Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry
Speaker 1: And this is Stuff you Should Know about dyslexia. How
Speaker 1: are you doing good? Good? How are you? I'm doing
Speaker 1: pretty good man, just you know, hanging out over here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ready to wrap. I thought this is pretty cool. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised that we had not discussed this yet because it's
Speaker 1: right upart alley totally very stuff you should know type show. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think it's an interesting uh you know, I
Speaker 1: guess it's labeled a learning disorder most most definitely it's
Speaker 1: a specific learning disorder according to the US government. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always just have a hard time, what you know,
Speaker 1: knowing whether or not to like almost aid affliction them, like,
Speaker 1: is that an affliction? I don't even know. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think anybody with dyslexia and anybody, any expert
Speaker 1: in the field would say it's a learning disability. It's
Speaker 1: a specific learning disability that um that we're not entirely
Speaker 1: certain what causes it, but most people would tell you
Speaker 1: that typically it's considered a neurobiological condition. They think that
Speaker 1: there's a basis to the brain that leads to this
Speaker 1: situation where otherwise um bright and um yep and intelligent
Speaker 1: students have what they call unexpected difficulty learning to read
Speaker 1: and that it afflicts them their entire life. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of questions that's surround the definition. And one
Speaker 1: of the problems with dyslexia research is that that's that's
Speaker 1: that's not the official definition. There's about as many definitions
Speaker 1: as there are studies of dyslexia. Yeah, this one from
Speaker 1: Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity made sense to me
Speaker 1: that as far as just sort of a simple way
Speaker 1: to say it, uh, an unexpected difficulty in reading in
Speaker 1: an individual who has the intelligence to be a much
Speaker 1: better reader. So in other words, like this isn't adding up.
Speaker 1: All the tools are there, um, and you should be
Speaker 1: a better reader than you are, but you're not. So
Speaker 1: why what gives? Yeah, So there's um, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot too that though, right, Like, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: if if we know enough about the brain and we
Speaker 1: have things like m r S and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: so you would think that by now, since maybe the
Speaker 1: nineties or whatever, we would have positively identified what it is.
Speaker 1: But there's a confounding problem that they've run into and
Speaker 1: dyslexic read dyslexia research and we'll get into it more later,
Speaker 1: but they haven't figured out if what they're looking at
Speaker 1: is the changes that would come from not reading as much, UM,
Speaker 1: or if the brain structure there's is actually dyslexia. Right,
Speaker 1: So they're having trouble with it. I'll explain it better later. No,
Speaker 1: but I know what you mean. Well, good as long
Speaker 1: as you do. But it also counts if like the
Speaker 1: million or so people listening to this also do uh, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: dyslexia is very um studying it and understanding it and
Speaker 1: UM learning how to teach children with dyslexia is very
Speaker 1: important because up until semi recently, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: say recently, if you were had dyslexia and you are
Speaker 1: a student, UM, you might have been called stupid or
Speaker 1: dumb and you might have been Yeah, you might have
Speaker 1: been put at a separate table and said, well you
Speaker 1: go here because we you can't keep up. UM this
Speaker 1: one guy, man, this one really hit home or not
Speaker 1: hit home, but UM hit you in the bread basket
Speaker 1: in the bread basket, which is like home um pull it.
Speaker 1: Pulletzer Prize winner Philip Schultz was diagnosed later in life,
Speaker 1: and he said, growing up in the nineteen fifties, he
Speaker 1: he said, basically he was placed in what he called
Speaker 1: the dummy class. Three children in his class were separated,
Speaker 1: put at a table in the corner. The teacher didn't
Speaker 1: talk to them much. And essentially one day, like the
Speaker 1: principle was coming around and she said, here these books,
Speaker 1: pretend to read them, right, the principles coming Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: that is just tough. But there's something really significant about
Speaker 1: that that that was a column written by a guy
Speaker 1: named Philip Schultz who was a Pulitz Surprise winner. So
Speaker 1: that really kind of reveals the fact that what they
Speaker 1: figured out through decades and decades of research is that
Speaker 1: people with dyslexia aren't stupid. They specifically have trouble learning
Speaker 1: to read and spell and write, and more and more
Speaker 1: research has kind of gotten to the root of their
Speaker 1: the problems with dyslexia. But we have found that with
Speaker 1: patients and practice, people with dyslexia can learn to read.
Speaker 1: You have dyslexia your entire life, there's no cure for it,
Speaker 1: but you can learn to read, and you can learn
Speaker 1: to navigate and cope with dyslexia as a child and
Speaker 1: into adulthood. Yeah, And I don't want to certainly don't
Speaker 1: want to sound like I'm bagging on teachers, because you know,
Speaker 1: both of my parents were teachers, and uh, even back
Speaker 1: in the day when you know, let me just say this, Uh,
Speaker 1: teachers back then didn't have the same tools that they
Speaker 1: have today, and they didn't have an understanding of dyslexia.
Speaker 1: So if they had students that weren't keeping up and
Speaker 1: uh would force the class to maybe lag behind. They
Speaker 1: may not have made the best decisions, but they didn't
Speaker 1: have all the tools at their disposal to make better decisions. Right.
