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 Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know that free podcast.
Speaker 1: It comes out twice a week, faithfully, and um, you
Speaker 1: don't pay a time for it, do you? Do you?
Speaker 1: I don't. I certainly do not. No one does talk.
Speaker 1: It's right, um, but we're still glad that you listened
Speaker 1: to it, even though it is free. Hi Frozen Body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was your idea, wasn't. It seemed like a no
Speaker 1: brainer for our Simpsons fans to call this cryonics episode
Speaker 1: high Frozen Body. Dr Nick That Um, that episode has
Speaker 1: one of my favorite Simpsons lines of all time. Uh,
Speaker 1: where the old guy Jasper a sidekick, he the frozen body.
Speaker 1: He comes out and he thaws out, and he goes
Speaker 1: over and picks up a moonpie and he goes moon pie.
Speaker 1: What a time to be alive. I love that. He's great. Yes. So, um,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen that episode of the Simpsons, we
Speaker 1: strongly recommend you do. Right. Yeah, he just gets stuck
Speaker 1: in the freezer right and freezes by accident or something
Speaker 1: in the who starts charging admission to see him? Or
Speaker 1: guess what the withsin the can that lost its label
Speaker 1: a long time ago. So, Um, the concept that you
Speaker 1: can freeze body and reanimate it is not just you
Speaker 1: know Simpsons lore No, it's not just cartoon TV. Lore No.
Speaker 1: Actually there's a guy who um kind of came up
Speaker 1: with this. Uh, I guess in the nineteen four It's
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Inger, and he just died a
Speaker 1: week or so ago. Chuck, that's right, like ten days ago.
Speaker 1: The man died, um, which is really weird that he did,
Speaker 1: because we had no idea that he was. That didn't
Speaker 1: spur the idea for the podcast. Yeah, you picked this one.
Speaker 1: And then it turns out the guy who created the
Speaker 1: field of cryonics, who coined the word cryonics, died a
Speaker 1: week before. Yeah. I felt kind of bad because I
Speaker 1: picked this out last week, or maybe it was earlier
Speaker 1: this weekend. Maybe he tapped you on the shower. It's like.
Speaker 1: And then I always look at the news just to see, hey,
Speaker 1: if there's anything relevant, and I saw that he died. Hey,
Speaker 1: when you do. And I saw that he died today,
Speaker 1: and my first instant was oh, awesome, how relevant, And
Speaker 1: then I thought, well, that's kind of sad. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: that was very nice of you to share his oh
Speaker 1: bit with me, though. Is in intro? Yeah, he ninety
Speaker 1: two years old and he is now frozen per his
Speaker 1: wishes in Michigan. Yeah, so he Um. He not only
Speaker 1: established the field of cryonics, which is the UM basically
Speaker 1: the attempt to store human bodies at very low temperatures
Speaker 1: in order to eventually revive them. Yeah, they're technically not frozen, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. UM. To store human bodies at extremely
Speaker 1: low temperatures without freezing, that's called vitrification. Get into that.
Speaker 1: But he came up with this whole prospect, this whole
Speaker 1: idea UM in a book called The Prospect of Immortality,
Speaker 1: which is why I just used the word prospect twice. UM,
Speaker 1: and he wrote it in and it had a pretty
Speaker 1: sweeping effect. In three years. Three years later, the first
Speaker 1: person UM entered cryogenic suspension. Yeah. That was pretty forward thinking,
Speaker 1: I would say back then, because this sounds like something
Speaker 1: from the future now. And imagine in the sixth early sixties,
Speaker 1: I thought he's nuts, right, But within three years of
Speaker 1: him writing this book, there are they already started carrying
Speaker 1: out his procedures that he kind of came up with
Speaker 1: and described. He's a physics professor, UM. And he founded
Speaker 1: the Cryonics Institute, I believe is what it is called.
Speaker 1: And UM he joined two wives and his mother in
Speaker 1: suspended animation in a nondescript building outside of Detroit. UM.
Speaker 1: And the other the guy, the first guy they froze.
Speaker 1: I keep I'm gonna say freeze this whole podcast. James Bedford.
Speaker 1: He was a seventy three year old psychologist and he
Speaker 1: is supposedly still frozen in good shape in Arizona. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should probably listen to a disclaimer here, like
Speaker 1: when we say frozen or freeze or frozen, when we
Speaker 1: really screw up. UM, what we're we're not talking about freezing.
Speaker 1: We're talking about, like we said, vitrification, which is a
Speaker 1: process of cooling the body down to extremely low temperatures
Speaker 1: without freezing. Freezing is the forming of um ice crystals, right,
Speaker 1: is good for the cells of your body. Know. But
Speaker 1: what they've found, supposedly, says groups like alk Core Life
Speaker 1: Extension UM. They they say that if you vitrify a
Speaker 1: cell or a group of cells, a k a tissue
Speaker 1: or a body or whatever, UM, you can preserve it.
Speaker 1: Not indefinitely. There's actually a length of time. Do you
Speaker 1: know that the time link that they say you can
Speaker 1: preserve a body cry genically, I'm going to guess one
Speaker 1: thousand years. Do you know why they say that? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: Actually because just being on Earth for ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: the body is exposed to too much cosmic rays and
Speaker 1: it just destroys the cells on its own death literal
Speaker 1: death bite cosmic ray. Yeah, but it takes ten thousand years.
