Latest / 1-800-1800 / 1-800-1872: Abby and the chocolate factory

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1-800-1872: Abby and the chocolate factory · 1-800-1800

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Ring, ring.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is this 1872?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is Abby Sandler calling from 1872.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've reached 1-800-1800.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I have a burning question.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 0:14
  [music]
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Mabel.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Madeline.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is 1-800-1800, your favorite podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Every episode we call up a different year from the 19th century.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: This week we are joined by the one and only Abby Sandler.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Who is my college classmate,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: but more importantly is an architect and writer,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: author of a great Substack called Price Upon Request, a weekly design newsletter.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Abby curates selections of sort of arcane objects.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love the things she digs up.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: She's on the auction sites.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: She's doing research.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: She's going to buildings and talking about them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Abby, what's your mission there?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: My mission there is,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to figure out a way to start talking about architecture in
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: a more engaging way because I think that there is famously a void in any sort
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: of enjoyable and accessible design criticism, like both design and architecture.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of felt like These objects were weirdly a way into that
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: because it felt like a very daunting task to just kind of figure out how
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: to make people interested in architecture again.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I have always been interested in interiors and these weird arcane objects
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: that come with them over centuries and thought, Like, why not start here?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Start small and see, you know, we can make our way to the big stuff.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it just was like kind of an experiment that I started.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: given the unfortunate consumer culture that we live in,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, let's make it shoppable.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's like not make this tied to museum collections.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like these things are out in the world.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us can't buy them, but, you know, some people can.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think just the idea that they're out there and they Can be consumed
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: and bought is kind of just a fun thought.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like they are just there for the taking in theory.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just like kind of thinking about how we engage with all these different objects,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's furniture or weird esoteric metal work.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's aspirational.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at grape scissors yesterday.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's aspirational, but it's also just, you know, fun to talk about for me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I figure whoever wants to listen will listen.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're listening.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think you've tapped into something.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's unclear, but...
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I believe in you.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to ask, what did you learn this week?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um...
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned a few things this week.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I learned a lot of things,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: but there are three big things that felt like when I learned them, I was like, whoa.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is that I need to stop taking photos of people in public
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: because I've now had photos I've posted on the internet be traced back to me by
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: the subject
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: in two different cases.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been like an interesting...
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a little drama.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I figure if there's one thing to learn from this, it's that maybe I just need to stop.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I feel like in the era of Google Glass,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: we have to let go of the like sneaky iPhone picture.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just, I don't know why.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't do it.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Was it the nuns that you took a picture of?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they didn't care.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or I haven't heard anything from them.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It actually was a dog owner.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: You can't even take pictures of dogs anymore?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The owners were in the photo.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Surveillance state.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: They commented on the Instagram with this passive-aggressive comment saying,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I would have posed for you, but my parents don't like being photographed.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you walk around with a dog like this dog,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: you just have to accept that sometimes someone like me is going to come along
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: and take a photo.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not feel the need to introduce myself in the process.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is helpful advice.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going to start.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I posted a photo of someone I was having dinner across from in Milan like
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: a year ago.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow both of these went viral.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have a very small Instagram audience.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Something got picked up in the algorithm where these found their way to a broader audience.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, they found their way back to me and the subjects.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways, the internet is very beautiful.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: This girl I was sitting across from was like, that's me.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, that's fucking insane.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so...
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was a big thing I learned.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Other thing I learned,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was writing about this house for this Vienna guide,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wittgenstein house, which designed by the philosopher in Vienna.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys are familiar with it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that two of his siblings committed suicide, which to me was really dark.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of makes sense to me.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It does sort of make sense.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a lot of troubled, dark energy in that house, but I was like, whoa.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a dark thing that I learned this week.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: But you learned two kind of dark things.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third one was just that I learned like what a sturgeon actually looks like.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't they have like a big horn?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're just hideous.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're like a large, hideous fish that are famously like very easy to catch in August, I guess.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I learned all this because someone was talking to me about the sturgeon moon.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, what's the deal with the sturgeon moon?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I saw people being like the sturgeon moon.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, that's so strange.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what the fuck is everyone talking about?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then someone,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: and then I finally looked into it and it was like,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: they're just like these big, ugly fish that like are around in August.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I'm Googling it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: and then,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: you see what it looks like and you're like,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: and then you think, oh, like caviar, like this is where caviar is coming from.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Have you seen how they get caviar out?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to know about it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: My coworker showed me and it was so, you'll never eat caviar again if you see it.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's so crazy.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I might never eat caviar again after seeing what these fucking fish look like.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: They're so scary.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're very scary and very large in a just kind of unsettling way.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: That I know how they take caviar out because sometimes when you're eating sardines,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: you know, there's like, there's an egg sack in there.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: You guys experienced this?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, I haven't.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: I had the pleasure.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I broke up with sardines very recently.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry to hear that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the love of my life.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: Fish ex-wife.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I ship fish.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's very much fish.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you want some really fancy sardines, I can send you mine because I won't eat them now.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, I'm always...
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline, what did you learn?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you guys got, I was just, this isn't really something I learned necessarily.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: I just was sort of attacked by this viral statue.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Anyone?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Is it like Charlie Kirk statue?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: So they put up a new statue of Herman Melville in
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: the town in Massachusetts,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think New Bedford, where he lived while he was writing Moby Dick.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: And everyone kept posting about how hot he was.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to drop this in the chat.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I like could not escape Instagram reels about people talking
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: about how hot Herman Melville is in this statue.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: I have to be honest.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not seeing it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of am.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting a pop-up ad.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, dear.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm trying to zoom in.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about the pants for me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: There's a bulge.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: There's definitely a bulge.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely a hand in the pocket.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: There might also be a bulge.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something going on.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Winswept hair, you know.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: The brow is good.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, strong brow.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Very strong brow.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And also, like, it can really go two ways with the statue.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's either, like,
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: you look
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: terrible, like a monstrous version of yourself, or you look kind of hot.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: How do you, I'm sorry, what are you comparing?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: What real person and statue are you comparing?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: My own imagination.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm like, you haven't seen the statue of me?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: So there's like flattering and unflattering statues.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's flattering and unflattering photos.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone has an opinion, you know?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, that was, I didn't really learn that, but I learned it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: You thought about it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: I thought about it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You learned that some people think Herman Melville was hot.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't surprise me.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: He had bad sciatica.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: That I know.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't really get that from this image.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't look like he's in any nerve pain.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, he's chilling.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: He's absolutely chilling.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: He's kind of clutching to this weird spiral thing in a way.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's a whale.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Those are whale ribs.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Which I know because I've seen a whale carcass.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, that's what I got for you this week.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen a whale on the beach?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, many.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, many.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my dad lives on the beach and whales unfortunately do wash up a lot.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, Mabel, we do want to hear what you learned this week.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: You muttered.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does anyone even care?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Do you guys want to hear what I
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: learned?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I did tweet this on Substack and I do feel like we need to work on the verb for
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I noted this on Substack.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about this when you noted this.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella, Madeline Porsella,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Porsella,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline Anne invited or got her brother hired to be a tutor for the eldest son
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: who basically graduated from being Anne's little nursling to being
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: a young man needing a man to educate him.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: So Branwell Bronte came to Thorpe Green to work with the kid.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Branwell...
