July 12, 2024 • 19 mins
Tracy talks about how and why the Unearthed episodes are structured into categories. There's also discussion of how to manage a visit to the Louvre, and the use of the George Washington cherries.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We had
our Unearthed all week this week.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
We sure did.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, stuff that was mostly found in April, May and June.
I think there was one thing that was reported on
literally the last day of March.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
That came up.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
The way that this works is throughout the quarter, I
bookmark all of this stuff to come back to later,
and when I go back to it, usually I am
confident that there will be some specific categories, Like we
are probably gonna have some books and letters and some animals.
There's definitely gonna be some shipwrecks. I can't imagine there
(00:54):
not being enough shipwrecks to have a shipwreck section in Unearthed.
But beyond that, the pattern kind of reveals itself as
I am working on the episodes. Yeah, so that is
why sometimes we have some categories, sometimes not sometimes entirely
(01:14):
new categories. We have heard from folks that some people
find the format a little tricky to follow if we're
jumping around from topic to topic too fast. So like
that's that's why there tends to be like a basic
category structure to try to make it as listenable as possible.
(01:37):
We also know these are a number of folks very
favorite episodes, or even the only ones they listen to.
I feel kind of guilty for putting science writers on
blast in their headlines about ravenui. Some of them, though,
Like there were articles that had these headlines that were
(02:00):
like total shocker. Turns out there maybe wasn't an ECO
side on rapanui. Sometimes the first two or three paragraphs
of the article then had that tone before acknowledging that
this was adding to an existing body of work, And
I was just like, what is why?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My only thought is.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Like, are they trying to contextualize it to new readers?
But even so, there's no reason you have to do
it that way. Yeah, I don't remember what the exact
headline was of like the university's press release about this research,
but like if you took the wording of that headline
an extra step farther, like it could be interpreted to
(02:46):
mean that this was a brand new discovery, not something
that was adding to a body of work, but not
to nearly the extent of like a bunch of stuff, right.
I know that there have been times that we have
talked about things on the show that have a greater
historical background that we didn't fully grasp when we talked
(03:07):
about it. I sure hope not in the kind of
celebratory tone of some of these Rapanui articles. Yeah, that's
really when we get into publications where like this is
their whole thing, this is what they focus on. They
focus on this kind of research that I'm like, why
did you also make it sound that way? The one
(03:29):
other thing I had noted to talk about and behind
the scenes, we had a thing we talked about that
was research about the Black Death including that was focused
on body lice. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
One of the articles that I read about this had
a lead image that looked like, you know, some kind
of close up microscope image of a body louse. And
I don't know what color body lice typically are, but
for whatever reason, in this image.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
It was green.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And my first thought was, why is there a video
game villain to illustrating this body lice article?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
H's really funny.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, it was just, you know, some imaging technology used
to image this body louse. I chuckle every time we
talk about the Mona Lisa. Yeah, because you know, nobody
cared about the Mona Lisa until nineteen eleven. Yeah, because
it got stolen, right, But if you look at even
news coverage of the time, a lot of them it
(04:39):
was so not known that a lot of those articles
show pictures of the wrong piece of art.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Oh no. So it's very funny to me that now
you know, everybody knows what the Mona Lisa looks like.
You can buy it on a pair of socks, you
can buy it on like any kind of item you
can imagine, and it's one of the most famous things
in the world. But it's only because it got stolen
suddenly everybody was looking for it. Before then, it was
kind of one of his lesser cared about works. Yeah, fascinating.
(05:09):
Did you see it.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
When we were at the Louver? Oh yeah, we did too.
I don't think we really planned for it. So the
Mona Lisa, if you're not aware, it's a pretty small
work of art.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, it's not not big at all.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And so a lot of people talk about seeing it
and being kind of underwhelmed because even if you know
it's a small work of art, like you see it
in person and you're like, it's even smaller than I
really had thought, right, but also knowing that the crowd
to see it was going to be so huge, and
that like that whole area of the Loof is like
(05:47):
really crowded. I think we had sort of plans like
to skip it, but we wound up in that part
of the loove kind of by accident because we did
not Patrick and I did not plan ahead what parts
of it we were going to go see. Uh, and
we were like, well, we're here now, might as well
see it.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, I still laugh. Nobody even noticed that thing was
gone for more than a day when it got stolen.
