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SYSK Selects: Do you stay conscious after being decapitated? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there, everybody. It's me Josh, your friend Josh, and
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Speaker 1: this week I've selected do You Really Stay Conscious After Decapitation?
0:10
Speaker 1: It was one of our top three grizzliest episodes we've
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Speaker 1: ever done. We talked in depth about what it's like
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Speaker 1: to have your head cut off, and it's a pretty
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Speaker 1: grim but it's also, in my opinion, one of the
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Speaker 1: most interesting ones we've ever done. So if you are
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Speaker 1: fain of heart or week of stomach, skip this one
0:31
Speaker 1: if you like, But I dare you to listen anyway,
0:33
Speaker 1: because it is that good. Welcome to Stuff you should
0:38
Speaker 1: know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
0:47
Speaker 1: to the podcast on Josh Clark. There is Charles W.
0:51
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant asleep at the mic. Wake up, Chuck. I couldn't.
0:54
Speaker 1: I could fall asleep right now. That's try with you,
0:56
Speaker 1: is it, Paul? It's just a means to sweepy. Are
1:00
Speaker 1: you you have a long night last night? Yeah? I
1:03
Speaker 1: haven't been sleeping that great really. Plus I got the
1:06
Speaker 1: window open because the weather so nice, but that means
1:09
Speaker 1: I hear birds in traffic really early, so I've been
1:11
Speaker 1: waking up at like six fifteen. Yeah, I hate that.
1:14
Speaker 1: I hate those birds, the early birds catching their worms?
1:18
Speaker 1: Are you don't stupid happy songs? Yeah? I don't like
1:20
Speaker 1: that either. I had a weird, uncomfortable dream last night.
1:23
Speaker 1: I was trying to rent a car and everything was
1:26
Speaker 1: sold out because Texas A and M was in some
1:28
Speaker 1: sort of crazy championship and there's like five thousand people
1:32
Speaker 1: there and they'd rented all the cars. So I had
1:34
Speaker 1: to stand around and wait until somebody brought a car
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Speaker 1: back and jump on that. And there's like twelve other
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Speaker 1: people doing the same thing. It was kind of no idea,
1:42
Speaker 1: why out of nowhere? Huh, I thought, at least to
1:45
Speaker 1: be ut No, so chuck, so weird, you know you
1:52
Speaker 1: know what that was? That was an example. Dreams in
1:56
Speaker 1: general are example of my neural networks. Whatever I learned
2:00
Speaker 1: or thought of that that day, um or something and
2:04
Speaker 1: jogged my memory. Whatever. There's a there's an idea that
2:07
Speaker 1: dreams are the basically your brain strengthening neural networks by
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Speaker 1: stimulating different ones, basically doing some some PaperWorks, some sorting
2:16
Speaker 1: while your body sleeping. Yeah, we still haven't done our
2:18
Speaker 1: Deluxe Dream podcast. We haven't. Somebody asked for it recently.
2:22
Speaker 1: I think we're I think we're getting more and more
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Speaker 1: prepared to it's coming. Okay, But um, that idea is
2:29
Speaker 1: kind of is based on um one of well, it's
2:33
Speaker 1: one of the things that's based on what a guy
2:35
Speaker 1: named Francis Crick, who you'll remember was one of the
2:39
Speaker 1: co discoverers of the structure d n A. Yeah, he
2:42
Speaker 1: was the d right. I don't know you're thinking of
2:46
Speaker 1: rutten day. Um. He later later on in his career
2:50
Speaker 1: really got into the idea of this thing called the
2:54
Speaker 1: astonishing hypothesis. But it is it's a little depressing if
2:58
Speaker 1: you ask me. We've talked about it before. I think
3:00
Speaker 1: we talked about a mirror neurons. But the astonishing hypothesis
3:04
Speaker 1: is essentially that all of our thoughts, are dreams, are beliefs,
3:09
Speaker 1: our hopes, are fears, are connections to others. Every aspect
3:14
Speaker 1: of the human experience is based on neurons and their excitement. Right.
3:21
Speaker 1: And he said, quite famously, quote, uh, you're nothing but
3:27
Speaker 1: a bowl of neurons or pack. Okay, but I said, quote, yeah,
3:33
Speaker 1: so you're just rewriting about a sack of neurons like that,
3:38
Speaker 1: a fistful of neurons. Oh god, that's awesome, thank you.
