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How Tourette Syndrome Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant
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Speaker 1: doing a little dance. You always give me away, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: to do secret things for you, and then you immediately
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Speaker 1: say what I'm doing? Yeah, Hey, Chuck just rubbed his butt.
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Speaker 1: I didn't know that they were secret just from me. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's all It's my little gift. I had no idea.
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Speaker 1: Thanks to that Friday dude. It's so good to be
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Speaker 1: recording on a Friday. Beautiful. Ow, it's like eighty degrees.
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Speaker 1: We have a window so we can see the beauty,
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Speaker 1: or we can actually see the ugly building. The construction
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Speaker 1: and the office is well underway. We've been inhaling volatile
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Speaker 1: organic compounds all week. It's out of hand. Actually, it's
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Speaker 1: everywhere I turned, their desk that shouldn't be there, and
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Speaker 1: cube walls stacked up. Yeah, it's weird. I can't believe
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Speaker 1: we're not working at home through this whole thing. It's
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Speaker 1: quite an idea, Bryant, is that a complaint? I don't
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Speaker 1: want to come across his complaining. You're fine. I'm glad
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Speaker 1: to have a job. We don't have a sponsor. It
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Speaker 1: doesn't matter, Chuck. Yes, have you ever seen a Tourette's
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Speaker 1: guy on YouTube? Uh? No, you haven't. He's this guy.
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Speaker 1: He's a hefty guy with a glasses and a mustache
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Speaker 1: and um, often a neck brace, and he has a
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Speaker 1: foul mouth and anger problem. Uh. He's fond of using
1:36
Speaker 1: Bob sagg It as an expletive. He goes Bob sag It.
1:40
Speaker 1: It's funny because Bob Saget is a very foul mouth.
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Speaker 1: He is surprisingly that in itself is almost a curse word.
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Speaker 1: Um he Uh. He's taken a lot of heat because
1:51
Speaker 1: he's very abusive towards his family members. Um I I
1:56
Speaker 1: can't imagine that. You haven't. He says just the craziest stuff.
2:00
Speaker 1: And also, uh, the stuff he's saying is is in
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Speaker 1: response oftentimes to what like questions other people ask or whatever.
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Speaker 1: So really comes off as just a jerk. So I
2:11
Speaker 1: went on Snopes to find out if the guy actually
2:14
Speaker 1: has Turette's. He does. Actually he had, he was diagnosed
2:18
Speaker 1: with Tourette's, but his family admits on the Feeling Guilty
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Speaker 1: page UM that, uh, he does have anger and alcohol
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Speaker 1: issues that exacerbate things. Okay, so he may just be
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Speaker 1: a jerk as well, It's possible, Yeah, but he has
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Speaker 1: raised awareness. One could say of Turette's syndrome tourette syndrome.
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Speaker 1: Tourette's going to be a problem throughout this whole podcast.
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Speaker 1: There is no s. It is Turette syndrome. Yeah, unless
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Speaker 1: you're just calling it Turette's without the syndrome, then it
2:51
Speaker 1: has an apostrophe s. The reason why is because it
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Speaker 1: belongs to a French physician, correct, Chuck kom Yes, his
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Speaker 1: name was de la Tourette is how I'm going to
3:02
Speaker 1: pronounce it in my faux French. And he was a
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Speaker 1: physician in France in the eighteen hundreds. And he did
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Speaker 1: not Actually he was not the first person to UM
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Speaker 1: to report about Turette's. That was Jean Marc Gaspars. It yes,
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Speaker 1: very nice, and he described the symptoms of a lady,
3:22
Speaker 1: a noble woman named Marquis de Dampia. I am impressed
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Speaker 1: with you, chucking. She was elderly and she had it
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Speaker 1: sounds like she had Turette's and uh, he described them
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Speaker 1: as a tick illness. And then later on is when
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Speaker 1: Tourette himself published the Study of Nervous Affliction, when he
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Speaker 1: tracted nine people in a French hospital, and then it
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Speaker 1: officially became Tourette, right, it became the syndrome de Turette.
3:49
Speaker 1: That's right. We sound like we could collude at any
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Speaker 1: moment um, so that that's where the the syndrome gets
3:56
Speaker 1: its name, right indeed. Uh. And since then, well, I
4:00
Speaker 1: guess since the nineteenth century to I'd say the mid
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Speaker 1: twentieth century, it was basically like holy cow, Tourette syndrome. Yeah. Uh.
