Latest / Ridiculous History / The Weird Origin of Pink Lemonade, Part 1: A Humble Citrus

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The Weird Origin of Pink Lemonade, Part 1: A Humble Citrus · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Uh this is this is near and
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  Speaker 1: dear to my heart. I once upon a time had
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: an obsessive relationship with lemonade, even down to like the
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  Speaker 1: etymology of it. Did you, guys ever have a lemonade phase?
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  Speaker 1: Or did you have a lemonade stand when you were kids? Oh?
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  Speaker 1: I'm Ben? Oh hey Ben, you did. I'm assuming this
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  Speaker 1: is this means that you were a young lemonade entrepreneur.
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  Speaker 1: Is that accurate? No? No, not at all. No. What
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  Speaker 1: did you sell? Like more like like homemade napalm or something?
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  Speaker 1: Or you more of like an an anarchist? Never mind,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I even said that. Go ahead,
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  Speaker 1: you know this is maybe a story for a different day.
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  Speaker 1: But on my way to becoming an eagle Scout, I
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  Speaker 1: sure hit the streets selling a lot of popcorn, which
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  Speaker 1: is the far inferior boy scout go to sales thing.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, girl scouts ran the ran the business with
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  Speaker 1: the cookies. That's just undeniable. I I would have sold
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  Speaker 1: maybe lemonade, I just I don't know. Would people buy it.
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  Speaker 1: Did you sell anything as I could? I know I did. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I did the popcorn thing, but it wasn't for boy Scouts.
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  Speaker 1: It was for like just fundraising at school. I want
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  Speaker 1: to say, you'd sell these like candied popcorn decorative tins,
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  Speaker 1: you know, for around the holidays. I want to say, Kasey,
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  Speaker 1: would about you super producer Casey Pegram excuse me? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I did the lemonade stand thing, and I don't know why.
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  Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be rich, Like I was
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  Speaker 1: so psyched about it. Yeah. I was just like, man,
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be rolling in the dough and when it's
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  Speaker 1: when this lemonade stand hits. And then I also had
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  Speaker 1: like a concession stand thing at my dad's office in
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  Speaker 1: the break room. It was just like a little cardboard
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  Speaker 1: box with like candy bars in it and like a
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  Speaker 1: little hole cut out to drop in like fifty cents
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  Speaker 1: or a dollar when he bought something. Totally on our system,
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  Speaker 1: but you know, a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit as
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  Speaker 1: a kid. That's awesome. Dude. Was this around the same
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  Speaker 1: time as your child model days? Yeah? Probably probably just afterwards,
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  Speaker 1: you know, so that money wasn't coming in anymore, I
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  Speaker 1: had to find some other way to make ends meet.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, in case, you always hear stories
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  Speaker 1: on like how I built this, you know, and and
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  Speaker 1: shows like that were like famous entrepreneurs are telling how
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  Speaker 1: they got started, and so many of them are like
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: they figured out that they cornered the market on like
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  Speaker 1: ring pops, you know, at a very early age. Um
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  Speaker 1: you were you were one of those. Um. Yeah, man,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I never had a particularly great sense
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  Speaker 1: of of economics. Um, but you know I've done okay. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: I had the gift of gab, I guess, and I
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  Speaker 1: got me somewhere. So what the gift of gab? The
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: gift of gab? You know, Gabbin, do you think we
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  Speaker 1: have the gift of gap or do you think absolutely
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  Speaker 1: you have to have the gift of gab to be
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  Speaker 1: even even moderately successful podcast, which I would think we
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  Speaker 1: at least qualify as moderately successful. Um. But here's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: I love lemonade to ben, and I've always wondered, like,
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  Speaker 1: what is the deal with pink lemonade? Because you have
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  Speaker 1: you got your pink lemonade, but then you also have
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  Speaker 1: your raspberry lemonade, your strawberry lemonade, all the various you know,
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  Speaker 1: types of crystal light, affied versions of lemonade, peach lemone,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know, different fruited lemonades. But pink lemonade really
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  Speaker 1: is its own thing. It doesn't really have a distinct flavor,
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  Speaker 1: and yet people seem to like it because it's like
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  Speaker 1: festive or something or I don't know what. What do
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  Speaker 1: you think the deal is with? Why? What? What differentiates
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  Speaker 1: pink lemonade with regular lemonade, just in terms of like
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  Speaker 1: the optics of it from the consumer level. Well, I
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  Speaker 1: hope we get to this today. I did some work
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  Speaker 1: on this back in my food stuff days. Uh. Color
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  Speaker 1: has a tremendous psychological effect on human beings. The color
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  Speaker 1: of something doesn't just affect how much you eat of
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  Speaker 1: a given substance or drink of a given substance. It
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  Speaker 1: also affects how you perceive the taste. And it's weird.
