Stuff You Should Know - Can you sweat colors?

Episode Date: August 2, 2011

A condition known as chromhidrosis can be jarring: The sufferer excretes colored sweat from the eccrine or the apocrine sweat glands. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore this somewhat understood, but ...still bafflingly mysterious medical condition. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?
Starting point is 00:00:42 They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, flying by the seat of our pants, right, Chuckers? Speaking of flying, you're like,
Starting point is 00:01:29 let's go, let's go. I got to go to New York. Yeah. It's your birthday tomorrow. It is. Happy birthday. This will be after the fact, of course. I can't believe you're bringing this up. So you got a little birthday trip planned. That's very nice. You mean to take me to New York? Nothing like a weekend in New York. No, they're celebrating anything. I'm very excited about it. Cool. I'm giddy. What you should be. Yeah. And we were just in New York, but it wasn't quite the same you mean they didn't come with, did she? No, no, no. We are staying at a friend's place. Oh, okay. Fortunately, we have some friends in Brooklyn. At, well, should you say his name? At Adams? Yeah, at Adams. Cool. Tell Adam I said hello. Yeah, I will. Adam and Serena's now.
Starting point is 00:02:10 Oh, well good for them. It's a lot of info. Might as well give out their address or security number, that kind of thing. Right. Um, Chuck, which probably gets started, right? Yeah, let's do it. You enjoy good sweat, right? That has been determined. You know, you know about sweating. Actually, I hate a good, I hate a good sweat. It plagues me. I wouldn't call it plague. I think you have it under control. Yeah. I mean, if I'm in the steam room, I love a good sweat or the sauna. Yes. That's when you're supposed to sweat. I like it too. I don't like it. I don't like it either. I'm totally with you. Like this summer has been particularly hot in Atlanta. I don't know if you noticed. And like, I'm at this point, there's this boiling point, I guess, that I've been hovering
Starting point is 00:02:54 around for like the last four weeks. Yeah. Where like, if I think about it, I can make sweat just like burst out from under my, my, um, my pecs. It's so awful. And like all over my stomach, there's like a sweat trail, a horizontal one that I constantly have. And then if you get skin tags, probably. Right. And then if you get the nerves, you get both kinds of sweat, which we'll talk about. Yeah. Because there's two different kinds of sweat glands. You want to just talk about sweating first and then go into this. Yeah. How about that? Let's, let's do that. Chuck, there's, you know, the average person has like four million sweat glands all over their body. You have like eight. I buy that. Right. And they're divided into two types. Ekrene and porcine.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Close. Ekrene and, uh, apocrine. Yeah. Apocrine. Apocrine. Ekrene and apocrine. Yeah, I think. You say, you know, yeah, don't say that. So, um, the, the, the are both sweat glands and you would think that you'd have, you know, like they'd all provide one function. They don't. You would be wrong. That's right. So, Ekrene sweat glands, I think are more predominant. I think there's more of them. Yeah. Cause they cool you down? Yes. That's their, that's what they're charged with. Is they don't cool me down or else. Actually, I don't know. Maybe it'd be like a really, really hot. You would be dead. You would be dead. Your thermostat is set high and it's your hypothalamus, by the way. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:18 That controls your body temperature. Right. It gets, uh, messages, say from like your skin. Right. The things are hot and your hypothalamus is like, Oh, well, I'm better activate the Ekrene sweat glands and humidity. I reckon too. Cause that's what kills me. Well, humidity kills you because it keeps you from sweating. Not me, man. No, it does. It kills you. It keeps you from cooling off. I should say. Oh, it keeps the sweat from evaporating. Yeah. So, so it's like gets backed up. Yeah. But it can be like 60 degrees and humid and I'll sweat. Yeah. The worst is when you get out of a shower and you start sweating immediately. Oh, like you go to the gym and the shower didn't take. Right. Yeah. Right. Man. I think that's
Starting point is 00:04:58 a Seinfeld reference too, actually. Is it? Yeah. George. Okay. He had a shower that didn't take. Yeah. Okay. That rings a bell. Yeah. I'll take an ice cold shower after the gym and it's still. Yeah. Just sweat. Well, it takes a little while for your hypothalamus to be like, Oh, okay. It's cool down. Yeah. Right. So, um, your hypothalamus, if it detects that your body temperature is getting too high and needs to cool down, it, um, it sends a message to your Ekrene sweat glands that says start sweating boys. And it's a different type of sweat that you're sweating than, um, the stuff that comes out of the apricot glands. Right. Yeah. It's mostly a salty salt water, basically. Yeah. Or water and salts, but mixed together. You have salt and electrolytes.
