Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all things tech and getting faster and faster
Speaker 1: with those, aren't I. It is time for another classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. This one has the title mod
Speaker 1: That Bod Body Modification. Seriously cool and sometimes weird and
Speaker 1: sometimes disturbing stuff. This episode originally published on August two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. Hope you guys enjoy it. We talked about piercing.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about actually putting stuff under the skin. Other
Speaker 1: lots of different versions of this. Now subdermal. The hint
Speaker 1: is in the name, right, sub dermal, So it's beneath
Speaker 1: so so so so Again, the epidermis is the skin
Speaker 1: that you can poke. The derm this is the more
Speaker 1: permanent layer below that. And then and then you've got
Speaker 1: subdermal fatty some other layers and we'll talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of them. Uh So, Yeah, the subcutest is this
Speaker 1: layer below the dermists. Actually, subdermal implants go between the
Speaker 1: subcutest lick layer and the facia, which is the fibrous
Speaker 1: tissue that serves as connective tissue. So this is pretty
Speaker 1: deep stuff. And the reason for that is these are
Speaker 1: shapes that people put under their skin so they protrude outward. Normally,
Speaker 1: it's in some places fairly visible, like your forehead, not
Speaker 1: my forehead, I'm not going to do this a person's
Speaker 1: hypothetical person's forehead or forehead, forearmed, sometimes the collar bone area. Uh,
Speaker 1: really can be anywhere, but these are the typical places
Speaker 1: it tends to be. And so people who are into
Speaker 1: this kind of body modification will usually pick a fairly
Speaker 1: simple shape because it needs to stand out when you
Speaker 1: when you're looking at the person's you know, wherever the
Speaker 1: implant is, that you can recognize what the shape is.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just gonna look like a lump, like a blob,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of way. Yeah. So usually it's a
Speaker 1: fairly distinctive, simple shape that is designed to create a
Speaker 1: visible bulge in wherever the person has chosen to have
Speaker 1: the implant. So stars, hearts, beads, sometimes you just round
Speaker 1: beads are are the most common form that I've seen. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And to do this again this now, when we're starting
Speaker 1: to get into these levels we're really talking about. You
Speaker 1: need to do your research because now we're getting into
Speaker 1: surgical procedures. Anytime they're making an actual cavity. In fact,
Speaker 1: pocketing kind of fits in this too. Anytime they're making
Speaker 1: an actual cavity in your body. Now you're talking serious
Speaker 1: surgical procedure. You need to make sure that the person
Speaker 1: who's going to be performing it is not only sterilizing
Speaker 1: all their equipment, but that they are experienced in doing this. Preferably,
Speaker 1: you would like to find a body modification specialist who
Speaker 1: has medical training. Uh, it is, I leave. It's technically
Speaker 1: illegal for people without medical depends on where you are, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it varies by state and their regionality. Right, there's
Speaker 1: some states that are like, whoa, We totally didn't ever
Speaker 1: think anyone would do that, So we don't have anything
Speaker 1: on the law. However, serving pretzels with beer is still terrible, right,
Speaker 1: we've actual law still in the books in some places.
Speaker 1: So if you want to talk about crazy laws. Where
Speaker 1: I grew up, it's illegal to eat fried chicken with
Speaker 1: a fork and knife. You have to eat it with
Speaker 1: your fingers. You are joking, are joking? I'd say a
Speaker 1: horse walks into a bar and bartender says, why the
Speaker 1: long face? I am being perfectly serious. However, I should
Speaker 1: add that this was a publicity stunt because Kentucky Fried
Speaker 1: Chicken opened up a branch in Gainsville, Georgia, and Gainsville,
Speaker 1: George's the poultry cabinal of the world, and so as
Speaker 1: a publicity stunt, they made it illegal to eat fried
Speaker 1: chicken with a fork and knife. So it was a
Speaker 1: joke law on the first place. I am completely horrified
Speaker 1: by our legal system right now. I'm a rural bumpkin.
