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How Near-Death Experiences Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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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 with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Bryant. Josh call him Chuck to Josh. Insert
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Speaker 1: with the intro. I don't have one, okay, so we
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Speaker 1: should we talk about in your death experience? Yeah, I've
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Speaker 1: got one for you. Actually, Um. In there was a
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Speaker 1: woman named Pam Reynolds who is a song stress from
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Speaker 1: what I can gather, a blues song stress, possibly country
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Speaker 1: cross over here there. She's in Atlanta, resident really yeah, um,
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Speaker 1: And she underwent a procedure to repair a brain and aneurism,
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Speaker 1: right okay, And this brain and yoursm apparently was in
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Speaker 1: a really difficult place. And um, she got in touch
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Speaker 1: with a specialist who's like, you know what, Um, I
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Speaker 1: know a procedure we can do on you, because we're
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Speaker 1: gonna have to drain all the blood from your brain
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Speaker 1: to operate on this thing. That's not good now. Basically,
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Speaker 1: the doctor said, Pam, we're gonna have to kill you.
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Speaker 1: For about forty five minutes. I was just about to
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Speaker 1: say that would probably mean she's dead. Huh. So the
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Speaker 1: procedure that she underwent was a hypothermic cardiac arrest, and
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Speaker 1: she was intentionally cardiac arrested, Um, by lowering your body
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Speaker 1: temperature to I think sixty degrees fahrenheit for for good
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Speaker 1: forty five minutes. Right, looks like flatlanders. It's very much
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Speaker 1: like talk. She'll see yes. Um, So Pam Reynolds is
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Speaker 1: dead for forty five minutes, and not like accidentally dead,
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Speaker 1: like she was purposefully killed by her physicians. Um. They
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Speaker 1: cut the top of her her head off, repaired the
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Speaker 1: brain aneurysm, so they're butchering her as well. Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: she's dead, what does she care? Uh? And then they
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Speaker 1: successfully bring her back and Pam Reynolds sits up after
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Speaker 1: she's recovering and says, hey, God, breath. Pretty crazy. I
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Speaker 1: saw my grandmother and my uncle, and there was a
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Speaker 1: tunnel with white light and all of these things that
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Speaker 1: have come to be recognized as aspects of a near
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Speaker 1: death experience. That's weird for one reason. One reason is
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Speaker 1: that there was no blood to her brain, therefore she
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Speaker 1: should not have had any sensory input reaction whatsoever. But
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Speaker 1: maybe it happened as it was draining. Now, who knows.
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Speaker 1: Maybe weird thing number two. Weird thing number two. When
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Speaker 1: she came to she could describe the bon saw that
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Speaker 1: she never saw while she was alive that cut her
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Speaker 1: head open. She said that she she was surprised by
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Speaker 1: it because it looked more like an electric toothbrush than
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Speaker 1: what she was expecting. She never saw it at any point, um.
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Speaker 1: And she could also describe things like, oh, I don't know,
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Speaker 1: the surgeons shirt that he was wearing beneath his scrubs,
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Speaker 1: things like that that she should not have ever been
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Speaker 1: able to see. Um. She was not, as far as
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Speaker 1: I know, much of a believer in that kind of
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Speaker 1: thing until afterward. And her case is widely pointed to
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Speaker 1: as one of the best pieces of evidence that there
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Speaker 1: is such a thing as life after death. She had
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Speaker 1: like a classic near death experience. We could end it
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Speaker 1: right now, and I think people would be satisfied. Okay,
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Speaker 1: that was such a good story. Well I'm hungry, so
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Speaker 1: why don't we Okay, let's get a twinkie. Wow, that's
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Speaker 1: awesome and cool. Thanks, And that really happened. Oh yeah,
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Speaker 1: it definitely happens. She's still Pam Reynolds. She's very much
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Speaker 1: alive and UM apparently likes her experience. She had a
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Speaker 1: great experience. Um. She has at least one album she
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Speaker 1: released called The Side Effects of Death. Are you serious? Yeah? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: she's She seems like a pretty cool lady. Is she
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Speaker 1: still at Lantay now? I don't know. That would be
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Speaker 1: cool if we you know, I've had lunch with her something. Well,
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Speaker 1: if if she is and she's listening to an email,
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Speaker 1: we'll go have lunch because I would love to hear
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Speaker 1: that firsthand. That would be awesome. As a matter of fact,
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Speaker 1: I will pay for lunch out of my own pocket
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Speaker 1: for that one, which is really saying something that I know.
