Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Peppermint

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why peppermint is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show.

Peppermint, known for being minty. Famous for being candy, Christmas. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why peppermint is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks, hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden.

Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of peppermint? I like peppermint. I like mint. I like chocolate and peppermint. Have you ever had peppermint Jojo's from Trader Joe's? Yeah, they're amazing, yeah.

It's a transcendent experience, I would say. And I'm in the tank for all peppermint desserts and treats. And, yeah, it's great. My favorite Girl Scout cookie is the thin mints. I love mint. Same by a mile. Yeah, they're so good. Yeah, I don't like junior mints.

They go too hard for me. Wow, we're so aligned. They're all right. There was one point at which my love for peppermint was, tested very in high school there was this kid

I'm not going to say his name but if you're out there you know who you are Sandigito Academy class of 2007 you know who you are in our chemistry class it was like we were seniors

I think and it was like AP testing and we weren't having a lot to do so we were just kind of hanging out and he had had somehow gotten his hands

on a giant bag of mints. He was like what do I do with all these mints and someone's like I don't know you could like share them and another person was like what if you put them all in your mouth at the same time so he went with the second option he put them all in his mouth

at the same time he was like barely holding on and I was like I don't know what if he just did like one more like one more a little one you can do it and he started laughing and this like stream of this viscous like white and pink fluid came out of his mouth in this giant stream to my melted mouth enzyme digested peppermints the smell was intense the visuals were sort of like a Christmas exorcism

and it was, it was a highly visceral situation. Did it, did it get on you? Not on me personally. It did get on the floor. Fortunately, it was a chemistry class, so the floor was like a tile that could be cleaned. The instructor was not overly pleased that there was now this like extremely strong peppermint smell pervading the classroom. But, you know, it was, it was all, it was a good time had by. I all, this, we were, we were high schoolers, so we didn't really consider.

He could have died. Like, he could have choked on. Choking, true, yeah. It's not a good idea to try to fit, like, 30 plus mints in your mouth. Like, you could choke and you could die. Like, he was laughing, and that could have killed him. Thank goodness it didn't. But for a little while after that, I couldn't even look at mints.

Right. But then I got over it and I like them again. It's shocking how much this is going to fit the first few numbers. I can't believe it. Sweet. Just so people know, Alex does all of the work on this show. I do nothing, so I don't know what the notes say. Yeah, that's how we do it.

Yeah, you're in for fun surprises. Sweet. Let's get into it. And this show is mostly about peppermint. We'll also touch on mint in general because also, before researching, I knew none of the distinctions of what's mint, what's peppermint, why? is this different name, everything. So it's fun.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of biology and chemistry and a lot of lore. Exciting. And on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called stats numbers. Stats numbers. Stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, that's numbers.

That's numbers. The name was submitted by Kyle over email. Thank you, Kyle. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a mycelion way I can bat as possible. Submit through Discord or to siftpot at gmail.com. That gets me in the statistical spirit. I liked that there were no other words besides stats and numbers.

Yeah, it's perfect. That's great. There's a lot of Christmas songs like that where it's just like Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Yeah. Right. It was probably originally a pop song about a pretty lady, and then they hit the Christmas market instead. Sure. And the first number this week is 46 compounds.

46 compounds. That's one study's findings for the amount of different compounds in peppermint oil. That's a lot of compounds. And the other quick number is two, because they also found that two compounds are kind of the dominant elements. That's two very similar chemicals called menthone and menthol. Menthone and menthol and men come and they go. Wow. Yeah.

And then you change the lyrics to be about Christmas when that sad song about men doesn't sell. Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, and those are both alcohols in the chemistry sense is not really like you're going to try to get drunk on them or something. Sure. Peppermint oil is basically our main purpose for peppermint, the plant. I see. And peppermint plants are one specific herb species that makes this oil. Because there's like, there are mint plants, and I've had mint leaves.

And then there's peppermint plants, right? Like specifically used for peppermint. Exactly. Yeah, peppermint is one species of mint. Its scientific name is mempha ex peperita. And we'll talk a lot more about that in the next takeaway. But any mint plant, you could just eat the leaves or something, but the human uses of peppermint is mainly to steam distill the oil out of the leaves.

You steam them and distill it out. Because I think in Italy, like it's hard for me actually to find mint tea. That's not some kind of weird combination. But yeah, I've seen menta pipaita, and I'm like, like, oh, that's it. That's some kind of mint tea. And so like when I see that, I know that that's mint tea or peppermint tea. Oh, like it's labeled by either the scientific name or the super similar Italian words. Exactly. Yes. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. And so if you ever want to look for it in that way you can. And apparently a few pounds of leaves produce several milliliters of that

oil. Wow. A milliliter is small, but the oil is incredibly potent if it's not diluted. So you get a lot of power out of that. If you've ever futzed around with essential oils, like peppermint ain't nothing to underestimate. It turns out. Yeah. It's, it's very, like, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not really an essential oil girly, but like I, uh, I, I am an anxiety girly. So I had, I got some like, advice wants that, like, hey, aromas are really good for, like, when you're really anxious to kind of, like, pull yourself out of your own head. And it's good advice. For me, I found better techniques. But, like, so I was like, so I got some, like, essential oils to sort of, like, do this thing. And, like, the peppermint one was like, like, a single drop contains the force of, like, a sun made out of peppermint. It's wild how strong it is. Now I'm imagining a sun with that red and white decoration. That's actually a cool, yeah. The candy universe.

