October 1, 2026 • 41 mins
Have you ever heard of a 'human mummy confection'? While it may sound like a Halloween treat, the legend of the Mellified Man was once taken quite seriously. Humans and honey have a deep relationship that predates known history (and Homo sapiens entirely), and for centuries people believed some holy men would voluntarily consume honey until they died, at which point they would be interred in coffins full of honey. Let a century pass, then -- boom! -- you open the coffin and the gunk inside has become a miraculous healing agent, capable of curing everything that ails you. Join Ben, Noel, and Max as they dive deep into the bizarre legend of the "Mellified Man".
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Let's hear it for our
super producer, Mr. Max Chiropractory Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Max, the mellified man of La Mancha Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You guys excited to get some tattoos done? Within a week,
we're all going to have tattoos from Cruz. I mean,
avoid shit.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tattoos from Cruz tattoos?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, obviously not me, but I fully support you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Especially you, Ben. I'm on the fence, too, man. I'm
not going to let you bully me into getting a
freaking Cruz tattoo.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm 100% on the fence, too. From what I've heard,
it's the duo from Sminty who are leading the charge
on this one.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Sminty, meaning Stuff Mom Never Told You.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Featuring the legendary Annie, Sam and Rima. So we we're
big fans of these folks. And that's Noel Brown. And
I'm Ben Bullen. Yeah. And I got to ask you
guys quick poll for the crew. What's the weirdest thing
you would do to live forever or to live like
(01:28):
an extra 50 years?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Drink mercury. That'll kill you, though. Yeah. I'm good. I'm
good with mortality, man. You can keep it. You can
keep your juice. Okay. By you, I mean whatever snake
oil salesman is offering me, this devil's bargain. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've asked this question just like so many world leaders.
Shout out to Mercury. Max is referencing the first emperor
of China there. we've also asked this in more modern senses,
like would you consider uploading your consciousness to the cloud?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Would you make clones? Would you participate in cannibalism? And
before you answer that last one, folks. Yes.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Quick caveat.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Noel, I love the yes and enthusiasm. On that last note,
before we talk about cannibalism, What if we sweetened the deal?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So, like, we're going to make human cake or something?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, we're going to make cannibalism sweet again, dude. We also, Nola,
as you remember, we became, years ago, fascinated with funereal
and burial practices across the planet, like mummies, cannibalism, cremation,
one of my personal favorites, sky burial, and so on.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah. Today we're talking about a different method. It's a
little bit more sticky icky. It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Out of all of humanity's traditions surrounding, like you said, Noel, mortality, death,
and thanatology in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Thanos. I already made this realization, man. This has happened
in real time before. It's happening a second time. He
is death incarnate. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Thanatology is the fancy word for the study of death.
There is one legendary process that stands unique. What, pray tell,
exactly is a mellified man?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
My mellow, my man. They call me Mellow Yellow, quite rightly.
It's just a real chill dude. Yes, it's just a.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It's just a real mellow yellow of a person.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, it would make you a little yellow. It's entirely possible,
or at least amber in hue. And you can't get
much more mellow than dead. And what's the word I'm
looking for? Preserved in sweet, sweet nectar of the bees. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So we'll introduce our word of the day. Melification, with
two L's. All it means is introducing honey into some
other substance, like making a honey cake, right? Or the
production of honey in general. And what I love about this,
Nola Max, is that this beautiful, awkward English language is
(04:33):
so full of cartoonishly specific words.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
That we don't use often. Ben, I made a delightful
marinade for my salmon last night that involved lemon juice, seasonings,
and honey, and a little olive oil. Did I mellify
my salmon?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
You may have mellified it, yeah, because you, especially in
a marinade, Noel, there we're introducing it into this other substance,
that being the salmon. Do you put ginger on the salmon?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I have been known to do so. I am currently
without ginger, but I really love a citrus in my salmon.
And a little bit of honey or even maple syrup
is nice because it causes it to caramelize a little
bit on the outside and you get a nice crust.
And I've been doing my salmon. I know it's a
little bit lazy, but I've been doing it in the
air fryer and it flipping rules. No judgment, man. That's
(05:27):
going to be awesome.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
The only judgment is that you haven't invited Max and
Max and I.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It already was awesome. It's gone. It's done. But I'll
do it. I'll do it up for you guys when
we get back from our voyage.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Now bring the air fryer with you. Let's air fry
some sandwich on the voyage.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
This is a chunky air fryer, man. This is like
almost like an industrial kitchen type air fryer. It's got
racks and stuff. I really like it.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I got the Delta card. I get two free check bags.
I'll use one for the air fryer.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Nah, I think they got the food. The food stuff's covered, man.
They are pretty good.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
We'll ask about their honey stance, but we can imagine
they will tell us they're very pro-honey because we can
all agree, and we hope you do too, folks, that
honey has always been seen as a sort of miracle
substance in humanity. Right. Going back to before the real
(06:22):
written word, it's how would we. OK, let's say aliens land.
How do we describe honey to them? I would say
it's like bee milk.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Well, spoiler alert, sort of for begonia and save the
green planet. More begonia. Three, two, one. The aliens in
that movie are super into honey and bees. And in fact,
that's kind of the way. One of the ways they
judge the failure of humanity is the die-off of colony collapse. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Perfect note because honey is– in begonia, it is seen
as a miracle substance by extraterrestrials as well. You're a
bee or you're a certain type of bee like a honeybee.
You get nectar from flowers. You go back to the hive.
you start working on this concoction. So this stuff, the
(07:18):
end result is so dense that a single tablespoon has
around 64 calories, 17 grams of sugar, no fat, no fiber,
no sodium. Obviously, humans have been in love with this
stuff for so long.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, it's also just nom, nom, nom-y, man. I mean,
it's like, it's delicious. And it has some pretty incredible
health properties, you know, whether you go out for all
of the holistic, you know, medicine type stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Eat honey made from local bees.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
They say it'll help you. I've seen it happen.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It'll help you tackle allergies or the placebo effect.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Maybe so. And we know the placebo effect is a
hell of a drug, but it does feel like it
does something. And also, You know, raw honey, they say,
has even more health benefits. Anyway, I just it's obviously
one of the most fascinating, naturally occurring kind. I mean,
just the perfect storm it takes to make this stuff,
that it even exists. The interaction of, you know, animal
(08:22):
and plant to create this, the whole synthesization process of
it is really, really fascinating. And it's such an interesting
look into the complexity of our planet. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And we found a really interesting theory on our way
to the mellified man here, folks. There are strong arguments
that honey may be partially responsible for the birth of
human civilization because way before people were figuring out how
to plant and routinely grow things, early ancestors of humans
(08:56):
were honey hunters. It was a supplement to the meat
and the plants they would find. You still see it,
in fact, in modern hunter-gatherer groups like the Hadza of Tanzania.
We see multiple anthropologists saying the massive energy density of honey,
just that punch you get, helped Homo sapiens evolve those large,
(09:21):
extremely expensive brains.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, there's even something called medical-grade honey, or manuka, which
is a particular... I'm trying to look up a little
bit more detail about the background of it. Yeah, okay.
