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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Joe McCormick. I would normally be joined on

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Speaker 2: Mike by my co host Robert Lamb, but Rob is

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Speaker 2: out on the day that we're recording this, so instead

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Speaker 2: I'm being joined by a couple of friends from here

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Speaker 2: in the Stuff Network. Today on the podcast, we have

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Speaker 2: Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum specifically well of many different projects.

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Speaker 2: But I would say, in your capacity today, you are

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Speaker 2: coming to us as ambassadors of the show Saver. What's

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Speaker 2: going on? Annie and Lauren?

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Speaker 1: Oh, I have no idea.

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Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for having us on, yes,

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Speaker 3: and also calling us ambassadors of Savor.

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Speaker 1: That makes me feel very official like.

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Speaker 2: That, I guess that makes it sound like you're like

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Speaker 2: a detached representatives. You are Savor. The two of you

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Speaker 2: are Savor, and that is all Safer is, along.

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Speaker 1: With our super producers Dylan and Andrew. Yes. But but yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we have this podcast called Save. It's about the

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Speaker 1: science and history and culture of foods and drinks and

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Speaker 1: other assorted materials related to those things. And yeah, so

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Speaker 1: when when you asked us to come on and talk

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Speaker 1: about this subject. We were like, yeah, okay, right, uh well.

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Speaker 2: Wait before we get into today's topic, just just give

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Speaker 2: us like the mall food court sample platter of savor.

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Speaker 2: What are a couple of things you've talked about recently.

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Speaker 1: Oh, good question. I jettison all of that from my

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Speaker 1: brain the second that I'm done with it. We've got

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Speaker 1: an episode coming out today about an early American cookbook

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Speaker 1: writer by the name of Melinda Russell, whose story was

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Speaker 1: almost lost to time. She was a free black woman

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Speaker 1: living during the era of the Civil War, and historians

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Speaker 1: recently like, on earth this cookbook that she wrote, that's

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Speaker 1: really changing the way that we think about black Southern

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Speaker 1: cooking in the United States during that time, because for

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Speaker 1: a long time, the kind of air of thought is like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that's poverty cooking, and it wasn't, or it's more nuanced

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Speaker 1: and complicated than that. And so just like from this

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Speaker 1: very normal human person's life, it's just an amazing gift

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Speaker 1: of historical knowledge and what a great story. But you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes we're just talking about artichokes or whatever it is.

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Speaker 3: The sea urchins. They wear hats show. Lauren told me about.

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Speaker 2: This sea urchins wear hats.

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Speaker 1: Sea urchins love wearing hats. If you give them it

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Speaker 1: helps them shelter from stuff. And so if you give

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Speaker 1: them a little hat, they'll put it on their head.

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Speaker 2: What are their hats made of in nature?

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Speaker 1: Shells? Oh, seaweed maybe? Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But I will also say we've been lucky to cross

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Speaker 3: over sometimes with stuff to blow your mind. Uh.

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Speaker 1: We had you on for one of our food fairy

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Speaker 1: tales once.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, did we talk about oh oh h

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Speaker 2: the poem Goblin Market.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh right, yeah that time that I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: one of them many times and I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: is this one going to get hr called on me?

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Speaker 1: But it's a great poem. It's it's a little bit

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Speaker 1: it's a little bit more racy than I ever remember.

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Speaker 2: Well, that was a lot of fun, and I really

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Speaker 2: really appreciate you all joining me today. I think this

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Speaker 2: is going to be a lot of fun also. So

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Speaker 2: I was thinking about what would be great to talk

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Speaker 2: about with Annie and Lauren, and as a topic combining biology, literature,

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Speaker 2: and food history, I thought it would be great to

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Speaker 2: talk about the mysterious substance known as ambergrease and quick

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Speaker 2: roadmap for the listener. In the first half of the episode,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about what this substance is and

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Speaker 2: what its biological origins are. And then in the second

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Speaker 2: half of the episode, Annie and Lauren are going to

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Speaker 2: take the lead on discussing this substance as food. So

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Speaker 2: pronunciation note at the top of the show, because this

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Speaker 2: is an audio format, the word ambergrease is spelled a

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Speaker 2: M B E R g rs and it's derived from French,

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Speaker 2: meaning I think it's a contraction of French, but it

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Speaker 2: comes from French for gray amber. So I think to

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Speaker 2: a French speaker it would be pronounced like ambergris. But

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Speaker 2: in English it seems everybody says the like a soft

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Speaker 2: pronunciation of the s, so it's like ambergrise or ambergrese.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going to be saying ambergris because

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Speaker 1: I can't look at the word gris and pronounce the

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Speaker 1: s even though I don't know French. But for some reason,

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Speaker 1: that one in particular, my brain is just like, Nope.

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Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that you'll be here to make me

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Speaker 2: feel small, but yeah, I'm going to do the s

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Speaker 2: as much as like, who knows, if we we pinball

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Speaker 2: back and forth. But to kick things off today, I

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Speaker 2: wanted to start with a bit of narrative from Moby Dick.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, comes up a lot.

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Speaker 2: Moby Dick comes up a lot on Savor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah surprisingly, Oh yeah, it.

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Speaker 2: Does have a clam chowder chapter, doesn't it.

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Speaker 3: It does. Yes, we talked about that. He got up

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Speaker 3: to all kinds of stuff in that book.

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Speaker 1: That's accurate.

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Speaker 3: You'd be surprised how many things that come up a

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Speaker 3: lot in Savor that you're like, well, I wouldn't have

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Speaker 3: associated this with food, but here I am.

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Speaker 2: That happens a lot. Actually, we've had Mobi Dick come

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Speaker 2: up several times on stuff to blow your mind. In

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Speaker 2: the past year or so. We did an episode on

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Speaker 2: whale spout on like what it is actually actually that

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Speaker 2: is ejected from the whales blowhole and like historical ideas

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Speaker 2: about that. And there's this wild chapter in Moby Dick

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Speaker 2: where he talks about how like, oh yeah, if you

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Speaker 2: get the whale spout on you, that'll like blind you

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Speaker 2: and burn your skin off and stuff like that. This

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Speaker 2: is not true or at least us, but yeah, Moby

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Speaker 2: Dick is great fun. So that's where I want to

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Speaker 2: start today. Herman Melville's novel, I would say, devotes not

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Speaker 2: one but two chapters to the subject of ambergrease, one

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Speaker 2: to its pursuit in a sort of narrative sense, and

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Speaker 2: then the other to what it means. So I want

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Speaker 2: to start by talking about chapter ninety one of Moby Dick,

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Speaker 2: called The Peaquad Meets the Rosebud. And this chapter begins

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Speaker 2: with a somewhat ominous epigraph from a seventeenth century English

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Speaker 2: author named Thomas Brown, and the epigraph reads, in vain,

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Speaker 2: it was to rake for amber grease in the paunch

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Speaker 2: of this leviathan insufferable feater, denying that inquiry. It's like

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Speaker 2: the saddest sentence I've ever read.

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Speaker 1: We don't use the word feeder enough anymore.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we truly don't, so recap. In this chapter the

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Speaker 2: Whalers of the Peaquad, they cross paths on the open

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Speaker 2: Sea with another whaling ship, a French vessel with a

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Speaker 2: name that translates to the Rosebud, and it's ironically named

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Speaker 2: because before they reach the ship, Ishmael, the narrator notes

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Speaker 2: that the ship reeks of death. He says, it smells

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Speaker 2: like a city that has suffered the plague, and the

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Speaker 2: reason it smells so bad is that the boat is

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Speaker 2: towing what Ishmael calls a blasted whale quote. That is,

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Speaker 2: a whale that has died, unmolested on the sea and

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Speaker 2: so floated an unappropriated corpse. So not a whale killed

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Speaker 2: by the whalers, but a whale found dead on the water.

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Speaker 2: And in fact, when they approach the ship they discover

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Speaker 2: a second dead whale in tow quote, even more of

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Speaker 2: a nosegay than the first. I had to look up

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Speaker 2: that word. I think that means like a bouquet of

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Speaker 2: fragrant flowers. Nosegay. Yeah, So the whale appears to the

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Speaker 2: second whale especially, appears to have been shriveled by before

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Speaker 2: it died, meaning that in one sense, the whaler would

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Speaker 2: look at it and say this is a whale of

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Speaker 2: no value, like the experienced whaler sees a shriveled whale

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Speaker 2: and says there is no oil there to harvest, because

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Speaker 2: oil is primarily what the whalers are looking for. However,

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Speaker 2: to a different kind of whaler's experience, this does not

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Speaker 2: mean it is without value. One of the mates of

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Speaker 2: the peaquad, a rascally fellow named Stub goes aboard the

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Speaker 2: Rosebud and scams the captain of that ship into cutting

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Speaker 2: the dead whales loose by claiming that a blasted whale

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Speaker 2: is a source of deadly fever to any boat that

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Speaker 2: ropes it. So he scares them, they cut the whales loose,

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Speaker 2: and then once the con has succeeded, the Rosebud goes

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Speaker 2: its own way. And here I'm going to read from

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Speaker 2: Moby Dick quote whereupon Stub quickly pulled to the floating body,

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Speaker 2: and hailing the peaquad to give notice of his intentions,

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Speaker 2: had once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning.

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Speaker 2: Seizing his sharp boat spade, he came hinst an excavation

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Speaker 2: in the body, a little behind the side fin. You

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Speaker 2: would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there

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Speaker 2: in the sea. And when at length his spade struck

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Speaker 2: against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old

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Speaker 2: Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His

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Speaker 2: boat's crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping their

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Speaker 2: chief and looking anxious as gold hunters, And all the

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Speaker 2: time numberless fowls were diving and ducking and screaming and

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Speaker 2: yelling and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed,

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Speaker 2: especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly, from out

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Speaker 2: of the very heart of this plague there stole a

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Speaker 2: faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of

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Speaker 2: bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river

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Speaker 2: will flow into and then along with another, without it

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Speaker 2: all blending with it. For a time, I have it,

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Speaker 2: I have it, cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in

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Speaker 2: the sub terranean regions a purse, a purse. Dropping his spade,

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Speaker 2: he thrust both hands in and drew out handfuls of

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Speaker 2: something that looked like ripe windsor soap, or rich modeled

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Speaker 2: old cheese, very unctuous and savory, withal you might easily

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Speaker 2: dent it with your thumb. It is of a hue

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Speaker 2: between yellow and ash color. And this, good friends, is

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Speaker 2: amber grease, worth a gold guineaan ounce to any druggist.

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Speaker 2: Some six handfuls were obtained, but more was unavoidably lost

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Speaker 2: in the sea, and still more perhaps might have been

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Speaker 2: secured were it not for impatient Ahab's loud command to

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Speaker 2: Stub to desist and come on board, else the ship

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Speaker 2: would bid them goodbye.

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Speaker 1: Oh Captain Ahab so impatient? Yeah he is.

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Speaker 2: Really he's not very nice, is he. It's even worse

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Speaker 2: later when there's a ship that comes by toward the

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Speaker 2: end that's like, we've lost people overboard, will you help us?

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Speaker 2: And he's like, no, you're seen Page Master.

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Speaker 3: There's a whole section with Captain am and he's a

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Speaker 3: real not nice guy in that. Shout out to people

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Speaker 3: who've seen Page Master.

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Speaker 2: I saw it when I was a kid. What was

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Speaker 2: the deal with that? It was like the kid makes

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Speaker 2: friends with books and one of them is like a

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Speaker 2: Frankenstein and one's a pirate.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Leonard Dnimoy is the horror section with Pee Goldbergers Fantasy,

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Speaker 3: Patrick Stewart's Adventure. They like are trying to get down

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Speaker 3: to the library. He's trying to get a library card,

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Speaker 3: but they run into Moby Dick and Captain Ahab and

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Speaker 3: he justus essentially like I want this whale. I don't

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Speaker 3: care what it's to all of you anyway.

