00:00SPEAKERDid you all watch the the landing today, the Perseverance landing?
00:03SPEAKERYeah, I didn't get any work done.
00:04SPEAKERThose had that on.
00:06SPEAKERI tried to watch it.
00:07SPEAKERI just a little, little misty eye.
00:10SPEAKERIt's a little hard to watch at one point somehow.
00:12SPEAKERBut I mean, I was sitting in the living room with my eight year old, my wife,
00:15SPEAKERand we were sitting there watching.
00:17SPEAKERAnd I looked over and she and I were both crying.
00:20SPEAKERAnd my daughter was like, so, you know, what now does it drive off?
00:25SPEAKERWell, like what she's like, I'm waiting for the cool stuff to happen
00:28SPEAKERand singularly unimpressed.
00:30SPEAKERBut it was emotional.
00:31SPEAKERI hope you I hope you told her about the helicopter.
00:34SPEAKERIt was. No, it was it.
00:36SPEAKERThere was the the the cinematic tension of like commencing EDL,
00:40SPEAKERyou know, the kind of militarized tactical crosstalk,
00:44SPEAKERif you were watching just the raw feed with all the initials and stuff.
00:47SPEAKERAnd it's, you know, go for flight, go for go for lunch, go over all that stuff
00:51SPEAKERfrom all the right stuff stuff, all the right, right stuff stuff.
00:54SPEAKERAnd and then like, you know, it's like that
00:58SPEAKERwhen you watch the Olympics and all of a sudden you're an expert in ice skating
01:01SPEAKERor whatever, you learn you learn all of it as you go.
01:04SPEAKERAnd so, you know, when it says like, OK, this is the seven minutes
01:06SPEAKERwhere we're going to not be able to hear because of the plasma.
01:08SPEAKERAnd then like they they do the thing.
01:10SPEAKERAnd it was they actually did it as as obscurely
01:14SPEAKERand obtusely as they possibly could and made it even better.
01:16SPEAKERIt was tango delta nominal was what they said when it touched down nominal,
01:20SPEAKERtouched down nominal.
01:21SPEAKERIt was like, you know, it wasn't touched down.
01:23SPEAKERIt wasn't contact. It wasn't, you know, perseverance is on Mars.
01:26SPEAKERIt was tango delta nominal was the first thing they said.
01:29SPEAKERAnd they said tango delta nominal. And I started crying.
01:32SPEAKERThat was it for me.
01:34SPEAKERIt's when it's the moment when the room goes from being incredibly like
01:39SPEAKERthey have serious checkpoints, long way parachute deployed.
01:42SPEAKERThe shields dropped all that stuff.
01:44SPEAKERAnd you see the tension drop off of each person on the desk as they go.
01:48SPEAKERBut then then there's a human thing that happens when when they get the thing
01:52SPEAKERthat they're waiting for and everybody stands up and cheers and they hug.
01:56SPEAKERAnd I think in the post brief, somebody said that it was the first time
01:59SPEAKERa lot of them had been in the same room for more than a year.
02:03SPEAKERNot so much hugging this time.
02:04SPEAKERThere's a lot of like cheering six feet apart.
02:06SPEAKERBut there's that it's that thing of of human
02:09SPEAKERlike a pinnacle of human achievement. Totally, totally.
02:12SPEAKERYes. You always you always get a little emotional watching, you know.
02:15SPEAKERYeah. Seeing the awe and majesty of of human potential being fulfilled.
02:19SPEAKERBut you're not the only ones.
02:21SPEAKERI saw like people on my Twitter talking about like ugly crying over this thing.
02:24SPEAKERAnd I'm just like, there's like a deep well of emotion
02:27SPEAKERthat nobody has had an outlet for for the last almost a year.
02:30SPEAKERAnd I think we're just all pouring it out on this robot that is now on another plate.
02:35SPEAKERAnd it feels like there just hasn't been a talking about a pinnacle of human
02:38SPEAKERachievement that you feel like we've I feel like we've been at the nadir
02:41SPEAKERof human achievement for so long in so many ways, despite the, you know,
02:45SPEAKERthe incredible efforts that people put out at an individual level.
02:48SPEAKERJust if you can't you spend a year looking at literally looking at death counts
02:53SPEAKERand losing American cities to weather and bureaucratic sociopolitical failure
02:58SPEAKERand just like these catastrophic these, you know, science
03:01SPEAKERfiction scaled jackpot apocalyptic feeling things.
03:05SPEAKERAnd you get like, OK, we got to win.
03:08SPEAKERWell, I mean, and you could argue that the vaccine I mean, I would argue
03:12SPEAKERthat the vaccine development in this this developing a new kind of vaccine
03:15SPEAKERin an incredibly short period of time and getting it deployed to,
03:19SPEAKERyou know, hundreds of thousands of people at this point.
03:21SPEAKERAnd hopefully, you know, millions by the by the summertime,
03:26SPEAKERyou know, tens and hundreds of millions by the summertime is is
03:30SPEAKERan incredible achievement.
03:32SPEAKERBut it's also not the kind of thing that you can like.
03:35SPEAKERYou don't there's not like it's not like they got the vaccine out
03:37SPEAKERand all of a sudden 300 million people were back there.
03:39SPEAKERSeven billion people were vaccinated all at once.
03:41SPEAKERAnd this is all behind us.
03:43SPEAKERLike that's going to be a multiyear process.
03:44SPEAKERAnd there's no like there's no TV nominal.
03:47SPEAKERNASA doesn't animate a six CG simulation of somebody getting a vaccine.
03:51SPEAKERYou know, there's not there's not there's not a lot that compares
03:54SPEAKERto the visual of a robot landing on another planet.
03:56SPEAKERI have a small amount.
03:58SPEAKERThat's probably not small.
03:58SPEAKERI have some amount of cynicism about the way NASA does play that stuff.
04:02SPEAKERNASA is very good at telling its own story in a way that a lot of scientists aren't.
04:05SPEAKERMaybe this is a positive way to think about it.
04:06SPEAKERA lot of scientists and technologists are not great at telling their own stories.
04:09SPEAKERNASA is supremely good at telling its own story,
04:12SPEAKERand they have such a great story to tell.
04:14SPEAKERIt is such a great story.
04:15SPEAKERIt's such a great it's it's an achievement.
04:17SPEAKERAnd, you know, there's going to be science
04:18SPEAKERand they they hold out the promise of maybe finding something once lived on Mars.
04:22SPEAKERI'm I'm you know, I love that.
04:23SPEAKERI love there to be or to further have for there to have been aliens.
04:27SPEAKERBut I I like just doing geology up there, areology up there.
04:30SPEAKERYou know, I mean, the science is so incredible.
04:33SPEAKERAnd it's and I think you're right.
04:35SPEAKERLike the the story also of the vaccines of this incredible
04:39SPEAKERamount of understanding of of COVID-19 of SARS-CoV-2
04:43SPEAKERthat's happened over the past year is one of of an emergent catastrophe
04:47SPEAKERof people racing against time.
04:48SPEAKERIt's it's the drama of like what the failure looks like.
04:52SPEAKEREverybody can tell, whereas this seems like an unalloyed success.
04:55SPEAKERIt's not in response to, you know,
04:58SPEAKERall the other failures of trying to get to Mars or something.
05:01SPEAKERI really I just have to say, I hope poor little perseverance
05:04SPEAKERnever hears this conversation because we're
05:06SPEAKERtaking off a lot of pressure on that little robot on its first day, man.
05:10SPEAKERWell, and you know, when you look at this, this this is the rocket
05:14SPEAKERthat took this to the perseverance to Mars launched after the quarantine started.
05:19SPEAKERLike the project was obviously in development for a really long time beforehand.
05:22SPEAKERBut but like next time you're at your school board meeting or you're
05:25SPEAKERat the you know, your your corporate offices and somebody's like, well,
05:28SPEAKERyou know, it's really hard to do stuff during the during the time of the Rona.
05:32SPEAKERThen you point at the point of Mars, be like, hey, man,
05:36SPEAKERif they can do it, you can too.
05:38SPEAKERVaguely wave your arms in the direction of the sky. Yeah.
05:41SPEAKERIt's a robot up there.
05:43SPEAKERWe could. Yeah. No, I
05:47SPEAKERI've been talking to some of the I'm writing a story about it.
05:49SPEAKERI'm talking to some of the a couple of the scientists
05:51SPEAKERwho worked on a specific part of the project and listening to them
05:54SPEAKERtalk about sort of how long they worked on it and what they were trying to do
05:58SPEAKERand how it felt. It really is.
05:59SPEAKERIt's a it's it's another one of those things that on the one hand, it took them
06:03SPEAKERseven years, and on the other hand, we watched it take half an hour.
06:06SPEAKERLike, are they going to pull it off at the last,
06:08SPEAKERyou know, the last moment when it really counts?
06:10SPEAKERAnd like, I got to imagine what the headspace is like when you're
06:14SPEAKERwhen you've worked on this for seven years.
06:16SPEAKERAnd if the next 20 minutes goes well, you got the next seven or six,
06:19SPEAKERseven, 10 years planned.
06:21SPEAKERAnd if it doesn't, you're like, well, what's up with Europa?
06:24SPEAKERStart making some other plans.
06:36SPEAKERSo. Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
06:57SPEAKERI'm Brad. Brad, we have a special guest today, a special guest, a special guest.
07:02SPEAKERAll of our guests are special, but this is a this is a special guest.
07:05SPEAKERJoining us today is a friend of mine, Adam Rogers, who is the author of Proof
07:09SPEAKERThe Science of Booze and the upcoming Full Spectrum.
07:12SPEAKERHow the science of color made us modern, as well as being a senior
07:14SPEAKERcorrespondent wired.
07:15SPEAKERWe're going to talk about Booze today with Adam.
07:18SPEAKERWelcome to the show, Adam Rogers.
07:20SPEAKERThank you very much.
07:21SPEAKERI am delighted to be here.
07:23SPEAKERWe're so glad to have you.
07:23SPEAKERIt's it's so nice to have guests in in in, you know, in the weird times
07:27SPEAKERthat we're living in right now.
07:28SPEAKERBut but I so a longtime listeners
07:33SPEAKERwill remember that I think five or six years ago when when Proof came out,
07:38SPEAKERwe sat down at a bar in Oakland and talked about about the science of booze.
07:44SPEAKERAnd I could have gone on for another two hours, probably,
07:46SPEAKERbecause it was it was a lovely chat.
07:49SPEAKERAnd so here we are.
07:50SPEAKERWe're going to we're going to talk about
07:52SPEAKERabout the science and technology behind making alcohol.
07:56SPEAKEROne of my favorite subjects.
07:58SPEAKERThe thing about talking about those and talking about it in a bar
08:01SPEAKERis that it gets kind of rate limited.
08:03SPEAKERIt has a dilemma, like because the quality of conversation
08:07SPEAKERdeclines at a certain slope that has some some relationship
08:11SPEAKERto how long you sit at a bar and actually indulge in the bar.
08:14SPEAKERWell, actually is get worse and louder.
08:17SPEAKERSo to do this, I have to I have to ask,
08:20SPEAKERwere you guys also indulging in the product or just the decor?
08:23SPEAKERI think we started I think we recorded it at 10 o'clock on a Monday morning.
08:26SPEAKERMaybe I can't it was really early. Yes. Yeah.
08:30SPEAKERYeah. Those weren't club sodas is what I'm saying.
08:32SPEAKERWhat better time? I mean, I look I love booze.
08:35SPEAKERI'm not going to lie.
08:36SPEAKERI enjoy drinking like high end alcohol.
08:39SPEAKERI had to have I feel like maybe a complicated
08:41SPEAKERrelationship with alcohol over the last year or so.
08:45SPEAKERYeah, that that as all of us did. Yeah.
08:48SPEAKERAs it becomes less of a social experience and more of a solitary one.
08:52SPEAKERBut that's I know that's maybe a little bit of a dark way to start this off.
08:55SPEAKERBut no, it was weird, too, because when I was reporting the book,
09:00SPEAKERmy my tolerance and my relationship with it changed as well.
09:05SPEAKERYou know, it was less and that was a long time ago.
09:08SPEAKERAnd now it's now it's really not great.
09:10SPEAKERLike my my it does not it's not as much fun as it was.
09:14SPEAKERThe science is still really fun.
09:16SPEAKERI'm still fascinated by it.
09:17SPEAKERBut the but the actual consumption of it at at 50 now is less fun
09:21SPEAKERthan it was at, you know, 35 when it was awesome.
