Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Do you stay conscious after being decapitated?

Episode Date: June 17, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, historically speaking, decapitation was a popular means of execution -- it's been used by everyone from ancient Romans to French revolutionaries. But is there any truth to claim that victims retain their consciousness? Tune in to learn more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi there, everybody. It's me, Josh, your friend, Josh. And this week I've selected, do you really stay conscious after decapitation? It was one of our top three grisliest episodes

we've ever done. We talk in depth about what it's like to have your head cut off. And it's pretty grim. But it's also, in my opinion, one of the most interesting ones we've ever done. So if you are a fan of heart or weak of stomach, skip this one if you like.

But I dare you to listen anyway, because it is that good. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark. There is Charles W. Chuck Bryant asleep at the mic. Wake up, Chuck. I could fall asleep right now. What's wrong with you?

Is it pollen? No. It just means haywire. I'm just sweeping. Are you? You have a long night last night? Yeah, I hadn't been sleeping that great. Oh, really?

Plus, I got the window open because the weather's so nice, but that means I hear birds in traffic really early, so I've been waking up at like 6.15. Yeah, I hate that. I hate those birds. I do, too. The early birds catching their worms are herald. Stupid happy songs.

Yeah, I don't like that, either. I had a weird, uncomfortable dream last night that I was trying to rent a car, and everything was sold out, because Texas A&M was in some sort of crazy championship, and there's like 500,000 people there, and they'd rented all the cars. So I had to stand around and wait until somebody brought a car back and jump on that, and there was like 12 other people

doing the same thing. It was kind of stressful. Texas A&M. No idea why. Out of nowhere, huh? Yeah. I thought at least it'd be UT. No.

It was A&M. So, Chuck. So weird. You know what that was? That was an example, dreams in general, an example of my neural networks, whatever I'd learned or thought of that day, or something I'd jogged my memory, whatever.

Sure. There's an idea that dreams are basically your brain strengthening neural networks by stimulating different ones. Basically doing some paperwork, some sorting, while your body's sleeping. Yeah, we still haven't done our Deluxe Dream podcast ever. We haven't.

Somebody asked for it recently. Yeah, we'll do it. I think we're getting more and more prepared, too. It's coming. It's coming. But that idea is based on one of the things that's based on what a guy named Francis Crick, who you'll remember, was one of the co-discoverers of the structured DNA.

Yeah, he was the D, right? Oh, no. You're thinking of Ron D. I think, yeah. Later on in his career, really got into the idea of this thing called the astonishing hypothesis. I love this. But it's a little depressing, if you ask me.

We've talked about it before. I think we talked about it in mirror neurons. But the astonishing hypothesis is, essentially, that all of our thoughts, our dreams, our beliefs, our hopes, our fears, our connections to others, every aspect of the human experience is based on neurons and their excitement, right? And he said, quite famously, quote,

you're nothing but a bowl of neurons. Or pack. I'll take a bowl. OK. But I said, quote. Yeah. So you're just rewriting Crick. How about a sack of neurons?

I like that. A fistful of neurons. Oh, God, that's awesome. Thank you. That's a band name right there. I knew you were going to say that. Fistful of neurons? Yeah.

Someone's going to be that now. Yes. So at the basis of all this is the neurotransmitter, right? Yes. Which is an electrochemical compound that, depending on what kind of neuron is excited or what compound is passed from synapse to synapse, right? Yeah.

You're going to have a different kind of experience. But all of these experiences are based on these electrochemical reactions in your neural networks. That's right. So you have one neuron exciting another, and they become connected, and it goes on and on. And then you have a neural network

that's associated with fear, or a fear of bears, more specifically. You see a bear, and it's excited, because you stored this neural network as a memory. Right. And that's consciousness. That's being alive, as they say. Right.