Like that's how unconcerned people were about the Bona Lisa. Yeah,
I just love that. Now. It's like people speak of
it so reverently as one of the most important pieces
of art and we must find out who this woman
was and where she was physically in a geographical sense,
(06:27):
and I'm like, nobody cared for so long. Yeah, it's
such an iconic thing right now.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
This is not really about unearthed, but just you know,
if you are planning to go to Paris and you're
going to go to the Louver, and especially if it
might be your only time and your life to go there.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yes, if there's stuff you.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Really want to see, make a list and plan what
you're doing ahead of time. Yeah, because it's enormous, Like,
it's so much bigger than I really canived of. We
went on one of our trips that we have gone
on for the show, and but like the Louve was
a side trip that people got tickets for individually, not
(07:09):
something that we went together as a group. So we
like went during our free time, and uh, Patrick and
I had no plan. We did not think of anything
ahead of time. We just sort of showed up and
got the digital tour thing that you could get and
we walked around in random meandering with it, which is fine,
(07:30):
But had I actually put forethought into it, there is
stuff I definitely would have made a point of seeing
while we were there that we did Nazi. It's so
big that it's very easy to get lost, And so
I think if unless it does not matter and you
are just excited to see whatever's there, I think it's
a really good idea to have a plan. Yes with
an amendment, okay, because yes, like if you're like I
(07:53):
want to see this Delaquix and only this Delaquix. Yeah, Yeah,
although those are easy because they're huge and they're on
the main hallway most of the Dilaqua or like I
wanted to see the Vigion Lebron stuff that they oh yeah, yeah,
But I would say keep that list to a reasonable
number and allow yourself to accidentally just walk around and
(08:14):
see stuff. I love this too, because there are so
many pieces that you might not realize are in the Louver,
or you may not even know of that artist, but
they're incredibly striking and beautiful that it's worth just giving
yourself a balance of like, here are the mussy checklist items,
and also I'm allocating this ninety minutes to just dink
(08:36):
around and find weird things. Yeah, because you will and
it's all beautiful. I kind of feel the same way
about the Vatican Museums. Yeah, make sure sure.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Nobody told me that there's an entire room of Mark
Schaghl's at the Vatican Museums. And when we walk through it,
I swear the breath left my body. I was like,
what you guys, go ahead. So they're they're often fun discoveries.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, well, and that's often how I approach a lot
of museums that I'll go to, like I'll be going
for a specific exhibition, but then I will also just
wander around and see what I see. And if I
am going to a museum that is nearish to where
I live, you know, it's a place I can probably
get back to sometime. If later I'm like, oh man,
(09:24):
I could have seen that thing, right, And if you
if you're gonna be happy with whatever you see, regardless
of what it is, feel free to not have a
plan at the leave. I I wish Patrick and I
had had like a little plan.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I also feel like a little bit of a plan
is good because, as you said, it's huge, and just like,
aside from I want to see X pieces of art,
it can just be overwhelming when you walk in if
you don't have some sort of idea of what you
might like to see, like if you are you know,
especially if you're with a group of people too, where
it's like everybody they kind of might have their own taste,
(10:02):
or like everybody's trying to be cool and like, I
don't know, what do you want to see? That wastes
time at the loop? Yeah, just pick a direction and go.
But it can be overwhelmingly large, so but also fabulous and.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Cool Yeah, most of that has nothing to do with
what was unearthed over the last few months.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
No, but you know what does what alcohol? Oh yeah, okay,
So did any of your research regarding the cherries on
you know, George Washington's property, have any theories about their uses?
