Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with blue people?

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. We are so glad to be coming back to SF Sketch Fest this week, the best comedy festival in the land for our first live show in two years. Yep. We're going to be there on Friday, January 21st at 7.30 p.m. at the Sidney Goldstein Theater

to be specific. And if you want tickets, then head on over to sfsketchfest.com or cityboxoffice.com and search stuff you should know. That's right. It's a vaccinated only show and a masking up show, so everyone be safe, get out there, and come check us out live. We'll see you on January 21st. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry was just here. She said, peace out, suckers. And this is Stuff You Should Know, of course. It was nice of her to log on to say goodbye. Right. Now, we're just kidding, Jerry. She's been busy lately. Yeah. That happens. It totally happens in this busy go-go world of 2021,

almost 2022, the double deuce. This year has just flown by. It really has. I think mercifully, because this is going to be part of the lost years when we look back, you know? Yeah. It felt like 2020 took 18 years. Right. And somehow 2021 has just been in a snap. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. I don't think anyone does any more Chuck, so don't feel bad. Can we shout out to the people and sources that helped us along for this one? Well, our buddy Dave Ruse wrote an article for How Stuff Works, and I found a great article from Wired. I forgot how much I love Wired. That's from Mallory Pickett, and BBC News, ABC News, NPR Morning A Dish, which is always a fun listen,

National Library of Medicine here in the US. And then, as always, I feel like it makes appearance in every episode, JamaicaHospital.org. That's right. Surprisingly helpful. Maybe not surprisingly. I wonder, is it Jamaica Queens or Jamaica Jamaica? Oh, you know what? I was thinking Jamaica, Jamaica. It may be Jamaica Queens. Yeah. Should I Jamaica scene? Jamaica Queens? My neighbor across the street neighbor is from Jamaica, the country, and I feel like a heel now because I was like, hey, that hospital website's great, Pat. She's like, what are you talking about? She's like, okay, great. Glad you like some random hospital website. Oh, boy. So we're talking today. You went and found some medical

stuff. That's why you went to look at JamaicaHospital.org, I'm guessing, because we're talking about a really interesting condition and actually a few kinds of conditions that have something unusual in common. And that is that the people who suffer from these conditions have blue skin. Blue skin. You heard it here first, everybody, even though this really first started hitting the presses in 2008. Yeah. I mean, you didn't hear it here first. I mean, this is all over the internet, but we're talking about not the blue man group, but the blue people group of Kentucky. It's a family. I guess it's pronounced fugate. It's not fugate. No, that's Italian. He was from France. Well, that's a spoiler. Oh, is it? I'm sorry. I take it back, everyone.

You know, it's not a spoiler, but for some reason, when I saw that the original Martin Fugate was from France from, I'm not sure what part of France, but I was like, huh, that's surprising. It was like, I don't know why it would be. Yeah, he could have come from anywhere in the world and he would have been like a completely overlookable person. I think totally lost the history. Had it not been for the rare genetic mutation that he happened to carry with him, and even that wouldn't have gotten him into the history books, Chuck. Even that wouldn't have. Instead, it took Martin Fugate to happen against all odds to have found a wife who he was not related to, who was a total stranger

from a totally different country, who also happened to have that same rare genetic mutation. And when the two get together, ka-pow! Blue kids start popping out. That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky to the Blue Hills of Kentucky, ironically. Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about that. In 1820, and like I said, he was from France and he was an orphan, so he didn't know a lot about his family as far as whether or not any of them were blue, I guess. No. Or if so, he wasn't piping up about it. Yeah. Maybe he just kept it quiet. But he did marry a redheaded American named Elizabeth Smith,

and they headed on over to Troublesome Creek near Hazard County in Kentucky and set up a homestead there. And it is a, I mean, one of the doctors from one of these articles said, you know, it's maybe one in a 100,000 chance that you ought to even have this genetic mutation. Right. And he said, but, you know, once you start, I guess there's no other way to say it, once you start inbreeding, which can happen in the 1800s in the ruralness of Kentucky, he said that can go down all the way to like one in eight chance. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. I was surprised it was even one in eight, but there's some little fluke of genetics that you have to, when you're talking about probability and genetics, it's a little