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Was a notorious drunkard and addict and just an overall really problematic guy.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And one of his worst acts was what happened at Thorpe Green,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: which is that he fell in love with the woman of the house,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Anne Bronte's boss, a woman who was named Mrs. Robinson, an older married woman.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So then I was like, okay, that must have inspired The Graduate, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, it didn't.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not on Wikipedia at least.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, that would be so cool if I uncracked that.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I cracked that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like such a deep cut that like if I were the graduate, I would also kind of want.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't have to admit it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I would kind of like want to.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's like.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good one.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: This is based on the life and times of Branwell Bronte.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Is there something like inherently sexy about the name Mrs. Robinson?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot to analyze there.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just persisting through across centuries.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, Mrs. Robinson's.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Across time.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I learned.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: So should we get into
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: 1872, ladies?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, Abby, will you tell us why we're in this year?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when you guys asked me...
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: To pick a year,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: after I got so excited,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about where
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: my lighthouses are in terms of the 19th century.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what really impacted me?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that my favorite building was built in 1872.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I like throwing this out there because
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: as an architect,
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: one of like the stupidest questions you get all the time is like,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: what's your favorite building?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then people are like, that's such a dumb question.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, yeah, it is.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually have one.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel, and it's one that nobody, nobody I've met, honestly, really knows about it.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is also kind of satisfying.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So what is it?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's actually, it's the Menier Chocolate Factory.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: In Noisiel, France, which is a suburb just outside of Paris.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a 30-minute train ride.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it was famously the mill that the Menier Chocolate Company,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we'll go a little deeper into this, but...
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: When they bought the site,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: there was already some sort of water mill on the river,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: and then they totally redeveloped it,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: and they turned it into a chocolate processing mill.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And for something so deeply industrial, and this was prime, beginning of industrial production,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is just like truly one of the most beautiful buildings.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went there for the first time, I had no idea it existed.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like in a class and we, you know, we were visiting the site.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now the whole compound is owned by Nestle and there's like a few different buildings.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I think you can visit it as a public, as a normal civilian.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we like had this whole tour and I was like,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: oh my God, we're going to some chocolate factory.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like who the fuck cares?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't even like chocolate that much.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I literally like it changed my life, this building.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I got here.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: People don't talk about falling in love with buildings enough.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they really don't.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, I don't know if like not a lot of people are doing it, but I'm doing it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not easy.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not easy, let me tell you.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: I like that you've said you've broken up with sardines and now that you're,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: you're also in love with this building.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, your dating life sounds amazing.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know the irony there is actually, it's just stunning.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to describe it a little bit for people and then we'll back out and
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: then get back to why?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Explain why it matters, how it looks?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, so I,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: which I think I said this,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: but the building sits like literally on top of the Marne River.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess like also functions as a bridge in the way
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: that it quite literally bridges the river.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it is this beautiful like brick and iron structure that...
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It has this blue iron lattice.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like latticework, honestly, but it's actually iron bracing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And across this completely painted brick structure with normal French windows kind
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: of puncturing like a normal building.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it is just between the ironwork and the painted brickwork,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that this place was just a factory and a place to crush cacao
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: and process it, it was just one of the most stunning sites.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we don't see a lot of beautiful buildings anymore also,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: which is a whole other conversation.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you come across one, it's pretty special.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: there's, yeah,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: there's an amazing brick patterning that's going on,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: like with all the painted brick work and ornamentation.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there's like a clock over the entrance that then there's like this little,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: what is that?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like a cartouche, but it's like a, I guess it's like a two dimensional one.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like kind of just like a little emblem and there's like little,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like painted cacao beans.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just, it's, It's beautiful.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it really stuck with me when I first saw it in 2019.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm looking at images of the building on my other screen to be like,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: am I missing anything?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're looking out into the distance.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not pondering.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: so it's really about this iron bracing,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: like one of the first, I guess, iron frame structures in New France, the world?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Europe?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your jury's out on that one.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But early, early on that.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: the idea that it was also kind of a structural,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: like, revelation, this building, and completely...
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like using new materials and methods of construction
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: and also like not really knowing how they work, which we'll get back into.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think also it's just what makes it so unique
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: and like why you're not like once you see a picture of this building,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're like, huh, like I haven't really seen that before.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like because like they didn't really know what they were doing.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and to me,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: that also kind of is beautiful because like,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they were just figuring it out still.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it probably wouldn't be as beautiful if they had figured it out sooner.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: They were trying something out.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were trying something out.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was just thinking while you were talking about the photographs of Bernd
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: and Hilla Bescher,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: the German couple who took all those photos of Industrial architecture in Germany
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: and like barns and silos and grain elevators and things like that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's so this building is so different than those photos,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: which are sort of like finding the beauty in something that wasn't necessarily built
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: to be beautiful.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: But and those are also industrial buildings.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is an industrial building that was like probably trying to be pretty.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sweet to me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I thought it was, like,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: just so surprising that they would put that kind of,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: like, ornamental and aesthetic effort into a building of this nature.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it, like, yeah, like, it's sweet.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: It really is sweet.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sweet, no pun intended, due to the fact that it's a chocolate factory, I guess.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what was not sweet?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: going to take us back for a second.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is for those who kind of missed what happened in 1871.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I would recommend you listen to our episode 1-800-1871.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Which is mostly about vampires.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: But we're telling a story about France.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, in quick summary, 1870, you see the fall of Emperor Napoleon III.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: 1870, 71, you see the Franco-Prussian War.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you see at the end of the Franco-Prussian War,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: this horrible treaty, well,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: it depends on your side,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: the Treaty of Frankfurt,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: which leaves France in debt to Germany,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: owing billions of francs and like ceding territory.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the entire city of Paris is under military rule,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: which leads ultimately to the Paris Commune in 1871,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: which is this time of sort of like amazing radical hope and opportunity.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then by 1875,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: you see the establishment of the Constitution of the Third Republic,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: which lasts until World War II.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was kind of interested in this timeline.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Madeline and I were just talking about actually Vienna in the 1890s
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: and these timelines that start in the 19th century and end at World War II or
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: at World War I.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like...
