Stuff You Should Know - Tattoos: Not Just For Dirtbags Anymore

Episode Date: March 18, 2014

Most Europeans first encountered tattoos after sailors visiting the South Pacific returned covered in them. From then on, with a few notable exceptions, tattoos have been associated with fringe dwellers in the West. Learn all about tats in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland, so it's Stuff You Should Know. The first and last name edition. That's right. And Chuck, you know, people love hanging out with us on the podcast. But little did you know, some of you guys, you can hang out with us outside of the podcast

too. We have a great Facebook page, facebook.com, stuff you should know. We have a nice little Twitter feed going. You do a great job there. The handle is at SYSK Podcast. And then we have a nice YouTube channel that people can go subscribe to. We do all sorts of video. It's basically like the Stuff You Should Know TV network.

Pretty much. That's, yeah, Stuff You Should Know or Josh and Chuck. You can search that on YouTube. And then we have a website where we just kind of house everything. Yeah. And by everything, I think if you're getting your podcasts through iTunes, which is great, or some other apps, you may think that we only have a few hundred. We have more than 630 podcasts up, which is shocking to some people.

Shocks. Shocks them like crazy. We've been doing this since April 2008, or you have at least. And they are all there on the website. And it helps us out if you listen to them from the website if you can. Yeah. Well, yeah. And plus, I mean, there's a lot more on the website than just podcasts too.

Yeah. And we're redoing the website soon to make it more user-friendly to find podcasts and stuff like that. So bear with us there, but we appreciate your support by listening to it there from the homepage. Nice Chuck. Oh, and speaking of our website, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. Stuff, you like the idea of tattoos?

Specifically, if you like the idea of really bad tattoos. Oh, man. We put together a gallery of 37, I think, bad tattoos. So if you search 37 really terrible tattoos, ours should come up in Google first. Yeah. Or you can go on our site and search tattoos. I think at the very least, it'll make you feel better about what you think is a bad tattoo.

Yeah, man. There are some bad tattoos out there. So it's a pretty cool little funny gallery. Yeah, man. Because this whole tattoo thing, there are bad ones, there are beautiful ones, there are weird ones. The whole culture is just so interesting, I think. We should do another gallery of like, I don't know, like, have you seen these photo-realistic

ones now? Yeah, yeah. We'll put together another gallery. Man, some of that stuff is just unbelievable. Yeah, there's some great ones. Yeah, but bad tattoos are pretty hilarious. Yeah, it's always nice to laugh at someone else's expense. Yeah.

So the photo-realistic tattoo, that's a fairly recent event, but tattoos themselves are pretty old. Yeah. Like, I was happy to go back to the 19th century. You were like, no, no. We need to go back way further than that. Well, they have some evidence that it gets super interesting in the 19th century. But the oldest physical body, the Iceman.

Yeah. Utsi. Utsi. Has tattoos. Yeah. They are... He had a shamrock. Yeah.

He had a tramp stamp. No, he had a black cross on the inside of his left knee and six straight lines on his lower back and then parallel lines on his ankles, legs, and wrists. And they think, because they found joint disease under the tattoos, that they thought it was supposed to relieve pain. So it wasn't necessarily like artistic. So was it a cross, like a crucifix or a plus sign, because he lived a few thousand years before Christ.

No, probably a plus sign. It wouldn't have been like a Christian thing. Maybe he was way ahead of his time. Right, yeah. He was a seer. Yeah. Well, yeah. And a pretty good hunter, too.

Yeah. The earliest tattoo that is... They were just sort of abstract patterns for many years. Yeah. And we're talking about the Ice Age, you know. Yeah. They were like Jackson Pollock back then. Exactly.

But there was one of an actual thing, the God Bess, B-E-S, the Egyptian God of revelry. And they have found that on Nubian mummies, females, dating back to 400 BC. So it's like the direct predecessor of people who get Coco Pelle tattooed on them. What is that? He's like a bringer of good times. Oh, really? Yeah. Is that a common thing?

Yeah, they do the flute. You've seen him a million times. Really? Yeah. He's like a Southwestern Indian motif. I'd probably recognize it, huh? Yeah. And of course, the Greeks and the Romans, they were kind of ahead of the game on everything.

And they used to tattoo criminals and slaves. Yeah, I saw that. So like, FUG for fugitive on their forehead, so in case they ran away, they would be forever known. Yeah. Tattooing used to be a punishment in some cultures, like the Greeks and the Romans. Some Native American tribes tattooed slaves, too. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. And I mean, the whole premise is like, well, it's basically like branding cattle. Yeah. If you're a runaway slave and you encounter somebody who's also a slave owner and they see that your face is tattooed but you're out walking by yourself, they may grab you and take you back. Yeah. And of course, that played out with Jews in the Holocaust in World War II.

Yeah. And I saw that it's sort of a trend now for modern Jewish people to get that as a tribute to their family. Yeah. That was really interesting. Or gays today get pink triangles, which was a symbol for homosexuals that was tattooed onto them by the Nazis in World War II as well. Oh, really?

Is that where that came from? Yeah. Huh. But now it's embraced. Yes. Interesting. But yeah, the Nazis gave tattooing a bad name in like World Brown, but it had a real direct impact on the decline of tattoos in America for a while because of that.

Well, let's go back a little further. Okay. Like I said, 19th century. Yes. Um, the tattooing, we talked about it in the Maori episode. Oh, yeah. We talked about tattooing because they were pretty closely related to the progenitors of tattoos.

Yeah. Tribes from, um, uh, Polynesia. That's right. And the word tattoo is a, comes from a Polynesian word to Tao, which basically means to strike. And they think it's on a monopea and a guy who sailed with Captain Cook through Polynesia a botanist named Joseph Banks was the one who introduced the word tattoo to the West. Yeah. And previous to that, they had, you know, when they were exploring explorers were exploring

the South Pacific and Latin America, they saw tattoos, but they had known the Moors and the Moors tattoos had tattoos, so they weren't like super knocked out by seeing tattoos. They were like, Oh my God, what are they doing? Right. Nor did they adopt it because they didn't, they didn't care about assimilating. They were just kind of conquering. Yeah. Not like, Hey, that's neat.

Try it. And, but the, the idea that sailors, the ones who visited Polynesia were sailors. They were the first ones to adopt tattoos themselves. Yeah. And that's where the idea of sailors and tattoos going hand in hand came from like back to the very beginning. Yeah. They were the original Westerners to get tattoos.

