Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Blaschko's Lines

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Did you know you have stripes? It’s true, you just can’t see them. Learn all about these little-known lines today!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, 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. Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck is here in spirit too. And we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that we are going to have a

swinging Pacific Northwest swing this coming February and tickets are now on sale. February 1st will be at the Moore Theater in Seattle. February 2nd will be at Revolution Hall in Portland. And on February 3rd for SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our social medias for more information and links to tickets. And we'll see you in February. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck Talley Ho. It's short stuff time. And we're talking about something that admittedly I kind of understand and kind of hope you really understand. I do. Good. I do. Also, before we start, I want to give a hat tip to my wife, Yumi, who came up with this one. She said,

have you ever heard of this? It's crazy. And I looked into it and I was like, this is crazy because what Yumi found and what we're about to explain to all of you is that humans are a species. Don't forget we're animals with stripes. We actually are a striped species of animal. Did you know that before? I had never heard of this. I did not know we were all brindle-coated animals like my dog Niko. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly what we are. We have beautiful patterns of swirls and whirls and drips and drops and all sorts of cool stuff all over us. But we can't see them normally under normal circumstances because we don't see on the UV side of the spectrum. But if we did, we'd be like, hey, I like your stripes. Well,

I like your stripes. And with some people, depending on the condition they have, they actually, their stripes actually show. It's pretty interesting stuff. But the whole thing we're talking about, if you noticed the title of this episode, are what are called Blash Coase Lines. Those are the stripes that all humans have. Now, did this happen because Yumi had a black light and went, oh my God. I don't know where she turned this one up. I didn't ask her. I'll have to ask her and then we'll record a pickup. All right. So hold on. Insert answer here. So Blash Coase Lines, that is in fact a name. It was named after a dermatologist, Alfred Blash Coase in the 1900s. He was the first person to notice this basically and write about it.

He thought, he was a little bit off though, because he thought that they followed predefined patterns on humans. But they don't. And the weird thing is, as you might think, is like, all right, so maybe these are lines that sort of indicate where your blood vessels are, or your nerve endings are, or your nerves or whatever. That is not the case. These stripes are not blood vessels that you can see under a black light at all. But we kind of know what it is now, right? Right. Yeah. There's no system in the body that these things follow. Instead, they're their own thing. They seem to be their own thing. And they are distinct on all people, but there are kind of some general patterns that we'll talk about. But what we've come up with

finally today, still today, we're not 100% certain that this is correct. But the general consensus is that what Blash Coase Lines are evidence of the migratory route that our skin cells took and then settled into while we were developing in the womb. Right. I'm just going to read this little bit from Mental Floss, because I think it kind of sums it up nicely. Yeah, I thought so too. And we always love to shout out our old pals at Mental Floss. The MFers. The MFers. Basically, they said, these are cellular relics of our development, basically, from single cell things. I thought you were quoting this. You're paraphrasing all over. No, no, no. I'm paraphrasing the beginning. As the cells divided,

they differentiated. Some became muscles, others bones, still others organs, and some became skin as those skin cells continued dividing. They expanded and stretched to cover a quickly growing body. One cell line pushed and swirled through another like steamed milk poured into an espresso to make a latte. And Blash Coase Lines are the molecular evidence of those swirls. That was very pretty writing. It was. So the reason that we can see these lines, Chuck, I think we should talk about after a break. Oh, mm hmm. 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. Oh, 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. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the

iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the reasons we can see these lines, Chuck, I think we should talk about now. Very nice. So they believe that the reason that there's differences, even though you can only see them under the UV spectrum, under normal circumstances, you cannot see the difference between skin cells on your arm, or on your shoulder, or on your torso, wherever. And you have Blaschko's lines all over your body as we'll see. Because the cells that make up our skin are almost entirely identical. They all come from generally the same genetic information. So they all start out from the same cell or globs of cells like Mental Floss pointed out. But because of the

different minute experiences that each cell has, those instructions get produced in just slightly different ways so that we think of ourselves as genetically monolithic beings. It turns out the term for humans are mosaics. All of those cells are so slightly different that it's almost like slightly different colored tiles being put up against one another. And they're so similar that, again, under normal light, you can't see the difference. But when you put yourself under a black light in a dark room, those differences show up. That's why they think we're able to see Blaschko's lines. That's why they think we have them. It's the same reason when you look at identical twins, they're actually a little bit different. Again, these environmental factors that happen

