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 lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what's your relationship with tattoos? Do you have tattoos? Is
Speaker 1: anyone close to you have tattoo? Well, I don't have
Speaker 1: a tattoo. I'm noncommittal by nature. And this is how
Speaker 1: I found out is by pondering like, well, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: get a tattoo. What tattoo would I get? And then
Speaker 1: just be like, I can't commit. Um, my husband is tattooed,
Speaker 1: and I like them. I parturefually, like chef tattoos that
Speaker 1: exalt like their favorite kind of food or their favorite night.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like that. There's the guy on Mind
Speaker 1: of a Chef the second season who has the one
Speaker 1: arm is sleeved and different vegetables and ingredients. My apologies
Speaker 1: for not remembering his name, but check out the second
Speaker 1: season of Mind of a Chef too, good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's can be really kind of fascinating. What about you, Well,
Speaker 1: I do have one tattoo. And to your noncommittal thing
Speaker 1: that you brought up, indeed with me. It was like
Speaker 1: a long sort of deciding process because I always kind
Speaker 1: of wanted one, but I wasn't impulsome enough to just
Speaker 1: go out and get like some stupid tattoo in junior
Speaker 1: higher high school. So I I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking, all right, if I get the one tattoo,
Speaker 1: get one one mark of my body that's gonna be permanent.
Speaker 1: You know, what is it gonna be? Where am I
Speaker 1: gonna put it? It It has to have some sort of
Speaker 1: um you know, it needs to be a potent enough symbol.
Speaker 1: It needs to uh to to to mean something to me.
Speaker 1: Because if you get a whole bunch of them, if
Speaker 1: you just get sleeves, and you can afford to have
Speaker 1: some duds in the mix, right, and you can cover
Speaker 1: them up later on. But if you're just gonna get
Speaker 1: the one, you gotta really hit it out of the
Speaker 1: park so that it's you know, you can argue that
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't hit it out of the park with this,
Speaker 1: so it's um. I had the design done by an
Speaker 1: artist by the name of Michael Manning, and it's it's
Speaker 1: on my my ribs and it's the Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was probably not a great place pain wise for
Speaker 1: a first tattoo, but it's essentially the spear wound of Christ.
Speaker 1: But it's also kind of like um a volva and
Speaker 1: also kind of like an eye. So like, I had
Speaker 1: those three requests because I'm always I've always been fascinated
Speaker 1: with with some of the Stranger Christ imagery, particularly images
Speaker 1: such as the you know, the with the finger is
Speaker 1: going into the whole and the resurrected Christ's body, and
Speaker 1: the idea that that the spear of wound and the
Speaker 1: resurrected Christ is not only like yonic symbolism but is
Speaker 1: all but it is ultimately about combining masculine and feminine
Speaker 1: aspects of God into one body. So I was always
Speaker 1: interested in all that stuff. So I thought, well, hell
Speaker 1: I would just get a tattoo that kind of encompasses
Speaker 1: some of those ideas. And uh is kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, a shifting, amorphous symbol of something. Well, I
Speaker 1: was just about to say, you really nailed it, but
Speaker 1: that's not a choice of words. But really, seriously, I
Speaker 1: mean that is a thoughtful tattoo. Well, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And plus it's out of the way, so nobody sees
Speaker 1: it unless I'm you know, swimming or something so works
Speaker 1: on all accounts. Now, a two thousand and twelve Harris
Speaker 1: poll found that twenty one percent of American adults have
Speaker 1: a tattoo. That's one in five, which is a lot
Speaker 1: higher than I thought it would be. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you know. Part of it is that you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to see tattoos. I've I've I've seen it.
Speaker 1: When I was researching this, I kept coming across I
Speaker 1: don't know something in the keywords I was throwing in.
Speaker 1: I kept finding an article about Dolly Parton being secretly
Speaker 1: covered with tattoos. I think she's a butterfly or something
Speaker 1: emerging from her boosom. But I mean, I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: So so so everybody could essentially have butterfly tattoos on
Speaker 1: their stern ums, have been Lessia at the beach with them.
Speaker 1: You're just not gonna know. Oh you're gonna call it
Speaker 1: this sternum the sternum. Yeah, I alright. Um. You probably
Speaker 1: are familiar with all sorts of sites that celebrate the good,
Speaker 1: the bad, the terrible of tattoos, because one of the
Speaker 1: intriguing things about tattoos is that they can be permanent.
Speaker 1: Although we have technology now to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: But essentially what you're doing is you're trying to immortalize
Speaker 1: some sort of idea. So when you see some bad
Speaker 1: grammar in a tattoo, then it's especially mortifying, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: bad grammar, just weird, perplexing imagery. Particularly one that I
Speaker 1: was come back to was the one of the dolphin
Speaker 1: setting on like a lazy boy recliner smoking a ball.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorites. Um, and really that's that's
Speaker 1: That's not even like one of the worst tattoos. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's not really offensive to anybody. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just strange that someone was like that, that's going on
Speaker 1: me and I'm going to take it with me to
Speaker 1: the grave. It's gonna last longer than my life. That tattoo. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one I saw that was super earnest and kind
Speaker 1: of sad only because of the way it turned out.