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Speaker 1: I O Jerry thirty five bucks first. Yeah, He's like,
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Speaker 1: pay me, then go eat your hot dog. Uh so, Josh.
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Speaker 1: The term near death experience coined in nineteen by Dr
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Speaker 1: Raymond Moody in his book Life After Life, very clever title,
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Speaker 1: it is very clever, Um and actually Moody you will
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Speaker 1: notice the doctor um, which makes him less of a
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Speaker 1: crack pot. Uh. And we'll find throughout this podcast that
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Speaker 1: there are some very smart, very educated, very um skeptical
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Speaker 1: people who are researching this. Yeah, this is not just
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Speaker 1: some fringe scientific idea or even just a fringe religious idea.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty much where religion and science converge. Yeah, I mean,
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Speaker 1: there's no doubt that there are near death experience is
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Speaker 1: what they are interpreted as and explained away as is
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Speaker 1: what differs. They definitely happened. The earliest description we have
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Speaker 1: of a near death experience comes from Plato's Republic, written
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Speaker 1: in A three sixty B c UM, which is BC
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Speaker 1: for those of you who are not hip to the
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Speaker 1: new abbreviation R. Do you know what BC stands for?
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Speaker 1: Before Christ existed, before Chuck existed, Before Chuck, I don't know.
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Speaker 1: Um No, before before the Common era, the Common era
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Speaker 1: Judaism and Christians. What's the other one, because you said
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Speaker 1: that one the end of the day, the Common Era CE, B, C, E,
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Speaker 1: and C. Right, Yeah, so with that out of the way, Yeah,
5:26
Speaker 1: it's still Judeo Christian though, and it's uh oh it is, well, yeah,
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Speaker 1: before the Common era of Judaism and Christianity. Oh I
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Speaker 1: just thought they meant before Chuck existed. Okay, so anyway,
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Speaker 1: Plato describes the soldier named Er who was killed in
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Speaker 1: battle uh, and came back to life, but apparently left
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Speaker 1: his body and was judged before a panel of souls
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Speaker 1: and saw heaven, which will sound kind of familiar to
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Speaker 1: any fan of Albert Brooks. Yeah, was Defending Your Life
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Speaker 1: In Your Life arguably the greatest movie about the afterlife ever. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I'm a big Albert Brooks fan. All Right, I'm not
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Speaker 1: a big fan, but that's what probably my top five
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Speaker 1: favorite movies. I like him. I think I'm down with
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Speaker 1: the neurotic uh, Woody Allen Albert Brooks types. I like
6:08
Speaker 1: him more than Woody Allen. I'm a Woody not so Chuck.
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Speaker 1: Do you think we should talk about near death experiences?
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Speaker 1: Maybe we should talk about what is typical of an indie? Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And the thing that strikes me is, you know, it's
6:22
Speaker 1: not that Um Grabanowski, who you know, is like the
6:25
Speaker 1: sign of quality for an article. You see him byline,
6:27
Speaker 1: you know it's worth reading, right, Um, Which is not
6:31
Speaker 1: to say that there's an article on the site that's
6:32
Speaker 1: not worth reading, now that I think about that, good point,
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Speaker 1: kiss up. Yeah, Um. But I think just anybody living
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Speaker 1: in the twenty one century has been so exposed to
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Speaker 1: the concept of near death experiences that like, all of
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Speaker 1: this will sound very familiar, but Chuck, yes, take it.
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Speaker 1: We'll go through these fairly quickly because there's a little list.
