Good Job, Brain! - 67: Bad Medicine

Episode Date: June 25, 2013

Paging Doctor Feelgood! We need 100cc of trivia facts STAT!!! We explore the trivia-filled world of medicine - specifically, the weird and wacky medical treatments: old-timey snake oil, traveling medicine shows, alcohol, quacks, that wonder drug "calomel", leeches (no, no, they're actually quite nice!), Hollywood "script doctors," and an odd story about... ancient Chinese ingenuity? Yeah... ALSO: Dog Show facts, XYZ quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, cranial cronies craving for crackups. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 67. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your bunch of of brainy buzzer beholders. I'm Colin. I'm Dana.

And I'm Chris. Just a quick note to start off the show. Obviously, I'm sure all of us fall down the wiki hole a lot. And just two nights ago, I fell down a YouTube hole, a wiki hole and YouTube hole together. Sometimes they're companions, right, to each other. Best in Show, the Christopher Guest movie, was on TV. And then so I was like, I need to know about all of the winners. of best in show from the, you know,

the, well, in real life, the Westminster Kennel Club, shock show. So then I decided, okay, I read all the winners, and I was like, now I need to watch all of the winning clips when they announced the Best In Show. And I went year by year backwards. You know, I like to see the reaction, the crowd reaction. Obviously, my favorite one is Uno, the Beagle, or the first Beagle that won Best In Show.

That was a big deal because, you know, like, Eagles are like America's dog and just the crowd. went wild. And then it's so funny because I was just in your bathroom, Colin, and you had an issue of mental floss, the trivia magazine. I do. And there's a little dog section in the most recent issue. So I want to ask you guys a quick question. And this may show up in trivia. I feel like it's a good pub trivia question. What breed of dog has won best in show the most number of times? Oh, poodle. French poodle? Incorrect. Oh, are Are you going to buzz?

You're ready to buzz, Chris. Well, I'm ready to buzz if inspiration were to strike me. I think of something. Just in case. How many years is it around, first of all? It's like over 100 years old or something. Yeah, the first winning dog, Besson Show, dates back to 1907. It was actually a dire wolf.

That's how far back it goes. Number one winner, according to breed, is the Wire Fox Terrier. Wow. 13 times Number two It's almost like family food Maybe it's like the mafia or something Yeah that dog's connected

I have a terrible mob dog pun What is it? La Cosa Nostra That's dumb It's so bad That can apply to so many other animals They all have noses That's why

We'll workshop that for him Give me a few more minutes Bonesa Nostra Bonesra Mokosa Bonesra. That sounds weird. Number two, dog breed that has won the most number of times, is of the Scottish Terrier.

A little Scotty. The Scotty Dog, Monopoly Dog. What was the breed of the dog that won in the movie Best in Show? It was a terrier. Norwich Terrier. Thank you for having that immediately. I found a clip of a Norwich Terrier actually winning the Westminster. In the movie, it's Mayflower Kettle Club.

There was a Norwich Terrier that won't. So I was wondering like, oh, if it was connected, if it was inspired. So there you go. If that comes up in pub trivia, the answer is why are Fox Terrier 13 times? Our dog is a mutt in this, could not compete in such a, he's a cheweener. A chihuahua doxon. I believe this weekend at Golden Gate Fields, not too far from here, they're having the Wiener Nationals, which they do once a year. Do they dress the dog like hot dogs?

It's little wiener dog races. I don't think they dress them like hot dogs. Because there's some races where they put them in a hot dog costume. Well, that's just ridiculous. All this stuff we've been talking about so far is perfectly fine. All right. Without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. That's my voice a little bit there.

You guys have your buzzers ready. Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. In what state is a king? Acadia National Park. Acadia must be a clue. Alaska? Uh-uh.

Because I have no idea. I hope it's not California. No, it is not. It is Maine. It has to be famous somehow. I think it may have been. It's like a Stephen King or something. All right.

Pink Wedge, name three, just three, of the six characters in the village people. Police officer Ding ding ding ding Native American Slash American Indian Construction worker Ding ding ding ding Deng ding

Dijk Dijker guy And is there a military person A soldier? There you go Last one Did we say we said cop Did we say cop?

We said Construction worker you said I'm a cowboy Of course Very good I'm like, you can name all six, but no idea where Acadio National Park is. Yeah, I don't even know who's president right now. Priorities, yeah.

All right, yellow wedge. What was the nickname for a woman who took on a traditionally male job during World War II? Oh, was it a Rosie, like Rosie the Riveter? Yes, Rosie the Riveter. Oh, really? They just called him Rosie the Riveters. I just thought that was the character. Yeah, it is.

Not like a term for everybody. Got applied generally. Interesting. Huh. All right, Purple Wedge. What group performed the 1994 hit Cotton Eye Joe, which became popular at wedding receptions and sporting events? Darn it. I had that album.

I do not know. They had like one other hit song, but it was, oh. Was it rednecks? Yes. Yes. Wow. Rednecks. With an X at the end.

I was just going to say, it's edgy. Well, it was the 90s. Yeah. Rednecks are actually from Sweden. Of course. Infectious pop music. All right. Greenwich for science.

