(AP Photo)

Post your comments below

Modern humans love to alter their skin. We bronze, we lighten, we pierce, we tattoo. Above all, for years, in the American culture, in summer, we have tanned.

In the country’s 21st century racial rainbow, skin color is – more than ever – all over the map, and proudly so. We have black, we have white, and everything in between – including in the White House.

And still, tanning is a cultural phenom. But these days, the sun may have little to do with it. A whole lot of tans these days come from a bottle, a lotion, a spray.

This hour, On Point: the new anthropology of skin and tanning.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nina Jablonski is the head of the Department of Anthropology at Penn State University. Her most recent book is “Skin: A Natural History” (2008).

Jane Brody writes the Personal Health column for The New York Times. Her books include “Jane Brody’s Guide to the Great Beyond” (2009), and “Jane Brody’s Good Food Book” (1985).

Carmindy is an on-screen makeup artist for the TLC show “What Not to Wear.” She is the author of “Get Positively Beautiful: The Ultimate Guide to Looking and Feeling Beautiful” (2008).

Birds do it. Bees do it. Humans do it, and when it’s “on the side” they call it infidelity. But infidelity is understood, practiced and paid for in many different ways around the world. In some countries it’s astonishingly common. In many others it’s not.

In the United States it is, perhaps, to most taboo. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Pamela Druckerman has found the statistics and followed the trail of infidelity around the world, from the USA to Paris and Moscow, Tokyo and Togo.

This hour On Point: Pamela Druckerman talks about her new book “Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee.”

-Tom Ashbrook

“I got the idea because I was a foreign correspondent and realized that you can learn a lot about foreign cultures by looking at people’s private lives.” Pamela Druckerman

“Men in poor countries cheat a lot and men in wealthier countries cheat a lot less.” Pamela Druckerman

“Women in wealthier countries cheat more than women in poor countries.” Pamela Druckerman

“America, the Philippines and Ireland are the most disapproving of infidelity.” Pamela Druckerman

“In America, the contemporary wisdom on infidelity is that it’s not the cheating, it’s the lying.” Pamela Druckerman

“When affairs happen, Americans are profoundly shocked.” Pamela Druckerman

Guest:

Pamela Druckerman, author of “Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee”