WEBVTT - April Fools' Day: Did Alchemy Prank the Modern Sciences? 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.400 Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:16.400 partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome to Criminalia. If you're 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:21.320 bracing yourself for more discussions of false imprisonment and extreme porture, 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.560 this episode has neither. No one is wrongly accused of 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:27.160 a crime here. The crime we're going to talk about 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.400 is that alchemy has long been considered a bunch of quackery. 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.640 This is our alchemical April Fool episode, starring names that 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:39.080 may surprise you. I'm Maria Tremarquis and I'm Holly Fry. 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:45.040 Social conventions, economics, and royal patronage greatly affected alchemy's history 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.360 and development. But there's no mistake that, no matter the 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.440 where or the when, it's practice laid the foundation for 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:55.200 the modern science of chemistry. And though the contributions of 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:59.400 alchemists have been dismissed by scholars for years, centuries, to 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:02.640 be accurate it some of the names that we recognize 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.360 as being influential in the early days of our modern 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.840 sciences were also alchemists. Whether it was known that they 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:14.399 were practicing alchemists, that is a different story. He put 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.119 Aristotle's theory of the elements, as well as Paris Elysis's 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.440 Three Primes or Tria Prima of alchemy to the test 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:26.240 with analysis and thorough criticism. He defined chemical elements, compounds, 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:30.000 and mixtures, and coined the term chemical analysis. He was 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:34.360 an advocate of corpuscularianism, a theory partly based in alchemical 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.640 work that stated all matter is composed of minute particles. 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:40.520 He believed that he had achieved a form of reverse 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.600 transmutation by changing gold into silver, and he also believed 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:50.080 that the Philosopher's stone existed. So who was this transmutational alchemist? 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.080 We're talking about the guy who's often known as the 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:58.360 father of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle. That's right. And Robert 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.720 Boyle was born on January sixty seven in the town 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:07.760 of Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. He was the fourteenth child 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.320 of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, Lord Treasurer of 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:15.080 the Kingdom of Ireland, and his second wife, Katherine Fenton, 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.200 who was the daughter of the Secretary of State in Ireland. 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.600 Through business marriage and landownership, Richard became one of the 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:27.720 most powerful landed and industrial magnets in seventeenth century Ireland. 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.120 And we really have to be clear that the Boyle 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.919 family was incredibly rich. It's often said it was one 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.120 of the wealthiest families in the British Isles at the 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:40.639 time that Robert lived. As a child in this very 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.600 aristocratic family, Robert was educated in some of the most 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:48.320 prestigious schools and by some of the most amazing minds. 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.079 He attended Eton College and he even studied with tutors 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.800 around Europe for several years. He took a just a 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.720 general chemistry class in high school. You may remember Robert 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.720 Boyle as the person who discovered the law of gases. 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.000 Boil's law states that the volume of a gas decreases 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.880 with increasing pressure, and vice versa. He was a resolute 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:13.920 proponent of the experimental method, which is a method of 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.040 research that's conducted using the assignment and the manipulation of 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.000 variables to test a hypothesis, which is really just a 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.720 long way of saying that the method is he used 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.560 to show a cause and effect relationship between two variables. 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:29.399 He's regarded as one of the pioneers of modern experimental 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.800 scientific method and he's widely considered to be one of 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.600 the first modern chemists and founders of the science of chemistry. 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:41.560 So why would he bother with something like alchemy. Since 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:45.360 its beginnings a few thousand years ago, alchemy was divided 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:50.880 among philosophical, religious, mystical, and scientific pursuits. It was a 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:56.000 branch of natural philosophy that combined proto scientific work and philosophy, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:00.560 and it flourished around the world for centuries. But alchemy 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:04.960 has a bad reputation among modern scientists, primarily because of 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:09.080 the association it developed with astrology, black magic, and the occult. 