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CLASSIC: Waging War With Hallucinogenic Honey · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: rounding out NOL. I guess we took somewhat of a vacation, not.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Really though, Yeah, you know, a micro hiatus is what
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: we said. But I think even still, we just did
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: the math. You know, we don't roll out these classic
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: episodes very often, and we do, it's usually for a
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: good reason, so that we can, you know, do human things.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I think we only hit you. This is the third
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I think that maybe we've hit you with.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And this one's a doozy.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: This is from back in the early days. I think
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: a pet interest of all three of us, honey and hallucinogens.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: This is sort of combinds us of all of those
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: things into one sweet treat of an episode.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you were to ask me, well in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Ben, what are the best pizza ingredients? I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: would not have known that hot honey is one, but
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: now I'm convinced. And honey, what about hallucinogenic hot honey?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's more than a sweet ingredient and it could be
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a weapon of war.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Let's get right to it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio well, folks, friends
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and neighbors, fellow would be apiarist. You have heard the buzz,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and the rumors are true. This is ridiculous history. My
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: name is Ben, my name is Noah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Not the bees. Not the bees. They're in my eyes? Brown,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: what is that? What is that? What is that? Holla? No,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: not the my eyes.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: And we are of course joined with our super producer,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegrim Casey, thank you. He just lifted a lovely
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: looking sparkling water in our direction. And I'm a fan
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of toast, and I've got a weird anecdote to start
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: this off.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Toast.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, toast, both the prepared bread item and the act.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Oh I thought you were like toast with honey. I
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: get it toast like a cheers kind of motion. I
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: got you.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that you mentioned honey. Funny story. There was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a middle aged couple once upon a time who decided
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to improve their sex life in two thousand and eight.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: They decided to do this, and they spent a week
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: eating raw honey gathered from an area in your Turkey's
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Black Sea, and it did not have the results that
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: they had hoped for.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Not only raw honey, in fact, in the abstract for
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: this study entitled mad honey sexual activity and acute inferior
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: myocardial infarctions in a married couple. You see the keyword
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: there is mad honey. That's because this particular honey is
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: produced from the nectar of the rhododendron flower or Rhododendron ponticum,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: which is native to areas of Japan, Nepal, parts of
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: North America, Europe, and Brazil, and as you mentioned then
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. And this honey
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: has some pretty interesting qualities, right, Yeah.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: To go back to the story there, the couple from
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the Black Sea did not have the improved sex life
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that they felt they would. Instead, they ended up in
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the hospital with symptoms mimicking heart attacks. Due to it's
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: relatively obscure, destroyer Noles introduced mad honey, specifically mad honey
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: poisoning this syrup. This substance is naturally toxic and it
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: does have a different taste to reportedly tastes more bitter
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: than normal honey, and the toxicity varies depending upon when
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you gather it. It's higher when you gather fresh honey
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in the springtime because that's when those rhododendrons are among
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the first plants to bloom, so bees are more likely
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: to interact with those.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Some of those interesting characteristics I mentioned, though, one of
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: them is that it apparently is used to treat erectile dysfunction,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: and it's that particular reason is one of the big
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: ones that causes you know, folks in the age range
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: of these patients to buy the stuff. And it's pretty
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: easy to buy online. But let's rewind the story way
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: back to when we first started hearing reports of the
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: effects of this type of honey.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Right, this is something that's easily purchased today, but it
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: does have a razor's edge. It can go from intoxicating
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: to lethal with just a small variance of dose, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: people have been aware of it for a long life,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: long time. The ancient Greek commander Xenophon, who led his
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: army of ten thousand soldiers from Persia back to Greece
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: in four hundred and one BC, prided himself on being
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the best, the utter last word, when it came to
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: finding healthy and safe campsites and enemy territory. This is
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: according to research scholar and Classics and History of Science
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: at Stanford named Adrian Mayer, she's also luckily for our purposes.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The author of a book called The Poison King and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: a survey of ancient warfare called Greek Fire, Poison Arrows
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and Scorpion Bombs, and according to Professor Mayer, Xenophon noticed
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  Speaker 1: nothing unusual about the campsite that he had chosen, in
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a place called Pontus on the Black Sea coast in
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: northeast Turkey. But he did note an extraordinary number of
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: swarming bees, and he said that his men soon discovered
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the hives and went nuts and bananas. They gorged on
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: that sweet, sweet wild.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: And then Xenophon, who was noted for his meticulous record keeping,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that's true, but he definitely kept them,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: recorded his observations of the way his troops behaved, and
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: the author Adrian Mayer describes them as such. He was
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: appalled when his soldiers suddenly began to behave like crazed
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: mad men, and they collapsed on mass I'm assuming in
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: some sort of Greek heap. His entire army was paralyzed
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to enemy attacks. So,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: in other words, they were wasted and utter sitting ducks.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And with the benefit of modern science, we can crack
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit of the case.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Here.
