December 17, 2020 • 47 mins
Humans have been using a form of aspirin for pain relief since at least the Sumerians. But in recent years we’ve come to learn the wonder drug is indeed awe-inspiring, from preventing heart attacks to possibly protecting humans from cancer.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry out there coated in powder. Um,
and this is the stuff you should know, the aspirin edition.
(00:24):
Why don't you pick this one? I've been reading a
giant book on aspirin and yeah, yeah, biography and you know,
behind the scenes, backstage that aspirin, all the ups and downs,
like a behind the music basically. Yeah, I don't remember
why I picked this. I just don't remember, but um,
(00:49):
I did, and I'm going to stand by it. Remember
when aspirin o'deed on itself? Yeah, yeah, June's family. That's
some nasty stuff to od onto, it turns out, I
would think, so. I mean not only the result, but
just the taste. I don't like the taste either. But
haven't you said that you're like a good eas headache
(01:09):
powder dude? Yeah, good eas er BC. I will, um,
you know, that's a lot of aspirin. It's like, you know,
if you will, and we'll get to this. But if
you have like a hard issue, they recommend you take
something like eighty five milligrams and in a good eason
a BC is like eight and fifty Holy cow, is
it really? Yeah? Plus caffeine. It's a it's a big
(01:30):
dose of aspirin plus the sea menafin two. It's it's um,
it's powdered excetern it's what is the same same formula? Well,
they're both different, but yeah, one of them is. I
can't remember which one. I think good eas is powdered, etcetera. Yeah,
I think BC does not have the SA menafin and
just has caffeine and maybe more caffeine. Wow, it's like
(01:51):
the jolt coal of headache powder. But point is, I
don't take that a lot anymore. And h it uh,
I don't mind the taste. I though it grows. There's
a lot of people out, but I don't love it.
And I'm I don't just like let it sit on
my tongue and does allve forever, Like I wash it
down very quickly, right, But I'm not like I got you.
(02:11):
It's just pretty better. You have no problem with the drain.
You're okay, funny guy. So um, we are talking aspirin
today and it is uh kind of tough. I've realized
to overstate the importance of aspirin as far as like
the world's medicine cabinet goes like, there is no other
(02:34):
drug that has been sold more than aspirin in the
history of humanity. Did you know that? Sure? Okay, I
mean you know it's it's it's the go to or
was for many, many, many many years, until other inseids
started making the scene. For you know, decades and decades,
(02:55):
aspirin was sort of the go to for a lot
of stuff. That's true. All right, Let's see if I
and impress you with this. One of the great things
about aspirin is it's synthesized from nature that it's actually
a perfected version of something that you would find in
a number of plants salasilic acid um. But specifically it
(03:16):
was Willow that yielded up her secrets for mankind humankind
to use as a medicine to make things better. Yeah,
I mean, that's a that's a lot of medicines, and
that's uh. You know, Emily has gotten really into herbalism
here in the last few years, and that's kind of
one of her beefs is that the medical inform of
(03:40):
industries have synthesized things and gotten rid of a lot
of the great parts of the plant. Sure she feels
like are of great use to human beings to make
the synthetic versions. Okay, fair enough in this case though
with aspirin, I would argue that it is the improved
version of nature's version. Oh yeah, I think so, and
(04:02):
we'll we'll talk about why. But like I said, it
was the willow plant that people realized pretty far back, chuck. Um.
I believe it was at least as as Um, as
late as the Sumerians. Um who I think there are
clay tablets found that basically said, are your joint sachy,
Try a little willow leaf tea. It'll fix you right up. Yeah,
(04:25):
it was um, you know they I don't think they
had the name for it at the time, but it
was sala Cylene was the ingredient, and you could boil
it down into a tea. Like you said, you could
dry dry it out and powder that bark up and
pound it down and work it through a sieve and
get you know, I guess an early version of goodies,
and you would, I mean everything from the Egyptians. There's
(04:48):
the Ebers Papyrus, which is a kind of a fun
little cookbook textbook, medical journal kind of thing that has
recipes for myrtle and willow leaf tea for joint pa.
Great chili recipe in there too, great chili. Uh, they
too bad. They didn't know about Freedo's back then. But
um and by the way, speaking of Friedo's, Yeah, you know,
(05:12):
there's actually a chapter in our book about freedom tows
on dogs. There is, I know, MoMA is in it.
I think that we don't talk enough about the fun
chapters of our book. There's a lot of like, kind
of heavy stuff, but there's also a chapter about freedom tows, which,
if you don't have a dog, it is it is
the smell of corn chips that a dog's paws can admit. Yeah,
(05:35):
that was kind of one of the more fun chapters.
I think it was a good chapter for sure, because
we talked not just about that, but about not just
about how humans perceived the smell of dogs paws, but
how dogs perceived the world with smell. Different bacteria can
make different smells, and it's pretty It was a good one.
I like that one, although I like our whole book,
to be honest. I finally got it two days ago.
(05:56):
Who ray, what do you think? Well, First of all,
it was very happy about how many they sent. Yeah,
I thought they were gonna send me a couple of books.
They sent me a big old box of books like
they did you. And it was just really great to
hold in my hand. And and it's it's it's awesome.
It looks great, it's the size we wanted, it looks
it looks like a real book. It is. It's a
(06:19):
legit book, like, which is weird, real book? I know.
Did they put your name on the box? No, your
name was on my box? Is that right? They put
my name on my box too. They just said, what
do you mean? It just said the book titled Then
by Josh Clark. Yeah, yeah that's what it said. I
think they just didn't print the whole thing. Okay. Well,
I like my idea that they were going to personalize
(06:41):
each of our box nice touch flat. This just sounds
like lazy box printing. But I got you okay. Well, yeah,
I wasn't like trying to rub it in thinking that
they would have personalized your box too. But you're like,
I'm going to save that box, but whatever. Yeah, actually,
can you send me your box? Okay, I'll send you
(07:02):
the box with a big old load of poop in it. Yeah,
there's like a foothole where where it used to see
Josh Clark. Uh. So anyway, you can pre order that
book stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. But back to aspirin Um. This book was
I don't even know where I was talking about. Oh,
people like plenty of the Elder and Hippocrates had written
(07:25):
about aspirin, or it wasn't aspirin yet, but sell us Eileen.
As you know, basically early on it was all about
reducing fever and reducing joint like arthritis, joint pain inflammation.
And it's still really good for that too. Aspirin it
turns out as a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug and
insid um and it like people realize that it was useful,
(07:50):
like you said, for for joint inflammation, for a fever reduction,
which makes it an anti pyretic um, which I think
is a great word um. And we knew about this
for centuries and apparently Europe introduced to China for once
rather than vice versa. But then it just kind of
fell away, It fell to the wayside um kind of
(08:10):
out of human knowledge, although like it was still there
just nobody was thinking about willow any longer until malaria
became a big thing. When UM the Age of Discovery
began and Europeans started to uh colonize other parts of
the world, including South America, malaria became a bit of
a problem UM. And one of the remedies for malaria
(08:33):
we figured out was sin chona sinchona, right. I always
said chinchona, but I think it is cinchona. I always
say chinchona too, but I'm looking right at it, and
I don't see that first age unless it's a weird
pronunciation thing. I think I've probably just been saying it wrong. Okay,
well let's let's say sin chona. Then we'll pronounce it
(08:54):
correctly for once in our lives. And that's a different
kind of tree whose bark works really well to treat malaria,
and not just treat malaria, but also reduced fevers as well. Um.
But the problem is is getting it from South America
can be very very expensive, or it certainly was in
the UM sixteen, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So it caused
(09:16):
this one guy European um doctor I believe, or at
least a researcher named Reverend Edward Stone to look for
an alternative for it, and he came upon willow. He
rediscovered willow again for the treatment of fevers in inflammation.
And by the way, I think we mispronounced is it shinchona?
(09:38):
I just know it's neither. That's so us. I just
looked up real quick. It says it's sun chona. Okay,
I like that one. It almost sounds like it almost
sounds like Quimby saying chowder. It's so weird, So sun shona. Yeah.
Edward Stone goes looking for an alternative, and he starts
(09:58):
looking at the willow bark in its properties and does
a pretty decent study for back then UH in seventeen
sixty three and found that a four hour administration of
willow bark powder um would reduce fever pretty consistently. And
like I said, it was a good study for back
then UM. There were some other Europeans who were also
extracting um, the active ingredient, from willow, and it was
(10:22):
kind of happening all around the same time. I think
it guy named LaRue did the best job of it
in the early eight and what they got was the
substance salacene, right, So um. That's basically the they isolated
the active ingredient in willow bark, and not just willow
(10:44):
bark um salacene or salacelic acid, which probably sounds familiar
um if you've ever used some sort of skincare treatment,
say to combat acne, because it actually goes in and
dissolves the stuff in your pores, so it comes in
handy like that. UM. When they when they isolated it,
they they found out that oh, actually this this pops
(11:06):
up elsewhere in nature. It's actually UM a kind of
hormone that plants use for their own immune response. And
you can find it and everything from willow or myrtle
or meadow sweet to jasmine peas clover. It pops up
very It's a pretty common plant hormone. And it was
isolated finally in the early nineteenth century. Yeah, and there
were a couple of other kind of important uh side
(11:30):
roads on the way to aspirin. That happened one in
eighteen fifty three when a French chemist name Gerhardt, he
invented aspirin by accident, but he wasn't very refined in
how he did it. It was not a very good quality,
was pretty impure. Not very effective, so it was not
paid very much attention to, but we have to mention him.