(10:51):
There was some about that that I did not spend
a bunch of time reading. There was one particular little
thing called cherry bounce. Yeah, and there was some speculation
about whether this could have been cherry bounce. There was
some of that was based on like the quantities that
(11:12):
cherry bounce was prepared in. Do you have insight on
this or is just curiosity? No? I have just questions
and theories. So yeah, you know cherry bounce, as you mentioned,
which was kind of a Christmas thing, but they would
prep it in the summer and put it up. That's
one thing that is like an alcoholic thing.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I know.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
George Washington also like love to drink, Like he drank
a lot of madeira, allegedly not allegedly. I think there's
pretty good evidence for it. But what I started to
wonder because you know, he also had a whiskey distillery
that was for okay distribution and sale. Yeah, and today
you can actually like that property has that distillery in
(11:55):
its modernized form back up and running, and you can
buy George Washington's spirits. But it made me wonder, like
was he drinking old fashions before they were really called that? Oh,
what a good question, because that's a very natural, you know,
a version of an old fashion. Listen, if you get
into the old fashioned discourse, like tread carefully because some
(12:16):
people will use cherries or cherry juice as the sweetener,
other people don't want that, et cetera. Right, everybody has
serin taste. But it makes me wonder if he wasn't
using them kind of as some sort of accompaniment to whiskey. Yeah,
which is an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It sounded to me like some of the fruit that
was preserved was like some kind of spirituous alcohol fruit preparation.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Others possibly not.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
And I think we said in the episode that they
thought that removing the liquid from the bottles was gonna
allow them to stabilize the glass better than leaving it
right filled with whatever was in there. So yeah, especially
round two of all of these additional bottles were announced
in June, I imagine there is like work still to
(13:07):
be done with that, conclusions still to be announced.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I hope someone designs a George Washington cherry beverage that
is a more modern cocktail making use of these things. Yeah, yeah,
I think there might there.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
So there were definitely references to the possibility of seeing
if any of those pits will germinate. Yes, there was
also some discussion of collecting DNA to compare these cherries
to other cherries currently growing in the area. Yeah, there's
a whole archaeology lab there, and like a whole lot
(13:46):
of other work that's going.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
On there is also if anybody wants it and you're
curious about what cherry bounce is, which is a freeedy
cordial mount Vernon dot org has a recipe for it,
so you can make it, just if you're curious there
and wondering cherry bounce and do you love cherries? I
also loved Slash was a little ooged out by the
(14:08):
Roman cremaines in wine.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, but then there was part of me that was like,
is this my final destination plan? Do I want like
my cremaines put in a bottle of gray Goose? Yeah,
since I'm a vodka gallant, Gray goose is my fee
That would just be funny to me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
But really, I don't know what was up with someone
apparently tasting it a little bit, and I intentionally quit
looking into it because I had this moment of like,
are you serious? Also why also gross? Let's move on, right,
I was working on these episodes, like I don't know,
(14:53):
we can just acknowledge end of June, beginning of July
nine million things happening in the new use, all of
them bad. Yeah, So it's like I was just trying
to keep my head down focusing on these things and
like not go down unproductive research holes about is this
(15:16):
a joke about the tasting the thing? What is happening
with that? Let's move on to the next thing for Unearthed.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Well, and just in case this may help you, but
also any listeners, I imagine this wasn't like he poured
himself a shot. I imagine it is like the most
minuscule amount possible for a variety of reasons other than uginess,
just not wanting to accidentally poison yourself or do anything
funky that you maybe didn't realize there are lots of
(15:47):
reasons not to do it. Uh yeah, Dickie, you.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Know, there was interesting stuff that we didn't get into
about that particular find that had to do with how
they identified it that it was wine and white wine specifically.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
That had to do with like isolating specific components within it, which,
like I thought that was interesting but also a lot
to try to explain in a short amount of time. Yeah,
if you find a bottle of something somewhere, please don't
drink it.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
S right up there with don't eat bog butter.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Just you know, we've talked before about during the summer months,
especially how I watch a bunch of through hikers documenting
their through hikes of various things on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And there was one of these.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Pairs of hikers that I was watching recently had gotten
to where they were supposed to be able to get water,
and the water source had dried up and they had
backtracked to like have to go back to try to
get other water, and they found a half empty discarded
bottle that someone else had left that they picked up
(16:59):
and said, we're gonna have this as part of our
emergency stash. And I was like, I no, no, no,
I advise against this a lot.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Oh no, thank you, No, no, no, no, no, no, I
that is part of why things like through hiking would
never have any appeal to me. Like nature's cool, but
like I don't want to put myself in a position
where I might not be able to get life necessities. Sure,
that's I know some people find that to be part
(17:28):
of the challenge. But I'm just like, but why though,
when you could go to the Marriott or some other
lovely hotel and have people just bring you a glass
of water? Why why?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, but I have a spoiled cookie who likes to
have things brought to me. Anyways, I understand this. Bring
me some cherry bouncer. Yeah, yeah, like have a recipe
for that.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I'll get to use my cherry pitter, which I find
deeply satisfying.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
It involves a lot of cherries. Just FYI, okay. The
recipe that they have on Mount Vernon is ten to
eleven pounds of cherries woo to four cups of brandy.
