October 30, 2020 • 17 mins
This season we may be exploring the lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady poisoners throughout history. And while almost all of the victims we've talked about this season have been fatally poisoned, not all poisonings have a fatal outcome. In today's bonus episode, we're instead inspired to talk about everything from mithridate to unicorn horns to activated charcoal ... the antidotes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio and
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to a
special Halloween episode of Criminalia. So this season we may
be exploring the lives and motivations of some of the
most notorious lady poisoners throughout history. But in today's episode,
(00:20):
which is a little shorter because it is a holiday special,
we are instead inspired to talk about the antidotes. I'm
Maria tru Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. And while almost
all of the victims we've talked about this season have
been fatally poisoned, not all poisonings have a fatal outcome,
(00:42):
and that's because some poisons have antidotes. Historically, and admittedly
some of those antidotes are let's just say, it's best
to have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes
to them. But let's take it back for a minute
to the first century where we find the very first
real vidence of said antidote. Misre Date is a semi
(01:04):
mythical antidote for poison. We're not sure which poisons, though
maybe all of them, and it was compounded with as
many as fifty or sixty ingredients, including everything from ginger
to honey. So it's a big old morass of things,
kind of a kitchen sink scenario that may or may
not have had any efficacy, right right, And I imagined
(01:26):
as that was like Nathi ingredients list, because it was
it was a little bit of everything. You know that
the honey is what kind of just was the glue
They were held together for you because you can chew
on it. Yeah, and it's said to have been created
by Mithradattis the six, the king of Pontus and Armenia minor.
So there's a fun fact about this king. He was
known to eat just a little something poisonous every day,
(01:48):
basically embodying the idea of what doesn't kill you makes
you stronger. Right, It's like he would go out to
his mushroom garden and just take a little nibble. You know.
I know it's messed up, but part of me is
like I get it. I'm like he's he's he is
protecting himself. So let's move on to this one, which
may be my favorite. There was the unicorn horn. Now,
(02:12):
first it was probably a narwhal horn, since there weren't
any unicorns running around in sixteenth century England. But it
was believed that if you drank from a unicorn horn,
it would neutralize the poison that you had consumed. And
also there was a second piece to it. It was
said to magically cure wounds. I mean, who wouldn't want
(02:32):
to keep a unicorn horn handy in that case? I know, right,
I'm not sure if you how it worked though on
the wounds, Like would you have to rub it on
your I don't know. I'm not sure, like a genie
in a bottle comes down, like the rituals not written down.
So but here's the thing. There are some antidotes that
(02:54):
do work. There is Prussian blue, the artist's pigment that
is also used in photography, which it turns out is
actually an effective antidote for thalium poisoning, which is very cool.
I thought, um, But sometimes you actually need a poison
to counteract another poison. I know that sounds a little
bit ridiculous. Bring me the poison the other poison, like
(03:19):
doubling up on your poisons. It doesn't sound like a
great idea to anyone, right, But depending on the poisons,
it can actually work. So for example, strict nine symptoms
can be counteracted with another poison known as c are a.
And that's because both of these poisonous compounds interact with
the same nerve receptors in your body. So it's just
(03:42):
that they have opposite effects on those receptors, and if
we're gonna put it really simply, they kind of just
cancel each other out right. But just in case anybody's
feeling uh, particularly of the mind, to take Maria's every
word to heart, it's not a scientific approach to base
any behavior on no got gidath at home. And sometimes
(04:03):
when it comes to certain poisons, there just isn't an antidote.
For instance, there's no specific antidote for arsenic, which we
talk about a lot on this podcast, except for maybe
having an emergency team of medical professionals flushing it out
of your body as fast as they can, which can
be done, and that's really just a good policy for
(04:23):
any poison. Um But there's one antidote that we're going
to talk about now that really shines above all its competition.
So historically it has been used to clean water and
as a treatment for a variety of things, including everything
to whitening your teeth, to face masks to hangover prevention.
