Speaker 1: They're from his quiver full of shafts, two arrows? Did
Speaker 1: he take of sundry works? To one causes love? The
Speaker 1: other doth H's slake. That causes love is all of
Speaker 1: gold with point, full, sharp and bright. That chase is
Speaker 1: love is blunt who steal with leaden head? Is Dight.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And so obviously we're talking about Cupid today. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's Valentine's Day? Is it? Yes? Is it actually Valentine's Yes,
Speaker 1: actual Valentine's Day. Okay, Yeah, so we figured what we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta do some sort of Valentine's episode. We
Speaker 1: had the the episode where we talked to Tomorrow Heart previously,
Speaker 1: but this is the day itself Towers of Ale sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it seemed proper to get a little mythological here
Speaker 1: as we kick off this episode, and to turn to
Speaker 1: that mythological figure that got of romantic love, Cupid, the
Speaker 1: creepy smooth baby who shoots arrows with heart tips. Yes,
Speaker 1: now that the reading at the top of the episode
Speaker 1: was was ovid that was from the Metamorphosis the Golden Translation,
Speaker 1: So that was how you get words like dit Yeah,
Speaker 1: which means clothed or equipped. I had to look that
Speaker 1: one up. Yeah, it might be not be completely clear,
Speaker 1: but what Ovid is basically saying is, hey, Cupid has
Speaker 1: two different arrows that he may pull from his quiver.
Speaker 1: You often forget this, or maybe he never even learned
Speaker 1: it in the first place. Well, right, if you're just
Speaker 1: going off of cheesy Valentine staate cards, you just think
Speaker 1: of that cartoon baby, and like you said, the arrows
Speaker 1: have just kind of a goofy cartoon heart at the end,
Speaker 1: and cupids launch and those at people and making them
Speaker 1: falling cartoon love with people. Yeah, well, you tend to
Speaker 1: not think cupids arrows literally being an arrow that strikes
Speaker 1: with force and penetrates the flesh. I guess we're to
Speaker 1: understand it that way, at least the ancients did. Like
Speaker 1: there's this poem by Anna Creon that Robert and I
Speaker 1: were talking about before the episode, where it's not actually
Speaker 1: that great of a poem. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: worth reading, but it makes this joke about cupid gets
Speaker 1: stung by a bee and he starts crying, and his mother,
Speaker 1: I guess this would be Aphrodite or Venus maybe comes
Speaker 1: to him and is trying to console him and says, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're crying about being stung by a bee,
Speaker 1: but you shoot people with arrows all the time. That
Speaker 1: must hurt more shot through the heart. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so he so he has two different arrows that he
Speaker 1: he chooses from when he decides to nail somebody. One
Speaker 1: of these arrows, as the as Ovid says, is tipped
Speaker 1: in gold with a sharp point and bright right, and
Speaker 1: so that's the that's the love arrow, that is the
Speaker 1: the romantic love arrow. But then he has this leaden
Speaker 1: arrow which it sounds like it's it's probably not an
Speaker 1: arrowhead composed entirely of lad for reasons will explain, but
Speaker 1: it is at least coded or tipped in lead somehow well.
Speaker 1: And it also says that as blunt, meaning I assume
Speaker 1: it is not meant to penetrate, but maybe strikes more
Speaker 1: like a like a beanbag gun. Yeah, like just to
Speaker 1: brain you with this dense leaden arrowhead. Yeah, just to
Speaker 1: just smack you hard. And then it Also it imparts aversion,
Speaker 1: so like it hits you and now you you want
Speaker 1: to you want to not be around somebody. I guess right.
Speaker 1: This seems that this seems to be the most popular
Speaker 1: interpretation of the leaden arrows power though I was looking around, uh,
Speaker 1: and I did see at least one description saying that
Speaker 1: the leaden arrow had to do with set with sensual passion.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's the predominant interpretation. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not the one that we're going to spend much time
Speaker 1: with here today. Consensual passion. There are other gods for that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Cupid's domain is more about that that that
Speaker 1: that romantic passion, the arrows or the philos or I
Speaker 1: lose track of what love is what in Greek philodo? Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be we'll be getting into the Greek and Roman
Speaker 1: stuff shortly, but yes, we're gonna be talking about Cupid.
Speaker 1: And I do I do encourage everyone to maybe put
Speaker 1: aside the more cherubic interpretations of of Cupid as we
Speaker 1: discuss this figure, because we have to remember he is
Speaker 1: a god. Um. He is capable of of of wrecking
Speaker 1: people's lives with his mischief and he's not always depicted
Speaker 1: as a as a baby. He's he's often he's usually
Speaker 1: depicted as youthful, certainly, and that may be a male
Speaker 1: youth or a boy. He's very often and you know,
Speaker 1: depicted naked or nearly so. And sometimes he's blindfolded as well.
Speaker 1: I think it's blind right, Oh yeah, I didn't think
Speaker 1: of that. Well, I I think he's often depicted as
Speaker 1: a baby just because if he were an adult, he
Speaker 1: would be a horrifying, gross creep. Right. Well, they're still
Speaker 1: there's still always room to find Cupid creepy for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, Well who is Cupid? Where do you come from?
Speaker 1: In the pantheon and the mythology? Okay, so Cupid is
Speaker 1: the Roman variant of the Greek god Arrows, the prime
Speaker 1: evil god of love, a son of chaos, though in
Speaker 1: later traditions he has depicted as a son of Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: who is the Roman Venus, whose goddess of sexual love
Speaker 1: and beauty. And as far as the father goes, it's
Speaker 1: all across the board. They're very different tellings. Sometimes it's Zeus,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's Aries. There's at least one version where
Speaker 1: it's It's It seems like it's Vulcan, the god of
Speaker 1: the forage. But in but then a lot of stories
Speaker 1: have it have hermes as the father, who of course
Speaker 1: is the Roman Mercury. So it's a real Mari show. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can very much imagine that there being a lot
Speaker 1: of drama around this. But he's a god of passion
Speaker 1: and love but also a fertility to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: As now, in Roman traditions, Cupid is largely described as
Speaker 1: a son of Venus and Mercury, combining their roles into
Speaker 1: that of a divine messenger of love. Okay, so Mercury
Speaker 1: is the messenger, Aphrodite is love. So he brings you
Speaker 1: the love signals, the he's he's the radar love god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't you So you can't really hate the messenger, right,
Speaker 1: I guess that's part of the story here as well.
