How to Master Any Skill & The Strange World of Tattoos

Saks Fifth Avenue
This episode is brought to you by saks.com@saks.com. Comma it's easy to find your new vibe. Dive into the western trend with gold cowboy boots from staat, or go full nineties throwback with platforms from Prada. You can shop for everything on your agenda, whether it's a breezy Zimmerman dress for a garden party or a bright Chloe blazer for brunch. Find inspiration for your new vibe every day.

Us.

Mike Carruthers
Today on something you should know how the color of your car can cost or save you money. Then how to master any skill by understanding how the brain works against you. There's definitely some hypothetical ceiling to how good you get at things, but I think most people plateau well below their ultimate attainable ability because of this process of the brain to take skills that you repeatedly do and try to make them automatic and low effort. Also, why you might want to start humming right now and inside the world of tattoos, who gets them, why they get them, and what a tattoo actually is. Yeah, I mean, they're basically magic, right?

Matt Lauter
If you're a kid, it's like scribbling on your arm and you can't rub it away. But the reason you can't rub it away is because the ink particles are suspended in your skin by your immune system. So essentially, tattooing is a product of our immune system response. All this today on something you should know. If you have to hire someone, what's the best way?

Mike Carruthers
Referrals? Well, maybe that could work. But just because somebody knows somebody who knows you doesn't necessarily mean they're qualified. Or you could pull out that file of random resumes that came in during the last six months. Maybe there's somebody in there.

Maybe. Now, if you're hiring, you need indeed, indeed is your matching and hiring platform. With over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to indie data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. As a business owner, I found that hiring the right people, theres just nothing more important. Dont leave it to chance or a referral or a random resume use.

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. You know, I'm not psychic, but I would say that if you own a car, out of all the colors in the rainbow, chances are your car is white or black, or maybe silver.

Those are the most popular car colors. In fact, black and white combined account for about half of all cars. After black, white and silver come red, blue and green. Yellow is the least popular car color, with just one 10th of 1% of all cars being yellow. And beige is pretty low on the list of popular colors as well.

But what's interesting to me is, and this is according to an article in the automobile club magazine, westways, car color can affect the resale value of the car. Remember a few years ago when new cars were hard to find? So the price of used cars dramatically rose because that's what people were buying. The price of used cars spiked on average by almost 50% overall. Yet the least popular car colors spiked even more.

Beige, yellow and green cars increased 103%, 85% and 75% respectively. Beige, yellow and green, whereas black and white used cars rose about 47%. Why? Well, it seems that its supply and demand, while not very many people want beige or yellow cars, more people wanted them than there were cars available. So the price shot way up.

So having an unpopular car color may actually be a good investment when it comes time to sell your car. And that is something you should know.

Learning something new can be really tricky. There are different ways to learn. You can learn by studying, or you can learn by doing, or you can learn by watching someone else doing. But the results are hardly guaranteed no matter how you learn. I mean, you can spend hours studying for a test and still fail.

So how is learning best accomplished? And how is learning something and then mastering it? How do you do that? Here to tell you is Scott Young. Scott is a writer whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Business Insider and the BBC, and he is host of the Scott Young podcast.

His latest book is called Get Better at anything. Twelve maxims for mastery. Hey, Scott, welcome. Well, welcome back to something you should know. Oh, it's great to be here.

Scott Young
Yeah, thanks for having me back again. So I think if you were to ask people what does it take to be good at anything, they would say, well, desire good teacher, practice and determination. And other than that, I mean, that's about it. So there must be something other than that because you wrote a book about it. So what's other than that?

Well, I mean, all those things are right. And I don't want to say that, you know, you don't need that. This isn't some secret flip, that you don't need those things. But I think sometimes we can spend a lot of time doing something and not get much better at it. And sometimes you can work on something for a short time and make progress, progress rapidly.

And so I think there's a real disconnect sometimes between our ideas of how we make improvement and a lot of the research, a lot of the things we've discovered about how learning works and about how skill acquisition works. And so when you just said that, like, sometimes we spend a lot of time and don't really get better at it, you know, I think that strikes a chord with everybody, that there's probably something that you've tried and just like maybe you tried art class and I don't get it, that kind of thing. And you wonder, well, why? I mean, I seem like I'm doing all the right things, but my brain just doesn't quite. So what's going on there?

I think there's three factors that matter for being able to get better at anything. The first is being able to learn from other people. Most of what we know comes from other people. And so if you are not able to learn from other people, if you're having obstacles to figuring out what it is that experts know that's going to slow your progress. The second factor is practice.