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Speaker 1: Feeling of calmness is one um intense pure bright light.
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Speaker 1: You always hear about the light go into the light. Uh,
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Speaker 1: and out of body experience. Ants. That's good. I think
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Speaker 1: it actually makes that sound upon re entry um entering
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Speaker 1: another realm or dimension. Spirit beings knees are beings of
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Speaker 1: light or other representations of spiritual entities. Already said, Okay,
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Speaker 1: the tunnel, which we always talk about, and the light
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Speaker 1: is typically at the end of the tunnel. Uh. Communication
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Speaker 1: with spirits it's usually a strong male voice, which is interesting. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And life review, which is also called a panoramic life
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Speaker 1: review check. And that is when you see your you
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Speaker 1: know you've heard of your life flash before your eyes. Right.
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Speaker 1: That's that. So those are the common hallmarks of an indie.
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Speaker 1: Right and UM. Most of the time, when you hear
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Speaker 1: somebody coming back to life after death, whether your physician
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Speaker 1: did it to you on purpose or accidentally, or somebody
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Speaker 1: hit you in the head with a ball peene hammer, Um,
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Speaker 1: most people say it was awesome, Like Jesus was there,
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Speaker 1: and so was my aunt and my dog and and everything. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Elvis was there and it wasn't fat anymore. It was wonderful. Um.
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Speaker 1: But there is actually a segment of the population that
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Speaker 1: has experienced a near death experience that says, yeah, that
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Speaker 1: didn't happen to me. Actually, I had the exact opposite experience.
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Speaker 1: I went to Hell. Up up to one of people
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Speaker 1: in a poll that we're going to talk about, said
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Speaker 1: it's what I like to call a bad trip. Bad trip, indeed,
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Speaker 1: probably the worst trip of all time. We're talking biblical
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Speaker 1: descriptions of hell, lakes of fire, tormented souls, and oppressive heat.
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Speaker 1: And actually this was surprising to me. There was there
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Speaker 1: some people come back from experiences like that or even
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Speaker 1: good ones, with the prophetic vision a lot of times
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Speaker 1: that the world is going to end. And there was
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Speaker 1: a group of people who were unknown to each other
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Speaker 1: that came back, Um, I guess during the eighties and
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Speaker 1: said the world's gonna end in And they didn't know
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Speaker 1: one another, and they all had the same experience, which
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Speaker 1: is weird. The world obviously didn't end in night, but
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Speaker 1: so that means it's bunk. Not necessarily, what if a
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Speaker 1: portion of the world ended, a portion that we're not
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Speaker 1: really familiar with, or that we just didn't realize, Like
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Speaker 1: maybe humanity lost a little bit of its humanenus in
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight and we just didn't recognize it as
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Speaker 1: the world ending. Or the aliens living inside the hollow
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Speaker 1: Earth maybe they all died or have you read um
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Speaker 1: what was it Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agents, never heard
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Speaker 1: of it. Douglas Adams, the guy who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide
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Speaker 1: to the Galaxy. That he writes about this, uh, this
9:39
Speaker 1: other dimensional group that are coming to take over Earth.
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Speaker 1: But somebody forgot to uh to carry like a zero
9:46
Speaker 1: or something, and they when they teleported themselves to our dimension,
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Speaker 1: they showed up as very very tiny and we're inhaled
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Speaker 1: by a dog immediately. Really. Yeah, that dude's got a
9:56
Speaker 1: great sense of humor. He's got a great one. I
9:58
Speaker 1: always did what he lays down well said. So let's
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Speaker 1: get back to that pole that I referenced. Yeah, because
10:03
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. This is one of the people
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Speaker 1: I was talking about. It's very smart and very educated
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Speaker 1: and very well known to George Gallop Jr. Right of
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Speaker 1: the pole. Gallops the gallop pole of the Coney Island Gallops.
