Stuff You Should Know - How Near-Death Experiences Work

Episode Date: December 3, 2009

The concept of a near-death experience is well-known in popular culture, but we still don't know why these seemingly supernatural events occur. Josh and Chuck explore the myriad theories that attempt to explain near-death experiences in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. With me as always is Charles W. Bryant. Hi Josh.

Call him Chuck. Josh, insert with the intro. I don't have one. Okay, so let's just sit here silent. Should we talk about in your death experience then? Yeah, I've got one for you actually. In 1991, there was a woman named Pam Reynolds who was a songstress from what I can gather,

a blues songstress, possibly country crossover here or there. She's an Atlanta resident. Really? Yeah. And she underwent a procedure to repair a brain aneurysm, right? Okay. And this brain aneurysm apparently was in a really difficult place

and she got in touch with a specialist who's like, you know what, I know a procedure we can do on you because we're going to have to drain all the blood from your brain to operate on this thing. That's not good. No. Basically, the doctor said, Pam, we're going to have to kill you for about 45 minutes.

I was just about to say that would probably mean she's dead, huh? So the procedure that she underwent was a hypothermic cardiac arrest. She was intentionally cardiac arrested by lowering her body temperature to, I think, 60 degrees Fahrenheit for a good 45 minutes, right? Looks like flat liners. It's very much like flat liners.

We'll talk about that later. She'll see. Yes. So Pam Reynolds is dead for 45 minutes and not like accidentally dead like she was purposefully killed by her physicians. They cut the top of her head off, repaired the brain aneurysm.

So they're butchering her as well? Right, yeah. She's dead. What does she care? And then they successfully bring her back. Oh, good. And Pam Reynolds sits up after she's recovering and says, hey.

Got a breath mint? Pretty crazy. I saw my grandmother and my uncle and there was a tunnel with white light. All of these things that have come to be recognized as aspects of a near-death experience, right? That's weird for one reason. One reason is that there was no blood to her brain.

Therefore, she should not have had any sensory input reaction whatsoever. But maybe it happened as it was draining now? Who knows? Maybe. Okay. Weird thing number two? Weird thing number two, when she came to,

she could describe the bone saw that she never saw while she was alive. That cut her head open? Uh-huh. She said that she was surprised by it because it looked more like an electric toothbrush than what she was expecting. She never saw it at any point.

Sure. And she could also describe things like, oh, I don't know, the surgeon's shirt that he was wearing, beneath his scrubs. Wow. Things like that, that she should not have ever been able to see. She was not, as far as I know, much of a believer

in that kind of thing until afterward. Right. And her case is widely pointed to as one of the best pieces of evidence that there is such a thing as life after death. Wow. She had like a classic near-death experience. We could end it right now, and I think people would be satisfied. Okay.

That was such a good story. Oh, I'm hungry, so why don't we? Okay. Let's get a Twinkie. Wow, that's awesome. And cool. Thanks, thanks. And that really happened?

Oh, yeah, it definitely happened. Is she still alive? Look at Pam Reynolds. She's very much alive. And apparently, likes her experience. She had a great experience. Uh-huh. She has at least one album she released

called The Side Effects of Death. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, she says she seems like a pretty cool lady. Is she still in Atlanta, do you know? I don't know. See, that would be cool if we had lunch with her or something. Well, if she is and she's listening, send us an email.

We'll go have lunch, because I would love to hear that firsthand. That would be awesome. As a matter of fact, I will pay for lunch out of my own pocket for that one, which is really saying something, too. No, that's not true. I know. I owe Jerry $35 first. Yeah.

She's like, pay me, then go eat your hot dog. So Josh, the term near-death experience. Coined in 1975 by Dr. Raymond Moody. Yes. And is booked life after life. Very clever title. It is very clever. And actually, Moody, you'll notice the doctor,

which makes him less of a crackpot. And we'll find throughout this podcast that there are some very smart, very educated, very skeptical people who are researching this. Yeah. This is not just some fringe scientific idea. Right. Or even just a fringe religious idea. It's pretty much where religion and science converge.

Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that there are near-death experiences. What they are interpreted as and explained away as is what differs. Right. They definitely happen. The earliest description we have of a near-death experience comes from Plato's Republic. Yeah. Written in 360 BCE, which is BC for those of you who are not hip to the new abbreviation.

Right. Do you know what BCE stands for? Before Christ existed? Before Chuck existed? Before Chuck existed. I don't know. No. Before the Common Era.

