Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Tattoos

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why tattoos are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Tattoos. Known for being art. Famous for being skin. Many people don't think much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why tattoos are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of tattoos? So I don't have any. Me neither. For some reason, the Internet algorithm thinks that I'm really into getting a tattoo because I keep getting things on like Reddit and Twitter where it's

like either really creative tattoos or tattoo cover-ups where someone gets a tattoo of like a jiggly puff and regrets it and then covers it up with a big panther or something. So I've been seeing a lot of tattoo content and it's not, I really don't think it's because I have a secret desire to get a tattoo. I'm not afraid of needles, but I don't like pain and I regret so many decisions that I make that I don't want another one. You don't want another decision hanging over you? I don't want another decision, not a single other decision. I'm happy to have no freedoms. I also do not have tattoos. I think I would get one. And then my wife, when we had our first date, during the date, I was like, what are you up to the next few weeks?

And she said, I'm flying across the country to get my first tattoo. Wow. And then she did. And it turns out you were the tattoo artist. I'm very elaborate with a first date. I go all out, new business, new city. It's great. But yeah, so I think I would get one. I just haven't taken that plunge. And I really like when people have them. It's cool. Yeah. It's like, it's something where you gotta, you gotta really like it because it's gonna be on you. Yeah. And it is removable. And also I deal with that, you know, so.

Yeah. It's all good. Right. In researching this, I pretty rapidly found this is yet another humongous topic. This is almost like trying to do a podcast about all of fine art or all of world cultures, because it really turns out the modern US, Canada, maybe Europe, we're sort of an outlier where lots of other places in the world tattoos are truly fundamentally profound in their culture. And here, at least in this era, it's more of a, hey, look at this fun art, which I think leads to the feeling we're having of,

do I want that art or not? Because it's a little more elective, a little more random. Right. I think if it's part of your culture where you already have a complex symbology from which to choose makes that decision, I wouldn't say easier, but at least more natural. Yeah. This was very fun to learn about because I think many listeners want to know all the secretly incredibly fascinating things about it. And thank you to Livewire on the Discord, Xcarex, Fakely, many people for suggesting this and supporting it in the polls. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called...

Stats on me. Stats on me. Stats on me. Stats on me. Numbers too. Stats on me. I'll read all these figures for you. For you. Yeah. That name was submitted by Heather E. Thank you heather that was fun we have a new

name for this every week please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible submit yours through discord or to sifpod at gmail.com this really brought me back to college i can taste the jello shot yeah it's sort of it's almost like a one hit wonder for the entire 1980s, if that makes sense. And then it like carried on and all the other eras. People were like, this song is the best song written in the entire 1980s. We're sticking with it. I saw Rick Astley live in Copenhagen. He went to Tivoli Gardens, the amusement park, and he sang this as well, a cover of this.

I'm so glad you went to that show. I also would like to imagine that you bought tickets to a different concert and then it was a prank and it was Rick Astley, you know what I mean? Like an elaborate public Rick Roll. We did actually get a little Rick Rolled because we simply wanted to go to Tivoli Gardens, the amusement park. And then when we were there, we found out that Rick Astley was coming. And so, yeah, we did, in fact, get a little bit Rickrolled by the real Rick Astley. That's so great. And good for him.

Good for him. The first number this week is at least 5,000 years. And that's how long humans have been tattooing themselves. Minim at least 5,000 years. And that's how long humans have been tattooing themselves. Minimum of 5,000 years. That makes sense. Because we've been, as soon as we have created the tools to do so, we have been decorating ourselves. You need a needle and you need ink. Invented the needle and pigments a long, long time ago.

So it doesn't really surprise me at all that it's that old. Yeah. If anything, this is a pretty conservative estimate. This is like not trying to overstretch what we've got as far as physical evidence of tattooing. And one key source this week is a historical research volume. It's called Written on the Body, the Tattoo in European and American History, edited by history professor Jane Kaplan of Bryn Mawr College. And it also looks at the whole world in order to do that lens. She says there's surviving physical evidence of tattooing in Europe in the late fourth

millennium BC. So 5,000 years ago. It's probably older than that. The minimum thing here, we have European physical evidence of needles and other tattooing instruments made of materials including bone and shell and wood. As people look at this ancient history of tattooing, they've tried to develop definitions of it. Another number here is between a quarter centimeter and half a centimeter, which is around between one-tenth of an inch and two-tenths of an inch. That's one technical definition of the puncturing depth for a tattoo.

One-tenth of an inch. In a way that leaves an indelible mark on the body that qualifies as a tattoo. I see. But then also like modern tattoo pens, it turns out they can puncture the skin as little as one millimeter. And then they do that while vibrating up to 3,000 times per minute, which is why modern tattoo pens do that buzzing sound up to 3,000 vibrations per minute. Wow. sound, up to 3,000 vibrations per minute. Wow.

