What's the Deal with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy?

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Cherry. So this is stuff you should know breaking news from two thousand fifteen editions. No, this is still very relevant to sure it. It definitely is. But I mean, like at the end of last year the beginning of this year, it's certainly

made the rounds a little more. While with the um movie Concussion, which is apparently like roundly criticized by everyone involved in the study of CTE, I didn't see it just because you know, it didn't look that good at me as a movie. Well, apparently I really like did a lot of oversimplification. It came to a lot of conclusions about the science that haven't been reached yet and may never be reached. That it was just kind of like, um.

But there are some really good documentaries out there, and I want to tout one just right off the bat. There's a two hour front line on this, a League of Denial. Did you see it? Uh? No, Man, it

is good. I'm not quite sure when it's from, maybe too sometime between two thousand and twelve and two thousand and fourteen or fifteen, but it was based on this book by the Fana brothers who wrote League of Denial, the book UM, and it was just about their investigation into what the NFL knew or didn't know about concussions possibly leading to this this condition CTE. We can just call it CT right well, practicing you say it once, I'm definitely going to screw it, and then we'll just

say CT after that. Okay, the condition is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Yeah, great, ta yeah CT Jumping on that grenade for the team. Yeah, we've known about it for a while. It's gone by other names farther back in in the medical literature. Sure, and we did our own uh in two thousand nine. Long time ago, we did one on concussions called do concussions called early Death? Yeah, remember that one, Um, And I don't even think we I don't even know ct was on a radar at

the time. I don't know if maybe we might have mentioned it. It started to really seep out into the news around two thousand nine, so we probably mentioned it, but I don't think we understood it or recognized it like we do now, meaning like you and me. Yeah, just two yokels behind the mica. Uh so you didn't

mention the other names. Um. Back in the day, In fact, we can go all the way back, shockingly to there was a dude named Dr Harrison T. Martland and uh he published an article in the Journal of American Medical Journal of the American Medical Association, and he you know, you've heard the term punch drunk in relation to boxers like outside the ring, Like you know, he as as big Ray, he's a little punch drunk. He was a boxer. What are he was talking about, although he didn't know

it at the time, was CTE. Which is it? It's really remarkable. It resembles if you had no idea and you were just a doctor looking at at a brain post more to my guess, let's really know. The way to say it is in order to unfortunately, right now, in order to study CT, you have to look at a brain under a microscope, right, which is the only

I can't really do while the person is alive. So if you didn't know any better, you would see a brain and say, well, this person has a had had a degenerative illness in the brain, neurological illness, and I would say Parkinson's and dementia. It's all here. But the striking thing is is it's not an illness. It is literally from repeated blows to the head. Yeah, it's not a disease causing or it's not caused by disease, right. Yeah,

it's a like a traumatic brain injury repeated. But some people put themselves into a situation over and over again where they're going to be exposed to the possibility of traumatic brain injury, right, and chief among them as boxers. And this doctor Martlin was basically describing this in the medical literature from what I understand, just the symptoms, right. I don't think he was king at brains, was he? No? I don't think he was or trying to identify. I

mean he called it punch drunk syndrome, but dementia pugilistic. Yeah, it's uh, what he was looking at was CT, and we now we now know that, we know we know that now. But again he was just kind of describing the symptoms. It wasn't until I think the science got a little further that they really started to look at brains and we understood the boxers were at risk for

what we understand now is CT. Yeah, they reached middle age, they would be like a little more confused, maybe get dizzy when they're walking around, be unsteady, maybe just slower generally moving around, and they like, yeah, I got punched drunk. Just basically just think of Rocky from Rocky four on

m I get them confused after Rocky three. So Rocky three was Mr T. It was Rocky to Mr T. Rocky three, Rockie two was the rematch with Apollo, Okay, well, then Rocky four was with Ivan Drago and Bridgete Nielsen. I didn't even really all the way through. I don't think what you didn't know? That's like lesser Rocky to me. Uh well that was that was when I was running around in the woods like shooting Rooskis with my fake m c M sixteen as like as seven eight year old,

