January 14, 2020 • 52 mins
Transdermal implants are just one in a number of procedures under the banner of extreme body modification. We don't like to yuk yums, so we'll offer a fairly straightforward look at this niche art form.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuff Bryan over there,
and there's Jerry over there, and she has a doughnut
beneath her skin on her forehead, which makes this stuff
you should know the transdermal implant addition, although technically they'd
(00:26):
be subdermal implant, right, you know, good point, there's a difference.
I'm kind of excited about this, are you. I'm excited too,
because as we record live today, this is the last
UM full length session of the year. We're doing some
shorties tomorrow and then I'm doing movie Crushes tomorrow and
(00:47):
that's it. Man, We're done for Like, if you look
at calendar days, almost three full weeks. You got a
big day tomorrow, don't you. Yeah, I'm recording a lot
of shows. That's a lot of episodes tomorrow, five six
seven episodes tomorrow. So are you sad we're not gonna
be recording for a little while, are you? Like? Yeah, No,
I'm super glad. That's fine. I'm not taking a personally
(01:07):
because I feel the same way now I'm not saying
I hate all the few people, but uh, it's gonna
be breaks are really good. Yeah, we get to charge
us tear the covers off of our textbooks. Yeah, turning
back in for um a substantially less amount than what
we paid for him. Yeah we what we After the
bell rings, we go down the hall throwing all our
papers around and stuff. Yeah, exactly the best. Everyone's like this,
(01:28):
Cooper's playing this is work. Yeah. Uh yeah, No, it's
gonna be a great break and uh means good quality
family holiday time. Uh, not having to research stuff. It's
nice for a few weeks, and then it makes us
eager to get back and start researching stuff again. And
not only that, we get to go on the road
shortly after we get back. That's right, we're gonna baking
(01:51):
in a yeah, shout out, prepare for this. Yeah, we're
doing a show in Seattle the More on January. That
would be the uh, and then we'll be in l
A for the Hurt podcast towards on Friday. No events
other than that because we're in and out. Then Saturday
(02:11):
we're gonna be at sketch Fest the Castro. That's the
live show, brand new stuff. So yeah, it's gonna be
a big jam, that's right. And then I'm doing a
movie crush on the nineteenth. And this year, I'm not
gonna do a single guest talking about a one movie.
I'm gonna mix it up and get the audience involved,
very nice, Gonna have a slate of people on stage,
(02:34):
be wandering around the audience with a microphone. I'm having
a lot of fun. I'm like nervous just thinking about that.
Oh yeah, I'm not even gonna be in the audience
because I'm not gonna be in town. I'm sorry. But
the idea of being in the audience and you picking me,
Oh no, it's voluntary. You know. I'm not gonna just
stick in someone's face. That's This is the cream of
(02:54):
the crop of stuff. You should know. Lusters, they're not.
They're not these drunk mainers who jump on the mic
and Q and A and going off on Maine. Again.
They're nice, But we had a couple of drunkies at
the end that tried to ruin the show. We totally
did anyway, Yeah, they're fine. Yeah, it happens from time,
and it happens from not in San Francisco or Portland, though,
man they know what's up. Or Seattle, Seattle. Sorry, yeah,
(03:16):
but we're hitting Portland in March. We haven't announced those yet,
but Portland and Vancouver it looks like, yeah, and then
we're debating other various places for yeah, right in, let
us know where to go. Yeah, okay, So off to
transdermal implants, Charles. Yeah, this is one kind of an
extreme body modification. And I want to go ahead and
say right off the bat, we don't like to yuck
(03:38):
people's yums um. We're gonna I'm gonna do this as
straightforward as I can. But it is hard and some
of these circumstances two uh, to not recoil in horror
at what you're seeing. But the reason I feel like
I can say that is I think that's kind of
the point, right for a lot of these folks because
(04:00):
they want to. They want to sometimes scare your average
square walking down the street, you know, your l seven. Yeah,
otherwise they wouldn't every picture wouldn't be them going right
right in the camera lens. A lot of them do that.
They're inciting a reaction, and I get it. It's fine,
for sure. Yeah, they're they're freaking out the normies. Basically
(04:22):
not all of them I was reading. I actually looked
up psychology of body modification. It's interesting, And this person wrote,
I think it was from a tattoo place for a
piercing place. And they're like, despite what most you know,
average people think, there's not some sort of psychological defect
driving people to do this stuff, but there is some
psychology to it, and frequently the most common explanation for
(04:45):
doing this a self expression. Yeah sure, I can't really
fault anybody for that. Sometimes it's kind of like to
show your affiliation with the tribe or something like that,
like if you're a grinder, which we'll get into, or
a raver or a goth yeah, or a mook mook
or posse boom. You sound a million years old right now.
And then let's see what's the last one. Oh, sexual enhancement. Also,
(05:09):
can't fault anybody for that one. Yeah, well, we'll talk
about some of those two. So I I but I
don't want to leave you high and dry here, because
like I don't. I don't have any issues with anybody
doing whatever to their own body for whatever reason. Um
sort of like serious might all illness, And I mean
I think that does come up, but it's very very rare. Um,
(05:32):
but I do. If you look at pictures of the
after or the during, sure it can make one a
little fainty. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean
we're curious people like if I ever sat down across
from someone with a split tongue and elf ears and
things like that and say, hey, you know, what's what's
(05:54):
going on with that? Let's say you say, how about
them cubbies that's big baseball fans, right, No, I'd want
to pick their brain a little bit, and and the
likely response, like you said, would be, it's just self expression. Man,
this is just how I feel I want to project myself.
He's like, you want to project as a to be
old bearded guy. Yeah, you're gross. So we're just kind
(06:16):
of we're dropping in on a subculture that we're not
affiliated with in any way ship perform but we're also
this is until like paradeum around um and been pointing
gawk and Latin. So if you if you're here for that,
move along, that's right. Okay, alright, boy, these are weirdos kidding.
So we're talking specifically about transdermal implants, which we'll get to,
(06:38):
but those are a I think you said, an extreme
form of body modification. Yeah, E, B and yeah E.
It's very important. This is not to be confused with
the mountain dew version of extreme. There's an E at
the beginning of that word, which legitimizes the whole thing tremendously.
You know what I'm saying. You were a child of
the nineties, You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, even
(06:59):
though I've never had a mount and do what never?
I don't think I've ever tasted mountain dew? What about
mellow yellow? I think I might have had a couple
of those when I was a kid. Okay, well, then
you're fine. You're covered about the same virtually the same thing.
Although mountain dew is branched out. They have some new
freaky stuff. They got all kinds of colors and flavors. Now,
(07:20):
so there's one that's blue that you me accidentally got
from a vending machine the other day and brought home
and I was like, I can't touch this, but I'll
bet you'd like to drink blue stuff. This is the
epitome of blue stuff that you shouldn't drink. But it's
like highly addictive. The taste is like Oh, it's awful.
I want another sip. That's so weird. But it's a
(07:41):
very addictive cotton candyish taste with a little bit of
blue raspberry mix and I'm not sure what it is,
but it's my brain is still like quivering from it.
And this is like a week ago. I don't know
what a blue raspberry is, so I'm already confused, but
I really you gotta think, Chuck. There are people who
do engage in transdermal iplain listening to this and they're like,
these guys are talking about the wildest experience they've had recently,
(08:05):
and it was Blue Mountain. Yeah, that's how. That's where.
This is our stage in life that we're in. Ye,
that's fine, I'm comfortable with that, Okay. So it's an
extreme foreign body modification, which is a larger umbrella that
covers a lot of different stuff and some stuff that's
been around a really long time, like tattooing, piercing, gauging. Yeah,
(08:26):
so you know it gauging like it's there's like a
hole in your ear and you can make it pretty
pretty big. That's actually, you know, a traditional custom that
dates back a very long time in our pal Letsie
apparently had zero gauge years really, Yeah, he was from
what five thousands something years before. Yeah, and I've also
seen it in the lip Yeah, the cultures that have
(08:47):
the disc inserted in the lip um. So, yeah, this
is something that is it is very important to point
out that it is our Western culture. To us, it's like, oh,
this new thing that these kids are doing, but for tattoos,
like for thousands of years other cultures across the world
have done similar things like that, right, And that also
(09:08):
raises a really important point to um. Body modification can
also include something like a pierced ear or a nose job,
or getting an eyelid job and a little nippit or tuck. Sure,
and these are typically people modifying their body to reach
h some sort of ideal of social ideal of beauty,
(09:29):
a norm of beauty that they feel like they don't
have naturally. So they're modifying their bodies with extreme body
modification like trans germal implants. It's the intention is to
go the other way, but it's still like on the
same coin, it's just a different side of that same coin. Right.
It's a beautiful thing to them, but I think they
realize that it's going to freak out the normy. That's right.
(09:52):
So it's win win, Yeah, it is, um. So there.
You know, we're not going to get into all these
because this is mainly on uh, these instrumal implants, but
we do need to mention things like beating. Um, we've
talked about the tongue splitting. Do you know what beating is? Yeah,
go ahead, Oh you're gonna lay it on me. I
(10:13):
was trying to lay it on you. So that's hell fair. Um.
Beating or genital beating or pearling is inserting like a
bead or something beneath the skin or on the top
of the skin, or somewhere under the skin on the penis.
And that is a million percent for sexual enhancement, for
her pleasure terms you know what they used to say.
(10:35):
That's what it's said on the bathroom wall of the
gas station. No, it was like ribbed, Yeah, for her pleasure.
They also have ribs instead of pearls, but so like
a ribbed penis. But those are subdermal implants. They're they're
meant to be under the skin. They're not supposed to
break the skin. Again of the genitals. That it's true,
(11:00):
which what the tongue splitting. Apparently there's one form of
tongue tongue splitting you can do where you have movement
over both sides. Oh no, like independently. I think. So
that's pretty I haven't seen it in action, like on YouTube,
but I read that a couple of hours ago, and
I did not go to YouTube on purpose. Right, Yeah,
(11:21):
I've suffered quite a bit the last couple of days
from my curiosity getting the best of me. And then
there's the subdermal implant like you were talking about, which
is different. If you've ever seen anyone that looks like
they are what what are the Star Trek? Is it
a cling on that has the big puffy I'm not
(11:42):
a Star Trek guy, so um, but whichever one's have
the very prominent brow. A lot of times, these subdermal
implants can look like that is something under the skin. Um,
that's a shape of something like I saw actually saw
pretty cool and on the top of a guy's hand
he had a skull under his skin. Yeah. I was like,
(12:05):
that's kind of awesome. It seems like transdermal implants. There
were subdermal implants first, and then transdermal implants kind of
made a splash, and then everybody's like, this is too dangerous.