And not just any kind of practice. There's a lot of interesting sort of quirks about how our brain works, that oftentimes we can spend a lot of time doing something, a lot of time practicing something and not make that much improvement. And the third factor is feedback. Being able to get quick and immediate feedback on what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and how you can correct that. What about this idea that I think people believe, and so maybe there's some truth to it, that almost anything is easier to learn when you're a kid.

Well, I think that's true for some things. I think the research shows that languages, for instance, if you start learning a language, and by learning, I don't mean, like, just go to a few classes, like you are immersed in some context where you're speaking it all the time, that people who learn before puberty sort of, you know, in that younger age, they tend to reach a higher level of eventual proficiency. But the actual research on, like, how quickly people learn. So not just, like, where you eventually get to, but how quickly you get to whatever level you get to. It's surprisingly sparse, showing that younger people are better.

So even in. Even in the language learning case, it seems that adolescents and adults actually do better than small children at reaching those kind of, like, beginner and intermediate milestones. Which makes sense if you think about how, like, your adult brain is just like, you know, you have so much better self regulation ability. You have so much better ability to, like, think about things, your background knowledge, whereas if, you know, you're three or four, you're not even able to pay attention to the class. So I think there's a lot of cases where people sometimes overestimate how quickly kids can learn things.

Mike Carruthers
Generally, though, you know, you'll sometimes see somebody, oh, look, he's playing golf. God, he's great. Well, he's been playing since he was seven. Well, is he great because he's been playing since he was seven? Because that means he's just been playing so long, he's gotten so good.

Scott Young
Well, I definitely think that if you've been playing for a very long time, that helps with proficiency. But we also have to be careful, too, because the seven year old who's been, you know, going through intensive golf training probably had some natural talent already. So there's a bit of a selection effect there. You know, when you hear about these chess prodigies that started at three, it was probably because, you know, the father, someone else, the mother showed them a chessboard and they, you know, had a strong interest and aptitude for it. And then that's when the chess coaching began.

So I don't think it's the case that, you know, if you're 30 or 40, you can't learn to golf, you can't learn to play chess, although it obviously helps if you have more natural talent. But what is talent and aptitude? What. How big a. How big a piece of the puzzle is that?

Mike Carruthers
And what is it? Is it just kind of this je ne sais quoi? I don't know. It just. You have it or you don't.

Scott Young
Personally, I definitely think that there are innate abilities that constrain how we learn things. So I'm not one of these people that says, you know, talent doesn't matter at all, but I kind of don't like talent as a concept because it's sort of a residual concept. It's sort of like what is left over after we account for the things that are easy to account for. So talent is like when you. You can't really account for.

Well, this person started at the same time as this person, and they seem to be doing better. So it's talent. It's just kind of a residual explanation, whereas there's a lot of research showing that, for instance, background knowledge, that the amount of skill and knowledge someone brings to the situation before they even start learning makes a huge difference. There's a recent paper that I found that I found fascinating, which showed that people actually, in this study, learned at relatively the same rate. But some people came to the classroom environment at the beginning of the class before they taught anything, scoring much higher on the tests.

And so that sort of suggests that maybe they already knew it from somewhere. They had already encountered some of this information, and so it looks like they have talent, but what they really have is background knowledge. And what about the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours concept? What's your take on that? Because that has really.

Mike Carruthers
I think people have really bought into that, that it's really practice, practice, practice, practice. I mean, the truth of the 10,000 hours rule is that, and I think what is true from the research is that becoming world class, like, reaching the pinnacle of a skill in almost any profession does require an enormous amount of time. So that case, it's probably true, but I think two things that I think we're missing there. One is just the idea that, well, not everyone is going to learn at exactly the same rate. Not everyone is going to reach exactly the same level.

Scott Young
So this idea that practice is the only thing that matters is a little bit too much. But then the other thing is that it kind of created this impression that just doing something a lot was the key to getting better at it. And the underlying research under Erickson's research of deliberate practice was that, well, no, that's not the case, that it's actually a very specific type of practice of working with a coach with direct feedback, making deliberate, conscious kind of striving efforts to make small improvements in your skills. That was the thing that actually led to growth. Just doing something a lot makes you confident at it.

It makes it really automatic for you, but it doesn't necessarily make you the best at it. Right. Cause you can do the same thing over and over again, and it's really easy for you, and you're really proficient, but there's probably somebody better than that because they've pushed it a little. I mean, I've spent thousands of hours driving a car, but I certainly would want to get on the racetrack. I mean, I think it's certainly the case, you can spend a lot of time doing something, but if you're not striving to improve it, if you're not under taking steps to deliberately improve small aspects of your performance, it typically plateaus.

It typically reaches a level where, you know, you're making very slight improvements, but you're not making these kind of large shifts in how you perform things. And what about the coach? What about the teacher? Because, you know, people say, well, you need to have a good teacher, but what does that mean? Because if you're really good, I've always wondered, like, if you're like, you know, like a gold medal winning champion, the coach is not.

