Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about skin today, the skin that we
Speaker 1: live in, the skin that covers our bodies, that is
Speaker 1: our bodies. Yeah, you know, I've been wanting to tell
Speaker 1: you this for a long time, and we've been podcasting
Speaker 1: now for what like a year and a half or so,
Speaker 1: so I feel like I could finally tell you. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me, let me have your epiderms is showing. We
Speaker 1: were just talking about this. This is this is the
Speaker 1: popular second grade, third grade joke. I guess you've got
Speaker 1: or one person comes to this is epidermousis showing and
Speaker 1: it sounds dirty or or oh what's happening something on
Speaker 1: zip to it. It's just just my skin And that's
Speaker 1: the punchline. Oh but everyone's skin is showing right right right.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing though, that that's that's the deal
Speaker 1: about skin. It seems not too exciting, the thing that
Speaker 1: gets overlooked a punchline, but it's amazing stuff. And and
Speaker 1: as you all can tell, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about this today. Yeah, so people probably heard this fact before,
Speaker 1: but it is in fact the largest organ human body.
Speaker 1: If you ever gone to a trivia night somewhere, they've
Speaker 1: probably thrown that one out. It's a favorite on the
Speaker 1: trivia circuit. If you were to stretch out the average
Speaker 1: adult skin, it would cover twenty two square feet two
Speaker 1: square meters and it's a little bigger than a twin bed,
Speaker 1: and it would weigh about eight pounds. That sounds a
Speaker 1: little horrific. It sounds a little like Buffalo Bill Signs
Speaker 1: of the Lamps if you were to stretch it out.
Speaker 1: But yes, if if you were teaching my favorite at
Speaker 1: least favorite skinners in fiction, like Buffalo Bill. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a fabulous or horrifying character in Larry McMurtry's Comanche
Speaker 1: Moon who skins people. There is a terrifying skinning sequence
Speaker 1: in Murakami's which one was not the wind Up Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is the wind Up Bird Chronicle. There's a Mongolian
Speaker 1: flair that plays a man alive, and of course fans
Speaker 1: of the Game of Throne series know the Bolton Clan
Speaker 1: rather well, it's a horrifying thing to anticipate. One more
Speaker 1: Evil Willow from Buffy someone who who does she get
Speaker 1: does somebody that someone who did something to her? Lady out?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, that sin. Yeah, but obviously this was
Speaker 1: a very dramatic moment. So yeah, we're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about invistration. So much is just this
Speaker 1: thing that we're wearing on us. Just flavoring the horror
Speaker 1: of being skinned kind of drives home just how important
Speaker 1: it is. It is the surface level of our being.
Speaker 1: It is the layer with which we sense the world
Speaker 1: around us. It is the layer that carries their physical identity,
Speaker 1: and we tend to have a really hard time living
Speaker 1: without it. Oh yeah, we'd be using all over. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty important. We clean it, we decorate it,
Speaker 1: we stretch it and pull it and pierce it. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, here's a nice start, eleven
Speaker 1: point seven million Americans underwent some sort of cosmetic procedure botox,
Speaker 1: filler surgery, so on. That is a four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty seven percent increase from a decade earlier. So we're
Speaker 1: pretty concerned about how we are portraying our skin to
Speaker 1: the world. And that's not counting tattooing, right, No, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: There's a lot associated with this. There's ego, there's beauty,
Speaker 1: there's ritual. And here's another little fact I wanted to
Speaker 1: throw out. There are relative hairlessness is not something that
Speaker 1: is an adaptation of us wearing clothes or us having
Speaker 1: descended from dolphins. It's a it's more to do with
Speaker 1: our abundance of sweat glands. So that's why we are
Speaker 1: the hairless wonders that we are. Some are the hairless wonders, yeah,
Speaker 1: someone others Like I was watching an older film where
Speaker 1: they had medallions the other day, and I was thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: if the medallion comes back as a male fashion accessory,
Speaker 1: they're going to be a number of guys out there
Speaker 1: who are not who are going to lack the prominent
Speaker 1: chest hair required to prominently display said medallion. And I
Speaker 1: was wondering if there is a business opportunity there for
Speaker 1: me in the marketing of I guess it would be
Speaker 1: like a chess market or something, a chess market chess wig,
Speaker 1: you know, because you don't want the medallion just said
Speaker 1: in there, and I just I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: good day. I'm going to say this right now, you know,
Speaker 1: Merkan hasn't come up a long time in conversation, so
Speaker 1: the fact that you just brought it up, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I'm sure there are other people out there
Speaker 1: that you just got some marking points with there. We
Speaker 1: are relatively careless, except for those who want to maybe
Speaker 1: go back to the seventies and wear medallions and put
Speaker 1: a roguain on their chest. But let's just have a
Speaker 1: little overview of how this wonder skin works for us
Speaker 1: well and why at imports. As we mentioned before, you know,
Speaker 1: without it, we would be using Clive Barkery horror shows.
