StarTalk Radio - The Cosmic Chemistry of Cosmetics

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

Learn about the evolution of paints, powders, perfumes and other potions as we discuss the artful science of cosmetics. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm with one of my favorite co-hosts Lynn Coplitz. Lynn welcome back to StarTalk. Thank you I really I'm I just have to tell you I'm so mad at you. Why? Because I didn't get to be on the football show. Well excuse me I got football peeps out there. Yeah because I'm a chick you didn't think I knew anything about football. Okay next time. Meanwhile I walked in and asked who was playing in the Super Bowl.

Next time for the spaghetti bowl we'll invite you for that one. Thanks, Neil. You call me fat. Okay. What's the show about today? The show today is about cosmetics, the chemistry and science of cosmetics. So I'm here for the chick show. That's right.

Well, I thought maybe you have some expertise about cosmetics. Did you know that cosmetics derives its name from the word cosmos? Of course, I did. Everyone knows that. You mean cosmos like the cocktail? Well, maybe they all share the same common Greek word origin, cosmos, with a K. And it means sort of order. And so cosmetics has been used since ancient times to rearrange a person's experience.

Really? Appearance, yeah. Is this what you do with your cosmetic? You rearrange your appearance? No, at this point, I really don't care. This is what you look like when you start giving up. Exactly. But I used to do that.

Apparently Neanderthal wore makeup. We have evidence of that. Why? And they still couldn't make themselves look better? Well, that's our representation. Have you ever seen a Neanderthal drawing? How do I make brows smaller? They all had unibrows back then, for sure.

So, they have lumps of red ochre, and black manganese has been found in Neanderthal sites from 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. And these are things that can change the color of your skin. That's interesting. So I guess they used that probably to tell, I mean, it's funny to say that they used it to attract, you know, Neanderthal men. It's not hard to attract them even now. It's just funny.

I can't, I'm trying to picture a Neanderthal with makeup on. It's just, it's somehow counter to any concept we have of them. Well, I would think they have some, I just never thought of them having time to do that. Well, you know, the most famous Hunt and Gather

seems to be priorities on Maslow's hierarchy and he's there. I think the most famous of all, like, famous people who used a lot of makeup was, of course,

Cleopatra. Cleopatra, like, total makeup babe. And I love the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra when it's like 60s looking. There's apparently a lot of extra blue eye makeup.

And why was that? Why did Cleopatra? I don't know. If it's available to you, the Egyptians was a pretty advanced civilization in its day. And they're very into their looks. And they buried people with all of your royalty, of course. They buried you with all of your belongings,

but also all the things that made you look beautiful. They try to preserve that. And so we look at that as, oh, that's weird, but of course that's what we all do today. It's true. So do you know, I interviewed two cosmetic chemists. Although we don't do that and paint it outside someone's casket.

A picture of them with the full eye makeup up, full drag. So I gave a talk recently at a cosmetics chemistry conference and bumped into a couple of cosmetic chemists who I couldn't resist. I said, I've got to get them on StarTalk Radio. They're two professors of chemistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. And one of them, his name is Art, right name George Alice, and Steve Herman. So let's just see what they have to say about it.

And we'll get back to this whole show on cosmetic chemistry here on StarTalk. Interesting. What is your philosophy? Is it to... Buddhism. Is it to make people better looking than they are or to prevent them from looking worse than they should?

The first aspect of cosmetics was simple products that do basic things. Wash your hair so that it's clean. Simple things like hand creams that just take dry skin and make you feel a little bit better. And functional products that everybody hopefully uses like antiperspirant and soap. So it starts... Okay. It's true. When I put on my deodorant, I'm not thinking chemist. I'm really not. I'm just thinking, I don't want to smell today. But you're thinking not only what a cosmetic chemist does, but in the case of an antiperspirant and a sunscreen of an OTC drug. So what we do. Over-the-counter drug. Correct. So what we do is sometimes cosmetics, which are not regulated by the FDA that way, sometimes we make products that are regulated.

You can see that on the label. When you buy a sunscreen, they will have active ingredients followed by the other ingredients. Same thing when you buy an antiperspirant. Okay, so FDA doesn't regulate it because we don't eat it, or at least not supposed to eat it. They do regulate both cosmetics and drugs. FDA regulates cosmetics, I didn't know that. Absolutely. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is what we're governed under, but they leave cosmetics off of the agency name because it's sort of one of the little minor players. Are you suggesting that if you come up with a new shampoo, it needs FDA approval?