Mike Carruthers
He didn't, he probably never won a gold medal. So why do you have him? Well, I think the value of a coach in this particular context where you're talking about, like, you're kind of a better performer than the coach itself, that's not usually the case. Usually you go to a class and the teacher knows more than you do. But if you're in a situation where you are actually a better performer, the thing the coach can do is they are able to monitor and observe what you're doing, whereas you have to actually do it.

Scott Young
There's this concept in psychology called working memory, which is this basically this bottleneck where all your thoughts and experiences have to go through and you can only keep a very limited amount of information in it. And so I think in a, you know, in an athletic context, that's clearly the case. You know, if you're swinging a golf club, you don't know exactly what the kinematics were of your golf stroke. You need someone who has the, like, high speed camera who can, like, you know, diagnose your movements and be like, okay, you need to be following through a little bit more. You need to be going a little bit slower thinking about this.

And so a coach, that's why they're so prevalent in these elite professions is because they can step outside and see what you're doing to provide feedback that would be impossible for you to get on your own. I find your explanation, your definition of talent, really intriguing. And basically you're saying, if I understand you right, that we don't know what it is, that once you account for everything else, the coach and the hours of practice and everything, and yet this guy is still so much better than everybody else, it's just talent. We don't know what it is, so we're going to call it talent. But there must be some sense, some explanation of what natural ability is.

I think there's probably some amount of ability that is in this kind of like basic intelligence. There's a lot of research showing that there's this g factor of intelligence. Some people's brains maybe just have a little bit more working memory capacity that makes them better handling some things. Maybe they have certain circuitry in their brain that makes it better for them to learn social skills or better for them to learn physical skills. But, I mean, it really is a mystery.

I don't think that we've figured out, okay, this is why this person is better at this, because, you know, it's, it's this exact thing going on in their head. We're discussing today how to learn something new and how to get really good at it. My guest is Scott Young. He is author of a book called get better at anything. Twelve maxims for mastery.

Mike Carruthers
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Saks Fifth Avenue
It's easy to find your new vibe. Dive into the western trend with gold cowboy boots from staat, or go full nineties throwback with platforms from Prada. You can shop for everything on your agenda, whether it's a breezy Zimmerman dress for a garden party or a bright Chloe blazer for brunch. Find inspiration for your new vibe every day@saks.com. Dot so, Scott, no matter how good you are at something, at some point you can't get any better, right?

Mike Carruthers
I mean, it levels off. You're going to get as good as you're going to get, and that's it. Well, I think that's true. I think that there's definitely some, like, hypothetical ceiling to how good you get at things. But I think this problem that I was talking about with the 10,000 hours rule, which is that most people plateau well below their ultimate attainable ability because of this process of the brain to take skills that you repeatedly do and try to make them automatic and low effort.

Scott Young
So, you know, taking the driving the car example, what my brain is doing as I'm repeatedly driving is not like just steadily getting better at driving at the maximum rate, but trying to automate the little things that I'm already doing so that they require less and less effort. And again, that's adaptive. But if I was trying to be the best driver in the world, that's maybe actually something I have to work against because, you know, the way that I started driving, the little sort of processes that I'm using for driving are maybe not optimal. So an example I think maybe makes more sense is typing on a keyboard. So some people learn the touch typing method where you have your hands on the home row and you type that way and it is faster.

Other people, they do the hunt and peck. Now, if you hunt and peck and you keep hunting and pecking, you are going to get faster, and it's going to become more automatic to hunt and peck. But you're never going to type as fast as someone who learns to touch type properly. So in this way, the kind of continuous continuing to hunt and peck doesn't actually make you this really great typist. It just makes it so that you searching for the keys and typing one at a time becomes easier for you.

Mike Carruthers
That's a great example. That really says it all right there. Because I'm a hunter pecker kind of guy, I see people type the right way and I think, boy, that is so cool. I wish I could do that. And I probably could if I took the time to learn it.

And yet here I am, and I've never taken the time to learn. Well, I mean, that's why piano teachers often say that they'd rather have someone who has no experience than that has the wrong experience, because you have to spend time kind of unlearning those bad habits. But it does seem that there's always those people, we always see those people who are just so much better than everybody else. And you really do wonder, like LeBron James or old medal winners, other guys maybe practice as much or close to as much as they do, but they never get there. What is that?

