Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Urban legend originating from the mid nineteen fifties would have
Speaker 2: you think. Opera singer Maria Kallis lost sixty five pounds
Speaker 2: on the tapeworm diet, a diet where she allegedly swallowed
Speaker 2: a parasite packed pill to consume calories for her Now
Speaker 2: that's been debunked. It's confirmed by her biography and personal
Speaker 2: communications that though she was diagnosed with a beef tapeworm,
Speaker 2: it was due to eating raw meat and wasn't something
Speaker 2: she did on purpose. But it probably goes without saying, though,
Speaker 2: that humans have done some very strange things in the
Speaker 2: name of beauty and fashion over the centuries. The tapeworm
Speaker 2: diet was and unfortunately still is a real thing, and
Speaker 2: it was once a super popular attempt at weight loss.
Speaker 2: So let's talk tapeworms. Perhaps one of our grossest episodes yet,
Speaker 2: Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky.
Speaker 1: And I'm Holly Frye. So getting yourself a parasitic buddy
Speaker 1: will help you lose weight, But please, for the love
Speaker 1: of all that's holy, don't do it. The idea here
Speaker 1: is that the tapeworm lives in your intestines and basically
Speaker 1: eats whatever you're eating, meaning you can go for seconds
Speaker 1: and thirds without feeling guilty about any of the calories
Speaker 1: is you're not absorbing them. That doesn't sound so bad
Speaker 1: right until you get to the tapeworm part. That is,
Speaker 1: tapeworm should not be inside your body period. They can
Speaker 1: get in there by accident, though, and that can happen if,
Speaker 1: for instance, you consume raw or undercooked meat that includes beef, pork,
Speaker 1: or fish, or if you drink contaminated water. You could
Speaker 1: also become infected after handling food, water, or objects that
Speaker 1: have been contaminated with feces. Close physical contact with your dog,
Speaker 1: such as allowing them to lick your face, is also
Speaker 1: a risk for developing a tapeworm infection. However, if you
Speaker 1: lived in London between roughly eighteen thirty and nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you might have intentionally swallowed a
Speaker 1: tapeworm for weight loss.
Speaker 2: The fad would also hit the United States, but not
Speaker 2: until a bit later in the early nineteen hundreds. We
Speaker 2: should note, though, that while we'll be talking about the
Speaker 2: Victorian tapeworm diet. Tyra Banks talked about the diet on
Speaker 2: her show back in two thousand and nine. Courtney Kardashian
Speaker 2: joked about wanting a tapeworm as recently as twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: and in twenty thirteen, a woman from Iowa consumed tapeworm
Speaker 2: pills for weight loss, which resulted in an official warning
Speaker 2: from the Iowa State Department of Public Health. This is
Speaker 2: one of those things that just hasn't gone.
Speaker 1: Away, and that's maybe because the tapeworm diet sounds pretty easy.
Speaker 1: All you needed was a little pill that was in
Speaker 1: victorian times advertised with claims like easily swallowed, sanitized and
Speaker 1: jar packed. One popular ad read Eat Eat, Eat, and
Speaker 1: all was stay thin, no diet, no baths, no exercise,
Speaker 1: no danger, guaranteed harmless fat. The enemy that is shortening
Speaker 1: your life banished. How with sanitized tapeworms jar packed friends
Speaker 1: for a fair form, easy to swallow, no ill effects,
Speaker 1: prepared by wt Bridge chemist, New York, send no money,
Speaker 1: particulars mailed free. To be clear, nothing about tapeworms is sanitary,
Speaker 1: but product labels surely did proudly claim that their pills
Speaker 1: were safe.
