Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Hey who am I? I believe you're Johnathan Strickland. Who
Speaker 1: are you? I believe I'm Lauren vocal Bomb. So it
Speaker 1: turns out the recorded an intro to this and forgot
Speaker 1: to name myself. So now I'm chagrined. But hey, we're
Speaker 1: here to talk about body modification. So we did an
Speaker 1: episode about body modification. It turned out to be a
Speaker 1: little longer than we had anticipated, a lot longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like an hour and a half. That's too long really
Speaker 1: for any episode of tech Stuff. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: break it up into two parts. And the second part
Speaker 1: is really going to be more about implants and some
Speaker 1: cyboard type stuff and some artistic expression kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that really goes more along the fringe of body modification.
Speaker 1: It's not the stuff that that you know, you typically
Speaker 1: see when on an average day out in In this episode,
Speaker 1: we do the weird stuff. Yeah, we do the weird stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to talking about modifying bodies in weird ways,
Speaker 1: or what some people would call weird ways. I would
Speaker 1: call them weird ways. But I'm such a normal kind
Speaker 1: of boring guy decorative ways. I would say next next
Speaker 1: on our list, while we were talking about piercing um
Speaker 1: is subdermal implants. Yeah, yeah, we've we've talked about talked
Speaker 1: about piercing. Let's talk about actually putting stuff under the skin.
Speaker 1: Other lots of different versions of this. Now subdermal. The
Speaker 1: hint is in the name, right, subdermal, so it's beneath
Speaker 1: the yes, so so so so Again, the epidermis is
Speaker 1: the skin that you can poke. The dermis is the
Speaker 1: more permanent layer below that. And then and then you've
Speaker 1: got subdermal, fatty, muffily, some other layers, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about a couple of them. Uh so, Yeah, the sub
Speaker 1: cutest is this layer below the dermists. Actually, subdermal plants
Speaker 1: go between the cutest lick layer and the facia, which
Speaker 1: is the fibrous tissue that serves as connective tissue. So
Speaker 1: this is pretty deep stuff. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is these are shapes that people put under their skin,
Speaker 1: so they protrude outward. Normally it's in some places fairly visible,
Speaker 1: like your forehead, not my forehead. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do this. A person's a hypothetical person's forehead, forearmed, sometimes
Speaker 1: the collar bone area. Uh, really can be anywhere, but
Speaker 1: these are the typical places it tends to be. And
Speaker 1: so people who are into this kind of body modification
Speaker 1: will usually pick a fairly simple shape because it needs
Speaker 1: to stand out when you when you're looking at the
Speaker 1: person's you know, wherever the implant is, that you can
Speaker 1: recognize what the shape is. Otherwise it's just gonna look
Speaker 1: like a lump, like a blob, and that's kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: So usually it's a fairly distinctive, simple shape that is
Speaker 1: designed to create a visible bulge in wherever the person
Speaker 1: has chosen to have the implant. So stars, hard beads,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just round beads are are common form that
Speaker 1: I've seen. Yeah. Uh, And to do this again this now,
Speaker 1: when we're starting to get into these levels we're really
Speaker 1: talking about, you need to do your research because now
Speaker 1: we're getting into surgical procedures. Anytime they're making an actual cavity.
Speaker 1: In fact, pocketing kind of fits in this too. Anytime
Speaker 1: they're making an actual cavity in your body, now you're
Speaker 1: talking serious surgical procedure. You need to make sure that
Speaker 1: the person who's going to be performing. It is not
Speaker 1: only sterilizing all their equipment, but that they are experienced
Speaker 1: in doing this. Preferably, you would like to find a
Speaker 1: body modification specialist who has medical training. It is. I
Speaker 1: believe it's technically illegal for people without medical depends on
Speaker 1: where you are, Yeah, it's It varies by states and regionality, right,
Speaker 1: there's some states that are like, WHOA, We totally didn't
Speaker 1: ever think anyone would do that, so we don't have
Speaker 1: anything on the law. However, having pretzels with beer is
Speaker 1: still terrible, right, We've led an actual low still on
Speaker 1: the books in some places. So if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about crazy laws. Where I grew up, it's illegal
Speaker 1: to eat fried chicken with a fork and knife. You
Speaker 1: have to eat it with your fingers. You are joking?
Speaker 1: Are joking? I'd say horse walks into a bar and
Speaker 1: bartender says, why the long face? I am being perfectly serious. However,
Speaker 1: I should add that this was a publicity stunt because
Speaker 1: Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up a branch in Gainsville, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and Gainsville, George is the poultry capital of the world,
Speaker 1: and so as a publicity stunt, they made it illegal
Speaker 1: to eat fried chicken with a fork and knife. So
Speaker 1: it was a joke law on the first place. I
Speaker 1: am completely horrified by our legal system right now. I'm
Speaker 1: a rural bumpkin. So anyway, um, yeah, so not a
Speaker 1: lot of not every place has legislation on this because frankly,
Speaker 1: people didn't think I was gonna do it. But really,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Here, here's the process. They make
Speaker 1: a surgical incision. By the way, you might be lucky
Speaker 1: and get some kind of ennis that for this, but
Speaker 1: more likely than not, you're you're not going to get
Speaker 1: it because an aesthetic that is perhaps a topical anesthetic
Speaker 1: maybe maybe because I think you can get a hold
Speaker 1: of those pretty easy. You might just get some ice
Speaker 1: on the area before they get started to numb it.
