How Dying Works

Chuck and Josh have covered just about every aspect of death except dying itself. Here, they fulfill the death suite of podcasts with an in-depth look at just how people die, what happens to the body during the dying process and how people accept death -- and what they regret not having done while they lived.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse storks dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, he and Jerry's over there. Jerry, for the
first time, I just saw a meme that's been out

(00:23):
for a couple of years. Yeah, that's that happened. That's
like when you rolled me like two years after it
was popular. You're like, isn't it the best? I was
lying in Wait, yeah, I thought that happened. So and
there's nothing more obnoxious than sending someone something and be
like fill it two years ago. I'm so so sorry.
I tried to show you something funny, right, you know.
But yeah, Jerry just saw the do we even say

(00:46):
the mumble mouth reporter? Maybe? Yeah, the lady who supposedly
had a migraine but appeared to have had a stroke
reporting from the Grammys in Los Angeles a couple of
years ago. Yeah. I still don't know whether it's okay
to laugh at that, because I don't know really what
happened to her. Well, we didn't laugh. We very solemnly
showed Jerry. Yeah, and she laughed terrible. Jerry. Um, I've

(01:10):
got one for you. I've got a bit of an intro.
It's not much, so get your hopes up. Um. Have
you ever heard of the Population Reference Bureau? No, you have,
because I've mentioned it before. I've mentioned this this article before.
It's on PRB dot org. It's called how Many People
Have Ever Lived on Earth? And I don't know what

(01:32):
we've mentioned and it maybe the Population Episode or something.
But it's a really cool little article by this demographer
named Carl hobb h au b and he Um. There's
even a video of him explaining it if you couldn't
get what he was going with. But hobb um he
reckons that modern humans, people who are virtually indistinguishable from

(01:52):
you or me, aside from the fact that they're not
wearing like any clothes really um showed up about fifty
two thousand years ago. So hobb puts the population of
humanity at two uh in fifty thousand BC. Okay, so
from that point to two thousand eleven, he extrapolates, does

(02:15):
the math, does this little demography thing, and hobb comes
up with the number that one hundred and seven billion,
six hundred and two million, seven hundred and seven thousand,
seven hundred ninety one people have ever lived between fifty
thousand BC and two thousand eleven. See, that's pretty neat,

(02:35):
it is. That's a lot of people. He says. That
means about six point five of that are alive right now,
or we're in two thousand eleven, right, so we're dying off.
That's the point. All one hundred and seven billion, six
hundred two million, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety
one of those people had one thing in common, one

(02:57):
thing aside from being humans, no, not even not even yeah, yeah,
they didn't have tax and in fifty BC they had
running from sabretooth tigers and death. It was death. That's
the one thing. All one hundred and seven billions, six
d two millions, seven hundred seven thousand, seven hundred ninety

(03:18):
one of those people had in common. You know, when
I was thinking of your intro driving here today, I
thought that'd be funny if Josh was like, how long
people been dying Chuck, And you know what, this wasn't
that far off? Was like, he wouldn't do that. You're like,
every way too boring. That's a good number. I like that.
Hundred seven billion, six hundred two million, seven hundred one

(03:43):
thousand seven seven. Yeah. Yeah, and that includes you and me. Pal.
You know what that means. You're gonna die. I'm gonna die,
Jerry's gonna die at least two or three times. We're
all gonna die. Yeah. This is our dying podcast, and
we have covered just about every aspect of dying. Can

(04:05):
you die from a broken heart? How rigor mortis works?
What's the worst way to die? Um? Is there a
best way to die? Did we do that? That was
kind of in the is there was? Yeah? Um, we've
covered everything from autopsies, peak oil, what can be done
with the dead body? Ninja's Yeah, well Ninja at least

(04:27):
you should know better than that. Yeah. We really have
danced around everything except just how dying works. And this
is gonna be a sad podcast in many ways and
gruesome in some ways. Yeah, because we're gonna touch on
some of the stuff we hit on in like rigor
mortis and autopsies and the actual dying process. Right, But
I mean, so brace yourself. And I've mentioned this guy

(04:49):
scores of times at least, but as the it's a
Charles Man. You're thinking of the great psychologist Ernest Becker,
Oh yeah, shout out to our pal Joe Randazzo, who's
like in the Becker Now, Ernest, there's Ernest, Ernest, you're
thinking of Max Ernest. Okay. Ernest becker Um wrote the

(05:11):
Denial of Death, seminal work that basically says, we're all
just doing everything we came to think about our own demise,
and there is some sort of health, whether it's spiritual, emotional,
there's some sort of health or well being I think
from facing the fact that you're going to die and

(05:31):
talking about it. Yeah, so let's talk about death, baby,
Let's talk about you and me. Let's do it. Okay.
So Molly Edmonds Um, who used to be on Sminty
Step Mom never told you we call it sminty Um
wrote this one, and I think it is interesting. And
I usually don't like it when articles say, like the
definition of blah blah blah, but it's kind of interesting

(05:53):
that in the first encyclopedia it was just the separation
of the soul from the body, and now it's you know,
thirty times that long in the encyclopedia, right, And that's
just sort of indicative of how we used to think
of it and how I don't know if it's ironic
or not, but how medical science has complicated that over
the years. Yeah, well it's definitely ironic because I mean,

(06:14):
we used to be confident that we understood death. It's
like that person isn't moving anymore. If you ask him
what he wants to eat, he's not going to respond.
If you choose something for him to eat, like a
block of cheese, it's not going to be swallowed like
that's death. And since there was perhaps a lot more
religiousness associated with death and dying than there is today, um,

(06:38):
that kind of underscored the belief and death. It's the
soul departing from the body, and what what more do
you want to know, egghead, it's death. Well yeah, and uh,
way back, you know, a few d years ago, you'd
call it a priest and they they checked the body,
see if it's breathing, and say, yep, they're dead, and
that was pretty much it. The doctor wasn't even involved

(06:59):
at that point. There may not have even been such
a thing as doctors, and if there were, they were
wearing like masks that made them look like crows to
protect them from the plague. So they weren't any better
it's ascertaining death than a priest. Was true. When doctors
did come along and they invented things like the stethoscope,
they could actually check and see if there was a heartbeat.
Before that, there was bal force test, which I couldn't

(07:22):
find out a lot about this other than you stick
needles into the heart with little flags on it and
see if the flags move. I think that's pretty straightforward.
Really yeah, I think that's about it. I mean, that's
the test by that, And there were other tests that
like a priest who may have come to say whether
you were dead or not, would use like placing a
feather above the mouth or around the mouth or knows