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:14.880 Considered tricksters and frauds for overpromising and under delivering. Many 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.960 alchemists themselves did not help their own reputation. Sometimes, of course, 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:22.840 they ended up executed for it. It's a story we 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.839 have seen this season. Remember George Honauer. He was a 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.120 goldsmith and an alchemist in the late sixteenth century, and 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.760 he claimed that he could convert iron into gold. But 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.599 when he could not deliver on that claim due Frederick 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.720 the first of Wurtemburg had him dressed in a gold 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.320 tinsel suit and hanged from a gallows covered in gold 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.279 colored foil. We're gonna take a break for a word 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.120 from our sponsor, and when we return we'll get into 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:59.640 how and why alchemy grew into the respectable science of chemistry. 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:10.360 Welcome back to criminalia. Between alchemy and chemistry, there once 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.680 was a field of study known as chemistry. That's with 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.600 two wise Please allow us to explain. Alchemy is based 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:20.960 on the idea that every substance is made up of 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:26.520 some combination of the four Aristotilian elements earth, fire, air, water. 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.560 You'll note this is different from chemical elements such as 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.400 sodium or phosphorus. It was sort of the proto concept 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:38.360 of the periodic table of elements, but obviously simplified at 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:42.039 a little misguided. So if you were able to figure 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:44.680 out the right proportions of those four elements, you would 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.440 be able to make gold or the elixir of life, 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.640 or maybe whatever you want it. Throughout its history, alchemy 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:57.039 was sometimes celebrated, sometimes feared. It's secretive nature drew suspicions 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.719 from the government and from the church, and many who 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.640 pro just did so in secret, in part because they 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:06.159 feared punishment from those establishments. So there's this full circle 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.640 going around here. But there were alchemists who did legitimate work, 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:16.359 legit chemical experimentation processes and applications that helped bring alchemy 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.480 into what we know as modern chemistry. It was about 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.039 the turn of the eighteenth century when alchemy and chemistry 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:28.400 started to grow apart. Medieval scientific study was dominated by 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:32.239 the ideas of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and physician slash 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:37.560 philosopher Paracelsus Boyle. That meant was working in an interesting time. 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:42.040 Alchemy was still very much alive and practiced during his lifetime. 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.240 But it's not like alchemy woke up one morning to 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.600 find out it was now called chemistry. The period from 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:52.080 the fifteenth century through the eighteenth century is often referred 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.320 to as the early modern world. In the first half 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.000 of that period, from the late fifteenth century through the 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.640 seventeenth century, is con sidered the dawn of a hybrid 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:06.240 between alchemy and chemistry called chemistry. It sounds like chemistry, 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.520 but it's spelled as follows c h y m I 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.200 asked t r y. An alchemist could have been known 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:15.880 as an alchemist, sure, but he also might have been 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.000 known as a chemist that spelled c h y m 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:23.440 I s t. Hybrid names for a hybrid science. And 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:27.560 it's not just Boyle who straddles this alchemical slash chemist line. 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:32.000 Influential early chemists such as George Ernst Stall and Isaac 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.440 Newton did too, and there really wasn't a whole lot 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.520 that was different between a laboratory used by an alchemist 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.480 versus one that was used by an early chemist. Yes, 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.000 the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:50.360 Isaac Newton was a curious and practiced alchemist, and he 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.320 didn't just dabble or borrow from their works and theories. 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.720 Newton believed that in his experiments he had found the 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.480 recipe for the Philosopher's stone, but you'd never have known. 