Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Adam's Apples and Throat Lumps

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

This week's short stuff is all about throat lumps and Adam's apples.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's up y'all this is Questlove and you know at QLS I get to hang out with my friends Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Umpink, Bill and we you know at Questlove Supreme like to nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and creatives. People that we feel really deserve that attention. We learn, we laugh, we fall down rabbit holes. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey and welcome to the short stuff.

I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and we've got two Atoms Apples between us and that makes this short stuff. That's right. This was another one where I just all of a sudden saw a guy with a very prominent Atoms Apple and I don't have a very prominent Atoms Apple. Do you? No. I don't think you do either do.

I've got a pretty Juan Atoms Apple. Yeah. So we're both just a couple of low voice squeaker fellas. I've got like an Atoms cumquat now that I really think about it. I might have like a grape. I can barely feel that thing. But we're talking about Atoms Apples here. That if you don't know, I don't want to be the podcaster that assumes everyone knows

what that is, it can be that prominent bump in the sort of center throat of usually as we'll see a man and let's talk about it. What is that thing? Yeah. Well, according to the Bible and Bible types, Adam, the original Adam was taking a bite of that forbidden apple and some of it got stuck in his throat which cursed all remaining men to come to be born with a symbol of that forbidden fruit sticking in his throat. And I love this article from, I think from How Stuff Works said, that's folklore.

But in reality, the Atoms Apple is a result of a boy's voice box larynx growing. That's right. And big thanks to How Stuff Works for this and Jennifer Sellers, the author and TheHealthy.com and I love this one, Harley Street E&T. Nice. If you want to learn about the throat, go to an ear, nose and throat place. Sure, for sure. That's their motto.

Yep. It is. It's a little self-serving but it is their motto. That's right. And here's the deal. It is cartilage and it starts out usually during puberty and it is your larynx. It is your voice box getting bigger and bigger and your voice will get deeper. And so I was like, hey, does that mean if you have really prominent Atoms Apple, you're

more likely to have a deeper, more booming voice. That's true. Oh, that makes total sense. The reason it's associated with men typically is that growth of it is activated by testosterone, an increase in testosterone during puberty. But that's not to say that girls larynxes don't grow as well. They just don't typically grow as prominent as boys do. And partially as a result of that, women have higher voices usually because their larynx

is smaller than a man's larynx. Right. So you're less likely to grow up looking like, I feel like Adrian Brody has a prominent Atoms Apple, right? Totally. Yes. That's a great example of that. I just watched that movie you told me to watch.

Which one? The sort of murder mystery in the theater. Oh, yeah. See how they run. Yeah. Very, very enjoyable. I started watching a horror series that he's in from the set in the 1860s or whatever called Chapel Weight.

Okay. And apparently it's like a prequel, the Salem's Lot maybe. I'm not sure I haven't figured that out. Interesting. It's okay. I just finished episode one and I'm deciding whether or not to start to. You've become quite the horror aficionado here. It's true.

In your middle age. I aficionate. Big time. All right, so that's the difference of the size of the Atoms Apple. Again, that's not to say that a woman could have an Atoms Apple that you see and notice and can be prominent. There could be several reasons for this. It could be a genetic thing.

It could be because of a hormonal imbalance that happened during puberty. It could just be an anomaly. But that's like, it can be problematic. I think that sometimes that's such a trait that you might associate with men that I think if a woman has one that's a little more prominent, that they might be embarrassed by that. You can get surgery for that kind of thing. Yeah, it's called the Feminizing Condolaryngoplasty, the tracheal shave. Tracheal shave.

Yeah, I'd rather it be called the Feminizing Condolaryngoplasty. Tracheal shave sounds very painful. But it's apparently not, it's apparently a pretty safe procedure. And women with Atoms Apples, who by the way, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Miley Cyrus, all known to have. Oh, really? Yep. Oh, Miley's got that deep voice.

Yeah, she does, for sure. But if a woman is self-conscious about that, she might have that procedure. Or for trans women, that's often a procedure that they undergo. But although the growth of the larynx leads to a higher or lower voice, depending on how big it is, if you do a tracheal shave, that doesn't affect the voice. You have to undergo voice feminizing surgery, where they actually go in and alter the length of the vocal cords. Wow, very interesting.

I'm glad you looked that up. Yeah. All right, well, let's take a break here, brumenate on that. And we will come back and talk about sort of an adjacent idea, which is when you get the sadds and you get a lump in your throat. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove. And at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends, Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill.

And we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like, to nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS team supreme, they're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving and music, everything, all monacking your musical history and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought, then you're a lot like me.

But you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock.

And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say.

For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Chuck, I am so psyched about this. This is the thing that I didn't know I wanted to know about.

And it's great because it's fully explicable. I love those. Yeah. The idea that you are, and it's usually a situation where I feel like it's usually a situation where you may not be able to just burst out in tears, maybe you're trying to hold some emotion back, and you go to swallow and it feels like you got a chunk of Havarti cheese in your throat, and it's very uncomfortable feeling. I think we've all had it, and that's, you know, you call that a lump in your throat.

Yeah. It's also known as the Galobis sensation, or Galobis, because it's a great band name. Yeah. I think so. And it all centers around the Galobis, which is the opening between your vocal cords that you can breathe through. And let's explain this, okay? When you feel the lump in your throat and you're stressed out, the point to your body

is that you're stressed out. And so the autonomic nervous system kicks in fight or flight. Remember our old, old friends fight or flight we used to talk about all the time? Well to your autonomic nervous system, if you're in a stressful situation, it makes no differentiation between whether a bear is coming at you or the entire stadium at the World Series is booing you, does not matter, it treats it the same way. And what it does is it prepares you to fight or flight, and one way that you do that is by breathing in better, so it opens your glottis big time and lets the oxygen in so that you

can start getting that blood pumping and those muscles moving. All right. So that's a good first part of the response. So what's happening literally is your, your glottis opens wide open because your body basically is saying, you need to run in the other direction and get the heck out of here. And in order to do that most efficiently, you need to breathe in more oxygen. So we're going, engines, we're going balls out literally is what we're doing. And we're going to open that glottis as wide as possible.

But if you're laying on the couch watching Brian Song, what's another sad movie? That's a bit old reference. Ordinary people. Okay. Sure. I watched that on a plane recently, very dull. Oh really? Yeah.

I never saw it. It just, it looks too early 80s to me. No, that's really good. Or terms of endearment, let's say, or steel magnolias. Old Yeller. I'm sorry to spoil steel magnolias. Oh yeah. Geez.

That's put a lump in your throat. Man. So if you're laying on your couch and your body is saying, get up and run down the street away from whatever this is that's stressing you out and you're lying there trying to swallow, you're just having a hard time swallowing because in order to swallow your glottis is supposed to close. Right. But your glottis is wide open because of your autonomic nervous system.

And therein is that lump in the throat. And the reason why you feel like swallowing and the reason you get a lump in your throat is because you're actively trying to fight back tears. And one way to fight back tears is to hold your breath, which you need to close your glottis for, or you swallow, which you need to close your glottis for. And so those two opposing forces trying to close your glottis and keep your glottis open is what gives you that lump in the throat sensation. Boy, the hunk of Havarti was tastier, but this is pretty tasty, too.

Totally. Tasty stuff. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good, perfect shorty, I think. I agree. Perfection has been achieved, which means short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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