more difficult than, you know, half and half. It's not straight math. Yeah. So apparently Martin himself possibly had like a little bit of blue to him. His wife, Elizabeth, had no blue to her. She apparently had very, very pale skin and bright red hair. But when the two got together, and those two genetic mutations donated their mutations to that specific gene, the kids that they had were like irresistibly blue. Like there was no confusing. It's not like, yeah, Martin's kind of blue. Have you ever noticed maybe he needs to breathe more deeply? This was like straight up blue kids. I've even seen him described as dark blue, not even a bluish hue or tint or tinge, dark blue skinned children. Yeah, four of seven were blue. And it's funny you said that she was

not, the mother was not blue tinted. But I imagine like before they knew about genetics and inbreeding, if he would, if she would have been a little blue, that might have been a reason to get together. You know what I mean? No, I don't explain. Well, blue man happens to meet blue woman and they're like, geez, there's another one like me. And, you know, we've been sort of, you know, sort of embarrassing and maybe we're cast out a little bit. So let's hitch our wagons together because there's probably nothing wrong with us having kids, right? Because medical science hadn't known that at that point. Right. It's a story as old as time, Chuck. But it was, it was just complete happenstance though. Right. Yeah. So, and I wonder also, like it was

significant to me that they pointed out that his wife, Elizabeth Smith, Fugate's skin was almost translucent. It was so pale because I wonder if she donated that to her children, which allowed the blue to really shine through even more. Oh, maybe. It's possible. Like the ultimate recipe for blueness. Exactly. And they actually became known as this blue family and they were not particularly proud of their blue skin. I think they were a little freaked out about it. I think that their neighbors may not have particularly treated them well. And so they already lived in like a pretty isolated part of Appalachia. But they took pains to actually isolate themselves even further. And one of the, one of the consequences of that was something you touched upon that,

that meant that their son married their aunt and cousins, married cousins, even if they were way too close to be marrying. And so one of the, one of the products of these, this inner marriage was an entire small regional population of blue families or families who have blue children or blue family members. Because these neighbor families were still blood relatives of the fugates who initially settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding. That's right. And the condition that they had is not a skin condition at all. It's actually a blood disorder, like you mentioned. And it's called medima globinemia. Is that pretty good? Wow. So it's not meth? No. Okay. Oh, I'm glad you said it first then.

I actually took great pains today to look up between this and the other episode we're recording. Oh yeah. Pronunciations. Yeah. And when you look at medima globinemia, that is 17 letters of, it's a mouthful of letters. Yeah, pure hell. And it's really one of those that I looked at over and over and just could not get it right in my head until I, you know, went and looked it up on the internet. And I was like, oh, it's not so hard. All right. Let me try. Let me try. Medima globinemia. I think it's more of a T than a D. Okay. What about a B? You want me to try that one? This is like the worst acting audition ever. Medima globinemia.

Yeah. What's my motivation here? To get through this episode. Okay, fair enough. So we're going to touch a little bit on melanin throughout this episode, but you remember melanin from our, I think, pretty good episode on sunscreen and suntans, right? And this is, you know, special cells in the body in the skin make melanin, and melanin is responsible for coloring your skin. And there are all kinds of different melanin disorders, whether you have too much or too little, whether you can, you know, will make your skin lighter or darker, or whether or not it happens in patches. I had a friend in Los Angeles with Vita Ligo, which I have a friend too. Oh, you do? Which, you know, leads to patches

of light skin on the body. Isn't that what Michael Jackson claimed to have had too? Yes. Was that verified? I don't know. I don't know either. I really don't know. I just remember there was a big stink when that came out. Everyone was like, yeah, right. Well, the reason why it was like, really, you got Vita Ligo because it's usually patches, like the melanocytes, the melanin-producing cells just kind of poop out or crap out in an area, and it leaves patches without pigment. Not your entire face without pigment, but who knows? Well, I think his, I think what he said was that he bleached his skin to match the light patches was his reasoning. Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable. You know, if you're self-conscious about Vita Ligo and you have a ton of money,