(07:44):
to see if he moves. Um, the old mirror mirror
trick that's still you know, useful, it is, but only
if the mouth is still moist. If it's a dried mouth,
it's probably not gonna fog up a mirror. Well, if
it's not breathing, it's not gonna fall right exactly. Um.
So I said that medical science has complicated it, and

(08:07):
that's exactly what's happened over the years, because as we
progressed with medicine, we discovered a lot of ways to
actually reverse death, like bring people back from the dead,
whether it's something as easy as CPR or as complicated
as you know, machines to help you breathe and feed you. Right,
And not only that, we've entered this really awkward period

(08:31):
um in human medical history where the machines that can
tell us whether someone is alive or not are more
advanced than our machines that can bring a person back
from death. Yeah, so we have ways to sustain the body,
but not necessarily the the person, depending on your definition

(08:54):
of death, like the faintest trace of a brain wave
maybe right. Yeah, So we went from holding a feather
under somebody's mouth or who knows to see if they
were alive, to using the m r I s to
see whether there's electrical activity. And we're finding that all
of these old signs, these old outward signs of death

(09:14):
don't necessarily mean that the person is dead. And even
if the person is dead, we have technology, like you
were saying, to resuscitate them. The question is, if we
resuscitate them and they're still not talking, they still don't
tell you what they want to eat, are they alive? Well? Yeah,
and we in this hasn't been that long you know,
I mean in the fifty two thousand years or whatever

(09:36):
the people have been dying. It's only been the past
you know, sixty something that we've had to come up
with terms like persistent vegetative state and irreversible coma because
of those machines that can resuscitate or sustain a body.
And that was when the French neurologists describe the coma

(09:57):
deposs which is a state beyond coma basically, uh, brain death,
although that didn't come along until technically until nineteen when
Harvard Medical School did uh, basically defined it for the
first time. Yeah, and although they didn't even call it
brain death at the time, what they call it just

(10:17):
irreversible comma like you're not coming back. Brain death was
kind of tagged on later. Um. So yeah, so comma
to pass um, vegetive, persistent vegetative state, brain death. Um,
all these things would indicate again that you're dead. The
problem is is we have these machines that can keep
your body warm, you can keep your chest rising and falling,

(10:39):
can keep your body going indefinitely. Um. But the thing
is there's something that's not there, and does that mean
you're dead. There's been a lot of talk about, um,
exactly what constitutes death. Defining death is a very very
difficult thing to do, especially through the advancement of medical technology.

(11:01):
It's kind of changed every time you come with the Okay,
I got it, this is the definition of death. Medical
technology can provide some picture of a state of consciousness
or life that throws the wrench in the works, you know. Yeah,
and it's um. Actually, after night it took one presidential

(11:21):
commission is when they finally in the United States wrote
a paper called Defining Death, Medical Legal and Ethical Issues
and the Determination of Death. That was the basis for
the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which basically rejected the
Harvard idea that of the higher brain, which is like,

(11:42):
when your personality and your memories are gone the cortical brain,
that means you're dead. And they rejected that in favor
of the whole brain, which includes the brain stem, which
is what keeps you breathing and functioning. Um, They're rejected
in favor of that. So Harvard was like, right, UM,
I I I don't know. I think I subscribed to

(12:04):
the higher brain death the definition of death. Um, the
brain stem. I'm yeah, that's pretty significant. Um, you can
be born with just a brain stem. We talked about
Mike the headless chicken before um he had his head
cut off, which included his brain, but his brain stem
was still there and he's a chicken, so it didn't
really matter. Um. But the that is a there's a

(12:27):
huge division between the two because there's a big difference
between breathing and being able to swallow for yourself and
making a conscious decision whether again what you want to
eat right there, or having memories or just reacting to
people aside from like you know, physical reaction. Right. Yes,

(12:47):
and that's one of the one of the there's a
whole article on brain death. Maybe we'll do that one.
I thought we did that now I think we did
it in the organ donation Procurement episode. We talked about
brain death and testing for and death like they shoot
ice cold water in your ear canal. Definitely remember covering
at some point. Yeah, I think it was in the
organ donation moment or maybe living wells. Obviously we might

(13:09):
have touched on it there. We did. We did wills,
but we hit on living wills. But you know, you
mentioned organs. I don't think we said that. That was
a big kind of a quandary in the nineteen sixties. Um,
in the late I'm sorry, mid nineteen fifties, and then
really in the nineteen sixties is when we went organ
transplant crazy. Um actually kind of not just the United States,

(13:31):
all over the world. Doctors said, hey, we can actually
give people a shot at life because we can now
transplant kidneys and lungs and hearts. The problem was, and
this is sort of one of the sad things that
Molly points out, is that the definition of death kind
of came about was hurried along, maybe because we needed

(13:53):
organs from these bodies that were still technically alive, which
is very ghoulish proposition. I mean, it makes sense from
a very utilitarian standpoint. It's like, this guy doesn't even
know he's laying there, and he's got a great kidney
that could go to his sister, who knows that she
needs a kidney. She's gonna die, and she's got kids
that she wants to hang out with, and like, can
put this kidney to good youth. So let's let's figure

(14:16):
this out. But um, as Molly says, like most developed
countries have signed on to the brain stem where it's
like you're brain can no longer keep you alive like
on your own. You can't swallow, you can't take a
breath for yourself, so you're dead. Um. The problem is
that's that's just that's different. That's a much much's much more.

(14:40):
It's a narrower definition of death, I guess. And I
think that that probably rules out a lot of people
who might otherwise be used to harvest organs harvest I know. Um,
all right, so let's talk about death itself. It's funny
that you well, it's not funny, but out of all
the different ways people can die, I thought it seems

(15:01):
simplified to break it down into three ways, but that's
really kind of the three ways. Yeah. I think we
talked about that in autopsies two right. Yeah, it can
be an accident obviously, Um, that's called the death. Yeah,
the violent death, which is also an opsie. I guess, well,
not an it's tragic homicide or suicide. So check. Let's

(15:23):
talk about what it's like to die from different types
of death. You dug this up, yeah, because I've really
wanted to know, like, what is it like to drown
or to be burned alive? Yeah? And and people have
survived some of these things and come back to tell
the tale. That's obviously the only way we're going to
find this stuff out or from lucky people. Um, drowning,

(15:45):
I've always heard drowning is a good way to go
because it's not so painful. Yeah, and that like the
brain supposedly releases endorphins at the end. Yeah, same with freezing,
I've heard too. Maybe true. Um, although drowning victims have
reported uh, aside from the panic, a tearing and burning
sensation when your water starts filling with lungs and quickly,