So it is indigenous to New Zealand and Australia. It
comes from the Leptospermum scoparium plant, and it is apparently
(09:44):
gangbusters at treating burns and other kinds of wounds. Even
the regular stuff, I think, does an okay job in
minor cases. burns and cuts and the kind of thing
you would have seen maybe used to make.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
A poultice ah we love a poultice here uh we
also know that the earliest depiction of humans chasing honey
dates back to get this folks 8 000 years ago
there's a rock painting in Spain's Spider Cave. We're just
translating to English here.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I want to go there. That sounds dope. You want
to go to Spider Cave? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Noel, could you describe the picture? We've attached an image
of what was painted on the cave wall.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I was about to say, it's kind of classic
cave painting type stuff. Yeah, dude, it's sort of a
wiry cave painting-esque figure. What maybe looks to be some
plant life, some stalks of some kind. and maybe a
rudimentary sun in the horizon. I'm not quite sure if
that's what I'm looking at. But very clear are the
(10:51):
wafting and floating bees that are, you know, there's multiple
of them. They're kind of clustered together like bees tend
to be. And, yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear what
they're depicting here. It also looks like the Homo sapien
being depicted is holding some sort of basket, perhaps doing
an early form of beekeeping. Apiary keeping? Yes. Yeah, yeah.
(11:16):
An apiarist? An apiarist, yeah. You nailed it, man.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It did not take long for humans to move from
stalking wild bees, kind of like bears, into attempts at
domesticating bees. And that's why we see organized beekeeping, or
as we said, apiary practices, dating back to like 3000
BCE in ancient Egypt. People were astounded. This stuff never
(11:45):
went bad. It tasted amazing. It is no surprise that
folks also ascribed magical powers to honey. You know, you
see the you see the Greeks, right? They say that Zeus.
ate honey as a child that's part of why he's
so powerful.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Bro the bible's always talking about the land of milk
and honey you know i mean it's definitely considered pretty
top stuff uh throughout various cultures um not to mention
ben uh have you seen the movie the beekeeper.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yes with uh jason statham i like how all his
titles are him having a.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Job it's true i think it's it's good I really
enjoy it. I do love when a badass kind of,
you know, person in a film is also depicted as
being like hyper zen until they start just like, you know,
going on a murder spree that they do with the
calm and collectedness of an apiarist. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
We also know the nine muses of myth. If they
liked you as a poet, an orator, or a philosopher,
they would give you sacred honey on your tongue. It
would make you speak and think better than the, you know,
ordinary hoi polloi or the proletariat. And word among the
(13:04):
Greeks was that if you had to pass through the
underworld and the afterlife on the way to Hades, you
would meet his three-headed guard dog and you could bribe
the dog with honey cakes.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He just wants a treat. He just wants a treat.
He's a good boy. He just wants a treat. Yeah,
it's something that you see kind of interculturally speaking, like
the Norse, for example. As we know, they were quite
fond of honey because they used it to make meat. Oh,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
In Hindu culture, honey is part of a concoction called panchamrita,
which is milk, yogurt, clarified butter, honey, and sugar that
is often offered during worship. to various ancestors, leaving offerings
of sweets and milk. Honey may also be used, depending
(13:53):
on various family cultures. In Mesoamerica, you see it. I mean,
it's all over the place, man. Because it doesn't go bad. Oh. Yeah.
I was going to say, but not only does it
not go bad, whatever you stick inside of it also
doesn't go bad. That's the idea.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The human relationship with honey is so deep, so widespread
throughout history. It is no wonder that humans looked at
it and eventually said, let's get even weirder, similar to
those alchemical ideas about mercury.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
What if we put a whole dude in there? Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
The big difference being that people who tried to consume
mercury to live forever got mercury poisoning and died pretty quickly,
but consuming honey is not going to kill you. So
at this time, there was a lot of what we
call sympathetic magic. Since honey does not spoil, maybe consuming
(14:48):
this unspoilable thing will do something similar to you. It
can heal your wounds, cure medical conditions. It could give
you strange powers or put you into a state beyond
simple life and death.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And Ben, if I'm not mistaken, it's coming to me
from something we talked about in the past, either on
this show or stuff they don't want you to know,
I want to say there's historical evidence of psychedelic honey,
kinds of honeys that'll get you messed up. Mad honey
is what they called it, I want to say, from
the black region of Turkey and Nepal that could cause nausea, vomiting, sweating, dizziness, tingling,
(15:25):
and some reports that it even could cause hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yes, meetings with God, right? And Obviously, over the many
millennia here, people tried to weaponize it. Here's the headline
for the episode. For centuries, folks, there has been this
very weird rumor that certain holy figures practiced a specific
(15:51):
type of slow-motion, honey-centric suicide. They would turn their bodies
into these relics that, when consumed by ordinary humans... would
function as a panacea.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Okay. Yeah, meaning a cure-all. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Snake oil to the max. Our primary sources, not you, Max,
just to the maximum. Our primary sources for these claims
come from an infamous Greek historian, Herodotus And I learned
that pronunciation from Assassin's Creed, so nobody get mad at me.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I think you nailed it. But Ben, speaking of the
panacea effect of it all, we talked recently on this
show about stink oil type stuff. I think it was
maybe in the Stuff People Used to Get High Too episode.
I can't quite remember. Yes, very much so. Right. And
I maybe mentioned, I know what it was. It was
with Zarin. He was talking about, we're talking about reindeer
antlers and guts and stuff like that and how in
my relatively recent kind of fitness obsession, The algorithm on
(16:50):
Instagram serves me up all kinds of weird snake oily
kind of supplements. Eat these reindeer organs. Eat these reindeer
organs or this velvet, antler velvet. One that I keep
seeing is particular types of raw honey that apparently, you know,
come in these little packets and you eat it. It also,
because it is so calorically dense, it's very popular with
(17:11):
bicyclists because they need to, and because the carbs, you know,
that's a big part of the fuel that long haul
products mountain bikers need. And it's so low weight. Low weight.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So our guy Herodotus.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
He has a, we'll be honest with you folks, he
has a lot of wild ass statements. One of his
statements is that Assyrians used to inter or embalm their
dead with honey. He didn't say it gave them magical powers.
For that, we have to go to Chinese medical text,
especially one called the– we're going to butcher the Chinese here, folks.
(17:56):
The translation would be great pharmacopoeia or the Ben Kao
Gong Mu.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Mm-hmm. And it makes sense. You know, people are always
talking about ancient Chinese medicine and these kind of holistic
remedies that culturally come out of that part of the world.
And honey is a big part of that. The compendium
that you're talking about, Ben, was published during the Ming Dynasty.
It includes some quite compelling accounts of medicine and natural
(18:24):
history and some of the traditional Chinese medicine and herbology
I was talking about. It was created by a dude
named Li Shixian. who lived from 1518 to 1593. He
was a physician and a pretty learned fellow, multidisciplinary type dude.
And he spent 27 years combining all of these sources
(18:46):
into his magnum opus, a lot of which you're going
to recognize from some of the Chinese, popular Chinese remedies.
that experts here continue to use. I mean, you hear
people all the time recommending, you gotta go to this
Chinese herbalist, you know, it's like life-changing stuff. And maybe
there's some placebo effect in that, but I don't know, man,
(19:06):
like I'm very curious.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, natural medicine, right, native medicine has things that big
pharma doesn't always have. And I know people might feel
like it's a hot take, feel that way if you wish,
but it is correct. And in this huge book, this
encyclopedia of Li Shijian saying all this stuff that he
(19:31):
heard about, he's like the editor, right? In this book,
there's one entry that still mystifies historians and doctors alike.
It's the legend of the mellified man. So his book
has this bizarre secondhand account in it. And he says, look, also,
(19:52):
I've heard that certain elderly holy men in distant lands
of the far west, cough, cough, modern Arabia, they're going
to get to the near the end of their lives.
And because they are so righteous, they volunteer to for
a specific type of mummification process. The typical mummification process
(20:14):
occurs posthumously in Egypt, or you could get ritually sacrificed
and buried in some dry cave like mummies in South America.
