December 15, 2020 • 41 mins
Today Benito Mussolini is probably best known as the founder of Italy's National Fascist Party, but he was also very, very into milk. So much so, in fact, that he funneled tons of funding into a strange new process: the creation of wearable milk. Lanital, as it was known, was wool-like in appearance, and, for a time, quite successful! So where are all our milk skirts and milk trousers now? Listen in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
for tuning in today. We could start with just just
one one weird fact. Uh. A long time ago, super
producer Casey Pegrum and a friend of the show, Paul
Deckan gotten a bit of an argument. I don't know
if you remember this, Casey. It was an argument about milk.
(00:49):
Did you hear about this? No? No, but I love
a good milk controversy. Spill it. I'm not sure I
even remember this argument. Do tell Ben? So I think
enough time has passed that's safe to say, Casey, you
and Paul are still friends. But Paul has a Midwestern background.
He is also the super producer and stuff they don't
want you to know. And I was present for a
(01:11):
time when Casey and Paul had this continuing discussion over
whether milk was a beverage or an ingredient. Do you
remember that now, Casey, I really do not. I have.
I have zero opinion on this. I guess I would
go beverage beverage, he says. I mean, I think clearly
it's both, you know, I mean, I think there's some
(01:32):
people that there always reminds me of the scene an
Anchor Man, where a downtrodden Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy
is walking around San Diego, disheveled after he's lost his job.
Spoiler alert for you know, anchor Man. I guess, but
he's drinking milk and it's it's so hot. Perhaps milk
was the wrong choice of beverage because you know, I
(01:56):
don't really think of milk is being refreshing. I think
of it as something you like, you know, dunka cookie
in um, you know, drink it with a piece of cake.
But I wouldn't really drink milk as like, you know,
to to re energize myself or hydrink. Yeah, there's something
kind of gross about the idea of substituting milk for
like gatorade or something. It's kind of nasty, true. True.
It's also the ability to drink milk into adulthood is
(02:19):
the result of a mutation. Let's make no bones about that.
But you know, it was really into milk. It's how
you dictator Bernito Mussolini. Yeah, he was. He actually drank
so much of the stuff up as a result of us.
I think he had like bad gut bacteria or something
like that, and had like a longstanding history of stomach
(02:40):
troubles and he felt like drinking milk was going to
help him with that. Doctors diagnosed him having a doodental
doodenal do audenal ulcer um, and he was at the
time had to kind of like disappear from the public
sphere for a little while. And he adopted this extreme
new at that consisted of tea uh, something called pain
(03:03):
biss scottato, which is just dry toast boiled fruit and
milk um. And he had to have that regiment three
times a day. Uh. And he had given up alcohol
two at the time because that doesn't do very good
stuff to your stomach if you're having digestive troubles. And
he gave his very telling quote about his feelings on milk.
(03:24):
He clearly believed it was a beverage and not a
not exclusively and ingredient. He says, I drink it at
the table, small gulps, so that it may properly salivated.
Milk is a wonderful food, perhaps the best food known
to man. This one glass of milk contains enough nourishment
to sustain me until the midday meal six hours hence,
(03:46):
and this story that we're about to embark on, it
does contain a lot of Mussolini if you're looking at
the ingredient list of this ridiculous history episode also contains futurism,
and contains some wartime information, and it attains a lot
of very weird stuff about milk. I hesitate to bury
the lead, but we can also build toward it. The
(04:08):
headline is this, eventually Mussolini was so into milk that
he thought it wasn't just the best food known demand.
It may also be a form of clothing. You did
not hear that wrong, ridiculous historians, a form of clothing.
It kind of starts with something called Futurism, which I
think that three of us are down with. It's early
(04:30):
twentieth century artistic movement alive. It was centered in Italy
and it it really emphasized dynamism, the energy and power
of the machine, and the frantic phonetic pace of modern life.
So during the second decade of the twentieth century, in
teen tens or so, the movement's influence expanded and spread
(04:52):
across the majority of Europe. The Russian avant garde loved it.
You'll probably associate it mo st often now with would
say visual arts and poetry, probably, yeah, absolutely, Or like
there's a really great um cartoon. I think it's called
like the World of Tomorrow or something along those lines.
I think it's a Chuck Jones cartoon where it shows
(05:16):
all of these amazing, you know, innovations that will potentially
take place in the future, obviously with a kind of
a comical bent. And I believe there's like a space
baby in it at some point, and there's like a
car that will like shave your face for you while
you're driving, and all that kind of stuff. So it
certainly was a zeitgeisty kind of thing, and exactly like
you said, been wrapped up in design or think the
Jet Sins. You know, that was a good kind of
(05:36):
modern example of like futurism personified kind of as as
a comedy and futurism, I guess was first officially announced
February nine in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. They published
this manifesto by an Italian author named Philip bo Thomas
(05:56):
ol Manti, and he had coined the word trism as
this this phrase that reflected his goal of getting rid
of all that old, stuffy junk from the past and
celebrating all the new hip unsquare original things, and so
they really love technology. They also, this is the weird
(06:18):
flex here, they're also really into violence and conflict. They said,
that's how we get rid of these traditional values and
destroy these cultural institutions. So as it had this aggressive
tone and it was supposed to get attention, it was
supposed to be controversial. They were trying to be edge lords,
you guys, That's what they were trying to do. So
(06:39):
ahead of the car really quick correction on my end,
I sort of like smushed two ideas together. Uh. The
the Chuck Jones cartoon was called Rocket Bye Baby, which
was about a space baby and also has heavy futurist elements.
And then the main one I was talking about was
called The World of Tomorrow, which is a tech savery
cartoon that like shows all of these like amazing inventions
that will exist in the future. Definitely that all kind
(07:02):
of don't work super well. So I have a question
for you both when when you when you see the
headline writ large, Mussolini predicted that wearable milk was the
future of fashion. What do you picture, because I had
something very distinct that I pictured, Casey, you want to
go first, maybe like a layer of semi transparent cheese
or something. I don't know. It's when I when I
(07:22):
first saw the phrase wearable milk, I was kind of
grossed out by it. But the more I thought about it,
I'm like, that might be kind of pleasant. I don't know,
you know, I'm I'm I'm keeping an open mind here.
How about you been? Uh? Yeah, so I I am
all for firsthand investigations. So I took all my clothes off,
I poured milk atop of my body, and for you know,
for a while I was wearing it, just not consistently. Uh.
(07:45):
It was pleasant vibe. It was probably not safe for work.
I don't think I can just wear milk at work.
But in all honesty, I I thought, you know, there's
some material science in there, because you could build things
out of proteins right in different stuff instances. That's right,
Oh you were. You were way more barking up the
right uh cow than I was. I kind of pictured
(08:08):
it like being some sort of like like a wearable
kind of plastic bag that was filled with milk. Think
of like a like a transparent plastic raincoat that like
is hollow on the inside and full of milk. Okay,
oh yeah, so we were. We were all three, I think,
taking interesting explorations there. And you know, I appreciate the
(08:29):
compliment about thinking about the chemistry. I want to be fair.
I was after I covered myself in milk and messed
up a good part of my apartment. I can't wait
to see those boudoir photos hit the internet. That's all
I'm gonna say. But I have to say, Ben, your
your spot on when you say this is all about
material science, because at the end of the day, that
is what this story is about. By the way, Mussolini
(08:52):
also was really anti waste um and the idea of
this particular form of material science is you don't have
to use fresh milk. You can use bespoiled milk. Sorry
I had to add the best, best spoiled. That's like
that word. But you can use milk that's gone bad
or substandard milk they like sometimes when the when the
cows generate milk, there's a link that has to be
(09:13):
graded or whatever, and I guess if it's a lower
quality and if it gets tossed. But in this situation,
you can actually use that lower quality milk to extract
these essentially like fibers. And there's a really cool video
that we found in this research called making Wool from Milk,
and I think the beginning of it sums up the
(09:33):
whole concept nicely. If we could roll that tape, that'd
be swell bo bo. Black sheep will have to look
to his laurels or in the world of wool, he
isn't the big noise he used to be. An Italian
inventor has discovered how to get wool from milk. At
the moment, it's just plain unadulterated cow juice. But you
ain't seen nothing yet. The milk goes through a whole
lot of processes, each of which brings it near the
(09:54):
consistency of wool. Watch how it grows and the finished
article is delivered through a pipe very much like milk.
