Latest / Ridiculous History / Everyone Was Covered in Poop: A Grimy History of Soap
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
- 0:27Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. This is gonna be a clean one.
- 0:32Speaker 1: I think you as always so much more. Tuning in.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Shout out to the man myth legend, super producer, mister
- 0:38Speaker 1: Max zestfully clean Williams.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Soap me up, Daddy, don't never say that again.
- 0:47Speaker 3: Shout out too, I will not. That is me. I'm triggered. Yeah,
- 0:51Speaker 3: and you're old brown and I've been bullet Yeah it
- 0:54Speaker 3: is we. Yeah. Oh gosh, I've got an image in
- 0:58Speaker 3: my head that I can't shake.
- 0:59Speaker 1: You know, some times a lot of our conversations fall
- 1:03Speaker 1: into like catchphrase things, and we just find weird moments
- 1:08Speaker 1: of speech that have suddenly become strange.
- 1:13Speaker 3: And I think we just had one right before going.
- 1:16Speaker 3: I think we did too, and it really it was
- 1:18Speaker 3: very affecting. Sometimes we just can carry on entire conversations
- 1:22Speaker 3: just with only catchphrases, right, yeah, sometimes the same one
- 1:25Speaker 3: over and over and over. Sure.
- 1:27Speaker 1: Yeah, we did an entire Illumination Globe Blood Limited commercial.
- 1:30Speaker 1: It's just zeros and ones, that's right. It's probably some
- 1:33Speaker 1: of our best writing. Our mental health is good.
- 1:36Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, a clean Bill of Mental Health, if you will.
- 1:41Speaker 1: There we go, and as you might be able to tell, now, folks,
- 1:46Speaker 1: we are going to explore something a lot of people
- 1:49Speaker 1: don't think about, which.
- 1:50Speaker 3: Is just so. I thought it was anti psychotic meds,
- 1:53Speaker 3: antipsychotic med I think about those all the time. Those
- 1:57Speaker 3: are the fun ones. Nor soap is okay. So maybe
- 2:02Speaker 3: we started out with a little bit of darkness here
- 2:05Speaker 3: and then we pivoted to something that seems very squeaky
- 2:09Speaker 3: clean and all American and wholesome. But boy, howdy, does
- 2:13Speaker 3: soap have a messed up history, like really really grizzly,
- 2:20Speaker 3: you know. I mean, anyone who's seen the movie Fight
- 2:22Speaker 3: Club probably knows, at least to a degree where soap
- 2:27Speaker 3: comes from, or at least the very earliest formulations of
- 2:30Speaker 3: soap from animal and or human fat mixed with ashes,
- 2:37Speaker 3: and then it creates this like alkali, right, Like, we'll
- 2:41Speaker 3: get to a lot of this stuff. But sure, I
- 2:43Speaker 3: just was really kind of taken aback by some of
- 2:46Speaker 3: the sort of it's one of these accidental discoveries. But
- 2:50Speaker 3: the circumstances that led to the accidental discoveries quite gruesome.
- 2:54Speaker 1: Yes, So that is a heads up for you. Friendly disclaimer.
- 2:58Speaker 1: Still we think it's such a fascinating and dare we say,
- 3:01Speaker 1: ridiculous story. The first thing you have to know, and
- 3:05Speaker 1: this also shout out to our research associated mister Max Williams. Here,
- 3:08Speaker 1: this is something that I know is important to you.
- 3:10Speaker 3: Matter.
- 3:10Speaker 2: I almost said the line again, but I respect a nol.
- 3:17Speaker 3: So this, this is the first.
- 3:20Speaker 1: Thing you need to do. The world is filthy. Ever
- 3:25Speaker 1: since the first guy looked through the first microscope, people
- 3:31Speaker 1: have been kind of avoiding admitting that the world is
- 3:36Speaker 1: riddled with bacteria, all kinds of viruses, ugly dangerous things.
- 3:41Speaker 1: They're all over you, inside of you.
- 3:44Speaker 3: Can you imagine that moment, that realization where it's saying,
- 3:47Speaker 3: there's like tiny things that are just crawling all over
- 3:51Speaker 3: us all the time. I mean this Dutch fellow by
- 3:54Speaker 3: the name of amazing name Antoine Phillips van Lewinoke, who
- 3:59Speaker 3: created lenses. He didn't exactly I don't think he invented
- 4:03Speaker 3: did he invent the compound lens? I know he is
- 4:06Speaker 3: credited with inventing the microscope, which is basically like a
- 4:09Speaker 3: reverse telescope. You know, it's like it's using a series
- 4:13Speaker 3: of lenses to magnify something that's very small as opposed
- 4:19Speaker 3: to seeing something that's very far away.
- 4:21Speaker 1: Yeah, he made a lot of contributions to the microscope,
- 4:25Speaker 1: to microbiology, you name it. And this guy came into
- 4:29Speaker 1: force back when it was pretty common for self taught
- 4:33Speaker 1: experts and scientists to make all these breakthroughs. And he
- 4:38Speaker 1: just happened to look too closely at the world and
- 4:40Speaker 1: found something terrifying. Oh boy, But we also know, just
- 4:44Speaker 1: just a pro bacteria point here, we also know that
- 4:46Speaker 1: your gut biome, the bacteria that live inside you, they
- 4:50Speaker 1: are absolutely vital to a good and healthy life.
- 4:53Speaker 3: And I will also argue that sort of like just
- 4:56Speaker 3: living in squalor, or like licking a public toilet seat
- 4:59Speaker 3: or something like that. I don't know that I've ever
- 5:01Speaker 3: seen someone like get sickened or die from just like
- 5:05Speaker 3: the world, you know what I mean, just encountering Like
- 5:08Speaker 3: I am a firm believer in the five second rule.
- 5:11Speaker 3: If I drop a fry on the ground, I will
- 5:13Speaker 3: brush it off and I will eat that fry.
- 5:15Speaker 1: No.
- 5:15Speaker 2: Yeah, I read something on here that said, like the
- 5:19Speaker 2: transmission of the common cold would go down by twenty
- 5:21Speaker 2: percent if everyone washed their hands for twenty seconds. So
- 5:24Speaker 2: I read that, and I'm like, nah, because I believe
- 5:27Speaker 2: in the five second rule also, so.
- 5:29Speaker 1: Well, you know, we have to consider that there are
- 5:32Speaker 1: so many moments in every human life where you run
- 5:35Speaker 1: into something that would have been really gross if you
- 5:38Speaker 1: realize what was happening, but you made it through because
- 5:41Speaker 1: the human is a resilient creature.
