Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, you welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Julie Douglas, and we are just coming off
Speaker 1: of the holidays here in which we all, to our shame,
Speaker 1: had a little bit too much of all the various
Speaker 1: holiday things. Uh, the holiday foods, the holiday visits with family, um,
Speaker 1: the holiday travel, the listening to the holiday music at
Speaker 1: the train station as it's piped in to fill everyone
Speaker 1: with holiday cheer and reduce gang violence. It seems like
Speaker 1: Christmas last for several months, just forever. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that's reassuring is when we can find some
Speaker 1: little bit of Christmas that also has a dark side
Speaker 1: to it, or I don't reassuring to me, be at
Speaker 1: Crampus in his his relationship with St. Nick, or in
Speaker 1: this case, a little something called nutmeg, which, as you say,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of Christmas that you can find
Speaker 1: all year long. Yeah, I mean it basically is the
Speaker 1: smell of Christmas, right it is, and and people love it.
Speaker 1: They love it on their eggnog, on their fancy coffee drinks,
Speaker 1: and in some savory dishes. Um. It's probably something that
Speaker 1: you've never considered before as having an evil side, but
Speaker 1: in fact it does. You also have it insiders. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't like him. Inside. I love cider, but but
Speaker 1: there's something about either if it's hard side or a
Speaker 1: soft side, or it's got the nutmeg, and I don't
Speaker 1: really go for it. But but in other things, like
Speaker 1: a little bit of of nutmeg on top of some eggnog,
Speaker 1: a little bit of nutmeg on top of even like
Speaker 1: a vanilla milkshake. It gives it just a little a
Speaker 1: little punch, right, there's a little just some heat to it,
Speaker 1: like a dry heat. Yes. And it's actually that's app
Speaker 1: that you say that's a dry heat, because it's explained
Speaker 1: that way in what we say, or what we call
Speaker 1: the four temperaments. Um. And we talked about this before,
Speaker 1: this idea that there are four different tomperaments that rule
Speaker 1: the human body. This is a very old idea, dry, cold, hot,
Speaker 1: and wet. So Um. This spice is actually thought to
Speaker 1: help with various ailments because the idea is that you
Speaker 1: have to balance these four temperaments. So when you have
Speaker 1: this spice, which is kind of like a bitter cinnamon um,
Speaker 1: it is thought, at least in some ancient civilizations and cultures,
Speaker 1: that it could actually have a myriad effects on your body,
Speaker 1: which we will explore a bit. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: in it's in a lot of cool Indian dishes. It's
Speaker 1: it's in coca cola. Uh, you find it all over
Speaker 1: the place, but it is. It is, like we said,
Speaker 1: it's a very old thing using the nutmeg, But some
Speaker 1: of the more ancient uses of it really relate more
Speaker 1: to medicinal purposes and folk medicine purposes, in addition to
Speaker 1: in some cases culinary sources as well. So it has
Speaker 1: a very interesting history which we're going to get into,
Speaker 1: and then it has a very arresting effect on the
Speaker 1: human body, depending on how much you're taking in. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get to the nut of it, as it were. Yes,
Speaker 1: what is the nutmeg? Right? Is it some fancy spice
Speaker 1: that I don't know comes out of a dead sand worm?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it carved out of the earth. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's like you said, it's from this nut right, Yes,
Speaker 1: And it comes actually from the nutmeg tree which has
Speaker 1: grown commercially in Indonesia, Penang Island, Malaysia, and the West Indies.
Speaker 1: It's an evergreen with thick, dark green leaves and reaches
Speaker 1: a maximum height of forty feet um and in some
Speaker 1: cases or some areas that actually shrub like, and it
Speaker 1: has fragrant yellow flowers that produce yellow fruit about the
Speaker 1: size and the shape of apricots. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize that it's actually coming from this fruit
Speaker 1: bearing tree. And so you get you have the fruit,
Speaker 1: and if you peel away the fruit, or if you're
Speaker 1: like a two can, two cans apparently love to eat
Speaker 1: the fruit, peel away the fruit and you'll find basically
Speaker 1: you'll find in here the nutmegs seed and the nutmegs
Speaker 1: seed itself is wrapped up in these flaps of of
Speaker 1: what is called mace, which is another spice derivative is
Speaker 1: obtained from the mace. So that kind of netting on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this netting kind of like an
Speaker 1: outer uh well not an outer skin, but peel a
Speaker 1: way the first layer of fruit and then there'll be
Speaker 1: another small layer of mace, and then in the very
Speaker 1: center that's your nut that's your nutmeg seed, and that's
Speaker 1: what's dried by sunlight for about one to two months.