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  Speaker 1: The honey they were consuming is dark, reddish mad honey
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: appearance in Turkey. It's called Deli ball, And we can
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: trace the active ingredient that's harming people. It's called grayanotoxin.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Grayanotoxins can be found in honey produced from the nectar
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: plants like this specific sort of rhododendron. Because they contain alkaloids,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: they're poisonous to humans. But as we're jumping back in time, Noel,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: you said you had another example from a little bit
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: later in the timeline I do.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: In sixty seven BCE, Rome invaded the Black Sea region
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: under the command of General POMPEII, no relation to the
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: town No No, but the opposition forces, which were headed
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: up by the reigning King Mithridates. They knew about the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: area and the indigenous wildlife and flora and fauna, and
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: so they kind of pulled a little bit of a
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: trick on the Romans by lining their paths with these
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: very enticing pieces of this mad honeycomb. And a similar
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: scenario took place as to the Greek situation. They started
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: vomiting and became intoxicated and just hallucinating wildly, and they
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: became easy prey, easy for the pickens.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, they also were experiencing the dizziness, hypotension, the heart problems,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the weird simulation, the feeling of you know, incoming death.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It's very painful, strange feeling. And this isn't the only
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: time that somebody weaponized mad honey. It's also been used
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: in mead as a way of stalling approaching forces. We
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: have an excellent article called Ancient Armies Waged War with
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Hallucinogenic Honey by our recurring contributor Lori L. Dove, and
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: in this you can find more information about these various instances.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And it turned out this stuff worked really well. If
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you used this honey, this Deli ball to make mead
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: or aka honeywine, then you can still have similar effects.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: In AD nine four to six this happened.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: It had a little extra kick to it.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I guess right, mm hmm yeah, yeah, not like a
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Heinz fifty seven versus ketchup kick, a more dangerous one.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I'm more of a Worcestershire sauce man myself.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And the Story of Worcestershire by the way itself.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Is just really weird. Oh, can we do that one?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that one in Do you want to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: do it in a later episode?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I think we do in a later episode in the
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: New Year.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, sounds good. So there was someone named Olga of Kiev,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and Olga of Kiev had Russian foes, and Olga went
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: through some proxies and had some allies offer these Russians
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: several tons of mead, and five thousand Russians ingested this
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: mead and they collapsed, reeling and delirious, and they were
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: summarily massacred.
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  Speaker 2: Then in fourteen eighty nine, in the same area, a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Russian army absolutely slaughtered ten thousand Totters who had drunk
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: too many casks of this kind of meat the Russians
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: had left behind. Once again in that kind of sneaky
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: honey traps. You call that kind of a honey trap.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: That's a term, but that's actually what it was. And
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: by the way, Totter's just kind of into this are
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: a Turkish people from living in and around Eurasia, in
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: eastern Europe and northern.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Asia, and so folks, we can begin to see the
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  Speaker 1: shape of the moral for today's episode. If this moral
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: would exist, is it honeycomb shaped? It is a honeycomb
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: hive shaped moral, and it is the following if someone
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: you don't trust offers you something to eat or drink,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: or if you are walking on the way to a
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: clear battle, I just don't eat stuff you see on
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the side of the road.
