July 18, 2017 • 48 mins
It's pretty obvious something's gone wrong when you get a sunburn, but did you know a tan means you've damaged your DNA? Dive into the three Ss of summer and learn all about how to protect yourself from the sun.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, stuff you should know is going on tour.
Do Do Do Do One are the deeds my friend. Okay,
So starting August eighth in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're
gonna be at dan Fourth Music Hall. And then Chicago,
we're gonna be there the next night, August nine, at
the Harris Theater at Chicago. We want to see your faces.
Step it up, Step it Up. Vancouver or the Vote
(00:23):
Theater September. That's gonna be a great show, I think,
don't you. It's gonna be a great of one. And
then in Minneapolis at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before.
It's lovely September. Yeah, and then we're gonna swing down
to Austin. It's gonna be during Austin City Limits, although
it has nothing to do with Austin City limits. Will
be there October ten, yes, and then we're going to
(00:43):
Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks, yeah on October eleventh. And hey,
if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area,
this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. Uh,
if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well then you should
go to the Bellhouse October. Will be there all three nights,
and finally we're gonna wrap it up here in Atlanta
at the Bucket Theater on November four for a benefit
(01:05):
show where we are donating all of the money's to
Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. YEP.
So for all this information again visually and for links
two tickets, just go to s y s K Live
dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how
(01:26):
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, there's Jerry's Stuff
you Should Know. That summer sunburn and addition your tan, well,
(01:49):
I did think it was kind of funny. I probably
have more sun on my face than I've had in years. Yes,
very easily, I would say, And I've been in the
sun a lot more lately. But I have been applying
sunscrew green. But as you will see very shortly, I
haven't been the best at reapplying it. No, That's what
I'm guilty of too, And so I end up getting
(02:09):
a tan, and then, of course, like a dummy, I'm like, hey,
tants look pretty good. I look fox people look good
with a little bit of a tan, which is just
how you fall into that trap of doing what's ultimately
very bad for yourself. Next up, Ascot's going down the
George Hamilton's route. But the rest of my body, well,
my lower my lower arms are tan and my face
(02:31):
is tan. Do you have like milk bottle calves? Tell
me everything else is white? Take off your pants, they're
already off. Okay, as always, your pants really are off? Um, Jerry,
did you know Chuck's pants are off? She's known for
nine years? Remember the the T shirt that listener made
(02:52):
his pants off? Mike's on or Mike's on pants off.
I can't remember the order that we do it. A
wax on, wax off. I think, uh, this one's long
overdo though, I think and pilot under our general public
service casts. Yeah, there's a lot of info that's floating
around that is wrong. Yeah, starting with the idea that
(03:13):
tans are healthy or even protective. Yeah, Like, well, we'll
go through all these and bust some myths, but handing
bad company saying like oh you need that vitamin D yeah,
or hey that based hand that will help you not burn.
We'll go through all this we're going to but let's
start Let's start where everything starts, Chuck, Let's start with
(03:34):
the sun. Alright, Sorry, So the Sun is streaming down.
You're familiar with the Sun. Our star, closest star, divides light, heat,
that kind of stuff. It's also bearing down on us
deadly radiation, trying to kill us all the time, right,
And there's three types, Well, there's three kinds of um
(03:55):
energy that the Sun shoots at us. There's infrared heat,
there's visible light light, and then there's ultra violet light
scar one ultra violet radiation, right, and then you can
break down ultra violet radiation into three more components, u
v A, UVB, and UVC. Actually, if we didn't have
(04:15):
our atmosphere, we'd all be dead right now, just because
the UVC. It's extremely deadly. But do right, if you're
an astronaut, you gotta worry about UVC, But those of
us here on Earth, we don't. We only have to
worry about u v A and UVB. And for decades,
ever since we started thinking about protecting ourselves from the sun,
we've basically been focused on UVB. Yeah. UVB is what
(04:39):
will sun burn you, right, which is why everybody wants
to protect themselves from it. But it turns out, as
we'll see, u v A is not it's even worse
than UVB. No, it really isn't. But those are the
three kinds. And when sunlight comes here on Earth, and
even when it doesn't, if it's reflected on a cloudy
day or through fog or something like that, don't be fooled, no,
(05:01):
because U v A still getting through. And as you'll see,
you need to protect yourself as a matter of fact,
because we will see some people recommend that you use
sunscreen every day, all over your body, every day, indoors
and out. Well, if you do that, you will probably
never get skin cancer, that's right, unless it's genetic. Yeah,
(05:23):
but you're definitely helping yourself out right. Uh. So you're
talking about that sunlight beaming down and fog and cloud
cover and all that stuff. You probably, if you've ever
been snow skiing, gotten sunburned because on a sunny day
that snow will reflect about of UV light. Yeah, so
you get the sun coming down on you and then
(05:43):
you're also getting a second dose of it reflected from
the snow at a rate. If you're at the beach
and you wonder why you might burn a little more
at the beach. It's because that sand does the same
thing to a rate of about where you will not
get sunburned, they say, is in a greenhouse. Yeah, did
you know that. I didn't know that. You're you'll sweat
(06:05):
to death, sure, and you can still get um tan,
but you won't burn. Yeah. Apparently glass is a substance
that absorbs UV radiation. This is a big thing that
I realized chucking. I just kind of touched upon it
for my entire life. I thought that sunburn was like
a tan gone too far, or conversely, that you got
(06:27):
sun burned and then you got tanned as a result
of sun burn, and then you were fine. Oh yeah,
like the people that are like, oh, always burn on
day one and then it turns it turns into a tan, right,
and then I keep that for the summer and I
don't even need some block after that, right now, Actually,
a sun tan and a sun burn are two different things,
and then the result of two different types of UV radiation. Yeah,
(06:51):
that people that say that stuff are completely talking out
of their butts, right, Don't listen to them, listen to
us instead. Yeah, because there's actual signs behind the UVB
is what causes sun burns. UV A rays are different,
and they they are what ultimately I think it's a
deeper penetration. They will ultimately cause like wrinkly skin, right
(07:15):
and like internal collagen damage and stuff like that. Right.
So uv A for aging, UVB for burning, right, yes,
and combines with both. You look like that lady, And
there's something about Mary made out with the dog. So
we are It's not like we're just complete, Um, we're
(07:35):
just completely at the mercy of the sun. Right. We
have a natural reactions to sunlight that are kind of
protective measures, but really more than anything, we're finding nowadays
that they're huge red flags that are meant to say, like,
get out of the sun. You're being internally damaged on
a molecular level right now, hence your sunburn. But it
(08:00):
turns out the tan is the same thing. Basically, it's
a it's a big red flag or a big brown
flag that says, um, you're undergoing genetic damage currently. You
may want to get out of the sun, not go
laid by the pools some more. You got your tan,
you're fine. Yeah, when you're getting that tan, what that
is is a pigment called melanin, and it is produced
(08:24):
in reaction to that. Uh, I guess you v B
u v A u v A and not gonna get
this v A ting right, should remember that? Yeah, but
it's tough to it's tough to separate the burn from
the tan and think that there are two different things.
After thinking that they're you know, related to all your life,
you know, well, it's It's why tanning beds use mainly
(08:48):
u v A light because you don't want to. They
don't want you to sunburn when you go to the
tanning salon because then you'll be like, wait a minute,
that's not how it's supposed to work. And you don't
get tann from UVB, so why even included? And if
you don't have to, well, yeah, and here's the deal, though,
I guess I might as well go ahead and let
the cat out of the bag with the tanning beds. Um.
One of the things, one of the bogus things that
(09:09):
they will tell you is like, no, that your body
needs vitamin D and so go to the tanning bed
because it's safer than being in the sun. One bs. Uh,
you get vitamin D from UVB, not uv A, and
tanning beds use uv A to get you tanned, so
it's that's completely bogus to begin with. UM. One recent
(09:32):
estimate UH suggested indoor channing caused about four hundred and
twenty thousand cases of skins can't skin cancer United States
every year. That's about double the number of lung cancer
linked to smoking UH, and twelve states at this point
of outlawed tanning beds for miners under eighteen years old.
That seems smart. I got one more stat for you.
(09:55):
People who used tanning beds for the first time before
the age of thirty UH, presuming they will. You know,
it's not a one off, have a seventy increased risk
in developing melanoma. The other don't go to tanning beds people. No,
that's a creat advice, Chuck Man. I mean, and a
lot of people also think, like melanoma nothing, you just
cut it out, it's fine. Actually, melanoma can spread, can
(10:17):
metastasize really quickly, and it is a very dangerous form
of cancer. So don't take that lightly at all. Plus,
if you're going to a tanning bed, you're probably doing
it for your looks. Have a little foresight because what
you're doing is subjecting your body to advanced hyper aging.
You're gonna age prematurely from and that whole like. You know,
(10:39):
people will say, I don't care, I'm young. I want
to look tann and look good. Um, that's why we
have nanny states to choose for you, because you're too
stupid to choose for yourself. Uh was that, judge, No,
we're trying to help people. I mean, this is it's
a danger. So the guy with a freshly tanned face,
(11:00):
let's let's go back to the skin and what the
skin is doing. Okay, all right, should we take a
break first, a little worked up? We can. All right,
let's take a little break, get into the skin. So chuck,
(11:31):
we're we're back on the skin. You said that when
u v A interacts with our skin, melana sites are
stimulated to produce melanin. Correct. Yeah, totally bailed on that.