Speaker 1: So anyway, um, yeah, so not a lot of not
Speaker 1: every place has legislation on this, because frankly, people didn't
Speaker 1: think I was gonna do it. But really, what's going
Speaker 1: on here? Here, here's the process. They make a surgical incision.
Speaker 1: By the way, you might be lucky and get some
Speaker 1: kind of anesthetic for this, but more likely than not,
Speaker 1: you're you're not going to get it because an aesthetic
Speaker 1: that is perhaps a topical anesthetic maybe maybe because I
Speaker 1: think you can get a hold of those pretty easy.
Speaker 1: You might just get some ice on the area before
Speaker 1: they get started to numb it. Because anesthetic that is legislated,
Speaker 1: that's heavily controlled in most places, so most places don't
Speaker 1: have any kind of authority, they can't use it. So
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to endure this without any
Speaker 1: like actual super anesthetic. So they make a surgical incision
Speaker 1: and then they insert something called a dermal elevator. Tell me,
Speaker 1: tell me what a dermal elevator is, Jonathan, Well, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not gonna have otis on it, so it's
Speaker 1: not mechanic. It's uh, well, you know, there's no moving parts.
Speaker 1: Is mechanic in the sense that you have to put
Speaker 1: mechanical stress on the end of it. Okay, So imagine
Speaker 1: a spatula or a butter knife that's medical grade so
Speaker 1: sterilized all that you've made an incision. The artist that
Speaker 1: inserts the dermal elevator under the flap of skin between
Speaker 1: the subcutest and facial layers and just just levers it,
Speaker 1: levers it up a little bit. Yeah, and I'm just
Speaker 1: slip whatever, separating the tissues so that there can be
Speaker 1: something instead there and making essentially an internal pocket inside
Speaker 1: that area. And then um gently perhaps actually usually it's
Speaker 1: not so gentle. They there's a pretty Usually it's a
Speaker 1: pretty sharp swift push of the You know, honestly, it's
Speaker 1: a band aid off kind of situation. I would rather,
Speaker 1: you know, if if I were going to do that,
Speaker 1: I would rather happening quickly. They put the plant underneath
Speaker 1: that layer and then they suture it sate close. Now
Speaker 1: we're talking like again. Now you gotta worry also that
Speaker 1: the implant itself has got to be absolutely very sterile,
Speaker 1: very sterile. Originally it was stainless steel grade, which could
Speaker 1: cause problems, so they did switch. Yeah, today it's a
Speaker 1: silicone or silicon. I'm sorry, right, and then corrected myself,
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's okay. We'll get to silicon later because
Speaker 1: we're talking about Mr Warwick. But but he's at the end. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's silicone. They also sometimes use implant grade teflon,
Speaker 1: but that's more rare. Silicone is by far the most
Speaker 1: common stuff they used to make these designs, right, and
Speaker 1: they shove that in sutured into place. There's there's a
Speaker 1: high risk here of multiple things going wrong, and healing
Speaker 1: from these things takes a long time, much longer than
Speaker 1: a tattoo, much longer than a typical piercing. Um, we're
Speaker 1: 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 trying, yeah, something that's trying to hurt it. And
Speaker 1: in this case, you would then you know, suffer some
Speaker 1: pretty some pretty irritating side effects until you either we're
Speaker 1: able to treat those symptoms or you would have the
Speaker 1: the implant removed. Not keep in mind this implants also
Speaker 1: going to possibly shift things around a little bit, so
Speaker 1: you might not look the way you did before the implant.
Speaker 1: Once you have an implant taken out, you could have
Speaker 1: plastic surgery to have that corrected. So plastic surgeons, it's
Speaker 1: perfectly reasonable. It's within societal norms. It's what they do.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly reasonable for them to alter a person's experience
Speaker 1: appearance to be closer to whatever the special ideal is,
Speaker 1: not whatever they want, just the social ideal. If it's
Speaker 1: outside the social idea, like, if it's outside the social
Speaker 1: norm they are not allowed to do it. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: plastic surgeons are not allowed to do subdermal implants. Transdermal implants,
Speaker 1: some of these other things we're gonna be talking about.