Scott Young
Yeah, well, I mean, no doubt that talent or this kind of residual concept of like that isn't explainable in terms of practice or motivation or whatever explains some of the difference in performance. Like, there's no doubt about that. And I think when you look at a really elite level, so we're talking about the LeBron James, the Tiger woods is the Hussain bolts of the world, it's going to be a huge factor because at that level, pretty much everyone is practicing as hard as they can. You know, I mean, I'm sure there's a few lazy basketball players and a few lazy golfers, but if, if you're in the PGA, you're really trying hard to be the best golfer in the world. You know, you're not just like guys going out on the weekend being like, yeah, I'll put in nine holes, whatever.

And I think. So. I think this, this idea of talent, I think it does become more important at that real extreme level just because pretty much everyone at that level has a great coach. They have, like, you know, top of the line advice and feedback. They're practicing nonstop.

They're, you know, they're professional. Whereas I think for everyday people who are trying to get a bit better at everything, there is a lot more room for practice just because of what we talked about that, you know, I'm not going to be a better driver just because I'm not putting in that deliberate effort. But if I knew how to put in that deliberate effort, yeah, I could probably become a better driver. But that's, that's an interesting example, too, because, and you had said earlier you're a good driver, but you wouldn't race in a professional. But those are two different things.

Mike Carruthers
Driving on the road and driving in a race are not the same that require different skills. No, no, definitely. But I mean, I would feel uncomfortable, like renting a car and driving around Mumbai, for instance. Or, you know, like, there's definitely aspects of driving ability that, you know, I just would feel are outside of my level. I'd be like, okay, I can't do that because it's too hard for me.

Scott Young
Whereas someone who was a better driver would be like, yeah, you know, I can rent a car and go, you know, do something where it's going to be a harder environment than I'm used to. And so I think that does affect my ability to drive things. It's obviously different than racing. Is there any research that says yes or no to whether or not watching somebody who's really good at something helps you? Well, I think watching someone when you're learning a skill is incredibly important, especially at the beginning, because a lot of what we're trying to do when we're learning a new skill is that there is an enormous combination of possible ways that you could approach it, and most of those don't work.

And so when you watch someone, you are narrowing down that possibility onto a much smaller subset. And this is particularly true, I think, for more intellectual skills. So if you're, you know, trying to solve a math problem, for instance, and you don't have the right background knowledge, I mean, anyone who's been in a difficult math class will know how hard it is. Whereas if you see someone demonstrate the problem, well, all of a sudden you know how to do it. And so a lot of our knowledge really just is that it's this library of methods and procedures that we've learned from other people.

So, you know, you open with the example of learning to draw. And I think the reason a lot of people struggle with learning to draw is that no one's taught them the methods. And there are lots of methods, there's lots of ways they're like, oh, well, this is how you do this, and this is how you solve this problem. And if you don't have that, if you haven't, you know, not, you don't have that basic foundation, then, you know, you don't draw very well. And you say to yourself, wow, I just don't have any talent.

Mike Carruthers
Right. Well, like when I probably when I was in kindergarten or first grade, the teacher said, okay, everybody draw, whatever. And I, mine looked like hell. And I thought, jesus, I'm not very good at this, and therefore kind of turned my back on it. Yeah.

Scott Young
And I think the thing is exacerbated by the fact that when you are good at something, this kind of, this process of making the skill more automatic makes it more unconscious so that it's harder for you to teach people, too. You know, I had an experience of trying to teach someone to swim, and I've been swimming my whole life, and they didn't know how to swim. And I had to explain to them how to tread water. It was very difficult because I know there's a method for treading water. But I just do it.

I don't think about it. And so often when you're learning to draw, let's say the person who has been drawing their whole life and is quite good, a lot of these procedures that you would have to learn explicitly are so obvious to them. They're so automatic that they just do them without even thinking about them. And so they're like, well, you just, you know, you just draw it right. And so that can also, I think, make it seem like it's talent, when really it is a skill that could be taught that has been so overlearned to the point that they're not able to, you know, convey it to you anymore.

Mike Carruthers
But it seems, too, that, you know, it would be hard to look at somebody who's really good at something and hear them say, I don't really enjoy this, I don't like this. It seems that. But although you just gave an example that, you know, you've been swimming your whole life, and a lot of, a lot of people learn to swim not because they really like it, because it's a safety thing. I mean, I've met people who are, like, really good at their job, but they think their job is, like, kind of boring and they'd rather do something that's more exciting. So it's not always the case that you always like things that you do.

Scott Young
But again, going to this self efficacy, this kind of, like, niche finding idea, and it's no surprise that we like the things that we're good at. And if you're able to get good at something or you're able to get better at something, that you tend to like it more. So I think there's a good correlation there, even if it's not one to one. But there's also that you see this with golf weekend golfers, too, a lot, that they love golf, but they get so angry because they throw their clubs. Well, if you hate it this much.

