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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What's the deal with blue people? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, winding it down with a couple of more
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: here from me, at least, with the Stuff You Should
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Know Gets Weird playlist. Have you ever seen The Blue People?
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: There's a thing where, I'm not going to spoil it,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: but let's just say there's a thing that happens where
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: people's skin can turn blue. And this is the episode
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: called What's the Deal with Blue People? And no, not
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: David Cross and Arrested Development or.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: The Blue Man Group.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And Jerry was
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: just here. She said, peace out, suckas. And this is
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Stuff You Should Know, of course.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: It was nice of her to log on to say goodbye.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: No, we're just kidding, Jerry. She's been busy lately.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: That happens.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: It totally happens in this busy go-go world of 2021.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Almost 2022. The double deuce.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: This year has just flown by.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: It really has. I think mercifully, because this is going
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: to be part of the lost years when we look back,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt like 2020 took 18 years.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: And somehow 2021 has just like been in a snap.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think anyone does anymore, Chuck, so don't feel bad.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Can we shout out the people and sources that helped
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: us along for this one? Well, our buddy Dave Ruse
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: wrote an article for How Stuff Works.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Ta-da!
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: And I found a great article from Wired. I forgot
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: how much I love Wired. That's from Mallory Pickett. And
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: BBC News, ABC News, NPR, Morning A Dish, which is
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: always a fun listen. National Library of Medicine here in
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: the U.S. And then, as always, I feel like it
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: makes appearance in every episode, jamaicahospital.org. That's right. Surprisingly helpful.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Maybe not surprisingly.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: I wonder, is it Jamaica, Queens or Jamaica, Jamaica?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know what? I was thinking Jamaica, Jamaica. It
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: may be Jamaica, Queens. Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Should I Jamaica scene? Jamaica, Queens?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: My neighbor across the street neighbor is from Jamaica, the country. Mm-hmm.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: And I feel like a heel now because I was like, hey,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: that hospital website's great, Pat. She's like, what are you
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: talking about?
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: She's like, okay, great. Glad you like some random hospital website. Oh, boy.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: So we're talking today. You went and found some medical stuff.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: That's why you went to look at JamaicaHospital.org, I'm guessing,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: because we're talking about a really interesting condition and actually
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: a few kinds of conditions that have something– unusual and common,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: and that is that the people who suffer from these
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: conditions have blue skin. Blue skin. You heard it here first, everybody,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: even though this really first started hitting the presses in 2008.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you didn't hear it here first. I mean,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: this is all over the internet, but we're talking about
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: not the Blue Man Group, but the Blue People Group
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: of Kentucky. It's a family that is, I guess it's
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: pronounced Fugate?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: It's not Fugate?
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: No, that's Italian. He was from France.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a spoiler.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, is it? I'm sorry. I take it back, everyone.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it's not a spoiler, but for some reason,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: when I saw that, the original Martin Fugate was from France.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what part of France, but I was like, huh,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: that's surprising. I was like, I don't know why it
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: would be.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he could have come from anywhere in the world
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: and he would have been like a completely overlookable person.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I think totally lost to history had it not been
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: for the rare, rare genetic mutation that he happened to
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: carry with him. And even that wouldn't have gotten him
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: into the history books, Chuck. Even that wouldn't have. Instead,
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: it took Martin Fugate to happen upon against all odds.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: To have found a wife who he was not related to,
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: who was a total stranger from a totally different country,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: who also happened to have that same rare genetic mutation.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: And when the two get together, kapow, blue kids start
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: popping out.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky, to
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the Blue Hills of Kentucky, ironically.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: In 1820. And like I said, he was from France
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and he was an orphan, so he didn't know a
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: lot about his his family as far as whether or
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: not any of them were blue, I guess.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: No. Or if so, he wasn't piping up about it. Yeah.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Maybe he just kept it quiet. But he did marry
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: a redheaded American named Elizabeth Smith, and they headed on
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: over to Troublesome Creek near Hazard County in Kentucky and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: set up a homestead there. And it is a, I mean,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: one of the doctors from one of these articles said,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: you know, it's maybe one in a 100,000 chance that
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: you even have this genetic mutation. And he said, but,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: you know, once you start, I guess there's no other
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: way to say it. Once you start inbreeding, which can
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: happen in the 1800s in the ruralness of Kentucky, he
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: said that can go down all the way to like
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: one in eight chance. And that's exactly what happened.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I was surprised it was even one in eight,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: but there's some little fluke of genetics that, um, that
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: you have to When you're talking about probability and genetics,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: it's a little more difficult than half and half.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: It's not straight math.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So apparently Martin himself possibly had a little bit
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: of blue to him. His wife Elizabeth had no blue
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: to her. She apparently had very, very pale skin and
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: bright red hair. But when the two got together and