And we all forget that a white flame is very hot, so we try to touch it, you know? Yeah. Mars would be like one of those little cinnamon balls. Now I'm just drooling like Homer about the planets. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. And you're absolutely right.

The pure undiluted peppermint oil is incredibly powerful. So, you know, a company can make a ton of candy and products out of it. And then when people use essential oils, that's broadly a safe product unless it is not diluted or there's another issue with allergies or some other oil getting mixed in. Right. But if it's not diluted, it's way too strong. The number I could find there is at least one person hospitalized. Oh, no. And it's just from one event.

It's in 2018 WNDU News Channel 16, which is news station in South Bend, Indiana. They covered an incident at a hotel where apparently the paramedics took several people to get care for inhalation injuries due to some kind of spill or other issue with pure undiluted peppermint oil, where it like filled the whole room like a gas and at least one person was hospitalized. Oh, that's wild. So it wasn't even that they directly ingested it, but they, like, inhaled it. That's crazy. Somebody, like, got an enormous amount and spilled or broke the container. Oh, no. And then the whole room full of people needed medical care.

Oh, boy. That's, yeah. Wow. Which is a really outrageous situation. If you like essential oils, just be marginally careful. They're not essential in that way. They're not, like, essential to life. They are.

Yes. They're the essence of something. And there can definitely be too much of it. Exactly. And apparently chemists, one thing they will call essential oils is volatile oils. That's a little bit more of a technical term because especially peppermine oil, if it's mostly two kinds of chemical alcohols, menthol and menthone, that can set off allergies. It can be phototoxic where if it's on your skin and the sun strikes you, that can lead to burns. if folks remember the episode about limes lime juice also does that yeah now it's there's a lot of

food type things and flavors that we have it's like oh this is nice and it's like a plant like telling you to f off uh yes to like other organisms like a plant telling insects to like uh f off or to try to like poison these plants uh or to try to poison any kind of insects or herbivores that want to eat it. Humans are just really perverse and we're like, ooh, this is tasty. And the plant is like, this is a defense mechanism so you don't eat me. And we're like, it's delicious and we're putting it in our Christmas treats. Yeah, and peppermint oil is one of those.

Apparently most mint plants, including peppermint, their oils can repel ants and moths and rodents. And also, gardeners warn you, in a way we'll talk about a little later, mint plants spread very quickly. So if you put mints with your other plants, it might crowd them out in a way that ruins the pesticide sort of function. But it is sort of a pest protective plants. Yeah.

Like I've heard a good way to do is like you can put them in like planters so that they don't like kind of take over a whole garden, but then you still have the like, they're in there. So they're helping ward off the insects. Yeah. That's the way to do it apparently. Because yeah, they will really take up all the soil if you let them. It's just the take on all mints, apparently. Yeah.

And we all think peppermint is cute, so we're not that careful with it. Yeah. And then in an essential oil format, it can be wild. Yeah. Because peppermint is cute. It's just also powerful. For Adventure Time fans out there, just like peppermint Butler. When I said Katie, this topic name, she sent back a Jeff of peppermint Butler doing a little dance.

It's a little candy. It's a little man made out of peppermint, and he's very cute. but I think he's also like a necromancer. I was like, who's this character? And the first images were him just reading a book that said Dark Magic 101. Yeah, yeah. It's a cool character. Seems like that's accurate, accurate to the thing.

And then we do love this oil, and one of the biggest reasons is what the menthol and menthone do. They create a cooling type effect without changing temperatures. Because our skin and the inside of our mouth have receptors. let us know if something has a cold temperature, and both those chemicals can trigger those receptors without a temperature change. So between that and often combining it with sugar or something and a treat, that's most of why we like peppermint. The smell and the taste and everything is cooling to us in a nice way.

It does have a definitive flavor, which is pleasant. Yeah. I guess it's like it's a combination, too, that enhances the pleasantness of it. Like if you have a cold soda or a cold beer versus a room temperature soda, which is never very good. The coldness does. I like that you were repulsed by your own next thought. Yeah. It's not a fun one.

You were like, oh, no. Yeah. Room temperature soda is not good. And it's like it's sugary. It should be good. It's just simply is not. Once you go cold, you never grow mold. I don't know. That's not. Anyways.

But, yeah, it's true. Like the cooling plus the basic herbal flavor. It's really nice combo. Yeah, it's doing two things. I didn't really think about the sort of faux temperature effect. But it's not actually cooling anything, right? Like, that's like an illusion. Yeah, completely an illusion. Yeah. The temperature doesn't change at all. But we've learned that this herb tricks us in a way we love. Hmm. Yeah. And the other quick number there with all mint is about 3,500 years ago, because that's the age of a papyrus in Egypt that was written about mint in general, not peppermint, mint in general having a medicinal property to help with digestion and also decrease flatulence. Whoa, okay. And like they used to write stuff on papyrus, so that's why you're talking about the plant. It's not just a font. folks. It was a fibrous plant that was turned into paper.

