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How Alchemy Worked · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we are here to
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: enchant you in this very special episode Stuff You Should Know,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: which we'd like to also call the Facts of Life too.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean alchemy. I think a very appropriate topic,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: taking something mundane and turning it into something fantastic.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I guess we are kind of alchemists in
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: that sense. Where were you talking about a different podcast?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, let's talk about what but I aim
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: to accomplish today.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Hey man, not only do you aim it, you are
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: aimed for it. You hit it right on the head.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, alchemy, Baby, let's do it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: What is the attempted a compliment? Yeah? Well yeah, when
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: we're talking about alchemy or alchemists, for me at least,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and I would assume most people kind of conjures images
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: of like some magician wearing like a robe with stars
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: and moons on it, maybe even a pointy hat to match. Sure,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: he's lit by candlelight, he's in a strange little laboratory.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: He's doing all sorts of weird stuff to basically create
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: some sort of magical potion or do something like that. Right,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: if you know a little more about it, maybe you
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: think of Charlatans who trick people into investing in their
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: alchemical schemes of turning you know, lead into gold. But
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: it turns out that there's a lot more to it
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: than I ever realized, and the people involved were.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Not.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: They were a lot more interesting and a lot less
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: dumb and fraudulent than history is kind of cast the mass.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I always thought of alchemy as just from what
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I knew as a youngster, which was just turning something
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: like a boring metal into gold, like you were talking about.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But it is I think interesting that modern science now
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: looks back and say and says, hey, you know what
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I mean. Sure, it was a lot of bunk and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: bs involved, but some of the foundations of modern chemistry
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: were there, even though that wasn't their intention. Really.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can also make a pretty strong case
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: that the alchemists were the ones who laid the groundwork
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: for the scientific method.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Wow. What's cool about it too, is that, you know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: the Europeans, the medieval European you know, monks and sages
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and scholars are the ones you typically think of at
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: least in the West when you think of alchemy, but
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: it's a I don't want to say worldwide, but it
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: really kind of ties together traditions from a bunch of
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: different parts of the world into a mad pursuit for
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: immortality and glory. Yeah, tots, So we should say that
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: you can kind of trace the Western tradition of alchemy
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the Europeans as you think of it, all the way
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: back to Egypt. Egypt was like the starting point for
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the Western tradition, but Egypt even seemed to get it
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: from other places. Specifically, even back before Egypt, it seems
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: like China and India were possibly in on the pursuit
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: for immortality, which seems to be the thing that initially
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: gave alchemy like its birth.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they may have called it like, you know,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the art or something like that, or maybe maybe you know,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: some other word that they had that meant, you know,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: some sort of transformation might be taking place. The word
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: alchemy itself was first used in Arabic and then eventually
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: French and English and medieval times. But yeah, I think
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that it followed that route, and it's also
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: not surprising that, you know, China was one of the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: first to get involved in something like this, because I
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: feel like any time we're talking about ancient practices, China
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: always seems to be sort of leading the way in
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: one way or the other.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Indeed, one of the reasons China was so heavy into
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: it was because the early alchemical like pursuits or purposes
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: were to create an elixir for immortality. The reason they
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: cared so much about that was because the country had
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: a huge Taoist population, and Daoism is very much interested
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: in achieving immortality one way or another. And so China
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: and it's alchemists put together mercury, arsenic sulfur and said, here,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: drink this a lot of times. And surely a lot
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: of people died from drinking those things, right, I mean,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: you can't drink a concoction of mercury and still, you know,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: just wipe your mouth with the back of your hand
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and walk off, like time to get to work, you know.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there were some people that
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: suffered under alchemy experiments over time. But they also, you know,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: on the other side, and this is sort of the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the plus and minus side of some of these experiments,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: they also whether or not purposefully or not, gave us
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: things we still use today, like you know, potassium nitrate.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: So they sort of accidentally discovered gunpowder and ammonium chloride,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: which is used today as nitrogen and fertilizer like for
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: farms and stuff like that.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Mh. So, yeah, there were that is kind of a
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: tradition in alchemy of you know, they're trying to do