Speaker 1: And that's telling because the skin is a protective layer.
Speaker 1: You can think of it as the wall all right
Speaker 1: inside all of our guts and our bones and all
Speaker 1: this is very important. But you can think of it
Speaker 1: as like a medieval city. And we recently discussed the
Speaker 1: walls in an entire episode, and we discussed the importance
Speaker 1: of those walls surrounding that city to protect it from
Speaker 1: marauders and invading armies and barbarians. Well, same deal with
Speaker 1: the skin. The skin is there, this is the wall
Speaker 1: around the city, and the white blood cells are the
Speaker 1: soldier is manning that wall to fight off the bacterial
Speaker 1: invaders that would come in the first line of defense
Speaker 1: on the epidermis right um. And the epidermis is also
Speaker 1: helping to produce melanin, which we'll talk about in a
Speaker 1: little bit, So we have a second line of defense.
Speaker 1: This is the dermist. Yes, and this is like sort
Speaker 1: of the meat of the sandwich I think of it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is where you find blood vessels, is
Speaker 1: full of collagen, which gives it the firmness that we
Speaker 1: encounter with skin. And it's also where you'll find sweat
Speaker 1: glands and the hair follicles. And it contains all these
Speaker 1: nerve endings as well. That allows to feel sensations such
Speaker 1: as heat, cold, and pain. And as we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the past and discussing pain, when our pain sensation is
Speaker 1: working appropriately, it is an important warning sign that something
Speaker 1: is wrong, that something has pierced the defenses, that something
Speaker 1: may pierce the defenses, that something may damage the walls
Speaker 1: of our being. It also tells our immune system like, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, we've got stuff going on, why don't
Speaker 1: you get into the action here. Because we tried to
Speaker 1: vanquish this bacteria with our white blood cells, but you know,
Speaker 1: possibly you should get in on the game as well, right,
Speaker 1: And those blood vessels also have an important role to
Speaker 1: play in regulating our body temperature. We touched on some
Speaker 1: of this when we were discussing the possibility and impossibility
Speaker 1: of gigantic creatures, and that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that came up and discussing like King Kong, is that
Speaker 1: you have a body that big, you've got a cooler
Speaker 1: body that big unregulated temperatures. So a blood vessels in
Speaker 1: the skin contract and dilate depending on the outside temperature.
Speaker 1: So when it's cold outside, blood vessels contract to keep
Speaker 1: the blood near the surface of your skin from it
Speaker 1: cooming too cool. And when it's hot outside, the same
Speaker 1: vessels expand to encourage heat loss and you begin to sweat. Ah.
Speaker 1: So that's what's keeping us all nice and comfortable. And
Speaker 1: then we have the hypodermis, which is just basically attaching
Speaker 1: the skin to the bones and the muscles. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the innermost layer and it's just the ground level
Speaker 1: of the skin. The tethering system. Yeah. Yeah, So our
Speaker 1: skin has to do a couple of things. That has
Speaker 1: to absorb enough ultra violet radiation from the sun to
Speaker 1: manufacture vitamin D. We your bodies really need to keep
Speaker 1: our bones strong and healthy. So I forgot the white
Speaker 1: blood cells are the soldiers manning the walls and the
Speaker 1: sea bone. They're like the outside force that kind of
Speaker 1: patrols right outside the gate. Our pores pump out this
Speaker 1: oily sea bone stuff, which is more difficult for bacteria
Speaker 1: to penetrate. It's just another protective layer. It's a nice
Speaker 1: little sheen on our skin. Yes, So it's doing all
Speaker 1: sorts of things, and it is also using and harnessing
Speaker 1: the power of the sun right to manufacture vitamin D.