(04:45):
I used to have a roommate who took it as
a digestivate. I've heard that too. While it does work
when it comes to water filtration, it's the best to
be pretty skeptical of most of its trendier uses. We
are talking about activated charcoal, which seems to be kind
of everywhere these days. Um, we know that the Egyptians,
(05:06):
if we go back in time, used charcoal as far
back ass and they used it to clean wounds that
had begun to smell a bit funky. Yeah, I know,
that's kind of sorry that right, it's a Halloween episode.
It's far the first more modern clinical example of it, though,
(05:27):
also comes from the early nineteenth century. This is a
French chemist named Michel Belton who proved that activated charcoal's
potency was a real thing in poisoning cases by swallowing
one hundred fifty times the lethal dosage of arsenic That's
just one teaspoon, right, We've talked about how just a
few grains can kill you. That frenchman was crazy and
(05:51):
he survived, though also crazy, How is this possible? Again?
Don't do this at home? But he had immediately after
he had taken that Arsenic consumed a quote liberal amount
of charcoal. We don't actually know what the measurement of
a liberal amount was. It was enough to save his life, however.
And then about forty years later, another French poisoning drama unfolded.
(06:13):
This was in eighteen fifty two when a second French scientist,
Pierre Fletrie, consumed a large dose of the poison strychnine,
again followed by a large dose of charcoal. And he
did this as part of an open experiment in front
of his colleagues at the French Academy of Medicine. And
he too lived through this. Can't even imagine that conference, like,
(06:36):
did he just swallow? Strict? Did you just see him? Do?
My meetings are not that much fun. With the return,
we'll talk about how activated charcoal is often considered the
universal antidote. Welcome back to criminalia. So is activated charcoal
(07:01):
as magical as the unicorn horn? Let's find out today.
You may be more familiar with treatments such as epicaque
or you know, having your stomach pumped, but in modern
medical toxicology, activated charcoal is the single most widely used
method of treating someone who has ingested poison, and that
(07:22):
actually includes both people and pets, so you either drink
it um or in a more critical situation, it's given
to you through a feeding tube. And this is definitely
not something you should try at home if you think
you've taken too much tile and all or whatever your
pain killer of choice might have been. Yes, self treatment, no, no,
(07:43):
see a doctor always always. Activated charcoal is just f
y I really similar to regular charcoal, just like the
kind that you would use with your grill to make
a delicious meal, but it's made to be used as
a medicine, so the manufacturing process is a little bit
different and it's actually kind of complicated. The simple version
is that activated charcoal is created from carbon rich materials,
(08:06):
so think about things like coconut shells, and those things
are burned at very high temperatures, which gives it a
lot of what you could think of kind of as pores.
It makes the surfaces very very porous, lots of tiny
little spaces just waiting to trap toxic materials, and it
works by attracting toxins and preventing them from being absorbed
(08:26):
into your gastro intestinal track. So think of it like
a magnet or like a sponge for things that shouldn't
be in your body. How it works at the basic
level is that it has a negative charge that makes
positive charged toxins attracted to it. So once those toxins
bind to the charcoal, they can't get into your body
(08:46):
because they're part of the charcoal, and they leave your
body along with said charcoal with your next bowel movement.
So this whole thing works best if it is given
as soon as possible, And then that makes sense because
we're talking about poisons after all. Medical professionals prefer to
administer it as soon as possible and ideally not more
than an hour after the poison or poisons plural were ingested,
(09:09):
but in some situations it can be effective up to
six hours after the poisons were ingested. Again, this is
not saying it's okay to take your time right right,
So instead of becoming a fatality with activated charcoal, your
common side effects can likely just be things like black
stools because this is charcoal, constipation, and maybe some vomiting
(09:31):
depending on how is given to you. So when it
comes to gastro intestinal decontamination, active charcoal is known as
a super absorber of poisons. It has been used for
decades as a sort of and we air quote here
universal antidote for most poisonings. It is not that, but
it's pretty close. Yeah, so in hospitals and in emergency departments.