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: those two genetic mutations donated... their mutations to that specific gene,
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: the kids that they had were like irresistibly blue. Like
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: there was no confusing. It's not like, yeah, Martin's kind
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: of blue. Have you ever noticed? Maybe he needs to
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: breathe more deeply. This was like straight up blue kids.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: I've even seen them described as dark blue, not even
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: a bluish hue or tint or tinge, dark blue skinned children.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, four of seven were blue. And it's funny you
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: said that she was not, the mother was not blue tinted.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: But I imagine like before they knew about genetics and inbreeding,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: if she would have been a little blue, that might
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: have been a reason to get together. You know what
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: No, I don't.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Explain. Well, blue man happens to meet blue woman and
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: they're like, geez, there's another one like me. And, you know,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: we've been sort of, you know, sort of embarrassing and
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: maybe we're cast out a little bit. So let's hitch
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: our wagons together because there's probably nothing wrong with us
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: having kids, right? Because medical science hadn't known that at
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: It's a story as old as time, Chuck.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: But it was just complete happenstance though.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. So and I wonder also, like it was
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: significant to me that they pointed out that his wife,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Smith Fugate's skin was almost translucent. It was so
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: pale because I wonder if she donated that to her children,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: which allowed the blue to really shine through even more.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, maybe.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: It's possible.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Like the ultimate recipe for blueness?
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And they actually became known as this blue family.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: And they were not particularly proud of their blue skin.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: I think they were a little freaked out about it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I think that their neighbors may not have particularly treated
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: them well. And so they already lived in like a
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: pretty isolated part of Appalachia. But they took pains to
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: actually isolate themselves even further. And one of the consequences
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: of that was something you touched upon that that meant
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: that their son married their aunt and cousins married cousins,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: even if they were way too close to be marrying.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: And so one of the products of this intermarriage was
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: an entire small regional population of blue families or families
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: who have blue children or blue family members because these
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: neighbor families were were still blood relatives of the fugates
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: who initially settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: That's right. And the condition that they had is not
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: a skin condition at all. It's actually a blood disorder,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: like you mentioned. And it's called medemoglobinemia. Is that pretty good?
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Wow. So it's not meth? No. Okay. Oh, I'm glad
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: you said it first then.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I actually took great pains today to look up. Between
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: this and the other episode, we're recording pronunciations.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: And when you look at medemoglobinemia, that is 17 letters of,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: it's a mouthful of letters.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pure hell.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: It's really one of those that I looked at over
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: and over and just could not get it right in
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: my head until I, you know, went and looked it
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: up on the internet. And I was like, oh, it's
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: not so hard.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: All right, let me try. Let me try. Medemoglobinemia.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's more of a T than a D.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Okay. What about a B? Do you want me to
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: try that one next?
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: This is like the worst acting audition ever.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Let me give you another one. What's my motivation here?
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: To get through this episode.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Okay. Fair enough.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So we're going to touch a little bit on melanin
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: throughout this episode, but you remember melanin from our, I think,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: pretty good episode on sunscreen and suntans, right? And this is,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: you know, special cells in the body and the skin
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: make melanin, And melanin is responsible for coloring your skin.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And there are all kinds of different melanin disorders, whether
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: you have too much or too little, whether it will
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: make your skin lighter or darker, or whether or not
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: it happens in patches. I had a friend in Los
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Angeles with vitiligo.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: I have a friend, too.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, you do?
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Which leads to patches of light skin on the body.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Isn't that what Michael Jackson claimed to have had, too? Yes.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Was that verified?
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know either.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: I really don't know.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I just remember there was a big stink when that
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: came out, and everyone was like, yeah, right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Well, the reason why it was like, really? You got vitiligo?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Because it's usually patches, like the melanocytes, the melanin-producing cells
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: just kind of poop out or crap out in an area,
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: and it leaves patches without pigment. Not your entire face
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: without pigment, but who knows?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I think his... I think what he said was
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: that he bleached his skin to match the light patches
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: was his reasoning.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable. You know, if you're self-conscious
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: about vitiligo and you have a ton of money, you
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: could do something like that.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Who knows?
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Who knows?
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Should we talk about skin color or should we take
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: an awkward Michael Jackson break?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: I think we just did. But the point is this
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: that I think you're making, Chuck, is that Changes in, like,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: your skin color typically have to do with a lack
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: of or an overproduction of melanin, right? That's right. What
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: we're talking about, metemoglobinemia, right?
