Speaker 1: Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there again. Gosh, it feels good to
Speaker 1: have you back. Chairs Cherysa's thanks and this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. The smell of mi So is back.
Speaker 1: I love the smell of me so in the morning.
Speaker 1: I've been doing a lot of mis lunches mm hmm,
Speaker 1: actually just eating balls of mis no. I found a
Speaker 1: I found a soup that's pretty good, like well, a
Speaker 1: ramen and a miso that are a little because I
Speaker 1: was thinking like man, I used to love those little
Speaker 1: ramin's in college. It's like, I wonder if there's an
Speaker 1: elevated version of that, and there is, Uh, I'll plug it.
Speaker 1: Mike's mighty good ramen. It's a cup of soup, but
Speaker 1: it's just a little bit better. It's made from better ingredients.
Speaker 1: In Instead of twenty cents, it's like two dollars. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still pretty affordable. But yeah, it's just super fast
Speaker 1: and get some you know, low calories in your body
Speaker 1: to stave off some food cravings. Stave off that cheeseburger craving,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Yes, which can be substantial.
Speaker 1: And you know what I'm also back on and this
Speaker 1: is all just because of calorie crap. But beef turkey
Speaker 1: is a nice little protein snack, not a ton of calories,
Speaker 1: and squashes cravings. That one kid, um sorry, that one guy,
Speaker 1: but he started it as a kid our listener who
Speaker 1: makes beef jerky really top quality stuff. It was good,
Speaker 1: but you know, I had my MOLDI beef jerky incident
Speaker 1: years ago in l A. Oh that's right. This is
Speaker 1: the first time I've had beef jerkey in fourteen years.
Speaker 1: Because of that incident. Well you're back on the train, though,
Speaker 1: I'm glad. Well, not like a ton, but a couple
Speaker 1: of times a week I'll snack on some beef jurney.
Speaker 1: That is. That's a lot. That's a lot of jerky. Yes,
Speaker 1: a couple of times a week is a lot. I
Speaker 1: mean that's like right in my wheelhouse. But it's a lot.
Speaker 1: And the whole bag of beef jerky once, okay, two ounces? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you weigh it out first? I do? Do you really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was on the food weighing thing for a little
Speaker 1: while and like you can get into it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a game. I mean just that's the only way
Speaker 1: to track accurately. Um. Yeah, good for you, man. Thanks,
Speaker 1: you're feeling good whatever, You're like, I've lost my world
Speaker 1: of blue now it's weighing beef jerkin. It's fine. Alright, Well, everybody,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about Indigo to Die in the History
Speaker 1: of It, which to me, did you know any of
Speaker 1: this before we started? No, So this is kind of
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this sounds interesting, let's do one on
Speaker 1: Indigo and dug In and struck Gold. You know, I
Speaker 1: was I was perusing the old house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com website um, which you know, I know we have
Speaker 1: almost cleaned that website dry over the years, but this
Speaker 1: one popped up and I thought interesting because this is
Speaker 1: one of those that is like, oh, indigo, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a color, but it's also a pigment and it has
Speaker 1: an interesting history and also slavery and race gets involved,
Speaker 1: so no idea. Yeah, it has a lot of tendrils
Speaker 1: that I found interesting. Yes, Supposedly, wherever indigo went, especially
Speaker 1: after the age of the exploration and colonization, so too
Speaker 1: went um slavery because it was it's a really intensive
Speaker 1: process and crop um to produce indigo to die very
Speaker 1: popular crop. Yeah, and it was also a worth a
Speaker 1: lot of money, which was like, oh, well, we'll just
Speaker 1: um kidnap people and make them work for free and
Speaker 1: and that's how we'll produce indigo. And that's how it
Speaker 1: went for hundreds of years apparently. Yeah, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to this, but there are some people that say the
Speaker 1: state of Georgia legalized slavery specifically so they could kind
Speaker 1: of keep pace with indigo as a crop. And those
Speaker 1: people who say that are historians, that's right. So okay,
Speaker 1: I knew zero about indigo aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: they used it to dye jeans and that was blue basically. Um.
Speaker 1: And I just found this ultimately super fascinating. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean this beginning though, I thought was even more fascinating
Speaker 1: because I never really thought about the fact that if
Speaker 1: you look at any color up to a certain point
Speaker 1: about the mid nineteenth century. Yeah, mid nineteenth century, was
Speaker 1: any color you would see on a fabric or a
Speaker 1: textile was there because a lot of plants and insects
Speaker 1: We're squashed like it was an insect and plant blood
Speaker 1: bath for eons in the world. Because if you wanted
Speaker 1: something to be colored at all, then you had to
Speaker 1: find a bug or a plant that you could grind
Speaker 1: up into a powder basically or some other means, yeah,
Speaker 1: or an animal, uh, like sea snails and animals, And
Speaker 1: if you wanted purple for a very very long time,
Speaker 1: you had to um, you had to get the mucous
Speaker 1: gland out of a sea snail and and desiccated. And
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that didn't end well for the sea snail. No,
Speaker 1: And I imagine that's a super labor intensive thing to do.