Um, and sailors haven't always been part of the mainstream. Very frequently they're like basically mercenaries at sea. Yeah. And they were as well, um, they were criminals on the run. Yeah. Yeah. They were, um, kind of fringe dwellers, not entirely, but more than the average Joe. Yeah.

Uh, and so since sailors got tattoos and also they were copying those tattoos from primitive peoples, yeah, tattoos almost out of the gate when introduced to the West, uh, became associated with the marginalized, um, dirt bags, yeah, eventually circus folk. Yeah. Yeah. Side show, uh, freaks. Yeah. Um, there was one named, uh, the great Constantine, Prince Constantine.

And he was, he basically went and spent a significant amount of money getting his whole body tattooed, eyelids, penis, the whole shebang, um, and ended up making a thousand dollars a week in the 1870s with, with, uh, PT Barnum circus, which is 20 grand a week in $2012. Just from being tattooed. Yeah. And he was still a circus side show performer. Right. So there was this long standing association of tattoos with fringe dwellers in the West

that lasted until like the seventies or eighties. Yeah. And the idea that, uh, it was associated with the criminal element and even like if you, the worst of a criminal you had, the more tattoos you had basically. Well, yeah. You know, that, that whole like phrenology thing, like you, you could supposedly look at a person or measure your physical attributes and tell what your moral character was. That people thought like tattoos were just an outward sign of that.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the more tattoos you had, the worse you were, which is kind of like, people still think that like, if you see a biker dude, the more tattoos he has, the more of an outlaw he is. Yeah. I mean, it's never been more accepted than it is today and it's still with certain people, you know, kind of unseemly, you know, placement also counts too.

Oh, sure. Like if you have something that stops at your wrist, you're, you're basically saying like, I'm still trying to be a part of normal society because I can wear long shirts, leaves and no one will see my tattoos. Yeah. If you have a face tattoo, you basically said like, I don't care about being a member of society. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Or, or, you know, having a job at Sprint, at least, right, you know? Yeah. I almost said next tell. Is that even still around? I think it is. I have no idea how that popped into my head.

Yeah. I think it is. Okay. I think I've seen a billboard here or there. Yeah. Yeah. All right. There's this weird little anomaly in history where in the, during the Victorian age, the

late 19th, early 20th century into the Edwardian age, if you want to get technical, there was a trend among the upper class. Yeah. This was really remarkable to me that like even while the people who had tattoos were the lowliest of the low as far as Western society went, not even just, you know, working class people, like the criminals, fringe dwellers, circus freaks, prostitutes, were the ones with, with tattoos. Sure.

All of a sudden, the elite of the West, and we're talking like royalty in some, in some cases, adopted tattoos as a status symbol. Yeah. And for a pretty interesting reason, quality. Well, yeah. Once Japan, Japan was kind of closed for business for a couple of hundred years to most of the Western world. And they turned around the open sign in 1853.

And it turns out they had some remarkable tattoo artist in Japan. Right. And so the quality went up and they weren't, you know, like the street tattoos that you would see. And so the, the elite of Europe would go to Japan, sometimes even royalty to get tattooed by these masters. Right. What's that one guy's name?

Yoshisuki Horatoyo. Very nice. Thanks. And there was one quote from a guy named Van Denter. Did he write a book? I think he did. I think this article, we're talking about an article by Agnezek Marzak. Yeah.

But she's quoting like sociologists and anthropologists mostly. Yeah. And thanks for this article too, because that helped us piece together the history for sure. Yeah. Yeah, visiting Japan without being tattooed by, say it, Yoshisuki Horatoyo. Was like visiting Rome and not seeing the Pope. So it was a big deal. Yeah.

And it was weird in that fashion trends tended to go from the top down and this came from the bottom up. Yeah. It was different. But it was like you, if you were an elite Western European and you had a tattoo. Yeah. And like you said, it just stood in stark contrast to the work some of the criminals were getting.

It wasn't like you were homeboys with the criminal on the street all of a sudden. Right. Yeah. And I mean, just the average person looking at the two side by side could be like, well, this is obviously a much more elaborate, much more detailed, much more expensive tattoo. So the tattoo among the Victorian elite, it was expensive because number one, you had to travel to Japan to get it, let alone the cost of the tattoo. That's a good point.

And then secondly, it was very time consuming. Again, you had to travel to Japan, but you had to sit there for a very long time because this was prior to the advent of a tattoo guns, motorized tattoo machines. So somebody used a needle and just kind of stabbed it in and out maybe a couple of times a second. Yeah. For many, many, many seconds. For many days, I would imagine.

Right. A lot of workers couldn't afford the time to sit there and get a tattoo. They couldn't afford the expense, but they also couldn't afford the time. So if you had a very elaborate Japanese tattoo that you went to Japan to get, it said, I'm a very wealthy man of leisure. Yeah. Especially if it was dollar signs on your forehead. Right.

Right. You know. Right on your eyelids. But things reversed in 1891 when the first machine was invented by Samuel O'Reilly, which we'll get to in a minute. But it democratized tattoos. Yeah. Basically, you know, poor people could now get tattoos that look pretty good.

And then the elite were like, oh, well, we don't want them anymore then. Right. But I didn't see anywhere what the elite did with their tattoos if they just lived with them or if they tried to get them taken off. Well, they probably just wore like more clothes. Yeah. They're already wearing a lot of clothes. Those Victorians wore a lot of clothes.

Yeah. Like you said, the tattoo gun was invented in 1891, but even before that, in the United States, the first professional tattoo shop had opened almost 50 years before. A guy named Martin Hildebrand opened a shop in 1846 in New York City. Where else? And most of his clientele was military, especially sailors. And it was here that this association with the military, soldiers and sailors getting tattoos developed and became popularized in America.

Yeah. It became, they call it the golden age of tattooing between the end of WW1 and the end of WW2. And that's because it was linked to patriotism and it was, you know, to see a soldier with a tattoo with an anchor and like the United States of America, like the flag or something. It was very cool. It wasn't looked down upon at all at this point. Yeah. There's another article I read too by Audrey Porchella that had a lot of the same stuff,

but it was more expansive. Yeah. I think she was saying like America loved its soldiers. Yeah. And so anything associated with soldiers, America loved too. Like you couldn't poo poo it. Right. The tattoos.

Right. But you didn't even want to. It was like a lovable mark of a soldier. Yeah. And a soldier just beat Hitler who was winning the war. So you, you would love their tattoos too. That's why we tolerate parrots because sailors walked around with them on their shoulder all the time.

