Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Nail Polish

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why nail polish is secretly incredibly fascinating. ***SIF members get a special digital art poster, to celebrate 300 episodes! Find it in your BoCo: https://maximumfun.org/howtoboco/ Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode. Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5 Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

Nail polish. Known for being cosmetics. By must for being colors. Nobody thinks much about it. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why nail polish is secretly incredibly fascinating. Here, folks. Hey there's it, below pods.

Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of nail polish? I mean, I like it. I use it on my fingernails and my toenails at times.

Right now I'm not, I'm going, having naked fingers because my son really loves sticking his fingers in his mouth. And so even though I'm pretty sure it'd be totally fine if it's completely cured and stuff, it's just like, I don't know. Like, I don't want them having that in his mouth. It's like, honestly, it's probably fine. I'm probably being weird. But yeah, so right now I've got naked nails. But I did get some toenail polish for the beach for the summertime. And, yeah, it was fun.

Listeners will demand to know what color. They're going to demand to know. Different colors on each toe. Okay. Blue and pink and green and yellow. Oh, that's a summary. Summer mode. Yeah.

Yeah, but I enjoy it. I've gotten both sort of the typical nail polish where it's just like the, I guess, the nail lacquer. And then also the gel polish. And I've done some research into it because I was like, oh, you know, UV and gel that seems like not super healthy. Yeah, and I kind of like learned about what what are the very small health issues with that, if any. And, but yeah, I'm really interested to learn about it because it's not like the most

natural thing. Like it seems that a lot of cultures have nail polish, but it's like our nail, like with makeup and stuff, it kind of makes sense because you're enhancing. your features, well, I should say it has been in the past used to enhance kind of your natural features. And then we get wild with it, like as an extension to do cool colors and stuff. But like our nails, like just don't have color on them generally other than natural human colors. So that's, it's interesting to me that we would, we're just like, oh, here's a part of our body that we can paint because it doesn't rub off.

And it doesn't like soak into the skin really, so it's not dangerous and it's cool. Yeah. I was excited to like learn about this in a SIF way because I think I've had a very American gendered relationship to it where I've never used it, never really think about it. And then like Schmidt baby was coming. We didn't know the sex yet. And it crossed my mind, okay, what's some girl stuff I would learn about? And then we found out it as a boy and I just stopped thinking about nail polish again. But, like, you know, it's for anybody, as we'll talk about.

And yeah, yeah, there's so much going on with it. Like, you can go your whole life without ever using it or you can use it every day. It's very stiff that way. I feel like K-pop has made it a lot more popular with boys these days. It was back in the day, it was something that you would do if you were goth and a boy or a girl. Yeah. But, and then emo, like, because there are like certain subcultures, it seems. that made it more acceptable to wear as a boy or man.

And now I think K-pop is kind of the latest thing where it is cool to wear nail polish regardless of your gender, which seems to make the most sense to me. Like our nails are the same. It's the same things. Yeah. And it's not like, oh, but you know, women have more, like, no, Like our nails are exactly the same.

There's no, it doesn't make any sense that it's gendered. Yeah. How many fingernails could a woman have, Michael, a hundred? You know, yeah, it's the same. Me and my 100 clickety-clacketing, bright red nails. Yeah, and thank you to XCareX on the Discord for suggesting this topic. It did very well in the polls. And also someone else on Discord mentioned that they have a phobia of nail art.

And that was very interesting to me. People have so many relationships to this. I didn't press them about it. It was just like some people were posting their great nail art when this got picked. And other people said I don't want to see it. Everybody feels differently about it. Just because I want to, when other people are courageous enough to share weird phobias, I want to share my weird one. You know, like the neck divot, like where kind of where your collar bones meet your neck.

and then there's that little divot. Okay, yeah. Like where it kind of concaves in or where like bones kind of poke out? It's where it concaves in, the little esophageal dip there. Necklaces that end right there, like touch that right there. Like, I don't know if it's like a phobia or a squeamishness, but it makes me super squeamish. And I can't deal with it. So it's, and I just assumed everyone was.

like that until I started seeing a lot of people wearing like necklaces where the pendant like hit that spot and it's like how is that comfortable and it's like what do you mean thanks for supporting that listener this great yeah yeah absolutely being being weirded out like it's sometimes that's just that's how it is yeah everybody has stuff which is great everyone has stuff that's a good point and it turns out the world has thousands of years of nail polish stuff uh on on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics this week that's in a segment called But you know that when the stats are told that you can count numbers up or you can just get old You're going to do math before you even count halfway through

When will you realize? Bum-Bum-Bum's if pod stats wait for you Wow. Makes you think. The name was submitted by Zach Baines. Thank you, Zach. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a miscellian way I can be as possible.

submit through Discord or to sitpott at gmail.com. And the first number is at least three possible origins. There's at least three different cultures and places that might have been the first society to decorate their fingernails. And use something like nail polish to do it. Ooh, do tell. And the first one is ancient China. They created what might be the closest thing to modern style nail polish. And according to the Smithsonian, they developed it about 5,000 years ago.

You know, I was going to guess China because for some reason, I associate China with a lot of, like, innovations in things like paints and paper and lacquer and things like that. It does make sense. And this was also primarily for wealthy people. So they had the time and money to figure it out. Women were able to soak their nails in a mixture of the following stuff. Egg white, gelatin, beeswax, and the dyes from flower petals. Whoa, cool. It's a good set of stuff.

Egg white, gelatin, beeswax, flower petal dye. It's all very natural. It's cool. So they would dip their entire fingers and it would be the entire tips of the fingers that would be dyed or just it would stick only to the nails? Oh, whichever they wanted, yeah. And a cross nail polish in a way we won't really get into details. of there's both a like protecting the nail purpose and a decorating the nail purpose and this did both. It also kind of seems like it would denote that you don't have to work, right,

be kind of a status because if you have nail polish and you do a lot of physical work and stuff, I mean, that's one reason I often don't do nail polish is if I'm doing a lot of stuff that I need my nails to get sort of rough and tumble. It's just going to come off. where, you know, like if you're washing, doing a lot of dishes, although I guess you can wear, if you wear gloves, that does help with that. But, or just doing manual labor, nail polish, ink on the last. That's a lot of the logic for this ancient Chinese nail polish, because apparently women would grow long fingernails to indicate wealth and social status. There's also, I found like bloggy claims about either specific colors of polish only being for empresses or claims about people being executed for having long nails if they weren't high

status. That seems maybe made up. But the real thing seems to be that wealthy women would grow their fingernails long and decorate their fingernails because they could. And poorer people could not. So was this also gendered back then in China? Yeah. In ancient China, it was women. Yeah. Okay. And that varies a little bit across some other societies in a way we'll talk about The second origin story here, we think this was mostly women as well, but people in places like ancient India and ancient Egypt, they use juices from the henna plant to dye their nails. Oh, cool. And this is early nail art. It's also different from nail polish because the dye goes into the fingernail.

It doesn't sit on top like nail polish. Right. I have had, I got, there was someone doing like it was during some sort of a, cultural fair when I was in college and I got a little like Hina thing. And it's really interesting because yeah, it's just kind of a, it's a very unique dye that soaks right in. Yeah. And it's very cool how early people probably discovered it. One source is the UK Natural History Museum in London. Hena is a plant. It has a reddish-orange dye that comes out of it. And our theory for people figuring that out is that shepherds probably were watching their sheep

and then panicked when their sheep had like bright red mouths. But it's because the sheep ate henna plants. It's not because something was wrong with them. And then they kind of put the pieces together. I love how the discovery is just like demonic looking sheep. But no, it's because they're being doofy and eating stuff. They shouldn't. Right.

Like one guy just kind of very humbly erasing. a legend he was carving. Like, never mind. There's not a sheep demon. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry, everybody. Chisel, chisel, chisel, unchisle, unchisle. You shake the stone tablet and that clears it. Oh, yeah. Etchimuth, yeah. Etchimuth, sure. And yeah, and so Hena, it's a plant that we think originated in the Middle East and to North Africa, and then it also spread a bit more across equatorial regions.

And so living people across a lot of modern India used it all over their bodies, not just their nails. And then in Egypt, one of its biggest uses was for the deceased, like before mummification, wealthy people of any gender would have it painted on their nails. And then the last one here, we think this was men in ancient Babylon, the Mesopotamian city and country around it of Babylon. We think soldiers used minerals to color their feet. fingernails before battles. Whoa, interesting.

And was that just to look cool or was there an intimidation factor? Like, look at how blood-drenched my nails are? Probably both, and they probably did very dark shades. They used the ancient name for it as coal, K-O-H-L. It's either antimony sulfide or lead sulfide. But about 5,500 years ago, we think that warriors in Babylon adorned their nails with ground-up versions of those minerals as part of a pre-battle intimidation ritual where there's this darkness to their hands now.

And is that the same thing? Because I've also heard of coal being used around the eye. Is that like the same thing? Yeah, same thing. Yeah. Cool. Or should I say cool? And it just makes me think of the department store.

We went there a lot when I was a kid. Oh, coals. Yeah, yeah. But either way, this was a specifically male practice. And I like that example for basically two key ideas about this. One is we'll never know how early on people did this. The University of Rochester says Babylonians might have done it 5,500 years ago, but that's a pretty loose estimate.

And the other big idea is this practice has never been totally gender-specific. I live in a place where it's female-coded and LGBTQ-coded. but that's arbitrary. It can always change. Yeah. And like I said, I see more and more, I want to say zoomers where the guys are wearing nail polish. And I don't think it's like necessarily only LGBTQ coded these days. Although there's usually a lot of cultural sort of like where you'll have a subculture start it.

and then it kind of diffuses into the general culture. That's pretty common. Yeah. And those examples you said, like goth folks or K-pop fans, those are some of the ways, especially men, have picked this up. And another one is actually recent athletes, especially since the 90s. My favorite numbers for that are the years 1995 and 2020. 1995 is the key year when Dennis Rodman started wearing nail polish in public, the NBA player.

And 2020 is when Caleb Williams, the NFL football player, started doing that. Oh, cool. Just kind of for fun? Or did they have a reason behind it? Yeah, I like that they have kind of separate reasons. But for both of them, it's self-expression. Like Caleb Williams especially, he started in his senior year of high school. but from then to this day he's currently in the NFL. He led the Chicago Bears to the playoffs. But he will put messages on it. He'll do everything from some kind of taunt to his opponents to like a PSA about the 988 suicide crisis hotline.

Whoa. It's all sorts of just different messages. And he partly does it because the NFL has truly baffling uniform rules where anything even vaguely self-expressive is not allowed. But the rules don't really cover nail polish because they just assumed all of the dudes would be too like, uh, unwilling to wear it. Going back to Dennis Rodman, it was, it's almost entirely been for fashion and self-expression. And, you know, Rodman was known for all sorts of changes to his appearance, like piercings and mainly hair color. But in 1995, he signed with the Chicago Bulls, he wore dark red and white nail polish for his first ever press conference with the

team. And then, especially for the rest of his career, he was just covered as a like celebrity wildness story. There would just be news about what he was up to. Growing up in Chicago, one of our newspapers had a little thing in the corner of the front of the sports section indicating what color his hair was today. Like it was the weather, you know. He was really wild. But But in 2013, Rodman also used what was called Twitter to say, quote, Painting your nails doesn't make you gay. I love to paint my nails. Nothing wrong with that.

Be you always. I mean. And he really was a trendsetter in terms of opening this up to straight-coated men. Right. I guess it's like I could see some complication with that message because, you know, if you're being uncharitable, you could be like, well, it's. nothing wrong with wearing nail polish if you're gay either. But I think I get what he's saying.

He wasn't making that distinction. Right, right. He's not like picking on gay people or something. Yeah, yeah. It's just trying to let people look the way they want to look. Yeah. And apparently another big trendsetter of that time was Brad Pitt in 2015. He wore nail polish on the red carpet at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

And then Caleb Williams. Williams is a big one today, partly because his mom is a nail technician. Like, he just was exposed to that craft throughout his life. And not only does he say it's for self-expression, but also after he won the Heisman trophy while he was joining the NFL, he told the press, quote, you've got to keep your hands fresh. This is where all the gold comes from. And so I like that additional reason of take care of your hands. Like, I'm a quarterback. I throw a football for a living.