Speaker 1: Now he's often depicted as this kind of cherubic creature
Speaker 1: like we describe, but also sometimes is more of a
Speaker 1: you know, in an androgynous, youthful figure, sometimes clad in
Speaker 1: armor because I guess love is also a battlefield and
Speaker 1: he's sometimes a mischief maker other times a generous patron
Speaker 1: of love. His targets include both mortals and other gods.
Speaker 1: And uh as always, the versions of the myth very
Speaker 1: with the teller and the time. But we certainly want
Speaker 1: to to tell the major Cupid story. Well, tell me
Speaker 1: the story, Robert, all right. So his mother again is Venus,
Speaker 1: and Venus has is subject to bouts of jealousy pretty
Speaker 1: much like all of them, the major gods and the pantheon, right,
Speaker 1: and so she one day she has had enough of
Speaker 1: this beautiful mortal by the name of Psyche. She's just
Speaker 1: too too lovely. She's so lovely that other mortals are
Speaker 1: afraid to approach her. And in Venus isn't having it.
Speaker 1: She tasks her son Cupid, and says, go to this woman,
Speaker 1: shoot her with a golden arrow of love, and then
Speaker 1: make her fall in love with the first thing she sees,
Speaker 1: because that's the power of the arrow in this in
Speaker 1: this interpretation of it. And she adds, make sure that
Speaker 1: the next thing she sees is the most hideous creature imaginable.
Speaker 1: I don't care what it is, usual imagination. She falls
Speaker 1: in love with the font Papyrus. That would have been good, um,
Speaker 1: so Cupid. Cupid goes down to Earth to do this,
Speaker 1: but he can't quite bring himself to finish the task,
Speaker 1: though he was certainly okay with the plan enough to
Speaker 1: trick her parents into a band, dinning her on a
Speaker 1: desolate hilltop so that she could wed a monster, but
Speaker 1: as far as actually yeah, because she's taken. The Psyche
Speaker 1: has taken to this hill and here you go. Sorry,
Speaker 1: the gods wants you to marry a monster. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: See you later, because you know you do what do
Speaker 1: what the gods say, or suffer. But then he can't
Speaker 1: actually shoot her with the arrow, so instead he pricks
Speaker 1: himself with the golden arrow and then gazes upon Psyche,
Speaker 1: falls in love with her, and so he takes her away,
Speaker 1: sets her up in a protected place like a palace,
Speaker 1: somewhere where he can visit her safely, but only in darkness.
Speaker 1: And then but then one night she cast light upon
Speaker 1: him and she learns his identity, spilling wax on him
Speaker 1: in the process, and he flees. So Psyche is distraught.
Speaker 1: She's she's in love with this this god, this beautiful
Speaker 1: young god boy, so she searches for him, and finally
Speaker 1: Venus agrees to hand him over, but only if she
Speaker 1: completes a series of trials. Oh yeah, never a good
Speaker 1: sign in a myth, right, you get the feeling that
Speaker 1: a lot of these trials might be tricks. Yes, and
Speaker 1: indeed they are. Uh. The the exact trials can vary
Speaker 1: with the telling, but uh, this is the basic roll
Speaker 1: out here. First of all, she has to sort a
Speaker 1: massive pile of seeds in a single night, and uh,
Speaker 1: fortunately some ants help her. Oh that's a great variation
Speaker 1: on all the tweety birds and scugs in the snow
Speaker 1: White story. You know they'll come in and help with
Speaker 1: the chores. Now it's ants, and who knows, maybe Spider's
Speaker 1: pitch in a bit. Well. The next task is that
Speaker 1: she has to fetch the golden wool from a like
Speaker 1: a monstrous sheep, like a kind of sheep that disembowels
Speaker 1: anyone who gets near it, and a swarm of cockroaches
Speaker 1: assist her. No, actually, a river god helps her out
Speaker 1: um and helps her acquire the wolf. So she turns
Speaker 1: that in. But then she has to venture into the
Speaker 1: underworld and acquire a drop of the Queen of the
Speaker 1: Underworld's beauty. Oh yeah, so uh cupid, it seems ends
Speaker 1: up sort of cluing her in sends her some signals
Speaker 1: because going to the underworld isn't easy, right, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous proposition. So Cupid clues her in you know,
Speaker 1: secret messages, letting her know, make sure you bring coins
Speaker 1: for torone and treats for service, important things to bring along.
Speaker 1: So she does this. She wins that drop, brings it
Speaker 1: back in a golden box, and brings it to the surface.
Speaker 1: She's on her way to deliver it to Venus, but
Speaker 1: then she decides, well, I'm gonna steal a little bit
Speaker 1: of that beauty from the box for myself, and then
Speaker 1: she discovers the boxes full of sleep. Sleep comes over her,
Speaker 1: Cupid comes to her way and wakes her up, gives
Speaker 1: her the nectar of the gods and makes her a
Speaker 1: god as well the embodiment of the soul, and she
Speaker 1: later gives birth to Pleasure. That's a heck of a story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there are various treatments of the story. The
Speaker 1: various you know, additional stories such as Beauty and the
Speaker 1: Beast take this basic structure and then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: employ it in a slightly different manner. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the major Cupid narrative. But there's also a fun one
Speaker 1: that employs his arrows in an interesting way in which
Speaker 1: both of them this time, both of them as he
Speaker 1: messes with the god Apollo. So Apollo is a powerful
Speaker 1: god and he's he's he's lusting after the nymph Daphne.
Speaker 1: And while he's in the midst of this, he taunts
Speaker 1: Cupid's archery ability. He says, you're not much of an archer,
Speaker 1: are you, And so it's always good to taunt people
Speaker 1: holding ranged weapons. Well, again, the gods are vain and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of and it's in vengeful and but
Speaker 1: also kind of stupid at times. So what Cupid does
Speaker 1: is he shoots Apollo with a golden arrow that makes him,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, lust like crazy after Daphney. But
Speaker 1: then he shoots Daphne with a leaden arrow, ensuring that
Speaker 1: she wants nothing to do with exactly. In fact, she
Speaker 1: runs away to her father, who also happens to be
Speaker 1: a river god, and has him turned her into a
Speaker 1: tree so that Apollo will leave her alone. And then
Speaker 1: Cupid you know, goes off and laughs about the whole affair. Now, wait,
Speaker 1: after the us, is Apollo still in love with the
Speaker 1: tree or not? It really depends on the user agreement
Speaker 1: with you on the golden arrow? How does the gold
Speaker 1: narrow magic work? Can you transform the essence of the
Speaker 1: target of the affection? And does that? Can'tcel the spell?
