Speaker 1: Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: Robert I am ready to leather up. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we are going to be exploring un invention.
Speaker 1: Uh we're getting into a little techno history here, but
Speaker 1: we're going to be considering soap. Uh. Soap has been
Speaker 1: on everyone's mind a bit more these days, I think. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is actually a topic that was suggested to us
Speaker 1: for our our previous side show, Invention, which is now
Speaker 1: back a part of Stuff to Blow Your Mind itself. Um,
Speaker 1: soap is something that is I think easy to take
Speaker 1: for granted, uh, given normal situations. Right, soap is just
Speaker 1: the thing that you uh, you know, speedily wash your
Speaker 1: hands with, you know, add a little bit of a
Speaker 1: nice smell, take some of the grease or grit off
Speaker 1: so you can move on to something else, perhaps give
Speaker 1: you a little bit of peace of mind before you
Speaker 1: do things like prepare food or put your contacts in.
Speaker 1: But lately it is of course has been stressed how
Speaker 1: essential it is via handwashing in the prevention of the
Speaker 1: spread of COVID nineteen. All right, so let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about soap. Soap is, of course a human invention. But
Speaker 1: did we ever get by without it? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to imagine life without soap, especially now,
Speaker 1: because it aids us in the cleaning of our bodies.
Speaker 1: It also helps us via you know, detergents, in the
Speaker 1: cleaning of our garments. We use uh, soaps to to
Speaker 1: clean you know, objects and surfaces as well. It helps
Speaker 1: maintain basic hygiene, it prevents the spread of disease, and
Speaker 1: it can also impart a pleasing odor. You know, what's
Speaker 1: not to love about soap? And how on earth can
Speaker 1: we get by without it? Now? Obviously we can look
Speaker 1: to the animal world for plenty of examples, but but
Speaker 1: a few common examples do tell us a lot. Birds,
Speaker 1: for instance, clean themselves with their eeks, and they use
Speaker 1: water or dust to bathe themselves. Uh. Cats, dogs and
Speaker 1: cows are frequent examples of animals that lick themselves to
Speaker 1: clean themselves. And uh, let's consider a few terms to
Speaker 1: put things in perspective as well. We're talking about grooming,
Speaker 1: which is a comfort behavior that is the practice of
Speaker 1: cleaning the body surface including the cleaning and oiling of
Speaker 1: feathers with the bill or of the hair with the tongue.
Speaker 1: And there are a few broad categories here. There's first
Speaker 1: of all, auto grooming, that is an animal's grooming of itself.
Speaker 1: And you know, ultimately that's what's going on when you
Speaker 1: take a shower in the morning or in the evening
Speaker 1: or whenever or both, you know, go go out. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also al of grooming, which is an animals grooming
Speaker 1: of another for parental or social reasons. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: one thing that's very interesting is the the array of
Speaker 1: social dynamics that seem to take place through grooming behaviors,
Speaker 1: like say, primate grooming behaviors where primates will sometimes pick
Speaker 1: pick little knits and bits and bugs out of each
Speaker 1: other's hair as a way to to manage and mediate
Speaker 1: social bonds within groups. Yeah, it becomes a part of
Speaker 1: the society for for creatures like that and for creatures
Speaker 1: like us. So all of this amounts to a general
Speaker 1: physical removal of particles scraped away, picked away, washed away.
Speaker 1: And there may be bacteria sidal properties as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly you'll see something there's some studies about
Speaker 1: saliva m into what degree they may be able to
Speaker 1: kill bacteria. But this, this basic removal can deal with
Speaker 1: everything from sand and dirt to dead skin cells, loose hairs,
Speaker 1: loose feathers, and like you mentioned, actual exo parasites, and
Speaker 1: of course in cleansing oneself, it's helpful to use nails
Speaker 1: and claws and beaks and all these uh these various
Speaker 1: uh uh you know, bio tools that we've already mentioned.
Speaker 1: But in dealing with with humans, in dealing with home
Speaker 1: sapiens and some of Homo sapiens closest kin, we of
Speaker 1: course have to get into tool use. We get into
Speaker 1: the techno history of the situation here. And one of
Speaker 1: the sources I was looking at for this episode was
Speaker 1: soaps from the Phoenicians to the twentieth century. A historical
Speaker 1: review by roth at All came out in they point
Speaker 1: out a few key examples from quote the pre soap era,
Speaker 1: This is uh an area you might think of as
Speaker 1: the squeegee era, you know, where there we did have
Speaker 1: some tools. We we probably were interested in cleaning ourselves,
Speaker 1: but we didn't have soap yet. So what can you do?
Speaker 1: Maybe you can kind of squeege your skin with a
Speaker 1: with a little bit of abrasive action. Yeah, and indeed, uh,
Speaker 1: Neolithic people apparently used flint scrapers to clean themselves, a
Speaker 1: basic way to remove dirt, grime, dead skin cells. You know,
Speaker 1: why depend on just those those So I'm guessing horrid
Speaker 1: fingernails that you have, uh during the Neolithic period, when
Speaker 1: you can also start using some some some tools. You're
Speaker 1: using tools to scrape other things. You need a good
Speaker 1: scraping as well, So grab some flint and get in there. Now.
Speaker 1: I really hope that they were not using the same
Speaker 1: hand axes, by faces or pieces of flint to process
Speaker 1: animal carcasses and then to scrape their own skin clean.
Speaker 1: But I have to guess there probably was a bit acrossover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems inevitable, it doesn't it. But so the use
Speaker 1: of a kind of a bit of mechanical leverage some
Speaker 1: some scraping with a tool did not stop with Neolithic
Speaker 1: or Stone Age people. This actually did continue into classical
Speaker 1: civilizations like the Romans did something similar. Yeah, before the
Speaker 1: Age of plenty in the first centuries. See, the Greeks
Speaker 1: and Romans depended on well, they had vapor baths, they
Speaker 1: had you know, an extravagant bath system for sure, but
Speaker 1: also they would scrub and scrape the skin with a
Speaker 1: st strigle or skin scraper made of bone, ivory or
Speaker 1: at all. And this basically what it sounds like. You
Speaker 1: get the you get the skin itself, you know, nice
Speaker 1: and moist from a bath or perhaps via the application
Speaker 1: of an oil, and then you can start scraping away
Speaker 1: and remove that, you know, that outer layer of grime,
Speaker 1: dead skin, etcetera. I guess some people still use something
Speaker 1: like this to cleanse themselves. I mean in terms of
Speaker 1: just dealing with our skin. I mean, I know, for
Speaker 1: instance that just going to the y m c A,
Speaker 1: I'll hear some of the the older gentleman in the
Speaker 1: locker room. Uh, they would talk of ways that they
Speaker 1: would deal with the like the thickened callouses on their feet,
Speaker 1: and some of the sometimes bad advice they would give
Speaker 1: each other would involve essentially scraping away the skin, generally
Speaker 1: with with tools and implements that were not designed for
Speaker 1: that purpose. Wait, it sounds like you've got a specific
Speaker 1: tool in mind, or they like using a food processor
Speaker 1: blade or what. Um, Well, one was definitely there was
Speaker 1: a guy that was telling me what you need to
Speaker 1: do is you need to get yourself safety raiser and
Speaker 1: then remove some of the safety features and then you
Speaker 1: can just you can, you know, scrape away some skin. Uh,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a bad idea, and I do not
Speaker 1: recommend anyone do that. Another person said, what you need
Speaker 1: to do is you need to get one of these
Speaker 1: and he held up, um, oh, well, what's the what
Speaker 1: do you call these? It's the it's for the the
Speaker 1: grating of say ginger, for culinary purposes. A microplane. Yes,
Speaker 1: a microplane. Uh. So he held a microplane and he says,
Speaker 1: you can get one of these at bed, bath and beyond.
Speaker 1: It works great. Again, I would not recommend using that
Speaker 1: on your body. I would recommend getting a standing or
Speaker 1: scrubbing implement that is designed for use on the skin
Speaker 1: and use on the feet. What you do is you
Speaker 1: get a stick blender and oh man, but that's not
Speaker 1: to say that that other folks weren't engaging in the
Speaker 1: use of essentially chemical approaches to the cleaning of the skin.
