Today its Spilled Milk: UNfiltered as we start at the very beginning of memory lane while enjoying a rap water tasting. We get into stupid stuff, science and dreams of linoleum before wondering how wells work and what went into primordial soup. Finally we get way too excited about water and aqueducts, attempt to cheese plate the uncheeseplateable and debate traveling to Buffalo.
Unleaded Podcast episode about Flint water crisis
Molly 0:00
Music. I'm Molly And I'm Matthew, and this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all, and you can't have any
Speaker 1 0:11
today. We're unreasonably excited to be talking about this week's episode, which I texted Molly to say, should be wrap water, but that
Molly 0:21
the your phone failed you. What you meant was tap water, yep.
Speaker 1 0:24
So we're talking tap water, everyone's favorite, with some exceptions that we got to, some might say we're rapping about tap water, yeah, and we're and some might say we're tapping about tap water, yeah, like we're tap dancing about architecture. That's right. This was suggested by listener Anna. Thank you for listener Anna. Listener Anna also suggested that maybe listeners could mail us samples of their local tap water. We didn't do that, okay, but I did ask Molly to bring over some of her tap water from home,
Molly 0:51
because I, because I live, I don't know. What would you say? Like, eight how many? I don't know. I live some miles from you, yeah, maybe like 800 miles. 800 miles. That's right, Matthew, You texted me about this morning, not about rap water or tap water, but about a dream you had last night. And everybody loves hearing about other people's dreams, so tell us about it.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:11
Okay, I had an important dream about the future of the show, and we have our corporate retreat coming up. We need to put this on as an agenda item, whether to pivot the show in this direction, okay? Because I had a dream that we started a spin off show about, like, home maintenance. It didn't have a we didn't have a title for it in the dream. So we should probably come up with, like, what's what's spilled milk's home maintenance spin off. But our first episode had comedian John Hodgman on as a guest, and he was talking about linoleum. So good. I want to make this happen. I know, right. I kind of feel like John Audrey would have some opinions on linoleum.
Molly 1:45
Yeah, I'd love to come on and talk about decking. Yeah, you can be
Speaker 1 1:49
on the show too. Yes, okay, we'll make you like a weekly guest. Okay, decking, yes, okay, like artificial versus real wood. Is that a thing? Yeah, yeah, pressed.
Molly 2:04
Well, there's, there's, there's pressure treated. I knew there was something pressed. Then there's like, just, you know, like, regular decking, which around here would be cedar, yeah, then you can get composite.
Speaker 1 2:15
Wow, I think this, I think this show has already come to fruition. And,
Molly 2:18
and then there's, like kind of a another thing anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1 2:24
press press button. Another thing. Okay, all right. So before, before we launch into tap water, which I know you're all itching to hear all about, and boy, did I do a lot of research, I do want to say that we know that tap water is political in the sense that not everyone has access to safe drinking water. This is a serious issue that we are not going to be covering on our comedy show, and that includes people in the US. That's right,
Molly 2:48
one quarter to 1/3 of people worldwide do not have access to like, safe potable drinking water. So
Speaker 1 2:55
like, access to safe water is a human right. We will link to a good podcast episode about the Flint water crisis that I thought was really well done, and now let's talk about stupid stuff. Great
Molly 3:05
science. Okay? Memory Lane, Matthew, I know memory let's begin. So as a kid, I didn't like drinking water. I didn't like the taste of it, is what I would have said, okay, and I remember as a teenager, kind of learning that drinking water was an important thing. So I don't remember much before,
Speaker 1 3:24
before, like becoming a teenager, you never drank any fluids. That's correct. Okay, that's correct. You were, you were a husk.
Molly 3:32
Isn't it amazing how I've, like, managed to plump up my cells. It's really
Speaker 1 3:36
unfortunate, like, three dimensional we didn't have YouTube yet when you were a teenager, because I'm sure that moment when you had, like, your first sip of water, and you went from from like a nearly two dimensional object to like, Yep,
Molly 3:50
it was awesome. No, but, um, I don't remember the taste of tap water where I grew up, because I think I drank so little of it. Where I went to college, I think I drank a lot of tap water. This was kind of the beginning of, the beginning of, like, everybody having a water bottle, but I don't remember anything notable about it. The first time I remember thinking about tap water, was living in France, oh, and not liking the taste of the water, and kind of understanding why it was that I always saw people lugging like, six packs of like, you know, two liter wattle water bottles home from the grocery
Unknown Speaker 4:22
Yeah, yeah. Pika, frozen water. And then,
Molly 4:28
of course, you know, there was the period of time when Brandon was living in New York. New York City does have really delicious water. Yep,
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:34
I put it, I put it on the agenda. Oh, good. Okay, so I've always loved tap water. I drink it all day long. I do in Seattle run it through a Brita type filter. I don't know if that's really necessary. Memory Lane, Matthew, that's contemporary lane. Okay, I grew up in Portland. I loved Portland tap water. We never had any sort of water filter. I thought, I thought it was totally legit. I. And I, when we moved to Seattle, I, as I recall, we got a Brita filter right away. Do you think you got it as like a wedding gift, probably. And like I do, remember thinking that the Seattle tap water was not as tasty as Portland tap water. I don't know if this is true. I don't know how I would even compare.
Molly 5:20
You know, I drank some tap water in Portland recently. I used it to just refill my water bottle, and it did taste really good coming straight out of the tap. I
Speaker 1 5:28
mean, Seattle tap water should be very good. We'll get into I did some research on, like, what is in Seattle tap water. So, yeah, well, and we're gonna do, we're gonna taste some like, filtered versus unfiltered Seattle tap water in a little while. I know you're all on tenterhooks for this.
Molly 5:44
And then, of course, there's, you know, in a lot of parts of the world, I guess I'm most familiar with this happening in Europe, you are often offered bottled water when you sit down at a restaurant. Oh, it doesn't have to be fancy, but you you know, you have to make a point of asking for tap water, and then, do they think you're weird? No, they don't think you're weird. I think that it's just not everybody drinks tap water.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:09
All right, we have some memory lane from producer Abby in an unusual twist, whoa, weird. Okay, producer Abby says you don't have to use this, but we are. But when we first moved to Budapest, my little sister, Megan, was six or seven, and the only Hungarian word she knew was chop vis, and she'd yell it out constantly anywhere and everywhere. Imagine you're a local Hungarian minding your own business, and a little American Girl is just yelling out tap water, tap water as she runs around the park. This is great memory lane, and I love just imagining imagining that I'm a local Hungarian minding my own business.
Molly 6:43
I wonder if, viz, then, is water, maybe like the chop part of it is, yeah, chop, like, like, tap top spigot water, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Well, so Matthew, when you said we were gonna do rap water, slash, tap water, you you made a joke to me again by text about the Roman aqueducts. And I was like, I was like, I feel like this is something I've always heard about. I don't know what you're talking it wasn't a joke. Well, I know, but you were like, Let's talk about the Roman aqueducts. And I was like, yes, and
Speaker 1 7:10
let's and I had never been more serious about anything in my life. So I mean, first, before we even get to Roman aqueducts, we should say that the current theory is that liquid water formed on Earth close to around the time Earth formed, so about 4.4 to 4.5 billion years ago.
Molly 7:25
Whoa. Okay, yeah. Okay, wow. Okay. So, like, not, Earth was very young when water, yeah, came. Like,
Speaker 1 7:32
it may, it may have come from, like, you know, been delivered to Earth from elsewhere in the solar system by, like, the Culligan man,
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:40
or Culligan man, or through a process involving, like hydrogen on the younger Earth, or both. Yeah, okay, but yeah, so water has been a thing on earth for a long it's been popular for a long time. Would you say
Molly 7:51
that water predated then the primordial soup? I mean, what was the soup? Base? If not, base
Speaker 1 7:57
was one, okay, great. With, with, you know, some aromatics, and we've talked about primordial soup a number of times on this channel, haven't we do? Do we? Could we really, like, give a clear description of what it was? I don't think so. Okay, what else? All right, so then let's, uh, let's fast forward to ancient Rome. Because I just wanted to know what Roman aqueducts were, because I could picture one, and I, like, vaguely knew what it was, but I wanted to see if I was right, and kind of, what is an aqueduct? Okay, an aqueduct? An aqueduct is a way of delivering water to a city. You've got a city and you need potable water for its inhabitants. And, like, if you're not on a even, even if you are on a lake, like, not everybody isn't gonna, like, run over to the lake every day with a bucket, with a bucket. So, like, you know, you're trying to, like, build it like a city with services and stuff. So you want to bring in fresh water from somewhere, and typically, that's somewhere that's far enough away that you need to do some engineering. Okay, okay. Hydro engineering is, like, one of the things that made cities possible, like as we know them today. The first Roman aqueduct was, oh, first of all, this is a huge topic. There is, there's a book that I mean, given the
Molly 9:09
fact that we kind of started, like, with the Big Bang, I would say
Speaker 1 9:13
that we got that was like way, way later than the Big Bang. The Big Bang was like 13 billion years ago. I think, okay, so fine. I don't know if that's right. That's the number that popped into my head. Astrophysicist, get in touch. Contact at spilled milk, podcast.com, all right, so there's a classic book on Roman aqueducts by a Trevor Hodge that sells for $75 in paperback. It has an average like 4.9 star review on Amazon. I didn't order it, but I am thinking about it. So instead of reading that book, I like, did a little research. The born this morning. Okay, the first Roman aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, was completed in 312 BCE, and it delivered somewhere between 9 million and 19 million gallons of water per day from springs along the Via Appia. What was the Via Appia? What. It. It was a road, like, a long road, okay? And so what is a spring? Okay, a spring is just where, like ground water bubbles up from the ground, usually due to thermal activity.
