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How Dying Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse storks dot com. Hey,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, he and Jerry's over there. Jerry, for the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: first time, I just saw a meme that's been out
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: for a couple of years. Yeah, that's that happened. That's
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: like when you rolled me like two years after it
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: was popular. You're like, isn't it the best? I was
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: lying in Wait, yeah, I thought that happened. So and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: there's nothing more obnoxious than sending someone something and be
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: like fill it two years ago. I'm so so sorry.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I tried to show you something funny, right, you know.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But yeah, Jerry just saw the do we even say
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the mumble mouth reporter? Maybe? Yeah, the lady who supposedly
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: had a migraine but appeared to have had a stroke
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: reporting from the Grammys in Los Angeles a couple of
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah. I still don't know whether it's okay
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to laugh at that, because I don't know really what
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: happened to her. Well, we didn't laugh. We very solemnly
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: showed Jerry. Yeah, and she laughed terrible. Jerry. Um, I've
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: got one for you. I've got a bit of an intro.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's not much, so get your hopes up. Um. Have
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: you ever heard of the Population Reference Bureau? No, you have,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: because I've mentioned it before. I've mentioned this this article before.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: It's on PRB dot org. It's called how Many People
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Have Ever Lived on Earth? And I don't know what
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: we've mentioned and it maybe the Population Episode or something.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But it's a really cool little article by this demographer
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: named Carl hobb h au b and he Um. There's
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: even a video of him explaining it if you couldn't
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: get what he was going with. But hobb um he
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: reckons that modern humans, people who are virtually indistinguishable from
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you or me, aside from the fact that they're not
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: wearing like any clothes really um showed up about fifty
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: two thousand years ago. So hobb puts the population of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: humanity at two uh in fifty thousand BC. Okay, so
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: from that point to two thousand eleven, he extrapolates, does
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the math, does this little demography thing, and hobb comes
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: up with the number that one hundred and seven billion,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: six hundred and two million, seven hundred and seven thousand,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: seven hundred ninety one people have ever lived between fifty
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: thousand BC and two thousand eleven. See, that's pretty neat,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it is. That's a lot of people. He says. That
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: means about six point five of that are alive right now,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: or we're in two thousand eleven, right, so we're dying off.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: That's the point. All one hundred and seven billion, six
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: hundred two million, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: one of those people had one thing in common, one
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: thing aside from being humans, no, not even not even yeah, yeah,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: they didn't have tax and in fifty BC they had
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: running from sabretooth tigers and death. It was death. That's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the one thing. All one hundred and seven billions, six
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: d two millions, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: one of those people had in common. You know, when
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I was thinking of your intro driving here today, I
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: thought that'd be funny if Josh was like, how long
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: people been dying Chuck, And you know what, this wasn't
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: that far off? Was like, he wouldn't do that. You're like,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: every way too boring. That's a good number. I like that.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Hundred seven billion, six hundred two million, seven hundred one
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: thousand seven seven. Yeah. Yeah, and that includes you and me. Pal.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You know what that means. You're gonna die. I'm gonna die,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Jerry's gonna die at least two or three times. We're
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: all gonna die. Yeah. This is our dying podcast, and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we have covered just about every aspect of dying. Can
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you die from a broken heart? How rigor mortis works?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: What's the worst way to die? Um? Is there a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: best way to die? Did we do that? That was
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: kind of in the is there was? Yeah? Um, we've
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: covered everything from autopsies, peak oil, what can be done
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: with the dead body? Ninja's Yeah, well Ninja at least
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you should know better than that. Yeah. We really have
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: danced around everything except just how dying works. And this
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: is gonna be a sad podcast in many ways and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: gruesome in some ways. Yeah, because we're gonna touch on
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: some of the stuff we hit on in like rigor
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: mortis and autopsies and the actual dying process. Right, But
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, so brace yourself. And I've mentioned this guy
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: scores of times at least, but as the it's a
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Charles Man. You're thinking of the great psychologist Ernest Becker,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, shout out to our pal Joe Randazzo, who's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: like in the Becker Now, Ernest, there's Ernest, Ernest, you're
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: thinking of Max Ernest. Okay. Ernest becker Um wrote the
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Denial of Death, seminal work that basically says, we're all
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: just doing everything we came to think about our own demise,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and there is some sort of health, whether it's spiritual, emotional,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: there's some sort of health or well being I think
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: from facing the fact that you're going to die and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: talking about it. Yeah, so let's talk about death, baby,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about you and me. Let's do it. Okay.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So Molly Edmonds Um, who used to be on Sminty
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Step Mom never told you we call it sminty Um
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: wrote this one, and I think it is interesting. And
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I usually don't like it when articles say, like the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: definition of blah blah blah, but it's kind of interesting
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that in the first encyclopedia it was just the separation
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of the soul from the body, and now it's you know,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: thirty times that long in the encyclopedia, right, And that's
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: just sort of indicative of how we used to think
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: of it and how I don't know if it's ironic
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: or not, but how medical science has complicated that over
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the years. Yeah, well it's definitely ironic because I mean,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: we used to be confident that we understood death. It's
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: like that person isn't moving anymore. If you ask him
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: what he wants to eat, he's not going to respond.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: If you choose something for him to eat, like a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: block of cheese, it's not going to be swallowed like
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: that's death. And since there was perhaps a lot more
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: religiousness associated with death and dying than there is today, um,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that kind of underscored the belief and death. It's the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: soul departing from the body, and what what more do
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you want to know, egghead, it's death. Well yeah, and uh,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: way back, you know, a few d years ago, you'd
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: call it a priest and they they checked the body,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: see if it's breathing, and say, yep, they're dead, and
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: that was pretty much it. The doctor wasn't even involved
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: at that point. There may not have even been such
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: a thing as doctors, and if there were, they were
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: wearing like masks that made them look like crows to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: protect them from the plague. So they weren't any better
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: it's ascertaining death than a priest. Was true. When doctors
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: did come along and they invented things like the stethoscope,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: they could actually check and see if there was a heartbeat.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Before that, there was bal force test, which I couldn't
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: find out a lot about this other than you stick
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: needles into the heart with little flags on it and
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: see if the flags move. I think that's pretty straightforward.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Really yeah, I think that's about it. I mean, that's
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the test by that, And there were other tests that
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: like a priest who may have come to say whether
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you were dead or not, would use like placing a
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: feather above the mouth or around the mouth or knows
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: to see if he moves. Um, the old mirror mirror
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: trick that's still you know, useful, it is, but only
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: if the mouth is still moist. If it's a dried mouth,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: it's probably not gonna fog up a mirror. Well, if
