The Magic of Brewing Your Own Beer

It goes without saying that beer was pretty damn important to the people of the Middle Ages.  They drank a fucking lot of beer.  How much beer do you ask?  Well, probably around at least a gallon per day per person.  So yeah, a lot of fucking beer.  Now it might be pretty damn funny to think of all of Europe as just a big shindig with everyone constantly drunk off of their asses and screaming out "hey nonny nonny", but that isn’t really how things were.  You see, back then people weren’t drinking all that beer to get their buzz on, though it was probably a nice side effect given the fact that life for most people living back then sucked donkey balls.  No, they were drinking all of that beer because it tasted a hell of a lot better than most of the water available, and was probably a hell of a lot safer too.  Water was often fall of all sorts of fun bacteria, and shitting oneself to death wasn’t all that uncommon.    

Now of course beer back then wasn't quite what it is today.  For starters, they didn't really have bottles, cans, or kegs, so anything that got brewed pretty much went bad within a few days.  This made it pretty difficult for large brewers to form, so most of the brewing was done via small batches in countless cottages and households across Europe.  Though the recipe and process for making beer was rather simple, it was also rather time consuming.  As a result, there wasn’t much money to be made in the beer brewing business, which is probably why the vast majority of brewers in the era were women.  This is of course not to say that women weren't capable of handling more profitable jobs, just that the Middle Ages was a time when women were largely seen as property, with laws and traditions mostly not pointing them in the direction of independent careers.   Basically, women were brewers for the same reason homeless people pick up cans, because it was the best option available to make money.  Those higher up the social ladder wanted beer, but they had no interest in making it themselves, thus creating a niche market for those desperate enough to take the time to do it.  

Anyways, this was the way of things until the fourteenth century when two big events completely upended the European beer industry.  The first was the Black Death, which pretty much upended everything in Europe what with killing 30 to 50 percent of the population.  As can be imagined, this totally fucked Europe's economy, which for reasons too numerous to mention, led to the production of beer becoming more profitable.  The second event was the introduction of hops across the continent, which not only improved the taste of beer, but also made the final product last much longer before it spoiled.  Between these two factors the profitability of brewing beer shot through the roof, attracting the attention of the menfolk.  Using their greater access to money and other dude’s with money, men began building large breweries and forming brewers’ guilds, which were basically old timey trade unions, which of course did not allow women to join.  For their part, the women brewers didn’t give up without a fight.  The improved profitability of brewing beer had allowed an increasing number to support themselves financially without the help of a person with a dick.  This of course made the powers that be rather nervous.  

Let’s pause real quick to discuss what your average brewing woman of the day looked like.  A fair share were older women, widows and others who had no one to support them.  Brewing required a large cauldron which they stirred with a long stick with bristles on one end.  Most kept a cat around to keep rats and mice out of the grains they needed for their brewing.  They as well tended to wear tall pointy hats, often two feet in height, to make them easier to find in crowds on market day.  Are you starting to get an idea of where all this is going?

That's right. Witches. Women brewers were pretty much exactly how we picture witches today.  It's not hard to guess what happened.  On the one hand we had a society that was decidedly not really okay with the idea of financially independent women.  On the other we had a growing handful of male dominated trade unions that didn't want anyone else grabbing all that sweet beer money.  Is that where you saw this all going?  Burning a bunch of independent businesswomen at the stake?  Yeah, I know, just great.  Thanks a lot history.  Seriously.  Way to ruin beer.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alewife_(trade)#/media/File:Mother_Louse,_Alewife_Wellcome_L0000658.jpg

The Immortal Woman

In 1951, a 31 year old black woman by the name of Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins University because of what she called a knot in her womb.  Even back then Johns Hopkins was considered one of the best hospitals in the country, though that wasn't the reason Henrietta went there, rather it was because this was the 1950's and it was the only hospital in the area that would actually admit black people.  The doctors at Johns Hopkins did the usual dog and pony show, including taking x-rays, which unfortunately for Henrietta revealed that she was just plain old fashioned riddled with cancer.  Again, this being the 1950's, the doctors tried to treat the cancer by injecting her body with solid chunks of radium, which unfortunately did little to slow the diseases progress.  Henrietta died just six months after her cancer was discovered.  She was soon after buried in an unmarked grave because her family was poor as shit.  What, you expected some kind of radiation created super power thing?  Grow up buddy.  This is the real world.

Anyways, unbeknownst to Henrietta, or any members of her family, the doctors at Johns Hopkins took a sample of her cancer cells and gave it to a researcher by the name of George Gey who was doing some kind of medical science research project that is far too boring to go into here.  However, it was during this research that Dr. Gey discovered that Henrietta's cancer cells were very unique.  You see, at the time medical research was pretty much at a standstill because it was hard as shit to perform experiments on human cells, you know, other than fucking around with the cells of living people.  At best, cells cultured outside the body lived only for a couple of days, making it impossible to do extensive testing on the same sample, something that is pretty damn important when it comes to pushing forward scientific progress.  Henrietta's cancer cells were different in that not only were they replicating themselves endlessly outside the body, in effect making them immortal, they were also doing it at an astoundingly fast rate.  Dr. Gey, being a rather clever fellow, recognized instantly what he had and the fantastical opportunities it created.