Speaker 1: In general, it is against their oath to do that.
Speaker 1: They can make someone look more like everybody else, but
Speaker 1: they can't make someone look less like everybody else. Crazy, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because too weird Like Ugly is Pretty Territory, which is
Speaker 1: a young adult series that I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: listening to the show has has read. They were they
Speaker 1: were cute books, um, but I takes about a dystopian
Speaker 1: future wherein everyone gets a lot of plastic surgery. I
Speaker 1: definitely take issue too with it, just from the idea
Speaker 1: of it's okay for for for you to alter a
Speaker 1: person's appearance in one sas circumstances but not in the
Speaker 1: other and not hurting anyone. And it's like, well, what's
Speaker 1: normal do you write? And for body modification? I would
Speaker 1: prefer 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, boy, is there a guy so subdermal? We've
Speaker 1: got this, You've got the whole healing. The healing process
Speaker 1: is slow. You've got the danger of rejection, danger of
Speaker 1: infection um and then risk of damage to any other
Speaker 1: tissue that's surrounding. I mean, for for example, nerves running
Speaker 1: through your skin. If you if you mess with one,
Speaker 1: bad 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 it doesn't I don't dislike it. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't decide whether these subdermal ones or the transdermal
Speaker 1: ones are the ones that make me feel the most uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed reading about the transdermal ones. They're actually
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. Okay, So so what these do. They're they're
Speaker 1: like a subdermal implant in that you are you are
Speaker 1: implanting or a trained professional with sterile materials is implanting
Speaker 1: a little bit of something into your skin, but a
Speaker 1: little bit of that little bit sticks out and the
Speaker 1: skin heels around it, and therefore you have something that's
Speaker 1: visible that frequently will allow you to to screw different
Speaker 1: studs in and out to change the appearance of your implant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so for subdermal obviously subdermal, meaning that it's completely under
Speaker 1: the skin, So you're just looking at a design that
Speaker 1: that is in your flesh. In your flesh, transdermal trans
Speaker 1: gives you that there's the hint there. It goes branches.
Speaker 1: So you could have a designed so it looks like
Speaker 1: you've been uh paled by something theoretically, or you could
Speaker 1: have spikes along your head, which, by the way, seems
Speaker 1: to be the most popular implementation of this particular kind
Speaker 1: of implant that I have seen. In all the body
Speaker 1: modification research I did, I've seen a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of little flat metal pieces that look like they're
Speaker 1: just inlaid directly into your skinner or gemstones for fancy occasions,
Speaker 1: if you're attending the Academy Awards and you don't want
Speaker 1: your your spikes to impale someone when you give them
Speaker 1: a hug on the red carpet, you switched to the
Speaker 1: gem stone. I would I would keep the spikes, um,
Speaker 1: but you would, you know. And it looks a little
Speaker 1: bit like a like a very fancy mole. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. So interesting. Another interesting bit here
Speaker 1: is there. I remember seeing a video of this years ago,
Speaker 1: and the story actually turns out to be pretty awful
Speaker 1: as it goes on. But I remember a story about
Speaker 1: a guy who invented an approach to two pays that
Speaker 1: was a little extreme. I thought, I thought, wow, this
Speaker 1: is preferable to hair loss. But his approach to two
Speaker 1: pays was to do a transdermal implant that was snaps.
Speaker 1: So you would have four snaps. I think it was four,
Speaker 1: might have been more than that, but four snaps on
Speaker 1: implanted underneath the skin of the subdermal plugs. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then and then you would be had the other snaps
Speaker 1: on the other side, on the underside, right, and you
Speaker 1: would knock it in and it had this great sound
Speaker 1: when he was putting it into place, like it sounded like,
Speaker 1: you know, like that that's why it sounded like each time.
