Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What is colorblindness?

Transcript

What is colorblindness? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there.
0:17
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know about color blindness,
0:24
Speaker 1: that's right, which I didn't know a lot about. No.
0:29
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't either. It's one of those things
0:31
Speaker 1: you just kind of assume you do, but there's a
0:32
Speaker 1: lot more to it than you realize, right. Yeah. I
0:35
Speaker 1: kind of wondered about myself though, because Emily is always
0:38
Speaker 1: telling me that I'm getting colors wrong. So I took
0:41
Speaker 1: a I took an online test. I did too. How'd
0:44
Speaker 1: you fare normal color? Did you? I? I? I took
0:48
Speaker 1: one of those um oh, what's it called the scope?
0:52
Speaker 1: One anomalous scope. I took one of those online, and
0:56
Speaker 1: I said I had just very weak um color blindness,
1:00
Speaker 1: which I wasn't very surprised by because dark colors are
1:02
Speaker 1: kind of hard for me to differentiate. Sometimes they said
1:05
Speaker 1: that you don't see black or white. You're like Michael Jackson, right,
1:11
Speaker 1: that's right, man. I've always said that. No one ever
1:14
Speaker 1: listened until now, until I proved it on the on
1:18
Speaker 1: the Internet, and thank out for the Internet. So, um,
1:22
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little history, because believe it
1:25
Speaker 1: or not, there is color blindness history. And I should
1:28
Speaker 1: say also, Chuck, I looked up the more politically correct
1:32
Speaker 1: term for color blindness and there really isn't one. Oh yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: well that's great. Yeah, so you can feel free to
1:41
Speaker 1: use color blind in good conscience. Okay, fantastic. So um
1:47
Speaker 1: back in s John Dalton, who came up with atomic theory.
1:53
Speaker 1: He was a pretty important, um early scientist. He presented
1:58
Speaker 1: his first scientific paper and was on color blindness. Did
2:02
Speaker 1: you know that I never heard of the guy? Yeah,
2:05
Speaker 1: so um. He his first It was, from what anybody
2:10
Speaker 1: can can tell, the first scientific paper on color blindness,
2:13
Speaker 1: and he wrote it about himself. He and his brother
2:16
Speaker 1: were both color blind, and he posited that he had
2:21
Speaker 1: some sort of blue fluid in his eye that was
2:24
Speaker 1: affecting his color vision. And he willed that when he
2:27
Speaker 1: died his ib dissected and when they did, um they
2:32
Speaker 1: found that no, it was pretty normal. There was no
2:34
Speaker 1: blue fluid in there. And later on they preserved his
2:37
Speaker 1: eye tissue and was diagnosed with something called um dudinopia.
2:43
Speaker 1: So he was a duduran in the parliance of people
2:46
Speaker 1: who are color blind, meaning that he lacked um functioning
2:52
Speaker 1: green cones or medium wave cones in his eye. Interesting,
2:58
Speaker 1: So he was the first, dude, Huh, he was the
3:00
Speaker 1: first one to write a scientific paper on it, at
3:02
Speaker 1: least good for him and bad for him. Well, yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: I think so too. I don't want to like overstate
3:13
Speaker 1: how bad I feel for people who have color blindness,
3:16
Speaker 1: because I know they're like living life and enjoying it
3:19
Speaker 1: and everything. But I would not want to be color
3:22
Speaker 1: blind if I had my druthers, you know, no, And
3:26
Speaker 1: I'm sure most people who are color blind would feel
3:28
Speaker 1: the same way. Uh. You know, John Fuller used to
3:31
Speaker 1: work with us. I believe he has some sort of
3:34
Speaker 1: color blindness or maybe calling it color vision deficiency. I
3:38
Speaker 1: saw that is a better term because color blind. A
3:41
Speaker 1: lot of people that don't know anything about it might think, well,
3:44
Speaker 1: if you're color blind, then you see in black and white,
3:46
Speaker 1: which is a form of color blindness. But that's the
3:49
Speaker 1: most extreme form. There's definitely a gradient, appropriately enough, between
3:54
Speaker 1: full color vision, which is called trichromacy, and complete color blindness. Yeah,
4:00
Speaker 1: let's get into the vision a little bit. Um, have
4:04
Speaker 1: we done one on the eye? Dude? I was like
4:07
Speaker 1: a lot of this sounds kind of familiar, and I
4:09
Speaker 1: looked high and low and could not find anything on
4:11
Speaker 1: vision on seeing on the eye. Nothing. So I don't
4:16
Speaker 1: know if we did like maybe a video on this
4:18
Speaker 1: once or something, but but it's some of it seemed familiar,
4:22
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find an episode on Alright, So we
4:25
Speaker 1: have a retina in our eye. Uh, like everyone knows
4:28
Speaker 1: the retina. Since this light deals with color and vision,
4:33
Speaker 1: and there are rods and cones. These are they're called
4:36
Speaker 1: rods and cones because of their shape. They look like
4:37
Speaker 1: cones or rods. So rods help you see in low light,
4:41
Speaker 1: and the cones are what where the detail and the
4:45
Speaker 1: color come from. So the cone mauthfunctioning or not being
4:49
Speaker 1: there at all if you don't have three cones, and
4:51
Speaker 1: you have to have at least two to see in
4:53
Speaker 1: any color. But if one of those cones of the three,
4:57
Speaker 1: if you do have three, is malfunctioning, then you will
5:00
Speaker 1: fall somewhere on the scale of color vision deficiency. Right right,
5:05
Speaker 1: So there's like, um something called so like I said,
5:09
Speaker 1: if you have normal color vision, you have trichromacy. If
5:12
Speaker 1: you have anomalous trichromacy, it means that one of those
5:16
Speaker 1: cones is not functioning properly, although they all still work there,
5:21
Speaker 1: it's just out of alignment a little bit. Yeah. And
5:26
Speaker 1: the way that it can get out of alignment is
5:28
Speaker 1: is those cones, each of them has UM a chromos
5:33
Speaker 1: chromophore I think is what it's called, which is like
5:36
Speaker 1: a little molecule that is attuned to a certain type
5:40
Speaker 1: of UM, a certain wavelength of the visible spectrum, and
5:46
Speaker 1: those wavelengths that it picks up kind of overlap depending
5:50
Speaker 1: on the cone. Like red and green cones what they
5:53
Speaker 1: what they pick up on the visible spectrum overlap big time.
