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The Stinky History of Human Hygiene · Stuff You Should Know

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1:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:09
Speaker 2: Hey, and Welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh, and
1:12
Speaker 2: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're all sparkling, clean,
1:16
Speaker 2: spotless and not smelly at all for this edition of Stuff,
1:20
Speaker 2: don't you know?
1:21
Speaker 1: Actually I'm a little smelly today.
1:23
Speaker 2: Are you smell? Pull? I think you're you're nice, I
1:28
Speaker 2: would say ripe, but not in an unpleasant way.
1:31
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you didn't scratch. You're supposed to scratch then stuff.
1:33
Speaker 2: Oh oh oh wait, oh yes, that is quite unpleasant.
1:37
Speaker 1: That tickles. All right, that was my joke.
1:41
Speaker 2: That was a great joke. Chuck, now you think so too,
1:44
Speaker 2: But she's on mute so we can't hear her laughing.
1:46
Speaker 1: I am a little bit smelly, but that was not
1:48
Speaker 1: in preparation to record it. Just haven showered in a
1:52
Speaker 1: couple of days.
1:53
Speaker 2: You know, a couple of days for real?
1:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, like two days.
1:58
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I mean I'm not being judgy. I'm just surprised.
2:02
Speaker 2: I do every day.
2:04
Speaker 1: Oh I'll skip. I skip days all the time.
2:07
Speaker 2: But when I do it, it's all over the place.
2:11
Speaker 2: Like if I have an appointment in the morning, obviously
2:12
Speaker 2: I'm taking a shower before that. If I don't have
2:15
Speaker 2: an appointment, I'll probably take a shower before bed. If
2:18
Speaker 2: we go to dinner, it might be in the middle
2:19
Speaker 2: of the day. Who knows it based on my schedule.
2:22
Speaker 2: But there's rarely a day that goes by where I
2:25
Speaker 2: don't take a shower. Not because I think it's dirty
2:27
Speaker 2: to not take a shower, sure, but because I feel
2:31
Speaker 2: like I think I just sleep better if I've had
2:35
Speaker 2: a shower that day. If I don't, I think I
2:36
Speaker 2: sleep worse.
2:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, a shower is a great, wonderful,
2:41
Speaker 1: relaxing thing when you're an adult, when you finally appreciate bathing.
2:45
Speaker 1: And I certainly do appreciate bathing, but you know, sometimes
2:48
Speaker 1: you just or maybe you don't because you do it.
2:51
Speaker 1: But sometimes I just don't want to feel wet. I
2:53
Speaker 1: don't want to get wet.
2:54
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I that
2:57
Speaker 2: doesn't actually happen to me. Mine is I do. I
3:00
Speaker 2: don't feel like going to the trouble of taking a shower.
3:02
Speaker 2: I just feel like feeling like I feel after the shower.
3:06
Speaker 2: So that's my motivator. I have no problem with being wet,
3:09
Speaker 2: now that you mentioned it.
3:10
Speaker 1: Shower before bed, that's nice. I should do that.
3:13
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, chuck, you don't know what you're missing. Shower
3:16
Speaker 2: before bed, wrap yourself in some fresh linen that you
3:19
Speaker 2: throw away the next.
3:20
Speaker 1: Day and it doesn't wake you up too bad.
3:25
Speaker 2: No, well, I would not recommend taking a cold shower
3:28
Speaker 2: before bed. I recommend taking a cold shower throughout the day,
3:31
Speaker 2: but not before bed. You want to take like a nice,
3:34
Speaker 2: tepid to warm a shower, and it's like it's like
3:39
Speaker 2: it's like dipping yourself into a warm glass of milk
3:41
Speaker 2: rather than drinking it.
3:42
Speaker 1: All right, Well, at the risk of still going on
3:45
Speaker 1: and on here at the beginning, I have a five
3:49
Speaker 1: second story of living in Athens one summer in my
3:52
Speaker 1: friend's place who had moved out, and he was like,
3:55
Speaker 1: you know, my parents paid the rent. You don't have
3:56
Speaker 1: a place to stay. You should stay there, And I did,
3:59
Speaker 1: but he could off the utilities. So I lived by
4:03
Speaker 1: candlelight and took cold showers for three months, because that's
4:05
Speaker 1: what you do in college. Sometimes that's so colonial. It
4:08
Speaker 1: was very fun.
4:09
Speaker 2: Actually, that's cool. Yeah, so you basically glamed.
4:13
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't hang out there a lot, you know,
4:15
Speaker 1: I just slept there, basically.
4:17
Speaker 2: Slept there, and the cold showers. That's amazing. Yeah, so Chuck,
4:21
Speaker 2: you taking cold showers and sleeping by candlelight really kind
4:24
Speaker 2: of dovetails with a large section of this episode. Yeah,
4:29
Speaker 2: which is around, like I said, the colonial era, which
4:33
Speaker 2: we'll get to later. I don't really have a very
4:35
Speaker 2: good segue other than this because we actually don't want
4:38
Speaker 2: to talk about the colonial era yet, so let's start
4:40
Speaker 2: further back.
4:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about the history of hygiene. And this
4:44
Speaker 1: is another great one from Olivia. I've been not obsessed,
4:49
Speaker 1: but just really interested lately in histories of commonplace things,
4:55
Speaker 1: and exercise was one, and now we're doing bathing. And
4:59
Speaker 1: as Olivia points out, and as many anthropologists that pointed out,
5:04
Speaker 1: and animal behaviorists, you know, animals before human beings have
5:09
Speaker 1: a lot of practices that we would then probably can
5:13
Speaker 1: call hygienic, like bathing type of things, using communal toilets
5:19
Speaker 1: within a species, stuff like that.
5:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. There's a behavioral scientist named Valerie A. Curtis
5:25
Speaker 2: who wrote a book or not a book. I'm sorry,
5:27
Speaker 2: it was a paper about I can't remember the name
5:31
Speaker 2: of it. I'm sorry, I thought I wrote it down.
5:33
Speaker 2: But basically Curtis makes the point that you could trace
5:37
Speaker 2: hygiene and hygienic behaviors back to unicellular life, Like, that's
5:42
Speaker 2: how old it is. Is Wow, you look at hygiene
5:45
Speaker 2: and hygienic behaviors as a means of either ridding yourself
5:50
Speaker 2: of disease or preventing disease, because those unicellular bacteria or bacteria,
5:57
Speaker 2: they had ways of like getting rid of parasites and pastigens.
6:00
Speaker 2: And that's essentially what you're doing. You know, when you're
6:03
Speaker 2: washing yourself off, you're ridding yourself of parasites and pathogens. So, yeah,
6:08
Speaker 2: it's a really ancient impulse that we have. It's just
6:11
Speaker 2: now we don't think of it as like disease prevention.
6:14
Speaker 2: We associate it mostly with beauty. Yeah, so we've kind
6:17
Speaker 2: of divorced it from its original roots, but we're still
6:19
Speaker 2: doing the same thing. We're just not thinking of it
6:21
Speaker 2: the same way.
6:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting you'll notice as we go through
6:26
Speaker 1: this stuff. At different times in the history of humans,
6:32
Speaker 1: we bathed for different reasons, and sometimes we were right
6:36
Speaker 1: on base. Sometimes we were off base. But it wasn't
6:39
Speaker 1: always like to get clean. Sometimes it was social reason.
6:43
Speaker 1: Sometimes the side benefit was you got a little clean.
6:47
Speaker 1: Sometimes they didn't bathe because they thought water was bad.
6:51
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting how we've i don't know, kind
6:54
Speaker 1: of been all over the map throughout human history as
6:57
Speaker 1: far as bathing goes, starting with hair.
7:00
Speaker 2: Well also, but even before that, like it's kind of
7:03
Speaker 2: waxed and waned, which I didn't realize. I thought it
7:05
Speaker 2: was just a steady progress towards the point we're at.
7:08
Speaker 2: Now that's not the case. There were a shower every night, Yeah,
7:12
Speaker 2: they were right exactly. There were chunks of time where
7:15
Speaker 2: we bathed, and then that just kind of went away,
7:18
Speaker 2: like you were saying, it just at different times and places.
7:20
Speaker 2: It wasn't just like a linear progression. And one of
7:23
Speaker 2: the ideas that we're I guess going to kind of
7:26
Speaker 2: get rid of in this episode is that the people
7:30
Speaker 2: in the days of your historical people were not just dirty,
7:34
Speaker 2: gross people who had never even occurred to to groom
7:37
Speaker 2: or bathe or whatever.
7:39
Speaker 1: Like.
7:39
Speaker 2: The stuff they had available to them and the ways
7:41
Speaker 2: that they were grooming seems not quite enough, probably did
7:45
Speaker 2: those of us in the West today, but it was
7:48
Speaker 2: still the same impulse, it was still the same thought,
7:51
Speaker 2: and they were still very fastidious in their own way.
