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New Zealand's Tragic (And Pretty Hilarious) Exploding Pants Epidemic · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Uh. My name is Ben.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: In My useless skill that I've recently picked up is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: um is the periodic table. I now know all eighteen elements.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Give it to us? Sure? Do you want him in order?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Do you want him alphabetically? Do you want them? Buy?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I want them in order of how you feel right now? Ben,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: give us like a poetic interpretation of the periodic table.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm know all by the way, you're all yeah, And
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that's our super producer, Casey Pegram. You know, it's interesting
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: because there are a lot of weird names there, and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I think it would make a fantastic episode for Ridiculous History.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: This was also a suggestion from uh from Kathy Welsh
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. Uh, it would make a fantastic episode to
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to explore some of the weirder stories behind the elements. Uh.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I like Prometheum, you know, named after Prometheus of myth. Uh.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Prometheus of course, the one who brought fire to humanity.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a that's a positive and poetic
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: one that didn't go well for him. Though, did it? Ben?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Didn't he end up chained to a rock with the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: eagle eating his liver? Did I make that up? No?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: That's correct. There's also um Tantalus gets a shout out
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: in the periodic table. You know, that's the origin the
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: word tantalizing, very very titillating word. Yeah. Yeah. It was
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: up to his neck and I think up to his
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: neck and wine, and he had food from a branch.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But every time he tried to sip the wine or
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: eat the fruit on the branch, it moved away from him.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: He was tantalized. That's that's some serious psychological terrorism right there.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Those those uh, those ancient mythical figures. I really knew
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: how to punish each other, didn't there. It also goes
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  Speaker 1: back to the earlier psychological quirk we were talking about
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: with humanity, where people like to uh, people like to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: have a little schadenfreud. They like to experience vicariously bad
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: things happening to other people, kind of like those orchestrated
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: train wrecks we talked about last week or the other day. Yeah,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the other day, the other day, what some other day?
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  Speaker 1: But I have to ask you, guys, do you have
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: like a favorite element or ally, they all just kind
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of same same to you. Oh No, I like Helium
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  Speaker 1: a lot, mainly because I really like the band Helium
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  Speaker 1: and Mary Timmany. So that's one that appeals to me. Ben,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: when you say you learned all of the elements, did
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you learn it in like song form? Because I know
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  Speaker 1: there's that scene in Breaking Bad when um Gus Spring's
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  Speaker 1: character meets the chemist Gael um Bennet and he's singing
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  Speaker 1: this like song with all of the elements and to
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  Speaker 1: the to the tune of a modern major general from
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  Speaker 1: uh the HMS pentaphore. It's like, uh, something that Barry
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  Speaker 1: aminmentium and kept me Amazon. I don't know the actual ones,
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  Speaker 1: but that's did you learn it that way? Ben? I
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: gotta know your your device. No, no, I didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: There are some There are some great songs out there
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  Speaker 1: that you can use as a mnemonic device for the
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  Speaker 1: periodic table and for countries. Of course, shout out to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the Animaniac song, which holds up even though there are
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  Speaker 1: some new countries now. But what I typically do when
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I'm learning long list of things like that is my
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  Speaker 1: deal is I'll try my best to get all of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: them and then if I miss several, then what I'll
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  Speaker 1: do before I test myself again is I'll pick one
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  Speaker 1: at random, and then I'll learn about that. That's why
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  Speaker 1: I know useless facts about places like uh two value
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  Speaker 1: in in the world of countries and that's uh. That's
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  Speaker 1: why I know useless spellings of elements that probably I
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  Speaker 1: will probably never talk about in conversation, like neo dymium.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think is gonna come up, and you know,
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  Speaker 1: I may be wrong. Maybe it'll be a key piece
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  Speaker 1: of a future episode. But those songs are incredibly useful,
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  Speaker 1: and some of them are super catchy. The thing is
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the one with one I heard with the elements, the
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  Speaker 1: full one. It's pretty long, as you might imagine, but
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  Speaker 1: it's great writing because they have to, you know, they
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  Speaker 1: have to make those weird names work. In meter and rhyme,
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  Speaker 1: I do love a good meter and or rhyme. Then, casey,
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  Speaker 1: what's your favorite element. I'm gonna go with mercury, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I don't really have a reason for it. I been
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: here in the world a lot lately. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: mercury poisoning. Who knows. Did you ever break up in
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a thermometer when you're a kid and play with it. No.
