Stuff You Should Know - Transdermal Implants: Body Art or Nightmare Fuel?

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Transdermal implants are just one in a number of procedures under the banner of extreme body modification. We don't like to yuk yums, so we'll offer a fairly straightforward look at this niche art form.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry over there.

And she has a donut beneath her skin on her forehead, which makes this Stuff You Should Know, the transdermal implant edition. Although technically that'd be subdermal implant. Right, good point. There's a difference. I'm kind of excited about this. Are you?

I'm excited too, because as we record live today, this is the last full-length sesh of the year. We're doing some shorties tomorrow. Yes. And then I'm doing movie crushes tomorrow, and that's it, man, we're done for, like if you look at calendar days, almost three full weeks. You got a big day tomorrow, don't you?

Yeah, I'm recording a lot of shows. That's a lot of episodes tomorrow. Five, six, seven episodes tomorrow. So are you sad we're not gonna be recording for a little while, or are you like, yeah? No, I'm super glad. That's fine, I'm gonna take it personally, because I feel the same way.

No, I'm not saying I hate all of you people, but... It's gonna be nice. These breaks are really good. Yeah, we get to like recharge us. Tear the covers off of our textbooks. Yeah. Turn them back in for a substantially less amount than what we paid for them.

Yeah, after the bell rings, we go down the hall throwing all our papers around and stuff. Yeah, exactly. That's the best. Everyone's like, Alice Cooper's playing. This is work. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's gonna be a great break.

And it means good quality, family, holiday time. Not having to research stuff is nice for a few weeks, and then it makes us eager to get back and start researching stuff again. And not only that, we get to go on the road shortly after we get back. Oh, that's right. We're gonna...

Baking in a shout out. Prepare for this. Yeah, we're doing a show in Seattle, The Moor on January, that would be the... Thursday. The 16th, I think. The 16th, yep. And then we'll be in LA for the Heart Podcast Awards

on Friday. Right. No events other than that. Right. Because we're in and out. Sure. Then Saturday, we're gonna be at Sketch Fest with the Castro.

Yep. For a live show, brand new stuff. It's the 18th. 18th? So yeah, it's gonna be a big jam. That's right. And then I'm doing a movie crush on the 19th. Right.

And this year, I'm not gonna do a single guest talking about a one movie. I'm gonna mix it up and get the audience involved. Very nice. Gonna have a slate of people on stage. Uh-huh. And be wandering around the audience with a microphone. Oh, wow.

And be having a lot of fun. I'm like nervous just thinking about that. Really? Oh, yeah. I'm not even gonna be in the audience, because I'm not gonna be in town. I'm sorry. Uh-huh.

But the idea of being in the audience and you picking me, oh. No, it's voluntary. You know, I'm not gonna just stick a microphone in someone's face. That's classy of you because- And this is the cream of the crop of stuff you should know, Listers.

They're not- Sure. They're not these drunk manors who jump on the mic in Q&A and- Going off on main again? They're nice, but we had a couple of drunkies at the end that tried to ruin the show. We totally did, didn't we?

Yeah, they're fine. Yeah. It happens from time to time. It happens from time to time. Not in San Francisco or Portland, though. Yeah, man, they know what's up. Or Seattle, Seattle, sorry. Yeah, but we're hitting Portland in March.

We haven't announced those yet, but- Yeah, Portland and Vancouver, it looks like. Yeah, and then we're debating other various places for 2020. Yeah, write in, let us know where to go. Yeah. Okay, so off to Transdermal Implants, Charles. Yeah, this is one kind of an extreme body modification

and I wanna go ahead and say right off the bat, we don't like to yuck people's yums. Right. I'm gonna do this as straightforward as I can, but it is hard in some of these circumstances to not recoil in horror at what you're seeing. But the reason I feel like I can say that is I think that's kind of the point

for a lot of these folks is they wanna, they want to sometimes scare your average square walking down the street, you know? Your L7? Yeah, otherwise they wouldn't, every picture wouldn't be them going eh, right in the camera lens. A lot of them do that.

They're inciting a reaction and I get it, it's fine. For sure. Yeah, they're freaking out the normies basically. Not all of them. I was reading, I actually looked up psychology of body modification. It's interesting. And this person wrote, I think it was from a tattoo place

or a piercing place and they're like, despite what most average people think, there's not some sort of psychological defect driving people to do this stuff. Right. But there is some psychology to it and frequently the most common explanation for doing this is self-expression.

Yeah, sure. Can't really fault anybody for that. Sometimes it's kind of like to show your affiliation with the tribe or something like that. Like if you're a grinder, which we'll get into, or a raver, or a goth. Yeah, or a mukmuk or a possepoom. You sound a million years old right now.

And then let's see, what was the last one? Oh, sexual enhancement also can't fault anybody for that one. Yeah, we'll talk about some of those too. So, but I don't wanna leave you high and dry here because I don't have any issues with anybody doing whatever to their own body for whatever reason, short of serious mental illness. And I mean, I think that does come up,

but it's very, very rare. But I do, if you look at pictures of the after or the during, it can make one a little feinty. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, we're curious people. Like if I ever sat down across from someone with a split tongue and elf ears and things like that, and say, hey, you know, what's going on with that?

