How Alchemy Worked

Alchemy evokes sorcerers working by candlelight combining potions to create magical items, real Dungeons & Dragons stuff. But alchemy gets a bad rap. Alchemists had lofty goals like curing poverty and their work laid the foundation for science to come. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:07Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:17Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we are here to enchant you in this very special episode of Stuff You Should Know, which we like to also call the Facts of Life 2.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean alchemy, I think a very appropriate topic, taking something mundane and turning it into something fantastic.

• 1:40Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I guess we are kind of alchemists in that sense. Or were you talking about a different podcast?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I was talking about what I aim to accomplish today.

• 1:51Josh Clark?

  Hey, man, not only do you aim it, you or aim for it, you hit it right on the head.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, alchemy, baby. Let's do it.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Clumsy attempted a compliment. Yeah, well, yeah, when we're talking about alchemy or alchemists, for me at least, and I would assume most people, kind of conjures images of like some, some magician wearing like a robe with stars and moons on it, maybe even a pointy hat to match. He's lit by candlelight, he's in a strange little laboratory, he's doing all sorts of weird stuff to basically create some sort of magical potion, or do something like that, right? If you know a little more about it, maybe you think of charlatans who trick people into investing in their alchemical schemes of turning, you know, lead into gold.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  But it turns out that there's a lot more to it than I ever realized. And the people involved were not, they were a lot more interesting and a lot less dumb and fraudulent than, than history has kind of cast the mass.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I always thought of alchemy as, just from what I knew as a youngster, which was just turning something like a boring metal into gold, like you were talking about. But it is, I think, interesting that modern science now looks back and says, hey, you know what? I mean, sure, there was a lot of bunk and BS involved, but some of the foundations of modern chemistry were there, even though that wasn't their intention, really.

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and you can also make a pretty strong case that the alchemists were the ones who laid the groundwork for the scientific method.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, in some ways, sure.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  What's cool about it, too, is that, you know, the Europeans, the medieval European, you know, monks and sages and scholars are the ones you typically think of, at least in the West, when you think of alchemy. But it's a, I don't want to say worldwide, but it really kind of ties together traditions from a bunch of different parts of the world into a mad pursuit for immortality and glory.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, totes.

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  So we should say that you can kind of trace the Western tradition of alchemy, the Europeans, as you think of it, all the way back to Egypt. Egypt was like the starting point for the Western tradition, but Egypt even seemed to get it from other places, specifically even, even back before Egypt. It seems like China and India were possibly in on the pursuit for immortality, which seems to be the thing that initially gave alchemy like its birth.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they may have called it like, you know, the art or something like that, or maybe, you know, some other word that they had that meant, you know, some sort of transformation might be taking place. The word alchemy itself was first used in Arabic. And then eventually French and English in medieval times. But yeah, I think it's interesting that it followed that route. And it's also not surprising that, you know, China was one of the first to get involved in something like this, because I feel like anytime we're talking about ancient practices, China always seems to be sort of leading the way in one way or the other.

• 5:05Josh Clark?

  Indeed. One of the reasons China was so heavy into it was because the early alchemical pursuits or purposes were to create an elixir for immortality. The reason they cared so much about that was because the country had a huge Daoist population, and Daoism is very much interested in achieving immortality one way or another. And so China and its alchemists put together mercury, arsenic, sulfur, and said, here, drink this a lot of the times. And surely, a lot of people died from drinking those things, right? I mean, you can't drink a concoction of mercury and still, you know, just wipe your mouth

• 5:48Josh Clark?

  with the back of your hand and walk off like, time to get to work, you know?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure there were some people that suffered under alchemy experiments over time. But they also, you know, on the other side, and this is sort of the plus side and minus side of some of these experiments, they also, whether or not purposely or not, gave us things we still use today, like, you know, potassium nitrate. So they sort of accidentally discovered gunpowder. And ammonium chloride, which is used today as nitrogen and fertilizer, like for farms and stuff like that.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  So yeah, there was, that is kind of a tradition in alchemy of, you know, they were trying to do something else, but they still found useful stuff that we still, you know, make or use today. And China's whole jam with alchemy kind of started to dry up as Buddhism spread throughout the country, because Buddhism is much more focused on rebirth and mellowing out about the whole immortality thing. And so the pursuit of, you know, immortality through a special elixir just kind of became a moot point, or a moo point, sorry.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess the Buddhists were like, yeah, maybe it's really not possible to live forever. Maybe we should set our goals a little more reasonably.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  Right. Let's just pretend like we don't care about living forever.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Uh, as far as India goes, uh, they were also not seeking immortality and they were also kind of like post

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Buddhist China, like, let's try and promote health. Let's try and cure some disease. Um, maybe we can try and transfer something into gold. Uh, but you know, you'll see that kind of popping up. That's why I think a lot of people, the first thing they think of is turning something into gold, because that was the pursuit of a lot of alchemists, because gold was so revered. Uh, either as like, you know, the, the, the best metal.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Go ahead and make your Whitesnake joke.

