Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 440: Spontaneous Human Combustion

Episode Date: January 30, 2021

This week, we explore the hotly-debated phenomenon that is spontaneous human combustion. How does it happen? Who has it happened to? And will it happen to you?Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

What a great topic for the smell that's in this room right now. Marcus, you are so safe in this sky, you're so safe in there. It smells like you burned an orangutan in the bathroom. That is puffin farted, okay? You putting them on the bowl? Ben, I would like to say that yes, it was me that farted. It was not Ben, as a matter of fact, Ben's farts only smell like the greatest cotton candy.

Puffin control! Yes, he can, and he tells no lies. I can't believe what you've done to me. Change puffin, it's not it. I remember puffin talking quite a bit when we were still recording in New York. Can you? I'm the only single guy here and you guys are trying to throw me under the proverbial bus.

No, no, kiss, listen, every single time- I didn't take a dump in the freaking corner, it was in the bathroom. Every single time we talk about one of these issues of yours, there's always a woman- It's not an issue. You just know there's a- it helps you because there's a woman out there who's like, I can fix him. Oh my god, it's called reproductive- no, not reproductive waste, that's like a whole another thing.

Oh my god. I'm gonna build a whole new daddy when I get in there. I'm gonna kill you and I'm taking a plane and I'm gonna go kill you, Marcus. Okay. Okay. Welcome to the- Thank you. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone, I am Ben hanging out with the ghost of Henry

and the ghost of Marcus because this episode's three weeks in the future and I have made true to my promise, to me or dare. Thanks to all for being with us this week and we want to send a special thank you to the Roundtable Facebook group. We haven't said that in a long time, but they sponsored and were able to finance a plaque at the St. Louis Bird Sanctuary for Bird Luger for Kevin Barnett and it's really sweet and it's awesome. So thank you so much.

Well, technically they did it two years ago and it just got placed, which is incredible. It's out there now, it's absolutely- it really did make us all emotional in a way that I'm not comfortable. Yes, absolutely. I was thinking that Kevin taught and I was trying to reflect and I said, what did Kevin teach me that I continue to do today? He treated everyone that he met any time in his life, he treated them with respect and dignity.

Always. And whether it was a friend that you met at the first open mic, he would stay- He really- He would stay your friend no matter what happened. Absolutely. You didn't even just have a juicy butt. No, he didn't. To be his friend, he'd like you better if you had one.

Well, you could, that's why he liked me so much because of my Wisconsin German tush that was flat but yet large. So that's just something to remember when it comes to the relationships you have in life, make sure that you keep them because Kevin was just so good at that and especially in this industry of ours, a lot of social climbers, a lot of people who talk to folks who can help them out and then as soon as they can't, they say, you're dead to me. He just wasn't like that. He never did that and he was a superstar in every sense of the word.

So thank you so much and treat people with respect just like Kevin would. All right. A friendship is a garden. You take a piss in it like you just did with me. Kissle sometimes spreads manure on the garden. I'm actually mad at both of you. I'm actually now mad at both of you. I can fix him.

I know his butt won't be like that when I'm done feeding. I'm actually, I'm doing dry January. I'm eating really well. I've tried to eat vegetables. That's great. That's great. And honestly, with the lack of alcohol in your diet, but with the extra fibers in your diet, you might actually be a, to be honest, you might just be a candidate for the situation

we're talking about today. All right. So what are we talking about today? Of course the topic is spontaneous human combustion. Perfect. Thank you all. I can fix him. Don't, can you stop?

I don't need to be fixed. I take care of two dogs. I'll give him a baby. Spontaneous human combustion called SHC to those in the know is a highly debated phenomenon in which a human bursts in the flames without any external source of ignition, almost always with fatal results. Now SHC is not the type of fire you burst into like when you see like Yonsei on the Super Bowl and you go, Yaaaaaah.

It's not that type of burst into energy. It's an all consuming fire that starts in your torso and leaves only your feet in your hands. Well, that's not bad. That's why just in case it happens, I always keep a little bit of chocolate and a little bit of marshmallow and a small stick to put them together with and a graham cracker. Just in case my friend becomes a bonfire, I want to have something to eat and I would love to consume food off of your burning flesh, Henry.

God, Polish smoked. How does it taste like sausage? It's a marshmallow. Now skeptics say that most, if not all, of purported SHC cases are merely instances of investigators overlooking an obscure ignition source. But others maintain that spontaneous human combustion is a phenomenon that could happen to any of us. Oh my god.

It's almost like they want us to think it. You know what I mean? Like they want us to be so afraid of our own bodies that they're like, so that's why we're going to tell you what to do with them. In any luck, they should have just killed JFK this way. Just light them up. I mean, honestly, he was on enough pills, he was soaked with alcohol, he had the fucking... He wasn't fat enough.

Well, yeah. The thing about SHC, honestly. You gotta be fat. You do? It's about, you gotta be a big person because that's where the fuel comes from. Oh. Well, we'll get into that. We'll definitely get into the fat fuel later.

I can't wait to get into the fat fuel, but also, can you imagine being a skeptic of this? Just someone whoosh, burst into flame in front of you and you're just like, eh, and they apparently had a faulty lighter. That's their job. It's like, oh my God. Can you just please say, wow, holy shit, that guy became a star? Every fire marshal's a fucking bummer because everything has to be rational and be able to put on a form because they go in there because you can't just say, the demon came through

the Ouija board. Like he doesn't want to hear that shit. It doesn't have to be a demon from a Ouija board, but it also doesn't. Like I just hate the idea that everything needs a skeptic, not everything needs a skeptic. Just, just let it, let it be. Sometimes people just blow up. Quiet miracle. It's just a, yes, spontaneous human combustion, a quiet miracle.

Well, one believer actually said that SHC is not as rare as we might think. Instead, he called it merely uncommon, citing one doctor from the 50s who said that he ran across a case of spontaneous human combustion about once every four years. All right. First of all. It comes around every year. I know. If you're a fat woman bursting the flames every single time, I gotta, gotta do my fucking

pageantry vote for the fucking quote unquote puppeteer in charge. Wow. I love Dr. Drunk on leap year. I decided my driver's license, so I'm not a citizen of this country. We'll definitely get into the skeptics point of view on all this, but before we get to that, let's see what the SHC chapter from my mysteries of mind, space and time collection had to say about spontaneous human combustion. Oh, let me just open up your book really quick.

You're going to die a virgin. What the hell chapter is this? I'm going to close that now. It is a 22 volume collection that is full of quite a bit of interesting and esoteric knowledge. And it's, it's changed because it used to be mysteries of mind, space and time that used to make you a virgin, but now honestly, it's highly fuckable material. So it's like, yeah.

Especially to have the whole thing. It's like encyclopedia Britannica for like the Adams family. Cool. Holy shit. Kissle. Yeah. All right. All right.

I got my mysteries of mind, space and time collection right next to my collection of man myth and magic. So I got one hell of a fucking encyclopedia Britannica going on over here. You got the library of like a goth girlfriend is excited to thumb through. You know what I mean? Like I have like a 24 year old covered in mesh. Yeah. Why not?

So according to mysteries of mind, space and time, spontaneous human combustion is a phenomenon that occurred most frequently during the olden days from the 1700s through the Victorian era, although the first recorded instance was hundreds of years previous. Hmm. A written account exists of a night named Polonus Vorstius, who in the 15th century came home to enjoy a few glasses of strong wine with his family. Drink it, daughter. Drink it.

Yes, indeed. It was written that suddenly Polonus began to belt fire, then proceeded to burst into flames and burn to death right in front of his parents. Fucking Gabriel Byrne from hereditary, man. That's fucking rules. And that wine went on to be Mad Dog 2020 Apple. Oh, yeah. Nice.