Starting point is 00:05:38 Yeah. You've seen idiocracy. I have. Have you? Yeah. You didn't like it, you said. No. I thought it was good to a point, but the one joke premise movie kind of got stale for me. I liked it. But yeah. Okay. But we did manage to work a movie into a sweat. That's right. The other kind, Chuck, is apricot. Yes. And that is, uh, usually in the, well, is it usually in the face, the axilla and breast just period or with this condition? That's where it's most heavily concentrated. Period. Yes. Okay. And the axilla is under the armpit. Yes. That is your armpit. Well, yeah. Your XLA. Yes. Not under the armpit. No. There's nothing under the armpit. No, it's just dead space there. That's right. Um, and remember when we talked about, uh, deodorant versus antiperspirant? Yes.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Classic SYSK episode. Oh, that's a long time ago. Yeah, it was. Well, we talked about sweat then, too, and apocrine sweat glands produce the kind of sweat that makes you stink, right? Right. So, if it's just salt and water coming out of your eccrine sweat glands, that's not going to smell. Sweaty palms, they're not going to stink. Right. No, they don't. You know, there's a, I mean, there's over, I think, hyperhydrosis period, but then some people get it so bad in their hands, you know, they have surgery. Yeah. Well, that's as far as we've ever progressed with, um, the treatment of sweating of any kind of sweat problems. Like destroying the sweat gland. Removing them, getting rid of them all together. Or yeah, going in with like a laser like. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:07:08 I don't get the palms. It's just, it's my head and face, which is an awesome place to sweat. Well, your palms are very hairy. I imagine if they weren't, they would, uh, they would, they would be far, far sweatier. Okay. Um, so with the apocrine sweat glands, you're sweating out water. That's the vehicle that's actually moving the stuff like fats, the waste byproducts of metabolism. Just basically, it's a way to evacuate stuff from your cells outside of, it's a disposal system. Yeah, it sounds gross. So when you say fats and waste, right? Well, coming through your skin. Yes. And those don't stink in and of themselves. It's the bacteria on your skin, the local flora, no, the local fauna, um, that eats those fats
Starting point is 00:07:55 and then creates the stink as a, as an excrement. So you stink because of bacteria excrement. That's what it is. So you've got both of these and both of them are capable of a condition, a very, very strange condition called a chromhydrosis. I'd never heard of this. And I would, I thought I knew everything about sweating. And the reason I didn't know anything about it is cause it is really, really, really rare. Like this is the alien hand syndrome of bodily fluids. I would say of sweating at least sweating. There's a lot of weird bodily fluids going on syndromes. Yeah. Uh, this is when drumroll, although you know the title is when your sweat is colored. Yeah. And I thought I had it bad, but at least I'm not sweating green.
Starting point is 00:08:41 That's really what it is. This, um, this condition chromhydrosis is, um, painless. It doesn't lead to any other conditions. It's benign. It's totally benign. Yeah. It's strictly embarrassing. It's, it's debilitating. I imagine this. I mean, you can't wear certain clothes. You certainly can't wear white because all of a sudden like you have two large orange circles where your nipples are. Yeah. Cause that's one place where, uh, especially, uh, the apocrine version places very typically under the armpit and at the breast. Right. And one of the reasons why, um, you can remember that apocrine sweat glands are around your nipples because they are eventually converted into, um, cells that deliver milk when you're, when you're lactating. Right. Well,
Starting point is 00:09:30 not you, but, you know, I told you I had a friend that lactated a guy. That's right. You did. So apocrine can turn into lactating cells. Right. That's why they're around the nipple. Right. Yes. And apocrine, if you have this, uh, form of, uh, chrome chromhydrosis, you will sweat yellow, green, blue, black or brown. Yes. And why specifically? Um, because the culprit here is something called lipofuscin. I don't know if it's lipofuscin or lipofuscin. It's like lipid, like fat. Yeah. It's a, it's a type of fat that's been oxidized. Yeah. And it produces a picolor. Yeah. And there you have it. I mean, it's pretty simple. Yeah. Mystery salt. So, um, if you come to your physician and say, Hey man, why are my nipples orange producing orange sweat or blue
Starting point is 00:10:18 or green or yellow? Yeah. Um, he's going to say, I have a pretty strong idea that it's apocrine chromhydrosis. I would say right away. That would be my, I saw the orange lady. Did you see her? The, uh, I saw a PowerPoint. Someone hit the nurse. Uh, was she a nurse? Was she the orange? She wouldn't know orange. So this is such a rare condition. I don't know if we've said that whoever you're talking about, it was probably the first case ever documented and that was like 2008. Maybe because it was a PowerPoint that some, I guess, physician had done and it showed, she, you know, her face was blacked out, but it showed pictures of like her stained brazier and t-shirts and it was just like, I can't imagine that. I feel awful enough as a sweater.
