 1: We might have just finished the death of the death suite.
Speaker 1: I bet there's something else. Yeah, only time can tell.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how much more aspects of death
Speaker 1: we can cover. And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put all of them together in a blog post the
Speaker 1: Death Sweet, so everybody can go listen to all things
Speaker 1: death via stuff you should know. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to look up more about dying, just type
Speaker 1: dying into the search bar. How stuff works. I think
Speaker 1: it has its own channel. Um, there's so much to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said search bar, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is a nice one. Um. We don't
Speaker 1: normally do shout outs, but this was a nice one,
Speaker 1: and I thought, what better way to end such a
Speaker 1: depressing show. Uh? Hey, guys and Jerry loved the podcast. Josh,
Speaker 1: I have to thank you for teaching my fiance, Danny
Speaker 1: and me about the flashlight trick to see spider ez. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I still haven't done it, man, I never think about
Speaker 1: it at night. Jerry, you said you tried to write
Speaker 1: new work. Yeah, okay, I need to do it. I
Speaker 1: need to set a reminder. And my my response to
Speaker 1: people who have been like, can you can you explain
Speaker 1: it again? Practice? That's my explanation. Just practice, Just try
Speaker 1: it from a different angle. Just practice. It's a real thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a trick. It is completely amazing. And this
Speaker 1: is from Peacheat by the way. Uh, and it's wonderful
Speaker 1: and frightening at the same time. But the problem now
Speaker 1: is that whenever we walk our dogs at night, I
Speaker 1: just can't have my normal fiance. I have this dude
Speaker 1: with the flashlight stuck to his forehead, stopping at every
Speaker 1: field to let me know just how many spiders are
Speaker 1: dogs are stepping on and how we are always surrounded.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the show, and now for a shameless request.
Speaker 1: I know you don't often give shout outs. But it
Speaker 1: would be the most amazing thing ever if you could
Speaker 1: give a shout out to Danny on the podcast The
Speaker 1: Airs sometime before our wedding on oct let him know
Speaker 1: that I love him more than anything, and then I'm
Speaker 1: excited to share my life with him, even if he
Speaker 1: does have a flashlight stuck to his forehead, with the
Speaker 1: rest of our lives walking our dogs together. I know
Speaker 1: this is totally blown away and I would even let
Speaker 1: him listen to that podcast first. So thanks to Jerry.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. That is from Peachy way in Thousand Oaks, California.
Speaker 1: I think Peachi 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 the 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 that flight once in a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: White h and Peachy don't use the word fiance so much. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a life lesson. I'm Chuck right there. I would
Speaker 1: like to hear that. Um. If you want to see
Speaker 1: if you can talk Chuck into a shout out, take
Speaker 1: your best shot. You can tweet to us at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can talk to him directly
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. It's
Speaker 1: where he spends all this time. UM. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can join us at our website, our very
Speaker 1: own website. It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com? Like a good neighbor
Speaker 1: state farm is there with eighteen thousand agents across the
Speaker 1: country who are ready to help you. Seven that's getting
Speaker 1: to a better state.