Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are so glad to be coming back
Speaker 1: to s F Sketch Fest this week, the best comedy
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and uh,
Speaker 1: Jerry was just here. She said peace out, suckers, and
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. Of course, it was
Speaker 1: nice of her to log on to say goodbye. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're just getting Jerry. She's been busy lately. Yeah, what happens.
Speaker 1: It totally happens in this busy, go go world of
Speaker 1: almost two The Double Deuce this year has just flown by.
Speaker 1: It really has I think mercifully because this is going
Speaker 1: to be part of the lost years when we look back,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it felt like eighteen years and somehow
Speaker 1: one has just like been in a snap. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. I don't think anyone does anymore, Chuck,
Speaker 1: So don't don't feel bad. Uh. Can we shout out
Speaker 1: to the people and sources that helped us along for
Speaker 1: this one? Well, our buddy Dave Rouse wrote an article
Speaker 1: for our Stuff Works. Uh, And I found a great
Speaker 1: article from Wired. I forgot how much I love Wired.
Speaker 1: That's from Mallory Pickett and BBC News, ABC News, NPR
Speaker 1: Morning a Dish, which is always a fun listen. Uh,
Speaker 1: National Library of Medicine here in the US. And then,
Speaker 1: as always, I feel like it makes appearance in every
Speaker 1: episode Jamaica Hospital dot Org. That's right, surprisingly helpful? Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe not surprisingly? I wonder is that Jamaica Queens or
Speaker 1: Jamaica Jamaica. Oh you know what I was thinking, Jamaica Jamaica.
Speaker 1: Maybe Jamaica Queens. Yeah, should I Jamaica scene Jamaica Queens.
Speaker 1: My neighbor across the street, neighbor has uh is from Jamaica,
Speaker 1: the country, and I feel like a heel now because
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, that hospital websites great. Pat, She's like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? She's like, okay, great, glad
Speaker 1: you like some rando hospital website. Oh boys, so we're
Speaker 1: talking today. You went and found some medical stuff. That's
Speaker 1: why you went to look at Jamaica Hospital dot org.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing because we're talking about a really interesting condition
Speaker 1: and actually a few kinds of conditions that have something
Speaker 1: unusual in common, and that is that the people who
Speaker 1: suffer from these conditions have blue skin. Blueskin. You heard
Speaker 1: it here first, everybody, even though this really first started
Speaker 1: hitting the presses in two thousand eight. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you didn't hear it here first. This, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is all over the internet. But we're talking about not
Speaker 1: the Blue Man Group, but the Blue People Group of Kentucky.
Speaker 1: It's a family that is I guess it's pronounced few Gate.
Speaker 1: It's not. No, that's Italian. He was from France. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's a spoiler. Oh is it? I'm sorry? I
Speaker 1: take it back. Everyone. You know it's not a spoiler.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, when I saw that the original
Speaker 1: Martin Fugate was from France. From uh, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what part of France, but I was like, that's surprising.
Speaker 1: It was like, I don't know why it would be. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He could have come from anywhere in the world, and
Speaker 1: he would have been like a completely overlookable person, I think,
Speaker 1: totally lost to history had it not been for the
Speaker 1: rare um rare genetic mutation that he happened to carry
Speaker 1: with him. And even that wouldn't have gotten him into
Speaker 1: the history books, Chuck, Even that wouldn't have. Instead, it
Speaker 1: took Martin Fugate to happen, upon against all odds, to
Speaker 1: have found a wife who he was not related to,
Speaker 1: who was a total stranger from a totally different country,
Speaker 1: who also happened to have that same rare genetic mutation.
Speaker 1: And when the two get together, capal blue kids start
Speaker 1: popping out. That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky,
Speaker 1: to the Blue Hills of Kentucky. Ironically, Oh wow, I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that. In And like I said, he
Speaker 1: was from France when he was an orphan, so he
Speaker 1: didn't know a lot about his his family as far
Speaker 1: as uh, whether or not any of them were blue,
Speaker 1: I guess, or if so, he wasn't he wasn't piping
Speaker 1: up a out. Yeah, maybe he just kept it quiet.
Speaker 1: But he did marry a redheaded American named Elizabeth Smith,
Speaker 1: and they headed on over to Troublesome Creek near Hazard
Speaker 1: County in Kentucky and set up a homestead there. And
Speaker 1: it is a I mean the one of the doctors
Speaker 1: that uh from one of these articles said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's maybe one and a one hundred thousand chance that
Speaker 1: you have to even have this genetic mutation. And he said,
Speaker 1: but you know, once you start, I guess there's no
Speaker 1: other way to say it. Once you start in breeding,
Speaker 1: which can happen in the eighteen hundreds in the rural
Speaker 1: nous of Kentucky, he said, that can go down all
Speaker 1: the way to like one in eight chance. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. Yeah, I was surprised there was even
Speaker 1: one in eight. But there's some little fluke of genetics that, um,
Speaker 1: that you have to when you're talking about probability in genetics,
Speaker 1: it's a little more difficult than half in a straight math. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So apparently Martin himself possibly had like a little bit
Speaker 1: of blue to him. His wife Elizabeth had no blue
Speaker 1: to her um. She apparently had very very pale skin
Speaker 1: and bright red hair. But when um the two got
Speaker 1: together and those two genetic mutations donated UM their mutations
Speaker 1: to that specific gene, they the kids that they had
Speaker 1: were like, um, irresistibly blue. Like there was no confusing.