Let's talk about this. You say, how about them cubbies? That's a big baseball fan. Right. No, I'd wanna pick their brain a little bit. And the likely response, like you said, would be, it's just self-expression, man. This is just how I feel I wanna project myself.

Sure. He's like, you wanna project as a tubby old bearded guy. Yeah, you're gross. So we're just kind of, we're dropping in on a subculture that we're not affiliated with in any way should perform, but we're also, this isn't to like parade them around and point and gawk and laugh. So if you're here for that, move along.

That's right. Okay. All right, boy, these are weirdos. No, I'm kidding. So we're talking specifically about transdermal implants, which we'll get to, but those are a, I think you said an extreme form of body modification.

Yeah, EBM. Yeah, E, it's very important. This is not to be confused with the Mountain Dew version of extreme. There's an E at the beginning of that word, which legitimizes the whole thing tremendously. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

You were a child of the 90s. You know what I'm talking about. Even though I never had Mountain Dew. What? I know. Never. I don't think I've ever tasted Mountain Dew. What about Mellow Yellow?

I think I might have had a couple of those when I was a kid. Okay, well then, yeah, you're fine. You're covered. Is it about the same? Virtually the same thing. Although Mountain Dew is branched out, they have some new freaky stuff.

Oh, they got all kinds of colors and flavors now. So there's one that's blue that Yumi accidentally got from a vending machine the other day and brought home and was like, I can't touch this, but I'll bet you'd like it. You can drink blue stuff. This is the epitome of blue stuff that you shouldn't drink,

but it's highly addictive. The taste is like, oh, that's awful. I want another sip. Oh, really? That's so weird. What? It's a very addictive cotton candy-ish taste with a little bit of blue raspberry mix,

and I'm not sure what it is, but my brain is still quivering from it, and this is like a week ago. I don't know what a blue raspberry is, so I'm already confused. But I really, you gotta think, Chuck, there are people who do engage in trans-termal implants listening to this,

and they're like, these guys are talking about the wildest experience they've had recently, and it was blue Mountain Dew. Yeah. That's how, that's where, this is our stage in life that we're in. Yeah, that's fine, I'm comfortable with that. Okay, so it's an extreme form of body modification,

which is a larger umbrella that covers a lot of different stuff, and some stuff that's been around a really long time, like tattooing, piercing, gauging. So with gauging, there's like a hole in your ear, and you can make it pretty, pretty big. That's actually a traditional custom that dates back a very long time,

and our pal, Utsi, apparently had zero gauge years. Oh, really? Yeah, he was from what, 5,000 something years before? Yeah, and I've also seen it in the lip. Yeah. The cultures that have the disc inserted in the lip. Mm-hmm. So yeah, this is something that is very important

to point out that it is our Western culture, to us, it's like, oh, this new thing that these kids are doing, but for many... Tattoos. Like for thousands of years, other cultures across the world have done similar things like that. Right, and that also raises a really important point, too. Body modification can also include something

like a pierced ear, or a nose job, or getting an eyelid job. Right. And... A little nip it, or a tuck? Sure, and these are typically people modifying their body to reach some sort of social ideal of beauty,

a norm of beauty that they feel like they don't have naturally. So they're modifying their bodies. With extreme body modification, like, transdermal implants, the intention is to go the other way. Right. But it's still on the same coin,

it's just a different side of that same coin. Right, it's a beautiful thing to them, but I think they realize that it's gonna freak out the normies. That's right. So it's win-win. Yeah, it is. So we're not gonna get into all these,

because this is mainly on these transdermal implants, but we do need to mention things like beating. We talked about the tongue splitting. Do you know what beating is? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, you're gonna lay it on me? Sure. Well, I was trying to lay it on you, so that's all fair.

Beating, or genital beating, or purling, is inserting, like, a bead or something beneath the skin, or on the top of the skin, or somewhere under the skin, on the penis. And that is a million percent for sexual enhancement. Yeah, we'll go over some more. For her pleasure. In terms.

You know what they used to say? That's what it said on the bathroom wall of the gas station. No, it was, like, ribbed. Yeah, for her pleasure. Right. Sure. They also have ribs instead of pearls, but ribs. So, like, a ribbed penis.

I got you. But those are subdermal implants. They're meant to be under the skin. They're not supposed to break the skin. Right. Again, of the genitals. That is true. The tongue splitting, apparently, there's

one form of tongue splitting you can do where you have movement over both sides. Oh, no, like, independently? I think so. That's pretty awesome. I haven't seen it in action, like, on YouTube, but I read that. That's neat. A couple hours ago, and I did not go to YouTube on purpose.

Right. Yeah, I've suffered quite a bit the last couple days from my curiosity getting the best of me. And then there's the subdermal implant, like you were talking about, which is different. If you've ever seen anyone that looks like they are, what are the Star Trek? Is it a Klingon that has the big puffy?

I'm not a Star Trek guy, so. But whichever one's had the very prominent brow, a lot of times, these subdermal implants can look like that, it's something under the skin that's a shape of something. Like, I saw, actually, I saw a pretty cool one. Oh, yeah. On the top of a guy's hand, he had a skull under his skin.