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Speaker 1: In character, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: In character exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: All right, So anyway, that's the chapter where they get

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Speaker 2: the ambergrease and then the next chapter ninety two is

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Speaker 2: just called Ambergrease, and it's one of the narrator Ishmael's

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Speaker 2: characteristic essay is on the spiritual meaning of some piece

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Speaker 2: of whale anatomy, in this case, the irony that such

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Speaker 2: a refined and expensive material, worth more than gold by

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Speaker 2: weight in some markets, prized by the richest of the rich,

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Speaker 2: would have such a revolting, carnally putrid origin. And he

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Speaker 2: goes on to say at one point, quote who would

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Speaker 2: think then that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale

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Speaker 2: themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of

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Speaker 2: a sick whale? Yet so it is by some ambergrease

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Speaker 2: is supposed to be the cause, and by others the

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Speaker 2: effect of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure

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Speaker 2: such a dyspepsia, it were hard to say, unless by

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Speaker 2: administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills and

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Speaker 2: then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in

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Speaker 2: blasting rocks. So there's a poop joke in Moby Dick.

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Speaker 2: Because Brandreth's pills. I had to look this up. Where

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Speaker 2: As I suspected a nineteenth century laxative.

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Speaker 3: Mm.

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Speaker 2: And I don't know what the quality of laxatives in

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Speaker 2: the nineteenth century was, but I imagine it was like

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Speaker 2: real good stuff.

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Speaker 1: Probably not subtle, I'm guessing not subtle. Yeah, uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so yeah.

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Speaker 2: So the character Ishmael here is the narrator is identifying

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Speaker 2: ambergrease as some kind of fecal mass or other intestinal

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Speaker 2: blockage within the hindgut of the whale, which would be

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Speaker 2: cleared in the same way that humans take medication to

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Speaker 2: clear constipation. Interesting that Melville presents this theory of the

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Speaker 2: origin of ambergresse as non controversial, even though for the

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Speaker 2: past like one thousand years, that explanation would have been

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Speaker 2: highly disputed. And we'll come back to the physical origins

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Speaker 2: of ambergress in a bit. But one thing that this

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Speaker 2: chapter gets into that is absolutely true is that high

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Speaker 2: quality ambergrease is, and for hundreds of years has been

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Speaker 2: extremely valuable if you can find the right buyer. It

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Speaker 2: was historically known as floating gold and was sought primarily

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Speaker 2: for its value in the manufacture of perfumes. But that

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Speaker 2: wasn't the only thing. I had a bunch of other

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Speaker 2: uses as well. Uses in medicine and in some cases

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Speaker 2: as a culinary delicacy to be used in food and drink.

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Speaker 2: And Annie and Lauren, that is why I wanted you

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Speaker 2: to join me on the show today to talk about

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Speaker 2: eating whale poop.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, We are honored and we're ready.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We usually talk about much smaller poops on our show,

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Speaker 1: made by bacteria and yeast, So this is a treat.

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Speaker 2: Yes. Were you telling me just a minute ago you

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Speaker 2: have a sound effect for like microbial poops.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it goes and there's usually a little bit

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Speaker 1: of an echo behind it. But yeah, bacteria poop.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, here's a good place to mention a major source

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Speaker 2: that I was using going into this episode. I meant

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Speaker 2: to finish the book before we talked. I was actually

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Speaker 2: not quite able to. But it's a very interesting book

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Speaker 2: called Floating Gold, A Natural and Unnatural History of Ambergrease

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Speaker 2: by Christopher Kemp from University of Chicago Press, twenty twelve.

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Speaker 2: And this thing is full of fascinating anecdotes about the

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Speaker 2: history of the ambergrease trade, both both long ago and

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Speaker 2: much more recent, and just as one example of the

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Speaker 2: ambergrease trade at a particular time, Kemp explains in the

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Speaker 2: prologue of his book that at the time he was writing,

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Speaker 2: ambergrease was traded on the global market at up to

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Speaker 2: twenty dollars per gram, depending on the quality, and for comparison,

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Speaker 2: at the same time, gold was trading at about thirty

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Speaker 2: dollars per gram, so about two thirds of the price

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Speaker 2: of gold by weight. Yeah, and there were times and

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Speaker 2: places when ambergres was worth more than gold by weight.

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Speaker 2: But even at this modern price, a chunk of high

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Speaker 2: quality ambergrease weighing like fifty pounds, which is not necessarily implausible,

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Speaker 2: could be worth something like half a million dollars. So

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Speaker 2: given this, when people think they've got a lead on

283
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Speaker 2: some ambergrease and they figure out what it would be

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Speaker 2: worth if it were the real thing, they sometimes become

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Speaker 2: extremely avaricious and territorial. And one amazing thing this book

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Speaker 2: does is document various ill fated ambergrese harvesting frenzies from history.

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Speaker 2: It seems that most ambergres that enters the market in

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Speaker 2: the modern period is not harvested directly from the body

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Speaker 2: of a dead whale, like stubbed did and moby Dick,

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Speaker 2: though sometimes it is. As one example of this happening

291
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Speaker 2: in the real world. Kemp tells the story of a

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Speaker 2: man named Louis Smith from Tasmania who in the year

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Speaker 2: eighteen ninety one, came across the body of a dead

294
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Speaker 2: sperm whale floating on the water. He towed it to

295
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Speaker 2: the beach like you do, yeah, and then collected a

296
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Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty pound boulder of ambergrease from its intestines.

297
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Speaker 2: He claimed aimed by literally cutting the whale open and

298
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Speaker 2: crawling inside its digestive track to retrieve it. I would

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Speaker 2: say this is not recommended behavior. I think you could

300
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Speaker 2: easily suffocate and die doing this.

301
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Speaker 1: Yeah. No, don't do that. What a way to go.

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Speaker 1: Important safety tip.

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Speaker 2: That's another thing in Moby Dick is like the perils

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Speaker 2: of dyeing inside a whale carcass are fully explored. There's

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Speaker 2: one whole part where character like falls inside a whale

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Speaker 2: and the whale starts to sink. Is horrifying.

307
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds awful.

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Speaker 2: But according to a newspaper article from the time, Louis

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Speaker 2: Smith's ambergrease harvesting would have paid off because the chunk

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Speaker 2: he came home with was estimated by several old whalers

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Speaker 2: to be worth about ten thousand pounds. I guess I

312
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Speaker 2: don't know what that ther relevant currency is there. If

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Speaker 2: that's British pounds or Australian pounds, that'd be a separate thing.

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Speaker 2: The pound whatever the pounds were used in Tasmania at

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Speaker 2: the time, and that would have been the year eighteen

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Speaker 2: ninety one. So this is a sizeable, very very valuable hull.

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Speaker 2: But like I said, most ambergrease is not collected from

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Speaker 2: a dead whale. Instead, it takes the form of flotsam,

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Speaker 2: strange hunks of material that float on the surface of

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Speaker 2: the ocean, sometimes for years or even decades, before eventually

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Speaker 2: washing up on a beach somewhere and being found. And

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Speaker 2: so a lot of these ambergrease frenzies occur when somebody

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Speaker 2: finds a weird, unidentifiable mass of something on a beach

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Speaker 2: and then people get the idea that it's ambergrease.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, this large rock looking thing that is

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Speaker 1: kind of floaty and kind of greasy might be worth

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Speaker 1: a half a million dollars. Yeah, let's find out exactly.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was thinking it's similar to how

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Speaker 2: it's similar to those daily mail articles that come up

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Speaker 2: like it seems about four times a day, where it's like,

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Speaker 2: somebody found a carcass of some animal on a beach,

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Speaker 2: it's a sea monster. And so I think the equivalent

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Speaker 2: here is somebody found a mass of some unidentified organic

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Speaker 2: or inorganic material on a beach. It's ambergrease.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, either monsters or ambergrese, you know.

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Speaker 2: Anyway. So one example of these like frenzies is described

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Speaker 2: in the very first thing in Camp's book. It's in

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Speaker 2: the prologue where he talks about an event from September

339
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Speaker 2: two thousand and eight in a place called Breaker Bay,

340
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Speaker 2: which is near Wellington, New Zealand, where a weird off

341
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Speaker 2: white object described as sort of the color of dirty

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Speaker 2: snow and about the size of a forty four gallon

343
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Speaker 2: drum washed up on the shore and people had different

344
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Speaker 2: theories about what it was, but eventually a rumor started

345
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Speaker 2: that it was ambergrease, which if true, would mean it

346
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Speaker 2: could be worth about ten million dollars in total. Because

347
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Speaker 2: this was a huge mass, so people started people started

348
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Speaker 2: carving off pieces of it. They would like go home

349
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Speaker 2: and get gardening tools and then go back to the

350
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Speaker 2: object and hack off pieces, carry a piece away in

351
00:20:03,280 --> 00:20:06,359
Speaker 2: a sling made out of a bed sheet, thinking that

352
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Speaker 2: they were going to be rich. But within three days

353
00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:13,359
Speaker 2: the mass was completely gone, and once the material was

354
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:17,840
Speaker 2: actually analyzed it turned out to be drum roll tallow

355
00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:23,760
Speaker 2: aka lard. It was a large mass of animal fat

356
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Speaker 2: that had probably somehow like fallen off of a ship

357
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Speaker 2: or broken out of its storage drum. We don't know

358
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Speaker 2: exactly where it came from, but it was it was

359
00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:35,600
Speaker 2: like lard, and the Wellington Regional Council was begging citizens

360
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Speaker 2: not to wash the lard down their drains, which is

361
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Speaker 2: generally but you don't want to put animal fat down

362
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Speaker 2: your drains at all.

363
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Speaker 1: No, no, not a forty four gallon drum worth all

364
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Speaker 1: at the same time across the city. Wow. Yeah, equally gross,

365
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Speaker 1: but way less valuable.

366
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Speaker 2: And there were other frenzies like this. There was the

367
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Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four Ambergrease craze in a place called Billinas, California,

368
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Speaker 2: where after people found weird masses of stuff on the beach,

369
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Speaker 2: they started concluding that this was ambergrease. Like that there

370
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:12,119
Speaker 2: was ambergrease washing ashore. People went to go get it.

371
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Speaker 2: And then actually they found out that these were like

372
00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:19,119
Speaker 2: congealed chunks of sewage bonded with sewer cleaning chemicals. I

373
00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:21,440
Speaker 2: think locally the sewers had just been cleaned out with

374
00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:25,320
Speaker 2: some kind of chemical formula. It made all these like

375
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:28,800
Speaker 2: white chunks that got washed out to see and then

376
00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:32,280
Speaker 2: brought in. But despite the fact that there are these

377
00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:35,320
Speaker 2: crazes for these like things that are not actually ambergress,

378
00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:39,040
Speaker 2: many people successfully make a lot of money by finding

379
00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:42,320
Speaker 2: real ambergresse on the beach and connecting with the buyer.

380
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Speaker 2: And documents throughout this book that a lot of people

381
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Speaker 2: involved in the ambergrease trade are very squirrely about talking

382
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Speaker 2: to interviewers and do not want to give away too

383
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Speaker 2: many details about their methods. But he does end up

384
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Speaker 2: talking to quite a few people who in the book

385
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Speaker 2: who open up and does find out things, But early

386
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 2: on a lot of the interviews are just like people

387
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,919
Speaker 2: who don't want to talk to him, and he realizes

388
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,679
Speaker 2: it's because, like, well, if they're people who you know,

389
00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:11,840
Speaker 2: are used to combing beaches for amber grease, they don't

390
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 2: want to like give away their good spots or they'll

391
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:16,640
Speaker 2: have other people coming in on their fines.

392
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Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah. He said in an interview with a Hakai

393
00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:22,760
Speaker 1: magazine that when he brought it up quote, it was

394
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,760
Speaker 1: like he had farted audibly.

395
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Speaker 2: Yeah. He describes a lot of just like dead silence

396
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:29,760
Speaker 2: on the phone.

397
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,640
Speaker 1: Some people just hang up on him. Yeah, like oh

398
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 1: I'm getting another call. Click.