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like we are not tapped into that timeline because I think for us,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: like most histories start at World War I and World War II,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: but there's actually this like moment in history that ends.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, begins, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Begins before.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: An ending is a beginning in a way.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: the Paris Commune was too good for this world and was immediately repressed in
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: an extreme amount of violence.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Cue the bloody week.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: 43,000 communards are taken prisoner, and Paris is denied municipal self-rule until the 1970s.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what's actually interesting about the timeline we were just talking about, like,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: that ends at World War II,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: there's actually something starting in the 1870s that lasts 100 years.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the Parisians are basically never forgiven for what they did during the commune.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Following the Paris Commune's bloody repression,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: the labor movement is left kind of leaderless and
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: the working class is more repressed and alienated than ever.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Adolf Tiers, is that how I say that?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tiers?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tiers?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, say it.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Tiers, if you're me reading it, so I'm happy.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's this guy.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: He takes over.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he is advocating for a,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: he wants to be the president of the French Republic,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: but there is still a burgeoning monarchical movement,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: but they can't really like settle on who should lead that between the bourbon
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: and Orlean strains that remain.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I always love a moment where they can't find someone fit to be a monarch,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: even when there's people who survive.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the French in particular.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: They have a hard time.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's true.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, these people must have been so inbred.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Quickly checking people off the list.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like the standard was so low.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then ultimately this republic does survive and a constitution is drafted.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: That cues this period of some stability in France.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought we should talk about what art is going on.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about art and then let's talk about colonialism.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Fabulous.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I pulled together some images for us.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: The first is Monet's impression, sunrise.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Can you ladies describe this for me?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's important.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: So Monet's sunrise is a seascape.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: We are looking at the ocean at sunrise.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: Don't say sunset.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: I just double checked.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Could be either.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: And you see some sort of more,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: old school looking little fishing boats in the foreground with one or two people
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: in them.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: But in the background,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: you can see these industrial ships or buildings that are putting out a lot of steam
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: and smoke.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there's, you know, kind of.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what those are.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: They look like cranes, but like there's just industries visible in the background of this.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Rigs of this oil rigs.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's oil though.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, I'm just kidding.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's chocolate.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's chocolate.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's sturgeon.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we have a kind of classic sunrise sunset scene,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: but instead of the normal,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: beautiful ocean unhindered by human occupants, you have industry in the background.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it's, you kind of have to.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: Which is why I think you chose this, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it requires deeper looking.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like at first,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: it almost feels like this idyllic version,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: like vision of France in the 19th century.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh, how sweet the sun is rising.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there's people in these twee little boats.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, oh, actually, the sort of fishermen are fishing.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, the sort of it's not haze.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a natural haze.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's smog that is creating this blurry, sunny, but gray horizon.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that feels important.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I think that was a good choice.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I actually did not mean for it to
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: be so relevant.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Keep it to yourself.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so smart.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So then on the other side,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I want to jump to Degas,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: who makes this painting called Dance Class at the Opera in 1872.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Abby, you're a former ballerina, aren't you?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am a former dancer,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: less of a ballerina, but, you know, the Degas really hit when I was a kid.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell the Degas.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me what's going on in this painting.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here you have a kind of typical ballet class,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: maybe more even a rehearsal since they look a little dressed, costumed rather.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you have actually a very pretty studio,
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: pretty like maybe
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: just French, like a classical interior.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you have a musician in the background that you have a violinist and
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: a teacher kind of yelling directions at this presumably poor girl who's tired and
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a much clearer image than our previous painting.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: More crisp.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you have some girls, you know, kind of rehearsing, stretching in the background.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just a very arguably typical scene in a ballet studio.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what I always think about when I see a Degas ballerina?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Lieber.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Prostitutes, yeah.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're working girls.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's another side of the same coin that I think you're seeing in Monet's.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think particularly the discipline of the body is something
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: that Degas is really interested in in a lot of his work.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: These are laboring.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: This is not a leisure activity, although watching them is a leisure activity.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: These are working people and you can see them sort of drooping under
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: the physical weight of the labor that they're doing.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: That they are actually fatigued.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like it could be comparable to like a scene of factory workers in some ways.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's so hard to take our 21st century glasses off when you're looking at
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: a Degas painting because it's like I think when you see this painting at
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: a first glance, you're like, oh, like how, again, how idyllic.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how beautiful.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: My ballet classes were not this pretty.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were really slaving away in your dance classes.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: These girls look like they're having a great time.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, yeah, these...
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: These women were subject to a new society that expected them to work and perform for men.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they were also like,
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: by being in this class,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: by being portrayed in these clothes, they were not like good women also.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then speaking of good women.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: You have a man with his big stick.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's always that.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: They love a stick.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ballet teachers love a stick.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's so scary.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: So then on the other hand, so,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: you have these ballerina girls who are kind of slaving away and
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: then you have this dress.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted us to talk about this dress that was designed by Charles Frederick Wirth
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: and it is a beautiful ball gown made of presumably silk and it has all
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: of these crazy tiers of, what do you call these, tassels?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Tassels, yeah.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of unusual for a worth dress because it seems to sort of be inspired
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: by the Orient.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's this kind of Islamicist pattern of embroidery on these bands of tassels.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't actually worn to a celebration of the Suez Canal in 1868,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: but it's mentioned in the description of this collection.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the Mets collection that the Empress Eugenie did wear his dresses.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: He made 250 dresses for her for the opening
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: of a canal, which is just iconic.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even imagine.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm so obsessed.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: I had to know that I was just the idea of going to an opening of a canal.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were living.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: They were living.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Madeline, I don't know if you've gotten to this.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're reading a book about 1873 right now and the party to celebrate
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: the Suez Canal is mentioned.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like the most expensive party that was ever thrown in the history of the world.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, really?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense to me.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of money to be made.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: changed the world.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like this is actually the perfect transition, again,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: did not mean to,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: to talk about the context of this chocolate factory in a global sense.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because what the Suez Canal does is open up the world, right?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can basically get through this really important geographical area faster
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: than you've ever been able to before.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really important when the French are producing at higher
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: and higher levels,
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: at more and more sophisticated ways,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: something like chocolate, which of course is not indigenous to France.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Famously.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think just the like important context here is that during the Third Republic,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: France went from having very small colonial holdings to having some of the biggest,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: the second largest colonial army or empire, sorry, after the British Empire.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So by World War I, they have more territory than almost every other European power.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: And during the Third Republic,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: they established all of these crazy colonial possessions in Asia and Africa.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And in Polynesia.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I want to hand the mic over to my chocolate expert, Madeline Porsella.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I actually like know too much about this.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to try to do an abbreviated version now.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was researching this forever.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's so interesting.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: But basically, chocolate, I'm like 5,000 years ago.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Also, you have to read your first note.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Your first note in your history of chocolate, read it.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's a tree.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Did you guys know that?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I knew that the cacao like pod tree.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are they pods?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's a beautiful image in there.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: They are much bigger than I realized.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: They're revolting.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: I cannot imagine picking that up and being like,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to make a delicious candy tree out of that.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: It basically looks like a seed pod full of teeth.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, yes,
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: it's a tree and it was first domesticated in Ecuador 5,000 years ago
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: and was very common in Mesoamerica,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: consumed by elites, used as currency medicine and in ceremonies.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: The name chocolate,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: it comes in the Spanish, which then becomes universal, is a Nahua word, chocolato.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Love, love.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Good for fun.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so when the Spanish arrive in Mesoamerica in 1519, they are confronted with chocolate.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: They don't think it's delicious, but they see its value.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: And they hear dollar signs.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: They hear dollar signs.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: They see dollar signs.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: They hear coins.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: They, you know, this, that, and the other.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so what they start to notice is that Tariffs are paid in cacao beans
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: and currency is recorded in quantities of cacao beans.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so the Spanish conquistadors pick up that currency system.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I have a note here that says in 1545, you could get a small rabbit for 30 cacao beans.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: One bean could buy a large tomato and 100 beans could purchase a turkey hen.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it was so valuable that they were often counterfeited with a dough made