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Is actually a blood disorder. It has nothing to do
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: with the skin. It just shines through that super translucent
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: skin that we have.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Right. So what's going on here in the body?
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: So, you know.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Are you surprised I'm asking you to do this?
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I'm a little surprised. I thought we maybe tag-teamed this one.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: But okay, okay. So, you have like a pinkish hue
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: to you typically. Thank you. Being Caucasian because there's not
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: a ton of melanin that's blocking the blood supply underneath
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: in your tissues. It's kind of shining through. And your
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: blood is red. And the reason it's red, Chuck, is because?
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: But the reason why blood is red? Well, remember in
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: school they teach you that your blood is blue until
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: you get cut and then it hits the air.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not true.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: And then it turns red. That's what you hear on
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the playground in elementary school.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: From dumb kids.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: But that is not true. And I bet you anything
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: kids are still spreading that mistruth on the playground.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's got some staying power for sure as far
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: as rumors go.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And you know what? My dad will sue your dad
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: for all the money he's got. Did you guys threaten lawsuits?
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Sure. We were very litigious.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Kids did, though. It was very funny.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: We were like little Puritans in Salem town.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: That's right. So blood is red. That was the question, right?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Why is blood red? Right.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Because, I don't know, we've talked about this before, but
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: it's because our red blood cells have hemoglobin. It's a protein.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: And it gets its red color from something called heme.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It's a compound that has an iron atom in there.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And that iron atom is the key. That's what binds
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: with oxygen and allows red blood cells to get oxygen
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: all over the body. And that's sort of what makes
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: us tick.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, that oxygen is super important.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: So we want to have super red, rich hemoglobin blood, right?
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Our bodies also produce something else called metemoglobins, I guess
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: is how you would pronounce it. That is not how
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: I've been pronouncing it in my head. But these metemoglobins
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: are basically the same thing as hemoglobins, but they have
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: a different kind of iron attached to them. The iron
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: they have is like there's really no other way to
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: put it. Well, actually, there's plenty of other ways to
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: put it. But one way you could put it is
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: that it's rusted. It's oxidized iron, which means that it's
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: missing an electron that it would need to bind to oxygen,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: which means it's useless for transporting oxygen through the blood.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: So if you have a bunch of metemoglobin built up
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: in your blood, your blood can reasonably turn blue. You
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: also may have some problems breathing because you don't have
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: any oxygen in your blood. Although that's not true, I'm sorry.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: You would be able to breathe perfectly fine, but it
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: wouldn't clear up necessarily the lack of oxygen in your
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: blood because it's on a blood level rather than something
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: to do with your lungs.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my one question because... doctor after doctor
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: has confirmed that metivoglobinemia doesn't present any health issues. But
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: how can that be possible that your blood is having
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: trouble carrying oxygen through your body and it doesn't matter?
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I had a really hard time with that too. And
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: the best I could come up with as far as
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: an answer, which is not definitive, but the best I
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: could come up with is that there's a threshold where
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: your blood will turn blue, where you have enough metemoglobins
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: in there that it's blue, but there's not so many
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: metemoglobins that you're actually having trouble with your oxygen in
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: your body. So it can turn blue long before you
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: actually suffer from the effects of low oxygen. Does that
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: make sense?
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And isn't the threshold...
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: To turn your skin blue, like a really low percentage even?
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Like 1% of metemoglobins. If your blood is 1% metemoglobins,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: you can start to turn blue, right? So it doesn't
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: take very much, which means that you have 99% of
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: the globins in your blood are hemoglobin, which means you're
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: still able to get all the oxygen you need. You
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: just have maybe a little less than somebody else. That's
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: my best guess from what I saw. And I... I
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: think at this point in our understanding of metemoglobinemia, it's
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: as good as anybody's.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Well, that sounds like a perfect place for a break.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: And we'll be right back to talk a little bit
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: more about this and other interesting blood conditions right after this.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: So, Chuck, we were talking about metemoglobinemia. And the reason,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: like I think one of us said earlier, that the
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: body naturally produces these things, these metemoglobins. But we also
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: produce an enzyme that can convert excess metemoglobins into hemoglobin.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: And it's got a doozy of a name, which I
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: just love. May I take this one?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: This enzyme is called reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: One of the great all-time names.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: What's its nickname? Sparky?