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it's not breathing, it's not gonna fall right exactly. Um.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So I said that medical science has complicated it, and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what's happened over the years, because as we
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: progressed with medicine, we discovered a lot of ways to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: actually reverse death, like bring people back from the dead,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: whether it's something as easy as CPR or as complicated
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: as you know, machines to help you breathe and feed you. Right,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And not only that, we've entered this really awkward period
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: um in human medical history where the machines that can
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: tell us whether someone is alive or not are more
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: advanced than our machines that can bring a person back
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: from death. Yeah, so we have ways to sustain the body,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: but not necessarily the the person, depending on your definition
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: of death, like the faintest trace of a brain wave
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: maybe right. Yeah, So we went from holding a feather
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: under somebody's mouth or who knows to see if they
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: were alive, to using the m r I s to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: see whether there's electrical activity. And we're finding that all
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of these old signs, these old outward signs of death
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily mean that the person is dead. And even
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: if the person is dead, we have technology, like you
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: were saying, to resuscitate them. The question is, if we
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: resuscitate them and they're still not talking, they still don't
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: tell you what they want to eat, are they alive? Well? Yeah,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and we in this hasn't been that long you know,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I mean in the fifty two thousand years or whatever
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the people have been dying. It's only been the past
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, sixty something that we've had to come up
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: with terms like persistent vegetative state and irreversible coma because
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of those machines that can resuscitate or sustain a body.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: And that was when the French neurologists describe the coma
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: deposs which is a state beyond coma basically, uh, brain death,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: although that didn't come along until technically until nineteen when
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School did uh, basically defined it for the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: first time. Yeah, and although they didn't even call it
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: brain death at the time, what they call it just
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: irreversible comma like you're not coming back. Brain death was
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: kind of tagged on later. Um. So yeah, so comma
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: to pass um, vegetive, persistent vegetative state, brain death. Um,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: all these things would indicate again that you're dead. The
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: problem is is we have these machines that can keep
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: your body warm, you can keep your chest rising and falling,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: can keep your body going indefinitely. Um. But the thing
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: is there's something that's not there, and does that mean
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: you're dead. There's been a lot of talk about, um,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: exactly what constitutes death. Defining death is a very very
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: difficult thing to do, especially through the advancement of medical technology.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It's kind of changed every time you come with the Okay,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I got it, this is the definition of death. Medical
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: technology can provide some picture of a state of consciousness
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: or life that throws the wrench in the works, you know. Yeah,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and it's um. Actually, after night it took one presidential
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: commission is when they finally in the United States wrote
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a paper called Defining Death, Medical Legal and Ethical Issues
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and the Determination of Death. That was the basis for
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which basically rejected the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Harvard idea that of the higher brain, which is like,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: when your personality and your memories are gone the cortical brain,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that means you're dead. And they rejected that in favor
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of the whole brain, which includes the brain stem, which
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: is what keeps you breathing and functioning. Um, They're rejected
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: in favor of that. So Harvard was like, right, UM,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I I I don't know. I think I subscribed to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the higher brain death the definition of death. Um, the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: brain stem. I'm yeah, that's pretty significant. Um, you can
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: be born with just a brain stem. We talked about
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Mike the headless chicken before um he had his head
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: cut off, which included his brain, but his brain stem
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: was still there and he's a chicken, so it didn't
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: really matter. Um. But the that is a there's a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: huge division between the two because there's a big difference
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: between breathing and being able to swallow for yourself and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: making a conscious decision whether again what you want to
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: eat right there, or having memories or just reacting to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: people aside from like you know, physical reaction. Right. Yes,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and that's one of the one of the there's a
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: whole article on brain death. Maybe we'll do that one.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I thought we did that now I think we did
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: it in the organ donation Procurement episode. We talked about
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: brain death and testing for and death like they shoot
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: ice cold water in your ear canal. Definitely remember covering
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, I think it was in the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: organ donation moment or maybe living wells. Obviously we might
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: have touched on it there. We did. We did wills,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: but we hit on living wills. But you know, you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: mentioned organs. I don't think we said that. That was
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: a big kind of a quandary in the nineteen sixties. Um,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in the late I'm sorry, mid nineteen fifties, and then
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: really in the nineteen sixties is when we went organ
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: transplant crazy. Um actually kind of not just the United States,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: all over the world. Doctors said, hey, we can actually
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: give people a shot at life because we can now
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: transplant kidneys and lungs and hearts. The problem was, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this is sort of one of the sad things that
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Molly points out, is that the definition of death kind
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of came about was hurried along, maybe because we needed
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: organs from these bodies that were still technically alive, which
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: is very ghoulish proposition. I mean, it makes sense from
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: a very utilitarian standpoint. It's like, this guy doesn't even
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: know he's laying there, and he's got a great kidney
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that could go to his sister, who knows that she
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: needs a kidney. She's gonna die, and she's got kids
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: that she wants to hang out with, and like, can
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: put this kidney to good youth. So let's let's figure
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: this out. But um, as Molly says, like most developed
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: countries have signed on to the brain stem where it's
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like you're brain can no longer keep you alive like
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: on your own. You can't swallow, you can't take a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: breath for yourself, so you're dead. Um. The problem is
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that's that's just that's different. That's a much much's much more.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It's a narrower definition of death, I guess. And I
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: think that that probably rules out a lot of people
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: who might otherwise be used to harvest organs harvest I know. Um,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk about death itself. It's funny
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that you well, it's not funny, but out of all
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: the different ways people can die, I thought it seems
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: simplified to break it down into three ways, but that's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: really kind of the three ways. Yeah. I think we
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: talked about that in autopsies two right. Yeah, it can
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: be an accident obviously, Um, that's called the death. Yeah,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the violent death, which is also an opsie. I guess, well,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: not an it's tragic homicide or suicide. So check. Let's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: talk about what it's like to die from different types
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: of death. You dug this up, yeah, because I've really
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, what is it like to drown
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: or to be burned alive? Yeah? And and people have
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: survived some of these things and come back to tell
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: the tale. That's obviously the only way we're going to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: find this stuff out or from lucky people. Um, drowning,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I've always heard drowning is a good way to go
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: because it's not so painful. Yeah, and that like the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: brain supposedly releases endorphins at the end. Yeah, same with freezing,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I've heard too. Maybe true. Um, although drowning victims have
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: reported uh, aside from the panic, a tearing and burning
