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Death by Honey: The Legend of the Mellified Man · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Let's hear it for our
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  Speaker 1: super producer, Mr. Max Chiropractory Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Max, the mellified man of La Mancha Williams.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: You guys excited to get some tattoos done? Within a week,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: we're all going to have tattoos from Cruz. I mean,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: avoid shit.
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  Speaker 2: Tattoos from Cruz tattoos?
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  Speaker 1: Well, obviously not me, but I fully support you guys.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Especially you, Ben. I'm on the fence, too, man. I'm
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: not going to let you bully me into getting a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: freaking Cruz tattoo.
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  Speaker 3: I'm 100% on the fence, too. From what I've heard,
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: it's the duo from Sminty who are leading the charge
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  Speaker 3: on this one.
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  Speaker 2: Sminty, meaning Stuff Mom Never Told You.
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  Speaker 1: Featuring the legendary Annie, Sam and Rima. So we we're
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  Speaker 1: big fans of these folks. And that's Noel Brown. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm Ben Bullen. Yeah. And I got to ask you
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  Speaker 1: guys quick poll for the crew. What's the weirdest thing
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  Speaker 1: you would do to live forever or to live like
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: an extra 50 years?
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  Speaker 2: Drink mercury. That'll kill you, though. Yeah. I'm good. I'm
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  Speaker 2: good with mortality, man. You can keep it. You can
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  Speaker 2: keep your juice. Okay. By you, I mean whatever snake
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  Speaker 2: oil salesman is offering me, this devil's bargain. Right.
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  Speaker 1: We've asked this question just like so many world leaders.
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  Speaker 1: Shout out to Mercury. Max is referencing the first emperor
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  Speaker 1: of China there. we've also asked this in more modern senses,
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  Speaker 1: like would you consider uploading your consciousness to the cloud?
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  Speaker 2: Don't do it.
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  Speaker 1: Would you make clones? Would you participate in cannibalism? And
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  Speaker 1: before you answer that last one, folks. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Wait, wait, wait.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Quick caveat.
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  Speaker 1: Noel, I love the yes and enthusiasm. On that last note,
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  Speaker 1: before we talk about cannibalism, What if we sweetened the deal?
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  Speaker 2: So, like, we're going to make human cake or something?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to make cannibalism sweet again, dude. We also, Nola,
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  Speaker 1: as you remember, we became, years ago, fascinated with funereal
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  Speaker 1: and burial practices across the planet, like mummies, cannibalism, cremation,
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  Speaker 1: one of my personal favorites, sky burial, and so on.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Today we're talking about a different method. It's a
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  Speaker 2: little bit more sticky icky. It is. It is.
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  Speaker 1: Out of all of humanity's traditions surrounding, like you said, Noel, mortality, death,
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  Speaker 1: and thanatology in the afterlife.
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  Speaker 2: Thanos. I already made this realization, man. This has happened
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  Speaker 2: in real time before. It's happening a second time. He
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  Speaker 2: is death incarnate. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Thanatology is the fancy word for the study of death.
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  Speaker 1: There is one legendary process that stands unique. What, pray tell,
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  Speaker 1: exactly is a mellified man?
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  Speaker 2: My mellow, my man. They call me Mellow Yellow, quite rightly.
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  Speaker 2: It's just a real chill dude. Yes, it's just a.
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  Speaker 1: It's just a real mellow yellow of a person.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it would make you a little yellow. It's entirely possible,
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  Speaker 2: or at least amber in hue. And you can't get
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  Speaker 2: much more mellow than dead. And what's the word I'm
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  Speaker 2: looking for? Preserved in sweet, sweet nectar of the bees. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So we'll introduce our word of the day. Melification, with
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  Speaker 1: two L's. All it means is introducing honey into some
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  Speaker 1: other substance, like making a honey cake, right? Or the
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  Speaker 1: production of honey in general. And what I love about this,
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  Speaker 1: Nola Max, is that this beautiful, awkward English language is
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  Speaker 1: so full of cartoonishly specific words.
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  Speaker 2: That we don't use often. Ben, I made a delightful
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  Speaker 2: marinade for my salmon last night that involved lemon juice, seasonings,
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  Speaker 2: and honey, and a little olive oil. Did I mellify
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  Speaker 2: my salmon?
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  Speaker 1: You may have mellified it, yeah, because you, especially in
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  Speaker 1: a marinade, Noel, there we're introducing it into this other substance,
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  Speaker 1: that being the salmon. Do you put ginger on the salmon?
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  Speaker 2: I have been known to do so. I am currently
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  Speaker 2: without ginger, but I really love a citrus in my salmon.