Yeah. And then I got him in, I was like, that's kind of awesome. It seems like transdermal implants, there were subdermal implants first, and then transdermal implants kind of made a splash. And then everybody's like, this is too dangerous. Let's go back to subdermal implants. And now those are a big time thing.

And apparently, the success rate for them is much greater. And they're meant to just be like you were saying, completely under the skin. And they come in all these different sizes and shapes. And the sizes in particular are meant to just kind of slowly stretch the skin like you do when you gauge your ears. Yeah, you can go bigger and bigger. Right.

So you just pull one in and let your skin kind of loosen up around it. And underneath the skin, there's that shape of, what'd you say, a skull? Yeah. I've seen skulls, hand grenades, throwing stars, which may or may not have just been regular stars with pointy edges, hearts, music notes, cherries,

like whatever. And you can put them anywhere on your body. And it's just like that shape protruding from underneath your skin. Or the most famous one, the one I saw, I think first, because I think the kid who did it was an early adopter, that donut shape on the forehead, which I'm not sure what that, if it's just aesthetic

or if there's some sort of symbolism behind it or not. But it is a definite look. It's not like Dr. Manhattan, is it? I don't know who that is. OK. Is that like a 70s disco group? No, it's the Watchmen. It's character from the Watchmen.

What did he? Graphic novel slash movie slash now. He had like a glowing thing underneath his skin, right? No, it was on his forehead. He had a circle. But it was glowing. No, no, it didn't glow. I mean, he could glow sometimes.

OK, maybe that's what I'm confusing it with. But there are now sub dermal implants that have LED lights. Oh, wow. So that not only is your skin this shape protruding, it also lights up. Did you see that thing about people having magnets put in their fingers? Let's talk about that for a second.

All right. People have magnets in their fingers sometimes. Yeah, Shannon Larratt is like kind of a huge extreme body mod artist, which is something we should say. The people who implant this stuff are called artists. The people who have it done to them are also called artists typically too. It's kind of like art.

I do the art and I am the art. Exactly. But don't call me a doctor. Right. Especially not Dr. Mann Hen. But Shannon Larratt was an early adopter of magnet fingertips. But it didn't work out all that well because of the way that they were produced.

Yeah, that is called sensory augmentation. And the idea here is you put a tiny magnet in your fingertip and you can sense things like magnetic fields. I mean, you become a magnet, at least the tip of your finger does. You like check out this paper clip. Now it's attached to my finger. What are you going to do, Normie?

Well, it said there were some funny things in this. I got a couple of articles on this. One of them was what you need to know about getting magnetic finger implants by George Dvorsky. George Dvorsky? Yeah, you know him? Oh, yeah, he's a huge I09 writer. Oh, OK.

So one of the things that said it could be useful if you work in electronics, you can feel the live wires versus the dead wires. And I'm just thinking, they have devices that do that. And then they listed a few other things. And finally, it said you can also do things like pick up bottle caps and paper clips. It's pretty neat.

But it's an early example, or I should say primitive example, of biohacking, which is like trying to do things. It's kind of like a part of the transhumanism umbrella, where it's like Stelarc with the ear. I knew that was coming. OK, of course. He's like our go-to poster child for transhumanism. So this is actually following through on biohacking with

your own body. And there's actually a name for that community, that very specific set of people who are actually doing this stuff. And they're called grinders. Yeah, and that's like a magnet or an RFID chip or something like that. If you really know you're going to be working at the same office for a while, you might have that your RFID card

implanted into the top of your hand. Never lose it. And then you just swipe your hand and freak out your normie coworkers. Yeah, this one guy from Wired. And he wasn't even listed as the author, maybe because he just wanted to remain anonymous, or she. And this person got the magnet done as an experiment

for the article. What? And it said four months after the thing basically, eventually he tried to get it taken out by his family doctor. He said, my family doctor tried to remove it and failed. The implant shattered into pieces, and it no longer worked as a magnet. He said, but four months later, I lost all the effect.

The spot darkened, and the magnetism returned. Because the magnet, being a magnet, had reassembled itself in my finger. Wow, that's awesome. Isn't that amazing? And it reassembled itself into a skull and crossbones. I don't know. He said it wasn't as sensitive, but he

could pick up bottle caps. That's pretty good, sure. Which is ultimately the point, you know? Yeah, it's all very interesting. And I know we're laughing a lot and stuff, but it is unusual. So forgive us if you're out there and you have a magnet in your finger and you're offended by us.

Yeah, go listen to some other episodes of stuff you should know, and you'll catch our vibe. You'll know we're not laughing at you. All right, should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's do that. Let's get some magnets and plant it in our pinkies. And we'll be right back.

["Living Things With Chuck and Chuck"] Living things with Chuck and Chuck. Chuck and all the things that you should know. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

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You know, one of the things I saw about having magnets implanted in your fingers and actually, any kind of implant that involves metal, and MRI is a terrible idea. I saw that. And sometimes you might need an MRI. It's medically necessary. It will pull it out of your body.

Oh my God. And I saw two different things. I saw one article where a guy said that you need to let them know so they can account for this. And I saw another one where they said, no, they won't let you do this. Sure. So I don't know if accounting for it means like

hanging your hand up the side, or which is not possible, I don't think. Maybe temporarily amputating your hands and then throwing you through the MRI and then reattaching them and hoping for the best. That sounds like something out of a movie though. Ripping a magnet out of your finger in real time. Oh my gosh.

