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

The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, winding it down with a couple of 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

(00:23):
David Cross and Arrested Development or.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
The Blue Man Group.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
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, suckas. And this is
Stuff You Should Know, of course.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
It was nice of her to log on to say goodbye.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
No, we're just kidding, Jerry. She's been busy lately.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
That happens.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
It totally happens in this busy go-go world of 2021.
Almost 2022. The double deuce.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
This year has just flown by.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
It really has. I think mercifully, because this is going
to be part of the lost years when we look back,
you know?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, it felt like 2020 took 18 years.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
And somehow 2021 has just like been in a snap.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
I don't think anyone does anymore, Chuck, so don't feel bad.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Can we shout out the people and sources that helped
us along for this one? Well, our buddy Dave Ruse
wrote an article for How Stuff Works.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Ta-da!

Speaker 2 (01:47):
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 U.S. And then, as always, I feel like it
makes appearance in every episode, jamaicahospital.org. That's right. Surprisingly helpful.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Maybe not surprisingly.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
I wonder, is it Jamaica, Queens or Jamaica, Jamaica?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Oh, you know what? I was thinking Jamaica, Jamaica. It
may be Jamaica, Queens. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Should I Jamaica scene? Jamaica, Queens?

Speaker 2 (02:22):
My neighbor across the street neighbor is from Jamaica, the country. Mm-hmm.
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?

Speaker 3 (02:35):
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 and common,

(02:59):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
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?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's not Fugate?

Speaker 3 (03:29):
No, that's Italian. He was from France.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, that's a spoiler.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Oh, is it? I'm sorry. I take it back, everyone.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know, it's not a spoiler, but for some reason,
when I saw that, the original Martin Fugate was from France.
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.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, he could have come from anywhere in the world
and he would have been like a completely overlookable person.
I think totally lost to history had it not been
for the rare, 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,

(04:13):
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

(04:34):
popping out.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky, to
the Blue Hills of Kentucky, ironically.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about that.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
In 1820. And like I said, he was from France
and he was an 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.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
No. Or if so, he wasn't piping up about it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
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

(05:19):
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 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.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah. I was surprised it was even one in eight,
but there's some little fluke of genetics that, um, that
you have to When you're talking about probability and genetics,
it's a little more difficult than half and half.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
It's not straight math.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah. So apparently Martin himself possibly had 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,

(06:17):
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 them described as dark blue, not even
a bluish hue or tint or tinge, dark blue skinned children.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
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 she would have been a little blue, that might
have been a reason to get together. You know what
I mean?

Speaker 3 (07:01):
No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
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

(07:22):
that point.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
It's a story as old as time, Chuck.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
But it was just complete happenstance though.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh, maybe.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
It's possible.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Like the ultimate recipe for blueness?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
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 consequences

(08:17):
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 intermarriage was
an entire small regional population of blue families or families

(08:38):
who have blue children or blue family members because these
neighbor families were were still blood relatives of the fugates
who initially settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
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 medemoglobinemia. Is that pretty good?

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Wow. So it's not meth? No. Okay. Oh, I'm glad
you said it first then.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I actually took great pains today to look up. Between
this and the other episode, we're recording pronunciations.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
And when you look at medemoglobinemia, that is 17 letters of,
it's a mouthful of letters.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, pure hell.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
All right, let me try. Let me try. Medemoglobinemia.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think it's more of a T than a D.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Okay. What about a B? Do you want me to
try that one next?

Speaker 2 (09:48):
This is like the worst acting audition ever.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Let me give you another one. What's my motivation here?

Speaker 2 (09:57):
To get through this episode.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Okay. Fair enough.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
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 and the skin
make melanin, And melanin is responsible for coloring your skin.

(10:21):
And there are all kinds of different melanin disorders, whether
you have too much or too little, whether it will
make your skin lighter or darker, or whether or not
it happens in patches. I had a friend in Los
Angeles with vitiligo.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
I have a friend, too.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh, you do?