I should have put together hands. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, like, I was not a super, like, I don't know, like, not really a fashionista growing up. So I didn't do much manicure, pedicure stuff. But, like, now I mostly do it because, like, there are times when stuff is happening with, like, either sort of the health of my feet or my fingernails. And it's like actually getting a professional to like take care of this would be great. And, you know, can actually make walking feel a lot nicer. Or like if you have a bunch of like problems with your cuticles, they can fix that. It's a very, it's interesting to me because a lot of a like that profession, it's like, it's quasi like part of it is taking care of your health.

but it's also aesthetics. So I think that it does not get enough respect. If you've ever had sort of calluses treated, it's like part of it is almost like a mini-surgery. It's crazy. Yes, 100%. You disclose stuff. The one listener with a phobia of nail art disclosed stuff.

I had a dermatologist sort of walked me through one time, the idea that, yes, most men don't get pedicures and most of the straight American men who avoid pedicures should also take more care of their feet. She was like, your feet have some stuff going on. Whether you want a pedicure or colors or not, maybe you should work out that a little bit. And I said, oh, this is a good tip. Thank you.

Listen, since we're sharing, yeah, like, I could not really, because I was pregnant. And when you're pregnant, like, you just, your feet just start to get forgotten for a long period of time. And I just- Oh, yeah, they're way down there. Yeah, yeah, they're down there. You can't really get anywhere near there. So, yeah, I By the floor? Forget it.

Yeah, no. And so I got like a, you know, a pedicure for the first time in like almost a year. And it was like I had not realized how much like just background pain I was in. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's fine because I was just like, yeah, this is normal. And then I got the pedicure. It's like, whoa, it's like I'm walking on a cloud. It was really great.

Yeah. It's nice. Yeah. And it's like, you know, these are, it's, it's kind of, it actually makes me semi-angry that it's so coded as this like, a lot of things that are feminine are seen as frivolous. And something like a manny-pedy is seen as like super frivolous, something that only like, I don't know, like a spoiled sort of. The example I'm thinking, not to cut you off, but the example I'm thinking of is like women. Men are supposed to get massages and then men are supposed to just like die of back pain and a field. Yeah.

Men are. But we all have backs and muscles. I don't know. It's fine. Women get massages. Men get like a nail gun. Just like if they have a knot in their back, just like use a nail gun on it without nails. Yeah, it's, it's silly.

And it's there was like some discussion online about someone like saying, oh, like nail technicians aren't working class. it's just such a strange thing. It's like, what do you mean? They are doing a working class job. They're doing labor. And then the nail polish is just very cool. Like it's, it's, it's, it's, very artistic. So it's like they're doing, they're doing like kind of like mini foot surgery almost.

I don't want to scare people away from it. It's not painful. It's great. And then, like treatment, treatment, not standard. Standing and stuff. Yeah. Getting, getting a belt sander down there. That's what I needed. Jesus.

But yeah, no, it's, and then the polish part is just like, because it's fun to have fun and express yourself. And there's a lot of really cool, like I don't usually go for the super intense art stuff. But if you look online at some nail art, it's really, really cool. It's mind-blowing. Totally. And yeah, there's like both too many men breaking ground and getting men to use nail polish to list and also too much cool nail. art to list, just especially our Discord, please share your favorites. Yeah.

And that one listener should maybe check out for about a week from the Discord, but it's how it goes. Yeah. It's like me with Jellyfish. It's fine. Sorry, man. Sorry, ma'am. And yeah, whatever your gender, if you're wearing nail polish, it's probably made

of one of a few modern materials. And this gets us into the typical modern nail polish with takeaway number one. The two originators of modern nail polish. where an American chemist learning about foot problems and a French makeup artist learning about car paint. Well, this kind of like dovetails really nicely into the conversation we're having where it's like a lot of manicure, pedicure stuff is for your health, not just for decoration. Yeah.

And like one of the, there's basically two people parallel inventing what became bright, glossy on top of the nail nail polish. And they were not the very first people to use the materials, but they really popularized it made it a thing. And the American guy involved in this was initially learning about toenail problems, like foot problems, and then came around to his staff helping with decoration. Cool. Interesting. Yeah.

And it's all basically from the 1910s and 1920s. So also your sort of ordinary bottle of nail polish. that's a little more than 100 years old, that kind of thing. Whoa. So this is also a way those ancient Chinese ladies doing nail polish were way ahead of their time. It's really cool. Yeah. No kidding.

I feel like that's the case with a lot of, I don't know how to categorize it, like paint and art technology. That's like paper, art, paint, et cetera. It seems like a lot of that. kind of was innovated in China from a really long time ago, like pottery as well. So I'm not surprised that nails were also an early adoption there. Yeah, and also just colors, like there's some SIF episodes about colors and like Egypt was way ahead on blue and people in the Mediterranean else were way ahead on purple. That'll just happen.

Yeah, it's very exciting in history. Yeah. But with this nail polish origin, key sources are digital resources from the Hagley Museum and library in Delaware and writing for Harvard Health by Dr. Janelle Nassim, writing for the Royal Society of Chemistry by science journalist Kit Chapman. Because modern nail polish, if you use what's called traditional, and we'll talk about a few other kinds later, you're probably painting plant fibers onto your nails, a kind of plant fiber called nitrocellulose.

Whoa. And that's plant fibers treated with acids. And basically, they suspend that in a solvent. such as ethyl acetate, you let that dry on your nails so the solvent evaporates leaving just a thin, smooth layer of nitrocellulose. And then you remove it with a second solvent. And that's the process. That's it. Hmm. That's wild.

Yeah. And also this makes traditional nail polish extremely flammable. Oh, boy. Because nitrocellulose, its other common name is gun cotton. Oh. And we don't quite have a specific inventor of nitrocellulose. as nail polish material because chemists were already using it in the 1800s for stuff like smokeless gunpowder, rocket propellants, some kinds of fireworks.

Like the step to making it nail polish was this is laying around. Could it be nail polish? Right. You said it's called gun cotton? Yeah, like one word, gun cotton. Because it's a plant material like cotton and then you use it for stuff like guns. That's the idea. Yeah.

Because guns explode. Yeah, yeah. And also the flammability, it's mostly the whole bottle. Once it's on your nails, you're not like about to catch on fire or something. Cool. But the whole bottle you could do some kind of Molotov thing with probably. Yeah. Right.

I got around to saying very late. Don't. You could, but don't. Wait, wait. You just have to do a really long pause. You could. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But don't.

