Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know from How Stuff Works dot Com? Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things we like to think about online fraud. Shouldn't do one of them, because with every purchase, PISA prevents to texts and resolves online fraud safe secure Visa. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh and Chuck. Here a couple of staff writers at how stuff works dot Com. How's it coming, Shuff, It's going good, Josh, so Chuck. I hate to tell you this, but there are people who are setting themselves on fire all over India right now. Have you heard anything about this right now? Possibly very lately. By right now, I mean lately. No, I didn't know that. It's it's becoming something of a widespread trend, actually terribly. UM. I read about one guy who's a tea vendor. You know, he just sells tea like you know, you buy a hot dog right on the streets of New or This guy just sells tea. Um. And apparently he fell in the bad graces of a local representative of the local government. Uh. And the guy was kind of being abused by this guy, the the government official. Um, and in retaliation, he doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire in front of the guy's house. That'll show him, yeah, pretty much. Um. Now the guy lived, but he has burns like over his body. And at this point you kind of wonder that all right, well, which is worse? You know? Right? It sounds like a terrible way to go. And and the whole thing, uh kind of reminded me that of an article i'd written into called is there a Worst Way to Die? When I was I love this article. It was like, uh, it was really interesting to write. I talked to um, a funeral director, I talked to a an E. R. Doctor, and I also spoke with the guy who is the director of the Ernest beck R Foundation. We'll talk about that in a minute. But um, because there's no there's no quantifiable way to say, yes, there's definitely a worse way to die, and here it is, it's all subjective and even worse, there's um, there weren't any you know, nationally recognized poles out there. I actually contacted Gallop to find out if they'd ever asked that question. No. I I wanted to find out what the data was if they'd ever taken that poll, and they said that they never had. I found one that was pretty close, a gallop pole that was about UM, fear of dying, not the worst way to die, and um. Astoundingly only of the people polled said that they were afraid to die. Interesting, and I think a really logical follow up question would have would have been, how often do you actually think about your own death? Maybe we should have conducted our own pole. Maybe we will, we will, We'll get it up on the site in no time instead of quiz corner fear of death corner. Um. But while I was researching it, I came across the impromptu poles about the worst way to die. Immolation is usually ranks up pretty high. Yeah, I would say, so burning to death not good, not good at all. I would say drowning is probably up there too. Drowning is up there too. Um. Yeah, they're usually uh, they're usually interchangeable at the top. What's your what's your worst way to die? Boy? Uh? I don't know if I could say the worst method of death, but I think that anything where I died alone would be the worst way. That is very funny that you bring that up, because I was doing extra research for this podcast and there was a British pole um from April this past April, and uh, the majority of the respondents said that their worst death was a dying alone. Yeah. Like Isaac ky Is, God rest his soul. He just passed a few days ago and I think they found him in his home jam with a treadmill going and something is mundane said. It just seems like the most depressing way to go. You know, you're lying there, your treadmill still alive right next to you, and there you are, right and and surrounded by no one. Right. Or Elvis Presley, as you know, I have Elvis on the brain after writing about Graceland and uh, you know Elvis famously died in his bathroom reading a book and no one found him, you know, for hours, So he was just laying there in his bathroom. Yeah, so this the second worst aspect of death that people came up with was not enough access to pain relief, right, which is a big thing to like if you basically there there's a really good way to answer this question is by changing the wording. Uh, is there the best way to die? I think you would find across the board dying um in your sleep would probably be the best, most highly rated way to go. People don't want to feel pain now, people don't want to be afraid or alone. Now. My worst death kind of combines all these except for the pain part. I don't think pain would be involved. Um plane crash, right, I'm actually I'm flying to Malta a week or so from now, and yeah, I'm not looking forward to the to the plane ride. Uh. In My big problem with with dying in a plane crash is if you're at thirty thousand feet or something like that, it doesn't happen instantaneously. A good minute or two headed straight to Earth at like eight hundred miles an hour. But even that takes a minute, maybe two, maybe three, depending on how high up you are. And buddy, you're totally aware of what's going on the whole time, right, You've got a solid minute to three minutes to think about you know, hey, I'm going to die, right, And the panic and the hysteria just I would say with everyone on the plane, it's not If you're by yourself, it would be bad enough. But you have hundreds of strangers that you were probably annoyed with just moments earlier for one reason or another, and you're all going through this. So at least you're not going to die alone. But