Otherwise parrots. Oh, yeah. I worked at a place to add exotic birds. Did you know that parrots in the wild travel in flocks? Yeah. I never thought about that because you only see them like by themselves. Maybe they're sharing a cage with one other parrot. You've seen them in LA and Pasadena.

Oh, I've never seen that. It's pretty cool. I was shooting one time and shooting parrots. Now shooting a TV commercial as a PA. I got you. And I saw a flock of parrots. I think they were parrots. They'd be bizarre to see.

It was really weird. Yeah. Because I just thought, look at all that money flying around, parrots are expensive. Did you jump after them? I did. I caught like four of them. They didn't survive though. No.

So you said the golden age of tattooing happened between World War I and World War II. Yeah. And we already talked about how Hitler, of course, screwed it up for everybody. Yeah. And it declined after World War II. But also during that time, that golden age, not only was it like patriotic sailors and soldiers who were getting tattoos. People were having their kids tattooed in the 30s.

I had never heard this. Because of the Lindbergh baby. Yeah. Like social security numbers tattooed on their child. Yeah. And then other people got, they're just like grownups got their social security number tattooed. Yeah.

Apparently because they placed a tremendous amount of import on those things when they first came out. But can't you think like after seeing it a few times, you're going to be like, didn't think I was going to be able to memorize this string of numbers, but it's in there. And now I have a tattoo. Yeah. It's definitely weird. Or soldiers sometimes would get their, you know, name rank and date of birth or serial

number. Sure. Yeah. And then apparently in the mid 50s, the Secretary of Defense said, you know, the US might experience an attack from the Ruskies. So just to make sure that everybody can get the medical care they need, maybe we should all get our blood types tattooed on us. And some people went out and did it.

Is that why you have a negative on the back of your neck? Yeah. Pretty cool. It's a band reference actually. Are we going to talk about our tattoos at any point? No. Okay. I'll talk about mine later.

If you want to hear about mine, all you have to do is go listen to Judge John Hodgman episode. Yeah. That's true. I can't remember the episode number though. All right. So let's move on to the 1960s. Things went downhill fast because outbreaks of hepatitis and tattoo parlors were shut

down like in New York City. They were banned between 1961 and 1997 and in Massachusetts, they were illegal. Tattoo parlors were illegal up until 2000, which is hard to believe. And remember in skateboarding, we said like once skateboarding came around in 1959, they never ever really went away and just got pushed underground. Same thing with tattoos. True. And every time it fell out of the mainstream, getting a tattoo became even more of a symbol

of rejection of society, which made it even cooler. And while it was forced underground and made illegal by those bands in the 1960s, it was taken up by, again, fringe groups like biker gangs, Chicano gangs. Sure. Remember the zoosuit riot? Oh yeah. That's one of my favorite shows that we've done. It's a great one.

There was like, I don't remember if we talked about it or not, but there was a whole aspect of it where gang tattoos or tattoos became associated with gangs from the zoosuit riot. Like the press reported on these groups of Chicano boys who all had Chicano style tattoos, which is beautiful stuff, by the way. Did you look it up? Oh yeah. It's like that lettering with the amazing flourishes. Yeah.

Mostly just black. Right, or like photorealistic shaded black and white, or well just black, like you said. Images of the Virgin Mary or praying hands. It's awesome stuff. Or like a fallen gang member, like it looks like a photograph basically. Yeah. Is that what photorealistic means? Yeah.

Okay. But that became associated, gang tattoos, especially Hispanic gang tattoos, or Latina. Yeah. They became associated from the zoosuit riot. Yeah. That's pretty cool. You should listen to that podcast. Was it just called How Zootsuits Work?

No, I think it was like, did zoosuits start a riot? It was one of those dumb ones where we asked the obvious question that we're going to answer. It was really good though. I think it was one of those where people are like, zoosuits, you did a podcast on zoosuits. Turned out really interesting. Yeah. Super interesting.

It's from the history of LA, which has a lot of black spots on it. Yeah. That's a good point. In the 1970s, things came around a bit because of the counterculture and civil rights movements and black power and gay rights movements and women's lib. There are all these causes now that people began to tattoo on their bodies just to show unity or just the hippies, of course, with mushrooms and marijuana leafs and keep on truckin' and r-crumb stuff.

Yeah, the truckin' dude. Yeah, rainbows and flowers and all sorts of things like that. So it became a little more common, but it was still on the fringe, I think. Through the 80s, really, don't you think? Pretty much, and then all of a sudden, America just kind of loosened up about it a little bit. It seems like it. I think what happened is it crossed that threshold that all things that are part of

the counterculture cross a co-opting of it to where it's no longer part of the fringe if enough people do something. That generational shift happens. Yeah, and more than ever, it's become part of the mainstream. There's going to be an enormous amount of tattooed grandparents in, like, 30, 40 years. Like shirtsleafed. Yeah, neck tattoos. Just plain old grandparents with neck tattoos.

I can't wait. Yeah, I can't either. All these saggy fading tattoos. I don't want to live that long to see all that, but yeah, it's become extraordinarily tolerated more and more and more ever since the 80s or 90s, but up to today, it's just like, I can't imagine there being more of a critical mass of people getting tattoos than there are now. And as a matter of fact, I predict it'll probably become passe in the next couple

of years because so many people are getting tattoos. I think it's already getting a little passe, don't you? I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of hipsterism, but you know, I can see it. I do know one of the new trends, and I hadn't heard of this either, are UV sensitive inks. Dude. So like you have a tattoo that you can't see unless you're under a black light at a rave? I saw a very cool tattoo with that technique, and it was not photorealistic, but an amazing

illustration across the upper back of a person of Yoda brandishing a lightsaber. And the lightsaber had the UV ink. Everything else is tattoo, but the lightsaber glowed under black light. That's pretty awesome. It was amazing. Yeah, you'll have to send me that. And then another, I don't know how new this is, but breast cancer survivors that undergo mastectomies sometimes will have reconstructive surgery and have 3D nipples tattooed on their

newly reconstructed breast. So it's like a combination of scarification and tattooing? Well, basically, you know, when you get the breast reconstruction, you don't get a nipple with that. Right. So they'll just tattoo one on. But how do they, like 3D perspective, or like they raise the skin using scars? No, no, no.

3D perspective. I got you, okay. Yeah, just like artistic talent, I guess. Yeah. I have no idea how they do that stuff. Yeah. So that's kind of cool, too. Yeah.

All right, so that's a pretty good overview of the history. I would say so. And I guess let's get down to the nitty gritty about what a tattoo is after this message break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay.

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never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. What's a tattoo?

It's actually pretty simple and it's exactly what you think it is. A tattoo is basically just a needle that's delivering ink through the needle into your dermis. It goes through your epidermis, a couple millimeters into your skin, into your dermis. Because your epidermis, well, you shed it. It's full of dead skin cells eventually and regenerating skin cells. Your dermis is comparatively stable. So when you stick it with some ink, the ink's going to stay.

And so you're seeing through the outer layer of your skin because remember in the myth busting episode, we talked about how blood looks blue because you can see through your skin. Right. That's how you see a tattoo. It does fade a little bit over the years, of course. It's not like your tattoo is going to look great when you first get it and over the years it's going to look worse and worse so you can get it touched up.

But apparently the elbows, knuckles, knees, and feet are more likely to fade over the years. I don't think we even said the needle, it runs sort of like a sewing machine. There's a motor and you've got a foot pedal and you've got basically between 50 and 3,000 times per minute, this needle's bobbing up and down like a sewing machine. I guess you want the one that's going 3,000 per minute, not the prison model at 50 per minute. Yeah.

That's probably pretty painful. Well, it's funny you bring up prison, like can we talk about that for a second? Prison tattoos? Yeah. So Chuck, in prison you don't have a tattoo gun that goes 3,000 punctures per minute I guess is what you'd call it. Punks per minute? Yeah.

Instead you have things like a toothbrush with a staple that somebody took out of a magazine attached to it or a mechanical pencil and you use like pen ink or maybe they harvest the ink from a newspaper. There's a lot of like really horrible ways that they give prison tattoos. Yeah, they actually, there are prison tattoo guns that you can make. It's not always just like one individual puncture at a time. Like they'll take an old tape player and use the motor from that to make one, but you seem, you know how fast the tape player motor goes.

Right. Even in fast forward. Yeah. So that's not great. And I've seen where they use like burned boot polish and get the soot from that or melt styrofoam. Yeah. That does not seem like it would take to the human body.

No. Melted styrofoam or plastic. It'd be poisonous. And most of them are, you know, gang emblems or they all generally have some sort of meaning like why they're in there maybe. Sure. Or who they're associated with or don't want to be associated with. Right.

Yeah. But it's a good deal. They'll get the opposite gang with like a circle and a slash through it. That's a common prison tattoo. And then for needles, they'll use everything from like springs from a pin to like a guitar string. Yeah. Guitar strings big.

Yeah. It's just kind of very DIY. Yeah. DIY. DIY. Yeah. For the most part, those of you out there listening to this podcast are not going to be getting prison tattoos.

If you get a tattoo, you're going to be going to a tattoo parlor and they're going to use that, that gun that was invented first in 1891 by a guy named Samuel O Riley. Yeah. And he actually modeled his invention after an invention by Thomas Edison that was basically like an etching pen. Yeah. And this guy said, you know what, if I just modify this a little bit and had some ink go through some a tube system, we could use this as a pretty great tattoo gun and bam.

Even today, like it's basically the same. Yeah. I hadn't changed that much. No. I saw that somebody invented one in 2000. It's pneumatic. He uses compressed air. Oh, yeah.

It's like farce. It's very lightweight. It's just a, you can take the whole thing and just throw it in an autoclave and sterilize it whole. You don't have to take it apart. Is that the next wave? I guess. Because I think most of them are electromagnetic now.

Most of them. Yeah. I think that's the only one that's not. Interesting. Yeah. All right. I guess we should talk a little bit about sterilization, maybe. Yeah.

I mean, we just explained tattooing aside from the artistic talent. I know. It's not a whole lot to it. Well, no, you do like part of the artistic talent is when you're drawing on a sheet of paper, you're all of the shading, all of that stuff. It's all on this, you know, basically flat two dimensional surface. When you're dealing with skin, you have to be aware of how deep the needle's going. You have to select your needles based on, you know, what kind you want.

Yeah. You know, needles have different tapers, which make some poignure or not poigny, different diameters, and then they can be grouped together, depending on what you're trying to do to create big lines, rounded lines, all that stuff. So you have to understand what you're doing with needles. Oh, sure. You have to have artistic talent, although not by law. Yeah, that's true.

And then you have to be, you have to be, I guess, well-versed in using human skin as a canvas. Yeah, I've seen, I think sometimes they'll practice on like watermelons and cantaloupes and things like that. There's an artist for themselves. I can't remember his name, Vimdelvoi with the W. And his website address is vimdelvoi.be. It's one of the better websites on the internet right now, frankly. Next to StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

But he has an art series of texadermied pigs that he's done like elaborate Chicano-style tattoos all over. Oh, really? It's really neat looking. You got to practice on something. Yeah. You know? But this guy's selling what he's practicing on, you know what I'm saying?

Oh, okay. It's like you can buy one of his tattooed pigs for tens of thousands of dollars. Oh, wow. It's art. That's weird. But so the point is a tattoo artist has a lot to take into account, including safety precautions too. Yeah.

All right, but let's go ahead and just talk about what's going to happen when you go in there. Okay. You're going to walk in there. You're going to be drunk. Not sure. Supposedly like it's illegal to tattoo somebody who's intoxicated in most states. I don't think that's true.

I think it's up to the shop from what I've seen. I've seen people, I've asked tattoo people, would you take to a drunk person? And they have, and I guess it depends on who it is, but the ones I know have answered yes. I think there are some states that it's against the law to tattoo somebody inebriated. Okay. So you're not drunk. You're sober. You go into your tattoo parlor.

Depending on the state. And you're going to, maybe you have a design already at the go. That's what I would recommend. Or you can go in and look at the myriad posters on the wall of what they call flash, which are all the clip art of the tattoo world. Just kind of ready to go like, hey, I like that barbed wire armband. Or I like that Japanese symbol for something that I don't understand. Yeah.

That's very dangerous, supposedly. Um, and then, you know, you'll pick out your, your design or you come in with your own, like I said, and then they will draw it on your arm with the, or stencil it or draw it. Um, with the medical grade pen, sterile medical grade pen, that is before the tattoo, right? A good tattoo shop should give you the pins because they're not going to reuse them. They shouldn't. It's, they're supposed to be sterile.

So you can take it home. Um, so they draw it on your skin. They, uh, then they start tattooing basically just going over that outlining it is the first thing they do. They call it black work. And the reason also that they draw it or stencil it on your skin first is because your skin stretches during the tattoo process. So as long as they're following that line, it's going to go back to the way it looked

before the skin stretched. But if they don't, and they just do it without a stencil or without a drawing, it's going to turn out weird. I imagine there's some free drawers, don't you think? Artists that are like really so good that they can just invent something. Sure. They can invent it, but then they should stencil it onto your skin because you can't predict which ways the skin's going to stretch.

