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Selects: How Nitrous Oxide Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Good morning or good afternoon everyone, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here.
0:04
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. It is February and Saturday Select time,
0:09
Speaker 1: because we are going back to that day to talk
0:11
Speaker 1: about how nitrous oxide works. And honestly, the reason I
0:14
Speaker 1: picked this as this select is that I don't even
0:17
Speaker 1: remember doing this one, so I'm gonna listen again, and
0:20
Speaker 1: so should you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
0:28
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Wa Hey, and welcome to
0:39
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Wal There's Charles W Chuck
0:44
Speaker 1: frant Wall, and there's Jerry And this is stuff you
0:47
Speaker 1: should Wall Wall Wall Wall, good podcast you're making. I'm
0:53
Speaker 1: giggling like a schoolgirl. You're making a I think I
0:56
Speaker 1: just topped you schoolgirl. One echo e reverbi uh sal.
1:00
Speaker 1: So this could only be about one thing, nitrous ox
1:03
Speaker 1: side and that's right and two oh, that's right. Hippie Crack,
1:07
Speaker 1: the Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz juice, Yeah why not? I
1:14
Speaker 1: mean those are the street names that has medical applicats.
1:17
Speaker 1: Some of those are made up. Yeah, we're going to
1:19
Speaker 1: cover the whole gamut here. Yeah, medical use and recreational
1:23
Speaker 1: use dangers. Yeah, we're gonna do an episode on nitrous oxide.
1:27
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, so, Chuck, we should probably start not
1:31
Speaker 1: at the beginning, but not at the end, somewhere in
1:34
Speaker 1: the middle, because the history of nitrous ox side is
1:37
Speaker 1: extraordinarily interesting, just the history. Yeah, we're gonna tell it
1:41
Speaker 1: out of order like pulp fiction. That's right. See if
1:45
Speaker 1: you can recognize characters from other movies like Vincent Vegas Brother, Yeah,
1:52
Speaker 1: Michael Madison was Vincent Vegas Brother. Did you know that? Yeah? Oh,
1:55
Speaker 1: you knew that. I did. Well, well, I don't think
1:58
Speaker 1: that's not it's heavily as secret. Did you notice that
2:01
Speaker 1: red Apple cigarettes make an appearance in more than just
2:04
Speaker 1: pulp ficture? Yeah, all right, I'm done. Did you notice
2:06
Speaker 1: that Quentin Tarantino likes to write two hundred and seventy
2:10
Speaker 1: five page scripts. Yeah, but that's nothing compared to the
2:14
Speaker 1: five hundred and eighty page tomb that Humphrey Davy wrote
2:19
Speaker 1: on nitros oxide. Very nice little segue. All right, So
2:22
Speaker 1: we're not even talking about Humphrey Davy yet. He's at
2:23
Speaker 1: the beginning. He's not even at the beginning, but he's
2:25
Speaker 1: towards the beginning. We're gonna talk instead about the sad
2:28
Speaker 1: saga of one Dr Horace Wells d D S very sad. Yeah.
2:33
Speaker 1: So Dr Horace Wells was a dentist in new Haven, Connecticut.
2:37
Speaker 1: I believe in the eighteen forties. What is dds is
2:41
Speaker 1: that Dennis Dennis see is That's what that means. That's
2:44
Speaker 1: what I've always assumed it was. And at this point
2:47
Speaker 1: everyone knows we just make most of the stuff. We
2:49
Speaker 1: stay up. That's right. Uh so you're right, sir. He
2:52
Speaker 1: was a dentist in Hotford, Connecticut. It was Hartford, I said,
2:55
Speaker 1: new Haven. Uh, what's the difference, as long as it's
2:59
Speaker 1: in Connecticut. Uh. And this was in the eighteen thirties
3:02
Speaker 1: and U oh man really yeah, maybe we should start over.
3:08
Speaker 1: Wow wow wow, all right. Uh. He was a dentist
3:12
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties, and he recognized something that all
3:14
Speaker 1: dentists of the day recognized, which is everyone hates your
3:18
Speaker 1: guts because you are causing excruciating amounts of pain on
3:23
Speaker 1: a daily basis to your patients. Yeah. It's it's like,
3:26
Speaker 1: here's some whiskey, Maybe bite on this broomstick. Well, actually
3:29
Speaker 1: you can't do that because you're doing dynastry. You can't
3:32
Speaker 1: even do that. Yeah, you ever heard the term? It's
3:34
Speaker 1: like pulling teeth. That's where it comes from, right, And
3:37
Speaker 1: and so Horace Wells dds dentist dentists. See. Uh. He
3:42
Speaker 1: felt pretty bad about this enough so that, um, he
3:46
Speaker 1: went to a traveling exhibition once that came through town.
3:49
Speaker 1: And this was in the eighteen forties, and it was
3:52
Speaker 1: staged by a man named h. A. Gardner Colton. That's
3:56
Speaker 1: a great name, Gardner Quincy Colton. Yeah he sounds like
3:58
Speaker 1: a like a rich kid from Texas or yeah, or
4:01
Speaker 1: like a side show showman, which is what he was, right.
4:05
Speaker 1: And he actually was in medical school for a little while.
4:08
Speaker 1: And while he was in med school he was introduced
4:10
Speaker 1: to the wonders of huffing nitrous oxide. Yes, and he said,
4:15
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do medical school anymore. Ims is gonna
4:17
Speaker 1: drop out and hit the road with tank the old
4:20
Speaker 1: hippie crack. Yeah exactly, and show people what's what. And
4:23
Speaker 1: so at one of these demonstrations in Hartford and sometime
4:26
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties, um, he saw Colton give this
4:31
Speaker 1: demo and and I guess right afterwards saw a man
4:34
Speaker 1: run into the stage or fell off the stage and
4:38
Speaker 1: hurt his leg and Wells went over. I was like,
4:41
Speaker 1: are you okay? And the guys like, what are you
4:42
Speaker 1: talking about? And he said the bonus sticking out of
4:45
Speaker 1: your legs, sir, And he's like, what's the bone? Now?
4:48
Speaker 1: It wasn't that bad, but he did say interesting. Um,
4:52
Speaker 1: here's what I'll do. I'll get Colton to come into
4:55
Speaker 1: my office tomorrow and my buddy colleague John Riggs. I'll
4:59
Speaker 1: get Cold to administer the gas and I'll get Rigs
5:02
Speaker 1: to pull one of my teeth. And uh he did so,
5:07
Speaker 1: and he said I did not feel so much as
5:09
Speaker 1: the prick of a pin. And he said, I think
5:11
Speaker 1: we're onto something here, something called pain free dentistry a
5:15
Speaker 1: k A. Please stop hating me, right, And so Wells
5:18
Speaker 1: followed in this really great tradition that really stopped in
5:22
Speaker 1: I guess probably about the twentieth century, mid the late
5:25
Speaker 1: twentieth century, of where if you were a scientist you
5:28
Speaker 1: were your own first human test subject. That people still
5:31
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, apparently in um in Marvel Comics they do.
5:35
Speaker 1: One of the greatest articles I've ever read in any
5:38
Speaker 1: magazine anywhere in all time throughout the universe, in perpetuity
5:42
Speaker 1: is called blood spore, and it was about the murder
5:45
Speaker 1: of a mycologist scientists who studies mushrooms, and um, it's
5:51
Speaker 1: really really interesting. There's all sorts of weird like cold
5:55
Speaker 1: case stuff to it, but there's also like an under
5:58
Speaker 1: underlying thread where if you're my oologists and you discover
6:01
Speaker 1: a mushroom, you try it out on yourself, right, Like
6:04
Speaker 1: that's just what they do still today. I think that
6:07
Speaker 1: you tried it on yourself after you fed it to
6:09
Speaker 1: your children, just to see what happened, maybe your dog first,
6:12
Speaker 1: and then you try it on you. Man. I'll bet
6:15
Speaker 1: those those my collogist dogs were bandanas then are super
6:18
Speaker 1: laid back. You know. Uh, what's the name of the article?
6:22
Speaker 1: I want to check that out, blood Sport. It's in
6:24
Speaker 1: Harper's which means it's behind a paywall, but gotcha, it's
6:28
Speaker 1: It's almost worth a year's subscription just for that one.
6:31
Speaker 1: And Harper's archives are definitely full of good articles. Agreed.