- 5:43Speaker 3: That's my point. Yeah, it's like, we're not. You're not
- 5:45Speaker 3: just gonna walk outside and inhale some piece of you know,
- 5:50Speaker 3: filth and then just keel over dead. But to that point,
- 5:53Speaker 3: and I don't want to de realist too it, We're
- 5:54Speaker 3: gonna give it to the story. I heard a really
- 5:56Speaker 3: cool piece of NPR the other day about how there
- 5:58Speaker 3: are some communities in the States that are starting to
- 6:02Speaker 3: move towards waste water processing and like converting it into
- 6:07Speaker 3: drinking water.
- 6:08Speaker 1: Well, that's a noble attempt, and it's one you would
- 6:12Speaker 1: want to be very confident in before deploy.
- 6:15Speaker 3: Well apparently they are, and then they and they had
- 6:17Speaker 3: to They said the biggest stumbling block or the biggest
- 6:19Speaker 3: roadblock is what they referred to as the ick factor.
- 6:23Speaker 3: That like to sell the community on it, they have
- 6:26Speaker 3: to like be on board, you know, they're like, you know,
- 6:28Speaker 3: they would be like, okay, are you okay with using
- 6:30Speaker 3: this to water your plants? Yeah, totally, they start washing
- 6:34Speaker 3: gray water. I recently installed a dehumidifier in my basement
- 6:39Speaker 3: that fills up with water every single day, and it
- 6:42Speaker 3: is apparently some of the cleanest water. It's already predistilled,
- 6:46Speaker 3: and I, you know, you could drink it. The dehumidifier
- 6:48Speaker 3: instructions say not to what do you do with it?
- 6:50Speaker 3: I water my garden with it actually, which is right
- 6:53Speaker 3: outside the door, so there's a little bucket. I pull
- 6:54Speaker 3: it out and I wanted the plants, so it's great. Yeah. Also,
- 6:57Speaker 3: my basement is never smelled fresher. And because as we know, bacteria,
- 7:02Speaker 3: you know, forms in moist conditions.
- 7:06Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, bacteria also produce your farts. If you're a human,
- 7:10Speaker 1: million it's not on you. So another thing we need
- 7:14Speaker 1: to know is right now, humanity is overall way cleaner
- 7:19Speaker 1: than it was in days of yore. As Jim Nizele
- 7:22Speaker 1: points out in Farmer's Almanac, centuries ago, the human race stink, stink,
- 7:27Speaker 1: and stunk, But today things were a little bit different.
- 7:31Speaker 1: All thanks to an invention called soap.
- 7:34Speaker 3: We got there. It did man, that's okay, that's what
- 7:37Speaker 3: the people are here for. I always think of that
- 7:40Speaker 3: scene from Monty Python on the Holy Gril where everyone's
- 7:43Speaker 3: just covered in feces, you know, because that wasn't that
- 7:46Speaker 3: far off. I mean, that's this hilarious movie. But you know,
- 7:49Speaker 3: without drainage for sewage, like there were there was a
- 7:52Speaker 3: time where it would just run through the streets and
- 7:55Speaker 3: soap wasn't a thing, and if it was, it was
- 7:58Speaker 3: not something that everyone had access too for sure. And
- 8:01Speaker 3: now soap is ubiquitous.
- 8:03Speaker 1: You go to various businesses and they will have soap
- 8:07Speaker 1: for free.
- 8:08Speaker 3: It's one of those things. Ye.
- 8:10Speaker 1: Soap is a twenty two billion dollar industry globally. Now
- 8:15Speaker 1: thirteen billion bars are sold every year in the US alone.
- 8:20Speaker 3: But how do we get there?
- 8:21Speaker 1: We're going to learn that with some great articles from
- 8:24Speaker 1: our pals at the New York Times, some great work
- 8:28Speaker 1: for Time magazine, and of course the Cleaning Institute dot org,
- 8:33Speaker 1: because that's of course that's a thing, right, that's another
- 8:36Speaker 1: weird job. You're on a date and they say, so
- 8:39Speaker 1: what do you do? When you say, oh, I work
- 8:41Speaker 1: at the cleaning Institute. That sounds sketchy.
- 8:46Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, like, are you like a crime scene cleaner? Right? Like,
- 8:50Speaker 3: what are we talking here? I remember then they're referred
- 8:52Speaker 3: to in that movie The Professional. They referred to professional
- 8:55Speaker 3: assassins as cleaners. Yeah.
- 8:57Speaker 1: I'm also thinking of a one of my favorite weird
- 9:01Speaker 1: Stephen King cameos in the in the TV show Sons
- 9:06Speaker 1: of Anarchy is a small spoiler. He shows up as
- 9:09Speaker 1: a cleaner, and in that use of the word, a
- 9:12Speaker 1: cleaner is someone who covers up a crime.
- 9:15Speaker 3: Scene, like Winston Wolf in pulp fiction. Yes, yeah, yeah,
- 9:19Speaker 3: just so. But when you think to your point about
- 9:21Speaker 3: the absolute bookoo amounts of money that pour into the
- 9:25Speaker 3: soap industry, companies like Procter and Gamble you may have
- 9:28Speaker 3: heard of, You know that they represent tons of different brands,
- 9:31Speaker 3: but some of them are you know, Ivory Soap, which
- 9:34Speaker 3: is a legacy soap brand. You know, brands that are
- 9:38Speaker 3: ubiquitous now like Dove, Irish Spring, Olay I guess, yeah,
- 9:44Speaker 3: I mean whatever they used to call it oil of Olay. Yeah,
- 9:47Speaker 3: now it's just olay. Yeah, it's a fun word to say.
- 9:51Speaker 3: A bullfighter. What does that spring in Ireland smell like?
- 9:55Speaker 3: Is if fresh? I guess because of leprechan magic presumable.
- 10:00Speaker 1: And I got to be honest. Nowadays, I'm not like
- 10:03Speaker 1: a bar of soap. Person.
- 10:05Speaker 3: Now, Max and I were talking about the same thing.
- 10:07Speaker 3: It's lately the thing is much more body wash, which
- 10:09Speaker 3: is still, you know, a similar thing. It's just a
- 10:12Speaker 3: liquid form, and it's easier to dispense, and you know,
- 10:14Speaker 3: bars of soap get gross and you don't only want
- 10:16Speaker 3: to share it, like if you live with somebody, Yeah,
- 10:19Speaker 3: I can't really trust them not to rub it directly
- 10:21Speaker 3: on their bits.
- 10:23Speaker 1: I remember bumming around. I was living a much different lifestyle,
- 10:27Speaker 1: and I was going from.
- 10:28Speaker 3: Back when you were a beat poet.
- 10:30Speaker 1: I was going from hostile to hostile. And the thing
- 10:33Speaker 1: that got me is they have bars of soap.
- 10:36Speaker 3: I know, you see one little curly on there.
- 10:39Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened, you know, I and I was
- 10:42Speaker 1: not you know, I was by no means a billionaire.
- 10:45Speaker 1: But I thought, I'm gonna have to just buy a
- 10:48Speaker 1: bar of soap. It's my bar. I take it with me.
