Episode 265 - Celebrating 100 episodes together plus some questions answered

Valerie George (0:00)

Hi, I'm Valerie and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 265 I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:27)

Hello Valerie, big show today.

Valerie George (0:30)

Huge show. It is our 100th episode together.

Perry Romanowski (0:35)

Exactly, yeah. If you're new to The Beauty Brains, and you haven't checked out episodes pre-165, that's where I had been doing this show with someone else for then, but Valerie came on, I guess almost halfway through the show, and we've been together for 100 episodes. Can you believe it?

Valerie George (0:57)

It's crazy, and it's been so fun.

I remember being so nervous at first, and of course, I knew you, but we had to build our rapport together and stuff like that. So now I feel like we're in a good rhythm. Yeah. You know, we know our place is in the show. I'm the person that uses product, you're the person that doesn't use product, which I think our fans appreciate.

Perry Romanowski (1:21)

One of my favorite moments happened, I think it was even in the last show when I started to riff on a thing and you were able to finish my sentence because you've heard it so many times.

That was when I say, you know, when you try a treatment, there are three things that can happen. It gets better, it gets worse, or nothing changes. Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah.

Valerie George (1:44)

Well, you know, we're great together and I think our fans are really loving it.

Perry Romanowski (1:49)

I think so. You know, Valerie, I had been going through some of the previous shows just to remember which questions were kind of my favorites and which were...

Valerie George (2:02)

They're fun to reminisce.

Perry Romanowski (2:04)

There's a lot of great ones. We thought that it would be fun to play our very first show together.

Before we do that, did you have any favorite episodes that you recall?

Valerie George (2:15)

Well, I'll tell you why we wanted to play the very first episode where we were together, because it's awkward and it's very painful to sit through. You know, we were still working on the sound quality and of course, me establishing myself in the show.

But also, I mean, that's one reason, right? But the real reason is I have loved doing so many of these episodes. I can't possibly pick a favorite. Now, I have favorite questions, really memorable questions, but to pick like one single favorite episode, that's pretty tough to do.

Perry Romanowski (2:47)

I agree. It was too tough for me too, but I did go through and pick out some of my more favorite questions that we covered. One of the ones way early on was, I always like the shows where you can describe, I think, your pure expertise or your most expert in hair color. And one of the first times we covered hair color was in episode 165, we talked about the difference between natural and synthetic hair colors. And I thought you covered it really well.

We got another hair carry question, don't we?

Valerie George (3:19)

Also an anonymous one.

This reader and follower of Beauty Brains wants to know what the difference is between hair color and all natural hair color and although you can't see me, I did put all natural in air quotes because that's what the asker of the question did. You obviously need dyes.

You need an alkalizer, which is an ingredient like ammonia or MEA that creates this high pH environment. You need antioxidants because these dyes oxidize together to form a color. And you don't want that happening in the tube, you want that happening on your hair.

You need hydrogen peroxide, and you need hair. And most people laugh when I say that, but it's actually true. The reaction doesn't. Oh yes, those are questions I can answer off the cuff. I love talking about hair color. I could talk about it all day, but we won't hear. So, yeah, I would have to say, yes, I've really enjoyed those questions as well. But one of my favorite questions where I laughed the hardest was in episode 253, where Misty wrote us, and she tried this miracle moisture conditioner that was based on chocolate. And she thought, you know what? This looks really interesting. Let me try it, something I've never looked at before. And she thought the bottle was brown. Like, oh cool, look at this little independent brand. And she got in the shower and plopped it in her hand, and the conditioner was darker brown. And she was like, why is this conditioner brown? It was like dripping everywhere in the shower.