3:41
Speaker 1: That's a band name. I knew you were going to
3:43
Speaker 1: say that full of neurons. Yeah, someone's gonna go be
3:46
Speaker 1: that now. Yes. So as as at the basis of
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Speaker 1: all of this is the is the neurotransmitter, right, yes,
3:54
Speaker 1: which is an electrochemical compound that depending on what kind
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Speaker 1: of neuron is excited or what what compound is passed
4:01
Speaker 1: from synaps to synaps, right, you're going to have a
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Speaker 1: different kind of experience. But all these experiences are based
4:07
Speaker 1: on these electrochemical reactions in in your neural networks. So
4:13
Speaker 1: you have one one neuron exciting another and they become
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Speaker 1: connected and it goes on and on, and then you
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Speaker 1: have a neural network that's associated with fear or fear
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Speaker 1: of bears. More specifically, you see a bear and it's
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Speaker 1: excited because you stored this neural network as a memory,
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Speaker 1: and that's consciousness, that's being alive. As they say, right,
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Speaker 1: it kind of takes the mystery out of life to
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Speaker 1: a certain extent. An you think, yeah, but it also
4:37
Speaker 1: and that's a great set up too for this and also, um,
4:40
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you can measure that and
4:42
Speaker 1: you can measure those brain waves that means there's something
4:44
Speaker 1: going on there, right, because we have we do have
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Speaker 1: machines called electro en cephalographs e g s that measure
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Speaker 1: the electrical activity in your head, and we've determined science
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Speaker 1: has come to agree that there's a strong enough correlation
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Speaker 1: between somebody going, hey, why is this thing on my
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Speaker 1: head um and electrical activity while it's happening that when
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Speaker 1: we detect this electrical activity, we're saying this person is conscious, right,
5:09
Speaker 1: right right, And that is a great way to set
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Speaker 1: up a study that was performed in the Netherlands. He's
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Speaker 1: wacky Dutch at the red red bowed. I'm sure that's
5:18
Speaker 1: not pronounced correctly. I would say rod Bood rod Bood
5:21
Speaker 1: University and the Netherlands in the nes h it's that word.
5:27
Speaker 1: I know. It's a lot of nitten him, nimigan, nimogen,
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Speaker 1: nije m. That's what I'm going with. And that's one
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Speaker 1: of the easier looking Dutch towards us to go over
5:38
Speaker 1: their aunt's crazy. Um. So they did this. You know
5:42
Speaker 1: when you when you work with lab rats that sometimes
5:44
Speaker 1: you have to put them to death. And what they
5:46
Speaker 1: do is they chump their little heads off because they
5:50
Speaker 1: you know, that's a quicken, speedy way to to kill something.
5:53
Speaker 1: So they thought, you know, we might want to do
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Speaker 1: some test to see if this is actually a humane
5:57
Speaker 1: way of doing this, which is what they thought it
5:59
Speaker 1: all along, which is why they decapitate rats and other
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Speaker 1: lab animals, is because it's assumed that's humane. These Dutch
6:05
Speaker 1: researchers saying, well, wait a minute, is it. Let's find
6:08
Speaker 1: out I would think smothering one with a tiny pillow
6:11
Speaker 1: while petting it, Yeah, while stroking it. I've thought about
6:14
Speaker 1: that too. But fear, Yeah, sure, because I think we
6:18
Speaker 1: should probably define humane here. Humane is probably the absence
6:22
Speaker 1: of fear and pain. It's a humane way to kill
6:25
Speaker 1: something on purpose. Yeah right, those are probably the two
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Speaker 1: things I would want cut out of my death, fear
6:30
Speaker 1: and pain. So um, they did this. They performed these
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Speaker 1: tests on rats, attached them to the little e g s,
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Speaker 1: cut off their heads, and they found that the brain
6:39
Speaker 1: continue to operate uh generate electrical activity between thirteen and
6:43
Speaker 1: a hundred hurts frequency, which is that means thought and consciousness, right,
6:48
Speaker 1: study of electrical activity in the brain. We found that
6:52
Speaker 1: within that band, that frequency band, those frequent stands that's
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Speaker 1: when you're thinking and feeling and saying, what is going on? Right?
7:00
Speaker 1: Why is my lifeless body over there without my head on? Right?
7:03
Speaker 1: For about four seconds and then lights out? Yeah, lights out?
7:06
Speaker 1: And then I think after about another fifty seconds or
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Speaker 1: something forty or fifty seconds, there was one last burst.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't exactly lights back on. It was like the
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Speaker 1: the end of everything in one last point. But there
7:21
Speaker 1: was nothing between those that indicated consciousness. It was just
7:24
Speaker 1: like everything was gone after about fifty seconds, but four
7:28
Speaker 1: seconds consciousness, which brings us to capital punishment capital. Uh.
