Stuff You Should Know - The Myth of Absinthe

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Absinthe makes you hallucinate and possibly even have a seizure, right? Nope. It's all a part of the myth of absinthe, which is really just a bitter tasting liquor with a bad reputation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here as well and it's the three green fairies coming to bring you madness and delirium. Possibly a seizure.

Yeah, on Stuff You Should Know. I wish, I wish Jerry would put like some sort of twinkle effect in there after I say Stuff You Should Know to the nod to the fairy thing. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, she's listening. She is and she's furiously scribbling notes in my imagination. Yes, only in your imagination. That's right. She's really stirring me so. Yeah, that's right. Man, smells nice. So Chuck, I mentioned green fairies because that is a nickname for what we're talking about today, which is absinthe. We've gathered here today to talk about this thing called absinthe. Dearly beloved. That's right. That's right. And this was my pick in Livia. I think this was Livia, right? That helped us out with this. I believe this was a

Grabster pick. Which, Chuck, I'm glad you said that because this makes this week a Grabster trifedka. Is it the Grabster? Because it seems like one. I was just talking recently on the show about how certain topics fit certain writers and this certainly fits Grabster. Not that he's a big absinthe head, but. Oh, if he's anything, he's a huge absinthe head. But it just feels like an head thing. But for some reason, it was spaced like Livia spaces things. I'm almost positive that it was absinthe. I'm pretty sure that it was. I mean, it was the Grabster. No, I'm sorry. So it was Livia. You're right. Wow. Hey, I know. It comes off like a Grabster article for sure. It does. At any rate, this idea came to me not too long ago because I don't, I definitely

didn't see the movie again, but I saw that scene from the Johnny Depp Jack the Ripper movie that I can't remember the name of. From hell? From hell where Johnny Depp is in the bathtub. And he is, maybe because that trial is going on or something. I don't know. And he does his absinthe ritual, which includes super sizing his, the effects by, do you remember what he does? I've not seen that one. Oh, okay. It's okay. You know, it's fine. Yeah. I remember hearing that it was just fine. Yeah, it was good enough. But he does the, and we'll talk a little bit about the sort of ritual of how you prepare absinthe. But one such ritual is to light sugar on fire and let it drip through

a slotted spoon into the absinthe, which is not recommended for a number of reasons, obviously. Not the least of which is alcohol and fire mixing. But what he does is he drops Lodnin. Is that what it is? I think so. Alcohol and opium mixed together? Yeah. Some sort of opium from a dripper bottle, dropper bottle, and he drops it on the sugar, then lights that on fire. So. Oh, that's pretty hardcore. I guess that's the way they did it back then. The other big movie moment that I know of is in that Bas Lerman, Mulan Rouge, where Ewan McGregor and John Leguizamo and some other pals all are all drinking absinthe,

and they see the green fairy. He turns out to be Kylie Minogue. I forgot about that. Have you seen the trailer for his Elvis movie coming out? No. Oh, it looks so good. I can't wait. What a great combination. I think the only one who could do maybe a better Elvis biopic is maybe David Lynch. And Bas Lerman might have him. Might have him beaten this one. It looks awesome, man. And the guy they got to do it just snails the body movements and like all the way up to the Vegas Elvis, just stone cold. Was it Peter Sarsgaard? No. No. Is that how you think should play him? No. Okay.

No, he's on my mind because we're going to talk about Wormwood in a second. And I was like, man, wasn't that like a series on Netflix? And sure enough, it was, directed by Eero Morris. Oh, I remember that. Was it called Wormwood? Yeah, it was about the MK Ultra program. Right. I watched some of that. Yeah, it was really good. But yeah. So anyway, okay, I think we've covered everything movie-wise, right? Well, so far. Okay. So the reason that I brought up Wormwood is because it is this main ingredient in absinthe. If you make absinthe, which by the way, if you're not, if you don't know what we're talking about, absinthe is a type of liquor or liqueur, I guess. It's usually made from a neutral

grain spirit. If you really want to get kind of authentic, you would make it from grapes, distilled grapes. And then you kind of process it like you would if you were making gin. You take some botanicals, distill it together. And then the resulting stuff that cools down after you evaporate it is absinthe. And to make absinthe, you have to have three main ingredients distilled with the liquor, fennel, anise, and then Wormwood. And Wormwood is the big tricky key to the whole thing that has caused a lot of problems and misconceptions over the years. That's right. A lot of myths. Their absinthe is obviously known for its very bright green color before you have gone through your ritual because it kind of changes the color a little bit.

