Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: for tuning in today. We could start with just just
Speaker 1: one one weird fact. Uh. A long time ago, super
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegrum and a friend of the show, Paul
Speaker 1: Deckan gotten a bit of an argument. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember this, Casey. It was an argument about milk.
Speaker 1: Did you hear about this? No? No, but I love
Speaker 1: a good milk controversy. Spill it. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: even remember this argument. Do tell Ben? So I think
Speaker 1: enough time has passed that's safe to say, Casey, you
Speaker 1: and Paul are still friends. But Paul has a Midwestern background.
Speaker 1: He is also the super producer and stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. And I was present for a
Speaker 1: time when Casey and Paul had this continuing discussion over
Speaker 1: whether milk was a beverage or an ingredient. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that now, Casey, I really do not. I have.
Speaker 1: I have zero opinion on this. I guess I would
Speaker 1: go beverage beverage, he says. I mean, I think clearly
Speaker 1: it's both, you know, I mean, I think there's some
Speaker 1: people that there always reminds me of the scene an
Speaker 1: Anchor Man, where a downtrodden Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy
Speaker 1: is walking around San Diego, disheveled after he's lost his job.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert for you know, anchor Man. I guess, but
Speaker 1: he's drinking milk and it's it's so hot. Perhaps milk
Speaker 1: was the wrong choice of beverage because you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really think of milk is being refreshing. I think
Speaker 1: of it as something you like, you know, dunka cookie
Speaker 1: in um, you know, drink it with a piece of cake.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't really drink milk as like, you know,
Speaker 1: to to re energize myself or hydrink. Yeah, there's something
Speaker 1: kind of gross about the idea of substituting milk for
Speaker 1: like gatorade or something. It's kind of nasty, true. True.
Speaker 1: It's also the ability to drink milk into adulthood is
Speaker 1: the result of a mutation. Let's make no bones about that.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was really into milk. It's how
Speaker 1: you dictator Bernito Mussolini. Yeah, he was. He actually drank
Speaker 1: so much of the stuff up as a result of us.
Speaker 1: I think he had like bad gut bacteria or something
Speaker 1: like that, and had like a longstanding history of stomach
Speaker 1: troubles and he felt like drinking milk was going to
Speaker 1: help him with that. Doctors diagnosed him having a doodental
Speaker 1: doodenal do audenal ulcer um, and he was at the
Speaker 1: time had to kind of like disappear from the public
Speaker 1: sphere for a little while. And he adopted this extreme
Speaker 1: new at that consisted of tea uh, something called pain
Speaker 1: biss scottato, which is just dry toast boiled fruit and
Speaker 1: milk um. And he had to have that regiment three
Speaker 1: times a day. Uh. And he had given up alcohol
Speaker 1: two at the time because that doesn't do very good
Speaker 1: stuff to your stomach if you're having digestive troubles. And
Speaker 1: he gave his very telling quote about his feelings on milk.
Speaker 1: He clearly believed it was a beverage and not a
Speaker 1: not exclusively and ingredient. He says, I drink it at
Speaker 1: the table, small gulps, so that it may properly salivated.
Speaker 1: Milk is a wonderful food, perhaps the best food known
Speaker 1: to man. This one glass of milk contains enough nourishment
Speaker 1: to sustain me until the midday meal six hours hence,
Speaker 1: and this story that we're about to embark on, it
Speaker 1: does contain a lot of Mussolini if you're looking at
Speaker 1: the ingredient list of this ridiculous history episode also contains futurism,
Speaker 1: and contains some wartime information, and it attains a lot
Speaker 1: of very weird stuff about milk. I hesitate to bury
Speaker 1: the lead, but we can also build toward it. The
Speaker 1: headline is this, eventually Mussolini was so into milk that
Speaker 1: he thought it wasn't just the best food known demand.
Speaker 1: It may also be a form of clothing. You did
Speaker 1: not hear that wrong, ridiculous historians, a form of clothing.
Speaker 1: It kind of starts with something called Futurism, which I
Speaker 1: think that three of us are down with. It's early
Speaker 1: twentieth century artistic movement alive. It was centered in Italy
Speaker 1: and it it really emphasized dynamism, the energy and power
Speaker 1: of the machine, and the frantic phonetic pace of modern life.
Speaker 1: So during the second decade of the twentieth century, in
Speaker 1: teen tens or so, the movement's influence expanded and spread
Speaker 1: across the majority of Europe. The Russian avant garde loved it.