7:34
Speaker 1: The way they came up with that originally is from
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Speaker 1: the Latin term cut put um, which means head. So
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Speaker 1: decapitation was where capital punisiments derived from decapitation. That's exactly right.
7:44
Speaker 1: And so now we can talk about humans losing their heads.
7:47
Speaker 1: Well yeah, because as we said, um, a humane way
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Speaker 1: of executing something or dispatching something um is to take
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Speaker 1: fear and pain out of it, right. Yeah. And this,
8:00
Speaker 1: this study of these rats suggests that hold on. I
8:03
Speaker 1: want everybody to do this, right. I want you to
8:06
Speaker 1: look around, to think, to feel, to listen. Well, I
8:10
Speaker 1: count four seconds off you're ready? One, two, three, four,
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Speaker 1: took a lot in just then, didn't you a lot
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Speaker 1: more than I'd be comfortable taking in with my head
8:22
Speaker 1: not attached to my body exactly. So here's the This
8:25
Speaker 1: is why the rat the rat study is so disturbing
8:28
Speaker 1: because it suggests that after your head is cut off,
8:32
Speaker 1: you are still very much aware of what's going on
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Speaker 1: and can think and feel and be terrified. Right, yes,
8:37
Speaker 1: and you know I read. I wish I had a
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Speaker 1: better source for this, but I did find one doctor
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Speaker 1: that firmly believes that there's a lot of pain associated
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Speaker 1: with a decapitation. Execution by decapitation, maybe not for long,
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Speaker 1: but he's like, I don't know about this painless thing,
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Speaker 1: right well, and long before um this Dutch study was published, people,
8:57
Speaker 1: people have long suspected like this, you're still conscious after
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Speaker 1: you're decapitated for a little while. Right, let's talk about
9:04
Speaker 1: decapitation first. I want to give a shout out to
9:06
Speaker 1: our buddy Alan Bellows from Damn Interesting, who wrote a
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Speaker 1: great article as well. You know him that, Um, yeah,
9:12
Speaker 1: he he emails with us sometimes, Okay, yeah, um, he
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Speaker 1: wrote one called lucid decapitation that I used this source
9:18
Speaker 1: for this. It's great. I read that today too. Yes,
9:21
Speaker 1: um so, chuck, let's let's do talk about a history
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Speaker 1: of head loss as it were, and not losing one's
9:28
Speaker 1: head isn't losing one's cool. No, do you mean Chopper style,
9:32
Speaker 1: although you do probably lose your cool when you lose
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Speaker 1: your head and you're still conscious. We'll find out. Uh
9:37
Speaker 1: in the biblical uh apocrypha, I love that word. Uh.
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Speaker 1: There's a widow named Judith. She cut off the head
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Speaker 1: of an Assyrian general name Holofer needs and uh he
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Speaker 1: was he was a bad guy, laying seized her town.
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Speaker 1: She cut his head off. Romans just sduced him and
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Speaker 1: then cut his head off. Well, that's the way to
9:56
Speaker 1: do it, especially if you're a biblical widow. Right. The
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Speaker 1: Romans did that to um their own because they thought
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Speaker 1: it was a better and more painless way than crucifixion,
10:06
Speaker 1: which they did to outsiders, which is not a very
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Speaker 1: nice way to die. I'm at evil Europe obviously all
10:12
Speaker 1: kinds of people from the ruling class, the peasants. And
10:15
Speaker 1: uh today it still happens in a few Middle Eastern countries. Yeah, Qatar,
10:21
Speaker 1: Yemen ran, most prominently Saudi Arabia. Seeing what was the
10:28
Speaker 1: fahrenheight nine eleven. There's footage of like a um, somebody
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Speaker 1: being beheaded in public and Saudi Arabia and like the
10:34
Speaker 1: late nineties, did they use the sword? Yeah, I really yep,
10:37
Speaker 1: the schmidtar and Josh, they're also the extra judicial judicial um,
10:43
Speaker 1: like when you know, a journalist is captured and beheaded
10:46
Speaker 1: by a group of guerrillas, and that's not like they
10:48
Speaker 1: don't use a sword or a guillotine. Is really gruesome, Yes,
10:51
Speaker 1: it's extremely gruesome. That's right. That's why um, most modern
10:55
Speaker 1: cultures UM have come to the conclusion that beheading is
11:01
Speaker 1: um extremely barbaric. It's an extremely painful way to die
11:06
Speaker 1: and I imagine probably one of the more terrifying ways
11:08
Speaker 1: to die too. UM. But it took a while for
11:12
Speaker 1: everybody to come to that conclusion, right, Yeah, And you
11:15
Speaker 1: mentioned Saudi Arabia is one of the main countries they
11:17
Speaker 1: they have Uh, I guess you would call very qualified
11:20
Speaker 1: swordsman to do this, but other places they're not so
11:24
Speaker 1: qualified and it doesn't go as smoothly. Sometimes there's like
11:28
Speaker 1: some chopping has to go on, which is not ideal.