But that comes from re-infusing after it's distilled, re-infusing it with more of those ingredients. You don't have to do that. There is such a thing as clear or white absinthe. But, you know, if you really want to have the absinthe experience, it's got to be green. Yeah. Why isn't this absinthe green? Take it away, Garson. Garson and boy. Right. That's right. Nice ref. That was very postmodern of you. Thank you. So that essential ingredient, Wormwood, has been known to humanity for thousands and thousands of

years. The earliest reference, written reference to it comes from the ebbers papyrus, which dates back to, oh, I would say something like about 3,500 years ago, something like that. It's possibly earlier than that. And that was just the first written reference. So we already knew we being humans knew about Wormwood long before that. And up until the mid 19th century, it was always treated as like basically a medicinal plant. That's right. There were, you know, this is sort of one of the heydays of medicinal plant use and, you know, all kinds of supposed cures, ills being cured, including, but not limited to, if you have stomach pains, if you want to get your menses going, they say it could be hypnotic. They say it could give you a pick me up if you

were tired. What else? If it wasn't something you didn't want to drink before, then knowing that Wormwood was used as an insect repellent and an antiseptic for cleaning up a bacteria-ridden mouth might do the trick. Right. And also one of the longstanding uses for it has been as an anti-helmetic, which means that it's a dewormer. And apparently when you ingest Wormwood, it actually stuns the worms that are attached to your gut lining enough that they let go and you poop them out the other end. And it really does work. The modern investigations of Wormwood have verified it is an effective dewormer. And it also is an appetite stimulant, too. So as we'll see, it became an aperteef, which you drink before you eat. And that makes

a lot of sense, the little Wormwood in it. But in German, there's a little, there's little tiny facts here there in this episode. It's one of those which I love. But in German, Wormwood is called the Wermut. And that might sound familiar. Wermuth is a fortified wine that contains Wormwood, among other things. Did you know that? I did know that because I love Wermuth. I do, too. I still didn't know it. I also know that it's modern studies even show that it can aid digestion, which gives credence to the old saying, absinthe makes the farts grow stronger. My goodness. So first of all, I know that that wasn't off the cuff. It's just not possible. You want to hear something terrible? I've been, I made up that joke in my head years ago.

Did you really? And I've never had the opportunity to drop it. You're in a chicken processing plant thinking that and you're like, I need to get a job where I'm really public facing so I can share this one. Well, it's a punch line. It's not a joke. I thought of that punch line and I've long tried to create a joke that would just take hold and spread around the world. Yeah. But I just didn't find one. You just did. That just spread around the world like this Boz Lerman Elvis biopic is about to. Let me ask you something though. Have you ever had malort? Yes, which is, it's just such hipster ridiculousness, but yes, I have.

So malort for those of you listening, pretty good descriptor, I guess. It's a liquor or a liquor made from wormwood. It is very popular almost exclusively in Chicago. And Jepsen's malort and it's, you know, it is a kind of a hipster thing. Like you get a PBR Tallboy and with the malort back at any hipster bar. But that was something that at Max Fun Con, which is the podcast network Max Mum Fun, has this summer retreat they do every year where John Hodgman and I do our pub trivia thing, which is now ended. But traditionally, John would do the benediction, pass around bottles of malort and everyone would drink it. And that, my friend, is a taste that will stay with you for hours. Yes. Yeah. Because wormwood is a really,

really bitter tasting something. And it's actually, so wormwood has a compound in it called absinthe. And absinthe itself is a Greek word that means undrinkable, basically. That's how bitter it is. The Polish apparently have a saying called bitter as wormwood, right? And this stuff absinthe that gives wormwood its bitter taste is so bitter Chuck that one ounce of absinthe, if you could extract it from the wormwood and you came up with just one ounce of it, if you poured it into 524 gallons of water, mixed it up and then offered someone a cup of that water, they would be able to detect the bitterness. Wow. Yeah. I believe it. Wormwood oil. Well, we might as well go ahead and get into this a little bit. Wormwood oil has a substance in it, about 40 to 60% of which

is a substance called thujone. And since time immemorial, when people had absinthe, they used to talk about the fact that you would have hallucinations and seizures. Yeah. So, this is one of the big myths that we're going to bust is that's really not true. That thujone can cause seizures and we know why. It's a GABA inhibitor and it's going to block the receptors that lead to these convulsions. But there's, and they've even done tests of pre-1910 absinthe recipes and found it's about the same amount as today. And I saw one article that said, it's basically about enough thujone that you would find from sage in a box of stovetop stuffing. Which has long been known to give you hallucinations and convulsions, in addition to

