My husband spent £1,000s to become a cyborg…it nearly destroyed our marriage, risked EXPLODING chest & made life hell
SWEATING, shaking and scared, Susanna Cappellaro gritted her teeth as the ‘surgeon’ about to transform her into a real-life cyborg stated: “Everything we do in this shop hurts.”
Undergoing an op was a giant U-turn for the actress, 48, of London, who had watched her husband’s agonising journey “to become technology” that left them on the brink of divorce.
For years, she bore witness to the “constant pain” suffered by music executive Scott Cohen, 59, that left him with “bleeding and oozing wounds”, unable to hug her and at times, ‘behaving narcissistically’.
The cyborg journey for him began in 2016, when he had two titanium rods inserted in his chest in order to attach a £280 North Sense device, which would transform him into a ‘human compass’.
The tech would vibrate whenever Scott faced north but it came with an array of damaging downsides, as revealed in the new documentary My Husband, The Cyborg, out on Apple TV on Valentine’s Day.
Shockingly, Susanna became a cyborg too after having a magnet inserted in her finger to feel the magnetic field, repel metal objects and lift items like paperclips.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, the couple reveal all about their journey including the strain that nearly tore their marriage apart, people’s shocked reactions and how they bypassed airport security on multiple occasions.
“Never, never, never,” Susanna tells us, when asked if she ever imagined becoming a cyborg too, before admitting the painful surgery made her feel “closer” to her husband.
“I felt we both had a secret, like a super-power, because we could feel something other people couldn’t and perceived the world differently with this extra sense.”
Needle-fearing Scott’s first operation to become a cyborg occurred in 2016 when two metal rods were put under his skin to act as an ‘anchor’ for the North Sense device, which he co-invented.
The Warner Music Group boss, from the US, explained that he wanted to “become technology, not use technology” and give himself a “fuller sense of the world” by feeling the earth’s electromagnetic field.
He considers it the future advancement for humans, arguing it’s not a drastic step, as he tells The Sun: “Pacemakers are totally normalised but guess what, you’re a cyborg if you have a pacemaker.
“Having a titanium knee or hip, a cochlear implant or a pacemaker isn’t freakish or weird, so why should this be?
“A couple of decades ago iPhones, video calling, all of this technology were all things of science fiction, now everyone has one or is using it, it’s normal.”
‘Years of pain’
After having North Sense attached, Scott gleefully spins around in a circle, pointing in a direction whenever his chest buzzes and proclaims: “It’s a crazy north dance.”
While it helped him to interact with the world differently, by intrinsically being able to tell which direction was north, it came at a price.
Scott struggled to put on clothes, could no longer hug in a normal way and suffered constant frustration, anger and pain due to the way the device was attached.
He says: “It was years of pain. There was never a moment when it didn’t hurt. So it was always physically painful.
You see all of his butchered chest, it was all self-inflicted and he wouldn’t give up because he was stubborn
Susanna Cappellaro
“It probably weighed on our relationship too because I was always hurting and always frustrated and that’s just not a nice place to be.
“In hindsight, it probably took over my life a lot more than I thought at the time… it was the pain, the procedures, it was bleeding and oozing all of the time.
“The whole area was so painful all of the time that it made intimate contact, just a hug, very painful. I couldn’t do it.
“Someone once grabbed my hand and pulled me in for a big bro hug very suddenly and smashed into my chest. It literally brought me to tears, it was that uncontrollable.”
Fixated on his new ‘sense’, Susanna felt increasingly isolated and struggled with the lack of physical affection from her husband.
The Italian argued it “adds a layer of narcissism… [and] of self-involvement” to his personality in the doc, which he rejected, and made her feel “really scared” because they had “never been more disconnected”.
“I felt a little lonely, a little sad and I think it’s because I don’t get the same physical contact I used to get before,” Susanna says.
Scott needed multiple operations to reinsert the rods into four different parts of his torso because his body kept rejecting the metal.
“You see all of his butchered chest, it was all self-inflicted and he wouldn’t give up because he was stubborn,” Susanna says.
Cyborg-maker parties
In raw moments, the couple argue and Susanna reveals she’s “tormenting myself” over the lack of connection to her husband.
She explains: “I’m concerned because the more he goes down this road, the more different he becomes to me, and our differences in the way we see the world will become bigger and bigger.
“I’m really terrified that is not going to make us stay together unless I take that journey too…because of his cyborgism, he’s added an extra layer to his sensorial expenses.”
If you let this piece of technology interrupt my interaction with you I will be very annoyed… So when we have sex is it going to smash on my face constantly?
Susanna Cappellaro
It leads Susanna to talk to other people with the North Sense device and visit an “implantation party” in Stockholm, Sweden where people “enter humans and leave cyborgs”.
She also met Kevin Warwick, who alongside wife Irena, became the ‘first cyborg couple’ after they electronically linked their nervous systems together for 24 hours in 2002.
After having microchips inserted into their arms, they rigged it so that when she clenched her hand the Coventry-born professor “felt a pulse”, which he said was “very intimate” and made them “feel very close, like we had a more special relationship”.
Four years earlier, Kevin, dubbed ‘Captain Cyborg’, implanted a chip the size of a two-pence coin that allowed him to open doors and switch on lights in the university he worked in by waving his arm.