Speaker 2: How did this even become a thing? You might be
Speaker 2: wondering these standards are problematic now, but in the eighteenth
Speaker 2: and early nineteenth centuries, ideas about feminine beauty included pale skin,
Speaker 2: rosy cheeks, red lips, white teeth, and sparkling eyes. Women
Speaker 2: were also expected to be wafishly thin. A sixteen inch waist,
Speaker 2: yes sixteen was ideal by some standards, and women also
Speaker 2: needed to be graceful and polite, according to a series
Speaker 2: of essays on the subject at the time, quote politeness
Speaker 2: may be defined as a dexterous management of our words
Speaker 2: and actions, whereby we make other people have better opinion
Speaker 2: of us and themselves.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular beauty guides of the era,
Speaker 1: an unfortunate book called The Ugly Girl Papers, written by
Speaker 1: SD Powers and published in eighteen seventy four, was a
Speaker 1: sort of self help guide for the quote unquote ugly
Speaker 1: women in society, with tips on how to become more beautiful,
Speaker 1: and even stated that quote it is a woman's business
Speaker 1: to be beautiful. Beauty takes time and effort, the book
Speaker 1: bok explained, and if you wanted to find a husband,
Speaker 1: you needed to put in the time. This body shaming
Speaker 1: guide had the gall to recommend women find a quote
Speaker 1: healthy balance in the pursuit of beauty, all while explaining
Speaker 1: how to maintain one's figure or how to drop a
Speaker 1: few pounds to be more attractive to others. The author claimed,
Speaker 1: quote if stout, a girl should eat as little as
Speaker 1: will satisfy her appetite, never allowing herself, however, to rise
Speaker 1: from the table hungry enter the tapeworm.
Speaker 2: But before we meet this parasite, we're going to take
Speaker 2: a break forward from our sponsors. When we're back, we
Speaker 2: will talk about the unreasonable standard of beauty women were
Speaker 2: held to in the Victorian era and how women were
Speaker 2: perceived if they did not fit that mold.
Speaker 1: We come back to criminalia. Let's start talking about tuberculosis
Speaker 1: and how it ties in to the tapeworm diet.
Speaker 2: So during this time, ideal feminine beauty was based on
Speaker 2: the appearance of people who had tuberculosis, which was romanticized
Speaker 2: during the era. For those characteristics we mentioned earlier, a
Speaker 2: pale complexion, dilated pupils, and a frail thin physique. Tuberculosis
Speaker 2: had reached epidemic levels in Europe and in the United
Speaker 2: States by the mid nineteenth century. The disease targets the
Speaker 2: lungs and also damages other organs, and before antibiotics were available,
Speaker 2: if you had it, it meant a slow death march.
Speaker 2: You died from what was then called consumption. During that time,
Speaker 2: consumption was believed to be caused by a hereditary susceptibility
Speaker 2: to it, as well as from unhealthy or so called
Speaker 2: bad air known as miasmas. It wasn't known to be infectious.
Speaker 1: Published in nineteen oh nine, the book Tuberculosis, a treatise
Speaker 1: by American authors on its etiology, pathology, frequency, semiology, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention,
Speaker 1: and treatment, outlines the illness this way quote, A considerable
Speaker 1: number of patients have and have had for years, a delicate,
Speaker 1: transparent skin, as well as fine silky hair. Those sparkling
Speaker 1: or dilated eyes and rosy cheeks and lips that were
Speaker 1: longed for were common in tuberculosis patients because their common
Speaker 1: characteristics of an ongoing low grade fever, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: known to the medical community at the time.
Speaker 2: Desperate to achieve the coveted look, some Victorian women snacked
Speaker 2: on wafers made of arsenic to give themselves that bright
Speaker 2: eyed look as well as help them achieve a translucent complexion.
Speaker 2: Eyedrops of belladonna were used to dilate pupils, which also
Speaker 2: made eyes look bigger. Belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade,
Speaker 2: can also cause blood kindness. Please don't try any of
Speaker 2: this at home, and as we keep going, none of
Speaker 2: it gets any healthier.
