Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the old vault, this time for
Speaker 1: an episode that originally aired on Valentine's Day of nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's right, Cupid's a laden arrow. This one is about.
Speaker 1: It's about a number of things. You get get a
Speaker 1: little bit of cupid mythology in this episode, and also
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions of lead, like what is lead?
Speaker 1: And then how have we used and arguably misused lad
Speaker 1: over the years? You get to learn all about the
Speaker 1: culinary virtues of lead. Don't cook with lead, but you'll
Speaker 1: find out why in the episode. So let's jump right
Speaker 1: in there. From his quiver full of shafts, two arrows?
Speaker 1: Did he take of sundry works to one causes love?
Speaker 1: The other doth hits slake? That causes love is all
Speaker 1: of gold with point, full, sharp and bright. That chase
Speaker 1: is love is blunt? Who steal with leadin? Head is dight?
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: weren't dot Com? Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and so obviously we're talking about Cupid today. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's Valentine's Day, is it? Yes? Is it actually Valentine's Yes,
Speaker 1: actual Valentine's Day. Okay, yeah, so we figured what we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta do some sort of Valentine's episode. We
Speaker 1: had the the episode where we talked to Tomorrow Heart previously,
Speaker 1: but this is the day itself Towers of Snail Sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it seemed proper to get a little mythological here
Speaker 1: as we kick off this episode and to turn to
Speaker 1: that mythological figure that got of romantic love, Cupid, the creepy,
Speaker 1: smooth baby who shoots arrows with heart tips. Yes, now
Speaker 1: that the reading at the top of the episode was
Speaker 1: was Ovid. That was from the Metamorphosis, the Golden Translation,
Speaker 1: So that was how you get words like dita, which
Speaker 1: means clothed or equipped. I had to look that one up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might not be completely clear, but what Ovid is
Speaker 1: basically saying is, hey, Cupid has two different arrows that
Speaker 1: he may pull from his quiver. You often forget this,
Speaker 1: or maybe he never even learned it in the first place. Well, right,
Speaker 1: if you're just going off of cheesy Valentine state cards.
Speaker 1: You just think of that cartoon baby, and like you said,
Speaker 1: the arrows have just kind of a goofy cartoon heart
Speaker 1: at the end, and cupids launch and those at people
Speaker 1: and making them falling cartoon love with people. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you tend to not think of Cupid's arrow as literally
Speaker 1: being an arrow that strikes with force and penetrates the flesh.
Speaker 1: I guess we are to understand it that way, at
Speaker 1: least the ancients did. Like there's this poem by Anna
Speaker 1: Creon that Robert and I were talking about before the
Speaker 1: episode where it's not actually that great of a poem.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's reading, but it makes this
Speaker 1: joke about Cupid gets stung by a bee and he
Speaker 1: starts crying and his mother I guess this would be
Speaker 1: Aphrodite or Venus maybe comes to him and is trying
Speaker 1: to console him and says, uh, you know, you're crying
Speaker 1: about being stung by a bee, but you shoot people
Speaker 1: with arrows all the time. That must hurt more shot
Speaker 1: through the heart. Um. Yeah, so he so he has
Speaker 1: two different arrows that he he chooses from when he
Speaker 1: decides to nail somebody one of these arrows, as the
Speaker 1: as Ovid says, is tipped in gold with a sharp
Speaker 1: point and bright right, and so that's the that's the
Speaker 1: love arrow, that is the romantic love arrow. But then
Speaker 1: he has this leaden arrow, which it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: it's probably not an arrow head composed entirely of lad
Speaker 1: for reasons will explain, but it is at least coded
Speaker 1: or tipped in lead somehow well. And it also says
Speaker 1: that it's blunt, meaning I assume it is not meant
Speaker 1: to penetrate, but maybe strikes more like a like a
Speaker 1: bean bag gun. Yeah, like just to brain you with
Speaker 1: this dense leaden arrowhead. Yeah, just to just smack you hard.
Speaker 1: And then it also it imparts aversion, so like it
Speaker 1: hits you, and now you you want to you want
Speaker 1: to not be around somebody. I guess, right. This seems
Speaker 1: that this seems to be the most popular interpretation of
Speaker 1: the leaden arrows power though I was looking around, uh,
Speaker 1: and I did see at least one description saying that
Speaker 1: the leaden arrow had to do with set with sensual passion.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's the predominant interpretation. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not the one that we're going to spend much time
Speaker 1: with here today because sensual passion. There are other gods
Speaker 1: for that. Uh, you know, Cupid's domain is more about
Speaker 1: that that that that romantic passion, the arrows or or
Speaker 1: the philos or I lose track of what love is.
Speaker 1: What in Greek philodough your love. Um, yeah, we'll be
Speaker 1: we'll be getting into the Greek and Roman stuff shortly, okay,
Speaker 1: but yes we're gonna be talking about Cupid. And I
Speaker 1: do I do encourage everyone to maybe he put aside
Speaker 1: the more cherubic interpretations of of Cupid as we discuss
Speaker 1: this figure, because we have to remember he is a god. Um.
Speaker 1: He is capable of of of wrecking people's lives with
Speaker 1: his mischief. And he's not always depicted as a as
Speaker 1: a baby. He's he's often he's usually depicted as youthful, certainly,
Speaker 1: and that may be a male youth or a boy.
Speaker 1: He's very often and you know, depicted naked or nearly so.
