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- [00:00]
Chuck Bryant
This is an iHeart podcast. You know, Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding, and that's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase. Plus shop weekly member deals and get access to free standard shipping. So what are you waiting for? Join Myloes Rewards for free today loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change.
- [00:29]
Danielle Robay
Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.
- [00:38]
Josh Clark
I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.
- [00:42]
Danielle Robay
I'm Danielle Robaix, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, books, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:12]
Josh Clark
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [01:21]
Chuck
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too. And we are here to enchant in this very special episode of Stuff youf Should Know, which we like to also call the Facts of Life, too.
- [01:37]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, alchemy, I think a very appropriate topic. Taking something mundane and turning it into something fantastic.
- [01:45]
Chuck
Oh, yeah. I guess we are kind of alchemists in that sense. Or were you talking about a different podcast?
- [01:50]
Chuck Bryant
No, no, no. I was talking about what I aim to accomplish today.
- [01:55]
Chuck
Hey, man, not only do you aim it you or aim for it, you hit it right on the head.
- [02:01]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, alchemy, baby. Let's do it.
- [02:04]
Chuck
Clumsy attempt at a compliment. Yeah, well, yeah, when we're talking about alchemy or alchemists, for me at least. And I would assume most people kind of conjures images of, like, some magician wearing, like, a robe with stars and moons on it, maybe even a pointy hat to match. He's lit by candlelight. He's in a strange little laboratory. He's doing all sorts of weird stuff to basically create some sort of magical potion or do something like that. Right? If you know a little more about it, maybe you think of charlatans who trick people into investing in their alchemical schemes of turning, you know, lead into gold. But it turns out that there's a lot more to it than I ever realized. And the people involved were not. They were a lot more interesting and a lot less dumb and fraudulent than history has kind of cast them as.
- [03:01]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I always thought of alchemy as just from what I knew as a youngster, which was just turning something like a boring metal into gold, like you were talking about. But it is, I think, interesting that modern science now looks back and says. And says, hey, you know what I mean? Sure, it was a lot of bunk and BS involved, but some of the foundations of modern chemistry were there, even though that wasn't their intention. Really.
- [03:30]
Chuck
Yeah. And you can also make a pretty strong case that the alchemists were the ones who laid the groundwork for the scientific method. Yeah. In some ways, what's cool about it, too, is that, you know, the Europeans, the medieval European, you know, monks and sages and scholars are the ones you typically think of, at least in the west, when you think of alchemy. But it's a. I don't want to say worldwide, but it really kind of ties together traditions from a bunch of different parts of the world into a mad pursuit for immortality and glory.
- [04:03]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, totes.
- [04:05]
Chuck
So we should say that you can kind of trace the Western tradition of alchemy, the Europeans, as you think of it, all the way back to Egypt. Egypt was like the starting point for the Western tradition, but Egypt even seemed to get it from other places, specifically, even. Even back before Egypt. It seems like China and India were possibly in on the pursuit for immortality, which seems to be the thing that initially gave alchemy, like, its birth. Yeah.
- [04:35]
Chuck Bryant
And they may have called it, like, you know, the art or something like that, or may maybe, you know, some other word that they had that meant, you know, some sort of transformation might be place. The word alchemy itself was first used in Arabic and then eventually French and English in medieval times. But, yeah, I think it's interesting that it followed that route. And it's also not surprising that China was one of the first to get involved in something like this, because I feel like anytime we're talking about ancient practices, China always seems to be sort of leading the way in one way or the other.
- [05:10]
Chuck
Indeed, one of the reasons China was so heavy into it was because the early alchemical pursuits or purposes were to create an elixir for immortality. The reason they cared so much about that was because the country had a huge Taoist population, and Daoism is very much interested in achieving immortality one way or Another. And so China and its alchemists put together mercury, arsenic, sulfur, and said, here, drink this. A lot of times. And surely a lot of people died from drinking those things, right? I mean, you can't drink a concoction of mercury and still, you know, just wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and walk off. Like, time to get to work, you know.
- [05:57]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there were some people that suffered under alchemy experiments over time, but they also, you know, on the other side, and this is sort of the plus side and minus side of some of these experiments, they also, whether or not purposefully or not, gave us things we still use today, like, you know, potassium nitrate. So they sort of accidentally discovered gunpowder and ammonium chloride, which is used today is nitrogen and fertilizer, like, for farms and stuff like that.
- [06:31]
Chuck
So, yeah, that is kind of a tradition in alchemy of, you know, they were trying to do something else, but they still found useful stuff that we still, you know, make or use today. And China's whole jam with alchemy kind of started to dry up as Buddhism spread throughout the country, because Buddhism is much more focused on rebirth and mellowing out about the whole immortality thing. And so the pursuit of, you know, immortality through special elixirs just kind of became a moot point or a moo point. Sorry.
- [07:02]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, I guess the Buddhists were like, yeah, maybe it's really not possible to live forever. Maybe we should set our goals a little more reasonably.
- [07:10]
Chuck
Right. Let's just pretend like we don't care about living forever.
