How Sword Swallowing Works

that's that's what I got. I'll take shoulders for five hundred back. Okay, yeah, yeah, and that way you said when I suggested this one, I typed it. Yeah, and I think you thought it was funnier when I typed it. I heard it, Okay, I heard I heard it in my head founded, much like that. Darrell Hammond, Sean Connery, Yeah, um, Chuck, Yes, have you ever seen in the movie Days Being Confused? Uh? Yeah, In fact, I remember the first time I saw that movie.

Oh yeah, let's here in Athens at the Georgia Theater. That was a great place to see that movie. That was wonderful. Remember when whenever they showed I think his name was Washington. That no, which character the black guy. I think you're thinking of the sweat Hogs. That was Washington, right, But I think his name was Washington Took. I think I'm not sure, but yes, clearly I could just be thinking of that guy because they both have frozen. They

were set in the seventies. But um, he has that paddle, it says soul poll on it. Do you remember like the whole theater just erupting the first time that showed that that was awesome. I remember I thought Matthew McConaughey was not an actor. Oh, like, he was really Waterson. I thought he was a real dude. They just dug up in Texas. Oh yeah, because that was like the beginning of his career, the first thing I ever saw him and Ben Affleck and that's It's a great movie.

Parker Posey. Yeah, well that brings me to my point. Parker Posey, you remember the part during the Beer Bust where Parker Posey's funneling beer through a beer bong and like she's got it for like a half a second, maybe a second and a half, and then but it just like pours out her mouth and all over her face. At that moment. The first thing I thought of is I'm sure everybody thought as well when they saw that very suggestive part was Parker Posey would be terrible at

sword swallowing. That's what I thought, because it takes a certain amount of relaxation to swallow a sword, and after research, I found that a sword swallow will make an excellent beer funneler. I haven't funnel the beer in a long Time's been a while for me. It's probably good when you're forty to be able to say that I lost access to beer funnels, and I think that's kind of what happens. Like you just don't go to places where

there's a beer final not anymore. But you can always shock in a beer as long as you have a pen and a beer can. I never got into any of that, to be honest, kig stands all that silliness. I was just like, just have a drink it. I don't prefer being upside down. I've never done a kigstand really never. It's really um. You're like, you know what it feels like to be torn apart by a gang of angry toughs because there's like a couple of guys like you're Yeah, you're it's really kind of scary. You're

on the edge there. We don't recommend any of those things now. And while we're at it, this is the ultimate c o A. Please anyone out there, never ever, ever try to swallow a sword or anything except food, obviously in beverage, right, but no food larger than the end of a football. Yeah, do not do not do not try this at home ever ever ever. Okay, Yeah, Josh and Chuck officially think you're stupid if you try to swallow anything after listening to this, or if you

participate in backyard wrestling. Yes, equally dangerous. All right, so Chuck, um, let's talk about swords swallowing. I'm excited about this one. Kind of cool. Yeah. Um, this is part of our ongoing circus arts collection. Have we already done one human cannonball? Okay, we've gotta get tight rope in there and then we're all set. Well, we need to do like freaks too. Uh yeah, just sideshow freaks, or maybe even like a

history of the sideshow. That would be pretty awesome, I agreed. Alright, So, um, what other kind of freaks would I've just been talking about? I don't know, um, you know the kind of meat on the Friday night have you seen have you seen that movie Freaks? Oh yeah, we've talked about that one, all right. Um, yes, so Chuck, let's talk about the history of sword swallowing, shall we. Yeah. I was kind of surprised to learn that it started out with sort

of religious undertones or are they overtones? I think sword swallowing is so that, um, it would be an overtone and overtone. It's not very subtle. Early on in India about four thousand years ago, they kind of the same folks who are doing the firewalking and snake handling to sort of show their oneness with God would swallow swords. Yeah, like they were protected and they will be like look what I can do. Yeah, I'm boastful. Yeah, funk here this is what they're called. F A k I r

okay um and uh. Yeah, sword swallowing has been around for four thousand years. Uh. And there's apparently still a tribe, although I couldn't find, um the name of the tribe, but it's in the Indian state of andrew Pradesh. And um they apparently still passed down sword swallowing skills from father to son. Yeah. Yeah, so we know where it came from and we know it's ancient. Started in India,