- 10:51Speaker 3: I even got wrap it up nice and tidy. Yeah, exactly.
- 10:54Speaker 1: So the liquid body wash stuff that a lot of
- 10:58Speaker 1: people are using now is it's somewhat poetic that that
- 11:04Speaker 1: has evolved from the original soap. Here's the gross part
- 11:07Speaker 1: we were teasing earlier. According to Dan Copple, writing for
- 11:10Speaker 1: Wirecutter out New York Times, soap likely originated as an
- 11:15Speaker 1: accidental invention, a byproduct of cooking meat over a fire.
- 11:20Speaker 3: Yeah, arguably the best way to cook meat.
- 11:23Speaker 1: First.
- 11:24Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember the spit urned dogs. That was the
- 11:27Speaker 3: whole thing, poor guys. Yeah, I mean, at least the
- 11:31Speaker 3: spitturned boys got out of it, but the dogs were
- 11:33Speaker 3: definitely overworked as well. But yeah, you have this a
- 11:37Speaker 3: giant metal thing attached to a crank that slowly turns
- 11:41Speaker 3: meat over and open fire. Well, it does create delicious meat.
- 11:45Speaker 3: It also has some byproducts which can be used in
- 11:48Speaker 3: their own ways. You've ever been to France, Ben, and
- 11:50Speaker 3: I know you actually have. They a big popular thing
- 11:53Speaker 3: and it's a lot of like kind of what we
- 11:54Speaker 3: would call bodega's. They have chickens that are roasting and
- 11:57Speaker 3: the fat drips down onto potatoes. Yeah, man, that's what's up.
- 12:01Speaker 3: And you can buy the potatoes separately. But back in
- 12:04Speaker 3: these days they would be an open fire. So what
- 12:06Speaker 3: happened is the fat would drip into the fire and
- 12:08Speaker 3: then eventually the fire would go out, leaving all these
- 12:11Speaker 3: globs of fat mixed in with the ashes.
- 12:14Speaker 1: Yeah, meat boogers and ashes too, very unclean sounding things
- 12:19Speaker 1: are key ingredients to what we call soap because what's crazy. Yeah,
- 12:24Speaker 1: what happened was you have to applaud the ingenuity and
- 12:27Speaker 1: inquisitiveness of these earlier humans.
- 12:30Speaker 3: What happened? Who tried that? Who did something? Yet that mum?
- 12:34Speaker 1: Who's like, I don't know, man around, Let's say, rub
- 12:36Speaker 1: it on my face might feel fresh, zestfully clean. How
- 12:41Speaker 1: much other stuff had they been rubbing on themselves?
- 12:44Speaker 3: You know?
- 12:45Speaker 1: They're like, I know the poison ivy didn't work out,
- 12:47Speaker 1: but I got a good feeling about these meat boogers guys.
- 12:56Speaker 3: I mean, I just can't understand quite what aha moment
- 13:00Speaker 3: would have led someone to realize that this chemical, this
- 13:03Speaker 3: kind of slippery stuff that was created was good at
- 13:06Speaker 3: removing dirt. I also don't fully understand scientifically speaking, how
- 13:12Speaker 3: that even works. Oh, we'll get it, Okay, I'm excited.
- 13:15Speaker 1: So you can see that after someone figured this out,
- 13:19Speaker 1: they said, you can rub this on yourself. It'll take
- 13:22Speaker 1: dirt off you, and you can, for the first time
- 13:25Speaker 1: in your life be kind of clean. Everybody loved this.
- 13:29Speaker 1: It became super popular. You can find recipes for making
- 13:33Speaker 1: soap that are almost five thousand years old, and it's
- 13:37Speaker 1: all around the ancient world Greece, Rome, Egypt. You know,
- 13:41Speaker 1: all the hits and alchemists made a lot of soap.
- 13:44Speaker 3: So how come I didn't catch on Like in the
- 13:46Speaker 3: Middle Ages when everyone was covered in poop?
- 13:49Speaker 1: Well it, I will tell you. From what I understand
- 13:52Speaker 1: about the Middle Ages and at least Western Europe, it
- 13:55Speaker 1: was pretty rare to take a bath. It was often
- 13:58Speaker 1: considered like a ritual list thing like a night may
- 14:01Speaker 1: take a bath once a year before the big jousting tournament.
- 14:06Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just sort of normalized to to stink. So
- 14:11Speaker 1: maybe soap was something that the elite would have. People
- 14:15Speaker 1: were trying to be clean. We're not saying they were
- 14:17Speaker 1: a bunch of degenerates.
- 14:18Speaker 2: They I will say, there's some stuff that coming up
- 14:21Speaker 2: about why they'd invade in the medieval era.
- 14:24Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about.
- 14:27Speaker 2: I think I think I know a bit of a reason,
- 14:29Speaker 2: some humorous level science.
- 14:33Speaker 3: Dare I say ridiculous. I also remember, like there was
- 14:36Speaker 3: a thing we discussed in an episode of ways back
- 14:38Speaker 3: about people washing their linens and urine. Mm hmm, yeah,
- 14:42Speaker 3: a thing. I think it was underwear. I think it
- 14:44Speaker 3: was in the underwear.
- 14:44Speaker 1: It was washing underwear in urine. And then also while
- 14:48Speaker 1: we're on the point of well we're on the point
- 14:51Speaker 1: of underpants history, check out the origin of pink lemonade.
- 14:55Speaker 3: Remember that episode clown Tights, the Rise of the Clown.
- 14:59Speaker 3: Let's just leave it at the Yeah. Sorry, it's crazy
- 15:01Speaker 3: to me that this is something that has existed for
- 15:04Speaker 3: so very long, just based on some accidental stumbling into
- 15:08Speaker 3: like however this happened, We don't know. What we do
- 15:10Speaker 3: know is that we have recipes dating back between either
- 15:13Speaker 3: the eighth and tenth century from alchemists, like you said,
- 15:16Speaker 3: and this is when here spread well burnt ashes from goodlogs.
- 15:20Speaker 3: It has to be good logs over woven wicker work,
- 15:23Speaker 3: which I guess acts as sort of like a cheese
- 15:25Speaker 3: cloth kind of situation, like cloth, Yeah, and gently pour
- 15:30Speaker 3: hot water on them, so it goes through drop by drop.
- 15:33Speaker 3: After it is clarified, well, let it cook, add enough
- 15:37Speaker 3: oil and stir very well.
- 15:39Speaker 1: So I want to point something out that you guys know,
- 15:42Speaker 1: I love food writing and reading. There's a great book
- 15:47Speaker 1: called Choice Cuts that has a lot of strange old recipes.
- 15:50Speaker 1: I'll bring it in one day. We should read it
- 15:52Speaker 1: out loud. And and what I love is just like
- 15:56Speaker 1: the George Washington recipe. There's a vagueness to it. Add
- 16:01Speaker 1: enough oil, get a goodly amount, enjoy liberally.