09:26SPEAKERWell, the thing I found, I mean, a yes, there's a
09:30SPEAKERthere is an overindulgence as the suffering related to overindulgence
09:33SPEAKERis much worse now than it was five or even 10, 10, five, 15 years ago.
09:37SPEAKERBut but like now when we're quarantined,
09:41SPEAKERthe places that I really enjoy having a drink, whether it's, you know,
09:45SPEAKERstopping and having a drink on the way home after work with people
09:48SPEAKERwith co-workers or, you know, mowing the lawn and drinking a beer
09:53SPEAKERlike the mowing the lawn, drinking a beer, that still happens.
09:56SPEAKERBut but like my likelihood of making a fancy cocktail
09:59SPEAKERbeyond like a gin and tonic or maybe
10:01SPEAKERmaybe like an old fashioned is really low these days,
10:05SPEAKERbecause like that's the thing that I do socially out in public with people.
10:08SPEAKERAnd that part of our lives is gone right now.
10:12SPEAKERIf you're in a state that's managed by sane people, a big chunk of that.
10:15SPEAKERThat's right. A big chunk of the book, actually, when I try to get into
10:19SPEAKERthe neuroscience of the experience to what happens to your body,
10:23SPEAKERinto your brain when you drink.
10:25SPEAKERSo I'm sort of skipping all the first parts of it. That's fine.
10:28SPEAKERWe'll talk about how awesome used is in a minute. Yeah.
10:31SPEAKERBut so much of that is theater.
10:34SPEAKERYou know, so much of it is
10:36SPEAKERis the environment that you're in and the context in which is presented to you.
10:39SPEAKERAnd the whole thing of the most basic level, the whole thing of people
10:43SPEAKERreporting that they enjoy an expensive bottle of wine better than a cheap one,
10:46SPEAKEReven if it's the same bottle of wine.
10:48SPEAKERThere are people thinking that a cocktail made a fancy bar with a person
10:52SPEAKERwho's doing all kinds of great pre prohibition bartender stuff
10:55SPEAKERis more fun than you doing it at home.
10:57SPEAKERAll of that, all that goes to the the effect of the experience in the room
11:02SPEAKERhas to the to the point that there are there are labs
11:05SPEAKERwhere people are testing these experiences, where they actually build a bar,
11:08SPEAKERa simulated bar and give people drinks with different amounts of alcohol in them
11:11SPEAKERto try to disentangle how much of the experience is that
11:16SPEAKERthat that psychological, that psychoactive one of the actual chemical
11:19SPEAKERdoing stuff to your brain and how much of it is sitting with people you like
11:21SPEAKERor sitting with people who you're sexually attracted to,
11:23SPEAKERhoping that they'll be sexually attracted to you and sitting with, you know,
11:26SPEAKERor with somebody who you haven't seen in a long time
11:28SPEAKERand with a bartender, you like a place that you're a regular.
11:31SPEAKERYou know, I I'm I'm realizing
11:34SPEAKERas if we were talking about what this year has been like.
11:37SPEAKERI keep thinking that, man, I really miss bars and it's different.
11:40SPEAKERThat feeling is really different than missing drinking in a bar.
11:44SPEAKERI just miss like going to the place is that third place, that place.
11:47SPEAKERI miss sitting in coffee houses, too, you know, and and that I think that's a
11:51SPEAKERit's been an interesting experiment in further disentangling
11:55SPEAKERthose kinds of feelings about the whole
11:59SPEAKERthe whole like the process, the milieu.
12:03SPEAKERI don't know, it's probably a good French word for the whole the gestalt.
12:05SPEAKERIt's a German word like the ritual and the substance and the people
12:09SPEAKERand all at once. Yeah.
12:10SPEAKERSo interesting that you talk about the theatricality of that experience,
12:13SPEAKERbecause you hear all the time that alcohol is a depressant.
12:15SPEAKERBut, you know, in so many situations, it is a very stimulating experience to drink.
12:20SPEAKERAnd I wonder how much of that actually is down to who you're doing it with
12:23SPEAKERand like what setting you're in and that sort of thing.
12:25SPEAKERYeah, and I think there's a
12:27SPEAKERI think you can you can measure how much of it is.
12:29SPEAKERThere's the depressive effect on your inhibitions and on your
12:33SPEAKERthe things that are making you kind of a folded up, bitter, sour person.
12:36SPEAKERI'm maybe just being for myself as a journalist, but you know what I mean?
12:39SPEAKERThose get those get depressed, you know, and then like all the other stuff
12:42SPEAKERgets depressed until you get to the part where you're actually just falling asleep.
12:45SPEAKERLike there's that arc of what actually is getting inhibited
12:48SPEAKERor inhibited or disinhibited, because like there's there's an XKCD for this.
12:52SPEAKERI'm sure you would do it very quickly
12:56SPEAKERand very funnily and much better than I did in the book. But yes.
12:59SPEAKERAnd also, there's some there there has been some good kind of sociology
13:02SPEAKERand anthropology that says that the that alcohol doesn't have any specific effects,
13:07SPEAKERreally, that it really depends on what you're culturally sort of pre-programmed
13:11SPEAKERto anticipate and expect the stuff to their expectancies
13:14SPEAKERis what it's called in psychology. And that's controversial.
13:16SPEAKERAnd the other thing, the one thing that it certainly does do
13:19SPEAKERis that after a certain amount of it, it seems to make people more violent,
13:21SPEAKERwhich is a bad thing that seems to be true across cultures.
13:24SPEAKERBut so it's not totally clear that it's it's alcohol by itself as a drug.
13:28SPEAKERIf we talk about it that way, it's a depressant.
13:29SPEAKERBut the effects that it has really depend on, you know, how you're consuming it
13:33SPEAKERand who you're doing it with and whether you wrote a book about it. I don't know.
13:37SPEAKERWell, one of the things that struck me, like I didn't
13:40SPEAKERI didn't really appreciate that there wasn't a that.
13:44SPEAKERWe don't know what the biological pathway for for alcohol is, really,
13:49SPEAKERyou know, where you can look at different other drugs
13:50SPEAKERand see that they're receptors that they hook on that fire with hormones
13:54SPEAKERand neuro receptors and stuff like that.
13:56SPEAKERThere's no easy analog for for alcohol.
13:59SPEAKERYou know, we know what it does to your liver.
14:01SPEAKERWe know what it does to to some some different organs.
14:04SPEAKERBut we don't know why, you know, getting drunk makes you less
14:08SPEAKERinhibited in some ways.
14:09SPEAKERAnd it's a weird thing, especially when it's used as much.
14:14SPEAKERThat's right. Unlike any other drug of unlike other
14:18SPEAKERany other recreational psychoactive chemical, you know, people use a lot of them.
14:23SPEAKERBut the people understand scientists understand nicotine.
14:25SPEAKERThey understand caffeine. They understand opiates.
14:27SPEAKERThey understand, you know, amphetamines, all that stuff.
14:31SPEAKERAnd the analog and there's there's some overlap with benzodiazepines,
14:35SPEAKERwhich is the reason that you're not supposed to take
14:37SPEAKERbenzos at the same time as you're drinking their synergistic.
14:39SPEAKERSo there's there's something going on there.
14:41SPEAKERBut even that it's still not well understood.
14:43SPEAKERAnd this is, you know, years since I did that reporting.
14:46SPEAKERIt's still not well done.
14:47SPEAKERSome of that, I think, is that in order to understand it,
14:50SPEAKERyou've got to be doing some pretty sophisticated and expensive
14:54SPEAKERneuroscience.
14:55SPEAKERAnd and it's really hard to do
14:59SPEAKERreal science on drinking if you're not studying abuse.
15:03SPEAKERThere's there's money that there's grant money to study abuse for really good reasons.
15:08SPEAKERI mean, it's a you know, it's going to be
15:09SPEAKERa catastrophic drug of abuse in the United States. It really is.
15:13SPEAKERBut people don't study the the place where the book takes place in my head.
15:18SPEAKERThat book takes place two sips into your second drink.
15:22SPEAKERThe OK, that makes sense, except except for the chapter
15:25SPEAKERon hangovers where, you know, that's all other stuff. Sure.
15:28SPEAKERBut the rest of that book takes place.
15:31SPEAKERYou have you finished your first one.
15:33SPEAKERYou've ordered the second one and you've just taken the second sip.
15:36SPEAKERThat's when that book that's all that book happens, right?
15:38SPEAKERHappens in that moment.
15:39SPEAKERBut that's perfect.
15:40SPEAKERLike it like in college, I always felt like just right about, you know,
15:43SPEAKERa third of the way into my second beer was when I was the best at pool.
15:46SPEAKERIt's exactly always the sweet spot in the bar.
15:48SPEAKERYou can speak whatever language you've been studying and classes.
15:51SPEAKERYou can your pool game gets better.
15:53SPEAKERYou're the jokes get funnier. Talk to anybody in the bar. No problem.
16:00SPEAKERCan we talk about the Hildegard Heyman tasting study stuff?
16:04SPEAKERBecause that is I think that was the most interesting,
16:07SPEAKERlike hard science stuff that came out of the book when I read it.
16:12SPEAKERAnd now how she set up a tasting lab and in at Davis
16:17SPEAKERand recruited people to develop like an ontology of flavor
16:21SPEAKERin, I guess, wine in this case. But yeah, it's it's
16:26SPEAKERI am I am really compelled by the problems
16:30SPEAKERinherent in creating heuristics of the senses.
16:35SPEAKERIt's not just true for smell and taste, although smell and taste are a big one.
16:38SPEAKERBut if you as a as a huge digression, because it's related to the next book,
16:43SPEAKERto the color book, I tried to look into some of this for thinking about color,
16:47SPEAKERabout the creation of color orders or color spaces to try to figure out
16:52SPEAKERwhat are the what are the basic colors, basic color terms
16:55SPEAKERor basic colors people can see and what order do you put them in?
16:58SPEAKERAnd how do you create a chart, you know, a graph, an illustration that says,
17:01SPEAKERhere's what order they go in and here's how to find all the colors.
17:03SPEAKERAnd and people have been trying to do this for, you know, since the Middle Ages.
17:07SPEAKERThe first ones were like charts of urine with different colors of darkness in order.
17:12SPEAKERAnd you can try to do that with with color.
17:14SPEAKERIt's really, really difficult.
17:15SPEAKERAnd you end up with these three dimensional, four dimensional, multidimensional
17:18SPEAKERcolor spaces because you have to account for sort of
17:21SPEAKERhow much light is coming out or how much reflection there is.
17:24SPEAKERYou have to account for how saturated the color is.
17:27SPEAKERYou have to account for what wavelength that is a whole bunch of different factors.
17:29SPEAKERWell, if you try to do that with with
17:32SPEAKERtaste and smell, especially because taste is much more complicated.
17:36SPEAKERIt's almost impossible to build one of those spaces.
17:39SPEAKERSo what the people who do who study flavor
17:42SPEAKERand aroma will do is they'll make like these wheels of all the different
17:47SPEAKERspecific aromas really taste is a pretty limited sense.
17:52SPEAKERIt just has kind of four or five receptors on the tongue for, you know,
17:56SPEAKERthis bitter and sour and sweet and salty.
17:59SPEAKERAnd and maybe like umami, which is that meaty flavors glutamate.
18:03SPEAKERAnd then there's all these other there's all these other perceptions, all these
18:06SPEAKERother things you can perceive that are more trigeminally based.
18:09SPEAKERThere are nerves.
18:10SPEAKERSo that's things like the cold of mint or the heat of a chili pepper
18:15SPEAKERor the the kind of the vibrational shock
18:18SPEAKERof of Sichuan peppers, which has a little bit of a zap to it.
18:23SPEAKERThose are all a different set of receptors, but also in the mouth.
18:25SPEAKERAnd there's also strain gauges that do things like like texture,
18:29SPEAKERwhether it's viscous or not.
18:31SPEAKERAnd then there's nobody knows how many aromas,
18:34SPEAKERbecause those are the actual chemicals, the actual molecules volatilizing
18:37SPEAKERand then attaching to a sensory epithelium kind of behind
18:40SPEAKERright behind your nose, above your mouth and somehow transducing those signals.
18:45SPEAKERNobody knows what those signals are somehow
18:46SPEAKERgetting transduced into neural signals that go into the olfactory cortex.
18:49SPEAKERAnd so when when we talk about
18:52SPEAKERwhat that actually is, if you and I say, OK, well, that smells like
18:57SPEAKERand this is stuff that we talked about at Davis,
19:00SPEAKERthat smells like apples.