The Common Era of Judaism and Christianity. And what's the other one? Because you said that one the other day. The Common Era. CE. Okay. Instead of BCE and CE. Right.

Yeah. So, with that out of the way. Yeah. It's still Judeo-Christian though. And it's... Oh, it is? Well, yeah. Before the Common Era of Judaism and Christianity.

Oh, I just thought they meant before Chuck existed. Okay, so anyway, Plato describes a soldier named Ur who was killed in battle and came back to life, but apparently left his body and was judged before a panel of souls and saw heaven. Yeah. Which will sound kind of familiar to any fan of Albert Brooks. Yeah. Defending your life.

Defending your life. Arguably the greatest movie about the afterlife ever. Yeah. I'm a big Albert Brooks fan. I'm not a big fan, but that's probably my top five favorite movies. I like him. I'm down with the neurotic Woody Allen Albert Brooks types. I like him more than Woody Allen.

I'm a Woody nut, so. Chuck, do you think we should talk about near-death experiences? Maybe we should talk about what is typical of an NDE. Yeah. And the thing that strikes me is, you know, it's not that Grabbinowski, who you know is like the sign of quality for an article. Oh, yeah. You see his byline, you know, it's worth reading, right?

Which is not to say that there's an article on the site that's not worth reading. You know, they think about it. Good point. Kiss up. Yeah. But I think just anybody living in the 21st century has been so exposed to the concept of near-death experiences that like all of this will sound very familiar, but Chuck. Yes.

Take it. We'll go through these fairly quickly because there's a little list. Feeling of calmness is one. Intense, pure, bright light. You always hear about the light. Go into the light. An out-of-body experience. Woop.

That's good. I think it actually makes that sound, too, upon reentry. Entering another realm or dimension. Woop. Spirit, beings. Woop. And these are beings of light or other representations of spiritual entities. I already said, woop.

Okay. The tunnel, which we always talk about. Woop. And the light is typically at the end of the tunnel. Communication with spirits. Woop. It's usually a strong male voice, which is interesting. And life review, which is also called a panoramic life review.

Check. And that is when you see your, you know, you've heard of your life flash before your eyes. Right. That's that. Yeah. So those are the common hallmarks of an NDE. Right. And most of the time when you hear somebody coming back to life after death, whether your

physician did it to you on purpose or accidentally or somebody hit you in the head with a ball peen hammer. Right. Um, most people say it was awesome. Like Jesus was there. And so was my aunt and my dog. And Elvis. And everything.

Yeah. Elvis was there and he wasn't fat anymore. It was wonderful. Right. Um, but there is actually a segment of the population that has experienced a near death experience that says, yeah, that didn't happen to me. So the exact opposite experience I went to hell up to a one to 25% of people in a poll that we're going to talk about said it's what I like to call a bad trip, a bad trip.

Indeed. Probably the worst trip of all time. We're talking biblical descriptions of hell, lakes of fire, tormented souls and oppressive heat. And actually this is surprising to me. There was, um, there are some people come back from experiences like that or even good ones with the prophetic vision. A lot of times that the world is going to end all the future.

And there was a group of people who were unknown to each other that came back. Um, I guess during the eighties and said the world's going to end in 1988 and they didn't know one another and they all had the same experience, which is weird. The world obviously didn't end in 1988, but so that means it's bunk. Not necessarily. Okay. What if a portion of the world ended a portion that we're not really familiar with or that we just didn't realize like maybe humanity lost a little bit of its humanness in 1988.

We just didn't recognize it as the world ending or the aliens living inside the hollow earth. Maybe they all died or have you read, um, what was it, Dirk gently's holistic detective agency? Never heard of it. By Douglas Adams, the guy who wrote hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy heard of that. He writes about this, uh, this other dimensional, uh, group that are coming to take over earth but somebody forgot to, uh, to carry like a zero or something and they, when they teleported themselves to our dimension, they showed up as very, very tiny and were inhaled by a

dog immediately. Really? Yeah. That dude's got a great sense of humor. He's got a great one. I always dig what he lays down. Well said. So, uh, let's get back to that poll that I referenced.

Yeah. Cause this is pretty interesting. This is one of the people I was talking about. He's very smart and very educated and, uh, very well known to George Gallup Jr., right? Of the pole Gallups. The Gallup pole. Of the Coney Island Gallups. Right.