Mike Carruthers
If it causes this kind of frustration, why play well? I mean, I don't know. I think that a lot of what we like about skills is this tension between being able to do it and also recognizing we're not able to do it. I mean, when things are so easy, they become boring, too. So it's, it is a kind of, it is a tension like a skill has to have a certain amount of complexity and competitiveness and sort of, like, reward that, you know, it requires your attention.

Scott Young
I mean, the psychologist Mihai Csikszent Mihaly had this whole flow idea which was that, you know, when things are too easy, they become so effortless that we don't even think about them. When they're too hard, they become frustrating. And this sort of zone where we're, like, totally absorbed and engaged and happy with it, that happens at this kind of. This sort of right level of difficulty. Everybody who's good at something, I think has had, well, I've certainly had this experience that there are some days when I'm really good.

Mike Carruthers
Like, it just is magic, and I want to put that in a bottle somehow. And there are other days that are struggles. And even if you take out lack of sleep or whatever, there seems to be a magic there that I don't know how you explain that. Yeah, I mean, some of that, I think, is when you have a well learned skill, there is a kind of, again, going back to this flow idea that where you are not being too deliberate about it, you're not being too focused on what you're doing, and you can kind of lose yourself and the skill. But at the same time, I think it requires a lot of, like, external conditions, and sometimes those conditions are present, and sometimes they're not.

Scott Young
My friend Cal Newport has this quote. I think it's from Chuck clothes and originally called inspiration is for amateurs in the context of writing, which is that all writers desire this kind of, like, free flowing writing. It just comes naturally, and it's beautiful prose. And he was like, well, that's an amateur mindset. The professional mindset is that while actually struggling through figuring out what you're going to and having these kind of grinding, halting attempts, that's what real writing is.

That's what it is to be a really good writer. And so I don't want to say that that's what I desire out of my writing sessions all the time. But I think it is sometimes comforting, because when you have those beautiful days on the golf course or writing an essay or doing whatever you're doing, where it just comes so easily and you feel like you're doing really well, cherish them, enjoy them. But recognize that performing a skill, performing something is difficult, even when you're good, can have that kind of struggling problem solving moment. Well, it's funny you say that, because I remember, and I found this very comforting, because all through school, I always struggled with math, and I always envied those kids who were so good at math.

Mike Carruthers
And someone told me, well, those kids struggle with it, too. Just because you're good at it doesn't mean it's easy. They just enjoy the struggle more. And that just came as such a great relief to me. I don't enjoy the struggle with math, but I enjoy the struggle with other things.

This has been really enlightening. I've been talking with Scott Young. He is a writer whose work has been featured in the New York Times Business Insider and you know millions of other places. His book is called get better at anything, twelve maxims for mastery. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thank you, Scott. Thanks for talking about this. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Take care.

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Mike Carruthers
Now, as a listener to something you should know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what something you should know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TEd Talks Daily. Now, you know about Ted talks, right? Many of the guests on something you should know have done TED talks.

Well, you see, Ted Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes, join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future, learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, something you should know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like Ted talks daily. And you get TEd talks daily wherever you get your podcasts.

I will admit that I have no tattoos, but I see a lot of people who do have tattoos. And I see, or I think I see a lot more people than I used to who have a lot of tattoos. So whats the appeal of the tattoo? What, in fact is a tattoo? Do most people who get them love them or do they one day regret it?

How did tattoos get identified with certain groups like bikers and prisoners and even the military? Well, here to take us on a tour into the world of tattoos is Matt Lauter. He is one of the world's leading experts on tattoos. He is a senior lecturer in art history and theory at the University of Essex, and his research primarily concerns the history of western tattooing. He is the author of a book called painted 5000 years of tattooed history, from sailors and socialites to mummies and kings.

Hi, Matt. Welcome to something you should know. Hi, thanks for having me. How are you? I'm great.

So what I said, my observation that I see more people with tattoos and more people with lots of tattoos, is that reality or is that my perception? Probably a mix of both, right? Definitely more people are tattooed now than ever. But I think you'd probably be surprised how much tattooing was going on under people's clothing in the past. So, you know, there's this constant cliche that tattooing is this hot, brand new thing, not just for sailors anymore.

Matt Lauter
Everyone's doing it. But, yeah, tattooers have been reporting that they've had much more diverse client bases for about 100, 4150 years now. Yeah, maybe that's it, because it does seem like people, maybe in the past, would have a tattoo and keep it, literally keep it a secret, hide it under their clothes, and nobody knew, whereas now it just seems to be more out there. Hey, look at my tattoo. But what is a tattoo?

Mike Carruthers
Maybe let's start there, explain what a tattoo is. Yeah, I mean, they're basically magic, right? If you're a kid, it's like scribbling on your arm and you can't rub it away. But the reason you can't rub it away is because the ink particles are suspended in your skin by your immune system. So essentially, tattooing is a product of our immune system response.