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Which leads to patches of light skin on the body.
Isn't that what Michael Jackson claimed to have had, too? Yes.
Was that verified?

Speaker 3 (10:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I don't know either.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
I really don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
I just remember there was a big stink when that
came out, and everyone was like, yeah, right.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Well, the reason why it was like, really? You got vitiligo?
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?

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Well, I think his... I think what he said was
that he bleached his skin to match the light patches
was his reasoning.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable. You know, if you're self-conscious
about vitiligo and you have a ton of money, you
could do something like that.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Who knows?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Who knows?

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Should we talk about skin color or should we take
an awkward Michael Jackson break?

Speaker 3 (11:38):
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?

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Is actually a blood disorder. It has nothing to do
with the skin. It just shines through that super translucent
skin that we have.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Right. So what's going on here in the body?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
So, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Are you surprised I'm asking you to do this?

Speaker 3 (12:13):
I'm a little surprised. I thought we maybe tag-teamed this one.
But okay, okay. So, you have like a pinkish hue
to you typically. Thank you. 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

(12:35):
blood is red. And the reason it's red, Chuck, is because?

Speaker 2 (12:40):
But 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.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, that's not true.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
And then it turns red. That's what you hear on
the playground in elementary school.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
From dumb kids.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
But that is not true. And I bet you anything
kids are still spreading that mistruth on the playground.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah. It's got some staying power for sure as far
as rumors go.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
And you know what? My dad will sue your dad
for all the money he's got. Did you guys threaten lawsuits?

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Sure. We were very litigious.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Kids did, though. It was very funny.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
We were like little Puritans in Salem town.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
That's right. So blood is red. That was the question, right?

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Why is blood red? Right.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
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

(13:49):
us tick.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
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

(14:13):
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 that it would need to bind to oxygen,
which means it's useless for transporting oxygen through the blood.

(14:34):
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

(14:57):
to do with your lungs.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, that was my one question because... doctor after doctor
has confirmed that metivoglobinemia 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?

Speaker 3 (15:14):
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'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

(15:38):
your body. So it can turn blue long before you
actually suffer from the effects of low oxygen. Does that
make sense?

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And isn't the threshold...
To turn your skin blue, like a really low percentage even?

Speaker 3 (15:53):
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

(16:14):
my best guess from what I saw. And I... I
think at this point in our understanding of metemoglobinemia, it's
as good as anybody's.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Well, that sounds like a perfect place for a break.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
And we'll be right back to talk a little bit
more about this and other interesting blood conditions right after this.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
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

(17:16):
just love. May I take this one?

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
This enzyme is called reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase.
One of the great all-time names.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
What's its nickname? Sparky?

Speaker 3 (17:30):
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 metemoglobin's into its ferrous state,

(17:50):
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

(18:13):
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 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.

(18:34):
That's how you cross that 1% threshold.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
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?

Speaker 3 (18:57):
I'm going with Cawine.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Cawine?

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Cawine. Cawine. I'm going with Cawine.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
C-A-W-E-I-N. Cawine.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Although I like Cawine. That doesn't sound like it'd be tasty,
but I'll bet it gives you a pretty good buzz.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
He was the grandson of a pretty famous at the
time poet out of Kentucky, and Madison was the third
of the Madisons. 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

(19:35):
caught and charged with a crime. And it kind of
remains one of Kentucky's... you know, sort of biggest cold cases.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Wow, I did not see that one coming.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, he and his wife and this other couple were
out drinking all night, supposedly, like just got... sloshed and
at a key at a country club um he madison
didn't even make it home i think he stayed the
night there but the other man uh the the man
from the other couple drove his wife home apparently just dropped.

(20:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Was he a suspect? Because I would have suspected him.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
I know.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Isn't that weird?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
It is weird.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
You're not buying it.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Nah, I don't want to, like, cast aspersions on somebody.
I don't know enough about the story, but that's just
very odd, especially... You're like, judging.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
From this 90-second story.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Right, exactly. I can conclusively solve this case. I've seen
enough law and order to know that the husband almost
always did it.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Well, that is probably true, but probably not in this case.
But at any rate, he was a hematologist at U,
at University of Kentucky.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
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 Fugates, but Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, I guess,
you know, it happened in some other family. I know
that Combs is.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
We knew a Combs from Kentucky. We had a friend
that we worked with for a little while.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Oh, really?

