Stuff You Should Know - Cryonics: Hi, Frozen Body!

Episode Date: August 30, 2011

In 1964 The Prospect of Immortality laid out a plan for placing humans in suspended animation. The first person was placed in cryonic suspension three years later. But how does it actually work? Learn more about cryonics in this chilly episode of SYSK. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. That free podcast, it comes out twice a week faithfully, and you don't pay a dime for it, do you? Do you? I don't. I certainly do not. No one does Chuck.

That's right. But we're so glad that you listened to it, even though it is free. Hi, frozen body. Yeah, that was your idea. It seemed like a no-brainer for our Simpsons fans to call this cryonics episode, Hi, Frozen Body. Dr. Nick. That episode has one of my favorite Simpsons lines of all time. The old guy, Jasper. I love Jasper. A sidekick. He's so great. The frozen body. Yeah, yeah, he has one in there. He comes out, he thaws out, and he goes over and picks up a moon pie, and he goes, moon pie, what a time to be alive. I love that line. He's great. Yes, so if you haven't seen that episode of The Simpsons, we strongly recommend you do, right? Yeah, he just gets stuck in the freezer, right? In freezes? Yeah. By accident or something? Yeah, in the

app who starts charging admission to see him or guess what's in the can that lost its label a long time ago. So the concept that you can freeze body and reanimate it is not just, you know, Simpsons lore. No, it is not just cartoon TV lore. No, actually, there's a guy who kind of came up with this. I guess in 1964, it's a guy named Robert Eddinger, and he just died a week or so ago, Chuck. That's right. Like 10 days ago, the man died, which is really weird that he did because we had no idea who he was. That didn't spur the idea for the podcast. Yeah, you picked this one, and then it turns out the guy who created the field of cryonics, who coined the word cryonics, died a week before. Yeah, it felt kind of bad because I picked this out last week, or maybe it

was earlier this week. Maybe. He tapped you on the shoulder and was like, it's time. Maybe so. And then I always look at the news just to see, hey, if there's anything relevant. And I saw that, he died. Do you say hey when you check? I do. And I saw that he died today, and my first instinct was, oh, awesome. How relevant. And then I thought, well, that's kind of sad, actually. That was very nice of you to share his obit with me, though, as an intro. Yeah, he's 92 years old, and he is now frozen per his wishes in Michigan. Yeah, so he not only established the field of cryonics, which is basically the attempt to store human bodies at very low temperatures in order to eventually revive them. Yeah, they're technically not frozen, right?

Yes, you're absolutely right. To store human bodies at extremely low temperatures without freezing. Yes. That's called vitrification. We'll get into that. But he came up with this whole prospect, this whole idea in a book called The Prospect of Immortality, which is why I just used the word prospect twice. Right. And he wrote it in 1964, and it had a pretty sweeping effect in three years. Three years later, the first person entered cryogenic suspension. Yeah, that was pretty forward thinking, I would say, back then. Sure. Because this sounds like something from the future now. And imagine in the early 60s, right? I thought he was nuts. Right. But within three years of him writing this book, they already started carrying out his procedures that

he kind of came up with and described. He's a physics professor. And he founded the Cryonics Institute, I believe is what it is called. And he joins two wives and his mother in suspended animation in a nondescript building outside of Detroit. Yeah. And the other guy, the first guy they froze, I'm going to say freeze this whole podcast, James Bedford. He was a 73-year-old psychologist, and he is supposedly still frozen in good shape in Arizona. Yeah. And we should probably, let's do a disclaimer here, like when we say frozen or freeze or froze when we really screw up, what we're not talking about freezing, we're talking about, like we said, vitrification, which is a process of cooling the body down to extremely low temperatures without freezing.

Freezing is the forming of ice crystals, right? That's no good for the cells of your body. No. But what they've found, supposedly, says groups like Alcor Life Extension. Algor? Or they say that if you vitrify a cell or a group of cells, a.k.a. tissue or a body or whatever, you can preserve it. Not indefinitely. There's actually a length of time. Do you know the time length that they say you can preserve a body cryogenically? I'm going to guess 1,000 years. 10,000. 10,000? Do you know why they say that? No, actually. Because just being on Earth for 10,000 years, the body is exposed to too much cosmic rays and it just destroys the cells on its own.

