After Life
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
This hour: Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lie beyond.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
3D Lab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trading. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life so you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trading of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. When you die, we can all agree on this. Something changes. We talked to a biologist at Princeton University, Lee Silver, who told us a story about a guy back in 1907 who did a very interesting experiment. His name was Duncan McDougal. I don't know. I don't know. I don't remember exactly who he was. He was a doctor. A doctor. A physician. Yes. And what's his story? He meant to prove that the soul exited the body after death. He thought the soul had a certain amount of weight that it was a substance. And so what he did was he had these people who were dying from tuberculosis and they were lying on beds on this gigantic scale. He literally put people almost dying onto a scale. Yes. They employ a patient on one side of the scale and on the other side are weights and they're in perfect balance. And then at the moment of death. Right at the last breath. He tried to determine whether or not the scale changed. So did they lose weight when they died? That was the question. Right. He claimed that on average they lost 21 grams, the instant they died. Does he describe the moment that suddenly the scales shift one way or the other? Yeah. The moment. I mean death was easy in those days because you stopped breathing. You were dead. I mean there weren't, they weren't hooked up to the scenes or something like that. Right. So it's the last breath. Last breath. Yes. Sometimes headline was, "Soul has weight physician thinks." Right. Great headline.
Transcription truncated.
This hour: Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lie beyond.