Speaker 1: So they're hoping that UM, and this is the whole
Speaker 1: point of cryonics is is that the people that we
Speaker 1: freeze or vitrify now will be able to be reanimated
Speaker 1: and UM cured of any disease, whether it be age
Speaker 1: or heart attack or whatever whatever killed them UM in
Speaker 1: the future. So there's a lot of um stuff floating
Speaker 1: around about cryonics, cryogenics. Walt Disney was not frozen. He
Speaker 1: actually died a year before the first guy was. UM
Speaker 1: was frozen vitrified. Okay, UM, So that's a complete and
Speaker 1: total rumor. But let's get to the let's let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about this, Chuck. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are skeptics of this, you realize, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of um rationality to it as well. Sure, okay, so
Speaker 1: go well, I think dead is where we should start off.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, at the end is actually the beginning when
Speaker 1: you're talking about cryonics. Um, it's thank you. I just
Speaker 1: made that up. Al core Is is one of the
Speaker 1: big companies in Arizon, and they have a quote dying
Speaker 1: as a process, not an event, and that I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's like they're huge terminator style quote when
Speaker 1: you walk in the lobby, but it should be because no,
Speaker 1: they don't have it like on a on a sign
Speaker 1: or anything. Some guy comes up to you wearing like
Speaker 1: nothing but a lab coat and cowboy boots and shakes
Speaker 1: you while he says it and then runs off. That's
Speaker 1: how you're greeted. That's good. He should get a job
Speaker 1: at Walmart. Um. But that is the who. Their whole
Speaker 1: point in that is that when your heart stops speeding,
Speaker 1: you were legally dead, but there is still some cellular
Speaker 1: and brain function for a short time, and their goal
Speaker 1: is to nab you in that instant and get the
Speaker 1: process started in that instant and preserve what minimal function
Speaker 1: you still have left in your brain in that instant.
Speaker 1: And that's that's based on good science. UM science is
Speaker 1: starting to realize that death is a gradual process. It's
Speaker 1: not like they said, an event. It's not just like
Speaker 1: one moment you're living, next man and you're dead. It's
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Remember we talked lot about organ donation,
Speaker 1: about UM brain death and UM cardiac death. And legally,
Speaker 1: in the United States, if your heart stop speeding, UM,
Speaker 1: you can you can be declared dead. But as far
Speaker 1: as al Core is concerned, your brain is still functioning UM.
Speaker 1: So therefore, if you can be preserved, you can be
Speaker 1: eventually reanimated. Like I said, this is sound science. Hypothermia
Speaker 1: research has led to a new understanding of heart attacks, right,
Speaker 1: So a new technique of reviving a patient with a
Speaker 1: heart attack is to lower their body temperature to like
Speaker 1: ninety one degrees very gradually, and then UM revived them
Speaker 1: by letting the body warm back up. And they've also
Speaker 1: found from this research that you can't just inundate it
Speaker 1: with oxygen because oxygen goes in and just kills all
Speaker 1: the cells, because there's this horrible caveat to resuscitating a
Speaker 1: heart attack victim is that when you resuscitate them successfully,
Speaker 1: you give them oxygen. It's just stay inter procedure at
Speaker 1: hospital and they're alive and happy and everything is good,
Speaker 1: and then two days later they die. And so they
Speaker 1: started to look at why people died, and they found
Speaker 1: out that it was because they were their cells were
Speaker 1: perfused with too much oxygen too quickly. So they found
Speaker 1: that if you lower body temperature and then gradually reintroduce
Speaker 1: oxygen in its own you can bring a person back
Speaker 1: effectively from death. Well, it happens all the time, and
Speaker 1: I imagine, I mean that makes sense. It's probably a
Speaker 1: traumatic event to be brought back to life on your
Speaker 1: body itself physiologically, So sure that makes sense. But like
Speaker 1: I just said, it happens all the time. People's hearts stop,
Speaker 1: people are trapped under ice and quote unquote dead and
Speaker 1: they're brought back to life and function normally. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't function normally. But this isn't so much different than that, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's and it's based on that, it's based
Speaker 1: on the concept. It is um so Chuck you're saying
Speaker 1: that if you, let's say you are a member of
Speaker 1: al Core Life Extension Foundation, right, which apparently is not
Speaker 1: that expensive. They liken it to um a lifetime of
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes or having cable TV or the like, which
Speaker 1: is pretty expensive. It is, but still, I mean it's
Speaker 1: not as much as you would think. I think I
Speaker 1: got the fees right here in front of me. Uh,
Speaker 1: if your first family member is you gotta see here's
Speaker 1: the deal. You gotta sign up, and you gotta pay
Speaker 1: for life, and then you gotta pay I believe, for
Speaker 1: the process on top of that, right, because it's a
Speaker 1: membership club. And then yeah, you're you're there's going to
Speaker 1: be a spike and pay when you die. So a
Speaker 1: first family member is six hundred and twenty bucks a year.