Speaker 1: It's not like, yeah, Martin's kind of blue. If you
Speaker 1: ever noticed, maybe you need to breathe more deeply. This
Speaker 1: was like straight up blue kids. I've even seen him
Speaker 1: described as dark blue, not even a bluish hue or
Speaker 1: tint or tinge dark blue skinned children. Yea, four of
Speaker 1: seven were blue. Uh. And it's funny he said that
Speaker 1: she was not. The mother was not blue tinted. But
Speaker 1: I imagine, like before they knew about genetics and in breeding,
Speaker 1: if he would, if she would been a little blue,
Speaker 1: that might have been a reason to get together, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? No, I don't explain. Well, blue
Speaker 1: man happens to meet blue woman and they're like, jeez,
Speaker 1: there's another one like me, and you know we've been
Speaker 1: sort of you know, sort of embarrassing and maybe we're
Speaker 1: cast out a little bit. So let's hitch our wagons
Speaker 1: together because there's probably nothing wrong with us having kids, right,
Speaker 1: His medical science hadn't known that at that point. It's
Speaker 1: a story as old as time, Chuck, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was just complete happenstance though, right. Yeah, So, UM,
Speaker 1: And I wonder also, like it was significant to me
Speaker 1: that they pointed out that his wife, Elizabeth Smith um
Speaker 1: few Gates skin was almost translucent. It was so pale,
Speaker 1: because I wonder if she donated that to her children, UM,
Speaker 1: which allowed the blue to really shine through even more.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's possible, like the ultimate recipe for blueness exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And they actually became owns, this blue family, and they
Speaker 1: were not particularly proud of their blue skin. I think
Speaker 1: they were a little freaked out about it. I think
Speaker 1: that their neighbors may not have particularly treated them well,
Speaker 1: and so they already lived in like a pretty isolated
Speaker 1: part of Appalachia, UM, but they took pains to actually
Speaker 1: isolate themselves even further. And one of the one of
Speaker 1: the consequences of that was something you touched upon. That
Speaker 1: that meant that, Um, their son married their aunt, and
Speaker 1: cousins married cousins, even if they were way too close
Speaker 1: to be marrying, and so one of the one of
Speaker 1: the products of these this inner marriage was an entire
Speaker 1: small regional population of blue families or families who have
Speaker 1: blue children or Blue family members, because these neighbor families
Speaker 1: were still blood relatives of the few Gates who initially
Speaker 1: settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the condition that they had is not a skin
Speaker 1: condition at all. It's actually a blood disorder like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: and it's called medima globinemia. It's so pretty good. Wow,
Speaker 1: you're so it's not meth now, Okay, Oh, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you said it first. Then I actually took great pains
Speaker 1: today to look up between this and the other episode
Speaker 1: we're recording pronunciations, and when you look at medima globinemia,
Speaker 1: that is seventeen letters of it's a mouthful of letters,
Speaker 1: pure hell. And it's really one of those that I
Speaker 1: looked at over and over and just could not get
Speaker 1: it right in my head until I, you know, went
Speaker 1: and looked it up on the internet and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's not so hard, all right, let me try. Let
Speaker 1: me try mediema globinemia. I think it's more of a
Speaker 1: t than a d uh, okay, what about a t
Speaker 1: you want me try that one? This is like the
Speaker 1: worst acting audition ever. What's my motivation here? Uh to
Speaker 1: get through this episode? Uh So we're gonna touch a
Speaker 1: little bit on melanin throughout this episode. But you remember
Speaker 1: melanin from our I think pretty good episode on sunscreen
Speaker 1: and sun tans, right. Uh? And this is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: special cells in the body, in the skin make melanin
Speaker 1: and they are Melanin is responsible for coloring your skin.
Speaker 1: And there are all kinds of different uh melanin disorders,
Speaker 1: whether you have too much or too little, whether you
Speaker 1: can you know, we'll make your skin lighter or darker,
Speaker 1: or whether or not it happens in patches. I had
Speaker 1: a friend in Los Angeles with bid eligo, which oh
Speaker 1: you do, which you know leads to uh, patches of
Speaker 1: light skin on the body. In't that what Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: claimed to have had to Yes? Was that verified? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know either. I really don't know,
Speaker 1: because I just remember there was a big stink when
Speaker 1: that came out and everyone was like, yeah, right, the
Speaker 1: well the reason why it was like, really it's you
Speaker 1: got videlago because it's usually um patches like the melano sites.
Speaker 1: The melanin producing cells just kind of poop out or
Speaker 1: crap out in an area, and it it leaves like
Speaker 1: patches without pigment, not your entire face, um without pigment.
Speaker 1: But who knows, well, I think his I think what
Speaker 1: he said was that he bleached his skin to match
Speaker 1: the light patches. Was his reasoning. Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're self conscious about videlago and you
Speaker 1: have a ton of money, you could do something like that.
Speaker 1: Who knows, Who knows? Should we talk about skin color?
Speaker 1: Should we take an awkward Michael Jackson break? I think
Speaker 1: we just did. But the point is this that I
Speaker 1: think you're making, Chuck, is that changes in like your
Speaker 1: skin color typically have to do with a lack of
Speaker 1: or an overproduction of melanin. Right, And that what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, uh, mattiemoglobinemia right, is actually a blood disorder.
Speaker 1: It's not has nothing to do with the skin. It
Speaker 1: just shines through that super translucent skin that we have. Right,
Speaker 1: So what's going on here in the body? Okay, So
Speaker 1: are you surprised, I'm asking you. I'm a little surprised.
Speaker 1: I thought we maybe tagging team this one. But okay, okay, so,
Speaker 1: uh you have like a pink is shoe too, typically
Speaker 1: being being Caucasian. Um, because you're there's not a ton
Speaker 1: of melonin that's blocking the blood supply underneath and your tissues.