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  Speaker 1: Fortunately I I did not do that. But because you
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  Speaker 1: had responsible parents, Casey, you know, well, uh, you know,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: maybe this is the year. I'm kidding. Don't do it.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're listening at home, don't do it. It's
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: not it's not as cool. I know it looks like
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the bad Guy and Terminator too, but it's it's not
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  Speaker 1: worth it. Uh. And Casey, you know if you change
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  Speaker 1: your I next week, that will mean you are mercurial.
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  Speaker 1: There you go, nicely done. So enough with the there
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  Speaker 1: there is a point for this. There is a point. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: This episode had I don't know about you guys, but
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  Speaker 1: this had me thinking a lot about chemistry because this
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  Speaker 1: is a very interesting story of a kind of inadvertent
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  Speaker 1: chemistry experiment, but instead of indavertent chemistry experiment. I think
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  Speaker 1: we're going to call this one exploding pants. Yeah, that's
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  Speaker 1: what it's about. Let's call it what it is. Why
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  Speaker 1: bury the lead? Uh, it's true. In the early nineteen thirties,
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  Speaker 1: and no other place than New Zealand, Uh, there was
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  Speaker 1: an epidemic of an invasive weed called rag wart that
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  Speaker 1: was really screwing with farmers crops and in order to
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  Speaker 1: combat this weed, a little chemistry came in handy in
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  Speaker 1: the form of sody him chlorate, a chemical war being
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  Speaker 1: waged on this invasive weed um that resulted in some
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  Speaker 1: pretty surprising effects in the pants department. Yeah, that's correct.
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  Speaker 1: In a situation similar to that exploding phone epidemic with
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  Speaker 1: Samsung a few years back, people in New Zealand in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties found their pants smoldering, catching fire, or
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  Speaker 1: even exploding without warning. One of the earliest reports comes
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  Speaker 1: from ninety one. Uh. It involves a guy named Richard Buckley.
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  Speaker 1: So he spent a day spraying ragwart in his fields
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  Speaker 1: and he was using, by the way, sodium chlorate. So
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  Speaker 1: when he comes home, he takes off his pants and
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  Speaker 1: he hangs them by the fire to dry, because people
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  Speaker 1: in New Zealand are very chill that way. All of
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  Speaker 1: a sudden, just a little bit later, his pants explode somehow.
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  Speaker 1: This farmer, Richard, he gets the pants out side and
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  Speaker 1: he throws him into the grass and they continue to
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  Speaker 1: explode for like several minutes. So he's just watching his
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  Speaker 1: pants not not smolder, but like have a series of explosions,
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  Speaker 1: and luckily, you know, he could have been seriously injured,
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  Speaker 1: but luckily he was. He was thinking quickly, who knows
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  Speaker 1: what have happened? His house could have burned if he
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  Speaker 1: left him in there. Was it a sign from God?
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  Speaker 1: He asked himself, these exploding pants did did they communicate
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  Speaker 1: to him revelations from on? I No, that did not happen,
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  Speaker 1: but it became kind of like a Bellweather moment for
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  Speaker 1: solving the mystery of the exploding pants because this really
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  Speaker 1: was kind of an epidemic at the time in New Zealand.
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  Speaker 1: People really genuinely didn't like narrow down what was causing
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  Speaker 1: it for a little while. Uh, there were folks who
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  Speaker 1: were less fortunate than our hero, Mr Buckley, and we're
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  Speaker 1: actually wearing their pants at the time of the uh,
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  Speaker 1: the unfortunate explosion. Um, some people uh survived, although we're
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  Speaker 1: seriously injured with you know, third fourth degree burns. And
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  Speaker 1: one poor soul actually perished when his house caught fire
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  Speaker 1: when he lit a match trying to check on his
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  Speaker 1: sleeping infant, which is really sad. He didn't have electricity
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  Speaker 1: and the path the pants just you know caught fire
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  Speaker 1: and caused um serious blaze. Yeah, that's true. No, Luckily,
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  Speaker 1: this epidemic did not last forever. This wasn't like a
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  Speaker 1: leading cause of death for the next decade. A lot
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  Speaker 1: of this information, by the way, we're getting from a
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  Speaker 1: very weird paper written by Massy University a storian named
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  Speaker 1: James Watson. In two thousand four, he publishes this paper
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  Speaker 1: called the Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers Reflections
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  Speaker 1: on an aspect of technological change in New Zealand dairy
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  Speaker 1: farming Deep Breath Between the World Wars. By the way,
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  Speaker 1: shout out to Dr Watson there. He did win an
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  Speaker 1: Ignoble Prize for this, which is a specific prize given
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  Speaker 1: for research. So it didn't last long because as people
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  Speaker 1: were telling this story as it was, you know, proliferating
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  Speaker 1: through the news, scientists figured out there there must be
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  Speaker 1: something real to this. This was not just the story
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  Speaker 1: from the tabloids, and they set about to discover the cause.
