Mod That Bod

like an hour and a half. That's too long really for any episode of tech Stuff. So we wanted to break it up into two parts. And the second part is really going to be more about implants and some cyboard type stuff and some artistic expression kind of stuff that really goes more along the fringe of body modification. It's not the stuff that that you know, you typically see when on an average day out in In this episode, we do the weird stuff. Yeah, we do the weird stuff.

Let's get back to talking about modifying bodies in weird ways, or what some people would call weird ways. I would call them weird ways. But I'm such a normal kind of boring guy decorative ways. I would say next next on our list, while we were talking about piercing um is subdermal implants. Yeah, yeah, we've we've talked about talked about piercing. Let's talk about actually putting stuff under the skin.

Other lots of different versions of this. Now subdermal. The hint is in the name, right, subdermal, so it's beneath the yes, so so so so Again, the epidermis is the skin that you can poke. The dermis is the more permanent layer below that. And then and then you've got subdermal, fatty, muffily, some other layers, and we'll talk about a couple of them. Uh so, Yeah, the sub cutest is this layer below the dermists. Actually, subdermal plants go between the cutest lick layer and the facia, which

is the fibrous tissue that serves as connective tissue. So this is pretty deep stuff. And the reason for that is these are shapes that people put under their skin, so they protrude outward. Normally it's in some places fairly visible, like your forehead, not my forehead. I'm not going to do this. A person's a hypothetical person's forehead, forearmed, sometimes the collar bone area. Uh, really can be anywhere, but

these are the typical places it tends to be. And so people who are into this kind of body modification will usually pick a fairly simple shape because it needs to stand out when you when you're looking at the person's you know, wherever the implant is, that you can recognize what the shape is. Otherwise it's just gonna look like a lump, like a blob, and that's kind of yeah. So usually it's a fairly distinctive, simple shape that is designed to create a visible bulge in wherever the person

has chosen to have the implant. So stars, hard beads, sometimes you just round beads are are common form that I've seen. Yeah. Uh, And to do this again this now, when we're starting to get into these levels we're really talking about, you need to do your research because now we're getting into surgical procedures. Anytime they're making an actual cavity. In fact, pocketing kind of fits in this too. Anytime they're making an actual cavity in your body, now you're

talking serious surgical procedure. You need to make sure that the person who's going to be performing. It is not only sterilizing all their equipment, but that they are experienced in doing this. Preferably, you would like to find a

body modification specialist who has medical training. It is. I believe it's technically illegal for people without medical depends on where you are, Yeah, it's It varies by states and regionality, right, there's some states that are like, WHOA, We totally didn't ever think anyone would do that, so we don't have anything on the law. However, having pretzels with beer is still terrible, right, We've led an actual low still on the books in some places. So if you want to

talk about crazy laws. Where I grew up, it's illegal to eat fried chicken with a fork and knife. You have to eat it with your fingers. You are joking? Are joking? I'd say horse walks into a bar and bartender says, why the long face? I am being perfectly serious. However, I should add that this was a publicity stunt because Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up a branch in Gainsville, Georgia, and Gainsville, George is the poultry capital of the world, and so as a publicity stunt, they made it illegal

to eat fried chicken with a fork and knife. So it was a joke law on the first place. I am completely horrified by our legal system right now. I'm a rural bumpkin. So anyway, um, yeah, so not a lot of not every place has legislation on this because frankly, people didn't think I was gonna do it. But really, what's going on here? Here, here's the process. They make

a surgical incision. By the way, you might be lucky and get some kind of ennis that for this, but more likely than not, you're you're not going to get it because an aesthetic that is perhaps a topical anesthetic maybe maybe because I think you can get a hold of those pretty easy. You might just get some ice on the area before they get started to numb it. Because anesthetic that is legislated, that's heavily controlled in most places, so most places don't have any kind of authority, they

can't use it. So you have to be willing to endure this without any like actual super anesthetic. So they make a surgical incision and then they insert something called a dermal elevator. Tell me, tell me what a dermal elevator is, Jonathan, Well, it's not it's not gonna have otis on it. So it's not mechanic. It's uh, well, there's no moving parts. It is mechanic in the sense that you have to put mechanical stress on the end