- [07:14]
Chuck Bryant
As far as India goes, they were also not seeking immortality. And they were also kind of like post Buddhist China. Like, let's try and promote health. Let's try and cure some disease. Maybe we can try and transfer something into gold. But you'll see that kind of popping up. That's why I think a lot of people, the first thing they think of is turning something into gold, because that was the pursuit of a lot of alchemists because gold was so revered either as, like, you know, the best metal. Go ahead and make your white snake joke.
- [07:50]
Chuck
I wasn't going to. I was just thinking of gold wearing a T shirt. That is the best metal.
- [07:55]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. With like, the devil's hands, the devil horn's fingers. And also thinking perhaps drinking something that may be liquid gold, but it's really not liquid gold. It just turned the color. Gold could make you healthier or maybe live forever.
- [08:13]
Chuck
Yeah. And in India, they were trying to make gold not to get rich. But because like you were saying, they were trying to balance health, restore health, like it was just associated with healthy living, essentially. Gold was.
- [08:24]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [08:26]
Chuck
So then we reached the Mediterranean. That was another ancient place. And by the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 322Bce, they found pretty quickly that the Egyptians had already been developing their own tradition of alchemy for a while. And the Greeks said, hey, I like your style. Let's mix together our philosophy and our understanding of physics and astrology with your alchemy and let's produce something really great that medieval monks are really going to go nuts for.
- [08:59]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I think this is like, I know we're going to say this quite a bit, but I think they were, these early scientists were taking a stab at, at some, at something, you know, like, sure there were charlatans and stuff like that, but this was so early on in the game, like science was brand new and they were like, hey, let's try this thing and see if it works out. And maybe didn't always follow modern best practices, but you can't expect them to either. So like, I don't know, I feel like over time on this podcast, period, we've kind of tried to shine a little bit of light on some of this stuff. Is like, hey, they were doing their best back then, trying to get, trying to get involved in science at least.
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Chuck
Right? At least they were doing something. You lazy sack.
- [09:42]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is when the first books on it came out. There was one called the Translation is Natural and Mystical Things by an Egyptian named Bolos of Minde. This is around 200 BCE. A lot of this was again about making valuable metals like gold and silver. But again, it was the first kind of preserved writing that we have on this.
- [10:07]
Chuck
Yeah, right. No, for sure. And he was also somebody who wrote pretty straightforward about alchemy and the recipes and the processes which would come to be very rare. As alchemy developed, it became much more secretive. Yeah, but this Greco, Egyptian creation, this melding of different traditions to create this specific kind of alchemy, it's called Hellenistic alchemy, that laid the foundation for Western alchemy to come. One of the other big things that came out of it, or another indicator of how important it was, is there was this kind of legendary figure that developed among the medieval alchemists, the monks. His name was Hermes Trismegistos. Just a great name. Not a good hotel check in name, but it's a, it's a great name regardless.
- [10:58]
Chuck Bryant
Did you spell it again? Sir, how many times are you going to hear that?
- [11:03]
Chuck
Right? And you would say it just like that, too. Like real uncertain and unsteady, like Hermes, Tristram, a Mesos. I think. So it was a combination, a straight up combination of Thoth or Thoth. I think Thoth, the Egyptian God who invented writing, the one with the ibis birdhead, and Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods. Like, this was a complete synchronous syncretization of those two. And later medieval monks would ascribe, like, alchemical text having been written by Hermes.
- [11:34]
Chuck Bryant
T. Yeah, Hermes T. That's a better check in name by far. Is that T E A, sir or T E E?
- [11:41]
Chuck
I think it means, like, Hermes. Third, the best, I think, is what trismegistos translates to.
- [11:48]
Chuck Bryant
All right, that's pretty good.
- [11:50]
Chuck
And this is one of those episodes, too, Chuck, where when we say words, we might accidentally cause somebody to go poof. And something either appears or disappears. So everybody be prepared for something to vanish.
- [12:01]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I agree. And no one knew it that, you know, like, when you look back on stuff like this, it's kind of hard to parse out, like, who was first, who was influencing who. It's just sort of spread around the world. There is a theory that India's belief system was basically just sort of brought over as a. Maybe not as a book, but, you know, brought over wholesale from proto Aryans in Central Asia. And they were in the area between four and 5,000 years ago. So it's, you know, I don't know if there's a lot to be gained from sort of debating who was coming up with what first, you know.
- [12:36]
Chuck
Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's those historians. They're kind of fixated on that kind of thing. But, you know, it is interesting to wonder, like, where culture came from, because so much of it influences so much else, not just in alchemy, but in all things, basically. But you mentioned Bolos of Mende in. And he actually came after the guy who the Western tradition of alchemy is kind of, like, based on. Like, this guy was the guy. He's like, here's how it's done. This is the ground rules for alchemy. Okay, everybody. His name was Zosimos of Panopoulos. And Zosimos of Panopoulos wrote something like 28 books on alchemy. And for a while they were like, we've only got a couple of letters of this guy, but we knew he was brilliant. Apparently, they've been finding his stuff all over the Arabic world, in libraries that they didn't realize they had it before. But a lot of his writings have recently been rediscovered. Yeah.