Speaker 1: The presence of a kid with dyslexia in a class
Speaker 1: creates a conundrum. Do you slow the class down to
Speaker 1: that kid's speed and um as far as like reading
Speaker 1: and spelling and writing lessons go um uh, potentially risking
Speaker 1: like slowing down the rest of the class who are
Speaker 1: learning at a normal clip. Or do you take this
Speaker 1: guy with dyslexia, this girl with dyslexia and put them
Speaker 1: in a special needs class that may address their reading
Speaker 1: and writing, but they're going to get so far behind
Speaker 1: their classmates and every other subject that they're normally proficient at.
Speaker 1: It's a problem, and they had no idea how to
Speaker 1: how to grapple with it for almost all of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century and multiple generations of kids with dyslexia suffered
Speaker 1: as a result. Yeah, it's really sad. Um. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of symptoms for dyslexia, key symptoms, uh, and
Speaker 1: these are very important because there is no blood tests,
Speaker 1: there is no there's no even I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of testing they can do, but that there's
Speaker 1: no standardized, specific tests that will really nail it down, right,
Speaker 1: So so keep that in mind. There's no there's no
Speaker 1: official definition of dyslexia, and there's no specific tests to
Speaker 1: suss out dysleke, right, two big problems. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: gotta look at this collection of symptoms. Um. The first
Speaker 1: obvious one is slow reading and accurate reading. Difficulty sounding
Speaker 1: out words, UM, difficulty pronouncing longer words with multiple syllables,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to that in a bit. UM. Inability
Speaker 1: to read or speak made up nonsense words, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting, poor short term memory, for verbal information,
Speaker 1: whether it's written or spoken spoken. Uh, poor spelling, like
Speaker 1: really poor spelling, to where you sometimes can't even tell
Speaker 1: what the words they're trying to spell are, right, not
Speaker 1: not just like you know, like using an F instead
Speaker 1: of a pH or something like that. Yeah, And we
Speaker 1: should also point out too, that is it's very much
Speaker 1: an incorrect notion that if you have dyslexi you just
Speaker 1: transpose letters or spell things backwards. That's what I thought
Speaker 1: for most of my life dyslexia was people they spelled
Speaker 1: things backwards and that was that, and that they also
Speaker 1: read backwards, and that they could train themselves to read
Speaker 1: things backwards. Totally made up. It's not totally made up,
Speaker 1: but it's so such a such a just a one
Speaker 1: component of dyslexia that it might as well just be
Speaker 1: an urban legend. Yeah, totally um. And then what this
Speaker 1: can lead to it's not just like, oh I have
Speaker 1: trouble reading like that. That spills out into all aspects
Speaker 1: of life, whether it's your self esteem, or you might
Speaker 1: have problem with with directions directionally, you might have issue
Speaker 1: with your budgets or money items, or you might not
Speaker 1: can tell time, very well, frustrated, anger, difficulty planning things.
Speaker 1: It's not just limited to reading issues. And then in
Speaker 1: real life you, um, you might read something and have
Speaker 1: very little recollection of what you just read. Um, you
Speaker 1: you will probably have problems giving presentations, finding the right word,
Speaker 1: recalling words, that kind of thing. Um. When you do read,
Speaker 1: and when you learn to read, you will be reading
Speaker 1: slower than anybody else, even reading at your reading level. Um,
Speaker 1: you just do it more slowly. And then as an adult,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, oh, good god, I'm
Speaker 1: done with school. Let me just go off and find
Speaker 1: a job that doesn't require any reading or any writing,
Speaker 1: and I will be fine. I will go to restaurants
Speaker 1: in order the same thing at every restaurant, and um,
Speaker 1: if this routine that I've developed to mask my dyslexia
Speaker 1: is ever interrupted, I will flip out and try to
Speaker 1: keep it under control, but I will seem a little
Speaker 1: awkward socially during instances like this. There's ways you can
Speaker 1: carve out a life for yourself. But you don't have to,
Speaker 1: because now we understand dyslexia way more than we did before,
Speaker 1: and we understand the treatment of it too. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: as far as how many people have it it's it's
Speaker 1: tough to get UM because of all these reasons we're
Speaker 1: talking about to have to get a good number that's reliable.
Speaker 1: But anywhere between five and fifteen to seventeen percent, it
Speaker 1: looks like UM would is sort of it's not the
Speaker 1: biggest range in the world. But they don't really know, no,
Speaker 1: they have they have no idea because there's a couple
Speaker 1: of problems. One, there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who don't realize they have dyslexia UM. And then there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who do know they have dyslexia
Speaker 1: in are either ashamed of it or have just set
Speaker 1: up their life to where they don't have time or
Speaker 1: room to go be diagnosed and then go learn to
Speaker 1: overcome it. There's just like, whatever, I have this thing,
Speaker 1: this issue where I'm slower at reading than other people. UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably very much underreported and underestimated how many people
Speaker 1: in the population have at Yeah, and we're talking mainly about,
Speaker 1: almost exclusively about developmental dyslexia, which is, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind we mostly think about. We're not talking about acquired dyslexia,
Speaker 1: which is can happen as a result of an injury um,
Speaker 1: so just want to point that out. Well, let's take
Speaker 1: a break and then we'll come back and talk about
Speaker 1: the history that actually features both of those. Okay, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: so Chuck. The first time the word dyslexia was used
Speaker 1: was in eight two by an ophthalmologist named Rudolph Berlin,
Speaker 1: who coined the term dyslexia. But the case that he
Speaker 1: was describing was a case of acquired dyslexia, where you
Speaker 1: can you can develop the symptoms of dyslexia, trouble reading,
Speaker 1: trouble writing, trouble um sounding out words from a head
Speaker 1: injury or say a lesion on your brain, something like that.