Speaker 1: But um, it was a bat tattoo that said only
Speaker 1: God can judge me. The problem with it is that
Speaker 1: it had super fancy scroll so that j look like
Speaker 1: an f and so it turned out essentially looking like
Speaker 1: only God can fudge me, fudge me. Okay, all right, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I mean that's the power of tattoos though,
Speaker 1: is that it's it's the the the permanence or the
Speaker 1: the ideal permanence of the thing. It's what may can
Speaker 1: make a tattoo uh inspiring and empowering. It's what it
Speaker 1: can make a tattoo uh dehumanizing and uh. And we've
Speaker 1: seen examples of both ends of the spectrum throughout human history.
Speaker 1: I mean, you go back in time, you look at
Speaker 1: some of our earliest examples. We found, Um, we found
Speaker 1: them etched in the flesh of the five thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred year old Ootsi the Iceman. This was the Iceman
Speaker 1: that we found on the Italian Austrian border back in
Speaker 1: nine And we also find very early examples of tattoos
Speaker 1: among the Egyptians, the only the females. This is a
Speaker 1: really interesting They this to date them back to around
Speaker 1: two thousand year two. This would date them back to
Speaker 1: around two thousand b c. E UM. And these were
Speaker 1: these women were probably they think royal Cortisan's dancers, ETCETERA.
Speaker 1: Archaeologist Johan Fletcher theorizes that these tattoos had a therapeutic
Speaker 1: role and functioned as a permanent form of amulet during
Speaker 1: the very different difficult time of pregnancy and birth, and
Speaker 1: these would have been placed on the abdomen um around
Speaker 1: the breasts and uh. And so in this we see
Speaker 1: the idea of the the tattoo is is is a
Speaker 1: is almost a magical spell as a protective uh feature.
Speaker 1: And and really you see that again through throughout human
Speaker 1: history even today, A lot of times we get those
Speaker 1: those tattoos on us um to immortalize some some spirit
Speaker 1: that we aspire to, or some person that means a
Speaker 1: lot to us, some deity, some supernatural force, whatever, some
Speaker 1: sort of symbolics, some symbolism that we wish to take
Speaker 1: into our flesh. One of the more interesting ones to
Speaker 1: me that I ran across was from a archaeological dig. Uh.
Speaker 1: These archaeologists were working in an icy plateau in eastern Russia,
Speaker 1: and they stumbled upon a burial chamber of a mummy
Speaker 1: who became known as the Siberian Ice Princess, and her
Speaker 1: year old body was incredibly well preserved in the permit frost,
Speaker 1: and it had elaborate tattoos on both of her arms. Now,
Speaker 1: her head was shaved, and she wore a wig and
Speaker 1: a tall wooden head dress decorated with cats and swans,
Speaker 1: and they think she goes a princess or someone who
Speaker 1: of elevated status, because not only that she was surrounded
Speaker 1: by six horses that were saddled and bridled they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be They think her spiritual escorts into the
Speaker 1: other world. And she also had a little um container
Speaker 1: of cannabis, which they then found out maybe had something
Speaker 1: to do with alleviating her pain, because she did have
Speaker 1: some cancer growth in her body and she had some
Speaker 1: form of osteoporosis too. So, um, what I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting in terms of the tattoos is that the
Speaker 1: person who lead this Natalia, Paulice Max, says that compared
Speaker 1: to all tattoos found by archaeologists around the world, those
Speaker 1: on the mummies of the Pazarik people whom she was
Speaker 1: a part of, are the most complicated and the most beautiful.
Speaker 1: And so what's interesting about this tattoo is that they're
Speaker 1: they're the sort of language that they deal in is
Speaker 1: of animal imagery, and so they had a kind of
Speaker 1: animal based language, which is really cool. And Paul's Max
Speaker 1: says that these tattoos were used as a means of
Speaker 1: personal identification, So think of your own passport. This idea
Speaker 1: is that this would tell the story of who you were,
Speaker 1: so that in the afterlife you could meet up with others. Interesting,
Speaker 1: there's a reminds me of an old Eastern saying that
Speaker 1: I ran across that said that if if you do
Speaker 1: not have a tattoo, did it's almost like you don't exist,
Speaker 1: Like you're you're basically invisible of the tat. By tattooing
Speaker 1: something into your body, um, like you're making yourself more real.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about that all right. Now. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: the sort of medicinal aspects of that tattoo, I should
Speaker 1: go back and mentioned that on our our friend Ootsi
Speaker 1: the iceman uh Ootsies tattoos consisted of dots and small
Speaker 1: crosses on his lower spine and right knee and ankle joints,
Speaker 1: and those correspond to areas of scrain induced degeneration uh
Speaker 1: with the suggestion here being that they may have been
Speaker 1: applied to alleviate joint pain, and therefore we're essentially therapeutic essentially,
Speaker 1: and again you're getting also probably into a certain amount
Speaker 1: of magical thinking as well and ritual but but ultimately
Speaker 1: an early form of of a medicinal tattoo. Now you
Speaker 1: had mentioned Egyptian women and um tattoos that would help
Speaker 1: as sort of talisman's And there's one example that the
Speaker 1: British Museum looked at. They had scan and ripped the
Speaker 1: mummy of an Egyptian woman dating back to seven hundred CE.