So everything we've talked about basically up to this point has been subdermal implants, which are completely under the skin. They either are used for like biohacking or just for adornment. There's something else in them. This is what we were actually talking about today. I know.

Those are called transdermal implants. Right. They bear a striking resemblance to subdermal, except they are even more extreme body modifications because they're implanted under the skin, but they also protrude out of the skin, which means they break the body envelope, which makes them extremely risky

as far as this whole thing is concerned. Yeah. And I've heard it's also called single point. Is another name for it? I've seen those for microdermals. Oh, really? Yeah, which we'll get to. Yeah.

Because yeah, it definitely wouldn't be single point because there's the second point that they make. What does that mean? I think so. Yeah, I think single point is, we'll talk about it with microdermals. All right, so the idea of the implant though is if you imagine a permanent jewelry maybe

or if you look online, the first thing that you will likely see is someone with a shaved head and little horns or spikes or any kind of adornment coming out of the head. But this guy, what was his first name, Mr. Al Ward? His first name Chuck was Joe. Joe, right.

He was one of, it seems like the first people. If not the. Who got this done in 1996 from- Steve Hayworth. Yeah, and Hayworth seems to be still a very prominent body modification artist. He's called the Mod Father. Oh, okay.

Well, there you have it. Does subdermal implants. He designs and sells them like crazy made out of silicone. Yeah, because he worked in medical tool engineering, which we're not saying that's a qualification. Oh, it definitely was in this case. But it probably helped. Oh yeah, no, no, no.

This guy basically, he grew up in his father's company. His father created cosmetic surgery tools and Steve joined the family company and he'd made cosmetic surgery tools and was very successful at it. First with his father's company and then later with his own company. But he also said, well, you know,

this is kind of a cool idea too, using this stuff for body modification. So not only did he invent, design, and create these tools that are used for this stuff, he also invented the procedures and he also invented the implants. So he was, he truly is the Mod Father. Yeah, and it's not always a metal mohawk of spikes

or anything. We should talk a little bit about a gentleman named Dennis Abner, who's no longer with us. If you have ever poked around this community, then you know who Dennis Abner was. He was known as... Stalking cat. Yeah, stalking cat or just the tiger.

Or cat man. Or Tigris or cat man. He was a veteran of the US Navy and this was from his obituary written by Shannon Lorat from the Mod Blog. And he worked as a programmer and a technician and he had, his totem was a tiger and a female tiger. He was a Huron, Native American of the Huron tribe.

So he was actually? Okay, that's what I couldn't find out. No, he definitely was. If he just followed along that tradition or if he actually was. He was an actual Huron. Okay, so he also had implants and things above his lip to kind of puff it out like a cat.

He had metal whiskers. Yeah, he had his upper lip surgically severed to make it more cat like. Yeah, what's that called? I can't remember, something ectomy though. I'll tell you how it ends. It ends with ectomy. So yeah, his ears, his nose, his lips, he had fangs

and not just like, you've seen the little vampire fangs. Like these looked like legit cat teeth. From what I saw, and maybe he did both, but he did, he engaged in tooth filing to give himself fangs. I also saw that he had his adult teeth removed and he had fang dentures implanted. Well, they had to be because these were super long.

Right, so I wonder if he did teeth filing at first and it didn't suit his needs and then he followed up with the dentures. But he was doing all this. In face tattoos, we should mention. Extensive facial tattoos. Yeah, like tiger stripes. Right, and he looked like a tiger.

Like if you were like, look at that guy. What do you think he looks like? Anyone would say a tiger. He nailed it in that respect. He totally did. But he was still in the process of, he said, I saw two different things. One that he was trying to emulate the perfect balance

between a human and a cat, a tiger. And he wanted to become the synthesis of those two things. Another was that he was just trying to become a cat. He was working on being surgically altered so that he would have to walk on all fours and that it would be comfortable for him. Just like ultimately that was his end goal. Either way, he died by suicide

before he reached his goal. But this was like his life's passion. This is what he did. He worked so that he could make money and he could repair computers. And then he took his money and gave it to underground surgeons to carry out these procedures or body modification artists

to carry out these procedures on him. That's right. One quote I saw was, it's brought me fame but not fortune. Right. And he liked the fame. If you look at the pictures of him, he's hamming it up at the Ripley's,

believe it or not, opening and things like that. Like he really enjoyed being in this spotlight like this. Yeah. It looked like he stepped off the Broadway stage from cats. Sure. Except it was real. I bet he had lifetime free admission to cats. And he was like, I can't believe it actually closed.

I was just liking it after the 1,000th time. Have you ever seen cats? Yeah. That's why I'm ragging on it. It's terrible. Is it really? It's the worst. I mean, I've heard things like that

but I've also heard people that are so excited about this movie. Do not trust those people. So you're not gonna see the movie? I think a good life motto, no. A good life motto is don't trust anyone who says they like the show cats. Okay.

