Speaker 1: Well, folks, friends and neighbors. Fellow would be apiarist. You
Speaker 1: have heard the buzz, and the rumors are true. This
Speaker 1: is ridiculous history. My name is Ben, my name is Knowl.
Speaker 1: Not the bees, not the bees. They're in my eyes brown?
Speaker 1: What is that? What is that? What is that? But
Speaker 1: not the bears, not the bears. And we are of
Speaker 1: course joined with our super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, thank you.
Speaker 1: He just did a a lovely looking sparkling water in
Speaker 1: our direction. And I'm a fan of toast and I've
Speaker 1: got a weird anecdote to start this off. Coast. Yeah, yeah, toast,
Speaker 1: both the prepared bread item and the act. I thought
Speaker 1: you were like toast with honey. I get it toasts
Speaker 1: like I like a like a cheers kind of motion.
Speaker 1: I got you. I'm glad that you mentioned honey. Funny story.
Speaker 1: There was a middle aged couple once upon a time
Speaker 1: who decided to improve their sex life in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: They decided to do this and they spent a week
Speaker 1: eating raw honey gathered from an area in your Turkey's
Speaker 1: Black Sea, and it did not have the results that
Speaker 1: they had hoped for. Not only raw honey, In fact,
Speaker 1: in the abstract for this study UM entitled mad honey
Speaker 1: sexual activity and acute inferior mio cardio in farctions in
Speaker 1: a married couple, you see the you were there is
Speaker 1: mad honey. That's because this particular honey is produced from
Speaker 1: the nectar of the rhododendron flower or Rhododendron ponticum, which
Speaker 1: is native to areas of Japan, Nepal, parts of North America, Europe,
Speaker 1: and Brazil and as you mentioned then the Eastern Black
Speaker 1: Sea region of Turkey, and this honey has some pretty
Speaker 1: interesting qualities, right, Yeah, To go back to the story there,
Speaker 1: the couple from the Black Sea did not have the
Speaker 1: improved sex life that they felt they would. Instead, they
Speaker 1: ended up in the hospital with symptoms mimicking heart attacks.
Speaker 1: Due to its relatively obscure destroyer nol is introduced mad honey,
Speaker 1: specifically mad honey poisoning this syrup. This substance is naturally
Speaker 1: toxic and it does have a different taste, reportedly taste
Speaker 1: more bitter than normal honey, and the toxicity UH varies
Speaker 1: the ending upon when you gather it. It's higher when
Speaker 1: you gather fresh honey in the springtime because that's when
Speaker 1: those rhododendrons are among the first plants to bloom, so
Speaker 1: bees are more likely to interact with those Some of
Speaker 1: those interesting characteristics I mentioned, though, one of them is
Speaker 1: that it apparently is used to treat erectile dysfunction, and
Speaker 1: it's that particular reason is one of the big ones
Speaker 1: that causes you know, folks in the age range of
Speaker 1: these patients um to buy the stuff. And it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to buy online. But let's let's rewind the story
Speaker 1: way back to when we first started hearing reports of
Speaker 1: the effects of this type of honey. Right, this is
Speaker 1: something that's easily purchased today, but it does have a
Speaker 1: a razor's edge. It can go from intoxicating the lethal
Speaker 1: with just a small variance of dose, and people have
Speaker 1: been aware of it for a long long time. The
Speaker 1: ancient Greek commander Xenophon, who led his army of ten
Speaker 1: thousand soldiers from Persia back to Greece and four one BC,
Speaker 1: prided himself on being the best, the utter last word,
Speaker 1: when it came to finding healthy and safe campsites and
Speaker 1: enemy territory. This is according to research scholar in classics
Speaker 1: and history of science at Stanford named Adrian Mayor. She's
Speaker 1: also luckily for our purposes. The author of a book
Speaker 1: called The Poison King and a survey of ancient warfare
Speaker 1: called Greek Fire, Poisoned Arrows and scorpion bombs, And according
Speaker 1: to Professor Mayer, Xenophon noticed nothing unusual about the campsite
Speaker 1: that he had chosen, in a place called Pontus on
Speaker 1: the Black Sea coast in northeast Turkey. But he did
Speaker 1: note an extraordinary number of swarming bees, and he said
Speaker 1: that his men soon discovered the hives and went nuts
Speaker 1: and bananas. They gorged on that sweet, sweet wild honey.
