Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed In History Class – “SYMHC Classics: Hennig Brand”

Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Original (Classic) Air Date: April 29, 2019
Classic Re-release: January 30, 2026
Episode Theme:
A fascinating and often humorous deep dive into the life of Hennig Brand, the 17th-century German alchemist who discovered phosphorus by boiling an astounding amount of urine. The episode explores the historical context of Brand’s discovery, its significance for science, and phosphorus’s journey from smelly curiosity to vital resource — all with the hosts’ trademark wit.

Episode Overview

The hosts revisit one of their most memorable stories: Hennig Brand’s quest for the philosopher’s stone and his subsequent discovery of phosphorus. The episode blends quirky history, early chemistry, gross-out science, and a big dose of humor, exploring why phosphorus matters and how its origins continue to influence modern agriculture and industry.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The BA Fest & Why Hennig Brand Matters

• Tracy introduces “BA Fest” (Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses) at MIT, noting its trophy—a depiction of Brand boiling urine—but not before delighting in the nerdiness of fake, funny scientific presentations.
  • "When I heard about this at BA Fest, I was like, we gotta do a podcast on that." (03:36)
• The episode kicks off with candid discussion about the comedic potential of bodily functions, especially among children, admitting, “There is a lot of urine in it.”
  • Holly: "Hooray. I love a pee joke. They're very funny to me because I'm crass." (04:39)

What Is Phosphorus, and Why Is It Essential?

• Holly and Tracy define phosphorus as a chemical element, explaining elemental phosphorus doesn’t occur naturally in pure form due to its high reactivity.
  • "Phosphorus is the first element whose discoverer we can name, and that was Hennig Brand in about 1669." (06:48)
• Phosphates are vital to life—structural components of DNA/RNA, ATP, bones, and teeth.
  • "It's just not an exaggeration to say that we would be dead without phosphorus or very squishy." (07:30)

Historic Uses of Phosphorus Before Its Discovery

• Long before its official “discovery,” people replenished soil using manure, urine, ash, bones, and other phosphate-rich substances, unknowingly cycling phosphorus for agriculture.
• Ancient urine’s role extended beyond fertilizer: as a cleaner, in dyeing and tanning, and in early industrial chemistry. Don’t try these at home!
  • Tracy recounts learning, while touring a bookbinders’ museum, that apprentices used stale urine to clean inky daubers. (09:46)

Hennig Brand's Life & The Alchemical Setting

[14:36]

• Brand likely born in Hamburg circa 1630, served as a low-level officer, apprenticed with a glassblower (useful for making alchemical glassware).
• Funded by his (and later his second wife's family) dowry after marrying; perhaps worked as an unqualified physician.
• Alchemists pursued the philosopher’s stone—believed to create gold and grant immortality—often seeking clues in bodily fluids, especially urine, suspected to be linked to gold due to its color and mysterious properties.
  • Tracy: "Urine was pretty mysterious at the time. Nobody knew how the body produced it or why it was yellow, but they did know that it did all kinds of...magical things." (16:24)

The Discovery: Boiling Urine for Science

[17:24–23:23]

• Brand’s method: Let about 50–60 pails of urine putrefy for weeks, then boil down to a paste/coal, add water, filter, reduce to salt, then distill in a retort at increasing heat.
  • Tracy (reading original recipe): "[...] let it lie steeping in one or more tubs...till it putrefy and breed worms [...] boil [...] reduce to a paste or rather a hard coal or crust." (18:53)
• Notable moment: As Brand distills, the output bursts into flame and smells like garlic.
  • Tracy: "One day, as Brand was distilling urine...the fluid dripping out started spontaneously bursting into flame. And it also smelled very strongly of garlic." (17:41)
• Final product (“cold fire”): A white, waxy, volatile, glowing material, later called phosphorus (“light-bringer”).
• Cautionary tale: Phosphorus is dangerous—can ignite and cause burns; an anecdote described a man burning his clothes and skin when phosphorus in his pocket caught fire. (21:17)

Transmission of the Secret & Early Phosphorus “Industry”

[24:03–28:41]

• Brand kept process secret for years. The knowledge spread to Johan Kunkel and Johann Daniel Kraft through murky dealings—possibly teaching for payment.
• Kraft demonstrated phosphorus across Europe. Nobles pondered industrial-scale production—Leibniz proposed lighting rooms, but quantity needed made this impractical.
  • Tracy: "It's not 100% clear where all of this urine came from...maybe from tavern keepers or brewers." (27:04)
• Eventually Brand and others ran short-lived “factories” using barrels of urine; demand grew as Robert Boyle reverse-engineered phosphorus creation.