Speaker 1: And so I remember seeing this and thinking like this
Speaker 1: is extreme. Who the heck? I mean as a bald man,
Speaker 1: and I'm not I'm not bald by choice. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was this choice was forced upon me. Uh. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I choose bald that But anyway, the story
Speaker 1: actually has a pretty horrifying turn. So Anthony pig Nataro
Speaker 1: as the name of the plastic surgeon who came up
Speaker 1: with us. First of all, um one of his patients
Speaker 1: that he was operating on died. Uh it was I
Speaker 1: think it was breast augmentation surgery, and she she died
Speaker 1: during the process, and and he had a whole uh
Speaker 1: legal problem with that, and you know, I had to
Speaker 1: deal with that. Then. To make things even more tragic
Speaker 1: and and horrifying, he gets out of prison and his
Speaker 1: wife starts to get sick and it looks like she
Speaker 1: has pancreatitis, and in fact there's the possibility that they
Speaker 1: might need to have a surgery, and he really advocates
Speaker 1: for the surgery, and she gets a little suspicious about
Speaker 1: what's going on, and then it turns out she finds
Speaker 1: out he's been poisoning her with arsenic Oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So he goes like an upstanding citizen, Yeah, nice dude. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he gets he gets charged with a various
Speaker 1: various poisoning related charges. Um, I think I think he
Speaker 1: might be able to get out of jail this year. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: and was he was contesting last I saw he was
Speaker 1: contesting a decision from the judge that upon his release,
Speaker 1: he would be required to be under some form of
Speaker 1: supervision for another five years. And apparently he stated that
Speaker 1: because that was not told to him at his previous trial,
Speaker 1: it cannot hold up because he was not informed of
Speaker 1: that at the time when he should have been. So
Speaker 1: he's saying that it's a legal uh mistake that was
Speaker 1: made and so therefore he should not be under supervision.
Speaker 1: The d A in this case has essentially called him
Speaker 1: a sociopath. So not a happy story. But that was
Speaker 1: the very first time I had ever seen anything about
Speaker 1: transdermal implants. It was this thing, this tupe a thing.
Speaker 1: I had never seen it before. I was a kid
Speaker 1: at the time, or at least a teenager when I
Speaker 1: saw this this video. And uh, now, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like I know a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: transdermal implants, but I have seen them, especially if you
Speaker 1: go to places like Dragon con you see all sorts
Speaker 1: of folks in various subcultures there. Hey, guys, I just
Speaker 1: had to take a break from putting magnets in my kneecaps.
Speaker 1: Don't ask why, but we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: I think that I've actually muddied our waters here and
Speaker 1: confused transdermal air and microdermal, and well they're very similar.
Speaker 1: Microdermal is really just a subset of transdermal. Okay, so
Speaker 1: microdermal really the big difference there is that they try
Speaker 1: to use smaller surface anchors, which are the little flat
Speaker 1: parts that that go underneath the skin. So those are
Speaker 1: the parts that are uh, that are are under your
Speaker 1: skin so that it holds the jewelry in place but there,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be the smaller things, like the
Speaker 1: little gemstones or whatever. But you could just as well
Speaker 1: do that with transdermal if you wanted to. Transdermal does
Speaker 1: tend to look like it tends to be applied to
Speaker 1: stuff that's bigger. Microdermal same sort of approach. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen anyone who has like this little jewel stone
Speaker 1: just sticking out someplace from their body, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like you could normally it's not like a like
Speaker 1: a labre piercing or something. You know, it's it's next
Speaker 1: to their eyeball right, So it's a possibility that it's
Speaker 1: a microdermal implant. Uh. These implants tend to have a
Speaker 1: lower rejection rate than transdermal and subdermal. Do doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you're going to get away without any problems, but
Speaker 1: it does mean that the odds are better. Um, they
Speaker 1: tend to have holes in the base, the flat part
Speaker 1: that goes under the skin, and those holes are meant
Speaker 1: for tissue to grow through them to help. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's supposed to provide stability. Now, of course that means
Speaker 1: that you have to wait through the healing process. And again,
Speaker 1: you don't want to get one of these somewhere where
Speaker 1: you're gonna brush it against stuff all the time, because
Speaker 1: 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. And there's also the idea
Speaker 1: of you know, like surface piercings, which are kind of similar.