So this would have been like right there for me. Well, and it was big time. I saw in the theater. I'm sure, like I saw it right when it came out on video. I'm sure. I talked to my parents and he getting show time so I could see it. He had burn Comie burn T shirts on. And then the iron curtain fell and I was like, wait a minute, none of the stuff that we were told holds up. Yeah, people just trying to get by over there exactly just like us. So where were we, Well, this is where

we were talking. I think it's really important to say that, yes, people knew there was such a thing as CTE. They called it punch drunk syndrome for a very long time. But everybody said, boxers know that this is going on there and millions exactly, they're getting paid millions of dollars to do this, They're doing it on their own accord. And this is such a small tranche of the population

of the world. Really who cares and it we should definitely say the medical establishment, especially in the United States, that we care. We have been calling on the Boxing Association and the government to ban boxing since the fifties, right, But for the most part, America said, well, we love a good fight, so we're not gonna go along with that. You guys keep boxing, And that was the way it went until two thousand two. And ladies are boxing now, Yes,

they are bringing ct just like many. Uh yeah, I mean that's not super new. But um, I think female boxing has grown a lot. I think especially since Muhammad Ali's daughter got into it. Oh yeah, she definitely brought a lot of attent tremendously. Do you remember when the Boxing Association tried to make female boxers wear skirts when

they boxed? Did they really? Interesting? The whole thing was just like an onion set up, but it was real life, and it was first of all, making any women in any profession wear a skirt these days, it's kind of untoward if you ask me. But secondly, choose the one profession where you shouldn't attempt to tell a woman to wear anything, let alone a skirt she doesn't want to. Female boxing is the first one that comes to mind. It's very interesting. Is a female boxing or women's boxing?

Probably both? All right? Okay, alright, So uh, two thousand two. Let's flash forward a little bit, uh into the more modern era. That was a neuropathologist still is name Bennett um Malu. Who That's who Will Smith played, right, Wasn't that about him? Right? Okay, I guess I should see that. I'm not a big Will Smith fan. You should just watch a fan of bad biopics. Watch The League of Denial.

There's he's interviewed extensively in it. Yeah, he's better. He does a better Omalu than does So there was a there was a man center for the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer Mike Webster died of a heart attack at age fifty, and he wound up uh in the care of Amaliu for his autopsy, and he started looking around the brain and said, there's something going on here that's

really weird. Uh. If you remember when we did um well the concussions, then then what was the other one that Alzheimer's recently where we talked about, okay, dementia, where we talked about beta am Lloyd proteins. Yeah, so they build up as like a plaque, right, Yeah, they build up like a plaque and then these towel proteins come along after and really do a lot of damage. He noticed that Webster had a lot of these towel proteins, but not the former beta amloid proteins, which is really weird.

It was weird in that he when he opened up Mike Webster's um skull and started poking around his brain like Mike Webster had been showing all of the classic symptoms of Alzheimer's in dementia for many, many years now, long before he died of a heart attack at age fifty, which is pretty young. So Amalu was like, surely I'm going to find these beta amaloids, and he didn't, so that the the lack of beta amloids made him dig a little deeper and really start looking at Mike Webster's brain,

and that's when he found the tow proteins. And he's like, what are these doing here? Especially by themselves? Well, yeah, and that's like I said earlier, he everyone thought he had Alzheimer's in dementia, but he just had dementia, which is not the way it's supposed to work. So it was a startling find, to say the least. And this was I believe the first NFL player a former player

that is that had this disease and was diagnosed with it. Yeah, morm Malo, who is I think like the forensic pathologist with Pittsburgh Um diagnosed him with chronic traumatic and cephalic and cephalopathy the like you said, the first football player ever to have this, this diagnosis. Up to this point, it had been boxers. Had he been a boxer, it would have made zero news whatsoever. But the fact that he was a football player, this is kind of weird.

And well, we'll talk about why this was so strange and weird right after this, So, Chuck, we were saying that Bennett omalu Um diagnosed Mike Webster with CTE and when he did, it made huge waves. And the reason why it was because Mike Webster was the first NFL

player to be diagnosed with this. But for a very long time, for the pretty much the last decade, the NFL had been fighting off this idea that concussions were worse than just having like your bell wrong or whatever cute thing you want to call, coming close to losing consciousness because the acceleration of your brain smacking against the inside of your skull has cognitively disabled you temporarily. That's right. Uh. The NFL, Oh boy, this is we're getting into it now.

They have they have a long checkered history with trying to protect players from injury and trying to protect their own interests as either a a massive revenue generating UH core operation and UH one that wants to keep its players safe, but also not beyond that money well and not beyond the hook for their injuries. Like oh yeah, yeah, you're playing the NFL. You know what you're getting into.