Speaker 1: And that told them a lot, right it really. Initially
Speaker 1: they thought maybe it was just a sign of low intelligence,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a problem with vision or something like that.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you could acquire dyslexia told um
Speaker 1: neurologists and optimologists working in the nineteenth century, No, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a there's a neurobiological basis to this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they called it early on um in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and I guess even in the early twentieth century. Well,
Speaker 1: actually they called it that up until the sixties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The sixties, um word blindness, and they it was a
Speaker 1: German who who coined that term, and they called it
Speaker 1: vart blind height. Can you say that that's good? Okay,
Speaker 1: you would do it only better than well, I would
Speaker 1: put on some dumb voice. But that's perfect pronunciation. You
Speaker 1: said that it's a w right, Yeah, and you said
Speaker 1: it as a va perfect Okay, click my heels together
Speaker 1: and said it checks out, Dorothy. Um. So they called it,
Speaker 1: like you said, up into the sixties, congenital word blindness. Uh,
Speaker 1: there a lot of people in the late eight d
Speaker 1: or not a lot, but a handful of people studying
Speaker 1: the stuff. Henschelwood and were the two big ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were optimologists and a doctor um Henschelwood was
Speaker 1: the optimologist and they and then there were also neurologist,
Speaker 1: a man named Samuel Orton and uh they they it's
Speaker 1: interesting to look back because they were sort of on
Speaker 1: the right track with how they what they thought was wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Word blindness also as a term, is not that not
Speaker 1: that far off? Yeah? I mean it really does a
Speaker 1: good job describinting the thing because they're saying, like there's
Speaker 1: some condition that these people have specifically because there are
Speaker 1: otherwise totally intelligent. They're just they have a problem with words,
Speaker 1: with seeing words and recognizing them like everybody else can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was obviously since the dawn of time people
Speaker 1: have had this condition, but it didn't obviously if you
Speaker 1: think about it, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: came along that really brought it into the forefront, like printing,
Speaker 1: widespread literacy. Yeah, newspapers and books and street signs exactly,
Speaker 1: menus like you're saying in a restaurant. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 1: everywhere there's the printed word and all of this. As
Speaker 1: all of this started to emerge in like the second
Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century, at least in the United
Speaker 1: States and in the Western europe um, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people who had dyslexia suddenly became apparent. Whereas before this
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been a parent because there was no
Speaker 1: way for dyslexia to manifest itself. People didn't walk around reading.
Speaker 1: You weren't expected to learn to read and write as
Speaker 1: a kid. You had to be like basically a monk
Speaker 1: to to learn to read and write or part of
Speaker 1: like the aristocracy. Now it became democratized in public schooling
Speaker 1: became widespread, and so as a result, dyslexia became a
Speaker 1: thing for the very first time. It's actually a relatively
Speaker 1: new condition that was born out of the modern era. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you were a kid back then then you uh,
Speaker 1: they were trying to teach your reading. You could and
Speaker 1: you were you were just they were like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I guess he's not a reader, so get out to
Speaker 1: the factory of the field and don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: But the that was what Morgan, like w Pringle Morrigan
Speaker 1: and James Henchelwood were doing was they were the first
Speaker 1: ones to say, wait, wait, wait, get that kid out
Speaker 1: of the field, because he seems otherwise bright to me.
Speaker 1: He just is having trouble reading. This might just be
Speaker 1: a thing. So they were the first ones to say, no,
Speaker 1: this is its own thing. This isn't just being being
Speaker 1: generally slow. This is a specific learning disability, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Samuel Orton, the neurologists I mentioned, he created the Orton
Speaker 1: Society in nineteen forty nine. Um, they were researchers and teachers, uh,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like, all right, we know this
Speaker 1: is a problem. Now how do we go about teaching
Speaker 1: kids like this and that eventually led to the International
Speaker 1: Dyslexia Association. Um, but it really took until the like
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. That was a book written by McDonald
Speaker 1: Critchley called The Ayslexic Child, And that's when things really
Speaker 1: started to come to the forefront more. Yeah, they started
Speaker 1: to realize, oh wait, you can teach kids with dyslexia
Speaker 1: how to read, so maybe we should start doing that,
Speaker 1: right And here are here are the symptoms and the
Speaker 1: signs of dyslexia, and let's let's take it seriously in
Speaker 1: the general education system. Yeah. And one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things that they learned, uh, they have learned over the
Speaker 1: years is part of the problem, at least in the
Speaker 1: case of English, is that it's a really tough language
Speaker 1: to learn, extraordinarily tough, and it matters if you have dyslexia.