Love Mad Dog. Now the Polonus story as fantastical as it might seem introduces an element that is common and almost essential to the majority of spontaneous human combustion cases, alcohol. Whoa. Well, now we can look at this from at least a somewhat scientific point of view. But in the Victorian era, spontaneous human combustion was seen as the divine retribution of God visited upon drunken sinners. It was done by in the Temporist group that that whole society during the middle of especially

Dickensian London, they specifically were trying to fight that like the temperance movement wanted to basically paint this idea that if you consume too much alcohol, that may be a layabout. Then you also become human charcoal and you like randomly burst into flames. And it went so far that actually got into a Charles Dickens novel that he wrote and he actually I forgot what's the name of the novel is crooked house crook house. Ah, yes. I was thinking crook.

Mr. Crook, I think was one of the main characters, but also in a weird example of the times then reflecting now was that he was actually accused by critics of spreading misinformation about spontaneous human combustion inside of like his novels. It was like, well, I am doing dry January, but I must defend something when it comes to booze. Most people spontaneously combust when they fall asleep smoking cigarettes. It seems very rarely is it just from the booze. However, there's another important factor that plays in the most cases of spontaneous

human combustion age. See many of the people who die from suspected cases of spontaneous human combustion are of the elderly persuasion or at least in their senior years, 60 and above. And many of those are also women. It's because what people don't know is that breasts are super flammable. Really? I didn't ever try to light mine up. I haven't yet.

I mean, my breasts are just waiting to pop. I can't wait to see you burst up. I'm getting my Snickers bar ready right now because physically wore my breasts are a slightly melted Snickers bar is actually good. Put it in the microwave for four seconds. What? It's really good. It's keeping the log of shit.

I like it in the car. No, it's not. What is your shit taste like? Your shit tastes like a Snickers bar. It's gross as fuck. No, it's it is the consistency of it. When you're just squeeze it out of the fucking thing into your mouth. First of all, Marcus, you enjoy British food unironically, you truly think it's the best

food on earth. So you're out of this competition. And you eat like the penises of whales. You eat food that should not have ever been killed because it was killed illegally. You mean a winner's food, top of the pyramid, eat any part of that I want kind of food? Yeah, it's just warm, nugget, nougat, chocolate, peanuts, and carmel. If that doesn't sound good to you, you're not a human being. It just tastes like shit.

It doesn't taste like shit. It doesn't taste like shit. Nugget in your mouth. Okay, Mr. De Niro, how much shit have you eaten? You saying that Bobby? You saying that Bobby? Eat shit. There are some theories out there.

Well, concerning the elderly women, take, for example, the case of the 62-year-old Countess Cornelia Bandy died 1731, not necessarily elderly, but she's about to get the discount at the movie theater. According to a statement, the Countess was put to bed after supper, and finally fell asleep after several hours of scintillating conversation with her maid. Tell me, maid, do you think if more lamp was alive, she would love me? Yes, I am your large male maid. You would only be such a delight if every time I went to sleep, everything in the house

came alive. Alive. All these singing and dancing, you think that's what happens? Like Walt Disney film. Oh, God. Yes. All right, now give me my sleep, licks. Okay, yes.

Are you done, man? Now go to the other side. Tastes like a Snickers bar, man. But, according to an account published in Gentleman's Magazine, that maid was met the next morning by a grisly scene. It said, quote, The floor of the chamber was thick smeared with a gluish moisture, not easily got off, and from the lower part of the window, trickled down a greasy, loathsome, yellowish liqueur

with an unusual stink. Honestly, great descriptors. That was greasy, yellowish. They paid by the word. The Gentleman's Magazine article went on to say that a pile of ashes were found four feet from the bed, and the only parts of the countess bandy left were her legs, feet, head, and three fingers. All the rest it said were ashes that, quote, left in the hand, a greasy and stinking moisture.

My name is Devon, I was her maid for a long time, and I have to say, ironically, those were her three favorite fingers. She always told me to use those fingers after I did the cleaning lick. This is disgusting, I apologize to everyone. That greasy and stinking moisture is called rendered human fat. Oh, that's what that is. In fact, from what the article said, it appeared as if the countess's torso had disintegrated where she stood, and her skull had simply dropped into the pile of ashes below.

So she was standing up as she combined, is that the common pose? We'll see, we'll see. But even more interesting than that was the fact that the bed, where the fire had presumably started, was unburnt, and the room itself was almost totally undamaged besides, of course, the smell. Yeah, I gotta get in one of those old fashioned Yankee candles in there. Honestly, what kind of Yankee candle would be strong enough if you have the scent of human skin burning, hair burning, all of the defecation that happens?

Well, my favorite Yankee candles are Dracar Noir, roast beef, and peanut butter dog hair. Anything that covers peanut butter dog, if someone knows what peanut butter dog hair smells like, you need to never have a dog again, and honestly, you're not allowed to buy peanut butter anymore, isn't that weird? Another case, which actually has quite grisly photographic evidence that was published in every newspaper of the day upon its taking in 1966, involved 93-year-old Dr. J. Irving Bentley. Dr. J!

Man! Well, I love him, he could do the layups and the reverse dunks. That was before anybody could jump by too, honestly. He was the first one that taught white people that jumping is possible. He was black. I know. That's why we had to meet him. He taught everyone else.

Bob Coosie taught us how to dribble, and then Julius Irving was like, but what if you just go and put it in there, and everyone's like, what, what, no, no, no, I was about to say we should make the basket low up, the basket should be on the ground, the vent should be allowed turns to throw the ball into the basket. That's why white people should never invent sport. That's why the common man should be allowed to trade stocks, only us experts. Dr. J's Burt remains were found in front of his toilet, with his walker resting atop the ashes, and the rubber tips of that walker conspicuously intact.

Henry, did you see this picture? It's wild. The thing about SHC is the pictures are wild. We were watching this documentary last night, and man, there's just like, it's so fucking metal. I know it's, it's horrible, you know, it's one of those things when you just see just like feet, you know, like everything else is gone, it's just feet there, and then the chair is fine.

It's cool. You know, I'm going to say, as far as dying goes, we're all going to do what I've heard. Huh, I read about it. Not me. It doesn't seem like the worst, although I don't know much information yet, so we'll learn together. But is it a quick death or a slow death? But if you're going to be like torn apart by a group of jackals, crazy rabbit wolves,

or spontaneously combust, I don't know, going away in a, in a punch, in a puff of smoking that bad. It takes fucking a half an hour. Does it take a long time? At least. I mean, that's the one thing. We'll go into more of the scientific areas as it goes on, but it's like, you smolder. What they say is true.

You smolder from the inside. Well, what about taking a quick ice bath then? No one's ever tried it. Okay. Honestly, I think one thing that could have fixed this whole thing is cleverly placed Nes-T bottles. Oh, yes. Well, from the pictures taken of Dr. J's burnt body, the only evidence that the pile of ashes

had ever been a person at all was Dr. Bentley's leg. The fire had stopped just below one of the knee joints and the leg lay in the hole left by the fire in the bathroom floor, as if the good doctor had just stood there while everything had burnt away and the leg merely fell over once the fire had burned out. And the hole in the floor is also a common thing with SHC. And what that is, is again, human fat rendered down, pools on the floor and then burns its way through the floor. Because the fat actually gets much hotter, it becomes like boiling and it falls down

and then it just eats away at shit. But that's like very common. And then when it eats away, it creates a vent of air that then shoots up and ignites the fire even more. All right. Now, officially, the story that the coroner went with concerning Dr. Bentley was that he was a careless smoker. Very careless.

Because you could see small burns riddling his everyday clothing and his bedroom floor. He's one of those guys. Everyone had that. Everyone's been to that house. The problem is he made himself the cigarette. So he doused himself and then lit himself a flame. So that makes you a professional smoker. Yes.

