SYMHC Classics: A Brief History of Vodka

This 2019 episode covers the story of vodka, which is closely tied to cultural identity for several countries. Where did it originate, and how did it evolve over time? We'll talk a bit about how vodka is made, where it came from, and how it's expanded to a global market.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday and Happy New Year's Eve. Since for a
lot of folks, New Year's Eve is a night of
revelry and fun and spirits, we're bringing out our February
episode on the history of vodka as Today's Saturday Classic. Also,
we end this episode by talking about some household uses
for vodka that do not involve drinking it. And after

(00:25):
it came out, we got a note from listener Megan
adding one more to the list that is substituting vodka
for half the water that goes into a pie crust
will make your crust flake year. Totally need to try that. Still,
Happy New Year, everybody, and thank you so much for
being with us over this past year. If you're headed
out tonight to ring in the New Year with some

(00:46):
cocktails or beer or champagne or other alcohol, please make
sure to plan ahead for how to get home safely
so we can all have a safe start to the
new year and enjoy this episode. Happy New Year, Welcome
to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(01:13):
Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I'm excited and
self serving because today, we're going to talk about my
spirit of choice, vodka. As soon as you told me
what you were researching, I thought this is gonna be
Holly's favorite episode ever. Um, sort of. I mean, I
would get into some of the bleak stuff that comes

(01:34):
with vodka, so it's not all fun in games. I
certainly enjoy a cocktail, but obviously we are not advocating
over imbibing drink responsibly. We just want to talk about
the history of this drink. Um, and the story of
vodka is one that is really closely tied to cultural
identity for several countries. But we're gonna examine where it
originated and how it evolved over time, and how those

(01:55):
identities sort of formed. I bet when I say vodka
and country, people automatic make a connection, and we'll talk
about why that's the case. Uh. We're going to talk
a little bit also about how vodka is made, and
then we'll get into that part about where it came
from and how it has expanded to become really a
global market, focusing on those countries where it remains and

(02:16):
has become most popular. And then we have to talk
about some of the problematic aspects of vodka's place in
the world, but I promise we'll end in a fairly
fun place. Yeah, vodka is a little unusual and that
it can be made from a lot of different things
while still being considered vodka, which isn't so much the
case with a number of other spirits. There are of course,

(02:38):
a lot of opinions and disagreements about just how far
afield you can go and selecting the base ingredient while
still calling the resulting spirit vodka. Yeah, this starts some
heated debates. I discovered in my research. Uh, it requires
a sugar or starch element to begin with, so most
popular in Russia and Poland as well as other country

(03:00):
is kind of in that northern belt are grains, potatoes
or sugar beat molasses as the starting ingredient. Uh. There
is actually an area that's colloquially called the vodka belt,
which stretches from Sweden to Poland, and that produces the
majority of the vodka that is consumed in the European Union.
In other places, though, there's a greater variability, including using

(03:20):
things like corn and fruit, and whether those things should
be considered vodka was the matter of debate for some time.
European Parliament ruled on the matter in two thousand seven,
giving a wider range of options for distillers, all following
under this vodka umbrella, defining vodka as a spirit drink
produced from ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin. Yeah, you can

(03:42):
even if you're feeling very very ambitious and uh want
to do some some juggling and babysitting. You could even
start a vodka from just sugar. Although it's not really
the recommended for general making, is my understanding. I have
never distilled vodka myself, so I'm going by what I
have read. Uh. That ruling that we just talked about

(04:03):
was unsurprisingly not entirely popular for vodka purists. It really
signaled a degradation to the spirit, and the Finnish politician
Alexander Stubb made the case that vodka should be more
specifically defined. He said at that time, quote, we have
made vodka out of potato and grain for over five
hundred years. When we became EU members in we were

(04:27):
told that vodka would have a tight definition, just like rum,
just like whiskey, just like grappa. We don't want vodka
to be some kind of alcoholic waste basket. I really
like the idea that like it sounds almost like they're
they're becoming part of the EU was in some ways
contingent on the definition of vodka. Yes, that was definitely

(04:51):
part of what they were they were agreeing to, is
that vodka would have this this rigorous, fairly rigorous standard
applied to it, and that didn't really pan out. Now.
The reason that the rules of what could be used
to produce vodka were relaxed was that vodka was already
being made from a variety of ingredients of distilleries all
over Europe, and excluding the producers that used alternates to