But it kind of takes the mystery out of life to a certain extent. Anything? Yeah, but it also, and that's a great setup, too, for this. It also, as long as you can measure that, and you can measure those brainwaves, that means there's something going on there. Right, because we do have machines

called electroencephalographs, EEGs, that measure the electrical activity in your head. And we've determined, science has come to agree, that there's a strong enough correlation between somebody going, hey, why is this thing on my head? And electrical activity, while it's happening, that when we detect this electrical activity, we're saying this person is conscious.

Right. Right? Right. And that is a great way to set up a study that was performed in the Netherlands. He's wacky Dutch. Yeah. At Radboud.

I'm sure that's not pronounced correctly. I would say Radboed. Radboed University in the Netherlands. Where in the Netherlands? It's that word. I know. It's a lot of consonants right there. Nittin, nimigan, nimogen.

Nijmegen. Nijmegen. That's what I'm going with. And that's one of the easier-looking Dutch words I've said. If you go over there, it's crazy. Yeah. So they did this when you work with lab rats,

that sometimes you have to put them to death. And what they do is they chop their little heads off. Because that's a quick and speedy way to kill something. So they thought, we might want to do some tests to see if this is actually a humane way of doing this. Which is what they thought all along, which is why they decapitate rats and other lab animals, is because it's assumed that's humane.

Right. These Dutch researchers were saying, well, wait a minute. Is it? Let's find out. I would think smothering one with a tiny pillow would be. While petting it. Yeah, while stroking it. I've thought about that too, but fear.

Yeah, sure. Because I think we should probably define humane here. Humane is probably the absence of fear and pain. It's a humane way to kill something on purpose. Yeah, right? Those are probably the two things I would want cut out of my death. Yes.

Fear and pain. So they did this. They performed these tests on rats, attached them to the little EEGs, cut off their heads. And they found that the brain continued to operate, generate electrical activity between 13 and 100 hertz frequency, which is, that means, thought and consciousness.

Right. Study of electrical activity in the brain, we found that within that band, that frequency band, those frequency bands, that's when you're thinking and feeling and saying what is going on. Right. Why is my lifeless body over there without my head on it? Right.

For about four seconds and then lights out. Yeah, lights out. And then I think after about another 50 seconds or something, 40 or 50 seconds, there was one last burst. Lights back on? It wasn't exactly lights back on. It was like the end of everything in one last point. But there was nothing between those that indicated consciousness.

It was just like everything was gone after about 50 seconds. But four seconds consciousness. Right, which brings us to capital punishment. Capital, the way they came up with that originally is from the Latin term caput, which means head. So decapitation was where capital punchments derived from decapitation. That's exactly right.

And so now we can talk about humans losing their heads. Well, yeah, because as we said, a humane way of executing something or dispatching something is to take fear and pain out of it, right? Yeah. And this study of these rats suggests that, hold on, I want everybody to do this, right? I want you to look around to think, to feel, to listen

while I count four seconds off. You ready? Yeah. One, two, three, four. Took a lot of inches then, didn't you? A lot more than I'd be comfortable taking in with my head not attached to my body. Exactly.

So this is why the rat study is so disturbing, because it suggests that after your head is cut off, you are still very much aware of what's going on and can think and feel and be terrified, right? Yes. And I wish I had a better source for this, but I did find one doctor that firmly believes that there's a lot of pain associated

with execution by decapitation. Yes. Maybe not for long, but he's like, I don't know about this painless thing. And long before this Dutch study was published, people have long suspected you're still conscious after you're decapitated for a little while. Let's talk about decapitation.

First, I want to give a shout out to our buddy Alan Bellows from Damn Interesting, who wrote a great article as well. Do you know him? That, yeah, he emails with us sometimes. Oh, OK, yeah. He wrote one called Lucid Decapitation that I use as a source for this.

It's great. I read that today, too. Yes. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the I Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Chuck, let's do talk about a history of head loss, as it were. And not losing one's head is in losing one's cool. No. You mean chopper style. Although you do probably lose your cool

when you lose your head, and you're still conscious. We'll find out. In the biblical apocrypha, I love that word, there's a widow named Judith. She cut off the head of an Assyrian general named Holophranese. And he was a bad guy laying siege to her town. She cut his head off.