Speaker 1: And sometimes he's blindfolded as well. I think it's blind right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. Well. I think
Speaker 1: he's often depicted as a baby just because if he
Speaker 1: were an adult, he would be a horrifying, gross creep right, Well,
Speaker 1: they're still there's STI always room to find Cupid creepy
Speaker 1: for sure. All right, Well who is Cupid? Where did
Speaker 1: he come from? In the pantheon and the mythology? Okay,
Speaker 1: so Cupid is the Roman variant of the Greek god Arrows,
Speaker 1: the prime evil god of love, a son of chao Us,
Speaker 1: though in later traditions he has depicted as a son
Speaker 1: of Aphrodite, who is the Roman Venus, whose goddess of
Speaker 1: sexual love and beauty. And as far as the father goes,
Speaker 1: it's all across the board. They're very different tellings. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's Zeus, sometimes it's it's Aries. There's at least one
Speaker 1: version where it's it's it seems like it's Vulcan, the
Speaker 1: god of the forge. But in but then a lot
Speaker 1: of stories have it have Hermes as the father, who
Speaker 1: of course is the Roman Mercury. So it's a real
Speaker 1: Mari show. Yes, yeah, you can very much imagine that
Speaker 1: there being a lot of drama around this. But he's
Speaker 1: a god of passion and love but also a fertility
Speaker 1: to a certain extent as well. Now, in Roman traditions,
Speaker 1: Cupid is largely described as a son of Venus and Mercury,
Speaker 1: combining their roles into that of a divine messenger of love. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Mercury is the messenger, Aphrodite is love. So he
Speaker 1: brings you the love signals, the he's he's the radar
Speaker 1: of God. Yeah, don't you? So you can't really hate
Speaker 1: the messenger, right, I guess that's part of the story
Speaker 1: here as well. Now he's often depicted as this kind
Speaker 1: of trubic creature like we describe, but also sometimes is
Speaker 1: more of a you know, in an androgeneous, youthful figure,
Speaker 1: sometimes clad in armor, because I guess love is also
Speaker 1: a battlefield, and he's sometimes a mischief maker other times
Speaker 1: generous patron of love. His targets include both mortals and
Speaker 1: other gods and uh. As always, the versions of the
Speaker 1: myth very with the teller and the time. But we
Speaker 1: certainly want to to tell the major Cupid story. We'll
Speaker 1: tell me the story Robert. Alright. So his mother again
Speaker 1: is Venus, and Venus has is subject to bouts of
Speaker 1: jealousy pretty much like all of them, the major gods
Speaker 1: in the pantheon, right, and so she one day she
Speaker 1: has had enough of this beautiful mortal by the name
Speaker 1: of Psyche. She's just too too lovely. She's so lovely
Speaker 1: that other mortals are afraid to approach her. And in
Speaker 1: Venus isn't having it. She tasks her son Cupid and says,
Speaker 1: go to this woman, shoot her with a golden arrow
Speaker 1: of love, and then make her fall in love with
Speaker 1: the first thing she sees, because that's the power of
Speaker 1: the arrow in this, in this interpretation of it. And
Speaker 1: she adds, make sure that the next thing she sees
Speaker 1: is the most hideous creature imaginable. I don't care what
Speaker 1: it is, usual imagination. She falls in love with the
Speaker 1: font papyrus. That would have been good. Um, so keep it.
Speaker 1: Keep it. Goes down to Earth to do this, but
Speaker 1: he can't quite bring himself to finish the task, though
Speaker 1: he was certainly okay with the plan enough to trick
Speaker 1: her parents into abandoning her on a desolate hilltop so
Speaker 1: that she could wed a monster, but as far as
Speaker 1: actually yeah, because she's taken. The Psyche is taken to
Speaker 1: this hill and here you go. Sorry, the gods want
Speaker 1: you to marry a monster. It's gonna happen. See you later,
Speaker 1: because you know you do what do what the gods
Speaker 1: say or her? But then he can't actually shoot her
Speaker 1: with arrows, so instead he pricks himself with the golden
Speaker 1: arrow and then gazes upon Psyche, falls in love with her,
Speaker 1: and so he takes her away, sets her up in
Speaker 1: a protected place like a palace, somewhere where he can
Speaker 1: visit her safely, but only in darkness. And then but
Speaker 1: then one night she cast light upon him and she
Speaker 1: learns his identity, spilling wax on him in the process,
Speaker 1: and he flees. So Psyche is distraught. She's she's in
Speaker 1: love with this this god, this beautiful young god boy.
Speaker 1: So she searches for him, and finally Venus agrees to
Speaker 1: hand him over, but only if she completes a series
Speaker 1: of trials. Oh yeah, never a good sign in a myth.
Speaker 1: Right now, you get the feeling that a lot of
Speaker 1: these trials might be tricks. Yes, and indeed they are. Uh,
Speaker 1: the the exact trials can vary with the telling, but
Speaker 1: this is the basic roll out here. First of all,
Speaker 1: she has to sort a massive pile of seeds in
Speaker 1: a sing gold night, and uh, fortunately some ants help her.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great variation on all the tweety birds
Speaker 1: and scugs and the snow white story. Yeah, they'll come
Speaker 1: in and help with the chores. Now it's ants and
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe Spider's pitch in a bit. Well. The
Speaker 1: next task is that she has to fetch the golden
Speaker 1: wool from a like a monstrous sheep, like a kind
Speaker 1: of sheep that disembowels anyone who gets near it, and
Speaker 1: a swarm of cockroaches. A sister, no actually a river
Speaker 1: god helps her out um and helps her acquire the
Speaker 1: woolf So she turns that in. But then she has
Speaker 1: to venture into the underworld and acquire a drop of
Speaker 1: the Queen of the Underworld's beauty. Oh yeah, so uh Cupid,
Speaker 1: it scenes ends up sort of cluing her in, sends
Speaker 1: her some signals and was going to the underworld isn't easy, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a dangerous proposition. So Cupid clues her in,
Speaker 1: you know, secret messages, letting her know, make sure you
Speaker 1: bring coins for torone and treats for a service, important
Speaker 1: things that bring along. Right, So she does this, She
Speaker 1: wins that drop, brings it back in a golden box,
Speaker 1: and brings it to the surface. She's on her way
Speaker 1: to deliver it to Venus, but then she decides, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal a little bit of that beauty
Speaker 1: from the box for myself. And then she discovers the
Speaker 1: boxes full of sleep. Sleep comes over her, Cupid comes
Speaker 1: to her way and wakes her up, gives her the
Speaker 1: nectar of the gods and makes her a god as
Speaker 1: well the embodiment of the soul, and she later gives
Speaker 1: birth to pleasure. That's a heck of a story. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there are various treatments of the story. The various you know,
Speaker 1: additional stories such as Beauty and the Beast take this
Speaker 1: basic structure and then uh, you know, employ it in
Speaker 1: a slightly different manner. But yeah, that's the major Cupid narrative.
Speaker 1: But there's also a fun one that employs his arrows
Speaker 1: in an interesting way in which both of them, this
Speaker 1: time both of them as he messes with the god Apollo.
Speaker 1: So Apollo is a powerful god and he's he's he's
Speaker 1: lusting after the nymph Daphne. And while he's in the
Speaker 1: midst of this, he taunts Cupid's archery ability. He says,
Speaker 1: You're not much of an archer, are you? And so
Speaker 1: it's always good to taunt people holding ranged weapons. Well, again,
Speaker 1: the gods are vain and you know, kind of and
Speaker 1: it's in vengeful and but also kind of stupid at times.
