WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Blaschko's Lines

0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:03.840
<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck is here in spirit too,

0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.120
<v Speaker 1>and we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that

0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.399
<v Speaker 1>we are going to have a swinging Pacific Northwest Swing

0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.160
<v Speaker 1>this coming February, and tickets are now on sale. February

0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.280
<v Speaker 1>one will be at the More Theater in Seattle, February

0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.200
<v Speaker 1>two will be at Revolution Hall in Portland, and on

0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:25.439
<v Speaker 1>February three, for SF Sketch Fest, will be at the

0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.800
<v Speaker 1>Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our social

0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.479
<v Speaker 1>media's for more information and links to tickets, and we'll

0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:40.920
<v Speaker 1>see you in February. Hey, I'm welcome to the Shorts

0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.400
<v Speaker 1>to Find Josh and there's Chuck tally Ho. It's short

0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.760
<v Speaker 1>Stuff time and we're talking about something that admittedly I

0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.000
<v Speaker 1>kind of understand and kind of hope you really understand.

0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.840
<v Speaker 1>I do good. I do. Also, before we started, wanting

0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:56.640
<v Speaker 1>to give a hat tip to my wife, you me

0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.560
<v Speaker 1>who came up with this one said have you ever

0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.160
<v Speaker 1>heard of this? It's crazy? And I looked into it

0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.039
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, this is crazy because what you

0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:07.200
<v Speaker 1>we found and what we're about to explain to all

0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.600
<v Speaker 1>of you is that humans are a species. Don't forget

0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:16.479
<v Speaker 1>we're animals with stripes. We actually are a striped species

0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.280
<v Speaker 1>of animal. Did you know that before? I've never heard

0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:22.400
<v Speaker 1>of this. I did not know we were all brindle

0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:26.759
<v Speaker 1>coated animals like my dog Nico. Yeah, that's exactly right,

0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.800
<v Speaker 1>that's exactly what we are. We have beautiful patterns of

0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:34.960
<v Speaker 1>swirls and whorls and drips and drops and all sorts

0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.880
<v Speaker 1>of cool stuff all over us, but we can't see

0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:42.520
<v Speaker 1>them normally under normal circumstances because we don't see on

0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.560
<v Speaker 1>the UV side of the spectrum. But if we did,

0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:47.720
<v Speaker 1>we'd be like, hey, I like your stripes. Oh, I

0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.240
<v Speaker 1>like your stripes. And with some people, depending on the

0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.680
<v Speaker 1>condition they have, they actually their stripes actually show. It's

0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.360
<v Speaker 1>pretty interesting stuff. But the whole thing we're talking about,

0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.000
<v Speaker 1>if you noticed, um the title of this episode, or

0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.040
<v Speaker 1>what are called blash cos lines, those are the stripes

0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.360
<v Speaker 1>that all humans have. Now did this happen? Because you

0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:07.320
<v Speaker 1>mean had a black light and went, oh my god,

0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:09.680
<v Speaker 1>I don't know where she turned this one up. I

0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:11.160
<v Speaker 1>didn't ask her. I'll have to ask her and then

0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.640
<v Speaker 1>we'll record a pick up. All right, So hold on

0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:20.040
<v Speaker 1>insert answer here. Uh So, blash cos lines that is

0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.320
<v Speaker 1>in fact a name. Uh. It was named after a dermatologist,

0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.200
<v Speaker 1>Alfred Blaschko and the nineteen hundreds. He was the first

0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.280
<v Speaker 1>person to uh notice this basically and write about it. Um.

0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:34.560
<v Speaker 1>He thought he was a little bit off though, because

0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:39.720
<v Speaker 1>he thought that they followed predefined patterns on humans. Um.

