Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: This season, we're exploring the lives and motivations of some
Speaker 1: of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frying and I'm Mariach from Marquis. If you've been a
Speaker 1: listener this season, you may agree with the following assessment.
Speaker 1: Modern scholars generally agree that the Victorian era was kind
Speaker 1: of the heyday for poisoners. There were many poisons to
Speaker 1: choose from then, and I mean there still are today,
Speaker 1: but at that time, arsenic was the poison of choice,
Speaker 1: primarily because it was really easy to get. Plus it
Speaker 1: was tasteless and it was odorless, so it's really easy
Speaker 1: to hide as well, And these are all good things
Speaker 1: when you're assessing poisons. Arsenic is, as we've mentioned before,
Speaker 1: naturally occurring, but in terms of human knowledge of it,
Speaker 1: it's been around since about twelve fifty, when a German
Speaker 1: scholar named Albertus Magnus is credited with discovering it, although
Speaker 1: we also probably want to air quote the word discover
Speaker 1: since arsenic was surely used before Albertas put his name
Speaker 1: on it, right, But he put his name on it first.
Speaker 1: This was a time when there were very few rules
Speaker 1: about how one might acquire a poison, and there were
Speaker 1: even fewer rules about who might acquire a poison. And
Speaker 1: some of the world's most infamous poisoners seemed to come
Speaker 1: from the Victorian era. But let's be super clear here,
Speaker 1: poisonings were happening long before Victorian times. The very first
Speaker 1: person to commit homicide with poison lived probably at least
Speaker 1: modern scholars estimate about seventy thousand BC. Where they mail
Speaker 1: where they female? Was this to settle a score or
Speaker 1: maybe a hungry power play, It was so long ago
Speaker 1: we can only speculate on the circumstance. Interestingly, historians recently
Speaker 1: believed that they have found more substantial evidence of a
Speaker 1: tribe using poison tipped arrowheads on the African continent, and
Speaker 1: that very likely jumped from human poisoning animal to human
Speaker 1: poisoning human. But what we do know is that humans
Speaker 1: have been poisoning one another for a very very long time. Poisoning, too,
Speaker 1: has always been seen as a dramatic type of murder.
Speaker 1: It's been romanticized. It even makes its way into our entertainment, say,
Speaker 1: like Shakespeare, for instance, he writes several instances I believe
Speaker 1: seven actually of murder by poison in his works, and
Speaker 1: six of those poisonings, curiously are administered by a woman.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen hundreds, Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher, who followed
Speaker 1: in Shakespeare's footsteps, described poisoning as the coward's weapon. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you don't have to be there
Speaker 1: for it. So but if you go all the way
Speaker 1: back I'm talking like back, back, back, back, back to
Speaker 1: the ancient Sumerians, which takes us back to like, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll find evidence that they too used plant toxins such
Speaker 1: as wolf spain, which we've we've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: in our episodes this season. Um, and they used it
Speaker 1: to poison the tips of their hunting arrows, also very
Speaker 1: likely used it to kill a person or two. Um.
Speaker 1: And when you're talking that far back in history, though,
Speaker 1: things get a little bit tangled between what was reality
Speaker 1: and what was mythology. The Sumerians, for instance, worshiped a
Speaker 1: goddess named Gula who ruled over charms and spells and
Speaker 1: also poisons. But it's the Sumerians who also may have
Speaker 1: been the first to document the effects of different poisonous substances,
Speaker 1: so they didn't believe it was all magical. They did
Speaker 1: sort of know that it was also based in reality.
Speaker 1: They were into the science of it. If we jump
Speaker 1: forward a bit to around three thousand BC, during the
Speaker 1: time of the ancient Egyptians, there is evidence that they
Speaker 1: definitely kept records of poisonous plants and their side effects,
Speaker 1: and included pretty detailed records of how you could extract
Speaker 1: those poisons and how to distill them into poisonous substances.
Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks are also really well known for using poisons,
Speaker 1: specifically as a capital punishment, which is a sentence that
Speaker 1: they called state poison. And if you know your history,
Speaker 1: you also know that that's how Socrates was executed and
Speaker 1: the ancient Persians, Yep, they two were poisoners. There's a
Speaker 1: story about Queen Parasites, who lived in the fifth century BC,
Speaker 1: poisoning the carving knife before she used it to serve
Speaker 1: her daughter in law. Chinese history, India's history, there are
Speaker 1: stories spanning the globe of poisoning in almost every culture
Speaker 1: going back centuries. The earliest whispers of widespread murder by
Speaker 1: poison and by women specifically. UH dates back to about
Speaker 1: three hundred BC, and it involves a group of something
Speaker 1: like a hundred and seventy women who decided to use
Speaker 1: the plague as an alibi for poisoning a bunch of
Speaker 1: Roman men. Unfortunately for them, their rus didn't work, and
Speaker 1: I suppose unfortunately for the Roman men as well. Um
Speaker 1: and all of the women who were involved were convicted
Speaker 1: of their crimes. I would love to see how that
Speaker 1: group came about. I know that's a pretty big group
Speaker 1: to get and everybody be cool, but here's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. That is a large group of people to
Speaker 1: get on board with one thing exactly and not have
Speaker 1: one person sort of like tell their cousin, who tells
Speaker 1: their sister, you know, and then anybody's in jail. Right
Speaker 1: before the popularity of arsenic in the Middle Ages and
Speaker 1: into the Renaissance, the ancient Greeks and Romans were more
Speaker 1: inclined to use hemlock as their poison of choice. Hemlock, incidentally,
Speaker 1: is also part of the Parsley family. I actually thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, you know, like may inform your
Speaker 1: your culinary presentations going forward right, be careful of wild
Speaker 1: carrots like it's also in the family. So regardless of
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about arsenic or you're talking about hemlock
Speaker 1: or any other poison really for that matter, one thing
Speaker 1: is really clear. Throughout human history, poison has been a
Speaker 1: potent weapon in every assassin's toolkit. It is discreet, it
Speaker 1: is quick if you want it to be um and
Speaker 1: it could make a woman a wealthy widow, and it
Speaker 1: could set in motion a change in power. And there's
Speaker 1: a reason we're setting up all of this assassination shock.
Speaker 1: When we look at ancient women and their knowledge of poisons,
Speaker 1: there is one that stands out and one that we
Speaker 1: have in fact mentioned before. So our scene becomes ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: and our poisoner is a woman named Locusta. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to dive into the life and
Speaker 1: crimes of this ancient poisoner. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's
Speaker 1: get into who Locusta was and why the Roman elite
Speaker 1: might have been interested in her skills. Locusta was an
Speaker 1: active poisoner during the first century in the final two
Speaker 1: reigns of the Julio Claudian dynasty. During the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: You may recognize her name from some of our previous episodes,
Speaker 1: but she has mainly been in the shadows. As we've
Speaker 1: been talking about this season, there's a long list of
Speaker 1: women who are remembered for their poisoned fuel like a
Speaker 1: sees right, but regardless of whether or not they actually
Speaker 1: committed the deed or in some instances deeds plural u.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there was rat poison in the eggnog, which we've seen,
Speaker 1: but we've also learned that sometimes it was simply deadly gossip.
Speaker 1: Poisoning in Rome was so common in the first century
Speaker 1: that it was often just assumed that if anyone in
Speaker 1: the Imperial court died, it was not natural causes, and women, women,
Speaker 1: well women, were considered the most notorious poisoners. At one point.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, the word for adulters was kind
Speaker 1: of synonymous with that of poisoner. Among the Romans, there
Speaker 1: was a pretty strong belief that Roman women poisoned for love,
Speaker 1: just romantic but not always true because they are so
Speaker 1: poisoned for money. Yeah right, So Locusta is mentioned all
Speaker 1: over the place when you're reading about the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: yet not a ton of information of out who she
Speaker 1: is has remained over the centuries. Other than the fact
Speaker 1: that she was a woman who poisoned for money, we
Speaker 1: do know that she came from Gaul, and sometimes she
Speaker 1: is actually referred to as Locusta of Gaul, and at
Speaker 1: the time Gall was the outer province of ancient Rome.
Speaker 1: Today it is part of France. There is no record, though,
Speaker 1: of how she came to be in the center of
Speaker 1: Roman power. There is one super sketchy story about her
Speaker 1: being a real sketchy kidnapped. There's a lot of sketchy
Speaker 1: when it comes to her story. Yes, um, there's one
Speaker 1: sketchy story about her being kidnapped in the year fifty
Speaker 1: four and being brought to Rome to exploit her skills,
Speaker 1: which would suggest she already had a reputation. But that
Speaker 1: story is very unlikely, mainly because she was also already
Speaker 1: allegedly in jail on a poisoning charge in Rome in
Speaker 1: the year fifty four, and that story makes more sense
Speaker 1: in her timeline. She probably was in Rome in jail
Speaker 1: awaiting a sentence the accused to herself. She actually wasn't
Speaker 1: a poisoner. She was a maker of poisons, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of smart to think of her more like a
Speaker 1: like a botanist or a chemist, and she would have
Speaker 1: been really right at home making drugs an apothecary. But
Speaker 1: we've mentioned this man once before. He's a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: toxicology expert who was brought in several times as a
Speaker 1: court witness. His name is Dr Alfred Swain Taylor, and
Speaker 1: he once said, and we quote him, a poison in
Speaker 1: a small dose is a medicine, and a medicine and
Speaker 1: a large dose is a poison. It's a subtle difference, yeah,
Speaker 1: and probably one that Locusta was very very keen on maintaining.