Speaker 1: Because anesthetic that is legislated, that's heavily controlled in most places,
Speaker 1: so most places don't have any kind of authority, they
Speaker 1: can't use it. So you have to be willing to
Speaker 1: endure this without any like actual super anesthetic. So they
Speaker 1: make a surgical incision and then they insert something called
Speaker 1: a dermal elevator. Tell me, tell me what a dermal
Speaker 1: elevator is, Jonathan, Well, it's not it's not gonna have
Speaker 1: otis on it. So it's not mechanic. It's uh, well,
Speaker 1: there's no moving parts. It is mechanic in the sense
Speaker 1: that you have to put mechanical stress on the end
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, So imagine a spatula or a butter
Speaker 1: knife that's medical grade, so sterile eised all that you've
Speaker 1: made an incision. The artist that inserts the dermal elevator
Speaker 1: under the flap of skin between the subcutest and facial
Speaker 1: layers and just just levers it, levers it up a
Speaker 1: little bit, yeah, to slip whatever, separating the tissues so
Speaker 1: that there can be something inside there and making essentially
Speaker 1: an internal pocket inside that area. And then um gently
Speaker 1: perhaps actually usually it's not so gentle. They there's a
Speaker 1: pretty usually it's a pretty sharp whift push of the
Speaker 1: you know, honestly, it's a band aid off kind of situation.
Speaker 1: I would rather, you know, if if I were going
Speaker 1: to do that, I would rather happen quickly. They put
Speaker 1: the implant underneath that layer and then they suiture it close.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking like again, Now you gotta worry also
Speaker 1: that the implant itself has got to be absolutely very sterile,
Speaker 1: very sterile. Originally it was stainless steel, which could cause problems,
Speaker 1: so they did switch. Yeah, today it's a silicone or silicon.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, right, and then correct myself. It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1: We'll get the silicon later because we're talking about Mr Warwick.
Speaker 1: But but he's at the end. Um. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's silicone. They also sometimes use implant grade teflon, but
Speaker 1: that's more rare. Silicone is by far the most common
Speaker 1: stuff they use to make these designs, right, and they
Speaker 1: shove that in, suture it into place. Uh. There's there's
Speaker 1: a high risk here of multiple things going wrong, and
Speaker 1: healing from these things takes a long time, much longer
Speaker 1: than a tattoo, much longer than a typical piercing. Um.
Speaker 1: We're talking months and months and months of healing. So uh,
Speaker 1: there's obviously the danger of infection. That's a big one.
Speaker 1: There's also the danger that your body rejects the implant,
Speaker 1: that your body essentially identifies the implant as something that
Speaker 1: is trend Yeah, something that's trying act, and in this case,
Speaker 1: you would then you know, suffer some pretty some pretty
Speaker 1: irritating side effects until you either we're able to treat
Speaker 1: those symptoms, or you would have the the implant removed.
Speaker 1: Not keep in mind this implants also going to possibly
Speaker 1: shift things around a little bit, so you might not
Speaker 1: look the way you did before the implant. Once you
Speaker 1: have an implant taken out, um, you could have plastic
Speaker 1: surgery to have that corrected. So plastic surgeons, it's perfectly reasonable.
Speaker 1: It's within societal norms. It's what they do. It's perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable for them to alter a person's experience appearance to
Speaker 1: be closer to whatever the special ideal is, not whatever
Speaker 1: they want, just the social ideal. If it's outside the
Speaker 1: social ideal, like, if it's outside the social norm they
Speaker 1: are not allowed to do it. Yes, plastic surgeons are
Speaker 1: not allowed to do subdermal implants, transdermal implants, some of
Speaker 1: these other things we're gonna be talking about. In general,
Speaker 1: it is against their oath to do that. They can
Speaker 1: make someone look more like everybody else, but they can't
Speaker 1: make someone look less like everybody else. Crazy, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's getting into weird. Like Ugly is Pretty Territory, which
Speaker 1: is a young adult series that I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone listening to the show has has read they were
Speaker 1: they were cute books. Um, but I take ute books
Speaker 1: about a dystopian future wherein everyone gets a lot of
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. Yeah, I definitely take issue too with it,
Speaker 1: just from the idea of it's okay for for for
Speaker 1: you to alter a person's appearance in one sas circumstances,
Speaker 1: but not in the other and not hurting anyone, right,
Speaker 1: and the obviously it's like it's like, well, what's normal
Speaker 1: do you write? And for body modification, I would prefer
Speaker 1: it if there were plastic surgeons who could do this,
Speaker 1: because they're the ones who are going to do it
Speaker 1: in the most safe way, hypothetically. Hypothetically, Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a story about that too, because I've got a there's
Speaker 1: a guy, boys, there a guy so subdomal, we've got this,
Speaker 1: You've got the whole healing, the healing process is slow.
Speaker 1: You've got the danger of rejection, danger of infection, um,
Speaker 1: and then the risk of damage to any other tissue
Speaker 1: that's surrounding. I mean, for for example, nerves running through
Speaker 1: your skin. If you if you mess with one, bad
Speaker 1: stuff can happen. That can technically happen in any piercing,
Speaker 1: you know, But but but you know, the larger the
Speaker 1: the operation, the greater the risks, right, I mean, just
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Uh, and uh you know that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff, and I would prefer it if it could
Speaker 1: be done by medical professionals. But that's a that's an issue.
Speaker 1: Another interesting one is um dermal anchors or transdermal implants. Oh, this,
Speaker 1: this is one. This is one that you just like. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't dislike it, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: can't decide whether the subdermal ones or the transdermal ones
Speaker 1: are the ones that make me feel the most uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I I really enjoyed reading about the transdermal ones they're
Speaker 1: at It's fascinating. Okay, So so what these do. They're
Speaker 1: they're like a subdermal implant, and that you are you
Speaker 1: are implanting or a trained professional with sterile materials is
Speaker 1: implanting a little bit of something into your skin, but
Speaker 1: a little bit of that little bit sticks out and
Speaker 1: the skin heels around it. And therefore and you have
Speaker 1: something that's visible that frequently will allow you to um
Speaker 1: to screw different studs in and out to change the
Speaker 1: appearance of your implant. Yeah, so for subdermal obviously subdermal,
Speaker 1: meaning that's completely under the skin, So you're just looking
Speaker 1: at a design that that is in your flesh. In
Speaker 1: your flesh transdermal trans gives you that there's the hint
Speaker 1: there it goes branches. So you could have it designed
Speaker 1: so it looks like you've been uh impaled by something theoretically,
Speaker 1: or you could have spikes along your head, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, seems to be the most popular implementation of
Speaker 1: this particular kind of implant that I have seen in
Speaker 1: all the body modification research I did. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of little flat metal pieces that
Speaker 1: look like they're just inlaid directly into your skin, or
Speaker 1: gemstones for fancy occations. If you're attending the Academy Awards
Speaker 1: and you don't want your your spikes to impale someone
Speaker 1: when you give them a hug on the red carpet,
Speaker 1: you switched to the gym stones. I would I would
Speaker 1: keep the spikes, um, but you would, you know, And
Speaker 1: it looks a little bit like a like a very
Speaker 1: fancy mole. Yeah, a lot of the time. So interesting.
Speaker 1: Another interesting bit here is ah there. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: a video of this years ago, and the story actually
Speaker 1: turns out to be pretty awful as it goes on.
Speaker 1: But I remember a story about a guy who invented
Speaker 1: an approach to two pays that was a little extreme.
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought, wow, this is preferable to hair loss.
Speaker 1: But his approach to two payes was to do a
Speaker 1: transdermal implant that was snaps, So you would have four snaps.
Speaker 1: I think it was four, might have been more than that,
Speaker 1: but four snaps on implanted underneath the skin of a
Speaker 1: subdermal plugs and then and then you would be had
Speaker 1: the other snaps on the other side, on the underside, right,
Speaker 1: and he would knock it in and it had this
Speaker 1: great sound when he was putting it into place, like
Speaker 1: it sounded like, you know, like like like that. That's
Speaker 1: what it sounded like each time. And so I remember
Speaker 1: seeing this and thinking like, this is extreme. Who the heck?
Speaker 1: I mean as a bald man, and I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not bald by choice. Yeah, this was this choice was
Speaker 1: forced upon me. Uh. I was like, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I choose bald that But anyway, the story actually has
Speaker 1: a pretty horrifying turn. So Anthony pig Nataro as the
Speaker 1: name of the plastic surgeon who came up with us.
Speaker 1: First of all, Um, one of his patients that he
Speaker 1: was operating on died. Uh it was I think it
Speaker 1: was breast augmentation surgery. And she she died during the process,
Speaker 1: and and and he had a whole uh legal problem
Speaker 1: with that, and you know, I had to deal with
Speaker 1: that then. To make things even more tragic and and horrifying,
Speaker 1: he gets out of prison and his wife starts to
Speaker 1: get sick, and it looks like she has pancreatitis, and
Speaker 1: in fact there's the possibility that they might need to
Speaker 1: have a surgery, and he really advocates for the surgery,
Speaker 1: and she gets a little suspicious about what's going on.