4:11
Speaker 1: And then in the later twentieth century we started to
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Speaker 1: get a slightly better handle on what was going on
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Speaker 1: with Tourette sufferers. Um, but we still don't entirely know
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Speaker 1: what what's going on there. We we suspect that it
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Speaker 1: has a genetic basis because um, they haven't tracted to
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Speaker 1: the gene but they believe that there's a or they've
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Speaker 1: noticed that parents with Tourette's have a fifty chance of
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Speaker 1: passing on to their kids, which is pretty strongly in
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Speaker 1: favor of genetics. Yeah, we also know and this. I
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Speaker 1: found it very interesting. I didn't know this that you
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Speaker 1: always have the onset of turette Tourette's, right, it's just
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Speaker 1: difficult before the age of eighteen. Yeah. Usually it starts
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Speaker 1: around seven peaks from eight to twelve, and then the
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Speaker 1: ticks start to decrease steadily after that. Boys get them
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Speaker 1: more than girls. Yep. I think there are four times
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Speaker 1: likely or three to four times likely to to have
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Speaker 1: Tourette's girls are and you can have tourettess and not
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Speaker 1: notice it too. Yeah. I did not have visible ticks.
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Speaker 1: It's just in the gene is in your body. If
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Speaker 1: it is indeed a gene. Let's let's stop beating around
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Speaker 1: the bush, shall we. Let let us talk about cop
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Speaker 1: ro lalia. Very nice, thank you, right, that is what
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Speaker 1: you were. What most people think of Tourette's is the
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Speaker 1: old joke, O, hey, that guy's got Turette's. If somebody
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Speaker 1: yells an obscenity, right, A vocal tick. It's a complex
5:43
Speaker 1: vocal tick, very complex. There's a simple vocal tick, which
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Speaker 1: might be like a grunt or clearing your throat or
5:49
Speaker 1: something like that. A complex vocal tick is is a
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Speaker 1: symptom of Tourette syndrome, where you are stringing words together
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Speaker 1: or even just saying a word would would be a
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Speaker 1: complex vocal tick. But specifically with coper lalia copper lalia,
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Speaker 1: I don't know, um. These these words aren't uttered often
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Speaker 1: within a social or emotional context, meaning that you know,
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Speaker 1: you're not there's it's quiet in the auditorium when the
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Speaker 1: kid blurts it out, you know, um, and it's an
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Speaker 1: obscenity there they blurt obscenities or reference to genitalia or um,
6:28
Speaker 1: bodily functions or sexual acts. Yeah, um, that right. The
6:36
Speaker 1: thing is, though, is UM. A lot of people who
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Speaker 1: age uh and have copper lalia um learned to they
6:44
Speaker 1: learn tricks like they might mutter it a little more,
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Speaker 1: They might mask their mouth with their hands. Um, they
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Speaker 1: might say just the first letter two of the word like,
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Speaker 1: and that is enough for a lot of people who
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Speaker 1: suffer suffered from this this affliction or have the symptom um.
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Speaker 1: But in other cases it's so extreme that you can't
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Speaker 1: say anything but that word that comes out. And what
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Speaker 1: I've read is it's akin to wanting to um sneeze,
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Speaker 1: but say sneezing is socially unacceptable. So you have to cough,
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Speaker 1: but that doesn't satisfy the urge to sneeze, and eventually
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Speaker 1: you're gonna have to sneeze. Do you know what I
7:26
Speaker 1: would do? I would just turn around and look at
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Speaker 1: the guy behind me every time. You're like, whoa dude? Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's your deal. Well, apparently also there's a kind of
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Speaker 1: um sub suffering of copper lalia where um people blurred
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Speaker 1: out like racial and ethnic slurs in the company of
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Speaker 1: people who would take offense to that. But the researchers
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Speaker 1: point out, although I'm not entirely certain that they have
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Speaker 1: a true handle on this, they point out that this
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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily indicate, you know, the thoughts of a person
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Speaker 1: who has copper Lawiyah. It's just this is what they're
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Speaker 1: what's in their mind right then, or what they're saying
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Speaker 1: or what's coming out. Yeah, well that's uh. That is
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Speaker 1: can be a symptom of turettes, but it's only in
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Speaker 1: less than fifteen percent of sufferers, So the common thing
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Speaker 1: that most people think of, it's actually very uncommon, right,
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Speaker 1: And like you said, a lot of people have such
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Speaker 1: mild symptoms you wouldn't even notice it. Like I could
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Speaker 1: have Turette syndrome Chuck a very mild case and you
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Speaker 1: wouldn't know. I know. Well, they say stat wise one
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Speaker 1: and a hundred people suffer from a mild form, which
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Speaker 1: is a lot more than I would have thought, and
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Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand Americans. It's just Americans have the
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Speaker 1: most severe forms. So that's that's definitely a little more
8:45
Speaker 1: common than you would think. And it is um pain cultural,
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Speaker 1: but it's not found in equal amounts in every culture,
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Speaker 1: which kind of undermines the genetic basis idea a little bit,
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Speaker 1: because there's a lot more Turette sufferers in in UM
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Speaker 1: the US than in Japan. Interesting, I wonder past something
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Speaker 1: to do with our culture. We're a foul mouth culture.