Absolutely not. So then what are you saying? We're saying that the shampoo, the manufacturer, is required by law to prove that the, or to have data that the shampoo is safe for the public to use. Oh, okay. So they're responsible for the safety, but the FDA would monitor it if there were a question about it from the public or from some incidents that might have occurred. And clearly it's easier to demonstrate the safetiness of a topical product than one that you ingest and has to interact with you chemically. Yeah, the testing is less, I shouldn't say less rigorous, but less extensive than you would have to do for a drug product. You know, these are two professional cosmetic chemists, and they're talking their trade.

You know, this beauty thing's been going back. We mentioned the Neanderthals with makeup. And Cleopatra, it's also referenced in the Bible. Jezebel is one among them. Yes, it says that she was anointed with perfume. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's also a big thing in the Bible. Jezebel is one among them. Yeah, it says that she was anointed with perfume. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's also a big thing in the Bible about, if you think about it, the wise men brought frankincense and myrrh,

and those were all perfumes. Myrrh. Perfume was a big thing in the Bible. There's always this thing, and then she poured oil on Jesus' head, and Jesus was like, she's the only one who gave me her smelly oil. Yeah, it's all there. I mean, it's not that I've ever smelled myrrh before. I have no idea.

I think they were stupid gifts anyway, if you want my opinion. Bring some soap and a blanket, you idiot. The things you really need. Or diapers. If you're really wise men. How about something for the donkey? Dragging this poor lady around. So over the years, what we've learned is that

cosmetics attempt, the way people use them, they try to exaggerate what you are as female in contrast with who you're trying to attract. And sometimes it's features like contrast between the color of your lips and the color of your cheek

and your eyes and this sort of thing. I think that's really interesting. I was reading that because men don't have as much of a contrast as women usually do. It turns out, I wouldn't have thought so until I sort of read up on this, and it turns out to be true. There's certain sort of fundamental differences between men and women in their appearance, and then we'd use makeup to try to exaggerate that so that you can stand out better.

This is the difference between me and Neil. Neil read up to see it was true. I went online and Googled women in drag and then went and looked at like Hilary Swank from Boys Don't Cry. Oh, yeah, yeah, when she played a boy, basically. And what they basically did was powdered her lips down. Like her lips were really – and it was really bizarre to me. I was like, what do you know? That's true.

Yeah, so in other words, the Hollywood folks, whether or not they know it explicitly, they certainly know implicitly that that's what they got to do to make. And throughout history, I guess that's always been true. Women have exaggerated like in the dark. I guess the dark red lips mean a youthful. And now she gets exaggerated with surgery. Right. Oh, and Queen Elizabeth. Remember that thing I read about?

Yeah. What was it? That she made her face white. And then she would paint blue veins so that she looked transparent. That's creepy. And creepy. Transparent and creepy. Yeah.

So other things, they're drugs with cosmetic applications. Did you know that there were eye drops given to people who had glaucoma? And what they found is that those eye drops had a side effect where they grew longer and thicker and darker eyelashes. It's now approved by the FDA for cosmetic use. I just have pictures of someone going, oh, grandma, I'm so glad you can see. And look at those lashes. Don't you look so fawn-like, Nana? You look hot, grandma.

Look at you, Nana, with those big blinky eyes. Grandma. Look at you, Nana, with those big blinky eyes. Yeah, I think that's Lattice, but now the concern is that they're, aren't they changing eye colors or something? Well, yeah, so it also makes your eyes darker. So if you had blue eyes and you really liked your blue eyes, they'd get darker. But then you'd have reduced effects of glaucoma, so that's your choice. But they don't turn your brown eyes blue.

No, they don't turn your brown eyes blue. But a book. And of course, there's the famous Botox. glaucoma. So that's your choice. But they don't turn your brown eyes blue. No, they don't turn your brown eyes blue. But a book. No. And of course, there's the famous Botox. It's a neurotoxin. Oh, do we have some sort of music that goes da-da-da-da-da? It's from the bacteria Bacillus botulinus. Whatever, which means terrific. So what it does is it paralyzes the nerve endings where it gets injected.

Do you know anything about Botox, Lynn? Oh, you're such a jerk. You know I do. I get it all the time. Really? I would get it right now if I could get it. So what part of your anatomy do you stick it up, do you put it in? Stick it up.

That's nice. I hope your family's in. Well, I ask because you hear about it getting used in the face, but I recently learned that Hollywood folks who are going to be on the red carpet, they get it injected into their armpits to prevent sweating. You don't have wet spots underneath. It's for people who have that perspiration problem or are going through hot flashes like I'm doing,

but I wouldn't do that. To me, that's way too vain. I just have it shot right in my face. Just in your face. Yeah, and it paralyzes your face, and you really can't use facial expression as much, which I don't think it's all that cracked up. I don't think facial expression is all it's cracked up to be. Let's go back to my interview with, in this case, we focus on Steve Herman.