Speaker 1: So what Cupid does is he shoots Apollo with a
Speaker 1: golden arrow that makes him of course, you know, lust
Speaker 1: like crazy after Daphney. But then he shoots Daphne with
Speaker 1: a leaden arrow, ensuring that she wants nothing to do
Speaker 1: with exactly. In fact, she runs away to her father,
Speaker 1: who also happens to be a river god, and has
Speaker 1: him turned her into a tree so that Apollo will
Speaker 1: leave her alone. And then Cupid, you know, goes off
Speaker 1: and laughs about the whole affair. Now, wait, after this,
Speaker 1: is Apollo still in love with the tree or not?
Speaker 1: It really depends on the user agreement with the golden arrow.
Speaker 1: How does the golden earrow magic work? Can you transform
Speaker 1: the essence of the target of the affection? And does
Speaker 1: that cancel the spell? Or do you have to roll
Speaker 1: a D twenty to find out? Don't know? And then
Speaker 1: we are the effects on god's Is that a little
Speaker 1: different than an effect on immortal? Who can say? Now
Speaker 1: you might think, okay, Cupid sounds like he makes some
Speaker 1: enemies here and there. Who's his greatest rival? Is there
Speaker 1: like a safety god who's always trying to take his
Speaker 1: arrows away? No? No, no, it's none other than the
Speaker 1: great god Pan. What one of our favorites. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: one corner we have the flighty arrow shooting cherubic son
Speaker 1: of of this of Venus U, the lord of love.
Speaker 1: And in the other corner we have the wild rutting
Speaker 1: he goat king of fornication, uh, surrounded by nymphs prancing
Speaker 1: through the forest. And so it's divine love versus earthly love,
Speaker 1: and uh spoiler alert, Cupid often comes out on top.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some there are paintings that depict Cupid
Speaker 1: kind of wrestling Pan to the ground. Could you also
Speaker 1: say that this is like city love versus country love?
Speaker 1: I guess you could. Yeah, like Pan was sort of envisioned.
Speaker 1: Is the representative of the I don't know, the the
Speaker 1: amorous affairs of like shepherds and country people. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is kind of country love versus you know, the divine
Speaker 1: love of Mount Olympus. Here. On the other hand, when
Speaker 1: you look up artistic interpretations of Pan, he is often
Speaker 1: wrestling or doing something like wrestling. So it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to say. He's definitely on the losing end of the
Speaker 1: scenario here. The pan's a rascal. Yeah. Now, in terms
Speaker 1: of other treatments of of Cupid, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to go through, you know, all the the echoes
Speaker 1: in popular culture. I did notice just the most dignified one. Yes,
Speaker 1: I did notice that there is a There is a
Speaker 1: Cupid in what DC comics that's kind of a feisty redhead,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a female. It's like a cohort
Speaker 1: of the green arrow. Is she a got us or
Speaker 1: just a human named Cupid? I think she's just a
Speaker 1: human who shoots arrows at people. Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: thor situation. I don't think so. If any comic book
Speaker 1: fans out there that want to, um, you know, clue
Speaker 1: us in on this, we'd love to hear more. But
Speaker 1: I think she just shoots arrows at people and tries
Speaker 1: to kill them, you know. Independent of you coming up
Speaker 1: with this lead, Robert, I immediately was googling, like Cupid
Speaker 1: horror movie? Is there one? And I I came across
Speaker 1: something only to discover that you'd already given it a
Speaker 1: little right up here. Yes, two thousand and one slasher
Speaker 1: film titled Valentine. Now have you seen this before? No?
Speaker 1: I looked up a couple of scenes on YouTube. One
Speaker 1: actually had kind of a cool set with like somebody's
Speaker 1: like walking through a maze made out of TV screens
Speaker 1: or something that. Yeah, I kind of like that, but
Speaker 1: otherwise it looks so stupid, and it has the ultimate
Speaker 1: like two thousand one smart Face cast where it's got
Speaker 1: David Boreanaz and Denise Richards. It's like the cast of
Speaker 1: Starship Troopers. It also has a has a two thousand
Speaker 1: and one alternative rock album, like the most too thousand
Speaker 1: and one alternative rock album, Imaginable. Yeah, that the soundtrack is,
Speaker 1: does it have what down with the sickness? It doesn't
Speaker 1: have that particular track, but Disturbed is present and and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much extrapolate from there what else is
Speaker 1: on the soundtrack. But it does have this killer stalking around,
Speaker 1: the slasher character with a cupid mask, and there is
Speaker 1: one scene at least where he kills somebody with arrows,
Speaker 1: and that's the sequence you're you're talking about with all
Speaker 1: the TVs. So yeah, as far as slasher films we're seeing,
Speaker 1: it's been too long since I've seen it to really
Speaker 1: give it a firm recommendation, but as far as slasher
Speaker 1: films worth looking up the kills on YouTube, I give
Speaker 1: it give it a thumbs up. But in this movie,
Speaker 1: unless I'm mistaken, no gold arrows and lead blunt arrows
Speaker 1: right right. I think he just has normal killing arrows
Speaker 1: because he's ultimately not an actual god. That would have
Speaker 1: been a fun twist. Though they don't get deep into
Speaker 1: the resonances of the mythology, no, because if there's a
Speaker 1: lot there you could really go go nuts with. For instance,
Speaker 1: the fact that Cupid is often depicted riding around on
Speaker 1: dolphins or even sometimes just on sea monsters. That's odd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you know we mentioned beating the
Speaker 1: Beast already, but I should throw out there even though
Speaker 1: I haven't read it, and I don't know why I
Speaker 1: haven't read it, because I read a whole lot of C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis at one point in my life. But C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis retells the story of of Cupid and Psyche in
Speaker 1: the nine novel Till We Have Faces. I've never read
Speaker 1: that either, but that sounds maybe worth check now. So again,
Speaker 1: we could keep going on Cupid. We could keep talking
Speaker 1: about various mythological treatments, different versions of the stories. Um,
Speaker 1: But basically, what we want to drive home here is that,
Speaker 1: first of all, he has these two arrows. He has
Speaker 1: the leaden arrow and the golden arrow, and these are
Speaker 1: the powers associated. And we also just want to drive
Speaker 1: home that he's he is more than just this ridiculous
Speaker 1: cartoon baby. Now he's an epic creep cartoon baby who
Speaker 1: wrestles goat man and rides on sea monsters. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: is so On that note, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back, we are going
Speaker 1: to discuss the leaden arrow of Cupid. We're going to
Speaker 1: get into what ancient people knew of lead, how they
Speaker 1: used lead, what they thought about its properties. And then
Speaker 1: of course we'll well we'll we'll dive a little bit
Speaker 1: into the periodic table and discuss exactly what lad is.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So, Robert, we have already told
Speaker 1: the story of Cupid, as especially as described in Ovid's metamorphoses. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the story of these two different arrows, he's
Speaker 1: got the gold arrow, which imparts love makes people fancy
Speaker 1: one another, and the lead arrow, which is blunt and
Speaker 1: maybe seems to cause a version, at least in some
Speaker 1: tellings of the story. Right Like if if you were
Speaker 1: hit with the lead arrow and somebody passed you a
Speaker 1: note in in in high school and said will you
Speaker 1: go out with me? Yes and no, you would add
Speaker 1: a third box that said I would rather my father
Speaker 1: turned me into a tree. Yeah, your head would just explode,
Speaker 1: would like in scanners? Yes. Well, other than the general
Speaker 1: association of gold being thought of as good, is there
Speaker 1: anything any reason we can think of why these particular
Speaker 1: metals are picked to have the magical significance they do
Speaker 1: in the arrows in the myth? Well, yeah, exactly what
Speaker 1: we with gold? Obviously, gold is beautiful, and humans have
Speaker 1: thought it's beautiful for ages, and we've been perfectly happy
Speaker 1: to squabble over it and kill each other over it.