5:56
Speaker 1: Green and blue kind of overlap, and then red and
5:59
Speaker 1: blue overlap least. But if the if the alignment of
6:03
Speaker 1: the wavelength to the visible spectrum within that cone is
6:06
Speaker 1: just a little bit off, you're not going to see
6:09
Speaker 1: colors like other people see colors, but you're still going
6:11
Speaker 1: to see something, right, And that's called anomalous trichromacy. Yeah,
6:16
Speaker 1: And there are well, I mean, there's so many different subcategories.
6:21
Speaker 1: I guess we should go through some of these. UM.
6:24
Speaker 1: If you have that analomus, uh, trichromacy. Some of the
6:29
Speaker 1: stuff is so hard. You do have your cones, so
6:32
Speaker 1: that means you have three cones, but one of those
6:35
Speaker 1: cones is defective. So if you have the do deuteronomally,
6:42
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a funmany. No, wait, that's a Bible book, right,
6:46
Speaker 1: What is it do to randomally? That's right, it just
6:49
Speaker 1: sounds weird. Yeah, I think I'm really bad with amalies.
6:55
Speaker 1: I think you just nailed it, man. Yeah, but it
6:58
Speaker 1: was it was clumsy, but that's fine. Do to anomaly, yeah,
7:01
Speaker 1: dou to anomaly, it's it's an anomaly of your duds,
7:07
Speaker 1: that's right. So that do to anomaly you're just talking about.
7:12
Speaker 1: That's if your green cones are out of alignment, all right,
7:17
Speaker 1: and there's pro to anomaly or protnomally, and that's your
7:22
Speaker 1: red cones being out of alignment. And then tried anomaly
7:26
Speaker 1: is blue all right. So if you're missing a cone altogether,
7:29
Speaker 1: that's for malfunctioning. You have three, but one of them
7:32
Speaker 1: doesn't work quite right. If you're missing one altogether, you
7:35
Speaker 1: have dichromatic vision. Uh. And then we said, of course
7:39
Speaker 1: that the worst is monochromacy. That's that's if that's basically
7:43
Speaker 1: seeing in black and white and sort of shades of gray.
7:46
Speaker 1: But if you are a dichromat or a person with
7:49
Speaker 1: dichromatic vision, maybe that's the PC distinction. It's to not
7:53
Speaker 1: call someone a dichromat. Maybe you think maybe I saw
7:58
Speaker 1: UM depending on your your condition, they're like abbreviated terms
8:04
Speaker 1: for it. But I saw people being referred to as
8:07
Speaker 1: dichromats all the time. But it really flies in the
8:09
Speaker 1: face of that whole thing of describing people by their
8:12
Speaker 1: condition rather than like a person with dichromacy, you know
8:16
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, Well, within the dichromat though, there
8:19
Speaker 1: are the three different subtypes, which are the du to,
8:22
Speaker 1: the proto, and the trita. That's the easiest way to
8:26
Speaker 1: say it, right, So that's what those fall under. Yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: And so the big difference between UM anomalous trichromacy and dichromacy.
8:36
Speaker 1: Dichromacy says it all is. It means you have two
8:39
Speaker 1: functioning cones and because of all that overlap, chuck with
8:44
Speaker 1: all of the wavelengths that the different pigments and your
8:47
Speaker 1: cones catch, that's a huge pellette of colors that are
8:53
Speaker 1: produced in the human brain when we look around. But
8:56
Speaker 1: if you remove one of those cones, there's an enormous
8:59
Speaker 1: reduction in colors. Supposedly, each cone multiplies the number of
9:04
Speaker 1: colors by a hundred. So if you start out with
9:07
Speaker 1: just one cone, let's say you can see a hundred shades.