He's a cosmetic chemist from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and we'll just get some background on how some of these products were developed. What's this one I see everywhere, polysorbate 60? What does that do and what is it for? Polysorbate 60, polysorbate 20 are surfactants or emulsifiers. I was going to say 20 too, but I was going to say that. You can say 20. And if you had hours and hours, we could go into how that actually came about. And it came out of World War II. There was a company called Atlas Chemical Company in Delaware that was making explosives out of menitol. And I think that was left over, was just piling up outside the building. It was sorbitol. This is the byproducts of explosives.

Of making explosives. We sent people to Germany as the war was ending, scientists, because we wanted to know what kind of science Germany had during the war. One of the people came from Atlas Chemical Company, went to Germany, and found out how the German chemists were making chemicals water-soluble using something called ethoxylation. He came back, saw this big pile of debris, and said, Oh, my God, if we ethoxylate this, we're going to have products that have detergent properties. And those were the first surfactants that were synthetic chemicals that were used in personal care. Wait, so you said a lot of words in there. Let me just unpack that. So a lot of chemistry words. A lot of chemistry words. Okay, so surfactant. What is

a surfactant? Okay, let's take all this chemistry and reduce it to one magic molecule. And let's go back to something that everyone knows, Italian dressing. When you take a bottle of Italian dressing, you have two layers in it. The oil and the vinegar. And when you use it, you shake it before you use it because that shaking temporarily mixes it together. But you can buy creamy Italian dressing, which is... My preference. Which is all mixed together.

It sticks better to the lettuce. Something... Don't tell me you put glue in it so that sticks better than the other stuff does. Something that you put in it changes it from being two separate phases, which is in a regular Italian dressing, to one phase, which is called an emulsion. And you use emulsions all the time. So one phase, that's your fancy word for one density. Well, yes.

You've taken two things that are incompatible and you've married them. Yeah, there's a lot going on there, Lynn. There's a lot going on. And Lynn, I was browsing your website recently, lynnkoplitzcomedy.com. That's right. And did I see what I thought I saw? Yeah, there's me getting Restylane and Botox and Perlene.

Restylane and Perlene are fillers. But these are your beauty secrets. You're letting your people realize this? I'm just letting them know that I'm real. I'm keeping it real now. But they can see it. It's a video on there. It's a video of you getting Botox.

And what are you getting injected in your skin? Restylane and Perline are fillers. Fillers. Yeah, they're things like what they used to use was collagen. Now they use Restylane and perline. Oh, okay. They're apparently better for you. So this fleshes out parts of your face that would otherwise be sunken and wrinkled.

It builds them up. It's called a knife-less, what do you call it, facelift. When we come back, we'll talk about lasers and how you remove scars and what role NASA has played in all of this. In a moment. StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with Lynn Coplitz, my comedic co-host. Lynn, you're here for our special show on cosmetic chemistry. So, cosmetic chemistry is not only about

the chemistry, it's about the mechanical things one can do to the body. And lasers, you know, all about lasic surgery. It fixes your eyes so you don't need the glasses and the contact lenses. And generally, people believe they look more beautiful without glasses. And so there's lasers making people beautiful.

What do you think of that? I don't wear glasses. So I, you know, Neil, I don't wear glasses. Is that what you bump into stuff with? I just care about things that affect me directly. But I do think it's a little weird to do that. I think most people look fine with glasses or contacts. I feel the same way, actually. Sometimes even glasses can even be sexy. Yeah, I do.

And, of course, they use lasers for hair removal. We grew up in a hot for teacher time. That's why. You know, Einstein wrote down the first equation that enabled lasers. And I'm just wondering if you said- It is true. It is true. Not widely known.

And he clearly didn't use it. It was a hairy little mess. But I just wanted to say, I'm inventing lasers so that we can have LASIK surgery one day. It's interesting how you can invent something and I have no clue where it'll turn up later on. I just wish we had that when I was a kid because we didn't have hair removal and I'm Italian. So I look like a little monkey. So you've got hairy places. Yeah.

And my mother would let me bleach my mustache so then it was just kind of a light Tom Selleck kind of looking thing. A blonde Tom Selleck mustache. A nice thick magnum mustache. So also I use lasers to remove scars and stretch marks and tattoos because what it does is it vaporizes the upper layer of the skin. And then the skin grows back fresh. And so it can reduce the effects of discoloration and the rest of this. Speaking of stretch marks. Yeah.