Not for these guys. What they do is start out
by just eating honey. They go on a new diet.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Honey diets, an only honey diet. They would apparently even
start bathing in honey. How expensive is that? Well, that's
a good point, Ben. We didn't really talk about this.
I don't know that we have any figures, but certainly
today we have these much more massive operations, maybe it
was part of why colony collapse is a thing. I
(20:52):
can't quite recall. But back in those days, honey probably
would have been a pretty hot commodity. You couldn't just
make endless amounts of it, right? Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And so these guys, as we're telling you just the
straight up story, they, okay, so they're all older dudes
and they're always a dude. They start eating honey. And
like you were saying, Noel, They start bathing in honey.
Prices be damned. You can't take the money with you.
And as they enter this diet, their bodies begin to change.
(21:23):
They are becoming mellified. This glorious bee milk substance is
replacing a lot of their anatomy to the point where
they are sweating honey. They're peeing honey. They're pooping honey.
They stink of honey.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I would argue that they have a delightful aroma of honey. No, man,
it would probably get real gnarly. You're right. And they
would eventually just wither up, wither away and die from
malnutrition because man cannot live on carbs alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Even back then, everybody knew this was unsustainable. Like you
were saying, once these guys passed away, that's where things
get interesting because the next step in the process is
is to create what we could call a time capsule today.
You put the body, after the person has passed away,
you put the body into a stone coffin, you fill
(22:19):
it to the brim with.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Honey. It's honey. It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And then you seal it up for a hundred years.
The first two ingredients are a righteous human being and honey.
The third ingredient is time. So like That made-for-TV infomercial
guy used to say with his rotisserie chicken, set it
and forget it.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, man. That's honey for you. It's nature's rotisserie chicken
cooker thing. So the people cooking this kind of, let's
be honest, pretty macabre recipe up likely knew that they
probably weren't going to do this themselves. Right. because, you know,
it took a hundred years to cure, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
So you are, you are the person putting the honey
on the corpse and sealing the coffin. You know, it
takes a hundred years to reach its potential minimum. So
you're probably not going to see it. And we have
an excerpt of Li Shenzhen's description translated to rough English.
(23:28):
Maybe we Maybe we half and half this. It says,
in the land of the Arabs, there are men 70
or 80 years old who are only willing to give
their bodies to save others, such that one takes no
more food or drink, only bathing and eating a little honey,
till after a month his excreta are nothing but honey,
(23:49):
then death ensues.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Wowzers is compatriots place the body to macerate in a
stone coffin full of honey with an inscription giving the
year and month of a burial. It's basically like they're
packing them up in a Tupperware. Yeah, it's labeled Tupperware.
For anybody who has a freezer. or an obsession with
cooking ahead. I'm a big vacuum sealer guy. I love it. Yeah,
(24:15):
it's great. It's the way to go. The astronauts do it.
Excellent kitchen accessory.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So, okay, we've got our Tupperware body in its stone coffin.
Fast forward a century has passed because honey doesn't go bad.
The issue here is that the body-honey combination, per the legend,
starts to break down into kind of a gunky confection
(24:43):
of sorts. You'll hear English speakers call it a mummy confection.
This pharmacopoeia refers to it as miuret, which translates to
honey person.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We've made a honey person. That's nice. A little scary.
Why am I thinking of Jurassic Park through all this?
Like just thinking of like the... you know, the insects
preserved in amber. I'm just curious if tree sap and
honey have any commonalities, at least in terms of their
ability to preserve. Yeah, it would appear that both derive
(25:18):
from sugary liquids. That makes sense. They do have different
compositions and roles, but they do have some commonalities in
their caloric density and their ability to crystallize. And they're obviously,
of course, both produced by natural processes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, and our buddy Lee, the editor of this pharmacopoeia,
he says, here's what happens. After this century of curing
has occurred, you take your stone coffin, you check the date,
you unseal it, and you take just a little dab
of this resulting corpse gunk and you put it on wounds,
(25:55):
both external and internal. So somebody gets hit with a
spear or a sword or some other type of blade.
You just plop it on them. and go with God,
and they're going to be fine. Or if you have
internal fractures or maladies of the organs, you give them
a little bit that they sip on, and it'll fix them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I mean, I'm skeptical of how an internal hemorrhage is
going to be cured by a little sip of honey.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Right. Especially knowing what we know about how the body
ingest substances, right? Like, how is that going to, anyway.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, and I could see from observation in early, you know,
documentation of this kind of phenomenon, how it might appear
to have some sort of regenerative qualities. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And this gets us to a weird part. We have
to admit that even in Lee's time, Everybody knew the
economy would mean that this miracle drug wasn't for everybody.
It was so labor-intensive in terms of ingredients. Someone has
to actually die, and they have to be a good
(27:08):
person before they die. As a result, the end product
is super-duper rare. It's hard to find. If you can
find it, it's egregiously expensive. This is a medicine for
the elite.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
That's the story.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That Lee says he heard. And similar to Herodotus, Lee
never says he directly witnessed this. He never says he
saw the results, nor consumed any of this mummy gunk.
And that leads us to ask Nolan Max, did this
ever actually happen, or is this a legend?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I don't doubt that it was attempted. I'm just skeptical
as to some sort of result being a perfectly preserved
human body. I hear you.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I'm even more skeptical, man, because I don't think it
was attempted.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Okay. All right.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I did just because of the cost, you know? And Lee,
I think, shares that with us because he is, again,
like you said, he's a polymath. He wants to be
seen as a credible academic source. And toward the end
of his entry on the Malified Man story, he puts
a little bit of fine print where he writes in part,
(28:30):
I myself do not know whether the tale is true
or not. In any case, I append it for the
consideration of the learned.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, Ben, I'd be skeptical as to what kind of
evidence might be out there in the archaeological record or
even outside of this hearsay that it would appear this
gentleman is repeating. any kind of true procedural guide on
how to go about this, like in some sort of
repeatable way.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, exactly. He's basically saying, guys, this is some stuff
I heard, but if you're reading this, you're a nerd
like me, so maybe you can straighten it out for us.
You can't do that in today's medical works, but if
we unpack it, You know, what I think interests both
of us here is that we do know ritualistic or
(29:22):
medicinal cannibalism is a real thing. It's in so many cultures.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You asked me at the top of the show if
I would ever do cannibalism. Maybe you didn't ask me
in that way directly. Hey, bro, would you ever do cannibalism?
What are you doing Saturday, bro? I just mean if
it was like... if someone donated their body to you
know culinary school i'd give it a try if it
was like if there was if it wasn't yeah if
it was there's some i would i would give it
(29:49):
a go i would i would try human meat It's
all about the marinade, really. It really is. Let's malify
that biz. There are numerous popular examples of ritualized cannibals,
of course. One that perseveres to this day, or at least,
you know, what's the word I'm looking for? It's more
of a figurative example of cannibalism, but I've always found
(30:09):
it pretty ghoulish. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
What we're saying here is going to be obvious to
a lot of our fellow Western ridiculous historians. If you
want ritualized figurative cannibalism, look no further than the practice
of Catholicism and a lot of Christianity.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
The Eucharist.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, the concept of consuming the Eucharist represented by the
ingestion of wine or grape juice and crackers that signify
the consumption of the blood and body of Jesus Christ
from earlier times. You know, we also have to mention transubstantiation,
which argues this is not figurative. Once it touches your
(30:51):
tongue or your mouth, it becomes the blood and body
of Christ.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And of course, you know, with things like vampirism and
just so much folklore that involves like absorbing someone's essence
by drinking of their blood or eating of their flesh.
