Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my 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 I love all things tech and it is time
Speaker 1: for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally
Speaker 1: published on August twenty six, two thirteen. It is titled
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Gets Tattooed and Pierced. Now I'm only one
Speaker 1: of those things. But between the time we recorded that
Speaker 1: show and now, I got another tattoo, So I've got multiple.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's go back and listen to this classic
Speaker 1: episode about tattoos and piercings. Speaking of regular old tattoos,
Speaker 1: in the interest of full disclosure, I've got two of them,
Speaker 1: so I can actually talk about the physical experience of
Speaker 1: receiving a tattoo as well as the actual science and
Speaker 1: technology that goes into producing a tattoo. Well, I have
Speaker 1: zero tattoos while we're while we're talking about it, but
Speaker 1: my ears are pierced. Does that Does that help? That
Speaker 1: that's body modification. I'm actually also interests of all disclosure,
Speaker 1: debating getting a new ear pierced. Just just one, just one,
Speaker 1: just one. I don't know that's going to happen too,
Speaker 1: because I keep thinking I might be too old for that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about tattoos. That's a good starting point, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, ear piercing is probably the lowest on the
Speaker 1: scale because it's the most socially accepted form of body
Speaker 1: modification in our culture. You know, it's one in the
Speaker 1: in the United States that ear piercing is. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty pretty beign. Yeah, very common. So it's no
Speaker 1: one would blink an eye really, depending upon the type
Speaker 1: of piercing. I mean, there are more extreme piercings that
Speaker 1: that some people would look at and go, wow, that's
Speaker 1: pretty extreme, but it's still kind of on the theme.
Speaker 1: And yeah, at least as far as our society is concerned. Right,
Speaker 1: But tattoos. Tattoos are one of those things that we
Speaker 1: have a lot of information about about how they happen. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and they are getting more common. According to a Harris
Speaker 1: Pole of American adults have one, um, including thirty eight
Speaker 1: percent of people between the ages of thirty and thirty nine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I fall into that category. Yeah, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: actually I'm always thinking about what my next one's going
Speaker 1: to be By the way, there's a common saying that
Speaker 1: tattoos are addictive that is kind of well, it's not
Speaker 1: physiologically true, but psychologically it is kind of true because
Speaker 1: after you take the plunge the first time, you think,
Speaker 1: I kind of want more. So clearly, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about tattoos in this podcast, we're really going to be
Speaker 1: focusing on the way that modern tattoos happened. But it,
Speaker 1: you know, it behooves us to talk about tattooing has
Speaker 1: a pretty long history. Yeah. Recent documentation from the Siberian
Speaker 1: Times reported that some of the permafrost preserved uh, like
Speaker 1: like ice princesses and stuff like that, have shown um
Speaker 1: from you know, fifth century BC have shown tattoos much
Speaker 1: like modern ones that particular articles strangely enough to link
Speaker 1: out to any scholarly institutions or or reporting sorain of salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but still well yeah, and then there have been reports
Speaker 1: of you know, tattoos being found on ancient Egyptian mummies
Speaker 1: from about two thousand BC. Uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: the word tattoo we get from a Tahitian word which
Speaker 1: essentially means to mark, which makes sense, and that that
Speaker 1: word started to appear in English writing right around the
Speaker 1: time that old James Cook was exploring the South Pacific,
Speaker 1: so about seventeen sixty nine. Now, tattoos are all done
Speaker 1: in essentially the same way, which involves piercing the skin
Speaker 1: and inserting some mak. But the tattoo machine is a
Speaker 1: little more recent. That comes to us from the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, so late nineteenth century, and that was a
Speaker 1: improvement by one Samuel O'Reilly on a machine patented by
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison. Yes, Thomas Essen's machine was not meant to tattoo.