Speaker 1: You'll probably associate it mo st often now with would
Speaker 1: say visual arts and poetry, probably, yeah, absolutely, Or like
Speaker 1: there's a really great um cartoon. I think it's called
Speaker 1: like the World of Tomorrow or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: I think it's a Chuck Jones cartoon where it shows
Speaker 1: all of these amazing, you know, innovations that will potentially
Speaker 1: take place in the future, obviously with a kind of
Speaker 1: a comical bent. And I believe there's like a space
Speaker 1: baby in it at some point, and there's like a
Speaker 1: car that will like shave your face for you while
Speaker 1: you're driving, and all that kind of stuff. So it
Speaker 1: certainly was a zeitgeisty kind of thing, and exactly like
Speaker 1: you said, been wrapped up in design or think the
Speaker 1: Jet Sins. You know, that was a good kind of
Speaker 1: modern example of like futurism personified kind of as as
Speaker 1: a comedy and futurism, I guess was first officially announced
Speaker 1: February nine in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. They published
Speaker 1: this manifesto by an Italian author named Philip bo Thomas
Speaker 1: ol Manti, and he had coined the word trism as
Speaker 1: this this phrase that reflected his goal of getting rid
Speaker 1: of all that old, stuffy junk from the past and
Speaker 1: celebrating all the new hip unsquare original things, and so
Speaker 1: they really love technology. They also, this is the weird
Speaker 1: flex here, they're also really into violence and conflict. They said,
Speaker 1: that's how we get rid of these traditional values and
Speaker 1: destroy these cultural institutions. So as it had this aggressive
Speaker 1: tone and it was supposed to get attention, it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be controversial. They were trying to be edge lords,
Speaker 1: you guys, That's what they were trying to do. So
Speaker 1: ahead of the car really quick correction on my end,
Speaker 1: I sort of like smushed two ideas together. Uh. The
Speaker 1: the Chuck Jones cartoon was called Rocket Bye Baby, which
Speaker 1: was about a space baby and also has heavy futurist elements.
Speaker 1: And then the main one I was talking about was
Speaker 1: called The World of Tomorrow, which is a tech savery
Speaker 1: cartoon that like shows all of these like amazing inventions
Speaker 1: that will exist in the future. Definitely that all kind
Speaker 1: of don't work super well. So I have a question
Speaker 1: for you both when when you when you see the
Speaker 1: headline writ large, Mussolini predicted that wearable milk was the
Speaker 1: future of fashion. What do you picture, because I had
Speaker 1: something very distinct that I pictured, Casey, you want to
Speaker 1: go first, maybe like a layer of semi transparent cheese
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. It's when I when I
Speaker 1: first saw the phrase wearable milk, I was kind of
Speaker 1: grossed out by it. But the more I thought about it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that might be kind of pleasant. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm I'm keeping an open mind here.
Speaker 1: How about you been? Uh? Yeah, so I I am
Speaker 1: all for firsthand investigations. So I took all my clothes off,
Speaker 1: I poured milk atop of my body, and for you know,
Speaker 1: for a while I was wearing it, just not consistently. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was pleasant vibe. It was probably not safe for work.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can just wear milk at work.
Speaker 1: But in all honesty, I I thought, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some material science in there, because you could build things
Speaker 1: out of proteins right in different stuff instances. That's right,
Speaker 1: Oh you were. You were way more barking up the
Speaker 1: right uh cow than I was. I kind of pictured
Speaker 1: it like being some sort of like like a wearable
Speaker 1: kind of plastic bag that was filled with milk. Think
Speaker 1: of like a like a transparent plastic raincoat that like
Speaker 1: is hollow on the inside and full of milk. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so we were. We were all three, I think,
Speaker 1: taking interesting explorations there. And you know, I appreciate the
Speaker 1: compliment about thinking about the chemistry. I want to be fair.
Speaker 1: I was after I covered myself in milk and messed
Speaker 1: up a good part of my apartment. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see those boudoir photos hit the internet. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say. But I have to say, Ben, your
Speaker 1: your spot on when you say this is all about
Speaker 1: material science, because at the end of the day, that
Speaker 1: is what this story is about. By the way, Mussolini
Speaker 1: also was really anti waste um and the idea of
Speaker 1: this particular form of material science is you don't have
Speaker 1: to use fresh milk. You can use bespoiled milk. Sorry
Speaker 1: I had to add the best, best spoiled. That's like
Speaker 1: that word. But you can use milk that's gone bad
Speaker 1: or substandard milk they like sometimes when the when the
Speaker 1: cows generate milk, there's a link that has to be
Speaker 1: graded or whatever, and I guess if it's a lower
Speaker 1: quality and if it gets tossed. But in this situation,
Speaker 1: you can actually use that lower quality milk to extract
Speaker 1: these essentially like fibers. And there's a really cool video
Speaker 1: that we found in this research called making Wool from Milk,
Speaker 1: and I think the beginning of it sums up the
Speaker 1: whole concept nicely. If we could roll that tape, that'd
Speaker 1: be swell bo bo. Black sheep will have to look
Speaker 1: to his laurels or in the world of wool, he
Speaker 1: isn't the big noise he used to be. An Italian
Speaker 1: inventor has discovered how to get wool from milk. At
Speaker 1: the moment, it's just plain unadulterated cow juice. But you
Speaker 1: ain't seen nothing yet. The milk goes through a whole
Speaker 1: lot of processes, each of which brings it near the
Speaker 1: consistency of wool. Watch how it grows and the finished
Speaker 1: article is delivered through a pipe very much like milk.
