Soap

Seven Things You Should Know

By: JIM STOVALL

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

You use it every day. You've never thought about it. That's about to change.

Pick up the bar of soap on your sink. It looks simple. It feels simple. It's been there so long it's practically invisible. It isn't simple. It's four thousand years of history, one of the most elegant chemical reactions in everyday life, a public health revolution that was ignored for decades, a masterclass in how to manufacture human anxiety, and a quiet impostor that may not even be what you think it is.

Here are the seven things you should know about soap:
• Soap is far older than you think — and for most of its history, it wasn't used to wash people at all
• The chemistry of saponification is one of the more beautiful reactions in everyday life
• A Hungarian physician proved that handwashing saves lives in 1847 — and was ignored, discredited, and committed to an asylum before anyone would listen
• The Victorian soap companies didn't just sell soap — they invented modern advertising while doing it
• Those same companies manufactured the anxieties about your body that you still carry today
• Most of what you call soap isn't soap — and the label will tell you, if you know how to read it
• Soap has worked its way into our language, our literature, and our culture in ways we almost never notice

I'm No Expert, But is the series for curious people who've noticed that the most ordinary things turn out to be the most interesting. Each volume covers a single subject — a historical event, an everyday object, a scientific idea — and finds the seven things that genuinely surprise you.
You'll finish this one knowing exactly what's in the bar on your sink. You'll know why you feel anxious about your body odor in ways your grandparents never did. You'll know the name of the man who figured out that handwashing saves lives and was punished for it.
And you'll never look at soap quite the same way again.