Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Chuck do your cheek
Speaker 1: thing all right? I'd like to explain to everyone we
Speaker 1: have a little superstition here at Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: And basically, every time Chuck doesn't do that with his
Speaker 1: cheeks ahead of time, we have a terrible take. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I have to have to stop part way through
Speaker 1: it gets so bad and do it again. And we've
Speaker 1: noticed that when Chuck does this, we have a good take.
Speaker 1: So prepare for an excellent podcast because he just did
Speaker 1: it twice. So we're good, right, Chuck. I think we're set. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and and I feel a little bit better after um,
Speaker 1: you told me that this article we're about to talk
Speaker 1: to you talk about Tim Bazzarre Ways to Die, was
Speaker 1: blowing up on the home page because it means that
Speaker 1: there's a lot more people, uh than me who are
Speaker 1: who have a morbid curiosity slash fascination with death. There
Speaker 1: are Buddy this one and the are their dead bodies
Speaker 1: on Mount Divers apparently did phenomenally well on the homepage.
Speaker 1: They exploded on the home and uh, you know, people
Speaker 1: want to to know about these wacky, bizarre death so
Speaker 1: we're going to share some of them. Yeah, we agree.
Speaker 1: We we're gonna do all ten right now, of course
Speaker 1: not okay. I don't know if you picked h the
Speaker 1: guy from Canada the first one, but if you didn't,
Speaker 1: have a question for you. So, this guy from Canada
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight got stuck in a sewer
Speaker 1: grade after he win after his wallet, and he was
Speaker 1: still alive right when they pulled him out by tow truck,
Speaker 1: but then he died. So my question is, did was
Speaker 1: he crushed to death and they pulled him out? Did
Speaker 1: the tow truck kill him? Like? What killed this guy? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great question and I don't have the answer. Actually,
Speaker 1: my editor, Amanda asked me the same question. She said,
Speaker 1: how do you actually die? And I couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: I looked other than the fact that he was stuck
Speaker 1: in a sewer, wedged several feet down, you know, upside
Speaker 1: down for a period of hours, which can't be good
Speaker 1: for you. But he was still alive when they pulled
Speaker 1: him up. By tow truck. He died on the way
Speaker 1: to the hospital or at the hospital something. I think
Speaker 1: he was alive when he came out of the sewer
Speaker 1: grade he was, so he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Speaker 1: And this isn't the first person to die from being
Speaker 1: stuck in a sewer dry, which really sad. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we should say we're not We're not making light of
Speaker 1: any of these very sad tragedies that have happened, but
Speaker 1: so abnormal sometimes that they you know, well, it's in
Speaker 1: the title bizarre. Bizarre. Yeah, yeah, he'd he'd uh went
Speaker 1: down to get something, retrieve something, to drain his wallet
Speaker 1: and after a robbery and got stuck upside down for
Speaker 1: a period of hours and was, like you said, pulled
Speaker 1: out by a tow truck. Yeah, and it was too late.
Speaker 1: It's odd. It is. Well, uh, that's one. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're playing on talking about that guy or not,
Speaker 1: but I had that question. I was not actually, Okay,
Speaker 1: well give me give me one of yours, Josh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the woman who died by her sheep's
Speaker 1: hand or I guess um. And this again another sad tragedy.
Speaker 1: A woman in England. Uh. You know, she was a
Speaker 1: farmer's wife and she was going out to feed the
Speaker 1: sheep and she had a little a TV that I
Speaker 1: guess she wrote out to where the sheep were, and
Speaker 1: sheep were really hungry, and apparently they came at her
Speaker 1: with a lot of force and knocked her off of
Speaker 1: a cliff and she was parked along the edge of
Speaker 1: a quarry, right, yeah, And so they knocked her off,
Speaker 1: and they say that the sad tragedy is that she
Speaker 1: may have lived, um, if not for her a TV
Speaker 1: falling on top of her. So that was knocked off
Speaker 1: as well. I came down on her hungry sheep, very
Speaker 1: hungry sheep. Did you get an idea of how many
Speaker 1: there there were? Uh, it just said a flock a flock,
Speaker 1: So well, it's like two or more, right, sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking probably a little more than two to
Speaker 1: to TV and a woman. Yeah, that is kind of,
Speaker 1: um bizarre. Again, I think that definitely falls in the category.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, how did you choose these? That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I thought you might ask that. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just start looking around on the internet
Speaker 1: for strange deaths and bizarre deaths and pretty soon you've
Speaker 1: got a big master list of stories, and did you
Speaker 1: have to pare down? Oh yeah, sure, Okay, well give
Speaker 1: me one that you that didn't take the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't think of one right now. You put me
Speaker 1: on the spot. I love putting you on the spot.
