July 30, 2020 • 49 mins
Soap is a miraculous substance – and mysterious too: we have no idea how humans first figured out to make it. We lived with soap for millennia before we thought to use it to wash ourselves with it, but once we did a love affair with cleanliness was born.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello friends, we have a book coming out finally and
it is awesome. You're gonna make me say the title again. Yeah, fine,
it's Stuff you Should Know colon An Incomplete Compendium of
mostly Interesting Things. And get this chuck. You don't have
to wait to order until the book comes out. You
can do what we in the book biz called pre
(00:21):
ordering it, and then when it does come out, you'll
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and not only that, you get a pre order gift.
You get this cool custom poster from the illustrator of
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was just a big team effort and it's really really cool.
(00:43):
We love how it's turning out. Yeah, we do. So
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the Stuff you Should Know colon An Incomplete Compendium of
mostly Interesting Things, and then after you do you can
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com and upload your receipt and get that order poster.
So thank you in advance for everybody who is pre ordering.
(01:04):
That means quite a bit to us and we appreciate you.
Stuff you should read books dot Com pre order Now,
welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck, Brian over there,
(01:27):
and Jerry flitted in and out like a little COVID
ferry and uh, this is this is stuff you should know.
I don't think you want the COVID ferry to visit. Uh,
how about the COVID safety Faery. You want the soap ferry? Yeah,
because the soap faery can take on the COVID ferry
and smack that bword down. Yeah. And more specifically, it
(01:52):
can pry it open and say, spill out your guts, yeah,
correct virus. It's pretty amazing what it does. I mean,
like soap just just from like just this research. I'm
just fascinated with it. It's a magical potion. And I
think the fact that like we have no real clue
how we figured out how to make soap is just
(02:14):
makes the whole thing even that much more delightful. Yeah,
and knowing how it actually works is really neat. And
hopefully this convinces some people that it does work better
than hand sanitizer. Yeah, rather than just running your your
hands under some water for half of a second then
wiping them on your shirt. Yeah. So um, and we
are talking about soap and I want to choke. Before
(02:36):
we started, want to give a special shout out to
Dr Brauner's because they are soap makers and they also requested,
um this this episode years ago. Yeah, they rode in
and said, hey, here's some free samples. How about an
episode on soap? And we said, okay, we can't be
bought with free samples, but an episode of soap is
(02:58):
a good idea. So finally we're getting around to it. Yeah,
and we had their uh big Jumbo daddy uh liquid
casteel soaps by our sink here at work. Remember we
had that that Casteel soap fight, the Great cast Steel
Soap Fight of of of the Odds. Yeah, twelve. No,
(03:19):
they're stuck good. And you know, if it wasn't for
the fact that my wife makes soap, then I would
I would be firmly on the Dr Brauner strain. I
like their stuff. I feel like you can do both. Now. No, okay,
Emily wouldn't allow that she's like you, it's never me. Well,
I mean how about this. Tell you mean to open
a business for twenty years and then say, I feel
(03:42):
like I might like to use your competitors some as well. Okay,
all right, all right, but I'll bet the people that
Dr Brauner's use Emily soap. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe
let's find out. Maybe they can write in so um so. Yes,
Emily does make soap too. She sells it at I
Love your Mama dot Com, don't she? Yeah? I mean
I haven't had to buy soapen and fifteen plus years,
(04:04):
it's been great. Do you help out making the soap
I did in the early days. I've made quite a
few batches in my day, but just not anymore. What's
your specialty? Uh? Well, I mean I didn't have a specialty.
I would just make whatever she told me to make.
I got. It's funny, I've got I have to make
genitals soap again. God, And that's not so for the genitals.
(04:26):
It's soap in the shape of genitals and also for
the genitals. Sure, I guess you probably shouldn't really make
a distinction there. So, like we said, soap is kind
of magic. Chuck and I feel like we just kind
of off the bat talk about, um, why it's magic,
because it's one of those things where science can explain it.
(04:46):
But that doesn't really make it any less impressive, you know.
Actually it makes it kind of more impressive, to tell
you the truth. Yeah, and you know, what soap is
is just a couple of things. Like if you were
to go back a long time and we'll talk about
the history, or go out in the middle of the
furthest reaches of oh, I don't know, the jungle where
(05:06):
people are sort of making their own versions of soap.
You really just need a couple of things, which is
some sort of a fat or an oil and an
alkali and uh, that's really it. You know, people can
use a lot of people through history have used animal
fats and stuff like that. Obviously, Fight Club had the
big joke about using lard from liposuction large I think, right,
(05:30):
so that's fat too. But um, you know, Emily's is
an olive oil based oapen. I'm a big fan of that. Yeah. Yeah,
they figured out finally you could you didn't need to
sacrifice goats anymore. You could just use s right. Yeah,
the same ceremony it's just dinkier, that's right. So, Um, yeah,
that's I mean, that's all there is two and an
(05:51):
alkali in this case, Um, it's a well. An alkali
in every case is a type of base. Um. It's
the opposite of an acid on the p H scale,
has a high pH and usually traditionally when making soap,
it comes in the form of lie and and lie
you can get by chopping down some wood, specifically hardwood
(06:11):
you don't want softwood, burning it, taking the ashes, boiling
them and then scraping off what floats to the top.
You have lie right there, and that's one of the
two main ingredients along with fat, like you said, um,
and in making soap, that's it. That's all there is
just to soap, right. But it's so you would have
(06:31):
like you would never put those two things together that
it's almost like it makes more sense how we figured
out how to make alcohol, and it does how we
figured out how to make soap, you know what I mean.
It's not very intuitive, No, it's not at all, But
that is what soap is. And we've been making it
for at least about forty hundred five thousand years as
(06:52):
we'll see. Um. But before we get to the history, Chuck,
let's talk a little bit about how the whole thing works. Okay, Yeah,
So you know you've got water and that's a key
component to washing your body. And if you've ever heard
the term oil and water don't mix, that's true because
it's all about you know, it goes down to a
molecular level and water molecules they like each other a lot,
(07:15):
but they don't like oil. They don't like fat because
the oil molecules are big and they don't have these
poles that have different electrical charges. And it really is
interesting that it comes down to literal chemistry in this case. Yeah.
Do you remember, I think in our pepper spray episode,
we explained why if you rinse your face off with
water after you've been pepper sprayed, Um, it doesn't work.
(07:39):
It's because the water and the I think the cap
sasan don't bind together. But if you use something like milk,
like a fat, that fat binds the cap sasan. So
that's why you'd want to use milk to wash your
eyes out after being pepper sprayed. Yeah, yeah, the end.
So um, there's a very similar thing going on with
water water, Like you said like to bind to itself,
(08:01):
and that binding chuck is what it counts for surface tension,
which is how you can fill a glass of water
up with water slightly over the rim of the glass
and it will hold its shape. It's because water molecules
are so attracted to each other that they form like
basically a well, a tense surface. Hence surface tension. So
(08:22):
when you add soap, things change. Soap comes along and says,
I see what you like, see what's going on here,
but I'm going to shake things up a little bit. Yeah,
And it's it's so cool because soap basically gets oil
and water to party together. Uh. Soap comes in. They
have these pin shaped uh ends and each end and
(08:44):
it's it's almost like it was meant to be this
way or something. They have very distinct ends and they
bind with the water on one side and the oil
on the other as if it was just made to say,
you guys need to get together and clean things. Yeah.
But not only do they like bind with the water
on one end and oil and the other end that
they have like polar opposite ends as a single soap
(09:07):
molecule does. So not only does like the end like
to bind with oil, which means it's oleophilic. It hates water,
which makes it hydrophobic. And because that end is hydrophobic,
it does everything it can to get away from water,
including pushing through water and separating water into its constituent molecules,
(09:29):
which loosens that surface tension of water um, which makes
soap a surfactant, a surface active agent, which means that
it makes water a little more permeable, like water can
get into tinier cracks and crevices than it normally would
because that that um hydrophobic end of the soap molecule
(09:49):
is keeping the water from from coming together because it's
just plowing right through trying to get away from the water. Yeah,
that's the tail end. The head end of the soap
has a little bit of a negative charge, and that says,
all right, I really want to bond with that positive
hydrogen atom and water. So that made makes it hydrophilic.
So that end loves water, the other end loves the oil,
(10:13):
and and and when they come together. And I love
the way Dave Verus put it. He said, Uh, the
hydrophilic head and the hydrophobic tail act like a team
of bouncers that's around the particles, uh, and say get
out of here. And I think the one thing we
didn't mention that makes us all work is the fact
that uh. And the reason why just rinsing your hands
off doesn't work as well as with soap is that
(10:34):
all those all the dirt and all that stuff that
builds up on your body has oil in it, right, right,
So so let's let's give an example here, Chuck. Let's
say that you have some cake frosting on your hands.
Don't ask, well, you just you know how you take
care of that. Yeah, but you've licked it so so
much so that now it's kind of getting gross, okay,
(10:55):
and you just need to You finally reached that point
where you need thought you're gonna suggest washing that off
of your hand, right, Okay, No, not that, No, that
we're past that stage, the licking stage, and we're at
the hand washing stage. Now. When you when you wet
your hands with water, you get it nice and primed.
Then when you add soap and you lather the soap up,
what you're doing is you're you're introducing those soap molecules,
(11:16):
which are again special magic little molecules, into this You're
creating like a solution of soapy water solution, and so
those soap molecules are basically trying to get away from
the water on one side, and on that side they're saying, oh, hey,
a little bit of oily hydrogenated cake frosting, great, I
(11:36):
want to be attracted to you. And a bunch of
different soap molecules are going to do that to a
single little particle of cake frosting, and they essentially surround it.
So the tail ends of a bunch of different soap
molecules are all pointing inward, enveloping basically a little particle
of cake frosting, and then on the outside they're connecting
(11:57):
to the water molecules that are surrounding that. So that's
basically stage one, and the cake frosting starts to sweat
a little bit. It's like, well, what's gonna come next?