Speaker 1: They found a tattoo on her thigh and as just
Speaker 1: deciphered by the curators, the tattoo, written in Ancient Greek,
Speaker 1: is transliterated as m I x A h A or Michael.
Speaker 1: So the idea here's that its thought that the the
Speaker 1: name was referring to the archangel Michael, and because it
Speaker 1: was placed on our inner thigh, that it might have
Speaker 1: been a protection not just for the birth of a child,
Speaker 1: but maybe even against a sexual violent act. Interesting. Here's
Speaker 1: another interesting religious tattoo. And I do want to point
Speaker 1: out that we're not going to attempt to chronicle every
Speaker 1: fascinating tattoo tradition that's been passed down through human history,
Speaker 1: because there are many whole books have been written about this.
Speaker 1: But we're just hitting some high points here. For us
Speaker 1: Um during the Crusades in the eleven and twelfth century,
Speaker 1: Um Christian warriors identified themselves with the mark of the
Speaker 1: Jerusalem Cross, so they could be given a proper Christian
Speaker 1: burial of died in battle. And that that one is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because on one hand it's a religious tattoo,
Speaker 1: but it's also it also is sort of like some
Speaker 1: of the modern models of medical tattoos that will touch on. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's saying who and what you were for anyone that
Speaker 1: would come across your body. All right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we get back. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: prison tats. All right, we're back now. Earlier and we
Speaker 1: mentioned the the power of tattoos. The permanence of tattoos has,
Speaker 1: of course the positive and empowering side, but also a
Speaker 1: negative into humanizing side. You do see a long tradition
Speaker 1: of penal tattoos uh throughout human history, particularly uh. You
Speaker 1: see it in Chinese, see it in Japan, you see
Speaker 1: it in the Hellenistic period. And this is the idea
Speaker 1: that you have, You have your your criminals, and you
Speaker 1: want to mark your criminals. So what do you do.
Speaker 1: You tattoo them and you let everyone know then from
Speaker 1: you know, ideally for the rest of their lives. We're
Speaker 1: dealing with someone who committed this act. So that's taking
Speaker 1: the permanence of that tattoo and using it in a
Speaker 1: very very negative manner. Yeah, but now you know, fast
Speaker 1: forward to today and you see prison tattoos more of
Speaker 1: aspect of prison culture. And to be clear, according to
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Prisons, having a tattoo kit is
Speaker 1: considered contraband for a number of reasons the US as
Speaker 1: a weapon, it could spread infectious disease. And yet, as
Speaker 1: we know, contraband gets through the gates, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there's an entire prison economy based on contraband. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we went into some of this in our did
Speaker 1: we go into this in our our our episodes about digestion?
Speaker 1: Because I know Mary Roach went into the prison wallet
Speaker 1: a lot in her book Prison Wallet. That's right. I
Speaker 1: cannot imagine smuggling a tattoo machine into my prison wallet
Speaker 1: based on some of the other things that get smuggled in.
Speaker 1: The tattoo gun is probably not the worst. But but indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could you look at a prison environment
Speaker 1: and you have so many there's it's it's almost a
Speaker 1: perfect model for why a lot of people get tattoos.
Speaker 1: Because you're cut off from people you love, so you
Speaker 1: might get a tattoo uh of some reminds you of
Speaker 1: somebody outside. You also have to in many cases bond
Speaker 1: with a different cultural group you're you know, you have
Speaker 1: prison gangs, for lack of another word, prison cultures, and
Speaker 1: that you want to show that you are a part
Speaker 1: of that culture. You make that that culture a part
Speaker 1: of your flesh. Also, it's a it's a place where
Speaker 1: some inmates find religion, and you want to show that
Speaker 1: that this deity or this uh, this model of faith
Speaker 1: means a lot to you, so you put it into
Speaker 1: your skin. Retired law enforcement official in prison culture expert
Speaker 1: Richard Lichton says, quote, I've talked to many inmates, and
Speaker 1: tattoos are always about what's important to them. It can
Speaker 1: be something personal likes about this name or a Bible quote,
Speaker 1: or to belong to a group, to intimidate others, or
Speaker 1: to tell a story. So I think that's really important
Speaker 1: to uh. And we'll talk a little bit more about this.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're in prison and you, as
Speaker 1: you say, you want to bond with a certain group
Speaker 1: or identify with the group, the easiest way to do
Speaker 1: that is to have a permanent tattoo inked on you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of comes back to the basic
Speaker 1: idea that as humans, we we all look kind of
Speaker 1: the same on the outside. You know, there's not there's
Speaker 1: nothing on the outside that necessarily gives a lot of
Speaker 1: depth about character. And the tattoo is an ability to
Speaker 1: take our inner world and make it a part of
Speaker 1: our outer world. Well. And in terms of prison culture too,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of survival, right, especially if you're trying
Speaker 1: to join a group or you know, get protection from
Speaker 1: that group. So, um, let's get to the tear drop tattoo.