Literal death by cosmic ray. Wow. Yeah. But it takes 10,000 years. So they're hoping that, and this is the whole point of cryonics, is that the people that we freeze or vitrify now now will be able to be reanimated and cured of any disease, whether it be age or heart attack or whatever. Sure. Whatever killed them in the future. So there's a lot of stuff floating around about cryonics, cryogenics. Walt Disney was not frozen. He actually died a year before the first guy was vitrified. So that's a complete and total rumor. But let's talk about this, Chuck. There's a lot of people who are skeptics of this, you realize. Oh yeah. But there's a lot of rationality to it as well. Sure. Okay, so go. Well, I think dead is where we should start off.

Oddly enough, at the end is actually the beginning when we're talking about cryonics. That was very clever. Thank you. I just made that up. Alcor is one of the big companies in Arizona, and they have a quote, dying is a process, not an event. And I don't know if that's like their huge terminator style quote when you walk in the lobby, but it should be because... No, they don't have it like on a sign or anything. Some guy comes up to you wearing like nothing but a lab coat and cowboy boots and shakes you while he says it and then runs off. That's how you're greeted. That's good. He should get a job at Walmart. But their whole point in that is that when your heart stops beating, you are legally dead, but there is still some cellular and brain function for a short time.

And their goal is to nab you in that instant and get the process started in that instant and preserve what minimal function you still have left in your brain in that instant. And that's based on good science. Science is starting to realize that death is a gradual process. It's not like they said an event. It's not just like one moment you're living, next minute you're dead. It's the whole thing. Remember, we talked a lot about organ donation, about brain death and cardiac death. And legally in the United States, if your heart stops beating, you can be declared dead. But as far as Alcore is concerned, your brain is still functioning. So therefore, if you can be preserved, you can be eventually reanimated. Like I said, this is sound science.

Hypothermia research has led to a new understanding of heart attacks. So a new technique of reviving a patient with a heart attack is to lower their body temperature to like 91 degrees very gradually and then revive them by letting the body warm back up. And they've also found from this research that you can't just inundate it with oxygen because oxygen goes in and just kills all the cells. Because there's this horrible caveat to resuscitating a heart attack victim is that when you resuscitate them successfully, you give them oxygen. It's just a standard procedure at hospital. And they're alive and happy and everything's good. And then two days later, they die. And so they started to look at why people died. And they found out that it was because

they were their cells were perfused with too much oxygen too quickly. So they found that if you lower body temperature and then gradually reintroduce oxygen in its own, you can bring a person back effectively from death. Well, it happens all the time. And I imagine, I mean, that makes sense. It's probably a traumatic event to be brought back to life on your body itself physiologically. So sure, that makes sense. Yeah. But like I just said, it happens all the time. People's hearts stop. People are trapped under ice and quote unquote dead and they're brought back to life and function normally. Sometimes they don't function normally. But this isn't so much different than that. No, it's not. And it's based on that. It's based on that concept. It is. So Chuck,

you're saying that if you let's say you are a member of Alcor life extension foundation, right, which apparently is not that expensive. They liken it to a lifetime of smoking cigarettes or having cable TV or the like. It's pretty expensive. It is. But still, I mean, it's not as much as you would think. I think I got the fees. Okay, right here in front of me. If you're a first family member is you got to see, here's the deal. You got to sign up and you got to pay for life. And then you got to pay, I believe, for the process on top of that, right? Because it's a membership club. And then yeah, you you're you're there's going to be a spike in pay when you die. So a first family member is 620 bucks a year. Each additional family member if you want them

on your cell phone plan is $310 a year. Minor family member is 155 bucks a year. Minor family like a distant aunt, I guess. Not like not siblings or or nothing. I mean a kid. Oh, really? No, because it said, oh, no, no, no, wait, you're right. It says under 18. I'm totally right. Like an aunt, you don't really care. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Like outside the nuclear family. All right. And if you're a student, good news, it's only 310 bucks a year. But I imagine your rate jumps up when you graduate. Sure. They always screw you when you graduate. So that's just the membership fees. The actual body freezing is up to 150 K. This article says to Alcor is 200 now. Is it really? And the brain