6:35
Speaker 1: So Wells was pretty happy because he knew he was
6:38
Speaker 1: onto something there, and he said he performed um, just
6:44
Speaker 1: dental procedures for the next few weeks and months on
6:47
Speaker 1: dozens of patients and they were all like this is great, great,
6:50
Speaker 1: didn't feel a thing, Doc, And he said, I think
6:52
Speaker 1: I'm ready. I wanna present this to some Harvard medical
6:55
Speaker 1: students in the establishment. And he got on stage and
7:00
Speaker 1: uh he went to pull a tooth and the guy
7:02
Speaker 1: started screaming. Yeah. So, like after all of these tests,
7:07
Speaker 1: successful tests, when he finally gets up the gumpch and
7:09
Speaker 1: to give a successful demonstration, it goes as bad as
7:13
Speaker 1: it could. And it's actually called the Humbug affair because
7:17
Speaker 1: the medical students shouted humbug and what was the other
7:21
Speaker 1: swindler at him, and he's like, no, I'm not, I'm not.
7:24
Speaker 1: I swear this is for real, I really care about
7:27
Speaker 1: my patients. In the room started spinning and he fell
7:29
Speaker 1: over and when he came to, he was on skid row,
7:31
Speaker 1: hooked on chloroform and nitrous oxide. Yeah. He later went
7:35
Speaker 1: on to say that, um, although wait, let me let
7:37
Speaker 1: me clarify, you technically can't get hooked on nitrous oxide.
7:41
Speaker 1: But he was huffing a lot of nitrous oxide, right. Uh. Well,
7:46
Speaker 1: although Davy, well we'll get to that a spoiler. He
7:49
Speaker 1: went on to say that he thought that he had
7:51
Speaker 1: probably withdrawn too much too soon from the guy, because
7:56
Speaker 1: as we'll go on to talk about here in a
7:58
Speaker 1: little bit, um, when you stop breathing in nitris, you
8:02
Speaker 1: go back to normal pretty quickly quickly. So he kind
8:04
Speaker 1: of just aired. I don't know, I would have gone
8:06
Speaker 1: a little bit overboard for the demo. Sure, on the
8:09
Speaker 1: same side, I would have been like ninety night pal.
8:11
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, he he became well, like you said,
8:16
Speaker 1: not hooked, but a heavy user of ether and chloroform
8:21
Speaker 1: in the On his thirty third birthday, he was I
8:25
Speaker 1: think awaiting arrival of his He ended up living alone,
8:28
Speaker 1: moved and was waiting on his wife and kid to
8:31
Speaker 1: come to London. But by this time he'd sunk into
8:33
Speaker 1: like a terrible depression, right and uh he was alone
8:37
Speaker 1: because his family wasn't able to join him yet. And
8:40
Speaker 1: he flipped out on his thirty third birthday and went
8:43
Speaker 1: out on the street and through acid on these two
8:44
Speaker 1: women flipped out after going on like a chloroform vendor. Yeah,
8:48
Speaker 1: and went to prison, and in prison he sort of
8:52
Speaker 1: reached He kept doing chloroform and ether in prison because
8:55
Speaker 1: I guess you could get it, and um hit rock
8:59
Speaker 1: bottom and under an ether binge slashed his femoral artery
9:04
Speaker 1: in his thigh died. Well, yeah, he talked to the
9:07
Speaker 1: guard into escorting him home to get his shaving kit.
9:12
Speaker 1: And at home it's like I need a big razor.
9:14
Speaker 1: I think at home or maybe back if he's getting
9:16
Speaker 1: chloroform in prison, it could have been there. He huffed
9:19
Speaker 1: a dose of chloroform to anesthetize himself and then he
9:22
Speaker 1: cut his femoral artery. So to the end, he was
9:25
Speaker 1: a believer in anesthesia, I guess. So. However, um years later,
9:32
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four, he was He was recognized by
9:35
Speaker 1: the A d A, the American Dental Association as a
9:39
Speaker 1: pioneer of using uh not ether But what are we
9:44
Speaker 1: talking about two in dentistry in two oh yeah, And
9:47
Speaker 1: do you know who got him to that point? Well, yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: Gardner Colton. That's right. He set up practice as a
9:55
Speaker 1: dentist after all, and it was his successful demonstrations that
9:59
Speaker 1: got the d A on board. So now we need
10:02
Speaker 1: to go back in time. Yeah, even further back. That's
10:04
Speaker 1: sort of the middle. So we're in the way back machine.
10:10
Speaker 1: I guess we didn't point out we were in there already.
10:12
Speaker 1: I think everyone just assumed, and we go back seventy
10:15
Speaker 1: years previous to Horace Wells, to a guy named Jason
10:20
Speaker 1: Priestley Dylan, Sorry, no, Brandon, Joseph Priestly. Oh that guy
10:26
Speaker 1: Jason Priestley's dad, Yeah, or great great great great great
10:30
Speaker 1: great great grandfather. I don't think there was any relation. Actually,
10:33
Speaker 1: you don't know, you're right, Joseph Priestley. He was an
10:39
Speaker 1: Englishman and he begins Priestley, that's right. And he was
10:43
Speaker 1: a big He was an enlightened thinker, and he was
10:47
Speaker 1: a contemporary Ben Franklin. And he was a smart guy
10:51
Speaker 1: on a lot of different subjects. He was a polyglot. Yeah,
10:54
Speaker 1: that's a good word for it. Cool guy. And no,
10:57
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. He was a poly math math a holly
11:00
Speaker 1: glodd as somebody speaks a bunch of different languages. Poly
11:02
Speaker 1: Math is somebody who's in a bunch of different fields. Yeah. Probably.
11:07
Speaker 1: He was an enlightenment guy for sure. And in the
11:10
Speaker 1: seventeen seventies he was studying a love I think we
11:13
Speaker 1: should go back to using only old terminology because what
11:16
Speaker 1: they called gases back then was the study of the airs,
11:20
Speaker 1: which is great, totally makes sense. Gases. It needs to
11:24
Speaker 1: shoot a duck and he actually lived next to a brewery,
11:29
Speaker 1: so he had a lot of access to CEO two
11:32
Speaker 1: and very smartly created a device called the pneumatic trough
11:37
Speaker 1: to isolate gases, collect and isolate these gases, and he
11:40
Speaker 1: was good at it so well. A guy named Steven
11:42
Speaker 1: Hales actually created the first pneumatic trough, which is actually
11:46
Speaker 1: pretty simple invention. It's neat though, so like you have
11:49
Speaker 1: a tube. Let's say you have a fire and you
11:52
Speaker 1: want to collect carbon monoxide from it. You basically have
11:55
Speaker 1: a tube that collects it the smoke that's coming off
11:58
Speaker 1: of it, and the tube goes into a vat of
12:01
Speaker 1: water and up into a like a glass bell jar
12:07
Speaker 1: that's upside down. It's inverted so that there's there's air
12:09
Speaker 1: at the top. I think the principle is similar. And
12:12
Speaker 1: so the smoke goes into the water and then goes
12:15
Speaker 1: up and is filtered through the water. And what the
12:18
Speaker 1: gas you have on the other end is whatever you're
12:20
Speaker 1: looking for, or a bunch of different gases that you
12:23
Speaker 1: can study and pure form simplistically beautiful. It is so
12:26
Speaker 1: um priestly had his own that he made the pneumatic trough,
12:30
Speaker 1: and this guy actually isolated eight different gases or airs
12:36
Speaker 1: for the first time, which apparently is a record. Still. Yeah,
12:39
Speaker 1: I don't know what the record is like most gases
12:41
Speaker 1: discovered in a single lifetime. Okay, I guess all right,
12:46
Speaker 1: that's good it is. I don't know that there's any
12:49
Speaker 1: more gases to discover. I wonder, and who studies that
12:53
Speaker 1: kind of thing? What do you call somebody who studies
12:55
Speaker 1: gases an arologists, anist? Well, if you do that right
13:00
Speaker 1: into us, because I want to know all about that,
13:02
Speaker 1: and if there's if you guys think there's any gases
13:04
Speaker 1: left to be discovered here on earth. Agreed. Alright, let's
13:08
Speaker 1: take a break before we talk about Humphrey Davy because
13:11
Speaker 1: he's This is where the story gets really good. That
13:32
Speaker 1: was quite a break. Yeah, I can't believe you broke
13:35
Speaker 1: that lamp. That was upset, all right, Humphrey Davy. Uh.
