Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker 2: Chuck here picking out a Saturday episode, a classic Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know, curated and handpicked by me to you Valentine,
Speaker 2: if you will. And this one is from March twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and it's about dyslexia. And this one hits close to
Speaker 2: home for me now and I enjoyed going back and
Speaker 2: re listening to it so I could relearn myself.
Speaker 1: So I hope you do as well.
Speaker 2: And it's called How Dyslexia Works.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 3: w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry, And this
Speaker 3: is Stuff you Should Know about dyslexia. How are you
Speaker 3: doing good? Good?
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing pretty good, man, Just you know, hanging out
Speaker 3: over here. Yeah, ready to wrap.
Speaker 1: I thought this is pretty cool. I'm surprised that we
Speaker 1: had not.
Speaker 2: Discussed this yet because it's right up our alley, totally
Speaker 2: very stuff you Should Know type show. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: think it's an interesting uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess it's labeled a learning disorder.
Speaker 3: Most most definitely it's a specific learning disorder. According to
Speaker 3: the US government.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always just have a hard time, what you know,
Speaker 2: knowing whether or not to like almost at affliction them, like,
Speaker 2: is that an affliction?
Speaker 1: I don't even know.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think anybody with dyslexia and anybody
Speaker 3: any expert in the field would say it's a learning disability.
Speaker 3: It's a specific learning disability that that we're not entirely
Speaker 3: certain what causes it. But most people would tell you
Speaker 3: that typically it's considered a neurobiological condition. They think that
Speaker 3: there's a basis to the brain that leads to this
Speaker 3: situation where otherwise bright and capable yep and intelligent students
Speaker 3: have what they call unexpected difficulty learning to read, and
Speaker 3: that it afflicts them their entire life. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot of questions, yes, that surround the definition. And
Speaker 3: one of the problems with dyslexia research is that that's
Speaker 3: that that's not the official definition. There's about as many
Speaker 3: definitions as there are studies of dyslexia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one from Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity
Speaker 2: made sense to me though, as far as just sort
Speaker 2: of a simple way to say it, an unexpected difficulty
Speaker 2: in reading in an individual who has the intelligence to
Speaker 2: be a much better reader. So in other words, like,
Speaker 2: this isn't adding up. All the tools are there and
Speaker 2: you should be a better reader than you are, but
Speaker 2: you're not. So why what gives?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's there's there's a lot to that though, right,
Speaker 3: Like there's this idea that if if we know enough
Speaker 3: about the brain and we have things like MRIs and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, so you would think that by now,
Speaker 3: since maybe the nineties or whatever, we would have positively
Speaker 3: identified what it is. But there's a confounding problem that
Speaker 3: they've run into in dyslexic dyslexia research, and we'll get
Speaker 3: into it more later, But they haven't figured out if
Speaker 3: what they're looking at is the changes that would come
Speaker 3: from not reading as much, or if the brain structure
Speaker 3: they're seeing is actually dyslexia. Right, so they're having trouble
Speaker 3: with it. I'll explain it better later.
Speaker 1: No, but I know what you mean.
Speaker 3: Well, good as long as you do. But it also
Speaker 3: counts as like the million or so people listening to
Speaker 3: this also do.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody dyslexia is very studying it and understanding it
Speaker 2: and learning how to teach children with the dyslexia is
Speaker 2: very important because up until semi recently, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to go say recently, if you were had dyslexia and
Speaker 2: you were a student, you might have been called stupid
Speaker 2: or dumb, and you might have been teacher, yeah, you
Speaker 2: might have been put at a separate table and said, well,
Speaker 2: you go over here because we you can't keep up
Speaker 2: this one guy.
Speaker 1: Man, this one really hit home, or not.
Speaker 3: Hit home, but hitch in the bread basket.
Speaker 2: In the bread basket, which is like home. Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 2: winner Philip Schultz was diagnosed later in life, and he said,
Speaker 2: growing up in the nineteen fifties, he said, basically he
Speaker 2: was placed in what he called the dummy class. Three
Speaker 2: children in his class were separated, put at a table
Speaker 2: in the corner. The teacher didn't talk to them much.
Speaker 2: And essentially one day like the principal was coming around
Speaker 2: and she said, here these books, pretend to read them.
Speaker 3: Right, the principle's coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, that is just tough.
Speaker 3: But there's something really significant about that. That was a
Speaker 3: column written by a guy named Philip Schultz, who is
Speaker 3: a Pulitzer Prize winner. So that really kind of reveals
Speaker 3: the fact that what they figured out through decades and
Speaker 3: decades of research is that people with dyslexia aren't stupid.
Speaker 3: They specifically have trouble learning to read and spell and write,
Speaker 3: and more and more research has kind of gotten to
Speaker 3: the root of the problems with dyslexia. But we have
Speaker 3: found that with patients and practice, people with dyslexia can
Speaker 3: learn to read. You have dyslexia your entire life. There's
Speaker 3: no cure for it, but you can learn to read,
Speaker 3: and you can learn to navigate and cope with dyslexia
Speaker 3: as a child and into adulthood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't want to certainly don't want to
Speaker 2: sound like I'm bagging on teachers, because you know, both
Speaker 2: of my parents are teachers, and even back in the
Speaker 2: day when you know, let me just say this, teachers
Speaker 2: back then didn't have the same tools that they have today,
Speaker 2: and they didn't have an understanding of dyslexia. So if
Speaker 2: they had students that weren't keeping up and would force
Speaker 2: the class to maybe lag behind, they may not have
Speaker 2: made the best decisions, but they didn't have all the
Speaker 2: tools at their disposal to make better decisions.