Speaker 1: Keeping us healthy, also keep our immune systems in check,
Speaker 1: and it protects us from the damage of too much
Speaker 1: ultra violet radiation from the sun because if you get
Speaker 1: too much uvy radiation, that destroys something called full eight
Speaker 1: and fullate is really important in terms of cell function
Speaker 1: and cell reproduction. Fullate deficiency is actually linked to neural
Speaker 1: tobe birth effects during pregnancy. That's why a lot of
Speaker 1: pregnant women take supplements for it. But this is something
Speaker 1: we're getting to you here, is this idea that our
Speaker 1: skin isn't just a protective covering, making sure that our
Speaker 1: organs don't fall out, but that there's other little nuanced
Speaker 1: things going on at the level where melanin is produced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Melanine is a pigment that's produced in specialized skin cells
Speaker 1: called care at incites. And the more melanine you have,
Speaker 1: the darker your skin happens to be. So hormones and
Speaker 1: genetics player role in this, and it and determines how
Speaker 1: much a pigment our bodies will produce. And it also
Speaker 1: explains the wide variety of skin tones that we have,
Speaker 1: Like you even have two siblings that share the same parents,
Speaker 1: but they'll have slightly different skin tones going on or
Speaker 1: sometimes not even so slight. And this is called the
Speaker 1: biological adaptation. It's a trait that's evolved over time because
Speaker 1: it increases the likelihood that that person will survive long
Speaker 1: enough to produce. Professor and author Nina Jablonsky did a
Speaker 1: great TED talk about the illusion of skin color, and
Speaker 1: she talks about this fact that we are so connected
Speaker 1: to our early ancestors. We are connected by our DNA,
Speaker 1: by our mitochondrial DNA, and yet we have these differences
Speaker 1: in our skin pigmentation. And a lot of this seems
Speaker 1: like yes, this all makes sense, but when she talks
Speaker 1: about it in this way, it's really fascinating. She talks
Speaker 1: about it by saying, let's look at what the earliest
Speaker 1: humans were dealing with in terms of their environment and
Speaker 1: why they had such a concentration of melanin in their skins.
Speaker 1: They had evolved in high UV environments in equatorial Africa.
Speaker 1: And again it's important to drive home again, melanin helps
Speaker 1: absorb the harmful for violet rays of the sun, so
Speaker 1: light skinned people have a greater tendency to get sunburned
Speaker 1: than dark skinned people, and that's where we also see
Speaker 1: panning come into play, right, Right, so you think about
Speaker 1: melanin as a natural sunscreen, right, Yeah. And so we're
Speaker 1: looking back at this early environment on Earth and we
Speaker 1: know that melanin has been in production for millions of years,
Speaker 1: and we've got the earliest humans hanging out near the
Speaker 1: equator and that is being bombarded the atmosphere by uv B,
Speaker 1: UV A and UVC. Now UVC is pretty much sort
Speaker 1: of being filtered out in the atmosphere, but UVB and
Speaker 1: uv A are really killing it. And v B can
Speaker 1: be really destructive. And yet it's also really important as
Speaker 1: we've talked about and producing are helping your skin to
Speaker 1: produce vitamin deed, especially when you're dealing with early civilizations
Speaker 1: where people are not working office jobs nine to five.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone is more or less out in the open.