- 16:06Speaker 3: I believe it was in the eggnog recipe that you're
- 16:08Speaker 3: referring to. Yeah, and this comes from actually a book
- 16:12Speaker 3: called the Maypie Clavicula, which is it's kind of cute
- 16:18Speaker 3: and Latin that translates to a little key to everything.
- 16:21Speaker 3: You know, it's like little live laugh love. You know,
- 16:26Speaker 3: it's kind of cute. I bet it had some like
- 16:27Speaker 3: nice life hacks in it.
- 16:29Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the how stuff works of it to day.
- 16:34Speaker 1: The Alchemist recipe for soap said you need to use
- 16:37Speaker 1: either olive oil or beef tallow animal fat, and today
- 16:43Speaker 1: animal fat, along with lye, is still a basic ingredient
- 16:47Speaker 1: of soap. Here's some of the science so fat reacts
- 16:50Speaker 1: with lye and this can be pretty toxic. So soap
- 16:55Speaker 1: makers when they're making this stuff they have to wear
- 16:58Speaker 1: protective gear. The process that can be dangerous to humans
- 17:03Speaker 1: is something called saponification.
- 17:06Speaker 3: That's right, and we believe that the origins of that
- 17:09Speaker 3: word come from the Proto German word sipo, which means
- 17:15Speaker 3: to strain. And again going back to that alchemist's recipe,
- 17:18Speaker 3: we're talking about straining substances through kind of like a
- 17:22Speaker 3: porous piece of fabric.
- 17:24Speaker 1: Another greasy strain is another really gross phrase.
- 17:29Speaker 3: Why not great? Yeah, and to that point, Ben, the
- 17:32Speaker 3: Latin word sebum is also associated with this, which translates
- 17:37Speaker 3: to Greece or another alternative is from something originating from
- 17:43Speaker 3: Mount Sappo, which is a mountain in Italy where I
- 17:46Speaker 3: believe there were like sacrifices being made or something it.
- 17:51Speaker 1: Gets its name from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's okay.
- 17:55Speaker 3: So the sources are great. Another meat and fat and
- 17:57Speaker 3: ash situation, Yes, not consensual.
- 18:01Speaker 1: So the wild soap is still very much I think
- 18:04Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three we have to be very we
- 18:07Speaker 1: have to be extremely clear with you folks. The soap
- 18:10Speaker 1: from back in the day was very different. Early soap
- 18:15Speaker 1: would not have looked cool to you if you traveled
- 18:18Speaker 1: back in time and hung out in a Roman bathhouse.
- 18:22Speaker 1: These soaps were probably people have recreated the sancient stuff
- 18:25Speaker 1: using those recipes. These soaps were like brown or gray.
- 18:29Speaker 1: They were kind of soft and mushy. They didn't have
- 18:31Speaker 1: any nice smells at the time. They're purely functional. At
- 18:35Speaker 1: the time, they were just a huge improvement. They were
- 18:38Speaker 1: a game changer for hygiene because beforehand, before soap, people
- 18:45Speaker 1: would clean themselves by rubbing their bodies with clay or
- 18:48Speaker 1: scraping them with scraping pumas across their flesh.
- 18:54Speaker 3: Sure, it was just pretty popular. People love a puma stone.
- 18:57Speaker 1: I mean, it's just exfoliating, true, true, but exfoliating is
- 19:02Speaker 1: part of bathing.
- 19:04Speaker 3: They were straight up at fully Lake. I don't know it. Yea,
- 19:07Speaker 3: it is a dry shower, is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah,
- 19:10Speaker 3: that's kind of that's kind of that's kind of it.
- 19:12Speaker 3: Really quickly, we talked about another of the potential origins
- 19:16Speaker 3: of the words, so Mount Sapo alluded to some some
- 19:22Speaker 3: gnarly goings on at this place that apparently the location
- 19:26Speaker 3: is lost to history. What exactly was Mount Sapo famous
- 19:30Speaker 3: for in ancient Rome? Oh?
- 19:32Speaker 1: Good, save, yes, I wast forgot about this one. Yeah,
- 19:36Speaker 1: all right, absolutely right. It is a It is believed
- 19:40Speaker 1: to be a hilly area somewhere near somewhere near Rome
- 19:44Speaker 1: and back in one hundred BC or b C, whatever
- 19:49Speaker 1: you prefer. There was a legend about this place and
- 19:54Speaker 1: the idea that was that Mount Sapo was a sacrificial
- 19:58Speaker 1: site for adnimals and rain water. They would kill these
- 20:03Speaker 1: animals pretty much constantly, and then rainwater would fall down
- 20:08Speaker 1: and mix with the animal fat and ashes, and then
- 20:13Speaker 1: from there it would run down to a river.
- 20:16Speaker 3: It's very interesting and just again. I always learned about
- 20:19Speaker 3: it stuff initially from the movie Fight Club, where Tyler
- 20:22Speaker 3: Dirt and Brad Pitt's character is a soap salesman who
- 20:27Speaker 3: gets his makings his ingredients by dumpster diving at liposuction clinics.
- 20:33Speaker 1: You get in situations you do and think about this
- 20:37Speaker 1: river that we both thought it was so cool. Is
- 20:41Speaker 1: once these sacrifices, all the gunk and the remains, once
- 20:46Speaker 1: it flows down from the mountain into the river, there
- 20:49Speaker 1: are people washing clothes in the river and they're saying, wait.
- 20:55Speaker 3: This ninety's never been this clean in my life. What
- 20:59Speaker 3: gives go looks brand new? That's better.
- 21:02Speaker 2: That's more.
- 21:02Speaker 3: We were more in the token.
- 21:03Speaker 1: The poop stains are all gone. We should make more sacrifices.
- 21:08Speaker 1: That's how soap started, according to this legend.
- 21:11Speaker 3: But it's a good legend. It seems a little apocryphal
- 21:14Speaker 3: once again, you know what I mean. Yeah, but it
- 21:16Speaker 3: does lead. It does make more sense than the fat
- 21:19Speaker 3: dripping into the fire and the ashes and someone just
- 21:23Speaker 3: figuring out how to just to take it and rub
- 21:25Speaker 3: it on themselves. Yeah, unless they were trying to eat
- 21:28Speaker 3: the fat. Yeah, exactly. But I'll tell you what, they
- 21:30Speaker 3: never used bad language again, right, because they washed their.
- 21:35Speaker 1: Mouths so so I think it was worth it, no
- 21:39Speaker 1: joke left behind. We were talking earlier about why the
- 21:44Speaker 1: Middle Ages, again in Western Europe, were so very dirty,
- 21:48Speaker 1: So let's maybe let's explore that, because although soap was
- 21:52Speaker 1: an amazing discovery, people weren't always using it. It was
- 21:58Speaker 1: considered a high craft or in art. In Italy and
- 22:02Speaker 1: Spain and France, they were making soap. There in the
- 22:04Speaker 1: Middle East, people were also making soap with olive oil,
- 22:10Speaker 1: and it was actually quite a flex to import that.