Speaker 1: I'm just making compounds, right, But being an apothecary strictly
Speaker 1: in the apothecary sense was not the path that she chose,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether it was medicines or poison. Though she
Speaker 1: was an expert in her craft. She's often called a
Speaker 1: serial killer, but Locusta could really also be called more
Speaker 1: of an assassin for hire. She provided poisons because she
Speaker 1: was hired to do so. Professor of forensic psychology Dr
Speaker 1: Katherine Ramsland has called Locusta's business necro entrepreneur. I just
Speaker 1: I when I saw that, I was like, she's right,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great business card title. If we've
Speaker 1: learned anything this season, it's that Romans loved their poisons,
Speaker 1: and in particular, they loved mixing them into their politics. So,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, Lokista was in great demand among them,
Speaker 1: and stories of Locusta suggests that she was also discreet.
Speaker 1: She didn't need to know why you needed poison or
Speaker 1: who you may have hoped to kill with it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to know about your beefs. I'm just selling
Speaker 1: you some chemic goals. I just wondered if you want hemlocker,
Speaker 1: opium und okay. All she needed to know was how
Speaker 1: you might want a theoretical death to play out. For instance,
Speaker 1: were you thinking about a quick and sudden death or
Speaker 1: were you imagining more of an agonizing lye long and
Speaker 1: painful affair. Either way, poison was always the matter of
Speaker 1: the day. It was a silent killer and perfect, always
Speaker 1: perfect for the job. She didn't just create and mix poisons.
Speaker 1: She advised others on which poisons would be best for
Speaker 1: their desired result, and she took on apprentices, which I
Speaker 1: thought was actually pretty cool. Usually if you're discreet, you
Speaker 1: don't do that um And eventually she was running a
Speaker 1: sort of training academy for poison assassins, and she encouraged
Speaker 1: and taught the poison arts too many, although to be honest,
Speaker 1: most of the poisonings that were happening at this time,
Speaker 1: we're all happening in the Imperial court. Emperor Caligula, for instance,
Speaker 1: is said to have had a trunk filled with various poisons.
Speaker 1: Poison was serious business in politics, so no wonder she
Speaker 1: started this cottage industry, as like the University of poison,
Speaker 1: there are there. Actually, when I was doing some research,
Speaker 1: I found that there were there were sort of three women,
Speaker 1: Locusta being one of them, and two other women who
Speaker 1: were well known for poisoning at the same time, but
Speaker 1: they had been apprentices of hers, so they really weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily part of her story. They just happened to be
Speaker 1: other poisoners, which I'm sure there were hundreds of across
Speaker 1: the city. So she, getting back to Locusta, was one
Speaker 1: of the few women we've talked about this season who
Speaker 1: didn't rely on our favorite poison arsenic. Her poisons would
Speaker 1: have actually included mostly vegetable poisons, and and that meant
Speaker 1: that she would have relied on plants like Belladonna and
Speaker 1: deadly nightshade, mandreg hemlock opium. Those are just a few examples.