Let's go back to subdermal implants. And now those are
a big time thing, and apparently the success rate for
him is much greater. And um, they're meant to just be,
like you were saying, completely under his skin. And they
(12:26):
come in all these different sizes and shapes, and um,
the sizes in particular are meant to just kind of
slowly stretch the skin like you do when you gauge
your ears. You can go bigger and bigger, right, Um,
So you just put one in and let your skin
kind of loosen up around it. And underneath the skin
there's that shape of what you say a skull, saying skulls,
hand grenades, throwing stars which may or may not have
(12:48):
just been regular stars with pointy edges. Um hearts, music notes,
cherries like whatever, and you can put them anywhere on
your body and it's just like that shape protruding from
underneath your skin. Or the most famous one of one
I saw, I think first, because I think the kid
who did it was an early adopter. That doughnut shape
on the forehead, which I'm not sure what that if.
(13:10):
It's just aesthetic or if there's some sort of symbolism
behind it or not. But it is a It is
a definite look. It's not like Dr Manhattan, is it.
I don't know who that is. Is that like a
seventies disco group? No, it's the Watchman character from The Watchman.
What did he novel? Slash movie? Slash? Now? He had
(13:30):
like a glowing thing underneath his skin right now? He
had it was on his forehead. He had a circle,
but it was glowing. Uh No, No, I didn't glow.
I mean he could blow sometimes. Okay, maybe that's why
I'm confusing it with but there are now subdermal implants
that have led lights, so that not only is your
skin this shape protruding, it also lights up. Did you
(13:52):
see that thing about people having magnets put in their fingers.
Let's talk about that for a second. All right, people
have magnets in their fingers sometimes. Yeah, Shannon Larrett was
is like kind of a huge extreme body mod artist um,
which is something we should say. The people who implant
this stuff are called artists. The people who have it
(14:12):
done to them are also called artists typically too. It's
kind of like art I do the art and I
and the art. But don't call me a doctor, especially
not Dr Manhtan, but um Shannon Larrett was an early
adopter of magnet fingertips, but it didn't work out all
that well because of the way that they were produced. Yeah,
that is called sensory augmentation. And the idea here as
(14:35):
you put a tiny magnet in your fingertip, and you
would you can sense things like magnetic fields. I mean,
you become a magnet. You know, at least the tip
your finger. Does you like, check out this paper clip
now it's attached to my finger. What are you gonna do?
Nor me? Well, it said there were some funny things
in this. I got a couple of articles on this.
One of them was what you need to know about
(14:57):
getting magnetic finger implants by George vorts Skey George Dvorski.
Yeah you know him. Oh yeah, he's from He's a
huge I O nine writer. Okay. So one of the
things that said it could be useful if you work
in electronics. You can feel the live wires versus the
dead wires. And I'm just thinking, like they have devices
that do that, you know. And then they listed a
(15:17):
few other things and finally said, you can also do
things like pick up bobble caps and paper clips. It's
pretty neat, but it's an early UM example, or I
should say, primitive example of bio hacking, which is like
trying to do things. It's kind of like a part
of the trans humanism umbrella where it's like it's like
Stellarc with the ear. I knew that was coming. Okay,
(15:38):
of course, he's like our go to poster child for
trans humanism. So this is actually following through on bio
hacking with your own body. And there's an actually name
for that community, that very specific set of people who
are actually doing this stuff, and they're called grinders. Yeah,
and that's like a magnet or an r f I
D chips or something like where you can, like, if
(16:00):
you really know you're gonna be working at the same
office for a while, you might have that your RFI
D card implanted into the top of your hand and
you just swipe your hand and freak out your normy
co workers. Yeah. This one guy from Wired, and he
wasn't even listed as the author, maybe because he just
wanted to remain anonymous or she um and this person
(16:23):
got the magnet done as an experiment for the article
what and it said. Four months after, uh, the thing
basically eventually he tried to get it taken out by
his family doctor. He said. My family doctor tried to
remove it and failed. The implant shattered into pieces, and
it no longer worked as a magnet, he said. But
four months later I lost all the effect. The spot
(16:46):
darkened and the magnetism returned because the magnet, being a magnet,
had reassembled itself in my finger. Wow, that's awesome. Isn't
that amazing? And it reassembled itself into a skull and crossbones.
I don't know, he said. It wasn't as sensitive, but
he could pick up bottle caps. That's pretty sure, which
is ultimately the point, you know. Yeah, it's all very interesting. Um. Yeah,
(17:09):
and I know we're laughing a lot and stuff, but
it is. It is unusual. So forgive us if you're
out there and you have a magnet in your finger
and you're offended by us. Yeah, go list into some
other episodes of stuff you should know and you'll you'll
catch our vibe. Yeah, you'll know we're not laughing at you.
All right, Should we take a break? All right, let's
do that let's get some magnets and planet in our
pinkies and uh, we'll be right back. Chock chock stop.
(18:03):
You know. One of the things I saw about having
magnets implanted in your in your fingers, and actually any
kind of implant that involves metal and an m R,
I is a terrible idea. I saw that, And sometimes
you might need an m R. It's medically necessary. It
will pull it out of your body. Oh my god.
And they I saw two different things. I saw one
(18:25):
article where a guy said that you need to let
them know so they can account for this, and I
saw another one where they said, no, they won't let
you do this. Um. So I don't know if accounting
for it means like hanging your hand out the side
or which is not possible. I think maybe temporarily amputating
your hands and when you throw the m R and
then reattaching them and hoping for the best. That sounds
(18:47):
like something out of a movie though, ripping a magnet
out of your finger and really, oh my god. So
everything we've talked about basically up to this point has
been subdermal implants, which are completely under the skin. They
either used for like bio hacking or just for a
dormant there's something else. Then this is what we're actually
(19:07):
talking about today. Those are Those are called transdermal implants,
and they bear a striking resemblance of subdermal except they
are even more extreme body modifications because they're implanted under
the skin, but they also protrude out of the skin,
which means they break the body envelope, which makes them
(19:29):
extremely risky as far as this whole thing is concerned. Yeah,
and I've heard it. It's also called single point. Um,
there's another name for it. I've seen those for microdermals really, yeah,
which we'll get to. Yeah, because yeah, it definitely wouldn't
be single point because there's the second point that they make.
I think, So, yeah, I think single point is. We'll
(19:51):
talk about it with microdermals, all right. So the idea
of the implant though, is, um, if you imagine permanent
jewelry maybe or if you look online, the first thing
that you will likely see is someone with a shaved
head and little horns or spikes or um any kind
of adornment coming out of the head. But this guy,
(20:15):
what was his first name, Mr al Ward? His first name,
Chuck was Joe Joe, right, he was one of it
seems like the first people, if not the who got
this done in X from Yeah, and Hayworth seems to
be still a very prominent body modification artist. He's called
(20:37):
the mod Father. Okay, well there you have those subdermal implants. Um.
He designs and sells him like crazy made out of silicon. Yeah,
because he worked in medical tool engineering, which we're not
saying that's you know, a qualification. Oh, it definitely wasn't this,
but it probably helped. Oh yeah, you know. No, No,
this guy basically he grew up in his father's company.
(20:59):
His father created cosmetic surgery tools, and Steve joined the
family company and he made cosmetic surgery tools. Um. It
was very successful at it, first with his father's company
and then later with his own company. Um. But he
also said, well, you know, this is kind of a
cool idea to using this stuff for body modification. So
(21:20):
not only did he invent, design and create these tools
that are used for this stuff, he also invented the
procedures and he also invented the implants. So he was
he created this truly is the mod Father. Yeah, and
you know it's not always a metal mohawk of spikes
or anything. We should talk a little bit about a
(21:41):
gentleman named Dennis Avner who is no longer with us.
If you have ever poked around this community, then you
know who Dennis Abner was. He was known as Stalking Cat, yes,
stalking Cat, or just the tiger or Catman or Tigris
or Catman. Yeah. He was a veteran of U. S. Navy.
And this was from his obituary written by Shannon Lauret
(22:04):
from mod blog. From the mod blog. And he worked
as a programmer and a technician, and he had his
totem was was a tiger and a female tiger. He
was a Huron Native American of the Huron tribe. So
he was actually Okay, that's what I couldn't find out
(22:26):
definitely if he just followed along that tradition or if
he actually was he was an actual Huron. Okay. So
he also had um implants and things above his lip
to uh kind of puff it out like a cat.
He had metal whiskers. Yeah, he had um ah, his
his upper lips surgically subvered to make it more cat like.
(22:49):
What's that called? I can't remember. Something acted me though, Yeah,
I'll tell you that how it ends. It ends with ectomy.
So yeah, his ears, his nose, his lips, he had
fangs and just like you know you've seen the little
vampire fangs like these looked like a legit cat. From
what I saw, he and maybe he did both, but
he did he engaged in tooth filing to give himself fangs.
(23:11):
I also saw that he had his um his adult
teeth removed, and he had um fang in dentures. Implanet
well they had to be because he's were super long, right,
So I wonder if he did teeth filing at first
and it didn't suit his needs, and then he followed
up with the dentures. But he was doing all this
and face tattoos. We should mention extensive facial tattoos like
(23:32):
tiger stripes, right, and he looked like a tiger. Like
if you're like, look at that guy, what do you
think he looks like? Anyone would say a tiger. He
nailed it in that respect, but he was still in
the process of he said, I saw two different things.
One that he was trying to um emulate the perfect
balance between a human and a cat a tiger, and
(23:53):
he wanted to become the synthesis of those two things.
Another was that he was just trying to become a cat.
They was working being surgically altered so that he would
have to walk on all fours and that it would
be comfortable for him. Just like ultimately that was his
end goal either way. Um, he died by suicide before
he reached his goal. Um, but this was like his
(24:13):
life's passion. This is what he did. This is he
worked so that he could make money, and he repaired computers,
and then he took his money and gave it to
underground surgeons to carry out these these procedures or body
modification artists to carry out these procedures on him. That's right.
I think the one quote I saw was it's brought
me fame but not fortune, right, and he he liked
the fame. If you look at the pictures of him,
(24:35):
he's hamming it up at the Ripley's Believe it or
not opening and things like that, Like he really enjoyed
being in this, this this spotlight like this. Yeah, it
looked like he stepped off the Broadway stage from Cats, sure,
except it was real. I'll bet he had lifetime free
admission to Cats. And I was like, I can't believe
it actually closed. I was just liking it after the
(24:56):
thousandth time. Have you ever seen cats? Yeah, that's I'm
ragging on it. It's terrible, really, it's the worst. I mean,
I've heard things like that, but I've also heard people
that are so excited about do not trust those people.
So I think a good life model, no, a good
life motto is, don't trust anyone who says they like
the show Cats. Okay, but anyway, one of the from
(25:19):
a former cast member, and one of the things about
Yeah Rum, Tom Tugger and the Traveling cast that one
of the names, Yeah, I think that's the only one
I can remember. Um. The one of the things that
we should say about um Stalking Cat is that in
the body modification community is widely considered to have suffered
(25:40):
from a serious mental disorder like body dysmorphic disorder or
something like that. That that he was the most extreme version.