13:42
Speaker 1: He worked at a place called the Newmatic Institute, and
13:45
Speaker 1: they used gases as for therapy, curative therapies, and he
13:52
Speaker 1: got into using them on himself, which, like you said,
13:54
Speaker 1: was sort of the thing to do at the time,
13:56
Speaker 1: you experiment on yourself. Right. Plus, as the author of
13:59
Speaker 1: this Rolling Stone article from nineteen seventy five that I
14:03
Speaker 1: read pointed out he was also like twenty at the time,
14:06
Speaker 1: so it totally makes sense that he would like half
14:09
Speaker 1: a bunch of nitrous oxide and then the call it science, right,
14:13
Speaker 1: but he I mean, it really was science. So this
14:15
Speaker 1: guy apparently had tried it a few times before, but
14:20
Speaker 1: then his big experiment, his first huge experiment was on
14:23
Speaker 1: Boxing Day of seventeen, right, which is December. It's very
14:27
Speaker 1: important that you remember December. Why is it important, Well,
14:33
Speaker 1: it was Boxing Day, but it was also literally box
14:38
Speaker 1: day because Humphrey David got into a box and had
14:42
Speaker 1: some guy pump in was it like twenty courts? Yeah,
14:45
Speaker 1: he's he stepped into a seal box and he requested
14:49
Speaker 1: a physician, like a real doctor, to release twenty courts
14:53
Speaker 1: because otherwise it'd just be crazy, right. He released twenty
14:57
Speaker 1: courts of nitrous oxide every five minute as long as
15:00
Speaker 1: I'm conscious. That must have been the safe words. I'm
15:05
Speaker 1: passed out. And he went for an hour and fifteen
15:07
Speaker 1: minutes like that in this box, and then he stepped
15:11
Speaker 1: out and apparently grabbed some oil skins or also called
15:15
Speaker 1: gas bags, and um huffed another twenty courts right afterward.
15:20
Speaker 1: And they're like, how are you still standing? And he goes,
15:24
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm flying. He basically did. He had a
15:27
Speaker 1: great disposition to laugh, which eventually is where laughing gas
15:31
Speaker 1: would come from. He talked about shining packets of light
15:35
Speaker 1: and energy. He talked about objects dazzling in their intensity,
15:39
Speaker 1: and sounds amplified into a cacophony that echoed through infinite
15:43
Speaker 1: space and losing all connection to external things. It's pretty cool.
15:48
Speaker 1: So we there's this really great article on the public
15:50
Speaker 1: Domain Review and it's called oh excellent, gas bag, gas
15:55
Speaker 1: bag or airbag, airbag, air bag, I'm sorry, which is
15:58
Speaker 1: a quote from a poet that was friends with Humphrey Davy,
16:01
Speaker 1: who became the Poet Laureate of Great Britain. Later on
16:05
Speaker 1: Um and the the Um, the author really does a
16:09
Speaker 1: good job of describing what nitrous oxide does to you,
16:13
Speaker 1: almost suspiciously good. So um. They say that the first
16:20
Speaker 1: signature was it's curiously benign sweet taste, followed by a
16:23
Speaker 1: general pressure in the head as he continued to inhale.
16:26
Speaker 1: Within thirty seconds, the sensation of soft, probing pressure had
16:30
Speaker 1: extended to his chest and the tips of his fingers
16:32
Speaker 1: and toes. This was accompanied by a vibrant burst of
16:35
Speaker 1: pleasure and a gradual change in the world around him.
16:38
Speaker 1: Objects became brighter and clearer, and the space in the
16:40
Speaker 1: cramped box seemed to expand and take on unfamiliar dimensions.
16:44
Speaker 1: Now under the influence of the largest dose of nitrous
16:47
Speaker 1: oxide anyone had ever taken, these effects were intensified to
16:50
Speaker 1: levels he could not have imagined. So I keep going, sure,
16:56
Speaker 1: do you want to do? You want to take over?
16:58
Speaker 1: I think it's better when we break it up. I'm
16:59
Speaker 1: gonna the southy part. So okay. His hearing became fantastically acute,
17:04
Speaker 1: allowing him to distinguish every sound in the room, and
17:07
Speaker 1: seemingly from far beyond, a vast, distant hump wah wah
17:11
Speaker 1: wah wah, perhaps the vibration of the universe itself. In
17:15
Speaker 1: his field of vision, the objects around him were teasing
17:17
Speaker 1: themselves apart into shining packets of light and energy. He
17:20
Speaker 1: was rising effortlessly in a new world whose existence he
17:23
Speaker 1: had never suspected. Somehow, the whole experience was irresistibly funny.
17:28
Speaker 1: So Robert Southey, his buddy you mentioned the future poet laureate.
17:32
Speaker 1: He brought him in afterward, He was like, I gotta
17:34
Speaker 1: get some more people in on this fantastic I gotta
17:37
Speaker 1: share this. Yeah, that's what you do. So he brought
17:39
Speaker 1: in Southey, got him high, and he wrote his brother
17:44
Speaker 1: Tom a letter that said, oh Tom, exclamation point, such
17:49
Speaker 1: a gas as Davy discovered the gaseous oxid. Oh Tom again,
17:55
Speaker 1: exclamation point, I have had some. It made me laugh
17:58
Speaker 1: and single and every toe and fingertip. Davy has actually
18:01
Speaker 1: invented a new pleasure for which language has no name.
18:04
Speaker 1: Oh Tom, I am going for more this evening. It
18:08
Speaker 1: makes one strong and so happy, so gloriously happy. Oh
18:12
Speaker 1: excellent air bag exclamation Boyit pretty great stuff, No wonder
18:16
Speaker 1: he was so in the summer of after they closed
18:21
Speaker 1: the shop down the Pneumatic Institution. During the day he
18:25
Speaker 1: would invite surgeons and playwrights and poets and chemists and
18:30
Speaker 1: anyone who was interested who we could get the word
18:32
Speaker 1: to to come in there and huff nitrius um. I
18:36
Speaker 1: was about to see under the guise of experimentation, but
18:38
Speaker 1: it really was because he would he learned that he
18:41
Speaker 1: was really finding that there were It was a language
18:44
Speaker 1: experiment because no one could accurately describe what they were
18:47
Speaker 1: feeling with English words right exactly. They He found that
18:52
Speaker 1: very strange and insignificant that people would just come out
18:56
Speaker 1: and just couldn't put it into into words. Their experience
19:00
Speaker 1: it was, I mean, it was a brand new sensation
19:01
Speaker 1: there was. Um. One guy, James Thompson said, we must
19:04
Speaker 1: either invent new terms to express these new and peculiar
19:07
Speaker 1: sensations or attach new ideas to old ones before we
19:10
Speaker 1: can communicate intelligently or I'm sorry, intelligibly with each other
19:15
Speaker 1: on the operation of this extraordinary gas. I think um
19:18
Speaker 1: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet, um put it best.
19:23
Speaker 1: He put it really succinctly. He basically said that it
19:26
Speaker 1: was like coming in from the snow into a warm room. Yeah.
19:31
Speaker 1: So what happened was he did these experiments with these people.
19:33
Speaker 1: They eventually got kind of tired of it. He experimented
19:37
Speaker 1: on himself, like not even in the room. He just
19:39
Speaker 1: would fill up a big balloon or not a balloon
19:41
Speaker 1: but a silk bag and just walk around England huffing.
19:47
Speaker 1: And he found himself getting psychologically hooked at least because
19:53
Speaker 1: he said, he confessed that the desire to breathe the
19:55
Speaker 1: gas is awakened in me by the sight of a
19:58
Speaker 1: person breathing. So he would just see someone walking and
20:01
Speaker 1: breathing and think, oh man, I wish I had some gas.
20:04
Speaker 1: That's how they call it, hippie crack. Yeah, exactly. So
20:07
Speaker 1: everyone else fell away. He was only experimenting with themselves
20:10
Speaker 1: for a little while. Then he brings in Coleridge and
20:12
Speaker 1: they really buddied up, and um he I think they
20:15
Speaker 1: were just kind of saw eye to eye on the gas,
20:19
Speaker 1: like neither one of them wanted to cease using it.
