The Ins and Outs of Albinism

before in my life. Well, I think that a little credit goes to our palagraphs or who has a knack for explaining very complex science stuff. Uh. And we also need to shout out, as usual when it comes to science. A kid's website, which is in this case Frontiers for Young Minds. That was a really good one. Yeah. They had a pretty good breakdown on albinism. Not albinism, let's just get that out of the way. Yeah. And I also tried to find out it it doesn't seem appropriate

to say albinos. Uh. I didn't expressly see that anywhere, but it just it seems like with the how we refer to things these days, that that that that stands out as something that we shouldn't do. Certainly did you find that though I did not, I didn't um, although there are all sorts of like um like pro social sites for people with albinism all over the place. I'm surprised we didn't run into that, but because I saw

it used. But I'm gonna err on the side of caution and just say albinism, yeah, totally, or people with albinism right well sure, or plants. Yeah, that's that's something that came up. Like certainly you've you're familiar that you know, not all it's not just people who can have albinism, but that um animals can too. Every once in a while you hear about it very rare like um uh, like a shark with albinism or like you said, an alligator with albinism. It's just so um stark and surprising.

One of the reasons why is because it's exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom. UM. But it's still around, and it's not just mammals that can have albinism too, although it would make a lot more sense if it was just mammals that got it because it affects a very specific part of the body, the Melana sites, which we'll talk about in great, great, great detail a little bit um.

But but that like, uh, like a whole cascade of events goes from or it takes place within those Melana sites, and any part of that can get messed up or disordered. And those those are what are the basis of the

different types of albanism, as we'll see. Yeah, and you know the reason that you you indicated that it was super rare to see like a guerilla with albinism, although you can see that's because and we'll get into the genetics more specifically, but it's in autosomal recessive trait, which means that both of your parents have to have this Albanism gene. So, I mean, it's rare enough in humans when two people fall in love and mate for life

and stuff like that. But when you're counting on two sharks that happened to swim by, that happened to have that, uh, express their genes that way, and they happen to, you know, get friendly with one another, bump up against one another. Sure rub fins, however sharks do that thing. Uh, it makes it even more rare because you're counting on um almost just like you know, fate or destiny, not destiny.

Let's not get hippie dippy about it. But you know, a couple of guerillas getting together in the midst that both have this genetic gene. They wait for the mist to settle and then they're like, no one can see I just said genetic gene too. That's just what I know. So yeah, for whatever reason, Chuck, whether it's like because the populations are isolated or what, but it it does seem to be much rarer. Albanism does seem to be much rare in like the wild than it is among humans.

And even in like some human populations, it's like you could call it not rare at all. Like if you go to some parts of Africa, UM, some parts of central or South America, UM, you'll find you'll find groups that like are fairly small genetically speaking, um and and the and albinism has just become kind of like an endemic trade among the population. Yeah. And I think that's even where the first uh, the word albino was first used in the eighteen hundreds in Africa for people that

had albinism. And it's I think the root is the Latin albus or albo from Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese. That's right. So when we're talking about albinism, I think most people probably know what we're talking about. But um use, really, when you see a person with albinism, they have either totally white hair or a very light colored hair UM usually UM, little to no skin pigmentation UM. Or they

can have kind of like a yellowish or pinkish skin pigmentation. UM. They might have eyes that lack color or seem red, which apparently has to do with the blood vessels in the eye reflecting the red light from well back out at you the viewer. But all of this has to do with a complete in total or a greatly reduced lack of melanin. Right. Yeah, And you know, if we're gonna crumble a myth, we can crumble the myth that

um you are not. Like, if you have albinism and you don't have red eyes or pink eyes, then you don't have true albinism, And that's not true at all. There are a lot of different kinds of albinism, and depending on the way that genes express themselves, there can be a range of of effects on your body. Uh ed was mentioned even with the plant Kingdom with maize, you know, there's uh you can have and it's not

white corn. That's a different thing altogether. But if you, because it trusts me, if you look up albanism and corn, the first thing you're gonna see as a corn snake. Even if you so you have to type in maze and then you're just gonna see white corn. But there are a few different kinds of albinism and maze, one of which basically is no pigment or chlorophyll, and that's not even gonna survive because it's a plant, one that will eventually become just a regular ear of corn. And

then a third type, which is really interesting. It's striped

and some parts have that pigment in some parts don't. Yeah, And like, if you put two different types of albinism, whether it's corn or humans together, the person who has both of those different traits probably won't appear to have albinism all because you have to have matching gene mutations to have an autosomal recessive uh uh genetic disorder in albi is one of those, like you said, yeah, And interestingly, if you just sort of look at it in a vacuum.