Speaker 1: H Wolf Spain was another good one that was surely
Speaker 1: part of her tool kids, and it was known as
Speaker 1: the Queen of Poisons. It said that when she formulated
Speaker 1: new poisons, she tested them at the emperor's request, on
Speaker 1: convicted criminals and enslaved persons. And actually the reality was
Speaker 1: that she tested her poisons on anyone she wanted to
Speaker 1: test them on, because frankly, she could. It's true. One
Speaker 1: of the great Roman historians, Tastus, described her as, and
Speaker 1: we quote him, a woman lately condemned as a dealer
Speaker 1: in clandestine practices, but reserved among the instruments of state
Speaker 1: to serve the purposes of dark ambition. So he was
Speaker 1: also known to play up the stereotype that women were
Speaker 1: much more likely to be poisoners than men were, and
Speaker 1: that stereotype has led the public to label women like
Speaker 1: the Cuesta as a witch. And we've seen it time
Speaker 1: and time again, no matter what century we've talked about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not the only one to link female poisoners
Speaker 1: with witches or witchcraft, not at all. This there was
Speaker 1: this pervasive and very popular belief that has carried on
Speaker 1: through the centuries that any woman who could make and
Speaker 1: who administered poisons couldn't just have scientific knowledge, she had
Speaker 1: to be a sorceress or or that she was at
Speaker 1: least somehow involved with magic. And that is a belief
Speaker 1: that we talked about through the centuries when we talk
Speaker 1: about accused female poisoners, never science, magic. Sir, this is
Speaker 1: going a good time for us to take a quick break. Um,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to go deeper into
Speaker 1: how Locusta was influential among the Roman elite. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Criminalia. Let's now get into how Locusta's skills could
Speaker 1: make or break an emperor. So we've talked briefly, very
Speaker 1: briefly about Locusta in an episode earlier this season, very
Speaker 1: early on, when we told the story of Empress Julia Agrippina.
Speaker 1: So Julia was said to have poisoned her husband to
Speaker 1: ensure her only son, who became Emperor Nero, would ascend
Speaker 1: to the throne. It was Locusta who provided the goods
Speaker 1: to make all of that happen. And Locusta, while she
Speaker 1: had what seemed to be a pretty steady business. She
Speaker 1: didn't work completely unscathed, though she paid prices for this
Speaker 1: line of work that she chose. She was arrested and
Speaker 1: thrown in jail several times. Twice she was bailed out
Speaker 1: when high ranking, ambitious and impatient Roman politicians intervened. After all,
Speaker 1: you can't have your assassin sitting in jail when they
Speaker 1: are political rivals to be poisoned. Murder by poison gave
Speaker 1: an easy alibi. We've mentioned this time and time again
Speaker 1: that you probably wouldn't be around when the victor and died,
Speaker 1: so it was really important to a lot of people
Speaker 1: that her business stayed up and running. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: the same as being stabbed like you're going to be
Speaker 1: there for that event, you know. That is that they
Speaker 1: couldn't have it. So if you recall him just a
Speaker 1: bit earlier, we mentioned that Lakista was not known just
Speaker 1: for her skills, but for her discretion, and that was
Speaker 1: surely by design. Since she didn't want to know what
Speaker 1: her client's business was regarding their plans for the various
Speaker 1: compounds she was concocting, she couldn't then share any details
Speaker 1: with authorities. If she was caught and interrogated. That engendered
Speaker 1: a level of trust in her, which is another reason
Speaker 1: why Rome's High and Mighty would step in to help
Speaker 1: her when she got all jammed up. The third time
Speaker 1: Locusta was imprisoned, it was actually the embress herself, Julia Agrippinma,
Speaker 1: who sprung her. Of course, she had a specific purpose
Speaker 1: in mind. Well, it's Julia. Julia wanted to poison her husband,
Speaker 1: Emperor Claudius, and Locusta was happy to oblige. It's here
Speaker 1: that we take another turn to show just how enterprising
Speaker 1: Julia Agrippina was. So instead of payment, which Locusta was
Speaker 1: very likely expecting and maybe a thank you, Julia instead
Speaker 1: turned her into the authorities and accused her of poisoning
Speaker 1: the emperor, which yes, sure technically she had provided the poison,
Speaker 1: but it was actually Julia who did the deed. Locusta
Speaker 1: was arrested again, surely a surprise to an assassin waiting
Speaker 1: for her payment for services rendered instead of being paid
Speaker 1: with um uh, traitorous moves man, and at this point
Speaker 1: she was sentenced to death. However, not long after the sentencing,
Speaker 1: Julia's son and now Emperor Nero, freed Locusta and absolved
Speaker 1: her of all of her crimes and allegedly gave her
Speaker 1: a get out of jail free card for any future crimes.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty sweet set up. It's a fantastic setup.
Speaker 1: When I was reading about it, actually checked it in
Speaker 1: multiple sources because I was like, I was like, he
Speaker 1: not only gave her absolutely he absolved all of her
Speaker 1: sins for before this, but any future ones. Like wow,
Speaker 1: So Nero, Um, if it sounds like something that an
Speaker 1: emperor would do, if he said, maybe wanted to make
Speaker 1: an ally of a poisoner, it was very likely that
Speaker 1: Nero did, in fact want to be allies with a
Speaker 1: poisoner or at least have this one on speed dial.
