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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. Today we're fishing out an episode of Invention.

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Speaker 1: I think so this one originally published in April of

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Speaker 1: twenty It was an Invention episode on the invention of soap,

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Speaker 1: and if I recall correctly, this one is like early

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Speaker 1: COVID themed Yeah, I believe so. Um it was you

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Speaker 1: lined up with a few different things. First of all,

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Speaker 1: COVID and ore are sort of rediscovered relationship with soap

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Speaker 1: at the time. But then also this was the final

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Speaker 1: episode of Invention as a separate entity from Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. But but the first also the first

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Speaker 1: episode of Invention that was part of the Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind feet because now nowadays we'll still can

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Speaker 1: we'll still do Invention episodes from time to time. Um,

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Speaker 1: but they published in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind

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Speaker 1: feed right. I'd also be curious to listen back to

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Speaker 1: this one because it's going to be kind of a

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Speaker 1: time capsule in the evolution of our understanding of like

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Speaker 1: how COVID nineteen was spreading and stuff. So so I

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Speaker 1: expect this one to be interestingly dated. All right, let's

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Speaker 1: ladder up and get in there. Welcome to Stook to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert I am

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Speaker 1: ready to lather up. That's right. Uh. In this episode,

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Speaker 1: we are going to be exploring uninvention. Uh we're getting

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Speaker 1: into a little techno history here, but we're going to

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Speaker 1: be considering soap. Soap has been on everyone's mind a

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Speaker 1: bit more these days, I think. Uh, this is actually

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Speaker 1: a topic that was suggested to us for our our

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Speaker 1: previous side show, Invention, which is now back a part

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Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind itself. Um, Soap is

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Speaker 1: something that is I think easy to take for granted, uh,

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Speaker 1: given normal situations. Right. Soap is just the thing that

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Speaker 1: you uh, you know, speedily wash your hands with, you know,

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Speaker 1: add a little bit of a nice smell, take some

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Speaker 1: of the grease or grit off so you can move

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Speaker 1: on to something else. Perhaps give you a little bit

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Speaker 1: of peace of mind before you do things like prepare

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Speaker 1: food or put your contacts in but lately it is,

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Speaker 1: of course, has been stressed how essential it is via

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Speaker 1: hand washing in the prevention of the spread of COVID nineteen.

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Speaker 1: All right, so let's let's talk about soap. Soap is

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Speaker 1: of course a human invention. But did we ever get

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Speaker 1: by without it? I mean, it's hard for us to

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Speaker 1: imagine life without soap, especially now, because it aids us

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Speaker 1: in the cleaning of our bodies. It also helps us

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Speaker 1: so via you know, detergents in the cleaning of our garments.

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Speaker 1: We use uh, soaps to clean you know, objects and

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Speaker 1: surfaces as well. It helps maintain basic hygiene, it evince

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Speaker 1: the spread of disease, and it can also impart a

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Speaker 1: pleasing odor. You know, what's not to love about soap?

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Speaker 1: And how on earth can we get by without it? Now?

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Speaker 1: Obviously we can look to the animal world for plenty

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Speaker 1: of examples. Uh, But but a few common examples do

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Speaker 1: tell us a lot. Birds, for instance, clean themselves with

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Speaker 1: their beaks, and they use water or dust to bathe themselves. Cats, dogs,

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Speaker 1: and cows are frequent examples of animals that look themselves

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Speaker 1: to clean themselves. And uh, let's consider a few terms

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Speaker 1: to put things in perspective as well. We're talking about grooming,

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Speaker 1: which is a comfort behavior that is the practice of

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Speaker 1: cleaning the body surface, including the cleaning and oiling of

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Speaker 1: feathers with the bill or of the hair with the tongue.

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Speaker 1: And there are a few broad categories here. There's first

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Speaker 1: of all, auto grooming, that is an animal's grooming of

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Speaker 1: itself and you know, ultimately that's what's going on when

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Speaker 1: you take a shower in the morning or in the

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Speaker 1: evening or whenever or both, you know, go go out. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's also all of grooming, which is an animal's grooming

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Speaker 1: of another for parental or social reasons. Yeah, and uh,

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Speaker 1: one thing that's very interesting is the the array of

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Speaker 1: social dynamics that seem to take place through grooming behaviors,

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Speaker 1: like say, primate grooming behaviors, where primates will sometimes pick

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Speaker 1: pick little knits and bits and bugs out of each

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Speaker 1: other's hair as a way to to manage and mediate

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Speaker 1: social bonds within groups. Yeah, it becomes a part of

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Speaker 1: the society for creatures like that and for creatures like us.

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Speaker 1: So all of this amounts to a general physical removal

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Speaker 1: of particles scraped away, picked away, washed away, and there

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Speaker 1: may be bacteria sidal properties as well. Uh you know,

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Speaker 1: particularly you'll see something there's some studies about saliva um

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Speaker 1: and to what degree they may be able to kill bacteria.

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Speaker 1: But this, this basic removal can deal with everything from

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Speaker 1: sand and dirt to dead skin, cell alls, loose hairs,

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Speaker 1: loose feathers, and like you mentioned, actual exo parasites, and

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Speaker 1: of course in cleansing oneself, it's helpful to use nails

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Speaker 1: and claws and beaks and all these these various uh um,

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Speaker 1: you know, bio tools that we've already mentioned. But in

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Speaker 1: dealing with with humans, in dealing with Homo sapiens and

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Speaker 1: some of Homo sapiens closest kin, we of course have

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Speaker 1: to get into tool use. We get into the techno

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Speaker 1: history of the situation here. And one of the sources

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Speaker 1: I was looking at for this episode was soaps from

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Speaker 1: the Phoenicians to the twentieth century. A historical review by

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Speaker 1: Role at All came out in n They point out

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Speaker 1: a few key examples from quote the pre soap era,

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Speaker 1: this is uh an area you might think of as

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Speaker 1: the squeegee era, you know, where there we did have

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Speaker 1: some tools we we probably were interested in cleaning ourselves,

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Speaker 1: but we didn't have soap yet, So what can you do?

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Speaker 1: Maybe you can kind of squeege your skin with a

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Speaker 1: with a little bit of abrasive action. Yeah, And indeed, uh,

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Speaker 1: Neolithic people apparently used flint scrapers to clean themselves, a

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Speaker 1: basic way to remove dirt, grime, dead skin cells. You know,

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Speaker 1: why depend on just those those So I'm guessing hard

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Speaker 1: fingernails that you have, uh, during the Neolithic period, when

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Speaker 1: you can also start using some some some tools. You're

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Speaker 1: using tools to scrape other things. You need a good

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Speaker 1: scraping as well, So grab some flint and get in there. Now.

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Speaker 1: I really hope that they were not using the same

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Speaker 1: hand axes, by faces or pieces of flint to process

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Speaker 1: animal carcasses and then to scrape their own skin clean.

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Speaker 1: But I have to guess there probably was a bit acrossover. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems inevitable, doesn't it. But so the use of

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Speaker 1: a kind of a bit of mechanical leverage some some

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Speaker 1: scraping with a tool did not stop with Neolithic Stone

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Speaker 1: Age people. This actually did continue into classical civilizations like

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Speaker 1: the Romans did something similar. Yeah, before the Age of

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Speaker 1: plenty in the first centuries see the Greeks and Romans

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Speaker 1: depended on what they had. Vapor baths. They had, you know,

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Speaker 1: an extravagant bath system for sure, but also they would

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Speaker 1: scrub and scrape the skin with a stridgle or skin

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Speaker 1: scraper made of bone, ivory or metal. And this basically

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Speaker 1: what it sounds like. You get the you get the

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Speaker 1: skin itself, you know, nice and moist from a bath

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Speaker 1: or perhaps via the application of an oil, and then

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Speaker 1: you can start scraping away and remove that, you know,

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Speaker 1: that outer layer of grime, dead skin, et cetera. I

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Speaker 1: guess some people still use something like this to cleanse themselves.

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Speaker 1: I mean in terms of just dealing with our skin.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know, for instance that just going to

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Speaker 1: the y m c A. I'll hear some of the

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Speaker 1: the older gentleman in the locker room. Uh, they would

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Speaker 1: talk of ways that they would deal with the like

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Speaker 1: the thickened callouses on their feet, and some of the

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Speaker 1: sometimes bad add advice they would give each other would

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Speaker 1: involve essentially scraping away the skin, generally with with tools

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Speaker 1: and implements that were not designed for that purpose. Wait,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like you've got a specific tool in mind,

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Speaker 1: or they like using a food processor blade or what. Um, well,

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Speaker 1: one was definitely. There was a guy that was telling

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Speaker 1: me what you need to do is you need to

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Speaker 1: get yourself safety raiser and then remove some of the

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Speaker 1: safety features and then you can just you can, you know,

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Speaker 1: scrape away some skin, uh, which sounds like a bad

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Speaker 1: idea and I do not recommend anyone do that. Another

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Speaker 1: person said, what you need to do is you need

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Speaker 1: to get one of these and he held up um, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: what's the what do you call these? It's the it's

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Speaker 1: for the grating of say ginger for culinary purposes. A

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Speaker 1: micro yes, a microplane. Uh. So he held microhide and

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Speaker 1: he says, you can get one of these at bed

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Speaker 1: bath and beyond. It works great. Again, I would not

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Speaker 1: recommend using that in your body. I would recommend getting

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Speaker 1: a sand ng or scrubbing implement that is designed for

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Speaker 1: use on the skin and use on the feet. What

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Speaker 1: you do is you get a stick blender and oh man,

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Speaker 1: but that's not to say that that other folks weren't

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Speaker 1: engaging in the use of essentially chemical approaches to the

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Speaker 1: cleaning of the skin. The ancient Egyptians made use of

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Speaker 1: soda to clean their skin as well as to treat

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Speaker 1: diseases of the skin. Okay, so soda is interesting here

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Speaker 1: because that suggests we're we're getting a little bit closer

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Speaker 1: to soap like territories. This will make more sense when

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Speaker 1: we explain soapen a bit. But but soda, of course

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Speaker 1: is an alkali. It's a it's a base, and in

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Speaker 1: certain combinations, in the presence of fats and water, this

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Speaker 1: can actually have a lathering soap like effect. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: so this is a nice ancient example. We'll get into

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Speaker 1: some more in a bit. But oh, and then another

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Speaker 1: example that wrowth at all point point out fifth century BC.