Speaker 1: Shall we kind of get that out of the way,
Speaker 1: because there's always that always comes up, and I feel
Speaker 1: like there's no definitive answer for this. This is the
Speaker 1: idea that you have a tear drop tattoo you've killed
Speaker 1: somebody in prison. Yes, okay, that's usually there. I should
Speaker 1: say that most people associate it with, you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that the wearer has killed someone, but it can
Speaker 1: also mean that the wearer has served a long prison
Speaker 1: sentence or is mourning the loss of a family member,
Speaker 1: And a clear tear drop can mean that the wearer
Speaker 1: has committed an attempted murder or alternatively that a close
Speaker 1: friend was killed and the wearer is seeking revenge. You know,
Speaker 1: we haven't even touched on this, but just as a
Speaker 1: call back to our episode The Zen of Pain and
Speaker 1: to a listener mail that we received and I believe
Speaker 1: red in our recent episode, getting a tattoo stings a bit.
Speaker 1: And Uh, it's depending on on your means of of
Speaker 1: of actually uh, putting the tattoo in your flesh. Um
Speaker 1: it it becomes a ritual, it becomes an experience of pain,
Speaker 1: a rich wolf pain, and so you have that whole
Speaker 1: dynamic going on as well as you say, get in
Speaker 1: the name of a departed loved one put into your flesh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that the reason why that tear drop
Speaker 1: one is appoignant or so trouble link to so many
Speaker 1: people because it's such a mark on that person and
Speaker 1: in such an outward expression of the angst or sadness
Speaker 1: that that consumes them. Presumably. Yeah, because when you get
Speaker 1: a facial tattoo, you're changing the way that you communicate
Speaker 1: with the world. Um. I think we've discussed before on
Speaker 1: here that, uh, when a when a hominid species such
Speaker 1: as humans have faces that kind of all look alike.
Speaker 1: It's because the more the more like we are, the
Speaker 1: more nuance comes out in our expressions, the more that
Speaker 1: we're better able to communicate with one another because we
Speaker 1: have kind of a similar facial recognition cognition system in place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so, yeah, the idea of facial tattoo is often
Speaker 1: kind of kind of frightening, kind of intimidating. Um. And
Speaker 1: of course you see a great tradition of a facial
Speaker 1: tattooing with the Maori people, really beautiful facial tattoos, but
Speaker 1: in particularly with the men, it's it's often you know,
Speaker 1: it's about uh, putting on this this impressive usual display,
Speaker 1: this aggressive display intimidation. Right, So it's sort of a
Speaker 1: kind of embodied cognition, which we've talked about before with
Speaker 1: the old lab coats, that people dawn sometimes and they
Speaker 1: feel more important or more proficient. In the same way,
Speaker 1: if you're altering your face to look more intimidating or
Speaker 1: to express express your grief, then you are embodying that
Speaker 1: that is changing the person that you are expressing to
Speaker 1: the world. Now, speaking of gangs and cultural tattoos and
Speaker 1: and about the hour display, sometimes it's about the hidden
Speaker 1: display as well, because I think one of the most
Speaker 1: remarkable examples of like a gang cultural tattoo is of course,
Speaker 1: the the the body tattoos of the yakuza, the Japanese
Speaker 1: gangster class. We have these elaborate designs that they generally
Speaker 1: have themes of of unresolved conflict and also symbols of
Speaker 1: of character traits that the the wear wants to aspire to.
Speaker 1: For instance, the carp often shows up as a representation
Speaker 1: and of strength and perseverance. Yeah, and then there's also
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the the language behind them, So
Speaker 1: it's not just the bonding, but it's also sort of
Speaker 1: again embodied cognition in a way of saying, this is
Speaker 1: the life that I have chosen for myself. When it
Speaker 1: comes to gang tattooing, the Canada Border Services Agency document
Speaker 1: Tattoos and their Meetings says that the three dot tattoo,
Speaker 1: usually in a triangle configuration, it signifies prison, hospital, cemetery,
Speaker 1: and that represents the path and the ultimate end of
Speaker 1: a gang lifestyle. So it's the kind of commitment to
Speaker 1: that lifestyle to to have that tattoo and say that
Speaker 1: I accept of these maybe the terms of of uh,
Speaker 1: my employment or the culture that I'm entering into now.
Speaker 1: We mentioned medical tattoos a little bit earlier, and of
Speaker 1: course we we still see the use of tattoos in medicine,
Speaker 1: though not as a mystical curative factor, but you do
Speaker 1: see them. For instance, is to indicate a medically relevant
Speaker 1: condition on a body of your location, kind of like
Speaker 1: those Crusader tattoos we mentioned earlier. Essentially would would let
Speaker 1: someone know this person has this condition, please treat them accordingly.
Speaker 1: You have in some cases, US soldiers have a tattoo
Speaker 1: version of their dog tags that are sometimes called meat tags,
Speaker 1: and this is essentially the same thing as the crusader
Speaker 1: tattoo that says this dead body was so and so
Speaker 1: and this is where they were formed, that is their unit, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But then you also see um medical tattoos uh used
Speaker 1: in radiotherapy. You're using a radiation to to treat a
Speaker 1: very particular part of the body. You want to hit
Speaker 1: the same part, the same area each and every time.