of it. Okay, So imagine a spatula or a butter knife that's medical grade, so sterile eised all that you've made an incision. The artist that inserts the dermal elevator under the flap of skin between the subcutest and facial layers and just just levers it, levers it up a little bit, yeah, to slip whatever, separating the tissues so that there can be something inside there and making essentially an internal pocket inside that area. And then um gently

perhaps actually usually it's not so gentle. They there's a pretty usually it's a pretty sharp whift push of the you know, honestly, it's a band aid off kind of situation. I would rather, you know, if if I were going to do that, I would rather happen quickly. They put the implant underneath that layer and then they suiture it close. Now we're talking like again, Now you gotta worry also that the implant itself has got to be absolutely very sterile,

very sterile. Originally it was stainless steel, which could cause problems, so they did switch. Yeah, today it's a silicone or silicon. I'm sorry, right, and then correct myself. It's okay, it's okay. We'll get the silicon later because we're talking about Mr Warwick. But but he's at the end. Um. Yeah, so yeah, it's silicone. They also sometimes use implant grade teflon, but that's more rare. Silicone is by far the most common stuff they use to make these designs, right, and they

shove that in, suture it into place. Uh. There's there's a high risk here of multiple things going wrong, and healing from these things takes a long time, much longer than a tattoo, much longer than a typical piercing. Um. We're talking months and months and months of healing. So uh, there's obviously the danger of infection. That's a big one.

There's also the danger that your body rejects the implant, that your body essentially identifies the implant as something that is trend Yeah, something that's trying act, and in this case, you would then you know, suffer some pretty some pretty irritating side effects until you either we're able to treat those symptoms, or you would have the the implant removed. Not keep in mind this implants also going to possibly shift things around a little bit, so you might not

look the way you did before the implant. Once you have an implant taken out, um, you could have plastic surgery to have that corrected. So plastic surgeons, it's perfectly reasonable. It's within societal norms. It's what they do. It's perfectly reasonable for them to alter a person's experience appearance to be closer to whatever the special ideal is, not whatever they want, just the social ideal. If it's outside the social ideal, like, if it's outside the social norm they

are not allowed to do it. Yes, plastic surgeons are not allowed to do subdermal implants, transdermal implants, some of these other things we're gonna be talking about. In general, it is against their oath to do that. They can make someone look more like everybody else, but they can't make someone look less like everybody else. Crazy, right, Yeah, Yeah,

it's getting into weird. Like Ugly is Pretty Territory, which is a young adult series that I don't know if anyone listening to the show has has read they were they were cute books. Um, but I take ute books about a dystopian future wherein everyone gets a lot of

plastic surgery. Yeah, I definitely take issue too with it, just from the idea of it's okay for for for you to alter a person's appearance in one sas circumstances, but not in the other and not hurting anyone, right, and the obviously it's like it's like, well, what's normal do you write? And for body modification, I would prefer it if there were plastic surgeons who could do this, because they're the ones who are going to do it

in the most safe way, hypothetically. Hypothetically, Yeah, we have a story about that too, because I've got a there's a guy, boys, there a guy so subdomal, we've got this, You've got the whole healing, the healing process is slow. You've got the danger of rejection, danger of infection, um, and then the risk of damage to any other tissue that's surrounding. I mean, for for example, nerves running through your skin. If you if you mess with one, bad

stuff can happen. That can technically happen in any piercing, you know, But but but you know, the larger the the operation, the greater the risks, right, I mean, just that makes sense. Uh, and uh you know that. So yeah, dangerous stuff, and I would prefer it if it could be done by medical professionals. But that's a that's an issue. Another interesting one is um dermal anchors or transdermal implants. Oh, this, this is one. This is one that you just like. Okay,

so I don't dislike it, but I don't know. I can't decide whether the subdermal ones or the transdermal ones are the ones that make me feel the most uncomfortable. I I really enjoyed reading about the transdermal ones they're

