Stuff You Should Know - How Cerebral Palsy Works

Episode Date: September 20, 2016

Cerebral palsy isn’t a disease, but an umbrella term for conditions arising from brain damage suffered in the womb or shortly after birth. The factors involved are so divergent no two cases of CP are alike, making it – and people who have CP – fascinating. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all possible with a Squarespace website.

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There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And we've got guest producer Noel in the house. Noel. Throwing a sound effect, Noel. Way to go. That was good. Yeah. I'm assuming he'll do that in post, right?

Yeah, or maybe the sound effect is silence. Oh, OK. That's a lack of sound effect. We'll find out. It's like when you're a little kid, and you'd have just a blank canvas. You'd be like, look, I did a picture of a snowman in the snowstorm.

I never did that. Yeah, smarty, smart alecky. Little smart aleck kid gets what's coming to him. You know? So, Chuck, do you remember we did a trivia night like years ago on the roof of Five Seasons Brewery? In Atlanta. Yeah.

I remember. Hodgman was there, buddy Joe Randazzo. Dave Willis was on our All Star team. Sure. Dave was just looking around like, what's going on? Yeah, who are you guys? Why do they care about you? My publicist said I should come to this.

That was a fun night. It was. There's a dude there, and he had cerebral palsy. His name was Kyle Pease. I remember him. You remember Kyle? Yep. K.P.Z. is what he goes by.

And again, this is what, maybe like five years ago, four years ago, maybe six? Six. OK, this is a while ago. Yeah. Well, Kyle was like, you guys should totally do one on cerebral palsy. We were like, we totally should.

And we didn't. Well, I ran into Kyle again when you and me and I were going to visit Laurel and Braden's baby at the hospital because he volunteers at Piedmont Hospital. It's all coming together. Yes. And I was like, you look really familiar. And he's like, so do you.

And I remembered we'd never done one on cerebral palsy, even though we totally said we would. So I was like, did he guilt you on the spot? Yeah. He didn't even say anything. He just looked at me and shook his head a little. No, he was super cool about it. He's a cool cat, actually.

He's a cool guy. Kyle actually does Iron Man competitions with his brother. Oh, wow. Who like wheels him along. And his wheelchair. Yeah, yeah. They did the New York Marathon. Wow.

And one of the wheels came off of Kyle's wheelchair. Literally. Yeah, like the wheel came off. The wheels came off. Right. So his brother is just kind of helping move along. I think holding up the axle. And some other people said, you know what?

We don't need to make time. We'll just help with this. So a bunch of strangers helps get Kyle across the finish line with his brother. That would have been me. I would have been like, why am I running this thing anyway? I'll just be a good guy. Yeah.

That is amazing. And you see that? You saw it recently in the Olympics when athletes will forgo their own race to help another. Yeah. That stuff just slays me. Or if they're qualifying in like the first three or the first five across the finish line,

go on to the next race. They'll slow up and like finish at the same time. Yeah. Except for one jerk. You're like noses out in front. Right. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool to see that kind of spirit. Yeah, man.

So anyway, Kyle Pease, he's got his own foundation. I think it's kylepease.org or Kyle Pease Foundation. Probably should look it up. But this one's for Kyle. Yeah, and you can Google that if you want to look into his foundation more. Yeah. So we're talking cerebral palsy, right?

Yes. And it's something that I've always known about. I've known people with cerebral palsy. Like it's just something you know about. But I had no idea what was going on with the condition. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I just assumed it was one specific thing.

But it turns out that cerebral palsy is actually basically an umbrella term for a bunch of different conditions that stem from a bunch of different origins, I guess. Yeah, causes. Causes. That was the word I was looking for. It's not a disease. Right.

And the cause is always a brain injury of some kind. That affects your movement. Yeah, but there can be all kinds of ways. And we're going to get into all that, obviously. And actually, you can develop cerebral palsy from a disease. But like you said, cerebral palsy itself is not a disease. Right. If you just off the cuff, not off the cuff,

but at the outset. Cause. That's about eight. Well, I was going to say, just starting out with some stats instead of finishing up. But off the cuff, something makes it sound like I'm making this up, which is not true. About 8,000 children a year are born with it every year.

That's like 1 in 300. Yeah, and I got this from a Canadian site. So you know, that's good. Yeah, that's legit. They say it's the most common childhood physical disability affecting about 2.5 of every 1,000 live term births and 22 out of every 1,000 live premature births. And it affects more boys than girls.

Yeah, I saw that premature births in particular have a higher incidence of cerebral palsy. Yeah. And I didn't know if it was the cerebral palsy caused premature births, but then I read it a little more in depth and saw that actually premature birth is a risk factor for developing cerebral palsy. Yes, exactly.

But with that broadly defined list, you want to jump back and do a little bit of history? Yes, let's go back way back to the 19th century. Yeah, way back to 1853, in fact, with Dr. John Little. Charles Dickens is hard at work in the same country as Dr. Little. Dr. Little, this guy was a good dude. He was, as a kid, he was afflicted

with a lot of illnesses. And he basically grew up to say, like, you know what? That was no fun. That was BS. And so what I'm going to do is dedicate my life to discovering the causes of some of these things, although he didn't have cerebral palsy. He started working in the 1830s.

And his first kind of, I guess, the first way that he was actually on the really the right track was, he started doing lectures on birth injuries, which we'll find out as, you know, birth injury can be a way that you can get cerebral palsy. Right. So that's where he was on the right track at first. But to him, birth injury was the only way

to get cerebral palsy. And the only way that you could get cerebral palsy from a birth injury was if you were asphyxiated while you were being born. Correct, which happened and happens. Right, so he was right. Right, but it turns out that was too narrow of an umbrella that he came up with.

Yeah, and he did these lectures, these really influential lectures that he later published called On the Nature and Treatment of the Deformities of the Human Frame. And it wasn't called cerebral palsy at the time, though. In fact, they called it Little's disease. He was like, oh. Yeah, shucks.

OK. A lot of the diseases originally had the doctor's name. And some of them kept those. Yeah. Like Copcross syndrome. Remember that one? Yeah. Was that named after?

Arnold Copcross. Did you just make that up? I made up the first name. Oh, OK. But it was the name? Sure. And Morgallons. Morgallons?

Which way do you say it? You just confused me. See, you can't even remember now. Morgallon sounds right. But you were saying it because you were poking fun at me, I think. Perhaps. You don't even remember now.

I think I do. I'll just have to go back and listen to the episode because it's documented. 1887 is when the term was actually coined by Sir William Osler, who wrote Cerebral Palsies of the Children. It was a book. And he used a lot of Little's work, or built upon Little's work, and finally gave it

that lasting name. Yeah. But he was the only one. That was a very famous Austrian doctor. Freud, yeah. Freud got it right. Freud had some theories that Cerebral Palsies could be developed, or could be the result of something

that happened before birth in the womb. Yeah, in pregnancy, yeah. Yeah, during development. That's what I was looking for. And everyone's like, Freud, go back to your cigars and your mother fixation and all that. Just leave this to us. Including Little, like they got a little contentious at times.

Yeah. A lot all contentious. Yeah, for two doctors, that is. Yeah. And Freud said, do you take the cigar and you stick it where the sun don't shine? Maybe so. So it turns out Freud was right.

But everyone just kind of ignored him. Until 1980, the first study that really looked at cerebral palsy and the development of cerebral palsy from a birth injury, an injury that occurred during birth. So would that be perinatal? Isn't that during birth? Neonatal's right after birth. Perinatal's during, right?

So perinatal injury developing cerebral palsy. Everyone thought it was 100% of the cause. It turns out it's like 10% or less. Something like 5% to 10% of births or of cases of cerebral palsy come from being injured while you're being born. Yeah. And there's all sorts of ways you can be injured.

Some can happen naturally. Like if you come out breach, if you get stuck in the birth canal too long. If the doctor is a little too heavy-handed with the forceps, which is like a horrific thing that can happen. Sure. You can also have a prolapsed umbilical cord where it comes out before the baby.

You can have the umbilical cord wrap around your neck. And any one of these things can cut off the blood supply to your brain or the oxygen supply to your brain, which are effectively one and the same. In either way, your little tiny brain is like, oh, well, this region's going down because I was just asphyxiated for a little while. Yeah.

So his work was later verified after his death. When did Freud die? I know it was 1980. I'm going to say the 30s now. That'd be pretty cool. The 30s. See Freud in a member's only jacket? Yeah.

I could see him really living it up in the disco area. So he would have been at Studio 54. Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A couple of other folks who made a name for themselves by doing a lot of great work, Leonard and Isabel Goldenson, their daughter had cerebral palsy.

And they basically dedicated their life to it for that reason to learn more about it. And sadly, she passed away at the age of 29. And they co-founded the United Cerebral Palsy Association in 1950. And they are a really big organization now. Yeah. This is here, the fifth largest health agency

in the United States. Yeah. And then in the, jeez, I don't remember the year. But there were some very famous books written by a woman named Marie Kalilia. Is that how we're going to say it? I would have said Kila Lea, but. Kila Lea?

If you want to go Hawaiian. Gotcha. She wrote a book, a couple of very famous books on the bestseller list, one called Karen and one called With Love from Karen, that really captured the attention of the United States at large. And they were about her daughter's struggle with cerebral palsy.

Yeah. And she, Karen, is still alive today. Oh, is she? Yeah, she's in her 70s and is very private. And I think works as a secretary at a monastery or something. That is extremely private. Something like that. You want to keep to yourself?

Not have to put up with any chit chat at work? That is where you can get a job. Probably. Very nice. It's secluded existence. Right. So those, I guess you could call them civilians, non-doctors, help to really kind of expand public awareness of cerebral

palsy is the impression I have, right? Yeah, and those books especially. Nice. Should we take a break? Let's take a break, man. All right, we'll take a break and we'll get into some of the causes right after this. Ooh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Still in a shape of. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lashier and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. But we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. ["Posted Tips"] All right, before we broke, you said,

we were talking about Freud and his, um, while we were talking about childbirth injuries. Yeah. Being, actually, accounting for a fairly small amount, like five to 10%. But they used to think, because of Dr. John Little, that it was like, that was the cause of cerebral palsy. Right.

70 to 80% of the time, Freud was right. Yeah, and you would think also that doctors, especially, um, pediatric doctors, the ones who are doing the deliveries, would be like, yeah, yeah, Freud's right. It's definitely not birth injury. Like the obstetrician society is. It's not our fault.

Right, yeah. They'd be like, it's something else that's happening during pregnancy. It's not us. Interesting. But they didn't. They just took it. Well, that you know of.

You never know. Well, at the very least, it didn't happen. And if you look up, um, if you look up cerebral palsy caused by Dr. Error, like the first eight pages of Google are nothing but articles on law firm sites. Oh, sure. Like every single one. Yeah.

They seem like pretty, like well-researched articles and well-written, but all of them are law firm sites. They're like, and by the way, give us a call. Well, it's funny, we'll talk about this later, but with, uh, uh, stem cell therapy, I looked into that some more because it's hard to get accurate information on that because the first five pages of Google

are all about companies that offer, that are trying to get money to do stem cell therapy. You kind of had to wade through that to get to actual facts. Right. So I just, I have so many questions. Well, we'll get to that. Okay, all right.

Later on. Um, and then the remaining, what do we say? 70, 80% is during pregnancy, five to 10% during childbirth, injury-wise. And then the remaining cases, as we'll see, are after birth up to the age of two or three. Right. As in, well, we'll get to the reasons why.

