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  • We watched this video in school over a year ago and I was proud to say that I had already watched this.

  • Oh no...

    I just realized that this channel is going to become a channel so good that I will watch every single video, and be sad cuz it's my favorite channel...

  • I wonder what "Gage" the iron rod was?? like maybe 1 "Gage"?? LOL

  • Of course my school never taught me this amazing story. Our textbooks were full of shit.

  • I was expecting this to be a song.

  • maybe he was distracted by an attacking squirrel (or by an amazing red death frisbee of a hat).

  • Did he survive due to the speed at which the rod passed, allowing the brain and skull to somewhat reform itself?

  • @ThePichu172 Even though he did survive, his brain was clearly damaged as his personality changed a lot which isn´t mentioned in the video.

  • @Tayloraurrekoetxea yeah, it's held up as an example of the effect of the frontal lobe on personality but not on IQ

  • @ThePichu172 Nope. He survived because his iron rod was custom made, he had ordered one that had a tapered top end, which was unusual. Because the tapering was 12 inches long, he wasn't penetrated by the full thickness of the rod, ergo less damage. The brain and skull didn't reform. An account by his doctor after Gage had healed stated that there was a depression on the top of his skull where you could see his brain pulsating.

  • We watched this video in health class. :D

  • i am studying that in my reading class but what do i say about that grosssssssssssssssss

  • awww happy ending

  • I'm debating between being Ramona Flowers and Phineas Gage for halloween... Any thoughts youtube?

  • hes good looking too

  • I almost don't believe this o_O

  • We learnt about this in Religios! :)

  • I kinda sorta have a crush on you (: ahahaha.

  • "because where could this story go from here?" *video has to buffer*

    me:"whu!....."

  • That's, roughly, the cover of Ellen Hardcastle!!!!!!

  • that was the first vlogbrothers video I ever watched!!!!

  • i would also like to add, if i may, that the story of Gage is in every psychology book. Gage's story provided undoubtable evidence, for most anyway, that the brain was in fact comprised of various, highly specialized structers/regions rather then a whole. This fact is is now common knowledge but at the time it was revolutionary.

  • *that's what she said* hahahaha Oh, Hank.

  • Omg my this is the first vlogbrothers video I saw! -3

  • my psychology professor made us write a discussion question on this video.. :D

  • @kkkkkkkkkirsty Me too

    that guy talks in a funny way

  • hey now I have all the information I need for my report on him... maybe almost...

  • Phineas Gage is actually quite attractive

  • they only thing i can really think of is that thank god the rod was pointy if it was blunt he probly would have lost many more teacup fulls of brain lol no so good

  • So, I was playing this game with my friends today where there was a category called "Famous Assasins and Murderers" and my friend couldn't think of a name (it had to start with h)... so she was like... "Heltzen... berg... er..." and everyone shouted, "He doesn't exist!" But I said, to try to help her, "Yeah, he does! He murdered Phineas Gage!" And then everyone agreed and let her move... But then I was like *chuckle* "Phineas Gage got a rod shot through his head and died 12 years later :D"

  • After re-watching this video I found my self poking my cheek where the rod would have gone through.... Yeah.

  • He used to be a contractor, but he took an iron rod to the brain, and now he's a sideshow act.

  • Is it weird that I watch this video atleast once a week?

  • @KashMoneh0319 A little bit.

  • ok phineas gage was a sexy ass mofo

  • hmmmmmmmmmm this sounds like a song ive heard befor who sang it whats it called

    hmmmmmmmmmmmm'

  • how did he not die of a bactirial infection????

  • So it's safe to say that at one point in his life, he must have uttered this sentence: 'I was a construction worker like you once, but then I took an iron rod to the head.'

  • The whole time I thought his head had been blasted off and he was just carrying it around....

  • Wow I am an idiot- I thought they never took the rod out!

  • @Hyperluna I thought the exact same thing, I was like, 'It must have sucked to have lived his life with a rod in his head!' DUUHHH! I am an idiot!

  • @TheYambo121 me to...i think it must be another story because i heard it on QI that someone like mr.Gage had something like this happen...and he toured with the iron bar and his act was he put the bar through the hole that was made by said bar...and he made some money...knowing me thats propably misremebered tripe but its nice to know that this is now on the internet and now has the oppertunity to be misquoted by someone else!!

  • heheh, this is probably the most entertaining portrayal of Phineas Gage I've EVER seen. Funny and witty, as well as very informative. i think my favorite line was "it was roughly WAY TOO MUCH BRAIN!" and "to which the doctor presumably replied...'nghh'"

    Thank you for making my day

  • Gosh, I'm writing a paper on neurophilosophy that features Phineas Gage and it took me forever to find how to cite a vlog in MLA format. :)

  • I see Michael Chabon on the bookshelf! Which book is it?