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Speaker 1: He Uh and author William Proctor released a book called
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Speaker 1: Adventures and Immortality in two and that's pretty much the
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Speaker 1: most exhaustive polling research that's ever been done on indies. Yeah,
10:28
Speaker 1: we have a rule of thumb here at how stuff
10:30
Speaker 1: works dot com where if it studies a decade old
10:34
Speaker 1: or more and a lot of us actually fudged towards
10:36
Speaker 1: the other side eight nine years, it's probably out of date.
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Speaker 1: This this book is still cited. It was just like,
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Speaker 1: it's so exhaustive, it's so authority, it's the standard. Yeah,
10:50
Speaker 1: very cool. I got some stats then from this pole.
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Speaker 1: Josh Chuck loves stats. They know that, Oh, somebody is
10:57
Speaker 1: drinking right now in Korea, Richard go chuckers Hey Jerry.
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Speaker 1: Of all Americans who had been in near death situations
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Speaker 1: reported having a near death experience, and it's a lot.
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Speaker 1: That is a lot. Nine percent included the classic out
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Speaker 1: of body experience, and h eleven percent included entering a
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Speaker 1: realm or dimension a different one. An eight percent featured
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Speaker 1: the presence of spiritual beings. Pretty cool, and well yeah,
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Speaker 1: one percent reported bad trip. Basically that was the Gaol
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Speaker 1: but other smaller studies have reported up to a quarter
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Speaker 1: of people who have indes have, as Chuck puts it,
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Speaker 1: bad trips. Yeah. The other cool thing Josh about this
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Speaker 1: UH study is they indicated that one hundred near death
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Speaker 1: experience subjects revealed that prior religious belief and knowledge of
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Speaker 1: the near death experience did not really have any kind
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Speaker 1: of effect. So it wasn't like, oh, I'm really, um
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Speaker 1: super Christian and so I saw God right in St. Jr.
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Speaker 1: Home and St. Pete, or I'm really into near death
12:03
Speaker 1: experiences so I saw one that kind of thing. Yeah. Um.
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Speaker 1: There's a guy named Kenneth Ring who's also a very
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Speaker 1: prolific researcher and author on near death experiences UM, and
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Speaker 1: he did a h he started to quantify UM what
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Speaker 1: was going on among populations that have experienced in these
12:23
Speaker 1: right and he found that most people, a small percentage
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Speaker 1: again feel like fear, depression, that kind of thing afterwards.
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Speaker 1: But most people who undergo a near death experience UM
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Speaker 1: have a new renewed appreciation for life and living. They
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Speaker 1: feel that they are not no longer afraid of death UM,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of them become a lot more extroverted
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Speaker 1: or I should say most of them become extroverted. They're
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Speaker 1: basically changed by their experience UM and they are much
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Speaker 1: more spiritual. But interestingly, that doesn't he didn't see an
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Speaker 1: increase a positive correlation between that increased spirituality and increased
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Speaker 1: UM religiousness or increased church attendance. Right, it was like
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Speaker 1: an inward spirituality. Right. Did you ever see the movie Fearless?
13:09
Speaker 1: Is that the Jeff Bridges plane crushed? Yeah? I heard
13:12
Speaker 1: the movie poster though, Oh that's you know what I had?
13:15
Speaker 1: That movie poster were so we were there to be chuck.
13:19
Speaker 1: That is odd. It's a great movie. They just check
13:21
Speaker 1: it out here. Jeff Bridges survives and he uh, it's
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Speaker 1: the only movie I know of that it goes through
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Speaker 1: all the classic UM in a realistic way. It goes
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Speaker 1: through the classic post near death experience UM trials and tribulations. See.
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Speaker 1: Knowing me, I would have just crippling survivors guilt for
13:37
Speaker 1: the rest of my life the way he had that.
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Speaker 1: And he also had the invincibility that they talked about too,
13:43
Speaker 1: like the shield of invincibility, cloak of invincibility literally, but yeah,
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Speaker 1: I felt like I can't die. Oh oh yeah, I
13:50
Speaker 1: remember he's like on a ledge or something at one
13:52
Speaker 1: point where I'm totally who cares? You noticed he didn't
13:55
Speaker 1: jump though, of course anyone can stand on a ledge.