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: It has no nickname. You have to say the entire
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: thing every time. And so this enzyme, reduced nicotinamide adenine
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase, is actually capable of converting the
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: iron from its ferric state in metemoglobin's into its ferrous state,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: which is capable of binding with oxygen, like the kind
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: that's found in hemoglobin. So for all intents and purposes,
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase is capable of
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: converting metemoglobins into hemoglobin, and most of us are able
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: to do that. But if you're like a fugate and
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: that mutation to you, And you develop metemoglobinemia. But there's
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide, adenine, dinucleotide, cytochrome B5 reductase,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: which means that metemoglobins that you naturally produce are able
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: to build up and accumulate in your blood. And when
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: they do that, that's how you start to turn blue.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: That's how you cross that 1% threshold.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: That's right. And this is one of the rare times
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: where you can actually have a genetic condition that's Pretty
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: easily solved. And in this case, it's just a pill.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And the guy who figured this out has sort of
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: an interesting story in his own right. His name is
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Madison Cawine or Cawine? Cawine?
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: I'm going with Cawine.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Cawine?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: Cawine. Cawine. I'm going with Cawine.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: C-A-W-E-I-N. Cawine.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Although I like Cawine. That doesn't sound like it'd be tasty,
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: but I'll bet it gives you a pretty good buzz.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: He was the grandson of a pretty famous at the
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: time poet out of Kentucky, and Madison was the third
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: of the Madisons. And this is just a side note,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: very sad and interesting. His wife was poisoned and murdered
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: by poison in the 1960s, and no one was ever
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: caught and charged with a crime. And it kind of
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: remains one of Kentucky's... you know, sort of biggest cold cases.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Wow, I did not see that one coming.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he and his wife and this other couple were
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: out drinking all night, supposedly, like just got... sloshed and
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: at a key at a country club um he madison
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: didn't even make it home i think he stayed the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: night there but the other man uh the the man
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: from the other couple drove his wife home apparently just dropped.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: They had another nightcap and she woke up dead. Well,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: didn't wake up dead. She died. And they thought it
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: was just, you know, alcohol or some natural cause. But
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: then they found these two like little needle pricks in her. Wow.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Where they think she was, I guess, given a shot
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: to pass out and then poisoned. And I can't remember
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the poison. It was some sort of like acid or something.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: But yeah, really, really interesting. Neither here nor there as
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: far as this goes. But That's the sad story of Dr.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Madison Cowwine's wife.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Was he a suspect? Because I would have suspected him.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think so because he wasn't even there. That's
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the first thing I thought. But apparently it was pretty
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: verified that he slept it off at the country club,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Crazy. Because, I mean, one of the things that he
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: became famous for, if not the thing he became famous for,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: was injecting people with some fairly weird stuff.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Isn't that weird?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: It is weird.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You're not buying it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Nah, I don't want to, like, cast aspersions on somebody.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know enough about the story, but that's just
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: very odd, especially... You're like, judging.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: From this 90-second story.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly. I can conclusively solve this case. I've seen
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: enough law and order to know that the husband almost
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: always did it.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Well, that is probably true, but probably not in this case.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: But at any rate, he was a hematologist at U,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: at University of Kentucky.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And he heard about these people throughout the world and
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: really wanted to kind of get to the bottom of
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: this when a couple of them, well, I don't think
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: these were Fugates, but Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, I guess,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: you know, it happened in some other family. I know
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: that Combs is.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: We knew a Combs from Kentucky. We had a friend
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: that we worked with for a little while.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: He was never, he never struck me as blue. Yeah.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: He never struck you as blue.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: But I wonder if he is related to the Combses.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Well, who knows?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Which would make them buy somehow a Fugate. Because again,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: these families in the Fugate area were all, if you
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: went back far enough, Fugates.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. All right, so these people walk into his
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: office and what happened?