Look, extrapolating from those small burns, the coroner surmised that Dr. Bentley had fallen asleep smoking, lit himself on fire, woke up, hobbled his 93-year-old ass to the bathroom on his walker so he could put himself out and then collapsed in front of the toilet where most of his body burned away to crumbled ash. Honestly, he was able to beat cancer via cigarettes, but his body was still just like, sorry, gotcha. Yeah, we're going to light you on fire now. However, believers in spontaneous human combustion think that Bentley was merely on his way to

the toilet for regular toilet activities when his body ignited, and it was there that he burned and died. I mean, it's technically- I don't know what a 93-year-old's regular toilet activity is. It's empty in the back. I could just see, I mean, like, I know how this is how I'm going to die. It's just like, okay, my flax is working, better get, oh, Mrs. Browsky, better get yourself your favorite chair. Oh, here we go.

I could see it, we're going to light a fart, and it's all going to be over. Yeah, I could see that. Well, part of why believers of SHC have the stand-in-place theory is that from the evidence we have, people who die from suspected spontaneous human combustion cases very rarely move once the burning starts. I just feel like I'd get the fucking case of the Zoomies if I was on fire. You know what I mean? Like, if I was on fire, I would start to feel like it hurts a lot, so maybe you don't want

to move? If you're on fire from the outside end, yes, but if you're on fire from the inside out, maybe not. There's almost never a trail of like singed carpet, burnt clothing, or anything else that one might expect. Sometimes in fact, people will burst into flames and burn on a bed, but the bed and the sheets are merely singed again as if the body is burning from the inside out. That's the shit that's really weird.

That's the shit that is, but I also know clothes were more flammable back in the day. There's like a thing that's maybe a common thread, but it's very strange to see just a fucking burnt-ass skeleton with feet on a bed that is unburnt with just everything else. It's just kind of the ceiling is stained directly above it. It's wild looking. I mean, it's a great day for whoever sold them those sheets just to be like, hey, they don't burn when your grandpa explodes himself.

Have you seen those videos? Have you Brooklyn in commercials? These are very, very strong sheets. Have I told you about my pillow? Sometimes though, spontaneous human combustion has been mistaken for murder. Such was the case of Jean Millet, an innkeeper accused of having an affair with a pretty servant girl, then murdering and burning his wife in 1725 so he could continue the affair. The wife, who was an exceptionally heavy drinker, was found one morning about a foot away from

the kitchen stove, burnt to death, and it was quickly surmised that her husband had killed her and tried to burn the evidence at the scene of the crime. However, the straw bed next to her was unburnt, as were the nearby wooden kitchen implements. All that was left of Mrs. Millet was part of the head and a few vertebrae, and so Jean was arrested for murder. Mr. Millet might have swung, if not for the intervention of a traveling doctor, named Claude Lecat. Oh, isn't that nice?

He found himself his own Alan Dershowitz to just lie for him, isn't that great? Man, your entire existence depends on a man named Mr. Lecat. It's Mr. Lecat. Oh, is that right? I'm American now. That's fun. Lecat. I promise I just did that whole cat character for dolls looking sunsills, you can't do another

cat character. Lecat convinced the court that this was no ordinary fire, and since this was 1725, his expert opinion was that this was a visitation from God, an obvious result of soaking one's innards with spirits. Yeah, sure. And the judge said, yeah, let him go. Yeah, that sounds great, Mr. Cats. The 17th.

You're lucky I hate dogs. Absolutely. I'm happy your name isn't Judge LaDog, because that would have been rough for me. That would have been rough, rough. Truly rough. That's okay. I want to combust right now. Can I please burst into flames?

God, the flames you'd make that stinky, stinky fire from those guts. Would you please, Henry, I think that my flames would smell wonderful. I know that when I burn him, he will smell like the finest cologne. Why did you make me marry to the, like, someone who, you know you're going to get married to a woman that looks just like me, no beard, just like clinging to your leg, being like, oh, Ben, get the milk for me, it's up too high. I think you greatly underestimate how much I physically despise your form. No, I will not be.

Well going off of the theories of Claude Lecat, who soon extrapolated those theories into a book about SHC. Man, this shit has been going on since the beginning of time. Men who shilled bullshit, and then just to sell the book that they just shilled on. Is it safe to say SHC was the, the glove doesn't fit, you must quit, version for the 17th century? Sure. Yeah.

But going off of his theory, the alcohol theory became an accepted cause for this bizarre phenomenon, or at least a contributing factor. In fact, one quote unquote scientist claimed that people ignited from within when internal gases and intestinal waste combined with alcohol and great quantities over a period of time. When you get filled with thoughts and shit, you put beer on it, sometimes you explode. That's just a fucking, that's just a strong shot of it. I don't know why we got the cursing scientist up here on the stand, but yes, that's fine,

it checks out. But spontaneous human combustion didn't just happen to drunkards. In 1789, a priest named Father Bertholi was lodging with his brother-in-law and had been left alone in his room for just a few minutes with his prayer book. Oh, I know one thing about priests, they don't drink at all. No. Sober, sober is the wind. It's the only thing that keeps them from all the molesting.

I could work the other way too. I would imagine that the alcohol would probably lead to the molesting. Sometimes what I've discovered about quarantine is that booze just makes my own brain fun enough to just sit there. Yeah, that's also true. Before long though, the priest's family members heard screaming, and when they came running, they found the priest on the floor surrounded by a pale flame. Fuck yeah, dude, this is a fucking devil.

Yeah, I'll get your motherfucker. Although the priest was prevented from burning through, he still died, and the skin on his torso was detached from the flesh and hung in shreds. Oh, it's a, you know, I'm starting to think it's not the most fun way to die. No, it's very bad. Yeah, you don't want- No fire death is good. No, no. You don't want to have a confetti death.

You don't want to look like the ultimate warrior when he was wearing his armbands, but it's added to the tassels, but it's just your human flesh hanging off of you. That's not cool. I never want someone to see my dead body and someone says, oh, is this some pernil? Oh, no, this is a human body. I thought this was, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. But the priest screaming is an anomaly. Some are found as if they sat calmly through the entire ordeal.

In 1960, five charred bodies were found in a burned out car near Pikeville, Kentucky. As the coroner wrote, they were sitting as though they'd just gotten into the car and burst into flames. Cool. And with all that heat, you'd think there'd be at least a little struggle. Yeah. But according to the report, no signs of struggle were present. Although this one very much sounds like five people were just murdered, then sat in a car

and set on fire to destroy you. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'd say that, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right. That's also a possible explanation for that one. Okay, that one seems like that could check out too, yeah. Another near universal characteristic of spontaneous human combustion is the extreme heat which is involved. See, under normal circumstances, it is actually very difficult to set a person on fire without

an accelerant because we are, after all, mostly water. Yeah, that's how I tried to get it over several times that I was fired where I just say being like, you can't fire water. You can't fire water. I'm 70% water. So you're just fire, oh, you're firing water now. You're going to fire what gives life. You're going to fire me that I give you life.

I'm water. I'm water. Yeah. All right, makes sense. What are you, Walter, Steven Hagan? But the reduction of a body into a pile of calcified ashes, which is what happens with most suspected cases of spontaneous human combustion that have full photographic evidence, requires enormous amounts of heat usually maintained for hours.

Okay, so it literally is a very specific way to burn to death. It is. So they know, so they can be like, it's not obvious, no accelerant was used, he didn't fall asleep with the cigarette. They know, no matter what, whether it be spontaneous human combustion or something else, but this is very, very specific. Whatever SHC is, it is at least the most interesting, I'm going to say the user word interesting, outliers and home fires that exist.

They are so strange and very idiosyncratic and it's, it is wild the energy in the, in the fire. Yeah. In fact, cremation itself is not just burning the body until everything turns to powder. The body is put into a cremation chamber, which burns at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. Essentially this just burns away the flesh, then the ample bony remains left are ground up using either mallets, rollers or heavy blocks.