Matt Lauter
You stick a foreign body into your skin layer, your body sends lots of what are called macrophage to try and remove that particle into your immune system. And if they're too big to remove which tattoo ink pigment usually is, it encapsulates that particle for you and it can't, you know, be taken away. So it gets protected from your immune system and just sits there in the skin for, you know, decades. As one tattooer said, for life plus six months, you know, it'll be there as long as. As long as you are, and then a few months after as you rot away in the ground.

Mike Carruthers
Nice. How lovely. And do we know how, when the first tattoo happened, roughly? Well, the. The sort of general paleoanthropological guess is that tattooing is at least 45,000 and maybe 100,000 years old.

Matt Lauter
The oldest tattoos we have that have sort of survived to the present day in skin are about five and a half thousand years old. So there's a very famous specimen from the Austro battalion Alps who's called Otzi the Iceman, discovered in the 1990s, who sort of covered in these little tally mark designs. And there are some dry preserved mummies from Egypt from around the same period, from around three and a half thousand years before the birth of Christ, which gives us a kind of minimum date of old age of five and a half thousand years. But obviously, it's quite unlikely that those guys were the first people ever to stumble across the technology. If I were to ask 20 people who have tattoos, why do you have tattoos?

Mike Carruthers
Would I get 20 different answers? Most likely. Oh, you probably get about 50 answers. Right. I mean, you know, a lot of people obviously get tattooed both in the present and in the past for affiliative reasons, you know, gang tattoos or tribal affiliation tattoos, tattoos to signal status in a.

Matt Lauter
In a particular social grouping. I think most of the time, though, especially in kind of contemporary western culture, a lot of that is retrofitted, right? So people just think they have to have a reason to get tattooed and they come up with it after the fact in a way, like the sort of famous example, if you've ever seen those Miami Inc. Shows or whatever, it's always like, you know, my dog died and my granddad died and my mum broke her toe. So I want, like, three skulls on fire kind of thing to justify why they want to get a tattoo.

But I think ultimately, certainly in the kind of contemporary west, like, the vast majority of tattooing is going to be aesthetic or decorative first and kind of meaningful after the fact. Right. Does it hurt? Yeah, yeah. It only hurts for a bit.

Like marathon running hurts. Lots of things people do hurt. Tattoos have an image and it's changed, but there is that image of the sailor and the gang member, and I got drunk one night and got a tattoo. Where does that come from, really? Like the kind of cliche of the tattooed sailors been around since the early 18 hundreds.

I mean, that's sort of roughly coincident when the Royal Navy and the american navy start recording the bodies of tattooed sailors in the first place. And lots of tattooing was happening at sea. Sailors have got gunpowder and needles to make tattoos from, so it's a sort of handy way to pass the time aboard ships. But even back then, there's plenty of people who weren't sailors and criminals getting tattooed. So famously in the 16th and 17th century, lots of pilgrims were getting tattooed.

And we have a professional tattoo industry from the middle half of the 19th century onwards, and it's largely, especially in Europe, rich people getting tattooed. So the birth of the tattoo industry is partly inspired by George V, King George V of England, getting tattooed in Japan in 1881. And tattooers have been sort of claiming a broader demographic for their practice for, as I said, for 140 years. Although that stereotype of the tattooed sailors been quite persistent. I had a tattooer tell me once, she's like, stop telling people that kings and aristocrats got tattooed because, like, that's bad for business.

Mike Carruthers
And the technology, I imagine over 5000 years, it must have improved somewhat. But how did it used to be done? Yeah, a little bit, although surprisingly really not probably as much as you think, at least not in the kind of non mechanical version of tattooing. So that guy Otzi, who I mentioned, five and a half thousand years old, he was tattooed with. Some friends of mine just did some research and have kind of argued, but he was tattooed pretty much the same way that you would do if you got tattooed by a hand tattooer today.

Matt Lauter
Just a sharp needle, ink made from essentially soot from a fire, and like, modern mats, produced black inks. And, yeah, like the base technology, stick a hole in the skin, put some ink in it somehow is pretty stable over a very long time. I mean, the electric tattoo machine was invented in the 1890s, adapted from various other bits of early electronic or electric equipment. So doorbells were quite famously adapted, dental drills, various other bits of early victorian technology. And the modern tattoo machines that we have, although they're, again, a bit more kind of mass produced and a bit more reliable now, but the basic technology in a modern coil tattoo machine is the same as in a victorian doorbell.