Molly 10:10
Okay, so there's, like, water that's, like, trapped under the
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:15
yeah, there's ground water that comes from, like, rain and snow melt, okay, but it's mixed with dirt. It's mixed with dirt, but as it bubbles up, like the dirt filters the water. Like springs. Hot springs are, first of all, it's boiling, like it boils at some point, for some for for one thing, and like, as it moves through layers of stuff, there are springs that are, like cloudy, but for the most part, like dripping through layers of dirt filters the water. That is magic isn't weird, that it doesn't just come up as, like, sludge, yes, yeah, I'm totally fascinated by it's not just dirt. It's also rock. I assume there's also, like, like, springs that come up through, like, like, muddy, silty dirt that are not as fun,
Molly 10:55
are wells, like, man made springs, sort of, I mean, there's not well, there's no boiling, there's
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:00
no springing. So wells are, I'm digging down to the to the groundwater, to, like, just, like, slurp some of that up with a bucket I get. I guess buckets don't really slurp. But
Molly 11:11
again, I'm fascinated that wells yield clear, clean, drinkable water.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:15
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta say, like, because tap water and well water are different things. Like, I guess you can get your tap water from a well, right? I guess you have a well on your property. You're not, like, lowering a bucket. I
Molly 11:26
mean, like brand so my ex husband has a well incarnation where he lives, and they have tap water that comes from the well.
Speaker 1 11:34
Okay, so this is, this is like, we're talking about, like tap water from, from, like, municipal tap water sheds. Okay, yeah, municipal, tech, municipal, I started to read about wells. Of like, Nope, I'm gonna run out of time. Like, Molly's gonna get come over here. I'm gonna be reading 1000 page book about the history of wells.
Molly 11:52
No, I'm so interested in this because it's so crazy to me. Like, how easy it is for humans to get, like, germs and to get sick and stuff. Oh, we'll get to that. Yeah, we can. Well, I know we're definitely gonna get to that, but still, like, water that comes straight out of the earth, you can drink it. What? Yeah. And
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:09
I don't want to be like, super Eurocentric about this and be like, like, the Romans invented water, because, like, that's that's not the case. We just had have a lot of, like, written history and ruins of Roman aqueducts. So when you imagine a Roman aqueduct. You're imagining like a trestle bridge kind of thing, right? Yes, which, like, where the water flows in, like a, like, a groovy channel along the top, it's just dancing. But like, they were largely swirling colors. They were, like, largely underground, like, those are the photogenic parts of the aqueducts. But like, where they had to, like, span, a span. But like, you know, mostly like, ideally, you wouldn't have to build a big thing, and you could just, like, run it through, like an underground tunnel. Okay, the thing I found most interesting, first of all, there were 11 Roman aqueducts in total. The last one was completed in 226, CE. They work by gravity, like you're getting water from like, a higher elevation and delivering it to a lower elevation. But the thing is, the slope of the aqueduct can't be very steep, because then you have two problems. First of all, it runs into the ground, like, you know, because, yeah, yeah, it's not like you're getting it from somewhere that's like 30,000 feet high. It's like, you know, like, a couple 1000 feet higher. And if the water runs too fast, it just erodes the viaduct. Oh, that makes Yeah, the aquatic Yeah, yeah. So too much gradient you get erosion. So Vitruvius, who is, like the the Roman, who wrote, like, the book on Roman architecture, like, who was an ancient Roman, recommended a maximum gradient of one to 4800 meaning over the course of one mile, the aqueduct would descend by about one foot. That's so interesting. So they were very building very little, yeah, to like that standard, that's plenty for the water to keep flowing. That's
Molly 13:55
fascinating. Wow. Okay, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:59
water quality, like how, like that some water is better than others, and, like, how to get the good stuff was pretty well understood in ancient Rome, despite being, like, 1000s of years off from the germ theory of disease. So it was known that rain water and spring water were generally safe to drink, and stagnant water was not. They didn't know why, but they knew stagnant water was bad. They also had a pretty good understanding of lead poisoning, and that water boy, waterborne illness could be caused by shared bathing.
Molly 14:29
Lead Poisoning being an issue because of like, pipes. Yes, okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:33
the water comes into town from from the aqueduct. Where does it go? You may wonder, I don't know. Okay, so it ran primarily into water castles, which were like public fountains, where citizens could come and get free water for drinking and other around the house stuff. Okay, the water was prioritized to the like, you know, the general public first, then public baths second. And there was, like a fee to enter the public bath. And then water running directly to wealthy private homes was the lowest priority.