Speaker 1: In the ancient Egyptians made use of soda to clean
Speaker 1: their skin as well as to treat diseases of the skin. Okay,
Speaker 1: so soda is interesting here because that suggests we're we're
Speaker 1: getting a little bit closer to soap like territories. This
Speaker 1: will make more sense when we explain soapen a bit.
Speaker 1: But but soda, of course is an alkali. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a base, and in certain combinations, in the presence
Speaker 1: of fats and water, this can actually have a lathering
Speaker 1: soap like effect. Yeah. So, so this is a nice
Speaker 1: ancient example. We'll get into some more in a bit.
Speaker 1: But oh, and then another example that growth at all
Speaker 1: point point out fifth century BC. During this time period,
Speaker 1: Herodotus wrote of the priest physicians of the temple of
Speaker 1: Ammon at Karnak in Egypt during the reign of Ramesses.
Speaker 1: This would have been uh eleven thirteen through ten five BC,
Speaker 1: and Herodotus stated that they would quote bathe in cold
Speaker 1: water twice a day and twice a night, and lensed
Speaker 1: their mouths with natron. Now, natron was a mixture of
Speaker 1: sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate. That's what you call mummy mouth. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite books on the history of hygiene
Speaker 1: is a book titled Clean by Virginia Smith, and that
Speaker 1: she points out that that natron was dissolved in water
Speaker 1: to clean the body, to clean clothes, furniture, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it could be ignited with incense as well. Priest would
Speaker 1: chew it and drink it as a as a cleansing
Speaker 1: as well. So it wasn't just used in the creation
Speaker 1: of mummies. It was like, in a way, this kind
Speaker 1: of uh, this kind of posh, high status chemical for
Speaker 1: for all the you know that all your hygiene needs.
Speaker 1: In a way, it can be like you've got to
Speaker 1: have that mummy mouth. Yeah. Now, I think one of
Speaker 1: the facts that we're getting into here with especially within
Speaker 1: with the Natron example, is that we're dealing with medicine.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with medicinal uses. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: amazing things is when you start looking at some of
Speaker 1: the earth the history of what we think of a soap,
Speaker 1: you're often dealing more specifically with with medical practices and
Speaker 1: sort of the magic of early medicine as opposed to
Speaker 1: just sort of the like we don't think about soap
Speaker 1: as medicine, we don't think about hygiene as medicine. But
Speaker 1: it is, I mean, it is preventative medicine. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, quite literally, yeah, totally Now, Other BC treatments
Speaker 1: included um using olive oil on the skin. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that already is something that you know it might apply
Speaker 1: before scraping. Clay and plant ashes as well. During the
Speaker 1: Biblical period we see a form of soap made from
Speaker 1: plant derivatives, generally from salty regions where the plants gathered
Speaker 1: potash and soda, and the Bible actually mentions the washing
Speaker 1: materials bore, bore, it and slig Acadian, Syrian, and Arabic
Speaker 1: languages all include words specific words for soap producing plants.
Speaker 1: Plants that would be you know, would definitely become important
Speaker 1: later are on, if not then in the creation of
Speaker 1: these soap like elements, and plant ash and clay were
Speaker 1: also widely used in the cultures of India, Peru, Chili,
Speaker 1: and Angola. Well, maybe this is a good place to
Speaker 1: stop and explain how soap actually works. But should we
Speaker 1: take a break first? We should, it will be right
Speaker 1: back than alright, we're back, So it's time to talk
Speaker 1: about how soap actually gets things clean. So in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, of course, we all know that simply
Speaker 1: washing with water can be very effective. If you don't
Speaker 1: have soap, you might as well wash your hands with
Speaker 1: water because that gets a lot of stuff off. Maybe
Speaker 1: not everything, but a lot, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it is again, it's it's often poorly understood by the
Speaker 1: people who use it, but it's highly effective. And actually,
Speaker 1: there was a very interesting passage about what I'm about
Speaker 1: to talk about in the book Until the End of
Speaker 1: Time by Brian Green, a recent guest on Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. The passage highlights the fact that water
Speaker 1: is good for washing things much for the same reason
Speaker 1: that it is the basis for life on Earth. And
Speaker 1: if if that doesn't make any sense, stick with me
Speaker 1: for a second here. So Green is talking about the
Speaker 1: chemical properties of water. He's talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: water is a polar molecule. So you've got a one
Speaker 1: atom of oxygen with two atoms of hydrogen. They're bonded together,
Speaker 1: and in this molecule there is a net negative charge
Speaker 1: at one end, the end where the oxygen atom is,
Speaker 1: and then there's a net positive charge at the other
Speaker 1: ends where the two hydrogen atoms are. And this difference
Speaker 1: in electrical charge across the length of the water molecule
Speaker 1: is essential to its function in the world of biochemistry.
Speaker 1: It's what makes water the molecule of life in a
Speaker 1: universe of death, and so that this distribution of electrical
Speaker 1: charge across the length of the molecule means that water
Speaker 1: can dissolve almost anything, not anything, but almost anything. The
Speaker 1: oxygen end will bind to almost anything that has even
Speaker 1: a slight positive charge, and the hydrogen tips at the
Speaker 1: other end will bind to almost anything that has even
Speaker 1: a slight negative charge. And Green rights that quote in tandem,
Speaker 1: the two ends of a water molecule act like charged
Speaker 1: claws that pull apart almost anything that's submerged for a
Speaker 1: sufficient time. So if you are if you're like a
Speaker 1: hardcore soaker when it comes to cleaning the dishes, uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is a this is a ammunition for
Speaker 1: your defense against the scrubbers. Oh of course, yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean just sitting something in water, Yeah, it will tend
Speaker 1: to just pull things out. And it's funny, because water
Speaker 1: is the fluid of life. We we think of it
Speaker 1: as not something that's uh, you know that rips everything
Speaker 1: apart at the molecular level. We think of it as
Speaker 1: this you know, this this cleansing, healing kind of liquid, which,
Speaker 1: of course it is to us. We need it to
Speaker 1: live but chemically, what it does and the reason why
Speaker 1: it's so useful to our bodies is that it has
Speaker 1: this power to dissolve, and so in dissolving things. Green
Speaker 1: gives the example of table salt, a very very common example.
Speaker 1: Table salt is known chemically as sodium chloride. Sodium chloride
Speaker 1: is a molecule. It's made from one atom of sodium
Speaker 1: and one atom of chlorine, and when you drop crystals
Speaker 1: of table salt into water, the water molecules immediately start
Speaker 1: ripping them apart and dissolving them. So the oxygen in
Speaker 1: the H two O snags the positively charged sodium ions,
Speaker 1: and the hydrogen tips of the H two O molecule
Speaker 1: grabbed the negatively charged chlorine ions. But it's not just
Speaker 1: table salt. Water works this way for a huge number
Speaker 1: of chemicals and substances, and it's the reason water is
Speaker 1: good for washing things. Substances previously stuck to the outside
Speaker 1: of your skin or to the outside of a dish
Speaker 1: or a pan, are grabbed and dissolved by the water
Speaker 1: and carried away when the water runs off of you
Speaker 1: or off of the dish, onto the ground downstream in
Speaker 1: a river, or down the drain and here's where things
Speaker 1: get really interesting. Uh here, I just want to quote
Speaker 1: directly from Brian Green's book Until the End of Time. Quote, well,
Speaker 1: beyond its utility and personal hygiene, water's capacity to grab
Speaker 1: hold of and ingest substances is indispensable to life. Cell
Speaker 1: interiors or miniature chemistry labs whose workings require the rapid
Speaker 1: movement of a vast collection of ingredients nutrients in, waste out,
Speaker 1: commingling of chemicals to synthesize substances required for cellular function,
Speaker 1: and so on. Water makes this possible. Water, constituting some
Speaker 1: seventy of a cell's mass, is life's ferrying fluid. Nobel
Speaker 1: Laureate Albert's zent Georgy summarized it eloquently. Quote water is
Speaker 1: life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no
Speaker 1: life without water. Life could leave the ocean when it
Speaker 1: learned to grow a skin, a bag in which to
Speaker 1: take the water with it. We are still living in water,
Speaker 1: having the water now inside. Oh wow, that's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sloshy water bag creatures that we are. It's true, we're
Speaker 1: bladders of life waddling around in the desert above. But
Speaker 1: so this is amazing. It's basically the same reason that
Speaker 1: water is good for washing your hands and the reason
Speaker 1: that astrobiologists are looking for signs of water on Mars.