So 100, 3135 years old, not a huge amount has changed. Inks have got a bit better, practice has got a bit cleaner. You might be needles are now mass produced rather than kind of handmade. But one of the beautiful things I think about this kind of historical depth of tattooing is just how comprehensible it is, you know, like, if any of your listeners have been tattooed, and especially if they've been hand poked, the sensations, the relationship they have with the person doing it and stuff would have been very, very similar to that experience that Otzi would have had five and a half thousand years ago. One of the things I find really interesting is that having a tattoo now seems so mainstream, but getting a tattoo is not so mainstream.

Mike Carruthers
Meaning the tattoo parlors are not in the mall next to the Wetzels, pretzels or Nordstrom. You have to go somewhere else, the other part of town, to get a tattoo. Why is that? I mean, historically, they sort of have been slightly in malls, like the first professional tattoo shops were in London, at least, were in, like, the nice part of town they were in. A, one of them was on a street called Jermyn street, which today still has tailors and art galleries.

Matt Lauter
And it's very kind of a nice part of town. Even as recently as the kind of 1990s and two thousands, there have been attempts to put tattoo shops into department stores. But I think, you know, even those aristocrats, even those posh people, even those middle class people who wanted to get tattooed still kind of appreciated. I think the, as you said, the kind of image of tattooing as being something slightly rebellious, something slightly strange. And many, many people over the century have tried to commercialize tattooing, have tried to make it this huge mass market business of the McDonalds business model, but its never quite taken off precisely because you cant quite franchise a tattoo in the same way you can a burger or a t shirt.

Mike Carruthers
So when I go into a tattoo, well, I don't. But if I did go into a tattoo ship and they say, well, what can I do for you? And I say, well, I want that, you know, I want that battleship on my back. Does the guy just look at it and then just kind of do it like an artist would paint a bowl of fruit? Or is there more to the process other than I'm just looking at that and artistically doing it on you?

Matt Lauter
Yeah. So there are artists that do do that kind of thing. It's called freehand. But you've got to be very confident in your tattooer to let them just kind of go wild with the machine. A lot of in the mid century and right up to the sort of 1980s and stuff, tattooers would just.

Especially if it was stuff that they did a million times a day, like roses or swallows, they just bash those out with muscle memory. They wouldn't need to. They wouldn't need to draw them on. But tattooers have been using what we call flash for over 100 years. Those are those designs you see on the wall.

And there are various technological ways. And now it's pretty straightforward to transfer those onto the skin and tattoo over them. Do you have any idea, I don't know if you know this, what percentage of the population has at least one tattoo? Yeah, it's difficult to know exact numbers, but it's probably about 35, 40% now, I think certainly under 35s, it's roughly about 35 40%. I mean, that's up from about 20 years ago.

It was closer to 25%, something like that. And back in the 1930s, it was something like one in ten, which is pretty even higher than people imagine. But, yeah, current estimates are something like one in three in the UK and the US. I don't know if you're in the minority now. I'm fine with it.

Mike Carruthers
One of the reasons I think people are reluctant to have a tattoo is it's just so permanent. I mean, you hear stories of people later regretting it, or that you have a tattoo, you have a tattoo for the rest of your life and do you really want that? One of the sayings, you know, is a tattoo is a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling. Right. The way I sort of combat that is, you know, like, if you go to, I don't know, the National Gallery in London or the Louvre in Paris, they've had the same paintings on the wall since the 18 hundreds.

Matt Lauter
So if you pick the right thing, if you get a good piece of art, if you're comfortable with that, then regret is very low. I mean, the number of people that regret getting tattooed is actually about, I think the last numbers of people who have tattoos who regret having them is about 18%. So it's about one and a half in ten. But most of those people don't regret being tattooed, it's just what they're tattooed with. So, you know, it's a good lesson to be careful and think about it and get the right thing.

But it's funny how the permanence for people who are tattooed and certainly people who are heavily tattooed, that becomes much less of a, much less of a concern. I think for lots of us who are heavily tattooed, it becomes almost like a collecting thing, right? So we can treat tattooing like collecting art or collecting whatever you're into. And once you own your collection, it becomes part of your life story, but part of your sense of who you are. And it's difficult to imagine life without them.

Mike Carruthers
Sometimes it does seem the image has somewhat changed, that it isn't quite so well, you're going straight to hell if you get a tattoo that it used to be. I mean, I think in middle class America 40 years ago, if you're kid came home with a tattoo, it's off to the military or something. I mean, you just, you can't do that. That really kicks in, that. That idea, that real sort of stigma against tattooing really doesn't kick in in the US and Britain until the 1950s properly.

Matt Lauter
But, you know, even as early, which is a result partly of changing tastes, you know, lots of. Lots of people were tattooed during World War two and then their kids was just like, oh, my God, I don't want to look like my mom or my dad because they've got tattoos. And also, tattooing gets a bit of a bad reputation in the fifties when stories come out about the forced tattooing of jewish people in concentration camps, for example. So tattooing and sort of stigmatization really is a particular product of the 1950s. I mean, before that, it was something that was looked upon, like a bit eccentric, but as I said, there were plenty of aristocrats and clubmen and, you know, members of wealthy families who were tattooed.