I'll tell you what, if George Gallup asked the people on a plane that was going down if they fear death, I'm pretty sure that the percentages would skyrocket that had to be hastily performed. Pole. Yeah, exactly. So, UM, you know, basically, check our our our approach to death, our fear of death, um, and some theorist size uh is a result of a kind of sanitizing of death. Of UM, basically, our our desire to not look death in the face, not think about death. UM. Becker Becker and the anatology A lot of Ernest Becker's views his his whole field was called the psychology of death, right and UM. In Becker's opinion, UH, culture, every aspect of culture, from our lazy boy recliners, to Nascar, to whiskey to guitar hero to the climbing the corporate ladder, whatever it is, it all serves to distract us from thinking about our own mortality. So culture, as has been created to distract us so we can throw ourselves into it. Um. That's Becker stands. The problem is, is we In Becker's opinion, he he died many, many years ago, UM at age forty nine. Sadly, I wonder if he saw that one coming. I don't know, but I'll bet you if there was ever a human who is walking the earth who was cool with it, or it was Becker and he died of cancer too, So I mean he knew it was coming. Um. But in Becker's opinion, we we know that death is coming. We're distracting ourselves. So the unconscious mind UH has to find an outlet somewhere, and usually that outlet is violence or aggression or war. So in Becker's opinion, if we'd all just go ahead and accept the fact that we are going to die someday and we don't know when it's gonna happen or how it's gonna happen, we'd all be a lot better off. We'd all basically chill, right. And I know, along those same lines of how we UH insulate ourselves from death as how, there's not as many open casket funerals these days. And I know back in the in the olden times, as they say, well as recent is the nineteenth century. Yeah, people would sit up with the dead. I know. That's a Southern tradition where you would literally have the body in your house or wherever they died, and uh, you know the family is just hanging out, yeah, for for days on it. Yeah. And one of the points of that was to socialized children to death public viewings, right, Yeah. And plus another aspect of it was, um, usually it wasn't the home because most people died in the home because modern medicine, you know, just kind of went, you know, good luck with that pal see see in hell, that kind of thing. Um. And uh, nowadays, you know, in nineteen hundred, the average life expectancy was, um, it was like forty nine years old. In two thousand and eight, it's seventies seven, creeping up on seventy eight. If it's not, they're already. So that extra you know, twenty almost thirty years has really kind of um strung us out right. We are really interested in in squeezing every last minute out of it, even sadly beyond the time when the quality of life has diminished. So what are he's saying, Well, I'm saying, we have all these machines to keep us alive, to breathe for us, and we know that they're out there. Um, so we have thrown ourselves even further into this denial of death. It right, So the very things that keep us alive or distracting us from the obvious pretty much and the inevitable. Yeah, and there was there was another aspect when you brought up nineteenth century that I found really interesting. There was a trend. Have you heard a bereavement photography? Uh? Yeah, that was um Like, have you seen the movie The Assassination of Jesse James? I have not. Yeah, he was famously a photographed and his casket uh you know, and the whole town came out. They had him on a block of ice. The whole town came and viewed the body and had their picture made with picture made were from the South picture had their picture made with the body of Jesse James. This is that what you're talking about? That? Yeah? I mean it's it's it's it's a photograph of a dead person. Um. For usually though it was of a loved one, and oftentimes they'd be on a couch sitting up looking like they were sleeping or in bed looking like they were sleeping. Sometimes their eyes were propped open to make it look like they were awake. That's really uh, it was kind of odd, but it actually still continues today. There are there is bereavement photography. Usually it's um used by parents whose child was was stillborn or died at a very very young age and this will be the only photo that they ever have of them. Is this the United States mainly, Yeah, it's um, it's you don't want to stay time, because clearly they're they're getting something from it, like I'm sure it poses like it creates a sense of catharsis or finality to it. And and plus they and say, well, this is what my baby looked like is for a short time as he or she was on earth, you know, Um, and it's a it's very sad, but I imagine that you can get something out of it. Who am I to judge exactly? And and photography in general kind of has since it since it was created, has always had kind of this fascination with death, like breathment photography or outlaws. Um. Even even Pablo Escobar, you know there's that famous photo of him all bloated and dead on that rooftop and meta ying or a famous photo of Lizzie Borden's father, uh, you know, kind of sideways on the couch. Yeah, face mashed in And what is it about as humans that wish that that photo wasn't so greeny, that you could make it out a little more, you know. But at the same time we kind of lets the imagination run. Well, we're a sick, sick, twisted species. We're afraid of her own death, and yet we love morbid photography of dead people, or at least you and I