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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This time we're pulling

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Speaker 1: an episode from January. This is an episode that you

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Speaker 1: did with Christian. Yeah, this was a pretty fun one

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Speaker 1: that I figured would be a good one to pull

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Speaker 1: back out because it's the science of holy butter. It's

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Speaker 1: it's some of the parts I remember the most. Or

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Speaker 1: we're just talking about what butter is and how it's

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Speaker 1: kind of amazing, the the saga that it goes through

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Speaker 1: because it's essentially sunlight. It is sunlight transformed through a

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Speaker 1: few different processes into a lump of substance that you

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Speaker 1: have in your refrigerator. Well, I guess that's true of

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Speaker 1: pretty much all our food. But yes, but but it

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Speaker 1: looks like sight. It looks like sunlight, you know, it

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Speaker 1: has it seems to shine and uh and also we

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Speaker 1: get into some of the sacred ideas wrap up in

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Speaker 1: butter and uh and and all of this. A lot

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Speaker 1: of this is spring boarding off of an excellent butter

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Speaker 1: book that will reference in the episode. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: butter up. Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. I'll this is the secret

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Speaker 1: name of butter, tongue of the gods navel of immortality.

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Speaker 1: We will proclaim the name of butter. We will sustain

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Speaker 1: it in this sacrifice by bowing low. These waves of

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Speaker 1: butter flow like gazelles before the hunter. Streams of butter

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Speaker 1: caress the burning wood agne. The fire loves them and

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Speaker 1: is satisfied. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert la and my name is Christian Seger.

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Speaker 1: Bow at the feet of butter. Yeah, I thought we

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Speaker 1: needed a nice regal opening there. And that is a

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Speaker 1: quote from the rig Veda. Uh. This is from around

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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred b CE. So we're going to really dive

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Speaker 1: into butter. The episode I wanted to do like an

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Speaker 1: episode title called Holy Butter Batman that it seems like

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Speaker 1: that might fit the best. But we we are going

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Speaker 1: to talk about religious uses of butter. We're also going

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Speaker 1: to talk about the basics food science of preparing butter,

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Speaker 1: and then butter war, which is a very real thing,

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Speaker 1: in fact, so real that it's generated a satirical uh

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Speaker 1: children's book all about butter. Yes, I imagine a number

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Speaker 1: of you were familiar with this. It is a Dr

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Speaker 1: Seuss The butter Battle Book published in and it's a

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Speaker 1: It is a satire that tackled the very serious topic

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Speaker 1: of cold wool or the nuclear arms race and mutually

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Speaker 1: assured destruction. It is the only children's book that I've

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Speaker 1: run across that ends with the contemplation of mutually assured

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Speaker 1: nuclear destruction. Yeah, I uh, you know, I was not

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Speaker 1: familiar with this specific Dr SEUs book until today. And

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Speaker 1: I watched the Ralph Backshet animated version on YouTube this

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Speaker 1: morning in coporation for this, and it blew my mind.

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Speaker 1: It was like, I I wonder how it would have

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Speaker 1: changed me as a person if I had seen this

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Speaker 1: when I was like four or five years old. You know, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't think I saw it when I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: And this is the this animated version, by the way,

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Speaker 1: narrated by Charles Dearning. Of anyone else who's not familiar

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Speaker 1: with it, you can you should be able to find

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Speaker 1: it on YouTube. Yeah, it was everywhere, and it's yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's such an interesting story because to to a kid,

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Speaker 1: it's just a goofy tale involving these bird like people

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Speaker 1: and the basic plot here is you have a cold

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Speaker 1: war between two factions. One side firmly believes that you

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Speaker 1: put your butter on top of the toast, on top

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Speaker 1: of the bread, and then the other side, on the

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Speaker 1: other side of this big wall, they believe you put

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Speaker 1: the butter on the bottom of the bread. And that

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Speaker 1: sounds ridiculous and would never happen with real human beings.

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Speaker 1: And yet when we talk about margarine and butter and

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Speaker 1: what happened with them in the nineteenth century going into

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, not that long ago. Uh, it's not

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Speaker 1: that far apart. Yeah. I think one of the things

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Speaker 1: about butter is that today especially we just take it

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Speaker 1: completely for granted. It's maybe a little less if you

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Speaker 1: you buy really good butter, or you you get involved

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Speaker 1: in a in a you know, a love affair with

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Speaker 1: with with coffee with butter in it, with bulletproof coffee

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Speaker 1: like that. But for the most part, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just this is yellow stuff that's maybe delicious and and

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Speaker 1: certainly has a huge role in so many different recipes,

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Speaker 1: and large quantities of it go into most you know,

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Speaker 1: restaurant foods to make it delightful. But we don't think

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Speaker 1: about the wonder of butter. We don't think about the

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Speaker 1: alchemy of butter and the miracle butter, and it's easy

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Speaker 1: to forget that we have all of these wonderful examples

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Speaker 1: from human history, where where as our their introduction suggests

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Speaker 1: there is there is something divine about butter. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: certainly tastes great. And I don't think I've ever met

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Speaker 1: a person who says they don't like butter, you know,

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Speaker 1: like everyone likes butter. It's it's butter. It's great, it

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Speaker 1: tastes great. But um, when you may not use better

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Speaker 1: for you know, even they made an ethical or dietary choice, right, yeah, totally,

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Speaker 1: but but still it tastes, tastes lovely. Uh. It's funny

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Speaker 1: you mentioned like the taste of it and like it

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Speaker 1: being so ubiquitous because you're right, Like I use butter

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Speaker 1: every day in cooking somewhere or another. Uh, and I

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Speaker 1: just kind of always get the generic store brand, you know.

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Speaker 1: And then my wife recently splurged and she bought that

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Speaker 1: carry gold Irish butter that like, it's really really good,

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Speaker 1: kind of expensive butter, and it I like reserve of

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Speaker 1: it for special things, like I don't don't just cook

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Speaker 1: with carry gold butter, you know, like like that's that's special. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we got into that better. Alam back, my wife and

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Speaker 1: I when we we briefly did we did like a

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Speaker 1: summer of the coffee butter concoction. Yeah. I remember hearing

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Speaker 1: about this from you and and it that was that

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Speaker 1: kind of went away, didn't it, Like the bulletproof coffee thing.

