Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: latest episode of Criminalia. For this season, we're exploring the
Speaker 1: lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady
Speaker 1: poisoners throughout history. I'm Maria Try and I'm Holly Fry
Speaker 1: and today we have a special guest with us, Deborah Blum.
Speaker 1: Deborah is amazing and you've probably heard of her if
Speaker 1: you follow Poison at All. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning
Speaker 1: science journalist. She is the author of six books. She
Speaker 1: is also now the director of the night Science Journalism
Speaker 1: program at M I T. And we worship her. So
Speaker 1: we have light resume there, nothing to check the box
Speaker 1: at the watch. But we have her here with us
Speaker 1: today because she is the author of the New York
Speaker 1: Times notable book Poison Squad and the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook. Deborah, welcome. Do you want to
Speaker 1: add anything to let us know who you are? Our
Speaker 1: poison expert extraordinaire here, Like, just overwhelmed by how nice
Speaker 1: you guys are. Really a pleasure to be here, and
Speaker 1: you know you're cover so many of my favorite subjects.
Speaker 1: It's actually fun for me not to be talking about
Speaker 1: how to run a remote fellowship program in the time
Speaker 1: of and I imagine so talking about how to kill
Speaker 1: people and other things that are more interested about arsenic symptoms. Listen, Love,
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk to you about some arsenic You are,
Speaker 1: of course, very well known as a journalist, and your
Speaker 1: love of science has driven so much of your work.
Speaker 1: Will you talk about how you ended up writing about science, science, history,
Speaker 1: and specifically poison, George, that's great territory for me to
Speaker 1: cover and and you know, just stopped me. I grew
Speaker 1: up in the South and Louisiana and Georgia, so I'm
Speaker 1: perfectly capable of going on about this stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: for the until the end of time. So if I
Speaker 1: do this. So I'm a failed chemistry major. My dad
Speaker 1: was an entomologist and chemical ecologist at the University of Georgia.
Speaker 1: And I and I when I started college, I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a chemist. And I discovered the some of
Speaker 1: the things that make me a good journalist, you know,
Speaker 1: having a short attentions man, uh, not working at all
Speaker 1: in the laboratory. And and I was actually a danger
Speaker 1: to myself and others. I set my hair on fire
Speaker 1: in one memorable afternoon, and also at one point generated
Speaker 1: speaking of a poison, a toxic cloud that caused them
Speaker 1: to have to evacuate the freshman chemistry lab. Your very first,
Speaker 1: very early age, right. So, but you know, so I
Speaker 1: went into ournalism because for the same reason that I
Speaker 1: like chemistry, I like to know how things work. And
Speaker 1: then eventually realized, after several years of working for newspapers
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to combine both of those loves,
Speaker 1: my interest knowing how things work scientifically my interest in
Speaker 1: knowing how things work in society. Got a grad degree
Speaker 1: in science journalism with a specialty and environmental toxicology, and
Speaker 1: went off to be a science writer in California, which
Speaker 1: was where I won the bullets er. Although that was
Speaker 1: writing about primate research, right, um, but that launched me
Speaker 1: into writing books, and I continued to write books. I
Speaker 1: kept saying to my agent, I've had the same edge
Speaker 1: and ever since I started writing books, and she's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I kept saying, you know, I'd really like to write
Speaker 1: a book in which poisons are characters, because partly because
Speaker 1: I was grounded in chemistry, and partly because I like murder.
Speaker 1: I grew up with Agatha Christie and a lot of
Speaker 1: early murder mystery writer is Agatha Christian in particular, who
Speaker 1: really did a lot of work with poisons um because
Speaker 1: she had worked in a hospital dispensary in World War One.
Speaker 1: UM And and she kept saying, oh, no, Devra, I
Speaker 1: have a better idea, no deveror you could do this,
Speaker 1: and finally, or books, and She's like, I can't take
Speaker 1: it anymore. It's like the slow drip of torture. Let's
Speaker 1: let you write the book that you wanted, right and
Speaker 1: so and she said, um, just right, and and this
Speaker 1: I have had the same editor for the last three books.
Speaker 1: She said, don't write a proposal, just write a delicious
Speaker 1: little two page letter to your editor. And I thought
Speaker 1: that would be so interesting to sell a book writing
Speaker 1: two pages. So I wrote a proposal on the idea
Speaker 1: that I was not going to kill my husband but
Speaker 1: I could, and a lot of stuff that I knew
Speaker 1: about poisons at the time. And my editor at Penguin
Speaker 1: Press bought the book. And then this is my advice
Speaker 1: to everyone who listens to this focus. Don't be me
Speaker 1: and don't do this, because then I sold the book.