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: sensation when your water starts filling with lungs and quickly,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: hopefully really quickly after that is the feeling of calmness
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that overcomes in tranquility. Yeah. Um, a heart attack. You've
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: got the squeezing chests, pain in your chest or your
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: left arm, Yeah, like a weight on your chest right. Um.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: What I didn't know is that because of the heart
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: not delivering oxygen to the brain any longer, you can
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: lose consciousness. Um, within like ten seconds. Um, I didn't
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: realize that. I think, like it was, there's a lot
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: more to it. Well, it depends. You know, everyone has
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: their own signature heart attack as well. Um, if you
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: bleed out, I imagine this is not one of the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: best ways to go. Um, after about a liter and
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a half of blood, you're gonna be thirsty and weak
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and anxious. Anything over too, you're gonna be pretty confused
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and dizzy and probably lose consciousness pretty soon. Now, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: all of that would be that would relate to how
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: fast you're losing blood, and it would probably be very
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: unpleasant depending on how you're losing blood. Like why because
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you would imagine that if you're stabbed in the gut
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, you got the attendant pain
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in addition to this dying from loss of blood or
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: like man reservoir dogs. Yeah, it's like one of the the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: most hardcore ways to open a movie or not open.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: But they cut right to that scene after the diner scene,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: right after the walk Yeah. Um. Electrocution. Um, if you're
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: in your house and you get electrocuted, could stop your
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: heart right then and there. And uh, if you're in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: an electric chair, you may have actually heated your brain
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: up to the point where you die or suffocated to death. Right.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But the there's indications that being electrocuted with enough voltage
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: that instantly you lose consciousness. That's the idea probably with
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the quote un quote humane, I'm sorry quote humane end quote.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop doing that. I'm going back to quote
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: unquote what if you fall from a height. If you
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: fall from a height, supposedly UM time slows, which is awful.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, you're gonna experience all of this. Yeah,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: that's uh yeah, the idea that you that you really
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: can take it all in, that's really awful. So they've
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: they did a study of UM jumpers from the Golden
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Gate Bridge, which is seventy five what is that two
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: hundred thirty it's high enough, and they they found evidence
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: that a lot of them died from exploded lungs, exploded hearts, UM.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Their organs were all cut up from their ribs, which
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: would indicate death was pretty much instantaneous. Yeah. We talked
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: about that on something too recently, I think, or maybe
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I heard it someone else talking about it. It's pretty
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that way to go. What the Golden Gate Bridge or
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: just just falling diving from a height. Yeah, I can't remember.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I was talking to about jumping in the water. I
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was like, what actually kills you when you jump in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the water from the eye, and that was like your
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: organs smash into each other and explode. Yeah, I guess
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: from any height. Yeah, but when you when you die
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: from that would be from organ explosion or whatever. Yeah,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: or you know the brain obviously if you go head first. Yeah,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that's um, the long drop back in the day would
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: although they still you can get hung in certain states
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: if you choose really yeah, Washington state and now you
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: can huh. Um, you can choose that as your method.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: They'll build you the gallows and uh. The idea that
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: there is you want your neck to snap, otherwise he's
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: died slower and you know, suffocate. The problem is there's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: a study of thirty or four prisoners that found four
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: fifths of them died partly from asphyxiation. Really, that's the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: wrong way to hang somebody. If you if you don't
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: snap their or they don't lose consciousness immediately, Um, they
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: sit there and hang and die of asphyxiation. That's a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: bad way to go. Uh. And speaking of bad, I
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: think being burned to death maybe one of the worst.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And then what we came up with on the I
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: think so because you feel it and you'd think like
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: your nerve endings, that's what I thought, like, oh, your
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: nerve endings are probably like stop responding quickly. But apparently
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that's not the case. No, not only is that not
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the case, Apparently you're fire further sensitizes your nerve endings,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: so you feel even more pain. Yeah, but luckily most people,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I think the vast majority of people who die in
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: fires actually die from smoke inhalation before they ever feel
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: pain from fire. Yeah, that are well, I don't know
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: about before they feel pain, but hopefully quick enough. Well,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you know, cover monoxide thinks, so like, well, there's a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: lot of smoke you are download to the ground and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: that's of the carbon carbon monoxide is so you're entailing
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: mostly that, so it's possible it's before, it's true. And
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: then the natural death, which is uh, passing of old
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: age or disease. And here in this country we have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: kind of whipped up a lot of the disease over
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the years into into they sniff them off. The case, right, Well,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it depends like some of the ones that like kill
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: undeveloped countries, like diarrheal disease, like dying from diarrhea. Um,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you don't have that much in the US, but we
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: have chronic disease like obesity, and diabetes and UM cardiopulmonary disease. Um,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: we have that downpat. I've got the top five here. Actually,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I think they're all in there, aren't they. Um, heart
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: is number one, cancer is number two. UM, lower respiratory
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: is number three. Strokers for an accidents are five. And
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: it's a huge drop. Cancer and heart are close to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: six hundred thousand, and then number three at lower respiratories
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: only a hundred and thirty eight thousand. So that shows
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you what cancer and heart disease are doing in the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: United States at least. And the upshot of all this
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: is that most of us are not going to die suddenly. Um,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: either by accident or by violent death. Yeah. Dying of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: old age didn't used to be a thing. No, it
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: was like like a lot of ways to die, but
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that was one of them. You ticked off some traveling night,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: or there's a dispute over grazing rights. Ye. Plague, Yeah,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you walked into a bear cave. Yeah. The plagues another
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: but um, yeah, old ages. It's kind of a new thing,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: but it's one of the most um prevalent forms of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: death in developed countries. It actually has its own name, frailty, Yeah,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: which is great. It's sad, but it's great that now
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: we can live out our lives and and we're about
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to talk about it. But sometimes the body, just like
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: any other machine, just stops. It's not designed to keep
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: going indefinitely, and ultimately the system shuts down as its
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: subsystem shut down. This shutting down every second right right now,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: are shutting down. And for that reason, because you and
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I are both dying. I guess once you're born, you
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: start dying, or after you stop growing, you start dying,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: right Is that just the positive outlooker, But I mean,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: like you're shedding cells and like this is like the dying.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: We're in the midst of the dying process. Just this
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: natural system is in the winding down, although it takes
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: decades and we still have plenty to do. Like you said,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you're dying, I'm dying. That's why they have a more
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: specific definition of death, which is um called active dying.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Like you and I are not actively dying right now. No, no, uh. Instead,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: if we are actively dying, we're in the midst of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the dying process. It has started. The dying processes started.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: The descent, if you will, has started, right, So, um,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: all this kind of happens since different types of cells
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: die at different speeds, that's what it is. It's cell death.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Cellular I don't want to let the cat out of
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the bag, but oxygen doesn't happen to different parts of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the body. Your cells are gonna die exactly, um. And
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: so as the cells die at different speeds, different systems
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: are gonna shut down. But just from watching frail people
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: die of old age, UM, they kind of have like
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: this the the order in which it happens kind of downpad.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: So there's the UM, there's the preactive dying phase which
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: can take about three weeks, starts about three weeks before death,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: two or three weeks. And then there's the active dying phase,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: which can take a few days. And obviously that's not
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: set in stone. None of this is set in stone.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: But this is all just um kind of accumulative knowledge
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: from observations of people dying in like hospice and things
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: like that. So you get the preactive phase of dying UM.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And like I said, it starts a couple of weeks
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: ahead of the actual death. Because we have this is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a big deal right now, what we're talking about, Like
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it's becoming very clear, UM in our modern age that
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: death is not an instant, it's not a moment, there's
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a process. Yeah, well unless it isn't an instant, but yeah,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: old age dying, yes, or like other kinds of dying.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: But how about non accidental dying. We'll call it that
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: because that's like the instantaneous thing, and even sometimes in
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a very short scale that can follow some of these
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: you know, Oh yeah, I forgot it all to you, yes,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: nodding my head. So the preactive phase of dying, Chuck,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: what do we got? Well, Um, you're gonna start sleep,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: You're gonna get sleepy, You're not gonna have much energy,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: You're gonna start sleeping more and more. Uh, your skin
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: might become cooler to the touch, might turn a little
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: bluish gray. Yeah, cyanosis, So that's called it's just becoming
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: oxygen deprived. Like apparently your body's like, okay, don't really
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: need to use the legs anymore because we're bedridden, So
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start focusing more of the circulation on the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: inner organs. Yeah. Well that probably causes the modeling too,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: which is, uh, your your skin can become sort of reddish,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: like splotchy with reddish blue splotches as well. Right, you're gonna, um,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be a little restless. Probably, you're gonna possibly
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: come off as confused. Um, You're you're not gonna be hungry. No,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna probably withdraw from UM social activities. You're gonna
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: become a little a little withdrawn. UM. You might wanna
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: settle unfinished business with family. You might request family come
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: visit you for that kind of thing, the non physical parts.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: That's definitely something you'd be interested in doing. Right, But
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that's like, UM, apparently something that that people intuitively know
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: like they need it. Apparently patients know when they're dying.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I've seen that happen. And one of the one of
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the signs from UM that's mentioned in hospice care palliative
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: care UM is that the patient may even state I'm
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: dying like I started, it's coming. That's pretty common um. Yeah,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and that's sad that when you realize like, all right,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: this is this is it, Like I feel myself, I'm
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: gonna be gone soon. But that's neat though, especially if
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you yeah, if you're like, okay, I'm gonna put everything
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in order then die happy or peacefully. Yeah, that's neat
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that you have that that time to to take care
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, if you're fortunate enough to go that
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: way for sure. Back to physically, Um, you you won't
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: be able to heal from a wound er and infection
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: any longer. Yeah, you might um lose control of your
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: bladder and your bowels with the course of some time. Um,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: you might be in pain, but chances are here in
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the modern world they're gonna take care of you in
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: that respect. Right and again that's called palliative care, where
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: at some point it's very obvious that you're going to die. Um,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and a lot of it can be based on what
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you want, even even um without your wishes, there's probably
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: a point in time where medical science says, there's nothing
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: we can do for you. Um, we just want to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: make you comfortable, exactly, so we're gonna give you pain meds.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: We're gonna like your your care is being transferred over
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: from a physician to who's you know, wants to save
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: your life and keep you going to hospice workers, health
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: care professionals who are trained to just keep you as
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: comfortable as possible for the for the duration of your life.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Right man, hats off to those people, like all health
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: care professionals of course, but man, hospice nurses, that's tough stuff.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: You've gotta be like, you've got to be made of
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: of the right qualities as a human to be able
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: to tackle something like that and still get up and
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: go to work every day. Like they're literally in the
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: business of dying. I mean, very valuable, valuable service people provide.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: So that's the um, that's the preactive phase. That's the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to die. I got a couple of
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: weeks and all of my systems are starting to wind down.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: In the active phase, the systems are starting to shut down. Um,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you may not have consciousness, and if you do, you
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: may Uh. If you are able to be aroused from
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: conscious from unconsciousness, you're gonna slip right back into it again. Possibly, Um,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you are probably and apparently families find this very disconcerting.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: You're probably going to talk about people who are dead
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: as if they're in the room or you can see
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: them or hear them. Yeah, it's just just the mind slipping.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: They don't know. Um. Hospice workers, from what I can tell,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: tend to just treat it like it's real, treated on
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: its own terms. They're not saying it's real or it's
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a hallucination or something like that. And they advise families
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: not to treat it like a hallucination. It just to
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: not to correct them. Yeah, that makes sense, because you're
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: there to provide comfort, not say no, Grandpa, grandma has
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: been gone for years. Why would you want to do that.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: There is an exception to that. You would want to
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: do that. If they're fearful from their visions, then you
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: can say that's it's not real. It's just you your
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: brain that's not real or whatever. Again, all about comfort, yes,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: but you don't want to contradict them if they're happy
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: or even saying it in a neutral tone. It's only
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: if they're they're fearful that you want to say that.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: But apparently families are kind of like, oh god, crazy,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know. But it's a it's a natural part of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the active dying process. Breathing is gonna become really weird. Um,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the patient's gonna stop breathing for disconcertingly long periods of time. Yeah,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: that's called Cheney strokes respiration stokes sorry, Cheney Stokes name
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: for John Cheney and William Stokes. Obviously, the first dudes
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: who described it, Let's get all the press quick deep breaths,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: sometimes very slow ones like you said, sometimes stopping altogether. Uh.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: And that is caused by receptors in the heart and
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: brain stem basically being too sluggish to respond two different
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: amounts of oxygen and CEO two and it's just kind
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: of lagging behind. Again, think of it as a machine
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that's just slowing down and those receptors can't pick up
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: on it in times, So it's it doesn't know how
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to tell you to breathe basically like at a steady rate. Um,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: we should say that there isn't evidence that that is
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: physically painful again, like awful for the healthy person in
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, yeah, for the family watching it, you
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: think that the person is suffering, there's not evidence that
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: they are in fact suffering. Yeah, but it seems like it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And that from what I understand with palliative care, UM,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: not only making the patient comfortable is one of the priorities.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Making the family comfortable as a priority as well, because
