Anyone know the tune(s) that play underneath Metamorphosis? It's earth-shatteringly beautiful stuff.

Found it here!
Temptations: Take a Stroll Through Your Mind

Which group did the song "My Mind is Sleeping but I'm wide awake"?

I've never been actually moved by any particular NPR or Radiolab segment before. But listening to Jeffrey Tambor's reading of "Metamorphosis," I had to go back and listen several times.

It's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

wout:
i like what youre trying to do but some of what you said is kind of misguided as air has a weight too, so air leaving the lungs wouldnt make a body heavier.

first off let me say I mean no offense here

about thorns feeling the weight increases

this could be 2 reasons

1. psycolegy... it's not unheard of in time of grief to feel like everything is heavier...

2. im not sure wether you held her in your arms or that you where just holding her hand but as someone dies the body goes limb and it always make it heavier

hey I had a discussion with some family members about weight leaving the body... it was a pretty good one till someone came in and said

when *loved one* died I saw him sweatting and it's just sweat leaving the body....

now at this point nobody dared to contradict him cause we where talking about someone close who died....

but I want to (for my own sake of mind) make sure that this statement is completly ridiculous...

if someone is sweating sweat is still on the body so that weight isn't gone yet

air leaving the lungs would increase the weight

and if it is consistantly(no matter how crude the matter of mesuare) it happened to everyone so there is something leaving

Great show, as always.

I had one thought about the last item, "Tennis" -- the ending thought is a pointless one: proving a negative is impossible, by definition. You cannot prove someone is dead, you can only prove they are alive.

This episode isn't on the iTunes feed. What gives?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I meant "kind of death"...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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..."

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

I really liked this episode! Good work.

Loved the topic and the humor.

Looking forward to the next episodes :)

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.

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.