13:58
Speaker 1: That's not gonna kill you. That's like the Bill routine. Okay,
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Speaker 1: So Bill Hicks is talking about people taking drugs like
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Speaker 1: PCP or whatever and flying on or you know, jumping
14:08
Speaker 1: off a buildings thinking they can fly, And Bill Hicks
14:11
Speaker 1: is like, if you think you can fly, why don't
14:13
Speaker 1: you just try taking off from the ground, Right, that's
14:16
Speaker 1: a good sharp guy. That's funny you mentioned that. Actually,
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Speaker 1: it's exactly, isn't it. This PCP and uh, what's that? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's right, are believed to give similar feelings as near
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Speaker 1: death experiences, Is that right? Uh? Yeah, Actually, supposedly you
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Speaker 1: can a lot of people feel like they're actually dying
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Speaker 1: when they're in the grips of a trip on PCP
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Speaker 1: or ketamine. And actually also, um, there's a lot of
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Speaker 1: similar near death experiences, like, uh, people have reported being
14:47
Speaker 1: on ketamine and feeling like they're spinning around and attracting
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Speaker 1: light beings like we mentioned earlier. Yeah, um, and and
14:55
Speaker 1: so there's some real similarities, especially with ketamine and near
14:58
Speaker 1: death experiences, which is really really odd, but that kind
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Speaker 1: of undermines the spiritual theory of near death experiences and
15:07
Speaker 1: in in supports the scientific theories about it. Right, let's
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Speaker 1: talk about those. Okay. What we're talking about with the
15:13
Speaker 1: spiritual is more like a supernatural explanation, is that you're
15:16
Speaker 1: talking about? Yeah, that you And I hate to put
15:19
Speaker 1: it like this because I don't think that. I think
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Speaker 1: supernatural kind of undermines it. It makes it sound cookie,
15:23
Speaker 1: but um, that I guess the supernatural explanation is that
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Speaker 1: you possess a soul that lives on after your your
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Speaker 1: body dies and your passion, it goes onto another dimension
15:34
Speaker 1: and just things that science can't or possibly can't yet explain,
15:40
Speaker 1: which makes them supernatural rather than natural. Supernatural actually should
15:44
Speaker 1: be a good word. Yeah, it's a great word as Um. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I mean essentially passing on to the afterlife, or in
15:52
Speaker 1: the case of reincarnation, may be passing from one life
15:55
Speaker 1: to another, that kind of thing. Right, So that's the
15:59
Speaker 1: spiritual supernatural reasoning. And then there's science. Are we there yet? Yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: we were there a while back. Science, there's a few
16:10
Speaker 1: theories going on that. Um, it's really a lot of
16:13
Speaker 1: stuff happening in the brain. Well, you can't say theories.
16:15
Speaker 1: These are hypotheses, because Chuck, why does it say scientific theories?
16:18
Speaker 1: Then the grapster was himself overworked that week. But um no,
16:25
Speaker 1: these are hypotheses because you can't test them. You can't
16:28
Speaker 1: kill somebody to see what happens to him, like flatliners exactly.
16:31
Speaker 1: I mean you can, but then you end up as
16:34
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon found in Big Trouble. Yeah, what did he had?
16:37
Speaker 1: The kids that he teased were after him or something?
16:40
Speaker 1: Or was that the mouth breather, No, the mouth breather,
16:44
Speaker 1: I don't remember what happened. He had the little girl
16:46
Speaker 1: in the subway train that was after him, the mouth
16:49
Speaker 1: breather and Kevin Bacon. No, no no, no, Kevin Bacon had
16:53
Speaker 1: the girl in the subway, and the mouth breather was
16:55
Speaker 1: the one who teased the kid up in the tree
16:57
Speaker 1: that fell, that's right. And Julia Roberts had cookie Dad
17:01
Speaker 1: and William Baldwin, Oh yeah, she not the cookie dad,
17:04
Speaker 1: the junkie the junkie dad. And then I don't think
17:07
Speaker 1: Oliver Platte everyone under Diddy he was kind of with.