you could do something like that. Who knows? Who knows? Should we talk about skin color or should we take an awkward Michael Jackson break? I think we just did, but the point is this that I think you're making, Chuck, is that changes in like your skin color typically have to do with a lack of or an overproduction of melanin, right? That's right. What we're talking about, metemoglobinemia, right, is actually a blood disorder. It has nothing to do with the skin. It just shines through that super translucent skin that we have. Right. So what's going on here in the body? Are you surprised I'm asking you to do this? I'm a little surprised. I thought we maybe tag team this one, but okay, okay. So you have like a

pinkish shoe to you typically being Caucasian because there's not a ton of melanin that's blocking the blood supply underneath in your tissues. It's kind of shining through and your blood is red and the reason it's red, Chuck, is because the reason why blood is red. Well, remember in school they teach you that your blood is blue until you get cut and then it hits the air. Yeah, that's not true. And then it turns red. That's what you hear on the playground in elementary school. From dumb kids. But that is not true and I bet you anything kids are still spreading that mistruth on the playground. Yeah, it's got some staying power for sure as far as rumors go. And you know what? My dad will sue your dad for all the money he's got.

Did you guys threaten lawsuits? Sure. We were very litigious. Kids did though. It was very funny. We were like little Puritans in Salem town. That's right. So blood is red. That was a question, right? Yeah. Yeah. Why is blood red? Right. Because I don't know we've talked about this before, but it's because our red blood cells have hemoglobin. It's a protein and it gets its red color from something called heme. It's a compound that has an iron atom in there and that iron atom is the key. That's what binds with oxygen and allows red blood cells to get oxygen all over the body. And that's sort of what makes us tick. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean that oxygen is super

important. So we want to have super red rich hemoglobin blood, right? Our bodies also produce something else called metemoglobins. I guess is how you would pronounce it. That is not how I've been pronouncing it in my head. But these metemoglobins are basically the same thing as hemoglobins, but they have a different kind of iron attached to them. The iron they have is like there's really no other way to put it. Actually, there's plenty of other ways to put it. But one way you could put it is that it's rusted. It's oxidized iron, which means that it's missing an electron that it would need to bind to oxygen, which means it's useless for transporting oxygen through the blood. So if you have a bunch of metemoglobin built up in your blood, your blood can reasonably

turn blue. You also may have some problems breathing because you don't have any oxygen in your blood. Although that's not true. I'm sorry. You would be able to breathe perfectly fine, but it wouldn't clear up necessarily the lack of oxygen in your blood because it's on a blood level rather than something to do with your lungs. Yeah, that was my one question because doctor after doctor has confirmed that metemoglobinemia doesn't present any health issues. Yeah. But how can that be possible that your blood is having trouble carrying oxygen through your body and it doesn't matter? I had a really hard time with that too. And the best I could come up with as far as an answer, which is not definitive, but the best I could come up with is that there

there's a threshold where your blood will turn blue, where you have enough metemoglobins in there that it's blue, but there's not so many metemoglobins that you're actually having trouble with your oxygen in your body. So it can turn blue long before you actually suffer from the effects of low oxygen. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And isn't the threshold to turn your skin blue like a really low percentage even? Like 1% of metemoglobins. If your blood is 1% metemoglobins, you can start to turn blue, right? So it doesn't take very much, which means that you have 99% of the globins in your blood are hemoglobin, which means you're still able to get all the oxygen you need. You just have maybe a little less than

somebody else. That's my best guess from what I saw. And I think at this point in our understanding of metemoglobinemia, it's as good as anybody's. Well, that sounds like a perfect place for a break. Okay. And we'll be right back to talk a little bit more about this and other interesting blood conditions right after this. 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. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are 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 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 I Heart 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 secondhand 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.

The 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 I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Chuck, we were talking about metemoglobinemia. And the reason, like I think one of us said earlier that the body naturally produces these things, these metemoglobins. But we also produce an enzyme that can convert excess metemoglobins into hemoglobin. And it's got a doozy of a name, which I just love. May I take this one? Yes. This enzyme is called reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase. One of the great all time. What's its nickname? Sparky. It has no nickname. You have to say the entire thing every time. And so this enzyme reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase is actually capable of converting the iron from its ferric state in metemoglobins into its ferrous state, which is capable of binding with oxygen like the kind that's found in hemoglobin. So for all intents and purposes, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase is capable of converting metemoglobins into hemoglobin.