Romans did that. She seduced him, and then cut his head off. Oh, that's the way to do it. Especially if you're a biblical widow. Right. The Romans did that to their own, because they thought it was a better and more painless way than crucifixion, which they did to outsiders.

Yes. Which is not a very nice way to die. No. In evil Europe, obviously, all kinds of people, from the ruling class to peasants. And today it still happens in a few Middle Eastern countries. Yeah, Qatar, Yemen, Iran, most prominently Saudi Arabia. You've seen, what was it?

Fahrenheit 9-11, there's footage of somebody being beheaded in public in Saudi Arabia in the late 90s. Did they use the sword? Yeah. Oh, really? Yep. The Schmittar. And Josh, there are also the extra judicial,

like when a journalist is captured and beheaded by a group of guerrillas. And that's not like they don't use a sword or a guillotine. It's really gruesome. Yes, it's extremely gruesome. That's right. That's why most modern cultures have come to the conclusion that beheading is extremely barbaric.

It's an extremely painful way to die. And I imagine probably one of the more terrifying ways to die, too. Yes. But it took a while for everybody to come to that conclusion, right? Yeah, and you mentioned Saudi Arabia is one of the main countries.

They have, I guess you would call, very qualified swordsmen to do this. But other places, they're not so qualified, and it doesn't go as smoothly. Sometimes there's some chopping that has to go on, which is not ideal. And one of the reasons why it is an ideal is because it takes chopping, or it

did for many, many centuries, because you had to either do it with a knife, which was really not a beheading. It was more cutting someone's head off over the course of a few minutes, probably. Or you could try to behead somebody with an axe or a sword. And those were the two favored implements used for state-sanctioned executions, right? But like you said, in some cultures,

like Saudi Arabia today, you're a very highly trained, highly skilled headsman, is what it's called. In other cultures, you could have also doubled as the guy who pulled the lever on the gallows. And you had no extra training. Maybe you'd done it once before. Maybe you hadn't. So for the most part, when you were beheaded,

most likely it was going to take more than one blow. And you're going to feel it. Yes. Then everything changed. Yes, the guillotine. Yes. Chuck, give them the fact of, well, one of the facts of this podcast.

Yeah, I've always heard, and I think a lot of people have always heard, the guillotine was named after Joseph Guillotine, the inventor of the guillotine. He was not the inventor of the guillotine. No, it was named after him. It was named after him, but he was not the inventor. He was the champion of the guillotine as a humane method of execution.

Yeah, he was, was he a doctor? Yeah, he was. He was a French physician of the Revolution. Another doctor named Antoine Louis was the one who actually invented it. And Joseph Ignace Guillotine had a lot more power and clout and said, this invention is awesome. It's going to allow us to kill people more humanely,

but also more quickly. And that actually led inadvertently, if the guillotine started out to be a humane method of execution, to what's called the reign of terror. Yeah, I think you said 30,000 people hit the guillotine in one year. In less than a year, actually.

And 30,000 is one of the lower estimates of it. I've seen up to 50,000 or 60,000 people. It's just like they are like, oh, great. Well, here's a machine of execution. And we're going to basically turn it into the end of the assembly line. Yeah, for those of you who don't know what a guillotine is, a little odd because they're all over the place

and cartoons even in pop culture. But it's a big, it's a tall, like 14 feet tall. At the top, yes, 14. And it drops a large blade that's held in a track. So it goes straight down. How heavy? So the blade itself has a weight at the top. You see, it's like an iron bar and then the angled blade,

right, diagonal blade. Those two things combined weigh about 175 pounds or 80 kilograms. The mouton? The mouton is the weight, yeah. So this puppy slides down very fast at 14 from 14 feet in its track. Very precisely, gets the back of your neck.

It's very sharp. And that generally means your head will probably just fall straight down into the little peach basket. Right. Ideally. Right. Now, if you were beheaded prior to the invention of the guillotine, right?

