November 9, 2023 • 23 mins
Honey is popular around the world, and for good reason. This addictively sweet substance is a common ingredient in hundreds of recipes, and people historically believe it has medicinal properties in addition to, well, being delicious! But in certain areas of the world honey is much more than a sweet ingredient -- it's a disturbingly effective weapon of war. In today's classic episode, the gang revisits the story of "Hallucinogenic Honey".
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are
rounding out NOL. I guess we took somewhat of a vacation, not.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Really though, Yeah, you know, a micro hiatus is what
we said. But I think even still, we just did
the math. You know, we don't roll out these classic
episodes very often, and we do, it's usually for a
good reason, so that we can, you know, do human things.
I think we only hit you. This is the third
I think that maybe we've hit you with.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And this one's a doozy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
This is from back in the early days. I think
a pet interest of all three of us, honey and hallucinogens.
This is sort of combinds us of all of those
things into one sweet treat of an episode.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, and if you were to ask me, well in
twenty seventeen, Ben, what are the best pizza ingredients? I
would not have known that hot honey is one, but
now I'm convinced. And honey, what about hallucinogenic hot honey?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's more than a sweet ingredient and it could be
a weapon of war.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Let's get right to it.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio well, folks, friends
(01:30):
and neighbors, fellow would be apiarist. You have heard the buzz,
and the rumors are true. This is ridiculous history. My
name is Ben, my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Not the bees. Not the bees. They're in my eyes? Brown,
what is that? What is that? What is that? Holla? No,
not the my eyes.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And we are of course joined with our super producer,
Casey Pegrim Casey, thank you. He just lifted a lovely
looking sparkling water in our direction. And I'm a fan
of toast, and I've got a weird anecdote to start
this off.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Toast.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, toast, both the prepared bread item and the act.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh I thought you were like toast with honey. I
get it toast like a cheers kind of motion. I
got you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm glad that you mentioned honey. Funny story. There was
a middle aged couple once upon a time who decided
to improve their sex life in two thousand and eight.
They decided to do this, and they spent a week
eating raw honey gathered from an area in your Turkey's
Black Sea, and it did not have the results that
(02:53):
they had hoped for.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Not only raw honey, in fact, in the abstract for
this study entitled mad honey sexual activity and acute inferior
myocardial infarctions in a married couple. You see the keyword
there is mad honey. That's because this particular honey is
produced from the nectar of the rhododendron flower or Rhododendron ponticum,
(03:18):
which is native to areas of Japan, Nepal, parts of
North America, Europe, and Brazil, and as you mentioned then
the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. And this honey
has some pretty interesting qualities, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To go back to the story there, the couple from
the Black Sea did not have the improved sex life
that they felt they would. Instead, they ended up in
the hospital with symptoms mimicking heart attacks. Due to it's
relatively obscure, destroyer Noles introduced mad honey, specifically mad honey
(03:54):
poisoning this syrup. This substance is naturally toxic and it
does have a different taste to reportedly tastes more bitter
than normal honey, and the toxicity varies depending upon when
you gather it. It's higher when you gather fresh honey
in the springtime because that's when those rhododendrons are among
the first plants to bloom, so bees are more likely
(04:17):
to interact with those.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Some of those interesting characteristics I mentioned, though, one of
them is that it apparently is used to treat erectile dysfunction,
and it's that particular reason is one of the big
ones that causes you know, folks in the age range
of these patients to buy the stuff. And it's pretty
easy to buy online. But let's rewind the story way
(04:42):
back to when we first started hearing reports of the
effects of this type of honey.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Right, this is something that's easily purchased today, but it
does have a razor's edge. It can go from intoxicating
to lethal with just a small variance of dose, and
people have been aware of it for a long life,
long time. The ancient Greek commander Xenophon, who led his
army of ten thousand soldiers from Persia back to Greece
(05:07):
in four hundred and one BC, prided himself on being
the best, the utter last word, when it came to
finding healthy and safe campsites and enemy territory. This is
according to research scholar and Classics and History of Science
at Stanford named Adrian Mayer, she's also luckily for our purposes.