And melanin is a pigment and one of the roles
that it plays is to absorb but actually absorbs radiation
(11:53):
u v A radiation and under normal circumstances, I think, um,
literally nine times out of a thousand, it when it
interacts with a photon of uv A radiation, it takes
that photon and it basically absorbs it into its molecular
structure and it spits it out as waste heat. So
(12:18):
it takes the radiation and turns it into something that's
just it's just heat. It's not deadly, it's not dangerous
any longer. Yeah, and that this isn't something that happens overnight.
It takes a little while to produce this melanin, which
is why you don't go out and get tan in
a day. Um. There's a longstanding myth that people who
have melanin production constantly, people with darker skin tones, um,
(12:45):
that they can't burn and that they can't get skin cancer.
And that's wrong on both accounts. It is um more
difficult for somebody with very dark skin tone to get
some burned. But I was cancer right, Yeah, there's a
lower prevalence. But I was reading, Um, I was reading
up on it, and I saw some dermatologists said, if
(13:07):
you have skin, you can get some burned. Just give
it enough time, under the right conditions, you'll get some burned.
And then yes, skin cancer is a thing as well. Um,
people of Uh, the fairier complexion, the worst you're going
to burn, and the um higher. Your incidence of getting
skin cancer from being out in the sun is but
(13:29):
it can happen. It's just a spectrum. But on on
the other end of the darkest end of the spectrum.
That doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it
happens last. So all of this applies to people of
all different skin tones. Yeah, and like we said before,
when it comes to uv A that's a deeper penetrating
light into the skin, it's gonna destroy collagen. It's a
(13:51):
structural protein and that collagen goes away, and that's when
your skin becomes less elastic, less smooth, and that is
what you think of when you think of wrinkles. Yeah,
they found this University of Michigan study found that when
the participants were exposed to uv A light, um something
(14:12):
called matrix metallo proton as one was um produced, and
that that goes and destroys collagen. It's like it's one
of the body's natural processes breaking down these cell walls
that gives skin structure, and that leads to wrinkles and
saggy skin eventually. And they found that even when you
(14:33):
started to tan the um, the MMP one production didn't
decrease at all. It just kept going. So this idea
that when you developed a tan when you're melon in
production kicks in that um you're being protected, that's actually
not the case at all. We're finding that it's actually
just it's a it's a defense mechanism, but it's not
(14:54):
a protective measure that keeps everything fine once your tans set.
I looked up just a quadruple check about the base
tan theory um and it's complete bs uh. They found
that a base hand provides and we'll talk about SPF
son uh protection factor. Right, you know why hesitant to less?
(15:19):
Second there, a base hand provides an SPF of three
or less, which means it buys you about ten extra
minutes in the sun and so little that the chief
of dermatologic surgery at Yale said it's essentially completely meaningless
(15:39):
in terms of providing protection. So and they in fact,
they say it can have the reverse effect because people
are under this assumption that a base hand helps, so
they won't do the things you need to do, like
where the hats or the UV shirts or the suntan
or sunscreen, or stay out longer, and so it ends
up being even worse for you because you think you
(16:00):
have this protective layer of brown. Yeah. That's one thing
that um, that kept coming up in the research is
that we have a lot of stuff to protect ourselves
and it can be made better, and people are at
work right now trying to improve the things that protect
us from the sun, but that most people aren't using
them right or don't understand the reality of the situation,
(16:24):
which is Sun's gonna mess you up pretty good. All right,
Well that's coming up in a sec Um. We've talked
about sun tan, right, so now let's talk about sunburn. Uh.
Sunburn kind of simply put is literally cellular damage from
ultra violet radiation. Uh. It's called um erythema or arithema.
(16:47):
It's the reddening of the skin, and it is this
delayed reddening of the skin caused by an increase of
blood flow to that area. Yeah. And the reason why
you have increased blood flow to the area is because
you've so damaged your skin on a molecular level that
your immune response has been set off and blood is
(17:08):
rushing to the area to bring in white blood cells
and other helper immune cells to try to repair the
damage you just did from letting yourself get a sunburned
from uv B rays. And if you've ever had like
a red, like to check and see if your sunburn.
You look at your red skin, you touch it, it
turns white, then goes back red real quick. It turns
(17:29):
white because you momentarily disrupt those capillaries and then they
immediately go, no, we need to send blood there, and
then the red just comes rushing back. And there's no
worse feeling than a bad sunburned. No, it's pretty bad.
It ruins your beach trip. If you get that thing
on the first day, everybody gets mad at you. You're screwed.
(17:52):
It's just no good. It's no good. It's no good.
It doesn't turn to tan. I don't care who you are.
That is not science. That's a myth. It is a myth.
So um, people like, now you don't know my skin
it turns to dead, right, No, it doesn't. It's wrong.
There is a lot of folklore surrounding sun tan and
sunburns and stuff. Well, I think because people think they
just like, I know my body and my skin. It's like, no,
(18:14):
there's science that supersedes all that, right, But I think
the reason that there is so much myth and folklore
around UM, sun tans and some burns is because science
really kind of dropped the ball for a while and
didn't really investigate this. There are only now starting to
investigate it on a like a really legitimate level. Yeah,
(18:37):
you know, it's a good point. So, I mean it's
kind of science is fault. Uh. And like you said before,
any skin can get burned, Any part of the body
can get burned, UM if it sees if the sunlight
can touch it, even through clothing, which we'll talk about
a bit later. To UM, you will get sunburned. Yeah,
(18:59):
that's another too. You might think. While I'm wearing a shirt,
most shirts, unless it's specifically designed to protect against UV radiation,
is letting u V through UM. And as you can
get burned, you can get tanned, you can get wrinkled,
you can cause cellular damage. UM, anytime UV radiation comes
in contact with your skin. And from what I saw,
(19:22):
the UVB radiation is the usually the likeliest culprit when
you get skin cancer because it goes in there and
directly knocks around d N A d NA, it turns
out actually is pretty good at absorbing energy and releasing
or absorbing radiation and releasing it as heat energy, just
(19:42):
like melanin is as well. But every once in a
while it gets excited and it gets kind of knocked
out of whack and some of its base pairs fused together,
what we call a mutation. And if that base pair
gets fused and isn't repaired, and it happens to be
at a sight that say, expresses a protein that protects
(20:02):
against tumors, well then you can get skin cancer. And
that's how it happens. And even though that happens, that
the base pairs fused together and aren't repaired, out of
maybe one out of every thousand times, that's one out
of every thousand interactions with a photon. Think of how
many photons are barreling down at you over a given
(20:24):
minute of exposure to sunlight. The odds are against you. Agreed. Uh.
And you know, since you mentioned the UV clothing or
SPF clothing, Ah, they are pretty great. Like most people
I know now wear those shirts, Um, well they look cool.
(20:44):
Well I wear one of those now because it's sort
of three purposes, looks kind of cool. Um. I hate
applying sunscreen, like all over my body. I'll hit my
face and arms and stuff, but like getting putting all
over my chest and belly and back and all. It's
just I'm you're gonna miss spots and have weird streaks
(21:06):
of sunburn here and there where you missed it, and
it's just no good. Uh. And then third, you know,
when you have some extra pounds, it's like, well, if
you wear the T shirt in the pool, everybody knows
it's not a good look, but you can get away
with the the SPF shirt. I think that is one
reason why SPF shirts were adopted. Oh sure, yeah, yeah,
(21:29):
but they really work great, um, and they dry super quick,
like my skinny friends use them, you know. But it's
good for fat dudes too. But they are rated up
to like fifty plus. The tighter the weave, the better.
They say. To hold a shirt up to the light,
like just a regular shirt will work. Like Denham, they said,
it's one of the best things because it's such a
(21:49):
tight weeks put on that Denham tuxedo and you're all set. Um.
But a UPF rating they go from about fifteen to fifty. Uh.
If you can hold it up to the light and
not see anything, the darker the better. It's like mine
is like gray and black, and um, some of them
or even have or even treated I think, yeah, that's
(22:12):
what I thought. So some of them are just the
weave is so tight, ye, sunlight light can't penetrate it.
Just it's a physical barrier to the UVB. What do
they treat some of them with? I'm not exactly sure.
That's the one thing that I'm kind of sketchy about
because I don't love like I try to not use
harmful chemicals as much as possible, So I don't know
if those are like soaked in like carcinogenic. Probably not right, Yeah,
(22:37):
probably not. It's probably magic dust of some story. But
this woman who was uh I think she's a director
of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York,
says that clothing is a single most effective form of
sun protection, even more than sunscreen, kind of for the
reasons I mentioned. Because it's complete coverage. I've got a
(22:59):
long sleeve one too, so um, it's just nice. I
throw it on, don't have to worry about all the
sunscreen junk, and then my legs. I usually don't get
a ton of sun exposure to my legs, like I
guess because you're usually vertical in a pool, like I
don't lay around on a float. Uh, and it's underwater, Well,
(23:20):
you you want to be careful, you v Radiation can
penetrate up to a foot underwater. Yeah, for sure. But
I mean like, I don't wear any sunscreen on my legs,
and you know I've got my pants off. Look at
them I've got They're pretty white. I have um flip
flap tan lines on my the tops of my feet.
I kind of forgot about the tops of feet, dude.