Prior to this podcast. And also, I have to say, like, you're right. Everybody knows what a guillotine looks like, to a certain extent. It wasn't until I wrote this and was doing research for it that I really actually looked at the actual guillotine, the whole assembly, right? I mean, look at that thing.

That monster is horrific. And it's like that's used by the state. And that's how you are going to die. You're going to lose your head. And Victor Hugo famously said that a person can have a certain indifference on the death penalty, as long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes. Which is, I think, very true.

It's pretty easy to talk a tough game about things like this until you actually see it go down. Exactly. Yeah, so the guillotine, what it does most notably is it deprives your brain of oxygen and blood. Right. Your circulatory system, it's a closed system, right? So it's based on pressure.

Your heart is pumping the blood throughout the body. It passes by the lungs, drops off CO2, which you exhale. It takes in oxygen, which you inhale, and then the whole thing goes again, right? As long as the system is closed and the heart's beating and the lungs are transferring air, you're fine. Once you take a head off, you have opened this closed system. And eventually, the heart's going to just pump everything

out of the neck. And whatever was in the head at that time is going to come out. And the brain, starved of oxygen and blood, starts to degrade very quickly. Its processes start to degrade, right? Yeah. Now, if you are at the hands of a hack, literally,

a headsman, who doesn't know what he's doing, he's got a blunt blade, he's hungover, who knows. He's going to take your head off. Got a disco eye. It's going to take a few hacks. And you're going to bleed out probably before your head comes off. Not so with the guillotine.

It is very precise. It comes right down. It takes your head right off. And then there's a little wooden shield to make sure that it doesn't go flying into the crowd. Instead, it maybe hits the shield and then bounces into the basket, where a headsman can hold it up.

Yeah, or sometimes throw it into the crowd. Didn't know they did that. Interesting. And sometimes they would be big jerks. In the case, a very famous case of Charlotte Corday. She was executed in France in 1793 because she assassinated a revolutionary leader named Jean-Paul Mellon.

And the jerk executioner picked up her head and smacked her around a little bit. Yeah, he got 11 years in prison for it, too. And people who witnessed this say that her expression on her headless head, I'm sorry, her head bodyless head, her dismembered head, disembodied, good lord, showed unequivocal marks of indignation.

So she actually had a facial expression of like, how dare you slap me? Right, and it wasn't like, from what I understand, it wasn't like that's how she looked when she, when he picked her head up. Yeah, there was a change. It was after he smacked her, like her cheeks flushed. And she basically went into a rage right before she died.

He got 11 years for that? Interesting. Yeah, the French did not, you did not screw around. You didn't do that. That was a huge lapse in humanity. Taste. Yeah. Cut off the heads fine.

Just smacking around. Well, again, remember that this is the time. This is 1793. The French officially adopted the guillotine in 1792 and used it until 1977. Yeah. That was the last guy to have his head cut off by the French state.

It was a, I believe, a rapist, murderer, immigrant, who hit death row. And then three years after that, France was like, we're done with the death penalty. Isn't that crazy? People were like partying in studio 64, 54. With their disco eyes? 64?

Where in the world did that come from? So. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, in France are cutting people's heads off still. Right. And again, remember, they adopted it the year before. This guy smacked Charlotte Corday's face the year after. They adopted it.

And people are like, I don't think that's supposed to happen. So from that moment on, and probably before that, because Chuck, there have been other instances of people in history who had their heads taken off. Skillfully, for example, Ambulin. Yeah. King Charles I. Yeah.

They had their heads taken skillfully, and both of them were reported to try to speak. Like they were moving their lips, so their eyes were moving. Right? And this is not funny, it's just. It's insane. Yeah, I'm not laughing because I think this is funny.