Speaker 1: So in future you'll be able to choose between drinking
Speaker 1: a glass of milk and wearing one. And unfortunately as
Speaker 1: a podcast you couldn't see all these crazy machines, but
Speaker 1: it's literally you know this, these chemists that are pouring
Speaker 1: milk into these beakers and kind of stretching it out
Speaker 1: into these ropey kind of gelatinous strands, and then they
Speaker 1: feed it into these machines that then pull it into
Speaker 1: longer gelatinous strands, and then they dry it out, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then you've got these workers in this factory that
Speaker 1: are pulling it apart like cotton, right, yeah, yeah, that's correct,
Speaker 1: And people can't be blamed at this point for you know,
Speaker 1: of course it might sound like a hoax, because this
Speaker 1: is the same part of the world that also once
Speaker 1: told people spaghetti grows on trees, like Europe has had
Speaker 1: some weird innovations, and at first blush, this reminded me
Speaker 1: of that. But the difference is wearable milk or this
Speaker 1: fibrous material is real. And going back to the futurism
Speaker 1: comes from that because they also loved fashion. So since
Speaker 1: the publication of the Futurist Manifesto of Men's Clothing, there
Speaker 1: was this debate over how Italian should dress, and futurists
Speaker 1: wanted manufacturers to make clothing out of new materials, revolutionary
Speaker 1: alternative materials. They didn't just propose milk, they proposed paper, tinfoil, rubber,
Speaker 1: fish skin, and somehow gas I'm still a little I'm
Speaker 1: not clear on the gas thing. It was just like
Speaker 1: you're always kind of like pigpen and the peanuts or something.
Speaker 1: But it's strange because the Manifesto of Futurist Women's Fashion
Speaker 1: in ninety added milk to the list, and it didn't
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. It wasn't just like someone saying
Speaker 1: fever dream. Between nineteen o four and nineteen o nine
Speaker 1: there was a German chemist named Frederick Totenhaupt who tried
Speaker 1: to turn milk into a kind of a silk substitute,
Speaker 1: similar to a process similar to what you see in
Speaker 1: that video. His efforts failed at first, but the futurists
Speaker 1: caught onto it and they started saying, you know, milk,
Speaker 1: it maybe the fabric of the future. So this idea
Speaker 1: wasn't as nuts as it might sound. You know, wool
Speaker 1: as a protein, and on a molecular level, it has
Speaker 1: a it's a protein with a similar structure to the
Speaker 1: protein found in milk casin. All chemists needed to do
Speaker 1: was figure out how to convince the case and to
Speaker 1: assume a shape that sort of imitated the texture of wool.
Speaker 1: And when Mussolini to your pointnal. When he started pushing
Speaker 1: for waste production, he was also pushing for increased self sufficiency.
Speaker 1: He was like, I don't want to see us reliant
Speaker 1: on the British and the French and those Americans. So
Speaker 1: the Futurists, they had a for a very short time,
Speaker 1: they had their own political party, the Futurist Political Party,
Speaker 1: and they merged with Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party, and they
Speaker 1: had a lot of goals for strengthening Italy's economy in
Speaker 1: preparation for the comming war. Member Futurism likes War two,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that they planned to do
Speaker 1: was to take the wild dream of milk clothing right,
Speaker 1: uh quick, quick aside um, Was it a kind of
Speaker 1: Mussolini that sort of coined the term fascism or did
Speaker 1: that exist pre him because obviously didn't mean anything bad
Speaker 1: when he used it as the name of his party.
Speaker 1: I think it just kind of got that rap over time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was definitely used by members of this movement. I
Speaker 1: think the first use was in nineteen fifteen from the
Speaker 1: fascis of Revolutionary Actions, so the Fascist or the Fascist
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Action, that's right, And they used it to refer
Speaker 1: to again, not like some sort of totalitary and evil
Speaker 1: empire kind of regime. It was more the idea of
Speaker 1: a syndicate or a guild. And apparently the Latin of
Speaker 1: fascismo is is a term that translates to a bundle
Speaker 1: of sticks, with which there's also another very divisive term
Speaker 1: that's a slur that also translates to a bundle of sticks.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it, but I think you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Yeah. So, Italy under this fascist
Speaker 1: government is being helmed by Mussolini, and he wants self sufficiency,
Speaker 1: and he wants to prepare the economy and new unorthodox ways.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they wanted to do was
Speaker 1: create artificial fabrics. This was a market that Italy had
Speaker 1: a good shot at further expanding in, and the Italian
Speaker 1: companies took up the suggestions of the futurists. They started
Speaker 1: using organic materials to make textiles. Their first big success
Speaker 1: was rayon, an artificial silk made of cellulose. In Italy
Speaker 1: alone became the world's leading producer of rayon. Uh. They
Speaker 1: didn't stop there, though. They still like when they closed
Speaker 1: their eyes, they dreamt of milk, which is a very
Speaker 1: weirdly specific. That's a rare insult that that I think
Speaker 1: I could give to the fascist government of Italy at
Speaker 1: the time. Building off of Totenhap's work, an Italian engineer
Speaker 1: named Antonio Ferretti perfected a process. He made a milk
Speaker 1: fiber he called La natale, a combination of the word
Speaker 1: lana meaning wool and ittal from Italia and and and
Speaker 1: it actually worked. The cool thing is we know how
Speaker 1: it worked, right. The science is pretty interesting, Like what's
Speaker 1: going on in that video we saw Noll? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were I was kind of fumbling my way through trying
Speaker 1: to describe it. And here's a little bit better or
Speaker 1: more science e version. Um. The acid is added to
Speaker 1: skim milk, which separates out that substance you're referring to here,
Speaker 1: I think it's pronounced casein um. Then that material is
Speaker 1: dissolved until it becomes that viscous, kind of gooey strandy
Speaker 1: type mater areal that retire almost like a dough um.