Speaker 1: But while water is an amazing solvent and good for
Speaker 1: washing all kinds of stuff off your hands, there are
Speaker 1: some cases where it's hygiene powers fall short. You of
Speaker 1: course know about this if you've ever tried to use
Speaker 1: water alone to wash an oily, greasy substance off your
Speaker 1: hands or off of a dish in the kitchen. So
Speaker 1: so you've got a frying pans covered in you know,
Speaker 1: residue of butter or something, and you try to run
Speaker 1: tap water over it to wash it off. Does it work?
Speaker 1: Of course not right, Like the water will maybe dislodge
Speaker 1: little bits of the butter residue, but mostly the oil
Speaker 1: on the surface of the pan will continue to stick
Speaker 1: and the water will kind of rush overtop it, or
Speaker 1: at best it will sort of push waves of the
Speaker 1: oil around through force. Now I do use that as
Speaker 1: an example because I know everybody has done it. But
Speaker 1: if you remember from our fat Bergs episode, please do
Speaker 1: not wash oil and grease down the drain lest you
Speaker 1: begin to make a soap dragon down the sewers below us.
Speaker 1: But here's another example. I'm sure everybody will be able
Speaker 1: to identify with Robert he ever put lotion on your hands,
Speaker 1: like a sort of oil based or kind of greasy lotion,
Speaker 1: and then you need to wash your hands. You go
Speaker 1: and wash your hands with just water without using soap.
Speaker 1: What happens there? Oh? You just you get with these
Speaker 1: least slippery hands. It's like, now it's like lotion plus one,
Speaker 1: right exactly, The lotion does not get washed off. You
Speaker 1: have to use soap in order to get lotion grease
Speaker 1: off of your hands, and your hands will stay greasy
Speaker 1: no matter how much water you run over them, right, Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously there's you know, a sort amount of
Speaker 1: physical removal was possible. Generally, what I do is like
Speaker 1: I I washing off my hands rel quick, and then
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I had a lotion on and now
Speaker 1: I kind of have to use like a hand towel
Speaker 1: that to physically remove some of the lotion water mixture. Right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, water by itself fails at washing away lipids,
Speaker 1: lipids or a class of substances including oils, fats, waxes,
Speaker 1: and steroids. And this is because simply oil and water
Speaker 1: do not mix easily, which is in turn due to
Speaker 1: the chemical properties of the two substances. So we were
Speaker 1: talking about how water is a polar molecule. It's got
Speaker 1: different electric charges at each end. And because of these
Speaker 1: different electric charges at each end of the water molecule,
Speaker 1: water links up with itself very easily through a series
Speaker 1: of connections called hydrogen bonds. So you can kind of
Speaker 1: think of the analogy of legos. Right the top of
Speaker 1: one block just very easily snaps onto the bottom and
Speaker 1: the next. Now, oils, on the other hand, are made
Speaker 1: up of non polar molecules, so they do not easily
Speaker 1: break through these bonds and link up with water molecules
Speaker 1: to form new compounds or dissolve into the water. So
Speaker 1: you say, say you take a jar and you put
Speaker 1: some oil and some water in the jar together, and
Speaker 1: then you shake it up really hard. If if you
Speaker 1: shake the jar like that, droplets of oil will be
Speaker 1: dispersed by force throughout the water. But these molecules of
Speaker 1: oil will after So first they will disrupt the hydrogen
Speaker 1: bonds between the water molecules. They'll get kind of dispersed throughout,
Speaker 1: but they won't be able to form bonds with the
Speaker 1: water themselves, and instead the disrupted water molecules I was
Speaker 1: reading about this, they they form a kind of molecular
Speaker 1: cage around the oil molecules. Uh. And this cage is
Speaker 1: this kind of almost crystalline type structure known as a
Speaker 1: class rate. And this cage actually represents a temporary decrease
Speaker 1: in the entropy of the water. So by forming these
Speaker 1: orderly structures around these droplets of oil suspended in the water,
Speaker 1: you are decreasing entropy. And we know that the universe
Speaker 1: does not tolerate decreases an entropy forever. The universe always
Speaker 1: wants to increase the entropy again. So gradually the mixed
Speaker 1: mass of water and oil manages to increase its entropy
Speaker 1: by spontaneously bumping around and rearranging until the oil molecules
Speaker 1: join up with one another into a solid mass and
Speaker 1: separate from the water to float on its surface. And
Speaker 1: of course, the reason that oil floats on top of
Speaker 1: water when it's separated is that oil is less dense
Speaker 1: than water. But for hygiene purposes, I guess all you
Speaker 1: have to remember is the short version that oil doesn't
Speaker 1: naturally dissolve in water like so many other substances do.
Speaker 1: And this is why water alone is not very good
Speaker 1: at dissolving and washing away oil or fat based substances.
Speaker 1: And this, of course is where soap comes in. Here's
Speaker 1: where we all know from experience you can't get the water,
Speaker 1: you can't get the lotion off your hands or the
Speaker 1: grease off your hands with water alone, but if you
Speaker 1: use some soap, it comes right off. Another example comes
Speaker 1: to mind here is of course, with our hair. I
Speaker 1: think if you've ever experimented with just rigorously shampooing versus
Speaker 1: going no pooh as they say it, if they can't
Speaker 1: um that you can definitely observe this in action. Uh
Speaker 1: so I feel the oils in your hair? Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: like I will generally go no shampoo for um for
Speaker 1: like a few weeks at a time, and I will
Speaker 1: my hair, doesn't It varies from person to person, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on you know your particular hair, and you know
Speaker 1: in a particular oil and how it builds up. But
Speaker 1: with my own hair, like a little bit of oil
Speaker 1: will build up in my hair, will will look tolerable
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I won't have to do much
Speaker 1: with it. But then eventually I'll come a point where
Speaker 1: I start feeling a little oily, and therefore I bust
Speaker 1: out the shampoo, and when I do, all the oil
Speaker 1: is gone. And now and then I just look like
Speaker 1: like a troll doll. You know, I said, Now there's
Speaker 1: no oil in my hair at all, and it's just
Speaker 1: this poofy uh blonde mess. But I bring this up.
Speaker 1: There's just an example of you know, this is a
Speaker 1: way to observe that water. Even a lengthy shower, a
Speaker 1: lengthy blast of of hot, steamy water is not going
Speaker 1: to get that oil out of your hair um, even
Speaker 1: if it's just day after day, twice a day even,
Speaker 1: uh not until you add that magical soap, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the oil just does not come away in the water.
Speaker 1: So soap is made by Classically, it's made by combining
Speaker 1: a fatty acid such as an oil or an animal fat.
Speaker 1: You know, you can use like a animal tallow or
Speaker 1: something with an alkali such as you would naturally find,
Speaker 1: say in the ashes from a wood fire, or today
Speaker 1: in a strong synthesized base like a lie uh so.
Speaker 1: At the molecular level, soap is a pin shaped molecule
Speaker 1: that plays well with both water and lipids. Its tail
Speaker 1: is hydrophobic, meaning it doesn't like water. It avoids water molecules,
Speaker 1: and it forms a bond with fats and oils. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: its head is hydrophilic, meaning likes water. It bonds with
Speaker 1: water easily, and it becomes suspended in a solution of
Speaker 1: water and gets washed away when the water is rinsed off. Now,
Speaker 1: often what happens after a good lathering is that soap
Speaker 1: molecules will form a kind of bubble structure called a
Speaker 1: mice cell around an oily contaminant, with their hydrophobic tails
Speaker 1: pointing inward and and and snagging onto the trapped particle,
Speaker 1: and their hydrophilic heads pointing outward and being carried around
Speaker 1: by the water. So you can imagine each soap molecule
Speaker 1: as a kind of a combination grasping claw at one
Speaker 1: end and parachute on the other end. One end grabs
Speaker 1: hold of the contaminant and the other end it catches
Speaker 1: the fluid current and is easily carried away. But I
Speaker 1: should add that the hygienic properties of soap don't end there,
Speaker 1: just at the ability to uh latch onto these lipid
Speaker 1: molecules and carry them away in the flow of water.
