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Comments

• [1] Sarah McClary from Dayton, Ohio July 29, 2009 - 11:46AM

  The 21 grams is probably merely the weight of pressure from air in the lungs and other gasses that would be expelled from the body after death. The Egyptians believed that a person's Ka (life-force) left the body along with the Ba (soul) at the time of death.

  Also, I think it would have been interesting to look at what happens after life if you believe in reincarnation. That belief system holds that your soul is reborn as a sentient being over and over again until the destruction of the universe.

  Is the soul made of matter? One of the basic laws of physics says matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

  
  
• [2] Phillip from Silver Spring, Maryland August 02, 2009 - 08:17AM

  I really enjoy this show. And I enjoyed this episode. However...

  Much of this episode was not really about science. It was more about beliefs and spirituality.

  In the end, I thought it strayed a little too far into territory covered by PRI's "This American Life."

  Just a thought. Keep up the good work.

  
  
• [3] Jerome from Luxembourg, Europe August 04, 2009 - 04:07PM

  I really liked this episode! Good work.

  Loved the topic and the humor.

  Looking forward to the next episodes :)

  
  
• [4] Marcie from Berkeley, CA August 05, 2009 - 12:37PM

  As usual, brilliant editing and inspiring content. Would you release a list of the music used in this episode?

  
  
• [5] Chris from Austin,Tx August 05, 2009 - 02:17PM

  Beautiful show, i really enjoyed it. I've gotta second Marcie's comment, please let us know where these samples come from!

  "my mind is sleeping but i'm wide awake..."

  
  
• [6] Valerie from Austin, TX August 05, 2009 - 03:19PM

  Hello there,

  Lovely podcast. Where can I find out what songs were being played in the background of this episode. There was one in particular in the middle of the episode, a woman singing a very opera-like song.

  Thanks and keep up the awesome work!

  -V

  
  
• [7] Radiolab from WNYC August 17, 2009 - 06:01PM

  Hey there, for those of you wondering, “My mind is sleeeepin” is The Temptations.“Take a Stroll Thru Your Mind” from Psychedelic Soul.

  Feel free to write into radiolab@wnyc.org to ask about other song references.

  
  
• [8] Neal Deesit August 21, 2009 - 04:51AM

  The Afterlife by Billy Collins

  While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your

  teeth,

  or riffling through a magazine in bed,

  the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

  They are moving off in all imaginable directions,

  each according to his own private belief,

  and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not

  reveal:

  that everyone is right, as it turns out.

  You go to the place you always thought you would

  go,

  the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

  Some are being shot up a funnel of flashing colors

  into a zone of light, white as January sun.

  Others are standing naked before a forbidding

  judge who sits

  with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on

  the other.

  Some have already joined the celestial choir

  and are singing as if they have been doing this

  forever,

  while the less inventive find themselves stuck

  in a big air-conditioned room full of food and

  chorus girls.

  Some are approaching the apartment of the female

  God,

  a woman in her forties with short wiry hair

  and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.

  With one eye she regards the dead through a hole

  in her door.

  There are those who are squeezing into the bodies

  of animals—eagles and leopards—and one trying

  on

  the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,

  ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

  while others float off into some benign vagueness,

  little units of energy heading for the ultimate

  elsewhere.

  There are even a few classicists being led to an

  underworld

  by a mythological creature with a beard and

  hooves.

  He will bring them to the mouth of a furious cave

  guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three

  headed dog.

  The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins

  wishing they could return so they could learn

  Italian

  or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light

  rain.

  They wish they could wake in the morning like

  you

  and stand at a window examining the winter trees,

  every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

  
  
• [9] thorn September 01, 2009 - 02:15PM

  i was holding my mom's hand when she died unexpectedly and very fast. as i looked at her, among the many awarenesses that hit me at that moment, was: "she's not using this anymore."

  what was left lying there seemed heavier, though. not lighter.

  
  
• [10] Jason from San Fran September 17, 2009 - 07:43PM

  I believe we all suffer many deaths, the most intimate ones being within ourselves. I look back at my life, 40 now, and think of the chapters that have taken place. It seems to me each ends with a king of death. How closely related am I today to that 4 year old I once was...

  Enjoyed the show.

  
  
• [11] Jason from San Fran September 17, 2009 - 07:44PM

  I meant "kind of death"...

  
  
• [12] Nick from UWS September 18, 2009 - 12:46PM

  It's all nonsense.

  Nothing happens when you die, and after. You stop functioning. You then have no more awareness than you did before you were born. You become an inert bag of chemicals that rots away.

  A human being is like a candle. It's ignited at conception, burns, expressing its energy and personality along the way, and then burns out. Whatever "soul" it has is expressed during life. When it's over it's over.

  
  
• [13] Fred from Brooklyn, NY September 20, 2009 - 12:24AM

  Nick,

  Out of curiosity, whom exactly are you railing against? Sure. the RL hosts feign some interest in 'spiritual' questioning, but the rhetorical "what happens when we die" is really just a canard -- a bit of marketing, maybe, to draw in those NPR listeners who like their pop science leavened with some new-agey fantasies. The show's bottom line is as unsurprising as it is clear: hard core (if cutesy and rather self-satisfied) nihilism. Worry not. You're among friends.

  
  
• [14] Phillip Wiecek from Sacramento CA September 20, 2009 - 11:04PM

  In segment 7, David Eagleman totally misses the point. If the technology he posits existed and we were to make a perfect copy of someone's brain, it would not be that person. It would be a copy. The person whose brain had been copied would still exist inside their own body.

  
  
• [15] Tom in Omaha from Omaha, NE September 20, 2009 - 11:20PM

  The story of afterlife seemed to me another take on Sartre's No Exit. In the room those who were remembering were heard in the room until they were no longer remembered.

  Additionally, I have worked as a chaplain in a hospital and in a hospice agency. I have been present at around 50 deaths, when the person actually died. There is clearly a difference in that moment when death occurs, obviously the skin color in the face changed. But that element of animation, the last bit of self-will is gone in that moment.

  The only time I did not see that was with a patient who had been declared brain dead. I was there when the tests were performed to determine that brain death had occurred. The was no sign of response in any form, nothing that showed there was any self-will. When he was extubated, he did not breathe and his heart continued to beat for nearly twenty-five minutes before cardiac death occurred. There was no real change in the person appearance other than the paleness of the skin from the loss of blood flow.

  There is something that happens to the family present when death happens. It is never simple and direct, there is a sense of a brokenness, a undesired knowledge of what is inevitable, that is something that will ripple in various ways throughout the remaining days of their life.

  This is the spiritual aspect of death for us as humans, when we recognize what has changed in our loved one and ourselves.

  
  
• [16] Grit from Texas October 13, 2009 - 12:52AM

  Is it just me or did Sanjay Gupta totally steal this concept and write a book about it? I just heard him on the Colbert report and it seems like a point by point recap of this segment.