(11:53):
And then in the eighteens, fifties and sixties, some German
chemists figured out how to produce it synthetically. They learned
the chemical structure of salicylate, which is just kind of
crazy to think that they could do stuff like that
back then. Um, that they were that advanced and learning
chemical structures of something like that, I was impressed by that.
(12:15):
But yeah, and they figured out how to produce it synthetically,
made it very much available, very inexpensive, and that was
all of a sudden. It was a very popular fever
reducer and pain reliever, despite its side effects, which are
mainly stomach problems and tenatus. Yes, but the thing is
(12:35):
is with that um, with especially tenitis and nausea like,
it can be really bad if you take too much.
It's temporary, but it can be a real problem. And
over time they also found out that it can produce
long term chronic effects because it's so hard on your
(12:57):
stomach because again, you're using the same sub sense um
that you used to clean out the ports, does all
the stuff in your and your pores that has a
big effect on your stomach, and in fact, we would
find later on that it erodes your gastric mucosa, your
stomach lining, and that can produce all sorts of problems
on its own. In the short term, it makes you
(13:17):
want to just throw up and die if you take
too much aspirin. And that's what we figured out with
salasilic acid. And that was the point of aspirin, was
to figure out how to create how to take this
really useful, important drug that had been known for millennia
by this time, and make it so it was it
didn't have any of these unpleasant side effects. And that's
(13:38):
where aspirin came from. Yeah, so maybe we can take
a break and come back and talk about very sort
of legendary company out of Germany called Buyer right after this.
(14:12):
All right, if you heard me say Buyer and you're thinking, dude,
it's bear aspirin. What are you German? No, I'm not German,
but that's how you pronounced it over there, It's Buyer.
We pronounced a bear over here. They were originally a
die making company, but like so many other companies involved
in chemistry, um, they could pivot very easily and you
(14:37):
start discovering things when you're working in chemistry that might
make you more money, and that was sort of the
case with Buyer, and they set up a pharmaceutical wing
and said, hey, you know, we're discovering these other things
and you can make a ton of money in pharmaceuticals.
And this is just sort of at the beginning of that.
They had no idea what they were onto, but they
started a pharmaceutical wing and said, one of our first
(15:00):
things we want to try and do is to create
a version of salasylate that doesn't have all these nasty
side effects. Yeah, and there's a there's a long standing
story in the chemistry community UM that a guy named
Felix Hoffman, a German chemist who worked for bear Um,
was trying to figure out a way to make salasilic
(15:24):
acid UH more easy on his father's stomach. His father
had rheumatism um, which is a chronic inflammation of the joints,
and he had to take salasilic acid a lot. So
Felix Hoffman was trying to figure out how to help
his dad out when he stumbled upon the recipe that
or what would become the recipe for aspirin that's right, So, uh,
(15:46):
all of this lad to one of the most popular
drugs in the history of the world. Um, there is
some debate. Like with everything like this, it seems like
sometimes it's hard to tell who exactly has given credit
because history is written by the victors, and um, in
this case, well, there's a there's three men. There's a
fourth dude named Carl Duisberg, who is included as being
(16:09):
a big person in the development because he was a
marketer and his marketing skills were a big, big reason
why aspirin was so successful. But a lot of people
point to Felix Hoffman as the quote unquote inventor of
aspirin because on August ten, in his notebook entry, he
described adding UH ascetic and hydrate and hydride to UH
(16:35):
salasylate and created aspirin. I'm gonna say it if you
won't say it. It's it's called aspirin. A setle silic man,
a setle salacilic acid. Yeah, it's it's kind of fun
to say. It has like a setle seal a salic acid.
It's the ascid that you love. But Chuck calls it
(16:57):
aspirin because it's easier and he can call it that
legally because Aspurn's our proprietary epin m as we'll see
in that. Wow, that was something. Should we leave that in? Sure?
All right? I think that's our gift to the listeners.
That's some end of the year's aningus right there. That
(17:18):
means our our brains are entering the December mush phase. Yeah, boy,
is it. I'm looking forward to that break. I New
York can't wait. Yeah, everyone, I think we've said this before.
We take a few weeks off at the end of
the year, and it's just do not have to research
stuff for three weeks? Is really nice? You guys don't
notice because we make sure we record extra episodes in advance,
(17:41):
but we actually do. We we bulk up the kitty
as we say. That's right, So, um, just just real
quick to put a button in this. Felix Hoffman is
is um said to be the guy who created this
a guy named Arthur Ike and Gruen said later on
he actually wrote a letter to Bear from a concentration
camp during the Nazi um the Third Reich, because he
(18:05):
was Jewish, and he said, I was the one who
came up with this um, but my my records were
expunged by the Nazis. Other people are like, I'm not
sure if that's true or not. And a guy named
Heinrich Dresser, he said, it doesn't matter if it's true,
because I rediscovered this stuff. I told both of these
guys not to mess with this. They did anyway. I
took their research published, it didn't give them credit, and
(18:28):
now I am the one officially who is listed as
the inventor of asperin, even though it was really Felix
Hoffman and possibly Arthur Ike and Gruen who did Yeah,
And I guess you could do that if there isn't
any patents being filed. You could literally just sort of
publish something and steal someone's work. Yeah, which is I
don't know, it's kind of weird to think about, but
(18:49):
I guess the law was the law. But they did
file patents, and I mean Bear realized pretty quickly. This
is at the same time they were coming out with
heroin too, so Bear had to really big hits, like
right right with from what I read, within a couple
of weeks of each other, and Felix Hoffman was central
to both of them. But with aspirin, they were like,
this is kind of a big deal. Everybody loves salasilic
(19:12):
acid and the effects that it has, but they hate
the side effects and we just got rid of them.
So they patented it, and they came up with the
name aspirin. So the A is a nod to the
ascetic and hydride the acetal part. The spur is a
reference to the botanical names Spiria old Maria, which is
(19:32):
the name for meadows sweet. Another source of um salasilic acid, right, yeah,
so that would be Asperia. And then they added the
I N at the end because that was just sort
of one of the naming conventions for medicines, just like
we have cane like cocaine and cylin for antibiotics, they
would add an I N. So Aspoia became aspirin. Yeah.
(19:56):
So if you picked up the box and you're like,
asper what is the So you get to the end
and see the I N and be like, oh, it's
a medicine, that's right. So Germany patents this in the
nineteen hundred in the United States. After patenting it in
Germany and everywhere they could they would try and get
a patent and it's been sort of an interesting story
(20:19):
since then because after World War One, Uh, and this
is I didn't even know this kind of stuff happened.
But um, Germany had to surrender their patents two countries
that had defeated them, and one of them was Aspirin,
so they couldn't prevent competitors all over the world from
making their own version. They did retain the trademark in
a few different countries. But that is, like you said earlier,
(20:42):
that is why you won't see aspirin or you don't
have to listpit list bit list it with a capital A,
because it is it's just one of those what do
you call it, proprietary epinem Yes, I love those. Yeah,
those are great. Yeah, you don't have to list it,
you don't have to say aspens correct. But um, some
historians actually make the case, Chuck, that World War Two
(21:04):
happened because Germany was treated so harshly after World War
One that it led to such traconian um basically revenge
on Germany and the German people, that it allowed a
guy like Hitler to rise as this populist and gain control.
So yeah, I didn't know about the patents either, But
(21:26):
that kind of jibes and dovetails with that whole view.
It's like give us all your art and patents, right,
what else you can ask for? Land? Sure, I guess,
but that's sure. And they did do that. Remember the
the uh, the Nazi gold episode. We didn't so Um.
(21:47):
There's another side story to all this that came out
of World War One as well, um, and that there
was an embargo on phenol um by England. England said, hey,
we make a lot of feene all over here. It's
an active ingredient and a lot of stuff including aspirin,
but not just aspirin explosives to which is one big
(22:07):
reason why we want to keep a lid on this thing.
And we're going to make sure that Germany doesn't get
any And there wasn't anything official in the United States
banning anyone from selling to fhen Aal the Germany, but
it was definitely looked like as you were aiding people
who were at the very least the enemy of our enemy,
if not our enemy yet because we had an inner
(22:28):
World War One yet. Um. But that didn't stop Thomas
Edison from selling Feenal to the Germans during World War One?
Did it? No? He was Germany was looking at a
losing one of their most profitable drugs and said all right,
we're gonna send a spy over there, uh to secretly
buy fhenal from Thomas Edison because he's guy loves to
(22:49):
blow stuff up. He's allows you with it. And I
think that was just exposed when one of the conspirators
accidentally left his briefcase on the train, and it was
a real black eye on not only Baia but Edison
as well. Yeah, and I mean like a lot of
people are like, oh wow, you know they were they
were trying to keep the Germans from having aspirin during
(23:11):
World War One again he could use phenal to create
T and T and other explosives. So that seems to
be the reason why, which makes Thomas Edison, he actually
created the phenal himself and then selling it to the
Germans all the more shady, you know, totally. So it
was definitely a blemish on on Edison for sure. Um.