Even though he gets lumped together with all people who
engage in extreme body modification, he was an outlier, and
that he probably did suffer from a mental tried. So
(26:02):
back to the implants, Um, they're their anchors under the skin,
like we talked about are we talking about how they
do these? Yeah, and kind of what they are and
how they do it. But these anchors, it seems like nowadays,
are mainly clover or figure eight shaped. That's what I
saw in that thing you said, although it did see
(26:22):
that they could be round or circular. Round in circular
this is the same thing. Or rectangular. Uh, there can
be custom made. They're made from what's called implant grade
titanium or tephlon, yeah, or silicone. Right. I don't know
how they could be silicone. I don't either, because it
seems it could be wobbly. That seems like more of
(26:43):
a subdormal thing, but maybe not. The key is this,
chuck um whatever you're the post or the the um,
the anchor, the anchor of the implant is it has
to have gaps holes in it. And the reason why
is because scar tissue is supposed to grow in these
holes and really cement that anchor into your skin. It
(27:06):
embeds it, not an anchor if it's not anchored exactly. Yeah,
I mean that's the whole point is that it's not
slipping around in your head or wherever you have it,
and it is stuck there um, and it's protruding through
the skin via the post that's part of the anchor
that's sticking out of your skin. Yeah, so anything anytime
you see a little devil's horn or whatever that is
screwed on, and they can just screw that thing off
(27:28):
and screw on a Homer Simpson head, that's what I
want to see. Sure, that would be good Homer Simpson
head like dr klong from from a fistful of Yen
from the Kentucky Fried movie. I don't remember that he um,
he had a prosthetic arm and he could, like her hand,
(27:49):
he could unscrew it and put on things like a flamethrower,
like a spear gun or something like that. You've seen
Kentucky Fried movie. I have. It's been a long time, though,
it's time you saw it again. Yeah, it's it's even
more juvenile than you remember. But it is just fantastic,
more juvenile than when I was twelve. And what that's amazing.
I've seen it and like, yeah, because when you're twelve,
(28:09):
you're like, oh, this is how grown ups think. I
can't wait to be a grown up. And you become
a grown up, you're like, no, it's just the Zucker brothers. Right. Uh,
so there is some controversy around all this, and um,
I looked up the legalities and from what I saw, like,
if you're a tattoo piercing place, you have definitely been
certified and you have your operating license and all that
(28:32):
good stuff. Probably have an autoclave to sterilize everything. Probably so. Um.
But if you're if you live in a basement though,
that's a different story. Well, what I saw was the
courts have still and this was from an article from
last year, the courts still have not been asked to
rule on extreme body modification because the question is is
(28:53):
does this qualify as surgery or is it like piercing?
Is it the same thing as piercing their scalpels, their sutures. Yeah,
from what I've seen, everybody in the body modification communities like, no,
that's that's surgery, right, Like it's it's pure and simple.
It's a type of cosmetic surgery. The reason why it
seems questionable is because every other cosmetic surgery you've heard
(29:14):
of is towards this beauty, this norm of of like
a norm western norm, right, Um, Whereas this is the
opposite way. So people are like, wait, what are you doing?
And you do this in a in a tattoo place
or a piercing place, but not being coerced, right, but
it's still it's still surgery. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So should
we go through the process. I woke up excited about
(29:37):
this part today. I can't wait. We'll kick it off then. Okay,
all right, I'm Chuck. I would like a I would
like uh hand, multiple hands giving high fives to each
other down the center of my head. More. Welcome in, Chuck,
have a seat. I'm a body modification artist or what
(29:57):
you think ones is like? Alright, and you like it, right,
I'm kidding, Chuck, I'm just teasing. Okay, let me take
that again. Oh well, please come in. I have a seat.
Care for some local anesthetic. It's illegal, but I want
you to have it if you want it. Yeah, I
mean there could be some local anesthetic or there could
just be ice. Are you breaking the fourth wall right now?
(30:21):
I've heard sometimes there's just ice. Yeah, it could be,
which is really saying something because people like you in
the extreme body modification community endure a tremendous amount of
pain in doing this procedure that we're about to describe
to one another, even though you're my customer. Alright, so
what happens next? Wait? Wait, sorry and seen? All right?
(30:43):
Can we go back to normal? Yeah? Alright, good? Um,
So what happens next? It's actually very straightforward, it really is.
So the the um artist, body modification artist slash Underground
Surgeon will um make two. So they'll they'll you'll say,
I want a metal mohawk, which is a bunch of
spikes coming out of like the top of your head,
(31:05):
about where your forehead ends. She didn't like my idea
about the hands high fiving. That's all the hands high fiving.
I'm sorry whatever, So, um, how many do you want?
You want? Like, so you've got one hand coming out
in another hand coming out, so you have two. I
want them all in a row. So I want four
sets of two hands. So that's that's eight total hands
facing each other. Okay, So I'm gonna figure out and
(31:26):
show you where I think they should go. I mean
I do that by using like a sharpie and marking
those spots, and you'll say, yes, that's perfect. I've got
eight dots on my head right now. I think that's
great placement for these hands. And then on each side
of those dots where those implants are going to be.
I'm going to measure off about an inch, about two
and a half centimeters, and make another mark. And that
(31:48):
mark is where the actual incision goes, and in each
of those eight spots, And again, chuck, bear in mind
you have had maybe some ice. You turned down the
anesthetic because you're super legal. Right, Um, you're going to
feel a scalpel make a slit in your head eight
different times about an inch away from where those implants are. Right,
(32:10):
that's step one. That's that's going to be like a
drive around Paradise Island compared to what's coming next as
far as pain goes. Yeah, I mean that sounds bad enough.
But then what needs to happen because remember your skin
likes being very close to your head. Yeah, it's not
loosey goosey. It's not lucy goosey, but you need to
make it a little bit loosey goosey because you gotta
slide that anchor over from your incision point to its
(32:34):
final destination, right, which is why you have to place
two points marked off the place where the implants coming
in the place where the incision is. So how do
you separate the skin. Then you separate it with a
little tool, uh, sort of like a tiny little spatchel.
Invented by Steve Hayworth. Did he invent this? I thought
this guy is legit, dude. I'm not saying he's not,
(32:55):
but I thought it was. All had been long used
in plastic surgery, and from what I saw he invented
the the dermal elevator. Okay, well, it's a dermal elevator.
It's a it's a little metal thing that you insert
and you use it as a little pry bar. Basically,
it's like a spatch, a little to pry the skin
up from your head. Yeah. So what you're doing then
(33:15):
is creating what's called a pocket, and and creating this pocket.
So you've got the you've got the dermal elevator. Now
it's it's pressed like you separated the skin from the
top of your head along all of these incisions. You're
probably doing it one at a time, I would guess,
because you don't want these incisions hanging out waiting for
you to be done with the first. But you um,
(33:36):
you slide the dermal elevator under finally, until it's under
the spot where you've marked off where the implant is
going to come out, and then you two you take
another maybe either the scalpel again or dermal punch, and
you make a little hole. And then now you have
that pocket, and then you have a hole, and you
take the implant, which again is consists of an anchor
(33:56):
with the post coming out of it, and you put
it into the incision, move it through the pocket that
you've created with the dermal elevator until and then just
kind of move it along your skull pops right out
of that hole until it pops out of the hole.
And the whole reason for this this specific procedure is
because you want the hole that the implants coming out
of to be smaller than the anchor of the implant,
(34:18):
which is why you make that incision, so you can
move the implant in and it won't just protrude through
the hole that you've made for the implant to come
out of. You do this, in your case eight times
after that, after what I just said, in the implants
in an imposition, then you suture, and then I guess
you do it seven more times. I can't imagine sitting
through one let alone. Eight Yeah, I mean it's not
(34:42):
my bag. Seems painful. I got my ear pierce when
I was in high school, and that that hurt bad enough.
I used to self pierce my own ears. Well, you know,
the funny story is, I got my ear pierce on
spring break senior year with all my buds, like the
dumbest suburban white boy thing to do, like George Michael,
me up right here basically, and they're all standing around
(35:04):
going jitterbug. So, yeah, I got that done. I actually
felt that was part of the story for a second.
Sold it that. Well. We got home and my mom
got really upset and cried, so I took it out.
She cried it right out of your ear, she did,
and then she felt bad and my mom repierced my ear.
Oh wow, how about that? Why did she feel bad?
(35:25):
She was successful? Uh? And what crying it out of
my ear? I think, you know, because I was one
of like eight guys and I was the only guy
who had it cried out of their ear. And I
think she just you know, came around. It was that
initial that's a great shock. That's great shock, and all
the normy came to love it. Yeah. So one other thing,
(35:45):
So we're talking about how it's not our bag, and
that like just having your ear pierce was painful. One
of the things I saw in an explanation why people
do this is for the pain. Some people get off
on the pain. Yeah, I figured that, but also some people,
um why to kind of push their comfort zone of
their pain tolerance. They're not necessarily getting off on it,
(36:07):
but they feel like they're increasing their endurance, their grit,
whatever you want to call it. They're gaining something right
there there. Yeah, possibly a spiritual experience from it that
it's not just like you know, there are people out
there who don't just necessarily think like you and me.
It's like, let's avoid pain at all costs. Some people
run into that stuff head first, forehead first, and say,
(36:30):
cut some holes in this man. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah,
I mean that. And that's basically the long and short
of how you do that. You've got this post sticking out,
then it's sutred up. Um. However, here's what I was
about to say. Here's what they don't tell you. I'm
sure they do tell you. This is the success rate
for transdermal implants is super low. It's it like, what
(36:51):
is so I've seen yes, is what I saw too. Well,
you know what, that's a great place to break. But
is that's the first downside and we'll talk about more
of those when we come back, and things like chop
chop stop. So Chuck, you said the success rate is
(37:38):
what does that mean? Well, that means that of the
time everything is great, you don't get a skull infection,
and of the time a number of things can happen.
Infection is obviously one of the biggest risks m because
you're working with people who you know, may have things
fully sterilized or may not. I'm sure they take it
(37:59):
really seriously now, And I'm not saying it's all like
in someone's basement and they like fish up to a
lot of a scalpl out of their pocket. I'm sure
they take it really seriously now. But infection in hospitals
is something that's a problem, so right, it's going to
be a problem here. It's yeah, it's not even necessarily
that the tools or the implant are infected, but you
(38:19):
have just um broken open the envelope of your body
and now there's a direct pipeline into one of the
most vulnerable parts of your body, your skull and your
brain um from the outside environment just come on in bugs.
And if you've done that eight times in your head,
and technically you have sixteen holes in your head now,
(38:41):
eight for the implant and eight incisions, sixteen opportunities exactly.