I mean, so if that's the definition of a tattoo, I have a tattoo from a number two pencil that I got in the fourth grade when I was bouncing the pencil on the eraser and it was sharp and then it went right in my hand and I still got a little piece of graphite in there. Oh, look at you. Yeah. We investigated and sussed out your secret tattoo. My secret tattoo, yeah. Gotcha, caught. Still in my hand all these years later.

Yeah, and that's all. I know that was a lot of numbers of little measurements, but it's interesting that like scholars are trying to say this is the parameters of a tattoo so we can understand ancient cultures and categorize things. Like, I don't know, fun. Yeah, that's really interesting. So it sounds like tattoo needles have become more shallow over time. Is that the idea? Like they're able to go less under the skin? Does that make the tattoo, does that change how long the tattoo lasts?

It doesn't. And especially mechanically with the modern pen, it can just go into your skin so many times. It doesn't need to go so deep. And then also we have different inks now. And it also turns out there's a range of just tools and mediums for doing tattoos. Some cultures use ink. There's also a lot of cultures doing scar tattoos. One super complex one is the scar tattoos of the Betamari Bay people of West Africa, where it's a very fine texture all over the skin. where it's a very fine texture all over the skin. And then a whole nother medium is one called skin stitching, and we'll link CBC coverage for that. It's particularly common with First Nations people in the Yukon and in the Arctic. The artist uses a needle and thread,

and then they run the ink-covered thread through and under the skin and take it back out. But that leaves line art behind in a threaded way. Hmm. That's so cool. And it makes me slightly squeamish. Yeah. The sewing element, you just have clothing making in your head, maybe if you're not familiar with it. And it's like, whoa. But it's been going on there for a long, long time. And people do it all sorts of ways. But it's been going on there for a long, long time. And people do it all sorts of ways. Canada's National Post says that some stitching skin tattoos are done to celebrate an upcoming baby. You do it on the woman's thigh while they're pregnant.

Oh, wow. And other people do other ones for life milestones or personal stories. And also during French and British colonization of what's now Canada, some missionaries tried to enact local bans on that kind of tattooing because they considered it unchristian and too strange. And so this has been kind of a fraught thing as well. Man, why are missionaries always like taking away everything fun? It's like no tattoos, no skateboarding, and no Coca-Cola. Right. Like, I want to represent my culture and my religion really positively. No dancing is weird.

You know, like, that's a weird way to do it, folks. Come on. Yeah. Party a little bit. Yeah. That's our criticism of centuries-old missionaries. Hey, cut it out. Lighten up, missionaries.

And then on top of the different mediums tattoos can be in, they can also have purposes beyond art and beyond symbols. Because the next number here is an ancient example. The number is 61. 61 is the number of tattoos drawn on Ötzi the Iceman, who was a significant find of a dead person. Ötzi is a modern name we gave to a 5,300-year-old human. They were found mummified in ice in the Alps near the Italian-Austrian border. When I went to Copenhagen, I went to one of their museums and they had a bunch of these like bog mummies and ice mummies. I don't know, it kind of makes you a little breathless because like some of these mummies are so well preserved, you can see their facial expressions.

Wow. With these mummies, when you can see these very distinguishing details about them, like tattoos, you know, their hair color, what they ate, they can like, you know, do analyses on like the contents of their stomach. It makes it feel so much closer in the timescale. It's like, these were people that lived back then. They ate food, they felt things, they had a fashion style, they decorated themselves, and they were real feeling people. Otherwise, I think sometimes we have this concept of, well, it's not so much an intentional idea, I think, but just this feeling of like, if people were from long enough ago, they didn't think or feel like we did. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's fascinating. So what were depicted on these tattoos? Utsi did not have super artistic tattoos, as far as we can tell, because most of the tattoos are simple lines in a bracelet-like shape. The most aesthetic element of it is that they're made with ink where one of the ingredients is bits of quartz rock, and that sparkles a little bit. So also he might have had slightly sparkly tattoos, which is cool. Why don't we do that now? It sounds pretty good. It might be super painful or I don't know, putting rock into it, my head just thinks, ow, ow. But, you know. Yeah, maybe it's bad for the health.

But, because, like, that's a game changer for me. If I can get a sparkly tattoo, I'm in. Yeah, a little glitter, a little fun. A little bit of glitz, a little glam. And as far as the health, these were probably tattoos to improve Otzi's health situation. Because they... Oh, I see. These were probably tattoos to improve Otzi's health situation. Oh, I see. So it had a ritualistic meaning that would help him?