(16:07):
hopefully really quickly after that is the feeling of calmness
that overcomes in tranquility. Yeah. Um, a heart attack. You've
got the squeezing chests, pain in your chest or your
left arm, Yeah, like a weight on your chest right. Um.
What I didn't know is that because of the heart
not delivering oxygen to the brain any longer, you can

(16:27):
lose consciousness. Um, within like ten seconds. Um, I didn't
realize that. I think, like it was, there's a lot
more to it. Well, it depends. You know, everyone has
their own signature heart attack as well. Um, if you
bleed out, I imagine this is not one of the
best ways to go. Um, after about a liter and

(16:50):
a half of blood, you're gonna be thirsty and weak
and anxious. Anything over too, you're gonna be pretty confused
and dizzy and probably lose consciousness pretty soon. Now, and
all of that would be that would relate to how
fast you're losing blood, and it would probably be very
unpleasant depending on how you're losing blood. Like why because
you would imagine that if you're stabbed in the gut

(17:11):
or something like that. Yeah, you got the attendant pain
in addition to this dying from loss of blood or
like man reservoir dogs. Yeah, it's like one of the the
most hardcore ways to open a movie or not open.
But they cut right to that scene after the diner scene,
right after the walk Yeah. Um. Electrocution. Um, if you're
in your house and you get electrocuted, could stop your

(17:34):
heart right then and there. And uh, if you're in
an electric chair, you may have actually heated your brain
up to the point where you die or suffocated to death. Right.
But the there's indications that being electrocuted with enough voltage
that instantly you lose consciousness. That's the idea probably with

(17:57):
the quote un quote humane, I'm sorry quote humane end quote.
I'm gonna stop doing that. I'm going back to quote
unquote what if you fall from a height. If you
fall from a height, supposedly UM time slows, which is awful.
It's like, well, you're gonna experience all of this. Yeah,

(18:19):
that's uh yeah, the idea that you that you really
can take it all in, that's really awful. So they've
they did a study of UM jumpers from the Golden
Gate Bridge, which is seventy five what is that two
hundred thirty it's high enough, and they they found evidence

(18:42):
that a lot of them died from exploded lungs, exploded hearts, UM.
Their organs were all cut up from their ribs, which
would indicate death was pretty much instantaneous. Yeah. We talked
about that on something too recently, I think, or maybe
I heard it someone else talking about it. It's pretty
that way to go. What the Golden Gate Bridge or
just just falling diving from a height. Yeah, I can't remember.

(19:05):
I was talking to about jumping in the water. I
was like, what actually kills you when you jump in
the water from the eye, and that was like your
organs smash into each other and explode. Yeah, I guess
from any height. Yeah, but when you when you die
from that would be from organ explosion or whatever. Yeah,
or you know the brain obviously if you go head first. Yeah,
that's um, the long drop back in the day would

(19:28):
although they still you can get hung in certain states
if you choose really yeah, Washington state and now you
can huh. Um, you can choose that as your method.
They'll build you the gallows and uh. The idea that
there is you want your neck to snap, otherwise he's
died slower and you know, suffocate. The problem is there's
a study of thirty or four prisoners that found four

(19:50):
fifths of them died partly from asphyxiation. Really, that's the
wrong way to hang somebody. If you if you don't
snap their or they don't lose consciousness immediately, Um, they
sit there and hang and die of asphyxiation. That's a
bad way to go. Uh. And speaking of bad, I

(20:11):
think being burned to death maybe one of the worst.
And then what we came up with on the I
think so because you feel it and you'd think like
your nerve endings, that's what I thought, like, oh, your
nerve endings are probably like stop responding quickly. But apparently
that's not the case. No, not only is that not
the case, Apparently you're fire further sensitizes your nerve endings,

(20:33):
so you feel even more pain. Yeah, but luckily most people,
I think the vast majority of people who die in
fires actually die from smoke inhalation before they ever feel
pain from fire. Yeah, that are well, I don't know
about before they feel pain, but hopefully quick enough. Well,
you know, cover monoxide thinks, so like, well, there's a

(20:56):
lot of smoke you are download to the ground and
that's of the carbon carbon monoxide is so you're entailing
mostly that, so it's possible it's before, it's true. And
then the natural death, which is uh, passing of old
age or disease. And here in this country we have
kind of whipped up a lot of the disease over
the years into into they sniff them off. The case, right, Well,

(21:20):
it depends like some of the ones that like kill
undeveloped countries, like diarrheal disease, like dying from diarrhea. Um,
you don't have that much in the US, but we
have chronic disease like obesity, and diabetes and UM cardiopulmonary disease. Um,
we have that downpat. I've got the top five here. Actually,
I think they're all in there, aren't they. Um, heart

(21:42):
is number one, cancer is number two. UM, lower respiratory
is number three. Strokers for an accidents are five. And
it's a huge drop. Cancer and heart are close to
six hundred thousand, and then number three at lower respiratories
only a hundred and thirty eight thousand. So that shows
you what cancer and heart disease are doing in the

(22:02):
United States at least. And the upshot of all this
is that most of us are not going to die suddenly. Um,
either by accident or by violent death. Yeah. Dying of
old age didn't used to be a thing. No, it
was like like a lot of ways to die, but
that was one of them. You ticked off some traveling night,
or there's a dispute over grazing rights. Ye. Plague, Yeah,

(22:26):
you walked into a bear cave. Yeah. The plagues another
but um, yeah, old ages. It's kind of a new thing,
but it's one of the most um prevalent forms of
death in developed countries. It actually has its own name, frailty, Yeah,
which is great. It's sad, but it's great that now
we can live out our lives and and we're about

(22:48):
to talk about it. But sometimes the body, just like
any other machine, just stops. It's not designed to keep
going indefinitely, and ultimately the system shuts down as its
subsystem shut down. This shutting down every second right right now,
are shutting down. And for that reason, because you and

(23:09):
I are both dying. I guess once you're born, you
start dying, or after you stop growing, you start dying,
right Is that just the positive outlooker, But I mean,
like you're shedding cells and like this is like the dying.
We're in the midst of the dying process. Just this
natural system is in the winding down, although it takes
decades and we still have plenty to do. Like you said,

(23:31):
you're dying, I'm dying. That's why they have a more
specific definition of death, which is um called active dying.
Like you and I are not actively dying right now. No, no, uh. Instead,
if we are actively dying, we're in the midst of
the dying process. It has started. The dying processes started.