is 80. And there's surcharges. If you're in England, a 15 grand outside US, Canada and England, it's 25 grand. I wonder why. And then you can also get if you're not a member, you can pay for a family member like let's say none of us are members and you want to freeze your father, the herbal Elvis upon his expiration, you'd have to pay 50 grand, 250 grand. Because there weren't there weren't any membership dues. Yeah. So it's a $50,000 surcharge. If you just want to say, Hey, I want my dad frozen and none of us were ever members. Gotcha. All right. I'll have to talk to dad about that. See what he thinks. So let's say you are a member in good standing. You've got, you know,

minor family members totally insured under this plan or as members as well. And we should also say we keep saying Alcor. Alcor is the one of the is far and away the most widely known cryonics group. Yeah. But there's like at least two others. The one in Michigan. Let's just go to their websites if you want to compare them. The Alcor looks pretty, they're both legit, but the one in Michigan's website, it looks sort of like a MySpace page. It does. Yeah. My advice to the Michigan Institute is to just pay somebody to do your website. Seriously. If you want, if you want to be taken seriously, but that's the one that was founded by Robert Eddiger. Well, and I think he did the website in 1967. Yeah, I think so too. He's like, someday there's going to be an internet

and this is going to be the first thing on it and it's never going to change. So okay, let's say you're a member in good standing at any of the cryonics groups or foundations or labs and you're about to die, right? Yep. What happens to you, Chuck? Take us through the process. Well, the first thing that happens is they are literally at your deathbed. The team is waiting for you to expire. I want Arby's. And as soon as they do that, as soon as you die, rather, they will, as the article says, spring into action. And also, Chuck, we should say they have to wait until you declare dead. It's illegal to put someone into a cryonic suspension. Or as the Michigan website says right now, it's illegal. Okay. So I think they envision a future where you're,

if you're on life support or something, you could probably, or if you're just fully healthy. They also envision a future where we reanimate dead people. That's true. So what they do is they spring into action. They stabilize your body by getting blood flowing and oxygen, but I guess not too much oxygen. And they pack you an ice and pump in some heparin, which is an anticoagulant, so your blood doesn't clot. And then they rush. It's like the opposite of a calf stomach. Yeah, exactly. And then they rush you to the facility where the real science begins. Right. And it's about here that things get a tad cutting edge. I would say so. So basically what they have to do is remove the water from your body. Right. And not just like your pee or your saliva. Yeah. They

gotta literally get the water out of your cells. Yeah. I read at least 60% of your cells. Okay. So it must be all the organ cells and all the vital. And they go after the brain in particular. Oh, yeah. Sure. The brain is of the utmost importance. And you can actually have your brain alone, cryonically suspended for something like 50K. 80K. They've raised it in the past five years. There's this article written. I don't think it was that long ago, but hey, it ain't cheap. And they still sort in your head, by the way. It's not like Futurama. Oh, cool. They said it does too much damage and why bother. Your head is a great bowling ball case, essentially. Awesome. So just cut your head off and preserve the whole thing. But it's really just your brain

that's undergone the vitrification process. Yeah. That is neat. Ted Williams' head is floating somewhere. His whole body, wasn't it? They removed the body. They're in two separate chambers. Oh, that's right. So when you're on the table, they remove the water from your body. And how did they do that? I didn't understand how they remove water from your cells. Are you asking me? Yeah. I don't know. Is it a pressing? I don't know, man. I tried to find out the literal process of how they get the water from the cells and replace it with the antifreeze. But they do replace it with antifreeze. A glycol-based, basically a human antifreeze. Yeah, a cyro-protectant is what they call it. A chiro. Cryo. Cryo. We got there eventually.

Jerry's just like, what are you guys doing? Jerry's like, this is not their best day. Yeah, it's a cryo-protected. So they pump you full of this stuff, basically like embalming fluid that will never freeze. And then they lay you on a bed of dry ice. And this is astounding to me that you can even get any tissue down to this degree. But basically they freeze your body. I'm sorry. They vitrify your body down to negative 130 degrees Celsius, which is negative 202 degrees Fahrenheit. Negative 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Isn't that like absolute zero? I don't know. We've been called out on that before, right? Yeah, we'll figure it out. No, we've been called out on whether 40 degrees is negative 40 is the same in Celsius