And most of us are able to do that. But if you're like a fugate and you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated that mutation to you and you develop metemoglobinemia, but there's some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase, which means that that metemoglobins that you naturally produce are able to build up and accumulate in your blood. And when they do that, that's how you start to turn blue. That's how you cross that 1% threshold. That's right. And this is one of the rare times where you can actually have a genetic condition that's pretty easily solved. And in this case, it's just a pill. And the guy who figured this out has sort of an interesting story in his own right. His name is Madison Cawine or Cawine? Cawine? I'm going with Cawine.

Cawine? Cawine. Cawine. I'm going with Cawine. C-A-W-E-I-N. Cawine. Although I like Cawine. That doesn't sound like it'd be tasty, but I'll bet it gives you a pretty good buzz. He was the grandson of a pretty famous at the time poet out of Kentucky. And Madison was the third of the Madison's. And this is just a side note, very sad and interesting. His wife was poisoned and murdered by poison in the 1960s.

And no one was ever caught in charge of the crime. And it kind of remains one of Kentucky's, you know, sort of biggest cold cases. Wow. I did not see that one coming. Yeah. He and his wife and this other couple were out drinking all night, supposedly, like just got sloshed. And at a country club, he, Madison, didn't even make it home. I think he stayed the night there. But the other man, the man from the other couple drove his wife home, apparently just dropped. They had another nightcap and she woke up dead. Well, didn't wake up dead. She died. And they thought it was just, you know, alcohol or some natural cause, but then they found these two like little needle pricks in her. Wow.

Where they think she was, I guess, given a shot to pass out and then poisoned. And I can't remember the poison. It was some sort of like acid or something. Wow. But yeah, really, really interesting. Neither here nor there as far as this goes. But that's the sad story of Dr. Madison Cowwine's wife. Was he a suspect? Because I would have suspected him. I don't think so because he wasn't even there. That's the first thing I thought. But apparently it was pretty verified that he slept it off at the country club, I guess. Crazy.

Because I mean, one of the things that he became famous for, if not the thing he became famous for, was injecting people with some fairly weird stuff. I know. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it is weird. You're not buying it. No, I don't want to like cast spursions on somebody. I don't know enough about the story, but that's just very odd, especially. Judging from this 90 second story. Right, exactly. I can conclusively solve this case. I've seen enough law in order to know that the husband almost always did it. Well, that is probably true, but probably not in this case.

But at any rate, he was a hematologist at you at the University of Kentucky. And he heard about these people throughout the world and really wanted to kind of get to the bottom of this when a couple of them, well, I don't think these were few gates, but Patrick and Rachel Richie, I guess, you know, it happened in some other family. I know that Combs is... We knew at Combs from Kentucky. We had a friend that we worked with for a little while. Oh, really? He was never struck me as blue, yeah. He never struck you as blue?

But I wonder if he is related to the Combs, which would make him buy somehow a few gate, because again, these families in the few gate area were all, if you went back far enough, few gates. Right, exactly. So these people walk into his office and what happened? So here's the thing, like they didn't walk into his office. He went and found them. I read an article about him and he became maybe a little obsessed with finding these people, wanted to know what the heck was going on.

So he actually went out in the woods and would wait for them. And every once in a while, I would see one and he chased them, telling them to stop. And of course, they would run off. So he figured out another way to do it. He moved to Hazard County near Troublesome Creek and he started asking around at clinics, like had anybody ever treated a blue patient? And he finally struck gold, blue gold, when he spoke to one nurse at a clinic that said, yeah, this one woman came in with blue skin and she was really self-conscious about her skin.

She came to the back door, was really just kind of meek and embarrassed. But yeah, we've treated a blue person before. So Cowain basically hung around this clinic until more blue people came in and this is where he met the Richie siblings. Yeah, so he started to dig into their family a little bit. It became pretty obvious to him that it was a genetic disorder. And he started digging around other stories around the North America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who had the same condition. I'm just going to call it this condition now. Okay.