And so even if you keep the thing clean and
really keep up with it while it's scarifying and healing,
it's still you have an open area for the outside
environment to come into your into your brain. And that
is one of the one of the frequent infections that
happens as a skull infection. You might have a skin infection,
(39:03):
it might go away, but it might have just migrated
to your skull and is eating into your skull, which
can become an abscess in your brain, which is a
real problem you can imagine um. And that is one
of the risks of transdermal implants. And it's such a
risk that people in the body mob community are like,
this is nuts. We really probably shouldn't be doing this.
(39:24):
Let's go back to subdermals. That's what I saw Shi
Finger on the pulse. Oh yeah, I'm super hip. I've
drink nothing but mountain dew blue all day. I'm trying
to picture you now being a like a cup reporter
podcaster who infiltrates the organization. I get talked into doing
a doughnut forehead thing because they don't believe you, because
(39:46):
you so you gotta prove it. I'm like, can I
just do some cocaine or something to prove it? You're like, well,
when I was younger, I gotta baby lodged under my
skin and a baby gun fight. How do you remember that?
Did that really happen to you? Oh? Yeah, okay, I
thought you remembered. No, I was taking that from Royal
Tannon bombs right here, so yeah, yeah, so there you go.
You've had a subdermal There was unwilling and involuntary. But
(40:10):
what happened? Did you just pop that thing right back out?
I didn't. A custodian at my school, dude, Oh man,
God bless him. Yeah that's amazing, God bless her. Oh really? Wow?
Oh man, she was the definition of grizzled. Yeah. She's like,
I can help you with that, whipped out her pocket
knife and just went to town. Man. The custodian at
(40:32):
my elementary school. These people are like teachers, like you
grow up with them. This is my high school. Yeah,
we had the same guy for seven years, Roger, and
he was amazing. He was he was like six three,
he was tall and lanky, and he had this big
long Cadillac with a front license so seventies front license
plate that said Maha Raja and air rushed and he
(40:55):
was so cool because my dad was principal. So he
hired Roger and Alfred, the two guys who like work there,
and they were there the whole time, Like I was
buddies with those Could you not hire? Roger shows up
with that that they were good guys? All right? So, um,
I feel like a scum wad for not remembering my
lady's name. You don't, well, I mean, I think the
(41:16):
fact that my dad was the principle, I got to
know a lot of the staff more than a normal
kid might. It's true because I was there in summers
and hanging out and stuff. They helped you with homework. Yeah, so, uh,
where were we we're talking about and fil trading? Oh okay,
here's some of the other things that can happen. Happen
aside from infection obviously rejection. Anytime you're introducing a foreign
(41:39):
object to the body, it really doesn't want it there.
So it strives to reject it, so when it does
work out, it's sort of not luck. But you know,
it's your body failing to do what it wants to do,
which is get rid of that thing. Right. Uh and
can also move great, So I guess if it doesn't
(42:00):
that tissue doesn't grow. I'm curious. I guess the suture
is supposed to hold it in place enough while the
tissue grows. Uh. No, that I mean the I think
you're not supposed to touch it for a while while
while the scar tissue is growing. But I don't know
that the suture has anything to do with it. The suture,
I thought it was just from the incision site, which
(42:20):
is an inch away. Oh, I thought they sutured around.
I don't think so. Really, they just punch it through. Yeah,
And I think the whole is small enough that it's
not really going to move as long as you don't
mess with it while it's scarring. So it's like the
little snaps on a trucker's cap kind of um. Interesting.
One of the one of the other things that can
happen too is if um some people don't use dermal elevators.
(42:43):
Some people use butter knives, instead, which as I saw
there was another Wired article from two dozen six. I saw, yeah,
Steve Hayworth um was saying, that's like trying to thread
a needle with a Cadillac, I guess a Maharajer Cadillac,
and that you just don't want to use a butter knife.
And if somebody's using a butter knife for this, just stop,
(43:05):
be like stop stop, I'm gonna go find somebody else.
But um, even if you use a transdermal or a
dermal elevator, you can go too deep and pull too
much skin away and started to mess with tendons and
nerves and all sorts of stuff you don't you don't
want to mess with, and that can that can cause
a lot of problems to I have. As you can see,
I sliced my thumb open last week and then the
(43:27):
tip of it is still completely numb. Cutting a bagel
with a serrated knife and it's completely numb. Yeah you know, Um,
I didn't want to take away from your glory, but
I cut a significant portion of my finger off right here,
like so see all this up to the nail um
(43:48):
just off and uh it took a while for the
for the feeling to come back a very long time.
Like I was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna
get feeling back. And I did. It comes back. It
just takes a little off with the nerves. But isn't
that spectacular that my finger is intact again now it
is like we can regrow fingertips. So I guess what
(44:08):
I'm trying to say is keep the faith, buddy. Well,
I got another story. Since we're on this, all right,
Well then I'll come up with my own again to uh.
And this was two and a half months ago. I
kicked my bed frame my shin and Emily heard the
sound and I hit the deck, and you know, I
tend to overreact. And she was kind of like, you know,
(44:30):
all right, like this is worse than when I got
my ear piers I was. I told her. I was like,
something happened. This was not a normal shin kick, And um,
there was a lump and if you touched it, it
was clearly some kind of exposed nerve like hayine would
shoot all the way through my leg for like two months.
And now the left top of my calf is still
(44:52):
numb two and a half months later, and like a
large like seven inches worth of my calf. Is it
one of those things where it's probably best that it's numb,
like you be in a lot of pain if I want. Well,
I mean, it's basically healed now, but um, that lump
in the nerve damage was now the lump is just
now gone. But it was pain like I've never literally
(45:13):
never felt before. It's crazy. It was awful. Oh you
didn't like it, No, I didn't. So this is not
my my thing. I understand. I'm not down with this,
but the whole thing is leading me into a suggestion
that we tackle nerves and nerve damage. I've been on
pain itself, but it's such a big topic. We haven't
had time to tackle it right, But we will. Okay,
(45:36):
are we done with this? We're probably not done yet.
Oh we were going to talk about microdermals before we leave. Yeah,
so those are way safer because the idea is that
it can be done with like a piercing gun type machine. Yeah.
So it's this device. It's the same thing. It looks
like there's a piece of jewelry or some adornment growing
(45:57):
out of your skin, but it's much much smaller than
what a transdermal anchor and post can handle much smaller
um and so you basically just kind of make a hole,
uh and dig the skin away just a little bit
just to create just enough of a pocket to put
basically a mini transdermal post an anchor in there. But
(46:20):
it's so small that you can just kind of move
the skin over and in the hole and pop it
in there, and then the skin closes back over it,
and now you have a little post and you can
screw a little you know, stud or diamond or whatever,
and it just looks like if you've ever seen somebody
with um, a stud on their cheek and it looks
like a jewel mole or something like that, that's a microdermal.
(46:43):
They actually have a hole in their face, not going
all the way through um that that they just there's
a post kind of in there. They're apparently easier to
get out too, which is a big problem with transdermal
is that once they're in and it's scars over, you've
got a real problem if you want them out. They're
hard to to remove. Sometimes surgery is involved. And then
(47:04):
I saw even though they were called permanent, that eventually
they all kind of need to come out at some point.
I'm not sure if that's where what what the science
is behind that? When you get an office job, that's
usually the science behind that. Yeah, I know. The last
thing I wanted to do was read over some of
these adult piercings. Yes, so have you? How many of
(47:25):
these did you look up? Uh? Most of them? I
could not resist anal piercing. Yeah, so two things, Google
image beware. Yeah, that's a I think that's fair. That's
a good c o A. And also, if you're kid,
if your mom or dad prepared to see what a
google anal piercing looks like, or just you know, you
might not want to hear any of these things. But
(47:47):
for or if you're playing this for your class for
some reason, right teacher, this might be a good time
to stop. So for males, it's lists the following ample langs.
Do you want to describe any of these? Or just that?
How does it? How does it spelled? Because I didn't
look up all of them A MP A, double L
A n G. That one I didn't see is that
the glands piercing. I'm not sure. I only looked up
(48:10):
about half of these. There's another one that begins with
an A. That's a glands piercing, the apa draw yas
I think, so, yeah, where it's a there's a a
piercing with two studs, a stud on either side. Okay,
that goes right through the head of the penis. Again
for sexual enhancement. All these are fixed sexual enhancement right,
well almost all the time. Sometimes it's for you know, aesthetics.
(48:32):
But um let me. There's something called a deep p a,
something called a dolphin, something called a didos foreskin piercing, boring, uh,
something called a guiches. Have you seen that? No, I
gotta see that one. Yeah, you check that out. I
don't know how to describe it without losing our show.
So how does this spell? G U I c h
(48:55):
E S pubics prince's wand a reverse sp a and
then the ever popular scroll the ladder. What is that one?
Just look it up? Uh? And these are the adult
piercings listed for females anal of course, men and women. Christina,
(49:17):
the old clatoris piercing, the forchette, the horizontal hood, the hymen,
inner labia, Isabella nipples, boring outer labia, Princess Albertina, the
triangle in the vertical hood. There's a. Yeah, there's a
(49:39):
lot of things to be pierced on a vagina. Apparently
there are, um and the you're right, we really probably
can't describe the guiches. Yeah, it's it's a it's just
it's sort of like no man's land. Yeah. Yes, that's
a really great way to put it. I think you
just saved the days. Uh. Well, if you we want
(50:00):
to know more about body modification, there's an actual there's
an article on how stuff works. You can check out.
It's a great place to start. Maybe it's your bag.
You'll find out. Um and since I said maybe it's
your bag, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is
about when I was talking about that story about the
googling the two words. Oh yeah, that didn't match up
(50:21):
or whatever. Chuck mentioned he had a friend who would
google to random words to get as a few results
as possible. I got really excited. This practice is called
google sculpting, and it was used in a subversive poetry
movement called flour Have you ever heard of this? This
guy wrote, Okay, well this is different. I wrote my
(50:42):
senior year English paper on this. In high school. Flour
fists would use google sculpting to create the worst poems
they could muster using Uh, we could muster using lines
from the few results they would get. It started as
a way to expose scam publications that admitted every entry,
collected a submission fee, and convinced the poets to purchase
(51:02):
the compendium. But flarf was so fun it quickly gained
a life of its own. This is from Chris da
Silva and uh, Philadelphia, and he he sent his paper
along and I read it and uh, just as so
everyone gets this, I'm gonna read out an example of
a flourf This was by kay Salim Mohammed and his
(51:22):
poem is called gold Mine. I type slobbering anus into
Google because I'm one big, fat, lazy exterminator nut. Some
people think I'm a gluttonous, poor sign fury man killing
gold mine made of sweet gold beautiful. And he said
(51:42):
this poem references the process in creating flarf in the
first line. So he explains how he wrote the poem
itself by compiling the search results from googling the phrase
slabbing anus. Very nice. That is from Chris Silva from Philly.
Thanks a lot, Chris, that was great. Who goal sculpting Google?