9:10
Speaker 1: Just by adding a second cone, you can now see
9:13
Speaker 1: ten thousand different colors, and by adding a third cone,
9:17
Speaker 1: you can now see a million different colors. Right, So
9:20
Speaker 1: if you remove one of those cones, you're suddenly down
9:23
Speaker 1: to ten thousand colors. That's a significant difference. And that's
9:27
Speaker 1: the thing about dichromacy is it's not that your your
9:31
Speaker 1: cones are misaligned. One of your cones just is not
9:34
Speaker 1: producing at all, and so you're lacking a whole range
9:37
Speaker 1: of colors that that other people with all three functioning
9:41
Speaker 1: cones can see. Right. And like I said earlier, with monochromacy,
9:45
Speaker 1: that's when you see basically in black and white and gray.
9:48
Speaker 1: And there are two types there, rod monochromacy and cone type.
9:53
Speaker 1: And if you have the Rod type, you also have
9:56
Speaker 1: very poor vision and you're very sensitive to light. Uh
9:59
Speaker 1: In you might also have something called uh nystagmus, which
10:04
Speaker 1: that is when you have they call it dancing eyes.
10:06
Speaker 1: That's when um, there's a horizontal version, which means your
10:09
Speaker 1: your eye basically darts back and forth to the left
10:12
Speaker 1: and to the right constantly. Like prove Taylor Vince does
10:16
Speaker 1: he have that? You'd recognize him? And and like, uh,
10:21
Speaker 1: he's just well known for he's the actor with Oh
10:24
Speaker 1: I know him. I just never noticed his eye. Oh
10:26
Speaker 1: really yeah, yeah, he Like you can tell the directors like,
10:29
Speaker 1: all right, let's let's really get that going for this scene. Okay, wow.
10:33
Speaker 1: So when you think about the color wheel red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, green, violet,
10:42
Speaker 1: I said them out of order. I don't know what
10:43
Speaker 1: that would spell. It doesn't spell roy g bib though.
10:47
Speaker 1: But if you're color blind, like everyone wants to know, like,
10:50
Speaker 1: what does it look like if you're color blind? Um?
10:53
Speaker 1: And it's a little hard to describe because it's very
10:55
Speaker 1: subjective when you think about how each person sees color,
10:59
Speaker 1: because imagine everyone sees things a little bit differently. But
11:02
Speaker 1: if you're color blind, that palette is just not as varied.
11:06
Speaker 1: It's more muted, Yeah for sure, because again those different
11:11
Speaker 1: cones are interacting, they're overlapping to produce a huge palette
11:15
Speaker 1: of colors. It's not like we just see everything in red, green,
11:18
Speaker 1: and blue. There's those those things mixed together and interact
11:22
Speaker 1: to produce colors beyond those three. So yeah, if you're
11:25
Speaker 1: missing one, you're you're missing a lot more than just
11:27
Speaker 1: green or just red or just blue. Yeah, and things.
11:31
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't mean it's altogether gone either, because
11:33
Speaker 1: it's on a spectrum, and it depends what kind you have,
11:36
Speaker 1: Like it could be reddish but very muted, or green
11:40
Speaker 1: could look a more green gray. But it's just not
11:44
Speaker 1: that sort of robust standard color wheel that that you're
11:47
Speaker 1: used to seeing with. Uh what what I guess you
11:50
Speaker 1: would consider normal color vision for sure. And like if
11:53
Speaker 1: you have one of the opius, if you have like proteonopia,
11:57
Speaker 1: which is um, your red cones don't function it all.
12:01
Speaker 1: The reds are brownish, the purples are bluish, Your yellows
12:05
Speaker 1: totally normal. Um. But the green is also kind of
12:10
Speaker 1: like a weird kind of khaki brown itself. And that
12:15
Speaker 1: um that really overlaps with do to in opia too.
12:19
Speaker 1: The big difference between those is that you're um, your
12:24
Speaker 1: red what would look like a dark dark brown too.
12:28
Speaker 1: A protein ope, uh for doo to and open, it
12:31
Speaker 1: would look kind of like a kind of a drab,
12:33
Speaker 1: brownish olive, which is not what you want to see
12:36
Speaker 1: when you look at like a bright red apple. Yeah,
12:41
Speaker 1: look at that huge olive right, looks delicious And then
12:45
Speaker 1: you take a bite and you're like, that's no olive.
12:47
Speaker 1: So uh, let's take a break, has some olives, and
12:52
Speaker 1: we'll talk about animals and testing for color blindness right
12:55
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So, I think a lot of
13:18
Speaker 1: people have always uh heard growing up on the playground
13:22
Speaker 1: that animals see in black and white, especially dogs and
13:25
Speaker 1: cats see in black and white. Some animals see in color,
13:28
Speaker 1: some see in black and white. It kind of depends. Um.
13:31
Speaker 1: Dogs and cats they actually do see color, they just
13:34
Speaker 1: don't see the whole roy gb of color spectrum that
13:37
Speaker 1: you and I know. Um apparently apes and monkeys see
13:41
Speaker 1: the same way we do. Then you have really color
13:44
Speaker 1: blind animals like black and white types like raccoons, seals, whales,
13:50
Speaker 1: uh black and white types, and then birds apparently see
13:55
Speaker 1: uh seed more color than we do. Yeah, and there's
13:58
Speaker 1: you know, there's other um animals that see things like
14:01
Speaker 1: ultra violet, like there's a visible spectrum, but that's what
14:05
Speaker 1: we humans see where Technically, if you had like some
14:09
Speaker 1: sort of chromophore and an option that work together in
14:12
Speaker 1: a cone to to produce the red, green, or blue,
14:15
Speaker 1: if you had when that was a tuned to gamma
14:18
Speaker 1: raise or X rays or ultra violet or infrared, we
14:21
Speaker 1: would be able to see in those two. But we
14:23
Speaker 1: don't have that. But other animals are attuned to other things.