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Chuck Bryant
And his stuff, he's another one of those that was pretty detailed in his writing. And to have stuff like this preserved is pretty amazing. He was, because he was an alchemist, obviously transforming metals or trying to transform metals. But like I said, he was pretty specific. He would have write ups on like exactly what tools he was using, on what methods he was using. A lot of this stuff was obviously repurposed from the kitchen, like kind of cooking stuff or maybe craft work, not the band, but you know, crafting and like.
- [14:09]
Chuck
Like a bedazzler.
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Chuck Bryant
Yeah, like a bedazzler or perfume making. And he credited a lot of this stuff with a Jewish woman named Maria. And he was like, you know, a lot. I've taken a lot of her methods, and a lot of her methods also transferred over to early methods of cooking. Like, you know, French and Italian cooking methods.
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Chuck
Yeah. Like a water bath, a bain marie or a bagno. Maria is, you know, like, you know, when you melt chocolate chips in a pan that's inside a pan that has water in it.
- [14:39]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
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Chuck
So you don't scorch it. Right, exactly. You can thank the Jewish woman named Maria, who has lost the history, aside from Zosimos, of Panopoulos's writings. But she apparently taught him.
- [14:50]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And he, he said, hey, you can use a lot of this stuff to, to not make gold from lead.
- [14:56]
Chuck
Yeah, I mean, he, he definitely came up with some processes that he figured out himself. And like you said, these people were taking a stab at it. They were like, what happens if I do this? And what, what happens if I. If I try that same thing with a different metal or a different powder or something like that. So they were experimenting. They were starting the beginnings of experimentation that would lead to what we understand it as a science. Zosimos was doing this, like he was one of the first to do this. I also saw a definition. I'm not sure if I sent it to you or not, but he had an explanation or a definition of what alchemy is. He said it was the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirit from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies. And what he was saying, like, if you stop and think about it, it's actually pretty comprehensible. He's saying alchemy is the study of, you know, all the things we've observed about the world around Us trying to figure out how that stuff works. Like, how does a soul come into a body and become attached to it? How does it leave it after death? What's the deal with water? That kind of stuff. So, like, it was just them seeking to apply essentially a proto scientific understanding of the world as they understood it.
- [16:10]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, like what happens if I distill this thing down to its base form or create, you know, you're going to hear a lot of talk about vapors. Like, you know, boil something or heat something to create a vapor and then smash it together with this thing. And now I've just learned, you know, I'm trying to make gold maybe, but I've all of a sudden discovered that it changes properties of both materials if I combine these two things. And while they may not have understood what the heck that meant, chemistry later on would say, oh, actually what they were doing was this.
- [16:42]
Chuck
Right, Exactly. Yeah. So this whole jam that was laid down by Zosimos and Bolos and the early Egyptians who eventually kind of combined their stuff with the Greek understanding of the world, which is really important because Aristotle's thoughts about, you know, what made matter up like earth, wind, fire and air, the four elements. That was the understanding of the world that they were working from. They were trying to figure things out within that context. So Aristotle had a huge contribution to alchemy early on, which as science would later kind of decide, was just a huge wrong turn at the outset. Especially considering that Democritus, who was around, around the same time as Aristotle, remember him? He was the one who's like, everything's made up of atoms. I just am not going to use the word atoms yet.
- [17:34]
Chuck Bryant
Right, Exactly. Good place for a break.
- [17:38]
Chuck
Yeah, I think so.
- [17:39]
Chuck Bryant
All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit about the move into Europe right after this.
- [17:57]
Unknown
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- [18:56]
Chuck Bryant
Here at Stuff They Don't Want yout To Know, we celebrate curiosity. And that's why we're talking about Hendrick's Gin.
- [19:02]
Unknown
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- [19:11]
Chuck Bryant
And you don't have to take our.
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Unknown
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- [19:25]
Chuck Bryant
If you love Hendricks, check out one of their limited releases. Each new variant enhances the signature essence of rose and cucumber. With new and exciting infusions, they'll take you on a flavor journey.
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Unknown
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- [19:56]
So what happened to Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.
- [20:00]
There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.
- [20:06]
Josh Clark
Left a woman to drown.
- [20:09]
Unknown
There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News, it's Teddy Escapes, Blonde Drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you the story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become President?
- [20:23]
Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.
- [20:28]
Josh Clark
And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.
- [20:31]
Unknown
The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.
- [20:41]
Josh Clark
Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [21:02]
Chuck
Okay, Chuck, so things were just kind of hanging around from, you know, three hundreds BCE where the Egyptians and the Greeks had kind of come together and created that version of alchemy. And eventually the Arab world started to rise and it started to go over here and go over there, and wherever it went, it kind of took this and that from each culture that it found interesting. And one of the Things that they did, they showed up in Egypt and they said, hey, I like this alchemy stuff you guys have been doing for the last few hundred years. Teach that to us. And that actually helped lay the groundwork for the incredible amount of learning that took place around this time in the Arab world.