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: something else, but they still found useful stuff that we
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: still you know, make her use today. In China's whole
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: jam with alchemy kind of started to dry up as
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Buddhism spread throughout the country because Buddhism is much more
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: focused on rebirths and mellowing out about the whole immortality thing,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: and so the pursuit of you know, immortality through special
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: elixir just kind of became a moot point or a
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: moot point. Sorry.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I guess the Buddhists were like, yeah,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: maybe it's really not possible to live forever. Maybe we
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: should set our goals a little more.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Reasonably, right, let's just pretend like we don't care about
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: living forever.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: As far as India goes, they were also not seeking immortality,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and they were also kind of like post Buddhists China,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: like let's try and promote health, let's try and cure
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: some disease. Maybe we can try and transfer something into gold.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But you know, you'll see that kind of popping up.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That's why I think a lot of people the first
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: thing they think of is turning something into gold, because
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that was the pursuit of a lot of alchemists, because
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: gold was so revered either as like, you know, the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: best metal, Go ahead and make your white snake joke.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I wasn't going to. I was just thinking of gold
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: wearing a T shirt that was the best metal.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Devil's hands, the devil horns fingers, and
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: you know, also thinking like you know, perhaps like drinking
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: something that maybe liquid gold but it's really not liquid
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: gold that just turned the color gold could make you
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: healthier or maybe live forever.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And in India they were trying to make gold
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: nut to get rich, but because like you were saying,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: they were trying to balance health, restore health, like it
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: was just associated with healthy living essentially gold was.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: So then we reached the Mediterranean, that was another ancient
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: place and by the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: in three twenty two BCE. They found pretty quickly that
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the Egyptians had already been developing their own tradition of
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: alchemy for a while, and the Greek said, Hey, I
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: like your style. Let's mix together our philosophy and our
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: understanding of physics and astrology with your alchemy, and let's
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: produce something really great that medieval monks are really going
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: to go nuts for.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this is like, I know we're
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: going to say this quite a bit, but I think
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: they were these early scientists were taking a stab at something,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: you know, like sure there were Charlatans and stuff like that,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: but this was so early on in the game, like
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: science is brand new, and they were like, hey, let's
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: try this thing and see if it works out. And
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: maybe didn't always follow modern best practices, but you can't
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: expect them to either. So like, I don't know, I
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: feel like over time on this podcast period, we've kind
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of tried to shine a little bit of light on
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: some of this stuff. Is like, hey, they were doing
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: their best back then, trying to get trying to get
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: involved in science at least, right.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: At least they were doing something you lazy sad.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I mean this is when the first books
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: on it came out. That was one called The Translation
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: is Natural and Mystical Things by an Egyptian named Bolos
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of Mende, and this is around two hundred BCE. A
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: lot of this was again about making you know, valuable
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: metals like gold and silver. But again it was the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: first kind of preserved writing that we have on this.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, no, for sure. And he was also somebody
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: who wrote pretty straightforward about alchemy and the recipes and
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the processes, which would come to be very rare. As
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: alchemy developed, it became much more secretive. But this Greco
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Egyptian creation, this melding of different traditions to create this
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: this specific kind of alchemy it's called Hellenistic alchemy that
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: laid the foundation for Western alchemy to come. One of
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the other big things that came out of it, or
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: another indicator of how important it was is there was
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: this kind of legendary figure that developed among the medieval alchemists,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the monks. His name was Hermes Trists Megistos. Just a
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: great name, not a good hotel check in name, but
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: it's a it's a great name.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Regardless how many times. Are you gonna hear that?
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Right? And you would say it just like that too,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: like real uncertain and unsteady like Hermes. I think. So
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: it was a combination, a straight up combination of Thoth
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: or Toth I think both the Egyptian god who invented writing,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: the one with the ibis bird head, yeah, and Hermi's
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the Greek messenger of the gods. Like this was a
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: complete syncret syncretization of those two, and later medieval monks
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: would describe like alchemical text to having been written by Hermi's.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: T Yeah, Hermi's t that's a that's a better check
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in named by far? Is that t acer or t ee?