or Fahrenheit, which it is. Oh, right. And then once your body reaches that temperature, you are vitrified. You're ready to go. You're ready to be stored for up to 10,000 years. And what they do is they put you in a tank, right? Yeah. Well, first of all, that means that your molecules have slowed down to the point where the chemistry stops. Right. There's no metabolism going on whatsoever. Nothing. It's called the glass transition temperature. And so it just everything kind of goes. That's suspended animation. It's a perfect example of it. Thank you. It's great. So they stuff you in a tank, right? That's right. Called a, well, if it's just your head, it's called a neuropod, right? Okay. And then if it's your

body, it's called a, I think a cryopod. I'd call it a full body pod. Okay. But so and then they put you in a container that can hold maybe four or five bodies because you're not by yourself. Yeah, that's a little weird. Yeah, I thought so too. Especially if somehow you're still cognizant, like if that was possible and you just didn't really like the people around you. You stuck with them for 10,000 years. That would stink. Yeah. So there's a, there's a pretty nice picture of an Alcor container that holds four whole body pods and six neuropods, right? So it's like a freaky futuristic nursing home in there. And there you go. You're sitting, you're on ice as it were for 10,000 years. And then every once

in a while they have what are called perfusion thresholds, I believe. Oh yeah. And they have software that measures that like the concentration of liquid nitrogen because that's what you're in. You're in a bad of liquid nitrogen that's being cooled down ultimately, even less than 202 degrees Fahrenheit. It's down when you're in cold storage as it were. You are stored in about negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit and liquid nitrogen at that temperature will eventually evaporate. So they have to keep adding some and they have software that monitors this. And there you go. You are officially in cryogenic suspension. Head down upside down. Yeah, which I thought was pretty clever. Fact of the podcast for me. If there's a leak,

do you want your head down because you want your brain? I guess if it leaks, the bottom obviously will be the last bit to contain any of the liquid. So that's where they want your head. It's very clever. Yeah. But again, if you're the least bit conscious or cognizant or anything like that, you're dead. Yeah, but man, can you imagine like that? That gives me a headache just thinking about being upside down. I'm sure. It's awful. Yeah. All the frozen blood rushes to your head. That's right. In one giant block. Ice, icy blood. Yeah. Vitrified. That's right. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. It works. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, everybody. I'm Tyler Florence and I'm Wells Adams. We're the hosts of the new podcast Two Dudes in the Kitchen. You might be asking yourself, why do these guys have a podcast? Because we love food. You and I have known each other for a while. We got a chance to click together on television, on Food Network back in the day. And I gotta tell you, there's no

two better guys, they're more equipped to take you guys on a journey through the kitchen. It's all about great recipes. It's all about connecting with fantastic techniques and having a great time while you're doing it. This is a podcast for you, for you to call into, give us your feedback. And we're here to answer your questions, kind of get those kitchen burners fired up. I got a lot of questions just because I'm not nearly as good of a chef as you are. So I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions and you guys out there can ask them as well. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to learn a lot. And you know what? Most importantly, we're going to eat good. We're going to eat good, man. Eat good in the neighborhood, man. We're here for you.

Listen to Two Dudes in the Kitchen on the iHeartRadioApp Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So what's the deal with all this, Chuck? I mean, as we said, there's a lot of people who criticize this stuff. And it seems like for good measure, they're saying like, you know, you're just like, this is a nice fancy process that you guys have come up with. And we're sure that, you know, you're doing everything you're saying. And yes, it is based on real science, but you can base anything on real science. And it's still just pseudo science. Sure. If it's not science, it's pseudo science. It's trickery, right? Well, they get a lot of heat, obviously, places like Alcor Dew. And they, one of the problems they say is that, first of all, it's based on three very

different scientific fields. So the reason why most scientists don't come out and say this can work is because they're scientists in a single given field. Right. And they don't understand that this involves three very different disciplines. They're like podiatrists. Exactly. One of the other problems is that they, they, one of the reasons that what are they called cryo biologists or yes, cryo biologists, people who study low temperature biology. Yeah, they say that they don't come out and say it can work because they feel like it has been given the pseudo sciences moniker and so it'll overshadow the real work they've done quote unquote real work that they've done with other kinds of cryo freezing. So they're just like, I don't even want to talk