So during pregnancy, there's a lot of stuff that can happen, but typically, um, you're, you, you are, either the baby comes down with a disease or an injury or the mother has a disease that affects the baby's development. Right. Yeah, it could be a condition, an infection, a disease.

We've talked about toxoplasmosis. Yeah. Why you shouldn't change out the cat litter if you're pregnant. Right. Toxoplasmosis can lead to your baby being born with cerebral palsy. Yep.

And, uh, rubella used to be a big problem and a huge cause of, um, cerebral palsy until they developed a vaccine for it. That's right. What is it, measled mumps, rubella? MMR. Wasn't there a good band like that called MMR? Mm, no, you would know.

I think there was. As a matter of fact, I know there was. I'm just not that familiar with it. No, just his eyes darted at you. As if to say, did he just say my name? He still hasn't acknowledged us. That's all right. Okay.

Um, what else? Epilepsy? Um, diabetes and epilepsy, if your mother has that, they have a higher chance, higher risk of having a baby with a CP. Right. And all of these things have, um, a couple different effects, like, or there's different, different effects that these diseases or injuries can have on the baby's development. Right.

But for starters, when you are building your tiny little brain in the womb, it starts out as, you start out as just a single cell, right? That starts dividing. Yeah. A fertilized cell that starts going haywire, but not haywire, haywire in a very structured manner. Right. Okay.

Um, well, eventually it gets to the neural tube and the neural tube is this little, uh, roly-poly cluster of cells that on one end develops into the brain and on the other end develops into the spinal cord. And then as it's developing, the cells divide more and more and they actually become specialized and they migrate to the root, to these different areas of the brain and make up different parts of the brain. Yeah. Different reasons of the brain.

Right. If at any point any of that gets messed up or there's like a problem with the migration or some of the cells don't develop correctly, they, there seems to be a pattern that they can follow where parts of the brain that direct movement in the muscles, they, they tend to cluster in a, um, in a, in a way that that gets affected with another place, more than other ways. And that's. And they don't know why.

No, they don't. Which is a pretty big mystery. Like just a random role of the dice, what, you know, what was affected by these different conditions and diseases and injuries, but it does seem to kind of fall on the spectrum toward, um, the, the conditions that, that make up cerebral palsy. Yeah. It's really interesting. It is.

It's odd. And, and again, they, they have no idea why. Hopefully they will one day. Well, I wonder if it, you know, there would just be a different condition if it was in a different area of the brain though, you know, you don't, I mean, does that make any sense? But I, I, and then maybe there are conditions out there that we just aren't aware of, but everybody else knows about that.

It is like, oh, if you're, if you, um, your neurons don't migrate in this way, you have this condition. If they don't migrate in this way, you have cerebral palsy. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Uh, so there are some pregnancy specific conditions that can cause CP, um, one's called, uh, preclampsia. And that's when you, uh, it's a disorder that causes high blood pressure in the mother. Uh, that's going to affect the blood flow to the umbilical cord.

And again, all this goes, it all goes back to the same problem, which is the baby, uh, developing fetus not getting enough blood and oxygen. Yeah. Or the neurons didn't migrate to the right way. There was either a problem with development or the developed cells were starved of oxygen. Right. And then apparently when that happens, they form holes in the brain. Yeah.

And then they get water and then get covered over and they become cysts. Yeah. That's a lesion. Man. Yeah. So sad. Uh, we talked about our H, uh, factor in compatibility in our blood podcast, which is one of our good ones.

Yeah. The blood one. Yeah. Oh yeah. I love that one. But, um, if that happens when the mother's blood type is, uh, not compatible with the, with the babies, uh, that can result in jaundice. This can lead, if it's severe enough, and they don't get the, the good treatment that

can lead to, uh, a certain kind of brain damage that we'll call, uh, cause CP. It's called, uh, uh, kerneteris. I'm going to go with a silent C on that one. Oh really? I'm going to make it a hard C. Cernicteris. All right. I know we, we sometimes look these things up.

I don't want to, no, I'm just saying, uh, I've tried to get better about looking at pronunciations, um, and we've had offers from people in the medical field. Yeah. Like, give me an email. I'll let you know. But, um, it's become part of our show. No disrespect intended. Cernicteris.

Uh, and we already talked about birth injury, which is one of the, uh, in the 5% range. Yeah. 5, 5 to 10%. Right. Yeah. What did I say? 5% 5 to 10. Yeah.

I mean, you were in there part way. 10% of all kids with, uh, born with cerebral palsy, uh, were born prematurely. Uh, Right. There's that, um, premature birth being a risk factor for cerebral palsy. Yeah. Exactly. It's so, yeah, it's not the other way around.

Right. But the article on the site makes it, it seemed like it's, it is the other way around the way the sentence is structured. Yeah. I agree. It's odd. Um, but you can, like we mentioned, um, and, and it's all very sad, but you can have a great birth, completely healthy baby, and then you can get cerebral palsy, uh, due to

an injury, uh, at the age of like two. Right. Or if you almost drown or if you choke on something with that, that oxygen is interrupted. Right. Uh, you can acquire, I guess it's a choir. Yeah. It would, that would be a choir, uh, CP, you know, as late as three years old. Yeah.

Um, the reason why, uh, it does, you can't acquire cerebral palsy at age 20 or something like that's cause your brain's developed by that. Yeah. I think your brain's fully developed by three to five years after you're born. Yeah. So you wouldn't, you would just have, I guess a certain level of brain damage, it wouldn't qualify as cerebral palsy. And the reason why it wouldn't qualify as cerebral palsy is because cerebral palsy describes

the symptoms basically of a specific type of brain damage that occurs during the brain's development. And again, it affects the muscles in their movement and control of it. Yeah. The other couple of ways, um, that you can get it through injury after birth are meningitis and then the saddicing on earth, uh, shaken baby syndrome, which we need to do a whole episode on that, that's a very controversial, um, thing. Controversial how?