Speaker 1: It's kind of shining through and your blood is red.
Speaker 1: And the reason it's red, Chuck, is because because the
Speaker 1: reason why blood is red, well, remember in school they
Speaker 1: teach you that your blood is blue until you get
Speaker 1: cut and then it hits the air. Yeah, that's not true,
Speaker 1: and then it turns red. That's what you hear on
Speaker 1: the playground in elementary school from dumb kids. But that
Speaker 1: is not true. And I bet you anything, kids are
Speaker 1: still spreading that mistruth on the playground. Yeah. It's got
Speaker 1: some staying power for sure, as far as as far
Speaker 1: as rumors go. And you know what, my dad will
Speaker 1: sue your dad for all the money he's got. Did
Speaker 1: you guys threaten lawsuits? Sure? We were very lutitious kids
Speaker 1: did though. It was very funny. We were like, we're
Speaker 1: like little Puritans in in Salem town. That's right. Uh
Speaker 1: so blood is red? That was a question, right? Uh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: why is blood red, right, because I don't know we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before, but it's because our red blood
Speaker 1: cells have hemoglobe and it's a protein and it gets
Speaker 1: its red color from something called hem It's a compound
Speaker 1: that has an iron atom in there, and that iron
Speaker 1: atom is the key. That's what binds with oxygen and
Speaker 1: allows red blood cells to get oxygen all over the body,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what makes us tick. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: definitely is. I mean that oxygen is super important, so
Speaker 1: we want to have super red rich hemoglobin blood. Right.
Speaker 1: Our bodies also produced something else called metemoglobin's I guess
Speaker 1: is how you would pronounce it. That is not how
Speaker 1: I've been pronouncing it in my head. But these metema
Speaker 1: globins are basically the same thing as hemoglobins, but they
Speaker 1: have a different kind of iron attached to them. The
Speaker 1: iron they have is like, there's really another way to
Speaker 1: put it. Actually, there's plenty of other ways to put it,
Speaker 1: but one way you could put it is that is rusted.
Speaker 1: It's oxidized iron, which means that it's missing an electron
Speaker 1: that it would need to bind oxygen, which means it's
Speaker 1: useless for transporting oxygen. Through the blood. So if you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of metemoglobin built up in your blood,
Speaker 1: your blood can reasonably turn blue. You also may have
Speaker 1: some problems breathing um because you don't have any oxygen
Speaker 1: in your blood, although that's not true, I'm sorry. You
Speaker 1: would be able to breathe, breathe perfectly fine, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't clear up necessarily the lack of oxygen your blood
Speaker 1: because it's on a blood level um rather than something
Speaker 1: to do with your lungs. Yeah, that was my one question,
Speaker 1: because doctor after doctor is confirmed that mativa globinemia doesn't
Speaker 1: present any health issues. But how can that be possible
Speaker 1: that your blood has is having trouble carrying oxygen to
Speaker 1: your body and it doesn't matter. I had a really
Speaker 1: hard time with that too. And the best I could
Speaker 1: come up with as far as an answer, which is
Speaker 1: not definitive, but the best that can come up with,
Speaker 1: is that there is a there's a threshold where your
Speaker 1: blood will turn blue, where you have enough metema globins
Speaker 1: in there that it's blue, but not so there's not
Speaker 1: so many metema globins that you're actually having trouble with
Speaker 1: your oxygen in your body. So it can turn blue
Speaker 1: long before you actually like suffer from the effects of
Speaker 1: low oxygen um. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And isn't the threshold to turn your
Speaker 1: skin blue like a really low percentage, even like one
Speaker 1: percent of metemaments. If you're blood is one percent in
Speaker 1: team of globins, you can start to turn blue right
Speaker 1: So it doesn't take very much, which means that you
Speaker 1: have of of the global the globins in your blood
Speaker 1: are are hemoglobin, which means you're still able to get
Speaker 1: all the oxygen you need. You just have maybe a
Speaker 1: little less than somebody else. That's my best guess from
Speaker 1: what I saw UM, and I think at this point
Speaker 1: in our understanding of my team of globalemia, it's as
Speaker 1: good as anybody's. Well. That sounds like a perfect place
Speaker 1: for a break, Okay, and uh, we'll be right back
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more about this and other
Speaker 1: interesting blood conditions right for this, So, Chuck, where're talking
Speaker 1: about my team globe and temia um and the reason like,
Speaker 1: like I think one of us said earlier that the
Speaker 1: body naturally produces these things, um, these metema globins um,
Speaker 1: but we also produce an enzyme that can convert excess
Speaker 1: metema globins into hemoglobin, and it's got a doozy of
Speaker 1: a name which I just love. May I take this one? Yes,
Speaker 1: this enzyme is called reduced nicotinamide adenine dionucleotide cytochrome B
Speaker 1: five reduct as one of the great all times nicknames.
Speaker 1: It has no nickname. You have to say the entire
Speaker 1: thing every time. And so this enzyme, reduced nicotinamine ad
Speaker 1: aine dionucleotide side of chrome B five reduct days is
Speaker 1: actually capable of converting the iron from its um ferric
Speaker 1: state in metema globin's into its fairest state, which is
Speaker 1: capable of binding with oxygen like the kind that's found
Speaker 1: in hemoglobin. So, for all intents and purposes, reduced nicotinamide
Speaker 1: adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B five reductase is capable of converting
Speaker 1: metemoglobins into hemoglobin. And most of us are able to
Speaker 1: do that. But if you're like a few gate and
Speaker 1: you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated
Speaker 1: that mutation to you and you developed metemoglobinemia, but there's
Speaker 1: some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide adenine dionucleotide cytochrome B
Speaker 1: five reductas, which means that that metemoglobin's that you naturally
Speaker 1: produced are able to build up and accumulate in your blood.