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  Speaker 2: And a little bit of honey or even maple syrup
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  Speaker 2: is nice because it causes it to caramelize a little
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  Speaker 2: bit on the outside and you get a nice crust.
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  Speaker 2: And I've been doing my salmon. I know it's a
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  Speaker 2: little bit lazy, but I've been doing it in the
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  Speaker 2: air fryer and it flipping rules. No judgment, man. That's
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  Speaker 2: going to be awesome.
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  Speaker 1: The only judgment is that you haven't invited Max and
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  Speaker 1: Max and I.
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  Speaker 2: It already was awesome. It's gone. It's done. But I'll
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  Speaker 2: do it. I'll do it up for you guys when
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  Speaker 2: we get back from our voyage.
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  Speaker 3: Now bring the air fryer with you. Let's air fry
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  Speaker 3: some sandwich on the voyage.
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  Speaker 2: This is a chunky air fryer, man. This is like
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  Speaker 2: almost like an industrial kitchen type air fryer. It's got
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  Speaker 2: racks and stuff. I really like it.
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  Speaker 3: I got the Delta card. I get two free check bags.
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  Speaker 3: I'll use one for the air fryer.
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  Speaker 2: Nah, I think they got the food. The food stuff's covered, man.
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  Speaker 2: They are pretty good.
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  Speaker 1: We'll ask about their honey stance, but we can imagine
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  Speaker 1: they will tell us they're very pro-honey because we can
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  Speaker 1: all agree, and we hope you do too, folks, that
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  Speaker 1: honey has always been seen as a sort of miracle
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  Speaker 1: substance in humanity. Right. Going back to before the real
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  Speaker 1: written word, it's how would we. OK, let's say aliens land.
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  Speaker 1: How do we describe honey to them? I would say
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  Speaker 1: it's like bee milk.
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  Speaker 2: Well, spoiler alert, sort of for begonia and save the
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  Speaker 2: green planet. More begonia. Three, two, one. The aliens in
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  Speaker 2: that movie are super into honey and bees. And in fact,
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  Speaker 2: that's kind of the way. One of the ways they
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  Speaker 2: judge the failure of humanity is the die-off of colony collapse. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Perfect note because honey is– in begonia, it is seen
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  Speaker 1: as a miracle substance by extraterrestrials as well. You're a
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  Speaker 1: bee or you're a certain type of bee like a honeybee.
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  Speaker 1: You get nectar from flowers. You go back to the hive.
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  Speaker 1: you start working on this concoction. So this stuff, the
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  Speaker 1: end result is so dense that a single tablespoon has
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  Speaker 1: around 64 calories, 17 grams of sugar, no fat, no fiber,
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  Speaker 1: no sodium. Obviously, humans have been in love with this
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  Speaker 1: stuff for so long.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's also just nom, nom, nom-y, man. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's like, it's delicious. And it has some pretty incredible
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  Speaker 2: health properties, you know, whether you go out for all
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  Speaker 2: of the holistic, you know, medicine type stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Eat honey made from local bees.
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  Speaker 2: They say it'll help you. I've seen it happen.
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  Speaker 1: It'll help you tackle allergies or the placebo effect.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe so. And we know the placebo effect is a
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  Speaker 2: hell of a drug, but it does feel like it
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  Speaker 2: does something. And also, You know, raw honey, they say,
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  Speaker 2: has even more health benefits. Anyway, I just it's obviously
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  Speaker 2: one of the most fascinating, naturally occurring kind. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: just the perfect storm it takes to make this stuff,
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  Speaker 2: that it even exists. The interaction of, you know, animal
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  Speaker 2: and plant to create this, the whole synthesization process of
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  Speaker 2: it is really, really fascinating. And it's such an interesting
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  Speaker 2: look into the complexity of our planet. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And we found a really interesting theory on our way
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  Speaker 1: to the mellified man here, folks. There are strong arguments
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  Speaker 1: that honey may be partially responsible for the birth of
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  Speaker 1: human civilization because way before people were figuring out how
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  Speaker 1: to plant and routinely grow things, early ancestors of humans
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  Speaker 1: were honey hunters. It was a supplement to the meat
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  Speaker 1: and the plants they would find. You still see it,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, in modern hunter-gatherer groups like the Hadza of Tanzania.
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  Speaker 1: We see multiple anthropologists saying the massive energy density of honey,
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  Speaker 1: just that punch you get, helped Homo sapiens evolve those large,
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  Speaker 1: extremely expensive brains.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's even something called medical-grade honey, or manuka, which
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  Speaker 2: is a particular... I'm trying to look up a little
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  Speaker 2: bit more detail about the background of it. Yeah, okay.
