Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty six, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company launched
Speaker 2: an ad campaign with the slogan quote more doctors smoke
Speaker 2: camels than any other cigarette, long before camel cigarettes became
Speaker 2: the doctor approved cigarette of choice. At least in advertising,
Speaker 2: people living with asthma were often instructed to inhale smoke
Speaker 2: to relieve their symptoms, and that advice was for asthmatic
Speaker 2: adults and children, and that is definitely not how asthma
Speaker 2: is treated today. The popular asthma cigarette, as they were called,
Speaker 2: and related products weren't packed full of tobacco, though many
Speaker 2: did include it. They were essentially psychotropic drugs from the
Speaker 2: night shade family that people inhaled in hopes of respiratory relief.
Speaker 2: Go to a time in history, a rather long period
Speaker 2: of time, it turns out, when smoking was recommended to
Speaker 2: people as young as six years old. And we'll take
Speaker 2: a look at what kinds of quack and I actually,
Speaker 2: to be honest, some not so quack products for asthma
Speaker 2: that existed before the invention of the inhaler. Welcome to criminalia,
Speaker 2: I'm Maria, tremarky.
Speaker 1: And I'm a holly fry. Asthma is a chronic disease
Speaker 1: that affects the airways of your lungs. During an asthma attack,
Speaker 1: a person's airways becomes swollen and they narrow, Mucus develops
Speaker 1: in them, and all of this can make it really
Speaker 1: difficult to breathe. Symptoms of an asthma attack can include coughing, wheezing,
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, and chest tightness. Attacks can range from
Speaker 1: a mild nuisance to a life threatening emergency.
Speaker 2: Asthma wasn't always known to be an inflammatory response. It
Speaker 2: was considered the result of neurosis. It has at times
Speaker 2: been considered a symptom of demonic possession as well. But
Speaker 2: no matter what people thought caused it, they sure did
Speaker 2: try a lot of things to relieve it, and not
Speaker 2: often included inhaling smoke, contrary to our modern treatments. We
Speaker 2: can go all the way back to ancient China around
Speaker 2: five thousand years ago to find that a Chinese herb
Speaker 2: called Ephedra seneca was inhaled for relieving asthma discomfort.
Speaker 1: Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates believe that people living with asthma
Speaker 1: might display a hunched back. He thought that you could
Speaker 1: tell they had asthma just by looking at them. You
Speaker 1: can't but that aside. He also was the first person
Speaker 1: to record his work in trying to understand the correlation
Speaker 1: that he observed between environment and specific trades and how
Speaker 1: they seemed to impact respiratory problems. He too recommended inhaling
Speaker 1: a fedra along with a glass of red wine for
Speaker 1: symptomatic relief. Around fifty CE, ancient Roman Pliny the Elder
Speaker 1: found links between pollen and breathing difficulties, and he too
Speaker 1: recommended inhaling ephedra as a treatment for those respiratory issues.
Speaker 1: As an aside, it is actually debated whether or not
Speaker 1: Pliny himself may have lived with asthma. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: around one hundred CE that the Greek physician Aretius of
Speaker 1: Cappadocia wrote a detailed definition of asthma that was actually
Speaker 1: fairly similar to the modern understanding of how the disease develops.
Speaker 1: And then he suggested that drinking a concoction of owl's
Speaker 1: blood and wine was an effective remedy and preventative.
Speaker 2: It's not Ehedra is a predecessor, though, of today's drug epinephrine,
Speaker 2: which is a common ingredient in modern quick relief asthma treatments.
Speaker 2: But while it may have been a valid remedy because
Speaker 2: of its anti inflammatory properties the fine particles inhaled from smoking,
Speaker 2: it may not have been the best delivery method for
Speaker 2: respiratory health. Let's talk about asthma's smoke because things have
Speaker 2: come a long way in what we know about asthma
Speaker 2: and what we know can help or worsen its symptoms.