It actually might have been directly physically helpful. Really? Yeah, not just a cultural hope for that. All of these tattoos are located near Otzi's joints. They're on wrists, elbows, knees, ankles. And the dominant theory about it is that people knew how to draw these tattoos in a way that distracted from joint pain. Almost sort of like acupuncture treatments today for conditions like arthritis. Because x-rays of Ö Otzi's bones suggest a severe case of arthritis. And so especially the application of these tattoos might have been

a treatment to temporarily relieve that pain. Whoa. And yeah, I love that this might have helped him feel better. Maybe he got all of these tattoos late in life when the arthritis kicked in, or maybe a few early on for ceremonial reasons and then later for medical reasons. It really opens up a lot of interesting questions about this 5,300-year-old culture that might have had tattoo moves to handle arthritis. I mean, that's really interesting because it's, uh, it, our, our concept of tattoos are something that young people get to look cool. And then when you get older, you regret them because you're like, who wants to be a grandma and have a tattoo of an Eagle on your butt? Uh, well I do first of all. Uh, but also, you know, it sounds like tattoos may have had this history of like it was actually as you get older, you want to get the tattoo because you've got joint pain and the tattoo is helping you with the joint pain.

Right. Like, am I turning into an old person? My knee hurts and I got a huge scorpion drawn on it. I think I'm old. I feel old and out of touch. That rules. Otzi didn't have a scorpion. I just want it to be cool. I wish he did. Is there any evidence that getting a sick ass scorpion on your joints helps more than random shapes.

Like studies of these ancient cultures had the exact jacket Ryan Gosling has in the movie Drive. And that is what knit them together. And with many of these tattooing methods, I realized pretty early in the research that one element of tattoos is just something I never wondered about or asked about, which is exactly how do they stay on the skin? Right? Like, wouldn't they wash off or whatever? Like, that's a dumb question, but I never thought about it. And that turned out to be a quick and amazing answer that we're going to make takeaway number one. Tattoo ink stays on human skin thanks to our immune systems,

and it can eventually get removed by the sun. Well, I mean, I guess if you go into the sun, all of your skin is removed, but that's interesting. Flying into it in space. Yeah. So that's very interesting. Cause yeah, like our, our skin is one of the most self-renewing organs on our body with the, one of the fastest cell turnover rates, certainly compared to like other organs and our skin is an organ. Also our skin is part of our passive immune system. We have a layer of the skin that you're touching is all technically dead. And it is very compact.

All the cells are sort of a larger, more plump cell. And as it dies, the skin kind of forms almost like scale mail on this like microscopic level. And it's like literally difficult for the pathogens to get through those tight, condensed dead skin cells. It's like, it's like a brick wall all around your body. So I am really interested to hear how other aspects of our immune system help us retain tattoos. Because you would think, right, like that as your skin renews, like your skin cells like die and are pushed to the surface that your tattoo would just fade and fade and fade until it's gone. Yeah, exactly.

And from a personal perspective, I am glad you did not know this off the top of your head because there may be listeners who already know this, especially if they got a tattoo. But I just realized what a fundamental question that I've never actually asked about or thought about. And it all comes down to white blood cells and the immune system, like specifically a macrophage type of human white blood cell. And McGill University's Office of Science and Society says our bodies reject most invading molecules and substances. So they try to reject the tattoo dye when we put it into our skin. It's like, whoa, what is this? Yeah, it doesn't have a passport to be in our body and our immune cells don't like that. So it would be considered a pathogen.

cells don't like that. So it would be considered a pathogen. Yes. A tattoo is like attacking and activating your immune system. And what happens is apparently macrophages try to remove it. They have some initial success, which is why immediately after a tattoo is drawn by a modern artist, it fades a bit. Then quote, most of the remaining dye molecules are too large to be picked up by our white blood cells. And then they proceed to eat the dye molecules but cannot digest them. Then they pass the dye molecules on to the next generation of macrophages. And so that is why a tattoo over time can look a little bit blurrier, is that just new white blood cells are in slightly different locations. But in general, that's also why the ink stays. Like we formulate dyes that are

just not something our white blood cells can remove due to their size. So it can't remove it. But why is it just too deep in the skin to be pushed up through the process of skin cell renewal? Like why, why doesn't it just fade from sort of the process? Because the way that like skin cells work is you have deeper in the skin, new skin cell growth, and then as those get older, they get pushed up and then flattened into that dead skin cell layer. So how does the ink not get sort of pushed up with the rest of the skin cells? It's really strange. Apparently, it gets passed down through those layers of white blood cells in the layers of the skin. Oh, wow.

It's extremely strange sounding. And there's also some recent research on this that kind of changed our mindset on it. There's apparently previous work where we thought the dye molecules are getting sequestered into fibroblast cells. And then there's more recent research suggesting it's getting passed down through white blood cells. through white blood cells. So on a super detailed level, we're a little bit still figuring it out, even though this is ancient stuff. Either way, we have the proof in front of us that the body just can't push it away as it renews skin. Like your skin keeps renewing where you have a tattoo. The dye molecules are getting passed down and down as the layers go up and up. Interesting. So it's like, it's going into white blood cell jail over and over again, and that kind of keeps it from leaving the system. Yeah. The other strange thing is that UV rays in sunlight or in other ultraviolet lights can break down those dye molecules. And it takes a long time and a lot

