Stuff You Should Know - How Sword Swallowing Works

Episode Date: September 27, 2011

Houdini suggested that sword swallowing was merely a trick. But there's no sleight of hand or throat to this ancient practice. Practitioners really do swallow swords, car axles and more. Learn more about sword swallowers in this gag-reflexive episode. 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, which makes this Stuff You Should Know like you didn't know. And if this is your first time, if you really didn't know, welcome to the dark side. Your life has just forever changed.

You are officially addicted. That's right. Yeah, that's what I got. I'll take souls for 500, Rebecca. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then what you said when I suggested this one? I typed it. Yeah. And I think you thought it was funny or when I typed it. I heard it. Okay. I heard it in my head. It sounded much like that. Daryl Hammond. John Connery. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever seen the movie Dazed and Confused? Yeah. In fact, I remember the first time I saw that movie. Oh yeah, let's hear it. In Athens at the Georgia Theater. That was a great place to see that movie. It was. That was wonderful. Remember when, whenever they showed, I think his name was

Washington? No. Which character? The black guy. I think you're thinking of the sweat hogs. That was Washington. Right. But I think his name was Washington, too. Oh, okay. I think, I'm not sure. But yes, clearly, I could just be thinking of that guy because they both have frozen there set in the 70s. Right. But he has that paddle. It says Soul Pole on it. Do you remember like the whole theater just erupting the first time it showed that? Yeah. Oh, it was awesome. I remember, I thought Matthew McConaughey was not an actor. Oh, like he was really Wooderson. I thought he was a real dude. They just dug up in Texas. Oh yeah, because that was like the beginning of his career. It's the first thing I ever saw him in. And Ben Affleck.

Yeah. And that was just a great movie. Parker Posey. Yeah. Well, that brings me to my point. Parker Posey. You remember the part during the beer bust where Parker Posey's funneling beer through a beer bong? Yeah. And like, she's got it for like a half a second, maybe a second and a half. And then it just like pours out of her mouth and all over her face. Yes. At that moment, the first thing I thought of is I'm sure everybody thought as well when they saw that that very suggestive part was Parker Posey would be terrible at sword swallowing. That's what I thought. Yeah. Because it takes a certain amount of relaxation to swallow a sword. And after researching the article, I found that a sword swallower would make an excellent beer funneler.

I haven't funneled a beer in a long time. It's been a while for me too. It's probably good when you're 40 to be able to say that. I lost access to beer funnels. I think that's kind of what happens. Like you just don't go to places where there's a beer funnel. Not anymore. But you can always shotgun a beer. As long as you have a pen and a beer can. I never got into any of that, to be honest. Kickstands, all that silliness. Kickstands, I wasn't big. I was just like, just have a drink it. I don't prefer being upside down. I've never done a kickstand. Really? Never. It's really, you know what it feels like to be torn apart by a gang of angry tusks because there's a couple of guys holding your ankles. It's really kind of scary. You're

on the edge there. We don't recommend any of those things. And while we're at it, this is the ultimate COA. Please, anyone out there, never, ever, ever try to swallow a sword or anything except food, obviously, in beverage. Right. But no food larger than the end of a football. Yeah. Do not, do not, do not try this at home, ever, ever, ever. Right. Okay. Yeah. Josh and Chuck officially think you're stupid if you try to swallow anything after listening to this. Or if you participate in backyard wrestling. Yes. While we're at it. Equally dangerous. Yes. All right. So Chuck, let's talk about sword swallowing. I'm excited about this one. Kind of cool. Yeah. This is part of our ongoing circus arts collection. Have we already done one?

Human cannonball. Okay. We've got to get tightrope in there and then we're all set. Well, we need to do like freaks too. Yeah, just sideshow freaks or maybe even like history of the sideshow. That'd be pretty awesome. Agreed. All right. So what other kind of freaks would I've just been talking about? I don't know. You know, the kind you meet on the Friday night. Have you seen, have you seen that movie freaks? Oh, yeah, we've talked about that one. All right. Yes, we have. So Chuck, let's talk about the history of sword swallowing, shall we? Yeah. I was kind of surprised to learn that it started out with sort of religious undertones or are they overtones? I think sword swallowing is so that it would be an overtones.

