January 12, 2021 • 35 mins
Criminalia hosts Holly Frey and Maria Trimarchi continue their conversation with "The Poisoner's Handbook" author and Pulitzer Prize recipient Deborah Blum.
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 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. M Hello, and welcome to Criminalia. Well,
we've been exploring the lives and motivations of some of
the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Maria Tremarket
and I'm Holly Fry. And as part of our wrap
(00:21):
up to this season of Poison, we invited award winning
journalist and poison expert Deborah Blum to chat with us,
which she very kindly did. As we mentioned in our
intro to the last episode, Deborah is the author of
the New York Times notable book The Poison Spot, as
well as the New York Times bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook.
So there was no other guests that we could think
(00:43):
of having. She had to begin. Yeah, the the absolute
perfect one. And this is part two of our chat
with Deborah. So if you missed part one, be sure
to give that a listen. And now let's jump right
back into our fun discussion with Deborah Blum all about poison. Okay,
so I'm gonna take us back to Arsenic for a minute.
And you've said before that Arsenic is your favorite poison.
(01:06):
As it turns out, it may be my favorite poison
as well after our first season of Griminalia. But I
was wondering if you would share why you prefer it
to something like strychnine. Perhaps, I mean, arsenic is still
my favorite poison. Yeah. The reason when I say that
people think I sound creepy, I don't understand it because
(01:26):
it's really really a cool poison. I don't find you
creepy when you say it at all. You're at the
right audience here. I've been having such a good time guys.
Our slicks a naturally occurring element, and uh it's about
the thirty third most common element in the Earth's crust.
(01:48):
So and we started making use of it really early
as a poison. Well, I mean one of the things
that's really it's got so many interesting layers, and the
things I like about it are both it's wonderful versatility,
is a homicidal poison, but also the fact that it's
really dangerous. Uh as at the park pavilion level. Now,
(02:12):
there's almost no other poison that you know kind of
sand bags you on two different levels the way Arsenic
is because there's an old famous saying in medicine that
the dose makes the poison, but with arsenic, in fact,
that's not entirely true. So it's really fascinating. Elemental arsenic.
It loves to bond with other atoms and and and
(02:36):
when it bonds with carbon and becomes like something like
an arsenic sugar, it's not particularly dangerous to us. UM.
And in fact, we eat a lot of arsenic sugars,
like our seno bin team which comes up, which is
in fish, because there's a lot of arsenic and ocean water,
and we just cabitalize that a way. They actually just
(02:57):
follow up on that for a minute. There was a
really interesting study in which they were looking at whether
pregnant women we're eating enough fish as part of a
healthy diet because people were avoiding fish because of mercury,
speaking of poisons UM, and they were able to tell
that these women had cut out fish because there was
no sentimenting in there. You're in right, it just wasn't there.
(03:20):
And so we know that we're exposed to these organic
arsenic compounds all the time, and they were big nothing um.
But inorganic arsenic, which you know in chemistry means without
carbon is all um is really dangerous and the worst
form of it for us is m arsenic trioxide, which
if you think about what that means, it just means
(03:40):
one atom of arsenic with three I mean, yeah, one
atom of arsenic three of oxygen arsenic three oxygen's trioxide,
and arsenic crioxide is in fact the poison that was
called the inheritance powder in the nineteen century. And if
you go and you look at the labels of pharmaceutical
bottles for that them that time, that's what you see
(04:01):
our snic trioxide. And we just cannot handle that at all.
It gets into your cells, It disrupts the um, the
part of the cell that is actually metabolizing, provides energy
the metabolic process and cells. And so it's a broad
spectrum really lethal poisonous and not that much I mean
(04:24):
not as poisonous acutely poisonous as strychnine or cyanide. So
you're talking, you know, in the teaspoon ish and up
kind of range. It'll kill you because it attacks every cell.
It's really hard to diagnose, right, So people got in
the nineteenth century got away with arsenic murders all the time.
And plus that it's odorless and tasteless. It's all these
(04:45):
wonderful studies from the nineteenth century with scientists mixing into
vanilla pudding and other things and proving that you know,
you know, you can put it in anything and people
can't tell as opposed to something like strychnine or cyanide
that's really bitter. And until James marsh the chemist about
mid nineteenth century came up with the first super simple
(05:06):
test to try to detect arsenic in a body, you
couldn't detect it. So, I mean, it's just such a storied,
amazing poison from the Borgias into the early twentieth century.
And one of the poisoner speaking of women poisoners in
my book, is an arsenic murderous Fanny Creighton, right, and uh,
and she does exactly the kind of things I'm describing,
(05:29):
you know, she just gets it as a domestic supply
and kills people that are annoying her in the way
of money. Um. So you know, even in the twenty
early twentieth century, when they did have some tools, you
could still get away with an arsenic murder because it
looked so much like a natural illness. And I just
loved the whole devious nous in the way I really
(05:50):
do it, so I know, right, Like, we had one
woman this season who mixed it into egg nog and
I was like, yeah, fantastic. Don't you love creative. It's
a poison that allows poisoners who are devious to be
so entirely creative. And how they're going to deliver it, right,
(06:10):
and at what does sore? You're gonna slowly make the
person sick, or you're gonna try to kill them over.
I had a arsenic mass murderer in UH Poisoner's Handbook
in which and what they believe was an angry, vengeful
baker who had been fired just mixed arsenic into the
dove for the next day and it was really I mean,
(06:33):
people just died, right. So although you can do this gradually,
it can just wipe you right out. And then finally,
because it is naturally occurring, it turns up in drinking
water and UH in rice, right, rice is the one
right that really pulls arsenic and at the part per
billion level, it does real harm. So the e P
(06:54):
a standard for arsenic and drinking water inorganic right again,
UH is ten parts per billion, which sounds like a
big nothing, but the actual recommendation was three, and so
the tam parts for billion was a compromise, you know,
in which utility systems were saying, we think we can,
you know, without breaking the bank, get this down to town.
(07:16):
But three would be really impossible. But if you go
over to countries where it took them a while to
figure this out, like um taiwan Uh back in the
I want to say, about thirty years ago had an
outbreak of something called blackfoot disease. They had arsenic in
the drinking water at about up to one part per million,
(07:36):
and it was so destructive to people's circulatory system that
they developed gangrain in their feet, and which was called
blackfoot disease. And so we know from actual these unfortunate
you know, human guinea pig examples of arsenic exposure, that
arsenic at this very small amount above fifty parts per
(07:58):
billion can cause real Right. So it is in many
ways one of the most versatile um and common poisons
on the planet, and it serves as a reminder to
all of us that we live on a poison poisoness planet.