Speaker 1: When compared to Italian, it says English has over a
Speaker 1: thousand ways to spell it's basic set of forty uh
Speaker 1: phonological sounds. Italian has twenty five speech sounds speech sounds
Speaker 1: and only thirty three ways to spell them. So incidences
Speaker 1: of dyslexia, while they may be the same technically in Italy,
Speaker 1: kids don't have as much of a problem in Italy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like thinking about this, so that short E sound you
Speaker 1: can spell it ai as in said EO is in leopard,
Speaker 1: You is in Barry, I E is in friend. Okay,
Speaker 1: it is tough. But what you're doing is when you're
Speaker 1: when you're spelling those things, you're you're encoding a sound.
Speaker 1: A phoneeme is what it's called. And like you said,
Speaker 1: in English, we have forty phonemes. And when you spell,
Speaker 1: when you read, your encoding and decoding a phoneme. And
Speaker 1: we have attached phone emes onto specific things out in
Speaker 1: real life. Leopard, right, if you can spell leopard, you
Speaker 1: can write down that word, and you can create a
Speaker 1: leopard in somebody else's mind's eye by reading it. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is all spectacular that we can do this, but
Speaker 1: it's a totally human construct. If you have dyslexia, you're
Speaker 1: the ground problem that that is the basis of your
Speaker 1: condition is you have trouble sorting through phonemes. You have
Speaker 1: trouble um with what's called phonological awareness, where you hear
Speaker 1: in part as two separate distinct sounds that you can
Speaker 1: learn to spell and learn to write. You you can't
Speaker 1: sort them sometimes they run together. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: problem on the very basis of reading, writing, spelling, the phonology.
Speaker 1: You have trouble. Your brain has trouble processing it and
Speaker 1: sorting it. That's the basis of dyslexia. So if you
Speaker 1: are a kid with dyslexia in in learning English with
Speaker 1: as difficult as it is, where there's all these different
Speaker 1: rules for the same phoneme, it's gonna be way harder
Speaker 1: than it isn't something like Italian, like you're saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as a result, as you would imagine, learning a
Speaker 1: second language if you have dyslexia is really tough. But
Speaker 1: they have found that Italian is can almost be like
Speaker 1: a therapy, a training like jam camp for learning really interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you learn, Oh there's rules with certain things, but
Speaker 1: these are really basic rules and they make sense. So
Speaker 1: maybe now I can learn English UM a little more
Speaker 1: easily with the expectation that the rules are structurally the same.
Speaker 1: But they're just different for English than they are for Italian.
Speaker 1: In nuance, but ultimately they're getting across the same stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the whole concept of language and um and symbols, e,
Speaker 1: letters and words, it's just fascinating to me, endlessly fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again and the humans like creating this and saying
Speaker 1: that thing of it there. If you draw these symbols
Speaker 1: in this order, that's what that is. So that leopard like,
Speaker 1: that's and then the word leopard like. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: all fascinating. It is because you're encapsulating knowledge that can
Speaker 1: be shared later on, can be unlocked later on by
Speaker 1: anyone who understands how to decode it in the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the science? Uh? What was it called? When you
Speaker 1: study that linguists? Is it just linguistics? I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: I could have been a linguist if I had only
Speaker 1: known what it was called. I just realized happy thing
Speaker 1: that would have dumped them. What's that thing called? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I could have been good at that? Yeah, yeah I couldn't.
Speaker 1: It was on the tip of my tongue. So um,
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk about the the fm R
Speaker 1: I and the m R I. Obviously, the Wonder Machine
Speaker 1: figures in pretty big when it comes to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and in the mid nineties is about when
Speaker 1: the fm R I came on the scene. With dyslexia
Speaker 1: and studies with dyslexia once they one of the problems
Speaker 1: was little kids. They're like, oh, we can't throw them
Speaker 1: in there, that they will explode their brain. And then
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, the fm r I machine is
Speaker 1: fine for kids. We tested it out on some bad
Speaker 1: kids and they were fine, and so they started putting
Speaker 1: children in there. Um, because you could obviously do this
Speaker 1: at any age, but it's important for school aged children,
Speaker 1: um to like figure out what's going on in their brains. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why that's the sample population
Speaker 1: is because it takes years for dyslexia to be prominent.