Speaker 1: Like surface piercings are um these are the piercings that
Speaker 1: involve longer pieces of jewelry that go through the whole.
Speaker 1: So we're talking like surface piercings might be above your
Speaker 1: hip bone. You might have seen some people who have those,
Speaker 1: or it can be uh, you know, along an arm
Speaker 1: or whatever. These are longer pieces of jewelry, sometimes several
Speaker 1: inches long or more like two inches long. They go
Speaker 1: underneath the skin, you see the ends of it. From
Speaker 1: what I understand from the sources i've read, surface piercing
Speaker 1: is one of those things that's best left as a
Speaker 1: temporary jewelry. So in other words, you use it for
Speaker 1: whatever you're going to do. Like maybe you're part of
Speaker 1: a performance art and you want to have the corset
Speaker 1: look along your back. I've seen that where people have
Speaker 1: had surface piercings that are hoops all down their backs
Speaker 1: and then they laces 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 there might be a little tension
Speaker 1: just to give the full effect, but not like tied tight.
Speaker 1: You would not want to do that. Um, it's by
Speaker 1: the way, I have seen that. It is a dramatic effect,
Speaker 1: pretty gorgeous. It's Yeah. Even even someone who's yeah I see,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, it definitely. It
Speaker 1: makes you look twice well again, better left as more
Speaker 1: of a temporary thing, because there are issues with migration
Speaker 1: with those two where you know your your skin is
Speaker 1: a living thing. It's it's the largest organ on your body,
Speaker 1: as everyone knows, and it does stuff. It doesn't just
Speaker 1: stay put. Yeah, so that's that's something else to keep
Speaker 1: me behind, Like stuff don't stay where you thought it would.
Speaker 1: Now we get to uh, super fun times, right, this
Speaker 1: is this next one is one day. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: cry for the rest of this podcast. Jonathan came to
Speaker 1: my desk earlier and was just like, why did I
Speaker 1: watch the video? Want I do people in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: do this to their eyes? We are about to talk
Speaker 1: about eyeball implant, yeah, also called eye piercing. Yeah. Why
Speaker 1: so In two thousand two, the Netherlands Institute for Innovative
Speaker 1: Ocular Surgery developed an implant. It goes into the superficial
Speaker 1: interpalperable conjunctiva in the eye, which is essentially the white
Speaker 1: of your eyes. It's it's this clera. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a which is a protective layer that that wraps around
Speaker 1: the eye from the cornea in the front all the
Speaker 1: way to the ocular nerve in the back. It's a
Speaker 1: it's horrifying people. I mean, okay, I don't I don't judge.
Speaker 1: I don't judge. If you're from the Netherlands and you've
Speaker 1: had this process, you are insane. But I'm not judging.
Speaker 1: I'm just making an observation. No, okay, okay, all joking aside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an implant. They take a platinum alloy, which
Speaker 1: is the jewelry itself, and the jewelry tends to be
Speaker 1: a very tiny and very simple shape. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: only a few shapes that are even available, things like
Speaker 1: the one I kept say was hearts. So the procedure
Speaker 1: involves immobilizing both eyes. They use an esthetic drops. This
Speaker 1: is very similar to the kind of stuff you might
Speaker 1: 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 eye 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 eye.