19:03SPEAKERWell, on the one hand, I say that to you and you, we all get in our heads
19:06SPEAKERlike, OK, Apple, I got it, Apple.
19:08SPEAKERBut then I say, well, green or red?
19:10SPEAKERYeah, crap. OK.
19:12SPEAKERAnd then I say, well, stewed or fresh cut or baked or Granny
19:16SPEAKERSmith or Rome or Macoon or Empire or or or Pink Lady, whatever.
19:22SPEAKERAnd all those I say all that stuff and it all starts snapping in your head.
19:25SPEAKERRight. And and and even though you and I might have,
19:28SPEAKEReven though I might be able to say to you like a fresh
19:31SPEAKERbaked apple, like baked apples and an apple pie,
19:34SPEAKERyou and I will both have a perception in our heads of that.
19:36SPEAKERAnd it'll still be different.
19:38SPEAKERSo what they were trying to do there was get like agreement was essentially
19:41SPEAKERhave a test group that would all agree, like, OK, I brought in samples.
19:45SPEAKERWe all agree that when all of us say
19:48SPEAKERdried apricot, this is what we mean, right?
19:53SPEAKEREverybody goes, right.
19:54SPEAKERYou sort of go through and come up with, you know, three dozen of those
19:57SPEAKERand then say, OK, now we're ready to taste some wine
20:00SPEAKERand see which one of those is in there.
20:02SPEAKERAll those things have what's called an object metaphor problem,
20:04SPEAKERwhich is that we are saying this is a smell that smells like that thing.
20:08SPEAKERIt's not the smell. It's not that thing.
20:10SPEAKERAnd even if we can agree on which chemical we're talking about,
20:12SPEAKERwhich we really can't, because it's a complicated collection.
20:14SPEAKERAnd when you get into something like wine or beer, whiskey, whatever, there's
20:18SPEAKERthere's peaks in the gas chromatograph that no one knows what they are.
20:21SPEAKERAnd they're all combined with each other.
20:23SPEAKERWe're still not really saying this is what that smell is.
20:25SPEAKERThere's no smell word we're using.
20:27SPEAKERWe're still comparing it to the actual chemical.
20:29SPEAKERSo we're not really communicating the science that we're trying to get it.
20:32SPEAKERWell, and even even in those groups,
20:36SPEAKERyou still had a spectrum of capabilities where where they could all like
20:40SPEAKERwhen they train the panels, they would go take them in
20:43SPEAKERand then they'd test them on different flavors.
20:45SPEAKERThey'd come up with consensus, right?
20:47SPEAKERIndependent of each other, which which, you know, kind of answers the,
20:52SPEAKERyou know, can you actually detect the notes of flavor
20:55SPEAKERwithin something complicated like wine or coffee or beer or whatever?
20:59SPEAKERYeah, but the consensus is limited in its
21:03SPEAKERand its vocabulary, what you can articulate.
21:05SPEAKEROne of the main differences that that anybody has ever found
21:08SPEAKERbetween like my ability to taste wine and a trained international sommelier,
21:14SPEAKERsomebody who's been through that whole program and is really good at it.
21:17SPEAKERThe only difference that anybody's ever been able to identify,
21:19SPEAKERit doesn't mean there aren't others.
21:21SPEAKERBut the difference people have been able to identify between my ability
21:24SPEAKERto discern all of those aromas and that person
21:27SPEAKERis that they know more words to describe those aromas.
21:30SPEAKERPart of that training is to be able to put those words in.
21:33SPEAKERSo the kind of the like
21:36SPEAKERsilly wine language that we all get used to making fun of, sort of,
21:39SPEAKERyou know, insouciant notes of slate and clay with with a finish of orange rind
21:45SPEAKERand the the punitive sense of having done wrong in one's elementary school.
21:50SPEAKERYou know, like that kind of stuff.
21:52SPEAKERIt's all the putting aside the really ridiculous ones,
21:55SPEAKERthe being able to say, well, that's the smell of of fresh baked bread.
22:00SPEAKERThat's a super evocative thing to be able to say.
22:02SPEAKERAnd all of us have had beers that we go like, oh, yeah, fresh baked bread.
22:06SPEAKERYeah, totally.
22:07SPEAKERWell, and and to your point,
22:10SPEAKERmy idea of what fresh baked bread smells like is is like a yeasty warm like it's
22:16SPEAKERlike the thing I'm thinking of, the smell I'm thinking of is a warm smell.
22:19SPEAKERRight. It's warm is not a smell,
22:22SPEAKERbut it smells like warm yeast and and and like carbon dioxide, basically.
22:27SPEAKERAnd yeah, it's a it's a it's it's almost magical
22:31SPEAKERbecause when you describe the flavors, I can't you can't help.
22:34SPEAKERIt's like telling somebody not to think about an elephant.
22:36SPEAKERAnd then, you know, they're obviously thinking about it's worse than that.
22:40SPEAKERYou can you can incept people with them.
22:43SPEAKERAnd I can hand you a glass of wine and say you're going to taste blackberry
22:47SPEAKERand a bit of kind of a of a of a spring, like an early rain,
22:52SPEAKERcherry blossom sort of smell.
22:55SPEAKERAnd then there's a bit of a there's like a floral at the front.
22:58SPEAKERAnd then that'll be more honey.
22:58SPEAKERLike if I do that, if I give you the if I say that to you
23:02SPEAKERbefore I give you the wine, I guarantee you're going to taste that stuff
23:04SPEAKERunless it's way, way the hell off, you know, unless this does taste like rain.
23:08SPEAKERYeah, it's amazing. Wow. Rain's fantastic.
23:12SPEAKERSorry, I was going to ask.
23:13SPEAKERI mean, do you think anybody can be trained to perform that kind of analysis
23:17SPEAKERor is that dependent on having some kind of like inborn perfect palette?
23:21SPEAKERIt sounds like you probably lean toward the former.
23:23SPEAKERThere's got to be a it's got to be a range of ability,
23:27SPEAKERyou know, in this in this same way that
23:30SPEAKERall of us have sort of a different sensorium.
23:32SPEAKERIt's just very hard for us to communicate each other sensoriums to each other.
23:35SPEAKERRight. But we all have this
23:38SPEAKERwhat would be the universe of senses that we live in.
23:41SPEAKERAnd it'll be it'll have different ranges in the same way that, you know,
23:44SPEAKERprobably are the photoreceptors in our eye are seeing sort of colors a little bit
23:47SPEAKERdifferently than each other's because of how many there are and where they are
23:50SPEAKERand how they're built.
23:51SPEAKERBut but I also think you can train somebody to be better at describing
23:54SPEAKERwhat they're perceiving, especially over the course of drinking of a of that.
23:58SPEAKERThat sort of course of like, OK, I pour it, smell it, take a second.
24:01SPEAKERI take a small sip, have it in my mouth for a minute.
24:03SPEAKERSwallow that. Wait a second.
24:05SPEAKERSmell it. Take another sip. Hold it in my mouth a little bit.
24:07SPEAKERSmell it like over that course.
24:09SPEAKERThat that experience you can get better at describing all of that.
24:12SPEAKERCan you remember all of that and then be able to do that test that the Somalis do
24:15SPEAKERwhere you taste 20 wines, go like, oh, well, that's the 1974 song,
24:18SPEAKERyou know, from the from grown.
24:20SPEAKERThat's obviously from the North Bank sort of like, can you can you translate that?
24:23SPEAKERI don't I don't know.
24:24SPEAKERI mean, I've tried that. I'm terrible at that.
24:28SPEAKERCan do. Let's see, do we want to talk about yeast a little bit?
24:31SPEAKERYeast is like the story of of your book is in a lot of ways for me,
24:35SPEAKERthe story of yeast, because I didn't I hadn't fully appreciated the miracle
24:39SPEAKERthat is this this little fungus.
24:43SPEAKERI'll tell you a funny story.
24:45SPEAKERWhen I when I wrote it, I think the first version of it,
24:47SPEAKERthe very first thing I said, like the lead for that chapter
24:51SPEAKERor whatever, was something about how it's basically like.
24:53SPEAKERI think it was something like, you know, the babble fish is,
24:56SPEAKERyou know, the hitchhiker's guide, there's a babble fish.
24:58SPEAKERIt's like it's such an amazing, useful and it's a mirror.
25:00SPEAKERAnd I went through the whole joke.
25:01SPEAKERLike I did the whole riff, basically just copy pasted it out of Hitchhiker's Guide.
25:05SPEAKERAnd my editor was like, yeah, so I don't know if everybody's
25:08SPEAKERgoing to really get that.
25:10SPEAKERAnd maybe you want to do that later.
25:12SPEAKERLike, no, but it really is like the babble fish.
25:15SPEAKERYou know, if God disappears in a poof of logic, she's like, yeah, no,
25:19SPEAKERI think you want to wait.
25:20SPEAKERYou got to disprove the existence of God using yeast later in the book.
25:24SPEAKERThat's like a chapter three or four thing.
25:25SPEAKERNot not like in the introduction, not right at the top. That's off-putting.
25:30SPEAKERBut but no, I think I
25:33SPEAKERto me, the idea that as recently as 500 years ago,
25:38SPEAKERwe didn't know what yeast was, but somehow we'd been making booze
25:41SPEAKERfor 10,000 years at that point is an incredible thought like like
25:47SPEAKERthe trial and error and the evolution of that.
25:50SPEAKERLike it's the the other example I love is the olive.
25:53SPEAKERLike who was the person that looked at these horrible, bitter,
25:56SPEAKERtasting fruits on the ground and thought, oh, you know what?
25:59SPEAKERIf we if we put this in a in a bucket with salty water for a few weeks,
26:03SPEAKERthese things are going to be delicious.
26:05SPEAKERLike, how do you get from the terrible thing that tastes like poison
26:08SPEAKERto something that we put in all of our cocktails?
26:11SPEAKERAnd the same thing happened.
26:12SPEAKERThe same thing happened with booze, right?
26:14SPEAKERLike the same thing happens with with yeast. And there's a
26:19SPEAKERyou really you can you can
26:20SPEAKERyou can understand why people would believe in magic.
26:23SPEAKERYeah, that it was transformers, literally this literally transformative process
26:27SPEAKERwhere you take some stuff and you leave it over there for a while.
26:31SPEAKERAnd then when you come back, it's different stuff and it's good
26:34SPEAKERand it makes you feel good. Right.
26:36SPEAKERAnd it actually has an effect.
26:37SPEAKERIt does something. It makes you feel better about things.
26:40SPEAKERAnd and then if you leave it in a different place,
26:42SPEAKERit doesn't turn into that stuff or the stuff's not as good.
26:44SPEAKERSo something's going on.
26:46SPEAKERYou know, there's some something there's a force out there
26:49SPEAKERin the universe that's doing this.
26:51SPEAKERAnd can we and you know, and then to go like, can I commercialize that?
26:54SPEAKERPerhaps I could sell the stuff from over there is a whole other
26:58SPEAKERkind of amazing human leap.
26:59SPEAKERYeah, I, I will say that there's, you know, there's this
27:05SPEAKERthe part of the book where I went and held on to that potsherd
27:08SPEAKERthat's that had at the time the oldest evidence of fermentation
27:12SPEAKERon it, and I had it in my hand.
27:14SPEAKERAnd just thinking like that was this supreme connection to that feeling of like,
27:17SPEAKERhere's this thing that human beings do that they didn't know
27:19SPEAKERhow they did it for so long. They did this magic.
27:21SPEAKERNobody knew how it was a mystery cult.
27:23SPEAKERAnd they still they they spent a lot of time and effort doing it.
27:27SPEAKERThis was this was a shard from, what, 10,000 years ago
27:29SPEAKERthat was found in Mesopotamia, in Jiahu, in China, in China.
27:35SPEAKERAnd and it, you know, I don't get to do that kind of stuff that often.
27:40SPEAKERIt was really it was really moving to have that in hand.
27:43SPEAKERAnd I'm sorry, go ahead.
27:45SPEAKERWell, I think I think that,
27:49SPEAKERyou know, the the fact that.
27:53SPEAKERFinally, coming to an understanding of what yeast was
27:56SPEAKERand what was going on, you know, both kind of solved
27:59SPEAKERand made systematic what what alcohol is, what beer and wine distilled spirits were.
28:04SPEAKERBut then also was the beginning of biochemistry also started a whole new science
28:08SPEAKERlike it was transformative.
