Outlaw Soaps: There's a long, boring story that I'd be happy to tell you, but the shortest version is that:

1. I was depressed about my job and soap was the least expensive, least fattening thing that made me happy.

2. Making soap is probably the most dangerous thing you can do in your own living room without breaking the law (though buying large quantities of lye gets you on some interesting government lists). That's a good kind of hobby to have.

3. When I ran the numbers and looked at other soap makers, it turns out soap is a pretty good business. Plus, about half my friends wanted to buy my soap as soon as they heard what I was doing, so I had them all rallying behind me.

Also, there are great parts of Oakland, and then there's where we live. I used to live in a nice part of Oakland, but we moved to a sketchy warehouse for cheap rent and fewer complaints about toxic chemicals. Eventually, we'll move to the forest and start a roadside attraction of soap, goats, chickens, and iced tea on the porch. (I assume there's a market for that.)

You use really novel scent combinations in your soaps. How do you go about determining what makes a great smell?

All our soaps are built on our life experiences. For example, I made "Fire in the Hole" on a weekend I was supposed to go camping with friends, but had to work. Our camping trips are filled with campfire, gunpowder, whiskey, sage, and bacon, so I made a soap that smelled like that.At the end of the day, the best smelling soap smells like the best memories you have.

Is there a scent that you’ve been trying for, that you want more than any other—a fragrant peak you’ve yet to traverse?

YES!! RAIN! We have tried every angle on rain: rain on concrete, rain in the forest, rain in the desert, rain on grass, a rainstorm with lightening... And it all comes out not smelling like rain. Rain is our holy grail. People request it all the time and there's absolutely nothing like it that we can find or make. I think the thing that makes rain such a challenge is that it's not just a smell, it's also a feeling. Rain is cool and undirected and everywhere. It surprises you in big drops off branches and changes the texture of the air when you breathe it. There's a certain kind of alive feeling when you're walking in the forest in the rain, like you can feel the things around you loving the rain.

That said, we recently ordered a scent that Russ and I both agreed at least had potential. We're giving it a try in a couple weeks. If we mix it with some grass, maybe a little hay, and some other assorted forest smell, it may approach rain in the woods. Wish us luck!

Finally, we know that you two are Burning Man die-hards, which made us wonder: just what did you contribute this year? It wasn’t . . . soap, was it!?

We contributed the most brutally metal thing we could think of: nothing.

After 10 years, we decided to take a year off to focus on... yeah... soap. However, we did offer to send soap out to the playa, which was very fun. Black Rock City has its own postal service. But take a city filled with a billion distractions, hand a hung over volunteer postal worker a tiny, poorly addressed package that says something like "The camp on the end of the corner next to the giant vagina clown sculpture at 4:30 and D," and send him into 95 degree mid-day heat to deliver it without any expectation of compensation at all. Oh, and he might not even be wearing pants, which adds a whole new patina of risk to the endeavor. We included lots of bribes and unnecessary forms filled in triplicate, which I know they love. All the packages arrived safely, bless the BRC Postal Service.