Speaker 1: And then when it's dried, it's pretty much like oval
Speaker 1: in shape and about an inch long, has a wrinkled surface,
Speaker 1: and it's got fragrant oil contained in the veins of
Speaker 1: the seed and that's what gives it that nice scent um,
Speaker 1: that that that aroma that we associate with the holidays. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: how long have people been using nutmeg and things. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to say, certainly millennia, just to be vague
Speaker 1: about it. We know that it's been used in Asia
Speaker 1: for just ages. We know that the ancient Romans used it,
Speaker 1: but mainly to sprinkle into alcoholic drinks, which which we
Speaker 1: still do to some agree today. I was looking around
Speaker 1: and uh, there were none of the drinks or anything
Speaker 1: I was particularly familiar with. But there are drinks, mixed
Speaker 1: drinks and cocktails that call for nutmeg. That's far to
Speaker 1: Medieval Renaissance banquets and mason nutmeg were both very popular,
Speaker 1: along with things like cinnamon, which they would just throw
Speaker 1: into dishes, just large amounts, because I guess at that
Speaker 1: time maybe the more you could cover up, the better. Right,
Speaker 1: and then and then in the centuries to follow it
Speaker 1: became so fashionable among French courmets that you'd actually bring
Speaker 1: your own nutmeg to a banquet so that you could
Speaker 1: add nutmeg to your to your own dish, to your
Speaker 1: own particular taste. Well. And that was absolutely a sign
Speaker 1: of wealth too at that time, right, because then this
Speaker 1: became the spice of the upper classes because it was
Speaker 1: so highly coveted at that time the seventeenth century um
Speaker 1: and onward into the eighteenth century that European traders were
Speaker 1: selling it at nearly a six thousand percent mark up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this stuff was just like gold. It was. We saw
Speaker 1: one historian who's referring to it as the iPhone of
Speaker 1: the time too. It's just like so popular. Everybody had
Speaker 1: to have it, I mean to the point where people
Speaker 1: had to have it nearly because it was a status symbol. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you were carrying it, that meant that you were
Speaker 1: a player. Yeah, you're a player at the table. Like
Speaker 1: they had like rap videos back back in the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: You can totally imagine like guys leaning back, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: showing off their their nutmeg shaker or grinder or whatever.
Speaker 1: Method you would you would choose to to really show
Speaker 1: off your nutmegitude. Yeah, I know, I'm just trying. I'm
Speaker 1: putting the wrap is now like coming together. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: like Tico Brahy kind of a dude, you know, just
Speaker 1: really you know, with a total gangster lean kind of
Speaker 1: going on with a nutmeg shaker. No, I'm seeing a
Speaker 1: tricorn hat perhaps. Yeah. Um. So obviously this becomes a
Speaker 1: really big deal in the spice trade, along with clothes
Speaker 1: and cinnamon. Um. But what you began to see is
Speaker 1: that there are two different countries that are trying to
Speaker 1: have some sort of dominancy over this particular nutmeg spice trade,
Speaker 1: and that is Britain and um in the Netherlands. And
Speaker 1: they're both trying to push each other out because again
Speaker 1: we're talking about a six thousand percent markup right, like
Speaker 1: this is yielding great results. I mean, they've got crops
Speaker 1: that aren't doing nearly as well. Um, They've got you know,
Speaker 1: various livestock that's not going to bring in this kind
Speaker 1: of money. So it becomes a really big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at the time, the other thing that makes it
Speaker 1: really crazy is that as far as anyone knew, there
Speaker 1: was really only one place to get it, despite you
Speaker 1: know the fact we mentioned earlier, it was it was,
Speaker 1: it was in India. You see it popping up in
Speaker 1: the aer vedic traditions, you see it popping up in
Speaker 1: Asia the ancient Romans. So we're able to get their
Speaker 1: hands on it. But as far as the Dutch and
Speaker 1: the English knew, the only place to get it was
Speaker 1: to sail out to the Run Islands in the Banda Sea,
Speaker 1: which is now eastern Indonesia. And there were a few
Speaker 1: islands there, and that's where you went to get the nut. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is um this is the part
Speaker 1: of eastern Indonesia. And what you have going on here
Speaker 1: is you've got the Dutch again trying to be dominant here.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, what they're doing at this time in the
Speaker 1: Run Islands is that they're telling the inhabitants, if you
Speaker 1: share any of these seeds with anyone, we will kill you.