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I think it means like Hermi's third. The best I
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: think is what tris megistos translates to.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: All right, that's pretty good.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: And this is this is one of those episodes to
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: chuck where when we say words we might accidentally cause
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: somebody to go poof and write something either appears or disappears,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: So everybody'd be prepared for something to vanish.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. Uh, And no one knew it that,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you know, Like when you look back on stuff like this,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to parse out like who was
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: who was first, who was influencing who is sort of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: spread around the world. There's is a theory that India's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: belief system was basically just sort of brought over as
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a maybe not as a book, but you know, brought
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: over wholesale from proto Arians in Central Asia, and they
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: were in the area between four and five thousand years ago.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: So it's you know, I don't know if there's a
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: lot to be gained from sort of debating who was
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: coming up with what first, you know.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, I mean it doesn't really matter. It's
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: those historians. They're kind of fixated around that kind of thing.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But you know, it is interesting to wonder, like where
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: culture came from because so much of it influences so
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: much else. It's not just in alchemy but in all
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: things basically. But you mentioned Bolos of Mende, and he
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: actually came after the guy who the Western tradition of
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: alchemy is kind of like based on, Like this guy
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: was the guy he's like, here's how it's done, and
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: this is the ground rules for alchemy. Hey, everybody, his
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: name was those the most of Panopolists, and those of
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the most of Panopolists wrote something like twenty eight books
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: on alchemy. And for a while they're like, we've only
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: got a couple of letters of this guy, but we
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: knew he was brilliant. Apparently they've been finding his stuff
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: all over the Arabic world in libraries that they didn't
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: realize they had it before. But a lot of his
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: writings have recently been rediscovered.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and his stuff. He's another one of those that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: was pretty detailed in his writing and to have like
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: stuff like this preserved is pretty amazing. He was because
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: he was an alchemist obviously transforming metals or you know,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: trying to transform metals. But he, like I said, he
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: was pretty specific. He would have write ups on like
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: exactly what tools he was using, on what methods he
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: was using. A lot of this stuff was obviously repurposed
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: from the kitchen, like kind of cooking stuff or maybe
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: craft work, not the band, but you know crafting and
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: like like a bedazzle, yeah, like a dazzler or perfume making.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And he credited a lot of this stuff with a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Jewish woman named Maria, and he was like, you know
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a lot, I've taken a lot of her methods and
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of her methods also transferred over to early
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: methods of cooking, like you know, French and Italian cooking methods.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like a water bath, a bomb Marie or a
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: bonyo Maria is you know, like you know when you
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: melt chocolate chips in a pan that's inside a pan
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: that has water in it. Yeah, so you don't scorch it,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: right exactly. You can thank the Jewish woman named Maria
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: who has lost a history aside from Zozimosa Panopolis's writings,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: but she apparently taught him.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said, hey, you can use a lot
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: of this stuff to not make gold from lead.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean he definitely came up with some processes
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: that he figured out himself. And like you said, these
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: people were taking a stab at it. They were like,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: what happens if I do this, and what happens if
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: I if I try that same thing with a different
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: metal or a different powder or something like that. So
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: they were experimenting. They were starting the beginnings of experimentation
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that would lead to what we understand it as a science.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Those of most was doing this like he was one
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: of the first to do this. I also saw a definition.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I sent it to you or not.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: But he had an explanation or a definition of what
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: alchemy is. He said it was the study of the
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: spirit from bodies, and bonding the spirits within bodies. And
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: what are you saying, Like, if you stop and think
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: about it, it's actually pretty comprehensible. Yeah, He's saying. Alchemy
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: is the study of all the things we've observed about
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: the world around us, trying to figure out how that
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: stuff works, Like how does a soul come into a
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: body and become attached to it, how does it leave
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: it after death? What's the deal with water? That kind
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: of stuff. So like it was just them seeking to apply,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: essentially a proto scientific understanding of the world as they understood.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: It, Like what happens if I distilled this thing down
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to its base form or create you know, you're gonna
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: hear a lot of talk about vapors, like you know,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: boil something or heat something to create a vapor and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: then smash it together with this thing. And now I've
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: just learned you know, I'm trying to make gold maybe,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: but I've all of a sudden discovered that it changes
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: properties of both materials if I combine these two things.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And while they may not have understood what the heck
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: that meant, chemistry later on would say, oh, actually what
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: they were doing was this right exactly.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So this whole jam that was laid down by
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Zosimos and Bolos and the early Egyptians who eventually kind
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: of combine their stuff with the Greek understanding of the world,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: which is really important because Aristotle's thoughts about you know,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: what made matter up, like earth, wind, fire, and air,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: the four elements, that was the understanding of the world
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: that they were working. They were trying to figure things
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: out within that context. So Aristotle had a huge contribution
