Laura: That expensive 10-step skincare routine you follow every night? It might be the very thing causing your skin problems. Today, we’re exploring the radical idea that the secret to better skin isn’t doing more, but doing much, much less. Sophia: Okay, you’re speaking directly to my soul, and also to my credit card statement. Are you telling me I’ve been bamboozled by the entire beauty industry? Laura: You might have been. This whole idea comes from a fascinating and, I have to say, pretty polarizing book called Clean: The New Science of Skin by James Hamblin. Sophia: Polarizing how? I feel like the quest for perfect skin is a universal truth. Laura: Well, the author, James Hamblin, isn't just a journalist. He's a physician with a Master's in Public Health from Yale. And he famously stopped showering for five years as part of his research for this book. That tends to get a reaction. Sophia: Hold on. A Yale-trained doctor stopped showering for five years? Okay, you have my complete and undivided attention. Where do we even start with that? Laura: We start by asking: how did we get so obsessed with showering and being "clean" in the first time? Because for most of human history, it just wasn't a thing.

Sophia: That’s hard to even imagine. I feel like a daily shower is a basic human right at this point. Laura: It feels that way, but Hamblin shows us it's a very recent, very manufactured feeling. He traces it back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the rise of soap giants. Take a company like Lever Brothers, for example. They had a product called Lifebuoy soap. Sophia: I think I’ve heard of that. Sounds very… nautical. Laura: It was originally marketed as a health soap, a defense against germs. But their real genius wasn't in the soap itself, it was in the problem they created for it to solve. In the 1920s, they launched a massive ad campaign around a new, terrifying social affliction: "B.O." Sophia: Body Odor. They invented that? Laura: They didn't invent the smell, but they absolutely invented the anxiety around it. The ads were ruthless. They showed people being shunned at parties, losing promotions, failing at romance, all because of their "B.O." Suddenly, a normal human smell became a social disease, and Lifebuoy was the only cure. Sales quadrupled in four years. Sophia: So they literally created a widespread social anxiety to sell more soap. That is both brilliant and deeply cynical. It sounds a lot like how modern beauty brands market "problem areas" we never knew we had. Laura: Exactly. And it wasn't just about smell. Think about Ivory soap. Their slogan, "99 and 44/100 percent pure," is one of the most iconic in advertising history. Sophia: Right, it makes you think it’s medically superior or something. Laura: But that slogan was born from a supposed factory accident. The story goes that a worker left a mixing machine on too long, whipping extra air into a batch of soap. Instead of throwing it out, they sold it. And people loved it because it floated in the tub! It was a novelty. Sophia: It floated? That was the big innovation? Laura: That was it. But Harley Procter, the founder's son, brilliantly branded this airy, floating soap as "Ivory," inspired by a line from the Psalms. He commissioned chemical analyses to show it had fewer impurities than other soaps, and then blasted the "99 and 44/100 percent pure" message everywhere. They turned a factory mistake into a symbol of purity and godliness. Sophia: Wow. So our bathroom cabinets are basically monuments to a century of marketing-induced anxiety and happy accidents. But what about the health aspect? Weren't people getting sick before all this soap? Laura: This is the crucial distinction Hamblin makes. There's hygiene, which is about preventing the spread of disease—things like handwashing, sanitation systems, clean water. Those are undeniably life-saving. Then there's cleanliness, which is a cultural aesthetic. It's about smelling like a certain perfume, having no visible oil on your skin, and adhering to a standard of appearance. The soap industry masterfully blurred the line between the two. Sophia: They made us believe that using their products was the same as practicing good hygiene. Laura: Precisely. They convinced us that to be healthy, you had to be constantly scrubbing, lathering, and deodorizing every inch of your body. And in doing so, we declared war on something we're only now beginning to understand.