Speaker 1: So it seems the perfect substance to sum up the
Speaker 1: appeal and then sometimes the dangers of love. Plus knowing
Speaker 1: what we know now, this was an element that was
Speaker 1: likely produced in the collisions of of neutron stars long
Speaker 1: before the formation of the Earth, which is amazing to consider.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean, just to contemplate this for
Speaker 1: a moment. Uh. You know, it was once thought that
Speaker 1: most of the universe is heavy elements, like elements heavier
Speaker 1: than iron, were created in supernovas, which is when a
Speaker 1: massive star at the end of its life cycle collapses
Speaker 1: on itself and then explodes, and supernovas can create ate
Speaker 1: some heavy elements. But some scientists have argued for a
Speaker 1: while that there are too many heavy elements. The proportion
Speaker 1: of them that we find in the universe is too
Speaker 1: high to be accounted for by what's possible from supernovas alone.
Speaker 1: So in recent years there have been some cool experiments
Speaker 1: that have shown that the collision of neutron stars, like
Speaker 1: you say, could be the alternative. For example, I was
Speaker 1: looking at there was a study published in in the
Speaker 1: Astrophysical Journal by Code at All that looked at data
Speaker 1: from a neutron star merger, and I love that's the
Speaker 1: technology they use, like two companies like mergers and acquisitions.
Speaker 1: But they should have used the language of love, because
Speaker 1: we are creating a substance that will one day be
Speaker 1: used by the God of love. Right it is it
Speaker 1: should be neutron star copulation, yes, neutron starter course, but anyway,
Speaker 1: that this collision was between eighty five and a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty million light years away, and the researchers calculated
Speaker 1: that this one event, these two neutron stars colliding, produced
Speaker 1: between one and five earth masses of an element called
Speaker 1: europium and between three and thirteen earth masses of gold
Speaker 1: earth masses of gold. So just think about a solid
Speaker 1: gold Earth and then between three and thirteen of them,
Speaker 1: and then it just like spits a bunch of this
Speaker 1: out into the universe to get bound up with other
Speaker 1: gases and stuff like that and eventually end up in
Speaker 1: maybe say a planetary accretion disk, where it becomes part
Speaker 1: of the crust of an Earth. So if you're wearing
Speaker 1: like a gold ring or any other piece of gold
Speaker 1: right now, or if you're maybe maybe say using an
Speaker 1: electronic device that has a bit of gold in it,
Speaker 1: just think about how that element was forged either in
Speaker 1: the guts of a dying star as it exploded, or
Speaker 1: was probably more likely created in the chaos of rapid
Speaker 1: neutron capture when two of the densest objects in the
Speaker 1: universe to neutron stars smashed together billions of years ago.
Speaker 1: And of course I guess the even crazier thing is
Speaker 1: that that doesn't stop at gold, right, like our amazement
Speaker 1: that the elements shouldn't stop there, because all the heavy
Speaker 1: elements had to be formed at some point. In fact,
Speaker 1: all the elements of any kind had to be formed
Speaker 1: at some point. A few of the lightest ones are primordial,
Speaker 1: you know, you find hydrogen and helium and lithium out
Speaker 1: in the original universe. Uh, and then a few more
Speaker 1: I think are formed by like a cosmic rays and stuff.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, pretty much everything that you could see
Speaker 1: and touch and that your body is made of was
Speaker 1: in some way forged inside a dying star. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you got this dying star forge that has slow neutron
Speaker 1: capture going on inside it, or it was a supernova
Speaker 1: explosion or the collision of neutron stars or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the very kind of forges one can imagine
Speaker 1: a god like Vulcan would employ, right exactly. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what's happening when he pumps the bellows, he's just pumping
Speaker 1: it to smash neutron stars together. And of course, you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned that, you know, anything heavier than iron
Speaker 1: likely had this this kind cosmic origin and that includes lead.
Speaker 1: So even though it's easy to say, oh, the golden
Speaker 1: arrow forged in in cosmic turmoil in in ages past, well,
Speaker 1: the same story applies to lead, even though it's not
Speaker 1: as shiny, Even though you probably don't have any leaden
Speaker 1: jewelry on your body right now. Uh, though, I mean,
Speaker 1: lead is an amazing element, and to consider the same way,
Speaker 1: I think. I think there are two main explanations for lead,
Speaker 1: as I believe. One is that there's slow neutron capture
Speaker 1: like the s process that takes place within dying stars,
Speaker 1: and the other is the the hot dense starter course,
Speaker 1: the neutron star collision Sunday, Sunday Sunday. Now, to come
Speaker 1: back to Cupid's arrow, I imagine basically the idea of
Speaker 1: the leaden arrow is that lead is not attractive. Lead
Speaker 1: is not beautiful. Lead is something that even in ancient times,
Speaker 1: it was rarely used in jewelry, or at least as
Speaker 1: the primary aspect of the jewelry. Well, no, and and
Speaker 1: even more, Uh, I don't know if you can be
Speaker 1: mean to lead, but if you, if lead has feelings,
Speaker 1: you could hurt its feelings even more by pointing out
Speaker 1: that lead. You know, lead doesn't occur generally free in nature.