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Speaker 1: During this time period, Herodotus wrote of the priest physicians

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Speaker 1: of the temple of Ammon at Karnak in Egypt during

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Speaker 1: the reign of Ramesses. This would have been leven thirteen

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Speaker 1: through ten five BC, and Herodotas stated that they would

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Speaker 1: quote bathe in cold water twice a day and twice

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Speaker 1: a night, and cleansed their mouths with natron. Now natron

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Speaker 1: was a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate. That's

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Speaker 1: what you call mummy mouth. Uh. One of my favorite

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Speaker 1: books on the history of hygiene is a book titled

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Speaker 1: Clean by Virginia Smith, and in that she points out

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Speaker 1: that that natron was dissolved in water to clean the body,

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Speaker 1: to clean clothes, furniture, and sometimes it could be ignited

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Speaker 1: with incense as well. Priest would show it and drink

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Speaker 1: it as a as a cleansing as well. So it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just used in the creation of mummies. It was like,

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Speaker 1: in a way, this kind of uh, this kind of posh,

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Speaker 1: high status chemical for for all the you know that

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Speaker 1: all your hygiene needs in a way and be like

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Speaker 1: you've got to have that mummy mouth. Yeah. Now, I

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Speaker 1: think one of the facts that we're getting into here

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Speaker 1: with especially within with an atron example, is that we're

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Speaker 1: dealing with medicine. We're dealing with medicinal uses. And that's

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Speaker 1: one of the amazing things is when you start looking

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Speaker 1: at some of the early history of what we think

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Speaker 1: of as soap, you're often dealing more specifically with with

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Speaker 1: medical practices and sort of the magic of early medicine

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Speaker 1: as opposed to just sort of the like we don't

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Speaker 1: think about soap as medicine, we don't think about hygiene

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Speaker 1: as medicine. But it is, I mean, it is preventative medicine.

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Speaker 1: Uh you know, you know, quite literally, yeah, totally. Now,

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Speaker 1: other BC treatments included um using olive oil on the skin.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned that already is something that you might apply

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Speaker 1: before scraping. Clay and plant ashes as well. During the

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Speaker 1: Biblical period, we see a form of soap made from

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Speaker 1: plant derivatives, generally from salty regions where the plants gathered

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Speaker 1: potash and soda, and the Bible actually mentions the washing

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Speaker 1: materials bore, bore, it and she lig Acadian, Syrian, and

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Speaker 1: Arabic languages all include words specific words for soap producing plants.

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Speaker 1: Plants that would be you know, would definitely become important

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Speaker 1: later on if not been in the creation of these

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Speaker 1: soap like elements, and plant ash and clay were also

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Speaker 1: widely used in the cultures of India, Peru, Chili, and Angola. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe this is a good place to stop and explain

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Speaker 1: how soap actually works. But should we take a break first?

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Speaker 1: We should, It will be right back, all right, we're back,

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Speaker 1: So it's time to talk about how soap actually gets

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Speaker 1: things clean. So in a lot of cases, of course,

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Speaker 1: we all know that simply washing with water can be

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Speaker 1: very effective. If you don't have soap, you might as

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Speaker 1: well wash your hands with water because that gets a

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Speaker 1: lot of stuff off. Maybe not everything, but lot right, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it is again, it's it's often poorly understood

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Speaker 1: by the people who use it, but it's highly effective.

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Speaker 1: And actually, there was a very interesting passage about what

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Speaker 1: I'm about to talk about in the book Until the

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Speaker 1: End of Time by Brian Green, a recent guest on

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. The passage highlights the fact

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Speaker 1: that water is good for washing things much for the

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Speaker 1: same reason that it is the basis for life on Earth.

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Speaker 1: And if if that doesn't make any sense, stick with

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Speaker 1: me for a second. Here. So Green is talking about

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Speaker 1: the chemical properties of water. He's talking about the fact

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Speaker 1: that water is a polar molecule. So you've got a

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Speaker 1: one atom of oxygen with two atoms of hydrogen. They're

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Speaker 1: bonded together, and in this molecule there is a net

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Speaker 1: negative charge at one end, the end where the oxygen

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Speaker 1: atom is, and then there's a net positive charge at

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Speaker 1: the other ends where where the two hydrogen atoms are.

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Speaker 1: And this difference in electrical charge across the length of

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Speaker 1: the water molecule is essential to its funk. And in

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Speaker 1: the world of biochemistry, it's what makes water the molecule

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Speaker 1: of life in a universe of death. And so that

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Speaker 1: this distribution of electrical charge across the length of the

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Speaker 1: molecule means that water can dissolve almost anything, not anything,

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Speaker 1: but almost anything. The oxygen end will bind to almost

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Speaker 1: anything that has even a slight positive charge, and the

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Speaker 1: hydrogen tips at the other end will bind to almost

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Speaker 1: anything that has even a slight negative charge. And Green

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Speaker 1: rights that quote. In tandem, the two ends of a

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Speaker 1: water molecule act like charged claws that pull apart almost

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Speaker 1: anything that's submerged for a sufficient time. So if you

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Speaker 1: are if you're like a hardcore soaker when it comes

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Speaker 1: to cleaning the dishes, uh, this is this is a

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Speaker 1: this is a ammunition for your defense against the scrubbers.

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Speaker 1: Oh of course, yeah. I mean just sitting something in water, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it will tend to just pull things out. And it's

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Speaker 1: funny because water is is the fluid of lie. If

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Speaker 1: we we think of it as not something that's uh

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Speaker 1: you know that rips everything apart at the molecular level,

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Speaker 1: we think of it as this. You know, this this

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Speaker 1: cleansing healing kind of liquid, which of course it is

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Speaker 1: to us we need it to live, But chemically what

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Speaker 1: it does, and the reason why it's so useful to

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Speaker 1: our bodies is that it has this power to dissolve,

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Speaker 1: and so in dissolving things. Green gives the example of

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Speaker 1: table salt, a very very common example. Table salt is

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Speaker 1: known chemically as sodium chloride. Sodium chloride is a molecule.

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Speaker 1: It's made from one atom of sodium and one atom

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Speaker 1: of chlorine, and when you drop crystals of table salt

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Speaker 1: into water, the water molecules immediately start ripping them apart

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Speaker 1: and dissolving them. So the oxygen in the H two

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Speaker 1: O snags the positively charged sodium ions, and the hydrogen

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Speaker 1: tips of the H two O molecule grab the negatively

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Speaker 1: charged chlorine ions. But it's not just table salt. Water

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Speaker 1: works this way for a huge number of chemicals and substances,

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Speaker 1: and it's the reason water is good for washing things.

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Speaker 1: Substances previously stuck to the outside of your skin or

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Speaker 1: to the outside of a dish or a pan, are

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Speaker 1: grabbed and dissolved by the water and carried away. When

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Speaker 1: the water runs off of you or off of the

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Speaker 1: dish onto the ground, downstream in a river, or down

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Speaker 1: the drain. And here's where things get really interesting. Uh here,

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Speaker 1: I just want to quote directly from Brian Green's book

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Speaker 1: Until the End of Time. Quote, well, beyond its utility

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Speaker 1: and personal hygiene, Water's capacity to grab hold of and

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Speaker 1: ingest substances is indispensable to life. Sell interiors or miniature

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Speaker 1: chemistry labs whose workings require the rapid movement of a

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Speaker 1: vast collection of ingredients, nutrients in, waste out, commingling of

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Speaker 1: chemicals to synthesize substances required for cellular function, and so on.

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Speaker 1: Water makes this possible. Water, constituting some seventy of a

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Speaker 1: cell's mass, is life's ferrying fluid. Nobel Laurea Albert's zen

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Speaker 1: Georgy summarized it eloquently. Quote water is life's matter and matrix,

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Speaker 1: mother and medium. There is no life without water. Life

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Speaker 1: could leave the ocean when it learned to grow a skin,

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Speaker 1: a bag in which to take the water with it.