Also, I mean, I'm glad you're. nails wouldn't catch on fire, but also that would look really cool for a few seconds before being really bad. Maybe that's what the Babylonian warriors did first. Oh, man, can you imagine? Back to the drawing board. Back to the drawing kuneiform tablet. Okay, but if you have long enough nails, right, then you could set the tips on fire

and like wave them around. That would be super intimidating. Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of what I've heard about pirates, you know, lighting beards on fire or something. Yeah, yeah. Ooh, that's cool. Man, I want to be a pirate with really long nails that are on fire.

Podcast over. We have a new passion in life. We do. Sorry. Later. All right, but yeah, because nowadays I can just put on some nail polish from a little bottle and it's I mean, I know it's a little flammable,

but it's not the same stuff, right? Apparently it's usually nitrocellulose still. Oh, wow, really? Pibers are cheap and easy. Yeah. Crazy. I know. There's other palishes we'll talk about later,

but this has never really gone away since the 1920s. It's just gotten better. So they're serious when they say, like, keep away from fire. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's extremely flammable. for good reasons.

So, yeah. Cool. Then two people really made this a thing all over the world, starting with the American. It's a guy whose name is Northam Warren. Northam Warren. The first name, Northam, you never see it, you know? Right. It's usually two first names you see in a name, but this is like two last names.

That's a rare kind of case. Right. And his last name Warren has more first name energy. It's very surprising. It's hard to figure out. I've met Warrens. I've never met a Northam. Northam Warren. That's like a name you're born with to make a clothing brand, an outdoorsman clothing brown. Northam Warren. Yeah, it's a little of the nominate of determinism thing because he got into chemistry but also importing and exporting. His name feels like a firm that would do that stuff. Yeah. Right. He's from the Midwest. He was born in 1878. And like when he was born, people were only starting to create nail salons. That same year, an entrepreneur named Mary Cobb opened the first U.S. nail salon in New York City. British folks opened them a little earlier. In both cases, it was mostly a manicure for care and cleaning and shaping. And like maybe a slight tint if they use specific oils. Also, some people sought out bleaching. The Hagley Museum says,

in the 1910s, a U.S. company was offering mail-order nail bleaching if you just wanted to brighten your nails with bleach. Oh, so like if your nails are kind of yellowish or something, that would kind of brighten them? Yeah, either yellowish or if you just sought a bleached look. Yeah, either way, yeah. But either way, most American and British people were not changing the color of their nails in the late 1800s into the 1900s. And then Northam Warren, he's a captain. He's a chemist for pharmaceutical companies. And he also had import-export experience. He said, I probably know enough business to start my own pharmaceutical and even cosmetics

business. But he needed a product idea to start. And allegedly he got it from his foot doctor. We don't know if he had toenail problems or if the doctor was telling him about other people's tonal problems. But the podiatrist said, hey, me and some other podiatrists have been trying like a chemical solution for removing dead cuticles. And like the cuticle, if folks don't know, it's like that hardened skin at the base of your nail. And as of 1910, most people, if their cuticle died, they had to

trim or scrape that off. So Mr. Northam Warren ran with the idea of, let's make a chemical formula that makes that easy to remove with just chemistry. The next year, 1911, he starts selling it under the brand name Qtex. Because like, cuticle. removal, cutex. Hmm. And that was a big hit on its own. And then he said, I'm going to start the Northam Warren Corporation, named after me, Northam Warren.

Makes sense. It's turning into a Malkovich. I love it. But then their main product was, we'll remove your already dead cuticle. And then kind of backwards, they ended up in nail polish. Their next product was, like, protective coating for a nail. and then grudgingly, Northam Warren let some of his employees start putting together their idea

of changing the color of a nail. Yeah, yeah, you can change the color, I guess. Make sure it's outdoorsy. He was concerned it would hurt the QTex brand and distract people from their great cuticle removal, the stuff. But in 1917, they started selling a nail covering that in a very slight way did a slight rose tints, which might even not be distinguishable on some people's hands, you know, but he was stunned to see customers buy it. And then in the

1920s, he visited Paris and saw people using liquids to polish their nails and said, oh, I guess it's smart if the French are doing it. We'll really go for it. Well, if the French are doing it. Apparently that's a big thing in beauty history. Like someone goes to Paris and sees it happening and says, I guess it's real. Like, Parisians lead the world. I feel like that has been the case up until now, and now I think it's like kind of Korea at this point where it's like, oh, well, like for skin care and beauty and stuff, it's like, oh, well, if they're doing it in Korea, it's probably good for your skin.

Right, right. And like maybe a couple years earlier, Japan. But, yeah, a few countries or places will just be perceived as the leader. Yeah. And maybe like Los Angeles for a while. It's really funny that way. Yeah. Yeah.

And then Northamoran accidentally might have seen some of the work of a French makeup artist named Michelle Menard. She's the other person here. Michelle Menard was a like working in demand makeup artist in France and then got curious about how they paint cars, which is not her field, right? But she just wondered how it works. I mean, sometimes I wonder too. Do they just have a big cartoon paint brush? Like the car drives under a big cartoon paint brush and that's what does it? So the first car paints and even kind of now, it is similar to what's now modern nail polish.

It's a polymer and a solvent and you let the solvent evaporate and you get a tough, clear coat that's very smooth. It's different but also a lot of the same logic. Yeah, I mean, it's, I'm hoping. being nail polish is less toxic to breathe in. Yeah, that's true. It has to be like on our hands and it's different safety. Yeah, for sure. And folks have heard passiffs about stuff like car horns or road atlases. Like the U.S. as a leading country and creating car culture, but also France and Germany were both up there. And Parisians had versions of liquid nail polishes in the 1920s, but not so much gloss, not so many bright shades. Michelle Menard learned about car paint

enamel and also how they make it so bright. And then she developed a formulation of that kind of thing for nail polish. And then the last step for her was finding a U.S. business partner. In 1932, she got looped in with an American businessman named Charles Revson, who was working for one of the early nail polish companies, but they passed him over for a promotion and he quit and started his own business. He and his brother, and then another guy with a last name starting with L, were partners. So Revson put an L in his name and starts Revlon, the business. Oh, I recognize that as a company that baked stuff. Yeah. And their first hit product that launched the whole thing was Michelle Menard's ideas

and formulas for a nail polish. And then their second good idea from Revson was to sell lipsticks that match nail polish. That was kind of new in the 1930s, that one company could do both for you. Right. And the rest was history. for them. And these two separate innovators kind of parallel inventing and borrowing the same stuff really launched nail polish as we know it today. That's really interesting. So it's just like it seems like it all coalesced at once. It really did, yeah. And then like the few other things that really got this going were the invention of artificial nails in the 1930s. In 1934, a U.S. dentist named Maxwell Lap came up with a prodigy called New N-U Nails, which is just an artificial

nail initially meant to satisfy nail biters. Whoa. And then later they realized, oh, this can be decorative in its own thing. That's interesting. So, like, because he did, did he do artificial teeth and then kind of. You would think, yeah. Like, what's the connection to nails? I think the spark was if you really aggressively bite your nails that affects the wear on your teeth.