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  I wasn't going to. I was just thinking of, of gold wearing a T-shirt. This is the best metal.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, with like the devil's hands, the devil, devil horns fingers.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and you know, also thinking like, you know, perhaps like drinking something that maybe liquid gold, but it's really not liquid gold. It just turned the color gold could make you healthier or maybe live forever.

• 8:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And in India, they were trying to make gold not to get rich, but because like you were saying, they were trying to balance health, restore health. Like it was just associated with healthy living, essentially gold was.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  So then, um, we reached the Mediterranean. That was another ancient place. And by the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 322 BCE,

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  um, they found pretty quickly that the Egyptians had already been developing their own tradition of alchemy for a while. And the Greeks said, hey, I like your style. Let's mix together our philosophy and our understanding of physics and astrology with your alchemy and let's produce something really great that medieval monks are really going to go nuts for.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think this is like, I know we're going to say this quite a bit, but I think they were, these early scientists were taking a stab at, at some, at something, you know? Like, sure, there were charlatans and stuff like that, but this was so early on in the game, like.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Science is brand new and they were like, hey, let's try this thing and see if it works out. And maybe didn't always follow modern best practices, but you can't expect them to either. So like, I don't know, I feel like over time on this, on this podcast period, we've kind of tried to shine a little bit of light on some of this stuff is like, hey, they were doing their best back then, trying to get, trying to get involved in science at least.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  Right, at least they were doing something, you lazy sap.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is when the first books on it came out, there was one called, the translation is Natural and Mystical Things by an Egyptian named Bolos of Mende, and this is around 200 BCE. A lot of this was again about making, you know, valuable metals like gold and silver. But again, it was, it was the first kind of preserved writing that we have on this.

• 10:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right. No, for sure. And he was also somebody who wrote pretty straightforward about alchemy and the recipes and the processes, which would come to be very rare as alchemy developed, it became much more secretive.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:18Josh Clark?

  But this Greco Egyptian creation, this melding of different traditions to create this, this specific kind of alchemy, it's called Hellenistic alchemy, that laid the foundation for Western alchemy to come. One of the other big things that came out of it, or another indicator of how important it was, is there was this kind of legendary figure that developed among the medieval alchemists, the monks. His name was Hermes Trismegistos. It's a great name, not a good hotel check-in name, but it's, it's a great name regardless.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Could you spell it again, sir? Like, how many times are you gonna hear that?

• 10:58Josh Clark?

  Right, and you would say it just like that, too, like real uncertain and unsteady, like Hermes Trismegistos, I think.

• 11:06Josh Clark?

  So it was a combination, a straight up combination of Thoth or Toth, I think Thoth, the Egyptian god who invented writing, the one with the ibis bird head.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:15Josh Clark?

  And Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods. Like, this was a complete syncretization of those two. And later medieval monks would ascribe like alchemical texts to having been written by Hermes T.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hermes T. That's a better check-in name by far. Is that T E A, sir, or T E E?

• 11:36Josh Clark?

  I think it means like Hermes III the best. I think is what tris-megistos translates to.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  All right. That's pretty good.

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  And this is, this is one of those episodes too, Chuck, where when we say words, we might accidentally cause somebody to go poof and something either appears or disappears. So everybody be prepared for something to vanish.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. And no one knew that, you know, like when you look back on stuff like this, it's kind of hard to parse out like who was, who was first, who was influencing who. It's just sort of spread around the world. There's, is a theory that India's belief system was basically just sort of brought over as a, maybe not as a book, but, you know, brought over wholesale from Proto-Arians in Central Asia. And they were in the area between four and 5,000 years ago. So it's, you know, I don't, I don't know if there's a lot to be gained from sort of debating who was coming up with what first, you know?