Speaker 1: And they do. Actually, they actually conduct a bit of
Speaker 1: a genocide on this island, really straight up horrible, like
Speaker 1: running people off of cliffs, beheading people. And then if
Speaker 1: you if you weren't actually killed out right, you ran
Speaker 1: the risk of being deported under horrifying conditions that you
Speaker 1: probably would not survive. Uh. And in upwards of of
Speaker 1: the native population was just wiped out in the name
Speaker 1: of this super fashionable spice which everyone was into. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe on some level because of the flavor. Sure,
Speaker 1: it does add a unique punch to anything you sprinkle
Speaker 1: it on, but then so much of it was prestige
Speaker 1: and then these various ideas about what it can do
Speaker 1: for you healthwise, which we'll get into in a little bit. Right. Right, So,
Speaker 1: there are various reasons why the Dutch wanted to try
Speaker 1: to clamp down on the islanders and make sure that
Speaker 1: they didn't trade these seeds or sell these seats. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're absolutely vicious, very bloody. Um. But that
Speaker 1: didn't obviously stop the trade because you have some British
Speaker 1: people who would come and they would grab the plants
Speaker 1: and then they would just plant them elsewhere. Um. India's
Speaker 1: when of the places that they transported Brazil eventually as
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka. Yeah, and then you have birds, birds eating
Speaker 1: the fruit and then poving out the seeds in various
Speaker 1: places along the way. Um, you can't stop the birds. Right.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of Monsanto, which is the seed company
Speaker 1: here in the United States that has a patent on
Speaker 1: certain seeds, and every once in a while they will
Speaker 1: try to prosecute farmers who they say are growing their
Speaker 1: seeds without having actually purchased the seeds, when in fact
Speaker 1: those seeds actually were blown by the wind over to
Speaker 1: their land. So it's sort of you know, you get
Speaker 1: into this situation where it's kind of futile to try
Speaker 1: to control nature like this. But that's what the Dutch did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see commercialism and imperialism, uh, smashing head on with
Speaker 1: natural cycles of biology. Yeah. So it's it's crazy and
Speaker 1: all simately tragic though that it ends in so much bloodshed.
Speaker 1: And of course this is where Manhattan comes in. Yes,
Speaker 1: Manhattan New Amsterdam as some of our older listeners but
Speaker 1: I guess, uh but but yeah, so that the Dutch
Speaker 1: had their little slice of New York here and uh,
Speaker 1: eventually this goes to British hands, right, But but but
Speaker 1: what was the trade? What? What was what was valuable
Speaker 1: enough that they would give up the city that what
Speaker 1: would become the city that never sleeps? Well, okay, the
Speaker 1: Dutch are looking at New Amsterdam. They're saying Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a fur trade, fur trade going on here, but it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as lucrative as this nutmeg thing. And we've
Speaker 1: got to shut this down. Yeah, because they wanted a
Speaker 1: monopoly on nutmeg, like that was the whole thing. That's
Speaker 1: why they were vicious enough to wipe out the whole populations.
Speaker 1: They wanted just to lock down all of it. Nobody
Speaker 1: gets nutmeg except through the Dutch. But then there's this
Speaker 1: one island out there, what was thought to be the
Speaker 1: only place in the world to obtain nutmeg. One island
Speaker 1: is in British hands. So this becomes the trade. This
Speaker 1: is that, this is what they have that the Dutch
Speaker 1: want more than anything. Yeah, and here's the thing. They say, Okay, look,
Speaker 1: we will give you this entire island, all the fur
Speaker 1: trading that you could ever want, if we can just
Speaker 1: go ahead and close this loophole on run Island and
Speaker 1: just go ahead and give it to us officially. And
Speaker 1: the British do acquiesce. They're not very excited by the trade,
Speaker 1: by the way, like, I don't know really what to
Speaker 1: do about this, um, But this is how how Manhattan
Speaker 1: actually changed hands via nutmeg. All right, all that history
Speaker 1: stuff will push it to the side because we want
Speaker 1: to start talking about nutmeg itself and what it does
Speaker 1: to the human body. Yes, now I do want to
Speaker 1: mention real quick. I was I was reading and apparently
Speaker 1: nutmeg is still a big deal if you're Dutch, like
Speaker 1: Dutch cuisine, it like does call for a lot of nutmeg,
Speaker 1: a lot of cinnamon, a lot of clothes, you know,
Speaker 1: in any of these things that used to be a
Speaker 1: really exotic and powerful spices. I mean, they were so
Speaker 1: important at the time. They've remained in an essential part
Speaker 1: of their culinary tradition. So even even though around the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds nutmegs ceased to be the super exotic thing,
Speaker 1: people moved on to getting excited about coffee and chocolate,
Speaker 1: tobacco more so than before. So but like you said,
Speaker 1: what is it due to the body? What? What are
Speaker 1: the health benefits? And this was part of the equation
Speaker 1: from early on because when we when we look back
Speaker 1: at references to nutmeg, nutmeg was showing up in medical
Speaker 1: texts and in dietary text before it was showing up
Speaker 1: in culinary text. So it's people were realizing this was
Speaker 1: something useful, this is something that could be used in
Speaker 1: in folk medicine to heal various ailments, and it was,
Speaker 1: and it's a wide array of ailments that it could
Speaker 1: apparently or supposedly deal with. Yeah, and this is why
Speaker 1: I ended up in cookery, right, because people are trying
Speaker 1: to incorporate it into what they ingested. Around the time
Speaker 1: of the Black plague too, people wore bags of the
Speaker 1: spice around their necks as protection against the black plague,
Speaker 1: and that might seem kind of silly, but um, it's
Speaker 1: plausible that nutmeg actually repelled fleece that carried plague cause
Speaker 1: in bacteria, so there was something perhaps to this. Um.