(05:14):
grain and potatoes could have led to a trade war.
Countries outside of the EU were making vodka out of
all kinds of things, and so had the ruling had
taken a more strict stance, that would have opened a
huge can of worms in terms of the global spirits market. Yeah.
So if you would imagine trying to put this in
sort of real terms instead of just theoreticals, if you

(05:37):
went into your local liquor store today to buy vodka
and you see all of the offerings, and then something
like this had happened and some people in the world said, no, no,
that thing you've been buying is vodka for X number
of years? Is no longer vodka? Like it would just
be a little bit of chaos. Uh. In terms of
how manufacturers labeled things, I imagine there would be pushback

(05:59):
because people wouldn't want to change the identities of the
products they had been making for a long time. It
really just would have been an absolute chaotic miss uh. Incidentally,
in the US, vodka is legally defined in ultra broad
terms as quote neutral spirits so distilled or so treated
after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be

(06:21):
without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color that is pretty,
it's so bad and yet regardless of whether the primary
ingredient is an old school traditional take or one that
falls under the wider rules, after the fermenting ingredient is selected,
it goes through fermentation. The base material is crushed, blended

(06:44):
with water, and heated, which turns the start into sugar.
That result is combined with yeast, and then the fluid
is distilled from the combined mixture. So alcohol, of course
boils more quickly than water, so the alcohol component in
that mixture vaporizes more quickly than the water in the mix,
and that vapor is captured excluding the very first and
last vapors of the batch. And next that vapor is

(07:07):
then condensed into a very potent alcohol, and then that
alcohol is combined again with water to produce the final product, vodka.
That's the very basic process. If you've completed those steps,
you have what could technically be called vodka, but it
can be and usually is further refined and process to

(07:27):
alter the taste and the purity. Filtering it through charcoal, lava, linen,
or a number of other substances, or performing multiple distillations
will make the spirit cleaner and purer and also remove
virtually all of the taste. Yeah, if you go on
a an online splunking expedition to see what people have
used to filter vodka, you will find everything from like

(07:50):
diamond dust to two pieces of cloth. Uh. And for
something that becomes part of their brand identity or if
they're doing like small batch artism and stuff, it's part
of their thing that they're they're creating new ways to
do it. And of course, UH flavored vodka is very
popular and the flavor has to be added after all

(08:10):
of these other steps. This is often done at the
production level. But there are also plenty of consumers who
like to add their own flavor infusions to plain vodka
for custom flavors. So I'm sure if you have friends
who drink, you know somebody who has been Like I
infused my vodka with jolly ranchers, or with apples, or
with any number of other I've had friends who have

(08:31):
done it with jelly beans. The result was delicious. Uh,
it just depends on what you like. There are consumers
and connoisseurs who desire a vodka that still tastes at
least a little bit like its original ingredients, rather than
having a post distillation added flavor. Some artisanal vodka producers

(08:51):
use small copper moonshine stills instead of the stills that
are used in larger production setups, because the resulting spirit
retains some of those component tastes. Yeah, if you want
your vodka to taste like a little like the wheat
or the potato or whatever was used initially, then that
is probably a better way to achieve it. Quality standards

(09:14):
for vodka are actually a really tricky topic because there
aren't any that are universally recognized. UH. Some countries such
as Poland defined quality by purity, there are other municipalities
that categorize simply by alcohol content, like what percentage of
the resulting spirit is alcohol? Uh. There's also marketing in

(09:34):
the mix playing apart, with some distillers touting the purity
of the water that they use as the ultimate determinant
of quality. We're about to dive in so where all
of this vodka production started, or at least where people
think it started. But first we will take a break
to hear from one of the sponsors that keeps the
show going. While the identity of vodka today is one

(10:03):
of an intoxicant, initially it's believed that it was developed
for medicinal use, but it's exact point of origin is
lost to time and is consequently argued by various countries
wishing to claim ownership of the world's most popular spirit.
Russia and Poland remain locked in their ongoing argument over
the matter. Both using language is evidence. So the Russian

(10:25):
word for water is voda with a V. The Polish
word for water is vota with a W. It's a
very subtle difference. I'm probably not enunciating it in a
way that makes that that difference apparent to native speakers,
but they do sound very similar, uh, particularly to Western ears,
and proponents of the Polish origins of vodka say that