Speaker 1: Today, we know that inhaling particles from smoke is considered
Speaker 1: a big asthma trigger, and people living with a condition
Speaker 1: are instructed to avoid smoking and secondhand smoke, as well
Speaker 1: as poor air quality such as the kind you would
Speaker 1: see in a wildfire smoke, or even vehicle exhaust. All
Speaker 1: smoke contains carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and particulate matter. Depending
Speaker 1: on what's burning, smoke can also contain different chemicals like aldehydes,
Speaker 1: acid gases, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, toluene, styrene, metals,
Speaker 1: and dioxids. All of these are bad for the human body,
Speaker 1: whether you have asthma or not. The United States Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency DeFi air pollution as quote any visible or
Speaker 1: invisible particles or gas found in the air that is
Speaker 1: not part of the natural composition of air. Even the
Speaker 1: smallest airborne particles can be respiratory irritants, whether you intentionally
Speaker 1: inhale them or not.
Speaker 2: An asthma attack can occur when something irritates your airways,
Speaker 2: but triggers do vary from person to person. One super
Speaker 2: common trigger, though, is smoke. Inhaling smoke is unhealthy for everyone.
Speaker 2: It irritates the lining of the airways, and it's associated
Speaker 2: with more severe asthma symptoms. It often also means more
Speaker 2: doctor visits and more frequent hospital admissions, and it's linked
Speaker 2: to not just an accelerated decline in your lung function,
Speaker 2: it also makes your body respond poorly to commonly used
Speaker 2: asthma treatments.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's the takeaway. It's pretty obvious, but asthma
Speaker 1: and smoke just do not mix. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a break here for a word from our sponsors, and
Speaker 1: when we're back, we'll talk about all kinds of methods
Speaker 1: and products that people used to inhale in the hopes
Speaker 1: that they would find a way to manage asthma symptoms.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to criminalia. There is no cure for asthma. However,
Speaker 2: to help control asthma symptoms and avoid attacks, there are
Speaker 2: a few rules of thumb.
Speaker 1: Modern medicine has treatments that can help alleviate asthma symptoms
Speaker 1: without needing to have a lighter on hand. But just
Speaker 1: as there's no cure, there's also no one size fits all.
Speaker 1: Treatment options include medications that are inhaled. Some can be
Speaker 1: taken as a pill. These inhaled medicines, though do not
Speaker 1: contain smoke. There are two general types of asthma medications.
Speaker 1: Quick relief dre ugs such as a beta agonist like albuterol,
Speaker 1: are used to control the symptoms of an asthma attack
Speaker 1: that's in progress by opening the airways, and long term
Speaker 1: options including inhaled or systemic corticosteroids can help you have
Speaker 1: fewer and milder attacks in the long run.
Speaker 2: It was English physician and astronomer John Mudge who created
Speaker 2: the very first inhaler of sorts in seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: which he based on a Pewter tankard. Its design allowed
Speaker 2: the user to breathe in an opium based vapor through
Speaker 2: a tube. The earliest known reference of smoking opium for
Speaker 2: respiratory relief dates back to eleven hundred BCE in China,
Speaker 2: and for a very long period of time, incense burners
Speaker 2: and pipes were the most prominent form for that type
Speaker 2: of opiate based respiratory drug delivery. People also began to
Speaker 2: use ceramic pots to inhale herb or chemical infused vapors.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty five, the first portable nebulizer hit the market.
Speaker 2: Dry powder inhalers also became popular around that same time.
Speaker 2: They worked by squeezing a rubber ball, and users could
Speaker 2: force a medicinal powder through a sieve to convert it
Speaker 2: into a vapor. One dry powder in haler on the
Speaker 2: market claimed it could cure asthma in ten minutes or less,
Speaker 2: but really, to no one's surprise, it could not.
Speaker 1: The major breakthrough in asthma treatment came in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties when the first portable meter dose in haler was
Speaker 1: invented by George Maison, the president of Riker Laboratories. Its
Speaker 1: design used glass vials and valves that were originally designed
Speaker 1: for perfume models to effectively deliver a puff of medicine
Speaker 1: to the lungs, and it set the stage for new
Speaker 1: asthma technology, including breath actuated inhler's, spacer devices and dosage counters.
Speaker 1: Meter dose in Haler's are now the most common device
Speaker 1: used for treating asthma.