An overtones. Yeah. It's not very subtle. Yeah. Early on in India, about 4,000 years ago, they kind of the same folks who were doing the fire walking and snake handling to sort of show their oneness with God would swallow swords. Yeah. Like they were protected and they would be like, look what I can do. Yeah. I'm boastful. Yeah. Fakirs is what they're called. F-A-K-I-R. And yeah, sword swallowing has been around for 4,000 years and there's apparently still a tribe, although I couldn't find the name of the tribe, but it's in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and they apparently still passed down sword swallowing skills from father to son. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So we know where it came from and we know it's ancient. It started in India,

started to move around the far east, the mid-east. A typical path. Things to follow. China, Japan, mid-east. Yeah. Language, civilization. Yeah. It all just followed the same path as sword swallowing. It hit Japan and China in the 8th century AD. In Japan, it became part of Sengaku, Sangaku, one of those two, which is basically like street performance, right? And then apparently it got picked up again later on in India again, and it's the cradle of it, but by the whirling dervishes. The rebirth of sword swallowing? Yes. The first one. By the dervishes? Right. The whirling dervish, a dervish is a beggar of the Sufi mystic order of monks, and they would kind of whip themselves into a frenzy, hence the term whirling dervish,

and there's a specific order of dervishes called the order of refies. Refies? Man, my Indian's getting rusty. They eat glass, walk on coals, swallow swords. Basically, it's like a revival of the original reason people would swallow swords. Okay. Then it comes to Europe, and as with all things that came to Europe from the outside, the Catholic Church persecuted anyone who could swallow a sword. Man, fun killers back in the day. But that was not enough to kill it. It was basically just a loss of enthusiasm by the public. By the 19th century in Europe, everybody's like, we've seen this before. We know what's going on. It's all an illusion, a trick, which we'll get to in a minute. But then it hits America,

and there's a guy from Madras, an Indian man named Senesama, and on November 24th, 1817, which will henceforth, in the SYSK pantheon of dates, be referred to as sword swallowing day. In New York City at St. John's Hall, for $1, adults could see the first person to ever swallow a sword in the United States. For a dollar? For a dollar. There's a lot of money back there. I agree, but this is a big deal. You would think it would have taken off right then, but no, it wasn't until 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair that it became very popular in the US. Yeah, I wonder what else was big that year. That wasn't the ice cream year, was it now? No, that was St. Louis in 1903. Okay, so pre-ice cream, of course,

sword swallowing, you know. If ice cream had been around, people would be like, eh. Right. I'd rather just eat ice cream. This was the year that electricity was a big one. Oh, 1893? Yeah, that was the one that the devil in the white city is set. Oh, okay. I still remember that. It's pretty good. You can wait for the movie now. Oh, is it coming out? Apparently, Leo DiCaprio is playing the bad guy. Of course he is. I don't know why I said that. He rarely plays bad guys. Yeah, that's true. Although, he wasn't that good of a guy in Shutter Island. Well, we don't want to ruin that. It doesn't matter. Okay.

It died out again in the 1950s because of, you know, it was on the Carnival Circuit, and I guess all these newfangled rides sort of took away from the whole sideshow aspect. And then I love how this points out that the, you know, the internet and video games also helped kill sword swallowing. Like, really? Yeah. I didn't know that one had anything to do with the other. The internet and video games pretty much killed everything but the internet and video games and TV. Yeah, but now you can research and watch sword swallowing on the internet. No. That is gorgeous thinking, Chuck. I'm very impressed with that one. All right, so that's pretty much the history of sword swallowing. There's, I guess,

toward the beginning of the 20th century when it became very popular in the U.S. There is also a lot of controversy over whether it was a trick or an illusion. And Harry Houdini himself said it's a trick. There's a trick to it. And he wrote in his very famous book, The Miracle Mongers and Exposé, right, that people who swallow swords first backstage swallow a metal sheath that they slide the sword into. All right, I've got to stop you here. You're still swallowing the thing that's just as long and it's made of metal. I agree. And you're pretending like it's not in there. You're walking around talking. I know. It seems easier just to learn to swallow this. I mean, it's not like, and we'll cover this. Actually, might as well go ahead and

say it. The swords that they swallow aren't sharp edged. No. They are still pointies, but it's not like they're swallowing razor blades. I get the impression that they're pointy-ish. Well, yeah, a dull point, I would say. Yes. But I mean, that can't be much worse than the sheath. So right, I think the sheath is worse. Maybe Houdini is being funny and Tracy Wilson missed that. Maybe so. She goes on to point out that the Encyclopedia Britannica says that it's a magic trick as well. And that it's not a that it is some sort of illusion or hoax or fraud. But really, apparently, the basis of swords swallowing is quite real. Like the person is swallowing a sword. Yeah. Right. 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 2200 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 asset.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo's card out of a piece of marble. True. This is true. And number two, he's the first person to show you that at every party at every dinner. Maybe take a shirt off. Shirt comes off like before dessert. I'm Bruce Bozzi. You may not know me yet, but you already know most of my launch dates by their first names and voices alone. That was George and Julia. But believe it or not, my podcast guests see me as more than just a piece