Speaker 1: And then next the case in is forced through these
Speaker 1: spinnerets kind of like a macaroni press. Have you ever
Speaker 1: watched any of those like really satisfying videos of like
Speaker 1: macaroni noodles being pushed through the little molds and you know,
Speaker 1: the little spirals or whatever, the various shapes a situation
Speaker 1: like that. So it's definitely like, what's the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, a industrial process using like heavy machinery. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they're hardened using a chemical bath, and then
Speaker 1: much like making noodles, they're cut into fibers of whatever
Speaker 1: length you need, and then it's it's dried again. And
Speaker 1: then you can actually in the video see workers separating
Speaker 1: them out by hand and then dumping them in these bins,
Speaker 1: and it's almost more like fluff at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: But that that may not be exactly the right order
Speaker 1: of operations, but that is one of the part of
Speaker 1: the process that isn't described here, but it's in the video. Um.
Speaker 1: So what you do get it's something that's very won't like.
Speaker 1: So Mussolini loved this stuff. He thought it was beautiful,
Speaker 1: that was amazing. He thought this was uniquely Italian fabric
Speaker 1: for uniquely Italian future. He thought Lal was genius because
Speaker 1: the truth was Italy, like many many other countries at
Speaker 1: the time, was wasting billions and billions of dollars per
Speaker 1: year in skim milk waste. So now to the point
Speaker 1: you made the top knel this lan ittal gave them
Speaker 1: a really smart, really cheap way to repurpose it, and
Speaker 1: it gave him a lot of bang for their buck.
Speaker 1: A hundred pounds of milk contained about three point seven
Speaker 1: pounds of this protein casein, and that translated to three
Speaker 1: point seven pounds of law and its hall. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty good or turn on investment right there for something
Speaker 1: that would have otherwise gone uh in the trash. And
Speaker 1: really nothing you can do with spoiled milk. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't cry over spoiled milk. That's not how it goes.
Speaker 1: I think it's spilt milk. But still there's nothing you
Speaker 1: can do with it. It's it's it's absolute waste product. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the know there were some issues that had some
Speaker 1: features that were positive. You know, obviously the math works
Speaker 1: out and it seems like a pretty good use of
Speaker 1: material it would otherwise be useless. But it wasn't as
Speaker 1: strong or as stretchy as the real thing. Will um.
Speaker 1: But Mussolini was so into it that he really wanted
Speaker 1: to He wanted Italy to be this kind of purveyor
Speaker 1: of this futurist mentality. So this was also partly a
Speaker 1: kind of propagandistic move to kind of situate Italy um
Speaker 1: as this you know, very forward thinking nation. So he
Speaker 1: wanted more of this kind of thing. So after he
Speaker 1: invaded Ethiopia um and was sanctioned heavily by the League
Speaker 1: of Nations, you know, because fascist dictator and all that, Uh,
Speaker 1: Italy became even more isolated. Uh So he really decided
Speaker 1: it was time to double down on this innovation of
Speaker 1: of landed. Yeah, it became this obsession for the government
Speaker 1: at the time, and the company that was manufacturing land
Speaker 1: etall s n I A Viscosa. They got tons of
Speaker 1: money and government aid and they were getting all the
Speaker 1: levers of government pulled such that they could immediately ramp
Speaker 1: up productions. So by nine seven they had produced ten
Speaker 1: million pounds of this wearable milk, and they started publishing
Speaker 1: propaganda posters that we're telling people to wear milk because
Speaker 1: it was like dressing in an Italian manner. And then
Speaker 1: the futurists who were still around love this invention, of course,
Speaker 1: because it makes them feel like they were right all along.
Speaker 1: And so they praised the fascist government at the time,
Speaker 1: and the guy we mentioned who made that earlier manifesto,
Speaker 1: Marinetti started writing poems for this company, s n I
Speaker 1: A Viscosa. His poem praises the text wild Manufacturer, and
Speaker 1: then this other poem, the simultaneous poem of Italian Fashion,
Speaker 1: also thanks the company for being so Italian like literally
Speaker 1: it's exemplary Italian nous. But his most memorable poem in
Speaker 1: this in this regard is his poem of the Milk Dress,
Speaker 1: which was published in like a little propaganda pamphlet booklet,
Speaker 1: and they have they have lines like and let this
Speaker 1: complicated milk be welcome, power, power, power, Let's exalt this
Speaker 1: milk made of reinforced steel, milk of war, militarized milk.