Speaker 1: Lead occur is bound up in ores. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: primarily the way lead was created in the ancient world
Speaker 1: was as a byproduct of the creation of silver. And
Speaker 1: so people are trying to extract silver for something from something,
Speaker 1: and you melt out some lead as a sort of
Speaker 1: waste product of that. And and it did have uses
Speaker 1: because it's got a high specific weight, so you could
Speaker 1: use it as like a weight for you know, if
Speaker 1: you have like fishing line, fishing nets or something you
Speaker 1: want to hold down that it's useful for that. It's
Speaker 1: not very good for making like solid like weapons or anything, right,
Speaker 1: because it's very soft. Yeah, it's it's not gonna be
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be a good metal if you want
Speaker 1: to actually forage arrows for combat or forge any kind
Speaker 1: of say armor. Um. But but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of uses for it if you want to create say,
Speaker 1: drinking vessels or so certainly if you want to create pipes.
Speaker 1: We're not advocating that, by the way, no, no, but
Speaker 1: certainly from a very early point humans were figuring this out.
Speaker 1: Lead is one of the seven Medals of antiquity. Humans
Speaker 1: were handling lead a long time ago. Cast. Lead beads
Speaker 1: found in modern day Turkey date from roughly BC. The
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians used lead as early as five thousand BC
Speaker 1: for pottery glazes, solder, and casting. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: was looking at early examples of lead artifacts. One example
Speaker 1: I found was a sort of maybe aesthetic artifact or
Speaker 1: maybe something that was used in like a whirld for
Speaker 1: for you know, working with textiles. Um. But this was
Speaker 1: in a cave in the Negev Desert in Israel, and
Speaker 1: it's supposedly dates to the late fifth millennium BC, and
Speaker 1: it's just basically this wooden wand that's got leaden beads
Speaker 1: at the end of it. And they don't know what
Speaker 1: it's for, though I wonder if maybe it's for some
Speaker 1: kind of heavy metal lead magic. Yeah, an anti love
Speaker 1: repulsion ray. Uh, so we can hope. So the Babylonians
Speaker 1: made inscriptions on lead plates soft you can inscribe things
Speaker 1: on it. And just to refer everyone back to our
Speaker 1: October episode on Curses, we spend a fair amount of
Speaker 1: time discussing Roman curse tablets. Oh yeah, we did. And
Speaker 1: what were those made out of? Well, like the ones
Speaker 1: found in Um in like second or third century Roman
Speaker 1: Britain were often they're made in lead. So there are
Speaker 1: these places where you can go around like modern day
Speaker 1: Lester and dig up these ancient sites where there would
Speaker 1: be maybe a shrine or a temple to an ancient god,
Speaker 1: maybe in the syncretic religions of Roman Britain, where you'd
Speaker 1: sort of combined maybe Roman gods with with native Celtic
Speaker 1: gods or or or the gods of Britain there, and
Speaker 1: people would be going there to say, curse somebody who
Speaker 1: stole something from them, like you know, Servandas shows up
Speaker 1: and says, somebody stole my oake. Whoever stole my cloak,
Speaker 1: I want him to not be able to pee for
Speaker 1: three months unless he gives me my cloak back. And
Speaker 1: this would be inscribed on a lead tablet and hung
Speaker 1: up somewhere. And part of the idea there is that
Speaker 1: it was partially to invoke this power, but also maybe
Speaker 1: just to have it hung up in a public place
Speaker 1: so people could like know what was going on. Now.
Speaker 1: One other important aspect of lead that that I wonder,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if it played into the use of
Speaker 1: into the creation of these cursed tablets, is that. Uh,
Speaker 1: lead does not corrode like other metals. So if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you inscribe your curse and a piece
Speaker 1: of lead, like, that's a curse that could speak across
Speaker 1: the ages. Right, lead doesn't rust, I mean, well lead
Speaker 1: the lead oxides do form, but they're not they're they're
Speaker 1: not like like iron rust, you know, the red rusty stuff.
Speaker 1: Lead oxide tends to be great, but generally exposed lead
Speaker 1: doesn't corrode. And uh and yeah, this does make it attractive,
Speaker 1: especially for some purposes, say like if you want to
Speaker 1: make something that holds liquids in it, something that is
Speaker 1: not gonna receive a lot of punishment, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that. Uh, that the weakness of it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can use it for drinking vessels or
Speaker 1: certainly for plumbing pipes. Here's a gross piece of trivia.
Speaker 1: Next time you have to call a plumber because who
Speaker 1: knows what you tried to flush a whole roll of
Speaker 1: paper towels down the toilet. Consider that the English words
Speaker 1: plumber and plumbing are derived from the Latin word plumb them,
Speaker 1: which means lead. And it's right there in the chemical
Speaker 1: elements symbol for lead on the periodic table. You ever
Speaker 1: noticed that it's one of those weird ones, like iron
Speaker 1: is f E. Why is that? Well, you know it
Speaker 1: comes from an archaic word of like the ferrest metal. Uh,
Speaker 1: lead on the periodic table is PB. Why is it pb?
Speaker 1: That comes from plumb them because ancient Romans loved some
Speaker 1: lead pipes and lead aqueducts, and lead reservoirs, and lead cisterns,
Speaker 1: lead cooking vessels, and lead based even lead based food additives.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to the food additives point now.
Speaker 1: I was looking at at one text from Cassis and
Speaker 1: and sort of titled Lead Chemistry Analytical Aspects, Environmental Impact
Speaker 1: and Health Effects, and they pointed out that ancient text
Speaker 1: showed a bit of confusion over lead and other elements,
Speaker 1: using plum bum to describe quote any silvery white, low
Speaker 1: melting and easily oxidized metal, including lead, tin, zinc, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They pointed out though that yeah, lead pipes have been
Speaker 1: used for a very long time. I see them in
Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamia, Cypress, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, of course, and
Speaker 1: various Roman provinces. So you know the technology and the
Speaker 1: materials would have spread with the Romans as well, and
Speaker 1: the Romans likely learned it from the Greeks. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the pipes. It was used in cases where
Speaker 1: iron wire or wooden hoops are currently used today you
Speaker 1: know as reinforcing brands for bands, for tanks, vats, um, amphora, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So you see it also used in masonry, cesspool coverings, roofing,
Speaker 1: damp proofing, foundations, uh, parapet walls, etcetera. Lead vessels were
Speaker 1: widely used and uh, this is interesting. Lead was also
Speaker 1: long associated with funeral rites, so Roman era caskets and
Speaker 1: urns are often made at least in part from lead,
Speaker 1: especially apparently in England. Lead was also used in ancient
Speaker 1: China in a variety of uses, from glassmaking to cosmetics.