There's chances are And this was long. I mean everyone always knew like, yeah, when you get old, you're you're not able to walk that well, you're gonna have creaky knees and a bad back and all the stuff that comes along with getting you know, hammered on the field each and every week. But they always did try to sort of downplay this concussion. And it's only in recent years that they've really made official a protocol for dealing

with concussions. Yes, it was always like, I want to get back in the game, coach, and they're like, how do you feel. You know where you are? Yeah, yeah, I'm good, all right, get back in there, right right, um. And it was a direct result of this initial diagnosis from two two of CTE but by Bennett Omaliu of Mike Webster right that all of this change we're seeing over the last couple of seasons, which apparently having like like great effects already as it comes from this moment

in time. Right and part and parcel of that diagnosis was also a lawyer that had been hired by Mike Webster or his family either right before he died or right after he died, and Um the lawyer was trying to build a case to get Mike Webster disability from the NFL's um Disability Committee, and the disability Committee made a decision based on the science that was presented to them that said, yes, without a doubt, Mike Webster had severe brain damage and cognitive impairment from his years of

playing football. And then it was the only time they'd admitted it. They've been putting it off for years, and it got buried. And from that moment on, the NFL completely changed its its course and just denied, denied, deny um and that was the state of affairs there for for a while. But as that was going on, simultaneously been in Omalu, who has been UM at times very much vilified. He's put his foot in his mouth a lot.

He speaks publicly out of line. UM. He said once that UM he would bet his medical license that O. J. Simpson had ct has CTE UM and the implication being that that's why he killed Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown. I guess I should say allegedly. I don't know what what what do you say if somebody gets off for murder in a criminal trial but is convicted of it in a civil trial. I don't know at any rate, just just saying stuff that like a man of science

shouldn't do. But the thing is is, when you look at the work that he's doing, his actual work is unimpeachable. His public persona is kind of lacking. But at the same time, the work he's doing stands up. And there's plenty of other people who have kind kind of come and joined the cause or we're already researching ct who have really kind of redoubled their efforts to try to

figure out what's going on here. Yeah, Chiefly there's a neuropathologist named Ann McKee that has joined up UH with him, and they're they're sort of the main face of this uh CTE campaign. At this point, she's in League of denial as well. There there's just really interesting people because they're very much dedicated to getting to the bottom of it. Yeah.

And one of the big reasons why this is a bigger deal than when you know, we're talking about boxing, and you know how many people boxing is pretty niche sport, but a lot of kids play football. And what they're finding out is that children especially are at risk because they think and this is this is all they said. They're in the toddler phase of CTE research right now, so they're really learning a lot um like as we speak. But um, one thing they think is a big factor

is the length of the neck two. Yeah, to brace and deal with these hits to the head. Um. Obviously that doesn't mean like, oh, you got a strong neck, you can just get hit in the head over and over and over. But they're saying for kids, especially these uh young boys and even girls now who play football

as like early teenagers, that's super dangerous. There's also there's a brain research name Robert Cantu from Boston University UM, and he was saying that in addition to the neck being less developed, the mile in sheaths, which UM UH protect our nerve endings are nerves, including our neurons in our brain UM are less developed, so there's less protection UM. And there's other factors to like, uh, girls are more susceptible to uh cte than boys, and like if you're dehydrated,

you're more likely to develop cte UM. There's a lot of different risk factors, but it does seem to be ages playing one of them. And the problem is is if you send a kid in fourteen year old into a game and they get a concussion where they and they keep playing. Yeah, they may stop playing football after high school, but decades later they could conceivably develop ct They could develop ct without ever having officially had a concussion. Right.

You know they're doing these tests now with these uh these sensors inside helmets, and you don't necessarily have to have a concussion. It's all about this sustained abuse over time. Right. So there's and it's not just football, no, it's not.

There's a bunch of other uh activities I guess you could say, including sports, but non sports too, activities like getting in car crashes over and overhere to get well true, but you know, obviously UH hockey rugby, wrestling, Uh, soccer, all those header balls they say can have an impact over time. Yeah. As a matter of fact, soccer internationally and nationally is starting to um come under more scrutiny because they're realizing, like, yeah, you don't have to get

a concussion to to develop CTE. Horseback riding the list, uh, lacrosse, skiing, Um, most of those are sports based. But anything where you are getting that sort of impact repeatedly over time is gonna It's just it's it builds that damage up. It seems like it's not like once you get over that concussion, then you're back at square zero exactly. That's exactly right.