He, uh, in, uh, author William Proctor released a book called, uh, Adventures in Immortality in 1982 and that's pretty much the most exhaustive, uh, polling research that's ever been done on Indies. Yeah. We have a rule of thumb here at howstuffworks.com where, uh, if a study's, uh, decade old or more and a lot of us actually fudged toward the other side like eight, nine years, it's probably out of date. Cause this, uh, 1982 book is still cited.

Right. Uh, it was just like, it's so exhaustive. It's so authoritative. Yeah. It's the standard. Yeah. Very cool. Uh, I got some stats then from this poll, Josh.

Chuck loves stats. They know that. Fifteen, oh, it's somebody is drinking right now in Korea. Oh yeah. Richard. Go, Chuckers. Uh, hey Jerry. Fifteen percent of all Americans who had been in near death situations reported having

a near death experience. Uh-huh. Fifteen percent. That's a lot. Nineteen percent included the classic out of body experience and, uh, eleven percent included entering a realm or dimension, a different one. And eight percent featured the presence of spiritual beings. Mm-hmm.

Pretty cool. Yeah. And oh yeah. One percent reported bad trip. Right. That was the Gallup poll, but, uh, other, uh, smaller studies have reported up to a quarter of people who have NDEs have, as Chuck puts it, bad trips. Yeah.

Yeah. One of the things Josh about this, uh, study is they, uh, indicated that one hundred near death experience subjects revealed that prior religious belief and knowledge of the near death experience did not really have any kind of effect. Yeah. So it wasn't like, ooh, I'm really, um, super, uh, Christian. And so I saw God. Right.

And Saint Jerome and Saint Pete. Or I'm really into near death experiences. So I saw one. Right. That kind of thing. Yeah. And one of the things, uh, who's, uh, also a very prolific, uh, researcher and author on near death experiences.

Kenny. Um, and he did a, uh, he, he started to quantify, um, what was going on among populations that have experienced NDEs, right? Yeah. And he found that most people, uh, a small percentage, again, feel like fear, depression, that kind of thing afterward, but most people who undergo a near death experience, um, have a new renewed appreciation for life and living, they feel that they are no longer afraid of death.

Right. Um, and a lot of them become a lot more extroverted, or I should say most of them become extroverted. They're basically changed by their experience, um, and they are much more spiritual, but interestingly, uh, that doesn't, uh, he didn't see an increase, a positive correlation between that increased spirituality and increased, um, religiousness or increased church attendance. Right. It was like an inward spirituality. Right.

Did you ever see the movie Fearless? Is that the Jeff Bridges plane crash survivor one? Yeah. No. I heard the movie poster though. Oh, that's, you know what? I had that movie poster. So weird.

We were, we were meant to be Chuck. Wow. That is odd. It's a great movie. They should check it out. I hear. Jeff Bridges survives and he, uh, it's the only movie I know of that it goes through all the classic, um, in a realistic way, goes through the classic post near death experience, um,

trials and tribulations. And knowing me, I would have just crippling survivor's guilt for the rest of my life. Yeah. Well, he had that and he also had the invincibility that they talked about too, like the shield of invincibility. Well, not like the cloak of invincibility, not literally, but yeah, felt like I can't die. Oh, yeah.

I remember, uh, he's like on a ledge or something at one point like, yeah, I'm totally who cares. Yeah. You notice he didn't jump though, of course. Yeah. Right. Anyone can stand on a ledge. That's not going to kill you.

That's like that Bill Hicks routine. Okay. I was thinking about, um, people taking, uh, drugs like PCP or whatever and flying off or, you know, jumping off a building seeking, they can fly and Bill Hicks is like, if you think he can fly, why don't you just try taking off from the ground? Right. That's a good point. Sharp guy.

That's funny. You mentioned that actually. It is that way. Isn't it? This PCP and, uh, what's that? Okay. Ketamine. Yeah, that's right.

Are, um, believed to give similar feelings as near death experiences. Is that right? Uh, yeah. Um, really supposedly you can, uh, a lot of people feel like they're actually dying when they're in the grips of a trip on PCP or ketamine. And actually also, um, there's a lot of similar near death experiences like, uh, people have reported, uh, being on ketamine and feeling like they're spinning around and attracting light beings like we mentioned earlier.

Crazy. Yeah. Um, and, and so there's some real similarities, especially with ketamine and near death experiences, which is really, really odd, but that kind of undermines the spiritual theory of near death experiences and, and, and supports the scientific theories about it. Right? Let's talk about those. Okay.