Speaker 1: And when they do that, and they they they that's
Speaker 1: how you start to turn blue. That's how you cross
Speaker 1: that one percent threshold. That's right. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the rare times where you can actually have a
Speaker 1: genetic condition that's pretty easily solved. And in this case,
Speaker 1: it's just a pill. Uh. And the guy who figured
Speaker 1: this out has sort of an interesting story in his
Speaker 1: own right. His name is Madison Coween or Coine Kaween.
Speaker 1: I'm going with col Wayne cal Wine, Colween, c A
Speaker 1: w Ei and Coween, although I like cow Wine. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like you'd be tasty, but I'll beg it
Speaker 1: gives you a pretty good bus. Uh. He was the
Speaker 1: h He was the grandson of a pretty famous at
Speaker 1: the time poet out of Kentucky. Uh. And Madison was
Speaker 1: the third of of the Madison's. And this is just
Speaker 1: a side note, very sad and interesting. His wife was
Speaker 1: poisoned and murdered by poison in the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: no one was ever caught in charge with a crime
Speaker 1: and it kind of remains one of Kentucky's um, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of biggest cold cases. Wow, I did not see
Speaker 1: that one coming. Yeah, he and his wife and this
Speaker 1: other couple were out drinking all night supposedly like just
Speaker 1: got slashed and at a at a at a country club. Um.
Speaker 1: He Madison didn't even make at home. I think he
Speaker 1: stayed the night there, but the other man, the man
Speaker 1: from the other couple, drove his wife home. Um, apparently
Speaker 1: just dropped. They had another nightcap and she woke up dead.
Speaker 1: One didn't wake up dead. She died and they thought
Speaker 1: it was just you know, alcohol or some natural cause.
Speaker 1: But then they found these two like little needle pricks
Speaker 1: in her where they think she was I guess given
Speaker 1: a shot to pass out and then poisoned. And I
Speaker 1: can't remember the poison. It was some sort of like
Speaker 1: acid or something. But yeah, really really interesting. Neither here
Speaker 1: nor there as far as this goes. But that's the
Speaker 1: sad story of Dr Madison. Uh cow wines wife. Was
Speaker 1: he a suspect because I would have suspected him. I
Speaker 1: don't think so, because he wasn't even there. That's the
Speaker 1: first thing I thought but apparently it was pretty verified
Speaker 1: that he slept it off at the country club. I
Speaker 1: guess crazy because yeah, well, I mean one of the
Speaker 1: things that he became famous for, if not the thing
Speaker 1: he became famous for. It wasn't jacting people with with
Speaker 1: some fairly weird stuff. I know, isn't that weird? It
Speaker 1: is weird. You're not buying it. No, I don't want
Speaker 1: to like cast persions on somebody. I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about the story, but that's just very odd, especially like
Speaker 1: judging from this ninety second story, exactly I can conclusively
Speaker 1: solve this case. I've seen enough law in order to
Speaker 1: know that the husband almost always did it else that
Speaker 1: is probably true, but probably not in this case. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, he was a hematologist at you at
Speaker 1: the University of Kentucky, and he heard about these people
Speaker 1: throughout the world and really wanted to kind of get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this. When a couple of them,
Speaker 1: uh well, I don't think these were few gates, but
Speaker 1: Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, I guess you know it happened
Speaker 1: in some other family. Know the Combs is. We knew
Speaker 1: it Combs from Kentucky. We had a friend that we
Speaker 1: worked with for a little while. Really he was never
Speaker 1: struck me as blue. Yeah, he never struck you. But
Speaker 1: I wonder if he is related to the combs is,
Speaker 1: which would make him vibe some somehow. Few Gate because again,
Speaker 1: these these families in the few Gate area where all
Speaker 1: if you went back far enough, few Gates exactly. All right,
Speaker 1: So these people walk into his office and what happened?
Speaker 1: So here here's the thing, Like, they didn't walk into
Speaker 1: his office, he went and found them. I read an
Speaker 1: article about him, and he became maybe a little obsessed
Speaker 1: with finding these people. Wanted to know what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on. So he actually went out in the
Speaker 1: woods and would wait for them, and every once in
Speaker 1: a while would see one and he chased them, telling
Speaker 1: him to stop, and of course they would run off.
Speaker 1: So he figured out another way to do it. He
Speaker 1: moved to Hazard County near Troublesome Creek, and he started
Speaker 1: asking around at clinics, like had anybody ever treated a
Speaker 1: blue patient? And he finally struck gold Um blue Gold
Speaker 1: when he spoke to one nurse at a clinic that said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this one woman came in with blue skin and
Speaker 1: she was really self conscious about her skin. She came
Speaker 1: to the back door. Was really just kind of me,
Speaker 1: he can embarrassed. Um, but yeah, we've treated a blue
Speaker 1: person before. So Colween basically hung around this clinic until
Speaker 1: more blue people came in and that this is where
Speaker 1: he met the Richie siblings. Yeah, so he started to
Speaker 1: dig into their family a little bit. Uh. It became
Speaker 1: pretty obvious to him that it was a genetic disorder,
Speaker 1: and he started digging around other stories around the North
Speaker 1: America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who had
Speaker 1: who had the same condition. I'm just gonna call it
Speaker 1: this condition now. I think we said it enough, at
Speaker 1: least I have. And he said, well, you know these
Speaker 1: people were interbreeding a lot because they were very remote
Speaker 1: as well. And so he said, I think we understand
Speaker 1: the problem here. How do we fix it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if he where he he got this idea,
Speaker 1: but he used something called methylene blue, which was already
Speaker 1: like in wide use. It's used to staying tissue because
Speaker 1: it affects some cells differently than others. Um, it was
Speaker 1: a malarial treatment, which malaria can actually produce matema globe anemia.