11:30
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why um it is an
11:33
Speaker 1: ideal is because it takes chopping, or it did for
11:37
Speaker 1: many many centuries, because you had to either do it
11:40
Speaker 1: with a knife, which was really like not a beheading.
11:43
Speaker 1: It was more cutting someone's head off over the course
11:46
Speaker 1: of a few minutes probably, or you could try to
11:50
Speaker 1: behead somebody with an axe or a sword, and those
11:52
Speaker 1: are the two favored implements used for state sanctioned executions. Right.
11:58
Speaker 1: But like you said, some cultures like Saudi Arabia today,
12:02
Speaker 1: you have to be um, you're a very highly trained,
12:04
Speaker 1: highly skilled headsman, is what it's called. Um. In other cultures,
12:09
Speaker 1: you could have also doubled as the guy who like
12:12
Speaker 1: pulled the lever on the gallows and you had no
12:15
Speaker 1: extra training. Maybe you've done it once before, maybe you hadn't.
12:18
Speaker 1: So for the most part, when you were beheaded, most
12:21
Speaker 1: likely it was going to take more than one blow,
12:24
Speaker 1: and um, you're going to feel it. Yes, then everything changed. Yes,
12:30
Speaker 1: the guillotine, Yes, chuck him. The fact of well one
12:34
Speaker 1: of the facts of this, uh this podcast. Yeah, I've
12:37
Speaker 1: always heard, and I think a lot of people have
12:39
Speaker 1: always heard. The guillotine was named after Joseph Guillotine, the
12:44
Speaker 1: inventor of the guillotine. He was not the inventor of
12:46
Speaker 1: the guillotine. No, it was named after him. It was
12:48
Speaker 1: named after him, But he was not the invitor. He
12:50
Speaker 1: was the champion of the guillotine as a humane method
12:53
Speaker 1: of execution. Yeah he was. He a doctor, Yeah he was.
12:57
Speaker 1: He was a French physician of the revolution. Um. Another
13:02
Speaker 1: doctor named Antoine Louis was the one who actually invented it,
13:06
Speaker 1: and Joseph Ignas guillotine Um had a lot more power
13:09
Speaker 1: in Cloud and said, this invention is awesome. It's going
13:13
Speaker 1: to allow us to kill people more humanely but also
13:17
Speaker 1: more quickly. And that actually led inadvertently, if you know,
13:21
Speaker 1: the guillotine started out to be a humane method of execution,
13:24
Speaker 1: UM to what's called the Reign of Terror. Yeah. I
13:28
Speaker 1: think you said thirty thousand people, uh, hit the guillotine
13:32
Speaker 1: in one year, in less than a year, actually, in
13:34
Speaker 1: thirty thousand is one of the lower estimates of it.
13:36
Speaker 1: I've seen up to like fifty or sixty thousand people.
13:39
Speaker 1: It's just like they're like, oh, great, well, here's a
13:42
Speaker 1: machine of execution and we're going to basically turn it
13:46
Speaker 1: into the end of the assembly line. Yeah. It's you know,
13:49
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know what a guillotine
13:51
Speaker 1: is a little odd because they're all over the place
13:54
Speaker 1: and cartoons even in in pop culture. But it's a
13:57
Speaker 1: big it's a tall, like fourteen ft tall at the
14:01
Speaker 1: at the top, yes, fourteen, and it and it drops
14:03
Speaker 1: a large blade that's held in a track, so it
14:06
Speaker 1: goes straight down. How have you? So the blade, the
14:09
Speaker 1: blade itself has a weight at the top, you can see,
14:12
Speaker 1: it's like an iron bar. And then the angle blade
14:15
Speaker 1: right diagonal blade. They those two things combined way about
14:19
Speaker 1: a hundred seventy The mouton is the weight. Yeah, So
14:24
Speaker 1: this puppy slides down very fast at fourteen from fourteen
14:28
Speaker 1: feet in its track very precisely gets the back of
14:31
Speaker 1: your neck. It's very sharp, and that generally means your
14:34
Speaker 1: head will probably just fall straight down into the little
14:36
Speaker 1: peach basket right ideally right now, if you are um,
14:41
Speaker 1: if you were beheaded prior to the invention of the guillotine,
14:44
Speaker 1: right this podcast, And also I have to say, like
14:47
Speaker 1: you're you're right, everybody knows what a guillotine looks like
14:51
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. It wasn't until I wrote this
14:54
Speaker 1: and was doing research for it that I really actually
14:57
Speaker 1: looked at the actual guillotine, the whole assembly, right, I mean,
15:02
Speaker 1: look at that thing. That monster is horrific, and it's
15:06
Speaker 1: like that's used by the state, and that's how you
15:09
Speaker 1: are going to die. You're going to lose your head.