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.760 He kept that business a well guarded secret. Those scholars 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.080 have known for a long time that Newton had a 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.560 general interest in alchemy. It wasn't until much more recently 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:16.440 that science historians discovered the scope of his interest through 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:21.440 analysis of his voluminous alchemical works housed in the Newtonian archives, 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.040 most of which were actually never published. He was prolific, 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.000 they've learned. He was quite serious about the study and practice, 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.480 and spent three decades trying to transmute one chemical element 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.360 into another. It's actually pretty telling that Newton's interested in 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.880 alchemy was something he didn't advertise. It already had a 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:44.320 bad reputation in his time. Newton's writings also showed that 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:46.959 he was strongly influenced in his work by a person 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:51.920 who wrote under the name Eranius Philolities. According to modern historians, 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:57.080 that was colonial American Harvard educated alchemist George Starkey, also 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:01.440 known as George Stark, hiding behind the pseudonym him. Starkey, 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.280 who called himself the Philosopher by Fire, was a physician 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.960 and an alchemist who not only influenced Newton, but also 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:14.120 Boyle and other early modern scientists. It was perfectly reasonable 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.000 for Isaac Newton to believe in alchemy, says William Newman, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:21.240 a historian at Indiana University, Bloomington, and he continued his 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.160 quote most of the experimental scientists of the seventeenth century did. 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.360 In his opinion, alchemy was synonymous with chemistry, and chemistry 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:34.839 was much bigger than transmutation. No one, though, successfully transmuted 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.120 any metal into gold. No one discovered the Philosopher's Stone 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.200 or the elixir of life. But that doesn't mean that 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.440 this was all for nothing, or that it was even 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.640 all bunk. Alchemists discovered a lot of significant things we've 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:54.000 discussed on the show. Before distillation refining of ores, the 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:58.839 production of gunpowder, the manufacturing of glass and ceramics, things 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.400 like leather tanning, the production of inks, dies and paints. 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.040 There's so much more to add to that list that 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:10.200 came out of alchemy using laboratory based analysis and synthesis. 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.560 Alchemists were among the first to formulate the principle of 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:18.360 mass balance, and their experiments on crystallographic analysis would seem 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.760 right at home in a modern chemistry lab. They invented 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:24.720 many of the instruments and equipment that you will still 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.439 find used in modern laboratories. And those of you who 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.079 were with us during our first season where we talked 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.960 all about lady poisoners, hey, hey, here it is alchemists 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.480 were the ones to isolate the chemical element arsenic first. 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.520 I feel like since that first season, I'm never gonna 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.040 be more than say, maybe two steps away from arsene 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:47.839 my life. It always just seems to pop up in 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.960 articles or somewhere like arsenic is the Kevin Bacon of 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:55.560 modern history. And on that. We're going to take a 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:57.920 break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:02.400 back we will explain how a true alchemist never admits it. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:19.560 Welcome back to criminalia. We discovered that Boil penned the 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.720 list of things he predicted would be invented, including antidepressants. 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:28.079 But first we're gonna talk about patent protection among alchemists. 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:34.559 Science historian, chemist, and professor at Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.280 Princeship Hay is also one of the world's foremost experts 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.559 on alchemy. He deciphers codes and replicates ancient formulas at 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:45.360 time and again. He has shown that the metaphors used 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:50.239 to write alchemical recipes really do provide real laboratory instructions, 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:55.160 if that is, you can decipher them in He analyzed 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.160 volumes of Boyle's writings in the Royal Society of London. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.800 Those writings, he found our with references to Boyle's own 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.960 attempts at transmutation, and include the same phrasing, vocabulary, and 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:11.960 symbology known among alchemists. Boyle believed in empiricism and that 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.400 a scientist's results should be shared with peers so that 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.760 their experiments could be repeated and their results confirmed. But 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:24.360 Print chap A discovered that while Boyle advocated knowledge sharing, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.680 he did, like a true alchemist, used code words in 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:33.120 his texts. For example, whenever Boyle wrote Ormant in a recipe, 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:37.840 he was really referring to potassium nitrate. For many alchemists, 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:39.760 that was a way to keep their study out of 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.920 what they considered dangerous hands, which is also another way 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.200 of saying that there was a belief among alchemists that 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.400 only some people could and should be in the know. 