Speaker 1: In addition to making it easy to wash lipid based
Speaker 1: dirt off of surfaces is like your hands. Soap is
Speaker 1: also directly lethal to many kinds of germs, including many
Speaker 1: kinds of viruses and bacteria. A lot of viruses and bacteria,
Speaker 1: including the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID nineteen. They're protected
Speaker 1: by an outer layer that can be disrupted by soap.
Speaker 1: The fat loving ends of soap molecules kind of jam
Speaker 1: themselves into the lipid by layer on the outside of
Speaker 1: the virus. I've seen it compared by some experts to
Speaker 1: like little chemical crowbars, just stabbing into the lipid outer
Speaker 1: membrane of the of the virus and breaking that outer
Speaker 1: membrane up. And essentially what this does is it disembowels
Speaker 1: the virus, so it's guts spill out all over the
Speaker 1: place and then they get washed away harmlessly and my
Speaker 1: cells whenever you rense your hands so As an added benefit,
Speaker 1: the soap not only makes it much easier to get
Speaker 1: these uh, these sticky little germs off of your hands,
Speaker 1: it also just kills of germs. Not every germ is
Speaker 1: is killed by soap, but lots are, including the coronavirus yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was. Maybe it was the growth article
Speaker 1: that I referred to earlier. The author's pointed out that
Speaker 1: you know, we have this this this you know, this
Speaker 1: safe mundane, this tame feeling about our soap. Soap is
Speaker 1: gentle um, but for most most organisms that we're dealing with,
Speaker 1: soap is a destroyer. It is just a a a
Speaker 1: brutal and destructive weapon. Well, yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 1: have your your lipids dissolved, and hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: you can actually start to feel a bit of this
Speaker 1: yourself if you say, if you have washed your hands
Speaker 1: too much, if you've been like cooking all day or
Speaker 1: something and you're repeatedly having to wash your hands over
Speaker 1: and over when you go in between tasks, you may
Speaker 1: start to notice with with really frequent hand washing, that
Speaker 1: the cumulative effects of soap on your skin do become abrasive. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you say, helped your husband kill a king or
Speaker 1: something to that effect, and washing your hands a lot, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll notice that this is starting to irritate the outer
Speaker 1: layer of my body. I mean, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of what's going on there is that is that natural
Speaker 1: lipids in your skin oils that are a healthy. Part
Speaker 1: of what your skin normally does to protect itself are
Speaker 1: removed also when you wash your hands like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: And if you just keep removing all that stuff, it
Speaker 1: can kind of dry your skin out and irritate it.
Speaker 1: But I do want to say one more thing about
Speaker 1: hand washing with soap, which is that I looked into
Speaker 1: this the question of time, because we've all been told
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. Now, you know you need to
Speaker 1: wash your hands with soap for at least twenty seconds, right,
Speaker 1: And maybe a lot of people think, ah, no, way,
Speaker 1: you actually need to do it for twenty whole seconds, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just told me that that soap. Soap
Speaker 1: can be lethal too, lots of germs. So basically, if
Speaker 1: you get soap all over your hands, you're good, Right,
Speaker 1: You just get the soap on there and then you
Speaker 1: rinse it off and then you should be fine. That
Speaker 1: that is not the case. It really does appear that
Speaker 1: time is a factor allowing soap to do its work.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a couple of studies that seemed
Speaker 1: to be an agreement that longer really is better, and
Speaker 1: the difference between twenty seconds of soapy washing and five
Speaker 1: seconds of soapy washing is pretty huge. I love how
Speaker 1: especially early on, to really get this message across. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were all these different versions of hey, you can
Speaker 1: remember how long twenty seconds is by singing this song
Speaker 1: or this chorus from this song. My God, so many
Speaker 1: articles like this, which it's like, is it that hard
Speaker 1: to know how long twenty seconds is? I? I know
Speaker 1: that was my my My initial thought was like, I
Speaker 1: don't really need to sing the happy Birthday song. Don't
Speaker 1: know how long twenty seconds is? I can just count
Speaker 1: to twenty. But then I realized, well, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is as much about getting the message out and
Speaker 1: making the message more fun as anything, and if it
Speaker 1: helps in that regard, then yeah, let's let's keep reminding
Speaker 1: everybody which songs match up with twenty seconds. I like
Speaker 1: the way of doing it is like expressing it in
Speaker 1: terms of the units of Ronnie Cox's monologue at the
Speaker 1: end of Total Recall, how many Ronnie Cox monologues do
Speaker 1: you need to do home in time for corn flakes?
Speaker 1: Is a monologue? Or no, no, no, I don't know
Speaker 1: it actually, but I should time it out and then
Speaker 1: you can know, like, Okay, I need to do it
Speaker 1: one and a half times, or I just I need
Speaker 1: to go two thirds of the way through. I haven't
Speaker 1: done the math myself, but some enterprising listener get on that.
Speaker 1: I bet Conner's monologue from Highlander two is about twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. Most people live a full measure of life,
Speaker 1: but most people just watch it slowly drip away. But
Speaker 1: if you can summon it all up at one time,
Speaker 1: in one place, you can accomplish something glorious. What was that? Maybe? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I better do it twice just to be able to say. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take another break. But when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will dive back into the history of
Speaker 1: soap and feel around in the darkness of history for
Speaker 1: its inventor. Alright, we're back, all right. So we're trying
Speaker 1: to discuss now the question of who invented soap And
Speaker 1: this is not going to be one of those cases
Speaker 1: where it was Jonathan Soap or Elizabeth Soap working in
Speaker 1: their their home laboratory. Uh. We don't know the actual
Speaker 1: inventor of soap, but we have some very interesting clues
Speaker 1: at a more sort of civilizational or cultural level about
Speaker 1: wind soap enter the history of humanity. Yes, now, I
Speaker 1: love that you've brought up the idea like the the
Speaker 1: handy and and just too good to be true idea
Speaker 1: of William Soap having invented soap or he did soap
Speaker 1: having invented soap, Because the first example I want to
Speaker 1: talk about here is kind of a version of that.
Speaker 1: It is it does not seem to be a true
Speaker 1: account of the history of soap. It is it is
Speaker 1: too it is too perfect. And but it's a store
Speaker 1: origin story that is often repeated on say, websites about soap,
Speaker 1: Like if there's a soap company and they have an
Speaker 1: about page, they might want to those soap facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might run across this one, and that is that
Speaker 1: soap originates, uh, on the mountain of Sappo. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me about Mount Sappo. Okay, that's that's Sappo s A
Speaker 1: p O. You know it sounds like soap. We're already
Speaker 1: basically there. It's the same letters rearranged. So the story
Speaker 1: here and again you may have heard it is that
Speaker 1: soap making began three thousand years ago on Mount Sappo
Speaker 1: near Rome. The ideas that animal sacrifices were made to
Speaker 1: the gods there, and streams of melted fat and ashes
Speaker 1: dribbled and dripped from the altar, and this mixture made
Speaker 1: its way down into the to the clay ground beneath,
Speaker 1: and here washer women learned that the resulting substance animal fat,
Speaker 1: ash and some clay. It resulted in something that could
Speaker 1: be used in the cleaning of garments. This sounds like
Speaker 1: sort of like one of those like evolution explanation narratives
Speaker 1: that people sometimes come up with. It's not based on
Speaker 1: any evidence at all, but it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: one time there was a monkey and it and you
Speaker 1: know it needed a rock to do this, and so
Speaker 1: this is what happened. The stories like this are fun
Speaker 1: to come up with because you can try to imagine
Speaker 1: what's plausible. Though I think we can interrogate the plausibility
Speaker 1: of this one based on things we actually know about
Speaker 1: Roman sacrifices and stuff. But but you can try to
Speaker 1: come up with a story about what's plausible, even if
Speaker 1: you don't have direct evidence for it. But coming up
Speaker 1: with a plausible story, as we know, does not mean
Speaker 1: that you've discovered where something actually came from. And in
Speaker 1: this case, we pretty much know this story is wrong, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that it's handy, and it's it's clean.
Speaker 1: Basically a slice of false etymology here, but I guess
Speaker 1: the basically, yeah, when you start looking at the details
Speaker 1: of it, Yes, this is the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: could have happened. Yeah, this story, as we've related it
Speaker 1: sounds plausible. But first of all, there's no mention of
Speaker 1: it in classical mythology. And it's also been pointed out
Speaker 1: that the manner of animal sacrifice that was practiced by
Speaker 1: the Romans would not have created vast amounts of soap um.
