How X-Rays Work

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know: "How X-Rays Work"

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts | Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant
Date: June 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a deep dive into the science of X-rays—how they were discovered, how they work, and their numerous practical applications, especially in medicine. As usual, the conversation is peppered with their signature humor and a few digressions, but always circles back to explaining the key concepts for a curious audience.

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Key Discussion Points

Personal Encounters with X-Rays

• Josh and Chuck kick things off by sharing their own (lack of) broken bone experiences and mostly relate to dental and occasional chest X-rays.
  • Chuck: "Never broken a bone. Knock on wood." (05:33)
  • Josh: "All of my X-rays too have been, like, just going to the dentist or whatever." (05:54)

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The Accidental Discovery of X-Rays

• Wilhelm Röntgen's Breakthrough: The German physicist discovered X-rays in 1895 while experimenting with cathode rays and noted an unexpected glow of a fluorescent screen, even though it was shielded from visible light.
  • Chuck: "That's a very wind about roundabout way of getting to its discovery in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Runtgen." (07:53)
  • Josh: "He was like, wait, this has got cardboard around it... There shouldn't be any visible light escaping." (08:19)
• First X-ray Image: Röntgen used his wife's hand to create the first X-ray photograph, revealing bones and a ring.
• Naming and Nobel Prize: He called them 'X'-rays (X for unknown), assuming the scientific community would later rename them, but the name stuck.
  • Chuck: "He named him X rays because he didn't know what the heck it was." (09:13)
• First Uses: Shortly after, X-rays found crucial application in medicine—like locating bullets during the 1897 Balkan War.
  • Chuck: "A couple years later, they were already using it in the Balkan war. Was the first time it was really put to practical use." (10:01)

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The Physics of X-Rays: The Electromagnetic Spectrum

• Where X-rays Fit: X-rays occupy the spectrum between ultraviolet and gamma rays—higher than visible light, lower than gamma.
  • Chuck: "X rays fall between gamma rays and ultraviolet rays on that spectrum." (10:53)
• Photon Basics: X-rays are a type of electromagnetic radiation, like visible light, but with much shorter wavelengths (higher frequency), granting them more energy.
• Atomic Interactions: The unique energy levels of X-ray photons allow them to be absorbed by dense atoms (like calcium in bones) while passing through softer tissues.
  • Josh: "The greater the energy differential, the greater the energy that photon... will have." (13:44)

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How X-Rays Create Images

• Absorption Differences: Bones (rich in calcium, with higher atomic number and density) absorb more X-ray photons than soft tissue, creating the characteristic contrast in an X-ray image.
  • Josh (Analogy): "Imagine Tuk Tuk blowing pigment over his hand on a cave wall... The hand absorbed all of that pigment... that's kind of what happens with an X-ray." (20:02)
• The Process: X-rays pass through the body; soft tissue lets most pass, bones stop them, casting a ‘shadow’ on the photographic plate or sensor.
  • Chuck: "The picture that we have is the outline, the silhouette of the bones. Because the X rays made it through. Through the tissue, didn't make it through the bones." (20:27)
• Lead Shielding: Lead’s high density makes it perfect for lining X-ray machines and for the protective aprons, keeping stray radiation away from the rest of the body.

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The X-Ray Machine Explained

• Basic Components:
  • A vacuum tube with a heated cathode and an anode (often made of tungsten).
  • A current heats the cathode, releasing electrons, which are accelerated towards the anode, generating X-rays upon impact.
  • Chuck: "The cathode is a heated filament... It's gonna spit electrons off that surface and... hit a disk made of tungsten... that's sort of the key piece." (24:19)
• Radiation Control: X-rays are focused into a narrow beam and shielded by lead except for the intended area of exposure.
• Heat Management: The process produces a lot of heat, so the anode rotates and is usually oil-cooled.
  • Chuck: "There's a cool oil bath that helps absorb heat as well, which I never have heard of that either." (27:13)

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Types of X-ray Imaging

• Standard Radiography: The typical single-image X-ray (bones, chest, teeth).
• CT (Computerized Tomography): Multiple X-ray images combined digitally to produce slice-by-slice views.
  • Josh: "If you hook it up with a computer that allows you to take X rays basically in slices, you can come up with computerized tomography." (27:59)
• Mammography: Specialized for breast tissue.
• Fluoroscopy: Live moving X-ray images, often with contrast media (like barium) to visualize soft tissue or blood vessels.
  • Chuck: "A contrast agent is basically more dense than the soft tissue... If there's any blockage, there's all sorts of applications for it." (29:22)

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Are X-rays Dangerous?