15:11
Speaker 1: And Victor Hugo famously said that, um, a person can
15:17
Speaker 1: have a certain indifference on the death penalty as long
15:19
Speaker 1: as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes,
15:23
Speaker 1: which is I think very true. It's pretty easy to
15:25
Speaker 1: talk a tough game about things like this until you
15:27
Speaker 1: actually see it go down exactly. So yeah, So the
15:30
Speaker 1: guillotine what it does is knows most notably is it
15:34
Speaker 1: deprives your brain of oxygen and blood right your your
15:38
Speaker 1: circulatory system. It's a closed system, right, so it's it's
15:43
Speaker 1: based on um pressure. Your heart is pumping the blood
15:46
Speaker 1: throughout the body. It passes by, the lungs drops off
15:49
Speaker 1: c O two, which you exhale, It takes in oxygen,
15:51
Speaker 1: which you inhale, and then the whole thing goes again. Right,
15:54
Speaker 1: as long as the system is closed and the hearts,
15:56
Speaker 1: the hearts beating, and the lungs are transferring, um uh,
16:01
Speaker 1: you're fine. Once you take a head off. You have
16:04
Speaker 1: opened this closed system, and eventually the heart's going to
16:09
Speaker 1: just pump everything out of the neck and whatever was
16:12
Speaker 1: in the head at that time is going to come out,
16:14
Speaker 1: and the brain, starved of oxygen and blood, starts to
16:18
Speaker 1: degrade very quickly. It's processes start to degrade right now.
16:22
Speaker 1: If you are at the hands of a hack literally
16:27
Speaker 1: headsman right who doesn't notice do and he's got a
16:31
Speaker 1: blunt blade, he's hungover, who knows he's gonna take your
16:34
Speaker 1: head off. It's good. It's gonna take a few what
16:39
Speaker 1: is the disco I okay, it's gonna take it's gonna
16:43
Speaker 1: take a few um hacks, and you're going to bleed out,
16:48
Speaker 1: probably before your head comes off. Not so with the guillotine.
16:51
Speaker 1: It is that very precise. It comes right down, It
16:55
Speaker 1: takes your head right off, and then there's a little
16:57
Speaker 1: wooden shield to make sure that it doesn't go flying
17:00
Speaker 1: into the crowd. Instead, it maybe hits the shield and
17:02
Speaker 1: it bounces into the basket where a headsman can hold
17:06
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, or sometimes throw it into the crowd.
17:08
Speaker 1: Didn't know they did that? Interesting, and sometimes they would
17:12
Speaker 1: be big jerks in the case a very famous case
17:16
Speaker 1: of Charlotte Corday, she who was executed in France in
17:20
Speaker 1: sevente because she assassinated a revolutionary leader named Jean Paul
17:25
Speaker 1: Melaw and the jerk executioner picked up her head and
17:30
Speaker 1: smacked her around in a little bit. Yeah, he got
17:32
Speaker 1: eleven years in prison for it too. And people who
17:35
Speaker 1: witnessed this say that her expression on her headless head,
17:40
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, her head, bodiless head, her dismembered headed, good lord,
17:48
Speaker 1: uh showed unequivocal marks of indignation. So she actually had
17:53
Speaker 1: a facial expression of like, how dare you slap me? Right?
17:56
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like from from what I understand, it
17:59
Speaker 1: wasn't like that's how she looked when she when he
18:02
Speaker 1: picked her head up. Yeah, there was a change. It
18:03
Speaker 1: was after he smacked her, like her cheeks flushed and
18:07
Speaker 1: she basically went into a rage right before she died.
18:10
Speaker 1: He had eleven years for that. Interesting, Yeah, the French
18:12
Speaker 1: did not You did not screw around. You didn't do that.
18:14
Speaker 1: That was a huge lapse in humanity taste. Yeah, cut
18:19
Speaker 1: off the heads fine smacking around. Well again, remember that
18:23
Speaker 1: this is this is the time, this is sevente France
18:26
Speaker 1: officially adopted the guillotine in seventeen two and used it
18:30
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy seven. Yeah, that was the last guy
18:33
Speaker 1: to have his head cut off by the French state.