Speaker 1: But who, Like I guess I could see like accidentally
Speaker 1: smashing a sea snail and be like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: very pretty purple. I wonder if I can use it
Speaker 1: to do stuff with the stuff that gets me those
Speaker 1: when you get into like indigo itself. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: the fact that you can get blue out of indigo
Speaker 1: is not intuitive. No, because you look at the plant,
Speaker 1: it's not blue. You squeeze the plant, not blue, eat
Speaker 1: the plant, poop it out, not blue. There's nothing blue
Speaker 1: about it. You have to you have to put it
Speaker 1: through this chemical reaction that's multi step to to get
Speaker 1: it to be blue. And I'm likely at a loss
Speaker 1: how what what series of accidents had to happen so
Speaker 1: that like somebody came up with indigo to die because
Speaker 1: apparently it's one of the least least natural natural dyes
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah. And and also and for that reason,
Speaker 1: one of the most sought after through antiquity, because you know,
Speaker 1: if they wanted to make red stuff, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things you can you know, get
Speaker 1: red out of it in nature or green obviously, but blue.
Speaker 1: You know the old thing about there being no blue foods.
Speaker 1: What old thing? Well, the old adage there are no
Speaker 1: blue foods. Have you ever had arctic blue gum? Well?
Speaker 1: I did look into this because this doesn't make a
Speaker 1: little sense of why blue as a pigment would be
Speaker 1: more sought after, and I think it ties into the
Speaker 1: fact that it's just not naturally occurring. Really, Um, I
Speaker 1: had never thought about that, but that. Yeah, now I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna spend the rest of the episode racking my
Speaker 1: brain for a blue food. Well, blue corn, blue potatoes,
Speaker 1: blue blueberries are the things that most people would say, well,
Speaker 1: what about that. I never would have thought of those,
Speaker 1: But those are technically purple. Um that on the Food
Speaker 1: Network a few years ago, and other people have done this.
Speaker 1: They used to spectro uh photometer photometer two look at
Speaker 1: the true colors of foods, and even those foods are
Speaker 1: actually purple. They brought Sydney Opera and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's purple. I don't get it. She had that song
Speaker 1: true Colors. Okay, I was thinking true blue. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's my daughter. Did you just add an r Onto
Speaker 1: the end of Madonna? Yeah, but that's a reservoir dogs reference. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you for explaining it. I didn't have to see
Speaker 1: like multiple emails two weeks from now with people being
Speaker 1: like great reservoir dogs reference Chuck. So the blue food thing,
Speaker 1: supposedly people think that blue light is one of the
Speaker 1: high energy wavelengths on the on the light spectrum, on
Speaker 1: the visible light spectrum, and that the guesses is to
Speaker 1: grow more efficiently plants absorbed that light and use that energy. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the blue end is is higher energy. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Yes, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was what we were talking about in the about
Speaker 1: the blue blood. Yes, but that's the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: It absorbs more red, so it reflects more blue. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so if it was blue, it would it would absorb
Speaker 1: less blue light. I don't know, I know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a mind sure, a brain teaser, right there
Speaker 1: you go. But at any rate, there are very supposedly
Speaker 1: no true blue foods, and that's probably ties into the
Speaker 1: fact there are not a lot of plants that were
Speaker 1: true blue. And as if you wanted something blue back then, uh,
Speaker 1: you had to get it from woade, which is a
Speaker 1: If you look at those, it's got yellow flowers again,
Speaker 1: not blue. If there was ever a medieval English word,
Speaker 1: I love it for that. It sounds like a little
Speaker 1: uh a little short, hairy stubby, that little woe man
Speaker 1: with big feet who wears like a tunic, that's a
Speaker 1: woad or the more um are the prettier named Indigo fera,
Speaker 1: which is a family of plants in India and South America,
Speaker 1: both of those that has like a pinkish flower. But
Speaker 1: both of those is where you used get indigo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what's weird about this also is not only like
Speaker 1: to neither of these plants look like they would produce
Speaker 1: blue dye, but neither one of them are actually particularly
Speaker 1: good at dyeing fabric. They both resist binding to fabric
Speaker 1: or um dissolving in water. Hence the reason why you
Speaker 1: don't just like squeeze wode or an intego ferra plant
Speaker 1: um and get blue dye. You have to run it
Speaker 1: through this process that starts with fermentation. Even yeah, and squeezing,
Speaker 1: squeezing your wode sounds it sounds like something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we don't know for sure. We think they've been
Speaker 1: making indigo from wode longer than from the Indigo ferra plant.
Speaker 1: I think now we we can't say the word woude
Speaker 1: anymore for the rest of the episode. I think you're right,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, we can't really tell sometimes whether
Speaker 1: it was woade or the indigo ferra. That they do
Speaker 1: think because Egypt and Mesopotamia are close to Turkey and
Speaker 1: they had a lot of blue uh and in Turkey
Speaker 1: they had more woad than indigo ferra, So they think
Speaker 1: that was probably the first one. Yeah. So the upshot
Speaker 1: of all that is that they can trace blue die
Speaker 1: back to the third millennium b c. Five thousand years
Speaker 1: ago or up to five thousand years ago, but they
Speaker 1: can't say whether it came from wood or indigo ferre right, right,
Speaker 1: But they did find indigo ferra in the Bronze Age
Speaker 1: in the Indus Valley civilization. And this was fascinating to
Speaker 1: me just because the um the horror Pon. I guess
Speaker 1: it's one of the same, the Indus Valley civilization and
Speaker 1: the that that what you just said, Yes, they're they're
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, Yes, they're the Harpon civilization that
Speaker 1: was one of maybe the largest ever ancient civilization. And
Speaker 1: I'm just fascinating anytime we talk about these civilizations back then,
Speaker 1: add like as many as five million people, It's just
Speaker 1: blows my mind. They also had indoor plumbing, underground sewage
Speaker 1: like they had it going on. They apparently had a
Speaker 1: better standard of living um than contemporary Egyptians at the
Speaker 1: same time. And everybody thinks that the Egyptians having it
Speaker 1: going on too. Yeah please, yeah, I guess not compared
Speaker 1: to the Indus Valley civilization. So um, there is lots
Speaker 1: of examples of this stuff. Um. Yeah, Indigo fera or
Speaker 1: wode they kind of competed for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and Europe kind of went the Woade way because wade
Speaker 1: grows in um in Europe much more easily related to
Speaker 1: the cabbage family. They took the load less traveled. That
Speaker 1: was good, um, and then that was really good. And
Speaker 1: then indigo fera grows better in like Pakistan, India that
Speaker 1: that area the Indus Valley um, and so that that
Speaker 1: was kind of like the split in blue dye. The
Speaker 1: thing is, there seems to have always been this understanding
Speaker 1: that indigo fair is just vastly superior to woade indigo um.