• Ionizing Radiation: X-rays can ionize atoms, leading to cell mutation, death, or cancer.
  • Josh: "It's basically radiation sickness. It's a form of ionization or ionizing radiation." (33:36)
• History of Overuse: X-rays were once overused, even in shoe stores to fit shoes in the 1930s–50s, not realizing the health risks.
• Exposure Calculation: Annual background exposure: 1–4 millisieverts. X-ray exposures:
  • Dental Panorama: 0.01 mSv
  • Chest X-ray (2): 0.1 mSv
  • Mammogram: 0.4 mSv
  • Back: 1.0 mSv
  • Abdominal/Pelvic CT: Up to 10 mSv
• Cumulative Effects: Radiation exposure adds up over time; medical use is tightly regulated to use the minimum necessary.
• Modern Precautions: Always ask if alternatives exist, minimize unnecessary images.
  • Josh: "It's still safer than the ultimate alternative... which was exploratory surgery." (39:30)

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Non-Medical Uses of X-rays

• Luggage scanning, food inspection, archeological analysis, mineral identification, and in astronomy (X-ray telescopes in space can see phenomena unobservable from Earth).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Josh: "If you can just hang on by your fingernails, it can click and then you lose it again, but that means that it could click again later on." (05:07)
• Chuck: "Hand cancer?"
  Josh: "No." (09:49)
• Josh: "The point is that it is ultimately the same thing. It's a type of electromagnetic energy that is carried on a photon, which is a particle of what we would call light." (12:14)
• Chuck: "If you want to imagine an atom, a nucleus of an atom, and rings around that atium. Atium."
  Josh: "That's a new word." (13:09)
• Josh (Tuk Tuk analogy): "He's just made an early stencil. He's like a Banksy, basically, like a caveman Banksy." (19:49)
• Chuck: "A box full of X-rays." (25:11)
• Josh: "You got anything else on X rays?"
  Chuck: "No... That was a fine amount of stuff. I'm feeling good about it." (40:39)

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Important Timestamps

• Discovery & History of X-rays: 07:53–10:30
• Electromagnetic Spectrum/Photon Physics: 10:44–15:39
• How X-rays Make Images: 18:06–22:28
• Inside the X-ray Machine: 22:28–27:28
• Types of X-ray Technology: 27:59–30:43
• Health Risks & Exposure Levels: 32:56–39:30
• Non-Medical Uses/Astronomy: 38:53–39:30

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Conclusion & Further Exploration

Josh and Chuck emphasize the double-edged nature of X-rays: an invaluable tool for medicine, science, and more, but not something to overuse given the risks of ionizing radiation. They encourage listeners to stay curious, be cautious, and always ask questions in medical settings.
For a visual explanation, they mention the original HowStuffWorks article on X-rays as a supplementary resource.

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This summary covers the core informational content of the June 19, 2026 "How X-Rays Work" episode, capturing both the detailed science and the banter that makes Stuff You Should Know such a hit for the science-curious.

Transcript

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

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[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Hey, Chuck here. We're almost done, everybody, with the science playlist. I hope all of our egghead friends out there got into this one. This one was, I feel like quite a while ago, but it's about X rays. It's called how X rays work and it's super nerdy and super fascinating. Give it a listen.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryan, as always. And there's Jerry over there fiddling around with stuff. So it's stuff you should know the

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

podcast, not stuff you should know the movie.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. You know, we were sworn to secrecy about that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That'd be a good movie. That'd be a bad movie.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, man. It could go either way. I always see. I imagine it like Strange brew.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, yeah. Yes, they could. They could base it on the stuff you should know. Tell all book I'm writing. Oh, yeah, that would Be exciting.

[Josh Clark]

That would be very exciting. I'm looking forward to that book.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Like, Lifetime movie of the week.

[Josh Clark]

Do you, like, switch people's names? Like, am I Joe?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Joe Clack?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, it's sort of like. Like, did you see the Saved by the Bell movie?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I didn't.

[Josh Clark]

Screech. Write a book. It was based on a book by Screech, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Wasn't it, like, all sex and drugs and stuff?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, it was. You know, it was a bunch of teenagers in Hollywood, so, sure, there was some of that in there, but it was. I didn't read the book, but the movie was bad. And not nearly as salacious as you wanted it to be.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I remember a lot of people being disappointed. And by remember, I mean I recall the. Like, two weeks ago when people were talking about it. When it came out, it stunk.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I'll watch Emily and I'll watch some of those just terrible, terrible biopics occasionally on tv. And it's. It can be fun. Like, we watched the. Who was the one actor? Brittany Murphy. The Brittany Murphy Story.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? Does she have a heck of a story. Is she alive still or did she die?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, she passed away.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Under kind of weird circumstances because she and her husband both passed away within weeks of each other.

[Josh Clark]

Weird.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And there were all these strange claims that her house was poisoned, that they were poisoned and. Yeah, it was fun.

[Josh Clark]

What's your take on it?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, I don't know. The movie wasn't very good.

[Josh Clark]

Who played Brittany Murphy? Do you remember? It was Julie Bowen, wasn't it? No, she's in all of those.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Someone who didn't look very much like Brittany Murphy.

[Josh Clark]

Julie Bowen. I was right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

The Ashton Kutcher guy was pretty good, though, I gotta say.

[Josh Clark]

Steve Jobs played him.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They should have just gotten Ashton Kutcher to play himself.

