Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant right there. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. Chuck, put your cool
Speaker 1: guy hat back. Chuck is wearing one of those Newsy caps.
Speaker 1: It's his newest thing, the flat cap. They're in style
Speaker 1: and he's he's coming on up. Up next is Floral
Speaker 1: Link Mink Coke. I could totally thank you. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: because who wants red pain or blood thrown all over
Speaker 1: when they walk down straight? Um? Chucker, have an anecdote
Speaker 1: for you? I don't, I don't want to know. All right,
Speaker 1: well I need to come up with another segway then
Speaker 1: go ahead. Okay, So, back before we knew each other, uh,
Speaker 1: years and years ago, my I had a whole group
Speaker 1: of friends, good friends. My dad was there, both my
Speaker 1: brothers in law were there. Um and one of my
Speaker 1: great all time friends, Tom Shechef, who actually writes for
Speaker 1: the site. Yeah yes, yeah, oh yeah, good friends. Uh.
Speaker 1: He came down from Tennessee. He was living in Johnson City,
Speaker 1: Tennessee at the time. And Tom brought with him to
Speaker 1: the party a pint of moonshine, just perfectly crystal clear moonshine.
Speaker 1: And there was no no no, believe me, whoever made
Speaker 1: this knew exactly what they were doing. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a peach in the bottom even and um, one of
Speaker 1: my friends, who was probably the youngest one at the party,
Speaker 1: kind of a little punk at the time, Um, just jokingly,
Speaker 1: you know, grabbed the moonshine and walked over to my dad,
Speaker 1: who was in his sixties at the time, uh, and said, hey, maw,
Speaker 1: you want to do some shots? And my dad grabbed
Speaker 1: the pint and it just went from there. Those two
Speaker 1: drank the whole thing and my dad matched the twenty
Speaker 1: one year old kids shot for shot of moonshine. And
Speaker 1: it gets better. And then after they were finished, my
Speaker 1: dad ate the peach. My dad ate the peach and
Speaker 1: imagine that thing, uh really had soaked up quite a
Speaker 1: bit of a booze. It really. My dad has no
Speaker 1: recollection of this event, um, but it's kind of become
Speaker 1: around my family. Uh. This uh, this kind of badge
Speaker 1: of honor. He hit the peach, you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So anytime somebody does something like really cool
Speaker 1: or tough or unexpecting, you know that he ate the peach.
Speaker 1: So that was my segue into how moonshine were. That's
Speaker 1: good like that? Yeah, yeah, have you have you ever
Speaker 1: tasted moonshine? Yeah? Yeah, I'm drinking before. I actually lived
Speaker 1: in Johnson City for a little while. I knew some people,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, man, it is Appalachia like around.
Speaker 1: I actually lived outside kind of up on a mountain
Speaker 1: um around the corner from people who lived in school
Speaker 1: buses with chimneys coming. I'm not kidding on Roan Mountain
Speaker 1: and there are tons of still still around. Like you
Speaker 1: can get moonshine from anybody up there. And the people
Speaker 1: they all know what they're doing. They're not doing it
Speaker 1: for you know, profit or anything like that. These are
Speaker 1: people who, you know, guys who are like into homebrewing.
Speaker 1: But imagine if like you're in a homebrewing and your
Speaker 1: grandfather taught you how to do it, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, Like they know exactly what they're going to,
Speaker 1: take a bunch of pride in it, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you just kind of get it from a friend or something,
Speaker 1: and it's actually really cheap. It's like tim Bucks for
Speaker 1: a cord or something like that. I've never paid for.
Speaker 1: I've had it quite a few times too, at various parties.