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: of amaranth, wax, and broken avocado pits.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: That is so crazy.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's so elaborate.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Also like the things that have been duped across human history.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I might not believe.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: I do think that speaks to the inherent yuckiness of cacao,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: that it can be duped by those ingredients.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not delicious on its own.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: And the Spanish really didn't like the way that the Aztecs prepared it.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: They started adding cinnamon and a sweetener, basically.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where you get drinking chocolate from.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it is in the form of drinking chocolate that chocolate makes its way
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: from Mesoamerica to Europe and becomes a delicacy of the elite
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: and particularly elite women.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: What's that
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: about, do you
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: think?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I also made a note here.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: There was something,
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: a line and something I read that was like,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: chocolate is for the elites,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: coffee is for the bourgeois, and beer is for the working class.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's some kind of like this sort
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: of ceremony around chocolate consumption,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think is what is actually the reason for that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was supposed to say there were two parties.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's also like something about drinks.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Women love drinks.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Women love drinks today and in the 19th century and before, but also like, I don't know.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I always think about this when like you're reading a 19th century novel
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: and they talk about making tea and making coffee.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's so much ceremony around drinks.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I also wonder if there's something about like food safety in it,
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: like about the way that sort of pleasure came from heating something up
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: and drinking it rather than just eating it.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Probably because it's less labor and also it might be like hygienically safer.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it seems like so they were not only using chocolate as like a delicious treat.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: It was also a common medicine, which is actually how Menye started.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: We can get into that.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: It was perceived to be an aphrodisiac because it was associated with sex and women.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: Then people thought it was evil.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: So there's many valences of chocolate consumption.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: Then because it's evil, it's sort of like a guilty pleasure thing.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: It takes on all these connotations very quickly.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it's worth saying that in order to support this kind of proliferation of meaning
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: in Europe of chocolate consumption,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: These really exploitative plantation systems are set up to farm cacao beans in first
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: in Mesoamerica.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then in the 1520s, it's brought to the Caribbean, Trinidad and Jamaica.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then by the 19th century,
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: Portugal is producing the most cacao in West Africa
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: in what Is essentially slave plantation labor systems that continue
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: after slavery is said to have ended.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that's like an ongoing issue today,
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: even the way that these West African cacao farms use enslaved labor.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: That reminds me of one of the first things you ever told me about was Tony's Choco Lonely.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you told me it was the first things I ever told you six years ago.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: You were like, it's slave free.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, what do you mean?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: I thought you were saying that.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to ask you to elaborate on that.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what do you mean the chocolate is slave free?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: I meant what I said.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: The concept was new to me.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: And now I'm really into Tony's Chocolate Lonely.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's the only chocolate she eats.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's slave free.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a huge problem.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a huge ongoing problem.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I just have some choice quotes about early encounters with chocolate
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: that I will share and then we can tally how.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: The first is from an Italian traveler named Giralomo Benzoni,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: who was offered chocolate by Guatemalan natives when he arrived there and declared
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: that the drink was fit only for pigs.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: And That the foam on top bubbles like feces.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know what the foam on top looks like, but I agree.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: And then once it made its way to Europe in 1668,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: the Earl of Sandwich,
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: lately back from Spain, wrote a report on the intriguing new import chocolate.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the recipes he included just sounds absolutely delicious.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's a frozen chocolate treat.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: Prepare the chocolati and then put the it's written in like really haphazard old English.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: Put the vessel that hath the chocolati in it into a giraffe, which is a giraffe.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: We need to sell this.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds great.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: We should have made it for this.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's so funny because I was going to text you guys earlier.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: I was at a coffee shop and people were ordering
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: mochas and I was like, I never got a mocha.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: The mocha lives in a different time in my life, I feel.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's for little girls.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's sort of like a 2000s drink, like Starbucks.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so, yeah, a coffee bean, I was going to say.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's like very Frappuccino coated.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's very Frappuccino coated.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I also just love Chocolati.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: Chocolati is so good.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: Chocolati.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: And my final quote is from a...
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: Physician who is expressing concern in a letter about the Marquise Dakota Logan
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: who took so much chocolate during her pregnancy last year that she produced
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: a small boy as black as the devil who died.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it could be all kinds of things.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: It could be all kinds of things.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: But essentially I introduce all of that to say that in Europe for well
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: into Menier's manufacturing history,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: chocolate is consumed as a,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: it's cacao powder that is then mixed with other things at home and consumed as
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: a beverage.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so in the 19th century,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: when this building is built,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's been a huge technological change in chocolate production,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: which started with...
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: There are Quaker chocolate manufacturers like Cadbury in the UK
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: and Swiss chocolate manufacturers like Lint.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing that all these companies still exist in...
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Switzerland, who are innovating on chocolate and make bar chocolate possible, basically.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it becomes possible in the 1830s,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: but then kind of it takes a while before it's market saturation
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: and people are educated about the product of bar chocolate.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really when Menier switches from being a pharmaceutical company,
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: which it had been and was producing cacao as part of their catalog
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: of pharmaceuticals into being a chocolate company.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: why the building was born.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why the building was born.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just say that,
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: and I texted Madeline this while we were researching chocolate,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: that I was addicted in middle school to a video game called Chocolatier.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Abby, did you play this?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Chocolatier?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: I need a visual.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Does it ring a bell for you?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it sounds familiar.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: I had never seen it, I'll admit.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was launched in 2007.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was a computer game.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, no.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: No?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, anyone who's listening who played it...
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: These little purple people?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, purple's a big color.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like steampunky and you play...
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone plays a young chocolatier circa 1880 who has been...
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hired by a woman named Evangeline Baumeister to rebuild
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: the Baumeister chocolate empire, which has been ruined by her evil younger sister.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: I played this in school as an educational activity and it was amazing.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: It made me the chocolatier I am today.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: When Mabel texted me that, I said,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: I learned cursive and did multiplication tables,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: which are two things that Mabel can't do.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is what she has on us.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: This
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: is how you learn to build a business.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like you judge and yet
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm benefiting from the lessons you took from Chocolatier every day.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Should we talk about some of these chocolate pots that were gathered in our notes?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: So in honor of Abby being our guest for this podcast,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: I did pull some chocolate drinking accoutrement,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: some of which is from the Mets collection and some of which is available
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: for purchase.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: Abby, what's your favorite?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite, I know I'm just scrolling through them now to reacquaint myself.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know...
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is this silver one,
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: neoclassical Dutch style,
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: question mark,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: where it has like, like, like, it's like relief, the silver ornament, like what?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: That has a name.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know, that's what I'm saying.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's not Repusay because it's, I'm pretty sure it's etched, but actually it might be Repusay.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I don't remember that, but that one is, I really do like that one.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's the one with the lobster on it.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that one's fascinating.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: That one's Tiffany.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, of course.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And like with the like porcelain handle, I just,
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: this has,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: and there's,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: actually a crab sneaking around the back that if you look really closely,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: he's coming.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just kind of like, what was going on there?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is there a lobster on this chocolate pot?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: I can't explain that one.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's pretty spectacular.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes me want to know more.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: It also really brings together our sort of like seafood and chocolate interests
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: of this
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: episode beautifully.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why it resonated so.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: And also maybe there's something about like chocolate and lobster as aphrodisiacs.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: Not to be disgusting.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: Or that it comes from across the sea.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to know more about this pot in particular.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: What I can say is that it was designed by Charles Osborne
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: while Edward Moore was running the Tiffany workshops.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: And Edward Seymour is known for having a very eclectic collecting taste.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Actually,
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of the Mets collection of Islamic stuff is stuff that he collected
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: while working for Tiffany to copy on Tiffany Goods.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so they were throwing out some crazy stuff while he was the head of the workshop.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also just like It reminds you that so many objects and buildings,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: to tie us back to our subject here,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: like every aspect of them is meant to demonstrate some kind of technical prowess.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Met's description says the lifelike cast ornaments of crawfish
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: and crabs further demonstrate technical virtuosity.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, not lobster.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Crawfish.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Which is actually gross.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: That changes everything.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, hold on.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's like bottom feeders.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Crawfish boil.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: This totally changes everything.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: It says that the lifelike cast ornaments demonstrates technical virtuosity
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: and inventive aesthetic sensibilities as does the rich red color
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: the result
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: of painstaking experimentation and innovative use of electrolytic technology
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: to achieve new surface tones and effects.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's because this is all electroplated silver, I think.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what that means.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: That was something they invented in the 1870s.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually probably bad for design, where basically you could add silver...
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's why it has that weird sheen on some of it and some of it looks more like a normal.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: It was plating,
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: but you could do it in a really refined and specific way
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: where you basically electrocute a bath of water and then plate the silver
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: in this electric bath and it's finer.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like we spent like an inordinate amount of time
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: in our master's degrees learning about electroplating?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: The amount of time I've spent in my life trying to understand electroplating with chocolate.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like only making me realize like I got the wrong master's,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: but... You would have loved our program
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: all week.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why did I... Oh, God.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I also wanted to ask you guys if you understand how you use this chocolate pot.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is a chocolate pot different than a teapot other than that they're like...
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was really hoping you would ask it.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: So a chocolate pot is different from a teapot in many ways.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: It is very similar to a coffee pot, but it's different in some choice ways.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: One is that the spout is much shorter and it's at the top of the pot rather than in
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: the middle because of something to do with heat.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: You don't want to burn it maybe?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think that coffee...
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: You want the water to come out for longer or something.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's about the hot water versus hot milk or something.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: And often a distinguishing thing that you can't see in these would also be
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: that there would be like a filter in the spout to filter out chunks.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't even thought about this.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like coffee, you don't want the bean itself in the drink if you're drinking cacao.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, any other questions?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is interesting, though, that they all have...
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very specific form.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just that it's...
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wonder,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know, it's like bottom heavy, I guess, would be very pear-shaped.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Pear-shaped.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think as with all these things,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: there's also probably an element of being able to tell the difference between
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_03: a coffee pot and a cocoa pot, like being...
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, something you wanted to show off.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: So they made them slightly different.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: But ultimately, I bet you could have made fine hot chocolate in a coffee pot and vice versa.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's funny because I always feel like we live in such an age of appliances,
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, like and I'm really anti appliance.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't want to have an Instapot and a rice cooker and like,
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I don't or in an air fryer.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't and I don't want any of them.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just want like, yeah, exactly.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: I want to use my stove.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And my oven because they basically will do everything.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: But that relies on the fact that like so much of the processing happens outside
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: of my home in the factory.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: And in some ways,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: like the chocolate pot is the is the key that opens the door to
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: the Meniere chocolate factory because it's like in some ways
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: the chocolate factory is doing the labor of the chocolate more and more
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: for people like chocolate bar versus chocolate powder.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is a big difference because you can just eat it on the go and eat it
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: without any instruments or specialty equipment.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't really thought about that.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but obviously,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: the 19th century and every century before there was like a tool for everything
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: and there's a fork for everything.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: What was the, you were talking about grape scissors, Abby?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking about grape scissors yesterday.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: As I was eating these grapes,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: I got these grapes at the farmer's market that really,
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: it feels so stupid to say this,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: but it's like they are like precisely the grape that you would see on like
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: a Murano grape chandelier.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like just so specifically, like that clouded kind of like texture that...
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: I have some of these in my fridge right now.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're really striking grapes.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how else to put it.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do they taste good too?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're so flavor bomb.
• 51:14
  It's crazy.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: We are so sweet.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't even believe it.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you both have grapes at home?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have grapes.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they're exactly the same,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: but I have a very similar grape in my fridge at the moment.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: No, I live in the Hudson Valley, so I got them at my local farm.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it could be the same.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about grape scissors and I was thinking about how I should do
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: a Substack on that.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, I probably shouldn't do a Substack on that.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think you should.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: People need to know.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, objects that's busy is so fun.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's really amazing.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Should we get back to Meniere now?
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: One thing I will say about the building is that in my research,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: this style was described as the Alhambra style, like the style of ornament.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was into that, actually, after you said that.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do you know why?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't really...
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it doesn't look particularly Islamic to me.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know, that's why I never really clocked it, and I'm trying to...
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I really know anything specifically about the ornament,
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: but I am thinking about at this, there's this museum in Paris.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like my favorite museum in the world.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Cité de l'Architecture is basically an architecture museum and they have
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: a model, scale model.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think I put in,
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: I showed you guys in the document,
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: but there's an amazing scale model that's like cut,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: like cut section and And, you know, half of it just has the iron structure.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, and then you see like the ornament on one side.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really getting a better understanding of like the tectonics involved.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then what I don't have a photo of that I know is there,
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: they have the sketches of the brick ornament, like in colored pencil.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think I linked to, there's one at the Musée d'Orsay that I linked to somewhere in that.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we'll never find it, but it exists in that document.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, I don't know or remember what it said about the exact pattern.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask a question about the structure of it?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: So is it sitting on top of the river?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it, why is it on these huge stone walls?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't understand.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is it because it's serving some kind of industrial function or that's just what
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: the building required in terms of support?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm like riffing here.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: This could be like totally wrong,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: but just given how it's like laid out,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: there's like the river level and then there's like the pedestrian access level,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: which is like off of this terrace that where that like main entrance is.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that there was, and I remember there's these tracks inside the building.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there was some,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: which like for some sort of carting or- They
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: built a train that went into it
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: at one point.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense because it's giving train tracks, these tracks.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like very like, you know, in the ground.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's very cool because it's like this,
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: tiled floor and then you have these tracks running through the space
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: for no clear reason.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there was something, there was something industrial happening on that level.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they also like really wanted to separate the rest of the building of it from it.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think even in order to do that,
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably both of what you're saying is that it's kind
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: of structural like piles almost.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And also kind of separating that bottom level of the building,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: which I think was I think was like where all the machinery was.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think what was, they were basically carting in the raw pods and there was a water mill.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the,
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: they needed the water going through the building to run the mill that was milling
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: the beans into the powder.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: And how do they,
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: are they, sorry,
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: now I'm back to chocolate really quick,
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: but like from the cacao pod to the beans,
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: is there like a drying process that happens and then they get milled down?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about that too,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: because you look at those beans in those pods and it's giving white chocolate.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: Again, I don't know exactly.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: I do know that the big innovation that allowed for bar chocolate to be made was
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: a process called conking, which basically involved Thank you.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: Taking, I mean this, I got so deep into this.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: So you take the powder once it's processed and reintegrate the butter,
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: like the cacao butter and reintroduce the fat back into the powder.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why you can make like smoother milk chocolate.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like some sort of separating process.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's a separation and then a recombining.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there also is a drying process.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: There must be a drying process.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Those beans looked wet.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: so we talked about the way that the building sits on top of the river
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: and it's associated, it's a mill.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: It needs the power from the water.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's the way that the building structure is also revealed
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: on its surface, which should we talk about that?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of like one of the most architecturally significant elements of
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: the building in that it was one of like the first exposed metal skeletons.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: And again,
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of what's so exciting is what I was saying before
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: about how they didn't really know how it worked.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: They treated it like a timber structure that you would see on facades of,
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: honestly,
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: smaller buildings,
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: but they were also actively incorporating it into the ornament of the building.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you zoom in on those, I don't know, where they intersect.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Argyle.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: The braces, yeah.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's, I don't know,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: just this idea that they were really, like,
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: taking this completely innovative construction method and figuring out how to, like,
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: celebrate it and make it,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: tie it together with the things that were going to make the building beautiful and,
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: like, very intentionally so.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's like they had been doing things with iron, like,
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: Factory buildings,
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: they'd been doing things with iron for a long time, but never exposed.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: They would often just be like a skeleton that was then covered.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's like more experimental uses of it.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like...
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_03: Saint-Jean of Yves is the sort of famous, like in Paris in particular, and that's in the 1850s.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: But you don't have the whole skeleton on the facade like this.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: You just have those,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: like where the girders come out is exposed so you can see the structure from
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: the outside.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think that structure is more about the interior structure rather
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: than what you're exposed to from the outside.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it's sort of like the moment,
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: it's a stone facade from the outside,
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_03: but you do have this moment for the first time,
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: in kind of public architecture,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: not industrial architecture,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: where you have the iron being something that's on display.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: But this is really like, I've never seen
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: something like this because it's 1872 by the 1880s.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: You're starting to get more contemporary looking things like factory wise.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_03: So the fact that they're taking the steel and trying
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: to imitate timber frame using this new material is like it's like what they did
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_03: at Saint-Jean-Biev where they were using the steel to elongate the stone columns
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: and they're using like a neoclassical vernacular.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_03: But It also feels like the ornament is very folksy or something like it.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: It reminds me of.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know these,
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious about like in the post,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: like in the new third Republic of France,
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: like how this building represents or doesn't represent a kind
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: of like inherent Frenchness,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: which given the fact that it's inspired by Alhambra, like,
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: or that it's sort of Orientalist in nature,
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: like maybe it doesn't, but there's something so specific about it.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: It really is so singular and you don't see like classical elements really in it.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's, it's, It is departing from like a kind of architecture vernacular of the time.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I included a photo of, so Jules Sonnier, who's the architect, had also done a studio.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_03: He did Rosa Bonner's Atelier.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: He did that building in a pretty traditional French vernacular style.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost like Tudor architecture in the UK,
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: but instead of a waddle and daub wall, it's brick.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: You have an exposed timber frame.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: I included the image because Abby made a comment that you think it was important.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did think about it.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: But you can see how he's appropriating these forms and this kind of concept
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: into these other materials really clearly when you're looking at
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_03: the Bonner building.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's before?
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think so.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's very similar.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it looks so much older.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: It does look so much older.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that's in the...
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was built in 1859, I think.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that is very, well, sorry, I'm trailing off.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: But that's in like a kind of French vernacular style.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: And there is post 1870 and post like the commune,
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_03: this real attention between, I mean,
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: it's like ongoing since the French Revolution, but attention between Paris and the
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that like trying to incorporate these provincial styles into like
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: an urban architecture.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was like a move to kind of remedy some of that tension,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: which was like political and economic in addition to.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: And like the people who helped support Tears and keep him
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: in power were mostly people outside of Paris.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: And also it's like worth it.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Noting that this was outside of Paris.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: You remind yourself that, oh no, Munier came in and totally transformed this village.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: There were like 200,
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: 100 people there when they bought the mill and decided that they were going
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: to start building.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then, I mean, that was, they made it their headquarters?
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was like a company town.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was completely a company town.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think,
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: so like,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's just when you think about like that,
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: in regard to like incorporating these,
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: bringing this provincial language like into this Differently sighted architecture,
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: it actually makes more sense than you'd think.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: And there's so many comparable company town type places in Germany,
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_03: like Darmstadt and all of those that kind of take folk architecture and bring them
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_03: into more industrial production and try to make a nice community for the workers
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: through folksy architecture.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: It works.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it works.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm like, if my office looked anything like this, like, I would hate my job way less.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_03: You heard it here.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: Should we talk about the Meniere chocolate company at large
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: and like what they're doing beside these innovation of architecture
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: and bar chocolate?
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what else were they doing that we didn't cover?
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I feel like we should talk about the Paris part and like the way that the posters
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: of Menier Chocolate become kind of like decoration within the city of Paris,
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: which is also transforming at the same time.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's kind of a Paris outside of Paris correlation.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so Menier was founded in 1816 by Antoine Brutus Menier.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_03: And he was an unlicensed but practicing pharmacist.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_03: Aren't we all?
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: Aren't we all?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_03: And chocolate was one of the medicinal products that he offered, as mentioned.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he builds this...
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: This facility in Nwaziel,
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: not including the building that we're looking at,
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_03: but he sort of was the one who started manufacturing in Nwaziel
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: and they were processing all different kinds of chemicals.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: By 1853, their annual chocolate production had gone up to 4,000 tons a year, which is a lot.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they had a variety of products that were not just medicinal anymore,
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_03: but also for baking and snacking.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_03: And when he died in 1860,
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_03: his sons took over and they decided to sell off the pharmaceutical business
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_03: and focus exclusively on chocolate.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: And in doing so,
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: they also purchased a bunch of cocoa plantations in Nicaragua and a bunch
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_03: of sugar beet fields in the north of France.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: Can I say two things?
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was looking at you because you looked like you were about to pipe in.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know when I have an overwhelming...
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I have two responses to what you've just said.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for saying it.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: So one is that, yes, four tons of chocolate is a lot, but... 4,000 tons.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: 4,000 tons.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that is a lot of tons.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because the other tonnage... You thought four tons was a lot.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: Four tons, I was impressed.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: 4,000 tons is a lot.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking about the current event,
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_02: which is that China has rejected this
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: 22-ton container of Argentinian beef
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: because it's too chemical.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then Trump was like, bring it in.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_02: So don't eat beef.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then thinking about chocolate prescribed as a medicine,
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I didn't say this earlier,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: but my British grandma grew up during World War II and And in its aftermath and
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: until college, she was still using rations to get food.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: And she was so skinny, icon, that she was
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: prescribed butter and sugar.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so she got extra rations for those things.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: Skinny legend.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_02: My grandma's 92 and still fits into her middle school uniform, which she will show off.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, sorry,
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_02: I just thought of like,
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: it just puts it into context too, that it's like, it sounds so twee and ancient.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're like, how would you be prescribed chocolate?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it reminds me of like being,
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in,
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: like my middle school was very isolated from the world and so was my childhood.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to high school in a more urban place.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the like revelation that went through my mind when I was like,
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: oh, I can go buy candy if I want it.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it just like blew my mind and like my entire relationship to food and candy.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: But just we're so we live in such a world of abundance, overabundance and overindulgence.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like it's nice to think about chocolate in a 19th century context
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: or even in my grandma's World War Two context where it's like, what a luxury.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_03: like my grandpa,
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_03: my grandpa constantly will talk about how he's French,
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_03: about how during World War Two for Christmas,
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_03: they would get oranges and they would be happy.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime we're being like even a little bratty that he'll bring that up and rub it in our face.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: Good reminder.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_03: Good reminder.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I also think what you're saying is important because,
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_03: the shift that's happening where Chocolate is going from this elite product or like
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_03: a pharmaceutical or this other kind of thing into bar chocolate where it's not just
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_03: that it becomes more like easily eatable.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's that it also is becoming accessible to a new class of consumers,
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: whereas like powdered chocolate is you need this like silver pot and you need like,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: yeah, you need a lot of stuff in order to be able to consume it.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's an elite thing and you can't.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: If you're paying for the sugar separately and you're paying for this separately
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_03: and it's like it adds up,
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: whereas the bar chocolate is something you can buy and eat on the go on your way
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: to your factory job.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_03: Or like if you're an orphan in a book,
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: once you've like pickpocketed a kind stranger,
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_03: you can go buy a bar of chocolate type thing.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so related actually to the Degas painting of the ballerinas
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: because it reminds me of all these new forms of entertainment and like carnivals
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: and,
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like amusement parks, which are also growing in popularity in the 19th century.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like the more that you work, the more that you need leisure.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: And chocolate is one of those ways of having a good time.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting like branding thing that comes out of this because,
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: which I guess brings us to the posters.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like,
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_00: they get to suddenly decide who this is for and who they want to market it towards.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny to think in this 19th century context,
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: given everything you've talked about,
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: the idea that we associate chocolate and chocolate bars with kids is like,
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: when did that start?
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh, then you start looking at these first ads that were printed.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: put up throughout the city to advertise this product and
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: as like something you could,
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: buy as a treat for your child or,
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: for children to see it and like want one on their way home from school is like
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: that development in terms of how The audience and demographic
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: for this product changed is, I don't know, is just really interesting to me.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's pretty spectacular how quickly they figured out that if you want people
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: to buy things, you advertise it to children.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And like start them young.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Get them addicted.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Get them addicted.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: While they're impressionable.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Get them while they're impressionable.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, also there's like a weird, the little girl in the menier ad is like the copper tone girl.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just thinking that.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_03: Mabel, do you want to describe the ad?
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine the cutest little girl you've ever seen,
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: but you're seeing her from behind,
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: which I'm always like, if you're seeing a kid from behind, you're a voyeur.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: We don't love that.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_02: You don't love that.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like consent, people.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: This little girl does not know she's being looked at.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: She has, I mean, it's hair goals.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: She has two long braids behind her back tied with one yellow bow.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: So cute.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: She's Wearing a pinafore and she's,
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think she's kind of like working class because look at her shoes.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, or maybe she wouldn't be wearing shoes if she was actually working class.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_03: No, she's definitely, that's, that is not a rich little girl.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, she's like not wearing a fancy outfit.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think she might actually even be selling that chocolate.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, interesting.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, totally.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't thought about that.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It also changes a lot to have the kids be selling it, which I guess actually would at that time.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_03: They would have been.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, totally.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't thought about it that way, but that makes no sense.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It makes so much sense.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like she has an umbrella because she's probably like walking through the streets of Paris.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Standing on the street corner.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And she has a basket full of chocolate and she's writing with the chocolate.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of Harold in the Purple Crayon style.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: She's writing the name Meniere Chocolate,
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_01: but it's also sort of Bart Simpson writing on
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_02: the blackboard.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like she's writing it twice.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really know why.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: She's like just learned how to spell.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: She's really lucky she knows how to spell.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe she's learning how to spell from the chocolate.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: She might be just copying out the shapes of the letters.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_00: She might not even know how to
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: read.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_03: This yellow becomes very associated with Meunier.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_03: The poster actually comes after they start wrapping their chocolate bars
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_03: in this very distinctive yellow wrapper that is like their signature.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great yellow.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great yellow.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like you still see these like if you're in Paris,
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_03: like walking along the Seine and you stop at one of those like sort
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_03: of cheesy kiosks, you'll still see like posters of this ad for sale.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I will be buying one next time.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I think also like in the grander scheme of things,
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: this is happening in conjunction with this explosion of print culture
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: and poster culture and advertising for the first time,
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_03: which is something that I'm always obsessed with.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's in Paris in particular,
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_03: it's not just like print in the way that we think about it,
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_03: maybe in an American or a British context where it's like circulating periodicals.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's like They build these kiosks all over Paris where posters are attached.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so the entire streetscape in Haussmann's Paris becomes essentially like an advert.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's like Broadway.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_03: It becomes this opportunity for advertisements.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so you get these really eye-catching posters.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_03: You get like eye-catching poster designs like this.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so the fact that this one has remained sort of Well known for that long is kind
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_03: of also speaks to it.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I always wondered that, like,
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_00: because this is all kind of happening around the same time and like
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: the building had just been built and.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was always kind of confused because that when you look at the building,
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: you're like, oh, this was built as an icon, like this was built as an image to sell.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then it like wasn't like.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: It like I think I unless I'm unless I'm a something.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I think you're right.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think they didn't use the image of the building
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: in this like whole advertising capacity,
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think in a way that like, I mean,
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I knew nothing about the company and the history until again,
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I went there, but it seemed like I don't know.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It like, again,
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: it made it made the building even more confusing because I'm like,
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: who so who was this for?
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like what?
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like if when you think about it, because again, you're not in central Paris.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not getting a lot of eyes.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: No one's circulating images of this thing, which.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_03: No, it is.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's definitely like a really interesting kind of because also that sort of.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_03: I associate the desire to make these didactic,
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_03: beautiful factory buildings with German and Austrian production in this time
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_03: a lot more.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_03: I never think about France when I'm thinking about that.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_03: France is kind of always about commerce.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_03: When you talk about it in 19th century architecture...
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas factory architecture, you're talking about the turbine building and barons.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's very Germanic.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_03: So it is a really interesting piece of that history that's not often looked at.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's also just interesting what does a corporate building want to tell you about itself?
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's reminding me of...
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Abby, have you seen the Roche Dinkaloo building that was
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: the Union Carbide Chemical Foundation that was built in Danbury?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's this insane building in Danbury that was built in 1982 for
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: the Union Carbide Chemical Company,
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_01: which was then like instantly or maybe even before the building was done.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_03: It was like while it was in progress was the Bhopal disaster.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was they they opened it and started using it as offices.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then like months later, the company got shut down.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's really crazy.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's insane.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: 8,000 people died within two weeks of this chemical spill in India and
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_01: then another 8,000 or more people died later.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So basically the company was completely destroyed by this horrific act
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: of Like reckless environmental terrorism, basically.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the building is this weird,
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: like haunted remnant of a company that no longer can exist in the form that it was
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: when it built the building.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Madeline and I went on this like amazing tour of the building.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, really?
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta go.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the dining room space?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like what is going on here?
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_03: We had lunch there.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was disgusting.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was incredible.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a food hall.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_02: I loved it.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_02: But like now it's been redeveloped
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_01: in a sort of residentially,
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know, by like attempting to be a residential development.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just something so haunting about being in a corporate building in general.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I learned about the
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_00: JP Morgan building very quickly.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like it reminds me of that too.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Obviously,
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_01: there's something so sweet about the Meniere chocolate factory,
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: but it too is a corporation.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think Madeline in the notes you wrote, like,
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_01: were you the one who wrote that it's hard to give a corporate history
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: because it's like the corporation tells its own history?