Speaker 1: And I believe a lot of this had to do
Speaker 1: with just like how much of the meat was actually
Speaker 1: like how much of the the animal is actually burnt,
Speaker 1: and how much of it was sort of taken apart
Speaker 1: for other uses. Right, So the chemical reasoning here would
Speaker 1: be that you've got animal sacrifices, animal bodies being burned,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of fat on them, and the
Speaker 1: fat is just rendering out as the animal is being burned,
Speaker 1: and it's pouring off into this area where there's also
Speaker 1: ash in the in the pit from the fire where
Speaker 1: the animals being burned. And of course, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: soap is made generally from a combination of lipids like
Speaker 1: animal fats and a base like ashes. Ashes can work
Speaker 1: for that. So you combine fats and ashes and and
Speaker 1: and water, and then you can basically have something like
Speaker 1: a crude or rudimentary soap. So you can imagine something
Speaker 1: like this happening. But one criticism I was looking at
Speaker 1: was that, uh, apparently in Roman animal sacrifices, you know,
Speaker 1: they take off most of the usable fat. It was like,
Speaker 1: it was like if you could, if you could do
Speaker 1: something with the fat, they weren't going to burn that
Speaker 1: on the altar. Yeah, they were. They were too practical
Speaker 1: for that. Uh. Yeah. Basically this is an origin story,
Speaker 1: a proposed origin story for soap. That would it say
Speaker 1: that soap is essentially a byproduct, and I guess like
Speaker 1: basically you would need enough of that byproduct to be
Speaker 1: produced for people to realize that it had some sort
Speaker 1: of a useful property to it. Um Also, did we
Speaker 1: mention that there is no Mount Tappo that's another place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no, there's no Mount Tappo, so we can't even
Speaker 1: identify it on on a map. Or again, there's no
Speaker 1: writings about it in the ancient traditions. So it seems
Speaker 1: that there's not much evidence to really back this up.
Speaker 1: It seems to be an altogether invented origin story, perhaps
Speaker 1: even a straight up hoax. There's another reason, though, I
Speaker 1: think that's a very good argument that this is not
Speaker 1: actually the origin of soap, which is that we've got
Speaker 1: literary references to soap that we'll get to in just
Speaker 1: a little bit that are actually older than this story
Speaker 1: alleges for the for the creation of soap. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And I think that's going to be one of the
Speaker 1: key factors here. Now, I do have to say it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible and within like generally within the history
Speaker 1: of of humanity that things get invented and reinvented, that
Speaker 1: the basic chemical properties in one like medicinal concoction in
Speaker 1: one culture. Uh, you know, that it gets reinvented somewhere else,
Speaker 1: you know, accidentally or with some tinkering in another culture.
Speaker 1: So that sort of thing is still possible, and I
Speaker 1: guess we have to keep that in mind. But in
Speaker 1: terms of saying where did it come from? When was
Speaker 1: the first soap born to us? It definitely was not
Speaker 1: born on this Mount Sappo three thousand years ago. Uh,
Speaker 1: stuff that we can pretty accurately say is soap predates
Speaker 1: it by quite a bit. Okay, I got a question. Yes,
Speaker 1: we love to hear from Plenty on ancient substances. Does
Speaker 1: Plenty of the elder right at all of soap? Oh?
Speaker 1: He certainly does. Yeah, you know, you know Plenty is
Speaker 1: going to talk about soap if it if it is
Speaker 1: it all around. Now, he does not mention mount sappo,
Speaker 1: which I think is another uh, you know, key fact
Speaker 1: to keep in mind and certainly adds to our our
Speaker 1: heap of evidence against the idea of that being an
Speaker 1: accurate story at all. But he does mention the word
Speaker 1: sappo as something the Galls used in their hair. And indeed,
Speaker 1: there is another story that you sometimes come across, and
Speaker 1: that's the idea that, uh that that you had a
Speaker 1: man in Gall discovering the properties of this sappo when
Speaker 1: his hair dressing of goat oil and beech tree ash
Speaker 1: got soaked in a rainstorm and formed a nice frothy lad.
Speaker 1: Now that that too, I don't know. That may be
Speaker 1: an example that's partially invented just because it's sounds. It's fun, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, by accident, my hair treatment has turned
Speaker 1: into soap. But but soap does seem to come from
Speaker 1: either the gall world SAPPO or from the Germanics SIPA
Speaker 1: based on the sources I was looking at. Um, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of authors Conkole and Rasmussen, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to cite their full article, uh, just in a
Speaker 1: little bit here. Uh. They mentioned that a soap in
Speaker 1: particular was probably tinged with plants to dye hair, and
Speaker 1: this was then imported to Rome because Roman women really
Speaker 1: coveted what they described as red gold coloration of the hair.
Speaker 1: So we're imagining some sort of soap like hair treatment
Speaker 1: that that is used to impart die to human hair.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, it becomes a possible that people realize, oh,
Speaker 1: this actually can be used for cleaning as well. Not
Speaker 1: to say this was the invention of soap, but this
Speaker 1: could be an example, you could. You can think of
Speaker 1: this as an example of the sort of the reinvention
Speaker 1: of soap or a particular substance becoming popular and it
Speaker 1: has soap like properties that are then exploited. Additionally, the
Speaker 1: Greek physician Galen lived through either one or two sixteen
Speaker 1: CE road of soap as well. Saying it worked as
Speaker 1: a better detergent than soda, and then it was made
Speaker 1: from fat mixed with lie and quicklime. And he added
Speaker 1: that the best soap is Germanic because it is creamy
Speaker 1: and pure, but Gals second best. Okay, here's a quote
Speaker 1: from Galen quote. All types of soap can severely loosen
Speaker 1: and remove all filth from the body and from clothing.
Speaker 1: You can also dry things out in the same manner
Speaker 1: of soda or foam of soda, and is put in caustics.
Speaker 1: But I should add it is not entirely clear that
Speaker 1: Gallen actually wrote this, as it could have been. We
Speaker 1: could have actually gotten this quote via pseudo Gallenic medieval handbooks.
Speaker 1: So so again per potentially more misinformation about where soap
Speaker 1: comes from. There's something about so there's something about our
Speaker 1: need to explain the origin of such an everyday substance
Speaker 1: and explain it with some sort of a novel, fun
Speaker 1: little story. Yeah. I wonder what's what is held in
Speaker 1: common by the types of inventions where you know, there
Speaker 1: are tons of inventions that we just don't know where
Speaker 1: they came from. And some of these get all these like, uh,
Speaker 1: these these false origin stories and others don't. What are
Speaker 1: the ones that get a false origin stories have in common?
Speaker 1: Are they just the ones that maybe children are most
Speaker 1: likely to wonder about and ask about? Yeah, where I
Speaker 1: was thinking, perhaps they're sort of sidebars, like soap is
Speaker 1: so important, and yet at the same time, it's easy
Speaker 1: to imagine if one were writing, like you know, people
Speaker 1: like Plenty did, if they were just writing about, you know,
Speaker 1: the general history and state of the world, if they
Speaker 1: just writing about everything, you might be tempted to just
Speaker 1: sort of speed through the soap section and be like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it came from some some gallic hair
Speaker 1: treatments something that effect. But but I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps the more has been written and said on this
Speaker 1: this aspect of of human curiosity, but whether or not
Speaker 1: that was actually a gallon that that we quoted their
Speaker 1: Other Greek writers of the time did write about soap
Speaker 1: um and we we see this with with Roman writers
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. Plenty rights that soap is made from
Speaker 1: the ashes of beech trees and goat fat, and that
Speaker 1: there are two types dick can liquid, both kinds used
Speaker 1: in by a gramatic cultures. Plenty stated that the Phoenicians
Speaker 1: discovered soap making in he gave the rough data six
Speaker 1: b C. But when we actually look for the earliest
Speaker 1: evidence of an actual soap like material, it certainly takes
Speaker 1: us back further than that. Okay, let's hear about it.
Speaker 1: So basically we can go back and we can look
Speaker 1: at Sumerian clay tablets that date back to the third
Speaker 1: millennium b C in the hit Type capital of bog Iscoy.