Speaker 1: Each additional family member if you want them on your
Speaker 1: cell phone plan, is three hundred and ten dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Minor family member is a hundred and fifty five bucks
Speaker 1: a year. Minor family just an aunt, I guess, not
Speaker 1: like not siblings or or nothing being a kid. Oh
Speaker 1: really no, because it said oh no, no, wait, you're right,
Speaker 1: says under eighteen, like an aunt, you don't that's like
Speaker 1: outside the nucle your family, all right, and if you're
Speaker 1: a student, good news. It's only three d and ten
Speaker 1: bucks a year. But I imagine you're right jumps up
Speaker 1: when you graduate, because you're not always screw you when
Speaker 1: you graduate. So that's just the membership fees. The actual
Speaker 1: body freezing is up to article says to our course
Speaker 1: two hundred now and the in the brain is eighty.
Speaker 1: And there's search charges if you're in England a fifteen grand.
Speaker 1: Outside US, Canada and England it's grand. I wonder why.
Speaker 1: And then you can also get if you're not a member,
Speaker 1: you can pay for a family member. Like let's say
Speaker 1: none of us are members, and you want to freeze
Speaker 1: your father, the herbal Elvis upon his expiration, you would
Speaker 1: have to pay fifty grand two D fifty grand because
Speaker 1: there weren't there weren't any membership dues. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: a fifty dollar surcharge if if you just want to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want my dad frozen, and none of us were
Speaker 1: ever members, all right, I'll have to talk to at
Speaker 1: about that, see what he thinks. Um. So uh, let's
Speaker 1: say you are remembering good standing, you you've got, you know,
Speaker 1: minor family members totally insured under this plan or as
Speaker 1: members as well. And we should also say we keep
Speaker 1: saying al Core. Al Core is the one of the
Speaker 1: it's far and away the most widely known cryonics group.
Speaker 1: But um, there's like at least two others, the one
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Let's just go to their websites if you
Speaker 1: want to compare them. The Alcore looks pretty, they're both legit.
Speaker 1: But's website it looks sort of like in MySpace pace
Speaker 1: it does. My advice to in the Michigan Institute is
Speaker 1: to just pay some money to your website seriously if
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: But that's the one that was founded by um Robert Edinger. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think he did the website in Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so too. He's like, someday there's going to be
Speaker 1: an Internet and this is gonna be the first thing
Speaker 1: on it and it's never gonna change. Um. So, okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you're remembering good standing at any of the
Speaker 1: the the cryonics UH groups or foundations or labs and
Speaker 1: you're about to die, right yep, what happens to Chuck
Speaker 1: take us through the process. Well, the first thing that
Speaker 1: happens is they are literally at your deathbed. The team
Speaker 1: is waiting for you to expire. I want armies. And
Speaker 1: as soon as they do that, as soon as you die, rather,
Speaker 1: they will, as the article says, spring into action. And also, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we should say they have to wait until you declare
Speaker 1: deatti to um to put someone into a cryonic suspension,
Speaker 1: or as the Michigan website says, right now, it's illegal. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I think they envision the future or where you're
Speaker 1: if you're on life support or something you could probably
Speaker 1: or if you're just fully healthy, they also envisioned a
Speaker 1: future or we reanimate dead people. Yeah, that's true. Uh
Speaker 1: So what they do is they spring into action. They
Speaker 1: stabilize your body by getting blood flowing in oxygen, but
Speaker 1: I guess not too much oxygen, and they pack you
Speaker 1: an ice and pump in some heperin, which is an
Speaker 1: anti coagulant so your blood doesn't clot. And then they
Speaker 1: rush the opposite of Calf's stomach. Yeah exactly, and then
Speaker 1: they rush you to the facility where the real science begins. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's about here that things get a tad um
Speaker 1: cutting edge, I would say, so. So Basically, what they
Speaker 1: have to do is remove the water from your body,
Speaker 1: right and not just like your p or your saliva.
Speaker 1: They gotta literally get the water out of your cells. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read at least six of your cells, so it
Speaker 1: must be all the organ cells and and and they
Speaker 1: go after the brain in particular. Your brain is of
Speaker 1: the utmost importance. UM. And you can actually have your
Speaker 1: brain alone cryonically suspended for something like fifty k K
Speaker 1: raised it in the past five Here is this article written.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that long ago, but hey, it
Speaker 1: ain't cheap um. And they still stort in your head.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's not like futurama. Oh cool, they
Speaker 1: said it does too much damage and why bother. Their
Speaker 1: head is a great bowling ball case essentially, so here
Speaker 1: they just cut your head off and preserve the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it's really just your brain that's undergone the vitrification process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is neat ted. Williams's head is floating somewhere. His
Speaker 1: whole body wasn't. They removed the body there in two
Speaker 1: separate chambers. Oh, that's right ahead of at um. So uh.
Speaker 1: When you're on the table, they remove the water from
Speaker 1: your body, and how did they do that? I didn't
Speaker 1: understand how they remove water from your cells? You're asking me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Is it a pressing? I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I've had the doctor. I tried to find out the
Speaker 1: literal process of how they get the water from the
Speaker 1: cells and replace it with the anti freeze. But they do.
Speaker 1: They do replace it with anti freeze, a glycol based
Speaker 1: um basically a human anti freeze syro protectant is what
Speaker 1: they call it, a Cairo cry We got there eventually,
Speaker 1: croct Jerry's like, this is not their best day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a cryo protective. So they pump you full of
Speaker 1: this stuff basically like embalming fluid that will never freeze UM.