(23:32):
And he eventually stopped selling it to them and then
donated the rest of the U. S. Army, I believe. Right,
So Bayer is selling a lot of aspirin as a
powder at first, um kind of like you know what
we were talking about earlier, But they figured out that
people and this is kind of how most a lot
of medicaments were powders at this point. And I think
(23:53):
aspirin from Bayer was one of the first ones to
be made into a tablet, and they said, hey, if
we can compress this stuff to a little tube, uh people,
it won't make people like wretch with disgust from how
bitter it is. You can just pop it into your mouth,
wash it down with some uh, with some liquor or
(24:13):
absent or something, some schnops peach peach knops and um,
and people will take it more readily or at least
not want to not take it. And it really really
worked and that really popularized the use of tablets kind
of from that point on. Yeah, not just with aspirin,
but with all medicines. Introduced the public to it, and
Bear was actually with their aspirin. They were also I
(24:35):
think we talked about this in the U Tile and
All Poisoning episodes that they were the ones who introduced
the cotton ball to pill bottles and they didn't to
keep the aspirin from breaking because they were worried that
somebody would take a broken tablet and it would be
too little of a dose. Or they would take a
bunch of broken tablets and it would be too much
of a dose, so they put the cotton in there
(24:56):
to keep them from breaking. And with the advent of
gel caps and coated cap soles and all that stuff,
there's never been a need for the cotton ball any longer.
But we've all gotten so used to it, we um
would we would be suspicious of opening a bottle of
pills without it, even though it's totally unnecessary. Now, I
love that little cotton ball. That's a great, great, great um.
It's at least one of the better um cotton ball
(25:19):
facts out there. Well. I like anything that can be repurposed,
like a twist six on a loaf of bread that
ties that up. Or you know, you gotta use that
cotton ball. You got a great like you don't do you?
You don't stick it back in your pill bottle, do you?
Or do you? Yes? Okay, I actually go to the
trouble of taking it out out and then putting it
(25:41):
back in like a total schmuck. That's right. I try
to use those things. What I do is that is
rapid toothpick with this cotton, and I use that as
a ear swab. That's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah,
the toothpick that came with uh what what comes with
the toothpick? I guess from the from the pig in
the blanket or something when you went and use the
(26:03):
bathroom for free at a show, niece, but refused to
eat there as I still have all these things left
over from being a a kid from the lower middle class.
You know, like it feels weird to throw away a
twist six or or those rubber bands that come around asparagus. Yeah, yeah,
who throws that stuff away? No, buddy, you got to
use that stuff, no sensible human being. I don't know
(26:25):
about using the cotton from a pill bottles a q
tip with a toothpick. It's actually very dangerous, chuck, But
I like the spirit behind it, you know what I mean? Yeah,
you should not do that because a qute tip or
a toothpick is way too stabby to be putting into
your ear. Yeah, for sure. And you should be using
those ear swabs anyway, right from what I understand. And
(26:46):
one more fact when we're cotton based fact, remember qute
tips were originally called baby gaze. Oh that's right, yea
little baby gaze what was that from the ear wax episode?
Maybe or ear candling? Maybe maybe I can't remember. Don't
do it. Don't ear candle everyone, no, at least got
that shirt now. Friends don't let friends ear candle? Right,
(27:07):
teenage ear candle in, don't do it. So buyer is
selling a ton of aspirin. They've always sold a ton
of aspirin. I think the most recent stat that ED
was able to dig up was from about nine years
ago in Um, where worldwide there was about forty thou
tons of aspirin produced, and in the US Americans were
(27:28):
taking ten billion aspirin tablets a year. Billion aspirin In
nineteen fifty UM it was the world's most purchased drug,
according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I also
read that in Argentina, in part because they have a
change shortage, like a legit one going on there. Um.
One of the things you might get is change at
(27:49):
the grocery store, gas station or whatever, is a couple
of tabs of aspirin. Oh nice, sure, if you makes sense?
Why not? Apparently they love their aspirin there for so.
Aspirin is one of those drugs where, for many, many,
many decades, they had no idea how it worked. It
(28:10):
was prescribed a lot. It eventually made its way too
over the counter in the nineteen twenties. It was one
of these things where they knew it worked because they
they did tons and tons of studies where like, this
stuff is really effective and it's the side effects aren't terrible.
As long as you're not using a ton of it,
it's pretty safe. But it's really complex when you try
(28:31):
and figure out how exactly chemically any drug works in
the human body, because of what happens when it gets
in your body. It's just it's it's really hard even
still to pinpoint the exact path something takes. When it's
a lot easier to say, well, hey, who cares, We've
got a thousand studies that show it works. Who cares
what chemical processes it work. Yeah, we just know that
(28:52):
it does work and in this way, and we also
know from all these studies that it has this side
effect and it might affect this group more or in
this way than other groups. UM. Apparently aspirin has the
largest chemical database of any compound anywhere. UM. I don't
know if that's true or not. I read it in
the Croatian brand profile of aspirin um. But it's a
(29:15):
great knock your socks off kind of fact if you
ask me. Yeah. But they they eventually did learn, didn't they. Um,
they definitely did learn that it does work. Um, and
exactly how I guess. Yeah, that is kind of one
of those rare examples of how we did figure it out,
isn't it. I think so? In the late sixties and
(29:37):
early seventies. Uh, And they were using building off the
work of Harry Collier, John Vanen, Priscilla piper Um, they
figured out that the there was a substance in the body.
It's weird. They kind of figured it out in a
roundabout way because they figured out what the substance was
that actually causes inflammation then in the body, which is uh,
(30:00):
the release of prostaglandin. And they figured out that insets
actually stopped this from happening, and aspirin is an inset,
like we said, And so in a roundabout way they
ended up figuring out how it worked. Yeah. Um. And
so prostaglandings are like a whole class of hormones that
are produced at the site of like an injury or
(30:20):
an illness to help your immune response like inflammation, pain,
all sorts of stuff that basically says like this needs
to be taken care of and the we need to
get some some immune response here as fast as possible.
And so aspirin blocks prostag landings from being released UM
by enzymes called cyclo oxygen AISE which kind of kick
(30:45):
off the production of prostag landings. And they figured this outly,
So this is how it works. This is how the
um anti inflammatory process works. And it's kind of a
It was a big enough deal that John Vayne received
the Nobel Prize for in two for medicine. Yeah, and
they also figured out and this is kind of key
with aspirin. Uh, not only does it um does that
(31:07):
enzyme inhibit that release, but it kind of can do
it permanently, which is what separates aspirin from uh, what's
what's the one? The other one, the big famous one,
Uh Adville Advill. Yes, I'm blanking because I never take
any of that stuff. Really, I'm an Adville guy. I
try not to take it because I don't want my
kidneys to blow up inside of my body. But um,
(31:31):
like when will you take it? Like headaches? Basically it's
a headache if my headache is bad enough, I will
I will take an advil. It's pretty rare that I
actually do, but um, yeah, I mean that's what that's
that's my go to because the other stuff doesn't work,
like Thailand all doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't do
anything for me. It's weird. You get headaches like regular
Uh no, it's pretty pretty infrequent. I have to say
(31:53):
I have been like the last couple of weeks. Um,
But yeah, I probably have more advil the last couple
of weeks, and I have in the last couple of years,
and they run up to the election. That's pretty funny. Yeah.
I don't never get headaches. I mean the the rare
hangover headache. But I don't get just like regular headaches
for no reason. Uh yeah, no, I normally don't either.
(32:14):
So what do you take? You take? Wait we established
this BC right, Yeah, and that's again just for hangover cures.
I hate that that's the only time I use that stuff,
but because I don't want to come across as a drunk.
But it's the rare, the rare hangover remedy. Got Okay, Yeah,
I think that's what most people use that stuff for.
It too Yeah, it's it's the caffeine and there it
(32:35):
really gives you a little boost. Sure, but you know,
all you gotta do when you get into it when
you're approaching fifty isn't learn when to stop drinking, right.
But the problem is, as you're approaching fifty, it takes
like one drink to get a hangover. Oh no, really,
sure that doesn't happen to you know, I'm good, okay
ki um. So there was one other thing that happened
(32:56):
to when when people were studying aspirin, like so like
the this is the point so many people are taking
aspirin that an average doctor conduct like basically a straw
pole or some sort of study on his patients or
her patients um to to investigate the effects of aspirin.
That's exactly what happened with one doctor and I believe
(33:17):
the fifties named Lawrence Craven, who basically said, I've noticed
that there's some sort of weird connection between more blood
loss um and ton selectomies that I'm performing on my patients.
It seems like the people who take aspirin regularly bleed more.
And he figured out that aspirin is a blood thinner
(33:38):
from this, Yes, and uh, I guess let's take a break. Now.
It's gonna say to save something for a surprise. But
that was the surprise. But we'll talk more about that
right after this. All right, So we've spoiled the big surprise,
(34:18):
which we Josh spoiled the big surprise, which is the
value of aspirin um more and more over the years
has been especially once other insects came on the scene
and took a lot of the market share has been
less fever reducer, less pain reliever, and more anticoagulant and more. Hey,
(34:39):
this can really help you out if you have potential
heart condition. Yeah, because they've figured out there's another prost
to land and throw on boxing A two that forms
platelets in the blood. Like if you have a cut
or something like that and your blood eventually clots. You
can thank through on boxing A two for forming that
(35:00):
the plate lists are joining the plate lists together UM
and aspirin specifically keeps that from happening. And like you said,
the other in SAIDs don't do that. It's just aspirin.