399
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 2: So at this point I would say, like, I want

400
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 2: to be able to picture a piece of ambergrease. We

401
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:58,000
Speaker 2: got a brief description in Moby dick Ishmael says it

402
00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 2: looks like ripe windsor soap, or like rich modeled old cheese.

403
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 2: But one thing that I think is really interesting is

404
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:10,760
Speaker 2: that if you read through real world descriptions of ambergres,

405
00:23:11,800 --> 00:23:15,200
Speaker 2: you will start to realize that different ambigris specimens are

406
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:19,000
Speaker 2: radically different in description, in terms of all different of

407
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 2: all the senses. Basically, they look different, they feel different,

408
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 2: they smell different. So ambergres can apparently be a huge,

409
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:33,119
Speaker 2: sticky black mass with overwhelming aromas of sheep dung, or

410
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 2: ambergrease can be a pale, waxy green or yellow rock,

411
00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 2: or kind of be like a large piece of white soap,

412
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 2: smelling sweet and fragrant in a way that is exceedingly

413
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 2: hard to describe. So on one hand, I'd be like,

414
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 2: how can this even be the same substance if it

415
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:55,399
Speaker 2: sounds like you're describing completely diametrically opposite physical characteristics of

416
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:59,760
Speaker 2: this thing. But from what I can tell, the difference

417
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:02,919
Speaker 2: in a appearance is largely due to a kind of

418
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 2: seasoning process that takes place as ambergrease floats in the

419
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 2: ocean over years and even decades, being exposed to solar

420
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 2: radiation and other forms of physical weathering and chemical reactions,

421
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 2: becoming gradually transformed, as Kim says, one molecule at a time,

422
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 2: into something somewhat different than it originally was. And it

423
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 2: is this more seasoned version, the kind that's been weathered

424
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 2: at sea for a long time, that seems to be

425
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:36,880
Speaker 2: the more desirable, high quality ambergrease that like the highest

426
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 2: end buyers will pay top dollar for. However, with like

427
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 2: physical characteristics so wildly divergent, I would have to wonder, like,

428
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:47,880
Speaker 2: how are you even supposed to know whether a random

429
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 2: chunk of something you find on the beach is actually

430
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 2: amber grease? And there are some tests apparently experienced ambergrease

431
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 2: buyers do certain tests. A famous one is called the

432
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 2: hot needle test. You heat up a needle in a fire,

433
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,920
Speaker 2: you poke it into the mass, and if it's actually ambergrease,

434
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:09,160
Speaker 2: this should cause it to leak out an oily fluid

435
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 2: the color of dark chocolate, with a specific bouquet of

436
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 2: aromas that an experienced ambergrease dealer will recognize. And then

437
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 2: beyond that you can do like actual chemical analysis with

438
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,400
Speaker 2: modern lab techniques and stuff if you want. But then

439
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 2: there are other cruder tests. For example, does it float?

440
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 2: Ambergresse apparently should float. If it sinks, it's probably not ambergrease.

441
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,679
Speaker 2: Another thing is is it full of squid beaks? And

442
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 2: the answer should be yes, definitely. But I like that

443
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 2: because it gives you a little hint before we fully

444
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,679
Speaker 2: look at it, like what ambergrease actually is?

445
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so right, So so far we know that

446
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 1: it is in the guts of whales and it's full

447
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: of squid beaks, right, and it smells either really bad

448
00:25:58,400 --> 00:25:59,119
Speaker 1: or really.

449
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:03,119
Speaker 2: Nice exactly, Yeah, And it looks like either like poop

450
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:04,160
Speaker 2: or like a rock.

451
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 3: And people want it, they pay a lot of money

452
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 3: for it.

453
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:12,399
Speaker 2: Well, here's a good question before we get into like

454
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 2: the biological origins of ambergrease or discussed its use, and

455
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 2: I'm very excited to hear what y'all are gonna have

456
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 2: to say about it's use in cookery. I wanted to

457
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 2: briefly talk about its use in perfume, which is one

458
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,479
Speaker 2: of the main ways in which there's been market demand

459
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:28,160
Speaker 2: for ambergrease over the years.

460
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:32,040
Speaker 1: Which which I should say, like like, perfume and cookery

461
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 1: are very intertwined, especially historically but today still like a

462
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: lot of the earliest recipe books were at least partially

463
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: medicinal in nature, and lots of things that we would

464
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: consider perfume me today were used as seasonings in the past,

465
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: like musk. Some still are today in some cuisines, like

466
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,880
Speaker 1: rose water. And on the flip side, some of our

467
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: modern seasonings have been and or still are really posh

468
00:26:57,400 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: perfume ingredients like vanilla.

469
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's really interesting rosewater. Do y'all ever watch

470
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 2: Great British Baking Show or whatever it's called Great britsh

471
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 2: Bake Off.

472
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: I haven't that often, but I'm aware that it's a thing.

473
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 2: Well it's a British you know, like it's the most

474
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 2: pleasant cooking contest show ever. But when I've watched it before.

475
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,639
Speaker 2: There's a thing where like contestants will always want to

476
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:24,880
Speaker 2: use rose water, but they like they can very easily

477
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 2: use too much rose water, and that's just like an

478
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 2: unforgivable sin. It's like too much rose water and this

479
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 2: is absolutely ruined. It becomes disgusting. I don't even know

480
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 2: what that would smell slash taste like, because I'm not

481
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 2: really very familiar with rosewater, but I know it's like

482
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 2: a sensitive ingredient. There's like some amount of desire for it.

483
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 2: It seems like maybe kind of a sign of confidence

484
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 2: or like a risky thing to use that could be

485
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 2: a big payoff, but if you use too much of it,

486
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 2: it's just it's dangerous.

487
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, I mean, if you've ever smelled a

488
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: rose it tastes like that, which can be either delightful

489
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: or if you go too hard, it's soap.

490
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, And a lot of us associate it

491
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 3: going back to perfume, with perfumes that our grandmothers may

492
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 3: be war or something. So it became sort of a

493
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 3: like you can see our episode for more about this.

494
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 3: We didn't episode in rosewater, but it became sort of

495
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,199
Speaker 3: a like, oh, that's.

496
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: Old people very Yeah, exactly. I still think it's delightful. Yeah,

497
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 1: me too.

498
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 2: I would just imagine that a lot of things that

499
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,199
Speaker 2: would be used in perfumes that would be prized for

500
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 2: their like really noticeable scent, might be like that in cookery,

501
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 2: where it's like it's very delightful in small quantities, but

502
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 2: you could easily use too much and then it ruins

503
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 2: the food.

504
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 3: M hm.

505
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've done that with garlic.

506
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 2: I've put garlic perfume.

507
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because you're a vampire, Laurie.

508
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 2: What no, sh I love the smell and taste of

509
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 2: vanilla in foods. But one time when I was working

510
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 2: at an ice cream store, I was making our waffle cones,

511
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 2: that's you know, that was my job, and uh do

512
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 2: you put You put a certain amount of vanilla in

513
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,200
Speaker 2: the mix. And I put more vanilla in than I

514
00:29:17,280 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 2: was supposed to, and I was like, well, I like vanilla,

515
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 2: what's this going to be like horrible, absolutely disgusting, just

516
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 2: like uh, bitter and inedible, Like you don't want to

517
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 2: use too much vanilla?

518
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 3: No, no, which vanilla was the replacement for rosewater in

519
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 3: the US.

520
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: This is you know, it's all cyclical.

521
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 3: But yeah, if you go overboard with those kinds of

522
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 3: very fragrant ingredients, gonna be in trouble.

523
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, totally. And I think another thing is

524
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 2: that a lot of them, like there's a disconnect between

525
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 2: we prize them for their smell and a lot of

526
00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 2: what we like about experiencing them in the food is

527
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 2: the smell, but if you actually have like an amount

528
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 2: in there that you can taste with your tongue, the

529
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 2: taste is overwhelming bitterness.

530
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

531
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 3: And also interestingly, a lot of them, like rosewater specifically

532
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 3: was used for coloring as well.

533
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, ads, this tint to it.

534
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:19,719
Speaker 3: So there's a you know, a lot going on when

535
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 3: we add these ingredients to foods, for sure.

536
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 2: So as you are saying, I think there's going to

537
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 2: be some overlap with the appeal of ambergresse as perfume

538
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 2: and as food, but specifically in perfumery, it seems ambergresse

539
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 2: has been prized for two different things, both for its

540
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 2: own intrinsic fragrance and then also as what's called a fixative.

541
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:44,959
Speaker 2: I didn't know what that meant originally, so I had

542
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 2: to look it up, and that means it is an

543
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 2: element of a perfume that helps the whole fragrance last

544
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,719
Speaker 2: longer on the skin or on whatever you spray it on.

545
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people would actually apply perfumes to like

546
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 2: articles of clothing and stuff, like to their gloves or something,

547
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 2: and it would help fix the scent to either the

548
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 2: body or to whatever surface it was applied to. According

549
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 2: to a paper I'm going to get to in just

550
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 2: a minute, Robert Clark's History of Ambergrease, many perfume chemists

551
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 2: consider ambergris the best known fixative in nature. Quote, it

552
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 2: preserves the note of a perfume after the perfume itself

553
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 2: has departed.

554
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a in terms of the chemistry of ambergris,

555
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: there's a compound in there that's a fixative called ambrian,

556
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: which is a precursor of the scent compounds such as

557
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: ambroxide and ambernall.

558
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way I understood it as I was reading

559
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 2: from Kemp's book, it seems like the ambrian is sort

560
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 2: of like the grandparent compound of the aroma compounds in ambergrise,

561
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 2: and so like that molecule, while being fairly fairly unscented

562
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 2: itself breaks down into a bunch of chains of other things.

563
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 2: These downstream products of it all have their own interesting aromas,

564
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 2: and that blend is what gives rise to the aroma

565
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 2: of ambergrease.

566
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: Which is part of why when it's just floating on

567
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 1: the ocean for a while, it starts developing these better

568
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:15,600
Speaker 1: sense in some cases better.

569
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 2: That would make sense. Yeah, in fact, to go into

570
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 2: that specifically, So in the book, Kemp talks to a

571
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 2: person named doctor Charles Cell, who is a researcher with

572
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 2: a company called Givauden or I'm not sure how you

573
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 2: say that, as giv A U D A N which

574
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 2: is a large flavor and fragrance manufacturer. And Cell is

575
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 2: talking about exactly this like breakdown chain. Who says that, Yeah,

576
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: this core ambergrease molecule, the one you were talking about, Lauren,

577
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 2: is like a terpenoid. It breaks down into these other

578
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 2: complex aroma molecules. And so like one decay product smells

579
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 2: like tobacco, another one smells like quote ocean. It's that

580
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 2: like briny ocean scent. Another one smells like mold feces,

581
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 2: and animals like mammals. But then it gets to there's

582
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 2: a really unique breakdown compound there called naphtho furine, which

583
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 2: I've never heard of before, obviously, but Cell says, quote,

584
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 2: if you look at the descriptions that people give, one

585
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 2: of the breakdown products is described as brineozone, another one

586
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 2: will be described as tobacco like, But the naphtho furine,

587
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 2: the only label we can put on it is ambergrease

588
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 2: because there's nothing else quite like it. And this is

589
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 2: interesting because this section of the book gets into people

590
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 2: who have experienced with ambergrease talking about the difficulty of

591
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 2: describing these unique aroma compounds that just don't really smell

592
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 2: like anything else. And it's not like a it's not

593
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 2: there's like a disnalogy with other types of sense data,

594
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 2: like say a shade of a color, where you could say, well,

595
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 2: it's like a lighter shade of red, you know, or

596
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 2: you could say, like it's a darker shade of orange

597
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:05,000
Speaker 2: or something. There's there are no degrees like that along

598
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 2: a spectrum. With smells, they're just kind of like each

599
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 2: you know, molecule hits the old factory bulb and produces

600
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:15,319
Speaker 2: a different pattern in the brain, and so like some

601
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 2: molecules just smell totally unique and there's nothing you can

602
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 2: compare them to, And I thought that was quite interesting.