• 12:31Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's, it's those historians, they're kind of fixated on that kind of thing. But, you know, it is interesting to wonder like where culture came from because so much of it influences so much else. It's not just in alchemy, but in all things, basically. But you mentioned Bolus of Mende, and he actually came after the guy who the Western tradition of alchemy is kind of like based on. Like, this guy was the guy. He's like, here's how it's done. This is the ground rules for alchemy. Okay, everybody? His name was Zosimos of Panopolis. And Zosimos of Panopolis wrote something like 28 books on alchemy. And for a while, they were like,

• 13:16Josh Clark?

  we've only got a couple of letters of this guy, but we knew he was brilliant. Apparently, they've been finding his stuff all over the Arabic world in libraries that they didn't realize they had it before. But a lot of his writings have recently been rediscovered.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and his stuff, he's another one of those that was pretty detailed in his writing. And to have like, stuff like this preserved is, is pretty amazing. He was, because he was an alchemist, obviously transforming metals or, or you know, trying to transform metals. But he, like I said, he was pretty specific. He would have write-ups on like, exactly what tools he was using, on what methods he was using. A lot of this stuff was obviously repurposed from the kitchen, like kind of cooking stuff, or maybe craft work, not the van. But you know, crafting and like-

• 14:05Josh Clark?

  Like a bedazzler?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a bedazzler, or perfume making. And he credited a lot of this stuff with a Jewish woman named Maria. And he was like, you know, a lot, I've taken a lot of her methods, and a lot of her methods also transferred over to early methods of, of cooking. Like, you know, French and Italian cooking methods.

• 14:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like a water bath, a baumari or a bagnomaria is, you know, like, you know, when you melt chocolate chips in a pan that's inside a pan that has water in it?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you don't scorch it, right?

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  Exactly. You can thank the Jewish woman named Maria, who has lost the history aside from Zosimos of Panopolis's writings, but she apparently taught him.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he, he said, hey, you can use a lot of this stuff to, to not make gold from lead.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, he, he definitely came up with some processes that he figured out himself. And like you said, these people were taking a stab at it. They were like, what happens if I do this? And what, what happens if I, if I try that same thing with a different metal, or a different powder, or something like that? So they were experimenting. They were starting the beginnings of experimentation that would lead to what we understand it as a science. Zosimos was doing this, like, he was one of the first to, to do this. I also saw a definition, I'm not sure if I sent it to you or not, but he had an explanation or a definition of what alchemy is. He said it was the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodifying, drawing the spirit from bodies, and bonding the spirits within bodies.

• 15:36Josh Clark?

  And what he was saying, like, if you stop and think about it, it's actually pretty comprehensible.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:40Josh Clark?

  He, he's saying alchemy is the study of, you know, all the things we've observed about the world around us, trying to figure out how that stuff works. Like, how does a soul come into a body and become attached to it? How does it leave it after death? What's the deal with water? That kind of stuff. So like, it was just them seeking to apply-

• 16:01Josh Clark?

  Essentially, a proto-scientific understanding of the world as they understood it.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what happens if I distill this thing down to its base form? Or create, you know, you're going to hear a lot of talk about vapors. Like, you know, boil something or heat something to create a vapor and then smash it together with this thing. And now I've just learned, you know, I'm trying to make gold, maybe. But I've all of a sudden discovered that it changes properties of both materials if I combine these two things. And while they may not have understood what the heck that meant, chemistry later on would say, oh, actually, what they were doing was this.

• 16:37Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. Yeah. So this whole, this whole jam that was laid down by Zosimos and Bolos and the the early Egyptians who eventually kind of combined their stuff with the Greek understanding of the world, which is really important because Aristotle's thoughts about, you know, what made matter up, like earth, wind, fire and air, the four elements. That was the understanding of the world that they were working from. They were trying to figure things out within that context. So Aristotle had a huge contribution to alchemy early on, which is science with later kind of decide was just a huge wrong turn at the outset, especially

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  considering that Democritus, who was around around the same time as Aristotle, remember him? He was the one who's like, everything's made up of atoms. I just am not going to use the word atoms yet.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Good place for a break, yeah?

• 17:34Josh Clark?

  I think so.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit about the move into Europe right after this.

• 17:53Josh Clark?