about that stuff. Right. I mean, your professional reputation is at stake. Yeah, sure. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean that just because skeptics have labeled this fraud that it doesn't necessarily work. The other big point as far as cryonic groups or boards or whatever, the point that they tend to make usually is that we have no idea how to reanimate anybody. Yeah, they're upfront about that. Yeah, they're saying like what we're doing and this is what Alcor life extension is known for is basically they know how to vitrify tissue. Yeah. And then just keep it that way indefinitely. And so that's what they're saying they're doing. And basically they're just the keepers of these bodies that are in suspended animation or dead depending on your

view until we come up with a way to revive them and repair anything that might have been wrong with them. And the the great white hope apparently is among cryogenic adherents is nanotechnology. Yeah, which makes sense. Right. Which is I mean nanotechnology, they can get down to the single atom and do mechanics work essentially. Right repair work on cells. So they think that that is the future of being able to reanimate people like this. Yeah, which again, it's all well and good, but you can't just be like, oh, yeah, we heard about nanotechnology and that's probably where it'll be. And how about this? Not only will it be the field of nanotechnology that reanimates people, but it'll be in 2040, which is apparently the number that they throw out. So

dubious there, but it seems like if they stick to the fact that no, we're putting people in suspended animation and there's a good chance that if death is a process and we're getting to this process, we're interrupting this process, then we can reverse it. Yeah, they're not saying we're promising eternal life or promising that we can bring you back from the dead. They're basically pretty upfront about saying we are a high tech storage facility. Right. Period. So when we when we talk about reanimating people, this is not new. The idea of reanimating a corpse is extremely old. There's a there was this cool little movement in the 19th century called galvanic reanimation. What's that? Basically, it amounted to hooking recently killed executed criminals up to like

huge batteries via cables. Wow. And during public display, like applying the electricity and making them like twitch and making their eyes open or making them grimace horribly. And that was like how you reanimated a corpse, which they look at the World's Fair. By definition, it that is reanimating it, but you're not that it's the technical definition, you know, it didn't imbue any life into it. Sure. But it did give Mary Shelley a good idea for Frankenstein. Is that where she got it? Yeah, there, you know, that was a whole idea for a very long time that like, if you could under the right circumstances, introduce an electrical current to life, you know, to a dead body, you could bring it back to life, which is pretty

clever if you think about it, because this was before the time of neuroscience or about the time it was nascent, right? Yeah. And neuroscience, if anything, has given us the awareness that everything is the result of like electrochemical conduction throughout the body. Right. So it was pretty smart to think of electricity as a way to reanimate bodies, although it doesn't do anything. Yeah. Well, and that's also the reason why they obviously the brain is so important. And they say you can just opt for the $80,000 head freeze because maybe in the future, I mean, if we're far along, far enough along where we can reanimate a person from cryogenic freezing, then we should be at the point where we can clone you a body to go along with that head.

Why not? You know, a hot body too. Oh yeah, sure. Sure. I would wear Daisy Dukes all the time in my body. You don't even wear shorts now. Well, I don't have a hot, cloned body. I've seen you in shorts once, actually. When? When you came over to my house to borrow the La Moria shorts. Really? And I saw your bare leg. I've seen you in boxer shorts too. When? I think in one of our trips, like you changed clothes in front of me or something. I think you should get a little more specific for the audience. Well, I mean, we didn't have like a dress-up party, but it was like, Hey, I got a, you know, we're late for something and you were changing your clothes or something. I don't know. I mean, I didn't mark it on my

calendar. Oh, in Guatemala? I'll bet it was in Guatemala at Lake Atitlan. Okay, sure. That one crazy day. So anyway, that was, what just happened there? That was possibly the wildest tangent we've ever been on. You've seen me in my boxers and in shorts. I've seen your bare legs and they're fine. I don't see why you don't like shorts. I'm just, no, no, not for you. No. Yeah. But it could be for a clone body. Right. Right. Yeah. Let's just get back to it, buddy. And again, back to the reanimation research. I think we've talked about before Max Planck Institute back in 2000. There's this one thing on the web and I can't find any follow-up stuff or any lead-up stuff, but basically they're talking about what therapeutic hypothermia