603
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 2: And so today there are synthetic compounds that are used

604
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 2: in perfumery that are designed to mimic ambergresse under trade

605
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 2: names like like am brocs and stuff. But from what

606
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 2: I understand, like some perfumers think that they're good, other

607
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 2: perfumers don't like them as much. There seems to be

608
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 2: a there are some people who are like sort of

609
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 2: think of themselves as natural perfumers. They want to use

610
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 2: like traditional ingredients and less like synthetic ingredients, and they

611
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 2: think that that natural ambergrease is just like sort of

612
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 2: unbeatable in its qualities. I can't really comment on that.

613
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have some familiarity with ambergris as a as

614
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 1: a perfume ingredient, like the artificial stuff I'm assuming. I'm

615
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: assuming that none of the like twenty dollars bottles of

616
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: perfume that I've purchased in my life contained actual ambergris.

617
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's usually kind of shorthand in perfumery for

618
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: like a like a sort of musky, sweet woody note,

619
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: I guess, And I've quite enjoyed it.

620
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, that list you gave it that overlaps with what

621
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 2: I've read, like the wood woody sort of elements, but

622
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 2: also the tobacco, also the strong kind of animal smell

623
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 2: and the sweetness. I don't know, it's hard to imagine.

624
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 2: It's funny to talk about with me just having no

625
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 2: idea what this smell's like and reading the descriptions and

626
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,320
Speaker 2: just saying like this doesn't add up, Like my brain

627
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 2: isn't making sense of what's being described.

628
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I very nearly. I had this thought last night.

629
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, I should go find one of

630
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,400
Speaker 1: my perfumes that has some of it in it. We're

631
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: we're on the internet right now. I can't show you

632
00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 1: a perfume. Oh no on this video call. So I

633
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:02,840
Speaker 1: didn't do that.

634
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 2: Well, that's okay. I almost kind of am cherishing my

635
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:10,240
Speaker 2: own ignorance here. Something about it is making the subject

636
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:22,359
Speaker 2: all the more mysterious and fun to me. I guess

637
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 2: this leads us to the next question, which is, like,

638
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 2: what is Ambergresse actually like? How is it actually formed?

639
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 2: So I think next we should do like the biological

640
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 2: origins of Ambergresse, and then we can talk about ambergrese

641
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:35,760
Speaker 2: as food.

642
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: Right, once we get good and grossed out, then talk

643
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: about it exactly, smell strange biological origins. Hmm, let's eat it.

644
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 2: It seemed like the right order to me. So the

645
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 2: most detailed scientific study of ambergress and the most detailed

646
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 2: history of the formation theories that I could find, was

647
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 2: a two thousand and six paper by the British biologist

648
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 2: Robert Clark. Clark actually passed away several years back, but

649
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 2: he seems to have been the world's foremost scientific authority

650
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 2: on ambergrease. It seems this is something that actually not

651
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 2: that many people studied. And Kemp talks about this in

652
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 2: his book that he tried to talk to a lot

653
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 2: of scientists and marine biologists about ambergrese and a lot

654
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 2: of them were just like, yeah, I have no idea,

655
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 2: so yeah. This paper is called the Origins of Ambergrease

656
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 2: in the Latin American Journal of Aquatic Mammals in two

657
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 2: thousand and six by Robert Clark, and Clark begins by

658
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 2: quoting an ambergrease dealer named Beauville, who explained in the

659
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 2: year nineteen fifty four that quote, not many people know

660
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 2: what ambergrease is, but those who do know it is

661
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 2: not the feces of a whale. And I don't know

662
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 2: what it is, but we know what it's not. And

663
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 2: Clark says to the contrary, after decades of study of

664
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 2: this mysterious subce, he is prepared to argue that it

665
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 2: is indeed the feces of a whale, or, to be

666
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 2: a bit more nuanced, a sort of complex quote fecal

667
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,759
Speaker 2: product of the sperm whale. So, before he explains is

668
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 2: the modern theory, Clark does a delightful recounting of the many,

669
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 2: many historical hypotheses about what ambergrease is and where it

670
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:23,759
Speaker 2: comes from. Suffice to say, it has long been, in

671
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,840
Speaker 2: the words of Herman Melville quote, a problem to the learned.

672
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 2: He says that in the seventeenth century there was speculation

673
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 2: about the origins of ambergreese, and it was like a

674
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 2: pretty popular subject. Is so popular, in fact, that in

675
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 2: the year sixteen seventy or sixteen sixty seven, sorry, there's

676
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 2: an author named Klobius. I think this was Eustace Fetus Clobius,

677
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 2: who recorded eighteen such ideas known at the time. So

678
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 2: a lot of people speculating about where it comes from.

679
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 2: Here are a few examples. There's an author named Fuskius

680
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 2: who claimed that ambergris was a human made fake that

681
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,719
Speaker 2: was like a composite made out of multiple other components,

682
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 2: including a labdanum, which is the resin of a rock

683
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 2: rose plant, but also aloe wood and the musk of

684
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:16,879
Speaker 2: a mammal called the civet. I think we were talking

685
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 2: about the civet earlier either before we were either off micron,

686
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 2: but yeah, the civet is sort of a cat like mammal,

687
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 2: a carnivoor.

688
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, which right? You get musk from? Sure? Or you could.

689
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: I don't personally.

690
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 2: There was one seventeenth century encyclopedist who claimed that it

691
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 2: was simply dried sea foam. Okay, it's hard to see

692
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 2: how that happens, but okay. Another said it was dried

693
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 2: foam from seals. Seal foam presumably, I guess from their mouths.

694
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 2: It doesn't say what seal foam that he's talking about.

695
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: There.

696
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 2: Another popular idea was that it was the excrement of

697
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:59,760
Speaker 2: a particular species of bird found in the Maldives, locally

698
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 2: called the ooh. And I'm gonna try my best of

699
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 2: this word the a knackungree pasqui, which lived on a

700
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:08,839
Speaker 2: diet of fragrant herbs. So I guess if it eats

701
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 2: fragrant herbs and then it poops, and that would explain

702
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 2: why the poop is so fragrant. Some wrote that it

703
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 2: was a form of lizard musk which was secreted from

704
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 2: the sexual organs and throat glands of crocodiles. Another idea

705
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 2: was that it was a honeycomb, as in like from

706
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 2: a bee colony which fell into the sea and then

707
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 2: was crystallized by exposure to the elements.

708
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:32,720
Speaker 1: Oh, I like that one.

709
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:37,359
Speaker 2: I like that too. Unfortunately it's not true. Another idea

710
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 2: was that it's just a rock, Like it's just a

711
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 2: rock or a type of like clod of earth of

712
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 2: a particular sort. And in fact there would be if

713
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 2: we could go out and find them, boulders and even

714
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 2: entire islands made of this type of rock, where like

715
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 2: the ground was ambergris, and these were just like the

716
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 2: chunks that broke off and floated away. The author of

717
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:03,960
Speaker 2: a of a ninth century Arabic text mentions that ambergris

718
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 2: was a fungus that grew in the dark at the

719
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean and could be ripped up from

720
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 2: the bottom by ocean currents and then floated around, and

721
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 2: this idea was held by many subsequent thinkers. The tenth

722
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,839
Speaker 2: to eleventh century Islamic physician and polymath Ibn Sina, also

723
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 2: known as Avicenna, sort of stuck to the idea that

724
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 2: it was fungus, but thought instead that it was like

725
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:28,879
Speaker 2: a terrestrial fungus that grew on rocks and then fell

726
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 2: into the water from land based rocks and then floated around,

727
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 2: rather than originating on the seafloor. Some writers seem to

728
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 2: think it's a type of fruit. The seventeenth century natural

729
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 2: philosopher Robert Boyle published a text containing the idea that

730
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 2: it was gum exuded from the roots of a seaside tree.

731
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 2: And then another idea favored by many later authors was

732
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 2: that ambergrease was a form of bitumen exuded from vince

733
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 2: on the seafloor. And bitumen is this like dense, thick,

734
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 2: black mixture of hydrocarbons that is a natural product of petroleum,

735
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 2: So you can think basically tar. So my idea from

736
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 2: like looking at this wide range of options is like

737
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 2: it just gives you a sense of how baffling this

738
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 2: substance found than the seashorts was. It was a hot commodity,

739
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 2: but like its properties are so elusive that it could

740
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 2: be anything from bird dung to honeycomb to fungus to

741
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:27,319
Speaker 2: a petroleum constituent.

742
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of mystique.

743
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:33,439
Speaker 3: It definitely, like even now it's pretty recent that there's

744
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 3: been more information about it, but it was certainly Yeah,

745
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 3: just the range of explanations of what it could be,

746
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 3: the tails behind it, the range of smells, like this

747
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 3: is something that people are like, I don't know, yeah,

748
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,360
Speaker 3: And I will say that historically, like there were a

749
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 3: lot of tall tails told about other precious spices and substances,

750
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 3: like because people didn't want you to horn in on

751
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 3: their on their product, right, so you know, like like

752
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,399
Speaker 3: like like Arab traders would be like, oh, yeah, that

753
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 3: comes from a dragon on this one island. Don't go

754
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 3: looking for it, man, like dragons, dude, And so some

755
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 3: of these stories might have a little bit of that

756
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 3: flavor to it as well.

757
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 1: I don't know.

758
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:18,359
Speaker 2: That's a very good point, I mean, and it sort

759
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:20,360
Speaker 2: of connects with the idea that even in the even

760
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 2: in the modern day, A lot of people who are

761
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:25,439
Speaker 2: involved in the ambergris trade like don't want to talk

762
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 2: about it, you know, with with outsiders. They're not interested

763
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 2: in sharing details of what this stuff is and how

764
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 2: it works. So yeah, you can imagine that similar confusions

765
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 2: could have arisen in centuries past for similar reasons that, like,

766
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 2: you know, people did not particularly want to share the

767
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,280
Speaker 2: details of how they made their money in this trade

768
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 2: and thus just deliberately confused outsiders with maybe false details

769
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 2: or other things.

770
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:57,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also interesting considering the legality too, which well,

771
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 3: I know we'll get into later. That's probably not what

772
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 3: what's at play here, but I just think that that's

773
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 3: a fascinating part of this is sort of like, yeah,

774
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 3: find this thing we don't know.

775
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:14,959
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you're saying that's another reason, like people

776
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 2: are hesitant to talk about it because yeah.

777
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, like maybe let's just not discuss this, let's just

778
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 3: see it as it is.

779
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: Doesn't smell let's go.

780
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay. One last common confusion before we get to

781
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 2: the main modern theory is that lots of authors in

782
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 2: history thought that ambergris, which we now know is in

783
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 2: fact a biological product of the sperm whale. They thought

784
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 2: that it was actually the same thing as an in reality,

785
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 2: completely different, unrelated biological product of the sperm whale, the

786
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 2: waxy substance known as spermaceti, which is found in the

787
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 2: whale's head and was the primary product sought by whalers

788
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 2: like the crew of Peaquad. You know, that was the

789
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 2: whale oil that whalers were trying to extract, and that

790
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 2: tragically led to the you know, the great reduction in

791
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 2: the populations of sperm whales around the world. Even in

792
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:15,319
Speaker 2: some cases where ambergrease was found inside sperm whales, it

793
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: was sometimes thought that it was not actually something made

794
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,760
Speaker 2: by the whale's body, but something that the sperm whale

795
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 2: had come across in the ocean and devoured. So, as

796
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 2: I stated earlier, Clark here thinks that the best theory

797
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 2: of ambergrease is that it is a sperm whale coprolith

798
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:38,800
Speaker 2: aka a mass of feces hardened into a rock like consistency.

799
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:43,000
Speaker 2: Clark traces this idea back to an eighteenth century author

800
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 2: and named schved Diaver. I don't know if you say

801
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 2: those ws like vs. Either schwed Diover or Shiddaver.

802
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 1: Great name either way.