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Speaker 1: We are still living in water, having the water now inside.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, sloshy water bag creatures that

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Speaker 1: we are. It's true, we're bladders of life. Waddling around

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Speaker 1: in the desert above. But so this is amazing that

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Speaker 1: it's basically the same reason that water is good for

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Speaker 1: washing your hands, and the reason that astrobiologists are looking

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Speaker 1: for signs of water on Mars. But while water is

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Speaker 1: an amazing solvent and good for washing all kinds of

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Speaker 1: stuff off your hands, there are some cases where it's

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Speaker 1: hygiene powers fall short. You of course know about this

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Speaker 1: if you ever tried to use water alone to wash

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Speaker 1: an oily, greasy substance off your hands or off of

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Speaker 1: a dish in the kitchen. So so you've got a

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Speaker 1: frying pans covered in you know, residue of butter or something,

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Speaker 1: and you try to run tap water over it to

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Speaker 1: wash it off. Does it work? Of course not right,

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Speaker 1: Like the water will maybe dislodge little bits of the

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Speaker 1: butter residue, but mostly the oil on the surface of

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Speaker 1: the pan will continue to stick and the water will

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Speaker 1: kind of rush overtop it, or at best it will

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Speaker 1: sort of push waves of the oil around through force.

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Speaker 1: Now I do use that as an example because I

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Speaker 1: know everybody has done it. But if you remember from

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Speaker 1: our fat Bergs episode, please do not wash oil and

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Speaker 1: grease down the drain lest you begin to make a

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Speaker 1: soap dragon down the sewers below us. But here's another example.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody will be able to identify with Robert

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Speaker 1: he ever put lotion on your hands, like a sort

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Speaker 1: of oil based or kind of greasy lotion, and then

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Speaker 1: you need to wash your hands. You go and wash

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Speaker 1: your hands with just water without using soap. What happens there? Oh?

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Speaker 1: You just you get with these least slipper hands. It's like, now,

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Speaker 1: it's like lotion plus one, right exactly. The lotion does

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Speaker 1: not get washed off. You have to use soap in

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Speaker 1: order to get lotion grease off of your hands, and

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Speaker 1: your hands will stay greasy no matter how much water

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Speaker 1: you run over them, right Yeah, Like yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: obviously there's you know, so a certain amount of physical

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Speaker 1: removal as possible. Generally, what I do is like I

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Speaker 1: washing off my hands real quick, and then like, oh

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Speaker 1: I had a lotion on and now I kind of

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Speaker 1: have to use like a hand towel that to physically

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Speaker 1: remove some of the lotion water mixture. Right. Uh, So,

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Speaker 1: water by itself fails at washing away lipids, lipids or

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Speaker 1: a class of substances including oils, fats, waxes, and steroids.

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Speaker 1: And this is because simply oil and water do not

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Speaker 1: mix easily, which is in turn due to the chemical

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Speaker 1: properties of the two substances. So we were talking about

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Speaker 1: how water is a polar molecule. It's got different electric

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Speaker 1: charges at each end. And because of these different electric

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Speaker 1: charges at each end of the water molecule, water are

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Speaker 1: links up with itself very easily through a series of

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Speaker 1: connections called hydrogen bonds. So you can kind of think

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Speaker 1: of the analogy of legos. Right at the top of

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Speaker 1: one block just very easily snaps onto the bottom and

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Speaker 1: the next. Now, oils, on the other hand, are made

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Speaker 1: up of non polar molecules, so they do not easily

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Speaker 1: break through these bonds and link up with water molecules

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Speaker 1: to form new compounds or dissolve into the water. So

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Speaker 1: you say, say you take a jar and you put

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Speaker 1: some oil and some water in the jar together, and

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Speaker 1: then you shake it up really hard. If if you

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Speaker 1: shake the jar like that, droplets of oil will be

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Speaker 1: dispersed by force throughout the water. But these molecules of

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Speaker 1: oil will after so first they will disrupt the hydrogen

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Speaker 1: bonds between the water molecules they'll get kind of dispersed throughout,

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Speaker 1: but they won't be able to form bonds with the

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Speaker 1: water themselves. And instead, the disrupted water molecules I was

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Speaker 1: reading about this, they they form a kind of molecular

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Speaker 1: cage around the oil molecules. Uh. And this cage is

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Speaker 1: this kind of almost crystalline type structure known as a

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Speaker 1: class rate. And this cage actually represents a temporary decrease

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Speaker 1: in the entropy of the water. So by forming these

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Speaker 1: orderly structures around these droplets of oil suspended in the water,

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Speaker 1: you are decreasing entropy. And we know that the universe

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Speaker 1: does not tolerate decreases in entropy forever. The universe always

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Speaker 1: wants to increase the entropy again. So gradually the mixed

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00:21:30,040 --> 00:21:33,800
Speaker 1: mass of water and oil manages to increase its entropy

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Speaker 1: by spontaneously bumping around and rearranging until the oil molecules

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00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,480
Speaker 1: join up with one another into a solid mass and

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Speaker 1: separate from the water to float on its surface. And

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Speaker 1: of course, the reason that oil floats on top of

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Speaker 1: water when it's separated is that oil is less dense

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Speaker 1: than water. But for hygiene purposes, I guess all you

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Speaker 1: have to remember is the short version that oil doesn't

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Speaker 1: naturally dissolve in water like so many other substances do.

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Speaker 1: And this is why water alone is not very good

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Speaker 1: at dissolving and washing away oil or fat based substances.

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00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:09,080
Speaker 1: And this, of course is where soap comes in. Here's

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Speaker 1: where we all know from experience you can't get the water,

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Speaker 1: you can't get the lotion off your hands or the

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00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:15,480
Speaker 1: grease off your hands with water alone, but if you

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Speaker 1: use some soap, it comes right off. Another example that

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00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:20,560
Speaker 1: comes to mind here is of course, with our hair.

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Speaker 1: I think if you've ever experimented with just rigorously shampooing

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Speaker 1: versus going no pooh as they say it, if they

395
00:22:29,359 --> 00:22:32,960
Speaker 1: call it um, that you can definitely observe this in action.

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00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,120
Speaker 1: Uh so I feel the oils in your hair? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like like I will generally go no shampoo for um

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Speaker 1: for like a few weeks at a time, and I

399
00:22:42,359 --> 00:22:45,399
Speaker 1: will my hair doesn't. It varies from person to person,

400
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:47,959
Speaker 1: you know, depending on you know, your particular hair and

401
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 1: in a particular oil and how it builds up. But

402
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:53,159
Speaker 1: with my own hair, like a little bit of oil

403
00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 1: will build up in my hair, well will look tolerable

404
00:22:56,280 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I won't have to do much

405
00:22:57,880 --> 00:22:59,640
Speaker 1: with it. But then eventually I'll come a point where

406
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 1: I start feeling a little oily, and therefore I bust

407
00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 1: out the shampoo, and when I do, all the oil

408
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:08,280
Speaker 1: is gone. And now and then I just look like

409
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:10,560
Speaker 1: like a troll do all, you know, because now there's

410
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 1: no oil in my hair at all, and it's just

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00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: this poufy blonde mess. But I bring this up. There's

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00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:18,280
Speaker 1: just an example of you know, this is a way

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Speaker 1: to observe that water. Even a lengthy shower, a lengthy

414
00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:25,439
Speaker 1: blast of of hot, steamy water is not going to

415
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:28,359
Speaker 1: get that oil out of your hair um, even if

416
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 1: it's just day after day, twice a day even, uh

417
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: not until you add that magical soap, right, Yeah, the

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00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,719
Speaker 1: oil just does not come away in the water. So

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00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,119
Speaker 1: soap is made by Classically, it's made by combining a

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00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:45,200
Speaker 1: fatty acid such as an oil or an animal fat.

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00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:48,159
Speaker 1: You know, you can use like a animal tallow or

422
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: something with an alkali such as you would naturally find,

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00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 1: say in the ashes from a wood fire, or today

424
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,680
Speaker 1: in a strong synthesized base like a lie. Uh So,

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00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 1: At the molecular level, soap is a pin shaped molecule

426
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:07,679
Speaker 1: that plays well with both water and lipids. Its tail

427
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:12,880
Speaker 1: is hydrophobic, meaning it doesn't like water, it avoids water molecules,

428
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:16,200
Speaker 1: and it forms a bond with fats and oils. Meanwhile,

429
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: its head is hydrophilic, meaning it likes water. It bonds

430
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:23,160
Speaker 1: with water easily, and it becomes suspended in a solution

431
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 1: of water and gets washed away when the water is

432
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 1: rinsed off. Now, often what happens after a good lathering

433
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:32,680
Speaker 1: is that soap molecules will form a kind of bubble

434
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: structure called a mice cell around an oily contaminant, with

435
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,399
Speaker 1: their hydrophobic tails pointing inward and and and snagging onto

436
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:45,720
Speaker 1: the trapped particle, and their hydrophilic heads pointing outward and

437
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,720
Speaker 1: being carried around by the water. So you can imagine

438
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: each soap molecule as a kind of a combination grasping

439
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 1: claw at one end and parachute on the other end.

440
00:24:56,800 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 1: One end grabs hold of the contaminant and the other

441
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: end hatches the fluid current and is easily carried away.