Speaker 1: You know, someone like you said, we'll just show up
Speaker 1: out of nowhere with a jar and mason jar. And
Speaker 1: I always kind of befriend that person because I'd love
Speaker 1: to taste of moonshine. It's really uh tough to to stomach,
Speaker 1: but there's something about the corn whiskey. Yeah, But I
Speaker 1: think right now is when the point where that we
Speaker 1: should say that it's illegal and in any form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do not encourage anyone to go out and build
Speaker 1: our own still, even though we're going to tell you
Speaker 1: how to. And this is also based on an article
Speaker 1: you can find out how stuff works dot com in
Speaker 1: the A P section. That doesn't tell you something, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that says about us, but yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we have recipes for moonshine on our site. That's what
Speaker 1: it says, all right, So Chuck, let's let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about moonshine a little bit. Where should we Where should
Speaker 1: we start? Well, I think we should travel back in
Speaker 1: time a bit to great Britain to the UK. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: English words come from great thinking. Right. The word moonshine
Speaker 1: actually comes from England. Originally, the term started from a
Speaker 1: verb moonshining, which was referred to any job that you
Speaker 1: did late at night, like the midnight shift was moonshining,
Speaker 1: and it eventually just kind of morphed into uh making
Speaker 1: illegal booze because they did it at night, you know,
Speaker 1: under cover of the night. Well not only did they
Speaker 1: make it, they also ran it, which is a different
Speaker 1: word bootlegging, right, It was it was smuggled at night, right,
Speaker 1: and that if you want to know the do from
Speaker 1: the word there is from they would stick it in
Speaker 1: their high boots, the bottles and the writing boots, right,
Speaker 1: yeah they're writing. But yeah, that's how they smuggle it.
Speaker 1: So bootleggers, I really choked that out there. This is
Speaker 1: this is this is during colonial time. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: uh these are distinct words, like a moonshiner and a
Speaker 1: bootlegger maybe one and the same, but it depends on
Speaker 1: the activity they're engaged in at any given time. Right,
Speaker 1: So the moonshiner actually makes the stuff, the bootlegger smuggles it.
Speaker 1: And there's a third one actually to a rum runner,
Speaker 1: which is by sea. It's a bootlegger who who smuggles
Speaker 1: by sea? Yeah, it's all very like it's yes, this wonderful,
Speaker 1: hazy past of smuggling ships and riding horses with phil
Speaker 1: you know, with boots filled with whiskey. Yeah, let's try
Speaker 1: not to romanticize it. Yeah, you're right. Um, I think though,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna set you up here because I know this
Speaker 1: is your favorite part of this whole podcast. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties and fifties, Uh, in the United States
Speaker 1: who started doing this by car, started filling up their
Speaker 1: trunk full of moonshine and bootlegging high speed chases and
Speaker 1: go and actually this this these people were tinker with
Speaker 1: their cars. Um. They You've got these kind of backwoods
Speaker 1: mechanics who learned to take like a Ford V eight
Speaker 1: and turned it into this supercharged, turbo boosted, wonderfully suspended
Speaker 1: car that could outrun any cop in the Georgia Mountains.
Speaker 1: Think of the Dukes of Hazzard that kind of time,
Speaker 1: and that these guys actually kind of became gearheads and
Speaker 1: they started challenging one another to races, and out of
Speaker 1: that came NASCAR. NASCAR is directly descended from bootlegging. Yep so,
Speaker 1: and actually the first guy I love this, I love
Speaker 1: this fact. The first guy to win an official NASCAR race.
Speaker 1: His name was Glenn Dunaway and he won the first
Speaker 1: official race on December twelve in Daytona, Florida. UM. He
Speaker 1: won the race, but was disqualified because the it's a
Speaker 1: stock car racing, you're not supposed to have a modified
Speaker 1: UM and he had an illegal wedge uh too for
Speaker 1: for handling right, So he was disqualified, But he actually
Speaker 1: won the first race. Of the reason he had the
Speaker 1: wedge was because he used that car to smuggle a
Speaker 1: bunch of whiskey the week earlier in North Carolina, the
Speaker 1: same car. I know that you're fat. You should just
Speaker 1: end it right now. It doesn't get me better than that.
Speaker 1: You're gonna go to sleep. Can you take the rest?
Speaker 1: I'll take it from you. Uh so, Yeah, you talked
Speaker 1: about UM run running, which is by sea and uh bootlegging,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Moonshine is made of corn. Generally in the US,
Speaker 1: it's almost exclusively made of corn, but it can be
Speaker 1: made of any grain right, correct, But for fruit true,
Speaker 1: anything that has starches in it, right, But it's generally
Speaker 1: in the US made you can hear it referred to
Speaker 1: as corn whiskey. So you need corn meal, sugar, yeast,
Speaker 1: and water. Every alcoholic beverage I think needs yeast? Is
Speaker 1: that true? I don't, I don't I know beer? Does
Speaker 1: you really put me on the spot here? I know
Speaker 1: someone's going, I've got something for you. Part of the
Speaker 1: process of making whiskey involves the same process as you
Speaker 1: used to make beer. Right. Um, it's that's fermentation exactly,
Speaker 1: and tech thinically apparently among the distilleries, the word that
Speaker 1: they use for the fermented alcohol before it's distilled is beer.