14:27
Speaker 1: And yeah, from what I saw, two birds seem to
14:29
Speaker 1: really see colors like nobody's business. Those birds and dogs,
14:34
Speaker 1: I think, tend to see blues and yellows just like us,
14:38
Speaker 1: in a little more robustly. And the other colors on
14:41
Speaker 1: the spectrum are more muted or just don't show up
14:45
Speaker 1: like we see them at all, or more like browns
14:47
Speaker 1: or something like that. So if you get your dog
14:49
Speaker 1: a ball, you want a blue ball or a yellow ball,
14:51
Speaker 1: that it will be able to spot those a lot easier. Well,
14:54
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean they can't see it. It just means
14:56
Speaker 1: they'll see a grayish ball, right, Yeah, if you get like, uh,
15:01
Speaker 1: yes for sure, but um, who wants to play with
15:04
Speaker 1: the gray ball? Okay, I think it's my point. Uh,
15:08
Speaker 1: I don't always wonder how they test for that stuff
15:10
Speaker 1: in animals. You just ask, yeah, blue right, that's a
15:16
Speaker 1: good Scooby impression. Alright. So testing for this you can
15:19
Speaker 1: go on the internet, of course, and you took one
15:23
Speaker 1: of the anomalous scope tests. I took what is known
15:27
Speaker 1: as a p I P which is a test called
15:29
Speaker 1: the Ishihara uh plate and pseudo isochromatic plate. So this
15:37
Speaker 1: was a doctor in Japan. He developed this test for
15:40
Speaker 1: the Japanese Army, doctor Ishihara. And if you go to
15:44
Speaker 1: look at it, it looks it's really kind of cool,
15:46
Speaker 1: slightly psychedelic looking. It's a circle composed of a bunch
15:50
Speaker 1: of little colored dots. Back in the day, he would
15:53
Speaker 1: just hold up cards like a ror check test, like
15:55
Speaker 1: watercolor cards. Yeah, and it's a circle with a bunch
15:59
Speaker 1: of little are dots in the middle, and then within
16:01
Speaker 1: all those dots there is the shape of a number
16:05
Speaker 1: composed of different variations of colors. So there will be
16:10
Speaker 1: like a circle with a bunch of dots that are
16:14
Speaker 1: mainly red and shades of red, and then within that
16:17
Speaker 1: will be like a number four that's really really close
16:21
Speaker 1: and it depends. Some of them really stand out as
16:23
Speaker 1: obvious and some of them really blend in or camouflaged almost,
16:28
Speaker 1: and you pick out these numbers and say what number
16:30
Speaker 1: you're seeing, and then after you go through this whole series,
16:33
Speaker 1: they'll be able to say, like, you know, you're pretty
16:35
Speaker 1: good on the reds, but you obviously have trouble with
16:38
Speaker 1: the greens or something like that. Yeah, because depending on
16:41
Speaker 1: what color scheme they use, if you are like a
16:44
Speaker 1: protein ope and can't see reds, you're you're not going
16:48
Speaker 1: to be able to pick out the red three that's
16:50
Speaker 1: embedded within these dots because you can't see red. It's
16:55
Speaker 1: all just going to fade together and just look like
16:56
Speaker 1: a field of dots to you, whereas somebody else who
16:59
Speaker 1: can see heads would just see it clear as day
17:01
Speaker 1: that there's a three in the middle of that circle. Yeah,
17:04
Speaker 1: it's pretty ingenious test, and that was that was like
17:07
Speaker 1: the test for a while, but it's definitely advanced by
17:10
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds um since then. There's there's more tests
17:15
Speaker 1: than than just showed up in this articles. One I
17:17
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it, but it's made of
17:20
Speaker 1: you have four rows of something like twenty or thirty
17:23
Speaker 1: tiles of varying shades across the spectrum and you're supposed
17:29
Speaker 1: to basically put them in order to match a line
17:33
Speaker 1: like a control line, and um, it's kind of like
17:37
Speaker 1: an anomalous gope test, but it's more hands on. And
17:40
Speaker 1: then there's one that the I think the Coast Guard
17:43
Speaker 1: in the Navy and the Air Force use um called
17:46
Speaker 1: the Falworth Lantern test or sorry, Farnsworth Lantern test. Yeah.
17:51
Speaker 1: My uh, my brother in laws a marine and he's
17:54
Speaker 1: a pilot and he had to take this, so this
17:56
Speaker 1: is an additional test. Basically, if you fail the pit test,
18:01
Speaker 1: then you will use this. The f A also uses
18:03
Speaker 1: it because if you want to be a pilot, um,
18:06
Speaker 1: you can't be color blind, so it's basically a backup.