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: how you die has a very lasting impact on the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: people who are there to witness your death. For family,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: so um, explaining that they're not suffering, Uh, is helpful,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: but not necessarily enough. Yeah, and I think actually this
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: podcast itself could help like some people, because I don't
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people do this sort of research
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: when they go into a hospital room in the last
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: hours of a loved one's life. Yeah, and they may
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: not be told. They may even if it is explained
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to it, it it might not sink in what they're being
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: told because you know, seeing somebody gasping for breath and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: then being told that they're not really suffering, those two
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: things might not jibe. Well, yeah, You're you're instinct is
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: probably trying to get help, like they can't breathe clearly,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: let's get a nurse in here, and the nurses like, no,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's part of it. Yeah. Another one that's
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: very just concidering. Another sign of active dying is the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: death rattle. And ye I did a I guess it.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Don't be dumb on death rattles. And basically, either you
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: have fluid in the lungs or like you know, when
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: you clear your throat like I just did, that's a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: normal ability you have until you start dying. You can't
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: clear your throat anymore. Those are your laryngeal muscles, right,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: basically spasming, what clearing your throat? No, the death rattle. No,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the death rattle is just breathing through the mire. It's
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: both it's it's either liquid or it's the muscle spasms. Yeah, okay,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: so did you find that that's painful? Because I found
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that it's it doesn't cause pain, it's just it sounds
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: terrible again to the people in the room exactly. And
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: this is uh, I don't think we pointed out this
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: is the agonal phase of death and it's Greek for struggle,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: And yeah, that's sort of just encapsulates it. I think
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: that's probably why they call it the active phase of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: death now rather than agonol. Oh do they don't even
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: call it that anymore? I mean I think some people do,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: but I think the active and agonol are the same
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: one and the same. It's just you know, they're in
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the agony faith, right, or they're in the active faith. Uh.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Your muscles, aside from your vocal cords, UM might start
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: convulsive and spasm ng. Um. You can get all you know,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: herky jerky and do things that wouldn't seem like you
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: should be able to do in your state, like um
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: card tricks. I don't know if you could do cards
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: shuffling card tricks from one hand to the other, and
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Grandpa never could. Before I knew he gets something. We're
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: in here somehow. Um what else? Uh, well, let's see. Um,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: your blood pressure is gonna drop, your jaw is gonna drop,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: you might end up in a really weird rigid position. Um,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and uh you're I think we said your extremities are
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: going to be cold to the touch. Yeah. Actually, the
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: the death rattle as a result of the spasming of
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: your laryngeal muscles that can also produce um, what was
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: described in what I read as a barking sound. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and I've never I didn't search that out to see
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: if that was recorded anywhere. But I'm curious what that
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: sounds like. I've heard everything from gurgling like gurgle too.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: It sounds like there's marbles in your throat. Uh, barking.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: That's a new one. But it makes I think everybody
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: has their own signature death rattle, you know, but they
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the rule of thumb, apparently among hospice workers, is once
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the death rattle comes, it's a sign that they got
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: about forty eight hours or less left to live. Yeah,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and all of these are tells, really and all of them.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about what happens after the body is
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: dead too, and that helps with finding out you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: in forensics, I think we pointed out plenty of times
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: at the time of death, depending on the various things
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: that happen when they find you. But all all of
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: these are almost like like markers on a clock. Yeah,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: and if you're in hospice care, you know these things
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: like oh this is this means this? Well, there there
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: are signs and symptoms of the system shut down that
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the person's body is going through, you know. So, Um,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the senses apparently also are lost in a healthy person
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: or a person who has all five senses. Um, they're
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: lost in a certain order, and touch and hearing are
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: the last to go. And another another very important point
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: that hospice workers make is never ever talk about the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: patient like they're not there, because they can hear you
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: up until the end. Like hearing is kept so long
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: as the person could hear before then there's not any
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: damage from you know, during the act of dying period. Um,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: they can hear you until the moment they die, and
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you need to be careful what you said. Yeah, And
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really nice thing that the last
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: things that you can experience are the touch of a
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: loved one or the voice of a loved one. Right,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you needs to see him. You may not
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: even be able to respond to that, but you can
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: still hear. That's true. I would definitely pick that over sight.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: I'd rather hear someone's words as I pass rather than
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: having silence and just seeing their faces staring at me,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: so long as the words aren't. Wait, one more thing,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I think it would be almost cruel to be able
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to see and not here at the end. You know,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: like he wants to see your family upset. You want
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to hear feel them hold your hand and say everything's
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: gonna be right. So you So you you raise a
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: good issue like there's if you have a dying family member,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: especially if they're dying a frailty or they're just dying,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: like they're in the dying process, so they're about to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: enter the dying process. Um, you could do worse things
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: than to go online and educate yourself on how to
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: be around them. I think people don't intuitively know how
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: to be around a dying person and there's certain things
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that you should do, certain things you shouldn't do. Like,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: for example, um, they say that you should talk to
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the person, not the condition. So don't treat them like
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: they're frail or dying, Like, treat them like they're your
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: old friend. Who they are. Um, it's extremely important to
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: make sure that they're in a peaceful, calm environment. Um. So,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: like maybe yelling at somebody over the will is a
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: really bad idea. They seem like no brainers, but I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: guess some people need to be told this stuff. Yeah,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: but I mean think about it, like it can put
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: you on edge being around a dying person, like do
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: you mention the fact that they're gonna die? Or do
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: you you know? I mean like do your dad's around it?
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: If they make a joke or something like can you
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: laugh or do you laugh too hard? Do you not
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: laugh enough? Like there's I think it's not necessarily like yeah,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's just put you on edge or
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: not everyone is as sensitive to that. Don't bring a
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: laptop in there and watch reruns of the Office. No, yeah,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: are you speaking from experience. I'm just gonna add that. Okay,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: that's on my list. Get off your cell phone. Yeah,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: pay attention to them. Sure, yeah, I mean that's what
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: you're there for. The as hospice workers put it, you're
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: giving them a very um heartfelt gift by being there
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: with them while they're dying and maybe receiving a gift,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you know, and many religions and cultures, it's very uh
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: much an honor to be a part of this whole thing,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: and even if you're not religious, that you could just
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: feel that way spiritually as a human, you know. Okay, uh, well,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: let's pause here because Chuck, it's time for a message
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: break and we're back. Okay, So are we dead yet?