of exposure, but the sun does fade a tattoo in a way that white blood cells can't. And so Earth's sun and other stars are better at attacking a tattoo than your body is. I mean, it's interesting because the UV rays from the sun also breaks down your skin cells. Like if you've ever had a sunburn, you'll know how that feels. You're basically bonking into the molecules and breaking them apart just as like the UV rays can bonk into our cells' DNA, break it, damage it, damage the skin. It's why too much sun exposure can actually cause skin cancer

because you get all this DNA damage. And then if you damage it, it's very rare, but if you do it enough, you may get a cell that the DNA is damaged in just such a way that it turns it into a cancer cell. Yeah. And in a less dangerous level, this phenomenon is also where we get tattoo removal technology in modern times. It turns out that that laser that they're using is flooding your tattoo with light and with UVs in a way that breaks it down in a very tactical and person

chosen way. And so it's all light, basically, if you want to get rid of a tattoo, and then your body is trying to get rid of it basically forever, but doesn't. Yeah, because light, it is physical. Well, it's both a particle and a wave, I guess, but it is directly interacting. The energy of the light is directly bonking into your, interacting, that energy of the light is directly bonking into your, the photons are interacting with the molecules, which is weird to think about, but yeah, it's cool. It's so cool. And I don't think about how my body works basically ever. And so it's neat to say, oh yeah, how do people draw on the human body successfully? It's just a really cool scientific process. And it's also something people have done amazing tattoo art for thousands of years without understanding it like scientific medical way necessarily.

They just figured out how it works and did it. I think I think too much about how the body works because then I get into this state of mind where I'm like, wait, am I what I have to manually breathe now? I forgot how to breathe. Right. It's it's the two ends of a bell curve where you're Homer Simpson forgetting how to breathe, either thinking way too little or way too much. Yeah, exactly. Well, and lots more numbers here about tattoos. The next one is the 1700s AD. Because the 1700s AD, that's the century when many European sailors and navies contacted Polynesian peoples who have a strong cultural history of tattooing. cultural history of tattooing. I'm sure we reacted just nicely to the fact that people already existed there.

I'm sure they're really nice to them. Yeah. Captain Kirk. No, Captain Cook. Captain Kirk. Little out of his element there. Yeah. Certain guys like Captain James Cook got murdered by people who had reason to do it. Anyway, among many effects of this exchange between Polynesian peoples and European sailors, the English language picked up the word tattoo.

It turns out that is a Tahitian word. Okay, that's interesting. So we stole that word. Yeah, and it's partly because there are ancient tattoo traditions in Europe. Let's see, the Iceman is one. Also, the Celtic people were especially into it. But around the 1700s AD, tattoos did not really have a cultural role in most European countries, and tattooing was extraordinarily rare.

And so when they met Polynesian peoples with an unbroken through countries and tattooing was extraordinarily rare. And so when they met Polynesian peoples with an unbroken through line of tattooing, they associated it with them. And we kind of recoined a word in English for that by taking it from Tahitian. Tahitian people use the word tatau. The anglicized spelling is T-A-T-A-U. But tatau, or maybe pronounced closer to tattoo, that was a verb in the Tahitian Polynesian language, which means to strike or to mark. And my favorite thing about the word is it might be onomatopoeia. Oh, interesting. So like the sound of the needle kind of poking the skin? Yeah, apparently 1700s Tahitian tattooing and probably before and after, they would often tap

the tattooing tool with a small hammer to make the skin marks. And so it was ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta all down someone's body to make this amazing line art. And so that might be where they got the word. this ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta They develop a word for tattooing that is just the noise I make when I'm whining. Like, wah. I don't know why I gave myself a baby sound for that. That's not a noise I make anymore. I make different, worse noises. Anyway. You said it, not me.

But in this exchange, it often gets credited with introducing tattoo culture to modern Europe and Canada and the United States to kind of reinvigorate that practice here. And especially Celtic people had tattoos in Europe. But as recently as the 1840s, most white U.S. audiences considered tattoos to be an element of circuses. And like something that you would see on the people in what they would have called freak shows. So much of like circuses was just like, this is not our very specific Western European culture, and therefore, freaks! Right. It took very little novelty and I think really depended on not knowing much about the rest of the world. There was even one key circus performer who helped just introduce the concept of tattoos to 1800s US audiences. In 1835, P.T. Barnum's circus debuted James F. O'Connell as a performer. And this was another Polynesian thing. O'Connell was an Irish sailor who was shipwrecked in what's now Micronesia and lived there for more than a decade and got full torso

tattoos from Polynesian artists and just as part of living among the society. And so then that happened to turn him into a valuable entertainer when he came back to the U.S. and Europe. So is that why tattoos are so associated with sailors? Because they would often travel to these cultures where tattoos were normal? Exactly. Especially people who visited Polynesia or Japan or a few other places where the practice of tattooing did not have a long break in it like it did in Europe. Hmm. not have a long break in it like it did in Europe.