- 22:13Speaker 1: So rich people in Europe were saying, ah, yes, my
- 22:16Speaker 1: Middle Eastern soap olive oil.
- 22:19Speaker 3: Soap is still kind of like a bespoke sort of
- 22:22Speaker 3: like popular thing, you know, like the kind of fancy
- 22:25Speaker 3: hand soaps are all the rage these days. You see
- 22:28Speaker 3: them at hotels. You U see the hotels and also
- 22:30Speaker 3: like places where they're sort of irregularly shaped and have
- 22:33Speaker 3: like kind of weird like striations in them. They almost
- 22:36Speaker 3: look like little blocks of sediments, you know, fancy one
- 22:40Speaker 3: c see at the grocery store sometimes. But no, it's true.
- 22:43Speaker 3: This was considered kind of a luxury item. So this
- 22:47Speaker 3: is almost some of the earliest days of bath products
- 22:51Speaker 3: as luxury. Yeah. Yeah.
- 22:53Speaker 1: And a lot of people, of course were making their
- 22:56Speaker 1: own soap at home because they were this was these
- 23:00Speaker 1: were largely agrarian economies, right, So you are on a farm,
- 23:05Speaker 1: you raise and kill animals, and you want to maximize
- 23:09Speaker 1: your productivity, so of course you have a soap recipe.
- 23:11Speaker 1: You pass it down to your kids and so on.
- 23:15Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, though, the fall of the Roman Empire is
- 23:20Speaker 1: a big reason more Europeans didn't have soap, which I
- 23:24Speaker 1: did not know that way, I did not see that coming.
- 23:27Speaker 3: Have we talked about the term castile soap. We have
- 23:30Speaker 3: not yet.
- 23:30Speaker 1: That's the one from the fancy soap in Italy, Spain
- 23:34Speaker 1: and France.
- 23:35Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was the name, and that is if
- 23:38Speaker 3: you if anyone's familiar with doctor Bronner's so very very
- 23:41Speaker 3: popular you use it to clear anything. But it is
- 23:44Speaker 3: like one of those kind of olive oil based soaps
- 23:47Speaker 3: that originated in Spain and they are still around today
- 23:50Speaker 3: and considered kind of the you know, the holy grail
- 23:54Speaker 3: of soaps.
- 23:56Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And soap was kind of the holy
- 24:00Speaker 1: grail in parts of Europe during the medieval period because,
- 24:05Speaker 1: as we know from soap and Detergent's history, after the
- 24:09Speaker 1: Fall of Rome, bathing habits went downhill in Europe and
- 24:14Speaker 1: this made they really let themselves go and and this
- 24:18Speaker 1: contributed in a very serious and disturbing way to plagues,
- 24:24Speaker 1: to illness, to infection. People were bathing and then they stopped.
- 24:30Speaker 1: That's kind of what happened. And this was a big
- 24:34Speaker 1: help to the fleas that traveled on the rats that
- 24:38Speaker 1: brought the Black Death to Europe.
- 24:40Speaker 3: Oh, just a perfect storm of nastiness. Yeah, that was
- 24:43Speaker 3: in the fourteenth century. But elsewhere in the world, folks
- 24:49Speaker 3: were taking care of themselves, you know, in terms of
- 24:52Speaker 3: their personal hygiene. In Japan, people bathed every day. It
- 24:57Speaker 3: was very very common and you know, as I mean
- 24:59Speaker 3: We always think Japan is kind of having there together,
- 25:02Speaker 3: you know, in terms of organization, in terms of innovation, uh,
- 25:06Speaker 3: and just kind of civilization. You know, all the Asians.
- 25:10Speaker 1: We you guys got to go to Japan with me.
- 25:14Speaker 1: We don't have to hang out together the whole time.
- 25:16Speaker 3: No, no, I'll be right by your side.
- 25:18Speaker 2: It's just three of us can be in a hot
- 25:20Speaker 2: tub together.
- 25:20Speaker 1: In Japan, they've got their classy they're called on st.
- 25:24Speaker 2: Oh I know, eisode.
- 25:27Speaker 3: I really want to do this.
- 25:29Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool, for sure, and it's it's an important
- 25:34Speaker 1: point for us to make that although a lot of
- 25:37Speaker 1: people in the West only think of Western Europe when
- 25:39Speaker 1: they think of the Middle Ages, the rest of the
- 25:42Speaker 1: world was still there totally, you know, and didn't have
- 25:45Speaker 1: all the same problems. In Iceland, people loved gathering together
- 25:51Speaker 1: in the hot springs. Also, you know what, ma'am, we
- 25:54Speaker 1: got to go to Scandinavia one day. I would love
- 25:56Speaker 1: to go there. I want to walk in a country
- 25:59Speaker 1: where it's considered normal to have a sauna.
- 26:02Speaker 3: Yeah, have a Schwitz. That's so crazy to me. You
- 26:04Speaker 3: ever heard that referred to as Schwitz? I think it's
- 26:08Speaker 3: a Sopranos thing. I think it might be Yiddish actually,
- 26:11Speaker 3: but it's just like getting getting your sweat on. And
- 26:14Speaker 3: then there's even like there's certain meats that are appropriate
- 26:19Speaker 3: to eat in a sauna.
- 26:23Speaker 1: That that part the second part I I hadn't heard before.
- 26:27Speaker 3: Uh yeah, sauna sausage. There's a whole company uh that
- 26:33Speaker 3: was obscure actually has an article in Finland. You cook
- 26:36Speaker 3: sausages in the stones. Yeah, that makes you guys.
- 26:40Speaker 2: Do you guys remember this from the uh Sausage War
- 26:42Speaker 2: episode the Expedition.
- 26:45Speaker 3: Oh that's right.
- 26:46Speaker 2: Yeah, at the very end of were talking about like
- 26:48Speaker 2: they have like a little like in the saunas. They
- 26:50Speaker 2: have just like a stone cut out sausage in and
- 26:53Speaker 2: they getting in there. And also expedition remember that.
- 26:57Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's fun one to say. Yeah, and that's
- 27:00Speaker 3: how it's pronounced. Yeah. And now there are modern innovations
- 27:02Speaker 3: that keep your sausage from getting soggy. It's like a
- 27:05Speaker 3: little sleeve that you put it in. It's sort of
- 27:07Speaker 3: like a stone and the sausage goes inside and then
- 27:10Speaker 3: that goes on the rocks.
- 27:11Speaker 1: So they're doing hot pocket rules amazing. So there's another
- 27:16Speaker 1: thing that happens here aside from the fall of the
- 27:18Speaker 1: Roman Empire. Medical experts of the time, working again with
- 27:24Speaker 1: the limited information they had, they started putting out some
- 27:28Speaker 1: scare pieces, some propaganda about bathing. They began to think
- 27:33Speaker 1: that bathing was a vector for spreading illness, and powerful
- 27:39Speaker 1: people believed them. King Louis the fourteenth over in France
- 27:43Speaker 1: was convinced that baths were bad for you, like they
- 27:46Speaker 1: were like unnecessary surgery. Apparently he only took three baths
- 27:53Speaker 1: throughout the course of his life and just you know,
- 27:57Speaker 1: covered his his swamps.
- 28:00Speaker 3: Yeah, with scented oils and lotions and perfumes. I've done
- 28:05Speaker 3: that every time in a pin.
- 28:07Speaker 1: Sure, every time I go somewhere and I smell a
- 28:10Speaker 1: little bit like close.
- 28:11Speaker 3: Little underarm sprits, Yeah, it's because I have not showered.
- 28:13Speaker 3: It's definitely for you guys.
- 28:15Speaker 2: If you guys ever put deodorant on a turd, I
- 28:19Speaker 2: haven't either. I have on when I'm a teenager.
- 28:22Speaker 3: That's a weird question.
- 28:23Speaker 2: Basically, what it smells like, they said, was dedorant, and
- 28:27Speaker 2: turn is what it smells like. The Uran doesn't cover what.
- 28:31Speaker 3: You're saying, So this is a hypothetical.
- 28:33Speaker 2: So no, this person actually did it. But what I
- 28:36Speaker 2: feel like this is a common thing to do.
- 28:38Speaker 3: It's not.
- 28:38Speaker 2: No, it's not agreed. Thanks, I'm such a never friend
- 28:42Speaker 2: of mine from like the end of middle school told
- 28:44Speaker 2: me to do that. You're wrong.
- 28:47Speaker 3: I once pooped my pants in middle school and hit
- 28:49Speaker 3: it in a drawer in my friend's house.
- 28:52Speaker 1: I once pooped in another guy's pants. That's crazy.
- 28:55Speaker 3: You win, you win. All this is coming out any
- 29:00Speaker 3: of us watched or staying in. But here's what I
- 29:09Speaker 3: do know. I always thought of King Louis the fourteenth
- 29:12Speaker 3: is the real fancy lad you know it wasn't he
- 29:16Speaker 3: the son king? Wasn't he like the Versailles guy, you know?
- 29:20Speaker 3: And he wore like fancy ruffles and was it all
- 29:23Speaker 3: into the height of fashion and all of that stuff.
- 29:25Speaker 3: He was, Yeah, Louis the Great?
- 29:27Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was I think the longest running ruler
- 29:32Speaker 1: of France.
- 29:33Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 29:33Speaker 2: And then didn't his son king Yeah, his grandson was
- 29:38Speaker 2: the sixteenth. He got shoved into the guilloteen. I think
- 29:40Speaker 2: that French Revolution is right after the fourteenth.
- 29:43Speaker 3: Yeah. Point being though, is I just didn't really pick
- 29:47Speaker 3: You'll get all these paintings of him with his glorious
- 29:49Speaker 3: flowing locks and all of this stuff, and you just
- 29:52Speaker 3: don't picture him smelling like crap.
- 29:55Speaker 2: Yeah, but at all. Frederickston was very in shape and skinny,
- 29:59Speaker 2: and he's the he was the king of Sweden who
- 30:01Speaker 2: aid himself to death.
- 30:02Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but he just loved those buns man. Yeah.
- 30:05Speaker 2: I mean, so like these paintings are generally not true,
- 30:10Speaker 2: well not super duper accurate.
- 30:11Speaker 1: I mean, imagine if you are the painter and you
- 30:15Speaker 1: have to make a picture of the most powerful person
- 30:19Speaker 1: in the country who can just have you killed. Yeah,
- 30:24Speaker 1: you are going to you know, judge it up a
- 30:27Speaker 1: little bit, sure, give him some definition, you know.
- 30:30Speaker 3: I would also say that the modern equivalent would be
- 30:33Speaker 3: like the way the social media pictures are curated. Nobody's
- 30:36Speaker 3: that happy, nobody lives that happy. A life is so contented.
- 30:41Speaker 1: Agreed, Agreed, social media curation and portraits of royalty may
- 30:47Speaker 1: not be the full truth. Soap is now modernized. How
- 30:52Speaker 1: did it become a modern thing? Well, technology, There were
- 30:57Speaker 1: advances in production and more sophisticated manufacturing techniques that are
- 31:03Speaker 1: responsible for the soap we have today. Soap is way
- 31:08Speaker 1: older than the United States, obviously, and the soap making
- 31:13Speaker 1: business in the US is also older than the United States.
- 31:17Speaker 1: It started way back in the sixteen hundreds, and it
- 31:22Speaker 1: wasn't anybody's job. It was just another household shore you
- 31:26Speaker 1: had to do. So if you think laundry stinks now, folks,
- 31:30Speaker 1: imagine another part of doing laundry was making the soap
- 31:35Speaker 1: you would use. So you're like, the clothes are getting
- 31:39Speaker 1: pretty dirty. I guess I have to kill an animal,
- 31:42Speaker 1: render its fat, start a fire, make some soap, and
- 31:46Speaker 1: then find a river.
- 31:49Speaker 3: Yeah. I have noticed that some kind of more traditional
- 31:54Speaker 3: soaps they don't really smell good. They kind of have
- 31:57Speaker 3: an acrid kind of smell all to them, you know
- 32:00Speaker 3: what I mean. Like, even just like a really basic
- 32:03Speaker 3: bar of soap, when you wash your hands in it,
- 32:05Speaker 3: there's a certain chemically kind of unpleasant odor. Certainly Trump's
- 32:11Speaker 3: whatever odor was there before it literally Trump said, gets
- 32:14Speaker 3: rid of it. But the smell isn't pleasant. It wasn't
- 32:16Speaker 3: until oils and the scents were introduced, and then that
- 32:20Speaker 3: that became more of a thing.
- 32:22Speaker 1: And this, you know, it reminds me of a common
- 32:25Speaker 1: scene in grocery stores. When you go to the cleaning aisle,
- 32:29Speaker 1: you'll it'll typically be on a bottom shelf. You'll see
- 32:33Speaker 1: that soap you're talking about. I always think of it
- 32:35Speaker 1: as the industrial stuff. It's like the soap, the lie soap,
- 32:39Speaker 1: the kind of thing that can hurt your hats.
- 32:41Speaker 3: Right, that's yeah, yeah, or you know it's because that's
- 32:44Speaker 3: literally the substance is used to like dissolve a body.
- 32:48Speaker 3: No comment, Okay, fair enough, So we'll call Stevi King.
- 32:52Speaker 1: There's something unique about the early North American soap industry.