Speaker 1: So mainly because there were political parties he wanted to
Speaker 1: get rid of, he wanted look used to out into
Speaker 1: the room, and elite poison was the obvious way to
Speaker 1: make that all those stuffs happen. It's important to point
Speaker 1: out that Locusta was very instrumental in Nero's rise to power,
Speaker 1: not just getting him on the throne, but beyond that.
Speaker 1: She provided the murder weapon for him over and over,
Speaker 1: which he mainly used against members of his own family
Speaker 1: and those in the Imperial Court. We have no idea
Speaker 1: how many people were actually poisoned by the results of
Speaker 1: concoctions coming out of Locusta's lab, but we do know
Speaker 1: Nero was very very busy, it wasn't he. So he
Speaker 1: then actually rewarded her for all of her great work
Speaker 1: with him with an official title. She was called the
Speaker 1: Imperial Poisoner, which I mean, that's not very subtle, but
Speaker 1: then everybody already seemed to know who she was, so
Speaker 1: subtlety was really already out the window here and her.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm picturing the cocktail parties we're taking. What
Speaker 1: do you do? I'm the Imperial Poisoner, I see, and
Speaker 1: you draw your hand away and slowly back out of
Speaker 1: the room, back out and find somebody else to talk to. Cool.
Speaker 1: That must be very um can get dental with that.
Speaker 1: Like her career and her school for poison there's also
Speaker 1: really flourished under Nero's fourteen your rain, and she just
Speaker 1: she had a great decade. But of course, if you
Speaker 1: are close to power that was gained in troublesome ways,
Speaker 1: eventually it all falls apart. And when Nero's rain ended,
Speaker 1: so did Locusta's. Now there's something that we have to address,
Speaker 1: So bear with us. There's actually a really terrifying rumor
Speaker 1: about Locusta's death that is not and I repeat not
Speaker 1: all caps, not an ot true. But we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about it, if only to be one more voice
Speaker 1: on record saying that this did not happen. The story
Speaker 1: is terrible, so we're just gonna give you the short version.
Speaker 1: It's so gross, so gross that someone even concocted this
Speaker 1: as a fiction. Uh, it's no secret that the Romans
Speaker 1: enjoyed watching prisoners be tortured. Watching someone torn apart by
Speaker 1: wild animals was considered pretty good fun. Is not that uncommon.
Speaker 1: And while this terrible story suggests that that happened to Locusta,
Speaker 1: that she was torn apart by wild animals, it also
Speaker 1: suggests that she was first raped by an animal, by
Speaker 1: a giraffe. It is, as I said, horrifying. So let's
Speaker 1: say this one more time. That's not a real thing.
Speaker 1: This is not how Locusta died. This is something that
Speaker 1: someone concocted somewhere along the way. The Internet will tell
Speaker 1: you this story over and over that is not based
Speaker 1: in any kind of fact. No matter what the Internet says,
Speaker 1: do not believe it. This is not the true story.
Speaker 1: The real story is that Locusta was executed in the
Speaker 1: year sixty nine, shortly after nero suicide. So suicide was
Speaker 1: an acceptable way to end your life in Rome. So
Speaker 1: this part of his story actually was one of the
Speaker 1: least scandalous things that he probably ever did in his life. Nero,
Speaker 1: by the way, though died by a dagger, not by poison,
Speaker 1: though Locusta had provided a pinch for him in a
Speaker 1: small gold box in case he ever needed it. Nero
Speaker 1: was succeeded by Emperor Galba, who actually only reigned quite briefly,
Speaker 1: not even two full years, but that small period of
Speaker 1: time was long enough to put to death all of
Speaker 1: Nero's favorites, and we quote the scum that had come
Speaker 1: to the surface in Nero's day, and that included Nero's
Speaker 1: favorite poisoner Locusta. So, without Nero's protection anymore, and her
Speaker 1: skills were so well known, she was sentenced to death
Speaker 1: for her role in the murders of dozens of members
Speaker 1: of the Room and elite. She was put in chains
Speaker 1: and she was paraded through the streets of the city
Speaker 1: to her public execution. Now popular methods of execution did
Speaker 1: include wild animals sometimes, but it also very much included
Speaker 1: things like beheading, strangulation, being buried alive, drowning, and a
Speaker 1: big favorite at the time was crucifixion. So although we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly which one of these her execution would
Speaker 1: have been, we know that it had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with a giraffe. Yeah, the story ended on a down note,
Speaker 1: It really did. Thanks a lot, Maria. Sorry, she was
Speaker 1: the coolest ascid bar higher and then I just check
Speaker 1: it to a bad place. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I really liked about her story was this idea that,