0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.440
<v Speaker 1>But they don't. And the weird thing is is you

0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.360
<v Speaker 1>might think is like, all right, so maybe these are

0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.400
<v Speaker 1>um lines that sort of indicate where your blood vessels

0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.359
<v Speaker 1>are or your nerve endings are, or your nerves or whatever. Um,

0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:56.280
<v Speaker 1>that is not the case. Uh, these stripes are not

0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.079
<v Speaker 1>blood vessels that you could see under a black light

0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:01.160
<v Speaker 1>at all. But we kind of know what it is now,

0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.120
<v Speaker 1>right right, Yeah, there's no system in the body that

0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.120
<v Speaker 1>these things follow. Instead, they're their own thing. They seem

0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:09.560
<v Speaker 1>to be their own thing, um, and they are distinct

0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.800
<v Speaker 1>on all people. But there are kind of some general

0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.880
<v Speaker 1>patterns that we'll talk about. But what what we've come

0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.800
<v Speaker 1>up with finally today is still today we're not certain

0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.600
<v Speaker 1>that this is correct, but the general consensus is that

0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:25.480
<v Speaker 1>what blash cos lines are evidence of the migratory route

0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.960
<v Speaker 1>that our skin cells took and then settled into while

0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:33.040
<v Speaker 1>we were developing in the womb. Right. Um, I'm just

0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.080
<v Speaker 1>gonna read this little bit from mental Flass because I

0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:36.960
<v Speaker 1>think it kind of sums it up nicely. Yeah. I

0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:38.880
<v Speaker 1>thought so too, And we always love to shout out

0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.680
<v Speaker 1>our our old pals at Mental Flass, the m f fs,

0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:48.360
<v Speaker 1>the ms uh. Basically, they said, these are cellular relics

0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:54.160
<v Speaker 1>of our development, basically from single cell uh things you

0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:59.520
<v Speaker 1>quoting this, No, I'm paraphrasing the beginning. Um, as the

0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.800
<v Speaker 1>cells of I did, they differentiated, some became muscles, others bones,

0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.720
<v Speaker 1>still others organs, and some became skin. As those skin

0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.080
<v Speaker 1>cells continued dividing, they expanded and stretched to cover a

0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.360
<v Speaker 1>quickly growing body. One cell line pushed and swirled through

0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.360
<v Speaker 1>another like steamed milk poured into an espresso to make

0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.200
<v Speaker 1>a latte, and Blash goes. Lines are the molecular evidence

0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.280
<v Speaker 1>of those swirls. It was very pretty writing. It was.

0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:28.920
<v Speaker 1>So the reason that we can see these lines, Chuck,

0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:57.280
<v Speaker 1>I think we should talk about after a break. So

0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.800
<v Speaker 1>the reasons we can see these lines, Chuck, I think

0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:04.720
<v Speaker 1>we're you talk about now? Very nice. So, Um, they

0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.720
<v Speaker 1>believe that the reason that there's differences even though you

0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:12.440
<v Speaker 1>can only see them under the UV spectrum. Under normal,

0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:17.240
<v Speaker 1>normal circumstances, you cannot see the difference between skin cells

0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.120
<v Speaker 1>on your arm, or on your shoulder, or on your

0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.120
<v Speaker 1>torso wherever, and you have blash cost lines all over

0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.920
<v Speaker 1>your body, as we'll see, because the cells that make

0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:31.440
<v Speaker 1>up our skin are almost entirely identical. They all come

0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.919
<v Speaker 1>from generally the same genetic information, so they all start

0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:38.720
<v Speaker 1>out from the same cell or gloves of cells. Like

0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:43.359
<v Speaker 1>mental falls pointed out, UM, But because of like the

0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:49.919
<v Speaker 1>different minute experiences that each cell has, those instructions get

0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:55.080
<v Speaker 1>produced and just slightly different ways, so that um, we

0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.039
<v Speaker 1>think of ourselves as like genetically monolithic beings. Right, It

0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:04.360
<v Speaker 1>turns out the term for humans UM are mosaics. All

0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.920
<v Speaker 1>of those cells are so slightly different that it's almost

0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.920
<v Speaker 1>like slightly different colored tiles being put up against one another.

0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:13.640
<v Speaker 1>And they're so similar that again, under normal light, you

0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.280
<v Speaker 1>can't see the difference. But when you put the put

0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.800
<v Speaker 1>yourself under a black light in a dark room, those

0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:22.400
<v Speaker 1>differences show up. That's why they think we're able to

0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.120
<v Speaker 1>see blash cost lines. That's why they think we have them.