Speaker 1: And suddenly having trouble saying, because we have been practicing lately.
Speaker 1: Um And what it does is it goes in and
Speaker 1: it interacts with the reduced nicotinamine, adenine di nucleotide side
Speaker 1: chrome B five reductation and basically gives it a boost
Speaker 1: and helps convert all of that excess um matema globins
Speaker 1: into hemoglobins in patients with metema globe anemia. And so
Speaker 1: I don't know where he got the idea, but he
Speaker 1: tried it and apparently injected the Ritchie kids with it,
Speaker 1: and they they stopped being blue, like almost on the spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like minutes later they returned to a to a you know,
Speaker 1: a standard color, and I mean they were overjoyed. Could
Speaker 1: you imagine being like this your whole life, getting a
Speaker 1: shot and looking in the mirror a few minutes later
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my gosh, it's like it's it's gone.
Speaker 1: It's actually really sweet because they were very self conscious,
Speaker 1: the whole family. I mean, this family like retreated to
Speaker 1: the woods to to like people didn't know where they lived,
Speaker 1: and they lived like five miles away from him and
Speaker 1: knew that there's this blue family still had no idea
Speaker 1: where they lived. It was like that's how far they
Speaker 1: retreated from society because they were that self conscious. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a pretty joyous occasion for them. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a movie about this at some point, right,
Speaker 1: I can't believe there's not. There's a very famous interview
Speaker 1: with Kyle Wayne in a magazine called Science Ad two.
Speaker 1: And there's also a really famous painting that somebody did
Speaker 1: and it was just kind of lost to history who
Speaker 1: did it? And I read this article. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what it was on, but this person tracked down, um,
Speaker 1: the artist, the initial artist, and got to see like
Speaker 1: the original. Because it's been scanned so many times, it's
Speaker 1: really lost a step. But um, the originals apparently really
Speaker 1: something to see. Should we say the quote that head
Speaker 1: in that science he said, he said, and they walked
Speaker 1: in the office, he said. They were bluer in Hill,
Speaker 1: very Kentucky. Alright. So over time, uh, a few gates
Speaker 1: started moving away, like some of the younger population of
Speaker 1: the family got out of Hazard County. And it's so
Speaker 1: hard not to make Dukes of Hazzard jokes. I've been
Speaker 1: just sidestepping the whole time. I've been doing really great,
Speaker 1: thank you. But they started to move away over time,
Speaker 1: and basically you know, that's gonna stop the inner breeding
Speaker 1: and that's gonna make fewer and fewer blue babies. And
Speaker 1: as of I think some were still blue, but not today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think now that there's a treatment and easy treatment
Speaker 1: because they don't even have to be injected anymore. Like
Speaker 1: if you're blue and you don't want to be blue,
Speaker 1: you just take a methylene blue pill once a day
Speaker 1: and it goes in. Apparently once you excreted out the
Speaker 1: methylene blue, you'd go back to being blue, so you
Speaker 1: have to take it daily. But I'll bet there's members
Speaker 1: of that family now and I'm just guessing here, but
Speaker 1: um that are proudly blue now that they know that
Speaker 1: they don't have to be blue, some of them I'll
Speaker 1: bet make a choice to be blue as kind of
Speaker 1: like a like a pride in their family heritage. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing here. Well, the thing I saw that there was
Speaker 1: one and that was the one in twelve that was
Speaker 1: still blue, like by choice, I think, so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just didn't take the pillow. That's neat, But but not
Speaker 1: today anymore. So this is uh not the only way
Speaker 1: you can get bluish or any you know. I guess
Speaker 1: silvery skin is another. There's another thing that comes into
Speaker 1: play here with this next disorder, and this is one
Speaker 1: called argeria. And some people are bluish, some people are silver.
Speaker 1: If you've looked up you know blue people or silver
Speaker 1: people online, you have no doubt seen uh Paul Harrison.
Speaker 1: They called him Papa Smurf, and he is all over
Speaker 1: the internet as one of the more famous cases of Algeria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was. He kind of emerged as I don't
Speaker 1: know if a cautionary tale is right, because that was
Speaker 1: not his purpose. Um, but he he also he whether
Speaker 1: he meant to or not, he served as a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale about taking colloidal silver because that is what turned
Speaker 1: him blue. And it didn't just turn his skin blue.
Speaker 1: It turned his mucous membranes blue. So if he like
Speaker 1: flashed his teeth, his gums were blue, and the inside
Speaker 1: of his mouth was blue, the inside of his nose
Speaker 1: was blue. He was blue blue or in hell, as
Speaker 1: Kawayne would probably put it um. And he he did
Speaker 1: it because he saw an article about how um silver
Speaker 1: eyeons basically restored some cut flower back to life again,
Speaker 1: and he thought, well, that would be really something to
Speaker 1: to to see what it can do on a human body.
Speaker 1: I want to be a fresh daisy, right, And he
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person at experimenting at the time, Like
Speaker 1: apparently for a while it was a over the counter drug.
Speaker 1: We've been using silver for a very long time. But
Speaker 1: he was, um, somebody who used it every single day.