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.640 But according to Prince Chape, in Boyle's case, it may 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.360 have been more like a version of patent protection after 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:59.200 rivals had stolen some of his work. Uh So, speaking 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:03.520 of stealing work, In sixteen sixty Boyle published his work 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:08.160 New Experiments Physico Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.640 and Its Effects, in which he explored the physical nature 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.120 of air and discussed his experiments using an air pump 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.240 to create a vacuum. This was only seventeen years after 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.520 Evangelista Toricelli produced the first laboratory vacuum that happened in 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:27.520 sixteen forty three, and in the second edition of New 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.920 Experiments Physical Mechanical, published two years later in sixteen sixty two, 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.800 Boyle outlined his law of gases, stating that the volume 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.840 of a gas varies inversely to the pressure of the gas. 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.040 In sixteen sixty one, he wrote A Skeptical Chemist. The 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.760 Skeptical Chemistry is where Boyle argued for the scientific method 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.040 of inquiry and the development of proof, and today it's 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:54.080 considered a foundational work. It's also considered the point when 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:59.120 the mystical traditions of alchemy transitioned into the science of chemistry. 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.560 Boil re spected alchemical work, elevated the practice into a science, 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.960 and established his reputation as a founder of modern chemistry. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.720 There's a quote from William Newman, who we referenced earlier, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.880 that says that Boyle quote basically pillaged the work of 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.560 the German physician and alchemist Daniel Center, who published a 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:23.160 few decades before him in the early seventeenth century, and 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.880 he borrowed heavily and without any kind of acknowledgement from 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:33.000 Center in his essay on Corpuscularianism titled of the Atomical Philosophy, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.960 and again in his work The Skeptical Chemist, where he 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:40.760 used Centered's experiments of gold and silver, again without acknowledgement. 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.080 Newman has also pointed out that some of Centered's corpusculary 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.560 and ideas oh much to the corpusculary and alchemical theory 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.520 of the Suma perfectionists of the pseudo javert, a collection 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:55.480 of alchemical writings that dates back to the late thirteenth 0:14:55.480 --> 0:15:00.440 and early fourteenth century. Incidentally, the javert re for instant. 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.600 The name is not Abu and Masa Jaber, even highan 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:06.840 who was an influential part of the Islamic Golden Age 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.480 of alchemy. We spoke about this in a recent episode. 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.520 Hyan was known by the name Jabbart throughout Europe, and 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.480 much of his work had been translated into Latin during 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:22.280 the eleventh through the centuries. There is another Jabbart known 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.000 as the pseudo Jabbart. Scholars believe it may have been 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:31.320 a thirteenth century alchemist, possibly a man named Paul of Taranto, 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:35.040 who borrowed the name. Or perhaps they say it might 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:37.640 have been a few alchemists who published under the pseudonym. 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.960 No one is exactly sure, but people who were not 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.320 that man used that man's name. So what's the quote 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.000 from the Dalai Lama? Share your knowledge? It's a way 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:52.600 to achieve immortality. In sixteen sixty, with eleven other poly maths, 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.600 Boil formed the Royal Society in London, which was created 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.400 to discuss scientific topics and share knowledge as els to 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.520 witness experiments. Peer review wouldn't be introduced as we know 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.120 it until seventeen thirty one, when the work Medical Essays 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.960 and Observations was published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.560 A devout and pious Anglican, Boyle was elected President of 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:20.600 the Society in sixteen eighty, but refused the position because 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.840 he felt that the oath required of him violated his 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:29.120 religious principles. The Royal Society's motto nullius in verba can 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:34.320 be roughly translated to take nobody's word for it. One 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.200 of my goals, Prince of Hay, is quoted as saying, 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.760 is to demonstrate the importance of alchemy to the history 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:43.800 of science, and to show that alchemy cannot be dismissed 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.880 out of hand as a worthless and past endeavor, simply 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.480 because the alchemist had a worldview very different from our own. 