Like there's very clear amazing Egyptian instructions for alien technology and stuff, but we won't read it because it's the font. We don't take it seriously. Right. It's a menu to some kind of two-bit restaurant. Yeah. Burn the Library of Alexandria. I don't want to look at this.

I don't want to look at this. So they were already like, they found like benefits to mint where they're like, hey, this is good for digestion and apparently flagellants, like good as in litting out the flagellants or preventing it? Excellent question, unclear. Yeah. Because, right, I guess if you, like, get it out of your system, then you're done. So it could be either one. Right, right.

Because, yeah, there are endemic mint species, not just peppermint, on five continents. And apparently there's debate about whether South America has any, the so-called old world and new world, most cultures. either found a placebo effect or a real mild effect from mint plants and the oils in them being something that feels cooling, feels relaxing, and either actively or tricks us, does something good. I have actually heard, and I, you know, like, I wonder how much they were correct about the beneficial effects, because I've heard that mint is good for your digestion, like today. Yeah. And I haven't spent a lot of time looking into studies about it, which I usually try to do when I'm, when people are like, oh, here's this natural remedy because I'm always very, I'm very skeptical because there's a lot of things that are natural that just, you know, like poop is natural. I'm not going to eat that.

But like, but like mint tastes good. So I'm just like, sure, I like it already. So you don't really need to sell me on it. But I think I read something about it like helping to relax. lacks some of the digestive muscles, which is a double-edged sword because it can help with indigestion then. But if you have a gastric reflux, it could actually potentially make it worse. I have found that when I drink mint tea, nothing in particular happens other than I like it. And it, I mean, maybe it makes me feel a little better. I don't know.

And that's a key question for the whole topic. And I'm also going to link off to the long ago episode about chocolate, because it's kind of a similar situation. where there are chemical properties to peppermint and it mostly might be just your mindset or your experience of it making any actual changes in your body because it's not like peppermint oil way too strong, way too powerful. It can like feel like it's burning your skin if you put it on it in the wrong way. Yeah. The diluted kinds, that is much more consumable and there's much less actual chemical impact on you. Yeah. So it's probably little or no medicinal effect, but also people have basically prized peppermint for both potential medicinal effects

and definite tastiness and good vibes. And even if you know something's a placebo, it still kind of works a little bit. Yeah. In terms of digestive issues, that matter is like a huge amount because we have a very, very strong feedback loop between the brain and the gut. So yeah, keep on keeping on if you like mint for the tummy. Just don't shotgun directly the oil. That will be bad.

You'll feel so bad. Yeah. And talked a lot about mint in general, too, doing some of this. Let's get into what specifically peppermint is in takeaway number one. Peppermint plants are a triple hybrid that cannot sexually reproduce. Wow. That's one of those situations that it's like humanity where it's like I've taken this wild creature or animal or plant and I've turned it into this like very strange mutant completely dependent upon me for sex. And this is such a weird thing where peppermint plants are

their own species and they do propagate themselves without human assistance and without having sex. But it's all a weird accident of mint hybridization. Like we don't think people made this happen either. But how did, so it's not that like peppermint was domesticated by people and propagated by people because otherwise how is it, how is it reproducing? Yeah, most mint species can reproduce sexually or reproduce asexually. I see.

Okay. And then peppermint is too many hybrids stacked on top of each other to achieve sexual reproduction. So it can only reproduce asexually. I see. It's so weird. This one's not on us this time. It messed itself up. Yeah.

The very next takeaway is human involvement in this, which is much less than you would think. But this is the botany of how peppermint exists. And the key sources here are a few. Kew University's digital resources, the Washington State University Laboratory for Cellular Metabolism and Engineering, and then the Michigan State University Extension School, also using digital resources from the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, also citing an article for J-Store Daily by writer Victoria Pickering about all sorts of mints all over the world. According to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, there are at least 25 species in the genus Memtha.

That's the genus with peppermint and other stuff. too. And these plants very easily hybridize. So there's also debate about whether individual plants people find are a new species or a one-off hybrid or whatever. But you find endemic mints like spearmint and water mint all over Europe, Asia and Africa. A species called mentha Australis is one of a few in Australia. And a lot of the North American endemic species have names like Mountain Mints or specific versions of that. But pretty much all of them can reproduce sexually. Mountain mint sounds like a men's body wash.

It really does, yeah. Yeah. Because, like, I've noticed this, like, with men's fragrances, there's this concept that men might be a little bit self-conscious about smelling, like, too delicate. So they got to, like, toss something in there, like, you know, like axe, body spray or, like, this is sword oranges. It's an orange flavor for your body, but swords. Yeah, I think in the UK axe is called lynx, because there's an axe and it's a mighty predator, you know.

Yeah, every, all the men's stuff has to be. It's an adorable predator with big fluffy paws. Yeah, I feel like all men's products either have to be a predator or a weapon or a mountain or Irish. Irish also works. Right. Yeah. Irish vanilla. That's a laugh.

Somehow more manly than just saying vanilla. And yeah, and so I guess speaking of gender, too. So mint species, most of them can reproduce sexually in the way that plants do. Their male and female parts come together some way, maybe with pollination. The thing is, most mint species can also propagate asexually, which is part of why people will warn you. If mint is not confined in your garden, it will take over the garden and just crowd everything else out. Mint species have two different kinds of horizontal stem. that essentially clone the individual plants.