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Are we at that point? Yeah? The the person has passed.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: It just sounded very cheery. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: mean like we've rattled off some pretty what seems like suffering.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But now the suffering is over. If there was any
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: other person is dead. So once you, immediately immediately after
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you die, your pupils are going to dilate because the
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: muscles controlling the iris or you know, gonna have their
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: final rest. So your pupils are going to dilate. And
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: then have you heard of the terminal tier or the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: lacrima mortists? This is a usually in the right eye,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and there's no real explanation for it, but um, it
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: is a final tier that you shed. And um, it
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't always happen right after you die, although it can.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: They did a study in the early nineties in New
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Zealand and out of a hundred deaths, fourteen of them
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: right at the time of death had the lacryma mortists
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: here and uh thirteen of them in the final ten hours.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And they say uh to to look out for that
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: if you're the family, because it can be a sign.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: And also they try to talk you into the fact
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: it it's a comforting thing to see that tier being shed. Wow. Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: And since we're on eyes, you know the old thing
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: where you close someone's eyes after they die, Oh yeah,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: or you put silver dollars on if it's it's the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: old West. Um, I guess people do that too. So
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: you're not having someone a dead body staring at you, right,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: because if they're looking dead forward, straight forward there like
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: following you all through out there. Yeah, and it's definitely
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: a movie trope. But if you don't close the eyes.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: And I never knew this, um something called t A
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: c H E. Noir. I don't know if it's tash
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: or taste more. That is a black, a dark reddish
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: brown strip that forms horizontally over your eyeball. And I
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: guess it's just you know, your eyeballs dry out and
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: has the air. So if you don't close your eyes,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: and I looked it up, you're gonna see this weird
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: horizontal stripe across your eye. But there's a plus the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: effect that has in the living, the difference between seeing
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: a dead body with their eyes closed and a dead
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: body with their eyes open, and it's just it's like
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: a galaxy between the two as far as discomfort goes.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Somebody should edit together the like every time that's ever
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: been done in a movie, just like super Fast. All right,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: So that's all I got on the eyes, Um said Chuck.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I want to alarm you right now. Boy. You have
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: living in your guts right now, the very organisms that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: are going to decompose your body when you die. They're
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: just sitting around waiting waiting for action, waiting for the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: signal yep Um, when you die, there's a lot of
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: stuff that's still alive, that's still going on, even though
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: your brain dead, whole brain, higher, brain, heart dead, your
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: heart stopped dead. That's another definition of death. I don't
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: know if we mentioned heart. Your heart's not beating anymore.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: You're dead. Yes, Um, there's no bringing you back. You've
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: been in your heart hasn't or your brain hasn't had
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: oxygen for a while. You died of hype thermia. Uh,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and they warmed you up. So now you're officially dead.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: You're gone, But there's still a lot of stuff. Remember
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: the poop Shake episode who Can Forget? We talked about
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the microbio and we have this whole other like part
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of our life are living organism that's still around, that's
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: still operating, and a lot of stuff living within us,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: including part of our microbiome. They're still carrying on processes
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: like apparently you can harvest skin cells for twenty four
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: hours and and they're still alive. Just use them, Yeah,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: for all sorts of stuff. Yeah, you can harvest them. Uh.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: And then of course inside your intestines there's a little
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: tiny organisms that are still living and are gonna help
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: do the work that comes next, starting a couple of
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: days after death, like if you just fell over in
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the woods and no one was around. I always loved
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the setting right, Um, and you're just left there. Within
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: about three days, these organisms of micro flora is going
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: go to work on you, starting in your intestines. Yeah,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and this is after the various mortises. Correct, Yes, which
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I guess we should kind of go over it. But
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I would recommend everybody, um go listen to what causes
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: rigor mortis? For sure. It's on the website. You can
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: go to stuff you should know dot com, slash podcasts,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: uh slash what hyphen causes hyphen rigor hyphen mortis. Um,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: we'll just run through the mortis is real quick. Then, Um.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Algor mortis, or the death chill, that's the first first
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: thing that's gonna happen. That's where your body starts dropping
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: in temperature about a degree and a half fahrenheit per
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: hour until you are just like a nice red wine
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: at room temperature. Yeah, actually that's not quite true. Red
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: wines like sixty four degrees for you. I guess it
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: depends what kind of room you're in. Yeah, if you're
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: in a sixty four degree it's perfect, all right. What else? Well,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: after algor mortis, um, you get rigor mortis a couple
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of hours after death, where the body um, settles into
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: a stiff state. Uh, and that lasts for what like
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours? I don't remember, we talked about it.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, I think so. Um, and then between
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: those you have live remortis or subdulation. That's where like
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: all the blood coagulates them. Yeah, basically that your red
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: blood cells are pretty heavy and they just sink and um,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: it's about twenty minutes to three hours after death is
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: when you're going to be in live remortis, and then
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: after that is riggor that's right. Okay, so not back
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: to putrification right, Well, that's the best thing can talk about. Yeah,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: that's that's basically like you're these organisms go into work
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: breaking down your body and they do it pretty quick. Um.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: The pancreas apparently has so many in there that it
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: just itself eats itself. The pancreas consumes itself. It's pretty efficient. Um,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: your other organs are gonna eventually eventually be consumed in
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: turned into liquid. You're liquefied from the inside out. Yeah,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: you're gonna turn colors, uh in this order green than
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: purple than black, which is just like a like a
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: black eye, I guess. Yeah, in that the same stage. Yeah,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: except it never fully heels explodes. Um you Uh, within
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, you're going to be liquid inside. Uh.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: The organisms that are eating you produce a gas as
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: a byproduct from their consumption. So you're going to be bloated.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Your tongue is going to stick out. He's gonna turn
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: dark to your tongue. Yeah, and that gas really stinks.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Your eyes are going to protrude. Yeah. Um. There's something
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: called purge fluid that is a putrid, reddish brown fluid
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: that can be expelled through just everywhere you've got an opening.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Can come out of your mouth, your nose, your vagina. Uh,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it can be mixed with feces and come out of
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: your rectum. Another. Um, there's something else I can come
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: out of your vagina too. Yeah. This is maybe the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: worst thing I've ever heard. I just I had no idea. Yeah,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I had no idea. You know, I know all about
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: death and all that, and it's like interests me. I
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: had never heard of this before, and you want to
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: talk about you don't either. Maybe we should type it
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: into the computer and make the computer say it. Do
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: we have that ability? Oh? Wow, that's pretty good. That's
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a good computer impression. So wait, that's what you do
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: when you don't want to say something yourself. You pretend
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: you're a computer. Yeah that, Emily and I most of
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: our fights are like that. Really. Yeah, it's pretty cute.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I go into a war games mode. What was it again, computer? Uh?