Speaker 1: So apparently any alcohol it goes through a fermentation process
Speaker 1: is technically called beer. So wine would technically be beer, right.
Speaker 1: Isn't that weird? Okay? But that's just step one in
Speaker 1: the and the fermentation process basically just adding um, yeast
Speaker 1: to whatever grain there is, and the yeast goes to
Speaker 1: town on it. They're very simple plants actually, Um. They
Speaker 1: ingest this stuff and as a byproduct they put out
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and alcohol, and what that stuff is called
Speaker 1: is mash. So this fermented stuff is called mash. And um,
Speaker 1: you take the mash. And now we get into the
Speaker 1: distilling process, right, Well, then you heat it up, yes,
Speaker 1: to about a hundred and seventy two degrees fahrenheiten and
Speaker 1: uh would coal? You can use anything basically you want
Speaker 1: that you can easy steam to heat a up. Sure,
Speaker 1: Now they use propane and I understand sure because you
Speaker 1: know you figure uh. And what happens is from there,
Speaker 1: the alcohol evaporates, pressure builds up, and the alcohol steam
Speaker 1: is forced through an arm which is a caparm, which
Speaker 1: is the pipe that leads out of the top of
Speaker 1: the still. So you have this evaporation going on, and
Speaker 1: then it goes into a what they call a thump keg, right,
Speaker 1: And it's so named because it catches sometimes some of
Speaker 1: this mash comes along with the alcohol vapor and when
Speaker 1: it comes into this hollow cag and hits the bottom
Speaker 1: and makes a thumping sound exactly. So this thump keg
Speaker 1: is is intended to further separate the mash from the
Speaker 1: alcohol vapor. Right. Can you imagine, like inhaling alcohol vapor?
Speaker 1: What would that do to you? I don't know, It's
Speaker 1: probably not very good. Okay, So so we're in the
Speaker 1: thump cake. Now, can you hear us, right, we are
Speaker 1: sour mash mash nice nice, So okay, chuck, what's going
Speaker 1: on in here? Well? And the thump keg, like you said,
Speaker 1: the bits of mash drop into inside of here where
Speaker 1: we are, and then it re evaporates the alcohol and
Speaker 1: filters out the mash because you don't want the mash.
Speaker 1: Which you want is a clear liquid, all right, So
Speaker 1: up we go out of the thumb cake and where
Speaker 1: are we? Up? And out of the thumb keg and
Speaker 1: now we travel into the worm um as steam. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: this is the the most fun part of the ride
Speaker 1: because the worm is actually basically just a pipe that
Speaker 1: coils around, right, So if we were actually able to
Speaker 1: go through, it would probably be kind of like a
Speaker 1: fun water slide. Yeah. And this worm actually, this this
Speaker 1: coil pipe actually just going through cold water which cools
Speaker 1: the alcohol from its gaseous state back into its liquid state.
Speaker 1: And guess where that arm comes out. Well, it comes
Speaker 1: out eventually into a little jar yep or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to put it, a pigot, and then bottle is
Speaker 1: right from there, right, And that said mason jar because
Speaker 1: many times it's it's I don't know if it's tradition
Speaker 1: or not. But they put it in mason. I've never
Speaker 1: seen in anything but a mason. Yeah, maybe a ball jar.
Speaker 1: That's about it, right. And what happens is now you've
Speaker 1: got a clear liquid. And that brings us to the
Speaker 1: the difference between moonshine and regular whiskey that you would
Speaker 1: get that's brown or you know, light colored, is the
Speaker 1: aging process. Moonshine is not aged, and that's why it
Speaker 1: remains clear. You're Jack Daniels that you love, Uh, that
Speaker 1: is the same thing for a little while, but then
Speaker 1: it's aged for years in oak barrels, charred oak barrels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I looked into the charring part. The reason they
Speaker 1: char the inside of the oak barrels. They're actually caramelizing
Speaker 1: the starches, which makes it sweeter. So the the the
Speaker 1: the bourbon. This is the part of the bourbon making process.