Speaker 1: It was meant to engrave metal, and it was meant
Speaker 1: to create stencils, and it was called an electric pen,
Speaker 1: also known as the autographic printer, and that was something
Speaker 1: that was invented right around eight or so. But what
Speaker 1: O'Reilly said was, you know, I'm a tattoo artist. He
Speaker 1: actually had been a tattoo artist in New York. He
Speaker 1: was an Irish immigrant came to New York sometime in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, set up shop, saw the electric pin
Speaker 1: by Thomas Edison. And it's interesting because that device that
Speaker 1: Thomas Essen made never really became popular for what it
Speaker 1: was designed to do. There were other technologies that came
Speaker 1: along shortly thereafter that made it more or less obsolete. Right,
Speaker 1: And also you know, for for for hand engraving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot um more efficient to in machine engrave
Speaker 1: than it is to handingring. Right. So o'reiley takes a
Speaker 1: look at this and says, wait a minute, though, this
Speaker 1: thing that maybe isn't so great for what it was
Speaker 1: meant to do might do something else if I just
Speaker 1: make a few modifications. Yeah, if I just changed the
Speaker 1: tube system to to accommodate inc and um uh, modified
Speaker 1: the oscillating unit to drive a needle rather than a Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suppose it was a needle to begin with, right, right,
Speaker 1: but there's a different style needle like the needles that
Speaker 1: was in the electric pin. You would not want to
Speaker 1: touch your skin because it was enormous. It was huge
Speaker 1: and a little bit scary. It was, yes, certainly, and
Speaker 1: it's funny if you want to actually take a look
Speaker 1: at the patent. The patent was issued on December eight.
Speaker 1: Because it's on the patent application, you can actually look
Speaker 1: up patents for free online. Google has a very good
Speaker 1: patent searching. This one comes right up if you do
Speaker 1: a patent searching Google. Uh. It's patent number four six
Speaker 1: for eight oh one and the name of it is
Speaker 1: tattooing machine. Both yes, both both that and Edison's machine. Um.
Speaker 1: The patents for them still exist. In The illustrations are
Speaker 1: very fancy and pretty. Yes, and I've seen some really
Speaker 1: slap dash patent tellstration my day, but these are top notch.
Speaker 1: There's some there's some ones for some particularly high tech
Speaker 1: gadgets that when you look at them, you think it
Speaker 1: was someone drunk when they drew this, And it just
Speaker 1: shows that, you know, engineers and artists don't always combine
Speaker 1: into one person right at anything rate. So you look
Speaker 1: at this pattern, it's very interesting it It does have
Speaker 1: that ink reservoir and it's got the ability to channel
Speaker 1: inc down to this needle. The needle, by the way,
Speaker 1: is solid. It's not like a hollow needle or anything, right.
Speaker 1: I think the idea is that the needle is contained
Speaker 1: within a small chamber that holds the ink, and then
Speaker 1: when the needle pushes down out through that chamber, it
Speaker 1: takes takes a drop off then right, and it pierces
Speaker 1: the skin and deposits the ink underneath. Specifically in the dermist,
Speaker 1: because you're going underneath the epidermis, which which sheds and
Speaker 1: cycles so frequently that if you put it in the epidermis,
Speaker 1: it would stick around for not very long at all,
Speaker 1: certainly not a lifetime like if you have if you
Speaker 1: have ever had either, you know, well, temporary tattoo will
Speaker 1: just wash off eventually. But if you were to get
Speaker 1: like a henna tattoo, something that stains the skin, then
Speaker 1: you know that eventually that skin, no matter how careful
Speaker 1: you are, that design is gonna go away because you
Speaker 1: will shed that skin. You know that skin will end
Speaker 1: up flaking off of you. It becomes dust. Actually, that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of the dust in our world is.
Speaker 1: It's skin scale. Yeah, I mean a lot of the
Speaker 1: dust that you encounter on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much from your body, happy thought anyway. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the tattoo is permanent because it is actually staining the dermists,
Speaker 1: as you said, not the epidermists. So we were actually
Speaker 1: looking at a tattoo through the epidermists. Think of the
Speaker 1: epidermist is kind of like a window, and the dermist
Speaker 1: is where you're actually seeing the design imprinted and your
Speaker 1: typical tattoo needle according to our article on how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, there's you know how tattoos work? We
Speaker 1: actually have this article. Uh, the needle can move between
Speaker 1: fifty and three thousand times per minute. Now that's actually
Speaker 1: the same frequency as the electric pen that Thomas Edison created.
Speaker 1: So I suspect that most needles probably move significantly faster
Speaker 1: than fifty times per minute, because that would be um, well,
Speaker 1: you'd have essentially one us once a second, So think
Speaker 1: about that one one to one THO you'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh stop it. I I suppose, depending upon the type
Speaker 1: of work being done. Yes, I am not a tattooed professional.
Speaker 1: That would be a really interesting question to ask a
Speaker 1: tattooed professional. Outlining versus shading is very different. I can
Speaker 1: save you from experience both on the performance end. Not
Speaker 1: I can't say that from experience, but from the recipient.