But anyway, one of the show. You're from a former cast member. One of the things about, yeah. I'm Tom Tugger and the traveling cast. Was that one of the names? Yeah. I think that's the only one I can remember. One of the things that we should say about stalking cat

is that in the body modification communities, widely considered to have suffered from a serious mental disorder like body dysmorphic disorder or something like that. That he was the most extreme version even though he gets lumped together with all people who engage in extreme body modification. He was an outlier in that he probably did suffer

from a mental illness. That's right. So back to the implants. They're anchors under the skin like we talked about. Are we talking about how they do these? Yeah. And kind of what they are and how they do it. But these anchors, it seems like nowadays

they're mainly clover or figure eight shaped. That's what I saw in that thing you said. Although I did see that they could be round or circular, round and circular, this is the same thing. Or rectangular, they can be custom made. They're made from what's called implant grade titanium. Or Teflon. Yeah.

Or silicone. Right. I don't know how they could be silicone. I don't either because it seems like it'd be wobbly. That seems like more of a sub-dermal thing, but maybe not. The key is this, Chuck, whatever you're, the post or the anchor of the implant is, it has to have gaps, holes in it.

That's right. And the reason why is because scar tissue is supposed to grow in these holes and really cement that anchor into your skin. It embeds it. Not an anchor if it's not anchored. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole point.

Is that it's not slipping around in your head or wherever you have it. Sure. And it is stuck there. And it's protruding through the skin via the post that's part of the anchor that's sticking out of your skin. Yeah, so anytime you see a little devil's horn or whatever, that is screwed on.

And they can just screw that thing off and screw on a Homer Simpson head. That's what I want to see. Sure, that would be good. It's a Mohawk of Homer Simpson head. Like Dr. Klong from A Fistful of Yen from the Kentucky Fried movie. I don't remember that.

He had a prosthetic arm and he could like, or hand, he could unscrew it and put on things like a flamethrower or like a spear gun or something like that. You've seen Kentucky Fried movie. I have, it's been a long time though. It's time you saw it again. It's even more juvenile than you remember

but it is just fantastic. More juvenile than when I was 12 and watched it. That's amazing. I've seen it in like, yeah, because when you're 12 you're like, oh, this is how grownups think, great. I can't wait to be a grownup. And then you become a grownup. You're like, no, it's just the Zucker brothers.

Right. So there is some controversy around all this and I looked up the legalities and from what I saw, like if you're a tattoo piercing place, you have definitely been certified and you have your operating license and all that good stuff. Probably have an autoclave to sterilize everything. Probably so.

If you live in a basement though, that's a different story. Well, what I saw was the courts have still, and this was from an article from last year, the courts still have not been asked to rule on extreme body modification. Because the question is, does this qualify as surgery or is it like piercing? Is it the same thing as piercing?

They're scalpels, they're sutures. Yeah, from what I've seen, everybody in the body modification community is like, no, that's surgery. Right. Like it's pure and simple. It's a type of cosmetic surgery. The reason why it seems questionable

is because every other cosmetic surgery you've heard of is toward this norm of like a norm. Yeah, Western norm. Right. Whereas this is the opposite way. So people are like, what are you doing? And you do this in a tattoo place or a piercing place? Right, and you're not being coerced.

Right, but it's still surgery. Yeah, absolutely. So should we go through the process? I woke up excited about this part today. I can't wait. We'll kick it off then. Oh, okay. Hi, I'm Chuck.

I would like multiple hands giving high fives to each other down the center of my head. Whoa, welcome in, Chuck. Have a seat. I'm a body modification artist or what you think one is like. All right. You like it?

Right. I'm kidding, Chuck. I'm just teasing. Let me take that again. Oh, well, please come in. Have a seat. My thanks. For some local anesthetic, it's illegal,

but I want you to have it if you want it. Yeah, I mean, there could be some local anesthetic or there could just be ice. Are you breaking the fourth wall right now? Oh, sorry. I've heard sometimes there's just ice. Yeah, it could be, which is really saying something because people like you

in the extreme body modification community endure a tremendous amount of pain in doing this procedure that we're about to describe to one another even though you're my customer. All right, so what happens next? Wait, wait, sorry. End scene.

All right, can we go back to normal? Yeah. All right, good. So what happens next? It's actually very straightforward. It really is. So the artist, body modification artist slash underground surgeon will make two,

so you'll say I want a metal mall hawk, which is a bunch of spikes coming out of like the top of your head about where your forehead ends. She didn't like my idea about the hands high-fiving. Oh, the hands high-fiving, I'm sorry. No, whatever. So how many do you want? You want, like, so you've got one hand coming out

and another hand coming out, so you have two? I want them all in a row, so I want four sets of two hands. So that's eight total hands facing each other. Okay, so I'm gonna figure out and show you where I think they should go. I'm gonna do that by using like a Sharpie and marking those spots.

And you'll say, yes, that's perfect. I've got eight dots on my head right now. I think that's great placement for these hands. And then on each side of those dots where those implants are gonna be, I'm gonna measure off about an inch, about two and a half centimeters and make another mark. And that mark is where the actual incision goes.

And in each of those eight spots, and again, Chuck, bear in mind, you have had maybe some ice, you turned down the anesthetic because you're super legal, right? You're going to feel a scalpel make a slit in your head eight different times, about an inch away from where those implants are.