Speaker 1: And it turns out she finds out he's been poisoning
Speaker 1: her with arsenic. So he goes like an upstanding citizen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice dude. Um. So yeah, he gets he gets charged
Speaker 1: with a various various poisoning related charges. Um. I think
Speaker 1: I think he might be able to get out of
Speaker 1: jail this year. Actually, uh, and was he was contesting
Speaker 1: last I saw he was contesting a a decision from
Speaker 1: the judge that upon his release, he would be required
Speaker 1: to be under some form of supervision for another five years.
Speaker 1: And apparently he stated that because that was not told
Speaker 1: to him at his previous trial, it cannot hold up
Speaker 1: because he was informed of that at the time when
Speaker 1: he should have been. So he's saying that it's a
Speaker 1: legal uh mistake that was made and so therefore he
Speaker 1: should not be under supervision. The d A in this
Speaker 1: case has essentially called him a sociopath. So not a
Speaker 1: happy story. But that was the very first time I
Speaker 1: had ever seen anything about transdermal implants. It was this thing,
Speaker 1: this tupe a thing. I had never seen it before.
Speaker 1: I was a kid at the time, or at least
Speaker 1: a teenager when I saw this, this video. And uh, now,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not like I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have transdermal implants, but I have seen them,
Speaker 1: especially if you go to places like Dragon Con. You
Speaker 1: see all sorts of folks in various subcultures there. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and now I think I think that I've actually muddied
Speaker 1: our waters here and confused transdermal and microdermal, And well
Speaker 1: they're very similar. Microdermal is really just a subset of transdermal,
Speaker 1: So microdermal really the big difference there is that they
Speaker 1: try to use smaller surface anchors, which are the little
Speaker 1: flat parts that that go underneath the skin. So those
Speaker 1: are the parts that are uh, that are are under
Speaker 1: your skin so that it holds the jewelry in place,
Speaker 1: but there. And they tend to be the smaller things
Speaker 1: like the little gemstones or whatever. But you could just
Speaker 1: as well do that with transdermal if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: Transdermal does tend to look like it tends to be
Speaker 1: applied to stuff that's bigger. Microdermal same sort of approach.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen anyone who has like this little
Speaker 1: jewel stone just sticking out someplace from their body, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem like you could normally it's not like
Speaker 1: a like a labre piercing or something. You know, it's
Speaker 1: next to their eyeball right, So it's a possibility that
Speaker 1: it's a microdermal implant. Uh. These implants tend to have
Speaker 1: a lower rejection rate than transdermal and subdermal do doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you're going to get away without any problems,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that the odds are better. Um,
Speaker 1: they tend to have holes in the base, the flat
Speaker 1: part that goes under the skin, and those holes are
Speaker 1: meant for tissue to grow through them to help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's supposed to provide stability. Now, of course that
Speaker 1: means that you have to wait through the healing process.
Speaker 1: And again, you don't want to get one of these
Speaker 1: somewhere where you're gonna brush it against stuff all the time,
Speaker 1: because that's just gonna make the healing process take even longer.
Speaker 1: It also increases the chance of rejection. There's also something
Speaker 1: called migration, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Uh,
Speaker 1: stuff can move around a bit, and you don't want
Speaker 1: that because then you're going to get an effect that
Speaker 1: was not what you wanted. Um. And there's also the
Speaker 1: idea of uh, you know, like surface piercings, which are
Speaker 1: kind of similar like service piercings are. Um. These are
Speaker 1: the piercings that involve longer pieces of jewelry that go
Speaker 1: through the whole. So we're talking like service piercings. Might
Speaker 1: be above your hip bone you might have seen some
Speaker 1: people who have those, or it can be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: along an arm or whatever. These are longer pieces of jewelry,
Speaker 1: sometimes several inches long or more like two inches long.
Speaker 1: They go underneath the skin. You see the ends of it.