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  Speaker 1: It's beyond psychology. There's some neurochemistry involved. But pink. What
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  Speaker 1: I like about that point is that pink is not
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  Speaker 1: a flavor. Right. Uh. Everybody is probably thinking now of
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  Speaker 1: Danny DeVito's role of Frank Reynolds and it's always sunny
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  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, where he spends one episode insisting that he
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  Speaker 1: only eats blue for his health, which to him is
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  Speaker 1: just blue stuff. Pink lemonade. To your point, there's like
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  Speaker 1: cranberry lemonade too, So what what gives? What? What puts
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  Speaker 1: pink lemonade in this rarefied air, this rarefied picture. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it turns out there's been a lot of research into
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  Speaker 1: pink lemonade. Everybody knows probably what we're talking about. It's
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  Speaker 1: a world it's world famous phenomena. Now Here in the US,
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  Speaker 1: people often associate pink lemonade or lemonade in general with
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: a company called country Time. You guys remember country Time Lemonade.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're still out there. Maybe we'll even play.
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  Speaker 1: I apologize for pinking you guys with weird lemonade commercials
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  Speaker 1: leading up to this. I want to taste good old
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  Speaker 1: fashioned lemonade with natural taste, like good old fashioned lemonade,
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  Speaker 1: Country Time lemonade flavor drink on sweeten two country Time
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  Speaker 1: country Time tastes like that fashion lemonade. But maybe to
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  Speaker 1: start the story of how we got to pink lemonade,
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  Speaker 1: we can tell you that the origin may not be
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  Speaker 1: as uh wholesome or inspiring as you expect. Uh it
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  Speaker 1: may it may be downright a circus, right, but the
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  Speaker 1: story of lemonade itself actually begins in the ancient Far East.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of people didn't know this. Lemons are from
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  Speaker 1: like India, China and an Mar or Burma, that's right,
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  Speaker 1: and it was you know, I mean, it's the kind
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  Speaker 1: of thing where there's literally an expression that says taking
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  Speaker 1: lemons and making lemonade, implying little lemon in and of
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  Speaker 1: itself isn't like entirely useful, even though we know it
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  Speaker 1: is in terms of like vitamin C and you know,
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  Speaker 1: staving off scurvy and the like for sailors or what
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  Speaker 1: have you. But yeah, I mean it, it's not a
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  Speaker 1: far reach to think that it wouldn't take that much
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  Speaker 1: for someone to maybe put together that, Oh if I
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  Speaker 1: take this very sour tart thing, mix it together with
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  Speaker 1: something sweet and a like a you know, water it down,
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  Speaker 1: then I could have a refreshing drink. Um. And the
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  Speaker 1: earliest examples of this kind of proto lemonade um, which
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  Speaker 1: would have been lemon juice mixed with sugar, dated back
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  Speaker 1: to medieval Egypt. There was a poet by the name
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  Speaker 1: of nass Here Acustra who wrote about He was kind
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  Speaker 1: of like, you know, you're like blogger of of eleventh
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  Speaker 1: century Egypt, and he referenced a very popular drink called
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  Speaker 1: kastarmazat uh qatarmas that excuse me, um q a t
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  Speaker 1: A r M I z a T and did my
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  Speaker 1: level best there. Probably my pronunciation will fluctuate as this
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  Speaker 1: episode goes on, but thankfully we're not talking about this
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  Speaker 1: period and lemonade for the whole episode. Um. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it was freshly squeezed lemon juice. Um. Often it was
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  Speaker 1: sweetened with either cane sugar or I believe there were
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  Speaker 1: versions of it that were sweetened with honey as well.