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• 21:43Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so things were just kind of hanging around from, you know, 300 B.C.E., where the Egyptians and the Greeks had kind of come together and created that version of alchemy. And eventually, the Arab world started to rise, and it started to go over here and go over there. And wherever it went, it kind of took this and that from each culture that it found interesting. And one of the things that they did, they showed up in Egypt, and they said, "Hey, I like this alchemy stuff you guys have been doing for the last few hundred years. Teach that to us." And that actually helped. Lay the groundwork for the incredible amount of learning that took place around this time in the Arab world.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, logging stuff, describing stuff that would later on, again, you know, lay the foundation for legit chemists of the future. And one of their theories was that production of different kinds of matter starts out basically, you know, with the basics, which are heat, coldness, dryness, moisture, and combining these in different ways are going to have different outcomes. Like to produce those vapors, you're going to have cold water, basically, and combine that with some sort of hot, moist air to create a vapor. And they would, you know, mix these things together and they would combine it with mercury or sulfur or something like that. And trying to make gold, once again.

• 23:11Josh Clark?

  Right. I think it's called Crisio Poya.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the technical term, I think, for trying to make gold.

• 23:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. And there are a couple of big, big names, there are a few big names, but two that still made it all the way through history. Razi's, who's known as the greatest physician of the Muslim world at the time. He was an alchemist, a contemporary, I believe, of his, named Jabir. He was well-known as an early scientist. Some people call him the father of chemistry. And these guys were, they were contributing by saying like, hey, don't just throw a handful of powder at something like, you know, do a thumbnail and use the same amount every time, just little contributions like that. What was a huge contribution too, was that they took a lot of these ancient texts, translated

• 24:01Josh Clark?

  them into Arabic, and then those were eventually translated into Latin, which is when things started to spread like wildfire throughout Europe in like the 12th century.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I promised talk of Europe and I just forgot we had to stop by Arabia first. But this is beginning in about the 12th century when it moved into Europe. And this was a time when... Europe was shifting, you know, to a university, sort of a more academic way of looking at things and away from the monasteries who were, I guess, some of the more early, you know, science-minded people.

• 24:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  And Christian scholars at the time in Europe, they started to become a little more open to say like, hey, maybe we should, you know, look to other texts, ancient texts even, look from other cultures to try and see if we can learn something from them. And so they started experimenting with mineral acids, boric acid, sulfuric acid, stuff like that, and trying to develop elixirs. And this is where you'll hear more about things like, you know, immortality, like the elixir of life, philosopher's stone, which we'll get into and stuff like that.

• 25:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we should say, now that I think of it, I'll bet a lot of this transfer of knowledge came from the Crusades. Europe just showed up and was like, give us everything, including all of your books on alchemy.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Josh Clark?

  You know? That would be my guess. But yeah, around this time, so I read that the European alchemists, following this tradition, believed that in the ancient world, they had already found what was called the philosopher's stone, which just sounds so cool. It'd make a really cool, like, title for a Harry Potter book or a Willie the Wizard book or something, you know?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Are you making a joke?

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Philosopher's Stone. No, I think it's just kind of like, it's just, it fits naturally, you know?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Well, that was the original title of the Harry Potter book. Sorcerer's Stone, okay. That's why I asked if you were joking.

• 25:56Josh Clark?

  Not the sorcerer's stone, it's the philosopher's stone, wasn't it?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  No, they changed it to the sorcerer's stone from the philosopher's stone.

• 26:02Josh Clark?

  What a ripoff. Okay, well, we're talking about the philosopher's stone, and that was a term for this substance that supposedly was all over the place, but we just didn't recognize the magical properties of it, that you could turn immediately anything into like gold or whatever the perfect version of that thing was. Because that was the thing. Gold to the alchemists was the perfect version of a metal. And all other metals, whether it's lead, tin, silver, whatever, are, we're seeing them in the process of moving naturally into gold. That's how they understood it. What they were trying to do is figure out how those processes worked so they could speed it up. Right?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:45Josh Clark?

  And do it, do it, but like, that's where they got the idea of taking lead and turning it into gold. That's what they were trying to do was move lead into its more perfect natural state, which was gold. And the way that they thought you could do that was with the philosopher's stone, which would make that happen automatically.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you mentioned earlier that they would operate a little more in secrecy later on. And this is kind of where we are now. Now is they would operate, maybe they would have their apprentices and stuff like that, but it was kind of shrouded in secrecy a lot of times. They would use like codes and symbols and metaphor and stuff when they were like recording their experiments. And there were a handful of European alchemists that, you know, we should probably go over a little bit. The first of which is Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great. He was a German philosopher in the 13th century, and he was a friar, a Dominican friar. And he studied the, the work of these Arab alchemists, because like we said, it kind of came over from there.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  And the ancient Greek philosophers, which, you know, as we mentioned, kind of melded those two worlds of philosophy and science, or this kind of science.