18:35
Speaker 1: It was a I believe, a rapist, murderer, UM immigrant
18:39
Speaker 1: who hit death row. And then three years after that,
18:42
Speaker 1: France was like, We're done with the death penalties. It
18:44
Speaker 1: isn't the crazy people were like partying in studio sixty
18:46
Speaker 1: four fifty four with their disco eyes sixty four. Where
18:50
Speaker 1: in the world did that come from? So yeah, and
18:52
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden in France are cutting people's
18:54
Speaker 1: heads off. Still right, but again remember they adopted it
18:57
Speaker 1: the year before. This guy smacks Charlotte Corday's the year
19:00
Speaker 1: after they adopted it, and people are like, uh, I
19:04
Speaker 1: don't think that's supposed to happen. So from that that
19:08
Speaker 1: moment on, and probably before that because Chuck there there
19:11
Speaker 1: have been other um instances of people in history who
19:15
Speaker 1: had their heads taken off skillfully. Um. For example, ambole
19:19
Speaker 1: In King Charles the first they had their heads taken skillfully,
19:24
Speaker 1: and both of them were reported to try to have
19:26
Speaker 1: to try to speak like they were moving their lips
19:29
Speaker 1: and their eyes were moving. Right. This is not funny,
19:32
Speaker 1: it's just it's insane. Yeah, I'm not laughing because I
19:35
Speaker 1: think this is funny. And there's a huge debate that's
19:38
Speaker 1: become increasingly one sided in favor of what we're talking
19:44
Speaker 1: about today. Um. The other side is, well, this is
19:49
Speaker 1: just like ghost electrical activity. Yeah, like you prick a
19:52
Speaker 1: frog ten minutes after this dissected, and they're still going
19:56
Speaker 1: to move. They have that stimulant or Marshall Brain has
19:58
Speaker 1: that very popular post on the blogs about sprinkling salt
20:03
Speaker 1: on frog's legs and making a move. Really truly, you've
20:06
Speaker 1: seen it. I don't think you have to check it out.
20:08
Speaker 1: And that's crazy. Yeah. Um, but yes, So that's if
20:13
Speaker 1: you cut a leg off or you cut an arm off. Yeah,
20:18
Speaker 1: that's remnant electrical activity. It's the same thing in the head.
20:22
Speaker 1: It's still electrical activity. The problem is you don't experience
20:26
Speaker 1: pain and fear and terror in your arm. Your arm
20:29
Speaker 1: feels absolutely nothing. All sensations that we experience, whether it
20:34
Speaker 1: it's our arm being cut off or you know, feeling
20:39
Speaker 1: terror at seeing our arm cut off, all of that
20:42
Speaker 1: is in the head. So when you decapitate, the head
20:44
Speaker 1: and there's still electrical activity, the chances are that it
20:48
Speaker 1: is conscious experience. Yeah, your brain has It's not like
20:51
Speaker 1: your head got bashed in. Your brain is very much intact. Yes,
20:54
Speaker 1: it's just not attached to the lower half and it
20:56
Speaker 1: still has plenty of oxygen and plenty of blood to
20:59
Speaker 1: deliver that oxygen for a few seconds. And that's what's required.
21:03
Speaker 1: As long as your brain hasn't suffered any damage, as
21:05
Speaker 1: long as um you have oxygen, you have blood, you
21:08
Speaker 1: are likely going to experience consciousness. And this is pretty
21:11
Speaker 1: much the conclusion that that people have arrived at, Like, yeah,
21:15
Speaker 1: if you cut someone's head off cleanly and quickly, they're
21:18
Speaker 1: going to know what's going on for a little while afterwards. Yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: and how long is very much up for debate. They've
21:24
Speaker 1: tested or not tested, but they've seen evidence and other
21:27
Speaker 1: mammals up to like a half a minute. Yeah. Chickens
21:31
Speaker 1: are very famous for running around the barnyard with no
21:34
Speaker 1: heads for a little while. Do you ever hear the
21:35
Speaker 1: story of Mike the headless chicken for a very long
21:38
Speaker 1: time in Mike's case, eighteen months, But Mike the headless chicken,
21:41
Speaker 1: And if you're interested in that, type in Mike the
21:43
Speaker 1: headless chicken, how stuff works, and it will bring up
21:47
Speaker 1: some things here. They're including a blog post I wrote
21:49
Speaker 1: on it. But his he was different because the farmer
21:51
Speaker 1: missed his brainstem, and chickens are almost all brainstem. But
21:55
Speaker 1: Mike lived like an extra eighteen months actually in good
21:59
Speaker 1: juicy breast and exactly. And he choked on a colonel
22:02
Speaker 1: of corn. That's how Mike died, after having his healthy
22:05
Speaker 1: feeding it though with a dropper. Okay, well that makes sense.