  • Phineas Gage if feature in the text book and a Lecture on emotion for my Evolutionary Psychology course.

  • Holy crap!!!

  • "Occasionally, weird things happen and we call them miracles. And that's a theory."

  • Why can't I stop watching this video?!

  • the human cerebrum contains the higher level brain function

    the cerebellem does the actual movement control

    the cerebellem contains the subconscious and instinct

    they only dameged the cerebrum the vital parts were okay

  • SammiRock0, We watched this in my class also! I think I was the only person who knew this was :)

  • My brothers Name is Phineas

  • What about the picture of him on wikipedia?

  • My psych teacher showed the song that hank put up!! I was freakin out!! Then later in my schools library I noticed a HUGE DFTBA sign!!! Soo there are deffinatly some nerdfighter teachers in my school :)

  • My psych teacher played this video today

    I totally spazzed out and made a dork of myself

    and my teacher hadn't even seen any of the other Vlogbrothers videos, so I had to explain to her what they were about :)

  • I'm actually doing my psychology project on Phineas Gage! I need awesome nerdfightastic things to say.

  • We talked about this in my psychology class on Friday! He even showed the picture and the animation used at the end :D

  • And today is the anniversary of that day that a metal rod went through his brain! ^_^

  • lol @ 1:51

    

  • he talks to fast

  • My teacher told us about this. Apparently his judgement was so impaired that they did a test on it. He refused a million dollars so he could keep a bag of rocks.

  • Epileptic Nerdfighters FTW 

  • I'll see you on wednesday! lol loove it!

  • I had the best day of school EVAR today. My Psycology teacher showed this in class.

    She's a Nerdfighter. Best. Day. Ever.

  • There's another picture of Phineas Gage that they found later on Wikipedia. =D

  • O.O Phineas Gage was kinda hot.

  • @RandomPersimmon #thingsineverthoughtidhear

    :D so true though! DFTBA

  • But he wasn't okay. Not really. Or, maybe he was, but he wasn't Phineas Gage anymore. He was someone else. Which isn't "okay" in my book.

  • The story of phineas gage is a fasinating one. One that i read about over and over and am equally interested in every time if not even more interested. Its a freaking awesome story!

  • Okay,now I finally understand the cover of Ellen Hardcastle. I love Nerdfighteria.

  • Phineas Gage wasn't that bad looking! Quite attractive in fact, but the fact he doesn't have one of his eye is kind of a turn down, but at least he has an "awesome" story to explain it, it's not like "I poked my eye with a stick while playing when I was a kid"

  • I was expecting a much worse picture. I scrolled down until I gathered the courage to look.

  • In my gifted and talented class, we learned about this, so first of all, to increase the awesome of young NITs, I will recomend this video to my GT teacher.

    however, we learned it a bit diffrently. I was told that it was 11 years and he died of hypothermia (somehow affected by his accedent, I can't remember the details...it was about two years ago.)

  • I knew more or less the story of phineas gage but.... I HAVE LIVED MY ENTIRE LIFE IN CHILE AND I HAD NO IDEA HE CAME HERE!! WHAT?? now, i NEED to find out what happened to him while in Chile...off to research!!!!

  • i miss riplys believe it or not.

  • Wow, this is fascinating ^_^ You learn something new every day!

    Although, honestly, with how I'm watching all this vids, I'm learning *several* different things a day due to the Vlogbrothers :3 Huzzah!

  • Thats what she said:D

  • Like, OWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!

  • i wanna hear the song TOO ITUNES!!!

  • HOW THE FUCK DID HE NOT DIE?!?!?!

  • @spartansareawesome His.... entire ordeal was pretty much how modern civilization discovered that tampering with the brain doesn't always kill, thus, we discovered brain surgery. People get brain surgeries all the time. Granted, they don't usually lose half a teacupful of brains, but still.

    (i think this is how it goes. I'm not entirely sure. I'm not a brain surgeon or anything, i just like to learn this sort of thing. = ] )

  • @spartansareawesome I first heard this story in a book called "most amazing stories never told" (cool stories that never became well known) and it had this case in it, saying that for a while, he had serious personality changes, and was bassicaly a mean man "bound to bouts of profanity" but as hank said, eventually managed to get over it. The rod passed through the emotions part of the brain, and was one of the first evidences of different parts of the brain

  • So I had to write an article about Phineas Gage today! I'm a new writer for a newspaper and someone is giving a talk about Gage and his impact on neuroscience. And while everyone in the newsroom was wondering who the heck this guy was, I was able to inform them all about this Phineas Gage and look like a nerd at my brand new job ;) thanks toyou Hank. You rock!