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: So here's the thing. They didn't walk into his office.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: He went and found them. I read an article about
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: him and he became maybe a little obsessed with finding
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: these people, wanted to know what the heck was going on.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: So he actually went out in the woods and and
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: would wait for them and every once in a while
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: would see one and he'd chase them telling them to stop.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: And of course they would run off. So he figured
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: out another way to do it. He moved to Hazard
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: County near Troublesome Creek and he started asking around at clinics,
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: like had anybody ever treated a blue patient? And he
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: finally struck gold, blue gold when he spoke to one
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: nurse at a clinic that said, yeah, this, this one
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: woman came in with blue skin and she was really
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: self-conscious about her skin. She came to the back door and,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: was really just kind of meek and embarrassed. But yeah,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: we've treated a blue person before. So Cowane basically hung
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: around this clinic until more blue people came in. And
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: this is where he met the Ritchie siblings. Yeah.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: So he started to dig into their family a little bit.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: It became pretty obvious to him that it was a
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: genetic disorder. And he started digging around other stories around
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: North America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: had who had the same condition. I'm just going to
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: call it this condition now.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: I think we've said it enough.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Or at least I have.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And he said, well, you know, these people were interbreeding
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: a lot because they were very remote as well. And
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: so he said, I think we understand the problem here.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: How do we fix it? Yeah.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he, where he got this idea
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: is But he used something called methylene blue, which was
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: already like in wide use. It's used to stain tissue
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: because it affects some cells differently than others. It was
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: a malarial treatment, which malaria can actually produce metemoglobinemia. I'm
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: suddenly having trouble saying it because we haven't been practicing lately.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: And what it does is it goes in. And it
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: interacts with the reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: of that excess metemoglobins into hemoglobins in patients with metemoglobin anemia.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And so I don't know where he got the idea,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: but he tried it and apparently injected the Richie kids
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: with it and they stopped being blue, like almost on
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: the spot.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like minutes later, they returned to a, you know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: a standard color. And I mean, they were overjoyed. Like,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: could you imagine being like this your whole life, getting
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: a shot? And looking in the mirror a few minutes later,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: you're like, oh, my gosh, it's like it's gone.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: It's actually really sweet because they were very self-conscious, the
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: whole family. I mean, this family like retreated to the
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: woods to like people didn't know where they lived. And
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: they lived like five miles away from them and knew
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: that there was this blue family still had no idea
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: where they lived. It was like that's how far they
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: retreated from society because they were that self-conscious. So, yeah,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: I'm sure is a pretty joyous occasion for them.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: There's going to be a movie about this at some point, right?
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I can't believe there's not. There's a very famous interview
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: with Kyle Wayne in a magazine called Science 82. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: there's also a really famous painting that somebody did. And
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: it was just kind of lost to history who did it.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: And I read this article. I can't remember what it
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: was on. But this person tracked down the artist, the
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: initial artist, and got to see like the original because
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: it's been scanned so many times. It's really lost a step.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: But the original is apparently really something to see.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Should we say the quote that Coane had in that
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Science 82 article? He said, and they walked into the office,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: he said, they were bluer than hell. Very Kentucky.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: All right. So over time, Fugates started moving away. Like
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: some of the younger population of the family got out
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of Hazard County. And it's so hard not to make
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Dukes of Hazard jokes. I've been just sidestepping the whole time.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: You've been doing really great.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you. But they started to move away over time.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: And basically, you know, that's going to stop the interbreeding
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: and that's going to make fewer and fewer blue babies.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: And as of 2012, I think some were still blue,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: but not today.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think now that there's a treatment, an easy treatment,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: because they don't even have to be injected anymore. Like
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: if you're blue and you don't want to be blue,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: you just take a methylene blue pill once a day
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: and it goes in. Apparently, once you excrete it out,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: the methylene blue You go back to being blue. So
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: you have to take it daily. But I'll bet there's
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: members of that family now, and I'm just guessing here,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: but that are proudly blue. Now that they know that
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: they don't have to be blue, some of them I'll
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: bet make a choice to be blue as kind of
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: like a pride in their family heritage. I'm guessing here.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing I saw that there was one, and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: that was the one in 2012 that was still blue.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Like by choice?
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah, just didn't take the pill.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Gotcha.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Wow, that's neat.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: But not today anymore. So this is not the only
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: way you can get bluish or any, you know, I
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: guess silvery skin is another thing that comes into play
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: here with this next disorder. And this is one called argyria.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And some people are bluish, some people are silver. If
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: you've looked up, you know, blue people or silver people online,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: you have no doubt seen uh paul karrison they called
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: him papa smurf and he is all over the internet
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: as one of the more famous cases of egeria.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah and he uh was he kind of emerged as
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: i don't know if a cautionary tale is right because
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: that was not his purpose um but he he also
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: he he whether he meant to or not he served
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: as a cautionary tale about taking colloidal silver Because that
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: is what turned him blue. And it didn't just turn
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: his skin blue. It turned his mucous membranes blue. So
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: if he like flashed his teeth, his gums were blue.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: The inside of his mouth was blue. The inside of
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: his nose was blue. He was blue. Blue in hell,
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: as Kyle Wayne would probably put it.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: And he did it because he saw an article about
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: how silver ions basically restored some cut flower back to
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: life again. And he thought, well, that'd be really something
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: to do. to see what it can do on a
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: human body.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I want to be a fresh daisy.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And he wasn't the only person experimenting at the time.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Like apparently for a while it was an over-the-counter drug.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: We've been using silver for a very long time. But
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: he was somebody who used it every single day. He
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: was drinking like a 10-ounce drink of colloidal silver. He
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: figured out how to basically make his own colloidal silver potion.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: And he also rubbed it on his face too. And
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: so in very short order, he started to turn blue
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: because that is definitely a consequence of using silver too much,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: of overexposure to silver.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: That's right. And this can happen if you work in
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: like a silver mine or something.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Like it can be one of the side effects of
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: mining in silver mines.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: I also saw that in the old time, not even
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: that old, but just pre-digital photography processing, photograph processing, you could.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Actually Old timey?