9:07
Speaker 1: Maybe right, we're and we're very nervous. I think the
9:12
Speaker 1: Cold War did it to us well. And they do
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Speaker 1: say that anxiety sometimes can increase the amount of tecks
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Speaker 1: and relaxation. That's one of the things I'll try and
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Speaker 1: get you do is relax yourself with like breathing techniques,
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Speaker 1: so that that could have some credibility. We'll get to that,
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Speaker 1: Dr Clark, Thank you. Dr bryant Um. Whether or not
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Speaker 1: it has a genetic basis, and by the way, if
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Speaker 1: it does, will know for certain within five to ten years,
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Speaker 1: because I'm gonna understand every single gene in the human
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Speaker 1: genome within that time. I think it is very scary,
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Speaker 1: all the ramifications. That's a podcast in itself. Yes it is.
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Speaker 1: Look for that one two thousand and eleven. Um whether
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Speaker 1: or not it has a genetic basis, they have kind
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Speaker 1: of and by they, I mean people who are involved
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Speaker 1: intoret research have the government have no although they do
10:00
Speaker 1: some to the National Institutes of Health. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
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Speaker 1: they've kind of narrowed down some regions of the brain
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Speaker 1: that are likely candidates for, um, the underlying mechanism of
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Speaker 1: Tourette syndrome. Right, Yeah, I thought this was a little weak.
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Speaker 1: I did too, and I didn't like the word pinpointed. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: because I mean they picked the thalamus, the basil, ganglia,
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Speaker 1: and the frontal cortex, and it's kind of like those
10:22
Speaker 1: are the three things that control like your motor functions.
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Speaker 1: Are like, well, I must have something to do with
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Speaker 1: that then, or you're from a cortex which is in
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Speaker 1: charge of controlling the motor activity of speech, including speech.
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Speaker 1: So it seems like I don't know, those are the
10:38
Speaker 1: obvious parts of the brain, right, Like nobody didn't even
10:41
Speaker 1: real research. That's not true, of course, but you know,
10:44
Speaker 1: they're just like, it's probably this part of the brain.
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Speaker 1: But like, we know enough about the brain. If someone
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Speaker 1: were to have sat us down beforehand and said, pick
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Speaker 1: out the three parts that may be responsible, I probably
10:53
Speaker 1: would have picked out those three. I would have said,
10:54
Speaker 1: frontal cortex. Sure. Sure. Um. The problem is, Chuck, is
10:59
Speaker 1: not only do we not know that much about the brain,
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Speaker 1: Humanity in general and science specifically doesn't have that great
11:07
Speaker 1: of a grasp on the brain. But and we'll say
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Speaker 1: it again too, but um, it looks like the likeliest
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Speaker 1: candidate is not necessarily a brain region. But uh, these
11:18
Speaker 1: brain regions working or malfunctioning in conjunction because of a
11:24
Speaker 1: an excess of the narrow transmitter dopamine misfiring transmitters. That's
11:28
Speaker 1: always the case. And again, the reason why they think
11:31
Speaker 1: that this is possible is not because they have any
11:35
Speaker 1: hard scientific evidence that this is the case. They've just
11:38
Speaker 1: noticed that in Parkinson's patients, which are the opposite of
11:42
Speaker 1: um Turette's patients in a lot of ways. Um, they
11:46
Speaker 1: move much more slowly, unsteadily um and their motor function
11:52
Speaker 1: seems to be impaired, it's decreased, and they've found that
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Speaker 1: there is a lack of dopamine in Parkinson's pay and
12:00
Speaker 1: so they're like, well, then it's probably just means that
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Speaker 1: there's an excess of you know, turette pace, because that's
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Speaker 1: the universe. Is that cut and dry, right, That's what
12:10
Speaker 1: I think? Yeah, me too, But like we said, it's
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Speaker 1: the brain, and it's just such a crap shoot when
12:14
Speaker 1: you're dealing with the brain. Do you just don't know?
12:17
Speaker 1: They're doing their best? Though? Should we talk about symptoms? Yeah,
12:20
Speaker 1: let's while we already covered the obscenity bursting coupla very nice.
