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