And from that discovery, aspirin was saved from probably obscurity. Yeah,
there was a point in the I think the seventies, eighties, nineties,
maybe even where aspirin didn't even make the list of
(35:22):
top ten over the counter pain relievers. It had fallen
so far out of favor. Yeah, it was like, that's
your parents pain reliever. It's not cool. That was not hip.
Aspirin was going the way of the dodo and then
they discovered this anti coagulant, uh sort of, I mean
not a side effect. I guess it just became a
(35:42):
a cross use or something, and then it became the
main use. And there are a few different reasons why
you might take something like um, it's usually like a
baby aspirin, but it sort of depends. But um, it's
always very low dose, but primary prevention if you've if
you've never had a stroke, you've never had out a
heart attack, but you may be at risk for something
(36:02):
like that. Your doctor might say you want to get
on a daily baby aspirin. Not always because the benefits
are somewhat uncertain, and there you know, there are other
risks like again, it thins the blood, so if you
if you get cut or something, you're gonna bleed a
lot more. And they don't exactly know why. But it affects.
It helps prevent heart attacks better for men, strokes better
(36:25):
for women. It is very weird, but that all falls
into the banner of of of preventative aspirin taking. Yeah,
and because it can cause bleeding and it can also
cause potentially gastro intestinal bleeding from messing with your stomach
so bad even a low dose, but a chronic low dose.
Um that they say, unless you have a high risk,
(36:47):
you probably don't want to start that regiment every day.
So um, basically, don't start taking aspirin without talking to
your doctor first. Like that's definitely one of those caveats
that you want to you want to say too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Secondary prevention is the next one. Uh, if you have
actually had a vascular event, if you've had a stroke
(37:07):
or a heart attack, then you will probably almost assuredly
be prescribed to take that daily low dose aspirin because
it is statistically significant, um that they have found there
are large, large reductions in subsequent heart attacks and strokes
if you've already had one and then you start that
low dose and that nuts. Yeah, it's amazing. Um. Like
(37:29):
they they there was a study in the estimated I
think it was a British study that was published in
the British Medical journal UM that aspirin probably saves a
hundred thousand lives a year. I guess the back in
the mid nineties at least just from that secondary prevention.
It's amazing. And then there's a cute vascular events e g.
(37:50):
You're having a heart attack or a stroke right now,
they say go take an aspirin, at least one aspirin,
maybe two, and it will actually possibly saved your life. Yeah.
I mean they've done study after study and it has
significant increase in survival rates. So chuck. There's some other
weird stuff that they're like, we don't really know how
(38:12):
this works. It's just typical aspirin stuff. We just know
that it works. UM. That are starting to become like
a pretty substantial body of medical literature about other benefits
that aspirin provides, not the least of which is it
seems to prevent some forms of cancer. Yeah, cancer is
a big one. Uh. It might slow or even prevent
(38:35):
dementira on set um. They've shown there's there's some evidence
that it reduces mortality for women that are high risk
for preclampsia, which is a sort of a high blood
pressure thing that happens to pregnant women. UM. So yeah,
they're just now. And like you said that, there's been
more studies about aspirin like any other medicine, and they
(38:58):
haven't stopped because they're still discovering things like this. Yeah.
They so with specific kinds of cancer. It seems like
colorectal cancer is the one that that people benefit from
the most, at least as far as we know right now.
There's one study that found a thirty eight percent decrease.
This is a fourteen thousand person population study. Um or Yeah,
(39:19):
population sample. Thirty eight percent reduction in the chances of
getting colorectal cancer if you took a daily aspirin regimen.
It's amazing. Uh. It's not all great though, like we said,
they're they're the regular side effects like the bleeding and
the stomach issues and potentially stomach bleeding. Uh. They've also
(39:40):
found that it suppresses immune response, and they don't fully
get that, um, but they do think that. I think
it's the low dose aspirin over Uh. I think the
lo dos aspirin is not hindering the ammune response. It's
really just the higher doses. But they figured out, well,
actually we can use this unlike graft operations or organ transplants.
(40:03):
You can give somebody aspirin and it will keep help
keep the body from rejecting it. Yeah, that pretty amazing. Historically,
they have sort of looked back now and said, I
think all this heavy aspirin use might have heard us
in the past with things like the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic,
the mortality rate could have increased because they were just
(40:23):
like shoveling aspirin down those their throats. Yeah. What else,
There's a couple of other things. Um Again, there's that
g I bleedings that they found that, um, if you
already have a blood clotting disorder, you probably don't want
to take aspirin. And I read somewhere that um Restputant
actually gained favor from the Romanovs from saving one of
(40:46):
the romanovs kids lives who had hemophilia by saying like
they needed to stop using any kind of modern medicine,
which included aspirin, which probably saved the kid's life because
it kept it from being UM kept the blood from
thinning of in a kid that already had hemophilia, And
they thought reciput and was a magical healer for that. Uh.
(41:09):
And then another thing we should mention in the eighties
and nineties, they discovered that giving aspirin to kids really
increase their chances of something called race syndrome or race
syndrome R E y E, which causes brain swelling, brain damage,
very often least to death. And there were This was
a big discovery and a lot of guidelines UM went
(41:30):
in place where they all of a sudden, like kids
using aspirin went down by which at the time was
along with the increase of other insects, really really put
a hurt and on aspirin's market share. Yeah. No, they
found that if you cut the use of aspirin UM,
the rates of race syndrome and kids went down. I
was like, yeah, so they were like stop using get
(41:53):
stopped giving your kids aspirin. Yeah, basically, And it was
already like you're saying, I mean the ends other end
sets they cut into their market shore and that one
almost killed aspirin. It was just that the heart protectiveness
that brought it back. Yeah. Another thing that almost killed
aspirin and buyer was UM. After World War One, they
were bought out by IG Farben and um if you
(42:17):
know anything about I G Farb in that company, they
manufactured zyclon b, very scary stuff. Um, but bear survived
all that. The dissolution of I G Farben eventually happened
and they were able to kind of just say, hey,
that wasn't us. We weren't doing that. We're the good
old fashioned aspirin and heroin people, right exactly. So um,
(42:37):
over the years they figured out like, Okay, there's still
problems with aspirin that we we could stand to still
keep going, Like the whole G I bleeding thing seems
to be a problem. So they've come with different formulations
and h ed who helps us with this? One turned
up that there was at least one mentioned that they
tried to chocolate coating of aspirin, which sounds delicious, but
(42:59):
he couldn't find any other place that had that. No,
but they did make the just easier to swallow and
less bitter coded versions they did. And let's not forget
buffer and remember buffering. What was buffering, even buffering was
an aspirin with a UM and UH and acid attached
to it, and that's that was It kept your your
(43:21):
stomach from getting upset, and apparently Bear also came up
with a version that had a coating so strong it
survives your stomach and and it dissolves in the gut
where it's needed. Where it's it's absorbed, you just poop it.
Eyeah's totally useless. It's called bear useless aspirin. It's called corn.
(43:43):
All right, that's how they coded. Dude, Uh, you got
anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well, since Chuck
said he's got nothing else and I said I got
nothing else, and we're just both presuming that Jerry's got
nothing else, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is
from Alex Ramos about the Bay of Pigs movie. And
(44:06):
by the way, uh, we should issue a quick correction.
I had one too, but I know that you very
much misspoke when you said Roberto Clemente was dishonorably discharged.
Oh thank you. Yes, that was just a mouth error.
We knew that it was honorable, and I didn't catch
it at the time either. So thanks for those h
(44:26):
for yends pittsburgh Ians who wrote in yes, and then
there was one I did oh, I think, Oh yeah,
rabbits aren't rodents. I got that. But rodents are rabbits? Right? What? Alright?
Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania. I love your show. Guys.
Started listening in a couple of years ago to East
of Pain and Monotony of scraping off old wallpaper in
(44:47):
the house my wife and I had just bought and
have been a devoted listener ever since. Listening to Bay
of Pigs right now. I haven't finished yet, so I
may be jumping the gun. You're not, but you were
musing about making a movie one day about the Bay
of Pigs opera ration. I want to let you know
that they're sort of is. There's a Coleman Francis movie
called Red Zone, Cuba that is partially about the Bay
(45:07):
of Pigs operation and also, for some reason, about a
tungsten mine with hidden treasure. It's a real snooze fest,
plotting and confusing, which is why it was picked up
by Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day.
It's a film for derision. I may have actually watched
it then. If that's the case, I don't remember it.
Though I don't remember that one either say in their
(45:27):
commentary is great, makes it watchable? I love the show.
Keep it up. Also and the off chance you read
this on the air, wouldn't mind you plugging my artwork?
Of course, Alex will plug your artwork. I'm a self
taught painter, mostly painting realistic still life pieces and acrylic
and my work can be found at Alex dot Ramos
Studio dot com. That is our a m O S.
(45:50):
Very nice, nice plug, Chuck, that was beautiful. It's good.
We don't plug stuff a lot, but we love we
love artists, and people are out there trying to scrape
by here in this weird time and I'm not seeing
it right now. When I just clicked it, though, I
think I clicked them the wrong ding. Okay, God, did
you just fall for a phishing scam? I don't think so.
(46:12):
I think I just went to Ramos Studio and x
Alex dot Ramis Studios. Yeah, we're going with Ramos there either,
Famous Ramos Is Alex from now on. UM, Well, if
you want to send us a confusing email or at
(46:33):
least confusing with a confusing U r L. We love
those because Chuck loves to try him on air and
then hilarity ensues. You can wrap it up, spank it
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my
(46:54):
heart radiovisit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry out there coated in powder. Um,
and this is the stuff you should know, the aspirin edition.