28:09SPEAKERIt was this kind of Newtonian moment
28:12SPEAKERin in the sciences to say, oh, there's a whole other kind of this is how life works.
28:16SPEAKERIt really is like a secret.
28:18SPEAKERThere was a secret key to life that people had not understood about enzymes
28:21SPEAKERand about how complicated things could form and be transformed.
28:25SPEAKERAnd that all came out of trying to understand what was going on with fermentation.
28:28SPEAKERAnd in that case, it was specifically sugar beets.
28:30SPEAKERIt wasn't just booze, but that's where that was.
28:34SPEAKERI was I was going to ask if there's much historical insight
28:36SPEAKERinto exactly how that process of fermentation was discovered.
28:39SPEAKERI mean, you know, you hear about like like, oh, soap maybe came about
28:41SPEAKERthrough, you know, fat and ash mixing in a river or something like that downstream.
28:45SPEAKERYou know, like I like to think there's like there's you know, there's some
28:48SPEAKERthere's some cheeky happenstance where like so and so stumbled over
28:52SPEAKERa barrel and drop some stuff in or something, but it's, you know, with right
28:56SPEAKERstorage, food storage and like kind of spoiling being as common as it was.
29:00SPEAKERI'm sure the actual answer is pretty mundane, but well, it's kind of curious.
29:03SPEAKERIt's weird, too, right?
29:04SPEAKERBecause if you if you assume that it kind of happened, that they had it in in.
29:11SPEAKERIn the Mesopotamian cultures, in the in the, you know, when they first started,
29:14SPEAKERsettled down to do farming, tigris and you afraid fertile crescent stuff.
29:18SPEAKERAnd then when they were doing that in China as well,
29:20SPEAKERthat there were there were all of these specific
29:22SPEAKERkinds of transformations of food that were going on that they wouldn't have known.
29:26SPEAKERYou know, they didn't know the micro the microbiology, but they knew they happened.
29:29SPEAKERSo they knew that, you know, dairy products could turn into yogurt and cheese.
29:33SPEAKERIf they did certain that they put them
29:35SPEAKERmix them in certain ways, put them in certain places.
29:37SPEAKERThey knew that if they ground up the barley that they were growing
29:41SPEAKERand mixed it with water, that it would and did something with that.
29:44SPEAKERIt could turn into bread.
29:46SPEAKERAnd they knew that if they took fruit, they knew that fruits,
29:49SPEAKERbut probably the fruit think that the fermentation of fruit
29:53SPEAKERwas probably the only one that they would have natural examples of,
29:57SPEAKERbecause that'll happen on the vine, that'll happen on a tree.
29:59SPEAKERAnd you can actually look over in the same like you were saying, how do you
30:03SPEAKERhow do you ever go and say like those super bitter little all of things?
30:05SPEAKERWell, if I just soak them in poison for a while, they'll be delicious.
30:08SPEAKERYou know, you could look and say, well, those that fruits been on that tree
30:12SPEAKERfor too long, and when the birds go over there and they fall out of the sky.
30:15SPEAKERSo something's going on and we don't know what, but something's happening.
30:19SPEAKERSo and I think probably, you know, the idea to me, the idea
30:22SPEAKERthat it happens to fruit first and then you start to mess around with like,
30:26SPEAKERwell, what if I leave out the what if I do that the barley water?
30:29SPEAKERWhat if I leave that out?
30:30SPEAKERIs there a different transformation that that can happen with?
30:32SPEAKERYou can start to imagine, you know, I've ground up the pulp of the juice
30:36SPEAKERand the rice stuff and I mixed it up and I leave it in a closed container for a while.
30:39SPEAKERIf I leave that fruit juice in that closed container for a while,
30:42SPEAKERsometimes it spoils and it'll make me sick if I drink it.
30:44SPEAKERBut sometimes it makes wine, you know, so you can start to imagine that.
30:47SPEAKERBut those are all just those stories.
30:50SPEAKERAnd I think it's telling that in so many cultures,
30:54SPEAKERthe the literal theology
30:58SPEAKERof like how people were created by whatever the gods were
31:03SPEAKERhas some involvement with barley and grain and beer and bread.
31:07SPEAKERThat's certainly true.
31:08SPEAKERIt's true the Egyptian theologies and myths.
31:11SPEAKERIt's true that there's a lot of different cultures, West African myths that do that.
31:15SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of other overlaps, too.
31:17SPEAKERBut there's you know, it's foundational.
31:18SPEAKERIt's like it's so old that they don't remember how they did it.
31:20SPEAKERBut part of the foundation of whatever the culture that you're in
31:23SPEAKERwas the ability to make beer and make some fermented fruit thing and make bread.
31:29SPEAKERLet's see. So we've talked about fermentation a little bit.
31:32SPEAKERThere's other stuff that people do to make booze more boozier.
31:37SPEAKERYou know, the distillation.
31:38SPEAKERAnd then there's a whole host of other weird things that we do.
31:42SPEAKERAnd I think it's I think it'd be interesting to talk about
31:45SPEAKERthe kind of evolution of those processes.
31:48SPEAKERYou know, how did at what point did somebody realize, hey, we can boil off
31:53SPEAKERthe water and the alcohol and these things at different rates and then collect that?
31:56SPEAKERLike, how how does that process evolve? Yeah.
32:00SPEAKERYou go like eight thousand years of,
32:04SPEAKERyou know, we know how to make beer and wine.
32:05SPEAKERBasically, we know how to make beer and we know how to make wines
32:08SPEAKERout of all the different fruits we have, because anything that's a sugar substrate,
32:12SPEAKERit becomes very clear.
32:13SPEAKERIt becomes clear over those eight thousand years that anything that has sugar in it,
32:16SPEAKERif you expose it to the magical forces
32:18SPEAKERthat can transform into something alcoholic, but it's got to have sugar. Right.
32:22SPEAKERAnd so the problem that they have to figure out how to solve is if you have something
32:26SPEAKERthat's mostly cellulose
32:29SPEAKERor starch, how do you get that to be sugar?
32:31SPEAKERAnd so there's a lot of solutions to that.
32:34SPEAKERMalting is the solution to that for barley and for beer.
32:36SPEAKERUsing the koji fungus is the solution if you're trying to make sake.
32:40SPEAKERChewing on it is the solution initially for making chicha, I guess.
32:46SPEAKERWait, wait. People would take the grains and chew them up
32:48SPEAKERand then spit them out.
32:49SPEAKERI was just going to let that pass without comment.
32:51SPEAKERBut should I come back to that?
32:53SPEAKERAh, no, let's get into it.
32:55SPEAKERIt's one of the things actually that made
32:58SPEAKERwhen I went through some of these stories that made a very smart editor
33:01SPEAKERnamed Bill Wasick, who's at The New York Times.
33:03SPEAKERI'll say like, you know, you have a book here
33:04SPEAKERwas me describing all of the different ways that you had to do this.
33:07SPEAKERIf you have simple sugar and fruit, it's easy.
33:10SPEAKERIt's almost it's hard not to make it from it.
33:12SPEAKERRight. If you just leave grape juice out, you're going to get wine.
33:14SPEAKERIt'll be crappy wine, but you'll get one.
33:15SPEAKERBut if you have but like for all these other if you have corn,
33:19SPEAKERbecause because starch is indigestible to yeast,
33:25SPEAKERbut it's digestible to us,
33:27SPEAKERpartially because we have an enzyme in our saliva called Amylase.
33:30SPEAKERIf we chew on corn or cornmeal
33:34SPEAKERand then kind of spit it out, make a little cake out of it, the sugars get
33:39SPEAKERget open, the sugars get simpler, they're available to yeast.
33:41SPEAKERSo the yeast can then turn that into a kind of fermented
33:44SPEAKERlike a corn beverage, like a beer almost.
33:48SPEAKERAnd if you're making sake or if you're making shochu
33:51SPEAKERfor making rice wine, you apply this domesticated fungus,
33:55SPEAKERjust like yeast is domesticated.
33:57SPEAKERYou know, some yeasts are better at making alcoholic beverages than others.
34:00SPEAKERKoji is a member of a family of funguses that are mostly poisonous
34:04SPEAKERor actually pretty dangerous.
34:05SPEAKERBut this one's trained.
34:06SPEAKERThis one, you know, we taught it to to sit up for a treat.
34:12SPEAKERAnd and and when and in return, it's it it eats some of that treat
34:16SPEAKERand then it excretes, excretes sugar that the yeast can get to and make alcohol.
34:21SPEAKERWhen you're trying to make
34:23SPEAKERany of the any of the tequilas, the mezcals, the agave spirits,
34:27SPEAKERthey just they pound the crap out of these out of the fibers of it
34:30SPEAKERwith those big stone crusher things or with more industrialized processes.
34:35SPEAKERNow, to get the the literally get the molecules small enough that these.
34:38SPEAKERSo that's a they're using a mechanical process instead of a chemical process.
34:42SPEAKERMechanical and heat. Yeah.
34:43SPEAKERSo there's also there's also heat and steam involved.
34:45SPEAKERAnd that's why you get the roasted, those pinnias, the big roasted pinnias
34:48SPEAKERfrom the agave.
34:49SPEAKERBut you do all that for a long time.
34:52SPEAKERBut then probably and this is not
34:55SPEAKERyou know, this history is not there.
34:57SPEAKERIt'll turn out to be something different.
34:58SPEAKERSomebody will figure this out archaeologically.
35:00SPEAKERBut at least in a couple of places, maybe in India,
35:04SPEAKERbut almost certainly in Alexandria, the kind of science that they were doing
35:08SPEAKERin the big labs of Alexandria at about the turn of the millennium
35:11SPEAKERfrom B.C. to A.D., that transition was like a few hundred years
35:15SPEAKERwhen, you know, Anthony and Cleopatra and Caesar were chasing each other around.
35:19SPEAKERAnd and every when every ship would come to Alexandria
35:24SPEAKERand they would kind of take all of the scrolls off of it by force
35:28SPEAKERand copy them and then put the scrolls back sort of building
35:32SPEAKERthese big libraries, research centers.
35:33SPEAKEROne of the things that they were doing.
35:35SPEAKERThere was a woman who sometimes go his industry is referred to as Maria,
35:39SPEAKERthe Jewess. Don't put that on me.
35:41SPEAKERI didn't do it. It's not my fault.
35:43SPEAKERBut who invented a lot of lab gear or something, especially for the alchemists.
35:48SPEAKERSo this is the basis.
35:49SPEAKERThis this research that they're doing there becomes the
35:52SPEAKERby through transitioning through the Abbasid Empire, the caliphate,
35:57SPEAKERwhen all the when Arab cultures were doing translations of Greek and Roman stuff.
36:01SPEAKERThis was the beginning of that. They got some of those scrolls.
36:02SPEAKERA lot of them were destroyed, but they got some of them.
36:04SPEAKERThat's the transition of that knowledge through Europe and into northern Europe
36:08SPEAKERthat begin that ends that begins the middle
36:10SPEAKERbegins the Middle Ages, begins the Renaissance, essentially.
36:12SPEAKERAnd it was that a tech. Was that a technological line, too?
36:16SPEAKERLike, was it suddenly we we got good at glassblowing or metalworking
36:19SPEAKERand were able to make pipes and tubes and things that couldn't exist before?
36:23SPEAKERYeah, some of the some of the those technologies existed previous to that.
36:26SPEAKERBut they were doing a lot of
36:29SPEAKERbasic technology like block and tackle fine grade technological work in Alexandria
36:33SPEAKERfor a bunch of different reasons.
36:35SPEAKERSome of it was because they were they were building early automatons.
36:37SPEAKERThey were doing automata.
36:38SPEAKERThey were they were very good at
36:41SPEAKERsort of steam and small pipes and and wheels and gears and clockwork mechanisms.
36:46SPEAKERThey liked all that stuff. It was really fun.
36:48SPEAKERSo they were they were good at that, which meant there was the expertise
36:51SPEAKERin forming metal and making metal solid enough to move hot liquids and move steam.
36:56SPEAKERMaria, who I mentioned, created a device that's still used in labs today.
37:00SPEAKERIt's essentially a double boiler
37:01SPEAKERcalled the boundary of Maria or marine bod, the Maria's bath. Right.
37:06SPEAKEROh, wow. And and one of the things that she also created
37:10SPEAKERwas effectively a still and she wasn't trying to do with probably
37:15SPEAKERthe research they were doing wasn't in taking food stuffs.