What's coming next? I don't really like being surrounded like
this without knowing what's coming next. And the cake frosting
doesn't want to know what comes next because it doesn't
pan out well for it. Yeah, so it gets surrounded
(12:18):
and like you said, the tails are pointing in, the
heads are pointing out, and it surrounds and basically traps
the dirt and the oil and what are called my
cells am I C E L L E S. And
that's a little bubble around the dirt basically, and all
those little little outside pointing heads lift that dirt from
(12:40):
the surface and all of a sudden it's floating around
a little bit now and not not bound to your skin.
He's like, I don't know what's happening. And that's where
your good friend water comes in to just wash it
all down the drain. Yeah, Because so remember um, in
addition to being oleophilic where it's attracted to oils, it's
also a surfactan, so it breaks water molecules up, which
(13:02):
means that that water can get into smaller crevices, for example,
underneath that piece of cake frosting, So it makes it
easier for it to just get carried away too. So
it's all just kind of coming together into this amazing
little process that happens every time you wash your hands
and form those little mice seller bubbles. Um. That's where
(13:22):
all those particles go. They just get carried off thanks
to these soap molecules surrounding them, connecting with the water
molecules and then just getting rinsed away. It's kind of like, um,
you know that scene in True Lies where Jamie Lee
Curtis is hanging from the helicopter and Arnold Schwartzeneger is
holding onto her, and he's actually holding on the helicopter.
(13:43):
So Arnold Schwarzenegger is the soap molecule, Jamie Lee Curtis
is the cake frosting, and the helicopter is the water
that's rinsing it all away down the drain, that's right,
and the dirt saying I'll be back, and the sub
saying no, you won't. Terrible the face of us retort
to I'll be back. And the coolest thing about all
(14:04):
of this, I mean, that's just how it takes care
of the dirt on your body, which is amazing in
and of itself. But it can do the same thing
with viruses and bacteria, especially well, not especially, but including
the coronavirus, because a lot of these things have this
double layered lipid membrane, including the coronavirus, and the deal
with that that hydrophobic into the soap. It's really really sharp,
(14:26):
and so it can actually you get a bunch of
those guys together, and it can wedge in between those
membranes and kind of if you get enough of them
pried up like it's a crowbar or something. And then
that's when the virus is all of a sudden, you know,
like Arnold Schwarzenegger just taking care of business. Yeah, it
basically gets ripped apart by so many let's like death
(14:47):
by a thousand paper cuts. But instead of paper, it's
soap molecules, and the lipid memory that protects the virus
just gets torn right open. It fills the virus proteins out,
and those virus proteins actually um get enveloped by even
more soap molecules. So not only does it like get
rid of microbes, it actually like kills certain kinds of microbes.
(15:10):
Just we're just talking about regular plain old soap and
water here, everybody. Yeah, and you know, not to get
to ahead of the game, But that's why soap is
better for washing your hands during well, at all times,
but especially during a time like this, because I think
people just figure, like because we have this association with
(15:32):
like alcohol and that smell, like it just kills everything
on contact, but it doesn't kill everything on contact. And
if you're in a pinch and you don't have soap,
and you're at a store or something, and it's good
to have that stuff to use, but uh, it doesn't
necessarily kill it. And what you're not doing is washing
it off with water and down the drain. No you're not,
(15:54):
you're and so so there's two problems here. Um. Yes,
it killed a bunch of stuff, especially things that alcohol
and kill. But the stuff that it can't kill. You
just basically gave an alcohol bath too. And it's still
there on your hands. So when you do touch your
face again, inevitably, um, those things are going to be
introduced to your mouth, including things like poliovirus, which, as
(16:14):
we learned recently, you don't want to go into your mouth.
Should we take a break, I think we should, and
then what we'll come back and talk history maybe, yeah,
let's do it. Okay, all right, chuck, so soap. Like
(16:52):
we said, we're not entirely sure how we ever figured
out how to make soap, um, but we do know
from records, hieroglyphics, cuneiform tablets, all that jazz that um.
In Mesopotamia, people were making soap, you know, taking an
alkali and a fat, mixing them together, adding heat into
(17:16):
water and through hydrolysis, going through this process called supontification. Uh,
and producing soap. That's how you produce soap has to
have gone through supontification to be considered soap. Right that
we've been doing this, we humans for at least five
thousand years. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Uh. When I
was making batches of soap that I heard that word
(17:37):
a lot from Emily because I would you know, there's
a lot of mixing involved, and I would think I
was done with the mixing, and she say, it hasn't
supontified yet, And you know, it's just sort of an
easy test. You would lift the mixer out, kind of
sling a little bit of it on the surface, and
it's almost like seeing when a pasta noodles done. You
can just sort of tell by the way it's that,
the thicknesses and the way it sets, and when you
(18:00):
finally reach that suppontification point, you're you know, you're right
or rock. It's a great word, it is. I always
called it. I would always say that we're pulling into
suppontification station, which was my old joke. That's a good one. Um,
So suppontification actually, Chuck, I didn't realize that it was
from um uh legendary mythical mountain. Did you know that
(18:23):
Mount Sappo? Is that the Roman one? Yeah? Yeah, that's
the sort of the legend, and no one knows if
it's true, but it sounds it makes for a good story.
From what I understand, it is definitely not true, okay,
but it does make for a good story, so we're
gonna tell it anyway. So, yeah, in ancient Rome there
was a Mount Sapo, and as the legend goes, that
(18:46):
is not true. Ancient priests would sacrifice animals up there,
and when it would rain, that animal fat from that
disgusting animal sacrifice ceremony would flow down along with the
wood ash that you already mentioned and was the Alkali
and go down there to the river, the Tiber river,
and people were washing their clothes down there, and when
(19:07):
that happened, they would be like, man, this stuff sudds
it up in. My clothes have never been cleaner. Yeah
that's not just plain clean, Yeah, that's Sappo clean. Right,
So U we, from what I understand, there's just no
question that there is no such thing as Mount Sappo,
and that this is all just kind of a made
up the God I didn't know that that was fake.
(19:32):
The Mount Sappo was fake. I just thought the legend
was fake. I didn't like, are there Romans? Are they fake?
I don't know. The jury is kind of still there
are today, but we're not sure where they came from.
Um No, from what I From what I know, there's
not a real Mount Sapo. But the fact is the
Romans felt compelled for some reason to say, where'd this
(19:52):
come from? Oh well, let me explain with this made
up story. So um and by the time this Mount
Sappo a legend came around. I mean, people have been
making this stuff for a couple of thousand years already.
So it definitely did not originate a Mount Sappo because
there is no Mount Sappo. But we do know the
Romans were into it, not just from that legend, but
(20:12):
also plenty of The Elder mentioned it in his Naturalists
story of from seventies seven CE. You know what else
the Romans were into? Yeah, they were into a lot
of stuff. They're like, I got a great story for
you about the soap. Come on into this room with
these other thirty five people. Have you met my friend press.
(20:33):
I'll tell you all about it. You're gonna love him.
So they were definitely producing um what you would call
soap though by two b c e. That was from
Kurd and like goat fat and beech tree ash, and
they would clean stuff in towns with that kind of stuff.
They would wash their pots out. Other people would use
(20:54):
it to clean cotton to make textiles and stuff like that.
But it wasn't like, uh wasn't for personal use yet. No,
that was like the one thing in common is people
were using it for everything but washing themselves. Like I
don't know if it just didn't hit upon them or whatever,
but they didn't like Apparently the galls even used it
(21:14):
to slick their hair back, not to wash their hair,
just to slick it back and give it a nice
little reddish tint apparently. But the but Europe, so Europe
had like soap making guilds from I think the seventh century.
For for a very long time people have been making
soap in Europe. But it wasn't until after the Crusades
(21:34):
that some of the crusaders returned um, as the legend
goes in Mount mount Sapo style story, but they returned
supposedly with Aleppo soap from Syria, which is fragrance with
bay laurels, very nice, beautiful olive oil soap you can
still get today. But the story goes that the returning
Crusaders said, get this stuff. It's soap, but you use
(21:57):
it to wash your genitals and you're up. Started to
get very clean, at least like the elite aristocracy who
had the money to afford things like that got very clean. Well,
at least their genitals did, right, right. It took another
three years for something and be like, I wonder if
you could use this on your under arms as well, right,
And they went, what about your face or like, you
know where you've been washing with that stuff. It's true,
(22:21):
it's got hair on it to prove it. Oh dude,
that was too much for you. I don't know. I
didn't even use the word pubic here. I mean we
said the word genitals like five times. That's true. So
that was That was how Europe supposedly started to come
into soap. It was imported from the Middle East, but
(22:43):
um in very short order, I think Spain started making
castile soap um out of olive oil and it took
off in France and England and elsewhere, and again it
was a luxury item, but it was it became much
more widespread when Europe started making it themselves. Yeah, I
think the Castile region, right, didn't that where that came from. Yeah,
(23:03):
And as long as it's supposedly originally was made from
olive oil, qualified as a casteel soap. But even now
you can make casteele soap from like palm oil or
coconut oil or whatever, and it's still considered castele soap.
So I think it's just a free for all. Yeah. Um,
you know what I like about Emily's Liquid Soap and
(23:24):
the Doctor Brauners is that it's how liquid soap should be,
which is to say then, um, it's almost like has
the same sort of viscosity as water. Uh. And whenever
I see and I don't want to name like Slam
a name brand, but let's just say the very popular
hand soap that they've had around since the eighties, and
(23:46):
the way that stuff comes out all gooey and pearly,
it's just so gross, really, mother of pearly. It's really
nasty looking to me now that I've seen like good
real liquid soap. Yeah, so um. Yeah. And one of
the other things I like about ket steel stub with
um Dr Bruner's and Emilies in particular, is that your
hands feel washed afterwards to it doesn't feel like you've
(24:09):
missed any like there's a residue. It's like it's gone,
but it also has left behind like a clean feeling.