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  Speaker 1: And it was a very popular drink that was sold
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  Speaker 1: in these like outdoor markets in Cairo. And then you
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  Speaker 1: had traders that would, you know, find out about these
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  Speaker 1: things and bring them back to their next of the woods,
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  Speaker 1: and you started to see these recipes kind of emerge
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  Speaker 1: around thirteenth century in Arabic cookbooks, and even like Genghis
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  Speaker 1: Khan's Mongol hordes Uh enjoyed a splash of lemonade from
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  Speaker 1: time to time or as it was called katarmaz At,
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  Speaker 1: and they particularly enjoyed um what we would now even
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  Speaker 1: referred to as spiked lemonade. You know, Mike spiked lemonade. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I always I got last night. I was actually writing
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  Speaker 1: a fake ad that I'm gonna save for later or
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  Speaker 1: a different show with Jengis Mike's hard uh has like
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  Speaker 1: a hard bikes lemonade ad. But yeah, one of the
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  Speaker 1: many weird things associated with Jengis Khan in history is
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  Speaker 1: uh Is. I'm I'm pronouncing this the way you pronounced
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  Speaker 1: the country, so I'm saying mazat. But a lemon by
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: any other name is still a lemon to grotesquely paraphrase, Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Some better writers than than the three of us. As
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  Speaker 1: this global trade expands, lemonade becomes pretty hot in Europe.
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  Speaker 1: They like this stuff. They like these novelties. You know,
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  Speaker 1: people in France love it. And there's even a company
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  Speaker 1: of lemon ideas who form in the sixteen seventies. They
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  Speaker 1: run around the streets of the fair Metropolis. They sell
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  Speaker 1: lemonade by the glass directly from these backpacks. So these
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  Speaker 1: guys wouldn't be too out of place at a rave.
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  Speaker 1: You know what, I mean centuries from the sixteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: And now when we look at the spread of lemonade
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  Speaker 1: to the United States, we know that this is a
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  Speaker 1: popular drink in North and South America because one of
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  Speaker 1: the key ingredients, sugar, is readily available due to sugarcane.
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  Speaker 1: One of the cookbooks that's often considered the first US
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  Speaker 1: cookbook or first truly American cookbook is The Virginia Housewife.
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  Speaker 1: And this book contains a recipe for what it calls
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  Speaker 1: ice lemonade. The reason I'm caveating this, by the way, folks,
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  Speaker 1: is that when I say a recipe for what it
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  Speaker 1: calls ice lemonade, this lemonade had eggs in it. Like casey,
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  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think you did that at your stand,
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  Speaker 1: did you? Absolutely not. No, we would never do such
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  Speaker 1: a thing like fi cents for a glass? Uh five
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  Speaker 1: cents extra for some egg right now? Well? Wait wait wait?
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  Speaker 1: Was it like egg whites? Kind of like a flip
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  Speaker 1: like one of those fancy prohibition eric cocktails with like
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  Speaker 1: the egg the frosty egg white, because that could be
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  Speaker 1: good like an egg cream? Yeah, well, like actually egg cream,
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  Speaker 1: ben the old ones, the old ones. Did I know
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  Speaker 1: what you're gonna say the old ones did have egg
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  Speaker 1: Was that true? I didn't know that, Like I thought that.
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  Speaker 1: My my understanding is that the original egg cream was
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  Speaker 1: the old old one and it had neither egg nor cream.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting fact here, according to Miriam Webster, the term egg
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  Speaker 1: cream could be based on ruption of the Yiddish word,
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  Speaker 1: but the name has been used since the early eighteen
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  Speaker 1: hundreds for multiple drinks that contain eggs and or cream. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I got it. Well, I'm fascinated by the idea of
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  Speaker 1: just putting eggs in a lemonade drink. I mean, if
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  Speaker 1: you frossed it up and like did a you know,
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  Speaker 1: put it in a shaker or something, that could be cool.
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  Speaker 1: But I don't know, like he's crack an egg in
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  Speaker 1: it like you would like if you were trying to,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you know, do a weird flex as like a bodybuilder,
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  Speaker 1: where you just like eat raw eggs. Is that kind
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  Speaker 1: of the idea, I don't know. Probably it probably results
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  Speaker 1: in more of a custard something that we would think
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  Speaker 1: of more as like kind of a lemon custer versus
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  Speaker 1: a lemonade. But we know that people have all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of variations on on the idea of lemonade. We know.
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  Speaker 1: One of the reasons it became popular it was not
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: just the availability of sugarcane, but it was teetotalers when
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  Speaker 1: people weren't drinking booze, were very against other people drinking booze.