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the 80s.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: You could actually develop argyria from exposure to the silver
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: dust that was used to expose photographic plates. I think
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: prior to the 80s. I don't know when they stopped
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: using that.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I don't either. I spent a lot of times in
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: dark rooms... as a kid because of my dad. Because
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: you were bad? Yeah, go in there, turn on that
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: red light and sit there and think about what you've done. No,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: my dad was an amateur photographer. Well, I guess semi-professionally
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: sold stuff, but he did his own developing and I
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: learned how to do it and did it some through
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: high school and then kind of quit doing it. It
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: was a lot of fun though. Dark rooms are very
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: like peaceful places.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just, you know, they're dark obviously. Sure. And you're
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: in there for, long period of time and it's just
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: very nice usually by yourself but unless you're in a
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: teen romance movie and then you know the cute girls
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: With you I well I always associate them with the
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: the murderer finally coming into focus and they happen to
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: be standing right next to the the photographer is developing
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: it so to me dark rooms are very tense scary.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Okay like as it has the as the photo paper
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: like comes into focus yeah Oh, very tense.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: It shows the calls coming from inside the dark room.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: That's right. Where were we? Okay, so what causes this
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: is an excess of silver ions in your body. And
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: when they're exposed to light, they react by forming dark
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: deposits on the skin that end up looking silverish. And
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: the bad news about this is Once you've got it,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: it's there. You can't take a pill and get rid
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: No, it's irreversible. We don't have a way to remove
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: excess silver from the tissues in the human body. And
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: that's all it is. It's just, it builds up. Normally
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: the body can excrete, you know, small amounts of silver
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: that we're exposed to from like, you know, touching silver
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: or snorting silver, that kind of stuff.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: What?
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: You know, uh, Like we pee it out, we poop
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: it out and we get rid of it. But if
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: we overcome that threshold and our silver ingestion exceeds our
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: ability to excrete it, it starts to build up in
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the tissue. And so if you're drinking your own 10
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: ounce colloidal silver homebrew every single day, you're going to
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: overwhelm your body's ability to excrete silver very quickly. And
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: it's going to build up and build up and build up.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: And pretty soon you're going to be blue or silver blue.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: That's right. And if you look up images of kerosene,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: you're probably also going to find pictures of Stan Jones,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: a libertarian politician in Montana, who around Y2K said, you
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: know what, I think things are going to go south
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and we're not going to have any antibiotics. So I'm
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: going to start making my own again, colloidal silver solution
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and drink that stuff. And then there was a teacher
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: in Brooklyn too named Rosemary Jacobs, who very sadly, I
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: think got nasal drops with silver when she was a kid.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: And she was sort of, not sort of, she was
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: very silver for life.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: Yes, she was. So these people, again, have proved to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: be cautionary tales to most people who are like, oh,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: that's what happens if you take too much silver. I'm
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: not going to take colloidal silver supplements over the counter
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: or anything like that. I'm just going to steer clear
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: of silver altogether. Because one of the problems is there's
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: not a lot of peer-reviewed evidence, if any, that suggests
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: that silver has any beneficial effect when taken internally, right?