Speaker 1: And so even in Europe, like you would find woade
Speaker 1: like the Greeks, the Romans, and then up to medieval Europeans,
Speaker 1: if they could get their hands on indigo ferra, indigo
Speaker 1: that um. They would pay through the nose for that stuff.
Speaker 1: Um and rightly. So, I mean like it was really
Speaker 1: expensive because it's hard to produce, as we'll see um.
Speaker 1: But also at the time you had to travel over
Speaker 1: land carrying the stuff, and so each trader that went
Speaker 1: along these trade rush just added more and more money
Speaker 1: on too. So by the time it reached a western Europe,
Speaker 1: you were paying a lot for this blue dive. One
Speaker 1: million dollars. They would be like that that number doesn't
Speaker 1: even exist yet. So the Greeks they called and this
Speaker 1: is going down a bit of a a word origin
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. But the Greeks called the blue pigment indecon
Speaker 1: with a K because it was from India and they
Speaker 1: wanted it to sound sinister because things were the K
Speaker 1: that became indigo in English. And then there's the word
Speaker 1: for die in ancient lands uh in i l i
Speaker 1: neely that was Sanskrit meaning dark blue, and then that
Speaker 1: became a n i l in Spanish, and eventually that
Speaker 1: became indigo in Central and South America. And apparently, yeah,
Speaker 1: blue in Arabic is al neil right, in English, uh
Speaker 1: annualine is derived from that, and that is synthetic die class.
Speaker 1: So it's all tied together. We got to climb right
Speaker 1: out of this hole. Yes, that was a big one. So, um,
Speaker 1: where are we in the ancient world? Well, I think
Speaker 1: we're in Marco Polo? Okay, good so and twelve the
Speaker 1: late twelve hundreds, the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo made
Speaker 1: his way to China and was like, hey, get this.
Speaker 1: We had to say something. This is me talking, not
Speaker 1: Marco Polo, but um, they had, like the Romans, the Greeks,
Speaker 1: the Europeans had no idea that indigo came from a plant,
Speaker 1: because by the time I got to them, it was
Speaker 1: like these little hard um bits of die and you
Speaker 1: would mix with water at about solution and there you
Speaker 1: had your die. All of a sudden, um, But they
Speaker 1: thought it was a mineral. Marco Polo went to China,
Speaker 1: saw some of this stuff firsthand. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: this comes from a plant. Did you guys know that?
Speaker 1: And by the way, I got a bunch of my
Speaker 1: boat if you want to buy something, And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there was trade now with with China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that went. It was still pretty expensive because there
Speaker 1: was no direct sea route to China. Until Vasco da
Speaker 1: Gama came along and said watch this, Yeah, I'll sail
Speaker 1: to China in like two seconds. Everyone was very impressed.
Speaker 1: And this kind of cut out the middleman in all
Speaker 1: those hands. Like you were saying, raising the prices along
Speaker 1: the way, you cut out a lot of those and
Speaker 1: you've got more supply. And even back then that those
Speaker 1: economics meant cheaper prices would follow, right, isn't Fosco da
Speaker 1: Gama George Costanza's favorite explorer? I can't remember. I was
Speaker 1: just wondering that. I want to say it is, but
Speaker 1: I thought it was Cortez. Now no, no, no, everybody
Speaker 1: hates Cortez. Who was Jerry's I don't remember which one.
Speaker 1: I think one of them was impressed about going around
Speaker 1: the Horn of Africa majelling. Maybe I'll have to look
Speaker 1: that all. What's the door Steinfeld research on that for you?
Speaker 1: So the cost of Indigo dropped a lot because of
Speaker 1: the da Gama but but not like rock bottom luxury,
Speaker 1: like the point zero one percent could afforded to you know,
Speaker 1: could afford kind of something like that. Yeah, But what
Speaker 1: that meant was is Woade was in big double because
Speaker 1: Indigo from the Indigo ferra was the blue gold, said,
Speaker 1: what is me? All right, let's take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the synthesization synthetization. Good God, am I
Speaker 1: dreaming right now? I think? So? Good night? Okay. So
Speaker 1: you said that they call it blue gold, right, or
Speaker 1: they did back in the age of Vasco da Gama.
Speaker 1: That's right because it was worth a lot of money.