These moments all contributed to Susanna’s decision to have a tiny magnet inserted into her finger in an extremely painful £200 operation.
“I’ve been shaking all morning, I was so nervous and I’m sweating. I do think maybe I’m crazy, I don’t know. It’s such a big deal to me,” she says.
The procedure saw a thick needle being lodged deep into her finger, and then a tiny magnet was forced into the hole, which was then sewn up.
‘Scary’ attraction
Describing her ‘new sense’, Susanna said: “I remember I opened my computer and I felt, ‘Oh, here there are magnets’ and on my phone too. It’s a fantastic party trick, especially if you want to impress drunk people.
“Induction stoves have very strong magnets, once I turned it on my hand went straight to it. I jumped back. It was quite scary.
“What you learn is the existence of something that others can’t see… It feels quite magical, you can intellectually understand a magnetic field but to feel it there is very different.”
It allowed Susanna to see how tech could “enhance our experience of the world” and “discover things that are invisible to our normal senses”.
Scott labelled it “baby steps” and later admits to us that he was “not enthusiastic” about her dalliance in the cyborg world.
Most people had it on for very short periods of time and were going, ‘This is a nightmare. I can’t do this any longer’
Scott Cohen
In the documentary, he quips: “You butchered yourself, why would you do something like that?”
Towards the end of the film, Scott reveals he had to remove the North Sense but unveils a new prototype that looks like a “cowbell” and would require inserting a battery under his skin.
Susanna says: “If you let this piece of technology interrupt my interaction with you I will be very annoyed… So when we have sex is it going to smash on my face constantly?”
“No, not constantly,” Scott fires back. The new North Sense didn’t come to fruition, much to Susanna’s relief who feared it would be “dangerous” and may “explode”.
He says: “It was a step too far with the way current technology was because batteries do leak and explode and it’s a risk if it’s in your body.”
Susanna adds: “It was insane to me. I was like why? Sometimes he takes it too far. It’s like those people who take selfies near the edge of a cliff, I’m like, ‘Why are you going so far? Come back, it’s dangerous. Don’t do that. Are you crazy?”
‘Are you insane?’
Since the documentary ended in 2021, Susanna removed the magnet from her finger and was initially quoted £9,000 because it’s a private operation.
“We paid nowhere near that…” she says. “They were treating it like a proper surgery, I was like ‘Are you crazy? I’ll do it myself in the kitchen’.
“I took it out because I started to get really worried. What if I needed an MRI? What if I got in an accident? Maybe having it was getting a bit old too.”
Scott is yet to have another device due to being unable to perfect the North Sense’s successor. He’s proud of having kept the device for the longest out of 200 people, despite the “pain, blood and gore”.
He adds: “Most people had it on for very short periods of time and were going, ‘This is a nightmare. I can’t do this any longer.’ Some lasted just a few months, no one had it for years and years and years like me.”
Scott describes “almost grieving” when it was removed as it was like “losing one of my senses”.
Human compass, earthquake detector & colour listener: meet the real-life cyborgs
- Earthquake detector – Moon Ribas: A Spanish choreographer, who has a sensor implanted in her arm that allows her to feel earthquakes in real-time. This “seismic sense” informs her dance and connects her to the Earth’s movements.
- Colour listener – Neil Harbisson: Born with achromatopsia (complete colour blindness), the British Catalan has an antenna implanted in his skull that translates colours into audible vibrations, allowing him to “hear” colour.
- Human compass – Scott Cohen: US-born Scott, who lives in London, uses North Sense device implanted in his chest. This device vibrates, indicating magnetic north, giving him a constant sense of direction.
- Wi-Fi listener – Frank Swain: The Brit, who suffered with early hearing loss at 25, had his hearing aid adapted so that a soundscape is created from invisible Wi-Fi fields around him.
- Human thermostat – Rich Lee: The ‘biohacker’ from Nevada, US, has several implants, including magnets in his ears that allow him to listen to music inaudible to others, and a biotherm chip that allows him to monitor his body temperature.
He compares it to when people lose their sense of smell due to Covid and adds: “You don’t lose anything practical… but life is a little duller, not as fulfilling”
One thing Scott doesn’t miss is the attention the device drew from people who knew, including his mum who yelled “Are you insane? God have mercy”. Then there were the stares whenever he was topless and occasionally setting-off airport security alarms.
He explains: “If it was going to catch anyone you’d think, it would be the man with electronics jammed in his chest. Most machines didn’t pick it up but the metal wands did.
“The guards would call all their friends over like, ‘What’s this? This is crazy’ I was thinking there are all these people queuing up, they could be late for their flights because staff are like ‘Look at this, check it out’”
While Scott is tech-free for now, he plans to return to cyborgism believing it’s the future and notes special moments like feeling the device vibrate while 40,000 feet in the sky or even when on the London Underground.
He recalls: “It’s absolutely crazy, you look at the Tube map and it looks straight, like going down a path, but when you’re on it. It’s turning, weaving, taking sharp lefts.
“You have no sense of where you are when on it. But I had a very strong sense of how we were moving in there, it’s not a straight line underground and I found it fascinating.”
My Husband, The Cyborg is available to stream on Apple TV+ and other streaming platforms on Valentine’s Day – February 14th.