of meat like my thoughtful friend Scarlett. Bruce Bozzi, I love you so much and I love meeting minds with you. What we do on my new podcast, Table for Two, is what everyone does when they're at lunch with an old friend. We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden wound up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to Table for Two on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So how do you do that? Well, Josh, if you're going to talk about swallowing a sword, then we need to talk about swallowing. And if you're going to talk about swallowing, you got to talk about the GI tract. Yes. Not the GI bill. The GI gastrointestinal tract. It's got a couple of types of muscle.

It's got a skeletal muscle tissue and smooth muscle tissue, a little lubrication layer called mucosa. And then skeletal muscle is involuntary, I'm sorry, voluntary. And if you're talking about your upper GI, you're talking about your mouth, your pharynx, and your upper esophagus. The smooth muscle is involuntary. And they work in concert to help you swallow junk. Right. So the top stuff is all voluntary. You can move your tongue. Yeah, you start off doing it on purpose when you chew and swallow. Right. But then it gets to a certain point past the, what is it, the upper esophageal sphincter? Yeah. That just cracks me up. Once it gets past that, which is kind of high up toward the top of the esophagus, then it, like you said,

it becomes all involuntary. It's automatic, which makes it very difficult to control anything that happens after that. Yeah. Specifically, the, you know, your epiglottis goes into action because that keeps stuff from going down into your lungs. Right. You don't want. Yeah. Bolas is food, is chewed food in saliva. That's the best word ever in Bolas. Yeah. B-O-L-U-S. And once you've done all the voluntary action, it does a pretty cool thing. It gets down to the part of your esophagus as the smooth muscle, the involuntary muscle. Yes. And peristalsis takes over. And that's basically your, it just squeezes it down like an inch at a time. Yeah. You know how your esophagus is ringed? Yeah. Right. Those rings are little bands of muscle,

and then they squeeze just above the bolus and just shove it down there. Finally, it gets to the lower esophageal sphincter. And that opens. You have to laugh every time you say sphincter. That opens and the bolus drops into the stomach to be digested and then eventually pooped out. Yeah. So that's what happens. That's swallowing. Food. That's life. That is life. We just described life. The trick here, not trick, but on the way down, it passes by things like your trachea, your heart, your aorta. Which I thought was part of the heart. Well, it's the artery, the main artery that connects to the heart. Yeah. And I saw the vena cava was also separate. That's the main vein. Yeah. That was unintentional as well. The diaphragm

is the muscle that moves up and down, which allows us to breathe. And we say all this because the sword is passing right through there. Yeah. I mean, it takes the same path as your food does. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. And not pretty much. Exactly. We have our ribs because we've got so many vital organs right there that they need extra protecting. And so we circumvent the ribs when we swallow swords and just go directly past all that stuff, all that soft tissue. All right. Yeah. But there's a difference, a big difference here. Swallowing food requires a lot of contraction of muscles. And what you want to do when you swallow a sword is you want to relax all those muscles, even the involuntary ones, which is we'll get into how to do that in a minute

here. Okay. But it's sort of the opposite of even though it follows the same path, the muscles are doing things they shouldn't do, aren't trained to do at least. Well, that's kind of the point of sword swallowing. Like if you, one of the reasons we warned you against sword swallowing is because you can't just swallow a sword the first time you try it. No. You could, but you would kill yourself. Yes. Swords swallowing actually takes a lot of practice and a lot of horrible, horrible practice too. You have to train, you have to train your involuntary muscle to work voluntarily, right? Or to not volunteer at all. That's a great point by relaxing. Yeah. So the voluntary stuff, and let's talk about this. This is, I guess now we've reached sword swallowing

one on one. Yeah. The first part is easy because it's all voluntary muscle. You move your tongue out of the way. Yeah. You open your throat. Yeah. You tilt your head back. You always see a sword swallow or tilt his head back. It's intuitive, but at the same time, the reason why is because they're lining up the pharynx, the throat with the esophagus so that it's a straight shot as straight as possible. From the mouth all the way down, right? That's right. And then after that, Chuck? Well, you slip the sword down in there and it passes through the mouth and pharynx and upper esophageal sphincter into the esophagus itself. And the esophagus has got a little curve to it, so the sword is actually going to straighten it out. And Tracy even points out that sometimes