Speaker 3: Right, the presence of a kid with dyslexia in a
Speaker 3: class creates a conundrum. Do you slow the class down
Speaker 3: to that kid's speed and as far as like reading
Speaker 3: and spelling and writing lessons go, potentially risking like slowing
Speaker 3: down the rest of the class who are learning at
Speaker 3: a normal clip. Or do you take this guy with
Speaker 3: dyslexia or this girl with dyslexia and put them in
Speaker 3: a special needs class that may address their reading and writing,
Speaker 3: but they're going to get so far behind their classmates
Speaker 3: and every other subject that they're normally proficient at. It's
Speaker 3: a problem, and they had no idea how to grapple
Speaker 3: with it for almost all of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 3: multiple generations of kids with dyslexia suffered as a result.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really sad. There are a lot of symptoms
Speaker 2: for dyslexia, key symptoms, and these are very important because
Speaker 2: there is no blood tests, There is no there's no
Speaker 2: even I mean, there are a lot of testing they
Speaker 2: can do, but that there's no standardized, specific tests that
Speaker 2: will really nail it down.
Speaker 3: Right, So so keep that in mind. There's no there's
Speaker 3: no official definition of dyslexia. Yeah, and there's no specific
Speaker 3: tests to suss out dyslexia, right, two big problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you got to look at this collection of symptoms.
Speaker 2: The first obvious one is slow reading and accurate reading,
Speaker 2: difficulty sounding out words, difficulty pronouncing longer words with multiple syllables,
Speaker 2: which we'll.
Speaker 1: Get to that in a bit.
Speaker 2: Inability to read or speak made up nonsense words, which
Speaker 2: I thought was interesting, Poor short term memory for verbal information,
Speaker 2: whether it's written or spoke spoken. Poor spelling, like really
Speaker 2: poor spelling, to where you sometimes can't even tell what
Speaker 2: the words they're trying to spell are.
Speaker 3: Right, not not just like a you know, like using
Speaker 3: an F instead of a pH or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should also point out too, that is
Speaker 2: it's very much an incorrect notion that if you have
Speaker 2: dyslexia you just transpose letters or spell things backwards.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought for most of my life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: dyslexia was people they spelled things backwards, and that was that,
Speaker 3: and that they also read backwards, and that they could
Speaker 3: train themselves to read things backwards. Right, totally made up,
Speaker 3: It's not totally made up, but it's so such a
Speaker 3: such a just a one component of dyslexia that it
Speaker 3: might as well just be an urban legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: And then what this can lead to. It's not just like, oh,
Speaker 2: I have trouble reading like that. That spills out into
Speaker 2: all aspects of life, whether it's your self esteem, or
Speaker 2: you might have problem with directions directionally, you might have
Speaker 2: issue with your budgets or money items, or you might
Speaker 2: not n tell time very well, frustrated, anger, difficulty planning things.
Speaker 2: It's not just limited to reading issues.
Speaker 3: And then in real life, you might read something and
Speaker 3: have very little recollection of what you just read. You
Speaker 3: will probably have problems giving presentations, finding the right word,
Speaker 3: recalling words, that kind of thing. When you do read,
Speaker 3: and when you learn to read, you will be reading
Speaker 3: slower than anybody else, even reading at your reading level.
Speaker 3: You just do it more slowly. And then as an adult,
Speaker 3: a lot of people are like, oh, good god, I'm
Speaker 3: done with school. Let me just go off and find
Speaker 3: a job that doesn't require any reading or any writing,
Speaker 3: and I will be fine. I will go to restaurants
Speaker 3: and order the same thing at every restaurant. And if
Speaker 3: this routine that I've developed to mask my dyslexia is
Speaker 3: ever interrupted, I will flip out and try to keep
Speaker 3: it under control, but I will seem a little awkward
Speaker 3: socially during instances like this. There's ways you can carve
Speaker 3: out a life for yourself, but you don't have to
Speaker 3: because now we understand dyslexia way more than we did before,
Speaker 3: and we understand the treatment of it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as far as how many people have it,
Speaker 2: it's tough to get because of all these reasons we're
Speaker 2: talking about. Tough to get a good number that's reliable,
Speaker 2: but anywhere between five and fifteen to seventeen percent it
Speaker 2: looks like, which is sort of well, it's not the
Speaker 2: biggest range in the world.
Speaker 3: But they don't really know, No, they have no idea
Speaker 3: because there's a couple of problems. One, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of people out there who don't realize they have dyslexia.
Speaker 3: And then there's a lot of people who do know
Speaker 3: they have dyslexia in are either ashamed of it or
Speaker 3: have just set up their life to where they don't
Speaker 3: have time or room to go be diagnosed and then
Speaker 3: go learn to overcome it. They're just like, whatever, I
Speaker 3: have this thing, this issue where I'm slower at reading
Speaker 3: than other people. So yeah, it's probably very much underreported
Speaker 3: and underestimated how many people in the population have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're talking mainly about, almost exclusively, about developmental dyslexia,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the kind we mostly think about.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about a choir dyslexia, which is can
Speaker 2: happen as a result.