Speaker 1: Every kid has problems learning, reading, and writing at first,
Speaker 1: but then as other kids progress and this one kid doesn't,
Speaker 1: but there are otherwise bright same socioeconomic opportunities and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Um, that's when it becomes possible that they
Speaker 1: have dyslexia. But by that time a couple more years
Speaker 1: have gone by, right, So you're not you're not testing
Speaker 1: for dyslexia on babies. You have to wait until it
Speaker 1: basically manifests itself. Yeah, And of course with the f
Speaker 1: m R I they I think there was some hope
Speaker 1: that it could Like you mentioned earlier, just be like, well,
Speaker 1: there it is, but you know it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as they you know, different regions of the brain would
Speaker 1: light up or not light up, but they didn't get
Speaker 1: any hard like pinpointing conclusions. No, they have kind of
Speaker 1: focused in on a few spots, like different studies have said,
Speaker 1: this is what we found, and it actually correlates with
Speaker 1: other studies too. There's um left hemisphere areas, the ventral
Speaker 1: occipito temporal region, the temporal parietal reagion, and the inferior
Speaker 1: frontal cortices which have to do with language processing, but
Speaker 1: also visual processing of language too. Yeah. So again they
Speaker 1: think that the basis of all of this is that
Speaker 1: when you're hearing sounds, when somebody's holding up a piece
Speaker 1: of bread that has been dried through heat and says toast,
Speaker 1: you're hearing toast, and you can learn to write T
Speaker 1: O A it's a little confounding, and then st over time,
Speaker 1: maybe the first few times you write t O E
Speaker 1: S T, it doesn't matter. You're going to learn to
Speaker 1: write T O A S T and you can write
Speaker 1: it down and then someone else can read it. And
Speaker 1: they think of toast with dyslexia you're not hearing to
Speaker 1: your your you, and you certainly can't extrapolate something that
Speaker 1: you're not hearing correctly into words and letters. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a good way to put it. The tost analogy there,
Speaker 1: you got, Uh, there is a genetic component. Um, you
Speaker 1: are likely, if you have dyslexi to also have other
Speaker 1: family members who have it. And they have isolated some
Speaker 1: genes associated with it. But again they haven't been like
Speaker 1: here's the cause. Let's just figure out how to switch
Speaker 1: this gene off or on right, And it's I think
Speaker 1: it's just correlated. It's not necessarily the cause. It's it's
Speaker 1: like people who have who have been shown to have
Speaker 1: dyslexia have these this set of genes that are doing this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what, like I said earlier, what's interesting is those
Speaker 1: early doctors weren't super far off. It does have to
Speaker 1: do with visual processing of this linguistic information, and they
Speaker 1: were on the right track even way back then, so
Speaker 1: not bad. And then even still though with this new
Speaker 1: understanding of like, ok, this brain region looks like this,
Speaker 1: this brain region looks like that, this is the sign
Speaker 1: of a dyslexic brain, there's still the question is this
Speaker 1: the result of going years and years without reading um?
Speaker 1: Or is that the structure of a brain with dyslexia,
Speaker 1: because we know that your brain changes when you read,
Speaker 1: when you learn to read. They they've done studies in
Speaker 1: the mri I with um illiterate adults who have learned
Speaker 1: to read. So they do a scan of them while
Speaker 1: while they cannot read, and then they scan them again
Speaker 1: while they can read, and then look for differences in
Speaker 1: the brain. And there are structural differences that take place
Speaker 1: in the brain, which makes sense because it makes you think.
Speaker 1: So in alliterate adult, is that the normal structure of
Speaker 1: the brain, and an adult that can read, is that
Speaker 1: an abnormal structure? Because think about it, we've only been
Speaker 1: doing that for a hundred hundred and fifty years. That's
Speaker 1: a new constructure. So it makes sense that the brain
Speaker 1: would be neuroplastic like that in that respect, because that's
Speaker 1: a new thing we've all started to try to do
Speaker 1: to alter our brains. Yeah, and that's where the practice
Speaker 1: part comes in, which we'll get too more. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting that and it sounds simple, But the better if
Speaker 1: you have dyslexia, the better you get at reading and writing.
Speaker 1: The better you will get at reading and writing exactly.
Speaker 1: You're you're just um, you're strengthening, you're creating new neural
Speaker 1: connections and the strengthening those pathways. And the fact that
Speaker 1: it all comes down to apparently patients and practice and
Speaker 1: that like it's saying, like these kids with dyslexia are
Speaker 1: going through the same thing that every kid does with
Speaker 1: with learning to read and write and spell, it just
Speaker 1: takes them way longer. The fact that generations of kids
Speaker 1: with dyslexia were just abandoned by the school system because
Speaker 1: of a lack of patients is really what it comes
Speaker 1: down to. Is beyond sad patients and resources, I think,
Speaker 1: and that's part of it. Sure, Yeah, I just don't
Speaker 1: want to sound like we're saying and like teachers just
Speaker 1: were impatient about it, all right, It's like, uh, it
Speaker 1: was complex and still very sad. Yes, that teachers have
Speaker 1: to buy their own school supplies still gets to me
Speaker 1: every year. The fact that we're like living with this
Speaker 1: as a country, like that's just become normal to us,
Speaker 1: is it's embarrassing. It's just a mark of shame on
Speaker 1: our country. If you ask me, all right, let's take
Speaker 1: a break. No I'm gonna go, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: your cat of nine tails so we couldn't flog each other.
Speaker 1: I realized, I'm I sound really forceful in this episode.
Speaker 1: Do I feel like I'm sounding forceful? Do I sound forceful?
Speaker 1: Do I? Well? That did? All right, We'll be right
Speaker 1: back everyone. Al Right. So, like you said earlier, there
Speaker 1: is no cure for dyslexia. There is treatment and they
Speaker 1: even put that in quotes. Um, but you shouldn't think
Speaker 1: of it as a disease cure type of thing. It's
Speaker 1: practice and patients. Yeah, and those are the two strategies
Speaker 1: that we will say it one more time for the
Speaker 1: tenth time. Patients and practice. Uh, it's you have to
Speaker 1: have that patience there as a parent, as a teacher,
Speaker 1: as someone with dyslexia. UM, I know it's frustrating, but
Speaker 1: the more patient you are give yourself time, teachers can.