Sophia: And what is that something we declared war on? Laura: Our own bodies. Specifically, the trillions of organisms living on our skin. Hamblin asks us to stop thinking of our skin as a sterile barrier and start seeing it as a thriving ecosystem. A rainforest, a bustling metropolis. Sophia: A metropolis of what, exactly? I’m almost afraid to ask. Laura: Bacteria, fungi, viruses, and… mites. Sophia: Whoa, hold on. Mites? On my face? Right now? I think I need a moment. That is genuinely horrifying. Laura: (Laughs) I know, the reaction is always the same! But these microscopic arachnids, called Demodex, are on almost every adult human. And they're not invaders; they're part of our natural ecosystem. They eat our dead skin cells and oils. They’re basically our live-in, microscopic exfoliation service. Sophia: Okay, "microscopic exfoliation service" is a much better branding than "face mites." I'll try to hang on to that. So this whole ecosystem is our microbiome? Laura: Yes, the skin microbiome. And the most compelling evidence for its importance comes from a study Hamblin details, comparing two genetically similar communities: the Amish and the Hutterites. Sophia: I’ve heard of them. Both are traditional, rural farming communities, right? Laura: Exactly. They have similar diets, genetics, and lifestyles. But there's one huge difference in their health profiles. The Hutterites have asthma and allergy rates similar to the average American. The Amish have almost none. Sophia: How is that possible if they're so similar? Laura: It comes down to one key difference in their daily lives. Hutterite farms are large, industrialized, and communal. The living quarters are separate from the barns. But Amish life revolves around small, family-owned dairy farms. From infancy, Amish kids are in the barn, playing in the hay, surrounded by animals, breathing in the dust. Sophia: So getting dirty as a kid is like... an immune system workout? My mom was right all along! Laura: She was! Hamblin explains this through what's now called the "biodiversity hypothesis." The old idea was the "hygiene hypothesis"—that a lack of germs was the problem. The new thinking is that it's a lack of diversity of microbes. The constant, low-grade exposure to the rich microbial environment of the barn trains the Amish children's immune systems from day one. It learns to tell the difference between a real threat, like a flu virus, and a harmless substance, like pollen or a peanut. Sophia: And the Hutterite kids, living in a cleaner, more separate environment, their immune systems don't get that training. So when they encounter pollen, their immune system freaks out, thinking it's an invader. Laura: That's the theory. Their immune systems are like jumpy, untrained soldiers. By trying to protect our children from every microbe, we might be preventing their immune systems from developing the wisdom they need to navigate the world. We're essentially creating the very conditions for allergies and autoimmune diseases to flourish. Sophia: That completely flips the script on what it means to be a good, protective parent. It suggests that a little bit of the farm, a little bit of dirt, is actually a form of protection. Laura: It is. And this realization is fueling a huge backlash against the very industry that sold us on hyper-cleanliness in the first place.

Sophia: The minimalist rebellion. I like the sound of that. It feels like people are getting tired of the 12-step routines and the endless stream of new "must-have" products. Laura: They are, and for good reason. Hamblin highlights just how unregulated the skincare industry is. As an experiment, he decided to launch his own skincare brand. He bought some ingredients at Whole Foods—beeswax, coconut oil, shea butter—mixed them in his kitchen, and put them in a jar. Sophia: What did he call it? Laura: "Brunson + Sterling." He gave it a very fancy, minimalist label with the tagline "Menscare for Fucking Perfect Skin." Sophia: (Laughs) I love it. Did he have to get it approved or tested? Laura: Not at all. He notified the FDA, as required, but he didn't have to provide any data on safety or efficacy. He could have put almost anything in that jar and sold it online. It's a perfect illustration of the wild west nature of the cosmetics industry. Sophia: That is genuinely terrifying. So anyone can just mix stuff in their kitchen and sell it as a miracle cure? This makes the "clean beauty" movement seem even more complicated. Is that just more marketing, or is it a real solution? Laura: That's the paradox. Hamblin points out that terms like "clean," "natural," or "green" have no legal or enforceable definition. It's mostly marketing. A product can be labeled "natural" and still contain synthetic chemicals. It’s often just another way to create a new category of products to sell. Sophia: So the real rebellion isn't just switching to "clean" products, but questioning the need for so many products in the first place. Laura: Exactly. It's led to entrepreneurs like Adina Grigore, founder of S.W. Basics. She suffered from terrible skin issues caused by the very steroid creams prescribed to help her. In desperation, she stopped using everything. And her skin got better. Her entire brand is now built on the philosophy of using as few ingredients as possible. Her advice is, and I quote, "Leave your skin the fuck alone." Sophia: A skincare founder whose main advice is to use less skincare. That’s a bold business model. So what is the future then? Is it just using nothing? Or is there a new wave of products, like probiotics for your skin? Laura: That's the emerging frontier. Companies are now developing products with live bacteria, or prebiotics that feed the good bacteria already on your skin. The idea is to cultivate your skin's microbial garden instead of clear-cutting it every morning in the shower.

Sophia: It really feels like we're at a turning point. We've gone from thinking of bacteria as the enemy to seeing them as our allies. Laura: We have. The book argues that we've swung from one extreme—what one historian called "a thousand years without a bath" in the Middle Ages—to the other extreme of trying to sterilize our entire world. The new science is pointing us toward a more balanced middle path. Sophia: So it’s not about throwing out all our soap and becoming a health hazard, especially not after a global pandemic that re-taught us the importance of handwashing. It's about being more intentional. Laura: Exactly. It's about distinguishing between life-saving hygiene and culturally-mandated cleanliness. Handwashing is non-negotiable. But maybe scrubbing your entire body with antibacterial soap twice a day isn't just unnecessary, but counterproductive. Sophia: You're stripping away your skin's natural defenses, that microbial rainforest we talked about. Laura: Precisely. Hamblin's ultimate point isn't that we should be dirty. It's that we should be less disruptive. To see our skin not as a passive wall to be scrubbed, but as a living, dynamic garden to be tended. And sometimes, the best way to tend a garden is to just let it do its own thing. Sophia: I love that framing. It feels less like a chore and more like a partnership with your own body. It makes me want to go look at my own skincare shelf and ask each product, "What are you really for? Are you helping my garden, or are you just well-marketed weed killer?" Laura: A perfect question for our listeners to ponder as well. What's in your cabinet, and why? Sophia: It's a great challenge. Thanks for this, Laura. My face mites and I feel much more at peace now. Laura: (Laughs) You're very welcome. This is Aibrary, signing off.