They make a plantlet in a new place. One kind of stem is called a rhizome. It goes underground horizontally. The other one is called a stolon. Stolons go just above ground level. They're also nicknamed runners. And because a mint plant will shoot out all these horizontal stems above and below ground, that's the crowding.

It prevents other stuff from just existing. Right, right, right, because they've got like this underground network of these runners going and being like, all right, I'm going to start growing here. And they've got a leg up on, say, other plant sprouts because they're being nourished by an adult plant. Yeah, and so that's also part of why there's so many mint species on so much of the world. Yeah. Because they're just really hardy and good at putting themselves everywhere. They're very tough, yeah. Because mint species can spread these two ways and hybridize easily, that means that there

ended up being a hybrid called peppermints that is so many kinds of mint put together it's no longer able to reproduce sexually, but it still thrives with these weird horizontal stems. Incredible. Wow. Pepperment is a triple hybrid. It's a combination of watermints and spear mints, which are both from Europe, Asia, Africa, that part of the world. Spearmint sounds like, again, a male body odor where it's like, we got to add a weapon to it for men to want to put this on their body. Yeah, it really, it's so masculine. I think it has more to do with the shape of the leaves, though.

That's why, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing is, water mint scientific name, menttha aquatica, it's its own species. But then spearmint is another hybrid. Spearmint is a hybrid of mentha longifolia and mentha suaveolins. Yeah, menta solvialins, menta longofolia. I am very familiar with this, of course. I guess suaveolins sounds like some kind of men's product too. Swaviola.

Sign me up. It's like Johnny Bravo's maiden name or something. Yeah. It's the name of like a side character and a romance novel that you meet. And like, yeah, it's a hot elf who's one of the two men in the triangle. A hot Italian elf. And, yeah, and so spearmint is a hybrid, but just that one combination, the result is able to reproduce sexually. But then this hybrid hybridized with another species, and it's too much of a Frankenstein's monster, apparently, to retain sexual reproduction.

So peppermint only spreads through essentially cloning through rhizome. and stolons. And then in modern times, human farmers started doing clippings and other practices to propagate it too. Yeah. Humans are basically interested in it because it's so pungent and its oil has so much menthol and menthone. Otherwise, it might not be all over the world because it's a pretty weird specific subset of mint. Right, right. So we've also propagated it and probably caused it to be invasive in areas. Sure. Yeah, because it's really good at growing. Yeah. Right.

And we also like it, too. It's not like we find it and start ripping it out of the ground. We're like, oh, score. Peppermint. Awesome. Yeah. Great. But I, yeah, but I do.

I have also heard the thing about like in gardens where it's like, you plant a little bit. You're like, oh, this is nice. And then, you know, several months later, you're like, oh. Same thing with like blackberry bushes, I think. Those are really like good at getting all in a garden. I mean, it sounds really nice. A garden made out of, like, extremely tough invasive mint and blackberries sounds pretty great to me. Yet, it sounds like the yard of the hot elf, Swaveolins, you know?

Like, it's a good place to me. Swalvillans. Would you like my mint and blackberry tea? It's like, oh, but I also love a wolf man. Oh, no. Yeah. It'll be so jealous. And then weird elf sex.

A lot of staring at each other and levitating. That's pretty much it. Yeah, we all know. Yeah, yeah. And I promised we'd get into human involvement in peppermint existing, because again, it's a hybrid that was not always around. It became popular because of one specific empire. Takeaway number two. Peppermint originated as a lucky accident and.

medical trade secrets in England. This is British Empire stuff basically, but it's because people foraged and discovered the wild creation of peppermints in, like, wet ditches in Essex. I mean, there's a lot of wet ditches. There's a lot of wet ditches in Essex. It also made me think of the word ditch weed for low-grade marijuana, but this is a different weed in ditches, peppermint. Right. Yeah.

And a key source here, it's an excerpt of a book called Peppermint Kings, a rural American history. Peppermints originated in England by accident. We don't think humans were trying to cultivate it. Instead, there start to be first written records of it in the 1690s AD. And it's records of people in Essex foraging it from stream banks, from the ponds formed by water mills, just other wet and marshy little spots. and writing it up as this new find of a truly strong mint. That's one of the nicer things you can find in like a ditch back in the Middle Ages. Yeah, I'm glad they didn't find like diseases, you know?

They found mint. Yeah, usually it's cholera. They're like, yeah. And then quoting Dan Alasso here, physicians and apothecaries had quickly recognized peppermint's superior effectiveness in treating all the ailments for which more common mint varieties had been prescribed, and for a while they had attempted to keep peppermint secret to create a monopoly. That's amazing.

Finally, a tiny crumb was smuggled by a rival apothecary and sprouted, end quote. Dude, like seeds get around, man. Like, what are you? Right, and it can't reproduce, actually. It just sort of happened by accident and one. over a few people foraged it. And so then they tried to keep their private to themselves. Yeah.

Because nobody had thought through how to make it. And so they thought, if I just sit on these seeds, it's just mine. Yeah, it's like, wow, look at this resource that will just grow in abundance. All you need is a bit of water and some dirt. How can I prevent other people from getting to this? And it's also, it's the 1690s. it's a time when a lot of medicine and pharmacies are basically people saying, try this herb.