Speaker 1: The bourbon actually absorbs the sugars more, which make gives
Speaker 1: it a sweeter taste and mellows it even further because
Speaker 1: it also gives it its brown color. Because moonshine is
Speaker 1: known for the they called the kick, and both of
Speaker 1: us can attest it is a very harsh tasting whiskey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. It definitely has a kick, and it
Speaker 1: tastes like nothing else that you've had. No, it's it
Speaker 1: tastes like God pulling your throat out. You kind of
Speaker 1: see a white light and there's just like a sudden,
Speaker 1: blinding flash of pain and that's the kick. That's that's
Speaker 1: a great it's a great way to describe it. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have thought of that. It's good. Um. It's also
Speaker 1: very potent. Um. I think moonshine usually is uh in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of a hundred fifty proof, which is a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot, because what is it eighty proof for
Speaker 1: ninety proof? Is on fifty proof would be alcohol? Right,
Speaker 1: but your average like bottle of bourbon is is ninety
Speaker 1: proof correct? Yeah? Eight nine? Yeah, yeah, because I mean
Speaker 1: wild turkeys they have a special one d Yeah true, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably eight Josh. If I didn't know any better, I'd
Speaker 1: say that you imbibe with an alcoholic beverage from time. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good um. So, uh, they make the moonshine.
Speaker 1: And one of the problems with moonshine, I guess we
Speaker 1: need to talk about the downside is that it can
Speaker 1: be dangerous if someone doesn't know what they're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the big problem. This is why all of you
Speaker 1: shouldn't run out and make your own still, as Chuck
Speaker 1: said earlier, because because it's illegal. That's that's number one,
Speaker 1: it is illegal. One of the reasons it's illegal is
Speaker 1: because it's so thoroughly unsafe. So I mean like when
Speaker 1: you make beer wine at home, which you can legally
Speaker 1: because you're making it in small batches. But number two,
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as dangerous. Whenever you make any kind
Speaker 1: of alcohol, you have a risk of um of their
Speaker 1: being impurities in your batch, right, um, and these impurities
Speaker 1: can be dangerous and beer wine, but it's much less
Speaker 1: likely when compared to spirits like whiskey. Um. And these
Speaker 1: these impurities are called congeners, right, And what those are,
Speaker 1: it's it's just to catch all name for any impurity
Speaker 1: that's a complex compound, like a polyphenol um or histamine,
Speaker 1: you know, those things that give you allergic reactions. These
Speaker 1: can easily end up in your batch. And this is
Speaker 1: why people often die from drinking moonshine. It's not just
Speaker 1: from alcohol poison or anything like that. It's it's these
Speaker 1: impurities get in there and re havoc on your body.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I would say not as much anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: not that it's a huge business or anything. But during Prohibition,
Speaker 1: I know there were a lot of people that were
Speaker 1: dying because they were it was in such demand because
Speaker 1: it was alcohol was illegal that they were mixing it
Speaker 1: too fast, and the operations sped up and and they
Speaker 1: actually sometimes purposely put impurities in there give it that
Speaker 1: kick like bleach was. It was often found in in
Speaker 1: moonshine during Prohibition, right. It's always it's funny we mentioned
Speaker 1: it's called Mash. It always reminds me of the TV
Speaker 1: show Mash, one of my favorite shows growing up, because
Speaker 1: you know, they had they're still in the what was
Speaker 1: the name of their the swamp in their tent and
Speaker 1: then distillery didn't they well they called it gin. But
Speaker 1: it's looking back now, this is before I ever had
Speaker 1: moonshine when I watched Mash, but it was probably just
Speaker 1: corn whiskey. I doubt if they were able to make
Speaker 1: like nice gin. I always took it as gin. No,
Speaker 1: I bet it. I bet it was moonshine. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: they were sipping like it was gin all right, Alan
Speaker 1: Alda needs to get in touch with us or the
Speaker 1: guy who played b J or Trapper or any of them.
Speaker 1: Really just no radar, no radar. I was about to
Speaker 1: say this, so Chuck. You know, moonshine um has actually
Speaker 1: a really long history with the U S. And it's
Speaker 1: so much so, it's so ingrained that it has it's
Speaker 1: had this kind of symbiotic effect on our cultural legacy. Um.
Speaker 1: When you start looking into moonshine, like NASCAR being you know,
Speaker 1: coming out of moonshine, or the term bootlegger that's used
Speaker 1: world brown came from the United States and are are
Speaker 1: smuggling right, Um. But when you really start to look
Speaker 1: into the history of moonshine and how it helps shape America,
Speaker 1: we used to be a nation of crazy, gun slinging
Speaker 1: nut jobs. I mean we used to be wild, especially
Speaker 1: like in the nineteenth century. Um, bootleggers used to the
Speaker 1: whole the whole reason boot egging was ever around in
Speaker 1: the US was because basically right after we formed our nation,
Speaker 1: our second government that the one we have now the
Speaker 1: constitutional government. Um, they started imposing taxes on on liquor,
Speaker 1: and everybody had just said, well wait, a minute. We
Speaker 1: just got out from under the thumb of a king
Speaker 1: who used to taxes. We're not paying any taxes and
Speaker 1: they didn't. They know they didn't. And actually, um, they
Speaker 1: would attack revenuers, tax collectors. They would tar and feather them,
Speaker 1: which sounds kind of funny now because we're sort of
Speaker 1: moved from it. That was actually apparently an extremely excruciating process.
Speaker 1: You like hot tar port on you and then you know,
Speaker 1: the feathers were probably nothing but a relief, but you're
Speaker 1: walking around and imagine trying to get cool tar off
Speaker 1: of your skin. Yeah, so I imagine being tart and
Speaker 1: feather wasn't that much fun. But even beyond that, they
Speaker 1: actually formed an armed uprising called the Whiskey Rebellion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was the Washington's first big wow as president.
Speaker 1: Holy crap, I'm president. And they just took over Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and it was like people from a lot of states.
Speaker 1: There were thousands of them. They were armed, and they
Speaker 1: were mad. They did not want to pay money or
Speaker 1: taxes on the liquor they were producing. Um. And it
Speaker 1: was actually the first use of a presidential pardon to
Speaker 1: overturn conviction was from the Whiskey rebellion did not know
Speaker 1: that it is, So what g W did, uh, which
Speaker 1: is George Washington. Of course he got together um a
Speaker 1: militia of about thirteen thousand dudes, and he basically quelled
Speaker 1: and dispersed the mob, captured as leaders and it was,
Speaker 1: like you said, forever known as a Whiskey rebellion. But
Speaker 1: there was nothing, nothing was actually resolved. Well, that's that's
Speaker 1: the the government and bootleggers. They go side by side,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while, usually when war funding
Speaker 1: is needed, the government attacks bootlegging to try to increase
Speaker 1: its its tax revenues. Um. So the basically the federal
Speaker 1: government went its way, the bootleggers went their way, and
Speaker 1: they maintained the status quo. Basically we kept having bootlegging.
Speaker 1: No one really had a problem with it until the
Speaker 1: clan got involved. And any American knows that in the
Speaker 1: United States you can do whatever you want as long
Speaker 1: as you're not hurting anybody and you're not affiliated with
Speaker 1: the clan. Everybody hates the clan here. Think it's something
Speaker 1: that yeah, the ku Klux Klan. I think that's something
Speaker 1: that people, you know, maybe some of our Norwegian or
Speaker 1: or Dutch listeners might not understand Americans hate the clan.
Speaker 1: We do. And this actually UM kind of led to uh,
Speaker 1: this outlaw view of bootleggers that we have now. So
Speaker 1: they were getting into shootouts and killing I R s
Speaker 1: auditors and collectors and um, intimidating families and you know,
Speaker 1: locals even who knew like where it still was. Well,
Speaker 1: bootleggers joined forces and made the mistake, the big mistake
Speaker 1: of joining up with the clan, right, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: So that turned the tied to public opinion all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. Bootleggers aren't just you know, so harmless anymore.
Speaker 1: They're in with the clan. So um that actually gave
Speaker 1: the temperance movement even more of a foothold. The Temperance
Speaker 1: movement is my worst nightmare. It is UM. Basically no,
Speaker 1: there's no alcohol produced or imported into the United States.
Speaker 1: Imagine the entire country dry. This is the point of
Speaker 1: the Temperance movement. And they weren't just you know, crackpots.
Speaker 1: They were actually they had identified alcohol as an agent
Speaker 1: of moral decay, social decay. It was a problem. So
Speaker 1: rather than and this is before rehab to rather than
Speaker 1: UM having alcoholics go dry out or take care of
Speaker 1: their their problem, their addiction. They said, we have a
Speaker 1: social responsibility to not tempt our alcoholics. We have to
Speaker 1: put them above the rest of us because the rest
Speaker 1: of us are an alcoholics, so we don't need a drink.
Speaker 1: So let's just get rid of alcohol together, or alcoholics
Speaker 1: can be good people. Yeah, Well, it actually happened. They
Speaker 1: finally got prohibition pushed through in the day the earth
Speaker 1: stood still. Uh, and it lasted, um from nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty four, and it actually turned out to
Speaker 1: be the greatest thing that ever happened to bootlegging because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, people there's one thing that they
Speaker 1: learned from prohibition is you can try and take away
Speaker 1: the alcohol, but the people want it and they're gonna
Speaker 1: get it. And I would liken it to the War
Speaker 1: on drugs. Yeah, it's just it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Anytime you prohibit anything, Number one, it makes it, um,
Speaker 1: It gives it kind of a forbidden feel, which makes
Speaker 1: it all the more desirable. Um. But I mean, think
Speaker 1: about how many people wouldn't or don't drink now be
Speaker 1: just because it's there. How many more would if you
Speaker 1: simply couldn't. And yeah, if prohibition proved anything, it's that
Speaker 1: if when there's a will, organized crime finds a way.
Speaker 1: So we've got speakeasies, we've got gang land murders, we've
Speaker 1: got moonshine that's being put out, it's being overproduced and
Speaker 1: watered down and with bleach added, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, prohibition goes away, and almost almost at the
Speaker 1: same time, so does moonshining, almost entirely well drastically reduced.
Speaker 1: And but it came made a big well I know
Speaker 1: about a big comeback, but it made a comeback as
Speaker 1: we talked about later on with the whole NASCAR thing.
Speaker 1: And then in um the nineteen seventies, uh, sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: they thought it was sort of a problem again, but
Speaker 1: they didn't really do a lot about it. Like there's
Speaker 1: very few court cases about it unless it has to
Speaker 1: do with I think they'll tie like money laundering using
Speaker 1: money laundering laws which are way way worse than than
Speaker 1: you know, moonshining being convicted of moonshining, UM and with that,
Speaker 1: moonshining is becoming a dying art, right, but they still
Speaker 1: do it. And then in the nineteen seventies, they made
Speaker 1: it legal to make your own and and beer with
Speaker 1: homebrew enthusiasts. I mean you can, but it's illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say it one more time, Chuck, it's illegal. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of surprised, actually if they allow homebrewing. It's it's
Speaker 1: sort of a maybe because it's more dangerous as the
Speaker 1: reason that's that's the impression I have is it's strictly
Speaker 1: because it's more dangerous, because I don't think they levy
Speaker 1: taxes any any higher on beer wine than they do
Speaker 1: on liquor. Do they don't know? I'm sure we'll have
Speaker 1: someone right in and tell I'm quite sure too. Well.
Speaker 1: You can find out even more about how moonshine works
Speaker 1: by typing that in to our handy search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. It'll bring up a fine, fine
Speaker 1: article written by our colleague, Ed Grebanowski. Yes, indeed, and Chuck,
Speaker 1: I believe you had some listener mail listener mail time, Okay, Josh,
Speaker 1: I do have an email, and I will file this
Speaker 1: under exceptional fan mail because it is one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Is from our old friend Molly in Manchester, Connecticut. Hey Molly,
Speaker 1: Hey Molly, and Molly may not be hearing this right
Speaker 1: away though, and this is the reason why Molly writes
Speaker 1: in says she loves the podcast, and uh she is
Speaker 1: actually going to West Africa to serve in the Peace
Speaker 1: Corps for two years, which is a great thing to do.
Speaker 1: We're very proud of Molly for that. And she's told
Speaker 1: that there is a much hope of having a continual
Speaker 1: lists continuous wireless internet and her mud hut. So uh,
Speaker 1: she says, she gets a thrill from listening to our cast,
Speaker 1: and so she's actually gonna save them up and for
Speaker 1: a period of many months, and so when she gets
Speaker 1: to Africa in the Peace Corps she can listen to
Speaker 1: them one after the other on her little iPod and
Speaker 1: uh we she says, she. I know it seems a
Speaker 1: little extreme. I don't think so, Molly. I think it's
Speaker 1: a great idea. And I think that the hours and
Speaker 1: hours of new stuff I should know to listen to
Speaker 1: when I'm feeling in the need of intelligent, humorous banter
Speaker 1: might be worth the sacrifice. So I've actually corresponded with
Speaker 1: Molly a couple of times by email, and yeah, wished
Speaker 1: her luck and told her to into some updates from
Speaker 1: the Peace Corp and let us know how things are going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck, Molly. So that's exceptional fan mail today. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to send us some fan mail, no
Speaker 1: matter whether you're in the Peace Corps or just you know,
Speaker 1: some working shlub, we don't care, we make no judgments.
Speaker 1: We love all of you. We're working schlubs exactly. You
Speaker 1: can send that to Stuff podcast at how stuff works
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