Speaker 1: And then they lay you on a bed of um
Speaker 1: dry ice. And here, this is astounding to me that
Speaker 1: you can even get any tissue down to this this
Speaker 1: um degree. But basically they freeze your body. They I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: they vitrify your body down to negative a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty degrees celsius, which is negative two d and two
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheight, negative two hundred degrees fahreheight. And they're like
Speaker 1: absolute zero. I don't know we've called on that before, right,
Speaker 1: I will figure it out. No, we've been called out
Speaker 1: on whether forty degrees is negative forties the same in
Speaker 1: celsius or fahrenheight, which it is. Um. And then once
Speaker 1: your body reaches that temperature, you're vitrified, you're ready to go,
Speaker 1: You're ready to be stored for up to ten thousand years.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they put you in a tank. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, that means that means that your molecules
Speaker 1: have slowed down to the point where the chemistry stops. Right,
Speaker 1: there's no metabolism going on whatsoever. Nothing. It's called the
Speaker 1: glass transition temperature. And uh so it just everything kind
Speaker 1: of goes. That's suspended animation. It's a perfect example of it.
Speaker 1: That's great. So they stuff you in the tank, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, called a well, if if it's just your head,
Speaker 1: it's called a neuropod, right, and then if it's your body,
Speaker 1: it's called a um I think a cryopod. I'd call
Speaker 1: it a full body pod. Okay, But so and then
Speaker 1: they put you in a container that can hold maybe
Speaker 1: four or five bodies because you're not by yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a little a weird Yeah, I thought so too, UM,
Speaker 1: especially if somehow you're still cognizant, Like if that was
Speaker 1: possible and you just didn't really like the people around you,
Speaker 1: you're stuck would stink. UM. So there's a there's a
Speaker 1: pretty nice picture of an alk core container that holds
Speaker 1: UM four whole body pods and six neuropods. Right, UM,
Speaker 1: So it's like a freaky futuristic nursing home in there,
Speaker 1: you know. UM. And there you go. You're you're on
Speaker 1: ice as it were for ten thousand years, and then
Speaker 1: every once in a while they have UM what are
Speaker 1: called UM profusion thresholds I believe, and then have software
Speaker 1: that measures that like the concentration of liquid nitrogen, because
Speaker 1: that's what you're in. You're in a bad of liquid
Speaker 1: nitrogen that's being cooled down ultimately, even even less than
Speaker 1: two d and two degrees high, it's down. When you're
Speaker 1: in cold storage as it were, UM, you are stored
Speaker 1: in about negative three twenty degrees fahrenheit, and liquid nitrogen
Speaker 1: at that temperature will eventually evaporate, so they have to
Speaker 1: keep adding some and they have software that monitors this,
Speaker 1: and there you go. You're officially in cryogenic suspension head
Speaker 1: head down, upside down, yeah, which I thought was pretty
Speaker 1: clever in fact to the podcast for me, if there's
Speaker 1: a leak, do you want your head down because you
Speaker 1: want your brain? I guess if it leaks, the bottom
Speaker 1: obviously will be the last bit too contain any of
Speaker 1: the liquid, so that's where they want your head. It's
Speaker 1: very clever. But again, if you're the least bit conscious
Speaker 1: or cognizant or anything like, you're you're dead. Yeah, but man,
Speaker 1: can you imagine like that? That gives me a headache
Speaker 1: just thinking about being upside down? I'm sure it's awful.
Speaker 1: All the frozen blood brushes to your head, that's right,
Speaker 1: and one giant block ice I see blood, yeah, vitrified
Speaker 1: that's right. So, um, what's the deal with all this chuck?
Speaker 1: I mean, as we said, it's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who criticize this stuff, and it seems like for good measure,
Speaker 1: they're saying, like, you know, you're just like this is
Speaker 1: a nice, fancy process that you guys have come up with,
Speaker 1: and we're sure that you know you're doing everything you're saying,
Speaker 1: and yes, it is based on real science, but you
Speaker 1: can base anything on real science. And it's still just
Speaker 1: pseudo science. If it's not science, it's pseudoscience, it's trickery. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: they get a lot of heat obviously, places like al
Speaker 1: Core do, and they one of the problems, they say
Speaker 1: is that UM, first of all, it's it's based on
Speaker 1: three very different, uh scientific fields. So the reason why
Speaker 1: most scientists don't come out and say this can work
Speaker 1: is because they're scientists in a single given field and
Speaker 1: they don't understand that this involves three very different disciplines
Speaker 1: like podiatrists. So yeah, exactly. Uh. One of the other
Speaker 1: problems is that they they one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: uh what they call cryobiologists or yes, cryo biologists, people
Speaker 1: who study UM low temperature biology. Yeah, they say that
Speaker 1: they don't come out and say it can work because
Speaker 1: they feel like it has been given the pseudoscience moniker
Speaker 1: and so it will overshadow the real work they've done,
Speaker 1: quote unquote real work that they've done with other kinds
Speaker 1: of cryo freezing. So they're just like, I don't even
Speaker 1: want to talk about that stuff, right, I mean, your
Speaker 1: professional reputation is at stake. Yeah. Sure, But again that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that just because UM skeptics have labeled
Speaker 1: this fraud that it doesn't necessarily work. The other big
Speaker 1: point as far as um crionic groups or boards or whatever, um,
Speaker 1: the the point that they tend to make usually is
Speaker 1: that we have no idea how to reanimate anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're upfront about that. Yeah, they're saying, like, what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and um, this is what al core life extension is
Speaker 1: known for. Is basically they know how to vitrify tissue
Speaker 1: and then just keep it that way, um, indefinitely. And
Speaker 1: so that's what they're saying they're doing. And basically they're
Speaker 1: just the keepers of these bodies that are in suspended
Speaker 1: animation or dead depending on your view, um, until we
Speaker 1: come up with a way to revive them and repair
Speaker 1: anything that might have been wrong with them. And the
Speaker 1: the great white hope, apparently is among cryogenic adherents is nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: which makes sense right, which is uh, I mean nanotechnology.