Now normally in such a story, this would be the part where the discoverer of such an amazing phenomenon patents the shit out of some cancer cells in order to make billions of dollars.  However, luckily for all of us, Dr. Gey was not one of these asshats.  Rather than sell his discovery, he began producing as many of Henrietta's cells (called HeLa cells) as possible, and shipping them out for free to medical researchers around the world.  One of these researchers was a dude named Jonas Salk, who used the HeLa cells to create the polio vaccine in 1953.  It was kind of a big deal given that at the time polio killed or paralyzed half a million people a year.  That same year other researchers used HeLa cells to create the first ever successful clone of a human cell.  These two monumental advancements were just the tip of the iceberg.  The discovery of the HeLa cell kicked cancer research into high gear.  HeLa cells were also used in research about countless viruses (including AIDS), how radiation and toxins effect the body, and even the mapping of the human genome.  Today, over 20 tons of HeLa cells have been produced, leading to over 60,000 scientific papers and nearly 11,000 patents.  No other single medical discovery in history has led to such a great leap forward for humankind.

Of course, given the importance of this discovery, you’ve probably already guessed that Henrietta’s five children had no idea any of this shit was going on, because again, nobody ever told them that samples of Henrietta’s cancer cells had been kept.  This total lack of knowledge was probably why they were so surprised and confused in 1975 when random medical researchers started contacting them asking for blood samples.  However, even given such a strange event, nobody in the family really asked any questions.  The whole thing didn’t become clear to the Lacks family until much later when a few family members overheard a dinner party conversation regarding the origin of the HeLa cells, which has to be by far one of the worst ways to find out your relative has become the immortal queen of medical research.  Unsure of what the hell they were supposed to do about any of it, the Lacks family just kind of went with it until researchers started publishing family medical records in 1990, at which point they sued.  Unfortunately for them, but luckily for the rest of us, the court ruled that discarded cells cannot be claimed as property.  Though decidedly a moral gray area, Henrietta continues to live on to this day, and we are all the better for it.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#/media/File:Henrietta_Lacks_(1920-1951).jpg

Making the News

By 1960, nearly every household in the U.S. had a television, replacing radio and movie theaters as the main source of news and entertainment.  Where once people either had to schlep their way to the theater or just imagine the world as described by a disembodied voice, they now had the best of both worlds conveniently contained in a glowing box in their living rooms.  Now one could go on and on about the transformational affect TV had on society, but in the end it was of course all about the money.  As with today the TV networks battled to provide the best entertainment in order to attract in the most viewers, because of course more viewers meant more money from advertisers.  However, unfortunately for the early networks, there was one place they weren't making money hand over fist.  As required by U.S. law, the television networks had to use a certain number of hours for the presentation of local and world news.  Hours that earned diddly squat for the networks.

This all changed in 1961, when the world seemed to be collapsing into World War III. Growing animosity between the United States and Soviet Union led to several high profile incidents that year, namely the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba and the building of the Berlin Wall.  Convinced that it was only a matter of time before the nukes started flying, countless Americans began watching the news religiously.  This little uptick of course did not escape the notice of the TV networks, but more importantly they also noted that a similar uptick in viewership for the shows put on right after the news.  Apparently people were just too damn lazy to change the channel.  Recognizing a surefire way to boost advertising, the networks began pumping money into their news programs in order to get more amazing stories to get more people to tune in.  In less than a year TV news changed from a man basically reading the newspaper out loud to vast webs of reporters spread across the country and around the world.  Things of course got weird.

By 1962, the big draw in viewership was news about the Berlin Wall and East Germans making escapes over it, under it, and through it.  The major news networks were desperate to get footage of people escaping.  However, for obvious reasons, such footage was extremely hard to get.  At least it was until some egghead at NBC came up with the brilliant plan of giving a group of German students a bunch of money to dig a tunnel under the wall in return for the right to film everything.  While the whole thing was rather skeezy, it did result in twenty-one East Germans making their way to freedom, and more importantly, some pretty damn amazing footage which led to a huge boost in NBC's ratings.  However, not everyone was happy with this turn of events.  The U.S. government was definitely not happy, what with this all happening right in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  For some reason the pinheads at the State Department were less than pleased with American journalists funding escape tunnels at the height of the Cold War.  NBC's main rival, CBS, was also not pleased.  The suits at CBS were the first to point out that maybe NBC paying people to dig a tunnel wasn't exactly the height of journalistic integrity.  However, before you start applauding CBS for its strong values, it’s probably worth mentioning that CBS had been funding the construction of its own tunnel under the wall, at least until the U.S. government caught wind of it and forced them to stop.  

Now one might think everyone learned a valuable lesson from all of this, but of course you would be wrong.  Such shenanigans continued throughout the early 1960's, culminating in CBS funding a planned invasion of Haiti.  In 1966, a group of somewhat geographically confused Cuban freedom fighters decided to invade Haiti in order to use the country as a launching point for a subsequent invasion of Cuba.  All in all it wasn't the worse plan in the world, minus the fact that the would be army had absolutely zero money.  Luckily, they somehow came into contact with CBS.  Recognizing that a war in the Caribbean would be great for ratings, CBS supplied some $1.5 million in today’s money in exchange for exclusive filming rights.  Let that sink in for a moment.  CBS supplied money to a paramilitary group to buy guns for a planned invasion of Haiti.  They were literally going to get people killed in order to attract more viewers to watch commercials about soaps and cigarettes.  Unluckily for CBS, but quite lucky for everyone else, the whole thing fell apart before it could really get off the ground.  The so-called freedom fighters were all arrested and jailed and CBS was investigated by Congress.  However, the hearings were all closed to the public in order to protect the network’s credibility.  Which is a nice way of saying they had none.  In the end, not one CBS employee was prosecuted, but at the very least the networks got it through their heads, at least for a time, to quit fucking around.     

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Family_watching_television_1958.jpg