Speaker 1: Or do you have to roll a D twenty to
Speaker 1: find out? I don't know. And then we are the
Speaker 1: effects on God's Is that a little different than an
Speaker 1: effect on immortal Who can say? Now you might think, okay,
Speaker 1: Cupid sounds like he makes some enemies here and there.
Speaker 1: Who's his greatest rival? Is there like a safety god
Speaker 1: who's always trying to take his arrows away? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's none other than the great God Pan. What one
Speaker 1: of our favorites. Yeah, In one corner we have the
Speaker 1: flighty arrow shooting Cherubic, son of of of Venus, U,
Speaker 1: the Lord of Love. And in the other corner we
Speaker 1: have the wild rutting he goat, king of fornication, Uh,
Speaker 1: surrounded by nymphs prancing through the forest. And so it's
Speaker 1: divine love versus earthly love, and spoiler alert, Cupid often
Speaker 1: comes out on top. In fact, there are some there
Speaker 1: are paintings that depict Cupid kind of wrestling Pan to
Speaker 1: the ground. Could you also say that this is like
Speaker 1: city love versus country love. I guess you could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Pan was sort of envisioned as the representative of
Speaker 1: the I don't know, the the amorous affairs of like
Speaker 1: shepherds and country people. Yeah, it is kind of country
Speaker 1: love versus you know, the divine love of Mount Olympus. Here.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you look up artistic interpretations
Speaker 1: of Pan, he is often wrestling or doing something like wrestling,
Speaker 1: so it's it's hard to say he's definitely on the
Speaker 1: losing end of the scenario here. The Pan's a rascal. Yea. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of other treatments of of Cupid, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to go through, you know, all the
Speaker 1: the echoes in popular culture. I did notice just the
Speaker 1: most dignified one. Yes, I did notice that there is
Speaker 1: a There is a Cupid in at DC comics that's
Speaker 1: kind of a feisty redhead and it's a it's a female.
Speaker 1: It's like a cohort of the green arrow. Is she
Speaker 1: a got us or just a human named Cupid? I
Speaker 1: think she's just a human who shoots arrows at people.
Speaker 1: It's not a thor situation. I don't think so. If
Speaker 1: any comic book fans out there that want to, um,
Speaker 1: you know, clue us in on this. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear more. But I think she just shoots arrows at
Speaker 1: people and tries to kill them, you know. Independent of
Speaker 1: you coming up with this lead, Robert, I immediately was googling, like,
Speaker 1: cupid horror movie? Is there one? I came across something,
Speaker 1: only to discover that you'd already given it a little
Speaker 1: right up here. Yes, two thousand and one slasher film
Speaker 1: titled Valentine. Now have you seen this before? No? I
Speaker 1: looked up a couple of scenes on YouTube. One actually
Speaker 1: had kind of a cool set with like somebody's like
Speaker 1: walking through a maze made out of TV screens or
Speaker 1: something that. Yeah, I kind of like that, but otherwise
Speaker 1: it looks so stupid. And it has the ultimate like
Speaker 1: two thousand one smart Face cast where it's got David
Speaker 1: Boreanaz and Denise Richards. It's like the cast of Starship Troopers.
Speaker 1: It also has a has a two thousand and one
Speaker 1: alternative rock album, like the most two thousand and one
Speaker 1: alternative rock album, Imaginable. Yeah that the soundtrack is, um,
Speaker 1: does it have what down with the sickness? It doesn't
Speaker 1: have that particular track, but Disturbed is present and h
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can pretty much extrapolate from there what
Speaker 1: else is on the soundtrack. But it does have this
Speaker 1: killer stalking around, this slasher character with a Cupid mask,
Speaker 1: and there is one scene at least where he kills
Speaker 1: somebody with arrows, and that's the sequence you're you're talking
Speaker 1: about with all the TVs. So yeah, as far as
Speaker 1: slasher films we're seeing, it's been too long since I've
Speaker 1: seen it to really give it a firm recommendation. But
Speaker 1: as far as slasher films worth looking up the kills
Speaker 1: on YouTube, I give it a give it a thumbs up.
Speaker 1: But in this movie, if unless I'm mistaken, no gold
Speaker 1: arrows and lead blunt arrows right right, I think he
Speaker 1: just has normal killing arrows because he's ultimately not an
Speaker 1: actual god. That would have been a fun twist. Though.
Speaker 1: They don't get deep into the resonances of the mythology, no,
Speaker 1: because if there's a lot there you could really go
Speaker 1: go nuts with. For instance, the fact that Cupid is
Speaker 1: often depicted riding around on dolphins or even sometimes just
Speaker 1: on sea monsters. That's odd. Yeah, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know we mentioned Beauty and the Beast already, but
Speaker 1: I should throw out there even though I haven't read it,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I haven't read it, because
Speaker 1: I read a whole lot of C. S. Lewis at
Speaker 1: one point in my life. But C. S. Lewis retells
Speaker 1: the story of of Cupid and Psyche in the nine
Speaker 1: novel Till We Have Faces. I've never read that either,
Speaker 1: but that sounds maybe worth check now. So again, we
Speaker 1: could keep going on Cupid, we could keep talking about
Speaker 1: various mythological treatments, different versions of the stories. Um. But basically,
Speaker 1: what we want to drive home here is that, first
Speaker 1: of all, he has these two arrows. He has the
Speaker 1: leaden arrow and the golden arrow, and these are the
Speaker 1: powers associated. And we also just want to drive home
Speaker 1: that he's he is more than just this ridiculous cartoon baby.