Speaker 2: But we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves with all
Speaker 2: this jazz about modern inhalers. Let's jump back to smoking
Speaker 2: remedies and start with one called fumigation. The Ebers Papyrus
Speaker 2: is an ancient Egyptian compilation of medical texts that dates
Speaker 2: back to about fifteen fifty BCE, making it one of
Speaker 2: the oldest known medical works. It contains asthma remedies prescribed
Speaker 2: by ancient Egyptian healers, and herbal treatments were the most common.
Speaker 2: These remedies included drying herbs, specifically black henbane, heating them
Speaker 2: on a hot stone, and then placing a jar with
Speaker 2: a hole over it. The user would inhale the smoke
Speaker 2: through the stalk of a reed that was placed into
Speaker 2: that hole. The smoke allegedly offered mild breathing relief for
Speaker 2: those who are curious. Other cures cited included quote the
Speaker 2: droppings of camels and crocodiles, though we are totally unsure
Speaker 2: how that remedy was administered and please let it not
Speaker 2: have been inhalation.
Speaker 1: Moving along on our history timeline, next, we have inhaling
Speaker 1: pipes the smoke of stramonium, a plant from the same
Speaker 1: family as belladonna and that you may also know as
Speaker 1: gymsen weed and other similar herbs like black henbane, indian hemp, tobacco,
Speaker 1: and cannabis were all on the list of plants to
Speaker 1: inhale for asthma symptom relief. Dried and crushed plant material
Speaker 1: was stuffed into a hollow pipe and inhaling. The smoke
Speaker 1: was believed to be calming and that it could ease
Speaker 1: mildly labored breathing. In fact, you can find ancient healers
Speaker 1: prescribing smoking pipes for asthma symptom relief at least as
Speaker 1: far back as one hundred BCE. In addition to the
Speaker 1: problem of irritating your airways with smoke particles, some of
Speaker 1: these plants, including stramonium and black henbane, are toxic and
Speaker 1: they may cause hallucinations or neurological problems. Hold on to
Speaker 1: that because we're going to talk more about those ingredients
Speaker 1: in a moment.
Speaker 2: So what could be better than a pipe stuffed with
Speaker 2: plants we know have toxic and hallucinigenic properties, enter cigars
Speaker 2: stuffed full of toxic and hallucinogenic herbs. In eighteen oh two,
Speaker 2: a Scottish born physician slash general named James Anderson was
Speaker 2: in India regarding the cultivation of silk when he first
Speaker 2: learned that people there inhaled smoke as a treatment for asthma.
Speaker 2: He shared that knowledge with his patients, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: the only one who'd caught the wave. A craze blue
Speaker 2: through Europe and then the United States. It seemed everyone
Speaker 2: was suddenly smoking stramonium, sometimes mixed with tobacco, rolled into
Speaker 2: cigars or stuffed into pipes and inhaled for breathing relief
Speaker 2: and maybe some interesting visions depending on those unregulated ingredients
Speaker 2: and how much of them you smoked.
Speaker 1: Another option, and this was a really inexpensive option for
Speaker 1: asthma relief, was inhaling the smoke from burning paper that
Speaker 1: contained potassium nitrate and stramonium. It worked as simply as this,
Speaker 1: you'd ignite the paper with a match and then breathe
Speaker 1: it in. Some asthmatics using this method may have used
Speaker 1: a paper funnel to direct the smoke to their airways.
Speaker 1: Directions for use seem to vary. This is obviously the
Speaker 1: lowest tech option you can imagine. Today, experts know that
Speaker 1: inhaling the smoke of potassium nitrate will not relieve respiratory symptoms,
Speaker 1: and it's actually known to irritate the bronchial mucous membrane,
Speaker 1: the opposite effect of how you'd want to common asthma attack.
Speaker 1: Potassium nitrate is also now considered to be quote probably
Speaker 1: carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Speaker 2: And then there was something known as asthma powders, which
Speaker 2: were made with stramonium. It really does seem like we've
Speaker 2: found our main character here in this episode, and you
Speaker 2: could buy a can of that at your local store.
Speaker 2: These products were used by placing a bit of powder
Speaker 2: on a piece of plane paper, igniting it, and inhaling
Speaker 2: the fumes. In this instance too, Sometimes pay per funnels
Speaker 2: were used to ensure you were directing the smoke straight
Speaker 2: into your airways. Powders were a really common asthma remedy
Speaker 2: from roughly the eighteen seventies all the way till the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: And then people with asthma and other respiratory conditions were
Speaker 1: introduced to the asthma cigarette and it was a hit.