Maybe that'll work. Yeah. And so peppermint was really exciting in that medical context. It's a really strong herb. When you don't have like a really good understanding of medicine, so you're just trying to have something work, it really does make sense because it's, you get to a point where it's like, my testicles are falling off. And it's like, I don't know.

I have this weed I found in a ditch on it. It can't. Your situation is so bad. This can't make it worse. Right, if you have no other options. Yeah, I don't know. Here you go. Yeah, go for it.

This has an odor or something. Sure. And yeah, and then English druggets and tincture makers and so on get better and better at distilling the oil out of peppermint leaves. Apparently by around 1750, there were relatively industrial business. is doing it near London. And then a few years after that, people start making this oil in the 13 colonies of the U.K. in North America. And apparently the first written records of peppermint oil and what's now the U.S. were newspaper advertisements in New York in the 1760s. That was like

the beginning of any peppermints in the United States because it was an English accident. It was not on purpose. Right. And so was that like when we were putting things in the Boston Harbor, Or did we also put, like, some peppermint in there to kind of like, because we put like a lot of teas. So we're sort of making an infusion, and you could put a little bit of peppermint in there as well. No joke there was an issue with the peppermint trade once the revolution started. Ah. According to Dan Alasso, once the revolution starts, American colonists believed that British peppermint oils were superior to our peppermint oils made locally, but it was considered unpatriotic to buy or sell the British goods. Right. Yeah. Oh, man, that as a peppermint enjoyer, it would be very hard.

Yeah, it would be hard. And apparently that, like, forced Americans to start to use their own peppermint oil and got our industry going because we were cut off from the British one. And got hopefully better at it. Sounds like we were making crept peppermint. Yeah. Then, like, after the revolution, Americans could get the peppermint. British stuff again. But by then, we had gotten our own industry going and also, as the 17 and 1800s went on, peppermint oil became less of a English secret. It became more of a global industry. Okay. Gosh, it's so funny that the English are like our secret peppermint formula. And that's like, of course that would be their deal. Yeah, it's so weird that peppermints is only like 400 or less years old. And we didn't cultivate it on purpose. We lucked

into it. Right. Almost no crops are like that. It's a happy accident. We really do. Like whenever nature like spits out some kind of horrific accident, we figure out a way to exploit it. Yeah, we love it. It's our favorite. Yeah. And there's one other reason we've kind of forgotten. that this was a happy accident and peppermint has kind of run together with the other mints which is that they all have the same name from the same myth the word mint which is takeaway number three mince plants got their English language name from a Greek myth about Hades cheating on his wife oh my gosh Hades come on now you have so many myths about Zeus cheating on his wife.

This is the first time I've come across Hades cheating on his wife. I actually have, I think I've seen, or, well, I saw it with my own eyes. I think I read this myth. It's like, Hades cheating with like menthe or something, the, the, a nymph on Persephone. I really like Greek mythology. It's like a soap opera with gods. It's very entertaining. It's like trash.

It's like desperate housewives, trash TV, but we're always into this. But yeah, all I know is like, I think he like got with Menth. And then when Persephone found out, she got really mad. Instead of getting mad at Hades and punishing him, as she should have, she actually punished the nymph and turned her into a plant. That's the story. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And it does match the Zeus template where neither of them ever catch any actual punishment for cheating. It's always the lady every time. Which I think is, look, I mean, if you know a God is married to someone, you shouldn't, you know. Yeah. Although there's an added element of Zeus and hate. I don't know if this was the case for Hades and the myths, but it's not like Zeus was super good at consent. So, you know, it added this kind of more menacing element, which made it even more frustrating when Hera or, in this case, Persephone, would punish the woman. Come on.

You can't turn every woman into a plant. Like, the problem is your husband. Right. Persephone will literally turn other women into plants before going to therapy or couples counseling. Right. Yeah, and this myth, some of the stages are told a few different ways, but the story is what Katie said. As we said, there's many myths about Zeus cheating on his wife. This is Hades, who's one of Zeus's brothers along with Poseidon,

Hades cheating on his wife. And Hades is definitely married at the start of the story. His wife is a goddess named Persephone, and that's its own famous myth, where Persephone is the daughter of a goddess named Demeter, who handles farming and agriculture. The gist is that Persephone goes to the underworld to live with her new husband. Demeter hates this so much.

She starts killing all plant life. Then Hades tricks Persephone into eating a little bit of pomegranate in the underworld, which means she always has to spend part of the year there. And it ends up being the myth to explain winter. Like winter is when Persephone is away from her mom and underground. Right, right. That also means she's only in the underworld part-time. And that's one reason, apparently, that Hades proceeds to cheat on her with a water nymph.

Yeah, like he can't have a sort of vacation home outside of heck. Right, he never leaves, I guess. And there's also, especially like Disney's Hercules presents Hades as a satanic figure, but it seems like in actual Greek myths, he's much more of a neutral and and stable and rules-oriented figure who just never leaves the underworld and does business all the time. In Greek mythology, he's not Satan.

