WEBVTT - A Delicacy from Realms of Insufferable Fetor 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.279 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.639 name is Joe McCormick. I would normally be joined on 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.439 Mike by my co host Robert Lamb, but Rob is 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.160 out on the day that we're recording this, so instead 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.200 I'm being joined by a couple of friends from here 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:33.520 in the Stuff Network. Today on the podcast, we have 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:39.640 Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum specifically well of many different projects. 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:41.879 But I would say, in your capacity today, you are 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:46.400 coming to us as ambassadors of the show Saver. What's 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:47.680 going on? Annie and Lauren? 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:50.680 Oh, I have no idea. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.240 Well, thank you so much for having us on, yes, 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.280 and also calling us ambassadors of Savor. 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.400 That makes me feel very official like. 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.760 That, I guess that makes it sound like you're like 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.880 a detached representatives. You are Savor. The two of you 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.680 are Savor, and that is all Safer is, along. 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:13.080 With our super producers Dylan and Andrew. Yes. But but yeah, 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:15.319 so we have this podcast called Save. It's about the 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.839 science and history and culture of foods and drinks and 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.800 other assorted materials related to those things. And yeah, so 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.039 when when you asked us to come on and talk 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:32.600 about this subject. We were like, yeah, okay, right, uh well. 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.160 Wait before we get into today's topic, just just give 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.080 us like the mall food court sample platter of savor. 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.320 What are a couple of things you've talked about recently. 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:43.480 Oh, good question. I jettison all of that from my 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.200 brain the second that I'm done with it. We've got 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:52.560 an episode coming out today about an early American cookbook 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.400 writer by the name of Melinda Russell, whose story was 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.840 almost lost to time. She was a free black woman 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.480 living during the era of the Civil War, and historians 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.240 recently like, on earth this cookbook that she wrote, that's 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.800 really changing the way that we think about black Southern 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.320 cooking in the United States during that time, because for 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.840 a long time, the kind of air of thought is like, oh, 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.960 that's poverty cooking, and it wasn't, or it's more nuanced 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.120 and complicated than that. And so just like from this 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.880 very normal human person's life, it's just an amazing gift 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:30.080 of historical knowledge and what a great story. But you know, 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.480 sometimes we're just talking about artichokes or whatever it is. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.840 The sea urchins. They wear hats show. Lauren told me about. 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:39.600 This sea urchins wear hats. 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:42.600 Sea urchins love wearing hats. If you give them it 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.480 helps them shelter from stuff. And so if you give 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:48.399 them a little hat, they'll put it on their head. 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:50.600 What are their hats made of in nature? 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.200 Shells? Oh, seaweed maybe? Yeah. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.240 But I will also say we've been lucky to cross 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.960 over sometimes with stuff to blow your mind. Uh. 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.320 We had you on for one of our food fairy 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:05.360 tales once. 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:11.799 So yeah, yeah, did we talk about oh oh h 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:13.440 the poem Goblin Market. 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.400 Yeah, oh right, yeah that time that I was like, oh, 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:18.079 one of them many times and I was like, oh, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.120 is this one going to get hr called on me? 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:25.600 But it's a great poem. It's it's a little bit 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.560 it's a little bit more racy than I ever remember. 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.600 Well, that was a lot of fun, and I really 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:34.880 really appreciate you all joining me today. I think this 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:36.640 is going to be a lot of fun also. So 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.000 I was thinking about what would be great to talk 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:44.920 about with Annie and Lauren, and as a topic combining biology, literature, 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.560 and food history, I thought it would be great to 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:53.520 talk about the mysterious substance known as ambergrease and quick 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.600 roadmap for the listener. In the first half of the episode, 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.120 I'm going to talk about what this substance is and 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.200 what its biological origins are. And then in the second 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.760 half of the episode, Annie and Lauren are going to 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.320 take the lead on discussing this substance as food. So 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:13.560 pronunciation note at the top of the show, because this 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.640 is an audio format, the word ambergrease is spelled a 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:22.200 M B E R g rs and it's derived from French, 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.919 meaning I think it's a contraction of French, but it 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.240 comes from French for gray amber. So I think to 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.960 a French speaker it would be pronounced like ambergris. But 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.960 in English it seems everybody says the like a soft 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.599 pronunciation of the s, so it's like ambergrise or ambergrese. 