0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:27.520
<v Speaker 1>It's the same reason when you look at identical twins.

0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:31.160
<v Speaker 1>They're they're actually a little bit different. Is again these

0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:35.800
<v Speaker 1>environmental factors that happen when you're a twin and and

0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.600
<v Speaker 1>in fact, uh, we just did an episode recently, what

0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:42.400
<v Speaker 1>was that on just this week on Doppelgangers. Doppelgangers when

0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.120
<v Speaker 1>they've seen a lot of evidence like when twins are

0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.920
<v Speaker 1>split up at birth, Um, they end up being quite

0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.680
<v Speaker 1>a bit different. And it's because of epigenetics. Isn't these

0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.159
<v Speaker 1>environmental factors. But even if they they aren't broken up,

0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.760
<v Speaker 1>even if they're together, these twins are these you know,

0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.640
<v Speaker 1>these minute little jenette differences that end up meaning these

0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.719
<v Speaker 1>twins are a little bit different. And that's the same

0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.320
<v Speaker 1>basic concept here. Yeah, but rather than whole people, we're

0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:14.280
<v Speaker 1>talking about the difference between genetically identical cells within one person.

0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.480
<v Speaker 1>There is something else called chimerism. So instead of mosaicism,

0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:23.360
<v Speaker 1>this is chimerism. And some people can have different genetic

0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:27.800
<v Speaker 1>material within them. So like um, very famously people with

0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.720
<v Speaker 1>two different eyes, they're chimeras, or they they're chimeric, I

0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:36.840
<v Speaker 1>should say, because different genetic information went into constructing each

0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.360
<v Speaker 1>eye and that's why they have two different colored eyes.

0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:44.680
<v Speaker 1>That's extraordinarily rare mosaicism apparently is universal that we're all.

0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.360
<v Speaker 1>We're just not if you took one cell in another

0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.480
<v Speaker 1>cell and you could get as granular as possible and

0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.640
<v Speaker 1>investigating them, you'd see that they're just slightly not the same,

0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.760
<v Speaker 1>even though they came from the same blueprint. Yeah, there's

0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.880
<v Speaker 1>a New York Mets picture that has one blue eye

0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:05.080
<v Speaker 1>and one dark eye? Is that David Bowie number seventy two.

0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:11.440
<v Speaker 1>It's Max Scherzer, And uh boy, it's just I didn't

0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:14.200
<v Speaker 1>even notice it until last year. And this is a

0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.640
<v Speaker 1>guy who's sort of at the latter stages of his career.

0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:20.480
<v Speaker 1>But then once you see a picture of this guy,

0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.360
<v Speaker 1>you're like, oh my god, it's really a striking difference

0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.840
<v Speaker 1>because it's a very very blue eye and a very

0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:28.680
<v Speaker 1>very brown eye. Uh and I just think it's so

0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.959
<v Speaker 1>cool looking. Yeah, like what a I don't know. I

0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:35.840
<v Speaker 1>would just always just go right up to people's faces

0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:40.360
<v Speaker 1>and and go, hi, how are you just like freak

0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:41.920
<v Speaker 1>him out a little bit? I think it's really cool.

0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:43.560
<v Speaker 1>Give him the left side, and then the right side,

0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.000
<v Speaker 1>and left side and the right side. Yeah. So, like

0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.800
<v Speaker 1>we said, they're like there, there's kind of some general

0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.280
<v Speaker 1>rules that like these lines will follow depending on where

0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.720
<v Speaker 1>you are on your body. Right, Yeah, there's like patterns,

0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.960
<v Speaker 1>which makes sense because you know all of us sort

0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.920
<v Speaker 1>of grow generally in the same way as far as

0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.920
<v Speaker 1>arms and legs and finghies and toes and torsos and

0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.880
<v Speaker 1>necks and armpits and all that stuff. So depending on

0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.600
<v Speaker 1>what can we keep naming parts about the dirty parts,

0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.839
<v Speaker 1>let's start, Um, they're only two. Uh So when you're

0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:22.920
<v Speaker 1>looking at a body, like there will be maybe a

0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:27.200
<v Speaker 1>V shape down your back, uh and inverted you from