Speaker 1: From what I understand from the sources i've read, surface
Speaker 1: piercing is one of those things that's best left as
Speaker 1: a temporary jewelry. So in other words, you use it
Speaker 1: for whatever you're going to do, Like maybe you're part
Speaker 1: of a performance art and you want to have the
Speaker 1: corset look along your back. I've seen that where people
Speaker 1: have had surface piercings that are hoops all down their
Speaker 1: backs and then they lace together like it's a corset, uh,
Speaker 1: and not pulling the way that of course it would,
Speaker 1: but the design is created in a way that would
Speaker 1: look like there might be there might be a little
Speaker 1: tension just to give the full effect, but not like
Speaker 1: tied tight. You would not want to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: It's by the way I have seen that it is
Speaker 1: a dramatic effects, pretty gorgeous. It's yeah. Even even someone
Speaker 1: who's yeah I see, I'm like, wow, that's pretty incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely it makes you look twice well. Again, better
Speaker 1: left as more of a temporary thing, because there are
Speaker 1: issues with migration with those two where your your skin
Speaker 1: is a living thing. It's it's the large store get
Speaker 1: on your body, as everyone knows, and it does stuff.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just stay put. Yeah. So um, that's that's
Speaker 1: something else to keep your wind like stuff don't stay
Speaker 1: where you thought it would. Now we get to uh,
Speaker 1: super fun times, right, this is this next one is
Speaker 1: one day. I'm just gonna cry for the rest of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Jonathan came to my desk earlier and was
Speaker 1: just like, why did I watch the video? Why do
Speaker 1: people in the Netherlands do this to their eyes? We
Speaker 1: are about to talk about eyeball implants, yeah, also called
Speaker 1: eye piercing. Yeah. Why So In two thousand two, the
Speaker 1: Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery developed an implant. It
Speaker 1: goes into the superficial interpalperable conjunctiva in the eye, which
Speaker 1: is essentially the white of your eyes. It's it's this clera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a which is a protective layer that that
Speaker 1: wraps around the eye from the cornea in the front
Speaker 1: all the way to the pcular nerve in the back.
Speaker 1: It's a it's horrifying people. I mean, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't judge. I don't judge. If you're from the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and you've had this process, you are insane. But
Speaker 1: I'm not judging. I'm just making an observation. No, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all joking aside. Yeah, this is an implant. They take
Speaker 1: a platinum alloy, which is the jewelry itself, and the
Speaker 1: jewelry tends to be a very tiny and very simple shape.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's only a few shapes that are even available,
Speaker 1: things like the one I kept saying was hearts. So
Speaker 1: the procedure involves immobilizing both eyes. They use an esthetic drops.
Speaker 1: This is very similar to the kind of stuff you
Speaker 1: might get if you were to go get laser eye surgery.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing Chris isn't here because he would
Speaker 1: totally flip our laser ice surgery. He turned a shade
Speaker 1: of green I have never seen before. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: they then they then cut a little pocket into your
Speaker 1: eye just this is essentially the same thing as the
Speaker 1: surface anchors that you see, uh for the other kind
Speaker 1: of implants we've talked about, but in this case, it's
Speaker 1: small or it's in your eyes and you're and they
Speaker 1: put this little implant so that the the design of
Speaker 1: whatever it is is laying flat against your eyeball, so
Speaker 1: you you if you were looking at someone who had
Speaker 1: one of these, you'd see their pupil, which would be
Speaker 1: unaffected because obviously you don't want to do anything that's
Speaker 1: going to affect the person's vision. And then next to it,
Speaker 1: if they were looking off to either the left or right,
Speaker 1: depending on what side they got it on, um, you
Speaker 1: would then see the little piece of jewelry. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is not legal anywhere outside of the Netherlands, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I think there are places in the United States that
Speaker 1: are actively uh making it illegal because before it ends
Speaker 1: up taking off somewhere else because I guess they saw
Speaker 1: pictures of it, went why you no way? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: essentially the response. Yeah, and then uh oh. In order
Speaker 1: to do this, by the way, they would that that incision,
Speaker 1: there's more than just the incision. Then they inject liquid
Speaker 1: between the layers of the eyeball where the implant space
Speaker 1: will go. So I actually did what a video of
Speaker 1: this procedure, and then I needed to go to my
Speaker 1: happy place for a while, which by the way, was
Speaker 1: farm Burgger. I was actually able to eat. I wasn't
Speaker 1: so upset that I couldn't heat. You have to make
Speaker 1: me really upset before I can't eat. Another fun thing
Speaker 1: that you can do to uh to the white of
Speaker 1: your eye is tattooing um back in Supposedly back in
Speaker 1: three and eye surgeon tattooed fake people onto the all
Speaker 1: white eye of of a man who had lost sight
Speaker 1: as a child due to poison ivy exposure. So this
Speaker 1: was an attempt to give this man something a normal appearance,
Speaker 1: right um and in in modern not in modern times,
Speaker 1: but in the in the late eighteen hundreds and early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, UM eye doctors would inject inc into patient's
Speaker 1: eyes to cover up UM disfiguring corneal scars. Uh. This,
Speaker 1: this process is no longer really necessary because um uh
Speaker 1: pres reconstructive surgery has has improved to the point that
Speaker 1: it's okay. But um but yeah. As as of two
Speaker 1: thousand seven and at a Canadian body mod convention, the
Speaker 1: three volunteers UM had ink injected with hypodermics. Regular tattoo
Speaker 1: needles were not working out. They tried and it Jonathan
Speaker 1: is so upset by this drill coming up my eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I can handle my arm or my back,
Speaker 1: but my eye. I Supposedly, after about after about forty
Speaker 1: pricks with a tattoo needle, UM, they gave up that
Speaker 1: many and and went went into um went into using
Speaker 1: a hypodermic and uh and and and died there the
Speaker 1: whites of their eyes blue. Supposedly, the ink spread out
Speaker 1: over the next few weeks um to to cover the
Speaker 1: entire white of their eye, rather than just the portion
Speaker 1: that had been tattooed, and um, blue eyes all over. Supposedly, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and and this was inspired by Dunes Freeman,
Speaker 1: who you know, all in taking the spice and have
Speaker 1: the bright crazy blue eyes. Spice mus flow, spice must flow.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not it's not really legal or recommended.