Speaker 1: I immediately spent the advance and and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what's this book really about. I can't write a book
Speaker 1: about how to poison my husband. That wouldn't be good.
Speaker 1: And so I then went into this frantic research that
Speaker 1: led me to find the two scientists who are at
Speaker 1: the heart of Poisoner's Handbook, which does indeed do what
Speaker 1: I had originally thought about, which was both tell their
Speaker 1: story but also look at poisons as the fascinating characters
Speaker 1: and the personalities that I think they have, which is
Speaker 1: a very science journalist way of seeing things. I love
Speaker 1: writing about science, and I love writing about chemistry, and
Speaker 1: I actually like writing about really dangerous substances because I
Speaker 1: think and that we need the too us to navy
Speaker 1: get a chemical world. We live in a chemical world.
Speaker 1: I am a collection of chemicals myself. I'm inhaling them
Speaker 1: as we speak, as are all of us. Most of
Speaker 1: them are not dangerous, but most people don't have the
Speaker 1: kind of toolkit to say what should it be I'd
Speaker 1: be afraid of? And how do I protect myself? And
Speaker 1: what should I not? And so a lot of what
Speaker 1: I think science journalists like myself do. All I hope
Speaker 1: we do is to provide people who are not, you know,
Speaker 1: right at the science inner circle, or don't follow it regularly,
Speaker 1: some of the tools that just let them navigate in
Speaker 1: an intelligent way because they are smart, they just need
Speaker 1: the tools. And that's really underlies my love of science
Speaker 1: journalism and is probably one of the reasons I'm here
Speaker 1: at in I t So that's my long Southern answer.
Speaker 1: I love it as I thought it would be. Um So,
Speaker 1: one of the hurdles that we often have when we're
Speaker 1: preparing our episodes is sometimes the sparse sinus of historical
Speaker 1: records just there's nothing out there, or if it is
Speaker 1: out there, there might be two or three sources and
Speaker 1: they all conflict with each other. Um. I imagine that
Speaker 1: you have come across the same challenge. And um I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could talk a little bit over
Speaker 1: the years of writing about science history, how he worked
Speaker 1: around that kind of challenge. Oh, I'm gonna love answering this.
Speaker 1: Um Uh, you know, well, real the inner nerd that
Speaker 1: I am, I guess um And and that reminds me.
Speaker 1: You know, I've done four books now that are narrative
Speaker 1: histories of science too about toxicology. But I love writing
Speaker 1: about history of science history in general. But because I
Speaker 1: don't think you really understand where you are unless you
Speaker 1: know how you got there, and that would be and
Speaker 1: and that's another part of you know, how did I
Speaker 1: get here? It's certainly true one of the lessons for me,
Speaker 1: especially in the Poison Squad book, which is about the
Speaker 1: invention of food safety in the United States, and that
Speaker 1: history both explain how we came up with the idea that,
Speaker 1: you know, we should regulate for food safety, but also
Speaker 1: why we do it so badly on a number of
Speaker 1: levels even today. So having said that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a real challenge depending on what you're writing about. When
Speaker 1: I did Poison Squad, the minor recent book, Harvey Washington Wiley,
Speaker 1: who was the chemist at the heart of that story,
Speaker 1: had been married to a suffragette librarian. I just love that,
Speaker 1: and she had left all of his papers to the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress. So the in that case, because I
Speaker 1: like to work from original documents, um, it was a
Speaker 1: matter of did I have enough time to go through
Speaker 1: four hundred linear feet of Harvey Washington wilt papers and
Speaker 1: documents and newspaper clippings and memos and letters and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to be smart that I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't always infect you must never get that right.
Speaker 1: But in that particular, as I was a wash in
Speaker 1: a see of documents which was super helpful, um and
Speaker 1: also daunting Poisoner's Handbook, I think better gets at that
Speaker 1: the some of the challenges that you mentioned. So as
Speaker 1: I said, I, UM, when I finally, after some fairly
Speaker 1: hysterical months of research, discovered in the in the newsletters
Speaker 1: of the Society Forensic Toxicology that the toxicologists at the
Speaker 1: heart of that book, Alexander Getler is considered the father
Speaker 1: of American forensic toxicology. UM, I thought, oh, this is great.
Speaker 1: I'll just go find a biography of him, and there
Speaker 1: was none. And then I went and looked for a
Speaker 1: biography of his boss, Charles Norris, who was the you know,
Speaker 1: wonderful and pioneering first uh medical examiner in New York City,
Speaker 1: and there was none. Right, And so I'm like trolley
Speaker 1: around trying to find information about these eyes, which was
Speaker 1: the other challenge. And so after much going through and
Speaker 1: then some of it you can be smart about. You
Speaker 1: can go onto you know, and look at what were
Speaker 1: the contemporary toxicology books, the books about legal medicine published
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century. And I bought a lot
Speaker 1: of those, um from used booksellers, and I have some
Speaker 1: of them to this day. UM. But and then you
Speaker 1: can look at contemporary journals. I did that too, So
Speaker 1: I can go into the Journal of the American Medical
Speaker 1: Association or Science of the Journal of Toxicology and look
Speaker 1: for papers published by Alexander Getler. And that was really
Speaker 1: essential for me in trying to both understand or look
Speaker 1: for papers about arsenic what did we know about arsenic
Speaker 1: and nine? Right, So all of that kind of helps
Speaker 1: provide a foundation. But then you start kind of saying, well,
Speaker 1: are there other archives that have some materials? So in
Speaker 1: this case, and this is one of my favorite stories
Speaker 1: about the challenges of working with archives and very different
Speaker 1: from the Library of Congress, I discovered that the New
Speaker 1: York City Municipal Archives had actually archived the letters of
Speaker 1: the Medical Examiner's Office from nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: just the period with Norris though. Oh, this is fantastic,
Speaker 1: and I talked on the phone to an archive is
Speaker 1: an extremely hostile and unfriendly archivist at the municipal archive. UM.
Speaker 1: But and I and it was so I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited about this and I can't wait. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come to New York. Let me take you out
Speaker 1: to dinner when I get there to thank you for
Speaker 1: your help. And he's like, we do not have to
Speaker 1: meet in person, and so I know. But I go
Speaker 1: to this archive, which is in an old it's like
Speaker 1: one of the old city halls of New York and um,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, underfunded and unfriendly um as anyone
Speaker 1: will tell you. And so I go up all shiny
Speaker 1: and like I have we already look at these papers
Speaker 1: and literally the guy the counter says to me, we
Speaker 1: don't have those and I go, yes, you do. It
Speaker 1: was just like being in kindergarten. He goes, no, we don't.
Speaker 1: I go, yes, you do. He goes, no, we don't
Speaker 1: come all the way to New York, right. UM. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: you do it. In fact, here's the name of the
Speaker 1: archivist who won't speak to me, um, and here's his
Speaker 1: phone number, and you're welcome to contact him. And so
Speaker 1: the guy goes off and he talks I never did
Speaker 1: see the archives. UM to the archives, and then he
Speaker 1: comes back and says, yes, we do actually have these, UM,
Speaker 1: and so here's the forms you have to fill out
Speaker 1: to get them. And I fell out the forms and
Speaker 1: these box has come up. They've got like a dumb
Speaker 1: waiter behind the counter and these it comes creaking up
Speaker 1: in a very atmospheric way with these boxes of files
Speaker 1: that are covered with dust and apparently some mold. Because
Speaker 1: both my I had my one of my grand students
Speaker 1: helping me UM when I this was when I was
Speaker 1: at Wisconsin UH, and both of us were sick. But
Speaker 1: the with the rest of it because we could have
Speaker 1: out them in other ways UM. And those files were
Speaker 1: amazing and really an unknown resource. So even when they
Speaker 1: were working on the documentary failed a Porsoner's handbook, they
Speaker 1: went back they said they had arm wrestle them out
Speaker 1: to write UM. So it wasn't like I had suddenly
Speaker 1: opened the floodgates. So once I had those, I you know,
Speaker 1: then looked at other you know, other archives, UM, and
Speaker 1: I went over to the New York City Public Library.
Speaker 1: I was doing a lot of contemporary you know what
Speaker 1: what what was being covered about Geller and Norris and
Speaker 1: Poisons at the time, and so I went to the
Speaker 1: New York City Public Library because you can get through
Speaker 1: ProQuest historical newspapers, the New York Times and a lot
Speaker 1: of the big major dailies. But I wanted like the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Eagle and on small papers, and they had those
Speaker 1: on microphis. So a lot of that was going in
Speaker 1: and finding the stories of micro phish, which I don't recommend,
Speaker 1: but we're and you know, printing them out. I did that,
Speaker 1: and then the one other thing, and then you know,
Speaker 1: we did interviews with um, you know, called people. There
Speaker 1: were still a few people left too, had been students
Speaker 1: of Getler, the Getler boys and UM. One of the
Speaker 1: things I did when I was doing research, and this
Speaker 1: will tell you just how anal or researcher I am,
Speaker 1: is that I had discovered, uh been able to track
Speaker 1: down Alexander Getler's kids and and their kids. And I
Speaker 1: knew that his son Joseph had a number of grandid
Speaker 1: kids or his grandkids who still lived in the New
Speaker 1: York City area. UM, and I didn't have their exact
Speaker 1: look and I did, I had their birth records, but
Speaker 1: not their exact location. So I went to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who worked for a newspaper who had some
Speaker 1: of those super search tools, and I said, if I
Speaker 1: give you this person's name and their date of birth
Speaker 1: and where they were born, can you find out for
Speaker 1: me where they're living now. And she did, and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, and don't tell anyone I did this. And
Speaker 1: also I'm not giving you his social Security number. Please
Speaker 1: don't give me his social Security number. Um. But basically
Speaker 1: I had the name. It was Paul Getler, who was
Speaker 1: one of Alexander Getler's grandkids. So I used my pages
Speaker 1: and I called every single Paul Getler in that county
Speaker 1: and I just said, Hi, my name is Debord Woe.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the grandson of Alexander Getler for a
Speaker 1: book I'm working on. And eventually got him, and he
Speaker 1: was fantastic, and he put me in touch with some
Speaker 1: of his siblings, one of whom had had her daughter.
Speaker 1: So Getler's great granddaughter had done a high school history
Speaker 1: report on him, and they came to my hotel in
Speaker 1: New York with her entire presentation and set up the
Speaker 1: giant poster boards in the lobby of the hotel too,
Speaker 1: I think slightly the horror people at the front desk
Speaker 1: of the hotel. But they had like letters and journals
Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff that they lent me. And
Speaker 1: when I went on book tour and I went back
Speaker 1: to New York to talk about the book at a
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble in New York City, Um, the whole
Speaker 1: Getler family was there, filling up the first two rows
Speaker 1: of that, you know. Um. And so that was wonderful,
Speaker 1: And that was another way that I was able to
Speaker 1: get at resources that weren't obvious. I think people who
Speaker 1: read these histories, you know, to me, they're a giant mosaic.
Speaker 1: And because I'm a narrative writer, I'm also looking for
Speaker 1: the pieces that I can put people in the time.
Speaker 1: You know, what did the city look like? What did
Speaker 1: the city sound like? All of those things, Um, But
Speaker 1: you're building this kind of tapestry or mosaic, uh and
Speaker 1: out all of these different pistes matter, and it is
Speaker 1: a ton of word. We have, as you know, talked
Speaker 1: a lot about women poisoners this season, and I know
Speaker 1: you have some thoughts on women and poison and why
Speaker 1: poison is considered a women's weapon and why that's not
Speaker 1: really an accurate characterization, Will you just share your thoughts
Speaker 1: on that matter with us? Sure? And in fact, while
Speaker 1: I was a blogger at Wired after I did Poisonous
Speaker 1: Sound Book, it's been about a decade. I still do
Speaker 1: to some extent, you know, researching and writing about poisons things.
Speaker 1: I had a blog at Wired called Elemental and a
Speaker 1: blog in the New York Times called poison pen Um,
Speaker 1: And at Wired I actually did a whole blog on
Speaker 1: the myths of the female poisoner, right, which I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you go back even to like
Speaker 1: you know, early crime fiction, when you actually looked at
Speaker 1: the modern xt FBI statistics, you see that that's not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of women use poison more preferentially
Speaker 1: over other weapons like guns and knives. Right, But if
Speaker 1: you look at the whole panoradum of poisoners, there's more
Speaker 1: male poisoners than female poisoners. But part of that, again
Speaker 1: is that there's more homicidal males than homicidal females. Right,
Speaker 1: there's just more men who killed people, is I dis
Speaker 1: the entire um, And so there's a lot. So when
Speaker 1: you actually look at the numbers, just the great numbers
Speaker 1: there's more male poisoners in the United States than female poisoners.
Speaker 1: If you analyze the use of weapons, you do see
Speaker 1: it tilts a little more female. And it's actually interesting
Speaker 1: because I did another book looking at biology and behavior,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that people talk about was
Speaker 1: that consistent imbalance on violence, right, and that there had
Speaker 1: been this idea, for instance, that as you know, guns
Speaker 1: became more available to women, there would be more shooting
Speaker 1: deaths caused by women than men, or it would equalize out,
Speaker 1: but in fact it never did. Right. Women in general,
Speaker 1: when you look at crime statistics, um, just don't commit
Speaker 1: those kinds of crimes. And you could certainly make this
Speaker 1: case I'm going on poison for a minute. If you
Speaker 1: look at the history of mass shootings in the United States, right,
Speaker 1: women have access to exactly the same women, but you
Speaker 1: don't see that pattern of mass shootings, right if there's
Speaker 1: just something socially, culturally, biologically, so something in the mix
Speaker 1: that So that's why you tend to see this sort
Speaker 1: of higher number of male poisoners, because you see a
Speaker 1: higher number of male assaults and tempted deaths. But the
Speaker 1: myth of the female poisoner probably dates back to the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century UM in which poisons were highly accessible in
Speaker 1: a domestic way, right, and women actually more access to
Speaker 1: them often than men if you looked at it in
Speaker 1: that sense, because they were the caretakers of the home
Speaker 1: and the distribution of UH jobs in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and so um they had access for two pharmaceutical products. Right,
Speaker 1: Arsenic was quite common in UM different tonics and treatments
Speaker 1: to improve your complexion in Victorian times. Right. Fowler's solution
Speaker 1: is a famous example of that. You find these wonderful
Speaker 1: advertisements targeting women, you know, in which they talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, how arsenic is going to make you more beautiful,
Speaker 1: and also how arsenic is entirely safe, which everyone knew
Speaker 1: wasn't true, but you know, for some reason, they don't
Speaker 1: always tell the truth in advertising. What I know him
Speaker 1: and have this incredible access to cosmetics right, containing one
Speaker 1: of the world's most famous and at that time handy
Speaker 1: homicidal poisons. I mean, arsen was a fabulous poison or
Speaker 1: poison in the nineteenth century because it's tasteless, it's odorless,
Speaker 1: it mimics the symptoms of a natural illness, and because
Speaker 1: they were just figuring out how to detect it in
Speaker 1: a corpse. Right, so, um so, women have access to
Speaker 1: this in a way, and not that a man couldn't
Speaker 1: walk into a drug store and buy file Folwer solution,
Speaker 1: but you know it's widely available to women. And a
Speaker 1: lot of the home products there were cyanide and some
Speaker 1: of the compounds that they used to like polish medal
Speaker 1: in the house. You know, there was stryct nine and
Speaker 1: pick me up tonics. Say mean, people had this incredible
Speaker 1: access to these in a way that triggered no alarm
Speaker 1: if you casually went and got something that contained arsenic
Speaker 1: or straight nine. Um so it was super easy if
Speaker 1: you were annoyed with your husband or your boyfriend or
Speaker 1: or was we're trying. Arsenic used to be known as
Speaker 1: the inheritance powder, you know, to work your way to
Speaker 1: your inheritance to just you know, put it in coffee
Speaker 1: or something, and people did. There were some quite notable
Speaker 1: women mass poisoners in the nineteenth century like Maryanne Cotton
Speaker 1: right who did exactly what I said us. You know,
Speaker 1: handily available arsenic to work or to to get eliminate
Speaker 1: relatives that stood in the way of money, to eliminate
Speaker 1: partners so that you can inherit. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: two was in the neighborhood of close to twenty by
Speaker 1: the time they caught her, which will tell you. And
Speaker 1: so that those kinds of you know, really stand out.
Speaker 1: Mass poisonings tended to shape the idea that women did
Speaker 1: this um in a way that is both you know,
Speaker 1: has a little bit of if I are in the smoke,
Speaker 1: but it's partly in largely smoke. We still have so
Speaker 1: much more from our great chat with blond and that
Speaker 1: is going to be next week's episode, which time thrilled
Speaker 1: about because this is easily one of my favorite conversations
Speaker 1: I have had all year. That's not even qualified as
Speaker 1: in a podcast, etcetera, just in life, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite conversations all year. And I am so glad that
Speaker 1: she is very graciously helping us close out our season
Speaker 1: of Poison, and with that, we're gonna do a little
Speaker 1: what's your poison? Right? It actually references something that comes
Speaker 1: up in episode two, but it also deals with stuff
Speaker 1: that Deborah talked about, which is a prohibition era and
Speaker 1: so we're doing prohibition eric cocktails for this one. And
Speaker 1: what I thought might be fun for these these ones
Speaker 1: as we're nearing the end of the season, is to
Speaker 1: talk about kind of a classic cocktail and then how
Speaker 1: you can approach them to maybe customize them to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more attuned to your palette if they're
Speaker 1: not for you as written. So, the first one is
Speaker 1: a side car. A sidecar, you'll see the amounts very slightly,
Speaker 1: but your basic side car is is usually one and
Speaker 1: a half to two ounces of cognac. Anywhere from one
Speaker 1: half ounce to one ounce of orange liquor. So you're
Speaker 1: thinking like a triple sec or a quantreaux. You could
Speaker 1: get crazy and lou use blue curasaw if you wanted.
Speaker 1: I suppose, um, and then anywhere from a half ounce
Speaker 1: to like three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice,
Speaker 1: like freshly squeezed lemon juice. And some people like to
Speaker 1: garnish with a sugar rim or they'll put an orange
Speaker 1: twist or both of those. Um, so I made one.
Speaker 1: I don't love sidecars, They're just not my jam. I
Speaker 1: like cognac more in a warm drink, you know, pour
Speaker 1: it in a latte or a tea or something. Uh
Speaker 1: perfection exactly. So what I decided to do as a
Speaker 1: test to see if I can make this a little
Speaker 1: bit more to my liking, is actually gonna harken back
Speaker 1: a little bit to one of our earlier cocktails. Um
Speaker 1: only because it's one of those one of those spirits
Speaker 1: you may have on hand if you were following along,
Speaker 1: and it's one that I bought for this, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I should use that in more things, so
Speaker 1: um in lieu of orange liqueur of any kind, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep the lemon juice. Otherwise you're getting
Speaker 1: too far away from from what a sidecar is. I
Speaker 1: just used ginger liqueur there. How was that way more
Speaker 1: palatable for me, less bitey, and I enjoyed it a
Speaker 1: lot more. I still would probably not select that over
Speaker 1: other cocktails that we that we have done this year,
Speaker 1: or just my usual very boring go to of vodka
Speaker 1: and diet coke um like clockwork every time. But but
Speaker 1: it is fun and that's kind of one of the
Speaker 1: ways that I like to play with cocktail recipes. So
Speaker 1: for anyone that's listening, if if you have not really
Speaker 1: done that before and you look at it just it
Speaker 1: just becomes a matter of like puzzly problem solving of like, well,
Speaker 1: this is the one ingredient that is least palatable to me.
Speaker 1: I wonder what I could do to shift that out
Speaker 1: and subend something else that will also go with the
Speaker 1: other ingredients. These are the experiments that will lead you
Speaker 1: to magical discoveries. You should I feel like, I mean
Speaker 1: your kitchen and you're cleaning to right. Absolutely. I have
Speaker 1: a little lounge area in my kitchen. So you just
Speaker 1: sit there and I'll just nix in different things to
Speaker 1: see which one works. Taste that sounds great, and we
Speaker 1: can train. You can sit and I'll make can taste
Speaker 1: because it doesn't seem fair. Oh, I don't mind, I'll
Speaker 1: prep all night. I love it. Uh So, anyway, that
Speaker 1: is that is this week's poison A sidecar or the
Speaker 1: sidecar variation of your choice. I was thinking too that
Speaker 1: it might be interesting to try other fruit liqueurs in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you did like an apple
Speaker 1: liquor in there, it could be really interesting if you did. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think because it is a little bit
Speaker 1: you know, you're limited what goes well with koa and
Speaker 1: lemon juice. That won't create cacophony in terms of taste. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know the word thing that happens. The worst
Speaker 1: thing that happens, exactly if you make a terrible mistake,
Speaker 1: is that you spit it out and dump it down
Speaker 1: the drink. And it's a small enough drink that you're
Speaker 1: not wasting a lot of alcohol in that case. This
Speaker 1: is my wisdom. Don't sweat it. If you throw out
Speaker 1: an ounce and a half of cod, it's fine. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us this week. Do not
Speaker 1: forget to join us next week for the second part
Speaker 1: of Deborah's interview. We will see you then. Criminalia is
Speaker 1: a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.