The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Le Pétomane (The Fartiste), Tesla Loved a Pigeon, Meat Lozenges

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

The weirdest things we learned this week range from a flatulist who became the highest-paid performer in France to meat lozenges. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/weirdest_thing #weirdestthingpod Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/lederman Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Lexi Krupp: www.twitter.com/KruppLexi --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no.

That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference.

Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. Popular science, we report and write dozens of science and text stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Feldman.

I'm Sarah Cherosh. And I'm Jason Letterman. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering a little teeth, a little pitch of a story that we found in the course of our reporting. or answering emails or checking Twitter or Reddit, you know, being a journalist. And we decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and vote on what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was.

And of course, now you can also vote for your favorite weirdest fact on Twitter at Weirdest underscore thing or on our Facebook group where you do all sorts of weirdo stuff whenever. you want. And this is the inaugural appearance of our long-suffering producer, Jason. So you get to go first. Oh, thank you so much. This feels weird. Yeah, I know. I'm on the wrong side of the microphone. I keep hearing your voice and being like, we got to cut it. So Jason, give us your tease. My tease. I am going to link the world's oldest choke to the highest paid performer at the Mulan Rouge of the 1890.

90s to Daniel Radcliffe and South Park. Wow. It's a journey. Aren't they all? That is quite a yarn. And Sarah, what's your yarn? I have but one yarn, and it is the phrase, meat lozenges. Oh, no.

Meat lozenges. Wow, we've had medical cannibalism on this show, and that's the grossest thing I've ever heard. Full stop. I have a description of how they're. made as well. It will be worse than you're imagining. Oh, I can't wait. Wow.

Okay. Okay. So my fact is one that I have mentioned just a few times, you know, here on the show in the pages of the magazine online all the time, whatever. It's a story of Nikola Tesla and his love for one beautiful bird. Yes. Finally, we make it on the show with Tesla and the piece. pigeon.

So, wow. I am going to say Jason should go first. Me too. I am so curious about how all of those points connect into the line. I'm not yet convinced that they will really connect all that well. So I need to be proven wrong. I'm honored. I really want to hear more about the mute lessons.

But let me dive in a little bit. So I first heard about this on a podcast called Delete This featuring Hank Green and then did some more research. I found an excerpt on slate of a book called C. Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Cain. So I want to tell you the story of Joseph Pujol. Pujol, it's French. I'm not going to say it correctly, and I just apologize now for the rest of this.

But he came... Just call him Joe. Just call him Joe. Joe came to be known as one of the most popular entertainers in France of the late 1800s. And his name was Le Petomaine, the Four. Fartiste. Oh my God. He was a professional flagealist.

So when Joe was a teenager, he was at the beach and discovered this talent wherein Rachel's already leaps again. I can barely hold it in, just like Joe. Please go on. His beautiful parts. Joe discovered this talent where he could suck water into his anal count. Oh my God. That's a lot of what I was expecting. And obviously was like concerned about this but went to a doctor and said it was fine.

It's all fine. This is a normal thing for your body to do. And then in his 20s, he joins the French army. And as sometimes happens when you're in a group of 20-something-year-old men, they start talking about like who can do the grossest thing. And Joe's like, I have this talent where I can put water up in my butt and shoot it like a fountain. And he shows it off. What a medical marvel. And like that could have been the end of it of like this guy has a weird talent until he realizes that he can do it with air.

Cool. And so he spends quite a bit of time practicing. And eventually he could fart for 10 to 5. 15 seconds at a time. That's a long fart. It's a long fart. But he could also manipulate both the pitch and the volume.

Wow. Oh my goodness. Truly a fartiste. Truly a fartiste. The one and only. So eventually he auditions at the Moulin Rouge. He is instantly hired.

Because like how do you not hire that guy? And so within two years of auditioning at the Mulan Rouge, he is the highest paid performer in France. Of course he is. Everybody loves a good fart. He could make up to 20,000 francs per show, which in 2015, U.S. dollars would be over $110,000 per show.

Wow. Wow. He's like the Beyonce of farting. So his show consisted of several different acts, some of which included impressions, some of which were animals, so he could do roosters or bees or ducks. So sorry, impressions, not classic impressions. Fart impressions. Fart impressions, correct.

