Hello, hello, hi everyone.

Welcome to Fat Mascara, a podcast about beauty culture.

I'm one of your host, Jen Sullivan.

I would love to ask you a quick favor.

If you have two seconds, maybe it takes like five seconds, please throw us a review on Apple or Spotify

or wherever you listen if they let you do

reviews. Or you can comment directly on episodes on Spotify. In fact, this episode is exactly why

you should comment. It's the comment section on Spotify where I got the idea for this episode.

So if you remember, our contributor Julie, Julie Wilson and I,

we spoke a few weeks ago about a variety show that I went to. It was called the bathing

culture variety show here in New York City. When I told her about it, we briefly discussed it.

It set off a discussion in the comments. Then Garrett, our other contributor weighed in a week

or so later. He loves a bathhouse. And that whole topic brought up some questions,

but the main one being, why aren't bathhouses a bigger part of post-colonial American culture?

Like you just do not see communal bathhouses or social bathing scenes in most of the United States right now, like you do in other areas of the world. Well, someone who is working to change that

is today's guest, Robbie Hammond.

So he was actually the emcee of that variety show I told you about. And he's also the president and chief strategy officer of Thermay Group US, which is part of

Thurme Group, a global group of companies that believes well-being should be accessible.

And they're probably best known for developing well-being resorts,

many of which include a bathhouse element. So before this job, Robbie was the co-founder of the High Line here in New York City. And if that sounds familiar, it's because it's the public park

that runs along an elevated former rail line and brings together art people, nature, and more.

So Robbie is going to answer some questions that were raised

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