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