Did you ever hear about how the Strivectin? No, I've never had a stretch mark. That's a cream that they use for stretch marks. And apparently somebody smacked it on their face. It works so well on the stretch marks. They said, oh, I'll see if it works. somebody smacked it on their face. It works so well on the stretch marks. They said, oh, I'll see if it works. So they put it on their face, and it did. And now they sell it in Sephora and stuff to remove fine lines from your face.

And my Botox guy said, oh, yes, it works very well. So guess who's getting that today? Today? Yeah, on my way home. You're going to stretch marks cream on your face. Yes, and people use hemorrhoid cream on their face too to reduce puffiness. Women do this. This is crazy. I think it's just hilarious

if someone's putting it on their butt and they're like, oh, this works well. Hey. What an idea. Those puffy things under my eyes. My butt and my eyes? What else is puffy? One of my favorites is, again, the role of NASA in nanotechnology, which is trying to make things as small as possible and still make them useful and effective.

And so in sunscreens, it turns out if you turn sunscreens into sort of nanoparticles and layer that on your skin, then it's not this sort of goopy, greasy surface coating on your skin, what happens is the particles are so tiny, they actually get into the nooks and crevices and crannies of your skin surface. And it has properties that resemble what light does off the surface of the moon. And so you can correspond. Oh, that's interesting. That's right. So the software that they used at NASA to understand light reflectivity off the surface

of the moon was applied to anti-wrinkle cream with nanoparticles and how they would then interact with the light on the texture of your skin. That's interesting. And I think that's what they're doing a lot now with mineral makeup. I don't know if you know about it, but it's where you can mix it, and then you don't even, they say you can even sleep in it, because, and it's great. It fills in the little lines on your face. Just become part of your skin, right.

And it becomes part of your skin. Mm-hmm. And then what happens is a lot of it is reflective. Yeah. So now that's why people are wearing a lot of the shiny makeup, because they say that it reflects the light and makes you look youthful. So you're sparkly, yes. It makes you look youthful and dewy.

Which is a big driver of cosmetics from the beginning, how to make you look youthful. And did you know that female astronauts, perhaps the men as well, but we don't see those, female astronauts on board space station also use makeup in the morning, whatever their morning is that they will put it on. Well, I'm sure what if they actually bump into an alien or something? You want to look your best. I'm just saying, you know, you'd think maybe you'd leave the makeup at home. But this has to be NASA-approved makeup so that it doesn't, like, out-gas or do weird things for you.

That really would be funny, though, to be overly made up in the space helmet. And it's not only just things that make you look good. There's things that make you smell good, too. One of my favorite recent advances is they're trying to make a perfume that contains oxytocin. What is that? That's like the drug that makes- Like Oxycontin? Like a drug?

Yeah. Well, it's related. It's like the one where you trust another person. So you can put a perfume on that makes people go, all right, you can have my handbag. Well, I think they would be after other things if this is the perfume that they're wearing. So what they're trying to do is create a perfume. Like a roofie perfume? A perfume that chemically changes how two people react to each other.

It's not just, oh, you smell good. It's, wow, I really want more of you. I thought that pig semen perfume or pig sweat or whatever did that. I missed that news cycle, if that's what you mean. They were using like some sort of gland from a pig and apparently it did it. It also did that. It was like pheromones or something. Yeah, yeah.

Well, this is what drives it. And so back to my interview with the cosmetic chemist, Art Georgalis and Steve Herman. That's interesting. We talked about the safety and concerns of cosmetics and also a little bit about perfumes. Let's see what they say. of cosmetics and also a little bit about perfumes. Let's see what they say. I worked for about 38 years in the fragrance industry,

specifically doing fragrance applications. So my... I don't... Fragrance applications? What does that mean? Like, I know there's a better, a simpler way to say that. You stick nice smelling things into other things. Oh, of course. When you...

If you... Well, why did you say that? Oh, right. Yeah, it doesn't When you, if you... Well, why did you say that? Oh, right. Yeah, doesn't sound right. Does not sound right. When people think of fragrance, they think of going to a store like Bloomingdale's to the perfume counter and buying something like CJ1.

They used to chase you down. They don't do that anymore. Yeah, they don't do that anymore. But much more perfume by volume goes into things like Tide and Downy. The biggest consumer of perfumes is Procter & Gamble, and they go into laundry detergent. But another thing is... I didn't know that.