(05:28):
The author of a book called The Poison King and
a survey of ancient warfare called Greek Fire, Poison Arrows
and Scorpion Bombs, and according to Professor Mayer, Xenophon noticed
nothing unusual about the campsite that he had chosen, in
a place called Pontus on the Black Sea coast in
northeast Turkey. But he did note an extraordinary number of
(05:50):
swarming bees, and he said that his men soon discovered
the hives and went nuts and bananas. They gorged on
that sweet, sweet wild.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And then Xenophon, who was noted for his meticulous record keeping,
I'm not sure if that's true, but he definitely kept them,
recorded his observations of the way his troops behaved, and
the author Adrian Mayer describes them as such. He was
appalled when his soldiers suddenly began to behave like crazed
(06:21):
mad men, and they collapsed on mass I'm assuming in
some sort of Greek heap. His entire army was paralyzed
and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to enemy attacks. So,
in other words, they were wasted and utter sitting ducks.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And with the benefit of modern science, we can crack
a little bit of the case.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Here.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
The honey they were consuming is dark, reddish mad honey
appearance in Turkey. It's called Deli ball, And we can
trace the active ingredient that's harming people. It's called grayanotoxin.
Grayanotoxins can be found in honey produced from the nectar
plants like this specific sort of rhododendron. Because they contain alkaloids,
(07:04):
they're poisonous to humans. But as we're jumping back in time, Noel,
you said you had another example from a little bit
later in the timeline I do.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In sixty seven BCE, Rome invaded the Black Sea region
under the command of General POMPEII, no relation to the
town No No, but the opposition forces, which were headed
up by the reigning King Mithridates. They knew about the
area and the indigenous wildlife and flora and fauna, and
(07:38):
so they kind of pulled a little bit of a
trick on the Romans by lining their paths with these
very enticing pieces of this mad honeycomb. And a similar
scenario took place as to the Greek situation. They started
vomiting and became intoxicated and just hallucinating wildly, and they
(08:04):
became easy prey, easy for the pickens.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yes, they also were experiencing the dizziness, hypotension, the heart problems,
the weird simulation, the feeling of you know, incoming death.
It's very painful, strange feeling. And this isn't the only
time that somebody weaponized mad honey. It's also been used
in mead as a way of stalling approaching forces. We
(08:31):
have an excellent article called Ancient Armies Waged War with
Hallucinogenic Honey by our recurring contributor Lori L. Dove, and
in this you can find more information about these various instances.
And it turned out this stuff worked really well. If
you used this honey, this Deli ball to make mead
(08:53):
or aka honeywine, then you can still have similar effects.
In AD nine four to six this happened.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It had a little extra kick to it.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I guess right, mm hmm yeah, yeah, not like a
Heinz fifty seven versus ketchup kick, a more dangerous one.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I'm more of a Worcestershire sauce man myself.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And the Story of Worcestershire by the way itself.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Is just really weird. Oh, can we do that one?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, let's do that one in Do you want to
do it in a later episode?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I think we do in a later episode in the
New Year.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Okay, sounds good. So there was someone named Olga of Kiev,
and Olga of Kiev had Russian foes, and Olga went
through some proxies and had some allies offer these Russians
several tons of mead, and five thousand Russians ingested this
mead and they collapsed, reeling and delirious, and they were
(09:47):
summarily massacred.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Then in fourteen eighty nine, in the same area, a
Russian army absolutely slaughtered ten thousand Totters who had drunk
too many casks of this kind of meat the Russians
had left behind. Once again in that kind of sneaky
honey traps. You call that kind of a honey trap.
That's a term, but that's actually what it was. And
(10:09):
by the way, Totter's just kind of into this are
a Turkish people from living in and around Eurasia, in
eastern Europe and northern.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Asia, and so folks, we can begin to see the
shape of the moral for today's episode. If this moral
would exist, is it honeycomb shaped? It is a honeycomb
hive shaped moral, and it is the following if someone
(10:39):
you don't trust offers you something to eat or drink,
or if you are walking on the way to a
clear battle, I just don't eat stuff you see on
the side of the road.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
It's very true, And we also.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Have good news for anybody who loves rhododendrons and says, wait,
am I in danger my friend's family and my foes
by having these plants? The answer is no. Only one
or two, maybe three of rhododendrons carry this stuff, so
generally you should be safe, and it's not all bad.