Speaker 1: It worked. That's the weirdest part that poem worked. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of a funny bit of a British comedy
Speaker 1: series that many of you might be familiar with called
Speaker 1: The Mighty Bush. There's a character named Howard Moon and
Speaker 1: he's obsessed. In the first season, they work at a
Speaker 1: zoo him and his partner, Vince Noir, is kind of
Speaker 1: like a fashion play, kind of hipster mod and Howard
Speaker 1: is obsessed with this woman whose name I'm forgetting, and
Speaker 1: he writes her these poems that he's too shy to
Speaker 1: to read to her, but they're all used the metaphor
Speaker 1: of cream, and he refers to himself as England's premier
Speaker 1: cream poet. So you know, it's it's a thing. There's
Speaker 1: an exerpt from one of Howard Moon's cream poems. He goes,
Speaker 1: and your nose like a delicious slope of cream, your
Speaker 1: ears like cream flaps, and your teeth like hard, shiny
Speaker 1: pegs of cream. Yeah that's all I got. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: maybe maybe they're taking some inspiration from this guy who's
Speaker 1: a real life milk poet. I would like to think so.
Speaker 1: But I like the phrase milk of war. It's it's
Speaker 1: it feels like it's a good it's a good concept
Speaker 1: album name for metal bands. Is that the opposite of
Speaker 1: the milk of human kindness? It's definitely, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely a different kind of ilk. You know. I
Speaker 1: was also thinking, like, gods of war, dogs of war?
Speaker 1: What does it cry? Havoc, let loose the milk of war?
Speaker 1: I love it. I'm here for it. Ben, Well, we'll
Speaker 1: see where, We'll see where it goes nol. Perhaps we
Speaker 1: have a future as dairy based poets ourselves. Will we
Speaker 1: be as successful as Marionetti? Well, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: that's a tall order, or should I say it's whole milkshake.
Speaker 1: Because London's Hall was everywhere in Italy and people started
Speaker 1: praising it in other countries. There was a British publication,
Speaker 1: the Children's Newspaper, that reported on this in April nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. Was it like a Sesame Street type situation?
Speaker 1: Why was it called the children's newspaper? That's an odd
Speaker 1: name for a newspaper. It was made of children. This
Speaker 1: was a very weird time, it would appear. So they
Speaker 1: were just material science run a muck is what I
Speaker 1: would say. But yeah, I mean milk wool was used
Speaker 1: to make these uh, very you know, fine Italian sue
Speaker 1: and dresses and garments and even like flags. And this
Speaker 1: order had gone out, you know, from the government, because
Speaker 1: they ruled all this stuff with an iron fist, that
Speaker 1: flags and banners should be made of this milk wool
Speaker 1: um and because it was a nationalist kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: Right then in nineteen thirty eight, s n I A.
Speaker 1: The Scosta, the company that you mentioned, UM was hell
Speaker 1: bent on spreading the milk the gospel of milk based
Speaker 1: clothing around the world. They wanted to go global with
Speaker 1: this UM and in two years they had sold patents
Speaker 1: to eight different countries in Europe, mainly Holland, Poland, Germany,
Speaker 1: Belgium and Japan, also France, Canada, Czechoslovakia and England. So
Speaker 1: there's only one country absent from this milk wool craze,
Speaker 1: and I think we can guess which one that was UM.
Speaker 1: This is the good old US of A. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The the SCOSA saw huge potential in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's a big country, it has an enormous dairy and
Speaker 1: agricultural infrastructure already, and they also knew that Americans have
Speaker 1: been thinking about this for some time since the early
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. There had been discussion in trade circles and
Speaker 1: agricultural colleges about using this protein, using casein as a
Speaker 1: bridge between agricultural and manufacturing sectors, again as a way
Speaker 1: to avoid tremendous skim milk waste. They were just they
Speaker 1: were taking a milk bath on fifty billion pounds of
Speaker 1: milk period totally. I mean that wasn't a uniquely Italian problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, milk wastes, milk waste wherever you are in
Speaker 1: the world. It reminds me of that episode we did
Speaker 1: about repurposing feed sacks uh into dresses, only kind of
Speaker 1: the other way around. Even if there were problems with
Speaker 1: this material, you think they could have at least used
Speaker 1: it to make feed sacks, especially it was since it
Speaker 1: was such a part of like the arming industry, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Didn't really come up in the research,
Speaker 1: but it's just something that occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Originally the US solution was going to be something like
Speaker 1: process this waste milk so that we can use the
Speaker 1: protein in glue in buttons and combs. It was used
Speaker 1: during World War One in a paint. They made milk
Speaker 1: paint for airplanes. It was in piano keys by nineteen
Speaker 1: forty or so. Like they were doing their their own
Speaker 1: stuff too. They just hadn't gotten to the clothing part yet.
Speaker 1: And that's why this Italian company, s nia Viscosa thinks
Speaker 1: why not, Well, why don't why don't we do it?
Speaker 1: This seems like a cool job for some people. Maybe
Speaker 1: not me, but for some people. They sent fashion emissaries
Speaker 1: to promote law nitall clothing like socialites, well connected people.
Speaker 1: I think there was, uh, some Italian aristocrats they sent.