Speaker 1: And this decided both in that paper by Roth at
Speaker 1: all that I already mentioned, as well as his paper
Speaker 1: by Conko and Rasmussen titled an Ancient Cleaner Soap Production
Speaker 1: and Use in Antiquity. This was published in Chemical Technology
Speaker 1: and Antiquity in two All right, so what is this
Speaker 1: Sumerian clay tablets? Say? How how do we know that
Speaker 1: it's talking about soap? It says with water, I bathed
Speaker 1: myself with soda. I cleansed myself with soda from a
Speaker 1: shiny basin. I purified myself with pure oil from the basin.
Speaker 1: I beautified myself with a dress of heavenly kingship. I
Speaker 1: clothed myself. Ah, so you're getting all the elements of soap.
Speaker 1: They're right, you're getting water, you're getting the alkali and soda,
Speaker 1: and you're getting the oil when it says oil. So
Speaker 1: if you combine those things together, you can get a
Speaker 1: rudimentary form of soap. Yeah and uh and this is
Speaker 1: from a Samerian clay cylinder found during the excavation of
Speaker 1: the ancient city of Babylon from the R dynasty. Uh
Speaker 1: So it is essentially sounds like a soap making process. Now,
Speaker 1: there's also a roughly c E text concerning the washing
Speaker 1: of wool, but according to Conchole and Rasmussen uh quote,
Speaker 1: details concerning the identity and contents of these tablets have
Speaker 1: not been reported. Like in all of this, I guess
Speaker 1: you know what, we're dealing with the fact that the
Speaker 1: history of soap is difficult to uncover. And this is
Speaker 1: something that this worth keeping in mind. Here we're dealing
Speaker 1: about finding written accounts of the physical soap, right because
Speaker 1: you can't find fossil soap, right. Yeah. The authors here
Speaker 1: point out that that first of all, ancient soap is
Speaker 1: difficult to study because it is organic and does not
Speaker 1: leave behind direct archaeological evidence. In addition, organic residues can
Speaker 1: simply undergo suppontification and become soap or soap like without
Speaker 1: any human chemistry actually interfering. So instead, the best we
Speaker 1: can hope for is a written record of it, especially
Speaker 1: in the form of a recipe, and in that we
Speaker 1: deal with all the normal problems of looking at the
Speaker 1: historical record to understand human history, because it's a question
Speaker 1: of what was actually recorded, and then what was recorded
Speaker 1: in a way that that could survive, and then what
Speaker 1: actually did survive. Uh, you know, the point about natural
Speaker 1: suppontification happening. This ties into something we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the podcast a couple of times, I believe, such as
Speaker 1: like the soap corpses. One very famous example is known
Speaker 1: as the soap lated that's housed at the Mooder Museum
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, which is what happens when people are buried
Speaker 1: in soil with a certain kind of soil chemistry and uh,
Speaker 1: and the lipids, the fat layers around the outside of
Speaker 1: their body react with the chemicals in the soil to
Speaker 1: form a kind of in tumbment or encasement of soap
Speaker 1: around the body as it decomposes. Yeah, so that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an example there. Like nobody was making soap on
Speaker 1: purpose there, but sometimes soap happens. Likewise, nobody's nobody's trying
Speaker 1: to make soap in the sewers with that's right, with
Speaker 1: the soap dragons. Yeah, yeah, because yeah, you can imagine
Speaker 1: if potentially someone looking back and they were like, well
Speaker 1: they created this, the aliens come and they're like, they
Speaker 1: created this enormous system underground, and it's so purpose seemed
Speaker 1: to be the construction of massive pieces of soap. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that stuff isn't technically soap. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it has soap like qualities, but yeah, or I don't
Speaker 1: know is it technically soap. I don't actually remember the
Speaker 1: answer to that question. It is soap like in some
Speaker 1: ways at least. Now Kunkol and Rasmussen, uh. They they
Speaker 1: do point to this, this third dynasty of or that's
Speaker 1: account as being quote a detailed economic account of cloth manufacture,
Speaker 1: and this is what includes a recipe for an impure
Speaker 1: liquid soap made from oil and potash, and this is
Speaker 1: what is generally and currently considered to be the oldest
Speaker 1: verified record of soap making. Now they point out that
Speaker 1: the soap is generally mentioned in connection with medical writings
Speaker 1: in Mesopotamian cultures centering in on the diagnosis and prognosis
Speaker 1: of illnesses and the creation of herbal remedies that usually
Speaker 1: consist of a pharmacological ointment containing oil, plant matter, and
Speaker 1: various other substances. So they also point to a Sumerian
Speaker 1: pharmacological tablet from b C from Nippur that is seemingly
Speaker 1: the oldest medical cred of soap. But it's also kind
Speaker 1: of deconstructed soap because the quote unquote ailing oregan is
Speaker 1: washed with a special solution, then rubbed with oil, and
Speaker 1: then covered with plant ash. So it's kind of like, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: what's the ailing organ? Yeah, I was, I was wondering
Speaker 1: about that too. It brought some rather um specific ideas
Speaker 1: to mind. Apparently there's some uncertainty there, but the authors
Speaker 1: later in the articles speculate that we're talking about hands
Speaker 1: and feet, so organ used very loosely here. That still
Speaker 1: makes me wonder. I mean, like, I know, in some
Speaker 1: ancient documents, like in some books of the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 1: I believe scholars speculate that references to the feet are
Speaker 1: often euphemistic references to the genitals. Yeah. Well, and ultimately, hey,
Speaker 1: the genitals need washing too, and genitals also suffer ailments,
Speaker 1: both of the skin uh and other varieties. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's you know, we might snicker at the idea
Speaker 1: of um, you know, old genitals, ailing genitals being oshed
Speaker 1: with a you know, a medical semi magical solution and
Speaker 1: ancient uh samaria, but I mean that's part of it,
Speaker 1: you know, in the same way that we often think
Speaker 1: of intestinal disruptions, you know, and um, you know, diarrhea
Speaker 1: and the like. There's there's kind of a humor to
Speaker 1: those those ailments, at least when we're not suffering them
Speaker 1: ourselves or when they're not too severe. But you look
Speaker 1: at say, you know, air vedic medicine, you look at
Speaker 1: any medical you know, old medical practice, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of attention given to digestive problems. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just that's part of being human and that's part of
Speaker 1: our quest to to treat the ailments of humanity. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Speaking of diarrhea, while soap is is great for washing
Speaker 1: the outside of your body, do not ingest it? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we we. We were reminding my son of this several
Speaker 1: months ago, maybe half a year ago now, and at
Speaker 1: the same time he was, as he is now super
Speaker 1: into Harry Potter, so he's into potion making. So when
Speaker 1: we told him about this, he took this potion bottle
Speaker 1: that he plays with the with the bat in the
Speaker 1: bathtub and he filled it like mostly with soap, and
Speaker 1: then he labeled it the diarrhea potion as one of
Speaker 1: the worst potions in Snap's class. I completely flunked the
Speaker 1: Diary of potion portion of the snape semester that the
Speaker 1: Diary of potion is still uh in the bathroom. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe I should take a picture of it and share
Speaker 1: it with with people on the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind discussion module on Facebook, because uh, yeah it exists,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it probably works. Probably works. I
Speaker 1: believe in magic, alright. So back to kun Cool and
Speaker 1: Rasmussen here. Then they point to a few other examples
Speaker 1: that the paper is is really good. It's worth looking at, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at say some there's a for instance,
Speaker 1: a seventh century text of a private Akadian citizen uh
Speaker 1: that's describing using tamarisks, date palm, pine cone, and some
Speaker 1: unidentified plant that is referred to as uh master call
Speaker 1: the quoting question, may the tamarisk whereof the tops grow
Speaker 1: high cleanse me? May the date palm which faces every wind,
Speaker 1: free me. May the mastercal plant which fills the earth
Speaker 1: clean me. May the pine cone which is full of
Speaker 1: seed corns free me. I carry a container with an
Speaker 1: aqueous solution of mastercal plant to the gods of the heavens,
Speaker 1: as I would bring forth to you for purification. So
Speaker 1: will you cleanse me? So another kind of magical um
Speaker 1: uh you know, intonation of the of the the substance
Speaker 1: that has been prepared. Okay, uh So what are the authors, though,
Speaker 1: make of the significance of this, like is, why would
Speaker 1: this be a soap here? Okay? So they say, quote
Speaker 1: the description of cleansing agents is quite interesting, and that
Speaker 1: it contains ingredients that form the two components of soap.
