What’s shakin’, cocktail fans? Welcome to Episode 286 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast! I’m your host, Eric Kozlik.

Thanks for joining me for this…well, I’m not sure exactly what kind of episode this is. It’s been a year in the making and I guess (in my mind) it’s one of those “problem episodes” that I’ve finally managed to put out into the world.

Almost exactly a year ago, someone from a brand called BOCE sent me a drinks coaster that they proposed would make any alcoholic beverage placed on it taste better–smoother (you know how much I hate that word) and more drinkable.

And to make matters worse (or better…depending on how you think about it) they said this drink coaster operates using “quantum physics,” employing a process called “quantum tunneling” to infuse the beverage with a specific wavelength of light. This, they claim, helps to reduce a certain class of compounds called “fusel oils” that may be responsible for certain undesirable flavors in distilled spirits.

Now, my background is in psychology and poetry…and, of course, spirits and cocktails. I’m no physicist. Strangely enough, though, as I’ve spent the last several years of my life independently studying complex systems science, I’ve had to familiarize myself with quite a bit of physics–including the quantum variety–in order to wrap my head around subjects like entropy, emergence, and the arrow of time.

The American physicist John Wheeler is quoted as saying: “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it,” which I think is an apt way of putting it. So there I was with this coaster. It’s clearly being marketed as a “futuristic” technology. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt myself being pulled a hundred years into the past when the notion of quantum physics was first breaking onto the world stage.

These first few decades of the 20th century were a time of high highs and low lows. Wars were Great, and so were Depressions. Entire decades roared, generations were Lost, and jazz redefined what music meant. People were actively working out what it was to be “modern,” which, back then, was the wave of the future. Peering back through the mists of time at this Gatsby-esque era, I’m always entertained by the hyperbole of it–the fedoras, and mobsters, the lavish architecture…but also the way in which an entire culture seemed to be cautiously groping its way toward the future like a person in a dark room searching for a light switch.

So I thought it might be fun to throw a little drama–and, of course, some humor and hyperbole–into the process of testing this bizarre quantum coaster. If there are any physics fans listening, I tried to pack as many jokes and references as I could into the silly narrative container of this blind tasting that I conducted with my good friend, Ethan Hall.

I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I think that will come out in the delivery. So please pour yourself a drink and enjoy.