Speaker 1: It lasted along and had a good shelf life, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, huge. It was pretty compact as
Speaker 1: far as storing and traveling, super compact. So um, if
Speaker 1: you'll indulge me, like I found a little bit about
Speaker 1: how that stuff that they used to to travel with
Speaker 1: was made. Yeah, and it's still if it's going to
Speaker 1: be made naturally, which it really isn't. This is how
Speaker 1: they would still do it, right. Someone figured this out
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago and still today from what we understand,
Speaker 1: the process is virtually the same. So the whole thing
Speaker 1: starts with a whole bunch of indigo ferra um plant um,
Speaker 1: and you throw it into a pot and you start
Speaker 1: to ferment it. Step one. Somebody figured out how to
Speaker 1: ferment or that you need to ferment indigo. I bet
Speaker 1: someone drank it at some point, yes, and they're like,
Speaker 1: chuck out my teeth. Have you ever seen teeth like these?
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, the reason why you can't just
Speaker 1: squeeze an indigo ferra plant and get indigo outs because
Speaker 1: there's no indigo in the plant. It doesn't exist naturally.
Speaker 1: But there's a precursor to it called indi can um,
Speaker 1: and that is what you ferment out of the um
Speaker 1: leaves with an enzyme which kind of breaks it down,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, um you have something called
Speaker 1: endoxyl and glucose. That's right, so you're splitting it. This
Speaker 1: endoxyl is what you're actually after. And then after that
Speaker 1: you drain the liquid um and into a second tank
Speaker 1: you add the endoxyl um with air. You stir it basically,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it oxidizes into intogotten and
Speaker 1: then the into gotten is actually what um apparently is indigo.
Speaker 1: Because there's no other steps after that except to let
Speaker 1: it air dry. It like settles at the bottom and
Speaker 1: then they can get rid of the uh, the matter
Speaker 1: on top. Yeah, they filter it out and you're left
Speaker 1: with kind of a sludgy paste, I think, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then if you dry that paste in the sun,
Speaker 1: which I think is the traditional customary way supposedly, that
Speaker 1: converts it into basically like blocky, solid indigo die. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not a powder, it says cakes. And then
Speaker 1: the fact that the but I've seen it as a powder,
Speaker 1: so I know what you're talking about. But I think
Speaker 1: the fact that the Romans and Greeks thought it was
Speaker 1: a mineral because it must be hard. But surely, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's got a breakdown somehow. But what's weird about all
Speaker 1: this is if you take that that indigo die and
Speaker 1: you say, like, soak some denomen in it, it's not
Speaker 1: just going to come out blue, certainly, not after one.
Speaker 1: If you're using natural indigo die, you have to, um
Speaker 1: I've seen up to forty times. You have to wash
Speaker 1: it in this indigo to get it to start to bind.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things about indigo is it doesn't
Speaker 1: like to bind with fibers. And then even when it does,
Speaker 1: it's very superficial. So like if you took your genes
Speaker 1: right now, cut it open, you looked at the cross section,
Speaker 1: you'd see white inside. It's just the superficial top of
Speaker 1: the fiber of your genes that have been die blue
Speaker 1: inside the indigo hasn't actually kind of traded, and I
Speaker 1: would be wearing some sweet daisy dukes you would with
Speaker 1: like the pockets sticking out of the bottom. No, I
Speaker 1: never went that short. I would cut off Geane phase,
Speaker 1: but never the Georgs. It was always had the frayed bottoms,
Speaker 1: kind of country style, nothing nothing hemmed. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I never never owned appear No, no, no, I know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. George didn't either. Actually it's not true,
Speaker 1: but mine was at a time where they were acceptable. Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I buy that. I don't. It's not like I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to wear those because theydn't even call
Speaker 1: them George back then. I think I just didn't have them.
Speaker 1: What you're describing is not what I have. Mine were
Speaker 1: bag here, but they had like a hem like the
Speaker 1: bottom of jeans did but they weren't at all the
Speaker 1: tebow George. Yes, yes, I didn't look anything like that here.
Speaker 1: I need to see what that looks like. Just imagine
Speaker 1: like nineties Geene shorts. Okay, there you go, you got it.
Speaker 1: Sort of we'll just leave it there, all right, Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: we don't know. Let's just smoove on. So Chuck just
Speaker 1: put his glasses on. Everybody. That's right, because I'm reading.
Speaker 1: My eyes have gotten so bad. Mine have to Chuck.
Speaker 1: I can't, like, I can't read anything now unless I
Speaker 1: have them. I have to go like this, and it
Speaker 1: makes it really hard to underline and highlight when you
Speaker 1: hold like Josh's holding a page very far from his
Speaker 1: face and then close and then it's really sad. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess we should get into the dark side of
Speaker 1: And I think this was one of the parts from
Speaker 1: the house Stuff Works article they said some of that.
Speaker 1: I had some NPR in there, and I think a
Speaker 1: fashion website even chimed in. That's a heck of a
Speaker 1: So when Europeans kind of like colonized North America colonialized,
Speaker 1: they started obviously they needed to grow crops and sell
Speaker 1: them for any That was a big deal was farming.
Speaker 1: So they were like, what should we grow, Like we've
Speaker 1: never been here before. Yeah, that's like you don't think
Speaker 1: about that, but that's exactly kind of what they went through.
Speaker 1: And they tried a bunch of different stuff, and they
Speaker 1: did grow a bunch of different stuff, but indigo was
Speaker 1: something that they tried to grow a lot of early on.
Speaker 1: They grew yeah, in Jamestown, New Amsterdam, I think in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: The French did it an okay job of it. But
Speaker 1: it was a woman named Eliza Lucas in the seventeen
Speaker 1: thirties and uh, more appropriately Eliza Lucas's slaves that figured
Speaker 1: this out. Yeah, so she was she gets the credit.