Speaker 1: And if you're living in an area that's not, say,
Speaker 1: heavily wooded, that doesn't benefit from a lot of cloud cover,
Speaker 1: then you're going to be absorbing this stuff on a
Speaker 1: verily regular basis well. And in this small concentration of
Speaker 1: area right like between tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, this
Speaker 1: is where early man is setting up shop because most
Speaker 1: of the rest of the earth is way too cold,
Speaker 1: it's way too harsh. So yeah, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: be dealing with this environment in your skin is actually
Speaker 1: going to naturally select to pigment itself, to to create
Speaker 1: this sunscreen for itself. But Jabonski says, Okay, what happened
Speaker 1: is that we then have migration, yes, and humans dispersed
Speaker 1: not once but twice major moves outside of our equatorial
Speaker 1: homeland from Africa and to other parts of the Old
Speaker 1: World and then most recently in the New World. And
Speaker 1: she says that when they were dispersed into these latitudes,
Speaker 1: conditions were significantly colder, of course, but they were also
Speaker 1: less intense with respect to the ultra violet regime, as
Speaker 1: she calls it. So, over thousands of years, we see
Speaker 1: individuals move from brighter, warmer climates to colder, darker climates,
Speaker 1: and then over the course of say a single generation
Speaker 1: or even less, you will have this new migration where
Speaker 1: someone will move from these darker, colder regions right back
Speaker 1: to where they started from, more or less in terms
Speaker 1: of heat and light within just a few years. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you do have some of these
Speaker 1: lands opening up as the climate warms, right, and it
Speaker 1: becomes possible to live in the northern climbs, and you
Speaker 1: have dark skinned people who begin to adapt, as you say,
Speaker 1: within generations to this, and they begin producing less melanin
Speaker 1: and become lighter skinned. And I just think it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because this is the reason why we have this array
Speaker 1: of colors. And she makes this incredible point to Blonsky.
Speaker 1: She says that we don't need a proof of concept
Speaker 1: to explain evolution that is overly complex. She says, just
Speaker 1: look at your skin and you can see the evidence
Speaker 1: of natural selection at play. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating and
Speaker 1: it really changes the way you look at different skin
Speaker 1: pigments among different racial groups that just based on where
Speaker 1: they are in the world. Well, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's given science and in particularly medicine a better understanding
Speaker 1: of how our environment really affects our health. So if
Speaker 1: you are someone who with light skin and you're living
Speaker 1: near the equator, then you have the very real possibility
Speaker 1: that you're going to be deficient and in full eight,
Speaker 1: and so you needed to take supplements for that. If
Speaker 1: you're dark skin and you're living in extreme northern climbs,
Speaker 1: then you're going to take vitamin D because you're not
Speaker 1: gonna produce nearly enough from a week UVB coming through.
Speaker 1: And there really a lot of us anyway in the
Speaker 1: modern world do not get in the vitamin D anyway
Speaker 1: because we, like I said, wait, now, we're living these
Speaker 1: lives where we're inside for nine to five in many cases,
Speaker 1: so we're not out in the open to receive that
Speaker 1: vitamin D in the quantities that we have evolved. Well.
Speaker 1: In sunscreen, actually, I know that there have been some
Speaker 1: studies about the deltarious effects of sunscreen on us in
Speaker 1: terms of our immune systems and vitamin D deficiencies and
Speaker 1: even some of the things that have been cropping up,
Speaker 1: just things like allergies and kids, things that didn't used
Speaker 1: to exist previous to like the nineteen seventies. Really because
Speaker 1: we are slathing ourselves in sunscreen, which you have to
Speaker 1: do it right, But again, if you were not really
Speaker 1: getting that exposure you need, then you can't synthesize vitamin
Speaker 1: D for yourself. Yeah, it's like you're sort of damned
Speaker 1: if you did, damned if you don't. Right, it's like,
Speaker 1: if I go out without sunscreen, I get burned. If
Speaker 1: I go out with sunscreen, then I need to take
Speaker 1: vitamin D. So it's true. It's true. You know, I
Speaker 1: think it's time to bring the sexy on in in
Speaker 1: the form of the future of skin. But we've or
Speaker 1: we do that, yes quick, all right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: we've discussed skin, how it works, what it does, what
Speaker 1: kind of goes wrong with it as we drag it
Speaker 1: into the modern age with us. But now we're gonna
Speaker 1: drag it even farther into the future with us. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take skin with us and try to imagine what
Speaker 1: our skin is going to be like in the years
Speaker 1: to come, all right, but this is really some very
Speaker 1: cool stuff that's on the horizon here. And before we
Speaker 1: go into that, I did want to mention that there
Speaker 1: is something that sounds futuristic that's already in playing. This
Speaker 1: is called spray on skin, and this is for burn victims.