Speaker 1: And then Xenophon, who was noted for his meticulous record keeping,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's true, but he definitely kept
Speaker 1: them coarded. His observations of the way his troops behaved,
Speaker 1: and the author Adrian mayer Um describes them as such.
Speaker 1: He was appalled when his soldiers suddenly began to behave
Speaker 1: like crazed madmen, and they collapsed on mass I'm assuming
Speaker 1: in some sort of Greek heap. His entire army was
Speaker 1: paralyzed and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to enemy attacks. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they were wasted and utter sitting ducks.
Speaker 1: And with the benefit of modern science, we can crack
Speaker 1: a little bit of the case. Here the honey they
Speaker 1: were consuming, it was dark, reddish mad honeting appearance in Turkey.
Speaker 1: It's called deli ball, and we can trace the act
Speaker 1: of ingredient that's harming people. It's called grayanotoxin. Grannotoxins can
Speaker 1: be found in honey produced from the nectar plants like
Speaker 1: this specific sort of rhododendron, because they contain alkaloids that
Speaker 1: are poisonous to humans. But as we're jumping back in time, Uh, Noel,
Speaker 1: you said you had another example from a little bit
Speaker 1: later in the timeline I do. In sixty seven b c. E. M.
Speaker 1: Rome invaded the Black Sea region under the command of
Speaker 1: General Pompey, new relation to the town No no Um.
Speaker 1: But the the opposition forces, which were headed up by
Speaker 1: the reigning king myth thread ats Um, they knew about
Speaker 1: the area and the indigenous wildlife and flora and fauna,
Speaker 1: and so they kind of pulled a little bit of
Speaker 1: a trick on the Romans by lining their paths with
Speaker 1: these very enticing pieces of this mad honeycomb. And a
Speaker 1: similar scenario took place as to the Greek situation, they
Speaker 1: started vomiting and became intoxicated uh and just hallucinating wildly,
Speaker 1: and they became easy prey z for the pickens. Yes,
Speaker 1: they also were experiencing the dizziness, hypotension, the heart problems,
Speaker 1: the weird simulation, the feeling of you know, incoming death.
Speaker 1: It's very painful, strange feeling. And this isn't the only
Speaker 1: time that somebody weaponized mad honey uh. It's also been
Speaker 1: used in mead as a way of stalling approaching forces.
Speaker 1: We have an excellent article called Ancient Armies Waged War
Speaker 1: with Hallucinogenic honey by our recurring contributor laur L. Dove,
Speaker 1: And in this you can find more information about these
Speaker 1: various instances. And it turned out this stuff worked really well.
Speaker 1: If you used this honey uh, this Deli ball to
Speaker 1: make mead or a k honey wine, then you can
Speaker 1: still have similar effects in a D nine four six
Speaker 1: this happened. It had a little extra kick to it.
Speaker 1: I guess right, yeah, yeah, not like a Heinz fifty
Speaker 1: seven versus catchup kick, a more dangerous one. I'm more
Speaker 1: of a Worcestershire sauceman myself, and the story of Worcestershire,
Speaker 1: by the way itself, is just really weird. Can we
Speaker 1: do that one? Yeah, let's do that one in Do
Speaker 1: you want to do it in a later episode? I
Speaker 1: think we do in a later episode in the New Year. Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds good. So there was someone named Olga of Kiev,
Speaker 1: and Olga of Kiev had Russian foes, and Olga went
Speaker 1: through some proxies and had some allies offered these Russians
Speaker 1: several tons of mead, and five thousand Russians ingested this
Speaker 1: mead and they collapsed, reeling and delirious, and they were
Speaker 1: summarily massacred. Then in fourteen eighty nine, in the same area,
Speaker 1: a Russian army absolutely slaughtered ten thousand Totters to a
Speaker 1: drunk too many casks of this kind of me that
Speaker 1: the Russians had left behind once again, and that kind
Speaker 1: of sneaky honey trap. And they've called that kind of
Speaker 1: a honey trap. That's a term, but that's actually what
Speaker 1: it was. And by the way, Totters just kind of
Speaker 1: into this um are a Turkish people from living in
Speaker 1: around and around Eurasia. And Eastern Europe and northern Asia,
Speaker 1: and so folks, we can begin to see the shape
Speaker 1: of the moral for today's episode. If this moral would
Speaker 1: exist as a honeycomb shaped it is a honeycomb hive
Speaker 1: shaped moral, and it is the following if someone you
Speaker 1: don't trust offers you something to eat or drink, or
Speaker 1: if you are walking on the way to a clear battle,
Speaker 1: I just don't eat stuff you see on the side
Speaker 1: of the road. It's very true. And we also have
Speaker 1: good news for anybody who loves rhododendrons and says, wait,
Speaker 1: am I in dangering my friends, family and my foes
Speaker 1: by having these plants? The answer is no, only one
Speaker 1: or two, maybe three of rhododendron and carry this stuff,
Speaker 1: So generally you should be safe and it's not all bad.