(23:53):
The descent, if you will, has started, right, So, um,
all this kind of happens since different types of cells
die at different speeds, that's what it is. It's cell death.
Cellular I don't want to let the cat out of
the bag, but oxygen doesn't happen to different parts of
the body. Your cells are gonna die exactly, um. And

(24:14):
so as the cells die at different speeds, different systems
are gonna shut down. But just from watching frail people
die of old age, UM, they kind of have like
this the the order in which it happens kind of downpad.
So there's the UM, there's the preactive dying phase which

(24:35):
can take about three weeks, starts about three weeks before death,
two or three weeks. And then there's the active dying phase,
which can take a few days. And obviously that's not
set in stone. None of this is set in stone.
But this is all just um kind of accumulative knowledge
from observations of people dying in like hospice and things

(24:56):
like that. So you get the preactive phase of dying UM.
And like I said, it starts a couple of weeks
ahead of the actual death. Because we have this is
a big deal right now, what we're talking about, Like
it's becoming very clear, UM in our modern age that
death is not an instant, it's not a moment, there's

(25:16):
a process. Yeah, well unless it isn't an instant, but yeah,
old age dying, yes, or like other kinds of dying.
But how about non accidental dying. We'll call it that
because that's like the instantaneous thing, and even sometimes in
a very short scale that can follow some of these
you know, Oh yeah, I forgot it all to you, yes,

(25:40):
nodding my head. So the preactive phase of dying, Chuck,
what do we got? Well, Um, you're gonna start sleep,
You're gonna get sleepy, You're not gonna have much energy,
You're gonna start sleeping more and more. Uh, your skin
might become cooler to the touch, might turn a little
bluish gray. Yeah, cyanosis, So that's called it's just becoming

(26:02):
oxygen deprived. Like apparently your body's like, okay, don't really
need to use the legs anymore because we're bedridden, So
I'm gonna start focusing more of the circulation on the
inner organs. Yeah. Well that probably causes the modeling too,
which is, uh, your your skin can become sort of reddish,
like splotchy with reddish blue splotches as well. Right, you're gonna, um,

(26:25):
you're gonna be a little restless. Probably, you're gonna possibly
come off as confused. Um, You're you're not gonna be hungry. No,
you're gonna probably withdraw from UM social activities. You're gonna
become a little a little withdrawn. UM. You might wanna
settle unfinished business with family. You might request family come

(26:47):
visit you for that kind of thing, the non physical parts.
That's definitely something you'd be interested in doing. Right, But
that's like, UM, apparently something that that people intuitively know
like they need it. Apparently patients know when they're dying.
I've seen that happen. And one of the one of
the signs from UM that's mentioned in hospice care palliative

(27:11):
care UM is that the patient may even state I'm
dying like I started, it's coming. That's pretty common um. Yeah,
and that's sad that when you realize like, all right,
this is this is it, Like I feel myself, I'm
gonna be gone soon. But that's neat though, especially if

(27:32):
you yeah, if you're like, okay, I'm gonna put everything
in order then die happy or peacefully. Yeah, that's neat
that you have that that time to to take care
of that. Yeah, if you're fortunate enough to go that
way for sure. Back to physically, Um, you you won't
be able to heal from a wound er and infection

(27:53):
any longer. Yeah, you might um lose control of your
bladder and your bowels with the course of some time. Um,
you might be in pain, but chances are here in
the modern world they're gonna take care of you in
that respect. Right and again that's called palliative care, where
at some point it's very obvious that you're going to die. Um,

(28:15):
and a lot of it can be based on what
you want, even even um without your wishes, there's probably
a point in time where medical science says, there's nothing
we can do for you. Um, we just want to
make you comfortable, exactly, so we're gonna give you pain meds.
We're gonna like your your care is being transferred over

(28:35):
from a physician to who's you know, wants to save
your life and keep you going to hospice workers, health
care professionals who are trained to just keep you as
comfortable as possible for the for the duration of your life.
Right man, hats off to those people, like all health
care professionals of course, but man, hospice nurses, that's tough stuff.

(28:57):
You've gotta be like, you've got to be made of
of the right qualities as a human to be able
to tackle something like that and still get up and
go to work every day. Like they're literally in the
business of dying. I mean, very valuable, valuable service people provide.
So that's the um, that's the preactive phase. That's the
I'm getting ready to die. I got a couple of

(29:17):
weeks and all of my systems are starting to wind down.
In the active phase, the systems are starting to shut down. Um,
you may not have consciousness, and if you do, you
may Uh. If you are able to be aroused from
conscious from unconsciousness, you're gonna slip right back into it again. Possibly, Um,

(29:38):
you are probably and apparently families find this very disconcerting.
You're probably going to talk about people who are dead
as if they're in the room or you can see
them or hear them. Yeah, it's just just the mind slipping.
They don't know. Um. Hospice workers, from what I can tell,
tend to just treat it like it's real, treated on

(30:00):
its own terms. They're not saying it's real or it's
a hallucination or something like that. And they advise families
not to treat it like a hallucination. It just to
not to correct them. Yeah, that makes sense, because you're
there to provide comfort, not say no, Grandpa, grandma has
been gone for years. Why would you want to do that.
There is an exception to that. You would want to

(30:23):
do that. If they're fearful from their visions, then you
can say that's it's not real. It's just you your
brain that's not real or whatever. Again, all about comfort, yes,
but you don't want to contradict them if they're happy
or even saying it in a neutral tone. It's only
if they're they're fearful that you want to say that.
But apparently families are kind of like, oh god, crazy,

(30:45):
you know. But it's a it's a natural part of
the active dying process. Breathing is gonna become really weird. Um,
the patient's gonna stop breathing for disconcertingly long periods of time. Yeah,
that's called Cheney strokes respiration stokes sorry, Cheney Stokes name
for John Cheney and William Stokes. Obviously, the first dudes

(31:08):
who described it, Let's get all the press quick deep breaths,
sometimes very slow ones like you said, sometimes stopping altogether. Uh.
And that is caused by receptors in the heart and
brain stem basically being too sluggish to respond two different
amounts of oxygen and CEO two and it's just kind

(31:29):
of lagging behind. Again, think of it as a machine
that's just slowing down and those receptors can't pick up
on it in times, So it's it doesn't know how
to tell you to breathe basically like at a steady rate. Um,
we should say that there isn't evidence that that is
physically painful again, like awful for the healthy person in

(31:50):
the room. Yeah, yeah, for the family watching it, you
think that the person is suffering, there's not evidence that
they are in fact suffering. Yeah, but it seems like it.
And that from what I understand with palliative care, UM,
not only making the patient comfortable is one of the priorities.
Making the family comfortable as a priority as well, because
how you die has a very lasting impact on the