442
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: But I should add that the hygienic properties of soap

443
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:10,760
Speaker 1: don't end there, just at the ability to uh latch

444
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: onto these lipid molecules and carry them away in the

445
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: flow of water. In addition to making it easy to

446
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:19,200
Speaker 1: wash lipid based dirt off of surfaces like your hands,

447
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: soap is also directly lethal to many kinds of germs,

448
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: including many kinds of viruses and bacteria. A lot of

449
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:32,640
Speaker 1: viruses and bacteria, including the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID nineteen.

450
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 1: They're protected by an outer layer that can be disrupted

451
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:42,120
Speaker 1: by soap. The fat loving ends of soap molecules kind

452
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:46,119
Speaker 1: of jam themselves into the lipid by layer on the

453
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: outside of the virus. I've seen it compared by some

454
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 1: experts to like little chemical crowbars, just stabbing into the

455
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 1: lipid outer membrane of the of the virus and breaking

456
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 1: that outer membrane up and send Actually, what this does

457
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: is it disembowels the virus, so it's guts spill out

458
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: all over the place, and then they get washed away

459
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: harmlessly and my cells whenever you rinse your hands. So

460
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,399
Speaker 1: as an added benefit, the soap not only makes it

461
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: much easier to get these uh, these sticky little germs

462
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: off of your hands, it also just kills lots of germs.

463
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: Not every germ is is killed by soap, but lots are,

464
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: including the coronavirus. Yeah, I think it was. Maybe it

465
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: was the growth article that I referred to earlier. The

466
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:30,919
Speaker 1: author's pointed out that you know we have this this

467
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: you know, this safe mundane, this tame feeling about our soap.

468
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: Soap is gentle um. But for most most organisms that

469
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:41,679
Speaker 1: we're dealing with, soap is a destroyer. It is just

470
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: a a brutal and destructive weapon. Well, yeah, you don't

471
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,439
Speaker 1: want to have your your lipids dissolved, and hey, you

472
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: know what, you can actually start to feel a bit

473
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: of this yourself if you say, if you have washed

474
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,239
Speaker 1: your hands too much, if you've been like cooking all

475
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 1: day or something, and you repeatedly having to wash your

476
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: hands over and over when you go in between tasks,

477
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: you may start to notice with with really frequent hand washing,

478
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 1: that the cumulative effects of soap on your skin do

479
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: become abrasive. Right, Yeah, Yeah, if you say, helped your

480
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: husband kill a king or something to that effect and

481
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,199
Speaker 1: washing your hands a lot, yeah, you'll notice that this

482
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 1: is starting to irritate the outer layer of my body.

483
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of what's going on

484
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: there is that is that natural lipids in your skin,

485
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 1: oils that are a healthy part of what your skin

486
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: normally does to protect itself, are removed. Also when you

487
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: wash your hands like that. Uh, And if you just

488
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: keep removing all that stuff, it can kind of dry

489
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 1: your skin out and irritate it. But I do want

490
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,679
Speaker 1: to say one more thing about hand washing with soap,

491
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: which is that I looked into this the question of time,

492
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: because we've all been told a bunch of times. Now

493
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:54,119
Speaker 1: you know you need to wash your hands with soap

494
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: for at least twenty seconds, right, And maybe a lot

495
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,360
Speaker 1: of people think, ah, no, way, you actually really need

496
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: to do it for twenty whole seconds, right. I mean,

497
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 1: you just told me that that soap. Soap can be

498
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,160
Speaker 1: lethal too, lots of germs. So basically, if you get

499
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: soap all over your hands, you're good, Right, You just

500
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:12,199
Speaker 1: get the soap on there and then you rinse it

501
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,439
Speaker 1: off and then you should be fine. That that is

502
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: not the case. It really does appear that time is

503
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: a factor in allowing soap to do its work. I

504
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: was looking at a couple of studies that seemed to

505
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 1: be an agreement that longer really is better, and the

506
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: difference between twenty seconds of soapy washing and five seconds

507
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: of soapy washing is pretty huge. I love how, especially

508
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: early on, to really get this message across, uh, there

509
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: were all these different versions of hey, you can remember

510
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 1: how long twenty seconds is by singing this song or

511
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: this chorus from this song. My God, so many articles

512
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: like this, which it's like, is it that hard to

513
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: know how long twenty seconds is? I? I know that

514
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: was my my My initial thought was like, I don't

515
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: really need to sing the happy Birthday sound to know

516
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: how long twenty seconds is. I can just count to twenty.

517
00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: But then I realized, well, no, this is this is

518
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: a much about getting the message out and making the

519
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: message more fun as anything, and if it helps in

520
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: that regard, then yeah, let's let's keep reminding everybody which

521
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: songs match up with twenty seconds. I like the way

522
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: of doing it is like expressing it in terms of

523
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: the units of Ronnie Cox's monologue at the end of

524
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 1: total recall, how many Ronnie Cox monologues do you need

525
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: to do home in time for corn flakes? Is it

526
00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: awd monologue? Or no? No, no, I don't know it actually,

527
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: but I should time it out and then you can

528
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: know like, Okay, I need to do it one and

529
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: a half times, or I just I need to go

530
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: two thirds of the way through. I haven't done the

531
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: math myself, but some enterprising listener get on that. I

532
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: bet Conner's monologue from Highlander two is about twenty seconds.

533
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 1: Oh okay. Most people live a full measure of life,

534
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 1: but most people just watch it slowly drip away. But

535
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: if you can summon it all up at one time

536
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: in one place, you can accomplish something glorious. What was that? Maybe? Yeah,

537
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: I better do it wise, just to be ample. All right,

538
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take another break. But when we

539
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:08,719
Speaker 1: come back, we will dive back into the history of

540
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: soap and feel around in the darkness of history for

541
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: its inventor. Alright, we're back, all right. So we're trying

542
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 1: to discuss now the question of who invented soap. And

543
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: this is not going to be one of those cases

544
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,480
Speaker 1: where it was Jonathan Soap or Elizabeth Soap working in

545
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: their their home laboratory. Uh. We don't know the actual

546
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: inventor of soap, but we have some very interesting clues

547
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: at a more sort of civilizational or cultural level about

548
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: wind soap. Enter the history of humanity. Yes, now, I

549
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: love that you've brought up the idea like the the

550
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: handy and and just too good to be true idea

551
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: of William Soap having invented soap or he did soap

552
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: having invented soap, because the first example I want to

553
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: talk about here is kind of a version of that.

554
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: It is it does not seem to be a true

555
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: account of the history of soap. It is. It is

556
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: too it is too perfect. And but it's the store

557
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: origin story that is often repeated on say websites about soap,

558
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: Like if there's a soap company and they have an

559
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 1: about page, they might soaps. Yeah, you might run across

560
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:18,719
Speaker 1: this one, and that is that soap originates on the

561
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: mountain of Sappo. Okay, tell me about Mount Sappo. Okay,

562
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,480
Speaker 1: that's that's Sappo s A p O. You know it

563
00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: sounds like soap. We're already basically there. It's the same

564
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 1: letters rearranged. So the story here and again you may

565
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: have heard it is that soap making began three thousand

566
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: years ago on Mount Sappo near Rome. The ideas that

567
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: animal sacrifices were made to the gods there and streams

568
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,479
Speaker 1: of melted fat and ashes dribbled and dripped from the altar,

569
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: and this mixture made its way down into the to

570
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 1: the clay ground beneath, and here washer women learned that

571
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: the resulting substance animal fat, ash and some clay. It

572
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: resulted in something that could be used in the cleaning

573
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: of garments. This sounds like it's sort of like one

574
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: of those like evolution explanation narratives that people sometimes come

575
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: up with. It's not based on any evidence at all,

576
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:13,479
Speaker 1: but it's just like, you know, one time there was

577
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: a monkey and it and you know it needed a

578
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 1: rock to do this, and so this is what happened.

579
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: The stories like this are fun to come up with

580
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: because you can try to imagine what's plausible. Though I

581
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: think we can interrogate the plausibility of this one based

582
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,560
Speaker 1: on things we actually know about Roman sacrifices and stuff.

583
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: But but you can try to come up with a

584
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 1: story about what's plausible, even if you don't have direct

585
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: evidence for it. But coming up with a plausible story,

586
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: as we know, does not mean that you've discovered where

587
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: something actually came from. And in this case, we pretty

588
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: much know this story is wrong, right, Yeah, despite the

589
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: fact that it's handy and it's it's clean. Basically a

590
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:54,640
Speaker 1: slice of false etymology here, but I guess the basically, Yeah,

591
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the details of it, Yes,

592
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing that could have happened. Yeah,

593
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: this story, as we've related it sounds plausible. But first

594
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: of all, there's no mention of it in classical mythology.

595
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: And it's also been pointed out that the manner of

596
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: animal sacrifice that was practiced by the Romans would not

597
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 1: have created vast amounts of soap um. And I believe

598
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: a lot of this had to do with just like

599
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: how much of the meat was actually like how much

600
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: of the the animal is actually burnt, and how much

601
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: of it was sort of taken apart for other uses. Right,

602
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: So the chemical reasoning here would be that you've got

603
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 1: animal sacrifices, animal bodies being burned, and there's a lot

604
00:33:29,840 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: of fat on them, and the fat is just rendering

605
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: out as the animal is being burned, and it's pouring

606
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: off into this area where there's also ash in the

607
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 1: in the pit from the fire where the animals being burned,

608
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 1: And of course, as I mentioned earlier, soap is made

609
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: generally from a combination of lipids like animal fats and

610
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: a base like ashes. Ashes can work for that. So

611
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: you combine fats and ashes and and and water, and

612
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: then you can basically have something like a crude or

613
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: rudimentary soap. So you can imagine something like this happening.