(11:14):
In Turkish culture, deli ball as seen as a kind
of medicine and it's used in very small amounts to
treat various medical conditions.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's true. The couple that we talked about at
the top of the show were trying to use this
stuff for a medicinal reason. They weren't just trying to
get messed up. We mentioned the idea of it being
used to treat a rectile dysfunction, but ben, have you
heard of the Gurrong people of Nepal.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Briefly, but I'd love to hear more.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, So they to this day carry on the tradition
of they call it hunting. For this hunting, we'll talk
about what that process is like in a minute. It's
pretty insane. But they use it to treat like joint pains,
things like arthritis or mild stomach aches or I believe
I read somewhere even you knowention, which is interesting considering
that in the medical study that we talked about, part
(12:05):
of the side effects of taking too much of the
stuff is that it can increase your heart rate significantly
and cause your blood pressure to drop dangerously.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Like the old saw about alcohol mad honey, maybe rumor
to cure some of the problems it causes.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Indeed, but these Gurang people are a fascinating bunch. They
live in villages and they are entirely self sufficient. They
shear the wool from goats that they have, They grind
their own flour, they make their own clothes, and what
they have leftover they sell at local markets. But every
(12:45):
year they carry on this tradition of going on an
expedition out to these incredible cliffs where they get this honey.
Because the areas were these particular bees, which are actually
I don't know if we mentioned the largest bees in
the world.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, the Himalayan rock bee is a gigantic honey.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Bee and they make their nests and their hives on
these steep, steep cliffs. So in order to access this,
these folks make these rope ladders out of kind of
twisted bamboo and then they it looks like a giant rope,
and then they insert these pieces of wood in between
to create rungs, and then they like well, you know,
(13:26):
rope it down to like a root or some kind
of tree, and then they repel down the side of
these cliffs and they use these giant sticks to kind
of poke at the combs and knock them into a
basket that's also being lowered down independently. And in order
to kind of protect themselves you might see this been
with traditional bee keeping, or to get the bees to
(13:48):
kind of leave so you can get this the goods,
they smoke them out of their holes, basically with burning
leaves and stuff. But still even still, these folks get
stung constantly, and it's a real almost right of passage
to do this, and there have been cases where people
have fallen to their death. There's a great quote in
(14:09):
this article from Vice Hunting for Hallucinogenic Honey in Nepal
by David Kapara, who actually went on this expedition, and
he's speaking firsthand, and he spoke to one of the
men that he went on the expedition with, and this
is what this man, Tulsi Gurung said, And all of
these folks have the surname of Gurum, everyone that lives
in the village. I think is interesting quote. At first,
(14:30):
I'm very scared going down the ladder, but when I
see the hives, I get filled with power and become fearless.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And this rite of passage, this arduous collection process, results
in what the locals call pagal maha or mad honey.
You can find accounts of people who have tried this
both medicinally and recreationally, like backpackers in Nepaul, for example.
We did say it was it is available, you can
(14:59):
buy it it likely from the comfort of your own computer.
But we were a little bit misleading because although you
can obtain it easily, you cannot really obtain it cheaply.
In some places, this stuff allegedly sells for one hundred
and sixty six dollars a pound exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Ben and I actually found an article talking about kind
of procuring some of this Turkish variety of deli ball
at a shop. And this piece was written by Emma
Bryce for Modern Farmer, called The Strange History of Mad Honey.
And Bryce actually makes her way to a shop that
(15:37):
specializes in honey, and the shopkeeper had a jar, and
she describes it as kind of a frothy honey, very
bright orange, almost looks like clarified butter. But the shopkeeper
called it rose of the forest honey or armand Kamar
Bali and Emma got a sense that they weren't really
(15:59):
trying to promote this stuff because they didn't want tourists
completely losing their minds by eating too much. In every
account that I've read of someone tasting this or trying it,
it's usually been a couple of tea spoons, and it's
described as having almost a cooling effect on the throat,
a little bit of a burn, but then that kind
of was replaced by kind of almost a I see
(16:22):
hot kind of effect that kind of then goes down
your spine and almost comparable to a cannabis high.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I guess, hmm, yeah, I think again it really depends
on the amount of the dose, because you could read
accounts from people who clearly took way too much of
this stuff and talk about laying awake at night in pain,
terrified by the sound of their own heartbeat. A lot
of hallucingenic experts will tell you that if you're going
(16:52):
for something recreational, not that we would ever legally recommend
considering that on our show, but if you are attempting
to use some hallucinogens for recreational purposes. Biologist Sean McCann
says the compounds involved in mad honey are not super
fun and not something I would recommend. They are far
(17:14):
better and safer hallucinogenic compounds that you can use.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Speaking of legally acquiring this stuff, I just wanted to
point out this may have maybe stating the obvious, but
it is legal in Turkey, so you can buy it,
you know, completely free and clear. But again there is
a sense, probably like the way Amsterdam has done business
for a long time, where even though you know cannabis
and you know edible versions of that are legal there,
(17:48):
they kind of tuck it away a little bit. They
don't necessarily want to promote it right up front, and
there is that sense that dummy American tourists are going
to swoop in and like take away too much and