Speaker 3 (21:52):
He was never, he never struck me as blue. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
He never struck you as blue.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
But I wonder if he is related to the Combses.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Well, who knows?

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Which would make them buy somehow a Fugate. Because again,
these families in the Fugate area were all, if you
went back far enough, Fugates.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Right, exactly. All right, so these people walk into his
office and what happened?

Speaker 3 (22:12):
So here's the thing. 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 and
would wait for them and every once in a while
would see one and he'd chase them telling them to stop.
And of course they would run off. So he figured

(22:33):
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 and,

(22:54):
was really just kind of meek and embarrassed. But yeah,
we've treated a blue person before. So Cowane basically hung
around this clinic until more blue people came in. And
this is where he met the Ritchie siblings. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
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
North America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who
had who had the same condition. I'm just going to
call it this condition now.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
I think we've said it enough.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Or at least I have.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
I don't know if he, where he got this idea
is 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 metemoglobinemia. I'm

(24:10):
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 nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B5 reductase
and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all
of that excess metemoglobins into hemoglobins in patients with metemoglobin anemia.

(24:35):
And so I don't know where he got the idea,
but he tried it and apparently injected the Richie kids
with it and they stopped being blue, like almost on
the spot.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
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,
you're like, oh, my gosh, it's like it's gone.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
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 was 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 is a pretty joyous occasion for them.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
There's going to be a movie about this at some point, right?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
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 to 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

(25:47):
it's been scanned so many times. It's really lost a step.
But the original is apparently really something to see.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Should we say the quote that Coane had in that
Science 82 article? He said, and they walked into the office,
he said, they were bluer than hell. Very Kentucky.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
All right. So over time, 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.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
You've been doing really great.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
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

(26:59):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Well, the thing I saw that there was one, and
that was the one in 2012 that was still blue.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Like by choice?

Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think so. Yeah, just didn't take the pill.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Wow, that's neat.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
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 argyria.
And some people are bluish, some people are silver. If

(27:45):
you've looked up, you know, blue people or silver people online,
you have no doubt seen uh paul karrison they called
him papa smurf and he is all over the internet
as one of the more famous cases of egeria.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah and he uh was he kind of emerged as
i don't know if a cautionary tale is right because
that was not his purpose um but he he also
he 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

(28:22):
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 in hell,
as Kyle Wayne would probably put it.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
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 do. to see what it can do on a
human body.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
I want to be a fresh daisy.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
And he wasn't the only person experimenting at the time.
Like apparently for a while it was an 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.

(29:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
That's right. And this can happen if you work in
like a silver mine or something.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Like it can be one of the side effects of
mining in silver mines.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
I also saw that in the old time, not even
that old, but just pre-digital photography processing, photograph processing, you could.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Actually Old timey?

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, you know, the 80s.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
You could actually develop argyria 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.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
I don't either. I spent a lot of times in
dark rooms... as a kid because of my dad. Because
you were bad? Yeah, go in there, turn on that
red light and sit there and think about what you've done. No,
my dad was an amateur photographer. Well, I guess semi-professionally
sold stuff, but he did his own developing and I

(30:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, just, you know, they're dark obviously. Sure. And you're
in there for, 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.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
With you I well I always associate them with the
the murderer finally coming into focus and they happen to
be standing right next to the the photographer is developing
it so to me dark rooms are very tense scary.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Okay like as it has the as the photo paper
like comes into focus yeah Oh, very tense.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
It shows the calls coming from inside the dark room.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
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

(31:19):
of it.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
What?

