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How Nicotine Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
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Speaker 1: that makes this stuff you should know? The podcast. How's
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Speaker 1: it going? Man? Podcast intro Version Version one? Okay, point one?
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Speaker 1: How you doing? I'm well, sir, and you're enjoying I
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Speaker 1: guess we can't say a whole lot of beverage not anymore.
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Speaker 1: Remember we used to just blatantly say stuff, you're enjoying
0:40
Speaker 1: a sparkling water. I can say that out of a can. Yep, frenchie, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's good stuff. Yeah. Why are we just determined to
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Speaker 1: push it to the envelope? I don't know saying in
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Speaker 1: Brandon it uh it rhymes with the boy? Uh so Chuck? Yeah,
1:02
Speaker 1: you know, I was a smoker for a while. Yeah,
1:06
Speaker 1: and uh, one could make a pretty good argument that
1:09
Speaker 1: I started out at an unreasonably young aide. No, you
1:14
Speaker 1: weren't young. I was young. You weren't young. No, I
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Speaker 1: was young. How old were you? Let me paint you
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Speaker 1: a picture? Okay, so first time I tried a cigarette.
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Speaker 1: It's in the mall. I'm young enough so that the
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Speaker 1: the guy who owns the pub in the mall that
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Speaker 1: has the cigarette machine that I'm buying cigarettes from, it
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Speaker 1: comes out and it's like, well, you could do it.
1:35
Speaker 1: But we made off with our cigarettes and smoked one,
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Speaker 1: and like the mall started spinning and everything was just crazy, right,
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Speaker 1: you could smoke in the mall. Yeah, it was a
1:44
Speaker 1: while ago. Um, that was the first time. The second
1:47
Speaker 1: time was a few months later eighth grade, and um,
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Speaker 1: my friends and I all decided that it was high
1:56
Speaker 1: time we started smoking. So we pull all of our
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Speaker 1: mind together and ended up with enough. We figured for
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Speaker 1: ten packs of cigarettes, so everybody gave me the money.
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Speaker 1: I got on my bike and rode to the gas station.
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Speaker 1: Rode up on my bike. Like the cashier saw me,
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Speaker 1: this kid who's thirteen right up on his bike. No. Fourteen,
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Speaker 1: just turned put his bike down and walk in and go,
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Speaker 1: I want ten packs of cigarettes. Brands exactly. I bought
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Speaker 1: like Cools, I bought Marlbro's, I bought Kent's draws like
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Speaker 1: anything else. I like that. And I remember the cash
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Speaker 1: here just like okay, here you go. Kidding and sent
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Speaker 1: me off with a bag of ten packs of cigarettes
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Speaker 1: dangling from the handlebars of my bike. It's probably like
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Speaker 1: ten bucks too. It was about ten bucks back in
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Speaker 1: the day. And we get back, I get back to
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Speaker 1: the woods, everybody's like, oh my god, we just started smoking,
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Speaker 1: and like right off the bat, I started smoking tons
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Speaker 1: of cigarettes. Yeah, And I turned green, got sick, and
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Speaker 1: still was like I like this a lot and smoked
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Speaker 1: for twenty years and chuck. Today is April, and how
3:07
Speaker 1: many days are there in April, thirty or thirty one.
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess thirty one. I'm gonna go with thirty
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Speaker 1: one too, and I'm going to say no, thirty In
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Speaker 1: three days, I may first it will be one year
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Speaker 1: since i've really, wow a long time kicked it. Congratulations,
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Speaker 1: I smoked too. You'd probably never even shared that with
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Speaker 1: You had no idea that you smoked. Yeah. I smoked
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Speaker 1: in college like everyone does here and there when I
3:31
Speaker 1: hands Yeah, but it wasn't ever anything that got its uh.
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Speaker 1: Nicotine never took a hold of meat to where I
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Speaker 1: needed a cigarette. It was always very much a social thing.
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Speaker 1: And then when I traveled around Europe, of course I
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Speaker 1: rolled my own cigarettes and thought it was just super cool. Yeah,
3:47
Speaker 1: but you know what, kids, I was not cool. I
3:49
Speaker 1: was dumb. No, I want to I want to add
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Speaker 1: that to there was absolutely nothing cool about what I did.