being very delicious. Yeah. So, there's just not enough in there. Like it does, thujone does come from wormwood oil and it does cause seizures, but there's just apparently trace amounts and it's even restricted by law, how much you can have in it. Right. Right. And it's the same thing as like, if you ate a kilogram of salt, it would affect you physiologically in some terrible ways. Like, you would just have to drink so much of it. And then also, because wormwood's so bitter, that even like the staunchest wax bearded hipster in the country could probably not drink enough wormwood to bring on a convulsion or hallucinations. No. So, that's just a big myth. The fact that, I mean, we'll get into the history of it, which is pretty interesting, but

you know, it was all basically because people were getting blasted on alcohol. Right. But like you said, since time immemorial, people have said like this wormwood stuff, it'll make you trip. That was enough to attract some artists, bohemians, writers, poets around the turn of the last century, particularly in Paris, to the idea of absinthe. We're not quite there yet. But once we get there, bear in mind, all of this is wrong and made up. And it makes all, it makes an entire, basically the Impressionist art movement really cringy, that they were all just self-deluded in thinking that this stuff was like causing them to hallucinate and maybe get a little mad and all this stuff. It was, it's really just kind of uncomfortable to look back on

now. It really is. So, Chuck, let's say we take a break and then we'll come back and really kind of dig into the history a little more. Let's get our shovels out and get ready. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different, hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand

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Okay, Chuck. So I mentioned earlier that Wormwood was long considered a medicinal plant. And there's a story that goes that a doctor named Pierre Ordinaire, who was hiding out from the French Revolution just across the border in Switzerland, in a town called Kuwait, Switzerland in particular, that Dr. Ordinaire was looking for a way to make Wormwood palatable to create a medicinal lixer. And that is how he ended up coming up with absent. That's right. That's how the story goes. Like you said earlier, if you want the real authentic kind, use grape spirits because distilled grapes is how it started. Now it's just sort of a base, like any sort of distilled vodka type base. Like white lightning.

Why am I tripping over all that? I don't know. It's almost like I didn't want to say it or something. I know. You really don't like that white lightning, do you? No, but back in the day, it was distilled grape spirit. And it did have the wormwood because that's what he was trying to make palatable. And he did, it appears, add a bunch of botanicals to make it taste better. That star anise is probably in it, licorice. I see Livia also mentioned the fennel and the hisop and parsley, coriander, chamomile, and spinach, which is quite a mixture. You take a little sip of absinthe and your friend would be like, you've got a little spinach in your teeth. That is a really strange sounding mixture,

especially parsley would throw the whole thing off. They've ever had like a greens drink, like fresh juice. The moment they put parsley in, it turns immediately south. It's horrible. It's horrific. Please leave parsley out of everything drinkable, okay? Yeah. We go through periods where we're gonna, we juice a lot at the house, but I know we've never added parsley. Because you're sensible. Celery, it's like, okay, you're getting a little close to messing this up. But then once you add the parsley, it's awful. It's punishment from that point on. So you want to leave the parsley out, whether you're making juice or absinthe. And you said one thing, Melissa, that's actually lemon balm I saw as well.

What did I say? Melissa, that's another term for lemon balm. I'm just saying like, it's not like you were incorrect in saying Melissa. I didn't say Melissa. I said hisop. I thought you said Melissa in there as well. Sorry, it comes up later then. Okay. You said, did I say Melissa? Am I driving you mad? Like the green fairy of absinthe? One of us is on absinthe right now. So that whole story about Dr. Ordinaire coming up with this, Chuck, is possibly wrong. Because at the end of the story, Dr. Ordinaire turns out to be this kind benevolent man who leaves his recipe for absinthe to the Henry Ode sisters who were his housekeepers. And they go on and start making

this stuff and sell it to a guy named Major Henri-Daniel Dubied and probably make a tidy sum from that. But some historians have said, no, actually, it looks like other people might have been making this stuff before him, including the Henry Ode sisters. So it's possible that Dr. Ordinaire actually stole this from them. Yeah. And it was also a time where there was, you know, this was the golden age of medicinal elixirs. So who knows, like everyone was experimenting with different recipes for stuff. And I definitely think we can't say for sure that it was Dr. Pierre Ordinaire. No, but it is a great name. But at some somehow, Dr. Major Dubied did come into this recipe and started making absinthe. And he had a

daughter named Emily, spelled like your wife's name. Oh, yeah. Yep. And Emily married another man, Henri-Louis-Perionoud. And Perionoud, sorry, I was adding an extra syllable in there as I do. Perionoud was the son of another family that had been making absinthe. And so the Dubieds and the Perionouds got together and became basically like an absinthe making dynasty along the Swiss French border. That's right. And what was the last name of that other family? Well, Perionoud finally changed their name to Pernod, P-E-R-N-O-D, which is a very famous brand of licorice-flavored liqueur that was once absinthe that had the wormwood removed and became Pernod. That's right. And they're now a, I believe there was a merger in the mid-70s with another beverage brand. And now they're a