Speaker 1: He was drinking like a ten ounce drink of colloidal silver.
Speaker 1: He figured out how to basically make his own colloidal
Speaker 1: silver potion, and he also rubbed it on his face too,
Speaker 1: and so in very short order he started to turn blue.
Speaker 1: Because that is definitely a consequence of using silver too
Speaker 1: much of overexposure to silver, that's right. Uh, And this
Speaker 1: can happen if you work in like a silver mine
Speaker 1: or something like. It can be one of the side
Speaker 1: effects of mining silver mine. I also saw that in
Speaker 1: the old time, um, not even that old, but just
Speaker 1: pre digital photography processing photograph processing, you could actually um yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the eighties, Um, you could actually develop algeria
Speaker 1: be from exposure to the silver dust that was used
Speaker 1: to expose um photographic plates. I think prior to the eighties.
Speaker 1: I I don't know when they stopped using that. I
Speaker 1: don't either. I spent a lot of times in dark
Speaker 1: rooms as a kid because my dad, because you were
Speaker 1: a mad go in there, turn on that red light
Speaker 1: and sit there and think about what you do. Now.
Speaker 1: My dad was an amateur photographer, well I guess, and
Speaker 1: my professionally sold stuff, but he did his own developing,
Speaker 1: and um, I learned how to do it and did
Speaker 1: it something through high school and then kind of quit
Speaker 1: doing it. It It was a lot of fun. Though. Dark
Speaker 1: rooms are very like peaceful places, is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just you know they're dark obviously, and you're in there
Speaker 1: for a long period of time, and it's just very nice,
Speaker 1: usually by yourself, but unless you're in a teen romance
Speaker 1: movie and then you know the cute girls in there
Speaker 1: with you, I well, I always associate them with the
Speaker 1: murderer finally coming into focus, and they happen to be
Speaker 1: staying right next to the photographers developing it. So to me,
Speaker 1: dark rooms are very tense, scary like as it as
Speaker 1: the as the photo paper like comes into focus, very tense,
Speaker 1: the calls coming from inside the dark room. That's right, Um,
Speaker 1: where were we? Okay? So what causes this is an
Speaker 1: excess of silver ions in your body and when they're
Speaker 1: exposed to light, they react by forming dark deposits on
Speaker 1: the skin that end up looking silver ish. And the
Speaker 1: bad news about this is, once you've got it, it's there.
Speaker 1: You can't take a pill and get rid of it. No,
Speaker 1: it's irreversible. We don't have a way to remove excess
Speaker 1: silver from the tissues and the human body. And that's
Speaker 1: all it is. It's just it builds up. Normally, the
Speaker 1: body can excrete you know, small amounts of silver that
Speaker 1: we're exposed to from like you know, touching silver or
Speaker 1: um snorting silver, that kind of stuff. Um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: like we pee it out, We poop it out and
Speaker 1: we get rid of it. But if we overcome that
Speaker 1: threshold and our silver ingestion um exceeds our ability to
Speaker 1: excrete it, it starts to build up in the tissue.
Speaker 1: And so if you're drinking your own tent outs colloidal
Speaker 1: silver um homebrew every single day, you're going to overwhelm
Speaker 1: your body's ability to excrete silver very quickly, and it's
Speaker 1: going to build up and build up and build up,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon you're going to be blue or silver blue,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And if you look up images of
Speaker 1: Carrison you're probably also gonna find pictures of Stan Jones,
Speaker 1: a libertarian politician in Montana who around why two K said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think things are gonna go south
Speaker 1: and we're not gonna have any antibiotics. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start making my own again colloidal silver solution and drink
Speaker 1: that stuff. And then there was a teacher in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: too named Rosemary Jacobs, who uh, very sadly I think
Speaker 1: got um nasal drops with silver when she was a kid,
Speaker 1: and she was sort of not sort of she was
Speaker 1: very silver for life. She was. So these people again
Speaker 1: have proved to be cautionary tales to most people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, that's what happens if you take too
Speaker 1: much silver. I'm not going to take colloidal silver saw
Speaker 1: pplements over the counter, um anything like that. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna steer clear silver all together. Because one of the
Speaker 1: problems is there's not a lot of pure reviewed evidence,
Speaker 1: if any, that suggests that silver has any beneficial effect
Speaker 1: when taken internally right, it is actually anti anti microbial.
Speaker 1: It's pretty clever to um use silver like in the
Speaker 1: pre scientific days, but there's nothing that says like, yes,
Speaker 1: if you drink colloidal silver homebrew, it's going to have
Speaker 1: any effect on your on your life or your health,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it might actually turn you blue. Despite this,
Speaker 1: people still take colloidal silver um pretty frequently. Apparently, Alex
Speaker 1: Jones touts it, Gwyneth Paltrow touts it. Dr Oz touts it.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, if it's not actually harming you,
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be any any harm from it,
Speaker 1: aside from potentially irreversibly turning blue. But there's a larger
Speaker 1: harm that I saw chuck to society in general, and
Speaker 1: that silver is a anti microbial of last resort, that is, um,
Speaker 1: they're figuring out how to use it against um my
Speaker 1: antibiotic resistant bugs like mersa. That silver will get in
Speaker 1: there and even kill mersa. But that silver resistance may
Speaker 1: be developed in bugs by all these people taking colloidal
Speaker 1: silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver um, you know, homebrews
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. That is actually creating silver resistant microbes,
Speaker 1: which is not a good thing for anybody. All Right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's take our second break, good, yes, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about coloidal silver right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, So you mentioned earlier that uh kind of
Speaker 1: in passing that cloydal Silver had been used pre UM.