Albinism isn't necessarily harmful. Uh. There can be comorbidities, and there can be other effects that happen, of course, like with things like sun and sunburn and sun exposure, and there's our vision problems that can happen, and we'll get into all this more specifically, but just by itself, albinism isn't necessarily harmful to a person or a population, right, And there's different types to their syndromic and non syndromic,

and syndromic means that you usually have other related health issues, and there are syndromic types of albinism. But one of the things that tends to UM tends to go along with albinism, along with the lack of skin and hair or pigmentation UM is vision problems, which we'll talk about,

but there's other stuff too. There's they've correlated UM autism with albinism, which I couldn't find a lot on, but it maybe wonder there's also a correlation between vision um problems and autism, and it's possible, they theorize because no one knows at this point what the correlation is, but they theorized that UM has to do with a low level of visual input leading to autism. So it's possible that if you have a low level of visual input

because of albinism, that could lead to autism as well, potentially. Right, so much we don't know, but we do know that it is albinism is a neural crest disorder. And this basically means, I mean, we can get as as wonky here science wise as you want to, but the easy version is it means that it's very early in embryonic development, uh, when a group of cells is folding into a crest, and at this point, if something is going on with those cells, it can affect a lot of different things

moving forward, including albinism. Right, Because those neural crests, when they form the extremely early embryonic stage, they form um cartilage, bone, skin, smooth muscle, cells, neurons, They differentiate into a bunch of different stuff. But the point of that is is that like you're the gene that is responsible for whatever type of albinism you have, um like differentiated like really early on,

long before many other genes were active. It also it also points out, Chuck, I think, um, something that's that's worth mentioning that at this point because it's a genetic disorder, and apparently in extraordinarily early in development genetic disorder. Um, there's no treatment for albinism. Everything treating is just to take care of the the symptoms that come along with it. I think that's a good overviewed to get us going. Don't you think so too. Yeah, let's let's take a break.

I smell a break. Yeah. Well, in fact, I could just be done and we could just run a bunch of ads if you want to do it that way. I don't think everybody would like that. I think they'd

rather hear is muddle through albinism. All right, we'll do a couple of messages from our sponsors and we'll be right back as watch skul So, when most people think of albinism, chuck Um, what they're actually thinking of is a specific type called oculo cutaneous albinism or O c A, which is the most prevalent form, but it's also the

most distinct form as well. Yeah, and this is you know, if you've ever seen the musician Johnny Winner or or Edgar Winner or uh, you know a lot of times people with alba is m will be cast in movies unfairly. A lot of times it's it's the bad guy because they have a unique look. Uh, and you know, it's Hollywood and that's kind of what they do exactly. And we'll get into that later on too. But um, it's

funny though. I did see a couple of videos where people with albinism sat and watched movie characters of people with albinism and basically just sort of made fun of it. They're just like, Okay, another bad guy. That's a surprise. But that's exactly that's what you're talking about. It. That's o c A. One is when you're talking about maybe someone with the pink or red eyes, the lack of pigment, the skin, that white white hair, right, um, and that one.

So there's supposedly there's somewhere between four and maybe even nine different forms, but most scientists who study albinism recognize maybe four to five different forms. The rest of them are, um, these really really almost ex oddic rare mutations that have occurred in these really isolated communities where albinism is actually common enough that it just is mutating in a new form. So most people say four to five forms. Um, And if you're like the easygoing type, you just call it

type one type two. If you're high strung like me, you probably call the most common one O C A one A. There's also O C A one B, O C A two, O C A UM three and four and so on, actually not so on. That's that's all of them. But the thing that all of these are, at least most of them sharing common is that there's either a total or complete lack of pigmentation. And then again it affects the eyes because it's that ocular cutaneous albinism.

And so with this lack of pigmentation, that one, uh, that's that most people think of when they think of albinism. O C A one A there's like no pigmentation whatsoever. And everybody with albinism has those those pigment forming cells melana sites. It's just the for different reasons, those melano sites are not producing pigments to varying degrees, and in

O C A one eight they're not producing pigment at all. Right, So, like you kind of said at the beginning, if you see someone that has the red or pinkish eyes, it's those are the blood vessels that you're saying. Because of the lack of pigment, and that's what's also going to lead to those vision problems. Uh. Like you kind of hinted at it. You know, a lot more light is going to be entering your eye that's not being absorbed like it would if you have pigment in your eye.