Yeah. I guarantee you there's people out there that don't stencil. I wouldn't go to a non stenciler. Um, so Josh is all about the stenciler for good reason. Um, so they're going to do their black work. They're going to outline it. Uh, it's just a little single tip needle at that point. Yeah.

Um, the ink is pretty thin and this is basically just to get your, your basic outline going. So you know, you know, it's not super, it's not shaded or outlined or, uh, or thick at this point. Right. And then they use different, a different needle. Yeah. Often a combination of needle that'll be, um, stacked or flat or round or whatever. And they, uh, commence with the shading and the shading is, um, it connects all of the

black work. Yeah. It fills in any lines or gaps. There's a gap in the work is called a holiday. Yeah. I thought that was kind of funny. And that's like either it didn't take or the artist missed that part in the shading part is supposed to, um, cover that up and connect all that to make sure there's no holidays.

Yeah. But we should say if you pay attention to the tattoo artist, if it's a right handed tattoo artist, they're going to start doing the outlining, the black work, um, from the bottom right and work their way upward to the left. And the reason they do that is because as they're doing the tattoo, um, they need to clean off the blood. Yeah. They're constantly wiping tattooing, wiping tattooing.

Exactly. And if you do that, you're going to wipe off the stencil. So they work their way up the stencil rather than down where they would smear the stencil and it would be problematic. That's right. And between each, um, step two, you're going to get it, uh, cleaned and wiped off and then they're going to restart again, uh, like for the shading and then what comes next, which is the coloring.

Yeah. Um, it's going to, you know, depending on what you want, you might, if the kind of style is not always colored in, sometimes it's just like outlines, but sometimes you got to have that thing fully colored in and that's when it gets super painful. Right. And you're going over this thing over and over and over and you think, my God, is it not fully colored in yet? And then they say, we're almost there.

And then you feel a little lightheaded and you feel like you might want to pass out. And I mean, depending on the tattoo you're getting, if you're getting like a huge piece done, like they may just do like the, the outlining in one and then the, uh, shading in another and then the, um, coloring in another, like three different sessions. Yeah. And over a span of days, perhaps. Over weeks or months. Yeah.

Depends on what you want. Yeah. So then after all that, after they do each process or each session, they're going to clean your tattoo and bandage you and send you on your way. And like we said, it depends on how you tolerate pain to, some people say it doesn't hurt at all. Some people have a really hard time with it. Well, it also depends on where the tattoo is.

Yeah. That is hugely important as far as pain is concerned. Yeah. Bony areas are, are tough, um, and hurt. And I found the inside of the armpit, like a really fleshy area is super, super painful. Is it like if you get an armband or something, the inside of your arm hurts a lot, but on the outside, like over muscle, it's not nearly as painful. Not as much.

Like I would say like a shoulder and like upper back, like those are not going to be as painful. But you know, it feels like, uh, it feels like somebody's drawing on you with, with a bee, with a pen that, yeah, with a bee stinger, sort of what it feels like. And it's, it's fairly mild, but, um, like I said, it depends on who you are. Some people are just like, it's no big deal at all. I remember the first one I got, I was a little, I got a little lightheaded. Um, and he, he said it was common. He said, it doesn't mean you can't tolerate pain.

It's just like an unusual bot, like bodily reaction. Huh. Yeah. Like it's just like stop. Yeah. If I pass out, like you'll stop letting this guy tattoo you. So, um, after they bandage you up and send you on your way, they're going to issue some advice for caring for your tattoo.

It's not like you just go home and forget about it. Like there, there's a process that takes place and, um, you, you kind of need to be on top of it. Depending on the tattoo parlor you go to, you could get very different and sometimes contradictory advice. Um, but for the most part, they're going to tell you to remove that bandage that they put on after an hour or two to let the tattoo breathe. Yeah.

Uh, you're going to want to keep it clean and wash it every once in a while with lukewarm water. Um, and a little bit of antibiotic soap, antibacterial soap. Yeah. Um, but you want to do it gently and when you dry it, you want to pat it dry. You don't want to rub it. Don't want to rub. You don't want to take a bath.

At least you don't want to submerge your tattoo and you also don't want to let the shower just beat down on it. No. And if it starts to scab up a little, uh, just sort of let it run its course. You don't want to start picking its scabs. Um, it definitely will come out. Yeah. Exactly.

But it should scab. It flakes over, right? Uh, yeah. And when that happens, then you're supposed to put on lotion. I was always told like you put on, um, Neosporin or something similar the whole time, but apparently these days they say don't use any kind of ointment because it can actually leach the color out. Yeah.

I've gotten two different sets of instructions and that's why it's a little distressing. Right. Like who's right? Yeah. I mean, these are from like pro tattoo parlors. Yeah. Some say use ointment, some say don't. The ones who say use ointment, they say keep a thin layer on at all times to keep it from

scarring. Right. Others say don't do that. Just keep it clean and dry. Um, and then as it starts to flake, you can put on like a nice like light lotion to keep it moisturized. Yeah. And then it'll help the flaking process and then everything will come off and your skin

will literally flake off, scab off. Yeah. And once that happens, your tattoo is complete a few weeks after you went into the tattoo parlor. Yeah. Um, but in the meantime, you want to stay out of the sun. You don't want to go into pools. Sure.

And again, you don't want a bunch of water dousing your tattoo. No, and you're also going to have to start buying clothes that show off your tattoo. Right. You're going to want to go cut off the sleeves of all your t-shirts. That's right. Uh, you're going to have to wear a little half shirt if you have the, uh, very popular lower back tattoo. Yeah.

Basically you want to start dressing like Mack from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Exactly. You want to go buy your first pair of Dickies. Yeah. What else? Um, that's about it. Okay. Maybe wear hair product too.

Uh, tattoos range in price greatly from depending on what you want, obviously, and how detailed it is to how good of an artist you're working with. Yeah. Well, it's one of those things where it's like, you pay for what you get. Exactly. For sure. Um, I had, uh, I've got a pretty bad tattoo on one arm from this lady in Arizona. Yeah.