be a liability.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And there are some other fascinating things here. First, Adrian
Mayer says that matt hunting could still be used as
a ruse in war today for just the same reason
that we pointed out. People could do a much better
job in general of accepting things from strangers. You got
to have some critical thinking. We also, you know, I
(18:21):
had heard about biological or chemical warfare throughout history before,
but it wasn't familiar with food, and I wanted to
see if there were any other examples, and I found
some stuff that's best vaguely related. There was a war
between Brazil and Uruguay in the eighteen sixties and during
(18:41):
one maritime battle, a Uruguay and ship ran out of
cannonballs and the captain ordered his men to fire stale
balls of cheese instead.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yikes, that's a that's thinking on your feet right there, though.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And how stale was this cheese man? Because one of
the cheeses shattered the main man of the enemy ship
and people died by a cheese shrapnel, which I know,
every human death is tragic, but that's kind of that's
kind of amusing.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's it's it's kind of ridiculous. You know, I could
picture cheese. Have you ever had a real hard cheese, ben,
I could picture if it was cut thin enough and
that fluid a fast enough you know speed, and the
trajectory was just right, I could picture getting garrotted by
one of those things.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Right, Because I think that's a very interesting point, Nol.
Because you know, we've been around a cheese wheel or two.
We've seen some dangerous cheese. I'd never thought it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
We could be lethal dangerous cheese.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And one time, apparently in the Pacific Ocean during World
War two, a Japanese submarine was sunk using potatoes. Just
gonna let that one hang in the air.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Were these like regular potatoes or these like you know,
super mutant potatoes. Were there just a whole bunch of
potatoes tied together to make a giant battering red I
don't know, I just just my imagination is going wild.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
These are all great ideas, These are all great ideas. No,
the usso bannon came across a surfaced Japanese submarine and
they had surfaced because they had a malfunctioning periscope, and
they blasted enough holes in the submarine to prevent it
from safely submerging again, but not enough damage to sink it.
(20:24):
And so they pulled directly along the sub and the submariners,
you know, are of course pod and angry, and before
they could start firing, the crew of the USS Obannon
began throwing potatoes at them, because for some reason, there
were no guns on the USS Obannon, and the Japanese
(20:45):
forces thought the potatoes were grenades.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You know, with a name like Obannon, you think they
would be more concerned with conserving their potatoes. Do you
know what?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Soon No, I think we have to wonder what the
what the namesake of the USS O Bannon would have
thought about it. But surprisingly enough to us, it turns
out that it is not well, it's uncommon, but it's
not unreasonable for food to be used as a weapon
of war. Typically, when I thought of this sort of stuff,
(21:18):
I thought food is a weapon of war would have
been a matter of resource restriction, right, like you starve
a city, you're sieging. I didn't know that you could
shoot cheese at people, and you know, that's on me
I gotta think outside the box.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, I think some time outside the box would do
us both a world of good. And thankfully we have
all these fun topics to help us do that. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And I want to ask you, Noel, does this curious
case of mad honey which persists today, does this inspire
any questions for you? Would you ever try it if
you found yourself near the Black Sea or Nepal?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah? I think so. I mean again, it's not illegal
if if I know enough about it that I certainly wouldn't,
you know, spread it on toast and just go to town.
But I try a little taste because it sounds like
in small doses it almost has just a slight euphoric
like maybe almost like having a beer or something kind
(22:18):
of vibe. But when you start kind of piling it on,
it turns much darker.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, you know, I think that's a reasonable way to
look at it. Let's see if we get a YA
or name from super producer Casey Pegrim Casey, what do
you think?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
All Right, we have a ya.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Casey's all for it, Nol's all for it. I think
it's reasonable. I am impulsive. I probably would try it,
But what about you? Friends and neighbors. Would you take
a dose of the infamous mad honey, the substance that
toppled armies. Would you be up to the task? Why
or why not? Or have you already tried it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah? Right into us. Any intrepid travelers out there that
have scaled the rocky cliffs of Nepal in search of
this intoxicating nectar. We are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
You can also find us on social media in various forms,
including Facebook and Instagram. Well those are the only.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Ones, yep, those are the main ones. We do not
have a LinkedIn, nor do we have a farmer's link.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
We don't use the P word anymore either.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
No, that's true. It is a it's a large sign
directly by this humongous timer we still have in the
office from a previous episode.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Unfortunately, today, time is not on our side, but we
hope that you will join us next time for another
episode of Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are
rounding out NOL. I guess we took somewhat of a vacation, not.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Really though, Yeah, you know, a micro hiatus is what
we said. But I think even still, we just did
the math. You know, we don't roll out these classic
episodes very often, and we do, it's usually for a
good reason, so that we can, you know, do human things.