Persephone is like, yeah, he is. But he's like a, yeah, he's just, he's a job. He's a god with a job, and his job is like managing the underworld where the shades and the souls are. It's not, it's not like. He's lawful neutral. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's the president of the underworld, but he didn't get voted in.

Yeah, and then when the Romans made him a god named Pluto, they worked money into it a little bit. But even the money was very lawful, you know. That's it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like you're supposed to, like, go down there with some money, which is wild. Like, not even death is free, man. Oh, wow, yeah. And yeah, and then the way this cheating story usually goes is the structure of the underworld involves rivers.

Rivers lead people into it or through it. And some of the rivers are managed by water nymphs called Niyads. And there's a beautiful water nymph named Mnthi. The spellings are either M-I-N-T-H-E or M-E-N-T-H-E. At some point, they meet because they're kind of co-workers. And then Mnthi and Hades start an affair. The stories either say it was Hades' idea or Mnthi's idea. And then the next step of the story is either Persephone,

does detective work and figures out an affairs happening, or Mimthy is extremely prideful and brags. It could go either way. At that point, then maybe she could use a little time as a plant. Right. It's very different depending on how that goes. But either way, Demeter and Persephone seek revenge. One or both of them use goddess magic to turn Mimthy into a tiny green plant.

Some tellings also say they turn her into straight up, and then Hades cultivates a little plants. But one way or another, she becomes a tiny herb. And the last step is she's turned into just a tiny green little sprag of something. And Hades proceeds to use his god magic. He can't turn it back into a person or a nymph, but he says, I will use my magic to give you a lovely odor if you are stepped on or crushed or otherwise broken up.

Oh, great for her. She's like, uh, thanks. Cool. If I'm stepped on, I'd smell good. What? Right, if I'm squished. How is that good for me? People will want to step on me.

Yeah, and this myth is so popular for just the story of an herb, right? That it becomes the dominant word in languages like English for every plant in this group. So peppermint is named that just because it is a mince. And then also the word pepper is there as basically a power statement. Like this plant is as minty as a powerful pepper is spicy or something. Okay, I see. And then otherwise, then the word mints, partly through this very dominant Greek myth, has just been applied to every kind of mint plants ever because it's such a popular story.

Right. So it's like every mint plant as in any plant that has that minty flavor and they're not necessarily all that related? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, most of them are in mentha and then a few other things with a minty vibe pick up. up this name too. Right. So yeah, it's Hades cheating on his wife that named all of this stuff. Greeks really wanted an entire myth just for this one herb because we like it a lot. They loved mess. They loved messy situations. That too. And folks, that's three big takeaways and our numbers. So we're going to take quick break, then come back with a little more lore about this

peppy mint. We're back, and we're back with a somewhat seasonal takeaway number four. Nobody really knows the origin of red and white coloring for peppermint candy canes other than it's probably new. Right. Yeah, because like mint is green. Yeah. Peppermint, the natural leaf is green. Still green.

Still green. And then when you like, if you put it in a candy, it's probably like white or off white. Right. And yeah, it turns out candy canes developed separately from the peppermint flavor. We think the earliest ones were basically just a sugary stick. I see. So no minty flavor. Yeah.

And so then there's not a solid answer for all. of this, this takeaway is about the little bit we do know. The key source here is journalist Sam Worley writing for Epicurious.com. There's claims about the origins of candy canes involving a church choir master in Germany. The claim is that in the 1600s, his choir students were goofing off too much between songs, and he gave them candy canes to suck on to not talk. That's funny. So now you have beautiful choral music, but then a bunch of sounds.

It's way louder. I forgot those kids are loud when they eat. Oh, no. Yeah, and then also there have been some basically neat and tidy retroactive stories about candy canes are red and white for the blood and purity of Jesus. Or like if it's the ones with the tiny little mini pinstripes inside, oh, there's three stripes for the Holy Trinity. Trinity. Like, all that stuff just seems to be retroactive justifications. I don't even know. I don't even, I'm not familiar enough with candy cane see. I'm like, I mean, I thought I was, but I don't even like three, oh, we've got a Trinity

candy cane and we got some other thing. And I'm like, I have no, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, like theoretically red for blood, white for purity, but that's all just kind of made up later on. Sure. What we do know is candy canes haven't always been peppermint flavored. And there's Christmas card art from as late as the 1800s, where the candy canes are just white and don't have any red decoration. And we think what really happened is basically the candy industry got going with peppermint-flavored candy. And then separately, candy cane producers figured out a machine in the early 1900s that let them bend the cane very easily. Oh.

Like bend it into a cane shape without any hand labor. I see. And they just thought it was kind of a fun shape. Yeah, and there's also no solid origin of the cane shape. It could be it's easy to hang on a tree. It could be referencing shepherds in the Bible. There's a lot of guesses. Right, right. Our best guess, which is still even a guess, is that once it was easy to make candy canes the cane shape, then producers said, what else can we do to distinguish our products? Because everybody has a cane shape. And so then they tried flavors besides just straight

up sweet sugar and peppermint took off. Yeah, I've actually, I think I've been tricked before by a candy cane. Like, there are certain versions of candy canes that are just like straight up like some kind of sugar taste and it's super boring. Yeah, I don't like it. And I had a chocolate one once that revolted me even though I like chocolate. No, no, chocolate like chocolate that's in sort of like a candy, well, okay, let me revise. Here is a hard candy that is chocolate flavored.

rather than, like, here is a piece of chocolate is revolting, yes. Yeah, I discovered I hate that, turns out, yeah. Yeah, like, just over time, it seems like there's no one inventor of peppermint candy should be white and red. Right. But it merged in some kind of Christmas setting, some kind of candy industry setting in a way we can't pin down, actually. We don't really know. But I figured people would wonder, so that's what we don't know. Yeah, fair enough.