Speaker 1: Now he's an epic creep cartoon baby who wrestles goat
Speaker 1: men and rides on seam monsters. Indeed, he is so
Speaker 1: On that note, we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we are going to discuss
Speaker 1: the leaden Arrow of Cupid. We're going to get into
Speaker 1: what ancient people knew of lead, how they used lead,
Speaker 1: what they thought about its properties, And then of course
Speaker 1: we'll well, we'll we'll dive a little bit into the
Speaker 1: periodic table and discuss exactly what lad is. Thank thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. So, Robert, we have already told
Speaker 1: the story of Cupid as especially as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Uh,
Speaker 1: And in the story of these two different arrows, he's
Speaker 1: got the gold arrow, which imparts love, makes people fancy
Speaker 1: one another, and the lead arrow, which is blunt and
Speaker 1: maybe seems to cause a version, at least in some
Speaker 1: tellings of the story. Right, Like if if you were
Speaker 1: hit with the lead arrow and somebody passed you a
Speaker 1: note in in in high school and said will you
Speaker 1: go out with me? Yes and no, you would add
Speaker 1: a third box that said I would rather my father
Speaker 1: turned me into a tree. Yeah, your head would just explode,
Speaker 1: like in Scanners. Yes, Well, other than the general association
Speaker 1: of gold being thought of as good, is there anything
Speaker 1: any reason we can think of why these particular metals
Speaker 1: are picked to have the magical significance they do in
Speaker 1: the arrows in the myth? Well, yeah, exactly what we
Speaker 1: with gold? Obviously, gold is beautiful and humans have thought
Speaker 1: it's beautiful for ages, and we've been perfectly happy to
Speaker 1: squabble over it and kill each other over it. So
Speaker 1: it seems the perfect substance to sum up the appeal
Speaker 1: and then sometimes the dangers of love. Plus knowing what
Speaker 1: we know now, this was an element that was likely
Speaker 1: produced in the collisions of of neutron stars long before
Speaker 1: the formation of the Earth, which is amazing to consider.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean us to contemplate this for
Speaker 1: a moment. Uh, you know, it was once thought that
Speaker 1: most of the universe's heavy elements, like elements heavier than iron,
Speaker 1: were created in supernovas, which is when a massive star
Speaker 1: at the end of its life cycle collapses on itself
Speaker 1: and then explodes, and supernovas can create some heavy elements.
Speaker 1: But some scientists have argued for a while that there
Speaker 1: are too many heavy elements that the proportion of them
Speaker 1: that we find in the universe is too high to
Speaker 1: be accounted for by what's possible from supernovas alone. So
Speaker 1: in recent years there have been some cool experiments that
Speaker 1: have shown that the collision of neutron stars, like you say,
Speaker 1: could be the alternative. For example, I was looking at
Speaker 1: there was a study published in and the Astrophysical Journal
Speaker 1: by Coat at All that looked at data from a
Speaker 1: neutron star merger and I love that's the technology they use,
Speaker 1: like two companies like mergers and acquisitions. What they should
Speaker 1: have used the language of love, because we are creating
Speaker 1: a substance that will one day be used by the
Speaker 1: out of love, right it is it should be neutron
Speaker 1: star copulation, yes, neutron starter course, but anyway, that this
Speaker 1: collision was between eighty five and a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: million light years away, and the researchers calculated that this
Speaker 1: one event, these two neutron stars colliding, produced between one
Speaker 1: and five earth masses of an element called europium and
Speaker 1: between three and thirteen earth masses of gold earth masses
Speaker 1: of gold. So just think about a solid gold Earth
Speaker 1: and then between three and thirteen of them, and then
Speaker 1: it just like spits a bunch of this out into
Speaker 1: the universe to get bound up with other gases and
Speaker 1: stuff like that and eventually end up in maybe say
Speaker 1: a planetary accretion disk, where it becomes part of the
Speaker 1: crust of an Earth. So if you're wearing like a
Speaker 1: gold ring or any other piece of gold right now,
Speaker 1: or if you're maybe maybe say using an electronic device
Speaker 1: that has a bit of gold in it, just think
Speaker 1: about how that element was forged either in the guts
Speaker 1: of a dying star as it exploded, or was probably
Speaker 1: more likely created in the chaos of rapid neutron capture
Speaker 1: when two of the densest objects in the universe, two
Speaker 1: neutron stars, smashed together billions of years ago. And of course,
Speaker 1: I guess the even crazier thing is that that doesn't
Speaker 1: stop at gold, right, Like our amazement at the elements
Speaker 1: shouldn't stop there, because all the heavy elements had to
Speaker 1: be formed at some point. In fact, all the elements
Speaker 1: of any kind had to be formed at some point.
Speaker 1: A few of the lightest ones are primordial, you know,
Speaker 1: you find hydrogen and helium and lithium out in the
Speaker 1: original universe. Uh, And then a few more I think
Speaker 1: are formed by like a cosmic rays and stuff. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, pretty much everything that you could see and
Speaker 1: touch and that your body is made of was in
Speaker 1: some way forged inside a dying star. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got this dying star forge that has slow neutron
Speaker 1: capture going on inside it. Or it was a supernova
Speaker 1: explosion or the collision of neutron stars or or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, these are the very kind of forges
Speaker 1: one can imagine a god like Vulcan would employ, right exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening when he pumps the bellows, he's just
Speaker 1: pumping it to smash neutron stars together. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned that in anything heavier than iron
Speaker 1: likely had this this kind of cosmic origin, and that
Speaker 1: includes lead. So even though it's easy to to say, oh,
Speaker 1: the golden arrow forged in in cosmic turmoil in in
Speaker 1: ages past, well, the same story applies to lead, even
Speaker 1: though it's not as shiny, even though you probably don't
Speaker 1: have any lead in jewelry on your body right now,
Speaker 1: uh though, I mean, lead is an amazing element, and
Speaker 1: to consider the same way, I think. I think there
Speaker 1: are two main explanations for lead, as I believe. One
Speaker 1: is that there's slow neutron capture like the s process
Speaker 1: that takes place within dying stars, and the other is
Speaker 1: the the hot dense starter course, the neutron star collision Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Now,
Speaker 1: to come back to Cupid's arrow, I imagine basically the
Speaker 1: idea of the lead in arrow is that lead is
Speaker 1: not attractive. Lead is not beautiful. Lead is something that
Speaker 1: even in ancient times, it was rarely used in jewelry,
Speaker 1: or at least as the primary aspect of the jewelry. Well. No,
Speaker 1: and and even more, Uh, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can be mean to lead, but if you if lead
Speaker 1: has feelings, you could hurt its feelings even more by
Speaker 1: pointing out that lead. You know, lead doesn't occur generally
Speaker 1: free in nature. Lead occur is bound up in ores. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so primarily the way lead was created in the
Speaker 1: ancient world was as a byproduct of the creation of silver.