Then we make use of those poisons in all kinds
of interesting ways, right, and that we need to like
(08:20):
going back to my point about finding the tools. You know,
where should I worry? Where should I shouldn't? There's nothing
better than arsenic. It's the world's great at poison. I
absolutely came out of our first season thinking the exact Yeah,
it definitely is kind of the star of the season
for sure. There's no side stepping it. It shows up everywhere.
(08:44):
It is the number one character. Uh. And I was
glad that you brought up the Marsh test because of course, Uh,
that as well as your work talking about kind of
the beginnings of forensic science, makes me wonder how quickly
the rise of forensics science stemmed the tide of homicidal poisonings. Oh,
(09:04):
that's such a good question. So not as quickly as
you might hope, right, I mean, the Marsh test was
a really primitive test, right, and which work most of
the time, but not all of the time. And and
then then they later came up with refinements on that um.
But even after the Marsh test, uh came into more
(09:27):
popular use about mid nineteenth century, people did not know
how to detect organic compounds, right, organic poisons like cyanide
or strychnine in a corpse and in Poisonous Handbook. I
quote this prosecutor from France saying, well, why doesn't everyone
just kill with plant poisons then, since nobody knows how
to find them in a corpse, right, I mean, so
(09:48):
poisoners who are, like I said, really poisons are you know,
the coldest of killers. I mean, they have to plot
and plan everything. All poisoning is premeditated, as opposed to
almost any other weapon. And so you see this really
interesting shift in the crime statistics in which poisoners shift
to plant poison's because they're not detectable, right. And it's
(10:10):
not till thirty to forty years after the March Test
that we figure out how to detect first nicotine in
a corpse and we take that on. So we're slowly
building this knowledge base that then is overwhelmed by the
tide of industrial chemistry, right, which arises in the late
nineteenth century. And this is really the setup for the
story I tell in Poisoner's Handbook, because I was surprised
(10:35):
to realize what a very young science, forensic science is, right, Um,
you know I'd always imagined I mean partly because you know,
you get this sense from some of the early crime
fiction in particular that we were right on top of
this and everyone was running tests. But in fact, the
(10:55):
for in the United States, the first forensic medicine program
was started in the nineteen thirties by Galler and Norris,
and it was the first in the country, followed by
rob in Boston shortly later. Um, there was no training
in that. I mean, people didn't even use the term.
They call it legal medicine, right. Um, so even the
use of the word forensic science, Um, you know, really
(11:18):
began in the nineteen thirties, which is less than a
hundred years ago, in spite of you know, the fact
that we're building this knowledge, right, I mean, actually forensic
chemistry was one of the earliest branches of forensic science, right,
people were not I mean the ability to understand um,
(11:38):
gunshots and gunshots, batter and bullet rifling is fairly new.
Blood tests are nude. Of course, DNA analysis much newer. Right. So, really,
this slow beginning of figuring out the chemistry of poisons,
the slow beginning was one of the first parts of
forensic science, but the field itself didn't always start assembling
(12:01):
itself until the nineteen thirties. And when you look at
the Nora Skeetler program. You see other people at the
New York City Medical Examiner's Office, UM, who are blood
specialists or um plants specialists or right, all of these
different parts that they're putting together to build a professional field. UM.
(12:24):
So it's slow, and there's no wonder that you know,
you can find even arsenic poisoners into the nineteen thirties
because the field is really playing catch up with the
killers themselves. Welcome back to criminalia. Do you happen to
(12:49):
have a favorite story from the development of forensic science
as it relates to poison or or do you really
kind of like a lot of a lot of the
I mean, um, so, one of my other favorite poisons
because it's so efficient, it's carbon monoxide, and I actually
have two carbon monoxide chapters and Poysoner's handbug um too,
(13:13):
because it, you know, plays into so many different aspects. UM.
But one of the carbon monoxide chapters involves this extremely
failed murder I guess because it makes me laugh. I
like this story. It's creamely, extremely frustrating and somewhat incompetent
(13:35):
murder syndicate that forms in the Bronx and UM. The
early nineteen thirty sort of towards the end of prohibition,
in which they this group of I mean I wouldn't
call them nearer to wells, but definitely shady characters who
are you know, marginally getting along, come up with a
(13:55):
scheme to um ensure the life of alcoholic garrel, like
it kind of floats through the speaking that one of
the moans, and then take out insurance policies on him
and then have him die, you know, with various different
schemes that they come up with and cash in and
(14:16):
the money, and so they pick this Irish alcoholic drifter
Mike malloy and Mike Malloyd came to be known in
the New York Press is Mike the Durable, Which will
tell you why I think this is so funny, because
they try all of these different ways to kill him,
you know, poison alcohol and running over him with a
(14:39):
cab and pouring cold water on him. And I shouldn't leave,
but it is so hard, right putting him out soaked
in water in a in a park in February, hoping
he'll get pneumonia, and and none of it works. He
just you know, bounces back from every single attempt until
they finally kill him. I won't give away the Hallwilian
(14:59):
where with carbon monoxide, and carbon oxide is such an
efficient killer, right, it works so amazingly well, has this
fabulous chemical reaction with your bloody which it just shoves
oxygen out of your blood in a kind of muscle
man kind of way, speaking of my tendency to animate poisons,
and right and uh and Getler had really looked at
(15:26):
all of these different issues with carbon monoxide, in part
because there had been a charge, a murder charge against
someone who actually hadn't killed someone with carbon monoxide, and
he was able to figure that out. And and there
were people who tried to fake um murders, pretending that
there had been like a carbon monoxide leak, which and
(15:48):
he was able to sort that out. So carbon monoxide
is so interesting because it's so good at what it does,
and because when you look at how they figured it out,
it's kind all these amazing stories like Mike Malloy and
you know a guy who tried to kill his wife
and um and was caught through chemistry. And so I'm
(16:10):
especially fond of that as well, just the whole fabulous
way that you see science Peel apart this long time
poison um and provide us with tools to protect ourselves
against it. So carbon oxide is oderless, which makes it
like arsenic, really dangerous. It's leaking into your room, but
you don't smell anything, right, you just get sleepy. Um.
(16:31):
So we add a compound chlora piccron to it now
so that if, for instance, you know, the gas went
off on your burner, on your stuff, and you had
a sleep of gas, you would you smell that weird,
slightly awkward smell. But that's the chlora piccren, that's not
the carbononoxide, right, And so we learned from these. It's
also an example of what we've learned and done better
(16:53):
in a public health sense. So yeah, that's another I
like them all, actually loves all the poison. They're so fascinating.
And you know, I'll say to people, I mean here,
I am like, you know, walking ball of chemicals, inhaling
them and drinking them every day, and most of them
(17:14):
don't do you any harm. So the ones that do
chemically are really clever. They unlock different locks in your body.