Speaker 1: She was a pretty interesting person herself that she was
Speaker 1: sixteen and her father, boy, but my voice just transitioned
Speaker 1: really weirdly. And her father um owned uh like at
Speaker 1: least three plantations in around Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah, again
Speaker 1: a British colony at the time, and he said, hey, Eliza,
Speaker 1: you're interested in botany, why don't you go take over
Speaker 1: these three plantations and see what will grow there. And
Speaker 1: he sent her some seeds and she started growing stuff
Speaker 1: and she found the indigo grew really really well in
Speaker 1: the lowlands of South Carolina. Yeah, she grew ginger cotton, hemp, alfalfa,
Speaker 1: and the aforementioned indigo. Eventually, for her efforts, she was
Speaker 1: inducted into as the first woman into the South Carolina
Speaker 1: Business Hall of Fame. Again she's sixteen years old at
Speaker 1: the time. Sure she got married to a man named
Speaker 1: Charles Pinkney. Um, you know, because she was an old
Speaker 1: maid of sixteen and not married yet getting up and
Speaker 1: they because, um, and you know, of course she'll get
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the credit now is being shared.
Speaker 1: But for many years she was like Eliza Lucas, the
Speaker 1: woman who figured out how to grow indigo. Whereas the
Speaker 1: true story is is Eliza Lucas um had slaves on
Speaker 1: her plantation from Africa that knew how to grow indigo.
Speaker 1: She's like, how do you do this? And they helped
Speaker 1: her out. Uh they Um. To their credit, they did
Speaker 1: share this, the plants, the seeds, the knowledge to all
Speaker 1: kinds of other farmers. And they are kind of looked
Speaker 1: at as being responsible for the indigo boom in the south, right,
Speaker 1: So then you could extrapolate pretty easily that they were
Speaker 1: also responsible for the introduction of slavery into the southern
Speaker 1: cultures because the indigo started growing so well, and this
Speaker 1: indigo boom happened. And remember this is still like a
Speaker 1: luxury item and in high demand. Everybody wanted everything blue, blue,
Speaker 1: blue blue, Give me some blue clothes right now? That
Speaker 1: was kind of the the age in the middle of
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. UM. And because this crop started growing
Speaker 1: so well in the south, and because it was so lucrative,
Speaker 1: they think that Georgia said, oh, you know, Charleston is
Speaker 1: doing really well with this indigo. We could be doing
Speaker 1: well too, if only we would overturn our ban on slavery.
Speaker 1: Had no idea that Georgia initially had a ban on slavery,
Speaker 1: did you. I did not, uh, and said We're going
Speaker 1: to start allowing slaves uh to be held in Georgia
Speaker 1: and the Georgia colony so that we can grow indigo.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. In seventeen fifty one
Speaker 1: is when the band in Georgia ended and the revolutionary
Speaker 1: Revolutionary I keep saying that revolutionary because it was truly revolutionary.
Speaker 1: The Revolutionary War came along. Um. By that point there
Speaker 1: were eighteen thousand slaves in Georgia and Uh. The war, though,
Speaker 1: kind of put a dent in the indigo market. Yeahs um.
Speaker 1: So the biggest um consumer base of indigo for the
Speaker 1: colonies was Britain, and Britain said, you don't wanna be
Speaker 1: our colonies anymore. You want to be independent, go find
Speaker 1: some other customers. And Britain said, we're gonna go take
Speaker 1: over India and get our indigo there, right, except they
Speaker 1: said it British, all British, British eight barby gun. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good. I don't know if that's pretty good, governor
Speaker 1: accurate at all. Uh. And this tie to slavery and
Speaker 1: indigo was basically around until the early twenty century when
Speaker 1: um synthetic indigo came along. Yeah. So if Eliza Lucas
Speaker 1: Pickney kicked off the slavery boom um in the Southern colonies,
Speaker 1: you can make a really good case that Alfred Vombayer,
Speaker 1: a German chemist, freed a lot of slaves when he
Speaker 1: found a synthetic um alternative to indigo. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: followed a boy, truly a boy, a teenage chemist named
Speaker 1: William Perkins. That's up with all these teenagers don't doing stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: they died when they were seven. Um, we both know
Speaker 1: that's not true. Don't bother emailing everybody. Seven Club. Great
Speaker 1: new show on our network from Yeah from Disgrace Lands,
Speaker 1: Jake Brennan, Catch it Sundays on my Heart. It is
Speaker 1: a good show though. Yeah, it's about the twenty seven Club,
Speaker 1: the musicians who die at the age of seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I think that's on our list of
Speaker 1: to do episodes, although now it's done. So yeah, why
Speaker 1: are we gonna rip jakeof I don't know, he'll come
Speaker 1: after us, I know. So. Uh. Brittish chemist, teenage wonder
Speaker 1: kid William Perkins, he was the first. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: the creator of the first synthetic die, which came about
Speaker 1: as a lot of things doing science by accident when
Speaker 1: they're trying to do something else, in this case a
Speaker 1: cure for malaria, right, which is teenage kid was doing
Speaker 1: trying to find a cure for malaria. Pretty cool, and
Speaker 1: he came up with something called Marvin, which produces a
Speaker 1: bright purple and so this was the first synthetic die.
Speaker 1: Remember up to this moment when William Perkins came along,
Speaker 1: everything that had ever been dyed in the history of
Speaker 1: humanity had been died using naturally sourced labor, intensive weirdo
Speaker 1: processed um dies. And all of a sudden he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is way easier. It's way more controlled. And because
Speaker 1: it's controlled, you can put it into like mass production
Speaker 1: pretty easily. Just changed everything. Yeah, and we don't have
Speaker 1: to harvest billions of insects and grind them up into
Speaker 1: powder or poor sea snails. Yeah. Um and so again.