Right. That's step one. That's gonna be like a drive around Paradise Island compared to what's coming next as far as pain goes. Yeah, I mean, that sounds bad enough, but then what needs to happen? Because remember, your skin likes being very close to your head.

Yeah, it's not loosey-goosey. It's not loosey-goosey, but you need to make it a little bit loosey-goosey because you gotta slide that anchor over from your incision point to its final destination. Right, which is why you have two points marked off. The place where the implant's coming and the place where the incision is.

So how do you separate the skin then? You separate it with a little tool, sort of like a tiny little spatula. Invented by Steve Hayworth? Oh, did he invent this? Yes, he did. I thought it was... This guy is legit, dude.

No, I'm not saying he's not, but I thought it had been long used in plastic surgery. From what I saw, he invented the dermal elevator. Okay, well, it's a dermal elevator. It's a little metal thing that you insert and you use it as a little pry bar, basically. Yeah, it's like a spatula-looking thing. To pry the skin up from your head.

Yeah, so what you're doing then is creating what's called a pocket. And creating this pocket, so you've got the dermal elevator, now it's pressed, like you separated the skin from the top of your head. I think you got a little room now. Along all of these incisions,

you're probably doing it one at a time, I would guess, because you don't want these incisions hanging out, waiting for you to be done with the first. But you slide that dermal elevator under, finally, until it's under the spot where you've marked off where the implant is going to come out. And then you take another,

maybe either the scalpel again, or a dermal punch, and you make a little hole. And then now you have that pocket, and then you have a hole. And you take the implant, which again consists of an anchor with the post coming out of it.

And you put it into the incision, move it through the pocket that you've created with the dermal elevator until, and then just kind of move it along your skull. Pops right out of that hole. Until it pops out of the hole. And the whole reason for this specific procedure is because you want the hole

that the implant's coming out of to be smaller than the anchor of the implant. Which is why you make that incision, so you can move the implant in, and it won't just protrude through the hole that you've made for the implant to come out of. That's right. You do this, in your case, eight times.

After that, after what I just said, and the implant's in an imposition, then you suture. And then I guess you do it seven more times. That's right. I can't imagine sitting through one, let alone eight. Yeah, I mean, it's not my bag.

Seems painful. I got my ear pierced when I was in high school, and that hurt bad enough. I used to self-pierce my own ears. Well, you know, the funny story is, I got my ear pierced on spring break senior year with all my buds, the dumbest suburban white boy thing to do ever.

You were like, George Michael me up right here. Basically. And they were all standing around going, jitterbug. So yeah, I got that done. I actually thought that was part of the story for a second, you sold it that well. We got home, and my mom got really upset,

and cried, so I took it out. She cried it right out of your ear? She did, and then she felt bad, and my mom re-pierced my ear. Oh, wow. How about that? Why did she feel bad? She was successful.

In what, crying it out of my ear? I think, you know, because I was one of like eight guys, and I was the only guy who had it cried out of their ear. I gotcha. I think she just, you know, came around. It was that initial shock. That's great. Shock and all.

The normie came to love it. Yeah. So one other thing, so we're talking about how it's not our bag, and that like, just having your ear pierced was painful. One of the things I saw in an explanation why people do this, is for the pain. Some people get off on the pain.

Yeah, I figured that. But also, some people want to kind of push their comfort zone of their pain tolerance. They're not necessarily getting off on it, but they feel like they're increasing their endurance, their grit, whatever you wanna call it. They're gaining something. Right, yeah, possibly a spiritual experience from it,

that it's not just like, you know, there are people out there who don't just necessarily think like you and me, it's like, let's avoid pain at all costs. Some people run into that stuff head first, forehead first, and say, cut some holes in this, man. Yeah. So that's cool.

Yeah, I mean, and that's basically the long and short of how you do that. You've got this post sticking out then, it's sutured up. However, here's what, well, I was about to say, here's what they don't tell you. I'm sure they do tell you this, is the success rate for transdermal implants is super low. It's at like, what, is it 20%?

So I've seen, yes, 20% is what I saw it to. All right, well, you know what? That's a great place to break, because that's the first downside, and we'll talk about more of those when we come back. 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

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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. 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. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 20. So Chuck, you said the success rate is 20%. What does that mean? Well, that means that 20% of the time, everything is great. You don't get a skull infection. 80% of the time, a number of things can happen. Infection is obviously one of the biggest risks, because you're working with people

who may have things fully sterilized or may not. I'm sure they take it really seriously now. And I'm not saying it's all in someone's basement, and they fish a scalpel out of their pocket. I'm sure they take it really seriously now, but infection in hospitals is something that's a problem. So it's going to be a problem here. Yeah, it's not even necessarily that the tools or the implant

are infected, but you have just broken open the envelope of your body, and now there's a direct pipeline into one of the most vulnerable parts of your body, your skull and your brain, from the outside environment. Just come on in, bugs, and if you've done that eight times in your head, and technically you have 16 holes in your head now, eight for the implant and eight incisions.

That's 16 opportunities. Exactly, and so even if you keep the thing clean and really keep up with it while it's scarifying and healing, it's still, you have an open area for the outside environment to come into your brain, and that is one of the frequent infections that happens is a skull infection. You might have a skin infection, it might go away,

but it might have just migrated to your skull and is eating into your skull, which can become an abscess in your brain, which is a real problem you can imagine. That is one of the risks of transdermal implants, and it's such a risk that people in the body mod community are like, this is nuts. We really probably shouldn't be doing this.