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:41.840 I feel like I'm going to be saying ambergris because 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.880 I can't look at the word gris and pronounce the 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.040 s even though I don't know French. But for some reason, 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.640 that one in particular, my brain is just like, Nope. 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.680 Well, I appreciate that you'll be here to make me 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:58.440 feel small, but yeah, I'm going to do the s 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.440 as much as like, who knows, if we we pinball 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.120 back and forth. But to kick things off today, I 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:09.160 wanted to start with a bit of narrative from Moby Dick. 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.799 Oh yeah, comes up a lot. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:15.880 Moby Dick comes up a lot on Savor. 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.560 Yeah surprisingly, Oh yeah, it. 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:21.640 Does have a clam chowder chapter, doesn't it. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:25.040 It does. Yes, we talked about that. He got up 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:26.359 to all kinds of stuff in that book. 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:28.240 That's accurate. 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.719 You'd be surprised how many things that come up a 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.600 lot in Savor that you're like, well, I wouldn't have 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:38.080 associated this with food, but here I am. 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:40.960 That happens a lot. Actually, we've had Mobi Dick come 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.640 up several times on stuff to blow your mind. In 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.039 the past year or so. We did an episode on 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.120 whale spout on like what it is actually actually that 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.920 is ejected from the whales blowhole and like historical ideas 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.360 about that. And there's this wild chapter in Moby Dick 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.640 where he talks about how like, oh yeah, if you 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.840 get the whale spout on you, that'll like blind you 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:02.960 and burn your skin off and stuff like that. This 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.800 is not true or at least us, but yeah, Moby 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:09.880 Dick is great fun. So that's where I want to 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:14.080 start today. Herman Melville's novel, I would say, devotes not 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:18.640 one but two chapters to the subject of ambergrease, one 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.919 to its pursuit in a sort of narrative sense, and 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.000 then the other to what it means. So I want 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.640 to start by talking about chapter ninety one of Moby Dick, 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.839 called The Peaquad Meets the Rosebud. And this chapter begins 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.640 with a somewhat ominous epigraph from a seventeenth century English 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.479 author named Thomas Brown, and the epigraph reads, in vain, 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.799 it was to rake for amber grease in the paunch 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:51.719 of this leviathan insufferable feater, denying that inquiry. It's like 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:53.640 the saddest sentence I've ever read. 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.080 We don't use the word feeder enough anymore. 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:00.880 Yeah, we truly don't, so recap. In this chapter the 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.159 Whalers of the Peaquad, they cross paths on the open 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.400 Sea with another whaling ship, a French vessel with a 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:11.640 name that translates to the Rosebud, and it's ironically named 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.200 because before they reach the ship, Ishmael, the narrator notes 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.280 that the ship reeks of death. He says, it smells 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.440 like a city that has suffered the plague, and the 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.200 reason it smells so bad is that the boat is 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.640 towing what Ishmael calls a blasted whale quote. That is, 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.240 a whale that has died, unmolested on the sea and 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.080 so floated an unappropriated corpse. So not a whale killed 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.920 by the whalers, but a whale found dead on the water. 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.920 And in fact, when they approach the ship they discover 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.520 a second dead whale in tow quote, even more of 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.040 a nosegay than the first. I had to look up 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.200 that word. I think that means like a bouquet of 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:56.480 fragrant flowers. Nosegay. Yeah, So the whale appears to the 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:00.800 second whale especially, appears to have been shriveled by before 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.760 it died, meaning that in one sense, the whaler would 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:05.480 look at it and say this is a whale of 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.480 no value, like the experienced whaler sees a shriveled whale 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.720 and says there is no oil there to harvest, because 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.200 oil is primarily what the whalers are looking for. However, 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.720 to a different kind of whaler's experience, this does not 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.680 mean it is without value. One of the mates of 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.960 the peaquad, a rascally fellow named Stub goes aboard the 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.720 Rosebud and scams the captain of that ship into cutting 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.600 the dead whales loose by claiming that a blasted whale 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.000 is a source of deadly fever to any boat that 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.960 ropes it. So he scares them, they cut the whales loose, 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.520 and then once the con has succeeded, the Rosebud goes 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.679 its own way. And here I'm going to read from 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:50.400 Moby Dick quote whereupon Stub quickly pulled to the floating body, 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.640 and hailing the peaquad to give notice of his intentions, 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.360 had once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.199 Seizing his sharp boat spade, he came hinst an excavation 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.440 in the body, a little behind the side fin. You 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.040 would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:09.640 