Speaker 1: In Turkish culture, deli ball as seen as a kind
Speaker 1: of medicine and it's used in very small amounts to
Speaker 1: treat various medical conditions. Yeah, it's true. The couple that
Speaker 1: we talked about at the top of the show, we're
Speaker 1: trying to use this stuff for a a medicinal reason.
Speaker 1: They weren't just trying to get messed up. We mentioned
Speaker 1: the idea of it being used to treat erectile dysfunction.
Speaker 1: But Ben, have you heard of the Guron people of
Speaker 1: Nepal briefly, but I'd love to hear more. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: they to this day carry on the tradition of they
Speaker 1: call it hunting for this honey. We'll talk about what
Speaker 1: that process is like in a minute. It's pretty insane, um.
Speaker 1: But they use it to treat like joint pains, things
Speaker 1: like arthritis, or mild stomach aches or I believe I
Speaker 1: read somewhere even um, you know, hypertension, which is interesting
Speaker 1: considering that in the medical study that we talked about,
Speaker 1: part of the side effects of taking too much of
Speaker 1: the stuff is that it can increase um your heart
Speaker 1: rate significantly and cause your blood pressure to drop dangerously,
Speaker 1: like the old saw about alcohol. Mad honey, maybe to
Speaker 1: cure some of the problems it causes. Indeed, But these
Speaker 1: Guran people are a fascinating bunch. Um. They live in
Speaker 1: villages and they are entirely self sufficient. They share wool
Speaker 1: from from goats that they have, They grind their own flower,
Speaker 1: they make their own clothes, and what they have left
Speaker 1: over they sell at local markets. Um. But every year
Speaker 1: they carry on this tradition of going on an expedition
Speaker 1: out to these incredible cliffs where they get this honey
Speaker 1: because the areas where these particular bees which are actually
Speaker 1: I don't know if we mentioned the largest bees in
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, the Himalayan rock b is gigantic honey bee,
Speaker 1: and they make their nests in their hives on these steep,
Speaker 1: steep cliffs. So in order to access this, these folks
Speaker 1: make these rope ladders out of kind of twisted bamboo
Speaker 1: and then they it looks like a giant rope, and
Speaker 1: then they insert these pieces of wood in between to
Speaker 1: create rungs, and then they like well, you know, rope
Speaker 1: it down to like a root or some kind of tree,
Speaker 1: and then they repel down the side of these cliffs.
Speaker 1: And he used these giant sticks to kind of poke
Speaker 1: at the combs and knock them into a basket that's
Speaker 1: also being lowered down independently, and in order to kind
Speaker 1: of protect themselves. You might see this been with traditional beekeeping,
Speaker 1: or to get the bees to kind of leave so
Speaker 1: you can get this the goods, they smoke them out
Speaker 1: of their holes basically with burning leaves, um and stuff.