Speaker 1: Of an injury. So I just want to point that out.
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a break and then we'll come back
Speaker 3: and talk about the history that actually features both of those. Okay, yes, sir,
Speaker 3: so Chuck. The first time the word dysli was used
Speaker 3: was in eighteen seventy two by an ophthalmologist named Rudolph Berlin,
Speaker 3: who coined the term dyslexia. But the case that he
Speaker 3: was describing was a case of acquired dyslexia, where you
Speaker 3: can you can develop the symptoms of dyslexia trouble reading,
Speaker 3: trouble writing, trouble sounding out words from a head injury
Speaker 3: or say a lesion on your brain, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that told them a lot, right it really. Initially
Speaker 3: they thought maybe it was just a sign of low intelligence,
Speaker 3: maybe it was a problem with vision or something like that.
Speaker 3: But the fact that you could acquire dyslexia told neurologists
Speaker 3: and optalmologists working in the nineteenth century. No, this is
Speaker 3: a this is a there's a neurobiological basis to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they called it early on in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: and I guess even in the early twentieth century. Well,
Speaker 2: actually they called it that up until the sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the sixties word blindness.
Speaker 3: And it was a German who coined that term, and
Speaker 3: they called it vort blindhyped. Can you say that that's good? Okay,
Speaker 3: you would do it way better than well.
Speaker 1: I would put on some dumb voice. But that's perfect pronunciation.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: You said that it's a W right, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: said it is a V.
Speaker 3: Yeah, perfect Okay. They didn't click my heels together, and.
Speaker 1: It checks out, Dorothy.
Speaker 2: So they called it, like you said, up into the sixties,
Speaker 2: congenital little word blindness. Uh. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: people in the late eighteen hundred or not a lot,
Speaker 2: but a handful of people studying this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Henchelwood and Morgan were the two big ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they were optomologists and a doctor. Henchelwood was
Speaker 2: the optomologist and they and then there were also neurologists.
Speaker 2: A man named Samuel Orton, and uh, they it's interesting
Speaker 2: to look back because they were sort of on the
Speaker 2: right track with how they what they thought was wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Word blindness also is a term. Is not that
Speaker 3: not that far off? Yeah, I mean it really does
Speaker 3: a good job describing the thing, because they're saying, like,
Speaker 3: there's some condition that these people have, specifically because they're
Speaker 3: otherwise totally intelligent. They're just they have a problem with words,
Speaker 3: with seeing words and recognizing them like everybody else can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was obviously since the dawn of time
Speaker 2: people have had this condition, but it didn't obviously if
Speaker 2: you think about it. There are a lot of things
Speaker 2: that came along that really brought it into the forefront, like.
Speaker 3: Printing, widespread literacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, newspapers and books and street signs exactly, menus like
Speaker 2: you were saying in a restaurant. Yeah, like everywhere there's
Speaker 2: the printed word and all of this.
Speaker 3: As all of this started to emerge in like the
Speaker 3: second half of the nineteenth century, at least in the
Speaker 3: United States and in the Western Europe, all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: people who had dyslexia suddenly became a parent, whereas before
Speaker 3: this it wouldn't have been a parent because they're there
Speaker 3: was no way for dyslexia to manifest itself. People didn't
Speaker 3: walk around reading. You weren't expected to learn to read
Speaker 3: and write as a kid. You had to be like
Speaker 3: basically a monk to learn to read and write, or
Speaker 3: part of the aristocracy. Now it became democratized and public
Speaker 3: schooling became widespread, and so as a result, dyslexia became
Speaker 3: a thing for the very first time. It's actually a
Speaker 3: relatively new condition that was born out of the modern era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or if you were a kid back then and
Speaker 2: they were trying to teach you read and you couldn't,
Speaker 2: you were just they were like, all right, well, I
Speaker 2: guess he's not a reader, right, So get out to
Speaker 2: the factory of the field, right, and don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: But that was what Morgan, like w Pringle Morgan and
Speaker 3: James Hinchelwood were doing, was they were the first ones
Speaker 3: to say, wait, wait, get that kid out of the field,
Speaker 3: because he seems otherwise bright to me. He just is
Speaker 3: having trouble reading. This might just be a thing. So
Speaker 3: they were the first ones to say, no, this is
Speaker 3: its own thing. This isn't just being being generally slow.
Speaker 3: Specific learning disability.
Speaker 2: Right, Samuel Orton, the neurologists I mentioned, he created the
Speaker 2: Orton Society in nineteen forty nine. They were researchers and
Speaker 2: teachers trying to figure out like, all right, we know
Speaker 2: this is a problem. Now how do we go about
Speaker 2: teaching kids like this? And that eventually led to the
Speaker 2: International Dyslexia Association, But it really took until the the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. That was a book written by McDonald Critchley
Speaker 2: called The Dyslexic Child, And that's when things really started
Speaker 2: to come to the forefront more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they started to realize, oh, wait, you can teach
Speaker 3: kids with dyslexia how to read, so maybe we should
Speaker 3: start doing that, right, And here are these symptoms and
Speaker 3: the signs of dyslexia, and let's take it seriously in
Speaker 3: the general education system.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things that they learned, they
Speaker 2: have learned over the years is part of the problem,
Speaker 2: at least in the case of English, is that it's
Speaker 2: a really tough language to learn, extraordinarily tough, and it
Speaker 2: matters if you have dyslexia. When compared to Italian. It
Speaker 2: says English has over a thousand ways to spell it's
Speaker 2: basic set of forty phonological sounds. Italian has twenty five
Speaker 2: speech sounds speech sounds and only thirty three ways to
Speaker 2: spell them. So incidences of dyslexia, while they may be
Speaker 2: the same technically in Italy, kids don't have as much
Speaker 2: of a problem in Italy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like thinking about this, so that the sure e
Speaker 3: sound eh eh, you can spell it ai as in
Speaker 3: staid EO is in leopard, You is in barry, Ie
Speaker 3: is in friend.