- [21:44]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, and you know, logging stuff, describing stuff that would later on again, you know, lay the foundation for, for legit chemists of the future. And one of their theories was that production of different kinds of matter starts out basically with the basics, which are heat, coldness, dryness, moisture. And combining these in different ways are going to have different outcomes. Like to produce those vapors, you're going to have cold water basically, and combine that with some sort of hot, moist air to create a vapor. And they would, you know, mix these things together and they would combine it with mercury or sulfur or something like that. And trying to make gold once again.
- [22:29]
Chuck
Right. I think it's called chrysiopoeia.
- [22:32]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's the technical term, I think, for trying to make gold.
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Chuck
Yeah, exactly. And there are a couple of big names. There are a few big names, but two that still made it all the way through history. Razies, who's known as the greatest physician of the Muslim world at the time, he was an alchemist, a contemporary, I believe, of his, named Jabir. He was well known as a early scientist. Some people call him the father of chemistry. And these guys were, they were contributing by saying, like, hey, don't just throw a handful of powder at something like, you know, do a thumbnail and use the same amount every time. Just little contributions like that. What was a huge contribution too was that they took a lot of these ancient texts, translated them into Arabic and then those were eventually translated into Latin, which is when things started to spread like wildfire throughout Europe in like the 12th century.
- [23:30]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I promised talk of Europe and I just forgot we had to stop by Arabia first. But this is beginning in about the 12th century when it moved into Europe. And this was a time when Europe was shifting to a university, sort of a more academic way of looking at things and away from the monasteries, who were, I guess some of the more early science minded people. And Christian scholars at the time in Europe, they started to become a little more open to say, like, hey, maybe we should look to other texts, ancient texts, even look from other cultures to try and see if we can learn something from them. And so they started experimenting with mineral acids, boric acid, sulfuric acid, stuff like that, and trying to develop elixirs and this is where you'll hear more about things like, you know, immortality, like the elixir of life, Philosopher's Stone, which we'll get into, and stuff like that.
- [24:28]
Chuck
Yeah. And we should say, now that I think of it, I'll bet a lot of this transfer of knowledge came from the Crusades. Europe just showed up and was like, give us everything, including all of your books on alchemy, you know, that would be my guess. But, yeah, around this time. So I read that the European alchemists, following this tradition, believed that in the ancient world they had already found what was called the Philosopher's Stone, which just sounds so cool. It'd make a really cool, like, title for a Harry Potter book or a Willy the wizard book or something, you know. Are you making a philosopher's stone? No, I think it's just kind of like it fits naturally, you know?
- [25:07]
Chuck Bryant
Well, that was the original title of the Harry Potter book, Sorcerer's Stone. Okay. That's why I asked if you were joking.
- [25:14]
Chuck
Not the Sorcerer's Stone. It's the Philosopher's stone, wasn't it?
- [25:17]
Chuck Bryant
No, they changed it to the Sorcerer's Stone from the Philosopher's Stone.
- [25:20]
Chuck
What a ripoff. Okay, well, we're talking about the philosopher's stone, and that was a term for this substance that supposedly was all over the place, but we just didn't recognize the magical properties of it, that you could turn immediately anything into, like, gold or whatever the perfect version of that thing was, because that was the thing. Gold to the alchemists was the perfect version of a metal. And all other metals, whether it's lead, tin, silver, whatever, are. We're seeing them in the process of moving naturally into gold. That's how they understood it. What they were trying to do is figure out how those processes worked so they could speed it up. Right. And do it, do it. But, like, that's where they got the idea of taking lead and turning it into gold. That's what they were trying to do is move lead into its more perfect natural state, which was gold. And the way that they thought you could do that was with the Philosopher's Stone, which would make that happen automatically.
- [26:20]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, and you mentioned earlier that they would operate a little more in secrecy later on, and this is kind of where we are now. They would operate, maybe they would have their apprentices and stuff like that, but it was kind of shrouded in secrecy. A lot of times they would use codes and symbols and metaphor and stuff when they were recording their experiments. And there were a handful of European Alchemists that we should probably go over a little bit, the first of which is Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great. He was a German philosopher in the 13th century, and he was a friar, a Dominican friar, and he studied the work of these Arab alchemists because like we said, it kind of came over from there. And the ancient Greek philosophers, which, you know, as we mentioned, kind of melded those two world of philosophy and science, or this kind of science.
- [27:10]
Chuck
Right, right. So there was another guy. I mean, there's a bunch that we could talk about. John D. Arthur D. Roger Bacon. They were all alchemists, contributed to our understanding of the world. One I hadn't heard of was Jean de Roque Tilade. Jean de Roquete. I think I got it that second time.
- [27:30]
Chuck Bryant
It sounds good to me. But German is my non specialty.
