Cold Open: Whiskey! Today’s suck is SOAKED in whiskey. Mostly - in Jameson - some Irish whiskey. A great drink for some fun times, kicking back, and enjoying the tastes of one of the best exports the Emerald Isle has to offer. Also a popular drink, in my experience, for people to torture you with by buying you shot after shot until you’re spinning and puking in the parking lot. Talking about Jameson will lead us, obviously, into talking about ….. cannibalism. Yup. John Jameson - the founder of Jameson - was originally a lawyer from Alloa [ah low uh] in Scotland before he founded his distillery in Dublin in 1780. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business. For the next 41 years, John Jameson Jr. built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3rd in 1851. They were killing it. By the turn of the 19th century, Jameson’s distilleries were the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the center of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had, by 1805, become the world's number one whiskey. And then, almost a century later, at the end 19th century, the Jameson name would get tarnished a wee bit when reports came back from the Congo that John’s great-grandson James S. Jameson paid to watch a young girl be killed and eaten. Cannibalism. Not a great PR moment. Hard to build a successful ad campaign around cannibalism. What the Hell happened in the Congo? We’ll look into it that today. And before we look into that, we’ll look into how whiskey came about, and how alcohol itself came about, in today’s how did I spend so much time drinking alcohol all these years but know so little about it, why the Hell are we also talking about cannibalism edition, of Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome! A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday and Happy May Meatsacks! Holy SHIT it is already May. Working of five months of separation between the present and the Twilight Zone that was 2020. Welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. Recorded this in advance of the Q Anon Suck releasing and can only imagine the handful of furious emails, Youtube slander, and one star ratings I have to look forward to online. I’m sure many will think I’ve gone to the left while I still find myself in the middle. I like some stuff on the right, like some stuff on the left, and hate a lot of stuff on both sides as well. I like to a la carte my politics, and not just order some meal that comes with a bunch of side dishes I don’t care for. I’m Dan Cummins, The Suck Master, Whiskey lover, cannibalism opponent, Lucifina deep tissue massager, and you are listening to Timesuck. Hail Nimrod, Lucifina, Triple M and Bojangles. The God, The temptress, the bard, and the canine mascot of the Suck verse. Recording per usual in the Suck Dungeon out of Couer d’Alene, Idaho which feels like the pollen capital of the world right now. Why do blooming trees have to hurt so much Mother Nature? Why are you trying to kill me with beauty? B.Tour Dates?: Got a bunch of standup comedy dates booked for the Fall and for all of next year. Looking forward and nervous as Hell to see if I remember how to do what I’ve done most of my adult life. Will have some dates posted on dancummins.tv soon. For right now - you can go to the following venues websites for August through October dates. Calling the new standup tour the Symphony of Insanity. Has to do with some material I was working on before Covid changed the world. And it just feels right. Everything feels more insane than it used to. Aug 13 & 14 I’ll be at Hilarities in Cleveland. Aug 19: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club – San Antonio Aug 20: The Secret Group – Houston Aug 21: Texas Theatre – Dallas August 26-28: Helium - Portland September 9-11: Punchline – Philadelphia September 24-25: Funny Bone – Columbus Oct 8-9: Cobb’s – San Francisco Oct 15-17: Spokane Comedy Club – Spokane Oct 22-23: Improv – Kansas City C.Merch: Super different kind of item now in the store at bad magic merch dot com. A rug! 2’x3' , 3'x5', and 4'x6' Each color represents a piece of each of the podcasts. Timesuck, Scared to Death, Is we Dumb, and The Secretsuck are all represented by each individual stripe. You can step into spring by stepping on some suck. D.Additional Announcements: I should have May Bad Magic Productions charity info next month. Just a bit early recording wise to have it today. And that’s it for announcements. E.Segue to Topic: Now…. let’s get fucked up. Or at least learn about how humans started getting fucked up, and the fucked up cannibalism incident that for awhile tarnished the Jameson whiskey name. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II.Intro/Establish Premiss: The Space Lizards have spoken! Our Patreon supporters, who vote on and choose two topics a month, picked a weird one this month. The dark history of Jameson Whiskey. And it’s a great choice! HOWEVER - it is the topic with the least information out there about it thus far out of any topic we’ve looked into. Other than my Papa Ward, of course. There aren’t a lot of details about an heir to the Jameson whiskey fortune paying for an African girl to be eaten in the 19th century. The details that are out there - we will share them today. But if we ONLY shared them, this would be about a ten minute episode. SO - to lead up to this incident, we will learn a little about Jameson Whiskey came to be, the top selling brand of Irish Whiskey in the world by far. In 2017, Jameson sold some 6.6 million cases of Irish whiskey. The second best-selling brand? Tullamore Drew, who sold 1.2 million cases— just a third of what Jameson sold. And that doesn’t even account for Jameson’s cultural clout— to many consumers around the globe, Jameson is Irish whiskey, and Irish whiskey is Jameson. Jameson’s Irish whiskey is thought of as an essential part of Ireland’s history— right up there with the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, the prose of James Joyce, and the songs of U2. And Enya. Never forget Enya. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw Start at :53. Stop at :59 What’s the Celtic elf up to these days? Probably meditating under a waterfall right now. Or teaching some elves or fairies yoga. Probably just got engaged to a centaur [ sen-tawr ]. Back to Irish whiskey. In Gaelic, whiskey translates to "water of life.” www.asylum.com/2010/04/02/bushmills-master-distiller-colum-egan- matches-wits-talks-whiskey-with-asy/ I have bought a LOT of Jameson whiskey myself over the years. It’s not that expensive and I think it’s pretty damn smooth. Good bang for the buck! If you’re not gonna drink it neat - with no ice and no mixers - don’t waste your money on far more expensive brands. If you’re making a whiskey ginger, my most frequent drink, you’re probably not gonna taste much difference between Macallan 18 - which costs around $250 a handle, and Jameson, which costs around $50 a handle. Save your money, meatsacks! Today we’ll meet the founder of Jameson. Learn a little about Irish Whiskey’s beginnings. And before diving into Jameson history, we’ll learn about how alcohol in general came to be - I think this is the more interesting part of this suck. We’ll learn about how whiskey evolved out of beer. What is whiskey? What different kinds are there? What is the difference between scotch and bourbon? What do fermentation and distillation have to do with hard liquor production? So much to learn! Let’s get started. III. HISTORY OF HUMAN ALCOHOL USE How the Hell did we humans figure out how to get drunk in the first place? The history of alcohol is tied to the history of bread. Fire was the first great invention when it came to cooking. The second? A fungus that played a very, very large roll in the development of human civilization. Yeast. Leaven that bread! Make it RISSSSEE UP! And yeast that juice into some wine! So where does yeast come from? Well - get ready to gag… You’re not gonna like where this is gonna go. Don’t shoot the messenger… Like humans of today, early humans used to get yeast infections… I’m sure you’ve either had one or heard of it. Most commonly, meatsacks got them in their vaginas or next to or behind their ball sack. Yeast fungi found naturally on the skin would start growing out of control and cause an infection. Archaeologists and anthropologists surmise that early humans liked the smell and taste of the yeast from these infections… and they’d rub the oily, gritty special sauce a yeast infection makes on bread, or maybe on some fruit, to give it a little extra kick. Throw a little zest on it as utterly disturbing as that sounds.