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Short Stuff: Blaschko's Lines · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck is here in spirit too,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: we are going to have a swinging Pacific Northwest Swing
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: this coming February, and tickets are now on sale. February
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  Speaker 1: one will be at the More Theater in Seattle, February
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  Speaker 1: two will be at Revolution Hall in Portland, and on
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: February three, for SF Sketch Fest, will be at the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our social
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: media's for more information and links to tickets, and we'll
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: see you in February. Hey, I'm welcome to the Shorts
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to Find Josh and there's Chuck tally Ho. It's short
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Stuff time and we're talking about something that admittedly I
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  Speaker 1: kind of understand and kind of hope you really understand.
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  Speaker 1: I do good. I do. Also, before we started, wanting
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  Speaker 1: to give a hat tip to my wife, you me
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  Speaker 1: who came up with this one said have you ever
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  Speaker 1: heard of this? It's crazy? And I looked into it
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  Speaker 1: and I was like, this is crazy because what you
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  Speaker 1: we found and what we're about to explain to all
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  Speaker 1: of you is that humans are a species. Don't forget
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  Speaker 1: we're animals with stripes. We actually are a striped species
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  Speaker 1: of animal. Did you know that before? I've never heard
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  Speaker 1: of this. I did not know we were all brindle
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  Speaker 1: coated animals like my dog Nico. Yeah, that's exactly right,
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  Speaker 1: that's exactly what we are. We have beautiful patterns of
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  Speaker 1: swirls and whorls and drips and drops and all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of cool stuff all over us, but we can't see
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  Speaker 1: them normally under normal circumstances because we don't see on
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  Speaker 1: the UV side of the spectrum. But if we did,
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  Speaker 1: we'd be like, hey, I like your stripes. Oh, I
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  Speaker 1: like your stripes. And with some people, depending on the
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  Speaker 1: condition they have, they actually their stripes actually show. It's
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  Speaker 1: pretty interesting stuff. But the whole thing we're talking about,
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  Speaker 1: if you noticed, um the title of this episode, or
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  Speaker 1: what are called blash cos lines, those are the stripes
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  Speaker 1: that all humans have. Now did this happen? Because you
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  Speaker 1: mean had a black light and went, oh my god,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know where she turned this one up. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't ask her. I'll have to ask her and then
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  Speaker 1: we'll record a pick up. All right, So hold on
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  Speaker 1: insert answer here. Uh So, blash cos lines that is
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  Speaker 1: in fact a name. Uh. It was named after a dermatologist,
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  Speaker 1: Alfred Blaschko and the nineteen hundreds. He was the first
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  Speaker 1: person to uh notice this basically and write about it. Um.
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  Speaker 1: He thought he was a little bit off though, because
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  Speaker 1: he thought that they followed predefined patterns on humans. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But they don't. And the weird thing is is you
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  Speaker 1: might think is like, all right, so maybe these are
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  Speaker 1: um lines that sort of indicate where your blood vessels
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  Speaker 1: are or your nerve endings are, or your nerves or whatever. Um,
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  Speaker 1: that is not the case. Uh, these stripes are not
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  Speaker 1: blood vessels that you could see under a black light
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  Speaker 1: at all. But we kind of know what it is now,
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  Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, there's no system in the body that
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  Speaker 1: these things follow. Instead, they're their own thing. They seem
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  Speaker 1: to be their own thing, um, and they are distinct
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  Speaker 1: on all people. But there are kind of some general
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  Speaker 1: patterns that we'll talk about. But what what we've come
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  Speaker 1: up with finally today is still today we're not certain
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  Speaker 1: that this is correct, but the general consensus is that
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  Speaker 1: what blash cos lines are evidence of the migratory route
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  Speaker 1: that our skin cells took and then settled into while
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  Speaker 1: we were developing in the womb. Right. Um, I'm just
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  Speaker 1: gonna read this little bit from mental Flass because I
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  Speaker 1: think it kind of sums it up nicely. Yeah. I
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  Speaker 1: thought so too, And we always love to shout out
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  Speaker 1: our our old pals at Mental Flass, the m f fs,
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  Speaker 1: the ms uh. Basically, they said, these are cellular relics
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  Speaker 1: of our development, basically from single cell uh things you
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  Speaker 1: quoting this, No, I'm paraphrasing the beginning. Um, as the
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  Speaker 1: cells of I did, they differentiated, some became muscles, others bones,
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  Speaker 1: still others organs, and some became skin. As those skin
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  Speaker 1: cells continued dividing, they expanded and stretched to cover a
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  Speaker 1: quickly growing body. One cell line pushed and swirled through
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  Speaker 1: another like steamed milk poured into an espresso to make
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  Speaker 1: a latte, and Blash goes. Lines are the molecular evidence
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  Speaker 1: of those swirls. It was very pretty writing. It was.