Speaker 1: So I've mentioned that because we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff. And you may say, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is going to come to fruition, but things like
Speaker 1: spray on skin, or the skin gun as it's called,
Speaker 1: also seemed like it might never come to fruition, and
Speaker 1: it certainly did. So what do we get here? Well,
Speaker 1: on the and just on the subject of skin growing
Speaker 1: and skin spraying, there's an interesting project from the front
Speaker 1: Hopper Institute of Interface Engineering and Biotechnology. They have set
Speaker 1: up a new skin factory that can supposedly produce five
Speaker 1: thousand penny sized discs of whitish translucent skin every month,
Speaker 1: and they can also do varying darker shades as well.
Speaker 1: Robots control the skin growing process, monitoring the cell broth
Speaker 1: and carefully slicing swatches to prevent infection. So this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing we can and will use in
Speaker 1: skin grass. You know, you have situations where someone has
Speaker 1: lost skin, particularly to burns, and what do you have
Speaker 1: to do. You have to get skin from elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the body and move it forward. That's why my friend Oz,
Speaker 1: who is shot with a flaming arrow when he was
Speaker 1: a kid, because yeah, as kids do, and so he
Speaker 1: has butt skin on his shoulder he's very proud of Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because a he has it, has a story
Speaker 1: about being shot with a flaming arrow, which is which
Speaker 1: is a pretty great story to have. And then he
Speaker 1: also has that you can talk about how it's his
Speaker 1: butt skin. But in other cases, skin is grafted from cadavers.
Speaker 1: Even so, in the best of circumstances that we're talking
Speaker 1: about a complex procedure that would be better suited if
Speaker 1: we just had some newly fresh grown custom skin on
Speaker 1: right hand, and that one too, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: they can actually add the pigment and they can change
Speaker 1: the different colors of skin. There's also something using spider silk. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the scientists in Germany are using spider silk as a biocompatible,
Speaker 1: biodegradable adhesive matrix for skin repairfold. Yeah, we talked about scaffolding.
Speaker 1: When we talked about growing organs, you really need some
Speaker 1: sort of structure that's underlying all this. So they're using
Speaker 1: dragline silk from golden orb web spiders, and they wove
Speaker 1: matrices on steel frames and seated them with fibroblasts which
Speaker 1: provided the structural background for connective tissue. And then they
Speaker 1: added skin cell progenitors and we're able to cultivate synthetic skin. Again,
Speaker 1: that's the sort of broth that you were talking about,
Speaker 1: and they were able to create dermis and epidermis, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. Now, the drawback on that is it's going
Speaker 1: to be really hard to harvest a lot of spider fibers, right,
Speaker 1: So the idea is to take these spider webs and
Speaker 1: then just sort of synthesize them and create, you know,
Speaker 1: something similar to to this natural structure. Didn't we engineer
Speaker 1: a goat that milks spiderweb or did I dream that?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it sounds a little surreal, a little dreamlight.
Speaker 1: I believe this was a project that some scientists were
Speaker 1: working and I have to fact check that it's projects
Speaker 1: like that that it could also be. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like we want spider webbing to serve as a scaffolding
Speaker 1: for these skin graphs. But if we could tinker with
Speaker 1: another animal to produce the spider like a goat produces
Speaker 1: spider web that has then used to grow human skin.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of beautiful cycle of life.