17:09
Speaker 1: And then William Baldwin's all involved ex Girl Friends, which
17:12
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty silly. Yeah, that's a good movie though.
17:15
Speaker 1: Yeah it hasn't aged well, oh no, I haven't seen it. Uh,
17:21
Speaker 1: not bad though. So medical science, Yeah, they say that
17:24
Speaker 1: the brain is um perhaps getting the senses confused, and
17:29
Speaker 1: your brain starts malfunctioning to the point where you see
17:33
Speaker 1: these uh see the lights as your brain is shutting
17:35
Speaker 1: down that kind of thing. Your visual cortex creates that
17:38
Speaker 1: image and it's it's all easily explained. Right. So I'm
17:41
Speaker 1: looking at you right now, Chuck, and you are really
17:43
Speaker 1: just a cluster of light and shadows that forms of
17:46
Speaker 1: shape which I'm receiving through my retinas, that are basically
17:51
Speaker 1: being transformed into electrical impulses that go to the visual
17:54
Speaker 1: cortex in my brain, which takes them compiles them into
17:58
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing as you, Chuck sitting there right What
18:02
Speaker 1: happens if that part of my brain is malfunctioning. I
18:05
Speaker 1: still am getting uh, sensory input through my eyes, but
18:09
Speaker 1: my brain is no longer making sense of it. So
18:11
Speaker 1: maybe it turns into what's called neural noise. My brain
18:16
Speaker 1: still is struggling to make sense of it, Like that's
18:18
Speaker 1: what our brains do. Remember the podcast on dreaming, there's
18:22
Speaker 1: a dreaming that we um our brains want to make
18:25
Speaker 1: sense of things no matter what, and that's possibly what
18:27
Speaker 1: dreams are. Right. It's almost like the brain is still
18:30
Speaker 1: just struggling. It's like a fish flopping in a boat
18:34
Speaker 1: at this point. It's it's, you know, not really doing
18:37
Speaker 1: what it wants to, but it it's still wants to
18:39
Speaker 1: do what it needs to write, wasn't it. Uh So,
18:44
Speaker 1: so the brain is taking all this information, but it's
18:47
Speaker 1: miscategorizing it whatever. So all of a sudden, there's a
18:50
Speaker 1: bright white light, or there's a tunnel, or there's a
18:53
Speaker 1: being there. Um. And it's also possible that it takes
18:56
Speaker 1: all this information and it's jumbled, but it's not until
18:59
Speaker 1: after we wake up and our conscious memory is active
19:02
Speaker 1: that it's sorting it into those memories, these false memories
19:06
Speaker 1: or whatever. And the other thing too, your brain, uh,
19:09
Speaker 1: your your spatial sense is prone to malfunction when you
19:12
Speaker 1: have in your death experience and that could explain potentially
19:15
Speaker 1: the outer body experience when you feel yourself floating around
19:18
Speaker 1: the room looking down at your own body. That kind
19:20
Speaker 1: of thing, right, and that um calm sensation and being
19:24
Speaker 1: at peace. It's possible that um, these are it's the
19:27
Speaker 1: result of endorphins flooding our brain, which has been shown
19:31
Speaker 1: to they've been really they are released during times of
19:34
Speaker 1: like trauma and extreme stress as a coping mechanism. Like apparently,
19:38
Speaker 1: if you're drowning, right before you drown, you've just become
19:41
Speaker 1: euphoric because your brain just floods itself with endorphins right
19:45
Speaker 1: before you die. So we know that that's a pretty
19:48
Speaker 1: good possibility to write. And uh, I think they've explained
19:52
Speaker 1: or tried to explain the meeting with God that kind
19:54
Speaker 1: of thing as basically a combination of a bunch of things,
19:58
Speaker 1: maybe the sensory and put combined with a lack of
20:01
Speaker 1: oxygen to your brain and the endorphins and they all
20:04
Speaker 1: getting mixed up together to create a really realistic Yeah, So, Chuck,
20:12
Speaker 1: this is um as far as near death experiences go.