22:09
Speaker 1: Let's tell some more stories, anecdotal stories about people living
22:12
Speaker 1: and making faces after their head has been cut off, okay,
22:16
Speaker 1: because those are interesting. In nineteen nine, an army veteran
22:19
Speaker 1: was in a car crash with um a friend. His
22:22
Speaker 1: friend was decapitated sadly, and he saw looked at his
22:25
Speaker 1: friend's face not attached to his body, and saw a
22:29
Speaker 1: distinct change in expression from he says, quote first of
22:34
Speaker 1: shock and confusion and then terror or grief. It's horrific.
22:38
Speaker 1: It is horrific. You mentioned Ambo Lennon King Charles Um
22:43
Speaker 1: there was there was one story, a very dubious one
22:45
Speaker 1: that's not in his biographies, but Antoine la Vossier in
22:50
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety four, apparently agreed to try and blink for
22:55
Speaker 1: as long as he could afterwards. Yeah. He was a
22:57
Speaker 1: French chemist around the time of the revolution, right, Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: so he reportedly blinked for about fifteen to twenty seconds.
23:04
Speaker 1: But there's there was also another murderer name uh Larcennaire
23:09
Speaker 1: who said, all right, I'm gonna wink at everyone after
23:12
Speaker 1: my head's cut off if I can. He didn't wink. Um,
23:15
Speaker 1: there is one. There is an account that is not dubious.
23:18
Speaker 1: It's probably the um most scientific observations of you know,
23:26
Speaker 1: consciousness following decapitation. Ever, Um, it's very famous and it
23:31
Speaker 1: is verified as far as I know. In n five,
23:34
Speaker 1: a guy named Dr Boreo right basically got permission to
23:41
Speaker 1: study the decapitated head of a murderer named on Relong
23:45
Speaker 1: Wheel right and Um, so he was right there, right
23:50
Speaker 1: at head level when line Wheels head came off. This
23:52
Speaker 1: plan in place, I assume he immediately picks up the
23:55
Speaker 1: head and starts experimenting on it. And over the course
23:58
Speaker 1: of thirty seconds, the physician basically he said longuil and
24:04
Speaker 1: long will opened his eyes and focused them his head
24:08
Speaker 1: just his head focused them on Dr. Barrio and then
24:12
Speaker 1: kind of like faded out again, and then doctor said
24:15
Speaker 1: long Guil, and Long Guil opened his eyes again and
24:18
Speaker 1: focused them, he says, undeniably focused them on the doctor's
24:22
Speaker 1: eyes again, and then he tried it a third time
24:24
Speaker 1: and then nothing. So that was his plan. Was yelled
24:27
Speaker 1: his name. I guess it worked, but it did work.
24:29
Speaker 1: He said that he his observations were that this that
24:32
Speaker 1: this this decapitated head went from its eyes closed or
24:36
Speaker 1: glazed over to you know, consciousness coming back into it
24:39
Speaker 1: and focusing its eyes on him. Because as a response
24:42
Speaker 1: to his name being called, yeah, and German researcher st summering,
24:51
Speaker 1: this is the worst one. If he he said that,
24:54
Speaker 1: um he he that was a physician inspecting ahead and
24:57
Speaker 1: poked the spinal canal with his finger, and that the
25:00
Speaker 1: head the person grimaced horribly and they grind their teeth.
25:05
Speaker 1: So it's almost as if the head was saying, I
25:08
Speaker 1: know you think I'm dead, but that really really hurts. Yeah.
25:11
Speaker 1: The spinal canal is where your spinal cord is in
25:14
Speaker 1: your spine, so you would think that there was a
25:18
Speaker 1: little bit left because he was poking up into the
25:20
Speaker 1: spinal cord with his finger, and I can't imagine the
25:23
Speaker 1: excruciating pain that that would cause. Well, the doctor I
25:26
Speaker 1: found that said that he thought it was decidedly painful,
25:29
Speaker 1: That's what he said. He's like, you can't expose and
25:32
Speaker 1: cut the spine like that without there being a lot
25:34
Speaker 1: of pain. Yeah, And that was st simmering right in
25:38
Speaker 1: arguing in the French newspapers to stop cutting people's heads off. Well,
25:42
Speaker 1: they listened a little less than two hundred years later.