[Josh Clark]

He's not doing much. He's on what, Two and a Half Men.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

That's got to require 15 minutes of work a week.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

He's selling cameras.

[Josh Clark]

Do you remember when that whole Two and a Half Men thing was going down? We were in la, and for the one and only time in my entire life, I see Jon Cryer that day.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, during the Charlie Sheen meltdown.

[Josh Clark]

Meltdown. Like the day of the meltdown. Like it happened at night. And within eight hours, I saw Jon Cryer for the first time in person at a McDonald's.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Did you yell Ducky?

[Josh Clark]

No, I left him alone. He looks stressed out.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, yeah, he's probably like my Career is going down the tubes, but little did he know, he's a survivor. Yeah. His career is just fine.

[Nissan Advertiser 1]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

So X rays is what we're talking about, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yep. That was the lightest part of this podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I like this one. This one, it's one of those things where if you can just hang on by your fingernails, it can click and then you lose it again, but that means that it could click again later on. That's what I like about it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Good. I'll leave that to you. I got lots of other stuff about it.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you do that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I totally understand.

[Josh Clark]

Good, good. So have you ever broken anything and needed an X ray or has it all just been dental stuff?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You know, dude, never broken a bone. Knock on wood.

[Josh Clark]

I better knock on wood.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, I've had. My injuries were always stitches, I was always getting busted open.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Rocks and sprinklers and I was always getting cut and sewed back up, but I never broke a bone.

[Josh Clark]

That's great.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You should probably knock on wood one more time just to be safe.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, all of my X rays too have been, like, just going to the dentist or whatever.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You never had a bone broken?

[Josh Clark]

I don't want to say, because I don't even know if knocking on wood

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

will do it on laminate. Ikea.

[Josh Clark]

That would just be so horribly interesting if both of us broke a bone after this.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And we're at the age where, like, you should break bones when you're a kid, where you're like, eh, whatever. I get a cast at this age. It's drag.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Yeah. I remember reading, like, a Tom Clancy novel and, like, some kid got an arm torn off or whatever, and one of the surgeons was like, if the arm's in the same room as the kid, it can be healed.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't hold true when you're Tom Clancy's age.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

So you are familiar with X rays? So you've seen them before, You've watched, Er, surely.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I've had X rays for, like, the dental ones, like you said, and then just other various, like chest X rays for sicknesses and things like that, which I think may be a little frivolous, to be honest.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And kind of dangerous, really. Yeah, conceivably. Sure. Which we'll get into later. But did you. Were you familiar with X rays at all beyond that? Did you know that they were invented or discovered accidentally?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I did know that.

[Josh Clark]

I did not.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's one of the few things I know. I saw a Little like quickie short on some. Like it might have been actually Science Channel.

[Josh Clark]

I looked all over. The most I could find was a dude on Siemens just describing it in the most flat affect.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I watched every single one of his videos.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I got to five and five wouldn't load. And I was like, forget this.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, five never loaded for me. I watched the other 14, though. And the whole time I was going, man, these are a minute long. Please join them all together into one six minute video.

[Josh Clark]

I know, it was so weird.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, it was pretty silly. But he was good. He was just very dry.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they spent zero pennies on any kind of soundtrack or anything. Like, if he grabs papers, you hear papers rustling in the classroom. It was pretty straightforward.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes. But that's a very wind about roundabout way of getting to its discovery in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Runtgen. And he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass. And he saw that the fluorescent screen was glowing when he turned on his electron beam, which wasn't a big deal, but he was like, wait, this has got cardboard around it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. There shouldn't be any visible light escaping.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Which is silly to think of now.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, it is, but you have to put yourself in his shoes. Like, X rays hadn't been discovered because he was literally on the verge of discovering them right then.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And yeah. So he was like, this is very curious that this is fluorescing.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And he noticed other things were glowing. And eventually he started putting other objects between the tube and the screen. They glowed. The screen did. That Is finally put his hand there.

[Josh Clark]

I read his wife's hand.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He's like, either way, come in here for a second. I want you to try something.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And saw Bones projected. And then I guess probably poo pooed his pants and said, man, I think I'm onto something here.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It was really that quickly. He was like, immediately the application was clear. It wasn't one of those things where it took 20 years.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

He's like, hold on, you can see Bones. This could be really helpful.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And he won a Nobel Prize, very rightfully so, the first one ever for physics. And he named him X rays because he didn't know what the heck it was.

[Josh Clark]

No, exactly.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's like kind of signing your name.

[Josh Clark]

He probably. I think he assumed that later on future scientists would fill in the blanks, but they were like, no, we're cool with X rays.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, he probably thought they'd. Someone would eventually call it, like, The Roentgen ray or something.

[Josh Clark]

He wasn't much of a self promoter. No, he was just like. I'll just call him X rays as a placeholder.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And he didn't patent any. Anything, you know, he never, like, made money off of it and then just.

[Josh Clark]

And his wife had hand cancer as a result.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, I was laughing, but no, she didn't. That would be very sad.