It's not being diffracted. Uh at the very least, if you have albinism, you're probably gonna be really sensitive delight. Um. But it can also actually damage the retina as well, right, which is a big one. Um. As we'll see, that's a it's a huge problem that the idea that um it's called photophobia, like deep sensitivity to light. Yeah. Um. And then also you you just can't see as well, um like you can in that in turn can lead

to problems with learning in high school drops. It's like a cascading effect that all just chickins with not enough pigment in the eye. It's really astounding with just something that seems kind of small has like the impacts that it has. Yeah. And you know the great thing about most schools systems these days is they make great efforts for any kind of uh kid in school that has any sort of a challenge to say like, all right,

well we have something to accommodate for that now. But it you know, it's taken a long time to get to this point and we still have a long way to go. But you know, you can't imagine somebody with albinism in the nineteen you know, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and what schooling must have been like when it was basically just like sorry, you know, you can't you obviously can't keep up. You're struggling to learn to read, and we don't quite know what to do with that, right

and there, and and they always punctuated with him. And by the way, everything your classmates are saying about you is true. Hopefully teachers are at least kind about it even back then. Maybe, but kids are always mean. Yeah, for sure. They're getting nicer, though, are they. That's great, man, that's a huge improvement. Well, they are, but it's um, I mean, obviously they're still bullying and a lot of

problems with that stuff. But the kids are getting better because it's I think we've proven as parents and educators that that can be taught, that you start them at a young age teaching about facial differences. Or just any kind of differences and that you know that we're all the same. Uh. You know, it sounds very free to be you and me, but we're all the same on the inside. And so that kind of like teaching that stuff actually works. That's why it's frustrating when people push

back on that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't want Mike could be nice. You can't make my kid be nice. It's a First Amendment issue. That was just a little soapox moment for me. I like it. I put one foot up on there with you too, Thank you so um so there's room for you in eat chuck. Yeah, Jerry's always up here. Of course she won't stop. It's a little much if you ask me, so, chuck. Before we keep moving on, because I think we need to

talk about that social aspect of albinism now. Um but but before we hit that, I want to say, there's one other thing that one of the big differentiators about between the different types of albinism is, like we were saying, at what point in the process of creating melanin that the pigmentation um is disrupted, means that you could actually produce some levels of pigment or some different types of pigment. Like, we have a couple of types of pigment that we

produce us humans. You melanin, that's one. That's the money melanin. Everybody thinks about its like it produces like the browns and everything like that. It gives you your tan if you have brown or dark hair, that's all you melanin. But there's also fail melanin, which is kind of a red yellow pigment producer. And people can have types of albinism where you're producing uh no you melanin whatsoever, but plenty of yellow red pao melanin. So that will adjust

the different kinds of skin pigments you have. And sometimes you'll see people with albinism we have like you know, totally pale skin, but like a big shock of yellow gold hair. They're producing plenty of phao melanin. Just no you ma melanin. And those are the different like the different gradiations of of albinism have to do with how much in what type of melanin can escape out into

the skin, into the eyes and into the hair. Yeah, And interestingly, birds and mammals are the only living things that have melanostes, which are those cells that produced the melanin. So this is why you're not going to see a lot of bright colored mammals. Like, you're not gonna see a lot of bright green or blue mammals. Uh. And then when its to birds to but you're like, wait a minute, why are humans you know, basically shades of sort of brown? Uh? And why can birds be like

pink and orange and red. It's for a lot of reasons. So we talked about some of these before. But one of the reasons is their diet, like in the case of the flamingo, of flamingo is white except uh for their diet, which turns them red or pink. Yeah, they can. Um. They can also produce certain kinds of chains of amino acids that produce blue or green. They can combine some of the pigments they produce with some structural stuff, like in in the way that their feathers are built, to

create entirely new colors. Um. There's a lot of stuff you can do, but that's typically birds. And the reason they think that birds are so colorful is because the visual acuity in the bird world is a little more important even in the human world. As important as it is for us. But there's also another thing that that um melanin does is it can provide like structure and toughness UM. Like if you look at the outer layer of fur and like a cold um, like a cold

dwelling animal, that's usually gonna be fairly dark UM. And one of the reasons why it's dark is because it's also providing like structure and toughness to that that outer layer for not just you know, UM, preventing U light to get through, UV to get through, right, But then you start scritching underneath, you get to that little baby soft, lighter colored undercoat. Even with my dog Charlie, who's got the longer hair, she's you know, she has an outer

coat and an undercoat, and that undercoat is different. It feels a little different, it looks a little different. The exception to that, of course, is polar bears. They're not actually producing any kind of white pigment. I think it's the structure of their um, their hairs, their clear hollow tubes, so they refract light so that all of the light comes back at you. Yeah, just google green polar bear if you want to freak your kids out a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah, it sounds sousical. It's kind of a

green polar bear. So while we're on that though we talk, you know, I want to talk a little bit about the um sort of social implicate implications of having Albanism.