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Speaker 1: He took the queue, and that is the rare symptom.
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Speaker 1: More commonly, what you're gonna see is like eye blinking,
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Speaker 1: throat clearing, shoulder shrugging. I knew a guy facial grimaces,
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Speaker 1: that this friend of mine in high school had tourettes,
12:42
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know it until, you know, recently,
12:45
Speaker 1: when I was researching. I was like, oh, that guy
12:48
Speaker 1: Andy had tourettes because he would go like uh like
12:53
Speaker 1: and like blank and turn his head and like make
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Speaker 1: a little gutural sound like that. Well, yes, then he
12:57
Speaker 1: would have turetts because you said that he had a
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Speaker 1: motor tick and a vocal tick, right, yes, So if
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Speaker 1: he just had you know, the shoulder shrugging um or
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Speaker 1: eye blinking or twitching just that, he would have had
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Speaker 1: a chronic motor tick disorder. Or if he just made
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Speaker 1: the guttural sounds, he probably would have had chronic votal
13:17
Speaker 1: vocal motor tick. It's tough when you get out, isn't it. Yeah. Uh, well,
13:22
Speaker 1: since we're here, we might as well go ahead and say,
13:23
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize this either, that there are all
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Speaker 1: these very specific classifications. So if you if you're being
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Speaker 1: diagnosed with turettes, they rule out a lot of other
13:32
Speaker 1: things first, and then once they've ruled out all the
13:35
Speaker 1: all the other stuff, they go, okay, have you what
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Speaker 1: kind of ticks do you have? How often do you
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Speaker 1: have them? When did you start getting them? Because it's
13:42
Speaker 1: got to be before eighteen. You have to have multiple
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Speaker 1: motor ticks and at least one vocal tick, and both
13:49
Speaker 1: of those have to happen within one year, and within
13:52
Speaker 1: that year you cannot go three months without a tick
13:55
Speaker 1: and still be diagnosed with turettes. I didn't know was
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Speaker 1: that specific. I didn't either, but it's in all of
14:01
Speaker 1: It's based on observation obviously. Um. But if you have
14:06
Speaker 1: something else, turette falls under a the umbrella movement disorders. Right. Um.
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Speaker 1: So there's all these different kind of sister sibling disorders
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Speaker 1: that that could be, uh, that could be diagnosed rather
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Speaker 1: than turette. It's kind of like tourette is a milange
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Speaker 1: of movement disorders or motor disorders. Very nice, Thank you
14:29
Speaker 1: very much for back to the French. Right exactly, So, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: I jumped ahead a little bit, didn't I. Um, there
14:37
Speaker 1: are some other really interesting tidbits about Tourette's that I
14:42
Speaker 1: was unaware of. Like, um, normally they start out higher
14:46
Speaker 1: up in the body and then as the patient ages,
14:50
Speaker 1: they the ticks move further down. Yeah. I thought that
14:52
Speaker 1: was interesting. So you might you might start out with
14:55
Speaker 1: um or shoulders shrugging or neck tensing or something like that. Right,
15:01
Speaker 1: And I should say, by the way, since this is
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Speaker 1: in a video podcast, you can't see it, but every
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Speaker 1: time Chuck or I describe some sort of tick, we
15:09
Speaker 1: try it out ourselves. It kind of feels it's almost involuntary,
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Speaker 1: it is. And then uh, from there, it can work
15:15
Speaker 1: its way down to the arms and hands, like clenching
15:17
Speaker 1: your fists, that kind of thing, and then eventually down
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Speaker 1: to your feet, so you might stomp your feet really loud,
15:22
Speaker 1: or you might have an a hitch in your giddy
15:26
Speaker 1: up as they say. Who says that, the Tourette researchers
15:30
Speaker 1: Walter Brennan Old Westerns. And then ultimately chucky can move
15:34
Speaker 1: into the respiratory and alimentary systems. So a tick can
15:38
Speaker 1: manifest as a hiccup or whistling or belching or throat
15:43
Speaker 1: clearing or something like that. So it makes the cycle
15:45
Speaker 1: over time. It doesn't necessarily, but it can. And once
15:49
Speaker 1: it starts moving, brother, it's tough to bring back to
15:53
Speaker 1: its original position. Yeah, what what happens is there's an urge.
15:57
Speaker 1: They all um suffers disc this build up. They feel
16:01
Speaker 1: it's like building up in their body, like this urge
16:03
Speaker 1: to do it, and then that that is satisfied by
16:07
Speaker 1: the tick, whatever that tick is. And sometimes you can,
16:10
Speaker 1: you know, learn to control that a little bit. But
16:12
Speaker 1: they say that you're just kind of putting up the uh,
16:16
Speaker 1: the wall, which will be broken at some point, so
16:18
Speaker 1: your tick will be even worse later on in the day.