Correct. Just confirming. All of his show was about the butt. Okay. But he could also do impressions of people, of types of people. So he would do a shy little fart to imitate a little girl. He would do... I'm sorry.

I know some little girls with nasty farts. But go on. I think this was more to try to simulate the voice than the fart. Oh. Oh, I see. He spoke with his butt. Right, right. And so he would try to imitate, he would do like a mother-in-law impression,

which would be like a loud, rippie fart. Yeah, okay. And it's said people laughed so hard. Sometimes they would pass out at the show. And so the Moulin Rouge would hang up signs that said, like, danger show. And people obviously wanted to go more. It's like the squash zone. I was going to say it's like when you go to see movies like paranormal activity

and they're like, people everywhere are losing their. minds over this salacious horror film. They're literally dying. But it's with farts. Right, exactly. Exactly. This was the paranormal activity of the 1800s, except for the paranormal activity of the 1800s. And so for his finale, he would fart the French national anthem, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But in farts. And then he would puff out a candle from across the stage. Like one of those air guns. Going to mimic fart sounds

doing the French national anthem, but I realize I don't think I can even modulate the pitch of a fart sound with my mouth. You are not a farting. I'm really amazed. So I want to quickly talk about the method by which Joe did his act.

Right, the science. The science. And then I want to talk about the rest of Joe and get through my links. The rest of Joe, other than his anus. No, I really really want to talk exclusively about his aides right now. Travel through the entire digestive tract.

So the method by which he did this, Joe would bend over, he plugged his nose and mouth, and then he would contract his diaphragm to expand his abdomen. And the reason they think this works, and his family wouldn't let scientists do an autopsy, so they weren't able to actually examine his body and see what was going on with his insides. but the reason they think this works is because it's basically a game of volume and pressure. He was creating a partial vacuum within his abdomen, but because he blocked all of the entrances, his nose and his mouth, there was only one way for air to get in.

And that was through his butt. See, I can make myself burp. And now I'm like, if I covered my nose and mouth, could I turn that into a fart? I don't think I could. I'm not going to try. I can do the same thing, and I tried, and it did not work. Oh, thank you for, wow. Thanks for running that experiment.

But you know what? Like science is about trying. things, so don't pass out. Rachel, if you try, we've gotten an end of two, and that's more scientific. That's more scientific. Rachel, I'm basically saying you should try it. But not right now. Later. We'll post about it on Twitter. So that's why they think this was able to work. And then, you know, when you're talking about sound and speed, it's really a matter of pushing the air faster or slower. That's how you are able to manipulate pitch.

So he just had, I mean, excessively good control of his anus, right? Right. So he wasn't actually farting. He was sucking. in air and then... He would suck in air and then was able to control the release of that air. Wow, amazing. Sort of like people who can... He had this beautiful arbiter.

Yeah. So Joe lives out the rest of his life. He gets into some legal disputes with the owner of the Moulon Rouge. He leaves and opens up his own club, but then decides to close that down after a couple of years after World War I because gas humor is not seen as particularly tasteful after chemical weapons. And so he decides to leave and open a bakery. And that's how he spent the rest of his life.

Is that his other talent? Is he a good big? Yeah, he's supposedly had the best bran muffins is what I press. That's so good. That's it. That's it. Get control of those fincters. Incredible. And so my...

He just wants everyone to have as much control over their bowels as he did. So my rabbit hole led me into other flatulists as well. there was one Roland the farder. He was the jester in the court of King Henry II in the late 1100s. It's so good to know that fart humor has always been funny. Oh, yes. Oh, so the world's oldest joke. Right. Goes back to 1900 BC from the Sumerians.

And this is what it is. I got this from the University of Wolverhampton via Atlas Obscura. It is a real knee-slapper. something which has never occurred since time immemorable. A young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. Those young women just farted all over the place. All over the place. Oh my gosh.

Wow. I love jokes. So, I mean, really, as long as people have farted, they have found it funny. Wow. Of course they do. There are so few constants in this world. Yes. So Roland the farder.