It's it's just its own thing for sure. Yeah. And
you know, since we're talking about this, I uh want
to say a huge thanks to people that went out
and bought stuff from her store after the Essential Oils episode.
UM We've given her plenty of shout outs over the years,
(24:31):
and there's always been a little little spikes in her business.
But I think the topic and small business and hurting
because of the coronavirus and everything kind of came together
and they've been overwhelmed with support and it's been really
really sweet and a little bit much even, but it's
been it's kind of like, be careful what you asked for,
you know, right. That's that's um and Buzz corporate buzz speak.
(24:54):
They say, that's a good problem to have. Yeah, So
if you're gonna order soap, just wait a week or two. Okay,
fair warning, everybody or just be prepared to wait a
week or two. In the back end, Hey, by the way,
you can also order something now too that you have
to wait for, and that would be our book, an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, which you can order
(25:15):
right now anywhere you buy books, and if you're lucky
enough to live in the United States and Canada currently,
you get a free poster as a gift or preorder. Wow,
that's that was a nice segue, my friend. Thank you
so for It took hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands
of years, Chuck, think about us, thousands of years after
the invention of soap before we finally started to use
(25:39):
it on ourselves. And then apparently it wasn't until after
the Civil War, at least in the United States that
that using soap really took off, and soap making and
the soap making industry became like kind of a thing
all around the same time. Yeah, like I think Ivory
soap was released in eight nine. Um, Paul Mallive was
(26:05):
released around the same time. And I never realized Paul
mall of soap is so named because it has palm
oil and olive oil in it. Did you know that
I didn't. But you know, I know those are two
potential soap ingredients, and palm oil is a little controversial
these days because of the way it's sourced. Yeah, and
you know, we don't have to go down that rabbit hole.
But just when you're shopping for stuff, just sort of
(26:28):
try and figure out where that stuff is coming from,
is all I'm saying. Um, and then let's see what else.
Life Boy, the one that Ralphie hated so much. I
was that Life Boy. Yeah, yeah, that one came out.
And what was remarkable about Life Boy, UM is that
it was Um. They were the ones who coined the
(26:50):
term body odor b O as part of a marketing
campaign to get you to actually buy in use soap.
I did not know that. I feel like we must
have talked about about that in our body Odor episode,
you know, I don't know. I do like that Little
Ivory story too, though. That Um. In eighteen seventy nine,
a soap maker at PNG made a mistake, as the
(27:10):
legend goes, and forgot to turn off the mixer and
then that whipped a bunch of air in there. This
is what happens when you over mixed something and uh
shipped him out anyway, because he was like, I don't
want to get, you know, pinned for this. And apparently
a lot of people wrote in We're like I love
that floating soap, and that was sort of always a
selling point for Ivory was that it floats. Yeah, and
(27:34):
the moral of the stories that they fired him anyway
for withholding the information. That's right, Jimmy Ivory. Yeah, they
kept his name. He kept his name. Uh. And then
the hand soap uh. In eighteen sixty five, William Shephard
patented the first liquid soap, but it took all the
(27:54):
way until nineteen eighty when you know soft soap came around. Yeah.
And here's the thing. Did you know the story from
the Minnetonka Corporation. I didn't previous to reading this. This
is so great. So the Minnetonka Corporation are the ones
who debuted soft soap. And before then it was like
you have bar soap, that was your option. But in
(28:15):
Night they said, we're gonna release this and I think
it's going to be a big deal. So we're gonna
go around and buy up all of the the soap
pumps that anybody could possibly use, and they cornered the
market on liquid soap, just from buying up all the
soap pumps. You think that's a good thing before they
release as far as like from the lens of a
(28:37):
robber baron. Okay, it's a great thing. It's like it
seems like a jerk move to me. At the very least.
It's a good story, you know. And everyone they talked
to you, they were like, oh, no, go out and
make liquid soap. What you're gonna put it in? Yeah?
What are you gonna do? Deliver it by hand to
people and just be like here, hold your hands, to
cut your hands. We'll give you some of our liquid soap.
You gotta wrap in paper. I don't think so it's true.
(28:59):
Oh and speaking you wrapped in paper, I have one
more little piece of lower soap. Lower. Do you ever
use Irish spring? I did in college. Okay, yeah, that's
the appropriate time to use Irish spring. Father um. Do
you know that scent? There's actually a name for it.
It's not like publicly named, but internally I think Colgate
palm Olive. It's called Ulster scent Ulster fragrance um. And
(29:25):
when they came out with Irish Spring, it wasn't debuted
in Ireland. No one in Ireland invented it. It was
actually invented in Germany in nineteen seventy and then it
made its way to the United States in nineteen seventy two,
and initially for the first like decade that Irish Spring
was around. On the package it said a manly deodorant soap.
(29:48):
How interesting for men. They couldn't call it German spring either,
because that sounds like some kind of Nazi offensive or something.
They they called the Irish Spring, but in German. Remember
how it's pronounced. M hmmm, I don't remember that one.
You can't put two and two together from that. No, ye, Well,
(30:10):
I'll see if I can find it while we're still talking. Okay,
So should we talk about how you should wash your
hands since that's relevant? Yeah? I think so. And I
know we talked about this some on the COVID episode,
But um, I love the way that this doctor put it.
It was a health official. I think that said wash
your hands like you've been chopping jalapenos, and you need
(30:32):
to change out your contact lenses. That's a really great advice.
It was sort of like when we did this reminds
me of when we did poison ivy and they said
you need to scrub like there's grease, like auto black
auto grease on your body. Do you remember saying that? No,
I mean that that was just the advice from the
poison IVY episode. Okay, but that's what I'm saying, Like,
(30:53):
I don't remember giving that advice. I'm I'm impressed as
I remember that, because you gotta get that that the
poison of off your body and it's it's very greasy.
I got poison ivy again the other day. Man, It's terrible.
How bad. It was very concentrated in a small area
I think, on my genitals, on my ankle, around my ankle,
(31:15):
I think, but it was like um, but it was
just a study and self control not to touch it.
I had zero calumine lotion or anything like that that
I could use. It was bad. I officially get it now,
because I think when we recorded that I had not yet. Uh,
I didn't think I was allergic or whatever. But I've
(31:36):
since gotten it a couple of times, including a couple
of weeks ago, just like you. Wow, not much though,
just a couple of tiny little spots. Maybe yours was
sympathy poison ivy maybe because I had it, you know, yeah,
my genitals itched. Your genitals always itching sympathy from it? Oh? Man,
I think how many times have we said that? Now? Eight?
(32:00):
We should put in a little ding a buzzer or something.
Let's see we can get Jerry to do that. All right? Hey,
do you want to know what Irish spring is in German? Yeah? Irish? Sure? Freeling? Yeah,
all right? How is my German great? Is that how
you would say it? Irish? Er? I guess? So how's
(32:21):
it spelled? Just Irish with an e R no I
r I s c h. Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right, okay,
and then freeling there's even an oom laut I love
tho zoom outs. So do you want to take a
break and talk about how to wash hands? Or do
you want to wash hands and then take a break. Now,
let's let's take that break. Okay, everybody, we'll be right back.
(33:08):
All right, we're gonna wash our hands. We're gonna do it.
You gotta wet them, you gotta start with water, gotta
soap up, and then you gotta really start scrubbing, and
especially now these days when they've and this is just
you should just do this from now to the end
of time, now that we really know how to watch hands. Uh,
you know, scrub those palms, scrub the backs, getting between
(33:29):
those fingies, getting getting those fingy nails. Uh. They say
to seeing Happy Birthday a couple of times. Sure, if
you know them. Um, I like to use Uh, I'd
like to use really hot water just because it makes
me feel like I'm getting them cleaner. It hurts me,
does it really? Yeah? He's cold water? No no, no, no,
(33:51):
I'm crazy. Um, but I do like warm water, warm
towards the hot side, but definitely not hot like I
wouldn't care drives it as hot? Yeah, like it's so
hot it can barely stand it. Really? Oh boy? That
to me, it's just a shy away from that. Uh.
And here's something that I've been wanting to say for
(34:13):
a long long time because this has been one of
Emily's big uh sort of things. Is stuck in her craw? Is?
I guess that's not the right things. Something stuck in
your craw? No, that's not quite right, but you know
what I mean, A thorn in her side? Okay, I
could see both working. Is that antibacterial soap is not
(34:34):
more effective people it's not. It's not it's not. No,
And in fact, it's actually kind of harmful in the
larger scheme of things. But it doesn't do anything that
soap can't do. No, you're falling for some marketing gobbledegook.
Stop it. And I mean it makes sense. You would
think like, Okay, I'm washing my hands, but I'm also
(34:55):
washing my hands with something that has an antibacterial agent,
and so it's killing stuff. And yes, it kills some things,
it's true, um, But the problem is is the stuff
that it doesn't kill stays around and evolves to be
resistant to those anti bio bacterial agents, right, And the
problem is that those same bugs aren't just on your
(35:16):
hands and don't just encounter soap. We use antibiotics against them,
but if they've learned to be resistant from soap washing
by you know, billions of people every day, um, it
makes it way harder to kill them with antibiotics. And
so they finally figured out that some of the antibiotic
resistant bugs that we were starting to see, we're basically
(35:39):
in training through antibacterial soap. And eventually the I think
the f d A band two of the ingredients that
that were commonly used in antibacterial soap. Right, Yeah, they
ban tri closen and triclocarbon and said use regular soap. Everybody.
The FDA said that it's not just me talking no,
And I mean, it's because is it that that regular
(36:01):
soap does all the same things that that anti bacterial
soap does too? And I have to say chuck. So
we're talking about handwashing. One of the things that I
found astounding in all this is that so handwashing is
so prevalent now, but it's not like it was anything
new when the when the COVID pandemic came around, right,
(36:21):
But apparently it's still relatively new as far as handwashing
guidelines go. That wasn't until the eighties that the CDC
issued their first handwashing guidelines, and that was for hospitals.