Speaker 1: Just this is essentially the same thing as the surface
Speaker 1: anchors that you see, uh for the other kind of
Speaker 1: implants we've talked about, but in this case, it's smaller
Speaker 1: and it's in your eyes and you'r and they put
Speaker 1: this little implant so that the the design of whatever
Speaker 1: it is is laying flat against your eyeball. So you
Speaker 1: you if you were looking at someone who had one
Speaker 1: of these, you'd see their pupil, which would be unaffected
Speaker 1: because obviously you don't want to do anything that's going
Speaker 1: 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 no way. Yeah, that's essentially the response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then uh oh, in order to do this. By
Speaker 1: the way, they with that that incision, there's more than
Speaker 1: just the incision. Then they inject liquid between the layers
Speaker 1: of the eyeball where the implant space will go. So
Speaker 1: I actually did watch a video of this procedure, and
Speaker 1: then I needed to go to my happy place for
Speaker 1: a while, which by the way was farm Burgger. I
Speaker 1: was actually able to eat. I wasn't so upset that
Speaker 1: they couldn't heat. You have to make me really upset
Speaker 1: before I can't eat. Another fun thing that you can
Speaker 1: do to to the white of your eye is tattooing
Speaker 1: UM back in supposedly back and I surgeon tattooed to
Speaker 1: fake people onto the all white eye of of a
Speaker 1: man who had lost sight as a child due to
Speaker 1: is an ivy exposure. So this was an attempt to
Speaker 1: give this man something a normal appearance, right UM and
Speaker 1: in modern not in modern times, but in the in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds and early nine hundreds, UM eye
Speaker 1: doctors would inject inc into patient's eyes to cover up
Speaker 1: UM disfiguring corneal scars. UH. This this process is no
Speaker 1: longer really necessary because UH procedures reconstructive surgery has has
Speaker 1: improved to the point that it's okay, but um but yeah.
Speaker 1: As as of two thousand seven, at a Canadian body
Speaker 1: mod convention, the three volunteers UM had ink injected with hypodermics.
Speaker 1: Regular tattoo needles were not working out. They tried and
Speaker 1: Jonathan is so upset by this drill coming at my eye. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can handle my arm or my back, but my eye.
Speaker 1: I Supposedly, after about after about forty pricks with a
Speaker 1: tattoo needle, UM, they they gave up that so many
Speaker 1: and and went went into U went in using a hypodermic,
Speaker 1: and and and and died there the whites of their
Speaker 1: eyes blue. Supposedly the ink spread out over the next
Speaker 1: few weeks to cover the entire white of their eye,
Speaker 1: rather than just the portion that had been tattooed. And
Speaker 1: they have blue eyes all over. Supposedly, yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: and and this was inspired by Dunes Freeman, who you
Speaker 1: know are in taking the spice and have the bright
Speaker 1: crazy blue eyes. Spice must flow, Spice must flow. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not really legal or recommended. Even the
Speaker 1: people who have had it done said, you know, have
Speaker 1: gone on record about the number of terrible things that
Speaker 1: can happen if you If you do this then so
Speaker 1: you know, another way you can get blue eyes is
Speaker 1: through arguria, which is just the consumption of lots of silver.
Speaker 1: I don't silver turns your skin blue and your eyes
Speaker 1: blue as well. Uh, the whites of your eyes blue.
Speaker 1: Do not do that. Colloidal silver has been a kind
Speaker 1: of a folk cure for certain stuff because silver does
Speaker 1: have antibacterial, anti microbial properties, but the ingestion of it,
Speaker 1: it tends to get deposited into your various subcutaneous layers
Speaker 1: and then you I'll show you a picture in a second.