Speaker 1: And I sure as heck can tell you there's a
Speaker 1: world of difference in the pain levels that you experience
Speaker 1: from outlining versus shading. Um. Now, it's also interesting you
Speaker 1: know your your experience of pain will depend upon several things,
Speaker 1: like your own threshold of pain. Obviously, mind's a pretty high.
Speaker 1: But it also depends on where you get the tattoo. Now,
Speaker 1: there's certain surfaces where you know it's nice and fleshy
Speaker 1: and you're not gonna you might feel like kind of
Speaker 1: a buzzing sensation and maybe some tingling, but it's not
Speaker 1: terribly painful. And then there are other areas where it
Speaker 1: feels like someone's really pinching you pretty hard, or may
Speaker 1: be getting like a bit of a bee sting. I've
Speaker 1: heard that anything close to it close to the bond.
Speaker 1: I've got one on my left shoulder blade, and anytime
Speaker 1: it got to the point where it was close to
Speaker 1: the actual bone was significantly more painful than the rest
Speaker 1: of the tattoo. And I've also got one on my
Speaker 1: left arm, and anything on the inside of the arm
Speaker 1: was more painful than the outside. But yeah, so you've
Speaker 1: got with your basic tattoo gun, your tattoo machine. You've
Speaker 1: got the the unit that the tattoo artist holds in
Speaker 1: his or her hand, which has a tube that houses
Speaker 1: the needle. It's got the ink uh the ink chamber
Speaker 1: or a little ink thing will will actually screw into it,
Speaker 1: and then there's usually a foot pedal control that controls
Speaker 1: the depth of the needle so that the tattoo artists
Speaker 1: can be very precise when actually putting the tattoo onto
Speaker 1: your skin. It'll be more or less a millimeter, depending
Speaker 1: on you know, and where it is. Yeah, but about
Speaker 1: a millimeters is that's that's a pretty good estimation. And
Speaker 1: it's the machine itself is is brilliantly simple. It's based
Speaker 1: on or. It's kind of similar to what a sewing
Speaker 1: machine is. If that metaphor doesn't totally skip you up completely,
Speaker 1: I'm actually perfectly fine with that. Yeah, but I guess
Speaker 1: it's because I've had a couple of tattoos and needles
Speaker 1: don't typically bother me. But I do understand there are
Speaker 1: people who have real psychological issues with anything that has
Speaker 1: to do with needles with needles. Totally understand that. But
Speaker 1: but so so the gun. The gun contains a circuit
Speaker 1: that runs through an electromagnet, and that circuit is opened
Speaker 1: and closed via the vibrations of a spring loaded a
Speaker 1: read or uh panel um and and those vibrations are
Speaker 1: controlled by a weight like a pendulum that's placed along
Speaker 1: that that flaunched interesting um and now the vibrations are
Speaker 1: caused by cycling power through the electromagnet, so they have
Speaker 1: the fluctuating electric magnetic field and that going to start
Speaker 1: causing some vibration, and the read is connected at the
Speaker 1: top um uh to to the to the base of
Speaker 1: the needle, and therefore the vibrations of it pushed the
Speaker 1: needle up and down. And it makes it very very
Speaker 1: simple to use. Very I mean, the the cycle is
Speaker 1: is self perpetuating until you cut off the electricity supply
Speaker 1: entirely and you have a simple reciprocating motion that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is so really the the complexity here comes
Speaker 1: in the actual execution of making a tattoo, and that's
Speaker 1: where the artistry and skill really comes in. Because operating
Speaker 1: the machinery is pretty simple. It's the handling it properly
Speaker 1: and making sure you're doing not only a wonderful artistic job,
Speaker 1: but that you're doing it safely right, and the safety
Speaker 1: issue is one of those One of the things that
Speaker 1: I do know very very well about tattoo parlors is
Speaker 1: that if it does not smell like a hospital, like
Speaker 1: a really good clean hospital, gone get out. Yeah, because yeah,
Speaker 1: so so for any of you guys out there who
Speaker 1: are considering tattoos. Uh, you know, make sure you do
Speaker 1: your research check and it makes certain that all the
Speaker 1: different whatever tattoo parlor you're looking at, is on the
Speaker 1: up and up, that they follow very strict uh sterilization processes,
Speaker 1: that they are very careful to have one use items
Speaker 1: and then they discard them and they don't ever use
Speaker 1: them again. Some some parts of the tattoo machine are reusable,
Speaker 1: and that's perfectly fine, and we'll talk about those which