I think we only hit you. This is the third
I think that maybe we've hit you with.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And this one's a doozy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
This is from back in the early days. I think
a pet interest of all three of us, honey and hallucinogens.
This is sort of combinds us of all of those
things into one sweet treat of an episode.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, and if you were to ask me, well in
twenty seventeen, Ben, what are the best pizza ingredients? I
would not have known that hot honey is one, but
now I'm convinced. And honey, what about hallucinogenic hot honey?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's more than a sweet ingredient and it could be
a weapon of war.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Let's get right to it.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio well, folks, friends
(01:30):
and neighbors, fellow would be apiarist. You have heard the buzz,
and the rumors are true. This is ridiculous history. My
name is Ben, my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Not the bees. Not the bees. They're in my eyes? Brown,
what is that? What is that? What is that? Holla? No,
not the my eyes.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And we are of course joined with our super producer,
Casey Pegrim Casey, thank you. He just lifted a lovely
looking sparkling water in our direction. And I'm a fan
of toast, and I've got a weird anecdote to start
this off.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Toast.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, toast, both the prepared bread item and the act.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh I thought you were like toast with honey. I
get it toast like a cheers kind of motion. I
got you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm glad that you mentioned honey. Funny story. There was
a middle aged couple once upon a time who decided
to improve their sex life in two thousand and eight.
They decided to do this, and they spent a week
eating raw honey gathered from an area in your Turkey's
Black Sea, and it did not have the results that
(02:53):
they had hoped for.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Not only raw honey, in fact, in the abstract for
this study entitled mad honey sexual activity and acute inferior
myocardial infarctions in a married couple. You see the keyword
there is mad honey. That's because this particular honey is
produced from the nectar of the rhododendron flower or Rhododendron ponticum,
(03:18):
which is native to areas of Japan, Nepal, parts of
North America, Europe, and Brazil, and as you mentioned then
the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. And this honey
has some pretty interesting qualities, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To go back to the story there, the couple from
the Black Sea did not have the improved sex life
that they felt they would. Instead, they ended up in
the hospital with symptoms mimicking heart attacks. Due to it's
relatively obscure, destroyer Noles introduced mad honey, specifically mad honey
(03:54):
poisoning this syrup. This substance is naturally toxic and it
does have a different taste to reportedly tastes more bitter
than normal honey, and the toxicity varies depending upon when
you gather it. It's higher when you gather fresh honey
in the springtime because that's when those rhododendrons are among
the first plants to bloom, so bees are more likely
(04:17):
to interact with those.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Some of those interesting characteristics I mentioned, though, one of
them is that it apparently is used to treat erectile dysfunction,
and it's that particular reason is one of the big
ones that causes you know, folks in the age range
of these patients to buy the stuff. And it's pretty
easy to buy online. But let's rewind the story way
(04:42):
back to when we first started hearing reports of the
effects of this type of honey.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Right, this is something that's easily purchased today, but it
does have a razor's edge. It can go from intoxicating
to lethal with just a small variance of dose, and
people have been aware of it for a long life,
long time. The ancient Greek commander Xenophon, who led his
army of ten thousand soldiers from Persia back to Greece
(05:07):
in four hundred and one BC, prided himself on being
the best, the utter last word, when it came to
finding healthy and safe campsites and enemy territory. This is
according to research scholar and Classics and History of Science
at Stanford named Adrian Mayer, she's also luckily for our purposes.