Speaker 1: The smell of nutmeg is actually due to something called
Speaker 1: iso u shun all, a natural pesticide that the plant
Speaker 1: uses to defend itself against um predators like insects and
Speaker 1: fun guy. So it's very possible that this was a
Speaker 1: sort of pesticide that was worn around the neck to
Speaker 1: ward off fleas. Cool and another big one was dysentery
Speaker 1: or is the Brits caught it back then the bloody flux,
Speaker 1: which sounds even more dreadful, but it was believed that
Speaker 1: that nutmeg could help with that. So yeah, and then
Speaker 1: according to Drs. Joseph Pizzorno and Michael Murray, the authors
Speaker 1: of the Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, Nutmeg oil inhibits over
Speaker 1: twenty five species of bacteria, including equal I. As far
Speaker 1: as nutrients go, nutmeg is a good source of vitamin A,
Speaker 1: vitamin C, iron copper, also a protein or MAGA six,
Speaker 1: fatty acids, dietary fiber. So there's even if you if
Speaker 1: you discount some of the wilder claim, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of really good stuff going on in in nutmeg.
Speaker 1: It's good for liver health. Researchers even today have concluded
Speaker 1: that that it has a liver productive actions that were
Speaker 1: that are due to its ability to reduce inflammatory immune
Speaker 1: chemicals in the human body that would otherwise potentially harm
Speaker 1: the liver. And it's also been found to relieve symptoms
Speaker 1: of pain and inflammation, so it could also help with
Speaker 1: other various symptoms, if not even the core ailments. You know.
Speaker 1: So there are some definite health advantages just straight straight
Speaker 1: up on the table that nuting. They can offer whether
Speaker 1: it was actually able to secure any kind of dysentery,
Speaker 1: might ever plague, well maybe not, but it is a
Speaker 1: healthy thing to ingest, at least in small quantities. Ah,
Speaker 1: and that's the key, right. And see that's when if
Speaker 1: we had sound effects, we would have like lightning and
Speaker 1: thunder cracking, and we begin to talk about nutmeg the vice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is where the where it really
Speaker 1: gets interesting. And I think this was ultimately what initially
Speaker 1: drew our interest and certainly continues to draw a lot
Speaker 1: of people's interests. The idea of nutmeg as a narcotic
Speaker 1: nutmeg as an illicit substance that can do all sorts
Speaker 1: of strange things to you despite being just right up
Speaker 1: there in the spice rack totally legal and uh and
Speaker 1: and just you know, just glaring at you and I
Speaker 1: guess tempting you to some weird degree um you here
Speaker 1: every time you open the spice cabinet. Now, we do
Speaker 1: need to mention though, before we even get into it,
Speaker 1: just in case someone wants to run off and grab nutmeg,
Speaker 1: do not do it, because because if we're gonna discuss
Speaker 1: your taking nutmeg for some sort of illicit pharmaceutical response
Speaker 1: is for the most part of stupid idea. Because there
Speaker 1: seems to be two categories right right when people take
Speaker 1: nutmeg for recreational purposes. Either it makes them horribly sick,
Speaker 1: or it gives them just a really horrible time for
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours where they're basically just delirious, or
Speaker 1: or there's a third category where you kind of get
Speaker 1: both your delirious and you're just violently ill, uh and
Speaker 1: sometimes even hospitalized. Yeah, I mean they kind of you
Speaker 1: kind of should look at it is like the runs high, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first question comes to mind is when did people
Speaker 1: start figuring this out that if you ingest a lot
Speaker 1: of nutmeg, and when we say a lot of nutmeg,
Speaker 1: we're talking like spoonfuls of the stuff. We're like a
Speaker 1: whole container of nutmeg. But when did people first getting
Speaker 1: get this idea in their head that they should try
Speaker 1: it or then it or that once they've tried it,
Speaker 1: that it does have some sort of strange effect on
Speaker 1: the human body. Well from Atlantic Magazine article My Nutmeg
Speaker 1: bend Or by Wayne Curtis, he says that the Benedictine
Speaker 1: abbess Hilda Guard of binging Nice Benin noted the mind
Speaker 1: altering effects of nutmeg all the way back to the
Speaker 1: twelfth century. So we've got some documentation that people were
Speaker 1: dabbling around with it. Then apparently in air vadic medicine,
Speaker 1: ancient Indian medicine, it was known as mata shonda or
Speaker 1: narcotic fruit, and it was sometimes chewed with beetle to
Speaker 1: excite one or it was actually consumed orally to excite
Speaker 1: the libido. And this is this is an interesting area,
Speaker 1: the idea that that okay, if you take nutmeg, uh,
Speaker 1: it could potentially enhance your sex life. And again a
Speaker 1: very old idea. We see it in ancient India and
Speaker 1: you see it come up again in various other Texas.