research has shown that if you, it's not death that injures cells and tissue and makes them unreanimatable. Right. It's trying to reanimate them and doing it too quickly. Oh, yeah. And they were working on reanimating dead bodies. And apparently since then, we have figured out how to reanimate some cryopreserved tissue like a rabbit kidney. Yeah, it worked. In 2005, apparently they vitrified a rabbit kidney. They took it out of a rabbit. They said, you wait here. Vitrified the kidney, brought it back, put it back in the rabbit and said, go urinate. And the rabbit did. And the kidney exploded. The end. They have also reanimated a nematode worm. Big deal. But hey, it worked. But no other mammals. Yeah. They said dogs and monkeys,

they've had their blood replaced. Well, remember that, that supposed aggression research film from 1941 of the dog's head? Oh God, that's awful. Yeah. But dogs and monkeys, they've had their blood replaced with the antifreeze essentially, cooled it to below zero degrees and rewarmed it and revived them successfully. But that's zero degrees is a long, long way from negative 300 Celsius. Yes. But, but they're pointing this to this and saying, hey, look, this is, this could be possible. Right. And it wasn't even vitrified, was it? It was just brought to a low temperature. No, no, no, it said their blood was replaced. Oh, I don't know if all the cells were, but the blood was at least. Yeah. So there are things to look for in the future

when you are successfully reanimated, possibly given a cloned body that wears daisy dukes a lot. And there's going to be some legal issues that people are already starting to think of. About reanimating? Yes. For example, when you are taken off to the cryonic facility, as far as society and the court system and social security administration is concerned. Oh, sure. You're illegally dead. Yeah, I didn't think about that. What happens when you come back to life? You'd have to apply to be a new person again, I guess. So they figure that probably somebody who's presumed dead and wasn't, right? But they were declared legally dead and they come back after that. There, nobody says, well, sorry. Yeah. And nobody's going to say that

somebody who's reanimated. But one of the other propositions that they're considering is a possibility is issuing you a new birth certificate. Really? Yeah. Isn't that cool? That is, so you would be literally reborn as far as the law is concerned. And then also, what happens, Chuck, as happened in the 1970s when there were, I think, six big cryogenic suspension companies in operation. Yeah. And that number dropped dramatically in the late 70s, early 80s. Yeah, what happened to those bodies? Do you know? I do know. They were left to rot. Really? Yes. The company went bankrupt and said, we don't have any money to keep these things going. Wow. And since it was a corporation, they could say that and the person walked away.

But the bodies were just left to thaw and rot. And that's what happened. Alcor, supposedly, has a fund set aside to where, if anything happens to the company, it will provide a bridge to continue care until they figure out what to do with these. That's where a lot of the 200 grand goes, supposedly. I think about half of that goes into that trust. And I was researching them. Apparently, they have a self-perpetuating board, which they're frequently criticized for. Right. Because it's just there's no new blood in there, as it were. But the board has generally or has been very transparent about how much money is paid. Like in 1990, supposedly, they announced that they were going to slash their staff's pay

across the board by like 25%. The average staff worker there made like 25 grand. Yeah. Board members don't get paid at all. Right. So supposedly, these people are just into it like to further cryonic research and keep these bodies suspended. Right? That's what you'll see on their website, at least. Right. But I was reading some outside links. There's this blog called Depressed Metabolism, which is just about all that. And they were going over a 2009 Alcor report. But they seem very conservative, but not good at generating their own income. They rely a lot on donations. Yeah. All the technology they use is licensed elsewhere. So there's like bleeding money, but they manage

to stay afloat because of donations from like wealthy members, which is kind of unfair. Right. But they're very conservative, too. Right. Whereas like the Cryonics Institute was always kind of criticized for being like a little reckless, a little cutting edge. But they were looking at Cryonics as not necessarily a way to keep people in suspended animation. But how do we apply this medically and get these people reanimated again? Right. Not just indefinitely, you know, in suspended animation. Well, and how do you get the mainstream medical science behind this period is one of their big battles. Yeah. I know that Alcor is in Arizona in 2004. There was a bill passed by the house there in Arizona that basically

was going to put them under the regulation of the state funeral board, which would have effectively probably shut them down. Yeah. And it was pulled from the floor, but they said it was a really nasty debate on the floor. And because there's a lot of religious ethical ramifications here that, that I guess we could talk about, but they said that we don't know. This could come back and they could shut us down. You never know. Yeah. In Arizona at least. Yes. But the ethical concerns is Alcor on their website again has addressed some of these because a lot of religious folks might say this is not, you know, something you should be doing. You shouldn't be playing God, quote unquote. And they say that

patients are theologically equivalent to unconscious patients in a hospital with an uncertain prognosis. Yeah. Theologically speaking. And then they've had people right into like people in the Catholic church and Protestant churches and even the Jesus Christ, Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. They've written essay supporting it. Some people have. Yeah. It's like if you're on life support, you're playing God or somebody's playing God with you. But other people in the religious circles have blasted it. So it depends on who you want to listen to. Yes, it does. And they said it's not just for the rich. That's one of the myths they say it's not an indulgence of the rich. They say most of the membership is middle class.