Speaker 1: But before we talk about how enormously popular it was,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a break for a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsors, and when we return, we will talk about
Speaker 1: how people smoked asthma cigarettes far into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Criminalia. Asthma cigarettes were super popular products,
Speaker 2: but let's not forget what was in them. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about stromone and other potentially toxic plant ingredients that people
Speaker 2: were inhaling thinking they would help.
Speaker 1: Asthma cigarettes were not only popular, they were also endorsed
Speaker 1: by well known and trusted names. Two leading nineteenth century writers,
Speaker 1: for instance, are on that list, the English physician Henry
Speaker 1: Hyde Salter, who was himself asthmatic, and the French physician
Speaker 1: Armand Trousseau. And this was also a product that was
Speaker 1: endorsed by the famous French novelist Marcel Proust, who on
Speaker 1: the evening of Saturday August thirty first, nineteen oh one,
Speaker 1: wrote to his mother recounting his struggle with a severe
Speaker 1: asthma attack the previous day. From his letter, we quote
Speaker 1: misery of miseries or mystery of mysteries. My asthma obliged
Speaker 1: me to walk all doubled up and light anti asthma
Speaker 1: cigarettes at every tobacconist's I passed and what's worse, I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to go to bed till midnight after
Speaker 1: endless fumigation. He had had periodic attacks since he was
Speaker 1: nine years old, in addition to bouts of hay fever,
Speaker 1: and he was familiar with his treatment options, and he
Speaker 1: had tried a lot of them, including prescribed opium, caffeine, iodine,
Speaker 1: and morphine. The latter had been injected by his father,
Speaker 1: doctor Adrienne Proust. His nose had been cauterized, a procedure
Speaker 1: used in the early twentieth century to help manage allergies.
Speaker 1: He had also been prescribed a milk diet at one point,
Speaker 1: and he occasionally visited health resorts such as Evian le
Speaker 1: Bin on the shores of Lake Geneva. However, Proust's best
Speaker 1: liked treatment for his symptoms involved the inhalation of smoke
Speaker 1: from asthma cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Unlike asthma cigars, you didn't have to really grown. You
Speaker 2: could very conveniently buy a box of pre rolled cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Many preparations have inhaled asthma remedies contained a short list
Speaker 2: of possible ingredients. It's usually a combination of stramonium, which
Speaker 2: is toxic, lobilia also toxic, potassium hydroxide, which is a
Speaker 2: caustic chemical known to damage the upper respiratory tract when inhaled,
Speaker 2: and tobacco, a carcinogen that can cause damage not only
Speaker 2: to your lungs but to your whole body. An early
Speaker 2: recipe for asthma cigarettes dating to the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: called for quote eight parts stramonium leaves, eight parts green
Speaker 2: tea leaves, six parts slobilia leaves, and two parts plantain leaves.
Speaker 2: In other recipes you'd often find tobacco, cannabis, and even
Speaker 2: some seriously bad stuff like arsenic. It was really a
Speaker 2: potpourri of potentially toxic plant materials in there. At that time,
Speaker 2: the perceived efficacy of asthma cigarette ingredients was linked to
Speaker 2: what was believed to be their anti sposmotic properties. They
Speaker 2: were thought to have a calming effect on your airways,
Speaker 2: but they were also known to cause quote grateful forgetfulness
Speaker 2: and a balmy oblivion like opiates. So there's that.
Speaker 1: Nothing about these remedies is scandalous, at least not for
Speaker 1: the medical knowledge at the times the treatments were being used.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a case of a guy hawking dubious breathing
Speaker 1: therapies at a traveling medicine show, but there was no
Speaker 1: shortage of advertisements with all kinds of claims regarding asthma relief.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen eighties. Joy's Cigarettes claimed in one of
Speaker 1: their ads that their product offered quote immediate relief in
Speaker 1: case of asthma, wheezing, and winter cough, and that their
Speaker 1: cigarettes were quote recommended by the most eminent physicians and
Speaker 1: medical authors, agreeable to use, certain in their effects and
Speaker 1: harmless in their actions. They may be safely smoked by
Speaker 1: ladies and children.