There's, there's a lot of people out there who say it's not a real thing that people are being put in prison for something based on junk science. Interesting. Yeah. There's a, um, some, somebody, some group of people made a documentary about it and they offered to send us a link to it to watch it privately. What, uh, I mean, obviously they're not saying shaking your baby is fine. They're just saying it doesn't lead to brain damage.

No, I think they're saying like there isn't a, there isn't, yeah, there isn't such thing as a shaken baby syndrome. I don't know what the documentarians are saying cause I haven't seen the documentary, but I have read other articles about it. Um, man, I wish I could remember the name of it. I'll, I'll tweet it or something like that, but there, there's this, um, really great long form article about this couple, I think in Dallas, whose baby like injured himself and the dad, just the EMTs came in and thought that the house, the scene looked kind of weird

and didn't like the way the dad was acting. And all of a sudden the guy's in prison now for years because he was convicted of shaking baby syndrome. Well, that's different. Right. I thought you were saying that people contend, contend that shaking your baby like that can't lead to, uh, these kinds of injuries and brain damage. I think some people do.

See, that's just, I think some people are saying like, It's weird. Shaking baby syndrome is not an actual thing. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. We need to do a whole episode on it. Yeah.

I'll have to look into that. My gut reaction is it's child abuse affecting the baby's head, so how can it not have an impact if it's severe enough? I think, okay. So if you're giving a baby a concussion, right, right. Yes. You could shake your baby until it gets, until your baby has a concussion or has some sort of brain damage or injury, right?

I think what, what the critics of the shaken baby syndrome are saying is that the current understanding, the current scientific understanding where if you see this, this and this in a baby, especially a child who's just died under mysterious circumstances, it was the parent who shook it to death. And so send the parent to jail and they're saying, no, that's junk science. You can't send people to jail based on this criteria that we're currently using and sending people to jail with, not, yeah, shake a baby as hard as you can. You'll never give it a concussion or kill it.

Right. Like that's, that's not what they're saying. Oh, okay. No, they're saying like the science, the scientific understanding. They're saying people are being wrongly convicted when there was no abuse going on. Right. That, so there's a witch hunt and it's based on junk science. Gotcha.

Man, we gotta do one now. Yeah. I mean, we definitely just teased it enough, didn't we? So here's a, we have this little sidebar in the article that I had to look into a little more about magnesium sulfate in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008. They did, they published an article about a study about, if you have a high risk of preterm delivery and you know this and you're given magnesium sulfate, the mother is, it cut the rate of CP in half by 50%.

And I looked up in studies, basically what I came down to is this is, and this was from that same Canadian website. It said that if you do know, there are two things, two treatments to minimize it in newborns. And one is magnesium sulfate. If you know ahead of time that you're at risk and you like get on it. It's amazing. And then therapeutic hypothermia, which we've talked about before. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that stuff's magic. Minimize the damage due to lack of oxygen or blood supply, which- Well, that one makes sense. Yeah. Because it's, like they will freeze you or bring you pretty close to freezing to keep you from going, from suffering brain damage because it lowers your metabolism. So you need less oxygen. And if your oxygen deprived and they lower your metabolism-

That's interesting. Yeah, that is. That was a great episode too. That was. Therapeutic hypothermia. So the magnesium sulfate does check out. That's really astounding. Yeah.

But again, it has to be given with the, you know, well in advance. So is it like a course of treatments or is it like here, take the shot of magnesium sulfate and you'll be fine for the rest of the pregnancy? You know, I'm not sure. My inclination from reading it was that it was a course of treatments, like you're on it during the pregnancy. Gotcha. That might be wrong, but I think that's, I think that's a deal.

Huh. You want to take a break? Yeah. And then we'll talk a little bit about what's going on with the muscles. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever

you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck. So, uh, we talked about muscles. Let's talk muscles. So we talked about all the ways you can get cerebral palsy, yes, or acquired or develop it. I guess get works, right? Sure.

Um, but the, the actual way that cerebral palsy is categorized is by the types of symptoms you have. And they're generally, um, carved into three types of cerebral palsy. There's spastic, there is, um, a-taxic, right? Yeah. And then, um, the third type is ethnoid dyskinetic. And spastic is by far the largest group of, um, cerebral palsy. Should we talk about spas, spas?

Spasticity, nice. The tooth is coming. Are you psyched? I am psyched. I'm ready for my S's to be a little more contained. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Uh, spasticity is the word. Uh, and you sent off, you sent over this little addendum. I think it really kind of helps understand how it all works. Uh, spasticity is basically the tension in your muscle. Right. You always have this going on, uh, otherwise we would just be laying down the floor at all times. Right.

Like you might not feel like your muscles are tensed or doing anything, but your muscles are tensed if you're sitting upright and you're, or you're walking around or you're doing anything. Yeah. There, there's like a real, um, conversation going on between your spinal cord and the muscles themselves, the nerve fibers and the muscles themselves saying, hey, uh, we're getting a little too contracted here, why don't you send us a little hit of relaxation. And so your muscles are just constantly alternating to keep you sitting upright, to, to let you

talk to just anything you use your muscles for. There's this interplay between tension and relaxation of the muscles. Yeah. And all that's called tone. Yeah. And, and the really interesting thing is that when you're, the actual message for increasing that tone comes from the muscle. Yeah.

That's a good thing about that too. The message to decrease it comes from the brain, right, which is weird. Yeah. Because the muscle saying, Hey, tell me to, to, to tighten. Yeah. Well, it's like just do it yourself, pal. Is there no brain involved there at all? I'm always having to hold your hand here.