Speaker 1: Even the people who have had it done said, you know,
Speaker 1: have have gone on record about the number of terrible
Speaker 1: things that can happen if you if you do this,
Speaker 1: and so you know, another way you can get blue
Speaker 1: eyes is through argeria, which is just the consumption of
Speaker 1: lots of silver. I don't silver turns your skin blue
Speaker 1: and your eyes blue as well. Uh, the whites of
Speaker 1: your eyes blue. Do not do that. Colloidal silver has
Speaker 1: been a kind of a folk cure for certain stuff
Speaker 1: because silver does have antibacterial antimicrobial properties, but the ingestion
Speaker 1: of it it tends to get deposited into your various
Speaker 1: subcutaneous layers and then you I'll show you a picture
Speaker 1: in a second. It looks like Papa Smurf. That's very exciting. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so before we get into the cyborg element of body
Speaker 1: modific cation, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the high tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Now we've got all those out of the way. And
Speaker 1: and by the way, if any of our listeners have
Speaker 1: any of these body modifications, again, my hat's off to you.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever you do to identify who you are,
Speaker 1: that's cool with me. Just blame it on me being
Speaker 1: a total boring social norm kind of guy and squeamish
Speaker 1: about little squeamish about eyeballs a R. It's a magnet
Speaker 1: implants what people are getting magnets implanted in them, like Magneto. Yes,
Speaker 1: well not like Magneto didn't have magnets implanted, probably not
Speaker 1: on purpose anyway. Now, this this is people who want
Speaker 1: to harness and extra sense. Oh I see, So this
Speaker 1: goes beyond our our normal senses. So you know, a
Speaker 1: whole touch and sight and smell and sound and taste
Speaker 1: and uh and uh and and Sheldon Freud supposedly this
Speaker 1: this gives them these are these are magnets that are
Speaker 1: subterminally implanted, that that give people the ability to sense
Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields. Yes, so the idea here is that they're
Speaker 1: very small, and they generally tend to get implanted a
Speaker 1: little bit off to the side of the path of
Speaker 1: the finger on normally the ring finger on the non
Speaker 1: dominant hand. And the thinking there goes that if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong with the implant, that's the least useful finger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that if you were to suffer any nerve damage
Speaker 1: or just that you know, it wouldn't it wouldn't interfere
Speaker 1: with your normal activities because that finger also has the
Speaker 1: least amount of impact when it comes to gripping. So
Speaker 1: and they wanted it to be off to the side obviously,
Speaker 1: because if you had to do an emergency gripping situation
Speaker 1: like let's say you're rock climbing and you suddenly lose
Speaker 1: your grip and you need to hold onto something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could tear out or you could crush it um.
Speaker 1: Either way is bad. You know you don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. Also, again, magnets, we're talking about surgery again,
Speaker 1: it's a surgical procedure that's being done usually by people
Speaker 1: who are not surgeons. By hackers tend to be kind
Speaker 1: of they're on the forefront of this stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: They're biohackers or grinders. As I found out, they're also
Speaker 1: called um tend to uh to be pretty far ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve on this so uh they Again, the
Speaker 1: procedure tends to be done with either some topical local
Speaker 1: and aesthetic or nothing at all. They will create an incision,
Speaker 1: insert the magnet, suture it shut. The magnet is small
Speaker 1: and tends to just vibrate when it comes into when
Speaker 1: it comes near something like a magnetic field. So you
Speaker 1: would be able to tell when electricity is flowing through
Speaker 1: something because that creates a magnetic field. Right, So you
Speaker 1: would move your hand near something that's that's running electricity
Speaker 1: through it and you're like, oh, I s yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's the idea, is that you have created a brand
Speaker 1: new sense. Now, granted, this sense is still very much
Speaker 1: aligned with touch, right, it's a it's an advanced form
Speaker 1: of touch. It's extended our touch, and but it would
Speaker 1: give you ability to touch stuff that normally you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to like magnetic fields electric fields. You'd also
Speaker 1: be able to do cool things like lift paper clips,
Speaker 1: you know, without having to pinch your fingers paper clips, right,
Speaker 1: I know how much effort it is to pick up
Speaker 1: a paper clip, So thank goodness we found a solution
Speaker 1: to that problem. Yeah, any fairest material you could stick
Speaker 1: to a little bit that. The magnets tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty small and not very powerful, so it's not like
Speaker 1: you would go to the refrigerator to get yourself a
Speaker 1: cool drank only to be stuff. Yeah, which would be hilarious,
Speaker 1: but not actually what would happen to you? However, that
Speaker 1: being said, there is one situation I could think of
Speaker 1: where you would need to be really careful, and that's
Speaker 1: if you had to get an m R. I yes,
Speaker 1: that that that would be something that you would want.