37:17SPEAKERIt was they were trying they were using sulfur or molten metal
37:20SPEAKERand seeing what those vapors were.
37:22SPEAKERBut the idea of having
37:24SPEAKERof exciting something so that parts of it would evaporate
37:27SPEAKERand then covering that up and letting that that
37:29SPEAKERre-condense into a liquid and collecting that liquid seems to have come from there.
37:33SPEAKERThere's some evidence that there were some Indian cultures that had
37:36SPEAKERwere doing the same thing.
37:37SPEAKERAnd then, you know, in the book, I tell this joke.
37:39SPEAKERI'm like, well, OK, even if Maria wasn't doing it, you know,
37:41SPEAKERI've been in enough labs to know that there's always beer around
37:45SPEAKERand postdocs are always going to try something like, I don't know,
37:47SPEAKERput the beer in it. Let's see what happens.
37:50SPEAKERWas my is my, you know, my made up invention for for distilling.
37:53SPEAKERBut what ends up happening is that that somewhere in there,
37:57SPEAKERpeople learn to do it with alcoholic beverages also.
38:01SPEAKERAnd you can kind of see across the timeline.
38:05SPEAKERYou can see cultures picking up the the technology and skill
38:09SPEAKERset for distilling, moving across essentially the Silk Road,
38:12SPEAKERacross trade routes, across Asia and into Europe.
38:16SPEAKERAnd it doesn't really turn into anything
38:19SPEAKERkind of commonly used until the early Middle Ages
38:24SPEAKERin monasteries, because they have access to all the weird herbs and stuff,
38:28SPEAKERbecause every monastery probably had medicinal herbs
38:30SPEAKERand they were helping travelers and things that become something that's medical.
38:35SPEAKERSo to me, one of the reasons that I really like
38:40SPEAKERlike chartreuse or Benedictine,
38:42SPEAKERsort of weird digestives, is that I have this sense
38:46SPEAKERand I read that like chartreuse is probably as close as anything
38:50SPEAKERgets to what the first spirit would have been like.
38:54SPEAKERWhat the what the earliest distilled something like if you showed up
38:59SPEAKERat a monastery that was already making beer and was working on that stuff
39:03SPEAKERin the back, you know, that and you were saying, I don't feel that good.
39:06SPEAKERThey might bring you a glass of that.
39:07SPEAKERAnd it would be something that would be very much like green chartreuse.
39:10SPEAKERSo I like that. Wow.
39:12SPEAKERSo so, OK, that that leads to an interesting question.
39:15SPEAKERYou know, we've spent the last 10,000 years
39:17SPEAKERdomesticating the yeast or sometimes not intentionally not domesticating the yeast.
39:21SPEAKERBut, you know, there's cross contamination both ways as this progresses.
39:25SPEAKERAnd we've we've been domesticating the the the fruit and the grains as well.
39:32SPEAKERHow much different is stuff that we're making today is is beer and wine
39:37SPEAKERand spirits that we're making today going to taste than it did,
39:40SPEAKERyou know, a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years ago.
39:42SPEAKERDo we have any idea? I think we can know.
39:46SPEAKERThat's a fascinating question there.
39:47SPEAKERThere are people who have worked on trying to take the old recipes,
39:52SPEAKERyou know, that you find on a on a.
39:55SPEAKERAssyrians delay or whatever and make the recipe and try to make the beer,
40:00SPEAKERbut of course, the substrate material, the barley might taste different
40:04SPEAKERor so you don't know exactly what it will be.
40:06SPEAKERI think it's probably a good guess to think that wine tastes pretty close.
40:09SPEAKERThe way the Romans made wine, the Romans had a pretty evolved
40:13SPEAKERwine culture.
40:15SPEAKERIt's probably pretty close, although they weren't aging it really yet.
40:18SPEAKEROr if they were aging it, it was in ceramic and was underground.
40:20SPEAKERSo they were getting oxidative aging, but not the extractive aging from wood.
40:24SPEAKERThere's not great history on when woody when barrel aging started
40:27SPEAKERas a as an intentional intentional practice.
40:31SPEAKERThere are people who know a lot more about this than I do,
40:33SPEAKERand I couldn't really get them to tell me anything because some of it's proprietary.
40:35SPEAKERBut because they want to know for their own, because they're like,
40:39SPEAKERyou know, they're doing the research at distilleries that they.
40:41SPEAKERBut yeah, like when when did they start, you know, when did it become.
40:46SPEAKERThe Romans transported wine and for a big vases
40:50SPEAKERat some point, vases.
40:52SPEAKERYeah, ceramic stonework, right?
40:55SPEAKERNot porcelain, but some, you know, ceramic watertight ceramic. Right.
40:59SPEAKERAnd and so you get some aging.
41:02SPEAKERAnd in fact, you can.
41:05SPEAKERI've I've now tasted some of the some mezcals that were made in a clay still.
41:11SPEAKERSo not in a metal one.
41:12SPEAKERAnd the material of the still is really is super important to how the stuff tastes.
41:17SPEAKERTypically, they use copper because copper transfers heat really well.
41:21SPEAKERGold and silver will be better, but they're too expensive.
41:23SPEAKERSo copper is the one that's affordable and you can work it.
41:24SPEAKERYou can make the shape and the shape matters if you're doing a still
41:27SPEAKERof a certain kind, but also copper will pull sulfur out.
41:30SPEAKERAnd the sulfur compounds are really are off flavors and distilling
41:34SPEAKEReach either gross, you know, sulfur is the same thing.
41:38SPEAKERGarlic and onion flavors or sulfur flavor, so you get a sense
41:41SPEAKERof what that would be like. Some spoiled eggs. Yeah. Yeah, right.
41:47SPEAKERBut you don't have to use copper to do distillation.
41:50SPEAKERAnd so I finally got to taste a couple of years ago,
41:53SPEAKERa mezcal that was made in a clay still.
41:57SPEAKERAnd it was really wonderful. You could taste the earth.
41:58SPEAKERI mean, it was it was earthy and not earthy the way Pete,
42:02SPEAKERnot like a Pete whiskey is earthy, but like, no, that tastes like clay.
42:05SPEAKERI can taste it. It was remarkable.
42:07SPEAKERIt was really fun to taste.
42:08SPEAKERSo and in the aging process, there's a whole other separate,
42:11SPEAKERyou know, piece of chemistry.
42:13SPEAKERThere's kind of two parallel.
42:16SPEAKERChemical process is going on with aging the way we do it now,
42:19SPEAKERbecause if you're doing it in wood, there's an extractive process
42:23SPEAKERwith the booze spends all this time sloshing up against the wood
42:25SPEAKERand kind of going into the outer layers of it and coming back out.
42:29SPEAKERAnd it's picking up all kinds of flavors
42:30SPEAKERfrom the essential of the decomposing cellulose and other stuff in the wood.
42:35SPEAKERAnd you get flavors like those
42:39SPEAKERsort of coconut fatty flavors
42:42SPEAKERfrom the wood or if you've had, you know,
42:44SPEAKEReverybody sort of jokes about the real the oaky Chardonnay's of the 90s.
42:47SPEAKERBut people remember those white wines like, well, that tastes like
42:50SPEAKERI feel like I'm chewing on a plank, you know.
42:53SPEAKERBut there are also these oxidative aging processes that not extractive,
42:56SPEAKERbut where the chemicals themselves are spending just enough time
43:00SPEAKERin contact with each other that they're changing
43:02SPEAKERand new chemical species are being formed all the time.
43:04SPEAKERSo the like the Roman wine would have had the oxidative stuff.
43:07SPEAKERAnd they had like 100 year old wine was the pinnacle.
43:11SPEAKERBut none of it would have but it wouldn't have any extractive flavor changes.
43:15SPEAKERSo, you know, you could get 100 year old bottle of wine now
43:18SPEAKERif you had the money and were willing to crack it open.
43:19SPEAKERBut it wouldn't taste like Roman 100 year old wine.
43:22SPEAKERI suspect that
43:25SPEAKERsomething like a brandy that you would get now probably tastes
43:28SPEAKERlike those early burnt wine,
43:30SPEAKERburnt vines that were the first brandies that came out around Europe in the 13,
43:35SPEAKER1400s or something.
43:37SPEAKERThat's probably closer.
43:38SPEAKERBut to try to recapture the flavor of,
43:42SPEAKERyou know, something from thousands of years ago would
43:47SPEAKERthe one I would there's two I would like to taste.
43:49SPEAKERI've never had these, but I've only read about them.
43:51SPEAKERAnd I and I feel like they're probably pretty close to what some early
43:57SPEAKERbooze flavors would have been.
43:58SPEAKERSome of them are the palm wine species in various parts of western Africa.
44:03SPEAKERThere's a lot of palm wines and they're there.
44:05SPEAKERIt's the particular species of plant
44:09SPEAKERthat then they are fermenting with wild type yeast.
44:12SPEAKERSo it's not a it's not like a controlled domesticated saccharomyces cerevisiae.
44:15SPEAKERIt's much more not and not even like the really pleasant
44:18SPEAKERbut weird yeast that they'll use in a lambic or something,
44:21SPEAKERbut really like gross yeast doing really weird stuff.
44:24SPEAKERSo are they fermenting the dates or are they fermenting something else?
44:28SPEAKERSome of them are date.
44:29SPEAKERSome of them are the are like there's
44:31SPEAKERthere are other fruits that are growing on the palm, I think.
44:35SPEAKERAnd it's a particular species.
44:37SPEAKERIt's not palm trees like in L.A., it's some other. Yeah, yeah.
44:41SPEAKERAnd they they're very potent and they're
44:44SPEAKERthey're like fatty and they they form like microbial mats on the top
44:48SPEAKERbecause there's other there's there's other stuff.
44:50SPEAKERThere's other other flora besides other microflora
44:54SPEAKERbesides the yeast that get involved.
44:56SPEAKERI'd like to taste those.
44:57SPEAKERThey're supposed to be to our palates, not great, but I want to taste them.
44:59SPEAKERAnd then also the cumus, which is fermented mare's milk.
45:04SPEAKERThe the the horse is the only mammal
45:10SPEAKERwhose milk has enough sugar that yeast will ferment cows.
45:15SPEAKERThere's just not enough sugar in there, at least that the yeast have access to.
45:18SPEAKERSo it's supposed to be like a boozy yogurt, basically like gloppy.
45:22SPEAKERAnd again, texturally, maybe you tried that.
45:26SPEAKERNo, I've never had it.
45:27SPEAKERI haven't had either.
45:27SPEAKEROK, and I really want to because I feel like those are
45:29SPEAKERthose are close to what you would be talking about.
45:31SPEAKERThose are ancient
45:33SPEAKERtechniques that are still practiced. Yeah.
45:39SPEAKERLet's Brad, you want to let's talk about stills.
45:40SPEAKERYou have still questions, I think.
45:42SPEAKERYeah, well, I was going to ask an aging question before we move on.
45:44SPEAKERAlthough, I mean, you know, these are all of a piece.
45:46SPEAKERI guess it's all a process.
45:47SPEAKERWe're just kind of discussing it out of order.
45:49SPEAKERBut I'm curious if the is the aging process arrested once you
45:53SPEAKERonce you bottle the final product and it's fully sealed up, because
45:56SPEAKERI'm always I'm always really curious about the odd story
45:59SPEAKERyou'll see about like, you know, like case of 500 year old wine
46:04SPEAKERunearthed intact from a shipwreck or like, you know, this
46:07SPEAKERthis 2000 year old booze from some tomb or something.
46:09SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
46:10SPEAKERLike, yeah, like I'm always curious about what has happened to that substance
46:13SPEAKERin all that time.
46:14SPEAKERBut because it's not supposed to air, I don't know what's going on in there.
46:17SPEAKERSo what the what the received wisdom in that is,
46:21SPEAKERand I don't know if it's totally true, the received wisdom is
46:24SPEAKERanything that's more than about 30 percent.
46:27SPEAKERNo, sorry. Anything that's more than, you know.
46:32SPEAKERThe proof that you would get a whiskey at now that it's
46:34SPEAKERthat's that's 40 percent of the proof, right, proof. Yeah.
46:39SPEAKERAnything at that or a little bit higher.
46:42SPEAKEROnce it's closed, that's it.
46:44SPEAKERAnd that'll stay in that bottle forever.
46:46SPEAKERAnd you won't get much change in flavor.
46:49SPEAKERIf any. Once it's exposed to air, it'll start to oxidate again.
46:54SPEAKERAnd it'll take time.