(23:41):
I am religious about putting sun block on the tops
of my feet, and I still got tan lines. I
saw a kid once, Um, his feet turned into like
Fred Flintstone's feet because he got burned on the tops
of them. Except for those never happening to me, the
whole foot. Well, they say the tops of feet like
the tops of your ears and earlobes. Um, did you
(24:04):
say the eyeballs can burn the back of the neck
and those are some of the areas that are you're
least likely or most likely to miss with sunscreen. But
I did not mention eyeballs. Yes, your eyeballs can burn,
can get sunburn. Yeah, I think I've experienced that after
being in the sun all day, like my eyes just
(24:25):
sort of burning and irritated. I wonder if that's what
that is. No, this is I think you would know? Yeah,
like I think my eyes are going to die. Yeah, alright,
should we take another break? Yeah, and then we'll come
back with sunscreen. H all right. If we were on
(25:03):
the way Back machine we traveled back to ancient Egypt,
you might see people slapping oat brand on their skin
or jasmine rice brand. What did I say? That was
from the food fads episode The Dummy. Yeah, rice brand spreading. Uh,
I guess moist rice brand? Why not? Or jasmine? They're like,
(25:27):
why not, it's BC let's party. Well, apparently jasmine is
as good at repairing damage skin. I wonder if they
tried jasmine rice oh many that Yeah, I would have
been like onto something back then. So they did this
back then, but actual sunscreen didn't come around until the
(25:48):
turn of the century. Until the ninth early nine hundreds,
thousands of years after the Egyptian dynasties were over, um,
there was a guy named Milton Blake. He was Australian
and he came up with what is considered the first
sun block in his kitchen apparently over like the course
of twelve years. And they still make it in Australia
(26:10):
and you really call it sun block back then, though
it's probably more like son They call it a good
first try. Yeah, he took him about twelve years of experimentation,
but like you said, he finally uh again selling it
and is it? What's is the brand called Milton Blake
that it was the one thing that I didn't look up.
(26:30):
All right, Well, while you do that, I'll go to
the nineteen forties, uh, to Switzerland. It was a swissman
named Franz Garita who was a climber, and we mentioned
snow um burns. Snow sun burns were pretty bad, and
so he was I think he had ascended Mount Pitts
on the Swiss Austrian border and got really burned. Is
(26:50):
that Pitts Palau from Inglorious Bastards? Is that the same mountain? Oh?
I don't know, I don't I forgot about that part.
But he got really burned and was like this is awful.
So he came back and started work, uh and in
six came up with the Pitts Boone Glacier cream uh.
And this had an SPF of two, which um, like
(27:14):
you said, good start. I don't even know if that
qualifies as a good start. Well, it was probably more
than Milton Blake's, don't you think. Or well, supposedly occasion
people have a UM have a natural SPF of about three.
So this guy somehow managed to bring it down and
not um. And then in Miami, Florida, there was a
(27:37):
man named Benjamin Green. He was an airman and pharmacist
and he was flying in World War Two and got
a lot of sun up there, and so he uh
developed something called he labeled red VET pet red veterinary PETROLATTAM,
which I think is the same thing as petroleum. And
(27:57):
I was surprised when I saw that he was an
air and VET. I figured it meant like a veteran
of a war veterinary who knew uh. And then he
would later add a little cocoa butter, little coca nut oil,
and waila, you have copper tone. And then in nineteen
fifty six they revealed the little copper Tone girl illustration
(28:19):
and it became a household hit. I think actually helped
sun block in general become a thing. By the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
that little girl's name is Sherry Irwin, and she was
the daughter of the woman who designed it. Yeah, the illustrator, right. Yeah.
Joyce Balantine in nineteen fifty nine used her own daughter
(28:41):
as a model, and h Joyce Valentine on her own
was very um, just sort of an anomaly at the time.
She got a lot of work as a graphic artist
in the nineteen fifties, and her daughter called her a
maverick in that way, and that she was, you know,
in the nineteen fifties, it was kind of tough for
a lady to get that kind of high dollar work.
(29:02):
And so that's off to you, Joyce Balentine, and Cherry's
still around. I can see that Joyce might be too.
I saw a recent thing. Really this is ninety six. Yeah,
she may be gone, but the art that she could
totally be around. I mean, I forgot what you were was.
(29:23):
I didn't catch the date on the article I read
about her, but it's worth looking up. She's interesting. Um.
So yeah, coppertone took off. The nineteen sixties is when
sun screens um kind of caught hold a little bit,
but it wasn't until the late seventies until the FDA
got involved and said, maybe we should like have some
(29:43):
guidelines here. Yeah, which they did, and a lot of
them didn't take some of them did. But one of
the things that the FDA did when they got involved
with UM sunscreen, especially in the U S, they're roundly
criticized for basically being really slow oh at testing the
chemicals that are used. On the one hand, hats off
(30:06):
for caring UM that the chemicals we put on our
bodies aren't gonna kill us, but at the same time,
hurry up. Apparently there's just a handful of chemicals that
are in use as active ingredients in sunscreen in the
United States, whereas Europe has something like eight I believe,
(30:26):
and I guess Europe and Japan their sunscreen is way
better than the stuff that we use here in the States. Yeah,
and it's not because they're just willing elly about what
they'll allow. They've actually researched and more chemicals. Yeah. Typically
the EU is pretty serious about when they clear chemicals.
It's pretty safe. So how does sunscreen work? So, Chuck,
(30:47):
here's how sunscreen works. For years and years and years
and years and years up until the century it was
it protected you from uvb only and even still there's
plenty of sunscreens out that only protect you from UVB.
So if you want protection from UVB and UV A,
which is what you want, you want to find one
(31:09):
that's called broad spectrum sunscreen and it will say that
they will champion that very clearly on the label. YEA.
And if it's not on the label, it doesn't do
anything to protect you from UVB. And so the whole,
the whole, Yeah, UV A only UVB. So you'll get
a tan, but you won't burn if you use it correctly. Yes,
you will just age right rapidly. So with UM, with sunscreen,
(31:34):
you will see also on the label it will say
SPF sun protection factor of fifteen or thirty or fifty
or hundred. Apparently it goes up to a hundred and ten. Now, yeah,
and there's a lot of controversy with that too, which
we'll talk about. But with sunproof factor, this is how
they determine, are you ready. They take the UM, they
(31:57):
take the sun the sunscreen, and they put a little
square on somebody's bottom and then they expose it to
UV radiation. And they used the bottom because that is
the part of the body least likely to have gotten sun. Sure,
it's like a blank slate, right without being a sexual organ.
Well put yeah, because you don't want to test sun no,
(32:19):
no uh. And then they'll they'll go to the other
buttock and they will say, expose that to UV radiation,
but it won't be treated as sunscreen. And we'll do
this up again and again and again basically until you burn.
And then they will say, okay, well, um, what was
the minimum dose for the untreated buttock and we're gonna
(32:41):
take that and divide use that to divide the minimum
dose of UV radiation for the treated buttock. And then
that number is going to be SPF and we're gonna
round down to the nearest five. And that's what some
protection factor is. It's ultimately another way of saying what
percentage of the radiation from the sun this stuff blocks? Right,
(33:04):
So if you get sunburned after ten minutes and the
sun with nothing, if you put on SPF fifteen, you
can be in the sun for about a hundred and
fifty minutes without burning. Yeah, Because there's another way to you.
There's a formula for taking SPF to figure out how
it applies to you, and it is you take the
um the number of minutes it takes you to burn,
(33:28):
which who knows that? Do you know how long it
takes you to burn? This? This is the dumbest formula ever.
How many minutes it takes you to burn times the
number on the SPF and then that's how many minutes
you can hang out outside without burning. That's that's what
SPF means to you personally. Yeah, and here are the caveats,
(33:49):
and there's a lot of them. One of them is
when they do these studies, they apply way more than
your average person does when they go to the wherever
in this sign. Yeah, they're applying the amount you're supposed
to apply. Uh, I would say, just cut everything in
half to be safe. That's probably pretty good. Like if
(34:11):
you're like, I'm good with us the thirty maybe even
by three quarters, because I saw a lot of people
use between a quarter two a half of what you're
supposed to use, right, and one reason they do well,
the beginning application is already short changed. And then you
need to reapply this stuff because even though they say
sweatproof and waterproof, um, we all know that that isn't true.
(34:34):
Like throughout the day Supposedly, if you in the United
States market. Something is water resistant or very water resistant.
It has to last either forty or eighty minutes respectively
in the water. Right, But even still they say when
you get out, just immediately reapply sunscreen like you're starting
from scratch again. You should. Yeah, and I don't do
(34:57):
that either, Like you said, you don't know. It's it's
my great failing in life. That's one of mine, for sure. Uh. Well,
and we'll we'll get back to application here in a minute.
But I don't think we ever said for sure how
this stuff works. They work in a couple of different ways.
One of two ways. Uh. They form a barrier, either
(35:19):
absorbing or reflecting. So it's either a chemical filter or
literally physically blocking these UV rays. Yeah, and forever and
still apparently today. Zinc oxide is the main mineral that's
used as a physical blocker blocker. It reflects the song,
and it doesn't It just bounces right off of it. Yeah.
Like if you put zinc oxide on your face, you're
(35:40):
golden um. It is a gross, greasy, white and mess
that's seemingly impossible to absorb. Um. But if you don't
care what you look like, or ironically, if you do
care what you look like, uh in the long term,
but don't care in the short term. That's what you
should be using on your face for you like having
(36:01):
a nose, Yes, you should put sync oxide on it.