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  Speaker 1: Lemonade became sort of touted as a healthy alternative to
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  Speaker 1: the moral dangers posed by alcohol. And Lucy web Haze,
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  Speaker 1: the first lady during the Hayes administration was nicknamed Lemonade
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  Speaker 1: Lucy because she would ban booze at the White House,
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  Speaker 1: but people could drink lemonade. I also, you know, I
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  Speaker 1: was thinking about this. Sometimes people give the temperance movement
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  Speaker 1: in the earlier days of the U S a hard time,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: but over the years doing this show looking at history
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: in the early US, those people were drunk a lot,
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  Speaker 1: like a lot a lot, Yeah, for sure. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: you know, we always talk about like the meads and
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  Speaker 1: stuff and the vikings and all that, and the reason
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  Speaker 1: they were drunk so much just because regular old still
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: water would like, you know, turn or they would this
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  Speaker 1: this is like having fermented beverages was assurance that it
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: wasn't gonna like go bad, because that was sort of
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  Speaker 1: like you know, part of the draw was that it
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  Speaker 1: had basically gone bad. Um. But yeah, so you know,
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  Speaker 1: lemonade really did start to catch on in the US,
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  Speaker 1: and that kind of brings us to today's story of
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  Speaker 1: the creation, Uh, the mythos, the creation myth I guess
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  Speaker 1: behind pink lemonade. So we've got we've got maybe we
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  Speaker 1: can laundry list a few theories that we're pretty sure
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  Speaker 1: are incorrect, right or maybe not the mean story. So casey,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of game show laundry listing
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  Speaker 1: theories music there is, but that's your prompt, perfect, Okay. One? Uh,
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  Speaker 1: influence from pre existing people on the continent, from Native
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  Speaker 1: American tribes. Uh. There's one theory that lemonade, pink lemonade specifically,
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  Speaker 1: is inspired by an ancient drink made with the berries
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  Speaker 1: of a specific type of sumac. They're bright red, they
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  Speaker 1: have a bright, lemony, citral flavor in This drink is
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  Speaker 1: known as kuala, and it has some similarities to pink lemonade. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: And it has that kind of tart flavor and it's
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  Speaker 1: still used for ceremonial purposes. But it's different, you know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean. It doesn't taste like lemonade. Does it
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  Speaker 1: gets you super high? I don't know. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: the ceremony there. Okay, well, well what to looking at
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that a little further, I'm fascinating. I never heard of
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  Speaker 1: the idea of drinking sumac. When I think of sumac,
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  Speaker 1: I always think of poison sumac, which is I guess,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: like a cousin of poison oak and poison ivy um.
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  Speaker 1: But this would be the red berries of the of
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  Speaker 1: of the sumac plant, which which presumably not poison unless
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  Speaker 1: that's part of the ritual. Too unclear. But this is
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  Speaker 1: what we know. I used to tomac cooking Persian food.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's it's pretty dope. Okay, good, I'll have to add that.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I have to add that to my repertoire. But you know,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways to get things pink in color, right, Um,
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  Speaker 1: you could. And that's the thing what I was getting
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  Speaker 1: at earlier too about pink lemonade was is it just
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  Speaker 1: an aesthetic thing? Why call it pink lemonade if it's
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  Speaker 1: about the flavor? You know? Um, to me, that denotes
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  Speaker 1: a certain attention paid to like the act the idea
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that it's sort of a gimmick. But Like we said,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: there's lots of ways to make a drink pink. You
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: could add other fruits that would exact would absolutely change
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the flavor, like cherries or watermelon. Um, you talked about
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: sumac hybiscus. That's a good one. But again, these are
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  Speaker 1: all to me I would call of I would I
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: would call out the fruit here rather than calling it
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: pink lemonade, I would say raspberry lemonade, cherry lemonade, cherry limeade,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: strawberry lemonad. These are all things, um, But that is
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  Speaker 1: the issue there. These all absolutely introduced new flavors, so
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  Speaker 1: they're not really considered to be the genesis of the
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: straight up gimmick that is pink lemonade. There are pink
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: lemons actually, but they were like I believe, sort of
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  Speaker 1: like a cross breed of another particular type of lemon,
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  Speaker 1: the yellow Eureka lemon tree. And you didn't really see
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: those come around until the thirties. So uh. And also
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: like you're sure it's called a pink lemon, but it
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't squeeze bright pink juice, so that's not that's not
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  Speaker 1: gonna do it either. Then we have, uh, the theory
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: um that takes sort of capitalism into into consideration here
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: with the idea of like the dye industry, the edible
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: or drinkable dye industry, which has its own kind of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: pitfalls throughout history, like yellow number five making you like
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  Speaker 1: infertile or something right. And then there's the fourth theory
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  Speaker 1: that pink lemonade may have something in common with a
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: cocktail popular in the eighteen fifties eighteen seventies, around the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: time pink lemonade sends into the national consciousness. Most historian
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: state the appearance of pink lemonade in that two decade
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: period around the same time, British sailors were drinking something
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: they called pink gin. It was made of angustora bidders
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: uh and those This was often a curative thing. People
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: would drink it to stave off seasickness and the dark
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: red bidders. It wasn't a classy cocktail necessarily, just to
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  Speaker 1: be honest with you all, they took jen and they
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  Speaker 1: put these bidders in it, and the dark the bidders
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  Speaker 1: are dark red, so they turned the gin to a
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  Speaker 1: different color. And then if you're super fancy and always
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: still kind of fighting scurvy, then you throw a little
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  Speaker 1: lemon peel on there, and then that stuff is practically
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  Speaker 1: the same color as pink lemonade. And you see other
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  Speaker 1: like spiked lemonade ideas very similar to this showing up
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  Speaker 1: in bartending guides around nineteen hundred and again the bidders,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I guess you could say it balances the tang of lemonade.