18:10
Speaker 1: And it's like a little box that shows you colored
18:14
Speaker 1: lights and you have to identify these colored lights as
18:17
Speaker 1: they come up from a distance. Uh. They'll show two
18:19
Speaker 1: at a time, maybe one at a time, and you
18:22
Speaker 1: just have to pick them out and identify the colors.
18:24
Speaker 1: But they do dim Uh they use a filter, so
18:27
Speaker 1: like you can't cheat your way through by knowing that
18:29
Speaker 1: something is bright, so it might be yellow, right, because yeah,
18:33
Speaker 1: if you if when you start looking at colored lights
18:35
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, it does become clear that some
18:39
Speaker 1: are just brighter than others, which is why I think
18:42
Speaker 1: people who have yellow blue color blindness or triton opes um,
18:48
Speaker 1: they tend to be very sensitive to bright light jay
18:52
Speaker 1: which kind of makes sense in a in a weird way.
18:55
Speaker 1: But a lot of this stuff, I was like, wait,
18:57
Speaker 1: how how does that happen? In you know, like due
19:01
Speaker 1: to an opia and protonopia, they overlap so much that
19:04
Speaker 1: they call both of them red red, green color blindness,
19:08
Speaker 1: and they both see reds as browns and they see
19:11
Speaker 1: greens as browns. But it's just bizarre to meet. And
19:15
Speaker 1: when I really kind of drill into it, the actual
19:18
Speaker 1: details of it are are really fascinating because you you
19:22
Speaker 1: just are raised your whole life to think like, this
19:25
Speaker 1: person can't see red, this person can't see green, this
19:28
Speaker 1: person can't see blue. And it's as simple as that.
19:30
Speaker 1: And it's the exact opposite of as simple as that
19:33
Speaker 1: in reality, because there's there's so much nuance to colors
19:36
Speaker 1: that are produced by these three r GB cones. Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine diagnosing a kid. I mean it's
19:44
Speaker 1: not I mean, we'll talk a little bit about living
19:46
Speaker 1: with color blindness in a bit but it's it's and
19:49
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from people. It's not like it
19:51
Speaker 1: might hamper you. I don't think to the point of danger.
19:55
Speaker 1: I guess maybe if you were a monochromat that might
19:58
Speaker 1: be possible, but it seems like more than an inconvenience
20:02
Speaker 1: than anything else. Right, you'd be like, what is this
20:05
Speaker 1: black liquid pouring out from a major artery in my arm?
20:09
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is. If it were red,
20:12
Speaker 1: I would know its blood. Yeah. Uh. As far as
20:16
Speaker 1: how it's caused, it is uh, largely genetic, although um,
20:22
Speaker 1: there are some drugs and diseases and conditions it could
20:25
Speaker 1: cause it later in life, but it's generally genetic. Yes,
20:31
Speaker 1: so um. Especially red green color blindness is uh what
20:38
Speaker 1: is it? Sex linked? Recessive? Yeah? And and way more
20:42
Speaker 1: men and way more Caucasian men get it than women.
20:46
Speaker 1: And I'm not quite sure about the Caucasian part. I
20:48
Speaker 1: couldn't find any explanation for that. But there's a very
20:50
Speaker 1: clear and easy explanation for why more men have it.
20:53
Speaker 1: Something like eight percent of Caucasian men and I think
20:57
Speaker 1: like five percent of Asian men tend to have red
21:00
Speaker 1: green color blindness of some some varying degree, right, and
21:05
Speaker 1: if you have red green color blindness, of people are
21:08
Speaker 1: gonna have mild and the other are going to have
21:11
Speaker 1: it so severe that it would basically be proteonopia. Do
21:15
Speaker 1: do to anopia, which again means your cones are starting
21:18
Speaker 1: aren't functioning, just like one of your cones isn't. But
21:21
Speaker 1: the reason why there's way more men than women, I
21:24
Speaker 1: think something like point five percent of the population in
21:28
Speaker 1: the US of women have color blindness is because it's
21:32
Speaker 1: carried on the X chromosome. And since it's recessive, men
21:37
Speaker 1: only have a one X chromosome and they have a
21:40
Speaker 1: Y chromosome, which means that they're all of their color
21:44
Speaker 1: vision genes are just on the X chromosome. And since
21:48
Speaker 1: it's recessive, if that one gene is defective and that
21:52
Speaker 1: you don't have normal color vision, that the man is
21:55
Speaker 1: gonna have color blindness. But for a woman, it takes
21:58
Speaker 1: two defective chromosome genes, right, that's right. So that makes it, uh,
22:05
Speaker 1: sex linked recessive, which is kind of that could be
22:08
Speaker 1: an okay album name. I don't know about a band
22:11
Speaker 1: name sex linked Recessive, sure, yeah, uh. And I talked
22:15
Speaker 1: about diseases and conditions UM, Glaucoma's one, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's leukemia, MS,
22:24
Speaker 1: sickle cell alcoholism. If you literally drink yourself color blind
22:30
Speaker 1: like that sounds like something made up. Yeah it does.