Which snake does not kill by constriction? Multiple choice. Anaconda. Python or water moccasin. I feel like it's the water moccasin. Yes, water mackison. That'd be hard to constrict you when you're in the water. Oh, that's true.

You'd slip right out. Those are venomous, right? Like, they bite you. I believe so. Yes, it has a venomous bite. Don't go in the water or engage nature at all. Don't go outside at all. The overriding.

If we've learned anything. Lesson of good job, brain. Nature's out to get you. Just watch TV. Especially if you live in Australia. Yeah. Oh, man. Last question, orange wedge.

How many times did Michael Jordan retire from the NBA? Ha, ha, ha, ha. I believe it was three times. Correct. Can you name all three years? Let's see. Really quickly, let's see. It was before the 94 season.

It was again after the 96th season. And then again, I want to say 2003, 2004. Why just give me the years? Retired in 1993. Okay, right. 1999. Oh, okay. And then 2003.

Okay. Very good job. I only quit playing basketball once. That was it. So this week, we want to talk about medicine, but not just general medicine. Not the kind that helps you. No, not the kind of helps you. We actually kind of want to go into, maybe veer into the territory, wacky medicine, perhaps offbeat.

Or quacky medicine? Wacky medicine. This week, we're talking about bad medicine. Take it up Just like bad medicine You got the post and I can feel my disease All right, so to kick things off So I feel like if we're going to talk about bad medicine

We have to talk about quacks Do you guys know what a quack is? What a sound duck makes. Like an incompetent doctor, right? Yes, an incompetent. Somebody pretends to have medical skills. I am unfamiliar. with this term.

Oh, okay. I just thought quack was a crazy person. Like, oh, that guy's a loon. That guy's a quack. Oh, I can see that. I didn't know it was like a specific doctor. There's a doctor term. It tends to specifically be applied to people who pretend that, you know.

That they have some kind of skill that they don't have. Yeah. Right. But it usually has to do with medicine specifically. It comes from the Dutch word quack solver. Sorry, I don't, I don't know Dutch. So I'm probably not pronouncing it quite right. But it had to do with somebody who is hawking salve at the market.

So they'd shout out. that they're selling some kind of medical ointment. So the word quack in Dutch, in Old Dutch, means to hawk something or sell something loudly. So it became like, oh, you're selling. Wow, that's actually a really good coincidence. Because it sounds kooky. It sounds weird, you know?

So quacks might sell snake oil to you. You know what snake oil? That's a fake medicine. Okay. Well, metaphorically, it's now used just to mean all fake medicine. Or really, just like, you know, you can say a business person is selling you snake oil if they're kind of like using smoke and mirrors

and they're selling you a product that's not really going to do with it. Yeah, anything that doesn't do what it's purported to do. Yeah. You guys are opening a whole new world to me. I don't know any of these things. English language idioms. So would you say, like, the weird diet drugs they sell on infomercial, would you count that as snake oil? I think a lot of them, you know, probably, yes.

Okay. Or there are a lot of theories about where that term came from. Some people said, oh, when the Chinese immigrants came, they would use snake oil on different injuries. And so that's where it came from. or there was some ointment that came from Seneca, New York, and it was cynical oil, and it became snake oil, which, I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But then there was actually a case of Clark Stanley's snake oil. He was a guy who sold something called snake oil. You could put it on your back.

You could put it on your sore tooth. Yeah, there actually are, like, pictures of bottles out there of snake oil. Yeah. And so he was the king of rattlesnakes, and he was supposed to have an extract of snake rattlesnakes in it, and it was going to cure you and numb you. And the U.S. government did a study of it. They analyzed it, and it had like mineral oil, turpentine, beef fat, and red chili peppers. So no snake. No snake at all.

No, what I meant is it's for oiling up your snakes. Keep your snakes. So they can't constrict you. So they can't constrict you. So in my research, I found out that when they busted him on this, not having any actual snake in it, they find him 20. whole dollars for only yeah and then

after that the term snake oil kind of came into usage popular usage as being a fake tonic well tiger bomb doesn't have tiger in it yeah but it wasn't represented as having tiger in it yeah baby oil has very little baby

these days yeah these days yeah extremely it's a lot of baby it's like Coca-Cola it's like Coca-Cola you saw right yeah there's a little bit of cocaine so a little bit of baby in the baby oil but not nearly what it used to be. Trace. Trace amounts of things.

So that was called a patent medicine. It's just basically a tonic or an elixir or something that people claim takes care of your ailments, whatever they may be. And there's this kind of famous one that emerged during Prohibition. It was created before Prohibition, but it really became popular during Prohibition called Jamaica Ginger or Jake. You might have heard that. People drinking Jake during the Prohibition when they weren't allowed.