Speaker 1: Matt our producer disagreed with that that's possible. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that if that's in your head, that that
Speaker 1: is real, then there is somewhere. But then there are
Speaker 1: also a number of more techie skin things that are
Speaker 1: out there developing. For instance, MT engineers have built nanoparticle
Speaker 1: tattoos and these are designed to help diabetics continuously monitor
Speaker 1: glucose levels, and this flows in with some of the
Speaker 1: technology we were discussing in our contact lenses of the
Speaker 1: gods article. The idea that you would have these a
Speaker 1: little receptors and nanotechnology in the lens that could interact
Speaker 1: with the fluids on the surface of your eye and
Speaker 1: then could signal you if something was up. Similar situation
Speaker 1: with the tattoos. You could have a tattoo in place,
Speaker 1: and you could have fluorescent dyes and sensor molecules that
Speaker 1: bind certain chemicals, and then you could flash the multiviolent
Speaker 1: light on it, and you could attact what is actually
Speaker 1: going on inside you. If you're having a right you
Speaker 1: can have an iPhone app that would send that information
Speaker 1: to a computer to be analyzed. Yeah. I know. It
Speaker 1: could be used to test for things like, you know,
Speaker 1: to help diabetics monitor GOOGLESE levels and things of that nature. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also something that's really cool and it is a
Speaker 1: peelable electronic circuit skin put. No, no, no, not skin put.
Speaker 1: That's a different one. I'm jumping ahead. The skin puts
Speaker 1: really cool too, though, But that can be rubbed onto
Speaker 1: the skin just like a temporary tattoo, and the small
Speaker 1: circuits can bend and stretch with the skin, and the
Speaker 1: semiconductor circuits could be used to monitor muscle activity, hard activity,
Speaker 1: or even brain waves. And you get it off just
Speaker 1: as you would temporary tattoo. You just kind of rub
Speaker 1: it off a little soap and water. Yeah, so almost
Speaker 1: like a patch, except even less intrusive. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: mentioned skin put that I am the most excited about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the project created at Carnegie mill And University and
Speaker 1: Microsoft Research. And it turns your arm or or I
Speaker 1: don't know, your back, I mean, but really anythings on
Speaker 1: the table I guess into a touch screen. So in
Speaker 1: the case of your hand, you have a small arm
Speaker 1: band and a user would project an information display onto
Speaker 1: the skin, so it would be you know, projection of
Speaker 1: say a keyboard or some sort of input display, and
Speaker 1: you would press the skin like you would an iPhone
Speaker 1: or any other touch screen. And the arm band contains
Speaker 1: an acoustic sensor that uses the tissue density and other
Speaker 1: biometric data to determine where you've tapped, So it's projecting
Speaker 1: this little keyboard onto your hand, and then the band
Speaker 1: would also detect where you're touching on that keyboard where
Speaker 1: you're on yourself. So if you think bluetooth, if you
Speaker 1: think that made everybody look insane, just wait until we
Speaker 1: get this little keyboards on our skin and we all
Speaker 1: are poking ourselves. You know that the early adopters, at
Speaker 1: least I like the idea of that using other people's
Speaker 1: backs for it, you know, because it kind of plays
Speaker 1: with the whole deal You've seen in TV shows where
Speaker 1: somebody needs to sign a paper and they would have
Speaker 1: the person in front of them lean over so they
Speaker 1: could sign on their back. Well, and I can see
Speaker 1: that like a cheesy like sitcom plot point to take
Speaker 1: your shirt off so I can use your back is
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know what I'm saying. I don't
Speaker 1: know it went somewhere. I didn't mean for it to go,
Speaker 1: but technology always does. It does exactly. So what about
Speaker 1: our robot friends like Arnie? What what sort of skin
Speaker 1: tents can we create for them? Oh? Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: some products that are looking into the possibility of robot skin,
Speaker 1: which sounds very terminator ask at first. As a kid,
Speaker 1: I always found that fascinating how the Terminator he has
Speaker 1: his end of skeleton that is robotic, and then he's
Speaker 1: covered in human skin, this living human tissue because he's
Speaker 1: disguising and because whatever they're weirdo time travel system you
Speaker 1: can only send a living thing back in time or something.