So like it's a high cherry component. Do we need
to pit the cherries? Yes? Yes, actually yes, pit the cherries,
(18:26):
cut them in half, put them in a large bowl
using a potato masher, carefully mash the fruit to extract
as much juice as possible, and then you strain the juice.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
All right, that might be a weekend project.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I have an easier thing you could do, which is
that I would pit the cherries, cut them in half.
I would boil them with a cup of sugar and
a cup of water and let them get kind of
simmery and glurpy, and then strain that off. And you
have beautiful cherry syrup to use in cocktails. And the
cherries you have strained off are great spread on like
(18:59):
toast or bread.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That sounds yummy. You made two things and it's way faster. Yeah,
you can still make delicious cocktails. Also get to use
the cherry pitter, which is, as we said, I find
very satisfying. Yes, whatever's happening on your weekends, I hope
it's great. If you have to pit some cherries for something,
I hope you enjoy doing that and that it goes
(19:22):
well and does not spray too much cherry juice around
your kitchen. We'll be back tomorrow with a Saturday Classic,
which I think is going to be about beekeeping if
I looked at the calendar right, And we'll be back
Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff you missed in
(19:42):
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We had
our Unearthed all week this week.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
We sure did.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, stuff that was mostly found in April, May and June.
I think there was one thing that was reported on
literally the last day of March.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
That came up.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
The way that this works is throughout the quarter, I
bookmark all of this stuff to come back to later,
and when I go back to it, usually I am
confident that there will be some specific categories, Like we
are probably gonna have some books and letters and some animals.
There's definitely gonna be some shipwrecks. I can't imagine there
(00:54):
not being enough shipwrecks to have a shipwreck section in Unearthed.
But beyond that, the pattern kind of reveals itself as
I am working on the episodes. Yeah, so that is
why sometimes we have some categories, sometimes not sometimes entirely
(01:14):
new categories. We have heard from folks that some people
find the format a little tricky to follow if we're
jumping around from topic to topic too fast. So like
that's that's why there tends to be like a basic
category structure to try to make it as listenable as possible.
(01:37):
We also know these are a number of folks very
favorite episodes, or even the only ones they listen to.
I feel kind of guilty for putting science writers on
blast in their headlines about ravenui. Some of them, though,
Like there were articles that had these headlines that were
(02:00):
like total shocker. Turns out there maybe wasn't an ECO
side on rapanui. Sometimes the first two or three paragraphs
of the article then had that tone before acknowledging that
this was adding to an existing body of work, And
I was just like, what is why?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My only thought is.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Like, are they trying to contextualize it to new readers?
But even so, there's no reason you have to do
it that way. Yeah, I don't remember what the exact
headline was of like the university's press release about this research,
but like if you took the wording of that headline
an extra step farther, like it could be interpreted to
(02:46):
mean that this was a brand new discovery, not something
that was adding to a body of work, but not
to nearly the extent of like a bunch of stuff, right.