Speaker 3 (31:39):
You know, uh, 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

(32:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
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

(32:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
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

(33:07):
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 a colloidal silver homebrew, it's going to
have any effect on your life or your health. And

(33:30):
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

(33:54):
that I saw chucked to society in general, in that
silver is an antimicrobial of last resort that is... they're
figuring out how to use it against antibiotic-resistant bugs like MRSA.
Silver will get in there and even kill MRSA. But
that silver resistance may be developed in bugs by all

(34:19):
these people taking colloidal silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver,
you know, homebrews and stuff like that, that it's actually
creating silver-resistant microbes, which is not a good thing for anybody.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
All right. Well, let's take our second break.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
Good. Yes.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
And we'll talk a little bit more about colloidal silver
right after this.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
All right.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
So you mentioned earlier that, uh, kind of in passing
that colloidal silver had been used pre, you know, mainstream
medical science coming on board. And it's really true. And
they were kind of onto something in that, like you said,
there were, there are some antimicrobial properties. So people like
Pliny the Elder, Cyrus the Great, they both touted the

(35:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
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

(35:58):
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 stayed
in use for a long time Nowadays, you'll find it
in like wound dressings. Sometimes sutures will be coated in silver.

(36:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
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?

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Dilute it?

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Diluting it. Right on the tip of my tongue.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
You did it.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
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.

(37:29):
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,
we'll just say it's a supplement.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
And just move it to the shelf, you know, four
feet away.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
And the FDA said, no.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
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 this 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

(38:14):
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 this 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.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, and I should point out, I don't know anything
about Gwyneth Paltrow's current usage, but her appearance on Dr.
Oz in 2013 was when she touted it. She may
have given it up. Who knows?

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Who knows? Paul Karasaw never gave it up, though, Chuck.
He died in 2013 as well, same year that Gwyneth
Paltrow outed herself as a silver user. Yeah. And Paul Carisson,
he apparently used colloidal silver, that homebrew he made, up
until the end. Like he never stopped, even though he

(39:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, I mean, I guess his point was probably, well,
I'm already blue. Yeah. Like, why stop now?

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Can't get much bluer. So, what else you got?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
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.

(40:00):
And it's funny, this article kept calling it intermarriage. What
they mean is, you know.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
It's just such a lovely way to put it.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
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
100 generations or as little as 100 generations, which is
a long time. But over the course of human history,

(40:38):
it's not that long.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
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 2000 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

(41:01):
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 100 generations. Right.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
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

(41:56):
adjust depending on that UV exposure by producing or slowing
down melanin production. That's it.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Pretty neat. But it is surprising that it's, Well, actually,
it's not that surprising that it can happen over 100
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.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah. I mean, it surprised the scientists. I think they
just thought it was quicker than they anticipated.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
Or in the future.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah. That's true.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
That's right. So take that.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
You got anything else?

Speaker 2 (42:40):
I have nothing else.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
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 Listener Mail.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
I'm going to call this one of the many... Thanks
we got for the M, not NRA, but the Mr.
Nah episode.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Right.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
This is one I think for both of us like
we were super stoked to do and like in retrospect
very proud of.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah. We're stoked.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
We were super stoked, not just stoked.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Bruh.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Stoked plus. There's no way to say stoked without sounding
like a bro. No.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
No way at all.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
It stinks, too, because I'm not a bro, but I
do like saying stoked.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
That's fine. Just say stoked. Be loud and proud like
the last remaining blue Fugate.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Man.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
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.
Nah vaccines. When I saw the topic pop up on
my player, took a deep breath and decided to listen anyway.

(44:20):
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 by, 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. Nah episode

(44:42):
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 grow Curiosity to
take hold is heroic. And that is from Mark, and boy,

(45:03):
I'm going to read that one another hundred times today.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, just print it out and fold it up and
keep it under your pillow.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yes, thank you, Mark. He wanted his last name to
be withheld, but appreciate the work you've done, Mark, and
hang in there.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
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 metemoglobinemia actually
can blush blue.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Oh, so they get bluer?

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Yeah. Isn't that neat?

Speaker 2 (45:35):
I guess that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
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

(45:57):
stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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