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: to alchemy early on, which is science would later kind
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: of decide was just a huge wrong turn at the outset,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: especially considering that Democritis, who was around around the same
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: time as Aristotle, remember him, he was the one who's like,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: everything's made up of atoms. I just am not going
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: to use the word Adams yet.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. Good place for a break, yeah, I think so,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: little bit about the move into Europe. Right after this.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So things were just kind of hanging around
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: from you know, three hundreds BCE, where the Egyptians and
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the Greeks that kind of come together and created that
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: version of alchemy, and eventually the Arab world started to
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: rise and it started to go over here and go
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: over there, and wherever it went, it kind of took
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: this and that from each culture that it found interesting.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that they did, they showed
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: up in Egypt and they said, Hey, I like this
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: alchemy stuff you guys have been doing for the last
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: few hundred years. Teach that to us. And that actually
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: helped lay the groundwork for the incredible amount of learning
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: that took place around this time in the Arab world.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, logging stuff describing stuff that would
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: later on again, you know, lay the foundation for legit
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: chemists of the future. And one of their theories was
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: that production of different kinds of matter starts out basically,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you know, with the basics, which are heat, coldness, dryness, moisture,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and combining these different ways are going to have different outcomes.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Like to produce those vapors, you're going to have cold
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: water basically, and combine that with some sort of hot
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: moist air to create a vapor, and they would you know,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: mix these things together and they would combine it with
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: mercury or sulfur or something like that and trying to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: make gold once again, pray.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's called christiopoia.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the technical term I think for trying to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: make gold.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And there are a couple of big, big names.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: There are a few big names, but two that still
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: made it all the way through history. Rosie's who's known
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: as the greatest physician of the Muslim world at the time.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: He was an alchemist. A contemporary I believe of his
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: named Jabir. He was well known as an early scientist.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Some people call him the father of chemistry. And these
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: guys were they were contributing by saying like, hey, don't
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: just throw a handful of powder, something like, you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: do a thumbnail and use the same amount every time.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Just little contributions like that. What was a huge contribution too,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: was that they took a lot of these ancient texts,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: translated them into Arabic, and then those were eventually translated
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: into Latin, which is when things started to spread like
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: wildfire throughout Europe. In like the twelfth century.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I promised talk of Europe and I just forgot
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: we had to stop by Arabia first. But this is
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the beginning in about the twelfth century when it moved
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: into Europe. And this was the time when Europe was shifting,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: you know, to a university sort of a more academic
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: way of looking at things and away from the monasteries
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: who were I guess some of the more early you know,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: science minded people. Yeah, and Christian scholars at the time
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: in Europe, they started to become a little more open
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to say, like, hey, maybe we should you know, look
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: to other texts, ancient texts, even look from other cultures
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to try and see if we can learn something from them.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: And so they started experimenting with mineral acids, boric acid,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: sulfuoric acid, stuff like that, and trying to develop elixirs.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And this is where you'll hear more about things like
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: you know, immortality, like the elixir of life, Philosopher's Stone,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: which we'll get into and stuff like that.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say, now that I think of it,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: I'll bet a lot of this transfer of knowledge came
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: from the Crusades. Europe just showed up and was like,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: give us everything, including all of your books on alchemy. Yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: you know, that would be my guess. But yeah, around
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: this time, so I read that the European alchemists, following
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: this tradition believed that in the ancient world they had
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: already found what was called the Philosopher's Stone, which just
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: sounds so cool. Make a really cool like title for
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a Harry Potter book or a Willie the Wizard book
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: or something. You know, are you making it Philosopher's Stone? No,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's just kind of like it's just fit naturally.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Well, that was the original title of the Harry Potter book,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Sorcerer's Stone. Okay, that's why asked if you were joking.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Not the Sorcerer's Stone. It's the Philosopher's Stone, wasn't it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: No, they changed it to the Sorcerer's Stone from the
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Philosopher's Stone.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: What a rip off. Okay, Well, we're talking about the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: philosopher's stone, and that was a term for this substance
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: that supposedly was all over the place, But we just
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: didn't recognize the magical properties of it that you could
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: turn immediately anything into like gold or whatever. The perfect
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: version of that thing was because that was the thing.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Gold to the alchemists was the perfect version of a metal,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and all other metals, whether it's lead, tin, silver, whatever,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: are we we're seeing them in the process of moving
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: naturally into gold. That's how they understood it. What they
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: were trying to do is figure out how those processes
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: worked so they could speed it up right, yeah, and
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: do it. Do it. But like that's where they got
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the idea of taking lead and turning it into gold.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: That's what they were trying to do, was move lead
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: into its more perfect natural state, which was gold. And
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: the way that they thought you could do that was