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.480 In sixteen sixty eight, Boyle moved permanently to London to 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.000 live with his sister, who was also his best friend, 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:02.560 Katherine Jones, Viscountess Randolam. Catherine was also a scientist and 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.960 a political and religious philosopher, and the two of them 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:10.000 spent much of their later years together, sharing scientific ideas 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:14.520 and editing each other's manuscripts. Robert died from paralysis on 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.800 December thirty one, that was just a week after Catherine 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:23.120 had died. After his death, found among his private papers 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.040 was a kind of wish list if things Boil hoped 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.240 would be achieved through science in the coming centuries. And 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:33.680 his list includes things that have come to be like airplanes, 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:39.880 oregan transplants, submarines, commercial agriculture, psychotropic drugs. But it does 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.480 seem we're still waiting for the prolonged life and recovery 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:48.240 of youth, though, I mean, I think that's debatable. Maybe 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.080 we're on our where it depends how you look at it. 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.520 So let's do us to alchemy. Yeah, let's have an 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.159 I'll come a toast. This one got me thinking a 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:09.200 lot about the idea of hiding things. So I took 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:13.639 it as an opportunity to take a cocktail I don't 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.120 like and make it into something I do like by 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.720 hiding the flavors I don't enjoy. Okay, that's like a 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.000 fantastic little drink project right there, and I'm calling it 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:31.200 Newton's Secret. So the cocktail that I do not enjoy 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:36.440 is a negrony. Okay, do you like those? I don't really. 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:38.240 I wouldn't go up and order one, but if you 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.679 put it in front of me, accept it. It's not 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.359 your go to at all. So for those of you 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.680 that don't know, and negroni is super easy to make. 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.240 It's one of those things that, like, every bartender should 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.679 know how to make it because it's super basic in 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.200 terms of how it's made. But it's also been around 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.040 long enough there are lots of people that like it, 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.679 and it's an interesting drink. It's just the flavors are 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.040 not for me. I'm not a big pari fan. Campari 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.520 is tricky, it is. It very much is. We'll talk 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:10.280 about why in a moment exactly. So, the negroni is 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:15.040 very easy to make. It's one part Jim, one part campari, 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:19.280 and one part sweet vermouth. You're combining three things I 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.040 don't love. Jim has grown on me, but I still 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:25.800 it has to be a you know, particular and very 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:30.359 delicious gin. And campari is technically a bitter. It's a 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:34.399 liqueur and it is it will slap you. It's not 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:38.200 your friend. And sweet vermouth that name is a misnomer. 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.960 It doesn't taste like candy. It's like when you're a 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:44.600 kid you see scotch and you think it might taste 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:48.600 like butter scotch, but its exactly exactly right. Sweet vermouth 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.639 is called that because sugar is used. It's a fortified 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.199 wine and sugar is used in that process. But the 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.200 flavor is really quite spicy. And so those three things 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.960 they make a very interesting flavor. You' don't shake in 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.560 a groaning. You stir it with ice because you want 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.040 to chill it all together. It's still a little slap 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.280 in the face for me. It's not my favorite thing. 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.320 And I thought, what can I do to make this 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:14.600 more yummy? And I do know a lot of people 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:19.240 that will sub in one of these ingredients with Saint Germain, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.840 which I love. I didn't do a subout though. I 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:25.639 just added and I kept everything equal parts because that 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.200 was my other challenge to myself. So I added one 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.400 part Saint Germain. This is where you get a little 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.639 choose your own adventure options because I thought, if I 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.679 just added juice to this, because that elder elderberry liqueur 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:40.720 does some cool things on its own where it softens 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.760 up that bitter edge, and it has its own not 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.000 cloying sweetness, but it does sweeten it up a little. 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.119 And I thought, if we add a juice to this, 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.560 you know, one part juice surely will have cracked it. 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.919 And I added just a one part cranberry juice, and 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:58.439 I actually found that to be very yummy. And of 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:03.800 course I said, my beloved, come here drink, because I 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.359 know you also dislike the base material, and we'll see 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:09.320 if this is better to you. But today is the 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.520 day I discovered that my husband also doesn't like cranberry cheese, 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:17.920 so there's really nothing about this drink that is redeeming 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:22.000 for him. Then I was thinking, surely there's gotta be 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.120 a way that we can make this work. And I 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.960 did a second one in which I put pineapple juice. 