Speaker 1: And so people are trying to extract silver for something
Speaker 1: from something and you melt out some lead as a
Speaker 1: sort of waste product of that. And and it did
Speaker 1: have uses because it's got a high specific weight, So
Speaker 1: you could use it as like a weight for you know,
Speaker 1: if you have like fishing line, fishing nets or something
Speaker 1: you want to hold down that it's useful for that.
Speaker 1: It's not very good for making like solid like weapons
Speaker 1: or anything, right, because it's very soft. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be it's not gonna be a good metal
Speaker 1: if you want to actually forge arrows for combat or
Speaker 1: forge any kind of say armor. Um. But but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of uses for it if you want
Speaker 1: to create, say, drinking vessels, or certainly if you want
Speaker 1: to create pipes. We're not advocating that, by the way, no, no,
Speaker 1: but certainly from a very early point humans were figuring
Speaker 1: This outlet is one of the seven Medals of Antiquity.
Speaker 1: Humans were handling lead a long time ago. Cast lead
Speaker 1: beads found in modern day Turkey date from roughly BC.
Speaker 1: The ancient Egyptians use lead as early as five thousand
Speaker 1: BC for pottery glazes, solder and casting. Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: so I was looking at early examples of lead artifacts.
Speaker 1: One example I found was a sort of maybe aesthetic
Speaker 1: artifact or maybe something that was used in like a
Speaker 1: whirl for for you know, working with textiles. Um. But
Speaker 1: this was the cave in the Negev Desert in Israel,
Speaker 1: and it's supposedly dates to the late fifth millennium BC,
Speaker 1: and it's just basically this wooden wand that's got leaden
Speaker 1: beads at the end of it. And they don't know
Speaker 1: what it's for though I wonder if maybe it's for
Speaker 1: some kind of heavy metal lead magic. Yeah, an anti
Speaker 1: love repulsion ray. Uh, so we can hope. So the
Speaker 1: Babylonians made inscriptions on lead plates soft you can inscribe
Speaker 1: things on it. And just to refer everyone back to
Speaker 1: our October episode on curses, we spend a fair amount
Speaker 1: of time discussing Roman curse tablets. Oh yeah we did.
Speaker 1: And what were those made out of? Well, like the
Speaker 1: ones found in um in like second or third century
Speaker 1: Roman Britain were often they're made in lead. So there
Speaker 1: are these places where you can go around like modern
Speaker 1: day Lester and dig up these ancient sites where there
Speaker 1: would be maybe a shrine or a temple to an
Speaker 1: ancient god, maybe in the syncretic religions of Roman Britain,
Speaker 1: where you'd sort of combined maybe Roman gods with with
Speaker 1: Native Celtic gods or or or the gods of Britain there,
Speaker 1: and people would be going there to say curse somebody
Speaker 1: who stole something from them, like you know, Servandas shows
Speaker 1: up and says, somebody stole my cloak. Whoever stole my cloak,
Speaker 1: I want him to not be able to pee for
Speaker 1: three months unless he gives me my cloak back. And
Speaker 1: this would be inscribed on a lead tablet and hung
Speaker 1: up somewhere. And part of the idea there is that
Speaker 1: it was partially to invoke this power, but also maybe
Speaker 1: just to have it hung up in a public place
Speaker 1: so people could like know what was going on. Now,
Speaker 1: one other important aspect of lead that that I wonder
Speaker 1: and I wonder if it played into the use of
Speaker 1: into the creation of these a curse tablets, is that, uh,
Speaker 1: lead does not corrode like other medals. So if you
Speaker 1: if you, if you inscribe your curse in a piece
Speaker 1: of lead, like, that's a curse that could speak across
Speaker 1: the ages. Right, lead doesn't rust. I mean, well lead
Speaker 1: lead ox sides do form, but they're not they're they're
Speaker 1: not like like iron rust, you know, the red rusty stuff.
Speaker 1: Lead oxide tends to be great, but generally exposed lead
Speaker 1: doesn't corrode. And uh, and yeah, this does make it attractive,
Speaker 1: especially for some purposes, say like if you want to
Speaker 1: make something that holds liquids in it, right, something that
Speaker 1: is not gonna receive a lot of punishment, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that. Uh. That the weakness of it,
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can use it for drinking vessels or
Speaker 1: certainly for plumbing pipes. Here's a gross piece of trivia.
Speaker 1: Next time you have to call a plumber because who
Speaker 1: knows what you tried to flush a whole roll of
Speaker 1: paper towels down the toilet. Consider that the English words
Speaker 1: plumber and plumbing are derived from the Latin word plumb them,
Speaker 1: which means lead. And it's right there in the chemical
Speaker 1: elements symbol for lead on the periodic table. You ever
Speaker 1: noticed that it's one of those weird ones like iron
Speaker 1: is f E. Why is that? Well, you know, it
Speaker 1: comes from an archaic word of like the ferrest metal. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lead on the pure reotic table is PB. Why is
Speaker 1: it pb that comes from plumb them? Because ancient Romans
Speaker 1: loved some lead pipes and lead aqueducts, and lead reservoirs
Speaker 1: and lead cisterns, lead cooking vessels, and lead based even
Speaker 1: lead based food additives. And we'll come back to the
Speaker 1: food additives point now. I was looking at one text
Speaker 1: from Cassis and and sort of titled Lead Chemistry Analytical Aspects,
Speaker 1: Environmental Impact and Health Effects, and they pointed out that
Speaker 1: ancient text showed a bit of confusion over lead and
Speaker 1: other elements, using plumb bum to describe quote any silvery white,
Speaker 1: low melting and easily oxidized metal, including lead, tin, zinc,
Speaker 1: et cetera. They pointed out though, that yeah, lead pipes
Speaker 1: have been used for a very long time. I see
Speaker 1: them in ancient Mesopotamia, Cypress, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, of course,
Speaker 1: and various Roman provinces. So you know, the technology and
Speaker 1: the materials would have spread with the Romans as well,
Speaker 1: and the Romans likely learned it from the Greeks. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the pipes. It was used in cases
Speaker 1: where iron wire or wooden hoops are currently used today,
Speaker 1: you know, as reinforcing brands for bands, for tanks, vats, um, amphora, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So you see it also used in masonry, cesspool coverings, roofing,
Speaker 1: damp proofing, foundations, uh, parapet walls, etcetera. Lead vessels were
Speaker 1: widely used and uh this is interesting. Lead was also
Speaker 1: long associated with funeral rites, so Roman era caskets and
Speaker 1: urns are often made at least in part from lead,
Speaker 1: especially apparently in England. Lead was also used in ancient
Speaker 1: China in a variety of uses from glassmaking to cosmetics.