Phosphorus’s Transformation: From Quack Remedy to Industry

• Once available, phosphorus was marketed as a miracle cure for a dizzying array of ailments—though it’s actually highly toxic.
  • Holly: "Soon phosphorus was being marketed as a cure all...for alcoholism, apoplexy, asthma [...] and that is only to name a few." (28:41)
  • Tracy: "Pure phosphorus does not treat any of these things and is in fact highly toxic and can be used as a poison." (29:28)

Phosphorus in Modern Times: Agriculture, Matches, & Environmental Impact

[30:09–33:29]

• By 19th century, large-scale phosphorus extraction from bone ash, then rocks; crucial for matches, industrial fertilizers, and (hazardously) in detergents.

• Guano (bird/bat dropping) rush and Guano Islands Act (1856) for phosphate mining—ironically, birds inhabit the phosphate-rich islands.

• Environmental consequences: Excess phosphate in water causes algal blooms; nations now regulate its use in detergents and industry.

• Phosphorus's dark side: Key ingredient in chemical weapons and incendiary munitions, including WWII bombing of Hamburg, Brand’s birthplace.

• Today, world faces risk of “peak phosphorus”—the resource is finite and only concentrated in certain minable deposits, raising global food security concerns.

  • Tracy: "There has been some discussion about whether the world is running out of phosphorus...there's a lot of phosphorus, phosphorus everywhere, but only a very few places with phosphorus in a high enough concentration to be able to efficiently mine it." (32:19)

• Full circle: One proposed future solution for phosphorus supply is, once again, recycling urine.

  • Tracy: "We're all the way back to just boiling some urine until the DIY comes from phosphorus glowing and exploding." (33:29)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On childish humor:

  • Holly: "Hooray. I love a pee joke. They're very funny to me because I'm crass." (04:39)

• On alchemical optimism:

  • Tracy: "Urine was pretty mysterious at the time. Nobody knew how the body produced it or why it was yellow, but...it did all kinds of fascinating and seemingly magical things." (16:24)

• On the grossness of the recipe:

  • Holly: "For one batch of phosphorus, Brand was leaving urine out in pails for about two weeks and then boiling it for between two and fourteen days. And that is not the end of the process." (19:43)

• On unintended hazards:

  • Tracy (reading): "...the very heat of it let in flame and burned all his clothes and his fingers also. For though he rubbed them in the dirt, nothing would quench it unless he had water." (21:17)

• On phosphorus’s journey:

  • Holly: "It's not totally clear exactly how much available phosphate there is in rocks that can reasonably be mined, or when we might reach peak phosphorus. Predictions run anywhere from decades to centuries because the vast majority of phosphorus is used as fertilizer for plants that directly or indirectly become food. This shortage has the potential to be a global catastrophe..." (33:03)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• BA Fest & Introduction ......................... [03:10–04:39]
• Phosphorus—History & Essentials ................. [05:29–07:55]
• Ancient Uses & Agricultural Significance ........ [07:55–09:46]
• Alchemy to Chemistry & Brand’s Motivation ....... [11:27–16:24]
• Brand’s Discovery: The Recipe & Process ......... [17:24–23:23]
• Secrecy, Spread, and Early “Phosphorus Factories” [24:03–28:41]
• Phosphorus as Quack Medicine & Industrial Good .. [28:41–30:09]
• Modern Uses & Environmental Impact .............. [30:09–33:29]
• “Back to Urine” Recap & Closing ................. [33:29–end]

Tone & Style

Playful, irreverent, but genuinely informative, the hosts keep the gross-out and scientific facts nicely balanced. They don’t shy away from toilet humor (“fiery garlic glopy”), but never lose sight of phosphorus’s central role in civilization and environmental science.

TL;DR

This episode traces the journey of phosphorus from its disgusting alchemical discovery by Hennig Brand (and his barrels of urine) to its current status as an indispensable, yet threatened, planetary resource. Along the way, listeners learn about early chemistry, faux cures, alchemical obsessions, the dangers of phosphorus, and the peculiar ways scientific discovery is both stranger and more circular than we imagine. If you want a vivid, funny, and surprisingly profound look at how one man's smelly quest shaped the world, this is the podcast for you.