we don't want to. I guess we shouldn't speak for the rest of humanity, although you know, I'd say we're fairly typical. Um. But but back to the photography part. There's, um, there's this really cool exhibit uh by a German photographer named Walter Shells, right, and uh. He did this series called Life Before Death. And what he did was he went and visited people who were terminally ill, spent the last you know, a couple of days of their lives with him, got you know, took series of photographs of him, got like the one he's looking for, and then arranged to take another photo of them right after they died, and he juxtaposed them one right next to the other, and there's actually a really great spread on the Guardian the Guardians UK site. What he find it was it was it uplifting or was it depressing? It's very subjective. It's death. You know, there's no objectivity with death. We have no idea what's coming after this. It's all subjective. You're scared of it, you're not scared of it whatever. Um So it's definitely one of those things where you know you're going to take what you want out of it, and some are more startling than others. But it's it's really it's odd and it's oddly comforting. Yeah, i'd like to see that. Yeah, well you can see it on the Guardians side. But first don't forget to go to how Stuff works dot com and read is there a Worst Way to Die? It's a pretty cool article if I do say so myself, and stick around to find out which article makes me pretty excited. It scares the hell out of chuck. Right after this stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about, like, say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera. But thankfully we don't need to think about online fraud because for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that for peace of mind? Safe, secure Visa. So Chuck, we're back. I know this. Uh, this article scares the hell out of you. I like it. Tell us about it. What's the missiplicity project? You want to tell everybody? Yeah, it has to do with dog cloning, cloning your pets and h kind of creeps me out. I know that you love your dogs like I do, but you want to clone yours? Do you want to have nine instead of three? Well, my dogs are never going to die, not if I have anything to say about it. But if they do, I feel comforted knowing that I can bring them back. Well, you better get a second job, buddy, It ain't you. No, I know it's not. I'm saving up already. Actually, it's like put kids through college, or you know, bring dogs back to life. Right, And we want to give a shout out to how stuff Works freelancer Julia Layton for creating a really cool article. You can check it out on how stuff works dot com. Just type in what's the mis Simplicity Project For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what you did. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know from How Stuff Works dot Com? Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things we like to think about online fraud. Shouldn't do one of them, because with every purchase, PISA prevents to texts and resolves online fraud safe secure Visa. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh and Chuck. Here a couple of staff writers at how stuff works dot Com. How's it coming, Shuff, It's going good, Josh, so Chuck. I hate to tell you this, but there are people who are setting themselves on fire all over India right now. Have you heard anything about this right now? Possibly very lately. By right now, I mean lately. No, I didn't know that. It's it's becoming something of a widespread trend, actually terribly. UM. I read about one guy who's a tea vendor. You know, he just sells tea like you know, you buy a hot dog right on the streets of New or This guy just sells tea. Um. And apparently he fell in the bad graces of a local representative of the local government. Uh. And the guy was kind of being abused by this guy, the the government official. Um, and in retaliation, he doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire in front of the guy's house. That'll show him, yeah, pretty much. Um. Now the guy lived, but he has burns like over his body. And at this point you kind of wonder that all right, well, which is worse? You know? Right? It sounds like a terrible way to go. And and the whole thing, uh kind of reminded me that of an article i'd written into called is there a Worst Way to Die? When I was I love this article. It was like, uh, it was really interesting to write. I talked to um, a funeral director, I talked to a an E. R. Doctor, and I also spoke with the guy who is the director of the Ernest beck R Foundation. We'll talk about that in a minute. But um, because there's no there's no quantifiable way to say, yes, there's definitely a worse way to die, and here it is, it's all subjective and even worse, there's um, there weren't any you know, nationally recognized poles out there. I actually contacted Gallop to find out if they'd ever asked that question. No. I I wanted to find out what the data was if they'd ever taken that poll, and they said that they never had. I found one that was pretty close, a gallop pole that was about UM, fear of dying, not the worst way to die, and um. Astoundingly only of the people polled said that they were afraid to die. Interesting, and I think a really logical follow up question would have would have been, how often do you actually think about your own death? Maybe we should have conducted our own pole. Maybe we will, we will, We'll get it up on the site in no time instead of quiz corner fear of death corner. Um. But while I was researching it, I came across the impromptu poles about the worst way to die. Immolation