Speaker 1: You need a permanent marker of where to to apply
Speaker 1: that radiation. Yeah, and usually it's just for like freckle
Speaker 1: sized dots, and you know, in sort of a square
Speaker 1: configuration that's mapping out that patch of tissue that needs
Speaker 1: to get hit over and over and over again. And
Speaker 1: the more accurate you can make that and the faster
Speaker 1: the process, especially for people who are going through say
Speaker 1: six weeks or more radiation treatments, this can be really
Speaker 1: really helpful. Indeed, also you'll see medical tattoos sometimes used
Speaker 1: for aerola replacement or parvy a replacement at following them assectomy.
Speaker 1: So again this dude, those are just some some quick
Speaker 1: points on the long, rich timeline of human tattooing. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the actual mechanics of tattooing. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've talked about the history of tattooing,
Speaker 1: culture of tattooing, and it brings us up to the
Speaker 1: modern day. Yeah, and before we really talk about the
Speaker 1: more of the modern aspects of tattooing, including the invention
Speaker 1: of the tattoo machine, we should say that, um, the
Speaker 1: reason why tattooing became so popular, or one of the
Speaker 1: reasons is people like Joseph Banks, who was naturalist aboard
Speaker 1: the British ship Endeavor and According to a Smithsonian article
Speaker 1: by Abigail West, he was one of the first to
Speaker 1: record encounters with the Polynesian practice of tattooings or tattoo um.
Speaker 1: And again we're talking about seventeen sixty nine when Banks
Speaker 1: was watching a twelve year old girl being extensively adorned,
Speaker 1: and then he wrote about it, and it really captured
Speaker 1: the imaginations of a lot of people, and they then
Speaker 1: wanted to also participate with tattoos, and indeed we have
Speaker 1: a rich tradition of sailor tattoos um. I think probably
Speaker 1: some of my first encounters with tattoos were individuals saying
Speaker 1: a church environment who were veterans and had been sailors
Speaker 1: or otherwise engaged in the Second World War, and they
Speaker 1: would have these sort of faded miss shape and tattoos
Speaker 1: that may have once been mermaids or or or just
Speaker 1: naked ladies or whatever, but had slowly turned into more
Speaker 1: sort of green blurs on their arms. And you can
Speaker 1: see the appeal because you know, here you have back
Speaker 1: in the day someone looking at these tribes, and you
Speaker 1: can see how sailors who consider themselves a community and
Speaker 1: to themselves like a tribe might want to use as
Speaker 1: bonding as well, or to tell stories about their travels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and they're of course engaging and often risky employment
Speaker 1: out there on the on the high seat. So you
Speaker 1: have every reason to want to make something a little
Speaker 1: permanent in your flesh when you're dealing with all of
Speaker 1: this uncertainty. So you won't be surprised to know that
Speaker 1: it became so popular that in December eighth eight someone
Speaker 1: by the name of Samuel F. O'Reilly received a patent
Speaker 1: for the first tattoo machine, a two coil electromagnetic tattoo needle.
Speaker 1: His invention was actually a modification of Thomas Edison's eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six electric pen patent, and O'Reilly saw how Edison's
Speaker 1: methods of ink transfer using a stencil and ink pen
Speaker 1: could be adapted for use in tattooing. And so what
Speaker 1: you have is this machine that just gets improved over
Speaker 1: and over again to the point where they get lighter,
Speaker 1: easier to handle, safer, and less painful, and you get
Speaker 1: better inks. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the ink, because
Speaker 1: because the ink has has has varied a lot, it's
Speaker 1: pretty uh, it's pretty stable. These days, it tends to
Speaker 1: be more of like a vegetable based pigment. But in
Speaker 1: the past you've seen him seen it made from anything
Speaker 1: from from soot to metal salts um. But again, nowadays,
Speaker 1: you go into a tattoo parlor, if you're getting a
Speaker 1: you know, an on the level tattoo, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be something more vegetable based, unless it's something super cutting edge,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in the next episode where we're
Speaker 1: talking about the future of tattoos. Don't want to give
Speaker 1: that away, but the tattoo gun, Yeah that the technology
Speaker 1: basically hasn't changed all that much. It's it's got there's
Speaker 1: been a refining process over the years where it gets
Speaker 1: gets better and better because you can still build a
Speaker 1: very crude tattoo gun and uh and do the work
Speaker 1: yourself or have your cellmate do it, which we don't recommend,
Speaker 1: do not recommend even getting into a situation where you
Speaker 1: have a cellmate in the first place. Yeah, it's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out. I believe the FDA does not technically approve
Speaker 1: of tattooing or even Hannah tattoos by the way, they say,
Speaker 1: hinna really, because I was I was looking at one
Speaker 1: of the um the more cutting edge techniques it will
Speaker 1: discuss later. I saw a note that it was not
Speaker 1: approved by the FDA, so I kind of looked into
Speaker 1: a little bit as well, what does the FDA approve of?
Speaker 1: And uh uh, it seemed to indicate that the FDA
Speaker 1: is really does not approve any of the tattooing. So
Speaker 1: there you go. Huh, they're kind of old school like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you are talking about putting ink into your skin,
Speaker 1: so you can't really expect the FDA to be two
Speaker 1: behind that. Yeah, let's talk about that. This machine is
Speaker 1: moving a solid needle up and down to puncture the
Speaker 1: skin between fifty and three thousand times per minute. The
Speaker 1: needle penetrates the skin by about a millimeter in deposits
Speaker 1: a drop of insoluble ink into the skin with each puncture.