It's progressive, right. So uh, and what they're finding based on some of these tests, like you were saying, there's something called subconcussive events to where say like you're heading a soccer ball, but you don't see stars afterward, or you um are fine with bright lights. There's there's no symptoms of a concussion. But as far as your brains concerned, it just took an impact and it as these things accumulate a little subconcussive e, especially when an actual concussion

is thrown in or multiple concussions. That's what they think is the mechanism behind the development of ct Alright, so symptom wise, Um, if you're talking to the average everyday person, they want to understand what it's like. Uh, there are different stages their three. In stage one, Um, you're gonna be dizzy and have headaches, and also, uh, your attention span is gonna be cut down. Um, you're gonna have that general difficulty concentrating on things. You're gonna be disoriented.

You might be a little more aggressive and have that impulse control, which and I know Amala probably shouldn't be shooting his mouth off about o J, but um, I mean that's possible. Like there have been all sorts of situations. Real these NFL players of like their families are saying, you know, they're not the same person. They're aggressive, they're getting in fights now which they never used to do.

They're depressed or suicidal. So uh, oddly they're not showing I don't think they were conclusively showing that link yet, but no, it seems to sort of be obvious, and in fact we should say that there there has not been a conclusive link between repetitive head injuries from sports, from contact sports and c t E. The science is still being worked out, and of course again there's never anything,

there's never there's no such thing as settled science. So if that's what you're looking for, it's never gonna get there. But what they're starting to do now is a mass enough of a medical literature, um that that yes, the the link will be conclusive basically all right, so second stage, um, in addition to all the first your behavior might get even more unpredictable and your memories even worse. And then

finally stage three. Uh, all those former stages us even slower movements, literally staggering, trembling, deafness, maybe you can't even speak correctly. Yeah, the final stage is very sad. Right. And so if you are a doctor and somebody comes to you presenting like this, you're gonna be like, wow, this this guy's got Alzheimer's, or you would have before now you'd probably be a lot more likely to be like my CTE. But we can't check. No, no, you can't.

And let's go a little into the brain. The only way that you can diagnose ct E is postmortem, like you're saying, right, um, And what they're looking for is this accumulation of TOW proteins. And again they're not a certain how this is going on, but this is what they think, especially when they start to include research on

tow proteins from Alzheimer's. So, normally, in your brain, tow proteins um give structure to what they're called microtubules, which are inside the neurons and they basically act as little transport chain insidety to your little brain cells. Right. Well, these tow proteins um strengthen and de strengthen these microtubules depending on whether the brain needs those microtubules at any time. And there's some type of event called hyper phosphoration in

which the tow proteins actually become destabilized. They're they're weakened, which is normal, but they're not able to regain strength, which is also normal. So as they become weaker and weaker and weaker, these TOW proteins actually kind of break

up and they start to accumulate within the neuron. They accumulate in the accent which is where a neuron transmits information there in the dendrites eventually, which is where it receives information, and then they start to accumulate even in just the neural body, and with all of this starting to clog up, the neuron itself dies And when enough of this stuff happens, a whole region of the brain

can start to die off, been wither. And that's when you have all of these symptoms that are basically identical to Alzheimer's. The the key is this there they have associated the presence of this in former football players who are known to have gotten concussions, who are known to have gotten all of these subconcussive events on a daily basis, with um what they're seeing in these same deed football

players brains. And at this point all they can do is say, yeah, man, like, of course this caused this, but they can't say exactly how it's causing it. They haven't reached that point yet. All right, Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about where this is all headed and what the NFL is doing about it. Alright, So, one of the big problems with c T e UM is that there is no cure at this point. So the best practice is to avoid the cause, which is getting hit

in the head a lot, over and over and over. Yeah, but how do you do that with football? Well, that's that's the rub. It's very tough. Uh. There are some schools of thought that say, these players know what they're getting into. If you ask them, many of them would probably, if not most, say, we know the risks. We are willing to shorten our lives. Our careers will be limited, all for the rush of being on that field, the adoration of the fans, and all that money we know