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Speaker 1: I heard about it for right around the time you

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Speaker 1: guys were doing it, and then I it just disappeared. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think it's still around. I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: people do what we did, and you you do it

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Speaker 1: for a little bit, maybe you know it. It forces

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Speaker 1: you to change your patterns a bit and then you realize, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: actually I don't need to put butter in my coffee,

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Speaker 1: and it tastes great, probably, but it's probably I would

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Speaker 1: assume fattening, right, Yeah, but part of it. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to get into the whole. There are a number

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Speaker 1: of of claims that are made about buttered coffee that

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Speaker 1: proclaimed that it hasn't almost mystical properties, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of in keeping with what we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: the day. But ultimately the main benefit of butter coffee

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Speaker 1: that I found was that it was very filling for

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Speaker 1: someone who normally just has coffee and smoothie for breakfast.

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Speaker 1: So I was sustained all the way through lunch and

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Speaker 1: maybe even past lunch without needing to snack. But the

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Speaker 1: curious thing is about a summer of coffee and butter

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Speaker 1: kind of cured me of that. So now a lot

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Speaker 1: of the time I don't snack in the mornings anyway.

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Speaker 1: Oh interesting, okay, and you're back to just like coffee

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Speaker 1: and smoothies. Interesting, Well I might, I might give it

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Speaker 1: a shot. Yeah, and everything's worth a shot, right, maybe

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Speaker 1: ice cream and butter. Now that that, well, that might

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Speaker 1: not work so well. All right, well, let's let's kick

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Speaker 1: off by getting in a way. We're gonna get this

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Speaker 1: out of the way, because I know the one thing

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Speaker 1: that most of you are not excited about is to

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Speaker 1: hear about the process of creating butter. But I want

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Speaker 1: to really help frame this in a in an exciting way.

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Speaker 1: I want you to think about it not so much

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Speaker 1: as oh, you milked a cow or some other mammal

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Speaker 1: and then you transfer it. You transformed it's milk into

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Speaker 1: a solid substance that's spread herble. Think of it as

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Speaker 1: a series of three miracles by which one turns the

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Speaker 1: light of the sun into a pad of butter. Again,

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Speaker 1: holy butter. All right, So first, let's just give at

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Speaker 1: least passing credit to the alchemy of photosynthesis. The grass

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Speaker 1: in the field converts energy in the form of sunlight

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Speaker 1: into chemical energy in the form of sugars or other carbohydrates.

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Speaker 1: So that's the first miracle. Second, a female ruminant, be

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Speaker 1: it a cow, a sheep, a camel, a water buffalo,

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Speaker 1: a goat, et cetera, they consume the grass. And and truly,

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Speaker 1: as Elaine Kostrov points out in her excellent book Butter,

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Speaker 1: a Rich History, uh, you're better off thinking of it

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Speaker 1: as a of the cow or the camel, or whatever

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Speaker 1: the animal might be, as a mobile um harvester and

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Speaker 1: processing unit, as opposed to just an animal that's eating.

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Speaker 1: Because these ruminants that are built to transform graph into milk.

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Speaker 1: That consider the fact that they have this three or

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Speaker 1: four chambered stomach. They have an upper dental pad instead

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Speaker 1: of teeth that's perfect for for masticating the greens. Each

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Speaker 1: animal puts its own particular chemical spin on the process,

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Speaker 1: but they crunch up the greens and ferment them in

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Speaker 1: their mini chambered guts. Eight hours of feeding with cows,

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Speaker 1: eight hours ruminating, and then the remains of the day

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Speaker 1: are just resting. So the maceration, the repeated chewing of

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Speaker 1: the cut, uh you know, because they'll swallow it will

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Speaker 1: come back up. All that this helps carry out the

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Speaker 1: second miracle, okay, the transformation of a low fat diet

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Speaker 1: of grass into high fat milk. So the broken down

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Speaker 1: food is even further assaulted in the guts of the

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Speaker 1: of these creatures by microbes and this oxygen free fermentation chamber,

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Speaker 1: the grassy meal is broken down to the to its

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Speaker 1: very basic elements strings of carbon and hydrogen molecules, and uh,

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Speaker 1: then the other bacteria down there they recombine the elements

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Speaker 1: into volatile fatty acids. This is reminding me of a

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Speaker 1: like four eight trip I went on when I was

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Speaker 1: in elementary school. You might have had a similar experience,

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Speaker 1: or maybe somebody out there listening has uh you know.

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Speaker 1: They took us around like a working farm and kind

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Speaker 1: of showed us how everything worked, and there was this

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Speaker 1: one cow that had like a window. Have you seen

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Speaker 1: these in person? Yeah? Yeah, It's like it was almost

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Speaker 1: like there was a um a porthole built into its side,

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Speaker 1: and you could look inside and it's not like you're

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Speaker 1: watching butter being made, you know. But I was like

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Speaker 1: so fascinated with this as a kid, like, why why

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Speaker 1: would you do that? Wouldn't that hurt the cow? Like

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Speaker 1: it was so strange to me. I still to this day,

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Speaker 1: I don't really think I know why, other than it's

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Speaker 1: probably for health practices, right to make sure that everything's working, okay,

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Speaker 1: to have a window into the cow. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm assuming an educational outreach. Yeah, well maybe that was.

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Speaker 1: It was just for us to be able to see

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Speaker 1: inside the living cow. Yeah, maybe this requires more more.

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Speaker 1: We need to come back to this. Maybe maybe someone

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Speaker 1: out there can can fill us in. Okay, So we

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Speaker 1: have this this wonderful fermentation process going on, and only

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Speaker 1: half of the fat is coming from the cow's diet.

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Speaker 1: The rest is coming from the cow's own body fat.

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Speaker 1: All right, So there's your second miracle. Ruminate in milk,

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Speaker 1: a fatty liquid that's that sole purpose is to ensure

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Speaker 1: the survival of the animals young or you know, you know,

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Speaker 1: for a bunch of eight creatures to steal who drink

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Speaker 1: and then process into various butters and cheeses. It's also

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Speaker 1: worth noting that the exact composition of this milk is

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Speaker 1: gonna vary from species to species, with additional factors depending

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Speaker 1: on environment and diet. So you produces twice the fat

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Speaker 1: content of cow milk. Goat milk has smaller, more digestible

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Speaker 1: fat molecules, a yak milk has less sugar and more protein.

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Speaker 1: Camel's milk has three times as much vitamin C and

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Speaker 1: water buffalo milk has twice the fat of cow milk.

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Speaker 1: What's like the weirdest type of butter you've ever had?