Speaker 1: A few years later, a couple of decades later. Uh,
Speaker 1: funny enough, Alfred von bayer Um said I'm going to
Speaker 1: start working on one for indigo. Oh yeah, eightolf in Uh.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty five he declared that that's what he
Speaker 1: was working on. In seven he figured it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not bad years. Ah, well, what's funny? He got the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize actually for chemistry for his work on organic dies,
Speaker 1: but also he discovered, um, barbiturous, didn't even mention it
Speaker 1: in the Nobel Prize barbituous or synthetic dies. We'll give
Speaker 1: it to them for synthetic dies. Wow. Yeah, chemistry, Well
Speaker 1: it's still interesting. But back then it was just like,
Speaker 1: I can make heavy duty drugs, might make synthetic dies,
Speaker 1: and they'll inject them both and see what happened. Um,
Speaker 1: when that launched in the natural production of indigo, was
Speaker 1: it about nineteen thousand tons? I guess annually it doesn't
Speaker 1: say those look like metric tons. If you ask me,
Speaker 1: there's an extra and and a knee. Yeah, Let's say
Speaker 1: it's annually and this was you mainly coming from India.
Speaker 1: About fifteen years later, after the invention of the synthetic die,
Speaker 1: that natural number had gone from nineteen thousand townies to
Speaker 1: one thousand tonies. It's a pretty precipitous drop. Pretty it
Speaker 1: hit a It hit the natural indigo market pretty hard,
Speaker 1: and it had nothing to do with the demand for indigo.
Speaker 1: It was just the synthetic indigo stepped in and just
Speaker 1: took over very very quickly. That's right, um, And so
Speaker 1: now it's like just a complete niche market to be
Speaker 1: like this is actually naturally dyed with natural indigo kind
Speaker 1: of garments. You just don't find those. Instead, almost entirely
Speaker 1: everything is made with synthetic dyes. Let's take our second
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and talk about how
Speaker 1: that's just ruining everything too, because there's nothing good about
Speaker 1: indigo apparently, correct, Charles. You're wearing jeans right now, are you?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I am as well. That's all you wear. How
Speaker 1: many pair of jeans you got two? I have two
Speaker 1: as well. One jean jacket show off you throw on
Speaker 1: like a little jeane vest. You got a Canadian tuxedo
Speaker 1: going yeah, I I but Emily made fun of me
Speaker 1: for buying a jean jacket and that's like, I think
Speaker 1: jean jackets are kind of in your Like Brennan thinks
Speaker 1: it's cool. I bet he can rock a jean jacket
Speaker 1: that hair, Yeah, for sure. Uh And I said, now
Speaker 1: these are in now, and she's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, they totally are. Like I'm
Speaker 1: going to make it my business that they're in now.
Speaker 1: They're in. You just don't don't wear them with gene bottoms.
Speaker 1: What are you wearing with? Uh? Well, according to the
Speaker 1: websites I looked up to prove Emily wrong, you wear
Speaker 1: them with like khakis. You wear it with a corresponding
Speaker 1: or a pant that doesn't jack doesn't sound right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: khakis are like you know, I have my like maroon khakis.
Speaker 1: You can wear it with that any anything that's not
Speaker 1: blue jeans, basically, because again, you look like you're edging
Speaker 1: really close to Canadian tuxedo. Yeah, but you know I've
Speaker 1: seen people pull it off. Will Ferrell he worked Innadian tuxedo.
Speaker 1: He's hilarious. He got up there, do you see that
Speaker 1: jean getting blue jeans? But he offset it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, because he did that whole Neil Diamond thing. Remember, no, oh,
Speaker 1: one of his greatest characters from Sorrence Live is Neil
Speaker 1: Diamond and you sorry, I mean Robert Goulay. Do you know? Okay,
Speaker 1: this Neil Diamond makes his Robert Goulay look like like
Speaker 1: dog poop. Really, it's yes. I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: saw there was he did it multiple times, but there
Speaker 1: was one where he did. A VH one storyteller is
Speaker 1: Neil Diamond and like Neil Diamonds just off the rails
Speaker 1: on like on pills and like he's got stitches for
Speaker 1: some reason, they come loose and just beautiful. He's like
Speaker 1: a bigoted racist who's singing about he can't really stand
Speaker 1: as keyboard player because he's black, and his keyboard players like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking? Yeah? It is Tim Meadows. So
Speaker 1: I I I demand that everybody pressed Paul and go
Speaker 1: watch the Neil Diamond Forever or no vh win storytellers
Speaker 1: will Ferrell and we'll wait. I will check that out
Speaker 1: and we're back. Okay, So where the heck are we now?
Speaker 1: Is the environmental nightmare that is modern text, not just
Speaker 1: blue jeans but textile dying period. Uh. There's a documentary
Speaker 1: called River Blue that I have not seen yet. Sounds lovely,
Speaker 1: but it details the chemical manufacturing process for denim specifically
Speaker 1: where like you go to China and there are rivers
Speaker 1: that are running blue um, which is not good for
Speaker 1: many reasons. No, some of the reasons are that the
Speaker 1: die itself makes the river blue, which blocks out sunlight.