Speaker 1: And now, when those tattoo needles are punching the skin,
Speaker 1: they're going through the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin,
Speaker 1: and then they drive into the dermis, which is the
Speaker 1: second layer of the skin. And that layer is modeled
Speaker 1: with nerves and blood vessels. And if the tattoo artist
Speaker 1: is shading the design, then they're using this um shader needle,
Speaker 1: which is comprised of several needles in a single bar.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they're just using one single line needle. So again,
Speaker 1: epidermis is the outer layer. Dermos is the second layer.
Speaker 1: So when you're looking at a tattoo, you're looking through
Speaker 1: the epidermis into the dermis. That's where the actual ink
Speaker 1: is contained. And that's really important because that has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with why they don't fade in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yeah, because you know, obviously there can be
Speaker 1: It depends on where you get the tattoo, depends on
Speaker 1: the wear and tear, depends on a number of factors.
Speaker 1: Tattoos do fade over time. If you were some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, I would love to see this attack
Speaker 1: in some sort of fiction where there's an immortal character,
Speaker 1: be it you know, kind of like a highlander or
Speaker 1: a vampire situation. What happens when they get that tattoo
Speaker 1: and they actually live five hundred, six hundred years. How
Speaker 1: awful would that tattoo look over the course of centuries? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of, I love mom. It would just be like
Speaker 1: our mom um. Yeah, because if it were just up
Speaker 1: to the epidermis, that first layer, they would slaw off.
Speaker 1: Now consider that we shed fortyo skin cells an hour.
Speaker 1: That's about a million a day. Yeah. In fact, that
Speaker 1: the body replaces itself with a largely new set of
Speaker 1: cells every seven years to ten years. Uh, and some
Speaker 1: of our most important parts are revamped even more rapidly.
Speaker 1: So we have red blood cells live for about four months. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those poor cells that line your your acid filled stomach,
Speaker 1: they're lucky the last like five days. Meanwhile, cells in
Speaker 1: the sculptal system are consistently regenerating, but a full turnover
Speaker 1: takes a full decade. So you know, we're constantly rebuilding
Speaker 1: our bodies as we as we go through live we're
Speaker 1: consuming food and we're consuming nutrients, and we're building everything
Speaker 1: back up again. And yet the tattoo remains mostly stationary,
Speaker 1: right because it's part and personally because it's sort of
Speaker 1: trapped in the dermist, that second layer, but also because
Speaker 1: of your immune system. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that every puncture signals to the body to begin
Speaker 1: the inflammatory process. So you have immune cells racing to
Speaker 1: those puncture sites, and then you have special cells called macrophages,
Speaker 1: and they begin kind of while saying quotes, eating the
Speaker 1: dye in an attempt to clean up the inflammation that's
Speaker 1: causing and then the rest of the dye gets soaked
Speaker 1: up by skin cells called fibroblasts. In the fiber blasts
Speaker 1: along with a lot of those macrophages, they kind of
Speaker 1: they suspended in the dermists in perpetuity. And so that's
Speaker 1: what you have showing through the skin. And of course
Speaker 1: the dermist is is more stationary than the epidermis. The
Speaker 1: epidermis is constantly slapping off, but but the dermist is
Speaker 1: uh is a little more set in stone, if you will.
Speaker 1: And I really think what's interesting about this is it's
Speaker 1: a story about the immune system helping this process to
Speaker 1: keep the ink in place in your body. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately you have that you have inc that's just
Speaker 1: not it's not small enough to be a factor for say,
Speaker 1: white blood cell. So you know, their University of Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Medical Center dermatologist James B. Bridenstein pointed out in Scientific
Speaker 1: American article the tattoos remain in the skin because the
Speaker 1: ink particles are too large to be ingested by the
Speaker 1: white blood cells that patrol the body in caraway foreign bodies.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: police officers walking in front of some graffiti art on
Speaker 1: a wall. It's not their jurisdiction to to deal with
Speaker 1: it's removal. They're not going to remove, and the white
Speaker 1: blood cells are saying, hey, it's not my problem. This
Speaker 1: thing is too big to be an issue to me anyway, right,
Speaker 1: And that's why I think it's interested with macrofacies are trying,
Speaker 1: and some of them are successful in carrying away the
Speaker 1: die particles. Well, others they just kind of sit there
Speaker 1: with it and their their bellies really, yeah, suspended forever
Speaker 1: in the dermis. Alright, So this of course brings up
Speaker 1: the question, how do we remove tattoos? How do you
Speaker 1: get rid of this this this awful tattoo that you
Speaker 1: say got on spring break back in n Or or
Speaker 1: a lover's name that no longer seems uh, seems appliable,
Speaker 1: like one that comes to my mind as a as
Speaker 1: a wrestling fan. There's of course the wrestler uh that
Speaker 1: goes by the name the Undertaker, And for a while
Speaker 1: he had like one of his past wives, her name
Speaker 1: was Sarah, and he got her name tattooed on his throat,
Speaker 1: so it was very, very prominent when you would see
Speaker 1: him perform that that Sarah meant a lot to him
Speaker 1: because her name was on his throat, and then eventually
Speaker 1: the name was gone and uh, and he was no
Speaker 1: longer married to her. So you you might wonder, how
Speaker 1: do you get rid of Sarah? How do you rid
Speaker 1: her name from your throat flesh? I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that tattoo regret is actually fairly common. According to the
Speaker 1: American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the number of people
Speaker 1: undergoing laser tattoo removal increased or be three percent from
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven to two thousand and twelve. I
Speaker 1: don't know, just like a bad year for for tattooing.