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Speaker 1: Because I can't. I don't think I've really experimented all

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Speaker 1: that much other than like goat butter. Probably, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't think I've experimented much at all with with butters

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Speaker 1: made from different milks. The closest I've come, I guess,

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Speaker 1: is having a few different types of cheese. So yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: I've had sheep cheese, I've had goat cheese, cow cheese,

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Speaker 1: And if you've had actual buffalo mozzarella, then you've had

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Speaker 1: cheese made from water buffalo. Yeah. Again, the fat content,

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Speaker 1: that's why that is the premier. I love some buffalo mozzarella.

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Speaker 1: My other favorite cheese is um from a very specific

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Speaker 1: part of the world, Zacapona, Poland. They yeah, it's I

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Speaker 1: believe it's a goat cheese, but again it's just phenomenal

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Speaker 1: smoked cheese. Anyways, this is making me hungry, all right.

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Speaker 1: So the animals milked and then you have to make cream.

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Speaker 1: That's the next step on our way to actual butter.

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Speaker 1: And this is achieved by allowing the milk to sit

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Speaker 1: and then skimming the resulting layer of fat fat molecules

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Speaker 1: that have collected on the top. They've floated up to

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Speaker 1: the top. You skim it off, and you can make

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Speaker 1: butter from whole milk like the rest of the milk

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Speaker 1: in that vat. But the more assured route is via

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Speaker 1: the cream. Yeah. So, like Robert said, we're not going

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Speaker 1: to really like hold your hand and walk through the

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Speaker 1: how the how it's made kind of thing. If you

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Speaker 1: want to look at that, there's plenty of articles online.

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Speaker 1: But basically, there's just tiny fat molecules that float to

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Speaker 1: the top of this milk. They form the cream. You

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Speaker 1: stir them up, that's what the agitation is until they

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Speaker 1: clump together to form wondrous butter. Yeah. The cow or

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Speaker 1: the sheep or the camel, they've made this wondrous liquid

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Speaker 1: to feed their their offspring, and the humans have come

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Speaker 1: in and said, actually, we're gonna take just the very

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Speaker 1: best of that, but the very top fatty stuff, and

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Speaker 1: then we're going to process it. It seems really wasteful,

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Speaker 1: but then you realize that there's there's a place for

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Speaker 1: all the various left dovers as well. Yeah, because what

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Speaker 1: happens next is you you agitate or stir up the cream.

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Speaker 1: This shakes the fat molecules out of position and causes

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Speaker 1: them to clump together. Eventually, after prolonged stirring, the fat

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Speaker 1: molecules clump so much that they separate from the liquid

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Speaker 1: in the cream and a solid mass forms. The liquid

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Speaker 1: is buttermilk, and of course that goes on to be

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Speaker 1: used as butter milk, and the solid mass is butter.

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Speaker 1: Behold the third and final miracle. So little research I

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Speaker 1: found this that one of the earliest recipes for butter

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Speaker 1: involved putting the milk or the cream inside an animal

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Speaker 1: skin and just suspending it and letting it swing back

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Speaker 1: and forth until butter formed. Uh. Today, to qualify as butter,

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Speaker 1: it has to contain at least eight butter fat with

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Speaker 1: no more than sixteen water and two percent milk solids.

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Speaker 1: And you need twenty one pounds of cow's milk to

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Speaker 1: make one pound of butter. So to get it to

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Speaker 1: be that consistent yellow that we're all used to, it's

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Speaker 1: actually artificially colored. And this is important it will come

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Speaker 1: back around later when we talk about margarine. The way

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Speaker 1: they do that is with something called a nato, which

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Speaker 1: is a food coloring that comes from the seeds of

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Speaker 1: I believe it's pronounced the aquiote tree. So it's not

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Speaker 1: as yellow as we're used to. That's a food coloring

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Speaker 1: that's added to it. Okay, so that's super yellow butter.

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Speaker 1: So you know, at this point, like you said, we

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Speaker 1: could go into greater detail about the chemistry of of

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Speaker 1: what's going on here, but but hopefully this will give

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Speaker 1: you just a fresh uh and new idea of what's

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Speaker 1: going on Again. I love that idea that solar energy

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Speaker 1: has become fatty, delicious butter has become this ultimately the

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Speaker 1: super food, this this premiere of food stuff that and

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Speaker 1: you'll you'll realize why it becomes so valuable to the

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Speaker 1: humans who obsess about it. Well, and I know some

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Speaker 1: of you out there are wondering this because I was

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Speaker 1: when I was doing the research. So, if butter comes

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Speaker 1: from milk, is there human butter? And what does that

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Speaker 1: taste like? The answer is yes, I don't know what

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Speaker 1: it tastes like, but yes there is human butter. In fact,

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Speaker 1: just two years ago, a woman experimented with her own

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Speaker 1: breast milk and shared photos on Reddit of the butter

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Speaker 1: that she created, and it caused a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a stir. The week that she did this, there were

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Speaker 1: people were freaking out, either saying, oh my god, this

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Speaker 1: is so cool or oh my god, that's so disgusting.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, same process works with human milk. Now,

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Speaker 1: in her defense, there are people who seem to freak

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Speaker 1: out when they realize that human breast milk exists. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: absolutely my people. I mean, of course, men, I got

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Speaker 1: and that was a segment of the male population who

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Speaker 1: seems to want to remain in complete denial. There definitely

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Speaker 1: seemed to be like some people that were like, that

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Speaker 1: is the most disgusting thing ever, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: have anything to do with it. And then the other

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Speaker 1: side was, oh, my god, I want to try that.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of that's kind of the divide and most reddit. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: reddit known for its diversity in opinions. Yeah, alright, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take our first break and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're getting going to get into this idea of holy butter.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna run through various examples from different cultures throughout history, Uh,

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Speaker 1: the way that they've obsessed about this substance. Alright, we're back.

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Speaker 1: So the word butter actually comes from the ancient Greek

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Speaker 1: combination of boo and turan, which means couches. Makes sense. Uh, Now,

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Speaker 1: we're going to go through a couple of different uses

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Speaker 1: religious experience uses of butter throughout many cultures around the world.

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Speaker 1: First one we talked about here was Tibetan butter, and

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Speaker 1: I couldn't find a lot on this, so I'd love

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Speaker 1: to know if anybody else out there has heard about it.

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Speaker 1: But apparently, uh, it's used in the embalming of bodies,

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Speaker 1: or at least it was used in the embalming of

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Speaker 1: bodies on the those of deceased Lamas and they basically

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Speaker 1: would simmer their corpses in boiling butter. And these are

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Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhist holy men. Yeah, not actual lamas of anyone

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Speaker 1: out there, just to be clear, right, Yeah, although that

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Speaker 1: would be a great lama recipe probably, yeah. Uh. On this,

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Speaker 1: On the this subject of funeral butter usage, I did

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Speaker 1: run across the fact that in ancient Egypt. Of course,

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Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians were known for their elaborate rights of embalming.