Speaker 1: especially because she was working primarily with um, you know,
Speaker 1: vegetable based poisons and was a botanist. Really, I felt
Speaker 1: like you really sort of bonded at the idea that
Speaker 1: she was kind of a botanist chemist type, right, she's
Speaker 1: just busy figuring out what plants do. Um. So it
Speaker 1: got me thinking about fun things that I could make
Speaker 1: with plants and that might be unusual. As of late,
Speaker 1: I have been in the evenings as part of my
Speaker 1: wine down ritual, having a very milk heavy kind of
Speaker 1: like a chi that's not kelf and eated. Uh, And
Speaker 1: it just got me to thinking that something in that
Speaker 1: space might be very, very fun. So I came up
Speaker 1: with something that I called the Botanists Latte. And this
Speaker 1: starts with two cups of almond milk. You could also
Speaker 1: use any other milk that you desire. I do usually
Speaker 1: almond or oat, a bag of earl gray tea I
Speaker 1: opted for decalf in this case, and then a quarter
Speaker 1: cup of culinary rosebuds. These are easy to find. If
Speaker 1: you just do a in a search online for food
Speaker 1: grade rosebuds or culinary rosebuds, you'll find all kinds of
Speaker 1: sources for them. They're easy to get. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: I put all this in a saucepan and I just
Speaker 1: let it heat on medium uh until the milk got
Speaker 1: kind of steamy and just started to bubble around the edges.
Speaker 1: You don't want it to actually boil, just get nice
Speaker 1: and nice and warm, and then you turn off the heat,
Speaker 1: give it a quick stir to make sure the rosebuds
Speaker 1: are all covered with the milk, and then you just
Speaker 1: leave that to sit for several minutes while you go
Speaker 1: put on your pajamas or whatever that got strained into
Speaker 1: a mug because you don't want to eat all those rosebuds,
Speaker 1: and then I put sweetener in mine, which, however you
Speaker 1: want to do that if you just want to do sugar,
Speaker 1: if you have some sugar free sweetener, you can also
Speaker 1: add a little vanilla syrubber, a simple syrup, whatever your
Speaker 1: pref to the point where you like it, and then
Speaker 1: it's not a heavy hitter in terms of alcohol. You
Speaker 1: could drink it just as it is at that point.
Speaker 1: But I also added just an ounce of brandy brandy.
Speaker 1: I was waiting to see what you might add into that.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting when you mentioned that you used Earl Grey.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen You're not really a citrus person though,
Speaker 1: have you ever had Lady Gray? Yeah? Um, I imagine
Speaker 1: you probably like a real better than Lady, But like
Speaker 1: Lady adds this some more citrus to it, and I
Speaker 1: would probably try this with with that type because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a citrus kind of a person. But that was
Speaker 1: immediately I was it was it's the first time that
Speaker 1: you've had a drink where I've gone, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try it, but I'm gonna swap out this ingredient like usually,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna try it the way that it is.
Speaker 1: I love ingredients swaps because everybody does have different tastes. UM.
Speaker 1: You could also use different food grade flowers in here
Speaker 1: if you wanted to. You could use chrysanthemums or food
Speaker 1: grade lavender if you wanted to. UM, there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of options. I really like a rose flavored things.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm in the wrong century because nobody
Speaker 1: ever has that anymore. Well, you have to just make
Speaker 1: it yourself. I will say, this smells so beautiful, so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It smells like soft and it smells creamy. Even though
Speaker 1: like I used almond milk, there is still the almond
Speaker 1: milk combined with the rosebuds makes this very creamy scent.
Speaker 1: It's quite pretty. Um. And then the brandy is just
Speaker 1: like a perfect little And if two cups of almond
Speaker 1: milk sounds like a lot, you lose a good bit
Speaker 1: In the steaming, it does reduce down a bit um.
Speaker 1: And if are like me, when you try to pour
Speaker 1: it out of the saucepan through the strainer into a mug,
Speaker 1: you lose a little more because I'm a sloppy gloppy
Speaker 1: And like I said, you don't have to add the brandy.
Speaker 1: It's quite yummy just on its own. That is the
Speaker 1: botanist latte. We hope you enjoyed this particular little concoction
Speaker 1: and that it sounds like a yummy thing to try.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's Criminalia, and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again next week with more poison stories. Criminalia
Speaker 1: is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
Speaker 1: please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H