Speaker 1: So plants die everything. Yeah, when they when they disintegrate,
Speaker 1: they are broken down by bacteria which stuck up all
Speaker 1: the oxygen, which kills the fish. It's just a horrible
Speaker 1: chain reaction. Um. Again, remember even with synthetic indigo, but
Speaker 1: with natural as well. Even with synthetic indigo, that the
Speaker 1: dye doesn't want to stick to the stuff. So you
Speaker 1: have to use something called the mordant, which is a
Speaker 1: bleaching agent that actually that will bind the indigo die
Speaker 1: to the garment. Oh, I thought the mordant was because
Speaker 1: the initial color that it gets is not the blue
Speaker 1: that you want, so you have to keep bleaching it.
Speaker 1: That's not my understanding, you know. I think it's the
Speaker 1: thing that binds that says, hey, indigo, come on over
Speaker 1: here and let's hang out with this this denim and
Speaker 1: we'll stain it blue. Well, the wastewater the leftover mordants
Speaker 1: are terrible or either acidic or their chromium or some
Speaker 1: other kind of horrible metal that kills fish and poisons
Speaker 1: the supply. Yeah, you know they spell it differently, which
Speaker 1: is why they pronounce it differently. No, I looked it up.
Speaker 1: How's it spelled exactly as it's pronounced. But we spell
Speaker 1: it aluminum in the US and in Canada. Apparently the
Speaker 1: rest of the English king world spells it alumni. Yum,
Speaker 1: there's that extra syllable spelled out. Oh they say aluminium. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I thought it was just aluminium, right,
Speaker 1: but they're they're really saying aluminium, but they're just they're British,
Speaker 1: so that would be an extra I after the end.
Speaker 1: Aluminum aluminium, Yes, exactly, all right, But in't that fascinating
Speaker 1: we spell it differently. Yeah, that's weird, But anyway, you
Speaker 1: don't want that stuff in your water supply. And it
Speaker 1: comes about in aces from the four billion pairs of
Speaker 1: genes that are died every year in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: jeans and geen jackets and gene hats all Canadian tuxedos.
Speaker 1: That's right, But they are trying to work on this. UM.
Speaker 1: There's a more environmentally friendly way they're there trying to
Speaker 1: formulate UM. I did not understand this at all, So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it's magic through chemistry. I have
Speaker 1: a feeling you're gonna want to explain it. Well, So
Speaker 1: it's here's the thing. Do you remember, Like endoxyl is
Speaker 1: what you're after when you're when you're extracting and fermenting
Speaker 1: indigo or indigo ferra plants in indigo. So that indoxyl
Speaker 1: it's super unstable, so it likes to buy into something.
Speaker 1: It becomes something else. We can't use that something else.
Speaker 1: You need the endoxyle. What they figured out is too
Speaker 1: they genetically altered an E. Coli, a strain of E. Coli,
Speaker 1: and it secretes that that precursor to endoxyl, or they
Speaker 1: can make it secrete it right right, Yeah, they like
Speaker 1: genetically engineered to do so UM that that precursor to endoxyl.
Speaker 1: When you put it together UM with some other natural enzyme,
Speaker 1: it separates that precursor into endoxyl and glucose, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you've got endoxyl. And what's neat
Speaker 1: is they found that with this particular type of endoxyl,
Speaker 1: when you expose it to air, it automatically turns into indigo. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns into uh luke luco indigo, which is the
Speaker 1: white indigo, which apparently is what you actually want to
Speaker 1: make things blue. That's right, it's really confusing it. You
Speaker 1: just lost me with that one. That's the deal. But
Speaker 1: they're they're they're saying, like, we've got this thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: this system actually works. We've engineered this bacteria to produce
Speaker 1: basically the precursor to indigo, and then you scale it.
Speaker 1: That's always the problem, exactly. It's exactly because big Denim
Speaker 1: is gonna say, great, show me the numbers. Tommy Hill
Speaker 1: figure is going to be like, I can't make any
Speaker 1: money off this, and and so will an tom antoine
Speaker 1: bugle boy. Well, they won't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: it unless it's cost efficient. Oh that's good. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the good thing about this is is it it uh
Speaker 1: solves a couple of problems. Um, the chemical synthesis of
Speaker 1: indigo is just bad. And then you also don't need
Speaker 1: that mortan bleaching stage either, and all of this stuff
Speaker 1: is running off into the rivers in China and other places.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have that, and you just have
Speaker 1: this nice little bacteria producing it on a massive scale,
Speaker 1: then the denim producers will say we're on board and
Speaker 1: the world will be saved. It's just could there be
Speaker 1: anything more wrong with the world? I know, because you
Speaker 1: start to think about like someone like someone who's vegan,
Speaker 1: it's like really walking the walk and trying to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, and like, I don't wear leather, no belts,
Speaker 1: no shoes, all of this stuff. They say, maybe while
Speaker 1: wearing their jeans or maybe not. Maybe they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I won't wear denim either. But I
Speaker 1: think it's all dependent on what you have researched. You
Speaker 1: could probably research everything on your body and find some
Speaker 1: awful practice along the way. Unless you're just sitting on
Speaker 1: your commune making your clothes and weaving your loom and
Speaker 1: you're just wearing like Tan Lennon's no colors, no dies.
Speaker 1: You're like, because you're not gonna smash up a beetle
Speaker 1: to get green. No, because that's not environmentally friendly either.
Speaker 1: Beetles got a right to live. Yeah, beatles got a beetle.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? No, it's just sad. You're right,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping to end it on the upbeat thing,
Speaker 1: but not this one. Yeah. You you follow the chain
Speaker 1: of almost anything used today, and it's got some terrible thing.