20:15
Speaker 1: There's so much evidence, and we have such a little
20:20
Speaker 1: grasp on the brain. It seems like the scientific theories
20:24
Speaker 1: are reasonable in some cases. And I'm like, there's a
20:27
Speaker 1: line that grab Anowski throws out there. He's like, but
20:30
Speaker 1: what about you know, people who like Pam Reynolds who
20:34
Speaker 1: describe what's going on while they're actually dead. Sure, He's like,
20:37
Speaker 1: it's possible the brain is still getting sensory input. He goes,
20:41
Speaker 1: whether you think that that's more irrational of an explanation
20:44
Speaker 1: than the person's soul actually left the body. As a
20:48
Speaker 1: matter of opinion, I thought he did a good job
20:50
Speaker 1: with that too, because there's no definite answer and there
20:52
Speaker 1: probably won't be. Well, I can't say that, but who knows. Well.
20:55
Speaker 1: I think a lot of scientists think that they have
20:57
Speaker 1: found definitive answers that the brain is just screwed up
20:59
Speaker 1: right there. But I think this is one of those cases.
21:01
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's this is true in every case,
21:03
Speaker 1: but this is one of those cases where science might
21:06
Speaker 1: be able to explain the how, but not the why.
21:09
Speaker 1: Like if we do undergo some sort of transformation or
21:12
Speaker 1: transition after death, wouldn't it be based on the chemical
21:15
Speaker 1: composition of our brains? Like, wouldn't that be the way
21:18
Speaker 1: we were most easily manipulated? I think, so, yeah, that's
21:21
Speaker 1: where I parked my car. Well, thanks for parking your Carlo, Chuck,
21:27
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Maybe we should kill each other tonight,
21:30
Speaker 1: like choke each other out until we're at the brink
21:33
Speaker 1: and then like slap each other in the face and
21:35
Speaker 1: see what happens. Um, why don't we not do it
21:38
Speaker 1: at the same time. You go first, I'll put a
21:40
Speaker 1: belt around your neck and tie you to a piece
21:42
Speaker 1: of exercise equipment, and I'll just stand there because I
21:46
Speaker 1: think one of us needs to be alive while the
21:47
Speaker 1: other one's under Yes, and we are not condoning this
21:50
Speaker 1: because that is very dangerous to do and you should
21:52
Speaker 1: not try something like that. Agreed. Agreed, we're trained professionals. Agreed.
21:57
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about near death experiences,
21:59
Speaker 1: there's actually um some pretty good articles. There's a Grabbinowski's.
22:03
Speaker 1: I wrote one on has science explained life after death?
22:07
Speaker 1: And uh, the former writer Jacob Silverman wrote one on
22:10
Speaker 1: out of body experiences. Uh. You can type in near
22:14
Speaker 1: death and I think it should bring all three of
22:16
Speaker 1: those up. Type those in the handy search bar at
22:18
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for
22:21
Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this, um a pretty
22:27
Speaker 1: amazing medical story, more amazing than what we were just
22:31
Speaker 1: talking about. Well, I don't know. And also check we
22:34
Speaker 1: should probably give a shout out to that listener. Remember
22:36
Speaker 1: he wrote in about his dad dying and he found
22:38
Speaker 1: out there were those cards on on the high shelf
22:41
Speaker 1: that you could only see if you were floating at
22:43
Speaker 1: the season right. So hey, there you inspired this podcast
22:47
Speaker 1: in a way. Hi guys, I'm propped up in a
22:51
Speaker 1: bed in a Sydney hospital, recovering from a gas direct
22:53
Speaker 1: to me by catching up on a whole uh stack
22:56
Speaker 1: of Stuff podcast in the hospital, listening to all my
23:00
Speaker 1: all our shows. Do they stack at the digital file?