So my clothes are smelling fresh and clean. That's one place all this fragrant research goes into. That's what you're saying. Exactly. Another thing is if you watch people shop, let's say for shampoo, and just watch a consumer going to buy shampoo. What do they do? They open the cap and they smell it. They don't think about how it cleans their hair. The signal to buy comes from the nose. So this dabbles in aromatherapy, right? I mean, I've smelled products

labeled as aromatherapeutic and they smell much deeper to me than other things that also smell good. The cosmetic industry, well, the perfume industry specifically defines something as aroma science to describe the emotional and physical effects that fragrance can have on us. Okay, so it could be for any fragrance then. How about the fact that when you smell something, it can trigger a memory from decades ago? Well, that's called the Proustian hypothesis. Oh, now I understand it. Is that Marcel Proust?

That is Marcel Proust. Marcel Proust, okay. In Remembrance of Things Past, there is a long description of the memories evoked by the smell of a madeleine, a French pastry. And that's given its name to all of the emotive, the memorial, the fragrance. That's cute. Another example, let's say the smell of skunk, which many people don't like. Many?

Many people. I would say 100%. It is not 100%. My wife likes the smell of skunk. She associates it with visiting her grandmother in Pennsylvania. They would drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. It's an associative smell. Absolutely.

So her smell of skunk reminds her of her grandmother, and it brings back a happy memory. So some things are learned. If right now I had put the smell of Chanel No. 5 on you and punched you in the face, the next time you smelled Chanel No. 5, you would have an association. Well, I would assure you that that would be the last time you ever did that to anybody. It doesn't disprove the science. It doesn't disprove the science. So, Lynn, are you from the backwoods?

Did you use eau de skunk? No. First of all, I'm not from the backwoods. Well, you're from some wood. Where did you grow up in? No. My family lives in Virginia. It's hardly the backwoods.

Compared to Manhattan, I would think so. Okay, but the smell is skunk. I just like that. He's like, my wife would in Virginia. It's hardly the backwoods. Compared to Manhattan, I would think so. Okay, but the smell is called, I just like that. He's like, my wife would like this man's skin. And Chanel No. 5, you still use this, is that right? Yeah, and I wear it partly for that reason, because it reminds me of my mother. Oh, so it's an associative memory again. It reminds me of my mom, and also because every time I'm around men, they're like, that smells really good. And it's because it reminds them of their mother.

Oh, so it's not only what cosmetics smell like, it's whether they're safe to use. Let's pick up a clip on that. The products that you get from the cosmetic industry are safe and effective. There are consumer groups, because there's so much misinformation on the internet,

who have what they call an anti-chemical bias and they think everything that has chemistry on it is going to kill you, and it's a big conspiracy. Some of my best friends are made of chemicals. Absolutely. And these anti-chemical groups, while there are safety issues... So they're like the chemistry version of PETA.

Correct. And there are anti-cosmetic activists trying to make laws. The fact is the industry has been extremely concerned about safety forever. The fragrance industry is specifically very concerned about safety. Yeah, but it's not because they're altruistic. It's because they would go out of business, right? I don't believe it's because they really care. They want to keep their reputation up.

Right, right, right. Also to forestall any more stringent regulations or more... Oh, so they police themselves, basically. Right, exactly. Otherwise, somebody comes after you. A lot of industries are like that. They want to make sure that they're maintaining safe and effective and quality products because, again, it's good business.

And it prevents or slows down the increased regulatory constraints that we might have. Yeah, I mean, safety matters in everything. And what's the cost of beauty is what this is all about, you know. And after the break, what we're going to do, we're going to talk about how the ancient Egyptians used lead-based makeup. Would that kill them? It would, but they wouldn't have known that. In fact, they didn't even know that the element lead, you know.

They died looking good. When we come back, we'll talk more about animal testing and how that can be circumvented because of technology. This is StarTalk Radio, a special show on cosmetic chemistry. Not cosmic chemistry, cosmetic chemistry. This stuff goes way back. And of course, there are some health issues that you should be concerned about. For example, if you go back into the 19th century, there was this belladonna. You ever read about belladonna? It's poison, right? Well, yeah, but not as originally used. It was a juice

that they used to drink. And it makes your eyes sparkle, your pupils dilate, and your cheeks go flush for having consumed it. And these are considered signs of attraction because, in fact, the name beautiful- Now it's called ecstasy. And if you translate belladonna, what do you get? You get beautiful- Beautiful girl. Beautiful woman. That's right.

Or woman. That's right. And it's also known as deadly nightshade, and it has toxic qualities, and an overdose causes death. So it's beauty or death. It's one of these things. Oh, and that's really weird. So if you don't take an overdose of it,

it just makes you look pretty? Yeah, and an overdose, you're dead. But then everybody gets gluttonous. I want to be prettier. And there's also, did you know that oxytocin, that chemical that makes people trust each other, this has been found as a fundamental part of the prairie voles. Do you know about these?

