More Hands, Less Body

My only regular podcast at this point is Social Distance from Katherine Wells and James Hamblin of The Atlantic. Today’s edition (“Is Anyone Else Not Showering?”) focuses on this Daily Mail post ridiculing Hamblin’s hygiene habits—or, more accurately, misconstruing both his hygiene habits and health advice based upon a promotional appearance for his forthcoming book, Clean: The New Science of Skin.

The podcast usually is an informative interview bookended by mutually-chiding banter between the hosts; this edition skips the interview segment. Highlights include Wells (who sounds like Jewel Staite) announcing that her Purell “has been liberated from its bladder”, Hamblin explaining that “we sold people so much soap that we had to start selling conditioner”, and a brainstorming session as to how to reduce Hamblin’s 90,000-word book down to a marketable catchphrase as a way to seize control of the internet’s apparent lack of nuance. I’ve titled this post for Hamblin’s own late-in-the-show suggestion.

For the record, I am a not-daily shower person, mostly for reasons related to regulating my available resources (or “spoons”), but I do at least actively wash up at the sink on a daily basis.