I said it goes directly from the muscle to the spinal cord. Yeah. It's crazy. I would think the brain would be involved. Uh, I think the brain gives the spinal cord a lot of leeway and stuff like that. Like you take, you got this, right? You got, you got this. You know what you're doing.

Uh, but like fly, fly a little bird. Uh, like I said, though, the brain is what tells the muscle to relax. And when you have the damage in cerebral palsy, when you have the damage to the brain, it's not sending the right message. Then you have an overworked, uh, not overworked, but the muscle is, is doing the, the message sending only. Yeah, because the muscles, um, neurons or, or, uh, sensory fibers are fine. So they're getting their message across loud and clear, but the other message that's part

of that interplay, that conversation to, to relax is not coming through. So in, um, in spastic cerebral palsy, you have muscles that are basically constantly rigid, and it may or may not be accompanied with, uh, by tremors, right? Yeah. Um, and the, the outcome, the result of a constantly tense to muscle, um, is, is ultimately a deformity. Like the, the limb might shrink, um, the bone itself can become twisted. Yeah.

Uh, there's a lot of things that can happen from just, I mean, just flex your forearm for, for 30 seconds. Oh yeah. You're using that all the time, like unrelentingly, that's what spastic cerebral palsy is. So it's, it's not like a child who was born with spastic cerebral palsy comes out with limbs that are, um, that are malformed or deformed. Right. Um, the, that, that actually is the result of years, several, even just a few years of

that constantly contracted muscle. Well, yeah, but we should point out though, it's not a degenerative disease. It doesn't get worse over time. No, it doesn't, but the, the, because it happens as your body's developing. Yeah. If your muscles develop like that, um, like the, the, that will, that will get worse until it develops into, I think a certain equilibrium. Oh, okay.

Uh, about 70 to 80% of people get the spastic kind and there are three, uh, subgroups, uh, within that. So this is crudja, uh, sorry, quadra, plegia, and that's when all four limbs are affected. You might have seizures and tremors, uh, you might not be able to talk. You might not be able to walk. Right. Uh, might be wheelchair bound and that's the most severe, uh, yeah, because again, like I'm using a bunch of different muscles right now to talk and, uh, swallow, eat, bring food

to my mouth, uh, do anything, anything you need to use your, your muscles for. If you, uh, are a quadra, plegic cerebral palsy sufferer, you are, you, it's all up for grabs. Yeah. You, you, there's, there, you might not, you might be able to do very little. That's true. Uh, hemiplegia, which is a one side of the body. And as we've talked about the brain, it's usually affects the opposite side from where

the injury is, uh, you might have to have braces on your legs. Um, your limbs might grow at different rates, uh, but you probably can walk. Um, and then the final subgroup of the spastic kind is, uh, Diplasia, and that's the lower part of the body only, um, you might be a toe walker if you've ever heard of that. That doesn't necessarily mean if you're a toe walker that you have CP because there are other causes of toe walking. Oh, really? Yeah.

That's unusual. Yeah. I had a friend actually whose daughter was a toe walker and, um, I don't know that I've ever seen that. Yeah. In researching this, I was trying to bring it to mind. I don't think I've ever seen anybody toe walk. Yeah.

Uh, she exactly what it sounds like. Yeah. Walking on your tippy toes. Uh, but it's, it's no good for balance. Like, um, it's not just like, Oh, that's a, uh, that's charming. Yeah. I mean, it actually affects their, their balance like big time. Like an imagine.

Yeah. Um, and, and like they're, you know, she's constantly moot in motion basically like she can never just stand still, uh, cause you know, get on your tippy toes is what it would be like. And, um, she eventually had a surgery, um, hers was at CP and she had, I guess, something elongated, uh, to allow her to attend in or something. I'm not exactly sure. But then, you know, it fixed it and she could like stand still for the first time in her

life. So like her 10 was too short, which made, which brought her up on her tippy toes. I think so. I don't remember exactly, but I think that's the way he described it. But, um, scissoring too is another thing if, uh, your, your legs cross, um, that I have seen. Yeah. Like when you, when you pick a baby up and they cross their legs immediately, that could

be an early sign. Yeah. Number two, uh, dyskinetic, uh, athetoid. I believe so. And those, those aren't, uh, you can call it either one, I think, right? This is a banner moment. We just agreed on a, on a pronunciation, a pronunciation. Everybody do a shot.

Uh, this can result in, uh, involuntary movements that are usually slower, usually in the arms and they're repetitive. So it looks like a tick almost, right? But the TSC, right? Not TSCK. Let me suck your blood. Um, the, the big difference with this one though is that your tone is usually, um, decreased.

You're not contract. Well, it can be either. They can be rigid or, or they describe it in here as loose and floppy. Okay. So let me ask you this then Chuck. Is that loose and floppy and then rigid in the same patient? Like it's going from alternating from one to the other or two, somebody could have loose and floppy tone or rigid tone and they could both still have athetoid dyskinetic, uh, CP.

That is a good question. I don't know. I mean, if you read the literal sentence, sometimes your muscles are stiff and rigid. Other times they are loose and floppy. Yeah. Makes it sound like one person can have these, it can come and go maybe. Right. Uh, who knows?

Well, I guess we'll never know. No, someone let us know. You'd think we would know. Uh, you may actually have difficulty walking, uh, talking, eating, um, basic motor skills might be affected if you have this kind. Uh, and then finally a taxic, a taxic CP, it's the least common 5 to 10% and this is like when you have trouble with your fine motor skills, like you might not be able to write well, uh, or you know, you might have trouble walking, uh, you can walk, but you

might have trouble with your balance and, uh, this one has another interesting side effect called an intention trimmer and that's when it's, it's very specific to, like you have an intention, like I want to go pick up that cup of coffee, like your hand might be fine and not have a trimmer, but when you go to do something with it specifically, it will start a trimmer. Right. Which has to be really frustrating. Oh yeah.