Starting point is 00:11:00 Right. I mean, you're a sweater plus color. Yeah. Exactly. Which just fascinates people. You can't, you can't fault somebody when they're like, why is, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I'm sure that happens a lot. Like all you do is explain away. Like, oh, I have this weird condition where I sweat orange. Well, apparently with, um, the, this nurse that I mentioned, I think she was like 26 or something like that. She spent five months wondering what the heck was going on before she went and sought treatment. She had no idea and I can't imagine sweating something right away and waiting like five months before I finally going to a doctor for red sweat. Yeah. Like I'm one of those guys who will like put off going to the doctor forever,
Starting point is 00:11:40 you know? Yeah. Uh, but red sweat would get me in there. Yeah. Have you seen the Gatorade commercial? Yeah. People sweat colors. Yeah. I'm sure that's not what they were. They weren't like, they should have had a tag at the end to it. Like not, not chrome. Yeah, exactly. Did not offend like the five people in the world to have this. So, um, Chuck, we were saying like, if you come in and your doctor sees that you have like blue sweat coming out of your nipples, they're going to think it's apocrine chromideurosis. You can prove definitively that it is by, um, holding a blacklight up to the sweat because the, um, the lipofuscans phosphoresce. And what's it called? A wood, a wood's lamp? I'd never heard that. I just called it a black
Starting point is 00:12:24 light. Yeah. Cause you know, you have a basement. Yeah. And who went to Spencer gifts when I was 13? Exactly. Do you have any woods lamps? Yeah, exactly. Um, so that's apocrine chromideurosis. Acronchromideurosis is also, uh, equally well explained. It's always a foreign object, like a dye or something that a person's ingested that somehow gets into the acro, acron sweat glands and then is, is, um, produced. Right. Because the one common thread between these two is that the pigment is produced in the sweat plan. Yeah. That's important because, uh, if you're a minor, a copper minor, sometimes you'll get a mineral mix with the sweat. Once it leaves the skin and it'll turn it blue, blue for copper. Yeah. Right. Um,
Starting point is 00:13:10 but which is not to be confused with the blue man who, uh, who had, he took too much some kind of copper colloidal silver. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was. Wouldn't it a senator or something or a congressman? Was he really? The one of the guys turned silver. Oh, and this guy was blue. He looked like a blue sandcloth. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow, man. Yeah. From too much colloidal silver. So, uh, yes. If you have, uh, pseudochromideurosis, it means that you're sweating a normal color or colorless sweat, but it's reacting with something on your skin to produce. Yeah. And they say, get out of the copper mine and it'll stop eventually. Stop rubbing, you know, pigment
Starting point is 00:13:46 on yourself. Right. Um, but, uh, with echromachromideurosis, um, you're, you're producing pigment and sweat and then sweating pigment and sweat, but it's, it's not from lipofuscans. It's from something else. And that nurse that I was talking about that waited five years. Uh, and I think this was in the mid nineties, the late nineties. Um, she sweat red and her, um, physicians took some samples of, you know, her regular sweat and, you know, compared it to the substance they found on her clothes and said, yeah, you've, you've got chromidrosis and we think it's Ekron and, uh, well, it would have to be because it wasn't yellow, green, blue, black, or brown. Right. Yeah. But we know so little about this that if somebody's start, if somebody presented with a
Starting point is 00:14:29 case of red apocrine, um, chromidrosis, they'd be like, oh, okay, well there's, this is new. Right. Right. You know, uh, because they don't understand the mechanism behind either. They understand what's going on. Yeah. Or they, they understand how it's happening. They don't understand what's going on. They have no idea. Yeah. And I think this like alien hand is one of those where they might be able to find out, but it's so rare. There's, it's not like a lot of funding goes into this for research. Right. So they just treat it. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.
Starting point is 00:15:06 They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,
Starting point is 00:15:47 Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, well, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs.
