Decoder Ring | The Fight Over Sunlight
About this episode
This episode explores the historical and cultural perspectives on sun exposure and tanning, featuring insights from experts on the evolving guidelines regarding sun safety.
The sun has always been a hot topic. For centuries, we’ve flip-flopped over whether our health depends on soaking up its rays—or shielding ourselves from them. The current conventional wisdom is clear: Avoid sunburns at all costs, using shade, hats, long sleeves, and the highest SPF sunscreen your drugstore has to offer. But in a historical sense, that advice is pretty new. Not long ago, doctors told parents to slather babies in oil and let them roast in the afternoon sun. Tanning was once medically prescribed. Though we’ve lived under it for all of human history, we’ve never quite figured out how much sun is actually good for us. So where has the pendulum landed today? And why does it keep swinging in the first place? In this episode of Decoder Ring, Willa talks to Rowan Jacobsen , author of the new book In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure , who argues that our current guidelines have gone too far in emphasizing the risks of the sun. She also speaks with Catherine Cocks , the director of the Syracuse University Press and author of Tropical Whites: The Rise of the Tourist South in the Americas , about how race drove our cultural obsession with…
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