[Josh Clark]

It was just a joke. You can proceed with the laughter.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Plus, I've never heard of hand cancer.

[Josh Clark]

It's gotta be out there.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And then a couple years later, they were already using it in the Balkan war. Was the first time it was really put to practical use.

[Josh Clark]

First Balkan war? The one around World War I, was it?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, no. 1897.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that Balkan War. I didn't know that existed until just now.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And they said we can see bullets and shrapnel and stuff now. Which is helpful.

[Josh Clark]

It is extremely helpful. So, like, this guy Rungen discovers X rays and their most practical application in one fell swoop, basically.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

And a little further study revealed that X rays are actually just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum of which radio waves microwaves, what we call visible light.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

What else is on there?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, I've got my handy wallet. Electromagnetic spectrum card.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And X rays fall between gamma rays and ultraviolet rays on that spectrum, which are all below. Well, you say below. I don't know if it's not really an above or below situation. Visible light and then infrared, microwave and radio waves.

[Josh Clark]

So it would be a higher or lower frequency because that's how the whole thing's divided.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, like, the visible spectrum of light consists of electromagnetic radiation that has a frequency, a wavelength that our eyes are sensitized to so we can pick up visible light. But there's plenty of other stuff on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and all of it is delineated by the frequency, the wavelength. So at the highest end, you have gamma rays that are like.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, that means the Squiggly line is very close together.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And then on the farthest end, you have radio waves that are like.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And that means the Squiggly line is far apart.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And that is called Chuck Science.

[Josh Clark]

That's good stuff. Yeah, it's back in my wallet right next to the. What else you have in there?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I just have my Pabst Blue Ribbon membership card, which I actually do.

[Josh Clark]

Do you really?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, but I've had it for, like, 20 years.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. When you. You got it when you're like, seven, eight. Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You flatter me.

[Josh Clark]

So X rays fall. I guess we're about in the sort of. Well, yeah, on the higher end, they have a higher frequency as far as the electromagnetic spectrum goes. But the point is that it is ultimately the same thing. It's a type of electromagnetic energy that is carried on a photon, which is a particle of what we would call light.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And we've talked about photons aplenty in the show. And the same, like, photons produce the visible light that we can see. Photons blast out from the sun. How long does it take?

[Josh Clark]

It takes, like 100,000 years to get from the core to the surface, and then like eight minutes to get from the surface to Earth.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Man, I love that fact.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So this is the only part I understand, so I'll lead with it. If you want to imagine an atom, a nucleus of an atom, and rings around that atium. Atium.

[Josh Clark]

That's a new word.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

An atom. As orbitals. When an electron drops to a lower orbital, it releases energy in the form of a photon.

[Josh Clark]

And the electron will always drop to the lower orbital.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So, like, if an orbital is. If an electron is kicked off of a lower orbital, an electron in the higher orbital goes. Yeah. And drops down to that one.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes. And depending on how far it drops, is going to determine the energy level

[Josh Clark]

of that photon that it releases its energy when it drops, Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Because it doesn't have to drop more than one orbital.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It can skip down I don't even know how far, but a long way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it can. And like you said, the greater the distance between the two orbitals or the greater the energy differential, the greater the energy that photon, when released, will have, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And as we said, photons are the energy carriers of the electromagnetic spectrum. And depending on that energy or the frequency, the wavelength of that photon, that determines what kind of photon it is. Right. Whether it's a radio photon or an X ray photon or a photon that we can see that's in the visible spectrum.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right. Sometimes when these photons are flying around, they will collide with other atoms, and sometimes those atoms absorb that photon's energy and then kick it up to that higher level again.

[Nissan Advertiser 2]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But it has to be, from what I understand, and I saw that there's like. Of course, it's science, so there's like in atomic science, so there's little exceptions to this and that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But from what I could see, Chuck, there is. The energy of that photon has to exactly match the energy differential between One orbital and another on an atom.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So that it can kick it up so that it hits that one electron in the lower orbital, kicks it up to the higher orbital, and thus transfers its energy, which. Which means that atom just absorbed that energy that that photon was carrying, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

But if it's a little less, it's not going to have the energy to kick that electron up, which makes sense to me. Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But if it's a little more. This is what doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't kick the electron up, and then the photon carries on in a diminished energetic state. It just doesn't do anything. It doesn't interact with that. It has to be exact, say, like the energy differential between orbits is 8.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So a photon has to have an energy of 8, or else it's not going to do anything with that atom.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And so, depending on the. Well, let's say you have a radio wave. They don't have very much energy, so they can't move electrons between these orbitals. They just pass through things. X rays are super powerful.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

There's lots of energy, so they can pass through things, which is key if you want to check out your bones from outside of your body.

[Josh Clark]

It is. And we're gonna explain exactly how right after this.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Parent 2 (Lingokids user)]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

This week it's Lingokids.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

Why Lingokids?

[Child (Lingokids user)]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Lingokids Advertiser]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, song and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Parent 2 (Lingokids user)]

So no dinosaurs.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

And dinosaurs.