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  Speaker 2: So it is indigenous to New Zealand and Australia. It
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  Speaker 2: comes from the Leptospermum scoparium plant, and it is apparently
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  Speaker 2: gangbusters at treating burns and other kinds of wounds. Even
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  Speaker 2: the regular stuff, I think, does an okay job in
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  Speaker 2: minor cases. burns and cuts and the kind of thing
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  Speaker 2: you would have seen maybe used to make.
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  Speaker 1: A poultice ah we love a poultice here uh we
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  Speaker 1: also know that the earliest depiction of humans chasing honey
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  Speaker 1: dates back to get this folks 8 000 years ago
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  Speaker 1: there's a rock painting in Spain's Spider Cave. We're just
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  Speaker 1: translating to English here.
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  Speaker 2: I want to go there. That sounds dope. You want
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  Speaker 2: to go to Spider Cave? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Noel, could you describe the picture? We've attached an image
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  Speaker 1: of what was painted on the cave wall.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, it's kind of classic
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  Speaker 2: cave painting type stuff. Yeah, dude, it's sort of a
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  Speaker 2: wiry cave painting-esque figure. What maybe looks to be some
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  Speaker 2: plant life, some stalks of some kind. and maybe a
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  Speaker 2: rudimentary sun in the horizon. I'm not quite sure if
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  Speaker 2: that's what I'm looking at. But very clear are the
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  Speaker 2: wafting and floating bees that are, you know, there's multiple
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  Speaker 2: of them. They're kind of clustered together like bees tend
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  Speaker 2: to be. And, yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear what
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  Speaker 2: they're depicting here. It also looks like the Homo sapien
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  Speaker 2: being depicted is holding some sort of basket, perhaps doing
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  Speaker 2: an early form of beekeeping. Apiary keeping? Yes. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: An apiarist? An apiarist, yeah. You nailed it, man.
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  Speaker 1: It did not take long for humans to move from
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  Speaker 1: stalking wild bees, kind of like bears, into attempts at
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  Speaker 1: domesticating bees. And that's why we see organized beekeeping, or
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  Speaker 1: as we said, apiary practices, dating back to like 3000
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  Speaker 1: BCE in ancient Egypt. People were astounded. This stuff never
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  Speaker 1: went bad. It tasted amazing. It is no surprise that
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  Speaker 1: folks also ascribed magical powers to honey. You know, you
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  Speaker 1: see the you see the Greeks, right? They say that Zeus.
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  Speaker 1: ate honey as a child that's part of why he's
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  Speaker 1: so powerful.
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  Speaker 2: Bro the bible's always talking about the land of milk
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  Speaker 2: and honey you know i mean it's definitely considered pretty
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  Speaker 2: top stuff uh throughout various cultures um not to mention
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  Speaker 2: ben uh have you seen the movie the beekeeper.
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  Speaker 1: Yes with uh jason statham i like how all his
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  Speaker 1: titles are him having a.
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  Speaker 2: Job it's true i think it's it's good I really
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  Speaker 2: enjoy it. I do love when a badass kind of,
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  Speaker 2: you know, person in a film is also depicted as
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  Speaker 2: being like hyper zen until they start just like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: going on a murder spree that they do with the
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  Speaker 2: calm and collectedness of an apiarist. Yes, yes.
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  Speaker 1: We also know the nine muses of myth. If they
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  Speaker 1: liked you as a poet, an orator, or a philosopher,
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  Speaker 1: they would give you sacred honey on your tongue. It
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  Speaker 1: would make you speak and think better than the, you know,
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  Speaker 1: ordinary hoi polloi or the proletariat. And word among the
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  Speaker 1: Greeks was that if you had to pass through the
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  Speaker 1: underworld and the afterlife on the way to Hades, you
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  Speaker 1: would meet his three-headed guard dog and you could bribe
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  Speaker 1: the dog with honey cakes.
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  Speaker 2: He just wants a treat. He just wants a treat.
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  Speaker 2: He's a good boy. He just wants a treat. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's something that you see kind of interculturally speaking, like
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  Speaker 2: the Norse, for example. As we know, they were quite
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  Speaker 2: fond of honey because they used it to make meat. Oh,
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  Speaker 2: that's right.