I can imagine. But it makes sense if, if, if a taxic, um, affects the fine motor skills. Yeah. And it, it takes increasingly more, um, fast twitch muscles to when you finally do go to grasp and pick something up, then it does just move your arm toward it. Yeah. You know? Uh, and you can have a mix of these, uh, as well.

Yeah. It's called mixed CP. And these are not, this isn't like you, as spastic is the worst and at the toy, it is the second worst and then a taxic is the lightest. You can have, um, mild or severe versions. Sure. And you can have a mix of these that just describes what, what the symptoms are, what areas are affected and how they're affected.

Yeah. And I, I get the feeling it all comes down to the severity of that initial brain injury. It does. I read somewhere that cerebral palsy, there's no two cerebral palsy cases alike because the region of the brain that's affected is a factor when it's affected in, in the development of the brain. Sure. So how, how the, uh, whether it was say from a disease that the mother had or an injury

that occurred a couple of years after birth. Um, so every person with cerebral palsy, uh, is a special little snowflake. Yeah. That's true. Um, in terms of diagnosis, uh, when you're a baby, uh, doctors will look at, uh, things like weak muscles or very tight muscles. Uh, when your baby crawls, uh, if one leg kind of drags behind, that could be a, a an early sign, uh, talked about the scissoring already in the, in the toe walking or any

kind of really bad posture, difficulty balancing, um, which is can be tricky because, you know, babies don't have great balance to begin with. So, you know, diagnosing it is, uh, eventually they're going to get you in a, in a brain scan, uh, if they really think that, you know, your symptoms might be leading down that road. Right. Um, there's a fine line to walk as a parent between freaking out over nothing or unnecessarily and getting it early because basically every course of treatment for dealing with cerebral

palsy and managing it, because again, it's, it's incurable that literally the damage is done. Yeah. But you can treat and manage the symptoms. Yeah. The earlier you catch it, the, the better the outcome you can possibly have from that treatment. For sure. So, um, working on muscle, muscle, muscle development, um, massages are really big.

Yeah. Yoga is huge. Yeah. Teaching the little kid yoga and even like if you can, if you can, um, uh, diagnose cerebral palsy as an infant, you'll want to start like working out, pumping those legs. Yep. Um, just really working on the muscle development has a big impact on, uh, the child's life later on.

Yeah. Um, some of the things, um, with the other kinds, uh, of the, uh, Athertoid Diskinetic CP, uh, which like I said, could result in trouble breathing and speaking and eating. They're going to be doing a lot of therapy with speech language pathologists, um, different modes of communication, occupational therapy, uh, so they can learn how to feed themselves. Um, and again, no tour alike. So it's really going to depend on the severity as to what kind of therapies you're going to need.

Um, and one other thing too about catching this early Chuck is that the, the brain again is still developing, which means it's highly plastic. Yeah. So you can actually find novel ways to do stuff without using say your arm or your leg. Like there was a, um, a very famous guy named Christie Brown. Oh, was that, uh, my left foot? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He had severe cerebral palsy and his left foot would follow the commands from his brain. So he did. Uh-huh. He created art with his left foot. Man. What a movie that was. I never saw it.

It's pretty good. Yeah. He was a Irish poet and artist. I believe. Yeah. I think just any Daniel Day Lewis movie is just a must. Yeah. He's one of those.

He's like the Brando. Like you, you just have to see it. Sure. You know, what are you about to say? What do you think of my left foot and Daniel Day Lewis? That was Lincoln. He's so good though. It's just ridiculous.

That was, that was the line that clinched the Oscar that year. What do you think of my left foot? You know, he's the one that goes so far and deep into the method that like, you know, I think when he was on, uh, what movie was it where he basically worked as a, like a 19th century carpenter, he like jumped. Was he in the crucible? Uh, no, I think it was Gary Oldman. Well, they might have both been in it.

Oh no, he was in the Scarlet Letter. One of the, oh no, it sounds like Daniel Day Lewis. He basically jumped in with the set carpenters and was like, I'm going to help build these sets with my old school. You're like, oh great. Yeah. That's great, Mr. Day Lewis. We'd love to have you.

Yeah. Now bring in the real one. Right. He builds it. He just falls over as he's walking away. Job well done. What accent would you like me to try now? Uh, drugs.

Yes. They use drugs. Uh, sometimes muscle relaxers can help with the spasticity. Yeah. Trummers. Uh, benzodiazepines. Yeah. Like Valium.

Yeah. I think Xanax is one of those. The problem is, is you're giving those to a two or three year old and they're on like Valium all the time. Yeah. There's, there's undesirable side effects of it, but they do work. Botox? Apparently Botox is like killing it.

Yeah. And it's a, it's FDA approved now as an off-label use. So Botox is, it's the botulin toxin, right? Yeah. But it paralyzes muscles. So if you inject Botox into a spastic muscle, it relaxes it and it lasts apparently for months for treatments and it might not just be like, oh, okay, everything's all good, but it's going to definitely reduce the effects of the spasticity enough that it's a, it's

a pretty good treatment. And they apparently are not finding many harmful side effects at all with it. That's great. Yeah. We should do one on Botox. Okay. I know that we had a listener right in and say, I started keeping count of how many times you said that and I'm up to like 70 or 80.

Yeah. And if we could remember a member. And I was like, well, what's the list? He said, oh, I'm not writing them down. I've just been making notches on my cave wall. Yeah. And I was like, well, what good are you? We need a list.

We can't keep track of this stuff. I haven't been writing them down. He might start writing them down. Well, I keep the list to my own blood. I can't write the titles. Some children, you might have a pump permanently, well, maybe not permanently, but a pump implanted in your abdomen. Pretty permanently.

Once you get old enough to deliver a constant stream of a drug called baclofen, it's an antispasmodic. Apparently, it works really well. Really? But you can overdose from it, which is not good. So what does that mean? Like the pump better work? Right?