16:21
Speaker 1: It's like, if you're in a business meeting and you're
16:22
Speaker 1: holding it back and holding it back, you might get
16:24
Speaker 1: out of the business meeting and have like a really
16:25
Speaker 1: bad tick or something, which is you know, I guess
16:28
Speaker 1: it's good if you can control it, but you gotta
16:31
Speaker 1: know when to let it loose to well. Yeah, and
16:32
Speaker 1: I imagine that that kind of comes with living with Tourette,
16:35
Speaker 1: Like you realize, Okay, I'm gonna have a really big
16:38
Speaker 1: tick after this business meeting, but if I can hold
16:41
Speaker 1: it during the meeting, then I'm probably better off. Or
16:45
Speaker 1: you know, if you're alone, I'm sure you just let
16:47
Speaker 1: the ticks fly right. Um. And also I was reading
16:51
Speaker 1: about a uh The New York Times has a lot
16:54
Speaker 1: of question and answer blogs about Turette syndrome, really interesting stuff.
16:59
Speaker 1: One guy said that he uses um his Turette's as
17:04
Speaker 1: a jerk meter or a jerk sensor, so like he's
17:09
Speaker 1: found that people who people react very differently, but they
17:13
Speaker 1: can kind of be lumped into two categories. One people
17:16
Speaker 1: who can look past it and be friends with you
17:19
Speaker 1: and the other category are people who just can't. And
17:23
Speaker 1: apparently people who are um not down with turettes are
17:28
Speaker 1: kind of uh sure, I mean in what way other
17:35
Speaker 1: than the fact that they're kind of jerks for not
17:37
Speaker 1: being understanding. I think that's enough, don't you. I mean,
17:41
Speaker 1: this is something that I don't I don't even know
17:44
Speaker 1: that you could say Turette syndrome is misunderstood and are
17:48
Speaker 1: I think the greatest misunderstanding is thinking that all Turette
17:51
Speaker 1: sufferers have copper lalia. But other than that, I mean,
17:54
Speaker 1: it's not like this is some hidden mystery that that
17:58
Speaker 1: everyone walking the planet had hasn't hurt about just because
18:01
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating and it doesn't have any um attendant
18:05
Speaker 1: like physical problems associated with it. It's completely based on
18:10
Speaker 1: brain function, you know. And although there's not like you know, uh,
18:14
Speaker 1: you're not wheelchair bound when you have Tourette syndrome. There
18:18
Speaker 1: are other um, I guess, behavioral problems or disorders that
18:24
Speaker 1: usually accompany or can very frequently right, Yeah, O C
18:28
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder and a d h D, which is
18:32
Speaker 1: adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Yes, thank you for filling
18:38
Speaker 1: in the blanks there, um, and they're they're not always linked,
18:41
Speaker 1: but UM, a lot of times they are like a child.
18:45
Speaker 1: If if you've been diagnosed with Tourettes and you're a kid,
18:49
Speaker 1: many times will be diagnosed with O c D or
18:51
Speaker 1: a d h D afterward. And um, not only that,
18:55
Speaker 1: but sometimes you can have disorders as a result of Tourette's,
18:58
Speaker 1: like a sleeping disorder or learn disorder because of the
19:02
Speaker 1: Turette's and they they I know that of Tourette's suffers
19:08
Speaker 1: have a d h D, which is a pretty strong link.
19:12
Speaker 1: But I also wonder if some of it has to
19:13
Speaker 1: do with misdiagnosis. The one that UM I kind of
19:17
Speaker 1: bought into was the O c D UM Tourette link. Yeah,
19:22
Speaker 1: you're twenty times more likely to have O c D
19:25
Speaker 1: or symptoms of O c D if you have Tourette's. Yeah,
19:28
Speaker 1: and pretty high parents um who have O c D
19:31
Speaker 1: are have a higher likelihood of having kids with Tourette syndrome.