Hospitals didn't have handwashing guidelines issued by the CDC until
the eighties. Isn't that astounding? It is? But I wonder
if that was just because they were like, uh, duh everybody,
(36:45):
and then someone said, well, you should probably just codify it.
I don't know. I saw that it was in response
to some hospital acquired infection outbreaks. So maybe the CDC
was like you know this right. And it turns out
that hospitals like no, not really yeah, very interesting, doctors
were walking around touching their genitals and doing surgery. Yeah.
(37:11):
So here's another thing. Liquid soap versus bar soap. You
would think that, and I think a lot of people
may be disgusted by bar soap that other people use,
especially when they're hairy. But they have done studies. They
did a study in nineteen sixty five where they contaminated
uh the hands of the researchers with five million bacteria
(37:35):
and then had them wash their hands and then had
other people afterward, and found that the bacteria was not
transferred to the second user. Uh. This was confirmed in
with another study. Uh. And what they came the conclusion
they came to basically is there could be some surface
bacteria on a bar soap that's just left out like that,
(37:55):
but it definitely doesn't transmit infection. Huh. Well why wouldn't it,
I don't know, because they soap. They just showed that
it didn't. Huh. Yeah, they showed that it didn't transmit infection.
And I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's uh the
properties of the soap at work, or maybe it just
doesn't live that long on on a surface like that.
(38:17):
I could see that. I could see soap not being
a very hospitable surface for microbes. But when I do
pick up bar soap in the shower, like I always
give it a rints off first. You get it wet,
get thee get the layer of gunk off first. You know, Yeah,
that's true. Um, And I think I think people probably
would be grossed out if public restaurants just had a
(38:39):
bar soapen there. But it's it's not gonna get you sick.
But but I get it. You know, you have those
pumps of individual soaps. I get it. It's true. Plus
also usually when you encounter liquid soap um it has
like other stuff in it that maybe moisturizes your hands
or does your things that a bar soap might not.
(39:02):
What's the deal with detergent so here's the thing. Most
of the stuff that you have in your bathroom right
now that you consider soap are actually detergents. A detergent
is simply a synthetic soap. The only way for something
to qualify as a soap is for it to have
gone through supontification station. CRU's right past. I'm glad this
(39:26):
came up because Uh, Emily came through when I was researching, researching,
and she's like, you know, soap isn't even soap anymore.
She's like, they can, they can call it soap legally,
but it's not even soap. Yeah. So, so you've got
your fats and you've got your um alkaline, and you
put them together and they undergo supontification, and you have soap.
(39:47):
If you don't start with fats and alkalines and they
don't undergo spontification, you have something that does the same
thing and in many cases is even more desire, has
more desirable traits than just natural soap. But it's just
not soap. It's a detergent. And the first detergents, and
plenty of detergents still around today were derived from um
(40:10):
synthetic chemicals that came from petroleum. Actually, yeah, because the
deal was is once they figured out soap many many
years ago, they just washed everything with soap, uh, clothes
and your dishes, and they would clean floors and it
was you know, it's that's not what it was made for.
So it would leave a residue. It's called soap scum.
(40:33):
And especially when it's mixed with hard water, if it's
really high in mineral salt, magnesium and calcium, it's gonna
make a lot of soap scum. And it was a
big problem back in the old days when it would
be left over on your kitchen floor or you know,
big time on your washing machine. Yeah, well that was
a big, big problem because washing machines came out before
laundry detergent did, and it could really gum up the
(40:56):
works when you had a soap scum layer that was
hard as concrete on that's right. But detergent it's solved
all that it did um because detergent doesn't leave soap
scumb because it doesn't interact with calcium and magnesium in
hard water, which made it vastly preferable to use for laundry,
which is by the first detergents that they ever came
out with were laundry detergents, and specifically, from what I saw,
(41:19):
the first detergent was draft in, which is still around today.
You can get draft really yeah, yeah, it's still very
much around and in Canada it's called ivory snow because
Canadians just weird with everything. I've heard of Ivory Snow
didn't giving draft everything. Well, Draft came around and that
(41:41):
handled like pretty decently soiled things, but nothing nothing too heavy.
Uh And so was it the same company that went
on to create Tied. I'm pretty sure it was Procter
and Gamble that did Draft. Did they do Tied? To
mm hmm. I want to say yes, I want to too,
but I don't want to get it. Would actually go
(42:02):
with yes, okay. Uh. The next one, yeah, the next
big one in three was Tied, and that was a
combination of these synthetic surfactants and something called Builders, and
the Builders kind of worked in concert with the synthetic
surfactants to just kind of get out tougher stains. And
(42:22):
in nineteen forty six they brought it onto the test
market as a heavy duty detergent. Everyone loved it and
it's this is kind of cool, but where did you
get this? Actually, this piece, I think that one was
from Thought Company. And I also want to give a
shout out to another Thought Company piece that was written
by an historian named Judith Ridner who gave us a
(42:43):
lot of the history stuff too well. Tide has tried
to improve it a lot over the years, and has
not stopped. And it says that each year they basically
try and duplicate mineral content of the water in all
parts of the US. Like what what? What are all
the kinds of water that we have in the United States?
(43:03):
And let's do fifty test loads with tie just to
make sure we're still up to snuff. Yeah, every year,
fifty thousand test loads. Imagine being the person in charge
of that laundry, wouldn't you just go just totally out
of it? Pretty bad? Fifty thousand. I wouldn't make it
to fifty. Yeah, Undy taking a stand against laundry um.
(43:31):
Although I have to say so. One of the things
we're talking about castile soap um in addition to just
being soap, it doesn't it's known to do a lot
of stuff, and one of the things supposedly is laundry.
So I did a test on a grease staying on
some shorts with some cast steel soap, and I will
report back eventually to let you know if it worked. Okay,
(43:51):
where was treated? It on the leg? Not too far
from the genitals. Now that you mentioned ding ding so
um so a detergent again, it's just a synthetic a
synthetic soap and it doesn't do anything differently. But the
reason why companies preferred detergents is because they can control
(44:13):
it a lot more. It's something that they create themselves.
They don't have to rely on nature. They don't have
to keep um a high priest on the payroll to
oversee the goat sacrifices to get the tall. Oh, it's
just a lot easier to control from beginning to end. Um.
The problem is is a lot of times some of
those stuff, some of those um synthetic detergents can be
(44:35):
um harsh on your skin. Yeah, they can dry things out,
It can be irritants for sure. If you have xema,
that's that's definitely something that you might or dermatitis. And uh,
Emily has had a lot of success with people that
specifically use her soap because it's real soap and they
had excellent skin problems and that really helped it out. Yeah. Yeah,
(44:57):
because I mean, like even soap haz it's high on
the on the pH scale, higher than natural skin pH,
but it's usually much lower than say like a detergent.
The thing is is modern chemistry and modern soap bank
and can can adjust things as needed to make things
easier on your skin for sure. Yeah, and those detergents
aren't great for getting that that gray water getting into
(45:20):
the eventual fresh water supply. It's no good for animals
and fishies especially no supposedly you know how soap surfactants.
Detergents are as well, which means that they break the
surface tension of water, which makes it easier for for
fish to um absorb all the gunk that we put
in the water. Along with detergents too, so it's bad
(45:43):
on that side. And it also stretches out and breaks
through their the membrane that keeps them gooey, which is
not good for fish either. It's no good fish just
need to use soap. I don't know what their problem is.
Get clean you and smell so fishy? Right? Have you
got anything else about soap? Got nothing else? Use it? People?
(46:06):
Wash your hands a lot, yep, wash your hands. Everybody
say you're abc, say happy birthday twice, but really get
a good latherer going and wash them a lot. Okay, Okay,
And since we said okay a couple of times and genitals,
god knows how many times, it's time for a listener
to me, I'm gonna call this hot off the presses. Uh.
(46:27):
You guys don't know this, but we are playing it
dangerously close here lately with our recording schedule, too close
for our comfort. So things that we're recording are coming
out days later, and that means the corrections are coming
just days later. So this was about the recently released
Billy the kid Win. Hey, guys, love the show. It
seriously keeps my work day interesting. Just listen to the
(46:49):
ability to kids short stuff and really enjoyed it. But
I thought i'd share a tidbit of info. You mentioned
that Billy went to slice up a bit of yearling.
Uh a k A horse meat for most coital snack.
I'm from Wyoming and my family raised his horses as
well as beef and show cattle. I just thought i'd share.
In the livestock industry, technically almost all live stock is
(47:11):
a yearling once they've hit a year of age, especially
especially common to call younger butcher cattle yearlings. Um. And
then I looked up the movie The Yearling. Remember that
it's about that little baby deer. So oh, I thought
that was about a horse too. I think it's about
a deer or at least there's a deer on the cover. Well,
(47:31):
that's probably about a deer. That very misleading of it.
Was it either that or like the person who was
in charge of the cover design didn't bother to read
the book. Well, Jewel says this. While it's very possible
it was a horse, because people did eat horses back then.
Yearling horses have don't have much meat on them, so
unless the family was really starving, it's unlikely they butcher
(47:51):
a horse that young for dinner. More than likely, Billy
was carving up a little bit of beef. Okay, that
makes a little more sense. But is this from Jewel?
Did you say as a Jewel? The singer, well, it's
from a Jewel. I don't know if I don't think
it's No, it's not because I'm looking at the last
name now, Okay, I don't know what Jewel's last name is.
I didn't even realize she had a last name. I
(48:12):
want to say it's Cuture or something like that. Okay, Well,
either way, she's great because I was listening to some
of her old stuff not too long ago for SERI reason, yeah,
and I was like, this is still really good music. Okay, Yeah,
give Jewel a listen, Chuck, I think you'd be like
Josh is right. Well, thank you Jewel for writing though. Yeah,
(48:33):
thank you other Jewel for writing in And if you're
the same Jewel, I'm onto you. If you want to
get in touch with this, like Jewel did, you can
send an email. Like Jewel did, go ahead and send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
(48:54):
How Stuff Works for more podcasts for my heart Radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where
ever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello friends, we have a book coming out finally and
it is awesome. You're gonna make me say the title again. Yeah, fine,
it's Stuff you Should Know colon An Incomplete Compendium of
mostly Interesting Things. And get this chuck. You don't have
to wait to order until the book comes out. You
can do what we in the book biz called pre
(00:21):
ordering it, and then when it does come out, you'll
be the first to get, or among the first. Well,
and not only that, you get a pre order gift.