46:58SPEAKERBut like people, people who keep bottles of brown liquor for a long time
47:01SPEAKERwill be like, well, if you get down to about two thirds
47:03SPEAKERor if you've done about a third full, you probably want to drink that
47:06SPEAKERor do something with it because it's not going to be 20 years.
47:09SPEAKERIt's not going to keep.
47:10SPEAKERI have tasted a very, very old whiskey
47:16SPEAKERthat had been opened or exposed to air and it got gross.
47:21SPEAKERLike how just didn't taste like whiskey or actively tasted.
47:26SPEAKERI've had I've had I've done this.
47:27SPEAKERI've had this twice in the one time I had a very old Isla,
47:31SPEAKERwhich are the very peaty, you know, the sort of famously
47:34SPEAKERlike bong watery, earthy, peaty, flavorly whiskies from Scotland.
47:39SPEAKERAnd once I had one that was old enough where you couldn't taste the peat anymore,
47:42SPEAKERit was just gone, you know, just like.
47:45SPEAKERAnd I mean, I was I was being self-effacing
47:47SPEAKERabout my ability to do that kind of sommelier thing with wine.
47:51SPEAKERI'm actually OK with whiskey like I can do that a little bit.
47:55SPEAKERAnd I was shocked.
47:56SPEAKERIt was just gone to the point where I was like, what's the point of this now?
47:59SPEAKERHow old are we talking? Do you know?
48:01SPEAKERIt was more than 50 years.
48:03SPEAKEROK. And I had another I did have one that was
48:07SPEAKERI can't remember even what the label was that it was much older.
48:09SPEAKERIt was, you know, sort of 70 years old or something.
48:12SPEAKERAnd it just didn't taste good anymore.
48:14SPEAKERLike the pleasantness of it was gone.
48:16SPEAKERIt was almost almost acred.
48:21SPEAKERIt was fun to try it was like, oh, that's cool.
48:23SPEAKERIt's like, oh, no, that doesn't taste good anymore.
48:26SPEAKERStop showing off rich guy who owns this.
48:28SPEAKERIt's not. I mean, congratulations, but your booze doesn't taste good.
48:30SPEAKERIt's it's weird, too.
48:32SPEAKERAnd all different different distilled spirits age differently as well.
48:37SPEAKERWhiskey to me, like
48:40SPEAKERhere's how snotty can I get, you know, whiskey that's more than 50 years old.
48:44SPEAKERIt's really gone off a cliff.
48:45SPEAKERThat's not you don't want that anymore.
48:47SPEAKERNot worth drinking.
48:47SPEAKERIt's I mean, why would you even but but
48:51SPEAKERcognac, you know, but French style brandy's
48:55SPEAKERas a person I talk to who who makes them makes a French style brandy
48:58SPEAKERhere in California said to me like they're only starting to get good
49:01SPEAKERat about 50 years in the barrel, like about 50 years in a barrel.
49:04SPEAKERThen they're really starting to come into their own, you know, 75.
49:07SPEAKERNow you're talking.
49:08SPEAKERSo what's the difference there?
49:09SPEAKERWell, right. What's the difference?
49:11SPEAKERWhat's what thing in it is getting good versus getting bad?
49:15SPEAKERI think what starts to happen is with whiskey, you start to lose flavors.
49:18SPEAKERAll this stuff, all these things are volatiles.
49:21SPEAKERRight. This is all about.
49:22SPEAKERMeaning they go away if exposed to that atmosphere for a definite.
49:25SPEAKERYeah. Yes. Essentially, some molecules are lighter than others.
49:28SPEAKERThe whole reason is still works is that some molecules are lighter than others
49:32SPEAKERso that when you heat it up, some of them evaporate first.
49:35SPEAKERAnd when you so when you take beer
49:38SPEAKERand you heat it up for a while and put it in through still what
49:41SPEAKERyou would the lighter molecules are like the alcohol
49:44SPEAKERand not the water which stays behind.
49:47SPEAKERAnd all the things that make whiskey taste the way it does,
49:49SPEAKERexcept for the stuff that makes whiskey brown or taste like wood,
49:52SPEAKERbecause that's all extracted that comes later.
49:54SPEAKERSo if you've ever had moonshine or white dog or something
49:57SPEAKERthat came right out of a still or unaged, you know,
50:00SPEAKERor even an ODV or, you know, any unaged spirit, you know what that tastes like.
50:04SPEAKERThat comes right off that you get that heat, but also sometimes a very intense
50:08SPEAKERif you have a good apricot ODV or a good pair ODV, like that's
50:12SPEAKERthat's like drinking the spec to me.
50:14SPEAKERThat's like the you taste like, well, that's what apricots.
50:17SPEAKERThat's the perfect apricot.
50:18SPEAKERAnd I want to have that in my mouth all the time.
50:19SPEAKERLike that's perfect,
50:22SPEAKERbecause some of those flavors, those evanescent flavors
50:24SPEAKERthat are the when you bite into apricot on a perfect summer day
50:27SPEAKERwhen you're a kid, you know, that go up your nose and and
50:30SPEAKERand when the juice runs down your mouth and all that,
50:32SPEAKERlike those flavors are all captured and locked into that for a while.
50:36SPEAKERAnd they can go away.
50:37SPEAKERThey'll evaporate over time, especially if that that stuff's exposed to air.
50:40SPEAKERI have also had a 50 year old whiskey where they did that.
50:43SPEAKERThat thing we're like, oh, they found it.
50:44SPEAKERIt was, you know, we got caved in in the blitz and then they found it in England
50:48SPEAKERand there was a barrel still there and that was fantastic.
50:50SPEAKERLike, I can still taste that.
50:52SPEAKERIt was it was amazing.
50:53SPEAKERIt had been in the barrel and then they bottled it.
50:55SPEAKERRight. So it's been aging in the barrel for, you know, since World War Two.
50:58SPEAKERAnd then they they bought and I've had a rum like that, too.
51:00SPEAKERAnd it was really pretty lovely.
51:02SPEAKERBut then but wine, because the alcohol level is lower,
51:06SPEAKERthat oxidation will kick in sooner.
51:07SPEAKERAnd also the cork is supposed to let a little air
51:10SPEAKERand they're supposed to be some through, you know, some air getting in there
51:13SPEAKERlike that, even though there's a capsule on it that should stop that.
51:15SPEAKERSo to wine, it'll oxidize and go bad sooner.
51:19SPEAKERNobody really thinks about like drinking any of those wines
51:22SPEAKERfrom Thomas Jefferson's wine wine cellar or whatever.
51:26SPEAKERThey trade them because they're old and they're antique.
51:28SPEAKERBut they don't get they don't get drunk, drunk and drinking.
51:31SPEAKERThey are not. They will not be drink to buy you. Yes.
51:34SPEAKERI will say that one of the things I like about going to distilleries
51:39SPEAKERis that you get to smell and sometimes taste
51:44SPEAKERall of these moments in the process that you can then,
51:47SPEAKERif you taste the final product, smell and taste again.
51:51SPEAKERThis is since since we spoke, I've been on a distillery tour,
51:54SPEAKERbecause I think when we talked last time, I hadn't I got to Jack Daniels as a kid,
51:57SPEAKERbut not when I was old enough to do anything fun there. Right.
52:01SPEAKERAnd I was in Kentucky a few years ago and got to go on on the tour at Woodford,
52:05SPEAKERwhich is like a big it's a big industrial, industrial,
52:09SPEAKERindustrial tour through a, you know, historical barn
52:14SPEAKERthat is like Disneyland for booze kind of, you know, in a trip.
52:18SPEAKERThat's exactly right. Yes.
52:20SPEAKERBut but it was amazing because you like you can sit and you're in these
52:24SPEAKERthese old barns and you're looking at these big casks that are made out of wood.
52:27SPEAKERAnd they're they're, you know, they're set up in a thing
52:30SPEAKERthat looks like it's been there for 200 years.
52:32SPEAKERAnd then when you walk out of that building and look up the hill,
52:35SPEAKERyou see warehouse after warehouse after warehouse of aging racks
52:39SPEAKERwhere they where they take the the product that comes out of the industrial
52:42SPEAKERversion of this and you get to go the whole thing.
52:44SPEAKERSo there's a real there's a real weird dichotomy there between, hey,
52:49SPEAKERhere's the way somebody probably did this 200 years ago, 150 years ago.
52:54SPEAKERAnd then also, by the way,
52:55SPEAKERwe make 50000 gallons of this stuff a year or whatever it happens to be.
52:59SPEAKERI'm always so frustrated at the way the American whiskey business
53:02SPEAKERespecially refuses to acknowledge that they're they're a chemical factory.
53:08SPEAKERYou know, because it doesn't that doesn't offend me.
53:11SPEAKERI ate a lot of processed food.
53:12SPEAKERAnd the fact is, like wild turkey,
53:15SPEAKERyou know, makes hundreds of thousands of gallons of booze every year.
53:20SPEAKERAnd it's delicious.
53:21SPEAKERThat is a fantastic product.
53:23SPEAKERAnd but they would they would like to pretend that it's, you know,
53:27SPEAKERUncle Billy Jack up the hill with a still the size of a television,
53:32SPEAKERyou know, on the run from the revenue or something.
53:34SPEAKERAnd that's who's making this stuff.
53:35SPEAKERAnd like, no, that's not you guys are sophisticated chemists.
53:40SPEAKERYou know, you're sophisticated chemists own up.
53:42SPEAKERYeah, it's it's I mean, the thing you have to remember is that they shot
53:45SPEAKERthe engine room scenes from the Star Trek reboot
53:49SPEAKERin the Budweiser Brewery in St. Louis. Right.
53:51SPEAKERLike it's it's high tech stuff. It's cool. Show us the cool side.
53:56SPEAKERYeah, let me see it.
53:56SPEAKERAnd then and to be able to have the high tech stuff and then turn it into a thing
54:01SPEAKERwhere you can if you're really good at it, you can sort of taste
54:04SPEAKERwhat's coming off the line.
54:05SPEAKERYou can smell what's coming off the line and go, oh.
54:08SPEAKERThere's a problem at Unit seven,
54:11SPEAKERyou know, of the like, you know, we got to we got to get another
54:14SPEAKERdouble bang of copper in there. It's not coming out right.
54:18SPEAKERBut it's fascinating.
54:20SPEAKERAt the same time, it was also fascinating to stand in the in the old barn
54:23SPEAKERand smell the smell the stuff that was fermenting in these big 500 gallon tanks
54:27SPEAKERand realize that, oh, right.
54:30SPEAKERI know the smell. This is like this.
54:31SPEAKERThe smell that I know is in here.
54:33SPEAKERYes. And that was amazing because I didn't expect that at all.
54:37SPEAKERYeah, that's and that's a wonderful moment for me.
54:38SPEAKERI get it and I get it every time I get the opportunity
54:41SPEAKERto go into an aging to a rec house or a warehouse, I forget.
54:45SPEAKERAnd then I walk in and I go, oh, right.
54:47SPEAKEROh, yeah, that's lovely. That's beautiful.
54:51SPEAKERIt's really nice as much as it is a kind of exacting chemical process.
54:55SPEAKERI just I find the aging part so fascinating because it's so immovable,
55:00SPEAKERyou know, like there's no short cutting through it, you know,
55:01SPEAKERlike you can't rush the passage of time.
55:03SPEAKERYou just kind of have to wait.
55:05SPEAKERAnd it seems like it would make the R&D process of making better whiskey
55:07SPEAKERlike the most languid process on the air, on the planet.
55:12SPEAKERI've heard it said before that, like, you know, like your your your master distiller
55:15SPEAKERor whatever you call them is going to get like what?
55:17SPEAKERBasically, two full runs of product in their entire career or something like that.
55:22SPEAKERThey'd love to speed it up.
55:24SPEAKERThere's a lot of science to try to get that to go faster.
55:26SPEAKERAnd they won't. Interesting.
55:27SPEAKERThey won't really.
55:29SPEAKERSo you can either try to come up with some fancy chemical thing.
55:32SPEAKERAnd there's a few folks who do that.
55:33SPEAKERThere was just a good a good article about some of the recent ones where you try to.
55:35SPEAKERAnd basically what you can do is you can figure out ways to speed up the extractive part.
55:40SPEAKERVery hard to figure out how to speed up the oxidative part.
55:42SPEAKERSo you end up with like a lot of for a while in the when the when the book came out,
55:47SPEAKERespecially 10 years ago, it's a little less true now.
