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