(09:52):
It's most commonly used to treat overdoses that involved things
like a seat amine fin which is tailan all antidepressants
and editives. But it can't absorb every toxin that's out there,
and it isn't effective when it comes to what toxicologists
referred to as fails, which is an acronym that stands
for pesticides, hydrocarbons, alcohols, iron, lithium, and solvents. Activated charcoal
(10:19):
also can't determine which compounds are supposed to be in
your system and which are not, meaning it can and
will absorb and remove even beneficial things such as your
daily medications. Basically, it cannot tell what exactly is binding
to it. It just kind of welcomes them all. On
one hand, it can be saving your life from a
(10:40):
phenobarbital overdose, but on the other hand, if you ingest
it in say a beverage, it could make it hard
for your body to absorb your antidepressant. If you have
taken it recently, and that is specifically something to keep
in mind right now. Actually, because this show is inspired
by Holly and Holly's Langest Cocktail, which feature is our
(11:00):
new favorite antidote. And no, I'm not talking about unicorn
horn it is. No, it's a unicorn can in a unicorn.
I wanted to make a cocktail with activated charcoal UM
in part because Halloween did fall in the middle of
our season on Lady Poisoners UM and I knew it
(11:20):
was used for poison, so we thought this would be
a great little way to do a bonus episode. And
since we have been talking about arsenic and other poisons, uh,
this seems like a natural ingredient to turn to you
because not only does just a tiny amount of it,
like a pinch, turn any cocktail black. Of course, it is,
as we have just discussed, very good at absorbing all
(11:42):
kinds of poisonous things so that they will not be
absorbed by your body. We also mentioned, and I want
to reiterate, that activated charcoal can also interact with things
like medicines that you intend to ingest that are good
for you. Uh, So use it as an ingredient with care.
Do not ever serve it to someone without disclosing your
(12:03):
secret for making that cocktail black, because they may be
on a medication that they do not want to have thwarted. Um.
And when in doubt, consulted doctor or a pharmacist, just
ask him, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Will this
interact with this? They'll tell you. Um. But if if
you have passed all of those checklist items and you
want to have a yummy black cocktail, UM, here is
(12:25):
one that I am calling the unlikely antidote. And here's
why I call it unlikely because it involves a liquor
that is normally not my jam. So basically, what this
is is my autumn version of a whiskey sound. I see.
I knew it's for Mariana. She's a whiskey girl, and
I tested her and I said, you're gonna like this.
(12:48):
It was going to be for me, and I was like,
we'll see about that. I didn't expect whiskey from you.
I know, right, I'm suddenly paying much more attention, surprising
at every turn. Once a d if you have a handy,
dainty shaker, now is the time I have one, and
I love it. So I threw in two ounces of
I used bourbon h three quarters of an ounce of
(13:09):
lemon juice, and one ounce of pumpkin syrup. And when
I say pumpkin syrup, I mean exactly the stuff you
would throw in your coffee that you can buy at
your local big box store at this time of year,
easy pace. And then like a quarter teaspoon at most
of activated charcoal powder, you can literally just throw a pinchion.
You do not need much. Put it on there with
(13:29):
some ice, give it a really good shake to combine
all those ingredients. And then in a shallow bowl or
a dish, you're gonna pour out some black cherry puree too,
about a quarter inch depth. You can buy that at
liquor store, some grocery stores carry it, etcetera. It's all
pre done for you. You don't have to do anything. Um.
And then I used I often mentioned a coupe glass
(13:50):
because I love them. I just love the shape and
I love the way they hold alcohol. Um. You can
also use a martini glass. You're just gonna dip the
rim into it, and I will warn you it is
a syrup, so it doesn't get drippy and sticky, but
it's fun and it makes a sort of blood effects.
It's Halloween paper Halloween, right. I wouldn't do it all
the time. It's definitely a for one cocktail kind of situation.
(14:11):
So dip that rim and flip it over, throw ice
in very quickly, and then strain your shake and drink
into the cup with the bloody rim, and then you're
golden and it's delicious. So let me ask this one
question about an activated charcoal cocktail, because I've I've actually
never had one before. Does it turn your mouth black
(14:31):
like tongue teeth? Do you get any black side effects
from it? Because I mean that would be pretty cool.
I actually hope answers. Yes, it can turn your tongue black.