Speaker 1: Of course, and now in the modern world we know
Speaker 1: that lead can have extremely serious health consequences can and
Speaker 1: very often does. Like there there are tons of ways
Speaker 1: to get lead in your body, and lead exposure can
Speaker 1: happen through through ingestion when when you eat, it can
Speaker 1: happen through breathing in lead particles can happen through absorption
Speaker 1: through the skin, and lead gets incorporated into the body
Speaker 1: and leads to both short term and long term negative consequences.
Speaker 1: The short term negative consequences are there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different one and so it can be sometimes it's
Speaker 1: hard to identify lead exposure in people, but it might
Speaker 1: be like you've got stomach distress, like your stomach hurts
Speaker 1: and you're constipated. But it also can lead to weakness
Speaker 1: and fatigue, and like your arms and legs are weak,
Speaker 1: and it can lead to psychological and neurological consequences. People
Speaker 1: can be like like tired and depressed and irritable, have
Speaker 1: loss of appetite, have trouble remembering things. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's enough to make you think it's my smartphone made
Speaker 1: out of lead, but uh, it is. It's We were
Speaker 1: actually talking about this before we recorded the episode, like
Speaker 1: there's so much to the story of of of our
Speaker 1: realization regarding the harmful effects of lead, that we really
Speaker 1: need to come back to it and devote an entire episode. Absolutely, yes, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a whole episode on leads someday soon,
Speaker 1: I think, maybe with a special focus on the Lord
Speaker 1: of Lead, Clacy Patterson. But yeah, we we now know
Speaker 1: lead to have all these problems and they're also the
Speaker 1: long term consequences, right, those are just like short term
Speaker 1: consequences I was mentioning, you know, it can there could
Speaker 1: be neurological damage from long term exposure to lead. Enough
Speaker 1: lead in a concentrated dose can kill you. They're definitely
Speaker 1: like developmental problems that children who have lead exposure experience.
Speaker 1: So it's uh, yeah, it's no joke. And the fact
Speaker 1: that humans have constantly surrounded ourselves for centuries or even
Speaker 1: millennia with just constant routes of exposure to environmental lead
Speaker 1: is something that is really horrifying and ridiculous. But I
Speaker 1: guess that's just what we do. All Right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to get back to this idea of lead as
Speaker 1: a food headed song hanging there. Soon it'll be time
Speaker 1: to eat some lead than Alright, we're back. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day. What do you get your sweetheart on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're flowers, but oh, I guess it's already there
Speaker 1: in the name, right, you get your sweethearts some sweets. Now,
Speaker 1: here's the question I've wondered about before, but I've never
Speaker 1: found a good answer to why is it that we
Speaker 1: associate sweet foods with like eroticism but not so much
Speaker 1: like other flavors, Like why isn't it that you get
Speaker 1: your sweethearts some salty foods on Valentine's Day or you
Speaker 1: get them some bitter foods or sour foods? Why sweet?
Speaker 1: I mean sweets are a decadent treat, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's part of it. Um, A sweet is
Speaker 1: something sweets or something we've always were always craving and uh,
Speaker 1: and we're just hardwired to want as much of it
Speaker 1: as possible, given that it would be a rarity in
Speaker 1: the natural world. But we also crave fat and salt.
Speaker 1: Why not, like for Valentine's Day, instead of a box
Speaker 1: of chocolates, it's like a bag of poor crimes and
Speaker 1: the stick of butter. Well, Um, I guess it would
Speaker 1: be harder to keep that secreted away in the back
Speaker 1: of the closet for a week or so. Um. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like they're people. Cel rate
Speaker 1: cheese is on Valentine's you know, certainly there are other
Speaker 1: foods that have a like a romantic or afrodisiac you know,
Speaker 1: vibe to them. Yeah, I guess so. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess part of what I'm wondering is is that
Speaker 1: link between like love and eroticism and sweet foods? Is
Speaker 1: that cultural or is there some biological element to it? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: We'll have to come back and explore that. That would
Speaker 1: be that would be interesting to look at, like when
Speaker 1: you look at other cultures. Is there something else that
Speaker 1: is considered the romantic flavor profile? Um? I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, considering how many like Scandinavian people have written
Speaker 1: into the show to to talk about the wonders of
Speaker 1: salty licorice, I bet that's what they use over there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And plus it makes me wonder about, say, Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: where there's so much emphasis placed on the balance of
Speaker 1: different flavors. Uh, you know, how does that impact uh
Speaker 1: sort of ritualized sweets? All right, well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the sweetest of all sweets, sweet lead. So I have
Speaker 1: found what has got to be the best entry ever
Speaker 1: in any Oxford companions, that is reading the Oxford Handyon
Speaker 1: to Sugar and Sweets. Yeah. So it's Oxford University Press,
Speaker 1: and there's an entry in it by the American chemist
Speaker 1: Michelle M. Francil and this has just got to be
Speaker 1: one of the best like Encyclopedia type entries I've ever read.
Speaker 1: So Francial writes about this substance called sugar of lead,
Speaker 1: also known as lead lead acetate or lead to acetate.
Speaker 1: It looks kind of like large salt crystals if you
Speaker 1: look it up, or it looks maybe like translucent rock candy,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff you get on a little stick, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like sort of like white, translucent in color. And
Speaker 1: Francial writes, quote, it is sweet, roughly as sweet per
Speaker 1: teaspoon as sugar, and only slightly more lethal than strychnine.
Speaker 1: So sugar of lead was used as like a medical
Speaker 1: treatment in nineteenth century Europe. And even though it is sweet,
Speaker 1: it is technically a salt, which is an electrically neutral
Speaker 1: collection of positive ions and negative ions. And actually we
Speaker 1: only think of salts as salty in flavor because the
Speaker 1: most common salt that we refer to is sodium chloride
Speaker 1: table salt. But salts don't have to be salty. Salts
Speaker 1: can be bitter, and salts can be sweet, and in
Speaker 1: this case it is sweet. So in lead acetate, this
Speaker 1: collection of oppositely charged ions is made from depositive lead
Speaker 1: ions and negatively charged acetate ions. And it turns out
Speaker 1: sugar of lead is not the only sweet metallic salt.