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  Speaker 1: And and people will say sometimes they perceive pink lemonade
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to be more sweet and less sour or less heart
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: than than the normal lemonade variety. But still none of
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  Speaker 1: those four theories we just named are widely accepted. Each
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of them has something that doesn't quite fit the bill. Here.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: If we want to go to the most likely theory
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  Speaker 1: for the origin of pink lemonade, we have to go
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to the circus. Yes, indeed, circuses and snacks presumably bread
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that would have been the original circus snack, right, because
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: those are the two things you had to give the
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: people to keep them from rising up in the streets. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But now these were you know, those circuses were more
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  Speaker 1: involving human slaughter. Uh, these were a little kinder and gentler,
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  Speaker 1: with like clowns and you know, uh, midways and and games.
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  Speaker 1: We throw that are rigged where you throw you know, darts,
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  Speaker 1: a balloons or like ping pong balls into goldfish bowls.
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  Speaker 1: They haven't really changed the whole hell of a lot
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  Speaker 1: since then. It's the old traveling carnival when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to town. A lot of those things still very much
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  Speaker 1: in play. But yeah, but those things often blur together,
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  Speaker 1: the circus versus the carnival, and they have a lot
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of the same little things. They have a lot of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the same games, They have a lot of the same snacks,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and they have a lot of the same popular beverages.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: And with the ice trade becoming a thing in the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, ice drinks were all the rage. So you
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: wouldn't really have a lemonade what we think of today
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: as a delicious tart cold um glass of lemonade if
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: it didn't have been for the innovation um in the
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: ice trade. And so lemonade really began to take off.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Because who doesn't love an ice cold glass of lemonade.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of my favorite things in the world.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I really am a big fan of mixing lemonade half
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: and half with us iced tea. Uh don't like iced
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: tea on its own one bit but add a little
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: half and half lemonade make it what they call an
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Arnold palmer in in this part of the country anyway. Um,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm I'm sold. But you started to see people
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: coming from miles away to see these circuses with you know,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: things like everything from a trapeze situation, uh, death defying stunts. Um.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Of course, the very uh problematic freak shows were a thing.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: We've talked about this on a recent episode, with contortionists
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: and fire breathers and bearded ladies and the like. Um.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, all this was hard work taking in
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: all this excitement, not to mention seeing like elephants and
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: animal you know, tricks being done. Um, you'd work up
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: quite a thirst. So lemonade was their go to and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it actually dates specifically back to a very one specific
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: circus in eighteen seventy nine mentioned in the West Virginia
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Wheeling Register that gives us one of the possible true
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: backstories of pink lemonade. I would pause at this moment
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to say, this is uh, this is a nicer version.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: The second version is my favorite, the real clown drink version.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: You'll you'll see what I mean in a second. So
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: these are both kind of legends. There's a guy named
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Henry E a Lot or Alett a L l O
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: t T. He is a circus promoter, which means that
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: he gets crowds to come to the circus and he
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: probably rips off his performers, because that was the world
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: of circuses at the time. Later, he reinvents himself as
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a gambler named Bunk Allen, which is a cool name.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: That's a very cool name, and so he becomes pretty
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: well known in the zeitgeist. He died in Chicago in
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: NT twelve, and he had obituaries not just in the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Washington Post, but in the New York Times as well,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and according to a trade handbook for the restaurant industry
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: published in nineteen thirteen, a year after his death, Alt
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: was fourteen years old working at a circus in eighteen
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: seventy two when he accidentally invented pink lemonade. He was
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in charge of candy and lemonade concessions. He was kind
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: of the young Casey Pegram of the circus and somehow,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: we're not sure how, he dropped an entire container of
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: red cinnamon candies into a vat of freshly made lemonade,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: staining it pink, a similar color to clown pants. I'm
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: just throwing foreshadowing left and right here because it's my
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: favorite are part of the story. But the Smithsonian magazine
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: tells us he knew that this kid when he was