(32:13):
people who are there to witness your death. For family,
so um, explaining that they're not suffering, Uh, is helpful,
but not necessarily enough. Yeah, and I think actually this
podcast itself could help like some people, because I don't
think a lot of people do this sort of research
when they go into a hospital room in the last

(32:33):
hours of a loved one's life. Yeah, and they may
not be told. They may even if it is explained
to it, it it might not sink in what they're being
told because you know, seeing somebody gasping for breath and
then being told that they're not really suffering, those two
things might not jibe. Well, yeah, You're you're instinct is
probably trying to get help, like they can't breathe clearly,

(32:54):
let's get a nurse in here, and the nurses like, no,
that's that's that's part of it. Yeah. Another one that's
very just concidering. Another sign of active dying is the
death rattle. And ye I did a I guess it.
Don't be dumb on death rattles. And basically, either you
have fluid in the lungs or like you know, when
you clear your throat like I just did, that's a

(33:16):
normal ability you have until you start dying. You can't
clear your throat anymore. Those are your laryngeal muscles, right,
basically spasming, what clearing your throat? No, the death rattle. No,
the death rattle is just breathing through the mire. It's
both it's it's either liquid or it's the muscle spasms. Yeah, okay,

(33:39):
so did you find that that's painful? Because I found
that it's it doesn't cause pain, it's just it sounds
terrible again to the people in the room exactly. And
this is uh, I don't think we pointed out this
is the agonal phase of death and it's Greek for struggle,
And yeah, that's sort of just encapsulates it. I think
that's probably why they call it the active phase of

(34:01):
death now rather than agonol. Oh do they don't even
call it that anymore? I mean I think some people do,
but I think the active and agonol are the same
one and the same. It's just you know, they're in
the agony faith, right, or they're in the active faith. Uh.
Your muscles, aside from your vocal cords, UM might start

(34:21):
convulsive and spasm ng. Um. You can get all you know,
herky jerky and do things that wouldn't seem like you
should be able to do in your state, like um
card tricks. I don't know if you could do cards
shuffling card tricks from one hand to the other, and

(34:42):
Grandpa never could. Before I knew he gets something. We're
in here somehow. Um what else? Uh, well, let's see. Um,
your blood pressure is gonna drop, your jaw is gonna drop,
you might end up in a really weird rigid position. Um,
and uh you're I think we said your extremities are
going to be cold to the touch. Yeah. Actually, the

(35:05):
the death rattle as a result of the spasming of
your laryngeal muscles that can also produce um, what was
described in what I read as a barking sound. Oh yeah, yeah,
and I've never I didn't search that out to see
if that was recorded anywhere. But I'm curious what that
sounds like. I've heard everything from gurgling like gurgle too.

(35:27):
It sounds like there's marbles in your throat. Uh, barking.
That's a new one. But it makes I think everybody
has their own signature death rattle, you know, but they
the rule of thumb, apparently among hospice workers, is once
the death rattle comes, it's a sign that they got
about forty eight hours or less left to live. Yeah,
and all of these are tells, really and all of them.

(35:48):
And we'll talk about what happens after the body is
dead too, and that helps with finding out you know,
in forensics, I think we pointed out plenty of times
at the time of death, depending on the various things
that happen when they find you. But all all of
these are almost like like markers on a clock. Yeah,
and if you're in hospice care, you know these things

(36:09):
like oh this is this means this? Well, there there
are signs and symptoms of the system shut down that
the person's body is going through, you know. So, Um,
the senses apparently also are lost in a healthy person
or a person who has all five senses. Um, they're
lost in a certain order, and touch and hearing are

(36:32):
the last to go. And another another very important point
that hospice workers make is never ever talk about the
patient like they're not there, because they can hear you
up until the end. Like hearing is kept so long
as the person could hear before then there's not any
damage from you know, during the act of dying period. Um,

(36:53):
they can hear you until the moment they die, and
you need to be careful what you said. Yeah, And
I think that's a really nice thing that the last
things that you can experience are the touch of a
loved one or the voice of a loved one. Right,
you know, you needs to see him. You may not
even be able to respond to that, but you can
still hear. That's true. I would definitely pick that over sight.

(37:17):
I'd rather hear someone's words as I pass rather than
having silence and just seeing their faces staring at me,
so long as the words aren't. Wait, one more thing,
I think it would be almost cruel to be able
to see and not here at the end. You know,
like he wants to see your family upset. You want

(37:37):
to hear feel them hold your hand and say everything's
gonna be right. So you So you you raise a
good issue like there's if you have a dying family member,
especially if they're dying a frailty or they're just dying,
like they're in the dying process, so they're about to
enter the dying process. Um, you could do worse things
than to go online and educate yourself on how to

(37:59):
be around them. I think people don't intuitively know how
to be around a dying person and there's certain things
that you should do, certain things you shouldn't do. Like,
for example, um, they say that you should talk to
the person, not the condition. So don't treat them like
they're frail or dying, Like, treat them like they're your
old friend. Who they are. Um, it's extremely important to

(38:20):
make sure that they're in a peaceful, calm environment. Um. So,
like maybe yelling at somebody over the will is a
really bad idea. They seem like no brainers, but I
guess some people need to be told this stuff. Yeah,
but I mean think about it, like it can put
you on edge being around a dying person, like do
you mention the fact that they're gonna die? Or do
you you know? I mean like do your dad's around it?

(38:42):
If they make a joke or something like can you
laugh or do you laugh too hard? Do you not
laugh enough? Like there's I think it's not necessarily like yeah,
I think it's it's just put you on edge or
not everyone is as sensitive to that. Don't bring a
laptop in there and watch reruns of the Office. No, yeah,

(39:03):
are you speaking from experience. I'm just gonna add that. Okay,
that's on my list. Get off your cell phone. Yeah,
pay attention to them. Sure, yeah, I mean that's what
you're there for. The as hospice workers put it, you're
giving them a very um heartfelt gift by being there
with them while they're dying and maybe receiving a gift,
you know, and many religions and cultures, it's very uh

(39:26):
much an honor to be a part of this whole thing,
and even if you're not religious, that you could just
feel that way spiritually as a human, you know. Okay, uh, well,
let's pause here because Chuck, it's time for a message
break and we're back. Okay, So are we dead yet?