Or like mortar and pestle. Yeah. If you're making like a pestle or something with it, you want to get one of those mortar and pestle. Sure, sure. Yeah. You want to make sure to clean it out really, really well before you make guac for the family though, because that'll make it kind of disgusting.

Or the remains are processed using specialized equipment like the patented remains processor built by Fire Lake Manufacturing, which is a somewhat disturbing and simultaneously fucking sick name for a company that makes incinerators and incinerator accessories. You guys take my bones, muddle them up and then form them into my tombstone. Yes. All right, cool. Let's do that. It's already done.

Bone stone. Do you, would you like us to make necklaces and rings and such out of your remains that we can wear around and show to people? Jangle them. No, I still got you guys are still going to be my friends. I can't have a bunch of those kind of friends. You guys, you guys don't do that. I don't know, I don't do the human equivalent of the shell necklace.

It's very popular in Wisconsin in the late nineties, early 2000s. Oh, I remember the Pooka shell necklace. Oh yeah. That was a worldwide phenomenon for some reason. Also very, also very popular in Texas as well. Okay. Yeah, everyone who shopped at PacSun had four of those. And honestly, Dave Matthews' band does have some good music.

I'm going to stand up for that. Okay, well, you know, I mean, sure. Monkey, you could say. Jumping monkey. Yeah, not that one. That's what he said. Satellite. That's fine.

That's fine. If you're trying to date a 20 year old at a bayou, I guess you can listen to satellite all night. Satellite. But actually it's kind of sad if you think about how our space is just filled with human garbage. Yeah. Yeah.

And actually what is the commentary on? Yeah. And dead animals, dead monkeys, dead dogs. There's a lot of them up there. And a lot of a lot of Russian dudes up there are dead in space too. Yeah. They allowed a lot of those guys to die. I saw a picture of our atmosphere in the 1960s versus now and we really got, we got to start

cleaning it up out there. We need a vacuum. We need some guy in space vacuum. I think there is one up there. But the point here is that for bones to essentially crumble into ash as they do with suspected spontaneous human combustion cases, it takes a sustained heat of about 3,000 degrees. And from accounts, some of the bodies burn for a relatively short period of time, not the two or three hours that it usually takes.

I eat too much. I drink too much. No. Too much. We're done. DMB is out of the conversation. It's done. I'll say that was a fun video.

That was a good one. I eat too much. I eat too much. That is one of their better songs. I drink too much. I drink too much. Too much. Too much.

And it's the only, very good. I mean, Spotify, we can play that. We'll play that song now in its entirety right now. Are we ready? I don't think, you want me to do it? No, we'll play, with Spotify, we can just play the song. I don't know if we need to lose the audience right now. Another fascinating aspect of this is that while the bodies obviously burn hot, there's

also an extreme confinement of the heat, sometimes, but not always, victims of spontaneous human combustion are found lying in unscorched beds or sitting on slightly singed chairs. It's just such a fucking sound garden, like music video image of like just someone just sitting in a blazy boy just burning. Black hole song. You know what I mean? It's fucking cool. You know, like a fucking Pink Floyd album cover.

Yeah, dawg. It really is freaking awesome, but maybe we'll get into it. But why doesn't anything else around it catch on fire? Well, sometimes it does, but I mean, most of the time there is evidence of fire, but it's still like highly localized. I mean, often the floor underneath is burned, as is the ceiling above, because the reason why nothing is really burned around it is because fire burns vertically. Fire never burns horizontally.

What I learned from the video I watched yesterday is that fires burn in columns and Vs. So fires, you could, the way they tell, the way fires burn is these natural V shapes that are shown in the fire marks. And the one common thing about spontaneous human combustion is that it's a very narrow column of flame that it is just. So why does everyone just build their houses horizontal? Because we're not Dutch. All right.

I like room. All right. I got to go places. Well, for example, Mary Reiser, 67 years old and a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida. What's going on, O.J. Oh, St. Petersburg, where Henry and Natalie got married and it was a beautiful night. It was. So tonight we met.

We met Charlie Chris there. Yeah. And that woman burned alive there. Well, that woman was reduced to ashes in a pillar of fire on July 1st, 1951. The overstuffed chair in which she died was burned to the springs, and there was a patch of soot on the ceiling above. However, the pile of papers nearby was entirely unaffected, despite the intense heat needed to reduce her to ashes.

Wow. Dr. Wilton Crogman, a forensic scientist who specialized in fire deaths, investigated the scene and said that he could not conceive of such a complete cremation without burning down the apartment itself. And don't think I don't fantasize about it. Oh, I wish every single fire encompassed every building that ever was, and finally, we could get back to the simplicity of the indigenous people. That's kind of an aggressive, angry doctor.

I'll tell you, I'm another doctor, and I'll tell you some everywhere I go is a six-feet cube of freedom. Yeah. You're talking about the gray if you want to go to the gray. No, no, no. That's when it's under the ground. Oh. When I'm above ground, I'm president of my own little world here, right?

Yeah, indeed. You're definitely hammered. I'll tell you that, Doc. I made an executive order to drink whiskey this morning. Well, Dr. Crogman further went on to say that if he were living in the Middle Ages and he saw such a scene, he'd mutter something about black magic. I do love that he addresses the fact that he would be part of the problem. I like that, where he would be like, I would have burned three witches, I call them witches,

because of the black magic. Yeah. You know, even honestly, even 10 years ago, I'd crucify as many women with fucking bush hair that I could find. Anyway, just letting you know, because the rules have changed, I won't do that. But I would do that if I could do that. I'm not going to say it, Doctor. I'm not going to say it.

That's why I say, let's sign an executive order right now. We're going, we're opening up six flags, and we're going, I ain't, I don't care about the flu. I love it. I'll light a match and I'll kill a woman. I'll fight. If I see a fire, I'll kill a woman. I'll call her a witch, you know?

Dr. Crockman, you just became secretary of the interior of my six feet cube of freedom. This is incredible. As far as the police went, they entertained every idea from something called an atomic pill to murder by flamethrower. Fuck. Shit, dude. You have to make somebody upset in your quilt group for them to show up with a flamethrower and set you on fire.

Absolutely. Freaking lutely. Great day to be a detective, though, because if those are your two options, no matter what happens with the case, it's going to be really fun. Everyone's going to talk to you and ask you questions. You're going to get access to a flamethrower. So cool. You get to test it?

Yeah. It'll be fun. Well, Dr. Crockman postulated that Mrs. Reeser may have been burned elsewhere by someone with access to crematorium type of equipment, and the remains were carried back to her apartment where the special effects wizards in charge of the scene made it look as if she burned to death in her chair. That was the most logical conclusion he could come to. You really thought that this was all going to be done by fucking Rick Baker?

It could be. And if somebody did do that as a special effects artist, as horror fans, do a couple of years in prison, but then come back and make the thing and stuff like that. But should it be that spontaneous human combustion was the case here, it seemed as if Mrs. Reeser did not put up any struggle whatsoever, as if, in the words of Charles Fort, she had been, quote, lulled into the wings of a vampire. Whoa. Jeez, Dr. Crockman.

My panties just got wet. Yeah, that was a doctor's quote. No, that was Charles Fort's quote. Yeah. Oh, okay. Crane of the term, Fortian. He was the first collector of all things weird and interesting. Charles Fort is the grandpappy of all of our favorite bullshit, and we should probably

do a series on him. I love thinking of pappies. Yeah, we should. Yeah, he wrote The Book of the Damned. Whoa. Now, Charles Fort wrote extensively about spontaneous human combustion, and even told of one tale in which there was an actual witness to the phenomenon who saved the possible victim from burning.

In the winter of 1904, at Binbrook Farm near Grimsby in England, an employer, where they got a cartoon bearer as fucking mayor, and everybody pees, everybody marbles sandwiches or some shit. It's crazy. Everyone has a bicycle, but there's only one wheel. It's a unicycle. Yeah, that's cute. It's a unicycle community.