7:54
Speaker 2: So the idea that everybody was gross back then is wrong.
7:57
Speaker 2: It actually they were in a real minority. And most
8:01
Speaker 2: people who are purposefully gross, especially during the medieval era,
8:06
Speaker 2: we're doing it to punish themselves to be better Christians. Essentially,
8:11
Speaker 2: everybody else was like, we're gonna just figure out how
8:14
Speaker 2: to take a bath in the river or comb our hair.
8:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, on the note of not
8:20
Speaker 1: yucking yems, there are plenty of people, and I think
8:23
Speaker 1: even sub movements of groups of people who don't like
8:28
Speaker 1: to bathe or you soaper deodorant and embrace the natural
8:31
Speaker 1: odors of the body and may not even wash their
8:34
Speaker 1: hair because that's the thing they're trying to do. Like
8:38
Speaker 1: that's your jam. That's fine, it's you know, certain things
8:42
Speaker 1: are more acceptable than others in certain societies and cultures.
8:45
Speaker 1: But like, if that's your deal, we're not poopooing it.
8:48
Speaker 1: We're just telling you the history of this stuff.
8:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like you're subtweeting the French right now.
8:55
Speaker 1: But I mentioned hair, and one of the first things
8:58
Speaker 1: we can debunk, I think anthe in part to an
9:01
Speaker 1: anthropologist named Judith Berman from a nineteen ninety nine paper
9:05
Speaker 1: that Judith wrote was that cavemen, even going all the
9:09
Speaker 1: way back then, and we'll use that in quotes, cavemen
9:12
Speaker 1: were just these wild, messy haired beasts that had like
9:16
Speaker 1: you know, basically birds nest in their hair. And that
9:19
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the case.
9:20
Speaker 2: No, I mean, look at even as recently as Unfrozen
9:22
Speaker 2: caveman Lawyer. He had a huge, wild mane of hair.
9:26
Speaker 2: But yes, she points out in this great titled paper
9:29
Speaker 2: Bad Hair Days in the Paleolithic that people have probably
9:33
Speaker 2: been cutting their hair for a very long time, millions
9:37
Speaker 2: of years, and that even I think Berman pointed to
9:40
Speaker 2: Venus figurines saying like they even had different hair styles
9:43
Speaker 2: back then, Like this is literal prehistory. These are prehistoric people,
9:47
Speaker 2: and they were cutting their own hair, they were creating hairstyles.
9:51
Speaker 2: And if you look at some cave paintings, some of
9:54
Speaker 2: the figures are beardless, others have beards, So that shows
9:58
Speaker 2: that they actually also cut the bes and trim their
10:01
Speaker 2: their body hair, probably because they were combating lice at
10:05
Speaker 2: the time.
10:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, lice comes back quite a few times, so yeah,
10:09
Speaker 1: they're probably If you're triggered by that itch inducing word,
10:13
Speaker 1: then just get ready.
10:14
Speaker 2: And also just real quick lice. By the way, are
10:17
Speaker 2: there a type of wingless insects who feast on human blood,
10:22
Speaker 2: typically at the scalp. But there's also body lice, which
10:26
Speaker 2: you can find a chest hair and aren't pit hair.
10:28
Speaker 2: And then there's pubic lice also known as crabs. Either way,
10:31
Speaker 2: you don't want them anywhere on your body, but if
10:33
Speaker 2: you don't bathe a lot, you can have them on
10:36
Speaker 2: your body pretty easy.
10:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you grew up in the seventies and eighties,
10:40
Speaker 1: do they still do life checks?
10:42
Speaker 2: No?
10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had lice checks in school.
10:44
Speaker 2: There's a big controversy about it about whether they should
10:47
Speaker 2: or not, and they're like, no, this is unnecessarily excluding kids,
10:51
Speaker 2: and other parents are like, uh, these kids are gonna
10:53
Speaker 2: spread lice. So there's just like everything else, there's problems
10:58
Speaker 2: in debate at the board of education about that.
11:01
Speaker 1: There's debate at boards of educations.
11:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy.
11:05
Speaker 1: So combing hair, you know, shampoo hasn't been around that long,
11:09
Speaker 1: and we'll get to sort of where that came from,
11:12
Speaker 1: Thank you Proctor and Gamble, But combing hair was one
11:17
Speaker 1: way that they sort of cared for hair before there
11:21
Speaker 1: was things like shampoo because we have this sebum which
11:24
Speaker 1: we'll talk about on the skin and in the hair.
11:26
Speaker 1: That's the oil, the hair oil. And if you comb
11:29
Speaker 1: that sebum out of your hair, you are helping to
11:32
Speaker 1: protect your hair, can get rid of some odors, it will,
11:36
Speaker 1: you know, you know, when you don't want your hair
11:39
Speaker 1: look and get kind of greasy. But I get the
11:41
Speaker 1: feeling that greasy thing is more of a modern thing
11:44
Speaker 1: that we want to get rid of. And back then
11:46
Speaker 1: it was just like, at least comb the sebum through
11:48
Speaker 1: the hair to help protect it.
11:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it helps protect it. It also breaks up areas
11:53
Speaker 2: where dirt and dust and grime and light lice can
11:57
Speaker 2: collect and feed. So you're kind of you're doing like
12:01
Speaker 2: a one two punch with combing. And we figured this
12:03
Speaker 2: out a very long time ago. There's a comb from
12:07
Speaker 2: Syria from the well a little more recent than that,
12:11
Speaker 2: but from the Bronze Age. We found a comb that
12:13
Speaker 2: had an inscription that said, may this tusk root out
12:18
Speaker 2: the lice of the hair and beard. So clearly a
12:20
Speaker 2: lice comb. But I think they, like you were saying,
12:23
Speaker 2: they found a comb that was at least ten thousand
12:25
Speaker 2: years old, all the way back in Syria.
12:28
Speaker 1: It's an old comb.
12:29
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, also look at
12:31
Speaker 2: the flintstones. People used to use fish skeletons for combs,
12:34
Speaker 2: Like it just makes sense, you know.
12:36
Speaker 1: Sure Simpsons always. I never was cool enough to carry
12:41
Speaker 1: the comb in the back pocket. But that was a
12:42
Speaker 1: big eighties look was that?
12:44
Speaker 2: H m hmm?
12:45
Speaker 1: What was the brand? I want to say, Goodies? Was
12:49
Speaker 1: that it?
12:49
Speaker 2: Yes, you're right, yep, good was it?
12:51
Speaker 1: So they make headache powder and combs two different things.
12:55
Speaker 2: It could be two different things, but it's also possible.
12:58
Speaker 2: But they're like ge they they do a lot of
13:00
Speaker 2: different stuff.
13:01
Speaker 1: They bring it things to light.
13:03
Speaker 2: So yeah, those combs with the handle and then like
13:06
Speaker 2: the comb on the side just above where your fist
13:08
Speaker 2: holds it.
13:10
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, sure yeah.
13:11
Speaker 2: And then you also had the afropick too.
13:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, with the black power fist. Those are great.
13:16
Speaker 1: So pre shampoo though, besides combing, there was washing going on.
13:20
Speaker 1: We talked about this stuff in our soap episode. We're
13:24
Speaker 1: going to go over a little bit of it today.
13:25
Speaker 1: But ash, which has lye was used to wash hair,
13:30
Speaker 1: It was used to wash skin. We'll get into the
13:33
Speaker 1: animal fat stuff a little bit later, but if you
13:36
Speaker 1: were well to do prior to the French Revolution, you
13:39
Speaker 1: might powder your hair, and I never knew what that was.
13:42
Speaker 1: I thought it was some kind of talk, but I
13:44
Speaker 1: think it could actually be flour, like wheat flour.
13:48
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, supposedly. One of the I guess inciting ideas
13:53
Speaker 2: of the French Revolution was that the aristocrats were using
13:57
Speaker 2: flour in their hair when other people couldn't even have
14:00
Speaker 2: for bread. That really ticked some people off enough to
14:04
Speaker 2: like chop the heads off of the people who had
14:06
Speaker 2: flour in their hair. That's right, So you mentioned LII.
14:11
Speaker 2: I saw that you could wash your hair with it,
14:14
Speaker 2: and it has a conditioning effect too, which is weird
14:16
Speaker 2: because it also goes in and breaks up all of
14:18
Speaker 2: that seabum pocket I heard the pockets. But I just
14:22
Speaker 2: have to say this on a very personal note. I
14:25
Speaker 2: have been in a strange tunnel where things that I'm
14:30
Speaker 2: seeing reading, watching on TV I immediately see in real life.
14:35
Speaker 2: I want to give you two examples. One on our
14:38
Speaker 2: exercise episode, I was driving around qaing it.
14:42
Speaker 1: When you saw a guy jogging.
14:44
Speaker 2: No, listen, that would have blown my mind. No, this
14:48
Speaker 2: is even crazier than that. I mentioned what I couldn't
14:51
Speaker 2: even remember the name of but people have since written
14:53
Speaker 2: in the abroller, that little weird thing that helps you
14:56
Speaker 2: do crunches. I couldn't even remember the name of it,
14:59
Speaker 2: let alone. I can't remember the last time I saw one.
15:02
Speaker 2: Within an hour of queueing that episode and hearing that part,
15:06
Speaker 2: I drove past a garbage can near my house that
15:09
Speaker 2: had an abroller sticking out of it.
15:11
Speaker 1: Did you grab it?
15:13
Speaker 2: No? I was too astonished. I think I almost like
15:15
Speaker 2: ran into a stop sign. It was so nuts. And
15:17
Speaker 2: then the other one that The reason I brought this
15:19
Speaker 2: up is I watched a video on medieval hair washing
15:24
Speaker 2: and it was this medieval person leaning over a basin
15:28
Speaker 2: washing her hair with like the water kind of going
15:31
Speaker 2: down her hair kind of dangling in front of her like.
15:34
Speaker 2: Less than an hour later, I go across the street
15:37
Speaker 2: to the park where there's like travelers that camp there.
15:40
Speaker 2: One of them was washing her hair that way. I've
15:43
Speaker 2: never seen her there before. I've never seen anybody wash
15:45
Speaker 2: their hair at this park. But within an hour of
15:47
Speaker 2: watching a medieval woman wash her hair like that, I
15:50
Speaker 2: saw a real life woman at the park doing the
15:53
Speaker 2: same thing.
15:54
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean this has been These.
15:56
Speaker 2: Are like two of just fistfuls of examples that have
15:58
Speaker 2: been happening to me. I don't know what's going on.
16:02
Speaker 1: I love it podcast imitates life or life imitates podcast.
16:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much.
16:07
Speaker 1: Well with body hair, I'm curious to see what else
16:09
Speaker 1: comes true with this one. But with body hair, it
16:13
Speaker 1: kind of depends on the time and place in the world,
16:16
Speaker 1: on whether or not people thought it was should be
16:20
Speaker 1: on your body or should not, And that continues today
16:22
Speaker 1: with some people. But when the Europeans came over and
16:25
Speaker 1: met indigenous Native Americans, the Europeans are like, boy, you
16:31
Speaker 1: guys are really hairy, and Native Americans were like, no, bruh,
16:36
Speaker 1: you're really hairy. We actually pluck a lot of our
16:39
Speaker 1: hair and are not known to be very hairy as
16:42
Speaker 1: a people. And that really confused me because I've always
16:45
Speaker 1: thought that Native Americans had less body hair, just you know,
16:50
Speaker 1: sort of genetically or whatever I think they do.
16:53
Speaker 2: And I think they're like, what this is saying is
16:56
Speaker 2: that they get every last one whenever they have the
16:59
Speaker 2: airant hair come up.
17:00
Speaker 1: Well, why would the Europeans call them, Harry, I.
17:03
Speaker 2: Think this is wrong, Harry, that there were a lot
17:05
Speaker 2: of dumb Europeans who traveled there and were confused with
17:08
Speaker 2: buffalo skins. Oh really, that's my hypothesis.
17:14
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, man, if you see a guy wearing
17:18
Speaker 1: a buffalo skin tomorrow.
17:20
Speaker 2: That would be I will be reporting back on that.
17:24
Speaker 1: What about you know, removing hair like you know, pubic
17:28
Speaker 1: hair and stuff.
17:29
Speaker 2: Actually that goes back to ancient Egypt. Did you know that?
17:32
Speaker 1: I did not know. That doesn't surprise me, but I
17:34
Speaker 1: didn't know that.
17:35
Speaker 2: There's a technique called sugaring. It's like waxing, but you
17:38
Speaker 2: use basically this kind of thick, honey colored paste and
17:43
Speaker 2: it does the same thing. It just pulls the hair
17:45
Speaker 2: out in a different direction. The Egyptians used to do
17:48
Speaker 2: the exact same thing.
17:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe it because, as you'll see, Egypt comes
17:54
Speaker 1: up a lot. They were big into you know, what
17:57
Speaker 1: they thought of as hygiene at the time.
18:00
Speaker 2: Hygiene, but also beauty too. They were the ones that
18:02
Speaker 2: kind of established it. Like they they would pluck their eyebrows.
18:05
Speaker 2: I saw in different places in different times, people used
18:08
Speaker 2: to use mouse skin to cover their eyebrows so that
18:11
Speaker 2: you basically didn't have eyebrows, because that would give the
18:13
Speaker 2: effect of a high forehead. Which was viewed as aristocratic.
18:17
Speaker 2: That dates all the way back to the Egyptians too.
18:20
Speaker 2: There's nothing hygienic about that. You're actually you want your
18:23
Speaker 2: eyebrows because they trapped the dirt and the grime and
18:25
Speaker 2: stuff that keeps it that gets in your eyes.
18:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why they're there, right, Yeah.
18:30
Speaker 2: So to pluck it. It's strictly a cultural beauty standard.
18:34
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
18:36
Speaker 2: Uh.
18:37
Speaker 1: And I think doesn't the word shampoo come I think
18:40
Speaker 1: it was originally a verb that the well, I guess
18:44
Speaker 1: the Native Americans didn't use it, but we use that
18:47
Speaker 1: word to describe what they were doing.
18:48
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, they would. They would anoint their heads with
18:53
Speaker 2: essential oils.
18:54
Speaker 1: Play. Yeah, and shampoo was a verb, and then it
18:57
Speaker 1: became a noun once they bottled it, I guess exactly.
19:00
Speaker 2: So, I guess we're kind of jumping around a little
19:02
Speaker 2: bit from Inci and Egypt to the twentieth century United States.
19:05
Speaker 2: But that is where we come upon the safety razor
19:11
Speaker 2: created by King C. Gillette, I think all the way
19:14
Speaker 2: back in like nineteen oh four, and this was I
19:18
Speaker 2: think for men at first. Yeah, it was for men
19:21
Speaker 2: at first, and men used to go to the barber
19:22
Speaker 2: and get shaved every week. Yeah, And the Gillette company said, no, no, no,
19:26
Speaker 2: you want to do this every day or else you
19:27
Speaker 2: look like a total slob. And by the way, by
19:30
Speaker 2: our refillable razor cartridges. And then about two decades later,
19:35
Speaker 2: women started wearing clothes that showed their like underarms and
19:38
Speaker 2: legs and all this, and Gillette saw another chance to
19:42
Speaker 2: double their market and they did.
19:44
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, should we take a break? Yes,
19:49
Speaker 1: all right, we've gone through hair and we'll jump into
19:52
Speaker 1: the bathtub next.
20:13
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're jumping into the bath chuck cold hands,
20:17
Speaker 2: jump in together.
20:18
Speaker 1: I gotta hold my nose with my other hand, so okay,
20:20
Speaker 1: fair enough.
20:22
Speaker 2: So bathing is a really, really old thing. Look at elephants,
20:27
Speaker 2: look at hippopotami. They bathe. Humans bathed to all of
20:31
Speaker 2: the same impulse. But we kind of like it took
20:35
Speaker 2: us a very long time to get from bathing to
20:39
Speaker 2: the kind of bathing that we get to today. Bathing
20:42
Speaker 2: back then was just either submersing yourself in water or
20:45
Speaker 2: using a very little amount of it, depending on where
20:48
Speaker 2: you were in the world and what time of the
20:51
Speaker 2: what period and history you're talking about.
20:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was often a social thing, and not
20:58
Speaker 1: even necessarily for for cleaning your body, I guess, just
21:02
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, sort of like a secondary benefit.
21:05
Speaker 1: But they have found baiting pools, like a nine hundred
21:08
Speaker 1: square foot a great bath in Mohino Dharo, which was
21:12
Speaker 1: an Indus civilization in third millennium BCE, and they also
21:17
Speaker 1: had washrooms and homes and they had for the time
21:22
Speaker 1: pretty good sewage system going on. So they're looked at
21:25
Speaker 1: as the people that you believed that hygiene was an
21:28
Speaker 1: important thing.
21:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and bath houses just kind of kept going from there,
21:33
Speaker 2: not just in the Middle East, China. Rome was very
21:37
Speaker 2: famous for bath houses, and wherever the Romans went, they
21:39
Speaker 2: brought bath houses with them, so bath culture spread along
21:43
Speaker 2: with the Roman Empire as well. And I think there
21:47
Speaker 2: was an estimate that around one thousand CE, so just
21:51
Speaker 2: over a thousand years ago, Baghdad supposedly had sixty thousand
21:56
Speaker 2: bath houses. And that is a little bit of any exaggeration,
22:01
Speaker 2: most historians guess, but it does kind of go to
22:04
Speaker 2: show like there were a ton of bath houses in
22:07
Speaker 2: the Middle East at the time. It was just a
22:09
Speaker 2: part of life.
22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that you've probably done this right somewhere in
22:13
Speaker 1: the world.
22:14
Speaker 2: I went to the oldest Turkish bath in Europe in well, no,
22:18
Speaker 2: I guess Turkey's part of Europe now the oldest Turkish
22:22
Speaker 2: bath at least in Hungary. It was in Red Heat
22:25
Speaker 2: at the beginning of Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And
22:28
Speaker 2: it was awesome, man, Like the old stones are like,
22:31
Speaker 2: you're still sitting in the same place that people sat
22:33
Speaker 2: in for, you know, the last four hundred, five hundred years.
22:36
Speaker 1: I think Emily went to that very bath sure on
22:40
Speaker 1: her trip last year to Hungary. And this is just
22:43
Speaker 1: like the social thing. I mean, it's like a big
22:45
Speaker 1: hot tub, like you're not bathing, right.
22:47
Speaker 2: It is like a big hot tub, and then it's
22:49
Speaker 2: like a big sauna. And like, this bath house was
22:52
Speaker 2: unusual because it was essentially coed, like throughout right, most
22:57
Speaker 2: bath houses weren't at the time. They either had separate
22:59
Speaker 2: bathouse for men and women, or they had a single
23:02
Speaker 2: bath house that men used at one time and women
23:04
Speaker 2: use at a different time. I'm not sure why this
23:07
Speaker 2: particular one bucked the trend because it was such a
23:09
Speaker 2: traditional bath Turkish bath, but it was it was definitely coed,
23:14
Speaker 2: and it was you know, just yeah, you were just
23:16
Speaker 2: sitting there bathing with tons of other.
23:18
Speaker 1: People you want to swimsuit?
23:21
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes you were because it was coed. But
23:24
Speaker 2: if you go to like a place like jay ju In,
23:26
Speaker 2: I think shambily. Have you ever been to that?
23:28
Speaker 1: No, I'm not into this.
23:31
Speaker 2: It's amazing, dude. If okay, start taking showers before bed,
23:34
Speaker 2: and I'll bet you'll be into bathing, like in not
23:37
Speaker 2: too long. But this is like separate, separated men and women.
23:43
Speaker 2: Uh so you're basically naked around a bunch of dudes.
23:45
Speaker 2: You don't know. I didn't do it, but listen, you
23:48
Speaker 2: just you just get used to it, and it's when
23:52
Speaker 2: you do, it's amazing. Like the whole the whole scene
23:56
Speaker 2: is just so chill and like there's just so much
24:00
Speaker 2: warm water everywhere. It's just so relaxing. It's nuts.
24:04
Speaker 1: I'm having a panic attack.
24:05
Speaker 2: Well okay, I'll give you another one. Then if next
24:08
Speaker 2: time you're in New York, go to Queens. There's a
24:10
Speaker 2: place called Spa Castle and it's almost exclusively co ed,
24:14
Speaker 2: so everybody's wearing bathing suits. But it is it. It
24:18
Speaker 2: has like all the same stuff and it's it's really great. Yeah,
24:22
Speaker 2: I would say try start with spacastle.
24:24
Speaker 1: Okay, well, and just to be clear that this is
24:27
Speaker 1: uh has nothing to do with like homophobia obviously, I'm
24:30
Speaker 1: just I was raised Southern Baptists, and I just I
24:33
Speaker 1: don't like to be naked with myself.
24:36
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm with you.
24:37
Speaker 1: I don't know.
24:38
Speaker 2: I do not either. I basically had to force myself
24:40
Speaker 2: to just get over it, and once I did, I
24:43
Speaker 2: was glad I did.
24:44
Speaker 1: But I do know it's like, are you Josh fum stuff?
24:47
Speaker 2: You should know, right, and I just the helicopter and
24:50
Speaker 2: I'm like you, no, I.
24:51
Speaker 1: Am oh man, I need that kind of confidence. So
24:57
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier different times where people you might think
25:01
Speaker 1: were dirty and maybe weren't, and that is medieval times.
25:07
Speaker 1: We had this idea probably that it was just everyone
25:09
Speaker 1: was disgusting, But they actually bathed fairly regularly back then,
25:14
Speaker 1: but for the odd reason that they thought it would
25:18
Speaker 1: help your inside problems, like if you had poor gut
25:23
Speaker 1: health or digestive issues. They thought bathing might could help that,
25:28
Speaker 1: which is you know, they're off base.
25:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were a little off base. They also thought
25:33
Speaker 2: that the that washing your hair would help more than
25:38
Speaker 2: just bathing, because that's where those digestive issues emanated from
25:42
Speaker 2: your scalp, and that's why your scalp would get dirty.
25:44
Speaker 2: It's because you're you have poorly digested food. So they
25:47
Speaker 2: were a tad bit off. But again, this is where
25:50
Speaker 2: we get to the point where this is This is
25:53
Speaker 2: where bathing kind of fell out of favor in the
25:55
Speaker 2: fifteenth sixteenth century Europe. Before that, you know, the twelfth
26:00
Speaker 2: and thirteenth and I think fourteenth century, like, people actually
26:04
Speaker 2: bathed more then than they did from the fifteenth to
26:08
Speaker 2: the eighteenth century in Europe. They were way way more
26:12
Speaker 2: into bathing and cleanliness and fastidiousness than they were in
26:17
Speaker 2: the starting in about the fifteenth century. But one of
26:20
Speaker 2: the things that these people in the later years did
26:24
Speaker 2: if instead of bathing. They were still concerned with cleanliness,
26:27
Speaker 2: but like you said, they were way off and in
26:29
Speaker 2: their ideas about how to be clean. So they like
26:32
Speaker 2: they would wear linens as undergarments and change them fairly frequently.
26:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that you know, that makes sense a little bit,
26:40
Speaker 1: because they thought that it was like the cloth absorbed
26:45
Speaker 1: bad things and that it would clinge your skin and
26:49
Speaker 1: it does have that gauzy sort of medical feel and look,
26:54
Speaker 1: you know.
26:54
Speaker 2: And also chuck all of those that whole look from
26:58
Speaker 2: that era, the Sir Walter Ali and like Pilgrim era,
27:03
Speaker 2: and I know they're not quite the same era, the
27:06
Speaker 2: like having frilly cuffs or frilly collar. Those are showing
27:10
Speaker 2: your undergarments and they're saying, like I'm wearing undergarments. Look
27:13
Speaker 2: at how clean it is. I'm a clean person. That's
27:16
Speaker 2: what those that's what those were for. I always thought
27:18
Speaker 2: they were just fashion, but they were. Yeah, they were
27:20
Speaker 2: a display of hygieneity.
27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:25
Speaker 2: I hate that word hygiene more than I hate the
27:27
Speaker 2: word moist.
27:29
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, hygiene is kind of gross.
27:31
Speaker 2: I got two words for you that are even worse
27:33
Speaker 2: than just hygiene alone. You're ready, okay. Hygienic utensil.
27:38
Speaker 1: Oh. I thought you were gonna say sebum pocket again.
27:41
Speaker 2: No, sebum, I mean, I get it, it's not a
27:43
Speaker 2: very very pretty word, but it's at least rounded. Hygienic
27:47
Speaker 2: is just it's somehow clinical and clean and gross at
27:52
Speaker 2: the same time. I don't get it.
27:54
Speaker 1: So what did you say, hygienic tool, hygienic utensil oh, utensil. Yeah,
27:58
Speaker 1: because they would use those, there were like scrapers and
28:02
Speaker 1: things that you know, if you didn't want to take
28:06
Speaker 1: a bath, you might I think King Louis the what
28:09
Speaker 1: is that fourteenth Yes, supposedly never took a bath or
28:15
Speaker 1: very few and he would I know, we talked about
28:17
Speaker 1: aqua vite on some episode, but that's the non e
28:21
Speaker 1: proof ethanol alcohol, So he would he would scrape himself
28:25
Speaker 1: with these scrapers and wipe himself down with alcohol instead
28:29
Speaker 1: of just taking a bath.
28:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again they were clean and trying to be clean.
28:35
Speaker 2: They were just clean in ways we don't really recognize
28:37
Speaker 2: or think are just kind of ridiculous today. But again,
28:40
Speaker 2: if there's one thread throughout this whole episode, it's that
28:44
Speaker 2: humans have basically always had the impulse to groom themselves somehow.
28:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially as different theories of disease come along,
28:55
Speaker 1: like once germ theory came along and that kind of
28:58
Speaker 1: semi coincided with plumbing getting better and better, all of
29:02
Speaker 1: a sudden, people are like, all right, if you've got
29:04
Speaker 1: a little status, then you can afford baths, and you
29:08
Speaker 1: can afford to stay clean and therefore healthy.
29:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. The first shower it's called a shower box that
29:13
Speaker 2: you could buy and install at your house, was from
29:17
Speaker 2: like the mid eighteenth century, so we've had showers for
29:20
Speaker 2: a while. And apparently the United States outpaced Europe in
29:23
Speaker 2: adopting indoor plumbing and bathroom fixtures because we were basically
29:28
Speaker 2: building this new nation and industrializing at a time when
29:33
Speaker 2: Europe was already still well established. So it was easier
29:36
Speaker 2: for us to install pipes rather than retrofit.
29:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so funny. That makes perfect sense.
29:41
Speaker 2: It does. It's hilarious. Now we need to retrofit everything
29:44
Speaker 2: because our sewers are falling apart, as is most of
29:47
Speaker 2: the infrastructure in the United States.
29:49
Speaker 1: Oh well, speaking of soapboxes, we promised a little bit
29:53
Speaker 1: at talk of soap. We have a really good episode
29:55
Speaker 1: on soap and its history. But as a recap, the
30:00
Speaker 1: Mesopotamians used rendered fat and lye from wood ash, and
30:04
Speaker 1: that was sort of a primitive soap. But a lot
30:08
Speaker 1: of this early soap was used to wash clothes and
30:13
Speaker 1: blankets and stuff like that, and it wasn't used for
30:16
Speaker 1: washing the body until later.
30:18
Speaker 2: No, it was once we figured out and we I mean,
30:22
Speaker 2: we learned from the Middle Easterners during the Crusades that
30:26
Speaker 2: you could make soap from vegetable oil rather than pork
30:29
Speaker 2: fat soap. Yes, that's when we started using it on
30:32
Speaker 2: our bodies for sure.
30:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine it was a lot of that. Early
30:36
Speaker 1: soap was very filmy and kind of greasy. Yeah.
30:39
Speaker 2: And when you put a fat together with a with lye,
30:43
Speaker 2: so you derive lye from wood ash and then fat
30:46
Speaker 2: from either animals or plants, a process called sopontification happens
30:52
Speaker 2: chemical reaction. You get glycerol and I can't remember the
30:56
Speaker 2: other thing, Oh, fatty acid salts or soap salts, and
31:00
Speaker 2: that's there's your soap right there.
31:03
Speaker 1: I was about to say we could go grab Emily
31:05
Speaker 1: for specifics, but for sure, that'd be great if she
31:08
Speaker 1: just was like, no, I don't remember any of that stuff.
31:10
Speaker 1: My business is done, right. Civil War, all of a
31:14
Speaker 1: sudden people were like post Civil War, I guess, or
31:18
Speaker 1: actually during the Civil War, you know, they realized that
31:22
Speaker 1: good health could come from bathing, regularly cleaning your body.
31:27
Speaker 1: And that's when like real like commercial soap came onto
31:31
Speaker 1: the scene thanks to Procter and Gamble, who introduced ivory
31:35
Speaker 1: soap finally to the world, the floating ivory soap.
31:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole it floats thing was a reference to
31:43
Speaker 2: river bathing, which most people still did at the time. Like,
31:47
Speaker 2: even if you had access to water, you probably didn't
31:52
Speaker 2: have a shower, which meant you had to heat up
31:54
Speaker 2: water pour it into a tub and it was a
31:57
Speaker 2: big process. So it was probably easier to just take
32:00
Speaker 2: cold bath in the river, and if your ivory soap floated,
32:03
Speaker 2: you could find it more easily than having to dig
32:04
Speaker 2: around on the river bottom. Yeah, river bathing just sounds
32:09
Speaker 2: really great to me. But nineteenth or earlier nineteenth century
32:15
Speaker 2: or earlier river bathing, I would not want to bathe
32:17
Speaker 2: the most of the rivers in America today.
32:20
Speaker 1: I've done it.
32:21
Speaker 2: Do you not know about our infrastructure?
32:25
Speaker 1: I've done it on camping trips, And you know, it's
32:27
Speaker 1: always important to use the I don't know what you
32:31
Speaker 1: call it, but the soap that's okay for rivers. It
32:34
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt you know, fish.
32:36
Speaker 2: Oh oh sure, without phosphates, I think yeah.
32:39
Speaker 1: But even then I'm like, is this really okay? I
32:42
Speaker 1: don't know. They say it is, yeah, I.
32:44
Speaker 2: Think fairly natural soap is fine. It's the industrial soap
32:49
Speaker 2: that's the problem, because there's so much easier to create
32:53
Speaker 2: chemicals that stand in for the natural version. Yeah, so
32:57
Speaker 2: that's usually the problem. The natural versions probably just fine
33:01
Speaker 2: for the river.
33:03
Speaker 1: I guess ari. I wouldn't do me wrong, right, no way.
33:08
Speaker 1: Shampoo also came along thanks to Procter and Gamble, the
33:12
Speaker 1: shampoo that we think of today, and that was a dream.
33:17
Speaker 1: Dr E n E was I think one of the
33:19
Speaker 1: first ones, and that was in the nineteen thirties and
33:22
Speaker 1: that's when they said, all right, like you were kind
33:24
Speaker 1: of talking about, we've developed these synthetics for factants now
33:29
Speaker 1: that clean your hair really good. And prior to that,
33:31
Speaker 1: people were using boiled soap shavings and that was sort
33:36
Speaker 1: of filming and gross. So they eventually came up with
33:39
Speaker 1: the synthetic stuff and it worked.
33:40
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, good enough. At least.
33:43
Speaker 1: Do you wash your hair every day? You don't wash
33:45
Speaker 1: your hair?
33:45
Speaker 2: Yeah? Almost every day?
33:47
Speaker 1: Oh wow?
33:47
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, I have to really watch it. I've
33:49
Speaker 2: got to use like good shampoo because it's really easy
33:52
Speaker 2: to dry out and strip. And I didn't use conditioner
33:55
Speaker 2: for a while because I think I used bag conditioner,
33:58
Speaker 2: so it just like my hair would just be flat
34:00
Speaker 2: and limp and lifeless on my head and I'd be like,
34:02
Speaker 2: I'm not using this, but Now I found that if
34:04
Speaker 2: you use good conditioner and use it every couple of days,
34:08
Speaker 2: oh boy, my hair looks amazing.
34:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean different hair. People's hair is different, and
34:15
Speaker 1: different hair does better sometimes washing it a lot, maybe
34:19
Speaker 1: in conditioning, and sometimes not washing it as much. And
34:23
Speaker 1: I know, like hair styling, Like my hair styles better
34:28
Speaker 1: after a couple of days without washing it. Sure, so
34:31
Speaker 1: I only only wash my hair like once a week.
34:32
Speaker 2: Maybe you have a thick, nice mane of hair and
34:36
Speaker 2: like I do not, I've got anthony heatous hair.
34:40
Speaker 1: I have a lot of hair, but it's it is thin.
34:42
Speaker 1: It's not a I mean thin. I think thin. Is
34:47
Speaker 1: that the hair strand it's thin?
34:49
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and then collectively they're thin.
34:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe that's it because I never it looks like
34:55
Speaker 1: I have a lot of hair, but I don't like
34:57
Speaker 1: in college my little ponytail speaking around as a ring finger.
35:02
Speaker 1: Maybe I was always jealous of these guys that had
35:05
Speaker 1: those big, beefy pony tails.
35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm with you, like a horse's tail or
35:11
Speaker 2: a pony. I guess the carry Scot did he have
35:17
Speaker 2: a ponytail.
35:18
Speaker 1: He grew his hair out once when he lived in
35:20
Speaker 1: l A for a while he grew his hair out,
35:22
Speaker 1: and of course he you know, he looked like a
35:25
Speaker 1: combination of Chris Chris Cornell and wonder Woman Linda Carter.
35:33
Speaker 2: Only Scott could pull that off.
35:35
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, he looked good.
35:36
Speaker 2: Let me, I want to I want to correct myself too.
35:39
Speaker 2: Your hair could be thin individually, and also it can
35:42
Speaker 2: be thin in number.
35:44
Speaker 1: I think I both.
35:45
Speaker 2: So it sounds like you have thick hair that's thin
35:47
Speaker 2: in number. Oh, all right, that'd be my guess. Okay,
35:51
Speaker 2: either way, your hair looks magnificent all the time.