Like blue songs and things like that. It comes up in blue songs for very good. good reason, actually. To make a ginger is ginger extract, but in order to break down the ginger, they put it in 70 to 80% per volume alcohol. So it will get you drunk if you drink a lot of it. And they were selling it as a medicine, so it's not against the law. You can drink this, but the government, the U.S. Treasury Department caught on to this,

and they were like, wait a minute. And so they require that you put in a lot more ginger, a lot more ginger solid into it. And it made it basically undrinkable at a big dose. You couldn't drink enough to get drunk, you mean? Well, yeah, it would be very hard because ginger is potent. Yeah. So you can drink a lot of it, but you can't feel your mouth. So to get around that, bootleggers, they're like, all right, well, it needs to have this much solid in it.

And so they tried putting different things like molasses or castor oil or that kind of thing to thicken it up. So if you boiled off all the alcohol, what's left is the solid. And they had to get to a certain percentage, basically. this big distributor of Jake figured out, oh, I could put in this, this plasticine, this ingredient that gets used in varnishes and industrial cleaners. And it was supposed to be non-toxic and it doesn't have like a strong flavor and it boils down nicely. Like so the Treasury Department won't, their alarm bells won't start going off. They put it in there and this Jake was really popular and a lot of people drank it. And then there started to be this thing called Jake Leg or Jake Walker and they figured out that it wasn't non-toxic.

at all that it actually would like give you nerve damage and you started losing like feelings in your fingers and your toes and your extremities. I saw some reports that said 30,000 to 50,000 people got nerve damage from this. And then I saw another thing that said 100,000 people got damage. Apparently he had enough ingredients to make 500,000 bottles of it. And there were stories about like a women's bridge group that they all got it. And the trick with this and why they couldn't track it down and it went on for for years was because people felt embarrassed or they didn't want to say why they were getting sick. And so they'd say, oh, I had a stroke or, oh, like, like, not, oh, I've been O-Ding on

yeah, oh, we've been spiking the punch with ginger alcohol with Jake. And so there's all sorts of blues songs about having Jake legs. I think I always just thought that Jake just meant like moonshine. I had no idea. It's a very specific type of kind of moonshine, although they didn't brew it in bathtubs or anything like that. It was actually distributed as a medicine. It makes you think it's more credible and legit, you know?

So I found a blues song about Jake. Once I really understood what it was about, it was like, this song is sad. It's really bluesy. So we'll play a little bit for you guys. I can't eat. I can't talk. I better drinking this Jake and tell him I can't walk. Come, yeah, mama, hold me by the hand.

I'm a Jake Walk, Papa from a Jakewalk plan. There you go. That's a flavor. It's called Jake Walk Papa by Asa Martin. So they linked it? They figured it out, but they weren't even able to get a full understanding of what happened until the 70s because of the stigma from prohibition and not being able to talk about why people might be sick and being able to like really research it. And it also affected poor people and immigrants and people in the South. And it's supposed to cure you. We sit here and we laugh at this stuff. But then like, you know, our grandchildren are. are going to be thinking back like, oh, my God, can you believe that people actually drank Capri Sun? Yeah, I'm so cooler in my butt.

They're going to be like 150 years old. I can't believe they actually drank that stuff. When you have, you know, it's the 1800s and you've got your crazy non-medicine that you've just mixed up out of a bunch of random things you found around lying on the ground. It's like liquid sausage, you know, liquid mystery meat. Exactly. It's like, well, how do you get it out there? to people. There's no television to advertise on and things of that nature. So you have a good

old-fashioned medicine show for your patent medicine. You know, I mean, it's just like the stereotype in American culture of Dr. Feel Good or Dr. Good Time or Dr. John going around on the covered wagon and, you know, jumping out in middle of the town square and delivering a stem winding speech about the benefits of this medicine and, you know, reading testimonials and things of that nature and selling it, then getting in the wagon and getting out of town before anybody realizes anything is missed. So, they're con men. Well, yes.

Let me read you. This is a great, this is a great old description of a classic old medicine. Yeah. So a valuable brain tonic and a cure for all nervous affections. Sick headache, neuralgia, hysteria, melancholy, etc. Does everybody want to venture a guess as to what medicine this is describing? This is an old newspaper ad. Alka-Seltzer.

Not Alka-Seltzer. Heroin. No. Is it actually like a good medicine or a bad medicine? It didn't do anything bad to you. Dr. Pepper. It's actually Coca-Cola. This is an old ad for Coca-Cola.

It goes on the valuable tonic and nerve-stimulant properties of the coca plant and the colon nuts. Oh, it did have stimulant in it, though. Exactly. And then down below it says, invigorating with consumed with a sandwich of hamburg steak and fried root of the potato plant. No, it doesn't. Okay, that part, that part is. a lot. When I was talking to my fiancé Regina about doing medicine shows, she had the

exact same reaction that Karen and Dana both did, which was like, oh, you're going to talk about ER and House and Raised Anatomy? I do love ER. No, I'm talking about the companies that were established around, you know, traveling around doing old-timey medicine show at the time was contemporary medicine.

And Karen, you're really going to love this. This kept coming up in my research, the most well-known, most famous brand of these patent medicines, medicine shows, was called the, I swear to you, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. Kickapoo.

Now, the Kickapoo Indians, there was actually Kickapoo Indian tribe. The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual Indian tribe. They were a company that was established in Connecticut, and basically they had come up with what they called Kickapoo Indian Sagwa. It was a salve, an ointment to rub anywhere and cure anything. And it actually, this is the early, early 1900s. It had one of the earliest celebrity endorsements of any product anywhere. It was not the earliest, but it was super early.

Buffalo Bill Cody himself, a famous Wild West showman, said, Kickapoo Indian Sagwa is the only remedy the Indians ever use and has been known to them for ages. An Indian would as soon be without his horse gun or blanket, as without Saguas. No American Indian, Native American tribes has ever, ever heard of it. But they would hire Native Americans or people to address as Native Americans to ride around on the wagon and stand there and look very solemn. Right. And nod, you know, as the pitchman was giving his speech. Yeah.

It must be true. The guy's standing right there. Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of legal regulations about, like, you know, saying what drugs can do. So one of the other things that I found was one of their popular product was called Kickapoo Indian Worm Killer. And they take out newspaper ads saying, parents, does your child suffer from whatever made-up disease? You know, then he probably has worms. Yes, worms are infesting your child. But if you give him the Kickapoo Indian Worm Killer, the worms will.

be expelled from the body and a couple of sources would say that what was in these pills that they would take would be worms yeah so basically what some of these would contain like a laxative and they think they would contain a really really really tightly wound ball of string okay so like you would very very quickly poop a string which you would you would not want to look too closely at it and you'd be like I had a tape worm and a tapeworm in my stomach. I'm glad it was a string and not worms. Not actual worms, not actual worms, no, but string.

I would like to say something in defense, or at least in partial defense, of snake oil and these and saba and things of that nature. They are at least harmless. They are mixtures of ordinary sort of herbs and oils, that things that don't do anything to you. There's a placebo effect. You think you're going to get better. This is proven, you know, some people will actually get better.

Okay, maybe they're being faked into thinking that, but at least it's not doing anything bad to you. And remember, a century or two ago, if you decided to not go to the medicine show, went to an actual doctor, that actual doctor might more likely than not give you a bunch of straight up poison to drink. In pre-Civil War, America, one of the really popular medications that I was reading about is called Calamel. It had been used for centuries. Paracelsis, the Renaissance-era physician had been a devalued. o-tie of this. So centuries. And even in, you know, early America, they were still giving people calomel. You should drink calomel for all your problems. Okay, great. What's calumel? Oh, it's mercury chloride. So people are just chugging down mercury for anything. People are

using it as a preventative. Women were baking it into breads because even if you weren't sick, oh, we'll just put the calomel up to the bread to prevent us from getting sick. And you'd lose your hair and you'd lose your teeth. This is a quote from American physician John Warren in 1813, who, excuse me not a quote, but a paraphrase, who said, basically, look, if you want to counter violent fevers, you have to use violent drugs. They knew it was doing bad things to them, but they were like, well, clearly it's working really hard to get everything up. There was a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in the late 1700s, and Kalamel was basically what was prescribed for everybody. So, and Kalimel would start, you know, the mercury would start making you

like salivate a lot, then you'd vomit, and you'd be vomiting black stuff. And they'd be like, oh, you're purging. You're getting all the bad stuff out. Yeah, exactly. No, you have yellow fever, and now you also have mercury poisoning. That didn't go so well. Eventually, they got rid of that. Now, what was considered to be the last of the great medicine shows in America was a product

called Hadacall. And this was called Hadacall. It was very popular in the 1940s and 1950s. This is a fascinating story. Buckle up. Okay. Chich. Hadacol was the brainchild of a sitting United States senator named Dudley J. LeBlanc.

A doctor had given him B vitamins and he was like actual medicine. And he was like, oh, I feel really good. I'm going to bottle B vitamins and sell him as medicine. And he had the Hadacall Goodwill Caravan. This was the traveling show. And this was huge. They would tour the American South. And they would bring in thousands of people.

There was one report I saw that said they would have like 10,000, 12,000 people go to one of these things. The admission to the show was two had-a-call box tops, one for children. If you imagine that they, to even get in here, they had to buy the product in the first place just to go and get the product sold to them, basically. And he would have Judy Garland, Milton Burl, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball. It's a whole show. But if you were famous in Hollywood at that time, 40s, early, 50s, you'd be performing in this big old show. Oh, yeah, they'd get a stadium, you know, the biggest things they can do.

There were songs. They were written about Hadacall, just like Jake, you know, the Hadacall boogie. Everybody loves that Hadacall. There was a comic book, Captain Hadacall, about a young man who drinks Hadacall and suddenly becomes a superhero. And they're just vitamin B. Yeah, well, it's not just vitamin B. There's vitamin B, and then there's a bunch of alcohol.

There was about 12% alcohol. Just one box top for kids. Yeah, exactly. This was post-prohibition, but there were still a lot of dry counties in the south where you couldn't get booze. And so they loved had a call. They had testimonial letters from parents in this comic book saying, like, how they gave had a call to their kids and their kids now feel great. No, duh. And it says, like, kids, show these letters to your parents.

So you'd show the letter to the parents. So the parents would get convinced that they had to. Absolutely shameless. And this, I mean, this also fell victim to the U.S. government coming in and saying, yeah, you cannot. You're making all these claims about what this thing does because by now it's the 50s. And they're like, you cannot make all of these claims. It doesn't do any of this. It's just B vitamins and booze, you know.

But my favorite, favorite part of this insane story is the name Hadacall, which there's an explanation for how it got its name. It's not that interesting. But whenever they asked Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, why it got that name, he would say, and I love him for this, well, I had to call it something. Oh. I thought at first it was like Haddock, like the fish? Oh, the H-A-C-O-L. Like alcohol from the Haddock fish. Fish a haul.

Did you see the thing, the luxur that people used to give to kids? I had a picture of a fairy just pouring it into a baby. And it was like, like it doesn't, you don't know how much to give to anybody. No, no concept of a dosage. No. Send your baby off to Fairyland. This is Winslow's soothing syrup.

And it's just like, she's not a fairy, but it kind of looks like a fairy. It looks like she poured it all over there. Now what's in soothing syrup? Morphine sulfate, chloroform, morphine, coating, heroin. Codine and here powdered opium Cannabis indica and combinations of these

morphine cannabis This sounds like a party in a bottle Oh my god Kick back with that and some Jake What is it? Yeah, soothing syrup and Jake This is Winslow's soothing syrup We'll be soothed for weeks

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So if I have one takeaway from that segment, it's don't drink mercury. No, definitely not. Oh, I talked about it before. We have talked about it before. Yeah, but I mean, it's important enough to hit over and over again. Yeah, public service announcement. We've specifically talked about it before, Karen. We talked about Emperor of China, Chin Chihuan.

Right? And he was emperor from 259 to 210 BC. And he was kind of a big deal. He was sort of the first emperor that really kind of unified all of China. And what's funny to me about him is we've talked how he died before. So let's just cut to the end very quickly. He died by ingesting mercury as part of a way of finding an elixir of life. You know, this was just an obsession of his was I want to be immortal. I want to see my rule never end. The irony is that over the course of his rule, he survived a lot of assassination. attempts and coups, and what brought him down was his own doctors and his own alchemists and his own physicians. Irony. Irony. Mercury. I was reading a little bit more about his story about specifically the circumstances of his death.

He was out away from court when he actually died. He was out and he took some mercury pills that his team of physicians had prepared for him, took the mercury pills, got gravely ill, and died in no short order. For anticlimatic. Yeah. And they're like, oh, crap, he died. Whoops. So now what happened next was a weekend at Bernie's level of farce to cover up the dead emperor.

So now, as I said, he had survived a lot of assassination attempts. And, you know, he was a unifier. There were a lot of people who would have been seeking to take his place as soon as they found out that he was dead. So I mentioned they were on the road. They were away from the seat of power. So all of his advisors, you know, and his right-hand men, they didn't want word to get out that the emperor had died because I mentioned.

They were afraid of what was going to happen in this power vacuum. So they continued their tour out in the countryside. So, you know, they're carrying the emperor in the little box, you know, with the servants. They would dress him up in new clothes. They would prop him up so that you could sort of look through the window and see that there was somebody in the carriage. But they wouldn't let you get too close. And no one could. I mean, nobody except the most trusted advisors, right?

Because as they're traveling through the villages, it wasn't out of the ordinary. Right, that's true. Yeah, it's not like commoners in a village or running up to the carriage. Yeah, high-fiving him. But so, I mean, this is in the middle of summer. He died. They're traveling around, and it started to smell really bad. I bet it did.

Really bad. So this is the solution they came up with as they're traveling around. Dryer sheets. They apparently, yeah, they wrapped him in dryer sheets. They apparently, the account goes, they got a cart full of rotting fish. Two carts, two carts full of rotting fish. Yes. And had one cart ahead of the emperor's carriage, one cart behind the emperor's carriage to, you know,

do their best to mask the odor of, No, because if you, no, because then if you saw, you would see the carts of rotting fish, and you'd be like, oh, well, that's just the rotting fish. But no one would question why is he sandwiched by two carts of rotting fish. I mean, he's the emperor, man. The emperor's whims. Whatever he wants. They would bring meals up to his carriage and, you know, take away plates and things like that. So that even people in the retinue wouldn't necessarily catch on.

Oh, they would stage fake meetings, you know, where the advisor would come up and pretend to be talking with him. and, you know, go away afterward. This went on for two months. What? That is so long. Until they got back to a seat of power where they felt comfortable enough to kind of announce, okay, yes, the emperor died. I don't know if they said that it was their fault for giving him mercury or not.

I don't think they can trace it back then. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you know, I'm sure. Well, also, they didn't know it was harmful. They thought it was going to help him. They thought he died in spite of him. He's been ingesting mercury all this time, too. Like, it wasn't just those two pills made him die.

During his reign while he was alive, he would take a lot of mercury, and it just builds up. And, I mean, it was. It was just totally magical and mystical. And I can believe it. I mean, it's metal. It's liquid at room temperature. Maybe I'll drink it and live forever. I think that's why we have to keep reiterating.

You're not supposed to drink it because it's so pretty and you want to put it in your mouth. Yeah, you want to. And, you know, if the emperor tells you who wants to drink it, you're going to let him drink it. Right. All right. Well, my research. I kind of took a different angle. We're going to talk about some movie and TV stuff.

Cool. I was originally going to do a TV doctor or movie doctor quiz, but I found this instead and I thought it was really interesting. So I'm going to ask you guys a few quiz questions. Have your buzzers ready? They're not a lot. And there is a theme. And we can talk about that because it is a fascinating industry.

Okay. So here's first question. All right. What actress uttered the line, why you stuck up half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerfurt her. Everybody. Carrie Fisher.

Yes, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. Good job. All right. Second question. What famous movie director has dated Kathy Griffin, comedian, another comedian, Margaret Cho, and actress Maris Sorvino.

Wow. Actually, Margaret Cho wrote about him in her book. I'll guess what he. Allen. No. Quentin Tarantino? Yes. Quentin Tarantino.

Not an idioticathe Gryphan. That's crazy. I cannot even picture what they would do on a date. Very talkative. They would just talk about. True, you're right. Two kind of red-headed people just yapping about. All right.

What famous TV show creator had lead characters Malcolm Reynolds, Echo, and Cordelia Chase featured in his shows? Dana. Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon. Correct. Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. Oh, yes.

Yes. Mow. Echo from Dollhouse and Cordelia Chase from Buffy and Angel. And Angel, yes. All right. Last question. Another TV show creator, his TV shows, took place in a sketch comedy studio and in the White House and in a newsroom. Aaron Sorkin.

Yes, Aaron Sorkin. So we have Aaron Sorkin, Quinn Tarantino, Carrie Fisher. and Joss Whedon, they have all been script doctors for a very long time. Actually, Carrie Fisher is the big surprise one. I did not know that. What is a script doctor? Oh, I'm so happy you ask. Script doctors are script consultants who help polish or finish up or tighten up,

maybe dialogue for an already greenlit or written script that they just need to. a little bit polished. However, a lot of their work is uncredited because they don't really change that much of it. They're not necessarily rewriting scripts, but in the Writers Guild of America for screenwriting, there's a really complicated crediting process. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you can't, you know, just because you wrote a line, it's not like your name's going to be into credits. Like according to the rule, a screenwriter has to contribute more than 50% of the original screenplay or 33% of adaptation. So if it was from a book or from somewhere else,

that they would actually get their name onto their credit. So a lot of these people, you know, as they're working, hustling, trying to become a successful script writer or whatnot or director, they pick up a lot of freelance gigs, I guess, as script consultants, but they're all kind of secretive. And no one knows. They only kind of show up maybe after these people become famous

and they mentioned it in interviews. So here's a rundown of the things that they've actually. actually worked on. Aaron Sorkin, obviously famous for, well, currently the newsroom on HBO. But like there's a few good men and West Wing. West Wing, definitely. And social network, which he won an Academy Award for. So he actually script doctored Schindler's List, The Rock, doing some polish.

Get that rapid fire dialogue down. And Joss Whedon has done so much script doctoring. Now he's famous for it. Like, oh, Mr. Avengers, Mr. Cabin the Woods, you know, Mr. Buffy, but before as he's working in Hollywood, he did a lot of punching up scripts such as Speed, starring our favorite Keanu Reeves. Nice. He actually worked on Waterworld, which is a weird one.

I think I had read that, yeah. There were like 30 people who worked on. Yeah, I tried a lot of people. Quinn Tarantino spruced up, it's Pat. I have heard that. Isn't that crazy? See, well, it's Pat was for those of you who either don't remember or was born afterwards, was a movie inspired by the Saturday Night Live character, Pat, who is androgynous. But anyway, somehow a movie was made, and Quinn Tarantino did some script polishing.

I think that's a good example, too, where maybe some of these are, they don't necessarily want their name attached to these movies. But also, they're working up the ladder. It's true. It's true. You got to start somewhere. You got to, yeah. Someone's got to write It's Pat. But Carrie Fisher.

I didn't, yeah. Yeah. What has she worked on? Like good big hits. Hook. Remember Hook? Yeah. She worked on Hook.

She also worked on Sister Act, another big hit. Crazy. And the wedding singer, starring Adam Sandler. You know, I just read the other day that M. Night Shyamalan said he ghost wrote, or he did Oh, yeah. On She's All That. Yes. And that was the same year he was six cents.

He said he ghost wrote it. He said he ghost wrote it, but he has a polished credit on it. She saw that was good. That was a good movie. Yeah. So there you go. I think for me, the draw is it's secretive. You know, people don't really talk about until maybe they've made it or it was mentioned in an interview.

If you are a script doctor, dear listener, send of some facttoids. Yeah. That'd be awesome. So there was something I almost talked about on our episode on creepy crawlies several episodes back. Yes. And I decided to shelve that. for a future conversation, which is now today. Oh, how fortunate.