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Speaker 1: We've discussed this a bit on the show and a

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Speaker 1: couple of episodes at least. And they used various things.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they seem to have used pretty much everything

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Speaker 1: in this practice. Anything you get their hands on. It

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Speaker 1: could be used to preserve the corpse and give it

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Speaker 1: a lifelike appearance. Uh. And they would use butter, along

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Speaker 1: with soldust and sand, as a way to plump up

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Speaker 1: desiccated flesh, either by stuffing it into the mouth or

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Speaker 1: through incisions in the skin. For some reason, that may

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Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me, only in the sense

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Speaker 1: of that, like, I know, a lot of plastic surgery

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Speaker 1: now involves injecting animal fat into skin. So like, if

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Speaker 1: you're going to try to form flesh somehow, whether it's

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Speaker 1: dead or alive, that seems like a natural place to go. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, especially for the ancient Egyptians, who I believe

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned on the show before. We're we're we have

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Speaker 1: some of the earliest examples of what is essentially plastic surgery. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So then what about Buddha butter? This sounds like somebody's

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Speaker 1: got a patent that if they haven't already, I'm sure

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Speaker 1: there's probably some company out there already a picture of

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Speaker 1: the smiling Buddha with a stick of butter in his hands. Uh. Well,

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Speaker 1: years ago, there were butter sculptures called tomas, which were

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Speaker 1: made to celebrate Shakya mooney Buddha's victories. Now today there's

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Speaker 1: actually still an annual butter festival that's celebrated in March

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Speaker 1: as part of the Mono Lam Festival, I believe that's

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Speaker 1: how you say it. And at this festival, thousands of

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Speaker 1: butter lamps are lit, and these signify the wisdom and

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Speaker 1: light of the Buddha. These are made from clarified yak

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Speaker 1: butter and they line the streets. Now, donating such butter

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Speaker 1: to the monasteries is actually believed to bring good karma

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Speaker 1: because these they allows the monks to craft the lamps

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Speaker 1: for this holiday. So there's another one. Yeah, this one

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Speaker 1: is fascinating. Uh. In that KOs Rova book that I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: butter a rich history. She goes into it at at

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Speaker 1: in depth, and I'm not going to attempt to to

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Speaker 1: share everything here. If you want to read more about it,

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Speaker 1: you should definitely pick that book up. But she she

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Speaker 1: says that the we have this modern tradition of creating

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Speaker 1: these thomas, and uh, these the modern tradition dates back

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Speaker 1: probably go around, but I think this those refer specifically

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Speaker 1: to the version that's fives today and not that that

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Speaker 1: earlier tradition that you alluded to. So turma as you

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Speaker 1: mentioned to additionally yak butter, but they'll also mix in

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Speaker 1: roasted barley flour or sampa uh and then sometimes wax

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Speaker 1: as i'll describe here. So traditionally this is crazy that

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Speaker 1: the monk would use only yak butter with the sampa,

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Speaker 1: and they would form a range of shapes and designs

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Speaker 1: for tantric rituals and offerings, and the monks would have

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Speaker 1: to cool their fingers uh, and to sculpt the butter clay,

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Speaker 1: they continually dip their fingers or the clay itself into

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Speaker 1: a bowl of cold water or the snow. And often

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Speaker 1: they would be working in like a really cold room,

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Speaker 1: so it would be super tough. Where this is not

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Speaker 1: just a thing where someone would grab some butter and

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Speaker 1: you know, a small bowl of cold water and then oops,

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Speaker 1: have got to work around with a little bit and look,

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Speaker 1: I made a sculpture. Now they would spend months on this,

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Speaker 1: and the artist would often suffer illness, frost bite, arthritis

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Speaker 1: and uh. And then at the end of all this,

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Speaker 1: the sculpture is just going to melt away in the spring.

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Speaker 1: So it's this this perfect symbol of of impermanence, much

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Speaker 1: like the Tibetan practice of crafting mandalas out of multi

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Speaker 1: colored sand. Wow. Well, all right, so it's easy to

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Speaker 1: do this in Tibet because it's cold there. What happens

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Speaker 1: if you I'm gonna jump ahead in the notes here,

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Speaker 1: what happens if you want to sculpt butter here in America?

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Speaker 1: Because it's a thing, it's not wholly necessarily but the

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Speaker 1: butter cow. I mean, has anybody out there seen a

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Speaker 1: butter cow before? I'm talking about a life sized butter

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Speaker 1: sculpture of a cow. Uh. It might strike close to

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Speaker 1: home for some of our listeners. You might have I

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Speaker 1: first heard about the butter cow on The West Wing

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Speaker 1: when the character C. J. Craig does this whole celebration

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Speaker 1: talking about how great the butter cow is. But it

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Speaker 1: was actually first sculpted in nineteen eleven by J. K.

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Speaker 1: Daniels at the Iowa State Fair. And you basically start

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Speaker 1: with wood, metal wire, and steel mesh to frame the

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Speaker 1: six pounds slab of low moisture, pure cream Iowa butter.

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Speaker 1: That's what at least that's what the Iowa State Fair says. Um.

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Speaker 1: They put that in a forty degree cooler and apply

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Speaker 1: more layers of butter until you've made a life sized cow.

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Speaker 1: Now some of you out there going, whoa, that's a

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Speaker 1: lot of butter that's wasted. Well, unlike the Tibetan practice

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Speaker 1: that we were just talking about earlier, this butter is

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Speaker 1: supposedly recycled and reused for up to ten years after. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it's interesting like present day, we can put them

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Speaker 1: inside a big cooler, but in Tibet they had to

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Speaker 1: go outside with cold water and they're getting sick. But

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Speaker 1: they're like still doing the same kind of you know,

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Speaker 1: aesthetic practice. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's interesting

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Speaker 1: too to note that eventually you have Tibetan monks that

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Speaker 1: are engaging in this practice moving down into warmer portions

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Speaker 1: of India. So how do you do this if you're

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Speaker 1: if if it's a you know, a warmer climate, right,

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Speaker 1: Monks now residing in India are often forced to use

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Speaker 1: or margarine mixed with paraffint wax. So that's where the

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00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 1: wax comes in, okay, and that probably helps keep it

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Speaker 1: all together. Yeah. Now, another Um Eastern tradition, I ran across,

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Speaker 1: comes from Chinese Buddhism. According to Chinese Buddhist master Tie

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Speaker 1: and Tae, the successive states of soul transformations in reincarnation

426
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 1: basically line up with the stages in the transformation from

427
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:27,399
Speaker 1: from milk to gee. And I think that fits in

428
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: rather nicely with what we read in the opening. You know,

429
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:32,320
Speaker 1: this idea that in the same way that that a

430
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,720
Speaker 1: soul may go from life to life to life, and

431
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: it's kind of this refining process ideally as you work

432
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,640
Speaker 1: towards a complete removal from the wheel of death and rebirth.