Speaker 1: Okay, English is so tough.
Speaker 3: It is tough. But what you're doing is when you're
Speaker 3: spelling those things, you're encoding a sound. A phoneeme is
Speaker 3: what it's called. Right, And like you said, in English,
Speaker 3: we have forty phonemes, and when you spell, when you read,
Speaker 3: you're encoding and coding a phoneme. And we've attached phonemes
Speaker 3: onto specific things out in real life. Leopard, Right, if
Speaker 3: you can spell leopard, you can write down that word
Speaker 3: and you can create a leopard in somebody else's mind's
Speaker 3: eye by reading it. Okay, this is all spectacular that
Speaker 3: we can do this, but it's a totally human construct.
Speaker 3: If you have dyslexia, you're the ground problem that is
Speaker 3: the basis of your condition is you have trouble sorting
Speaker 3: through phonemes. You have trouble with what's called phonological awareness,
Speaker 3: where you hear impart as two separate distinct sounds that
Speaker 3: you can learn to spell and learn to write. You
Speaker 3: can't sort them. Sometimes they run together. It's a problem
Speaker 3: on the very basis of reading, writing, spelling the phonology.
Speaker 3: You have trouble. Your brain has trouble processing it and sorting.
Speaker 3: That's the basis of dyslexia. So if you are a
Speaker 3: kid with dyslexia, in learning English with as difficult as
Speaker 3: it is where there's all these different rules for the
Speaker 3: same phoneme, it's going to be way harder than it
Speaker 3: is in something like Italian.
Speaker 2: Like you were saying, yeah, And as a result, as
Speaker 2: you would imagine, learning a second language if you have
Speaker 2: dyslexia is really tough. But they have found that Italian
Speaker 2: can almost be like a therapy.
Speaker 3: A training like training camp for learn really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you learn, Oh there's rules with certain things, but
Speaker 3: these are really basic rules and they make sense. So
Speaker 3: maybe now I can learn English a little more easily
Speaker 3: with the expectation that the rules are structurally the same,
Speaker 3: but they're just different for English than they are for
Speaker 3: Italian in nuance, but ultimately they're getting across the same stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole concept of language and symbols, e letters
Speaker 2: and words, it's.
Speaker 1: Just fascinating to me, endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because again I don't like the humans.
Speaker 2: Like creating this and saying that thing over there. If
Speaker 2: you draw these symbols in this order, that's what that is.
Speaker 2: See that leopard like, that's and then the word leopard like. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just all fascinating.
Speaker 3: It is because you're encapsulating knowledge that can be shared
Speaker 3: later on, can be unlocked later on by anyone who
Speaker 3: understands how to decode it in the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the science? What was it called? When you
Speaker 1: study that?
Speaker 3: Linguistics?
Speaker 1: Is it just linguistic?
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I could have.
Speaker 1: Been a linguist. Oh yeah, if I had only known
Speaker 1: what it was called.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just realize how anything that would have dumb
Speaker 2: dumb what's that thing called?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have been good at that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't. It was on the tip of
Speaker 3: my tongue.
Speaker 2: So I guess we can talk about the the fMRI
Speaker 2: and the MRI. Obviously, the Wonder Machine figures in pretty
Speaker 2: big when it comes to this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 2: And in the mid nineties is about when the fMRI
Speaker 2: came on the scene with dyslexia and studies with dyslexia.
Speaker 2: Once they one of the problems was little kids. You're like, well,
Speaker 2: we can't throw them in there, that they will explode
Speaker 2: their brain. And then they're like, oh no, the fMRI
Speaker 2: machine is fine for kids.
Speaker 3: We tested it out on some bad kids and.
Speaker 2: They were fine, and so they started putting children in
Speaker 2: there because you could obviously do this at any age,
Speaker 2: but it's important for school age children to like figure
Speaker 2: out what's going on in their brains.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the reasons why that's the sample
Speaker 3: population is because it takes years for dyslexia to be prominent. Right,
Speaker 3: every kid has problems learning, reading and writing at first, sure,
Speaker 3: but then as other kids progress and this one kid doesn't,
Speaker 3: but they're otherwise bright, same socioeconomic opportunities and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: That's when it becomes possible that they have dyslexia. But
Speaker 3: by that time a couple more years have gone by,
Speaker 3: right right, Yeah, so you're you're not testing for dyslexia
Speaker 3: on babies, right, you have to wait until it basically
Speaker 3: manifests itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course with the fMRI they I think there
Speaker 2: was some hope that it could, like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: just be like, well there it is, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: You know it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't as they you know, different regions of the
Speaker 2: brain would light up or not light up. But they
Speaker 2: didn't get any hard like pinpointing conclusions.