Speaker 1: And there's a two thousand and twelve British Association of
Speaker 1: Dermatologist survey that found that nearly one third of people
Speaker 1: suffer they say suffer from tattoo regret. To be fair,
Speaker 1: this survey was really small, like respondents men, women, and
Speaker 1: the most tattoos were done by a professional, but half
Speaker 1: of the patients were over forty, which tells the story
Speaker 1: that a lot of these tattoos were done in the
Speaker 1: younger years, between eighteen and twenty five years old. See,
Speaker 1: it was a youthful indiscretion that they want to to
Speaker 1: actually erase from their flesh when they're an adult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then occasionally to you'll have medical complications. Um. The
Speaker 1: New England Journal of Medicine described contaminated inc causing infections
Speaker 1: of non tuberculosis myso bacteria. It's really difficult to treat
Speaker 1: and really the only option is removing that tattoo. I've
Speaker 1: also heard that sometimes tattoo removal is useful for people
Speaker 1: who are who are very much still into their tattoos,
Speaker 1: but essentially becomes a tool of retouching past tattoos. So
Speaker 1: you you have some sort of you know, star or
Speaker 1: name or an emblem, and it's maybe it's faded a
Speaker 1: little bit or just not maybe it wasn't of the
Speaker 1: same quality as you. You want your other tattoos and
Speaker 1: you you don't want to raise it completely, but you
Speaker 1: want to touch it up, and tattoo removal techniques can
Speaker 1: be used to essentially make it look better. Indeed. Um, now,
Speaker 1: when we get to the actual mechanics of tattoo removal,
Speaker 1: just remember about the macrofishes and this, you know, the
Speaker 1: dyes being too large right to break down in the
Speaker 1: dermis and recall the information because when you are trying
Speaker 1: to remove a tattoo, what you're basically doing is aiming
Speaker 1: a laser at it and breaking it down into tinier
Speaker 1: and tinier particles so that those macrofiges can consume it
Speaker 1: and take it away into the bloodstream to be flushed
Speaker 1: out of your body, break it down to a level
Speaker 1: that they can handle it, and to a level to
Speaker 1: where it their business to handle it. And most tattoos
Speaker 1: require at least three to four treatments. They're spaced about
Speaker 1: eight weeks apart to remove. The cost can range from
Speaker 1: several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the size
Speaker 1: and the location of the tattoo. And it turns out that, um,
Speaker 1: just black and white tattoos are the easiest to remove
Speaker 1: because those that black dye is easier to break down
Speaker 1: with a laser. It's interesting. I would have thought that
Speaker 1: maybe some of the other colors would be easier to
Speaker 1: break down, but I guess the black is really stark,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's just it responds better to the laser. Now, um,
Speaker 1: the removal is described as someone snapping a rubber band
Speaker 1: at your skin over and over again, so it's it's
Speaker 1: another sort of painful ritual that you go through um
Speaker 1: to to to exercise some force, some symbol or some
Speaker 1: some presents from your life. Of purging. Yeah right, it's
Speaker 1: almost like self flagilation. Yeah, I mean, and a great
Speaker 1: way to I guess, end to break up or a
Speaker 1: marriage or something. You just actually just pay someone to
Speaker 1: use a laser beam to just blast their name out
Speaker 1: of your skin and let your your body's immune system
Speaker 1: consume it. You can say that too. You can be like,
Speaker 1: right now, you, I'm purging you from my blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my immune system is is eating the last of you now, Sarah. Now,
Speaker 1: given the number of individuals who end up needing to
Speaker 1: have a tattoo removed, it's it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: we would want to develop inc that is more easily
Speaker 1: removed to make tattoos in a sense a little less permanent,
Speaker 1: knowing that we're going to get tattoos so we don't
Speaker 1: want to keep forever. I was thinking about that. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is good for the noncommittal set like myself.
Speaker 1: He was like, Okay, maybe I'll get one if I
Speaker 1: know that it's going to break down much easier with
Speaker 1: a laser. And that brings us to UH to the
Speaker 1: special Infinity Inc. Manufactured by what's the name of the company,
Speaker 1: Freedom to Ink, freedom to eat, because yeah, freedom to
Speaker 1: be me, you and me. But with the caveat that
Speaker 1: we can we can erase things that we put into
Speaker 1: our flesh. And the idea here is that you just
Speaker 1: have a a die that is easier to remove because
Speaker 1: the diet is stored in microscopic capsules uh that will
Speaker 1: stay in the skin for good, but are more easily
Speaker 1: broken down by the laser. So it's basically, let's make
Speaker 1: an ink that is easier to remove with the accepted technique.