at It's fascinating. Okay, So so what these do. They're they're like a subdermal implant, and that you are you are implanting or a trained professional with sterile materials is implanting a little bit of something into your skin, but a little bit of that little bit sticks out and the skin heels around it. And therefore and you have something that's visible that frequently will allow you to um to screw different studs in and out to change the

appearance of your implant. Yeah, so for subdermal obviously subdermal, meaning that's completely under the skin, So you're just looking at a design that that is in your flesh. In your flesh transdermal trans gives you that there's the hint

there it goes branches. So you could have it designed so it looks like you've been uh impaled by something theoretically, or you could have spikes along your head, which, by the way, seems to be the most popular implementation of this particular kind of implant that I have seen in all the body modification research I did. I've seen a lot of a lot of little flat metal pieces that look like they're just inlaid directly into your skin, or

gemstones for fancy occations. If you're attending the Academy Awards and you don't want your your spikes to impale someone when you give them a hug on the red carpet, you switched to the gym stones. I would I would keep the spikes, um, but you would, you know, And it looks a little bit like a like a very fancy mole. Yeah, a lot of the time. So interesting.

Another interesting bit here is ah there. I remember seeing a video of this years ago, and the story actually turns out to be pretty awful as it goes on. But I remember a story about a guy who invented an approach to two pays that was a little extreme. I thought, I thought, wow, this is preferable to hair loss. But his approach to two payes was to do a transdermal implant that was snaps, So you would have four snaps.

I think it was four, might have been more than that, but four snaps on implanted underneath the skin of a subdermal plugs and then and then you would be had the other snaps on the other side, on the underside, right, and he would knock it in and it had this great sound when he was putting it into place, like it sounded like, you know, like like like that. That's what it sounded like each time. And so I remember seeing this and thinking like, this is extreme. Who the heck?

I mean as a bald man, and I'm not I'm not bald by choice. Yeah, this was this choice was forced upon me. Uh. I was like, yeah, I think I choose bald that But anyway, the story actually has a pretty horrifying turn. So Anthony pig Nataro as the name of the plastic surgeon who came up with us. First of all, Um, one of his patients that he was operating on died. Uh it was I think it

was breast augmentation surgery. And she she died during the process, and and and he had a whole uh legal problem with that, and you know, I had to deal with that then. To make things even more tragic and and horrifying, he gets out of prison and his wife starts to get sick, and it looks like she has pancreatitis, and in fact there's the possibility that they might need to have a surgery, and he really advocates for the surgery, and she gets a little suspicious about what's going on.

And it turns out she finds out he's been poisoning her with arsenic. So he goes like an upstanding citizen. Yeah, nice dude. Um. So yeah, he gets he gets charged with a various various poisoning related charges. Um. I think I think he might be able to get out of jail this year. Actually, uh, and was he was contesting last I saw he was contesting a a decision from the judge that upon his release, he would be required to be under some form of supervision for another five years.

And apparently he stated that because that was not told to him at his previous trial, it cannot hold up because he was informed of that at the time when he should have been. So he's saying that it's a legal uh mistake that was made and so therefore he should not be under supervision. The d A in this case has essentially called him a sociopath. So not a happy story. But that was the very first time I had ever seen anything about transdermal implants. It was this thing,

this tupe a thing. I had never seen it before. I was a kid at the time, or at least a teenager when I saw this, this video. And uh, now, I mean it's not like I know a lot of people who have transdermal implants, but I have seen them, especially if you go to places like Dragon Con. You see all sorts of folks in various subcultures there. Yeah. Um, and now I think I think that I've actually muddied our waters here and confused transdermal and microdermal, And well

they're very similar. Microdermal is really just a subset of transdermal, So microdermal really the big difference there is that they try to use smaller surface anchors, which are the little flat parts that that go underneath the skin. So those are the parts that are uh, that are are under your skin so that it holds the jewelry in place, but there. And they tend to be the smaller things like the little gemstones or whatever. But you could just as well do that with transdermal if you wanted to.