Molly 15:04
God, we have really gotten everything turned upside down. Yeah,
Speaker 1 15:07
everything was great back. No problems. Everyone was equal. Sorry, yeah, no, but you're right. As you may imagine, theft and fraud were problems. Okay, a Roman story named Sextus Julius frontinus wrote a treatise de aqueductu, essentially saying, Hey, I know who's been stealing the water and how. And one of the most popular ways to steal water was to hook up an unlicensed pipe, like outside of town, or enlarge an existing pipe. Cool, yeah, if there isn't a movie about so we just watched the movie conclave. Have you seen it? I've seen it. Okay. We really enjoyed it. Did you enjoy it? Oh, yeah, I thought it was so silly. Oh,
Molly 15:51
it was extremely silly. But, I mean, did you enjoy like, I've heard a lot of people enjoy it as, like, a serious, like, really good story. I was
Speaker 1 15:59
like, No, this is a Goofy Movie. Like, it takes a serious turn at some point. I'm like, you sort of lost me there. Like, I wanted to be more more, like, backstabbing and like, you know, I don't care about any of these guys are just fighting. What the hell yeah, the ending, the end, I was like, I was a little let down, but overall, I thought the movie was really fun. Why did I bring this up? Oh, because I want, I want the equivalent movie set in ancient Rome where people are fighting over, like, who, who hooked up the illegal water pipe. I may be describing the movie Genda floret.
Molly 16:34
No, maybe that's man on the last
Unknown Speaker 16:35
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 16:39
I haven't seen those in ages. I
Speaker 1 16:40
mean, either, oh my god, I really enjoyed them, like even, even, like the parts where she was wearing clothes were good, okay, okay, the the Roman aqueducts fell into disuse by the end of the Middle Ages, around 1500 however, aqueducts are still one of the main ways that cities get their water. The other is pumping stations, when, like, there isn't enough gravity to do the job, okay, but if you can do it with gravity, it's gonna be a lot cheaper, and you don't have to fix a pump. Okay, wow. Interesting. So that's, that's Roman aqueducts. Like, what did they use after the Roman aqueducts fell into disuse, I guess other aqueducts probably,
Molly 17:19
yeah, because you still got the water. Yeah, Huh, interesting. You know, I'm realizing, as we, you know, here, with our, like, sort of Western focus here, I'm realizing that God, when June was really into ancient Egypt, they did a report on how the ancient Egyptians got water into cities, and there was, I used to know the name of, like, a particular bucket type thing on, like a long pole. It's called, like a shaphu or something like that. Anyway, who knew that I should have been paying more attention. Okay.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:54
Well, speaking of ancient Egypt, like water filtration and purification is also very old. An ancient Egypt alum was used to precipitate dissolved solids and clarify water. Okay? Ancient Sanskrit writings discuss treating water by charcoal filtering, which is basically how a Brita filter works. Also exposure to sunlight, boiling and straining. These were all known 1000s of years ago. That is so
Molly 18:19
interesting. How far, far, far. These things predate germ theory? Yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:23
So biological contaminants in water were not well understood until the mid 19th century, when, famously, John Snow removed London's Broad Street pump handle to stop a cholera outbreak. Do you know this story? Yes, there's a great book about it by Steven Johnson. It was like an Amster Burton family favorite that just was one of, like the first non fiction books that December read by themselves. Oh, you gotta, you gotta find the title. Yeah. No, let's, let's look at it. Okay, the ghost map, the story of London's most terrifying epidemic and how it changed science cities in the modern world, by Steven Johnson. Really good book. Okay, cool. No, I'm very interested. So one thing I recall from the book and confirmed this morning, is that the Broad Street pump was considered like a great place to get your water because it was really delicious. Also it was definitely contaminated with human poop. So I don't know how to reconcile these two things.
Molly 19:16
Yeah. I mean, this explains the cholera. Yeah, one thing, yeah, it does explain the cholera, but not the delicious, right? Yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:35
Tap water became a thing in the US in the 30s, pretty much the 1930s prior to that, only about 20% of households had indoor plumbing by the end of the decade of the vast majority did.