Yeah. It's automatic. Yeah. Wow. That's a little scary. Probably shouldn't connect and let it be connectable. The Bluetooth or anything hackable too. I would agree with that.

And then surgeries. You talked earlier about your bones becoming twisted. They can untwist them surgically. Yeah. They will, I guess, probably cut them in two and then just twist them around so that they're aligned in a straight line again. Crazy. Yeah.

If you think about it, the fact that that works is astounding. That's a pretty primitive operation if you think about it. Can you really think about the nuts and bolts of it? Well, the bone twisted this way, so we're going to cut it in two and then reset it so that it's back to the way it's supposed to be. Yeah, it sounds like something a barber would have thought of. Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking.

A barber surgeon. Have you heard about the head transplant that's happening? Oh, no. Yeah, dude. Is it Rosie Greer? No. I'm not even sure what that means. The thing with two heads?

It was Ray Milan and Rosie Greer, I think. The man with two heads? The Steve Martin movie? No, no. The man with two brains. Yeah, this is the thing with two heads. Oh, boy. Ray Milan and I think it's, and it might not be Rosie Greer, it could be Jim Brown.

Was it a movie? Oh, dude. You've not seen it? Yeah. It was like a Saturday shocker. No, this is a real surgery. I mean, it's happening very soon if it hasn't already. And I read about it on one of our UK flights.

There's a surgeon that is, I think he's Italian, that is, he's found a body donor, which is a body on life support with no chance of coming off life support. And he is taking the head off of the man who needs help putting it on this body, supposedly. There are, he's roundly being called a quack in a lot of circles, but the doctor said, yeah, those same people who are calling me quack are also calling me up and saying, like, how are you doing this? Tell me, like, is it possible? Will I be licking my boots when this is over?

Maybe. I mean, it's, I couldn't believe what I was reading when I was reading this article. I can't believe what I'm hearing. They freeze, I think, the body and the head, and there's like an hour that they have to get this thing reattached and the blood flowing and the nerves connected. And to make it worse, they play the Jeopardy theme. Yeah, exactly. Like, turn that out.

So this guy, I can't remember what affliction he has, but it's, it's... Bodyitis? No, it's something sort of like this in that he has no, but I think it's degenerative where he has no control over his own body. Oh, is it ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease? I don't think it's ALS. I wonder. And the guy was volunteering saying, you know, I might very well die, but he's like, somebody's

got to go first. Man, that is insane. And I'm willing to do so. Yeah. The number of, like, nerves and blood vessels and everything that you would have to connect this, the spinal column to the brain, like, how would you even do that? I don't know, man. It does, it seemed like...

Botox. Crazy science when I was reading it, and bile means it might be. I got to check that out. Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, we're going to do it sooner or later. Yeah. It's just insane that it's happening now.

Well, I thought for sure in the 2020s at the earliest. Yeah, he called it head transplant, but once I read it, it feels more like a body transplant. Yeah. I guess it's... Yeah, tomato, tomato, at that point. Head transplant sounds awesome. That's probably why I picked it. Yeah.

Where were we? Oh, surgeries. There are also surgeries, if you have severe spasticity, where they actually identify nerve fibers and cut those, it's called selective dorsal riseotomy, yeah. And... The rhizotomy. That's the last resort surgery, though. Yeah.

It's not, like, something they would go to right away. Yeah. So I would imagine once you cut a nerve to your muscle that you can't use that muscle anymore. Yeah. But if it's been spastic your whole life, you're probably like, fine, fine, just cut it. I'm sick of it.

And then the cord blood therapy, which we talked about earlier, what I found was this. Currently, there are no approved stem cell therapies for treating cerebral palsy. So I think they're all in clinical trials. And it's interesting. The Canadian website said, if you research this, across the website, you will come across companies that say otherwise and offer fee-based treatments, which is what I found, which is super sad and the worst thing to prey on people that are willing to pay whatever on something that may or may not work.

So these aren't approved. They are in trials, though, and they're seeing, if either your own cord blood. And one of the problems is people are starting to bank their cord blood more now, but it wasn't a very common thing. So people are like, well, I don't have any cord blood. So they think that sibling cord blood could, or sibling stem cells. What do they call those, like, savior babies or something like that? Yeah, something like that.

But it's not quite there, but it could be at some point. That is fascinating. Yeah. Well, though, it's a tough act to follow the head transplant. Well, sure. You know? I have a feeling that this guy won't ever, you know, he probably won't do a lot of medicinal practicing if it doesn't go well.

No. Who knows? He'll go back to, like, merging pigs and orangutans. It's sort of what it sounded like. Your life expectancy is normal if you have CP, but, like you indicated, you could have worsening mobility over the years. Right. And we should also say, I think a lot of people assume that people with cerebral palsy have

intellectual disabilities. They very well may. If the brain or if the blood supply or oxygen supply is cut off to your brain, that can lead to intellectual disabilities. That's almost co-morbid, though, right? Or co-occurring. Yeah. Co-occurring.

Did you see somebody write that in? No. They were like, Chuck, don't worry. There's another term for it. Yeah. Co-occurring. Because it's not necessarily because of the CP. It's because of the brain injury, right?

Right. Right. So it would be co-occurring, right? So some people who have CP also have an intellectual disability. You would be very much mistaken to assume that all people who have CP have an intellectual disability. And I think you could probably bet that most people who have CP who you talk to, like they have an intellectual disability, would resent that tremendously.

Sure. Because they are typically of average intelligence or even above average intelligence. Yeah. I imagine that's a big struggle. Yeah. Especially if you have this condition called dysarthria, where you can't speak because you can't control those muscles. So people just assume that since you can't speak, you have an intellectual disability.

Or do you remember Jerry Jewel? Oh, yeah. Jerry from Facts of Life? Sure. The comedian. Uh-huh. And she was also on Deadwood too. Oh, yeah.