22:32
Speaker 1: You know, you wouldn't be able to detect the pink
22:35
Speaker 1: elephant anymore. Yeah, that's true. You say, who is that
22:38
Speaker 1: gray elephant? And they say all elephants are gray? Drinking
22:42
Speaker 1: yourself color blind? Man? That is that's nuts. That's a
22:45
Speaker 1: tom Wait song. There's also um it should be for sure.
22:50
Speaker 1: There's also like some drugs that can do it too, right. Yeah.
22:54
Speaker 1: I didn't get to look into these as much though,
22:56
Speaker 1: but it says that digitalis and chloroquine, you know, the
23:00
Speaker 1: second ones of malaria treatment and the first one is
23:03
Speaker 1: a reckless heart treatment. Um, but I guess both of
23:09
Speaker 1: them can cause color blindness. The thing about color blindness,
23:13
Speaker 1: if it's acquired, if it's if it's um genetic, it's
23:16
Speaker 1: probably red green, you're probably a boy and you're probably
23:20
Speaker 1: Caucasian boy, still likeliness, But if it's acquired, it's likelier
23:24
Speaker 1: that um, you're yellow blue color blind? Right, Yeah, and
23:29
Speaker 1: that can actually get better if it's acquired, it can
23:31
Speaker 1: get worse, but it can also go away, depending on say,
23:34
Speaker 1: if you stop using the drug that is causing color blindness,
23:38
Speaker 1: or maybe you give up drinking. Right, But there's no
23:40
Speaker 1: cure for color blindness genetically, so you can't take a
23:44
Speaker 1: pill or get a shot or get any kind of treatment. Um.
23:48
Speaker 1: There apparently are corrective lenses that they have out there,
23:53
Speaker 1: but UM, I don't know about that. That doesn't sound
23:56
Speaker 1: like a great idea. I'm not sure how effective those are.
23:58
Speaker 1: Supposedly they like kind of work for color, but they
24:01
Speaker 1: also affect like depth perception too, which it's kind of
24:05
Speaker 1: robbing Peter to pay Paul in that sense. Maybe even
24:08
Speaker 1: worse than that. Interesting and I looked them up there
24:11
Speaker 1: they don't seem to be any further along than when
24:13
Speaker 1: this article was written. But um, there's gene therapy. It
24:17
Speaker 1: just hasn't been tested in humans, but it's been shown
24:20
Speaker 1: to work in monkeys where they inject genetic material directly
24:25
Speaker 1: into the eye and hope for the best. But apparently
24:30
Speaker 1: it works in monkeys. Again, same thing as what you
24:33
Speaker 1: were saying, how do you how do you know do
24:36
Speaker 1: you test for color blindness and animals? It's I want
24:39
Speaker 1: to know it's fascinating just the idea of it. Sure,
24:44
Speaker 1: hopefully they'll right in. So let's take a break and
24:46
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk about living with color blindness. Chuck,
24:50
Speaker 1: how about that? Alright? So, like I said before, uh,
25:15
Speaker 1: and I do want to hear from people that are
25:17
Speaker 1: are color blind. It seems like more of an inconvenience
25:20
Speaker 1: than an actual danger or a threat. Um it does
25:24
Speaker 1: it could limit like maybe what kind of job you
25:26
Speaker 1: might want to get. Um, Like I said, you can't
25:29
Speaker 1: be color blind if you're a pilot or if you
25:32
Speaker 1: want to be a pilot. Um, it's funny they mentioned
25:36
Speaker 1: in here if you're an electrician, like color coded wires
25:39
Speaker 1: are never really thought about that. But this is probably
25:42
Speaker 1: a pretty good point where I guess if you're may
25:45
Speaker 1: never work for a bomb squad. Oh yeah, that's a
25:48
Speaker 1: good one. That's your life calling. That's sad. Also saw
25:51
Speaker 1: if you're a meat inspector, you probably can't be color blind.
25:55
Speaker 1: Um looks good to me, right, it's all gray. It's that,
26:00
Speaker 1: it's all good. And the similarly, if you um have
26:05
Speaker 1: a red color blindness, you can't tell whether steaks cooked
26:10
Speaker 1: or not based on color. And uh, Similarly, you if
26:14
Speaker 1: you have a green color blindness, you might have trouble
26:17
Speaker 1: with ripe fruit, whether fruits ripe or not. Luckily, anyone
26:21
Speaker 1: that knows what they're doing with a steak, you could
26:25
Speaker 1: be blindfolded and cooking steak right. Sure, And plus it,
26:30
Speaker 1: even if you don't know what you're doing, there's meat
26:32
Speaker 1: thermometers that I have to do is get to like
26:34
Speaker 1: one sixty I think, And you're all right, yeah, But
26:37
Speaker 1: I mean we've talked enough about cooking steak in here.
26:41
Speaker 1: It's a it's a time thing, a temperature thing, and
26:44
Speaker 1: at the very least you can touch it and know
26:46
Speaker 1: what's going on. Sure, if it's if it gives your
26:49
Speaker 1: thumb frost bite, probably not done yet, because if you're
26:53
Speaker 1: cooking a steak by color, that means you're you're cutting
26:57
Speaker 1: into the steak to see if it's done, which is
27:00
Speaker 1: the worst thing you could ever do. It's it's a sin. Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm horrified at that whole notion. I am
27:08
Speaker 1: too choke. What about little kids getting dressed and coloring crayons.