Hmm. I just, it's like, I always thought like the association between tattoos and sailors were just like, they're rough and tumble, so they're tough and then they get tattoos. But maybe the association with tattoos being a rough and tumble thing is because sailors would get it. And, you know, like in the cultures where tattoos were, you know, part of the larger sort of like culture religion, it's like, well, no, it's not like a necessarily like a tough guy thing. It's just, it's the thing that we do. Exactly right. Yeah. Only our weirdest boat men were getting them. And so we said, must be a weird boat man thing. And it was most people getting them elsewhere. I think I even just associate them

with men. Right. You know, like lots of ladies have tattoos now, but there's something sort of masculine about it as like an old practice in my head. Right. The old timey. And then they would get it of like a lady on their bicep and then they flex their bicep and then the lady would wink or something. You know, Popeye stuff. That and when you described a lady tattoo, the entire Nickelodeon television show Pete and Pete flooded back into my head and into my bones. That is a deep cut. Like younger Pete having petunia on his arm and she was in the credits in the start of the show. Oh man, what a good show. That is a deep cut.

Oh, that felt great. Anyway, wow. But yeah, yeah, it was like 1800 sailors in particular. You know, O'Connell was sort of a rare case where he joined Micronesian society and got local tattoos there. Micronesian society and got local tattoos there. And then the crossover is that especially in port cities, a lot of tattoo parlors popped up to give sailors either Latin alphabet writing or simple cartoon shapes or other non-native art styles. And the other thing that helped promote it in the modern US is the invention of the tattooing machine pen. And numbers there, 1876 was an early prototype and patent of this kind of machine by Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison worked on a tattoo pen. Whoa, this guy again. Edison made a version of a tattoo pen in 1876. Later on, in 1891, a New York tattoo artist named Samuel O'Reilly patented a different and better tattooing machine pen. The 1800s, especially the 1890s, of tattoo pens starting to pop up as a machine, that's not that long ago culturally. And in particular, I love that you brought up Popeye, because Popeye the Sailor Man has large anchor tattoos on his arms. He was created by cartoonist LZ Chrysler Sager in 1929. of, yeah, sailors are where tattoos come from. And then through further media about it, we still have that idea today. It's a really surprising through line of cultural history. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, was that a relatively common tattoo for sailors, the anchor? Apparently for real, yeah. And also it's a little piece of line art that is interesting, but also not that hard to draw. Right. And so I think that's a lot of why artists especially said, sure, I can do a tattoo. Whereas today, if you're on, let's say, Instagram and looking at amazing tattoo art, there's a lot more ideas out there and a lot more to take in.

more ideas out there and a lot more to take in. Yeah, there's like a new tattoo style recently where they make the tattoos look like sew-on patches. Dang. Like a 3D effect sew-on patch tattoo. It's nuts what they can do with tattoo art these days. Yeah. And before it was a person full of whiskey with a huge mustache saying, I can do one anchor. And then I'm taking a break. One anchor. That's it. Two if you have huge arms and you're Popeye. If you've got those beefy, massive Popeye arms that are actually concerningly large, you can do two tattoos.

Two anchors. Huge medical problem. Yeah. Arm disease. And we actually have more to say about a significant anchor tattoo. And before we do that, we're going to take a quick break before returning

with more Tattoo Tales. Alrighty, Tattoo Tales. T.T. T.T. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

And remember no running in the halls. Folks. We are back with TT tattoo tails. Cause we have a thrilling bit of crime solving for you. And then also a joyful story about all of humanity getting tattoos. Did someone get a tattoo of like, I was murdered by Dennis Murder Man? His reign of terror must end. Yeah, this is takeaway number two. One of the most famous British legal cases of the mid-1800s

hinged on a key tattoo and helped popularize tattoos across Victorian society. Huh. This is a British crime of the century kind of story from the mid-1800s. It's the story of Roger Tichborne and a tattoo that saved his family fortune. Interesting. Was his tattoo just like the deed to their estate on his thigh? He's like, I spent one second looking for paper

and I couldn't find paper. Let's tattoo it. I give up. We used to use animal hides as paper. Why not people hides? I think some old books were bound in human skin or something too. You know.

Yeah, it's spooky. It's some real grimoire stuff. It's hecka spooky. Yeah, this is a really thrilling tale. And it's not a murder crime story, but there is death involved and fraud and fake identities. Fraud? Yeah. Not fraud.

I was on board with the murder, but fraud? I can't consume true crime because of all the murders, and I want any non-murder story. So this is one of those. I love it. Yeah. I'm like, fraud. And then he skimmed just a few cents off of the invoice. It's all accounting, yeah.

invoice. It's all accounting, yeah. So, Roger Tichborne, this was a wealthy son of British privilege. He was the heir to the baronet Tichborne. And there's a few sources here. Peace for Metal Floss by Stacey Conrad,

Peace by Historians, Robert Shoemaker, and Zoe Elker for theconversation.com. They say that the first event here is 1854. 25-year-old Roger is just out there being rich and traveling the world. He has finished a luxurious tour of South America. He boards a ship to Jamaica. It wrecks, it sinks, he's presumed dead.