Speaker 1: I've got. I've got it. But that doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: should give up. No, no, because anyway, any choice you
Speaker 1: make that helps something continue to live did not be polluted.
Speaker 1: It's still helping. Now you're still screwing up this other
Speaker 1: way you don't mean to, but the other stuff that
Speaker 1: you are doing that is helping is still helping. It
Speaker 1: still saving a life, it's still promoting some healthier ecosystem somewhere,
Speaker 1: and it's still worthwhile. I'm a big subscriber to this.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to be all or nothing.
Speaker 1: Some people are that's great, But every little bit of
Speaker 1: good you can do is still doing good because I've
Speaker 1: been taking the task personally over the years from listeners saying,
Speaker 1: how can you be an advocate for dogs and eat meat? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they love that one, And I'm like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still helping dogs. You know, I just really love two
Speaker 1: ounces of perfectly proportioned beef jerky was and maybe I
Speaker 1: should be vegan. But to call me out on saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a hypocrite because you're helping dogs, like, no,
Speaker 1: helping dogs is good, period, full stop. Agreed, And they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, strangling turtles with a plastic bag while they're
Speaker 1: saying this too, because I guarantee if you drilled in chuck,
Speaker 1: you could find something too. Yeah. Yeah, but that's not
Speaker 1: a fruitful road to go down. No it's not chuck, No,
Speaker 1: it's not agreed. Uh. Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about being a better person, go back and listen
Speaker 1: to our catalog. How about that? Yeah? All of them? Um,
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
Speaker 1: what is this? Oh? This is kind of a fun one.
Speaker 1: It's a correction for you, but it's a lighthearted and
Speaker 1: fun one. Hey, you guys, A long time listener, huge
Speaker 1: advocate for all you do. I live in southern Maine
Speaker 1: and frequently make the long drives to Vermont. In your
Speaker 1: podcast helps me make that more tolerable. But I got
Speaker 1: a bone to pick with Josh. Whenever the state of
Speaker 1: Maine comes up, you guys always slide in a comment
Speaker 1: about our state's weird and independent nature. Rightly so. But
Speaker 1: I've now counted two times at least where Josh is
Speaker 1: misidentified Maine as the slogan live for or Die uh,
Speaker 1: the first time in the rank choice voting and then
Speaker 1: more recently in AI facial recognition. I let it go then,
Speaker 1: but I have to say something now, Live for you
Speaker 1: or Die is famously New Hampshire state motto Josh, not Maine.
Speaker 1: It's even on their license plate. Main state motto is uh,
Speaker 1: dear a dear Ago dear a Joe Latin for eye lead.
Speaker 1: I have no idea d I R I G O.
Speaker 1: That suits us quite well as our state leads as
Speaker 1: the first in the nation to use rank choice voting,
Speaker 1: having the most breweries per capita, and being the state
Speaker 1: in which the most Stephen King books take place. Again,
Speaker 1: I love the show. Always chuckle when you call us
Speaker 1: Maynard's weirdos. I hope you enjoyed your time in Portland
Speaker 1: during your live episode last Wall. Now, if you excuse me,
Speaker 1: I have to go ride my moose to the ocean
Speaker 1: so I can catch lobsters by my lighthouse. And that
Speaker 1: is from John Q Neo. Speaking of lighthouses, we both agreed.
Speaker 1: The Lighthouse was an amazing movie. I know you just
Speaker 1: randomly texted me, it's just so good that have you
Speaker 1: seen The Lighthouse. I was moved to Robert Agars, just
Speaker 1: please keep making movies. He's great, and I was. I
Speaker 1: wish it hadn't gotten shut out of the Academy Awards.
Speaker 1: I thought, why would it have been because it was
Speaker 1: black and white, because it was weird, It was almost
Speaker 1: an experimental film. But the fact that either or both
Speaker 1: of them did not get nominated for Best Actor is
Speaker 1: just ridiculous, pretty ridiculous because they were both amazing and
Speaker 1: production design everything. Have you ever seen a more like
Speaker 1: authentic looking film that's absolutely true Edgar's Robert Pattinson came
Speaker 1: out and was like, we basically lived like you know,
Speaker 1: it was whatever year it was. He was like, it
Speaker 1: was awful. It's like all the stuff you see is
Speaker 1: doing is the wheelbarrow scene that just looks miserable because
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, everybody, if you don't know we're talking about,
Speaker 1: just go look up the Lighthouse and it was so
Speaker 1: good and watch it and just watch it all the
Speaker 1: way through. Okay, and then after that I really like this,
Speaker 1: then go watch the Witch, which is Robert Eger's first movie.
Speaker 1: That's right, his first movie was The Witch, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest films ever made. In Pattinson is just one
Speaker 1: of my favorite actors. He's so great. Have you seen
Speaker 1: Good Time? Oh? Yeah, man, I couldn't believe how good
Speaker 1: that was. Amazing. Okay, John wrote that that listener mailan
Speaker 1: right hold on, I think it was John, Yes, John, Cuneo. John,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that definitely in the facial recognition episode,
Speaker 1: I was being I was trolling. I know for a
Speaker 1: fact that it's New Hampshire's slogan, and if I know Josh, John,
Speaker 1: you're going to hear that again. Yeah. I would also
Speaker 1: guess that when I said it before in whatever other
Speaker 1: episode I said it any Yeah, I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: That was probably me trolling too, But if I was mistaken,
Speaker 1: I apologize live for or die everyone. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, like John did, you
Speaker 1: can go into Stuff you Should Know dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can just send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.