Speaker 3: No, they have kind of focused in on a few spots,
Speaker 3: like different studies have said, this is what we found,
Speaker 3: and it actually correlates with other studies too. There's left
Speaker 3: hemisphere areas, the ventral occipito temporal region, the temporal parietal region,
Speaker 3: and the inferior frontal cortices, which have to do with
Speaker 3: language processing. Yeah, but also visual processing of language too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So again they think that the basis of all of
Speaker 3: this is that when you were hearing sounds and somebody's
Speaker 3: holding up a piece of bread that has been dried
Speaker 3: through heat and says toast, you're hearing toast. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you can learn to write t A. It's a little confounding, sure,
Speaker 3: and then st over time, maybe the first few times
Speaker 3: you write te ST, it doesn't matter. You're going to
Speaker 3: learn to write T A S T and you can
Speaker 3: write it down and then someone else can read it
Speaker 3: and they think of toast. Right, with dyslexia, you're not
Speaker 3: hearing toast. You're you're you, and you certainly can't extrapolate
Speaker 3: something that you're not hearing correctly into words and letters. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: it's a.
Speaker 2: Good way to put it, the Toast analogy. There you go, U,
Speaker 2: there is a genetic component. You are likely, if you
Speaker 2: have dyslexi to also have other family members who have it,
Speaker 2: and they have isolated some genes associated with it. But
Speaker 2: again they haven't been like here's the cause. Let's just
Speaker 2: figure out how to switch this gene off or.
Speaker 3: On right, And it's I think it's just correlated. It's
Speaker 3: not necessarily the cause. It's it's like people who have
Speaker 3: been shown to have dyslexia have these set of genes
Speaker 3: that are doing this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what, like I said earlier, what's interesting is those
Speaker 2: early doctors weren't super far off. It does have to
Speaker 2: do with visual processing of this linguistic information, and they
Speaker 2: were on the right track even way back then.
Speaker 1: So not bad.
Speaker 3: And then even still though with this new understanding of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this brain region looks like this, this brain region looks
Speaker 3: like that, this is the sign of a dyslexic brain,
Speaker 3: there's still the question is this the result of going
Speaker 3: years and years without reading or is that the structure
Speaker 3: of a brain with dyslexia? Right, because we know that
Speaker 3: your brain changes when you read, when you learn to read.
Speaker 3: They've done studies in the MRI with illiterate adults who
Speaker 3: have learn to read. So they do a scan of
Speaker 3: them while they cannot read, and then they scan them
Speaker 3: again while they can read, and then look for differences
Speaker 3: in the brain. And there are structural differences that take
Speaker 3: place in the brain, which makes sense because it makes
Speaker 3: you think, So an illiterate adult is that the normal
Speaker 3: structure of the brain, and an adult that can read
Speaker 3: is that an abnormal structure? Because think about it, we've
Speaker 3: only been doing that for one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: That's a new construct. So it makes sense that the
Speaker 3: brain would be neuroplastic like that in that respect, because
Speaker 3: that's a new thing we've all started to try to
Speaker 3: do to alter our brains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where the practice part comes in which
Speaker 2: we'll get to more. But it's interesting that and it
Speaker 2: sounds simple, but the better if you have dyslexia, the
Speaker 2: better you get at reading and writing, the better you
Speaker 2: will get at reading and writing exactly.
Speaker 3: You're just you're strengthening, You're creating new neural connections and
Speaker 3: strengthening those pathways. And the fact that it all comes
Speaker 3: down to apparent patience and practice and that like it's
Speaker 3: saying like these kids with dyslexi are going through the
Speaker 3: same thing that every kid does with learning to read
Speaker 3: and write and spell, it just takes them way longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The fact that generations of kids with this lexi were
Speaker 3: just abandoned by the school system because of a lack
Speaker 3: of patience is really what it comes down to. Is
Speaker 3: beyond sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, patients and resources, I think, and that's part of it. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just don't want to it sound like we're saying
Speaker 2: like teachers just were impatient about it, all right, It's
Speaker 2: like it was complex and still very sad.
Speaker 3: Yes, that teachers have to buy their own school supply
Speaker 3: still gets to me every year. Yeah, the fact that
Speaker 3: we're like living with this as a country, Like that's
Speaker 3: just become normal to us. Is it's embarrassing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just a mark of shame on our country.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, all right, let's take a break.
Speaker 3: No, I'm gonna go.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you your out of nine tails
Speaker 2: so we can flog each other.
Speaker 3: I realize I'm I sound really forceful in this episode.
Speaker 3: Do I feel like I'm sounding forceful? Do I sound forceful?
Speaker 3: Think you're great?
Speaker 1: Do I? Well? That did?
Speaker 2: All right, we'll be right back everyone. All right, So,
Speaker 2: like you said earlier, there is no cure for dyslexia.
Speaker 2: There is a treatment, and they even put that in quotes,
Speaker 2: but you shouldn't think of it as a disease cure
Speaker 2: type of thing.
Speaker 1: It's practice and patience.
Speaker 3: You have it for life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those are the two strategies that we will
Speaker 2: say it one more time for the tenth time patients.
Speaker 2: In practice, you have to have that patience there as
Speaker 2: a parent, as a teacher, as someone with dyslexia. I
Speaker 2: know it's frustrating, but the more patient you are give
Speaker 2: yourself time, teachers can. And then there are programs now
Speaker 2: where students can get extra time to take tests and
Speaker 2: things like that. And oh yeah, I think even officially,
Speaker 2: like with the SAT and stuff like that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: there are programs where you are not to put it
Speaker 2: a disadvantage.