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: just fourteen. He knew the show had to continue. So
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: he said, all right, whatever, I'm gonna sell this pink lemonade.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And it actually sold better than the original yellowish lemonade
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: people were so used to. But I have a question
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: for you guys here. Wouldn't dumping that container of candy
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: into the lemonade make it taste like cinnamon? I was
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: thinking the same thing. That's not what you want. That's
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: not refreshing. I mean, cinnamon's got it's placed in the
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: flavor of profile universe and warm drinks. That's where cinnamon blogs.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry to sound kind of absolutist about this. Right
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: in with a cold cinnamon drink, if you've got one,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I'll try it out. I'd be enjoy Well, you know
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: there's fireball liquor liqueur shots, which is you know it's
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: not for everybody, but that it is served cold. But
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I've always found that a little off putting because it
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: really just it's like gives you like a like big
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: red gum in alcoholic shot form. But you're right, Ben,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I certainly, at the very least think people would have
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: noticed if they were used to there, I would have complained,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: wouldn't you. I don't know, man, because so much of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: this is framing. If Bunk is or the man will
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: grow to be Bunk, if Bunk is clever enough and
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: keeps his straight face, then people might assume it's on
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: purpose and it's a novelty like remember the first time
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: you saw dipping dots, or remember the first time you
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: saw all those other gimmicky candies like cotton candy. Cotton
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: candy is it's weird, right, But people are buying it
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: partially for the novelty as children. So I think if
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: he did it with a straight face, uh, this could work.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: But there's a problem because at the time of this discovery,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: if this is what happened, red candies had a coloring
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: agent that could be highly toxic. They could have red
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: lead or red vermilion. And then there's the other problem
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: with the story, which we talked about. It's this It's
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the same thing the authors bring up in a fantastic
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: epicurious article. No one has really tried cinnamon flavored lemonade,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and if that's how it tasted, and if that really happened,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: then someone would have replicated it. Right, So this tale
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: is probably probably not all the way through. It's a
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: good campfire story, or it's a good lemonade stands story.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: But for years before, lemonade would already been sold as
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the different fruit based varieties we named watermelon lemonade, raspberry, rhubarb, strawberry,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: so on, all of which would give it a nice
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: pinkish hue. But there's another legend. I think we should
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: call that. I you know, I think we should call
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: this one the clown drink. I like that. Or we
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: could also do it where it's like submitted for the
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: approval of the Midnight Society. I call this the tale
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of the circus mishap involving a pair of red tights.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And now we have to pause. Big lemonade got to us.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I just got the I just got the email. Uh
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: we are We're gonna have to go back and reevaluate
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: some things before we continue revealing the truth about pink lemonade. Um,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I guess before we end this one, nol Casey, is
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: it okay to play just the clip of that crazy
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: lemonade commercial? Oh god, please, it's more than okay. I
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: think it's it's required. You have to hear this. I
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: think so too, She quid. We're trying to. It's not
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: always there, it is. I was looking for a way
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to insert this in the show. We're just gonna put
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: it at the end of part one because this is
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: part one of the surprisingly disturbing origin story of pink Lemonade.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: We'll be back this week with Part two. In the meantime.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Huge thanks to super producer Casey peg Graham for putting
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: up with us, and and and dealing with all the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: these retroactive two partners. We love you, man, You're the best. Um,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: don't ever change and will which we will try to change.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I've I've pledged to do better. Um. But huge thanks
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Christopher Hascion is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: here in spirit. Big big thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k A The Quister,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a k A Young Quizzles, a K Baby j a
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: k A. Strike. That guy is just racked up a
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: lot of nicknames over time, and I hate to say
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that I've I've probably accidentally been the source of several
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of those. But assuming the big lemonade, lets us continue
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: with Part two. We can't wait to tell you how
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: clowns come into the lemonade mix. Here. We'll see you
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.