You get this cool custom poster from the illustrator of
the book, Carli Manardo, who is awesome. We worked with
another great writer who helped us out with this thing
a great deal. His name is Nils Parker, and it
was just a big team effort and it's really really cool.
(00:43):
We love how it's turning out. Yeah, we do. So
anywhere you can buy books, you can go pre order
the Stuff you Should Know colon An Incomplete Compendium of
mostly Interesting Things, and then after you do you can
go on over to stuff you Should Read books dot
com and upload your receipt and get that order poster.
So thank you in advance for everybody who is pre ordering.
(01:04):
That means quite a bit to us and we appreciate you.
Stuff you should read books dot Com pre order Now,
welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck, Brian over there,
(01:27):
and Jerry flitted in and out like a little COVID
ferry and uh, this is this is stuff you should know.
I don't think you want the COVID ferry to visit. Uh,
how about the COVID safety Faery. You want the soap ferry? Yeah,
because the soap faery can take on the COVID ferry
and smack that bword down. Yeah. And more specifically, it
(01:52):
can pry it open and say, spill out your guts, yeah,
correct virus. It's pretty amazing what it does. I mean,
like soap just just from like just this research. I'm
just fascinated with it. It's a magical potion. And I
think the fact that like we have no real clue
how we figured out how to make soap is just
(02:14):
makes the whole thing even that much more delightful. Yeah,
and knowing how it actually works is really neat. And
hopefully this convinces some people that it does work better
than hand sanitizer. Yeah, rather than just running your your
hands under some water for half of a second then
wiping them on your shirt. Yeah. So um, and we
are talking about soap and I want to choke. Before
(02:36):
we started, want to give a special shout out to
Dr Brauner's because they are soap makers and they also requested,
um this this episode years ago. Yeah, they rode in
and said, hey, here's some free samples. How about an
episode on soap? And we said, okay, we can't be
bought with free samples, but an episode of soap is
(02:58):
a good idea. So finally we're getting around to it. Yeah,
and we had their uh big Jumbo daddy uh liquid
casteel soaps by our sink here at work. Remember we
had that that Casteel soap fight, the Great cast Steel
Soap Fight of of of the Odds. Yeah, twelve. No,
(03:19):
they're stuck good. And you know, if it wasn't for
the fact that my wife makes soap, then I would
I would be firmly on the Dr Brauner strain. I
like their stuff. I feel like you can do both. Now. No, okay,
Emily wouldn't allow that she's like you, it's never me. Well,
I mean how about this. Tell you mean to open
a business for twenty years and then say, I feel
(03:42):
like I might like to use your competitors some as well. Okay,
all right, all right, but I'll bet the people that
Dr Brauner's use Emily soap. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe
let's find out. Maybe they can write in so um so. Yes,
Emily does make soap too. She sells it at I
Love your Mama dot Com, don't she? Yeah? I mean
I haven't had to buy soapen and fifteen plus years,
(04:04):
it's been great. Do you help out making the soap
I did in the early days. I've made quite a
few batches in my day, but just not anymore. What's
your specialty? Uh? Well, I mean I didn't have a specialty.
I would just make whatever she told me to make.
I got. It's funny, I've got I have to make
genitals soap again. God, And that's not so for the genitals.
(04:26):
It's soap in the shape of genitals and also for
the genitals. Sure, I guess you probably shouldn't really make
a distinction there. So, like we said, soap is kind
of magic. Chuck and I feel like we just kind
of off the bat talk about, um, why it's magic,
because it's one of those things where science can explain it.
(04:46):
But that doesn't really make it any less impressive, you know.
Actually it makes it kind of more impressive, to tell
you the truth. Yeah, and you know, what soap is
is just a couple of things. Like if you were
to go back a long time and we'll talk about
the history, or go out in the middle of the
furthest reaches of oh, I don't know, the jungle where
(05:06):
people are sort of making their own versions of soap.
You really just need a couple of things, which is
some sort of a fat or an oil and an
alkali and uh, that's really it. You know, people can
use a lot of people through history have used animal
fats and stuff like that. Obviously, Fight Club had the
big joke about using lard from liposuction large I think, right,
(05:30):
so that's fat too. But um, you know, Emily's is
an olive oil based oapen. I'm a big fan of that. Yeah. Yeah,
they figured out finally you could you didn't need to
sacrifice goats anymore. You could just use s right. Yeah,
the same ceremony it's just dinkier, that's right. So, Um, yeah,
that's I mean, that's all there is two and an
(05:51):
alkali in this case, Um, it's a well. An alkali
in every case is a type of base. Um. It's
the opposite of an acid on the p H scale,
has a high pH and usually traditionally when making soap,
it comes in the form of lie and and lie
you can get by chopping down some wood, specifically hardwood
(06:11):
you don't want softwood, burning it, taking the ashes, boiling
them and then scraping off what floats to the top.
You have lie right there, and that's one of the
two main ingredients along with fat, like you said, um,
and in making soap, that's it. That's all there is
just to soap, right. But it's so you would have
(06:31):
like you would never put those two things together that
it's almost like it makes more sense how we figured
out how to make alcohol, and it does how we
figured out how to make soap, you know what I mean.
It's not very intuitive, No, it's not at all, But
that is what soap is. And we've been making it
for at least about forty hundred five thousand years as
(06:52):
we'll see. Um. But before we get to the history, Chuck,
let's talk a little bit about how the whole thing works. Okay, Yeah,
So you know you've got water and that's a key
component to washing your body. And if you've ever heard
the term oil and water don't mix, that's true because
it's all about you know, it goes down to a
molecular level and water molecules they like each other a lot,
(07:15):
but they don't like oil. They don't like fat because
the oil molecules are big and they don't have these
poles that have different electrical charges. And it really is
interesting that it comes down to literal chemistry in this case. Yeah.
Do you remember, I think in our pepper spray episode,
we explained why if you rinse your face off with
water after you've been pepper sprayed, Um, it doesn't work.
(07:39):
It's because the water and the I think the cap
sasan don't bind together. But if you use something like milk,
like a fat, that fat binds the cap sasan. So
that's why you'd want to use milk to wash your
eyes out after being pepper sprayed. Yeah, yeah, the end.
So um, there's a very similar thing going on with
water water, Like you said like to bind to itself,
(08:01):
and that binding chuck is what it counts for surface tension,
which is how you can fill a glass of water
up with water slightly over the rim of the glass
and it will hold its shape. It's because water molecules
are so attracted to each other that they form like
basically a well, a tense surface. Hence surface tension. So
(08:22):
when you add soap, things change. Soap comes along and says,
I see what you like, see what's going on here,
but I'm going to shake things up a little bit. Yeah,
And it's it's so cool because soap basically gets oil
and water to party together. Uh. Soap comes in. They
have these pin shaped uh ends and each end and
(08:44):
it's it's almost like it was meant to be this
way or something. They have very distinct ends and they
bind with the water on one side and the oil
on the other as if it was just made to say,
you guys need to get together and clean things. Yeah.
But not only do they like bind with the water
on one end and oil and the other end that
they have like polar opposite ends as a single soap
(09:07):
molecule does. So not only does like the end like
to bind with oil, which means it's oleophilic. It hates water,
which makes it hydrophobic. And because that end is hydrophobic,
it does everything it can to get away from water,
including pushing through water and separating water into its constituent molecules,
(09:29):
which loosens that surface tension of water um, which makes
soap a surfactant, a surface active agent, which means that
it makes water a little more permeable, like water can
get into tinier cracks and crevices than it normally would
because that that um hydrophobic end of the soap molecule
(09:49):
is keeping the water from from coming together because it's
just plowing right through trying to get away from the water. Yeah,
that's the tail end. The head end of the soap
has a little bit of a negative charge, and that says,
all right, I really want to bond with that positive
hydrogen atom and water. So that made makes it hydrophilic.
So that end loves water, the other end loves the oil,
(10:13):
and and and when they come together. And I love
the way Dave Verus put it. He said, Uh, the
hydrophilic head and the hydrophobic tail act like a team
of bouncers that's around the particles, uh, and say get
out of here. And I think the one thing we
didn't mention that makes us all work is the fact
that uh. And the reason why just rinsing your hands
off doesn't work as well as with soap is that
(10:34):
all those all the dirt and all that stuff that
builds up on your body has oil in it, right, right,
So so let's let's give an example here, Chuck. Let's
say that you have some cake frosting on your hands.
Don't ask, well, you just you know how you take
care of that. Yeah, but you've licked it so so
much so that now it's kind of getting gross, okay,
(10:55):
and you just need to You finally reached that point
where you need thought you're gonna suggest washing that off
of your hand, right, Okay, No, not that, No, that
we're past that stage, the licking stage, and we're at
the hand washing stage. Now. When you when you wet
your hands with water, you get it nice and primed.
Then when you add soap and you lather the soap up,
what you're doing is you're you're introducing those soap molecules,
(11:16):
which are again special magic little molecules, into this You're
creating like a solution of soapy water solution, and so
those soap molecules are basically trying to get away from
the water on one side, and on that side they're saying, oh, hey,
a little bit of oily hydrogenated cake frosting, great, I
(11:36):
want to be attracted to you. And a bunch of
different soap molecules are going to do that to a
single little particle of cake frosting, and they essentially surround it.
So the tail ends of a bunch of different soap
molecules are all pointing inward, enveloping basically a little particle
of cake frosting, and then on the outside they're connecting
(11:57):
to the water molecules that are surrounding that. So that's
basically stage one, and the cake frosting starts to sweat
a little bit. It's like, well, what's gonna come next?