614
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: But one criticism I was looking at was that, uh,

615
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: apparently in Roman animal sacrifices, you know, they take off

616
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: most of the usable fat. It was it was like

617
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: if you could, if you could do something with the fat,

618
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 1: they weren't going to burn that on the altar, Yeah,

619
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: they were. They were too practical for that. Uh. Basically,

620
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 1: this is an origin story, a proposed origin story for

621
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: soap that would say that soap is essentially a byproduct,

622
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 1: and I guess like basically you would need enough of

623
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: that byproduct to be produced for people to realize that

624
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:34,399
Speaker 1: it had some sort of a useful property to it.

625
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,839
Speaker 1: Um Also, did we mention that there is no Mount

626
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 1: Tappo that's place, There's no there's no Mount Tappo, so

627
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: we can't even identify it on on a map, or again,

628
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:48,439
Speaker 1: there's no writings about it in the ancient traditions so

629
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,879
Speaker 1: it seems that there's not much evidence to really back

630
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: this up. It seems to be an altogether invented origin story,

631
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: perhaps even a straight up hoax. There another reason, though,

632
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good argument that this is

633
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: not actually the origin of soap, which is that we've

634
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: got literary references to soap that we'll get to in

635
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: just a little bit that are actually older than this

636
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: story alleges for the for the creation of soap. Yeah, exactly,

637
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: And I think that's going to be one of the

638
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: key factors here. Now, I do have to say it's

639
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible and within like generally within the history

640
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 1: of of humanity that things get invented and reinvented, that

641
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: the basic chemical properties in one like medicinal concoction in

642
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: one culture, uh, you know, that it gets reinvented somewhere else,

643
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: you know, accidentally or with some tinkering in another culture.

644
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 1: So that sort of thing is still possible, and I

645
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: guess we have to keep that in mind. But in

646
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: terms of saying where did it come from? When was

647
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 1: the first soap born to us? It definitely was not

648
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: born on this Mount Sapo three thousand years ago. Uh,

649
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: stuff that we can pretty accurately say is soap predates

650
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: it by quite a bit. Okay, I got a question. Yes,

651
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: we love to hear from Plenty on ancient substances. There's

652
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:06,359
Speaker 1: plenty of the elder right at all of soap. Oh,

653
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 1: he certainly does. Yeah, you know, if you know Plenty

654
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:11,440
Speaker 1: is going to talk about soap, if it if it

655
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: is it all around. Now, he does not mention mount sappo,

656
00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 1: which I think is another uh, you know, key fact

657
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 1: to keep in mind and certainly adds to our our

658
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: heap of evidence against the idea of that being an

659
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: accurate story at all. But he does mention the words

660
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: sappo as something the Galls used in their hair. And indeed,

661
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 1: there is another story that you sometimes come across, and

662
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: that's the idea that, uh that that you had a

663
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:41,359
Speaker 1: man in Gall discovering the properties of this sappo when

664
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: his hair dressing of goat oil and beech tree ash

665
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: got soaked in a rainstorm and formed a nice frothy ladder.

666
00:36:49,960 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 1: Now that that too, I don't know. That may be

667
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: an example that's partially invented just because it's sound. It's fun, right,

668
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: It's like oh by accident, my hair treatment has turned

669
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: into soap. But but soap does seem to come from

670
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: either the gall world sapo or from the Germanic saipa

671
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:10,360
Speaker 1: based on the sources I was looking at. Um, there

672
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:13,400
Speaker 1: are a couple of authors, Conkole and Rasmussen, and I'm

673
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: going to cite their full article, uh, just in a

674
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: little bit here. Uh. They mentioned that this soap in

675
00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: particular was probably tinged with plants to dye hair, and

676
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: this was then imported to Rome because Roman women really

677
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: coveted what they described as red gold coloration of the hair.

678
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: So we're imagining some sort of soap like hair treatment

679
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: that that is used to impart die to human hair.

680
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: And then yeah, it becomes a possible that people realize, oh,

681
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: this actually can be used for cleaning as well. Not

682
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,880
Speaker 1: to say this was the invention of soap, but this

683
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: could be an example, you could You can think of

684
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: this as an example of the sort of the reinvention

685
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: of soap or a particular substance becoming popular and it

686
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: has soap like properties that are then exploited. Additionally, the

687
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: Greek physician Galen, who lived through either one or to

688
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 1: sixteen see wrote of soap as well, saying it worked

689
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: as a better detergent than soda, and then it was

690
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 1: made from fat mixed with lie and quicklime. And he

691
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,359
Speaker 1: added that the best soap is dramatic because it is

692
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:22,240
Speaker 1: creamy and pure, but gal soap second best. Okay, here's

693
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 1: a quote from Galen. Quote. All types of soap can

694
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 1: severely loosen and remove all filth from the body and

695
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: from clothing. You can also dry things out in the

696
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: same manner as soda or foam of soda, and is

697
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: put in caustics. But I should add it is not

698
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: entirely clear that Gallen actually wrote this, as it could

699
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,399
Speaker 1: have been. We could have actually gotten this quote via

700
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: pseudo Gallenic medieval handbooks. So so again per potentially more

701
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: misinformation about where soap comes from. There's something about so

702
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: there's something about our need to explain the origin of

703
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: such an everyday substance and explain it with some sort

704
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: of a novel, fun little story. Yeah. I wonder what's

705
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: what is held in common by the types of inventions

706
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: where you know, there are tons of inventions that we

707
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: just don't know where they came from. And some of

708
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,240
Speaker 1: these get all these like, uh, these these false origin

709
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: stories and others don't. What what are the ones that

710
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 1: get the false origin stories have in common? Are they

711
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:23,880
Speaker 1: just the ones that maybe children are most likely to

712
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 1: wonder about and ask about? Yeah, where I was thinking,

713
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 1: perhaps they're sort of sidebars, like soap is so important,

714
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time, it's easy to imagine

715
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: if one were writing, like you know, people like plenty did,

716
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: if they were just writing about, you know, the general

717
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:41,479
Speaker 1: history and state of the world, if you just writing

718
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: about everything, you might be tempted to just sort of

719
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 1: speed through the soap section and be like, uh, yeah,

720
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,240
Speaker 1: it sounds like it came from some some gallic hair treatments,

721
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: something to that effect. But but I don't know, you know,

722
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: perhaps more has been written and said on this, this

723
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:02,799
Speaker 1: aspect of of human curiosity. But whether or not that

724
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 1: was actually a gallon that that we quoted their other

725
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,760
Speaker 1: Greek writers of the time did write about soap um

726
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,359
Speaker 1: and we we see this with with Roman writers as well.

727
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: Uh plenty of rights that soap is made from the

728
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 1: ashes of beech trees and goat fat, and that there

729
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:20,400
Speaker 1: are two types, thick and liquid, both kinds used in

730
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:24,800
Speaker 1: by a Germanic cultures. Plenty stated that the Phoenicians discovered

731
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: soap making in he gave the rough data six b C.

732
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: But when we actually look for the earliest evidence of

733
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: an actual soap like material, it certainly takes us back

734
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: further than that. Okay, let's hear about it. So basically

735
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: we can go back and we can look at Sumerian

736
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: clay tablets that date back to the third millennium BC

737
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: in the hit Type capital of bog Iscoy. And this

738
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 1: decided both in that paper by roth at All that

739
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 1: I already mentioned, as well as his paper by Conkole

740
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: and Rasmussen titled an a Cleaner Soap Production and Use

741
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 1: in Antiquity. This is published in Chemical Technology and Antiquity

742
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: in t all. Right, So what is the Sumerian clay

743
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 1: tablet's say? How how do we know that it's talking

744
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: about soap? It says with water, I bathed myself with soda.

745
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: I cleansed myself with soda from a shiny basin. I

746
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 1: purified myself with pure oil from the basin. I beautified

747
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: myself with a dress of heavenly kingship. I clothed myself. Ah,

748
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: so you're getting all the elements of soap. They're right.

749
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: You're getting water, you're getting the alkali and soda, and

750
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: you're getting the oil when it says oil. So if

751
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: you combine those things together, you can get a rudimentary

752
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: form of soap. Yeah and uh and this is from

753
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 1: a Sumerian clay cylinder found during the excavation of the

754
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: ancient city of Babylon from the R dynasty. Uh So

755
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: it is essentially sounds like a soap making process. Now,

756
00:41:55,360 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: there's also a roughly b c. E. Text concerning the

757
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: washing of wool, but according to Concho and Rasmussen uh quote,

758
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: details concerning the identity and contents of these tablets have

759
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: not been reported. Like in all of this, I guess

760
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,360
Speaker 1: you know, we're dealing with the fact that the history

761
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,959
Speaker 1: of soap is difficult to uncover, and this is something

762
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: that this worth keeping in mind. Here we're dealing about

763
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 1: finding written accounts of the physical soap, right because you

764
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: can't find fossil soap, right. Yeah. The authors here point

765
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: out that that first of all, ancient soap is difficult

766
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:32,359
Speaker 1: to study because it is organic and does not leave

767
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 1: behind direct archaeological evidence. In addition, organic residues can simply

768
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:41,919
Speaker 1: undergo suppontification and become soap or soap like without any

769
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 1: human chemistry actually interfering. So instead, the best we can

770
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:48,279
Speaker 1: hope for is a written record of it, especially in

771
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: the form of a recipe, and in that we deal

772
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: with all the normal problems of looking at the historical

773
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: record to understand human history, because it's a question of

774
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,080
Speaker 1: what was actually recorded, and then what was recorded in

775
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: a way that that could survive, and then what actually

776
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: did survive. You know, the point about natural suppontification happening.