Speaker 3: There's the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of two
Speaker 3: thousand and four, the IDEA Act or IDEA. It specifies
Speaker 3: dyslexia as a specific learning disorder. And when you have
Speaker 3: a diagnosis of dyslexia, the whole world opens up to you.
Speaker 3: You all of a sudden have your own personal teachers
Speaker 3: assistant working with you. Hopefully, you have all sorts of
Speaker 3: resources that just weren't available to you before that are
Speaker 3: being funneled directly toward helping you learn to read faster.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's across the board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that schools probably have specific funding for
Speaker 3: IDEA stuff. I mean, like when Congress comes up with
Speaker 3: an act like that, they fund it, and then they
Speaker 3: fund it out of it, like those huge omnibus budgets
Speaker 3: have funding for that, and that goes to the school
Speaker 3: and school's supposedly not allowed to spend it on anything
Speaker 3: but that stuff. So yeah, probably if you get a
Speaker 3: diagnosis of dyslexia, it's pretty sweet and a huge relief
Speaker 3: because all of a sudden, it's just like a brand
Speaker 3: new world. You're taken away from the dumb kid's table
Speaker 3: like Howard Schultz was, and all of a sudden, you
Speaker 3: have your own one on one reading and spelling lessons
Speaker 3: that you just didn't have before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other, like said, is practice, and over time, you
Speaker 2: know you can learn to read and you make those
Speaker 2: new neural pathways, and it just it's heartening to know
Speaker 2: that if you have this patience and you put in
Speaker 2: the time, it is something that can be overcome if
Speaker 2: everyone works together.
Speaker 3: Right, And if you can learn to read, even as
Speaker 3: an adult. You're not going to learn to read necessarily proficiently.
Speaker 3: I think you can if you really really practice, if
Speaker 3: you put your mind to it. It's going to be
Speaker 3: very slow, but it's not like you'll never read a
Speaker 3: book or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I saw one woman describing her condition as an adult,
Speaker 3: and she said she was very proud to be at
Speaker 3: like a seventh grade reading level now as an adult,
Speaker 3: which is like, you can navigate through life with a
Speaker 3: seventh grade at a seventh grade reading level pretty easy.
Speaker 3: The problem comes when you don't ever you've never gotten
Speaker 3: any help, and you're basically an illiterate adult because of dyslexia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have technology can help out. There are what
Speaker 2: they call assist of listening devices because sometimes if you
Speaker 2: have someone your ear reading something out loud while you're
Speaker 2: reading along, sort of like a teacher, and an app
Speaker 2: like that one on one experience, that can really really help.
Speaker 2: Seeing a transcription sometimes of what someone's saying.
Speaker 3: A real time transcription.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so all these apps and devices are really
Speaker 2: helping things along.
Speaker 3: This so's it's like a brand new world for kids
Speaker 3: with dyslexia compared to like last century. Oh yeah, or
Speaker 3: even a few decades ago, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The one thing I didn't quite get was this thing
Speaker 2: that you sent from Sir Jim Rose. I didn't fully
Speaker 2: get what this guy was saying.
Speaker 3: He was part of it. So he's not saying this,
Speaker 3: he's he's he's definitely all into dyslexia. But there is
Speaker 3: a thread that of experts in childhood education, psychology, childhood
Speaker 3: cognition who who suspect that there's no such thing as dyslexia,
Speaker 3: really that those earliest neurologists and ophthalmologists and doctors who
Speaker 3: who named it and made it a thing were wrong,
Speaker 3: and that really an inability to read transcends any level
Speaker 3: of intelligence. It's disconnected from intelligence. That no matter whether
Speaker 3: you are of high intelligence or low intelligence, you can
Speaker 3: suffer from an inability to learn to read. And so
Speaker 3: if you have dyslexia and you are of high intelligence,
Speaker 3: the kid next to you who has low intelligence and
Speaker 3: can't read also has dyslexia or or else. No one
Speaker 3: has dyslexia, and it's just an inability to learn to read.
Speaker 3: Most experts say dyslexia is a thing, sure, which means
Speaker 3: then the debate is, okay, doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 3: with intelligence. And if it doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 3: with intelligence, then all of these resources that are being
Speaker 3: diverted to these kids who are of high intelligence but
Speaker 3: are having trouble learning to read is really doing a
Speaker 3: disservice to the kids of low intelligence. And I'm making
Speaker 3: air quotes here. Everybody who are having trouble learning to read?
Speaker 3: Why differentiate they're both having trouble learning to read. Start
Speaker 3: attacking the problem with both of them. And there was
Speaker 3: this one Australian expert who basically said, like, yes, dyslexia
Speaker 3: is the thing. It is his own thing. It has
Speaker 3: a neurobiological basis. It's not made up. It's not a myth.
Speaker 3: But let's treat first and then diagnose later. If you
Speaker 3: see an inability to learn to read, go after that.
Speaker 3: Don't say, well, is a dyslexia. Let's test the kids
Speaker 3: intelligence it doesn't matter, and focus on learning. How I'm
Speaker 3: teaching them how to read interesting and apparently interventions. There's
Speaker 3: this guy named Julian, Professor Julian.
Speaker 1: What's his name, Chuck Lenin.