Molly 19:46
So where would you have gotten your water if you didn't have indoor plumbing? I guess
Speaker 1 19:50
from why I knew there were gonna be a lot of questions I couldn't answer. Well, yeah, probably the well, maybe a chauffeur, the Culligan man, maybe the Culligan man. I. Maybe there was a maybe, like, a fire truck would come by and just like, spray you with water. Maybe come on right, like we do our best
Molly 20:10
here, we do and you did a lot of good work
Speaker 1 20:13
here. I did a lot of great work here. Yeah, I've been, I'm getting a citation. So you may wonder, like, when did we start chlorinating tap water? Do you wonder? I
Molly 20:24
think it didn't occur to me that we chlorinate it? Oh, okay, yeah. I mean, I think of chlorine as being what swimming pools
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:30
have. So swimming pools have more chlorine. Yes, this makes sense, because you're you're not supposed to drink the water, and, like, people are bathing at it. So there are a lot more germs, but essentially all municipal water in North America is chlorine treated to kill pathogens. The technology was invented in Germany in the late 19th century, and the first municipality to adopt it was Maidstone, England in 1897 the first city to have chlorinated water in the US was Jersey City in 1908 in New Jersey, and chlorinated water has been easily one of the most successful health public health projects in history. I assume someone has estimated how many lives it has saved, but it's in the many millions.
Molly 21:13
Just to be clear, I mean, chlorine is really volatile, right? So, so we use this stuff to, like, clean the water, but then it's gone. But it's time to drink it for the most part,
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:23
so, but there definitely you can taste chlorine in some municipal water, like, it depends, it depends on, like, the specific process, like, how long it's been sitting around, since, uh, since it was chlorinated. But people who say, like, you know that my tap water smells a little chlorine, especially the smell, are not wrong. It's at a level that's completely safe to consume. Okay, yeah, so, so, yeah. So it's treated with chlorine, then most of it like evaporates off.
Molly 21:50
Matthew, is there gonna be anything today about why when we travel to some other countries, sometimes we choose not to drink the tap water so that we don't get sick?
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:00
Yeah, I didn't put that on the agenda, but the answer is, because they don't have, like, a modern treatment and filtration process, and so you can't be confident that there aren't pathogens in the water, okay, like, some, sometimes contaminants, but usually that is because of, like, pathogens, like, Like, don't know, yeah, Shigella, maybe. Okay, great, okay, bacteria that you that you do not want to consume, interestingly, so when, when a society goes from like unsafe water to safe tap water, it often takes generations for people to trust it. I've noticed this when traveling that like when I've been like in Hong Kong or Taiwan, which are places with very safe tap water, many people, and particularly older people, still tend to say, No, I am not going to take my chances with the tap water, even though it is fine, yeah, that's that's really interesting, understandable. Like, it makes sense, yeah. Would you like to hear about hard water? Okay, yeah, no, I do always wonder. Like, and my mom used to always say, like, Oh, I couldn't get the shampoo, or I couldn't get the conditioner out of my hair because the water's too soft, or my hair feels weird, or whatever. Yeah, so I didn't really, I don't think I really understood what this was, and maybe still don't, but I did a little research. So hard water is water with high levels of dissolved calcium and magnesium caused by water flowing over limestone deposits, and like most of the most of the US has hard water, Seattle has soft water, New York also soft water. But that doesn't mean that soft water is better or tastier. We'll get there. Hard water does cause soap not to foam, effectively, because of a chemical reaction, it produces soap scum. It produces lime scale deposits in water heaters, pipes and kettles. Yeah, it's not a health hazard at all. You can drink hard water. It's totally fine. Some municipalities have a water softening process, but it's expensive. Hard water doesn't really cause that serious of problems. It's not like a public health problem, so you're probably going to want to spend the money on something else. And naturally, soft water can be slightly acidic and can cause pipe corrosion, hmm,
Molly 24:07
soft being not containing these limestone deposits, yes, containing something else. Instead
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:13
contain just not containing them. Okay, your water is very sorry. And calcium and magnesium, you can taste like hard water that it tastes people describe it as slightly metallic. But like, what you're talking about, there is a form of mineral water, yeah. So it's not that it tastes bad, necessarily, and generally, even people who, like, have, like, soft municipal water, generally, like, really soft water just tastes kind of blah. Like distilled water, okay? Like, if you ever, if you've ever drunk, I think we did this once on the show, like we drank distilled water, and like, it's not bad, but it's just like, This doesn't taste like anything, and that makes you realize that regular water does kind of taste like something.
Molly 24:52
Sure, yeah, sure. So do you drink this stuff? Do you drink tap water?