777
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:10,240
Speaker 1: This ties into something we've talked about on the podcast

778
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: a couple of times, I believe, such as like the

779
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: soap corpses. One very famous example is known as the

780
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: soap lated that's housed at the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia,

781
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: which is what happens when people are buried in soil

782
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,359
Speaker 1: with a certain kind of soil chemistry and uh and

783
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 1: the lipids, the fat layers around the outside of their

784
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: body react with the chemicals in the soil to form

785
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:39,200
Speaker 1: a kind of entombment or encasement of soap around the

786
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 1: body as it decomposes. Yeah, so that's yeah, that's an

787
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 1: example there. Like nobody was making soap on purpose there,

788
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,719
Speaker 1: but sometimes soap happens. Likewise, nobody's nobody's trying to make

789
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 1: soap in the sewers with that's right, with the soap dragons, Yeah, yeah,

790
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: because yeah, you can imagine if potentially someone looking back

791
00:43:57,640 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: and they were like, well, they created this the aliens kind,

792
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: and they're like, they created this enormous system underground, and

793
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: it's so purpose seemed to be the construction of massive

794
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: pieces of soap. I mean, I guess that stuff isn't

795
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: technically soap. I mean it has soap like qualities, but yeah,

796
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 1: or I don't know is it technically soap. I don't

797
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: actually remember the answer to that question. It is soap

798
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: like in some ways at least Now, Conkol and Rasmussen,

799
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,840
Speaker 1: they they do point to this, this third dynasty of

800
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 1: or that's account as being quote a detailed economic account

801
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 1: of cloth manufacture, and this is what includes a recipe

802
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: for an impure liquid soap made from oil and potash,

803
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: and this is what he is generally and currently considered

804
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:47,279
Speaker 1: to be the oldest verified record of soap making. Now,

805
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: they point out that the soap is generally mentioned in

806
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: connection with medical writings in Mesopotamian cultures centering in on

807
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,799
Speaker 1: the diagnosis and prognosis of illnesses and the creation of

808
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: dorbal remedies that usually consist of a pharmacological ointment containing oil,

809
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:10,280
Speaker 1: plant matter, and various other substances. So they also point

810
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 1: to a Sumerian pharmacological tablet from from Nippur that is

811
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,839
Speaker 1: seemingly the oldest medical record of soap. But it's also

812
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: kind of deconstructed soap because the quote unquote ailing Oregon

813
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: is washed with a special solution, then rubbed with oil,

814
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 1: and then covered with plant ash. So it's kind of

815
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 1: like wait, wait, wait, what's the ailing or yeah, I was,

816
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:39,279
Speaker 1: I was wondering about that too. It brought some rather

817
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:44,439
Speaker 1: um specific ideas to mind. Apparently there's some uncertainty there,

818
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: but the authors later in the articles speculate that we're

819
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: talking about hands and feet, so organ used very loosely here.

820
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 1: It still makes me wonder. I mean, like, I know,

821
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:56,880
Speaker 1: in some ancient documents, like in some books of the

822
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:00,080
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible, I believe scholars speculate that references to the

823
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,879
Speaker 1: feet are often euphemistic references to the genitals. Yeah, well,

824
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,759
Speaker 1: and ultimately, hey, the genitals need washing too, and genitals

825
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: also suffer ailments both of the skin, uh and other varieties.

826
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: So I mean it's you know, we might snicker at

827
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: the idea of um, you know, old genitals, ailing genitals

828
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,280
Speaker 1: being washed with a you know, a medical semi magical

829
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 1: solution and ancient samaria, but I mean that's part of it,

830
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: you know, in the same way that we often think

831
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: of intestinal disruptions, you know, and um, you know, diarrhea

832
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: and the like. There's there's kind of a humor to

833
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: those those ailments, at least when we're not suffering them

834
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: ourselves or when they're not too severe. But you look

835
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 1: at say, you know, air vedic medicine, you look at

836
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: any medical you know, old medical practice, and there's a

837
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: lot of attention given to digestive problems. I mean, that's

838
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 1: just that's part of being human, and that's part of

839
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: our quest to to treat the ailments of humanity. M hm.

840
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 1: Speaking of diarrhea. While soap is is great for washing

841
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 1: the outside of your body, do not ingest it? Oh yeah,

842
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: we we. We were reminding my son of this several

843
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 1: months ago, maybe half a year ago now, and at

844
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: the same time, he was, as he is now, super

845
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,319
Speaker 1: into Harry potter. So he's into potion making. So when

846
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: we told him about this, he took this potion bottle

847
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: that he plays with the with the bat in the

848
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: bathtub and he filled it like mostly with soap, and

849
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: then he labeled it the diarrhea potion as one of

850
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 1: the worst potions in Snape's class. I completely flunked the

851
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 1: Diary of potion portion of the Snape semester that the

852
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,160
Speaker 1: Diary of potion is still in the bathroom. Um, maybe

853
00:47:43,200 --> 00:47:44,920
Speaker 1: I should take a picture of it and share it

854
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 1: with with people on the Stuff to Blow your Mind

855
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: discussion module on Facebook, because uh, yeah it exists, and

856
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:54,240
Speaker 1: you know what, it probably works. Probably works. I believe

857
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: in magic, alright. So back to kun Cool and Rasmussen.

858
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 1: Here they point to a few other examples that the

859
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: paper is is really good. It's worth looking at, uh,

860
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:06,840
Speaker 1: you know, looking at say some there's a for instance,

861
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:10,480
Speaker 1: a seventh century text of a private Acadian citizen. Uh

862
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:15,439
Speaker 1: that's describing using tamarisks, date palm, pine cone, and some

863
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: unidentified plant that is referred to as master call the

864
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:25,239
Speaker 1: quoting question, may the tamarisk whereof the tops grow high

865
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: cleanse me? May the date palm which faces every wind

866
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 1: free me. May the master call plant which fills the

867
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: earth clean me. May the pine cone which is full

868
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: of seed corns, free me. I carry a container with

869
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: an aqueous solution of mastercal plant to the gods of

870
00:48:42,520 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: the heavens, as I would bring forth to you for purification.

871
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: So will you cleanse me? It's another kind of magical

872
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: um uh you know, intonation of the of the the

873
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: substance that has been prepared. Uh So what are the

874
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:01,359
Speaker 1: authors that make of the mignificance of this? Like is,

875
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: why would this be a soap here? Okay, so they say,

876
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 1: quote the description of cleansing agents is quite interesting, and

877
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: that it contains ingredients that form the two components of soap.

878
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 1: The tamarisk, genus of a group of saline and alkaline

879
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: soil tolerant flowering shrubs native to raise in Africa, could

880
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: be a potential source of alkali along with the mastacol plant.

881
00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 1: Tamarisk is also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, when

882
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: the goddess nin son Gilgamesh's mother bathed ceremoniously in a

883
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 1: bath of tamarisk and soap work. The date palm, which

884
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: contains a number of fatty acids in both the seed

885
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: and the flesh of the fruit could provide the second

886
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:42,239
Speaker 1: component needed to produce soap. So again we're in the

887
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 1: zone of possible soap here. Again, the chemistry of soap

888
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 1: is certainly possible before that date we gave earlier in

889
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,240
Speaker 1: the third millennium BC. It's just a matter of finding

890
00:49:52,320 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 1: hard evidence for a hard records of it that we

891
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: can We can definitely point to um. Plus. You know,

892
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:02,720
Speaker 1: it does make as we've seen with the gall origin idea,

893
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: which again is much later in human history, that the

894
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: likely origin of soap might involve, you know, an adjacent

895
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:13,759
Speaker 1: area of health, hygiene, medicine or cosmetics, and these examples,

896
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:17,360
Speaker 1: and you could well imagine it's sort of being discovered rediscovered,

897
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: uh to, to varying degrees across different cultures. Uh So,

898
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:24,879
Speaker 1: I want to read just this nice closing from conk

899
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: Cool and rasmussin quote. The slightly complicated process of rendering

900
00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:31,719
Speaker 1: the fats and oils and combining with with alkali could

901
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,759
Speaker 1: not have been developed spontaneously. There must have been a

902
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: series of steps or procedures that slowly evolved, where each

903
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: step results in a process useful enough to be adopted

904
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 1: in its own right. One proposed sequence of development is

905
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:47,320
Speaker 1: that people use sand or ashes to remove the grease

906
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 1: from skin. If they rinse the ashes off with water,

907
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: the water and their skin would become slippery, which was

908
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: because of the dissolved alkali salts. This water would clean

909
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 1: better because the dissolved alkali reacts with grease, converting it

910
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:03,799
Speaker 1: into soap. The more grease that was was dissolved in

911
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 1: the solution, the better it cleans because more soap is formed.