So Roland the Fartter, there's Mr. Methane, who started in 1991. He had appeared in the 80s on the Howard Stern Show as the British Blaster. He's upset both Phil Spector and Phil Collins by farting their songs. How could you be upset by that? They think that he's desecrating their art form. That's, well, that makes it fun. You may also recognize this guy from Britain's Got Talent. He was buzzed off after he farted the Blue Deneub Waltz, which is Dut.

Da, da, da, da, da. I'm glad that we all did that. Of course, Terrence and Philip from South Park are like a pretty well-known modern incarnation of the flatuist. And finally, Daniel Radcliffe, about a year and a half ago, was in a movie called Swiss Army Man. Oh, right. Wherein he played a farting corpse.

And I got to interview him, and we did a video on that. But I also did some extra research and spoke to the film sound designer and his official title on the film was Fartist. Wow. He sound designed dozens of farts for different scenarios for the film. Wow, a fart for every season. Yeah. Designed the farts.

Yeah, you have to build different layers to get different effects for different things. Have you seen that video footage of them filming the Harry Potter series where Alan Rickman hid whoopee cushions on the sit? There's that scene where they're all sleeping and sleeping bags in the Great Hall, and they're all supposed to be quiet. And Alan Rickman just hid whoopee cushions to make all the kids laugh in the middle of the scene. It was very good. That's also another farting connection to Daniel Ratchez. There you go.

Oh, there you go. Wow, what a... What a tale. So many parts. Thank you, Jason. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for having. I'm so excited to be on this side of the microphone.

and I really wanted to bring my A-game. It's really good. Thank you. Do you guys know that the size of a fart is between a bottle of nail polish and a can of soda? That's a wide variability. Yeah. It is, yeah. I'm not sure if that has to do with the pressure of the gas or the size of the person.

Probably both. I would say both. That's my fart fact for the day. Fart Facts, TM. And, you know, the reason the smell of someone's own farts tend to seem less offensive to them is the same reason all of our bottle smells seem less offensive to us because our brains receive so much sensory input all the time that certain receptors that are pinged over and over again will just like shut off because you would you would go net so if you actually perceived every single perceivable scent or sound

around you all the time so the same way that like a noise can become white noise to you the smells of your body become, you know, white smells, too? Of course, like, a fart isn't something you're smelling all the time constantly, so, like, you will still be like, oh, man, I farted. But you're probably, you're more likely to be standing in a room and someone else farts, and you're like, dear God, how dare they? And that is because it is a scent unfamiliar to your nose. Brand new fart.

Just know that however bad you think your fart smells, It is demonstrably worse to everyone around you. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with more weird facts. Hey, pals, looking for super cool popular science merch. We've got you covered at popsai.threadless.com. Pick up t-shirts, notebooks, and mugs with iconic vintage covers and illustrations ripped from the magazine. Plus, check out our podcast store and rep your favorite shows, like last week in tech, and the weirdest thing I learned this week. That's popsci.com.

P-O-P-S-C-I-Thudlis.com. So to avoid going right from farts to meat lozenges, just one body horror after another, I'm going to jump in and talk about Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor. He certainly has gotten more popular over the past few years because there have been a few great movie and TV portrayals of him. Up until then, he was really kind of unsung

because he had a rivalry with Thomas Edison, Edison, debatably, like, took some credit for stuff that Tesla did. Tesla would say that Edison was, like, really averse to, like, book learning and actual math and science, and that Edison was just like, I'm an inventor, like, I'm an entrepreneur. And Tesla was this, you know, very antisocial scientist. So, at least from Tesla's perspective, you know, he had no chance when Edison was out there, like, you know, with his swagger and all his patents. But they were doing very similar work.

So if you're familiar with what Thomas Edison did, you're familiar with what Nikola Tesla did, probably responsible for creating first wireless radios. So he was kicking around in like the 19th and 20th century. And one thing about him is that he really loved pigeons. And in particular, he loved one pigeon, very much, like quite a lot, a lot, a lot. And this came up a few weeks ago when I was talking about the history of rocketry and also sex magic, and I figured it was time to really do justice to Nicola himself. I first came across this fact by way of Melissa Dumfie. She's a composer who wrote a piece on the subject in 2010,