Speaker 1: But still even still these folks get stung constantly, and
Speaker 1: it's a real almost right of passage to do this,
Speaker 1: and there have been cases where people have fallen to
Speaker 1: their death. There's a great quote in this article from
Speaker 1: Vice Hunting for Hallucinogenic Honey in Nepal by David Capara,
Speaker 1: who actually went on this expedition, and he's speaking firsthand,
Speaker 1: and he spoke to one of the men that he
Speaker 1: went on the expedition with, and this is what this man,
Speaker 1: Tulsi Gurung said, And all of these folks have the
Speaker 1: surname of Gurum, everyone that lives in the village. I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting um quote. At first, I'm very scared
Speaker 1: going down the ladder, but when I see the hives,
Speaker 1: I get filled with power and become fearless. And this
Speaker 1: right of passage, this arduous collection process results in what
Speaker 1: the locals call pagal maha or mad honey. You can
Speaker 1: find accounts of people who have tried this, both medicinally
Speaker 1: and recreationally, like backpackers in Nepal. For example. We did
Speaker 1: say it was it is available, you can buy it,
Speaker 1: likely from the comfort of your own computer, but we
Speaker 1: were a little bit misleading because although you can obtain
Speaker 1: it easily. You cannot really obtain it cheaply. In some places,
Speaker 1: this stuff allegedly sells for a hundred and sixty six
Speaker 1: dollars a pound exactly. Then, and I actually found um
Speaker 1: an article talking about kind of procuring some of this
Speaker 1: Turkish variety of deli ball at a shop. And this
Speaker 1: piece was written by Emma Bryce for Modern Farmer, called
Speaker 1: the Strange History of Mad Honey. And Bryce actually makes
Speaker 1: her way to a shop that specializes in honey, and
Speaker 1: the shopkeeper had a jar um, and she describes it
Speaker 1: as kind of a frothy honey that's very bright orange,
Speaker 1: almost looks like clarified butter um. But the shopkeeper called
Speaker 1: it rows of the forest honey or armand Kamar Bali
Speaker 1: and Emma got a sense that they weren't really trying
Speaker 1: to promote this stuff because they didn't want tourists completely
Speaker 1: losing their minds by eating too much um. In every
Speaker 1: account that I've read, someone tasting this or trying it,
Speaker 1: it's usually been a couple of tea spoons, and it's
Speaker 1: described as having almost a cooling effect on the throat
Speaker 1: um a little bit of a burn. But then the
Speaker 1: kind of is replaced by kind of almost ah, I
Speaker 1: see hot kind of effect, that kind of then you know,
Speaker 1: goes down your spine and almost comparable to a cannabis high.
Speaker 1: I guess M yeah. I think again, it really depends
Speaker 1: on the amount of the dose, because you could read
Speaker 1: accounts from people who clearly took way too much of
Speaker 1: this stuff and talk about laying awake at night and
Speaker 1: pain terrified by the sound of their own heartbeat. A
Speaker 1: lot of hallucin genic experts will tell you that if
Speaker 1: you're going for something recreational, not that we would ever
Speaker 1: legally recommend considering that on our show, but if you
Speaker 1: are attempting to use some hallucinogens for recreational purposes, biologists
Speaker 1: Sean McCanns says, the compounds involved in mad honey are
Speaker 1: not super fun and not something I would recommend. They're
Speaker 1: far better and safer hallucinogenic compounds that you can use.
Speaker 1: Speaking of legally acquiring this stuff, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point out this may have maybe stating the obvious, but
Speaker 1: it is legal in Turkey, so you can buy it,
Speaker 1: you know, completely free and clear. But again there is
Speaker 1: a sense, probably like the way Amsterdam has done business
Speaker 1: for a long time, where even though you know um
Speaker 1: cannabis and you know edible versions of that are legal there,
Speaker 1: they kind of tuck it away a little bit. They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to promote it right up front. And
Speaker 1: there is that sense that dummy American tourists are going
Speaker 1: to swoop in and like take away too much and
Speaker 1: be a liability. And there are some other fascinating things here. Uh. First,
Speaker 1: Adrian Mayer says that mad honey could still be used
Speaker 1: as a ruse and war today for us the same
Speaker 1: reason that we pointed out, people could do a much
Speaker 1: better job in general of accepting things from strangers. You
Speaker 1: got to have some critical thinking. We also, you know,
Speaker 1: I had I had heard about biological or chemical warfare
Speaker 1: throughout history before, but it wasn't familiar with food. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to see if there were any other examples,
Speaker 1: and I found some stuff that's at best vaguely related.
