Death

It’s the inevitable fate that all of us will eventually face. Although it’s often feared or dreaded, it can drive us forward and motivate us to live our lives to the fullest. The vernacular is full of mentions of this phenomenon that is an anomalous fact of life. Religions reference it relentlessly in their rites and rituals. We’ll dig deep into death on this week’s episode of FYI!

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it's the inevitable fate that all of us will eventually face although it's often feared or dreaded it can drive us forward and motivate us to live our lives to the fullest the vernacular is full of mentions of this phenomenon that is an anomalous fact of life religions reference it relentlessly in their rights and rituals please we'll dig deep into death on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it you got it[Applause][Music][Applause] foreign[Applause][Music] edition of you guessed it FYI for your English and if you haven't figured it out we're gonna take a look at a somber subject for those of you who have that morbid curiosity we've all stopped when there was a traffic accident or at least slowed down to see what was going on and let's be honest death is a part of life so I want to start out by saying thank you to my student David for recommending this episode I jumped on the opportunity to do it because I think it's important to know a little bit about death and also to know the right vocabulary to use because usually if you have to use these Expressions that we're going to look at it's at a funeral or some event like this when you're expressing your feelings towards somebody's loss for example and as you can imagine it's a delicate subject you don't just want to go up to somebody at a funeral you know the Widow for example and the Widow is Labuda and say hey I'm really sorry your husband kicked the bucket lo siento Que La Palma you know this is a delicate time so we're going to take a look at all that and all these fun facts so thank you to David for suggesting it and while we're at it I'm gonna send a shout out to all my patrons now who are my patrons my patrons are my students who are with me every day every weekend we have classes if you're in our Interstellar level you get a monthly class with me a monthly private class with me and then every week you get a review class where we take a look at the vocabulary in each episode so I urge all of you if you haven't discovered our curious Community go over to patreon dot com slash Alberto Alonso and for as little as three Euros a month plus tax you can have access to a bonus episode worksheets and so much more plus you're part of a community so join us take a look if you'd like you can get more information on patreon.com slash Alberto Alonso we're having lots of fun and I sure hope you'll join us and you can get as little or as much as you want you don't know how many people have asked me Alberto can I get classes with you and the answer is yes you just have to join us over on patreon in our Interstellar level speaking of a shout out to all my Interstellar students Carmen Lina Issa Paco and Edgar and don't forget about my super duper students Javier Paco Roberto David who recommended the episode Jose Maria who is in our last episode on Dancing Mila and Alex if you want more information go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and join our curious Community let's take a look at the intro to Today's Show because as always I like to put some verbs some adjectives as you say in Spanish million dollar words words that make you sound eloquent I started out by saying it's the inevitable fate inevitable inevitable it's written exactly the same it's the inevitable fate Destino that all of us will eventually face we will face it one day eventually we use this adverb a lot then I said although it's often feared or dread did it's the same thing to fear something or to dread I would say to dread sounds even stronger I said it can also drive us forward to propel us and motivate us to live our lives to the fullest how many times have you heard of somebody who had a near-death experience and they approached their life in a totally different way once they survived it examples are people who have been in a coma or who you know had very slim chances of surviving a disease and ended up fighting it and winning and that's something we'll realize here in this episode the human body is just an amazing machine and who doesn't want to live their life to the fullest then I said the vernacular is full of mentions vernacular is the modern day language is full of mentions of this phenomenon that is an anomalous fact of life and then I wrapped up the intro saying religions reference it relentlessly in their rights susritos and their rituals and I want you to pronounce that word with me ritual so you notice there were two words in the intro that you would recognize in Spanish but they're pronounced totally different let's say them together inevitable rituals inevitable rituals nice job well are you ready to dig deep into death on this week's episode and did you catch my pun there to dig deep all right well I don't want to make too many jokes I mean death is a serious subject but remember half of my teaching style is cracking jokes and laughing so we'll try and treat it as serious as possible let's begin with a little definition of death well wait wait wait before we get into the definition let's clear something up death it's a verb and dead is the adjective so he's dead because he died he was never afraid of death don't mix them up they're different parts of speech and I've heard students mix them up often now there's my disclaimer we can get into our definition death is the irreversible cessation sound familiar the irreversible of all biological functions that sustain an organism for organisms with a brain death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain including the brain stem and I remember something from anatomy class if I'm not mistaken the brain stem is called the medulla oblongata the definition go goes on to say and brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death the remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death and in the bonus part we're going to take a look at what happens the processes and I'm just gonna warn you now I think it's gonna be a bit graphic but hey I think you know learning about the body learning about life death and everything in between is so important just because it's an uncomfortable topic or an uncomfortable