If you use more, you will get more black tongue. Right,
Mine wasn't crazy black. It's stuck to my husband's tongue
a little bit more. This was a little more of
a gray petina about it, um, which is funny because
(14:55):
I drank more of it than he did. But I
think in this case the lemon juice may keep it
from sticking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's strictly conjecture on
my part. I have no like science to back it
up other than that lemon juice will often strip things
from other things, um, so I could see it bonding
with the charcoal and preventing it from sticking to your tongue. Um.
(15:16):
But it was very, very yummy. Surprising to me because
I am not a whiskey sour person normally, but that
little change of the pumpkin syrup and the that black
cherry on the rim softened that up a little bit
and took the bite out of the whiskey that I
don't usually like in a whiskey or a bourbon um,
(15:37):
And it was quite yummy, very refreshing. Well, it's it's
it's probably one of them. There have been several drinks
this season so far that I've been like, I need
to try this, but this one, being a whiskey bourbon
specifically drink um will definitely be tried with pumpkin, with
pumpkin and charcoal all in the same drink. This was
(15:57):
not the only combination I tried. We tested a few
different versions, and the pumpkin was the clear winner. If
you don't like pumpkin, you can always sub out for
um simple syrup there, which is what a whiskey sour
would normally have, or a little bit of sugar in it.
I did not try, but would like to at some
point the same thing, especially because it is black with
(16:19):
Anna set I was actually been a little liquorice flavor
when I was thinking about the charcoal turning your mouth black?
Do do you remember the black jack? I mean this
is kind of almost before our time, but I remember
black jack gum. Yeah, like the old school black jack,
like beamons and black jack and all of that. And
if you would chew it, it it would turn your whole
mouth and your teeth black and like, but you had
(16:40):
to like the flavor of licorice or you you know,
kind of screwed. But um, I just thought that was
great when I was a little kid. I love it.
So I hope everyone has a marvelous Halloween this year.
And if you don't celebrate Halloween, then you just have
a beautiful fault. But if you're in the Halloween, which
(17:02):
I certainly am, and then I hope you enjoyed it.
And if you try this drink, let us know. Tabby
Halloween CRIMINALLYA is a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda
land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio and
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to a
special Halloween episode of Criminalia. So this season we may
be exploring the lives and motivations of some of the
most notorious lady poisoners throughout history. But in today's episode,
(00:20):
which is a little shorter because it is a holiday special,
we are instead inspired to talk about the antidotes. I'm
Maria tru Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. And while almost
all of the victims we've talked about this season have
been fatally poisoned, not all poisonings have a fatal outcome,
(00:42):
and that's because some poisons have antidotes. Historically, and admittedly
some of those antidotes are let's just say, it's best
to have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes
to them. But let's take it back for a minute
to the first century where we find the very first
real vidence of said antidote. Misre Date is a semi
(01:04):
mythical antidote for poison. We're not sure which poisons, though
maybe all of them, and it was compounded with as
many as fifty or sixty ingredients, including everything from ginger
to honey. So it's a big old morass of things,
kind of a kitchen sink scenario that may or may
not have had any efficacy, right right, And I imagined
(01:26):
as that was like Nathi ingredients list, because it was
it was a little bit of everything. You know that
the honey is what kind of just was the glue
They were held together for you because you can chew
on it. Yeah, and it's said to have been created
by Mithradattis the six, the king of Pontus and Armenia minor.
So there's a fun fact about this king. He was
known to eat just a little something poisonous every day,
(01:48):
basically embodying the idea of what doesn't kill you makes
you stronger. Right, It's like he would go out to
his mushroom garden and just take a little nibble. You know.
I know it's messed up, but part of me is
like I get it. I'm like he's he's he is
protecting himself. So let's move on to this one, which
may be my favorite. There was the unicorn horn. Now,
(02:12):
first it was probably a narwhal horn, since there weren't
any unicorns running around in sixteenth century England. But it
was believed that if you drank from a unicorn horn,
it would neutralize the poison that you had consumed. And
also there was a second piece to it. It was
said to magically cure wounds. I mean, who wouldn't want
(02:32):
to keep a unicorn horn handy in that case? I know, right,
I'm not sure if you how it worked though on
the wounds, Like would you have to rub it on
your I don't know. I'm not sure, like a genie
in a bottle comes down, like the rituals not written down.
So but here's the thing. There are some antidotes that
(02:54):
do work. There is Prussian blue, the artist's pigment that
is also used in photography, which it turns out is
actually an effective antidote for thalium poisoning, which is very cool.
I thought, um, But sometimes you actually need a poison
to counteract another poison. I know that sounds a little
bit ridiculous. Bring me the poison the other poison, like
(03:19):
doubling up on your poisons. It doesn't sound like a
great idea to anyone, right, But depending on the poisons,
it can actually work. So for example, strict nine symptoms
can be counteracted with another poison known as c are a.
And that's because both of these poisonous compounds interact with
the same nerve receptors in your body. So it's just
(03:42):
that they have opposite effects on those receptors, and if
we're gonna put it really simply, they kind of just
cancel each other out right. But just in case anybody's
feeling uh, particularly of the mind, to take Maria's every
word to heart, it's not a scientific approach to base
any behavior on no got gidath at home. And sometimes
(04:03):
when it comes to certain poisons, there just isn't an antidote.
For instance, there's no specific antidote for arsenic, which we
talk about a lot on this podcast, except for maybe
having an emergency team of medical professionals flushing it out
of your body as fast as they can, which can
be done, and that's really just a good policy for
(04:23):
any poison. Um But there's one antidote that we're going
to talk about now that really shines above all its competition.
So historically it has been used to clean water and
as a treatment for a variety of things, including everything
to whitening your teeth, to face masks to hangover prevention.
(04:45):
I used to have a roommate who took it as
a digestivate. I've heard that too. While it does work
when it comes to water filtration, it's the best to
be pretty skeptical of most of its trendier uses. We
are talking about activated charcoal, which seems to be kind
of everywhere these days. Um, we know that the Egyptians,
(05:06):
if we go back in time, used charcoal as far
back ass and they used it to clean wounds that
had begun to smell a bit funky. Yeah, I know,
that's kind of sorry that right, it's a Halloween episode.
It's far the first more modern clinical example of it, though,
(05:27):
also comes from the early nineteenth century. This is a
French chemist named Michel Belton who proved that activated charcoal's
potency was a real thing in poisoning cases by swallowing
one hundred fifty times the lethal dosage of arsenic That's
just one teaspoon, right, We've talked about how just a
few grains can kill you. That frenchman was crazy and
(05:51):
he survived, though also crazy, How is this possible? Again?
Don't do this at home? But he had immediately after
he had taken that Arsenic consumed a quote liberal amount
of charcoal. We don't actually know what the measurement of
a liberal amount was. It was enough to save his life, however.
And then about forty years later, another French poisoning drama unfolded.
(06:13):
This was in eighteen fifty two when a second French scientist,
Pierre Fletrie, consumed a large dose of the poison strychnine,
again followed by a large dose of charcoal. And he
did this as part of an open experiment in front
of his colleagues at the French Academy of Medicine. And
he too lived through this. Can't even imagine that conference, like,
(06:36):
did he just swallow? Strict? Did you just see him? Do?
My meetings are not that much fun. With the return,
we'll talk about how activated charcoal is often considered the
universal antidote. Welcome back to criminalia. So is activated charcoal
(07:01):
as magical as the unicorn horn? Let's find out today.
You may be more familiar with treatments such as epicaque
or you know, having your stomach pumped, but in modern
medical toxicology, activated charcoal is the single most widely used
method of treating someone who has ingested poison, and that
(07:22):
actually includes both people and pets, so you either drink
it um or in a more critical situation, it's given
to you through a feeding tube. And this is definitely
not something you should try at home if you think
you've taken too much tile and all or whatever your
pain killer of choice might have been. Yes, self treatment, no, no,
(07:43):
see a doctor always always. Activated charcoal is just f
y I really similar to regular charcoal, just like the
kind that you would use with your grill to make
a delicious meal, but it's made to be used as
a medicine, so the manufacturing process is a little bit
different and it's actually kind of complicated. The simple version
is that activated charcoal is created from carbon rich materials,
(08:06):
so think about things like coconut shells, and those things
are burned at very high temperatures, which gives it a
lot of what you could think of kind of as pores.
It makes the surfaces very very porous, lots of tiny
little spaces just waiting to trap toxic materials, and it
works by attracting toxins and preventing them from being absorbed
(08:26):
into your gastro intestinal track. So think of it like
a magnet or like a sponge for things that shouldn't
be in your body. How it works at the basic
level is that it has a negative charge that makes
positive charged toxins attracted to it. So once those toxins
bind to the charcoal, they can't get into your body
(08:46):
because they're part of the charcoal, and they leave your
body along with said charcoal with your next bowel movement.
So this whole thing works best if it is given
as soon as possible, And then that makes sense because
we're talking about poisons after all. Medical professionals prefer to
administer it as soon as possible and ideally not more
than an hour after the poison or poisons plural were ingested,
(09:09):
but in some situations it can be effective up to
six hours after the poisons were ingested. Again, this is
not saying it's okay to take your time right right,
So instead of becoming a fatality with activated charcoal, your
common side effects can likely just be things like black
stools because this is charcoal, constipation, and maybe some vomiting
(09:31):
depending on how is given to you. So when it
comes to gastro intestinal decontamination, active charcoal is known as
a super absorber of poisons. It has been used for
decades as a sort of and we air quote here
universal antidote for most poisonings. It is not that, but
it's pretty close. Yeah, so in hospitals and in emergency departments.
(09:52):
It's most commonly used to treat overdoses that involved things
like a seat amine fin which is tailan all antidepressants
and editives. But it can't absorb every toxin that's out there,
and it isn't effective when it comes to what toxicologists
referred to as fails, which is an acronym that stands
for pesticides, hydrocarbons, alcohols, iron, lithium, and solvents. Activated charcoal
(10:19):
also can't determine which compounds are supposed to be in
your system and which are not, meaning it can and
will absorb and remove even beneficial things such as your
daily medications. Basically, it cannot tell what exactly is binding
to it. It just kind of welcomes them all. On
one hand, it can be saving your life from a
(10:40):
phenobarbital overdose, but on the other hand, if you ingest
it in say a beverage, it could make it hard
for your body to absorb your antidepressant. If you have
taken it recently, and that is specifically something to keep
in mind right now. Actually, because this show is inspired
by Holly and Holly's Langest Cocktail, which feature is our
(11:00):
new favorite antidote. And no, I'm not talking about unicorn
horn it is. No, it's a unicorn can in a unicorn.
I wanted to make a cocktail with activated charcoal UM
in part because Halloween did fall in the middle of
our season on Lady Poisoners UM and I knew it
(11:20):
was used for poison, so we thought this would be
a great little way to do a bonus episode. And
since we have been talking about arsenic and other poisons, uh,
this seems like a natural ingredient to turn to you
because not only does just a tiny amount of it,
like a pinch, turn any cocktail black. Of course, it is,
as we have just discussed, very good at absorbing all
(11:42):
kinds of poisonous things so that they will not be
absorbed by your body. We also mentioned, and I want
to reiterate, that activated charcoal can also interact with things
like medicines that you intend to ingest that are good
for you. Uh, So use it as an ingredient with care.
Do not ever serve it to someone without disclosing your
(12:03):
secret for making that cocktail black, because they may be
on a medication that they do not want to have thwarted. Um.
And when in doubt, consulted doctor or a pharmacist, just
ask him, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Will this
interact with this? They'll tell you. Um. But if if
you have passed all of those checklist items and you
want to have a yummy black cocktail, UM, here is
(12:25):
one that I am calling the unlikely antidote. And here's
why I call it unlikely because it involves a liquor
that is normally not my jam. So basically, what this
is is my autumn version of a whiskey sound. I see.
I knew it's for Mariana. She's a whiskey girl, and
I tested her and I said, you're gonna like this.
(12:48):
It was going to be for me, and I was like,
we'll see about that. I didn't expect whiskey from you.
I know, right, I'm suddenly paying much more attention, surprising
at every turn. Once a d if you have a handy,
dainty shaker, now is the time I have one, and
I love it. So I threw in two ounces of
I used bourbon h three quarters of an ounce of
(13:09):
lemon juice, and one ounce of pumpkin syrup. And when
I say pumpkin syrup, I mean exactly the stuff you
would throw in your coffee that you can buy at
your local big box store at this time of year,
easy pace. And then like a quarter teaspoon at most
of activated charcoal powder, you can literally just throw a pinchion.
You do not need much. Put it on there with
(13:29):
some ice, give it a really good shake to combine
all those ingredients. And then in a shallow bowl or
a dish, you're gonna pour out some black cherry puree too,
about a quarter inch depth. You can buy that at
liquor store, some grocery stores carry it, etcetera. It's all
pre done for you. You don't have to do anything. Um.
And then I used I often mentioned a coupe glass
(13:50):
because I love them. I just love the shape and
I love the way they hold alcohol. Um. You can
also use a martini glass. You're just gonna dip the
rim into it, and I will warn you it is
a syrup, so it doesn't get drippy and sticky, but
it's fun and it makes a sort of blood effects.
It's Halloween paper Halloween, right. I wouldn't do it all
the time. It's definitely a for one cocktail kind of situation.
(14:11):
So dip that rim and flip it over, throw ice
in very quickly, and then strain your shake and drink
into the cup with the bloody rim, and then you're
golden and it's delicious. So let me ask this one
question about an activated charcoal cocktail, because I've I've actually
never had one before. Does it turn your mouth black
(14:31):
like tongue teeth? Do you get any black side effects
from it? Because I mean that would be pretty cool.
I actually hope answers. Yes, it can turn your tongue black.
If you use more, you will get more black tongue. Right,
Mine wasn't crazy black. It's stuck to my husband's tongue
a little bit more. This was a little more of
a gray petina about it, um, which is funny because
(14:55):
I drank more of it than he did. But I
think in this case the lemon juice may keep it
from sticking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's strictly conjecture on
my part. I have no like science to back it
up other than that lemon juice will often strip things
from other things, um, so I could see it bonding
with the charcoal and preventing it from sticking to your tongue. Um.
(15:16):
But it was very, very yummy. Surprising to me because
I am not a whiskey sour person normally, but that
little change of the pumpkin syrup and the that black
cherry on the rim softened that up a little bit
and took the bite out of the whiskey that I
don't usually like in a whiskey or a bourbon um,
(15:37):
And it was quite yummy, very refreshing. Well, it's it's
it's probably one of them. There have been several drinks
this season so far that I've been like, I need
to try this, but this one, being a whiskey bourbon
specifically drink um will definitely be tried with pumpkin, with
pumpkin and charcoal all in the same drink. This was
(15:57):
not the only combination I tried. We tested a few
different versions, and the pumpkin was the clear winner. If
you don't like pumpkin, you can always sub out for
um simple syrup there, which is what a whiskey sour
would normally have, or a little bit of sugar in it.
I did not try, but would like to at some
point the same thing, especially because it is black with
(16:19):
Anna set I was actually been a little liquorice flavor
when I was thinking about the charcoal turning your mouth black?
Do do you remember the black jack? I mean this
is kind of almost before our time, but I remember
black jack gum. Yeah, like the old school black jack,
like beamons and black jack and all of that. And
if you would chew it, it it would turn your whole
mouth and your teeth black and like, but you had
(16:40):
to like the flavor of licorice or you you know,
kind of screwed. But um, I just thought that was
great when I was a little kid. I love it.
So I hope everyone has a marvelous Halloween this year.
And if you don't celebrate Halloween, then you just have
a beautiful fault. But if you're in the Halloween, which
(17:02):
I certainly am, and then I hope you enjoyed it.
And if you try this drink, let us know. Tabby
Halloween CRIMINALLYA is a production of Shonda land Audio in
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land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
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