- 32:57Speaker 1: It gets started because of bacon and canned lighting in
- 33:01Speaker 1: general was a big part of commercial cleansers because both
- 33:06Speaker 1: making candles and making soap, both of them traditionally rely
- 33:11Speaker 1: on byproducts from animals. So as the US becomes more
- 33:14Speaker 1: industrialized and people are less and less likely to raise
- 33:18Speaker 1: their own animals for meat, they're going to purchase stuff
- 33:21Speaker 1: from butchers. That means they're also less likely to make.
- 33:25Speaker 3: Soap at home. So that's when we have, you know,
- 33:29Speaker 3: the first steps of the I guess soap industry starting
- 33:35Speaker 3: to pop up, right, soap revolution, soap evolution. But it's
- 33:38Speaker 3: earlier than you might think. Back in seventeen ninety one,
- 33:40Speaker 3: we've got a French chemist by the name of Nicholas LeBlanc.
- 33:45Speaker 1: Yeah, he patents this process where you can make soda
- 33:49Speaker 1: ash from salt. Soda ash is important because you can
- 33:53Speaker 1: combine it regular fat and you'll make soap. And that discovery,
- 33:57Speaker 1: the blancs breakthrough makes soap making one of the fastest growing,
- 34:03Speaker 1: most explosive industries in the United States.
- 34:07Speaker 3: By eighteen fifty.
- 34:08Speaker 1: We also see real life factories coming into play, and
- 34:12Speaker 1: the soap business is boomy. It's good to be This
- 34:15Speaker 1: is back when you could be a soap tycoon.
- 34:18Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and even like I think there were
- 34:20Speaker 3: like traveling salesmen and stuff like that, you know, with
- 34:23Speaker 3: their suitcases full of bars of soap. And this was
- 34:27Speaker 3: also the time remember that propaganda of like you know,
- 34:30Speaker 3: the previous era, the sort of main people question soap.
- 34:34Speaker 3: Now we have I think a little bit more medical
- 34:37Speaker 3: kind of support for soap. That's good and like expressions
- 34:40Speaker 3: like cleanliness is next to godliness and all of that stuff.
- 34:44Speaker 3: God is empty. It's yeah, he is, he really is.
- 34:47Speaker 3: It's cool to be clean though, you know what I'm saying.
- 34:50Speaker 3: This is definitely starting to be the message. So during
- 34:52Speaker 3: the Crimean War in the eighteen fifties, we have Florence Nightingales,
- 34:57Speaker 3: very important figure in the mystery of medicine, who's credited
- 35:01Speaker 3: with kind of changing the way nursing is done and
- 35:07Speaker 3: really made a big deal about washing those hands because
- 35:12Speaker 3: that could potentially save lives by preventing the spread of cholera. Yeah, yeah,
- 35:19Speaker 3: and she is.
- 35:21Speaker 1: She's in the pantheon of people who who were underappreciated
- 35:26Speaker 1: by civilization. I would argue she's up there with Samalwis,
- 35:30Speaker 1: the guy who asks surgeons to wash their hands before
- 35:32Speaker 1: they do operations, right, or assistant childbirth. So this is
- 35:40Speaker 1: very important stuff. Also in the mid eighteen hundreds, in
- 35:43Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven, there's this candle maker out of Cincinnati,
- 35:46Speaker 1: William Procter, and he says, oh, yeah, well making candles
- 35:51Speaker 1: making soap. I have the ingredients for both, and he
- 35:55Speaker 1: puts them together. He teams up with a guy named
- 35:57Speaker 1: James Gamble and makes a company that ultimately becomes not
- 36:04Speaker 1: just a huge deal in the soap business, but the
- 36:07Speaker 1: world's largest consumer products company ever.
- 36:10Speaker 3: Procter and Gamble, P and G, baby and G. What
- 36:14Speaker 3: do they not make? I don't know, humans?
- 36:18Speaker 1: Yeah now as of now, yeah, they're making prototype humans.
- 36:24Speaker 1: So Procter and Gamble is also one of the first
- 36:29Speaker 1: soaps to gain national distribution. It's the Ivory brand, which
- 36:33Speaker 1: is still around today, right.
- 36:35Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's still distributed by parct and Gamble. They're
- 36:37Speaker 3: the kind of company that has been in the game
- 36:39Speaker 3: for so long, diversified so much, and they've created so
- 36:43Speaker 3: many like ubiquitous kind of brands. So remember that cast
- 36:46Speaker 3: deal soap we were talking about from Spain that was
- 36:48Speaker 3: sort of the fancy lad soap. This plain white soap
- 36:53Speaker 3: was designed to be competition for that, like perhaps the
- 36:59Speaker 3: people soap.
- 37:00Speaker 1: The people's soap, soap for the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 37:05Speaker 1: It was pretty affordable, and the name was from a
- 37:10Speaker 1: biblical passage. The company said, the name of the soap
- 37:16Speaker 1: is an indicator of its purity. There even came to
- 37:20Speaker 1: be a kind of modern legend, a creation myth about
- 37:24Speaker 1: how Ivory was made. The story was that there was
- 37:29Speaker 1: a mixing machine left on someone took a long lunch
- 37:33Speaker 1: break and extra air accidentally pumped into what was what
- 37:38Speaker 1: was being mixed, And in two thousand and four, weirdly enough,
- 37:44Speaker 1: people working for Procter and Gamble went through Old Man
- 37:48Speaker 1: Gambles diary from eighteen sixty rude.
- 37:52Speaker 3: Yeah, they read his diary and dear diary. Yeah, that's exactly.
- 37:57Speaker 3: I got a crush on this diary.
- 38:00Speaker 1: I made floating soap today I think will make all
- 38:04Speaker 1: of our stock that way. So the legend that was
- 38:06Speaker 1: the quote, Yeah, that was the quote. The legend was
- 38:08Speaker 1: probably made up.
- 38:10Speaker 3: Got it. But here's the thing. A lot of the
- 38:13Speaker 3: soap that you think is soap isn't in fact soap scale.
- 38:21Speaker 3: There's a lot to be said, as we alluded to earlier,
- 38:23Speaker 3: about the chemistry of soap and how it actually works.
- 38:27Speaker 3: It something that's always eluded me. This seems like a
- 38:29Speaker 3: mystical substance. A lot of these manufacturing processes stayed very
- 38:33Speaker 3: much the same until nineteen sixteen during World War One,
- 38:38Speaker 3: and then there was another change that happened during World
- 38:39Speaker 3: War Two, as often as the case during wartime, because
- 38:42Speaker 3: of shortage and things that were needed as part of
- 38:44Speaker 3: the supply chain, because a lot of these fats that
- 38:47Speaker 3: were needed to make chemicals were being used elsewhere, probably
- 38:52Speaker 3: for those like k rations or whatever.