And you know, it's interesting that it's much more common in parts of Africa, especially in Sub Saharan Africa, but that's also where you can find some of the most uh stigma and people being ostracized, which is I don't know, it's really kind of sad that it seems like something that is more common might be accepted a little bit more, but that's not really the case, is it. No, it's not. And unfortunately the reason why is because people with Albanism

in Africa are in some parts of Africa. We've learned over the years you can't just be like in Africa because it's just so ridiculously different culturally and geographically. But in some parts of Africa, I believe Bigeria, Um parts of Nigeria, if you're if you have alb albinism, you are extraordinarily valuable. I think the body of a person with albinism is worth about seventy five thousand U S dollars in in places where people are living on like

six dollars a day is for like medical research. No oh no, no no, no, I know you're talking about for witchcraft and sourcery. They're considered the bone. They there's lower, there's so here's here's the problem. Um. Not only are people with albinism subject to being ostracized and isolated because they're different and they look different the people and people not just in Africa, but in other places where education is less prevalent and less standardized and science is less

um relied on. I guess um, there's just a lot of myth and lower surrounding albinism, and so people think that it's like contagious. So you just want to stay away from those people because you don't want to catch it. Um. And then all the way across the spectrum to their bones are made of gold dust. And if you get your hands on the cadaver of an person without albinism, you can you can create potions and sell them to

people in in the wholesale market. You can. You would pay seventy five dollars for the the corpse of a person with albinism. And it happens like people get murdered for their bodies because they're they have albinism, and it's

just it's it's a despicable practice and trade. But part of it is like figuring out how to get across to like these large groups and populations the science behind all this, and that at the very least it's not contagious and at best their their bones are not filled with gold dust, so please stop chopping them up kind of thing. Yeah, And as far as you know here in the United States, if you know this is like we talked about, you know, kids teasing or stay airing.

As as parents and educators, you should be armed, I think with the barest bones of information at least to be able to say, oh, well, you know, that is somebody with albinism and that means their body doesn't produce pigment and so their skin looks different than ours does. And if your parents you can just leave it at that. And that's really all you have to do. Like, if you want to listen to this episode and get into

uh Melana sites, knock yourself out, that's parenting plus. But at the very least you should be able to describe it. And like I know when I was a kid and this is not a knock on my parents. They were both smart people and teachers. But but just scared to death of people with albinism. No, no, but they probably would not have known what to tell me. Uh. They probably would have said, oh, that's an albi now full stop, steer clear of them. That's contagious. No, I don't think

that either. But I just think we have a duty these days, like to educate ourselves to the to the lowest level of understanding other people, you know, yeah, you know. That's something that I've carried with myself for many, many years, is like people didn't explain the why to me, and so there didn't seem to be purposed to anything. I couldn't.

I couldn't time to appreciate the things that the reasons why we were doing things, the strategy to football, it was just get out there and make sure that person doesn't get past you kind of stuff, no reason why doesn't. And it's like a stupid example, but it's a good case of it that like nobody stopped and said, here's the grand picture, here's the grand scheme of things. And the more information I would have had, the more I would have appreciated life and probably appreciated other people too,

So I agree with you completely. I think that that is that is a part and parcel with making the world a better places is providing more information. Um two kids especially. Yeah, and again this is slightly tangential and soapboxy, but I think in our day, and certainly before our day as kids, there was a lot of just like shut up and don't ask questions sort of attitude. Yeah, that's a terrible thing to do. You should do is

ask questions and get questions sort. My lord, it's frustrating the whole like because I said so kind of thing, which is so prevalent when we were kids. As I understand, it's going the way of the dinosaur, which I think is great. It is, but boy, when you accidentally catch yourself saying it, that's apparent you're just like, oh no, i'll be right back. I'm gonna go flog myself. Oh I'm sure there's plenty of parent groups just waiting to

flog you outside your door too. Yeah. The because I said so crowd, Yeah yeah, they're like the Guilty Remnant, the Leftovers. They just stand outside your house and smoke, which were two episodes away from finishing by the way that appens tonight. That's great man. Congratulations from from all of the stuff you should know listeners. I just have to say, and I knew this was the show that got progressively better and more bonkers, but boy, what they're

thrown down in season three. I am all over it. I don't believe I made it that far. What. Yeah, and I thought you I thought you like said you wish you could go back and do it over again. Yeah, yeah, the first time. I don't think I realized and then kept going after season one. Yeah, yeah, there were three seasons. Okay, well good, I've got some sticks and I gotta reframe everything. Now.

I'll watch this on your recommendation. So, Chuck, I feel like we can button this up by saying society has a long way to go toward learning how to treat people with albinism. Equally agreed. Yeah, but let's do that. All right, Let's do that, and let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit more about what limited amount we know about what causes this right after this as watched by SKA. All right, so we're back. We know and we've talked about this already that it's a

recessive gene that causes albinism. But it's it's like, all right, so that's a recessive gene. This is like when you're not off in biology class when I woke up. You wake up and you go, Okay, well, I know the answer is a recessive gene. But how does that happen? Uh? And the secret to it all is a little protein called tirasinase. Right, how would you pronounce it? I just exactly like that taraskay, those tyros sinase. But that's how it's spelled tyrosinas. But tarrasin is surely is the way

that you'd say, right, I think probably. So, So that's the one that's the one that is like the the catalyst for basically everything that comes after to create melanin. Right, whether it's you melanin or phao melanin doesn't matter. Tarrasse is like the beginning of it. And so in that O C A one A, the type of albinism where you just utterly lack of pigmentation altogether, tarrasinse um is an impacted. So when your terracins is impacted, your melanin

production just doesn't happen. In your melano sytes and therefore you have O C A one A albinism. That's right. Uh, And if that happens early on, that whole chain reaction is going to shut down, and that's when you're going to have the complete lack of pigmentation. In the other forms, it might affected at different stages along the way of that melanin creation. So that's why you might you know,

not be totally absent of pigmentation. Yeah. And again, like there's different slightly different processes that produce you melanin and other processes that produce FO melanin, so um any any one of those things. It's a very like complex intricate production to to create melanin. And so that means that there's a lot of different points where that that process can break down. It's just I just find that extremely fascinating.

And then also one other thing I find fascinating when you talked about um autosomal recessive traits, did you mention that means that two parents can both have the gene for albinism, but neither one have albinism, but they're considered carriers and so they can pass it along or not pass it along to their kids. Well, yeah, because I mean, and I think this is something that you would often see is two parents without albinism have a child with albinism,

and someone might just be like, well, how does that work. Well, it's just very easy because you have to have both parents, and if obviously these parents didn't have both of their parents that had that genetic mutation, then they're not gonna have it. But it's interesting. It's one of those things where you sort of like the sharks sharks bumping in the night. Did you say sharks first? I think I did say sharks. That's a whole different problem. That's bumping

in the night. H sharks bumping in the night. It's like, uh, you wouldn't know this. You probably wouldn't know this about yourself if you only had one, if you were just carrier, you know what I mean, right, So you probably wouldn't find this out until you had a kid exactly. And that was that's one reason why there's a lot of lower and myth around um albinism in less educated areas, like there's like a question of paternity, like this can't

possibly be my kid um that kind of thing. But then on the same token too, as far as passing it along Uh, if you have albinism and you fall in love and reproduce with a person who doesn't have albinism, but it also is in a carrier of albinism, your children won't have albinism. Have both those parents. You gotta have both those parents that have passed along both those things, because again, you can have siblings that don't have albinism.

Because like I think, you have a chance of getting albinism or of being passed along to you, you have a fifty percent chance or seventy chance of it not being passed along, But there's a different combination of what's

not passed along. Yeah. Yeah. What I also thought was interesting was um when Ed towards the end started talking a little bit about in the animal kingdom, and you know the fact that it's for sure a disadvantage if you're living in the jungle and you're an animal, because coloration is a big part of your camouflage and survival, blending into your natural habitat as both the predator and a prey. So if you are, you know, an alligator or a guerilla with albinism, you're definitely in a disadvantage

in the wild. Um. I don't know that it's you know, it's definitely in the wild, because he said, if you have like a bunch of lab rats just sort of doing their thing, then it's really not going to affect them much at all. But you know, we talked a little bit in the Cave Dwellers episode about these organisms and I think reptiles that live deep in these caves that are essentially I have no pigment and in there it doesn't really matter, and in fact, some of the

vision stuff might be an advantage. Yeah, like the fact that you don't have pigments like bouncing light and refracting it off. UM. I guess basically keeping it from bouncing around means that you should be able to get more light, more visual information in very low levels of light, So that would be an advantage for sure. Yeah, I think

it's pretty interesting. It is interesting. So I guess before we go chuck um, we should we should talk about there's a lot of other um conditions that can happen that have to do with pigmentation melanin um that really don't have anything to do with albinism, which really kind of goes to show you, like just how complex melanin production actually is you know. Yeah, and we talked recently. I don't know why, but we did mention viddle igo recently. Um,

this is not the same thing as albinism. This is when you have these sort of very defined areas of your body that have no melanin. Uh. It is similar

because it has to do with melanin, but not albinism. No. They think that, um, there's either some sort of uh, really bad sunburn mechanical insult, like something happened to your milana sites, uh, you know, mechanically, or you might have had like some sort of chemical reaction and that whatever trauma happens to the milana sites, it triggers your immune system to target them as foreign invaders. So they think now that viduligo is some sort of autoimmune disorder. That's right.

What else is there? There's poliosis, which I looked and no, it does not have anything to do with polio. They should they miss titled this one. I think they really did because it has nothing to do with it. But that's the one where someone will have like just a shock, like a little patch of white hair, just totally pigment free hair. Yeah. I know a couple of people that have that the little h like the white schwa. Sure like.

Um remember John Henson from Talk Soup. Uh, yeah, he had the white schwa RT example of that guy living with poliosis. That's right. Uh. Emily calls any kind of hair thing like that a schwa. I don't know why it makes sense. I've heard it before, but I don't know what it means. I think it means exactly what it means, right, I don't. I think she just means what like if I poof my hair up in a with a big like like a pompadour, she would call

that a schway. Okay, I got you. It's very I think no one outside my household really understands what it means. It's a tuft of hair. Yeah, it's a tough Okay. I don't think I realized that's what poliosis was. Yeah, that's that's what it is. What do you think it was? You thought I had to do with polio, didn't you? I totally did. Actually I did too until I confirmed. Nope,

just terribly named. There's also Wardenburg syndrome. Uh. This is abnormality with the pigment and the hair and skin and eyes. But this is a congenital disease also not have anything to do with albinism, right, um, and I think that's about it. There's piebald is m. You know the kind of piebald horses where there's a big um white patch, usually a like a large one sometimes on the chataful. It's the type of horse. It's actually a condition um that that humans can have as well. It's just that

they bred a certain type of horse. They selected it in a certain type of horse called the piebald horse. Uh. You know, I have a tuxedo catos. I'm kind of curious about how that happens. I'm gonna look into that. That's classy. Yeah, classy tuxedo cat. That's right. Well that's it for albinism. Huh. That's it. If you want to learn more about albinism, you should go out and do that.

There's a lot to learn, um. And you could do worse than starting at um Frontiers for Kids on their Albanism article, because it's a pretty good one, and then just go from there. Uh. And since I said just go from there, it's time for a listener mail. Yeah. This is short and sweet. We got called out on something and whenever we get something wrong, we certainly like to uh and and not just a correction on a

fact or something. But when we get something wrong that we shouldn't have gotten wrong, then we like to call attention to it and we try and do better. Uh. This is from Natalie from California. I wanted to start out with saying a big fan of the show, found it during lockdown and made a big difference from my boredom level as levels while working from home. But I was a bit disappointed guys listening to the child chillibus kidnapping as multiple times you guys implied that not being

able to spell means that you're not smart. Uh. And you're totally right, Natalie. I didn't even think about that, but Uh, Natalie says, I'm an adult with dyslexia and I cannot spell, but save my life, in spite of this, I'm a highly intelligent and successful adult. Uh. And it's fairly able us to correlate ability to spell with overall intelligence and I expect more. And Natalie, you are totally right, and that is on us and big apologies. We uh

did not think that one through. No, indeed, we definitely we weren't trying to throw any shade on people with dyslexia at all, of course not. But you know, it's another thing like we all learn as we go through life, and when you learn on the air, it can be a little embarrassing sometimes. Just that's what we do as a job and so we we take that. Yeah, so was that from Natalie. Yeah, yeah, thank you for for

that one, Natalie. We appreciate it. And if you have something you want to call us out on, we'll we'll take it and you can address it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.