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Speaker 1: There's nothing adventurous. And many, many, many times over the
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Speaker 1: course of my life, I cursed myself. I cursed that
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Speaker 1: cashier and then cursed my bike for allowing me to
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Speaker 1: make one of the worst decisions of my entire life
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Speaker 1: that I regretted time and time and time again. You
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Speaker 1: cursed Abraham Lincoln because he was on the two five
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Speaker 1: dollar bills that you have to pay for it now,
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Speaker 1: I think they're probably he was on the pennies that
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Speaker 1: we used to pay for ten packs of cigarettes. So, um,
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Speaker 1: nicotine got under my skin, chuck as it were, which
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Speaker 1: is one of a few ways it can diffuse into
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Speaker 1: the human body. Huh, that's right. Uh. Should we talk
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Speaker 1: about tobacco just for a second here, let's at the beginning. Um,
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Speaker 1: it was cultivated as early as six thousand BC. People
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Speaker 1: were chewing on or inhaling tobacco. They realize, hey, this
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Speaker 1: is pretty good. Yeah. Native Americans. I'm not sure what
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Speaker 1: tribes they used to roll um like cigars that were
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Speaker 1: several feet long, and somebody would hold it at the end,
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Speaker 1: maybe another one in the middle, and you'd walk up
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Speaker 1: in you puff on them like really hard and inhale
5:02
Speaker 1: until you started coughing, and then from the coughing you
5:05
Speaker 1: get light headed and supposed that you had a vision. Interesting, Well,
5:09
Speaker 1: I do know that as early as the sixteen hundreds
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Speaker 1: people actually thought, you know what, this might be bad
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Speaker 1: for you. And I bet you there's a link here
5:17
Speaker 1: to some of these diseases that are killing people and
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Speaker 1: the smoke that we're inhaling. Yes, and I didn't know that.
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Speaker 1: I had no idea it went back that far. I
5:25
Speaker 1: didn't either concerns about smoking right, and and cancer. Apparently
5:29
Speaker 1: they were aware of the cancer back then as well. Yeah,
5:32
Speaker 1: they probably call it like spirit intrusion or something instead,
5:35
Speaker 1: but yeah, they they knew that there was something too smoking.
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Speaker 1: They also thought it was medicinal, which, as we'll see
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Speaker 1: towards the end of this podcast, um has actually made
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Speaker 1: something of a resurgence that the medicinal properties of nicotine.
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Speaker 1: So this is nicotine go uh Nicotiana tobaccum. Yes, nicotine,
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Speaker 1: uh Nicotiana tobaccum. What did I say no. I think
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Speaker 1: that's right. Okay, I like your Latin chuck. Thank you.
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Speaker 1: It's making a big comeback these days. It is so nicotine, Josh,
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Speaker 1: is a liquid alkaloid. Yeah, it's the only one. Most
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Speaker 1: alkaloids are white solids, really clean caffeine. Okay. I saw
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Speaker 1: on a page that that nicotine is the only liquid
6:22
Speaker 1: all right, well I believe it then. Uh. It is
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Speaker 1: an organic compound. Alkaloid is and it's made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen,
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Speaker 1: and sometimes a little oxygen in there and sometimes why.
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Speaker 1: And nicotine makes up about five per cent of a
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Speaker 1: tobacco plant if you're talking weight. But cigarettes contain between
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Speaker 1: eight and twenty milligrams of nicotine per cigarette. But here's
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Speaker 1: an important distinction. You only ingest about one milligram of
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Speaker 1: that into your body when you smoke a cigarette. It's
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Speaker 1: absorbed you ingest more, but only about a milligrams. Good point,
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Speaker 1: um say it in Latin chuck absorbed um nicotine. So,
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Speaker 1: like I said, nicotine got under my skin, which is
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Speaker 1: one of three ways that it can be absorbed right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: through the skin, uh, into the lungs and mucus membranes
7:11
Speaker 1: like the landing of your nose and gums. And if
7:14
Speaker 1: you think who would snort tobacco, that's what snuff was
7:18
Speaker 1: and is done that too, you sniff snuff. They they
7:22
Speaker 1: still make that stuff. They do. It's a real old
7:25
Speaker 1: timy like I think. You can only find it at
7:27
Speaker 1: a like the customer service counter at a Piggy Wiggly
7:30
Speaker 1: and it's still there from the night. My grandfather's company
7:34
Speaker 1: actually made snuff in Tennessee. Your grandfather R. J. Reynolds. No,
7:40
Speaker 1: he didn't own the company, but he was like a
7:43
Speaker 1: manager of the of the workers on the floor, I think,
7:47
Speaker 1: so he exploited people. Yes, And they also made like candy,
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Speaker 1: popcorn and stuff. It was weird, one of those companies
7:52
Speaker 1: that made all kinds of crazy things. It was not
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Speaker 1: our gameral. So. Uh, nicotine, and we're talking about how
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Speaker 1: it how it gets into your body. It's absorbed. It
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Speaker 1: moves into the blood vessels that line these tissues, straight
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Speaker 1: into the blood stream and then pretty much directly to
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Speaker 1: the brain where it does its WAMO effects. That's right, um.
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Speaker 1: Out of the ways that you can ingest nicotine into
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Speaker 1: the body, the lungs are the most efficient, right, which
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Speaker 1: is why their cigarettes the little right, exactly. The inhaling
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Speaker 1: um nicotine through smoking tobacco, UM introduces this this drug,
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Speaker 1: this alkaloid to the alveola, which are the little tiny
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Speaker 1: air sacks where gas exchange occurs. And this is the
8:37
Speaker 1: fact of the podcast for me, the the alveola, right,
8:43
Speaker 1: little millions of tiny little gas bags, cute little gas bags. Um.