Speaker 1: People set out to try and figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: nutmeg can do for the body when it's taking taken
Speaker 1: in abnormal doses. There was a man by the name
Speaker 1: of Andrew Board, and he had a book called Dietary
Speaker 1: of Health UH in which he says generally nutmegs be
Speaker 1: good for them which have cold in their head and
Speaker 1: does comfort the site and the brain. But he uh,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, he's a it was a celibate monk, you know,
Speaker 1: valve of chastity. And he also suggested that nutmeg damp
Speaker 1: and sexual desire, which which were reportedly according to some
Speaker 1: of the dirt on this guy, it didn't really work
Speaker 1: all that well for it, or maybe he was trying
Speaker 1: to tap down so much desire that even large quantities
Speaker 1: of nuting meg didn't help. But then there's another interesting
Speaker 1: I guess you would say nutmeg psychonot the Earl of Dorset,
Speaker 1: Charles Sackville. And this guy, this is the late sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and we see a reference to him in Samuel Peep's diary.
Speaker 1: Charles Sackville would would regularly take a spoonful of nutmeg
Speaker 1: before bedtime, and he claimed that this would fill his
Speaker 1: dreams with all manner of illicit scenarios, and then he'd
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning rather excited by it. Uh
Speaker 1: And and according to Samuel Peete's um, Sackville eventually wound
Speaker 1: up in the slammer after a night of quote running
Speaker 1: up and down all night, almost naked through the streets.
Speaker 1: So um, all right, But then again, to what extent
Speaker 1: is this just rather excitable guy anyway? And he takes it,
Speaker 1: you know, the placebo effect could be in full, full effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no I mean, there's no evidence that it really
Speaker 1: is an aphrodisiac, but researchers have found it to increase
Speaker 1: mating behaviors in mice, and it's known to stimulate the
Speaker 1: circulatory system and increase and flow, so it stands to
Speaker 1: reason that it could help in terms of sexual drive.
Speaker 1: But and then again, we're talking about large doses here,
Speaker 1: because because generally the consensus is small doses of of
Speaker 1: nutmeg on a regular basis, as in the kind of
Speaker 1: nutmeg that you would use in cooking or putting on
Speaker 1: top of your coffee, or the occasionally a mixed drink
Speaker 1: or Christmas side or what have you. All that is
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. It's not gonna hurt you at all, and
Speaker 1: it will probably have beneficial effects. But it's the ingestion
Speaker 1: of let's say, a whole nutmeg seed. Right, this is
Speaker 1: a huge spoonful every night, that kind of right. This
Speaker 1: is where we begin to see some some of the
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic facts of it. And you had already noted some
Speaker 1: of the possible side effects including loose bowels, vomiting, accelerated
Speaker 1: heart rate. But also, according to Wing Curtis in that
Speaker 1: article my Nutmeg Vendor, nutmeg burps at twenty minute intervals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, people, this is not sexy stuff here. Um,
Speaker 1: this is probably not something that you want to take
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, have a date. In fact,
Speaker 1: you don't want to take it at all. Um. Over
Speaker 1: and over again we saw accounts of this, of people saying,
Speaker 1: this is not really um a hallucinatory experience that is
Speaker 1: exalted in any way, This is not desirable experience. This
Speaker 1: is I mean because they're also things like giddiness, laughing fits, yes, fantasies,
Speaker 1: but also nausea, the heart palpitations, hallucinations. Generally speaking, there
Speaker 1: seemed to be two categories of people. The vast majority
Speaker 1: are the people who try it once and then realize
Speaker 1: it was a stupid thing they did and they never
Speaker 1: do it again. And then there's a very small category
Speaker 1: of people who were just really maybe there's just a
Speaker 1: there's an obsessive personality about them, or they or they
Speaker 1: have just an inflated idea of what it's doing for them.