in the sea. And when at length his spade struck 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.439 against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:17.440 Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.920 boat's crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping their 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.360 chief and looking anxious as gold hunters, And all the 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:28.400 time numberless fowls were diving and ducking and screaming and 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:32.479 yelling and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed, 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:37.440 especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly, from out 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.720 of the very heart of this plague there stole a 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.360 faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:49.000 bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.600 will flow into and then along with another, without it 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.640 all blending with it. For a time, I have it, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.599 I have it, cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:04.400 the sub terranean regions a purse, a purse. Dropping his spade, 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.600 he thrust both hands in and drew out handfuls of 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.800 something that looked like ripe windsor soap, or rich modeled 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:16.400 old cheese, very unctuous and savory, withal you might easily 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:18.679 dent it with your thumb. It is of a hue 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:22.280 between yellow and ash color. And this, good friends, is 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.960 amber grease, worth a gold guineaan ounce to any druggist. 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:30.760 Some six handfuls were obtained, but more was unavoidably lost 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:33.079 in the sea, and still more perhaps might have been 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.920 secured were it not for impatient Ahab's loud command to 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.360 Stub to desist and come on board, else the ship 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:41.600 would bid them goodbye. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.079 Oh Captain Ahab so impatient? Yeah he is. 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.000 Really he's not very nice, is he. It's even worse 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.679 later when there's a ship that comes by toward the 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.880 end that's like, we've lost people overboard, will you help us? 0:10:54.920 --> 0:11:01.400 And he's like, no, you're seen Page Master. 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.600 There's a whole section with Captain am and he's a 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:10.240 real not nice guy in that. Shout out to people 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:11.280 who've seen Page Master. 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:14.280 I saw it when I was a kid. What was 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:16.400 the deal with that? It was like the kid makes 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.320 friends with books and one of them is like a 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.640 Frankenstein and one's a pirate. 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:26.240 Yeah. Leonard Dnimoy is the horror section with Pee Goldbergers Fantasy, 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:31.440 Patrick Stewart's Adventure. They like are trying to get down 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:33.320 to the library. He's trying to get a library card, 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.400 but they run into Moby Dick and Captain Ahab and 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.200 he justus essentially like I want this whale. I don't 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.680 care what it's to all of you anyway. 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.679 In character, yeah, yeah. 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:46.520 In character exactly. 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.239 Yeah. 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:51.719 All right, So anyway, that's the chapter where they get 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.440 the ambergrease and then the next chapter ninety two is 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:58.760 just called Ambergrease, and it's one of the narrator Ishmael's 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:02.520 characteristic essay is on the spiritual meaning of some piece 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.320 of whale anatomy, in this case, the irony that such 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:10.160 a refined and expensive material, worth more than gold by 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.280 weight in some markets, prized by the richest of the rich, 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:19.960 would have such a revolting, carnally putrid origin. And he 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.600 goes on to say at one point, quote who would 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.679 think then that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:29.320 themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.239 a sick whale? Yet so it is by some ambergrease 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.679 is supposed to be the cause, and by others the 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.040 effect of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.920 such a dyspepsia, it were hard to say, unless by 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:46.080 administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills and 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.920 then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:54.440 blasting rocks. So there's a poop joke in Moby Dick. 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.080 Because Brandreth's pills. I had to look this up. Where 0:12:57.360 --> 0:12:59.839 As I suspected a nineteenth century laxative. 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:00.319 Mm. 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.599 And I don't know what the quality of laxatives in 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:05.920 the nineteenth century was, but I imagine it was like 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:07.320 real good stuff. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:14.120 Probably not subtle, I'm guessing not subtle. Yeah, uh yeah, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:14.560 so yeah. 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.640 So the character Ishmael here is the narrator is identifying 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:22.040 ambergrease as some kind of fecal mass or other intestinal 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.200 blockage within the hindgut of the whale, which would be 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:27.400 cleared in the same way that humans take medication to 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:32.160 clear constipation. Interesting that Melville presents this theory of the 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.920 origin of ambergresse as non controversial, even though for the 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.880 past like one thousand years, that explanation would have been 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:43.079 highly disputed. And we'll come back to the physical origins 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.760 of ambergress in a bit. But one thing that this 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.199 chapter gets into that is absolutely true is that high 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:54.079 quality ambergrease is, and for hundreds of years has been 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.040 extremely valuable if you can find the right buyer. It 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.559 was historically known as floating gold and was sought primarily 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.559 for its value in the manufacture of perfumes. But that 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.320 wasn't the only thing. I had a bunch of other 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:12.480 uses as well. Uses in medicine and in some cases 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.480 as a culinary delicacy to be used in food and drink. 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:19.320 And Annie and Lauren, that is why I wanted you 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:21.640 to join me on the show today to talk about 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:22.560 eating whale poop. 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.480 Thank you, We are honored and we're ready. 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:28.680 Yeah. 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.840 We usually talk about much smaller poops on our show, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.160 made by bacteria and yeast, So this is a treat. 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.120 Yes. Were you telling me just a minute ago you 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:41.280 have a sound effect for like microbial poops. 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.760 Yeah, yeah, it goes and there's usually a little bit 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:47.440 of an echo behind it. But yeah, bacteria poop. 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.160 Anyway, here's a good place to mention a major source 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:55.400 that I was using going into this episode. I meant 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:57.640 to finish the book before we talked. I was actually 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.280 not quite able to. But it's a very interesting book 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.479 called Floating Gold, A Natural and Unnatural History of Ambergrease 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:09.080 by Christopher Kemp from University of Chicago Press, twenty twelve. 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:14.200 And this thing is full of fascinating anecdotes about the 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:18.280 history of the ambergrease trade, both both long ago and 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.520 much more recent, and just as one example of the 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:26.560 ambergrease trade at a particular time, Kemp explains in the 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:28.840 prologue of his book that at the time he was writing, 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.360 ambergrease was traded on the global market at up to 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:38.000 twenty dollars per gram, depending on the quality, and for comparison, 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.080 at the same time, gold was trading at about thirty 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:43.720 dollars per gram, so about two thirds of the price 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:48.680 of gold by weight. Yeah, and there were times and 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.080 places when ambergres was worth more than gold by weight. 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.480 But even at this modern price, a chunk of high 0:15:55.520 --> 0:16:00.000 quality ambergrease weighing like fifty pounds, which is not necessarily implausible, 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.200 could be worth something like half a million dollars. So 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.120 given this, when people think they've got a lead on 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:11.920 some ambergrease and they figure out what it would be 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.080 worth if it were the real thing, they sometimes become 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:19.560 extremely avaricious and territorial. And one amazing thing this book 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:24.360 does is document various ill fated ambergrese harvesting frenzies from history. 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.920 It seems that most ambergres that enters the market in 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.640 the modern period is not harvested directly from the body 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:34.960 of a dead whale, like stubbed did and moby Dick, 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.680 though sometimes it is. As one example of this happening 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.600 in the real world. Kemp tells the story of a 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.560 man named Louis Smith from Tasmania who in the year 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.320 eighteen ninety one, came across the body of a dead 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.000 sperm whale floating on the water. He towed it to 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:54.480 the beach like you do, yeah, and then collected a 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.680 one hundred and eighty pound boulder of ambergrease from its intestines. 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.760 He claimed aimed by literally cutting the whale open and 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:06.879 crawling inside its digestive track to retrieve it. I would 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.280 say this is not recommended behavior. I think you could 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.280 easily suffocate and die doing this. 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.119 Yeah. No, don't do that. What a way to go. 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:15.400 Important safety tip. 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.040 That's another thing in Moby Dick is like the perils 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:21.720 of dyeing inside a whale carcass are fully explored. There's 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.560 one whole part where character like falls inside a whale 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:26.639 and the whale starts to sink. Is horrifying. 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:29.480 Yeah, that sounds awful. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:36.080 But according to a newspaper article from the time, Louis 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:39.600 Smith's ambergrease harvesting would have paid off because the chunk 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.119 he came home with was estimated by several old whalers 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.440 to be worth about ten thousand pounds. I guess I 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.760 don't know what that ther relevant currency is there. If 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.000 that's British pounds or Australian pounds, that'd be a separate thing. 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.520 The pound whatever the pounds were used in Tasmania at 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:57.480 the time, and that would have been the year eighteen 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.880 ninety one. So this is a sizeable, very very valuable hull. 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.680 But like I said, most ambergrease is not collected from 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:09.400 a dead whale. Instead, it takes the form of flotsam, 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:14.119 strange hunks of material that float on the surface of 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.119 the ocean, sometimes for years or even decades, before eventually 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.159 washing up on a beach somewhere and being found. And 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.680 so a lot of these ambergrease frenzies occur when somebody 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:32.200 finds a weird, unidentifiable mass of something on a beach 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:35.800 and then people get the idea that it's ambergrease. 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.240 Yeah, they're like, this large rock looking thing that is 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.120 kind of floaty and kind of greasy might be worth 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.480 a half a million dollars. Yeah, let's find out exactly. 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.800 Well, you know, I was thinking it's similar to how 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.760 it's similar to those daily mail articles that come up 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.320 like it seems about four times a day, where it's like, 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.359 somebody found a carcass of some animal on a beach, 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.520 it's a sea monster. And so I think the equivalent 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:05.440 here is somebody found a mass of some unidentified organic 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.560 or inorganic material on a beach. It's ambergrease. 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.199 Yeah, either monsters or ambergrese, you know. 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.320 Anyway. So one example of these like frenzies is described 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.399 in the very first thing in Camp's book. It's in 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.639 the prologue where he talks about an event from September 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.920 two thousand and eight in a place called Breaker Bay, 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:29.320 which is near Wellington, New Zealand, where a weird off 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.960 white object described as sort of the color of dirty 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.760 snow and about the size of a forty four gallon 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:40.399 drum washed up on the shore and people had different 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.040 theories about what it was, but eventually a rumor started 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.600 that it was ambergrease, which if true, would mean it 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.120 could be worth about ten million dollars in total. Because 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:55.560 this was a huge mass, so people started people started 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.840 carving off pieces of it. They would like go home 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.320 and get gardening tools and then go back to the 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.240 object and hack off pieces, carry a piece away in 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.359 a sling made out of a bed sheet, thinking that 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.160 they were going to be rich. But within three days 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.359 the mass was completely gone, and once the material was 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:17.840 actually analyzed it turned out to be drum roll tallow 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:23.760 aka lard. It was a large mass of animal fat 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.600 that had probably somehow like fallen off of a ship 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.239 or broken out of its storage drum. We don't know 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:31.119 exactly where it came from, but it was it was 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.600 like lard, and the Wellington Regional Council was begging citizens 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:39.239 not to wash the lard down their drains, which is 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:41.880 generally but you don't want to put animal fat down 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:42.720 your drains at all. 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.439 No, no, not a forty four gallon drum worth all 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.400 at the same time across the city. Wow. Yeah, equally gross, 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:51.640 but way less valuable. 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.120 And there were other frenzies like this. There was the 0:20:55.240 --> 0:21:00.360 nineteen thirty four Ambergrease craze in a place called Billinas, California, 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:05.359 where after people found weird masses of stuff on the beach, 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.719 they started concluding that this was ambergrease. Like that there 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.119 was ambergrease washing ashore. People went to go get it. 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:14.320 And then actually they found out that these were like 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:19.119 congealed chunks of sewage bonded with sewer cleaning chemicals. I 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:21.440 think locally the sewers had just been cleaned out with 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:25.320 some kind of chemical formula. It made all these like 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:28.800 white chunks that got washed out to see and then 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:32.280 brought in. But despite the fact that there are these 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.320 crazes for these like things that are not actually ambergress, 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.040 many people successfully make a lot of money by finding 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.320 real ambergresse on the beach and connecting with the buyer. 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:46.040 And documents throughout this book that a lot of people 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.119 involved in the ambergrease trade are very squirrely about talking 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.320 to interviewers and do not want to give away too 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.720 many details about their methods. But he does end up 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.000 talking to quite a few people who in the book 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.959 who open up and does find out things, But early 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:04.080 on a lot of the interviews are just like people 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.919 who don't want to talk to him, and he realizes 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.679 it's because, like, well, if they're people who you know, 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:11.840 are used to combing beaches for amber grease, they don't 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.320 want to like give away their good spots or they'll 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:16.640 have other people coming in on their fines. 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:19.800 Sure. Yeah. He said in an interview with a Hakai 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:22.760 magazine that when he brought it up quote, it was 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:25.760 like he had farted audibly. 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.080 Yeah. He describes a lot of just like dead silence 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:29.760 on the phone. 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.640 Some people just hang up on him. Yeah, like oh 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:36.280 I'm getting another call. Click. 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:51.720 So at this point I would say, like, I want 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.080 to be able to picture a piece of ambergrease. We 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.000