Speaker 1: And then there are programs now where students can get
Speaker 1: extra time to take tests and things like that. And
Speaker 1: I think even officially like with the S A T
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Yeah, UM, there are programs where
Speaker 1: you are not to put it a disadvantage. There's um,
Speaker 1: the individuals with disabilities Education Improvement Act of two thousand four,
Speaker 1: the Idea Acts or idea um IT. It specifies UH
Speaker 1: dyslexia as a specific learning disorder. And when you have
Speaker 1: a diagnosis of dyslexia, the whole world opens up to you.
Speaker 1: You all of a sudden have your own personal teachers
Speaker 1: assistant working with you. Um. You have all sorts of
Speaker 1: resources that just weren't available to you before that are
Speaker 1: being funneled directly toward helping you learn to read faster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's across the board. UM. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that schools probably have specific funding for IDEA stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, like when when Congress comes up with an
Speaker 1: act like that, they fund it and then they fund
Speaker 1: it out of it, like those huge omnibus budgets have
Speaker 1: funding for that, and that goes to the school and
Speaker 1: schools supposedly not allowed to spend it on anything but
Speaker 1: that stuff. So yeah, probably if you get a diagnosis
Speaker 1: of dyslexia, it's pretty sweet um and a huge relief
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, it's just like a brand
Speaker 1: new world. You're taken away from the dumb kids table,
Speaker 1: like Howard Schultz was, UM, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have your own your own one on one UM
Speaker 1: reading and spelling lessons that you just didn't have before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other, like we said, is practice. Uh, and over time,
Speaker 1: you know, you can learn to read UM and you
Speaker 1: make those new neural pathways and and it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's hardening to know that if you have this patience
Speaker 1: and you put in the time, it is something that
Speaker 1: can be overcome if everyone like works together, right, and
Speaker 1: if you can learn to read even as an adult,
Speaker 1: You're you're not going to learn to read necessarily proficiently.
Speaker 1: I think you can if you really really practice, if
Speaker 1: you put your mind to it's going to be very slow.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you'll know ever read a book
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I saw one woman describing
Speaker 1: her condition as an adult, and she said she was
Speaker 1: very proud to be at like a seventh grade reading
Speaker 1: level now as as an adult, which is like you
Speaker 1: can navigate through life as with a seventh grade at
Speaker 1: a seventh grade reading level pretty easy. Um. The problem
Speaker 1: comes when you don't ever you've never gotten any help
Speaker 1: and you were basically in a literate adult because of dyslexia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have technology now can help out there what they
Speaker 1: call assist of listening devices because sometimes if you have
Speaker 1: someone to ear reading something out loud while you're reading along, UM,
Speaker 1: sort of like a teacher and an app UM like
Speaker 1: that one on one experience that can really really help.
Speaker 1: UM seeing a transcription sometimes of what someone's saying, a
Speaker 1: real time transcription. Yeah, so all these apps and devices
Speaker 1: are really helping things along. So it's it's like a
Speaker 1: brand new world for kids with dyslexia compared to like
Speaker 1: last century or even a few decades ago. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one thing I didn't quite get, what's this thing
Speaker 1: that you said from Sir Jim Rose. I didn't fully
Speaker 1: get what this guy was saying. He was part of it.
Speaker 1: So he's not saying this, he's he's uh, he's definitely
Speaker 1: all into dyslexia. UM. But there is a a thread
Speaker 1: um that of of experts in childhood education, psychology, UM,
Speaker 1: childhood cognition who who suspect that there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as dyslexia, that those earliest neurologists and ophthalmologists and doctors
Speaker 1: who who named it and made it a thing, we're wrong,
Speaker 1: And that really an inability to read transcends any level
Speaker 1: of intelligence. It's disconnected from intelligence. That no matter whether
Speaker 1: you are of high intelligence or low intelligence, you can
Speaker 1: suffer from an inability to learn to read. And so
Speaker 1: if you have dyslexia and you are of high intelligence,
Speaker 1: the kid next to you who has low intelligence and
Speaker 1: can't read also has dyslexia, or there's or else. No
Speaker 1: one has dyslexia, and it's just an inability to learn
Speaker 1: to read. Most experts say dyslexia is a thing, which
Speaker 1: means then the debate is, okay, doesn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with intelligence. And if it doesn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with intelligence, then all of these resources that are
Speaker 1: being diverted to these kids who are of high intelligence
Speaker 1: but are having trouble learning to read is really doing
Speaker 1: a disservice to the kids of low intelligence. And I'm
Speaker 1: making air quotes here. Everybody UM who are having trouble
Speaker 1: learning to read? Why differentiate they're both having trouble learning
Speaker 1: to read. Start attacking the problem with both of them.
Speaker 1: And there was this one Australian UM expert who basically said, like, yes,
Speaker 1: dyslexia is a thing. It is his own thing, has
Speaker 1: a neurobiological basis. It's not made up. It's not a myth.