So shipwreck, oh well. It's your average, you know, old-. So shipwreck. Oh, well. It's your average, you know, old timey shipwreck. Yeah. Just like, whoops. You got the bottom of your pants are in like a little cutoff pattern. You're, you know, creating a wife out of coconuts. Shout out to those pants. And then the part above the zigzag is it's really solid integrity. Maybe there's one patch, but everything below the zigzag gone. The belt is usually a rope. Yep.

Rope belt, white shirt that's a little scrunchy. Right. And if there's two of you, you start imagining the other person as a hamburger or a hot dog, depending on their physical build. Like a giant wiener. Like if you're tall and lean, you're a giant wiener. And if you're short and squat, you are a hamburger. Big hamburger. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know it. Classic shipwreck. Have we never talked about how we've both been shipwrecked? That's fun. That's fun about us. Yeah. Have I never talked about how once Alex transformed into a giant McDonald's fries?

Katie was also a fry. It was interesting. Look at us. Being potato products. Vegetarian shipwrecked people. Anyway. Yeah. vegetarian shipwreck people uh anyway yeah um so so roger tichborn is presumed dead and that appears to be correct it seems like he just died he didn't go through the whole zigzag pants situation um damn then from there the family is roger's father roger's mother

and his one brother and so his father continues being the Baron at Tichborne, but then he dies. And instead of this passing to... Oh, no, that's the only shipwreck of this. That'd be great. Just a series of boats. Cholera then. Consumption? I'm going through all of the old timey deaths. They don't really detail these except Roger's brother will die of his alcoholism, which has stuck with us. But back then, too, it was they would call you dissolute. That word has kind of gone away. But all the sources call Roger's brother dissolute.

I see. So, yeah, this family, Roger's father dies. Instead of it going to dead Roger, it goes to the younger brother. Then younger brother is dissolute, dies of alcoholism. Oh my. And Roger's distraught mother says, well, what do I do about all this? And Roger's body was never found. And so she does what any Victorian would do. She hires a clairvoyant. Right? Gotta get a clairvoyant. Yeah, of course. And the clairvoyant, she asks him if Roger's alive and the clairvoyant says yes, probably because that's just fun.

You know, like, sure. Yeah. I mean, if you're like, no, sorry, he's dead. What what else is there to do? How are you going to keep that grieving grieving widow slash mother money rolling in. Exactly. Like, why are you in this business if not to... Right.

Then over the next several years, Roger's mother runs advertisements in newspapers across the British Empire with a reward for information about Roger. And then once Roger's brother dies, it's also if we somehow find Roger, he can come be the baronet. Like he would inherit it. That would make sense. That's something you want to put in a newspaper. Like, I can't remember what your face looked like or your physical build, but I know I would love you even if you sounded completely different from my memory and I would shower you with gifts and money. No questions asked. So yeah, that's exactly what happened.

She's in England. Her empire-wide advertisements get a response from a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia. Yeah. And his name is Thomas Castro. from a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia. And his name is Thomas Castro. And apparently what he did is he got a hold of a tobacco pipe with the initials RCT carved into it, which are Roger's initials. And then he started his scam by smoking the pipe everywhere he could publicly until somebody asked about it and said, I've seen the ads. Is this like the same initials? And then Castro proceeded to claim, oh yes, I'm Roger

Tichborn. And I had gone through massive traumatic amnesia from my shipwreck. And I got to Australia because when my ship between South America and Jamaica sank, a different ship picked me up that was headed to Melbourne. Right. And then I just kind of stayed in Australia and didn't talk to anybody about it. That's what I did. Right. I mean, that's what I'd do in the same set of circumstances, including the part where I'd smoke a pipe really close to people. And then when they're like, what are you doing?

What's your deal, man? Why are you in your face? Why are you in my face smoking this pipe i'd be like do you notice the initials on the pipe have you read the initials of my pipe it's it's all just so corny and and also it's just laughable how little this guy was Roger Tichborn. Apparently, Thomas Castro couldn't write with good grammar or correct spellings. And Roger was wildly rich guy educated. But that was because of amnesia. Truly, every hole in this, he was like shipwreck amnesia.

That's why. Amnesia. Apparently, Roger was a skinny guy. Castro weighed nearly 400 pounds. That was the amnesia as well. Shipwreck amnesia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what happens is no one believes him except the grief stricken elderly Mrs. Tichborne.

Yeah. That's sad. Who brings him to England and he spends multiple years just enjoying being a baronet and having all their money and land. Okay. Fraud! The 1800s, there's not so much physical evidence and easy ways to prove stuff. And so for a while, Thomas Castro gets away with this. And so for a while, Thomas Castro gets away with this. What changes is Mrs. Tichborne passes away.