Speaker 1: Um perhaps you know, printed on a note in your
Speaker 1: wallet or something super powerful magnets there, I mean that
Speaker 1: could rip right through the flush of your finger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could end up with a hole where your
Speaker 1: magnet used to be. Um yeah, dangerous stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: one one case where I would think you would need
Speaker 1: to be very careful. Uh. And you know, I read
Speaker 1: an interesting article and wired. The guy who wrote it
Speaker 1: actually had one of these put into his finger as
Speaker 1: part of the story. I'm like, wow, that's dedicated journalism.
Speaker 1: I do not think I would have done that. He
Speaker 1: also had the problem of the magnet breaking at one point,
Speaker 1: like breaking into pieces, and for a while it wasn't
Speaker 1: working at all. In his finger turned black or part
Speaker 1: of his finger turned black, which you would think would
Speaker 1: be something of a warning sign, But eventually his finger
Speaker 1: got better. He had a little bit of an infection
Speaker 1: from it, but he fought it off and then because
Speaker 1: it's a magnet, and eventually reformed itself enough so that
Speaker 1: it works again, although he says not quite at the
Speaker 1: level at what it did when he first got it done.
Speaker 1: Oh bio hackers. So there have also been a couple
Speaker 1: of groups that have created some devices that actually extend
Speaker 1: abilities beyond just detecting magnetic fields. So in this case,
Speaker 1: they've created sensors that can that are tripped from various
Speaker 1: things like it could be a temperature sensor, it could
Speaker 1: be a distance sensor, and when it detects something, it
Speaker 1: will then create a aknetic field which activates the magnet.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you're giving yourself even more extra
Speaker 1: sensory perception abilities. One of the demos I saw had
Speaker 1: a guy with a blindfold on who would extend his
Speaker 1: hand out holding one of these devices. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: device would detect through I think radio waves kind of
Speaker 1: like radar when it got close to something else, So
Speaker 1: he could actually detect when something was in front of
Speaker 1: him even if he couldn't see it. Cool. So so
Speaker 1: for medical purposes, for example, um we we we could
Speaker 1: give these to the blind and compared it could easily
Speaker 1: be something like that. But at the time when I
Speaker 1: was looking at the way he was just demonstrating it,
Speaker 1: it was only when he was pretty close that he
Speaker 1: was able and and it was kind of like like
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen someone using a metal detector. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like sweeping across the area before figuring out, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's at this point in front of me. But
Speaker 1: with improvements that that would be that's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to watch. But the whole thing with the demo, I
Speaker 1: just kept thinking, or you could just look because they
Speaker 1: were they they weren't using a blind person as the exist,
Speaker 1: so I was just like, wow, this this sure does
Speaker 1: take away that whole tough thing of looking two feet
Speaker 1: in front of you, but that was me being started
Speaker 1: or at this point it sounds like where you know
Speaker 1: it's it's you could just extend your hand the extra
Speaker 1: two inches and some. To be fair, this is early
Speaker 1: early days of bio hacking. It's obviously not something that's
Speaker 1: meant to be rolled out to a wide audience, but
Speaker 1: it's got interesting potential. Then we've got r F I
Speaker 1: D implants. This is where we talk about Kevin Warwick,
Speaker 1: whom we have spoken about In a previous episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Chris and I did an episode I think
Speaker 1: we talked about cyborgs and we brought up Kevin Warwick.
Speaker 1: He's often referred to as one of the early cyborgs,
Speaker 1: mostly because he's just done some kind of pioneering work
Speaker 1: in implanting technology into himself. Uh not personally. He actually
Speaker 1: had other people performed the procedure, but he developed what
Speaker 1: it was that was going to happen. So he's a
Speaker 1: British you know, mathematician and scientist who um he worked
Speaker 1: with some people to have originally a microchip, a chip
Speaker 1: transponder implanted in his forearm and they used local anesthetic.