Sure. Some of them – don't watch the animal planet. I was just going to say, whatever. It's a little dog that runs around in the prairie. There's a monogamous prairie vole. Like they find a mate and they stay hooked, hitched for life. And what we think is going on – What is that? Is that an animal? A vole, an animal. A prairie vole. Like they find a mate and they stay hooked, hitched for life. And what we think is going on. What is that?

Is that an animal? A vole, an animal. A prairie vole, yeah. Don't say vole like I'm supposed to know. I don't know what it is. It's an animal plant. Everybody knows if you watch the animal channel. I'm just saying there's a kind of prairie vole that is monogamous.

And it's monogamous their entire life and when you study what may have enabled that what they find is that the release of oxytocin and other chemicals can allow them to be addicted to each other we think it's an addiction that's what the oxytocin that makes me sad that means we're going to take their little glands right that's what it means that's what it means i'm telling you right now someone's going to cut open that little prairie roll and get its little thing that makes it monogamous. Maybe they can make it in the lab. But with regard, interesting you mentioned, with regard to animal testing on cosmetics,

that's been a hot topic. Well, because it's been done for years and it's really hideous. So what they're trying to- Bunnies in the eye with mascara. Right. So what they're trying to do is shift away from animal testing. And so, for example, L'Oreal, the company, they designed a new chip that simulates the behavior of skin cells

when you've put makeup on it. And it eliminates the need to test out allergic responses in other little pets and fuzzy creatures. Bravo, L'Oreal. Right. And so the chip contains a layer of cultured human skin cells.

And it allows them to recognize whether there's an immune response or whether you have an allergic response based on the reaction of the skin cells on this chip. So that's where that plays. What does it mean, Neil, when it says that something's – I don't know exactly what this means, when something is hypoallergenic. I mean, it doesn't mean that – I know it means that it's better for people with allergies but it can't mean that

it won't it won't hurt you it just means that it's it's really it when they've tested it it's worked well yeah exactly exactly exactly or test on whatever forces there were we've got a good clip where we've got my two favorite cosmetic chemists, the only two that I know. They just talk about what they do and what efforts, how widespread their efforts are in culture and in our beauty. What the consumer is looking for are really drastic changes to their skin structure that's happened because of age. They'd like to reverse that, but reversing that is actually a physiological change. You're changing the structure and function of your biochemistry, right? Right. So you're tailing into the drug area, and you'd have to basically do the studies to show that that was both safe and effective for performing that function. But there are things that we can do that don't affect your skin

that still make you feel better, look better. There are optical properties. When you have a wrinkle on your skin, it's actually a shadow. It's where you see it because it's a shadow. If you can lighten that area optically, you don't see the shadow and you don't see the wrinkle. Well, that's just makeup at that point. No, no, no.

It's a little different because the shadow and you don't see the wrinkles. Well, that's just makeup at that point. No, no, no. It's a little bit. It's masking technology. It's a little different because the shadow is there, but also as you grow older, your skin color changes. Skin in young people has a greenish blue color component and a red color component. Is that like white people's skin? I mean, whose skin are you talking about? White people's skin. Okay, thank you. Being a white person, I'm going to stick with that. People, yeah, people equals white people.

When I was a kid, you know, the Cray the Crayola, they didn't call it pink. They called it flesh. I said, what flesh are you talking about? Okay, so go on. Okay, so us white people have these two pigments. As you get older, the reddish blue one fades away, and you look redder. That's why older people, they look redder. They are redder.

They don't just look redder, they are redder. They are redder. Now you can now take a particle, you can make it reflect light, and then you can make it actually iridescent and you can engineer that color so it reflects out a bluish green light, which counteracts that reddish appearance. You've not only made the wrinkle go away optically, you've changed the color of the skin to make the skin look younger. Because subliminally, we associate the other color with younger people. Exactly.

It's amazing what these guys are thinking about. I mean, it's kind of creepy, actually, that somebody put that much brain power into what's going on on your face. Lynn, you're happy for this. But you know I do a lot of TV stuff and everything. And I've studied all these little makeup artists. And one of the best things they say is when you put bronzer on, to always put really bright pink blush on top of it. Because then it looks more youthful. Otherwise, just the bronzer will make you look older.

So it's all about trying to look young. Otherwise, just the bronzer will make you look older. So it's all about trying to look young. We've got another clip where we talk about the effects of smoking and sun exposure on how old or young you can look. Let's see what my favorite chemists tell us. The worst things for your skin are the sun and smoking. We know that. What does smoking do to your skin?

I never heard that. Oh, smoking is terrible. If you look at smokers, their skin gets tremendously wrinkled. And I hate to say it's about chemistry. It's about the free radicals that are in smoke. It affects the collagen. Oh, so it's the external presence of the smoke, not the fact that they inhaled it that affects the skin. Oh, correct. Okay, so how about people who hang around campfires?