And from there, investigators are able to bring a civil case against Castro now that she's not protecting him. And that's sad, though. She's probably so lonely. Probably part of her kind of knew that maybe this wasn't her son, but also like she just wanted it to be true so bad. Yeah, exactly. And that makes it such a rich story. And also it got a ton of media coverage, partly because she bought all those newspaper advertisements. And then when this guy popped up who became known as the Titchborn Claimant, then newspapers

said, oh, well, just cover this. Like, this is amazing. What a story of this like sad lady and weird fake guy. And so it became huge news across the British Empire and especially the 1870s. There's always been a TMZ throughout human history. Even before printed media, there was some guy who was just essentially TMZ telling you about all the juicy gossip. I think we came up with news a lot later. First, it was just, can you believe this wild thing about some rich people? Unbelievable.

And then later we were like, I guess we should look at Congress or whatever. Okay, sure. All right. Someone just yelling in your face about celebrities breaking up or getting back together. Right. But with a hear ye, hear ye. And then the exact thing. Hear ye, hear ye. Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift in hot water with with Jezzy Blah Blah Bl man i i cannot like i see so many headlines about celebrities and it's becoming more and more gibberish i think the more disconnected with the zeitgeist i get or it's just like tizzy g and the wheats now an item first of all i didn't know that about the wheats. I need to process this. But yeah,

yeah. And this, this celebrity news too, I feel like no listeners know this story. This was huge news basically globally, but then we all move on from celebrity news. Like we just go on to the next thing. Yeah. And in its time, it was huge. And then also the investigation and civil case that they finally brought against Castro was an epic effort. They were planning to call more than 200 witnesses against this guy. Whoa. Like they were like, we are going to end this fraud finally. But it ended up being a very fast and easy case. but it ended up being a very fast and easy case. Yeah. I think he smoked his pipe in too many people's faces.

Made a lot of enemies there. Yeah. Even in that smoke-filled 1800s time, you don't exhale directly in people's faces while waggling your pipe initials and try to get a response. It's not cool. It's still like shoving the initials in your face and going, you notice these? Any similarities to recent news clippings? I hope he also had that weird accent and tried to claim it was an English accent

caused by shipwreck trauma. Like, that is how you talk after shipwreck trauma. Amnesia. I miss my coconut wife. Right, the Baroness Titchborn. Just a bunch of coconuts, yeah. So this case, they said, okay, we think we have an uncrackable civil case that will finally kick this guy out of the baronet. But then it ended up going super fast because one of the first witnesses was a boarding school friend of Roger's. And the friend said like, well, this isn't the guy. But then also

the friend knew something amazing, which is that Roger had a distinctive left arm tattoo. Hmm. And it was a tattoo of a heart, a cross, and an anchor. Anchor tattoos are very real as a British and American thing. It's not just Popeye. And also, it's like a distinctive tattoo, and then you just described the most generic old-timey tattoo I could possibly imagine. Was it a heart that said mom on it with an arrow through it?

Honestly, too distinctive. This was just basic line art of shapes. But that was rare at the time. And apparently, you know, this chum reveals this and Thomas Castro was not aware of that about Roger and was like, oops. And so they just said, OK, Thomas Castro, show us your arm. He didn't have a tattoo and he was convicted and sent to prison. That was that. There you go. And my favorite part, it sounds like a bit, but Castro claimed that the reason he didn't have a tattoo on his arm. Amnesia!

Is that the amnesia erased the tattoo. I was joking. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, the amnesia wiped it out, along with his memories in his brain. It also removed physical stuff from his skin. My coconut wife was not into that look, so I had it removed. Oh yeah, the coconut I drew a face on and put a wig on told me to remove it. That is more believable. She was like, you're going to embarrass me in front of my other coconut wife friends.

And then the prosecution's like, I don't believe it, but we will put her on the stand. We'll give her a chance to speak about it. So truly, I think my favorite crime story ever. And then also. Incredible. On top of that, this was such news in the 1870s British Empire. It actually helped spark a tattoo craze in the UK and in the empire. They're like, I want to be like that dead guy whose mom got defrauded. Right.

Sign me up. Tattoos did kind of become a thing of the rich and famous. The other spark for this was that in parallel, people found out in the 1880s that a few British royals had tattoos that they had gotten years earlier. And it's super fun who the future King Edward VII allowed two of his teenage sons to get animal art tattoos while on a trip to Japan. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, you know, what animals?

One of them got cranes. Okay, that's a classic. And then the other son was his heir so england's king george v had an arm tattoo of a dragon and an arm tattoo of a tiger so i'm not a monarchist but that's that's pretty fly it It rules. And this was a recent king. He ruled in World War I. His granddaughter is Queen Elizabeth II. So it's only a few generations back you have British royals with rad animal tattoos. Flexing on the Bismarck with his rad baller dragons. And it's fun because all of them were related through Queen Victoria.

So Tsar Nicholas II of Russia had a dragon tattoo, also from a visit to Japan. This was a big era of Europeans and Americans saying, other cultures have tattoos. We should do some of that. Yeah. Wild British stuff. And then we have a last fast takeaway for this main episode because it's very joyful. Takeaway number three. Tattoos have supported human pain relief in a couple different ways for more than 5,000 years. Wow.