55:50SPEAKERAll these small distilleries would were spinning up.
55:53SPEAKERAnd in order to have product out the door quickly, they would age in smaller barrels.
55:58SPEAKERSo you get it would be the same color would look like whiskey
56:00SPEAKERand it would taste mostly like whiskey, but it would also taste to me very green.
56:04SPEAKERThere was this it was it was like a cedary, resinous flavor.
56:09SPEAKERAnd that was the extraction without the oxidation.
56:12SPEAKERThere's very few places that are still selling that.
56:14SPEAKERMost of that didn't it didn't taste good.
56:16SPEAKERSo they didn't sell it.
56:17SPEAKERAnd a lot of the places that wanted to stay in the business got into it, made it 10 years,
56:20SPEAKERyou know, made it eight years when their stuff was starting to come online that was actually
56:23SPEAKERspending eight years in a barrel like it was supposed to.
56:26SPEAKERBut I but yeah, there are also, you know, there are some of the some of the big distilleries
56:32SPEAKERwill do will do climate controlled chambers, you know, instead of having the barrels essentially
56:38SPEAKERin what what is for all intents and purposes, an open warehouse where the air and temperatures
56:42SPEAKERnot controlled air comes in and out where they'll try to control the temperature and
56:45SPEAKERthe humidity in different ways and see if they can move it faster.
56:48SPEAKERThey'll move the barrels to see if they can get more exposure to the wood over a certain
56:52SPEAKERamount of time.
56:53SPEAKERAll these things.
56:54SPEAKERThere are things they can control a little bit.
56:56SPEAKERTo my knowledge, they've never improved on it.
56:58SPEAKERYou also use different woods, you can try different flavors -
57:00SPEAKER- Put the barrels on a paint shaker, just let it rip, really agitate the hell out of
57:05SPEAKERit.
57:06SPEAKERPut them on a boat, age it at sea, they do that too.
57:08SPEAKER- That's right.
57:09SPEAKERAnd I'm not convinced - see, and this is where I don't have the - I lack faith, I lack the
57:15SPEAKERfaith of my convictions.
57:17SPEAKERTo me, I will taste those and think nah, it didn't make any difference.
57:20SPEAKERBut I've seen people be able to taste differences that I believe in, you know, I tell this story
57:26SPEAKERall the time.
57:27SPEAKERI probably told it last time we talked too, but I have been - I went out once, it's probably
57:32SPEAKER20 years ago now, went out with a bunch of master distillers to a dinner and we went
57:36SPEAKERto a place that had a pretty good whiskey list and I knew the list also, at that point
57:41SPEAKERI was drinking enough of it that I was like "yeah, I know these" and the guy I was sitting
57:45SPEAKERnext to was like "I think the master distiller from Woodford at the time" like, so I'm like
57:48SPEAKER"oh yeah, we'll have that, that, that, that and that", you know, he did one of those things
57:51SPEAKERlike those guys were like - and I was like "okay", I was like "I think I'm gonna be able
57:54SPEAKERto do this when these show up".
57:56SPEAKERI think that I'm given - you put those in front of me, you know, and I might not know
57:59SPEAKERtoo, but I'll take a guess, but I know those three pretty well, I'm gonna be able to - I'm
58:03SPEAKERready to play, deal me in guys.
58:05SPEAKERI'm a big kid, I can do this.
58:08SPEAKERI can do this, I'm a professional booze writer, you know, and the wait person came with the
58:15SPEAKERtray and had the five glasses, these five Amaco liquors and the guy looked at him went
58:19SPEAKERlike "that one's that one, that one, that one and that one" by sight and I was like
58:24SPEAKER"I fold".
58:26SPEAKERBut that's a lifetime of experience.
58:30SPEAKERYeah, it was amazing.
58:32SPEAKERThese things, these things really ebb and flow in that, in that market, right, and I
58:35SPEAKERhave to assume a lot of that is based on supply, right, because you can't just gin up more
58:39SPEAKER- like gin is, gin is, well, not a gin, you can't, you can gin up gin, yeah, but not,
58:44SPEAKERbut you can't, you can't just conjure more of whatever's hot, like rye or whatever it
58:47SPEAKERis right now on, on a lark, right, like, like I have to assume the market follows, yeah,
58:52SPEAKERbut the marketing, marketing is pretty big.
58:57SPEAKERIt is true and there have been times when like there wasn't enough of a particular,
59:02SPEAKERyou know, brand because it got really popular, but then there was that whole thing like that
59:05SPEAKERPappy Van Winkle 25 year old thing where everybody, all the, you know, sort of stockbroker types
59:10SPEAKERwanted to be drinking that and I, and you go like, you know, the way this business works,
59:16SPEAKERlike if you buy this other whiskey, if you buy this other American bourbon, that's Pappy
59:21SPEAKERwith a different label on it and you get that at 18 years old and it's a hundred dollars
59:26SPEAKERless a glass, you know, you could get that.
59:30SPEAKERThey just weren't, their people are interacting, it's that theater thing again that we were
59:33SPEAKERtalking about at the top, people are interacting with the label and with the here's I'm ordering
59:36SPEAKERbecause I'm, you know, because I know stuff about it and I, you know, I'm, I've got my
59:41SPEAKERown version of that too, right, I go, I walk into a bar with, back in the old days when
59:46SPEAKERpeople walked into bars and with people and like, and I like stand up sort of on the rail
59:52SPEAKERand look over and look for like the weird stuff, I'm like, okay, what are they?
59:56SPEAKERAnd then like, and I do that thing and people are looking, by that time, people were looking
59:59SPEAKERat me because now I'm the guy who wrote the book about booze and like, oh, what's going
1:00:02SPEAKERon over there?
1:00:03SPEAKERAnd that's, that's a thing.
1:00:04SPEAKERAnd then I feel like I'm a big shot and I got to show off and it like, you know, that's
1:00:08SPEAKER-
1:00:09SPEAKERYou're the guy figuring out what's next at that point, but I mean, I guess like Japanese
1:00:12SPEAKERwhiskey who occupied that niche pretty recently and like, you know, stuff like Yamazaki 12
1:00:17SPEAKERand 18 and stuff where like, it's like 150, 200 bucks a bottle now, but you're like, I
1:00:21SPEAKERtalked to somebody who worked for a supplier who was like, oh yeah, I remember when that
1:00:24SPEAKERstuff was 50 bucks and it's fine.
1:00:25SPEAKERIt's, you know, it's more about the image and the rarity of it at this point that's
1:00:29SPEAKERdriving those prices.
1:00:30SPEAKERI'll tell you one of those stories about me in the opposite direction.
1:00:32SPEAKERI was in a very good whiskey store that had - this is a long time ago now when Yamazaki
1:00:37SPEAKER18 was just coming online and they had it and I was talking to the guy and he said,
1:00:45SPEAKER"have you had it?"
1:00:46SPEAKERI said, "yeah, I've had it".
1:00:48SPEAKERI have to tell you, you know, it's - and I think this was actually being racist, like
1:00:53SPEAKERI think I was actually being racist when I said that, like it just feels kind of programmatic
1:00:57SPEAKERto me though.
1:00:58SPEAKERIt just feels really like rigid, like it's just like, it's so structured and the sort
1:01:03SPEAKERof flavors come in these beats that are so - and he just looked at me like, "you're crazy,
1:01:07SPEAKERit's delicious.
1:01:08SPEAKERWhat's the matter with you?
1:01:09SPEAKERYou're nuts".
1:01:10SPEAKERI was like, "okay, fair, sorry".
1:01:12SPEAKERAnd he's right.
1:01:13SPEAKERHe just had one of those palettes I guess.
1:01:17SPEAKERYeah, no, he was right.
1:01:18SPEAKERI was being a dick.
1:01:19SPEAKERDo you have any thoughts on - I mean, this seems like the perfect time to ask about this.
1:01:22SPEAKERDo you have any thoughts about, I guess this qualified as a minor scandal a few years - I
1:01:26SPEAKERmean, scandal's a strong word, but a few years ago in the - I'm talking about M.G.D. and
1:01:30SPEAKERall the like, "oh, they're factory producing the distillate in mass quantities and selling
1:01:35SPEAKERit to these tiny distilleries that are maybe aging it or blending it and just slapping
1:01:38SPEAKERa label on it", but it's all actually coming from the same place in Indiana.
1:01:42SPEAKERI'll tell you the funny thing about that when that story came out is that a lot of the rest
1:01:45SPEAKERof us who'd written about booze were really mad that we didn't - we hadn't written it
1:01:48SPEAKERbecause it was not a secret.
1:01:50SPEAKEROh wow.
1:01:52SPEAKERThe booze people knew it, we just forgot that nobody else knew it.
1:01:55SPEAKERWait, so you're saying you go like the booze - the distillery trade show and there's a
1:02:00SPEAKERbig M.G.D. booth that's like, "hey, we can get you your truckloads of distillate for
1:02:05SPEAKER-"
1:02:06SPEAKERYeah, I mean that's how they were - yes, that's how they were presenting it.
1:02:08SPEAKERIt's actually - it's a great story, the reason why, like - so they were - it was a massive
1:02:15SPEAKERchemical production facility and they were making stuff that would be used in like industrial
1:02:20SPEAKER- from industrial alcohol to neutral grain spirits to the like the thing that was going
1:02:25SPEAKERto be 50% of a Canadian rye, all that other stuff.
1:02:28SPEAKERThey were making any of those things and it was owned by Seagram initially.
1:02:34SPEAKERAnd then Edgar Bronfen Jr, the scion of the Seagram fortune decided that he wanted to
1:02:41SPEAKERmake movies and so he went and bought Universal Studios - I think it was Universal's MCA and
1:02:47SPEAKERtotally failed, tanked it, lost a ton of money and the family was like, "welp, guess we gotta
1:02:54SPEAKERsell some rye".
1:02:56SPEAKERSo they started selling the stuff and they would - it wasn't all the same - by the time
1:03:03SPEAKERany of us drank it, it wasn't the same anymore because they would do stuff to it.
1:03:08SPEAKERSo they would finish it in different kinds of barrels or they would have a different
1:03:11SPEAKER- they would say like, "well, we've got this batch and this batch, we can mix those together
1:03:14SPEAKERor you can mix it together with this other batch that you get from somewhere else".
1:03:18SPEAKERBut what was happening is that that thing that we were talking about before, about how
1:03:21SPEAKERa distillery in Kentucky will make a big deal out of their rural and pastoral and whiskey
1:03:27SPEAKERrebellion past when they've actually got a big factory down the road.
1:03:30SPEAKERHere there were places that didn't have a distillery at all.
1:03:34SPEAKERThey were just essentially - a great whiskey writer would call them Potemkin distilleries.
1:03:40SPEAKERThey were a label and a bottling facility, essentially, and they were buying stuff.
1:03:45SPEAKERAnd then a couple of them, it became - it turned out a couple of them were adding flavors.
1:03:50SPEAKERLike not just mixing with other ryes, but were going to a flavor company and buying
1:03:54SPEAKERrye flavor or some other flavors and adding that to the bottle.
1:03:58SPEAKERThat's the Cheetosification of whiskey to tie it back to another Reason episode.
1:04:01SPEAKERBut here's the thing about that, that it's - the reason that we bridle it that is that
1:04:09SPEAKERit offends our sense of authenticity.
1:04:12SPEAKERBut it still tasted good.
1:04:17SPEAKERSo we're making a connection, we're making important a connection that mainly isn't that
1:04:24SPEAKERimportant.
1:04:25SPEAKERThat if you could - because what may be true is that somebody could, for very cheap, make
1:04:31SPEAKERa rye-like liquid that you could buy and that would taste delicious, but it would be the
1:04:37SPEAKERequivalent of Coca-Cola, you know?
1:04:39SPEAKERIt would be like the most commodified stuff in the world.
1:04:42SPEAKERIt would have no - what Philip K Dick called historicity, right?
1:04:47SPEAKERIt would have no historicity behind it.
1:04:49SPEAKERAnd so, we would say like "well, that's not - you can't - come on, you can't do that.
1:04:52SPEAKERThat's not - that's not okay.
1:04:53SPEAKERThat's terrible.
1:04:54SPEAKERThat's not - it's supposed to be - look, it's only champagne if it's from the French region
1:04:59SPEAKERof sparkling - otherwise it's just sparkling rye".
1:05:02SPEAKERYou know, that's what that joke is about, right?
1:05:05SPEAKERAnd I don't know if that's true or not.