8:48
Speaker 1: If you combine their their surface area, the total surface area,
8:54
Speaker 1: they have ninety times more surface area than the human skin. Wow,
8:58
Speaker 1: and I imagine that's like an average size person. But
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Speaker 1: still it's pretty impressive. Yeah, which again is why people
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Speaker 1: smoke it. And we we're gonna say cigarettes a lot,
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Speaker 1: but obviously this includes cigars and pipe smoke in any way.
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Speaker 1: You're gonna ingest tobacco dip snuff if you're still doing
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Speaker 1: the snuff the snuff, yeah uh so, but we're gonna
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Speaker 1: say cigarettes mainly. That's fine. Okay, that's the most popular way.
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Speaker 1: I believe that's right. So Josh, we said, um, here's
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Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing too about the half life? Is
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Speaker 1: that right? Is that how half life works? It said
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Speaker 1: that nicotine has a half life of sixty minutes, so
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Speaker 1: six hours after a cigarette, that one milligram that was
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Speaker 1: in your body is now point oh three one. That
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Speaker 1: didn't seem quite right, but I guess that is I
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Speaker 1: don't know, Chuck. Well, that's what it says. So that's
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Speaker 1: what we're gonna go with. Um, but how does your
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Speaker 1: body get rid of this stuff? How does it process
9:51
Speaker 1: it for removal? Well? Um, several ways. Of it is
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Speaker 1: broken down by your liver, right, okay, Um, some is
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Speaker 1: habitalized by your lungs too and turned into uh, codine
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Speaker 1: and nicotine oxide. Yeah and coddina look that up. It's
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Speaker 1: an alkaloid as well, and also an anagram for nicotine. Huh.
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Speaker 1: And it does pretty much the same thing as nicotine,
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Speaker 1: just at a much lower potency. And alkaloids, by the way,
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Speaker 1: tend to really mess with humans. Like of there's different
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Speaker 1: types of alkaloids, but the under the large umbrella alkaloids
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Speaker 1: you have strychnine, night shade, opium, psilocybin, hemlock or got
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Speaker 1: anything that can get you wasted or kill you is
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Speaker 1: an alkaloid basis right. Um. You can also get rid
10:40
Speaker 1: of cotonine um through your urine. So it takes about
10:45
Speaker 1: twenty four hours to get rid of cotonine that way,
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Speaker 1: so you can actually do a nicotine p test a
10:51
Speaker 1: day after or within a day. You can also do
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Speaker 1: a smell test that works too, with the breath or
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Speaker 1: the clothes or the hair or whatever. Here's the fact
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Speaker 1: of the podcast for me, Josh is that, Uh, some
11:03
Speaker 1: people have a genetic defect and the enzymes in their
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Speaker 1: liver that the mutant enzyme is less effective at metabolizing nicotine.
11:11
Speaker 1: So some people are born able to smoke less yet
11:16
Speaker 1: retain the feeling they get from smoking longer. There's a
11:19
Speaker 1: time in my life when I would have called those
11:21
Speaker 1: people lucky. Uh yeah, well, I mean, I guess if
11:26
Speaker 1: you're gonna smoke, it's better to smoke less. But I
11:29
Speaker 1: still wouldn't should mess with it at all. Agreed, Chuck. Agreed.
11:32
Speaker 1: It's so good to hear you say these things because
11:35
Speaker 1: he used to say how much you loved cigarettes. I know,
11:38
Speaker 1: but I still I think in this one, even if
11:39
Speaker 1: I did still smoke, I would I would advise never
11:42
Speaker 1: to take it up. Um, Chuck, let's talk about the
11:46
Speaker 1: effects of nicotine. It is an alkaloid, which means it's
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Speaker 1: a drug basically, um, which means it has an effect
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Speaker 1: on a couple of parts of the brain, right yes, um,
12:00
Speaker 1: and not just the brain of the body. One of
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Speaker 1: the first responses the body has um to nicotine is
12:06
Speaker 1: the release of adrenaline, which kicks in our dear old
12:09
Speaker 1: friend the fight or flight response, right yes, And that's initially,
12:13
Speaker 1: but can also what they call it biphasic. Yeah, it
12:16
Speaker 1: can invigorate and relax. Yeah, and that sounds a little
12:19
Speaker 1: odd until you think about like something like alcohol, which
12:24
Speaker 1: has the same qualities many times, which is why you
12:28
Speaker 1: know the girl at the bar is all fired up
12:30
Speaker 1: at first, and then later on it's why did it means?
12:35
Speaker 1: Or you know, I can't hold my head up right um?