And that creepy crawly is leeches. Oh, very creepy and very coldly. Just everything about it. The way they look, the way they kind of slither around. I've never touched one, but I imagine the way they touch would creep me out. And, of course, the fact that they suck the blood out of your body. Right. Now, they actually do.

Now, you're probably, you might mention that there are some, like, actual good medicinal applications. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I want to talk about the history here. Yeah. So I want to talk specifically about bloodletting, just in general. You know, I mean, leeches were a tool in the blood letter's toolkit. But, you know, going back in terms of just the craziest bad medicine and bad treatments, I can think of trepination, trapeering, which is drilling a hole in your head. Yeah. So the bad spirits will fly out. Sure. Bad spirits, evil humors, whatever it is. Yeah. Brain. And then bloodletting as well, which goes, I mean, way back. to ancient times. I mean, and I always think when we talk about bad medicine, it's always a red flag for me if something is described as a cure for virtually everything. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's you open up a vein, cut a hole, and let some blood out until you've reached whatever they prescribed amount of blood to be lost is. Oh, it's not like the blood is bad. Or you have bad blood, therefore you are ill. Well, so, you know, I mean, there's like the theory of the four humors, right? Of, you know, that everything, every ill in the body is a result of the imbalance of blood, phlegm, black bile or. yellow bile. And so, yeah, if you had too much blood and out of balance, you would release some blood. Wow.

The range of things, this is going back again, to ancient Egyptians. I mean, everything could be cured by bloodletting. Headaches, indigestion, hemorrhoids, gout, acne. I mean, listlessness, hyperactivity. I mean, the list of things that you could prescribe bloodletting for is it? Both listlessness and hyperactivity. Yeah. I mean, it centers you. It centers you. And, as I say, I mean, you know, separate from knives or needles, leeches were a great tool for bloodletting because, you know, you could put them on and they work fairly fast. You know, if you put a leach on, it'll suck easily its weight in blood.

And they can't suck anymore because then it's too full. They do reach a point where they are satiated and full of blood. Every few hundred years, there would kind of be a resurgence in the leech fad and phenomenon. Leach beet magazine. Leach beet. There was a huge resurgence in leaching as a therapeutic or medicinal treatment in the 19th century, particularly in Europe. There were reports of millions of leeches being imported specifically for the purpose. From where?

Leaching treatments. Oh, hey, you know, the leaching centers of the world, Karen. I thought you were going to say leaching or whatever I like as you were saying. Leachinstein. Yeah. Oh, that's where it comes from. Yeah, Leecherstein. I like that.

There is no really good evidence that leaching cures headaches or indigestion or gout or scurgeant. or scurvy or hemorrhoids or any of these things that they claimed it would. And leaching did sort of really fall out of favor after the 19th century, at least in the way that I was describing it as a way of bloodletting and releasing bad blood or toxins in the system. And Chris, you were, I think, you know, maybe getting at the top of the segment, which is in starting around in the 1980s, when they really got to advancements in surgery, particularly what they call microsurgeries, which is surgeries like down at the time. the vein and capillary level and reattachment surgeries. You know, someone has a hand severed

in an industrial accident. They got to the point where, you know, I mean, once upon a time, you lose in a hand industrial accident. Well, you got a hook now for the rest of your life. But it got to the point. It was like, no, we can reattach that hand if we keep it viable. They discovered that one of the, one of the real pitfalls of these kind of surgeries was immediately after the surgery, you need to keep the tissue oxygenated with fresh blood. You need to make sure that none of the tissue dies or is rejected by the body or clots up. and can lead to all kind of complications. And what doctors and surgeons discovered was if you attach leeches on the attached

or reattached surgery, and here's the thing about leeches, when leeches kind of settle in for a meal and they're going to suck your blood, they secrete a natural anticoagulant to sort of liquefy the blood, make it easier for them to suck up. To grease the wheels of industry and commerce. Yeah. They discovered that what you could do is attach this to reattached surgery, and it would keep the blood from clotting. It would keep the blood liquid. Keep it flowing through. And it would keep it alive and healthy enough that your body or the person who undergone the surgery could

sort of take over the rest from there. So, okay, this is what I'm picturing in my head. So if my hand gets cut off on my arm stump, just on the end, a whole bunch of leeches just there. No, no, no. Hopefully it's a nice clean cut. You've got a friend who can like put the hand on ice or something. They would reattach it for you. And then immediately after, or when ready, they would put the leeches on the reattached part of your hand to basically bring the blood through fresh from the healthy part of your body. So like a leech bracelet. And aside from that, the sessions sound very similar to an old-fashioned 1800s leaching.

You know, they'll put the leeches on. It sounds like a leaching session, as I say, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, a couple hours. And I learned also in the course of researching this, there's the difference between good leeches and bad leeches. So there are some leeches that all they're interested in is eating the blood, or sorry, in sucking the blood. And when they reach their fill, they kind of stop. And then they'll either pop off on their own or you can pry them off. Bad leeches will eat not just blood, but tissue. And so there are cases all through history of blood letters using bad leeches instead of the good leeches.