Well, there, an employer came into his kitchen to see a young servant girl calmly sweeping, entirely unaware that the back of her dress was, at that moment, on fire. Oh, that's like national ampouche Christmas vacation. It is a little bit, or Mrs. Doubtfire when he has hot flashes. The kids. The movies. The girl who was completely oblivious to what was happening until her employer tackled her and smothered the flames with wet sacks was terribly burned and had been on fire for

some time, apparently without noticing. I'm too immature for you to say the words wet sack. Yeah. I can't. I just pictured him like doing the halo thing. Yeah, sure. Yeah, tea bagging her. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it is fun. He's got his nutsack all wet and then he did that, so. Yeah, it's just how. That was where my mind went. It's how we're raised. Yeah. I blame America. Sorry about that.

I blame the public education system. I didn't understand what he was actually trying to say. It wasn't testicles. It was. Yeah, it wasn't testicles. You understood it on a very, on a very, on a, on a conscious level. But then I got it. Yeah.

My gym teacher taught math and science. Well, I also saw him like bringing in all the other caterers and be like, take your balls out, boys. Dip them in the water. We need to nut sack this woman. You make a joke, but my football coach was also my science teacher all throughout. And the girl's volleyball and the girl's coach was the history teacher for a brief period of time.

And my history teacher actually taught dating to several classes, which is really interesting. I didn't know they were teaching them dating and lifestyle tech. No, that was the next school over that over at roll. They did that whole thing where the coach ended up marrying one of his students. Yeah. And he married. He got married. He got married.

Because everyone was cool with it because they waited until she was 18 to tell everyone about it. Yeah. We had one of those. Because you could do everything over the clothes and then when you get to 18, then you can put the tip in and then everybody applauds you for being super legal and roll had the fucking temerity to call us low class. Wow.

I can't believe you can use the word like temerity. There's nothing low class about that. What's the use? That's right. Yeah. That's because the football coach, it was a lateral move for him to be the science teacher. Usually football coaches are the are the are the what do you call Jim teacher?

Would you call that PR? What do you call it? Yeah, PR. Yeah, exactly. I haven't been in school in a long time. Public recreation. Yeah. Something like that.

But yeah, I mean to be the science teacher, what did he teach you? What was one thing that he taught you that was totally wrong? Oh, I don't know if he really taught me much at all. Yeah. I remember he did get really excited one day teaching friction using a big metal pole and a rag and making it look like he was jerking it off and he was like giggling to himself in front of the whole club. That's why you were valedictorian because he made learning fun.

He did. Don't get coached for him. He was also my driving instructor. I used to use to make, but he would make me drive him to track meets all around town. That's how I got my driving credits. He was also your family doctor and he was the mayor coach for was fucking great. He's best football coach we ever had. How don't you have hooves?

That's all I want to know. I just don't, your childhood is just so wonderfully magical. As far as explanations for spontaneous human combustion go, there's a lot of speculation, but no definitive cause on the believer side. Some think that it's an invisible force because after all, we can have our insides cooked by extreme radiation or microwaves, but we can't see radiation or microwaves unless you got your cool glasses. Yeah, unless you got the cool microwave glasses reminds me of unit 731, them just turning

it up the, what, the pressure until you crap out your intestines. Yeah. I think about it a lot. It's come up a lot recently. I think about it too much. Yeah. Whatever that little footage was that we saw, I know it was a movie, man, that one sticks with you, but they use real corpses in it.

That's what it was. Okay. The writer named Larry Arnold wrote in his book, a blade, a blade. What? But the main culprit of SHC was a theoretical subatomic particle that he dubbed the pyrotron. Just remember that Larry Arnold is, the only way I describe him is that he looks like a wrestler's manager. I love it.

And he is, he's an independent researcher. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Not a scientist per se. Not really a whole lot of credits for Larry Arnold, but he's read a lot of stuff and he's got a lot of opinions.

The pyrotron also was my favorite ride at Epcot. Absolutely. It sounds like it's, it sounds like something that the flaming lips would be like, and now for the pyrotron. And then they sing, do you realize, and then your brain is on mushrooms and then you're like, be even dude. Yeah. And then you look at your big, huge body with all the deep vein thrombosis and you're like,

I am beautiful, which is an obvious lie. I love it. Well Larry Arnold proposed that the pyrotron was usually harmless, but when it passed through a body with a highly increased blood alcohol content, the conditions for spontaneous human combustion are met. Sure. UK writer Michael Harrison made the terrifying suggestion that SHC is just another form of poltergeist.

Cool. And along that track, others think that spontaneous human combustion is a form of psychic suicide. Psychic suicide? You're the only way I'm going, you girl, psychic suicide? Yeah, what you want about pre-science, you know, the pre-science world, it was much more fun. Always. Pre-science world, this fucking theory is from 1996.

Pre-science. Pre-science. We didn't even have stem cells then. But they think it's psychic suicide. The person simply wills themselves into death by flame. It's 1996. They're like, legitimately. Somebody said it's psychic suicide.

They are still saying today that it's psychic suicide. I'm not going to listen to someone who likes Johnny Depp's later work, you know, the number one Hollywood vampire fan. I'm not going to listen to them. This is definitely like the opinion of like the darkest dude in Sedona, Arizona. It's cool though. I do love this idea because also there is another side shoot idea that it can possibly, some people might also like psychic suicide.

It might be that it's not just that they willed themselves to explode, was that maybe also they're accidentally tuned into their own pyrokinetic abilities. And one of those things, because they said the one big thing that can happen here is chronic imbalance, right, or like the idea that your inner energy is too mischievous, so you explode. But some people, this is just humors. This is just, oh, his humors are out of balance. We need to bleed him for three days.

Like it's just, yeah. But some people can control their prana so much. I saw this one little Asian guy, he said a thing on fire with his ants. Yeah, it's looking like it. That's from X-Men. That was the fact kid from X-Men in the most recent one where he has the fire ability. This is a new fact kid. Yeah.

New fact kid. Well, I guess it actually would make sense then that would be a chubbier person that has the fire power. Get all the flu. Get all the fuel. Why does that make sense? Because of the lard. Because we just said that help them out fat burns, yeah.

But honestly, it also shows that chubby people really are super hot. Jesus. What do you fucking want from him? What do you fucking want from him? What do you fucking want from me? They are. Yes, everyone has always said that when it comes to the perfect physical physique it is yours.

No. This is, I'm a cute, I'm cute, I'm a boy with an eye. That's the nice thing about wives, they lie to you. They have to. Yeah. Well, others still think that it's a number of extreme factors that have to come together all at once. The chain theory.

In one issue of the Forty-Injournal Pursuit, a writer noticed that a significant number of spontaneous human combustion cases occurred at peaks of geomagnetic flux. Okay, I'm hearing you. I'm getting it. I'm hearing you. Follow me through here. Follow me on the road. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

No, teach me, teach me. See, global averages of daily geomagnetic figures have been made available to astronomers and geophysicists for years. Sure. And the writer of this article discovered that days of high geomagnetic activity coincided with instances of spontaneous human combustion. How did I know? I'm so happy we're finally talking about the subject that I care about, which is high

geomagnetic, magnetic, whatever. Yeah, you've been begging to have this on the show for so long. I mean, nothing just fucking screams cool guy more than a theory that involves spreadsheets. Yeah, yeah. Yes, indeed. I mean, it's graphs. It's a lot of graphs, charts mostly, a lot of charts. Charts don't make them themselves.

No, they don't. No, they don't. Now, of course, it isn't only geomagnetic fluctuations that cause spontaneous human combustion, because otherwise, people would just be bursting into flames on a weekly fucking basis, which would be terrifying. Can you imagine if we lived in a world where you'd have like a fire forecast, where like on Thursday, at least 30,000 people will burst into flames, so be ready for it. Fucking get my visor, dude, get my lawn chair, put it out on the front on the street and

just like, look around, just be like, which one do you know to be barbecue today? I would get a super soaker and one of those really big ones with the backpack, fill it full of gas, and then I would spray it on people and I'd try to connect them with the fire. So then you could like connect the fire people. I mean, they're all going to be dead, but honestly, but also, this is the one time you without towels completely soaking wet in your clothes when you leave the shower. You're the safest man who's ever been, it might actually become like a fashionable

thing to do to be just sopping wet all day. Absolutely. But what this suggests is that spontaneous human combustion might be a result of a complex chain of events and geomagnetic activity is just a part of it. Okay. So as far as the ignition agent goes, those same people suggest that perhaps the old unexplained phenomena known as ball lightning is the ultimate culprit that lights the fuse. Do you think that, where's ball lightning's defense attorney?

Because ball lightning is blamed for so much shit. People are always like, once they get to it, it's either it comes down to ball lightning. That's they just say the word ball lightning, they don't really see, I've seen evidence of ball lightning. It's lightning. It is just lightning. Is it a form of a ball? No.

It's just lightning. They just say ball lightning. It's like another thing saying like, oh, this is a, what this is, is a spontaneous creation of plasma. And you're just saying shit. Yeah. Well, there was a different time. Everyone liked light, there was like grease lightning, like everyone liked lightning

back in the day. Grease lightning is actually a much better like term for it because every time when the, when the grease lightning come through, it leaves all the puddles of grease. One study in 1969 postulated that ball lightning, in some cases, could manifest short radio waves of the kind used in microwave ovens. And these waves essentially cook the person from the inside out until they burst into flames like so much baked potato. Would they, okay.

So let's say they don't get to the flame part. Would they still, are they dead by the time they burst into physical flames? That was that, that was that priest, remember that priest earlier? And there's another story I was listening to and one of the documentaries I watched had a story of a witness who saw his sister-in-law who he said was medically mentally handicapped is what he said. Okay. And she said that in the living room, she went to him literally said, my tummy hurts.

And then, and they started throwing up flames like shot flames out of her mouth. This is his whole thing. And she was like, and the role were none of the flimes. It was like being next to a radiator. And you watch, and she'd go, oh, give her some ice, throw something on her. They got her fucking, they got bottles of water and just to start throwing water all over her. Right.

And she's just like, oh, flames shooting out of her fucking mouth. And then they managed to stop the fire. But then she, she died. Well, that is just one of the strangest to Sony commercials I have ever seen. But honestly, it made me thirsty. I think Fiji water would have saved her life. All right. Well, let's start.

Let's go through a chain of events and which spontaneous human combustion might occur. First, sunspot activity has to be high. Although I could not figure out anyone who could explain to me why sunspot activity has to be high. Geomagnetic flux. You're going to want that to be high. Geomagnetic flux was because when the sunbelches. So the sunspot activity causes the geomagnetic storm?

Yes. You're going to want that. You're going to want that geometric activity to be high near a sunspot. And we got here. This doctor knows exactly what he's talking about. He also explained to me, you don't need to pay your tickets because honestly, cops are part of a separate corporation. America's a corporation.

I've been listening to a lot to these doctors and they've taught me a lot. Well, now when the sunspot activity comes in and now that I know that causes the geomagnetic storm, that's followed by ball lightning, which shoots a cosmic ray of low frequency energy into the body of the victim. And the victim goes, poof, ball lightning. Very cool. What a way to make it just so like there's something about these theories that make the victims of spontaneous human combustion must feel so special.

No. I don't think they feel special. Because the whole universe, like the sun had a fart, ball lightnings had a show up, and you literally, and it all was just so you would burst into flames. How nice is that? Yeah. Well, these explanations, however, are most likely not the cause of spontaneous human combustion.

What have we been doing here? Well, these are the fantasy reasons, they're not fantasy reasons. These are, if you believe that spontaneous human combustion is a thing, this is like how they're trying to figure it out. Well, I thought it was a thing. The whole episode is about it. Well, there's a lot of people that say it's not a thing at all. And actually, the hardest part of this whole thing is spelling spontaneous, because that

was for me. Oh, it is hard. E-U-I or like what? I don't know. I don't know. There's a bunch of letters in there. Yeah, it's crazy. It goes into the skeptics' questions and explanations for S-H-C.

Eugh. Well, they're pretty... All right. Okay. We gotta learn. We gotta learn. What do the skeptics say? Well, first, if spontaneous human combustion is a real thing, then why out of the 7 billion

people on earth does it not happen more often? And why does it never happen in public or in the middle of the day or on public transit or while someone's just sitting in the office? It's because everybody's addicted to their phones. Yeah, and it's because not everybody's mother had sex with the candelabra from Beauty and the Beast. That your father has to be waxed. A woman can have sex with a candle, especially if you like the other side.

Yeah. Well, of course you can. Furthermore, why does it only occur in humans? Let's just take, for example, chickens. Okay. There are 23.7 billion chickens on earth. Damn. Yes.

I love them. That is a scare. We gotta start killing these chickens. Are we killing enough? Okay. Okay. And yet I've never seen a chicken burst into flames, nor have I ever heard of someone saying that a chicken spontaneously burst into flames.

I've never heard of it. We've got a lot of cows. It would be delicious. We've got a lot of birds. We've got a lot of everything. But they don't consume alcohol. See? Chickens can't drink beer.

Although if you do see a chicken drinking a beer, you can't. Take a picture and send it. That's not true. That's not true. Some monkeys eat fermented fruit from the floors of jungles in order to get drunk. But do we know, but we don't know, maybe a monkey in the jungle has randomly exploded. We don't know. Obviously.

Yeah. And we don't know. We don't know like the molecules that makes the Bud Light Lime Lime. Right? We don't know. That's due to a person. Also, if you could transport me, maybe it'll become extremely violent, but I'd love to get drunk in the forest with a bunch of monkeys and gorillas and just hang out.

Oh, they're so fun. Sounds really fucking dangerous. It could be dangerous. Well, it depends. Do they get nicer or do they get meaner? I think, I don't know. I don't know. I just think they become more monkey-like.

Yeah. It could be fun, though. As far as the human victims of suspected cases of spontaneous human combustion go, there are quite a few shared factors that might go a ways towards explaining it. Many victims are of low mobility due to advanced age or obesity, which means that moving once they catch on fire wasn't always the easiest thing. To me, that was, because at first I truly did think when I was looking at these pictures, like, why weren't they running around, but I just, I mean, this is literally the worst

thing you can think of. You're 90 years old, you can barely move. You're like overweight, you have mobility problems. You can't go, you begin to catch on fire. You then, because the thing is, panic sets in, right? You're on fire. Yeah. You can't, like.

And Donahue is on, and you want to know how it's going to end. What's in the vault? Yeah, what's in the vault? There's a roll, though. You are on fire, and they struggle to get up, and then I wonder if you're in so much pain, and then immediately in sconce and flames, and you kind of just being like, I guess we're just going to ride this out? I guess you just do.

What other choice do you have? Well, furthermore, most of them were smokers, which means that they might have been in the middle of a tasty cigarette when they were suddenly struck down by a heart attack. Then the cigarette lights the fire that consumes them, and that's what brings us to the Wick theory. The Wick theory, because it's all about how it starts with, you accidentally kill another man's dog. Do not do that to John Wick, you will kill everybody.

You don't know that that dog belonged to one of the most premier, handsome assassins that's ever lived, and he comes to your house and he burns you with a flamethrower. By the end of John Wick 3, I did actually, for the first time, have one thought where it's like, you've killed hundreds of people. Maybe get another dog, you know what I mean? You know, it's like, oh, there's a great dog, I love that dog, it's a gift from the girlfriend who passed away. Have you taught me about running for office and helping to solve the situation from the

inside out? From the inside, but at some point it was just like, you have killed a lot of people for that dog, but then again, don't kill a man's dog, that's the lesson. This comes from a term that I was starting to read about, which is called this concept of fat Wick burn, so it's what they now call, that's like the common term for, but the idea of SHC is this thing, it's this type of phenomenon, which is actually very complicated. Well, I don't know, just check your, we're, check your butt for Wick's, I don't know, what do you, you'll see, you'll see what this is.