So that's that's a physical barrier. What the chemical filters do,
um they act like a synthetic melanin where they take
the UV radiation, absorb it, and then turn it into
waste heat energy. They don't allow it to penetrate the skin.
(36:21):
It's amazing. That's what sun screen is. It's a it's
a it's you're covering your body. You're putting it in
between the sun and your body so that the sun's
radiation can't penetrate through it to your skin beneath it.
It's amazing that they came up with that. Yeah, it's
pretty cool, especially considering the Egyptians had an idea of
(36:41):
what was going on here. Yeah. Uh so we mentioned
you know that. I think you said they go up
to what now, one tin? That's the highest I saw.
So the controversy there is is basically it doesn't it's
not an exponential growth anything over thirty. They just consider
the D plus because if you wear something that's a
(37:04):
one tin, it's not like, well, then that's you know,
four times almost as much as a thirty. It doesn't
work that way. No. And supposedly, if you if you
burn in ten minutes, right, and you are say, using
a seventy, you should be able to sit out in
the sun for seven hundred minutes without without getting a burn. Technically,
(37:30):
if everything was a hundred percent right, that that may
be true, but that it never works out that way
in practice, So just throw out that idea altogether, right. Um,
And like you said, the FDA wanted it to just
be thirty plus because at thirty, an SPF of thirty
blocks point seven percent of the sun's harmful rays, right, Um,
(37:55):
fifty though only blocks and a hundred blocks. Yeah, block
is better than blocking seven percent. But if you are
sitting there just going by the SPF number, and you're
using a thirty, and then you think, well, if I
use a hundred, I can just put it on once
and stay out all day. Um, that's where the problem lies.
(38:17):
It gives a false sense of security where you shouldn't
have security. And so that the FDA was saying, everybody
just used thirty and use it correctly and reapply it
a lot. I think what we use in our family
is generally the seventy and then we also have the
straight up zinc oxide. Oh you do, huh yeah, And
I don't. I don't care what I look like anymore.
(38:39):
Have my pants off. I've got I've got one of
those like big wide brim like floppy fishing hats and
like camo with like the neck thing and everything, like
the jungle hat, like the jungle. I. Emily wears a
big straw hat because she just had a little skin
cancer removed from her temple. Oh no, she all right, Yeah,
(39:02):
she's good. They got it, and you know she's gonna
keep going back. But everything looks like in most cases
it is a little minor thing, you know. Um, but
she's like hardcore now and she always has been hardcore
about sunscreen for a while, but now it's that and
a hat. Yeah. And I wear my my trusty pith helmet.
(39:23):
A pith helmet, Yeah, a pith helmet, A pith helmet.
I wore it became I got it before I think
my first or not my first, only one. I've been
to Newport Folk Festival. Um, because they're great, they're comfortable,
they breathe, uh, they block out the sun. I think
(39:46):
they're super cool because you know, I'm the only guy
around with the pith helmet on. I'm easy to spot
in the crowd. Pith helmet and a UV shirt and
no pants, milk bottle white calves. No, well, yeah, it's
about right. That's if you see me at the pool,
that's me Ray bands, pith helmet, V shirt. Well it's
(40:06):
another one too. Like, even if you don't like wearing
sunglasses ts, you need to be wearing sunglasses and ones
that polarize. I feel like I'm going to die if
I don't wear sunglasses outside. Yeah, me too. I hate
bright light like it hurts, and I wear them a
lot inside. Like I know it's obnoxious, but in uh,
(40:26):
like bright spaces and airports and grocery stores a lot
of times I'll wear my sungla It's a statement. I
just I don't know, man, I don't like bright light.
I hate it. So, um, do you lay out in
the sunlight? No, okay, I don't either. No no, no,
like it's always in the shape for me. No, Like
I'll like I don't lay out or at all. But
(40:50):
I mean, if you're like hanging out by a pool
or something. I'm almost always in the water. Okay, I'm
always under the I'll jump in the water to cool off,
but then I'm underneath like an umbrella the rest of
the time. What do you like, Read a book, listen
to music. Yeah, I'm almost always in the water because
it's so god awful hot for me in my sweatiness. Um,
(41:11):
but the pool is just my best friend. Yeah, it's nice.
And I'm generally like neck deep, not much exposed. So yeah,
about a foot down, run about to your nipples. Yeah
you're safe. Yeah, nipples up. You gotta be careful, chuck,
or I'll get one of those uh noodles boom noodles,
and I just saddle it up, straddle it and a
(41:34):
good a thick noodle keeps me at about mid chest
level and I can live with that, and I'll just
bob up and down for hours. Have you seen they
have like these kind of nettings that you can run
a noodle through. You you like it. The reason I
don't like mine is because it doesn't fit the big noodle.
It fits the thinner noodle, And so I found out
(41:56):
had to do a little work to keep my chin up. Yeah,
you don't want to work a little. The kicking. It's
okay every now and then, but I had to kind
of constantly kick to keep my neck up, and I
like to just be either chest high or neck hind water.
That's my recipe. Um. I don't think we mentioned how
much you're supposed to use. No mean we should. You're
(42:18):
supposed to use for an average adult body. Whatever the heck.
That means. Um, about a shot glass size about an
ounce of sunscreen on your body and about a nickel
size him out for your face and neck. Right, So
you put that on fifteen to thirty minutes before you
go outside to let it absorb and do its work. Yeah,
(42:38):
a lot of people don't do that. Um, once you
start to sweat, once you get in the pool, which
is when I start thinking about going outside. Right, you
want to reapply, you want to keep up with reapplying,
and um, you want to wear a hat broad spectrum
and you want broad spectrum, don't mess around. Get broad spectrum.
(43:00):
High SPF, get as high n SPF as you want.
It will block more percentage of the rays. It will
just Um, you just don't put your full faith in it. Yeah,
don't do the formula. Just throw the formula out go
highest PF broad spectrum, reapply and and don't forget some
areas of your feet, like your ears and stuff. And
(43:20):
they also said this is good advice their number one thing.
Where'd you get this? Actually? Do you remember all over
which which part? The one through five tips? I think
that was from how Stuff Works? Okay, Um, it says
know thyself. So if you're super white, red headed Irish
person ladder last and you know you've been dealing with
(43:41):
this your whole life, you don't have to be told.
But you burned super easy, you might want to use more,
reapply more often, or if you have a prevalence of
skin cancer in your family, you might want to take
that into consideration for anything else. Uh I do. I
got one more thing, just on the spray versus the cream.
All these sprays are the rage now you know, but
(44:04):
I'm you're super easy. The wind well, yeah, sure, the
wind is a factory and think about that. Uh. They
are very convenient, but Consumer Reports says, don't use them
on your kids because inhaling the fumes is no good. Um.
And you can tell you get a mouthful that you're like. Um. Basically,
(44:25):
what it comes down to is. The upside is is
that if you are more likely to use the spray
than nothing, then use the spray. If if the convenience
is what makes the difference, then go wild with it.
Don't use it on your kids, don't use it on
your face ever. Rub it in, you know, spray then
rub it in. You're not supposed to use it on
your face. Yeah, they say don't spray it on your face.
(44:48):
I mean the spray in your face sometimes. Um, And
it says how how long you apply it makes a difference.
So if you just spray for two to three seconds,
you're getting you're not get enough. Oh yeah, you definitely
don't want to do it on your face then, so
they definitely side with creams is better. But if you
just won't use anything because you hate the cream, then
(45:11):
use the spray. Yeah, it's good advice. One day we're
gonna have some perfect sunscreen that does the trick and
everybody's gonna know how to use it just right, and
everything will be great, just in time for this climate
change thing too. Yeah. If you want to know more
about sunscreen, sun block, sun tanned sun lotion, everything, I
(45:33):
don't think you could know more about it. Yeah, just
go to sleep. Go to sleep and let this gel
and you will know everything there is to know. And
since I said jel, it's time for listener mail, I'm
gonna call this. Oh. This is one where I get
to chime in on something in real time. Hey guys,
my name is Rebecca Chan, and first I'd like to
(45:54):
say I love your show. By listening to it, I
impress people with my knowledge of random things. It's a
good start, Rebecca. I wanted to write in about your
episode on election laws and voter fraud. You mentioned early voting,
and this reminded me of the time I got into
an argument online with someone about it. Well, no, people
argued online I really like early voting, but this person
(46:15):
said they disagreed with it and wish it would be
taken away because they felt it was disrespectful to not
go on actual election day, seeing they did not think
people who went to vote early actually cared about elections.
This was surprising to me because I only thought of
early voting as an alternate, more convenient way to vote.
Then again, maybe I'm just a stupid millennial who buys
(46:35):
too much avocado toast. What are you? She burned herself?
What are your thoughts on early voting being disrespectful to
elections from Rebecca Chan Rebecca, We're most likely apt to
say to each his own, but I will say that
that person is stupid. That makes zero sense. It's not
(46:56):
like shooting fireworks off the day before the fourth the July.
You know, like, if you can vote earlier, vote earlier.
Being disrespectful to an election day by voting early is
the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's pretty ridiculous. So
whoever said that on the internet is not interneting correctly. Nice,
(47:18):
pretty good. Chuck shut that down and hats off to
Rebeccaford just being genuinely puzzled by it rather than like
you're an idiot. Yeah. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Rebecca did, you can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
(47:38):
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at a home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how Stuff Works dot com
Hey, everybody, stuff you should know is going on tour.