I mean, it makes sense that the ancient Romans truly
believed that they could derive the power of the warrior
from consuming gladiator blood.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah. And then we have to also mention a previous
episode about how various medieval Europeans believed would literally grind
up Egyptian mummies for medicine, it's not implausible then to
suppose that, you know, I have to walk it back. No,
(31:36):
it's quite possible that someone may have tried to mellify
themselves because our second point is honey is a miracle substance.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
And truly it's, I mean, we didn't even get into this,
but part of the reason that it is so effective
in treating burns and wounds and things like that is
it has a significant antimicrobial properties. Yes. Good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
We also, we've got to mention this. We have actual
proof that humans in some parts of the world still
practice traditional rituals and medicine involving the use of human
body parts, not always with consent.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, now that's where it gets tricky. What we don't have, though, Ben,
I think we set it up, you set it up beautifully,
is much, if any, I don't know, you'll have to
school me on this one, Ben, evidence of this very
mellow man. Yeah, we have no proof, by the way. Cool, cool, cool.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
We have no proof whatsoever unless this is one of
history's biggest cover-ups. We're not saying Lee was a knucklehead,
but like Herodotus before him.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
He was a historian, though. Yeah, physician, historian. It was
doing a medical— I mean, I don't know that even in
the way he's describing it as saying you should do this.
He seemed skeptical. In the translations anyway, I think.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, he was leaning in and going, guys, I heard
this crazy story, by the way.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Wouldn't that be wild?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
He was working with a dearth of information. He had
no way to prove or disprove this conclusively. And he
was also working against translation because Herodotus just said, I
heard some Assyrians got buried with honey, not necessarily encased
in it, again, crazy expensive. Herodotus never said these graves
(33:28):
were opened up like some kind of ghoulish goodie basket
for the wealthy.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
It's so easy to forget how absolutely crucial translations are
of ancient texts or works of fiction or theater, you know? Like,
there was a lot of hubbub made around the recent
Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey, and which translation was used.
And I've heard a lot of discussions comparing previous translations,
(33:52):
and it can just change so much of the meaning.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, a lot of back and forth on that one, too, right?
We know that if you go to more contemporary researchers
like Joseph Needham and or Lu Guizhen, they'll tell you
that old Li was probably lost in translation, just like
Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola. He was telling us this
(34:23):
tale of exoticized Arabian mystics, but it was coming from
much closer to home, an old Burmese custom, modern-day Myanmar,
of preserving corpses of monks and abbots in honey. And
then he was saying, oh, and Buddhist values mean you
sacrifice yourself for other people.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I guess I also don't fully understand, like, if I
were to be skeptical about one particular part of this description,
is the whole, like, eating nothing but honey. Like, I
get preserving a corpse. That makes sense. It seems like
that could work. Because of the antimicrobial stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
100%.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah. You know, like eating, what's the point of that?
Are you trying to just pre-preserve your innards? Like I
just like prime the pump a little bit? That part
doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, that's a great point, Noel, because we also here
in 2026, not being the smartest apes on the planet
just yet, we have hard scientific biological proof that if
you only consume honey for a long time, It is
going to kill you way before you're straight up pooping
(35:32):
and sweating, honey. This is the epitome of don't.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Try it at home. For sure. Ben, I got to
sidetrack really quickly. Did I tell you that I booked
the Lost in Translation Hotel for my trip to Japan?
I'm so excited for you, man. Just for one night?
It's the night that I'm going to be on my
own because I'm traveling with a big group and family
and stuff, and so we're kind of doing a little
bit of... You'll want that one night. I'm so into it,
but I was just like, you know what? I ought
to splurge and live out my... My Bill Murray finding
(35:57):
myself in Tokyo middle-aged crisis fantasy. Oh, come on. Treat yourself, baby.
I'm stoked, man. I'm going to have a time.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I don't care what time it is, wherever I'm at,
just text me.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
I will. The Park Hyatt. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And the nail in this sweet-smelling coffin is that even now,
as we record, no one, no one ever, ever has
found a single physical trace of this.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
No one.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Uh, mellified man, body parts, no artifacts, no honey ridden
stone coffins with somebody saying seal back up by this date. Uh,
and you know, that's one of the things you and
I were talking about off air. There are also no
records of this from the actual middle East at all.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah. And, and by the way, um, middle Eastern honey, uh, there's,
there's a popular kind that I think when you and
I went to, the Middle East to Doha, Qatar. I
brought home some of this Arabian honey that's like white
and it has a very different, I guess this just
has to do with what flowers, you know, are pollinated.
But they're big on honey over there.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And they, yes, the Middle East does and did know
about honey. And the strangest thing we could find is
the closest that experts have gotten to figuring out a
mellified man case is is finding historical incidents of unscrupulous
(37:28):
con artists selling counterfeit mellified man gunk, just like medieval
grifters would shill out pieces of the true cross or
televangelists will sell blessed objects in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Well, I think it's also important to mention that honey
could slow down the decay of organic flesh. True. And
you're definitely going to see it used to preserve things
like nuts or fruits. Sure, yeah. And there's certain delicious
confections that are that very thing. But over time, you
(38:02):
would not end up with a preserved body part like
you would in, say, formaldehyde or even just alcohol, right? Right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So what we're saying here, folks, is we're kicking off
spooky season. with a little bit of skeptical uh skeptical investigation.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
How would you do a malified man costume ben.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Oh wow uh i've got some ideas okay yeah okay
i'm thinking like our couples costume yeah i'm thinking i'm
thinking like would you just cover yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
In honey and and maybe like walk around inside a
clear plastic bag like.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah do like a uh skeleton mask Right.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So you have something that looks like this with the
eyes in it. Ben is holding aloft a poor Yorick-esque skull.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Oh, yes. Alas, he sweeted well. So that's a great question.
You would also maybe– I've got some ideas.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Okay. I've got some ideas. We'll talk offline. That's a
great question. Yeah. We'll offline this one. Niche historical costumes
are always a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yes, I knew a quite clever guy back in another
life who prided himself on thumbing through the dictionary and
randomly dressing like a word he found there. And I
got to tell you, they weren't all bangers.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Can't imagine they would be, Ben, but I do appreciate
the uh very specific flex.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
The commitment to the bit he came dressed as a
quincux one time and i was like thank you for
teaching me that word i think.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
People should dress up as esoteric uh like you know
punctuation marks.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Right right and it's arabang uh quincunx by the way
a geometric pattern of five points arranged in a cross
okay Yeah, no, it just wasn't the best costume, but
a mellified man might be a wonderful costume.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
You said honey mummy off mic and corrected yourself. I
love honey mummy. I'm just going to say.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, we got to save it because our point is.
The next time someone tries to sell you a little snarf,
a honey mummy, don't buy it.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You know, be cool. Don't bust them necessarily. So you
do it first. You do it first.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
And folks, you have brave, the bold frontiers of podcastry
with us. We cannot thank you enough. We've got more
episodes on the way. We're so excited for you to
hear them. Big, big thanks to our super producer. one
of the sweetest guys in the game, Maxwell Williams.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Alex Williams, brother of Max, who composed... I had a
dream about Alex the other night, and the details elude me,
but he was there, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yes, yes, big shout-out to A.J. Bahamas Jacobs, a.k.a. The Puzzler,
and a little bit of a skeleton face saying, Jonathan Strickland,
The Quister, we know what you did.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yes, he is the skeleton in all of our closets.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Eve's Jeffcoat, Chris Rossiotis here in spirit.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Boy, oh boy, the rude dude's over at Ridiculous Crime. Man,
really enjoyed having Zeron on the podcast talking about weird
stuff people used to get high to, get high with.