20:22
Speaker 1: And so again, though you have to point out all
20:25
Speaker 1: this time, while he's under the he's just huffing nitrous
20:27
Speaker 1: basically constantly. Humphrey Davy is still remaining a man of science. Right,
20:32
Speaker 1: So remember December was the day that the Boxing Day
20:38
Speaker 1: experiment took place, right by Easter. Just a few months later,
20:42
Speaker 1: he'd written a five hundred and eighty page scientific treatise
20:46
Speaker 1: on nitrous oxide and its effects on humans and animals.
20:52
Speaker 1: Should I read the title, Yeah, Researches chemical and philosophical
20:56
Speaker 1: chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or deep Oh man, what is
21:01
Speaker 1: that word? Deflogisticated nitrous air and its respiration was the
21:06
Speaker 1: name of it? Yes, So in that book he he
21:09
Speaker 1: mentioned something, um kind of I guess off handedly. He
21:13
Speaker 1: says that as nitrous oxide appears capable of destroying physical pain,
21:17
Speaker 1: it may probably be used with advantage during surgical operations
21:20
Speaker 1: in which no great effusion of blood takes place. Yes,
21:23
Speaker 1: so not like open heart surgery, but maybe if you're
21:26
Speaker 1: going to set someone's broken arm. Right, So he says this,
21:30
Speaker 1: But it's another forty years before Horace Wells starts trying
21:36
Speaker 1: to use nitrous oxide as an anesthetic. Up to that point,
21:40
Speaker 1: it's basically just a high society drug that people have
21:44
Speaker 1: like nitrous parties with. That was the fate of nitrous
21:48
Speaker 1: oxide from eighteen hundred to about the eighteen forties. And
21:51
Speaker 1: then Horace Wells picks it up and it becomes brought
21:54
Speaker 1: into the medical field. Yeah, they finally start using it
21:57
Speaker 1: for its intended Uh, well, what would end up being
22:00
Speaker 1: its intended purpose? That's still used today and uh. In fact,
22:05
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide is the number one inhaled anesthetic in the
22:09
Speaker 1: medical profession. Asked for it by name. And here's the
22:13
Speaker 1: deal though, when you get it in the at the dentist,
22:16
Speaker 1: they can actually vary it, but it never goes more
22:19
Speaker 1: than a seventy thirty mix. I saw that too. This
22:22
Speaker 1: article says it's always a fifty fifty mix. That's not right.
22:24
Speaker 1: So it's it's um no more than nitrous yeah, which
22:29
Speaker 1: is very much key, as you'll learn, because one of
22:31
Speaker 1: the big dangers of doing it recreationally is not mixing
22:36
Speaker 1: it with oxygen. If you mix it with oxygen, like,
22:40
Speaker 1: you're fine, You're totally fine. Um. So it's kind of
22:44
Speaker 1: nuts chuck that with nitrous oxide. We spent at least
22:49
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years and still the day we're
22:52
Speaker 1: not a million percent sure, but at least a hundred
22:55
Speaker 1: and fifty years using it medically without understanding how it worked. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: it's like you said, though, it's still a little dicey.
23:02
Speaker 1: It is a little bit dice you know. It makes
23:04
Speaker 1: you feel good, right, It does the trick, and it
23:07
Speaker 1: kicks in your your dopamine and all the pleasure receptors.
23:10
Speaker 1: So it's it's classified as three things. It's an analgesic,
23:13
Speaker 1: which means that it kills pain. It's a it's an anesthetic,
23:16
Speaker 1: but it's actually not a true anesthetic. And uh, it's
23:19
Speaker 1: an anxioltic, which means it diminishes anxiety. And so I
23:25
Speaker 1: found this two thousand six paper UM and it basically says,
23:29
Speaker 1: here's what we think is going on. So within anxiolytic
23:34
Speaker 1: um it triggers the same UM response in the brain
23:38
Speaker 1: as a benzodiazepin, which is like valium or annex or
23:42
Speaker 1: something like that. So it actually does cut down an anxiety,
23:45
Speaker 1: which is why they dentist will use it for like
23:48
Speaker 1: little kids or patients who are like nervous about going
23:51
Speaker 1: to the dentists. Get a little gas, probably not a
23:54
Speaker 1: seventy thirty concentration, just a little bit, and it will
23:57
Speaker 1: cut down on your anxiety and you're totally I doc,
24:00
Speaker 1: go ahead and do whatever you like. Yeah, UM, as
24:03
Speaker 1: far as an analgesic is concerned, it actually does have
24:06
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of UM an ability to cut down
24:10
Speaker 1: on pain. And it does so by activating your opioids
24:14
Speaker 1: that those are released, opioids are producing the brain and
24:17
Speaker 1: your oh sorry, opioid receptors are activated as well. And
24:22
Speaker 1: then it also goes to your spinal column and messes
24:25
Speaker 1: with its ability to UM to process pain there too.
24:29
Speaker 1: And they say that something like a just a thirty
24:32
Speaker 1: percent concentration of nitrous oxide is equal to about ten
24:35
Speaker 1: to fifteen milligrams of morphine. Yeah, and that's if it's
24:39
Speaker 1: fifty fifty or below with oxygen. It's on the analgesic side,
24:44
Speaker 1: I think up to the se is when it is
24:47
Speaker 1: known as an anesthetic, right, And so it's not technically
24:50
Speaker 1: an anesthetic in that if you if you huff that
24:54
Speaker 1: until you lost consciousness, you're probably in big trouble. You
24:58
Speaker 1: don't want to use nitro sock side for that, and
25:01
Speaker 1: anesthetists know that kind of thing. But it's used usually
25:04
Speaker 1: as an aid to a general anesthetic, right, And it
25:08
Speaker 1: does have anesthetic properties, but it's a dissociative anesthetic, kind
25:12
Speaker 1: of like ketamine, which means that it goes after your
25:15
Speaker 1: n M d A receptors, which have to do with
25:18
Speaker 1: memory formation and they control UM like neural firing, right,
25:24
Speaker 1: And it it has a dissociative effect, which is why
25:27
Speaker 1: when you're on nitris you feel like you have left
25:30
Speaker 1: your body. You've gone back the time you died and
25:33
Speaker 1: are being reborn. Yeah. And one of the um we'll
25:36
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about childbirth later, but UM
25:38
Speaker 1: one of the quotes I saw from a childbirth nurse. Um,
25:42
Speaker 1: they said they the mothers who use it during childbirth
25:45
Speaker 1: are that sometimes they can still feel pain, they just
25:48
Speaker 1: don't care about it, which would be the disassociative quality exactly.
25:52
Speaker 1: But I don't get because you said it was an analgesic. Yeah,
25:56
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I guess maybe childbirth is so painful
26:00
Speaker 1: I can't knock it out completely. And also, I mean,
26:02
Speaker 1: like with anesthetics of any kind, UM or even analgesics,
26:05
Speaker 1: any any person is going to have different reactions, varying
26:08
Speaker 1: reactions to different drugs, you know. UM, So that's that's
26:13
Speaker 1: kind of the current state of understanding with UM the
26:17
Speaker 1: what nitrous does to the brain. Right, you can also
26:21
Speaker 1: find nitrous elsewhere outside of medical settings to right, Yeah,
26:24
Speaker 1: you can find in a can of ready whip or
26:27
Speaker 1: if you UM, A lot of chefs will have their
26:31
Speaker 1: own UM nitrous canister to put whatever they want in
26:34
Speaker 1: it to be used as a propellant. So, uh, it
26:38
Speaker 1: works really well with fatty liquids and heavy creams and things.
26:42
Speaker 1: So what happens is the gases in their compressed into
26:45
Speaker 1: a liquid and mixed with the cream because it's it's
26:48
Speaker 1: fat soluble, highly pressurized, but as soon as you open
26:53
Speaker 1: that thing up, it turns back into a gas and
26:55
Speaker 1: expands it like four times. So that's why the whip
26:58
Speaker 1: cream will come shooting out. What's neat is you could
27:01
Speaker 1: buy ready Whip twenty years hence, after it sat in
27:06
Speaker 1: a garage in Tampa, Florida, say somewhere hot and muggy,
27:11
Speaker 1: and shake it up and pour it out, and that
27:14
Speaker 1: whipped cream will be totally fresh, not the least bit rancid.