- [27:36]
Chuck
He was trying to figure out Chrysopoia, which is again transforming things into gold. The thing is, and this is a really good example or way to point this out, he was a Franciscan monk. He didn't care anything about getting rich. As a matter of fact, he had taken a vow of poverty so much so many times. The alchemists are like, all they wanted to do is like just make gold and be rich. They were just greedy magicians, essentially. No, that's not the case. They wanted to create gold to end poverty. They wanted to find the elixir of life to end disease. Like, they had really big, big goals that they were trying to reach. And he was a good example of that. He wanted to give the Catholic Church the ability to make gold so that they could fund themselves better, essentially.
- [28:25]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I took a vow of poverty in my 20s. I think you did too.
- [28:29]
Chuck
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was forced on me.
- [28:33]
Chuck Bryant
So one of the things that he did too, which is pretty interesting, I think, is he, God talked about sort of distilling things down to their purest form. He did that with booze and he distilled it down to aqua. How would you pronounce that? Vita, Aqua, Vita, Aqua, vitae. He called it the fifth essence of wine or the quinta essentia. And this goes back to Aristotle again, this idea that it's something different than those four classical elements that we're talking about. And I forgot how he pronounced his name, but let's just call him Dr. Richard said that, hey, when I create this distilled wine down to its purest form of alcohol, and I put meat in that stuff, the meat just kind of stays like it is. It stops this decay. And he didn't think he had tapped into a new way to preserve meat. He thought, like, hey, maybe this stops things from aging and maybe this alcohol is a cure.
- [29:29]
Chuck
All right. He went on to create the mai tai.
- [29:32]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, nice.
- [29:33]
Chuck
Another one. This guy's my favorite. Paracelsus. His real name was Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus Von Hoheim, but we'll call him Phil Hohenheim.
- [29:45]
Chuck Bryant
Hohenheim.
- [29:46]
Chuck
Yeah. Well, he went by Paracelsus. I think we talked about him in our poison episode, or there was some episode, because he was famous for saying the dose makes the poison. Like you can take enough of anything and it's going to kill you. Which is a really important understanding at the time. But he was one of the ones who led the way of secrecy because he believed that what the alchemists were doing was dealing in, like, the nature of the universe and that this information was way too potent to just have out there. So he was one of the ones that led the charge in that. He also was known as questioning Galen's thousand year old idea of the four humors being the cause of disease. Paracelsus was like, no, I think that there's like external factors involved, like maybe even little tiny bugs or something like that that gets in your throat and then into your stomach and then just really screwed things up down there. Yeah, that's me paraphrasing him. That was Paracelsus. So he was a straight up genius for his time. I'm a big fan.
- [30:45]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I'm sure they came right back at him and said, no, no, silly man. It's just black bile. That's the problem. He's like, you sure? Like, this other stuff could be making us sick.
- [30:53]
Chuck
He's like, again with the bile.
- [30:55]
Chuck Bryant
There was also Nicholas Flamel, I guess, or Flamel. I'm not sure how you would pronounce.
- [31:00]
Chuck
That, but I think Flamel.
- [31:02]
Chuck Bryant
Flamel, okay. He is the one who is credited to have discovered the philosopher's stone. He was just a mere bookseller in the 14th and I guess 15th centuries. And he said, I got a book. I purchased a book. And it was in a language that was so hard to translate. It took me 21 years. But once I finally cracked that code in that book was the information on how to produce the philosopher's stone. And this is what I don't understand. He got rich. But did he get rich off of selling this? Like, that's what I couldn't figure out.
- [31:40]
Chuck
No. The later alchemists, like, Starting around the 17th century, they created a legend about him saying that he had created the philosopher's stone, so now he could turn anything into gold, and that's how he got rich.
- [31:51]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, but how did he get rich?
- [31:54]
Chuck
I still don't get it from. I see.
- [31:56]
Chuck Bryant
Because he wasn't turning stuff into gold.
- [31:58]
Chuck
No. From what I saw, his wife was rich. Oh, that's the likeliest explanation. But this legend grew up around him because he really was well known. He's recorded historically as being very rich. Kind of suddenly they endowed, like a ton of hospitals, a bunch of schools, churches that are. Some of them are still around today. And he was known for putting alchemical messages kind of encoded in the buildings, like on plaques or in archways or something like that. Yeah. So he definitely was an alchemist. He definitely was rich. But it was this legend that grew up around him that he was one of the few who actually found the philosopher's stone. I almost said sorcerer's stone, man. See, gets in there.
- [32:46]
Chuck Bryant
Another legend is that he perhaps maybe lived to be 114, but records say he was between 80 and 114. So that's a pretty big gap there. A wide range. Yeah, 34 years.
- [33:01]
Chuck
It's pretty. Pretty wide. But even 80 back in the 1400s, early 1400s, is pretty respectable, I guess.
- [33:08]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, agreed.
- [33:09]
Chuck
So we talked a little bit about the philosopher's stone. That was one thing that, as far as we know, no one ever created. Right. But all of the alchemists in Europe were after this, trying to figure this out, while at the same time also performing all these other experiments. Just in case they didn't figure out how to do the philosopher's stone, they were figuring out how to do it the hard way, too. There was also another thing that they were famous for trying to create, which are called homunculi, which are essentially artificial people in miniature that they wanted to create so that they could study how life begins or. Or like Zazimos had said, you know, how the. How the spirit bonds to the body. Like, that's the kind of thing they're trying to figure out by creating many humans. And they had all sorts of. I think it's fair to call it wacky ideas of how to create a homunculus.