subject doesn't mean we should avoid it I think we should talk about it even more as of the early 21st century 56 million people obviously this is ballpark a ballpark is an estimation 56 million people die per year now let's see if you guys know the answer to this one what is the most common reason the most common cause of death did you guess did you say cardiovascular disease because if you said cardiovascular disease you nailed it but that's not the only one I realized as I was researching this that there are so many different ways to die even death by vending machine and in the United States over 7 000 people a year are killed due to messy handwriting messy handwriting or as we call it chicken scratch and what does this mean well if you've ever seen the way a doctor writes a prescription it's chicken scratch you can't read their writing and that has sadly led to many deaths seven thousand too many we'll take a look at some other causes of death in the bonus episode and we just looked at the definition but if you think about it determining When Death has happened or occurred is extremely difficult because it doesn't happen simultaneously you know not all of your organs stop working at the same time that's why they say okay so which ones have to stop working so that we can deem or consider this a death so even though we just defined death there's still a gray area in there usually life is defined in terms of Consciousness if you're conscious you're alive so when Consciousness seizes some people say that that's death but there are flaws again and that's why all of this stuff is debated flaws are imperfections imperfections because if you use that approach that definition there are many organisms that are alive but probably not conscious and this is where we get into this whole euthanasia debate and we're not going to get into debates today I just want to look at all the different aspects historically they Define death as the cessation of the heartbeat cardiac arrest so when your heart stops beating you're dead or when you start breathing but when they developed CPR which is cardiopulmonary resuscitation I think it stands for significa because if you need to you know usually when you're saying those words you got to say them quickly I imagine I need CPR give him CPR no need to say the long version but CPR and defibrillation have rendered that definition inadequate I mean we've all seen it how many times have First Responders reactivated a heartbeat or gotten somebody to start breathing again so both of these functions thanks to modern technology can be restarted not always but sometimes and then as we said in the the intro many religions believe your life starts when you die your eternal life your life life of rewards and I've got to say as somebody who's not very religious but I am spiritual I would like to think there's more I think it offers Humanity hope and this is not just a Catholic or a Christian thing many religions and cultures have their ideas on the afterlife many of them say that you will be judged you will face a Judgment Day and if your good deeds outweigh your bad Deeds well then in the case of Christianity Saint Peter will open the Pearly Gates of Heaven[Music] and there are also a lot of different Customs around how to bury the body but we'll take a look at that and more fun facts in the bonus episode right now we're going to take a look at the processes processes is the plural of the word process and the process I'm referring to is human decomposition it is a natural process obviously which involves the breakdown and when something breaks down it gets down to its smallest denominator so it involves the breakdown of tissues and the rate at which a human body decomposes varies and that's due to several factors such as weather temperature moisture or humidity pH and oxygen levels cause of death body position I mean there are a lot of different factors but we're going to look at it in general there are generally four stages of decomposition and I found this information on a funeral director's website so I imagine he knows what he's talking about also as I always do when I'm researching for these episodes I look at a lot of different websites just to get all kinds of contrasting opinions and just to get ideas too the four stages are autolysis bloat active Decay and skeletonization now I think the last one is pretty clear that's when you're finally a skeleton when your body turns into a skeleton so obviously that's the fourth and final stage the first one is autolysis and this is the first stage of human decomposition another way to say it would be self-digestion the body begins to digest itself and this happens immediately after death as soon as blood circulation and respiration stop the body he has no way of receiving oxygen or removing waste and waste is well pee pee and poopy and then the excess carbon dioxide it's a little bit technical here but if you're following along it's pretty simple the excess carbon dioxide causes an acidic environment and it causes the membranes in the cells to rupture to break and these membranes that break open they release enzymes that begin to eat the cells From the Inside Out is anybody hungry I'm just kidding all right stage two of human decomposition is bloating and this is a really good word to know as well this word is a word that we use when you're in chado we don't only use it when you're dead oh man I drank too much beer I'm bloated my wife tells me sometimes when she's on her period she gets bloated in jado and bloating of the body is when leaked enzymes okay leaked leaked enzymes from the first stage begin producing many gases and due to these gases on account of these gases the human body are you ready for this the human body can double in size giving it a bloated look and that's why this stage is called bloating these compounds contain sulfur and these are released by the bacteria which is what causes the skin discoloration also this is the stage where you'll start to see insect activity sounds like fun huh I told you this wasn't going to be an easy subject to tackle but we're learning a lot of vocabulary and by the way if you can can't keep up with all the vocabulary consider becoming a patron you'll have access to all of it in the PDFs the third stage is active Decay now this is when fluids released through your orifices and orifice is a hole in your body and this is when you can really start to see that active Decay as the stage is called organs muscles and skin become liquefied when all of