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  Speaker 2: It's very true, And we also.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Have good news for anybody who loves rhododendrons and says, wait,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: am I in danger my friend's family and my foes
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: by having these plants? The answer is no. Only one
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: or two, maybe three of rhododendrons carry this stuff, so
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: generally you should be safe, and it's not all bad.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: In Turkish culture, deli ball as seen as a kind
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: of medicine and it's used in very small amounts to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: treat various medical conditions.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. The couple that we talked about at
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: the top of the show were trying to use this
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: stuff for a medicinal reason. They weren't just trying to
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: get messed up. We mentioned the idea of it being
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: used to treat a rectile dysfunction, but ben, have you
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: heard of the Gurrong people of Nepal.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Briefly, but I'd love to hear more.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So they to this day carry on the tradition
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: of they call it hunting. For this hunting, we'll talk
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: about what that process is like in a minute. It's
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: pretty insane. But they use it to treat like joint pains,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: things like arthritis or mild stomach aches or I believe
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I read somewhere even you knowention, which is interesting considering
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: that in the medical study that we talked about, part
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: of the side effects of taking too much of the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: stuff is that it can increase your heart rate significantly
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: and cause your blood pressure to drop dangerously.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Like the old saw about alcohol mad honey, maybe rumor
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to cure some of the problems it causes.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Indeed, but these Gurang people are a fascinating bunch. They
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: live in villages and they are entirely self sufficient. They
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: shear the wool from goats that they have, They grind
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: their own flour, they make their own clothes, and what
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: they have leftover they sell at local markets. But every
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: year they carry on this tradition of going on an
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: expedition out to these incredible cliffs where they get this honey.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Because the areas were these particular bees, which are actually
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we mentioned the largest bees in
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Himalayan rock bee is a gigantic honey.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Bee and they make their nests and their hives on
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: these steep, steep cliffs. So in order to access this,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: these folks make these rope ladders out of kind of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: twisted bamboo and then they it looks like a giant rope,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: and then they insert these pieces of wood in between
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: to create rungs, and then they like well, you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: rope it down to like a root or some kind
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: of tree, and then they repel down the side of
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: these cliffs and they use these giant sticks to kind
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: of poke at the combs and knock them into a
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: basket that's also being lowered down independently. And in order
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to kind of protect themselves you might see this been
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: with traditional bee keeping, or to get the bees to
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: kind of leave so you can get this the goods,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: they smoke them out of their holes, basically with burning
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: leaves and stuff. But still even still, these folks get
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: stung constantly, and it's a real almost right of passage
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: to do this, and there have been cases where people
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: have fallen to their death. There's a great quote in
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: this article from Vice Hunting for Hallucinogenic Honey in Nepal
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: by David Kapara, who actually went on this expedition, and
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: he's speaking firsthand, and he spoke to one of the
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: men that he went on the expedition with, and this
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: is what this man, Tulsi Gurung said, And all of
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: these folks have the surname of Gurum, everyone that lives
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: in the village. I think is interesting quote. At first,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I'm very scared going down the ladder, but when I
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: see the hives, I get filled with power and become fearless.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And this rite of passage, this arduous collection process, results
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: in what the locals call pagal maha or mad honey.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You can find accounts of people who have tried this
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: both medicinally and recreationally, like backpackers in Nepaul, for example.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: We did say it was it is available, you can
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: buy it it likely from the comfort of your own computer.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: But we were a little bit misleading because although you
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: can obtain it easily, you cannot really obtain it cheaply.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: In some places, this stuff allegedly sells for one hundred
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and sixty six dollars a pound exactly.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Ben and I actually found an article talking about kind
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: of procuring some of this Turkish variety of deli ball
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: at a shop. And this piece was written by Emma
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Bryce for Modern Farmer, called The Strange History of Mad Honey.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And Bryce actually makes her way to a shop that
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: specializes in honey, and the shopkeeper had a jar, and
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: she describes it as kind of a frothy honey, very
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: bright orange, almost looks like clarified butter. But the shopkeeper
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: called it rose of the forest honey or armand Kamar
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Bali and Emma got a sense that they weren't really
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: trying to promote this stuff because they didn't want tourists
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: completely losing their minds by eating too much. In every
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: account that I've read of someone tasting this or trying it,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: it's usually been a couple of tea spoons, and it's
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: described as having almost a cooling effect on the throat,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a burn, but then that kind
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: of was replaced by kind of almost a I see
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: hot kind of effect that kind of then goes down
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: your spine and almost comparable to a cannabis high.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I guess, hmm, yeah, I think again it really depends
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: on the amount of the dose, because you could read
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: accounts from people who clearly took way too much of
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: this stuff and talk about laying awake at night in pain,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: terrified by the sound of their own heartbeat. A lot
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of hallucingenic experts will tell you that if you're going
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: for something recreational, not that we would ever legally recommend
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: considering that on our show, but if you are attempting
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to use some hallucinogens for recreational purposes. Biologist Sean McCann
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: says the compounds involved in mad honey are not super
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: fun and not something I would recommend. They are far
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: better and safer hallucinogenic compounds that you can use.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Speaking of legally acquiring this stuff, I just wanted to