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: with the Philosopher's stone, which would make that happen automatically.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you mentioned earlier that they would operate a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: little more in secrecy later on, and this is kind
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: of where we are now now. They would operate, maybe
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: they would have their apprentices and stuff like that, but
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it was kind of shrouded in secrecy. A lot of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: times they would use like codes and symbols and metaphor
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and stuff when they were like recording their experiments. And
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: there were a handful of European alchemists that you know,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: we should probably go over a little bit. The first
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: of which is Albertus Magnus or Albert the Great. He
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: was a German philosopher in the thirteenth century, and he
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: was a friar, a Dominican friar, and he studied the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: work of these Arab alchemists, because like we said, it
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: kind of came over from there, and the ancient Greek philosophers,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: which you know, as we mentioned, kind of did those
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: two world of philosophy and science or this kind of science.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Right right. So there was another guy. I mean, there's
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: a bunch that we could talk about, John d, Arthur
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: d Roger Bacon. They were all alchemists who contributed to
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: our understanding of the world. One I hadn't heard of
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: was jonder Roque Telaude de jonder Roche Telaude. I think
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I got it that second time.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: That sounds good to me. But German is my non specialty.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: He was, he was he was trying to figure out
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: chris poia chrysal poya, which is again transforming things into gold.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: The thing is and this is a really good example
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: or way to point this out. He was a Franciscan monk.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: He didn't care anything about getting rich. As a matter
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: of fact, he had taken a vow of poverty. So
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: many times the alchemists are like, all they wanted to
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: do is like just make gold and be rich. They
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: were just greedy magicians essentially. No, it's not the case.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: They wanted to create gold to end poverty. They wanted
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: to find the elixir of life to end disease. Like,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: they had really big, big goals that they were trying
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: to reach. And he was a good example that he
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: wanted to give the Catholic Church the ability to make
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: gold so that they could fund themselves better.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Essentially, yeah, I took a vowed poverty in my twenties.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: I think you did too.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it was forced on me.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that he did too, which
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: is pretty interesting, I think, is he got talked about
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: sort of distilling things down to their purest form. He
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: did that with booze, and he's distilled it down to aqua.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: How would you pronounce that? Vita aqua vite, aqua vite.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: He called it the fifth essence of wine or the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: quinta essentia. And this goes back to Aristotle again, this
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: idea that you know it's something different than those four
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: classical elements that we're talking about. And I forgot he
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: pronounced his name, but let's just call him Doctor R.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Said that, hey, when I create this distilled wine down
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to its purest form of alcohol and I put meat
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: in that stuff, the meat just kind of stays like
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: it is. It stops this decay. And he wasn't. He
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: didn't think he had tapped into a new way to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: preserve meat. He thought like, hey, maybe this stops things
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: from aging, and maybe this alcohol is a cure.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: All right. He went on to create the my tie.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Oh nice, another one. This guy's my favorite. Paracelsus. His
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: real name was Philippus Theophrastus Aureolis Bombastis von Hoheim, but
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: we'll call him phil Hohenheim Hohenheim. Yeah, well, he went
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: by Paracelsus. I think we talked about him in our
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: poison episode or there was some episode, because he was
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: famous for saying the dose makes the poison like you
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: can take enough of anything and it's going to kill you,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: which is a really important understanding at the time. But
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: he was one of the ones who led the way
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: of secrecy because he believe that what the alchemists were
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: doing was dealing in like the nature of the universe,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: and that this information was way too potent to just
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: have out there. So he was one of the ones
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: that led the charge in that. He also was known
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: as questioning Galen's thousand year old idea of the four
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: humors being the cause of disease. Paracelsus was like, no,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: I think that there's like external factors involved, like maybe
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: even little tiny bugs or something like that that get
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: in your throat and then into your stomach and then
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: just really screwed things up down there. Yeah, that's me
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: paraphrasing him. That was Paracelsus. So he was a straight
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: up genius. Yeah for his time. I'm a big fan.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure they came but right back at him
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and said, no, no, silly man, it's just black bile.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: That's the problem. He's like, you sure, like this other
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: stuff could be making us sick.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: He's like again, with the bile.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: There was also Nicholas Flamel I guess or Flammeel. I'm
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: not sure how you would pronounce that, but I think
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Flamel Flamel. Okay. He is the one who was credited
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to discovered the Philosopher's Stone. He was just a mere
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: bookseller in the fourteenth and I guess fifteenth centuries. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: he said, I got a book. I purchased a book,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: and it was in a language that was so hard
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to translate. It took me twenty one years. But once
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I finally cracked that code. In that book was the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: information on how to produce the Philosopher's Stone. And this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: is what I don't understand. He got rich, But did
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: he get rich off of selling this? Like, that's what
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: No, the later alchemists, like starting around the seventeenth century,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: they created a legend about him, saying that he had
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: created the Philosopher's Stone, so you know, he could turn
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: anything into gold, and that's how he got rich.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but how did he where? How did he get rich?