803
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. There have been some competing modern theories, such

804
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 2: as the notion that it is primarily a concretion of

805
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:01,759
Speaker 2: bile from the whaless digi estive system, or that it's

806
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,720
Speaker 2: a secretion of whale like sexual glands, but Clark argues

807
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 2: that these don't really fit with the evidence. So here's

808
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 2: I'm going to work here from Kemp's synthesis of Clark's

809
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,200
Speaker 2: favorite copperlith theory. And this does seem to be, from

810
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,640
Speaker 2: what I can tell, the explanation that is currently the

811
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 2: most widely accepted by cytologists and other relevant experts. So,

812
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,960
Speaker 2: the average sperm whale eats a lot of squid. You know,

813
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,399
Speaker 2: sperm whale life is like it's diving down to meet

814
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 2: its metabolic needs. It has to eat like a ton

815
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 2: of squid every day. Oh yeah, that's a lot. And

816
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 2: so it hunts for squid by diving deep into the

817
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 2: dark the mesoplagic zone and hunting with the help of echolocation,

818
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 2: the acoustic clicks that it can emit with the help

819
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 2: of its giant box head. So the whale swim down

820
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 2: and they hunt, and they eat lots of squid. The

821
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:58,040
Speaker 2: sperm whale's got four different stomachs, and it digests its

822
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:01,719
Speaker 2: prey in different stages. Here you got the soft, liquefied

823
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:04,919
Speaker 2: parts of the prey animals that they pass on through

824
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 2: the stomachs to the intestine, while the small number of

825
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 2: indigestible hard parts and squid. You're primarily talking about beaks there,

826
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 2: because squid have you know, their mouth is a beak

827
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 2: that is in many ways morphologically similar to a bird beak.

828
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 2: It's like a parrot's beak sort of. But they've also

829
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 2: got a hard part that's an internal organ that's a

830
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 2: quill like hard part called a pin. These things gather

831
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:33,359
Speaker 2: in the sperm whale stomachs and then eventually, when there's

832
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 2: too many of them sperm whales like who, and it

833
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 2: vomits them up. Yep, Yeah, this is not ambergris. This

834
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 2: is just whale vomit. And it's mostly squid beaks. For

835
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 2: some reason, sometimes a massive beaks fails to be vomited

836
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 2: up and instead goes in the other direction. And here

837
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 2: Kemp quotes from Clark, and this section is very good,

838
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 2: so I must quote from Clark as well. So these

839
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 2: are Clark's word here. Quote now, once in the Antarctic.

840
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty eight, on board a boat called the

841
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 2: Southern Harvester, I examined a sperm whale whose cylindrical last

842
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:14,760
Speaker 2: stomach was entirely filled with a compacted mass of squid beaks,

843
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:19,400
Speaker 2: squid pins, and nematode worms. The mass was one point

844
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 2: two meters in length and zero point four meters in diameter.

845
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 2: This last stomach is normally empty except for a few

846
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 2: small beaks, pins, and nematode cuticles. We have only to

847
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 2: imagine an imperfect valve, a leaky sphincter between this last

848
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 2: stomach and the intestine. When all conditions are set for

849
00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 2: a train of events which should result in ambergrease. And

850
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 2: I think the metaphor of a tray in there is

851
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:50,839
Speaker 2: perfect because it's like plowing down the intestinal tract. So

852
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:53,760
Speaker 2: here what happens is like this tangled wad of beaks

853
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 2: passes into the intestine, which is not evolved to pass solids.

854
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 2: It's only for liquid matter is supposed to be going

855
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 2: into the sperm whales intestine. The hard beaks irritate the

856
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 2: intestinal lining as they pass. Eventually this massive beaks and

857
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 2: compacted fecal matter, it becomes stuck and it obstructs the rectum,

858
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 2: and fecal matter builds up behind the mass. And then,

859
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 2: to quote from Campire quote, the whales gastro intestinal system

860
00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 2: responds by increasing water absorption from the lower intestines, and

861
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,680
Speaker 2: gradually the feces saturating. The compacted mass of squid beaks

862
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 2: become like cement, binding the slurry together permanently. It becomes

863
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:38,960
Speaker 2: a concretion, a smooth and striated boulder, so it's like

864
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:43,439
Speaker 2: forming a cement like solid, hardened rock like mass here

865
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 2: and at various points the feces will sort of be

866
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 2: able to pass by. But over time the massive beaks

867
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 2: and fecal matter becomes harder and harder and denser and

868
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 2: more solid, and new layers are added to it, like

869
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 2: the rings of a tree trunk, and eventually, somehow the

870
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:03,800
Speaker 2: mass leaves the whale, either because the whale is actually

871
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:06,760
Speaker 2: able to pass it, it's unclear how often this happens,

872
00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 2: if ever, or because the whale dies and its body

873
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:14,160
Speaker 2: is subject to scavenging and decomposition, and eventually the chunk

874
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:16,920
Speaker 2: of fresh ambergrease is separated from the rest of the

875
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 2: remains floats away through the water, and then it is

876
00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 2: acted upon and transformed by the elements for who knows

877
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 2: how long, maybe decades before it either washes up on

878
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:31,280
Speaker 2: a beach and is found or decomposes completely in the ocean.

879
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 2: And the process here is apparently quite rare. Clark estimates

880
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:37,439
Speaker 2: that it only happens in roughly one out of every

881
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 2: one hundred sperm whales, and of course, sperm whale populations

882
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 2: worldwide were greatly reduced by commercial whaling from roughly like

883
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 2: eighteen hundred till the nineteen eighties or so, and populations

884
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 2: are probably recovering now but still reduced from where they were.

885
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 2: So ambergrease has probably always been a pretty rare nature fact,

886
00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:01,440
Speaker 2: and it's probably even much rarer now than it was

887
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 2: hundreds of years ago.

888
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing. And I think there's some speculation that

889
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 1: the ambergrease is actually what winds up killing the whale

890
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:16,399
Speaker 1: in yeah, a lot of these instances, because it has

891
00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:20,040
Speaker 1: this intestinal blockage that eventually right, yeah.

892
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is speculated to be the case, that

893
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 2: it builds up until finally nothing gets around it and

894
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,359
Speaker 2: the whale dies from it. And that would go again

895
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:30,840
Speaker 2: to like the observer and no, this is just a

896
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:34,040
Speaker 2: fictional novel, so, and it's from the nineteenth century, so

897
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 2: very likely to be wrong. But it kind of fits

898
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:38,759
Speaker 2: with like Melville's observation that it was like a sick,

899
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 2: emaciated whale in which it was found.

900
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really impressed by I feel like that is

901
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,800
Speaker 1: like score one one out of like thousands for Melville

902
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: being scientifically correct about anything.

903
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:54,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of stuff is wrong in Moby Dick,

904
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 2: but it's always wrong in an interesting way.

905
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 1: You're making me want to revisit mobi deck for the

906
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:04,600
Speaker 1: first time in my entire life.

907
00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, do as you will. But yeah,

908
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 2: I agree, there's a lot of interest to be found

909
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 2: in it. And it's not just the chowder. But speaking

910
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 2: of chowder, hey, I want y'all to tell me about

911
00:52:18,360 --> 00:52:21,240
Speaker 2: ambergres as food because one of the most shocking things

912
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:25,240
Speaker 2: to me after learning about the substance is not only

913
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 2: was it used in these small quantities as like a

914
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:30,319
Speaker 2: fixative and perfumes, not only was it used as many

915
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:34,720
Speaker 2: natural materials are as a as a medicine of various sorts,

916
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:38,360
Speaker 2: or as like a potency enhancer for people, it was

917
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:40,760
Speaker 2: also just used as a culinary item.

918
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:47,359
Speaker 1: Yep, yepper's squidbeaks and intestinal leakage. Yeah, that's, as it

919
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 1: turns out, has a lot of culinary uses throughout history.

920
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: So I would like to start by actually quoting from

921
00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:58,040
Speaker 1: Kemp because he wrote in his book about using ambergris

922
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:03,200
Speaker 1: as a seasoning and okay, so he reports it crumbles

923
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: like truffle. I fold it carefully into the eggs with

924
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,200
Speaker 1: a fork, rising and mingling with curls of steam from

925
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 1: the eggs, the familiar odor of ambergris begins to fill

926
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 1: and clog my throat, a thick and unmistakable smell that

927
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 1: I can taste. It inhabits the back of my throat

928
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: and fills my sinuses. It is aromatic, both woody and floral.

929
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: The smell reminds me of leaf litter on a forest

930
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:28,080
Speaker 1: floor and of the delicate really undersides of mushrooms that

931
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:29,960
Speaker 1: grow in damp and shaded places.

932
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 2: I want to cry, tears streaming down my face with

933
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 2: the beauty of eating this whale poop, like I'd like

934
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 2: the how, even knowing what, knowing what we know, and

935
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 2: knowing that he knows what we know, because he also

936
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 2: writes about it in his book of like where this

937
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 2: comes from the description of it, like filling his throat

938
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 2: like that in the same way that it folds up

939
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 2: to clog the intestine rectum of the whale.

940
00:54:02,200 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: It's a very specific kind of poetry. Yeah. Yeah. A

941
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 1: writer for Gourmet magazine reported in two thousand and eight

942
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:13,919
Speaker 1: that eggs cooked with ambergris are are good. Uh, don't

943
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: go well with bacon, but we're good with toast.

944
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:18,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't go well with bacon.

945
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, interesting.

946
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:24,760
Speaker 2: Wonder why, Like, I is it sort of too meaty

947
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:25,359
Speaker 2: on its own?

948
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,800
Speaker 1: Maybe they were puzzled as well. They were kind of like, yeah,

949
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:31,160
Speaker 1: it didn't It didn't go well with the bacon, but

950
00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 1: the toast was fine. I feel like when.

951
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 3: You eat bacon, though, you're kind of there for the bacon,

952
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like the bacon is a

953
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 3: big part of what why you got whatever you're eating. Yea,

954
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 3: So maybe it's just like it was a distraction from

955
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:51,240
Speaker 3: the bacon.

956
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 1: I don't know.

957
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:56,359
Speaker 2: Bacon is kind of a perfume of its own, and

958
00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 2: so maybe bacon, because it has those like smoky complex

959
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:04,400
Speaker 2: sweet aromas, doesn't play well with other very strong aromas.

960
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: Do you think that in the case yeah, I think so.

961
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, because, yeah, like the smell of bacon is so distinct.

962
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 3: I can see it again, never having smell ambergris, I

963
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 3: can imagine that it kind of it messes up with

964
00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:21,240
Speaker 3: the smell of the ambergris.

965
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:23,640
Speaker 1: It messes up the smell of bacon. So it kind

966
00:55:23,640 --> 00:55:26,680
Speaker 1: of clashes. You've got too many different kinds of mammal

967
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:39,839
Speaker 1: smell coming at you. Yeah yeah.

968
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 2: So so y'all mentioned that one of the things that

969
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 2: might be affecting people's willingness to talk about ambergris or

970
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 2: ambergris is is the fact of its legality, So, like,

971
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:53,919
Speaker 2: what's going on with that, right?

972
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:59,240
Speaker 1: So, Okay, in international law, I think it's technically it's

973
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:01,319
Speaker 1: like it's like legal to the point that it's up

974
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: to individual countries to regulate for or against it, as

975
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:09,839
Speaker 1: with any other protected animal product, any product that comes

976
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:13,319
Speaker 1: from a protected animal species. Okay. So yes, it is

977
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,279
Speaker 1: illegal in the United States as a clause in the

978
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: Marine Mammal Protection Act of nineteen seventy two, but it's

979
00:56:19,080 --> 00:56:23,720
Speaker 1: not really prosecuted. Apparently, there have only been like nine

980
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: reports of people, like like nine reported instances of people

981
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:30,759
Speaker 1: collecting ambergers in the US in the past ten years

982
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: or so, and none of them come to actual prosecution.