27:18
Speaker 1: That's because nitrous oxide totally displaces air and oxygen, so
27:23
Speaker 1: no bacteria can can form inside a can of Ready
27:27
Speaker 1: Whip or any other instant whip cream. Well, and that
27:30
Speaker 1: displacement of oxygen is also why you can die if you,
27:34
Speaker 1: let's say, put a bag over your head to intensify
27:37
Speaker 1: your high. If you're using it recreationally, well, we'll talk
27:39
Speaker 1: more about that later, right, Yes, before we break though,
27:43
Speaker 1: let's mention cars, because anyone who has ever seen fasts
27:49
Speaker 1: and furious is or is this Sammy Hagar solo fan,
27:53
Speaker 1: I can't drive, that's right? Does he talked about nitros No,
27:57
Speaker 1: but it's just assumed that there's nitrous and all. Well,
28:01
Speaker 1: you've heard. You may have heard or seen on TV
28:03
Speaker 1: or movies about using nitrous in your car, like you
28:06
Speaker 1: have that little tank, or you may see one of
28:08
Speaker 1: those cheesy cars in a parking lot with the with
28:11
Speaker 1: the little tank in there. And basically what it does
28:13
Speaker 1: is cars run burn hotter. Engines burn hotter and go
28:16
Speaker 1: faster with more oxygen. And if you crank in that
28:20
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide, Uh, it's just basically going to ramp up
28:23
Speaker 1: the oxygen levels going into the engine. Right, with more oxygen,
28:28
Speaker 1: more gaskets burned, right, more gaskets burned, more horsepowers produced
28:32
Speaker 1: because the gases expanding pump those pistons even harder than
28:35
Speaker 1: You're too fast and too furious, yea for the roads,
28:37
Speaker 1: maybe even doing a little tokyo drifting. Have you seen
28:41
Speaker 1: those any of them? No? But I believe I believe
28:45
Speaker 1: they're the most lucrative movie franchise in the history of
28:49
Speaker 1: like all movies, because they made seven of them. Yeah,
28:53
Speaker 1: but like the first one made a billion dollars world
28:56
Speaker 1: its first week, or the last one, the last one
28:59
Speaker 1: made like a billion dollars. It's crazy how I saw.
29:03
Speaker 1: I think I saw the first one. Yeah, I've never
29:04
Speaker 1: seen any of them. But that's about it's just not
29:07
Speaker 1: my bag. No, I don't. If you like that kind
29:10
Speaker 1: of thing, that's great. I'm not I've never been a
29:13
Speaker 1: car guy. Yeah, you know, like I like my cars,
29:17
Speaker 1: but I've never been like, oh man, look at that
29:19
Speaker 1: sports car. I sure would like to drive fast in that. Yeah. Well,
29:23
Speaker 1: remember when we hosted or judge that Red Bull thing.
29:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was talking to uh young Jock and
29:30
Speaker 1: I was talking to him and he started talking about cars,
29:33
Speaker 1: and I'm like, Wow, we don't have anything common, do we. Yeah, Josh,
29:35
Speaker 1: and I judged a soapbox derby contest sponsor by Red
29:38
Speaker 1: Bull and Young Jock at local Atlanta rapper who was
29:41
Speaker 1: super cool. He's very nice guy, but he was a
29:43
Speaker 1: car dude. And I'm not a car dude. I know
29:45
Speaker 1: you're not a car dude either. Like, well, I got
29:48
Speaker 1: my pickup truck. Yeah, I'm like, look at those uh tires,
29:52
Speaker 1: pretty neat. They really make contact with the asphalt, don't they.
29:58
Speaker 1: All Right, well, let's take a break and go learn
30:00
Speaker 1: more about cars, and we'll come back and talk about
30:03
Speaker 1: some of the recreational use and dangers. But we're done
30:05
Speaker 1: talking about cars, right, Yes, And by the way if
30:25
Speaker 1: you want to know about cars, if you're into that
30:27
Speaker 1: kind of thing and you love us, and you're not
30:30
Speaker 1: getting your fixed from cars from us, go listen to
30:33
Speaker 1: car stuff. You don't, you're definitely not getting your fix
30:37
Speaker 1: about cars from us. I can tell you that you
30:38
Speaker 1: can get it from car stuff. Ben and Scott have
30:40
Speaker 1: it locked down over there. I bet you they've covered nitros.
30:44
Speaker 1: I'm sure in the automobile they've covered everything all right, so, uh,
30:48
Speaker 1: recreational use. Um. It has this medical purposes and its
30:51
Speaker 1: food and auto purposes. But nitros is very famous for
30:57
Speaker 1: becoming um, a big, big especially at concerts. That's what
31:03
Speaker 1: they call it, hippie crack. In the in the seventies,
31:05
Speaker 1: you started being able to buy this stuff like a
31:08
Speaker 1: big balloon full of it at like a concert festival
31:11
Speaker 1: or let's be honest, at a grateful dead show. Right.
31:14
Speaker 1: They're also I'll post that Rolling Stone um article on
31:19
Speaker 1: the podcast page for this really interesting. But it's also
31:23
Speaker 1: a a what is that? Oh it's called second hand embarrassment? Like, um,
31:30
Speaker 1: what people getting never watching the Jeb Bush campaign? Second
31:33
Speaker 1: hand embarrassment? Well, yes, well you never you're embarrassed somebody, Yes, exactly. Um,
31:39
Speaker 1: the the the you definitely get that from reading this
31:43
Speaker 1: because the writers very earnestly super seventies. Really Yeah, like
31:50
Speaker 1: one of the person the people who has interviewed as
31:53
Speaker 1: a as an expert of sources, the guy from High Times.
31:57
Speaker 1: Only in the mid seventies did you get away with
32:00
Speaker 1: calling up the High Times guy and just using him
32:03
Speaker 1: like a regular source. You'll see what I'm saying, like
32:06
Speaker 1: it sounds normal. Read the article and you'll be like, yeah,
32:08
Speaker 1: this is super seventies. Well, in the seventies is when
32:13
Speaker 1: it started becoming a big concert going activity. Oh wait,
32:16
Speaker 1: I know what it was going to solid dorm rooms.
32:18
Speaker 1: In this Rolling Stone article, they were saying like if
32:21
Speaker 1: you go to like a lot of us said at
32:23
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, California, and they were like places all over,
32:26
Speaker 1: not just a concerts Um, it was everywhere in the
32:30
Speaker 1: seventies because a lot of people were like, as it's cool,
32:33
Speaker 1: but this stuff like you can just stop and five
32:35
Speaker 1: minutes later you're back on your feet. Yeah, so it
32:39
Speaker 1: was like a big deal to him. Well, which is
32:40
Speaker 1: one reason they call a hippie crack because the the
32:43
Speaker 1: highest short lived. Uh, and you want to do another one?
32:48
Speaker 1: Uh and go listen our crack episode. Should we talk
32:50
Speaker 1: about why the Highest short lived? Uh? Well, let me
32:54
Speaker 1: finish my thoughts. Sorry so um. Earlier in the nineteenth
32:59
Speaker 1: and twentieth century, though, like you said, when it was
33:01
Speaker 1: um sort of the back room parlor game of the
33:04
Speaker 1: high society. It made its way into Hollywood and uh
33:08
Speaker 1: back in like the days of making High Times and
33:10
Speaker 1: movies like or uh not High Times the h what
33:14
Speaker 1: was the one Casa Blanket? No, the famous pop movie
33:18
Speaker 1: I'm totally blanking out on the pot movie for madness. Uh.
33:22
Speaker 1: There were movies about huffing, though. Was Charlie Chaplin was
33:25
Speaker 1: in one in nineteen fourteen where he played a dentist. Uh, well,
33:30
Speaker 1: someone posing as a dentist who would hugh gas? Have you?