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  Speaker 1: So the reason that we can see these lines, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: I think we should talk about after a break. So
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  Speaker 1: the reasons we can see these lines, Chuck, I think
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  Speaker 1: we're you talk about now? Very nice. So, Um, they
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  Speaker 1: believe that the reason that there's differences even though you
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  Speaker 1: can only see them under the UV spectrum. Under normal,
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  Speaker 1: normal circumstances, you cannot see the difference between skin cells
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  Speaker 1: on your arm, or on your shoulder, or on your
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  Speaker 1: torso wherever, and you have blash cost lines all over
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  Speaker 1: your body, as we'll see, because the cells that make
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  Speaker 1: up our skin are almost entirely identical. They all come
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  Speaker 1: from generally the same genetic information, so they all start
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  Speaker 1: out from the same cell or gloves of cells. Like
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  Speaker 1: mental falls pointed out, UM, But because of like the
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  Speaker 1: different minute experiences that each cell has, those instructions get
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  Speaker 1: produced and just slightly different ways, so that um, we
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  Speaker 1: think of ourselves as like genetically monolithic beings. Right, It
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  Speaker 1: turns out the term for humans UM are mosaics. All
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  Speaker 1: of those cells are so slightly different that it's almost
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  Speaker 1: like slightly different colored tiles being put up against one another.
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  Speaker 1: And they're so similar that again, under normal light, you
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  Speaker 1: can't see the difference. But when you put the put
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  Speaker 1: yourself under a black light in a dark room, those
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  Speaker 1: differences show up. That's why they think we're able to
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  Speaker 1: see blash cost lines. That's why they think we have them.
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  Speaker 1: It's the same reason when you look at identical twins.
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  Speaker 1: They're they're actually a little bit different. Is again these
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  Speaker 1: environmental factors that happen when you're a twin and and
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  Speaker 1: in fact, uh, we just did an episode recently, what
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  Speaker 1: was that on just this week on Doppelgangers. Doppelgangers when
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  Speaker 1: they've seen a lot of evidence like when twins are
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  Speaker 1: split up at birth, Um, they end up being quite
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  Speaker 1: a bit different. And it's because of epigenetics. Isn't these
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  Speaker 1: environmental factors. But even if they they aren't broken up,
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  Speaker 1: even if they're together, these twins are these you know,
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  Speaker 1: these minute little jenette differences that end up meaning these
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  Speaker 1: twins are a little bit different. And that's the same
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  Speaker 1: basic concept here. Yeah, but rather than whole people, we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about the difference between genetically identical cells within one person.
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  Speaker 1: There is something else called chimerism. So instead of mosaicism,
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  Speaker 1: this is chimerism. And some people can have different genetic
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  Speaker 1: material within them. So like um, very famously people with
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  Speaker 1: two different eyes, they're chimeras, or they they're chimeric, I
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  Speaker 1: should say, because different genetic information went into constructing each
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  Speaker 1: eye and that's why they have two different colored eyes.
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  Speaker 1: That's extraordinarily rare mosaicism apparently is universal that we're all.
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  Speaker 1: We're just not if you took one cell in another
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  Speaker 1: cell and you could get as granular as possible and
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  Speaker 1: investigating them, you'd see that they're just slightly not the same,
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  Speaker 1: even though they came from the same blueprint. Yeah, there's
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  Speaker 1: a New York Mets picture that has one blue eye
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  Speaker 1: and one dark eye? Is that David Bowie number seventy two.
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  Speaker 1: It's Max Scherzer, And uh boy, it's just I didn't
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  Speaker 1: even notice it until last year. And this is a
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  Speaker 1: guy who's sort of at the latter stages of his career.