What's coming next? I don't really like being surrounded like
this without knowing what's coming next. And the cake frosting
doesn't want to know what comes next because it doesn't
pan out well for it. Yeah, so it gets surrounded
(12:18):
and like you said, the tails are pointing in, the
heads are pointing out, and it surrounds and basically traps
the dirt and the oil and what are called my
cells am I C E L L E S. And
that's a little bubble around the dirt basically, and all
those little little outside pointing heads lift that dirt from
(12:40):
the surface and all of a sudden it's floating around
a little bit now and not not bound to your skin.
He's like, I don't know what's happening. And that's where
your good friend water comes in to just wash it
all down the drain. Yeah, Because so remember um, in
addition to being oleophilic where it's attracted to oils, it's
also a surfactan, so it breaks water molecules up, which
(13:02):
means that that water can get into smaller crevices, for example,
underneath that piece of cake frosting, So it makes it
easier for it to just get carried away too. So
it's all just kind of coming together into this amazing
little process that happens every time you wash your hands
and form those little mice seller bubbles. Um. That's where
(13:22):
all those particles go. They just get carried off thanks
to these soap molecules surrounding them, connecting with the water
molecules and then just getting rinsed away. It's kind of like, um,
you know that scene in True Lies where Jamie Lee
Curtis is hanging from the helicopter and Arnold Schwartzeneger is
holding onto her, and he's actually holding on the helicopter.
(13:43):
So Arnold Schwarzenegger is the soap molecule, Jamie Lee Curtis
is the cake frosting, and the helicopter is the water
that's rinsing it all away down the drain, that's right,
and the dirt saying I'll be back, and the sub
saying no, you won't. Terrible the face of us retort
to I'll be back. And the coolest thing about all
(14:04):
of this, I mean, that's just how it takes care
of the dirt on your body, which is amazing in
and of itself. But it can do the same thing
with viruses and bacteria, especially well, not especially, but including
the coronavirus, because a lot of these things have this
double layered lipid membrane, including the coronavirus, and the deal
with that that hydrophobic into the soap. It's really really sharp,
(14:26):
and so it can actually you get a bunch of
those guys together, and it can wedge in between those
membranes and kind of if you get enough of them
pried up like it's a crowbar or something. And then
that's when the virus is all of a sudden, you know,
like Arnold Schwarzenegger just taking care of business. Yeah, it
basically gets ripped apart by so many let's like death
(14:47):
by a thousand paper cuts. But instead of paper, it's
soap molecules, and the lipid memory that protects the virus
just gets torn right open. It fills the virus proteins out,
and those virus proteins actually um get enveloped by even
more soap molecules. So not only does it like get
rid of microbes, it actually like kills certain kinds of microbes.
(15:10):
Just we're just talking about regular plain old soap and
water here, everybody. Yeah, and you know, not to get
to ahead of the game, But that's why soap is
better for washing your hands during well, at all times,
but especially during a time like this, because I think
people just figure, like because we have this association with
(15:32):
like alcohol and that smell, like it just kills everything
on contact, but it doesn't kill everything on contact. And
if you're in a pinch and you don't have soap,
and you're at a store or something, and it's good
to have that stuff to use, but uh, it doesn't
necessarily kill it. And what you're not doing is washing
it off with water and down the drain. No you're not,
(15:54):
you're and so so there's two problems here. Um. Yes,
it killed a bunch of stuff, especially things that alcohol
and kill. But the stuff that it can't kill. You
just basically gave an alcohol bath too. And it's still
there on your hands. So when you do touch your
face again, inevitably, um, those things are going to be
introduced to your mouth, including things like poliovirus, which, as
(16:14):
we learned recently, you don't want to go into your mouth.
Should we take a break, I think we should, and
then what we'll come back and talk history maybe, yeah,
let's do it. Okay, all right, chuck, so soap. Like
(16:52):
we said, we're not entirely sure how we ever figured
out how to make soap, um, but we do know
from records, hieroglyphics, cuneiform tablets, all that jazz that um.
In Mesopotamia, people were making soap, you know, taking an
alkali and a fat, mixing them together, adding heat into
(17:16):
water and through hydrolysis, going through this process called supontification. Uh,
and producing soap. That's how you produce soap has to
have gone through supontification to be considered soap. Right that
we've been doing this, we humans for at least five
thousand years. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Uh. When I
was making batches of soap that I heard that word
(17:37):
a lot from Emily because I would you know, there's
a lot of mixing involved, and I would think I
was done with the mixing, and she say, it hasn't
supontified yet, And you know, it's just sort of an
easy test. You would lift the mixer out, kind of
sling a little bit of it on the surface, and
it's almost like seeing when a pasta noodles done. You
can just sort of tell by the way it's that,
the thicknesses and the way it sets, and when you
(18:00):
finally reach that suppontification point, you're you know, you're right
or rock. It's a great word, it is. I always
called it. I would always say that we're pulling into
suppontification station, which was my old joke. That's a good one. Um,
So suppontification actually, Chuck, I didn't realize that it was
from um uh legendary mythical mountain. Did you know that
(18:23):
Mount Sappo? Is that the Roman one? Yeah? Yeah, that's
the sort of the legend, and no one knows if
it's true, but it sounds it makes for a good story.
From what I understand, it is definitely not true, okay,
but it does make for a good story, so we're
gonna tell it anyway. So, yeah, in ancient Rome there
was a Mount Sapo, and as the legend goes, that
(18:46):
is not true. Ancient priests would sacrifice animals up there,
and when it would rain, that animal fat from that
disgusting animal sacrifice ceremony would flow down along with the
wood ash that you already mentioned and was the Alkali
and go down there to the river, the Tiber river,
and people were washing their clothes down there, and when
(19:07):
that happened, they would be like, man, this stuff sudds
it up in. My clothes have never been cleaner. Yeah
that's not just plain clean, Yeah, that's Sappo clean. Right,
So U we, from what I understand, there's just no
question that there is no such thing as Mount Sappo,
and that this is all just kind of a made
up the God I didn't know that that was fake.
(19:32):
The Mount Sappo was fake. I just thought the legend
was fake. I didn't like, are there Romans? Are they fake?
I don't know. The jury is kind of still there
are today, but we're not sure where they came from.
Um No, from what I From what I know, there's
not a real Mount Sapo. But the fact is the
Romans felt compelled for some reason to say, where'd this
(19:52):
come from? Oh well, let me explain with this made
up story. So um and by the time this Mount
Sappo a legend came around. I mean, people have been
making this stuff for a couple of thousand years already.
So it definitely did not originate a Mount Sappo because
there is no Mount Sappo. But we do know the
Romans were into it, not just from that legend, but
(20:12):
also plenty of The Elder mentioned it in his Naturalists
story of from seventies seven CE. You know what else
the Romans were into? Yeah, they were into a lot
of stuff. They're like, I got a great story for
you about the soap. Come on into this room with
these other thirty five people. Have you met my friend press.
(20:33):
I'll tell you all about it. You're gonna love him.
So they were definitely producing um what you would call
soap though by two b c e. That was from
Kurd and like goat fat and beech tree ash, and
they would clean stuff in towns with that kind of stuff.
They would wash their pots out. Other people would use
(20:54):
it to clean cotton to make textiles and stuff like that.
But it wasn't like, uh wasn't for personal use yet. No,
that was like the one thing in common is people
were using it for everything but washing themselves. Like I
don't know if it just didn't hit upon them or whatever,
but they didn't like Apparently the galls even used it
(21:14):
to slick their hair back, not to wash their hair,
just to slick it back and give it a nice
little reddish tint apparently. But the but Europe, so Europe
had like soap making guilds from I think the seventh century.
For for a very long time people have been making
soap in Europe. But it wasn't until after the Crusades
(21:34):
that some of the crusaders returned um, as the legend
goes in Mount mount Sapo style story, but they returned
supposedly with Aleppo soap from Syria, which is fragrance with
bay laurels, very nice, beautiful olive oil soap you can
still get today. But the story goes that the returning
Crusaders said, get this stuff. It's soap, but you use
(21:57):
it to wash your genitals and you're up. Started to
get very clean, at least like the elite aristocracy who
had the money to afford things like that got very clean. Well,
at least their genitals did, right, right. It took another
three years for something and be like, I wonder if
you could use this on your under arms as well, right,
And they went, what about your face or like, you
know where you've been washing with that stuff. It's true,
(22:21):
it's got hair on it to prove it. Oh dude,
that was too much for you. I don't know. I
didn't even use the word pubic here. I mean we
said the word genitals like five times. That's true. So
that was That was how Europe supposedly started to come
into soap. It was imported from the Middle East, but
(22:43):
um in very short order, I think Spain started making
castile soap um out of olive oil and it took
off in France and England and elsewhere, and again it
was a luxury item, but it was it became much
more widespread when Europe started making it themselves. Yeah, I
think the Castile region, right, didn't that where that came from. Yeah,
(23:03):
And as long as it's supposedly originally was made from
olive oil, qualified as a casteel soap. But even now
you can make casteele soap from like palm oil or
coconut oil or whatever, and it's still considered castele soap.
So I think it's just a free for all. Yeah. Um,
you know what I like about Emily's Liquid Soap and
(23:24):
the Doctor Brauners is that it's how liquid soap should be,
which is to say then, um, it's almost like has
the same sort of viscosity as water. Uh. And whenever
I see and I don't want to name like Slam
a name brand, but let's just say the very popular
hand soap that they've had around since the eighties, and
(23:46):
the way that stuff comes out all gooey and pearly,
it's just so gross, really, mother of pearly. It's really
nasty looking to me now that I've seen like good
real liquid soap. Yeah, so um. Yeah. And one of
the other things I like about ket steel stub with
um Dr Bruner's and Emilies in particular, is that your
hands feel washed afterwards to it doesn't feel like you've
(24:09):
missed any like there's a residue. It's like it's gone,
but it also has left behind like a clean feeling.