1:05:06SPEAKERAnd I tell these stories all the time and I like sitting there with, you know, my fancy
1:05:10SPEAKERglass and a glass of whiskey that I can tell a story about, but there's a difference - there's
1:05:15SPEAKERsome difference and we don't make the difference anymore.
1:05:18SPEAKERWe mix together, we blend together what the thing tastes like and smells like to us and
1:05:23SPEAKERthe experience that we have when we consume it and the story that we then tell about it.
1:05:26SPEAKERI suppose that's how branding works.
1:05:27SPEAKERI mean, I'm just - I'm a reporter so that doesn't make any sense to me, but I think
1:05:30SPEAKERthat's what that is.
1:05:31SPEAKERIt's -
1:05:32SPEAKERSounds dangerously like a branding exercise, yeah.
1:05:34SPEAKERYeah.
1:05:35SPEAKERYeah, sorry.
1:05:36SPEAKER[Laughter]
1:05:37SPEAKERI think you've outlined some legitimate reasons that that's important to people.
1:05:39SPEAKERYou know, like it does provide sort of a straight through line to like a more agrarian past,
1:05:44SPEAKERyou know, when people touch the land and live off the land more and you know, like knowing
1:05:49SPEAKERthat it underwent all those natural processes and I think, again, crucially had to sit somewhere
1:05:54SPEAKERfor a very long time, it is very meaningful to a lot of people.
1:05:58SPEAKERI think that's right and I think that gets braided with the experience that we have when
1:06:03SPEAKERwe drink it.
1:06:04SPEAKERSo, I think I tell this joke in the book, like that one bottle of wine that you had
1:06:09SPEAKERin that one little trattoria in Florence, you know, with your romantic partner before
1:06:13SPEAKERyou were legally partnered but when you had just met and this was your first trip and
1:06:16SPEAKERit was raining out and you ducked into this one little place and you had the perfect bolognese
1:06:20SPEAKER- probably not bolognese in Florence, sorry, but like you - you know, that one moment,
1:06:24SPEAKERthat moment that lives large and you remember and then you find that wine, you know, again,
1:06:29SPEAKERsame year, same winery, whatever, I promise you, it's not as good if you have it sitting
1:06:35SPEAKERon the couch.
1:06:36SPEAKERWell, and it's - I mean, but at the same time, sometimes that same bottle of wine will evoke
1:06:41SPEAKERthe same sense memory that you had when you drank it the first time, you know, it's -
1:06:45SPEAKERYou're absolutely right and as soon as I said what I just said, I realized like, oh, but
1:06:49SPEAKERalso, maybe it would be just as good, maybe it would remind you of that moment and it
1:06:52SPEAKERwould be even better because you would think, man, this is just like that time, I'm so glad
1:06:55SPEAKERto be with you, right? Like it would do that too, maybe. Yeah, do it.
1:06:59SPEAKERLook, it can go either way, depends on how the - it depends on how it worked out, right?
1:07:04SPEAKERI think that's a good - as good a place as any to wrap up. Brad, you got any other closing
1:07:10SPEAKERthoughts?
1:07:11SPEAKERI mean, I could sit here and ask questions all day, but they're all gonna be about whiskey
1:07:13SPEAKERwhich starts to feel self-indulgent at some point, so...
1:07:19SPEAKERI think that that also - I will say just at the end of that, I think that business - that
1:07:22SPEAKERworld is pretty different, even when I was writing about it. I think that world of kind
1:07:25SPEAKERof single malt whiskeys coming out of small distilleries, it's not really what it was
1:07:30SPEAKERthat all got sort of bought by the big transnationals and branding and stuff.
1:07:32SPEAKEROh, you know, that was something Will had written down. Yeah, the consolidation, like
1:07:35SPEAKERdo you have any thoughts on how that's affected things? I guess so.
1:07:38SPEAKERWell, it makes me sad. I think there's only a couple of few whiskeys that I'm that interested
1:07:46SPEAKERin. I don't drink a lot of whiskey anymore because it costs a lot of money and it - it's
1:07:53SPEAKERjust not my thing as much anymore, but I still love it and every time I do have one that
1:07:58SPEAKERis really really good, I remember - I think like why do I not drink this anymore because
1:08:01SPEAKERI really love it.
1:08:02SPEAKERBut like, there was a - there's a distillery that no longer exists and when I first went
1:08:09SPEAKERto Scotland with my dad - this is one of those stories, like the Trattoria in Florence. My
1:08:16SPEAKERdad and I went to Scotland to taste whiskeys before I was - I was in my 20s, before I was
1:08:21SPEAKERgonna write a book, I didn't know I was gonna write a book about it, we just went. It was
1:08:23SPEAKERa trip I took with my dad and one of the whiskeys that we had there was called Imperial. We
1:08:29SPEAKERwent to the whiskey shop in Duffton which is in the center of the space side whiskey
1:08:34SPEAKERtrails, bought a case of different whiskeys, went in, the guy I'm like "I know we're American
1:08:39SPEAKERand we're stupid but we're actually here to spend some money, what do you got?"
1:08:42SPEAKERAnd one of the things we walked out was this stuff was from this distillery Imperial. Imperial
1:08:46SPEAKERdoesn't exist anymore, not only was it shuttered, it was destroyed. It was you know, razed to
1:08:50SPEAKERthe ground. So there's no more Imperial. Every so often, a case - a cask shows up, like K&L
1:08:56SPEAKERin San Francisco used to get it. Once in a while, they get it and so one time they had
1:09:00SPEAKERit in, they had Imperial you know, from some independent bottler and I bought a case basically.
1:09:05SPEAKERLike and this is - these are expensive bottles for me but I was like "I'm gonna buy - I bought
1:09:10SPEAKER12" you know, and I still have a few. I still have like five bottles of this and there's
1:09:15SPEAKERno more. So I find that really romantic and moving and I you know, because of that story
1:09:22SPEAKERand because I have that - the experience of it with my dad and because of the experience
1:09:25SPEAKERof it what it means the history of whiskey and because it's unique and because whiskey
1:09:29SPEAKERis a thing that only human beings do and only certain human beings can make it and it's
1:09:33SPEAKERa thing that's like a fundamental expression of human art, just like to me in a weird way,
1:09:38SPEAKERjust like that Mars probe is. And so when I occasionally, occasionally have a glass
1:09:43SPEAKERof it and I don't save it, I don't husband it, you know, action figures are for playing
1:09:47SPEAKERwith whiskey is for drinking. But I do get to think about all that kind of stuff and
1:09:55SPEAKERthere's just not a lot of that kind of whiskey left but I think about it when I have that
1:09:57SPEAKERone.
1:09:58SPEAKER- It's - the ephemeral nature of it is kind of what makes it special, right?
1:10:04SPEAKER- That's right.
1:10:05SPEAKER- That's awesome. Adam, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. What's up next? Do you have
1:10:09SPEAKERFull Spectrum coming out soon?
1:10:10SPEAKER- Full Spectrum comes out in May. May 18th, my other obsession. So at the same time as
1:10:18SPEAKERI was learning to be obsessed with booze and how it worked and what it was, I was also
1:10:22SPEAKER- I got compelled by the existence of one particular pigment, one particular thing that
1:10:29SPEAKERcolors a lot of stuff that human beings make; titanium dioxide. You know what titanium is,
1:10:34SPEAKERright? Titanium dioxide is just titanium and two oxygen atoms stuck together and it is
1:10:40SPEAKERin almost everything that human beings make that has color. Like, if you look around the
1:10:44SPEAKERspace that you're in right now, basically a surface that has color on it probably has
1:10:47SPEAKERtitanium dioxide because it has a very high refractive index, it's very opaque, it's very
1:10:52SPEAKERbright and so it makes other colors brighter in paint and in dishware and in pills and
1:10:58SPEAKERin candy and in paper and in all kinds of stuff that's around us every day.
1:11:03SPEAKERSo, I got transfixed by the idea that there was this one thing that gave other stuff color
1:11:07SPEAKERand the color white especially and that turned into this exploration of this - of the long
1:11:13SPEAKERarc, the rainbow shaped arc of the human relationship with color and how we make it because there's
1:11:19SPEAKERthese - because there's a three-sided relationship between - among the kind of physics and chemistry
1:11:25SPEAKERof the universe that makes things have colors and the way that human beings take advantage
1:11:30SPEAKERof that to make colors and make new colors and make other colors into each other and
1:11:35SPEAKERturn that into from root code science of the universe into a technic, into a practice and
1:11:41SPEAKERthen the way the human eye and the human brain turn those into things that are colors in
1:11:46SPEAKERour minds and how we talk about them, which is different than any other animals would
1:11:49SPEAKERhave much less what aliens would see.
1:11:51SPEAKERSo, I got transfixed by all of that and now that's what's in the new book.
1:11:56SPEAKERI can't wait to read it.
1:11:58SPEAKERPeople can find proof at fine book sellers everywhere and where can they find you?
1:12:03SPEAKERI am way too often probably on Twitter as @jocco, J-E-T-J-O-C-K-O and I write for Wired
1:12:12SPEAKERso my boss is probably expecting a byline any minute now.
1:12:16SPEAKER[Laughter]
1:12:17SPEAKERWell, Adam, thank you so much for taking the time.
1:12:21SPEAKERLet's buzz you out and we'll have you back soon, I hope.
1:12:25SPEAKERAnd as always, we've reached the part of the episode where we thank the people who support
1:12:28SPEAKERthe show on Patreon.
1:12:30SPEAKERSo thanks to all of our patrons, whether you're backing at the $2 level where you get access
1:12:35SPEAKERto the fabulous TechPod Discord or at everybody in between or even if you just tell your friends
1:12:41SPEAKERabout the show a lot, we really appreciate it.
1:12:44SPEAKERI loved it.
1:12:45SPEAKERI don't know if you were watching this morning, but the conversation that happened on Thursday
1:12:48SPEAKERmorning as the Perseverance Lander was coming in, we had people sitting and talking in chat
1:12:54SPEAKERthe whole morning.
1:12:55SPEAKERIt was a delight.
1:12:56SPEAKERLive watch party.
1:12:57SPEAKERIt was pretty exciting.
1:12:58SPEAKERExtra exciting.
1:12:59SPEAKERAgain, not to blow our community's horn too much.
1:13:03SPEAKERExtra exciting when you have somebody who works in the building there talking about
1:13:06SPEAKERit.
1:13:07SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
1:13:08SPEAKERI was busy trying to impress upon an eight year old the level of challenge and excitement.
1:13:16SPEAKERI think the best I got was it's like throwing a basketball from here to your grandparents'
1:13:20SPEAKERhouse across the country and getting a basket in.
1:13:24SPEAKERThey always have to work with metaphors, they understand.
1:13:27SPEAKERYeah, the math isn't right, but the idea is strong, I think.
1:13:31SPEAKERAs always, special thanks to our executive producer level patrons.
1:13:35SPEAKERCedric Kotzenmacher, The Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chappell, David Allen, and James Kamik.
1:13:41SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:13:42SPEAKERWe really appreciate you all.
1:13:43SPEAKERThank you.
1:13:45SPEAKERAnd we'll be back next week with another episode of the TechPod.
1:13:48SPEAKERNext week's episode, questions.
1:13:51SPEAKERWe're turning questions into answers.
1:13:53SPEAKEROh my God.
1:13:54SPEAKERIt's wow.
1:13:55SPEAKERI can't believe we made it.
1:13:56SPEAKERWe got back on track as intended.
1:13:57SPEAKEREmails are for the last week of the month.
1:14:00SPEAKERtechpod@content.town is the email address.
1:14:02SPEAKERWe also have to come up with a patron episode for this month.
1:14:04SPEAKERI don't think we have any ideas on the bank, so we're going to have to come up with something
1:14:08SPEAKERgood.
1:14:09SPEAKEROkay, I got an idea.
1:14:10SPEAKEROkay, what is it?
1:14:11SPEAKERWe open our audio editor of choice and hit record.
1:14:14SPEAKERJust talk?
1:14:15SPEAKERWe sit in front of these microphones.
1:14:16SPEAKERYeah.
1:14:17SPEAKERAnd we talk.
1:14:18SPEAKERPeople liked that last month.
1:14:19SPEAKERThat seems to work.
1:14:20SPEAKERI don't know.
1:14:21SPEAKERYeah.
1:14:22SPEAKEROkay.
1:14:23SPEAKERWe'll come up with something a little more ambitious than that.
1:14:24SPEAKERSee you all next week.
1:14:34SPEAKERBye.