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:56
We always run our tap water through a British diet. Filter. I We have the water drop brand 10 cup filter, which is a Brita knockoff. I think the design is much better. Like, I don't think the filtering is any better, but it just, like, doesn't fall apart as easily when you're trying to fill it. It's been a while since we've done like, a like, since I've done a side by side test. Do you think we should we should do it. We
Molly 25:18
should do one. I think we should do one. We use a Britta too, or we use an actual Brita. Brita, I will say that I often forget to change the filter. So it makes me wonder, like, how different the water actually does taste from tap? Yeah, do you? Do you feel like you really stay on top of changing your filter? Matthew, no,
Speaker 1 25:38
I'm terrible. I changed the filter when I noticed that, like, it's not no water's dripping through anymore, and it just stays in the top part. Okay, yeah, okay, so probably getting to that point, yeah,
Molly 25:50
uh, well, so I have brought today two different containers of tap water from my house, one from the kitchen spigot and one from the bathroom. We got the kitchen sink that we have in, like, 2015 and ever since we got it, I have felt like it tastes different and I don't like the taste
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:08
the kitchen one. You don't like kitchen okay, because I never drink water from the bathroom sink. Like, not for any reason, like, it's not unsafe or anything. I think I just don't like it because, because it's near the toilet. Interesting.
Molly 26:19
Well, yeah, yeah, right. I mean, there is that saying, you know, don't drink, where you where you poop,
Speaker 1 26:26
yeah, that's right. I mean, that that is, I know that's not the actual saying, but it's very good advice.
Molly 26:32
It's good advice, no, but anyway, yeah, I'm really curious, because the water that I drink from my own house, which I drink all day long, comes from a Brita filter, and it's been a really long time since I had my unfiltered tap water because I didn't like it. So here we go. And then, then can we talk about what might be affecting the taste?
Speaker 1 26:53
Yeah, and should we should we have a dump bucket? Sure, we'll have a
Molly 26:56
dump bucket. I'll take a dump bucket. I mean, yes, here
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:02
we go. We go. All right, okay, so we're starting. Let's start with my since I just poured it, we're starting with my Seattle tap water. And the reason I asked Molly to bring her own was because I believe Molly and I get our municipal tap water from two different watersheds. Okay, so I was so excited to think that like it's treated in different ways. Yeah, I do. Oh, okay. So we, you know, our water's coming from two different watersheds, and then you think it's being handled slightly differently before we get it, yeah. So, okay, so Seattle's tap water comes from the Cedar River and Tolt watersheds. The Cedar River watershed is about 35 miles southeast of Seattle, in an area encompassing rattlesnake Lake. Okay? The Tote watershed is about 50 miles northeast of Seattle, kind of East northeast. Okay. So if you live north of Green Lake, as Molly does, most of the time, you get your water from the Tolt watershed, okay, if you live south of Green Lake, as I do, most of the time, you get your water from the Cedar River watershed. When there's when they're like, supply issues. It's easy for the city to like switch from one to the other. So, like, everyone gets Cedar River water, if there's more of that, probably at this time of year, though, we are getting them from our local ones,
Speaker 2 28:12
so let's find out. Yeah, so Matthew, what is this one we're beginning with? Okay, so this is, this is some Cedar River water from, from my tap in my kitchen, okay, directly from the tap, unfiltered. Cheers, cheers. I feel like I'm smelling a little chlorine. I taste Yeah, I taste chlorine, yeah, it's not great. It's not great. It tastes chlorine II, just kind of it has a real flavor that doesn't feel clean or fresh, not
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:42
fresh, right? I agree. I don't like it very much. Like, I think if I usually drink my water iced or, like, fridge temperature, and I think, like, it wouldn't be as obvious. But, yeah, I don't love it. One thing I know that I read is that the tote water is unfiltered and the Cedar River water is filtered. I don't know what that means,
Molly 29:01
really, though, should we begin with my kitchen water, the one that I didn't like? Let's do it all those years ago. Wait. Should I pour
Speaker 1 29:08
or we could just both sip it out? Grace. Okay, so here's my kitchen sink water. Yeah, Molly brought it a little, a little mason jar. I think that's better than the one. I think it's better, but it's still, it's not, it's not great. And also, I wonder if it could be better, because it's been sitting longer, like, I guess it was in a sealed, yeah,
Molly 29:26
I had a lid on it. Like, immediately. Hold on, let me taste this again. Okay, it doesn't smell like chlorine. You want to smell again. Doesn't have that chlorine smell. No, I think it's better, but I don't love it. I don't love it either. Okay, let's turn my bathroom. Okay, all right, so excited.