[Josh Clark]

Lingokids.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

Everything kids love. Download it for free.

[Lingokids Advertiser]

AI has taken over the Internet. Wrong answers, made up facts. He ask a simple question and get a generated essay. Nobody asked for technology. Trying to decide for you and still getting it wrong. The Internet didn't used to be this way. When you just want to search anything online and find what you need, StartPage is the private search engine that keeps it simple. Real links, less noise. And we don't keep track of what you asked. Try [e-mail]. that's startpage.com.

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[Josh Clark]

Okay, so we're back. Chuck. And you tantalized everybody by saying that this. This difference in absorption is what produces X rays. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Was that tantalizing?

[Josh Clark]

I was tantalizing. Okay. And I even know it's coming. That's how excited I am about X rays.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Good.

[Josh Clark]

So consider this. Like, different atoms have different atomic weights. They have different densities. They're just different. Like, different atoms are different. And atoms also have what are called differences in radiological density.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So a really high energy, high atomic weight, very dense atom is going to be able to absorb a lot of energy. Smaller atoms that maybe are looser and have a lower atomic weight are going to get kicked around by any old photon that wants to come along.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And that's key. Like I said, if you want to see bones, because your soft tissue, if you've ever noticed, when you have an X ray, you'll see the bones, but, you know, the rest is sort of a grayish black mess.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Because your soft tissue has smaller atoms, your bones, calcium atoms are much larger. So they're going to absorb those X ray photons.

[Josh Clark]

That's exactly right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They do it really well.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So imagine you have. Let's say, Chuck, let's go back and hang out with Tuk Tuk. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

Let's get back in the Wayback Machine.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's been a while.

[Josh Clark]

Okay,

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Look at him over there.

[Josh Clark]

So here we are in France in this cave. Tuk Tuk has his hand up against the cave wall, as you'll see. And in his other hand, he's got that little straw filled with pigment, red pigment. He's blowing it on his hand, Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And now that he moves his hand away, there's the outline of his hand.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's called a stencil.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Exactly. He's just made an early stencil. He's like a Banksy, basically, like a caveman Banksy. But if you look at the back of Tuk Tuk's hand, Don't get too close, but look at the back of his hand.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It's covered in red pigment, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So if you can, if you want to equate this to an X ray. The hand absorbed all of that pigment.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And the stuff that passed through, left the picture on the cave wall. That's kind of what happens with an X ray. Except with an X ray photograph, the X ray photons are absorbed by the denser calcium rich bones.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And they pass through the softer tissue. So the picture that we have is the outline, the silhouette of the bones. Because the X rays made it through. Through the tissue, didn't make it through the bones. They made it through the tissue and onto the X ray plate, which absorbed the picture in negative.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right. And I'm glad you said picture because that's all it is. On the other side of the human being that they're shooting the X ray at, there's a camera and you're just going to get a regular negative. And they could make it a positive, but they leave it as a negative because you really don't need the positive image.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And that's what they'll put on that little screen to show you your cracked femur.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And they can see the crack because some of those X rays will make it through the gap.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So all you're seeing is the result of X rays that made it through the tissue were absorbed by the bone. So those don't make it to the plate. The ones that make it to the plate cause the chemical reaction that gives you your negative, your X ray. And it's pretty simple, really. Like, if you think about it, at least in principle, it's also extraordinarily difficult to conceive of. But if you understand the principle behind it, it makes uttering complete sense.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And it's a pretty focused shot that they're using there. It's not like they don't fill the entire room with X rays. They've got a thick lead shield around the whole device and it contains everything. And it's got a little small window that's just going to let that narrow beam pass through a series of filters and basically hit you wherever they want to hit you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the reason that they use lead is because lead is an extremely dense element. Yes, right, sure. Oh, God, I hope so. With a very high atomic number, which means it can absorb tons of energy. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. That's why you're going to wear a lead apron. If you're not, you know, if you're getting your skull done, you're probably gonna wear an apron on your chest, let's say.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. So you're, you're. So this lead is being bombarded with X ray photons and electrons and it's just taking it, it's fine. And it's not being able to, it's not able to pass through because it doesn't have high enough energy. But yes, when they put that little window in the X ray generating machine, it passes right through there in a concentrated beam. And Chuck, let's talk about the machine. Right, so and this is basically what we use as X ray machines is essentially what Rootkin was experimenting with when he accidentally discovered them. Because if you look for X rays like they're, they propagate naturally. But I think like 20% of the X rays on Earth come from humans.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like we generate a lot of X rays. They don't come, they don't come like you don't find them normally on Earth. They're coming from outer space to us, hence X ray astronomy. But the ones here on Earth that are generated on Earth, it's not like rocks put out X rays or something like that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

We do, we humans do. Humans in lead aprons put out X rays and they use this machine like Runtgen Main.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. What you have in the machine, you have an electrode pair, a cathode and an anode. And that's inside a good old fashioned glass vacuum tube which it's amazing how vacuum tubes are still like the best way to do many of these things.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it allows things to travel at the speed of light easily.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right. And it allows guitar amps to sound great.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't know they used vacuums in that. Oh, is that a cathode tube?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. Like a, like the best amps are still made with vacuum tubes. You can get solid state amps, but they're just. The sound isn't as rich. So it's kind of like this old technology that's still superior.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They're all pumped out by hand by a 90 year old man in Tennessee, Mr. Marshall. Yes.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So the cathode is a heated filament, just like you might see in a light bulb. And the machine's gonna pass a current through that and heat that thing up and then it's gonna spit electrons off that surface and it's gonna hit a disk made of tungsten and it's going to draw those across a tube. It's basically the tube is sort of the key piece.