25:46
Speaker 1: So I think the answer to this one is yes,
25:51
Speaker 1: you stay conscious after your head is cut off from
25:54
Speaker 1: your body, at least for several seconds. That's right, right,
25:58
Speaker 1: well done, sir, Thank you, sir. Good article. Uh. If
26:01
Speaker 1: you want to learn more, you should search for stuff.
26:04
Speaker 1: You should know how stuff works in your search engine,
26:07
Speaker 1: and it should bring up our brand spanking new, beautiful
26:09
Speaker 1: looking stuff you should know homepage. Yeah, we got a
26:12
Speaker 1: little fan page now that uh looks like a proper
26:15
Speaker 1: fan page. Yeah, and we we decide what's on it, right,
26:18
Speaker 1: we say, hey, here's some cool articles you guys should
26:20
Speaker 1: check out. Here's some articles based on some of our
26:23
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts, image galleries, quizzes, just basically everything. Like it's
26:27
Speaker 1: like they gave a portion of the site to us,
26:29
Speaker 1: and we're doing some cool stuff with it. How about that?
26:32
Speaker 1: So um, you'll be able to find that there right indeed?
26:35
Speaker 1: Okay um? And yeah, wow, I didn't say search bar.
26:40
Speaker 1: Just type the capitation into the search bar at how
26:43
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and that will probably bring up
26:46
Speaker 1: some cool stuff, including this that sounds like a practical joke.
26:49
Speaker 1: Just type the capitation and and see what happens. It
26:51
Speaker 1: brings up nothing but rabbits. And since I said search bar,
26:57
Speaker 1: listener man, Josh, I'm gonna call this little poem from
27:02
Speaker 1: Alex our fan. And Alex's birthday is a today. Happy birthday, dude,
27:09
Speaker 1: Happy birthday Alex. You know you're timing there, buddy. Yeah,
27:13
Speaker 1: and this is his twenty one birthday. And I hope
27:15
Speaker 1: he has a strong stomach girl, else he was never
27:17
Speaker 1: going to hear this, that's right. Alex is in a
27:20
Speaker 1: creative writing class and he writes poems and lots of them. Well,
27:24
Speaker 1: he says, I write nothing but poems, even though I'm
27:26
Speaker 1: a guy. Yes, Josh, he is a guy, but he
27:30
Speaker 1: is a poet. A strange thing to say, renaissance man. Recently,
27:33
Speaker 1: I was listening to how fossils work and saunas more
27:36
Speaker 1: interesting than you think. And I wrote this poem about
27:38
Speaker 1: the podcast, sleeping in my bed, trying to absorb unique
27:42
Speaker 1: facts about different topics, dreaming of a fossil forming, a
27:47
Speaker 1: young Josh smoking, and an older Chuck laughing at dirty
27:51
Speaker 1: Chuck's I'm not sure what that means, understanding now that
27:55
Speaker 1: reading about saunas requires you to strip. Having this podcast
28:00
Speaker 1: allows me to own a piece of history. I'm sorry,
28:03
Speaker 1: I own a piece of unique history, learning about different
28:08
Speaker 1: parts of human life, healing over and laughter at the jokes.
28:14
Speaker 1: You are reading this like William Shatner reads poetry. I
28:17
Speaker 1: am now I know why people own eye products to
28:21
Speaker 1: listen to Josh and Chuck w talk about talk and
28:24
Speaker 1: joke around. I hope you like it, and I hope
28:28
Speaker 1: you like you're part of the poem. I don't remember. No,
28:30
Speaker 1: it's not because that'd be weird. So the whole high
28:33
Speaker 1: end all my poems with hope you like that. Yeah,
28:35
Speaker 1: but you know the first letter of each line spells
28:39
Speaker 1: out stuff you should know. Oh you didn't know that.
28:43
Speaker 1: That's why I was reading it like Shatner, having would
28:46
Speaker 1: be the h oh you didn't know that, even points
28:50
Speaker 1: out if you still don't get it, read the first
28:52
Speaker 1: letter of each line. So very creative, and even Joe
28:56
Speaker 1: didn't get it. Thanks a lot, Alex. Happy birthday to you,
28:59
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck. Indeed, probably shouldn't ask for any decapitation
29:04
Speaker 1: stories or poems. Yeah, I know, poems. You don't get
29:08
Speaker 1: any ideas from this. This, this is just special, all right.
29:12
Speaker 1: If you have an unusual pet that is not a ferret,
29:15
Speaker 1: because it's not unusual any longer, Um, we want to
29:19
Speaker 1: hear about it. If you have taken an animal from
29:21
Speaker 1: the wild and tamed it to be your pet or
29:24
Speaker 1: possibly do your bidding, we want to hear stories about that. Okay,
29:28
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29:31
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