(10:46):
the word vodka with a W spelled the W instead
of a V, appeared in print before vodka with a V,
and thus it must be Polish in origin. There are
some additional elements in this whole Russia versus Poland debate
on where vodka came from. A Polish drink called gor
zolka has existed since the eleventh century, and there have

(11:09):
been some assertions that that's the original proto vodka, but
the counter argument is that the historic drink of gorge
yolka is a more general, undefined alcoholic spirit and not
really anything that can be definitively linked to vodka. Ukraine
also has a claim to vodka's birthplace because that area
produced the most grains in the region in the fifteenth century,

(11:31):
so it would make sense that grain based alcohol originated there,
and there is even the possibility, truly that vodka actually
first entered the region from somewhere else, and that locals
then figured out how to make their own. We know
that vodka as we know it originated somewhere in eastern Europe,
but whether that's in modern Ukraine, Russia, Poland or Belarus,

(11:52):
we don't really know. The whole region is inhospitable to
grapes as a crop, so inventive folks came up with
new ways to make alcohol. All The prevailing theory is
that we have monks to thank for it. This is
true with the number of other alcohols. They needed a
spirit to use as a sedative and disinfectant in the
communities where they worked, and they turned to wheat to

(12:14):
get it. Yeah, so that's why it kind of has
those origins as a medicinal. In the fourteen hundreds, vodka
production became more refined, and it also branched out to
use other grains. Early vodkas were most likely quite sharp,
having a very unpleasant flavor. They weren't doing all of
that refining and filtering that we would do today, so

(12:35):
flavoring started to be added in order to help make
it more palatable. Fruit, honey, and spices came into the picture.
But in making vodka more tasty, distillers helped to shift
it away from simply medicinal use to recreational because then
it started to be yummy, and that shift in identity
to a beverage from a medicine lead to more experimentation

(12:57):
and innovation. Vodka stayed largely in Northern Europe for a while,
but eventually it began to spread. Like other products we've
talked about as shipping and industry group, vodka was able
to travel farther and farther away from its point of origin.
But even so there was still a lot of cool
stuff going on in that sort of cradle where it
first came about. In Poland, in particular, herbal vodkas were

(13:19):
developed to treat all manner of ailments and concerns in
the sixteenth century, and it was also in Poland the
potatoes were first used in fermentation to create vodka, and
Polish distillers continued to drive the exploration of flavorings and
tweaks to distilling methods well into the nineteenth century. But
vodka is often linked with Russia and Russian cultural identity,

(13:41):
and that's due in part how quickly I'm in the
Third of Russia also known as I'm in the Great,
established vodka as a key revenue source in the country.
In fourteen seventy four, he started taxing vodka and set
up a government based monopoly on the beverage, and that
set the stage for his successor, i'm In the Fourth
known as i'm In the Terrible, to continue manipulating the

(14:02):
flow of vodka to suit his own desires. Ivan the
Fourth went so far as to exclude most of his
people from having access to vodka. He set up a
new social class of loyal favorites, and only they could
have vodka, and in this move he redistributed land to
them and also turned his back on the nobility that
had existed before this restructure. He also used vodka to

(14:24):
keep people loyal to him, because cross the czar and
you would lose your drinking privileges. Other Russian leaders similarly
used vodka as a means to reward their favorites and
to intoxicate guests so that they would tell state secrets, and,
in the case of Peter the Great, force enemies to
drink until they collapsed. But it was Catherine the Second,
also known as Katherine the Great, who instituted changes that

(14:46):
once again put vodka in the glasses in the cups
of common people. Under her rule, the vodka monopoly ended,
and more distillers were licensed to produce the spirit The
costs of vodka were also regulated to keep prices reasonable,
but this often led to the dilution of the product
on a part of the producers. Yeah, if the costs

(15:06):
were going to be capped at a pretty low amount,
they were like, well, we're going to stretch our products then. Uh.
This also led to vodka quality being seen as a
shorthand way to identify one's status. So even though they
had taken away the the access through the hierarchy, it's
sort of built itself again in a new way. The
wealthiest households began distilling their own vodkas with an array

(15:28):
of expensive flavorings and spices, and this was to maintain
their distance from peasants in the eyes of guests. Even
the potency of the perfect vodka was scientifically measured by
the Russian scientist Dmitri. Mentally, if you believe that myth
that name sounds familiar, it's because his published work Tentative
System of Elements as the foundation of the periodic Table

(15:51):
of the Elements. But before that, his dissertation A Discourse
on the Combination of Alcohol and Water is said to
have established thirty eight percent alcohol by volume as the
best proportion for vodka. In fact, he was working with
theoreticals and alcohols and much higher concentrations than that. None
of it had anything to do with setting a gold
standard for vodka. His connection to vodka has been mythologized

(16:15):
a lot over the years. It's easy to find assertions
that he invented vodka. Obviously he did not do that,
or that he served on the state's regulatory commission and
was tasked with implementing rules for the perfect vodka. He
did serve on a government weights and measures agency, but
he wasn't given any kind of mandate to codify vodka production.