Speaker 1: French Will points out that lots of barrillium salts are
Speaker 1: very sweet, so sweet in fact, that the Greek word
Speaker 1: for the element beryllium is glucinium, from like glucose or glycos,
Speaker 1: the Greek word for sweet. But as good as these
Speaker 1: metal salts that are sweet taste, they are very bad
Speaker 1: for you. Lead acetate can be fatal to a seventy
Speaker 1: or a hundred and fifty pound adult at a dose
Speaker 1: of three teaspoons. So basically what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: if anybody has any fancy dining plants this evening and
Speaker 1: they see any lead based sweeteners on the menu, I
Speaker 1: would advise against it. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that
Speaker 1: the ancient Romans used indirectly, I would say indirectly, used
Speaker 1: this lead salt as a kind of sweetener, or at
Speaker 1: least as a way of avoiding other types of taste
Speaker 1: imparted into their foods. So here's how this goes. The
Speaker 1: Romans created a syrup that they called sapa, which was
Speaker 1: produced by boiling down a liquid called must. Must is
Speaker 1: basically weak wine. Frontal describes it as quote mildly fermented
Speaker 1: grape juice, so there'll be a little bit of alcohol content,
Speaker 1: maybe kind of like grape beer. Almost. Of course, must,
Speaker 1: like wine, has some acid in it. It has acetic acid,
Speaker 1: and acetic acid is the acid basis of vinegar. Vinegar
Speaker 1: is usually just acetic acid diluted with water or some
Speaker 1: other aqueous substance. And acetic acid provides acetate ions, which
Speaker 1: can react with metals in the pots where they are boiled,
Speaker 1: and uh, and this can result in some salts. So
Speaker 1: if you boil your must in a copper pot, the
Speaker 1: resulting sappa will have some copper acetate salts in it,
Speaker 1: and these taste really bad, like they're bitter. Even ancient
Speaker 1: Roman writers would would comment on this. In the Natural History,
Speaker 1: Plenty discusses the production of sappa and he writes, quote
Speaker 1: leaden vessels should be used for this purpose, not copper ones.
Speaker 1: So it's like, get that copper out of there, makes
Speaker 1: the sappa taste bad? You want lead except no less?
Speaker 1: So why use lead? Because remember lead salts are sweets.
Speaker 1: So not only does cooking in lead pots not foul
Speaker 1: your sappa, it might make it even a little bit sweeter. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a quote from This is a quote
Speaker 1: from Franciles century quote. Chemical analysis of sappa, produced according
Speaker 1: to recipes dating from the classical Roman period using kettles
Speaker 1: of similar metallic composition as those found at Pompeii and
Speaker 1: other sites, suggests that the lead content of sappa was
Speaker 1: eight and fifty milligrams per leader, any thousand times higher
Speaker 1: than what is generally allowable in drinking water, even diluted
Speaker 1: and used sparingly. Sweetening with sappa was a serious risk.
Speaker 1: Now I have seen some people phrase this is like
Speaker 1: that the lead pots were used specifically to make the
Speaker 1: sappa sweeter, and Francill sort of disagrees with that, because
Speaker 1: she says the lead was probably not really intended to
Speaker 1: add much sweetness to the wine because it wouldn't put
Speaker 1: It wouldn't add that much. Really, you you'd already have
Speaker 1: a pretty sweet substance and would be the equivalent of
Speaker 1: adding like a pinch of sugar to it, So it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make a huge difference. It was more that the
Speaker 1: lead vessels, if they when they did add flavor, would
Speaker 1: sort of complement the existing sweetness rather than adding a foul,
Speaker 1: bitter flavor like copper vessels would. Okay, so in a
Speaker 1: blind taste test of the in which both vessels have
Speaker 1: the same already sweet or semi sweet wine, you're going
Speaker 1: to find that the leaden vessel is going going to
Speaker 1: impart a like a slightly sweeter, less foul experience, will
Speaker 1: probably significantly less foul. But yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's evidence that they thought of it. As the lead
Speaker 1: comes out and makes it a lot sweeter, they just thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you use lead pots it tastes way better. In the end. However,
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where we also can't
Speaker 1: just make fun of the ancients, because this this kind
Speaker 1: of thing carried on into a ridiculously recent time. She
Speaker 1: points out that the use of lead as a food
Speaker 1: additive and treatment did not stop in ancient Rome, and
Speaker 1: that lead equipment and additives were used to prevent spoilage
Speaker 1: in wine in some cases up until the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, now we do have to just drive home
Speaker 1: for everybody, even though again we're not getting deep into
Speaker 1: the the the the the dangers of lead in this episode. Please,
Speaker 1: if you were if you were tempted, all tempted it all.
Speaker 1: Do not go out and drink a bunch of wine
Speaker 1: out of lead vessels just to to to test the
Speaker 1: sweetening ability of the of the vessel. The amount of
Speaker 1: lead you should be absorbing on purposes zero, whatever you're
Speaker 1: accidentally getting from the environment is still probably more than
Speaker 1: you want. And there's actually a lot more stuff that
Speaker 1: There's been an ongoing argument over the years about the
Speaker 1: role of lead ingestion and lead exposure in ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: because before Ancient Rome there was lead. People did use
Speaker 1: lead to make some objects, but it wasn't used in
Speaker 1: wide like widespread construction and infrastructure and all that. The
Speaker 1: Romans were the ones that really started using lead for
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. And in nineteen three, a Canadian
Speaker 1: researcher named Jerome Riyagu argued that lead poisoning actually lead
Speaker 1: to the downfall of the Roman Empire. You've probably heard
Speaker 1: this before, Yeah, the idea that they just they built
Speaker 1: up all this lead essentially lead infrastructure and then poisoned
Speaker 1: themselves with yeah, and cooked with this, especially the cooking
Speaker 1: with lead vessels, I think um. And so this has
Speaker 1: later been called into doubt by others who said, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily seem like we can claim that, but
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that many robins were exposed to unsafe
Speaker 1: levels of lead. I was just looking at a study
Speaker 1: from P. And A. S. By the by Delisle at
Speaker 1: All called lead in Ancient Rome city waters, and they
Speaker 1: found that the tap water, you know, basically the aqueduct
Speaker 1: delivered water or delivered through some kind of lead infrastructure,
Speaker 1: that water in ancient Rome would have roughly a hundred
Speaker 1: times the lead content of local spring water. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of lead, all right, was we we wind down here,
Speaker 1: Let's just let's just talk once more about just the
Speaker 1: properties of lead, right, And I wonder if in looking
Speaker 1: at these properties we can figure out what makes it
Speaker 1: so special as as the opposite of the love inducing
Speaker 1: golden arrow. Yeah. Yeah, And and indeed, why Cupid would
Speaker 1: have walked up to his possible father Vulcan and said, hey,
Speaker 1: what medal should you use to make my repulsion arrows?