We don't know. And we'll talk more about candy in the bonus show. For the main show, we have one last takeaway number five. The Peanuts Character Peppermint Patty got that name because of a dad joke and because Charles Schultz wanted to do a second tribute to his cousin. Hmm. The character peppermint Patty is named that for specific and kind of accidental reasons, but it's mostly because Charles Schultz.

Schultz had a cousin who he really loved named Patty Swanson. Aw. Which is really nice. Yeah. And then that ended up influencing the whole character, too. The key sources here are a few Peanuts fandom sites and also an interview with Gene Schultz, who is the second wife and widow of Charles Schultz. Peppermint Patty is the second Peanuts character with the name Patty or Patricia.

And the first one was in the very first peanut strip ever. The first ever strip did include Charlie Brown, but is almost kind of a sidekick to a kid named Shermy and a kid named Patty. Hmm. Wow. Like I thought she was a fairly late addition. I guess I have kind of have it mixed up. Yeah. If folks know the peanuts strips and specials and stuff, there's a character named Patty and then a more popular character named Pepperment Patty.

And this girl just named Patty, there's not a lot of character to her. She's just sort of in a dress and looks like a girl in the 1950s. That's plenty for a woman in a fictional setting. Her personality is dress. Basically. And in that first trip, it's Shermy talking about Charlie Brown and she just sits and listens. And that's it. Yeah.

So she's not very distinctive. It's a cartoon. That's all right. It's not many. You don't got a lot of panels to work with there. Yeah, yeah. And so that was way back in 1950, and this first ever girl in all of Peanuts, Schultz named her after Patricia Swanson is one of his favorite cousins. He just really likes this cousin.

And then 16 years later, he wants to add another character. And so August 22nd, 1966, he creates another character named Patty. In the first strip, she names herself Peppermint Patty with quotes around. peppermint. Like peppermints are nickname. The character's first name comes again from this cousin, Patricia Swanson. Really nobody knows Peppermint Patty's last name is Ryschart, which was the last name of Schultz's secretary, Sue Ryshart. So he did a tribute to a few people. But 16 years later, Schultz's life and also his cousin's life, he's now incorporating more of who she is in the 60s into the strip. And she is potentially a lesbian.

Oh, like in real life. Yeah, so apparently Schultz said conflicting things about it. And then we'll link an interview with Gene Schultz where she told Andy Cohen of Bravo on his radio show in public that Patricia Swanson was gay. And there's a lot of fandom about our peppermint paddy and another character named Marcy, a gay couple. Right. I mean, Marcy does call her, sir. I don't think that that's meant to really be. anything other than just sort of like her being funny and militaristic, like the like very official. So I don't think that's really meant to.

Yeah. I'm a straight. So I can't really speak to this. But I suspect not a lot of lesbian couples call each other, sir. But maybe. I don't know. I can't say. That's the thing.

And Gene Schultz talks about this in the interview too. Charles Schultz as an artist was just primarily very humanitarian and very interested in the idea that people are weird and funny and it seems like he kind of accidentally wrote in the existence of gay and bi and lesbian people

without ever meaning to but he was basing her personality potentially on his cousin who may have been lesbian herself yes And then the other reason the name came back at all is that he just apparently one day looked at a dish of peppermint paddy candy and then thought of the straight up dad joke that a person could be called peppermint paddy. It's not even really a pun or a dad joke or any. It's kind of nothing.

Sure. Oh, yeah. But allegedly he was so excited about the idea he rushed to use it before another artist did it. He was concerned somebody else would beat him to the joke of peppermint Patty could be the name for a person named Patty. Right. I'm not accusing Charles Schultz of having a little bit of the sticky icky, but that is a sticky icky thought. We're like, what if someone else's names their character? Pepperman Patty, I've got to lock this in.

Right. No one else thinks that's interesting, but, you know. No, no, no. No, it's like unicorn don't. I got to make it happen. Right. And no one else in the world is like, you've probably thought of this, but no. No, no, no.

No one's, yeah. He rushes to reuse his cousin's name, even though you'd think the other girl Patty is already using it because he thinks that joke is funny. But then also by the 60s, it seems like Patricia Swanson, we can't ever know her true sexuality, but she's apparently a bit of a tomboy. Does she have a roommate that she? She's lived with for like 20 years. Yes.

She had a longtime roommate and allegedly, and according to Gene Schultz, actually gay partner, her name was Elise Galloway. And apparently Elise Galloway was the direct inspiration for Marcy. I see. I mean, I think that's, you know. At the time you couldn't be, at the time, I don't think you could be openly lesbian. So if you're the long term one female roommate that. It's obviously there, there could be cases in which that's platonic, but I think that a lot of the time it's like, and they were roommates.