983
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:38,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, laws vary by country. There have been recent

984
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:43,160
Speaker 1: arrests for its possession in India, but that its technical

985
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,360
Speaker 1: illegality does not prevent it from showing up on American menus,

986
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:49,279
Speaker 1: for example, in like posh bars, as an ingredient in

987
00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:52,799
Speaker 1: hot chocolate or snazzy cocktails. This one bartender working with

988
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: it in Chicago back in twenty sixteen told Food fifty

989
00:56:55,960 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: two it smells like a tide pool in your grandmother's

990
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:09,320
Speaker 1: basement in a good way. Apparently, yeah. There the cocktail

991
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 1: they were using it in was like it was like

992
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,680
Speaker 1: a three rum blend with some pineapple kind of drink

993
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: and and and apparently yeah, the ambergris added a hint

994
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: of the ocean.

995
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 2: Okay, tidepool in your grandmother's basement. I can see that

996
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 2: how that connects to like the decay or the decomposition

997
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:26,680
Speaker 2: molecules we talked about earlier, because it's like one in

998
00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 2: one sense smells like the ocean. It's kind of briny,

999
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 2: but in the other sense of your grandmother's basement. I

1000
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 2: think one of the compounds was said to smell like

1001
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 2: mold or like feces, and so maybe the mold is

1002
00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 2: the basement part.

1003
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then that floral wood note might be the

1004
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:45,760
Speaker 1: grandma Yeah.

1005
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, not the grandma's house, right.

1006
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 1: Right, yes, definitely, yes, yes, but okay, all right, how

1007
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: did we at here? So older records are scant, But

1008
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: let's start with this Egyptian cookbook from thirteen hundreds that

1009
00:58:10,240 --> 00:58:14,880
Speaker 1: has a whole bunch of different medicinal like perfume, incense

1010
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 1: kind of recipes that list ambergris, but also does include

1011
00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 1: a recipe for a dried apricot compote made with floral

1012
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:27,520
Speaker 1: essences pomegranate, juice, and mint, and that you then put

1013
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:33,240
Speaker 1: in a vessel quote infused with smoke of ambergris. And

1014
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 1: because ambergris was often used as an incense, I'm thinking

1015
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 1: that fumigation might have been a popular way to flavored

1016
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: dishes with the stuff. Yeah, by smoking it kind of

1017
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:45,120
Speaker 1: like smoking meat in it or something like that.

1018
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh okay, that's interesting. So I guess when I

1019
00:58:48,760 --> 00:58:51,440
Speaker 2: imagined it being used in food, I would have primarily

1020
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 2: thought just like directly adding it to the food. But

1021
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 2: you're saying, like, like the thing where you'd add the

1022
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 2: smoke of it in an enclosed container to like sort

1023
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,960
Speaker 2: of I don't know, to perfume the food with the

1024
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 2: aroma of it, but you're not actually like chewing on

1025
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:07,600
Speaker 2: pieces of it in this case, in.

1026
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 1: That particular well, in that particular case, no, but certainly

1027
00:59:11,560 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: just chunks of it were being used. Okay. Another cook

1028
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 1: book right around fifteen hundred from India that had a

1029
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 1: lot of Persian influence. It was written for the Sultan

1030
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,400
Speaker 1: who is famous for his eccentric devotion to pleasure. Okay,

1031
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: this cookbook included a recipe for making these skiers of

1032
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 1: stewed meat that you would then rub down with saffron,

1033
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: white ambergris and rose water, and then cook again with rice, ginger, salt,

1034
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: and onions and serve with a good gravy whatever that means.

1035
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:41,040
Speaker 1: And that sounds delicious.

1036
00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to eat this.

1037
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, very expensive, like saffron was and still is one

1038
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:52,840
Speaker 1: of the most expensive things on the planet that people

1039
00:59:53,200 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: insist upon eating, and rose water would have been pricey

1040
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:59,520
Speaker 1: at the time too, So this is truly a feast

1041
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:03,240
Speaker 1: of pleasure. And that's just one example. There are dozens

1042
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:05,800
Speaker 1: of recipes in the books Sweet and Savory Plus for

1043
01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: perfumes that include ambergris.

1044
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 3: Yes, and there were decadent persons shurbets sarbets once called

1045
01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:17,840
Speaker 3: they once called for ambergris as an ingredient alongside water

1046
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:21,240
Speaker 3: and lemon And that's been a theme coming up in

1047
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 3: like ice cream or some kind of similar dessert.

1048
01:00:25,120 --> 01:00:29,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, ambergris. Yeah. It might have spread to Europe through

1049
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: these kind of Arab Indian cultural exchange roots along the

1050
01:00:33,040 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 1: spice routes, and so by the fifteen hundreds, Ish cooks

1051
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:40,120
Speaker 1: in the Italian courts were flavoring stuff like piscatti and

1052
01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: other desserts with it, often paired with musk, like musk

1053
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 1: and ambergris in these baked goods and other sugary things.

1054
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:51,240
Speaker 1: By the sixteen hundreds, France had picked this combination up

1055
01:00:51,320 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: musk and ambergris, and a famed chef and cookbook author

1056
01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:56,560
Speaker 1: of Francois Pierre de lave Rene had a bunch of

1057
01:00:56,560 --> 01:01:00,120
Speaker 1: recipes calling for ambergris in this book of sweets that

1058
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 1: he published in Candied Fruits in Marzapan, in creams, in lemonade,

1059
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:06,480
Speaker 1: and in wine.

1060
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:10,600
Speaker 3: Right, and beginning around sixteen sixty, English cooks started publishing

1061
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 3: recipes utilizing ambergris The English especially enjoyed cooking with it

1062
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:18,200
Speaker 3: because it was rare and therefore luxurious. This is one

1063
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:20,360
Speaker 3: of my favorite things, and we do topics like this.

1064
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 3: There's a part of me that wonders if there's like

1065
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 3: a willful surely it didn't come from a whales rectum, or.

1066
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:30,400
Speaker 1: If it even matters. It's rare.

1067
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:33,760
Speaker 3: Therefore we want it in our recipes to show that

1068
01:01:33,840 --> 01:01:37,440
Speaker 3: we can afford it. And a lot of these recipes

1069
01:01:37,480 --> 01:01:42,240
Speaker 3: were for desserts or something otherwise very fancy. Baked puddings

1070
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:44,320
Speaker 3: made with bread or ground almonds were some of the

1071
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 3: most popular ways to use ambergris as a food ingredient,

1072
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 3: mostly sweet in the sweet variety, and ambergris also started

1073
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 3: showing up in medicinal drinks, alcoholic drinks like posset and punch, candies,

1074
01:01:57,400 --> 01:01:58,440
Speaker 3: and gelatines.

1075
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,120
Speaker 1: It was often again paired with musk or things like

1076
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:05,480
Speaker 1: rose or orange flower water and with some warm spices,

1077
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:09,080
Speaker 1: so especially considering how expensive sugar still was at this time,

1078
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 1: these were all like really show off kind of kind

1079
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 1: of recipes. It also showed up in possibly the first

1080
01:02:15,400 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 1: English recipe for ice cream, dating from around sixteen sixty five,

1081
01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:23,840
Speaker 1: which listed as suggested flavorings either mace or orange flower

1082
01:02:23,840 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 1: water or ambergreen.

1083
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:28,200
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's something I had seen this association with

1084
01:02:28,240 --> 01:02:32,000
Speaker 2: this early ice cream recipe. I have a question if

1085
01:02:32,600 --> 01:02:37,440
Speaker 2: ambergris if ambergrease works as a as a fixative, Like

1086
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:41,320
Speaker 2: it's really good at making smells stick to surfaces and

1087
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 2: linger there, even smells of things that are mixed with it,

1088
01:02:45,360 --> 01:02:48,120
Speaker 2: not necessarily just its own smell. I wonder how that

1089
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:51,600
Speaker 2: would affect its use in food, Like do you do

1090
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:54,000
Speaker 2: you want? I don't know. Is there some sense in

1091
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:59,280
Speaker 2: which food pleasure could be enhanced by aromas being kind

1092
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 2: of like sticky year to surfaces even maybe including I

1093
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:04,960
Speaker 2: don't know, the plate, the utensils, the inside of the

1094
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:07,919
Speaker 2: mouth and things like that. Or is that an undesirable

1095
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 2: thing in food? I haven't haven't fully figured that out,

1096
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 2: but it seems like this fixative quality could affect its

1097
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 2: appeal as food as well.

1098
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if it would maybe help stick around

1099
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:21,880
Speaker 1: in a food some of the some of the scents

1100
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 1: and flavors that would otherwise kind of gas off and

1101
01:03:25,040 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: get lost to time, Like if you bake it into bread,

1102
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 1: that fresh bread smell might stick with the bread.

1103
01:03:31,080 --> 01:03:33,040
Speaker 2: I don't know, seems possible.

1104
01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:37,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that they would be a much

1105
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,480
Speaker 3: like the less the better, and a lot of spices

1106
01:03:40,480 --> 01:03:42,440
Speaker 3: at the time were that way, Like you want that

1107
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 3: kind of fragrance, but if you use too much then

1108
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:50,560
Speaker 3: it gets overpowering. So I can see, I can see

1109
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 3: that ambergris would be valuable in that case of like

1110
01:03:54,880 --> 01:03:58,880
Speaker 3: I want the smell, but it sticks, so it kind.

1111
01:03:58,720 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: Of less of whatever you're trying to.

1112
01:04:02,040 --> 01:04:06,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, show up, which apparently could have led to a death.

1113
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:13,520
Speaker 3: Oh intrigue, I have to bring the intrigue. Allegedly, King

1114
01:04:13,600 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 3: Charles the Second of England died by poisoning via his

1115
01:04:17,560 --> 01:04:21,240
Speaker 3: favorite breakfast, which was eggs and ambergris in sixteen eighty five,

1116
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:26,000
Speaker 3: and some speculate that the ambergris may have hidden the

1117
01:04:26,080 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 3: taste of the poison. So also, a poisoning agent potentially

1118
01:04:31,920 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 3: will to kill someone.

1119
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:37,600
Speaker 2: Because it like it's so because the aroma is so strong,

1120
01:04:37,640 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 2: it would like mask other things.

1121
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:40,240
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1122
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:43,959
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're just like soaking up that ambergris smell,

1123
01:04:44,000 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 3: You're not thinking about any poisons and then that's the end.

1124
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:53,600
Speaker 2: Wait, but his favorite breakfast was eggs and ambergres. So again,

1125
01:04:53,680 --> 01:04:56,320
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, is this just like big just chunks of

1126
01:04:56,360 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 2: it cut up in the eggs.

1127
01:04:57,760 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: Or it's like it's like a shaving maybe maybe like

1128
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 1: shaving a little bit of it into the eggs the

1129
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:05,600
Speaker 1: way that Camp was kind of talking about in the passage. Yeah,

1130
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was inspired by Charles the

1131
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:14,400
Speaker 1: Second Urn. Not here we are, okay, all right, moving

1132
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 1: from intrigue to Milton. We have to talk about paradise regained.

1133
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:25,400
Speaker 1: So so this was first published in sixteen seventy one,

1134
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:30,360
Speaker 1: and in it Milton describes a feast worthy of royalty

1135
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:35,280
Speaker 1: that the passage begins, a table richly spread in regal mode,

1136
01:05:35,400 --> 01:05:38,680
Speaker 1: with dishes piled and meats of noblest sort and savor,

1137
01:05:39,120 --> 01:05:42,320
Speaker 1: beasts of chase or foul of game, and pastry built

1138
01:05:42,520 --> 01:05:45,880
Speaker 1: or from the spit or boiled gris amber steamed. Ah.

1139
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:48,560
Speaker 2: Okay, so grease amber. There would just be another name

1140
01:05:48,600 --> 01:05:51,080
Speaker 2: for amber, grease, a sort of yeah.

1141
01:05:51,400 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1142
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: People think that he probably just just transposed it because

1143
01:05:54,760 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 1: of for the for the meter, but yeah, partially because

1144
01:05:59,600 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: it is transposed like that. Future annotated editions of the

1145
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:06,040
Speaker 1: work really like to remark on this. Also because people

1146
01:06:06,080 --> 01:06:10,960
Speaker 1: are just fascinated by ambergris. One note from seventeen fifty

1147
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:15,959
Speaker 1: three has this really long passage about recent and contemporary

1148
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:20,960
Speaker 1: culinary use of ambergris uh the annatyite. The annotators cite

1149
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 1: it to a curious lady, which I think is rad

1150
01:06:25,880 --> 01:06:29,560
Speaker 1: If if anyone ever forgets my name, feel free to

1151
01:06:29,600 --> 01:06:31,160
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, some curious lady.