[Nissan Advertiser 2]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Because you've got the positive and the negative charge, the cathode and the anode. Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that difference, that electrical charge draws those electrons down to the anode.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. With a lot of force.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that force means that when those electrons hit the tungsten anode, it knocks a bunch of electrons off, creates a bunch of X rays in the process. And you have a whole box filled with X ray radiation.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

A box full of X rays.

[Josh Clark]

That's exactly what it is. Like, you're just. I mean, there might as well be like, a foot crank to this thing, like an old sewing machine. For as technologically advanced as it is, there may be.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

For all I know. I don't know what goes on in that other room.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You know, true.

[Josh Clark]

There's some dude in there with, like, his right leg is three times more muscular than his left leg because that's the only one he uses. So, in addition, like I said, to X rays being created, the other X rays, other photons, can go on and knock more electrons off. So you have what's like a process of chain reaction starting. Right. It's not like one gets hit and then that's it. And a photon's created, and it just hangs around until it's beamed out. You're just generating this huge amount of X rays. And the X rays are also continuing to propagate themselves because they're knocking more electrons free. And the more free electrons you have, the more interactions you have. Right, right. So one of the ways that more electrons can be knocked off, you don't even need a direct transfer of energy where a photon is absorbed or knocks an electron from one orbit to another or knocks it loose entirely. A photon actually has this really cool capability of just orbiting close by the nucleus of an atom. And when the nucleus basically draws it into its orbit, the photon just takes a hard left turn.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. It just bumps it off its course.

[Josh Clark]

But even like the Dodge Viper has to slow down to take a left turn. Slow a little bit, Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Just a little.

[Josh Clark]

Just a little.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But that little bit in Photon world means a transfer of energy from the photon outward.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. As an X ray.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And then the photon, like the photon, takes that left turn, and the energy is transferred to the atom.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And one of the byproducts. If this sounds like it's gonna create a lot of heat, it's because it will. And in order to combat this, they rotate this anode to keep it. It would just melt down if you kept it in place.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And apparently there's a cool oil bath that helps absorb heat as well, which I never have heard of that either.

[Josh Clark]

It sounds oily.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

A cool oil bath.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It doesn't sound refreshing at All. It sounds like the opposite of refreshing.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Cool and oil don't really go together.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And I misspoke. That's an electron that can be drawn to the nucleus of an atom, appropriately enough, because they orbit nuclei anyway. But it doesn't have to hook up with that atomic. When it takes that hard left, it emits the photon, like you said.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right. And like I said earlier, there's a camera on the other side of the patient, and it's going to record that pattern of light when it passes through the body. And it's not so different from a regular camera. And in the end, you're just going to get a picture, like I said, a negative image.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And if you hook it up with a computer that allows you to take X rays basically in slices, you can come up with computerized tomography.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. AKA ct.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

A CT scan.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. If you get a breast exam, you're using a type of X ray called mammography. And then there's a fluoroscopy, which the man in the extraordinarily dry presentation from Siemens said was basically like moving picture.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's like a movie.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And then he showed us what a movie is with a flip book. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That old flip book trick.

[Josh Clark]

And if you listen to this podcast. I'm sorry, I just want to apologize for both of us. Siemens guy.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, hats off to you for doing that at all.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Because he's probably saying, well, at least I was correct in everything I said.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. It's a good point, sir, but with fluoroscopy, it's basically like a movie of an X ray movie. And you would do this to make sure, like, a heart is beating correctly because you wanted to see it, but you have to have an additional instrument, because, as we've said, X rays will pass through tissue, like heart tissue and muscle tissue and blood vessels, and all the stuff you want to get pictures of using an X ray. So you have to use something called a contrast media for it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. A contrast agent is basically more dense than the soft tissue. So if you want to, let's say, swallow, it's usually like a barium compound. If you want to examine, like, your blood vessels or your circulatory system, sometimes they can inject that or you might drink it to see if you're doing, like, a gastrointestinal, like a GI tract, you're gonna swallow that stuff, which I've never had to do. I think my dad had to do that. Yeah, I don't think it's super pleasant.