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I still look out because he wasn't turning stuff into gold.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: No, from what I saw, his wife was rich. Oh
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: that's the likeliest explanation. But this legend grew up around him.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I got because he really was well known. He's recorded
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: historically as being very rich. Kind of suddenly they endowed
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: like a ton of hospitals, a bunch of schools, churches
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: that are some of them are still around today. And
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: he was known for putting alchemical messages kind of encoded
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: in the buildings, like on plaques or in oventories or
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah, so he definitely was an alchemist.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: He definitely was rich. But it was this legend that
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: grew up around him that he was one of the
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: few who actually found the Philosopher's Stone, almost his Sorcerer's stone,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: man see gets in there.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Another legend is that he perhaps maybe lived to be
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fourteen, but records say he was between
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: eighty and one hundred and fourteen. So that's a pretty
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: big gap there, a wide range. Yeah, thirty four years.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: It is pretty wide, but even eighty back in the
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: fourteen hundreds early fourteen was pretty respectable, I guess.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: So we talked a little bit about the Philosopher's Stone.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: That was one thing that as far as we know,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: no one ever created, right, but all of the alchemists
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: in Europe were after this trying to figure this out,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: while at the same time also performing all these other
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: experiments just in case they didn't figure out how to
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: do the Philosopher's Stone. They were figuring out how to
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: do it the hard way too. There was also another
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: thing that they were famous for trying to create, which
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: are called homunculi, which are essentially artificial people in miniature
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: that they wanted to create so that they could study
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: how life begins or like Zosimos had said, you know
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: how how the spirit bonds to the body. Like, that's
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of thing they're trying to figure out by
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: creating many humans. And they had all sorts of I
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: think it's fair to call it wacky ideas of how
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: to create a homunculus.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty fun. I mean, the word homunculus
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: is fun in and of itself. But yeah, there's something
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: called the Book of the Cow. This is an Arabic
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: book in the ninth century that apparently Plato had something
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: to do with. And there was a recipe for a
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: homunculus in there, which is one a Monculye, and it
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: involved in seminating a you, which is I guess that's
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a female sheep, right with human sperm. Don't ask cow.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure how that happened, but I'm sure they.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Had too many ways to do that back then.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they had their methods, and you would have
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a berth and it would be some sort of shapeless
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: form at that point, and then you need to treat
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: it with specific stuff materials, put it in a glass container,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and then it grows into a tiny person.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think that this ever worked, but they
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: I guarantee some people tried it for sure.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Oh I bet. I mean you have to have some
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: excuse for when you're found with the sheep, right, Oh
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: my god.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Oh that's going to stay with me like Sorcerer's Stone Chuck.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Every time I see the word you eat, it reminds me.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: There was this Happy Days episode where Richie was writing
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: in chalk on the sidewalk a message to some girl
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: that he liked well in a place where he knew
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: that she was going to walk home from high school
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: for this. And he drew I and then the heart
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: and then the you like a sheep, and the girl
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: comes up on him while he's sitting there finishing it
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: and she's like, I love sheep, and he's like, it's
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: a you, I love you. But the way that she
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: said I love sheep just always it stuck with me,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: like the weird thing you said about inciminating sheep and
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Sorcerer's Stone will always.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah with me, and it probably taught you the lesson
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: like never put yourself out there with a girl.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, that was definitely your line you got from
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Richie Cunningham. For sure.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I had forgotten completely about that, and as you started
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: to tell that story, I completely remembered it just like
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: flooded back to me. That's funny.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: There's one other one too. This was a Brady Bunch
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: one that I always think of whenever I think of
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I heart sheep when I see the word you. So
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: we're like three or four inceptions from this original thing.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: There was a Brady Bunch where Greg and his friend
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: stole a rival school's mascot, which was a goat.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, I remember this.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: So happened that like a bunch of officials from the
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: school were came over for coffee to the Brady House
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: while the goat was there, and they had to move
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: it from room to room and hide it, and Greg
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: finally gets discovered with the goat in a closet holding
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: in this really awkward position and the face he makes
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: when they opened the closet doors. I can't imagine how
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: many takes they did to get it just that perfect.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: But it's one of the great all time shots of
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: seventies television.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: If you ask me, did the goat was he wearing