Speaker 3: Sands, Yes, Julian Sands In boxing Helena, and he makes
Speaker 3: it's a big soliloquy about whether or not dyslexi is
Speaker 3: a myth. I can't remember the guy's last name, but
Speaker 3: I get the impression that parents of children with dyslexi
Speaker 3: are not a big fan of this guy. But he's
Speaker 3: basically said, we're diverting a lot of funding away from
Speaker 3: kids who know how to who don't know how to read,
Speaker 3: just because they don't they supposedly don't have a high IQ.
Speaker 3: Let's treat all the kids. So that's the idea of
Speaker 3: whether it's a myth, not that dyslexi doesn't exist, although
Speaker 3: I think some people suspected it didn't for a while
Speaker 3: now people believe it does, but not necessarily that it's
Speaker 3: just intelligent upper middle class kids who have dyslexia. It's
Speaker 3: just an inability to read for the same reason. Interesting,
Speaker 3: that's the basis of it. It's still up in the air,
Speaker 3: and it's a really touchy subject, very touchy subject, sure,
Speaker 3: and rightfully so. I mean, like, I can imagine you
Speaker 3: feel lost in the woods if there's no official diagnosis,
Speaker 3: there's no official test of it, there's no official definition
Speaker 3: of it. Your kid has it, and you know your
Speaker 3: kid has it. Yeah, I can't imagine what it must
Speaker 3: feel like to have some expert going like there's no
Speaker 3: such thing as dyslexia, right, you know, yeah, yeah, thanks
Speaker 3: a lot. It is very touchy and rightfully so.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Finally, there's this whole notion that if you have dyslexia,
Speaker 2: then you may excel in other areas. You may be
Speaker 2: more creative, or you may be more prone to be
Speaker 2: like an entrepreneur, perhaps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you think outside of the box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a long list of people, like,
Speaker 2: you know, famous creative types that have dyslexia.
Speaker 3: IGETHA. Christie, did you know that one?
Speaker 1: I didn't but I didn't either that.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't just make it up. I learned there's.
Speaker 2: A long list. But just recently part of this bugs
Speaker 2: me though, I don't know. I just hate it when
Speaker 2: they're like, well, look what celebrities have this thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: I get it. Maybe that it might, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just don't see the value in that.
Speaker 3: Well, it's saying like, look at this guy, this guy,
Speaker 3: this lady.
Speaker 1: Maybe I guess so.
Speaker 3: He's not a street sweeper. You don't have to spend,
Speaker 3: you don't have to look forward to a life of
Speaker 3: shoveling horse maneuver because you have dyslexia. You can achieve
Speaker 3: just stick to a kid.
Speaker 1: No, I get all that, and that's valid.
Speaker 3: Are you're questioning the cult of celebrity?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 2: That just sort of bugs me, But no, there is benefits.
Speaker 2: I'm sure if some kid is like Tom Cruise has dyslexia,
Speaker 2: right and look at him.
Speaker 3: I have had some questions about xanax and its value myself.
Speaker 1: Oh goodness.
Speaker 2: There have been some studies though over the years that
Speaker 2: may or may not support this, Like supposedly, if you
Speaker 2: have dyslexia, you may be quicker to find something in
Speaker 2: your peripheral vision. Maybe you can like mc esher style
Speaker 2: drawings or the impossible images hidden images, you might see
Speaker 2: those quicker or more easily find patterns in noise. Sure,
Speaker 2: like you could be a great data analysts perhaps.
Speaker 3: And they think like and this makes total sense. But
Speaker 3: the problem is it's anecdotal at this point. But it
Speaker 3: makes total sense that, yes, you're the same senses that
Speaker 3: you were using to read and write. If you don't
Speaker 3: know how to read and write, your brain's going to
Speaker 3: compensate with other things. It's going to possibly excel at
Speaker 3: other stuff just because it's structured different If your brain
Speaker 3: is structured differently, which we know that's the case, if
Speaker 3: you do not read or write, you would expect that
Speaker 3: it would manifest itself in real world behaviors and traits.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and the first thing I thought it was like, yeah, totally,
Speaker 2: like if your vision impaired you hear things better.
Speaker 3: Well, supposedly that's a myth.
Speaker 1: Well I looked it up.
Speaker 2: There are studies where if you are vision impaired, you
Speaker 2: are better at pinpointing like location of sound and certain sounds.
Speaker 3: But it's not as you can't hear something two miles away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not as cut and dry as you can't
Speaker 2: he better, Yeah, because like your ears developed better.
Speaker 3: You know, if you remember that guy who can echo locate,
Speaker 3: he's visually impaired and he's like, no, he uses clicks
Speaker 3: or something like that, like a he basically taught himself
Speaker 3: to echo locate. 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?
Speaker 3: Stellarc? Stell what's great?
Speaker 1: Oh man?
Speaker 3: I love that you and I like go back and
Speaker 3: forth on remembering the guy's name. Last time we bought
Speaker 3: most of it, I didn't remember his name, and you
Speaker 3: rattled it right at Stellark Between us, Stellarc is going
Speaker 3: to live forever like the transhumanist to you.
Speaker 2: But then that last thing about being entrepreneurial or maybe
Speaker 2: a corporate executive. They did do a study in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine that found there was an anecdotal evidence
Speaker 2: of over representation in those fields. But then that's the
Speaker 2: thing too, where they're like, maybe they were just better
Speaker 2: at overcoming adversity, right, and that stayed on through their
Speaker 2: whole life to where it wasn't just dyslexia but like
Speaker 2: and nothing would keep them down.