What we're talking about with the spiritual is more like a supernatural explanation is that you're talking about. Yeah. That you, you, and I hate to put it like this because I don't think that I think supernatural kind of undermines it. It makes it sound kooky, but, um, that the, I guess a supernatural explanation is that you possess a soul that, that lives on after your, your body dies and it goes on to another dimension.

Right. Just things that science can't or possibly can't yet explain, which makes them supernatural rather than natural. Right. Supernatural actually should be a good word. Yeah. It's a great word as far as I'm concerned. It's super.

Right. Um, yeah. I mean, essentially passing on to the afterlife or in the case of, uh, reincarnation, maybe passing from one life to another, that kind of thing. Right. So that's the, uh, spiritual or supernatural reasoning and then there's science. Are we there yet? Yeah.

We were there a while back, uh, science. There's a few theories going on that, um, it's really a lot of stuff happening in the brain. Well, you can't say theories. These are hypotheses because Chuck, why does it say scientific theories then the grabster was, uh, over, over worked that week. But, um, no, these are hypotheses because you can't test them. You can't kill somebody to see what happens to them.

Like flatliners. Exactly. I mean, you can, but then you end up as Kevin Bacon found in big trouble. Yeah. What did he have the kids that he teased were after him or something? Yeah. Or was that, uh, the mouth breather? No, the mouth breather.

I don't remember what happened. Oh, he had the little girl in the subway train that was after him, the mouth breather. Did he? And Kevin Bacon. No, no, no. Kevin Bacon had the girl in the subway and the mouth breather was the one who teased the kid up in the tree that fell. Okay.

That's right. And Julia Roberts had the kooky dad and William Baldwin. Oh yeah. She, not the kooky dad, the junkie dad. Yeah. The junkie dad. Yeah. And then I don't think Oliver Platt ever went under, did he?

He was kind of a wuss. And then William Baldwin's all involved ex-girlfriends, which I thought was pretty silly. Yeah. It's a good movie though. Yeah. It hasn't aged well. Oh no. I haven't seen it since it came out.

Not too long ago. It's not great. Okay. So medical science, yeah, they say that the brain is perhaps getting the senses confused and your brain starts malfunctioning to the point where you see the lights as your brain is shutting down, that kind of thing. Your visual cortex creates that image and it's all easily explained. Right.

So I'm looking at you right now, Chuck. And you are really just a cluster of light and shadows that forms a shape which I'm receiving through my retinas that are basically being transformed into electrical impulses that go to the visual cortex in my brain, which takes them, compiles them into what I'm seeing as you, Chuck, sitting there, right? What happens if that part of my brain is malfunctioning? I still am getting sensory input through my eyes, but my brain's no longer making sense of it.

So maybe it turns into what's called neural noise. My brain still is struggling to make sense of it. That's what our brains do. Remember the podcast on dreaming? Is it dreaming that our brains want to make sense of things, no matter what, and that's possibly what dreams are, right? Yeah. It's almost like the brain is still just struggling to operate.

It's like a fish flopping in a boat. At this point, it's not really doing what it wants to, but it still wants to do what it needs to, right? Yeah, I think I'm understanding that. That's the sink, wasn't it? So the brain's just taking all this information, but it's miscategorizing it, whatever, so all of a sudden there's a bright white light, or there's a tunnel, or there's a being there. It's also possible that it takes all this information and it's jumbled, but it's not

until after we wake up and our conscious memory is active that it's sorting it into those memories, these false memories or whatever. The other thing too, your brain, your spatial sense is prone to malfunction when you have a near-death experience, and that could explain potentially the out-of-body experience when you feel yourself floating around the room, looking down at your own body, that kind of thing. Right, and that calm sensation or being at peace, it's possible that it's the result of endorphins flooding our brain, which has been shown to, they are released during times

of trauma and extreme stress as a coping mechanism, like apparently if you're drowning right before you drown, you've just become euphoric because your brain just floods itself with endorphins right before you die, so we know that that's a pretty good possibility too. Right, and I think they've explained, or tried to explain, the meeting with God, that kind of thing, as basically a combination of a bunch of things, maybe the sensory input combined with the lack of oxygen to your brain and the endorphins, and they all get mixed up together to create a realistic, but surreal experience. Really far out, man.