but the focus of the piece, it is from the perspective of this pigeon because Tesla told this story, I believe in some letters and also to some journalists at some point about this pigeon that he loved, quote, as a man loves a woman. And wow. What a thing to say about a pigeon. To a journalist. So let's get into that. So Tesla was famously abstinent. And in fact, I found, while Googling, I wish I had not found,

he's mentioned quite a lot among folks today who believe that avoiding sex and masturbation gives you boosted intellectual power. There's no evidence of this. The best evidence is that doing whatever makes you happy and fulfilled physically is probably the best thing for your intellectual capability. So, you know, it's cool if you're not interested in sex, that's great. If you, like, really want to be having sex, you should figure out how to interact socially in a way that makes other people want to have sex with you so that you can live your best life. And by doing so, have your best thoughts.

You're not actually getting smarter by not having sex. That was a beautiful guy to getting laid from Popside. I love that. I try to put good thoughts out into the world. So Tesla is shared a lot online as an example of somebody who is like proof that if you just keep it all in, meaning your semen, I guess, that you'll stash it all inside. Don't let it make out. You'll do great things. And he certainly said this explicitly, that he thought his abstinence was part of his genius and his work ethic.

but he's really not like a model for healthy work-life balance. He worked 20-hour days. He claimed to only sleep two hours a night, and like several people who were close to him have corroborated this. He wore gloves a lot and like refused handshakes. He ate like a more and more limited diet as he got older. He followed this very strict routine about when he was at his office and when he was at the one place he ate dinner.

It was Delamonicos for a long time in New York City, and he was like, wow, that was all. maybe the last restaurant you could have listed that I would have expected. But I saw one thing that was like, you know, like the head waiter there who was like the only person he would accept food from said he was like the like gontest and strangest looking man you would ever see in that restaurant. Imagine seeing Tesla just like at Delmonicos. Well, and he also, he was very facetious about his appearance but then didn't really change the kind of clothes he wore. So as it got into the 1910s and 20s, he looked very odd and old-fashioned because he was wearing like Victorian spiffy clothes. So yeah, he was, he, Tesla was not a well man.

And if he is your model for why you shouldn't masturbate, I ask you to look at the whole package and say maybe. No pun intended. Say maybe that was like, actually. one of the least interesting things about Nikola Tesla. So, you know, we shouldn't look at Tesla and say, like, he did all this great work because he, you know, was antisocial and spent so much time working. Like, that's the reason why he didn't get as much done. Yeah, we really glorify Tesla.

But, like, he died mostly forgotten and alone. Yeah. And sad. Yeah, and the interesting thing about Tesla is that there was kind of a narrative for a while that he must have been secretly gay if he wasn't marrying and having sex with women. But there isn't really evidence of that. It seems like maybe he was asexual or maybe he just was unable to form the kind of social connections that would have led to him having sex.

He clearly was a very anxious person. He had a lot of feelings about like control and hygiene. So it, you know, kind of follows that maybe some of the things that were keeping him from, you know, really participating actively in society might have also made him be like sex, why bother? So one can hope that he just wasn't interested in sex, but he certainly was not trying to have it, and there isn't really any evidence that that was because he was gay. And in fact, he had like really interesting, weird views about women. He sometimes would talk about how they were, like, clearly the superior sex and how actually he couldn't

possibly fathom himself worthy of a woman, but then he did some of this kind of like weird, MRA, men's rights activist style stuff, where he was like, women, why are they trying to be men? They were already the superior sex. I hate all this woman taking men's job. So it's like, oh, you thought they were the superior sex when they literally did nothing. Yes. Cool. Women are the superior sex, as long as they pose no threat to any of us.

And even then, like, he seems to have kind of gone back and forth. So certainly had a very complicated relationship with his feelings about women. his actual sexuality, complete mystery, all we know is that he was almost certainly actually celibate. And he said at one point in a magazine, sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work. So I have decided to lavish all the affection of a man no longer young on the feathery tribe. I am satisfied if anything I do will live for posterity. But to care for those homeless, hungry, or sick birds is the delight of my life. is my only means of playing.