And there's a huge debate that's become increasingly one-sided in favor of what we're talking about today. The other side is, well, this is just like ghost electrical activity. Yeah, like you prick a frog 10 minutes after it is dissected and they're still gonna move. They have that stimuli. Or Marshall Brain has that very popular post on the blogs

about sprinkling salt on frogs legs and making a move. Oh, really? It's really, you've seen it. I don't think I have. You have to check it out, it's crazy, yeah. But yeah, so that's if you cut a leg off, or you cut an arm off. Yeah, that's remnant electrical activity.

Yeah. It's the same thing in the head. Right. It's still electrical activity. The problem is, you don't experience pain and fear and terror in your arm. No, no, no. Your arm feels absolutely nothing.

All sensations that we experience, whether it's our arm being cut off, or feeling terror at seeing our arm cut off, all of that is in the head. So when you decapitate the head and there's still electrical activity, the chances are that it is conscious experience. Yeah, your brain has,

it's not like your head got bashed in. Your brain is very much intact. Yes. It's just not attached to the lower half. And it still has plenty of oxygen and plenty of blood to deliver that oxygen for a few seconds, and that's what's required. As long as your brain doesn't suffer any damage,

as long as you have oxygen and you have blood, you are likely going to experience consciousness. And this is pretty much the conclusion that people have arrived at. Like, yeah, if you cut someone's head off cleanly and quickly, they're going to know what's going on for a little while afterward. Yeah, and how long is very much up for debate.

They've tested, or not tested, but they've seen evidence and other mammals up to like a half a minute. Yeah. Chickens are very famous for running around the barnyard with no heads for a little while. Did you ever hear the story of Mike the Headless Chicken? Or for a very long time, in Mike's case.

18 months? Yeah. But Mike the Headless Chicken, and if you're interested in that, type in Mike the Headless Chicken, how stuff works, and it'll bring up some things here there, including a blog post I wrote on it. But his, he was different because the farmer

missed his brain stem, and chickens are almost all brain stemmed. But Mike lived like an extra 18 months. All brain stemmed. And actually, he- And good juicy breast and wings. Exactly. And he choked on a kernel of corn

that's how Mike died after having his head cut off. How's he feeding it, though? With a dropper? Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's tell some more stories, anecdotal stories about people living and making faces. Okay.

My head's been cut off. Okay. Cause those are interesting. Yeah, yeah. In 1989, an army veteran, it was in a car crash with a friend. His friend was decapitated, sadly, and he looked at his friend's face,

not attached to his body, and saw a distinct change in expression from he says, quote, first of shock and confusion, and then terror or grief. It's horrific. It is horrific. You mentioned Ambulan and King Charles. There was one story, a very dubious one

that's not in his biographies, but Antoine Lavossier in 1794, apparently agreed to try and blink for as long as he could afterward. Yeah, he was a French chemist around the time of the revolution, right? Yeah, so he reportedly blinked for about 15 to 20 seconds.

Yeah. But there was also another murderer named Larsen air who said, all right, I'm gonna wink at everyone after my head's cut off if I can, he didn't wink. Yeah. There is an account that is not dubious. It's probably the most scientific observation

This one's awesome. of consciousness following decapitation ever. It's very famous, and it is verified as far as I know. In 1905, a guy named Dr. Boreo, right? Mm-hmm. Basically got permission to study the decapitated head of a murderer named Henri Longuil, right? Mm-hmm.

And so he was right there, right at head level when Longuil's head came off. He had his plan in place, I assume. He immediately picks up the head and starts experimenting on it. And over the course of 25 to 30 seconds, the physician basically, he said, Longuil. And Longuil opened his eyes and focused him.

Yeah. His head, just his head, focused him on Dr. Boreo and then kind of like faded out again. Mm-hmm. And the doctor said, Longuil. And Longuil opened his eyes again and focused him. He says, undeniably, focused them on the doctor's eyes again. And then he tried it a third time and then nothing.

So that was his plan, yell his name. Yeah, I guess it worked. But it did work. He said that his observations were that this decapitated head went from its eyes closed or glazed over to consciousness coming back into it and it focusing its eyes on him because as a response to his name being called, wow. Yeah.