Speaker 1: I can't think of one, all right, Well maybe by
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast. Okay, well, let me give
Speaker 1: you one of my chuck which, by the way, this
Speaker 1: is just an excellent article. It's it's as good as
Speaker 1: numbers journalism gets, right. Yeah. Um, so I guarantee this
Speaker 1: is one of yours too, but I'm going to just
Speaker 1: go ahead and steal it. Um in nineteen nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this one. It's just so nuts. Um. In
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen in North Boston, there was a neighborhood that
Speaker 1: was largely populated by Italian immigrant it and one of
Speaker 1: the big features of this neighborhood was, I guess a
Speaker 1: huge holding tank. I assume a molasses processing plan or
Speaker 1: something huge, huge holding tank that that held um two
Speaker 1: point five million gallons of molasses. Apparently that's a couple
Speaker 1: of gallons too many, because the tank ruptured and from
Speaker 1: what I gather, exploded with molasses. There was shrapnel that
Speaker 1: was flying everywhere. So some people died that way, sure,
Speaker 1: But I think the the the most horrific aspect of
Speaker 1: the deaths that came out that that day was that
Speaker 1: one people were killed by a twenty five ft high
Speaker 1: wall of molasses. And you know, the term slow as
Speaker 1: molasses that did not apply in this case, because their
Speaker 1: reports where that it was going about thirty five miles
Speaker 1: an hour. The problem is that you have that much
Speaker 1: molasses and it's traveling that fast and you get stuck
Speaker 1: in it, You're going to drown in molasses. And I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it takes more than one breath of molasses
Speaker 1: to drown you. Yeah, I would say something, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty horrible way to go. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: weird thing is is that it's apparently to this day,
Speaker 1: I understand they the residents of this neighborhood almost a
Speaker 1: hundred years later, at least well ninety years later, still
Speaker 1: say that on a hot day they can smell the
Speaker 1: molasses that took years to clean up this mess, right,
Speaker 1: And don't you know, of course that's one of those
Speaker 1: things that might be lower at this point, but it
Speaker 1: makes for a good story. It definitely does. But yet
Speaker 1: one people died drowning in molasses, right, Yeah, bizarre, very bizarre.
Speaker 1: Onto the Call Your Brothers. These two, this is my
Speaker 1: other favorite one. These guys were pretty famous too. If
Speaker 1: you're from New York City, UM, you've probably heard of
Speaker 1: the Call Your Brothers at some point. Um Langley and
Speaker 1: Homer Callier. They moved to New York to Harlem in
Speaker 1: nineteen o nine when they're in their twenties, and they
Speaker 1: were from an upper crust family, uh, kind of well
Speaker 1: to do, and the brothers lived together in Harlem and
Speaker 1: uh became hermits basically over the years. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: just hermits, but compulsive hoarders, which you know, we should
Speaker 1: do a podcast on this one, which should That's very interesting,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, I read an analysis of compulsive hoarding
Speaker 1: using the Wonder Machine, and they found that when asked
Speaker 1: to decide like if they if they should throw away
Speaker 1: one piece of junk mail or another, the region of
Speaker 1: the brain that's associated with processing very unpleasant experiences lights
Speaker 1: up like a Christmas tree. Really interesting and I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: from what I gather, Homer and Langley, we're definitely compulsive hoarders. Legendary, right, legendary.