I think we said it enough. Sure. At least I have. Yeah. And he said, well, you know, these people were interbreeding a lot because they were very remote as well. And so he said, I think we understand the problem here. How do we fix it? Yeah, I don't know if he, where he got this idea, but he used something called methylene blue,

which was already like in wide use, it's used to stain tissue because it affects some cells differently than others. It was a malaria treatment, which malaria can actually produce metemoglobinemia. I'm suddenly having trouble saying it because we haven't been practicing lately. And what it does is it goes in and it interacts with the reduced nicotinamine adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all of that excess metemoglobins into hemoglobins in patients with metemoglobinemia. And so I don't know where he got the idea, but he tried it and apparently injected the Ritchie kids with it and they stopped being blue like almost on the spot. Yeah. Like minutes later, they returned to a, you know, a standard color and I mean, they were overjoyed.

Like, could you imagine being like this your whole life, getting a shot and looking in the mirror a few minutes later and you're like, oh my gosh, it's like, it's gone. It's actually really sweet because they were very self-conscious. The whole family. I mean, this family like retreated to the woods to, like people didn't know where they lived and they lived like five miles away from them and knew that there's this blue family still had no idea where they lived. It was like, that's how far they retreated from society because they were that self-conscious. So yeah, I'm sure it was a pretty joyous occasion for them. There's going to be a movie about this at some point, right? I can't believe there's not.

There was a very famous interview with Kyle Wayne in a magazine called Science 82 and there's also a really famous painting that somebody did and it was just kind of lost the history who did it. And I read this article. I can't remember what it was on, but this person tracked down the artist, the initial artist and got to see like the original because it's been scanned so many times. It's really lost a step, but the original is apparently really something to see. Should we say the quote that Kyle Wayne had in that Science 82 article? Totally. He said, he said when they walked in the office, he said, they were blue-eared in hell. Very Kentucky.

Yeah, totally. All right. So over time, the fugates started moving away like some of the younger population of the family got out of Hazard County and it's so hard not to make Dukes of Hazard jokes. I've been just sidestepping the whole time. You've been doing really great. Thank you. But they started to move away over time and basically, you know, that's going to stop the interbreeding and that's going to make fewer and fewer blue babies. And as of 2012, I think some were still blue, but not today.

Yeah, I think now that there's a treatment, an easy treatment because they don't even have to be injected anymore. Like if you're blue and you don't want to be blue, you just take a methylene blue pill once a day and it goes in. Apparently, once you excrete it out, the methylene blue, you go back to being blue. So you have to take it daily. But I'll bet there's members of that family now, and I'm just guessing here, but that are proudly blue. Now that they know that they don't have to be blue, some of them I'll bet make a choice to be blue as kind of like a pride in their family heritage. I'm guessing here. Well, the thing I saw that there was one and that was the one in 2012 that was still blue.

Like by choice. I think so. Yeah. Just didn't take the pill. Gotcha. Wow. That's neat. But not today anymore.

So this is not the only way you can get bluish or any, you know, I guess silvery skin is another thing that comes into play here with this next disorder. And this is one called Argeria. And some people are bluish. Some people are silver. If you've looked up, you know, blue people or silver people online, you've no doubt seen Paul Karrison. They called him Papa Smurf and he is all over the internet as one of the more famous cases of Argeria. Yeah. And he was kind of emerged as, I don't know if a cautionary tale is right because that was not his purpose.

But he, he also, he, whether he meant to or not, he served as a cautionary tale about taking colloidal silver because that is what turned him blue. And it didn't just turn his skin blue. It turned his mucous membranes blue. So if he like flashed his teeth, his gums were blue. The inside of his mouth was blue. The inside of his nose was blue. He was blue.

Blue or in hell as Cawain would probably put it. That's right. And he did it because he saw an article about how silver ions basically restored some cut flower back to life again. And he thought, well, that'd be really something to see what it can do on a human body. I want to be a fresh daisy. Right. And he wasn't the only person experimenting at the time. Like apparently for a while it was a over the counter drug.

We've been using silver for a very long time, but he was somebody who used it every single day. He was drinking like a 10 ounce drink of colloidal silver. He figured out how to basically make his own colloidal silver potion. And he also rubbed it on his face too. And so in very short order, he started to turn blue because that is definitely a consequence of using silver too much of overexposure to silver. That's right. And this can happen if you work in like a silver mine or something. Right.