So in future you'll be able to choose between drinking
a glass of milk and wearing one. And unfortunately as
a podcast you couldn't see all these crazy machines, but
it's literally you know this, these chemists that are pouring
(10:16):
milk into these beakers and kind of stretching it out
into these ropey kind of gelatinous strands, and then they
feed it into these machines that then pull it into
longer gelatinous strands, and then they dry it out, I guess,
and then you've got these workers in this factory that
are pulling it apart like cotton, right, yeah, yeah, that's correct,
And people can't be blamed at this point for you know,
(10:39):
of course it might sound like a hoax, because this
is the same part of the world that also once
told people spaghetti grows on trees, like Europe has had
some weird innovations, and at first blush, this reminded me
of that. But the difference is wearable milk or this
fibrous material is real. And going back to the futurism
(11:00):
comes from that because they also loved fashion. So since
the publication of the Futurist Manifesto of Men's Clothing, there
was this debate over how Italian should dress, and futurists
wanted manufacturers to make clothing out of new materials, revolutionary
alternative materials. They didn't just propose milk, they proposed paper, tinfoil, rubber,
(11:25):
fish skin, and somehow gas I'm still a little I'm
not clear on the gas thing. It was just like
you're always kind of like pigpen and the peanuts or something.
But it's strange because the Manifesto of Futurist Women's Fashion
in ninety added milk to the list, and it didn't
come out of nowhere. It wasn't just like someone saying
(11:46):
fever dream. Between nineteen o four and nineteen o nine
there was a German chemist named Frederick Totenhaupt who tried
to turn milk into a kind of a silk substitute,
similar to a process similar to what you see in
that video. His efforts failed at first, but the futurists
caught onto it and they started saying, you know, milk,
(12:07):
it maybe the fabric of the future. So this idea
wasn't as nuts as it might sound. You know, wool
as a protein, and on a molecular level, it has
a it's a protein with a similar structure to the
protein found in milk casin. All chemists needed to do
was figure out how to convince the case and to
assume a shape that sort of imitated the texture of wool.
(12:29):
And when Mussolini to your pointnal. When he started pushing
for waste production, he was also pushing for increased self sufficiency.
He was like, I don't want to see us reliant
on the British and the French and those Americans. So
the Futurists, they had a for a very short time,
(12:50):
they had their own political party, the Futurist Political Party,
and they merged with Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party, and they
had a lot of goals for strengthening Italy's economy in
preparation for the comming war. Member Futurism likes War two,
and one of the things that they planned to do
was to take the wild dream of milk clothing right,
(13:13):
uh quick, quick aside um, Was it a kind of
Mussolini that sort of coined the term fascism or did
that exist pre him because obviously didn't mean anything bad
when he used it as the name of his party.
I think it just kind of got that rap over time. Yeah,
it was definitely used by members of this movement. I
think the first use was in nineteen fifteen from the
(13:34):
fascis of Revolutionary Actions, so the Fascist or the Fascist
Revolutionary Action, that's right, And they used it to refer
to again, not like some sort of totalitary and evil
empire kind of regime. It was more the idea of
a syndicate or a guild. And apparently the Latin of
fascismo is is a term that translates to a bundle
(13:55):
of sticks, with which there's also another very divisive term
that's a slur that also translates to a bundle of sticks.
I'm not gonna say it, but I think you know
what I'm talking about. Yeah. So, Italy under this fascist
government is being helmed by Mussolini, and he wants self sufficiency,
and he wants to prepare the economy and new unorthodox ways.
(14:18):
And one of the things they wanted to do was
create artificial fabrics. This was a market that Italy had
a good shot at further expanding in, and the Italian
companies took up the suggestions of the futurists. They started
using organic materials to make textiles. Their first big success
(14:40):
was rayon, an artificial silk made of cellulose. In Italy
alone became the world's leading producer of rayon. Uh. They
didn't stop there, though. They still like when they closed
their eyes, they dreamt of milk, which is a very
weirdly specific. That's a rare insult that that I think
(15:01):
I could give to the fascist government of Italy at
the time. Building off of Totenhap's work, an Italian engineer
named Antonio Ferretti perfected a process. He made a milk
fiber he called La natale, a combination of the word
(15:24):
lana meaning wool and ittal from Italia and and and
it actually worked. The cool thing is we know how
it worked, right. The science is pretty interesting, Like what's
going on in that video we saw Noll? Yeah, we
were I was kind of fumbling my way through trying
to describe it. And here's a little bit better or
more science e version. Um. The acid is added to
(15:45):
skim milk, which separates out that substance you're referring to here,
I think it's pronounced casein um. Then that material is
dissolved until it becomes that viscous, kind of gooey strandy
type mater areal that retire almost like a dough um.
And then next the case in is forced through these
(16:05):
spinnerets kind of like a macaroni press. Have you ever
watched any of those like really satisfying videos of like
macaroni noodles being pushed through the little molds and you know,
the little spirals or whatever, the various shapes a situation
like that. So it's definitely like, what's the word I'm
looking for, a industrial process using like heavy machinery. Um.
(16:26):
And then they're hardened using a chemical bath, and then
much like making noodles, they're cut into fibers of whatever
length you need, and then it's it's dried again. And
then you can actually in the video see workers separating
them out by hand and then dumping them in these bins,
and it's almost more like fluff at that point. Um.
But that that may not be exactly the right order
(16:47):
of operations, but that is one of the part of
the process that isn't described here, but it's in the video. Um.
So what you do get it's something that's very won't like.
So Mussolini loved this stuff. He thought it was beautiful,
that was amazing. He thought this was uniquely Italian fabric
for uniquely Italian future. He thought Lal was genius because
(17:12):
the truth was Italy, like many many other countries at
the time, was wasting billions and billions of dollars per
year in skim milk waste. So now to the point
you made the top knel this lan ittal gave them
a really smart, really cheap way to repurpose it, and
(17:33):
it gave him a lot of bang for their buck.
A hundred pounds of milk contained about three point seven
pounds of this protein casein, and that translated to three
point seven pounds of law and its hall. That's a
pretty good or turn on investment right there for something
that would have otherwise gone uh in the trash. And
really nothing you can do with spoiled milk. You know,
they don't cry over spoiled milk. That's not how it goes.
(17:54):
I think it's spilt milk. But still there's nothing you
can do with it. It's it's it's absolute waste product. Uh.
So the know there were some issues that had some
features that were positive. You know, obviously the math works
out and it seems like a pretty good use of
material it would otherwise be useless. But it wasn't as
strong or as stretchy as the real thing. Will um.
(18:19):
But Mussolini was so into it that he really wanted
to He wanted Italy to be this kind of purveyor
of this futurist mentality. So this was also partly a
kind of propagandistic move to kind of situate Italy um
as this you know, very forward thinking nation. So he
(18:39):
wanted more of this kind of thing. So after he
invaded Ethiopia um and was sanctioned heavily by the League
of Nations, you know, because fascist dictator and all that, Uh,
Italy became even more isolated. Uh So he really decided
it was time to double down on this innovation of
of landed. Yeah, it became this obsession for the government
(19:04):
at the time, and the company that was manufacturing land
etall s n I A Viscosa. They got tons of
money and government aid and they were getting all the
levers of government pulled such that they could immediately ramp
up productions. So by nine seven they had produced ten
million pounds of this wearable milk, and they started publishing
(19:29):
propaganda posters that we're telling people to wear milk because
it was like dressing in an Italian manner. And then
the futurists who were still around love this invention, of course,
because it makes them feel like they were right all along.
And so they praised the fascist government at the time,
and the guy we mentioned who made that earlier manifesto,
(19:50):
Marinetti started writing poems for this company, s n I
A Viscosa. His poem praises the text wild Manufacturer, and
then this other poem, the simultaneous poem of Italian Fashion,
also thanks the company for being so Italian like literally
it's exemplary Italian nous. But his most memorable poem in
(20:15):
this in this regard is his poem of the Milk Dress,
which was published in like a little propaganda pamphlet booklet,
and they have they have lines like and let this
complicated milk be welcome, power, power, power, Let's exalt this
milk made of reinforced steel, milk of war, militarized milk.