0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.839
<v Speaker 1>the breast to the upper arm. Your lateral trunk will

0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:33.240
<v Speaker 1>have a wave like shape. There might be an S

0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:37.600
<v Speaker 1>shape on your abdomen, stuff like that. Yeah, your scalp. Actually,

0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.240
<v Speaker 1>if you look at your whole head, it looks like

0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.800
<v Speaker 1>as far as your blash co lines are are concerned,

0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.840
<v Speaker 1>that you're wearing a ball of clava like around around

0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.480
<v Speaker 1>your eye areas open, but there's different like lines surrounding

0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.720
<v Speaker 1>it elsewise, and apparently on your scalp at spirals, whereas

0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.400
<v Speaker 1>on the side of your face it comes there like

0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.640
<v Speaker 1>kind of vertical lines. It's pretty cool. There's um, I

0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.640
<v Speaker 1>think blash Coo himself, did you know, some initial um

0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:08.440
<v Speaker 1>descriptions of it through sketches, but since then science has

0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.240
<v Speaker 1>really kind of gotten pretty good at drawing it. So

0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.079
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of neat drawings of blash cos lines

0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:18.160
<v Speaker 1>on on the Internet of all places. But was he early?

0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.600
<v Speaker 1>He was like nineteen o one from what I saw, Okay,

0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.240
<v Speaker 1>the earliest. But Chuck, I think you should take the

0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.840
<v Speaker 1>fact of the short stuff, um, that the blash cos

0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.800
<v Speaker 1>lines don't just exist on the skin, right, Yeah, this

0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.960
<v Speaker 1>was pretty freaky. Um. Apparently your teeth and eyes and

0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.920
<v Speaker 1>tongue all have blash cose lines as well. Yeah, which

0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.400
<v Speaker 1>I mean anything that that forms from cells, you know,

0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:50.480
<v Speaker 1>expressing themselves, writing poetry and songs. You mentioned earlier though

0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.600
<v Speaker 1>about there are certain conditions that someone might have where

0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:58.040
<v Speaker 1>these lines are revealed in in regular light with regular vision,

0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.680
<v Speaker 1>right yeah, yeah, so vital eye where your skin loses

0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:06.720
<v Speaker 1>its pigmentation. Um, it often follows blash COEs lines. Um.

0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.920
<v Speaker 1>Also there's other types of congenital conditions, I believe, and

0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.200
<v Speaker 1>some inquired ones where um, so vidaigo would be like

0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:18.120
<v Speaker 1>a negative of your your blash COEs lines, whereas the

0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:20.840
<v Speaker 1>some of the other ones, they're like it's like a

0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.680
<v Speaker 1>tiger stripes. Like you can see the person's blash COEs

0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:27.480
<v Speaker 1>lines because it's hyper pigmented, so you can see them

0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.319
<v Speaker 1>without UV light. You can just see him under normal

0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:33.080
<v Speaker 1>visible light. And it's pretty cool looking, actually, I have

0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.200
<v Speaker 1>to say yeah, although usually if you look up on

0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.440
<v Speaker 1>the internet see what this looks like, it's just like

0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.480
<v Speaker 1>close ups of armpits and stuff. Sure, sure, and I

0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:45.560
<v Speaker 1>say it's pretty cool looking. I don't know how you know,

0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:47.760
<v Speaker 1>somebody who has a condition where their blash goes lines

0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:49.679
<v Speaker 1>are showing all the time feel about it. But as

0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.240
<v Speaker 1>an observer, I think it's pretty interesting and neat. And

0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.480
<v Speaker 1>then also when you stop and think about if you're

0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.600
<v Speaker 1>like that person's skin is striped, your skin is striped

0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:00.520
<v Speaker 1>to pal you just don't see it because you have

0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:05.400
<v Speaker 1>to see it under normal UV lights. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah.

0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.160
<v Speaker 1>So that's it for blash Coast Lines a A thanks

0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:15.160
<v Speaker 1>you me and thank you friend for listening to this episode.

0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.240
<v Speaker 1>Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.280
<v Speaker 1>For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart

0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.240
<v Speaker 1>Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.719
<v Speaker 1>favorite shows. H