Speaker 1: They can get down to the single atom and and
Speaker 1: do mechanics work essentially right, repair work on the cells.
Speaker 1: So they think that that is the future of being
Speaker 1: able to reanimate people like this, which again it's it's um,
Speaker 1: that's all well and good, but you can't just be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we heard about nanotechnology and that's probably where it will be.
Speaker 1: And how about this, Not only will it be the
Speaker 1: field of nanotechnology that reanimates people, but it will be
Speaker 1: in which is apparently the number that they throw out.
Speaker 1: So um dubious there. But it seems like if they
Speaker 1: stick to the fact that no, we're putting people in
Speaker 1: suspended animation, and there's a good chance that if death
Speaker 1: is a process and we're getting to this process, we're
Speaker 1: interrupting this process, then we can reverse it. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not saying we're promising eternal life. We we're promising that
Speaker 1: we can bring you back from the dead. They're basically
Speaker 1: pretty upfront about saying we are a high tech storage facility. Period.
Speaker 1: So when we when we talk about reanimating people, this
Speaker 1: is not new. Um. The idea of reanimating a corps
Speaker 1: is extremely old. Um. There's a there was this cool
Speaker 1: little movement in the nineteenth century called galvanic reanimation. What's that.
Speaker 1: Basically it amounted to um hooking recently killed executed criminals
Speaker 1: up to like huge batteries via cables and during public
Speaker 1: display like applying the electricity and making them like twitch
Speaker 1: and making their eyes open or making them grimace horribly.
Speaker 1: And that was like how you reanimated a corpse, which
Speaker 1: by definition that is reanimating it, but you're not. It's
Speaker 1: the technical definition, you know. Um, it didn't imbue any
Speaker 1: life into it, but it did give Mary Shelley a
Speaker 1: good idea for Frankenstein. Yeah there, you know, that was
Speaker 1: a whole idea for a very long time, that like,
Speaker 1: if you could, under the right circumstances, introduce an electrical
Speaker 1: current to life, you know, to a dead body, you
Speaker 1: can bring it back to life, which is pretty clever
Speaker 1: if you think about it, because this was before the
Speaker 1: time of neuroscience, or about the time it was nascent, right,
Speaker 1: and neuroscience, if anything, has given us the awareness that
Speaker 1: everything is the result of like electro chemical conduction throughout
Speaker 1: the body. So it was pretty smart to think of
Speaker 1: electricity as a way to reanimate bodies, although it doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything. Yeah. Well, and that's also the reason why
Speaker 1: they obviously the brain is so important, and they say
Speaker 1: you can just opt for the eighty dollar head freeze
Speaker 1: because maybe in the future, I mean for far along,
Speaker 1: far enough along where we can reanimate a person from
Speaker 1: cryogenic freezing. Then we should be at the point where
Speaker 1: we can clone you a body to go along with
Speaker 1: that head. Why not a hot body too? Oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I would wear Daisy dukes all the time in my body.
Speaker 1: You don't even wear shorts now, Well, I don't have
Speaker 1: a hot cloned body. I've seen you in shorts once, actually,
Speaker 1: when when you came over to my house to bar
Speaker 1: the lot more. You hound shorts really and I saw
Speaker 1: your bare leg I've seen you in boxer shorts too.
Speaker 1: When I think in one of our trips, like you
Speaker 1: changed clothes in front of me or something, I think
Speaker 1: should get a little more specific for the audience. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we didn't have like a dress up party,
Speaker 1: but it was like, hey, I gotta you know, we're
Speaker 1: late for something and you were changing your clothes or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I didn't market on my
Speaker 1: Guatemala I'll bet in Guatemala Lake that one crazy day.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that was just happened there. That was possibly
Speaker 1: the wildest tangent we've ever been on. You've seen me
Speaker 1: in my boxers and in shorts senior bare legs, and
Speaker 1: they're fine. I don't see why you don't like shorts.
Speaker 1: I'm just no, no, not for you. Um, but it
Speaker 1: could be for a cloned body, right right, Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: just get back to it, buddy. Um. And uh again
Speaker 1: back to the reanimation research there. I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, Max Planck Institute, back in two thousand. There's
Speaker 1: just one thing on the web and I can't find
Speaker 1: any follow up stuff or any lead up stuff, but
Speaker 1: basically they're talking about what. Um, the arapeutic hypothermia research
Speaker 1: has shown that if you it's not death that injures
Speaker 1: cells and tissue and makes them unreanimateable. It's trying to
Speaker 1: reanimate them and doing it too quickly. And um, they
Speaker 1: were working on reanimating dead bodies. Um. And apparently since
Speaker 1: then we have figured out how to reanimate some cryo
Speaker 1: preserved tissue like a rabbit kidney. Yeah, it worked. In
Speaker 1: two thousand five, apparently they vitrified a rabbit kidney. Um.
