SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What's the deal with blue people?

This is an "I Heart" podcast, guaranteed human. Hey everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers with the "Hey Jonas" podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rod, Michael Wubley, Seth Meyers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and how everyone does. Okay, well control is a harsh word. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails, and giving advice. Listen to "Hey Jonas" on America's number one podcast network, "I Heart." Follow "Hey Jonas" and start listening on the free "I Heart" radio app today. Hey Jonas, it's sponsored by EdibleArrangements. Order yours today at edible.com. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kid's brain, the group chat, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. "Your child is not doing this on purpose." That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the "I Heart" radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everybody, winding it down with a couple more here from me at least. With the stuff you should know gets weird playlist. Have you ever seen the blue people? There's a thing where I'm not going to spoil it. But let's just say there's a thing that happens where people's skin can turn blue. And this is the episode called "What's the deal with blue people?" And no, not David Cross and arrested development or the blue main group. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of "I Heart" 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. Now we're just getting, 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. 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 "House to Forks." And I found a great article from "Wired." I forgot how much I love "Wired." That's from "Mallory Picket." And BBC News, ABC News, NPR Morning Edition, 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. Yeah, maybe not surprisingly. I wonder, is it Jamaica Queens or Jamaica Jamaica? Oh, you know what? I was thinking Jamaica, Jamaica, maybe Jamaica Queens. Yeah. Should I make a 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 Rano 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 that is, 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. 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." I 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 upon 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, Kapow! 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 in orphan, so he didn't know a lot about his, his family as far as whether or not any of them were blue, I guess. No. Or if so, he wasn't, he wasn't piping up about it. Yeah. Maybe he just kept it quiet. But he did marry a red-headed American named Elizabeth Smith, and they headed on over to trouble some creek near Hazard County in Kentucky and set up a homestead there. And it is a, I mean, the one of the doctors that, from one of these articles said, you know, it's maybe one in a 100,000 chance that you even have this genetic mutation. And he said, but, you know, once you start, I guess there's no other way to say it. Once you start in breeding, which can happen in the 1800s and 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 that it was even one in eight, but there's some little fluke of genetics that you have to, that when you're talking about probability and genetics, it's a little more difficult than, you know, half and a straight man. 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 have 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 you need to breathe more deeply. This was like straight up blue kids. I've even seen him described as dark blue, not even a blueish 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 we've been 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. It's a story as old as time chuck. But it was, it was just complete happenstance though. Right. Yeah. And I wonder also like it was significant to me that they pointed out that his wife, Elizabeth Smith, fugates 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 products of this inner marriage was an entire small regional population of blue families, or families who had blue children, or blue family members. Because these neighbor families were still blood relatives of the few gates, 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 Medema Globenemia. 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. Pronunciation. Yeah. When you look at Medema Globenemia, 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, that's not so hard. All right. Let me try. Let me try. Medema Globenemia. I think it's more of a T than a D. Okay. What about a D? A B. You want me to try that one? It's like the worst acting audition ever. Medema. Medema Globenemia. Let me get you another one. 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 sun tans, right? And this is, you know, special cells in the body and the skin make melanin and they are 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, it will make your skin lighter or darker, or whether or not it happens in patches, I had a friend in Los Angeles with Vidaligo, which I had a friend. Oh, you do? Mm-hmm. Which, you know, leads to patches of light skin on the body, and what Michael Jackson claim to have had to? Yes. Was that verified? I don't know. I don't know either. I really don't know. Because I just remember those big stink when that came out, everyone was like, yeah, right. Well, the reason why it was like, really, you got Vidaligo 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 like patches without pigment, not your entire face without pigment. 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 your self-conscious about Vidaligo 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, 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, metema globanemia, right? Yep. It's 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? Okay. So, you know. Are you surprised I'm asking you? I'm a little surprised. I thought we would maybe tag team this one, but okay, okay. So you have like a pinkish hue to you typically being Caucasian because you're, 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 mistrust on the playground. Yep. Yeah. It's got some staying power for sure as far as as far as rumors go. And you know it, my dad will sue your dad for all the money he's got. Did you guys threaten lawsuits? Sure. We were very religious. 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 metema globin, I guess is how you would pronounce it, that is not how I've been pronouncing it in my head. But these metema globin are basically the same thing as hemoglobin, 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. Well, 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. But 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 metema globin 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 metema globinemia doesn't present any health issues. 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 is a threshold where your blood will turn blue, where you have enough metema globin in there that it's blue, but there's not so many metema globin 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 it makes sense. And isn't the threshold to turn your skin blue like a really low percentage even? Like one percent of metema globinemia. If your blood is 1 percent metema globin, you can start to turn blue, right? So it doesn't take very much, which means that you have 99 percent of the globin, the globin's 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 metema globinemia, it's as good as anybody. 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. Hey everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers with The Hey Jonas Podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rod, Michael Blay, Seth Meyers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters. Like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone to do it. Okay, we'll control as a harsh word. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving advice. Listen to Hey Jonas on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Hey Jonas and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. Hey Jonas is sponsored by Edible Arrangements. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie To Me. I'm Lexi. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get any of your fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Lier. Then on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, I don't really care. Bye. or so at least 70 percent have a phone. Middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. Joy and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend real time on it in our surviving middle school run, bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological chaos happening all this thing. We got into group chats and gaming, friendship and bullying and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. You can think of belonging as I can be myself and I can still be accepted and then there's fitting in fitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapists, cure gains on black fatherhood and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. You don't have more shorts so you can't do flips you have on the dress you have across your legs. That's the range of this run. From screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. You have to get off her device but the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as your adult in the life to miss out on. This has been our surviving middle school run brought to you by the people who spend their careers thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartReneo app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your pod pan. So Chuck, we were talking about Matimaglobanemia and the reason I like like I think one of us said earlier that the body naturally produces these things. These Matimaglobans. But we also produce an enzyme that can convert excess Matimaglobans into hemagloban 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 dynucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase. One of the great all-time nicknames. Sparky. It has no nickname. You have to say the entire thing every time. And so this enzyme reduced nicotinamide adenine dynucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase is actually capable of converting the iron from its ferric state in Matimaglobans into its ferrous state which is capable of binding with oxygen like the kind that's found in hemagloban. So for all intents and purposes reduced nicotinamide adenine dynucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase is capable of converting Matimaglobans into hemagloban and most of us are able to do that. But if you're like a few gate and you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated that mutation to you and you develop Matimaglobanemia but there's some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide adenine dynucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase which means that Matimaglobans that you naturally produce are able to build up and accumulate in your blood and when they do that and they that's how you start to term 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 Colleen or Colleen Colleen? I'm going with cow wine, cow wine, Colleen, Colleen. I'm going with Colleen, C-A-W-E-I-N, Colleen. Although I like cow wine, it doesn't sound like it'd be tasty but I'll bet it gives you a pretty good bus. He was the or he was a grandson of a pretty famous at the time Poet out of Kentucky and Madison was the third of of the Madison's and this is just a side note. The very sad and interesting, his wife was poisoned and murdered by poison in the 1960s and no one was ever caught and charged with a crime and it kind of remains one of Kentucky's you know sort of biggest cold cases. Wow I did not see that on coming. Yeah he and his wife and this other couple were out drinking all night supposedly like just got slushed and at a at a at a country club he Madison didn't even make it home. I think he stayed the night there but the other man the the man from the other couple drove his wife home. Apparently just dropped they had another night cap and she woke up dead. What 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 of 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 Cowline'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 yeah well 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 and that weird. Yeah it is weird. You're not buying it. No I don't want to like cast versions on somebody. I don't know enough about the story but that it's just very odd especially like judging from this 90 second story. Exactly. I can't possibly 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 he metologist at you at 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 refugates but Patrick and Rachel Ritchie I guess you know it happens to mother family and other combs is. We knew a 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 me as blue. But I wonder if he is related to the combs. Which would make him buy some somehow a few gate because again these these families in the fugate area were all if you went back far enough few gates. Right. Exactly. Alright 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 would see one and he'd chase them telling him 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 this one woman came in with blue skin and she was really self conscious about her skin. She came to the back door. It was really just kind of meek and embarrassed. But yeah we've treated a blue person before. So Cowayne 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 any population in Alaska who had who had the same condition. I'm just gonna call 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 malarial treatment which malaria can actually produce metema globenemia. 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 nucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all of that excess metema globins into hemoglobins in patients with metema globenemia. And so I don't know where he got the idea but he tried it and apparently injected the richy kids with it and they stop being blue like almost on the spot. Yeah like minutes later they return 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 you're like oh my gosh it's like it's 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 this is blue family still had no idea where they lived. It was like That's how far they were treated from society because they were that self-conscious. So yeah, I'm sure it's 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's 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 a history who did it. And I read this article, "Oh, 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 Kauaiin had in that science 82 article? Totally. He said, he said, and they walked in the office, he said, "They were bluer than hell." Very Kentucky. Totally. All right, so over time, a few gates 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 side stepping 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 inner breeding, 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 all 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, but not today anymore. So this is not the only way you can get blue-ish or any, you know, I guess, silvery skin is another is another thing that comes into play here with this next disorder. And this is one called Algeria. And some people are blue-ish, some people are silver. If you've looked up, you know, blue people or silver people online, you have 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 Algeria. 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 mucus 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 and hell, his cow-wing would probably put it. That's right. And he, 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, 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 at 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 ten 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, like it can be one of the side effects of mining. It's over mine. I also saw that in the old time, not even that old, but just pre-digital photography processing, photograph processing. You could actually, you know, the '80s. You could actually develop our geriat 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 a man. Go in there, turn on that red light and sit there and think about what you're doing. Now my dad was an amateur photographer. Well, I guess, in my professionally sold stuff, but he did his 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, 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 staying up right next to the photographer who's developing it. So to me, dark rooms are very tense, scary places, like, as the photo paper, like, comes into focus. Yeah. 