- 38:54Speaker 1: Yeah, and back to our pal Dan writing for Wirecutter,
- 38:58Speaker 1: he said, German and Ears figured out they could use
- 39:02Speaker 1: a different cleaning product that didn't need animal fat and ashes.
- 39:07Speaker 1: It was a synthetic substance they called detergent Latin for
- 39:13Speaker 1: to wipe away. Detergents didn't have soap. They used enzymes that,
- 39:19Speaker 1: through chemical reactions, lift stains off of clothing and skin.
- 39:25Speaker 1: American companies get on board with this and again the
- 39:28Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds and they start making new detergents and
- 39:34Speaker 1: mixing ingredients up to see what other properties they can discover.
- 39:40Speaker 1: And eventually, after the times of privation had passed, they
- 39:47Speaker 1: were left with something that actually worked better than the
- 39:50Speaker 1: original soap. And they said, okay, well, you know, history
- 39:54Speaker 1: is cool, but we're going to have to go with
- 39:56Speaker 1: a thing that's a better cleaner.
- 39:57Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 39:57Speaker 3: It also doesn't like SuDS up the same. It behaves
- 40:01Speaker 3: differently when mixed with water, Like I don't know if
- 40:03Speaker 3: anyone's ever been unfortunate enough to accidentally put the regular
- 40:07Speaker 3: soap into a dishwasher or something like that, you're gonna
- 40:10Speaker 3: have like SuDS shooting all over your kitchen. Totally. Yeah,
- 40:14Speaker 3: it's a rite of passage as an adult. But that's
- 40:17Speaker 3: the thing like with you know, if you look at
- 40:20Speaker 3: what laundry detergent does, for example, in the washing machine.
- 40:23Speaker 3: It's not full of bubbles. It's much of much like
- 40:26Speaker 3: you know, it's clearly a different process. It's more of
- 40:29Speaker 3: a smooth operator. It's a smooth operator. It creates kind
- 40:32Speaker 3: of like this slurry, you know.
- 40:34Speaker 1: And as a result, like you were saying earlier, Man,
- 40:37Speaker 1: what people are calling soap today is not completely soap.
- 40:42Speaker 1: Most of the cleansers, the majority of them liquid and solid,
- 40:46Speaker 1: are gonna be synthetic detergent products. And people like these
- 40:51Speaker 1: products because they don't form gummy deposits. The origin story
- 40:55Speaker 1: of them is not as disturbing to some people. And
- 41:00Speaker 1: modern cleansers also include a lot of other ingredients. Stuff
- 41:04Speaker 1: to make it the bar of soap, brighter stuff to
- 41:07Speaker 1: make the liquid, you know, look bluish water, softeners, antibacterial
- 41:12Speaker 1: stuff like alcohol, and these bars can have some of
- 41:16Speaker 1: the same ingredients as soap, Like when you see what
- 41:21Speaker 1: is it, the animal fat is still in some of them.
- 41:24Speaker 1: It's just not called that anymore.
- 41:26Speaker 3: Yeah, And some of the main ingredients in these are
- 41:28Speaker 3: something that we both tittered at. I guess a little
- 41:31Speaker 3: bit off my sodium talowate. It's just because it's a
- 41:34Speaker 3: funny word.
- 41:34Speaker 1: I don't know why it feels like someone trying to
- 41:36Speaker 1: do pretend Latin.
- 41:38Speaker 3: It does sound that way. And then sodium lard eate,
- 41:40Speaker 3: which sounds like what it is, or it can also
- 41:43Speaker 3: include vegetable fats such as sodium palmitate and sodium coco eate,
- 41:51Speaker 3: which sounds delightful. But chemically speaking, they're not actually soap,
- 41:57Speaker 3: but it does seem that they mean they're obviously it's
- 42:00Speaker 3: like chemically or like scientifically in terms of what the
- 42:02Speaker 3: process is doing a similar job, right right.
- 42:06Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is one of Max, I think this
- 42:09Speaker 1: is one of the big questions for you, and I
- 42:12Speaker 1: appreciate this because we've got to give a shout out
- 42:15Speaker 1: to our alma matter. How stuff works. Maybe we end here,
- 42:19Speaker 1: how does soap actually work? Well, it's less of a
- 42:22Speaker 1: disinfectant and more of what you called, Max, I think
- 42:27Speaker 1: quite appropriately a germ slipping slide. They're not killing the germs,
- 42:31Speaker 1: they're moving them. The slipperiness of soap lowers the surface
- 42:36Speaker 1: temperature of water when you mix them together, and rubbing
- 42:40Speaker 1: your hands together while washing gets the dirt to temporarily
- 42:44Speaker 1: bond with the water and soap, and then it.
- 42:46Speaker 3: Leaves with the water. It lifts it right off. Yeah,
- 42:49Speaker 3: it's interesting, just like those commercials exactly leaving U zestfully clean.
- 42:55Speaker 3: I'm sorry, man, I think you got that jingle stuck
- 42:58Speaker 3: in my head a little while ago. I think, ye,
- 43:00Speaker 3: not fully clean and unless you zest fully clean.
- 43:04Speaker 1: Yeah, it's jaunty. It's a jaunty jingle. And this has
- 43:08Speaker 1: been a pretty fascinating episode. It took us a lot
- 43:11Speaker 1: of places. We got into some pretty dark territory. We
- 43:16Speaker 1: got into some really interesting stuff about hygiene, and we're
- 43:19Speaker 1: going to have to continue the journey next week.
- 43:25Speaker 3: To our personal hygiene journey. Our personal hygiene journey. Yeah, man,
- 43:29Speaker 3: we're look at us. All three of us are being
- 43:31Speaker 3: pretty good. Now, we're working out, we're taking showers. Oh man,
- 43:35Speaker 3: I took one three days ago. I feel like you're
- 43:37Speaker 3: high roading me. But congratulations. My favorite place it took
- 43:41Speaker 3: us was the top of the Sacrifice Mountain. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 43:44Speaker 3: Can you imagine finding that place in the modern day,
- 43:49Speaker 3: Probably pretty creepy piles of bones and whatnot like the
- 43:52Speaker 3: Predator's Layer, but it would be an adventure. Indeed, it
- 43:55Speaker 3: would until the predatory is too.
- 43:58Speaker 1: Thanks as always to super producer mister Max Williams, thanks
- 44:02Speaker 1: to research associate Max Williams, thanks to Chuck Palinook, thanks
- 44:06Speaker 1: to Brad Pitt, thanks to Ed Norton.
- 44:11Speaker 3: He's apparently a bit of a pill, but he's a
- 44:13Speaker 3: fabulous actor, and of.
- 44:15Speaker 1: Course thanks to our own theatrical professional Jonathan stricklandka the poster.
- 44:21Speaker 3: Indeed, we'll see you next time, folks Stickley. For more
- 44:31Speaker 3: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
- 44:35Speaker 3: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.