Wow. That's so sad. He married all pigeon kind. He married all pigeon kind. And in fact, when Edison died, the one negative note in his obituary was that somebody had called up Tesla. And he insulted him by, among other things, saying that he had no hobbies or interests. So clearly when Tesla said that pigeons were his only means of playing, he put a lot of

stock in that. He thought that was the one thing he had on Edison. He would feed the pigeons every day in the park. And if he couldn't make it, he would pay a messenger boy to go do it for him. But then things started getting odd as Tesla's career declined. And he was kind of just living in seclusion in various hotels. He was getting paid a consulting fee by one company or another. But it's generally thought that that was just like their way of getting around him not wanting to accept charity.

And they didn't want him to be like an embarrassment. So they were just kind of putting him up. And he was living in hotel to hotel and running up all these bills. He was in New York at the time. And in fact, a lot of people say that one of the reasons he kept moving from hotel to hotel was that he kept keeping these pigeons. And people were like, who was the crazy old man with the pigeons? So he had been feeding pigeons for a long time, but he started to get really attached to them.

There's this one story about he was still going into his office every day at one point. And he didn't show up. And it turned out it was because. there was a sick pigeon at home. And he was like, I'm afraid if I leave, she's going to die. So see you when I see it. And he didn't show up for a few days. And his secretary was like, oh, man, he's really on the decline.

Like, I hope he's not sick or anything. But then this just turned out to be like what Tesla was going to be like for the rest of his life. At one point, a machinist who he knew claims that Tesla asked him to bury a dead pigeon on his property because he lived in the suburbs. And he was like, you'll be able to tend to this grade. in a way that I can't in the city. But then after the guy took it, Tesla called him and was like, I changed my mind, give me the dead pigeon back. And nobody knows what happened to the dead.

Oh, no. And at one point, he came across an injured pigeon. And this is a quote, using all my mechanical knowledge, I invented a device by which I supported its body in comfort in order to let the bird heal. He took her into his hotel suite, and he estimated that it cost $2,000 to cure her with a year and a half of daily care, after which he carried her. by hand to one of his favorite farms. And I didn't know exactly what year he was referring to,

so I couldn't get the exact inflation rate. But that's tens of thousands of dollars today. Wow. For one of the pigeons. Yep. To heal. Going to the vet is expensive, man. It's true.

I really like thinking of Tesla, you know, one of the like great mechanical minds of the 19th and 20th century being like, I will use everything I've ever learned to make an anchor. brace for this pigeon. Oh my God, it's beautiful. And then that brings us to the pigeon, the one. The love of his life. Yes.

He said in an interview once, I've been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years, but there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light gray tips on its wings. That one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me.

I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was purpose to my life. And he said one night she flew into his room after dark. He was sitting up working because he did not sleep because he was very well. And he says as he looked at her, he knew she was dying. And he said he saw a light from her eyes more powerful than anything he'd ever seen in his lab. And he said, when that pigeon died, something went out of my life.

Up to that time, I knew with a certainty that I would complete my work, no matter how ambitious my program. But when that something went out of my life, I knew my life. work was finished. God, Rachel, I'm going to cry on the podcast. Yeah, reading all this stuff just made me really sad about Tesla. Like, why was no one helping Nikola Tesla?

He clearly needed help. A lot of help. Because this is the problem with glorifying genius like this, that you come to feel that Tesla's habits were somehow contributing to his genius rather than, like, the reality is that he achieved what he achieved in spite of the fact that he clearly had a lot of mental health problems that no one was acknowledging

because they were like, oh, Tesla, he's a genius off doing his genius stuff in his hotel with his pigeons and like, let's leave him alone. Yeah. Well, poor Tesla. Poor Tesla. If you feel like you're like Tesla, go see a therapist. Talk to someone about it. For real.

I feel confident saying that if you see a lot of commonality between yourself and Nikola Tesla, it is time to find a therapist. Therapy is great. It is. We should all see therapists, probably. Probably. Yep. We're going to take quick break, and then we'll be right back. It's really easy to get confused by all of the tech news flying around the internet. On last week in tech, the popular science tech team explains everything and tells you how all of these stories affect your daily life. New episodes post every Monday on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, and pretty much anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. We'll talk to you then.