Transdermal does tend to look like it tends to be applied to stuff that's bigger. Microdermal same sort of approach. If you've ever seen anyone who has like this little jewel stone just sticking out someplace from their body, and that doesn't seem like you could normally it's not like a like a labre piercing or something. You know, it's next to their eyeball right, So it's a possibility that

it's a microdermal implant. Uh. These implants tend to have a lower rejection rate than transdermal and subdermal do doesn't mean that you're going to get away without any problems, but it does mean that the odds are better. Um, they tend to have holes in the base, the flat part that goes under the skin, and those holes are meant for tissue to grow through them to help. Yeah, so it's supposed to provide stability. Now, of course that means that you have to wait through the healing process.

And again, you don't want to get one of these somewhere where you're gonna brush it against stuff all the time, because that's just gonna make the healing process take even longer. It also increases the chance of rejection. There's also something called migration, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Uh, stuff can move around a bit, and you don't want that because then you're going to get an effect that

was not what you wanted. Um. And there's also the idea of uh, you know, like surface piercings, which are kind of similar like service piercings are. Um. These are the piercings that involve longer pieces of jewelry that go through the whole. So we're talking like service piercings. Might be above your hip bone you might have seen some people who have those, or it can be uh, you know,

along an arm or whatever. These are longer pieces of jewelry, sometimes several inches long or more like two inches long. They go underneath the skin. You see the ends of it. From what I understand from the sources i've read, surface piercing is one of those things that's best left as a temporary jewelry. So in other words, you use it for whatever you're going to do, Like maybe you're part of a performance art and you want to have the

corset look along your back. I've seen that where people have had surface piercings that are hoops all down their backs and then they lace together like it's a corset, uh, and not pulling the way that of course it would, but the design is created in a way that would look like there might be there might be a little tension just to give the full effect, but not like tied tight. You would not want to do that. Um. It's by the way I have seen that it is

a dramatic effects, pretty gorgeous. It's yeah. Even even someone who's yeah I see, I'm like, wow, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, it definitely it makes you look twice well. Again, better left as more of a temporary thing, because there are issues with migration with those two where your your skin is a living thing. It's it's the large store get on your body, as everyone knows, and it does stuff.

It doesn't just stay put. Yeah. So um, that's that's something else to keep your wind like stuff don't stay where you thought it would. Now we get to uh, super fun times, right, this is this next one is one day. I'm just gonna cry for the rest of this podcast. Jonathan came to my desk earlier and was just like, why did I watch the video? Why do people in the Netherlands do this to their eyes? We are about to talk about eyeball implants, yeah, also called

eye piercing. Yeah. Why So In two thousand two, the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery developed an implant. It goes into the superficial interpalperable conjunctiva in the eye, which is essentially the white of your eyes. It's it's this clera. Yeah, it's it's a which is a protective layer that that wraps around the eye from the cornea in the front all the way to the pcular nerve in the back. It's a it's horrifying people. I mean, okay, I don't

I don't judge. I don't judge. If you're from the Netherlands and you've had this process, you are insane. But I'm not judging. I'm just making an observation. No, okay, okay, all joking aside. Yeah, this is an implant. They take a platinum alloy, which is the jewelry itself, and the jewelry tends to be a very tiny and very simple shape. In fact, there's only a few shapes that are even available, things like the one I kept saying was hearts. So

the procedure involves immobilizing both eyes. They use an esthetic drops. This is very similar to the kind of stuff you might get if you were to go get laser eye surgery. It's a good thing Chris isn't here because he would totally flip our laser ice surgery. He turned a shade

of green I have never seen before. Yeah. So anyway, they then they then cut a little pocket into your eye just this is essentially the same thing as the surface anchors that you see, uh for the other kind of implants we've talked about, but in this case, it's small or it's in your eyes and you're and they put this little implant so that the the design of whatever it is is laying flat against your eyeball, so you you if you were looking at someone who had

one of these, you'd see their pupil, which would be unaffected because obviously you don't want to do anything that's going to affect the person's vision. And then next to it, if they were looking off to either the left or right, depending on what side they got it on, um, you