It's it's just its own thing for sure. Yeah. And
you know, since we're talking about this, I uh want
to say a huge thanks to people that went out
and bought stuff from her store after the Essential Oils episode.
UM We've given her plenty of shout outs over the years,
(24:31):
and there's always been a little little spikes in her business.
But I think the topic and small business and hurting
because of the coronavirus and everything kind of came together
and they've been overwhelmed with support and it's been really
really sweet and a little bit much even, but it's
been it's kind of like, be careful what you asked for,
you know, right. That's that's um and Buzz corporate buzz speak.
(24:54):
They say, that's a good problem to have. Yeah, So
if you're gonna order soap, just wait a week or two. Okay,
fair warning, everybody or just be prepared to wait a
week or two. In the back end, Hey, by the way,
you can also order something now too that you have
to wait for, and that would be our book, an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, which you can order
(25:15):
right now anywhere you buy books, and if you're lucky
enough to live in the United States and Canada currently,
you get a free poster as a gift or preorder. Wow,
that's that was a nice segue, my friend. Thank you
so for It took hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands
of years, Chuck, think about us, thousands of years after
the invention of soap before we finally started to use
(25:39):
it on ourselves. And then apparently it wasn't until after
the Civil War, at least in the United States that
that using soap really took off, and soap making and
the soap making industry became like kind of a thing
all around the same time. Yeah, like I think Ivory
soap was released in eight nine. Um, Paul Mallive was
(26:05):
released around the same time. And I never realized Paul
mall of soap is so named because it has palm
oil and olive oil in it. Did you know that
I didn't. But you know, I know those are two
potential soap ingredients, and palm oil is a little controversial
these days because of the way it's sourced. Yeah, and
you know, we don't have to go down that rabbit hole.
But just when you're shopping for stuff, just sort of
(26:28):
try and figure out where that stuff is coming from,
is all I'm saying. Um, and then let's see what else.
Life Boy, the one that Ralphie hated so much. I
was that Life Boy. Yeah, yeah, that one came out.
And what was remarkable about Life Boy, UM is that
it was Um. They were the ones who coined the
(26:50):
term body odor b O as part of a marketing
campaign to get you to actually buy in use soap.
I did not know that. I feel like we must
have talked about about that in our body Odor episode,
you know, I don't know. I do like that Little
Ivory story too, though. That Um. In eighteen seventy nine,
a soap maker at PNG made a mistake, as the
(27:10):
legend goes, and forgot to turn off the mixer and
then that whipped a bunch of air in there. This
is what happens when you over mixed something and uh
shipped him out anyway, because he was like, I don't
want to get, you know, pinned for this. And apparently
a lot of people wrote in We're like I love
that floating soap, and that was sort of always a
selling point for Ivory was that it floats. Yeah, and
(27:34):
the moral of the stories that they fired him anyway
for withholding the information. That's right, Jimmy Ivory. Yeah, they
kept his name. He kept his name. Uh. And then
the hand soap uh. In eighteen sixty five, William Shephard
patented the first liquid soap, but it took all the
(27:54):
way until nineteen eighty when you know soft soap came around. Yeah.
And here's the thing. Did you know the story from
the Minnetonka Corporation. I didn't previous to reading this. This
is so great. So the Minnetonka Corporation are the ones
who debuted soft soap. And before then it was like
you have bar soap, that was your option. But in
(28:15):
Night they said, we're gonna release this and I think
it's going to be a big deal. So we're gonna
go around and buy up all of the the soap
pumps that anybody could possibly use, and they cornered the
market on liquid soap, just from buying up all the
soap pumps. You think that's a good thing before they
release as far as like from the lens of a
(28:37):
robber baron. Okay, it's a great thing. It's like it
seems like a jerk move to me. At the very least.
It's a good story, you know. And everyone they talked
to you, they were like, oh, no, go out and
make liquid soap. What you're gonna put it in? Yeah?
What are you gonna do? Deliver it by hand to
people and just be like here, hold your hands, to
cut your hands. We'll give you some of our liquid soap.
You gotta wrap in paper. I don't think so it's true.
(28:59):
Oh and speaking you wrapped in paper, I have one
more little piece of lower soap. Lower. Do you ever
use Irish spring? I did in college. Okay, yeah, that's
the appropriate time to use Irish spring. Father um. Do
you know that scent? There's actually a name for it.
It's not like publicly named, but internally I think Colgate
palm Olive. It's called Ulster scent Ulster fragrance um. And
(29:25):
when they came out with Irish Spring, it wasn't debuted
in Ireland. No one in Ireland invented it. It was
actually invented in Germany in nineteen seventy and then it
made its way to the United States in nineteen seventy two,
and initially for the first like decade that Irish Spring
was around. On the package it said a manly deodorant soap.
(29:48):
How interesting for men. They couldn't call it German spring either,
because that sounds like some kind of Nazi offensive or something.
They they called the Irish Spring, but in German. Remember
how it's pronounced. M hmmm, I don't remember that one.
You can't put two and two together from that. No, ye, Well,
(30:10):
I'll see if I can find it while we're still talking. Okay,
So should we talk about how you should wash your
hands since that's relevant? Yeah? I think so. And I
know we talked about this some on the COVID episode,
But um, I love the way that this doctor put it.
It was a health official. I think that said wash
your hands like you've been chopping jalapenos, and you need
(30:32):
to change out your contact lenses. That's a really great advice.
It was sort of like when we did this reminds
me of when we did poison ivy and they said
you need to scrub like there's grease, like auto black
auto grease on your body. Do you remember saying that? No,
I mean that that was just the advice from the
poison IVY episode. Okay, but that's what I'm saying, Like,
(30:53):
I don't remember giving that advice. I'm I'm impressed as
I remember that, because you gotta get that that the
poison of off your body and it's it's very greasy.
I got poison ivy again the other day. Man, It's terrible.
How bad. It was very concentrated in a small area
I think, on my genitals, on my ankle, around my ankle,
(31:15):
I think, but it was like um, but it was
just a study and self control not to touch it.
I had zero calumine lotion or anything like that that
I could use. It was bad. I officially get it now,
because I think when we recorded that I had not yet. Uh,
I didn't think I was allergic or whatever. But I've
(31:36):
since gotten it a couple of times, including a couple
of weeks ago, just like you. Wow, not much though,
just a couple of tiny little spots. Maybe yours was
sympathy poison ivy maybe because I had it, you know, yeah,
my genitals itched. Your genitals always itching sympathy from it? Oh? Man,
I think how many times have we said that? Now? Eight?
(32:00):
We should put in a little ding a buzzer or something.
Let's see we can get Jerry to do that. All right? Hey,
do you want to know what Irish spring is in German? Yeah? Irish? Sure? Freeling? Yeah,
all right? How is my German great? Is that how
you would say it? Irish? Er? I guess? So how's
(32:21):
it spelled? Just Irish with an e R no I
r I s c h. Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right, okay,
and then freeling there's even an oom laut I love
tho zoom outs. So do you want to take a
break and talk about how to wash hands? Or do
you want to wash hands and then take a break. Now,
let's let's take that break. Okay, everybody, we'll be right back.
(33:08):
All right, we're gonna wash our hands. We're gonna do it.
You gotta wet them, you gotta start with water, gotta
soap up, and then you gotta really start scrubbing, and
especially now these days when they've and this is just
you should just do this from now to the end
of time, now that we really know how to watch hands. Uh,
you know, scrub those palms, scrub the backs, getting between
(33:29):
those fingies, getting getting those fingy nails. Uh. They say
to seeing Happy Birthday a couple of times. Sure, if
you know them. Um, I like to use Uh, I'd
like to use really hot water just because it makes
me feel like I'm getting them cleaner. It hurts me,
does it really? Yeah? He's cold water? No no, no, no,
(33:51):
I'm crazy. Um, but I do like warm water, warm
towards the hot side, but definitely not hot like I
wouldn't care drives it as hot? Yeah, like it's so
hot it can barely stand it. Really? Oh boy? That
to me, it's just a shy away from that. Uh.
And here's something that I've been wanting to say for
(34:13):
a long long time because this has been one of
Emily's big uh sort of things. Is stuck in her craw? Is?
I guess that's not the right things. Something stuck in
your craw? No, that's not quite right, but you know
what I mean, A thorn in her side? Okay, I
could see both working. Is that antibacterial soap is not
(34:34):
more effective people it's not. It's not it's not. No,
And in fact, it's actually kind of harmful in the
larger scheme of things. But it doesn't do anything that
soap can't do. No, you're falling for some marketing gobbledegook.
Stop it. And I mean it makes sense. You would
think like, Okay, I'm washing my hands, but I'm also
(34:55):
washing my hands with something that has an antibacterial agent,
and so it's killing stuff. And yes, it kills some things,
it's true, um, But the problem is is the stuff
that it doesn't kill stays around and evolves to be
resistant to those anti bio bacterial agents, right, And the
problem is that those same bugs aren't just on your
(35:16):
hands and don't just encounter soap. We use antibiotics against them,
but if they've learned to be resistant from soap washing
by you know, billions of people every day, um, it
makes it way harder to kill them with antibiotics. And
so they finally figured out that some of the antibiotic
resistant bugs that we were starting to see, we're basically
(35:39):
in training through antibacterial soap. And eventually the I think
the f d A band two of the ingredients that
that were commonly used in antibacterial soap. Right, Yeah, they
ban tri closen and triclocarbon and said use regular soap. Everybody.
The FDA said that it's not just me talking no,
And I mean, it's because is it that that regular
(36:01):
soap does all the same things that that anti bacterial
soap does too? And I have to say chuck. So
we're talking about handwashing. One of the things that I
found astounding in all this is that so handwashing is
so prevalent now, but it's not like it was anything
new when the when the COVID pandemic came around, right,
(36:21):
But apparently it's still relatively new as far as handwashing
guidelines go. That wasn't until the eighties that the CDC
issued their first handwashing guidelines, and that was for hospitals.