Speaker 1: There's nothing magic about. You can't just rub them the
Speaker 1: magnet on it and make it go away, but it
Speaker 1: makes it easier to get rid off with the traditional
Speaker 1: means of tattoo removal. Again about the macro fuses and
Speaker 1: the size, right, So if you can get that die
Speaker 1: particle as tiny as you can and just suspend it
Speaker 1: in a polymer bead, then when you aim that laser
Speaker 1: at it and it combust that polymer bead, than it's
Speaker 1: so much easier to deal with by the body. And
Speaker 1: it seems like this uh, the sink is becoming more
Speaker 1: and more accessible and more and more tattoo parlors around
Speaker 1: the world. But it does still kind of seem like
Speaker 1: an easy way out, like like why why do you
Speaker 1: want to have that? Is having that escape route in
Speaker 1: place seems a little against the idea of of the
Speaker 1: permanency of the whole point anyway, Yeah, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess it would be it would be definitely beneficial
Speaker 1: I could see for for those medical tattoos we were
Speaker 1: talking about, particularly ones used in radiation treatments, because in
Speaker 1: many cases hum individuals who undergo that kind of treatment afterwards,
Speaker 1: even though we're talking about very small dots, they might
Speaker 1: want to get rid of them because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a permanent sign of this, uh, this this ordeal they
Speaker 1: had to go through. So or maybe it's just something
Speaker 1: that they should always offer when someone is getting a
Speaker 1: you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend's named tattooed, like how
Speaker 1: do you want to upgrade a bit and go to
Speaker 1: this so other ink, you know, the sort of offered
Speaker 1: as a as a you know, behind the counter kind
Speaker 1: of sale. It's like, hey, I know she means a
Speaker 1: lot to you, but trust me, five years show now,
Speaker 1: who knows I don't know why the tattoo artists is
Speaker 1: talking like that. Yeah, well, you generally want all your
Speaker 1: relationship advice from a tattoo artist generally speaks Oh, I
Speaker 1: think a tattoo artist could provide great relationship with us.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? They probably have seen everything and probably
Speaker 1: know more about the human experience than most of us.
Speaker 1: I've heard a friend of a friend used to work
Speaker 1: at a tattoo parlor in Athens, Georgia, and supposedly the
Speaker 1: parlor had a at a wall of shame in the
Speaker 1: back where they would put the particularly bad tattoos that
Speaker 1: individuals had had paid for like their own workmanship, or
Speaker 1: just like more of like the like hey I want
Speaker 1: this dolphins sitting on a lazy boy. I think that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, you know, or particularly like racist tattoos,
Speaker 1: just things where you're like, oh, why would someone do that?
Speaker 1: I think it probably you know, there was a range
Speaker 1: from just the the the head scratching tattoos to the
Speaker 1: purely awful uh tattoos. I have a challenge for you
Speaker 1: guys out there. You come up with the tattoo that
Speaker 1: I should get, and I'm not saying I'm gonna get it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying because you know, I'm noncommittal, but I'm
Speaker 1: intrigued by it. Christian Stein Metts of uh stuff of
Speaker 1: genius in other house efforts um joints, I suppose um
Speaker 1: he and I were talking one day and saying that
Speaker 1: we should get all get like one bonding tattoo and
Speaker 1: what should that be, And of course the house of
Speaker 1: logo came up as an idea, which is a question
Speaker 1: mark if you guys aren't familiar with it. And then
Speaker 1: we thought, yes, tramp stamps of the House to works logo.
Speaker 1: And then we quickly decided that's a terrible idea and
Speaker 1: so confusing for anybody who might be amorously involved with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does it. Yeah, I can see that being problematic.
Speaker 1: Well maybe we should put it. We should all get
Speaker 1: it right here on our third eye in the penney
Speaker 1: on Gland. Yes, over the should probably pick one chakra,
Speaker 1: Just go pick one of these chakras that it relates
Speaker 1: most to your The sort of content that you produce
Speaker 1: is for how stuff works, and that's where you get it.
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, what are the car stuff guys
Speaker 1: gonna do? Oh? Which which chakra is the automotive chakra.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the pelvic regions. Yeah, alright, So there
Speaker 1: you have it. UM A crash course in some of
Speaker 1: the some of the interesting points of tattooing history and
Speaker 1: culture that that we found interesting UM as well as
Speaker 1: the science of tattoos, the science of tattoo removals. And
Speaker 1: in our next episode we're going to look to some
Speaker 1: of the more cutting edge UH and indeed the near
Speaker 1: future applications of tattoos, the future of tattooing. So look
Speaker 1: forward to that episode, and in the meantime, make sure
Speaker 1: you go to stuff to Blow your mind dot com
Speaker 1: because that is find where you will find all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes, all the videos, all the blog posts, as
Speaker 1: well as links out the various social media accounts that
Speaker 1: we maintain. And if you would like to send us
Speaker 1: your thoughts about tattoos, because I bet you guys have
Speaker 1: some experiences out there are some things that you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, you can do that by emailing us a
Speaker 1: blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.