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  Speaker 1: But then once you see a picture of this guy,
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  Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, it's really a striking difference
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  Speaker 1: because it's a very very blue eye and a very
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  Speaker 1: very brown eye. Uh and I just think it's so
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  Speaker 1: cool looking. Yeah, like what a I don't know. I
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  Speaker 1: would just always just go right up to people's faces
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  Speaker 1: and and go, hi, how are you just like freak
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  Speaker 1: him out a little bit? I think it's really cool.
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  Speaker 1: Give him the left side, and then the right side,
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  Speaker 1: and left side and the right side. Yeah. So, like
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  Speaker 1: we said, they're like there, there's kind of some general
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  Speaker 1: rules that like these lines will follow depending on where
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  Speaker 1: you are on your body. Right, Yeah, there's like patterns,
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  Speaker 1: which makes sense because you know all of us sort
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  Speaker 1: of grow generally in the same way as far as
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  Speaker 1: arms and legs and finghies and toes and torsos and
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  Speaker 1: necks and armpits and all that stuff. So depending on
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  Speaker 1: what can we keep naming parts about the dirty parts,
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  Speaker 1: let's start, Um, they're only two. Uh So when you're
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  Speaker 1: looking at a body, like there will be maybe a
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  Speaker 1: V shape down your back, uh and inverted you from
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  Speaker 1: the breast to the upper arm. Your lateral trunk will
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  Speaker 1: have a wave like shape. There might be an S
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  Speaker 1: shape on your abdomen, stuff like that. Yeah, your scalp. Actually,
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  Speaker 1: if you look at your whole head, it looks like
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  Speaker 1: as far as your blash co lines are are concerned,
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  Speaker 1: that you're wearing a ball of clava like around around
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  Speaker 1: your eye areas open, but there's different like lines surrounding
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  Speaker 1: it elsewise, and apparently on your scalp at spirals, whereas
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  Speaker 1: on the side of your face it comes there like
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  Speaker 1: kind of vertical lines. It's pretty cool. There's um, I
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  Speaker 1: think blash Coo himself, did you know, some initial um
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  Speaker 1: descriptions of it through sketches, but since then science has
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  Speaker 1: really kind of gotten pretty good at drawing it. So
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot of neat drawings of blash cos lines
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  Speaker 1: on on the Internet of all places. But was he early?
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  Speaker 1: He was like nineteen o one from what I saw, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: the earliest. But Chuck, I think you should take the
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  Speaker 1: fact of the short stuff, um, that the blash cos
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  Speaker 1: lines don't just exist on the skin, right, Yeah, this
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  Speaker 1: was pretty freaky. Um. Apparently your teeth and eyes and
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  Speaker 1: tongue all have blash cose lines as well. Yeah, which
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  Speaker 1: I mean anything that that forms from cells, you know,
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  Speaker 1: expressing themselves, writing poetry and songs. You mentioned earlier though
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  Speaker 1: about there are certain conditions that someone might have where
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  Speaker 1: these lines are revealed in in regular light with regular vision,
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  Speaker 1: right yeah, yeah, so vital eye where your skin loses
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  Speaker 1: its pigmentation. Um, it often follows blash COEs lines. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Also there's other types of congenital conditions, I believe, and
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  Speaker 1: some inquired ones where um, so vidaigo would be like
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  Speaker 1: a negative of your your blash COEs lines, whereas the
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  Speaker 1: some of the other ones, they're like it's like a
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  Speaker 1: tiger stripes. Like you can see the person's blash COEs
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  Speaker 1: lines because it's hyper pigmented, so you can see them
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  Speaker 1: without UV light. You can just see him under normal
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  Speaker 1: visible light. And it's pretty cool looking, actually, I have
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  Speaker 1: to say yeah, although usually if you look up on
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  Speaker 1: the internet see what this looks like, it's just like
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  Speaker 1: close ups of armpits and stuff. Sure, sure, and I
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  Speaker 1: say it's pretty cool looking. I don't know how you know,
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  Speaker 1: somebody who has a condition where their blash goes lines
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  Speaker 1: are showing all the time feel about it. But as
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  Speaker 1: an observer, I think it's pretty interesting and neat. And
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  Speaker 1: then also when you stop and think about if you're
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  Speaker 1: like that person's skin is striped, your skin is striped
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  Speaker 1: to pal you just don't see it because you have
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to see it under normal UV lights. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So that's it for blash Coast Lines a A thanks
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  Speaker 1: you me and thank you friend for listening to this episode.
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