(16:36):
Just the same. His story, used in various advertisements and
spread throughout the Internet, has added to this perception that
Russia is the epicenter of all things vodka. Yeah. The
trick there is that at least I could not find
an English translation of that dissertation that he wrote, so
it's very easy for people to claim what is in it.

(16:56):
So it really really does spread like wildfire. I'd read
that cirtation, though I would do uh. In the eighteen sixties,
Pyotr A. Smyrnov founded a vodka company in Moscow, which
became the favored source of the spirit for the country's royals,
and it is now one of the most common brands
in the world, and it continues that link between Russia

(17:17):
and vodka in the minds of consumers everywhere. Under the
Bolsheviks in the nineteen teens, alcohol was outlawed. When the
Soviet Union was established in ninety two, mild alcoholic drinks
were once again allowed to be sold, and in vodka
was again legalized at normal proof. When Joseph Stalin gained
power in the nineteen thirties, he had state run distilleries

(17:38):
increased production to generate revenue, even though he knew there
was a real problem with alcoholism in the country. Yeah,
we're going to talk about that again in just a
little while. But though some temperance efforts started after Stalin died,
drinking remained a problem, and it wasn't until the nineteen
eighties under Gorbachev that temperance efforts got a real boost,

(17:59):
and the Fament made a concerted effort to get the
entire country on board. And while the programs that were
initiated during this time did curtail drinking to some degree
and improve overall health statistics of the population, eventually public
sentiment turned against it. Next up, we're going to talk
about how vodka became one of the most popular liquors
in the United States. But first we will have a

(18:21):
quick sponsor break. Uh surprise, the US is the world's
second greatest consumer of vodka after Russia. That may or
may not surprise you. I found it a little surprising.
Vodka didn't really get a serious place in drinking state

(18:43):
side though until after prohibition. Prior to that, there was
just a smattering of mediocre vodka options available, and it
really didn't catch on in any sort of significant way.
In the nineteen thirties, the Russian immigrant named Rudolph Kunnitt,
who had purchased the rights to use the smeared Off name,
started selling better vodka in the United States than had
been available previously. His Connecticut distillery struggled until the end

(19:07):
of that decade when it was purchased on behalf of
Hublind's Liquor Company by John G. Martin. Hublands was absorbed
by a larger company, but Martin had wisely made sure
that he retained the rights to the smear Knoff name. Yeah,
he had been an executive with Hublands and uh he
had had written that in Smartly, where he got some
rights for distribution, but Martin didn't figure out a way

(19:30):
to capitalize on his rights to the smear knof name
until when he and his friend and tavern owner came
up with the combination of ginger beer and vodka with
lemon or lime juice in a copper mug. Uh. This
has its own mythology around it. Where it happened in
l A, which is where his friend's tavern was, versus

(19:50):
it happened in New York, and it only took off
in l A. And that one of them had too
much ginger beer and one of them had too much vodka,
and it was almost a Reese's Cup situation. Uh. And
we don't really know, but he they he is completely recognized,
he and his friend as originating the Moscow mule uh.
And once that drink was born, it finally made drinkers

(20:12):
in the United States embrace vodka, at least until World
War Two. After the war, for a while, vodka became
sort of spirit non grata in the US as the
Cold War began and all things associated with the Soviet
Union reviewed through that lens. It didn't go away completely
and Martin was still concocting other cocktails with vodka, but

(20:32):
it really it kind of had a big spike in
in popularity and then a big drop off. Vodka's reputation
perked up once Sean Connery ordered a vodka martini and
dr No in nineteen sixty two, but then it really
got a boost when President Richard Nixon, after visiting the
Soviet Union, approved business between Pepsicola and the USSR and

(20:53):
exchanged for assistance and setting up a Pepsi factory in
the Soviet Union. The US business was paid in Stolich
nine of vodka, which made the soda giant the stolely
distributor in the US. With the backing of a massive
Kola brand, vodka became the most popular spirit in the
US in nineteen Vodka remains one of the most popular

(21:14):
liquors in the United States and smeared off as the
most popular brand. Yeah. If you look at like year
to year top ten UH spirits in the US, vodka
is almost always in the top two, and usually it
is um smear Koff. It shifts a little bit, but

(21:36):
I think whiskey kind of stays at the top or
has for the last several years anyway. Um, but that's
all funny games. But we have to acknowledge that vodka
has a pretty dark side to its history as well.
There have certainly been plenty of issues that stemmed from
over indulgence in and addiction to alcohol in the world's
ongoing story. For example, in a late nineteenth century Russia

(21:58):
was in the middle of a real crisis of alcoholism.
It was so bad that it threatened the labor pool
and caused outcry from activist groups and churches and medical professionals. Eventually,
Zar Alexander the Third couldn't ignore the problem any longer
and limited the production of vodka, put regulations in place
to mandate quality, and formed a Temperance Society that touted

(22:20):
the idea of drinking in moderation, despite the fact that
the name of the society, which was the Guardianship of
Public Sobriety, might suggest that it would be against the
drink altogether. To be clear, though Alexander the Third himself
was a drinker. Yeah, he was definitely responding to outside pressures.
He was not like, hey, we should cut back on
drinking in the country because he loved to drink. The

(22:42):
state also started a program to boost non alcoholic entertainments
as a means to curtail drinking. Free theater and concerts,
as well as adult education offerings and other leisure incentives
were offered, but none of this really worked at all.
Regulations did not stop illicit liquors sales and the production
of inferior product, and this problem with alcoholism persisted into

(23:05):
the Russo Japanese War and actually cost Russia battles, backing
them into a corner and putting them in a really
weak position for brokering a treaty. Additionally, the Czar's decision
to ban alcohol in an effort to help the troops
stay on task for that conflict meant that a huge
source of tax revenue was lost in the process. And
all of that was before the twentieth century efforts to

(23:27):
sober up the country that we mentioned earlier. In a
study titled Alcohol and Mortality was conducted at the University
of Toronto, and it featured some really grim data. The
authors of the paper, Jurgen rem and Kevin D. Shield,
outline the fact that more than two hundred different diseases
are linked to alcohol, but their research focuses on cancer, liver,

(23:49):
cirrhosis and injury, and their research indicated that in four
of all deaths globally from those diseases were attributable to
alcohol consumption that same year, alcohol consumption resulted in an
average percentage of years lost of four point Those numbers
increased as compared to similar data from This is not

(24:13):
in your outline, but I was reading a thing recently
that was a hypothesis that one of the reasons that
breast cancer rates are lower in Utah is because of
Utah's more stringent alcohol laws. I cannot speak to that
because I have not read it. Yeah, I mean, it's
one of those things, right, we definitely have to kind

(24:33):
of acknowledge that, uh, consuming alcohol comes with inherent danger.
There was a recent study I didn't put it in
my notes either, so I'm quoting it kind of out
of the air that basically, I think it was from
or twenty seventeen that was like, really, the safest way
to consume alcohol is to not consume alcohol, because even

(24:54):
though there are and it's outlined in the RAM paper,
there are some specific health issues that alcohol and moderation
can actually help, but for the most part, like the
dangers are far worse than any of those, So just
things to consider. We're not telling people to go out
and drink a ton of vodka. UM, let's all be

(25:14):
grown ups. Uh. We and we don't want to minimize
also or downplay the issue of over indulgence or addiction. Uh.
But that would be a really downer place to end
this episode. So instead, I thought it might be fun
to close with a few anecdotes and facts about vodka
that are just sort of fascinating on their own. We
mentioned earlier that vodka was probably originally concocted for medicinal use,

(25:37):
but there are still plenty of sort of old wives
remedies that make use of it. Alcohol infused with St.
John's work and sage is believed to have had curative
powers as a liniment. Vodka served with black pepper is
an old Russian cold remedy, and vodka fumes from infused
fabrics are believed by some to cure everything from muscle

(25:57):
aches to ear problems. It's also used as an astringent
cleanser to clean out pours and as a disinfectant for wounds.
It can be used for cleaning surfaces as well as humans,
as a polished for mirrors, chrome tile and the like. Yeah,
it definitely will kill all your stuff. My favorite use
for vodka, which I didn't put in here, but it is.

(26:19):
Here's the trick I give to you that I learned
from working in costume shops forever. If you get cheap,
cheap vodka and you put it in a spritzer bottle, uh,
if you can't make it to a dry cleaner, that
will freshen up your clothes, kill any bacteria that are
causing odor, and help you get through to your next thing. Yeah,
this is why I have in my bathroom under the
sink there are two spray bottles, both clearly marked so

(26:40):
I don't confuse them. One contains peroxide, the other contains vodka. Yeah.
I At one point I was helping out as like
a really low level mouse in a costume shop that
was serving a ballet company and their uh, their costume
director was all was walking around with the bottle of

(27:01):
vodka and spritsing things to make sure that they did
not smell bad, especially if you were doing like a
matinee performance in an evening, and there was no way
to really do serious cleaning between the two in terms
of time, especially when you're trying to prep things for
a full quarter ballet. Uh, A little vodka sprits will
help perk things up and make it not smell bad. Uh.
There's also another little household hand, which is that adding

(27:22):
vodka and sugar to water at the base of Christmas
trees or two vases of flowers is thought to prolong
the life of the plants. I have never tried that
one me neither. Just don't make your don't make your
Christmas tree water accidentally flammable. In the eighteen sixties, the
smear enof distillery added annis and egg whites to combine

(27:43):
with the vodka to make it more delicious. I would
like to disagree. It's smeared off about whether that would
be more delicious. Is it the liquorice or the egg whiteyic?
I love liquorice, so this sounds delightful. You can have
all mine. If you've never had like egg white foam
in an alcoholic drink, and that may sound weird to you,

(28:03):
I encourage you, if you are of legal drinking age,
to try it because it's quite interesting. There's a there's
some good tiki drinks to feature it as well. Uh.
This is another one that I love. In eleven, the
Bullshowy Theater in Moscow, which was originally built in seventeen
seventy six, went through a major spruce up and renovation.
It actually started far before eleven, but that's when it
finished after it had been neglected for several decades. But

(28:27):
when it came to the finishing touches performed by guilders,
they turned to a medieval recipe. It turns out to
make perfect gold guilt, egg whites have to be first
kept in a warm room for forty days, and then
those egg whites are mixed with a clay, and then
the magic ingredient vodka is added to that mixture, which
is then used to apply gold leaf. And according to

(28:49):
Mikhail Sudarov, who works with the company that handled this
refurbishment project, quote, this method keeps gold from being overused
and helps retain its luster for fifty to seventy years. So,
in essence, the same kind of thing that makes baked
bread look shiny and delicious will also make your gold
gleam and gleam in the light. Due to an uptick

(29:11):
in specific diets, there are now vodka's marketed that fit
within various eating restrictions, so any domestically made, non flavored,
grain or potato based vodka in the US is considered kosher.
Some brands made outside the US to use to seek
Kosher certification from the Orthodox Union, including stolach Naya and

(29:32):
Crystal Head, and some vodkas include messaging on the label
about their gluten free status. Yeah, if you have dietary restrictions,
there is probably a company out there making vodka that
wants to make sure you know you can drink whatever
it is they're making. Um. And because I love talking
about art, we're gonna end with innovative Norwegian artist Zebjorn

(29:53):
sand And when Sound was visiting Antarctica and was inspired
to paint using the watercolors that he had brought with him,
ran into a little bit of a problem, which is
his paints were freezing before he could get anything done,
and his Russian guides suggested vodka, and he found success
when he mixed that with his pigments, and he called
the resulting technique vodka color. I love a little innovation.

(30:16):
I feel like vodka is sort of one of those
universal solvent substances because it does get you still medicinally
still for cleaning and a stringent needs and also in
art and also to make things beautiful and guilt edged
with gold fabulous. Okay again, don't overindulge. Please be careful

(30:38):
with your vodka consumption or don't drink at all if
that is the choice that you would rather make. Yeah,
totally fine. Uh whatever works for you and is best
for your health. I feel a little like Steve Rule,
but I'm back up off of that. Thanks so much

(30:59):
for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is
out of the archive, if you heard an email address
or a Facebook U r L or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. Our old house stuff works email address
no longer works, and you can find us all over

(31:20):
social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I
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Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
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visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

(31:42):
listen to your favorite shows.