35:53
Speaker 1: I thinks you're testing. I like it. It's good. Uh.
35:57
Speaker 1: Should we take a break or should we keep going?
36:00
Speaker 1: Should we talk perfume and then break?
36:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do that, and we should direct people to
36:04
Speaker 2: our perfume episode. You know, we've done an episode in
36:06
Speaker 2: almost every section in here.
36:08
Speaker 1: I know it's funny. Yeah, we really haven't. Do we
36:12
Speaker 1: do deodorant?
36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah? The difference between anty person and deodorant very well
36:17
Speaker 2: A long time ago.
36:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an old one. Perfume though, is you know
36:22
Speaker 1: I've talked about it plenty of times, and how much
36:24
Speaker 1: I hate colonnes and perfumes and getting in lift cars
36:28
Speaker 1: and elevators and just ended up smelling like someone else.
36:32
Speaker 1: I think it's I don't want to Yu young, but
36:35
Speaker 1: you're making someone else smell. So I feel like it's
36:37
Speaker 1: okay to stand up and say please stop doing that. Sure,
36:40
Speaker 1: because that smell gets on you. But ancient Egypt and
36:44
Speaker 1: places like that would have been a nightmare. And like
36:47
Speaker 1: the Versai, like all these places, all they did was
36:52
Speaker 1: just cake perfumes and smells onto everything instead of really
36:56
Speaker 1: bathing and watching, right.
36:58
Speaker 2: Because then you have like all these crazy floral and
37:01
Speaker 2: sweet sense on top of body odor, which means it's
37:05
Speaker 2: kind of intermingled with body odor. So it's not Yeah,
37:08
Speaker 2: it would not have been pleasant for me either.
37:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no good. Ancient Egypt they use ostrich egg
37:16
Speaker 1: apparently in tortoise shell.
37:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could not find anything on that.
37:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, that must have I don't know what kind of
37:23
Speaker 1: odor that would have. Maybe that was a stabilizer or something,
37:25
Speaker 1: and they.
37:26
Speaker 2: Smell like tortoise.
37:28
Speaker 1: I don't know.
37:29
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, I think we must have mentioned
37:31
Speaker 2: this in the Perfume episode two. With distillation in the
37:34
Speaker 2: thirteenth century, you finally get alcohol based perfumes, and that
37:37
Speaker 2: like revolutionized everything. I don't think we talked about because
37:41
Speaker 2: this was news to me. The first known or recorded
37:45
Speaker 2: alcohol based perfume was called Queen of Hungary Water, supposedly
37:51
Speaker 2: hails from the thirteenth century, named after the thirteenth century
37:55
Speaker 2: Queen Elizabeth or Isabelle of Hungary at the time.
37:59
Speaker 1: With an.
38:01
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's very Hungarian, and it was scented with rosemary.
38:07
Speaker 1: I like rosemary. Sure do you ever stroke a rosemary
38:11
Speaker 1: plant on a dog walk from a neighbor?
38:14
Speaker 2: My friend, we have long branches of rosemary like sitting
38:17
Speaker 2: around our house in vases and stuff.
38:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great.
38:21
Speaker 2: Stay answer your question every time.
38:23
Speaker 1: I mean, we have our own rosemary. But yeah, when
38:25
Speaker 1: we're on walks and we see rosemary, basically everyone in
38:27
Speaker 1: the family just runs their hand along one of them
38:29
Speaker 1: and then kind of wipes it on their shirt or something.
38:32
Speaker 2: And for that reason, you should never use rosemary that
38:34
Speaker 2: you grow in the front of your house that people
38:37
Speaker 2: can contact in your foot.
38:40
Speaker 1: Oh man, they didn't think about that.
38:41
Speaker 2: I mean, that's on them. If they're using it, you
38:44
Speaker 2: can go ahead and walk in touch, that's what people do.
38:46
Speaker 2: But if they're using it to cook with, that's their fault.
38:49
Speaker 2: They need to grow it in the.
38:50
Speaker 1: Back, so someone's marinating steak might have a little.
38:54
Speaker 2: Chuck on it, a little bit of chuck.
38:57
Speaker 1: I like to think that adds a little certain something.
39:01
Speaker 2: It doesn't icy.
39:03
Speaker 1: So we talked about germ theory of disease for a while.
39:07
Speaker 1: That was called the miasma theory of disease Anetinc.
39:11
Speaker 2: Episode.
39:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's when they thought that, you know, the
39:15
Speaker 1: nasty smelling air could be a carrier of disease. And
39:19
Speaker 1: I guess what they were talking about was airborne illnesses,
39:22
Speaker 1: which could happen for sure, But going around and spraying
39:27
Speaker 1: really sweet smelling herbs and things I don't think really
39:29
Speaker 1: helped much.
39:31
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. Their treatment for it didn't make sense.
39:34
Speaker 2: But it's always it's puzzled me why people just poo
39:37
Speaker 2: poo this like it's idiocy, Like it makes a lot
39:39
Speaker 2: of sense. Actually, sure, there's probably even I think there's
39:43
Speaker 2: diseases that you that have like distinct smells that humans
39:46
Speaker 2: can detect, So it makes sense to me. And I
39:49
Speaker 2: mean there's actually something called tularimia, which is a type
39:52
Speaker 2: of disease. I can't remember exactly what kind it is,
39:56
Speaker 2: but you can get it from inhaling the decay of
40:00
Speaker 2: a rotting rabbit or cat carcass.
40:03
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, and it's bad.
40:05
Speaker 2: It's bad news because that's actually the worst version of tularimia.
40:08
Speaker 2: You can get it all sorts of ways, like through
40:10
Speaker 2: touch and all that stuff too, but when you inhale it,
40:12
Speaker 2: the respiratory version is really bad and it stinks. Obviously,
40:15
Speaker 2: the carcass of the cat or rabbit stinks at that point,
40:19
Speaker 2: but you're actually getting yeah, exactly, you're getting disease from
40:23
Speaker 2: an offensive smell that's mixed with those odor molecules. So
40:26
Speaker 2: I mean, there's at least one disease that miasma theory
40:30
Speaker 2: holds up with. All right, I think we've talked about
40:33
Speaker 2: that dying on this hill.
40:35
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll talk
40:38
Speaker 1: about deodorant and wind it down with bad breath right
40:42
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So deodorant. The first commercial deodorant
41:07
Speaker 1: that really sold was called Mum Mum all the way
41:11
Speaker 1: back in eighteen eighty eight, and it was a cream
41:14
Speaker 1: that you applied that would kill odor producing bacterias. It
41:18
Speaker 1: was kind of greasy. Nineteen oh three surprised me, ever,
41:23
Speaker 1: dry that was the first antiperspirant, all the way back
41:25
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three.
41:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it used the same stuff that they used today,
41:29
Speaker 2: aluminum salts that plug the pores that keep you from sweating.
41:33
Speaker 2: That's how antipersperants work. So, speaking of this stuff, deodorant,
41:38
Speaker 2: anti pursprant, it's significant and unique in that this is
41:41
Speaker 2: not an ancient type of grooming. This is actually really new,
41:45
Speaker 2: Like this doesn't have its roots in Greece or Egypt
41:48
Speaker 2: unless you count perfumes. The actual attempt to counter body
41:52
Speaker 2: odor with theodor and antiperspriant is twentieth century I mention basically.
41:57
Speaker 1: That's right. And a teenager invented something called odor rono
42:03
Speaker 1: like odor oh no, named Edna Murphy. She was the
42:07
Speaker 1: daughter of a surgeon and he had apparently sweaty hands,
42:10
Speaker 1: so she invented this anti perseprint to keep daddy's hands
42:15
Speaker 1: dry and then started selling it door to door and
42:20
Speaker 1: pharmacies and stuff. It did not catch on initially because
42:24
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, I've got these dress shields to
42:26
Speaker 1: soak up my underarm sweat and keep my shirt from
42:29
Speaker 1: getting pit stains.
42:31
Speaker 2: Rubber dress shields.
42:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I can't. They still make dress shields people
42:37
Speaker 1: wear my guests rubber ones. I don't know about rubber,
42:40
Speaker 1: but I mean dress shields are a thing I didn't
42:42
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, look up dress shields isn't there. You
42:45
Speaker 1: can buy them on a you know, dress shields dot com.
42:48
Speaker 2: You can buy cat based dress shields.
42:52
Speaker 1: But the odor Rono wasn't going well until advertising really
42:57
Speaker 1: picked up on it and marketing and a guy named
42:59
Speaker 1: Jane Eames Young, who was a copywriter ended up being
43:02
Speaker 1: very successful, started doing something that would become a hallmark
43:08
Speaker 1: that I think someone argue still goes on today, which
43:10
Speaker 1: is selling beauty products and hygiene products out of fear,
43:18
Speaker 1: most notably targeted toward women. And you'll see this over
43:21
Speaker 1: and over from here on out, which is your breath
43:24
Speaker 1: might stink and you won't get a man. Your body
43:26
Speaker 1: probably stinks so you won't get a man. You got
43:31
Speaker 1: underarm sweat on your dress, so you can't get a man.