Speaker 1: Of course, and now in the modern world, we know
Speaker 1: that lead can have extremely serious health consequences, can and
Speaker 1: very often does. Like there there are tons of ways
Speaker 1: to get lead in your body, and lead exposure can
Speaker 1: happen through through in jel question when when you eat,
Speaker 1: It can happen through breathing in lead particles can happen
Speaker 1: through absorption through the skin, and lead gets incorporated into
Speaker 1: the body and leads to both short term and long
Speaker 1: term negative consequences. The short term negative consequences are there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different ones, so it can be
Speaker 1: sometimes it's hard to identify lead exposure in people. But
Speaker 1: it might be like you've got stomach distress, like your
Speaker 1: stomach hurts and you're constipated. But it also can lead
Speaker 1: to weakness and fatigue, and like your arms and legs
Speaker 1: are weak, and it can lead to psychological and neurological consequences.
Speaker 1: People can be like like tired and depressed and irritable,
Speaker 1: have loss of appetite, have trouble remembering things. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's enough to make you think it's my smartphone
Speaker 1: made out of lead, but uh, it is, it's we
Speaker 1: were actually talking about this before we recorded the episode,
Speaker 1: like there's so much to the story of of of
Speaker 1: our realization regarding the harmful effects of lead, that we
Speaker 1: really need to come back to it and devote an
Speaker 1: entire episode. Absolutely, yes, yes, absolutely, We're gonna do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on lead someday soon, I think, maybe with
Speaker 1: a special focus on the Lord of Lead, clar Cy Patterson.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we we now know lead to have all
Speaker 1: these problems, and they're also the long term consequences, right,
Speaker 1: those are just like short term consequences. I was mentioning,
Speaker 1: you know, it can there can be neurological damage from
Speaker 1: long term exposure to lead. Enough lead in a concentrated
Speaker 1: dose can kill you. They're definitely, uh like developmental problems
Speaker 1: that children who have lead exposure experience. So it's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's no joke. And the fact that humans have constantly
Speaker 1: surrounded ourselves for centuries or even millennia with just constant
Speaker 1: routes of exposure to to environmental lead is something that
Speaker 1: is really horrifying and ridiculous. But I guess that's just
Speaker 1: what we do. All right. We're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back We're going to get
Speaker 1: back to this idea of lead as a food headed
Speaker 1: song hanging there. Soon it'll be time to eat some
Speaker 1: lead than Alright, we're back. Okay, it's Valentine's Day. What
Speaker 1: do you get your sweetheart on Valentine's Day? Sometimes they're flowers?
Speaker 1: But oh, I guess it's already there in the name, right,
Speaker 1: you get your sweethearts some sweets. Now here's the question
Speaker 1: I've wondered about before, but I've never found a good
Speaker 1: answer to. Why is it that we associate sweet foods
Speaker 1: with like eroticism but not so much like other flavors?
Speaker 1: Like why isn't it that you get your sweethearts some
Speaker 1: salty foods on Valentine's Day? Or you get them some
Speaker 1: bitter foods or sour foods? Why sweet? I mean sweets
Speaker 1: are a decadent treat, right, I mean I guess that's
Speaker 1: part of it. Um, A sweet is something sweets or
Speaker 1: something we've always were always craving and uh, and we're
Speaker 1: just hardwired to want as much of it as possible,
Speaker 1: given that it would be a rarity in the natural world.
Speaker 1: But we also crave fat and salt. Why not like
Speaker 1: for Valentine's Day, instead of a box of chocolates, it's
Speaker 1: like a bag of pork crimes and a stick of butter. Well. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess it would be harder to keep that secreted
Speaker 1: away in the back of the closet for a week
Speaker 1: or so. Um. But I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: they're people celebrate cheeses on Valentine's You know, certainly there
Speaker 1: are other foods that have a like a romantic or
Speaker 1: afrodisiac uh, you know, vibe to them. Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I guess part of what I'm wondering
Speaker 1: is is that link between like love and eroticism and
Speaker 1: sweet foods. Is that cultural or is there some biological
Speaker 1: element to it? Oh? Man, We'll have to come back
Speaker 1: and explore that. That would be that would be interesting
Speaker 1: to look at, Like when you look at other cultures,
Speaker 1: is there something else that is considered the romantic flavor profile? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, considering how many like Scandinavian
Speaker 1: people have written into the show to to talk about
Speaker 1: the wonders of salty licorice, I bet that's what they
Speaker 1: use over there. Yeah. And plus it makes me wonder about, say,
Speaker 1: Chinese traditions where there's so much emphasis placed on the
Speaker 1: balance of different flavors. Uh, you know, how does impact
Speaker 1: sort of ritualized sweets. All right, well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the sweetest of all sweets, sweet lead. So I found
Speaker 1: what has got to be the best entry ever in
Speaker 1: any Oxford Companions that was reading the Oxford Companion to
Speaker 1: Sugar and Sweets. Yeah. So it's Oxford University Press, and
Speaker 1: there's an entry in it by the American chemist Michelle M. Francil,
Speaker 1: And this has just got to be one of the
Speaker 1: best like Encyclopedia type entries I've ever read. So francial
Speaker 1: writes about this substance called sugar of lead, also known
Speaker 1: as lead lead acetate or lead to acetate. It looks
Speaker 1: kind of like large salt crystals if you look it up,
Speaker 1: or it looks maybe like translucent rock candy, the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff you get on a little stick, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like sort of like white, translucent in color. And
Speaker 1: Francile writes, quote, it is sweet roughly as sweet per
Speaker 1: teaspoon as sugar, and only slightly more lethal than stricken.
Speaker 1: So sugar of lead was used as like a medical
Speaker 1: treatment in nineteenth century Europe, And even though it is sweet,
Speaker 1: it is technically a salt, which is an electrically neutral
Speaker 1: collection of positive ions and negative ions. And actually we
Speaker 1: only think of salts as salty in flavor because the
Speaker 1: most common salt that we refer to is sodium chloride
Speaker 1: table salt. But salts don't have to be salty. Salts
Speaker 1: can be bitter, and salts can be sweet, and in
Speaker 1: this case it is sweet. So in lead acetate, this
Speaker 1: collection of oppositely charged ions is made from di positive
Speaker 1: lead ions and negatively charged acetate ions. And it turns
Speaker 1: out sugar of lead is not the only sweet metallic salt.