912
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:10,480
Speaker 1: At some point the ashes were discarded and the solution

913
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:14,240
Speaker 1: from leech ed ashes or concentrated alkali salts were used.

914
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 1: That's very plausible route of development to me. That maybe

915
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: first you just had the oil as the contaminant itself,

916
00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: and then if you used ashes and the washing, it

917
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,359
Speaker 1: would naturally combine with the oils that you were trying

918
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,600
Speaker 1: to get off to make the soap. Uh and that

919
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 1: of course that would wash off much more easily because

920
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: it bonds with the water you're using to rinse. So yeah,

921
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:38,319
Speaker 1: I can definitely see something like that, maybe that like

922
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:42,240
Speaker 1: ashes from a fire pit or kind of the stepping stone. Yeah,

923
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: so so yeah, this is interesting to really sort of

924
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 1: you know, peer back through history and again, you don't

925
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: have that wonderful aha moment where where you suddenly have

926
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 1: something accidentally produced. Instead, it's it's something that develops out

927
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:59,040
Speaker 1: of these um, these hygienic practices and rituals. You know.

928
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: One of the funny things so that I was just

929
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: thinking about is that throughout history you would have had

930
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:07,800
Speaker 1: all of these uh, soap making industries that we're making

931
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 1: use of rendered animal fats, and I would guess that

932
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: a lot of the animal fats they were using were

933
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: probably not the ones that were like still freshest and

934
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:21,280
Speaker 1: best for I don't know, culinary uses or other types

935
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:24,440
Speaker 1: of uses. So I can imagine that the process of

936
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: making soap throughout history might often have been rather nasty

937
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: and stinky work. You know, what you're making is ultimately

938
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: the thing that that gets the gets the rich butts clean. Yes,

939
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:40,319
Speaker 1: so making does, even knowing you know a little bit

940
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 1: more about what goes into the into the sausages, it

941
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: does have this air of of sort of chemical nobility

942
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 1: to it right today, especially when you're dealing with with

943
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: with with with crafts people bespoke soaps and so forth.

944
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:03,399
Speaker 1: But yeah, which I made with rancid goat rancid goat

945
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,719
Speaker 1: fat is not used in the marketing enough, you know.

946
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: I always think back to those Irish spring commercials when

947
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:10,520
Speaker 1: I was a kid, where it's like, you know that

948
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 1: the manly Irish soap that is appears to just spring

949
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 1: forth from the earth. Uh. It's like some weird manna

950
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: that flows out of the uh you know, the mountains

951
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:25,319
Speaker 1: uh in Ireland or something. You know. Soaps another thing

952
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:29,160
Speaker 1: we've talked before about we're like products they get gendered

953
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 1: marketing and products that don't. Um and like, of course

954
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: soap is one of those that's so interesting, Like you know,

955
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,280
Speaker 1: there's feminine soap and there's masculine soap, and like why

956
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I mean, I mean obviously some

957
00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:45,799
Speaker 1: soaps are are more I guess, um, you know, more

958
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: durable than others, or more or harsher. Like I remember

959
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:53,319
Speaker 1: my my grandfather would always wash and lather up with

960
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 1: lava soap, which was one that was definitely gendered, you know,

961
00:53:57,560 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: but it was it was like a workman. So I

962
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:01,600
Speaker 1: guess they probab we still make it. I'm certainly not

963
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:03,480
Speaker 1: in the market for it, but it was a harsh

964
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 1: and abrasive bar of soap. It was the it was

965
00:54:06,480 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: the most masculine bar of soap imaginable. This will turn

966
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,880
Speaker 1: you into leather, it will make beef jerky out of

967
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:15,399
Speaker 1: your skin. Yeah, to just rip your skin right off.

968
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 1: And then, of course you see what the Irish spring

969
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 1: and there, I mean, there's I'm sure a plethora of

970
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:23,759
Speaker 1: different uh you know, masculine soaps out there. Uh. And

971
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:25,360
Speaker 1: then of course the reverse is true as well. You

972
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,400
Speaker 1: have something you know that lots of floral tones and

973
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,800
Speaker 1: are definitely going in the other direction. I don't know.

974
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: I'm more of the the gender neutral soap category. I

975
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:39,000
Speaker 1: like something uh, you know, nice uh and politely in between.

976
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:44,319
Speaker 1: So uh. Of course, it doesn't matter whether you use

977
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: masculine soap or feminine soap or gender neutral soap. It's

978
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:51,239
Speaker 1: very important that whatever kind of soap you use, you

979
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: wash your hands. And that's one of the reasons we

980
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:56,879
Speaker 1: wanted to do this episode today. Robert, you discovered there's

981
00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 1: actually a Global hand Washing Day. I didn't know about that. Yeah,

982
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:02,920
Speaker 1: this is this was news to me. October fifte is

983
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: Global hand Washing Day, and it was established by the

984
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 1: Global Handwashing Partnership in two thousand and eight. Uh quote

985
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:12,920
Speaker 1: The observance aims to increase awareness and knowledge of the

986
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:16,880
Speaker 1: benefits of handwashing with soap. I have been going, um, uh,

987
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: you know, certainly since its inception, I have not noticed

988
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:23,400
Speaker 1: uh this holiday. I have a feeling this October fift

989
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:27,919
Speaker 1: we might give it a little more attention. Yeah, and

990
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:32,399
Speaker 1: and certainly I do want to stress if it's masculine sop,

991
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:36,239
Speaker 1: gender neutral soap, you know, feminine soap, whatever, kids soap,

992
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: grown up soap, Use something you like. If if if

993
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:43,279
Speaker 1: if a certain branding or or fragrance or whatever, uh

994
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 1: makes you like it more or makes your your child

995
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,839
Speaker 1: like it more, go for it. That's my take on it. Uh.

996
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the Global Handwashing Day is coming up,

997
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:55,959
Speaker 1: and uh, I was looking into it, and I found

998
00:55:56,000 --> 00:56:00,440
Speaker 1: some wonderful stats via the CDC about just the the

999
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:05,080
Speaker 1: benefits of handwashing, specifically the benefits of hand washing education

1000
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:08,359
Speaker 1: within a given community. They point out that it can,

1001
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 1: first of all, reduce the number of people who get

1002
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:15,239
Speaker 1: sick with diarrhea by about twenty three to It can

1003
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: reduce absenteeism due to gastro intestinal illness and school children

1004
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:23,880
Speaker 1: by twenty nine to fifty seven percent. It can reduce

1005
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:27,400
Speaker 1: diarrheal illness in people with weakened immune systems by about

1006
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent, and it can reduce respiratory illnesses like

1007
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 1: colds in the general population by about sixteen to one. Yeah,

1008
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: and now one thing that's highlighted here is that hand

1009
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: washing is going to have different levels of effectiveness with

1010
00:56:42,120 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 1: different kinds of germs and diseases. I think one thing

1011
00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 1: that we should probably be clear about is that I

1012
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:51,319
Speaker 1: want to say, based on everything I've been reading, the

1013
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 1: primary route of transmission, for example, of the novel coronavirus

1014
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 1: is going to be probably through droplets dispersed directly for

1015
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: other people onto you. So stuff that you would receive,

1016
00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:06,960
Speaker 1: you know, from people talking or breathing, coughing, sneezing in

1017
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:09,879
Speaker 1: your presence. That's the primary route. But of course we

1018
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: we do think that a strong secondary route is you know,

1019
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 1: contaminated surfaces and and spreading through contact through the hands

1020
00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: touching the face. Yeah, I mean, that's why handwashing alone

1021
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 1: is not enough. That's why you know, early on in

1022
00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:26,840
Speaker 1: the pandemic here in the United States, it was there

1023
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:28,640
Speaker 1: was like this. There are a few days, maybe even

1024
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:31,880
Speaker 1: a week there where like every business just went crazy

1025
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: with hand sanitizer and handwashing, UH encouragement, you know, with

1026
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 1: just handwashing stations or or hand sanitation of stations everywhere.

1027
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 1: But then it quickly became you know, off hiss that

1028
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 1: that was that's only the secondary transmission. Primary transmission is

1029
00:57:49,040 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 1: going to be those droplets. Therefore social distancing is necessary,

1030
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:54,760
Speaker 1: exactly right. But of course you can see with many

1031
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: other diseases, especially a lot of diseases I think that

1032
00:57:57,040 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 1: affect the digestive system, like diarrheal diseases have a very

1033
00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 1: strong component of of you know, contamination delivered through the

1034
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,440
Speaker 1: hands to the mouth, all these fecal oral route diseases

1035
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:10,560
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, so even outside of COVID nineteen, there

1036
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: are plenty of fringe benefits UH to an additional you

1037
00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 1: know it benefits to doing all that hand washing. I

1038
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: found this interesting. I imagine other folks heard about this

1039
00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:24,720
Speaker 1: as well. But Dr Anthony Focci, the director of the

1040
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: National Institute of Allergy and Affectious Diseases, UH, an individual

1041
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:31,479
Speaker 1: everyone you know, is seeing a lot about week after week.