Speaker 1: Apparently they accumulated a hundred and eighty tons of you know,
Speaker 1: they called it junk in their apartment. I know, and
Speaker 1: think about that every time you can think of that's
Speaker 1: sixty more tons than what they've got every year on
Speaker 1: Mount Everest, which is one of the most littered places
Speaker 1: on Earth, and there is an apartment. These guys had
Speaker 1: it an apartment. Yeah, so I think to call them
Speaker 1: compulsive hoarders is right on the money. Uh so. I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking busta chandeliers, baby care, just smashed pianos, clocks, furniture,
Speaker 1: newspapers just stacked to the ceiling. Homer went blind in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and was bedridden because of rheumatism. By
Speaker 1: and his younger brother helped care for him night and
Speaker 1: day and saved all these newspapers and hopes that one
Speaker 1: day his brother would regain his sight, which I found
Speaker 1: beyond sweet. Yeah, it's pretty sweet and strange. Um. The
Speaker 1: other odd thing is is they had their home booby
Speaker 1: trapped because they were What they did was, you know,
Speaker 1: they moved to Harlem, and then Harlem over the years
Speaker 1: started becoming a little bit more of a rough neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and they never moved. They just like shut themselves in
Speaker 1: and and you know, closed all the doors. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so they set these booby traps and uh, it turned
Speaker 1: out to be Langley's undoing. He tripped on one of
Speaker 1: these booby traps and was buried beneath an avalanche of junk,
Speaker 1: and Homer was starved to death because his brother wasn't
Speaker 1: around the thick care of him. Did you get the
Speaker 1: impression that Langley died instantly, like a broken neck or
Speaker 1: something like that, or did he possibly starved to death
Speaker 1: as well? You know, that's a good question. I didn't
Speaker 1: get that because I didn't say it, just said that
Speaker 1: he was buried underneath a pile of junk, So he
Speaker 1: could very well just been trapped and had to starve
Speaker 1: to death as well. I mean, can you imagine Homer
Speaker 1: realizing that his brothers just died under a pile of
Speaker 1: junk and blind and bedridden. You imagine you would have
Speaker 1: been like, oh right, I'm toasted. Yeah, exactly. So bizarre, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very bizarre. Yeah. And apparently I read this, I think
Speaker 1: it was a New Yorker article about this, and the
Speaker 1: author said that he grew up in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies in New York and his parents that was
Speaker 1: something they would say, They say, you know, clean up
Speaker 1: your room and you're gonna end up like this. Call
Speaker 1: your brothers sort of poor guys. But they were grossly
Speaker 1: misunderstood too. Probably. Yeah, alright, well, I guess it's my turn. Hunt.
Speaker 1: I call this one death by irony because that's what
Speaker 1: it feels like to me every time I hear this one.
Speaker 1: Pagan twistle. Yeah. Yeah, So she was a failed actress,
Speaker 1: somewhat successful back in New York, but she got um.
Speaker 1: She was drawn to Hollywood Land, as the sign originally said,
Speaker 1: right um and and in ninety two, after a string
Speaker 1: of rejections she acting role rejections, Thank you romantic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, wow wow um she so yeah. She
Speaker 1: kept turned down for part after part after part um,
Speaker 1: and she decided she was going to take her own life,
Speaker 1: which I called dedication to your craft. Right. So she
Speaker 1: climbs up to the H but first leaves a suicide
Speaker 1: note at the bottom of it. Climbs up to the
Speaker 1: top of the H which is like what sixty ft
Speaker 1: or something like that. I think it's about that. I
Speaker 1: smell some listener mail in my future. Um. But she
Speaker 1: climbed it to the top, jumped off sixty ft or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It killed her and they found her
Speaker 1: two days later, and her her suicide note was very
Speaker 1: apologetic and short and sweet, and she just couldn't take
Speaker 1: it anymore, right. And what what kills me is that
Speaker 1: the day after she died she killed herself, a letter
Speaker 1: arrived at her house offering her apart for the role
Speaker 1: of a suicidal woman. Yep, yeah, that one. That's bizarre
Speaker 1: and agonizing, agonizing. You know, I used to the Hollywood
Speaker 1: sign was outside my window in my apartment in l A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very cool, very cool view. And didn't for Sutherland
Speaker 1: to live in your neighborhood too. Uh, ry mouth be there.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and jump straight to number one.
Speaker 1: Death by unexplained phenomenon is what I'm calling it, even
Speaker 1: though I know it's really space aliens. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: Ural Mountains of Russia. This is a group of college students,
Speaker 1: Russian college students went hiking from Eural Polytechnic Institute. And
Speaker 1: this is in the wintertime and so it was cold.
Speaker 1: Nine never made out of the woods, and what the
Speaker 1: investigators found was frightening. It really was horrific. I think
Speaker 1: is a good word. Hurt. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: this one's bizarre. It's horrific. Yeah, just unexplained and horrific. Um.