Do Do Do Do One are the deeds my friend. Okay,
So starting August eighth in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're
gonna be at dan Fourth Music Hall. And then Chicago,
we're gonna be there the next night, August nine, at
the Harris Theater at Chicago. We want to see your faces.
Step it up, Step it Up. Vancouver or the Vote
(00:23):
Theater September. That's gonna be a great show, I think,
don't you. It's gonna be a great of one. And
then in Minneapolis at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before.
It's lovely September. Yeah, and then we're gonna swing down
to Austin. It's gonna be during Austin City Limits, although
it has nothing to do with Austin City limits. Will
be there October ten, yes, and then we're going to
(00:43):
Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks, yeah on October eleventh. And hey,
if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area,
this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. Uh,
if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well then you should
go to the Bellhouse October. Will be there all three nights,
and finally we're gonna wrap it up here in Atlanta
at the Bucket Theater on November four for a benefit
(01:05):
show where we are donating all of the money's to
Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. YEP.
So for all this information again visually and for links
two tickets, just go to s y s K Live
dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how
(01:26):
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, there's Jerry's Stuff
you Should Know. That summer sunburn and addition your tan, well,
(01:49):
I did think it was kind of funny. I probably
have more sun on my face than I've had in years. Yes,
very easily, I would say, And I've been in the
sun a lot more lately. But I have been applying
sunscrew green. But as you will see very shortly, I
haven't been the best at reapplying it. No, That's what
I'm guilty of too, And so I end up getting
(02:09):
a tan, and then, of course, like a dummy, I'm like, hey,
tants look pretty good. I look fox people look good
with a little bit of a tan, which is just
how you fall into that trap of doing what's ultimately
very bad for yourself. Next up, Ascot's going down the
George Hamilton's route. But the rest of my body, well,
my lower my lower arms are tan and my face
(02:31):
is tan. Do you have like milk bottle calves? Tell
me everything else is white? Take off your pants, they're
already off. Okay, as always, your pants really are off? Um, Jerry,
did you know Chuck's pants are off? She's known for
nine years? Remember the the T shirt that listener made
(02:52):
his pants off? Mike's on or Mike's on pants off.
I can't remember the order that we do it. A
wax on, wax off. I think, uh, this one's long
overdo though, I think and pilot under our general public
service casts. Yeah, there's a lot of info that's floating
around that is wrong. Yeah, starting with the idea that
(03:13):
tans are healthy or even protective. Yeah, Like, well, we'll
go through all these and bust some myths, but handing
bad company saying like oh you need that vitamin D yeah,
or hey that based hand that will help you not burn.
We'll go through all this we're going to but let's
start Let's start where everything starts, Chuck, Let's start with
(03:34):
the sun. Alright, Sorry, So the Sun is streaming down.
You're familiar with the Sun. Our star, closest star, divides light, heat,
that kind of stuff. It's also bearing down on us
deadly radiation, trying to kill us all the time, right,
And there's three types, Well, there's three kinds of um
(03:55):
energy that the Sun shoots at us. There's infrared heat,
there's visible light light, and then there's ultra violet light
scar one ultra violet radiation, right, and then you can
break down ultra violet radiation into three more components, u
v A, UVB, and UVC. Actually, if we didn't have
(04:15):
our atmosphere, we'd all be dead right now, just because
the UVC. It's extremely deadly. But do right, if you're
an astronaut, you gotta worry about UVC, But those of
us here on Earth, we don't. We only have to
worry about u v A and UVB. And for decades,
ever since we started thinking about protecting ourselves from the sun,
we've basically been focused on UVB. Yeah. UVB is what
(04:39):
will sun burn you, right, which is why everybody wants
to protect themselves from it. But it turns out, as
we'll see, u v A is not it's even worse
than UVB. No, it really isn't. But those are the
three kinds. And when sunlight comes here on Earth, and
even when it doesn't, if it's reflected on a cloudy
day or through fog or something like that, don't be fooled, no,
(05:01):
because U v A still getting through. And as you'll see,
you need to protect yourself as a matter of fact,
because we will see some people recommend that you use
sunscreen every day, all over your body, every day, indoors
and out. Well, if you do that, you will probably
never get skin cancer, that's right, unless it's genetic. Yeah,
(05:23):
but you're definitely helping yourself out right. Uh. So you're
talking about that sunlight beaming down and fog and cloud
cover and all that stuff. You probably, if you've ever
been snow skiing, gotten sunburned because on a sunny day
that snow will reflect about of UV light. Yeah, so
you get the sun coming down on you and then
(05:43):
you're also getting a second dose of it reflected from
the snow at a rate. If you're at the beach
and you wonder why you might burn a little more
at the beach. It's because that sand does the same
thing to a rate of about where you will not
get sunburned, they say, is in a greenhouse. Yeah, did
you know that. I didn't know that. You're you'll sweat
(06:05):
to death, sure, and you can still get um tan,
but you won't burn. Yeah. Apparently glass is a substance
that absorbs UV radiation. This is a big thing that
I realized chucking. I just kind of touched upon it
for my entire life. I thought that sunburn was like
a tan gone too far, or conversely, that you got
(06:27):
sun burned and then you got tanned as a result
of sun burn, and then you were fine. Oh yeah,
like the people that are like, oh, always burn on
day one and then it turns it turns into a tan, right,
and then I keep that for the summer and I
don't even need some block after that, right now, Actually,
a sun tan and a sun burn are two different things,
and then the result of two different types of UV radiation. Yeah,
(06:51):
that people that say that stuff are completely talking out
of their butts, right, Don't listen to them, listen to
us instead. Yeah, because there's actual signs behind the UVB
is what causes sun burns. UV A rays are different,
and they they are what ultimately I think it's a
deeper penetration. They will ultimately cause like wrinkly skin, right
(07:15):
and like internal collagen damage and stuff like that. Right.
So uv A for aging, UVB for burning, right, yes,
and combines with both. You look like that lady, And
there's something about Mary made out with the dog. So
we are It's not like we're just complete, Um, we're
(07:35):
just completely at the mercy of the sun. Right. We
have a natural reactions to sunlight that are kind of
protective measures, but really more than anything, we're finding nowadays
that they're huge red flags that are meant to say, like,
get out of the sun. You're being internally damaged on
a molecular level right now, hence your sunburn. But it
(08:00):
turns out the tan is the same thing. Basically, it's
a it's a big red flag or a big brown
flag that says, um, you're undergoing genetic damage currently. You
may want to get out of the sun, not go
laid by the pools some more. You got your tan,
you're fine. Yeah, when you're getting that tan, what that
is is a pigment called melanin, and it is produced
(08:24):
in reaction to that. Uh, I guess you v B
u v A u v A and not gonna get
this v A ting right, should remember that? Yeah, but
it's tough to it's tough to separate the burn from
the tan and think that there are two different things.
After thinking that they're you know, related to all your life,
you know, well, it's It's why tanning beds use mainly
(08:48):
u v A light because you don't want to. They
don't want you to sunburn when you go to the
tanning salon because then you'll be like, wait a minute,
that's not how it's supposed to work. And you don't
get tann from UVB, so why even included? And if
you don't have to, well, yeah, and here's the deal, though,
I guess I might as well go ahead and let
the cat out of the bag with the tanning beds. Um.
One of the things, one of the bogus things that
(09:09):
they will tell you is like, no, that your body
needs vitamin D and so go to the tanning bed
because it's safer than being in the sun. One bs. Uh,
you get vitamin D from UVB, not uv A, and
tanning beds use uv A to get you tanned, so
it's that's completely bogus to begin with. UM. One recent
(09:32):
estimate UH suggested indoor channing caused about four hundred and
twenty thousand cases of skins can't skin cancer United States
every year. That's about double the number of lung cancer
linked to smoking UH, and twelve states at this point
of outlawed tanning beds for miners under eighteen years old.
That seems smart. I got one more stat for you.
(09:55):
People who used tanning beds for the first time before
the age of thirty UH, presuming they will. You know,
it's not a one off, have a seventy increased risk
in developing melanoma. The other don't go to tanning beds people. No,
that's a creat advice, Chuck Man. I mean, and a
lot of people also think, like melanoma nothing, you just
cut it out, it's fine. Actually, melanoma can spread, can
(10:17):
metastasize really quickly, and it is a very dangerous form
of cancer. So don't take that lightly at all. Plus,
if you're going to a tanning bed, you're probably doing
it for your looks. Have a little foresight because what
you're doing is subjecting your body to advanced hyper aging.
You're gonna age prematurely from and that whole like. You know,
(10:39):
people will say, I don't care, I'm young. I want
to look tann and look good. Um, that's why we
have nanny states to choose for you, because you're too
stupid to choose for yourself. Uh was that, judge, No,
we're trying to help people. I mean, this is it's
a danger. So the guy with a freshly tanned face,
(11:00):
let's let's go back to the skin and what the
skin is doing. Okay, all right, should we take a
break first, a little worked up? We can. All right,
let's take a little break, get into the skin. So chuck,
(11:31):
we're we're back on the skin. You said that when
u v A interacts with our skin, melana sites are
stimulated to produce melanin. Correct. Yeah, totally bailed on that.
And melanin is a pigment and one of the roles
that it plays is to absorb but actually absorbs radiation
(11:53):
u v A radiation and under normal circumstances, I think, um,
literally nine times out of a thousand, it when it
interacts with a photon of uv A radiation, it takes
that photon and it basically absorbs it into its molecular
structure and it spits it out as waste heat. So
(12:18):
it takes the radiation and turns it into something that's
just it's just heat. It's not deadly, it's not dangerous
any longer. Yeah, and that this isn't something that happens overnight.
It takes a little while to produce this melanin, which
is why you don't go out and get tan in
a day. Um. There's a longstanding myth that people who
have melanin production constantly, people with darker skin tones, um,
(12:45):
that they can't burn and that they can't get skin cancer.
And that's wrong on both accounts. It is um more
difficult for somebody with very dark skin tone to get
some burned. But I was cancer right, Yeah, there's a
lower prevalence. But I was reading, Um, I was reading
up on it, and I saw some dermatologists said, if
(13:07):
you have skin, you can get some burned. Just give
it enough time, under the right conditions, you'll get some burned.
And then yes, skin cancer is a thing as well. Um,
people of Uh, the fairier complexion, the worst you're going
to burn, and the um higher. Your incidence of getting
skin cancer from being out in the sun is but
(13:29):
it can happen. It's just a spectrum. But on on
the other end of the darkest end of the spectrum.
That doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it
happens last. So all of this applies to people of
all different skin tones. Yeah, and like we said before,
when it comes to uv A that's a deeper penetrating
light into the skin, it's gonna destroy collagen. It's a
(13:51):
structural protein and that collagen goes away, and that's when
your skin becomes less elastic, less smooth, and that is
what you think of when you think of wrinkles. Yeah,
they found this University of Michigan study found that when
the participants were exposed to uv A light, um something
(14:12):
called matrix metallo proton as one was um produced, and
that that goes and destroys collagen. It's like it's one
of the body's natural processes breaking down these cell walls
that gives skin structure, and that leads to wrinkles and
saggy skin eventually. And they found that even when you
(14:33):
started to tan the um, the MMP one production didn't
decrease at all. It just kept going. So this idea
that when you developed a tan when you're melon in
production kicks in that um you're being protected, that's actually
not the case at all. We're finding that it's actually
just it's a it's a defense mechanism, but it's not
(14:54):
a protective measure that keeps everything fine once your tans set.
I looked up just a quadruple check about the base
tan theory um and it's complete bs uh. They found
that a base hand provides and we'll talk about SPF
son uh protection factor. Right, you know why hesitant to less?
(15:19):
Second there, a base hand provides an SPF of three
or less, which means it buys you about ten extra
minutes in the sun and so little that the chief
of dermatologic surgery at Yale said it's essentially completely meaningless
(15:39):
in terms of providing protection. So and they in fact,
they say it can have the reverse effect because people
are under this assumption that a base hand helps, so
they won't do the things you need to do, like
where the hats or the UV shirts or the suntan
or sunscreen, or stay out longer, and so it ends
up being even worse for you because you think you
(16:00):
have this protective layer of brown. Yeah. That's one thing
that um, that kept coming up in the research is
that we have a lot of stuff to protect ourselves
and it can be made better, and people are at
work right now trying to improve the things that protect
us from the sun, but that most people aren't using
them right or don't understand the reality of the situation,
(16:24):
which is Sun's gonna mess you up pretty good. All right,
Well that's coming up in a sec Um. We've talked
about sun tan, right, so now let's talk about sunburn. Uh.
Sunburn kind of simply put is literally cellular damage from
ultra violet radiation. Uh. It's called um erythema or arithema.
(16:47):
It's the reddening of the skin, and it is this
delayed reddening of the skin caused by an increase of
blood flow to that area. Yeah. And the reason why
you have increased blood flow to the area is because
you've so damaged your skin on a molecular level that
your immune response has been set off and blood is
(17:08):
rushing to the area to bring in white blood cells
and other helper immune cells to try to repair the
damage you just did from letting yourself get a sunburned
from uv B rays. And if you've ever had like
a red, like to check and see if your sunburn.
You look at your red skin, you touch it, it
turns white, then goes back red real quick. It turns
(17:29):
white because you momentarily disrupt those capillaries and then they
immediately go, no, we need to send blood there, and
then the red just comes rushing back. And there's no
worse feeling than a bad sunburned. No, it's pretty bad.
It ruins your beach trip. If you get that thing
on the first day, everybody gets mad at you. You're screwed.
(17:52):
It's just no good. It's no good. It's no good.
It doesn't turn to tan. I don't care who you are.
That is not science. That's a myth. It is a myth.
So um, people like, now you don't know my skin
it turns to dead, right, No, it doesn't. It's wrong.
There is a lot of folklore surrounding sun tan and
sunburns and stuff. Well, I think because people think they
just like, I know my body and my skin. It's like, no,
(18:14):
there's science that supersedes all that, right, But I think
the reason that there is so much myth and folklore
around UM, sun tans and some burns is because science
really kind of dropped the ball for a while and
didn't really investigate this. There are only now starting to
investigate it on a like a really legitimate level. Yeah,
(18:37):
you know, it's a good point. So, I mean it's
kind of science is fault. Uh. And like you said before,
any skin can get burned, Any part of the body
can get burned, UM if it sees if the sunlight
can touch it, even through clothing, which we'll talk about
a bit later. To UM, you will get sunburned. Yeah,
(18:59):
that's another too. You might think. While I'm wearing a shirt,
most shirts, unless it's specifically designed to protect against UV radiation,
is letting u V through UM. And as you can
get burned, you can get tanned, you can get wrinkled,
you can cause cellular damage. UM, anytime UV radiation comes
in contact with your skin. And from what I saw,
(19:22):
the UVB radiation is the usually the likeliest culprit when
you get skin cancer because it goes in there and
directly knocks around d N A d NA, it turns
out actually is pretty good at absorbing energy and releasing
or absorbing radiation and releasing it as heat energy, just
(19:42):
like melanin is as well. But every once in a
while it gets excited and it gets kind of knocked
out of whack and some of its base pairs fused together,
what we call a mutation. And if that base pair
gets fused and isn't repaired, and it happens to be
at a sight that say, expresses a protein that protects
(20:02):
against tumors, well then you can get skin cancer. And
that's how it happens. And even though that happens, that
the base pairs fused together and aren't repaired, out of
maybe one out of every thousand times, that's one out
of every thousand interactions with a photon. Think of how
many photons are barreling down at you over a given
(20:24):
minute of exposure to sunlight. The odds are against you. Agreed. Uh.
And you know, since you mentioned the UV clothing or
SPF clothing, Ah, they are pretty great. Like most people
I know now wear those shirts, Um, well they look cool.
(20:44):
Well I wear one of those now because it's sort
of three purposes, looks kind of cool. Um. I hate
applying sunscreen, like all over my body. I'll hit my
face and arms and stuff, but like getting putting all
over my chest and belly and back and all. It's
just I'm you're gonna miss spots and have weird streaks
(21:06):
of sunburn here and there where you missed it, and
it's just no good. Uh. And then third, you know,
when you have some extra pounds, it's like, well, if
you wear the T shirt in the pool, everybody knows
it's not a good look, but you can get away
with the the SPF shirt. I think that is one
reason why SPF shirts were adopted. Oh sure, yeah, yeah,
(21:29):
but they really work great, um, and they dry super quick,
like my skinny friends use them, you know. But it's
good for fat dudes too. But they are rated up
to like fifty plus. The tighter the weave, the better.
They say. To hold a shirt up to the light,
like just a regular shirt will work. Like Denham, they said,
it's one of the best things because it's such a
(21:49):
tight weeks put on that Denham tuxedo and you're all set. Um.
But a UPF rating they go from about fifteen to fifty. Uh.
If you can hold it up to the light and
not see anything, the darker the better. It's like mine
is like gray and black, and um, some of them
or even have or even treated I think, yeah, that's
(22:12):
what I thought. So some of them are just the
weave is so tight, ye, sunlight light can't penetrate it.
Just it's a physical barrier to the UVB. What do
they treat some of them with? I'm not exactly sure.
That's the one thing that I'm kind of sketchy about
because I don't love like I try to not use
harmful chemicals as much as possible, So I don't know
if those are like soaked in like carcinogenic. Probably not right, Yeah,
(22:37):
probably not. It's probably magic dust of some story. But
this woman who was uh I think she's a director
of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York,
says that clothing is a single most effective form of
sun protection, even more than sunscreen, kind of for the
reasons I mentioned. Because it's complete coverage. I've got a
(22:59):
long sleeve one too, so um, it's just nice. I
throw it on, don't have to worry about all the
sunscreen junk, and then my legs. I usually don't get
a ton of sun exposure to my legs, like I
guess because you're usually vertical in a pool, like I
don't lay around on a float. Uh, and it's underwater, Well,
(23:20):
you you want to be careful, you v Radiation can
penetrate up to a foot underwater. Yeah, for sure. But
I mean like, I don't wear any sunscreen on my legs,
and you know I've got my pants off. Look at
them I've got They're pretty white. I have um flip
flap tan lines on my the tops of my feet.
I kind of forgot about the tops of feet, dude.
(23:41):
I am religious about putting sun block on the tops
of my feet, and I still got tan lines. I
saw a kid once, Um, his feet turned into like
Fred Flintstone's feet because he got burned on the tops
of them. Except for those never happening to me, the
whole foot. Well, they say the tops of feet like
the tops of your ears and earlobes. Um, did you
(24:04):
say the eyeballs can burn the back of the neck
and those are some of the areas that are you're
least likely or most likely to miss with sunscreen. But
I did not mention eyeballs. Yes, your eyeballs can burn,
can get sunburn. Yeah, I think I've experienced that after
being in the sun all day, like my eyes just
(24:25):
sort of burning and irritated. I wonder if that's what
that is. No, this is I think you would know? Yeah,
like I think my eyes are going to die. Yeah, alright,
should we take another break? Yeah, and then we'll come
back with sunscreen. H all right. If we were on
(25:03):
the way Back machine we traveled back to ancient Egypt,
you might see people slapping oat brand on their skin
or jasmine rice brand. What did I say? That was
from the food fads episode The Dummy. Yeah, rice brand spreading. Uh,
I guess moist rice brand? Why not? Or jasmine? They're like,
(25:27):
why not, it's BC let's party. Well, apparently jasmine is
as good at repairing damage skin. I wonder if they
tried jasmine rice oh many that Yeah, I would have
been like onto something back then. So they did this
back then, but actual sunscreen didn't come around until the
(25:48):
turn of the century. Until the ninth early nine hundreds,
thousands of years after the Egyptian dynasties were over, um,
there was a guy named Milton Blake. He was Australian
and he came up with what is considered the first
sun block in his kitchen apparently over like the course
of twelve years. And they still make it in Australia
(26:10):
and you really call it sun block back then, though
it's probably more like son They call it a good
first try. Yeah, he took him about twelve years of experimentation,
but like you said, he finally uh again selling it
and is it? What's is the brand called Milton Blake
that it was the one thing that I didn't look up.
(26:30):
All right, Well, while you do that, I'll go to
the nineteen forties, uh, to Switzerland. It was a swissman
named Franz Garita who was a climber, and we mentioned
snow um burns. Snow sun burns were pretty bad, and
so he was I think he had ascended Mount Pitts
on the Swiss Austrian border and got really burned. Is
(26:50):
that Pitts Palau from Inglorious Bastards? Is that the same mountain? Oh?
I don't know, I don't I forgot about that part.
But he got really burned and was like this is awful.
So he came back and started work, uh and in
six came up with the Pitts Boone Glacier cream uh.
And this had an SPF of two, which um, like
(27:14):
you said, good start. I don't even know if that
qualifies as a good start. Well, it was probably more
than Milton Blake's, don't you think. Or well, supposedly occasion
people have a UM have a natural SPF of about three.
So this guy somehow managed to bring it down and
not um. And then in Miami, Florida, there was a
(27:37):
man named Benjamin Green. He was an airman and pharmacist
and he was flying in World War Two and got
a lot of sun up there, and so he uh
developed something called he labeled red VET pet red veterinary PETROLATTAM,
which I think is the same thing as petroleum. And
(27:57):
I was surprised when I saw that he was an
air and VET. I figured it meant like a veteran
of a war veterinary who knew uh. And then he
would later add a little cocoa butter, little coca nut oil,
and waila, you have copper tone. And then in nineteen
fifty six they revealed the little copper Tone girl illustration
(28:19):
and it became a household hit. I think actually helped
sun block in general become a thing. By the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
that little girl's name is Sherry Irwin, and she was
the daughter of the woman who designed it. Yeah, the illustrator, right. Yeah.
Joyce Balantine in nineteen fifty nine used her own daughter
(28:41):
as a model, and h Joyce Valentine on her own
was very um, just sort of an anomaly at the time.
She got a lot of work as a graphic artist
in the nineteen fifties, and her daughter called her a
maverick in that way, and that she was, you know,
in the nineteen fifties, it was kind of tough for
a lady to get that kind of high dollar work.
(29:02):
And so that's off to you, Joyce Balentine, and Cherry's
still around. I can see that Joyce might be too.
I saw a recent thing. Really this is ninety six. Yeah,
she may be gone, but the art that she could
totally be around. I mean, I forgot what you were was.
(29:23):
I didn't catch the date on the article I read
about her, but it's worth looking up. She's interesting. Um.
So yeah, coppertone took off. The nineteen sixties is when
sun screens um kind of caught hold a little bit,
but it wasn't until the late seventies until the FDA
got involved and said, maybe we should like have some
(29:43):
guidelines here. Yeah, which they did, and a lot of
them didn't take some of them did. But one of
the things that the FDA did when they got involved
with UM sunscreen, especially in the U S, they're roundly
criticized for basically being really slow oh at testing the
chemicals that are used. On the one hand, hats off
(30:06):
for caring UM that the chemicals we put on our
bodies aren't gonna kill us, but at the same time,
hurry up. Apparently there's just a handful of chemicals that
are in use as active ingredients in sunscreen in the
United States, whereas Europe has something like eight I believe,
(30:26):
and I guess Europe and Japan their sunscreen is way
better than the stuff that we use here in the States. Yeah,
and it's not because they're just willing elly about what
they'll allow. They've actually researched and more chemicals. Yeah. Typically
the EU is pretty serious about when they clear chemicals.
It's pretty safe. So how does sunscreen work? So, Chuck,
(30:47):
here's how sunscreen works. For years and years and years
and years and years up until the century it was
it protected you from uvb only and even still there's
plenty of sunscreens out that only protect you from UVB.
So if you want protection from UVB and UV A,
which is what you want, you want to find one
(31:09):
that's called broad spectrum sunscreen and it will say that
they will champion that very clearly on the label. YEA.
And if it's not on the label, it doesn't do
anything to protect you from UVB. And so the whole,
the whole, Yeah, UV A only UVB. So you'll get
a tan, but you won't burn if you use it correctly. Yes,
you will just age right rapidly. So with UM, with sunscreen,
(31:34):
you will see also on the label it will say
SPF sun protection factor of fifteen or thirty or fifty
or hundred. Apparently it goes up to a hundred and ten. Now, yeah,
and there's a lot of controversy with that too, which
we'll talk about. But with sunproof factor, this is how
they determine, are you ready. They take the UM, they
(31:57):
take the sun the sunscreen, and they put a little
square on somebody's bottom and then they expose it to
UV radiation. And they used the bottom because that is
the part of the body least likely to have gotten sun. Sure,
it's like a blank slate, right without being a sexual organ.
Well put yeah, because you don't want to test sun no,
(32:19):
no uh. And then they'll they'll go to the other
buttock and they will say, expose that to UV radiation,
but it won't be treated as sunscreen. And we'll do
this up again and again and again basically until you burn.
And then they will say, okay, well, um, what was
the minimum dose for the untreated buttock and we're gonna
(32:41):
take that and divide use that to divide the minimum
dose of UV radiation for the treated buttock. And then
that number is going to be SPF and we're gonna
round down to the nearest five. And that's what some
protection factor is. It's ultimately another way of saying what
percentage of the radiation from the sun this stuff blocks? Right,
(33:04):
So if you get sunburned after ten minutes and the
sun with nothing, if you put on SPF fifteen, you
can be in the sun for about a hundred and
fifty minutes without burning. Yeah, Because there's another way to you.
There's a formula for taking SPF to figure out how
it applies to you, and it is you take the
um the number of minutes it takes you to burn,
(33:28):
which who knows that? Do you know how long it
takes you to burn? This? This is the dumbest formula ever.
How many minutes it takes you to burn times the
number on the SPF and then that's how many minutes
you can hang out outside without burning. That's that's what
SPF means to you personally. Yeah, and here are the caveats,
(33:49):
and there's a lot of them. One of them is
when they do these studies, they apply way more than
your average person does when they go to the wherever
in this sign. Yeah, they're applying the amount you're supposed
to apply. Uh, I would say, just cut everything in
half to be safe. That's probably pretty good. Like if
(34:11):
you're like, I'm good with us the thirty maybe even
by three quarters, because I saw a lot of people
use between a quarter two a half of what you're
supposed to use, right, and one reason they do well,
the beginning application is already short changed. And then you
need to reapply this stuff because even though they say
sweatproof and waterproof, um, we all know that that isn't true.
(34:34):
Like throughout the day Supposedly, if you in the United
States market. Something is water resistant or very water resistant.
It has to last either forty or eighty minutes respectively
in the water. Right, But even still they say when
you get out, just immediately reapply sunscreen like you're starting
from scratch again. You should. Yeah, and I don't do
(34:57):
that either, Like you said, you don't know. It's it's
my great failing in life. That's one of mine, for sure. Uh. Well,
and we'll we'll get back to application here in a minute.
But I don't think we ever said for sure how
this stuff works. They work in a couple of different ways.
One of two ways. Uh. They form a barrier, either
(35:19):
absorbing or reflecting. So it's either a chemical filter or
literally physically blocking these UV rays. Yeah, and forever and
still apparently today. Zinc oxide is the main mineral that's
used as a physical blocker blocker. It reflects the song,
and it doesn't It just bounces right off of it. Yeah.
Like if you put zinc oxide on your face, you're
(35:40):
golden um. It is a gross, greasy, white and mess
that's seemingly impossible to absorb. Um. But if you don't
care what you look like, or ironically, if you do
care what you look like, uh in the long term,
but don't care in the short term. That's what you
should be using on your face for you like having
(36:01):
a nose, Yes, you should put sync oxide on it.
So that's that's a physical barrier. What the chemical filters do,
um they act like a synthetic melanin where they take
the UV radiation, absorb it, and then turn it into
waste heat energy. They don't allow it to penetrate the skin.
(36:21):
It's amazing. That's what sun screen is. It's a it's
a it's you're covering your body. You're putting it in
between the sun and your body so that the sun's
radiation can't penetrate through it to your skin beneath it.
It's amazing that they came up with that. Yeah, it's
pretty cool, especially considering the Egyptians had an idea of
(36:41):
what was going on here. Yeah. Uh so we mentioned
you know that. I think you said they go up
to what now, one tin? That's the highest I saw.
So the controversy there is is basically it doesn't it's
not an exponential growth anything over thirty. They just consider
the D plus because if you wear something that's a
(37:04):
one tin, it's not like, well, then that's you know,
four times almost as much as a thirty. It doesn't
work that way. No. And supposedly, if you if you
burn in ten minutes, right, and you are say, using
a seventy, you should be able to sit out in
the sun for seven hundred minutes without without getting a burn. Technically,
(37:30):
if everything was a hundred percent right, that that may
be true, but that it never works out that way
in practice, So just throw out that idea altogether, right. Um,
And like you said, the FDA wanted it to just
be thirty plus because at thirty, an SPF of thirty
blocks point seven percent of the sun's harmful rays, right, Um,
(37:55):
fifty though only blocks and a hundred blocks. Yeah, block
is better than blocking seven percent. But if you are
sitting there just going by the SPF number, and you're
using a thirty, and then you think, well, if I
use a hundred, I can just put it on once
and stay out all day. Um, that's where the problem lies.
(38:17):
It gives a false sense of security where you shouldn't
have security. And so that the FDA was saying, everybody
just used thirty and use it correctly and reapply it
a lot. I think what we use in our family
is generally the seventy and then we also have the
straight up zinc oxide. Oh you do, huh yeah, And
I don't. I don't care what I look like anymore.
(38:39):
Have my pants off. I've got I've got one of
those like big wide brim like floppy fishing hats and
like camo with like the neck thing and everything, like
the jungle hat, like the jungle. I. Emily wears a
big straw hat because she just had a little skin
cancer removed from her temple. Oh no, she all right, Yeah,
(39:02):
she's good. They got it, and you know she's gonna
keep going back. But everything looks like in most cases
it is a little minor thing, you know. Um, but
she's like hardcore now and she always has been hardcore
about sunscreen for a while, but now it's that and
a hat. Yeah. And I wear my my trusty pith helmet.
(39:23):
A pith helmet, Yeah, a pith helmet, A pith helmet.
I wore it became I got it before I think
my first or not my first, only one. I've been
to Newport Folk Festival. Um, because they're great, they're comfortable,
they breathe, uh, they block out the sun. I think
(39:46):
they're super cool because you know, I'm the only guy
around with the pith helmet on. I'm easy to spot
in the crowd. Pith helmet and a UV shirt and
no pants, milk bottle white calves. No, well, yeah, it's
about right. That's if you see me at the pool,
that's me Ray bands, pith helmet, V shirt. Well it's
(40:06):
another one too. Like, even if you don't like wearing
sunglasses ts, you need to be wearing sunglasses and ones
that polarize. I feel like I'm going to die if
I don't wear sunglasses outside. Yeah, me too. I hate
bright light like it hurts, and I wear them a
lot inside. Like I know it's obnoxious, but in uh,
(40:26):
like bright spaces and airports and grocery stores a lot
of times I'll wear my sungla It's a statement. I
just I don't know, man, I don't like bright light.
I hate it. So, um, do you lay out in
the sunlight? No, okay, I don't either. No no, no,
like it's always in the shape for me. No, Like
I'll like I don't lay out or at all. But
(40:50):
I mean, if you're like hanging out by a pool
or something. I'm almost always in the water. Okay, I'm
always under the I'll jump in the water to cool off,
but then I'm underneath like an umbrella the rest of
the time. What do you like, Read a book, listen
to music. Yeah, I'm almost always in the water because
it's so god awful hot for me in my sweatiness. Um,
(41:11):
but the pool is just my best friend. Yeah, it's nice.
And I'm generally like neck deep, not much exposed. So yeah,
about a foot down, run about to your nipples. Yeah
you're safe. Yeah, nipples up. You gotta be careful, chuck,
or I'll get one of those uh noodles boom noodles,
and I just saddle it up, straddle it and a
(41:34):
good a thick noodle keeps me at about mid chest
level and I can live with that, and I'll just
bob up and down for hours. Have you seen they
have like these kind of nettings that you can run
a noodle through. You you like it. The reason I
don't like mine is because it doesn't fit the big noodle.
It fits the thinner noodle, And so I found out
(41:56):
had to do a little work to keep my chin up. Yeah,
you don't want to work a little. The kicking. It's
okay every now and then, but I had to kind
of constantly kick to keep my neck up, and I
like to just be either chest high or neck hind water.
That's my recipe. Um. I don't think we mentioned how
much you're supposed to use. No mean we should. You're
(42:18):
supposed to use for an average adult body. Whatever the heck.
That means. Um, about a shot glass size about an
ounce of sunscreen on your body and about a nickel
size him out for your face and neck. Right, So
you put that on fifteen to thirty minutes before you
go outside to let it absorb and do its work. Yeah,
(42:38):
a lot of people don't do that. Um, once you
start to sweat, once you get in the pool, which
is when I start thinking about going outside. Right, you
want to reapply, you want to keep up with reapplying,
and um, you want to wear a hat broad spectrum
and you want broad spectrum, don't mess around. Get broad spectrum.
(43:00):
High SPF, get as high n SPF as you want.
It will block more percentage of the rays. It will
just Um, you just don't put your full faith in it. Yeah,
don't do the formula. Just throw the formula out go
highest PF broad spectrum, reapply and and don't forget some
areas of your feet, like your ears and stuff. And
(43:20):
they also said this is good advice their number one thing.
Where'd you get this? Actually? Do you remember all over
which which part? The one through five tips? I think
that was from how Stuff Works? Okay, Um, it says
know thyself. So if you're super white, red headed Irish
person ladder last and you know you've been dealing with
(43:41):
this your whole life, you don't have to be told.
But you burned super easy, you might want to use more,
reapply more often, or if you have a prevalence of
skin cancer in your family, you might want to take
that into consideration for anything else. Uh I do. I
got one more thing, just on the spray versus the cream.
All these sprays are the rage now you know, but
(44:04):
I'm you're super easy. The wind well, yeah, sure, the
wind is a factory and think about that. Uh. They
are very convenient, but Consumer Reports says, don't use them
on your kids because inhaling the fumes is no good. Um.
And you can tell you get a mouthful that you're like. Um. Basically,
(44:25):
what it comes down to is. The upside is is
that if you are more likely to use the spray
than nothing, then use the spray. If if the convenience
is what makes the difference, then go wild with it.
Don't use it on your kids, don't use it on
your face ever. Rub it in, you know, spray then
rub it in. You're not supposed to use it on
your face. Yeah, they say don't spray it on your face.
(44:48):
I mean the spray in your face sometimes. Um, And
it says how how long you apply it makes a difference.
So if you just spray for two to three seconds,
you're getting you're not get enough. Oh yeah, you definitely
don't want to do it on your face then, so
they definitely side with creams is better. But if you
just won't use anything because you hate the cream, then
(45:11):
use the spray. Yeah, it's good advice. One day we're
gonna have some perfect sunscreen that does the trick and
everybody's gonna know how to use it just right, and
everything will be great, just in time for this climate
change thing too. Yeah. If you want to know more
about sunscreen, sun block, sun tanned sun lotion, everything, I
(45:33):
don't think you could know more about it. Yeah, just
go to sleep. Go to sleep and let this gel
and you will know everything there is to know. And
since I said jel, it's time for listener mail, I'm
gonna call this. Oh. This is one where I get
to chime in on something in real time. Hey guys,
my name is Rebecca Chan, and first I'd like to
(45:54):
say I love your show. By listening to it, I
impress people with my knowledge of random things. It's a
good start, Rebecca. I wanted to write in about your
episode on election laws and voter fraud. You mentioned early voting,
and this reminded me of the time I got into
an argument online with someone about it. Well, no, people
argued online I really like early voting, but this person
(46:15):
said they disagreed with it and wish it would be
taken away because they felt it was disrespectful to not
go on actual election day, seeing they did not think
people who went to vote early actually cared about elections.
This was surprising to me because I only thought of
early voting as an alternate, more convenient way to vote.
Then again, maybe I'm just a stupid millennial who buys
(46:35):
too much avocado toast. What are you? She burned herself?
What are your thoughts on early voting being disrespectful to
elections from Rebecca Chan Rebecca, We're most likely apt to
say to each his own, but I will say that
that person is stupid. That makes zero sense. It's not
(46:56):
like shooting fireworks off the day before the fourth the July.
You know, like, if you can vote earlier, vote earlier.
Being disrespectful to an election day by voting early is
the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's pretty ridiculous. So
whoever said that on the internet is not interneting correctly. Nice,
(47:18):
pretty good. Chuck shut that down and hats off to
Rebeccaford just being genuinely puzzled by it rather than like
you're an idiot. Yeah. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Rebecca did, you can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
(47:38):
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at a home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how Stuff Works dot com
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