Speaker 1: But I always found it interesting to think, well, how
Speaker 1: does that skin behave, how is it working? How is
Speaker 1: it jiving with that robot underneath it. One of the
Speaker 1: big things would be that the skin is this layer
Speaker 1: of sense. It allows us to touch things and feel
Speaker 1: the environment around us. So while we're not necessarily looking
Speaker 1: to grow Arnold Schwarzenegger's skin around all of our robots.
Speaker 1: The idea of creating a skin like barrier, the skin
Speaker 1: like layer that is used to sense the world, that
Speaker 1: is very much on robotist minds. Okay, well, let me
Speaker 1: describe something to you that is extremely rudimentary version of that.
Speaker 1: Like I even sort of see it as like a
Speaker 1: metal robot, like squirted with do Okay. Basically, a team
Speaker 1: of researchers at pit University may predictions regarding the behavior
Speaker 1: of Belosov zabatanski z gel. And that's a material that
Speaker 1: was first fabricated in the late nineties and is shown
Speaker 1: to pulsate in the absence of any external stimmy lie.
Speaker 1: In fact, under certain conditions, the gel can sit in
Speaker 1: a petri dish and resembles a beating heart. So there's
Speaker 1: a little creepy element. And that's without scimuli. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so it needs stimuli to stop the pain. This sounds
Speaker 1: like a great I was about to say, it seems
Speaker 1: like you're going there with a plotline. So Annabellas, she's
Speaker 1: the Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and Pits
Speaker 1: Swanson School of Engineering, says, think of it like human skin,
Speaker 1: which can provide signals to the brain that something on
Speaker 1: the body is deformed or hurt. The gel has numerous
Speaker 1: far reaching applications, such as artificial skin that could be sensory,
Speaker 1: which she says is the holy grail in robotics. You
Speaker 1: throw in haptic technology for virtual reality environments and the
Speaker 1: applications there become obvious as well. We're sending, say a
Speaker 1: robotic pro about to another world, and we want to
Speaker 1: sense that world as we would sense it there physically.
Speaker 1: Didn't makes sense to have that kind of technology involved
Speaker 1: with the robot that we sent. Well, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that too in the context of the virtual sex
Speaker 1: episode that we did, especially with another little technology here
Speaker 1: or big technology is stretchable electronics. Yeah, and this electronic
Speaker 1: skin could bring touch sensitivity to machine. So this is
Speaker 1: a more well, I think if it is a more
Speaker 1: sophisticated version. So the gentlest pressure that human skin can
Speaker 1: detect is about one kilopascal, but a stretchable skin can
Speaker 1: actually detect pressures that are one thousand times more gentle,
Speaker 1: like a ghost sneezing on you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's based on organic transistors. It's made of electric elect
Speaker 1: elastic sorry material sandwich between two electrodes, and it's a
Speaker 1: highly sensitive surface that could help robots pick up delicate
Speaker 1: objects without breaking them. When delicate objects, I think means
Speaker 1: us right in the future. We've talked about that too.
Speaker 1: Give prosthetics a sense of touch, which would be super cool,
Speaker 1: and give surgeons find or control over tools for minimally
Speaker 1: invasive surgery. Well, there you have it. The future of
Speaker 1: skin is bright, full of that grown custom skin pulsating
Speaker 1: pulsating gel that we're spraying onto our robots. It's going
Speaker 1: to be an amazing time to live in. HM. Let's
Speaker 1: check in with our skinless robots, shall we. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Let's get some listener mail. All right, here's one we
Speaker 1: received from our listeners. Scott. Scott writes in and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I stumbled across your podcast a few weeks ago, and
Speaker 1: I've been greedily gobbling up episodes ever since. I just
Speaker 1: listened to the Lucid Dreaming episode and I wanted to
Speaker 1: share some of my experiences with lucid dreaming. When I
Speaker 1: first started working on the night shift as an r ND,
Speaker 1: I would have extremely vivid lucid dreams almost every time
Speaker 1: I slept. I really enjoyed my experiences while lucid dreaming,
Speaker 1: and although I could never exercise complete control over the
Speaker 1: dream environment, I could usually do things like fly, teleport
Speaker 1: through walls, and breathe underwater. Somewhat less enjoyable were the
Speaker 1: episodes of false awakenings that I begin to have after
Speaker 1: especially stressful days. I would quote unquote way Cup lying
Speaker 1: in my bed, and then I would slowly realize that
Speaker 1: I was still dreaming. I did some research, and I
Speaker 1: found some reality checks that came in Handing jumping or
Speaker 1: skipping seemed to work especially well for me. If I
Speaker 1: was dreaming, I would leap in slow motion. If I
Speaker 1: wasn't dreaming, I would just feel a little silly. The
Speaker 1: false awakening got a little unnerving when I begin having
Speaker 1: as many as eight of them in a row. However,
Speaker 1: false awakenings did help me learn how to recognize dreams,
Speaker 1: and now I have lucid dreams about three times a week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the great podcast, Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: And then he also adds, Julie, have you noticed any
Speaker 1: limits on your control of your lucid dreams? For instance,
Speaker 1: when I fly in my dreams, I find that I
Speaker 1: usually can't fly any higher than the tree tops. Can
Speaker 1: you fly? Oh I can? I can fly pretty well.