it's nudging organs out of the way as well on the way down. Yeah. That's why you usually swallow a sword slowly. And the lubed sword as well. Yeah. And then lubed either by saliva or artificially. Right. Some people use petroleum jelly or vegetable or something. Whatever your flavor is. So that's how it's done. Pretty cool. That's right. That's pretty much all there is to it, but again, it takes some tremendous practice. And also depending on the type of the sword, the length of the sword, you said it was blunted. It's not sharp, still kind of pointy. Yeah. But it's as dull as possible. But the length of the sword is also very important as well. Usually from your teeth to the cartia, which is basically where the stomach connects to the esophagus,

where your lower esophageal sphincter is about 40 centimeters in the average person. Yeah. Okay. Sounds about right. So if you swallow a sword that's longer than 40 centimeters, you are going to, it's going to have to go into your stomach. Yeah. That's a big deal. Yeah. And what I've gotten is most sword swallowingers don't do that. It's not by accident that the sword swallower's Association International defines that length at 38 centimeters that, you know, to qualify. So if it's 40 centimeters, they said let's make it a couple centimeters short. Right. But this is just the typical person. It could be much shorter. That's just to qualify. I don't know. I thought it had to be that long.

No, no. I'm saying the distance to your cartia could be shorter. So even with that shorter sword, you still may be in your stomach. But yes, if you just, if you get it all the way down to a couple centimeters above your cartia, the SS AI, it still considers you a sword swallower, which I think is nice. That is nice. But Chuck, if you are taking a sword all the way down to your cartia, into your stomach, the sword is literally in your stomach. That's crazy. Not only have you relaxed like all the voluntary muscles in your mouth, you've relaxed all the voluntary muscles on your, on your larynx and in your esophagus, right? Yeah. All the involuntary muscles. But you've also managed to figure out how to relax both of your esophageal sphincters, the top one

and the one above your stomach so that you can pass a sword through without damaging it. That is nuts. Yeah. And they do recommend, by the way, nothing over 24 inches, 61 centimeters, because at that point you are well into your stomach. Yeah, that's the SS AI again. Yeah. And I guess anything over that you might go hit the bottom of the stomach, which you don't want to do. Also, I want to point out that there is also a long tradition of sword swallowers who juggle and often do this on horseback while juggling. Oh, dude, unicycles, cartwheels, they do all sorts of crazy things. So really to me, just standing stock still and swallowing a sword, that's impressive. Have you ever seen the drop? No. There's this, I don't know if it's a new move,

but it's a move where you put it down like halfway and then you move your hands and you let it drop by itself and you actually tighten your, catch it with your esophageal muscles. That is control. Pretty good control. Yeah. And they always take it out really quick too, if you notice, because we'll talk about the gag reflex, but you're suspending that and you can only do that for so long. That's why you see them do it and then it's like, ta-da, and they yank it back out really quickly. Because they want to live. That's right. Yeah. Well, speaking of the gag reflex, that's one of the things that has to be overcome in training. Yeah, let's get into the reflexing. Okay. Well, reflexes exist outside of the brain.

They're actually regulated by the brain stem. I didn't know that actually. Well, it's how somebody can still be considered alive, even though their higher faculties are gone, because they still have reflexes. It makes sense. I just never really thought about it that way. But well, may I describe how a reflex works? Please. So basically you have a receptor nerve ending that detects, in this case, in your throat detects some sort of object or intrusion that shouldn't be there. Like a sword. Basically the only stuff that should be there is fluid and chewed food, as far as your receptors are concerned. But yes, if a sword or any other metal object makes its way into your throat, the receptors are going to figure this out, and they're going to

send an electrical impulse to your central nervous system in the brain stem. The integration center is what it's called. Yeah, that's kind of like, it's kind of sounded to me like a call center, like literally, I mean, it happens so quick, but it's like, what's the nature of your emergency, sir? Exactly. Like I've got a sword in my throat. But this is the brain stem. So it's all done on like, punch cards, like they used to play tic-tac-toe in the 70s. Hanging jads. So your brain stem says, oh, okay, well, there shouldn't be a metal object there. Let's just go ahead and direct the muscles of the throat to gag. And that produces what's called a wretch. And that's meant to expel the foreign object. Yeah. What sword swallows do is mute or dole