- [34:02]
Chuck Bryant
I think it's pretty fun. I mean, the word homunculus is fun in and of itself. But yeah, there's something called the Book of the Cow. This is an Arabic book in the 9th century that apparently Plato had something to do with. And there was a recipe for a homunculus in there, which is one homunculi and it involved inseminating a ewe, which is. I guess that's a female sheep. Right. With human sperm. Don't ask how. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I'm sure they had not too.
- [34:30]
Chuck
Many ways to do that back then.
- [34:31]
Chuck Bryant
I'm sure they had their methods. And you would have a birth, and it would be some sort of shapeless form at that point. And then you need to treat it with specific stuff, materials, put it in a glass container, and then it grows into a tiny person.
- [34:45]
Chuck
Yeah, I don't think that this ever worked, but they. Some. I guarantee some people tried it, for sure.
- [34:51]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, I bet. I mean, you have to have some excuse for when you're found with the sheep, right?
- [34:57]
Chuck
Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, that's going to stay with me. Like sorcerer's stone. Chuck. Every time I see the word U E W E, it reminds me. There's this Happy Days episode where Richie was writing in chalk on the sidewalk a message to some girl that he liked. Well, in a place where he knew that she was going to walk home from high school. I remember this. And he. He drew I and then the heart and then the U, like a sheep. And the girl comes up on him while he's sitting there finishing it, and she's like, I love sheep. And he's like, it's a ewe. I love you. But the way that she said, I love sheep, just always, it stuck with me. Like, the weird thing you said about inseminating sheep and sorcerer's stone will always stick with me.
- [35:46]
Chuck Bryant
And it probably taught you the lesson, like, never put yourself out there with a girl.
- [35:50]
Chuck
That's right. Yeah. That was definitely the line you got from Richie Cunningham, for sure.
- [35:55]
Chuck Bryant
I had forgotten completely about that. And as you started to tell that story, I completely remembered. It just, like, flooded back to me. That's funny.
- [36:04]
Chuck
There's one other one, too. This was a Brady Bunch, one that I always think of whenever I think of. I heart sheep when I see the word you. So we're like three or four inceptions from this original thing. There was a Brady Bunch where Greg and his friends stole a rival school's mascot, which was a goat.
- [36:23]
Chuck Bryant
Okay, I remember that.
- [36:24]
Chuck
It just so happened that, like, a bunch of officials from the school came over for coffee to the Brady House while the goat was there, and they had to move it from room to room and hide it. And Greg finally gets discovered with the goat in a closet, holding it in this really awkward position. And the face he makes when they open the closet door. I can't imagine how many takes they did to get it just that perfect. But it's one of the great all time shots of 70s television if you ask me.
- [36:52]
Chuck Bryant
Did the goat, was he wearing a cape or something? Yeah, I remember that.
- [36:58]
Chuck
I'm going to send you that clip because it's worth watching.
- [37:01]
Chuck Bryant
All right, so I guess we need to take our second break.
- [37:04]
Chuck
Yes.
- [37:05]
Chuck Bryant
And then we'll come back with more talk of 70s television right after this.
- [37:21]
Unknown
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- [38:23]
Chuck Bryant
Hey everybody. Want to talk to you about Hendrix Gin. Because Hendrix is crafted with care in Scotland by master distiller miss Leslie Gracie and is uniquely infused with rose and cucumber.
- [38:33]
Chuck
Yeah, opening a bottle of Hendrix gin is more than the beginning to a cocktail. It's about being open to the extraordinary, the unusual. And you can follow your curiosity this summer and try Hendrik's Gin.
- [38:44]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, how about awakening your senses with a Hendrix cucumber lemonade or just a simple cocktail that's perfect for any occasion?
- [38:51]
Chuck
Yes, Hendrix is the refreshingly curious choice for marvelous summer cocktails. Chuck.
- [38:56]
Chuck Bryant
That's right. And if you love Hendrix, check out one of their limited releases. Each new variant enhances Hendrix's signature essences of rose and cucumber with new and exciting infusions from citrus to stone fruit to wildflowers.
- [39:06]
Chuck
To learn more about Hendrix and to find more cocktail recipes, visit hendrixgin.com US drink responsibly Hendrix Gin 44% alcohol by volume 2025 imported by William Grant & Sons Incorporated, New York, NY.
- [39:26]
Unknown
So what happened To Chappaquiddick. Well, it really depends on who you talk to.
- [39:30]
There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.
- [39:36]
Josh Clark
Left a woman behind to drown.
- [39:39]
Unknown
There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News. It's teddy Escapes, Blonde Drowns. And in a strange way, Right, that sort of tells you the story really became about ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will TED become president?
- [39:54]
Capaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.
- [39:58]
Josh Clark
And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.
- [40:01]
Unknown
The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America. Royal family.