  • im in 6th grade and i have this for summer reading. :(

  • thumbs up if u have this book for summer reading

  • THANK YOU!!! my boyfriend ACTUALLY LEARNED SOMETHING from this ^_^

  • Hey there, 9th grade pre-Ib bio! That's when I first learned about Gage. And no matter how many times I hear about him, it's still wicked ridiculous and awesome and a wee bit terrifying.

    This was fascinating because I didn't know about the end of the story, the 12 years later bit. BAMF of the 1800s.

  • I was fine until he said, "And then he vomited up a teacupfull of brain." That's when I felt like puking myself.

  • Today was my first day of Psych 201, and on the pretest there was a question about Phineas Gage (which I answered correctly, of course!). There was a big smile on my face when I saw his name :) I just wanted to say thanks, Hank! :D

  • AMYGDALAAAAAS~ <3

  • I am currently enrolled in Psych. Science and we had to study the case of Phineas. Have exam tomorrow, cant find my notes anymore, my room looks like a war zone so came on youtube and now I know what happened to the guy! Thank you some geek guy!

  • its roughly WAY TOO MUCH BRAIN

  • I was watching Dr House and I was so proud of myself when I knew who Phineas Gage was. Hank, thank you for making me feel smart :D

  • Today at school our librarian was talking about the summer reading project, and a book on phineas Gage was one of them, and she showed us this video. Needless to say a library full of middle schoolers cracked up at the 'that's what she said'.

  • How in the world did he not die of blood loss?!

  • Wow that's weird..and gross

  • I learned about phineas gage in psychology, my teacher insisted on calling penis gage

  • Was the iron rod stuck in his head for the rest of his life?

  • @tospeaksiennese It went through and "landed 80 feet away".

  • @lennic95 Ouchhhhhhh!

  • @tospeaksiennese ... You're kidding, right?

  • Oh my gosh thank you thank you so much for this. I'm studying him in my linguistics class.

  • WRONG!

  • During Biology today in class my teacher brought up phineus gage. My nerdfighter friend and myself flipped out and told his whole life story. It was awesome.

  • I'm a ChaCha Expeditor and I was asked what year Phineas Gage got injured. I remembered the answer from this video and I felt so proud of myself. Thank you for helping me get through college with awesome Nerdfighter trivia!! :D

  • Today in my psychology class my teacher mentioned Phineas Gage and I immediately remembered this video. XD

  • It's not the only picture of Phineas Gage that exists, it's one of two that exist and was the second one to be found. Also, another fact that is incorrect in this video involves Gage's state directly after his injury. He didn't even go unconscious. He merely was knocked over, but he got back up almost immediately.

  • Comment removed

  • I don't know why but Hank just scared the crap out of me.

  • did anyone else find this funny

  • "the unit of measurement 'teacup full' has since fallen out of use, but it's roughly (me preparing for accurate relation to modern unit of measurement) WAY TOO MUCH BRAIN."

    ahaha

  • We watched this in class[:

    I was so excited that I was about to hop up and say "NERDFIGHTERS FTW" with the Nerdfighters symbol

    but my teacher told me to sit down

    everying one was like

    "Who the eff is this"

    and I was like

    "IT'S HANK GREEN!"

    and they were like

    "WHO THE EFF IS HANK?!!?"

  • @SammiRock0 You get to watch the Vlogbrothers in class?

    CAPS LOCK CANNOT EXPLAIN MY JEALOUSY

  • @SammiRock0 I sure hope this story is true, because, that. That's awesome. Just... Awesome.

  • @SammiRock0 what class was this? I did something similar only I quoted Arnold from Predator. My teacher said if you have to use the bathroom do it now, to which I told my sister louder than I intended to, "Do it now, kill me!" When my teacher looked mad confused and I said "oh, sorry." Surprisedly that was the end of it. It would have been hilarious if I had the chance to say "run! go! get to the chopper!"

  • @puertorrriquena It was in Literacy, haha :) That's pretty awesome:D Everyone thought I was loopy when I was talking along with the video :P

  • @SammiRock0 WE WATCHED IT IN CLASS TOO! i was the only person in that was super excited.....

  • @TheKellybellyjelly I was like, jumping for joy, and saying the words aloud because the sound was so quiet :)

  • I love that Hank considers a raccoon just as distracting as a hot girl.

    Then again, he's married.

  • The story of Phineas Gage is gross and bizarre, yet fascinating all at the same time!

  • I guess putting his head on a spike just wouldnt quite do the trick... but blasting the spike through his head was a cool idea. I guess it was just a bonus that he lived

  • Is it weird that i knew this story before you told us?