Speaker 1: Frens Will points out that lots of beryllium salts are
Speaker 1: very sweet, so sweet in fact, that the Greek word
Speaker 1: for the element beryllium is glucinium, from like glucose or glycos,
Speaker 1: the Greek word for sweet. But as good as these
Speaker 1: metal salts that are sweet taste, they are very bad
Speaker 1: for you. Lead a state can be fatal to a
Speaker 1: seventy or a hundred and fifty pound adult at a
Speaker 1: dose of three teaspoons. So basically what you're saying is
Speaker 1: that if anybody has any fancy dining plants this evening
Speaker 1: and they see lead based sweeteners on the menu, I
Speaker 1: would advise against it. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that
Speaker 1: the ancient Romans used indirectly, I would say indirectly used
Speaker 1: this lead salt as a kind of sweetener, or at
Speaker 1: least as a way of avoiding other types of taste
Speaker 1: imparted into their foods. So here's how this goes. The
Speaker 1: Romans created a syrup that they called sapa, which was
Speaker 1: produced by boiling down a liquid called must. Must is
Speaker 1: basically weak wine. Frontal describes it as quote mildly fermented
Speaker 1: grape juice, so there'll be a little bit of alcohol content,
Speaker 1: maybe kind of like grape beer. Almost. Of course, must,
Speaker 1: like wine, has some acid in it. It has acetic acid,
Speaker 1: and acetic acid is the acid base is of vinegar.
Speaker 1: Vinegar is usually just acetic acid diluted with water or
Speaker 1: some other aqueous substance, and acetic acid provides acetate ions
Speaker 1: which can react with metals in the pots where they
Speaker 1: are boiled and uh and this can result in some salts.
Speaker 1: So if you boil your must in a copper pot,
Speaker 1: the resulting sappa will have some copper acetate salts in it,
Speaker 1: and these taste really bad, like they're bitter. Even ancient
Speaker 1: Roman writers would would comment on this. In the Natural History,
Speaker 1: Plenty discusses the production of sappa and he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: leaden vessels should be used for this purpose, not copper ones.
Speaker 1: So it's like, get that copper out of there, makes
Speaker 1: the sappa taste bad? You want lead? Except no less?
Speaker 1: So why use lead? Because remember lead salts are sweets.
Speaker 1: So not only does cooking in lead pots not foul
Speaker 1: your sappa, it might make it even a little bit sweeter. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a quote from This is a quote
Speaker 1: from Francile's injury quote. Chemical analysis of sappa produced according
Speaker 1: to recipes dating from the classical Roman period using kettles
Speaker 1: of similar metallic composition as those found at POMPEII and
Speaker 1: other sites, suggests that the lead content of sappa was
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty milligrams per leader, many thousand times
Speaker 1: higher than what is generally allowable in drinking water, even
Speaker 1: diluted and used sparingly. Sweetening with sappa was a serious risk.
Speaker 1: Now I have seen some people phrase this is like
Speaker 1: that the lead pots were used specifically to make the
Speaker 1: sappa sweeter, and Francis sort of disagrees with that because
Speaker 1: she says the lead was probably not really intended to
Speaker 1: add much sweetness to the wine because it wouldn't put
Speaker 1: it wouldn't add that much. Really, you You'd already have
Speaker 1: a pretty sweet substance and would be the equivalent of
Speaker 1: adding like a pinch of sugar to it, So it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make a huge difference. It was more that the
Speaker 1: lead vessels, if they when they did add flavor, would
Speaker 1: sort of complement the existing sweetness ra other than adding
Speaker 1: a foul, bitter flavor like copper vessels would. Okay, so
Speaker 1: in a blind taste test of the in which both
Speaker 1: vessels have the same already sweet or semi sweet wine,
Speaker 1: you're going to find that the leaden vessel is going
Speaker 1: to impart a like a slightly sweeter, less foul experience. Well,
Speaker 1: probably significantly less foul. But yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's evidence that they thought of it, as the lead
Speaker 1: comes out and makes it a lot sweeter. They just thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you use lead pots it tastes way better. In the end. However,
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where we also can't
Speaker 1: just make fun of the ancients. Because this this kind
Speaker 1: of thing carried on into a ridiculously recent time. She
Speaker 1: points out that the use of lead as a food
Speaker 1: additive and treatment did not stop in Ancient Rome, and
Speaker 1: that lead equipment and additives were used to prevent spoilage
Speaker 1: in wine in some cases up until the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, now we do have to just drive home
Speaker 1: for everybody, even though again we're not getting deep into
Speaker 1: the the the the the dangers of lead in this episode. Please,
Speaker 1: if you were, if you were tempted, all tempted it all,
Speaker 1: do not go out and drink a bunch of wine
Speaker 1: out of lead vessels just to to to test the
Speaker 1: sweetening ability of the of the vessel. The amount of
Speaker 1: lead you should be absorbing on purposes zero, whatever you're
Speaker 1: accidentally getting from the environment is still probably more than
Speaker 1: you want. And there's actually a lot more stuff that
Speaker 1: There's been an ongoing argument over the years about the
Speaker 1: role of lead ingestion and lead exposure in ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: because before Ancient Rome there was lead. People did use
Speaker 1: lead to make some objects, but it wasn't used in
Speaker 1: wide like widespread construction and infrastructure and all that. The
Speaker 1: Romans were the ones that really started using lead for
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and in nine three, a Canadian
Speaker 1: researcher named Jerome Riyagu argued that lead poisoning actually lead
Speaker 1: to the downfall of the Roman Empire. You've probably heard
Speaker 1: this before, Yeah, the idea that they just they built
Speaker 1: up all of this lead essentially lead infrastructure and then
Speaker 1: poisoned themselves with yeah, and cooked with this, especially the
Speaker 1: cooking with lead vessels, I think. Um. And so this
Speaker 1: has later been called into doubt by others who said,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't necessarily seem like we can claim that,
Speaker 1: but there's no doubt that many robins were exposed to
Speaker 1: unsafe levels of lead. I was just looking at a
Speaker 1: study from P and A. S by the by Delisle
Speaker 1: at All called lead in Ancient Rome city waters, and
Speaker 1: they found that the tap water, you know, basically the
Speaker 1: aqueduct delivered water or delivered through some kind of lead infrastructure,
Speaker 1: that water in ancient Rome would have roughly a hundred
Speaker 1: times the lead content of local spring water. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of lead, all right, was we we wind down here,
Speaker 1: Let's just let's just talk once more about just the
Speaker 1: properties of lead, right, And I wonder if in looking
Speaker 1: at these properties, we can figure out what makes it
Speaker 1: so special as as the opposite of the love inducing
Speaker 1: golden arrow. Yeah, and and indeed, why Cupid would have
Speaker 1: walked up to his possible father Vulcan and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what metal should you use to make my repulsion arrows?