And it's not even, and I don't even want it anymore. Yeah. I'm going to get them removed. I know, but then it's like, why, like what's the purpose? It's under my short sleeves. It's like no big deal, but I'm definitely of the 17% that regrets it. And it's not a regret. Like I don't wake up every day and wish I didn't have it, but yeah, right, kind of wish

it wasn't there when you're lounging at the pool. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's as far as I'll go with that. You can always wear like a black armband and just if anybody asked to feel like you're one of my friends died, you know, to get a tattoo of one, no, just cover it with, oh, just yeah. Chuck's got bad luck.

His friends are always bad, but you know, they can be like 50 to 100 bucks for a little tiny one. Um, if you want to get that Georgia peach on your butt, that's an inch big, supposedly I saw a hundred dollars. Yeah. I saw a 2013 Pew, um, survey found like the average cost of a small tattoo is 45 bucks. Yeah. But if you want like a revered tattoo artist, like you go to LA or New York or, uh, and

you know, you want Kat Von D to give you a tattoo, I can't imagine how much her hourly rate must be. Yeah. She probably charges by the hour. Don't you think? Well, most of them do, especially for a big piece. Really? Yeah.

See the ones I've seen, they'll just look at the piece or maybe they just have a sense of how many hours it'll take. Right. But if they're doing like a whole sleeve or something like that or your whole back and it's going to take multiple sessions, they charge by the hour and it reaches into the hundreds easily. But then you get to walk around and say Kat Von D did my tattoo. Right.

I met her. Yeah. Cause she tattooed my back. I gave her $6,000. Right. Good for her. That's what I say. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

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So that's the cost. And when you get a tattoo, unless it is one of those ones where you're in a state where they can tattoo you drunk legally and are willing to, and you go in and just get a tattoo while you're drunk, if you're planning on getting a tattoo, it's a good idea to do some research. Yeah, really think about it, folks. Like find, well, I mean, if you've thought about it and you want to get it, you want to find the best tattoo artist you can afford because it's going to be on there for very

long time. Yeah. Not only are you paying for artistic ability, you're paying for technical ability too, ideally. So somebody who can do a really good tattoo can make it look exactly like you want it, but can also make it stay, keep it from fading over time, just basically keep it looking sharp as well. So like you said, you get what you pay for with tattoos, typically. Yeah.

And that goes for safety too. And we've been dancing around this, so I guess we should just go ahead and talk about it, huh? Since you're working with needles and there's blood, there are dangers of course, like hepatitis. That is a real thing that has happened. Any kind of blood infectious disease could be spread. There have been zero reported cases of HIV via a tattoo at this point, the CDC says. But that doesn't mean in some random situation that could possibly happen, but if they're

following the protocols of safety, which is a three-pronged approach of sterilization, disposal materials, and then hand sanitation and just basic sanitation, then it's a pretty low chance of any kind of hepatitis or anything like that. You shouldn't be scared, but you should be aware of the kind of tattoo parlor you're walking into. It's not just like blood-borne pathogens. You can also get like a skin infection from a dirty tattoo parlor too. But any tattoo parlor worth its all is following the same blood-borne pathogens rules that hospitals

and doctor's offices use. And so if you go into a tattoo parlor, what's going to happen when you sit down and you start to get your tattoo done? There's going to be a whole lot of stuff laid out on a tray that looks basically like a surgical tray, surgeon's instruments tray. Yeah. A good artist will explain all this stuff to you as well. Right.

Exactly. What they're doing, why they're doing this. Yeah, exactly. And most of the packages, the needles, the ink, the ink cups, all of this stuff are all pre-packaged and sterile packaging that is opened in front of you. Yeah. They're all single use. Right.

It's all supposed to be thrown away afterward. And then in between uses, the stuff that isn't reusable like the tattoo gun, the tubing system, all this stuff is supposed to be put in what's called an autoclave, which uses heat pressure and time to totally kill any organism on this stuff, on this equipment. Like nothing's left alive. So there's like a process where they put this, an autoclave, it looks, some of the least expensive ones look like a... Easy bake oven.

Well, yeah. Pressure cooker. Oh, yeah. That sits on like the oven. And they'll put it in for a certain amount of time, something like, I think, 250 degrees for 30 minutes. Yeah. You've got two methods.

250 Fahrenheit, under 10 pounds of pressure for 30 minutes, or if you're in a hurry, you can crank up the heat a little bit to 270 under 15 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes. And both of those will kill everything. And it's pretty interesting that they put the different parts into special pouches that you seal up. And the pouches have these indicator strips that show whether the stuff is sterile or not. Yeah.

And the indicator strips are actually made in some cases of little microbes that will germinate, I guess, due to the steam that they use if it doesn't reach a certain temperature. Really? Yeah. So if the strip, and when they germinate, they change color. So if the strip is a certain color after X amount of minutes or whatever, that means the temperature wasn't reached and those instruments aren't sterile. Wow.

Isn't that cool? Yeah. That's very cool. The FDA doesn't regulate tattoo ink, which is... I was a little surprised by that. And apparently, you could experience burning with an MRI because of metallic pigments. Well, you have to take out piercings and all that stuff when you go in an MRI because it's a huge magnet. Yeah.

I just had an MRI yesterday. What? My first one. What? Yeah. Are you okay? Yeah, my lower back. Oh, okay.

But have you ever had one? I know. It's probably weird. How long were you in there for? About 25 minutes. And it was... The thing's no more than like three inches from the tip of your nose, so bad news if you have any kind of claustrophobia. Well, there's open MRIs, but I hear you pay for them.

You know what I mean? This one was closed. I would probably lose it. And it cost me $150. That's not bad. No. Good insurance. Oh, yeah.

And of course, the first thing I wanted to do is scratch my nose as soon as I went in there. And you just have to suffer through it or you've got to start over. Do your hands on your nose and just sit there? But it was... The thing that was remarkable to me was the noise. Isn't it like a clicking sound? Dude, it's all... It sounded like you were in a German dance club. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. And it varied. There were all these different noises, but it would literally be like... And it's super loud. They give you earplugs. And... Really? Yeah, man.

I had no idea. I didn't either. Like, they slid me in there and there would be like a... But super loud. No, and then something else would come in and go... This is nice. It's really cool. And it would change sounds like every couple of minutes. And right when you got bored with it, it's like it knew. It was just weird, man.

I had no idea it made noises like that. And what I could figure out... I have to look into it is what that noise is. Is it a mechanical thing going on? I don't know. Have we ever done one just on MRIs? No. I'd like to know. I mean, I'm using MRIs as lie detectors and stuff like that.

So could you feel your tattoo? Is it burning? No, but I don't know if they were concentrating on the lower back and I don't have a tramp stamp, so that was no problem. The reason it burns is because some pigments, some tattoo pigments are metallic. And so the MRI being a huge magnet draws the metallic pigment, I guess, toward the top of the skin that creates a burning sensation. That's crazy.