12:39
Speaker 1: The last couple of shows, the last couple of comedy
12:41
Speaker 1: shows I've been too. There have been chatty drunk girls
12:45
Speaker 1: who have just been overly courageous in expressing what was
12:50
Speaker 1: on their mind loudly at any given moment, heckling or
12:53
Speaker 1: just too loud, but heckling but not not heckling like
12:57
Speaker 1: you're a bad meeting, just like you know, the guy
12:59
Speaker 1: would tell a joke and should be like I work
13:01
Speaker 1: at home depot and it was that like you're you're
13:04
Speaker 1: talking Bob Gold tweet right now and no idea what
13:07
Speaker 1: he's gonna do. Za Galafernakis has some classic YouTube bits
13:11
Speaker 1: dealing with hecklers. Yeah yeah, this one girl will take
13:14
Speaker 1: a slate. It's really good. Everyone I've seen, though, has
13:17
Speaker 1: done a pretty good job with these people. It's the
13:19
Speaker 1: worst part of the job, I would imagine. Um, So, chuck,
13:23
Speaker 1: you've got the release of adrenaline. Um. You. Also, we
13:28
Speaker 1: have an explanation for why people who smoke tend to
13:33
Speaker 1: eat less. Yeah, you hear oral fixation, and I imagine
13:37
Speaker 1: that that probably has a lot to do with people
13:40
Speaker 1: putting on the weight after they quit smoking. Um. But
13:45
Speaker 1: if you smoke, you can go fairly long without food.
13:50
Speaker 1: And now we understand why nicotine send some signals to
13:55
Speaker 1: your brain. Right here, let me do a little dramatic creani.
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Speaker 1: So nicotine into the body. Hey, body, go ahead and
14:02
Speaker 1: dump a lot of the glucost stores in your cells
14:05
Speaker 1: into the blood stream. Okay. The body says, okay, and
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Speaker 1: the nicotine says, and by the way, I don't want
14:12
Speaker 1: you releasing any insulin. Insulin absorbs glucost in the bloodstream,
14:17
Speaker 1: and the body's like okay, And then the nicotine goes Okay, Well,
14:21
Speaker 1: now that you have a bunch of glucose in your
14:23
Speaker 1: blood stream, don't you think that you've just eaten and
14:26
Speaker 1: are full and the body goes you know, I do,
14:29
Speaker 1: and the insulin exactly, And yeah, so that's called hyperglycemic
14:36
Speaker 1: And like you said, basically, it makes you feel like
14:40
Speaker 1: you're not hungry, and um, it also increases your basal
14:44
Speaker 1: metabolic rate. So you're gonna burn more calories sitting around
14:48
Speaker 1: smoking than you would if you were just sitting around.
14:51
Speaker 1: And this all sounds awesome. What I eat less and
14:54
Speaker 1: I just burn calories sitting around? It sounds awesome, but
14:59
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's not like, oh, I can lose weight smoking,
15:02
Speaker 1: and that's like exercise, because what you're actually doing is
15:05
Speaker 1: killing yourself over the long haul. And speaking of basil
15:09
Speaker 1: or basil metabolic rate, um, that is something that apparently
15:16
Speaker 1: is very overlooked when with people who exercise and count
15:19
Speaker 1: calories and things like that. How did that? I just
15:21
Speaker 1: sounded like Silvester the cat person. Um. You if you
15:27
Speaker 1: exercise and you burn five hundred calories, people are like, well,
15:31
Speaker 1: that's pretty awesome. I just burned five hundred calories. But
15:33
Speaker 1: they're not taking too account the basil metabolic rate, which is,
15:37
Speaker 1: had you just not gone to the gym and stay
15:39
Speaker 1: at home, you would have burned a hundred and fifty calories.
15:41
Speaker 1: So really you only burned three d and fifty calories.
15:44
Speaker 1: You have to take your net calorie burn to really
15:46
Speaker 1: figure out how much weight you lose exercising. Yeah, well,
15:50
Speaker 1: I don't ever look at the like on a treadmill.
15:52
Speaker 1: I don't ever pay attention to like, can you burn
15:54
Speaker 1: this many calories? Like? You know what, I gave my
15:58
Speaker 1: hard to work out for forty five minutes exactly, and
16:00
Speaker 1: I didn't fall over dead exactly. And I never weighed
16:02
Speaker 1: myself either, do you really? Yeah? I just fixed my
16:06
Speaker 1: scale actually the batteries, I'll fix it up, put a
16:08
Speaker 1: battery in it, and it had been out for like
16:11
Speaker 1: four or five months, and I didn't, you know, I
16:14
Speaker 1: felt myself getting fatter, and I weighed myself and I
16:17
Speaker 1: was actually like a pound less than I was six
16:19
Speaker 1: months ago. So it was all in my head. Well
16:21
Speaker 1: it's not great. Ideally, I'm twenty pounds less than I
16:24
Speaker 1: went six months ago. I've just been reintroduced to my
16:27
Speaker 1: hip bones lately. Yeah, that's good. You can start wearing
16:32
Speaker 1: the hip huggers you haven't noticed. Sorry, Okay, So chuck.
16:40
Speaker 1: Cigarettes will kill you is where we left off, because
16:42
Speaker 1: they will raise your bad cholesterol level, damage your arteries,
16:46
Speaker 1: and eventually you are in line for a heart attacker stroke. Yes,
16:50
Speaker 1: and that, and while we'll get into it later, let's
16:52
Speaker 1: talk about the brain. Yeah, and I don't think that's
16:54
Speaker 1: much of a spoiler. Now, cigarettes kill you. The the
16:59
Speaker 1: the irony of it is is the nicotine won't kill you.