[Josh Clark]

I get the impression not too. But my dad did it as well.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, it's an old guy thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So I should be getting one soon. And then it allows you to see a moving image, basically how that liquid is. If there's any blockage, there's all sorts of applications for it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because that liquid has a high radiological density, which means that the X rays don't just pass right through the tissue that it's being suspended in, like your blood vessels, it absorbs it for it. So you get a picture of your blood vessels, your circulatory system, which is pretty cool. It's pretty clever. It's also extraordinarily elementary in principle. That's right, my dear Watson.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And that single picture, I think we, you know, we mentioned CT and mammography and all that in fluoroscopy, but the single picture is just called standard radiography. And that's when you're, you know, taking a photo of your skull.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Or your lungs or your bones or your teeth.

[Josh Clark]

And so speaking of the lead apron thing, man, it's always made me kind of nervous, like, if the rest of my body has to wear a lead apron, but you're shooting an X ray into my head. Am I gonna be okay?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, we'll answer that right after this message.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Stuff you should know.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Parent 2 (Lingokids user)]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

This week it's Lingokids.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

Why Lingokids?

[Child (Lingokids user)]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild anim, and superheroes.

[Lingokids Advertiser]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Parent 2 (Lingokids user)]

So no dinosaurs.

[Child (Lingokids user)]

And dinosaurs, Lingokids.

[Parent 1 (Lingokids user)]

Everything kids love. Download it for free.

[Lingokids Advertiser]

AI has taken over the Internet. Wrong answers, made up facts. You ask a simple question and get a generated essay. Nobody asked for technology. Trying to decide for you and still getting it wrong. The Internet didn't used to be this way. When you just want to search anything online and find what you need, StartPage is the private search engine that keeps it simple. Real links, less noise. And we don't keep track of what you asked. Try [e-mail]. that's startpage.com,

[Nissan Advertiser 1]

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[Nissan Advertiser 2]

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[Josh Clark]

Good thing.

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[Nissan Advertiser 2]

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[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you can tell.

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[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

All right. X rays, are they bad for you? The answer is yes, pretty unequivocally. But like all things, it's in. Moderation is the key.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

In the 1930s and 40s and into the 50s, they had X ray machines at shoe stores.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They could X ray your feet to get a better fit. And they didn't realize at the time that they were X raying people way, way too much.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Talkative kids in class, they just shoot them with an X ray. And would they?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, no, they probably did.

[Josh Clark]

I've got you like twice today.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, no, I believe that, like, hey, let's look at his brain. There may be a mouse running around inside of it.

[Josh Clark]

People in the 30s were dumb.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, it's basically radiation sickness. It's a form of ionization or ionizing radiation. Right. So what can happen, like if just normal light hits an atom is no big deal. But when an X ray hits an atom, it knocks electrons off of it, creates an ion, which is an electrically charged atom. And basically anything from cellular death to mutation can happen at that point. Yeah, and mutation can spread and it can cause cancer.

[Josh Clark]

Right, because stable atoms are neutral. Right. Because they have an equal number of protons and electrons. You lose an electron, all of a sudden you have a positively charged ion and that negatively charged electron running around, and it just causes trouble. And you said light, visible light can be absorbed and it's no big deal, because visible light exists on a wavelength that's about in tune with the soft tissues of our body. Right. So we know how to absorb it, and it makes us tan, and that's cool. Right. But with these ionized atoms, these positively charged atoms, like going around in your body, it can cause a lot of problems, like mutations. Like cancer, Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, if you break that DNA chain. That's not good.

[Josh Clark]

No, it isn't. And one of the results is the DNA can basically lose its ability to regulate itself, and the cell replicates more frequently than it should. And all of a sudden you have a tumor on your hands, and that can spread. It can also be a problem if that DNA break occurs in utero, because then that can lead to birth defects, which is why pregnant women shouldn't get X rays. And it can also just lead to plain old cellular death. If you have cellular death, then the tissues that are made up by those cells break down and you have a problem on your hands with that as well.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So here's the deal. We get exposed to radiation every day just walking around on the planet. Yeah, it depends on where you live. But every year, the average person is going to be exposed to anywhere from 1 to 4. It's measured in millisieverts per year, like I said, depending on where you are. I think in higher elevations, it's less than at sea level. So if you live in Denver, Colorado, you're going to be exposed to less.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, because Death Valley, you're higher up in the atmosphere. And that makes sense a difference.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

You have less protection, right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. So what they want to do, medically speaking, they want to use, or they're supposed to use, the minimum amount to achieve the pictures you need. It's not like the old days where they're just like, let's do 20x rays. Let's do the minimum amount we need to get the information that we need. A CT scan can get your. You lay down in the tube and it rotates around you and your whole body can be photographed in less than five seconds these days. But there are concerns if you get too many X rays still like a dental panorama. I think what I say, 1 to 4 millisieverts per year, and it's cumulative, too.

[Josh Clark]

You should say it's not like you get one and then eight months later you get another one and that first one went away. It accumulates over the course of a year.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. So here's just a few examples of how much radiation you're being exposed to with X rays. A dental panorama is going to be 0.01 millisieverts. So not very much. Like two chest X rays might be 0.1. Mammogram is around 0.4. Your pelvis 0.6. Your back, upper back may be 1.0.