is usually ranks up pretty high. Yeah, I would say, so burning to death not good, not good at all. I would say drowning is probably up there too. Drowning is up there too. Um. Yeah, they're usually uh, they're usually interchangeable at the top. What's your what's your worst way to die? Boy? Uh? I don't know if I could say the worst method of death, but I think that anything where I died alone would be the worst way. That is very funny that you bring that up, because I was doing extra research for this podcast and there was a British pole um from April this past April, and uh, the majority of the respondents said that their worst death was a dying alone. Yeah. Like Isaac ky Is, God rest his soul. He just passed a few days ago and I think they found him in his home jam with a treadmill going and something is mundane said. It just seems like the most depressing way to go. You know, you're lying there, your treadmill still alive right next to you, and there you are, right and and surrounded by no one. Right. Or Elvis Presley, as you know, I have Elvis on the brain after writing about Graceland and uh, you know Elvis famously died in his bathroom reading a book and no one found him, you know, for hours, So he was just laying there in his bathroom. Yeah, so this the second worst aspect of death that people came up with was not enough access to pain relief, right, which is a big thing to like if you basically there there's a really good way to answer this question is by changing the wording. Uh, is there the best way to die? I think you would find across the board dying um in your sleep would probably be the best, most highly rated way to go. People don't want to feel pain now, people don't want to be afraid or alone. Now. My worst death kind of combines all these except for the pain part. I don't think pain would be involved. Um plane crash, right, I'm actually I'm flying to Malta a week or so from now, and yeah, I'm not looking forward to the to the plane ride. Uh. In My big problem with with dying in a plane crash is if you're at thirty thousand feet or something like that, it doesn't happen instantaneously. A good minute or two headed straight to Earth at like eight hundred miles an hour. But even that takes a minute, maybe two, maybe three, depending on how high up you are. And buddy, you're totally aware of what's going on the whole time, right, You've got a solid minute to three minutes to think about you know, hey, I'm going to die, right, And the panic and the hysteria just I would say with everyone on the plane, it's not If you're by yourself, it would be bad enough. But you have hundreds of strangers that you were probably annoyed with just moments earlier for one reason or another, and you're all going through this. So at least you're not going to die alone. But I'll tell you what, if George Gallup asked the people on a plane that was going down if they fear death, I'm pretty sure that the percentages would skyrocket that had to be hastily performed. Pole. Yeah, exactly. So, UM, you know, basically, check our our our approach to death, our fear of death, um, and some theorist size uh is a result of a kind of sanitizing of death. Of UM, basically, our our desire to not look death in the face, not think about death. UM. Becker Becker and the anatology A lot of Ernest Becker's views his his whole field was called the psychology of death, right and UM. In Becker's opinion, UH, culture, every aspect of culture, from our lazy boy recliners, to Nascar, to whiskey to guitar hero to the climbing the corporate ladder, whatever it is, it all serves to distract us from thinking about our own mortality. So culture, as has been created to distract us so we can throw ourselves into it. Um. That's Becker stands. The problem is, is we In Becker's opinion, he he died many, many years ago, UM at age forty nine. Sadly, I wonder if he saw that one coming. I don't know, but I'll bet you if there was ever a human who is walking the earth who was cool with it, or it was Becker and he died of cancer too, So I mean he knew it was coming. Um. But in Becker's opinion, we we know that death is coming. We're distracting ourselves. So the unconscious mind UH has to find an outlet somewhere, and usually that outlet is violence or aggression or war. So in Becker's opinion, if we'd all just go ahead and accept the fact that we are going to die someday and we don't know when it's gonna happen or how it's gonna happen, we'd all be a lot better off. We'd all basically chill, right. And I know, along those same lines of how we UH insulate ourselves from death as how, there's not as many open casket funerals these days. And I know back in the in the olden times, as they say, well as recent is the nineteenth century. Yeah, people would sit up with the dead. I know. That's a Southern tradition where you would literally have the body in your house or wherever they died, and uh, you know the family is just hanging out, yeah, for for days on it. Yeah. And one of the points of that was to socialized children to death public viewings, right, Yeah. And plus another aspect of it was, um, usually it wasn't the home because most people died in the home because modern medicine, you know, just kind of went, you know, good luck with that pal see see in hell, that kind of thing. Um. And uh, nowadays, you know, in nineteen hundred, the average life expectancy was, um, it was like forty nine years old. In two thousand and eight, it's seventies seven, creeping up on seventy eight. If it's not, they're already. So that extra you know, twenty almost thirty years has really kind of um strung us out right. We are really interested in in