Speaker 1 29:42
This is the Is this the first time? It's not the first time we've cheese plated water, but it's the first time we've cheese plated tap water. I feel
Molly 29:48
like that. I don't know, maybe the flavor is just accumulating, but I feel like that. I don't know, they taste the same thing. I can't tell anymore. They taste the same. Okay? These do not have that chlorine II smell, which is interesting. Okay, so
Speaker 1 29:59
then. I just, I just ran through the filter some tap water at, like, at like, tap temperature, so it's not coming straight out of the fridge. Much better. It's much better. So, wow, that's so much better. So that makes sense, because, like, a Brita filter, the thing it's best at filtering out is chlorine. Okay, like, you know, if they're, if they're like, particulates in your water, okay, it's gonna filter that out. But, like, for the most part, like the things that would be really bad that almost certainly aren't in your municipal water, like the Brita filter isn't gonna help with lead, for example, sure, but it's gonna help with the flavor aspect, right? So it's and it works. It does work. Yeah, hold on. I'm gonna so I've got some filtered water here in my water bottle from just from your Brita filter here,
Molly 30:44
dump that out. Okay, so this I filled up right before I left home, and I would say this also tastes similarly, like fresh and neutral. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 30:52
I think this tastes the same as mine. Is
Molly 30:56
great. This is really cool, yes. So Wow. You know, there's a part of me that always felt like, does this Brita actually do anything? And yes, it does. It does a lot. Usually, I
Speaker 1 31:07
always use filtered water for making green tea, and I feel like it makes a difference. And now I'm even more convinced
Molly 31:13
I have been using like regular water, like tap water, for my my kettle that I make coffee and tea with. And now I'm like, I gotta go to the Britta, yeah. Okay. What affects the taste of the water? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:24
so like hard water, other dissolved minerals and chlorine, mainly. Okay. So the other possibilities that are less common are like dissolved copper from copper pipes, which gives like a bitter flavor the presence of sulfur reducing bacteria, which are bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide, like, if you ever have water with a slight rotten egg smell, which I have running, I have to, yeah, that's, that's what's going on there. It's, again, it's not, it's not unsafe to drink, but it's not good. Okay? Some people claim that added fluoride affects the taste of water. It doesn't. And to be clear, this water that we're drinking has fluoride. Is full. Yes, it is fluoridated. Okay, yes, okay. And the fluoridation is purely for our teeth, purely for our teeth. Great. Yes, cool, yeah. And, like I said, like, very pure water tends to taste kind of flat. Seattle water is pretty soft. It is similar. So I went down a, like, the deepest rabbit hole of all the rabbit holes that I went down this morning was trying to figure out, what is the difference between Seattle and New York City Municipal Water in terms of dissolved mineral content? And I've just found these gigantic tables, like, here's how much manganese is in there,
Speaker 1 32:34
and a mongoose bathed in the water. So I think, I think Seattle and New York City Water are kind of similar, but I remember New York City tap water tasting really good, like I don't I don't know why some municipal sources taste more chlorine than others,
Molly 32:51
yeah, yeah. This is so interesting to me. I am not exaggerating, yeah, I just find it really interesting. You're not You're not exaggerating. You're just purely lying. No, no, I'm really interested. Okay, well, wow, this clears up a lot of thoughts for me. I mean,
Speaker 1 33:10
I don't have to think clouds, clouds, some other other thoughts, yeah,
Molly 33:14
but no. I mean, this really, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep on keeping on with my Britta.
Speaker 1 33:19
I think, I think we probably have a lot of listeners in rural areas who are like, You guys really don't know anything about what a well is
Molly 33:28
true. We really don't
Speaker 1 33:30
Okay. We only know it as the thing. Baby Jessica, not baby M, that was baby
Molly 33:36
Jessica. Yeah, right. God. I mean, can you believe what an impression that made on our psyche. I remember when she was, like, rescued. I remember like, like, sort of this grainy photo of her being like, hoisted out of the well, yeah.
Speaker 1 33:51
And now we know that, like, you know, about 20% of the time, if you send the bucket down the well, a baby woke up and just be like, Hello. Okay. Was baby. M like, a surrogacy story. I'm not. I remember there's baby. Ms, I think those, those are, like the two main babies. I
Molly 34:06
remember Louise Brown, the first IVF baby. Oh, she
Speaker 1 34:10
wasn't like the murderous nanny. No, think so. Okay, all right, the 80s were cool. I
Molly 34:16
mean, whatever listeners write in and let us know if we've gotten literally everything wrong, okay, but,
Speaker 1 34:23
but you send us some spilled mail? Contact at spilled milk podcast.com like, how does your water taste? Yeah,
Molly 34:29
I would love to know Matthew, speaking of spilled mail, we've got some. Let's hear it.