27:12
Speaker 1: That's why crayons are labeled. But I mean, if they
27:15
Speaker 1: use some names that don't really mean anything to the color.
27:18
Speaker 1: That's not very helpful, you know. But yeah, if you
27:21
Speaker 1: have crayons with the labels peeled off and your color blind,
27:24
Speaker 1: that's not good. Um. I also saw diamond appraisers so interesting,
27:30
Speaker 1: casino dealers, the chip colors um. But now they have
27:36
Speaker 1: things like software that can actually change colors on the
27:40
Speaker 1: web so that you can see them more clearly depending
27:43
Speaker 1: on what kind of color blindness you have. Interesting, so
27:46
Speaker 1: that I think it used to be like a real problem,
27:49
Speaker 1: and then they came up with a lot of different
27:51
Speaker 1: software that you can buy and just run on your computer. Um,
27:55
Speaker 1: which that's got to help quite a bit. Yeah, that
27:58
Speaker 1: didn't surprise me. I mean I figured in the olden
28:00
Speaker 1: days it was just like, well, sorry for you, But
28:03
Speaker 1: but now there are so many different things that they
28:05
Speaker 1: can do to to help people out with various like
28:09
Speaker 1: slight conditions like this for sure. And I think a
28:11
Speaker 1: lot of the worries were kind of overblown. Um, Like
28:15
Speaker 1: the f a A used to used to say like
28:17
Speaker 1: you have to have normal color vision to be an
28:21
Speaker 1: f a A employee, and they repeal that because there's
28:24
Speaker 1: so many other ways you can design things other than colors. Um.
28:30
Speaker 1: And it's still a problem for it. I can tell
28:32
Speaker 1: like with color blindness, UM, the same light will be
28:36
Speaker 1: used on like an electronic thing to show it's fully
28:40
Speaker 1: charged or to show it needs charging, Whereas if you
28:43
Speaker 1: just have a light blink to show that it needs charging,
28:47
Speaker 1: that would help tremendously, rather than just using a green
28:49
Speaker 1: for fully charged in red for needing charging. Doesn't help
28:53
Speaker 1: somebody with color blindness because it just looks like an
28:56
Speaker 1: ugly brown light to them. Um. I never thought about that.
28:59
Speaker 1: A lot of things blinking right, And I'll bet that's why. Actually,
29:02
Speaker 1: because it's just a better design, not using different colored
29:06
Speaker 1: chalked for emphasis in school, UM, using for graphs rather
29:11
Speaker 1: than like just colors. You can also use like cross
29:14
Speaker 1: hatching or dots or something like that to indicate differences. Um.
29:19
Speaker 1: And then the reason I said why it seems like
29:24
Speaker 1: people are coming around to the idea of it being
29:26
Speaker 1: unsafe to to be color blind in this world, um
29:30
Speaker 1: being overblown. Japan had a real like um bias against
29:35
Speaker 1: people with color blindness for many, many years. Did you
29:39
Speaker 1: read the article I sent? I didn't see that one
29:42
Speaker 1: man so back in I think n the crown Prince
29:46
Speaker 1: hera Hito was about to marry um a woman, and
29:50
Speaker 1: it turned out that she had color blindness in her family,
29:55
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the royal families stepped
29:58
Speaker 1: up and was like, I don't want marrying this this
30:01
Speaker 1: girl because her family has color blindness in in her lineage.
30:06
Speaker 1: And the marriage went on anyway, but the publicity involved
30:12
Speaker 1: really got people's attention and they really took it to heart,
30:15
Speaker 1: and for decades up until a few years ago, there
30:19
Speaker 1: was discrimination against people who were colorblind, Like you could
30:23
Speaker 1: not enroll in some high school courses or college courses
30:28
Speaker 1: if you were tested as color blind, and all kids
30:31
Speaker 1: were tested at a young age to see whether they
30:33
Speaker 1: were color blind or not. Um you couldn't get some jobs,
30:37
Speaker 1: and not even where it was conceivably safe or unsafe.
30:41
Speaker 1: It was just like discrimination against people who are color blind.
30:45
Speaker 1: In some cases, people who were fully blind could enroll
30:48
Speaker 1: in some courses that people who are color blind could not,
30:52
Speaker 1: So there was like no scientific basis to it whatsoever.
30:55
Speaker 1: It was strictly like this kind of um distaste for
30:58
Speaker 1: color blindness that had been the culture since is finally
31:03
Speaker 1: fading away as as um as time goes on, they
31:07
Speaker 1: stop testing kids in Japan in the last year or two, um,
31:10
Speaker 1: for color blindness, because they're like, we understand it better
31:13
Speaker 1: now and you're not a monster for being color blind. Man,
31:16
Speaker 1: that's amazing, isn't that interesting? Yeah? Yeah, something I should know?
31:24
Speaker 1: So color blindness? Chucky? Got anything else? Uh? No? Well,
31:28
Speaker 1: actually that one little interesting tidbit that apparently people that
31:31
Speaker 1: are color blind can pick out camouflage better because they
31:35
Speaker 1: look more at texture than in the actual color. Yeah,
31:37
Speaker 1: I saw that they make better spotters for sniper teams.