started to move around the Far East, the Mid East. Um. Typical path things will follow China, Japan, Mid East language civilization. It all just followed the same path as sword swallowing hit Japan, UM and China. In the eighth century, a d in Japan and became part of Sanu Sangaku Sangaku one of those two, which is basically like street performance, right. Um. And then apparently it got picked up again later on

in India again and it's the cradle of it. Um by the whirling dervishes, the rebirth of swords swallowing, Yes, the first one by the dervishes, right. The whirling dervish. Dervish is a beggar of the Sufi mystic order of monks and um, they would kind of whip themselves into a frenzy, hence the term whirling dervish. Uh. And there's a specific order of dervishes um called the Order of

Refis refights. My Indians getting rusty and they eat glass, walk on coals, swallow swords basically the original it's like a revival of the original the original reason people would swallow swords. And then it comes to Europe, and as with all things that came to Europe from the outside, the Catholic Church persecuted anyone who could swallow a sword man fun killers back in the day, but that was not enough to kill it. It was basically just a

loss of enthusiasm by the public. Um by the nineteenth century in in Europe, everybody's like, we've seen this before, we know what's going on. It's all an illusion, a trick, which we'll get to in a minute. Um. But then it hits America and there's a guy um from Madras,

an Indian man named Senna Sama. And on November seventeen, which will henceforth in the s Y s K Pantheon of dates be referred to as sword Swallowing Day, Yeah uh, in New York City at St. John's Hall, for one dollar, adults could see the first person to ever swallow us order in the United States and for a dollars a lot of money back then, I agreed, but this is a big deal, and you would think it would have taken off right then, but no, it wasn't until eighteen

nine at the Chicago World's Fair that it became very popular in the US. Yeah, I wonder what else was big that year that wasn't the ice cream here wasn't now, No, that was St. Louis in nineteen o three. Okay, so pretty ice cream of course, Swords wallow Horse. You know, if ice cream had been around, people be back. I'd rather to see ice cream, right. This was the year that electricity was a big one. Yeah, that was the one that The Devil in the White City is said. Okay,

it's pretty good, but you can wait for the movie. Now, that was it coming out. Apparently Leo DiCaprio is playing the bad guy. Of course he is. I don't know why I said that he rarely plays bad guys. Yeah that's true. Yeah, although he wasn't that good of a guy in Shutter Island. Uh, well, we don't want to

ruin that. It doesn't at her okay. Uh. It died out again in the nineteen fifties because of you know, it's on the carnival circuit and I guess all these new fangled rides sort of took away from the whole side show aspect. And then I love how this points out that the you know, The Internet and video games also helped kill swords swallowing, Like, really, yeah, I didn't know that one had anything to do with the other. It did. The Internet and video games pretty much killed

everything but the Internet and video games and TV. Yeah, but now you can research and watch sort swallowing on the internet. Now that is gorgeous thinking. I'm very impressive that one. Alright, So that's pretty much the history of swords swallowing. There's I guess towards the beginning of the twentieth century when it became very popular in the US. There is also a lot of controversy over whether it was a trick or an illusion, and Harry Houdini himself

said it's a trick. There's a trick to it, and he wrote in um, his very famous book The Miracle Mongers, and expose right um that people who swallow swords first backstage swallow a metal sheath that they slide the sword into. All Right, I gotta stop you here. How it's you're still swallowing the thing that's just as long and it's made of metal, and you're pretending like it's not in there. You're walking around talking a lot. I don't know it seems easier just to learn to swallow this. I mean,

it's not like and we'll cover this. Actually, might as well go ahead and say it. The swords that they swallow aren't sharp edged. No, they are still pointyes, but it's not like they're swallowing razor blades. I get the impression that they're pointy ish. Well, yeah, a dull point I would say, yes, But I mean that can't be much worse than the sheath. So I think the sheath is Maybe Houdini was being funny and Tracy Wilson missed that. Maybe.