would then see the little piece of jewelry. Uh. This is not legal anywhere outside of the Netherlands, and in fact, I think there are places in the United States that are actively uh making it illegal because before it ends up taking off somewhere else because I guess they saw pictures of it, went why you no way? Yeah, that's essentially the response. Yeah, and then uh oh. In order to do this, by the way, they would that that incision,

there's more than just the incision. Then they inject liquid between the layers of the eyeball where the implant space will go. So I actually did what a video of this procedure, and then I needed to go to my happy place for a while, which by the way, was farm Burgger. I was actually able to eat. I wasn't so upset that I couldn't heat. You have to make

me really upset before I can't eat. Another fun thing that you can do to uh to the white of your eye is tattooing um back in Supposedly back in three and eye surgeon tattooed fake people onto the all white eye of of a man who had lost sight

as a child due to poison ivy exposure. So this was an attempt to give this man something a normal appearance, right um and in in modern not in modern times, but in the in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, UM eye doctors would inject inc into patient's eyes to cover up UM disfiguring corneal scars. Uh. This, this process is no longer really necessary because um uh pres reconstructive surgery has has improved to the point that

it's okay. But um but yeah. As as of two thousand seven and at a Canadian body mod convention, the three volunteers UM had ink injected with hypodermics. Regular tattoo needles were not working out. They tried and it Jonathan is so upset by this drill coming up my eye. Yeah yeah, I can handle my arm or my back,

but my eye. I Supposedly, after about after about forty pricks with a tattoo needle, UM, they gave up that many and and went went into um went into using a hypodermic and uh and and and died there the whites of their eyes blue. Supposedly, the ink spread out over the next few weeks um to to cover the entire white of their eye, rather than just the portion

that had been tattooed, and um, blue eyes all over. Supposedly, yeah, and uh and and this was inspired by Dunes Freeman, who you know, all in taking the spice and have the bright crazy blue eyes. Spice mus flow, spice must flow. And yeah, it's not it's not really legal or recommended.

Even the people who have had it done said, you know, have have gone on record about the number of terrible things that can happen if you if you do this, and so you know, another way you can get blue eyes is through argeria, which is just the consumption of lots of silver. I don't silver turns your skin blue and your eyes blue as well. Uh, the whites of

your eyes blue. Do not do that. Colloidal silver has been a kind of a folk cure for certain stuff because silver does have antibacterial antimicrobial properties, but the ingestion of it it tends to get deposited into your various subcutaneous layers and then you I'll show you a picture in a second. It looks like Papa Smurf. That's very exciting. Yeah. Anyway, so before we get into the cyborg element of body modific cation, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.

So let's talk about some of the high tech stuff. Now we've got all those out of the way. And and by the way, if any of our listeners have any of these body modifications, again, my hat's off to you. You know, whatever you do to identify who you are, that's cool with me. Just blame it on me being a total boring social norm kind of guy and squeamish about little squeamish about eyeballs a R. It's a magnet

implants what people are getting magnets implanted in them, like Magneto. Yes, well not like Magneto didn't have magnets implanted, probably not on purpose anyway. Now, this this is people who want to harness and extra sense. Oh I see, So this

goes beyond our our normal senses. So you know, a whole touch and sight and smell and sound and taste and uh and uh and and Sheldon Freud supposedly this this gives them these are these are magnets that are subterminally implanted, that that give people the ability to sense electromagnetic fields. Yes, so the idea here is that they're very small, and they generally tend to get implanted a little bit off to the side of the path of the finger on normally the ring finger on the non

dominant hand. And the thinking there goes that if something goes wrong with the implant, that's the least useful finger. Yeah, that that if you were to suffer any nerve damage or just that you know, it wouldn't it wouldn't interfere with your normal activities because that finger also has the

least amount of impact when it comes to gripping. So and they wanted it to be off to the side obviously, because if you had to do an emergency gripping situation like let's say you're rock climbing and you suddenly lose your grip and you need to hold onto something, Yeah, it could tear out or you could crush it um. Either way is bad. You know you don't want to do that. Also, again, magnets, we're talking about surgery again, it's a surgical procedure that's being done usually by people