So we're back sort of to, what was his name? Utsi? Utsi, yeah. And his pain relieving joint tattoos. Exactly. I wanted to just bring that up again because there's one other short story here of totally different medical use of tattoos.

Because modern medicine has found a roundabout pain relief use for tattoos. It's not the tattoo giving pain relief, but some cancer treatment programs give patients a tattoo for their radiotherapy treatments. It's a tattoo to mark where to do the radiotherapy. Interesting. Wait, so why do they need a tattoo versus like using a little Sharpie? It's basically just more permanent than a Sharpie. Okay. Because these tattoos are either a couple of dots or even just one dot and that's it. They're

not drawing a whole anchor or heart with mom on it or something. I mean, that would be rad, but. They should do that. That'd be great. Yeah. So, so is that to make sure that they figure out where to precisely target the chemo? Yes. And then they can reduce side effects of chemo by making sure it's really targeted precisely or something? Yeah. This is like a topical super targeted application of radiation. It can be as often as daily. It's just extraordinarily important to put that in the exact right spot. And so the way to get a precise mark that will not move around or wash off is a tiny

tattoo. Wow. Yeah. And so I'll link the Mayo Clinic because they have a picture of one and it's just a dot on skin and they put a US dime or 10 cent coin next to it for scale. It's a tiny tattoo. It's about the size of the eyeball on Franklin D. Roosevelt on a dime. We already covered the whole Oatsy thing.

I just love that from arthritis 5,300 years ago to cancer treatment now, tattoos are useful for that. They're more than art. They're this whole thing. Yeah. It's just a whole history of using them from, you know, taking, using our bodies as an expression of our culture and art to medicine. That's really cool. Yeah.

But I do want to ask, Alex, if you got a tattoo, what would you get? You know, I've thought about bisons for obvious reasons. Bisons. That'd be great. To people who know my stuff and creating the bison emoji, go to bisonemojipodcast.com to hear me and also one of my guests, Katie, on that show. That would be super cool. And also bisons look awesome. They do.

Like I'm with these British royals who were like, first tattoo, animal. That's cool. That makes sense. What would you get, Katie? What would you tattoo? Okay, so I have these three freckles that form, like, a triangle. Cool. Cool. So I want to get like a tattoo of a line sort of going, connecting the dots and then like maybe the angle measurements of this triangle that I have formed by my freckles.

That's so neat. Yeah. Probably won't do it, though, because I'm afraid of skin commitment. Yeah, and there's especially a modern trend of people, either freckles or scars or anything that is already on the body, incorporating that into tattoo art. There's so much creativity out there that between that and it being visual, we'll never cover all of it on the podcast. I just like that it's going on. And let's talk about it on the Discord, especially. What a perfect use for that. Send us your sick tats. Yes. Yeah, this is basically Tattoo Week on the Discord.

I'm cutting the ribbon like the queen. Back to British Royals again. Here we are. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, tattoo ink stays on human skin thanks to our immune systems and can get removed by sunlight. Takeaway number two is that Titchborn claimant story, one of the most famous British legal cases and scams of the mid-1800s, hinging on a key tattoo.

Takeaway number three, tattoos have supported human pain relief in a couple of ways for more than 5,000 years. That, of course, ties into Otzi the Iceman and his arthritis tattoos, and there's many more stats and numbers from there, everything from the origin of the word tattoo to the speed and origin of tattoo machine pens. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode

because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is astounding modern developments in United States tattoos and Maori tattoos. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 13 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, a library of more than 13 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being

somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a historical research volume. It's called Written on the Body, the Tattoo in European and American History. It's a set of scholarship edited by history professor Jane Kaplan of Bryn Mawr College. We also use digital resources from McGill University, an interview on the science of tattoos with Dr. Anne Lauman of Northwestern University, coverage of Yukon tattoo art by the BBC and by the National Post, plus lots more material from other great sources, such as the Mayo Clinic and the New York Times. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to

acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadagoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. As I said at the end of this main episode, it's basically Tattoo Week 2. Because that's another thing we talk about on the Discord, is each new episode each week, also past episodes. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode, a past episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number

generator. This week's pick is episode 158. That's a very recent episode. It's about the topic of CAPTCHAs, the Internet Security System CAPTCHAs. Fun fact, almost every action you do online is secretly solving a captcha. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Special programming note about that. Next week in this main SIF feed, the episode is going to be a celebration of Creature Feature.

It's sharing a recent one where me and Katie explore secretly incredibly fascinating pink animals. And so that's going to be in the main feed. And then the bonus feed is going to have a whole new thing, absolutely new SIF bonus show for the folks who support the show. So that is its usual thing and even better than usual. In the meantime, main feed is really, really going to encourage you to check out that awesome podcast creature feature. If you have not heard it already, you are missing out. In the meantime, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with a special crossover celebration of Creature Feature and

with a full new SIF bonus show, and then of course all kinds of new SIF after that too. So how about that? Talk to you then. maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you