Speaker 1: I feel like today that'd be somewhere in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of a combination of like an Instagram influencer and a
Speaker 1: diplomat exactly very well put. One of these, in particular
Speaker 1: was a journalist um who became an Italian princess by
Speaker 1: the name of Marguerite Katani Um and she promoted this
Speaker 1: material in New York in seven there is an article
Speaker 1: in Time magazine that also described Katani's ability or efforts
Speaker 1: to recruit American socialites, folks like Mona Bismarck, who Chanel
Speaker 1: once um named the best dressed woman in the world
Speaker 1: and had her model. Uh, these high end milk based dresses. Ext.
Speaker 1: I can't not chuckle when I say milk based dresses. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was something that was like put front and
Speaker 1: center in front of these American audiences. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: paid off. Paid off, by the way. One a team
Speaker 1: for the a r A, the Atlantic Research Associates, which
Speaker 1: is a division at the time of the National Dairy Corporation,
Speaker 1: starts producing what is essentially Latin at All under the
Speaker 1: name are a Lack, which is land at al and
Speaker 1: r A lack sound like characters from Tolkien or something,
Speaker 1: But that's our lack is a r A as an
Speaker 1: American Research Associates plus lack Latin for milk l A C.
Speaker 1: And the fibers are a hit. The New York fashion
Speaker 1: scene is thinking, Wow, our lack clothing is the way
Speaker 1: of the future. It's like a short, like people wear this.
Speaker 1: They're so sophisticated, you know, and they're so elite. There's
Speaker 1: so fashion forward. Onward to the future, and the future
Speaker 1: is milk uh. But then the US joined World War
Speaker 1: Two and our lack became much more valuable for military purposes.
Speaker 1: It was blended with rayon to produce hats, and that
Speaker 1: means here's our trivia fact that comes to us courtesy
Speaker 1: of Life magazine. This means during World War Two, a
Speaker 1: lot of American soldiers literally wore milk into battle. It's
Speaker 1: so weird. And then, like Land at All, our relax
Speaker 1: spread throughout the United States. Maybe it wasn't quite the
Speaker 1: level of popularity that Land at All reached in Italy,
Speaker 1: but you could in the forties you could find our
Speaker 1: lack in coats and suits and dresses, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't know either that they were wearing milk. Well, sure,
Speaker 1: and I would maybe argue that it wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: as as big of a thing as it was in
Speaker 1: Italy because obviously Italy was a totalitarian, fascist regime and
Speaker 1: he could basically force companies to use the stuff, whereas
Speaker 1: in America they would have had to adopt it willingly,
Speaker 1: you know, and and uh, the market would have had
Speaker 1: to adopt it, and the audiences would have had to
Speaker 1: adopt him. True. Yeah, there are more decision makers involved,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's why after a time milk based fabrics
Speaker 1: started to fall out of favor, not just in the
Speaker 1: US but in in the world because you know, we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that Landatoll was like wool, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: as durable. It could break easily, threads could come out
Speaker 1: when you ironed it. But the weirdest thing, and this
Speaker 1: is something I was thinking about two before we started
Speaker 1: digging into this, The weirdest thing about land Atoll and
Speaker 1: are Lack, I believe, was the smell. When they got damp,
Speaker 1: they sometimes smelled like sour milk. So imagine you're out
Speaker 1: on a date with your like Tom Waite says, if
Speaker 1: you've got your arms around your sweet when your oldsmobile
Speaker 1: you got the top down, it starts raining, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden your date points out that you smell
Speaker 1: of spoiled milk. A but spoiled milk if you prefer,
Speaker 1: I do prefer, but I appreciate you thinking of me. There, man,
Speaker 1: it's true. Um, and we're gonna get to some modern
Speaker 1: uh kind of innovations and milk based fiber, but for now, uh,
Speaker 1: it kind fizzled, right, Yeah, that's correct, and Viscosa the
Speaker 1: Italian companies started focusing their energy on other alternatives, but
Speaker 1: they took a hit for the war effort because they,
Speaker 1: like the U. S Forces. Uh, the Italian forces had
Speaker 1: a lot of land at all in their own battle gear,
Speaker 1: their boots, their blankets, their uniforms, and Mussolini thought this
Speaker 1: would help them resist poison gas because again, Mussolini loved milk.
Speaker 1: Milk can do no wrong if you're Mussolini. The problem
Speaker 1: is that land at all didn't really help Italian soldiers.
Speaker 1: There were cheaper products that were already flooding the market.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a clear advantage to land at all other
Speaker 1: than being a creative way to use milk waste. And
Speaker 1: so it started to fizzle out in Italy as well
Speaker 1: for a time. As you said, yeah, that's right, um.
Speaker 1: And yet here we are in uh the year with
Speaker 1: If there was ever any year that sounded more futuri, I,
Speaker 1: I don't know of it. Um, We're in it, guys.