19:35
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a little something there, something linking
19:39
Speaker 1: them or something something. Uh So, Josh, let's say one
19:43
Speaker 1: of us has turette and we want to try and
19:46
Speaker 1: rein it in some what can we do? Do you
19:48
Speaker 1: mean treatments? What what are my options? Well? I think
19:52
Speaker 1: probably the gentlest um option is behavior modification. Behavioral therapy, yeah, Josh,
19:59
Speaker 1: And habit reversal therapy is one of the behavioral therapy,
20:02
Speaker 1: so we'll use a lot of times. It's got five components,
20:04
Speaker 1: but the main key there is the competing response. So
20:08
Speaker 1: if you feel a tick coming on, uh, and oftentimes
20:12
Speaker 1: you'll do the competing response is sort of linked to
20:14
Speaker 1: what your ticket is. So if you have like a
20:16
Speaker 1: a shoulder thing and you feel a tick coming on,
20:19
Speaker 1: you will like really relax your shoulders or roll your
20:22
Speaker 1: shoulders and like roll your neck around or something to
20:25
Speaker 1: try and like fight back the tick. Right, you want
20:27
Speaker 1: to use the same muscles to create the opposite movement though, Right,
20:31
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when your earbug chords are kind
20:35
Speaker 1: of bent, right, you have to bend them back the
20:39
Speaker 1: other way for a while to get back to the middle.
20:41
Speaker 1: It's just like that. Yeah, I can't believe me to
20:43
Speaker 1: think that. Thanks for that, Chucky. What I don't understand though,
20:47
Speaker 1: is it I mean, it makes sense in one way,
20:49
Speaker 1: but if you're always going to be doing that competing response,
20:52
Speaker 1: what's the difference. Now, The point is that you're not
20:54
Speaker 1: always doing the competing response, just like your earbug cord
20:57
Speaker 1: is not going to always be twisted the other. You're
21:00
Speaker 1: just working it out from being twisted one way for
21:04
Speaker 1: so long, so eventually eventually able to eradicate the ticks. Okay, Yeah,
21:09
Speaker 1: I thought it was just to keep from doing the ticket,
21:11
Speaker 1: and I think, well, what's the difference. You know, I
21:14
Speaker 1: think that it's to eventually get to the point where
21:17
Speaker 1: you're not having those ticks any longer. Um. There's also regular,
21:23
Speaker 1: straight up, good old cognitive behavioral therapy, which mainly focuses
21:28
Speaker 1: on UM relaxation techniques, UM, identifying and dealing with stressors because,
21:35
Speaker 1: like you said, UM Tourette's syndrome is often set off
21:38
Speaker 1: by UH emotions, stress right, UM, and drugs. There's drugs. Drugs.
21:46
Speaker 1: You want to this These are tough, man, This is dicey,
21:49
Speaker 1: and I think that these are generally UM reserve for
21:53
Speaker 1: people with UH Tourette syndrome that really interferes with their
21:57
Speaker 1: daily life. Yeah, if you can't get it through behavior
22:00
Speaker 1: modification and it's more than a nuisance, then you might
22:03
Speaker 1: want to look into something like an antipsychotic Josh, Yeah,
22:07
Speaker 1: like pema's eyed or hell a parrot al or something. Yeah,
22:11
Speaker 1: these are rough. Well, that's a deal. That's why doctors
22:14
Speaker 1: don't throw you on these meds if you have turetts
22:16
Speaker 1: like immediately, because they can bring along some side effects
22:20
Speaker 1: like men growing breasts, men growing breast, drooling, restlessness, sexual dysfunction,
22:27
Speaker 1: and seizures. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, the
22:31
Speaker 1: cure can be worse than the disease when you're using
22:33
Speaker 1: anti psychotics, tight turetts and UM. Since it occurs in
22:39
Speaker 1: conjunction with a d h D or O c D,
22:41
Speaker 1: a lot of times the doctor will just piggyback the
22:44
Speaker 1: turette treatment onto treatment of a d h D or
22:47
Speaker 1: O c D. Right, So, if you have O c
22:50
Speaker 1: D and Tourette syndrome UM, you're probably going to be
22:53
Speaker 1: prescribed to ssr I like Zoloft or prozac or something
22:59
Speaker 1: the p and then like riddling or something to treat
23:01
Speaker 1: a d h D may help alleviate the Tourette syndrome too. Yeah,
23:07
Speaker 1: but Josh, if all these don't work, then you've got
23:10
Speaker 1: a really really debilitating case of turettes and none of
23:13
Speaker 1: this stuff works. There is an experimental surgery taking place
23:17
Speaker 1: called deep brain stimulation where they connect electrodes two wires
23:22
Speaker 1: from a small battery pack in your chest. So it's
23:24
Speaker 1: sort of like a pacemaker for the brain, there's a
23:26
Speaker 1: good way to describe it. Yeah. And it prevents its
23:28
Speaker 1: supposedly prevents against the misfiring of neurons. Yeah, it blocks,
23:33
Speaker 1: it blocks the firing of the neurons. That crazy. And
23:37
Speaker 1: they're they're not using this widely now because it's really
23:39
Speaker 1: experimental at this point, but they do use it for Parkinson's.
