Hey, hey, from NHPR. This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I am your host, Nate Hedgy, here with our producer, Justine Paradis. And as usual, to start our episode, I have a question for you. Okay, shoot. And that question is, how old would you guess that sunscreen is, like, the first modern version? What do you think? You know, it just kind of feels like a

World War II. I got World War II vibes. I think, like, you know, right around, like, sending

a bunch of young soldiers to the tropics. That is correct. Wow. Okay. Airmen, which is what it's

described as in every article, which I find very like old-time radio.

Like, amen.

They were furnished with something called Red Vet Pet in case their plane was downed and they were stranded like on a life raft.

Okay.

And this was a very dark petroleum jelly, heavy and unpleasant, according to the New York Times.

Yeah.

Apparently it had an SPF of two.

Okay.

We've come a long way since then in many ways.

I'd hope so, because, you know, globbing on a bunch of petroleum jelly does not seem very fun.

Yeah, like orange, dark petroleum jelly is how I imagine it.

Yeah, I'm not going to look good on the beach wearing that.

Nate, when you're headed out on a hike, when you bust out the sunscreen, what are the

qualities you want in this, you know, maybe seemingly simple goo?

You know, Justine, if only I did bust out the sunscreen.

That's a whole other question. Okay, what I'm looking for, especially early summer, is like, I don't want to have that first bad red burn. You wanted to protect you from a sunburn. But I also don't want to look where it's like it doesn't actually go in and you just have white stuff all of your face. You want it to look good. It needs to be invisible. I would say I'm going to add some things to the list. We want it to be durable. We want it to last. Yep. We want it to not give us acne. Yes, very true. We want it to smell nice. We want it to be non-toxic. Yes. We want it to last for a long time in our beach bags. We don't want it to replace it a lot.

If I go in the water, I don't want to have to put it on again or if I start sweating.

You want it also to be cheap.

Yeah, I don't want to drop, you know, an arm and a leg on sunscreen.

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