So Chuck, this is, as far as near-death experiences go, there's so much evidence, and we have such a little grasp on the brain, it seems like the scientific theories are reasonable, in some cases, and I like there's a line that Grabinowski throws out there, he's like, but what about, you know, people who, like Pam Reynolds, who described what's going on while they're actually dead, he's like, it's possible the brain's still getting sensory input, he goes, whether you think that that's more rational of an explanation than the person's soul actually left the body, it's a matter of opinion, I thought you did a good job with that.

I did too, because there's no definite answer, and there probably won't be, well, I can't say that, but who knows. Well, I think a lot of scientists think that they have found definitive answers, that the brain's just screwed up right there, but I think this is one of those cases, and I don't think it's, this is true in every case, but this is one of those cases where science might be able to explain the how, but not the why, like if we do undergo some sort of transformation or transition after death, wouldn't it be based on the chemical composition of our brains, like wouldn't that be the way we were most easily manipulated?

I think so, yeah. That's where I park my car, I would say, well, thanks for parking your car there, Chuck. That's a good one. Maybe we should kill each other tonight, like choke each other out until we're at the brink, and then like slap each other in the face and see what happens. Okay. Why don't we not do it at the same time? You go first.

I'll put a belt around your neck and tie you to a piece of exercise equipment, and I'll just stand there, because I think one of us needs to be alive while the other one's under. Yes, and we are not condoning this, because that is very dangerous to do, and you should not try something like that. Agreed. Agreed. We're trained professionals.

Okay. If you want to learn more about near-death experiences, there's actually some pretty good articles. There's Grabbinowski's. I wrote one on Has Science Explained Life After Death, and the former writer Jacob Silverman wrote one on out-of-body experiences. You can type in near-death, and I think it should bring all three of those up. Type those in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, which means it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this a pretty amazing medical story. More amazing than what we were just talking about? Well, I don't know. And also, Chuck, we should probably give a shout-out to that Listener. Remember he wrote in about his dad dying, and he found out there were those cards on the high shelf that you could only see if you were floating at the ceiling? Right. So, hey there.

You inspired this podcast. In a way. Hi, guys. I'm propped up in a bed in a Sydney hospital recovering from a gastrectomy by catching up on a whole stack of stuff I cast, sitting in the hospital listening to all my art shows. Do they stack? I thought they're digital files. They are.

I've been here for two weeks after emitting myself to emergency with abdominal cramps. I had a... There's a lot of medical terms in there. I had a lobectomy of my left lower lung in December of last year to remove a pulmonary sequestration in the initial CT scan when I was admitted showed an abscess in the space where my lung used to be. Used to be. Wow.

It's got like phantom lung. I know. I was very fortunate to have the same surgeon called in to repeat the procedure, however, once he got in there, he was met with something very unexpected. The abscess was actually my stomach, which had herniated into a cavity through a minute opening in my diaphragm created by the sequestration. IE, it's always been there, but it was only exposed when they removed it. So it was gone had gone completely gangrenous, which is not a pleasant word to hear.

Gangrenous. Gangrenous? Jerk. They immediately flipped me over and found that all but 10% of my stomach had been pulled through this tiny hole. What? So they had to completely remove it and attach my esophagus directly to my small intestine. I told you it was pretty amazing.

Only is the procedure used on stomach cancer patients. And he was in surgery theater for almost 10 hours. For when I gather, it's a very unique occurrence and all the nurses that have come by have asked me about it and the doctors give me this fascinating look whenever they pass by my ward like, wow, that's the dude. With the recent special in U.S. healthcare system, I thought it would be interesting to both of you. It wasn't for the quick action of the surgeons and the fact that I was in the hospital to

the residents to some of the top surgeons in the state, I've been told there's a good chance I wouldn't have made it. Quite sobering. So word is after a month, my intestine will have expanded to the point where I won't notice a big difference in diet or capacity and the only ongoing treatment I'll need is a potential vitamin B12 injection every three months. Cool. Crazy, huh?

That's what he says. Yeah. Yes. And he wrote in after that, I wrote him back and he wrote in and said that he wanted to add that it basically didn't cost him a dime. Nice. Nice. Who is it?

This is Jeff and Jeff is the owner of Grizzly Personal Training in Sydney, Australia at grizzlypt.com and Jeff is on the mend and hopefully he'll be physically training some people stomachless soon. Nice. Well, Jeff, congratulations on surviving and thank you for listening and taking the time to write in. That's pretty awesome actually. Thanks for having the stomach to tell us that story.

Well, if you have any amazing stories about how bundled payments led you to find that you have a hole in your body that shouldn't be there, you can send it in an email to Stuff Podcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready.

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