23:42
Speaker 1: That's gonna be one of those treatments that in fifty
23:44
Speaker 1: or a hundred years looks just ridiculously primitive and barbaric.
23:48
Speaker 1: You know, I can't believe they suck up wires and
23:50
Speaker 1: block firing of neurons patient akers in the brain. Should
23:54
Speaker 1: we talk about famous people because I know we mentioned
23:57
Speaker 1: in uh, I think in our CD podcast about Mammad
24:02
Speaker 1: abdul Rolf who was the basketball player? Yeah? Yeah, was
24:06
Speaker 1: that him? Yeah? I think it was like Chris somebody,
24:09
Speaker 1: Chris Jackson. He changed his name? Is me paying attention?
24:13
Speaker 1: I thought his name was Cassius Clay uh. And I
24:17
Speaker 1: think we got email saying no, he didn't have O C.
24:20
Speaker 1: D head turettes or the other way around. But I
24:22
Speaker 1: think he's diagnosed with both in conjunction. I might be wrong.
24:26
Speaker 1: You're probably right, Chut dan Ackerroyd, I had no idea. Yeah,
24:29
Speaker 1: one of the Blues brothers, uh, Pete Bennett, who apparently
24:34
Speaker 1: was on Big Brother, which apparently is a TV show.
24:37
Speaker 1: I have not heard of this. I haven't either. James Boswell,
24:41
Speaker 1: he's a writer. Jim eisen Reich, he's a major League
24:45
Speaker 1: baseball player. I think for the Cardinals. Maybe we'll find out.
24:49
Speaker 1: And who else is a little guy named like the
24:52
Speaker 1: tinker on the piano named Mozart possibly possibly that's that
24:56
Speaker 1: that that might be uh false, they don't know for sure.
25:00
Speaker 1: And then a few other people. I haven't heard of
25:01
Speaker 1: goalkeeper for man you Tim Howard, Yeah, I'm more of
25:05
Speaker 1: an Arsenal guy. Really, Yeah, figures and sent me it's
25:12
Speaker 1: just Arsenal. That's like coming to American be Liken Yankees, right.
25:16
Speaker 1: But no, I think if you're a man, you fan,
25:18
Speaker 1: that's that that you would go to Europe and be like,
25:20
Speaker 1: oh man, you fan. See. I thought Arsenal was like
25:22
Speaker 1: the biggest no they're both pretty big. But it doesn't
25:25
Speaker 1: matter either way. If you don't really play soccer and
25:28
Speaker 1: you're an American and you call it soccer and you're
25:31
Speaker 1: an Arsenal fan or making air quotes, you're a jackass.
25:34
Speaker 1: If you walk in here with an arsenal sweater or
25:36
Speaker 1: something like that, would not maybe a scarf. Those things
25:39
Speaker 1: are saucy checked. There's one last thing we talked about,
25:42
Speaker 1: copra copri la, yes, copper lay um. There's also copper praxia,
25:50
Speaker 1: the the involuntary use of obscene gestures like this. I
25:55
Speaker 1: had that in traffic at times. Yeah, yeah, you do,
25:58
Speaker 1: but yours is voluntary. That's a big difference. There's also
26:02
Speaker 1: echolalia m right right, oh boy exactly. That's when you
26:08
Speaker 1: repeat things that someone says, I guess yeah. And then lastly,
26:12
Speaker 1: there's an echo prexia, which is um me doing I'm
26:16
Speaker 1: stroking my goatee as Chuck does too, except you don't
26:19
Speaker 1: have a good phantom gotee. Okay, so you mimic someone's motion,
26:23
Speaker 1: bodily motions? Interesting, Yeah, well do you have it? That's turette?
26:29
Speaker 1: Is that it? And anything else? Oh? Medical marijuana is
26:33
Speaker 1: a study a field of research right now for treatment
26:37
Speaker 1: of it, and all the potheads are like, yeah, man,
26:39
Speaker 1: it works really well treatment turette, and all the scientists
26:42
Speaker 1: are like, we don't know. Do you see me yelling
26:45
Speaker 1: out words, bro exactly. The jury is definitely still out
26:49
Speaker 1: on medical marijuana and any of its uses, but we're
26:52
Speaker 1: looking into it. So that's definitely it. That's that's it
26:56
Speaker 1: for now. If you want to learn more about Tourette syndrome,
26:59
Speaker 1: you can type that in that's t O U r
27:02
Speaker 1: E t t E syndrome. And there's a really cool
27:05
Speaker 1: picture of a turette suffer. It's a multiple exposure picture
27:09
Speaker 1: of a turette suffer undergoing a series of ticks. It's
27:12
Speaker 1: pretty neat. You can type that into the handy search
27:15
Speaker 1: bart how stuff first dot com, which of course means
27:18
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, the return of listener mail.