Check out that podcast. And now we're back to this podcast. and Sarah is going to tell us about meat lozenges. Meat lozenges. So I don't remember how I found the meat lozenges. I've just had the tab open to meet lozenges as a Google search for honestly so long when I've forgotten why I googled it in the first place. Somehow I got to meet lozenges, which as far as I can tell, we're possibly invented at Fortnham and Masons,

the quite famous British department store. It's very fancy. It has a doorman who opens the door for you, and they may have invented a lozange made of meat. There is a... I will never get over this phrase. A lozange made of meat. Their store historian,

which says a lot about the kind of store that it is, said that, quote, in the 19th century, we sold meat lozenges, a bit like fruit pasties. We recommended them for people going on long journeys or working long shifts. In particular, if you were a member of parliament and had an all-night sitting.

Just imagine a smell of meat. In parliament. Just like the sound of people like rolling lozenges around in their mouth. Just like unwrapping like. Rolling like old people on a movie, but unwrapping meat. So boy, do I just have a lot of quotes about meat lozenges. In the 1880s, the first place I found it was in the Housekeeper's Guide to Preserved Meats, Fruits, Fruits, Vegetables, and Condiments.

All the ways of preserving everything you could possibly want to eat. And in the entry under meat lozenges, it calls them a very convenient form of, of having concentrated nourishment always at hand. They will be found particularly useful to persons with somewhat delicate stomachs who indulge in walking tors. I'm not sure why walking tors. They are also often used by invalids who are apt at times owing to sleeplessless at night to feel exhausted. A few meat lozenges placed in the mouth afford great relief.

Do they? To the invalids. Invalids meaning like it's someone who is ill, like physically, by the way. So they seem to have started. as far as I can tell, like, as a beef jerky, but gelatinous. Like one of those meal replacement things. Or like those cliff bar things that are just like a little gummy, but they have carbs or something.

But meat. Exactly. All those things, but with meat. Yeah. So I naturally wanted to find out what a meat lozenges. And I looked for images of them in the hopes that someone would show me. They look kind of like neko wafers, but brown. Like a dark, meaty brown.

And I did find this ad for Brand's meat lozenges, as in the brand of brand. Brands meat lozenges. Sustaining and invigorating, quote, a meal in the vest pocket. Not sure why you keep lozenges in the vest pocket. It also calls them a most acceptable gift to officers and men. A most acceptable gift.

I would gladly accept a meat lozenges right now. Brands meat lozenges sounds like some surrealist grocery store ad, like half off brands meat lozenges. Half a meat lozenges by brand. I still want it. Do you want to know how you make a meat lozange? Yes. So this is actually a patent for, quote, improvement in fluid meats.

Can we not? It just dated October 14th, 1876 by John Lawson Johnston. So his patent was to produce a fluid or paste. combining the stimulating properties of the most approved extracts of meat and the nutritious qualities of flesh food in a form easy of digestion and dissimulation and designed for use medicinally and as an article of food. So you can make it of any meat that you want. It's all up to your imagination. It says, The parts of the animal which in life have least muscular action are selected and freed from all visible fat and tendon.

The flesh is then minced to a pulp and dried in the body. an evaporating jacket at a temperature commencing at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit and gradually decreased until all the moisture is expelled. It is then pulverized into a very fine smooth powder is produced, which constitutes the first ingredient of the preparation. The second ingredient is pure albumin, which I prefer to extract from the juice of the meat. This albumin is then dried in an evaporating jacket and pulverized in the manner herein before described, blah, blah, blah, the third ingredient is essence of beef, which is procured by any of the well-known processes. Any of them.

Any of them? They are all fine. And then you add gelatin to it. And then you mix them all together in whatever proportions you like. And then you pack it in suitable vessels and hermetically seal it. And that's a meat lozange. So I want to be very against this. But I recently saw this video scrolling through my...

Facebook feed about how soup dumplings are made. Right. And it's very similar. It's like a meat jello and then they just steam it so that it melts and that's how you get your soup. But the difference, the difference, Jason, is that that is being put into a dumpling that is then almost immediately being heated and served liquidy and hot. Right. But I imagine the melting of the lozance within your mouth would create a similar type of soup. I don't know.