And 1795, a German researcher, ST Summering. This is the worst one if you ask me. He said that he, he, he, there was a physician inspecting a head and poked the spinal canal with his finger and that the head, the person grimaced horribly and they grind their teeth. So it's almost as if the head was saying, I know you think I'm dead, but that really, really hurts.

Yeah, the spinal canal is where your spinal cord is in your spine. So you would think that there was a little bit left because he was poking it up into the spinal cord with his finger. And I can't imagine the excruciating pain that that would cause. Well, the doctor I found that said

that he thought it was decidedly painful, that's what he said. He's like, you can't expose and cut the spine like that without there being a lot of pain. Yeah, and that was ST Summering, right? In 1795, arguing in the French newspapers to stop cutting people's heads off. Well, they listened a little less than 200 years later.

So I think the answer to this one is yes, you stay conscious after your head is cut off from your body, at least for several seconds. That's right, right? Well done, sir. Thank you, sir. Good article. If you want to learn more, you should search for stuff

you should know, how stuff works in your search engine. And it should bring up our brand spanking new, beautiful looking stuff you should know homepage. Yeah, we got a little fan page now that looks like a proper fan page. Yeah, and we decide what's on it, right? We say, hey, here's some cool articles you guys should check out.

Here's some articles based on some of our favorite podcasts, image galleries, quizzes, just basically everything like, it's like they gave a portion of the site to us. Yeah. And we're doing some cool stuff with it. How about that? So you'll be able to find that there, right? Indeed.

OK. And yeah, wow, I didn't say search bar. No. Just type decapitation into the search bar at howstuffworks.com, and that will probably bring up some cool stuff, including this. That sounds like a practical joke. Yeah.

Just type decapitation and see what happens. Brings up nothing but rabbits. And since I said search bar, listener man. Josh, I'm going to call this a little poem from Alex, our fan. And Alex's birthday is April 26, two day. Happy birthday, dude. Happy birthday, Alex. You know your timing there, buddy.

Yeah. And this is his 21st birthday, and I hope he has a strong stomach or else he was never going to hear this. That's right. Alex is in a creative writing class, and he writes poems and lots of them. Wait, he says, I write nothing but poems,

even though I'm a guy. Yes, Josh. He is a guy, but he is a poet. A strange thing to say. Renaissance man. Recently, I was listening to How Fossils Work in Saunas. More interesting than you think, and I wrote this poem about the podcast.

Sleeping in my bed, trying to absorb unique facts about different topics. Dreaming of a fossil forming, a young Josh smoking, and an older Chuck laughing at dirty jokes. I'm not sure what that means. Understanding now that reading about saunas requires you to strip. Having this podcast allows me to own a piece of history.

I'm sorry. Own a piece of unique history. OK. Learning about different parts of human life. Keeling over and laughter at the jokes. Wait, you are reading this like William Shatner reads poetry. I am. Now I know why people own iProducts to listen to Josh and Chuck.

W, talk about, talk and joke around. Hope you like it. And um. It's hope you like it part of the poem? I don't remember. No, it's not. OK. Because that'd be weird.

So the whole. I end all my poems with hope you like them. Yeah, but you know, the first letter of each line spells out stuff you should know. Oh. You didn't know that? That's why I was reading it like Shatner. OK.

Having would be the H, own would be the O. You didn't know that? Even points out, if you still don't get it, read the first letter of each line. It doesn't. So very creative. Even the Josh said we get it. Thanks a lot, Alex.

Happy birthday to you. Right, Chuck? Indeed. Probably shouldn't ask for any decapitation stories. Or poems. Yeah, no poems. Yeah, don't get any ideas from this. This was just special.

Right? Yep. If you have an unusual pet that is not a ferret because it's not unusual any longer, we want to hear about it. If you have taken an animal from the wild and tamed it to be your pet or possibly do your bidding, we want to hear stories about that, OK?

Send it in an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The Howstuffworks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.