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.359 Completely changes the profile, and to me that was not 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:34.479 as yummy as the cranberry juice one, but to him 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:37.480 it was much nicer. Okay, well, it's get information. I 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:39.840 think the one part juice is a choose your own 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.879 adventure portion. I bet if you like grapefruit juice, that 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.919 might do something beautiful here. Interesting. I have mixed feelings 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.439 about grape fruit juice. Anyway, So I would give it 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:52.560 a try. How it works in here a bit, but 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.160 I'm like about the whole bottle to do that right. 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.240 I liked the cranberry juice just fine. You could do 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.359 a grape juice, said, I bet you'd get one. There's 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:03.720 a lot of the alcohol taste goes away, that is 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.800 Newton's secret, and you just want to stir those together 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.240 again with ice. Normally you would serve and a grony 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:13.680 with a large cube. Since you're messing with it already, 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.720 you don't have to beat. It's particularly adherent to those 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:19.920 kinds of cocktail rules. But this is an interesting one 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:24.520 to do a mocktail um because with a mocktail there's 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.119 you don't have to hide anything. The mock tail is 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:31.000 quite different, but it also has some of the same 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:33.760 notes that play together. So I think what you want 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:38.280 to do is select a floral tea for yourself. I 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:41.760 would go with like a chrysanthemum here, and you're going 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.159 to brew the tea, but then you're gonna boil it 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.399 down and reduce it a little bit, and then add 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:49.520 an equal part sugar and make like a chrysanthemum syrup. 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:52.919 And I would add that to the juice of your choice, 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:55.800 and then I would zest the peel of an orange 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:57.680 on top, so you still get some of that bite 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.640 and sharpness. And that is what I would do over 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:05.240 ice for Newton's secret in mocktail version. Newton's secret is 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:11.960 that it's a negrony in a cloak like the alchemy 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:16.199 gear robes and a hat. That's the part that you 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:19.879 hide so over that you would put a very fancy 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:25.000 frock coat and pose. That's how that would go. So 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:27.119 I have a question about about the drink and the juice. 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:32.119 So yes, I am a huge granberry fan. Should I 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.040 do one that has juice but like a little sweeter 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:38.800 you do want the sweeter cranberry juice here? And I 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:40.760 would say if it's one of those things where if 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:45.000 you have unsweetened cranberry juice on hand, don't go out 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:46.840 and buy more. You could just add a little simple 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:51.240 syrup in there to sweeten yourself a little touch of sweetness. 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.439 It's a little little scoche. Since I don't bring it 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:56.280 to the table myself, I'll just have to bring a 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:01.119 little table stewing over with me. But that's it's an 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:03.399 interesting thing, and it's a. It was a fun experiment. 0:24:03.800 --> 0:24:06.959 I have been thinking a lot about it. Came up 0:24:07.000 --> 0:24:10.679 recently while I was traveling and I was at a 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:13.720 bar that I love and normally always get amazing drinks, 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.040 and I got a drink that I get all the time, 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:20.360 which is a vodka Collins, but the bartender there didn't 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:22.040 seem to have the hang of it, and so I 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:24.960 was like, Okay, what else can I order that will 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:27.040 make this into a yummy drink? So in that case, 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:28.680 I went the Lazy Root and was just like, hey, 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:30.200 can I also get a ginger ale? And I just 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:32.439 kind of combined them and that was fine, but it 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:35.199 did make me think a lot about fixing drinks and 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:38.800 like when you can and cannot rescue a cocktail that 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:41.600 might not be to your taste. Again, I always encourage 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:45.120 people to experiment and try that you can encode your 0:24:45.200 --> 0:24:51.199 Negroni in a more delicious juice. That is Newton's secret, 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:53.080 and if you make it, I hope it's fun. If 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:54.880 you try different juice, let us know, because I want 0:24:54.880 --> 0:24:57.000 to know what works for everybody, because everybody's palate is 0:24:57.000 --> 0:24:59.280 a little different. I even thought about what if I 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:01.520 put coconut water this is what would that do? Did 0:25:01.520 --> 0:25:03.920 you try? I didn't. I didn't try. You know, you 0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:06.960 gotta limit the number of experiments you do. Robert Boyle 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:09.280 would tell you, you can't have that many variables. Newton 0:25:09.320 --> 0:25:13.720