So she goes on to point out that the Encyclopedia Britannica says that it's a magic trick as well, and that it's not a that it is some sort of illusion or hoax or fraud. But really, apparently the the basis of um sword swallowing is quite real. Like the person is swallowing a sword, right, So let's how how do you do that? Well, Josh, if you're gonna talk about swallowing a sword, then we need to talk about swallowing. And if you're gonna talk about swallowing, you got to

talk about the g I tract. Yes, not the g I bill, the g I gastro intestinal tract. It's got a couple of types of muscle. It's got a skeletal muscle tissue and smooth muscle tissue, little lubrication layer called mucosa. And then skeletal muscle is involunteery, I'm sorry, voluntary, And if you're talking about your upper g I, you're talking about your mouth, you're farring in your upper esophagus. The smooth muscle is involuntary, and they work in concert to

help you swallow junk. Right, So the top stuff is all voluntary, Like you can move your tongue, you can, you can. Yeah, you start off doing it on purpose when you chew and swallow, right, But then it gets to a certain point past the what is it, the upper esophageal um sphincter. Yeah, that just cracts me out. Once it gets past that, which is kind of high up towards the top of the esophagus. Yes, then it's like you said, it becomes all involuntary. It's automatic, which

makes it very difficult to control anything that happens after that. Yeah, specifically, the you know, your epic epiglotis goes into action because that keeps stuff from going down into your lungs, which you don't want. Bullus is food is chewed food and saliva. That's the best word ever in bullus b O, l u, s and um. Once you've done all the voluntary action,

it does a pretty cool thing. It gets down to the part of your esophagus as the smooth muscle, the involuntary muscle and paristalsis takes over and that's basically you're It just squeezes it down like an inch at a time. Yeah, you know how your esophagus is ringed, Yeah, right, Um, those rings are little bands of muscle, and then they squeeze just above the bullus and just shut it down there. Finally it gets to the lower esophageals fixter and that opens.

You have to laugh every time that that opens, and the bullus drops into the stomach to be digested and then eventually pooped out. So that's what happens. That's that's life that we just described life. The trick here, not trick, but on the way down it passes by things like your trachea, your heart, your a order which I thought was part of the heart. Well it's a it's the artery, the main artery that connects to the heart, and I

saw the vena cava was also separate. That's the main vein. Yeah, And the diaphragm is the the muscle that moves up and down which allows us to breathe. And and we say all this because the sword is passing right through there. Yeah, I mean it takes the same path as your food does. Yeah, pretty much, yeah, pretty much exactly. We have our ribs because we've got so many vital organs right there, they

need extra protecting um. And so we circumvent the ribs when we swallow swords and just go directly past all that stuff, all that soft tissue, right. Yeah. But there's a difference, a big difference here. Swallowing food requires a lot of contraction of muscles, and which you want to do when you swallow a sword, is you want to relax all those muscles, even the involuntary ones, which is we'll get in into how to do that in a

minute here. But it's sort of the opposite of even though it follows the same path, the muscles are doing things they shouldn't do, aren't trained to do, at least, well, that's kind of the point of sworce swallowing. Like if you one of the reasons we warned you against sword swallowing is because you can't just swallow a sword the first time you try it. No, you you could, but you would kill yourself. Um. Sword swallowing actually takes a

lot of practice, and a lot of horrible, horrible practice too. Um. You have to train. You have to train your involuntary muscle to work voluntarily, right, Yeah, or to not volunteer at all. That's a great point by by um relaxing. So the voluntary stuff, and let's talk about this. This is I guess now we've reached sword swallowing one on one. The first part is easy because it's all voluntary muscle. You move your tongue out of the Yeah, you open

your throat. Um, you tell your head back. You always see a sword swallower tilts his head back. It's intuitive. But at the same time, the reason why is because they're lining up the pharynx, the throat with the esophagus so that it's a straight shot as straight as possible from the from the mouth all the way down right. That's right, um. And then after that, chuck, well, you slip the sword down in there, and it passes through the mouth and pharynx and upper esophagal sphincter into the

esophagus itself. And the esophagus has got a little curve to it, so the sword is actually gonna straighten it out. And Tracy even points out that sometimes it's nudging organs out of the way as well on the way down. That's why you usually swallow a swords slowly and and the lube sword as well. Yeah uh. And then um loose either by saliva or artificially, right, some people use um uh petroleum jelly or vegetable or something, whatever your

flavor is. So that's how it's done. Pretty cool, that's right. That's pretty much all there is too. It's but again it takes some tremendous practice. Um. And also depending on the type of the story of the length of the sword. You said it was blunted, it's not sharp, still kind of pointy, but it's as dull as possible. Um. But

the length of the sword is also very important as well. Um. Usually from your teeth to the cardia, which is uh where basically where the stomach connects to the esophagus, where your lower esophageal sphincter is. Um, it's about forty centimes in the average person. Yeah, okay, so right, so if you swallow a sword that's longer than forty centimeters, um, you are going to it's gonna have to go into your stomach. That's that's a big deal. Yeah. And what

I've gotten is most sword allowers don't do that. Um, it's not by accident that the Sword Swallowers Swallowers Association International UH defines that length at thirty eight centimeters. That you know, to qualify. So if it's forty centimeters, they said, let's make it get a couple of centimeters short, right, But this is just the typical person. It could be much shorter. That's just to qualify. I don't know, I thought it had to be that long. No, No, I'm

saying you're the distance cardia could be shorter. So even with that shorter sword, you still may be in your stomach. But yes, if you just if you get it all the way down to a couple of centimeters above your cardia, the s s AI, it still considers you a sword swallower, which I think is nice. That is nice, but chuck, Um, if you if you are taking a sword all the way down to your cardia into your stomach, the sword

is literally in your stomach. That's crazy. Not only have you relaxed, like all the voluntary muscles in your mouth, you've relaxed all of voluntary muscles on your on your larynx and in your esophagus right, all the involuntary muscles. But you've also managed to figure out how to relax both of your esophageal sphincters, the top one and the one above your stomach, so that you can pass a

sword through without damaging it. And is nuts. And they do recommend, by the way, um, nothing over twenty four sixty one because at that point you were well into your stomach. Yeah, that's the s s ai again. Yeah, And I guess anything over that you might go hit the bottom of the stomach, but you don't want to do. Also, I want to point out that there is also a long tradition of sword swallowers who juggle, and often do this on horseback while juggling dude, unicycles, cartwheels, They do

all sorts of crazy things. So really, to me, just standing stock still and swallowing a sword, that's impressive. Have you ever seen drop? There's this. I don't know if it's a new move, but it's a move where you put it down like halfway and then you move your hands and you let it drop by itself and you actually tighten your catch it with your esophageal muscles. That

is control, pretty good control. Yeah, yeah, And they always take it out really quick to if you notice, because you're we'll talk about the gag reflex, but you're suspending that and you can only do that for so long. That's why they you know, you see him do it and then it's like tada, and they yank it back out really quickly because they want to live. That's right. Yeah. Um, well, speaking of the gag reflex, that's one of the things that has to be overcome and training, you know. Let's

let's get into the reflexing. Okay, Well, reflexes exist outside of the brain. They're actually regulated by the brain stem. I didn't know that. Actually, Well, that's how how somebody can still be considered alive even though their higher faculties are gone, because they still have reflexes. It makes sense. I just never really out about it that way. But well,

may I describe how it reflects works. So basically, you have a receptor nerve ending that detects, in this case, in your throat detects some sort of object or intrusion that shouldn't be there. Basically, the only stuff that should be there is fluid and chewed food as far as

your receptors are concerned. But yes, if a sword or any other metal object um makes its way into your throat, the receptors are going to figure this out and they're gonna send an electrical impulse to your central nervous system in the brain stem. The in the integration center is what it's called. Yeah, that's kind of like it's kind of sounded to me like a call center. Like literally, I mean, it happens so quick, but it's like, what's

the nature of your emergency, sir? Exactly, Like I've got a sword in my throat, but this is the brain stem. So it's all done on like um punch cards like they used to play Tic tac toe in the hanging chads. Um. So your your brain stem says, Okay, well there shouldn't be a metal object there. Just go ahead and direct the muscles of the throat to gag and that produces what's called a wretch, and that's meant to expel the

foreign object. What swords followers do is mute or dull this reflex so that it doesn't happen at all, and they do it by setting it off time after time after time, unbelievable. They make themselves gag as much as they can until it doesn't work, which is dangerous. It's very dangerous. And if you didn't get the idea before from the initial c O, a sword swallowing is a very very dangerous pastime, profession, whatever you're using it for,

I would imagine there at a higher risk for choking. Choking, Um, yeah, because the point of the gag reflexes to get that stuff out. That piece of steak comes flying out when you wretch it up. Uh. And ideally, if you don't have a gag reflex, then yeah, that's bad news because that steak just stays in there and die. You know. I had a friend um who when I was in elementary school, his mom got an emergency tracking out of

me with a steak knife. Oh yeah, Dad, you always hear about the stories she had the little scar and everything cheese. Someone in a restaurant door. Oh wow, yeah, I mean a steak knife, no anesthesia, know nothing, steak knife and then a straw or pent cheese. I've never seen anything good like that happen. I didn't see it happen. Yeah, but I mean I've never I'm just saying I've never seen any like awesome life saving situation. I want to be a part of one one day, just not on

the side. Uh so what what other dangers? They actually did a study um of and they want to ignoble prize for the study. I found out in two thousand seven and they studied a hundred and ten um English speaking sword swallowers and basically just ask him a bunch of questions about their health. And they called it sword throat when they get a sore throat. Yeah, I thought that was kind of clever. Clever. So throat pain, um lower chest pain, persistent lower chest pain, internal bleeding occasionally.

I saw this one lady who was coughing up blood and they found out that she had like nicked part of her esophagus way down, which imagine it's common um esophical perforations like we just talked about. Uh, how do you say that pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, and paracarditis, which is inflammation of the sack that protects the heart. And that's in descending order of how often those things happened.

So everyone gets the sword throat, it seems like, but probably very few actually got inflammation of the the paricardium, right. They also figured out that, um, there was a trend among sword swallowers where if they had a particularly rough performance, um, the inflammation that would result resulted in further injury. So like they would be okay during the performance, but you know, they had a little trouble getting it down, but then a day later or something they broke their esophagus or

something like that. And then also apparently sinus infections are common because you're you're passing the sword with petroleum jelly and whatever hair and gun get picked up in between the time you put the petroleum jelly on and the time you swallowed it right past the sinuses, which can be sensitive. I can attest, and I imagine the circus side show isn't the cleanest area on the planet, you,

I think, imagine correctly, you know what I'm saying. Um, there's also death is a side effect of sword swallowing from time to time. Um. Another British medical journal study cited the death of a man who um swallowed an umbrella or tried to and died. My first question was, did he accidentally try and open it? You hit the button. It's like Tom and Jerry totally. His body flares out like an umbrella. It's like Tom and Jerry, except real life.

And said, that's right. Um. World sword Swallowers Day, two thousand ten. What it sounds like is that they gathered sword swallowers at Ripley's believe it or not, all over the country to do this all at once to perform um and Red Stewart, your buddy Red. He swallowed a world record fifty two swords at a time. Oh man, I don't know if that's official or unofficial Guinness certified. But George the Giant swallowed a thirty seven inch sword at the Hollywood believe it or not. Jeez, So that's

they recommend twenty four inches max. Because you're in the stomach thirty seven inches. That's longer than three ft. That's crazy. Uh. Dan Meyer swallowed a giant straight razor and hedge clippers in Dallas at the belief that they're not there. Travis Festler swallowed a sword with cockroaches crawling around it, um,

crawling on the sword. And guess where this one happened Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Um. What else a hundred and twenty degree curve sword at the Ripley's Believe It or Not in Ocean City, Maryland, and I'm just amazed over, you know. And finally, Mike Harrison at the Orlando Believe it or Not, swallowed a sword that was driven down his throat by the discharge of a gun. I don't know how that happened, but wait what happened? Apparently it was shot into his mouth

from a gun. I don't know. I'd like to see that one. Yeah, that's kind at the at the Internet, which is first killed and then now supports sword swallowing. And also Red Stewart, who you mentioned, who swallowed fifty two swords at once. I guess his former record was twenty five. Um. But before that, this impresses me the most. He in V seven he swallowed a our axel. Well they do. Tracy pointed out people swallowed dipsticks and other

straight metal things. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Stuff. Yeah, that's got to be pretty big around too. Yeah, and people have swallowed snakes. I found this guy, Oh that sucks for the snake. Yeah, I think the snake lives. Yeah, but still he's like, well, sure, what are you doing? Well, the snake is probably like I'm getting eaten by another snake, you know. Yeah, okay, so it's just desserts then. But this dude in the eighteen forties sal Uh salam intro

the snake swallower. He uh have a couple of good quotes from him. They fancy that it hurts you, but it don't, or what a fool I should be to do it. I don't mean to say it don't hurt you at first, because it do. For my swallow was very bad and I couldn't eat anything but liquids for two months whilst I was learning. I cured my swallow

whilst I was stretching it with lemon and sugar. And then he learned this that was sore, doesn't He learned to swallow a snake and said, the snakes are about eighteen inches long, and you must first cut the stingers out because it might hurt you. When I first began swallowing snakes. They tasted queer, like they draw the roof of your mouth a bit. It's a roughish taste. Apparently, the scales like it's easier going down than it is coming back up. I could see that, the way the

scales are laying, I could totally see that. So we don't recommend swallowing snakes either, and I don't know if anyone still does that. That might be a nineteenth century swallowing steaks. Snakes swallow steaks a lot. Yeah, it's not tough. Um, Well, I guess that's it. You've got anything else, Well, if you want to see some pretty cool images about um, sword swallowing with a strange like kind of um superhero

worship ee um man, he was buff too. Yeah, there's a there's a period around how S works where like comic book geeks like kind of ruled the place, right, and so this is acceptable in some way. Yeah, it's definitely look different than our other illustrations. Right, So if you want to, um, if you want to see those weird illustrations and learn as much as you possibly can about sword swallowing, uh and the circus arts in general, we have a whole circus arts section. Did you know

that I just let you say circus arts. Um, it's uh. Any of that stuff can be typed into the search bar how stuff works dot com and that means, now, Chuck, it's time for listen to mail. I'm gonna call this blood type follow up. Guys are just googled good podcast and found your name, and I think you're serious. Although I google good podcast and I didn't see anything. What comes up? Uh? There was one article about how to do a good podcast and it was like, enunciate very clearly,

stick to the point, and keep it short. We're away of breaking rules. Uh. So I just enjoyed your latest podcasts and have a contribution on the subject of blood type.

To put it simply, the transfusion rate is sixty to ninety million eaters per hour for the first fifteen minutes, although each hospital has its own policy in an exact rate, but it UH on average it is sixty to ninety After about fifteen minutes, the rate can be advanced to one hundred to one hundred and twenty million eaters per hour. The rationale is that if an acute hemolytic reaction is going to occur at will happened in the first fifteen minutes of a transfusion, and the slow rate keeps the

infused volume low. So, using a little advanced math to answer your question, it takes as little as sixteen to twenty two point five million leads of incompatible blood to cause a reaction. Of course, these are rough estimates, that they do give you a hint of how a little bad blood can cause a big problem. Thanks for doing the show. I look forward to going back and listening to old shows as well as the current new ones. I hope I didn't just make myself look like an idiot.

Far from it, Dan, you sounded pretty dang smart, I would say so. Um. Yeah. Also, it's really weird to U two get feedback that quickly, like we recorded that two days ago and bam, we've got an answer. I really enjoyed that. We I kind of wish we could do this alive, but that wouldn't work. We've tried that before. It never does work. Um, well, I guess it's it. Do you have anything Do you want to call for anything? Uh? Okay, um, if you have any kind of circus arts background or

your family, does we want to hear about it? Because we find that kind of stuff fascinating. Um. Also, by the way, the black guy in Dason confused his named Melvin Spivey. Really it was way off, so sorry about that. UM. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can send us stuff on Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can also send us an old fashioned email to stuff podcast at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out

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