433
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: Also we're seeing this, you know, the sunlight, the grass,

434
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: everything moving towards butter as the guess the human achievement. Yeah, uh, well,

435
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 1: it's interesting because you know when you read up on

436
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: butter and people talk about like the ancient practices involving it,

437
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,399
Speaker 1: most always they bring up the Bible because it's like

438
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: one of our most read modern texts that references but

439
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: are quite a bit. Yeah, there's there's one part in

440
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:12,000
Speaker 1: particular that's uh, that's that's worth pointing out, you know,

441
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,159
Speaker 1: not just for the Bible also, I mean basically Abrahamic

442
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: tradition as as a whole, because it conserves Abraham. He's

443
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: a preparing food for three angels of the Lord who

444
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: are visiting in Genesis eighteen. And if you think back

445
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 1: to our our John d episode, we're talking angels of

446
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 1: the Lord here. These are these are terrifying, beautiful beings.

447
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: They've taken human form, sure, but these are these are

448
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 1: the guys that the way, you know, lay waste to cities. Yeah,

449
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: what else are you gonna give them? Would welcome them

450
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:44,440
Speaker 1: with the butter? Yeah, they said, hey, Sarah, help me

451
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: fetch the bread and butter. We've got three angels of

452
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: the Lord coming. And it worked out. They apparently thought

453
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: the butter was delightful, good, it's probably carried gold. They're

454
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,399
Speaker 1: not paying you gotta pull out the best stuff and

455
00:25:56,520 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: the angels of the Lord. Well, that leads me to

456
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: a totally opposite, unrelated to the Bible butter cultural phenomenon,

457
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: and that is the Yule Lads of Iceland. Now, Joe,

458
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:15,199
Speaker 1: our co host, insisted that we had to bring this up.

459
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: You recommended it to us. We've talked about the Yule

460
00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: Lads before. I think it was maybe last year's Christmas

461
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: episode we were talking about them. But if you don't

462
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:28,400
Speaker 1: recall that the basic gist is in Icelandic lore, uh

463
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: instead of or maybe it's along with Santa Claus. I'm

464
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: not quite sure. There's thirteen children who visit Iceland's Kids

465
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: during the thirteen nights prior to Christmas, one each night,

466
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: and they have these amazing names. There's all kinds of

467
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 1: of Ule Lads like Sausage sniffer and door liquor, but

468
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: there is one that is specifically related to Butter, and

469
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: his name is Butter Greedy. At least that's what it

470
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: translates as. Uh. So, the gist is that you're supposed

471
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: to put a shoe out on your window sill and

472
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: if you're good, each day, a fule lad will leave

473
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 1: you candy in the shoe, but if you're bad, they

474
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: fill it up with rotting to potatoes, rotting potatoes. And

475
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: so I'm wondering about butter greedy, like presumably he eats

476
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:17,919
Speaker 1: all your butter if you're bad, and he also puts

477
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: rotting potatoes inside your shoe. But it immediately popped to

478
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 1: Joe's mind when we said, hey, we're doing this episode

479
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 1: on butter, and he was like, there's gotta be a

480
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: ule lad And he was right, there was, Yeah, because

481
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: in a bit we're gonna talk about some other um

482
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: superstitions and folk beliefs that line up with this idea

483
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:39,439
Speaker 1: of protecting that butter from you know, real world thiefs,

484
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 1: but also supernatural threats because this is this, this is

485
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,280
Speaker 1: a super food stuff and especially in you know, in

486
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: the winter, you're gonna need this to survive, right, I mean,

487
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: think about how much work goes into making it, especially

488
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:57,360
Speaker 1: like when you're when you're not talking about an industrialized process, right,

489
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:00,920
Speaker 1: like you're making it by hand, Like you're gonna really

490
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: covet and and uh conserve this stuff. Yeah, indeed, I

491
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,960
Speaker 1: mean survival um, real quick before we move on, I

492
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 1: want to point out that Lord Krishna in Hinduism, there's

493
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: a you know, a noble, important figure in so many

494
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: of the epics, but it's uh, there's also this tradition

495
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,239
Speaker 1: of young Krishna kind of like baby Krishna. You may

496
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: have a number of you may have seen pictures because

497
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,199
Speaker 1: he's depicted is basically this blue baby. I kind of

498
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: remember this. And he's a trickster and he's always getting

499
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: into mischief and one of the things he would do

500
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,359
Speaker 1: is steel butter. Oh okay, well that's quasi related to

501
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: the next instance of butter, which a lot of you

502
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: are probably familiar with, and that's g uh. My wife

503
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: uses ge all the time and cooking essentially in Hindu sacrifices.

504
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: Though during the Vedic period, g it was created because

505
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: it's a kind of clarified butter that's made with various

506
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: grains and vegetables, and back then it was thought to

507
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: satisfy the hunger of the gods who would ensure order,

508
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: that make sure order was maintained on earth. And there

509
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: was a ritual called Jottak Carmon that was performed at

510
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: the birth of a boy and involved presenting the baby

511
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: with ge, honey and gold. Alright, so some of you

512
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: out there probably wondering, well, clarified butter I like that.

513
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: What's the difference between that and ge or what's traditionally

514
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 1: called it was leaky. Well, they've both been made by

515
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 1: melting butter over low heat, allowing the water content to

516
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 1: evaporate so that the milk solids settle to the bottom

517
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: of the pand then what you do is you you

518
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: skim the surface, you clear the fat. It's poured off

519
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: and the residue is discarded. But here's the difference. Clarified

520
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: butter has the fat poured off as soon as possible.

521
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: That way, it keeps the milk solids from browning. For

522
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: it was le ge, the butter is simmered until the

523
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: solids are golden browned. And this is what gives it

524
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: this nutty flavor. I'm sure many of you out there,

525
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: if you've if you've had Indian food, you're probably familiar

526
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: with this flavor. You might not know that it's ge,

527
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: but it's it's a it's delightful um. And the vegetable

528
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: that was mentioned earlier, that's actually made from hydrogenated vegetable

529
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 1: oils um and it basically resembles shortening. And then another

530
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: one that Joe brought to our attention, This is a

531
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: weird one. He started talking about this yesterday and I

532
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: got a little nauseous, uh, And then I did the

533
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: research on it. Bog butter. Yeah, this one originally came

534
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: up a little bit in our our research for the

535
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: episode we did about ritual regicide and this idea that

536
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 1: that you would have certain ancient cultures that would ritually

537
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: murder kings or failed kings, you know, rulers or failed rulers.

538
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: And one of the examples comes up in these these

539
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: early European cultures that would utilize the bogs. You would

540
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: find these bodies and the bogs that had been ritually

541
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: murdered because the bog was not it wasn't just a

542
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: place you dumped something you wanted to get rid of.

543
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: This isn't like the mafia taking somebody out to a

544
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: swamp and dumping them. This the bog was a sacred

545
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: place and it was a place where it was you know,

546
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: it's a fitting spot to deposit to the body of

547
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 1: a king that had been killed in a sacrifice, especially

548
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: because of its preservative qualities. It makes me think like

549
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: it's interesting, like bogs were sort of to Ireland in Scotland,

550
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: what the very arid desert was for ancient Egypt. It

551
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: results in mummification, which is why we know so much

552
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: about the Bog people and in this case, bog butter.

553
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: So you're probably going, wait, what is bog butter? What

554
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: does that have to do with dead kings buried in bogs? Well,

555
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: four hundred thirty samples of bog butter have been excavated

556
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: from Pete bogs in Ireland and Scotland and they date

557
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: back as early as four hundred BC. Basically, it's buried

558
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: several feet deep in these bogs in huge quantities. Uh.

559
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: And I first thing that popped in my mind was

560
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: is this just like raw butter? Or is it in something?

561
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: And we turned to an academic article about it and

562
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: it's it turns out it's Uh, it's either just a

563
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: lump of butter, like a big lump of butter, or

564
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: it's in a container that's usually made of wood, or

565
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: it might be wrapped in animal bladders. And you're probably going,

566
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 1: why are these people? Okay, I get why they're preserving

567
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 1: their dead kings but why are they dropping butter in

568
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 1: the bog. Well, it's probably because the bogs have a

569
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: well documented ability to preserve that. And butter was really valuable.

570
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 1: I mean it was so valuable that it was used

571
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: to pay rent and taxes, and in some areas it

572
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: was actually used to help waterproof fabric, and it was

573
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: used in everything from building materials to candles. So burying

574
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: it in a bog while you could have been doing

575
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:44,240
Speaker 1: that to preserve it, or or maybe it was a

576
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: way to change its flavor. And I wrote next to

577
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: this in the notes because I'm thinking, like, what does

578
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: bog butter taste like? It's so it seems like nobody's

579
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: really eating bog butter. I mean maybe they have, but

580
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like the ideas, like you dig

581
00:32:57,720 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 1: it up thousands of years later and it's so much better,

582
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: you know, Like, it's not like that. But the butter.

583
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing. It was also thought to cure illness.

584
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: So some people placed it next to a person who

585
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: is ill at the time, and they thought it might

586
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: absorb their disease. But what happens if the victim dies, Well,

587
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: then you take that butter and you bury it in

588
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: the ball. Okay, so maybe you really shouldn't eat that

589
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: butter then, because it's filled with butter. Yeah, exactly, man,

590
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: that should be like a that should have been like

591
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: a full Moon Entertainment directed DVD movie like Attack of

592
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: the Bog. Better, if there's still time, there's still I

593
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: can see it like moving and crawling around, maybe even

594
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:43,880
Speaker 1: animating a butter cow. Oh oh yeah, that's the culminating

595
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: scene as a butter cow comes to life and chases

596
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: somebody into the bog. All right, let's see what else

597
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,240
Speaker 1: we have here real quick in passing that, if we

598
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: did find an African example in remote regions of Ethiopia,

599
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: there's still some cultural use where of butter, where the

600
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: bride to be is lacquered with butter and red clay,

601
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: kind of you know, a preparation for marriage. But one

602
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: of the more fascinating examples that we came across, and

603
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 1: this ties back into this idea of butter theft. Are

604
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: these just various traditions and beliefs that are where one

605
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 1: would protect the butter or attempt to steal butter through magic.

606
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: So in Norwegian, uh, it's something called the small cat

607
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: or the butter cat and uh it's a bajara, I

608
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:41,160
Speaker 1: believe in Swedish and a tilberry or snucker in Icelandic.

609
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: It was a creature of spun yarn that you know,

610
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 1: I'm sorcerer would make and uh it sucked milk from

611
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: other people's cows and returned it to its master. Butter

612
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: homunculi made of yarn. That's pretty cool. That's crazy. And

613
00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 1: there's like a whole tradition of various like thread based uh,

614
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: weaving based magic. Very very curious because when you think

615
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: about the creation, the creation aspect of all of this,

616
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: like we're talking about using one like a magical use

617
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 1: of one technology to tap into another technology, right. Yeah.

618
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,760
Speaker 1: So I've also read and of course you know traditions

619
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: are going to vary, but I've I've read some accounts

620
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: that the til barry was created from a human rib

621
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,399
Speaker 1: dug up from a graveyard and brought to life when

622
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: the commune when communion wine is spit on it three

623
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 1: sundays in a row. This is again, this has to

624
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: be in our butter horror movie. So you take a

625
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: human rib, you spit on it for three weeks, and

626
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: then you presumably you've ad yarn, and then you've got

627
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:49,439
Speaker 1: your butter homunculous cat being that goes and steals butter

628
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 1: yea or milk, at least milk, but the but the

629
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: butter is still very much at risk. And so you

630
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: have all these magical protections that are utilized to protect

631
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: the butter, including the magical butter not And this was

632
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: a symbol that was used to magically protect a butter

633
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: in Icelandic traditions. And uh, I had an image of

634
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 1: it that it kind of looks like what a pentacle,

635
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,320
Speaker 1: except one that is kind of skewed so that the

636
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: base is is broader and wider than the top, so

637
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, a kid misdrew a pentagon

638
00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: or something. So this is a symbol that's drawn near

639
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: the butter to protect it, or is it is it

640
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: drawn in butter um? I think both understanding is that

641
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 1: had kind of varied. You would just the symbol had

642
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:38,479
Speaker 1: to be associated with the butter. But I did see

643
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 1: some other examples of various things you would do to

644
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: the butter to safeguard it, including one right that involved

645
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:49,320
Speaker 1: driving a rusty nail from a coffin into the side

646
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:52,439
Speaker 1: of your butter. That would protect it from going bad

647
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: or being stolen. Interesting, all right, Yeah, I'm just collecting

648
00:36:56,719 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: more ideas for my butter movie now. Yeah, and and

649
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: I if anyone out there really wants to make a

650
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: go at the butter horror movie again, check out that

651
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: book by A. Lane Kosa Rova, Butter at a Rich History.

652
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: It's in print right now, it's in digital form. I

653
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: can't recommend it strongly enough, best butter book you'll ever read.

654
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:16,919
Speaker 1: On that note, let's take a quick break, our final break,

655
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we will discuss butter

656
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:28,439
Speaker 1: and war. All right, we've returned. So we started off

657
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: by talking about that doctor Seus's story about the butter War,

658
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: and it sounded vaguely ridiculous, right, that these two cultures

659
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 1: would fight each other over which side of the bread

660
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: they would put their butter on. Yeah, it was the

661
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: UK versus Zooks. And his one propaganda poster in the

662
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,439
Speaker 1: book reminds us, yuks are not zooks, keep your butter

663
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: side up. And it sounds crazy, but we came pretty

664
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: close to something similar here in the US. Maybe not

665
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:00,840
Speaker 1: a war necessarily, but there was some hysteria for sure

666
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 1: surrounding butter. Uh. And it all started in France. In

667
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, Emperor Louis Napoleon the Third offered a

668
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: prize to whoever could make a low priced version of

669
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: butter for the lower classes and for the military, So

670
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 1: it was butter butter for war. The winner people, Oh yeah, exactly.

671
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: The winner was French chemist I'm going to get this

672
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: name wrong, Hippolyte Maje Moray uh. And he invented margarine,

673
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: which we all know and used today. Yeah, it's pretty

674
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,399
Speaker 1: interesting how he figured it out because he basically made

675
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 1: that connection that we we pointed out earlier that a

676
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: lot of the fat is coming from the animal itself, right,

677
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: so he said, why not process it from the animal itself? Yeah,

678
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: it's made from well, at least his version was made

679
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: from beef tallow um. And he sold this patent to

680
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:55,479
Speaker 1: the Jurgen's Butter making company and they eventually became part

681
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: of Unilever, and Uni Lever is still one of the

682
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: world's leading producers of margarine. So when it arrived here

683
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 1: in the US in the eighteen seventies, there was a

684
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:12,800
Speaker 1: political economic battle between manufacturers of margarine and manufacturers of butter,

685
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,760
Speaker 1: and it led to In eight six, the federal government

686
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 1: had to pass the Margarine Act, which put a restrictive

687
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: tax on margarine and demanded that its manufacturers pay a

688
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: prohibitive licensing fee. This is a quote from the article

689
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: that I read about it in National Geographic. It said

690
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: pro butter political cartoonists pictured factories dropping everything from stray

691
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:42,360
Speaker 1: cats to soap paint, arsenic and rubber boots into the

692
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: margarine mix, and a barrage of dubious scientific reports hinted

693
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:51,919
Speaker 1: that margarine caused cancer or possibly lead to insanity. What's

694
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: that remind us of that we just talked about also

695
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:59,840
Speaker 1: from this same period of time, Green tea. Yeah, he

696
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 1: but we're saying that it made you crazy, it made

697
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:07,399
Speaker 1: you hallucinate, or it was ultimately because the manufacturers were

698
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: putting illicit substances in it, like iron filings. But in

699
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: this sense, the cartoonists, I think this was propaganda. I

700
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,919
Speaker 1: don't think necessarily that this margarine had a stray cat

701
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: dropped into it. But why did this happen? Well, Okay

702
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: State politicians began fighting over the color of margarine. They

703
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:31,720
Speaker 1: were saying that coloring yellow was false advertising because margarine

704
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:34,879
Speaker 1: is naturally white. It's made from tallow and that's after

705
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: it's processing. But thirty two states here in the US

706
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 1: passed laws to demand that margarine be dyed pink instead

707
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: of yellow, and the Supreme Court actually had to intervene

708
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 1: and they overturned the laws because they said, look, it's

709
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: illegal to enforce the adulteration of food. Yeah, that's it

710
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,959
Speaker 1: sounds like some straight up Dr SEUs nonsense right there,

711
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: The idea that someone would say, actually, you're to sell

712
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: that margarine, you gotta die at pink. Yeah, it's just

713
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: straight up right out of the doctor's But clearly must

714
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: have inspired this story. They must have known about it.

715
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just crazy to me. You know. I

716
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: think about like all the insanity that's going on in

717
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: our government right now and the back and forth like

718
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:24,239
Speaker 1: haggling and kind of just nasty rhetoric, and it feels like, oh,

719
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: this is just a product of today, and then you

720
00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: look back a hundred hundred and fifty years ago and

721
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:30,280
Speaker 1: you're like, oh no, Like it was just as silly

722
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,800
Speaker 1: people were yelling at each other about making margarine pink. Yeah,

723
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: yeah you can, because I can imagine the way like

724
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: modern headlines and social media would pick up on it like, oh,

725
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: this legislator just introduced a bill to die all of

726
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: our marjarine pink, what's going on exactly? So all right,

727
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: you think this story is over, it's not. By the

728
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 1: time we get to World War two, the United States

729
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,319
Speaker 1: needs margarine because the depression in the war have led

730
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: to butters shortages. Like we said, bondared, it's a valued commodity.

731
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: So argarine became more palatable to Americans because it was

732
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:07,799
Speaker 1: made with hydrogenated vegetable oils instead of animal fats like

733
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 1: the one we were just talking about with the gee. Yeah,

734
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 1: so that's interesting. But during the war, margarine was even

735
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: sold with capsules of yellow food coloring to get past

736
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: all the fury about dying. So it came white, but

737
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:24,799
Speaker 1: then you would add the yellow so when you put

738
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: it out on your table, it looked like butter. Except

739
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. Wisconsin wasn't having any of this because using

740
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: yellow margarine in Wisconsin was a crime that was punishable

741
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:43,000
Speaker 1: by fines or imprisonment. Oh goodness. So you look at

742
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: the Yuks and the Zooks and you think, well, that

743
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: couldn't happen. Well, we got pretty close. We we were

744
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: at least imprisoning people and finding them in one state

745
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:56,839
Speaker 1: in the United States for how they used butter and

746
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: or Margarine. Well, you know, to bring it all back

747
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 1: around to the Yuks and the Zooks and the Butter

748
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:06,359
Speaker 1: Battle Book. Uh and and as I was getting ready

749
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: with my notes for this episode, I ended up going

750
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: to the library checking out a copy of this book

751
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:14,319
Speaker 1: because we have a number of sus books in the house,

752
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: but we don't have the Butter Battle Book. So I thought, all,

753
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: I need to read this to my son. He loves

754
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 1: Dr sus I love Dr Susy. Did you like it?