I see, because you bite your nails with your teeth. Yeah, but it's weird. An interesting lateral move. Yeah, it is weird. It's like this guy Northam Warren, we're in a very roundabout way. He got into cosmetics. Yeah. I have also tried to press on nails.

I do like them, but then they fall off. And I'm like, I have this, like, terrible fear that, like, they're going to fall. off into like someone's drink and then someone's going to scream and everyone's going to look at me with nine nails and one not having the nail. Right, 99 fingers with a nail and then one additional finger. Yeah. Yeah. Also, as I say this joke, I'm sure it's somebody's phobia. I'm sorry. Katie has a regular amount of fingers. I have like only 10 fingers. Don't worry. But yeah, like, Like artificial nails also people realized you can make those from jump any color so that increased just colored nails in like U.S. British Canadian society. And the other other spark was mass media being able to be in color more often.

Like especially movies once they were in color more often, movie stars would have colored nail polish. Apparently Rita Hayworth was known for red nail polish. It was just part of her celebrity image. Right. So that also became trend setting and kind of made this a lasting thing. An advertisement too, I would imagine. Yeah, advertisements. Yeah, then these businesses could do print ads showing off the colors.

So that also made it more of a thing. Very interesting. And the rest is our life now. Yeah. Yeah, it's just out there. The rest is now. Yeah. Nail polish.

Now there's different types of nail polish. So you have the traditional nail lacquer, which you just kind of have it. It's in a little bottle. You have it with a little brush. You put it on. Maybe you have a base coat and a top coat. But essentially, you just paint it on, let it dry. That's that.

But there's also press saw nails and you have acrylic nails, which is a whole kind of process where you put it on and like you have to cure it. And then you also have gel polish, which you put it on and you cure it under a UV lamp. So nowadays we have a whole bunch of different types of nail stuff. Totally. And that gets us right into takeaway number two. Nail polish is totally fine for your health unless one of two terrible things happens, either with a specific gel manicure chemical or you handling a tick bite the wrong way.

Oh, God. Okay. This will be fast and I promise not scary. The upshot is almost all nail polish uses and cases is totally fine. Right. Like they, the biggest reason is just, especially in the U.S. since the early 1900s, progressive people put government regulations in place. Like a nail polish company can't hurt you without massive consequences.

So you'll be okay. Okay. It's basically as safe as any other food or drug in your country is. You know what I mean? Right, right. It's regulated. They won't let them harm you. Like, just like other foods, like you should do it responsibly.

You should not like consume the nail polish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and our key sources here, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Baylor College of Medicine, and then reporting from popular mechanics, The Guardian, the Atlantic magazine, and Allure magazine. Because, yeah, there's constant regulation of nail polishes. I'm going to link to the New York Times for a new European Union regulation.

in September 2025, they banned one nail polish ingredient called trimethyl benzoyle diphenyl phosphine oxide. Finally, they got rid of the trimethyl oil vices sulfide. Yes. And they got rid of it because one rodent study showed complications, and they're just being extremely proactive. Apparently, the EU tends to be more proactive. the U.S. is more reactive. But in general, unless everything in your country is unsafe, your nail polish is safe. Yeah.

I mean, like, what happened when they gave those rodents trimethyl-ethyl-ethel-ethel-ethel-Mickdonalds? They apparently it was toxic to their bodies, but you're bigger than a rodent of nothing else. There's a lot of reasons it's good they're checking. And you don't need to worry yet. A little bit rude, Alex. Okay. Thanks. Right.

Our capy bearer-sized listeners are quite angry. You don't know me. You don't know me. Actually, you do. You have seen me in person. Multiple times. Ten fingers, regular size. Right.

And then, as Kaye said, there's a lot of different kinds of nail polish. And they're generally safe. Like, the traditional one just sits on top of your nail. you can seek out what's called non-toxic nail polish, but they're all non-toxic, and then what's called non-toxic tends to avoid specific chemicals. And if you want that, you can get it. And then there's two minor health issues from specific nail polishes, and it's still broadly fine, because there's a treatment called powder dip. And Harvard Health says that that involves a step where finely milled acrylic powder is applied, either by dipping the nail into powder or brush. brushing it onto the nail. Apparently, if you're dipping into the jar and too many people share the same jar and the salon is not doing enough sanitation, maybe you're trading fungi or bacteria with people. The fix is better sanitation in the salon. It's still an okay way to do it.

I like how you call it trading it as if we're sort of doing it on purpose. Like, hey, I'll trade you a C-chloridium for an S. Mymifibium. Mine is a shiny merfibium, so you're going to have to give me more better cards. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And then the other thing people worry about that they don't really need to is with a gel nail polish, there's usually UV rays from the lamp that dries that. But the amount of UV is so minor

that unless you have very specific skin issues, you're probably fine. The Atlantic interviewed Paulo Buffetta, the director of cancer prevention at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He said you'll get more UV light going outdoors than you will from a gel manicure lamp.

It's fine. And you can, like, if you're just like doing gel manicure every week for some strange reason, you could put sunscreen on your hands and it would be fine. Yeah, that too. Yeah. And apparently with gel manicures, you're just supposed to kind of take breaks to let your nails breathe a bit because it is quite solid on top of them. These are all minor things.