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  Speaker 1: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: In Hindu culture, honey is part of a concoction called panchamrita,
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  Speaker 2: which is milk, yogurt, clarified butter, honey, and sugar that
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  Speaker 2: is often offered during worship. to various ancestors, leaving offerings
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  Speaker 2: of sweets and milk. Honey may also be used, depending
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  Speaker 2: on various family cultures. In Mesoamerica, you see it. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's all over the place, man. Because it doesn't go bad. Oh. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I was going to say, but not only does it
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  Speaker 2: not go bad, whatever you stick inside of it also
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  Speaker 2: doesn't go bad. That's the idea.
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  Speaker 1: The human relationship with honey is so deep, so widespread
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  Speaker 1: throughout history. It is no wonder that humans looked at
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  Speaker 1: it and eventually said, let's get even weirder, similar to
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  Speaker 1: those alchemical ideas about mercury.
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  Speaker 2: What if we put a whole dude in there? Yeah, right.
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  Speaker 1: The big difference being that people who tried to consume
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  Speaker 1: mercury to live forever got mercury poisoning and died pretty quickly,
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  Speaker 1: but consuming honey is not going to kill you. So
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  Speaker 1: at this time, there was a lot of what we
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  Speaker 1: call sympathetic magic. Since honey does not spoil, maybe consuming
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  Speaker 1: this unspoilable thing will do something similar to you. It
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  Speaker 1: can heal your wounds, cure medical conditions. It could give
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  Speaker 1: you strange powers or put you into a state beyond
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  Speaker 1: simple life and death.
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  Speaker 2: And Ben, if I'm not mistaken, it's coming to me
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  Speaker 2: from something we talked about in the past, either on
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  Speaker 2: this show or stuff they don't want you to know,
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  Speaker 2: I want to say there's historical evidence of psychedelic honey,
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  Speaker 2: kinds of honeys that'll get you messed up. Mad honey
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  Speaker 2: is what they called it, I want to say, from
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  Speaker 2: the black region of Turkey and Nepal that could cause nausea, vomiting, sweating, dizziness, tingling,
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  Speaker 2: and some reports that it even could cause hallucinations.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, meetings with God, right? And Obviously, over the many
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  Speaker 1: millennia here, people tried to weaponize it. Here's the headline
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  Speaker 1: for the episode. For centuries, folks, there has been this
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  Speaker 1: very weird rumor that certain holy figures practiced a specific
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  Speaker 1: type of slow-motion, honey-centric suicide. They would turn their bodies
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  Speaker 1: into these relics that, when consumed by ordinary humans... would
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  Speaker 1: function as a panacea.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, meaning a cure-all. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Snake oil to the max. Our primary sources, not you, Max,
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  Speaker 1: just to the maximum. Our primary sources for these claims
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  Speaker 1: come from an infamous Greek historian, Herodotus And I learned
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that pronunciation from Assassin's Creed, so nobody get mad at me.
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  Speaker 2: I think you nailed it. But Ben, speaking of the
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  Speaker 2: panacea effect of it all, we talked recently on this
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  Speaker 2: show about stink oil type stuff. I think it was
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  Speaker 2: maybe in the Stuff People Used to Get High Too episode.
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  Speaker 2: I can't quite remember. Yes, very much so. Right. And
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  Speaker 2: I maybe mentioned, I know what it was. It was
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: with Zarin. He was talking about, we're talking about reindeer
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  Speaker 2: antlers and guts and stuff like that and how in
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: my relatively recent kind of fitness obsession, The algorithm on
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Instagram serves me up all kinds of weird snake oily
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  Speaker 2: kind of supplements. Eat these reindeer organs. Eat these reindeer
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  Speaker 2: organs or this velvet, antler velvet. One that I keep
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  Speaker 2: seeing is particular types of raw honey that apparently, you know,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: come in these little packets and you eat it. It also,
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  Speaker 2: because it is so calorically dense, it's very popular with
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  Speaker 2: bicyclists because they need to, and because the carbs, you know,
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  Speaker 2: that's a big part of the fuel that long haul
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: products mountain bikers need. And it's so low weight. Low weight.
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  Speaker 1: That's a huge part of it.
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  Speaker 2: So our guy Herodotus.
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  Speaker 1: He has a, we'll be honest with you folks, he
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  Speaker 1: has a lot of wild ass statements. One of his
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  Speaker 1: statements is that Assyrians used to inter or embalm their
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  Speaker 1: dead with honey. He didn't say it gave them magical powers.
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  Speaker 1: For that, we have to go to Chinese medical text,
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  Speaker 1: especially one called the– we're going to butcher the Chinese here, folks.
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  Speaker 1: The translation would be great pharmacopoeia or the Ben Kao
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  Speaker 1: Gong Mu.
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  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. And it makes sense. You know, people are always
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  Speaker 2: talking about ancient Chinese medicine and these kind of holistic
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  Speaker 2: remedies that culturally come out of that part of the world.