Speaker 2: Doctor Blosser's medical cigarettes claimed to relieve quote sudden violent
Speaker 2: asthma attacks quickly by warm vapor which penetrate clogged breathing passages,
Speaker 2: loosen phlegm, relieve congestion, and soothe irritated membranes. We won't
Speaker 2: hold our breath on that claim.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety, an advertisement for Doctor Battie's asthma cigarettes
Speaker 1: claimed Doctor Battie's brand would quote effectively treat asthma, hay fever,
Speaker 1: foul breath, all diseases of the throat, head colds, canker saws,
Speaker 1: and bronchial irritations. Note it also warned against allowing kids
Speaker 1: younger than six years old to use them. Potter's asthma
Speaker 1: cigarettes claimed that they were quote for the relief of
Speaker 1: asthma attacks and other spasmodic affectations of the respiratory tract.
Speaker 1: No one, as you may have noticed, advertised what exactly
Speaker 1: you would be inhaling if you tried these products.
Speaker 2: We know most of these asthma cigarettes contained stramonium as
Speaker 2: their active ingredient, and they were considered top of the
Speaker 2: line asthma therapy before the first asthma in haler hit
Speaker 2: the market in nineteen fifty seven, and they perhaps surprisingly
Speaker 2: remained readily available until the mid twentieth century, when they
Speaker 2: were phased out amid growing evidence of recreational abuse. Their
Speaker 2: ingredients could cause hallucinations as well as problems such as disorientation,
Speaker 2: respiratory distress, heart conditions, delusions, seizures, coma, and a high
Speaker 2: enough dose their active ingredients could be fatal.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what asthma cigarettes brought to the table. No, First,
Speaker 1: let's talk about those two ingredients that keep coming up
Speaker 1: stramonium and black hen beane. Atropine is the thing that
Speaker 1: makes stramonium and black hen beane potent, and it also
Speaker 1: makes them toxic. It's a white alkaloid discovered in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty three and then isolated in eighteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 1: it's the key within those plants to asthma relief, specifically
Speaker 1: opening airways. By eighteen seventy nine, with Europeans and America
Speaker 1: skins hooked asthma cigarette manufacturers used, it seemed any combination
Speaker 1: of plants containing atropine. An example ingredients list for these
Speaker 1: so called medicated cigarettes contained quote stramonium leaves containing alkaloids
Speaker 1: zer point two five percent in finished product, chestnut leaves,
Speaker 1: tea leaves, gum, benzoin colon nuts. Clinical studies conducted during
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. In nineteen fifties, so decades after these
Speaker 1: became popular continued to emphasize the therapeutic value of asthma cigarettes,
Speaker 1: wrote researcher h. Herkzheimer in nineteen fifty nine. So after
Speaker 1: the introduction of the first modern inhaler, quote, atropine administered
Speaker 1: locally in cigarette smoke or wet aerosols increases the vital
Speaker 1: capacity and gives a feeling of relief in cases of
Speaker 1: mild or moderate chronic asthma and emphysema.
Speaker 2: A nineteen eighty study of the popular Potter's brand, which
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier, concluded that these in gret dience were
Speaker 2: all a bunch of ahui and that quote. Although an
Speaker 2: asthma cigarette contains approximately zero point six milligrams atropine equivalent alkaloids,
Speaker 2: it is a crude preparation and after smoking, the amount
Speaker 2: of active drug reaching the bronchial tree is extremely variable
Speaker 2: and unpredictable. In addition to that, the level of toxin
Speaker 2: was found to vary greatly, not just from brand to brand,
Speaker 2: but cigarette to cigarette. So maybe you had a feeling
Speaker 2: of relief, or maybe you needed immediate medical attention.
Speaker 1: Despite the possible benefit and possible side effects of inhaling
Speaker 1: atropine over the counter, inhalation therapies were bound to sound
Speaker 1: better than doctor prescribed adrenaline shots to anybody that was
Speaker 1: living with asthma before the nineteen fifties, those injections were
Speaker 1: one of the very few tools against asthma symptoms that
Speaker 1: early twentieth century physicians had. Unlike tobacco based cigarettes, asthma
Speaker 1: cigarettes were more of a delivery system for herbal remedies
Speaker 1: that hopeful asthmatics hoped might take the edge off of
Speaker 1: their discomfort before the invention of albuterol and propellant based inhaler's.