Starting point is 00:16:28 They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, speaking of alien hand, I found out about this thing. I wrote a blog on it recently
Starting point is 00:17:05 about mirror dystonia. And it was like mirror neurons and alien hand mixed together. Right. So like if you have this, your brain isn't producing proteins, this one specific protein that basically acts as like the switch. Like when you go to pick, I'm going to pick this up with my right hand. Right. So both of your both sides of your brain get the signal, but there's this protein that switches is like, Oh, okay, right, right hand. Right. So this protein isn't strong enough and people with mirror dystonia. So they go like this. Really pick up something with both hands. Both hands. Yes. Or both. Like if they go to take a step with their right foot, they do it their left foot too.
Starting point is 00:17:40 The walking is very difficult to jump. Yeah. Wow. Isn't that crazy? What to do a full podcast on that? Maybe there is not enough on it. All right. Well, that was it then. The mini cast. Yeah. So, um, Akron chromhydrosis that nurse I was talking about, she was eating some sort of, and I could never find out. Oh, I wonder why you didn't list it. I couldn't. I thought it was for like, like, Oh boy, I can't say it was like a Kiebler devil's food cake. It had a, it was tomato based and had paprika and it was a prepared food that she ate as a snack constantly. So the, the red tomato paste and the paprika were coloring her sweat. And that's where science is baffled. They have no idea how something gets into the
Starting point is 00:18:23 sweat. You can get into your sweat glands. It doesn't make any sense. They also don't know why some people overproduce lipofuscans or their fats become overly oxidized until they become lipofuscans. Well, Akron is the one that you want because the treatment for that is to identify the culprit of the foreign food or not foreign, but there's whatever the food that's discoloring your sweat and discontinuing that food. Okay. Sorry, lady. You like the paprika stuff? The lady could have been like, you know, hey, um, to heck with it. I'm going to keep eating this. It's like the best thing I've ever eaten. Fudge that. Right. So, uh, Chuck, if you, I guess if you're stuck with apocrine chromidrosis, right, or you love your tomato paste paprika flavored, whatever
Starting point is 00:19:13 prepared food product, right? Um, that's, that's my novelty throwing disc. Remember that on the Simpsons? Yeah. Um, they couldn't call it a prison. Right. Yeah. And I don't think we can either. Sure we can. Um, if, if you like it so much that you want to seek treatment, what, what, what are some of your treatment options? Uh, well, uh, there's this substance called cap capsaicin, which is the key ingredient to pepper spray, and it's a, and bear spray, and it is, uh, from red pepper. It's a disc dry from red pepper itself, isn't it? Yeah. Like red pepper flakes? Pretty much. And it will burn you. I guess if you spray it in your face, but apparently as a cream, it can help treat, uh, the apricon version. Right. And we should have said earlier,
Starting point is 00:20:00 apricon sweat glands are triggered by changes in body temperature since by the hypothalamus. Right. Um, apricon sweat glands are triggered by emotion. Well, that's why I talked about the nerves. Right. Yeah. So, um, there's this neurotransmitter called substance P that apparently is involved with, um, the activation of your apricon sweat glands, right? So with, uh, with capsaicin, for some reason it blocks the reuptake of, uh, substance P, which makes you sweat less. Yes. You might work in concert and I think most people that sweat more than usual work in concert because like you get hot and you're like, Oh crap. Oh yeah. Like if you're headed to, I mean, if you're not doing anything important, it doesn't matter. But if you're going somewhere and you're
Starting point is 00:20:47 like, Oh man, now I'm sweating. Yeah. And then the other ones kick in. Yeah. It's even works. Yeah. That used to happen to me in college. Like I couldn't sit toward the front of the class because I was just too self-conscious and I'd start, my scalp would start to tingle a little bit and I'd be like, is that sweat or are there bugs jumping off my head and it just hit this vicious cycle? Are you sure that was going on? I'm pretty sure college bugs jumping off your head. Yeah. Okay. It could have all been some sort of dream. Uh, I also, it's funny you said tingling because I don't know if this is true, but I did see one account that said it's sometimes associated with an aura like a warmth or prickling sensation. What? The, this condition. Oh really? Yeah. Huh. And
Starting point is 00:21:29 that it happens more often in African Americans and that the youngest age they found it in was an 11 year old. So in apocrine or eccrine? Both. Huh. Just the whole condition period, I think. I wonder if like these additional things like, uh, you can sense them leaving your skin maybe more than just sweat or the standard sweat. And I don't know if associated means it was like one of the cases or if everyone across the board said it was kind of hazy. Yeah. Uh, and then we also talked about, um, removing sweat glands is one treatment option for hyperhydrosis and chromhydrosis. Yeah. And botulinum. Yeah. Botox or, what is that? To be fair, myoblock as well. Right. Um, it's, it affects, it's a toxin, right? And it affects the neurotransmitters that are
Starting point is 00:22:14 involved in sweating as well. Oh, the other, the other one too, which is a terrible treatment is to express the glands. Yeah. Because it lasts a couple of days and like basically sweat it out. But then you got to do that every couple of days. Or you could just go to the sauna a lot. Yeah. I imagine that would help. And wear maybe like a sign around your neck that says, yes, I know I'm sweating blue. Right. I'm with stupid. Have you ever had to express your dog's anal glands? No, I haven't. I, um, I, someone roughly told me, I don't remember who years ago and I was like, I'm not doing that. They're like, well, then you have to take your dog to a groomer. And I was like, no, I don't. Yeah. Jerry ever? No. Have you ever smelled it? Anyone?