17:03
Speaker 1: I mean, the nicotine can kill you, but you literally
17:05
Speaker 1: have to overdose on it, and it takes more than
17:07
Speaker 1: you could get from cigarettes. It's other chemicals, the thousands
17:12
Speaker 1: of other chemicals in a cigarette that kill you. Well,
17:14
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that because that's a huge point. Um.
17:18
Speaker 1: The other chemicals are killing you. The nicotine is what
17:21
Speaker 1: makes you smoke over and over and over again. So
17:25
Speaker 1: it's a it's a one two punch of death. Well,
17:27
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Let's talk about what happens in
17:29
Speaker 1: the brain that gets you basically addicted. Um. First up,
17:34
Speaker 1: as with anything, is the reward pathway is manipulated. Right, So,
17:38
Speaker 1: just like with cocaine or alcohol or anything like that,
17:41
Speaker 1: dopaminees released, which is how we learn how to eat
17:45
Speaker 1: and reproduce and do anything that that causes our own
17:49
Speaker 1: or our species survival. Were rewarded, right, Well, nicotine unlocks
17:55
Speaker 1: the release of dopamine, which teaches us to smoke again. Rights, right,
17:59
Speaker 1: But even more than that, a smarter neurotransmitter. And I
18:03
Speaker 1: do kind of think that dopamine is kind of a
18:06
Speaker 1: in fact, Chris Farley kind of neurotransmitter. You know, it's
18:09
Speaker 1: just kind of like out for a good time kind
18:11
Speaker 1: of thing. A setal colin. That guy is slick. That's
18:14
Speaker 1: like a Patrick Bateman kind of neurotransmitter. That's right. And
18:18
Speaker 1: nicotine docks to this uh that binds to this neurotransmitter,
18:24
Speaker 1: and that's where that's where it all happens basically, And
18:28
Speaker 1: may I interject r I P Chris Farley. I know
18:31
Speaker 1: for a fact that he was not dumb. He was
18:33
Speaker 1: a very smart guy. I was talking more about his
18:36
Speaker 1: buffoon like characters that played, not him specific. We don't
18:39
Speaker 1: want to speak ill of the dead, especially not Chris Farler.
18:42
Speaker 1: That's right. So we just mentioned the set to colleen,
18:45
Speaker 1: which the nicotine binds to this neurotransmitter. It's gonna end
18:49
Speaker 1: when you smoke, it's gonna increase the release of setal colleen.
18:53
Speaker 1: And the problem is that the set colin is great
18:56
Speaker 1: and the body, everybody loves the body regulates the release
19:00
Speaker 1: of it in the proper way, but when nicotine gets involved,
19:04
Speaker 1: it's just out of control. Willy nilly, cetoclin going crazy
19:08
Speaker 1: in your body, right, um, one of the and it's
19:11
Speaker 1: a bunch of a seal colin being released means a
19:14
Speaker 1: bunch of activity in the cholinergic neurons. Right, So the
19:18
Speaker 1: cholinergic neurons basically tell your body like, hey, you wake up,
19:21
Speaker 1: bub Let's go do something right, Let's go roller skate
19:25
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. Cholinergic neurons also promote dopamine release,
19:31
Speaker 1: so you're up and at them. You're feeling good, you're
19:34
Speaker 1: feeling you forhork Um. You endorphins are released, which is
19:38
Speaker 1: the body's natural painkiller. You've heard of the runners high.
19:41
Speaker 1: That is h endorphins going crazy at the end of
19:44
Speaker 1: your long jog, exactly. Um. And then lastly, the thing
19:48
Speaker 1: that cements at all is the release of glutamate, which
19:51
Speaker 1: glutamate has been shown to enhance neural connections, connections between
19:57
Speaker 1: the neural pathways, which enhances memory. We talked about memory
20:01
Speaker 1: that we didn't talk about glutamate. Yeah, how do we
20:04
Speaker 1: miss that? I don't know. Well, what can happen here
20:07
Speaker 1: is if you when you ingest nicotine, glutamate can create
20:10
Speaker 1: a memory loop of how awesome it is. So now
20:12
Speaker 1: you've got this recurring film playing in your head like
20:15
Speaker 1: smoking is great, smoking is great. Have another cigarette over
20:19
Speaker 1: and over and over a deadly concoction. Yes, so that's
20:25
Speaker 1: what happens. You're you lose weight, you feel great, right, Uh,
20:30
Speaker 1: like you said, but you're slowly dying. Yes, But we
20:32
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Um that there there there are medicinal there's
20:38
Speaker 1: medicinal value to nicotine specifically, right, because it has this
20:42
Speaker 1: effect on your cholinergic pathways. Um, it could help with Alzheimer's.
20:46
Speaker 1: They're finding Alzheimer's is a loss of cholinergic neurons, that's right, right,
20:53
Speaker 1: which leads to memory loss, that kind of thing. You're
20:55
Speaker 1: not quite as active, You are angry and you don't
20:59
Speaker 1: know why. That's right. Um, they're finding that nicotine can
21:02
Speaker 1: help replace these or it can at the very least
21:05
Speaker 1: stop the loss of cholinergic neurons and promote the activity
21:09
Speaker 1: of the ones that are still around. That's right, hence
21:12
Speaker 1: reversing the effects of Alzheimer's or forestalling it. That's right.