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  Speaker 1: They found that the problem with these exploding pants dates
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  Speaker 1: back to the first two decades of the nineteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: That's when New Zealand started really doubling down on dairy farming,
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  Speaker 1: and when they were doubling down on dairy farming they
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  Speaker 1: ran into a problem. That problem was rag wart. It
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  Speaker 1: began to spread through the country's pastures and and rag wort.
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  Speaker 1: Ragwart is a weed, but it's also poisonous to certain animals,
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  Speaker 1: so else couldn't need it. Yeah, and therefore it kind
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  Speaker 1: of was allowed to grow unchecked and really became a problem.
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  Speaker 1: UM by the nineteen thirties. It was a full blown crisis,
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  Speaker 1: essentially an agricultural crisis at the very least, and the
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  Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture became involved. And one of the first
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  Speaker 1: kind of fixes for this was sodium chlorate, which was
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  Speaker 1: used at the time as a chemical herbicide, and there
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  Speaker 1: was some research that went into this. There was an
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  Speaker 1: article in the early nineteen thirties that talked about what
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  Speaker 1: a effective um agentless was for getting rid of rag wart.
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  Speaker 1: So the government really started to encourage it and UM
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  Speaker 1: the farmers began to use it pretty liberally. This was
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  Speaker 1: also during a time when there was a pretty significant
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  Speaker 1: labor shortage in the farming industry in New Zealand. New
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Zealand I didn't really realize this had UH and I
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: believe has particularly restrict to immigration laws, and they also
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: pay a higher wage and this use of sodium chlora
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  Speaker 1: would appear on the surface to be a cost effective
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  Speaker 1: and quick and timely solution to this problem without needing
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  Speaker 1: to pull in a bunch of other a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: other laborers because they just weren't available right. Well, they
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: were available, but at a tremendous cost such that it
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  Speaker 1: could have put a business out of business to to
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  Speaker 1: try to hire new people, especially if they were sponsoring
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: them for immigration. I want to go back to the
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  Speaker 1: problem with rag worts as poison because I said of
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  Speaker 1: poison cows, it also was poisonous to horses. So you
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  Speaker 1: think it wouldn't be proliferating. It actually wasn't. Back when
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  Speaker 1: there were more sheep to take care of the problem.
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  Speaker 1: Rag worts not poisonous to sheep, so one of the
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  Speaker 1: most effective ways of keeping ragwort down historically was to
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  Speaker 1: have sheep eat it. But once they shifted to dairy production, Uh,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: there were fewer sheep around to eat it. That's why
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  Speaker 1: it grew unchecked. When they learned about this chemical, this herbicide,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed like a silver bullet. They were able to
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  Speaker 1: kill a ton of ragwort weeds with sodium chlorate. There's
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  Speaker 1: an interesting thing like this is very powerful herbicide. As
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  Speaker 1: you mentioned, sodium chlorate is also highly caustic, especially when
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  Speaker 1: it's dry. Farmers found this out by being you know, uninformed,
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  Speaker 1: non consensual guinea pigs uh and witnessing their pants exploding.
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  Speaker 1: The problem is this, I like the way Atlas Obscura
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  Speaker 1: puts it in their article about the exploding pants in
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand. It goes down to the way the sodium
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  Speaker 1: chlorate was applied. So you would mix the chemical with
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  Speaker 1: water to create a solution. You do that with a
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  Speaker 1: lot of herbicides and things things of that nature, and
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  Speaker 1: then you would just spray it on the ragwort. And
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  Speaker 1: when you sprayed it, especially depending on whether it was
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  Speaker 1: a windy day, this spray would get on the pants
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  Speaker 1: of the farmers. And then when the clothing dried, you know,
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  Speaker 1: drying means the water is being removed, so there's nothing
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  Speaker 1: left but those sodium chlorate crystals and they're bonded to
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the fibers. Basically, how mgeiver is this? They created explosive cloth? Like,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: how is this not an episode of Mgeiver? Yeah, or
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: an episode of Breaking Bad. It made me think of that.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I don't want to give any supposed away, but there's
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: definitely some cool chemistry mcgiver very type tricks that Walter
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: hy Bryan Cranston's character pulls off from the very beginning
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of the show. Um not for everyone definitely gets super dark.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: But I rewatched recently and it holds up a fabulous,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: fabulous show and it really does get the science right
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: about a lot of the tricks that he does. And
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: for everything from you know, using thermite to dissolve locks
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and you know, break into buildings to creating handheld explosives
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: with this process is very similar to this, but yes,
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  Speaker 1: that's true. I mean you end up with this pure
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  Speaker 1: layer of these sodium chloric crystals that create that explosion.