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Coffin birth. So basically those gases that, um, this is
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: a real thing. We're not making this up. Yeah, but
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: post mortal fetal extrusion is another name for it. So
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the gases that build up in the body before the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: body ruptures um, which comes a little later, can become
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: so pressurized that a pregnant woman who has died with
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the feet is still in utero can actually the gases
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: can push the fetus out of the vagina um, which
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: is birth. Yeah, and this doesn't happen much anymore, thankfully,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: because we take care of dead bodies pretty quickly. Um.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Although they did find evidence of it in a case
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: in two thousand eight where this woman was found like
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: in the woods, but um, it was described a lot
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: in like the eighteenth century medical literature. You know, it
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: just drove them crazy to she was obviously alive for
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: weeks afterward. Yeah, and archaeologists apparently too, or I have
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: to rethink sometimes when they find because sometimes you would
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: die during childbirth, but the um they have buried the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the baby with the mother, and so you would find
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the bones like cradling each other almost. But then they
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: go back, they've had to go back and look at
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: somewhere they find the you know, between the legs, the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: bones of the baby, and they think that might be
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the case, like of a coffin birth. Right, So there's
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world. Yeah, Um, there's probably
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: death male band with that name. If there's not, there
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: is now. Um. So the gases ultimately, eventually once they start,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: once they really get down to business and they're no
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: longer just what's it called where they're the fluids coming
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: out a little orifice is here, they're purge fluid. Okay.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: So once it's like enough with the purge fluid, the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: we're just gonna tear the sucker open. Your body ultimately ruptures. Yeah,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: and this is you know, your skin has already blistered
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: at this point, Um, your hair, nails, and teeth have
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: fallen out. They don't keep growing. No, it's your skin
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: receding from drawing out, from desiccating. So pass that around
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: in school kids. When someone says that your fingernails keep
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: going after death, you set him straight, tell him Josh saying,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: oh god, I just realized there's kids listening to this. Um.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: And then the old d gloving which we talked about before,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about that, remember that? Yeah? Where
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the that can upen to you? If you drive at
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: ten and two and you have an air bag, the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: gases that expand the air bag out of your steering
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: wheel are very hot. And if you're not driving at
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: nine and three and you have your hands at like
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: ten and two or something like, you're going to be
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: de gloved alive. Yeah, but your skin is just burned
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: right off your hands, or it's burned and separated and
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: then eventually comes off. So ten and two is not
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: how you should drive it on. Really, That's what I've learned. Yeah,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I drive it either just a straight up six o'clock
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: with one hand or a nooner, just just straight up
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: noon noon. I rarely have two hands on the wheel.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: You don't drive with like your knees, with your hands
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: behind your head relaxing occasionally if I'm you know, relaxing. Yeah,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: we're playing the guitar or something. Yeah, de gloving is
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and then we talked about this in the probably rigor mortis.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: But that's when your body farms maybe, yeah, that's when
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: basically your skin is removed, still attached to things like
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: fingernails and things like that, and it's they call it
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the gloving for a reason. I don't think we need
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: to explain that it makes perfect sense. Or de socking sometimes,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: you know, can happen to your feet. And well I
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: hadn't heard of that one. Did you just make that up? Well,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: they said gloves or socks if it's your feet. But
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I did make up the socking. Well I have to
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: use that from now on. That might be a new thing. Um.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: So the body, once it once ruptures, your organs are
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: already liquid um, and all that's left is a skeleton
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: which will eventually turn to dust too. Can I be done? No, wait,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: we can't be done, because we do need to talk
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit about assisted suicide. Yeah, I just eat
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that up for you. You should. Um, that's quite a
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: controversial subject, like we said, Um, I don't know if
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I said or not. Like this has just been such
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: a huge whirlwind of input of information in my head
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: the last like thirty six hours studying for this um
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: that I don't know what I've said yet or not,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: or what we talked about in another podcast, but so
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: we talked about dying of frailty of old age and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: that it's increasing. Supposedly five out of ten people in
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the United States will die in the intensive care unit.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: And I saw this Ted talk from Newcastle, Australia with
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: this guy I can't remember what his name is, but
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's about dying. I think it's called it can
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: we talk about dying or something, And his point was,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you're going to die in the I see you, whether
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: you want to or not, if you die of a
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: degenerative disease or frailty, unless you say you don't want
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to die there, because the way medical science is currently
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: set up, you are going to be treated most of
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the time up until a bitter end with life saving measures,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and you're going to die in the I see you
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: with tubes hooked up and things be being and like
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: other people having crash carts taken in and out of
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: their room and people making a big ruckus up until
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the point you die unless they give you palliative care
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: or or you say, I don't want to be sustained
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: like that, I don't want to go to the i
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: c U. And this point was, if half of Americans
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: are gonna die in the i c U, you have
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: to assume that maybe not all of them would want
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: to die in the i c U. And therefore they
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: need to think of things like I wanted an advanced directive,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: a living will, I want a living power of attorney
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: to somebody to say no, no, do not put them
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: on a ventilator, do not put them in feeding tubes.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Like they don't want that. They just want to die,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: or they want to go to hospitals. They want to
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: go back home. That's another big one, like they don't
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: let you go back home, especially if you can't speak
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: for yourself, like to medical science these days, that's crazy.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: You don't leave the hospital when you know you're dying.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: You stay in the hospital and and we keep doing
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: stuff until you die. That's not the way it drives
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: with a lot of people. But if you don't stop
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and think about it and then write it down or
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: tell somebody who can speak for you, that's you're not
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: going to go home. You're not going to get to hospice.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: You have to do this ahead of time. And part
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: of that that's kind of come out of this idea
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: is Okay, well, if we have autonomy to say I
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: don't want you to intibate me, why don't we have
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the autonomy to say, I want you to give me
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: some stuff that's going to painlessly end by life, because
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: it's either that or facing a tremendous amount of pain
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: and suffering through this degenerative disease. Basically saying I'm ready,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I am ready, it is my life. It's like the
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Richard dryf this movie from the eighties, Uh covertus, whose
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: life is anyway? I think I have no idea what
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: you're talking about. Think it was a movie about assisted
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: suicide and do you should you have the right to
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: be able to You know, that's a hot button issue
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: for sure, but apparently most Americans or the jority of
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Americans actually support it until you start using a word
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: like suicide. Right when you pull them and say do
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: you are you in favor of doctors helping someone painlessly
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: in their life or something at the end of life? Yeah,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: And then they're like, okay, so you're a favorite physician
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: assistant suicide. Um, what's that word? You know? And and
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the doctors who are in favor of euthanasia is another
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: term for it. Um, say, look at palliative care, it's
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: like half of a step away from physician assisted suicide.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Like you're keeping somebody if they requested and knockdown on