Are bad leeches and good leeches just differentiate by species or is it on a one-by-one basis? No. Yeah, it's by type of leach. And yeah, and if you're getting your hand reattached in a hospital, you can rest assured they're using the good leachers. But the leeches can be used over and over again. Yeah, and they love it. Yeah, once they're hungry again, just put them back on a new reattached hand. And I would like to say, I know what you're all thinking, and I did just confirm on the internet, that yes, John Wayne Bobbitt did in fact use leeches to help in the reattachment of his penis.

Of his penis. No, are you kidding? Because sometimes I can't tell. No, no, I'm serious. No, he did. That's a textbook case of where you would use the leeches. Yep, right on your junk. Oh, my God.

And I'm sure he was happy they were there. Whoa. So I think after the show, you guys up for some bloodletting? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And go to the lake in the box. Two leech tacos for 99 cents. Anyways.

Well, that was a lot of bad medicine talk. And it was good bad medicine talk Good, yeah Good bad medicine Circle back to the dog mafia The dog father It's like no bad man But I had to say it

That's the best one Okay I'm glad we finally got to that At some point If you guys come up with a better one Let us know we like puns On August 1st May I speak freely

I prefer English The Naked Gun is the most fun You can have in theaters Yeah let's go Without getting arrested Is he serious Is he serious? The Naked Gun, only in theaters, August 1st.

And to end our show, we have one non-topic quiz segment. Colin, you've prepared for us, right? I have. I have a quiz for you guys called X-ray Yankee Zulu. Oh, okay. Which you may recognize are the phonetic alphabet military codes for X, Y, Z. Oh. Yeah, that's a fun one, too.

This is good. So every answer in this quiz will start with a letter X, Y, or Z. Oh, wow. It's sort of my favorite. Just a little bit of grab bag, general trivia here. All right. So right off the bat. Wait, hold on.

What's X, Y, and Zee, and the military codenames again? X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Zulu. Yeah. And that's the NATO alphabet, but it's kind of tweaked country to country. So that's U.S. Army. Okay. This well-known American company takes its name from Greek roots, meaning dry writing.

Chris. Xerox. Correct. Oh. Yes. They. I was being grass. They made up a word.

They made up the word zirography. So it's a modern word. Yes. Try writing. Singer Freddie Mercury, famously of Queen, was born in this country, which has since been renamed. Karen. Zanzibar. Yes, he was born in Zanzibar.

Which is now, or the part that he was born in is now Tanzania. Born in Zanzibar was a British protectorate. I did not know that. This C.D. Payne novel from 19. 1993 tells the story of 14-year-old Nick Twisp. Whoa. It was made into a movie starring Michael Sarah a few years ago. Oh.

Karen? Young, no, youth revolt. Youth in revolt. Yes, youth and revolt. Yeah, sat right here in the Bay Area. Oh, yeah. This writer was one of the leaders of the French naturalist movement, and in 1898, famously wrote the Jacques-Hugh's letter. Oh, is that from where's your cute?

Who? Remember the category. Xavier. We'll go for his last name. I'm looking for his last name. Oh. I have no idea. Emil Zardos.

Zola. Zola. Oh, yes. This noble gas, recognizable by its distinctive blue glow when stimulated, found a popular use in headlamps for cars. Karen. Xenon.

Zon. With an X. With an X. Not a Zee. Yes. Not to be confused with Zina, the warrior princess. This fictional outlaw is named after the Spanish word for fox. Oh.

Dana. Zorro? Zorro. Oh. Absolutely right. And he's kind of foxy, crafty. Yeah. I don't know.

If I were to attribute Zorro to an animal, it would be a fox. Or a raccoon. Yeah. Yeah. Something with a mask. Yeah. Masky. All right, last one. We'll close it out here.

Established in 1872, this is not just the first national park in the U.S., but is considered the first national park in the world. Yosemite. Oh, no. Yellowstone. Zion. Whoa, hey, whoa, we got a lot of answers on the table. I think Chris best in first. I said Yosemite.

Incorrect. Okay. Zion. Incorrect. No, Yellowstone. Correct. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was hoping to throw you guys off there.

That was good. There you go. Wait, so what was the right answer? Yellowstone. Yellowstone. Yellowstone. Jellystone. Not jellystone.

Not jellystone. Not jellystone. Yeah, Yellowstone, National Park. But with a Spanish accent. Oh, yeah. Yellowstone. Jellystone. Yeah, heistone.

Oh, right. Oh, that was pretty hard, actually. I thought it was going to be a quiz about the names for the letters. That's a fun separate claims. Yeah. We should work on that because that actually does come up. We have had that. We absolutely have had, yeah, like what's the code for H?

or whatever it is. I only know Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I know from Dollhouse. Yes. You probably know more than you know. You know Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. Yeah.

Well, that's our show, everybody. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot about snake oil and about mixing vitamin Bs with alcohol to give it to children, script doctors, and the very now nice leeches. I would say they'd be nice now.

Yeah. And you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, which is goodjobbrain.com, and check us out on Twitter and Facebook as well, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Don't drink the mercury. So pretty.

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