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  Speaker 1: It can of course be ignited by a flame, as
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: with our story, our tragic story of the gentleman who
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: lit a match to check on his baby, or as
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: we know about things that are very unstable, like you know,
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  Speaker 1: nitroglycering for example, can be ignited with just a strong bump,
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  Speaker 1: you know, an impact to the pant whatever that might
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: be right, right, it's volatile, you know. And thankfully dairy
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  Speaker 1: farming shifted to sheep uh and and you know is
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that this was a big shift. As a matter of fact,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: today in New Zealand, I believe one of the fund
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: statistics about the countries that sheep still outnumber people. It's
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: roughly I think six to one. So you don't have
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to worry about exploding trousers as much now if you're
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: a farmer in New Zealand. Now we we have some
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of the contemporary reports of this phenomenon, and uh, you know,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I have to say this probably happened hopefully before there
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: were some fatalities involved. But the Evening Post on April
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: one ran ran this like multi line, somewhat poetic headline,
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  Speaker 1: trousers explode, not their fault, we're killing dangers sodium chlory.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's not even a sentence. If you look at
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the margin, it's like a verse. Yeah. I looked at
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: it at first. On first glance, I thought it was
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: a high kup, but didn't quite get the form right. Um, yeah,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Here here's the quote from the article. It's obviously written
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: in a bit of a tongue in cheek manner and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: been to your point, I do hope that they they weren't,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: you know, making such light of it given any depth
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: that it occurred to. This may have been early on,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: but uh not long ago. In a country township, a
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: man's pair of trousers exploded with a loud report. Fortunately
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the owner was not in them at the time. This
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: strange behavior of a quite respectable garment was due to
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the fact that its owner had been spraying sodium chlorate
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: on ragwarts. Boom he's got boom pants. Boom pants. It
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: makes me think of the epidemic and Loony Tunes cartoons
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: of all those exploding cigars. You know, it was a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: really reaked havoc on You know, cartoon characters just wanted
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: a nice relaxing smoke. I wonder where that comes from,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: because I know Loony Tunes was lifting that from popular culture.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But surely it was a prank, like a more dangerous
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: version of a whoopee cushion. Yeah, maybe a Mars Brothers
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: kind of situation is what it makes me think of.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah maybe. No, Um, you couldn't actually, because of the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: nature of this reaction, You couldn't smother the pants. You
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: just kind of had to let them, let them do
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: their exploding thing because the oxygen that you would need
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to feed a fire or this kind of reaction was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: already present in as they described intimate contact with the material.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Now this paper, the Post claimed that there have been
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: at least two deaths from this phenomenon, and we don't
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: have those a hundred percent verified, but we do have
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that claim. People sort of forgot about this story for
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: decades and decades of decades until two thousand and four
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: when the historian James Watson uh examines this and uh
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: in in his paper you know it makes the rounds.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: He goes to Harvard where he gets his Ignoble Prize
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, and then in two thousand
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and six, MythBusters starts testing chemicals to see if they
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: can turn them into uh, you know, wearable explosives. Yeah,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and then of course they they tried using sodium chloria,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: although for some reason they didn't actually name the compound
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: in the show, and that was the one that proved
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to be the most effective and causing these pants to combust.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: It's always a bummer when the MythBusters, you know, can't
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: make something happen, like shooting a gas tank. I really
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to believe you can make a car fully explode
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and flip over with a single shot. To the gas tank.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Apparently not nearly. The case requires a whole lot more
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: effort than that. Yeah, it's like when have you guys
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: ever seen a real grenade explosion. It's it's way less
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: cool than the movies make it appear. Really, there's not
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: like smoke and debris everywhere. Not even a soundtrack. Man,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: there's not even like an action movie soundtrack. It's just
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: it's just a uh you know. This reminds me of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: our earlier conversation about the h L. Hunley I was,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I was. Dr Rachel Lance got in my mind about
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: she's our explosives expert now she's the official Ridiculous History
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: explosives expert. And when she told me that in real life,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: any explosion or any impact that's strong enough to knock
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you in the air and back will essentially do incredible
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: damage to your body. Yeah, and you can't get up.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I've been why I've been watching a lot of films
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: now since we're in quarantine and grading them on their realism.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: When someone gets knocked over. Uh, I hope it didn't
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: ruin film for anybody else. If anything, makes every film
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that I see it in accidentally a comedy. Uh, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: there's one thing we should address though at the end