Speaker 1: The tamarisk, genus of a group of saline and alkaline
Speaker 1: soil tolerant flowering shrubs native to raise An, Africa, could
Speaker 1: be a potential source of alkali along with the mastacol plant.
Speaker 1: Tamarisk is also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, when
Speaker 1: the goddess nin son Gilgamesh's mother bathed ceremoniously in a
Speaker 1: bath of tamarisk and soap work. The date palm, which
Speaker 1: contains a number of fatty acids in both the seed
Speaker 1: and the flesh of the fruit could provide the second
Speaker 1: component needed to produce soap. So again we're in the
Speaker 1: zone of possible soap here. Again, the chemistry of soap
Speaker 1: is certainly possible before that date we gave earlier in
Speaker 1: the third millennium BC. It's just a matter of finding
Speaker 1: hard evidence for it, hard records of it that we
Speaker 1: can we can definitely point to um plus. You know,
Speaker 1: it does make sense, as we've seen with the gall
Speaker 1: origin idea, which again is much later in human history,
Speaker 1: that the likely origin of soap might involve, you know,
Speaker 1: an adjacent area of health hygiene, medicine or cosmetics, and
Speaker 1: these examples, and you could well imagine it's sort of
Speaker 1: being discovered rediscovered, uh to varying degrees across different cultures.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I want to read just this nice closing
Speaker 1: from conk Cool and ras Mussin quote. The slightly complicated
Speaker 1: process of rendering the fats and oils and combining it
Speaker 1: with alkali could not have been developed spontaneously. There must
Speaker 1: have been a series of steps or procedures that slowly evolved,
Speaker 1: where each step results in a process useful enough to
Speaker 1: be adopted in its own right. One proposed sequence of
Speaker 1: development is that people use sand or ashes to remove
Speaker 1: the grease from skin. If they rinse the ashes off
Speaker 1: with water, the water and their skin would become slippery,
Speaker 1: which was because of the dissolved alkali salts. This water
Speaker 1: would clean better because the dissolved alkali reacts with the grease,
Speaker 1: converting it into soap. The more grease that was was
Speaker 1: dissolved in the solution, the better it cleans because more
Speaker 1: soap is formed. At some point the ashes were discarded
Speaker 1: and the solution from leech dashes or concentrated alkali salts
Speaker 1: were used. That's very plausible route of development to me.
Speaker 1: That maybe first you just had the oil as the
Speaker 1: contaminant itself, and then if you used ashes in the washing,
Speaker 1: it would naturally combine with the oils that you were
Speaker 1: trying to get off to make the soap. Uh and
Speaker 1: that of course that would wash off much more easily
Speaker 1: because it bonds with the water you're using to rinse.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can definitely see something like that, maybe
Speaker 1: that like ashes from a fire pit or kind of
Speaker 1: the stepping stone. Yeah, so so, yeah, this is interesting
Speaker 1: to really sort of you know, peer back through history,
Speaker 1: and again you don't have that wonderful aha moment where
Speaker 1: where you suddenly have something accidentally produced. Instead, it's it's
Speaker 1: something that develops out of these um these hygienic practices
Speaker 1: and rituals. You know. One of the funny things that
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about is that throughout history you
Speaker 1: would have had all of these uh, soap making industries
Speaker 1: that we're making use of rendered animal fats, and I
Speaker 1: would guess that a lot of the animal fats they
Speaker 1: were using were probably not the ones that were like
Speaker 1: still freshest and best for I don't know, culinary uses
Speaker 1: or other types of uses. So I can imagine that
Speaker 1: the process of making soap throughout history might often have
Speaker 1: been rather nasty and stinky work. You know, what you're
Speaker 1: making is ultimately the thing that that gets the gets
Speaker 1: the rich butts clean. Yeah, so making does, even knowing
Speaker 1: you know a little bit more about what goes into
Speaker 1: the into the sausages, it does have this air of
Speaker 1: a sort of chemical nobility to it. Right today, especially
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with with with with with crafts people,
Speaker 1: right and soap bespoke soaps and so forth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: which I made with rancid goat fat. Rancid goat fat
Speaker 1: is not used in the marketing enough, you know. I
Speaker 1: always think back to those Irish spring commercials when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, where it's like, you know that the
Speaker 1: manly Irish soap that is appears to just spring forth
Speaker 1: from the earth. Uh. It's like some weird manna that
Speaker 1: flows out of the uh you know, the mountains uh
Speaker 1: in Ireland or something. You know. Soaps another thing we've
Speaker 1: talked before about weird like products they get gendered marketing
Speaker 1: and products that don't um and like, of course, soap
Speaker 1: is one of those that's so interesting, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's feminine soap and there's masculine soap, and like why
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I mean, I mean obviously some
Speaker 1: soaps are are more I guess, um, you know, more
Speaker 1: durable than others, or more or harsher. Like I remember
Speaker 1: my my grandfather would always wash and lather up with
Speaker 1: lava soap, which was one that was definitely gendered, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was it was like a workman. So I
Speaker 1: guess they probably still make it. I'm certainly not in
Speaker 1: the market for it, but it was a harsh and
Speaker 1: abrasive bar of soap. It was the it was the
Speaker 1: most masculine bar soap imaginable. This will turn you into leather,
Speaker 1: It'll make beef jerky out of your skin. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: just rip your skin right off. And then, of course
Speaker 1: you see with the Irish Spring and there, I mean
Speaker 1: there's I'm sor a plethora of different uh, you know,
Speaker 1: masculine soaps out there. Uh. And then of course the
Speaker 1: reverse is true as well. You have something you know
Speaker 1: that lots of floral tones and are definitely going in
Speaker 1: the other direction. I don't know. I'm more of the
Speaker 1: the gender neutral soap category. I like something uh, you know,
Speaker 1: nice uh and politely in between. So uh. Of course,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whether you use masculine soap or feminine
Speaker 1: soap or gender neutral soap. It's very important that whatever
Speaker 1: kind of soap you use, you wash your hands. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons we wanted to do this
Speaker 1: episode today. Robert, you discovered there's actually a Global Handwashing Day.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about that. Yeah, this is this was
Speaker 1: news to me. October fifte is Global hand Washing Day,
Speaker 1: and uh. It was established by the Global Handwashing Partnership
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. Uh quote. The observance aims
Speaker 1: to increase awareness and knowledge of the benefits of handwashing
Speaker 1: with soap. I have been going, uh yeah, certainly since
Speaker 1: its inception, I have not noticed uh this holiday. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling this October we might give it a
Speaker 1: little more attention. And and certainly I do want to
Speaker 1: stress if it's masculine so gender neutral soap, you know,
Speaker 1: feminine soap, whatever, kids soap, grown up soap, Use something
Speaker 1: you like. If if if it if a certain branding
Speaker 1: or or fragrance or whatever, uh makes you like it
Speaker 1: more or makes your your child like it more, go
Speaker 1: for it. That's my take on it. Uh. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: the Global Handwashing Day is coming up, and uh, I
Speaker 1: was looking into it, and I found some wonderful stats
Speaker 1: via the CDC about just the benefits of handwashing, specifically
Speaker 1: the benefits of hand washing education within a given community.
Speaker 1: They point out that it can, first of all, reduce
Speaker 1: the number of people who get sick with diarrhea by
Speaker 1: about twenty three to It can reduce absentee is um
Speaker 1: due to gastro and testine illness and school children by
Speaker 1: twenty nine to fifty seven percent it can reduce diar
Speaker 1: real illness in people with weekend immune systems by about
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent, and it can reduce respiratory illnesses like
Speaker 1: colds in the general population by about sixteen to Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that's highlighted here is that hand washing is
Speaker 1: going to have different levels of effectiveness with different kinds
Speaker 1: of germs and diseases. I think one thing that we
Speaker 1: should probably be clear about is that I want to say,
Speaker 1: based on everything I've been reading, the primary route of transmission,
Speaker 1: for example, of the novel coronavirus is going to be
Speaker 1: probably through droplets dispersed directly from other people onto you.