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: like a like a cape or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I remember that.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm going to send you that clip because it's
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: worth watching.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: All Right, So I guess we need to take our
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: second break, yes, and then we'll come back with more
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: talk of seventies television right after this. All right, So
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: we have talked sort of hinted at the fact that
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: alchemy is not looked back as it was for many years,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and there's a more modern sort of view of it
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: as like that, hey, they were doing the best that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: can at least that's what Chuck said. And some of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the foundations they laid for modern chemistry you're actually kind
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of valuable. And that's kind of where we're at now.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: A lot of like metallurgical processes were created that were legitimate,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: maybe accidentally creating medicines or things that led to medicines happened,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: which is also valuable. What else, oh.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean just the very fact that these guys
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: were carrying out experiments like before then philosophers just said
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: like Aristotle, like this is what everything's made of, earth, wind, fire, water.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Trust me.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: No one asked him exactly, No one asked him, how
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: do you know that? Or anything like that, and he
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: really you know, I'm not saying he was a fraud
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: or anything, but he didn't use any scientific experimentation. It
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: was the alchemists who started that. They were the ones
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: who started working in the lab with specific measures of
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: materials and then very importantly recording their results, so they
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: were documenting what they were finding. These are all just
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the basic outlines of the scientific method today.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean the word chemistry actually comes from
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: alchemy in about the seventeen eighties, which is pretty interesting.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: M hm.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And alchemy is also like the other definitions of alchemy,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: doesn't it also mean like some sort of romantic chemistry
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that can happen, Yeah, you know.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Like romantic chemistry, right, So so a rom com what
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: they have in there, romantic chemistry. That understanding and use
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: of the term chemistry actually predates the use of the
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: word chemistry as far as the scientific discipline goes, by
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: almost two hundred years.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good point. And there were also some
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: pretty major players that we you know revere as our
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: scientific forebears that were involved in stuff like this, who
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: maybe try to keep a little quiet, like Isaac Newton.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: And this is like well into the eighteenth century when
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Isaac Newton was doing his thing, and he was like, yeah,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: maybe we could make gold from other materials and maybe
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna you know, I'm also into some occult
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and spiritual concepts, but I'm going to kind of play
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: that down and keep that all under the table for
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: now and it will only be discovered later.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, underneath his roughle puffy pirate shirt, he had the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: best metal T shirt.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: On well, and people that were in charge of sort
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: of keeping up with his story and his records they
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: kind of buried that stuff over the years to protect
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: his image, didn't they.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Newton was such a genius that he was pursuing
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: two lines of inquiry into the nature of the universe.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: One like the physics genius, the mathematician that we know
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: and love is like the world's first true scientists. At
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: the same time, he was pursuing alchemy as well, like
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: he was looking into the whole thing like you know that. Yeah,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: essentially he was trying to figure it out. He apparently
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: believed or his paper said that he thought alchemy was
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: this ancient wisdom that God had directly given humans and
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: that alchemists were figuring out we're learning like that this
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: was like divine, a divine delivery of like knowledge essentially,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: and like like you said, his papers were kept private
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: just to preserve his image for centuries, and then finally
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: they started to get published and people started to understand
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: him a little more. And I saw a really interesting
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: quote at some point that one of his biographers said
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: that Isaac Newton was not the first scientists, he was
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the last alchemists. WHOA, Yeah, And I mean it doesn't
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: necessarily make sense to you if you when you first hear,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: but it's very much like how say a bird evolved
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: out of a dinosaur bird. The dinosaur bird was not
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: a true bird. The first bird was the first true bird.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: And in that same way, the point they were making
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: was Newton was the thing that the first real scientists
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: evolved out of, but he was not that he was
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: part alchemists too.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good point. There were, you know, even
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: some more modern world leaders that were like, you know,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: these guys were trying to make gold and I know
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that didn't work out, but like, maybe we could try,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: because it'd be great if we had a lot of gold.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Maximilium the second and Rudolph the second and this was
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: sixteenth and seventeenth century Holy Roman Empire stuff where they
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: were like, hey, why don't we just sort of help
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: financially support these alchemists because you never know, maybe they
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: can maybe they can tap into this elixir of life
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: or get us untold amounts of gold.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I also saw Henry the sixth not only gave