Like it can be one of the side effects of mining in silver mines. I also saw that in the old time, not even that old, but just pre-digital photography processing, photograph processing. You could actually, yeah, you know, the 80s. Yeah. You could actually develop Algeria from exposure to the silver dust that was used to expose photographic plates. I think prior to the 80s, I don't know when they stopped using that. I don't either. I spent a lot of times in dark rooms as a kid because of my dad.

Because you were bad. And then go in there, turn on that red light and sit there and think about what you've done. Now, my dad was an amateur photographer. Well, I guess in my professional, he sold stuff, but he did his own developing and I learned how to do it and did it some through high school and then kind of quit doing it. It was a lot of fun though. Dark rooms are very like peaceful places. Is that right? Yeah.

Just, you know, they're dark, obviously. Sure. And you're in there for a long period of time and it's just very nice. Usually by yourself, but unless you're in a teen romance movie and then, you know, the cute girls in there with you. Well, I always associate them with the murderer finally coming into focus and they happen to be standing right next to the photographer is developing it. So to me, dark rooms are very tense, scary. Like as the photo paper like comes into focus. Yeah.

Oh, very tense. It shows the calls coming from inside the dark room. That's right. Where were we? Okay. So what causes this is an excess of silver ions in your body. Right. And when they're exposed to light, they react by forming dark deposits on the skin that end up looking silverish.

And the bad news about this is once you've got it, it's there. You can't take a pill and get rid of it. No, it's irreversible. We don't have a way to remove excess silver from the tissues in the human body. And that's all it is. It's just, it builds up. Normally the body can excrete, you know, small amounts of silver that we're exposed to from like, you know, touching silver or snorting silver, that kind of stuff. What?

You know, like we pee it out, we poop it out and we get rid of it. But if we overcome that threshold and our silver ingestion exceeds our ability to excrete it, it starts to build up in the tissue. And so if you're drinking your own 10 ounce colloidal silver homebrew every single day, you're going to overwhelm your body's ability to excrete silver very quickly. And it's going to build up and build up and build up. And pretty soon you're going to be blue or silver blue. That's right. And if you look up images of kerosene, you're probably also going to find pictures of Stan Jones, a libertarian politician in Montana who around Y2K said, you know what? I think things are going to go south and we're not going to have any antibiotics.

So I'm going to start making my own, again, colloidal silver solution and drink that stuff. And then there was a teacher in Brooklyn, too, named Rosemary Jacobs, who very sadly I think got nasal drops with silver when she was a kid. And she was sort of not sort of, she was very silver for life. Yes, she was. So these people, again, have proved to be cautionary tales to most people who are like, oh, that's what happens if you take too much silver. I'm not going to take colloidal silver supplements over the counter or anything like that. I'm just going to steer clear of silver altogether. Because one of the problems is there's not a lot of peer-reviewed evidence, if any, that suggests that silver has any beneficial effect when taken internally, right?

It is actually antimicrobial. It's pretty clever to use silver like in the pre-scientific days. But there's nothing that says like, yes, if you drink colloidal silver homebrew, it's going to have any effect on your life or your health. And in fact, it might actually turn you blue. Despite this, people still take colloidal silver pretty frequently. Apparently, Alex Jones touts it, Gwyneth Paltrow touts it, Dr. Oz touts it. And that's, you know, if it's not actually harming you, there doesn't seem to be any harm from it, aside from potentially irreversibly turning blue. But there's a larger harm that I saw chuck to society in general. And that silver is an antimicrobial of last resort that is, they're figuring out how to use it against antibiotic resistant bugs like MRSA.

That silver will get in there and even kill MRSA. But that silver resistance may be developed in bugs by all these people taking colloidal silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver homebrews and stuff like that. That is actually creating silver resistant microbes, which is not a good thing for anybody. All right. Well, let's take our second break. Good. Yes. Let's talk a little bit more about colloidal silver right after this. 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.