Speaker 1: It's one of I thought it was so interesting that
Speaker 1: he brought that up because it it's variable, like it's
Speaker 1: so mental because I can get up really really really
Speaker 1: high and see sort of like what you would think
Speaker 1: of as like not the view of a state, that
Speaker 1: particular geographical area. But it takes so much effort to
Speaker 1: try to keep going higher and higher because I find
Speaker 1: that I keep dropping in my dreams, and then I
Speaker 1: have to get myself back up again. So it sort
Speaker 1: of depends on what I'm doing. If I'm just flying
Speaker 1: down the sidewalk looking in shop windows and I need
Speaker 1: to get so high. On a related note to the dreaming,
Speaker 1: last night was the first night that I tried out
Speaker 1: this app on my iPhone called dream On like dream
Speaker 1: cooling on. The way it supposedly works is that you
Speaker 1: turn it on when you go to bed, you haven't
Speaker 1: plugged into the wall, and you have it laying face
Speaker 1: down on the bed next to you, like at the
Speaker 1: corner of the bed, and then it will detect your
Speaker 1: motions like you can supposed to tell how much you're
Speaker 1: moving around, and then it can figure out when you're
Speaker 1: in deep sleep based on your lack of motion, and
Speaker 1: you can have it play a preset sound to let
Speaker 1: you know that this is the time when you should
Speaker 1: be dreaming. If not alert you into a lucid state,
Speaker 1: then at least color your dreams with some sort of
Speaker 1: a soundscape that sounds like the beginnings of what we
Speaker 1: talked about the Aldge study right where they were talking
Speaker 1: about trying to influence your dreams and give you a
Speaker 1: nice dream. Yeah, and the the app had some sort of
Speaker 1: dream journal apparatus as well, because the people who made
Speaker 1: it want to sort of keep track on how people
Speaker 1: are using it and what effect is having. I did
Speaker 1: not have any good experiences with it last night because
Speaker 1: the cat was very vocal about becoming an indoor cat.
Speaker 1: Did you dream of a goat producing spider whip milk? No?
Speaker 1: I dreamed a vote cat that was shut up for
Speaker 1: an hour straight so I could sleep. That then turned
Speaker 1: into a goat. Yeah, But I'm gonna keep trying it
Speaker 1: out and see if it does anything for me. It's
Speaker 1: a free download if anyone else wants to try it.
Speaker 1: There are some like in app purchases if you want
Speaker 1: to get like different sounds, but you can use it
Speaker 1: as is, and you can incorporate your own music tracks
Speaker 1: off your phone without any kind of interventional price. So
Speaker 1: if anyone else wants to try it out, let me know.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear what your experiences are with it,
Speaker 1: and hopefully I'll have some sort of noteworthy dreaming experience
Speaker 1: within myself. I like this your collecting data, now, aren't you.
Speaker 1: How do you get in touch with us? Well, you
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook. As always, we are stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind on there, and you can also
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter, where our Twitter handle is blow
Speaker 1: the Mind one word, and you can also drop us
Speaker 1: a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com