33:33
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that chaplain um thing where he
33:35
Speaker 1: does coke and jail and ends up like pulling the
33:37
Speaker 1: bars apart. It's pretty hilarious actually, And there were several
33:42
Speaker 1: uh movies early on called Laughing Gas, not just one, right,
33:46
Speaker 1: and they weren't sequels. There were just multiple movies called
33:48
Speaker 1: Laughing Gas. Yeah, I'm sure you could get a decent
33:51
Speaker 1: amount of people into a theater to watch people doing
33:53
Speaker 1: laughing gas, and then they thought, man, I could go
33:56
Speaker 1: for some laughing gas myself. All right, so what were
34:00
Speaker 1: you gonna say about? Oh? Why the high last such
34:05
Speaker 1: a short period of time? So it's constant while you're
34:07
Speaker 1: huffing it, right, because you're huffing nitrogen gas or nitrogen
34:11
Speaker 1: nitrogen oxide gas, and it's displacing oxygen I'm sorry, nitrous oxide, guess,
34:16
Speaker 1: And it is displacing oxygen. But as long as you're
34:19
Speaker 1: huffing in a safe supply of oxygen as well, your
34:22
Speaker 1: brain is continuing to function. But your opioid receptors are
34:26
Speaker 1: also going crazy, and you're dissociative, and d m A
34:29
Speaker 1: receptors are going crazy too, and so you're high, but
34:32
Speaker 1: you're staying alive because you're taking in enough oxygen. Right.
34:36
Speaker 1: The thing is, your body doesn't metabolize almost any of
34:41
Speaker 1: that nitrous oxide. Something like point zero zero four percent
34:45
Speaker 1: of nitrous oxide is metabolized for the most part. You
34:48
Speaker 1: huff it in, it's dissipated through your lungs into your
34:51
Speaker 1: bloodstream and then brought back out and you exhale it,
34:54
Speaker 1: so it resembles almost exactly it's same form that it
34:58
Speaker 1: went in when it comes out, which means that there's
35:01
Speaker 1: no hangover and it's expelled from your body through breathing,
35:05
Speaker 1: just normal breathing after you take the nitrous away, which
35:08
Speaker 1: is why so many people were like, you can have
35:10
Speaker 1: crazy visions on this. This is what the hippies were saying.
35:13
Speaker 1: You can have crazy visions on this, and it takes
35:15
Speaker 1: you to other universes and then five minutes later, you're fine.
35:19
Speaker 1: Sign me up. Let's call the High Times guy and
35:21
Speaker 1: see what he thinks about it. Let's get a quote
35:23
Speaker 1: from him. I did find a study though, and um,
35:28
Speaker 1: I think it was last year, uh, published in Clinical Neurophysiology,
35:33
Speaker 1: that they hooked people up to an e G and
35:36
Speaker 1: had m huff nitrous They really yeah, And the guy
35:39
Speaker 1: there said nitrous oxide has control over the brain in
35:42
Speaker 1: ways no other drug does. And what they found was,
35:45
Speaker 1: um it altered UH basically created slow delta waves for
35:49
Speaker 1: up to three minutes across the front of the brain
35:52
Speaker 1: every ten seconds. I wonder if that's what makes the
35:54
Speaker 1: wallah sound, Well, it's it. Basically what they found is
35:58
Speaker 1: it lasted for three minutes. After you think you're okay,
36:02
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so it's still uh still doing damage even
36:07
Speaker 1: though you think you feel fine for for three minutes,
36:09
Speaker 1: which completely surprised them. Oh yeah, I could see that especially.
36:13
Speaker 1: I mean, if the effects whereof you would think you
36:16
Speaker 1: would you you would physiologically be back to normal too.
36:20
Speaker 1: That is surprising. I found another study UM from I'm
36:24
Speaker 1: not sure when that sometimes in the last few years,
36:27
Speaker 1: where they studied the effects of it on rats and
36:32
Speaker 1: found that UM short term low concentration exposure and low
36:37
Speaker 1: concentration meaning like fifty years like what they used medically.
36:40
Speaker 1: UM would like the effects of it on the brain
36:44
Speaker 1: neural cells is reversible. But it is very true. And
36:48
Speaker 1: this is why everybody hears about nitrous oxide is that
36:51
Speaker 1: when you huff you it kills brain cells. That's absolutely true.
36:56
Speaker 1: It create It creates apoptosis, which is pre programmed cellular death,
37:01
Speaker 1: and your neurons. It causes your brain cells to die
37:03
Speaker 1: because of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen or nitrous oxide
37:07
Speaker 1: displaces oxygen and your brain needs oxygen. And when your
37:09
Speaker 1: brain cells don't get oxygen, they die and your brain
37:13
Speaker 1: undergoes hypoxy All right, not good for you. Plus the
37:17
Speaker 1: fact that UM it goes after n d M A
37:20
Speaker 1: s uh receptors which are responsible for the mile in
37:23
Speaker 1: which is the sheath that coats your your nerves right, Um,
37:29
Speaker 1: that can lead to brain damage. That last two the
37:33
Speaker 1: thing is, and this is a rat study. It seems
37:35
Speaker 1: like it's prolonged exposure or exposure of super high concentrations
37:39
Speaker 1: that that create irreversible damage. Yeah. They've done a lot
37:43
Speaker 1: more studying about it in the UK than here because
37:46
Speaker 1: up until this year it was legal. Oh they allowed it. Yeah,
37:49
Speaker 1: well so I guess the results of the study weren't promising. Uh. Well,
37:53
Speaker 1: I mean this was that only what is it now
37:56
Speaker 1: mid February. Yeah, it's only like two weeks ago that
37:58
Speaker 1: like literally came on the really has officially law. Uh.
38:02
Speaker 1: And there were big demonstrations in in England, like like
38:05
Speaker 1: massive huffing parties on the lawn of uh, like the
38:10
Speaker 1: I don't know where they decide these things in Parliament
38:12
Speaker 1: put Buckingham Palace, say Buckingham Ballace because they're like this
38:17
Speaker 1: is you know, what are we gonna do at Glastonbury
38:20
Speaker 1: Festival every year? Now? Uh? And they nice bozz marketing
38:24
Speaker 1: by the way, what the Glastonbury Well, we're not going
38:28
Speaker 1: to that. I know. I was saying nice, okay, Um,
38:31
Speaker 1: well they do it a lot there. That's why the
38:33
Speaker 1: festival people said it's like a big litter offender because
38:38
Speaker 1: I could totally see that canisters and balloons are just everywhere,
38:41
Speaker 1: and you know, birds pick up the balloons and they
38:44
Speaker 1: tried to fly off of the canisters and tear their
38:46
Speaker 1: legs off because they're not strong enough to lift them.
38:49
Speaker 1: So worldwide it was in two thousand fourteen it was
38:52
Speaker 1: the fourteenth most used drug in the world. And m really, yeah, huh,
38:59
Speaker 1: what do you think of higher or lower? I didn't
39:01
Speaker 1: even think about it. I think it's that's just that's
39:03
Speaker 1: that just totally caught me by surprise. Uh. And the
39:06
Speaker 1: Independent said that um, the UK's largest drug and alcohol
39:10
Speaker 1: charity alistair Boe. They said, you know what, we can't
39:14
Speaker 1: credibly deny that, compared to other drugs, is relatively low risk.
39:18
Speaker 1: The risk from taking it from balloons are quite low. Uh.
39:21
Speaker 1: And to back up what you said, he said, where
39:22
Speaker 1: there have been stories about deaths, they tend to be
39:24
Speaker 1: from people who are using canisters uh in masks. Uh.
39:29
Speaker 1: That's when you get into danger. Like that's stupid. Let
39:31
Speaker 1: me get out this old World War two gas masks,
39:34
Speaker 1: or let me put a bag over my head, or
39:35
Speaker 1: let me get in a car. Uh, and then you're
39:37
Speaker 1: not getting that mix of oxygen and then you die.
39:40
Speaker 1: First of all, kids, if you are putting a plastic
39:43
Speaker 1: bag over your head for any reason, don't you're a dummy.
39:46
Speaker 1: That's a dumb thing to do. Well, yeah, you're you're
39:51
Speaker 1: you're reaching, you're going down the wrong path in life.
39:54
Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it, because I don't
39:57
Speaker 1: want some kids to be like, oh, I'm a dummy
39:58
Speaker 1: and that's why I do these things. You know, that's
40:01
Speaker 1: self defeating. Come on, come on, son. But there have
40:04
Speaker 1: been plenty of plenty of incidences of death. Um. Joseph Bennett,
40:09
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old from North London, died in two
40:11
Speaker 1: thousand twelve after falling into a coma, and then just
40:15
Speaker 1: this year that twenty one year old student was found
40:18
Speaker 1: dead um in his room with two hundred spent cartridges.