squeezing every last minute out of it, even sadly beyond the time when the quality of life has diminished. So what are he's saying, Well, I'm saying, we have all these machines to keep us alive, to breathe for us, and we know that they're out there. Um, so we have thrown ourselves even further into this denial of death. It right, So the very things that keep us alive or distracting us from the obvious pretty much and the inevitable. Yeah, and there was there was another aspect when you brought up nineteenth century that I found really interesting. There was a trend. Have you heard a bereavement photography? Uh? Yeah, that was um Like, have you seen the movie The Assassination of Jesse James? I have not. Yeah, he was famously a photographed and his casket uh you know, and the whole town came out. They had him on a block of ice. The whole town came and viewed the body and had their picture made with picture made were from the South picture had their picture made with the body of Jesse James. This is that what you're talking about? That? Yeah? I mean it's it's it's it's a photograph of a dead person. Um. For usually though it was of a loved one, and oftentimes they'd be on a couch sitting up looking like they were sleeping or in bed looking like they were sleeping. Sometimes their eyes were propped open to make it look like they were awake. That's really uh, it was kind of odd, but it actually still continues today. There are there is bereavement photography. Usually it's um used by parents whose child was was stillborn or died at a very very young age and this will be the only photo that they ever have of them. Is this the United States mainly, Yeah, it's um, it's you don't want to stay time, because clearly they're they're getting something from it, like I'm sure it poses like it creates a sense of catharsis or finality to it. And and plus they and say, well, this is what my baby looked like is for a short time as he or she was on earth, you know, Um, and it's a it's very sad, but I imagine that you can get something out of it. Who am I to judge exactly? And and photography in general kind of has since it since it was created, has always had kind of this fascination with death, like breathment photography or outlaws. Um. Even even Pablo Escobar, you know there's that famous photo of him all bloated and dead on that rooftop and meta ying or a famous photo of Lizzie Borden's father, uh, you know, kind of sideways on the couch. Yeah, face mashed in And what is it about as humans that wish that that photo wasn't so greeny, that you could make it out a little more, you know. But at the same time we kind of lets the imagination run. Well, we're a sick, sick, twisted species. We're afraid of her own death, and yet we love morbid photography of dead people, or at least you and I we don't want to. I guess we shouldn't speak for the rest of humanity, although you know, I'd say we're fairly typical. Um. But but back to the photography part. There's, um, there's this really cool exhibit uh by a German photographer named Walter Shells, right, and uh. He did this series called Life Before Death. And what he did was he went and visited people who were terminally ill, spent the last you know, a couple of days of their lives with him, got you know, took series of photographs of him, got like the one he's looking for, and then arranged to take another photo of them right after they died, and he juxtaposed them one right next to the other, and there's actually a really great spread on the Guardian the Guardians UK site. What he find it was it was it uplifting or was it depressing? It's very subjective. It's death. You know, there's no objectivity with death. We have no idea what's coming after this. It's all subjective. You're scared of it, you're not scared of it whatever. Um So it's definitely one of those things where you know you're going to take what you want out of it, and some are more startling than others. But it's it's really it's odd and it's oddly comforting. Yeah, i'd like to see that. Yeah, well you can see it on the Guardians side. But first don't forget to go to how Stuff works dot com and read is there a Worst Way to Die? It's a pretty cool article if I do say so myself, and stick around to find out which article makes me pretty excited. It scares the hell out of chuck. Right after this stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about, like, say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera. But thankfully we don't need to think about online fraud because for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that for peace of mind? Safe, secure Visa. So Chuck, we're back. I know this. Uh, this article scares the hell out of you. I like it. Tell us about it. What's the missiplicity project? You want to tell everybody? Yeah, it has to do with dog cloning, cloning your pets and h kind of creeps me out. I know that you love your dogs like I do, but you want to clone yours? Do you want to have nine instead of three? Well, my dogs are never going to die, not if I have anything to say about it. But if they do, I feel comforted knowing that I can bring them back. Well, you better get a second job, buddy, It ain't you. No, I know it's not. I'm saving up already. Actually, it's like put kids through college, or you know, bring dogs back to life. Right, And we want to give a shout out to how stuff Works freelancer Julia Layton for creating a really cool article. You can check it out on how stuff works dot com. Just type in what's the mis Simplicity Project For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what you did. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you