this reflex so that it doesn't happen at all. And they do it by setting it off time after time after time. Unbelievable. They make themselves gag as much as they can until it doesn't work. Yeah. Which is dangerous. It's very dangerous. And if you didn't get the idea before from the initial COA, sword swallowing is a very, very dangerous pastime profession, whatever you're using it for. I would imagine there at a higher risk for choking. Choking. Yeah, because the point of the gag reflex is to get that stuff out. That piece of steak comes flying out when you wretch it up. Yes. And ideally, if you don't have a gag reflex, then yeah, that's bad news. Because that steak just stays in there and you die. You know, I had a friend who,

when I was in elementary school, his mom got an emergency tracheotomy with a steak knife. Oh yeah? Yep. God, you always hear about the stories. She had the little scar and everything. Jeez. Yeah. Someone in a restaurant. Doctor. Oh, wow. Yeah. Gave her a, I mean, a steak knife. Yeah. No anesthesia, no nothing. Steak knife and then a straw or a pen. Cheese. Yeah. Yeah. I've never seen anything good like that happen. I didn't see it happen. Yeah, but I mean, I've never, I'm just saying, I've never seen any like awesome life-saving situation. Yeah. I want to be a part of one one day. Just not on the steak side. 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 a 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 y'all. 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo's card out of a piece of marble. Truth. This is true. And number two, he's the first person to show you that at every party at every dinner. Maybe take a shirt off. Shirt comes off like before dessert. I'm Bruce Bozzi. You may not know me yet, but you already know most of my lunch dates by their first names and voices alone. That was George and Julia. But believe it or not, my podcast guests see me as more than just a piece of meat like my thoughtful friend Scarlett. Bruce Bozzi, I love you so much and I love meeting minds with you. What we do on

my new podcast, Table for Two, is what everyone does when they're at lunch with an old friend. We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden wound up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to Table for Two on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So what are their dangers? They actually did a study and they want to ignore Bell Prize for the study I found out in 2007. And they studied 110 English speaking sword swallowers and basically just asked them a bunch of questions about their health. And they called it sword throat when they get a sore throat. Yeah, I thought that was kind of clever. It is very clever. So throat pain, lower chest pain, persistent lower chest pain,

internal bleeding occasionally. Yeah, I saw this one lady who was coughing up blood and they found out that she had like nicked part of her esophagus way down, which I imagine is common. Esophageal perforations like we just talked about. How do you say that? Pluricy? Pluricy. Pluricy. Inflammation of the lungs and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the sac that protects the heart. And that's in descending order of how often those things happened. Yeah. So everyone gets the sword throat, it seems like, but probably very few actually got inflammation of the pericardium. Right. They also figured out that there was a trend among sword swallowers where if they had a particularly rough performance, the inflammation that would result resulted in

further injury. So like they would be okay during the performance, but you know, they had a little trouble getting it down. But then a day later or something, they broke their esophagus or something like that. Oh really? And then also apparently sinus infections are common because you're passing the sword with petroleum jelly and whatever hair and gunk it picked up in between the time you put the petroleum jelly on and the time you swallowed it right past the sinuses, which can be sensitive. I can attest. And I imagine a circus side show isn't the cleanest area on the planet. You, I think, imagine correctly. You know what I'm saying? There's also death is a side effect of sword swallowing from time to time. Another British medical journal study cited the death

of a man who swallowed an umbrella or tried to and died. My first question was, did he accidentally try and open it? He hit the button. It's like Tom and Jerry. Yeah, totally. His body flares out like an umbrella. Right. It's like Tom and Jerry except real life and sad. That's right. Yeah. World Sword Swallower's Day, 2010. What it sounds like is that they gathered sword swallowers at Ripley's Believe It or Not all over the country to do this all at once to perform. And Red Stewart, your buddy Red, he swallowed a world record 52 swords at a time. Oh man. I don't know if that's official or unofficial Guinness certified, but George the Giant swallowed a 37 inch sword at the Hollywood Believe It or Not. Jeez. So that's, they recommend 24 inches max because you're in

the stomach. It's 37 inches. That's longer than three feet. That's crazy. Dan Meyer swallowed a giant straight razor and hedge clippers in Dallas at the Believe It or Not there. Travis Fessler swallowed a sword with cockroaches crawling around it, crawling on the sword. And guess where this one happened? Where? Gatlinburg. Oh yeah. Tennessee. Wow. What else? 120 degree curved sword at the Ripley's Believe It or Not in Ocean City, Maryland. I'm just amazed over here. I know. And finally, Mike Harrison at the Orlando Believe It or Not swallowed a sword that was driven down his throat by the discharge of a gun. I don't know how that happened, but wait, what happened? Apparently it was shot into his mouth from a gun. I don't know.

