00:00 The electric chair is a specifically American invention and the only known method of execution using electricity.

05:21 The electric chair involves placing a metal cap with a natural sponge on the prisoner's head and another electrode on their leg, allowing electricity to flow through their body until they die.

10:37 The electric chair is generally not used in the United States anymore, but it is still an option for execution in nine states, and the protocol for electrocution varies depending on the state.

15:56 The electric chair was once used to execute multiple prisoners in a single day, causing extreme distress among the inmates, and the job of an executioner was not a pleasant one, often leading to negative consequences for the person carrying out the executions.

21:19 In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to review a case on the constitutionality of the electric chair, and Justice William Brennan described the gruesome details of an execution in his dissent.

27:01 The Jerry Commission, led by Elbridge Thomas Jerry Goh and including dentist Alfred P. Southwick, spent two years researching different methods of execution and concluded that none of them were an improvement on hanging, until Southwick suggested electrocution as the best method due to the widespread use of electricity.

32:48 The Electric Death Commission, formed by the Jerry Commission, experimented with electrocution on stray dogs and concluded that electricity could instantly disrupt the heartbeat and cause painless death, leading to New York passing a state law in 1888 to use electrocution as a method of execution.

38:14 The War of Currents was a competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over whether AC or DC power would be used, and Harold Brown, who worked for Edison, conducted gruesome public electrocutions to show the dangers of AC current and convince the Electric Death Commission to use it for the electric chair.

43:14 The first execution by electric chair was botched when the belt on the generator started to fall off, causing the electricity to stop after only 17 seconds, leaving the man still alive and struggling.

48:45 Willie Francis was the only person to survive a botched execution in the electric chair and was later executed again after the chair was fixed.

54:22 The use of the electric chair for executions in the 80s and 90s resulted in botched and painful deaths, leading to public outcry and the eventual shift towards lethal injection as a supposedly more humane method of execution.

01:00:03 The episode ends with a discussion about listener mail and the hosts encourage listeners to get in touch with them, but there is no further information about the electric chair.