Speaker 3: So they excelled, right, they learned how to how to
Speaker 3: try harder than their peers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, even if that is the case, great, Sure,
Speaker 3: But the point is it's still anecdotals, so you have
Speaker 3: to be careful with saying like, oh, yeah, people with
Speaker 3: dyslexia are way better at this, right, or they're they're
Speaker 3: more likely to be entrepreneurs. It's just it hasn't been settled. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But I think the overall point of this episode is
Speaker 3: if you are if you do have dyslexia, there is
Speaker 3: plenty of hope. Do not give up hope, whether that
Speaker 3: your kid has dyslexia or you have dyslexia, you can
Speaker 3: learn to read and write and spell, and you can
Speaker 3: become a Pulitzer Prize winning.
Speaker 1: Columnist or Agatha Christie yep.
Speaker 3: Or John Irving. I saw his yslexia, John Oiving. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Richard Branson, that was really good.
Speaker 1: Ozzy Osbourne, for God's sake, look at that guy. Sure,
Speaker 1: if I'm going around the house.
Speaker 3: He's successful. Yeah, despite himself. If you want to know
Speaker 3: more about dyslexia, you can learn all about it on
Speaker 3: the internets. And since I said that it's time for
Speaker 3: listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this Sid and Marty Kroft email.
Speaker 2: This guy wrote in to email us about a personal
Speaker 2: connection he had to the Schoolhouse Rock episode. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna read that half of the letter because I don't
Speaker 2: want to further embarrass the family, but he's his relation
Speaker 2: to the person that we kind of called out as
Speaker 2: the guy who ruined Schoolhouse Rock.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, wasn't he an exec?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: But the second half of this, as speaking of unbelievable stories, guys,
Speaker 2: I thought it. You'd be jealous to know that I
Speaker 2: grew up hanging out on the sets of all the
Speaker 2: Sidden Marty Croft shows because my mom was on a
Speaker 2: bunch of them. He used to have lunch with the
Speaker 2: slee stacks and throw around big foam boulders from Land
Speaker 2: to the Loss. She was Nashville on the Captain Cool
Speaker 2: and the Kong Show, which wrapped around the Saturday morning cartoons.
Speaker 1: I remember that, mm hm.
Speaker 2: They also that also led to the music group the
Speaker 2: Bay City Rollers showing up to my birthday party when
Speaker 2: I was like five. It caused such a big mom
Speaker 2: scene the police had to come.
Speaker 3: That's the SA yeah, you are d a. Why you
Speaker 3: know how they got their name They threw a dart
Speaker 3: at a map and it landed on Bay City, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Because they're like Scottish, aren't they.
Speaker 3: I think so they are.
Speaker 1: I remember my sister.
Speaker 2: We had a babysitter, and then my sister and the babysitter.
Speaker 2: I don't know why my sister wasn't just my babysitter.
Speaker 2: She was six years older. There was another girl who
Speaker 2: babysat that was like a sister's age, and they would
Speaker 2: sit around. This is my big memory of the Bay
Speaker 2: City Rollers. They would there was one of their albums
Speaker 2: that had each of their pictures sort of in a
Speaker 2: dartboard like fashion in a circle, and they would spin
Speaker 2: the record around and close their eyes and stop it
Speaker 2: with their finger, and.
Speaker 3: Like they had to make out with that picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had to like kiss that picture or whatever.
Speaker 3: I hope your sister doesn't listen to this.
Speaker 1: No, it's great. The seventies man, so innocent.
Speaker 3: I love the seventies.
Speaker 2: So the Bay City Rollers came through his birthday party.
Speaker 2: They called the cops.
Speaker 1: She went on.
Speaker 2: My mom went on to do a ton of cool
Speaker 2: stuff that I'm sure you guys would know a bunch
Speaker 2: of episodes of Plastic Man, Wow, all the women voices
Speaker 2: on Celebrity Deathmatch, Cool, hosting a game show called Rodeo Drive,
Speaker 2: playing Joan Rivers on Family Guy Wow, being in the
Speaker 2: Catskills on Broadway nice for two years. Too much more
Speaker 2: to mention, guys, except also she went on the road
Speaker 2: with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman for a number of
Speaker 2: years posing is Carol Burnette, and my little brother ended
Speaker 2: up engaged to Harvey Corman's daughter, Wow, but it didn't
Speaker 2: work out.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I love the show, guys. If I can ever
Speaker 2: be a resource, let me know. That is from Keith
Speaker 2: or Ell Keith.
Speaker 3: That was amazing. You remember Celebrity Deathmatch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, so great. Big shout out to your mom too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to see your mom's Keith. Yeah. Well, if
Speaker 3: you want to brag on your mom because she's done
Speaker 3: some awesome stuff, we love hearing about that. Moms always
Speaker 3: have great welcomeness here and stuff. You should know. That's right,
Speaker 3: that's gonna end up being a crummy T shirt. If
Speaker 3: you want to get in touch of this, you can
Speaker 3: hang out on stuff youshould know dot com. And check
Speaker 3: out our social links there, and you can get in
Speaker 3: touch with me, Chuck and Jerry and everybody else here
Speaker 3: at Stuff Should Know by sending an email to Stuff
Speaker 3: podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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