23:03
Speaker 1: They are? Um? I've been here for two weeks after
23:05
Speaker 1: admitting myself to emergency with abdonmenal cramps. I had a
23:10
Speaker 1: there's a lot of medical terms in there. I had.
23:12
Speaker 1: I had a lubectomy of my left lower lung in
23:15
Speaker 1: December of last year to remove a pulmonary sequestration, and
23:19
Speaker 1: the initial CT scan when I was admitted showed an
23:22
Speaker 1: abscess in the space where my lung used to be used.
23:26
Speaker 1: To bet I know, I was very fortunate to have
23:30
Speaker 1: the same surgeon called in to repeat the procedure. However,
23:34
Speaker 1: once he got in there, he was met with something
23:36
Speaker 1: very unexpected. The abscess was actually my stomach, which had
23:41
Speaker 1: herniated into a cavity, who a minute opening in my
23:44
Speaker 1: diaphragm created by the sequestration. I eat, It's always been there,
23:49
Speaker 1: but it was only exposed when they removed it, so, uh,
23:53
Speaker 1: it was gone, had had gone completely gan greenness, which
23:57
Speaker 1: is not a pleasant word to hear, DNS gangredness, jerk.
24:01
Speaker 1: They immediately flipped me over and found that all but
24:03
Speaker 1: ten percent of my stomach had been pulled through this
24:06
Speaker 1: tiny hole. What so they had to completely remove it
24:09
Speaker 1: and attach my esophagus directly to my small intestine. I
24:13
Speaker 1: told you it was pretty amazing, apparently as the procedure
24:16
Speaker 1: used on stomach cancer patients, and uh, he was in
24:20
Speaker 1: surgery theater for almost ten hours. From what I gather,
24:24
Speaker 1: it's a very unique occurrence, and all the nurses that
24:26
Speaker 1: have come by have asked me about it, and the
24:29
Speaker 1: doctors give me this fascinated look whenever they passed by.
24:32
Speaker 1: My word like, wow, that's the dude. With the recent
24:35
Speaker 1: special US health care system. I thought it would be
24:37
Speaker 1: interesting to both of you, but wasn't for the quick
24:40
Speaker 1: action and surgeons and the fact that I was in
24:42
Speaker 1: the hospital residents to uh, some of the top surgeons
24:45
Speaker 1: in the state. I've been told, there's a good chance
24:48
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have made it quite sobering. So where it
24:51
Speaker 1: is after a month, my intestine will have expanded to
24:53
Speaker 1: the point where I won't notice a big difference in
24:56
Speaker 1: diet or capacity. And the only only ongoing treatment on
24:59
Speaker 1: the as a potential vitamin B twelve injection every three months.
25:03
Speaker 1: Cool crazy, Huh that's what he said, Yes, and uh
25:08
Speaker 1: he wrote in. After that, I wrote him back and
25:10
Speaker 1: he wrote in and said that, um, he wanted to
25:12
Speaker 1: add that it basically didn't custom a time. Nice. So
25:16
Speaker 1: who who is it? This is Jeff and Jeff is
25:19
Speaker 1: the owner of Grizzly Personal Training in Sydney, Australia at
25:22
Speaker 1: grizzly pt dot com and Jeff d is on the
25:25
Speaker 1: mend and hopefully he'll be physically training some people stomachless. Well, Jeff,
25:31
Speaker 1: congratulations on surviving and thank you for listening and taking
25:35
Speaker 1: the time to write in. That's pretty awesome. Actually, thanks
25:38
Speaker 1: for having the stomach to tell us that story. Well,
25:42
Speaker 1: if you have any amazing stories about how bundled payments
25:45
Speaker 1: led you to find that you have a hole in
25:48
Speaker 1: your body that shouldn't be there, you can send in
25:51
Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
25:59
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
26:02
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
26:06
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
26:08
Speaker 1: com home page. H brought to you by the reinvented
26:13
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you