21:15
Speaker 1: And Tourette syndrome is another thing they're looking into now
21:19
Speaker 1: with nicotine patches. Slowly delivering nicotine can reduce the episodes
21:24
Speaker 1: of Tourette's ticks and outbursts. So did we come? I
21:29
Speaker 1: don't even know if we covered that in turetts. This
21:30
Speaker 1: may be news to us. Do you anyone who hasn't
21:34
Speaker 1: heard Tourette sint him yet? Go back illicito. It's a
21:36
Speaker 1: good one, um, but chuck again. We want to specify
21:41
Speaker 1: that you are much more likely to die from ingesting
21:46
Speaker 1: nicotine via the current ways that we have it. We
21:50
Speaker 1: have to ingest it then you are to gain any
21:52
Speaker 1: kind of benefit, right, that's right. Cancer obviously, emphysema, heart disease, stroke,
21:58
Speaker 1: and uh, the nicotine is what gets you addicted, and
22:01
Speaker 1: all the thousands of chemicals and the cigarette is what
22:05
Speaker 1: kills you. And it will kill you. I mean, if
22:09
Speaker 1: you smoke your whole life, you're very much a rarity.
22:13
Speaker 1: If you're one of those people that's like smoking for
22:15
Speaker 1: fifty years and not suffering any effects. That's that's really rare.
22:20
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel death over my shoulder. Really now you're healing, man.
22:24
Speaker 1: You can you can reverse the effects. That's what's so
22:26
Speaker 1: good about it. Yeah, you can reverse the effects, but
22:28
Speaker 1: you can also do lasting damage well, all sorts of
22:32
Speaker 1: time bombs in your body after smoking thousands and thousands
22:35
Speaker 1: of cigarettes over twenty years. True, but you're you're doing good, buddy,
22:38
Speaker 1: um So, Chuck, we talked about it being psychologically addictive, right,
22:43
Speaker 1: very much. You do it compulsively. The definition of this
22:46
Speaker 1: is you are compulsively engaging in an activity that you
22:50
Speaker 1: know will harm you. Yes, you're still doing it. Yes,
22:53
Speaker 1: And it is physiologically anything. Neuroscientists basically say anything that
22:58
Speaker 1: that uh synthetically turns on your reward pathway is addictive,
23:04
Speaker 1: and that's cigarettes for sure. Um or nicotine specifically. And
23:08
Speaker 1: we also mentioned chuckers that um nicotine itself is harmful
23:14
Speaker 1: if you overdose on it. Yeah, but it's very difficult
23:18
Speaker 1: to overdose on it because we remember there's eight to
23:20
Speaker 1: twenty milligrams with nicotine and a cigarette, but your body
23:22
Speaker 1: only jests about one. It's very difficult to overdose by
23:26
Speaker 1: way of smoking inhalation. It is, but if you're a
23:29
Speaker 1: baby and you're dumb, you can eat cigarettes or cigarette
23:33
Speaker 1: butts and overdose on it. It doesn't take very much.
23:37
Speaker 1: It can take eating one cigarette can send a baby
23:40
Speaker 1: to the hospital with a lot of problems. Yes, and
23:42
Speaker 1: I looked this up and it says so in this article,
23:44
Speaker 1: but I double checked the adults. If you eat like
23:49
Speaker 1: three to seven cigarettes as an adult, you will likely die.
23:54
Speaker 1: So don't do that. Don't ever eat a cigarette for
23:56
Speaker 1: any reason. No, But I remember we talked about um
23:58
Speaker 1: ambient people on and in Waking Up and cigarettes, and
24:03
Speaker 1: I was surprised. I thought it was like, oh, eat
24:05
Speaker 1: like three packs of cigarettes and you might get really sick.
24:07
Speaker 1: But if you eat four or five six cigarettes, you
24:09
Speaker 1: will likely die if you don't get to a hospital.
24:12
Speaker 1: So there. This all reminds me of a story of
24:15
Speaker 1: I hope somebody out there can help me with this.
24:18
Speaker 1: It was in a feature article in g Q sometime
24:22
Speaker 1: between probably nineteen nine and n okay, okay. It was
24:28
Speaker 1: about a bank robber may I. He was one of
24:32
Speaker 1: the more successful bank robbers of all time because he
24:34
Speaker 1: figured out if you put a clown wig on glasses
24:37
Speaker 1: and then dangle ribbons from the glasses. No one will
24:40
Speaker 1: ever be able to give a good description of you, ever.
24:43
Speaker 1: So here's a very successful bank robber for a while.
24:46
Speaker 1: What about his wearing a mask? I don't know that
24:50
Speaker 1: was his though. This guy finally gets napped, right, and
24:54
Speaker 1: he's in prison, and he decides he needs to get out,
24:57
Speaker 1: so he takes a pack of cigarettes, right that I
24:59
Speaker 1: imagine he traded a few honeybutons for um. He unrolls
25:03
Speaker 1: the cigarettes and puts him in a cup of water.