huge sort of liquor company that owns, I think they own Seagrams, they own a couple of other vodka's, they own lots of stuff. And you can see that green Perno on any liquor store shelf. And you've probably, if you're not an aficionado, you've probably always wondered, is that absinthe or what the heck is up with that bright green stuff? Well, as we'll see, it was a stand-in for absinthe, which had become kind of popular taste-wise after it got banned. That's right. In the absinthe absence. Man, you're full of it today. You're just full of lickety-splits and vinegar. I've never heard that term. Oh, I just made it up. Okay. So, we're still not at this point where absinthe has become an actual popular drink. Really honestly,

so Dubied was like, I want to buy this, but I think you're wasting it selling it as a medicinal. I think people would actually like to drink this. And he was right. But it wasn't until it was used extensively as a medicinal with the French army who were sent off to North Africa by Napoleon in the 1840s, I believe, and were given absinthe during their stay to fight off malaria. The absinthe became popular because those French soldiers came back and said, hey, have you guys tried this absence stuff? Like they gave it to us as medicine, but we love drinking it regardless. Yeah. And the French army was popular enough at the time that whatever was fashionable with them became fashionable with the rest of France as well. That's right. So they bring the taste of absinthe back. At first,

it is expensive. And it is, you know, basically people with money, sort of the higher class that are drinking absinthe. And then even early on, because of its reputation as a hallucinogen, and artists were into it, trying to get inspiration for their poems and paintings and things like that. And things changed, though, starting in about the 1870s, when there was a insect, the phylo-rexera, phyloxera. There you go. We're adding letters all over the place today. Yeah. So it's the insect phyloxera. It really in, you know, France, as everyone knows, is most famous for its wine growing. And this devastated grapes in France. And that was a bad thing for the wine industry because that just meant, obviously, when something like that happens,

wine is going to be more expensive. And so absinthe came along and said, hey, we can make this with anything. We don't need grapes. We can make it with cheaper stuff. And all of a sudden, absinthe is cheaper. And all of a sudden, the people drinking absinthe became just sort of the working class because wine was so expensive all of a sudden. Yeah. Because the French said, we got to drink something. So they replaced their wine, which is now ridiculously expensive, which with much, much, much cheaper absinthe. But the thing is, Chuck, is absinthe is a spirit. Wine is not a spirit. So, you know, wine definitely contains alcohol, and you can make wine with more or less, you know, alcoholic content. But one of the things about absinthe is it's one of the highest

proof liquors on the market. Yeah, I didn't know that. It frequently hits 60 to 70 up to 80% alcohol. So if you get a really high ABV or high proof absinthe and you pour yourself a glass of it, 20% of that is not alcohol. The other 80% is pure alcohol. So that's a really big switch. That's a huge switch over from wine, drinking a couple of glasses of wine at dinner and drinking a couple of glasses of absinthe at dinner. That's a big difference. Yeah, I guess I should have asked, have you ever had absinthe like just a real deal straight up at some drink or not a cocktail, but an absinthe? Yes. Yeah, you and me got me a little bottle of St. George absinthe. I think they're out of San Francisco. Yeah, St. George. Yeah, they make really good gin, too.

And a little spoon, a little slotted spoon. So I made this absinthe here or there a couple of times. It's fine. Is it okay? Something to write home about. Yeah. All right. I've never had it. I meant to get some and try this. I'm going to try it after now that I know the whole deal and how to do it, but I can already tell that it's not going to be like something I'm going to drink a lot of. No, I mean, it's tasty. You definitely want to dilute it with water and sugar water in particular, as we'll see. And it's neat that there's like a ritual to it. It's fun to like kind of learn the ritual, make the drink like that, you know, following these, this kind of ritualized. And then never do it again. Yeah. The problem is when you want like a second one or something like that,

it's like, oh, I'm going to go through this whole rigmarole again, you know? So it's one of those things, you know? Then you just crack a beer. That's right. When was the last beer you had? Do you know drink beer at all anymore? Do you? Oh, yeah, sometimes. Yeah. I mean, once in a while, it's not frequent or anything, but the last beer I had was probably a few months ago, but then... Yeah, I don't drink it much anymore. I miss it. If you want a beer and you have a beer, it can be really satisfying under the right conditions, you know? Yeah. And I think what I do with beer now is I used to just be beer, beer, beer, you know, when you're younger or when I was younger. But now I treat beer as like a treat that I have every