Well in this theory, a small external flame, like a burning cigarette, chars the clothing of the victim and splits the skin, releasing subcutaneous fat that is in turn absorbed into the burning clothing, which acts like a Wick, because usually the human body has enough energy stored in fat to fully combust the body, and the fat continues to feed the fire just as candle wax feeds a candle Wick, and this is actually the reason why the feet and hands don't burn, because the extremities typically have far less fat. And the extremities don't necessarily, when you're home, have clothes on them, so one of the main factors is the clothes on the body to help.

I also need to point out that Henry's reaction when you mentioned how the fat was melting and all that stuff, he sounded just like Homer staring at a pork chop, you said, mmm, and then you made a guttural voice, like a guttural thing, I just think about it, because all the smoking, this is human fat we're talking about, human combustion we're talking about, but it's smoking so much meat, yeah, I know, because we smell like pork, and technically that's what they said, it's like when the human body roasts, like they talk about this, like you can kind of, you do smell the meat, the meat smells good, yeah, it smells like pork, it smells like big ol' pig roast, I don't think so, so many wires, you all both

like the pig roast more than me, I can't be looking at the thing's eyes, oh fuck it suck out its eyeballs man, I know, I think you did, well this could also explain why so many cases occurred in olden times, when open flames in one's household were far more common than what we have today, and of course in the 20th century, the most common open flame in the house was a cigarette, and as far as how the bones burn and crumble as they do, many of the suspected victims of spontaneous human combustion are elderly women, and one of the most common diseases in that demographic is osteoporosis, which makes the bones brittle and weak.

Oh okay, so like more easily burnable? More easily burnable, more easily crumbleable, but yeah, that's why old people, yeah, old people burn better, unfortunately, I was actually good to know though for the future, for clean fuels, for renewables fuel source, like the old people, we keep getting old, well, I mean theoretically aren't we all, I mean it's the dino bones right, that we have our oil now, at some point it'll be, I mean there must be some human bones in there making oil too, right? I have no fucking clue, I know they made the walls in Edinburgh, that's all I remember

about Edinburgh is that people be like that ain't rock, that's half bone, that's bone, cool, so fucking sweet. As far as the alcohol factor goes, it certainly has something to do with it, but not in the way we might think, a person cannot physically consume enough alcohol to make it an internal accelerant, but a person can certainly drink enough where they don't wake up before a fire kills them by asphyxiation, which is most likely the cause of death in many of the spontaneous human combustion cases. That's like why I drink, you know what I mean, so I can sleep, if you don't be a hero and

save your family, just back to sleep. Alcohol, however, according to some spontaneous human combustion researchers, can produce acetone in the human body, and in one experiment, a researcher soaked pig flesh, which is similar to human flesh, in acetone, and when he lit it on fire, it went up, in his words, like an incendiary bomb. To waste the pork. Well, so, I mean, it's an interesting way to have warfare, throw a bunch of pork butts at enemy tribes, I guess.

Pig bombs. Everyone loves pig bombs. Pig bomb. Oh, that's going to be the name of my restaurant, Pig Bomb. Pig bomb. Sergeant Perks, get the pig bomb. But on the other hand, the WIC effect is not definitive proof. Scientists at the California Criminalistics Institute attempted to replicate the WIC effect

conditions in 1998 by wrapping a dead pig in a blanket, setting it on fire, and letting it burn. What a day at the office, huh? Honestly, they just get to do it, but they said it, apparently, because that's the idea, is that the clothes, like, hold it all together, and then the fat sucks, the fat absorbs into the clothes, making the clothes even more flammable as they go, and like, it's something like that. You just cut to the janitor at midnight, just putting his finger on the ground, wiping

it, putting it into his tongue, and be like, yeah, that's pretty good. I'm not getting old for this shit. That's pretty good. Yeah, I'm almost too young for this shit. Eventually, it did produce conditions similar to SHC remains, but only after several hours of smoldering. Other attempts to replicate this with dead pigs has failed, and this still doesn't explain the alleged cases in which the victims burned relatively quickly.

Man, I hope Ryan Gosling's careful with all the smoldering he does. Honestly, he is also funny. He is the perfect man. I know. Yeah. And actually, there are examples of exploding animals in nature, of a sort. Some varieties of carpenter ants can fatally explode at will to protect the nest from intruders by contracting abdominal muscles and rupturing poison glands, sinning the stuff spraying

in all directions. That's loyalty. That's loyalty. Yeah, ant-suicide bombers. That's fucking cool. Ant-suicide bombers. It's fighting for something out there. Ants are really awesome.

Too bad they're so tiny. They were big. They'd have a lot of power. Yeah, that's the movie them. It is. Yes. Yes. There was also the case of the exploding toads of Hamburg.

In Germany. Henry, where were you? No, he was just watching. In Germany, in April of 2005, nature protection officials observed at least a thousand toads swell up and explode, sending their innards flying up to a meter away. Dude, this is like a fucking Farley Brothers movie. You're gonna be like that. That's horrible.

You got to wear those glasses that have the little window wipers on them. You could definitely see a sketch where it's been like my priceless toad collection. Yeah. And then they're all like, idiot. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. It happened at the greatest frequency between two and three AM, and it usually occurred at a pun that the locals soon dubbed tumpul des turdis, a.k.a. the pool of death.

Yeah. Fuck yeah. This is one of the rare times where English actually sounds a lot cooler than tumpul de turdis. According to observers, the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size before exploding. But they did find a likely cause. After performing necrop, I can never say this fucking word.

Necropsies. Necropsies. You just did. Necropsies. Yeah, necropsies. After performing necropsies on the toads, a Berlin veterinarian named Franz Mutschmann theorized that the whole thing had resulted from a murder of crows using the toads as an organ meat buffet.

I've also been gotten to think that some of these turrets went to the Taco Bell. They went to the Taco Bell. Yeah, that is a strange Berlin accent. I'm from South Berlin. South Berlin. Oh, interesting. Good history there. Good hot dogs.

So I don't know. Probably actually. Love sausages. We'll be there. We'll be there. Yeah. We are. That's common.

You motherfuckers were coming. No reason to curse them and tell them that they had sex with their mothers. You motherfuckers were coming. We really are though. We really are. Wait till you see when we release. So crows were harvesting the organs of these toads. Well, let me tell you how it happened.

Yes, please. From what the vet observed, the highly intelligent crows got a taste for toad livers. Sure. And instead of killing the toads to extract the tasty organ meats contained therein, they were simply picking through the skin between the toad's chest and abdominal cavity. Grabbing the livers and then just fucking flying away. Then the toads, in using their natural defense mechanisms, would puff themselves up. But because their bodies were sporting a large hole and because the liver was missing, the

blood vessels and the lungs would rupture, causing the frogs to literally explode. That's fucking crazy. That's like Sherlock Holmes. Scaring out that shit. Crows are scary. They are scary. They are scary. Wendy is crows.

Crows are scary. Wendy is fascinated with crows and ravens. And I keep having to pull her away because it's like, they are going to pluck out your fucking eyes, Wendy. Yeah. And apparently, what if they get a taste for Chihuahua liver? We're all doomed. Crows are wonderful animals.

They're so intelligent. They're so fucking smart. They actually make art for people they like. Oh, that's cute. You could teach a crow where the clit is. I don't, that, ugh, no. A lady worm. I don't know.

It is not a lady worm. Marcus, also, did you, is that something you want to have? You want to have a restaurant? A restaurant? No, but if I were to one day want to have a restaurant, I'd still call it the pig bomb. Marcus is legally not allowed to have a restaurant because his favorite international food is British food.