Let's go back to subdermals. Oh yeah? That's what I saw. Is your finger on the pulse? Oh yeah, I'm super hip. I drink nothing but Mountain Dew Blue all day. I'm trying to picture you now being a, like a cub reporter, a podcaster who infiltrates

the organization. I get talked into doing a donut forehead thing. Yeah, because they don't believe you, because you got to prove it. Right, I'm like, can I just do some cocaine or something to prove it? You're like, well, when I was younger, I got a BB lodged under my skin in a BB gun fight.

How do you remember that? Did that really happen to you? Oh yeah, I thought you remembered. No, I was taking that from Royal Tannenbombs. Right here. So yeah, so there you go. You've had a subdermal. Yeah, it was unwilling and involuntary, but it happened.

What happened? Did you just pop that thing right back out? I didn't, a custodian at my school did. Oh man, God bless him. That's amazing. God bless her. Oh really? Wow.

Oh man, she was the definition of grizzled. She's like, I can help you with that. Whipped out her pocket knife and just went to town. Man, the custodian at my elementary school, these people are like teachers, like you grow up with them. This is my high school. Yeah, we had the same guy for seven years, Roger. Yeah.

And he was amazing. He was like six, three, he was tall and lanky. And he had this big, long Cadillac with a front license, it's so 70s, a front license plate that said, Maharaja, an air rush. And he was so cool, cause my dad was principal. So like he hired Roger and Alfred, the two guys who like worked there.

And they were there the whole time. Like I was buddies with those days. How could you not hire Roger? Maharaja? When he shows up with that, with that car. They were good guys. That's neat. All right, so I feel like a scum wad

for not remembering my lady's name. Well, I mean, I think the fact that my dad was the principal, I got to know a lot of the staff more than a normal kid might. Oh, that's true. Cause I was there in summers and hanging out and stuff. Great, they helped you with homework? Oh, yeah.

So where were we? We were talking about- You were infiltrating. Oh, okay. Here's some of the other things that can happen, happen aside from infection. Obviously rejection, anytime you're introducing a foreign object to the body, it really doesn't want it there.

So it strives to reject it. So when it does work out, it's sort of not luck, but it's your body failing to do what it wants to do, which is get rid of that thing. Right. And it can also move. Migration. Migrate.

So I guess if it doesn't, if that tissue doesn't grow, I'm curious, I guess the suture is supposed to hold it in place enough while the tissue grows? No, I mean, I think you're not supposed to touch it for a while while the scar tissue is growing, but I don't know that the suture has anything to do with it. The suture, I thought was just from the incision site, which is an inch away.

Oh, I thought they sutured around. I don't think so. Really, they just punch it through? Yeah. And I think the hole is small enough that it's not really gonna move as long as you don't mess with it while it's scarring. So it's like the little snaps on a trucker's cap.

Kind of. Interesting. One of the other things that can happen too is if some people don't use dermal elevator, some people use butter knives instead, which as I saw, there was another wired article from 2006 that I saw. Wired is all over this kind of stuff.

Yeah, Steve Hayworth was saying that's like trying to thread a needle with a Cadillac. I guess a Maharaja Cadillac, right? And you just don't want to use a butter knife. And if somebody's using a butter knife for this, just stop. Be like, stop, stop. I'm gonna go find somebody else.

But even if you use a dermal elevator, you can go too deep and pull too much skin away and start to mess with tendons and nerves and all sorts of stuff you don't want to mess with. And that can cause a lot of problems too. I have, as you can see, I sliced my thumb open last week. And the tip of it is still completely numb. Cutting a bagel with a serrated knife.

Yeah, and it is completely numb. Yeah, you know, I didn't want to take away from your glory, but I cut a significant portion of my finger off right here. Like, so see all this? Up to the nail, just off. And it took a while for the feeling to come back, a very long time. Like I was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna get feeling

back and I did, it comes back. It just takes a little off for the nerves. But isn't that spectacular that my finger is intact again now? It is. Some regrow fingertips. So I guess what I'm trying to say is keep the faith, buddy. Well, I got another story since we're on this.

All right, well, then I'll come up with my own again too. And this was two and a half months ago. I kicked my bed frame with my shin. And Emily heard the sound and I hit the deck. And you know, I tend to overreact. And she was kind of like, you know, all right. You're like, this is worse than when I got my ear pierced. I told her I was like, something happened.

This was not a normal shin kick. Oh yeah. And there was a lump and if you touched it, it was clearly some kind of exposed nerve. Like Hain would shoot all the way through my leg for like two months. And now the left top of my calf is still numb two and a half months later.

Wow. And like a large like seven inches worth of my calf. Is it one of those things where it's probably best that it's numb? Like you'd be in a lot of pain if it weren't. Well, I mean, it's basically healed now, but that lump and the nerve damage was, now the lump is just now gone,

but it was pain like I've never, literally never felt before. That's crazy. It was awful. Oh, you didn't like it? No, I didn't. So this is not my thing. I understand.