You're going to be okay. All of this said, there's two extremely specific things that are either being researched or are known that you need to not do with nail polish for your health. Okay. One is a new story about gel manicures and a possible allergy. Apparently around 2023, this made news. There's a specific kind of chemical in some brands of gel manicures. It's called methacrolates. And that's fine if the gels are properly dried and cured.

but basically if you use gels with meth acrylates and it's not sufficiently cured and you aren't lucky, it can leak into the skin and cause irritation. And then irritation is broadly okay, but then in some people that irritation triggers an allergy. So if all of these steps happen, that is quite bad for you. Because then if you're allergic to that, you're also allergic to the acrolates in some important medical treatments such as joint replacements and also some medications including meds for diabetes contain acrylates you don't want to be allergic to those important health things and so as of 2023 researchers and regulators are trying to figure out how do we get this out of the gels or what do we

do so that's going on right now and how common is this reaction to the gels apparently it's understudied and it might partly be because we don't do enough study of women's health problems if we declare gels to be for women, which in a country like the U.S. they tend to be. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a girly thing, so who cares? Yeah. And it is relatively new news and relatively complicated. So as always, we're not doctors and it's worth like finding out about if you're getting a gel manicure. We should become doctors just so we don't have to keep saying that. Oh, wow. We could make it like a drive goal. With this many subscribers, we'll both go to bed school. If we get a billion subscribers, we'll go to med school.

Fully get a medical degree. Right. Also, check out the podcast Sawbones. Sidney McElroy is a doctor. It's a very good. Hey, yeah. She's a real actual doctor. Don't let her listen to this podcast, though. She'll probably cringe. Oh, yeah. I'm trying to be secret from her. Oh, no. I've spoken to Justin. Oh, no. And so then the other thing here is totally known and I think I had not heard about it because I'm male and people presumed I would never have access to nail polish, but there is wildly false conventional wisdom about getting a tick off you with nail polish. Do not do that. Yeah. Well, I've actually never heard this either, so I don't know. Good, okay. It's terrible advice apparently. Okay. And for very simple reasons.

Like the advice is, oh, if a tick has already bitten you, the fumes and chemicals of the nail polish will drive it away, right? But if you do that, one of two bad things will happen instead. One is that the tick might burrow deeper into you. I'm sorry, that's upsetting. Oh, yeah, that's not good. I don't like to hear that. And the other case is even more upsetting and probably why people thought this is a good way to get a tick off. the other thing that could happen is the tick will come off, but it might vomit fluids into you.

Ooh, that's bad. It's so gross. I'm sorry. The fluids are where the disease is, so you don't want that. Exactly. So you're like wildly increasing the chances of the worst tick bite outcome where they give you a disease. Because if they just drink your blood, that's like a mosquito shirt. But just like don't do that.

It's terrible advice. I'm glad I'd never heard it. Yeah, don't do that. Don't pee on a jellyfish sting. that doesn't do it. Yeah. Like the best thing for the tick bite, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, you also, you're not supposed to like take a burning match stick to it.

That's similarly not good. Like you take tweezers, if possible, try to get to the, you see where their mouth parts are, get there and carefully. pull off the whole thing, including the mouth parts. And that's it. You don't do anything fancy or weird. Yeah, exactly. Careful, gentle removal of the whole thing.

And again, we're not doctors, but look it up. That's what you do. Right. Right. God, I got to be a doctor. My husband's a doctor of economics. Yeah, my wife has a doctorate in psychology. Yeah.

So we're married to doctors. We're married to doctors. That's kind of cool, yeah. Right? We've noticed it before. I just wasn't thinking about it right now. I'm just like, hey, honey, my, I got a, my arms falling off. It's like, oh, well, I can do regression analysis of your arm falling off for you.

Right. On to a slightly more uplifting and quick takeaway. Takeaway number three, researchers figured out how to make nail polish operate a touchscreen. I don't understand that sentence, Alex. Run that by me again. Yeah, a lot of people have long fingernails and often decorate them with nail polish. So in 2026, researchers at Centenary College in Louisiana announced that they created nail polish that is conductive enough so that you can use your long fingernails with the polish on it, like a stylus for a touchscreen. Whoa, that's cool.

So then you're not like very awkwardly trying to get your flash against the touchscreen. with long fingernails. That's so cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, and I'm linking to Ars Technica and Smithsonian for coverage of this. And apparently it's a prototype that is not commercially viable yet. Like they can't do it cheaply enough to sell it yet.

But it works and they want to figure out the next steps. I want long fingernails that like, I want different functions for every finger. Like one finger opens doors. One finger starts a car. Another one pays for my groceries. Could one of them be a can opener? I guess this is both the distant future and Inspector Gadget. I want Inspector Gadget fingernails and I want them now.

Yeah. And then Dr. Claw just gets nice colors on his clothes. right? He goes the other way. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Klai. This is, we're getting deep into Inspector Gadget Lord. I'm not sure we have time for that. The girl's name Penny, right? Yeah, I think so. Next week we're talking about pressed pennies. Preview. Anyway. And then there's a dog. Yeah, the dog. I forget the dog's name. Anyway.

Who cares. Yeah. And so. Yeah, I don't think about touch screens a lot and they work how I kind of thought, which is where your body's electrical current through the fleshy parts of your fingers. The touchscreen is just designed to receive that as an input and then it works. Your fingernails do not have enough of that electrical current to do the same thing. And so this really neat, simple idea that that also feels like something they only got around to after a while because it's perceived as ladies' stuff, but these researchers prototyped a working way to paint the nail polish onto your fingernails and then it can

carry that current and information from your body's fleshy parts to the touchscreen. It works. That's really cool. Yeah. And I would like to think this is just on the way to you, the consumer, because if we can make it work, some cosmetic company is going to want to be the first one. Yeah. So that's great.

Makes sense. And then also apparently there's one other use case for this where some people, especially if they're constantly using touchscreens, their finger's skin gets too dry and kind of stops like doing the input effectively enough. The nickname for it is zombie finger. What? How have I never heard of this? I thought I was addicted to devices. I know. Me too. I would think I would have zombie finger. Right. Especially now that I'm like holding baby Schmidt in one arm all the time and doing stuff on my phone with the other, you know? Yeah. I like do a lot of my writing now just like on my phone because so much stuff is happening.

And yeah, so this nail polish would also solve zombie finger at any length of nail. It's really exciting. Whoa. That's cool. Yeah, it's cool. So I love that about tech. It's just going on.