Speaker 1: So you see people like Charles Sackville who at least
Speaker 1: claims to have taken in large doses of it in
Speaker 1: a regular basis thinking or to some extent, getting some
Speaker 1: sort of illicit use out of it. Or I was
Speaker 1: looking around on moder earn message boards and I ran
Speaker 1: across one individual who was just really gung ho about
Speaker 1: figuring out a way how to how to break the
Speaker 1: nutmeg code, like how to how to combine nutmeg with
Speaker 1: other substances so that he could get this trippy experience
Speaker 1: without any of the side effects, which it just seems
Speaker 1: like he was putting a lot of work into a
Speaker 1: just an undesirable coal. And I said, so, by and large,
Speaker 1: you see people who take it once and never take
Speaker 1: it again. You can look on YouTube and you'll find
Speaker 1: people who stupidly decide they're going to take the nutmeg challenge,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of that. Have you ray familiar
Speaker 1: with this scenario? I think there was like a cinnamon challenge,
Speaker 1: and and there's like stuff like Saby challenge where it's
Speaker 1: just idiots taking spoonfuls fulls of things and choking them
Speaker 1: down and generally choking because you're not supposed to have
Speaker 1: a spoonful of with Your body knows a spoonful of
Speaker 1: sabby is a bad idea. Your body knows that a
Speaker 1: spoonful of nutmeg is a bad idea, and that's why
Speaker 1: you literally have to choke it down if you're taking
Speaker 1: large amounts of it. So people inevitably, general eight teenagers
Speaker 1: with a webcam end up doing this and just having
Speaker 1: an awful time because you at the very least you're
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna feel nasty going down. Uh, you're gonna
Speaker 1: and you're gonna feel totally out of sorts for something
Speaker 1: like forty eight hours. Takes about four hours to set in,
Speaker 1: and then you're looking at forty eight hours even three
Speaker 1: days of just feeling weird and awful and zombie like
Speaker 1: and sluggish. You might maybe you'll feel a little bit
Speaker 1: like you're flying, but you'll also have diarrhea. So well,
Speaker 1: and that's what Wayne Curtis details in his article in
Speaker 1: Atlantic Magazine. I mean, he says that you know, it
Speaker 1: took effect on him and for a couple of days
Speaker 1: it took a while to to shake off and um.
Speaker 1: He says that it's hallucinogenic properties are likely from the
Speaker 1: molecules of mistresson and elemison and Mrson is a nutmeg
Speaker 1: and has a chemical structure that shares similarities with mescaline,
Speaker 1: uh amphetamine, and ecstasy. And in the Dictionary of Hallucinations,
Speaker 1: it says that nutmeg has been ported to mediate visual
Speaker 1: auditory tactile and Kinney's kin aesthetic hallucinations, notably the sense
Speaker 1: of floating, as you had already mentioned. So what I
Speaker 1: think is really interesting is that Curtis actually went to
Speaker 1: the trouble of trying this to see what sort of
Speaker 1: effect it would have on him. And before we discussed that, um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out that people have resorted to
Speaker 1: using this it looks like in cases where they could
Speaker 1: not obtain other substances, and I'm talking about in prison,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of rumors that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: people have used it in prisons, uh to to try
Speaker 1: to get high. And in fact, in Malcolm access biography,
Speaker 1: he says that a penny match book full of nutmeg
Speaker 1: had the kick of three or four reefers. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: this experience is going to vary from person to person,
Speaker 1: but largely what people are reporting is that they're not
Speaker 1: having a mellow high or anything like that. We're again
Speaker 1: we're talking vomit and diarrhea here. Yeah. I mean it's
Speaker 1: important that we're talking about prison scenarios because because this
Speaker 1: is also a scenario where individuals are going to be
Speaker 1: kind of desperate for any kind of sensory change. You know,
Speaker 1: they want a different experience and the thing that they're
Speaker 1: having every single day, and if the various other forms
Speaker 1: of stimulation are withheld from them, then they may have
Speaker 1: no other choice in their view, to tries things like nutmeg.