(20:37):
It worked. That's the weirdest part that poem worked. It
reminds me of a funny bit of a British comedy
series that many of you might be familiar with called
The Mighty Bush. There's a character named Howard Moon and
he's obsessed. In the first season, they work at a
zoo him and his partner, Vince Noir, is kind of
like a fashion play, kind of hipster mod and Howard
(21:00):
is obsessed with this woman whose name I'm forgetting, and
he writes her these poems that he's too shy to
to read to her, but they're all used the metaphor
of cream, and he refers to himself as England's premier
cream poet. So you know, it's it's a thing. There's
an exerpt from one of Howard Moon's cream poems. He goes,
(21:22):
and your nose like a delicious slope of cream, your
ears like cream flaps, and your teeth like hard, shiny
pegs of cream. Yeah that's all I got. Yeah, So
maybe maybe they're taking some inspiration from this guy who's
a real life milk poet. I would like to think so.
(21:43):
But I like the phrase milk of war. It's it's
it feels like it's a good it's a good concept
album name for metal bands. Is that the opposite of
the milk of human kindness? It's definitely, I mean it's
it's definitely a different kind of ilk. You know. I
was also thinking, like, gods of war, dogs of war?
(22:04):
What does it cry? Havoc, let loose the milk of war?
I love it. I'm here for it. Ben, Well, we'll
see where, We'll see where it goes nol. Perhaps we
have a future as dairy based poets ourselves. Will we
be as successful as Marionetti? Well, that's a that's a
that's a tall order, or should I say it's whole milkshake.
(22:25):
Because London's Hall was everywhere in Italy and people started
praising it in other countries. There was a British publication,
the Children's Newspaper, that reported on this in April nineteen
thirty seven. Was it like a Sesame Street type situation?
Why was it called the children's newspaper? That's an odd
name for a newspaper. It was made of children. This
(22:47):
was a very weird time, it would appear. So they
were just material science run a muck is what I
would say. But yeah, I mean milk wool was used
to make these uh, very you know, fine Italian sue
and dresses and garments and even like flags. And this
order had gone out, you know, from the government, because
they ruled all this stuff with an iron fist, that
(23:09):
flags and banners should be made of this milk wool
um and because it was a nationalist kind of vibe.
Right then in nineteen thirty eight, s n I A.
The Scosta, the company that you mentioned, UM was hell
bent on spreading the milk the gospel of milk based
clothing around the world. They wanted to go global with
(23:31):
this UM and in two years they had sold patents
to eight different countries in Europe, mainly Holland, Poland, Germany,
Belgium and Japan, also France, Canada, Czechoslovakia and England. So
there's only one country absent from this milk wool craze,
and I think we can guess which one that was UM.
(23:52):
This is the good old US of A. Yeah, that's right.
The the SCOSA saw huge potential in the United States.
It's a big country, it has an enormous dairy and
agricultural infrastructure already, and they also knew that Americans have
been thinking about this for some time since the early
nineteen twenties. There had been discussion in trade circles and
(24:17):
agricultural colleges about using this protein, using casein as a
bridge between agricultural and manufacturing sectors, again as a way
to avoid tremendous skim milk waste. They were just they
were taking a milk bath on fifty billion pounds of
milk period totally. I mean that wasn't a uniquely Italian problem.
(24:40):
I mean, milk wastes, milk waste wherever you are in
the world. It reminds me of that episode we did
about repurposing feed sacks uh into dresses, only kind of
the other way around. Even if there were problems with
this material, you think they could have at least used
it to make feed sacks, especially it was since it
was such a part of like the arming industry, right, Yeah,
(25:01):
that's a good point. Didn't really come up in the research,
but it's just something that occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Originally the US solution was going to be something like
process this waste milk so that we can use the
protein in glue in buttons and combs. It was used
during World War One in a paint. They made milk
(25:23):
paint for airplanes. It was in piano keys by nineteen
forty or so. Like they were doing their their own
stuff too. They just hadn't gotten to the clothing part yet.
And that's why this Italian company, s nia Viscosa thinks
why not, Well, why don't why don't we do it?
This seems like a cool job for some people. Maybe
(25:43):
not me, but for some people. They sent fashion emissaries
to promote law nitall clothing like socialites, well connected people.
I think there was, uh, some Italian aristocrats they sent.
I feel like today that'd be somewhere in the neighborhood
of a combination of like an Instagram influencer and a
diplomat exactly very well put. One of these, in particular
(26:06):
was a journalist um who became an Italian princess by
the name of Marguerite Katani Um and she promoted this
material in New York in seven there is an article
in Time magazine that also described Katani's ability or efforts
to recruit American socialites, folks like Mona Bismarck, who Chanel
(26:31):
once um named the best dressed woman in the world
and had her model. Uh, these high end milk based dresses. Ext.
I can't not chuckle when I say milk based dresses. Uh.
And this was something that was like put front and
center in front of these American audiences. Yeah, and it
paid off. Paid off, by the way. One a team
(26:54):
for the a r A, the Atlantic Research Associates, which
is a division at the time of the National Dairy Corporation,
starts producing what is essentially Latin at All under the
name are a Lack, which is land at al and
r A lack sound like characters from Tolkien or something,
(27:15):
But that's our lack is a r A as an
American Research Associates plus lack Latin for milk l A C.
And the fibers are a hit. The New York fashion
scene is thinking, Wow, our lack clothing is the way
of the future. It's like a short, like people wear this.
They're so sophisticated, you know, and they're so elite. There's
(27:36):
so fashion forward. Onward to the future, and the future
is milk uh. But then the US joined World War
Two and our lack became much more valuable for military purposes.
It was blended with rayon to produce hats, and that
means here's our trivia fact that comes to us courtesy
(27:59):
of Life magazine. This means during World War Two, a
lot of American soldiers literally wore milk into battle. It's
so weird. And then, like Land at All, our relax
spread throughout the United States. Maybe it wasn't quite the
level of popularity that Land at All reached in Italy,
but you could in the forties you could find our
(28:21):
lack in coats and suits and dresses, and a lot
of people didn't know either that they were wearing milk. Well, sure,
and I would maybe argue that it wouldn't have been
as as big of a thing as it was in
Italy because obviously Italy was a totalitarian, fascist regime and
he could basically force companies to use the stuff, whereas
in America they would have had to adopt it willingly,
(28:43):
you know, and and uh, the market would have had
to adopt it, and the audiences would have had to
adopt him. True. Yeah, there are more decision makers involved,
and maybe that's why after a time milk based fabrics
started to fall out of favor, not just in the
US but in in the world because you know, we
(29:04):
mentioned earlier that Landatoll was like wool, but it wasn't
as durable. It could break easily, threads could come out
when you ironed it. But the weirdest thing, and this
is something I was thinking about two before we started
digging into this, The weirdest thing about land Atoll and
are Lack, I believe, was the smell. When they got damp,
(29:28):
they sometimes smelled like sour milk. So imagine you're out
on a date with your like Tom Waite says, if
you've got your arms around your sweet when your oldsmobile
you got the top down, it starts raining, and all
of a sudden your date points out that you smell
of spoiled milk. A but spoiled milk if you prefer,
I do prefer, but I appreciate you thinking of me. There, man,
(29:50):
it's true. Um, and we're gonna get to some modern
uh kind of innovations and milk based fiber, but for now, uh,
it kind fizzled, right, Yeah, that's correct, and Viscosa the
Italian companies started focusing their energy on other alternatives, but
(30:10):
they took a hit for the war effort because they,
like the U. S Forces. Uh, the Italian forces had
a lot of land at all in their own battle gear,
their boots, their blankets, their uniforms, and Mussolini thought this
would help them resist poison gas because again, Mussolini loved milk.
Milk can do no wrong if you're Mussolini. The problem
(30:39):
is that land at all didn't really help Italian soldiers.
There were cheaper products that were already flooding the market.
There wasn't a clear advantage to land at all other
than being a creative way to use milk waste. And
so it started to fizzle out in Italy as well
for a time. As you said, yeah, that's right, um.