Hospitals didn't have handwashing guidelines issued by the CDC until
the eighties. Isn't that astounding? It is? But I wonder
if that was just because they were like, uh, duh everybody,
(36:45):
and then someone said, well, you should probably just codify it.
I don't know. I saw that it was in response
to some hospital acquired infection outbreaks. So maybe the CDC
was like you know this right. And it turns out
that hospitals like no, not really yeah, very interesting, doctors
were walking around touching their genitals and doing surgery. Yeah.
(37:11):
So here's another thing. Liquid soap versus bar soap. You
would think that, and I think a lot of people
may be disgusted by bar soap that other people use,
especially when they're hairy. But they have done studies. They
did a study in nineteen sixty five where they contaminated
uh the hands of the researchers with five million bacteria
(37:35):
and then had them wash their hands and then had
other people afterward, and found that the bacteria was not
transferred to the second user. Uh. This was confirmed in
with another study. Uh. And what they came the conclusion
they came to basically is there could be some surface
bacteria on a bar soap that's just left out like that,
(37:55):
but it definitely doesn't transmit infection. Huh. Well why wouldn't it,
I don't know, because they soap. They just showed that
it didn't. Huh. Yeah, they showed that it didn't transmit infection.
And I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's uh the
properties of the soap at work, or maybe it just
doesn't live that long on on a surface like that.
(38:17):
I could see that. I could see soap not being
a very hospitable surface for microbes. But when I do
pick up bar soap in the shower, like I always
give it a rints off first. You get it wet,
get thee get the layer of gunk off first. You know, Yeah,
that's true. Um, And I think I think people probably
would be grossed out if public restaurants just had a
(38:39):
bar soapen there. But it's it's not gonna get you sick.
But but I get it. You know, you have those
pumps of individual soaps. I get it. It's true. Plus
also usually when you encounter liquid soap um it has
like other stuff in it that maybe moisturizes your hands
or does your things that a bar soap might not.
(39:02):
What's the deal with detergent so here's the thing. Most
of the stuff that you have in your bathroom right
now that you consider soap are actually detergents. A detergent
is simply a synthetic soap. The only way for something
to qualify as a soap is for it to have
gone through supontification station. CRU's right past. I'm glad this
(39:26):
came up because Uh, Emily came through when I was researching, researching,
and she's like, you know, soap isn't even soap anymore.
She's like, they can, they can call it soap legally,
but it's not even soap. Yeah. So, so you've got
your fats and you've got your um alkaline, and you
put them together and they undergo supontification, and you have soap.
(39:47):
If you don't start with fats and alkalines and they
don't undergo spontification, you have something that does the same
thing and in many cases is even more desire, has
more desirable traits than just natural soap. But it's just
not soap. It's a detergent. And the first detergents, and
plenty of detergents still around today were derived from um
(40:10):
synthetic chemicals that came from petroleum. Actually, yeah, because the
deal was is once they figured out soap many many
years ago, they just washed everything with soap, uh, clothes
and your dishes, and they would clean floors and it
was you know, it's that's not what it was made for.
So it would leave a residue. It's called soap scum.
(40:33):
And especially when it's mixed with hard water, if it's
really high in mineral salt, magnesium and calcium, it's gonna
make a lot of soap scum. And it was a
big problem back in the old days when it would
be left over on your kitchen floor or you know,
big time on your washing machine. Yeah, well that was
a big, big problem because washing machines came out before
laundry detergent did, and it could really gum up the
(40:56):
works when you had a soap scum layer that was
hard as concrete on that's right. But detergent it's solved
all that it did um because detergent doesn't leave soap
scumb because it doesn't interact with calcium and magnesium in
hard water, which made it vastly preferable to use for laundry,
which is by the first detergents that they ever came
out with were laundry detergents, and specifically, from what I saw,
(41:19):
the first detergent was draft in, which is still around today.
You can get draft really yeah, yeah, it's still very
much around and in Canada it's called ivory snow because
Canadians just weird with everything. I've heard of Ivory Snow
didn't giving draft everything. Well, Draft came around and that
(41:41):
handled like pretty decently soiled things, but nothing nothing too heavy.
Uh And so was it the same company that went
on to create Tied. I'm pretty sure it was Procter
and Gamble that did Draft. Did they do Tied? To
mm hmm. I want to say yes, I want to too,
but I don't want to get it. Would actually go
(42:02):
with yes, okay. Uh. The next one, yeah, the next
big one in three was Tied, and that was a
combination of these synthetic surfactants and something called Builders, and
the Builders kind of worked in concert with the synthetic
surfactants to just kind of get out tougher stains. And
(42:22):
in nineteen forty six they brought it onto the test
market as a heavy duty detergent. Everyone loved it and
it's this is kind of cool, but where did you
get this? Actually, this piece, I think that one was
from Thought Company. And I also want to give a
shout out to another Thought Company piece that was written
by an historian named Judith Ridner who gave us a
(42:43):
lot of the history stuff too well. Tide has tried
to improve it a lot over the years, and has
not stopped. And it says that each year they basically
try and duplicate mineral content of the water in all
parts of the US. Like what what? What are all
the kinds of water that we have in the United States?
(43:03):
And let's do fifty test loads with tie just to
make sure we're still up to snuff. Yeah, every year,
fifty thousand test loads. Imagine being the person in charge
of that laundry, wouldn't you just go just totally out
of it? Pretty bad? Fifty thousand. I wouldn't make it
to fifty. Yeah, Undy taking a stand against laundry um.
(43:31):
Although I have to say so. One of the things
we're talking about castile soap um in addition to just
being soap, it doesn't it's known to do a lot
of stuff, and one of the things supposedly is laundry.
So I did a test on a grease staying on
some shorts with some cast steel soap, and I will
report back eventually to let you know if it worked. Okay,
(43:51):
where was treated? It on the leg? Not too far
from the genitals. Now that you mentioned ding ding so
um so a detergent again, it's just a synthetic a
synthetic soap and it doesn't do anything differently. But the
reason why companies preferred detergents is because they can control
(44:13):
it a lot more. It's something that they create themselves.
They don't have to rely on nature. They don't have
to keep um a high priest on the payroll to
oversee the goat sacrifices to get the tall. Oh, it's
just a lot easier to control from beginning to end. Um.
The problem is is a lot of times some of
those stuff, some of those um synthetic detergents can be
(44:35):
um harsh on your skin. Yeah, they can dry things out,
It can be irritants for sure. If you have xema,
that's that's definitely something that you might or dermatitis. And uh,
Emily has had a lot of success with people that
specifically use her soap because it's real soap and they
had excellent skin problems and that really helped it out. Yeah. Yeah,
(44:57):
because I mean, like even soap haz it's high on
the on the pH scale, higher than natural skin pH,
but it's usually much lower than say like a detergent.
The thing is is modern chemistry and modern soap bank
and can can adjust things as needed to make things
easier on your skin for sure. Yeah, and those detergents
aren't great for getting that that gray water getting into
(45:20):
the eventual fresh water supply. It's no good for animals
and fishies especially no supposedly you know how soap surfactants.
Detergents are as well, which means that they break the
surface tension of water, which makes it easier for for
fish to um absorb all the gunk that we put
in the water. Along with detergents too, so it's bad
(45:43):
on that side. And it also stretches out and breaks
through their the membrane that keeps them gooey, which is
not good for fish either. It's no good fish just
need to use soap. I don't know what their problem is.
Get clean you and smell so fishy? Right? Have you
got anything else about soap? Got nothing else? Use it? People?
(46:06):
Wash your hands a lot, yep, wash your hands. Everybody
say you're abc, say happy birthday twice, but really get
a good latherer going and wash them a lot. Okay, Okay,
And since we said okay a couple of times and genitals,
god knows how many times, it's time for a listener
to me, I'm gonna call this hot off the presses. Uh.
(46:27):
You guys don't know this, but we are playing it
dangerously close here lately with our recording schedule, too close
for our comfort. So things that we're recording are coming
out days later, and that means the corrections are coming
just days later. So this was about the recently released
Billy the kid Win. Hey, guys, love the show. It
seriously keeps my work day interesting. Just listen to the
(46:49):
ability to kids short stuff and really enjoyed it. But
I thought i'd share a tidbit of info. You mentioned
that Billy went to slice up a bit of yearling.
Uh a k A horse meat for most coital snack.
I'm from Wyoming and my family raised his horses as
well as beef and show cattle. I just thought i'd share.
In the livestock industry, technically almost all live stock is
(47:11):
a yearling once they've hit a year of age, especially
especially common to call younger butcher cattle yearlings. Um. And
then I looked up the movie The Yearling. Remember that
it's about that little baby deer. So oh, I thought
that was about a horse too. I think it's about
a deer or at least there's a deer on the cover. Well,
(47:31):
that's probably about a deer. That very misleading of it.
Was it either that or like the person who was
in charge of the cover design didn't bother to read
the book. Well, Jewel says this. While it's very possible
it was a horse, because people did eat horses back then.
Yearling horses have don't have much meat on them, so
unless the family was really starving, it's unlikely they butcher
(47:51):
a horse that young for dinner. More than likely, Billy
was carving up a little bit of beef. Okay, that
makes a little more sense. But is this from Jewel?
Did you say as a Jewel? The singer, well, it's
from a Jewel. I don't know if I don't think
it's No, it's not because I'm looking at the last
name now, Okay, I don't know what Jewel's last name is.
I didn't even realize she had a last name. I
(48:12):
want to say it's Cuture or something like that. Okay, Well,
either way, she's great because I was listening to some
of her old stuff not too long ago for SERI reason, yeah,
and I was like, this is still really good music. Okay, Yeah,
give Jewel a listen, Chuck, I think you'd be like
Josh is right. Well, thank you Jewel for writing though. Yeah,
(48:33):
thank you other Jewel for writing in And if you're
the same Jewel, I'm onto you. If you want to
get in touch with this, like Jewel did, you can
send an email. Like Jewel did, go ahead and send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
(48:54):
How Stuff Works for more podcasts for my heart Radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where
ever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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