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of this episode. It's something that maybe a lot of
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of our fellow listeners are wondering about today,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: which is this put simply, did this strange phenomenon in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: New Zealand in the nineteen thirties become the basis for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the figure of speech? Liar, liar, pants on fire? This
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: is for fellow etymology nerds in the audience. We do
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: have an answer. Don't ruin this for me, Ben, please
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: please let it be so. You know, it's a weird phrase, right,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: liar liar pants on fire? It's not. It's not the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: most intuitive thing, you know. So it seems like it
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: could be based on the New Zealand case, But the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: rhyme makes it so cutting though. It's the rhyme that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: really gets under your skin, Like win or winner chicken dinner.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: It's just I still wonder where that one came from.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Chicken dinner is a positive thing. Obviously, having your pants
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: be on fire is a negative thing. I think. I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: think that's probably where the similarities enter, right. Possibly, I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: would like to think that most people would prefer their
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: pants to be um, not on fire. So very popic
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: is a linguist who specializes in slang in proverbs. How
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: cool of a job is that? And he says that
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: liar liar just that phrase has at least been around
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: since the fourteen hundreds. People used to say liar liar,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: lick dish, l I c k hyph dish, lick dish.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So maybe that's someone who like is sort of beneath
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: you and will lick the scraps off of someone's dish.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Or is it you lick your own dish because you're greedy?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm confused about this lick dish? Is
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: there is there more? Yeah? The idea is that the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: accused will quote lie as fast as a dog will
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: lick a dish. It got it? Lick dish? Yeah, I
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard that ever. So, but there are a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: lot of words and a lot of idioms in this
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful language of ours. Polpicum dug into the whole phrase
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: liar liar pants on fire back in and in This
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: was for an etymology blog he does called the Big Apple.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: He found some English naval ballads from eighteen forty and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: one of the kind of gets the liar liar pants
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: on fire. It goes like this, liar, liar, lick spit,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: turn about the can will stick. What's good for liar,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: brimstone and fire. So it's there, but where the pants.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It's missing the pants, Like a lot of us on
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: our quarantine calls, I am currently pants less right now,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna come clean about it. I swear to God,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: you guys, I'm telling the truth. I'm not wearing pants.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I'm wearing you know me Undy's. But but no pants
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: because you can't see. What do you care? So I'm
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: just gonna let you use your imagination. If you wish,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: you should turn off your your other cameras. My lower
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and my lower camera lower camera is still rolling. I think, Oh,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: my goodness, gracious, what's become of us? No, really, that's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: about it. It seems as though these expressions date way
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: back before the idea of the exploding pants epidemic in
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: New Zealand. Um, I do, like, I just want to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: go back really quickly the one you said about lick spit. Uh.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking when you first said lick dish,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: because a lick spittle is someone who is like obsequious
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: to people in power, or the idea of bowing and
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: scraping kind of. So I think it's just meant to
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: be an insult to someone's character, saying, you know, you're
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: some kind of toady, you know. Yeah. Etymology is so
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: interesting and sometimes it's it can be impossible to get
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a solid kind of provenance for a phrase. So he
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: does find one example from the nineteen thirties, right right
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: around the time people's pants are exploding left and right
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand. Popic finds an issue of the Sunday
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: World Herald from August thirteenth, y three that says fat
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Pat to rastle Savage because the public wants it. Gave
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: it the public what they want right right? Who was
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: this fat Pat? How fat Pat McGill is, russ Is
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: rastling r A S s l E. A guy named
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Steve Savage. And the report says that the guys promoting this,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the local wrestling from Odor is overwhelmed by letters and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: phone calls and uh telegrams. And then there's a weird
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: there's a weird line in here in this in this
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: article where they say it is so you liar, liar
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: pants on fire. There were several people who called up
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and because it's weird because they're kind of saying, yeah,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: people actually do want Fat Pat to wrestle Steve Savage.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And if you say that's not the case, you're lying.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: But the way that they sort of off handedly referred
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: to it makes makes popec think that it was already
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: around for a while. We just don't know. Win again,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: rhyme is a strong thing, my friend. You know, uh,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: liar liar, pants on fire. Somebody could have just tossed
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: it off one day and then it caught on. That's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: how a lot of like these phrases happened someone just
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and maybe the pants on fire was in the zeitgeist
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to the point where it just kind of occurred to somebody.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't have to be like an homage to this.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: This period is to these kinds of things just get
