Botanical, Chemical, or Biotech? The False Choices of Modern Skincare
Send us Fan Mail Botanical, chemical, or biotech? The beauty industry loves to sell these as three opposing worlds: natural is pure and gentle, chemical is harsh and suspicious, biotech is futuristic ...
3 Nov 49min
INCI Lists and Ingredient-Checking Websites: Why They Can Mislead You
Send us Fan Mail You’ve done it, and I’ve done it too. You photograph an ingredient list, paste it into a checker app, and seconds later you get a verdict in red, yellow and green: toxic, questionable...
27 Okt 43min
Why “Preservative-Free” Skincare Is a Red Flag
Send us Fan Mail Few words frighten people in skincare like “preservatives.” We’ve been taught that preservative-free sounds clean, paraben-free sounds safer, and natural sounds best. But here’s the s...
20 Okt 41min
Smoother Skin in Minutes: The Science of Film Formers
Send us Fan Mail Some skincare feels like magic: a serum that smooths your skin in three minutes, an eye product that makes bags vanish on camera, a primer that turns pores into glass. We tend to cred...
13 Okt 35min
Emulsifiers, Stabilisers and Thickeners: The Invisible Architecture
Send us Fan Mail A few days ago, a lovely, thoughtful client asked to return an unopened product. She'd spotted a "cross polymer" on the ingredient list, read that it might be a microplastic, and didn...
6 Okt 27min
Inside a Cream: The Science of Emulsions (Pt. 2)
Send us Fan Mail In Part 1, I told you the story of the cream, 2,000 years of history from Galen's rose water and beeswax to the jars on our shelves today. Now let's open the jar and look inside. In t...
29 Sep 24min
Creams and Emulsions (Pt.1): From Galen to Nivea and The Surprising History of Cream
Send us Fan Mail A cream looks like the most ordinary thing in your bathroom: white, soft, familiar, a little boring. But I'm here to tell you it's the single most sophisticated structure in all of sk...
22 Sep 26min
The Most Misunderstood Ingredient in Skincare: Water
Send us Fan Mail "It's mostly water, I'm not paying for that." If you've ever thought about a skincare product, this episode is for you, because water might be the most underestimated, misunderstood i...
15 Sep 38min