43:35
Speaker 1: And it was all based around this thing, like you know, ladies,
43:39
Speaker 1: unless you clean up your act literally, then you're not
43:41
Speaker 1: going to get that husband.
43:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this guy is patient zero, James Young, the
43:46
Speaker 2: guy who created this whole thing, and they still do
43:48
Speaker 2: it today. It's crazy, but he had a I guess
43:52
Speaker 2: for odor Ono, he had an advertising campaign called Oh,
43:57
Speaker 2: I Think the Curve of a Woman's Arm, And it
44:00
Speaker 2: looked like an article in the Lady's Home Journal. It
44:03
Speaker 2: had like a headline and the sub subtitle was a
44:07
Speaker 2: frank discussion of a subject too often avoided, and it
44:10
Speaker 2: was basically about, like, do you think you're dainty? Are
44:13
Speaker 2: you sure you're dainty? Do you know it's possible you smell?
44:16
Speaker 2: And if you smell, you probably don't detect it yourself.
44:20
Speaker 2: Other people do And this is like huge, Like people
44:23
Speaker 2: did not talk about that kind of thing. And there's
44:26
Speaker 2: this whole one page ad in the Lady's Home Journal
44:28
Speaker 2: And apparently two hundred subscribers canceled their subscriptions and cited
44:33
Speaker 2: that as the reason. But as far as Oderono was concerned,
44:37
Speaker 2: it worked really well because their sales increased I think
44:40
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirteen percent year over here.
44:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big jump, and just to keep people
44:47
Speaker 1: from emailing. Oderono was also the name of a WHO song,
44:51
Speaker 1: Oh really from the band of Who. It was on
44:54
Speaker 1: the Who sell Out, which was that one record they did.
44:57
Speaker 1: It's kind of a concept record, I guess where there
45:01
Speaker 1: were like little fake It was supposed to be like
45:03
Speaker 1: a radio station, so they made these little fake radio commercials.
45:06
Speaker 1: And Oderono was one that Pete Townsend wrote in saying
45:11
Speaker 1: about the deodorant Oderono, and he has a big giant
45:15
Speaker 1: stick of Oderno on the album cover that he's putting on.
45:19
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a great one to choose, because that
45:21
Speaker 2: was the one that changed everything. That really kind of
45:23
Speaker 2: created marketing to people's worst fears and self consciousness about themsel, you.
45:30
Speaker 1: Know, and all of the ads kind of from here
45:33
Speaker 1: on out for a long time. And like I said,
45:36
Speaker 1: still today there are ads that sort of poke around
45:39
Speaker 1: that they're not as overt like the one I think
45:42
Speaker 1: it was. I think, oh no, it was Oderono again
45:45
Speaker 1: that said beautiful but dumb. She's never learned the first
45:49
Speaker 1: rule of long lasting charm, which is, you know, don't
45:53
Speaker 1: stink right exactly.
45:54
Speaker 2: And again it was women that were targeted at first, because,
45:57
Speaker 2: like you said, you're never going to get a man
45:59
Speaker 2: because you smell, so you odor ono. And then eventually
46:02
Speaker 2: men fell under the spell of James Yelling and his ilk.
46:07
Speaker 2: And there was a deodorant called top Flight, which was
46:10
Speaker 2: first sold in the thirties, and I think another one
46:14
Speaker 2: called Seaforth marketed to men that you know, we're in
46:19
Speaker 2: the Great Depression and everybody's job is insecure, So do
46:22
Speaker 2: you want to be the one at the office that
46:24
Speaker 2: stinks because you're going to be the first one they
46:26
Speaker 2: cut when layoffs come around? Like, that's nuts. And when
46:30
Speaker 2: you look at it historically, it's like that's crazy. And
46:33
Speaker 2: then you look at our ads today and it's like,
46:36
Speaker 2: this is the same thing. It's just more sophisticated.
46:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Sea fourth was at least one version of
46:43
Speaker 1: it in the forties was sold in it looks like
46:45
Speaker 1: a whiskey jug. And actually found the one. It wasn't
46:49
Speaker 1: eBay it with some other sales site, but it's supposedly
46:53
Speaker 1: still had product in it really and it was only
46:55
Speaker 1: twelve dollars, So I was like, maybe I should buy this.
46:57
Speaker 1: I gotta see what that tastes like or tastes like gross?
47:01
Speaker 1: What it smelled what it smells like.
47:02
Speaker 2: Was it Etsy that you saw it on? No, I
47:05
Speaker 2: don't remember where it was, but it was probably Etsy,
47:08
Speaker 2: you think, so, Chuck, I think we should finish up
47:12
Speaker 2: wind down, as you put it before with bad Breath,
47:15
Speaker 2: And I would direct people to our halatosis. I think
47:18
Speaker 2: Colon Worst Smell Ever episode, Yeah, which is a good one.
47:25
Speaker 2: But again, this is this has got some new stuff
47:28
Speaker 2: in it. If you ask me, like, did you know
47:30
Speaker 2: that in the Talmud, bad breath is considered a quote
47:34
Speaker 2: major disability and grounds for divorce.
47:39
Speaker 1: It's in the Talmud.
47:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, in that nuts I had no idea, but it's
47:43
Speaker 2: been around a long time. People are like, hey, you
47:46
Speaker 2: can do something about that, and you should for the
47:48
Speaker 2: rest of our sake. Yeah.
47:50
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting how like maybe underarmed body odor
47:55
Speaker 1: was just sort of accepted and people are like, I
47:56
Speaker 1: guess that's what people smell like. But it seems like
47:59
Speaker 1: from the beginning bad Breast people are like mm mmmm no, no, no, no,
48:03
Speaker 1: that's I don't like.
48:04
Speaker 2: That, and that interesting. I don't know why it really is.
48:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't either.
48:07
Speaker 2: So people have been combating this. This is like the
48:11
Speaker 2: opposite of deodorant. Like, people have been trying to do
48:13
Speaker 2: something about us for a really long time. We've recognized
48:17
Speaker 2: plants having some plants having like fresh smells or almost
48:21
Speaker 2: antiseptic smells, and cultures around the world who were never
48:25
Speaker 2: in contact with one another. All were like, hey, if
48:28
Speaker 2: I chew this, it might do something for my breath.
48:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, And all kinds of cultures all over the world
48:34
Speaker 1: have and still do chew on little twigs and sticks
48:38
Speaker 1: of different plants because A they might make things smell
48:43
Speaker 1: a little better. B you're kind of scrubbing your teeth
48:46
Speaker 1: like you would a toothbrush, And I think that's it,
48:49
Speaker 1: just A and B sure, yeah, it makes well.
48:53
Speaker 2: No, there's another one that's ant in bacterial most of
48:55
Speaker 2: the time.
48:55
Speaker 1: Oh, there you go. I knew that was a number three.
48:57
Speaker 2: And yeah, ab and three yeah.
49:00
Speaker 1: And they've also ground up different kinds of powders to
49:04
Speaker 1: make into what you know, would qualify as toothpaste.
49:07
Speaker 2: Yes, And these were very misguided because they were like, oh,
49:10
Speaker 2: if we use an abrasive, it'll get that gunk off
49:13
Speaker 2: really really well. So they would use everything from like
49:16
Speaker 2: ground up oyster shells to sand to pulverize bricks to pummus.
49:23
Speaker 2: And they figured out pretty quickly at different times in
49:26
Speaker 2: different places. And then I guess the knowledge was lost
49:29
Speaker 2: or not passed on that you couldn't get too abrasive
49:31
Speaker 2: because you'll pull the enamel right off of the teeth.
49:35
Speaker 2: So there were probably a lot of unhappy people walking
49:38
Speaker 2: around at different periods in history with stripped enamel off
49:41
Speaker 2: of their teeth and really really sensitive teeth because their
49:45
Speaker 2: roots were that much more exposed, which is awful.
49:49
Speaker 1: It is awful. Yeah, And I think like people can
49:53
Speaker 1: overbrush today and do similar damage, right sure.
49:58
Speaker 2: And it wasn't just the toothpaste or too powders or
50:00
Speaker 2: whatever they were concocting that were problematic. The original tooth brushes,
50:06
Speaker 2: I think the first one was invented in China just
50:09
Speaker 2: before the fifteen hundreds, and it used hog bristles. That
50:13
Speaker 2: thing was in use until the nineteen the twentieth century
50:17
Speaker 2: around the world. They basically used hog bristles until nylon
50:21
Speaker 2: was invented in the thirties. And they're like, let's see
50:23
Speaker 2: if this makes a softer brush, then the hog bristles
50:26
Speaker 2: that make our gums bleed every time we brush.
50:29
Speaker 1: Have you ever bet a hog?
50:31
Speaker 2: Yeah? They're not soft. They look soft now not.
50:34
Speaker 1: It's almost like a porcupine esque. That stuff is really bad.
50:37
Speaker 2: A little bit. Also, go check out our porcupine episode.
50:40
Speaker 1: Right, all right, well, let's wind it up in with jeez.
50:45
Speaker 1: I think we've covered this too, we had didn't realize.
50:48
Speaker 2: We did an episode on the hygiene hypothesis.
50:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, is you know, can you get too clean? And
50:54
Speaker 1: the answer is yes. Since twenty sixteen, when the FDA
50:59
Speaker 1: banned some ingredients and antibacterial soaps.
51:02
Speaker 2: We did an episode on that too. Yeah.
51:04
Speaker 1: They started saying, you know, to keep saying that it's
51:07
Speaker 1: so fun, though they've said, like, you know, some of
51:11
Speaker 1: this stuff is having negative health impacts because you're wiping
51:15
Speaker 1: out all the bacteria potentially creating superbugs, the good microbes
51:21
Speaker 1: that you need, and like, let's tone it down here
51:23
Speaker 1: with the antibacterial stuff.
51:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew about the superbugs problem. What I didn't
51:27
Speaker 2: know is that there's possibility that the two main ingredients,
51:30
Speaker 2: triclosane and triclo carban are also hormonal disruptors too. So
51:36
Speaker 2: there's a lot of reasons not to use antibacterial soaps,
51:39
Speaker 2: and chief among them is you don't need it. It
51:41
Speaker 2: doesn't do anything more than regular soap, and it's probably harmful.
51:45
Speaker 2: They also kill bacteria indiscriminately, and as we're slowly realizing
51:49
Speaker 2: here in the twenty first century, the microbiome in our
51:53
Speaker 2: body and on our body is really vital to our health.
51:56
Speaker 2: So you don't want to just kill off everything if
51:58
Speaker 2: you don't have to can irritate skin in all sorts
52:02
Speaker 2: of places.
52:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that, seeb them. And again, like hair,
52:07
Speaker 1: everyone's skin is different. So some people skin does better
52:11
Speaker 1: if it's a little oiler. Some skin gets way too oily,
52:14
Speaker 1: And you know acne can happen. Did what on an acne? Too?
52:19
Speaker 1: But I remember, and I might have told this story
52:20
Speaker 1: in the acne when when I was little, I wanted
52:22
Speaker 1: to We're not little. I was probably like twelve. You know,
52:25
Speaker 1: my sister and other teenagers were using the like buff
52:29
Speaker 1: puffs and nutri gena soap, and I thought, you know
52:33
Speaker 1: that made you like, you know how you pretend to
52:35
Speaker 1: do older things. And so one time I got a
52:38
Speaker 1: buff puff and a nutrigena and like scrub my face
52:42
Speaker 1: really good, just like my sister did. And I had
52:45
Speaker 1: never had pimples until I did that. And I had
52:47
Speaker 1: pimples after that a little, I mean just for like
52:49
Speaker 1: that week, and then I luckily never really had pimples again.
52:53
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's because I disrupted my my natural skin
52:57
Speaker 1: oils and dried myself out really bad.
53:00
Speaker 2: I did the same exact thing and with nutrigena too,
53:02
Speaker 2: and I used it almost every day.
53:05
Speaker 1: Oh you kept using it?
53:07
Speaker 2: I did, and I'm quite sure I changed the chemistry
53:09
Speaker 2: of my face for a very long time as well.
53:12
Speaker 2: I had a really oily t zone afterward.
53:15
Speaker 1: What's a T zone.
53:16
Speaker 2: It's the part across the top of your eyebrows and
53:18
Speaker 2: down your nose. Oh, oily t zone.
53:22
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good Maybe that's the record for the
53:25
Speaker 1: album title for sebum pocket, Yeah.
53:29
Speaker 2: It is. It'd be a concept album too.
53:32
Speaker 1: What else do you have anything else?
53:34
Speaker 2: No? I think that's it.
53:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. Check out the Hygiene Hypothesis. It's interesting. Oh very
53:40
Speaker 1: I think everyone kind of gets that. We don't need
53:41
Speaker 1: to recap that.
53:42
Speaker 2: No, if you want to know about it, just go
53:44
Speaker 2: listen to our episode on the hygiene hypothesis. Yeah. Yeah,
53:48
Speaker 2: this one was chalk full of interesting stuff and references
53:52
Speaker 2: to interesting episodes we've done. So hopefully you'll be like, oh,
53:55
Speaker 2: perfume didn't know about that, Oh Soap didn't know about that,
53:58
Speaker 2: and you'll just go enjoy a bunch of grooming and
54:00
Speaker 2: hygiene episodes. Okay, totally, Chuck said, totally. That means it's
54:04
Speaker 2: time for listening to mail.
54:08
Speaker 1: Did we do a listener mail on another episode?
54:10
Speaker 2: Everyone almost starting back in Man a long time ago.
54:15
Speaker 2: When you had that idea.
54:17
Speaker 1: That's right, I've got a.
54:18
Speaker 2: Really good idea.
54:20
Speaker 1: All right, here we go. We're gonna call this jogging.
54:27
Speaker 1: I might need your help because there's a little bit
54:28
Speaker 1: of French in here. Okay, Hey, guys. Was delighted to
54:31
Speaker 1: learn about the history of exercise in America and surprised
54:34
Speaker 1: of how recent it was. Something in the discussions of
54:37
Speaker 1: jogging reminded me of a wonderful story I heard from
54:39
Speaker 1: a friend we'll call him Paul, paul name some time ago.
54:45
Speaker 1: Paul helped chaperon a high school exchange trip to France,
54:48
Speaker 1: and he quite enjoyed the family that he stayed with.
54:50
Speaker 1: They were kind, and the father would invite him to
54:53
Speaker 1: join him on a run. The way this invite was
54:56
Speaker 1: expressed was, how would you say, fai t du jogging?
55:03
Speaker 2: Fay do fay do jogging. Yeah. I'm not sure what
55:06
Speaker 2: that means, though, but I've seen it before.
55:08
Speaker 1: I guess do you want to jog with me? Maybe
55:11
Speaker 1: I just like to jog. Do you want a jog?
55:13
Speaker 1: I don't know.
55:13
Speaker 2: I don't know if means okay, so well you read.
55:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, look it up while I'm reading. So anyway, the
55:19
Speaker 1: Frenchman would say, faye do jogging and said in acute
55:23
Speaker 1: French accent, even the jogging, and it just was amazingly adorable.
55:27
Speaker 1: You guys should give it a try, which I just did. Paul, though,
55:30
Speaker 1: every time, would agree, thinking it would be a nice
55:32
Speaker 1: little gentle jog around the neighborhood, but every time he
55:35
Speaker 1: was reminded this was not the case. Before they'd even
55:38
Speaker 1: left the driveway, the Frenchman set off at a dead
55:41
Speaker 1: sprint because he was training for a race that was
55:44
Speaker 1: a long distance sprinting event. He was also clearly an athlete.
55:50
Speaker 1: Paul would quickly give up and revert back to just
55:52
Speaker 1: regular jogging. And it sounds like the father did a
55:56
Speaker 1: few laps around the city like this and caught Paul
55:59
Speaker 1: lapped in as it got back to the house. I
56:03
Speaker 1: think most I think about this story almost every time
56:05
Speaker 1: I hear the word jogging, and I usually mutter that
56:07
Speaker 1: in a French accent under my breath for a good chuckle.
56:10
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me in my breakfast wanders before work,
56:13
Speaker 1: Stay well, and that it's from.
56:15
Speaker 2: James Okay, so I think what he was saying is
56:20
Speaker 2: shall we go jog? Or would you like to go jog?
56:23
Speaker 2: But what he was saying is makes the jog? So
56:26
Speaker 2: he's saying, do you want to go make the jog?
56:30
Speaker 2: That's very cute. It is that's even cuter when you
56:32
Speaker 2: know it. And that's a good reason to learn other languages.
56:34
Speaker 2: Everybody agreed. Who is that from?
56:38
Speaker 1: James?
56:38
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, James, and also Paul indirectly too, and
56:43
Speaker 2: also Paul's exchange family. That was very nice of you
56:46
Speaker 2: to accept them into your lives. If you want to
56:49
Speaker 2: send us an email, just like James did, you can
56:52
Speaker 2: send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
56:59
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
57:02
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