And although it was looked upon strangely, it wasn't particularly stigmatizing. Well, I would imagine that you've got to be pretty careful what you get tattooed on, particularly words, but even images that they're not dated. I mean, if you got a tattoo in the sixties and it said, hey, groovy baby, or, you know, far out man, well, you'd be stuck with that today. If you get stuff that's kind of not particularly trendy, like people getting Internet memes or the kind of real trend at the moment, these things do look very dated very quickly. But if you get a good example, even of things that are trendy in the moment, they're going to last, they're going to survive, they're going to be good.

I mean, it's a good lesson to remember that tattoos do last your whole life. But embedded in those questions, I think there's always this interesting paradox, right? Because on the one hand, it's like, aren't you worried about being in fashion? And then it's like, aren't you worried about being not in fashion? Because.

So I always think that question's kind of, you can't win, right? What do you think the future of tattooing is? What does it look? Where does it look like it's going? Or does it just kind of mosey along and things change here and there, but it is what it is.

People have been predicting a kind of decline in tattooing, and we have seen that in the past. Things like all things come and go in waves. But I think one of the real interesting things that's happening at the moment is that tattoos are more easily removed now than they have been before. Laser technology in particular, has made removing tattoos easier. So I think a lot of people, particularly younger people, have been treating tattoos as more temporary than perhaps they should have done.

And I see a lot of people online in their twenties and early thirties, like, posting that they're getting laser tattoo treatment and it's not working or it's taking a long time or it's really painful or really expensive. And so I think maybe as those stories get out there, people will become a bit more cautious about getting visible tattoos again, because that sense of impermanence has led to a rise of facial and hand tattooing, which, you know, he's a little bit worrying. As you said, it kind of Moses along. You know, tattooing's been called a kind of passing fad for over 150 years, and it's been part of human culture for five, at least thousand years old, and it's not gone anywhere yet. So there'll always be tattooed people around, and there'll always be non tattooed people around.

And those. The numbers of those two halves will kind of wax and wane a bit. But, yeah, you know, it's here to stay. I would imagine that when you get a tattoo and it looks great when you walk out of the tattoo shop, that after 60 years, it probably doesn't look as great as it did on day one. So what happens?

Mike Carruthers
Or if it gets blurry or faded, can you go in and get a touch up or what? Yeah, you can't really get the blur out, but you can kind of get touch up and you can kind of go over it again and you can. You can put one color over the top of another, and you can kind of tidy things up quite a lot. Well, yeah. Well, as I said, I find it so interesting that it has become so mainstream and so many people have tattoos, but it has not kicked its image of being very rebellious and the other side of the tracks kind of thing, which is kind of unique.

Matt Lauter
Yeah, man, I always say, you know, and part of my work and part of what I try and do is, like, show you what's going on beneath clothing and behind shop doors, because you're right, it is a very sort of secretive and closed world, even today, but certainly historically, but there's been a lot more going on behind a lot more closed doors and underneath a lot of sleeves than I think people realize, you know? And it's a real pleasure to be able to talk to people like yourself and get that information out there because, you know, you never know what might be lurking underneath, underneath someone's shirt sleeves. Well, that's why I love this job, is I get to learn about things that I probably would never otherwise learn about and learn about it from people who are real experts in it, like yourself. So I appreciate you sharing that. I've been speaking with Matt Lauter.

Mike Carruthers
He is one of the world's leading experts on the history of tattoos, and he is author of the book painted 5000 years of tattooed history, from sailors and socialites to mummies and kings. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you Matt. Have a lovely day. Thank you so, so much.

If you have a moment, you might want to just do some humming. Humming can do wonders for your state of mind and even provide some allergy relief. A minute or more of steady humming can help reduce stress by relaxing the muscles in your face, head and shoulders, and the vibrations that come from humming can actually soothe your brain. Humming also increases the airflow between sinus and nasal cavities, which can help relieve mild congestion from allergies. Humming can also induce the release of melatonin, aiding in sleep and offering antioxidant and anti inflammatory effects for a boosted immune system.

So it's worth it to take a minute or two every day and just hum. And that is something you should know. I know I frequently ask you to tell a friend about this podcast, share an episode with someone. But you don't only have to do that verbally. You can also do it on social media or on your webpage.

If you have one. You can recommend this podcast and put a link in there. We'd really appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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How to Master Any Skill & The Strange World of Tattoos

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1: Mastering Skills

2: The Art and Science of Tattoos

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