Speaker 1: It looks like Papa Smurf. That's very exciting. Yeah, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: Jonathan from here. Now that my body is totally moded,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try it out. But that means we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We'll be right back. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the high tech stuff. Now we've
Speaker 1: got all those out of the way. And and by
Speaker 1: the way, if any of our listeners have any of
Speaker 1: these body modifications, again, my hat's off to you. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever you do to identify who you are, that's cool
Speaker 1: with me. Just blame it on me being a total
Speaker 1: boring social norm kind of guy and squeamish about eball,
Speaker 1: a little screamish about eyeballs. Sorr. It's a magnet implants
Speaker 1: what people are getting magnets implanted in them, like magneto. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we'll not like Magneto didn't have magnets implanted, probably
Speaker 1: not on purpose anyway. Now, this this is people who
Speaker 1: want to harness and extra sense. Oh, I see, so
Speaker 1: this goes beyond our our normal senses. So you know,
Speaker 1: a whole touch and sight and smell and sound and
Speaker 1: taste and uh and uh and and Sheldon Freud supposedly
Speaker 1: this this gives them these are these are magnets that
Speaker 1: are subdermally implanted that that give people the ability to
Speaker 1: sense electromagnetic fields. Yes, so the idea here is that
Speaker 1: they're very small, and they generally tend to get implanted
Speaker 1: a little bit off to the side of the path
Speaker 1: of the finger on normally the ring finger on the
Speaker 1: non dominant hand. And the thinking there goes that if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong with the implant, that's the least full 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 site 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. Biohackers tend to be kind of
Speaker 1: they're on the forefront of this stuff. You know, they're
Speaker 1: biohackers or grinders. As I found out, they're also called
Speaker 1: um tend to uh to be pretty far ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve on this so uh that. Again, the procedure
Speaker 1: tends to be done with either some topical local and
Speaker 1: aesthetic or nothing at all. They will create an incision,
Speaker 1: insert the magnet, sutur 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 sense it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's the idea, is that you have created a
Speaker 1: brand new sense. Now, granted, this sense is still very
Speaker 1: much aligned with touch, right, it's a it's an advanced
Speaker 1: form of touch. It's extended our touch, and but it
Speaker 1: would give you ability to touch stuff that normally you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to, like magnetic fields, electric fields. You'd
Speaker 1: also 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've found a solution
Speaker 1: to that problem. Yeah, any fairest material you could stick
Speaker 1: to a little bit. The magnets tend to be pretty
Speaker 1: small and not very powerful, so it's not like you
Speaker 1: would go to the refrigerator to get yourself a cool
Speaker 1: 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 um, you know, I
Speaker 1: read an interesting article and wired the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: it actually had one of these put into his finger
Speaker 1: as 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, and 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. Oh,
Speaker 1: bio hackers. So there have also been a couple of
Speaker 1: groups that have created some devices that actually extend abilities
Speaker 1: beyond just detecting magnetic fields. So in this case, they've
Speaker 1: created sensors that can that are tripped from various things
Speaker 1: like it could be a temperature sensor, it could be
Speaker 1: a distance sensor, and when it detects something, it will
Speaker 1: then create a magnetic field which activates the magnet. So
Speaker 1: in other words, you're giving yourself even more extrasensory perception abilities.
Speaker 1: One of the demos I saw had a guy with
Speaker 1: a blindfold on who would extend his hand out holding
Speaker 1: one of these devices, uh, and the device would detect
Speaker 1: through I think radio waves kind of like radar when
Speaker 1: he got close to something else, So he could actually
Speaker 1: detect when something was in of him even if he
Speaker 1: couldn't see it. Cool. So so for medical purposes, for example, um,
Speaker 1: we we we could give these to the blind and
Speaker 1: he prepared it could easily be something like that. But
Speaker 1: at the time when I was looking at it, the
Speaker 1: way he was just demonstrating it. It was only when
Speaker 1: he was pretty close that he was able and and
Speaker 1: it was kind of like like if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: someone using a metal detector. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: sweeping across the area before figuring out, Oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: at this point in front of me. But with improvements
Speaker 1: that that would be that's an interesting thing to watch.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing with the demo, I just kept thinking,
Speaker 1: or you could just look because they were they they
Speaker 1: weren't using a blind person as the example. So he's
Speaker 1: just like, wow, this this shirt does take away that
Speaker 1: whole tough thing of looking two feet in front of you,
Speaker 1: But that was me being smart or at this point
Speaker 1: it sounds like or you know, it's it's you could
Speaker 1: just extend your hand the extra two inches and something.