Speaker 1: This unrealistic image society set for women to live up to,
Speaker 1: also used a woman's weight as a barometer of her intelligence,
Speaker 1: her character, her sexuality, and even her sanity. In Victorian society,
Speaker 1: excess weight was attributed to a woman's quote indolence of mind.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and embrace yourself, because the body shaming only
Speaker 1: gets worse from here. A nineteen hundred edition of The
Speaker 1: Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette reported quote obesity always carries with
Speaker 1: it physical and often mental weakness. In his eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven book The Female Offender, author Cizar Lambroso, who was,
Speaker 1: among other things, a eugenicist, claimed a connection between obesity
Speaker 1: and sex work, stating quote, this greater weight among prostitutes
Speaker 1: is confirmed by the notorious fact of the obesity of
Speaker 1: those who grow old in their vile trade and who
Speaker 1: gradually become positive monsters of adipose tissue. Taking another leap,
Speaker 1: he goes on to conclude that quote female lunatics are
Speaker 1: far more often exaggeratedly fat than men.
Speaker 2: A so called consumptive chic to cover the fashion world
Speaker 2: of the mid eighteen hundreds, as women sought to avoid
Speaker 2: being associated with all of that negative perception of carrying
Speaker 2: any weight at all. To look as thin as possible
Speaker 2: and achieve that ideal sixteen inch waist, women wore pointed
Speaker 2: corsets and generous skirts to call attention to tiny waists,
Speaker 2: and under those voluminous skirts, women appeared to glide as
Speaker 2: they moved, adding an otherworldly dimension to their delicate comportment.
Speaker 2: Women also attempted to mimic the consumptive ethereal appearance by
Speaker 2: using white powder on their skin and by washing their
Speaker 2: skin with arsenic yes. Again, the poison.
Speaker 1: Tuberculosis chic was hot. Take for instance, Marie Duplessi, a
Speaker 1: French Cortisan and Parisian celebrity. Today we would think of
Speaker 1: someone like her as an influencer. She was a striking
Speaker 1: Victorian beauty whose well known portrait by artist Edouar Vienna
Speaker 1: shows off her shiny black hair. Framing her oval face.
Speaker 1: Her eyes are sparkling, and she has pale ivory skin.
Speaker 1: Duplessi got that sought after look because she was afflicted
Speaker 1: with tuberculosis and she died from it at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty three. To achieve that kind of beauty, women
Speaker 1: bathed in ammonia and they wore body crushing corsets. And
Speaker 1: some women chose more drastic measures, and that is ingesting
Speaker 1: tapeworms by swallowing tapeworm pills. Those pills contained beef tapeworm larvae.
Speaker 1: These larvae cysts would then hatch inside the body and
Speaker 1: voila weight loss was now in progress.
Speaker 2: According to food historian Anny Gray Quote, during the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: dieting became big business. Advertising was becoming more and more sophisticated,
Speaker 2: with more and more diet products being pedled. So let's
Speaker 2: talk how these tapeworms fit in to consumptive chek.
Speaker 1: So, tapeworms, as we've been saying, are parasites. They're members
Speaker 1: of the phylum Anelda, also known as segmented worms, and
Speaker 1: that's a species that also includes pinworms and leeches. Segmented
Speaker 1: worms can break off segments of their body and as
Speaker 1: long as the head remains attached to its host, the
Speaker 1: creature can regrow more segments. Tapeworms have three main parts.
Speaker 1: The head, which is the part that attaches to intestines
Speaker 1: and ingests nutrients from your body, the neck, which can
Speaker 1: regenerate its body. And then there's the rest of the worm,
Speaker 1: which consists of many segments that bear eggs. When those
Speaker 1: eggs hatch, they detach from the rest of the tapeworm
Speaker 1: and travel through the bloodstream to your muscles and to
Speaker 1: your brain, liver, and other organs, where they develop into cysts.
Speaker 1: If treatment to get rid of a tapeworm does not
Speaker 1: eliminate the head and neck, it may as well be
Speaker 1: useless because the entire worm can regrow.
Speaker 2: Tapeworms generally don't cause more than minor symptoms, including things
Speaker 2: like lack of appetite, diarrhea, nausea, weight loss of course,
Speaker 2: and a craving for salty foods. But if those cysts
Speaker 2: grow in the spine or brain rather than the intestine,
Speaker 2: side effects could cause life threatening problems, including seizures, nerve pain,
Speaker 2: muscle weakness, and cognitive changes. If the central nervous system
Speaker 2: becomes infected, a person might experience hydrocephalous meningitis, and damage
Speaker 2: to blood vessels in the brainstem or nerves. In some cases,
Speaker 2: if the tapeworm grows long enough, it could lead to
Speaker 2: obstruction of the bowel appendix or bialduct, which is a
Speaker 2: medical emergency. And on ava ridge, an adult tapeworm is
Speaker 2: about fifteen to thirty feet long. I mean, can you
Speaker 2: imagine in you're intestine on purpose, and they weren't temporary guests.
Speaker 2: You could host one for up to a decade. As
Speaker 2: long as your symptoms were mild, you might not even notice.
Speaker 1: So with all of that delicious imagery and mind, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a break for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: and when we're back, we will talk about how one
Speaker 1: might remove a tapeworm before anti parasitic drugs. It was
Speaker 1: not especially easy.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's get to talking about ways
Speaker 2: tapeworms were removed before modern medicine. But first let's talk
Speaker 2: about how maybe not a lot of those pills worked
Speaker 2: as advertised anyway.
Speaker 1: When it comes down to both Victorian and modern dieters,
Speaker 1: because that tapeworm diet just won't go away. Stories about
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of this horrifying diet are actually kind of murky.
Speaker 1: Modern historians disagree on whether people actually ingested any real
Speaker 1: tapeworms from those pills, or whether the advertised products were
Speaker 1: just simply placebos. Luckily, most of those tapeworm pills probably
Speaker 1: didn't work because most of them were probably inactive, or
Speaker 1: they just didn't even contain the active ingredient, which is
Speaker 1: a funny thing to call a tapeworm at all. One example,
Speaker 1: a product called Neutroids, marketed in the nineteen hundreds is
Speaker 1: a weight loss supplement sold by doctor R. Lincoln Graham
Speaker 1: of the Gram Sanatorium in New York City, contained ie
Speaker 1: at all, magnesium carbonate, starch, talc, and a trace of iron.
Speaker 1: But you'll notice that ingredients list contains absolutely no mention
Speaker 1: of tapeworms.
Speaker 2: But for those who were actually infected, there's still one
Speaker 2: thing we haven't talked about. Removing your tapeworm buckle up
Speaker 2: because some of these will probably make you squirm. The
Speaker 2: worm could theoretically leave your body on its own during
Speaker 2: a bowel movement. Segments of a tapeworm can break off
Speaker 2: and exit the body in your stool, and you would
Speaker 2: be able to see them. Pieces of tapeworm in your
Speaker 2: stool usually look flat and rectangular. They would be white
Speaker 2: or a pale yellow, and they'd be the size of
Speaker 2: a grain of rice, although sometimes they remain joined together
Speaker 2: in a long chain of segments.
Speaker 1: Today, if you find yourself in the unfortunate scenario where
Speaker 1: you have a tapeworm, your doctor would prescribe what are
Speaker 1: known as anthelmentic drugs, which treat parasitic infections. But before
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, when the first modern anti parasitic
Speaker 1: drugs hit the market, worms were treated in a few ways.
Speaker 1: Purgative plants such as wormwood were used to both kill
Speaker 1: the wor you were hosting and trigger your body to
Speaker 1: expel it with about of rather severe diarrhea.