1152
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you file that under l or c or

1153
01:06:35,280 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 2: lady kama a curious.

1154
01:06:40,160 --> 01:06:45,560
Speaker 1: That's that's that's a style guide question that h. But okay,

1155
01:06:45,600 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 1: So this curious lady uh says that it was previously

1156
01:06:49,720 --> 01:06:53,479
Speaker 1: the oh I can't French that the halgu of Queen

1157
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:58,680
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's court, the how gut the posh, the posh in

1158
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:04,040
Speaker 1: popular culinary thing that that word yeah, like a main

1159
01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:06,840
Speaker 1: ingredient in every course of a banquet, but especially on

1160
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:10,080
Speaker 1: all manner of meats, and furthermore used to excess by

1161
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:13,200
Speaker 1: the notorious Cardinal Wolsey of King Henry the eighths Court.

1162
01:07:14,160 --> 01:07:16,320
Speaker 1: He was the one who like couldn't get his marriage

1163
01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 1: and old so he was yeah anyway, And this curious

1164
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:23,600
Speaker 1: lady furthermore reported that she had had it herself as

1165
01:07:23,640 --> 01:07:27,479
Speaker 1: a seasoning on a baked pudding, and of all of

1166
01:07:27,720 --> 01:07:30,680
Speaker 1: what she just said, I believe that part for sure.

1167
01:07:32,960 --> 01:07:35,960
Speaker 2: That's a baked pudding. Putting in this context, did that

1168
01:07:36,040 --> 01:07:38,960
Speaker 2: mean like a like a dessert just generally some kind

1169
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:40,000
Speaker 2: of dessert.

1170
01:07:39,840 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: Share probably with probably the kind of thing that that

1171
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:45,040
Speaker 1: Annie was talking about, something with like like eggs and

1172
01:07:45,080 --> 01:07:48,160
Speaker 1: cream and maybe bread or ground almonds as a kind

1173
01:07:48,200 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 1: of thickening base, and then and then baked until it's

1174
01:07:52,080 --> 01:07:55,000
Speaker 1: basically like a custard. Yeah. A lot of these, a

1175
01:07:55,040 --> 01:07:59,000
Speaker 1: lot of these recipes from these times, especially when when

1176
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:01,200
Speaker 1: I got to England, were for like cream based or

1177
01:08:01,240 --> 01:08:02,080
Speaker 1: egg based things.

1178
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:06,120
Speaker 2: Can I fill in a piece of context about Paradise regained?

1179
01:08:06,560 --> 01:08:09,560
Speaker 1: I would love you too, Yes, yeah, okay, So this is.

1180
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:11,520
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, sequel to Paradise Loss. So I

1181
01:08:11,520 --> 01:08:14,280
Speaker 2: was wondering in this story, like who's who's gonna eat

1182
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:16,519
Speaker 2: the grease amber steamed? Like who's this feast?

1183
01:08:16,520 --> 01:08:16,600
Speaker 3: For?

1184
01:08:17,160 --> 01:08:22,519
Speaker 2: It is for Jesus, it's Satan. It's in the temptation

1185
01:08:22,680 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 2: and the wilderness scene from like the Gospels, So like

1186
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:28,680
Speaker 2: after Jesus gets baptized, he goes out in the wilderness

1187
01:08:28,680 --> 01:08:31,840
Speaker 2: to fast for I think it's forty days and and

1188
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:34,200
Speaker 2: Satan comes up to him and tries to tempt him, like, hey,

1189
01:08:34,240 --> 01:08:37,760
Speaker 2: stop fasting, eat this feast I've set out before you,

1190
01:08:38,040 --> 01:08:41,679
Speaker 2: And Jesus says, no, I judge these treats to be tricks.

1191
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:46,920
Speaker 1: Wow, just tricks.

1192
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:50,800
Speaker 2: After all, it seems funny that Satan would be like,

1193
01:08:50,840 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 2: what would Jesus really like? And He's like, yeah, Ambergrease,

1194
01:08:56,240 --> 01:08:56,880
Speaker 2: I've got it.

1195
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:02,200
Speaker 1: But right, but again Milton is talking about like like

1196
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:08,360
Speaker 1: specifically Satan was steaming these meats with the ambergreas. Mmm.

1197
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:13,080
Speaker 2: Oh oh okay, I see your Yeah, I read that wrong. Yeah,

1198
01:09:13,120 --> 01:09:15,000
Speaker 2: so it's it's like perfuming the meats.

1199
01:09:15,120 --> 01:09:16,599
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1200
01:09:16,920 --> 01:09:19,679
Speaker 3: But also there could have been a layer of temptation

1201
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:25,000
Speaker 3: here because another fun sound effect we have on our show.

1202
01:09:25,920 --> 01:09:29,760
Speaker 3: It comes up every time a food is an aphrodisiac,

1203
01:09:30,400 --> 01:09:35,639
Speaker 3: and this one was, at least according to Italian author,

1204
01:09:35,680 --> 01:09:38,960
Speaker 3: amongst a lot of other stuff Casanova, who allegedly added

1205
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:42,000
Speaker 3: it to chocolate moose to use it as an afrodisiac

1206
01:09:42,280 --> 01:09:45,320
Speaker 3: in the seventeen hundred, So you know, could have been

1207
01:09:45,520 --> 01:09:47,160
Speaker 3: something else going on as well.

1208
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:51,400
Speaker 2: Have y'all noticed on Savor, like, is there a pattern

1209
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:55,439
Speaker 2: to the types of food ingredients that are believed to

1210
01:09:55,479 --> 01:09:58,839
Speaker 2: be to have afrodiziak qualities. Is it kind of random

1211
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:02,519
Speaker 2: or is it more like delicacies and luxury items or

1212
01:10:03,280 --> 01:10:06,240
Speaker 2: strange foods that are considered strange in a certain time

1213
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:08,240
Speaker 2: and place, Like, what is there a pattern at all?

1214
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:11,639
Speaker 1: No, it's all foods. It's all foods ever have been

1215
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:15,559
Speaker 1: by someone at some point considered an afrodisiac.

1216
01:10:15,800 --> 01:10:20,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, we only have we found one instance where something

1217
01:10:20,720 --> 01:10:23,479
Speaker 3: was considered not so far, we still have a lot

1218
01:10:23,520 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 3: of topics to come.

1219
01:10:24,400 --> 01:10:26,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it let us right, and it was let

1220
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:32,920
Speaker 1: us but lettuce Hold your laughter, Joe, because lettuce also

1221
01:10:33,000 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 1: has been cited as an aphrodisiac. So, okay, I don't

1222
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:43,360
Speaker 1: know what we're to take from this. I think it

1223
01:10:43,439 --> 01:10:44,280
Speaker 1: might have been a joke.

1224
01:10:44,320 --> 01:10:47,559
Speaker 3: I think it was kind of satire, those like fourteen

1225
01:10:47,640 --> 01:10:49,280
Speaker 3: hundred jokes I can't really pick up on.

1226
01:10:49,439 --> 01:10:58,080
Speaker 1: So he could have just been choking. Okay, Oh yeah, Yeah.

1227
01:10:58,200 --> 01:11:01,439
Speaker 1: I believe that there's been some sign topic inquiry into

1228
01:11:01,479 --> 01:11:04,439
Speaker 1: this in modern times concerning not lettuce, but uh but

1229
01:11:05,080 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: ambergris Uh. I feel like I kept reading, I didn't

1230
01:11:08,160 --> 01:11:11,040
Speaker 1: look into it, so I didn't like find the scientific paper,

1231
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:13,280
Speaker 1: but I saw in a lot of places people refer

1232
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:16,400
Speaker 1: to some study that had been done in rats where

1233
01:11:17,400 --> 01:11:20,280
Speaker 1: it made them randy. Yeah, so I don't.

1234
01:11:20,120 --> 01:11:23,880
Speaker 3: Know, Okay, Yeah, I feel like a lot of the

1235
01:11:23,880 --> 01:11:28,240
Speaker 3: big ones we talk about are usually meat somehow like

1236
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:29,160
Speaker 3: animal related.

1237
01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: But it is everything, Lauren is correct.

1238
01:11:31,320 --> 01:11:34,800
Speaker 3: It is like pretty much every episode like oh yeah,

1239
01:11:35,120 --> 01:11:36,240
Speaker 3: at some point.

1240
01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:51,160
Speaker 1: Someone thought this was an aftertas gag. Okay, going back

1241
01:11:51,200 --> 01:11:55,519
Speaker 1: to our amber grease is food timeline, okay. So so

1242
01:11:55,920 --> 01:11:58,719
Speaker 1: some of these recipes even eventually made it to America.

1243
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: Amelia Simmons, who we talk about a lot on Savre,

1244
01:12:02,320 --> 01:12:06,280
Speaker 1: included in her seventeen ninety six book American Cookery, which

1245
01:12:06,360 --> 01:12:09,560
Speaker 1: was the first American cookbook actually published in America, a

1246
01:12:09,720 --> 01:12:12,240
Speaker 1: recipe for a kind of like whipped cream and egg

1247
01:12:12,280 --> 01:12:17,040
Speaker 1: white foam dessert sweetened with sugar and flavored with wine, lemon, peel,

1248
01:12:17,160 --> 01:12:22,160
Speaker 1: and musk or ambergris termed their amber gum, which stemmed

1249
01:12:22,160 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: from earlier English recipes for similar dishes.

1250
01:12:24,600 --> 01:12:28,759
Speaker 3: In eighteen twenty six, influential and instrumental French chef billiat

1251
01:12:28,760 --> 01:12:33,520
Speaker 3: Severan recommended people mix about a shillings worth of ambergris

1252
01:12:33,600 --> 01:12:36,200
Speaker 3: in a mixture of sugar and chocolate for a tonic

1253
01:12:36,360 --> 01:12:39,160
Speaker 3: that was in the vein of coffee but wouldn't leave

1254
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:40,680
Speaker 3: you over caffeinated.

1255
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:44,559
Speaker 1: Yeah. He described this hot chocolate as the chocolate of

1256
01:12:44,600 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: the afflicted. He recommended this mixture to quote any man

1257
01:12:48,400 --> 01:12:50,599
Speaker 1: who is drunk too deeply of the cup of pleasure,

1258
01:12:50,800 --> 01:12:53,760
Speaker 1: who finds his wit temporarily losing its edge, or who

1259
01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:57,839
Speaker 1: is tortured by a fixed idea. Oh wow, that's very Richard,

1260
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:02,679
Speaker 1: by a fixed idea. Wow. Oh, I like that. We're

1261
01:13:02,680 --> 01:13:08,759
Speaker 1: bringing back the laxative concept. Together. It all goes around.

1262
01:13:10,800 --> 01:13:12,439
Speaker 2: Oh boy, get that idea out.

1263
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:19,479
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the aforementioned Moby Dick, published in eighteen fifty one,

1264
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:23,560
Speaker 1: Melville does talk about culinary uses of ambergris or ishmael

1265
01:13:23,280 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 1: I should say really in like sugar medicine drops in

1266
01:13:27,680 --> 01:13:31,600
Speaker 1: Turkish cooking, and as a flavoring in claret wine specifically

1267
01:13:33,479 --> 01:13:36,960
Speaker 1: so Yeah. As with many other flavorings, it mostly fell

1268
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:41,320
Speaker 1: out of fashion when tropical spices and seasonings like cinnamon

1269
01:13:41,439 --> 01:13:45,640
Speaker 1: and vanilla became more available and less expensive. By the

1270
01:13:45,680 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: time chemists synthesized one of those scent compounds in the

1271
01:13:49,280 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 1: mid nineteen hundreds, Amberger was pretty much relegated to perfume.

1272
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:57,280
Speaker 3: Yes, but as Lauren said, there are people doing stuff

1273
01:13:57,320 --> 01:14:00,200
Speaker 3: with it still, like in cocktails. I especially saw lot

1274
01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 3: of like beverage applications, so it is still around, but yeah,

1275
01:14:05,800 --> 01:14:07,040
Speaker 3: not very common.

1276
01:14:07,520 --> 01:14:10,400
Speaker 2: I would say, are the two of you interested in

1277
01:14:10,479 --> 01:14:13,680
Speaker 2: trying ambergree flavored foods or if you have? If you have,

1278
01:14:13,880 --> 01:14:15,880
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know what the like the

1279
01:14:16,120 --> 01:14:20,120
Speaker 2: ethical issues with ambergris are that would make it, like

1280
01:14:20,400 --> 01:14:23,320
Speaker 2: why it is subject to you know, being a controlled

1281
01:14:23,360 --> 01:14:26,439
Speaker 2: animal product in some ways, I would assume that has

1282
01:14:26,479 --> 01:14:28,840
Speaker 2: something to do with like trying to discourage poaching or

1283
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:32,519
Speaker 2: or harming of sperm whales, even though it does seem

1284
01:14:32,560 --> 01:14:34,960
Speaker 2: to be from what I can tell, generally collected not

1285
01:14:35,200 --> 01:14:37,840
Speaker 2: by killing the whale in a modern sense, but just

1286
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:41,640
Speaker 2: like found on a beach. But but yeah, so like

1287
01:14:41,680 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 2: if you put those concerns aside, whatever ethical concerns you have, like,

1288
01:14:44,880 --> 01:14:47,880
Speaker 2: would you be interested in trying it in food?

1289
01:14:48,520 --> 01:14:53,120
Speaker 1: Absolutely? I will, I will say I do have.

1290
01:14:54,560 --> 01:14:56,960
Speaker 3: I'd like I'm ready to try anything, but I am

1291
01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:00,679
Speaker 3: sensitive to really bad smells. Like one of the only

1292
01:15:00,760 --> 01:15:06,879
Speaker 3: times I've almost vomited in high school during our anatomy

1293
01:15:06,920 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 3: class was the smell of the al pellet. I didn't

1294
01:15:10,000 --> 01:15:14,040
Speaker 3: care about anything else. It sounds like ambergreen will be fine,

1295
01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:18,120
Speaker 3: but that's my only concern. I want to try it.

1296
01:15:18,360 --> 01:15:21,080
Speaker 3: I don't know how the smell go. I'm also the

1297
01:15:21,080 --> 01:15:24,320
Speaker 3: same with Darian, which we have long been waiting to

1298
01:15:24,360 --> 01:15:27,280
Speaker 3: try the smell. I don't know, but I want to

1299
01:15:27,280 --> 01:15:27,720
Speaker 3: try it.

1300
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:28,519
Speaker 1: How about you?

1301
01:15:28,840 --> 01:15:32,040
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm super intrigued. I mean, I think I

1302
01:15:32,040 --> 01:15:34,320
Speaker 2: would want to figure out first, like what is the

1303
01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:36,760
Speaker 2: deal with like why is it illegal and discouraged and

1304
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:38,640
Speaker 2: all that is? Like, you know, if you were to

1305
01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:40,880
Speaker 2: actually buy some of it, is there a chance this

1306
01:15:41,000 --> 01:15:43,200
Speaker 2: is being like actually, like is a sperm whale being

1307
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:46,120
Speaker 2: killed in order to retrieve this or something?

1308
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:48,559
Speaker 1: I think it really is what you were saying earlier.

1309
01:15:48,600 --> 01:15:52,400
Speaker 1: Where does people? Where does illegal people? Just or the

1310
01:15:52,400 --> 01:15:56,599
Speaker 1: government entity wants to discourage people from killing whims, which

1311
01:15:56,640 --> 01:15:58,720
Speaker 1: is cool, which is great. I'm super into that. But

1312
01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:02,240
Speaker 1: that's why an or national law. It's basically like, yeah,

1313
01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: it's up to you.

1314
01:16:03,120 --> 01:16:05,360
Speaker 3: Isn't it Also like not in a lot of places

1315
01:16:05,400 --> 01:16:08,719
Speaker 3: it's not. There aren't laws about it as a food

1316
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:12,000
Speaker 3: because they don't necessarily consider it as a food. I

1317
01:16:12,040 --> 01:16:14,080
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of places where they don't even

1318
01:16:14,760 --> 01:16:15,839
Speaker 3: they haven't even thought.

1319
01:16:15,640 --> 01:16:19,920
Speaker 1: Of that part. The FDA has generally recognized it. It's

1320
01:16:19,960 --> 01:16:27,280
Speaker 1: safe though, So yes.

1321
01:16:25,040 --> 01:16:27,599
Speaker 2: Well in that case, yeah, I mean this, this poop

1322
01:16:27,640 --> 01:16:31,640
Speaker 2: is mighty, mighty interesting to me, and I would I

1323
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:37,439
Speaker 2: would taste of the copper lith absolutely. Now I wonder

1324
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:41,400
Speaker 2: when you get it. From what I understand, I think

1325
01:16:41,560 --> 01:16:44,880
Speaker 2: more often it would be sold maybe this is more

1326
01:16:44,920 --> 01:16:47,040
Speaker 2: in the in the sense of a perfumery, but more

1327
01:16:47,080 --> 01:16:49,320
Speaker 2: often it would be sold like as a tincture or

1328
01:16:49,360 --> 01:16:52,479
Speaker 2: something like that. I don't know how easy it is

1329
01:16:52,520 --> 01:16:54,639
Speaker 2: to just like get a hunk of it too, as

1330
01:16:54,800 --> 01:16:57,160
Speaker 2: as you were talking about in Kemp's story, like shave

1331
01:16:57,240 --> 01:17:00,439
Speaker 2: off pieces like it's like it's a truffle that might

1332
01:17:00,439 --> 01:17:02,200
Speaker 2: be harder to get. I'm not quite sure.

1333
01:17:02,439 --> 01:17:05,920
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure either. I didn't really look into it.

1334
01:17:06,360 --> 01:17:10,000
Speaker 1: I read some stories where people were talking about receiving

1335
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:12,360
Speaker 1: it as a tincture and some stories where people had

1336
01:17:12,400 --> 01:17:15,679
Speaker 1: like a rock of it, And so I'm not without

1337
01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:18,840
Speaker 1: without doing more research, I can't. I can't tell you.

1338
01:17:20,040 --> 01:17:25,200
Speaker 2: Well, Lauren, Annie, I have so greatly enjoyed you joining

1339
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:27,679
Speaker 2: me on the show today, and I'm really really grateful

1340
01:17:28,240 --> 01:17:30,360
Speaker 2: that you took time out of your busy schedules to

1341
01:17:31,520 --> 01:17:33,880
Speaker 2: join us here today. I know, I know, we're all

1342
01:17:33,960 --> 01:17:36,160
Speaker 2: very busy around here, so it really means a lot.

1343
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:39,479
Speaker 2: I greatly appreciate it. And hey, where where can people

1344
01:17:39,680 --> 01:17:42,439
Speaker 2: find your work to hear more of what you do?

1345
01:17:42,800 --> 01:17:47,040
Speaker 3: Oh, you can find us on the Savor Podcast, where

1346
01:17:47,040 --> 01:17:50,680
Speaker 3: we do cover a bunch of things that I think

1347
01:17:50,720 --> 01:17:53,519
Speaker 3: are just in line with stuff to blow your mind,

1348
01:17:53,640 --> 01:17:58,040
Speaker 3: including fictional foods. Any kind of marine biology is always

1349
01:17:58,040 --> 01:18:01,960
Speaker 3: interesting when we talk about like scallops, what's going on there?

1350
01:18:02,120 --> 01:18:07,639
Speaker 1: Lobsters low so, what is going on there?

1351
01:18:07,680 --> 01:18:08,959
Speaker 2: What's going on exactly?

1352
01:18:10,439 --> 01:18:11,519
Speaker 1: They're so cool?

1353
01:18:12,280 --> 01:18:21,360
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes, yes, we have a lot of topics

1354
01:18:21,360 --> 01:18:23,320
Speaker 3: that I think have great crossovers. So you can find

1355
01:18:23,400 --> 01:18:27,639
Speaker 3: us there, and we are on all the social media's related.

1356
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:30,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and

1357
01:18:30,720 --> 01:18:34,040
Speaker 1: Instagram at saver pod. As we say at the end

1358
01:18:34,080 --> 01:18:35,680
Speaker 1: of every episode, which is why that was so sang

1359
01:18:35,760 --> 01:18:38,799
Speaker 1: song you and I just said it. But yeah yeah,

1360
01:18:38,840 --> 01:18:42,240
Speaker 1: also right, yeah, Annie's on a show on a show

1361
01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:45,839
Speaker 1: called a Stuff Mom never told you. That's a podcast

1362
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:48,599
Speaker 1: about like intersectional feminism. And I've got a short form

1363
01:18:48,640 --> 01:18:52,920
Speaker 1: show called brain Stuff with general science and history that

1364
01:18:53,360 --> 01:18:57,880
Speaker 1: Joe used to write for the YouTube version of back

1365
01:18:57,880 --> 01:18:59,080
Speaker 1: in the days when we did that.

1366
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:01,800
Speaker 2: That was some time ago. That was an that was

1367
01:19:01,840 --> 01:19:10,559
Speaker 2: an Ambergris seasoning lifetime ago. Absolutely well, once again, I

1368
01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:13,760
Speaker 2: really appreciate you joining me today and it has been

1369
01:19:13,920 --> 01:19:17,479
Speaker 2: such pleasure talking to you as always, you know.

1370
01:19:17,880 --> 01:19:21,720
Speaker 1: This was thank you any any any time we can

1371
01:19:21,840 --> 01:19:23,920
Speaker 1: talk about squid beaks and whale poop.

1372
01:19:24,320 --> 01:19:31,479
Speaker 2: Yep, we're there, all right, let's see to wrap things

1373
01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:34,400
Speaker 2: up here. Hey, if you're new to the show, Stuff

1374
01:19:34,439 --> 01:19:38,080
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, kind

1375
01:19:38,080 --> 01:19:42,559
Speaker 2: of science and culture intersecting topics, where core episodes publish

1376
01:19:42,720 --> 01:19:47,040
Speaker 2: every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday of each

1377
01:19:47,040 --> 01:19:49,479
Speaker 2: week we read back listener mail and I'll give you

1378
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:51,280
Speaker 2: the email address if you want to get in touch

1379
01:19:51,320 --> 01:19:54,920
Speaker 2: in just a moment. On Wednesdays, we run a short

1380
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:58,559
Speaker 2: scripted episode called The Artifact or the Monster Fact or

1381
01:19:58,600 --> 01:20:03,280
Speaker 2: even new forms of short scripted episodes are emerging. On Fridays,

1382
01:20:03,320 --> 01:20:07,280
Speaker 2: we do a show called Weird House Cinema where my

1383
01:20:07,360 --> 01:20:10,759
Speaker 2: co host Robert Lamb and I just watch weird movies

1384
01:20:10,920 --> 01:20:14,760
Speaker 2: and talk about them, well known or obscure, good or bad,

1385
01:20:14,880 --> 01:20:17,320
Speaker 2: all types of movies, as long as there's something strange

1386
01:20:17,320 --> 01:20:21,639
Speaker 2: about them, Let's see huge. Thanks as always to our

1387
01:20:21,800 --> 01:20:25,400
Speaker 2: excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to

1388
01:20:25,400 --> 01:20:27,920
Speaker 2: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

1389
01:20:28,000 --> 01:20:30,360
Speaker 2: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1390
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:32,639
Speaker 2: or just to say hello, you can email us at

1391
01:20:32,760 --> 01:20:43,679
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1392
01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:46,680
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1393
01:20:46,760 --> 01:20:49,519
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1394
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:52,439
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1395
01:21:01,040 --> 01:21:04,760
Speaker 1: Plant is with Rat Rat Rat Rat