Speaker 1: They did the procedure and it allowed him to do
Speaker 1: things like unlocked doors or turn on lights. Essentially, if
Speaker 1: you've ever worked in a place where they have electronic
Speaker 1: locks and you have a little key card that you
Speaker 1: swipe in front of a detector we do here, um,
Speaker 1: then that that's the same sort of thing, except that
Speaker 1: instead of a card, he just had to wave his
Speaker 1: arm in front of it. Which you know, again, it's
Speaker 1: showing the potential for the technology. It wasn't meant to
Speaker 1: be like this is going to be part of me
Speaker 1: forever and ever and ever, right right, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: being rolled out to everyone. Yeah, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like everyone who worked in that building had to go
Speaker 1: and get surgery so that they could work. But it
Speaker 1: did allow him also to be tracked by a computer
Speaker 1: whenever he was moving through the Department of Cybernetics at
Speaker 1: the University of Reading. And that implant it was not
Speaker 1: meant to be permanent. It was removed after he had
Speaker 1: done essentially I think a couple of weeks of this
Speaker 1: and sort of showing the proof of concept. Now and
Speaker 1: the Science Museum in London, isn't it sure is, or
Speaker 1: at least last I heard it is. I mean, I
Speaker 1: assume it's still there, they can track it if it's not.
Speaker 1: But then since then a lot of people, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but several other people have done r F I D.
Speaker 1: Chip implants to kind of do everything from control basic
Speaker 1: electronics to activate other things like doors and lights. UM.
Speaker 1: And this is the same technology that that if you're
Speaker 1: if your dog or cat or other pet, I suppose
Speaker 1: you can put them in really whatever you wanted to
Speaker 1: um has has a microchip, then that is that is
Speaker 1: the same basic idea exactly the microchips are. They essentially
Speaker 1: have a signal on them that when you have a
Speaker 1: a device that can read the signal, can come up
Speaker 1: with whatever the code is, and then you can type
Speaker 1: it into a database and find out where that animal belongs. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you've ever microchip to pet, it's the
Speaker 1: same basic concept, except it's being used on humans. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: this is already something that has also been legislated in
Speaker 1: lots of places, and clean the United States, several states
Speaker 1: have made it against the law to implant or in
Speaker 1: some cases, like I think Georgia, force the implantation process
Speaker 1: upon people. Right, some of the worries I think where
Speaker 1: that UM that either people are going to microchip their
Speaker 1: their children or convicts employees, which in some companies feels
Speaker 1: like the same thing either as children or convicts or
Speaker 1: children convicts. I got an idea for reality show. I
Speaker 1: talked to you after the show. Anyway, Yeah, so two
Speaker 1: thou Warrick also had another surgical procedure done where he
Speaker 1: had about a hundred electrodes attached to one of his nerves,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to have some mural control over devices
Speaker 1: like a wheelchair or a little electronic hand. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. But anyway, that's that's kind of like
Speaker 1: the that's the next step, right, These are the science
Speaker 1: fictional kind of ways. And I think we can end
Speaker 1: on the Mondo Bizarrow weirdo way, which was the Stelios
Speaker 1: Arcadius also known as stell arc the performance artist who
Speaker 1: had a human ear surgically attached to his forearm. It
Speaker 1: was grown, It was not It was not a human.
Speaker 1: It was a cultured ear. Yes, it wasn't wasn't harvested.
Speaker 1: There's not a van go walking around saying I can't
Speaker 1: hear anything but my ears. Art. This was actually grown
Speaker 1: in the lab and then surgically attached to his arm.
Speaker 1: He at least at some point had plans on also
Speaker 1: getting a microphone and transmitter also part as as part
Speaker 1: of this ear project, so that you could quote unquote
Speaker 1: here what the ear was hearing, because it's not a
Speaker 1: working organ, it's just cosmetic. It's a cosmetic ear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have to be attached to and and I
Speaker 1: mean they create a whole sense organ and then create
Speaker 1: pathways to the brain for it to be something that's working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we are nowhere near that level of biotechnology. No, No,
Speaker 1: the human ears is actually very complex. Yeah, now we
Speaker 1: could possibly do the whole microphone transmitter thing. That's well
Speaker 1: within the realm. By the way, the whole the whole
Speaker 1: project received some criticism from people who require plastic surgery
Speaker 1: to reconstruct ears, either because they've lost in and maxed
Speaker 1: in or there's a broth to effect or whatever. They've
Speaker 1: criticized it saying that you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who don't have the money to have this
Speaker 1: procedure done, and this guy seems to just be wasting it. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's been some criticism on that level. And then
Speaker 1: there are other people who say, like, well, art is art,
Speaker 1: and you know who is one person to judge what
Speaker 1: another person's art is. That's an argument that's outside the
Speaker 1: realm of tech stuff thankfully. Alright, So, um, Lauren, you're
Speaker 1: ready to go and modify your body now that we've
Speaker 1: had this discussion, not not. I think I'm gonna yeah good,
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right right for this current moment. I
Speaker 1: did check in tattoos, I want to guess, but okay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: well I think I'm gonna pay my rent instead this
Speaker 1: month that personally, you know, priorities good, yeah, place to
Speaker 1: live first, food, then tattoos. Alright, So, guys, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode. Do you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes? I recommend you get in touch with this
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