Speaker 2: Another popular method of removing your tapeworm involved holding a
Speaker 2: glass of milk at your mouth or near your anus,
Speaker 2: and then waiting for the worm to come out. Theoretically,
Speaker 2: it would head for that milk. Now, there is no
Speaker 2: proof that milk can coax or remove a parasite, but
Speaker 2: when it comes to folk remedies, it can be hard
Speaker 2: to shake. And then there's this method. Terry Deary, in
Speaker 2: his book Horrible Histories Vile Victorians, describes a method invented
Speaker 2: by a doctor Myers of Sheffield, England, in which cylinders
Speaker 2: stuffed with food were inserted into a person's digestive tract.
Speaker 2: Patients were then instructed not to eat for a few days,
Speaker 2: so that the tapeworms looking for a meal would theoretically
Speaker 2: be lured into those traps. Tapeworms would then be coaxed
Speaker 2: out of the body with the aforementioned milk method, and
Speaker 2: while a glass of milk wasn't really going to help,
Speaker 2: at least it was a fairly benign treatment in comparison,
Speaker 2: some people choked to death on these cylinders.
Speaker 1: During the second half of the nineteenth century, there was
Speaker 1: a better understanding of tuberculosis when in eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Robert Coch announced that he discovered the bacteria that causes
Speaker 1: the disease. In eighteen sixty one, Louis Pasteur had introduced
Speaker 1: germ theory, a breakthrough that proved microscopic organisms invisible germs
Speaker 1: were a cause of infection rather than something like bad air.
Speaker 1: Building on that, Koch's understanding of tuberculosis helped germ theory
Speaker 1: gain more legitimacy, and it also convinced both public health
Speaker 1: experts and physicians that tuberculosis was a contagious disease.
Speaker 2: For those desperate to lose weight, whatever their motivation to
Speaker 2: do so, tapeworms maybe sounded more appealing or potentially quicker
Speaker 2: than things like changing your diet and exercise habits. The
Speaker 2: United States Food and Drug Administration officially banned tapeworm pills,
Speaker 2: but there's no ban on the unrealistic expectations of female
Speaker 2: beauty then or now, I think we need to drink
Speaker 2: to make this just wash away from.
Speaker 1: I think so tia. But this comes with a bit
Speaker 1: of a secondary history lesson. Are you ready, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We mentioned one of the treatments was to consume wormwood. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I can't let a mention of wormwood go by
Speaker 1: and not talk about absence. Of course. So wormwood's scientific
Speaker 1: name is Artemisia absyntheum. That's where absinthe gets its name.
Speaker 1: It's an ornamental plant. It's native to Europe, although now
Speaker 1: you can find it in other places. It has been
Speaker 1: used medicinally since all the way back to ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: It was in the ebers Pyrus. It's also mentioned in
Speaker 1: the Bible. Pliny the Elder talked about it Juliette's wet
Speaker 1: nurse in Shakespeare's play speaks of weaning Juliet by putting
Speaker 1: wormwood on her person because the bitter taste made nursing unappealing.
Speaker 1: But it didn't become an alcohol until the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: when Pierre Ordinaire, who was a French doctor, is credited
Speaker 1: with coming up with the first absinthe recipe in his
Speaker 1: book The Complete Body of Distilling. That was in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty one, and it was still more than sixty years
Speaker 1: before absinthe was bottled as a commercial product, which was
Speaker 1: done by Henri Luis Perennaut, and once it was commercially available,
Speaker 1: it was a huge hit, so much so that cocktail
Speaker 1: hour in Paris got renamed le'overt which is the green hour.