Speaker 1: To be fair, this is early early days of bio hacking.
Speaker 1: It's obviously not something is meant to be rolled out
Speaker 1: to a wide audience, but it's got interesting potential. Then
Speaker 1: we've got r F I D implants. So this is
Speaker 1: where we talk about Kevin Warwick, whom we have spoken about.
Speaker 1: In a previous episode of Tech Stuff, Chris and I
Speaker 1: did an episode I think we talked about cyborgs, and
Speaker 1: we brought up Kevin Warwick. He's often referred to as
Speaker 1: one of the early cyborgs, mostly because he's just done
Speaker 1: some kind of pioneering work in implanting technology into himself.
Speaker 1: Uh not personally. He actually had other people performed the procedure,
Speaker 1: but he developed what it was that was going to happen.
Speaker 1: So he's a British you know, mathematician and scientist who, um,
Speaker 1: he worked with some people to have originally a microchip,
Speaker 1: a chip transponder implanted in his forearm and they used
Speaker 1: local anesthetic. They did the procedure and it allowed him
Speaker 1: to do things like unlocked doors or turn on lights. Essentially,
Speaker 1: if you've ever worked in a place where they have
Speaker 1: electronic locks and you have a little key card that
Speaker 1: you swipe in front of a 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 is
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, it's not like everyone
Speaker 1: who worked in that building had to go and get
Speaker 1: surgery so that they could work. But it did allow
Speaker 1: him also to be tracked by a computer whenever he
Speaker 1: was moving through the Department of Cybernetics at the University
Speaker 1: of Reading. And that implant it was not meant to
Speaker 1: be permanent. It was removed after he had done essentially
Speaker 1: I think a couple of weeks of this and sort
Speaker 1: of showing the proof of concept. Now and the Science
Speaker 1: Museum in London, isn't it sure is, or at least
Speaker 1: last I heard it is. I mean, I assume it's
Speaker 1: still there. They can track it if it's not. But
Speaker 1: 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 could put them in really whatever you wanted to
Speaker 1: has has a microchip, then that is that same basic
Speaker 1: idea exactly the microchips are they essentially have a signal
Speaker 1: on them that when you have a device that can
Speaker 1: read the signal can come up with whatever the code is,
Speaker 1: and then you can type it into a database and
Speaker 1: find out where that animal belongs. Um. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you've ever microchip to pet, it's the same basic concept,
Speaker 1: except it's being used on humans. Now, obviously, this is
Speaker 1: already something that has also been legislated in lots of places,
Speaker 1: and clean the United States, several states have made it
Speaker 1: against the law to implant or in some cases, like
Speaker 1: I think Georgia, force the implantation process upon people. Right,
Speaker 1: some of the worries I think where that that either
Speaker 1: people are going to microchip their their children or convicts
Speaker 1: or employees, which in some companies feels like the same
Speaker 1: thing either as children or convicts or children convicts I
Speaker 1: got an idea of for reality show I talked to
Speaker 1: you after the show anyway, Yeah, so two Worrick also
Speaker 1: had another surgical procedure done where he had about a
Speaker 1: hundred electric roads attached to one of his nerves, which
Speaker 1: allowed him to have some ural control over devices like
Speaker 1: a wheelchair or a little electronic hand. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. But the 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: cultured ear. Yes, it wasn't wasn't harvested. There's not a
Speaker 1: van go walking around saying I can't hear anything but
Speaker 1: my ears art. This was actually grown in the lab
Speaker 1: and then surgically attached to his arm. He at least
Speaker 1: at some point had plans on also getting a microphone
Speaker 1: and transmitter also part as as part of this ear project,
Speaker 1: so that you could quote unquote here what the ear
Speaker 1: was hearing. Is this not a working organ, It's just cosmetic.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up another classic episode of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics of tech stuff, reach out to me on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter to handle it. Both of those is
Speaker 1: Text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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