Speaker 1: You know, mainstream medical science coming on board, and it's
Speaker 1: really true, and they were kind of onto something and that,
Speaker 1: like you said, there were there are some anti microbial properties.
Speaker 1: So people like Plenty the Elder Cyrus to the Great
Speaker 1: they both touted the use of silver. Monks in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages used silver nitrate UM to treat ulcers and burns,
Speaker 1: and it was used a lot. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: in a way before we had real antibotics, one of
Speaker 1: the first antibiotics. Yes, UM again externally, it messes up
Speaker 1: microbs and we're not exactly sure even still today what
Speaker 1: the mechanism is. The guesses are that somehow penetrates the
Speaker 1: membrane of the of bacteria and prevents it from replicating
Speaker 1: properly UM or it had it does like some one two,
Speaker 1: which is on enzymes that the microbes need to to
Speaker 1: survive UM, but that it it will leave your human
Speaker 1: skin cells alone. It just attacks microbes weirdly bacteria specifically UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was like an early antibiotic and it
Speaker 1: actually kept UM stayed in use for a long time
Speaker 1: now to nowadays, you'll find it in like wound dressings.
Speaker 1: Sometimes suitures will be coated in silver. Replacement joints artificial
Speaker 1: joints will have some sort of silver component to it
Speaker 1: to to protect um against infection UM. But we were
Speaker 1: using them internally for a really long time up until
Speaker 1: the sixties. Even I think babies got like silver eye
Speaker 1: drops when they were born, which I had not heard
Speaker 1: of until you know, yesterday. I had neither yes, silver
Speaker 1: nitrate to prevent eye infections, but then they found out
Speaker 1: it can actually cause eye damage and burn the skin.
Speaker 1: So they really worked on UM just sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: what's the word I'm looking for? When you make something
Speaker 1: less potent by mixing it with water diluting it right
Speaker 1: on the tip of my tongue, You did it, No,
Speaker 1: you did it. So they learned how to dilute it.
Speaker 1: But the problem with diluting it in a formula is
Speaker 1: it wasn't an exact science, Like they didn't know exactly
Speaker 1: how much silver was still going to be active, and
Speaker 1: so you know, you couldn't really use it as a
Speaker 1: medicine anymore because it was either too weak to do anything,
Speaker 1: or it was so much that you risk turning blue.
Speaker 1: So eventually they just scrapped it as a medicine and said,
Speaker 1: I think in the FDA said this isn't a medicine.
Speaker 1: You can't advertise it as such. So they said, all right,
Speaker 1: well to say it's a supplement and just move it
Speaker 1: to the shelf, you know, four ft away, and the
Speaker 1: Ft said, and that's what happened, and you can still
Speaker 1: get this stuff. That's where you know. That's why when
Speaker 1: it's Paltrow uses it. Yeah. So, and I mean, like again,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's like, yes, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Silver has an anti microbial properties. There's probably
Speaker 1: some microbes in your body you don't want um, so
Speaker 1: take some silver and see if it works. But again,
Speaker 1: there's just not any pure of viewed evidence that backs
Speaker 1: this up. That's not necessarily to say that it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Just because there isn't pure viewed evidence that backs it
Speaker 1: up doesn't also necessarily mean in the same breath that
Speaker 1: there's plenty of pure viewed evidence that says it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting anybody take the stuff. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: there's not pure of viewed evidence to back up that
Speaker 1: it actually does anything. And if you do take it again,
Speaker 1: you risk permanently irreversibly turning blue. Yeah, and and I
Speaker 1: should point out I don't know anything about Gwyneth Paltrow's
Speaker 1: current usage, but this her appearance on Dr OZ was
Speaker 1: when she touted it. She she may have given it up,
Speaker 1: who knows? Who knows? Um. Paul Keason never gave it
Speaker 1: up the chuck. He died in uh two thirteen as well,
Speaker 1: same year that Gwyneth Paltrow outed herself as a silver
Speaker 1: user um and Paul carrasan Uh. He apparently used colloidal
Speaker 1: silver that homebrew he made up until the end. Like
Speaker 1: he never stopped, even though he apparently retreated from the
Speaker 1: public eye because he was tired of being treated like
Speaker 1: a freak or a weirdo UM and had some rough
Speaker 1: years towards the end apparently after he went public, but
Speaker 1: he's still kept up with the colloidal silver, although that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have been linked to his death. He
Speaker 1: was also a really heavy smoker for many years, and
Speaker 1: he suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess his point was probably while I'm already blue, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why stop? Now? You can't get much bluer? So uh,
Speaker 1: what else you got? Well, I just thought we'd wind
Speaker 1: it up with this little kind of sidebar. Uh. I
Speaker 1: can't This doesn't really have any to do with being
Speaker 1: blue or silver, but I thought it was an interesting
Speaker 1: find that, uh, they basically determine. Uh, there's something called
Speaker 1: repigmenting that has happened to people, uh to go their
Speaker 1: skin both darker and lighter. That has nothing to do
Speaker 1: that in this funny in this article kept calling it
Speaker 1: inter marriage. Um, what they mean is you know or
Speaker 1: or yeah, what they mean is having sex and having babies, uh,
Speaker 1: two different skin colors. But they keep calling it inter marriage,
Speaker 1: which I guess is uh, you know, very sweet. It's
Speaker 1: just such a lovely way to put it. It's but
Speaker 1: they know that repigmenting happens regardless of uh, inter marriage.