Flour uh, goaches, guaches, gleiches uh. If you want to
(52:10):
get in touch of this, like Christa Silva from Philly did,
you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com
and there you will find all of our social links
and if you want, you could also send us an email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, pierce it
somewhere and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(52:31):
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuff Bryan over there,
and there's Jerry over there, and she has a doughnut
beneath her skin on her forehead, which makes this stuff
you should know the transdermal implant addition, although technically they'd
(00:26):
be subdermal implant, right, you know, good point, there's a difference.
I'm kind of excited about this, are you. I'm excited too,
because as we record live today, this is the last
UM full length session of the year. We're doing some
shorties tomorrow and then I'm doing movie Crushes tomorrow and
(00:47):
that's it. Man, We're done for Like, if you look
at calendar days, almost three full weeks. You got a
big day tomorrow, don't you. Yeah, I'm recording a lot
of shows. That's a lot of episodes tomorrow, five six
seven episodes tomorrow. So are you sad we're not gonna
be recording for a little while, are you? Like? Yeah, No,
I'm super glad. That's fine. I'm not taking a personally
(01:07):
because I feel the same way now I'm not saying
I hate all the few people, but uh, it's gonna
be breaks are really good. Yeah, we get to charge
us tear the covers off of our textbooks. Yeah, turning
back in for um a substantially less amount than what
we paid for him. Yeah we what we After the
bell rings, we go down the hall throwing all our
papers around and stuff. Yeah, exactly the best. Everyone's like this,
(01:28):
Cooper's playing this is work. Yeah. Uh yeah, No, it's
gonna be a great break and uh means good quality
family holiday time. Uh, not having to research stuff. It's
nice for a few weeks, and then it makes us
eager to get back and start researching stuff again. And
not only that, we get to go on the road
shortly after we get back. That's right, we're gonna baking
(01:51):
in a yeah, shout out, prepare for this. Yeah, we're
doing a show in Seattle the More on January. That
would be the uh, and then we'll be in l
A for the Hurt podcast towards on Friday. No events
other than that because we're in and out. Then Saturday
(02:11):
we're gonna be at sketch Fest the Castro. That's the
live show, brand new stuff. So yeah, it's gonna be
a big jam, that's right. And then I'm doing a
movie crush on the nineteenth. And this year, I'm not
gonna do a single guest talking about a one movie.
I'm gonna mix it up and get the audience involved,
very nice, Gonna have a slate of people on stage,
(02:34):
be wandering around the audience with a microphone. I'm having
a lot of fun. I'm like nervous just thinking about that.
Oh yeah, I'm not even gonna be in the audience
because I'm not gonna be in town. I'm sorry. But
the idea of being in the audience and you picking me,
Oh no, it's voluntary. You know. I'm not gonna just
stick in someone's face. That's This is the cream of
(02:54):
the crop of stuff. You should know. Lusters, they're not.
They're not these drunk mainers who jump on the mic
and Q and A and going off on Maine. Again.
They're nice, But we had a couple of drunkies at
the end that tried to ruin the show. We totally
did anyway, Yeah, they're fine. Yeah, it happens from time,
and it happens from not in San Francisco or Portland, though,
man they know what's up. Or Seattle, Seattle. Sorry, yeah,
(03:16):
but we're hitting Portland in March. We haven't announced those yet,
but Portland and Vancouver it looks like, yeah, and then
we're debating other various places for yeah, right in, let
us know where to go. Yeah, okay, So off to
transdermal implants, Charles. Yeah, this is one kind of an
extreme body modification. And I want to go ahead and
say right off the bat, we don't like to yuck
(03:38):
people's yums um. We're gonna I'm gonna do this as
straightforward as I can. But it is hard and some
of these circumstances two uh, to not recoil in horror
at what you're seeing. But the reason I feel like
I can say that is I think that's kind of
the point, right for a lot of these folks because
(04:00):
they want to. They want to sometimes scare your average
square walking down the street, you know, your l seven. Yeah,
otherwise they wouldn't every picture wouldn't be them going right
right in the camera lens. A lot of them do that.
They're inciting a reaction, and I get it. It's fine,
for sure. Yeah, they're they're freaking out the normies. Basically
(04:22):
not all of them I was reading. I actually looked
up psychology of body modification. It's interesting, And this person wrote,
I think it was from a tattoo place for a
piercing place. And they're like, despite what most you know,
average people think, there's not some sort of psychological defect
driving people to do this stuff, but there is some
psychology to it, and frequently the most common explanation for
(04:45):
doing this a self expression. Yeah sure, I can't really
fault anybody for that. Sometimes it's kind of like to
show your affiliation with the tribe or something like that,
like if you're a grinder, which we'll get into, or
a raver or a goth yeah, or a mook mook
or posse boom. You sound a million years old right now.
And then let's see what's the last one. Oh, sexual enhancement. Also,
(05:09):
can't fault anybody for that one. Yeah, well, we'll talk
about some of those two. So I I but I
don't want to leave you high and dry here, because
like I don't. I don't have any issues with anybody
doing whatever to their own body for whatever reason. Um
sort of like serious might all illness, And I mean
I think that does come up, but it's very very rare. Um,
(05:32):
but I do. If you look at pictures of the
after or the during, sure it can make one a
little fainty. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean
we're curious people like if I ever sat down across
from someone with a split tongue and elf ears and
things like that and say, hey, you know, what's what's
(05:54):
going on with that? Let's say you say, how about
them cubbies that's big baseball fans, right, No, I'd want
to pick their brain a little bit, and and the
likely response, like you said, would be, it's just self expression. Man,
this is just how I feel I want to project myself.
He's like, you want to project as a to be
old bearded guy. Yeah, you're gross. So we're just kind
(06:16):
of we're dropping in on a subculture that we're not
affiliated with in any way ship perform but we're also
this is until like paradeum around um and been pointing
gawk and Latin. So if you if you're here for that,
move along, that's right. Okay, alright, boy, these are weirdos kidding.
So we're talking specifically about transdermal implants, which we'll get to,
(06:38):
but those are a I think you said, an extreme
form of body modification. Yeah, E, B and yeah E.
It's very important. This is not to be confused with
the mountain dew version of extreme. There's an E at
the beginning of that word, which legitimizes the whole thing tremendously.
You know what I'm saying. You were a child of
the nineties, You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, even
(06:59):
though I've never had a mount and do what never?
I don't think I've ever tasted mountain dew? What about
mellow yellow? I think I might have had a couple
of those when I was a kid. Okay, well, then
you're fine. You're covered about the same virtually the same thing.
Although mountain dew is branched out. They have some new
freaky stuff. They got all kinds of colors and flavors. Now,
(07:20):
so there's one that's blue that you me accidentally got
from a vending machine the other day and brought home
and I was like, I can't touch this, but I'll
bet you'd like to drink blue stuff. This is the
epitome of blue stuff that you shouldn't drink. But it's
like highly addictive. The taste is like Oh, it's awful.
I want another sip. That's so weird. But it's a
(07:41):
very addictive cotton candyish taste with a little bit of
blue raspberry mix and I'm not sure what it is,
but it's my brain is still like quivering from it.
And this is like a week ago. I don't know
what a blue raspberry is, so I'm already confused, but
I really you gotta think, Chuck. There are people who
do engage in transdermal iplain listening to this and they're like,
these guys are talking about the wildest experience they've had recently,
(08:05):
and it was Blue Mountain. Yeah, that's how. That's where.
This is our stage in life that we're in. Ye,
that's fine, I'm comfortable with that, Okay. So it's an
extreme foreign body modification, which is a larger umbrella that
covers a lot of different stuff and some stuff that's
been around a really long time, like tattooing, piercing, gauging. Yeah,
(08:26):
so you know it gauging like it's there's like a
hole in your ear and you can make it pretty
pretty big. That's actually, you know, a traditional custom that
dates back a very long time in our pal Letsie
apparently had zero gauge years really, Yeah, he was from
what five thousands something years before. Yeah, and I've also
seen it in the lip Yeah, the cultures that have
(08:47):
the disc inserted in the lip um. So, yeah, this
is something that is it is very important to point
out that it is our Western culture. To us, it's like, oh,
this new thing that these kids are doing, but for tattoos,
like for thousands of years other cultures across the world
have done similar things like that, right, And that also
(09:08):
raises a really important point to um. Body modification can
also include something like a pierced ear or a nose job,
or getting an eyelid job and a little nippit or tuck. Sure,
and these are typically people modifying their body to reach
h some sort of ideal of social ideal of beauty,
(09:29):
a norm of beauty that they feel like they don't
have naturally. So they're modifying their bodies with extreme body
modification like trans germal implants. It's the intention is to
go the other way, but it's still like on the
same coin, it's just a different side of that same coin. Right.
It's a beautiful thing to them, but I think they
realize that it's going to freak out the normy. That's right.
(09:52):
So it's win win, Yeah, it is, um. So there.
You know, we're not going to get into all these
because this is mainly on uh, these instrumal implants, but
we do need to mention things like beating. Um, we've
talked about the tongue splitting. Do you know what beating is? Yeah,
go ahead, Oh you're gonna lay it on me. I
(10:13):
was trying to lay it on you. So that's hell fair. Um.
Beating or genital beating or pearling is inserting like a
bead or something beneath the skin or on the top
of the skin, or somewhere under the skin on the penis.
And that is a million percent for sexual enhancement, for
her pleasure terms you know what they used to say.
(10:35):
That's what it's said on the bathroom wall of the
gas station. No, it was like ribbed, Yeah, for her pleasure.
They also have ribs instead of pearls, but so like
a ribbed penis. But those are subdermal implants. They're they're
meant to be under the skin. They're not supposed to
break the skin. Again of the genitals. That it's true,
(11:00):
which what the tongue splitting. Apparently there's one form of
tongue tongue splitting you can do where you have movement
over both sides. Oh no, like independently. I think. So
that's pretty I haven't seen it in action, like on YouTube,
but I read that a couple of hours ago, and
I did not go to YouTube on purpose. Right, Yeah,
(11:21):
I've suffered quite a bit the last couple of days
from my curiosity getting the best of me. And then
there's the subdermal implant like you were talking about, which
is different. If you've ever seen anyone that looks like
they are what what are the Star Trek? Is it
a cling on that has the big puffy I'm not
(11:42):
a Star Trek guy, so um, but whichever one's have
the very prominent brow. A lot of times, these subdermal
implants can look like that is something under the skin. Um,
that's a shape of something like I saw actually saw
pretty cool and on the top of a guy's hand
he had a skull under his skin. Yeah. I was like,
(12:05):
that's kind of awesome. It seems like transdermal implants. There
were subdermal implants first, and then transdermal implants kind of
made a splash, and then everybody's like, this is too dangerous.
Let's go back to subdermal implants. And now those are
a big time thing, and apparently the success rate for
him is much greater. And um, they're meant to just be,
like you were saying, completely under his skin. And they
(12:26):
come in all these different sizes and shapes, and um,
the sizes in particular are meant to just kind of
slowly stretch the skin like you do when you gauge
your ears. You can go bigger and bigger, right, Um,
So you just put one in and let your skin
kind of loosen up around it. And underneath the skin
there's that shape of what you say a skull, saying skulls,
hand grenades, throwing stars which may or may not have
(12:48):
just been regular stars with pointy edges. Um hearts, music notes,
cherries like whatever, and you can put them anywhere on
your body and it's just like that shape protruding from
underneath your skin. Or the most famous one of one
I saw, I think first, because I think the kid
who did it was an early adopter. That doughnut shape
on the forehead, which I'm not sure what that if.
(13:10):
It's just aesthetic or if there's some sort of symbolism
behind it or not. But it is a It is
a definite look. It's not like Dr Manhattan, is it.
I don't know who that is. Is that like a
seventies disco group? No, it's the Watchman character from The Watchman.
What did he novel? Slash movie? Slash? Now? He had
(13:30):
like a glowing thing underneath his skin right now? He
had it was on his forehead. He had a circle,
but it was glowing. Uh No, No, I didn't glow.
I mean he could blow sometimes. Okay, maybe that's why
I'm confusing it with but there are now subdermal implants
that have led lights, so that not only is your
skin this shape protruding, it also lights up. Did you
(13:52):
see that thing about people having magnets put in their fingers.
Let's talk about that for a second. All right, people
have magnets in their fingers sometimes. Yeah, Shannon Larrett was
is like kind of a huge extreme body mod artist um,
which is something we should say. The people who implant
this stuff are called artists. The people who have it
(14:12):
done to them are also called artists typically too. It's
kind of like art I do the art and I
and the art. But don't call me a doctor, especially
not Dr Manhtan, but um Shannon Larrett was an early
adopter of magnet fingertips, but it didn't work out all
that well because of the way that they were produced. Yeah,
that is called sensory augmentation. And the idea here as
(14:35):
you put a tiny magnet in your fingertip, and you
would you can sense things like magnetic fields. I mean,
you become a magnet. You know, at least the tip
your finger. Does you like, check out this paper clip
now it's attached to my finger. What are you gonna do?
Nor me? Well, it said there were some funny things
in this. I got a couple of articles on this.
One of them was what you need to know about
(14:57):
getting magnetic finger implants by George vorts Skey George Dvorski.
Yeah you know him. Oh yeah, he's from He's a
huge I O nine writer. Okay. So one of the
things that said it could be useful if you work
in electronics. You can feel the live wires versus the
dead wires. And I'm just thinking, like they have devices
that do that, you know. And then they listed a
(15:17):
few other things and finally said, you can also do
things like pick up bobble caps and paper clips. It's
pretty neat, but it's an early UM example, or I
should say, primitive example of bio hacking, which is like
trying to do things. It's kind of like a part
of the trans humanism umbrella where it's like it's like
Stellarc with the ear. I knew that was coming. Okay,
(15:38):
of course, he's like our go to poster child for
trans humanism. So this is actually following through on bio
hacking with your own body. And there's an actually name
for that community, that very specific set of people who
are actually doing this stuff, and they're called grinders. Yeah,
and that's like a magnet or an r f I
D chips or something like where you can, like, if
(16:00):
you really know you're gonna be working at the same
office for a while, you might have that your RFI
D card implanted into the top of your hand and
you just swipe your hand and freak out your normy
co workers. Yeah. This one guy from Wired, and he
wasn't even listed as the author, maybe because he just
wanted to remain anonymous or she um and this person
(16:23):
got the magnet done as an experiment for the article
what and it said. Four months after, uh, the thing
basically eventually he tried to get it taken out by
his family doctor. He said. My family doctor tried to
remove it and failed. The implant shattered into pieces, and
it no longer worked as a magnet, he said. But
four months later I lost all the effect. The spot
(16:46):
darkened and the magnetism returned because the magnet, being a magnet,
had reassembled itself in my finger. Wow, that's awesome. Isn't
that amazing? And it reassembled itself into a skull and crossbones.
I don't know, he said. It wasn't as sensitive, but
he could pick up bottle caps. That's pretty sure, which
is ultimately the point, you know. Yeah, it's all very interesting. Um. Yeah,
(17:09):
and I know we're laughing a lot and stuff, but
it is. It is unusual. So forgive us if you're
out there and you have a magnet in your finger
and you're offended by us. Yeah, go list into some
other episodes of stuff you should know and you'll you'll
catch our vibe. Yeah, you'll know we're not laughing at you.
All right, Should we take a break? All right, let's
do that let's get some magnets and planet in our
pinkies and uh, we'll be right back. Chock chock stop.
(18:03):
You know. One of the things I saw about having
magnets implanted in your in your fingers, and actually any
kind of implant that involves metal and an m R,
I is a terrible idea. I saw that, And sometimes
you might need an m R. It's medically necessary. It
will pull it out of your body. Oh my god.
And they I saw two different things. I saw one
(18:25):
article where a guy said that you need to let
them know so they can account for this, and I
saw another one where they said, no, they won't let
you do this. Um. So I don't know if accounting
for it means like hanging your hand out the side
or which is not possible. I think maybe temporarily amputating
your hands and when you throw the m R and
then reattaching them and hoping for the best. That sounds
(18:47):
like something out of a movie though, ripping a magnet
out of your finger and really, oh my god. So
everything we've talked about basically up to this point has
been subdermal implants, which are completely under the skin. They
either used for like bio hacking or just for a
dormant there's something else. Then this is what we're actually
(19:07):
talking about today. Those are Those are called transdermal implants,
and they bear a striking resemblance of subdermal except they
are even more extreme body modifications because they're implanted under
the skin, but they also protrude out of the skin,
which means they break the body envelope, which makes them
(19:29):
extremely risky as far as this whole thing is concerned. Yeah,
and I've heard it. It's also called single point. Um,
there's another name for it. I've seen those for microdermals really, yeah,
which we'll get to. Yeah, because yeah, it definitely wouldn't
be single point because there's the second point that they make.
I think, So, yeah, I think single point is. We'll
(19:51):
talk about it with microdermals, all right. So the idea
of the implant though, is, um, if you imagine permanent
jewelry maybe or if you look online, the first thing
that you will likely see is someone with a shaved
head and little horns or spikes or um any kind
of adornment coming out of the head. But this guy,
(20:15):
what was his first name, Mr al Ward? His first name,
Chuck was Joe Joe, right, he was one of it
seems like the first people, if not the who got
this done in X from Yeah, and Hayworth seems to
be still a very prominent body modification artist. He's called
(20:37):
the mod Father. Okay, well there you have those subdermal implants. Um.
He designs and sells him like crazy made out of silicon. Yeah,
because he worked in medical tool engineering, which we're not
saying that's you know, a qualification. Oh, it definitely wasn't this,
but it probably helped. Oh yeah, you know. No, No,
this guy basically he grew up in his father's company.
(20:59):
His father created cosmetic surgery tools, and Steve joined the
family company and he made cosmetic surgery tools. Um. It
was very successful at it, first with his father's company
and then later with his own company. Um. But he
also said, well, you know, this is kind of a
cool idea to using this stuff for body modification. So
(21:20):
not only did he invent, design and create these tools
that are used for this stuff, he also invented the
procedures and he also invented the implants. So he was
he created this truly is the mod Father. Yeah, and
you know it's not always a metal mohawk of spikes
or anything. We should talk a little bit about a
(21:41):
gentleman named Dennis Avner who is no longer with us.
If you have ever poked around this community, then you
know who Dennis Abner was. He was known as Stalking Cat, yes,
stalking Cat, or just the tiger or Catman or Tigris
or Catman. Yeah. He was a veteran of U. S. Navy.
And this was from his obituary written by Shannon Lauret
(22:04):
from mod blog. From the mod blog. And he worked
as a programmer and a technician, and he had his
totem was was a tiger and a female tiger. He
was a Huron Native American of the Huron tribe. So
he was actually Okay, that's what I couldn't find out
(22:26):
definitely if he just followed along that tradition or if
he actually was he was an actual Huron. Okay. So
he also had um implants and things above his lip
to uh kind of puff it out like a cat.
He had metal whiskers. Yeah, he had um ah, his
his upper lips surgically subvered to make it more cat like.
(22:49):
What's that called? I can't remember. Something acted me though, Yeah,
I'll tell you that how it ends. It ends with ectomy.
So yeah, his ears, his nose, his lips, he had
fangs and just like you know you've seen the little
vampire fangs like these looked like a legit cat. From
what I saw, he and maybe he did both, but
he did he engaged in tooth filing to give himself fangs.
(23:11):
I also saw that he had his um his adult
teeth removed, and he had um fang in dentures. Implanet
well they had to be because he's were super long, right,
So I wonder if he did teeth filing at first
and it didn't suit his needs, and then he followed
up with the dentures. But he was doing all this
and face tattoos. We should mention extensive facial tattoos like
(23:32):
tiger stripes, right, and he looked like a tiger. Like
if you're like, look at that guy, what do you
think he looks like? Anyone would say a tiger. He
nailed it in that respect, but he was still in
the process of he said, I saw two different things.
One that he was trying to um emulate the perfect
balance between a human and a cat a tiger, and
(23:53):
he wanted to become the synthesis of those two things.
Another was that he was just trying to become a cat.
They was working being surgically altered so that he would
have to walk on all fours and that it would
be comfortable for him. Just like ultimately that was his
end goal either way. Um, he died by suicide before
he reached his goal. Um, but this was like his
(24:13):
life's passion. This is what he did. This is he
worked so that he could make money, and he repaired computers,
and then he took his money and gave it to
underground surgeons to carry out these these procedures or body
modification artists to carry out these procedures on him. That's right.
I think the one quote I saw was it's brought
me fame but not fortune, right, and he he liked
the fame. If you look at the pictures of him,
(24:35):
he's hamming it up at the Ripley's Believe it or
not opening and things like that, Like he really enjoyed
being in this, this this spotlight like this. Yeah, it
looked like he stepped off the Broadway stage from Cats, sure,
except it was real. I'll bet he had lifetime free
admission to Cats. And I was like, I can't believe
it actually closed. I was just liking it after the
(24:56):
thousandth time. Have you ever seen cats? Yeah, that's I'm
ragging on it. It's terrible, really, it's the worst. I mean,
I've heard things like that, but I've also heard people
that are so excited about do not trust those people.
So I think a good life model, no, a good
life motto is, don't trust anyone who says they like
the show Cats. Okay, but anyway, one of the from
(25:19):
a former cast member, and one of the things about
Yeah Rum, Tom Tugger and the Traveling cast that one
of the names, Yeah, I think that's the only one
I can remember. Um. The one of the things that
we should say about um Stalking Cat is that in
the body modification community is widely considered to have suffered
(25:40):
from a serious mental disorder like body dysmorphic disorder or
something like that. That that he was the most extreme version.