And also, apparently, there's tattoo makeup, permanent makeup. You can get eyeliner tattooed or what have you. And that supposedly can actually mess up an MRI of a person's brain because it's often a metallic pigment. So if you get a cosmetic tattoo of eyeliner, then you're screwed for your end. It just don't have any neurological problems. That's good advice anyway. If you want to go give blood, there might be some restrictions depending on how recently

you've had your tattoo and what state you're in. The American Red Cross, if you have had a tattoo in the past year, doesn't accept your blood unless your parlor is state regulated and apparently most states don't regulate them. So it depends. I saw that there were a lot of regulated states. There are three that have, they're just like, do whatever you want. North Dakota, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. are all just basically like we have no regulations

whatsoever. Interesting. A lot of states don't have state regulations, but they'll have local ordinances. Almost all states forbid tattooing minors without a parent's consent. In some states, it's even a felony if you tattoo a minor. And then other states have state regulations where the Department of Health regulates tattoo parlors. And in most regulated states, which is most states, a tattoo artist has to be licensed,

which basically means like you go take a health class and then pass an exam and then you're licensed tattoo artist, which means, again, there's no study of artistic ability, no testing of artistic ability. If you can pass this health exam in most states, you are a bona fide tattoo artist who can charge money and make people very, very angry when you finish your shoddy work. Yeah. Well, you can't regulate that. You can't, you know, say you can't open this art gallery because you're not a good painter.

No, it's true, you know, but I see how it affects other people. I get that, right, but it's subjective. Right. It totally is. I understand what you're saying. The good news is that as tattoos have become more and more widespread and hence more and more lucrative, a lot more people have been coming out of art school and getting into tattoo.

Sure. They're not necessarily self-taught. They're formally trained artists who are doing tattoos. You can probably make more money quicker as a tattoo artist out of art school than you can selling your paintings. I'm sure the income's more steady for sure. You know. Yeah.

All right. There's a few more things we can talk about. You hit the cosmetic tattoos. If you're vegan, there are vegan tattoo parlors. Good luck finding one because they're not super, you know, abundant. Oh, but those are so expensive. But a lot of tattoo ink is made with bone char and that is burnt animal bones. Sometimes you use the resin of shellac beetles and the ink.

And sometimes like the soap and stuff they use, if you're like really vegan, you're not going to want them to wash your skin with something that has been tested on animals even. Yeah. And then there's another idea by rubbing a piece of raw chicken breast on it. I mean, there's also, you'd be very surprised. You would never notice it unless you're a vegan, though. I wish people could have seen you doing the demonstrate that because that was good.

And then, of course, you've got the henna tattoo, very popular in Indian culture. But also apparently very dangerous, too. I didn't realize this. Well, it can be. Natural henna is derived from a plant and that's henna dye and that's light orange. And kind of like kind of a rust color. And that is safe because it is natural and it will, it's a temporary thing. It's a temporary tattoo.

My friend Seema, when she got married at her, you know, before her wedding, the day before, all the bridesmaids got these like amazing henna tattoos. Yeah. And she gets the most, you know, the bridesmaids got some, but she was like all over her like face and arms and hands. Really gorgeous stuff. And it's, you know, a big part of the culture and heritage. But black henna contains synthetic ingredients, including a PPD.

Oh, you're going to try and pronounce that. P phenylenediamine, P phenylenediamine, that's not bad, phenylenediamine. I did it. P phenylenediamine. All right. Three times. PPD. And that is a coal tar, it's found in coal tar and it can cause permanent scarring and

really bad reactions. So if you go to get a henna tattoo, use natural orange henna. Yes. Or if you're a kid, get some cracker jacks. Have you seen the Octopussy, the James Bond movie? I never have. I saw it the other day again and maybe the worst movie tattoo I've ever seen. It looked literally like a cracker jacks tattoo that they put on this lady's hair scene.

It's an octopus and you know, James Bond has her in bed and remarks about it and it had a close up shot of it and it's literally like peeling off at the edges. Was it really? Oh yeah. Did they dub in like a wah-wah-wah? No. His Bond movies have not aged well, by the way. Which one?

Was it Roger Moore in that? Yeah. I love those. I think they're the best. Yeah, no. We've talked about this, but I urge you to go watch Octopussy. You didn't even see that. No, but I watched Live and Lie Tie the other night.

That was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. He's like inexplicably surly in that one. Oh, really? Yeah, he's like real weird like David Foster Wallace being interviewed by Charlie Rose or something. He's like looking at everybody out of the corner of his eye.

It's weird. Interesting. Yeah. There's something wrong with Roger Moore during the shooting of that one. We've got a few stats and then I guess we can cover removal. About $1.65 billion is spent in the US on tattoos each year. This is Pew, by the way, too. It's that 2013 Pew poll.

Oh, it is. So you know it's quality. It's reliable. 14% of all Americans have at least one to two, if you're between 18 and 25, 36%. And I'm surprised it's a little bit older. 26 to 40-year-olds have the most, 40% now of 26 to 40-year-old Americans have tattoos. Yeah. That crazy.

40%. Yeah. That's pretty high. Yeah. Four-tenths. And I mentioned that 17% have some regret, I think 5% cover up the tattoo with another tattoo and 11% try complete removal, which is what we're at here. And well, almost.

We're almost there. There's 21,000 tattoo parlors in the US. So again, take your time to go find the best one that you can afford and not just the best artistically, but make sure when you go in everybody's wearing gloves, all of the stuff is sterile. Like they're not joking around with the blood-borne pathogen rules. Yeah. Like they're being serious because it is serious because you're getting punctured several

thousand times a minute and every one of those puncture wounds is an opportunity for an infection. Yeah. You don't want a skin infection. So don't take it lightly and don't go to a tattoo parlor that takes safety lightly, too. You don't want to discriminate against new businesses. But in the case of a tattoo parlor, maybe you should look at one that's been around

for a little while and has a good reputation. I don't know if I'd go to one on opening day, you know? Unless they're giving out a real great discount. Yeah, they might. So Chuck, 17% of people regret their tattoo. Have some regret. I don't know if that means because only 11% have it removed. So I guess that other 6% are like me.

They're like, I don't look like that. I guess I'll just keep it. So Chuck, prior to the 80s, people still wanted tattoos removed. 1980s. Yes. But there weren't lasers available. Lasers are what we use today. That's right.