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: morphine for the rest of their life, so they're never
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: going to regain consciousness. Um. There's this you you dug
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: up this one article by a British physician who argues that, um,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: that agonal um gasping reflex. Apparently when part of the
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: apnea is that your body has a reflex where you
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: gasp for air and it's really disconcerting to family members.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Even though they don't think that you're suffering, it looks
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: like you're suffering. And this doctor argued, well, we have
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: drugs that can block this response so that the person
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: can't gusp for air. And what it's going to cost
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: them their last couple of breaths. But these last couple
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: of breaths make it appear like they're suffering, and the
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: family remembers that their kids suffered. Um, so why wouldn't
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: we do that? And there's this conversation that's taking place
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: more and more and more that ultimately it's kind of like,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: who is somebody to say that somebody can't choose to
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: end their own life painlessly through the use of like
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: drugs or like Hunter Thompson did. Well, I mean, that's
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: another way to go, and you anybody can do that, sure,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: but there are some people out there who don't want
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: to die violently for their family. Like that's the part
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: that I was upset about with that was his wife,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: like finding him and stuff, his wife and his son,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: and it was just like, not only that he did
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: it in his own basement, which I can understand doing
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: it at home, but he left quite a mess in
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: his own basement for his family to clean up. But
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: if he had other options these days, like doctor assisted suicide,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: he might not have had to make a mess in
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: his beast My first families and chuck, uh. We know
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: that Hunter Thompson is far from the only person to
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: make his own exit his own way. Another very famous person, uh,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud did too. Huh oh yeah, yeah, you know
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: that assisted suicide. Yeah, literally, physician assisted suicide. He was
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: um diagnosed with cancer of the palette because he smoked
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: tons of cigars, which were sometimes just a cigar and UH.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: For sixteen years he lived with that diagnosis and finally,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: towards the end, he asked his surgeon, his physician, go
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: ahead and hit me up with I think five grams
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: of morphine, like just a ton of morphine. And he
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: died three hours after the injection of it, but which
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: was more than his usual two grams of morphine right
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: or cocaine. He loved cocaine um, but he had um
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: developed what was called todden angst todin angst as German,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: which is a dread of death. So and so we
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: lived with that for sixteen years. But he finally he
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: decided along the way like I fear this, but I'm
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: going to take it into my own hands. Physician assisted suicide.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: And there's definitely more than one side to this coin.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people. There's very strong opinions on
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: either side. But I think it's a at the very least,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: even if you remove a motion from it's an extremely
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: interesting conversation and that it reveals so much about our
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: attitudes towards death and autonomy and like who's who has
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: the right to decide whether they're going to die or
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: who has the right to tell somebody that they can't
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: do that? Whose life is it anyway, Richard Dreyfus. Uh,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: and then chuck one. One other thing that we want
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: to hit on is um regret. Yeah, I actually saw
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: this a few weeks ago, just by chance, and then
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: you sent it to me. Um. I think it was
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in England hospice nurse spent a lot of time researching
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: life regrets over the course of a certain amount of
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: time and came up with the five most common life regrets.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: And uh, I think this is like a good way
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: to end it, you know. Number one, I wish I
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: had the courage to live a life true to myself
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and not the life others expected of me. That was
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the number one regret. Number two was I wish I
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: didn't work so hard. That doesn't surprise me at all.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Number three I wish I had the courage to express
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: my feelings. Number four I wish I had stayed in
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: touch with my friends. It's a very sad one. And
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I wish I'd let myself be happier. There's number five. Yeah,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: like that she was saying that they didn't realize towards
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: until the end of their life. That happiness is a
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: choice that you make. It's not something that happens to you.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: It's something you go search out. It's a state of
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: mind that you strive for and to figure that out
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: like at the end, that that's the regret. Yeah, So
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: call to action people, Yeah, really, like you think about
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: the stuff. You don't have to wish these things on
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: your deathbed if you start doing something about it now
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: exactly dying, Chuck, you know what we might have just done.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: We might have just finished the death of the death suite.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: I bet there's something else. Yeah, only time can tell.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: But I don't know how much more aspects of death
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: we can cover. And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: put all of them together in a blog post the
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Death Sweet, so everybody can go listen to all things
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: death via stuff you should know. In the meantime, if
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: you want to look up more about dying, just type
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: dying into the search bar. How stuff works. I think
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: it has its own channel. Um, there's so much to it. Uh.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: And since I said search bar, it's time for a
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: listener mail. This is a nice one. Um. We don't
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: normally do shout outs, but this was a nice one,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and I thought, what better way to end such a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: depressing show. Uh? Hey, guys and Jerry loved the podcast. Josh,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: I have to thank you for teaching my fiance, Danny
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: and me about the flashlight trick to see spider ez. Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I still haven't done it, man, I never think about
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: it at night. Jerry, you said you tried to write
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: new work. Yeah, okay, I need to do it. I
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: need to set a reminder. And my my response to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: people who have been like, can you can you explain
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: it again? Practice? That's my explanation. Just practice, Just try
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: it from a different angle. Just practice. It's a real thing.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: It's not a trick. It is completely amazing. And this
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: is from Peacheat by the way. Uh, and it's wonderful
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: and frightening at the same time. But the problem now
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: is that whenever we walk our dogs at night, I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: just can't have my normal fiance. I have this dude
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: with the flashlight stuck to his forehead, stopping at every
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: field to let me know just how many spiders are
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: dogs are stepping on and how we are always surrounded.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the show, and now for a shameless request.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I know you don't often give shout outs. But it
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: would be the most amazing thing ever if you could
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: give a shout out to Danny on the podcast The
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Airs sometime before our wedding on oct let him know
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: that I love him more than anything, and then I'm
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: excited to share my life with him, even if he
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: does have a flashlight stuck to his forehead, with the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: rest of our lives walking our dogs together. I know
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: this is totally blown away and I would even let
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: him listen to that podcast first. So thanks to Jerry.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks guys. That is from Peachy way in Thousand Oaks, California.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: I think Peachi just expressed it very nicely. Yeah, so Danny, Peachy, congratulations, Uh,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: best of luck, best witches from us. I told her
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: listen up for it on the Dying podcast and he
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: thought that was kind of funny, and it's like great. Yeah,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and Danny, um, maybe put that flight once in a while. Yeah,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: White h and Peachy don't use the word fiance so much. Okay,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: it's a life lesson. I'm Chuck right there. I would
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: like to hear that. Um. If you want to see
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: if you can talk Chuck into a shout out, take
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: your best shot. You can tweet to us at s
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can talk to him directly
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. It's
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: where he spends all this time. UM. You can send
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: and you can join us at our website, our very
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: own website. It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com? Like a good neighbor
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: state farm is there with eighteen thousand agents across the
• 1:03:35
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• 1:03:39
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