Speaker 2: That is, while the cure for asthma has yet to
Speaker 2: be discovered, neither has the cause, but experts do know
Speaker 2: more and more about the condition, including that inhaling smoke,
Speaker 2: whatever kind of smoke that may be, is more likely
Speaker 2: to exacerbate respiratory symptoms than calm them. No matter what
Speaker 2: all of those advertisements may have claimed.
Speaker 1: Asthma cigarette, Yeah, you want a little sip of something
Speaker 1: that cures what ails you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I'd rather have that than an asthma cigarette.
Speaker 1: I really love the ingredients lists here, and I particularly
Speaker 1: love the one that read eight parts stramonium leaves eight
Speaker 1: parts of green tea leaves, six parts lo be leaves,
Speaker 1: and two parts plantain leaves. And that was my starting point.
Speaker 1: I'm not making stramonium martinis, but I am making something delicious.
Speaker 1: This is one you build in the shaker. I put
Speaker 1: everything in before I put ice in because I don't
Speaker 1: want to over dilute this. Although you will shake it
Speaker 1: with ice, but first pour in two ounces of green tea,
Speaker 1: so whatever you have that you've made and cooled, one
Speaker 1: ounce of lemon juice, one ounce of macha syrup.
Speaker 2: Hey have we used that before?
Speaker 1: No, we haven't. I bought mine online. Some grocery stores
Speaker 1: carry it. I'm told I haven't found one in my locals,
Speaker 1: but it was really easy for me to find online
Speaker 1: and get in the matter of two days. Delicious. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna use it everything. Then you're gonna add two ounces
Speaker 1: of bourbon and a half ounce of banana liqueur. Look,
Speaker 1: bananas are not plantains, and I know that, but they
Speaker 1: are in the same family, and you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of it in here. Okay. First of all, let
Speaker 1: me tell you when you put this all together in
Speaker 1: your shaking tint, it smells like heaven. It smells so
Speaker 1: good it should be illegal. But then you're gonna add
Speaker 1: your ice. You're gonna shake, shake it, and then you're
Speaker 1: just gonna strain it over fresh ice. This is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite drinks I've made in a long time.
Speaker 1: This is probably going to show up at the end
Speaker 1: of season discussion. The bourbon flavor gets subsumed. I don't
Speaker 1: know where it goes. It's in there, but it's not there.
Speaker 1: The banana banana is always tricky. We've talked about it before.
Speaker 1: It can really drive the bus and kind of take
Speaker 1: over a drink, and the scent of it is very
Speaker 1: prominent in this drink. But something about the green tea
Speaker 1: undercuts it, and you just get this really beautiful. It
Speaker 1: tastes medicinal. It tastes like you're having green tea, you're
Speaker 1: lowering your cholesterol. I'm not claiming that it's actually doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it feels like you're doing something healthy.
Speaker 2: Pretend you're breathing better.
Speaker 1: Absolutely spectacularly delicious drink this one. I'm gonna make it
Speaker 1: a bunch to make this as a mocktail. You're basically
Speaker 1: gonna do everything normally except instead of bourbon. You will
Speaker 1: use a black tea, so it'll be essentially like a
Speaker 1: fabulous iced tea at that point. And then you'll use
Speaker 1: a half ounce of banana syrup instead of a banana liqueur.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna call this the Stramonium Special, even though
Speaker 1: there's no stremonium in it. I had been wanting to
Speaker 1: play with macha syrup for a while, and I kept
Speaker 1: putting it off, and then I was like, I think
Speaker 1: today's the day. It was. Then I was very happy
Speaker 1: those green tea leaves in that plantain led to delightful inspiration.
Speaker 1: If you drink this Stremonium Special, I hope it's delicious.
Speaker 1: And we also hope that you join us again next
Speaker 1: week because we're gonna be right back here to talk
Speaker 1: more about some wild things people have sold in the
Speaker 1: name of curatives that aren't really gonna do that they say,
Speaker 1: and we'll also have another drink. We hope you join us.
Speaker 1: Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.