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: into people's heads and then they're repeated and passed around.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense that would be
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: where this came from. And again, there's historical precedents already
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that would lead one to believe that these kinds of
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: expressions were already kind of kicking around. So I love
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: etymology just like you, ben. Uh. It does turn out
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that rag wart is still a pretty nasty problem um
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand. There have been other attempts to bring
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: this uh, this invasive plant under control using non pant
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: exploding herbicides UM and also trying to use some more
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: kind of outside the box methods like introducing the rag
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: wart flea beetle um and something called a cinnabar moth
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: which sounds delicious, and that was introduced actually right around
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the same time as as the six pants exploding epidemic
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: took place, and you know, with varying degrees of success,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: because it does still seem to be a problem. But
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you know, we have not seen any further uh exploding
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: pants epidemics since that original spate in the thirties. What
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a cool story though, I think this is a quintessential
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: ridiculous history topic. Yeah, and maybe we can end today's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: episode on one last note from Popic because he seems
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to think that that phrase liar liar pants on fire
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: comes from a maybe a childhood taunt, uh, like a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: little song kids would sing. And he says, you know,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: we've lost this to time. I liked what he said here.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: This might work for a segue, he says, Unfortunately, we
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: didn't have Twitter back then. If we had Twitter, I'd
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: be able to pen this down to the exact day
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and exact hour. And speaking of segways, since his we
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: do have uh, we do have social media for ridiculous history.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram. You can find us
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter as a
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: show and as individual. How has nobody come up with
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: kind of a vaguely satanic social media program called Pentagram?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: That'd be fun. Yeah, that's interesting. How would it work?
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Divining, you know, black mirrors walking around
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. What's that called? Ben winter winter
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: winter winter shin winter s? I always think it's winter
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Shin's like you know better better. It's like when you
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: grow the hair out on the back of your legs
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: to prepare for the wintertime. Yeah, yeah, know it's true. Uh.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not on Pentagram, doesn't exist yet, but you can't
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: find me on Instagram. Where I am at? How now,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Noel Brown? I've been on a bit of a role posting,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you know, memes and cooking stuff. I've been doing a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: lot of cooking. I made my first pieya the other
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: night in my new Dutch oven that I got, Uh,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite possessions in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the world. What what what you put? Okay? So it's
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: started with chicken thighs um caramelized onions to start, uh,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and then two cans of clams including the juice, and
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: then chicken stock, a lot to white wine San Marzano
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: tomatoes that you kind of mush up um. And then
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: you actually add the paia rice into the mix and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: then you cover it and like like simmer it in
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the really heavy litted Dutch oven and it absorbs. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I kids you not, all of that liquid absorbs into
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the rice and it becomes this like creamy kind of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you know, texture, delightful thing. And then I added shrimp
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and scallops at the very last minute. They just cook
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: just in the heat of the pot. You don't even
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: have to turn the heat off at that point. One
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: of my favorite things I've ever made. Will will repeat
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: nice nice. Yeah. Yeah, I think I've been cooking quite
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a bit too now that have a little a little
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: more time of making a lot of stuff from scratch. Um.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I haven't posted pictures of that, but I think that's
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: where you're you're going. Did you say your Instagram handle gosh,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I sure didn't, Ben, it is at how now Noel Brown. Ben,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I would very much love to see some of your
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: cooking your I'm always seeing stuff from your girlfriend. She
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: is a fabulous cook, and I would love to see
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: some from you. Where can folks do that? If you
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: so choose to share, Sure you can. You can find
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: updates on my quarantine Beard and various misadventures on Instagram
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: at Ben Boland or on Twitter at Ben Bolan h
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: s W. So check it out. Say hi, we always
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you, and we hope that this
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: episode find you well in non flammable or at least
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: non explosive pants. Thank you so much for listening. Folks
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: in a casey pegram, thank you for hanging out. It's
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: weird because usually when we're in the studio, the place,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the spot that I usually sit in your face is
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: obscured by a by one of the bars of the windows.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Bar of windows. Maybe not the best best way to say,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: but it makes it sound like we're in podcast jail.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, we went from podcast jail to pandemic jail
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: right And by the way, folks, pro tip if you
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: want to keep your pants from exploding. Don't wear pants.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time fast m hmmm. For more
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,