Speaker 1: What would make Vulcans say, oh, yeah, lead, lead is
Speaker 1: what you want? Okay, Well, one thing we know about
Speaker 1: lead is that, for a metal has a pretty low
Speaker 1: mel thing point right right, And this means it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to cast with, requires less equipment, and it
Speaker 1: made an ideal solder component. Yeah, so if you want
Speaker 1: to melt something easily to like seal things together, I
Speaker 1: think yeah, and I've read this also makes it like
Speaker 1: an attractive additive if you're like casting something in a mold, right.
Speaker 1: And then to your point earlier, like it was there
Speaker 1: as a byproduct of going after other metals, so it
Speaker 1: was available um onto onto. An addition, we've talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit. Lead is DNSE. It is. It's
Speaker 1: a heavy metal, and leads density is due to its
Speaker 1: high atomic mass, short bond lengths, and a small atomic radius.
Speaker 1: And this, along with its high number of electrons needed
Speaker 1: to maintain a neutral charge, makes it a useful radiation
Speaker 1: shield in our modern world, a scattering X rays and
Speaker 1: gamma rays. Yeah, and so you'll actually see it in
Speaker 1: use in places where there's a radiation risk. There are
Speaker 1: sometimes lead blocks deployed as a as basically a like
Speaker 1: the sand bags of the radiation world. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: my my father was a dentist, and and so I
Speaker 1: was often hanging out in dental offices, and part of
Speaker 1: that is being being near an X ray machine. And
Speaker 1: of course that big, big heavy lead line smock that
Speaker 1: lead one where yeah so so yeah, you see you
Speaker 1: see this kind of radiation shielding all over kind of
Speaker 1: makes me think back to our our our episode on
Speaker 1: the X ray machine that we did for Invention. So
Speaker 1: certainly if you want more on on the use of
Speaker 1: X rays and the dangers of radiation associated with that
Speaker 1: with X rays, I highly recommend that episode of our
Speaker 1: other show, Invention. And then the third major attribute of
Speaker 1: lead is that it is soft and it's malleable. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's limited usage somewhat. You know, while a god might
Speaker 1: be able to craft an arrow out of it or
Speaker 1: coat an arrow with lead anyway, you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to fashion anything with it that can sustain any
Speaker 1: real stress. But when you're talking about something like water
Speaker 1: and sewage pipes or cooking vessels, uh yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is an area where lead can can excel as long
Speaker 1: as you're not getting into questions of whether it will
Speaker 1: poison you or not. Just from a physical and a
Speaker 1: physical basis, it can get the job done. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want like a lead hammer, though, I think you can
Speaker 1: have like lead alloy hammers and stuff like you can
Speaker 1: use alloys to strengthen metals that are inherently soft. So
Speaker 1: coming back to Cupid, I mean, maybe the idea is
Speaker 1: that the lead in arrows or somehow combating the radiation
Speaker 1: of intense, passionate love. The power of love is actually
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a type of ray. It's what's
Speaker 1: beyond gamma rays. Yeah, and you've got to scatter those
Speaker 1: love rays. And the only way to do it is
Speaker 1: with with some high end um god forged lead in ammunition.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing another residence here because one of the sources
Speaker 1: we didn't mention, So we talked about how lead can
Speaker 1: be created in like events in space inside like a
Speaker 1: dying star and the collision of neutron stars. We also
Speaker 1: didn't talk about another. I think it probably accounts for
Speaker 1: a much much smaller percentage of it. But lead can
Speaker 1: be created as the byproduct of radioactive decay sometimes, like
Speaker 1: uranium can decay into some isotopes of lead. So maybe
Speaker 1: if we're considering that love is a type of radioactivity
Speaker 1: or type of ray, they're actually lead represents what happens
Speaker 1: when love dies and decays, you know, like so like
Speaker 1: love fades and eventually it becomes lead. What starts as
Speaker 1: this golden, splendid, sharp arrow becomes this blunt, dull, lusterless instrument.
Speaker 1: We have crucified this myth and taken out all of
Speaker 1: the beauty and turned it into a chemical Frankenstein. I'm
Speaker 1: so proud of us. Yeah, I I feel like we have.
Speaker 1: We've done a good job here today, taking the candy
Speaker 1: coated and kind of lame holiday of Valentine's Day, and
Speaker 1: I think we've injected some fresh life into it. We've
Speaker 1: fed it a lot of lead and uh and and
Speaker 1: and uh and in doing so, we've we've killed off
Speaker 1: a lot of the uh, the more irritable aspects of
Speaker 1: the holiday. Sweet sweet lead. Yes, So big takeaways from
Speaker 1: from today. Don't eat lead sugar, right, don't do not
Speaker 1: do it. Don't cook in lead pots right, don't drink
Speaker 1: from lead leading vessels if you have a choice in
Speaker 1: the matter. Be wary of gods with bows and arrows, right,
Speaker 1: And and keep in mind that, yeah, cupid has two arrows,
Speaker 1: so if he's aiming at you, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: toss up which one he's trying to hit you with.
Speaker 1: And sometimes even the great god Pan gets out wrestled
Speaker 1: exactly all right, so we're gonna close out the special
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But
Speaker 1: as always, if you want to check out more episodes
Speaker 1: of the show, you can always head on over to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship.
Speaker 1: That's where you will find all the episodes of the show.
Speaker 1: You'll find links out to various social media accounts. You
Speaker 1: can of course find us anywhere you get podcasts. That's
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Speaker 1: So wherever you find subscribe and if you have the
Speaker 1: power to do so on these platforms, give us a rating,
Speaker 1: throw as many stars as possible at us the golden
Speaker 1: kind not the lead ones, uh, and then leave a
Speaker 1: nice message about how how awesome the show is, because
Speaker 1: you know, these these may seem like small things, but
Speaker 1: they really help us out in the long run. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly with feedback about this episode or
Speaker 1: any other to suggest topic for the future, we're just
Speaker 1: to say hi. You can email us at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff
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