She played Jewel. Right. Who I think was like an innkeeper or tavern lady or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Boy, that was a good show. She doesn't have intellectual disabilities, but people assumed she did because she had a certain amount of dysarthria. Same with Josh Blue, another comedian.

Yeah. And Jerry started out doing stand-up in the 70s. Oh, no. I remember that. Josh Blue won last comic standing, I think. Oh, really? He's a very famous stand-up comedian who has cerebral palsy. What about RJ Middy?

Yeah. We both wrote him down. If you look at the notes. RJ Middy is at the top. Yeah, he's at the top. If you've seen Breaking Bad and you know and love Flynn or Walter White Jr. People loved him or they hated him? I thought he was great.

Yeah, he was. I mean, he's a handsome kid, he's a good actor and why not put someone in there? I think people are like, well, why do they, why does he have cerebral palsy? Why not? Yeah. Because people have it and as soon as we normalize this by just saying, sure, put him in that role. Why not?

Exactly. It had no impact on the show. It might have. I mean, maybe there was an extra vulnerability that the family felt as a protectors. But I think that humanized them even more rather than it added certainly an extra amount of depth to their characters. Yeah, I thought it was great. He was awesome.

Have you heard of Abby Nicole Curran? No. She was Miss, she represented Iowa. She was Miss Iowa for the Miss USA 2008 pageant. Uh-huh. I already mentioned Christie Brown, my left foot guy. There's a dude named Jerry Trailer who jogged across the United States on his crutches. Wow.

Jogged across the U.S. on his crutches. Crazy. That's amazing. And then Stephen Hopkins had cerebral palsy and he signed the Declaration of Independence and he had this awesome quote, my hand trembles, my heart does not. Love that guy. Good stuff. And then lastly, if you want to just kind of see what it's like to live with cerebral

palsy. There are a lot of online journals, Facebook pages of people who are more than happy to tell you about it. Yeah. I came across one called CP Daily Living and it's written by the mom of a nine-year-old girl named Maya who has cerebral palsy and it's extremely uplifting and inspiring and then heart-wrenching and just neat to just kind of peek in on this girl's life. She's the new Karen.

That's why those books captured America's attention because it was really just about the ins and outs of your life. Yeah. This is exactly what that's like. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's a neat blog for sure.

So cerebral palsy, get off our backs, Kyle. Okay. Yeah. And cerebral palsy awareness month, I believe is March. Boom. So we're coming out in September. We're either late or we're early. We're both.

Yes. If you want to know more about cerebral palsy, go online. You can also type those words in the search bar, howstuffworks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this, clearing up a couple of things. About ice. Is this about ice? No.

But we should go ahead and issue that. There was a gaffe about ice being more dense than water. The one liquid that's not. And first of all, we want to thank, actually, let me take that back because that's probably wrong and we'll get listener mail about that. First of all, we want to thank the 42,000 people who sent us messages, 42,019 and counting. One just came in. We should have a counter.

But if you listen to our icebergs podcast, Josh very eloquently explains the correct thing. Oh, I just forgot. In depth in the icebergs podcast. So thanks, man. How did you know that? You remembered it? Well, no, someone said, Josh, you did a great job explaining it correctly in the icebergs

podcast. And yeah, it was just a little goof. But I'm just like at this point, a marionette of knowledge. I just lurch from one fact to another. Yeah, it's proof that things get jumbled up there after 850 something shows. I got to go back and listen to icebergs again. I remember that one being a good one. Just like when you go to bed tonight, put it on under your pillow and just curl up.

A single tear rolls down my cheek and freezes. All right. Hey guys, just want to say your podcast has been an absolute revelation for me. I've avoided podcasts for the last decade somehow, but I started a new job with an hourly commute or the commuter's best friend and picked up you guys as my first one. Anyway, you're pretty much, you were pretty full of info. I thought I posed a question that I came up with in the shower. Is it better to hear good news first or bad news?

I could see good news being better first so bad news will be softened, but the opposite could make sense to help take your mind off the bad news once you've heard the good news. Any thoughts? Definitely. It's a personal preference. Bad news first. Yeah. I'm a bad news first guy too.

Yeah. Let's get it out of the way. I want to know the bad first. And then yeah, there's a treat coming afterward. Yeah. So you get the sugar with the medicine. Yeah. Like Mary Poppins.

Yeah. All right. I agree. Mostly I want to tell you guys how much you've enriched my life by not only making my commute better, but teaching me about topics I had no idea were so fascinating. Like icebergs. So you get a lot of emails like this, but from the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you for what you do.

Nice. And that is Jacob Beasley. And there's another question. Oh, okay. Well, this guy's full of them. And it's a PS. It's a fact and a factoid. I always thought a factoid is a statement of the peer's truth that isn't.

You guys use it a lot. I'm sure you, I'm sure I'm incorrect. Jacob, you're not. We are factoid now factoid is one of those words because language evolves as a living thing that now has officially two meanings. Norman Mailer invented the term factoid. Oh, he did. In the seventies.

Like truthiness. Yeah. Sort of. But his original definition was a piece of information becomes accepted as fact, even though it's not true. That sounds like Norman Mailer all over. Oh, totally. But since then it has evolved to, it can mean just a insignificant little fact.

Right. Like a nugget. Yeah. It's, it's evolved into what it sounds like finally. Yeah. So language evolves people. It does, man. Decimate.

Octopi. Octopuses. Octopods. Yep. Take your, take your pick. Yeah. And stop being weirdos about it. Yeah.

Pedantry is no fun for anyone. No, it's not. Uh, if you want to hang out with Chuck and I and our social meds, you can catch up with us on Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can hang out with me at Josh underscore, um, underscore Clark can hang out on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know or facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuff you should know.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever

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