- [40:12]
Josh Clark
Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [40:32]
Chuck Bryant
All right, so we have talked, sort of hinted at the fact that alchemy is not looked back as it was for many years. And there's a more modern sort of view of it as like, that, hey, they were doing the best they can. At least that's what Chuck said. And some of the foundations they laid for modern chemistry are actually kind of valuable. And that's kind of where we're at now. A lot of, like, metallurgical processes were created that were legitimate. Maybe accidentally creating medicines or things that led to medicines happened, which is also valuable. What else?
- [41:07]
Chuck
Oh, well, I mean, just the very fact that these guys were carrying out experiments like, before then philosophers just said, like Aristotle, like, this is what everything's made of. Earth, wind, fire, water. Trust me, no one asked him. Exactly. No one asked him, how do you know that? Or anything like that. And he really, you know, I'm not saying he was a fraud or anything, but he didn't use any scientific experimentation. It was the alchemists who started that. They were the ones who started working in the lab with specific measures of materials and then, very importantly, recording their results. So they were documenting what they were finding. These are all just the basic outlines of the scientific method today.
- [41:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I mean, the word chemistry actually comes from alchemy in about the 1780s, which is pretty interesting. And alchemy is also like the other definitions of alchemy. Doesn't it also mean, like, some sort of romantic chemistry that can happen?
- [42:05]
Chuck
Yeah, you know, like romantic chemistry. Right. So a rom com, what they have in there. Romantic chemistry, that understanding and use of the term chemistry actually predates the use of the Word chemistry, as far as the scientific discipline goes by almost 200 years.
- [42:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's a good point. And there are also some pretty major players that we, you know, revere as our scientific forebears that were involved in stuff like this who maybe tried to keep a little quiet, like Isaac Newton. And this is, like, well into the 18th century when Isaac Newton was doing his thing, and he was like, yeah, maybe we could make gold from other materials. And maybe I'm not going to. You know, I'm also into some occult and spiritual concepts, but I'm going to kind of play that down and keep that all under the table for now, and it will only be discovered later.
- [42:53]
Chuck
Yeah. Underneath his ruffled, puffy pirate shirt, he had the best metal T shirt on.
- [42:59]
Chuck Bryant
Well, and people that were in charge of sort of keeping up with his story and his records, they kind of buried that stuff over the years to protect his image, didn't they?
- [43:07]
Chuck
Yeah. Newton was such a genius that he was pursuing two lines of inquiry into the nature of the universe. One, like the physics genius, the mathematician that we know and love, is, like, the world's first true scientist. At the same time, he was pursuing alchemy as well. Like, he was looking into the whole thing, like, hedging his bets. Yeah, essentially, he was trying to figure it out. He apparently believed, or his paper said, that he thought alchemy was this ancient wisdom that God had directly given humans and that alchemists were figuring out, were learning, like, that this was, like, divine delivery of, like, knowledge, essentially. And, like, like you said, his papers were kept private just to preserve his image for centuries. And then finally they started to get published and people started to understand him a little more. And I saw a really interesting quote at some point that one of his biographers said that Isaac Newton was not the first scientist. He was the last alchemist.
- [44:10]
Chuck Bryant
Whoa.
- [44:12]
Chuck
Yeah. And, I mean, it doesn't necessarily make sense to you if you. When you first hear it, but it's very much like how, say, a bird evolved out of a dinosaur bird. The dinosaur bird was not a true bird. The first bird was the first true bird. And in that same way, the point they were making was Newton was the thing that the first real scientists evolved out of, but he was not that. He was part alchemist, too.
- [44:39]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it's a good point. There were even some more modern world leaders that were like, you know, these guys were trying to make gold, and I know it didn't work out, but, like, maybe we could try, because it'd be great if we Had a lot of gold. Maximilian ii and Rudolph II. And this was 16th and 17th century holy Roman Empire stuff, where they were like, hey, why don't we just sort of help financially support these alchemists? Because you never know, maybe they can tap into this elixir of life or get us untold amounts of gold.
- [45:12]
Chuck
Yeah. I also saw Henry VI not only gave some, like, I think 15 or 16 alchemists official royal licenses to produce alchemical gold, he took what they used and minted it into coins. So supposedly there were coins which wasn't gold. No. It was a combination of mercury and copper sulfate with a little bit of water, and it produces some alloy once you clean it up that looks a lot like gold, but it's much lighter. There's coins out there still today to collect that were basically alchemy gold that Henry VI commissioned and that Britain's gold coins were made out of for a.
- [45:55]
Chuck Bryant
Little while, which, ironically, are probably worth a lot of money.
- [45:58]
Chuck
I would guess so. And that is ironic, isn't it?
- [46:00]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, a little bit. Don't you think?
- [46:02]
Chuck
Yeah, I would even say more than a little bit. I'd say a lot of bit.
- [46:06]
Chuck Bryant
Okay. The Academy Royale des Sciences in France is founded in 1666. And that's when they said, all right, this philosopher's stone stuff is not going to be in our curriculum anymore. We're not going to look at astrology. We're going to move into the modern era of the 17th century version of the modern era. And that's what they did. They kind of shut all that stuff down as like the official scientific. As far as official scientific pursuit academically goes.