All right. Let's call it a day.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
We've got to get stocked up on our antler velvet
before we go on this trip.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
A little snarf of antler velvet, perhaps. See you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Let's hear it for our
super producer, Mr. Max Chiropractory Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Max, the mellified man of La Mancha Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You guys excited to get some tattoos done? Within a week,
we're all going to have tattoos from Cruz. I mean,
avoid shit.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tattoos from Cruz tattoos?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, obviously not me, but I fully support you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Especially you, Ben. I'm on the fence, too, man. I'm
not going to let you bully me into getting a
freaking Cruz tattoo.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm 100% on the fence, too. From what I've heard,
it's the duo from Sminty who are leading the charge
on this one.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Sminty, meaning Stuff Mom Never Told You.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Featuring the legendary Annie, Sam and Rima. So we we're
big fans of these folks. And that's Noel Brown. And
I'm Ben Bullen. Yeah. And I got to ask you
guys quick poll for the crew. What's the weirdest thing
you would do to live forever or to live like
(01:28):
an extra 50 years?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Drink mercury. That'll kill you, though. Yeah. I'm good. I'm
good with mortality, man. You can keep it. You can
keep your juice. Okay. By you, I mean whatever snake
oil salesman is offering me, this devil's bargain. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've asked this question just like so many world leaders.
Shout out to Mercury. Max is referencing the first emperor
of China there. we've also asked this in more modern senses,
like would you consider uploading your consciousness to the cloud?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Would you make clones? Would you participate in cannibalism? And
before you answer that last one, folks. Yes.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Quick caveat.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Noel, I love the yes and enthusiasm. On that last note,
before we talk about cannibalism, What if we sweetened the deal?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So, like, we're going to make human cake or something?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, we're going to make cannibalism sweet again, dude. We also, Nola,
as you remember, we became, years ago, fascinated with funereal
and burial practices across the planet, like mummies, cannibalism, cremation,
one of my personal favorites, sky burial, and so on.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah. Today we're talking about a different method. It's a
little bit more sticky icky. It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Out of all of humanity's traditions surrounding, like you said, Noel, mortality, death,
and thanatology in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Thanos. I already made this realization, man. This has happened
in real time before. It's happening a second time. He
is death incarnate. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Thanatology is the fancy word for the study of death.
There is one legendary process that stands unique. What, pray tell,
exactly is a mellified man?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
My mellow, my man. They call me Mellow Yellow, quite rightly.
It's just a real chill dude. Yes, it's just a.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It's just a real mellow yellow of a person.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, it would make you a little yellow. It's entirely possible,
or at least amber in hue. And you can't get
much more mellow than dead. And what's the word I'm
looking for? Preserved in sweet, sweet nectar of the bees. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So we'll introduce our word of the day. Melification, with
two L's. All it means is introducing honey into some
other substance, like making a honey cake, right? Or the
production of honey in general. And what I love about this,
Nola Max, is that this beautiful, awkward English language is
(04:33):
so full of cartoonishly specific words.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
That we don't use often. Ben, I made a delightful
marinade for my salmon last night that involved lemon juice, seasonings,
and honey, and a little olive oil. Did I mellify
my salmon?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
You may have mellified it, yeah, because you, especially in
a marinade, Noel, there we're introducing it into this other substance,
that being the salmon. Do you put ginger on the salmon?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I have been known to do so. I am currently
without ginger, but I really love a citrus in my salmon.
And a little bit of honey or even maple syrup
is nice because it causes it to caramelize a little
bit on the outside and you get a nice crust.
And I've been doing my salmon. I know it's a
little bit lazy, but I've been doing it in the
air fryer and it flipping rules. No judgment, man. That's
(05:27):
going to be awesome.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
The only judgment is that you haven't invited Max and
Max and I.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It already was awesome. It's gone. It's done. But I'll
do it. I'll do it up for you guys when
we get back from our voyage.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Now bring the air fryer with you. Let's air fry
some sandwich on the voyage.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
This is a chunky air fryer, man. This is like
almost like an industrial kitchen type air fryer. It's got
racks and stuff. I really like it.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I got the Delta card. I get two free check bags.
I'll use one for the air fryer.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Nah, I think they got the food. The food stuff's covered, man.
They are pretty good.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
We'll ask about their honey stance, but we can imagine
they will tell us they're very pro-honey because we can
all agree, and we hope you do too, folks, that
honey has always been seen as a sort of miracle
substance in humanity. Right. Going back to before the real
(06:22):
written word, it's how would we. OK, let's say aliens land.
How do we describe honey to them? I would say
it's like bee milk.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Well, spoiler alert, sort of for begonia and save the
green planet. More begonia. Three, two, one. The aliens in
that movie are super into honey and bees. And in fact,
that's kind of the way. One of the ways they
judge the failure of humanity is the die-off of colony collapse. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Perfect note because honey is– in begonia, it is seen
as a miracle substance by extraterrestrials as well. You're a
bee or you're a certain type of bee like a honeybee.
You get nectar from flowers. You go back to the hive.
you start working on this concoction. So this stuff, the
(07:18):
end result is so dense that a single tablespoon has
around 64 calories, 17 grams of sugar, no fat, no fiber,
no sodium. Obviously, humans have been in love with this
stuff for so long.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, it's also just nom, nom, nom-y, man. I mean,
it's like, it's delicious. And it has some pretty incredible
health properties, you know, whether you go out for all
of the holistic, you know, medicine type stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Eat honey made from local bees.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
They say it'll help you. I've seen it happen.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It'll help you tackle allergies or the placebo effect.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Maybe so. And we know the placebo effect is a
hell of a drug, but it does feel like it
does something. And also, You know, raw honey, they say,
has even more health benefits. Anyway, I just it's obviously
one of the most fascinating, naturally occurring kind. I mean,
just the perfect storm it takes to make this stuff,
that it even exists. The interaction of, you know, animal
(08:22):
and plant to create this, the whole synthesization process of
it is really, really fascinating. And it's such an interesting
look into the complexity of our planet. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And we found a really interesting theory on our way
to the mellified man here, folks. There are strong arguments
that honey may be partially responsible for the birth of
human civilization because way before people were figuring out how
to plant and routinely grow things, early ancestors of humans
(08:56):
were honey hunters. It was a supplement to the meat
and the plants they would find. You still see it,
in fact, in modern hunter-gatherer groups like the Hadza of Tanzania.
We see multiple anthropologists saying the massive energy density of honey,
just that punch you get, helped Homo sapiens evolve those large,
(09:21):
extremely expensive brains.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, there's even something called medical-grade honey, or manuka, which
is a particular... I'm trying to look up a little
bit more detail about the background of it. Yeah, okay.
So it is indigenous to New Zealand and Australia. It
comes from the Leptospermum scoparium plant, and it is apparently
(09:44):
gangbusters at treating burns and other kinds of wounds. Even
the regular stuff, I think, does an okay job in
minor cases. burns and cuts and the kind of thing
you would have seen maybe used to make.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
A poultice ah we love a poultice here uh we
also know that the earliest depiction of humans chasing honey
dates back to get this folks 8 000 years ago
there's a rock painting in Spain's Spider Cave. We're just
translating to English here.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I want to go there. That sounds dope. You want
to go to Spider Cave? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Noel, could you describe the picture? We've attached an image
of what was painted on the cave wall.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I was about to say, it's kind of classic
cave painting type stuff. Yeah, dude, it's sort of a
wiry cave painting-esque figure. What maybe looks to be some
plant life, some stalks of some kind. and maybe a
rudimentary sun in the horizon. I'm not quite sure if
that's what I'm looking at. But very clear are the
(10:51):
wafting and floating bees that are, you know, there's multiple
of them. They're kind of clustered together like bees tend
to be. And, yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear what
they're depicting here. It also looks like the Homo sapien
being depicted is holding some sort of basket, perhaps doing
an early form of beekeeping. Apiary keeping? Yes. Yeah, yeah.
(11:16):
An apiarist? An apiarist, yeah. You nailed it, man.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It did not take long for humans to move from
stalking wild bees, kind of like bears, into attempts at
domesticating bees. And that's why we see organized beekeeping, or
as we said, apiary practices, dating back to like 3000
BCE in ancient Egypt. People were astounded. This stuff never
(11:45):
went bad. It tasted amazing. It is no surprise that
folks also ascribed magical powers to honey. You know, you
see the you see the Greeks, right? They say that Zeus.
ate honey as a child that's part of why he's
so powerful.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Bro the bible's always talking about the land of milk
and honey you know i mean it's definitely considered pretty
top stuff uh throughout various cultures um not to mention
ben uh have you seen the movie the beekeeper.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yes with uh jason statham i like how all his
titles are him having a.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Job it's true i think it's it's good I really
enjoy it. I do love when a badass kind of,
you know, person in a film is also depicted as
being like hyper zen until they start just like, you know,
going on a murder spree that they do with the
calm and collectedness of an apiarist. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
We also know the nine muses of myth. If they
liked you as a poet, an orator, or a philosopher,
they would give you sacred honey on your tongue. It
would make you speak and think better than the, you know,
ordinary hoi polloi or the proletariat. And word among the
(13:04):
Greeks was that if you had to pass through the
underworld and the afterlife on the way to Hades, you
would meet his three-headed guard dog and you could bribe
the dog with honey cakes.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He just wants a treat. He just wants a treat.
He's a good boy. He just wants a treat. Yeah,
it's something that you see kind of interculturally speaking, like
the Norse, for example. As we know, they were quite
fond of honey because they used it to make meat. Oh,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
In Hindu culture, honey is part of a concoction called panchamrita,
which is milk, yogurt, clarified butter, honey, and sugar that
is often offered during worship. to various ancestors, leaving offerings
of sweets and milk. Honey may also be used, depending
(13:53):
on various family cultures. In Mesoamerica, you see it. I mean,
it's all over the place, man. Because it doesn't go bad. Oh. Yeah.
I was going to say, but not only does it
not go bad, whatever you stick inside of it also
doesn't go bad. That's the idea.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The human relationship with honey is so deep, so widespread
throughout history. It is no wonder that humans looked at
it and eventually said, let's get even weirder, similar to
those alchemical ideas about mercury.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
What if we put a whole dude in there? Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
The big difference being that people who tried to consume
mercury to live forever got mercury poisoning and died pretty quickly,
but consuming honey is not going to kill you. So
at this time, there was a lot of what we
call sympathetic magic. Since honey does not spoil, maybe consuming
(14:48):
this unspoilable thing will do something similar to you. It
can heal your wounds, cure medical conditions. It could give
you strange powers or put you into a state beyond
simple life and death.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And Ben, if I'm not mistaken, it's coming to me
from something we talked about in the past, either on
this show or stuff they don't want you to know,
I want to say there's historical evidence of psychedelic honey,
kinds of honeys that'll get you messed up. Mad honey
is what they called it, I want to say, from
the black region of Turkey and Nepal that could cause nausea, vomiting, sweating, dizziness, tingling,
(15:25):
and some reports that it even could cause hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yes, meetings with God, right? And Obviously, over the many
millennia here, people tried to weaponize it. Here's the headline
for the episode. For centuries, folks, there has been this
very weird rumor that certain holy figures practiced a specific
(15:51):
type of slow-motion, honey-centric suicide. They would turn their bodies
into these relics that, when consumed by ordinary humans... would
function as a panacea.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Okay. Yeah, meaning a cure-all. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Snake oil to the max. Our primary sources, not you, Max,
just to the maximum. Our primary sources for these claims
come from an infamous Greek historian, Herodotus And I learned
that pronunciation from Assassin's Creed, so nobody get mad at me.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I think you nailed it. But Ben, speaking of the
panacea effect of it all, we talked recently on this
show about stink oil type stuff. I think it was
maybe in the Stuff People Used to Get High Too episode.
I can't quite remember. Yes, very much so. Right. And
I maybe mentioned, I know what it was. It was
with Zarin. He was talking about, we're talking about reindeer
antlers and guts and stuff like that and how in
my relatively recent kind of fitness obsession, The algorithm on
(16:50):
Instagram serves me up all kinds of weird snake oily
kind of supplements. Eat these reindeer organs. Eat these reindeer
organs or this velvet, antler velvet. One that I keep
seeing is particular types of raw honey that apparently, you know,
come in these little packets and you eat it. It also,
because it is so calorically dense, it's very popular with
(17:11):
bicyclists because they need to, and because the carbs, you know,
that's a big part of the fuel that long haul
products mountain bikers need. And it's so low weight. Low weight.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So our guy Herodotus.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
He has a, we'll be honest with you folks, he
has a lot of wild ass statements. One of his
statements is that Assyrians used to inter or embalm their
dead with honey. He didn't say it gave them magical powers.
For that, we have to go to Chinese medical text,
especially one called the– we're going to butcher the Chinese here, folks.
(17:56):
The translation would be great pharmacopoeia or the Ben Kao
Gong Mu.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Mm-hmm. And it makes sense. You know, people are always
talking about ancient Chinese medicine and these kind of holistic
remedies that culturally come out of that part of the world.
And honey is a big part of that. The compendium
that you're talking about, Ben, was published during the Ming Dynasty.
It includes some quite compelling accounts of medicine and natural
(18:24):
history and some of the traditional Chinese medicine and herbology
I was talking about. It was created by a dude
named Li Shixian. who lived from 1518 to 1593. He
was a physician and a pretty learned fellow, multidisciplinary type dude.
And he spent 27 years combining all of these sources
(18:46):
into his magnum opus, a lot of which you're going
to recognize from some of the Chinese, popular Chinese remedies.
that experts here continue to use. I mean, you hear
people all the time recommending, you gotta go to this
Chinese herbalist, you know, it's like life-changing stuff. And maybe
there's some placebo effect in that, but I don't know, man,
(19:06):
like I'm very curious.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, natural medicine, right, native medicine has things that big
pharma doesn't always have. And I know people might feel
like it's a hot take, feel that way if you wish,
but it is correct. And in this huge book, this
encyclopedia of Li Shijian saying all this stuff that he
(19:31):
heard about, he's like the editor, right? In this book,
there's one entry that still mystifies historians and doctors alike.
It's the legend of the mellified man. So his book
has this bizarre secondhand account in it. And he says, look, also,
(19:52):
I've heard that certain elderly holy men in distant lands
of the far west, cough, cough, modern Arabia, they're going
to get to the near the end of their lives.
And because they are so righteous, they volunteer to for
a specific type of mummification process. The typical mummification process
(20:14):
occurs posthumously in Egypt, or you could get ritually sacrificed
and buried in some dry cave like mummies in South America.
Not for these guys. What they do is start out
by just eating honey. They go on a new diet.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Honey diets, an only honey diet. They would apparently even
start bathing in honey. How expensive is that? Well, that's
a good point, Ben. We didn't really talk about this.
I don't know that we have any figures, but certainly
today we have these much more massive operations, maybe it
was part of why colony collapse is a thing. I
(20:52):
can't quite recall. But back in those days, honey probably
would have been a pretty hot commodity. You couldn't just
make endless amounts of it, right? Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And so these guys, as we're telling you just the
straight up story, they, okay, so they're all older dudes
and they're always a dude. They start eating honey. And
like you were saying, Noel, They start bathing in honey.
Prices be damned. You can't take the money with you.
And as they enter this diet, their bodies begin to change.
(21:23):
They are becoming mellified. This glorious bee milk substance is
replacing a lot of their anatomy to the point where
they are sweating honey. They're peeing honey. They're pooping honey.
They stink of honey.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I would argue that they have a delightful aroma of honey. No, man,
it would probably get real gnarly. You're right. And they
would eventually just wither up, wither away and die from
malnutrition because man cannot live on carbs alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Even back then, everybody knew this was unsustainable. Like you
were saying, once these guys passed away, that's where things
get interesting because the next step in the process is
is to create what we could call a time capsule today.
You put the body, after the person has passed away,
you put the body into a stone coffin, you fill
(22:19):
it to the brim with.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Honey. It's honey. It is. It is.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And then you seal it up for a hundred years.
The first two ingredients are a righteous human being and honey.
The third ingredient is time. So like That made-for-TV infomercial
guy used to say with his rotisserie chicken, set it
and forget it.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, man. That's honey for you. It's nature's rotisserie chicken
cooker thing. So the people cooking this kind of, let's
be honest, pretty macabre recipe up likely knew that they
probably weren't going to do this themselves. Right. because, you know,
it took a hundred years to cure, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
So you are, you are the person putting the honey
on the corpse and sealing the coffin. You know, it
takes a hundred years to reach its potential minimum. So
you're probably not going to see it. And we have
an excerpt of Li Shenzhen's description translated to rough English.
(23:28):
Maybe we Maybe we half and half this. It says,
in the land of the Arabs, there are men 70
or 80 years old who are only willing to give
their bodies to save others, such that one takes no
more food or drink, only bathing and eating a little honey,
till after a month his excreta are nothing but honey,
(23:49):
then death ensues.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Wowzers is compatriots place the body to macerate in a
stone coffin full of honey with an inscription giving the
year and month of a burial. It's basically like they're
packing them up in a Tupperware. Yeah, it's labeled Tupperware.
For anybody who has a freezer. or an obsession with
cooking ahead. I'm a big vacuum sealer guy. I love it. Yeah,
(24:15):
it's great. It's the way to go. The astronauts do it.
Excellent kitchen accessory.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So, okay, we've got our Tupperware body in its stone coffin.
Fast forward a century has passed because honey doesn't go bad.
The issue here is that the body-honey combination, per the legend,
starts to break down into kind of a gunky confection
(24:43):
of sorts. You'll hear English speakers call it a mummy confection.
This pharmacopoeia refers to it as miuret, which translates to
honey person.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We've made a honey person. That's nice. A little scary.
Why am I thinking of Jurassic Park through all this?
Like just thinking of like the... you know, the insects
preserved in amber. I'm just curious if tree sap and
honey have any commonalities, at least in terms of their
ability to preserve. Yeah, it would appear that both derive
(25:18):
from sugary liquids. That makes sense. They do have different
compositions and roles, but they do have some commonalities in
their caloric density and their ability to crystallize. And they're obviously,
of course, both produced by natural processes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, and our buddy Lee, the editor of this pharmacopoeia,
he says, here's what happens. After this century of curing
has occurred, you take your stone coffin, you check the date,
you unseal it, and you take just a little dab
of this resulting corpse gunk and you put it on wounds,
(25:55):
both external and internal. So somebody gets hit with a
spear or a sword or some other type of blade.
You just plop it on them. and go with God,
and they're going to be fine. Or if you have
internal fractures or maladies of the organs, you give them
a little bit that they sip on, and it'll fix them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I mean, I'm skeptical of how an internal hemorrhage is
going to be cured by a little sip of honey.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Right. Especially knowing what we know about how the body
ingest substances, right? Like, how is that going to, anyway.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, and I could see from observation in early, you know,
documentation of this kind of phenomenon, how it might appear
to have some sort of regenerative qualities. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And this gets us to a weird part. We have
to admit that even in Lee's time, Everybody knew the
economy would mean that this miracle drug wasn't for everybody.
It was so labor-intensive in terms of ingredients. Someone has
to actually die, and they have to be a good
(27:08):
person before they die. As a result, the end product
is super-duper rare. It's hard to find. If you can
find it, it's egregiously expensive. This is a medicine for
the elite.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
That's the story.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That Lee says he heard. And similar to Herodotus, Lee
never says he directly witnessed this. He never says he
saw the results, nor consumed any of this mummy gunk.
And that leads us to ask Nolan Max, did this
ever actually happen, or is this a legend?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I don't doubt that it was attempted. I'm just skeptical
as to some sort of result being a perfectly preserved
human body. I hear you.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I'm even more skeptical, man, because I don't think it
was attempted.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Okay. All right.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I did just because of the cost, you know? And Lee,
I think, shares that with us because he is, again,
like you said, he's a polymath. He wants to be
seen as a credible academic source. And toward the end
of his entry on the Malified Man story, he puts
a little bit of fine print where he writes in part,
(28:30):
I myself do not know whether the tale is true
or not. In any case, I append it for the
consideration of the learned.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, Ben, I'd be skeptical as to what kind of
evidence might be out there in the archaeological record or
even outside of this hearsay that it would appear this
gentleman is repeating. any kind of true procedural guide on
how to go about this, like in some sort of
repeatable way.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, exactly. He's basically saying, guys, this is some stuff
I heard, but if you're reading this, you're a nerd
like me, so maybe you can straighten it out for us.
You can't do that in today's medical works, but if
we unpack it, You know, what I think interests both
of us here is that we do know ritualistic or
(29:22):
medicinal cannibalism is a real thing. It's in so many cultures.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You asked me at the top of the show if
I would ever do cannibalism. Maybe you didn't ask me
in that way directly. Hey, bro, would you ever do cannibalism?
What are you doing Saturday, bro? I just mean if
it was like... if someone donated their body to you
know culinary school i'd give it a try if it
was like if there was if it wasn't yeah if
it was there's some i would i would give it
(29:49):
a go i would i would try human meat It's
all about the marinade, really. It really is. Let's malify
that biz. There are numerous popular examples of ritualized cannibals,
of course. One that perseveres to this day, or at least,
you know, what's the word I'm looking for? It's more
of a figurative example of cannibalism, but I've always found
(30:09):
it pretty ghoulish. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
What we're saying here is going to be obvious to
a lot of our fellow Western ridiculous historians. If you
want ritualized figurative cannibalism, look no further than the practice
of Catholicism and a lot of Christianity.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
The Eucharist.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, the concept of consuming the Eucharist represented by the
ingestion of wine or grape juice and crackers that signify
the consumption of the blood and body of Jesus Christ
from earlier times. You know, we also have to mention transubstantiation,
which argues this is not figurative. Once it touches your
(30:51):
tongue or your mouth, it becomes the blood and body
of Christ.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And of course, you know, with things like vampirism and
just so much folklore that involves like absorbing someone's essence
by drinking of their blood or eating of their flesh.
I mean, it makes sense that the ancient Romans truly
believed that they could derive the power of the warrior
from consuming gladiator blood.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah. And then we have to also mention a previous
episode about how various medieval Europeans believed would literally grind
up Egyptian mummies for medicine, it's not implausible then to
suppose that, you know, I have to walk it back. No,
(31:36):
it's quite possible that someone may have tried to mellify
themselves because our second point is honey is a miracle substance.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
And truly it's, I mean, we didn't even get into this,
but part of the reason that it is so effective
in treating burns and wounds and things like that is
it has a significant antimicrobial properties. Yes. Good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
We also, we've got to mention this. We have actual
proof that humans in some parts of the world still
practice traditional rituals and medicine involving the use of human
body parts, not always with consent.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, now that's where it gets tricky. What we don't have, though, Ben,
I think we set it up, you set it up beautifully,
is much, if any, I don't know, you'll have to
school me on this one, Ben, evidence of this very
mellow man. Yeah, we have no proof, by the way. Cool, cool, cool.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
We have no proof whatsoever unless this is one of
history's biggest cover-ups. We're not saying Lee was a knucklehead,
but like Herodotus before him.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
He was a historian, though. Yeah, physician, historian. It was
doing a medical— I mean, I don't know that even in
the way he's describing it as saying you should do this.
He seemed skeptical. In the translations anyway, I think.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, he was leaning in and going, guys, I heard
this crazy story, by the way.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Wouldn't that be wild?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
He was working with a dearth of information. He had
no way to prove or disprove this conclusively. And he
was also working against translation because Herodotus just said, I
heard some Assyrians got buried with honey, not necessarily encased
in it, again, crazy expensive. Herodotus never said these graves
(33:28):
were opened up like some kind of ghoulish goodie basket
for the wealthy.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
It's so easy to forget how absolutely crucial translations are
of ancient texts or works of fiction or theater, you know? Like,
there was a lot of hubbub made around the recent
Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey, and which translation was used.
And I've heard a lot of discussions comparing previous translations,
(33:52):
and it can just change so much of the meaning.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, a lot of back and forth on that one, too, right?
We know that if you go to more contemporary researchers
like Joseph Needham and or Lu Guizhen, they'll tell you
that old Li was probably lost in translation, just like
Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola. He was telling us this
(34:23):
tale of exoticized Arabian mystics, but it was coming from
much closer to home, an old Burmese custom, modern-day Myanmar,
of preserving corpses of monks and abbots in honey. And
then he was saying, oh, and Buddhist values mean you
sacrifice yourself for other people.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I guess I also don't fully understand, like, if I
were to be skeptical about one particular part of this description,
is the whole, like, eating nothing but honey. Like, I
get preserving a corpse. That makes sense. It seems like
that could work. Because of the antimicrobial stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
100%.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah. You know, like eating, what's the point of that?
Are you trying to just pre-preserve your innards? Like I
just like prime the pump a little bit? That part
doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, that's a great point, Noel, because we also here
in 2026, not being the smartest apes on the planet
just yet, we have hard scientific biological proof that if
you only consume honey for a long time, It is
going to kill you way before you're straight up pooping
(35:32):
and sweating, honey. This is the epitome of don't.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Try it at home. For sure. Ben, I got to
sidetrack really quickly. Did I tell you that I booked
the Lost in Translation Hotel for my trip to Japan?
I'm so excited for you, man. Just for one night?
It's the night that I'm going to be on my
own because I'm traveling with a big group and family
and stuff, and so we're kind of doing a little
bit of... You'll want that one night. I'm so into it,
but I was just like, you know what? I ought
to splurge and live out my... My Bill Murray finding
(35:57):
myself in Tokyo middle-aged crisis fantasy. Oh, come on. Treat yourself, baby.
I'm stoked, man. I'm going to have a time.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I don't care what time it is, wherever I'm at,
just text me.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
I will. The Park Hyatt. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And the nail in this sweet-smelling coffin is that even now,
as we record, no one, no one ever, ever has
found a single physical trace of this.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
No one.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Uh, mellified man, body parts, no artifacts, no honey ridden
stone coffins with somebody saying seal back up by this date. Uh,
and you know, that's one of the things you and
I were talking about off air. There are also no
records of this from the actual middle East at all.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah. And, and by the way, um, middle Eastern honey, uh, there's,
there's a popular kind that I think when you and
I went to, the Middle East to Doha, Qatar. I
brought home some of this Arabian honey that's like white
and it has a very different, I guess this just
has to do with what flowers, you know, are pollinated.
But they're big on honey over there.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And they, yes, the Middle East does and did know
about honey. And the strangest thing we could find is
the closest that experts have gotten to figuring out a
mellified man case is is finding historical incidents of unscrupulous
(37:28):
con artists selling counterfeit mellified man gunk, just like medieval
grifters would shill out pieces of the true cross or
televangelists will sell blessed objects in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Well, I think it's also important to mention that honey
could slow down the decay of organic flesh. True. And
you're definitely going to see it used to preserve things
like nuts or fruits. Sure, yeah. And there's certain delicious
confections that are that very thing. But over time, you
(38:02):
would not end up with a preserved body part like
you would in, say, formaldehyde or even just alcohol, right? Right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So what we're saying here, folks, is we're kicking off
spooky season. with a little bit of skeptical uh skeptical investigation.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
How would you do a malified man costume ben.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Oh wow uh i've got some ideas okay yeah okay
i'm thinking like our couples costume yeah i'm thinking i'm
thinking like would you just cover yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
In honey and and maybe like walk around inside a
clear plastic bag like.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah do like a uh skeleton mask Right.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So you have something that looks like this with the
eyes in it. Ben is holding aloft a poor Yorick-esque skull.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Oh, yes. Alas, he sweeted well. So that's a great question.
You would also maybe– I've got some ideas.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Okay. I've got some ideas. We'll talk offline. That's a
great question. Yeah. We'll offline this one. Niche historical costumes
are always a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yes, I knew a quite clever guy back in another
life who prided himself on thumbing through the dictionary and
randomly dressing like a word he found there. And I
got to tell you, they weren't all bangers.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Can't imagine they would be, Ben, but I do appreciate
the uh very specific flex.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
The commitment to the bit he came dressed as a
quincux one time and i was like thank you for
teaching me that word i think.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
People should dress up as esoteric uh like you know
punctuation marks.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Right right and it's arabang uh quincunx by the way
a geometric pattern of five points arranged in a cross
okay Yeah, no, it just wasn't the best costume, but
a mellified man might be a wonderful costume.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
You said honey mummy off mic and corrected yourself. I
love honey mummy. I'm just going to say.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, we got to save it because our point is.
The next time someone tries to sell you a little snarf,
a honey mummy, don't buy it.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You know, be cool. Don't bust them necessarily. So you
do it first. You do it first.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
And folks, you have brave, the bold frontiers of podcastry
with us. We cannot thank you enough. We've got more
episodes on the way. We're so excited for you to
hear them. Big, big thanks to our super producer. one
of the sweetest guys in the game, Maxwell Williams.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Alex Williams, brother of Max, who composed... I had a
dream about Alex the other night, and the details elude me,
but he was there, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yes, yes, big shout-out to A.J. Bahamas Jacobs, a.k.a. The Puzzler,
and a little bit of a skeleton face saying, Jonathan Strickland,
The Quister, we know what you did.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yes, he is the skeleton in all of our closets.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Eve's Jeffcoat, Chris Rossiotis here in spirit.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Boy, oh boy, the rude dude's over at Ridiculous Crime. Man,
really enjoyed having Zeron on the podcast talking about weird
stuff people used to get high to, get high with.
All right. Let's call it a day.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
We've got to get stocked up on our antler velvet
before we go on this trip.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
A little snarf of antler velvet, perhaps. See you next time, folks.
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Noel Brown
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