Speaker 1: And there certainly are some of those FUTUREI things that
Speaker 1: maybe we're portrayed in that tech savory cartoon like video
Speaker 1: chat uh and and such. That's the one that I
Speaker 1: always thought was the most future, like those you know,
Speaker 1: communicators and Star Trek and all that. So we have
Speaker 1: that a lot of the technology that we have a
Speaker 1: little more subtle. Sure we have electric cars. We certainly
Speaker 1: don't have flying cars or suitcase cars or any of
Speaker 1: that stuff, or food in pill form, but we do
Speaker 1: have wearable milk uh, and it is making a comeback
Speaker 1: in the world of hoot couture. Hope, I pronounced that right,
Speaker 1: hot couture whatever? Uh, Casey, what what do you think
Speaker 1: ho hawk is? There is the t siland thank you Casey.
Speaker 1: On the case Pretaporte was that a film was a
Speaker 1: friend that mean's ready to wear Robert at tell me
Speaker 1: that's right. I haven't seen that one. I've heard it's good.
Speaker 1: Casey has nothing to say about this, uh, not your faith,
Speaker 1: not one of his finale of Okay fair, But it's true.
Speaker 1: It has remained kind of top of mind for some
Speaker 1: futures for obvious reasons, right, Like, it really does feel
Speaker 1: like a smart use of a waste product that I
Speaker 1: still haven't heard in any of this research any other
Speaker 1: good uses for Uh. You did mention at the top
Speaker 1: end that you could use those fibers for other things
Speaker 1: like glue and buttons and all that, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: the thing that's done. I don't really know. But in eleven,
Speaker 1: a German based clothing company called Camilche comedic because it's
Speaker 1: milk in German and the que could be silent, it
Speaker 1: could just be milk, but I'm gonna go with comi
Speaker 1: um and they designed or manufactured and designed all of
Speaker 1: their highly fashionable products using casin. And it all started
Speaker 1: with a German microbiologist, interesting combo and designer named Anka
Speaker 1: domasca Um And they claim that their products require fewer
Speaker 1: chemicals than lan atol. In the nineties and the forties.
Speaker 1: She actually single handedly or with a small team, developed
Speaker 1: a better process than those Italian scientists had back in
Speaker 1: the thirties, and a single dress costs between two hundred
Speaker 1: and two hundred three dollars uh and has made from
Speaker 1: six leaders of milk. Yeah, yeah, and there are there
Speaker 1: are other people who are coming into the fray. Here
Speaker 1: you can see articles from places like Reuters reporting how
Speaker 1: other high and fashioned labels are selling milk based clothing.
Speaker 1: Uniclow has a popular apparel line called heat Tech and
Speaker 1: that's partially made from milk proteins. Mademoiselle Chichi is selling
Speaker 1: milk based clothing. And now you know, in these are
Speaker 1: modern days, the world is threatened by some pretty catastrophic
Speaker 1: consequences of global warming, and folks are looking for alternatives
Speaker 1: to oil based products like polyester and so on. So
Speaker 1: what the question is, does it make sense to give
Speaker 1: milk clothing a second chance? The answer is yeah, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people behind it. We know
Speaker 1: that there is ongoing research. People already created softer, more
Speaker 1: durable versions of these materials. Hopefully they've chosen better brand
Speaker 1: names for them, better than com but well, I mean
Speaker 1: land at all. I think because on the page. Look,
Speaker 1: it visually rhymes with genital that's weird or jaritol, which
Speaker 1: I've never understood what it actually has. I know it's
Speaker 1: a medication over the counter that the elderly take. I
Speaker 1: assume it's for a digestion, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: And are lack, which is a which sounds like czar
Speaker 1: lac or something. It sounds like a weird monster from
Speaker 1: a sci fi film. So, but what's what's it? What's
Speaker 1: in a name? You know? The answer is a lot.
Speaker 1: It is a lot. Yeah, it's the barrier for entry
Speaker 1: for a how to folks. I did want to mention
Speaker 1: I saw a really cool video that you can find
Speaker 1: online if you google milk clothing. I think that's really
Speaker 1: all you need to do. You'll find a video um
Speaker 1: from Euromax to x is because it's extreme adaptable called
Speaker 1: clothes from Milk and it it talks about this designer,
Speaker 1: Anka Domoski. At the time this came out in she's
Speaker 1: only twenty years old, the biologist and fashion designer we
Speaker 1: talked about, and she walks through the whole thinking behind it,
Speaker 1: but she never credits the Italians. I gotta I gotta
Speaker 1: falter for that like everything in the in the piece
Speaker 1: and the way she talks about it almost makes it
Speaker 1: seem like she came up with this idea alone. And
Speaker 1: even the process it shows the factory looks almost exactly
Speaker 1: like that situation in that very early video, the old
Speaker 1: timey one from the thirties. Um. But they did apparently
Speaker 1: solve the smell problem, because apparently these garments do not
Speaker 1: ever smell, and they're pretty easy to care for and
Speaker 1: they feel good, because that was another problem with the
Speaker 1: original formula, as I think it wasn't as malleable or stretchy,
Speaker 1: and it also had a bit of a roughness to
Speaker 1: it that wasn't pleasant m which is why they combined
Speaker 1: it with a lot of stuff. But this, this other,
Speaker 1: this new milk clothing design also requires less water to
Speaker 1: make so and it balances out against the production process
Speaker 1: of cotton. So there is a very real chance that
Speaker 1: in the future, ridiculous historians, you too could be wearing
Speaker 1: the latest uh in dairy fashion, which is milk clothing. Uh.
Speaker 1: So maybe our answer to that that question UH that
Speaker 1: Casey and Paul had years ago, is milk ingredients or
Speaker 1: is it a beverage? Perhaps now it's just a pair
Speaker 1: of slacks, hats, dresses, underwear. I don't know there's a
Speaker 1: heat problem there. But if they fixed the smell, yeah,
Speaker 1: they fixed the smell. Um, Yeah, it's fine. This whole
Speaker 1: time we've been doing this, I've been trying to think
Speaker 1: of what the really popular milk ad campaign slogan was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Got Milk, but very incorrectly in my mind,
Speaker 1: was milk the fresh Maker? No, that's not it. That
Speaker 1: was mentos. And then I also thought milk, it's what's
Speaker 1: for dinner. Also, I'm not sure I believe that was beef.
Speaker 1: And then there was milk the other white meat, New
Speaker 1: York milky. Yeah. Do you guys know who directed those
Speaker 1: Got Milk ads? By the way, No, who was it? No?
Speaker 1: Was it like Steven Soderberger, David Fincher or something, Michael
Speaker 1: Bay Oh, I got a start, yep, yep. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a good one. So an explosive ad campaign if you
Speaker 1: can't do explosions exactly, that was That was pre he
Speaker 1: didn't have the budget yet. I bet if he had,
Speaker 1: he would have figured out a way to shoehorn an
Speaker 1: explosion into those. But that has a really great milk
Speaker 1: based trivia nugget to end on today. I personally found
Speaker 1: this subject delightful. Um and it's really cool that it
Speaker 1: has such a full circle kind of trajectory and now
Speaker 1: here we are in the future, the actual future that
Speaker 1: the futurists were dreaming of, and perhaps milk will be
Speaker 1: part of your next outfit. I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: episode Ridiculous Historians. I know we've got a couple of
Speaker 1: people in the crowd who are saying, well, or we
Speaker 1: only using milk from cattle at this point, that seems
Speaker 1: to be the case. So if you want to get
Speaker 1: ahead of the fashion curve, maybe your next move is
Speaker 1: to get milk from another mammal, horse milk, goat milk,
Speaker 1: and so on. Let us know how it goes. We
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. We want to hear your
Speaker 1: favorite bits of trivia. I would like to hear uh,
Speaker 1: some of your favorite commercial jingles. They don't have to
Speaker 1: have anything to do with milk. Tell us all about it.
Speaker 1: On the internet. You can find us on Facebook, can
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Like to recommend Ridiculous Historians are community page, but you
Speaker 1: can also find us not just as a show, but
Speaker 1: as individuals. Boy, can you ever? You can find me
Speaker 1: on Instagram at how now Old Brown? How about you, Ben?
Speaker 1: Where can the folks find your Internet presence? Thanks for asking, though.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at ben Bolland. You
Speaker 1: can also find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben
Speaker 1: Bolland h s W. Thanks as always to our long
Speaker 1: suffering super producer Casey Pegram. Casey, I swear I'm not
Speaker 1: making up that story. You guys did have a weird
Speaker 1: conversation about it. I can remember some kind of long
Speaker 1: protracted argument over nothing, so they probably was that was
Speaker 1: there also not at a brief debate as to whether
Speaker 1: egg nog should be served hot or cold possibly would
Speaker 1: stay cold again. Yeah, you don't remember any of these
Speaker 1: cream or milk based arguments, Casey, No, you're cream blind.
Speaker 1: Got the dairy blindness, kid, But you'll soldier on uh
Speaker 1: thinks also too, of course, Alex Williams, I don't. This
Speaker 1: is a great story and I personally, I personally really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it cast Mussolini in a new light, but it
Speaker 1: didn't get me to the point where I feel like
Speaker 1: I should thank him. If that makes I don't need
Speaker 1: to thank him the Moose as I like to call him. Huge.
Speaker 1: Thanks Christopher hasciotes here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed
Speaker 1: this banging bob Uh, Jonathan Strickland the Quister. I believe
Speaker 1: we're due for zoom bomb any day now, thankfully not
Speaker 1: today and thinks as well to Eve's Jeff Coach. Thanks
Speaker 1: to you've know and thanks to all. This is a
Speaker 1: sincere thanks. Thanks to all the farmers and all the
Speaker 1: cattle who have made this possible. Oh God, and we'd
Speaker 1: be remiss if we didn't thank researcher extraordinaire Gabe Louisier,
Speaker 1: who wrote us a delightful email to demystify the pronunciation
Speaker 1: of his last name. It is, in fact Lucier ah Man,
Speaker 1: the Magic's God. Well, Gabe, maybe his name is actually
Speaker 1: pronounced gob A and he just hasn't told us. Let's
Speaker 1: let's get this season two of Gabe's weird name and
Speaker 1: you know what, let's have him back on the show.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. Yah. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.