once in a while and I'll have one, maybe two. Yeah. And that's it. And I kind of think back, I'm like, man, how did I used to drink like a lot of this? That's just a lot of liquid. Yeah. A lot of burpen. Yeah. A lot of like your pants falling down. I mean, like a lot of weird stuff happens when you drink a lot of beer. Yeah. So anyway, back to absinthe. Where are we? Okay. It is now the working classes drinking it, they're loving it, and advertising, what we know is like modern advertising is just starting to be a thing. And in France, they went a few different directions, kind of like with, I mean, look at any beer now and you can kind of say the same thing. Some of it was patriotic,

like they would adorn it in the French, the colors of the French flag. Some of them were even called things like Patriot. And then they had the sexy ads with, you know, sexy ladies, drinking absinthe. And so that's like any, you know, that could be a Budweiser poster. But the thing that they don't do on a Budweiser poster is they also advertise it as a hygiene product. Right. Because again, remember, this whole thing started off as a medicinal liquor, medicinal elixir. So they could still kind of lean on that because it was close enough in the recent past that people recognized it as such, you know? Got worms? Drink absinthe. Or got bad breath? Drink absinthe. Just imagine swishing it around in your mouth.

Wow. Yeah, it's probably like a mouthwash. I guess a little bit. It's like, you know, that old-timey, licorice-flavored toothpaste. I imagine it'd be like that. Yeah, probably so. We should also point out this is mainly in Europe. It never really took off in the United States around this time, except in, of course, the French-inspired New Orleans. It was pretty popular there. Yeah. But like you said, in Europe, it was very popular, especially among artists, in particular Bohemian artists. And there was a real transition going on in the late 19th century, early 20th, very, very early 20th century. The aughts, as you'd call them, where art was getting a little more rebellious, a little less stuffy. And the old guard did not

really like this very much, but the new guard said they cared not. And one of the things that they were interested in was changing, altering their perceptions. So they used opium. They drank lots of booze. But there was this idea that in particular, absence could change your perceptions of the world and life and yourself in ways that nothing else could, again, because of this super hallucinatory wormwood that if you drank too much, it might drive you mad. And so they adopted absence to kind of fuel this transition to a much more rebellious type of art or movement of art. Yeah. And I think, you know, I didn't quite get what you meant earlier about looking back on it. It is kind of gross and embarrassing because they were just getting plowed on liquor is what was

happening. And, you know, they were writing poems about it. And they were painting paintings, you know, about absinthe. And, you know, Monet had one called the Absinthe Drinker. And it was a man, it was a portrait of a man named Colardette, who was just sort of a street drunk who was dressed up a little fancy. And that was a big scandal because you weren't supposed to paint portraits of people like that. And Van Gogh drank a lot of absinthe. And Picasso had a sculpture called The Glass of Absinthe. And there were poems written about it and stories. And it was just, it was all, it was all fake when you look back. It was nothing but getting plowed on liquor. Yes, exactly right. And to give an example of how it's just kind of uncomfortable, it can make you

bow to layer, who I always think of with, what was that bon vivant that John Lovett's played on SNL, kind of a dandy? The one, I'm an actor. Maybe. I just remember him invoking Baudelaire. And this is who he was talking about was Charles Baudelaire, who was a very influential poet of this time, who really liked getting wasted. And he in particular thought that getting wasted on absinthe was amazing because quote, neither wine nor opium equals the poison welling up in your eyes that show me my poor soul reversed. My dreams throng to drink at those green distorting pools. Absinthe. When really, it was just high proof liquor. That was it, everybody. That was it. Yeah, he could have been, it could have been said, been about Hunch Punch.

Exactly. You know, like College Freshman wrote similar poems inspired by Jim Morrison and Hunch Punch. Oh yeah, exactly. Hunch Punch really does get on top of you pretty quick too. I never had that stuff. If it's well made, you don't even taste the incredible amount of high, high, high proof liquor in it. It's crazy. You're like, how is this being hidden? But it does, I guess, because it's a neutral spirit. But it's, wow. And for some reason, there's always like an entire garbage can full of it. It's never like a small amount. Nobody ever makes like a nice cocktail of Hunch Punch here and there. There's a garbage can full of it. It's a very dangerous thing to do actually in retrospect. I have a theory about Absinthe and I haven't really seen anything about