Speaker 1: What would make Vulcans say, oh, yeah, lead, Lead is
Speaker 1: what you want? Okay? Well, one thing we know about
Speaker 1: lead is that, for a metal, has a pretty low
Speaker 1: melting point right right, And this means it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to cast with requires less equipment, and it made
Speaker 1: an ideal solder component. Ye, So if you want to
Speaker 1: melt something easily to like seal things together, I think yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've read this also makes it like an attractive
Speaker 1: additive if you're like casting something in a mold. Right.
Speaker 1: And then to your point earlier, like it was there
Speaker 1: as a byproduct of going after other metals, so it
Speaker 1: was available, um onto onto. An addition, we've talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit. Lead is dnse. It is. It's
Speaker 1: a heavy metal, and leads density is due to its
Speaker 1: high atomic mass, short bond lengths, and a small atomic radius.
Speaker 1: And this along with its high number of electrons needed
Speaker 1: to maintain a neutral charge, makes it a useful radiation
Speaker 1: shield in our modern world, a scattering X rays and
Speaker 1: gamma rays. Yeah, and so you'll actually see it in
Speaker 1: use in places where there's a radiation risk. There are
Speaker 1: sometimes lead blocks deployed as a as basically a like
Speaker 1: the sand bags of the radiation world. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: my my father was a dentist and and so I
Speaker 1: was often hanging out in dental offices, and part of
Speaker 1: that is being being near an X ray machine and
Speaker 1: of course that big, big heavy lead line smock that lead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, you see, you see this kind of
Speaker 1: radiation shielding all over. It kind of makes me think
Speaker 1: back to our our our episode on the X ray
Speaker 1: machine that we did for Invention. So certainly if you
Speaker 1: want more on on the use of X rays and
Speaker 1: the dangers of radiation associated with that with X rays,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend that episode of our other show Invention.
Speaker 1: And then the third major attribute of lead is that
Speaker 1: it is soft and it's malleable. Uh, it's limited usage somewhat.
Speaker 1: You know, while God might be able to craft an
Speaker 1: arrow out of it or coat an arrow with lead anyway,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to fashion anything with it
Speaker 1: that can sustain any real stress. But when you're talking
Speaker 1: about something like water and sewage pipes or cooking vessels,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that that is an area where lead can
Speaker 1: can excel as long as you're not getting into questions
Speaker 1: of whether it will poison you or not. Just from
Speaker 1: a physical and a physical basis, it can get the
Speaker 1: job done. You wouldn't want like a lead hammer, though,
Speaker 1: I think you can have like lead alloy hammers and
Speaker 1: stuff like. You can use alloys to strengthen metals that
Speaker 1: are inherently soft. So coming back to Cupid, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe the idea is that the leaden arrows or somehow
Speaker 1: combating the radiation of intense passionate love. The power of
Speaker 1: love is actually a it's a it's a type of ray.
Speaker 1: It's what's beyond gamma rays. Yeah, and you've got to
Speaker 1: scatter those love rays. And the only way to do
Speaker 1: it is with with some high end um God forged
Speaker 1: a leaden ammunition. I'm seeing another residence here because one
Speaker 1: of the sources we didn't mention. So we talked about
Speaker 1: how lead can be created in like events in space
Speaker 1: inside like a dying star and the collision of neutron stars.
Speaker 1: We also didn't talk about another. I think it probably
Speaker 1: accounts for a much much smaller percentage of it. But
Speaker 1: lead can be created as the byproduct of radioactive decay sometimes,
Speaker 1: like uranium can decay into some isotopes of lead. So
Speaker 1: maybe if we're considering that love is a type of
Speaker 1: radioactivity or type of ray, they're actually lead represents what
Speaker 1: happens when love dies in decays, you know, like so
Speaker 1: like love fades and eventually it becomes lead. What starts
Speaker 1: as this golden, splendid, sharp arrow becomes this blunt, dull,
Speaker 1: lusterless instrument. We have crucified this myth and taken out
Speaker 1: all of the beauty and turned it into a chemical Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of us. Yeah, I I feel like
Speaker 1: we have. We've done a good job here today, taking
Speaker 1: the candy coated and kind of lame holiday of Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: and I think we've injected some fresh life into it.
Speaker 1: We've fed it a lot of lead and uh and
Speaker 1: and there and uh and in doing so, we've we've
Speaker 1: killed off a lot of the the more irritable aspects
Speaker 1: of the holiday. Sweet sweet lead. Yes, so big takeaways
Speaker 1: from from today. Don't eat lead sugar, right, don't do
Speaker 1: not do it. Don't cook in lead pots, right, don't
Speaker 1: drink from lead leading vessels if you have a choice
Speaker 1: in the matter. Be wary of gods with bows and arrows,
Speaker 1: and and keep in mind that, yeah, Cupid has two arrows,
Speaker 1: so if he's aiming at you, uh, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a toss up which one he's trying to hit you with.
Speaker 1: And sometimes even the great God Pan gets out wrestled exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're gonna close out the special Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But as always,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out more episodes of the show,
Speaker 1: you can always head it over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's where
Speaker 1: you will find all the episodes of the show. You'll
Speaker 1: find links out to various social media accounts. You can
Speaker 1: of course find us anywhere you get podcasts. That's that's
Speaker 1: true across the board, So just search for us there.
Speaker 1: So wherever you find us, subscribe, and if you have
Speaker 1: the power to do so on these platforms, give us
Speaker 1: a rating. Throw as many stars as possible at us.
Speaker 1: The Golden Kind, not the lead ones uh, and then
Speaker 1: leave a nice message about how how awesome the show is,
Speaker 1: because you know these these may seem like small things,
Speaker 1: but they really help us out in the long run.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and try Harrison. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly with feedback about this episode
Speaker 1: or any other to suggest topic for the future, we're
Speaker 1: just to say hi. You can email us at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
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