25:05
Speaker 1: Let's a couple of water sit overnight, goes around out
25:08
Speaker 1: into the prison yard during like exercise time, runs around
25:11
Speaker 1: a couple of times. It comes back in and immediately
25:14
Speaker 1: chugs this cup of nicotine water of tobacco water and
25:17
Speaker 1: falls right over right. So the hospitals like we are
25:21
Speaker 1: the prisons like we gotta get this guy at the hospital. Well,
25:24
Speaker 1: the ambulance that shows up is full of paramedics who
25:27
Speaker 1: pulled guns on the prison guards. Get the guy into
25:31
Speaker 1: the back of the ambulance. It's his gang posing his paramedics.
25:34
Speaker 1: They take him to an underground doctor who revives him
25:37
Speaker 1: and he lives is that that really happened According to
25:40
Speaker 1: this g Q article and my memory of the g
25:42
Speaker 1: Q article, that's what happened. We could find that out
25:45
Speaker 1: of bet but we can explain exactly what they would
25:48
Speaker 1: have treated him with to to overcome this nicotine overdose
25:52
Speaker 1: which he was surely suffering. We can now, well, what
25:55
Speaker 1: would they treat him with? Well, there's a couple of
25:58
Speaker 1: things you could do. You could get the You could
26:00
Speaker 1: get the nicotine out by giving them ipcac something to
26:03
Speaker 1: induce vomiting. Yeah, um, which you would probably want to do.
26:07
Speaker 1: You can also give them activated charcoal, which the carbon
26:10
Speaker 1: will attract the nicotine the alkaloids, and it will keep
26:13
Speaker 1: the body from absorbing more of it. But that's basically
26:17
Speaker 1: what you want to do is to get out whatever
26:18
Speaker 1: you can and make sure nobody eats any more nicotine. Yeah,
26:21
Speaker 1: and I guess the only scenario no one would want
26:24
Speaker 1: to do that is the the sleepy, hungover morning after
26:28
Speaker 1: when you reach over and grab what you think is
26:30
Speaker 1: that cup of soda and it's really the thing that
26:34
Speaker 1: all your cigarette butts were there into. I knew a
26:36
Speaker 1: kid who would still drink beer with cigarette butts in it. Yeah,
26:40
Speaker 1: smart guy. Uh so I'm not talking about of course
26:44
Speaker 1: you're not. Um so nicotine, Like we said, it gets
26:47
Speaker 1: in your body. Like any drug, your body will adapt adapt,
26:52
Speaker 1: adapt to that drug and start behaving differently. So that's
26:57
Speaker 1: why when you quit, just like any drug, your body's
26:59
Speaker 1: gonna say, wait a minute, Like I was functioning on
27:03
Speaker 1: a certain level here. Uh, and now you just took
27:05
Speaker 1: the nicotine away. So I don't know what to do right.
27:08
Speaker 1: I'm used to a certain amount of color colinergic activity.
27:12
Speaker 1: Give it to me. So I'm gonna be really messed
27:14
Speaker 1: up for a while, and you're gonna be really irritable. Um,
27:17
Speaker 1: Mr person who who has my body? And uh, you're
27:20
Speaker 1: gonna be anxious, and you're gonna be depressed, and you're
27:23
Speaker 1: gonna crave me a lot for about a month and beyond.
27:29
Speaker 1: But a month physically, they say, is when it kind
27:31
Speaker 1: of will leave your system. But the psychological part. I
27:34
Speaker 1: know some people that quit smoking for a decade and
27:37
Speaker 1: they still craved that cigarette on occasion. I used to.
27:40
Speaker 1: I would meet people here there who would you know
27:44
Speaker 1: who saw me smoking? Like I quit thirty years ago
27:46
Speaker 1: and I still want a cigarette every day, And it
27:49
Speaker 1: scared me because I'm kind of like, I think I'd
27:51
Speaker 1: rather die than go like live like that, you know,
27:54
Speaker 1: And now I understand what they're talking about. Where it's
27:56
Speaker 1: like you, it's so manageable. It's such a passing thought
28:01
Speaker 1: that I don't I don't have it every day, but
28:04
Speaker 1: I mean I have had it where I'm like, it
28:06
Speaker 1: would be really greattte probably having a drink that for
28:10
Speaker 1: a lot of people alcohol in cigarettes you would think. So, No,
28:13
Speaker 1: I haven't noticed any actual triggers. Um, there is a
28:16
Speaker 1: lot of it is association, like yes, if you if
28:19
Speaker 1: you drink, you want it. You want a cigarette that
28:23
Speaker 1: doesn't it's fleeting. It's more kind of out of the blue,
28:26
Speaker 1: not like stress related, not necessarily interesting. It's just kind
28:29
Speaker 1: of they're like and like underneath a certain part of
28:32
Speaker 1: your brain and it just kind of floats to the
28:34
Speaker 1: service every once a while, but you just kind of
28:36
Speaker 1: batted away. It's completely manage about you. Yeah, well that's good.