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: point out this may have maybe stating the obvious, but
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: it is legal in Turkey, so you can buy it,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: you know, completely free and clear. But again there is
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a sense, probably like the way Amsterdam has done business
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: for a long time, where even though you know cannabis
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: and you know edible versions of that are legal there,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: they kind of tuck it away a little bit. They
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily want to promote it right up front, and
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: there is that sense that dummy American tourists are going
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: to swoop in and like take away too much and
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: be a liability.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And there are some other fascinating things here. First, Adrian
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Mayer says that matt hunting could still be used as
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: a ruse in war today for just the same reason
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that we pointed out. People could do a much better
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: job in general of accepting things from strangers. You got
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: to have some critical thinking. We also, you know, I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: had heard about biological or chemical warfare throughout history before,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't familiar with food, and I wanted to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: see if there were any other examples, and I found
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: some stuff that's best vaguely related. There was a war
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: between Brazil and Uruguay in the eighteen sixties and during
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: one maritime battle, a Uruguay and ship ran out of
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: cannonballs and the captain ordered his men to fire stale
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: balls of cheese instead.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Yikes, that's a that's thinking on your feet right there, though.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And how stale was this cheese man? Because one of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the cheeses shattered the main man of the enemy ship
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and people died by a cheese shrapnel, which I know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: every human death is tragic, but that's kind of that's
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: kind of amusing.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: That's it's it's kind of ridiculous. You know, I could
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: picture cheese. Have you ever had a real hard cheese, ben,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I could picture if it was cut thin enough and
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: that fluid a fast enough you know speed, and the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: trajectory was just right, I could picture getting garrotted by
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: one of those things.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Right, Because I think that's a very interesting point, Nol.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Because you know, we've been around a cheese wheel or two.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We've seen some dangerous cheese. I'd never thought it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: We could be lethal dangerous cheese.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: And one time, apparently in the Pacific Ocean during World
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: War two, a Japanese submarine was sunk using potatoes. Just
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: gonna let that one hang in the air.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Were these like regular potatoes or these like you know,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: super mutant potatoes. Were there just a whole bunch of
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: potatoes tied together to make a giant battering red I
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: don't know, I just just my imagination is going wild.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: These are all great ideas, These are all great ideas. No,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the usso bannon came across a surfaced Japanese submarine and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: they had surfaced because they had a malfunctioning periscope, and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: they blasted enough holes in the submarine to prevent it
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: from safely submerging again, but not enough damage to sink it.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And so they pulled directly along the sub and the submariners,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you know, are of course pod and angry, and before
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: they could start firing, the crew of the USS Obannon
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: began throwing potatoes at them, because for some reason, there
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: were no guns on the USS Obannon, and the Japanese
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: forces thought the potatoes were grenades.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: You know, with a name like Obannon, you think they
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: would be more concerned with conserving their potatoes. Do you
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: know what?
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Soon No, I think we have to wonder what the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: what the namesake of the USS O Bannon would have
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: thought about it. But surprisingly enough to us, it turns
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: out that it is not well, it's uncommon, but it's
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: not unreasonable for food to be used as a weapon
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of war. Typically, when I thought of this sort of stuff,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I thought food is a weapon of war would have
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: been a matter of resource restriction, right, like you starve
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a city, you're sieging. I didn't know that you could
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: shoot cheese at people, and you know, that's on me
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I gotta think outside the box.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think some time outside the box would do
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: us both a world of good. And thankfully we have
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: all these fun topics to help us do that. Agreed.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And I want to ask you, Noel, does this curious
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: case of mad honey which persists today, does this inspire
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: any questions for you? Would you ever try it if
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you found yourself near the Black Sea or Nepal?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so. I mean again, it's not illegal
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: if if I know enough about it that I certainly wouldn't,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: you know, spread it on toast and just go to town.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: But I try a little taste because it sounds like
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: in small doses it almost has just a slight euphoric
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: like maybe almost like having a beer or something kind
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: of vibe. But when you start kind of piling it on,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: it turns much darker.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think that's a reasonable way to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: look at it. Let's see if we get a YA
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: or name from super producer Casey Pegrim Casey, what do
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: All Right, we have a ya.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Casey's all for it, Nol's all for it. I think
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: it's reasonable. I am impulsive. I probably would try it,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: But what about you? Friends and neighbors. Would you take
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a dose of the infamous mad honey, the substance that
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: toppled armies. Would you be up to the task? Why
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: or why not? Or have you already tried it?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Right into us. Any intrepid travelers out there that
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: have scaled the rocky cliffs of Nepal in search of
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: this intoxicating nectar. We are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: You can also find us on social media in various forms,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: including Facebook and Instagram. Well those are the only.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Ones, yep, those are the main ones. We do not
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: have a LinkedIn, nor do we have a farmer's link.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: We don't use the P word anymore either.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: No, that's true. It is a it's a large sign
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: directly by this humongous timer we still have in the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: office from a previous episode.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, today, time is not on our side, but we
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: hope that you will join us next time for another
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: episode of Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: your favorite shows.