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So you mentioned earlier that kind of in passing that colloidal silver had been used pre-mainstream medical science coming on board. And it's really true. And they were kind of onto something in that, like you said, there are some anti-microbial properties. So people like Pliny the Elder, Cyrus the Great, they both touted the use of silver. Monks in the Middle Ages used silver nitrate to treat ulcers and burns. And it was used a lot. It's kind of, in a way, before we had real antibiotics, one of the first antibiotics. Yes. Again, externally, it messes up microbes. And we're not exactly sure, even still today, what the mechanism is. The guesses are that it somehow penetrates the membrane of bacteria and prevents it from replicating properly.

Or it does like some one-two punches on enzymes that the microbes need to survive. But that it will leave your human skin cells alone. It just attacks microbes weirdly, bacteria specifically. So yeah, it was like an early antibiotic. And it actually kept stating use for a long time. Nowadays, you'll find it in like wound dressings. Sometimes sutures will be coated in silver. Replacement joints, artificial joints will have some sort of silver component to protect against infection.

But we were using them internally for a really long time, up until the 60s even. I think babies got like silver eye drops when they were born, which I had not heard of until, you know, yesterday. I had neither. Yeah, silver nitrate to prevent eye infections. But then they found out it can actually cause eye damage and burn the skin. So they really worked on just sort of... What's the word I'm looking for when you make something less potent by mixing it with water? Dilute it? Diluting it.

Right on the tip of my tongue. You did it? No, you did it. So they learned how to dilute it. But the problem with diluting it in a formula is it wasn't an exact science. Like they didn't know exactly how much silver was still going to be active. And so, you know, you couldn't really use it as a medicine anymore, because it was either too weak to do anything or it was so much that you risk turning blue.

So eventually they just scrapped it as a medicine and said, I think in 1999, the FDA said, this isn't a medicine, you can't advertise it as such. So they said, all right, well, to say it's a supplement. Right. And just move it to the shelf, you know, four feet away. And the FDA said, hmm. And that's what happened. And you can still get this stuff.

That's where, you know, that's why Gwyneth Paltrow uses it. Yeah. And I mean, like, again, it's one of those things where it's like, yes, it makes sense. Silver has antimicrobial properties. There's probably some microbes in your body you don't want. So take some silver and see if it works. But again, there's just not any peer reviewed evidence that backs us up. That's not necessarily to say that it doesn't work just because there isn't peer reviewed evidence

that backs it up. Doesn't also necessarily mean in the same breath that there's plenty of peer reviewed evidence that says it doesn't work. I'm not suggesting anybody take the stuff. I'm just saying there's not peer reviewed evidence to back up that it actually does anything. And if you do take it, again, you risk permanently irreversibly turning blue. Yeah. And I should point out, I don't know anything about Gwyneth Paltrow.

I don't know anything about Gwyneth Paltrow's current usage. But this, her appearance on Dr. Oz in 2013 was when she touted it. She may have given it up. Who knows? Who knows? Paul Carrisson never gave it up though, Chuck. He died in 2013 as well. Same year that Gwyneth Paltrow outed herself as a silver user.

And Paul Carrisson, he apparently used colloidal silver, that homebrew he made up until the end. Like he never stopped, even though he apparently retreated from the public eye because he was tired of being treated like a freak or a weirdo and had some rough years toward the end, apparently after he went public. But he still kept up with the colloidal silver. Although that doesn't seem to have been linked to his death. He was also a really heavy smoker for many years. And he suffered a heart attack and a stroke.

Yeah. I mean, I guess his point was probably, well, I'm already blue. Yeah. Like, why stop now? Can't get much bluer. So what else you got? Well, I just thought we'd wind it up with this little kind of sidebar. This doesn't really have anything to do with being blue or silver,

but I thought it was an interesting find that they basically determine, there's something called repigmenting that has happened to people to go, their skin, both darker and lighter, that has nothing to do in this funny, this article kept calling it intermarriage. What they mean is, you know... Eat or eat or... Yeah. What they mean is having sex and having babies of two different skin colors.

But they keep calling it intermarriage, which I guess is, you know, very sweet. It's just such a lovely way to put it. It is. But they know that repigmenting happens regardless of intermarriage. But what they found recently is that this has happened a lot faster than anyone thought. And we're talking about a hundred generations, or as little as a hundred generations, which is a long time, but over the course of human history, it's not that long. It's potentially...