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: some like I think fifteen or sixteen alchemists official royal
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: licenses to produce alchemical gold, he took what they used
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: and minted it into coins. So supposedly there was no
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: It was a combination of mercury and copper sulfate with
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: a little bit of water and it produces some alloy.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Once you clean it up. That looks a lot like gold,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: but it's much lighter. There's coins out there still today
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: to collect that were basically alchemy gold that Henry the
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: sixth commission and that Britain's gold coins were made out
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: of for a little while.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Which ironically are probably worth a lot of money.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I would guess, so and that is ironic, isn't it.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit, don't you think.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would even say more than a little bit.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: I'd say a lot of bit.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. The Academy Royale des Sciences in France is founded
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty six, and that's when they said, all right,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: this philosopher's stone stuff is not going to be in
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: our curriculum anymore. We're not going to look at astrology.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: We're gonna move into the modern era of the seventeenth
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: century version of the modern era. And that's what they did.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: They kind of shut all that stuff down as like
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the official scientific as far as official scientific pursuit academically goes.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the whole thing kind of continued on the
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: nineteenth century still had alchemists in it. The upshot of
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: that whole thing was that they were frauds, charlatans, and
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: they were really the ones who gave alchemy a bad
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: name to our modern ears. But also science when it
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: was really when it really developed it, it had a
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: tendency to turn on its predecessors, the things that it
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: evolved out of, like witches, herbalists, that kind of thing.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Same thing with alchemists, like it was just so dumb
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: and backwards. Science is the truth. It just based disavowed alchemy,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: even though it directly evolved out of alchemy. Yeah, but
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: now it is nice, kind of refreshing that today science
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: is ready to be like, yes, it's a little embarrassing,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: but this is our grandfather. Yeah.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I feel like grandfather is usually less
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: embarrassing than father.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it depends on the air of the
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: grandfather's from because they can say some really inappropriate stuff
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: at Thanksgiving. You know.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I strive to be if I ever am a grandfather,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: just to be the sort of sweet, doddering old guy
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: that everyone just thinks is fun and funny.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: You definitely will be, man, no controversy about. I think
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you're also though, one of those grandfathers who's also a
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: beloved dad.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Too, which is well, so far, so good.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: It's hard to do.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Uh. One more thing about alchemy. I when I was
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: studying listened to a bunch of Dungeon synth. I know
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: I've mentioned it before, Okay, but in particular I was
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: listening to albums by which Bolt. Okay, it's really good stuff. Man,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: if you're into any kind of like instrumental synth music.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: You could do a lot worse than listening to witch Bolt,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: all right, And then it also jogged my memory when
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I mentioned Dungeon Synths. A couple of years ago. We
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: got an email from somebody named the loan Enchanter who
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: has a Dungeon synth label called High Mage Productions, and
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: you can go check them out on band camp. But
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: they sent us a couple of jingles that apparently were
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: lost because I sent them to Jerry, and she's like,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I have never heard either of these, so we can
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: look for some High Mage Production jingles coming in the future.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for that.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Casting. I'm going to check out witch Bolt.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: What a great name it really is, and their album
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: covers are amazing too. I bet Okay, Well that's it
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: for Alchemy everybody. We did it, Chuck, and we're done,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: and that means it's time for listener mail.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: This is a correction on me. I can't believe I
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: missed this. I feel like a dummy. Hey guys, when
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: you mentioned heavy metal parking Lot on the Sunset Strip
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: episode the Greatest Heavy Metal Short Documentary of All Time,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck attributed it to Penelope Spearrus she made Decline of
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Western Civilization, so I goofed that up. I was
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: totally thinking of Decline of Western Civilization. Another great documentary.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: But have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot? Then I have.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I just misattributed the filmmaker. Apparently Jeff Krulik and John
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Hayne made Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It's beyond satire and
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: encapitulates a moment in time that was magical. They also
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: made and this I didn't know, they also made a
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: documentary called Neil Diamond Parking Lot.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: No.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty fun. I'm gonna have to check that
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: one out. That is from That's with best regards from
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: matthew T from Cleveland, Ohio, with a ps, I love
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: you both, Perry very much.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, matthew T. Right back at you. And
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: if you want to be like matthew T and correct Chuck.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Chuck loves that kind of thing, you can wrap it up,
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom as an email, and send
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 43:09
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• 43:12
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