Speaker 1: But let's treat first and then diagnose later. If you
Speaker 1: see an um an inability to learn to read, go
Speaker 1: after that. Don't say, well as a dyslexia. Let's test
Speaker 1: the kids intelligence. It doesn't matter. Focus on learning. How
Speaker 1: I'm teaching them how to read and apparently interventions. There's
Speaker 1: this guy named, uh Julian professor Julian Um. What's his name,
Speaker 1: Chuck Lennon Sands, Yes, Julian Sands in boxing Helena he
Speaker 1: makes He has a big soliloquy about whether or not
Speaker 1: dyslexi is a myth. I can't remember the guy's last name,
Speaker 1: but um. I get the impression that parents of children
Speaker 1: with dyslexia or not a big fan of this guy,
Speaker 1: but he's He's basically said, um, we're diverting a lot
Speaker 1: of funding away from kids who know how to who
Speaker 1: don't know how to read, just because they don't they
Speaker 1: supposedly don't have a high I Q UM, Let's treat
Speaker 1: all the kids. So that's the idea of whether it's
Speaker 1: a myth, not that dyslexia doesn't exist, although I think
Speaker 1: some people suspected it didn't for a while it now
Speaker 1: people believe it does, but not necessarily that it's just
Speaker 1: intelligent upper middle class kids who have dyslexia. It's just
Speaker 1: an inability to read for the same reason. Interesting, that's
Speaker 1: the basis of it. It's still up in the air,
Speaker 1: and it's a really touchy subject, very touchy subject, um
Speaker 1: and rightfully so. I mean, like, I can imagine you
Speaker 1: feel lost in the woods if there's no official diagnosis,
Speaker 1: there's no official test of it, there's no official definition
Speaker 1: of it. But your kid has it, and you know
Speaker 1: your kid has it. I can't imagine why it must
Speaker 1: feel like to have some expert going like there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as dyslexia. You know. It is very touchy
Speaker 1: and rightfully so. Uh Well, Finally, there's this whole notion that, um,
Speaker 1: if you have dyslexia, then you may excel in other areas. Um,
Speaker 1: you may be more creative, or you may be more
Speaker 1: prone to be, like um, an entrepreneur, perhaps because you
Speaker 1: think outside of the box. Yeah, I mean there's a
Speaker 1: long list of people, like, you know, famous creative types
Speaker 1: that have dyslexia, get the Christie. Did you know that one?
Speaker 1: I didn't, but I didn't either that. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't just make it up. I learned there's a long list.
Speaker 1: But just recently part of this bugs me though, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just hate it when they're like, well,
Speaker 1: look what celebrities have this thing? I mean, I get it.
Speaker 1: Maybe that it might, I don't know. I just don't
Speaker 1: see the value in that. Well it's saying like, look
Speaker 1: at this guy, this guy, this lady. Maybe I guess
Speaker 1: so she's not a street sweeper. You don't have to spend,
Speaker 1: you don't have to look forward to a life of
Speaker 1: shoveling horse maneuver because you have dyslexia. You can't achieve.
Speaker 1: Just stick to a kid. Now. I get all that,
Speaker 1: and that's valid. You're questioning the cult of celebrity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. That just sort of bugs me.
Speaker 1: But no, there is benefits. I'm sure if some kids
Speaker 1: like Tom Cruiz has dyslexia and look at him, may
Speaker 1: may I have had some questions about Zanix and its
Speaker 1: value myself. Oh goodness. Uh. There have been some studies
Speaker 1: though over the year. It may or may not support this.
Speaker 1: Like um supposedly, if you have dyslexia, you may be
Speaker 1: UM quicker to find Um, something in your peripheral vision.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can like mc escher style drawings or the
Speaker 1: impossible images hidden images, you might see those quicker or
Speaker 1: more easily find patterns in in noise, like you could
Speaker 1: be a great data analysts perhaps, And they think like
Speaker 1: and this makes total sense, But the problem is as
Speaker 1: its anecdotal at this point, but it makes total sense
Speaker 1: that yes, you're you're the same senses that you were
Speaker 1: using to read and write. If you don't know how
Speaker 1: to read and write, your brain is going to compensate
Speaker 1: with other things, is going to possibly excel at other stuff,
Speaker 1: just because it's structure different If your brain is structured differently,
Speaker 1: which we know that's the case, if you do not
Speaker 1: read or write, Uh, you would expect that it would
Speaker 1: manifest itself in real world behaviors and traits. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the first thing I thought was like, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: Like if your vision impaired, you you hear things better.
Speaker 1: Well supposedly that's a myth. Well I looked it up. Um,
Speaker 1: there are studies where if you were vision impaired, you
Speaker 1: are better at pinpointing like location of sound and certain sounds.
Speaker 1: But it's not you can't hear something two miles away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as cut and dry. It's just can't hear
Speaker 1: there better because like your ears developed better. You know,
Speaker 1: you remember that guy who can echo locate. He's visually impaired,
Speaker 1: and he's like he uses clicks or something like that
Speaker 1: like a bat. He basically taught himself to echolocate. Really amazing.
Speaker 1: The first thing I thought about was the guy with
Speaker 1: the ear in his arm? What was his name? Stell Arct?
Speaker 1: What's great, oh man, that you and I like go
Speaker 1: back and forth. I'm remembering the guy's name. Last time
Speaker 1: we brought him most and I didn't remember his name,
Speaker 1: and you rattled it right at stell Arc between us,
Speaker 1: stell arc is going to live forever, like the trans
Speaker 1: human is to you. But then that last thing about
Speaker 1: being entrepreneurial or um maybe a corporate executive. They did
Speaker 1: do a study in two thousand nine that found there
Speaker 1: was a anecdotal evidence of over a representation in those fields.