I know that there have been times that we have
talked about things on the show that have a greater
historical background that we didn't fully grasp when we talked
(03:07):
about it. I sure hope not in the kind of
celebratory tone of some of these Rapanui articles. Yeah, that's
really when we get into publications where like this is
their whole thing, this is what they focus on. They
focus on this kind of research that I'm like, why
did you also make it sound that way? The one
(03:29):
other thing I had noted to talk about and behind
the scenes, we had a thing we talked about that
was research about the Black Death including that was focused
on body lice. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
One of the articles that I read about this had
a lead image that looked like, you know, some kind
of close up microscope image of a body louse. And
I don't know what color body lice typically are, but
for whatever reason, in this image.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
It was green.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And my first thought was, why is there a video
game villain to illustrating this body lice article?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
H's really funny.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, it was just, you know, some imaging technology used
to image this body louse. I chuckle every time we
talk about the Mona Lisa. Yeah, because you know, nobody
cared about the Mona Lisa until nineteen eleven. Yeah, because
it got stolen, right, But if you look at even
news coverage of the time, a lot of them it
(04:39):
was so not known that a lot of those articles
show pictures of the wrong piece of art.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Oh no. So it's very funny to me that now
you know, everybody knows what the Mona Lisa looks like.
You can buy it on a pair of socks, you
can buy it on like any kind of item you
can imagine, and it's one of the most famous things
in the world. But it's only because it got stolen
suddenly everybody was looking for it. Before then, it was
kind of one of his lesser cared about works. Yeah, fascinating.
(05:09):
Did you see it.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
When we were at the Louver? Oh yeah, we did too.
I don't think we really planned for it. So the
Mona Lisa, if you're not aware, it's a pretty small
work of art.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, it's not not big at all.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And so a lot of people talk about seeing it
and being kind of underwhelmed because even if you know
it's a small work of art, like you see it
in person and you're like, it's even smaller than I
really had thought, right, but also knowing that the crowd
to see it was going to be so huge, and
that like that whole area of the Loof is like
(05:47):
really crowded. I think we had sort of plans like
to skip it, but we wound up in that part
of the loove kind of by accident because we did
not Patrick and I did not plan ahead what parts
of it we were going to go see. Uh, and
we were like, well, we're here now, might as well
see it.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, I still laugh. Nobody even noticed that thing was
gone for more than a day when it got stolen.
Like that's how unconcerned people were about the Bona Lisa. Yeah,
I just love that. Now. It's like people speak of
it so reverently as one of the most important pieces
of art and we must find out who this woman
was and where she was physically in a geographical sense,
(06:27):
and I'm like, nobody cared for so long. Yeah, it's
such an iconic thing right now.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
This is not really about unearthed, but just you know,
if you are planning to go to Paris and you're
going to go to the Louver, and especially if it
might be your only time and your life to go there.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yes, if there's stuff you.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Really want to see, make a list and plan what
you're doing ahead of time. Yeah, because it's enormous, Like,
it's so much bigger than I really canived of. We
went on one of our trips that we have gone
on for the show, and but like the Louve was
a side trip that people got tickets for individually, not
(07:09):
something that we went together as a group. So we
like went during our free time, and uh, Patrick and
I had no plan. We did not think of anything
ahead of time. We just sort of showed up and
got the digital tour thing that you could get and
we walked around in random meandering with it, which is fine,
(07:30):
But had I actually put forethought into it, there is
stuff I definitely would have made a point of seeing
while we were there that we did Nazi. It's so
big that it's very easy to get lost, And so
I think if unless it does not matter and you
are just excited to see whatever's there, I think it's
a really good idea to have a plan. Yes with
an amendment, okay, because yes, like if you're like I
(07:53):
want to see this Delaquix and only this Delaquix. Yeah, Yeah,
although those are easy because they're huge and they're on
the main hallway most of the Dilaqua or like I
wanted to see the Vigion Lebron stuff that they oh yeah, yeah,
But I would say keep that list to a reasonable
number and allow yourself to accidentally just walk around and
(08:14):
see stuff. I love this too, because there are so
many pieces that you might not realize are in the Louver,
or you may not even know of that artist, but
they're incredibly striking and beautiful that it's worth just giving
yourself a balance of like, here are the mussy checklist items,
and also I'm allocating this ninety minutes to just dink
(08:36):
around and find weird things. Yeah, because you will and
it's all beautiful. I kind of feel the same way
about the Vatican Museums. Yeah, make sure sure.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Nobody told me that there's an entire room of Mark
Schaghl's at the Vatican Museums. And when we walk through it,
I swear the breath left my body. I was like,
what you guys, go ahead. So they're they're often fun discoveries.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, well, and that's often how I approach a lot
of museums that I'll go to, like I'll be going
for a specific exhibition, but then I will also just
wander around and see what I see. And if I
am going to a museum that is nearish to where
I live, you know, it's a place I can probably
get back to sometime. If later I'm like, oh man,
(09:24):
I could have seen that thing, right, And if you
if you're gonna be happy with whatever you see, regardless
of what it is, feel free to not have a
plan at the leave. I I wish Patrick and I
had had like a little plan.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I also feel like a little bit of a plan
is good because, as you said, it's huge, and just like,
aside from I want to see X pieces of art,
it can just be overwhelming when you walk in if
you don't have some sort of idea of what you
might like to see, like if you are you know,
especially if you're with a group of people too, where
it's like everybody they kind of might have their own taste,
(10:02):
or like everybody's trying to be cool and like, I
don't know, what do you want to see? That wastes
time at the loop? Yeah, just pick a direction and go.
But it can be overwhelmingly large, so but also fabulous and.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Cool Yeah, most of that has nothing to do with
what was unearthed over the last few months.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
No, but you know what does what alcohol? Oh yeah, okay,
So did any of your research regarding the cherries on
you know, George Washington's property, have any theories about their uses?
(10:51):
There was some about that that I did not spend
a bunch of time reading. There was one particular little
thing called cherry bounce. Yeah, and there was some speculation
about whether this could have been cherry bounce. There was
some of that was based on like the quantities that
(11:12):
cherry bounce was prepared in. Do you have insight on
this or is just curiosity? No? I have just questions
and theories. So yeah, you know cherry bounce, as you mentioned,
which was kind of a Christmas thing, but they would
prep it in the summer and put it up. That's
one thing that is like an alcoholic thing.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I know.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
George Washington also like love to drink, Like he drank
a lot of madeira, allegedly not allegedly. I think there's
pretty good evidence for it. But what I started to
wonder because you know, he also had a whiskey distillery
that was for okay distribution and sale. Yeah, and today
you can actually like that property has that distillery in
(11:55):
its modernized form back up and running, and you can
buy George Washington's spirits. But it made me wonder, like
was he drinking old fashions before they were really called that? Oh,
what a good question, because that's a very natural, you know,
a version of an old fashion. Listen, if you get
into the old fashioned discourse, like tread carefully because some
(12:16):
people will use cherries or cherry juice as the sweetener,
other people don't want that, et cetera. Right, everybody has
serin taste. But it makes me wonder if he wasn't
using them kind of as some sort of accompaniment to whiskey. Yeah,
which is an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It sounded to me like some of the fruit that
was preserved was like some kind of spirituous alcohol fruit preparation.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Others possibly not.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
And I think we said in the episode that they
thought that removing the liquid from the bottles was gonna
allow them to stabilize the glass better than leaving it
right filled with whatever was in there. So yeah, especially
round two of all of these additional bottles were announced
in June, I imagine there is like work still to
(13:07):
be done with that, conclusions still to be announced.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I hope someone designs a George Washington cherry beverage that
is a more modern cocktail making use of these things. Yeah, yeah,
I think there might there.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
So there were definitely references to the possibility of seeing
if any of those pits will germinate. Yes, there was
also some discussion of collecting DNA to compare these cherries
to other cherries currently growing in the area. Yeah, there's
a whole archaeology lab there, and like a whole lot
(13:46):
of other work that's going.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
On there is also if anybody wants it and you're
curious about what cherry bounce is, which is a freeedy
cordial mount Vernon dot org has a recipe for it,
so you can make it, just if you're curious there
and wondering cherry bounce and do you love cherries? I
also loved Slash was a little ooged out by the
(14:08):
Roman cremaines in wine.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, but then there was part of me that was like,
is this my final destination plan? Do I want like
my cremaines put in a bottle of gray Goose? Yeah,
since I'm a vodka gallant, Gray goose is my fee
That would just be funny to me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
But really, I don't know what was up with someone
apparently tasting it a little bit, and I intentionally quit
looking into it because I had this moment of like,
are you serious? Also why also gross? Let's move on, right,
I was working on these episodes, like I don't know,
(14:53):
we can just acknowledge end of June, beginning of July
nine million things happening in the new use, all of
them bad. Yeah, So it's like I was just trying
to keep my head down focusing on these things and
like not go down unproductive research holes about is this
(15:16):
a joke about the tasting the thing? What is happening
with that? Let's move on to the next thing for Unearthed.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Well, and just in case this may help you, but
also any listeners, I imagine this wasn't like he poured
himself a shot. I imagine it is like the most
minuscule amount possible for a variety of reasons other than uginess,
just not wanting to accidentally poison yourself or do anything
funky that you maybe didn't realize there are lots of
(15:47):
reasons not to do it. Uh yeah, Dickie, you.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Know, there was interesting stuff that we didn't get into
about that particular find that had to do with how
they identified it that it was wine and white wine specifically.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
That had to do with like isolating specific components within it, which,
like I thought that was interesting but also a lot
to try to explain in a short amount of time. Yeah,
if you find a bottle of something somewhere, please don't
drink it.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
S right up there with don't eat bog butter.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Just you know, we've talked before about during the summer months,
especially how I watch a bunch of through hikers documenting
their through hikes of various things on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And there was one of these.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Pairs of hikers that I was watching recently had gotten
to where they were supposed to be able to get water,
and the water source had dried up and they had
backtracked to like have to go back to try to
get other water, and they found a half empty discarded
bottle that someone else had left that they picked up
(16:59):
and said, we're gonna have this as part of our
emergency stash. And I was like, I no, no, no,
I advise against this a lot.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Oh no, thank you, No, no, no, no, no, no, I
that is part of why things like through hiking would
never have any appeal to me. Like nature's cool, but
like I don't want to put myself in a position
where I might not be able to get life necessities. Sure,
that's I know some people find that to be part
(17:28):
of the challenge. But I'm just like, but why though,
when you could go to the Marriott or some other
lovely hotel and have people just bring you a glass
of water? Why why?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, but I have a spoiled cookie who likes to
have things brought to me. Anyways, I understand this. Bring
me some cherry bouncer. Yeah, yeah, like have a recipe
for that.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I'll get to use my cherry pitter, which I find
deeply satisfying.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
It involves a lot of cherries. Just FYI, okay. The
recipe that they have on Mount Vernon is ten to
eleven pounds of cherries woo to four cups of brandy.
So like it's a high cherry component. Do we need
to pit the cherries? Yes? Yes, actually yes, pit the cherries,
(18:26):
cut them in half, put them in a large bowl
using a potato masher, carefully mash the fruit to extract
as much juice as possible, and then you strain the juice.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
All right, that might be a weekend project.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I have an easier thing you could do, which is
that I would pit the cherries, cut them in half.
I would boil them with a cup of sugar and
a cup of water and let them get kind of
simmery and glurpy, and then strain that off. And you
have beautiful cherry syrup to use in cocktails. And the
cherries you have strained off are great spread on like
(18:59):
toast or bread.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That sounds yummy. You made two things and it's way faster. Yeah,
you can still make delicious cocktails. Also get to use
the cherry pitter, which is, as we said, I find
very satisfying. Yes, whatever's happening on your weekends, I hope
it's great. If you have to pit some cherries for something,
I hope you enjoy doing that and that it goes
(19:22):
well and does not spray too much cherry juice around
your kitchen. We'll be back tomorrow with a Saturday Classic,
which I think is going to be about beekeeping if
I looked at the calendar right, And we'll be back
Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff you missed in
(19:42):
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