Same problem? Yes. Okay. I didn't know that. So campfire people have messed up skin is what you're saying. If you do it all your life. And then go to look for... And barbecue people.

People tailgating football games. They're going to have bad skin. Well, the amount of hours that they really spend doing that, Neil, would probably not be significant. Like a chain smoker. Yeah, not like a chain smoker. Oh, so a chain smoker is immersed in the cloud all the time. I got you. So let's go back to the sun.

We know the sun is bad for you. And we do make sunscreens. I happen to like the sun, but okay. You have some natural protection nails. Right, okay. But we know the sun is bad for you. It breaks down DNA. The sunscreens that we make, and they have SPF, they have drug claims on them.

The sunscreens that we make, and they have SPF, they have drug claims on them. And we know that by either staying out of the sun or by wearing sunscreens, that you are definitely preventing a lot of damage, external damage from your skin. And there's two kinds of aging. There's aging from the outside and there's aging from the inside. It's called extrinsic and intrinsic aging. That external aging from assault from the environment, from smoke, from sun, from chemicals that are in the air, the cosmetic industry can help protect you from.

So that, as a preventative thing, is very, very real. So in a way, it's like a cosmetic force field. Yes. Where you are protected from assaults on your beauty. Correct. So that's the number one thing. And that's probably the bulk of the products that get sold. Yes.

It's a huge market. Number two is... Sunscreen's in regular daily products now, protecting... It's in lip balm. I remember when it showed up, it was like, oh, that's a good idea, yeah. The next thing we can do is halt some of the damage that the sun is causing. The sun creates a cascade effect damage that leads to other damage. And by using things like antioxidants, we're able to stop that cascading effect and prevent, you know, the damage from spreading as far as it could. So there you see a lot of products that have vitamins in them or antioxidant

claims often from botanical products. Now what I think you might be able to do is send people into space and then gravity is not dragging on your body parts. Have you looked at the skin of astronauts who've come back? Yes. You have? Yes. The effect of being in space is the same as the effect of natural aging on the ground, on skin. So it's no different? No, it is accelerated in space. The added effect that you get from being in space is equivalent to what we get aging here. It increases wrinkles and degradation. Ten times faster or five times faster, do we know?

It's hard because they don't spend that, you know, they're only a few months in space. Right. But we know it has a bad effect on the skin because, look, you're in an environment where things like humidity are different than they are in the Earth. Yeah, I mean, the sun is, you know, you've got to love the sun, but it's going to mess

you up as well. And see, I come from a time, like, I was raised in Florida, and my mother would literally roll us in like lather us down in baby oil plain old baby oil no before you went out to the yeah before i went to the beach if we got the sand on us we looked like chicken cutlets we would literally and we would play all day in that and now i'm like oh my gosh it's gonna affect me and that was not a protection from the sun. That just oiled you up. It basically just greased you up so you could go cook.

You could get fried. Yes. Well, of course, it's the ultraviolet light from the sun that interacts with your skin and makes you dark. And of course, that's what gives you skin cancer. But they have these tanning beds for people that don't want to wait for the sun or go to the beach. Did you ever use tanning beds?

What do you use? Oh, really? I'm asking. I don't know. I'm right up there with wait for the sun or go to the beach. Did you ever use tanning beds? What do you use? Oh, really? I'm asking. I don't know. I'm right up there with Snooki and the rest of the kids. Gym laundry tan. Yeah, I use tanning beds.

I use them all the time. And right now, the tanning salon by my house closed. Uh-oh. And I've been feeling very pasty. That's why you look kind of Casper-like here. Yeah, thank you. But I started taking vitamin D because I saw this thing on Good Morning America where they said if you're not getting sun, that you have to take vitamin D. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk Radio.

Welcome back. You know, there's a whole industry behind creams that will change your skin color, make it lighter, make it darker, get rid of dark spots. And I buy them all. So, Lynn, if we took away your cosmetics cabinet, Lynn, what would you look like the next day? Neil, I look just fine. Well, then, the way you talk about it, I don't know. I just have a lot of lotions and ointments. But now, look at my hands.

They're orange. Why do you have orange hands? Because when you use self-tanner, if you don't put gloves on, which I absolutely don't, and you don't use a scrub to take it off immediately, your hands will get darker. You rub self-tanner on your body? Yeah, all the time. Or just the parts that are exposed? All the time.