27:24
Speaker 1: It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a little while.
27:27
Speaker 1: We've been so long winded lately. There hadn't been a room.
27:30
Speaker 1: Carry has been like enough, she's listening. Uh, So I'm
27:34
Speaker 1: gonna call this one, uh Patriot offsets. This is from
27:38
Speaker 1: Robin Cincinnati, Rob K and he I'll just summarize the beginning.
27:43
Speaker 1: He was a little he's a little put off by
27:45
Speaker 1: the whole carbon offset thing because he's like, how can
27:48
Speaker 1: you be an environmentalist and support this, Like it basically
27:50
Speaker 1: means you're free to do whatever you want as once
27:52
Speaker 1: you buy these offsets. He was put off in the
27:55
Speaker 1: same way by the Catholic Church who sold indulgences to
27:59
Speaker 1: offset the sins the wealthy. We got a lot of
28:01
Speaker 1: email about this, apparently that you know, I said something
28:03
Speaker 1: about a karma off setter, and they said indulgences are
28:08
Speaker 1: kind of like that. So he's he was put off
28:10
Speaker 1: by that, and they were very popular. So he says,
28:13
Speaker 1: in the spirit of the carbon offset, Josh and Chuck,
28:16
Speaker 1: I am now creating the patriot offset because I have
28:20
Speaker 1: noticed once or twice in the blogs that you two
28:22
Speaker 1: get a few people were a bit close minded and
28:25
Speaker 1: question your patriotism. Yeah, that happens from time to time. Yeah,
28:28
Speaker 1: they think we're it's not gonna ask me if I
28:31
Speaker 1: served in the military. Very mockingly, Oh really you should, said, yeah.
28:36
Speaker 1: Howard stern Away says it is in Vietnam when he
28:38
Speaker 1: was here. He tells these big, long stories about it.
28:42
Speaker 1: I have I have fifteen years in the army with
28:45
Speaker 1: three deployments so far. For the simple price of a
28:47
Speaker 1: shout out on the podcast, I'm willing to give each
28:50
Speaker 1: of you a year of my army time and let's
28:53
Speaker 1: say three months of peacekeeping deployment in Kosovo. Aw, you
28:57
Speaker 1: guys had a blast, trust me, he says in Kosovo.
29:00
Speaker 1: So next time anyone calls you a hippie or anything
29:02
Speaker 1: like that, just tell them that you bought your service
29:04
Speaker 1: to your country and you were true Americans. And that
29:07
Speaker 1: is from Rob. So we now have served a year
29:10
Speaker 1: in the army. So do we get a year each
29:12
Speaker 1: or a year combined? Were we in the same platoon,
29:14
Speaker 1: same unit? What did we do any like search and
29:16
Speaker 1: destroying missions? We need to come up with this stuff.
29:19
Speaker 1: I think we were definitely probably bunk mates because I
29:22
Speaker 1: remember that one night went out. Well, not in the
29:24
Speaker 1: same bunk, bunks are on top of each other. I
29:27
Speaker 1: just remember being on that top bunk of that night
29:30
Speaker 1: when you beat me with the bar of soap in
29:32
Speaker 1: the towel along with you're asking for it, squealer. You
29:34
Speaker 1: shouldn't screw things up for the rest of the platoon.
29:37
Speaker 1: I had to wipe down the latrines because of you. Yeah, sorry, pile,
29:42
Speaker 1: Well I got it in the end with the soap.
29:44
Speaker 1: You certainly did. Wow, Chuck, that one was fraught with
29:49
Speaker 1: all of it was super clean though. And also did
29:52
Speaker 1: you know that in the Civil War, wealthy people could
29:55
Speaker 1: pay people to stand in uh for their conscription? Oh
29:59
Speaker 1: really doesn't surprise me, which we just kind of did
30:02
Speaker 1: with no money changing hands. It's basically legal. So shout
30:05
Speaker 1: out to Rob. Yeah, big shout out to Rob. Thank
30:07
Speaker 1: you for the military service for us. UM. If you
30:11
Speaker 1: want to give Chuck or I anything we love free stuff,
30:15
Speaker 1: you can send an email to us describing it and
30:18
Speaker 1: possibly offering something. Uh. To stuff podcast at how stuff
30:24
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
30:31
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Want
30:34
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house.
30:37
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