this, but I think the mere fact that it was this bright, bright green, just, I think if it would have been a clear or brown liquor, it wouldn't have taken hold like it did. I think there was something about that color that just sort of entranced people. I think you're totally right. And the point that shouldn't be mistaken is that in some way, shape, or form, Absinthe, even if it was a mythological concept when you really get right down to it, did fuel some really creative art at that time. I mean, we're talking about Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, all these guys were fueled by Absinthe. It really did have a huge impression on the art world, even if they were kind of self-deluded. Yeah, the Oscar Wilde quote, of course, every Oscar Wilde quote is pretty great,

but he liked the stuff and he said, after the first glass of Absinthe, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are and that is the most horrible thing in the world, which just means you're plastered. Yeah. Another one that we could not just not shout out, though, was pretty much the head cheese as far as getting super plowed on Absinthe goes, which is Toulouse La Trek, Henri de Toulouse La Trek. He loved the stuff. Very famous with pastel portraits, very famous, just kind of hard living, hard drinking French dude from the era. And he apparently loved Absinthe so much that he had a walking cane that he carried a couple shots of Absinthe poured into, hollowed out walking cane

with them everywhere he went. That's a nice party trick. So it was really something like everybody was really getting plowed on Absinthe. Remember, a lot of working-class French people replace their morning, afternoon, and evening glasses of wine with morning, afternoon, and evening glasses of 80% liquor Absinthe instead. And this was starting to make a lot of people worried. There was a temperance movement in 1872, beginning in 1872 in France, and it was not gaining traction. And then Absinthe really started to come along and a target began to emerge. And Chuck, I say that we take a break and then come back and talk about how the ban on Absinthe began. Let's do it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips

with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the

story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesha Tickler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So you teased that the temperance movement in France didn't take at first because it was France. The French love to drink lots of wine and other things. God bless them.

But absinthe started to grow in popularity and they zeroed in and said, all right, here's our chance. This stuff is the devil's juice and we can really have a way in here if we target absinthe as a thing. And then winemakers, which is sort of weird, got involved in the temperance movement in a way when they said, yeah, absinthe is terrible. And it's not like cognac, which is, it was just really sort of highfalutin alcohol made from distilled grapes. But this stuff is really bad stuff. It's cheap and it's petty and it's for the lower class. So we're going to join up in the temperance movement ourselves to help get rid of it. Yeah. And it worked really, really well. I mean, they had a common enemy, absinthe.

And then what was really kind of helped along or helped the entire thing along were a couple of things. One was a psychiatrist named Valentin Magnant. Magnan. Magnan, sorry. I printed this on draft setting, so I can't see very well. But even, and we'll come back to magnan slash magnart in a second. But what really kind of shocked the nation's, and in fact, the world's conscience about just letting absinthe flow freely was Jean LeFré's murder of his entire family while he was about as drunk as a human being can be. Right. But not so much on absinthe, which is the irony here. This was in 1905. And as the story goes, in court, they say he drank five liters of wine, six glasses of cognac,

two creme de mince, just, you know, because a coffee with brandy, I guess, to sober up. And then but two ounces of absinthe gets in a fight with his wife, his pregnant wife, murders her with a gun and his two and three year old daughters. An amazingly horrible domestic homicide case, then tried to kill himself, survived it, and was basically spared the death penalty because they said he was in the throes of absinthe madness, and it worked. Yeah, there was a different psychologist from Switzerland named Albert Mayhem. And he said, no, this man was in the grips of this absinthe madness, even though he just had two ounces of absinthe throughout the whole day. But the fact that he had had absinthe

and absinthe had this reputation, he was able to seize on it. And so that really caught the attention of everybody that if you drank absinthe, it could drive you to murder your own family. That really made a lot of people reconsider it. And then either like before this, well, full 30 years before this, there was a psychiatrist in France named Magnan, Valentin Magnan. And he, I guess, was part of the temperance movement as well. And he had conducted some studies where he got his hands on wormwood and just basically kept giving wormwood oil to dogs until they'd finally start having convulsions and seizures. Right. And then he published a study saying wormwood oil gives you convulsions and seizures. It doesn't really matter how much wormwood oil

you drink. Just the fact that wormwood oil was in absinthe made it questionable, made it dangerous. And so these two things, Magnan's pretty much made up study and Jean LeFrance Horrific Crime came together to give that strange bedfellow joint movement between the temperance people and the wine industry a huge target on the back of absinthe. And they went after absinthe full bore. And it did not take very long after Jean LeFrance's crime for absinthe to start to get banned around the world. Yeah. I mean, they made up a name for it even. It was called absintheism instead of alcoholism. And I think the murder was in, he, by the way, appears died by suicide just a few days after he was put in jail just to put a button on that. But that was in 1905,

Switzerland banned it in 1908. The U.S. banned it in 1912. France finally gave in in 1915. And then that is when in 1920, we mentioned that Perneau started making a Perneau anise, which is now just known as Perneau, as that substitute for absinthe in 1920. Right. So there's a ban in a lot of different countries. Not all countries, apparently the UK never banned it, but I read that it was partially because they were just ignoring things that have to do with French tastes for real. The Czechs never banned it. So you could go to Prague, which was also a center of artsy intellectual bohemian vibes. In fact, I think Bohemia actually is in that area. So they would definitely have an original

claim to that. But for the most part, if you wanted to get absinthe, it was very, very difficult. And because it could drive you mad, it can make you kill your family. And you mentioned it a second ago, absintheism, this syndrome, which was a collection of maladies, everything from hallucinations, sleeplessness, tremors, convulsions, madness, from drinking absinthe. And in retrospect, historians say this didn't exist. What this person was describing was excessive alcohol use. All this stuff you can get from drinking way too much high-proof alcohol, which is what they were doing. So in addition to this kind of moral panic about it making you kill your family, there was an accompanying made-up syndrome to give a veneer of science to the moral

panic as well. And it was so effective, Chuck, that absinthe was banned for over a hundred years in some places. Yeah. I mean, it took the liquor industry and distilleries basically beating the drums saying, we want to make absinthe. We want to make this probably highly marketable, super hopped up liquor again. And they said, all right, the EU started lifting the ban in the late 80s and 88. France, it was sort of in a gray area basically, but they finally removed the law against it in 2011. I believe the US was 2007 when the AT, the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau said, all right, well, here's what you can do. You can distill this liquor. You can call it absinthe, but it's got to be through Joan Free. It's got to have less than 10 parts per million. And if it's

coming across the border, if you're importing it, you can't import something labeled absinthe or any bottle that shows like people tripping or any kind of hallucinogenic effects on the bottle. Right. Which just underscores the government's preoccupation with controlling citizens' perception of reality. Really strange if you step back and think about it. It really is. So you can get absinthe here today. In Switzerland, they have one of those, man, I can't remember what it's called, but where in champagne there's rules about what qualifies as champagne and everything that don't follow those. Something about Appalachian, I can't remember. But Switzerland has something like that. And Kouvet is kind of, I saw it described as the

spiritual home of absinthe. So you can get it. It's widely available today. And there's some really good craft distillers making absinthe all around the world. And if you do get your hands on it and you do say like, oh, I want to try this, there is a pretty interesting ritual involved. And absinthe is typically drunk at least with water and sugar. And the way that you combine those two things with absinthe is kind of where the rituals start to kick in. That's right. And firstly, you should look for absinthe that is not made green with some artificial coloring. You don't want that. You want something that's like genuinely colored from the post distillation process of infusion. Yes. So once you've got

your hands on some good absinthe, there's different ways you can do it. There are cool little things that look good on your bar. I've seen some, they look sort of like these clear vases with a little spout on one side. But you don't even need all that stuff really. You just, all you really have to do is pour and you don't even need sugar. I think sugar helps the taste. But if you want to, what is it pronounced? The lush? That's what I think. Yeah. L-O-U-C-H-E. If you want to create the lush, which is this sort of cloudy effect in your absinthe, all you really have to do is dribble ice cold water in your absinthe. So, you know, you pour just a little bit. You don't need much. Like an ounce, maybe two ounces if you're really going for it. And then you want to mix about four

parts ice cold water. Just dribble it in the little flat spoon on top. If you want to get into the ritual, it can be a little fancier. But I saw people online that literally just sort of held a glass of ice cold water high above their absinthe glass and just sort of dribble the water in. Yeah. Those drippers though are really cool. They look like a virus almost, like three or four-legged virus that sits atop your glass. And then there's a tray beneath it that you put the sugar cube on. And then you just pour the four or five ounces of cold water into the reservoir above the tray over the glass. And it drips it onto the sugar at a steady rate, which drips the sugar water into the glass of absinthe below. And they're very, very pretty

for the most part, like that Bellypock peri look. It looks good on your bar. Yeah. It's really cool. It's like, I could see how people get into this kind of thing too. But that loose chuck, there's a really cool legend about it. So, the luscious created when the water dissolves some parts of the alcohol, but not some of the oil-based plant stuff. And rather than just separating like oil and water, it separates out enough to just kind of create this vapor cloud. And there's a legend, I don't know if it's true or not, that at the Pernod distillery, there was a lightning strike that threatened to blow up, I guess, created a fire that threatened to blow up thousands of barrels of absinthe.

So, the workers were dumping it out as fast as they could into the nearby river, the Dube's River. And there was a local theory that the Dube's River fed another river through an underground channel. And when the other river showed a luce a couple of days later that confirmed that theory, which is pretty neat, although not necessarily a fully documented story. That's a good story though. And the luscious cool looking, like admittedly, it's, you know, what you start out, if you've never seen it, what you start out with, with absinthe is sort of a sort of a see-through, green, very bright green thing. And the luce, once it gets cloudy, it ends up looking kind of almost like lime juice, sort of a cloudy lime juicy look. And again,

it's mostly water. And, you know, there is that fire method where you light the sugar cube on fire and then extinguish it with cold water after it drips down and melts into the thing. But I saw the A, this was not a good idea for a lot of reasons because the danger of fire, if you're in a bright room, you might not see that light blue flame and go to drink something that's still on fire. And that it's really, it's usually or historically was a way to disguise like really bad absinthe. And if you have good absinthe, then it's not something you need to do at all. Right. The best thing, in my opinion, that you can do with your absinthe is use it to rinse a glass that you're about to make a sazarak in. Yeah, I've heard of that. Oh man, it's good.

A good sazarak is, oh my gosh. I like a sazarak. I'd never, I don't think I saw, I've seen one being made at like a bar. It has come to me at the table. So I don't know if they've done that or not. They most definitely have, if they're making anything approaching an accurate sazarak. I guarantee they have for sure. Like you just put just a little bit in, like a quarter ounce or less of absinthe and then you turn the glass kind of on its side and twist it around in a circle on its axis. Yeah. I guess with y'all control, maybe I'm not sure. And now your glass is ready to have the sazarak poured in. Or if you really want to get fancy, they sell little atomizers, like those perfume atomizers that you can put absinthe in and just spray it on the inside of your glass

and it should stick to the sides. Yeah, that's, when I get a, you know, I love my martinis, but I like a martini with a little vermouth in there, not much. I like them dry, but I do like a little actual vermouth in there. And it annoys me when I ask for a dry martini, when they just put their vermouth in and swish it around and then dump it out. I'm always like, come on, just, just a little bit. Yeah, that's like a bone dry martini. Yeah. Or they don't even, like the thought of vermouth isn't even an option. It's just straight up gin. I'm like, hey, martini, it's supposed to have a little vermouth in there. Yeah. You might as well say, can I have three ounces of gin, please?

Yeah, cold gin. That's basically what I have with a little olive brine. Yeah. So you got anything else about absinthe? Nothing else. There are plenty of cocktails out there that have a little absinthe in there, if you're into that, but I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to see what it's all about. Some have a lot of them. I saw the Necromancer. It's equal parts, absinthe, lilé blanc, Saint Germain, and lemon juice with a dash of gin. Saint Germain is green, right? No, it's a kind of a goldish color. It's elderflower liqueur. It's not green. You're thinking of chartreuse.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Which is another difficult thing to find recipes for, actually. Yeah, I've got some of that stuff on my bar now, and it remains largely untouched until I go digging. I think that's another one that started out as a botanical medicinal remedy, too. Yeah. Well, that's it for botanical medicinal remedies, everybody, in particular absinthe, and if you want to know more about absinthe, just check it out. See what you think. You should be over 21, though, just COA. Since I said just COA, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, and don't do the fire method. Just don't do it. Agreed. No need. All right, this is Simpson's reference that we missed. I always love these,

and this is from Lauren, Andrew, and Homer, believe it or not. Hey, guys, just listen to the wonderful episode on postmodernism. So forgive me, this has already been pointed out to you, but I couldn't believe that no one, especially Josh, made any reference to the classic Simpson's episode, Homer the Moe, in which Moe transforms the tavern into a swanky club called M. Right. Do you remember that one? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. There is a great scene where Homer and the other longtime patrons are questioning Moe about some eyeball art on the wall, and after some attempt to get the guys to understand it is Poe Moe, he finally describes it as being weird for the sake of weird, and they all get it.

This definition has been what I think of when I think of postmodern art for my entire adult life, so I thought I'd share, again, from Lauren, Andrew, and Homer, Prince C's actual name. Pretty great. Thank you for that. Thank you for raking us over the coals for missing that one, but it is pretty obvious, and we should have thought about it. I didn't do kind of raking research. Yeah, I guess so. Still hurts so bad. But if you want to make us hurt so bad, you can get in touch with us like Lauren, Homer, and... And Andrew, and if you want to make it hurt so good, get in touch with John Mellencamp. That's my last joke. That wasn't a joke.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

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