Yeah. And paid for with insurance. Yeah. Life insurance. Is that true? I have, I didn't get a chance to research that one. Not for myself, but. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, everybody. I'm Tyler Florence and I'm Wells Adams. We're the hosts of the new podcast, two dudes in the kitchen. You might be asking yourself, why do these guys have a podcast? Cause we love food. You and I have known each other for a while. We got a chance to click together on television, on food network back in the day. And I gotta tell you, there's no

two better guys are more equipped to take you guys on a journey through the kitchen. It's all about great recipes. It's all about connecting with fantastic techniques and having a great time while you're doing it. This is a podcast for you, for you to call into, give us your feedback. And we're here to answer your questions, kind of get those kitchen burners fired up. I got a lot of questions just because I'm not nearly as good of a chef as you are. So I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions and you guys out there can ask them as well. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to learn a lot. And you know what? Most importantly, we're going to eat good. We're going to eat good, man. Eat good in the neighborhood, man. We're here for you. Listen

to two dudes in a kitchen on the iHeartRadioApp Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Paul Rudd's making a movie about this. Did you see that? It's been done. No, what? Iceman. No, no, no, no, no, no. Iceman two, the return of Iceman. Iceman three. The Iceman. Little Iceman Junior. What else? Well, this one is Bonafide. Arial Morris, the awesome documentarian. He's making his first non-documentary film since the early 90s. Fiction. I'm sure. But it's not fiction because it's a true story. So first feature film. Wow, man. That's awesome. He just came out with a new documentary recently, too, didn't he? Yeah, it's about the tabloid scandal when that woman kidnapped the Mormon. I don't know.

I think his woman kidnapped some Mormon guy and took him away to some cabin and forced sex upon him for months and then came back and was a celebrity because of it in the 70s. Wow. Yeah, it looks really good. So his feature film, sorry for interrupting. That's right. It's based on the memoir by Robert F. Nelson taken from a This American Life segment and Ira Glass is producing this. This isn't everything taken from a This American Life segment. And the name of This American Life was You're as Cold as Ice was the name of their show. Personally, I think High Frozen Body. A little better. Way better, Chuck. Way to go. So Paul Rudd, one of my favorites. He's playing this dude. Yeah. Good for him. Good for Ira, too.

Oh, we need to talk about Ted Williams real quick. Oh, yeah. Good Lord. That was close. Well, as you said, Walt Disney was not suspended in liquid nitrogen, but Ted Williams, the famous hitter, the last hitter to hit 400 in baseball, is. Yeah, he's an Alcor member. Yeah, 2002. They put him on vitrify. And they said it to vitrify. Yeah. And he was like, his there's there was a legal battle over it. Apparently, his daughter was accusing his son of having him vitrified, put in cryonics animation or suspended animation, because he wanted to later sell his dad's DNA, which apparently his son was like, maybe, but dad still wanted to. We had a sign packed me and our other sister, but not you. Yeah. And so he didn't even know him till he was

30, though. He was a half brother. Is that right? Or a half son? Okay. Well, Ted was running around telling people all sorts of different stuff. Apparently, he told his daughter that he wanted to be scattered his he wanted to be cremated and have his cremated remains scattered over the Florida Keys. So says she the daughter. Yeah. The son said, no, we had a pact, a signed pact, which apparently he was able to produce. So a judge said, okay, Ted's going to stay frozen. You can't sell his DNA. Bing bang. Boom. Bon Jovi. Case closed. Yeah. And this bang in a gap. The son got him. He was painted in an unfair light because of this Sports Illustrated article by Tom Burducci that basically slammed him as, Hey, this kid didn't even know until he's 30.