who are not surgeons. By hackers tend to be kind of they're on the forefront of this stuff. You know. They're biohackers or grinders. As I found out, they're also called um tend to uh to be pretty far ahead of the curve on this so uh they Again, the procedure tends to be done with either some topical local and aesthetic or nothing at all. They will create an incision, insert the magnet, suture it shut. The magnet is small and tends to just vibrate when it comes into when

it comes near something like a magnetic field. So you would be able to tell when electricity is flowing through something because that creates a magnetic field. Right, So you would move your hand near something that's that's running electricity through it and you're like, oh, I s yeah. So that's the idea, is that you have created a brand new sense. Now, granted, this sense is still very much aligned with touch, right, it's a it's an advanced form

of touch. It's extended our touch, and but it would give you ability to touch stuff that normally you wouldn't be able to like magnetic fields electric fields. You'd also be able to do cool things like lift paper clips, you know, without having to pinch your fingers paper clips, right, I know how much effort it is to pick up a paper clip, So thank goodness we found a solution to that problem. Yeah, any fairest material you could stick

to a little bit that. The magnets tend to be pretty small and not very powerful, so it's not like you would go to the refrigerator to get yourself a cool drank only to be stuff. Yeah, which would be hilarious, but not actually what would happen to you? However, that being said, there is one situation I could think of where you would need to be really careful, and that's if you had to get an m R. I yes, that that that would be something that you would want.

Um perhaps you know, printed on a note in your wallet or something super powerful magnets there, I mean that could rip right through the flush of your finger. Yeah, and you could end up with a hole where your magnet used to be. Um yeah, dangerous stuff. So that's one one case where I would think you would need to be very careful. Uh. And you know, I read an interesting article and wired. The guy who wrote it actually had one of these put into his finger as

part of the story. I'm like, wow, that's dedicated journalism. I do not think I would have done that. He also had the problem of the magnet breaking at one point, like breaking into pieces, and for a while it wasn't working at all. In his finger turned black or part of his finger turned black, which you would think would be something of a warning sign, But eventually his finger

got better. He had a little bit of an infection from it, but he fought it off and then because it's a magnet, and eventually reformed itself enough so that it works again, although he says not quite at the level at what it did when he first got it done. Oh bio hackers. So there have also been a couple of groups that have created some devices that actually extend

abilities beyond just detecting magnetic fields. So in this case, they've created sensors that can that are tripped from various things like it could be a temperature sensor, it could be a distance sensor, and when it detects something, it will then create a aknetic field which activates the magnet. So in other words, you're giving yourself even more extra sensory perception abilities. One of the demos I saw had a guy with a blindfold on who would extend his

hand out holding one of these devices. Uh, and the device would detect through I think radio waves kind of like radar when it got close to something else, So he could actually detect when something was in front of him even if he couldn't see it. Cool. So so for medical purposes, for example, um we we we could give these to the blind and compared it could easily

be something like that. But at the time when I was looking at the way he was just demonstrating it, it was only when he was pretty close that he was able and and it was kind of like like if you've ever seen someone using a metal detector. It was kind of like sweeping across the area before figuring out, oh, it's it's at this point in front of me. But with improvements that that would be that's an interesting thing

to watch. But the whole thing with the demo, I just kept thinking, or you could just look because they were they they weren't using a blind person as the exist, so I was just like, wow, this this sure does take away that whole tough thing of looking two feet in front of you, but that was me being started or at this point it sounds like where you know it's it's you could just extend your hand the extra two inches and some. To be fair, this is early

early days of bio hacking. It's obviously not something that's meant to be rolled out to a wide audience, but it's got interesting potential. Then we've got r F I D implants. This is where we talk about Kevin Warwick, whom we have spoken about In a previous episode of tech Stuff. Chris and I did an episode I think we talked about cyborgs and we brought up Kevin Warwick. He's often referred to as one of the early cyborgs, mostly because he's just done some kind of pioneering work

in implanting technology into himself. Uh not personally. He actually had other people performed the procedure, but he developed what it was that was going to happen. So he's a British you know, mathematician and scientist who um he worked with some people to have originally a microchip, a chip transponder implanted in his forearm and they used local anesthetic. They did the procedure and it allowed him to do