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was like really, really hard to find.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody was claiming they were the first.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I was just about to say,
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like,
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: when you look at like their timeline,
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: and we're the first people to do this and then we're the first people to do that.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was like Googling, I It can't be true.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's like four other corporate histories of chocolate companies
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_03: that claim they're the first, but they all were kind of doing it at the same time.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I don't know.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an evergreen problem of like architecture and capitalism to try
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: to like decipher what is a beautiful building and what is a building with
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: a corporate message to tell.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know what else it's making me think of?
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_03: When I was growing up in Soho,
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_03: there was a building on my block that was always called the Tootsie Roll Factory.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it was actually a Tootsie Roll Factory like in the late 19th century.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it was completely abandoned
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_03: and it would like smell like chocolate sometimes really strongly on a hot day.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And they've redeveloped it into those horrific condos that the faces
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_03: on West Broadway where it's like the squigglies.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think so, yeah.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, God.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_02: How many blocks from the Brandy Melville is that?
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm just kidding.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: West Broadway.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, got it.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm complete.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_02: My map of New York City is only based off of where the Brandy Melvilles are.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, also what we haven't talked about, of course, is like the Willy Wonka of it all.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so true.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_03: So true.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_03: I did include a little Willy Wonka.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, chocolate factories are magical places,
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_03: but or hellscapes.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why does nobody know about this building?
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is this image not anywhere?
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's just weird to me.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it literally doesn't make sense.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_03: It is weird.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was because I was trying to find like I'm a PhD in architectural history.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, there must be references to this building.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Siegfried Gideon talks about it in space-time architecture,
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_03: but he talks about 750,000 buildings.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_03: He dedicates a paragraph to it.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Then there's this one article that I found that talks about
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_03: because it was taking timber frame construction from Somebody talks about it in
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_03: the context of the invention of the balloon frame in Chicago.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think this has anything to do with that,
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_03: but I included the reference because,
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_03: but balloon frames were timber and they weren't really ornamental at all.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like the fact that they took the time to do the brick infill like this is,
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_03: you know, not, I don't know.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's essentially a curtain wall, I guess, is what the argument for that is.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was surprised there wasn't anything else written about it.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like always fascinating.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally since I laid eyes on this building,
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: it's just felt like such an anomaly.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I haven't really been able to crack it.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I also couldn't find much about the architect.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is this weird,
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: because I remember also when,
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: did I tell you about the thing in grad school with this building?
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very much failing my structures class.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a great relationship with our professor, despite the fact that I was failing.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we would talk a lot.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, letting me do these.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: As someone in my mid 20s, extra credit assignments.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, okay, Abby, he's like, why don't you, you know, pick your favorite building?
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you'll do three of these.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But like, let's start, like, pick your favorite building.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll do like a structural load analysis,
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know, based on whatever, how the building is built.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, easy.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, menye.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I picked this building and we talked about it.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Cause he was like, what the fuck is this building?
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, my favorite building in the world.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: How gorgeous is she?
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, it's beautiful.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he was actually questioning whether or not the bracing was ornamental
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_00: or actually structural, like just by looking at it.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Cause he's like, this doesn't, he's like, I don't think this is actually structural.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I was like, I'm pretty sure it is.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it definitely is.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's like if you do a little research,
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: also when you go and see the model, it really kind of emphasizes that.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I could see how looking at an image of this thing, you're just like, that's not.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we got in an argument about it.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he was wrong.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he was wrong, which felt really good.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, but he was like,
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_00: he was like commenting on like how passionately I was talking about this building.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's like,
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: he's like,
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_00: you really like,
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: and I was like, yeah, I just like, I don't, I haven't seen anything like this.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like we don't make anything like this anymore.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's, you don't come across it.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, and he was like, and I was like, we don't care about ornament.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: that doesn't have to be like,
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Things added to the building,
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_00: like it can be found in the materials, it can be found in the structure.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like the best architecture is,
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: people who figure out how to synthesize these things into like
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: a single beautiful object.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, well,
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_00: why don't, so he's like, so why don't like you make that like your career's mission?
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like bring,
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: like bring ornament back,
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: like figure out a way to like reintroduce like the things that you love
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_00: about this building into like architecture today that like in a way
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_00: that would make sense and feel still contextual.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh my God, you're right.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, I'm going to start a Substack.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not what happened.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it does feel like in some ways the weird origin story of my Substack
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_00: and also my career because it was kind of like
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_00: the first time someone let me just appreciate the beauty of something and
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_00: that was valid.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, it actually is not even just that because it's doing something.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is tectonic and functional.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's an argument.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It just really felt like a pivotal building in my life.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm like all those Mies buildings that have the like ugly I-beam columns.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is that, but better.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just thinking about other iron architecture from the 19th century,
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_01: like thinking about Joseph Paxton and the Crystal Palace and iron
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: and glass architecture,
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_01: which now compared to this building, I'm like, oh, you iron and glass structure.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're just showing off.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_01: You want everyone to see how you're holding yourself together.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_01: What I like about this building is how it's hiding it.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's integrated.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something about opacity, which is really interesting to me.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just staring at the image of the model because that's
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: the only way I can really see what the iron is doing.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's hiding it, but it's also on full display.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like, you know, you can see exactly what's holding the building up.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like also delighting you with this beautiful...
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like ironic,
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_00: like the opacity,
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: transparency, like transparency of structure, but opacity of like building.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_01: It also has an absolutely dazzling M logo.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_03: I know I was jealous of their logo.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Madeline, let's steal that from Mandylion.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think we probably could.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's literally perfect.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Who would know?
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_02: It actually also looks a lot like our logo.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, maybe that's why I like it.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like this resonates.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're rebranding.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_02: We are the building.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Abby,
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I really do feel that future architectural historians will listen to this episode
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_01: of 1-800-1800 and say, this is how Abby Sandler...
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Came to be.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I came to be.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_03: Your origin story.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Very confused.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Does anyone have any final thoughts?
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like this proves that one building in one year can be this exhaustive global history.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so grateful for you guys.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's really true.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm astonished to say that we got through everything in the 60 pages of notes that we included.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_02: The weirdest thing.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_02: And now I'm going to eat some chocolate.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_02: I might go get ice cream.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_02: What chocolate will you eat?
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I have like probably slave
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_03: chocolate.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_02: I have, I don't, you would recognize the packaging, but I can't tell you what it's called.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it has like almonds in it.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a whole other history we talk about.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we'll have a part two.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I got fed a crazy TikTok before this of this guy who's like so ripped
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_03: and hot being like 90 or how many days are there in here?
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_03: 364 days of the year.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a CEO.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_03: But one day when my family's almond harvest happens,
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a farmer and he's like topless and
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_00: raking.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_03: It was so insane.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_03: Raking these like almonds into a bucket.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, where did you come from?
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Where are you going?
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_03: Where are you going?
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Where are you going?
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, thank you so much, Abby.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_02: This was so fun.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_00: This was so fun.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also making me realize I need to like read everything that exists on this building.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm prepared to stand up for it.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, you are prepared.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And also I was thinking like we always say here at Mandylion HQ,
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_01: like if there's a book that you can't find, you have to write it.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you might have to do the I know.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've thought about it.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go back to being like, good luck finding an audience for that.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's a publishing in an academic journal.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_03: They won't pay you.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think they would pay me to publish it anywhere else.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Download Abby's self-published book.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, isn't that why everyone does start a Substack at the end of the day?
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Hello?
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_02: You've reached 1-800-1800.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_02: I have a burning question.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_02: 1-800-1800.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have a burning question.