[Josh Clark]

I wonder why. Because there's so much bone there.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Maybe. Yeah, maybe have to do with exposure to. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Josh Clark]

I got a ton of bone in my upper back.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

A full CT scan. It depends on what you are. It depends on what you're X raying. But a CT scan is obviously more like an abdominal or pelvis CT scan could be as many as 10 millisieverts. So that's like up to two or three years worth of radiation in a single CT scan, which can be problematic, which is why they don't say, get in the CT machine like every other week.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But, you know, some of the reasons you might. If you had a traumatic injury, they're gonna X ray you. A lot of times for disease confirmation, they'll use an X ray machine during surgery as a visual guide. Like, if you do endoscopic surgery, the surgeons actually needs to look at something. So sometimes they use X rays for that or to monitor your healing process when you break a bone. It's not just that first X ray. You're gonna keep getting them to see how you're healing up.

[Josh Clark]

This is right out of the Siemens video, huh? No, it isn't. Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I don't think so. I mean, I looked at so much stuff.

[Josh Clark]

It all runs together.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I call it cumulative research.

[Josh Clark]

So I did a brain stuff on Sieverts and how many we can take.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And, yeah, it's kind of like. It's a little alarming.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

How much radiation we're exposed to. People who fly a lot, too, are exposed to tons of radiation because you're again, higher up in the atmosphere, so you're less protected by the atmosphere.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Speaking of flying, of course, baggage that is x. Rayed. The food industry uses X rays a lot. Archaeologists use it if they don't want to destroy an object and they want to see what's inside. Or earth sciences, they'll use X rays for rocks to see what kind of mineral composition. So there's all sorts of applications. It's not just medical space.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

X ray telescopes out on satellites, apparently you can see a lot. You can see things you can't detect from an earthbound telescope because X rays are absorbed by our atmosphere. So you can't, like, shoot it into space like that.

[Josh Clark]

So this article makes a pretty good point, if you ask me. It says, like, yes, X rays are like, are bad for you, and you should use them with care and caution. And one. One good point is to always ask if there's an alternative to an X ray. Just to basically say, hey, Doc or Dennis, slow your roll. Yeah, let's. Is there another way we can get this information without an X ray? I know it's the easiest, but what are the alternatives? But then the article makes the point like it's still safer than the ultimate alternative, the thing that X rays replaced, which was exploratory surgery.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Back in the day, if you. They thought you had cancer, they would cut you Open and see.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And this is definitely better than that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or broken bone. Imagine getting that arm cut open just to see how it's doing.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They're like, nope, it's not broken.

[Josh Clark]

And we haven't invented anesthetic yet.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So good luck with your dentist, by the way, because I always get the feeling that the dentists are like, no. Your insurance allows us to bill for so many per year, so that's how many you're going to get.

[Josh Clark]

These X rays are putting my kid through college.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else on X rays?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

That was a fine amount of stuff. I'm feeling good about it. You feel good about this one?

[Parent 2 (Lingokids user)]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

I do, too.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about X rays, you can check out this really informative article on howstuffworks.com it's got some great diagrams that explain a lot of the stuff we were saying visually. And you can type X ray into the search bar, how stuff works, and it'll bring that up. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

This is from my buddy Poppy in Vancouver. Stuff you should know Listener that I met while I was there. And Poppy has this to say. He's got a pretty cool job. He listened to the PTSD show and wanted to write in about another option that he works with. He's a registered acupuncturist in Vancouver with special training in trauma and addictions. He has a program called neurotrophic stimulation therapy, ntsd. And a large part of the program uses ear acupuncture and electroacupuncture to promote neuroplasticity in the brain. He says you can't necessarily directly fix the brain, but you can stimulate the ear nerves and will help the brain re regulate certain functionality so it can heal itself. He's been treating trauma and PTSD patients for several years, and the evidence for his efficacy is high. It can be done with acupuncture needles alone or in combination with mild electrical stimulation. Remember we talked about

[Josh Clark]

transcranial electromagnetic stimulation?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, transdermal cranial stimulation. He says that's one of the things that he's also using to treat ptsd, which is pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And he said it makes cognitive behavioral therapies so much easier to introduce because it promotes neuroplasticity. And the results help a PTSD sufferer to be more open to and able to receive positive social programming. So he has a program we want to promote. If you want to see all the components in action in his program, you can visit lastdoor Recovery [e-mail] NTST or you can donate funds to help purchase a brain scanner so that they can scientifically measure the results of the program, which would really help show the validity of the therapies. And if you're interested in helping out Poppy's cause, there's because he's really big on treating veterans in Canada and the US I shortened his little URL to bit ly bit ly 11ynloq and that is from Poppy and he says Namaste.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot Poppy. Is it Poppy with a O P O p p I Nice if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to usyskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com stuffyou should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastowstuffworks.com that's right. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyou should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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[Kalpen (Kal Penn)]

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[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

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