28:40
Speaker 1: It's different for everybody, and um, the way it reacts
28:43
Speaker 1: in your body is different for everyone. Your tolerance level
28:46
Speaker 1: is going to be different, uh for everybody. That's why
28:49
Speaker 1: some people smoke three packs a day is because they
28:51
Speaker 1: need to keep recharging that hit of dopamine. And some
28:54
Speaker 1: people can get by with smoking the occasional cigarette, and
28:58
Speaker 1: our advice is to not ever start, avoid the whole mess. Yeah,
29:02
Speaker 1: and this is coming from a dude who love to smoke.
29:05
Speaker 1: And now you're just like, no, no, no, no, that's great.
29:08
Speaker 1: I love it, Thanks, Chuck. Um. If you love nicotine
29:13
Speaker 1: and you want to learn more about it, if you
29:16
Speaker 1: love it at an intellectual level, I guess that is
29:18
Speaker 1: what I mean. If you can learn more by typing
29:21
Speaker 1: in nicotine, right, Yes, I imagine you could also type
29:25
Speaker 1: in coded nine if you wanted to in in the
29:28
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com, which will
29:30
Speaker 1: bring up this article on nicotine, and search bar brings
29:34
Speaker 1: up listener mail. That's right, you almost caught me off guard.
29:40
Speaker 1: That was so slick, Uh, Josh, I'm gonna call this
29:44
Speaker 1: uh follow up on wacky Wills. Yes, we asked for
29:48
Speaker 1: wacky will stories and this was a good one. This
29:50
Speaker 1: is from Nate in Galesburg, Illinois. Dear Josh and Chuck
29:55
Speaker 1: and Jerry, guys have been a big fan for years.
29:57
Speaker 1: I heard how wills work. I was hoping you would
29:59
Speaker 1: mention my favorite story of strange will stipulations. But you
30:02
Speaker 1: didn't so here it is uh And he included a
30:06
Speaker 1: link to Snopes because it's uh true. Yeah, he wasn't
30:10
Speaker 1: the only one to send this one into Oh did
30:12
Speaker 1: more than one of these come in? So? A Toronto
30:16
Speaker 1: lawyer named Charles vance Millar died in with a hefty estate.
30:20
Speaker 1: Left a number of strange clauses in his will, most
30:23
Speaker 1: of which are described in the link, the strangest of
30:25
Speaker 1: which is came to be known as the Great stork
30:28
Speaker 1: derby wacky Canadians. He left a significant portion of his
30:33
Speaker 1: money investment that would turn out to be worth up
30:36
Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the woman
30:39
Speaker 1: who gave birth to the most children in Toronto. And
30:43
Speaker 1: it's in years following his death. Oh this guy to
30:45
Speaker 1: do that? I don't know. I'm really trying to think
30:48
Speaker 1: of a reason he was. Um, he was a big
30:52
Speaker 1: fan of coitus maybe or just trying to populate Canada.
30:57
Speaker 1: I guess take over the US once and for all?
30:59
Speaker 1: Is it toront that's what he says. Uh. There were
31:02
Speaker 1: a number of interesting legal challenges highlighted in the link,
31:05
Speaker 1: such as whether or not illegitimate or deceased children counted.
31:09
Speaker 1: It's awful, and ultimately the purse was split among six
31:12
Speaker 1: women in total, the most money going to four women
31:15
Speaker 1: with nine legitimate live burse during the time frame, each
31:19
Speaker 1: of whom received the hundred and twenty five grand I
31:21
Speaker 1: hope you guys have a chance to mention this uncommon
31:23
Speaker 1: and capreaches equipment from Nate in Galesburg and uh quickly.
31:30
Speaker 1: We also wanted to mention Chris uh is a marine.
31:33
Speaker 1: Was a marine and then later a Naval reserve officer,
31:37
Speaker 1: and they were required to have a will, so we
31:40
Speaker 1: mentioned the on the battlefield type of holographic will or
31:45
Speaker 1: oral will and apparently now you have to prove that
31:49
Speaker 1: you have a will to get into the armed services.
31:51
Speaker 1: So that's that's the information we got from Chris. Thanks Chris.
31:55
Speaker 1: And I can't remember the name of the person who
31:58
Speaker 1: sent us an email and uttered dis the leap that
32:00
Speaker 1: we failed to mention Brewster's millions, but my apologies to
32:04
Speaker 1: that person and anyone else who thought the same thing. Yeah,
32:07
Speaker 1: we totally overlooked that. That's Lesser Prior's good. But Lesser
32:12
Speaker 1: Prior and John Candy, Yeah, God, Resistledig exactly do you
32:16
Speaker 1: want to say hi to Chuckers or me, You can
32:20
Speaker 1: do so by going on our Facebook page Facebook dot
32:22
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you Should Know UM. You can also
32:25
Speaker 1: tweet high to us that's at s y s K
32:29
Speaker 1: podcast uh. And then you can always just send us
32:31
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned email at stuff Podcasts at how
32:36
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
32:43
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
32:45
Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
32:48
Speaker 1: in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
32:51
Speaker 1: Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived down at it today
32:54
Speaker 1: on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented tooth thousand
33:00
Speaker 1: and twelve Camry. It's ready, are you