Speaker 1: H So in many prisons to this day, it's still
Speaker 1: it's difficult to find nutmeg in the kitchen because they're
Speaker 1: just not gonna stock it because somebody's gonna end up
Speaker 1: taking it. But again, it's it's just not going to
Speaker 1: be a pleasant time. Um. There are also stories that
Speaker 1: jazz musicians, particularly Charlie Parker, reportedly partook of nutmeg. Supposedly, um,
Speaker 1: I mean supposedly nutmeg wasn't the only thing that Charlie
Speaker 1: Parker took. But it's just it's again this this is
Speaker 1: on no one knows for sure. Like I was reading
Speaker 1: a um on one of our articles we're looking after this,
Speaker 1: they were talking about it. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: mystery that nobody wants to talk about, like the the
Speaker 1: jazz musicians the secret of jazz is nutmeg, which I
Speaker 1: don't buy for a second, you know, Yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: I do think it's interesting that it really didn't even
Speaker 1: become known in the Western world really until I think
Speaker 1: that's sixties and one of the first people to ferret
Speaker 1: it out was Dr Andrew Wild, who at the time
Speaker 1: was submitting his thesis for honors in biology at Harvard University,
Speaker 1: and he was he he wanted to really make an
Speaker 1: inquiry into nutmeg as a narcotic and a hallucinogenic and uh,
Speaker 1: he kind of sort of went through the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting, but because before then, again people
Speaker 1: didn't really think of it as having any sort of
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic properties. But you probably know Dr Andrew Wild now
Speaker 1: is someone who has been at the at the sort
Speaker 1: of forefront of what you would say integrative medicine is
Speaker 1: and really looking at these various natural um herbs implants
Speaker 1: to try to integrate into medicine and get some sort
Speaker 1: of benefit from Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating paper
Speaker 1: a young while put together UM and it's also amusing
Speaker 1: too because there's so many beatnecks in it. He keeps
Speaker 1: talking about UM. One one particular that encounter that he
Speaker 1: mentioned because he mentions talking to this guy and that
Speaker 1: guy that you know it doesn't use any names, but
Speaker 1: particularly is interested in in the At one point in
Speaker 1: the article, he is interested in individuals who normally take marijuana,
Speaker 1: but when they can't obtain marijuana, then supposedly they turned
Speaker 1: a nutmeet, which, as we've already illustrated, clearly nutmeg is
Speaker 1: not equatable with marijuana use. But but he was just
Speaker 1: asking around. It's like, is this true? When you can't
Speaker 1: have marijuana, do you have nutmeg? And there's one Harvard
Speaker 1: graduate in particular that while talked to who answered him
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, here, step over here to your spice cabinet.
Speaker 1: And he opened the spice cabinet and he points at
Speaker 1: all the various things that he is pretty much everything
Speaker 1: in here, but msg if you take enough of it,
Speaker 1: it's going to have some sort of weird effect on
Speaker 1: your body. Uh, you know if you're palpations. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be sentiment, it could be paprika. But if
Speaker 1: you take enough of anything, and certainly a spice, because
Speaker 1: the spice is gonna be a very potent substance that
Speaker 1: it just we don't use in large quantities, but if
Speaker 1: you consume a large quantity of you're gonna get some
Speaker 1: sort of reaction, probably not a good one. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also like that paper too, because you can see all
Speaker 1: of as handwritten molecular compounds. I'll have all of his
Speaker 1: drawings very quaint. Uh. But yes, so it's I think
Speaker 1: that kind of gives you an idea of of how again,
Speaker 1: it's not this uh wonderful high that people are seeking.
Speaker 1: There's probably a reason why it's not something that is
Speaker 1: done in drug culture A lot right, not so great.
Speaker 1: Back to Wing Curtis. In the article, he talks about
Speaker 1: his nutmeg bender. Let me just read a little bit
Speaker 1: of his own experience. He says that, both dubious and intrigued,
Speaker 1: I grated up a whole nutmeg and part of another,
Speaker 1: producing about one and a half table spoonful of powder.
Speaker 1: I swallowed it in one small spoonful at a time,
Speaker 1: chasing each gulp down with water. Um. He says. Consumed
Speaker 1: in that quantity, nutmeg loses its fuel to high goodness
Speaker 1: and tastes like turpentine. Perhaps my dosage was too low
Speaker 1: or my nutmeg too desiccated. I did go through an
Speaker 1: early giddey phase when everything seemed immensely amusing, including the
Speaker 1: shingles on my neighbor's house, and I felt a slight
Speaker 1: floating sensation when walking around the neighborhood. But mostly I
Speaker 1: just felt out of sorts for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: When I tried to write, my words sometimes became unmoored
Speaker 1: from my thoughts. Though, to be fair, of this happens
Speaker 1: even without the influence of nutmeg. You know, again, not
Speaker 1: so not so exciting description here, a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: going through trying to get some sort of high out
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, it's not you don't. You don't encounter
Speaker 1: romantic descriptions of nutmeg us. It's just it's it's only
Speaker 1: a failure or or a real failure. I mean. And
Speaker 1: then there have been cases where individuals, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been hospitalized or in some cases possibly died from
Speaker 1: using it. The chances of dying from nutmeg poisoning or
Speaker 1: are pretty slim, but it's it's always it's always possible,
Speaker 1: and certainly it's also possible to for there to be
Speaker 1: drug gut interactions as well. So, I mean, everybody's body
Speaker 1: is different. It depends on you know, what's going on
Speaker 1: inside you, what other substances you're taking, what your particular
Speaker 1: health situation is. So I think what we're saying is kids,
Speaker 1: just keep it on the top of your coffee. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Just a couple of sprinkles will do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or apparently, as the Joy of Cooking says, use it
Speaker 1: sparingly but often so it's probably a good good place
Speaker 1: to leave it. But but still, I will admit, even
Speaker 1: though even though I am I would, I will absolutely
Speaker 1: never try and choke down a whole bunch of nutmeg
Speaker 1: in the hopes of stuff weird happening and to me
Speaker 1: and standing forty eight hours on a toilet, Um, the
Speaker 1: next time I sprinkled nutmeg on it, I will I
Speaker 1: will certainly have that in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: I'll feel a little cooler using my nutmeg because I'm like,
Speaker 1: look at me, I'm like a I'm like a Dutch aristocrat. See,
Speaker 1: I'll just think about the bathroom thing. My mind will
Speaker 1: go straight to the gutter. All right, So there you go. Um.
Speaker 1: That is actually a nice little precursor for a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes that are coming out. To look for them,
Speaker 1: we were going to talk more specifically about hallucinogen's shamans
Speaker 1: all sorts of good stuff, um, in the various ways
Speaker 1: that we tried to manipulate the mind. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's call over the robit and look
Speaker 1: at the listener mail. Here's one from our listener, Marcio.
Speaker 1: Marcio writes sentences, Hi, Robert and Julie. I'm a listener
Speaker 1: from Portugal who, for obvious reasons doesn't observe Thanksgiving, but
Speaker 1: of course still listen to the Turkey episode. You may
Speaker 1: recall the part about the origin of the bird's name
Speaker 1: and how the British called everything Oriental Turkish, including something
Speaker 1: that was merely traded by Eastern merchants. Interestingly enough, kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing happened with the Portuguese in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. Spanish America was properly referred to as Peru.
Speaker 1: When the Spanish first brought that bird to Europe, we
Speaker 1: called it Peru, and it's still that name. It still
Speaker 1: has that name today. At least we got the continent right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the cast. I'm a fan. Have fun, Marcia,
Speaker 1: so that's in it. Certainly that ties in nicely with
Speaker 1: this episode in which we talked about international trade and
Speaker 1: how it affects our understandings of various products. You know,
Speaker 1: also on the Thanksgiving episode, we we ruminated in that
Speaker 1: particular episode about the possibility of a killer turkey horror
Speaker 1: movie and possible. Yes, and lo and behold it exists.
Speaker 1: A number of you pointed out that there is a
Speaker 1: movie by the name of Thanks Killing, Thanks Killing that
Speaker 1: appears to to star a kind of skexy, light evil
Speaker 1: turkey puppet that goes around killing people, and it's it's
Speaker 1: currently the one Netflix streamings, which is which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is out there. You should totally check
Speaker 1: out the trailer at the very least. It's it's very
Speaker 1: funny stuff. So there you have it. A little listener
Speaker 1: mail there. If you would like to write in with
Speaker 1: your thoughts on nutmeg, we would love to hear about them. Again,
Speaker 1: do not actually try and take a bunch of nutmeg
Speaker 1: and then expect that we're gonna read your thoughts about
Speaker 1: it on on on the podcast Taking my Head now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, but we would love I would particularly love
Speaker 1: to hear any of you who are Dutch or who
Speaker 1: have had a lot of Dutch cuisine. I'd love to
Speaker 1: know about the nutmeg in that culinary condition, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. I would love to hear about anything else
Speaker 1: not related that you may have to share that doesn't
Speaker 1: involve spooning down that man. If you want to share
Speaker 1: this kind of thing with us, you can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook and tumbler. If we're we are stufforable in
Speaker 1: your mind on both of those, and you can also
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter, where our handles blow the mind.
Speaker 1: And you can always drop us a line at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
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