things like unlocked doors or turn on lights. Essentially, if you've ever worked in a place where they have electronic locks and you have a little key card that you swipe in front of a detector we do here, um, then that that's the same sort of thing, except that instead of a card, he just had to wave his arm in front of it. Which you know, again, it's

showing the potential for the technology. It wasn't meant to be like this is going to be part of me forever and ever and ever, right right, And it wasn't being rolled out to everyone. Yeah, you know, it's not like everyone who worked in that building had to go and get surgery so that they could work. But it did allow him also to be tracked by a computer whenever he was moving through the Department of Cybernetics at the University of Reading. And that implant it was not

meant to be permanent. It was removed after he had done essentially I think a couple of weeks of this and sort of showing the proof of concept. Now and the Science Museum in London, isn't it sure is, or at least last I heard it is. I mean, I assume it's still there, they can track it if it's not. But then since then a lot of people, not a lot, but several other people have done r F I D. Chip implants to kind of do everything from control basic

electronics to activate other things like doors and lights. UM. And this is the same technology that that if you're if your dog or cat or other pet, I suppose you can put them in really whatever you wanted to um has has a microchip, then that is that is the same basic idea exactly the microchips are. They essentially have a signal on them that when you have a a device that can read the signal, can come up with whatever the code is, and then you can type

it into a database and find out where that animal belongs. UM. So yeah, if you've ever microchip to pet, it's the same basic concept, except it's being used on humans. Now, obviously, this is already something that has also been legislated in lots of places, and clean the United States, several states have made it against the law to implant or in some cases, like I think Georgia, force the implantation process

upon people. Right, some of the worries I think where that UM that either people are going to microchip their their children or convicts employees, which in some companies feels like the same thing either as children or convicts or children convicts. I got an idea for reality show. I

talked to you after the show. Anyway, Yeah, so two thou Warrick also had another surgical procedure done where he had about a hundred electrodes attached to one of his nerves, which allowed him to have some mural control over devices like a wheelchair or a little electronic hand. So that's kind of cool. But anyway, that's that's kind of like the that's the next step, right, These are the science

fictional kind of ways. And I think we can end on the Mondo Bizarrow weirdo way, which was the Stelios Arcadius also known as stell arc the performance artist who had a human ear surgically attached to his forearm. It was grown, It was not It was not a human. It was a cultured ear. Yes, it wasn't wasn't harvested. There's not a van go walking around saying I can't hear anything but my ears. Art. This was actually grown in the lab and then surgically attached to his arm.

He at least at some point had plans on also getting a microphone and transmitter also part as as part of this ear project, so that you could quote unquote here what the ear was hearing, because it's not a working organ, it's just cosmetic. It's a cosmetic ear. Yeah, it would have to be attached to and and I mean they create a whole sense organ and then create pathways to the brain for it to be something that's working. Yeah, and we we are nowhere near that level of biotechnology. No, No,

the human ears is actually very complex. Yeah, now we could possibly do the whole microphone transmitter thing. That's well within the realm. By the way, the whole the whole project received some criticism from people who require plastic surgery to reconstruct ears, either because they've lost in and maxed in or there's a broth to effect or whatever. They've criticized it saying that you know, there are a lot of people who don't have the money to have this

procedure done, and this guy seems to just be wasting it. Um. So there's been some criticism on that level. And then there are other people who say, like, well, art is art, and you know who is one person to judge what another person's art is. That's an argument that's outside the realm of tech stuff thankfully. Alright, So, um, Lauren, you're ready to go and modify your body now that we've had this discussion, not not. I think I'm gonna yeah good,

I'm doing all right right for this current moment. I did check in tattoos, I want to guess, but okay, alright, well, well I think I'm gonna pay my rent instead this month that personally, you know, priorities good, yeah, place to live first, food, then tattoos. Alright, So, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do you have any suggestions for

future episodes? I recommend you get in touch with this must know alright, just a tech stuff at Discovery dot com or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You can find us there. We have the handles tech Stuff hs W at both locations. We look forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear from us again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com