Speaker 1: But what they found recently is that this has happened
Speaker 1: a lot faster than anyone thought. And we're talking about
Speaker 1: a hundred generations, or as little as a hundred generations,
Speaker 1: which is a long time, but over the course of
Speaker 1: human history, it's not that long. It's potentially not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that long. Usually a generation is chalked up
Speaker 1: at about twenty years, So we're talking as little as
Speaker 1: two thousand years, groups that were once lily white went
Speaker 1: back to being dark, and groups that were dark can
Speaker 1: turn into a lily white population, and that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just basically more evidence that race is strictly a
Speaker 1: social construct. Skin color has nothing to do with anything
Speaker 1: but the amount of melanin that our genes tell our
Speaker 1: bodies to produce, which is triggered by the amount of
Speaker 1: UV exposure that we have over something like a hundred generations, right,
Speaker 1: And so if you're family lineage moves from a place
Speaker 1: that has lots of UV near the equator to a
Speaker 1: place that doesn't how much daylight or vice versa, your
Speaker 1: body is going to adapt and melanin production is going
Speaker 1: to change, and over time, your entire family's skin color
Speaker 1: can change. Yeah, because we actually need UV, right, but
Speaker 1: we just need a certain amount of it. If you
Speaker 1: have too much, you can get skin cancer. Apparently, it
Speaker 1: can have reproductive issues. If you get too little. It
Speaker 1: can also have issues on your bone because we use
Speaker 1: UV to produce vitamin D, which we use for for
Speaker 1: strong bones bone density. So our bodies have figured out
Speaker 1: how to kind of adjust depending on that you V
Speaker 1: exposure by producing or slowing down melanin production. That's it
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, pretty neat. But it is surprising that it's well, actually,
Speaker 1: it's not that surprising that it can happen over a
Speaker 1: hundred generations or two thousand years because the body is
Speaker 1: very responsive to its environment. We adapt very easily, so
Speaker 1: that's not particularly surprising, although it is neat. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's surprised the scientist. I think they just thought
Speaker 1: it was quicker than they anticipated. So if you're a racist,
Speaker 1: just stop and think that somewhere down your family line
Speaker 1: there is a white person or a black person or
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah, that's true. That's right. So take that.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? I have nothing else? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about blue people or
Speaker 1: colloidal silver or pigmentation, go start reading up on it
Speaker 1: on the internet. Uh. And thanks again to all the
Speaker 1: great sites that you found in putting this really good
Speaker 1: episode together, Chuck. And since I complimented talks episode putting
Speaker 1: together skills, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this, uh, one of the many thanks we got
Speaker 1: for the m Not in Array, but the the Mr
Speaker 1: Not episode, Uh, this is one I think for both
Speaker 1: of us like we were super stoked to do and
Speaker 1: like in retrospect, very proud of you know, we're stoked.
Speaker 1: We were super stoked, not just stoked stoked. Plus, there's
Speaker 1: no way to say stoked without sounding like the bro. No,
Speaker 1: no way at all. It stinks too because I'm not
Speaker 1: a bro, but I do like things stoked. That's fine
Speaker 1: to say stoked, be loud and proud, like the last
Speaker 1: remaining blue fugate. So this is from Mark, and it
Speaker 1: was a really long one that I'm gonna just sort
Speaker 1: of summarize. The first part, uh, is that Mark works
Speaker 1: in healthcare information technology and had a rough go of
Speaker 1: it over the past couple of years, like so many people,
Speaker 1: um working alone and uh listening to our show, which
Speaker 1: he said help quite a bit, losing some close friends
Speaker 1: to COVID and seeing all this up close and personal.
Speaker 1: So Mark had a tough time. So he says this,
Speaker 1: after working for almost two years on the COVID nineteen problem,
Speaker 1: the last thing I wanted to hear was your podcast
Speaker 1: about Mr No vaccines. When I saw the topic pop
Speaker 1: up on my player, took a deep breath and decided
Speaker 1: to listen. Anyway, I knew almost everything you shared on
Speaker 1: the podcast, but became enthralled in the recap of this
Speaker 1: amazing story. To my surprise, I was again brought to
Speaker 1: tears with a recognition one that you two share of
Speaker 1: these brilliant helpers who use their gifts for the benefit
Speaker 1: of all humanity. At the risk of making you blush.
Speaker 1: You two are part of those helpers. You presented this
Speaker 1: mr NA episode with the childlike curiosity and relatable simplicity
Speaker 1: that anyone with doubts on taking the vaccine would reconsider.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that I have to say this, but
Speaker 1: facts help and fact shares are helpers. I might also
Speaker 1: add that letting go of any bias is to let
Speaker 1: your curiosity curiosity take hold is heroic. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: is from Mark, and boy, I'm gonna read that one
Speaker 1: another hundred times today. Yeah. Just print it out and
Speaker 1: fold it up and keep it under your pillow. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you Mark. He wanted his last name to be
Speaker 1: with help but appreciates Mark. You've done Mark, and hang
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah. Same same to you, Mark. And UM,
Speaker 1: that was very high praise. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: it means a lot to hear something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: One other thing they chuck that that Mark reminded me
Speaker 1: of that people with matima globe anemia actually can blush blue.
Speaker 1: Oh so they get bluer. Yeah in that neat, I
Speaker 1: guess that makes sense. Thanks for that to Mark, even
Speaker 1: though you had no idea, you're setting us up for it.
Speaker 1: You did, so you're just basically a an altogether great person.
Speaker 1: If you want to be a great person like Mark
Speaker 1: and right in to let us know whatever you want
Speaker 1: to let us know we want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: you can wrap it up and spank it on that
Speaker 1: bottom until it's blue in the case and send it
Speaker 1: off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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