My mouth is not. as hot as a soup dumpling. If you'd seen a picture, I don't think you'd think that it would taste anything like a souped dumpling or feel anything like a souped dumpling. It looks... I just love soup dumplings. I really want you to imagine a neko wafer,

but meat. Less Shialeng Bao, more meatneco. So the meat lozange Google sort of took me down this little side route of just sort of because they, like I said, they seem to have been started as sort of

of a meal replacement, like maybe something you ate when you were sick to sort of soothe you, like broth, but concentrated and dried for some reason. But then they seem to have, like, gotten into being a medicinal thing. And so there are, there's like a report in the British Medical Journal from 1885 about how it was descriptions of new inventions describing Mason's invalid dietetics, which were like supplements essentially for your diet to help treat. treat various diseases. And they were all meat. They were all meat.

Oh my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Rachel, you're right. It says, the chief articles are those identified with the name of the brand family, concentrated beef tea, essence of beef,

beef jelly, and savory meat lozenges, all pure extracts of meat. It qualifies that the meat lozenges are unusually well-flavored and have not that hard and gelatinous character, which is often found to be a source of objection.

They were the best meat lozenges. The best of the best. You got to love those brands. You've got to love those brands. There was also, by 1898, it seems to have also spread into being a thing for the military so that you could, you know, you could carry your little tin of meat lozenges around and then just pop one anytime you need it a little bit of nourishment. Aren't we all just little tins of meat lozenges? There is also something called Bovril, which I think still exists. I think you can buy this as like a brand.

It is made by the Bovroll Company. I'm familiar. Do you want to guess what it is? It's not a lozange, but it is meat-related. Is it just like cow gelatin? Almost. It is meat extract, like yeast extract, like marmite, but meat. And I think you're sort of maybe supposed to spread it on something,

and it notes that it's a specially concentrated meat lozange, very serviceable for travelers, cyclists, and others. And others. And others. Not just cyclists. The meat lozenges. Yeah, it had made it into the Encyclopedia Britannica under the entry lozange by 1911, which is, I'm not, I'm not sure why out of all the lozenges, they went with the meat.

So the 1800s, it seems to have been, like, slowly progressing, and then by the 1920s it was, like, fully a treatment for dyspepsia in diatotherapy by Dr. William Edward Fitch, which is just, I guess, meat seems to have been a really big thing for early. dietitians that it was, you know, it was protein, it was nourishment, it was nice and warm if it wasn't to lozange. So when do meat lozenges go out of style? Because we're the 1920s now, and now we're in 2018. I couldn't really find when they died. They were definitely given to soldiers in World War I, but they were like actually given out as a ration. I'm amazed they lost it until 1922 from the late 1800s. That's 40 years of people eating gelatinous meat in a disc.

I mean, I just kind of picture it like a piece of jerky, but sort of... Right. So why not a jerky, you know? I don't really know, because it's not like they didn't... We haven't known for a long time how to salt and dry meats of all kinds. Somebody eating a piece of jerky and was like, what if this was more gelatinous? I'd like mine in convenient wafer form, please. I suppose the wafer... No chewing.

I guess the wafers were probably more pored. You know, as a cyclist, you could bring it. You can bring turkey. And others. I bring turkey when I go. I heard. But the meat lozenges is beautiful. You can buy antique meat lozenges tins.

If anyone I'm related to out there is listening, I'd love that for my birthday. It's coming up in a couple months, so you have a bit to track it down. They're beautiful. Brandon Pose, savory meat lozenges. Wow. Okay, so what do we think the weirdest thing we learned this week was? Meat lozange. Yeah, I'm really torn between both of y'alls.

I mean, meat lozend, great. I guess I have to vote for the fartiste. It's really on brand for me. Also, like, the farts are objectively kind of gross, but, like, I'm just delighted by that. I'm not grossed out by the story of a guy. Then you would be very welcome at the Moulin Rouge in the late 1890s. That was already true, yeah.

But meat lausage is just disgusting to me. It was a fascinating story. I went too far into the gross end of this background. Yeah, that's fair. I'm not repulsed by the farting, oddly. I'm just curious to know more. I guess farting wins. Yeah, Jason wins.

Wow. Congratulations, Jason. Thank you. I can never come on again. I have to be batting a thousand at all time. It's true. You can't top the fartiest. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch, including Weirdest Thing t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popsye. Dotlest.com. Our theme music was produced by Billy Cadden. Our editor is Lexi Krupp.

If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank.