Why Can’t You Hold Your Breath to Death?
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why you can’t suffocate by holding your breath; how being angry makes you more likely to believe misinformation; and that time scholars tried to kick Latin out of English, thanks to words like honorificabilitudinitatibus.
Why can't you suffocate by holding your breath? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Daniel in Beirut)
- Parkes, M. J. (2005). Breath-holding and its breakpoint. Experimental Physiology, 91(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1113/expphysiol.2005.031625
- Parkes, M. J. (2012). The Limits of Breath Holding. Scientific American, 306(4), 74–79. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0412-74
Being angry makes you more likely to believe misinformation by Kelsey Donk
- Dolan, E. W. (2021, January 8). A new study has found being angry increases your vulnerability to misinformation. PsyPost; PsyPost. https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/a-new-study-has-found-being-angry-increases-your-vulnerability-to-misinformation-59061
- Han, J., Cha, M., & Lee, W. (2020). Anger contributes to the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-39
- Greenstein, M., & Franklin, N. (2020). Anger increases susceptibility to misinformation. Experimental Psychology, 67(3), 202–209. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000489
16th-Century Scholars Once Tried to Kick Latin Out of English by Arika Okrent
- Specktor, B. (2017, October 2). Shakespeare’s Longest Word Is a Whopping 27-Letters Long. Reader’s Digest; Reader’s Digest. https://www.rd.com/article/shakespeares-longest-word/
- BERLIN, R. L. G. (2014, January 28). Johnson: What might have been. The Economist; The Economist. https://www.economist.com/prospero/2014/01/28/johnson-what-might-have-been
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Cody Gough. |
| 0:07.0 | And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today we'll answer a listener question about why you can't suffocate by holding your breath. |
| 0:12.0 | Then you'll learn about how being angry affects how much why you can't suffocate by holding your breath. |
| 0:12.6 | Then you learn about how being angry affects |
| 0:14.7 | how much you believe misinformation, |
| 0:16.9 | and that time scholars tried to kick Latin out of English. |
| 0:20.4 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. We got a listener question from Daniel in Beirut who writes, |
| 0:26.0 | Why is it not possible for a human being to choke themselves to death |
| 0:30.0 | by intentionally deciding not to breathe? The answer is way more mysterious than you'd think. |
| 0:37.2 | So obviously the human body is equipped with fail-safes that make it really hard to kill ourselves on purpose. |
| 0:44.0 | If you hold your breath for more than a minute or two, |
| 0:46.2 | your brain will force you to inhale. |
| 0:49.0 | Even if you could hold your breath long enough to pass out, |
| 0:52.1 | once you were unconscious, you wouldn't be able to consciously hold your breath long enough to pass out. Once you were unconscious, you wouldn't be able to |
| 0:54.0 | consciously hold your breath anymore and you'd start breathing again. But here's the mystery. |
| 0:59.7 | Your lungs should be able to hold enough oxygen to sustain you for four minutes. |
| 1:05.4 | But most people can barely hold their breath for half that long without training. |
| 1:09.7 | And sure, carbon dioxide builds up in your blood when you can't breathe, but it doesn't get to toxic |
| 1:14.8 | levels quickly enough to explain that short time limit. |
| 1:18.3 | In fact, studies show it has nothing to do with our blood. Patients who have severed nerve connections |
... |
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