when you're a twin. And in fact, we just did an episode recently. What was it on? Just this week. On doppelgangers. Doppelgangers, when they've seen a lot of evidence like when twins are split up at birth, they end up being quite a bit different. And it's because of epigenetics, these environmental factors. But even if they aren't broken up, even if they're together, these twins are these minute little genetic differences that end up meaning these twins are a little bit different. And that's the same basic concept here. Yeah. But rather than whole people, we're talking about the difference between genetically identical cells. Right. Within one person. There is something else called chimerism. So instead of mosaicism, this is chimerism. And some people can have different genetic

material within them. So like very famously, people with two different eyes, they're chimeris, or they're chimeric, I should say, because different genetic information went into constructing each eye. And that's why they have two different colored eyes. That's extraordinarily rare. Mosaicism apparently is universal. We're just not, if you took one cell in another cell and you could get as granular as possible in investigating them, you'd see that they are just slightly not the same, even though they came from the same blueprint. Yeah, there's a New York Mets picture that has one blue eye and one dark eye. Is that David Bowie, number 72? No, it's Max Scherzer. And boy, it's just, I didn't even notice it until last year. And this is a guy who's sort of at the

latter stages of his career. But then once you see a picture of this guy, you're like, oh my god, it's really a striking difference because it's a very, very blue eye and a very, very brown eye. And I just think it's so cool looking. Yeah, for sure. Like what a, I don't know, I would just always just go right up to people's faces and then go, hi, how are you? Freak him out a little bit. I think it's really cool. Give him the left side and then the right side and the left side and the right side. Yeah. So like we said, there's kind of some general rules that these lines will follow depending on where you are on your body, right? Yeah, there's like patterns, which makes sense because, you know, all of us sort of grow generally in the same way,

as far as arms and legs and fingies and toes and torsos and necks and armpits and all that stuff. So depending on, can we keep naming parts? Yeah. How about the dirty parts? Let's start. They're only two. So when you're looking at a body like there will be maybe a V shape down your back and inverted you from the breast to the upper arm. Your lateral trunk will have a wave-like shape. There might be an S shape on your abdomen, stuff like that. Yeah. Your scalp, actually, if you look at your whole head, it looks like, as far as your blast code lines are concerned, that you're wearing a balaclava, like around your eye areas open, but there's different lines surrounding it else-wise. And apparently on your scalp, it spirals,

whereas on the side of your face, they're like kind of vertical lines. It's pretty cool. I think Blashcoe himself did some initial descriptions of it through sketches, but since then science has really kind of gotten pretty good at drawing it. So there's a lot of neat drawings of Blashcoe's lines on the internet of all places. Was he early 1900s? He was like 1901 from what I saw. Oh, okay. The earliest. But Chuck, I think you should take the fact of the short stuff, that the Blashcoe's lines don't just exist on the skin, right? Yeah, this was pretty freaky. Apparently your teeth and eyes and tongue all have Blashcoe's lines as well. Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, anything that forms from cells, expressing themselves,

writing cool poetry and songs. You mentioned earlier, though, about there are certain conditions that someone might have where these lines are revealed in regular light with regular vision, right? Yeah, yeah. So vitiligo, where your skin loses its pigmentation, it often follows Blashcoe's lines. Also, there's other types of congenital conditions, I believe, and some inquired ones where, so vitiligo would be like a negative of your Blashcoe's lines, whereas some of the other ones, they're like, it's like a tiger stripes. Like you can see the person's Blashcoe's lines because it's hyperpigmented. So you can see them without UV light. You can just see them under normal visible light. And it's pretty cool-looking, actually, I have to say. Yeah, although usually

if you look up on the internet and see what this looks like, it's just like close-ups of armpits and stuff. Sure, sure. And I say it's pretty cool-looking. I don't know how somebody who has a condition where their Blashcoe's lines are showing all the time feel about it, but as an observer, I think it's pretty interesting and neat. And then also, when you stop and think about it, if you're like, that person's skin is striped, your skin is striped too, pal. You just don't see it because you have to see it under normal UV lights. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah. So that's it for Blashcoe's lines, eh? Thanks, Yumi. And thank you, friend, for listening to this episode.