Even though he gets lumped together with all people who
engage in extreme body modification, he was an outlier, and
that he probably did suffer from a mental tried. So
(26:02):
back to the implants, Um, they're their anchors under the skin,
like we talked about are we talking about how they
do these? Yeah, and kind of what they are and
how they do it. But these anchors, it seems like nowadays,
are mainly clover or figure eight shaped. That's what I
saw in that thing you said, although it did see
(26:22):
that they could be round or circular. Round in circular
this is the same thing. Or rectangular. Uh, there can
be custom made. They're made from what's called implant grade
titanium or tephlon, yeah, or silicone. Right. I don't know
how they could be silicone. I don't either, because it
seems it could be wobbly. That seems like more of
(26:43):
a subdormal thing, but maybe not. The key is this,
chuck um whatever you're the post or the the um,
the anchor, the anchor of the implant is it has
to have gaps holes in it. And the reason why
is because scar tissue is supposed to grow in these
holes and really cement that anchor into your skin. It
(27:06):
embeds it, not an anchor if it's not anchored exactly. Yeah,
I mean that's the whole point is that it's not
slipping around in your head or wherever you have it,
and it is stuck there um, and it's protruding through
the skin via the post that's part of the anchor
that's sticking out of your skin. Yeah, so anything anytime
you see a little devil's horn or whatever that is
screwed on, and they can just screw that thing off
(27:28):
and screw on a Homer Simpson head, that's what I
want to see. Sure, that would be good Homer Simpson
head like dr klong from from a fistful of Yen
from the Kentucky Fried movie. I don't remember that he um,
he had a prosthetic arm and he could, like her hand,
(27:49):
he could unscrew it and put on things like a flamethrower,
like a spear gun or something like that. You've seen
Kentucky Fried movie. I have. It's been a long time, though,
it's time you saw it again. Yeah, it's it's even
more juvenile than you remember. But it is just fantastic,
more juvenile than when I was twelve. And what that's amazing.
I've seen it and like, yeah, because when you're twelve,
(28:09):
you're like, oh, this is how grown ups think. I
can't wait to be a grown up. And you become
a grown up, you're like, no, it's just the Zucker brothers. Right. Uh,
so there is some controversy around all this, and um,
I looked up the legalities and from what I saw, like,
if you're a tattoo piercing place, you have definitely been
certified and you have your operating license and all that
(28:32):
good stuff. Probably have an autoclave to sterilize everything. Probably so. Um.
But if you're if you live in a basement though,
that's a different story. Well, what I saw was the
courts have still and this was from an article from
last year, the courts still have not been asked to
rule on extreme body modification because the question is is
(28:53):
does this qualify as surgery or is it like piercing?
Is it the same thing as piercing their scalpels, their sutures. Yeah,
from what I've seen, everybody in the body modification communities like, no,
that's that's surgery, right, Like it's it's pure and simple.
It's a type of cosmetic surgery. The reason why it
seems questionable is because every other cosmetic surgery you've heard
(29:14):
of is towards this beauty, this norm of of like
a norm western norm, right, Um, Whereas this is the
opposite way. So people are like, wait, what are you doing?
And you do this in a in a tattoo place
or a piercing place, but not being coerced, right, but
it's still it's still surgery. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So should
we go through the process. I woke up excited about
(29:37):
this part today. I can't wait. We'll kick it off then. Okay,
all right, I'm Chuck. I would like a I would
like uh hand, multiple hands giving high fives to each
other down the center of my head. More. Welcome in, Chuck,
have a seat. I'm a body modification artist or what
(29:57):
you think ones is like? Alright, and you like it, right,
I'm kidding, Chuck, I'm just teasing. Okay, let me take
that again. Oh well, please come in. I have a seat.
Care for some local anesthetic. It's illegal, but I want
you to have it if you want it. Yeah, I
mean there could be some local anesthetic or there could
just be ice. Are you breaking the fourth wall right now?
(30:21):
I've heard sometimes there's just ice. Yeah, it could be,
which is really saying something because people like you in
the extreme body modification community endure a tremendous amount of
pain in doing this procedure that we're about to describe
to one another, even though you're my customer. Alright, so
what happens next? Wait? Wait, sorry and seen? All right?
(30:43):
Can we go back to normal? Yeah? Alright, good? Um,
So what happens next? It's actually very straightforward, it really is.
So the the um artist, body modification artist slash Underground
Surgeon will um make two. So they'll they'll you'll say,
I want a metal mohawk, which is a bunch of
spikes coming out of like the top of your head,
(31:05):
about where your forehead ends. She didn't like my idea
about the hands high fiving. That's all the hands high fiving.
I'm sorry whatever, So, um, how many do you want?
You want? Like, so you've got one hand coming out
in another hand coming out, so you have two. I
want them all in a row. So I want four
sets of two hands. So that's that's eight total hands
facing each other. Okay, So I'm gonna figure out and
(31:26):
show you where I think they should go. I mean
I do that by using like a sharpie and marking
those spots, and you'll say, yes, that's perfect. I've got
eight dots on my head right now. I think that's
great placement for these hands. And then on each side
of those dots where those implants are going to be.
I'm going to measure off about an inch, about two
and a half centimeters, and make another mark. And that
(31:48):
mark is where the actual incision goes, and in each
of those eight spots, And again, chuck, bear in mind
you have had maybe some ice. You turned down the
anesthetic because you're super legal. Right, Um, you're going to
feel a scalpel make a slit in your head eight
different times about an inch away from where those implants are. Right,
(32:10):
that's step one. That's that's going to be like a
drive around Paradise Island compared to what's coming next as
far as pain goes. Yeah, I mean that sounds bad enough.
But then what needs to happen because remember your skin
likes being very close to your head. Yeah, it's not
loosey goosey. It's not lucy goosey, but you need to
make it a little bit loosey goosey because you gotta
slide that anchor over from your incision point to its
(32:34):
final destination, right, which is why you have to place
two points marked off the place where the implants coming
in the place where the incision is. So how do
you separate the skin. Then you separate it with a
little tool, uh, sort of like a tiny little spatchel.
Invented by Steve Hayworth. Did he invent this? I thought
this guy is legit, dude. I'm not saying he's not,
(32:55):
but I thought it was. All had been long used
in plastic surgery, and from what I saw he invented
the the dermal elevator. Okay, well, it's a dermal elevator.
It's a it's a little metal thing that you insert
and you use it as a little pry bar. Basically,
it's like a spatch, a little to pry the skin
up from your head. Yeah. So what you're doing then
(33:15):
is creating what's called a pocket, and and creating this pocket.
So you've got the you've got the dermal elevator. Now
it's it's pressed like you separated the skin from the
top of your head along all of these incisions. You're
probably doing it one at a time, I would guess,
because you don't want these incisions hanging out waiting for
you to be done with the first. But you um,
(33:36):
you slide the dermal elevator under finally, until it's under
the spot where you've marked off where the implant is
going to come out, and then you two you take
another maybe either the scalpel again or dermal punch, and
you make a little hole. And then now you have
that pocket, and then you have a hole, and you
take the implant, which again is consists of an anchor
(33:56):
with the post coming out of it, and you put
it into the incision, move it through the pocket that
you've created with the dermal elevator until and then just
kind of move it along your skull pops right out
of that hole until it pops out of the hole.
And the whole reason for this this specific procedure is
because you want the hole that the implants coming out
of to be smaller than the anchor of the implant,
(34:18):
which is why you make that incision, so you can
move the implant in and it won't just protrude through
the hole that you've made for the implant to come
out of. You do this, in your case eight times
after that, after what I just said, in the implants
in an imposition, then you suture, and then I guess
you do it seven more times. I can't imagine sitting
through one let alone. Eight Yeah, I mean it's not
(34:42):
my bag. Seems painful. I got my ear pierce when
I was in high school, and that that hurt bad enough.
I used to self pierce my own ears. Well, you know,
the funny story is, I got my ear pierce on
spring break senior year with all my buds, like the
dumbest suburban white boy thing to do, like George Michael,
me up right here basically, and they're all standing around
(35:04):
going jitterbug. So, yeah, I got that done. I actually
felt that was part of the story for a second.
Sold it that. Well. We got home and my mom
got really upset and cried, so I took it out.
She cried it right out of your ear, she did,
and then she felt bad and my mom repierced my ear.
Oh wow, how about that? Why did she feel bad?
(35:25):
She was successful? Uh? And what crying it out of
my ear? I think, you know, because I was one
of like eight guys and I was the only guy
who had it cried out of their ear. And I
think she just you know, came around. It was that
initial that's a great shock. That's great shock, and all
the normy came to love it. Yeah. So one other thing,
(35:45):
So we're talking about how it's not our bag, and
that like just having your ear pierce was painful. One
of the things I saw in an explanation why people
do this is for the pain. Some people get off
on the pain. Yeah, I figured that, but also some people,
um why to kind of push their comfort zone of
their pain tolerance. They're not necessarily getting off on it,
(36:07):
but they feel like they're increasing their endurance, their grit,
whatever you want to call it. They're gaining something right
there there. Yeah, possibly a spiritual experience from it that
it's not just like you know, there are people out
there who don't just necessarily think like you and me.
It's like, let's avoid pain at all costs. Some people
run into that stuff head first, forehead first, and say,
(36:30):
cut some holes in this man. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah,
I mean that. And that's basically the long and short
of how you do that. You've got this post sticking out,
then it's sutred up. Um. However, here's what I was
about to say. Here's what they don't tell you. I'm
sure they do tell you. This is the success rate
for transdermal implants is super low. It's it like, what
(36:51):
is so I've seen yes, is what I saw too. Well,
you know what, that's a great place to break. But
is that's the first downside and we'll talk about more
of those when we come back, and things like chop
chop stop. So Chuck, you said the success rate is
(37:38):
what does that mean? Well, that means that of the
time everything is great, you don't get a skull infection,
and of the time a number of things can happen.
Infection is obviously one of the biggest risks m because
you're working with people who you know, may have things
fully sterilized or may not. I'm sure they take it
(37:59):
really seriously now, And I'm not saying it's all like
in someone's basement and they like fish up to a
lot of a scalpl out of their pocket. I'm sure
they take it really seriously now. But infection in hospitals
is something that's a problem, so right, it's going to
be a problem here. It's yeah, it's not even necessarily
that the tools or the implant are infected, but you
(38:19):
have just um broken open the envelope of your body
and now there's a direct pipeline into one of the
most vulnerable parts of your body, your skull and your
brain um from the outside environment just come on in bugs.
And if you've done that eight times in your head,
and technically you have sixteen holes in your head now,
(38:41):
eight for the implant and eight incisions, sixteen opportunities exactly.
And so even if you keep the thing clean and
really keep up with it while it's scarifying and healing,
it's still you have an open area for the outside
environment to come into your into your brain. And that
is one of the one of the frequent infections that
happens as a skull infection. You might have a skin infection,
(39:03):
it might go away, but it might have just migrated
to your skull and is eating into your skull, which
can become an abscess in your brain, which is a
real problem you can imagine um. And that is one
of the risks of transdermal implants. And it's such a
risk that people in the body mob community are like,
this is nuts. We really probably shouldn't be doing this.
(39:24):
Let's go back to subdermals. That's what I saw Shi
Finger on the pulse. Oh yeah, I'm super hip. I've
drink nothing but mountain dew blue all day. I'm trying
to picture you now being a like a cup reporter
podcaster who infiltrates the organization. I get talked into doing
a doughnut forehead thing because they don't believe you, because
(39:46):
you so you gotta prove it. I'm like, can I
just do some cocaine or something to prove it? You're like, well,
when I was younger, I gotta baby lodged under my
skin and a baby gun fight. How do you remember that?
Did that really happen to you? Oh? Yeah, okay, I
thought you remembered. No, I was taking that from Royal
Tannon bombs right here, so yeah, yeah, so there you go.
You've had a subdermal There was unwilling and involuntary. But
(40:10):
what happened? Did you just pop that thing right back out?
I didn't. A custodian at my school, dude, Oh man,
God bless him. Yeah that's amazing, God bless her. Oh really? Wow?
Oh man, she was the definition of grizzled. Yeah. She's like,
I can help you with that, whipped out her pocket
knife and just went to town. Man. The custodian at
(40:32):
my elementary school. These people are like teachers, like you
grow up with them. This is my high school. Yeah,
we had the same guy for seven years, Roger, and
he was amazing. He was he was like six three,
he was tall and lanky, and he had this big
long Cadillac with a front license so seventies front license
plate that said Maha Raja and air rushed and he
(40:55):
was so cool because my dad was principal. So he
hired Roger and Alfred, the two guys who like work there,
and they were there the whole time, Like I was
buddies with those Could you not hire? Roger shows up
with that that they were good guys? All right? So, um,
I feel like a scum wad for not remembering my
lady's name. You don't, well, I mean, I think the
(41:16):
fact that my dad was the principle, I got to
know a lot of the staff more than a normal
kid might. It's true because I was there in summers
and hanging out and stuff. They helped you with homework. Yeah, so, uh,
where were we we're talking about and fil trading? Oh okay,
here's some of the other things that can happen. Happen
aside from infection obviously rejection. Anytime you're introducing a foreign
(41:39):
object to the body, it really doesn't want it there.
So it strives to reject it, so when it does
work out, it's sort of not luck. But you know,
it's your body failing to do what it wants to do,
which is get rid of that thing. Right. Uh and
can also move great, So I guess if it doesn't
(42:00):
that tissue doesn't grow. I'm curious. I guess the suture
is supposed to hold it in place enough while the
tissue grows. Uh. No, that I mean the I think
you're not supposed to touch it for a while while
while the scar tissue is growing. But I don't know
that the suture has anything to do with it. The suture,
I thought it was just from the incision site, which
(42:20):
is an inch away. Oh, I thought they sutured around.
I don't think so. Really, they just punch it through. Yeah,
And I think the whole is small enough that it's
not really going to move as long as you don't
mess with it while it's scarring. So it's like the
little snaps on a trucker's cap kind of um. Interesting.
One of the one of the other things that can
happen too is if um some people don't use dermal elevators.
(42:43):
Some people use butter knives, instead, which as I saw
there was another Wired article from two dozen six. I saw, yeah,
Steve Hayworth um was saying, that's like trying to thread
a needle with a Cadillac, I guess a Maharajer Cadillac,
and that you just don't want to use a butter knife.
And if somebody's using a butter knife for this, just stop,
(43:05):
be like stop stop, I'm gonna go find somebody else.
But um, even if you use a transdermal or a
dermal elevator, you can go too deep and pull too
much skin away and started to mess with tendons and
nerves and all sorts of stuff you don't you don't
want to mess with, and that can that can cause
a lot of problems to I have. As you can see,
I sliced my thumb open last week and then the
(43:27):
tip of it is still completely numb. Cutting a bagel
with a serrated knife and it's completely numb. Yeah you know, Um,
I didn't want to take away from your glory, but
I cut a significant portion of my finger off right here,
like so see all this up to the nail um
(43:48):
just off and uh it took a while for the
for the feeling to come back a very long time.
Like I was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna
get feeling back. And I did. It comes back. It
just takes a little off with the nerves. But isn't
that spectacular that my finger is intact again now it
is like we can regrow fingertips. So I guess what
(44:08):
I'm trying to say is keep the faith, buddy. Well,
I got another story. Since we're on this, all right,
Well then I'll come up with my own again to uh.
And this was two and a half months ago. I
kicked my bed frame my shin and Emily heard the
sound and I hit the deck, and you know, I
tend to overreact. And she was kind of like, you know,
(44:30):
all right, like this is worse than when I got
my ear piers I was. I told her. I was like,
something happened. This was not a normal shin kick, And um,
there was a lump and if you touched it, it
was clearly some kind of exposed nerve like hayine would
shoot all the way through my leg for like two months.
And now the left top of my calf is still
(44:52):
numb two and a half months later, and like a
large like seven inches worth of my calf. Is it
one of those things where it's probably best that it's numb,
like you be in a lot of pain if I want. Well,
I mean, it's basically healed now, but um, that lump
in the nerve damage was now the lump is just
now gone. But it was pain like I've never literally
(45:13):
never felt before. It's crazy. It was awful. Oh you
didn't like it, No, I didn't. So this is not
my my thing. I understand. I'm not down with this,
but the whole thing is leading me into a suggestion
that we tackle nerves and nerve damage. I've been on
pain itself, but it's such a big topic. We haven't
had time to tackle it right, But we will. Okay,
(45:36):
are we done with this? We're probably not done yet.
Oh we were going to talk about microdermals before we leave. Yeah,
so those are way safer because the idea is that
it can be done with like a piercing gun type machine. Yeah.
So it's this device. It's the same thing. It looks
like there's a piece of jewelry or some adornment growing
(45:57):
out of your skin, but it's much much smaller than
what a transdermal anchor and post can handle much smaller
um and so you basically just kind of make a hole,
uh and dig the skin away just a little bit
just to create just enough of a pocket to put
basically a mini transdermal post an anchor in there. But
(46:20):
it's so small that you can just kind of move
the skin over and in the hole and pop it
in there, and then the skin closes back over it,
and now you have a little post and you can
screw a little you know, stud or diamond or whatever,
and it just looks like if you've ever seen somebody
with um, a stud on their cheek and it looks
like a jewel mole or something like that, that's a microdermal.
(46:43):
They actually have a hole in their face, not going
all the way through um that that they just there's
a post kind of in there. They're apparently easier to
get out too, which is a big problem with transdermal
is that once they're in and it's scars over, you've
got a real problem if you want them out. They're
hard to to remove. Sometimes surgery is involved. And then
(47:04):
I saw even though they were called permanent, that eventually
they all kind of need to come out at some point.
I'm not sure if that's where what what the science
is behind that? When you get an office job, that's
usually the science behind that. Yeah, I know. The last
thing I wanted to do was read over some of
these adult piercings. Yes, so have you? How many of
(47:25):
these did you look up? Uh? Most of them? I
could not resist anal piercing. Yeah, so two things, Google
image beware. Yeah, that's a I think that's fair. That's
a good c o A. And also, if you're kid,
if your mom or dad prepared to see what a
google anal piercing looks like, or just you know, you
might not want to hear any of these things. But
(47:47):
for or if you're playing this for your class for
some reason, right teacher, this might be a good time
to stop. So for males, it's lists the following ample langs.
Do you want to describe any of these? Or just that?
How does it? How does it spelled? Because I didn't
look up all of them A MP A, double L
A n G. That one I didn't see is that
the glands piercing. I'm not sure. I only looked up
(48:10):
about half of these. There's another one that begins with
an A. That's a glands piercing, the apa draw yas
I think, so, yeah, where it's a there's a a
piercing with two studs, a stud on either side. Okay,
that goes right through the head of the penis. Again
for sexual enhancement. All these are fixed sexual enhancement right,
well almost all the time. Sometimes it's for you know, aesthetics.
(48:32):
But um let me. There's something called a deep p a,
something called a dolphin, something called a didos foreskin piercing, boring, uh,
something called a guiches. Have you seen that? No, I
gotta see that one. Yeah, you check that out. I
don't know how to describe it without losing our show.
So how does this spell? G U I c h
(48:55):
E S pubics prince's wand a reverse sp a and
then the ever popular scroll the ladder. What is that one?
Just look it up? Uh? And these are the adult
piercings listed for females anal of course, men and women. Christina,
(49:17):
the old clatoris piercing, the forchette, the horizontal hood, the hymen,
inner labia, Isabella nipples, boring outer labia, Princess Albertina, the
triangle in the vertical hood. There's a. Yeah, there's a
(49:39):
lot of things to be pierced on a vagina. Apparently
there are, um and the you're right, we really probably
can't describe the guiches. Yeah, it's it's a it's just
it's sort of like no man's land. Yeah. Yes, that's
a really great way to put it. I think you
just saved the days. Uh. Well, if you we want
(50:00):
to know more about body modification, there's an actual there's
an article on how stuff works. You can check out.
It's a great place to start. Maybe it's your bag.
You'll find out. Um and since I said maybe it's
your bag, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is
about when I was talking about that story about the
googling the two words. Oh yeah, that didn't match up
(50:21):
or whatever. Chuck mentioned he had a friend who would
google to random words to get as a few results
as possible. I got really excited. This practice is called
google sculpting, and it was used in a subversive poetry
movement called flour Have you ever heard of this? This
guy wrote, Okay, well this is different. I wrote my
(50:42):
senior year English paper on this. In high school. Flour
fists would use google sculpting to create the worst poems
they could muster using Uh, we could muster using lines
from the few results they would get. It started as
a way to expose scam publications that admitted every entry,
collected a submission fee, and convinced the poets to purchase
(51:02):
the compendium. But flarf was so fun it quickly gained
a life of its own. This is from Chris da
Silva and uh, Philadelphia, and he he sent his paper
along and I read it and uh, just as so
everyone gets this, I'm gonna read out an example of
a flourf This was by kay Salim Mohammed and his
(51:22):
poem is called gold Mine. I type slobbering anus into
Google because I'm one big, fat, lazy exterminator nut. Some
people think I'm a gluttonous, poor sign fury man killing
gold mine made of sweet gold beautiful. And he said
(51:42):
this poem references the process in creating flarf in the
first line. So he explains how he wrote the poem
itself by compiling the search results from googling the phrase
slabbing anus. Very nice. That is from Chris Silva from Philly.
Thanks a lot, Chris, that was great. Who goal sculpting Google?
Flour uh, goaches, guaches, gleiches uh. If you want to
(52:10):
get in touch of this, like Christa Silva from Philly did,
you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com
and there you will find all of our social links
and if you want, you could also send us an email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, pierce it
somewhere and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(52:31):
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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