Speaker 1: There was a war between Brazil and Uruguay in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties and during one maritime battle, Uruguayans ship ran
Speaker 1: out of cannonballs and the captain ordered his men to
Speaker 1: fire stale balls of cheese instead. That's a that's thinking
Speaker 1: on your feet, right there though, and how stale was
Speaker 1: this cheese man because one of the cheese is shattered
Speaker 1: the main mass of the enemy ship and people died
Speaker 1: by cheese shrapnel, which I know every human death is tragic,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of that's kind of amusing, that's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of ridiculous. Um. You know, I could picture, uh, cheese.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had a real hard cheese, ben, I
Speaker 1: could picture if it was cut thin enough and that
Speaker 1: flew at a fast enough you know of speed, and
Speaker 1: the trajectory was just right, I could picture getting garrotted
Speaker 1: by one of those things, right, Because it seems I
Speaker 1: think that's a very interesting point, Noel, Because you know,
Speaker 1: we've been around a cheese wheel or two. We we've
Speaker 1: seen some dangerous cheese. I've never thought it we could
Speaker 1: be lethal dangerous cheese. And one time, apparently in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean during World War Two, a Japanese submarine was
Speaker 1: sunk using potatoes. I'm just gonna let that one hang
Speaker 1: in the air. Were these like regular potatoes or these
Speaker 1: like you know, super mutant potatoes. Were They're just a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of potatoes tied together to make a giant
Speaker 1: battering right. I don't know, I just just my imagination
Speaker 1: is going wild. These are all great ideas, These are
Speaker 1: all great ideas. Uh. The US S. O Bannon came
Speaker 1: across a surfaced Japanese submarine and they had surfaced because
Speaker 1: they had a malfunctioning periscope, and they blasted enough holes
Speaker 1: in the submarine to prevent it from safely submerging again,
Speaker 1: but not not enough damage to sink it. And so
Speaker 1: they pulled directly along the sub and the submariners you know,
Speaker 1: are of course pe oed and angry. Uh. And before
Speaker 1: they could start firing, the crew of the USS O'Bannon
Speaker 1: began throwing potatoes at them because for some reason, there
Speaker 1: were no guns on the USS O'Bannon, and the Japanese
Speaker 1: forces thought the potatoes were grenades. You know, with a
Speaker 1: name like O'Bannon, you think they would be more concerned
Speaker 1: with conserving their potatoes. Oh you know, no, I think
Speaker 1: we have to wonder what the what the namesake of
Speaker 1: the U S S o Bannon would have thought about it.
Speaker 1: But surprisingly enough to to us, it turns out that
Speaker 1: it is not well, it's uncommon, but it's not unreasonable
Speaker 1: for food to be used as a weapon of war. Typically,
Speaker 1: when I thought of this sort of stuff, I thought
Speaker 1: food as a weapon of war would have been a
Speaker 1: matter of resource restriction, right, like you starve a city,
Speaker 1: you're seeching. I didn't know that you could shoot cheese
Speaker 1: at people, and you know that's on me. I gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta think outside the box. Yeah, I think some
Speaker 1: time outside the box would do us both a world
Speaker 1: of good. Um, And thankfully we have all these fun
Speaker 1: topics to help us do that. Agreed. And I would
Speaker 1: have asked, you know, does this does this curious case
Speaker 1: of mad honey which persists today? Uh? Does this inspiring
Speaker 1: any questions for you? Would you ever try it if
Speaker 1: you found yourself near the Black Sea or Nepal? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean again, it's not illegal, um
Speaker 1: if if I know enough about it that I certainly wouldn't.
Speaker 1: You know, spread it on toast and just go to town.
Speaker 1: But I try a little taste because it sounds like
Speaker 1: in small doses it almost has just a slight euphoric
Speaker 1: like maybe almost like having a beer or something kind
Speaker 1: of vibe. But when you start kind of piling it on,
Speaker 1: it turns much darker. Yeah, you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: a that's a reasonable way to look at it. Let's
Speaker 1: see if we get a yea or name from super
Speaker 1: producer Casey pegram Casey. What do you think? All right,
Speaker 1: we have a Casey's all four, Noel's all four. I
Speaker 1: think it's reasonable. I am impulsive. I probably would try it.
Speaker 1: But what about you, friends and neighbors. Would you take
Speaker 1: a dose of the infamous mad honey, the substance that
Speaker 1: toppled armies. Would you be up to the task? Why
Speaker 1: or why not? Or have you already tried it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right into us, Any and trepid travelers out there that
Speaker 1: have scaled the rocky cliffs of Nepal in search of
Speaker 1: this um intoxicating nectar. We are ridiculous at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can also find and us on
Speaker 1: social media in various forms, including Facebook and Instagram. Well
Speaker 1: not not. Those are the only ones. Yep, those are
Speaker 1: the main ones. We do not have a LinkedIn uh,
Speaker 1: nor do we have a Farmer's only. We don't use
Speaker 1: the P word anymore either. No, that's true. It is
Speaker 1: in a It's a large sign directly by this humongous
Speaker 1: timer we still have in the office from a previous episode. Unfortunately, today,
Speaker 1: time is not on our side, but we hope that
Speaker 1: you will join us next time for another episode of
Speaker 1: ridiculous history.