• 27:52Josh Clark?

  Right, right. So there was another guy, I mean, there's a bunch that we could talk about, John D., Arthur D., Roger Bacon, they were all alchemists who contributed to our understanding of the world. One I hadn't heard of was Jean de Rôteilade, Delade? Jean de Rôteilade? I think I got it that second time.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  It sounds good to me, but German is my non-specialty.

• 28:15Josh Clark?

  He was, um, he was, uh, he was trying to figure out Crisio Poya, Crisio Poya, um, which is again transforming things into gold. The thing is, and this is a really good example or way to point this out, he was a Franciscan monk. He didn't care anything about getting rich. As a matter of fact, he had taken a vow of poverty. So much, so many times the alchemists are like, all they want to do is like just make gold and be rich. They were just greedy magicians, essentially. No, it's not the case. They wanted to create gold to end poverty. They wanted to find the elixir of life to end disease. Like they had really big. Big goals that they were trying to reach. And he was a good example of that.

• 29:00Josh Clark?

  He wanted to give the Catholic Church the ability to make gold so that they could fund themselves better, essentially.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I took a vow of poverty in my twenties. I think you did too.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was forced on me.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Uh, so one of the things that he did too, uh, which is pretty interesting, I think, is he, God talked about sort of distilling things down to their purest form. He did that with booze and he distilled it down to Aqua, uh, how would you pronounce that? Vita?

• 29:29Josh Clark?

  Aqua vite.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Aqua vite. Um, he called it the fifth essence of wine or the quintessentia. And this goes back to Aristotle again, this idea that, um, you know, it's something different than those four classical elements that we're talking about. And I forgot how he pronounced his name, but let's just call him Dr. R. Uh, said that, hey, when I create this distilled wine down to its purest form of alcohol and I put meat in that stuff, the meat just kind of stays like it is. It stops this decay. And it, he wasn't, he didn't think he had tapped into a new way to preserve meat. He thought like, hey, maybe this stops things from aging and maybe this alcohol is a cure all.

• 30:12Josh Clark?

  Right. He went on to create the Mai Tai.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 30:15Josh Clark?

  Another one, this guy's my favorite, Periselsis. Uh, his real name was Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus Von Hohein.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  But we'll call him Phil?

• 30:27Josh Clark?

  Hohenheim.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Hohenheim?

• 30:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, he went by Periselsis. I think we talked about him in our, uh, poison episode or there was some episode because he was famous for saying, uh, the dose makes the poison. Like you can take enough of anything and it's going to kill you, which is a really important understanding at the time. But he was one of the ones who led the way of secrecy because he believed that what the alchemists were doing was dealing in like the nature of the universe and that this information was way too potent to just have out there. So he was one of the ones that led the charge in that. He also was known as, um, questioning Galen's thousand year old idea of the four humors being the cause of disease. Periselsis was like, no, I think that.

• 31:10Josh Clark?

  There's like external factors involved, like maybe even little tiny bugs or something like that that get in your throat and then into your stomach and then just really screw things up down there.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:19Josh Clark?

  That's me paraphrasing him. That was Paracelsus. So he was a, a straight up genius.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:25Josh Clark?

  For his time. I'm a big fan.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure they came right back at him and said, no, no, silly man. It's just black bile. That's the problem. He's like, you sure? Like this other stuff could be making us sick.

• 31:35Josh Clark?

  He's like, again with the bile.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Uh, there was also Nicholas Flamel, I guess, or Flamel. I'm not sure how you would pronounce that, but.

• 31:43Josh Clark?

  I think Flamel.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Flamel, okay. Um, he is the one who is credited to have discovered the philosopher's stone. Uh, he was just a mere bookseller in the 14th and I guess, uh, 15th centuries. And he said, I got a book. I purchased a book and it was in a language that was so hard to translate. It took me 21 years, but once I finally cracked that code, in that book was the information on how to produce the philosopher's stone. And this is what I don't understand. He got rich, but did he get rich off of selling this? Like, that's what I couldn't figure out.

• 32:21Josh Clark?

  No, the, the later alchemists, like starting around the 17th century, they created a legend about him saying that he had created the philosopher's stone.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:30Josh Clark?

  So now he could turn anything into gold and that's how he got rich.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but how did he, where, how did he get rich? I still don't get it.

• 32:37Josh Clark?

  From, oh, I see what you're saying.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Cause he wasn't turning stuff into gold.