Speaker 1: But then that's the thing too, where they're like, maybe
Speaker 1: they were just better at overcoming adversity and that stayed
Speaker 1: on through their whole life to where it wasn't just dyslexia,
Speaker 1: but like and nothing would keep them down. So they excelled, right,
Speaker 1: they learned how to how to try harder than their peers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, even if that is the case, great, sure,
Speaker 1: But the point is it's still anecdotal, so you have
Speaker 1: to be careful with saying like, oh, yeah, people with
Speaker 1: dyslexia are way better at this, or they're they're more
Speaker 1: likely to be entrepreneurs. Just hasn't been settled. Um, But
Speaker 1: I think the overall point of this episode is if
Speaker 1: you are if you do have dyslexia, Um, there is
Speaker 1: plenty of hope. Do you not give up hope? Whether
Speaker 1: that your kid has dyslexia or you have dyslexia, you
Speaker 1: can learn to read and write and spell, and you
Speaker 1: can become a Pulitzer Prize winning calumnist or Agatha Christie
Speaker 1: Ye or John Irving. I saw his six alexia, John Oving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Richard Branson, that was really good. Ozzy Osborne, For God's sake,
Speaker 1: look at that guy fumbling around the house. He's successful
Speaker 1: despite himself. Um. If you want to more about dyslexia,
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it on the internet. And
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this sid and Marty Croft email. This guy
Speaker 1: wrote in to email us about a personal connection he
Speaker 1: had to the Schoolhouse Rock episode. I'm not gonna read
Speaker 1: that half of the letter because I don't want to
Speaker 1: further embarrass the family. But his he's his relation to
Speaker 1: the person that we kind of called out as the
Speaker 1: guy who ruined Schoolhouse Rock. Okay, wasn't he an exact Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the second half of this is uh, speaking of
Speaker 1: unbelievable stories, guys, I thought it. You'd be jealous to
Speaker 1: know that I grew up hanging out on the sets
Speaker 1: of all the SidD and Marty Croft shows because my
Speaker 1: mom was on a bunch of them. He used to
Speaker 1: have lunch with the slee stacks and throw around big
Speaker 1: foam boulders from Land to the Lost. She was Nashville
Speaker 1: on the Captain Cool and the Kong Show, which wrapped
Speaker 1: around the Saturday Morning cartoons. I remember that they also
Speaker 1: That also led to the music group the Bay City
Speaker 1: Rollers showing up to my birthday party when I was
Speaker 1: like five. It caused such a big mom scene the
Speaker 1: police had to come. That's the s Yeah, you are dy.
Speaker 1: You know how they got their name? They threw a
Speaker 1: dart at a map and it landed on Bay City, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Because they're like Scottish, aren't they? I think so? I
Speaker 1: think they are. I remember my sister. Uh, we had
Speaker 1: a babysitter and then my sister and the babysitter. I
Speaker 1: don't know why my sister wasn't just my babysitter. She
Speaker 1: was six years older. There was another girl who babysat
Speaker 1: that was my sister's age, and they would sit around.
Speaker 1: This is my big memory of the Bay City Rollers.
Speaker 1: They would there was one of their albums that had
Speaker 1: each of their pictures sort of in a dartboard like
Speaker 1: fashion and kle and they would spend the record around
Speaker 1: and close their eyes and stop it with their finger
Speaker 1: and like they didn't make out with that picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to like kiss that picture or whatever. I
Speaker 1: hope your sister doesn't listen to this. It's great. The
Speaker 1: seventies man so innocent. I love the seventies. So Basicity
Speaker 1: Rollers came to his birthday party. They called the cops. Uh.
Speaker 1: She went on. My mom went on to do a
Speaker 1: ton of cool stuff that I'm sure you guys would know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of episodes of Plastic Man, all the women's
Speaker 1: voices on Celebrity Deathmatch, hosting a game show called Rodeo Drive,
Speaker 1: playing Joan Rivers on Family Guy, being in The Catskills
Speaker 1: on Broadway for two years. Too much more to mention, guys,
Speaker 1: except also she went on the road with Tim Conway
Speaker 1: and Harvey Corman for a number of years posing is
Speaker 1: Carol Burnett, and my little brother ended up engaged to
Speaker 1: Harvey Corman's daughter, but it didn't work out anyway. I
Speaker 1: love the show, guys. If I can never be a resource,
Speaker 1: let me know that is from Keith or l Keith.
Speaker 1: That was amazing. You remember Celebrity Deathmatch? Yeah, big shout
Speaker 1: out to your mom too. Yeah, and up to your
Speaker 1: mom's Keith. Uh. Well, if you want to brag on
Speaker 1: your mom because she's done some awesome stuff, we love
Speaker 1: hearing about that. Moms always have great um welcomeness here
Speaker 1: at stuff you should know that that's gonna end up
Speaker 1: being a crummy T shirt. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with this, you can hang out on
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our
Speaker 1: social links there. I have a website called the Josh
Speaker 1: Clark Way dot com. You can get in touch with
Speaker 1: me there, and you can get in touch with me
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry and everybody else here at Stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know by sending an email to Stuff podcast how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com