Yep. Yep. You won't find any salt there. I'll tell you. If I found the right place and if I were to find the right city that enjoyed meat pies as much as I do and fish and chips, a good cod, then maybe those things would be able to do it. No, it's not about those things.

Maybe we'd be able to do it. In theory, a meat pie is wonderful. Fish and chips is great, but the way that you like it served, which is, it's a little bit on the, it's a little bland. No. Well, UK food in general is planned. What am I supposed to do with a meat pie? It's a little salt.

Put a little salt. Put a little meat. Put chimichurri sauce in it. Ooh. I'm just saying they don't really salt their food very much. But what I'm talking about is an empanada. Ooh. I like empanadas.

Yeah. Ooh, Marcus, you have to have an empanada store so we can do that. I mean, Caroline is a big empanada fan. We could have an empanada and fucking English food store. Meat pie. Empanada and meat pie. Yeah, it's all meat pie. It all works.

It all works. I'm not a fucking person who doesn't like an empanada. No, absolutely not. Who doesn't like an empanada? I'm mad. Just thinking about it. No, I think Marcus is the perfect nervous and just perfect nervous energy to be completely overwhelmed at a small restaurant.

Oh yeah. I could definitely see Marcus being, looking at his feet while being screamed at by Gordon Ramsay in 24 hours to hell and back. No, it's a bit. You've got to get your shit together. And he's just like, I know, I know, I'm just also running a podcast network. I got a lot going on. I don't think.

I don't think. I don't think your head is in this. No, if it's, if anything, I'm going to open a comic book slash record store someday. But that's great. That's many years in the future. I love it. Now, of course, the toads and the ants have nothing to do with fire. It's not really anything to do with spontaneous human combustion.

But then it combusts. It's fascinating nonetheless. It's fascinating. It's exploding toads. What do you want? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you want? That's good content.

What's amazing though is that cases of spontaneous human combustion, or at least suspected cases, still exist. In 2010, an Irishman named Michael Feherty, 76, apparently burned alive in his home in Galway. The only damage done to the house was the floor below and the ceiling above. Feherty himself was reduced to a pile of ashes, and the coroner, left with no other possibility that he could see, actually recorded a verdict of spontaneous human combustion. So whether it's done by a lazy coroner or done by a horny author, spontaneous human

combustion is still a viable thing. It's out there. I was looking at these abstracts from medical books, like still talking about this spontaneous human combustion in the light of the 21st century. People have been talking about this. It's still out there. Like there are cases of it every year. But mostly you would file it under, in my mind, technically, it's closer to mysterious

fires, right, necessarily than SHC. But if you're feeling frisky, and if your wife left you, and if you're a coroner, just put it down there. Make it a spontaneous human combustion. But we don't know. But the interesting thing is, through all of this science, we still don't know what causes it, right? So like if you're a killer, and you're like, I want to get away with it.

I'm going to fake spontaneous human combustion, there's no way to know how to do it. Yeah, that's what I would tell my client. Really? I would tell my client that. But I mean, that's kind of interesting. Throughout the science, they didn't figure out exactly what's causing it. So I guess that's why they're still. Yeah.

Plenty of room for rumor. They've got a pretty good idea. It's just, it's hard to prove these sorts of things, because you can't really burn a pig alive, and you can't burn a person alive to see what happens, and it's very hard to observe it actually going on. Not with this new fucking liberal government we can't. That's for certain. You can't burn people alive anymore.

That's for science. Science! And then you have the same guy from Rockterio literally just doing like, fascinating. Like as you burden people alive. That man should have been burned alive. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening to this week's fun episode on spontaneous human combustion. If you're feeling hot in your tummy, I say just have a cold Gatorade, and you're going

to feel just fine, and just be very careful. And just so everyone knows, we didn't forget that we did spontaneous human combustion like nine years ago. We know. It's just nice to redo shit as we go. This isn't a big redo. No. Because that's coming in two episodes.

We got two episodes. We got it coming. But this was, you know. This is good to get right back into our fucking old, weird roots now with our new scientific eyeballs. Oh, just so brilliant. How much we've learned over the last 10 years. Oh, God, we've learned so much.

We have. I'm scared of crows. Every piece of information I hear about a crow makes me more scared of crows. We make your world smaller and smaller every week. I love them. They're beautiful, and I know they're smart, but do they do anything that's like hyper-positive the crow? What do you want them?

A crow does something extraordinarily positive. If you feed a crow or like a group of crows and they get a murder of crows, if you feed a murder of crows and they get to like you, they will actually bring you gifts. They will bring you shiny things. They'll bring you like, you know, like a corridor or like a little cap from a can of Coke or something like that. Yeah. They'll bring you gifts.

They're very positive. I befriended this group of crows and they brought me this detached human penis. Really? And now it's like, alright guys, thank you for the gift. But this is a lot. And that's the one you have to this day, surgically put onto your body. I'm not nice to birds. I mean, I'm nice to birds, but I'm neutral with birds.

I have nothing to get out of this game. I definitely prefer birds over fucking frogs. Fuck them. Fuck the fucking frogs. No. Give me birds. I'm kind of scared of both of them, to be honest. Yeah.

Stay careful. And also scared of birds. She said she doesn't trust them. I don't trust them one bit. They don't have our agendas in mind. That's for certain. They don't. No, they don't.

The only animal that will never hurt you, although they were attacking people, I guess, in Queens, but squirrels. Yeah, they've been viciously attacking people in Queens. Yeah, but I like a good squirrel. Don't have nuts in your pocket when you're walking around. Alright, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you're doing alright out there.

We have some big news. Do we want to talk about our weed? Can we talk about weed? We haven't even, we don't have the release yet, so there's no point yet. Okay, but we did look at some new designs and they look really cool and we're super excited. We're very, very excited. We can't wait to give you this weed.

What we can tell you is join our Patreon, because what we're doing is every week Tuesday is 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We are back. Those are the oceans. Those are the oceans. Last stream on the left is back. For those of you that, any tier of the Patreon that join, you can join us live and watch your show live.

And then the next day, we will put the show out for free on our YouTube. Absolutely. So watch us live, interact with the chat and you can say a whole bunch of fun stuff. And we already had to edit stuff from the show on the stream on Tuesday live version to put it on YouTube, so you get exclusive horrible shit. By the end of it, we're just going to be doing it on Patreon. But you know what? That's just fine with us.

But we'll find out because- Because we'll just be together, because apparently these platforms have standards and practices. I want to speak to Twitch though. I just want to have a free cup of coffee at Twitch offices. We'll get that coffee and I'll actually take one of the bananas. Always take a snack. That's another big thing. If you have any meetings or something coming up where you can go in person, take anything

that's free. Absolutely. Absolutely. It shows power. Well, just two cares. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Let's see.

Do we have anything else? Let's podcast merch. We've got new shit coming out real soon. We've got new stuff. Obviously, we have all the shows here. We've got Top Hat. We've got Kind of Fun. We've got Page 7.

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Forget it. When are you doing the Almond Brothers? Almond Brothers probably not going to be coming up. Probably not. I appreciate them. What the fuck? This is fucking shit. What you do, you know what I was thinking about the other day was Duran Duran.

I love Duran Duran because I do kind of want to do, I actually, I love new age music. Not as much as Flock of Seagulls. Honestly, though, that album is actually pretty good. The one that I ran on is actually a really good album. I like that album because I'm also a Gary Neumann fan. Gary Neumann? Actually, Gary Neumann is on the possibilities list because I'm a huge, I'm a huge Gary Neumann fan.

I love Gary Neumann. All right. I think we've annoyed Marcus enough. I love it. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail game.

Magustalations, everyone. Hail me. If you got an ounce of Comelift. Oh, my. Be careful. Be careful. Watch out for the ball. Ball lightning.

Ball lightning. Ball lightning. Ball lightning. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.