Prior to this, getting your tattoo removed basically meant you're just going to scar over that area. Pretty much. Dermabrasion is basically sanding off your tattoo slowly. Not to be confused with microdermabrasion, which is still in use today. Dermabrasion is basically like using a cheese grater. Didn't most as lack come at somebody with a cheese grater to get rid of their tattoo? That sounds right.

Cryo surgery, which is where they freeze it off. It sounds pretty painful as well. Yeah. And then there's just regular old surgery. Just cutting it off? Yeah. Where they cut out the part. And if it's a big old tattoo, they're probably going to have to do a skin graft.

But at least you don't have the tattoo anymore. Yeah. And now we have lasers and you've even used this, right? Yeah. Laser removal. Hurts like the dickens. Does it really? It hurts as bad as getting a tattoo.

If not, maybe a little more depending on where. What's it feel like? It feels like somebody's frying bacon right next to your skin. That's awesome. It doesn't smell like it. It hurts like the bacon grease is jumping off onto your skin. Okay. It hurts bad.

I mean, like it's nothing that you can't tolerate, but a lot of places that do laser tattoo removal will also offer like a local anesthetic. Uh-huh. I'm too cheap. Right. I just bite my thumb. Yeah. Yeah.

And like I can make it through it. How many? I'm not like some like huge pain tolerance guy or anything like that. I say I'm average as far as pain threshold goes. Your average pain and you're on the cheap side. Right. It's me in a nutshell. What, how many treatments did you get?

So I've reached a point where I'm like, it's faded enough that it's, I've shown that yes, I'm, I want to get rid of that tattoo. The problem is the place I was going, and here's a little key for you. Basically anybody can buy a laser and charge whatever they want for tattoo removal. Oh yeah. Fortunately, we have a friend called Groupon that these laser tattoo removal places frequently use. Uh-huh.

They can get one first and get like a package, like you can get them for as cheap as like two or three sessions for 50 or 60 bucks, which isn't bad at all. Right. Um, I went maybe six times so far and I would say it's two thirds of the way gone. The problem is the last laser place I went to said, um, like we've reached the limit of lasers. You should do microdermabrasion. I don't particularly believe them, but I haven't gone and found another place yet.

Gotcha. So. So you're deciding now what your final steps will be. Well, my final steps will be like getting more laser removal. Right. It's, it's not guaranteed. Like any place will tell you like, I can't guarantee I'm going to get this all the way off.

Right. If it doesn't come all the way off, then I'm out a bunch of money. So I'm now looking for a place where I feel comfortable trusting their expertise and that place says, yes, we can get this off with laser. Okay. I haven't got to look into microdermabrasion. And then, uh, how does the laser work exactly? Doesn't it just bust apart the ink so it disperses?

That's exactly right. The laser, um, is attuned to the pigment apparently green is the hardest to get rid of blue and black are the easiest to get rid of. And, uh, the lasers, there's different lasers use different, um, crystals, I guess, to target pigment selectively. And it's just your synthetic pigment. It's not going to, it shouldn't affect your body's natural pigment. Okay.

And it goes in and breaks it up and, um, those little pieces of pigment are absorbed by your immune system and spit out in your sweat along with all sorts of the detritus from your cells and all that. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Awesome. I think I might look into that. It's, it's, I mean, and again, the pain is not intolerable.

Yeah. There, if you go in the first few sessions, they're going to get rid of, like it's going to like go away dramatically. It just, as it gets further along, it gets more difficult and you have to have somebody that really knows what they're doing, knows what kind of laser to use, what pulse setting to use it on and isn't going to overcharge you. All right. So really think about it before you get one folks, because it's going to cost you money

and pain going in and then later on money and pain. If you want it removed. That's right. And that's tattoos. If you want to see some really weird stuff, you can look up Gregory Paul McLaren or AKA lucky diamond rich. He is the world's most tattooed man. He is 100% tattooed.

Every part of his body, including eyelids, inside of eyelids, well, inside of eyelids, under his foreskin, inside of his ears, mouth, wow, he's completely tattooed. Do you remember those two twin hit men on Breaking Bad? Yes. One of them has tattoos on their eyelids in real life and I've read an interview with him and he said they used a plastic spoon over his eyeball and pulled the eyelid over it and then tattooed it. I'm like, I think that's worse than the tattooing part.

Like having a plastic spoon against your eyelid pulled over it. So that's how he did it. And if you want to see something even weirder, go look up stalking cat or Dennis Avner, AVNER. This is a guy, he's dead now, but he had plastic surgeries and modified his body along with facial tattoos to look like a cat, like a tiger. Oh yeah. Have you seen that bagel body modification that's big in Japan? They go in and pump something in to create this round protrusion on the forehead that's

hollow in the center. So it's like a bagel head. I see the award. It's very odd. I've always wanted a bagel head. There's like this strange trend in Japan that's like wow. We should do one on just body modification. People take it to like super extremes these days.

Let's do it. It's got whiskers. Wow. Like implanted. So it's basically like Rob Lowe in behind the candelabra. Exactly. Weird. All right.

Well, that was tattoos. Everything there is to know about tattoos. Again, go check out our website. Look up 37 really terrible tattoos and it'll bring up a pretty cool show for you. And if you want to know more about tattoos, search tattoos in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and it'll bring up this article by Tracy Wilson. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this horrific amputation from Amber about her father.

Hello, gentlemen. I just finished listening to the podcast on amputation. Of course, it was wonderfully informative as always, but I have a bit of anecdotal information which you may or may not enjoy. Why I'm not an amputee, my father was. You discuss how they prep the patient in terms of anesthesia for a digit. You get a little numb for a limb you go all under. In 1988 in Columbus, Ohio, my father had the lower half of one leg amputated due to complications

from diabetes. No, man. Since he was a diabetic who did not take care of himself, his heart was not strong enough to be put under. And so at the age of 38, he had the heart of a 98-year-old and what they did instead of anesthesia was perform a spinal block and then put him headphones on his head so he could not hear the saw cutting through his bone. He did make it successfully through that surgery, but sadly passed away that November

as a result of his diabetes and this was in the 1980s. And that is from Amber Nicole and she said, feel free to share this. It's pretty awful. Yeah. Well, thanks, Amber. We're sorry to hear about your dad, but yeah, thanks for sharing it with everybody. No, I understand. If you're on the path to diabetes, maybe this will make you think twice.

Seriously. Yeah. If you want to warn your fellow stuff you should know listeners based on your own experience, we're always happy to pass along good info. You can tweet it to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at discovery.com and you can hang out with us at our website stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

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