They take advantage of um, you know, natural symptoms, natural
systems in an interesting way. Radium deposits to your bones
because the body processes that like calcium. Thallium is distributed
(17:35):
by potassium channels, because the body potassiut you know, distributes
it like potassium. And and the way that poisons can
take advantage of the Simpson systems that mostly you know,
protect our health. They're just really interesting, devious chemical compounds.
And and in a way that probably does make me
sound creepy, there's a part of me that steps back
(17:56):
and admires deviousness right related to every one being made
of chemicals. I was recently researching an incident in sixteen
sixties Paris, which, of course there was that big debate
going on in the French academy over whether or not
(18:16):
it should be allowed for doctors to treat people using
chemical means. And the whole time I'm reading it, I'm like,
they're they're already doing it, they just don't call it
a chemical. Uh So I was glad you mentioned it. Um.
As we have worked our way through our list of
poisoning this season, of course, we've been kind of picking
apart the ways that some of these stories have been
told over the years, and then comparing that to the
(18:41):
historical record, to see whether there's really support for it,
and sometimes there's not. There is clearly a case where
someone has gotten this reputation when they maybe did not
deserve it. Um. Have you been surprised by any of
the instances of poisonings that you've studied over the years,
either because it turned out poison was not the case,
or just the way it was it was handled or
(19:01):
discussed or characterized was a little bit surprising. You know.
One of the things I tackled in Poisoner's Handbook was
people being falsely accused of poisoning. Right, so there's a
Mercury poisoner who did not poison his wife, um, but
was accused of it publicly. Um. There was, as I said,
a man who was accused of poisoning his one of
(19:26):
his neighbors and he in that turned out to be
an accidental death. And so one of the points you
raise here that I that from my perspective, is really
important is that, you know, investigations that find innocence are
just as important as investigations that find guilt. And you know, too,
we should not just assume that the criminal justice system
(19:49):
is there to you know, send people to prisoners or
send them to execution. It's also there in a justice
sense to take these cases apart and show when people
work guilty or wherever the story doesn't hold up, and
and in some cases it it genuinely doesn't. I have
also thought, you know, about the sort of mythology we
(20:11):
built around certain poisons and how misleading that can be.
And and one of those is, of course rice, and
which was a big hero of Breaking Bad as you know,
everyone's favorite lethal poison, and gave people the impression and
I wrote about this too over at Wired, but gave
people the impression that man, they just had to you know,
(20:34):
mess around with castor beans or whatever and and gin
up a little ric in and they could take out
anyone they didn't know without at all understanding how ricin works.
And the fact that it's actually lethal in a very
narrow targeted sense, right, and just really insane uses of it.
And of course rice and powder. Since when if you
(20:56):
are you know, an espionage agent, which is where really
famous rice and killings come from. Um and you carefully injected,
of course it's going to kill you. But the other methods,
like you know, rice and pizzas are really nearly as
dangerous as people like so people partly through you know,
popular shows like Breaking Back, get these ideas about poisons
(21:19):
and how they work and and then use them. And
and that also happened in an interesting way, although it
is unexpectedly dangerous. There was one of these shows in
which someone uses vizine to make someone sick at a
wedding party the wedding um and vizine is really dangerous
if you swallow it, right, And so there was then
(21:42):
this rash of visine poisonings. Right. So I think the
other part of this story is that when we're telling
poison stories and putting that information out, you know, you know,
we're trying not to instruct people on how to poison
other people, right, but you need to be aware that
(22:06):
they're always going to be people who are going to
read this um and poisoner's handbook. Actually, and this was
really appalling to me. I should tell you, Uh ended
up in a criminal trial of a guy in um.
He was in the Navy, I think that in San Diego,
and he tried to kill his wife with salium. People
(22:30):
wrote me about this when they did the criminal druve.
The one book he had on his phone was Poisonous handbook.
So when you look at that chapter, it talks a
lot about the fact that it's certainly in the nineteen thirties,
which is a hard to detect poison, right, I mean,
that's a nineties and that's that's in the nineteen thirties.
This guy clearly took it into the twenty first century
(22:52):
thinking he could get away with it, and he got
the dose completely wrong, right, and so he you know,
his wife survived and he went to prison. But and literally,
anytime I was at a party and people say, what
are you working on, I say, I'm working on a
book about, you know, something relighted to poison. And people
would always say to me almost every party, they said, well,
(23:14):
how would you poison someone. I said to my editor
at Penguin, I'm like this, this is starting to really
make me nervous, and she said, I absolutely forbid you
to ever tell anyone out to poison anyone um. And so,
you know, I was really careful in the book, but people,
(23:35):
but it is a reminder that when you write about
these things, or like in the case of breaking Bad,
when you kind of glorify a particular poison um, you
can drive this kind of activity and so to be careful.
That is a fascinating aspect I had not. I mean,
we think about it and we joke about how Maria
(23:57):
and I should anyone ever look at our search history
are going to be like, right, I mean, why are
you asking how much our stink it takes to kill
a two hunder pound right, exactly exactly. I've googled it
more than once. You know, I always thought to myself
there was a point where I starts the FBI ever
looked at my searches story, I feel the same entirely homicidal. Right,
(24:21):
So you are, as we mentioned at the top, the
director of the Night Science Journalism program. I'm wondering what
advice you give to up and coming journalists about writing
on the subject of historical science. And it maybe don't
tell people how to poison people, but I bet there
are other lessons also. That's a great question. And you know,
when I do, when I'm talking to our fellows or
(24:44):
when i'm you know, talking to other journalism groups, particularly
talk about the importance of writing about science history. And so,
going back to when I got my grad degree at Wisconsin,
my adviser had a joint appointment in journalism and why
life biology. And when I went there, he said to me,
you have to study history of science. And I had
(25:06):
never occurred to me. I had worked for newspapers for
five years. I was interested in, you know, modern environmental toxicology,
and um, I'm like, huh. And he said, the most
important thing about understanding the history of what you cover
is that you people will not be able to shine
you on. You know that you're going to interview scientists
who will say I'm the first person who've ever thought
(25:28):
of this, and you'll know that's not true because you
actually know something about the history of the field. So
one of the things I do when I am talking
to journalists is I talked not only about my you know,
philosophical idea that we're always smarter if we know how
we got here, but about the importance of understanding the
history of the field, because when you do understand that,
(25:49):
you really can put what's going on in context right.
And there's so many examples of that beyond um poison.
You know, the obvious example today is if you actually
take a look at some of the things that arose
in the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic um, they're predictive of
(26:10):
some of the things we're going through here. They obviously
we're a long way from a flu shot at that point,
but mask wearing, social distancing, the hostile response to that,
the the second wave of that. Right, there's just so
much that you can look and say to yourself, what
have we learned and what mistakes are re repeating and
(26:32):
how could we be smarter about this? And so you know,
I remind people all the time that, um, there's all
these amazing facts from history that we've forgotten. Um, if
you go into an archive. I one of the books
I did was on the history of the idea that
love matters, which in science, right, going through this arc
(26:55):
from the early twentieth century and look in which scientists
argued that love didn't exist in that relationships between same
mother and child too just to be called proximity to
the period where we say, I mean, it was crazy
to to the other side of that paradigm shift in
which we say love is. You know, we need a
solid foundation of love and affection in healthy human development.
(27:18):
And when I was doing that, I went to the
archives of the history of American psychology, which are in
acron Ohio. In that archive. As I was researching this
changing idea, I found so many scientists who had been
famous in their time, who are forgotten, who have made
discoveries about how we think and how we relate to
(27:41):
each other, that if we just remembered them, if we
just had that history of time, we wouldn't be making
some of these mistakes. Again that I mean, in the
nineteen thirties, they were actually looking at the connection between
affection and intelligence and the importance of right having that
(28:01):
solid family background in the development of how you think
and how you thrive in intellectual settings. I mean, when
I read it, I just thought, oh, I wish right
that we had not just put that into some archive, right,
but continue to keep that at the forefront of the conversation.
(28:21):
So history makes us so much smarter about poison's right,
but about the world we live in ourselves, and and
you know, the last thing I'll say about that is
it's really interesting. You know. I don't know if it's
a failure of the way we teach history in the
K twelve system, but once you get into like his
into history, you you just find yourself going, this is
(28:45):
such an amazing story of who we are. And I
would like everyone to think that way. On our show,
normally at the end of every episode we do a
segment called What's Your Poison, where we make a cocktail
that is the to the subject at hand. So I
(29:05):
do not know if you are a drinker or not,
But if you are or if you're not, what's your poison?
What's your favorite beverage? Oh, I'm like a journalist. I've
been drinking in newsrooms for decades. Um So I really
love some of the nineteen twenties cocktails. Um and and.
(29:28):
In fact, while I was working on Poisoner's Hand, but
I like was trying to drink my way through the
famous cocktails of the twenties, that's all I thought to myself,
I'm really becoming an alcoholic here um and, because they
were really interesting cocktails, because a lot of some of
them were designed to cover up the taste of ethel
(29:50):
you know, methyl alcohol and boot like bathtub gin and
some of the really horrible tasting you know, sort of
homebrews of the nineteen twenties, so oh, different kinds of flavoring.
So my two favorite cocktails from that period are a
Sidecar and the Bee's Needs, which is a fairly simple
(30:11):
cocktail of fresh lemon juice and gin and honey, or
a simple servant sirrup and you can add some different
herbs to that, and I highly recommend them their wonderful cocktails.
I love it, Deborah. We can never thank you enough
for spending all this time with us. Oh that's so
(30:32):
nice of you, guys. I mean, this was really fun
for me. And you have such smart Debra, take a
minute and thank questions. I really enjoyed it. It was
really fun for us to Yes, you guys, take care
out there. You much, deb It's almost impossible to say
how much we want to thank Debrae for joining us
(30:54):
and spending a ton of time just chatting about poison
and poison and more poise and and not even just arsenic, right,
it was a little bit of like an arsenic fan.
But uh. We also cannot recommend her books highly enough
if you have not read them, As is completely obvious
(31:14):
from listening to her talk. She is so knowledgeable and
so good at talking about science in a way that
is accessible for non scientists and really really compelling. Highly
recommend So we do have one What You're Poison following
this interview that I'm going to throw over to Holly. Yeah,
(31:34):
so as you as you know, we asked Eva what
her favorite cocktails were. If you listen last week, we
you know, you know, we did a sidecar, and this
time I'm doing a bes knees. Similar to the sidecar,
you'll see recipes for bees knees that are all pretty similar,
but with slightly different variations and amounts of of each
(31:55):
particular component. So you'll see anywhere from one and a
half to the most. I was two and a half
ounces of gin. That seems like an awful lot to me.
I would hit right around to um half an ounce
to an ounce of lemon juice. Three quarters is where
I tend to land, and then most call for about
a half ounce of honey syrup. I like a whole
ounce of honey syrup because it takes the edge off
(32:17):
the gin a little bit. For me, I'm not a
gin person. I'm not either. I was wondering when this
came up. I was trying to think if I'd had
these knees before, but because it's gin, it is highly unlikely. YEA, Yeah,
I have had them before, and I it's one of
those things I'm always like I'm gonna have that. It
sounds fun, and then I'm like, why did I order this?
It's not really my drink there I mean, which is
(32:39):
no shade at all to any bartender that's ever made one.
It's just gin is not I'm I have one of
those palettes to whom gin tastes very much like I'm
chewing on pine bark. Um. A good gin will help that,
but even so I still get pine flavor. So, uh,
that's last time I talked about how you can kind
of switch things up. This is such a simple recipe
(33:01):
um that for me, it's just becomes a matter of
like throttling the amount of honey syrup that's in it.
If you don't have you know, uh, if you did
not know, honey syrup is one of the easiest things
on earth to make. It is just like a simple syrup.
It's one part honey to one part water. You throw
it in a saucepan and let it just reach a boil,
(33:22):
so it's completely easy to um for the sugar and
the honey to dissolve, and then you let it cool
off in your golden I do very small amounts when
I make batches of honey syrup like literally a third
of a cup to a third of a cup because
I just don't use it in that much stuff. But
it doesn't, It really doesn't come up a lot doesn't.
But then it's one of those things that once you
(33:43):
have it on hand, you'll just start throwing it in
cocktails and then discovering because one of the things it
really does is it like warms it up. It just
gives it this nice extra body and it it um.
It does take the edge off of things. And if
there are harsh flavors your your spirits, it will help
kind of soothe those. Uh. And so for me, it's
(34:04):
just a matter of adding that bit of honey to
make this a yummy or drink. So that is the
bees Knees. And again we cannot say thanks enough to Deborah,
so we will raise the beas knees in her honor.
I'll drink the gin just for it, right absolutely, And
we also want to make sure that we thank you
are listeners for listening this season. Our next and last
(34:26):
episode on Lady Poisoners is going to be our review
of the whole season. But do not fret, we're going
right into a season two. It won't be about Lady Poisoners.
It will be about stalkers instead. But we're gonna, we're
gonna keep right on going, and so in that next episode,
we are going to cover some of our favorite episodes
from the season, as well as our favorite cocktails that
(34:46):
we've had this time around. Thank you again for listening.
We can't wait to meet back here next week. Criminalia
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more pod casts from Shondaland Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. M Hello, and welcome to Criminalia. Well,
we've been exploring the lives and motivations of some of
the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Maria Tremarket
and I'm Holly Fry. And as part of our wrap
(00:21):
up to this season of Poison, we invited award winning
journalist and poison expert Deborah Blum to chat with us,
which she very kindly did. As we mentioned in our
intro to the last episode, Deborah is the author of
the New York Times notable book The Poison Spot, as
well as the New York Times bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook.
So there was no other guests that we could think
(00:43):
of having. She had to begin. Yeah, the the absolute
perfect one. And this is part two of our chat
with Deborah. So if you missed part one, be sure
to give that a listen. And now let's jump right
back into our fun discussion with Deborah Blum all about poison. Okay,
so I'm gonna take us back to Arsenic for a minute.
And you've said before that Arsenic is your favorite poison.
(01:06):
As it turns out, it may be my favorite poison
as well after our first season of Griminalia. But I
was wondering if you would share why you prefer it
to something like strychnine. Perhaps, I mean, arsenic is still
my favorite poison. Yeah. The reason when I say that
people think I sound creepy, I don't understand it because
(01:26):
it's really really a cool poison. I don't find you
creepy when you say it at all. You're at the
right audience here. I've been having such a good time guys.
Our slicks a naturally occurring element, and uh it's about
the thirty third most common element in the Earth's crust.
(01:48):
So and we started making use of it really early
as a poison. Well, I mean one of the things
that's really it's got so many interesting layers, and the
things I like about it are both it's wonderful versatility,
is a homicidal poison, but also the fact that it's
really dangerous. Uh as at the park pavilion level. Now,
(02:12):
there's almost no other poison that you know kind of
sand bags you on two different levels the way Arsenic
is because there's an old famous saying in medicine that
the dose makes the poison, but with arsenic, in fact,
that's not entirely true. So it's really fascinating. Elemental arsenic.
It loves to bond with other atoms and and and
(02:36):
when it bonds with carbon and becomes like something like
an arsenic sugar, it's not particularly dangerous to us. UM.
And in fact, we eat a lot of arsenic sugars,
like our seno bin team which comes up, which is
in fish, because there's a lot of arsenic and ocean water,
and we just cabitalize that a way. They actually just
(02:57):
follow up on that for a minute. There was a
really interesting study in which they were looking at whether
pregnant women we're eating enough fish as part of a
healthy diet because people were avoiding fish because of mercury,
speaking of poisons UM, and they were able to tell
that these women had cut out fish because there was
no sentimenting in there. You're in right, it just wasn't there.
(03:20):
And so we know that we're exposed to these organic
arsenic compounds all the time, and they were big nothing um.
But inorganic arsenic, which you know in chemistry means without
carbon is all um is really dangerous and the worst
form of it for us is m arsenic trioxide, which
if you think about what that means, it just means
(03:40):
one atom of arsenic with three I mean, yeah, one
atom of arsenic three of oxygen arsenic three oxygen's trioxide,
and arsenic crioxide is in fact the poison that was
called the inheritance powder in the nineteen century. And if
you go and you look at the labels of pharmaceutical
bottles for that them that time, that's what you see
(04:01):
our snic trioxide. And we just cannot handle that at all.
It gets into your cells, It disrupts the um, the
part of the cell that is actually metabolizing, provides energy
the metabolic process and cells. And so it's a broad
spectrum really lethal poisonous and not that much I mean
(04:24):
not as poisonous acutely poisonous as strychnine or cyanide. So
you're talking, you know, in the teaspoon ish and up
kind of range. It'll kill you because it attacks every cell.
It's really hard to diagnose, right, So people got in
the nineteenth century got away with arsenic murders all the time.
And plus that it's odorless and tasteless. It's all these
(04:45):
wonderful studies from the nineteenth century with scientists mixing into
vanilla pudding and other things and proving that you know,
you know, you can put it in anything and people
can't tell as opposed to something like strychnine or cyanide
that's really bitter. And until James marsh the chemist about
mid nineteenth century came up with the first super simple
(05:06):
test to try to detect arsenic in a body, you
couldn't detect it. So, I mean, it's just such a storied,
amazing poison from the Borgias into the early twentieth century.
And one of the poisoner speaking of women poisoners in
my book, is an arsenic murderous Fanny Creighton, right, and uh,
and she does exactly the kind of things I'm describing,
(05:29):
you know, she just gets it as a domestic supply
and kills people that are annoying her in the way
of money. Um. So you know, even in the twenty
early twentieth century, when they did have some tools, you
could still get away with an arsenic murder because it
looked so much like a natural illness. And I just
loved the whole devious nous in the way I really
(05:50):
do it, so I know, right, Like, we had one
woman this season who mixed it into egg nog and
I was like, yeah, fantastic. Don't you love creative. It's
a poison that allows poisoners who are devious to be
so entirely creative. And how they're going to deliver it, right,
(06:10):
and at what does sore? You're gonna slowly make the
person sick, or you're gonna try to kill them over.
I had a arsenic mass murderer in UH Poisoner's Handbook
in which and what they believe was an angry, vengeful
baker who had been fired just mixed arsenic into the
dove for the next day and it was really I mean,
(06:33):
people just died, right. So although you can do this gradually,
it can just wipe you right out. And then finally,
because it is naturally occurring, it turns up in drinking
water and UH in rice, right, rice is the one
right that really pulls arsenic and at the part per
billion level, it does real harm. So the e P
(06:54):
a standard for arsenic and drinking water inorganic right again,
UH is ten parts per billion, which sounds like a
big nothing, but the actual recommendation was three, and so
the tam parts for billion was a compromise, you know,
in which utility systems were saying, we think we can,
you know, without breaking the bank, get this down to town.
(07:16):
But three would be really impossible. But if you go
over to countries where it took them a while to
figure this out, like um taiwan Uh back in the
I want to say, about thirty years ago had an
outbreak of something called blackfoot disease. They had arsenic in
the drinking water at about up to one part per million,
(07:36):
and it was so destructive to people's circulatory system that
they developed gangrain in their feet, and which was called
blackfoot disease. And so we know from actual these unfortunate
you know, human guinea pig examples of arsenic exposure, that
arsenic at this very small amount above fifty parts per
(07:58):
billion can cause real Right. So it is in many
ways one of the most versatile um and common poisons
on the planet, and it serves as a reminder to
all of us that we live on a poison poisoness planet.
Then we make use of those poisons in all kinds
of interesting ways, right, and that we need to like
(08:20):
going back to my point about finding the tools. You know,
where should I worry? Where should I shouldn't? There's nothing
better than arsenic. It's the world's great at poison. I
absolutely came out of our first season thinking the exact Yeah,
it definitely is kind of the star of the season
for sure. There's no side stepping it. It shows up everywhere.
(08:44):
It is the number one character. Uh. And I was
glad that you brought up the Marsh test because of course, Uh,
that as well as your work talking about kind of
the beginnings of forensic science, makes me wonder how quickly
the rise of forensics science stemmed the tide of homicidal poisonings. Oh,
(09:04):
that's such a good question. So not as quickly as
you might hope, right, I mean, the Marsh test was
a really primitive test, right, and which work most of
the time, but not all of the time. And and
then then they later came up with refinements on that um.
But even after the Marsh test, uh came into more
(09:27):
popular use about mid nineteenth century, people did not know
how to detect organic compounds, right, organic poisons like cyanide
or strychnine in a corpse and in Poisonous Handbook. I
quote this prosecutor from France saying, well, why doesn't everyone
just kill with plant poisons then, since nobody knows how
to find them in a corpse, right, I mean, so
(09:48):
poisoners who are, like I said, really poisons are you know,
the coldest of killers. I mean, they have to plot
and plan everything. All poisoning is premeditated, as opposed to
almost any other weapon. And so you see this really
interesting shift in the crime statistics in which poisoners shift
to plant poison's because they're not detectable, right. And it's
(10:10):
not till thirty to forty years after the March Test
that we figure out how to detect first nicotine in
a corpse and we take that on. So we're slowly
building this knowledge base that then is overwhelmed by the
tide of industrial chemistry, right, which arises in the late
nineteenth century. And this is really the setup for the
story I tell in Poisoner's Handbook, because I was surprised
(10:35):
to realize what a very young science, forensic science is, right, Um,
you know I'd always imagined I mean partly because you know,
you get this sense from some of the early crime
fiction in particular that we were right on top of
this and everyone was running tests. But in fact, the
(10:55):
for in the United States, the first forensic medicine program
was started in the nineteen thirties by Galler and Norris,
and it was the first in the country, followed by
rob in Boston shortly later. Um, there was no training
in that. I mean, people didn't even use the term.
They call it legal medicine, right. Um, so even the
use of the word forensic science, Um, you know, really
(11:18):
began in the nineteen thirties, which is less than a
hundred years ago, in spite of you know, the fact
that we're building this knowledge, right, I mean, actually forensic
chemistry was one of the earliest branches of forensic science, right,
people were not I mean the ability to understand um,
(11:38):
gunshots and gunshots, batter and bullet rifling is fairly new.
Blood tests are nude. Of course, DNA analysis much newer. Right. So, really,
this slow beginning of figuring out the chemistry of poisons,
the slow beginning was one of the first parts of
forensic science, but the field itself didn't always start assembling
(12:01):
itself until the nineteen thirties. And when you look at
the Nora Skeetler program. You see other people at the
New York City Medical Examiner's Office, UM, who are blood
specialists or um plants specialists or right, all of these
different parts that they're putting together to build a professional field. UM.
(12:24):
So it's slow, and there's no wonder that you know,
you can find even arsenic poisoners into the nineteen thirties
because the field is really playing catch up with the
killers themselves. Welcome back to criminalia. Do you happen to
(12:49):
have a favorite story from the development of forensic science
as it relates to poison or or do you really
kind of like a lot of a lot of the
I mean, um, so, one of my other favorite poisons
because it's so efficient, it's carbon monoxide, and I actually
have two carbon monoxide chapters and Poysoner's handbug um too,
(13:13):
because it, you know, plays into so many different aspects. UM.
But one of the carbon monoxide chapters involves this extremely
failed murder I guess because it makes me laugh. I
like this story. It's creamely, extremely frustrating and somewhat incompetent
(13:35):
murder syndicate that forms in the Bronx and UM. The
early nineteen thirty sort of towards the end of prohibition,
in which they this group of I mean I wouldn't
call them nearer to wells, but definitely shady characters who
are you know, marginally getting along, come up with a
(13:55):
scheme to um ensure the life of alcoholic garrel, like
it kind of floats through the speaking that one of
the moans, and then take out insurance policies on him
and then have him die, you know, with various different
schemes that they come up with and cash in and
(14:16):
the money, and so they pick this Irish alcoholic drifter
Mike malloy and Mike Malloyd came to be known in
the New York Press is Mike the Durable, Which will
tell you why I think this is so funny, because
they try all of these different ways to kill him,
you know, poison alcohol and running over him with a
(14:39):
cab and pouring cold water on him. And I shouldn't leave,
but it is so hard, right putting him out soaked
in water in a in a park in February, hoping
he'll get pneumonia, and and none of it works. He
just you know, bounces back from every single attempt until
they finally kill him. I won't give away the Hallwilian
(14:59):
where with carbon monoxide, and carbon oxide is such an
efficient killer, right, it works so amazingly well, has this
fabulous chemical reaction with your bloody which it just shoves
oxygen out of your blood in a kind of muscle
man kind of way, speaking of my tendency to animate poisons,
and right and uh and Getler had really looked at
(15:26):
all of these different issues with carbon monoxide, in part
because there had been a charge, a murder charge against
someone who actually hadn't killed someone with carbon monoxide, and
he was able to figure that out. And and there
were people who tried to fake um murders, pretending that
there had been like a carbon monoxide leak, which and
(15:48):
he was able to sort that out. So carbon monoxide
is so interesting because it's so good at what it does,
and because when you look at how they figured it out,
it's kind all these amazing stories like Mike Malloy and
you know a guy who tried to kill his wife
and um and was caught through chemistry. And so I'm
(16:10):
especially fond of that as well, just the whole fabulous
way that you see science Peel apart this long time
poison um and provide us with tools to protect ourselves
against it. So carbon oxide is oderless, which makes it
like arsenic, really dangerous. It's leaking into your room, but
you don't smell anything, right, you just get sleepy. Um.
(16:31):
So we add a compound chlora piccron to it now
so that if, for instance, you know, the gas went
off on your burner, on your stuff, and you had
a sleep of gas, you would you smell that weird,
slightly awkward smell. But that's the chlora piccren, that's not
the carbononoxide, right, And so we learned from these. It's
also an example of what we've learned and done better
(16:53):
in a public health sense. So yeah, that's another I
like them all, actually loves all the poison. They're so fascinating.
And you know, I'll say to people, I mean here,
I am like, you know, walking ball of chemicals, inhaling
them and drinking them every day, and most of them
(17:14):
don't do you any harm. So the ones that do
chemically are really clever. They unlock different locks in your body.
They take advantage of um, you know, natural symptoms, natural
systems in an interesting way. Radium deposits to your bones
because the body processes that like calcium. Thallium is distributed
(17:35):
by potassium channels, because the body potassiut you know, distributes
it like potassium. And and the way that poisons can
take advantage of the Simpson systems that mostly you know,
protect our health. They're just really interesting, devious chemical compounds.
And and in a way that probably does make me
sound creepy, there's a part of me that steps back
(17:56):
and admires deviousness right related to every one being made
of chemicals. I was recently researching an incident in sixteen
sixties Paris, which, of course there was that big debate
going on in the French academy over whether or not
(18:16):
it should be allowed for doctors to treat people using
chemical means. And the whole time I'm reading it, I'm like,
they're they're already doing it, they just don't call it
a chemical. Uh So I was glad you mentioned it. Um.
As we have worked our way through our list of
poisoning this season, of course, we've been kind of picking
apart the ways that some of these stories have been
told over the years, and then comparing that to the
(18:41):
historical record, to see whether there's really support for it,
and sometimes there's not. There is clearly a case where
someone has gotten this reputation when they maybe did not
deserve it. Um. Have you been surprised by any of
the instances of poisonings that you've studied over the years,
either because it turned out poison was not the case,
or just the way it was it was handled or
(19:01):
discussed or characterized was a little bit surprising. You know.
One of the things I tackled in Poisoner's Handbook was
people being falsely accused of poisoning. Right, so there's a
Mercury poisoner who did not poison his wife, um, but
was accused of it publicly. Um. There was, as I said,
a man who was accused of poisoning his one of
(19:26):
his neighbors and he in that turned out to be
an accidental death. And so one of the points you
raise here that I that from my perspective, is really
important is that, you know, investigations that find innocence are
just as important as investigations that find guilt. And you know, too,
we should not just assume that the criminal justice system
(19:49):
is there to you know, send people to prisoners or
send them to execution. It's also there in a justice
sense to take these cases apart and show when people
work guilty or wherever the story doesn't hold up, and
and in some cases it it genuinely doesn't. I have
also thought, you know, about the sort of mythology we
(20:11):
built around certain poisons and how misleading that can be.
And and one of those is, of course rice, and
which was a big hero of Breaking Bad as you know,
everyone's favorite lethal poison, and gave people the impression and
I wrote about this too over at Wired, but gave
people the impression that man, they just had to you know,
(20:34):
mess around with castor beans or whatever and and gin
up a little ric in and they could take out
anyone they didn't know without at all understanding how ricin works.
And the fact that it's actually lethal in a very
narrow targeted sense, right, and just really insane uses of it.
And of course rice and powder. Since when if you
(20:56):
are you know, an espionage agent, which is where really
famous rice and killings come from. Um and you carefully injected,
of course it's going to kill you. But the other methods,
like you know, rice and pizzas are really nearly as
dangerous as people like so people partly through you know,
popular shows like Breaking Back, get these ideas about poisons
(21:19):
and how they work and and then use them. And
and that also happened in an interesting way, although it
is unexpectedly dangerous. There was one of these shows in
which someone uses vizine to make someone sick at a
wedding party the wedding um and vizine is really dangerous
if you swallow it, right, And so there was then
(21:42):
this rash of visine poisonings. Right. So I think the
other part of this story is that when we're telling
poison stories and putting that information out, you know, you know,
we're trying not to instruct people on how to poison
other people, right, but you need to be aware that
(22:06):
they're always going to be people who are going to
read this um and poisoner's handbook. Actually, and this was
really appalling to me. I should tell you, Uh ended
up in a criminal trial of a guy in um.
He was in the Navy, I think that in San Diego,
and he tried to kill his wife with salium. People
(22:30):
wrote me about this when they did the criminal druve.
The one book he had on his phone was Poisonous handbook.
So when you look at that chapter, it talks a
lot about the fact that it's certainly in the nineteen thirties,
which is a hard to detect poison, right, I mean,
that's a nineties and that's that's in the nineteen thirties.
This guy clearly took it into the twenty first century
(22:52):
thinking he could get away with it, and he got
the dose completely wrong, right, and so he you know,
his wife survived and he went to prison. But and literally,
anytime I was at a party and people say, what
are you working on, I say, I'm working on a
book about, you know, something relighted to poison. And people
would always say to me almost every party, they said, well,
(23:14):
how would you poison someone. I said to my editor
at Penguin, I'm like this, this is starting to really
make me nervous, and she said, I absolutely forbid you
to ever tell anyone out to poison anyone um. And so,
you know, I was really careful in the book, but people,
(23:35):
but it is a reminder that when you write about
these things, or like in the case of breaking Bad,
when you kind of glorify a particular poison um, you
can drive this kind of activity and so to be careful.
That is a fascinating aspect I had not. I mean,
we think about it and we joke about how Maria
(23:57):
and I should anyone ever look at our search history
are going to be like, right, I mean, why are
you asking how much our stink it takes to kill
a two hunder pound right, exactly exactly. I've googled it
more than once. You know, I always thought to myself
there was a point where I starts the FBI ever
looked at my searches story, I feel the same entirely homicidal. Right,
(24:21):
So you are, as we mentioned at the top, the
director of the Night Science Journalism program. I'm wondering what
advice you give to up and coming journalists about writing
on the subject of historical science. And it maybe don't
tell people how to poison people, but I bet there
are other lessons also. That's a great question. And you know,
when I do, when I'm talking to our fellows or
(24:44):
when i'm you know, talking to other journalism groups, particularly
talk about the importance of writing about science history. And so,
going back to when I got my grad degree at Wisconsin,
my adviser had a joint appointment in journalism and why
life biology. And when I went there, he said to me,
you have to study history of science. And I had
(25:06):
never occurred to me. I had worked for newspapers for
five years. I was interested in, you know, modern environmental toxicology,
and um, I'm like, huh. And he said, the most
important thing about understanding the history of what you cover
is that you people will not be able to shine
you on. You know that you're going to interview scientists
who will say I'm the first person who've ever thought
(25:28):
of this, and you'll know that's not true because you
actually know something about the history of the field. So
one of the things I do when I am talking
to journalists is I talked not only about my you know,
philosophical idea that we're always smarter if we know how
we got here, but about the importance of understanding the
history of the field, because when you do understand that,
(25:49):
you really can put what's going on in context right.
And there's so many examples of that beyond um poison.
You know, the obvious example today is if you actually
take a look at some of the things that arose
in the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic um, they're predictive of
(26:10):
some of the things we're going through here. They obviously
we're a long way from a flu shot at that point,
but mask wearing, social distancing, the hostile response to that,
the the second wave of that. Right, there's just so
much that you can look and say to yourself, what
have we learned and what mistakes are re repeating and
(26:32):
how could we be smarter about this? And so you know,
I remind people all the time that, um, there's all
these amazing facts from history that we've forgotten. Um, if
you go into an archive. I one of the books
I did was on the history of the idea that
love matters, which in science, right, going through this arc
(26:55):
from the early twentieth century and look in which scientists
argued that love didn't exist in that relationships between same
mother and child too just to be called proximity to
the period where we say, I mean, it was crazy
to to the other side of that paradigm shift in
which we say love is. You know, we need a
solid foundation of love and affection in healthy human development.
(27:18):
And when I was doing that, I went to the
archives of the history of American psychology, which are in
acron Ohio. In that archive. As I was researching this
changing idea, I found so many scientists who had been
famous in their time, who are forgotten, who have made
discoveries about how we think and how we relate to
(27:41):
each other, that if we just remembered them, if we
just had that history of time, we wouldn't be making
some of these mistakes. Again that I mean, in the
nineteen thirties, they were actually looking at the connection between
affection and intelligence and the importance of right having that
(28:01):
solid family background in the development of how you think
and how you thrive in intellectual settings. I mean, when
I read it, I just thought, oh, I wish right
that we had not just put that into some archive, right,
but continue to keep that at the forefront of the conversation.
(28:21):
So history makes us so much smarter about poison's right,
but about the world we live in ourselves, and and
you know, the last thing I'll say about that is
it's really interesting. You know. I don't know if it's
a failure of the way we teach history in the
K twelve system, but once you get into like his
into history, you you just find yourself going, this is
(28:45):
such an amazing story of who we are. And I
would like everyone to think that way. On our show,
normally at the end of every episode we do a
segment called What's Your Poison, where we make a cocktail
that is the to the subject at hand. So I
(29:05):
do not know if you are a drinker or not,
But if you are or if you're not, what's your poison?
What's your favorite beverage? Oh, I'm like a journalist. I've
been drinking in newsrooms for decades. Um So I really
love some of the nineteen twenties cocktails. Um and and.
(29:28):
In fact, while I was working on Poisoner's Hand, but
I like was trying to drink my way through the
famous cocktails of the twenties, that's all I thought to myself,
I'm really becoming an alcoholic here um and, because they
were really interesting cocktails, because a lot of some of
them were designed to cover up the taste of ethel
(29:50):
you know, methyl alcohol and boot like bathtub gin and
some of the really horrible tasting you know, sort of
homebrews of the nineteen twenties, so oh, different kinds of flavoring.
So my two favorite cocktails from that period are a
Sidecar and the Bee's Needs, which is a fairly simple
(30:11):
cocktail of fresh lemon juice and gin and honey, or
a simple servant sirrup and you can add some different
herbs to that, and I highly recommend them their wonderful cocktails.
I love it, Deborah. We can never thank you enough
for spending all this time with us. Oh that's so
(30:32):
nice of you, guys. I mean, this was really fun
for me. And you have such smart Debra, take a
minute and thank questions. I really enjoyed it. It was
really fun for us to Yes, you guys, take care
out there. You much, deb It's almost impossible to say
how much we want to thank Debrae for joining us
(30:54):
and spending a ton of time just chatting about poison
and poison and more poise and and not even just arsenic, right,
it was a little bit of like an arsenic fan.
But uh. We also cannot recommend her books highly enough
if you have not read them, As is completely obvious
(31:14):
from listening to her talk. She is so knowledgeable and
so good at talking about science in a way that
is accessible for non scientists and really really compelling. Highly
recommend So we do have one What You're Poison following
this interview that I'm going to throw over to Holly. Yeah,
(31:34):
so as you as you know, we asked Eva what
her favorite cocktails were. If you listen last week, we
you know, you know, we did a sidecar, and this
time I'm doing a bes knees. Similar to the sidecar,
you'll see recipes for bees knees that are all pretty similar,
but with slightly different variations and amounts of of each
(31:55):
particular component. So you'll see anywhere from one and a
half to the most. I was two and a half
ounces of gin. That seems like an awful lot to me.
I would hit right around to um half an ounce
to an ounce of lemon juice. Three quarters is where
I tend to land, and then most call for about
a half ounce of honey syrup. I like a whole
ounce of honey syrup because it takes the edge off
(32:17):
the gin a little bit. For me, I'm not a
gin person. I'm not either. I was wondering when this
came up. I was trying to think if I'd had
these knees before, but because it's gin, it is highly unlikely. YEA, Yeah,
I have had them before, and I it's one of
those things I'm always like I'm gonna have that. It
sounds fun, and then I'm like, why did I order this?
It's not really my drink there I mean, which is
(32:39):
no shade at all to any bartender that's ever made one.
It's just gin is not I'm I have one of
those palettes to whom gin tastes very much like I'm
chewing on pine bark. Um. A good gin will help that,
but even so I still get pine flavor. So, uh,
that's last time I talked about how you can kind
of switch things up. This is such a simple recipe
(33:01):
um that for me, it's just becomes a matter of
like throttling the amount of honey syrup that's in it.
If you don't have you know, uh, if you did
not know, honey syrup is one of the easiest things
on earth to make. It is just like a simple syrup.
It's one part honey to one part water. You throw
it in a saucepan and let it just reach a boil,
(33:22):
so it's completely easy to um for the sugar and
the honey to dissolve, and then you let it cool
off in your golden I do very small amounts when
I make batches of honey syrup like literally a third
of a cup to a third of a cup because
I just don't use it in that much stuff. But
it doesn't, It really doesn't come up a lot doesn't.
But then it's one of those things that once you
(33:43):
have it on hand, you'll just start throwing it in
cocktails and then discovering because one of the things it
really does is it like warms it up. It just
gives it this nice extra body and it it um.
It does take the edge off of things. And if
there are harsh flavors your your spirits, it will help
kind of soothe those. Uh. And so for me, it's
(34:04):
just a matter of adding that bit of honey to
make this a yummy or drink. So that is the
bees Knees. And again we cannot say thanks enough to Deborah,
so we will raise the beas knees in her honor.
I'll drink the gin just for it, right absolutely, And
we also want to make sure that we thank you
are listeners for listening this season. Our next and last
(34:26):
episode on Lady Poisoners is going to be our review
of the whole season. But do not fret, we're going
right into a season two. It won't be about Lady Poisoners.
It will be about stalkers instead. But we're gonna, we're
gonna keep right on going, and so in that next episode,
we are going to cover some of our favorite episodes
from the season, as well as our favorite cocktails that
(34:46):
we've had this time around. Thank you again for listening.
We can't wait to meet back here next week. Criminalia
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more pod casts from Shondaland Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
Popular Podcasts
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.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.