Speaker 1: And then absence spread from beyond France to the rest
Speaker 1: of Europe and then eventually to the US, and people
Speaker 1: really loved it, then they didn't, or some people loved
Speaker 1: it and some people did not. A lot of people
Speaker 1: got a legen addicted to it, and by the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century it was really easy to find editorials talking
Speaker 1: about the dangers of absinthe and how it was fundamentally
Speaker 1: evil and how it was going to ruin everybody. That
Speaker 1: wave of anti absent thinking was helped by doctors who
Speaker 1: had started to attribute a lot of issues to absinthe,
Speaker 1: including various mental illnesses which were all grouped under the
Speaker 1: nebulous umbrella of insanity, which made me think also of
Speaker 1: how some doctors who were horrible made strange and unscientific
Speaker 1: associations between carrying extra weight and being insane or whatnot.
Speaker 1: And eventually they believed that they had isolated the specific
Speaker 1: problem ingredient, which was wormwood in absinthe, which of course
Speaker 1: contains a compound called thujone. Thujone is toxic, to be clear,
Speaker 1: but the assessment of absent that the dawn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century wasn't accurate in terms of that theu jone
Speaker 1: being dangerous, because there were actually studies that started to
Speaker 1: come out talking about thu jon dangers and what it
Speaker 1: could do to you. That's kind of why it was medicinal.
Speaker 1: It had enough toxicity that you could use it to
Speaker 1: do things like kill a tape.
Speaker 2: Or kill a tape worm exactly.
Speaker 1: And as the medical community and scientists started publishing papers,
Speaker 1: absence started getting banned. Belgium was the first to ban
Speaker 1: it in nineteen oh five, and then just ten years later,
Speaker 1: by nineteen fifteen, almost I think every European country except
Speaker 1: Spain had banned it. The US had also banned it,
Speaker 1: and it stayed banned for a long time.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because that overlaps our time frame here with
Speaker 2: killing tape worms with wormwood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It really wasn't like until eighty years after
Speaker 1: it that people started looking at absinthe again and being like, wait,
Speaker 1: what wasn't it that was so bad and really kind
Speaker 1: of start to do analysis on whether it had actually
Speaker 1: been toxic, And when those analyzes were performed, it really
Speaker 1: became clear that the theu jone in absinthe really was
Speaker 1: just adding a little bit of bitter flavor and sometimes
Speaker 1: part of that green coloration we associate with it, but
Speaker 1: there was nowhere near enough in it to be toxic.
Speaker 1: So that idea that the wormwood in absinthe was what
Speaker 1: made it dangerous was completely unfounded. All of those problems
Speaker 1: that had been attributed to thujone and to absyinthe, it
Speaker 1: was really just run of the mill alcoholism in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, and it was like the novel alcohol,
Speaker 1: so that's why people were choosing it, and in some
Speaker 1: cases I suspect there were also instances where people actually
Speaker 1: did have some form of mental illness that they were
Speaker 1: self medicating through heavy drinking because there was no one
Speaker 1: recognizing what the real problem was to treat.
Speaker 2: Them, and no real treatment at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was nothing to do, so like absinthe and
Speaker 1: wormwood kind of got this bad rap for no actual
Speaker 1: factual reason. By the way, that whole absinth causing hallucinations
Speaker 1: thing is debunked left and right. It's kind of one
Speaker 1: of those two sided coins. Both the people that were
Speaker 1: into absinthe and the people that thought it was evil
Speaker 1: were kind of both perpetuating that myth because people that
Speaker 1: were really into it were like, it was amazing, it
Speaker 1: was mind altering, it was the best thing I've ever had,
Speaker 1: And people that thought it was evil were like, it
Speaker 1: will mess up your mind. It's gonna make you like
Speaker 1: they were saying the same thing but with different emphasis.
Speaker 1: So as all of this scientific information started to become
Speaker 1: a parent, slowly those bands started to roll back. There
Speaker 1: are specific limits just in case on how much wormwood
Speaker 1: can be included in production of absinth, but you can
Speaker 1: buy it pretty readily almost anywhere. Now this has been
Speaker 1: your absent advocacy minute, and now we're going to drink
Speaker 1: some all right.
Speaker 2: I like a little history lesson with my drink.