Molly 34:41
Today's is from listener Randy. That's Randy with an eye, like
Speaker 1 34:44
the amazing Randy. I don't know who that is. I think it was a magician. Okay,
Molly 34:48
dear Molly and Matthew, I can't believe you're actually reading this on the air. Look, Mom, I've made it. And to
Speaker 1 34:55
be clear, listener Randy wrote this before, before I told them that we were. You gotta be there. I love
Molly 35:01
that longish time listener here circa 2018 I look forward to tuning in each week to see what totally normal thing one or both of you has never had. That's our show regarding the ranch dressing episode where Matthew mentions dipping pizza in ranch here in Buffalo, New York, blue cheese dressing is the obligatory condiment for both wings and pizza we take our blue cheese very seriously. Here. It is not uncommon for wing and pizza places to make their own in house blends, but the gold standard for store bought is a brand called Rudy's that's r, o, o, t, I, E, S. I love this, a local brand that's been around since 1978 it's very thick and chunky with chunks of blue cheese ranging from lentil size to roughly the size of a butter bean. If you dared order a side of ranch for wings pizza or your carrots and celery, we basically know you're an outsider. Side note, have you ever had a pizza log? If not, it's essentially an egg roll wrapper filled with mozzarella, pepperoni and a little marinara than deep fried. These regional favorites are also delightful, dipped in blue cheese dressing and or marinara. TTFN, Randy, mayonnaise connoisseur, blue cheese enthusiast, okay,
Speaker 1 36:13
thank you for this amazing message. Randy and I've never had a pizza log. I sure would try it and dipping pizza crust in, like, chunky blue cheese dressing. Sounds great. Sounds
Molly 36:24
fantastic. And I wish that we could get Rudy's here, but I bet it's, you know, I don't think it's shelf I hope it's not shelf stable. It would taste much better, yeah, in the refrigerator case. Anyway, we'll just have to go to Buffalo, maybe for our next corporate retreat. I
Speaker 1 36:37
know, like, you know, many years ago, I had my first Australian friend, and that's how I learned that, like a root in Australia is like a dick. So like root ease as a as a product, Dave is funny. Oh, okay, I'm sure it would be funny in Australia, it's currently. It's currently, June 5, 2025. When this episode airs, do you think it's too late for a New Year's resolution? Well, too bad, because, like, a couple times recently, Lori and I have made a salad with with, like, chunks of blue cheese. And I'm like, I need to eat more blue cheese. Like I never think to buy it, and I enjoy it so much. Every time
Molly 37:12
I was in a grocery store while traveling, I was in California, and I was in a grocery store that had Neil's yard Stilton, yeah, and I was like, I must buy this. That's one of
Speaker 1 37:19
the ones that we used recently. So good. It's so good. All
Molly 37:23
right, thank you. Randy, Matthew, what's your snacking?
Speaker 3 37:26
Hey, what you're snacking? You gotta tell me what you're snacking, or I'll release the Kraken. So watch your snacking.
Matthew Amster-Burton 37:39
This is a sequel to a previous one. Yeah, it's another cowbee Asian chips. And this is the umami salt flavor. And the umami salt that they put on these chips has salt MSG, shitake powder, kombu powder, yeast extract and scallop powder.
Molly 37:59
Okay? I mean, it's delicious. I'm just trying to
Speaker 1 38:02
you, don't forget all those flavors. I just think it's like, it's like a super savory blend. I've been really digging them.
Molly 38:09
The interesting thing is, it's not a terribly salty chip. I mean, there's some chips like Lay's, which I love, but they are really salty. So I want to be clear that the interesting thing is that these are kind of perfectly salted. Yeah, I'm really digging these. But there's like, Not, not. There's like, this whole other dimension going on,
Speaker 1 38:29
yeah, these. So the other one we tried were the Thai yellow curry, which I thought were really good, but we're a chip that, like, I would like, you know, hit the wall on at some point and be like, Okay, I've eaten 17 chips. I'm gonna stop these. I could easily put away a whole bag.
Molly 38:42
I do wish they were almost a little saltier. Yeah, I feel like I might not taste the whole depth of what's going on here. Yeah, my mouth, my mouth is sparkling now that you told me there's like, scallop powder in here and mushroom Yeah, I'm definitely, like, feeling I don't know the roundness of those flavors.
Speaker 1 39:00
Okay, definitely recommended cowbi, Asian chips, Asian style chips, umami, salt flavor, and I'm sure the other two flavors will be making an appearance in
Molly 39:11
the future. Our producer is Abby sercatella.
Speaker 1 39:13
You can write in reviews wherever you get your podcasts. Molly's eating chips. So I'll tell you that you can also find us at reddit.com/r/everything, spilled milk, where you can talk to other spilled milk listeners about your favorite and least favorite tap waters.
Molly 39:28
And hey, you know, I would also love to know, like, Do you drink, do you drink the tap water in your bathroom? Do you think that's weird?
Speaker 1 39:35
Yeah, that's a really good question. Like, it's still It feels weird to me, even though I know there's no reason. Yeah,
Molly 39:40
yeah, I get it. Okay. Well, hey, thanks for listening to spilled milk, the show that is filtered from pure mountain BS,
Unknown Speaker 39:51
Burton Molly. It's funny, because it's true. You.
Molly 40:00
Oh, they did not like that. I like that. Yes, okay,
Unknown Speaker 40:03
how's that good? All right?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai