We continue to look back at some of our favorite episodes this week at Distillations. First, we look back at the four humors featured in our body chemical episode. Our former host, Robert Hicks, tells us about black bile. Then Jackie Duffin, of Queen’s University in Ontario, and Audra Wolfe talk about the scientific proof needed to verify a miracle, as indicated by the Vatican. Finally Jen Dionisio explains how sound is created by Pop Rocks in Chemistry in Your Cupboard. Element of the Week: Black Bile.

Listen now (streaming file)
Download (9.1 MB MP3 file)

Show Clock

00:00 Opening Credits
00:31 Introduction
00:48 Element of the Week: Black Bile
02:12 A Conversation with Jackie Duffin
06:44 Chemistry in Your Cupboard: Pop Rocks
08:52 Closing Credits

Credits

Thank you to Erin McLeary, Robert Hicks, and Chi Chan who researched the shows we featured this week.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music from the PodSafe Music Network.

There’s an old stereotype that portrays science and religion as inevitably mired in conflict. On today’s show we look past the clichés—evolution and Galileo and all that—for some areas where the two have something constructive to say to each other. We start off with early philosophers’ attempts to understand the soul as an element. Next, we chat with Jackie Duffin, a historian and hematologist at the University of Toronto, who inadvertently found herself making a case for sainthood for Marie-Marguerite d’Youville (pictured). Partially because of Duffin’s testimony, d’Youville was recognized as the first Canadian saint in 1990. Duffin’s experience with the Vatican inspired her new book, Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World, which will be published by Oxford University Press this October. We wrap up the show with a look at the chemistry of zombies. Element of the Week: Pneuma.

Listen now (streaming file)
Download (11.3 MB MP3 file)

Show Clock

00:00 Opening Credits
00:32 Introduction
01:01 Element of the Week: Pneuma
03:00 A Conversation with Jackie Duffin
07:55 Mystery Solved! Zombies
10:42 Quote: Albert Einstein
11:02 Closing Credits

Resources and References

For background on pneuma, we relied on William Newman’s Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Mary Roach tells the story of the weight of the soul in her book on scientific studies of the afterlife, Spooked, and also in “A Soul’s Weight,” Lost Magazine (December 2005). [Note: we are having trouble linking to the article, but just Google the phrase "soul's weight lost magazine."]
You can learn more about the process of canonization and miracle verification at the Web site of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
The information on voodoo powder came from William Booth, “Voodoo Science,” Science 240 (1988): 274–277.
You can find a chemical analysis of tetradotoxin here.
Today’s quote is from Albert Einstein’s 1941 book, Science, Philosophy, and Religion.

Credits

A special thanks to Robert Hicks for researching the show.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music from the PodSafe Music Network. Additional music is “To Lose the War,” by Josh Woodward, “Burnt Sugar,” by Plasmabat, and “Funk in A,” by Pat Zalenka.

The portrait of Marie-Marguerite d’Youville is in the public domain, and was downloaded from the Vatican’s biography of the saint.

Please note: In today’s episode we have included more mature content than a typical show. 

A Valentine for our listeners, this show is dedicated to the chemistry of love. In today’s show, we explain why passion has always been associated with fire and how the stars can influence your love life. We will also look at the long history of aphrodisiacs, from Spanish fly to chilies to chocolate — but in a different way than one might expect. The Element of the Week: Fire.

And, as promised in the episode, special love recipes for you and your Valentine. Can you figure out which one we don’t recommend trying at home?

The Wolf
“…on the tail of this animal there is a tiny patch of hair which is a love-charm; if the wolf fears that it may be captured, it tears the hair out with its teeth; the charm has no power unless the the hair is taken from the wolf while it is still alive.”
From the Aberdeen Bestiary (a manuscript on animals), written in England around 1200. Aberdeen University Library MS 24, f. 17r.

The Grand Duke of Tuscany’s famous jasmine chocolate
• 4.5 kg ground and roasted cocoa beans
• fresh jasmine flowers
• 3.6 kg dry white sugar
• 85 g “perfect” vanilla pods
• 115 to 170 g “perfect” cinnamon
• 2.5 g grey amber

Place alternate layers of jasmine with layers of ground chocolate in a box, and leave to rest for 24h. Then mix together and add more alternate layers of jasmine and cocoa and proceed in the same way. Repeat the operation 10 to 12 times so that the cocoa really absorbs the scent of the jasmine. Then add the other ingredients and grind this mixture on a warm metate stone. If the metate is too hot, the aroma may evaporate.
From The Chocolate Museum.

Listen now (streaming file)
Download (11.5 MB MP3 file)

Show Clock

00:00    Opening Credits
00:32    Introduction
00:54    Element of the Week: Fire
02:45    Mystery Solved: Aphrodisiacs
05:46    Precise as Pastry
10:03    Quote: Robert Burton
10:31    Closing Credits

Resources and References

On fire: The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements, from John Opsopaus
On love and chemistry: Jen Muehlbauer, “The Chemistry of Love”
On Spanish fly: Poisonous Plants and Animals article from ThinkQuest
On pheromones: An informative entry on Wikipedia

Credits

Special thanks to Anke Timmermann for researching the show.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music was provided from the Podsafe Music Network, Andrew Chalfen, and The Bobs. The music for introduction to the Element of the Week is Fire, by Cyclops. At the end of the Element of the Week the music is Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, arranged and performed by The Bobs. The music for both the intro and the outro for the Mystery Solved segment is Super Size My Love, by Lima Charlie. The music for the quotation is Incidental Music 9, by Andrew Chalfen.

This week’s image appears in Giambattista della Porta’s De distillatione, book 9 (1608). Image courtesy of the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library at CHF. Photo by Douglas A. Lockard.

How do scientists explain what they do to the larger public, and how can historians help? In this first episode of Distillations, we explore this question by looking at phlogiston, an obsolete element once thought to explain combustion. We also talk with Paul Smith, director of laboratory demonstrations at Purdue University. For more than 15 years, Smith has been performing reenactments of the 19th-century chemist Michael Faraday’s Christmas lectures, complete with period costume and language. (That’s Paul in the picture.)

Listen now (streaming file)
Download or listen (10.9 MB MP3 file)

Show Clock

00:00 Opening Credits
00:42 The periodic table
01:52 Element of the Week: Phlogiston
04:02 Interview with Paul Smith, director of lecture demonstrations in the department of chemistry, Purdue University
09:16 Quote of the week: Primo Levi
09:43 Closing Credits

Resources and references

On the periodic table: Eric Scerri, “Mendeleev’s Legacy: The Periodic System,” Chemical Heritage 25:1 (2007), pp. 22–27.
On phlogiston and the discovery of oxygen: Material on Georg Ernst Stahl, Joseph Priestley, and Antoine Lavoisier on CHF’s Chemical Achievers Web site.

On scientific demonstrations: Iwan Rhys Morus, Frankenstein’s Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Quote: Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, trans. by Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schoken Books, 1984), pp. 57–58.

Credits

Special thanks to Anke Timmermann for researching the show.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music was provided from the Podsafe Music Network. The background music for the phlogiston segment is J. P. S. Bach’s Fugue in C-minor, BMW 847, performed by Steven Kreinberg. The music for the quotation is the second movement of Arise for chamber ensemble, by Jeff Vidov.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Chemistry, Purdue University.