• 32:39Josh Clark?

  No, from what I saw, his wife was rich.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  That's the likeliest explanation, but this legend grew up around him.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 32:48Josh Clark?

  Because he really was well known. He's recorded historically as being very rich. Kind of suddenly, uh, they, they endowed like a ton of hospitals, a bunch of, um, schools, churches, um, that are, some of them are still around today. And he was known for putting alchemical messages, um, kind of encoded in the buildings, like on plaques or in archways or something like that. Yeah. So he definitely was an alchemist. He definitely was rich, but it was this legend that grew up around him that he was one of the few who actually found this, the philosopher's stone. I almost said sorcerer's stone, man.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  See?

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  Gets in there.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Uh, another legend is that he perhaps maybe lived to be 114, but um, records say he was between 80 and 114. So that's a pretty big uh, gap there, or a wide range.

• 33:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  34 years.

• 33:43Josh Clark?

  It is pretty, pretty wide, but even 80 back in the 1400s, early 1400s, is pretty respectable, I guess.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  No, agreed.

• 33:51Josh Clark?

  So we talked a little bit about the philosopher's stone. That was one thing that as far as we know, no one ever created. Right? But of all of the alchemists in Europe were after this, trying to figure this out. While at the same time also performing all these other experiments, just in case they didn't figure out how to do the philosopher's stone. They were figuring out how to do it the hard way, too. There was also another thing that they were famous for trying to create, which are called homunculi, which are essentially artificial people in miniature uh, that they wanted to create so that they could study how life begins. Or um, or like Zosimos had said, you know, how the, how the, the spirit bonds to the body.

• 34:34Josh Clark?

  Like, that's the kind of thing they were trying to figure out by creating mini humans. And they had all sorts of, I think it's fair to call it wacky ideas of how to create a homunculus.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  I think it's pretty fun. I mean, the word homunculus is fun in and of itself, but uh, yeah, there's something called the Book of the Cow. Uh, this is an Arabic book in the 9th century uh, that apparently Plato had something to do with. And there was a recipe for a homunculus in there, which is one homunculi. And it involved inseminating a, a ewe, which is, I guess, that's a female sheep, right? With human sperm. Don't ask how, I'm not really sure how that happened, but I'm sure they had their.

• 35:11Josh Clark?

  Not too many ways to do that back then.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  I'm sure they had their methods. And you would have a birth and it would be some sort of shapeless form at that point. And then you need to treat it with specific stuff, uh, materials, put it in a glass container, and then it grows into a tiny person.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I don't think that this ever worked, but they, some, I guarantee some people tried it for sure.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I bet. I mean, you have to have some excuse for when you're found with a sheep, right?

• 35:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Oh my god. Oh, uh, that's gonna stay with me like Sorcerer's Stone, Chuck. Every time I see the word ewe, it reminds me there was this Happy Days episode where Richie was writing in chalk on the sidewalk, a message to some girl that he liked. Well, in a place where he knew that she was gonna walk home from high school.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  I remember this.

• 36:02Josh Clark?

  And he, he drew I and then the heart and then the U like a sheep. And the girl comes up on him while he's sitting there finishing it and she's like, I love sheep? And he's like, it's a U. I love you. But the way that she said, I love sheep, just always, it stuck with me like the weird thing you said about inseminating sheep and Sorcerer's Stone will always stick with me.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And, and it probably taught you the lesson, like never put yourself out there with a girl.

• 36:32Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yeah. That was definitely the line you got from Richie Cunningham for sure.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  I told, I had forgotten completely about that. And as you started to tell that story, I completely remembered it just like flooded back to me. That's funny.

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  There's one other one too. This was a Brady Bunch one that I always think of whenever I think of I heart sheep. When I see the word you. So we're like three or four inceptions from this original thing. There was a Brady Bunch where Greg and his friends stole a rival school's mascot, which was a goat.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Okay, I remember that.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  And it just so happened that like a bunch of officials from the school were, came over for coffee to the Brady house while the goat was there. And they had to move it from room to room and hide it. And Greg finally gets discovered with the goat in a closet, holding it in this really awkward position. And the face he makes when they open the closet doors. I, I can't imagine how many takes they did to get it just that perfect, but it's a, it's one of the great all time shots of 70s television, if you ask me.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Did the goat, was he wearing like a, like a cape or something?

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I remember that.

• 37:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I'm gonna send you that clip because it's worth watching.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  All right. So I guess we need to take our second break.