And that's a ton of takeaways and numbers. We're doing kind of a belated break here. And then we'll be back with two more quick takeaways about wonderful nail polish stories. All right. Looking forward to it. Folks, quick heads up for members who support this show through Maximum Fun. You funded digital art to commemorate episode 300, which was last Monday. We celebrated with Sparta, and that digital art is in your Boko vault on MaximumFund's website.

Go to maximum fund.org slash how to Boco to access all of your bonus shows, everything we've ever given you, including this and other wonderful digital art for all the milestone episodes of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Again, that's maximum fun.org slash how-to-bocco. I will try to remember to put it in the description of this episode as well. Enjoy it. We are back, and we have a couple more quick takeaways about really fun uses of nail polish that are, to me, quite novel. I think novel to anybody, not just people who don't wear nail polish.

The next one is takeaway number four. There is now halal nail polish, thanks to a young Muslim woman learning about a Polish nail polish scientist. That is very cool. So I don't know enough about religion or about nail polish to know sort of what, how nail polish is not halal to begin with. And then how you fix that problem. Yeah, I didn't either. And this is one reading of the Quran, which is also a reasonable reading to me, but not that it matters.

Of course, why am I even lodging that? Point is. Here's the Quran understander with our new podcast. Alex Schmidt understands the Quran and he's going to explain it to you. So you better listen. As I left my mouth, I was like, no one needed this more than maybe anything you've ever said. Wow. Here's Alex Schmidt explaining the Quran to everyone.

Yeah, and Mental Floss magazine covered this at the time. We tend to mainly use their magazine as a source because the website can be funky. But in 2012, Shabana Haxton, she's a nurse in California, and she wished she could wear nail polish, but due to a reading of the Quran and her practice of Islam, that doesn't work. There's one part of the Quran that says, before prayer, worshippers need to run water over the entirety of their hands. It's a ritual called woodoo. And some people read that as, great, I just run water over my hands. Other people read that as nail polish is a barrier between my fingernails and the outside. And so I cannot perform this ritual if I have traditional nitrocellulose or even gel nail polish on.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah. And so also a lot of people will use Hena to decorate their nails as a way around that because it soaks directly into the nail. It's not a barrier in that reading. Yeah, like the water will still touch your nail. Yeah, yeah. So that's fascinating. I just never heard of that idea at all. And so then Shabana Haxson says, can I do some research about just current nail polish technology?

Like is anybody inventing something that solves this? And three years earlier, a material scientist in Poland kind of did. His name's Wojchek-Inglat. And scientist Wojek-Inglat had invented. a polish intended to help people whose fingernails and toenails get too dry. He looked into the polymers used in breathable contact lenses and figured out a way to make nail polish out of that that lets more air and water reach your nails and helps people with sensitive nails. I mean, that seems kind of cool for everyone, to be honest. Like, wouldn't that improve nail health

in general? Yes. And I was curious if nail polish brands are incorporating this in general, and I couldn't really find anything. Yeah, it's just a good idea because, yes, your nails can get too dry if you are putting nail polish on them too much and have relatively dry nails. Yeah. And so Menel Floss says that Shabana Haxton got a hold of like a sample of this formula that Whitechick Inglot developed. She tested whether that let more water through than regular nail polish.

She put them both on a coffee filter and then poured water on it. Makes sense. And water seeped through Inglaught's formula. She showed her Imam this. The Imam blogged about it. And the upshot is they decided this fits the Quran and lets enough water through your nails to wear it and do the ritual washing of hands. Nice. It's so cool.

Yeah, that is awesome. So that kind of nail polish is certified halal if it uses Wojcheck Inglaatz formula. It's wild. I love it. That is very cool. Yeah. I didn't even really think about how like nail polish does like block off your nails. But in general, I think one of the issues with say like certain types of nail polish or coatings is like bacteria can get trapped under there.

So I wonder how that would also just for anyone wearing it would like help just let your nails breathe more. Yeah, I don't know. And I feel like everybody's nails are slightly different too. So just everybody's on their own journey of minor infections and preventing it or not. And yeah, it's wild. Yeah. And that also gets us into our last takeaway number five. An online argument about whether scientists can wear nail polish helped popularize nail polish as a way of marking scientific specimens.

Whoa. Okay. So I guess like if you're if you're working with certain, I guess certain sort of like chemicals or specimens that you shouldn't wear it. But I don't know why because I thought you should wear gloves for those things. Right. Yeah. It turns out just in general, it's the kind of thing you mentioned earlier about if you're doing a lot with your hands, maybe it's not worth putting nail polish on because it'll get beat up. Right.

Or like in a cosmetic sense, if nothing else, it'll look less uniform than you want it to. And so some scientists, especially if they're wearing nitrile gloves, like that synthetic rubber. Also, if they're wearing dive boots, if they're using research gear in a field, there's just all sorts of reasons where if you're tramping around doing, especially biological science, you might decide what's the point of polishing my nails. It's just going to get rubbed off or changed. Right, right. And then there's a separate, wonderful thing where it turns out nail polish is a very handy and ordinary way of just marking, especially animals and biological specimens with a color to help track what you're doing in your experiment. It's cool. I'm very excited.

I know where you're going with this because of an amazing photo you sent me, and I'm so excited to hear about this. Yeah. And apparently that's been better known since 2013 because of a fight on the website Twitter. So that's nice. Good. Now known as eggs.com. Man, I, so I would love to get a sponsorship from nuts.com. It's legitimately a wonderful website for buying nuts and snacks.

And I, maybe I'll just start telling people they change the name of Twitter to nuts.com and send people there. Because then you get snacks. Nats.com. You know, that'd be great. My parents, my parents, uh, legit love Nuts.com. It's so good. And I have reached out to them so many times. It hasn't worked.

man. Do I have to start doing it? Guys, let's start a harassment campaign against nuts.com. At this point, they don't deserve it. Yeah. I'm sure that would be good for a great company that sends nuts, like, if we just harass them. They're just nice people with a warehouse full of almonds. But anyway, 2013, the Teen Girl magazine 17.

they started a hashtag called Manicure Monday. And apparently they had a pretty strong hand in how this went. So they emphasized femininity. Right. Like they emphasized femininity and the concept that you're like

going to spend the week doing delicate things with your hands. So let's do a fresh manicure every Monday. And then a scientist went viral for arguing with this. Hope Yaron is a isotope geochemist and laboratory scientist. At the time she was

studying plants at the University of Hawaii Manoa. And she tweeted, quote, take pick of your hand doing something, hashtag science, and post to hashtag manicure Monday, polish optional. And then was relatively argumentative with people who asked why she was butting into this. She said, like, 17 is telling girls they can't be scientists. Because they wear nail polish. I don't.