1042
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: He was talking to the Wall Street Journals podcast about this, UH,

1043
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: and he said, he's talking about like what happens when

1044
00:58:39,360 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 1: we we sort of begin to emerge from our current um,

1045
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:47,240
Speaker 1: you know, social distancing and uh and shelter in place

1046
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 1: uh requirements. He said. Quote when you gradually come back,

1047
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 1: you don't jump in with both feet. You say, what

1048
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 1: are the things you could still do and still approach normal?

1049
00:58:58,720 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 1: And one of them is absolute compulsive handwashing. The other

1050
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: is you don't shake anyone's hands. I don't think we

1051
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:09,160
Speaker 1: should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you,

1052
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 1: Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease,

1053
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: it would probably it probably would decrease instances of influenza

1054
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: dramatically in this country. But how will this be received

1055
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:23,960
Speaker 1: by the people who just love shaking hands? I say

1056
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: as a joke, because I assume nobody does. I mean,

1057
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:28,800
Speaker 1: I guess some people actually probably do enjoy it. I mean,

1058
00:59:28,920 --> 00:59:31,959
Speaker 1: I don't know does anybody except like the certain kinds

1059
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 1: of people who like to play some weird dominance game

1060
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: about it, does anybody else enjoy it? I mean, it's

1061
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 1: literally just a friendly greeting words are great, yeah and uh.

1062
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:44,840
Speaker 1: And like I was thinking of a little bit about

1063
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: this myself, because certainly the handshakes that I remember are

1064
00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: like the big dominant like hand crushing handshakes you encounter,

1065
00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:57,080
Speaker 1: and also the awkward like dead fish handshakes, and and

1066
00:59:57,120 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: even like a normal handshake is at least for me,

1067
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: kind of awkward. But I think part of it is

1068
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:03,760
Speaker 1: like you think about, you know, when do you hand

1069
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 1: and shake hands? When do you not? We tend not

1070
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:08,840
Speaker 1: to shake hands with our closest friends and co workers, etcetera.

1071
01:00:09,040 --> 01:00:12,520
Speaker 1: It's like new people. Uh. And that's part of why

1072
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: I mean that that flows right into a Dr Foxci's

1073
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 1: advice here. But I guess the other thing is we're

1074
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: often talking about kind of like business handshakes and that

1075
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 1: that level of stranger handshake. But then there are also

1076
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 1: the sort of handshakes that often take place and say

1077
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:33,040
Speaker 1: a communal church environment. So my initial response was yes,

1078
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: I hate business handshakes, but then I had to think, well,

1079
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: how about handshakes that take class place during the passing

1080
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: of peace in a church? And those so those are okay,

1081
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: those are nice. I like those that being said, Uh,

1082
01:00:44,920 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 1: I'm happy to leave those behind. Do something else instead.

1083
01:00:47,720 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 1: We can do the elbow bump thing we cannot do

1084
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: each other. There are tons of things we can do

1085
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:55,959
Speaker 1: and still have that communal experience. I want to see

1086
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: churches past the piece with a fist bump, because I

1087
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: was just looking at the study for the American Journal

1088
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: of Infection Control in by Sarah Miller and David E.

1089
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 1: Whitworth called the fist bump and more hygienic alternative to

1090
01:01:09,640 --> 01:01:13,760
Speaker 1: the handshake. They actually studied how much at like, what

1091
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 1: percentage of germs were spread by handshakes versus other types

1092
01:01:18,160 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: of greetings, including a high five and a fist bump.

1093
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: And what they found was that quote nearly twice as

1094
01:01:25,160 --> 01:01:29,280
Speaker 1: many bacteria were transferred during a handshake, and the mean

1095
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: here was one point to four times ten to the

1096
01:01:32,200 --> 01:01:37,560
Speaker 1: eight CFU. That's cfu means colony forming units compared with

1097
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: the high five, whereas the fist bump consistently gave the

1098
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:44,920
Speaker 1: lowest transmission. So I think, if you must touch fist

1099
01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 1: bump instead of handshake, especially, don't do prolonged handshakes. Um

1100
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:53,680
Speaker 1: This is the they measured that a strong handshake quote

1101
01:01:53,760 --> 01:01:58,240
Speaker 1: or a prolonged handshake is even worse than a moderate handshake.

1102
01:01:58,640 --> 01:02:02,600
Speaker 1: So like those ridiculously long handshakes that um uh. They

1103
01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:05,000
Speaker 1: you sometimes see the U S president engage in where

1104
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 1: like nobody's letting go, like where it's like the test

1105
01:02:07,120 --> 01:02:11,840
Speaker 1: of the test of will. That's just a natural way

1106
01:02:11,880 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 1: to to pass on various ailments or like the ones.

1107
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 1: Uh I think aren't there some of these in like

1108
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:21,000
Speaker 1: action movies like an Arnold Schwartzenigger movies like the beginning

1109
01:02:21,040 --> 01:02:24,920
Speaker 1: of Predator and caral weather Is they're just like holding

1110
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:28,960
Speaker 1: hands for several minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an iconic scene.

1111
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 1: It it's just so raw, the big muscles and all.

1112
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:34,960
Speaker 1: They not a good idea. But they both had diarrhea

1113
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:38,320
Speaker 1: for a week after that. Yeah, I mean probably just

1114
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:40,920
Speaker 1: that was that they probably were already happy they were

1115
01:02:40,920 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: in the jungle scenario right living off the land. Now.

1116
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:49,120
Speaker 1: I did notice that they point out a difference between

1117
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,520
Speaker 1: fist bump and prolonged fist bump. So it's like, I

1118
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: wonder it is a prolonged fist bump going to be

1119
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:56,560
Speaker 1: more like the snail or some of these these uh

1120
01:02:56,640 --> 01:02:59,320
Speaker 1: you know, these variations on the fist bump or or

1121
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 1: And then then also where does are they blowing it

1122
01:03:01,680 --> 01:03:03,600
Speaker 1: up at all? Is there they're doing the hand grenade?

1123
01:03:04,200 --> 01:03:06,560
Speaker 1: So many questions I would I would imagine the blowing

1124
01:03:06,560 --> 01:03:08,720
Speaker 1: it up is pretty safe. I don't think any germs

1125
01:03:08,720 --> 01:03:11,240
Speaker 1: are transferred during blowing it up. Yeah, as long as

1126
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:13,760
Speaker 1: it blows up quickly. Maybe that's the great thing about it.

1127
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:16,680
Speaker 1: The blowing it up is a way to remind ourselves

1128
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:18,480
Speaker 1: that we've got to keep this brief, because this hand

1129
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:24,080
Speaker 1: grenade is about to go off. Well, I will say

1130
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: my personal prejudice against hand shaking aside. If you're gonna

1131
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: be shaking hands, and make sure you wash your hands

1132
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 1: a lot, wash your hands before, wash your hands after. Yeah,

1133
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 1: And and use soap. Use soap, yeah, because soap again,

1134
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:41,680
Speaker 1: is a fabulous human chemical invention. It has a very

1135
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:45,640
Speaker 1: long history, a very fascinating history. So hopefully you'll all

1136
01:03:45,680 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: think this is something you can think about during those

1137
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: twenty plus seconds that you wash your hands. Totally. All right,

1138
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:53,959
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go ahead and close it up there.

1139
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:57,160
Speaker 1: You know, obviously there's there's more we could have gone into,

1140
01:03:57,240 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 1: and you know, in terms of certainly the more recent

1141
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:03,040
Speaker 1: history of soap, uh and and so forth. But but

1142
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,400
Speaker 1: really I think that the ancient history here and just

1143
01:04:05,440 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: the basic basic understanding of how soap works were the

1144
01:04:09,400 --> 01:04:12,760
Speaker 1: most important things to focus in on. In the meantime,

1145
01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:14,840
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

1146
01:04:14,880 --> 01:04:17,560
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to

1147
01:04:17,560 --> 01:04:19,240
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That will lead you over

1148
01:04:19,280 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: to the I heart listing for this show. But you

1149
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:24,000
Speaker 1: can also find Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever you

1150
01:04:24,040 --> 01:04:27,400
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Just make

1151
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:31,120
Speaker 1: sure you rate, review, and subscribe. At least for the

1152
01:04:31,160 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 1: immediate future, we're planning to continue doing invention themed episodes

1153
01:04:36,000 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: on a periodic basis, So I don't think that's gonna

1154
01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:41,080
Speaker 1: be No, it's not gonna be weekly, but you know

1155
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:43,160
Speaker 1: it's I think it's gonna at least be monthly. That's

1156
01:04:43,200 --> 01:04:46,640
Speaker 1: my my gut. There's no real, uh you know, firm

1157
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:49,560
Speaker 1: schedule in place on that. But we love covering inventions,

1158
01:04:49,600 --> 01:04:52,920
Speaker 1: we love covering human techno history, so we will continue

1159
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:54,960
Speaker 1: to do so we'll do when we feel like it,

1160
01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:57,120
Speaker 1: and we feel like in an awful lot, I'd say

1161
01:04:57,240 --> 01:05:01,640
Speaker 1: yeah anyway, huge Thanks to our ex audio producer Seth

1162
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:03,960
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1163
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

1164
01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1165
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff

1166
01:05:12,560 --> 01:05:23,080
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

1167
01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:26,040
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

1168
01:05:26,040 --> 01:05:28,120
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app,

1169
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:42,439
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.