Speaker 1: This is a drink that I'm calling beauty standards, and
Speaker 1: it is a really easy one because you make it
Speaker 1: in the glass. It shares some DNA with a mule.
Speaker 1: There are times when you do not want to directly
Speaker 1: pour your alcohol and your mixing ingredients over ice, because
Speaker 1: the ice starts to melt very quickly and dilute. In
Speaker 1: the case of absinthe, I think it's fine you would
Speaker 1: normally if you order an absinth in a bar, they're
Speaker 1: gonna dilute it with water anyway. That's what that whole
Speaker 1: sugar cube drop thing is going on when you get one.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna put your ice, a good amount of
Speaker 1: ice in your glass or your cup, whatever you're using.
Speaker 1: You're gonna pour in an ounce of absinthe, a half
Speaker 1: ounce of lemon juice, a half ounce of violet syrup,
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna top that with two to four
Speaker 1: ounces of ginger beer and just give it a stir.
Speaker 1: The violet syrup and the absinthe. It's like drinking the
Speaker 1: most beautiful bouquet in the world. Like all of the
Speaker 1: herbaceous flavors of absinthe really come out, and the violet
Speaker 1: it softens the edges of everything. It's so yummy and delicious.
Speaker 1: I would like one right now.
Speaker 2: That's in a great list of ingredients that sounds like
Speaker 2: a yummy drink.
Speaker 1: Violet syrup is one of those things. If you don't
Speaker 1: have it, I recommend getting some. You can make it.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit tricky, so I recommend buying that one,
Speaker 1: or at least I find it tricky. Somebody else would
Speaker 1: be like what, it's easy, and every time I recommend
Speaker 1: ordering some because it's just one of those syrups that's
Speaker 1: like it adds to your bar cart or your backbar,
Speaker 1: whatever you're using, like just this little like secret weapon
Speaker 1: that you can use to make drinks feel a little elevated.
Speaker 1: And if when you use it in lieu of simple syrup,
Speaker 1: you can also throw it on, you know, a scone
Speaker 1: or a cookie and it's I love violet syrup and everything.
Speaker 1: The mocktail for this one is so easy. You're going
Speaker 1: to do the exact same thing, but instead of using
Speaker 1: any absynthe you will use like a half ounce instead
Speaker 1: of an ounce of an anis or a licorice syrup.
Speaker 1: That's it. Bump it down because at that point that
Speaker 1: liquorice flavor gets really intense at a full ounce, so
Speaker 1: you don't need that much, especially because you then have
Speaker 1: two syrups going on. So I would in that case
Speaker 1: probably also lean towards the heavier end of your ginger
Speaker 1: beer port. That is the beauty standard, which is easy
Speaker 1: to achieve.
Speaker 2: Delicious and easy to achieve.
Speaker 1: I drink too, finding the beauty and everyone and not
Speaker 1: making people do foolish things to stop being themselves and
Speaker 1: become something else in the interest of pleasing somebody else's gaze.
Speaker 2: Right, going so far as to ingest.
Speaker 1: A, don't danguer your.
Speaker 2: Health to look good to other people.
Speaker 1: Listen. You can be as close to the perfect level
Speaker 1: of beauty standard as you want, but if you're sick
Speaker 1: to get there, or if you don't feel good about
Speaker 1: any of it, it's not worth it. I promise. I
Speaker 1: am very grateful that you have all hung out and
Speaker 1: listened to us and listened to me yammer on about
Speaker 1: my absent feelings.
Speaker 2: And stayed through the disgusting episode out of tamwork.
Speaker 1: We needed some fun talk to shake off all of
Speaker 1: that holding milk up to your orifices discussion I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in, but we are so grateful that you spent
Speaker 1: this time with us, and we will be right back
Speaker 1: here again next week with another story of snake oil,
Speaker 1: which hopefully will involve less anous talk and another drink
Speaker 1: that definitely won't if I have anything to say about it.
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.