(39:49):
Are we at that point? Yeah? The the person has passed.
It just sounded very cheery. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I
mean like we've rattled off some pretty what seems like suffering.
But now the suffering is over. If there was any
other person is dead. So once you, immediately immediately after
you die, your pupils are going to dilate because the

(40:12):
muscles controlling the iris or you know, gonna have their
final rest. So your pupils are going to dilate. And
then have you heard of the terminal tier or the
lacrima mortists? This is a usually in the right eye,
and there's no real explanation for it, but um, it
is a final tier that you shed. And um, it

(40:36):
doesn't always happen right after you die, although it can.
They did a study in the early nineties in New
Zealand and out of a hundred deaths, fourteen of them
right at the time of death had the lacryma mortists
here and uh thirteen of them in the final ten hours.
And they say uh to to look out for that
if you're the family, because it can be a sign.

(40:57):
And also they try to talk you into the fact
it it's a comforting thing to see that tier being shed. Wow. Yeah.
And since we're on eyes, you know the old thing
where you close someone's eyes after they die, Oh yeah,
or you put silver dollars on if it's it's the
old West. Um, I guess people do that too. So
you're not having someone a dead body staring at you, right,

(41:19):
because if they're looking dead forward, straight forward there like
following you all through out there. Yeah, and it's definitely
a movie trope. But if you don't close the eyes.
And I never knew this, um something called t A
c H E. Noir. I don't know if it's tash
or taste more. That is a black, a dark reddish
brown strip that forms horizontally over your eyeball. And I

(41:42):
guess it's just you know, your eyeballs dry out and
has the air. So if you don't close your eyes,
and I looked it up, you're gonna see this weird
horizontal stripe across your eye. But there's a plus the
effect that has in the living, the difference between seeing
a dead body with their eyes closed and a dead
body with their eyes open, and it's just it's like
a galaxy between the two as far as discomfort goes.

(42:04):
Somebody should edit together the like every time that's ever
been done in a movie, just like super Fast. All right,
So that's all I got on the eyes, Um said Chuck.
I want to alarm you right now. Boy. You have
living in your guts right now, the very organisms that

(42:26):
are going to decompose your body when you die. They're
just sitting around waiting waiting for action, waiting for the
signal yep Um, when you die, there's a lot of
stuff that's still alive, that's still going on, even though
your brain dead, whole brain, higher, brain, heart dead, your
heart stopped dead. That's another definition of death. I don't

(42:47):
know if we mentioned heart. Your heart's not beating anymore.
You're dead. Yes, Um, there's no bringing you back. You've
been in your heart hasn't or your brain hasn't had
oxygen for a while. You died of hype thermia. Uh,
and they warmed you up. So now you're officially dead.
You're gone, But there's still a lot of stuff. Remember

(43:08):
the poop Shake episode who Can Forget? We talked about
the microbio and we have this whole other like part
of our life are living organism that's still around, that's
still operating, and a lot of stuff living within us,
including part of our microbiome. They're still carrying on processes
like apparently you can harvest skin cells for twenty four

(43:28):
hours and and they're still alive. Just use them, Yeah,
for all sorts of stuff. Yeah, you can harvest them. Uh.
And then of course inside your intestines there's a little
tiny organisms that are still living and are gonna help
do the work that comes next, starting a couple of
days after death, like if you just fell over in
the woods and no one was around. I always loved

(43:50):
the setting right, Um, and you're just left there. Within
about three days, these organisms of micro flora is going
go to work on you, starting in your intestines. Yeah,
and this is after the various mortises. Correct, Yes, which
I guess we should kind of go over it. But
I would recommend everybody, um go listen to what causes

(44:12):
rigor mortis? For sure. It's on the website. You can
go to stuff you should know dot com, slash podcasts,
uh slash what hyphen causes hyphen rigor hyphen mortis. Um,
we'll just run through the mortis is real quick. Then, Um.
Algor mortis, or the death chill, that's the first first
thing that's gonna happen. That's where your body starts dropping

(44:34):
in temperature about a degree and a half fahrenheit per
hour until you are just like a nice red wine
at room temperature. Yeah, actually that's not quite true. Red
wines like sixty four degrees for you. I guess it
depends what kind of room you're in. Yeah, if you're
in a sixty four degree it's perfect, all right. What else? Well,
after algor mortis, um, you get rigor mortis a couple

(44:55):
of hours after death, where the body um, settles into
a stiff state. Uh, and that lasts for what like
twenty four hours? I don't remember, we talked about it.
Uh yeah, yeah, I think so. Um, and then between
those you have live remortis or subdulation. That's where like
all the blood coagulates them. Yeah, basically that your red

(45:18):
blood cells are pretty heavy and they just sink and um,
it's about twenty minutes to three hours after death is
when you're going to be in live remortis, and then
after that is riggor that's right. Okay, so not back
to putrification right, Well, that's the best thing can talk about. Yeah,
that's that's basically like you're these organisms go into work

(45:38):
breaking down your body and they do it pretty quick. Um.
The pancreas apparently has so many in there that it
just itself eats itself. The pancreas consumes itself. It's pretty efficient. Um,
your other organs are gonna eventually eventually be consumed in
turned into liquid. You're liquefied from the inside out. Yeah,
you're gonna turn colors, uh in this order green than

(46:02):
purple than black, which is just like a like a
black eye, I guess. Yeah, in that the same stage. Yeah,
except it never fully heels explodes. Um you Uh, within
a couple of weeks, you're going to be liquid inside. Uh.
The organisms that are eating you produce a gas as

(46:24):
a byproduct from their consumption. So you're going to be bloated.
Your tongue is going to stick out. He's gonna turn
dark to your tongue. Yeah, and that gas really stinks.
Your eyes are going to protrude. Yeah. Um. There's something
called purge fluid that is a putrid, reddish brown fluid
that can be expelled through just everywhere you've got an opening.