Yeah, it's not that long. Usually a generation is chalked up at about 20 years. So we're talking as little as 2,000 years that groups that were once lily white went back to being dark and groups that were dark can turn into a lily white population. And that it's just basically more evidence that race is strictly a social construct. Skin killer has nothing to do with anything, but the amount of melanin that our genes tell our bodies to produce, which is triggered by the amount of UV exposure that we have over something like a hundred generations.

Right. And so if your family lineage moves from a place that has lots of UV near the equator to a place that doesn't have much daylight or vice versa, your body is going to adapt and melanin production is going to change. And over time, your entire family's skin color can change. Yeah, because we actually need UV, right? But we just need a certain amount of it. If you have too much, you can get skin cancer.

Apparently it can have reproductive issues. If you get too little, it can also have issues on your bone because we use UV to produce vitamin D, which we use for strong bones, bone density. So our bodies have figured out how to kind of adjust depending on that UV exposure by producing or slowing down melanin production. That's it. Pretty amazing. Pretty neat.

But it is surprising that it's... Well, actually, it's not that surprising that it can happen over a hundred generations or 2,000 years because the body is very responsive to its environment. We adapt very easily. So that's not particularly surprising, although it is neat. Yeah. I mean, it surprised the scientists that I think they just thought it was quicker than they anticipated.

Mm-hmm. So if you're a racist, just stop and think that somewhere down your family line, there's a white person or a black person. Haha. That's true. Or in the future. Yeah. That's true.

That's right. So take that. You got anything else? I have nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to know more about blue people or colloidal silver or pigmentation, go start reading up on it on the internet. And thanks again to all the great sites that you found in putting this really good episode

together, Chuck. And since I complimented Chuck's episode putting together skills, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this one of the many thanks we got for the M, not NRA, but the Mr. Na episode. Right. This is one, I think, for both of us. We were super stoked to do and in retrospect, very proud of. We're stoked.

We were super stoked, not just stoked. Bra. Stoked plus. There's no way to say stoked without sounding like a bro. No. No way at all. That stinks too, because I'm not a bro, but I do like saying stoked. That's fine.

Just say stoked. Be loud and proud like the last remaining blue fugate. So this is from Mark, and it was a really long one that I'm going to sort of summarize the first part is that Mark works in healthcare information technology and had a rough go of it over the past couple of years, like so many people working alone and listening to our show, which he said helped quite a bit, losing some close friends to COVID and seeing all this up close and personal. So Mark had a tough time.

So he says this, after working for almost two years on the COVID-19 problem, the last thing I wanted to hear was your podcast about Mr. Nov vaccines. Understood. When I saw the topic pop up on my player, took a deep breath and decided to listen anyway. I knew almost everything you shared on the podcast, but became enthralled in the recap of this amazing story. To my surprise, I was again brought to tears with a recognition, one that you two share of these brilliant helpers who use their gifts for the benefit of all humanity at the risk

of making you blush, you two are part of those helpers. You presented this Mr. Nov episode with a childlike curiosity and relatable simplicity that anyone with doubts on taking the vaccine would reconsider. I can't believe that I have to say this, but facts help and fact sharers are helpers. I might also add that letting go of any biases to let your curiosity take hold is heroic. And that is for Mark and boy, I'm going to read that one another hundred times today. Yeah, just print it out and fold it up and keep it under your pillow. Yes.

Thank you, Mark. He wanted his last name to be with help, but appreciate the work you've done, Mark, and hang in there. Yeah. Same to you, Mark. And that was very high praise. Thank you very much for it. It means a lot to hear something like that.

One other thing though, Chuck, that Mark reminded me of, that people with Matema Globanemia actually can blush blue. Oh, so they get bluer? Yeah. Isn't that neat? I guess that makes sense. Thanks for that too, Mark, even though you had no idea you were setting us up for it, you did.

So you're just basically an altogether great person. If you want to be a great person like Mark and write in to let us know whatever you want to let us know, we want to hear from you. You can wrap it up and spank it on that bottom until it's blue in the face and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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 Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.