I'd like to see that one. Wow. Yeah, that's gotta be on the internet, which has first killed and then now supports sword swallowing. And also Red Stewart, who you mentioned, who swallowed 52 swords at once. I guess his former record was 25. But before that, this impresses me the most. He, in 1977, he swallowed a car axle. Well, they do. Tracy pointed out people swallowed dipsticks and other straight metal things. Car axle. Yeah. That's pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, that's gotta be pretty big around too. Yeah. And people have swallowed snakes. I found this guy. Oh, that sucks for the snake. Yeah, I think the snake lives. Yeah, but still, he's like, well, sure. What are you doing? Well, the snake is probably like, I'm getting eaten by another snake.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's just deserts. But this dude in the 1840s, Sal, Sal Amintro, the snake swallower. He, I have a couple of good quotes from him. They fancy that it hurts you, but it don't. Or what a fool I should be to do it. I don't mean to say it don't hurt you at first, because it do. For my swallow was very bad and I couldn't eat anything but liquids for two months whilst I was learning. I cured my swallow whilst I was stretching it with lemon and sugar. And then he learned to swat, that was swords. And he learned to swallow a snake and said, the snakes are about 18 inches long. And you must first cut the stingers out because it might hurt you. When I first began swallowing snakes, they tasted queer like they draw the

roof of your mouth a bit. It's a roughish taste. Apparently the scales, like it's easier going down than it is coming back up. Oh, I could see that. That's the way the scales are laying. I could totally see that. So we don't recommend swallowing snakes either. And I don't know if anyone still does that. That might be a 19th century swallowing snakes. Yeah. I swallow snakes a lot. Yeah. It's not tough. No. Well, I guess that's it. You got anything else? No. Well, if you want to see some pretty cool images about sword swallowing with a strangely kind of superhero worshipy man. He was buff, too. Did you notice that? Really buff, yeah. There's a period around how stuff works where comic book geeks kind of ruled the place. Right. And so this is acceptable in some

way. Yeah. It's definitely looked different than our other illustrations. Right. So if you want to, if you want to see those weird illustrations and learn as much as you possibly can about sword swallowing and the circus arts in general, we have a whole circus art section. Did you know that? I just let you say circus art. Yeah. It's any of that stuff can be typed into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And that means now, Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this blood type follow up. Guys, it just Googled good podcast and found your name. And I think you're serious, although I Googled good podcast and I didn't see anything. What comes up? There was one article about how to do a good podcast, and it was like, enunciate very clearly, stick to the

point and keep it short. Well, we're away. Breaking rules. So I just enjoyed your latest podcast and have a contribution on the subject of blood type. To put it simply, the transfusion rate is 60 to 90 milliliters per hour for the first 15 minutes, although each hospital has its own policy in an exact rate. But on average, it is 60 to 90. After about 15 minutes, the rate can be advanced to 100 to 120 milliliters per hour. The rationale is that if an acute hemolytic reaction is going to occur, it will happen in the first 15 minutes of a transfusion and the slow rate keeps the infused volume low. So using a little advanced math to answer your question, it takes as little as 16 to 22.5 milliliters of incompatible blood to cause a reaction. Of course, these are rough

estimates, but they do give you a hint of how a little bad blood can cause a big problem. Thanks for doing the show. I look forward to going back and listening to old shows, as well as the current new ones. I hope I didn't just make myself look like an idiot. Far from it, Dan, you sounded pretty dang smart. I would say so. Yeah, also, it's really weird to get feedback that quickly, like we recorded that two days ago. Yeah. And bam, we've got an answer. I really enjoyed that. I kind of wish we could do this live, but that wouldn't work. We've tried that before. It never does work. Yeah. Well, I guess it's it. Do you have anything? You want to call for anything? No. Okay. If you have any kind of circus arts background,

or your family does, we want to hear about it because we find that kind of stuff fascinating. Also, by the way, black guy in days and confused is named Melvin Spivey. That was way off. So sorry about that. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can send us stuff on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can also send us an old fashioned email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore them as 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 jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Where were you in 92? Bouncing your butt to Sir Mixolot? Wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a moment? Now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Lanfie and on my new show Where Were You in 92 we take a ride through the major hits One Hit Wonders and Shocking Scandals that shaped the wildest 12 months in music history. You know the president came after me. Everybody

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