Speaker 1: even those you make sure they have, like an autoclave
Speaker 1: clave they are they are sterilizing their equipment because you
Speaker 1: want to heat things to either two or two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy degrees depending on the pressure and the time
Speaker 1: length that you're using. Yeah, and we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the autoclave specifically in just a second to
Speaker 1: kind of explain what that is for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know. But the whole purpose here is to
Speaker 1: kill off any kind of bacteria or other organism that
Speaker 1: could cause infection or disease. And because like we said,
Speaker 1: you're what a tattoo is is a you know, a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of little punctures in your skin. Punctures can
Speaker 1: get infected it's it's an open wound. Yeah, yeah, any
Speaker 1: kind of heels up right. But yeah, any kind of
Speaker 1: wound has the potential to get infected. So it's very
Speaker 1: important that you find a place that is reputable and clean.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jonathan from twenty twenty. While you're getting
Speaker 1: inked and pierced and everything, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. So the basic parts of
Speaker 1: this tattoo that you've got, the sterilized needle and those
Speaker 1: are one use. That's that should just every time you
Speaker 1: go to a tattoo parlor, if you're getting a tattoo,
Speaker 1: the needles they have should be one use needles and
Speaker 1: sterilized packets that they should open right in front in
Speaker 1: front of you, right before they start their work. Right.
Speaker 1: Those packets should remain sealed until they're ready to do work.
Speaker 1: So they open it up and they put in the
Speaker 1: needle into the machine which has already been cleaned in
Speaker 1: the autoclave. And I'll get to that in a second. Uh.
Speaker 1: Other things that need to be single use include ink, ink, cups, gloves,
Speaker 1: All of this kind of stuff needs to be one
Speaker 1: use in sterile packaging to minimize the risk of any
Speaker 1: kind of contamination. So make sure. And it's perfectly fine
Speaker 1: to ask questions any reputable tattoo artists because it shows
Speaker 1: that you have done your research and that you're serious
Speaker 1: about it. And again, if they're reputable, they'll have no
Speaker 1: problem answering your questions being able to show you what
Speaker 1: what is they do to stay? I think if you
Speaker 1: a grief about it, get out of here and don't
Speaker 1: don't go there, go somewhere else. Um. So UH. The
Speaker 1: autoclave is actually think of it as like a machine
Speaker 1: that generates lots of heat, pressure, and steam. Those are
Speaker 1: essentially the three components there, and it's often used in
Speaker 1: Autoclaves are used in medical facilities to clean medical uh equipment.
Speaker 1: So you the way it works as you would put
Speaker 1: stuff in a little pouch, each one with each piece
Speaker 1: of the equipment would get its own little pouch. UH.
Speaker 1: This equipment would be things like the needle bar and
Speaker 1: the tube of the machine. So these would be the
Speaker 1: bits that would be used again and again they go
Speaker 1: into their little pounches. Each pouch has a little indicator
Speaker 1: strip on the outside for when everything is has been
Speaker 1: heated to the correct temperature. That indicates yeah, exactly. It
Speaker 1: says essentially that that sticker changes color and it tells
Speaker 1: you what's not sticker. But the indicator changes color and
Speaker 1: it tells you everything in here is dead you and so.
Speaker 1: Uh but yeah, like you said, it can heat depending
Speaker 1: upon the settings. The general rule of thumb is two
Speaker 1: or fifty degrees fahrenheight or a hundred twenty one degrees
Speaker 1: celsius for ten pounds of pressure for thirty minutes, or
Speaker 1: to seventy degrees fahrenheit or one two celsius at fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds of pressure for fifteen minutes. Uh. That is the
Speaker 1: standard upberating procedure. The tattoo parlors should be following one
Speaker 1: of those two with its autoclave. And uh, there you go.
Speaker 1: That is your standard approach to sterilize the reu do
Speaker 1: bowl equipment. So remember ask those questions, make sure you know,
Speaker 1: you do your research, and uh and if everything's on
Speaker 1: the up and up, then enjoy your painful experience. It's
Speaker 1: really not that bad, depending up on where you get it,
Speaker 1: and how big the tattoo is, and and and your
Speaker 1: personal tolerance and the skill of the of the artists.
Speaker 1: I had an incredible tattoo artists who did both. The
Speaker 1: same guy did both my tattoos, and uh, and he
Speaker 1: was just he was not only really skilled at creating
Speaker 1: beautiful designs, he also really minimized all the discomfort. I
Speaker 1: mean there was some, especially around the shoulder blade area,
Speaker 1: but it was it was nothing too intense. Like, it
Speaker 1: was nothing more intense than you know, a minor beasting.
Speaker 1: So assuming you're not allergic to bees and you've experienced
Speaker 1: a beasting and it wasn't a big deal, that's pretty
Speaker 1: much the worst it got for me personally. Right, I
Speaker 1: happened to be allergic to be for you compared compared
Speaker 1: to a beasting, and you'd say I would die, That's
Speaker 1: not what I mean. Other fun questions to ask your
Speaker 1: tattoo artists are what kind of inks they use? Um,
Speaker 1: Just as an interesting note, sometimes inks contain metallic pigments,
Speaker 1: and um, if you ever have to go in for
Speaker 1: an m R I after getting a tattoo with the
Speaker 1: metallic pigment, it's not gonna fly out of your body
Speaker 1: magneto style or anything like that. Yeah, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: also good just to make sure that you know if
Speaker 1: you have any known allergies. That's obviously something else you
Speaker 1: need to discuss because there's a possibility that either the
Speaker 1: ink itself could contain something that you are allergic to,
Speaker 1: which could be a problem, or that some of the
Speaker 1: other materials, like they're supposed to the whole process before
Speaker 1: they tattoo you, they have to uh clean and shape, right,
Speaker 1: So any anything like that, you just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're not going to come into contact some
Speaker 1: with something that's going to give you a bad reaction. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I had one other kind of cool thing. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, if you're feeling in a goofy mood,
Speaker 1: we do have a we do have a fake article
Speaker 1: and how stuff Works about tattoos, uh, one of our
Speaker 1: few so we we haven't done it every year, but
Speaker 1: occasionally how stupp Works has made an April Fool's article
Speaker 1: on how stuff works, and we have one about how
Speaker 1: animated tattoos work, which is all about electronic tattoos that
Speaker 1: are it's like electronic devices, right right. The story goes that,
Speaker 1: And there's an actual patent for a subdermal l c
Speaker 1: D screen out there that exists in the real world
Speaker 1: that has never nothing ever really came of it, I think,
Speaker 1: but but but but yeah, the article talks about a
Speaker 1: little subdermal l c D that's connected to a little
Speaker 1: magnetic battery and a small controller, and so that you
Speaker 1: would be able to have a tattoo that would actually
Speaker 1: be like showing video and stuff, or have an animation
Speaker 1: on it that we could run in a loop. Now,
Speaker 1: there are obviously some some barriers to that, the big
Speaker 1: one being that the body tends to not like stuff
Speaker 1: introduced to it. And we're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: that when we get into the second half, and we
Speaker 1: start talking about some interesting implants that there are dangers
Speaker 1: of a body rejecting certain materials, and you can't really
Speaker 1: predict which ones it's going to reject, which ones it's not.
Speaker 1: There's some that have a lower percentage of rejection, and
Speaker 1: even people's immune systems work differently, right, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of a tass and it can change depending upon your
Speaker 1: activity level too. I mean, if you get a if
Speaker 1: you get an implant in an area that gets a
Speaker 1: lot of like a lot of agitation, then that can
Speaker 1: increase the odds of a rejection that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that in the second half. However,
Speaker 1: there is a different kind of animated tattoo. It's not
Speaker 1: really The tattoo itself is not animated, so it's a
Speaker 1: misnomer really, But there was a guy who goes by
Speaker 1: the handle the tattoo handle of Carl K A R L.
Speaker 1: Each of those letters is capitalized with a period after it.
Speaker 1: Sure like you. But Carl in Paris, uh American as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, or maybe maybe Canadian North American.
Speaker 1: At any rate, he's a tattoo artist working in Paris,
Speaker 1: created what he calls the first animated tattoo, and I
Speaker 1: even have a date for you June sixteen eleven. The
Speaker 1: first animated tattoo not really an animated tattoo. It's a
Speaker 1: tattoo that has what was it like a flipbook? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually got forty guys and tattooed to stick figure
Speaker 1: on each of them doing something slightly different than how
Speaker 1: to run in a circle. And then no, it's not
Speaker 1: that would also be awesome. I don't know where you
Speaker 1: could be able to convince forty guys to do that.
Speaker 1: I am sure that you could, though I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of crazy tattoos out there. Know what it was
Speaker 1: was a QR code. So you had a guy have
Speaker 1: a tattoo with a QR code incorporated in it. Now
Speaker 1: QR codes for those of you who don't remember, haven't
Speaker 1: seen one in a while. Um, they were big for
Speaker 1: a little bit, but then they kind of like they
Speaker 1: kind of fell out of favor. That don't see it
Speaker 1: was a marketing gimmick. I mean, I feel like it
Speaker 1: was overpromoted as the problem. It was a fine technology,
Speaker 1: but but the way that that WiFi wound up happening,
Speaker 1: I don't think that it was as necessary as people
Speaker 1: thought that it was going. And there's a lot a
Speaker 1: lot more work and image recognition like things that like,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot more work now where software
Speaker 1: can recognize things without there having to be some sort
Speaker 1: of established pattern. Rare, but essentially it's it is kind
Speaker 1: of like the next generation of the bar code. It
Speaker 1: was those those blocky pictures you've ever if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen them, they're they're a square that have a little
Speaker 1: black except it's all block it's all hard edges but
Speaker 1: pixelated R shack test. Yeah, there you go exactly. And
Speaker 1: so this was incorporated in the tattoo and in fact,
Speaker 1: they didn't know if it was gonna work while they're
Speaker 1: this guy is getting tattooed and they have no idea
Speaker 1: if it's going to work or not because they don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes precision again, because the digital camera
Speaker 1: sensor has to take a image of this and then
Speaker 1: the software has to analyze it and interpret that as
Speaker 1: uh information in some way. And if the tattoo artist
Speaker 1: had made a block a little too big or a
Speaker 1: little too small, it wouldn't it wouldn't when it wouldn't
Speaker 1: coordinate with that information, right. So in this case, what
Speaker 1: the QR code did was it prompted the smartphone to
Speaker 1: then go to YouTube and pull up a video of
Speaker 1: an animated version of the tattoo design singing opera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit a round headed guy with like
Speaker 1: a little top hat and a big handlebar mustache singing
Speaker 1: opera in the middle of this tattoo. And then that's
Speaker 1: that's what the tattoo was. I mean, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen some some esthetic barcodes on people that you know,
Speaker 1: I hit Man style, like basically skull hit Man or
Speaker 1: you know. I I think there's a probably a lot
Speaker 1: of science fiction that I'm forgetting that includes some something
Speaker 1: like this, but there's probably like some sort of twelve
Speaker 1: Monkeys type thing. Yeah, there's totally an episode of reboot.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, yeah that show I don't watch, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jonathan twenty again, we're gonna take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll return in just a moment. Well, that that's like
Speaker 1: the big tattoo thing, right, We wanted to cover that
Speaker 1: pretty extensively because that's one of those that has the
Speaker 1: really cool toy, if you want to put it that way,
Speaker 1: the piece of technology. But there are other things we
Speaker 1: can talk about. Obviously. The other basic one we've already
Speaker 1: mentioned piercing, So whether it's your ear or some other
Speaker 1: part of your body, piercing. Now, of course that involves
Speaker 1: creating a whole which jewelry will then pass through. So
Speaker 1: piercing usually means that you're seeing the ends of a
Speaker 1: piece of jewelry, right, whether it's like a barbell or
Speaker 1: if it's a stud or a hoop or whatever, you're
Speaker 1: seeing the exterior part. That's that's the part that's on display. Yes,
Speaker 1: there there's another form of piercing. Um, what's it called pocketing?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pocketing, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But pocketings. Pocketing is kind of They call it anti piercing,
Speaker 1: And the reason why they call it anti piercing is
Speaker 1: that pocketing involves creating pockets of skin. This is where
Speaker 1: I started getting a little creepy crawley. Uh. Like I said,
Speaker 1: my my tolerance level is probably fairly normal when it
Speaker 1: comes to body modification, normal in the sense of what
Speaker 1: the society norms are. I don't judge anyone who's on
Speaker 1: through and gotten body modification because whatever you want to
Speaker 1: do to to assert your identity, as long as you're
Speaker 1: not hurting anyone else, I'm totally for it. It's just
Speaker 1: that if I look at it and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: that that looks like that must be uncomfortable. But pocketing, essentially,
Speaker 1: what that means is you create these pockets in the
Speaker 1: skin surgically, you actually cut open and create surgical pockets,
Speaker 1: which I'm guessing at some point you need to be
Speaker 1: lined with something to keep it from being just an
Speaker 1: open wound. But the jewelry is inserted. The ends of
Speaker 1: the jewelry are inserted in either pockets. So think of
Speaker 1: two pockets that are facing one another, and then the
Speaker 1: jewelry the end of it fits in one and the
Speaker 1: other end fits in the other, and so the the
Speaker 1: middle of the jewelry is exposed as opposed to the ends.
Speaker 1: The ends of the jewelry are inside the pockets, so
Speaker 1: they are out of you. And this can be done
Speaker 1: in lots of ways, Like if you make really deep pockets,
Speaker 1: you can make this kind of super cool but very
Speaker 1: creepy effect of the skin being pulled apart because you're
Speaker 1: seeing these like ribs of metal. I saw it in
Speaker 1: one guy's arm where he had done the inside of
Speaker 1: his forearm, where he uh, these deep pockets. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the last I don't know, a quarter inch or
Speaker 1: so of the jewelry was under the skin and the
Speaker 1: rest was exposed. In the middle part was exposed. Now piercing,
Speaker 1: of course, that that's where you just have the whole
Speaker 1: that the metal or whatever the jewelry fits through and
Speaker 1: the ends are on display. And that's again and not
Speaker 1: at all a new thing. I know that records of
Speaker 1: nostril piercing go back as far as four thousand years
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, and that both ear and nostril
Speaker 1: piercing are mentioned in the Bible. Yeah, these are ancient
Speaker 1: forms of of expression identity, sometimes religion. Sometimes it's religious,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a tribal identification. I mean this is something,
Speaker 1: you know, the way of adorning ourselves. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's something that goes back to prehistoric times. So now
Speaker 1: obviously with piercing you have several of the same concerns
Speaker 1: that you do with tattooing. You're talking about creating essentially
Speaker 1: creating a wound in yourself, and so you want all
Speaker 1: the equipment and the person delivering the equipment unto you
Speaker 1: to be um as sterile as possible, A tots sterile. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: like I know there are a lot of uh piercing
Speaker 1: like key or there used to be. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there still are. But when I remember when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, there are a lot of the little
Speaker 1: places in the mall like piercing Goda look at the
Speaker 1: Claire's or whatever, like a little kiosk and they would
Speaker 1: have the little piercing gun and stuff. Totally not not
Speaker 1: a good idea, because that's that's a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: If you don't know how they are sterilizing their equipment. Again,
Speaker 1: if if if you know, if anything that's coming into
Speaker 1: contact with you um, if they have an auto clave
Speaker 1: in the back and anything that's coming into contact with
Speaker 1: you has is just being opened in front of your face,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a pretty good sign. Pretty good sign.
Speaker 1: But I would always, I mean, like every person I've
Speaker 1: ever talked to who is in to any level of
Speaker 1: body modification, whether it's someone who just enjoys piercings or
Speaker 1: someone who enjoys some of the things that again that
Speaker 1: I would I would think of as more extreme. They
Speaker 1: all say, go to a to a professional parlor, piercing parlor,
Speaker 1: a place where that's what they do. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there's one near my home, which is where I would
Speaker 1: go and go on if I go and do it,
Speaker 1: But I I did. I did get my ears pierced
Speaker 1: when I was like twelve or something like that at
Speaker 1: like a Claire's. I'm all but and and I have
Speaker 1: never they've never been infected. It's always been fine. Sure, no,
Speaker 1: it's and it's not like, yeah, we don't want to
Speaker 1: say that if you if you have had this done,
Speaker 1: that you're living on borrowed tom which just mean that
Speaker 1: the the you know, if you're considering this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: these are the places that are going to be traditionally yes,
Speaker 1: the most safe. So again again, same thing. You ask
Speaker 1: questions when you get there. You ask them how they
Speaker 1: how they handle their equipment, Which pieces of our equipment
Speaker 1: are reusable versus one use only? How do they take
Speaker 1: care of things after it's all done? You know? And
Speaker 1: it's good to ask questions. It's whenever your safety and
Speaker 1: health are concerned. Ask questions. Hey there, guys, hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions or future topics I should cover on the show,
Speaker 1: please reach out on Twitter or Facebook. The handle at
Speaker 1: both of those is text stuff H s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
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