• 37:46Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  And then we'll come back with more talk of 70s television right after this.

• 38:05Josh Clark?

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• 38:27Josh Clark?

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• 38:43Speaker 02

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• 39:05Speaker 03

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 39:21Speaker 04

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• 40:04Speaker 04

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• 40:28Speaker 03

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 40:38Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 40:53Speaker 02

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• 41:22Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  All right, so we have talked, sort of hinted at the fact that alchemy is not looked back as it was for many years. And there's a more modern sort of view of it as like that, hey, they were doing the best they can, at least that's what Chuck said. And some of the foundations they laid for modern chemistry are actually kind of valuable. And that's kind of where we're at now. A lot of metallurgical processes were created that were legitimate,

• 42:19Speaker 02

  maybe accidentally creating medicines or things that led to medicines happened, which is also valuable.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  What else?

• 42:26Josh Clark?

  Oh, well, I mean, just the very fact that these guys were carrying out experiments. Like before then philosophers just said, like Aristotle, like this is what everything's made of. Earth, wind, fire, water.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Trust me.

• 42:38Josh Clark?

  No one asked him, exactly. No one asked him, how do you know that or anything like that? And he really, you know, I'm not saying he was a fraud or anything, but he didn't use any scientific experimentation. It was the alchemists who started that. They were the ones who started working in the lab with specific measures of materials. And then, very importantly, recording their results. So they were documenting what they were finding. These are all just the, the basic outlines of the scientific method today.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, the word chemistry actually comes from alchemy. In about the 1780s, which is pretty interesting. And alchemy is also, like the other definitions of alchemy. Doesn't it also mean like some sort of romantic chemistry that can happen?

• 43:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you know, like romantic chemistry, right? So a rom com, what they have in there, romantic chemistry. That understanding and use of the term chemistry actually predates the use of the word chemistry as far as the scientific discipline goes by almost 200 years.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good point. And there were also some pretty major players that we, you know, revere as our scientific forebears that were involved in stuff like this, who maybe tried to keep a little quiet, like Isaac Newton. And this is like well into the 18th century when Isaac Newton was doing his thing. And he was like, yeah, maybe we could make gold from other materials. And maybe I'm not gonna, you know, I'm also into some occult and spiritual concepts, but I'm gonna kind of play that down and keep that all under the table for now. And it will only be discovered later.

• 44:12Josh Clark?

  Yep. Underneath his ruffled puffy pirate shirt, he had the best metal t-shirt on.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Well, and people that were in charge of sort of keeping up with his story and his records, they kind of buried that stuff over the years to protect his image, didn't they?

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Newton was such a genius that he was pursuing two lines of inquiry into the nature of the universe. One, like the physics genius, the mathematician that we know and love is like the world's first true scientist.

• 44:43Josh Clark?

  At the same time, he was pursuing alchemy as well. Like, he was looking into the whole thing like-

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Hedging his bets?

• 44:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, essentially, he was trying to figure it out. He apparently believed, or his papers said, that he thought alchemy was this ancient wisdom that God had directly given humans and that alchemists were figuring out, were learning. Like, that this was like divine, a divine delivery of like, knowledge, essentially. And like, like you said, his papers were kept private, just to preserve his image for centuries. And then finally, they started to get published and people started to understand him a little more. And I saw a really interesting quote at some point, that one of his biographers said that Isaac Newton was not the first scientist, he was the last alchemist.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 45:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I mean, it doesn't necessarily make sense to you if you, when you first hear it, but it's very much like how, say, a bird evolved out of a dinosaur bird. The dinosaur bird was not a true bird. The first bird was the first true bird.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:47Josh Clark?

  And in that same way, the point they were making was Newton was the thing that the first real scientists evolved out of, but he was not that. He was part alchemist, too.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good point. There were, you know, even some more modern world leaders that were like, "You know, these guys were trying to make gold, and I know it didn't work out, but like, maybe we could try, because it'd be great if we had a lot of gold." Maximilian II and Rudolph II, and this was 16th and 17th century, Holy Roman Empire stuff, where they were like, "Hey, why don't we just sort of help financially support these alchemists? Because you never know, maybe they can, maybe they can tap into this elixir of life, or get us untold amounts of gold."

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I also saw Henry VI not only gave some, like, I think 15 or 16 alchemists, official royal licenses to produce alchemical gold. He took what they used and minted it into coins. So supposedly there are-

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Which wasn't gold.

• 46:49Josh Clark?

  No, it was a combination of mercury and copper sulfate with a little bit of water, and it produces some alloy, once you clean it up, that looks a lot like gold, but it's much lighter. He, he, there's coins out there still today to collect that were basically alchemy gold that, that Henry the, the sixth commissioned and that Britain's gold coins were made out of for a little while.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Which ironically are probably worth a lot of money.

• 47:16Josh Clark?

  I would guess so. And that is ironic, isn't it?

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little bit, don't you think?

• 47:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I would even say more than a little bit. I'd say a lot of bit.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, the Academy Royal de Sciences in France is founded in 1666 and that's when they said, all right, um, this philosopher's stone stuff is not going to be in our curriculum anymore. Uh, we're not going to look at astrology. We're going to move into the modern era, uh, of the 17th century version of the modern era. And that's what they did. They kind of shut all that stuff down. Um, as like the official scientific, as far as official scientific pursuit academically goes.

• 47:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the whole thing kind of continued on. The 19th century still had alchemists in it. Um, the upshot of that whole thing was that they were frauds, charlatans, and they were really the ones who gave alchemy a bad name to our modern ears. But also science, when it was really, when it really developed, it, it had a tendency to turn on its predecessors. The things that it evolved out of like witches, herbalists, that kind of thing. Um, same thing with alchemists. Like it was just so dumb and, and backwards. Science is the, the, the truth. Um, it just basically disavowed alchemy, even though it directly evolved out of alchemy.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:33Josh Clark?

  But now it is nice, kind of refreshing that today, science is ready to be like, yes, it's a little embarrassing, but this is our grandfather.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you know, I, I feel like grandfather is usually less embarrassing than father.

• 48:46Josh Clark?

  I don't know. It depends on the era the grandfather's from because they can say some really inappropriate stuff at Thanksgiving, you know?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I strive to be, if I ever am a grandfather, just to be the sort of sweet doddering old guy that everyone just thinks is, is fun and funny.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

  You definitely will be, man.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  I don't want to, no controversy.

• 49:06Josh Clark?

  I think you're also the one of those grandfathers who's also a beloved dad, too.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Well, so far, so good.

• 49:12Josh Clark?

  It's hard to do.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:15Josh Clark?

  One more thing about Alchemy. I, when I was studying, listened to a bunch of Dungeon Synth. I know I've mentioned it before.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:22Josh Clark?

  But in particular, I was listening to albums by Witchbolt.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:27Josh Clark?

  It's really good stuff, man.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:29Josh Clark?

  If you're into any kind of like instrumental synth music.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  I am.

• 49:33Josh Clark?

  You could do a lot worse than listening to Witchbolt.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  All right.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  And then it also jogged my memory. When I mentioned Dungeon Synth a couple of years ago, we got an email from somebody named The Lone Enchanter, who has a Dungeon Synth label called High Mage Productions. And you can go check them out on Bandcamp, but they sent us a couple of jingles that apparently were lost because I sent them to Jerry and she's like, I have never heard either of these. So we can look for some High Mage Production jingles coming in the future. Thank you very much for that.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Fantastic. I'm gonna check out Witchbolt. What a great name.

• 50:08Josh Clark?

  It really is. And their album covers are amazing, too.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Oh, I bet.

• 50:12Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, that's it for Alchemy, everybody. We did it, Chuck, and we're done. And that means it's time for listener mail.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  This is a correction on me. I can't believe I missed this. I feel like a dummy. Hey, guys. When you mentioned Heavy Metal Parking Lot on the Sunset Strip episode, the greatest heavy metal short documentary of all time, Chuck attributed it to Penelope Spira.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  She made Decline of the Western Civilization. So I goofed that up. I was totally thinking of Decline of Western Civilization, another great documentary.

• 50:47Josh Clark?

  But have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot, then?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  I have. I just misattributed the filmmaker. Apparently Jeff Krulick and John Hain made Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It's beyond satire and encapsulates a moment in time that was magical. They also made, and this I didn't know, they also made a documentary called Neil Diamond Parking Lot.

• 51:07Josh Clark?

  No.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  So that's pretty fun. I'm gonna have to check that one out. That is from, that's with best regards from Matthew T. from Cleveland, Ohio. With a P.S., I love you both very, very much.

• 51:19Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Matthew T. Right back at you. And if you want to be like Matthew T. and correct Chuck, Chuck loves that kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom as an email, and send it off to [email protected].

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic

• 53:23Speaker 04

  reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 53:53Josh Clark?

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• 54:26Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.