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: It is actually antimicrobial. It's pretty clever to use silver
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: like in the pre-scientific days. But there's nothing that says like, yes,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: if you drink a colloidal silver homebrew, it's going to
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: have any effect on your life or your health. And
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: in fact, it might actually turn you blue. Despite this,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: People still take colloidal silver pretty frequently. Apparently, Alex Jones
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: touts it. Gwyneth Paltrow touts it. Dr. Oz touts it.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: And that's, you know, if it's not actually harming you,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: there doesn't seem to be any harm from it, aside
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: from potentially irreversibly turning blue. But there's a larger harm
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: that I saw chucked to society in general, in that
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: silver is an antimicrobial of last resort that is... they're
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: figuring out how to use it against antibiotic-resistant bugs like MRSA.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Silver will get in there and even kill MRSA. But
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: that silver resistance may be developed in bugs by all
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: these people taking colloidal silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: you know, homebrews and stuff like that, that it's actually
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: creating silver-resistant microbes, which is not a good thing for anybody.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's take our second break.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Good. Yes.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk a little bit more about colloidal silver
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: right after this.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned earlier that, uh, kind of in passing
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: that colloidal silver had been used pre, you know, mainstream
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: medical science coming on board. And it's really true. And
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: they were kind of onto something in that, like you said,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: there were, there are some antimicrobial properties. So people like
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Pliny the Elder, Cyrus the Great, they both touted the
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: use of silver. Monks in the Middle Ages used silver
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: nitrate to treat ulcers and burns. And it was used
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: a lot. It's kind of in a way, before we
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: had real antibiotics, one of the first antibiotics.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Yes. Again, externally, it messes up microbes, and we're not
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: exactly sure, even still today, what the mechanism is. The
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: guesses are that it somehow penetrates the membrane of bacteria
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: and prevents it from replicating properly. or it does like
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: some one, two punches on enzymes that the microbes need
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: to survive, but that it will leave your human skin
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: cells alone. It just attacks microbes weirdly, bacteria specifically. So yeah,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: it was like an early antibiotic, and it actually stayed
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: in use for a long time Nowadays, you'll find it
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: in like wound dressings. Sometimes sutures will be coated in silver.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Replacement joints, artificial joints will have some sort of silver
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: component to it to protect against infection. But we were
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: using them internally for a really long time, up until
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: the 60s even. I think babies got like silver eye
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: drops when they were born, which I had not heard
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: of until, you know, yesterday.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I had neither. Yeah, silver nitrate. to prevent eye infections.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: But then they found out it can actually cause eye
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: damage and burn the skin. So they really worked on
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: just sort of... What's the word I'm looking for when
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: you make something less potent by mixing it with water?
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Dilute it?
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Diluting it. Right on the tip of my tongue.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: You did it.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: No, you did it. So they learned how to dilute it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: But the problem with diluting it in a formula is...
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: it wasn't an exact science. Like they didn't know exactly
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: how much silver was still going to be active. And so,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: you know, you couldn't really use it as a medicine
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: anymore because it was either too weak to do anything
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: or it was so much that you risk turning blue.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: So eventually they just scrapped it as a medicine and said,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I think in 1999, the FDA said, this isn't a medicine,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you can't advertise it as such. So they said, all right,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: we'll just say it's a supplement.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: And just move it to the shelf, you know, four
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: feet away.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And the FDA said, no.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: And that's what happened. And you can still get this stuff.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: That's where, you know, that's why Gwyneth Paltrow uses it. Yeah.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: And I mean, like, again, it's one of those things
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: where it's like, yes, it makes sense. Silver has antimicrobial properties.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: There's probably some microbes in your body you don't want.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: So take some silver and see if it works. But again,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: there's just not any peer-reviewed evidence that backs this up.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: That's not necessarily to say that it doesn't work just
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: because there isn't peer-reviewed evidence that backs it up. Doesn't
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: also necessarily mean in the same breath that there's plenty
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: of peer-reviewed evidence that says it doesn't work. I'm not
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: suggesting anybody take this stuff. I'm just saying there's not
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: peer-reviewed evidence to back up that it actually does anything.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: And if you do take it, again, you risk permanently,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: irreversibly turning blue.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I should point out, I don't know anything
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: about Gwyneth Paltrow's current usage, but her appearance on Dr.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Oz in 2013 was when she touted it. She may
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: have given it up. Who knows?
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Who knows? Paul Karasaw never gave it up, though, Chuck.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: He died in 2013 as well, same year that Gwyneth
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Paltrow outed herself as a silver user. Yeah. And Paul Carisson,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: he apparently used colloidal silver, that homebrew he made, up
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: until the end. Like he never stopped, even though he
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: apparently retreated from the public eye because he was tired
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: of being treated like a freak or a weirdo and
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: had some rough years toward the end, apparently after he
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: went public. But he still kept up with the colloidal silver,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: although that doesn't seem to have been linked to his death.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: He was also a really heavy smoker for many years,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: and he suffered a heart attack and a stroke.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess his point was probably, well,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I'm already blue. Yeah. Like, why stop now?
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Can't get much bluer. So, what else you got?
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I just thought we'd wind it up with this
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: little kind of sidebar. This doesn't really have anything to
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: do with being blue or silver, but I thought it
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: was an interesting find that They basically determine there's something
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: called repigmenting that has happened to people to go their
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: skin both darker and lighter that has nothing to do.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: And it's funny, this article kept calling it intermarriage. What
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: they mean is, you know.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: What they mean is having sex and having babies of
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: two different skin colors. But they keep calling it intermarriage,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: which I guess is, you know, very sweet.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: It's just such a lovely way to put it.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: It is. But they know that repigmenting happens regardless of intermarriage.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: But what they found recently is that this has happened
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: a lot faster than anyone thought. And we're talking about
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: 100 generations or as little as 100 generations, which is
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: a long time. But over the course of human history,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: it's not that long.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: It's potentially. Yeah, it's not that long. Usually a generation
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: is chalked up at about 20 years. So we're talking
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: as little as 2000 years. That groups that were once
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: lily white went back to being dark and groups that
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: were dark can turn into a lily white population. And
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: that it's just basically more evidence that race is strictly
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: a social construct. Skin color has nothing to do with
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: anything but the amount of melanin that our genes tell
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: our bodies to produce, which is triggered by the amount
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: of UV exposure that we have over something like 100 generations. Right.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: And so if your family lineage moves from a place
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: that has lots of UV near the equator to a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: place that doesn't have much daylight or vice versa, your
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: body is going to adapt and melanin production is going
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: to change. And over time, your entire family's skin color
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: can change.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because we actually need UV, right? But we just
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: need a certain amount of it. If you have too
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: much You can get skin cancer. Apparently it can have
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: reproductive issues. If you get too little, it can also
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: have issues on your bone because we use UV to
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: produce vitamin D, which we use for strong bones, bone density.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: So our bodies have figured out how to kind of
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: adjust depending on that UV exposure by producing or slowing
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: down melanin production. That's it.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Pretty amazing.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Pretty neat. But it is surprising that it's, Well, actually,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: it's not that surprising that it can happen over 100
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: generations or 2,000 years because the body is very responsive
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: to its environment. We adapt very easily. So that's not
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: particularly surprising, although it is neat.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it surprised the scientists. I think they
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: just thought it was quicker than they anticipated.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: So if you're a racist, just stop and think that
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: somewhere down your family line, there is a white person
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: or a black person. Ha ha.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Or in the future.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's true.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: That's right. So take that.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: You got anything else?
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I have nothing else.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: All right. Well, if you want to know more about
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: blue people or colloidal silver or pigmentation, go start reading
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: up on it on the Internet. And thanks again to
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: all the great sites that you found in putting this
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: really good episode together, Chuck. And since I complimented Chuck's
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: episode putting together skills, it's time for Listener Mail.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to call this one of the many... Thanks
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: we got for the M, not NRA, but the Mr.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Nah episode.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: This is one I think for both of us like
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: we were super stoked to do and like in retrospect
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: very proud of.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We're stoked.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: We were super stoked, not just stoked.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: Bruh.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Stoked plus. There's no way to say stoked without sounding
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: like a bro. No.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: No way at all.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: It stinks, too, because I'm not a bro, but I
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: do like saying stoked.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: That's fine. Just say stoked. Be loud and proud like
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: the last remaining blue Fugate.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: So this is from Mark, and it was a really
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: long one that I'm going to sort of summarize the
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: first part, is that Mark works in healthcare information technology
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: and had a rough go of it over the past
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: couple of years, like so many people, working alone and
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: listening to our show, which he said helped quite a bit,
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: losing some close friends to COVID.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: And seeing all this up close and personal. So Mark
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: had a tough time. So he says this, after working
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: for almost two years on the COVID-19 problem, the last
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: thing I wanted to hear was your podcast about Mr.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Nah vaccines. When I saw the topic pop up on
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: my player, took a deep breath and decided to listen anyway.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I knew almost everything you shared on the podcast, but
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: became enthralled in the recap of this amazing story. To
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: my surprise, I was again brought to tears by, with
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: a recognition, one that you two share, of these brilliant
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: helpers who use their gifts for the benefit of all humanity.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: At the risk of making you blush, you two are
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: part of those helpers. You presented this Mr. Nah episode
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: with a childlike curiosity and relatable simplicity that anyone with
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: doubts on taking the vaccine would reconsider. I can't believe
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: that I have to say this, but facts help, and
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: fact-sharers are helpers. I might also add that letting go
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: of any biases to let your curiosity grow Curiosity to
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: take hold is heroic. And that is from Mark, and boy,
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to read that one another hundred times today.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just print it out and fold it up and
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: keep it under your pillow.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Mark. He wanted his last name to
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: be withheld, but appreciate the work you've done, Mark, and
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: hang in there.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, same to you, Mark, and that was very high praise.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much for it. It means a lot
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: to hear something like that. One other thing, though, Chuck,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: that Mark reminded me of, that people with metemoglobinemia actually
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: can blush blue.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, so they get bluer?
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Isn't that neat?
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: I guess that makes sense.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Thanks for that too, Mark. Even though you had no
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: idea you were setting us up for it, you did.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: So you're just basically an altogether great person. If you
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: want to be a great person like Mark and write
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: in to let us know whatever you want to let
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: us know, we want to hear from you. You can
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: wrap it up and spank it on that bottom until
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: it's blue in the face, and send it off to
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.