And every time I rub it in, I think think i hope this isn't carcinogenic we got to call my guys and find out so that we have another clip where we talk about just what what goes on with these with all the skin color changing that so these guys like i said are not only worried about things that make you beautiful, you know, makeup and rouge and all the rest of this, but just things people do just to completely change who and what they are. And it's kind of scary, I think. Well, they also control like antiperspirants and stuff, too, like things that make you stop sweating. All of this. All of this. It's kind of the power that they exercise over what we look like is extraordinary.

So let's find out what they say about ethnic products and skin lighteners, and of course the dangers of tanning bags. Ethnic products. I learned the hard way. Don't use a black girl's hair stuff. Let's find out. Now, since you pointed out that you're not a white person, This is a radio audience, so we have to clarify that.

There is a whole range of things that then happen because African-American hair is different from Caucasian hair. And the products have to be made differently, the treatments. Makeup has to be different colors. And one of the products to straighten hair has very severe chemistry. So the ethnic hair products are a specialty within the personal care products that we make that go to the special needs of these other markets. So anytime I'm on TV, of course you go in the makeup room, it's funny when I walk in there's a whole other box that they slide over into place that has the palette that would serve my skin color. And those products, what we would call ethnic products, which were basically a small little industry on their own, about 10 years ago, those companies were bought up by the giants like

L'Oreal and became then part of their mass market operations. So that changed from being sort of a little neighborhood type of product to being part of the multinationals. Plus, that would help mainstream it, I guess, if you're part of the bigger force of the... Right. The market really grew, and they saw an opportunity there. And they bought, as Steve said, a number of those bigger companies. Afrosheen, I think, was one of them. I remember. I used that back when I had the big Afro. And another example of these kind of products are skin lighteners,

which are very popular in the Asian market, where there are societies that identify lighter skin with upper class because the workers were out in the sun and the rich people were inside. So an upper class person, if they add a lighter skin tone, and we have products like that. There are drug products that are used and and there are botanical products that are used as skin light so there's never a point where you say this is crazy what are you guys doing it's like just be yourself absolutely nobody's satisfied with being their self they want to change their hair color their skin color yeah but you're you're like enabling that right so suppose you said you guys are crazy just just but then on the opposite side you have the white people who want

to be dark and then you have the tanning salons and you have the so tanning salons does that i assume they have the right wavelength of uv to not they're terrible they're they're one of the most dangerous things and probably they will end up being banned they are the worst things ever for for people's skin they will give cancer. But why hasn't that been rampant already where there's a time delay that'll show up? It's happening. Yeah, these guys are on it. These guys. I mean, they're

telling it like it is and how it might be about these tanning salons. Listen, I just I'm stuck still on the ethnicity thing. Oh yeah? I just want to know what it is that makes like black women not age. Oprah's like 400 years old. She doesn't look one bit different today than she did when she started.

And I watched her in color purple the other day on High Def. And she's not that pretty in color purple. But not a line on her face. Not a line on the face. Not a line. And even Eddie Murphy's joke that black people really don't have the acne problems that the white people do. No, they don't have acne or bacne or any of that horrible. Bacne?

Ooh. White people get bacne. Let's go back to my guys and see what they say about the future of cosmetics. In the near term, there's a lot more involvement of the biology scientists in skin biology and also genomics. So beauty from within. Beauty from within. Well, not only beauty from within, but also understanding what the components are of having beautiful and more youthful looking skin. So there's a lot of research being done there to understand what part of your genome is controlling how you're aging.

So there will be eventually products to forestall that, even to reverse it. But then we talk about how are those going to be marketed. Will they be medical devices or will they be cosmetics or will they be topical drugs or even ingestible drugs? So there's a lot of interesting things coming up in the future, all coming out of that skin biology. And the long term? The long term, I think, is really the manipulation, maybe, of your genes. The long term is a face transplant.

Well, that's a possibility, too. The face transplant has been done already. I thought I remembered a news cycle where that was the case. Yes. That would be the ultimate of cosmetic surgery, I guess. If you want to change the way you look. I mean, there was a Humphrey Bogart movie that was the whole thesis of changing the way he looked in order to escape prosecution. So, you know, they thought about that all the way back in the 40s.

But now you're right. It is a reality. But would you really want to change your face, or would you really just want to have... Given how much surgery some people have on their face, that's what they're doing. They're changing their face. Look at Michael Jackson. Talk about surgery. Lynn, you're friends with Joan Rivers. I am.

You've got to love her because she's just so upfront about all that goes on with her looks. She really is. She actually came to one of my shows and she said, Listen, whenever I laugh, I'll hit the table so you know. Is this the Botox that's in her face and everything else? She's making me laugh. She's one of the funniest, most wonderful people I've ever met. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio.

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.