(31:00):
And yet here we are in uh the year with
If there was ever any year that sounded more futuri, I,
I don't know of it. Um, We're in it, guys.
And there certainly are some of those FUTUREI things that
maybe we're portrayed in that tech savory cartoon like video
chat uh and and such. That's the one that I
always thought was the most future, like those you know,
(31:21):
communicators and Star Trek and all that. So we have
that a lot of the technology that we have a
little more subtle. Sure we have electric cars. We certainly
don't have flying cars or suitcase cars or any of
that stuff, or food in pill form, but we do
have wearable milk uh, and it is making a comeback
in the world of hoot couture. Hope, I pronounced that right,
(31:42):
hot couture whatever? Uh, Casey, what what do you think
ho hawk is? There is the t siland thank you Casey.
On the case Pretaporte was that a film was a
friend that mean's ready to wear Robert at tell me
that's right. I haven't seen that one. I've heard it's good.
Casey has nothing to say about this, uh, not your faith,
(32:02):
not one of his finale of Okay fair, But it's true.
It has remained kind of top of mind for some
futures for obvious reasons, right, Like, it really does feel
like a smart use of a waste product that I
still haven't heard in any of this research any other
good uses for Uh. You did mention at the top
(32:24):
end that you could use those fibers for other things
like glue and buttons and all that, and maybe that's
the thing that's done. I don't really know. But in eleven,
a German based clothing company called Camilche comedic because it's
milk in German and the que could be silent, it
could just be milk, but I'm gonna go with comi
(32:44):
um and they designed or manufactured and designed all of
their highly fashionable products using casin. And it all started
with a German microbiologist, interesting combo and designer named Anka
domasca Um And they claim that their products require fewer
(33:05):
chemicals than lan atol. In the nineties and the forties.
She actually single handedly or with a small team, developed
a better process than those Italian scientists had back in
the thirties, and a single dress costs between two hundred
and two hundred three dollars uh and has made from
six leaders of milk. Yeah, yeah, and there are there
(33:26):
are other people who are coming into the fray. Here
you can see articles from places like Reuters reporting how
other high and fashioned labels are selling milk based clothing.
Uniclow has a popular apparel line called heat Tech and
that's partially made from milk proteins. Mademoiselle Chichi is selling
(33:48):
milk based clothing. And now you know, in these are
modern days, the world is threatened by some pretty catastrophic
consequences of global warming, and folks are looking for alternatives
to oil based products like polyester and so on. So
what the question is, does it make sense to give
(34:08):
milk clothing a second chance? The answer is yeah, and
there are a lot of people behind it. We know
that there is ongoing research. People already created softer, more
durable versions of these materials. Hopefully they've chosen better brand
names for them, better than com but well, I mean
(34:29):
land at all. I think because on the page. Look,
it visually rhymes with genital that's weird or jaritol, which
I've never understood what it actually has. I know it's
a medication over the counter that the elderly take. I
assume it's for a digestion, but I'm not really sure.
And are lack, which is a which sounds like czar
lac or something. It sounds like a weird monster from
(34:51):
a sci fi film. So, but what's what's it? What's
in a name? You know? The answer is a lot.
It is a lot. Yeah, it's the barrier for entry
for a how to folks. I did want to mention
I saw a really cool video that you can find
online if you google milk clothing. I think that's really
all you need to do. You'll find a video um
(35:13):
from Euromax to x is because it's extreme adaptable called
clothes from Milk and it it talks about this designer,
Anka Domoski. At the time this came out in she's
only twenty years old, the biologist and fashion designer we
talked about, and she walks through the whole thinking behind it,
but she never credits the Italians. I gotta I gotta
(35:34):
falter for that like everything in the in the piece
and the way she talks about it almost makes it
seem like she came up with this idea alone. And
even the process it shows the factory looks almost exactly
like that situation in that very early video, the old
timey one from the thirties. Um. But they did apparently
solve the smell problem, because apparently these garments do not
(35:54):
ever smell, and they're pretty easy to care for and
they feel good, because that was another problem with the
original formula, as I think it wasn't as malleable or stretchy,
and it also had a bit of a roughness to
it that wasn't pleasant m which is why they combined
it with a lot of stuff. But this, this other,
this new milk clothing design also requires less water to
(36:17):
make so and it balances out against the production process
of cotton. So there is a very real chance that
in the future, ridiculous historians, you too could be wearing
the latest uh in dairy fashion, which is milk clothing. Uh.
So maybe our answer to that that question UH that
(36:38):
Casey and Paul had years ago, is milk ingredients or
is it a beverage? Perhaps now it's just a pair
of slacks, hats, dresses, underwear. I don't know there's a
heat problem there. But if they fixed the smell, yeah,
they fixed the smell. Um, Yeah, it's fine. This whole
time we've been doing this, I've been trying to think
(36:58):
of what the really popular milk ad campaign slogan was. Yeah,
it was Got Milk, but very incorrectly in my mind,
was milk the fresh Maker? No, that's not it. That
was mentos. And then I also thought milk, it's what's
for dinner. Also, I'm not sure I believe that was beef.
And then there was milk the other white meat, New
(37:20):
York milky. Yeah. Do you guys know who directed those
Got Milk ads? By the way, No, who was it? No?
Was it like Steven Soderberger, David Fincher or something, Michael
Bay Oh, I got a start, yep, yep. Okay, that's
a good one. So an explosive ad campaign if you
can't do explosions exactly, that was That was pre he
(37:42):
didn't have the budget yet. I bet if he had,
he would have figured out a way to shoehorn an
explosion into those. But that has a really great milk
based trivia nugget to end on today. I personally found
this subject delightful. Um and it's really cool that it
has such a full circle kind of trajectory and now
here we are in the future, the actual future that
(38:02):
the futurists were dreaming of, and perhaps milk will be
part of your next outfit. I hope you enjoyed this
episode Ridiculous Historians. I know we've got a couple of
people in the crowd who are saying, well, or we
only using milk from cattle at this point, that seems
to be the case. So if you want to get
ahead of the fashion curve, maybe your next move is
(38:23):
to get milk from another mammal, horse milk, goat milk,
and so on. Let us know how it goes. We
want to hear from you. We want to hear your
favorite bits of trivia. I would like to hear uh,
some of your favorite commercial jingles. They don't have to
have anything to do with milk. Tell us all about it.
(38:44):
On the internet. You can find us on Facebook, can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
Like to recommend Ridiculous Historians are community page, but you
can also find us not just as a show, but
as individuals. Boy, can you ever? You can find me
on Instagram at how now Old Brown? How about you, Ben?
Where can the folks find your Internet presence? Thanks for asking, though.
(39:05):
You can find me on Instagram at ben Bolland. You
can also find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben
Bolland h s W. Thanks as always to our long
suffering super producer Casey Pegram. Casey, I swear I'm not
making up that story. You guys did have a weird
conversation about it. I can remember some kind of long
(39:25):
protracted argument over nothing, so they probably was that was
there also not at a brief debate as to whether
egg nog should be served hot or cold possibly would
stay cold again. Yeah, you don't remember any of these
cream or milk based arguments, Casey, No, you're cream blind.
Got the dairy blindness, kid, But you'll soldier on uh
(39:48):
thinks also too, of course, Alex Williams, I don't. This
is a great story and I personally, I personally really
enjoyed it cast Mussolini in a new light, but it
didn't get me to the point where I feel like
I should thank him. If that makes I don't need
to thank him the Moose as I like to call him. Huge.
Thanks Christopher hasciotes here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed
(40:09):
this banging bob Uh, Jonathan Strickland the Quister. I believe
we're due for zoom bomb any day now, thankfully not
today and thinks as well to Eve's Jeff Coach. Thanks
to you've know and thanks to all. This is a
sincere thanks. Thanks to all the farmers and all the
cattle who have made this possible. Oh God, and we'd
(40:33):
be remiss if we didn't thank researcher extraordinaire Gabe Louisier,
who wrote us a delightful email to demystify the pronunciation
of his last name. It is, in fact Lucier ah Man,
the Magic's God. Well, Gabe, maybe his name is actually
pronounced gob A and he just hasn't told us. Let's
let's get this season two of Gabe's weird name and
(40:54):
you know what, let's have him back on the show.
