What's the Deal with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy?

Concussions are bad enough for football players, but research has found all of those smaller hits can add up to massive brain trauma later in life too, leading to a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition the NFL sought to cover up.

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Episode Transcript

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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

(00:44):
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

(01:05):
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

(01:28):
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,

(01:50):
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

(02:12):
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

(02:34):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:40):
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

(04:02):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:45):
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

(05:05):
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

(05:25):
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.

(05:49):
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.

(06:12):
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.

(06:33):
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

(06:54):
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

(07:15):
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,

(07:38):
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

(07:59):
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,

(08:22):
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?

(08:45):
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.

(09:06):
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

(09:28):
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

(09:50):
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

(10:13):
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

(10:34):
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

(10:56):
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

(11:17):
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

(12:01):
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

(12:22):
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.

(12:43):
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

(13:04):
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

(13:24):
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.

(13:46):
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

(14:11):
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

(14:34):
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

(14:57):
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.

(15:18):
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,

(15:40):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:22):
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

(16:46):
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

(17:07):
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

(17:28):
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,

(17:52):
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

(18:18):
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.

(18:38):
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

(18:59):
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

(19:21):
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

(19:42):
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

(20:02):
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

(20:23):
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

(20:45):
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,

(21:06):
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,

(21:31):
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

(21:51):
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

(22:13):
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

(22:37):
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

(22:59):
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

(23:21):
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

(23:43):
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

(24:04):
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

(24:27):
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

(25:09):
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

(25:31):
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

(25:51):
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

(26:12):
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,

(26:32):
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

(26:53):
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

(27:15):
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

(27:37):
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

(27:57):
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.

(28:18):
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.

(28:41):
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

(29:03):
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

(29:27):
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

(29:49):
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

(30:11):
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

(30:32):
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

(30:53):
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

(31:13):
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

(31:33):
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,

(31:55):
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

(32:19):
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,

(32:40):
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

(33:01):
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

(33:23):
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

(33:46):
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

(34:07):
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

(34:28):
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

(34:50):
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

(35:12):
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

(35:35):
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,

(35:58):
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

(36:20):
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

(36:43):
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.

(37:09):
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,

(37:31):
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

(37:55):
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
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(38:17):
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