I'm not down with this, but the whole thing is leading me to a suggestion that we tackle nerves and nerve damage at some point. Sure. I've been wanting to do one on pain itself, but it's such a big topic. We haven't had time to tackle it. Right.

But we will. Okay. Are we done with this? We're probably not done yet. Oh, we were going to talk about microdermals before we leave. Yeah. So those are way safer,

because the idea is that it can be done with like a piercing gun type machine. Yeah. So it's this. Or device. It's the same thing. It looks like there's a piece of jewelry or some adornment growing out of your skin,

but it's much, much smaller than what a transdermal anchor and post can handle. Much smaller. Yeah. And so you basically just kind of make a hole and dig the skin away just a little bit, just to create just enough of a pocket to put basically a mini transdermal post and anchor

in there. But it's so small that you can just kind of move the skin over in a hole and pop it in there and then the skin closes back over it. And now you have a little post and you can screw a little stud or diamond or whatever. And it just looks like, if you've ever seen somebody with a stud on their cheek

and it looks like a jewel mole or something like that, that's a microdermal. They actually have a hole in their face not going all the way through. Right. That they just, there's a post kind of in there. They're apparently easier to get out to, which is a big problem with transdermal

is that once they're in and it scars over, you got a real problem if you want them out. They're hard to remove. Sometimes surgery is involved. And then I saw, even though they were called permanent, that eventually they all kind of need to come out at some point. Right.

I'm not sure if that's what the science is behind that. Mm-hmm. When you get an office job. I said it. That's usually the science behind that, yeah. I know the last thing I wanted to do was read over some of these adult piercings. Yes, so have you, how many of these did you look up?

Most of them. I could not resist anal piercing. Yeah, so two things, Google image beware. Yeah, that's a, I think that's fair. That's a good COA. And also if you're a kid, if you're a mom or a dad. Prepare to see what an anal piercing looks like. Or just, you know, you might not want to hear

any of these things. But for me. Or if you're playing this for your class for some reason. Right. Teacher, this might be a good time to stop. So for males, it lists the following, ample angst. Do you want to describe any of these or just? That one, how does it spell?

Cause I didn't look up all of them. A-N-P-A-L-L-L-A-N-G. That one I didn't see. Is that the glands piercing? I'm not sure. I only looked up about half of these. There's another one that begins with an A that's a glands piercing.

The apidrovias. I think so. Yeah. Where it's a piercing with two studs, a stud on either side. That goes right through the head of the penis. Again, for sexual enhancement. All these are for sexual enhancement, right?

Well, almost all the time. Sometimes it's for, you know, aesthetics. I gotcha. Let me, there's something called a deep PA. Something called a dolphin. Something called a didos. Foreskin piercing. Boring.

Something called a gweaches. Have you seen that? No, I gotta see that one. Yeah, you can check that out. I don't know how to describe it without losing our show. How does it spell? G-U-I-C-H-E-S. Pubix, Prince's wand, a reverse PA,

and then the ever popular scrotal ladder. What is that one? Just look it up. And these are the adult piercings listed for females. Anal, of course, men and women. Christina, the old clitoris piercing. The foreshet, the horizontal hood, the hymen, interlabia, Isabella, nipples.

Boring. Outer labia, princess, Albertina, the triangle and the vertical hood. There's a lot of things to be pierced on a vagina apparently. There are. And you're right, we really, we probably can't describe the gweaches. Yeah, it's just sort of like no man's land.

Yeah, yes. That's a really great way to put it. I think you just saved the day, Joe. Okay, good. Well, if you want to know more about body modification, there's an article on how stuff works. You can check out. It's a great place to start.

Maybe it's your bag you'll find out. And since I said maybe it's your bag, it's time for listener mail. This is about when I was talking about that story, about the Googling, the two words. Oh, yeah. That didn't match up or whatever. Chuck mentioned he had a friend who would Google

two random words to get as few results as possible. I got really excited. This practice is called Google sculpting. And it was used in a subversive poetry movement called Flarf. You ever heard of this? This guy wrote. I've heard of Fralf.

Okay, well, this is different. Okay. I wrote my senior year English paper on this in high school. Flarfists would use Google sculpting to create the worst poems they could muster using lines from the few results they would get. It started as a way to expose scam publications that admitted every entry collected a submission fee

and convinced the poets to purchase the compendium. But Flarf was so fine, it quickly gained a life of its own. This is from Chris De Silva in Philadelphia. And he sent his paper along and I read it. And just so everyone gets this, I'm gonna read out an example of a Flarf. This was by K. Salim Muhammad. And his poem was called Gold Mine.

I type slobbering anus into Google because I'm one big fat lazy exterminator nut. Some people think I'm a gluttonous porcine, very man-killing gold mine made of sweet gold. Beautiful. And he said this poem references the process in creating Flarf in the first line. So he explains how he wrote the poem itself

by compiling the search results from Googling the phrase slobbering anus. Very nice. And that is from Chris De Silva from Philly. Thanks a lot, Chris. That was great. Google sculpting. Google sculpting.

Flarf. Flarf. Goaches. Gweaches. Gweaches. If you want to get in touch with us, like Chris De Silva from Philly did, you can go on to StuffYouShouldKnow.com

and there you will find all of our social links. And if you want, you could also send us an email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, pierce it somewhere, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody,

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.