40:23
Speaker 1: Oh well, just chasing that high it's the problem. Yes,
40:26
Speaker 1: I mean, you shouldn't try it at all, but you're
40:29
Speaker 1: you're gonna die when you have those high, high, high concentrations. Yeah,
40:34
Speaker 1: that's the I mean, that's the problem. With nitris. I mean, like,
40:37
Speaker 1: if you're being administered nitrous, even in a medical setting,
40:41
Speaker 1: you can have a bad reaction to it, and it
40:43
Speaker 1: turns out your allergic to nitris and your debt or
40:46
Speaker 1: you're in if you are in, right, But if you
40:50
Speaker 1: even if you're in a medical setting, you're you're you're
40:53
Speaker 1: flirting with death. You're right there on on the edge
40:55
Speaker 1: of death. And if you're doing outside of a medical setting,
40:58
Speaker 1: your likelihood of dying or or suffering some sort of
41:01
Speaker 1: horrible adverse reaction to it is even more through the roof, right,
41:05
Speaker 1: especially if you're taking hits straight out of a tank
41:08
Speaker 1: and you're not taking breaths of clean air in between. Yes,
41:12
Speaker 1: you you very likely could die. And it's not just
41:15
Speaker 1: um hypoxia that that gets you or asphyxiation. You can
41:20
Speaker 1: also die from passing out and hitting your head. Yeah.
41:24
Speaker 1: Or I saw this one sad case. I think it
41:26
Speaker 1: was in the United States. This lady's son, like you know,
41:31
Speaker 1: wandered out into traffic and got hit by a car
41:34
Speaker 1: from nitrous. Yeah, because he did nitros and was just
41:37
Speaker 1: like so spaced out, he just kind of walked out
41:39
Speaker 1: into traffic. Um, because you're not you know, you're not
41:42
Speaker 1: aware of what's going on at the time and chasing
41:45
Speaker 1: that high like I was talking about, Uh, it would
41:48
Speaker 1: feel so good, You're like, but it's so fast, Like, well,
41:51
Speaker 1: how can I prolong that experience? I'll just stop breathing
41:54
Speaker 1: regular air in between. What a waste? Yeah, it's just
41:58
Speaker 1: it's not smart. No, it doesn't know. Um, I think
42:02
Speaker 1: we got that across anyway. I think so you know
42:04
Speaker 1: who doesn't do nitrous no? How no way? Scientologists? Uh why?
42:11
Speaker 1: L Ron Hubbard hated nitrous oxide so much so that
42:15
Speaker 1: he stopped going to the dentist. He had famously terrible
42:18
Speaker 1: um teeth, and he didn't go to the dentist, and
42:22
Speaker 1: he in eight he did go to the dentist to
42:26
Speaker 1: have some work done, and they put him under with
42:28
Speaker 1: some nitris and he had a near death experience and
42:31
Speaker 1: came back and he wrote a manuscript called ex Caliber,
42:34
Speaker 1: and it's unpublished, and in ex Caliber, l Ron Hubbard
42:38
Speaker 1: claimed that anyone who read it either went insane committed suicide.
42:42
Speaker 1: I remember reading about that, and and all of this
42:44
Speaker 1: knowledge was given to him from his nitrous oxide experience.
42:47
Speaker 1: So he determined that nitrous oxide is very bad it's
42:50
Speaker 1: a hypnotic, it makes you too suggestible, and um, you
42:54
Speaker 1: should avoid at all costs. Interesting. Yeah, he writes about
42:57
Speaker 1: it in Dianetics, saying it's it's bad jam. He's the
42:59
Speaker 1: only person ever do it and not say this is great.
43:02
Speaker 1: You had a bad time on it. Well, let's talk
43:04
Speaker 1: about childbirth unless you have anything else. So in Canada,
43:11
Speaker 1: in Finland, Australia, in the United Kingdom, traditionally women have
43:18
Speaker 1: used this and still do today during childbirth up to
43:22
Speaker 1: six in the UK and about and those other countries,
43:26
Speaker 1: but it's not in the US. In two thousand eleven,
43:28
Speaker 1: less than one percent of hospitals even offered it. I've
43:32
Speaker 1: never heard of that in the U. S. Well, that's
43:34
Speaker 1: all changing now. Um, basically the medical establishment is basically
43:39
Speaker 1: saying there's really no good reason not to. It's just
43:42
Speaker 1: sort of stubbornness in our history and being fixed in
43:45
Speaker 1: our ways um of offering the epidural and and other
43:49
Speaker 1: kinds of drugs during childbirth. So it's there's been a
43:52
Speaker 1: big push lately to have it as an option at
43:54
Speaker 1: least for women. Um, labor machines are only fifty fifty.
43:58
Speaker 1: You can't even alter the setting to go any higher
44:00
Speaker 1: than that. Uh. And it's self administered, Like the woman
44:04
Speaker 1: has the mask and she breathes it when she feels
44:07
Speaker 1: like she needs it, and at any point she can
44:10
Speaker 1: be like nope, I want the epidural. Um. The thing
44:14
Speaker 1: is so epidurals can be really expensive. Um nitris is
44:18
Speaker 1: super cheap. It is super cheap. And again it's as
44:20
Speaker 1: effective as ten to fifteen milligrams of morphine for taking
44:25
Speaker 1: care of pain. So they're basically saying women should have
44:27
Speaker 1: the option at least if they want to try it out. Uh.
44:30
Speaker 1: It's a lot cheaper than an epidural. Uh safer And
44:34
Speaker 1: they haven't um epidural I mean they're narcotics and epidurals say,
44:38
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of side effects, and
44:40
Speaker 1: they really haven't found any side effects with that fifty
44:42
Speaker 1: fifty mix under like a controlled supervise setting. Well, the
44:46
Speaker 1: big fear though, is that aside from dizziness, the kid
44:49
Speaker 1: is going to absorb some of this and there's going
44:51
Speaker 1: to be neural cell death in the baby as it's delivered.
44:56
Speaker 1: Is that has that been proven wrong? They don't think
44:58
Speaker 1: there is any danger to the key aid so far,
45:00
Speaker 1: because they said it's filtered through the lungs and uh
45:03
Speaker 1: not like the narcotics that are filtered through deliver um.
45:07
Speaker 1: So they said, so far they haven't found where it
45:09
Speaker 1: hurts a baby in any way. Plus to let you
45:11
Speaker 1: remember being born. I just think the self administration part
45:16
Speaker 1: it is pretty interesting. Yeah, you know, it makes lets
45:20
Speaker 1: a woman feel more in control, supposedly of their own
45:23
Speaker 1: uh comfort. Right, So I'm all for it. Why not?
45:28
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, if it doesn't have any adverse effects,
45:32
Speaker 1: why not. It is a pretty good question. Are you
45:35
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else. That's nitrous socks
45:37
Speaker 1: side and two oh Humphrey Davy the gas. Uh. If
45:45
Speaker 1: you want to know more about nitrous oxide, type those
45:47
Speaker 1: words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
45:49
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts, time for a listener
45:51
Speaker 1: mayo no, Chuck no, no, what is it time for?
45:55
Speaker 1: It's time for administrative So chuck first and foremost. I
46:07
Speaker 1: really want to thank John Morgan over at Queen Charlotte's
46:11
Speaker 1: Pimano Cheese Royal. He has hooked us up good, good stuff,
46:17
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff. The men cheese like the best pimono cheese
46:21
Speaker 1: you can buy on the planet, better than palmetto cheese.
46:24
Speaker 1: I think so all right, yeah, yeah it's good and
46:27
Speaker 1: there's like some yeah it's really good. Good try that stuff.
46:31
Speaker 1: Queen Charlotte's Permono Cheese Royale. Alright. We received Christmas cards
46:34
Speaker 1: from the Kavanaughs, the Lees, the Loses and you know
46:40
Speaker 1: Hillary and Mike who were talking to They hook us
46:43
Speaker 1: up with the cheese. Yeah with a flathead lake, flathead
46:46
Speaker 1: lake or just flathead cheese. I think flathead lake. I
46:49
Speaker 1: think it is too. It's delicious. Hillary, You're the best. Yeah,
46:52
Speaker 1: thank you. And the Nelson's so thank you for those
46:55
Speaker 1: Christmas cards. Um, Mike over at Shaker and Spoon and
47:00
Speaker 1: the rest of the gang. I thank them before for
47:02
Speaker 1: sending the box. Um go check out Shaker and Spoon.