Speaker 1: First of all, they found their tent abandoned. It was
Speaker 1: ripped open from the inside and half buried in snow,
Speaker 1: and their shoes and like their coats and their belongings
Speaker 1: were still inside the tent. So that's where we're starting
Speaker 1: with the investigating. There's there's snow everywhere, it's like winter
Speaker 1: right sure, February and Russia. The first two bodies were
Speaker 1: found at the edge of the forest, barefoot and dressed
Speaker 1: in their underwear. The next three bodies were found near
Speaker 1: near there in similar state, and then two months later,
Speaker 1: the last bodies were found buried in the snow about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty feet away from them. So they're
Speaker 1: all dead. Um. Four of the students had massive internal injuries,
Speaker 1: broken ribs, crushed skulls. One of them was missing her tongue,
Speaker 1: which is just freaky and uh, but they had no
Speaker 1: external wounds and no signs of struggle. No, so they
Speaker 1: had like crushed skulls, but no external wounds. That's insane, yes,
Speaker 1: But the weird thing is what they found on their clothing, right, Well,
Speaker 1: the final victims were wearing the clothing of the other victims, right,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't the clothing irradiated. Yeah, they did test
Speaker 1: on the clothing and found that it had high levels
Speaker 1: of radiation. The case records were sealed until nineteen and
Speaker 1: when the case came back open, they learned that there
Speaker 1: were bright orange spheres spotted in the sky that night
Speaker 1: by other hikers. So you think, you think aliens? Oh
Speaker 1: and these people their faces were a sunburned too. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if it was aliens necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I think it was probably what I think it
Speaker 1: was some kind of army experimentation radiation, maybe bombs, something
Speaker 1: like that. That's very odd, but I mean it's still
Speaker 1: to this day, they the Russian government won't own up
Speaker 1: to anything happening out of the ordinary in the area
Speaker 1: nine of your your youth killed it your hand accidentally
Speaker 1: or otherwise. It makes for bad pr And you guys
Speaker 1: can't see this, but that one, it was clearly Chuck's
Speaker 1: favorite because normally, like in an article, he will highlight
Speaker 1: a little passenger to as a reminder. He has that
Speaker 1: entire thing highlighting. You love that one, don't you do?
Speaker 1: It's really strange. Can I do one more? We have
Speaker 1: a hit? Ten? Yea have we? Okay? So I call
Speaker 1: this one disco boy, the sixteen year old kid in England.
Speaker 1: Um And if he was sixteen, he probably only started
Speaker 1: using deodor it maybe a couple of years before. But
Speaker 1: he took a real shine to this stuff, a Saul
Speaker 1: deodorant right. Um. And apparently this kid would just slather
Speaker 1: it on all over his body a couple of times
Speaker 1: a day. And you say in the article it was
Speaker 1: so so thick sometimes that his family downstairs could taste
Speaker 1: it right in the air. Um. And eventually, at age sixteen,
Speaker 1: he dropped out of a heart attack, right. And the
Speaker 1: reason why they round he he had heart failure due
Speaker 1: to um UH levels ten times the lethal dosage of
Speaker 1: butane and propane liquid liquid natural gases that are used
Speaker 1: as accelerants and aerosols or were. And this kid built
Speaker 1: it up time over over probably two years. Man, I
Speaker 1: mean think about that, and it just built up in
Speaker 1: his system and finally just stopped his heart, which is
Speaker 1: just crazy to me. And apparently he used it in
Speaker 1: a very confined space like his bathroom. Um, so not
Speaker 1: only was he absorbing it through his skin, yeah he was.
Speaker 1: He was inhaling it as well. So we're not saying
Speaker 1: it's dangerous to use any kind of aerosol. Well, good
Speaker 1: luck finding an aerosol deodorant these days. I don't legal illegal,
Speaker 1: at least ones with with propane and butane in them. Sure,
Speaker 1: so we'll go to the store and look, you want
Speaker 1: to after this? Yeah, well I bring that up because
Speaker 1: I know somebody who occasionally will use fabreeze in her
Speaker 1: hair to kind of like freshen up. And now now
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, what kind of kild do not?
Speaker 1: I find that strange? As do I? As do I?
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, well it's ten bizarre deaths x number
Speaker 1: of bizarre deaths. There's still more that you can read about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I strongly recommend anyone go on to the site
Speaker 1: read this article, a fine one written by one Charles W. Bryant,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is type in ten
Speaker 1: bizarre ways to die in the handy search bart how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com and chuck while we are here,
Speaker 1: while we have everyone's attention because we know you guys
Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. You know, listener mails coming eventually, you
Speaker 1: want to hear your names. So first, exactly, Um, first,
Speaker 1: let's talk about our spoken word album. That's right, Josh
Speaker 1: and I and Jerry got together, excuse me, Josh and
Speaker 1: me and Jerry got together and we recorded our first
Speaker 1: ever full length is like an hour plus super Stuffed
Speaker 1: Guide to the Economy and we break it down economics
Speaker 1: on a global level and tell you what it means
Speaker 1: to the individual and get into some pretty complex stuff
Speaker 1: in it in the way that we like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we broke it down into very um
Speaker 1: manageable knowledge, right, Yeah, well that's the stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Super Stuff Guide to the Economy, which we love that name.
Speaker 1: It's up on iTunes for what right now nine If
Speaker 1: you guys want to go get it, that's cool with us.
Speaker 1: You can actually find it on iTunes by typing in
Speaker 1: super and stuffed. We're super stuffed two words, I mean
Speaker 1: in the little search bar on iTunes. And I think
Speaker 1: it's the first thing that comes up, maybe the only thing.
Speaker 1: No it's not, but it is definitely the first thing
Speaker 1: that comes up. And you can find it there, like
Speaker 1: I said, on iTunes, And I guess while we're at it,
Speaker 1: we should go ahead and plug the blog to right
Speaker 1: our weblog. Well, we have a blog now, folks called
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know oddly enough, and you can access
Speaker 1: it through the homepage how stuff works dot com over
Speaker 1: on the right side. Chuck and I each post once
Speaker 1: a day, so it's updated twice. Sometimes it's news items
Speaker 1: that we find interesting. Sometimes it's something that a fans
Speaker 1: and end that maybe isn't full enough for a podcast.
Speaker 1: I do a little recap on Friday, so where we can,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to the fans about what we podcasted
Speaker 1: about that week. And it's fun stuff. It is fun.
Speaker 1: Actually I've kind of taken to taken a shine to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. Yeah, so, Chuck, I guess it's
Speaker 1: listener in mail time, right, Josh, this is a really
Speaker 1: good one. I'm just gonna call this exceptional fan mail.
Speaker 1: We get these from time to time. Remember when you
Speaker 1: brought up proso pagnosia. Yeah, facial blindness, facial blindnes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do a real quick recap of what that is. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a malfunction of the brain region that
Speaker 1: processes visual facial information. And so people with probe how
Speaker 1: do I We'll say it one more time, chuck, Uh,
Speaker 1: proso pagnosia. Yeah, well, facial blindness. Um, I have a
Speaker 1: total inability to make a memory of someone's face. So
Speaker 1: seeing somebody you've known for years, uh, for the thousandth
Speaker 1: time is like seeing them for the first time. You
Speaker 1: don't recognize them. So we had someone right in who
Speaker 1: has this, which is very cool. So we like these
Speaker 1: firsthand accounts. So Anna wrote in and said that we
Speaker 1: could read this to our fans. So I thought it's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. She said that she cannot visualize the
Speaker 1: faces of her coworkers or anybody for that matter, but
Speaker 1: she does I do see faces when I look at them.
Speaker 1: This means that we can memorize features such as hair
Speaker 1: and skin color, haircut, and facial structure to some extent.
Speaker 1: Feature based recognition like this is useless for recognizing people
Speaker 1: out of context, but it's usually enough to differentiate differentiate
Speaker 1: between people in context when you expect to see them. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, she's comes up with a system of
Speaker 1: how to recognize people at work, Let's say, or you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere else she might go to the club. Um. Secondly,
Speaker 1: we recognize voices just as well as the next person.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people wrote in an assets
Speaker 1: much excellent point. Yeah, so that safe uh that safe
Speaker 1: word thing when talking to relatives is absolutely not necessary.
Speaker 1: You were talking about and having a safe word, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Uh So in the workplace, if a colleague greets me,
Speaker 1: I know who they are from their voice. Thirdly, people's
Speaker 1: body language is very individual, and although I can't recognize
Speaker 1: somebody's face, I can recognize how they walk and move,
Speaker 1: which is very individual. And that made sense to me
Speaker 1: because it's just the face exactly, only the face. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what she says. It's it's facial recognition is specialized
Speaker 1: for faces only in the brain. And fourth she says
Speaker 1: that people tend to dress similarly from day to day,
Speaker 1: and that's also a good guideline. So you develop coping strategies.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you get by well enough. Although
Speaker 1: I work at a large company, I very rarely have
Speaker 1: problems at work and with people I meet regularly, and
Speaker 1: I don't think my colleagues notice. So that's correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you come up with a system it's it's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: kind of like the guy Memento would write down important
Speaker 1: things or tattooed the really important thing, right somebody? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks Anna, you sound like a sharp tech. Appreciate you
Speaker 1: sharing all that with us, And if you want to
Speaker 1: share some tips for overcoming facial blindness or anything else,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
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