He's going to sell his DNA. And it was apparently he got one version of the story and that's it and stopped his fact checking there. So I've seen follow up reports where this guy was like, that ain't what happened. And I did not want to sell his DNA. And like, we really got to be close after I met him later in life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, you got anything else? Just if you want to know how popular this is. As of June of this year, Alcor has 950 members and 106 quote unquote patients. Yeah, that's what they call them. And Michigan at the cryonics Institute, I believe has over a hundred. So there's a couple of hundred and change people current currently in the United States that are upside down and bats of liquid nitrogen

with other people. Yeah. One of them might be Ted Williams. I wonder if they like, Hey, check it out. Yeah. The Yankee Clipper. No, that was Joe DiMaggio. Ted Williams was the the boss. Oh, was he? No, he was the Red Sock. It was like the monster. I always confuse him with Johnny Bench. Didn't they play at the same time? Or Collier Stromsky? Maybe it may have overlapped. It was like the big hitter, the monster hitter. Well, he was the last player to hit 400. So I can't remember. Anyway, we go Ted. If you want to learn more about baseball, we encourage you to type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. You can also type in cryonics, C-R-Y-O-N-I-C-S. And that will lead you to some cool articles. Also, if you have not gotten around to reading

H.P. Lovecraft's brilliant short story, Herbert West Reanimator. Oh, yeah. Check it out. Probably his best. And I said Reanimator, which means that it's time for a listener mail. That's right. Boy, I'm going to get hammered by Yankee fans and Red Sox fans for that. I'd back off of that one. Joe DiMaggio's Yankee Clipper. Ted Williams is the monster. Well, the green monster is, is that what you're thinking? I mean, clearly that's influencing it, but there's something there. All right. Today, Josh, I got on Facebook. I don't know if he saw and I was like, I can't find any good listener mail. So tell me some stories. And I just got a few of those to read off. Nathan, I'm sorry, Nathaniel Jerkiewicz got hit by a car while walking home from work

earlier this week as I was listening to one of your episodes. Cool. Which one? I don't know. He said he rolled off the hood and checked to make sure nothing was broken and then scrolled back to what I had missed. Nice. And yeah. That was Nathan. Nathaniel. So I hope you're okay. Yeah. Hang in there, Nathaniel. Belina Alina said, my doctor says I mispronounce letters when I speak not because of a list, but because I have a heart shaped uvula. To be honest, until he pointed out, I didn't have any idea that everyone else's uvula did not have a split in the center. How about that? Yeah. Split uvula. Yeah, I've heard of that. And Angie Steckin says, when I was seven years old, my mom spotted a wood tick in my ear while eating

in the subway. I screamed hysterically. My stepdad tried to remove it with a plastic, a variety of plastic cutlery. And in a seedling torch. I attracted the attention of a cop. He tried his best with keys. I started to bleed for my ear and the subway told us to leave. The subway did. Weird. My mom sat me on a bench outside, continued the quest. The man sitting next to us asked about why I was screaming. And once my mom told him, he asked if he could try and produce a hook for a hand. What is going on with this story? I'm so confused. She had a tick in her ear. No one could get it out. They went outside and this dude, the subway told him, dude, and then this dude with a hook on his hand said, can I give it a shot? Okay. This guy in New York. I screamed even louder as my mother held me

down. And the man plucked the tick from my ear. So I wanted to thank him for saving my life. And it's still, I still smile every time I encounter a person with a hook for a hand. And they think that she's laughing at them. I don't know. And then finally, congratulations to our buddy, Andy John Cox. Yeah, with the mustache. He got engaged. Oh, hey, congratulations. Yep. And she said yes. And he's getting married and Andy's one of our boys and way to go, dude. That is fantastic way to go. I'm sure you shaved off the mustache and it said, will you marry me underneath it? Yeah, that was a great idea. Chuck stories. You got a story you want to hear it. Wait until Chuck asks. Nah, forget it. Just go ahead and let us know. Go on to our Facebook page. It's facebook.com

slash stuff you should know. You can also tweet us stories if they consist of 140 characters or less. That'd be good. That's a great idea. We want your 140 character story on Twitter. Good idea, Chuck. S-Y-S-K podcast is our Twitter handle. And then you can also send us email to stuffpodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join HowStuffWorks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you,

the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.