47:06
Speaker 1: It's awesome, great gift for yourself for somebody else where.
47:09
Speaker 1: They send you all the ingredients you need to make
47:12
Speaker 1: cocktails voting recipes. You just add booze and wow are
47:16
Speaker 1: your friends? And what better time to go off the
47:19
Speaker 1: page and thank Crown Royal When we off handedly mentioned
47:23
Speaker 1: that the Crown Royals uh Rye Whiskey won the whiskey
47:27
Speaker 1: the year and I was like, man, I'd love to
47:29
Speaker 1: try that they sent us. Some someone heard it and
47:32
Speaker 1: they sent us six bottles of boots. Nice guy, did
47:36
Speaker 1: you try not yet? I guess you just found it
47:39
Speaker 1: today in the office. So there you tried it. That'd
47:41
Speaker 1: be we should we should mention Crown Royal basically every
47:46
Speaker 1: time every episode. So Crown Royal. Ashley Miller, thank you
47:50
Speaker 1: for the wonderful Lego candy that you gave us in
47:52
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Yes, thank you for that. Um, and I
47:56
Speaker 1: think in Los Angeles to remember, she just follows us
47:58
Speaker 1: around with Lego candy at least in California now, Um.
48:02
Speaker 1: Lucy Brooks sent us a nice letter. Good luck with
48:04
Speaker 1: the rest of the Granny list. Lucy, thank you, congratulations
48:08
Speaker 1: the best of luck to Allison and Chuck for their
48:10
Speaker 1: wedding in Cleveland. Yes, Um, Connor and Beatriz Marinan send
48:15
Speaker 1: us our beautiful wine cork grief Chuck, thanks, Yes, loves
48:20
Speaker 1: that too. She won't set it down. Good luck with
48:22
Speaker 1: your alcoholism, right, I'm just kidding. Thanks to Eric Young
48:27
Speaker 1: from Squamish BC for the typewritten letter. Eric has a
48:31
Speaker 1: site called Pigeons and Inc. Dot Com, where he offers
48:36
Speaker 1: the service of writing typewritten letters. On others behalf Yeah,
48:40
Speaker 1: and he uses a Squarespace site. Pretty awesome. How about that.
48:44
Speaker 1: Kelly from the Elephants Trunk send us some awesome toys.
48:47
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for those, Kelly. Thank you to
48:50
Speaker 1: em from Melbourne, Australia via Knoxville, Tennessee for the homemade
48:54
Speaker 1: sour dough hot Cross bun. Yes, that was good. Um.
48:59
Speaker 1: And in Elizabeth Henry send us a signed copy of
49:02
Speaker 1: Who Killed Mr? Moonlight by the One and Only David
49:05
Speaker 1: J of Bauhaus And I made a joke about ba
49:08
Speaker 1: House and um, Elizabeth Henry said, Oh, David J is
49:12
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's dad. I'll get him to sign a copy
49:14
Speaker 1: of his autobiography and mail it to the guys. Who
49:17
Speaker 1: was he in Bouhouse? He played bass? Wow? Yeah he
49:20
Speaker 1: also had a good solo career too. Yeah. Yeah. Shan Erskine,
49:24
Speaker 1: thank you for the stuff you should know bottle cap
49:26
Speaker 1: logo art. That was great. Yes. Um. Jeremy and Irene
49:31
Speaker 1: Kemia k A m I y A send us glass
49:35
Speaker 1: on teak which is amazing. Chuck. Let me just describe us.
49:38
Speaker 1: They basically take an awesome piece of teak driftwood and
49:42
Speaker 1: then blow a glass bowl so that it molds on
49:46
Speaker 1: the bottom to that specific piece of teak. And then, buddy,
49:50
Speaker 1: you've got yourself a beautiful place to house a goldfish
49:53
Speaker 1: put used for hurricane, lamp for candle. Keep your keys
49:57
Speaker 1: in there, maybe hold those uh ellie bean counting contests
50:01
Speaker 1: with who knows Sky's limit. But it's awesome and attractive
50:04
Speaker 1: and it looks really really cool and mid century modern,
50:07
Speaker 1: so good. Check out K A M I y A
50:10
Speaker 1: CEO dot com. Dorrian Wilson, owner of Revival Ltd. They
50:15
Speaker 1: make cool shirts and the proceeds of those shirts go
50:18
Speaker 1: to people in Brazil displaced by the World Cup. Is
50:22
Speaker 1: that right? Oh? Yeah? Wow? Uh and you can find
50:26
Speaker 1: that information at Revival Global dot com. Yes. Um, Johnny
50:31
Speaker 1: Wood who works for Yakima, the outfitter, the biking outfitter.
50:39
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Yakima. Yeah,
50:41
Speaker 1: and they like pike racks, thank you. Yeah, he sent
50:44
Speaker 1: us some swag. Yeah, I got a tuk that I wear. Yeah,
50:47
Speaker 1: and he travels around selling Yakima stuff, which probably sells itself,
50:51
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And uh, he listens to
50:54
Speaker 1: us on the road. So thanks a lot, Johnny. This
50:55
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites of recent memory. Robbie Zupta.
50:59
Speaker 1: He made the bullet pins man, and he sent tho
51:03
Speaker 1: so long ago and it's so it's we we've just
51:06
Speaker 1: been lax, so thank you for those. It's really neat.
51:08
Speaker 1: He has a series called the He's an artist called
51:10
Speaker 1: the Mightier Than series, as in pin as mightier than
51:14
Speaker 1: the Sword, and he takes like bullet casings and makes
51:17
Speaker 1: these fountain pins from bullet casings. It's really neat. Makes
51:21
Speaker 1: a statement in school looking Yeah. Um, we got a
51:25
Speaker 1: nice letter from Jenny Cochrane. That's that. We want to
51:28
Speaker 1: thank Matt for the handmade hinge game h E n
51:31
Speaker 1: g e is in stone inch Um. And Lorie Gesh
51:35
Speaker 1: for the copy of her kid's book Copper Light Colon,
51:38
Speaker 1: a really crappy story, and she sent us some real
51:42
Speaker 1: copper lights, which is fossilized poop. Oh. That's right, I
51:46
Speaker 1: remember seeing that. I have a piece of tuck to
51:48
Speaker 1: my cheek right now. Thanks to our buddy Gary for
51:51
Speaker 1: the homemade cookies. Uh. And then Beth View Manic Lopez
51:55
Speaker 1: sent us a copy of Unbound colin How eight Technologies
51:59
Speaker 1: made us human, insformed society, and brought the world to
52:02
Speaker 1: the Brink by Richard L. Courier. Thank you very much
52:04
Speaker 1: for that hard copy. No less Uh. In my final one,
52:08
Speaker 1: I had a bunch of people send very lovely gifts
52:11
Speaker 1: for Ruby. Oh yeah, my baby when we got her,
52:15
Speaker 1: and um, I'm not going to read off all of
52:18
Speaker 1: their names, but you know who you are, and it
52:21
Speaker 1: was very very nice. You know you are they Uh,
52:25
Speaker 1: I've got the last one all right, uh, which seems
52:28
Speaker 1: chumpy following that heartfelt thing. But thanks a lots to
52:32
Speaker 1: Brett Goods first sending us pork Cloud stuff port Cloud
52:36
Speaker 1: pork grind, chips, soap and pork dust. If you're like,
52:40
Speaker 1: I'm not too big on bread crumbs, I'd rather than
52:43
Speaker 1: be porky. Port Cloud has you covered. I think that
52:46
Speaker 1: was decidedly non chumpy. Thank you nice, Thank you Brett Goods.
52:51
Speaker 1: Thanks to all Right, Well we're gonna finish up. We
52:53
Speaker 1: have quite a few more and we're gonna finish up
52:55
Speaker 1: in the next episode. I think yes, and uh. As always,
52:59
Speaker 1: thank you to those who send in good thoughts and
53:02
Speaker 1: letters and handmade fun gifts. Yeah, we're nice. We really
53:06
Speaker 1: appreciate it. It's the best. Uh. So if you want
53:09
Speaker 1: to get in touch of this. You can tweet to
53:10
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast. You can join
53:12
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
53:15
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
53:17
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
53:20
Speaker 1: at a home on the web Stuff you Should Know
53:22
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53:26
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