Speaker 1: So stuff that you would receive, you know, from people
Speaker 1: talking or breathing, coughing, sneezing in your presence. That's the
Speaker 1: primary route. But of course we we do think that
Speaker 1: a strong secondary route is you know, contaminated surfaces and
Speaker 1: and spreading through contact through the hands touching the face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why handwashing alone is not enough. That's
Speaker 1: why you know, early on in the pandemic here in
Speaker 1: the United States, it was there was like this. There
Speaker 1: were a few days, maybe even a week there where
Speaker 1: like every business just went crazy with hand sanitizer and
Speaker 1: handwashing U encouragement, you know, with just handwashing stations or
Speaker 1: or hand sanitation of stations everywhere. But then it quickly
Speaker 1: became you know, off hiss that that was that's only
Speaker 1: the secondary transmission. Primary transmission is going to be those droplets.
Speaker 1: Therefore social distancing is necessary, exactly right. But of course
Speaker 1: you can see with many other diseases, especially a lot
Speaker 1: of diseases I think that affect the digestive system, like
Speaker 1: diarrheal diseases of a very strong component of of you know,
Speaker 1: contamination delivered through the hands to the mouth, all these
Speaker 1: fecal oral route diseases and stuff. Yeah, so even outside
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen, there are plenty of fringe benefits UH
Speaker 1: to an additional you know it benefits to doing all
Speaker 1: that hand washing. I found this in resting. I imagine
Speaker 1: other folks heard about this as well. But Dr Anthony Focci,
Speaker 1: the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, UH,
Speaker 1: an individual everyone you know, is seeing a lot about
Speaker 1: a week after week. He was talking to the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journals podcast about this, UH, and he said, he's
Speaker 1: talking about like what happens when we we sort of
Speaker 1: begin to emerge from our current um, you know, social
Speaker 1: distancing and uh and shelter in place uh requirements. He said.
Speaker 1: Quote when you gradually come back, you don't jump in
Speaker 1: with both feet. You say, what are the things you
Speaker 1: could still do and still approach normal? And one of
Speaker 1: them is absolute compulsive handwashing. The other is you don't
Speaker 1: shake anyone's hands. I don't think we should ever shake
Speaker 1: hands ever again, to be honest with you, Not only
Speaker 1: would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease, it would
Speaker 1: probably probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country.
Speaker 1: But how will this be received by the people who
Speaker 1: just love shaking hands? I say as a joke, because
Speaker 1: I assume nobody does. I mean, I guess some people
Speaker 1: actually probably do enjoy it. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: does anybody except like the certain kinds of people who
Speaker 1: like to play some weird dominance game about it, does
Speaker 1: anybody else enjoy it? I mean, it's literally just a
Speaker 1: friendly greeting. Words are great, yeah and uh. And like
Speaker 1: I was thinking of a little bit about this myself,
Speaker 1: because certainly the handshakes that I remember, are like the
Speaker 1: big dominant like hand crushing handshakes you encounter, and also
Speaker 1: the awkward like dead fish handshakes. Yeah, and and even
Speaker 1: like a normal handshake is at least for me, kind
Speaker 1: of awkward. But I think part of it is like
Speaker 1: you think about, you know, when do you hand shake hands?
Speaker 1: When do you not? We tend not to shake hands
Speaker 1: with our closest friends and co workers, etcetera. It's like
Speaker 1: new people. Uh. And that's part of why I mean
Speaker 1: that that flows right into a Dr Fauci's advice here.
Speaker 1: But I guess the other thing is we're often talking
Speaker 1: about kind of like business handshakes and that that level
Speaker 1: of stranger handshake. But then there are also the sort
Speaker 1: of handshakes that often take place and say a communal
Speaker 1: church environment. So my initial response was, yes, I hate
Speaker 1: business handshakes, but then I had to think, well, how
Speaker 1: about handshakes that take plas place during the passing of
Speaker 1: peace in a church? And those so those are okay,
Speaker 1: those are nice. I like those that being said, Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to leave those behind. Do something else instead.
Speaker 1: We can do the elbow bump thing, we can nod
Speaker 1: to each other. There are tons of things we can
Speaker 1: do and still have that communal experience. I want to
Speaker 1: see churches past the piece with a fist bump, because
Speaker 1: I was just looking at a study from the American
Speaker 1: Journal of Infection Control in ten by Sarah Miller and
Speaker 1: David E. Whitworth called the fist bump a more hygienic
Speaker 1: alternative to the handshake. They actually studied how much like
Speaker 1: what percentage of germs were spread by handshakes versus other
Speaker 1: types of g eatings, including a high five and a
Speaker 1: fist bump. And what they found was that quote, nearly
Speaker 1: twice as many bacteria were transferred during a handshake, and
Speaker 1: the mean here was one point to four times ten
Speaker 1: to the eight CFU. That's cfu means colony forming units
Speaker 1: compared with the high five, whereas the fist bump consistently
Speaker 1: gave the lowest transmission. So I think, if you must
Speaker 1: touch fist bump instead of handshake, especially, don't do prolonged handshakes.
Speaker 1: Um This is the they measured that a strong handshake
Speaker 1: quote or a prolonged handshake is even worse than a
Speaker 1: moderate handshake. So like those ridiculously long handshakes that um uh,
Speaker 1: they you sometimes see the US president engage in where
Speaker 1: like nobody's letting go, like where it's like a test
Speaker 1: of the test of will that's just a a natural
Speaker 1: way to to pass on various ailments or or like
Speaker 1: the ones. Uh, I think aren't there some of these
Speaker 1: in like action in movies like an Arnold Schwartzenigger movies
Speaker 1: like the beginning of Predator and Coral Weather Is they're
Speaker 1: just like holding hands for several minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an iconic scene and it's just so raw, the
Speaker 1: big muscles and all the uh. They had not a
Speaker 1: good idea, but they both had diarrhea for a week
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, I mean probably just that was that
Speaker 1: they probably were already having it. They were in the
Speaker 1: jungle scenario right living off the land. Now, I did
Speaker 1: notice that they point out a difference between fist bump
Speaker 1: and prolonged fist bump. So it's like, I wonder, is
Speaker 1: a prolonged fist bump going to be more like the
Speaker 1: snail or some of these these uh you know, these
Speaker 1: variations on the fist bump or or And then then
Speaker 1: also where does are they blowing it up at all?
Speaker 1: Is that they're doing the hand garnade, so many questions
Speaker 1: I would I would imagine the blowing it up is
Speaker 1: pretty safe. I don't think any germs are transferred during
Speaker 1: blowing it up. Yeah, as long as it blows up quickly.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the great thing about it. The blowing it
Speaker 1: up is a way to remind ourselves that we've got
Speaker 1: to keep this brief because this and grenades about to
Speaker 1: go off. Well, I will say my personal prejudice against
Speaker 1: hand shaking aside, Uh, if you're gonna be shaking hands,
Speaker 1: and make sure you wash your hands a lot, wash
Speaker 1: your hands before, wash your hands after. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: use soap. Use soap, yeah, because soap again is a
Speaker 1: fabulous human chemical invention. It has a very long history
Speaker 1: of very fascinating history. Uh. So hopefully you'll all think
Speaker 1: of this is something you can think about during those
Speaker 1: uh twenty plus seconds that you wash your hands. Totally alright,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go ahead and close it up there. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously there's there's more we could have gone into,
Speaker 1: and you know, in terms of certainly the more recent
Speaker 1: history of soap, uh and and so forth. But but
Speaker 1: really I think that the ancient history here and just
Speaker 1: the basic, basic understanding of how soap works were the
Speaker 1: most important things to focus in on. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That will lead you over
Speaker 1: to the I heart listing for this show. But you
Speaker 1: can also find Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Just make
Speaker 1: sure you rate, review, and subscribe. At least for the
Speaker 1: immediate future, we're planning to continue doing invention themed episodes
Speaker 1: on a periodic basis, So I don't think that's gonna
Speaker 1: be No, it's not gonna be weekly, but you know
Speaker 1: it's I think it's gonna at least be monthly. That's
Speaker 1: my my gut. There's no real, uh, you know, firm
Speaker 1: schedule in place on that. But we love covering inventions,
Speaker 1: we love covering human techno history, so we will continue
Speaker 1: to do so. We'll do when we feel like it,
Speaker 1: and we feel like it an awful lot, I'd say, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: huge thanks to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other. To suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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