  • 'WAY TOO MUCH BRAIN!' makes me laugh every time. :D

  • ooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww­wwwwwwwww and

    groooooooooooooooooooooooooooo­oossssss

  • So...the iron rod was removed..?

  • @shellfish1010 It flew right through his head. ouch.

  • @shellfish1010 yes it was. It shot right outta his head.

  • That is creepy. But kind of cool... btw, he is relatively cute. :]

  • .....Are you high? i mean with !"ª"·caine...that chin don`t lie!!

  • I read the book, and I feel that Gage was very lucky. Do you think so?

  • I was so excited when I got to use my knowledge from this video in my psychology class today. :) 

  • that's what she said XD

    weird :)

  • im watching house and theyre talking about phineas gage!

  • They played this in class and man I just have to say, this made me actually interested in the guys story. Just the way it was told made me laugh. Awesome vid. Thanks for putting it up.

  • @ShadowXSniper cmon nigga!!

  • Soooo cool. That is also why I love the internet. Really amazing story. Thanks for sharing, Hank!

  • Oh the irony.

    Advert: "Improve your brain."

  • I think your voice is my favorite voice of any voice I've ever heard :D

  • Phineas Gage was hot... you know, in that one-eye-open kind of way. I like his hair, though!

  • @bruh4444 Being interested in a topic that you yourself do not find interesting does not automatically make someone homosexual.

  • Why is there unopened lip balm on the shelf?

  • my psychology teacher was talking about him today and he played this video for the class to tell the sotry. i was like omg its hank green i watch him on youtube :)

  • That's actually not so true hank. There is another picture shown on Wikipedia. The second identified portrait of Phineas Gage. If anyone can prove me wrong please reply.

    Note: I am not being cheeky I just thought to point it out.

  • @dunzy1996 yeah, I looked. It appears so. but Wiki labels the other as "the second known photograph" and the one hank showed is labeled as "the first known photograph, discovered in 2009"

    so, at the time of the 'commenter on flickr' it was, indeed, the only known photo of gage in existence.

    So technically, you're both right. Good point though!

  • @floddell

    Phineas Gage didn't die when the rod passed through his head because the rod didn't actually cause damage to the medulla oblongata, which controls involuntary muscle movement like breathing and swallowing. The medulla is located very close to the spinal cord and wasn't really anywhere near the actual damaged area.

    The bit of the brain that controls personality and reasoning is in the front of the brain, though, which as we can see, it the part that got damaged. Just sayin.

  • @shinymakar: do u remember what the name of the movie was?

  • "WELL!"

    Hahaha, so cute. :3

  • @usefulappendix I understand completely

  • Anyone else notice the "Thats what she said?"

  • @EliteDarknessScyther i noticed it.

    

  • @EliteDarknessScyther subliminal messages

  • That is incredibly awesome. But I should start wearing headphones because its hard to explain to my mom why I spend my free time like this. Or why I find this useless knowledge awesome.

  • I think he lived entirely because it passed through him so quickly and so released a minimum of energy into his brain and thus caused a minimum of damage.

  • @CyraEm still pretty wierd that he live dont ya think???

  • @floddell Undoubtedly.

  • wasn't he blind? you know, atleast in one eye?

  • "the unit of measurement 'teacupful' has since fallen out of use, but its is roughly WAY TO MUCH BRAIN!!"

  • i emailed this video to my psychology teacher and she gave me extra credit. :)

  • A "teacupful" is 3/4 an American cup...

    Therefore Phineas lost 3/8 cup of his brain...

    Where a human brain only wieghs about 1300-1400 grams (2.985 lbs)...

    Not to mention the additional brain that was lost in the initial blow...

    OhMiGosh thats alot of brain!!!!!!!!!

  • I LOVE your video. I am a homeschool mom and today we read a bit about Mr. Gage and to further assist us in our reading, i looked on YouTube and found your video. THANK YOU. My kids especially loved the tea cup mention...."WAY TOO MUCH BRAIN!"

  • i was talking to my friends about him and they were like"what! how?" i told them this story and they said "he is my new hero"

  • 1:08 -> 1:20 i thought he did all that headless..until he said 'chatted'

    i thought the rod took his head and flew with it this is how bad he explains it

  • thanks Hank... I was just putting a rather big spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth when you said a teacupful of his brain fell out... Blurgh

  • The interesting part is that his disposition completly changed. He was much more angry and agressive after the fact.

  • That is awesome...no, awesome cannot describe it. Thus making it completely Indescribable, ya I think that's good :) Indescribable, that's it...it is Indescribable...

  • feel free to correct me if i'm wrong... but in my psychology class i was told phineas gage had some interesting personality changes. he started becoming enraged at little things and he mightve become violent at times, i think he also suffered from some depression and sort of lived like a hermit for a while. we even watched a movie about it lol