we're getting into. We know it's a dangerous thing, and we're willing to do so. Anyway, A lot of them would not. All of him, though, of course not. I mean, there have been some really high profile cases, like a guy named Junior say ow Right, who's like a legend in the NFL. He committed suicide and his brain, after a very long struggle, was um found to have was

diagnosed as cte UM. There I oh, I can't speak for anybody who's died, but there are a lot of um people who are suffering now who are who wouldn't go back and do it again in the exact same way. Well, regret is different than I mean, you asked the young man exiting college and he says, yeah, I know where this is going to lead me us the old person suffering from dementia, and they'll say, well, young me didn't

know what he was talking about. I would trade all the money and all the fame to go back and lead a fuller life. The key to this, the chuck is would that young man's that if you go back even further to that ten year old boy, it what

his mom knowing all this let him play. And if numbers are down in little league football, which is bad news for the NFL because those little league players who are really good eventually become NFL stars that make the NFL a lot of money, which is one of the main reasons why they tried very hard to clamp down on public awareness of this. So the NFL, on their part, have tried to limit concussions. Now, um, it's not working

so far as far as limiting concussions. Oh no, I thought they were down In two thousand fourteen there were two hundred and six and two thifteen there were two seventy one. So that's not what I saw. Yeah, it's really depends on the year, like they're up and down

each year. They're definitely not in some downward trajectory though, overall, PBS has like gone all in on tracking CTE and they actually did a concussion watch and they counted the concussions I guess diagnosed can since I'm not sure in every game and they came up with, well, the NFLS is two seventy one, which is sort of commuch or to what you would think NFL or PBS. As far as the stance for football guests, Well, you think the NFL would be the ones under playing it, you know.

But um, at any rate, Uh, they've tried to change some of the rules as far as leading as a tackler with the crown of your helmet. They have moved the kickoff forward so now there aren't as many runbacks on kickoffs and that's where a lot of the high

impact collisions occur is on kickoffs and the special teams plays. Uh. It's a rub though, because fans like the NFL is known and I'd love the NFL, Like I'm at odds with myself on this because part of what you love about the game is the game as it is, and you can't regulate, uh injury out of the NFL or head injury out of the NFL because it wouldn't be football anymore. Like you literally couldn't have people tackling people. UM,

actually went to a game. Have you ever been to an NFL game and sat close to the field close fish? It's like I was talking to my buddies who I was with. I was like, you get close down there, and you're like, man, I would literally need an ambulance on any play that happened. Period. I don't see how these men get up at all when you see these collisions they take. But that's what the fans love about the sport, and that's what the NFL is built on.

So to change that would fundamentally change the game. Um. But at the same time, the NFL doesn't. You know, they've been really shady. UH as far as how they've handled all this over the years. They there was a congressional report that found that they they basically made a thirty million dollar a gift unrestricted gift in two thousand twelve to the National Institutes of Health to look into head injuries. UH. They found out that they the research wasn't so friendly to the NFL, so they tried to

get the the UH. The main researcher from UH. I think it was either Boston College or bu stripped of his position even though there they weren't supposed to monkey around with any of it. It It was like, nope, you do your unbiased research and we're staying out of it. So yeah, they didn't stay out of it. They were found out. Then they said, you know what, We're not going to give you that full thirty million. Then oh,

you're joking. They pulled the final sixteen million from the from the research, and UM basically denied up until literally this year. In March of this year was the first time an NFL senior vice president stood up and acknowledged

the link between CTE publicly and football. Well, they also settled with five thousand former players for a billion dollars, and they settled because it was found that they had tried to suppress evidence about concussions, leading to CTE keep the players unaware of this UM And there's a lot of those players and that we're saying no, no no, no, Like now this all come out and they're like that

payoff is nothing, sure, Like I want out of this suit. Yeah, because again, please please take the time to go watch League of Denial. They do such an amazing job talking about the Nefariu stuff that the NFL has done over the years to try to like keep this out of the players awareness, keep it out of the public awareness. But they also do a really good job of getting across like what life can be like for some of

these players. And we should say for some of people, even players with CTE found to have ct after death doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be suicidal or that they had um Alzheimer's symptoms or anything like that. But for the ones that do, they have a really rough life, and so does their families as a matter of fact, and that really comes across in the document Memory. Well, there's just one study they did that they took brains

of a hundred and sixty five former football players. Um, it could have been high school, college, NFL, or obviously all three if you went to the NFL, A hundred and thirty one of the one had ct and of the ninety one that played in the NFL of them had ct YE. And it's shocking. And they do make the point in this article that those who choose, whose families or individuals chose to donate their brains are probably

people that likely have the CTE. Right when you're healthy, you're not thinking I need to donate my brain to science. That's what they need, you know, they need like all kinds of h people. I mean, you know athletes. Well, actually there's a test that was kind of fortuitous from u c l A. Actually, they're people are trying to figure out how they can diagnose c t E in living people, right um, and it's there. They have not

figured it out yet. They're trying to figure out how to like die the tow proteins in the brain to see accumulations and then check to see if there's beta amyloids too out they will. But this U c l A researcher duo of researchers found that um, they could check for the shrinkage of volume and parts of the brain and correlate those two ones that have been found through autopsies of football players with CTE. Right, and they

scanned some guys brain still alive. Former football player has all the um all the symptoms of CTE UM and crucially he also had a UM M r I done like four years before, so they could compare his current brain size to what he had four years before and see the regions that were shrinking and one region lost like four of its volume and just the four years. But they found that these regions correlate with stuff they're

seeing in CTE and former football players. So they're thinking maybe they can use this as the test, just look for shrinkage in different brain regions. Well, one thing they do know is that, uh, in two thousand and eight, they did a survey and the NFL. Former NFL players get Alzheimer's at a rate about six times higher than

the general population, which is no surprise. Um, But like we're talking about earlier, that whole link to depression and suicide, Apparently former NFL players are less likely to have depression and less likely to commit suicide, almost six less likely. Um, I don't know that that says a whole lot though. I don't think that disproves at all that depression and suicide can also be you know, part of CTE. That smells like an NFL funded study. Yeah, just I don't know.

Something's not adding up with that. Yeah. Again, if you watch the legal denial, you're like, question everything everybody. It's weird. It's a really weird situation because it's on one side, you've got the NFL fighting for its life, throwing everything it can't money and lawyers, and doing really dirty stuff like discrediting the doctors involved, trying to get an I H.

Researchers fired. And on the other side, you've got all of these incredibly well educated, incredibly in some cases egotistical neuro neurologists and neuro researchers who are all vuying to be like the one who makes the connection with ct E. The science is out there enough that there's someone someone can come along and be like, here case closed, put my name on this. And there's a lot of gross

stuff like Junior Sayou's brain. Um had a lot of people after it in like just the hours after he died, and they were calling his family and ailing his family and like bad mouthing one another when they were talking to his son saying like, hey, give us the brain. You don't want to give it to Boston University. Their ghoules will probably eat some of it, you know. Um,

it's just a weird situation that's going on, very sad. Yeah, you got anything else I do not well that is ct and I can assure you there will be plenty more of that because they're still figuring it out, but if you want to know more about it in the meantime, type those letters into the search part how stuff works dot Com. Since I said search bars signed for listener, ma'am,

I'm gonna call this Halloween response. Hey guys, UH, normally skip the Halloween podcast because I'm I'm not much a fan of ghost stories, but I thought it was broad daylight, so I'll go ahead and listen. My first ghost story actually gave me the creeps. The reason I'm writing, though, is you pointed out that the majority of horror stories to pick violence against women. Being a fan of horror movies is interesting. He doesn't like ghost stories, but he

likes horror moans. Not definite, but these aren't even ghost stories. Being a fan of horror movies, I would be lying if I said it wasn't something I had wondered about myself. After listening to some great true Prime true crime podcasts, though, of which there are many, I've concluded that the reason is that stuff is art imitating life. A lot of these movies or stories are based on true events. Unfortunately, in the real world, violence against women, especially with serial killers,

is far more common. UH. When people set out to write horror. They usually research existing crimes to base ideas off of in order to make it more realistic and in turn more frightening. So it may be easier to change fiction to be less sexist. Uh, the real issue lies more in the world that we live in, and I guess we can probably convince cereal killers start killing more men, we'll probably continue to see more violence. Until we do that, we'll see more violence against women in

horror films. I never thought about that, James. It's a good point. It's a pretty good hypothesis. Actually, it makes a great case. Thanks James. H. If you want to get in touch with us to say, hey, man, here's something smart we love hearing that, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.

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