(46:45):
Can come out of your mouth, your nose, your vagina. Uh,
it can be mixed with feces and come out of
your rectum. Another. Um, there's something else I can come
out of your vagina too. Yeah. This is maybe the
worst thing I've ever heard. I just I had no idea. Yeah,
I had no idea. You know, I know all about
death and all that, and it's like interests me. I

(47:07):
had never heard of this before, and you want to
talk about you don't either. Maybe we should type it
into the computer and make the computer say it. Do
we have that ability? Oh? Wow, that's pretty good. That's
a good computer impression. So wait, that's what you do
when you don't want to say something yourself. You pretend
you're a computer. Yeah that, Emily and I most of

(47:29):
our fights are like that. Really. Yeah, it's pretty cute.
I go into a war games mode. What was it again, computer? Uh?
Coffin birth. So basically those gases that, um, this is
a real thing. We're not making this up. Yeah, but
post mortal fetal extrusion is another name for it. So
the gases that build up in the body before the

(47:51):
body ruptures um, which comes a little later, can become
so pressurized that a pregnant woman who has died with
the feet is still in utero can actually the gases
can push the fetus out of the vagina um, which
is birth. Yeah, and this doesn't happen much anymore, thankfully,

(48:13):
because we take care of dead bodies pretty quickly. Um.
Although they did find evidence of it in a case
in two thousand eight where this woman was found like
in the woods, but um, it was described a lot
in like the eighteenth century medical literature. You know, it
just drove them crazy to she was obviously alive for
weeks afterward. Yeah, and archaeologists apparently too, or I have

(48:38):
to rethink sometimes when they find because sometimes you would
die during childbirth, but the um they have buried the
the baby with the mother, and so you would find
the bones like cradling each other almost. But then they
go back, they've had to go back and look at
somewhere they find the you know, between the legs, the
bones of the baby, and they think that might be

(48:58):
the case, like of a coffin birth. Right, So there's
the worst thing in the world. Yeah, Um, there's probably
death male band with that name. If there's not, there
is now. Um. So the gases ultimately, eventually once they start,
once they really get down to business and they're no
longer just what's it called where they're the fluids coming
out a little orifice is here, they're purge fluid. Okay.

(49:20):
So once it's like enough with the purge fluid, the
we're just gonna tear the sucker open. Your body ultimately ruptures. Yeah,
and this is you know, your skin has already blistered
at this point, Um, your hair, nails, and teeth have
fallen out. They don't keep growing. No, it's your skin
receding from drawing out, from desiccating. So pass that around

(49:42):
in school kids. When someone says that your fingernails keep
going after death, you set him straight, tell him Josh saying,
oh god, I just realized there's kids listening to this. Um.
And then the old d gloving which we talked about before,
Oh yeah, I forgot about that, remember that? Yeah? Where
the that can upen to you? If you drive at
ten and two and you have an air bag, the

(50:05):
gases that expand the air bag out of your steering
wheel are very hot. And if you're not driving at
nine and three and you have your hands at like
ten and two or something like, you're going to be
de gloved alive. Yeah, but your skin is just burned
right off your hands, or it's burned and separated and
then eventually comes off. So ten and two is not

(50:26):
how you should drive it on. Really, That's what I've learned. Yeah,
I drive it either just a straight up six o'clock
with one hand or a nooner, just just straight up
noon noon. I rarely have two hands on the wheel.
You don't drive with like your knees, with your hands
behind your head relaxing occasionally if I'm you know, relaxing. Yeah,
we're playing the guitar or something. Yeah, de gloving is

(50:51):
and then we talked about this in the probably rigor mortis.
But that's when your body farms maybe, yeah, that's when
basically your skin is removed, still attached to things like
fingernails and things like that, and it's they call it
the gloving for a reason. I don't think we need
to explain that it makes perfect sense. Or de socking sometimes,

(51:11):
you know, can happen to your feet. And well I
hadn't heard of that one. Did you just make that up? Well,
they said gloves or socks if it's your feet. But
I did make up the socking. Well I have to
use that from now on. That might be a new thing. Um.
So the body, once it once ruptures, your organs are
already liquid um, and all that's left is a skeleton

(51:36):
which will eventually turn to dust too. Can I be done? No, wait,
we can't be done, because we do need to talk
a little bit about assisted suicide. Yeah, I just eat
that up for you. You should. Um, that's quite a
controversial subject, like we said, Um, I don't know if
I said or not. Like this has just been such
a huge whirlwind of input of information in my head

(52:00):
the last like thirty six hours studying for this um
that I don't know what I've said yet or not,
or what we talked about in another podcast, but so
we talked about dying of frailty of old age and
that it's increasing. Supposedly five out of ten people in
the United States will die in the intensive care unit.
And I saw this Ted talk from Newcastle, Australia with

(52:23):
this guy I can't remember what his name is, but
it's it's about dying. I think it's called it can
we talk about dying or something, And his point was,
you're going to die in the I see you, whether
you want to or not, if you die of a
degenerative disease or frailty, unless you say you don't want
to die there, because the way medical science is currently

(52:44):
set up, you are going to be treated most of
the time up until a bitter end with life saving measures,
and you're going to die in the I see you
with tubes hooked up and things be being and like
other people having crash carts taken in and out of
their room and people making a big ruckus up until

(53:07):
the point you die unless they give you palliative care
or or you say, I don't want to be sustained
like that, I don't want to go to the i
c U. And this point was, if half of Americans
are gonna die in the i c U, you have
to assume that maybe not all of them would want
to die in the i c U. And therefore they
need to think of things like I wanted an advanced directive,

(53:30):
a living will, I want a living power of attorney
to somebody to say no, no, do not put them
on a ventilator, do not put them in feeding tubes.
Like they don't want that. They just want to die,
or they want to go to hospitals. They want to
go back home. That's another big one, like they don't
let you go back home, especially if you can't speak
for yourself, like to medical science these days, that's crazy.

(53:54):
You don't leave the hospital when you know you're dying.
You stay in the hospital and and we keep doing
stuff until you die. That's not the way it drives
with a lot of people. But if you don't stop
and think about it and then write it down or
tell somebody who can speak for you, that's you're not
going to go home. You're not going to get to hospice.
You have to do this ahead of time. And part

(54:15):
of that that's kind of come out of this idea
is Okay, well, if we have autonomy to say I
don't want you to intibate me, why don't we have
the autonomy to say, I want you to give me
some stuff that's going to painlessly end by life, because
it's either that or facing a tremendous amount of pain
and suffering through this degenerative disease. Basically saying I'm ready,

(54:37):
I am ready, it is my life. It's like the
Richard dryf this movie from the eighties, Uh covertus, whose
life is anyway? I think I have no idea what
you're talking about. Think it was a movie about assisted
suicide and do you should you have the right to
be able to You know, that's a hot button issue
for sure, but apparently most Americans or the jority of

(55:00):
Americans actually support it until you start using a word
like suicide. Right when you pull them and say do
you are you in favor of doctors helping someone painlessly
in their life or something at the end of life? Yeah,
And then they're like, okay, so you're a favorite physician
assistant suicide. Um, what's that word? You know? And and

(55:20):
the doctors who are in favor of euthanasia is another
term for it. Um, say, look at palliative care, it's
like half of a step away from physician assisted suicide.
Like you're keeping somebody if they requested and knockdown on
morphine for the rest of their life, so they're never
going to regain consciousness. Um. There's this you you dug

(55:42):
up this one article by a British physician who argues that, um,
that agonal um gasping reflex. Apparently when part of the
apnea is that your body has a reflex where you
gasp for air and it's really disconcerting to family members.
Even though they don't think that you're suffering, it looks

(56:03):
like you're suffering. And this doctor argued, well, we have
drugs that can block this response so that the person
can't gusp for air. And what it's going to cost
them their last couple of breaths. But these last couple
of breaths make it appear like they're suffering, and the
family remembers that their kids suffered. Um, so why wouldn't
we do that? And there's this conversation that's taking place

(56:25):
more and more and more that ultimately it's kind of like,
who is somebody to say that somebody can't choose to
end their own life painlessly through the use of like
drugs or like Hunter Thompson did. Well, I mean, that's
another way to go, and you anybody can do that, sure,
but there are some people out there who don't want
to die violently for their family. Like that's the part

(56:49):
that I was upset about with that was his wife,
like finding him and stuff, his wife and his son,
and it was just like, not only that he did
it in his own basement, which I can understand doing
it at home, but he left quite a mess in
his own basement for his family to clean up. But
if he had other options these days, like doctor assisted suicide,
he might not have had to make a mess in

(57:10):
his beast My first families and chuck, uh. We know
that Hunter Thompson is far from the only person to
make his own exit his own way. Another very famous person, uh,
Sigmund Freud did too. Huh oh yeah, yeah, you know
that assisted suicide. Yeah, literally, physician assisted suicide. He was
um diagnosed with cancer of the palette because he smoked

(57:34):
tons of cigars, which were sometimes just a cigar and UH.
For sixteen years he lived with that diagnosis and finally,
towards the end, he asked his surgeon, his physician, go
ahead and hit me up with I think five grams
of morphine, like just a ton of morphine. And he
died three hours after the injection of it, but which

(57:55):
was more than his usual two grams of morphine right
or cocaine. He loved cocaine um, but he had um
developed what was called todden angst todin angst as German,
which is a dread of death. So and so we
lived with that for sixteen years. But he finally he
decided along the way like I fear this, but I'm

(58:17):
going to take it into my own hands. Physician assisted suicide.
And there's definitely more than one side to this coin.
There's a lot of people. There's very strong opinions on
either side. But I think it's a at the very least,
even if you remove a motion from it's an extremely
interesting conversation and that it reveals so much about our
attitudes towards death and autonomy and like who's who has

(58:40):
the right to decide whether they're going to die or
who has the right to tell somebody that they can't
do that? Whose life is it anyway, Richard Dreyfus. Uh,
and then chuck one. One other thing that we want
to hit on is um regret. Yeah, I actually saw
this a few weeks ago, just by chance, and then
you sent it to me. Um. I think it was
in England hospice nurse spent a lot of time researching

(59:05):
life regrets over the course of a certain amount of
time and came up with the five most common life regrets.
And uh, I think this is like a good way
to end it, you know. Number one, I wish I
had the courage to live a life true to myself
and not the life others expected of me. That was
the number one regret. Number two was I wish I

(59:26):
didn't work so hard. That doesn't surprise me at all.
Number three I wish I had the courage to express
my feelings. Number four I wish I had stayed in
touch with my friends. It's a very sad one. And
I wish I'd let myself be happier. There's number five. Yeah,
like that she was saying that they didn't realize towards
until the end of their life. That happiness is a

(59:46):
choice that you make. It's not something that happens to you.
It's something you go search out. It's a state of
mind that you strive for and to figure that out
like at the end, that that's the regret. Yeah, So
call to action people, Yeah, really, like you think about
the stuff. You don't have to wish these things on
your deathbed if you start doing something about it now

(01:00:07):
exactly dying, Chuck, you know what we might have just done.
We might have just finished the death of the death suite.
I bet there's something else. Yeah, only time can tell.
But I don't know how much more aspects of death
we can cover. And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna
put all of them together in a blog post the

(01:00:27):
Death Sweet, so everybody can go listen to all things
death via stuff you should know. In the meantime, if
you want to look up more about dying, just type
dying into the search bar. How stuff works. I think
it has its own channel. Um, there's so much to it. Uh.
And since I said search bar, it's time for a
listener mail. This is a nice one. Um. We don't

(01:00:50):
normally do shout outs, but this was a nice one,
and I thought, what better way to end such a
depressing show. Uh? Hey, guys and Jerry loved the podcast. Josh,
I have to thank you for teaching my fiance, Danny
and me about the flashlight trick to see spider ez. Yeah.
I still haven't done it, man, I never think about
it at night. Jerry, you said you tried to write
new work. Yeah, okay, I need to do it. I

(01:01:10):
need to set a reminder. And my my response to
people who have been like, can you can you explain
it again? Practice? That's my explanation. Just practice, Just try
it from a different angle. Just practice. It's a real thing.
It's not a trick. It is completely amazing. And this
is from Peacheat by the way. Uh, and it's wonderful
and frightening at the same time. But the problem now
is that whenever we walk our dogs at night, I

(01:01:32):
just can't have my normal fiance. I have this dude
with the flashlight stuck to his forehead, stopping at every
field to let me know just how many spiders are
dogs are stepping on and how we are always surrounded.
Thanks for the show, and now for a shameless request.
I know you don't often give shout outs. But it
would be the most amazing thing ever if you could
give a shout out to Danny on the podcast The

(01:01:54):
Airs sometime before our wedding on oct let him know
that I love him more than anything, and then I'm
excited to share my life with him, even if he
does have a flashlight stuck to his forehead, with the
rest of our lives walking our dogs together. I know
this is totally blown away and I would even let
him listen to that podcast first. So thanks to Jerry.

(01:02:15):
Thanks guys. That is from Peachy way in Thousand Oaks, California.
I think Peachi just expressed it very nicely. Yeah, so Danny, Peachy, congratulations, Uh,
best of luck, best witches from us. I told her
listen up for it on the Dying podcast and he
thought that was kind of funny, and it's like great. Yeah,
and Danny, um, maybe put that flight once in a while. Yeah,

(01:02:39):
White h and Peachy don't use the word fiance so much. Okay,
it's a life lesson. I'm Chuck right there. I would
like to hear that. Um. If you want to see
if you can talk Chuck into a shout out, take
your best shot. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can talk to him directly

(01:02:59):
on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. It's
where he spends all this time. UM. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
and you can join us at our website, our very
own website. It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com

(01:03:20):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com? Like a good neighbor
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