Speaker 1: They took it out of a rabbit, they said you
Speaker 1: wait here, vitrified the kidney, brought it back, put it
Speaker 1: back in the rabbit and said go urinate, and the
Speaker 1: rabbit did, and the kidney exploded. The and uh. They
Speaker 1: have also reanimated a nematode worm. Um, big deal. But hey,
Speaker 1: it worked, but no other mammals. Yeah, they said, dogs
Speaker 1: and monkeys they've had their blood placed. Well remember that
Speaker 1: that supposed to Russian research film from head God, that's awful.
Speaker 1: But dogs and monkeys, they've had their blood replaced with
Speaker 1: the anti freeze essentially cooled it to below zero degrees
Speaker 1: and rewarmed it and revived them successfully. But that's zero
Speaker 1: degrees is a long long way from negative three. Yes,
Speaker 1: but but they're pointing this to this and saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: this is this could be possible. And it wasn't even vitrified.
Speaker 1: Was that it was just brought to a low temperature. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it said their blood was replaced. Okay, Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if all the cells were, but the blood was
Speaker 1: at least so Um. There are things to look for
Speaker 1: in the future when you are successfully reanimated, possibly given
Speaker 1: a cloned body that wears Daisy Dukes a lot um.
Speaker 1: And there's gonna be some legal issues that people are
Speaker 1: already starting to think of about reanimating. Yes, for example,
Speaker 1: when you are taken off to the cryonic facility. As
Speaker 1: far as society and the court system and Social Security
Speaker 1: administration is you're illegally dead. You didn't think about that.
Speaker 1: What happens when you come back to life. You have
Speaker 1: to apply to be a new person again, I guess.
Speaker 1: So they figured that probably if somebody who's presumed dead
Speaker 1: and wasn't right, but they were declared legally dead and
Speaker 1: they come back after that, there there nobody says well sorry,
Speaker 1: and nobody's gonna say that somebody who's reanimated. But one
Speaker 1: of the other propositions that they they're considering is a
Speaker 1: possibility is issuing you a new birth certificate? Really yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're cool that is, so you would be literally
Speaker 1: reborn as far as the law is concerns. Um. And
Speaker 1: then also what happens, chuck. Has happened in the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies when there were I think six big cryogenic suspension
Speaker 1: companies and operation and that number dropped dramatically in the
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighty And what happened to those bodies?
Speaker 1: You know, I do know they were left to rot?
Speaker 1: Really yes they have. The company went bankrupt and said,
Speaker 1: we don't have any money to keep these things going.
Speaker 1: And um, since it was a corporation, they could say
Speaker 1: that the person walked away, but the bodies were just
Speaker 1: left to thaw and rot, and that's what happened. Um
Speaker 1: our Core supposedly has a fund set aside to where
Speaker 1: if anything happens to the company, it will provide a
Speaker 1: bridge to continue care until they figure out what to
Speaker 1: do with these That's where a lot of goes supposedly.
Speaker 1: I think about half of that goes into that trust.
Speaker 1: And I was researching them. Apparently they have a self
Speaker 1: perpetuating board, which they're frequently criticized for because it's just
Speaker 1: there's no new blood in there as it were. But
Speaker 1: the board is generally or has been very transparent about
Speaker 1: how much money is paid, like um in supposedly they
Speaker 1: announced that they were gonna slash their staffs pay across
Speaker 1: the board. By the average staff worker, they're made like
Speaker 1: twenty grand. Board members don't get paid at all, right, right, UM,
Speaker 1: So it's supposedly these people are just into it, like
Speaker 1: two UM further cryonic research and and keep these bodies suspended. Right.
Speaker 1: That's what you'll see on their website at least, right.
Speaker 1: But I was reading some outside links. There's this blog
Speaker 1: called Depressed Metabolism, which is just about all that UM
Speaker 1: and they were going over a two thousand nine al
Speaker 1: Core report UM. But they seem very conservative but not
Speaker 1: good at generating their own income. They rely a lot
Speaker 1: on donations. All the technology they use as licensed elsewhere,
Speaker 1: so there's like bleeding money, but they manage to stay
Speaker 1: aflow because of donations from like wealthy members, which is
Speaker 1: kind of unfair. So, but they're very conservative to UM,
Speaker 1: whereas like the Cryonics Institute was always kind of UM
Speaker 1: criticized for being like a little reckless, a little cutting edge,
Speaker 1: but they were looking at cryonics is not necessarily a
Speaker 1: way to keep UM people in suspended animation, But how
Speaker 1: do we apply this medically and get these people reanimated again, right,
Speaker 1: not just indefinitely, you know, increasing animation well, and how
Speaker 1: do you get medical mainstream medical science behind this period
Speaker 1: is one of their big battles. Uh I. Now that
Speaker 1: al cores in Arizona and then two thousand four there
Speaker 1: was a bill passed by the House there in Arizona
Speaker 1: that basically was going to put them under the regulation
Speaker 1: of the State Funeral Board, which would have effectively probably
Speaker 1: shut them down, and it was pulled from the floor,
Speaker 1: but they said it was a really nasty debate on
Speaker 1: the floor. And uh, because there's a lot of religious
Speaker 1: ethical ramifications here that that I guess we could talk about,
Speaker 1: but they said that we don't know. This could come
Speaker 1: back and they could shut us down. You never know,
Speaker 1: and in Arizona at least, but the ethical concerns is
Speaker 1: alcor On their website again has addressed some of these
Speaker 1: because a lot of religious folks might say, this is not,
Speaker 1: you know, something you should be doing. You shouldn't be
Speaker 1: playing God, quote unquote, and they say that patients are
Speaker 1: theologically equivalent to unconscious patients in a hospital with an
Speaker 1: uncertain prognosis theologically speaking. And they've had people right into
Speaker 1: like people in the Catholic Church and Protestant churches and
Speaker 1: even the Jesus Christ Church of Jesus Christ of the
Speaker 1: Latter day Saints. They've written essays supporting it. Some people
Speaker 1: have Yeah, it's like if you're on life support, you're
Speaker 1: playing God or somebody's playing God with you. But other
Speaker 1: people in religious circles have blasted it. So it's it
Speaker 1: depends on how you want to listen to. Yes, it does.
Speaker 1: And they said it's not just for the rich. That's
Speaker 1: one of the myths. They say it's not an indulgence
Speaker 1: of the rich. They say most of the membership is
Speaker 1: middle class. Yeah, and paid for with insurance, Yeah, life
Speaker 1: insurance on don't Is that true? I have I didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to research that one. Looking not for myself,
Speaker 1: but Paul Rud's making a movie about this. Did you
Speaker 1: see that? It's been done? No what Iceman? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: no no. Um ice Man to the Return of Iceman
Speaker 1: ice Man three, The Iceman Jr. What else? Well, this
Speaker 1: one is bona fide uh Errol Morris, the awesome documentarian.
Speaker 1: He's making his first, uh, non documentary film since the
Speaker 1: early nineties. Fiction, I'm sure, but it's not fiction because
Speaker 1: it's a true story. So the first first feature film.
Speaker 1: Um wow, man, that's awesome. Yeah, it's because it came
Speaker 1: out with a new documentary recently, too, didn't he Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's about that. It's about the tabloid scandal
Speaker 1: when that woman kidnapped the those Mormon I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's a woman kidnapped some Mormon guy and
Speaker 1: like took her, took him away to some aven and
Speaker 1: forced sex upon him for like months and then came
Speaker 1: back and was a celebrity because of it in the seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks really good. So his feature film, Sorry, that's
Speaker 1: all right, it's uh. It's based on the memoir by
Speaker 1: Robert F. Nelson called Uh and taken from this American
Speaker 1: Life segment and Ira Glasses producing This isn't everything taken
Speaker 1: from any this American Life segment And the name of
Speaker 1: This American Lives was Your as Cold at You're Cold
Speaker 1: as Ice was the name of their show. Personally, I
Speaker 1: think high frozen body a little better, way better, Chuck,
Speaker 1: way to So Paul read one of my favorites. He's
Speaker 1: playing this dude. Yeah, good for him. Good. Oh we
Speaker 1: need to talk about Ted Williams real quick. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: good lord. That was close. Well, as you said, Walt
Speaker 1: Disney was not uh suspended and liquid nitrogen, but Ted
Speaker 1: Williams the famous hit her last hit her to hit
Speaker 1: four hundred in baseball is yeah. He's an Alcore member.
Speaker 1: Two thousand two, they put him on Vitrify and um,
Speaker 1: they said it to Vitrify and he was like, whoa
Speaker 1: his there's There was a legal battle over it. Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently his daughter was accusing his son of having him
Speaker 1: uh vitrified put in cryonics animation or suspended animation um
Speaker 1: because he wanted to later sell his dad's d n A,
Speaker 1: which apparently his son was like, yeah, maybe, but dad
Speaker 1: still wanted to. We had a sign packed me and
Speaker 1: our other sister, but not you and so um. He
Speaker 1: didn't even know him till he was thirty, though he
Speaker 1: was a half brother or half so okay. Well, Ted
Speaker 1: was running around telling people all sorts of different stuff.
Speaker 1: Apparently he told his daughter that he wanted to be
Speaker 1: um scattered his He wanted to be cremated and have
Speaker 1: his cremated remains scattered over the Florida Keys. The daughter
Speaker 1: the son said no, we had a packed a signed packed,
Speaker 1: which apparently he was a will to produce. So Judge said, okay,
Speaker 1: Ted's again his stay frozen. You can't sell his DNA
Speaker 1: bing bang boom by Jovi yeah and then banging a gable.
Speaker 1: The sun got a he he was painted in an
Speaker 1: unfair light because of the Sports Illustrated article by Tom
Speaker 1: Verducci that basically slammed him as Hey, this kid didn't
Speaker 1: even know until he's thirty, He's gonna sell his DNA
Speaker 1: and it was apparently he got one version of the
Speaker 1: story and that's it and stopped his fact checking there.