Starting point is 00:22:59 Yes. It is the most distinct awful smell on the planet. There's nothing worse. And it's exactly like when you smell it, you're like, okay, that's anal gland. Yeah. Well, that's why they rub their, their bottoms. They're expressing their own anal glands. I know. My dogs are, they self-express. But you smell it when it happens. And then you see them cleaning themselves and you're just like, all right, remember no licks for like a week. Right. On me. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry, I got sidetracked. So, uh, yeah, I guess that's it. Right. You got anything else? Dude, there's so much. I don't on this one. There's so much sweating stuff. I personally can tell you quite a bit about sweating, sweat glands, zits, all that stuff. I spent like a couple of months
Starting point is 00:23:44 is writing about this stuff for a while. Um, and this article came out of it. I wonder if I never got zits because I sweat so much. I wonder if that helps keep my pores clean or something. I don't know. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. Okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:24:25 And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, well, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in
Starting point is 00:25:16 our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex that sucks you in like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes and we've heard all sorts of things that you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It also has to do with oil on the skin and I think
Starting point is 00:26:03 you're like my family, none of us really got it. So I think it's hereditary to a certain degree too. Yeah. And I think it also has to do with the degree of how sensitive your skin is. Right. Well, anyway, if you want to learn about that kind of stuff and sweating and read my article on chromaedrosis, type sweat into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it'll bring up a ton of stuff. We should do it on acne. Okay. That's a big one. Yeah. I'll bet some of our pubescent listeners would appreciate that one. Am I right? Yeah. All right. Well, I said am I right? So that means it's time for Listener Man. Yeah. I'm gonna, this is someone who's correcting us and I'm just not quite sure how right she is. So we're gonna discuss it. Hey guys, I'm a fairly new fan of
Starting point is 00:26:51 your show, but I really enjoy every episode. I'm dying to go back and listen to the older ones, but there are so many that it's taking some time. That's true. I just listened to the recent one about America's version murderer. It was great. At the beginning though, I think you may have confused or lumped together Puritans and Pilgrims. Pilgrims that came to Plymouth Rock in 1620 were actually separatists. Right. Because they wanted to completely break away from the Church of England, whereas the large group that settled in Massachusetts, like 10 years later, was Puritan, they wanted to purify, reform the Church of England, not break away. The Puritans and separatists had some different philosophies and beliefs, so I think it's important to make that
Starting point is 00:27:29 distinction. I am a history nerd, so I think those details are cool. Please let me know if I misheard or if I don't have my facts straight. Thank you, Rachel. I'm a history nerd too. Yes. And I don't know the answer to that one. I looked it up and I got a little confused, to be honest, because it was a little bit like that rectangle or square thing. I think some of the separatists or some of the Puritans were separatists, but not necessarily the other way around or something, or Pilgrims. I don't know. I got confused. Oh, so you're saying some of the Pilgrims were separatists, but not all separatists were Pilgrims? One of those kind of things? I think so. I mean, I could see it that explains why there is the word separatists and the word
Starting point is 00:28:11 Puritans. I'm sure it describes the same group. I think I would argue, though, that it matters so little at this point that we lump them together. I think she's saying that there were no Puritan Pilgrims. Well, we'll find out. We'll either find out. Someone will set us straight that really knows it, or we will just say, Rachel, thank you for the correction. Either way, I'm going to go look. I can't let this surprise. Even if it doesn't matter any longer, I still need to know. And it's not like I didn't care. I did look, but we're busy now. I didn't have quite enough time to fully research it. Well, okay, if you have an amazing historical fact that's been lost to the age of time that you want to tell us about, we're very interested in that kind of stuff. Send
Starting point is 00:29:01 us an email. You totally should. You can address it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join HowStuffWorks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the
Starting point is 00:29:54 iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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