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, 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, 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 home brew 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 a carousel on, 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 antibiotic. 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 silver all together." 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 anti-microbial, it's pretty clever to use silver 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, Toutsit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Toutsit, Dr. Oz, Toutsit, 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 chucked to society in general, in that silver is anti-microbial 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, you know, 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. And we'll talk a little bit more about colloidal silver right after this. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rod, Michael Bubley, Seth Meyers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex Nastynerl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone to do that. Listen to Hey Jonas on America's #1 podcast network, I Heart. Follow Hey Jonas and start listening on the free I Heart Radio app today. lisa we should tell them about our new show oh my god lexie we have a new podcast it's called don't lie to me I'm lexie you want to wear two bus friends 22 years apart but so close at heart and I'm lexie de julio the old one which means we have wildly different references occasionally different opinions and at this point in my 50s I've lived it all I'm not gonna get any fighting that is wild I learned that about you today now in my 30s being the founder of new shoes good taste is my business and I've always got something to say if men were just honest about this there would be so much more peace in the world we're gonna talk about dating relationships beauty getting older and a little wiser we're best friends but we don't always agree because you told us how accommodating you are obviously I would do what I think I could do to to fight the fight but there's only so much fight I can fight don't lie to me don't lie to me don't lie to me don't lie to me don't lie to me don't lie to me liar listen on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I don't really care by age or rather in our cell at least 70% have a phone middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in I'm Dr. Joy and this is therapy for black girls we spent real time on it in our surviving noodle school run bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now so it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological chaos happening all this you got we got into group chats and gaming friendships and bullying and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust you're belonging you could think of belonging as I can be myself and I can still be accepted and then they're fitting in fitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection did we turn the conversation toward the fathers sitting down with therapists cure gains on black fatherhood and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage you don't have more shorts so you can't do flips you have one to dress you up across your legs that's the range of this run from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home you have to get off her device but the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as you're adult in the life to miss out on this has been our surviving middle school run brought to you by the people who spend their careers thinking about exactly this I'm Dr. Joy listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart Radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast all right so you mentioned earlier that kind of in passing that kloetal silver had been used pre you know mainstream medical science coming on board and it's really true and they were kind of on to something and that like you said there were there are some antimicrobial properties so people like plenty the elder Cyrus the great they both touted the use of silver monks in the middle ages use silver nitrate to treat ulcers and burns and it was used a lot it's 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 the membrane of the of bacteria and prevents it from replicating properly or it has 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 a early antibiotic and it actually kept stating use for a long time now at 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 it 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 yes 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 yeah and that's what happened then you can still get this stuff that's where you know that's why when the baltrow uses it yeah so 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's current usage but this her appearance on Dr. Oz in 2013 was when she touted it cheat she may have given it up who knows who knows Paul Karrison 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 Karrison he apparently used colloidal silver that home brew 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 I can't this doesn't really have any in 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 yeah what they mean is having sex and having babies the 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 has talked up at about 20 years so we're talking as little as 2000 years yeah 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 it's it's just basically at more evidence that race is strictly a social construct skin color 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's 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 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 2000 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's a process scientist. I think they just thought it was quicker than they anticipated. So, if you're a racist, just stop and think that somewhere down your family line, there is a white person or a black person. Ha ha. 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 gloidal 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 I'm not in array, but the Mr. or not episode. Right. This is one, I think, for both of us, like we were super stoked to do. And like in retrospect, very proud of, you know, 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 to 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. Nav vaccines understood when I saw the topic pop up on my player. So could 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. The risk of making you blush, you two are part of those helpers. You presented this Mr. Nav 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. In fact, shares are helpers. I might also add that letting go of any biases to let your curiosity, curiosity 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, 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 that Mark reminded me of that people with Matimaglobanemia actually can blush blue. Oh, so they get bluer. Yeah, in that neat, I guess that makes sense. Thanks for that too, Mark. Even though you had no idea you're 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 Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rod, Michael Blay, Seth Meyers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and ask General. Okay, well, control is a hard swear. Hey, Jonas is sponsored by edible arrangements. Lisa, tell them about our new show. I'm Lexi Iwanio, where two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my food days, I've lived it all. Listen on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. So would like to buy azer rather than or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids' brain, the group chat and their friendships and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose. That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.