31:42
Speaker 1: Nice yea, I guess so, um, all right, what about now?
31:46
Speaker 1: You got anything else? Now? Nothing else? So if you
31:48
Speaker 1: want to know more about color blindness, go ask somebody
31:51
Speaker 1: who's color blind. I'm sure they are gonna have some
31:54
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff for you. And we want to hear from
31:56
Speaker 1: color blind people too, So please let us know what
31:58
Speaker 1: it's like to live as buddy with a color vision
32:01
Speaker 1: deficiency or color blindness, or let us know exactly what
32:05
Speaker 1: we should say. And uh, since I said that, it's
32:07
Speaker 1: time for a listener mate, Alright, I'm gonna call this
32:12
Speaker 1: uh little prices right follow up? Okay, we just released
32:17
Speaker 1: our live game show live in Denver, Colorado, where we
32:24
Speaker 1: had a lot of our stuff. You should know. Army
32:26
Speaker 1: members traveled in and met each other for the first time. Yeah,
32:30
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool, which is really really neat. We
32:32
Speaker 1: had a backstage hang and uh, you know who you are, folks,
32:35
Speaker 1: So it was it's great to see you as always.
32:38
Speaker 1: We'll be back to Denver because we did two sold
32:40
Speaker 1: out shows there. Yeah, it was. It's a great town.
32:43
Speaker 1: It was really good. All right. So here we go
32:45
Speaker 1: with a little bit about the prices. Right, Hey, guys,
32:48
Speaker 1: fairly new listeners started in July. Wow, we'll welcome to
32:50
Speaker 1: the show. David um but he's working his way backwards,
32:54
Speaker 1: which is great. So he listened to game shows and
32:57
Speaker 1: he said, I'm a child of the eighties and like Chuck,
32:59
Speaker 1: my sum or in home sick from school days were
33:02
Speaker 1: built around a plethora of awesome daily game shows. When
33:05
Speaker 1: talking about the Price is Right, Chuck mentioned trotting out
33:09
Speaker 1: to the very tough Cliffhanger game. Uh. And this might
33:13
Speaker 1: throw me into the dork category, but I'm obsessed with
33:16
Speaker 1: getting on the show. I've been to three tapings in
33:17
Speaker 1: the past year, and I've studied tips and tricks. So
33:20
Speaker 1: he's like, uh, what's his face. Oh, man, I was
33:25
Speaker 1: the guy who beat Uh yeah, Michael Larson. Yeah, Michael Larson,
33:29
Speaker 1: except he's the Michael Larson of of Cliffhanger. He said,
33:33
Speaker 1: he claims this is a full proof way to win,
33:36
Speaker 1: so listen up, everybody. Every time he's done it, it's worked.
33:40
Speaker 1: Here's the trick. For the first item, bid twenty dollars,
33:44
Speaker 1: whatever the actual prices, doesn't matter, Add eleven dollars and
33:50
Speaker 1: make that the bid on the second item. Then whatever
33:53
Speaker 1: the actual prices for that item, add eleven dollars to that.
33:58
Speaker 1: And he said it works every single time. Weird. I
34:02
Speaker 1: wonder why. I don't know. Well, they're probably gonna change
34:06
Speaker 1: you because, as everyone knows, Drew Carey listens to stuff
34:09
Speaker 1: you should know religiously. I'm sure Drew Carey does not
34:11
Speaker 1: care one bit who wins and who loses. Uncle Iffhanger.
34:15
Speaker 1: I don't know, man. I read this. I think a
34:17
Speaker 1: g Q Vanity Fair article about this guy who was
34:20
Speaker 1: accused of cheating on the prizes, right, and Drew Carey
34:23
Speaker 1: was mad about the idea. Well, sure, if you cheat,
34:27
Speaker 1: I guess that's true. Yeah, that's a big distinction. Uh.
34:30
Speaker 1: And then he says this my other interesting tidbit is
34:32
Speaker 1: regarding the Japanese game show that you discussed to Catchy's Castle.
34:37
Speaker 1: Starting in two thousand three, Spike TV took old episodes
34:39
Speaker 1: and dubbed them in English, and it totally transformed into
34:42
Speaker 1: one of the funniest things you'd ever watch. If you
34:45
Speaker 1: have twenty minutes to burn, hop on the YouTube and
34:47
Speaker 1: catch an episode. Thanks for the great work that is
34:50
Speaker 1: David Mills. Uh. I have a cousin named David Mills,
34:54
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming that is not you. You never know.
34:58
Speaker 1: Surely he would have just texted me cousin Dave. He's
35:02
Speaker 1: the formal type. He doesn't like to take shortcuts except
35:05
Speaker 1: the cliffhanger. Well, thanks a lot, cousin Dave. We appreciate that.
35:11
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us to
35:12
Speaker 1: share your tips and secrets for game shows or for
35:16
Speaker 1: getting through life, whatever we want to hear from you,
35:19
Speaker 1: You can hang out with us on socials by going
35:21
Speaker 1: to our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and
35:23
Speaker 1: finding all the links there, or you can send us
35:25
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned email Send it to Stuff podcast
35:29
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com for more on this
35:37
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
35:39
Speaker 1: dot com,