We'll see you next time, folks. Yah. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
for tuning in today. We could start with just just
one one weird fact. Uh. A long time ago, super
producer Casey Pegrum and a friend of the show, Paul
Deckan gotten a bit of an argument. I don't know
if you remember this, Casey. It was an argument about milk.
(00:49):
Did you hear about this? No? No, but I love
a good milk controversy. Spill it. I'm not sure I
even remember this argument. Do tell Ben? So I think
enough time has passed that's safe to say, Casey, you
and Paul are still friends. But Paul has a Midwestern background.
He is also the super producer and stuff they don't
want you to know. And I was present for a
(01:11):
time when Casey and Paul had this continuing discussion over
whether milk was a beverage or an ingredient. Do you
remember that now, Casey, I really do not. I have.
I have zero opinion on this. I guess I would
go beverage beverage, he says. I mean, I think clearly
it's both, you know, I mean, I think there's some
(01:32):
people that there always reminds me of the scene an
Anchor Man, where a downtrodden Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy
is walking around San Diego, disheveled after he's lost his job.
Spoiler alert for you know, anchor Man. I guess, but
he's drinking milk and it's it's so hot. Perhaps milk
was the wrong choice of beverage because you know, I
(01:56):
don't really think of milk is being refreshing. I think
of it as something you like, you know, dunka cookie
in um, you know, drink it with a piece of cake.
But I wouldn't really drink milk as like, you know,
to to re energize myself or hydrink. Yeah, there's something
kind of gross about the idea of substituting milk for
like gatorade or something. It's kind of nasty, true. True.
It's also the ability to drink milk into adulthood is
(02:19):
the result of a mutation. Let's make no bones about that.
But you know, it was really into milk. It's how
you dictator Bernito Mussolini. Yeah, he was. He actually drank
so much of the stuff up as a result of us.
I think he had like bad gut bacteria or something
like that, and had like a longstanding history of stomach
(02:40):
troubles and he felt like drinking milk was going to
help him with that. Doctors diagnosed him having a doodental
doodenal do audenal ulcer um, and he was at the
time had to kind of like disappear from the public
sphere for a little while. And he adopted this extreme
new at that consisted of tea uh, something called pain
(03:03):
biss scottato, which is just dry toast boiled fruit and
milk um. And he had to have that regiment three
times a day. Uh. And he had given up alcohol
two at the time because that doesn't do very good
stuff to your stomach if you're having digestive troubles. And
he gave his very telling quote about his feelings on milk.
(03:24):
He clearly believed it was a beverage and not a
not exclusively and ingredient. He says, I drink it at
the table, small gulps, so that it may properly salivated.
Milk is a wonderful food, perhaps the best food known
to man. This one glass of milk contains enough nourishment
to sustain me until the midday meal six hours hence,
(03:46):
and this story that we're about to embark on, it
does contain a lot of Mussolini if you're looking at
the ingredient list of this ridiculous history episode also contains futurism,
and contains some wartime information, and it attains a lot
of very weird stuff about milk. I hesitate to bury
the lead, but we can also build toward it. The
(04:08):
headline is this, eventually Mussolini was so into milk that
he thought it wasn't just the best food known demand.
It may also be a form of clothing. You did
not hear that wrong, ridiculous historians, a form of clothing.
It kind of starts with something called Futurism, which I
think that three of us are down with. It's early
(04:30):
twentieth century artistic movement alive. It was centered in Italy
and it it really emphasized dynamism, the energy and power
of the machine, and the frantic phonetic pace of modern life.
So during the second decade of the twentieth century, in
teen tens or so, the movement's influence expanded and spread
(04:52):
across the majority of Europe. The Russian avant garde loved it.
You'll probably associate it mo st often now with would
say visual arts and poetry, probably, yeah, absolutely, Or like
there's a really great um cartoon. I think it's called
like the World of Tomorrow or something along those lines.
I think it's a Chuck Jones cartoon where it shows
(05:16):
all of these amazing, you know, innovations that will potentially
take place in the future, obviously with a kind of
a comical bent. And I believe there's like a space
baby in it at some point, and there's like a
car that will like shave your face for you while
you're driving, and all that kind of stuff. So it
certainly was a zeitgeisty kind of thing, and exactly like
you said, been wrapped up in design or think the
Jet Sins. You know, that was a good kind of
(05:36):
modern example of like futurism personified kind of as as
a comedy and futurism, I guess was first officially announced
February nine in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. They published
this manifesto by an Italian author named Philip bo Thomas
(05:56):
ol Manti, and he had coined the word trism as
this this phrase that reflected his goal of getting rid
of all that old, stuffy junk from the past and
celebrating all the new hip unsquare original things, and so
they really love technology. They also, this is the weird
(06:18):
flex here, they're also really into violence and conflict. They said,
that's how we get rid of these traditional values and
destroy these cultural institutions. So as it had this aggressive
tone and it was supposed to get attention, it was
supposed to be controversial. They were trying to be edge lords,
you guys, That's what they were trying to do. So
(06:39):
ahead of the car really quick correction on my end,
I sort of like smushed two ideas together. Uh. The
the Chuck Jones cartoon was called Rocket Bye Baby, which
was about a space baby and also has heavy futurist elements.
And then the main one I was talking about was
called The World of Tomorrow, which is a tech savery
cartoon that like shows all of these like amazing inventions
that will exist in the future. Definitely that all kind
(07:02):
of don't work super well. So I have a question
for you both when when you when you see the
headline writ large, Mussolini predicted that wearable milk was the
future of fashion. What do you picture, because I had
something very distinct that I pictured, Casey, you want to
go first, maybe like a layer of semi transparent cheese
or something. I don't know. It's when I when I
(07:22):
first saw the phrase wearable milk, I was kind of
grossed out by it. But the more I thought about it,
I'm like, that might be kind of pleasant. I don't know,
you know, I'm I'm I'm keeping an open mind here.
How about you been? Uh? Yeah, so I I am
all for firsthand investigations. So I took all my clothes off,
I poured milk atop of my body, and for you know,
for a while I was wearing it, just not consistently. Uh.
(07:45):
It was pleasant vibe. It was probably not safe for work.
I don't think I can just wear milk at work.
But in all honesty, I I thought, you know, there's
some material science in there, because you could build things
out of proteins right in different stuff instances. That's right,
Oh you were. You were way more barking up the
right uh cow than I was. I kind of pictured
(08:08):
it like being some sort of like like a wearable
kind of plastic bag that was filled with milk. Think
of like a like a transparent plastic raincoat that like
is hollow on the inside and full of milk. Okay,
oh yeah, so we were. We were all three, I think,
taking interesting explorations there. And you know, I appreciate the
(08:29):
compliment about thinking about the chemistry. I want to be fair.
I was after I covered myself in milk and messed
up a good part of my apartment. I can't wait
to see those boudoir photos hit the internet. That's all
I'm gonna say. But I have to say, Ben, your
your spot on when you say this is all about
material science, because at the end of the day, that
is what this story is about. By the way, Mussolini
(08:52):
also was really anti waste um and the idea of
this particular form of material science is you don't have
to use fresh milk. You can use bespoiled milk. Sorry
I had to add the best, best spoiled. That's like
that word. But you can use milk that's gone bad
or substandard milk they like sometimes when the when the
cows generate milk, there's a link that has to be
(09:13):
graded or whatever, and I guess if it's a lower
quality and if it gets tossed. But in this situation,
you can actually use that lower quality milk to extract
these essentially like fibers. And there's a really cool video
that we found in this research called making Wool from Milk,
and I think the beginning of it sums up the
(09:33):
whole concept nicely. If we could roll that tape, that'd
be swell bo bo. Black sheep will have to look
to his laurels or in the world of wool, he
isn't the big noise he used to be. An Italian
inventor has discovered how to get wool from milk. At
the moment, it's just plain unadulterated cow juice. But you
ain't seen nothing yet. The milk goes through a whole
lot of processes, each of which brings it near the
(09:54):
consistency of wool. Watch how it grows and the finished
article is delivered through a pipe very much like milk.