Speaker 1: So I've seen follow up reports where this guy was
Speaker 1: like that ain't what happened, and I did not want
Speaker 1: to sell his DNA and like we really got to
Speaker 1: be close after I met him later in life, and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well you got anything else?
Speaker 1: Just if you want to know how popular this is
Speaker 1: um As of June of this year, Alcor has nine
Speaker 1: d and fifty members and a hundred and six quote
Speaker 1: unquote patients. Yeah, that's what. And Michigan at the Cryonics
Speaker 1: Institute I believe has over a hundred. So there's a
Speaker 1: cup one hundred and change people current currently in the
Speaker 1: United States upside down like that of liquid nitrogen with
Speaker 1: other people, one of them my be Ted Williams. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they're like, hey, check it out. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Yankee Clipper. No, that was Joe Di Maggio, Tied Williams
Speaker 1: was the boss. That was he He was the Red Sox.
Speaker 1: It was like the Monster. I always confused him with
Speaker 1: Johnny Bench. Didn't they play at the same time or
Speaker 1: call your stremski? Uh? Maybe it may have overlapped. It
Speaker 1: was like the big hitter or the monster hitter. Well
Speaker 1: he was the last player to hit four hundred, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Anyway, Let you go, Ted Um. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about baseball, we encourage you
Speaker 1: to type that word into the search bar at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can also type in cryonics
Speaker 1: C R Y O N I C s UM and
Speaker 1: that will lead you to some cool articles. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: if you have not gotten around to reading HP Lovecraft's
Speaker 1: brilliant shorts story Herbert West re Animator, Oh yeah, check
Speaker 1: it out. Probably his best. Um And I said re animator,
Speaker 1: which means that it's time for a listener mail. That's right, boy,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get hammered by Yankee fans and Red Sox
Speaker 1: fans for that. I'm back off of that one. Jody
Speaker 1: Maggio's a Yankee clipper. Ted Williams is the monster, well
Speaker 1: the green monster is? Is that what you're thinking? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's influencing it. But there's something there all right. Today,
Speaker 1: Josh I got on Facebook I don't know if he saw,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't find any good listener mail,
Speaker 1: So some help tell me some stories, and I just
Speaker 1: got a few of those to read off. Nathan. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Nathaniel jerk jeriko Witz Jerkovitz got hit by a car
Speaker 1: while walking home from work earlier this week. As I
Speaker 1: was listening to one of your episodes cool which one
Speaker 1: I don't know? He said. He rolled off the hood
Speaker 1: and checked to make sure nothing was broken, and then
Speaker 1: scrolled back to what I had missed. Nice and uh,
Speaker 1: yeah that was Nathan. Nathaniel, So I hope you're okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hanging there, Nathaniel, Billina Elena said. My doctor says I
Speaker 1: mispronounced letters when I speak, not because of a list,
Speaker 1: but because I have a heart shaped uvula, to be honest,
Speaker 1: until he pointed out, I didn't have any idea that
Speaker 1: everyone else's uvulop did not have a split in the center.
Speaker 1: How about that? Yeah, split uvul Yeah, I've heard of that.
Speaker 1: And Angie Speken says, uh. When I was seven years old,
Speaker 1: my mom spotted a wood tick in my ear while
Speaker 1: eating in the subway. I screamed hysterically. My stepdad tried
Speaker 1: to remove it with a plastic variety of plastic cutlery,
Speaker 1: and then a seemingly toward tracked at the attention of
Speaker 1: a cop who tried his best with keys. I started
Speaker 1: to bleed from my ear and the subway told us
Speaker 1: to leave the subway. Did My mom sat me on
Speaker 1: a bench outside, continued the quest. The man sitting next
Speaker 1: to it next to us asked about why I was screaming,
Speaker 1: and once my mom told him, he asked if he
Speaker 1: could try and produce a hook for a hand. What
Speaker 1: is going on with this story? I'm so confused. She
Speaker 1: had a chicken re ear and no one could get
Speaker 1: it out. They went outside and this dude the subway
Speaker 1: told him, dude, and then this dude with a hook
Speaker 1: on his hand said, can I give it a shot? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's got to New York. I screamed even louder as
Speaker 1: my mother help me down, and the man plucked the
Speaker 1: tick from my ear. So I wanted to I thank
Speaker 1: him for saving my life. And it's still I still
Speaker 1: smile every time I encounter a person with a hook
Speaker 1: for a hand and they think that she's laughing at him.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And then finally, congratulations to our buddy
Speaker 1: Andy John Cox. Yeah with the mustache he got engaged.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, congratulations and she said yes, and uh, he's
Speaker 1: getting married and and he's one of our boys. And
Speaker 1: way to go, dude, and it's fantastic. Way to go.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you shaved off the mustache and it said
Speaker 1: will you marry me underneath it? And Ben I think
Speaker 1: they do. Uh. Yeah, that was a great idea. Chuck Stories.
Speaker 1: You got a story you want to hear it? Wait
Speaker 1: until Chuck asks not forget it. Just go ahead and
Speaker 1: let us now go into our Facebook page. It's a
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can
Speaker 1: also tweet us stories if they consist of a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty characters or less, that'd be good. Um too,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. You can We want your hundred
Speaker 1: and forty character story's on Twitter? Um, good idea. Chuck
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast is our Twitter handle, and
Speaker 1: then you can also send us email to Stuff Podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you