- [46:34]
Chuck
Yeah. And the whole thing kind of continued on the 19th century still had alchemists in it. The upshot of that whole thing was that they were frauds, charlatans, and they were really the ones who gave alchemy a bad name to our modern ears. But also science, when it was really. When it really developed, it had a tendency to turn on its predecessors. The things that it evolved out of, like witches, herbalists, that kind of thing. Same thing with alchemists. Like, it was just so dumb and backwards. Science is the truth. It just basically disavowed alchemy, even though it directly evolved out of alchemy.
- [47:13]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [47:14]
Chuck
But now it is nice, kind of refreshing that today science is ready to be like, yes, it's a little embarrassing, but this is our grandfather.
- [47:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, well, you know, I feel like grandfather is usually less embarrassing than father.
- [47:27]
Chuck
I don't know. It depends on the era. The grandfather's from. Because they can say some really inappropriate stuff at Thanksgiving, you know?
- [47:35]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I strive to be, if I ever am a grandfather, just to be the sort of sweet, doddering old guy that everyone just thinks is fun and funny.
- [47:42]
Chuck
You definitely will be, man.
- [47:44]
Chuck Bryant
I don't want to doubt it.
- [47:47]
Chuck
I think you're also, though, one of those grandfathers who's also a beloved dad, too, which is.
- [47:52]
Chuck Bryant
Well, so far, so good.
- [47:53]
Chuck
That's hard to do.
- [47:54]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [47:56]
Chuck
One more thing about Alchemy, I, when I was studying, listened to a bunch of Dungeon Synth. I know I've mentioned it before.
- [48:02]
Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [48:03]
Chuck
But in particular, I was listening to albums by Witchbolt.
- [48:07]
Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [48:08]
Chuck
It's really good stuff, man. If you're into any kind of, like, instrumental synth music.
- [48:14]
Chuck Bryant
I am.
- [48:14]
Chuck
You could do a lot worse than listening to Witchbolt.
- [48:17]
Chuck Bryant
All right.
- [48:17]
Chuck
And then it also jogged my memory when I mentioned Dungeon Synth. A couple of years ago, we got an email from somebody named the Lone Enchanter, who has a Dungeon Synth label called High Mage Productions. And you can go check them out on Bandcamp, but they sent us a couple of jingles that apparently were lost because I sent them to Jerry, and she's like, I have never heard either of these. So we can look for some High Mage production jingles coming in the future. Thank you very much for that.
- [48:46]
Chuck Bryant
Fantastic. I'm going to check out Witchbolt. What a great name.
- [48:49]
Chuck
It really is. And their album covers are amazing, too.
- [48:52]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, I bet.
- [48:53]
Chuck
Okay. Well, that's it for Alchemy, everybody. We did it, Chuck. And we're done. And that means it's time for listener mail.
- [49:02]
Chuck Bryant
This is a correction on me. I can't believe I missed this. I feel like a dummy. Hey, guys, when you mentioned Heavy Metal Parking Lot on the Sunset Strip episode, the greatest heavy metal short documentary of all time, Chuck attributed it to Penelope Spiris. She made Decline of the Western Civilization, so I goofed that up. I was totally thinking of Decline of Western Civilization, another great documentary, but have.
- [49:29]
Chuck
You seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot then?
- [49:30]
Chuck Bryant
I have. I just misattributed the filmmaker. Apparently, Jeff Krulich and John Hahn made Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It's beyond satire and encapsulates a moment in time that was magical. They also made. And this I didn't know. They also made a documentary called Neil Diamond Parking Lot.
- [49:48]
Chuck
No.
- [49:50]
Chuck Bryant
So that's pretty fun. I'm gonna have to check that one out. That is from. That's. With best regards from Matthew T. From Cleveland, Ohio, with a P.S. i love you both very very much.
- [50:00]
Chuck
Thanks a lot Matthew T. Right back at you. And if you want to be like Matthew T. And correct Chuck. Chuck loves that kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom as an email and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.
- [50:17]
Josh Clark
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite.
- [50:33]
Danielle Robay
Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.
- [50:41]
Josh Clark
I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.
- [50:46]
Danielle Robay
I'm Danielle Robay and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. The new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcast where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [51:14]
Chuck
Join iHeartRadio and Sarah Spain in celebrating the one year anniversary of iHeart Women's.
- [51:20]
Josh Clark
Sports with powerful interviews and insights insider analysis, our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's Sports. In just one year, the network has launched 15 shows and built a community.
- [51:30]
Chuck
United by passion podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports.
- [51:34]
Josh Clark
Thank you for supporting iHeart women's sports and our founding sponsors E L F Beauty, Capital One and Novartis.
- [51:41]
Chuck
Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now.
- [51:46]
Unknown
So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.
- [51:49]
There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.
- [51:56]
Josh Clark
Left a woman behind to drown.
- [51:59]
Unknown
Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.
- [52:09]
Josh Clark
Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [52:18]
Chuck Bryant
This is an iHeart podcast.