You know, my good old roommate, you know, and you, like, it's, I think it's kind of like a joke now where it's like, oh, yeah, you know, your aunt and her, and her roommate that she lived with for 50 years and who was there at her bedside when she died. Right. And it seems like Schultz didn't 100% clock what he was doing with his own art. Because for one thing, Peppermint Patty constantly has a crush on Charlie Brown in the strips. I see. Who is a boy. So she could be by, of course. But also she has this extraordinarily close relationship with Marcy. Of course, yeah.

And Schultz is pulling it from his cousin's life, who probably across the 60s and then later in life was increasing. if not open, at least like not pretending so much that this is not her partner. Right. And along with the wonderful story of Schultz adding the black American character of Franklin to the strip, it seems like he would just sort of be an instinctive progressive. Right. The story goes that he added Franklin to the strip just because it seemed like that'd be nice. And then there was pushback from racist newspapers and racist communities.

and then he just said, buzz off, I'm keeping Franklin anyway. Nice. But it wasn't really like he was constantly thinking about civil rights. And the same thing seems to have happened with Pepperm and Patty. Right. He just kind of stumbled into being an ally. Yeah, he just thinks everybody's great. Yeah.

And reflected the huge diversity of humanity. And like Marcy calling her sir is straight up a joke but also gets it something, you know? Like he just accidentally recognized the diversity of human. vanity. Yeah, it's sort of something where it's like funny because it's kind of this militaristic thing, like official thing. But it's also, it's not a mean-spirited joke because it has nothing to do with like, you know, misgendering someone. It's just kind of this pure fun thing of like, you know, using a pronoun that you wouldn't normally use in that situation and everyone's fine with it. And so it still is kind of like stumbling into sort of like, yeah,

why not? Why not? If everyone's cool with it, like, you know, who cares? It's fun. Right. And then also with like LGBTQ characters in media, a lot of times they've entered media through subtlety where like nobody knows it's happening. So there was really never pushback about peppermint paddy because anti-gay people didn't even clock it. And so, right. Then apparently Schultz, as the years went on, started to realize the LGBT community was identifying with Patty. And he kept writing her the exact same way, but also downplayed the connection to his cousin in interviews because he just wanted to protect her privacy.

That makes sense. You can't fault him for that. He just wants to, you know, yeah. And I like they didn't change the character. He just can't, he didn't suddenly, like, marry her to a man or something. He, like, stuck with it, you know? He didn't do it. He didn't do a child marriage, which is clearly preferable to.

a gender non-conforming child. America, 2025. But the really weird genesis of all of it is the kind of candy named peppermint patties, like York peppermint patties. Right, right. If that hadn't existed, he probably only names one character after his cousin, and does it so early in the strip that none of the gay stuff gets into it. Right.

It's so specific. Candy is really, really good for humanity. It's a, you know Yeah, go have a york And celebrate progress, you know Right, right It's like how Moon pies like

inspired NASA To go to the moon Folks, that is the main. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, peppermint plants are a triple hybrid that cannot reproduce sexually. They are all basically clones. Takeaway number two, peppermint originated as a lucky accident

and medical trade secret in England. Takeaway number three, all mint plants got their English language name from a Greek myth about Hades cheating on his wife. Takeaway number four, nobody really knows the origin of red and white coloring for peppermint candy canes. All we know is the coloring and flavor are new. Takeaway number five, the Peanuts character Peppermint Patty is named that because of a dad joke about candy and because Charles Schultz loved his cousin. And then a numbers section before that about the amazing power and force of peppermint oil and the amazing diversity of mint species all over five continents. Those are the takeaways.

Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show. Every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is how one of the strongest trademarks in American history created the cough drop industry and the peppermint candy industry. Visit sifpod.fod.fund for that bonus show for a library of almost 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows.

It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximumfund.org. Key sources this week include a ton of scholarly digital resources, in particular from Washington State University and their laboratory for cellular metabolism and engineering, also the Michigan State University Extension School, the UK Royal Botanic Gardens. I'm also linking an Estonian University study that tried to break down the exact chemical makeup of various peppermint oils from several countries.

Beyond that, we leaned on the digital magazine tasting table and articles for them by writer Jennifer Amos and writer Autumn Swires. Also citing Theoi.com for some Greek mythological resources. Jay Store Daily and writer Victoria Pickering for more background on all mint species. And an excerpt of a fascinating book about lots of things beyond just the origins of peppermint. It's called Peppermint Kings, a rural American history. It's by historian Dan Alasso of Bemidji State University.

That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode, because each week I'm finding you something.

something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 124. That's about the topic of Snoopy. And I put a finger on the scale that was not randomly generated. I just want you to have as much peanut stuff as possible if you enjoyed that last takeaway about peppermint patty. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals,

science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners. And we're going to say another thank you soon because we always do a holiday message for the week between Christmas and New Year's, whichever Monday falls between those two holidays. We do that instead of a full SIF episode because, you know, we want to reflect on the year and also give ourselves a little bit of care and rest for that

holiday time. So that message is coming. Also, there's going to be a very special bonus release of some all new stuff for you people who are members and support the show. And then the following week in the future sounding year of 2026, we're back with a whole new episode of secretly incredibly fascinating. I hope you enjoy all of those things as you ease into the end of 2025. And hey, how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.