(00:24):
Why don't you pick this one? I've been reading a
giant book on aspirin and yeah, yeah, biography and you know,
behind the scenes, backstage that aspirin, all the ups and downs,
like a behind the music basically. Yeah, I don't remember
why I picked this. I just don't remember, but um,
(00:49):
I did, and I'm going to stand by it. Remember
when aspirin o'deed on itself? Yeah, yeah, June's family. That's
some nasty stuff to od onto, it turns out, I
would think, so. I mean not only the result, but
just the taste. I don't like the taste either. But
haven't you said that you're like a good eas headache
(01:09):
powder dude? Yeah, good eas er BC. I will, um,
you know, that's a lot of aspirin. It's like, you know,
if you will, and we'll get to this. But if
you have like a hard issue, they recommend you take
something like eighty five milligrams and in a good eason
a BC is like eight and fifty Holy cow, is
it really? Yeah? Plus caffeine. It's a it's a big
(01:30):
dose of aspirin plus the sea menafin two. It's it's um,
it's powdered excetern it's what is the same same formula? Well,
they're both different, but yeah, one of them is. I
can't remember which one. I think good eas is powdered, etcetera. Yeah,
I think BC does not have the SA menafin and
just has caffeine and maybe more caffeine. Wow, it's like
(01:51):
the jolt coal of headache powder. But point is, I
don't take that a lot anymore. And h it uh,
I don't mind the taste. I though it grows. There's
a lot of people out, but I don't love it.
And I'm I don't just like let it sit on
my tongue and does allve forever, Like I wash it
down very quickly, right, But I'm not like I got you.
(02:11):
It's just pretty better. You have no problem with the drain.
You're okay, funny guy. So um, we are talking aspirin
today and it is uh kind of tough. I've realized
to overstate the importance of aspirin as far as like
the world's medicine cabinet goes like, there is no other
(02:34):
drug that has been sold more than aspirin in the
history of humanity. Did you know that? Sure? Okay, I
mean you know it's it's it's the go to or
was for many, many, many many years, until other inseids
started making the scene. For you know, decades and decades,
(02:55):
aspirin was sort of the go to for a lot
of stuff. That's true. All right, Let's see if I
and impress you with this. One of the great things
about aspirin is it's synthesized from nature that it's actually
a perfected version of something that you would find in
a number of plants salasilic acid um. But specifically it
(03:16):
was Willow that yielded up her secrets for mankind humankind
to use as a medicine to make things better. Yeah,
I mean, that's a that's a lot of medicines, and
that's uh. You know, Emily has gotten really into herbalism
here in the last few years, and that's kind of
one of her beefs is that the medical inform of
(03:40):
industries have synthesized things and gotten rid of a lot
of the great parts of the plant. Sure she feels
like are of great use to human beings to make
the synthetic versions. Okay, fair enough in this case though
with aspirin, I would argue that it is the improved
version of nature's version. Oh yeah, I think so, and
(04:02):
we'll we'll talk about why. But like I said, it
was the willow plant that people realized pretty far back, chuck. Um.
I believe it was at least as as Um, as
late as the Sumerians. Um who I think there are
clay tablets found that basically said, are your joint sachy,
Try a little willow leaf tea. It'll fix you right up. Yeah,
(04:25):
it was um, you know they I don't think they
had the name for it at the time, but it
was sala Cylene was the ingredient, and you could boil
it down into a tea. Like you said, you could
dry dry it out and powder that bark up and
pound it down and work it through a sieve and
get you know, I guess an early version of goodies,
and you would, I mean everything from the Egyptians. There's
(04:48):
the Ebers Papyrus, which is a kind of a fun
little cookbook textbook, medical journal kind of thing that has
recipes for myrtle and willow leaf tea for joint pa.
Great chili recipe in there too, great chili. Uh, they
too bad. They didn't know about Freedo's back then. But
um and by the way, speaking of Friedo's, Yeah, you know,
(05:12):
there's actually a chapter in our book about freedom tows
on dogs. There is, I know, MoMA is in it.
I think that we don't talk enough about the fun
chapters of our book. There's a lot of like, kind
of heavy stuff, but there's also a chapter about freedom tows, which,
if you don't have a dog, it is it is
the smell of corn chips that a dog's paws can admit. Yeah,
(05:35):
that was kind of one of the more fun chapters.
I think it was a good chapter for sure, because
we talked not just about that, but about not just
about how humans perceived the smell of dogs paws, but
how dogs perceived the world with smell. Different bacteria can
make different smells, and it's pretty It was a good one.
I like that one, although I like our whole book,
to be honest. I finally got it two days ago.
(05:56):
Who ray, what do you think? Well, First of all,
it was very happy about how many they sent. Yeah,
I thought they were gonna send me a couple of books.
They sent me a big old box of books like
they did you. And it was just really great to
hold in my hand. And and it's it's it's awesome.
It looks great, it's the size we wanted, it looks
it looks like a real book. It is. It's a
(06:19):
legit book, like, which is weird, real book? I know.
Did they put your name on the box? No, your
name was on my box? Is that right? They put
my name on my box too. They just said, what
do you mean? It just said the book titled Then
by Josh Clark. Yeah, yeah that's what it said. I
think they just didn't print the whole thing. Okay. Well,
I like my idea that they were going to personalize
(06:41):
each of our box nice touch flat. This just sounds
like lazy box printing. But I got you okay. Well, yeah,
I wasn't like trying to rub it in thinking that
they would have personalized your box too. But you're like,
I'm going to save that box, but whatever. Yeah, actually,
can you send me your box? Okay, I'll send you
(07:02):
the box with a big old load of poop in it. Yeah,
there's like a foothole where where it used to see
Josh Clark. Uh. So anyway, you can pre order that
book stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. But back to aspirin Um. This book was
I don't even know where I was talking about. Oh,
people like plenty of the Elder and Hippocrates had written
(07:25):
about aspirin, or it wasn't aspirin yet, but sell us Eileen.
As you know, basically early on it was all about
reducing fever and reducing joint like arthritis, joint pain inflammation.
And it's still really good for that too. Aspirin it
turns out as a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug and
insid um and it like people realize that it was useful,
(07:50):
like you said, for for joint inflammation, for a fever reduction,
which makes it an anti pyretic um, which I think
is a great word um. And we knew about this
for centuries and apparently Europe introduced to China for once
rather than vice versa. But then it just kind of
fell away, It fell to the wayside um kind of
(08:10):
out of human knowledge, although like it was still there
just nobody was thinking about willow any longer until malaria
became a big thing. When UM the Age of Discovery
began and Europeans started to uh colonize other parts of
the world, including South America, malaria became a bit of
a problem UM. And one of the remedies for malaria
(08:33):
we figured out was sin chona sinchona, right. I always
said chinchona, but I think it is cinchona. I always
say chinchona too, but I'm looking right at it, and
I don't see that first age unless it's a weird
pronunciation thing. I think I've probably just been saying it wrong. Okay,
well let's let's say sin chona. Then we'll pronounce it
(08:54):
correctly for once in our lives. And that's a different
kind of tree whose bark works really well to treat malaria,
and not just treat malaria, but also reduced fevers as well. Um.
But the problem is is getting it from South America
can be very very expensive, or it certainly was in
the UM sixteen, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So it caused
(09:16):
this one guy European um doctor I believe, or at
least a researcher named Reverend Edward Stone to look for
an alternative for it, and he came upon willow. He
rediscovered willow again for the treatment of fevers in inflammation.
And by the way, I think we mispronounced is it shinchona?
(09:38):
I just know it's neither. That's so us. I just
looked up real quick. It says it's sun chona. Okay,
I like that one. It almost sounds like it almost
sounds like Quimby saying chowder. It's so weird, So sun shona. Yeah.
Edward Stone goes looking for an alternative, and he starts
(09:58):
looking at the willow bark in its properties and does
a pretty decent study for back then UH in seventeen
sixty three and found that a four hour administration of
willow bark powder um would reduce fever pretty consistently. And
like I said, it was a good study for back
then UM. There were some other Europeans who were also
extracting um, the active ingredient, from willow, and it was
(10:22):
kind of happening all around the same time. I think
it guy named LaRue did the best job of it
in the early eight and what they got was the
substance salacene, right, So um. That's basically the they isolated
the active ingredient in willow bark, and not just willow
(10:44):
bark um salacene or salacelic acid, which probably sounds familiar
um if you've ever used some sort of skincare treatment,
say to combat acne, because it actually goes in and
dissolves the stuff in your pores, so it comes in
handy like that. UM. When they when they isolated it,
they they found out that oh, actually this this pops
(11:06):
up elsewhere in nature. It's actually UM a kind of
hormone that plants use for their own immune response. And
you can find it and everything from willow or myrtle
or meadow sweet to jasmine peas clover. It pops up
very It's a pretty common plant hormone. And it was
isolated finally in the early nineteenth century. Yeah, and there
were a couple of other kind of important uh side
(11:30):
roads on the way to aspirin. That happened one in
eighteen fifty three when a French chemist name Gerhardt, he
invented aspirin by accident, but he wasn't very refined in
how he did it. It was not a very good quality,
was pretty impure. Not very effective, so it was not
paid very much attention to, but we have to mention him.
(11:53):
And then in the eighteens, fifties and sixties, some German
chemists figured out how to produce it synthetically. They learned
the chemical structure of salicylate, which is just kind of
crazy to think that they could do stuff like that
back then. Um, that they were that advanced and learning
chemical structures of something like that, I was impressed by that.
(12:15):
But yeah, and they figured out how to produce it synthetically,
made it very much available, very inexpensive, and that was
all of a sudden. It was a very popular fever
reducer and pain reliever, despite its side effects, which are
mainly stomach problems and tenatus. Yes, but the thing is
(12:35):
is with that um, with especially tenitis and nausea like,
it can be really bad if you take too much.
It's temporary, but it can be a real problem. And
over time they also found out that it can produce
long term chronic effects because it's so hard on your
(12:57):
stomach because again, you're using the same sub sense um
that you used to clean out the ports, does all
the stuff in your and your pores that has a
big effect on your stomach, and in fact, we would
find later on that it erodes your gastric mucosa, your
stomach lining, and that can produce all sorts of problems
on its own. In the short term, it makes you
(13:17):
want to just throw up and die if you take
too much aspirin. And that's what we figured out with
salasilic acid. And that was the point of aspirin, was
to figure out how to create how to take this
really useful, important drug that had been known for millennia
by this time, and make it so it was it
didn't have any of these unpleasant side effects. And that's
(13:38):
where aspirin came from. Yeah, so maybe we can take
a break and come back and talk about very sort
of legendary company out of Germany called Buyer right after this.
(14:12):
All right, if you heard me say Buyer and you're thinking, dude,
it's bear aspirin. What are you German? No, I'm not German,
but that's how you pronounced it over there, It's Buyer.
We pronounced a bear over here. They were originally a
die making company, but like so many other companies involved
in chemistry, um, they could pivot very easily and you
(14:37):
start discovering things when you're working in chemistry that might
make you more money, and that was sort of the
case with Buyer, and they set up a pharmaceutical wing
and said, hey, you know, we're discovering these other things
and you can make a ton of money in pharmaceuticals.
And this is just sort of at the beginning of that.
They had no idea what they were onto, but they
started a pharmaceutical wing and said, one of our first
(15:00):
things we want to try and do is to create
a version of salasylate that doesn't have all these nasty
side effects. Yeah, and there's a there's a long standing
story in the chemistry community UM that a guy named
Felix Hoffman, a German chemist who worked for bear Um,
was trying to figure out a way to make salasilic
(15:24):
acid UH more easy on his father's stomach. His father
had rheumatism um, which is a chronic inflammation of the joints,
and he had to take salasilic acid a lot. So
Felix Hoffman was trying to figure out how to help
his dad out when he stumbled upon the recipe that
or what would become the recipe for aspirin that's right, So, uh,
(15:46):
all of this lad to one of the most popular
drugs in the history of the world. Um, there is
some debate. Like with everything like this, it seems like
sometimes it's hard to tell who exactly has given credit
because history is written by the victors, and um, in
this case, well, there's a there's three men. There's a
fourth dude named Carl Duisberg, who is included as being
(16:09):
a big person in the development because he was a
marketer and his marketing skills were a big, big reason
why aspirin was so successful. But a lot of people
point to Felix Hoffman as the quote unquote inventor of
aspirin because on August ten, in his notebook entry, he
described adding UH ascetic and hydrate and hydride to UH
(16:35):
salasylate and created aspirin. I'm gonna say it if you
won't say it. It's it's called aspirin. A setle silic man,
a setle salacilic acid. Yeah, it's it's kind of fun
to say. It has like a setle seal a salic acid.
It's the ascid that you love. But Chuck calls it
(16:57):
aspirin because it's easier and he can call it that
legally because Aspurn's our proprietary epin m as we'll see
in that. Wow, that was something. Should we leave that in? Sure?
All right? I think that's our gift to the listeners.
That's some end of the year's aningus right there. That
(17:18):
means our our brains are entering the December mush phase. Yeah, boy,
is it. I'm looking forward to that break. I New
York can't wait. Yeah, everyone, I think we've said this before.
We take a few weeks off at the end of
the year, and it's just do not have to research
stuff for three weeks? Is really nice? You guys don't
notice because we make sure we record extra episodes in advance,
(17:41):
but we actually do. We we bulk up the kitty
as we say. That's right, So, um, just just real
quick to put a button in this. Felix Hoffman is
is um said to be the guy who created this
a guy named Arthur Ike and Gruen said later on
he actually wrote a letter to Bear from a concentration
camp during the Nazi um the Third Reich, because he
(18:05):
was Jewish, and he said, I was the one who
came up with this um, but my my records were
expunged by the Nazis. Other people are like, I'm not
sure if that's true or not. And a guy named
Heinrich Dresser, he said, it doesn't matter if it's true,
because I rediscovered this stuff. I told both of these
guys not to mess with this. They did anyway. I
took their research published, it didn't give them credit, and
(18:28):
now I am the one officially who is listed as
the inventor of asperin, even though it was really Felix
Hoffman and possibly Arthur Ike and Gruen who did Yeah,
And I guess you could do that if there isn't
any patents being filed. You could literally just sort of
publish something and steal someone's work. Yeah, which is I
don't know, it's kind of weird to think about, but
(18:49):
I guess the law was the law. But they did
file patents, and I mean Bear realized pretty quickly. This
is at the same time they were coming out with
heroin too, so Bear had to really big hits, like
right right with from what I read, within a couple
of weeks of each other, and Felix Hoffman was central
to both of them. But with aspirin, they were like,
this is kind of a big deal. Everybody loves salasilic
(19:12):
acid and the effects that it has, but they hate
the side effects and we just got rid of them.
So they patented it, and they came up with the
name aspirin. So the A is a nod to the
ascetic and hydride the acetal part. The spur is a
reference to the botanical names Spiria old Maria, which is
(19:32):
the name for meadows sweet. Another source of um salasilic acid, right, yeah,
so that would be Asperia. And then they added the
I N at the end because that was just sort
of one of the naming conventions for medicines, just like
we have cane like cocaine and cylin for antibiotics, they
would add an I N. So Aspoia became aspirin. Yeah.
(19:56):
So if you picked up the box and you're like,
asper what is the So you get to the end
and see the I N and be like, oh, it's
a medicine, that's right. So Germany patents this in the
nineteen hundred in the United States. After patenting it in
Germany and everywhere they could they would try and get
a patent and it's been sort of an interesting story
(20:19):
since then because after World War One, Uh, and this
is I didn't even know this kind of stuff happened.
But um, Germany had to surrender their patents two countries
that had defeated them, and one of them was Aspirin,
so they couldn't prevent competitors all over the world from
making their own version. They did retain the trademark in
a few different countries. But that is, like you said earlier,
(20:42):
that is why you won't see aspirin or you don't
have to listpit list bit list it with a capital A,
because it is it's just one of those what do
you call it, proprietary epinem Yes, I love those. Yeah,
those are great. Yeah, you don't have to list it,
you don't have to say aspens correct. But um, some
historians actually make the case, Chuck, that World War Two
(21:04):
happened because Germany was treated so harshly after World War
One that it led to such traconian um basically revenge
on Germany and the German people, that it allowed a
guy like Hitler to rise as this populist and gain control.
So yeah, I didn't know about the patents either, But
(21:26):
that kind of jibes and dovetails with that whole view.
It's like give us all your art and patents, right,
what else you can ask for? Land? Sure, I guess,
but that's sure. And they did do that. Remember the
the uh, the Nazi gold episode. We didn't so Um.
(21:47):
There's another side story to all this that came out
of World War One as well, um, and that there
was an embargo on phenol um by England. England said, hey,
we make a lot of feene all over here. It's
an active ingredient and a lot of stuff including aspirin,
but not just aspirin explosives to which is one big
(22:07):
reason why we want to keep a lid on this thing.
And we're going to make sure that Germany doesn't get
any And there wasn't anything official in the United States
banning anyone from selling to fhen Aal the Germany, but
it was definitely looked like as you were aiding people
who were at the very least the enemy of our enemy,
if not our enemy yet because we had an inner
(22:28):
World War One yet. Um. But that didn't stop Thomas
Edison from selling Feenal to the Germans during World War One?
Did it? No? He was Germany was looking at a
losing one of their most profitable drugs and said all right,
we're gonna send a spy over there, uh to secretly
buy fhenal from Thomas Edison because he's guy loves to
(22:49):
blow stuff up. He's allows you with it. And I
think that was just exposed when one of the conspirators
accidentally left his briefcase on the train, and it was
a real black eye on not only Baia but Edison
as well. Yeah, and I mean like a lot of
people are like, oh wow, you know they were they
were trying to keep the Germans from having aspirin during
(23:11):
World War One again he could use phenal to create
T and T and other explosives. So that seems to
be the reason why, which makes Thomas Edison, he actually
created the phenal himself and then selling it to the
Germans all the more shady, you know, totally. So it
was definitely a blemish on on Edison for sure. Um.
(23:32):
And he eventually stopped selling it to them and then
donated the rest of the U. S. Army, I believe. Right,
So Bayer is selling a lot of aspirin as a
powder at first, um kind of like you know what
we were talking about earlier, But they figured out that
people and this is kind of how most a lot
of medicaments were powders at this point. And I think
(23:53):
aspirin from Bayer was one of the first ones to
be made into a tablet, and they said, hey, if
we can compress this stuff to a little tube, uh people,
it won't make people like wretch with disgust from how
bitter it is. You can just pop it into your mouth,
wash it down with some uh, with some liquor or
(24:13):
absent or something, some schnops peach peach knops and um,
and people will take it more readily or at least
not want to not take it. And it really really
worked and that really popularized the use of tablets kind
of from that point on. Yeah, not just with aspirin,
but with all medicines. Introduced the public to it, and
Bear was actually with their aspirin. They were also I
(24:35):
think we talked about this in the U Tile and
All Poisoning episodes that they were the ones who introduced
the cotton ball to pill bottles and they didn't to
keep the aspirin from breaking because they were worried that
somebody would take a broken tablet and it would be
too little of a dose. Or they would take a
bunch of broken tablets and it would be too much
of a dose, so they put the cotton in there
(24:56):
to keep them from breaking. And with the advent of
gel caps and coated cap soles and all that stuff,
there's never been a need for the cotton ball any longer.
But we've all gotten so used to it, we um
would we would be suspicious of opening a bottle of
pills without it, even though it's totally unnecessary. Now, I
love that little cotton ball. That's a great, great, great um.
It's at least one of the better um cotton ball
(25:19):
facts out there. Well. I like anything that can be repurposed,
like a twist six on a loaf of bread that
ties that up. Or you know, you gotta use that
cotton ball. You got a great like you don't do you?
You don't stick it back in your pill bottle, do you?
Or do you? Yes? Okay, I actually go to the
trouble of taking it out out and then putting it
(25:41):
back in like a total schmuck. That's right. I try
to use those things. What I do is that is
rapid toothpick with this cotton, and I use that as
a ear swab. That's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah,
the toothpick that came with uh what what comes with
the toothpick? I guess from the from the pig in
the blanket or something when you went and use the
(26:03):
bathroom for free at a show, niece, but refused to
eat there as I still have all these things left
over from being a a kid from the lower middle class.
You know, like it feels weird to throw away a
twist six or or those rubber bands that come around asparagus. Yeah, yeah,
who throws that stuff away? No, buddy, you got to
use that stuff, no sensible human being. I don't know
(26:25):
about using the cotton from a pill bottles a q
tip with a toothpick. It's actually very dangerous, chuck, But
I like the spirit behind it, you know what I mean? Yeah,
you should not do that because a qute tip or
a toothpick is way too stabby to be putting into
your ear. Yeah, for sure. And you should be using
those ear swabs anyway, right from what I understand. And
(26:46):
one more fact when we're cotton based fact, remember qute
tips were originally called baby gaze. Oh that's right, yea
little baby gaze what was that from the ear wax episode?
Maybe or ear candling? Maybe maybe I can't remember. Don't
do it. Don't ear candle everyone, no, at least got
that shirt now. Friends don't let friends ear candle? Right,
(27:07):
teenage ear candle in, don't do it. So buyer is
selling a ton of aspirin. They've always sold a ton
of aspirin. I think the most recent stat that ED
was able to dig up was from about nine years
ago in Um, where worldwide there was about forty thou
tons of aspirin produced, and in the US Americans were
(27:28):
taking ten billion aspirin tablets a year. Billion aspirin In
nineteen fifty UM it was the world's most purchased drug,
according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I also
read that in Argentina, in part because they have a
change shortage, like a legit one going on there. Um.
One of the things you might get is change at
(27:49):
the grocery store, gas station or whatever, is a couple
of tabs of aspirin. Oh nice, sure, if you makes sense?
Why not? Apparently they love their aspirin there for so.
Aspirin is one of those drugs where, for many, many,
many decades, they had no idea how it worked. It
(28:10):
was prescribed a lot. It eventually made its way too
over the counter in the nineteen twenties. It was one
of these things where they knew it worked because they
they did tons and tons of studies where like, this
stuff is really effective and it's the side effects aren't terrible.
As long as you're not using a ton of it,
it's pretty safe. But it's really complex when you try
(28:31):
and figure out how exactly chemically any drug works in
the human body, because of what happens when it gets
in your body. It's just it's it's really hard even
still to pinpoint the exact path something takes. When it's
a lot easier to say, well, hey, who cares, We've
got a thousand studies that show it works. Who cares
what chemical processes it work. Yeah, we just know that
(28:52):
it does work and in this way, and we also
know from all these studies that it has this side
effect and it might affect this group more or in
this way than other groups. UM. Apparently aspirin has the
largest chemical database of any compound anywhere. UM. I don't
know if that's true or not. I read it in
the Croatian brand profile of aspirin um. But it's a
(29:15):
great knock your socks off kind of fact if you
ask me. Yeah. But they they eventually did learn, didn't they. Um,
they definitely did learn that it does work. Um, and
exactly how I guess. Yeah, that is kind of one
of those rare examples of how we did figure it out,
isn't it. I think so? In the late sixties and
(29:37):
early seventies. Uh, And they were using building off the
work of Harry Collier, John Vanen, Priscilla piper Um, they
figured out that the there was a substance in the body.
It's weird. They kind of figured it out in a
roundabout way because they figured out what the substance was
that actually causes inflammation then in the body, which is uh,
(30:00):
the release of prostaglandin. And they figured out that insets
actually stopped this from happening, and aspirin is an inset,
like we said, And so in a roundabout way they
ended up figuring out how it worked. Yeah. Um. And
so prostaglandings are like a whole class of hormones that
are produced at the site of like an injury or
(30:20):
an illness to help your immune response like inflammation, pain,
all sorts of stuff that basically says like this needs
to be taken care of and the we need to
get some some immune response here as fast as possible.
And so aspirin blocks prostag landings from being released UM
by enzymes called cyclo oxygen AISE which kind of kick
(30:45):
off the production of prostag landings. And they figured this outly,
So this is how it works. This is how the
um anti inflammatory process works. And it's kind of a
It was a big enough deal that John Vayne received
the Nobel Prize for in two for medicine. Yeah, and
they also figured out and this is kind of key
with aspirin. Uh, not only does it um does that
(31:07):
enzyme inhibit that release, but it kind of can do
it permanently, which is what separates aspirin from uh, what's
what's the one? The other one, the big famous one,
Uh Adville Advill. Yes, I'm blanking because I never take
any of that stuff. Really, I'm an Adville guy. I
try not to take it because I don't want my
kidneys to blow up inside of my body. But um,
(31:31):
like when will you take it? Like headaches? Basically it's
a headache if my headache is bad enough, I will
I will take an advil. It's pretty rare that I
actually do, but um, yeah, I mean that's what that's
that's my go to because the other stuff doesn't work,
like Thailand all doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't do
anything for me. It's weird. You get headaches like regular
Uh no, it's pretty pretty infrequent. I have to say
(31:53):
I have been like the last couple of weeks. Um,
But yeah, I probably have more advil the last couple
of weeks, and I have in the last couple of years,
and they run up to the election. That's pretty funny. Yeah.
I don't never get headaches. I mean the the rare
hangover headache. But I don't get just like regular headaches
for no reason. Uh yeah, no, I normally don't either.
(32:14):
So what do you take? You take? Wait we established
this BC right, Yeah, and that's again just for hangover cures.
I hate that that's the only time I use that stuff,
but because I don't want to come across as a drunk.
But it's the rare, the rare hangover remedy. Got Okay, Yeah,
I think that's what most people use that stuff for.
It too Yeah, it's it's the caffeine and there it
(32:35):
really gives you a little boost. Sure, but you know,
all you gotta do when you get into it when
you're approaching fifty isn't learn when to stop drinking, right.
But the problem is, as you're approaching fifty, it takes
like one drink to get a hangover. Oh no, really,
sure that doesn't happen to you know, I'm good, okay
ki um. So there was one other thing that happened
(32:56):
to when when people were studying aspirin, like so like
the this is the point so many people are taking
aspirin that an average doctor conduct like basically a straw
pole or some sort of study on his patients or
her patients um to to investigate the effects of aspirin.
That's exactly what happened with one doctor and I believe
(33:17):
the fifties named Lawrence Craven, who basically said, I've noticed
that there's some sort of weird connection between more blood
loss um and ton selectomies that I'm performing on my patients.
It seems like the people who take aspirin regularly bleed more.
And he figured out that aspirin is a blood thinner
(33:38):
from this, Yes, and uh, I guess let's take a break. Now.
It's gonna say to save something for a surprise. But
that was the surprise. But we'll talk more about that
right after this. All right, So we've spoiled the big surprise,
(34:18):
which we Josh spoiled the big surprise, which is the
value of aspirin um more and more over the years
has been especially once other insects came on the scene
and took a lot of the market share has been
less fever reducer, less pain reliever, and more anticoagulant and more. Hey,
(34:39):
this can really help you out if you have potential
heart condition. Yeah, because they've figured out there's another prost
to land and throw on boxing A two that forms
platelets in the blood. Like if you have a cut
or something like that and your blood eventually clots. You
can thank through on boxing A two for forming that
(35:00):
the plate lists are joining the plate lists together UM
and aspirin specifically keeps that from happening. And like you said,
the other in SAIDs don't do that. It's just aspirin.
And from that discovery, aspirin was saved from probably obscurity. Yeah,
there was a point in the I think the seventies, eighties, nineties,
maybe even where aspirin didn't even make the list of
(35:22):
top ten over the counter pain relievers. It had fallen
so far out of favor. Yeah, it was like, that's
your parents pain reliever. It's not cool. That was not hip.
Aspirin was going the way of the dodo and then
they discovered this anti coagulant, uh sort of, I mean
not a side effect. I guess it just became a
(35:42):
a cross use or something, and then it became the
main use. And there are a few different reasons why
you might take something like um, it's usually like a
baby aspirin, but it sort of depends. But um, it's
always very low dose, but primary prevention if you've if
you've never had a stroke, you've never had out a
heart attack, but you may be at risk for something
(36:02):
like that. Your doctor might say you want to get
on a daily baby aspirin. Not always because the benefits
are somewhat uncertain, and there you know, there are other
risks like again, it thins the blood, so if you
if you get cut or something, you're gonna bleed a
lot more. And they don't exactly know why. But it affects.
It helps prevent heart attacks better for men, strokes better
(36:25):
for women. It is very weird, but that all falls
into the banner of of of preventative aspirin taking. Yeah,
and because it can cause bleeding and it can also
cause potentially gastro intestinal bleeding from messing with your stomach
so bad even a low dose, but a chronic low dose.
Um that they say, unless you have a high risk,
(36:47):
you probably don't want to start that regiment every day.
So um, basically, don't start taking aspirin without talking to
your doctor first. Like that's definitely one of those caveats
that you want to you want to say too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Secondary prevention is the next one. Uh, if you have
actually had a vascular event, if you've had a stroke
(37:07):
or a heart attack, then you will probably almost assuredly
be prescribed to take that daily low dose aspirin because
it is statistically significant, um that they have found there
are large, large reductions in subsequent heart attacks and strokes
if you've already had one and then you start that
low dose and that nuts. Yeah, it's amazing. Um. Like
(37:29):
they they there was a study in the estimated I
think it was a British study that was published in
the British Medical journal UM that aspirin probably saves a
hundred thousand lives a year. I guess the back in
the mid nineties at least just from that secondary prevention.
It's amazing. And then there's a cute vascular events e g.
(37:50):
You're having a heart attack or a stroke right now,
they say go take an aspirin, at least one aspirin,
maybe two, and it will actually possibly saved your life. Yeah.
I mean they've done study after study and it has
significant increase in survival rates. So chuck. There's some other
weird stuff that they're like, we don't really know how
(38:12):
this works. It's just typical aspirin stuff. We just know
that it works. UM. That are starting to become like
a pretty substantial body of medical literature about other benefits
that aspirin provides, not the least of which is it
seems to prevent some forms of cancer. Yeah, cancer is
a big one. Uh. It might slow or even prevent
(38:35):
dementira on set um. They've shown there's there's some evidence
that it reduces mortality for women that are high risk
for preclampsia, which is a sort of a high blood
pressure thing that happens to pregnant women. UM. So yeah,
they're just now. And like you said that, there's been
more studies about aspirin like any other medicine, and they
(38:58):
haven't stopped because they're still discovering things like this. Yeah.
They so with specific kinds of cancer. It seems like
colorectal cancer is the one that that people benefit from
the most, at least as far as we know right now.
There's one study that found a thirty eight percent decrease.
This is a fourteen thousand person population study. Um or Yeah,
(39:19):
population sample. Thirty eight percent reduction in the chances of
getting colorectal cancer if you took a daily aspirin regimen.
It's amazing. Uh. It's not all great though, like we said,
they're they're the regular side effects like the bleeding and
the stomach issues and potentially stomach bleeding. Uh. They've also
(39:40):
found that it suppresses immune response, and they don't fully
get that, um, but they do think that. I think
it's the low dose aspirin over Uh. I think the
lo dos aspirin is not hindering the ammune response. It's
really just the higher doses. But they figured out, well,
actually we can use this unlike graft operations or organ transplants.
(40:03):
You can give somebody aspirin and it will keep help
keep the body from rejecting it. Yeah, that pretty amazing. Historically,
they have sort of looked back now and said, I
think all this heavy aspirin use might have heard us
in the past with things like the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic,
the mortality rate could have increased because they were just
(40:23):
like shoveling aspirin down those their throats. Yeah. What else,
There's a couple of other things. Um Again, there's that
g I bleedings that they found that, um, if you
already have a blood clotting disorder, you probably don't want
to take aspirin. And I read somewhere that um Restputant
actually gained favor from the Romanovs from saving one of
(40:46):
the romanovs kids lives who had hemophilia by saying like
they needed to stop using any kind of modern medicine,
which included aspirin, which probably saved the kid's life because
it kept it from being UM kept the blood from
thinning of in a kid that already had hemophilia, And
they thought reciput and was a magical healer for that. Uh.
(41:09):
And then another thing we should mention in the eighties
and nineties, they discovered that giving aspirin to kids really
increase their chances of something called race syndrome or race
syndrome R E y E, which causes brain swelling, brain damage,
very often least to death. And there were This was
a big discovery and a lot of guidelines UM went
(41:30):
in place where they all of a sudden, like kids
using aspirin went down by which at the time was
along with the increase of other insects, really really put
a hurt and on aspirin's market share. Yeah. No, they
found that if you cut the use of aspirin UM,
the rates of race syndrome and kids went down. I
was like, yeah, so they were like stop using get
(41:53):
stopped giving your kids aspirin. Yeah, basically, And it was
already like you're saying, I mean the ends other end
sets they cut into their market shore and that one
almost killed aspirin. It was just that the heart protectiveness
that brought it back. Yeah. Another thing that almost killed
aspirin and buyer was UM. After World War One, they
were bought out by IG Farben and um if you
(42:17):
know anything about I G Farb in that company, they
manufactured zyclon b, very scary stuff. Um, but bear survived
all that. The dissolution of I G Farben eventually happened
and they were able to kind of just say, hey,
that wasn't us. We weren't doing that. We're the good
old fashioned aspirin and heroin people, right exactly. So um,
(42:37):
over the years they figured out like, Okay, there's still
problems with aspirin that we we could stand to still
keep going, Like the whole G I bleeding thing seems
to be a problem. So they've come with different formulations
and h ed who helps us with this? One turned
up that there was at least one mentioned that they
tried to chocolate coating of aspirin, which sounds delicious, but
(42:59):
he couldn't find any other place that had that. No,
but they did make the just easier to swallow and
less bitter coded versions they did. And let's not forget
buffer and remember buffering. What was buffering, even buffering was
an aspirin with a UM and UH and acid attached
to it, and that's that was It kept your your
(43:21):
stomach from getting upset, and apparently Bear also came up
with a version that had a coating so strong it
survives your stomach and and it dissolves in the gut
where it's needed. Where it's it's absorbed, you just poop it.
Eyeah's totally useless. It's called bear useless aspirin. It's called corn.
(43:43):
All right, that's how they coded. Dude, Uh, you got
anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well, since Chuck
said he's got nothing else and I said I got
nothing else, and we're just both presuming that Jerry's got
nothing else, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is
from Alex Ramos about the Bay of Pigs movie. And
(44:06):
by the way, uh, we should issue a quick correction.
I had one too, but I know that you very
much misspoke when you said Roberto Clemente was dishonorably discharged.
Oh thank you. Yes, that was just a mouth error.
We knew that it was honorable, and I didn't catch
it at the time either. So thanks for those h
(44:26):
for yends pittsburgh Ians who wrote in yes, and then
there was one I did oh, I think, Oh yeah,
rabbits aren't rodents. I got that. But rodents are rabbits? Right? What? Alright?
Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania. I love your show. Guys.
Started listening in a couple of years ago to East
of Pain and Monotony of scraping off old wallpaper in
(44:47):
the house my wife and I had just bought and
have been a devoted listener ever since. Listening to Bay
of Pigs right now. I haven't finished yet, so I
may be jumping the gun. You're not, but you were
musing about making a movie one day about the Bay
of Pigs opera ration. I want to let you know
that they're sort of is. There's a Coleman Francis movie
called Red Zone, Cuba that is partially about the Bay
(45:07):
of Pigs operation and also, for some reason, about a
tungsten mine with hidden treasure. It's a real snooze fest,
plotting and confusing, which is why it was picked up
by Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day.
It's a film for derision. I may have actually watched
it then. If that's the case, I don't remember it.
Though I don't remember that one either say in their
(45:27):
commentary is great, makes it watchable? I love the show.
Keep it up. Also and the off chance you read
this on the air, wouldn't mind you plugging my artwork?
Of course, Alex will plug your artwork. I'm a self
taught painter, mostly painting realistic still life pieces and acrylic
and my work can be found at Alex dot Ramos
Studio dot com. That is our a m O S.
(45:50):
Very nice, nice plug, Chuck, that was beautiful. It's good.
We don't plug stuff a lot, but we love we
love artists, and people are out there trying to scrape
by here in this weird time and I'm not seeing
it right now. When I just clicked it, though, I
think I clicked them the wrong ding. Okay, God, did
you just fall for a phishing scam? I don't think so.
(46:12):
I think I just went to Ramos Studio and x
Alex dot Ramis Studios. Yeah, we're going with Ramos there either,
Famous Ramos Is Alex from now on. UM, Well, if
you want to send us a confusing email or at
(46:33):
least confusing with a confusing U r L. We love
those because Chuck loves to try him on air and
then hilarity ensues. You can wrap it up, spank it
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my
(46:54):
heart radiovisit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.