Yeah. I don't know. She was saying that they're erasing. the idea that women can do stuff like science by promoting the idea that women should have fresh, brightly colored nail polish. And I see all of the sides of all the layers of this. Yeah. It's about what's feminine, whether science is feminine, whether nail polish and science can coexist. Like, there's a lot going on. I'm not really for or against her on this. I mean, I kind of like, I can see where she's coming from in terms of like if it's, if you're saying

like this is femininity means having nice nails like but the thought I'm constantly having when I'm reading online discourse about anything to do with women is like can people just like be normal about stuff just be normal just whatever man do stuff and also sometimes you could get a manicure that has like little science things on your nails like you could cheat on your size science test by having the ATP process on your nail polish. So there you go. Right. It's like, why listen to the recent SIF about the element Bismuth when I can just write a lot of information about Bismuth on the nails? And I'm set. I've beaten SIF, you know? So there's like a big, there's a big imbroglio online. Yeah. And the key source for us is it's a wonderful blog. It's

called Shorelines. It's the research blog of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and writer Kristen Goodhue got it like all of the facets of this. It's great. Like really, really gets it. And then my favorite facet is that apparently this fight led people to learn that nail polish has been a very handy, cheap, ordinary tool for... I keep saying that. Dang it. It's a very handy ordinary tool for just putting a bit of color on a specimen and helping you know, okay, the red one's this, the orange one's this, etc. I assume they put it on a part of the specimen that does not compromise this specimen. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, Goodyear writes that this has been a thing since the 1940s,

and then people like found out about it from the Twitter fight in 2013. So Twitter drama did result in learning for the first time ever. First and last time. I'm glad they got it in under the wire before Elon Musk, yeah. Yeah, it's mainly used on larger animals and biological things because, right, you need a spot on it where it won't really affect its health that you put a little splotch of nail polish on them. It's been used for snails, lobsters, crabs, lizards, tortoises, even insects, apparently. And also birds, if you can, I don't know, get them to slow down enough to take a stripe and nail polish. And it's been legitimately useful for studies of growth, mortality, movement and distribution, habitat preference, sexual selection, nestling behavior, predator prey interactions, and foraging behavior, end quote. Like a ton of science since the 40s has benefited from, you know, Northam Warren, Michelle Menard, Charles Rebson, all these people making nail polish what it is. It's essentially like bird banding where you put a band on a bird. Yeah.

So you can tell the birds apart, except that you, yeah, man, nail polish on snails, it's probably not good to do the whole snail shell because it, in fact, I'm sure it's not because of, it needs to be able to breathe. But that would be pretty. As soon as you started describing that, it got really tempted. Yeah. And like with the marking of these, the last, last thing is I'm going to link to a piece by science writer Sabrina Imbler because she can.

covered something and has pictures. That's my favorite example. In 2019, scientists completed studies of a rare bat species in Cuba that's in danger. They're trying to save it. It's the Cuban greater funnel ears bat. And they use nail polish to tag them. And then because bats have these claws on their feet that are a lot like fingernails. They basically did a perfect little patty on the bats. So it's cool. It's cute. I love it so much. This bad. This That is just absolutely rocking these nails. It's fire engine red and a taxi car yellow on these little cute little feats. These are beautiful, beautiful nails.

Yeah, the sort of stuff you have to do to track bats is just look into it a little bit because I actually talked to this bat biologist, his name is, I believe, Medellin. And he was, he's doing bat conservation and setting of bats in, in terms of the, the nectivorous bats that help pollinate agave plants. And they had to give bats like this sort of phosphorous and powder that was like, would glow in the dark and then it would get in their poop, like pass harmlessly through them and in their poop.

So then they would go and find this like glowing poop and be able to find. Where the bats went. Let's make sure to link it. That's awesome. Yeah. Man, it's just, yeah, what a world. What a world to be. I'm just going to be carried by bat tracking the rest of the day.

That's great. Close as the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the two originators of modern nail polish, were an American chemist learning about foot problems and a French makeup artist learning about car paints. That's Northam Warren in the U.S., Michelle Menard in France.

Takeway number two, nail polish is totally fine for your health unless you go through one of two extremely specific things. Those are a new possible allergy that's being studied in one kind of gel manicures, and a terrible piece of conventional wisdom about using nail polish to solve a tick bite. Do not use nail polish on a tick bite. Takeaway number three, there's a wonderful new nail polish prototype that allows people to use long fingernails as a stylus on a touchscreen, or alternatively, solve zombie finger. Takeaway number four, there is now halal nail polish,

thanks to a young Muslim woman learning about a Polish nail polish scientist. Takeaway number five, an online argument about whether scientists can wear nail polish helped popularize the longtime practice of using nail polish to mark the bodies of biological specimens. And then a lot of numbers in this episode, especially early, early stories of nail polish in China, India, Egypt, and Babylon. And also some stories of male heterosexual presenting athletes in the U.S. helping popularize. nail polish for everybody. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now.

If you support this show at maximum fun.org, members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is two pop culture scandals with significant, you federal legal consequences sparked by nail polish. Visit sifpod.fund.fund for that bonus show for a library of 25 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. Also all of our digital art to commemorate round numbers like episode 300.

It's special audio and art just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research. sources on this episode's page at maximum fund.org. Key sources this week include a lot of digital resources from scientific institutions. I mentioned the blog Shorelines of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. We also have resources from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Harvard Health Publishing, the Baylor College of Medicine, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Hagley Museum and Library

in Delaware, which is a Smithsonian affiliate. I also really enjoyed blogging from the U.K. Natural History Museum in London, about the origins of people using henna as art all over their bodies, not just their nails. And then we're linking further work from The Guardian, Mental Floss Magazine, Ars Technica, and other trusted sources of writing about all sorts of things, including this week, nail polish. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lanabe people, and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategook people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in

the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you, would you be a you like a tip on another episode because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 35. That's about the topic of keys. And one fun fact there,

those little plastic card keys that you might have used in a hotel are a true landmark in the entire history of keys across civilization. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for editing this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network.

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