the body's soft tissue decomposes the hair the bones the cartilage the cadaver loses most of its mass during this stage as you can imagine and then the next stage which I said is the final stage skeletonization I tried not to get too technical over there but I tried to go over the basics let me sum it up in other ways as well again I got all this information right from an Undertaker's website but wait before I said funeral director and then I said Undertaker like the wrestler well both are correct I think funeral director sounds nicer a little bit nicer at least and honestly Every Time I Think of The Undertaker I think of wrestling and again this timeline isn't all bodies there are a lot of factors that go into play here but in the first 24 to 72 hours after death the internal organs begin to decompose three to five days after death is when the body starts to bloat as we said before this is when blood and foam a mixture of blood and foam is Puma start coming out of your orifices your mouth and your nostrils your nostrils are the holes in your mouth then eight to ten days after death the body starts to turn from green to red as the blood begins to decompose pose and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas hey that sounds like my life story all right well hey we're gonna find out in the fun facts later you don't stop farting when you die uh oh then several weeks after death your nails and your teeth fall out and there's a popular myth that your nails and your hair they keep growing after you die and we're gonna prove in the bonus part of the show that that is just that a myth they don't continue to grow and I'll tell you why then about one month after your death the body starts to liquefy again all these things can be less or more depending on the environment cause of death and all that jazz so let's talk a little bit about the people who dedicate their lives to this profession I imagine it must be a a unique kind of person so another word I already told you Undertaker I told you funeral director but also so we say mortician if you know The Addams Family what is the the mother's name the wife her name is Morticia it comes from mortician so it started out as Undertaker then they went to mortician and now it's funeral director I say it's the guy who deals with the dead bodies and I I gotta be honest you know we're laughing right now a little bit here but I that's a job I couldn't stomach I don't think I could do it I have a phobia of death not death not dying but dead bodies coffins I don't like things associated with death which is weird because I like Black Sabbath and dark metal but when it comes to real death I don't like it and I always remember a quote that my mom would say to me when we had to go to a funeral I remember we went to my great grandmother's funeral and I said Mom I'm scared and she said you shouldn't be scared of dead people you should be scared of the people who are alive and it made me chuckle but I've got to be honest with you I'm still afraid of corpses I don't really want to touch them or be too near them so what is the role of an Undertaker a much a mortician or a funeral director well depending on the family they'll have to do different things but in general they're responsible for collecting the person who died their body obviously from the home the hospital the hospice it's an interesting hospital hospital and hospice and then they put that toe tag on you that famous toe tag and that's how they identify you then they take the body to the funeral home or crematorium and they store it Lu almathenan in a cool place this helps keep the body preserved until they cremate it if in fact they cremate it if not they bury the body if they're going to bear hurry the body well then they'll usually embalm the bodies and embalming is where the Undertaker removes the blood and fluids from the person's body and replaces them with water colorants and chemicals that help preserve the body if I'm not mistaken they use formaldehyde normally if a body is going to be cremated then they don't embalm the body so in my case I'll tell you right here as part of my last will and testament I want to be cremated that's right I don't want to be underground or as we say six feet under which is also the name of a very popular show from back in the day and we're going to take a look at why it's six feet and not seven feet I know you say[ __ ] metros but we say Six Feet Under And if you choose to put the body on display so that the family can see the body that's called an open casket funeral abierto now in that case they embalm you even if they're going to cremate you after because people want to see you in good condition they don't want to see you looking worse than you did and that part is called the wake I think you say bellatorio the wake I think somebody was being funny there hey did you hear about his uncle he died and now we're going to his wake what yeah somebody there had a sense of humor but after the Wake usually you have a funeral ceremony where if you have the ashes you have an urn I think you say urna in Spanish and if not you go to the cemetery or the graveyard and you bury the body and usually there's a priest obviously it depends on your religion but um there'll be a priest there that reads something there's usually a eulogy a eulogies the priest also if you're religious will perform your last rights but your last rights are performed not at your funeral but when you're dying and there's always that joke of what is it going to say on your Epitaph your Epitaph is the words that are written on Your Grave on your Tombstone I guess you can also put them in your obituary and this is vocabulary all vocabulary associated with death obituary is the announcement in the newspaper and then you have the funeral you bury the deceased it's a very formal way of saying the dead and then you have a party what yeah at least in the United States we have a party afterwards called a repast I know I know what you're thinking a party somebody just died yeah but think of it as a way to celebrate the person's life I mean now that you got the whole family together when was the last time you did that at a wedding or a funeral so it's a chance to have a great moment together and remember that person's life we've got to get going right now don't worry we're not going to the great beyond I'm just going to take a quick pause and then we're gonna come back with our bonus episode and I sure hope you're dying to hear our bonus episode of f why foreign[Applause][Music][Music]