755
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 1: He liked it? He had he had questions about it,

756
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:29,320
Speaker 1: questions that I could only vaguely answer because the spoiler.

757
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:32,960
Speaker 1: But the book ends with a standoff as this arms

758
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: race over how how best to spread your butter has

759
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: led to essentially the development of these little pill sized

760
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, and the Yuks and the Zooks are to

761
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:47,319
Speaker 1: standoff who's going to drop theirs first? And and other

762
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: other Yuks and Zooks are going into bomb shelters, and

763
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:54,759
Speaker 1: it's it confronts mutually assured destruction, the idea that have

764
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,319
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons are ever deployed. Uh. In a in a

765
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 1: large scale manner, you just gonna be complete destruction on

766
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: both sides, not to mention environmental um destruction as well.

767
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: So I haven't read the book, but I watched the

768
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: cartoon version this morning, and if it's similar, what really

769
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: impressed me was that it's a story that doesn't hold

770
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 1: your hand or a child's hand by saying like, this

771
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 1: is what you're supposed to learn from this, because both

772
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: sides are hysterical in their rhetoric against one another and

773
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: how they use butter, and they basically are amping up

774
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:32,919
Speaker 1: their their technology in the like kind of silly Dr

775
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 1: Seuss like weaponry way right there, like weird sling shots

776
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:38,279
Speaker 1: and the things that catch sling shots and throw them back.

777
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:43,120
Speaker 1: But like it's it's interesting in the cartoon because it's

778
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: like a father telling his son like, this is why

779
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 1: we hate them, this is why you have to destroy them,

780
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: and here's my personal story as to why. And usually

781
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,879
Speaker 1: in a children's cartoon or a story like that, you go, oh, well,

782
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: that's the authoritative figure. I will listen to him, and

783
00:44:57,400 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: I will learn a lesson from him. But the lesson

784
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: to be earned is like these people are all crazy

785
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: and they're they're gonna end up killing each other. Yeah,

786
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: Like you read seuses the Lorax and they have that

787
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 1: wonderful environmental message at the end. It's also kind of

788
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: darth that says, look, the things are bad and it's

789
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,319
Speaker 1: up to you to to change it and make it better.

790
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:19,000
Speaker 1: And here's something you can do, Like it's all symbolized

791
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: in the planning of the seed. You can plant more trees,

792
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: you can care about the environment, and we might be

793
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: able to reclaim some of what's lost. But at the

794
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 1: end of the butter Battle Book, there's no suggestion. It

795
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 1: just shows you, like how crazy the world has gotten

796
00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 1: and what kind of state we're in. And SEUs doesn't

797
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: have an answer, so totally I bastion being like, um so,

798
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: who was right the yooks or the zooks or what

799
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do? It raises a lot of

800
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 1: a lot of questions, uh, And it's I was tempted

801
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 1: to say what It raises more questions now And it's

802
00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 1: more of a potent story now because we have this

803
00:45:54,480 --> 00:46:00,080
Speaker 1: renewed discussion of a potential nuclear arms race and and

804
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,399
Speaker 1: and nuclear tensions once more. But this is but it's

805
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 1: never This is a story that's never become unimportant, like right,

806
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll ever be passe, right, Like you

807
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 1: and I will be deadened in the ground two hundred

808
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: years from now. The butter Battle Book in the bottom.

809
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, maybe that's it. Yeah, yeah, it's still it's

810
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:23,280
Speaker 1: still a wonderful book, but also a terrifying book for adults,

811
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,279
Speaker 1: because the threat of nuclear war is terrifying and the

812
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 1: threat hasn't gone away. And so in continuing this this

813
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:35,879
Speaker 1: effort to to highlight nonprofits organizations that depend on donations

814
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: on our our episodes, I wanted to do a call

815
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,799
Speaker 1: out to the Arms Control Association. Okay, you can find

816
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 1: them at arms control dot org. They were founded in

817
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 1: nineteen one. They're in national, nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to

818
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies,

819
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: so that they have public education and media programs. It

820
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: has a magazin seen arms Control Today. They provide policymakers,

821
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 1: the press, and just the interested public with authoritative information, analysis,

822
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:13,799
Speaker 1: and commentary on arms control proposal proposals, negotiation negotiations and agreements,

823
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: and related national security issues. So maybe that's what you

824
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: do if you've got a kid who reads the Butter

825
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: battle Book and says, I don't know what I'm supposed

826
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: to do. I suspect the Arms Control Association probably has

827
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: some media materials that, at least for us as adults,

828
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 1: helps us to sort of better think about arms races

829
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: and mutually assured destruction. Indeed, so there we go from

830
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: from butter to mutually assured destruction. That's what we bring

831
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: you here. I Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

832
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 1: And hey, also, I want to know some answers because

833
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: we couldn't find them here. If you know what human

834
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: butter tastes like, I want to know if you know

835
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,319
Speaker 1: what bog butter tastes like. I want to know what's

836
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: the weirdest butter that you've had, like from from an animal. Uh,

837
00:47:58,000 --> 00:47:59,839
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of places to tell us. You can

838
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.

839
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: You can write us at blow the Mind on all

840
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: of those platforms, or you can go visit stuff to

841
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:10,879
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com if you want to learn

842
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: more about mutually assured destruction or butter. Well, that's where

843
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,319
Speaker 1: we've got all of our podcasts, We've got all of

844
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,479
Speaker 1: our videos, every blog post that we've ever written. Check

845
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:22,839
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, and as always, you can reach out

846
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: to us you want to. You want more episodes they

847
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,359
Speaker 1: focus on food products you wan't want on cheese, Let

848
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: us know you want some more episodes that focus on

849
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Speaker 1: the threat of nuclear annihilation. Let us know we can

850
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:36,319
Speaker 1: do that as well. We walk both sides of the

851
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 1: street here at stuff to blow your mind. Send us

852
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: an email, let us know at blow the mind at

853
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Well more on this and

854
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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot com.

855
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Speaker 1: The tame big I think them four stout far far

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Speaker 1: f