So in future you'll be able to choose between drinking
a glass of milk and wearing one. And unfortunately as
a podcast you couldn't see all these crazy machines, but
it's literally you know this, these chemists that are pouring
(10:16):
milk into these beakers and kind of stretching it out
into these ropey kind of gelatinous strands, and then they
feed it into these machines that then pull it into
longer gelatinous strands, and then they dry it out, I guess,
and then you've got these workers in this factory that
are pulling it apart like cotton, right, yeah, yeah, that's correct,
And people can't be blamed at this point for you know,
(10:39):
of course it might sound like a hoax, because this
is the same part of the world that also once
told people spaghetti grows on trees, like Europe has had
some weird innovations, and at first blush, this reminded me
of that. But the difference is wearable milk or this
fibrous material is real. And going back to the futurism
(11:00):
comes from that because they also loved fashion. So since
the publication of the Futurist Manifesto of Men's Clothing, there
was this debate over how Italian should dress, and futurists
wanted manufacturers to make clothing out of new materials, revolutionary
alternative materials. They didn't just propose milk, they proposed paper, tinfoil, rubber,
(11:25):
fish skin, and somehow gas I'm still a little I'm
not clear on the gas thing. It was just like
you're always kind of like pigpen and the peanuts or something.
But it's strange because the Manifesto of Futurist Women's Fashion
in ninety added milk to the list, and it didn't
come out of nowhere. It wasn't just like someone saying
(11:46):
fever dream. Between nineteen o four and nineteen o nine
there was a German chemist named Frederick Totenhaupt who tried
to turn milk into a kind of a silk substitute,
similar to a process similar to what you see in
that video. His efforts failed at first, but the futurists
caught onto it and they started saying, you know, milk,
(12:07):
it maybe the fabric of the future. So this idea
wasn't as nuts as it might sound. You know, wool
as a protein, and on a molecular level, it has
a it's a protein with a similar structure to the
protein found in milk casin. All chemists needed to do
was figure out how to convince the case and to
assume a shape that sort of imitated the texture of wool.
(12:29):
And when Mussolini to your pointnal. When he started pushing
for waste production, he was also pushing for increased self sufficiency.
He was like, I don't want to see us reliant
on the British and the French and those Americans. So
the Futurists, they had a for a very short time,
(12:50):
they had their own political party, the Futurist Political Party,
and they merged with Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party, and they
had a lot of goals for strengthening Italy's economy in
preparation for the comming war. Member Futurism likes War two,
and one of the things that they planned to do
was to take the wild dream of milk clothing right,
(13:13):
uh quick, quick aside um, Was it a kind of
Mussolini that sort of coined the term fascism or did
that exist pre him because obviously didn't mean anything bad
when he used it as the name of his party.
I think it just kind of got that rap over time. Yeah,
it was definitely used by members of this movement. I
think the first use was in nineteen fifteen from the
(13:34):
fascis of Revolutionary Actions, so the Fascist or the Fascist
Revolutionary Action, that's right, And they used it to refer
to again, not like some sort of totalitary and evil
empire kind of regime. It was more the idea of
a syndicate or a guild. And apparently the Latin of
fascismo is is a term that translates to a bundle
(13:55):
of sticks, with which there's also another very divisive term
that's a slur that also translates to a bundle of sticks.
I'm not gonna say it, but I think you know
what I'm talking about. Yeah. So, Italy under this fascist
government is being helmed by Mussolini, and he wants self sufficiency,
and he wants to prepare the economy and new unorthodox ways.
(14:18):
And one of the things they wanted to do was
create artificial fabrics. This was a market that Italy had
a good shot at further expanding in, and the Italian
companies took up the suggestions of the futurists. They started
using organic materials to make textiles. Their first big success
(14:40):
was rayon, an artificial silk made of cellulose. In Italy
alone became the world's leading producer of rayon. Uh. They
didn't stop there, though. They still like when they closed
their eyes, they dreamt of milk, which is a very
weirdly specific. That's a rare insult that that I think
(15:01):
I could give to the fascist government of Italy at
the time. Building off of Totenhap's work, an Italian engineer
named Antonio Ferretti perfected a process. He made a milk
fiber he called La natale, a combination of the word
(15:24):
lana meaning wool and ittal from Italia and and and
it actually worked. The cool thing is we know how
it worked, right. The science is pretty interesting, Like what's
going on in that video we saw Noll? Yeah, we
were I was kind of fumbling my way through trying
to describe it. And here's a little bit better or
more science e version. Um. The acid is added to
(15:45):
skim milk, which separates out that substance you're referring to here,
I think it's pronounced casein um. Then that material is
dissolved until it becomes that viscous, kind of gooey strandy
type mater areal that retire almost like a dough um.
And then next the case in is forced through these
(16:05):
spinnerets kind of like a macaroni press. Have you ever
watched any of those like really satisfying videos of like
macaroni noodles being pushed through the little molds and you know,
the little spirals or whatever, the various shapes a situation
like that. So it's definitely like, what's the word I'm
looking for, a industrial process using like heavy machinery. Um.
(16:26):
And then they're hardened using a chemical bath, and then
much like making noodles, they're cut into fibers of whatever
length you need, and then it's it's dried again. And
then you can actually in the video see workers separating
them out by hand and then dumping them in these bins,
and it's almost more like fluff at that point. Um.
But that that may not be exactly the right order
(16:47):
of operations, but that is one of the part of
the process that isn't described here, but it's in the video. Um.
So what you do get it's something that's very won't like.
So Mussolini loved this stuff. He thought it was beautiful,
that was amazing. He thought this was uniquely Italian fabric
for uniquely Italian future. He thought Lal was genius because
(17:12):
the truth was Italy, like many many other countries at
the time, was wasting billions and billions of dollars per
year in skim milk waste. So now to the point
you made the top knel this lan ittal gave them
a really smart, really cheap way to repurpose it, and
(17:33):
it gave him a lot of bang for their buck.
A hundred pounds of milk contained about three point seven
pounds of this protein casein, and that translated to three
point seven pounds of law and its hall. That's a
pretty good or turn on investment right there for something
that would have otherwise gone uh in the trash. And
really nothing you can do with spoiled milk. You know,
they don't cry over spoiled milk. That's not how it goes.
(17:54):
I think it's spilt milk. But still there's nothing you
can do with it. It's it's it's absolute waste product. Uh.
So the know there were some issues that had some
features that were positive. You know, obviously the math works
out and it seems like a pretty good use of
material it would otherwise be useless. But it wasn't as
strong or as stretchy as the real thing. Will um.
(18:19):
But Mussolini was so into it that he really wanted
to He wanted Italy to be this kind of purveyor
of this futurist mentality. So this was also partly a
kind of propagandistic move to kind of situate Italy um
as this you know, very forward thinking nation. So he
(18:39):
wanted more of this kind of thing. So after he
invaded Ethiopia um and was sanctioned heavily by the League
of Nations, you know, because fascist dictator and all that, Uh,
Italy became even more isolated. Uh So he really decided
it was time to double down on this innovation of
of landed. Yeah, it became this obsession for the government
(19:04):
at the time, and the company that was manufacturing land
etall s n I A Viscosa. They got tons of
money and government aid and they were getting all the
levers of government pulled such that they could immediately ramp
up productions. So by nine seven they had produced ten
million pounds of this wearable milk, and they started publishing
(19:29):
propaganda posters that we're telling people to wear milk because
it was like dressing in an Italian manner. And then
the futurists who were still around love this invention, of course,
because it makes them feel like they were right all along.
And so they praised the fascist government at the time,
and the guy we mentioned who made that earlier manifesto,
(19:50):
Marinetti started writing poems for this company, s n I
A Viscosa. His poem praises the text wild Manufacturer, and
then this other poem, the simultaneous poem of Italian Fashion,
also thanks the company for being so Italian like literally
it's exemplary Italian nous. But his most memorable poem in
(20:15):
this in this regard is his poem of the Milk Dress,
which was published in like a little propaganda pamphlet booklet,
and they have they have lines like and let this
complicated milk be welcome, power, power, power, Let's exalt this
milk made of reinforced steel, milk of war, militarized milk.
(20:37):
It worked. That's the weirdest part that poem worked. It
reminds me of a funny bit of a British comedy
series that many of you might be familiar with called
The Mighty Bush. There's a character named Howard Moon and
he's obsessed. In the first season, they work at a
zoo him and his partner, Vince Noir, is kind of
like a fashion play, kind of hipster mod and Howard
(21:00):
is obsessed with this woman whose name I'm forgetting, and
he writes her these poems that he's too shy to
to read to her, but they're all used the metaphor
of cream, and he refers to himself as England's premier
cream poet. So you know, it's it's a thing. There's
an exerpt from one of Howard Moon's cream poems. He goes,
(21:22):
and your nose like a delicious slope of cream, your
ears like cream flaps, and your teeth like hard, shiny
pegs of cream. Yeah that's all I got. Yeah, So
maybe maybe they're taking some inspiration from this guy who's
a real life milk poet. I would like to think so.
(21:43):
But I like the phrase milk of war. It's it's
it feels like it's a good it's a good concept
album name for metal bands. Is that the opposite of
the milk of human kindness? It's definitely, I mean it's
it's definitely a different kind of ilk. You know. I
was also thinking, like, gods of war, dogs of war?
(22:04):
What does it cry? Havoc, let loose the milk of war?
I love it. I'm here for it. Ben, Well, we'll
see where, We'll see where it goes nol. Perhaps we
have a future as dairy based poets ourselves. Will we
be as successful as Marionetti? Well, that's a that's a
that's a tall order, or should I say it's whole milkshake.
(22:25):
Because London's Hall was everywhere in Italy and people started
praising it in other countries. There was a British publication,
the Children's Newspaper, that reported on this in April nineteen
thirty seven. Was it like a Sesame Street type situation?
Why was it called the children's newspaper? That's an odd
name for a newspaper. It was made of children. This
(22:47):
was a very weird time, it would appear. So they
were just material science run a muck is what I
would say. But yeah, I mean milk wool was used
to make these uh, very you know, fine Italian sue
and dresses and garments and even like flags. And this
order had gone out, you know, from the government, because
they ruled all this stuff with an iron fist, that
(23:09):
flags and banners should be made of this milk wool
um and because it was a nationalist kind of vibe.
Right then in nineteen thirty eight, s n I A.
The Scosta, the company that you mentioned, UM was hell
bent on spreading the milk the gospel of milk based
clothing around the world. They wanted to go global with
(23:31):
this UM and in two years they had sold patents
to eight different countries in Europe, mainly Holland, Poland, Germany,
Belgium and Japan, also France, Canada, Czechoslovakia and England. So
there's only one country absent from this milk wool craze,
and I think we can guess which one that was UM.
(23:52):
This is the good old US of A. Yeah, that's right.
The the SCOSA saw huge potential in the United States.
It's a big country, it has an enormous dairy and
agricultural infrastructure already, and they also knew that Americans have
been thinking about this for some time since the early
nineteen twenties. There had been discussion in trade circles and
(24:17):
agricultural colleges about using this protein, using casein as a
bridge between agricultural and manufacturing sectors, again as a way
to avoid tremendous skim milk waste. They were just they
were taking a milk bath on fifty billion pounds of
milk period totally. I mean that wasn't a uniquely Italian problem.
(24:40):
I mean, milk wastes, milk waste wherever you are in
the world. It reminds me of that episode we did
about repurposing feed sacks uh into dresses, only kind of
the other way around. Even if there were problems with
this material, you think they could have at least used
it to make feed sacks, especially it was since it
was such a part of like the arming industry, right, Yeah,
(25:01):
that's a good point. Didn't really come up in the research,
but it's just something that occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Originally the US solution was going to be something like
process this waste milk so that we can use the
protein in glue in buttons and combs. It was used
during World War One in a paint. They made milk
(25:23):
paint for airplanes. It was in piano keys by nineteen
forty or so. Like they were doing their their own
stuff too. They just hadn't gotten to the clothing part yet.
And that's why this Italian company, s nia Viscosa thinks
why not, Well, why don't why don't we do it?
This seems like a cool job for some people. Maybe
(25:43):
not me, but for some people. They sent fashion emissaries
to promote law nitall clothing like socialites, well connected people.
I think there was, uh, some Italian aristocrats they sent.
I feel like today that'd be somewhere in the neighborhood
of a combination of like an Instagram influencer and a
diplomat exactly very well put. One of these, in particular
(26:06):
was a journalist um who became an Italian princess by
the name of Marguerite Katani Um and she promoted this
material in New York in seven there is an article
in Time magazine that also described Katani's ability or efforts
to recruit American socialites, folks like Mona Bismarck, who Chanel
(26:31):
once um named the best dressed woman in the world
and had her model. Uh, these high end milk based dresses. Ext.
I can't not chuckle when I say milk based dresses. Uh.
And this was something that was like put front and
center in front of these American audiences. Yeah, and it
paid off. Paid off, by the way. One a team
(26:54):
for the a r A, the Atlantic Research Associates, which
is a division at the time of the National Dairy Corporation,
starts producing what is essentially Latin at All under the
name are a Lack, which is land at al and
r A lack sound like characters from Tolkien or something,
(27:15):
But that's our lack is a r A as an
American Research Associates plus lack Latin for milk l A C.
And the fibers are a hit. The New York fashion
scene is thinking, Wow, our lack clothing is the way
of the future. It's like a short, like people wear this.
They're so sophisticated, you know, and they're so elite. There's
(27:36):
so fashion forward. Onward to the future, and the future
is milk uh. But then the US joined World War
Two and our lack became much more valuable for military purposes.
It was blended with rayon to produce hats, and that
means here's our trivia fact that comes to us courtesy
(27:59):
of Life magazine. This means during World War Two, a
lot of American soldiers literally wore milk into battle. It's
so weird. And then, like Land at All, our relax
spread throughout the United States. Maybe it wasn't quite the
level of popularity that Land at All reached in Italy,
but you could in the forties you could find our
(28:21):
lack in coats and suits and dresses, and a lot
of people didn't know either that they were wearing milk. Well, sure,
and I would maybe argue that it wouldn't have been
as as big of a thing as it was in
Italy because obviously Italy was a totalitarian, fascist regime and
he could basically force companies to use the stuff, whereas
in America they would have had to adopt it willingly,
(28:43):
you know, and and uh, the market would have had
to adopt it, and the audiences would have had to
adopt him. True. Yeah, there are more decision makers involved,
and maybe that's why after a time milk based fabrics
started to fall out of favor, not just in the
US but in in the world because you know, we
(29:04):
mentioned earlier that Landatoll was like wool, but it wasn't
as durable. It could break easily, threads could come out
when you ironed it. But the weirdest thing, and this
is something I was thinking about two before we started
digging into this, The weirdest thing about land Atoll and
are Lack, I believe, was the smell. When they got damp,
(29:28):
they sometimes smelled like sour milk. So imagine you're out
on a date with your like Tom Waite says, if
you've got your arms around your sweet when your oldsmobile
you got the top down, it starts raining, and all
of a sudden your date points out that you smell
of spoiled milk. A but spoiled milk if you prefer,
I do prefer, but I appreciate you thinking of me. There, man,
(29:50):
it's true. Um, and we're gonna get to some modern
uh kind of innovations and milk based fiber, but for now, uh,
it kind fizzled, right, Yeah, that's correct, and Viscosa the
Italian companies started focusing their energy on other alternatives, but
(30:10):
they took a hit for the war effort because they,
like the U. S Forces. Uh, the Italian forces had
a lot of land at all in their own battle gear,
their boots, their blankets, their uniforms, and Mussolini thought this
would help them resist poison gas because again, Mussolini loved milk.
Milk can do no wrong if you're Mussolini. The problem
(30:39):
is that land at all didn't really help Italian soldiers.
There were cheaper products that were already flooding the market.
There wasn't a clear advantage to land at all other
than being a creative way to use milk waste. And
so it started to fizzle out in Italy as well
for a time. As you said, yeah, that's right, um.
(31:00):
And yet here we are in uh the year with
If there was ever any year that sounded more futuri, I,
I don't know of it. Um, We're in it, guys.
And there certainly are some of those FUTUREI things that
maybe we're portrayed in that tech savory cartoon like video
chat uh and and such. That's the one that I
always thought was the most future, like those you know,
(31:21):
communicators and Star Trek and all that. So we have
that a lot of the technology that we have a
little more subtle. Sure we have electric cars. We certainly
don't have flying cars or suitcase cars or any of
that stuff, or food in pill form, but we do
have wearable milk uh, and it is making a comeback
in the world of hoot couture. Hope, I pronounced that right,
(31:42):
hot couture whatever? Uh, Casey, what what do you think
ho hawk is? There is the t siland thank you Casey.
On the case Pretaporte was that a film was a
friend that mean's ready to wear Robert at tell me
that's right. I haven't seen that one. I've heard it's good.
Casey has nothing to say about this, uh, not your faith,
(32:02):
not one of his finale of Okay fair, But it's true.
It has remained kind of top of mind for some
futures for obvious reasons, right, Like, it really does feel
like a smart use of a waste product that I
still haven't heard in any of this research any other
good uses for Uh. You did mention at the top
(32:24):
end that you could use those fibers for other things
like glue and buttons and all that, and maybe that's
the thing that's done. I don't really know. But in eleven,
a German based clothing company called Camilche comedic because it's
milk in German and the que could be silent, it
could just be milk, but I'm gonna go with comi
(32:44):
um and they designed or manufactured and designed all of
their highly fashionable products using casin. And it all started
with a German microbiologist, interesting combo and designer named Anka
domasca Um And they claim that their products require fewer
(33:05):
chemicals than lan atol. In the nineties and the forties.
She actually single handedly or with a small team, developed
a better process than those Italian scientists had back in
the thirties, and a single dress costs between two hundred
and two hundred three dollars uh and has made from
six leaders of milk. Yeah, yeah, and there are there
(33:26):
are other people who are coming into the fray. Here
you can see articles from places like Reuters reporting how
other high and fashioned labels are selling milk based clothing.
Uniclow has a popular apparel line called heat Tech and
that's partially made from milk proteins. Mademoiselle Chichi is selling
(33:48):
milk based clothing. And now you know, in these are
modern days, the world is threatened by some pretty catastrophic
consequences of global warming, and folks are looking for alternatives
to oil based products like polyester and so on. So
what the question is, does it make sense to give
(34:08):
milk clothing a second chance? The answer is yeah, and
there are a lot of people behind it. We know
that there is ongoing research. People already created softer, more
durable versions of these materials. Hopefully they've chosen better brand
names for them, better than com but well, I mean
(34:29):
land at all. I think because on the page. Look,
it visually rhymes with genital that's weird or jaritol, which
I've never understood what it actually has. I know it's
a medication over the counter that the elderly take. I
assume it's for a digestion, but I'm not really sure.
And are lack, which is a which sounds like czar
lac or something. It sounds like a weird monster from
(34:51):
a sci fi film. So, but what's what's it? What's
in a name? You know? The answer is a lot.
It is a lot. Yeah, it's the barrier for entry
for a how to folks. I did want to mention
I saw a really cool video that you can find
online if you google milk clothing. I think that's really
all you need to do. You'll find a video um
(35:13):
from Euromax to x is because it's extreme adaptable called
clothes from Milk and it it talks about this designer,
Anka Domoski. At the time this came out in she's
only twenty years old, the biologist and fashion designer we
talked about, and she walks through the whole thinking behind it,
but she never credits the Italians. I gotta I gotta
(35:34):
falter for that like everything in the in the piece
and the way she talks about it almost makes it
seem like she came up with this idea alone. And
even the process it shows the factory looks almost exactly
like that situation in that very early video, the old
timey one from the thirties. Um. But they did apparently
solve the smell problem, because apparently these garments do not
(35:54):
ever smell, and they're pretty easy to care for and
they feel good, because that was another problem with the
original formula, as I think it wasn't as malleable or stretchy,
and it also had a bit of a roughness to
it that wasn't pleasant m which is why they combined
it with a lot of stuff. But this, this other,
this new milk clothing design also requires less water to
(36:17):
make so and it balances out against the production process
of cotton. So there is a very real chance that
in the future, ridiculous historians, you too could be wearing
the latest uh in dairy fashion, which is milk clothing. Uh.
So maybe our answer to that that question UH that
(36:38):
Casey and Paul had years ago, is milk ingredients or
is it a beverage? Perhaps now it's just a pair
of slacks, hats, dresses, underwear. I don't know there's a
heat problem there. But if they fixed the smell, yeah,
they fixed the smell. Um, Yeah, it's fine. This whole
time we've been doing this, I've been trying to think
(36:58):
of what the really popular milk ad campaign slogan was. Yeah,
it was Got Milk, but very incorrectly in my mind,
was milk the fresh Maker? No, that's not it. That
was mentos. And then I also thought milk, it's what's
for dinner. Also, I'm not sure I believe that was beef.
And then there was milk the other white meat, New
(37:20):
York milky. Yeah. Do you guys know who directed those
Got Milk ads? By the way, No, who was it? No?
Was it like Steven Soderberger, David Fincher or something, Michael
Bay Oh, I got a start, yep, yep. Okay, that's
a good one. So an explosive ad campaign if you
can't do explosions exactly, that was That was pre he
(37:42):
didn't have the budget yet. I bet if he had,
he would have figured out a way to shoehorn an
explosion into those. But that has a really great milk
based trivia nugget to end on today. I personally found
this subject delightful. Um and it's really cool that it
has such a full circle kind of trajectory and now
here we are in the future, the actual future that
(38:02):
the futurists were dreaming of, and perhaps milk will be
part of your next outfit. I hope you enjoyed this
episode Ridiculous Historians. I know we've got a couple of
people in the crowd who are saying, well, or we
only using milk from cattle at this point, that seems
to be the case. So if you want to get
ahead of the fashion curve, maybe your next move is
(38:23):
to get milk from another mammal, horse milk, goat milk,
and so on. Let us know how it goes. We
want to hear from you. We want to hear your
favorite bits of trivia. I would like to hear uh,
some of your favorite commercial jingles. They don't have to
have anything to do with milk. Tell us all about it.
(38:44):
On the internet. You can find us on Facebook, can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
Like to recommend Ridiculous Historians are community page, but you
can also find us not just as a show, but
as individuals. Boy, can you ever? You can find me
on Instagram at how now Old Brown? How about you, Ben?
Where can the folks find your Internet presence? Thanks for asking, though.
(39:05):
You can find me on Instagram at ben Bolland. You
can also find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben
Bolland h s W. Thanks as always to our long
suffering super producer Casey Pegram. Casey, I swear I'm not
making up that story. You guys did have a weird
conversation about it. I can remember some kind of long
(39:25):
protracted argument over nothing, so they probably was that was
there also not at a brief debate as to whether
egg nog should be served hot or cold possibly would
stay cold again. Yeah, you don't remember any of these
cream or milk based arguments, Casey, No, you're cream blind.
Got the dairy blindness, kid, But you'll soldier on uh
(39:48):
thinks also too, of course, Alex Williams, I don't. This
is a great story and I personally, I personally really
enjoyed it cast Mussolini in a new light, but it
didn't get me to the point where I feel like
I should thank him. If that makes I don't need
to thank him the Moose as I like to call him. Huge.
Thanks Christopher hasciotes here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed
(40:09):
this banging bob Uh, Jonathan Strickland the Quister. I believe
we're due for zoom bomb any day now, thankfully not
today and thinks as well to Eve's Jeff Coach. Thanks
to you've know and thanks to all. This is a
sincere thanks. Thanks to all the farmers and all the
cattle who have made this possible. Oh God, and we'd
(40:33):
be remiss if we didn't thank researcher extraordinaire Gabe Louisier,
who wrote us a delightful email to demystify the pronunciation
of his last name. It is, in fact Lucier ah Man,
the Magic's God. Well, Gabe, maybe his name is actually
pronounced gob A and he just hasn't told us. Let's
let's get this season two of Gabe's weird name and
(40:54):
you know what, let's have him back on the show.
We'll see you next time, folks. Yah. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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