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  Speaker 2: And honey is a big part of that. The compendium
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  Speaker 2: that you're talking about, Ben, was published during the Ming Dynasty.
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  Speaker 2: It includes some quite compelling accounts of medicine and natural
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: history and some of the traditional Chinese medicine and herbology
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  Speaker 2: I was talking about. It was created by a dude
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  Speaker 2: named Li Shixian. who lived from 1518 to 1593. He
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  Speaker 2: was a physician and a pretty learned fellow, multidisciplinary type dude.
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  Speaker 2: And he spent 27 years combining all of these sources
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  Speaker 2: into his magnum opus, a lot of which you're going
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  Speaker 2: to recognize from some of the Chinese, popular Chinese remedies.
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  Speaker 2: that experts here continue to use. I mean, you hear
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  Speaker 2: people all the time recommending, you gotta go to this
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  Speaker 2: Chinese herbalist, you know, it's like life-changing stuff. And maybe
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  Speaker 2: there's some placebo effect in that, but I don't know, man,
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  Speaker 2: like I'm very curious.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, natural medicine, right, native medicine has things that big
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  Speaker 1: pharma doesn't always have. And I know people might feel
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  Speaker 1: like it's a hot take, feel that way if you wish,
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  Speaker 1: but it is correct. And in this huge book, this
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  Speaker 1: encyclopedia of Li Shijian saying all this stuff that he
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  Speaker 1: heard about, he's like the editor, right? In this book,
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  Speaker 1: there's one entry that still mystifies historians and doctors alike.
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  Speaker 1: It's the legend of the mellified man. So his book
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  Speaker 1: has this bizarre secondhand account in it. And he says, look, also,
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  Speaker 1: I've heard that certain elderly holy men in distant lands
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  Speaker 1: of the far west, cough, cough, modern Arabia, they're going
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to get to the near the end of their lives.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And because they are so righteous, they volunteer to for
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: a specific type of mummification process. The typical mummification process
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  Speaker 1: occurs posthumously in Egypt, or you could get ritually sacrificed
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and buried in some dry cave like mummies in South America.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Not for these guys. What they do is start out
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: by just eating honey. They go on a new diet.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Honey diets, an only honey diet. They would apparently even
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: start bathing in honey. How expensive is that? Well, that's
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: a good point, Ben. We didn't really talk about this.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know that we have any figures, but certainly
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: today we have these much more massive operations, maybe it
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: was part of why colony collapse is a thing. I
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: can't quite recall. But back in those days, honey probably
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: would have been a pretty hot commodity. You couldn't just
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: make endless amounts of it, right? Right, exactly.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And so these guys, as we're telling you just the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: straight up story, they, okay, so they're all older dudes
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and they're always a dude. They start eating honey. And
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: like you were saying, Noel, They start bathing in honey.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Prices be damned. You can't take the money with you.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And as they enter this diet, their bodies begin to change.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: They are becoming mellified. This glorious bee milk substance is
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: replacing a lot of their anatomy to the point where
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: they are sweating honey. They're peeing honey. They're pooping honey.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: They stink of honey.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I would argue that they have a delightful aroma of honey. No, man,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: it would probably get real gnarly. You're right. And they
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: would eventually just wither up, wither away and die from
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: malnutrition because man cannot live on carbs alone. Yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Even back then, everybody knew this was unsustainable. Like you
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: were saying, once these guys passed away, that's where things
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: get interesting because the next step in the process is
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: is to create what we could call a time capsule today.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You put the body, after the person has passed away,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: you put the body into a stone coffin, you fill
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: it to the brim with.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Honey. It's honey. It is. It is.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And then you seal it up for a hundred years.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: The first two ingredients are a righteous human being and honey.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: The third ingredient is time. So like That made-for-TV infomercial
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: guy used to say with his rotisserie chicken, set it
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and forget it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. That's honey for you. It's nature's rotisserie chicken
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: cooker thing. So the people cooking this kind of, let's
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: be honest, pretty macabre recipe up likely knew that they
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: probably weren't going to do this themselves. Right. because, you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: it took a hundred years to cure, right? Yeah.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So you are, you are the person putting the honey
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: on the corpse and sealing the coffin. You know, it
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: takes a hundred years to reach its potential minimum. So
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you're probably not going to see it. And we have
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: an excerpt of Li Shenzhen's description translated to rough English.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe we Maybe we half and half this. It says,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: in the land of the Arabs, there are men 70
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: or 80 years old who are only willing to give
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: their bodies to save others, such that one takes no
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: more food or drink, only bathing and eating a little honey,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: till after a month his excreta are nothing but honey,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: then death ensues.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Wowzers is compatriots place the body to macerate in a
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: stone coffin full of honey with an inscription giving the
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: year and month of a burial. It's basically like they're
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: packing them up in a Tupperware. Yeah, it's labeled Tupperware.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: For anybody who has a freezer. or an obsession with
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: cooking ahead. I'm a big vacuum sealer guy. I love it. Yeah,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: it's great. It's the way to go. The astronauts do it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Excellent kitchen accessory.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: So, okay, we've got our Tupperware body in its stone coffin.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Fast forward a century has passed because honey doesn't go bad.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: The issue here is that the body-honey combination, per the legend,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: starts to break down into kind of a gunky confection
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of sorts. You'll hear English speakers call it a mummy confection.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: This pharmacopoeia refers to it as miuret, which translates to
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: honey person.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: We've made a honey person. That's nice. A little scary.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Why am I thinking of Jurassic Park through all this?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Like just thinking of like the... you know, the insects
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: preserved in amber. I'm just curious if tree sap and
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: honey have any commonalities, at least in terms of their
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: ability to preserve. Yeah, it would appear that both derive
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: from sugary liquids. That makes sense. They do have different
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: compositions and roles, but they do have some commonalities in
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: their caloric density and their ability to crystallize. And they're obviously,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: of course, both produced by natural processes. Yeah.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and our buddy Lee, the editor of this pharmacopoeia,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: he says, here's what happens. After this century of curing
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: has occurred, you take your stone coffin, you check the date,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you unseal it, and you take just a little dab
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: of this resulting corpse gunk and you put it on wounds,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: both external and internal. So somebody gets hit with a
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: spear or a sword or some other type of blade.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: You just plop it on them. and go with God,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and they're going to be fine. Or if you have
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: internal fractures or maladies of the organs, you give them
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a little bit that they sip on, and it'll fix them. Yeah.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm skeptical of how an internal hemorrhage is
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: going to be cured by a little sip of honey.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Right. Especially knowing what we know about how the body
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: ingest substances, right? Like, how is that going to, anyway.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Well, and I could see from observation in early, you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: documentation of this kind of phenomenon, how it might appear
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: to have some sort of regenerative qualities. Of course, yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And this gets us to a weird part. We have
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to admit that even in Lee's time, Everybody knew the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: economy would mean that this miracle drug wasn't for everybody.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: It was so labor-intensive in terms of ingredients. Someone has
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to actually die, and they have to be a good
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: person before they die. As a result, the end product
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: is super-duper rare. It's hard to find. If you can
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: find it, it's egregiously expensive. This is a medicine for
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the elite.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: That's the story.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: That Lee says he heard. And similar to Herodotus, Lee
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: never says he directly witnessed this. He never says he
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: saw the results, nor consumed any of this mummy gunk.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And that leads us to ask Nolan Max, did this
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: ever actually happen, or is this a legend?
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I don't doubt that it was attempted. I'm just skeptical
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: as to some sort of result being a perfectly preserved
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: human body. I hear you.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I'm even more skeptical, man, because I don't think it
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: was attempted.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Okay. All right.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I did just because of the cost, you know? And Lee,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I think, shares that with us because he is, again,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: like you said, he's a polymath. He wants to be
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: seen as a credible academic source. And toward the end
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: of his entry on the Malified Man story, he puts
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a little bit of fine print where he writes in part,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I myself do not know whether the tale is true
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: or not. In any case, I append it for the
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: consideration of the learned.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Ben, I'd be skeptical as to what kind of
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: evidence might be out there in the archaeological record or
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: even outside of this hearsay that it would appear this
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: gentleman is repeating. any kind of true procedural guide on
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: how to go about this, like in some sort of
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: repeatable way.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He's basically saying, guys, this is some stuff
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I heard, but if you're reading this, you're a nerd
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: like me, so maybe you can straighten it out for us.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: You can't do that in today's medical works, but if
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: we unpack it, You know, what I think interests both
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: of us here is that we do know ritualistic or
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: medicinal cannibalism is a real thing. It's in so many cultures.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: You asked me at the top of the show if
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I would ever do cannibalism. Maybe you didn't ask me
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: in that way directly. Hey, bro, would you ever do cannibalism?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: What are you doing Saturday, bro? I just mean if
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: it was like... if someone donated their body to you
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: know culinary school i'd give it a try if it
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: was like if there was if it wasn't yeah if
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: it was there's some i would i would give it
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: a go i would i would try human meat It's
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: all about the marinade, really. It really is. Let's malify
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: that biz. There are numerous popular examples of ritualized cannibals,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: of course. One that perseveres to this day, or at least,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: you know, what's the word I'm looking for? It's more
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: of a figurative example of cannibalism, but I've always found
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: it pretty ghoulish. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: What we're saying here is going to be obvious to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of our fellow Western ridiculous historians. If you
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: want ritualized figurative cannibalism, look no further than the practice
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of Catholicism and a lot of Christianity.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: The Eucharist.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the concept of consuming the Eucharist represented by the
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: ingestion of wine or grape juice and crackers that signify
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the consumption of the blood and body of Jesus Christ
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: from earlier times. You know, we also have to mention transubstantiation,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: which argues this is not figurative. Once it touches your
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: tongue or your mouth, it becomes the blood and body
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: of Christ.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And of course, you know, with things like vampirism and
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: just so much folklore that involves like absorbing someone's essence
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: by drinking of their blood or eating of their flesh.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, it makes sense that the ancient Romans truly
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: believed that they could derive the power of the warrior
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: from consuming gladiator blood.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then we have to also mention a previous
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: episode about how various medieval Europeans believed would literally grind
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: up Egyptian mummies for medicine, it's not implausible then to
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: suppose that, you know, I have to walk it back. No,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: it's quite possible that someone may have tried to mellify
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: themselves because our second point is honey is a miracle substance.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: And truly it's, I mean, we didn't even get into this,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: but part of the reason that it is so effective
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: in treating burns and wounds and things like that is
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: it has a significant antimicrobial properties. Yes. Good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: We also, we've got to mention this. We have actual
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: proof that humans in some parts of the world still
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: practice traditional rituals and medicine involving the use of human
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: body parts, not always with consent.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now that's where it gets tricky. What we don't have, though, Ben,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I think we set it up, you set it up beautifully,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: is much, if any, I don't know, you'll have to
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: school me on this one, Ben, evidence of this very
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: mellow man. Yeah, we have no proof, by the way. Cool, cool, cool.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: We have no proof whatsoever unless this is one of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: history's biggest cover-ups. We're not saying Lee was a knucklehead,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: but like Herodotus before him.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: He was a historian, though. Yeah, physician, historian. It was
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: doing a medical— I mean, I don't know that even in
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the way he's describing it as saying you should do this.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: He seemed skeptical. In the translations anyway, I think.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was leaning in and going, guys, I heard
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: this crazy story, by the way.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be wild?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: He was working with a dearth of information. He had
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: no way to prove or disprove this conclusively. And he
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: was also working against translation because Herodotus just said, I
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: heard some Assyrians got buried with honey, not necessarily encased
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: in it, again, crazy expensive. Herodotus never said these graves
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: were opened up like some kind of ghoulish goodie basket
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: for the wealthy.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: It's so easy to forget how absolutely crucial translations are
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: of ancient texts or works of fiction or theater, you know? Like,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of hubbub made around the recent
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey, and which translation was used.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: And I've heard a lot of discussions comparing previous translations,
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: and it can just change so much of the meaning.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of back and forth on that one, too, right?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: We know that if you go to more contemporary researchers
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: like Joseph Needham and or Lu Guizhen, they'll tell you
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that old Li was probably lost in translation, just like
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola. He was telling us this
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: tale of exoticized Arabian mystics, but it was coming from
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: much closer to home, an old Burmese custom, modern-day Myanmar,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: of preserving corpses of monks and abbots in honey. And
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: then he was saying, oh, and Buddhist values mean you
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: sacrifice yourself for other people.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: I guess I also don't fully understand, like, if I
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: were to be skeptical about one particular part of this description,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: is the whole, like, eating nothing but honey. Like, I
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: get preserving a corpse. That makes sense. It seems like
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: that could work. Because of the antimicrobial stuff.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, like eating, what's the point of that?
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Are you trying to just pre-preserve your innards? Like I
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: just like prime the pump a little bit? That part
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: doesn't make any sense.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point, Noel, because we also here
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: in 2026, not being the smartest apes on the planet
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just yet, we have hard scientific biological proof that if
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you only consume honey for a long time, It is
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: going to kill you way before you're straight up pooping
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and sweating, honey. This is the epitome of don't.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Try it at home. For sure. Ben, I got to
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: sidetrack really quickly. Did I tell you that I booked
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: the Lost in Translation Hotel for my trip to Japan?
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited for you, man. Just for one night?
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: It's the night that I'm going to be on my
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: own because I'm traveling with a big group and family
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: and stuff, and so we're kind of doing a little
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: bit of... You'll want that one night. I'm so into it,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: but I was just like, you know what? I ought
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: to splurge and live out my... My Bill Murray finding
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: myself in Tokyo middle-aged crisis fantasy. Oh, come on. Treat yourself, baby.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I'm stoked, man. I'm going to have a time.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I don't care what time it is, wherever I'm at,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: just text me.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: I will. The Park Hyatt. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And the nail in this sweet-smelling coffin is that even now,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: as we record, no one, no one ever, ever has
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: found a single physical trace of this.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: No one.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Uh, mellified man, body parts, no artifacts, no honey ridden
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: stone coffins with somebody saying seal back up by this date. Uh,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and you know, that's one of the things you and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I were talking about off air. There are also no
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: records of this from the actual middle East at all.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and by the way, um, middle Eastern honey, uh, there's,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: there's a popular kind that I think when you and
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I went to, the Middle East to Doha, Qatar. I
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: brought home some of this Arabian honey that's like white
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: and it has a very different, I guess this just
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: has to do with what flowers, you know, are pollinated.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: But they're big on honey over there.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: And they, yes, the Middle East does and did know
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: about honey. And the strangest thing we could find is
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the closest that experts have gotten to figuring out a
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: mellified man case is is finding historical incidents of unscrupulous
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: con artists selling counterfeit mellified man gunk, just like medieval
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: grifters would shill out pieces of the true cross or
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: televangelists will sell blessed objects in the modern day.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's also important to mention that honey
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: could slow down the decay of organic flesh. True. And
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: you're definitely going to see it used to preserve things
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: like nuts or fruits. Sure, yeah. And there's certain delicious
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: confections that are that very thing. But over time, you
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: would not end up with a preserved body part like
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: you would in, say, formaldehyde or even just alcohol, right? Right, yeah.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So what we're saying here, folks, is we're kicking off
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: spooky season. with a little bit of skeptical uh skeptical investigation.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: How would you do a malified man costume ben.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Oh wow uh i've got some ideas okay yeah okay
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: i'm thinking like our couples costume yeah i'm thinking i'm
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: thinking like would you just cover yourself.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: In honey and and maybe like walk around inside a
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: clear plastic bag like.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah do like a uh skeleton mask Right.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: So you have something that looks like this with the
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: eyes in it. Ben is holding aloft a poor Yorick-esque skull.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes. Alas, he sweeted well. So that's a great question.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: You would also maybe– I've got some ideas.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Okay. I've got some ideas. We'll talk offline. That's a
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: great question. Yeah. We'll offline this one. Niche historical costumes
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: are always a lot of fun.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, I knew a quite clever guy back in another
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: life who prided himself on thumbing through the dictionary and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: randomly dressing like a word he found there. And I
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: got to tell you, they weren't all bangers.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Can't imagine they would be, Ben, but I do appreciate
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: the uh very specific flex.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: The commitment to the bit he came dressed as a
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: quincux one time and i was like thank you for
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: teaching me that word i think.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: People should dress up as esoteric uh like you know
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: punctuation marks.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Right right and it's arabang uh quincunx by the way
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a geometric pattern of five points arranged in a cross
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: okay Yeah, no, it just wasn't the best costume, but
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a mellified man might be a wonderful costume.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: You said honey mummy off mic and corrected yourself. I
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: love honey mummy. I'm just going to say.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to save it because our point is.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: The next time someone tries to sell you a little snarf,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: a honey mummy, don't buy it.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: You know, be cool. Don't bust them necessarily. So you
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: do it first. You do it first.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: And folks, you have brave, the bold frontiers of podcastry
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: with us. We cannot thank you enough. We've got more
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: episodes on the way. We're so excited for you to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: hear them. Big, big thanks to our super producer. one
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: of the sweetest guys in the game, Maxwell Williams.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Alex Williams, brother of Max, who composed... I had a
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: dream about Alex the other night, and the details elude me,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: but he was there, who composed our theme.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, big shout-out to A.J. Bahamas Jacobs, a.k.a. The Puzzler,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and a little bit of a skeleton face saying, Jonathan Strickland,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: The Quister, we know what you did.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, he is the skeleton in all of our closets.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Eve's Jeffcoat, Chris Rossiotis here in spirit.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Boy, oh boy, the rude dude's over at Ridiculous Crime. Man,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: really enjoyed having Zeron on the podcast talking about weird
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: stuff people used to get high to, get high with.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: All right. Let's call it a day.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: We've got to get stocked up on our antler velvet
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: before we go on this trip.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: A little snarf of antler velvet, perhaps. See you next time, folks.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.