(05:28):
The author of a book called The Poison King and
a survey of ancient warfare called Greek Fire, Poison Arrows
and Scorpion Bombs, and according to Professor Mayer, Xenophon noticed
nothing unusual about the campsite that he had chosen, in
a place called Pontus on the Black Sea coast in
northeast Turkey. But he did note an extraordinary number of
(05:50):
swarming bees, and he said that his men soon discovered
the hives and went nuts and bananas. They gorged on
that sweet, sweet wild.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And then Xenophon, who was noted for his meticulous record keeping,
I'm not sure if that's true, but he definitely kept them,
recorded his observations of the way his troops behaved, and
the author Adrian Mayer describes them as such. He was
appalled when his soldiers suddenly began to behave like crazed
(06:21):
mad men, and they collapsed on mass I'm assuming in
some sort of Greek heap. His entire army was paralyzed
and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to enemy attacks. So,
in other words, they were wasted and utter sitting ducks.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And with the benefit of modern science, we can crack
a little bit of the case.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Here.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
The honey they were consuming is dark, reddish mad honey
appearance in Turkey. It's called Deli ball, And we can
trace the active ingredient that's harming people. It's called grayanotoxin.
Grayanotoxins can be found in honey produced from the nectar
plants like this specific sort of rhododendron. Because they contain alkaloids,
(07:04):
they're poisonous to humans. But as we're jumping back in time, Noel,
you said you had another example from a little bit
later in the timeline I do.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In sixty seven BCE, Rome invaded the Black Sea region
under the command of General POMPEII, no relation to the
town No No, but the opposition forces, which were headed
up by the reigning King Mithridates. They knew about the
area and the indigenous wildlife and flora and fauna, and
(07:38):
so they kind of pulled a little bit of a
trick on the Romans by lining their paths with these
very enticing pieces of this mad honeycomb. And a similar
scenario took place as to the Greek situation. They started
vomiting and became intoxicated and just hallucinating wildly, and they
(08:04):
became easy prey, easy for the pickens.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yes, they also were experiencing the dizziness, hypotension, the heart problems,
the weird simulation, the feeling of you know, incoming death.
It's very painful, strange feeling. And this isn't the only
time that somebody weaponized mad honey. It's also been used
in mead as a way of stalling approaching forces. We
(08:31):
have an excellent article called Ancient Armies Waged War with
Hallucinogenic Honey by our recurring contributor Lori L. Dove, and
in this you can find more information about these various instances.
And it turned out this stuff worked really well. If
you used this honey, this Deli ball to make mead
(08:53):
or aka honeywine, then you can still have similar effects.
In AD nine four to six this happened.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It had a little extra kick to it.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I guess right, mm hmm yeah, yeah, not like a
Heinz fifty seven versus ketchup kick, a more dangerous one.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I'm more of a Worcestershire sauce man myself.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And the Story of Worcestershire by the way itself.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Is just really weird. Oh, can we do that one?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, let's do that one in Do you want to
do it in a later episode?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I think we do in a later episode in the
New Year.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Okay, sounds good. So there was someone named Olga of Kiev,
and Olga of Kiev had Russian foes, and Olga went
through some proxies and had some allies offer these Russians
several tons of mead, and five thousand Russians ingested this
mead and they collapsed, reeling and delirious, and they were
(09:47):
summarily massacred.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Then in fourteen eighty nine, in the same area, a
Russian army absolutely slaughtered ten thousand Totters who had drunk
too many casks of this kind of meat the Russians
had left behind. Once again in that kind of sneaky
honey traps. You call that kind of a honey trap.
That's a term, but that's actually what it was. And
(10:09):
by the way, Totter's just kind of into this are
a Turkish people from living in and around Eurasia, in
eastern Europe and northern.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Asia, and so folks, we can begin to see the
shape of the moral for today's episode. If this moral
would exist, is it honeycomb shaped? It is a honeycomb
hive shaped moral, and it is the following if someone
(10:39):
you don't trust offers you something to eat or drink,
or if you are walking on the way to a
clear battle, I just don't eat stuff you see on
the side of the road.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
It's very true, And we also.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Have good news for anybody who loves rhododendrons and says, wait,
am I in danger my friend's family and my foes
by having these plants? The answer is no. Only one
or two, maybe three of rhododendrons carry this stuff, so
generally you should be safe, and it's not all bad.
(11:14):
In Turkish culture, deli ball as seen as a kind
of medicine and it's used in very small amounts to
treat various medical conditions.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's true. The couple that we talked about at
the top of the show were trying to use this
stuff for a medicinal reason. They weren't just trying to
get messed up. We mentioned the idea of it being
used to treat a rectile dysfunction, but ben, have you
heard of the Gurrong people of Nepal.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Briefly, but I'd love to hear more.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, So they to this day carry on the tradition
of they call it hunting. For this hunting, we'll talk
about what that process is like in a minute. It's
pretty insane. But they use it to treat like joint pains,
things like arthritis or mild stomach aches or I believe
I read somewhere even you knowention, which is interesting considering
that in the medical study that we talked about, part
(12:05):
of the side effects of taking too much of the
stuff is that it can increase your heart rate significantly
and cause your blood pressure to drop dangerously.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Like the old saw about alcohol mad honey, maybe rumor
to cure some of the problems it causes.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Indeed, but these Gurang people are a fascinating bunch. They
live in villages and they are entirely self sufficient. They
shear the wool from goats that they have, They grind
their own flour, they make their own clothes, and what
they have leftover they sell at local markets. But every
(12:45):
year they carry on this tradition of going on an
expedition out to these incredible cliffs where they get this honey.
Because the areas were these particular bees, which are actually
I don't know if we mentioned the largest bees in
the world.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, the Himalayan rock bee is a gigantic honey.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Bee and they make their nests and their hives on
these steep, steep cliffs. So in order to access this,
these folks make these rope ladders out of kind of
twisted bamboo and then they it looks like a giant rope,
and then they insert these pieces of wood in between
to create rungs, and then they like well, you know,
(13:26):
rope it down to like a root or some kind
of tree, and then they repel down the side of
these cliffs and they use these giant sticks to kind
of poke at the combs and knock them into a
basket that's also being lowered down independently. And in order
to kind of protect themselves you might see this been
with traditional bee keeping, or to get the bees to
(13:48):
kind of leave so you can get this the goods,
they smoke them out of their holes, basically with burning
leaves and stuff. But still even still, these folks get
stung constantly, and it's a real almost right of passage
to do this, and there have been cases where people
have fallen to their death. There's a great quote in
(14:09):
this article from Vice Hunting for Hallucinogenic Honey in Nepal
by David Kapara, who actually went on this expedition, and
he's speaking firsthand, and he spoke to one of the
men that he went on the expedition with, and this
is what this man, Tulsi Gurung said, And all of
these folks have the surname of Gurum, everyone that lives
in the village. I think is interesting quote. At first,
(14:30):
I'm very scared going down the ladder, but when I
see the hives, I get filled with power and become fearless.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And this rite of passage, this arduous collection process, results
in what the locals call pagal maha or mad honey.
You can find accounts of people who have tried this
both medicinally and recreationally, like backpackers in Nepaul, for example.
We did say it was it is available, you can
(14:59):
buy it it likely from the comfort of your own computer.
But we were a little bit misleading because although you
can obtain it easily, you cannot really obtain it cheaply.
In some places, this stuff allegedly sells for one hundred
and sixty six dollars a pound exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Ben and I actually found an article talking about kind
of procuring some of this Turkish variety of deli ball
at a shop. And this piece was written by Emma
Bryce for Modern Farmer, called The Strange History of Mad Honey.
And Bryce actually makes her way to a shop that
(15:37):
specializes in honey, and the shopkeeper had a jar, and
she describes it as kind of a frothy honey, very
bright orange, almost looks like clarified butter. But the shopkeeper
called it rose of the forest honey or armand Kamar
Bali and Emma got a sense that they weren't really
(15:59):
trying to promote this stuff because they didn't want tourists
completely losing their minds by eating too much. In every
account that I've read of someone tasting this or trying it,
it's usually been a couple of tea spoons, and it's
described as having almost a cooling effect on the throat,
a little bit of a burn, but then that kind
of was replaced by kind of almost a I see
(16:22):
hot kind of effect that kind of then goes down
your spine and almost comparable to a cannabis high.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I guess, hmm, yeah, I think again it really depends
on the amount of the dose, because you could read
accounts from people who clearly took way too much of
this stuff and talk about laying awake at night in pain,
terrified by the sound of their own heartbeat. A lot
of hallucingenic experts will tell you that if you're going
(16:52):
for something recreational, not that we would ever legally recommend
considering that on our show, but if you are attempting
to use some hallucinogens for recreational purposes. Biologist Sean McCann
says the compounds involved in mad honey are not super
fun and not something I would recommend. They are far
(17:14):
better and safer hallucinogenic compounds that you can use.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Speaking of legally acquiring this stuff, I just wanted to
point out this may have maybe stating the obvious, but
it is legal in Turkey, so you can buy it,
you know, completely free and clear. But again there is
a sense, probably like the way Amsterdam has done business
for a long time, where even though you know cannabis
and you know edible versions of that are legal there,
(17:48):
they kind of tuck it away a little bit. They
don't necessarily want to promote it right up front, and
there is that sense that dummy American tourists are going
to swoop in and like take away too much and
be a liability.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And there are some other fascinating things here. First, Adrian
Mayer says that matt hunting could still be used as
a ruse in war today for just the same reason
that we pointed out. People could do a much better
job in general of accepting things from strangers. You got
to have some critical thinking. We also, you know, I
(18:21):
had heard about biological or chemical warfare throughout history before,
but it wasn't familiar with food, and I wanted to
see if there were any other examples, and I found
some stuff that's best vaguely related. There was a war
between Brazil and Uruguay in the eighteen sixties and during
(18:41):
one maritime battle, a Uruguay and ship ran out of
cannonballs and the captain ordered his men to fire stale
balls of cheese instead.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yikes, that's a that's thinking on your feet right there, though.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And how stale was this cheese man? Because one of
the cheeses shattered the main man of the enemy ship
and people died by a cheese shrapnel, which I know,
every human death is tragic, but that's kind of that's
kind of amusing.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's it's it's kind of ridiculous. You know, I could
picture cheese. Have you ever had a real hard cheese, ben,
I could picture if it was cut thin enough and
that fluid a fast enough you know speed, and the
trajectory was just right, I could picture getting garrotted by
one of those things.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Right, Because I think that's a very interesting point, Nol.
Because you know, we've been around a cheese wheel or two.
We've seen some dangerous cheese. I'd never thought it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
We could be lethal dangerous cheese.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And one time, apparently in the Pacific Ocean during World
War two, a Japanese submarine was sunk using potatoes. Just
gonna let that one hang in the air.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Were these like regular potatoes or these like you know,
super mutant potatoes. Were there just a whole bunch of
potatoes tied together to make a giant battering red I
don't know, I just just my imagination is going wild.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
These are all great ideas, These are all great ideas. No,
the usso bannon came across a surfaced Japanese submarine and
they had surfaced because they had a malfunctioning periscope, and
they blasted enough holes in the submarine to prevent it
from safely submerging again, but not enough damage to sink it.
(20:24):
And so they pulled directly along the sub and the submariners,
you know, are of course pod and angry, and before
they could start firing, the crew of the USS Obannon
began throwing potatoes at them, because for some reason, there
were no guns on the USS Obannon, and the Japanese
(20:45):
forces thought the potatoes were grenades.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You know, with a name like Obannon, you think they
would be more concerned with conserving their potatoes. Do you
know what?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Soon No, I think we have to wonder what the
what the namesake of the USS O Bannon would have
thought about it. But surprisingly enough to us, it turns
out that it is not well, it's uncommon, but it's
not unreasonable for food to be used as a weapon
of war. Typically, when I thought of this sort of stuff,
(21:18):
I thought food is a weapon of war would have
been a matter of resource restriction, right, like you starve
a city, you're sieging. I didn't know that you could
shoot cheese at people, and you know, that's on me
I gotta think outside the box.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, I think some time outside the box would do
us both a world of good. And thankfully we have
all these fun topics to help us do that. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And I want to ask you, Noel, does this curious
case of mad honey which persists today, does this inspire
any questions for you? Would you ever try it if
you found yourself near the Black Sea or Nepal?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah? I think so. I mean again, it's not illegal
if if I know enough about it that I certainly wouldn't,
you know, spread it on toast and just go to town.
But I try a little taste because it sounds like
in small doses it almost has just a slight euphoric
like maybe almost like having a beer or something kind
(22:18):
of vibe. But when you start kind of piling it on,
it turns much darker.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, you know, I think that's a reasonable way to
look at it. Let's see if we get a YA
or name from super producer Casey Pegrim Casey, what do
you think?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
All Right, we have a ya.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Casey's all for it, Nol's all for it. I think
it's reasonable. I am impulsive. I probably would try it,
But what about you? Friends and neighbors. Would you take
a dose of the infamous mad honey, the substance that
toppled armies. Would you be up to the task? Why
or why not? Or have you already tried it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah? Right into us. Any intrepid travelers out there that
have scaled the rocky cliffs of Nepal in search of
this intoxicating nectar. We are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
You can also find us on social media in various forms,
including Facebook and Instagram. Well those are the only.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Ones, yep, those are the main ones. We do not
have a LinkedIn, nor do we have a farmer's link.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
We don't use the P word anymore either.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
No, that's true. It is a it's a large sign
directly by this humongous timer we still have in the
office from a previous episode.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Unfortunately, today, time is not on our side, but we
hope that you will join us next time for another
episode of Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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