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In Scotland, some long-time whisky makers are switching over to gin. In Germany, people who distill traditional brandies are doing the same. The world is in the middle of a gin distillery boom, and it is coming to America.

One place to find the roots of this boom is London, where 250 distilleries once existed in the city limits alone.

For Charles Maxwell, this story is personal. "My great-great-grandfather was apprenticed in the city of London in the 1680s to learn how to make gin," Maxwell says. "And from that day to this, we've distilled gin in London."

Maxwell is the only man ever to have received the London Gin Guild's lifetime achievement award. He and his ancestors have watched the drink go in and out of fashion many times over the centuries. The high point — or really the low point — was in the mid-1700s.

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A depiction of "Gin Lane," filled with sins caused by drunken revelries. William Hogarth/Wikimedia hide caption

itoggle caption William Hogarth/Wikimedia

A depiction of "Gin Lane," filled with sins caused by drunken revelries.

William Hogarth/Wikimedia

"Things had got slightly out of hand in England," says Maxwell. "We'd actually got to the point where the consumption per person in England was over four cases of gin a year."

That's 48 bottles of gin each. More if you leave out children, though some kids drank it, too.

In 1751, the artist William Hogarth created his famous print, "Gin Lane," showing chaos as a drunken mother drops her baby in the gin-soaked London streets. (That print was commissioned by the beer brewers.)

London is not returning to the days of Gin Lane. For one, alcohol is now tightly regulated and can no longer be sold out of bathtubs. But we are in the midst of a worldwide gin distillery boom.

At a bar in central London called Graphic, more than 300 gin brands line the shelves. Manager Dom Balfour says the owners didn't set out to create a gin destination — "it's just something that happened over time a few years ago."

"Someone took an interest in gin and started to increase the amount of gins. Before you know it, you've got 100. Then you've got 200. Then you've got 300, and it keeps going."

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A bartender at Graphic works on drinks for NPR reporter Ari Shapiro and producer Rich Preston. Ari Shapiro/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR

A bartender at Graphic works on drinks for NPR reporter Ari Shapiro and producer Rich Preston.

Ari Shapiro/NPR

On this night, an up-and-comer is trying to find a bit of space on the crowded shelves. Nick Tilt is here representing Sloane's gin, a new brand from the Netherlands. He launches into a sales pitch about the flavors of fresh citrus fruits, and vanilla from Madagascar "that creates a full creaminess to the middle of the palate and holds all the other flavors together."

His colleague pulls out little vials of angelica root and coriander seeds. He deploys spray bottles to spritz the aromas. It's quite a production.

There's a simple reason that so many new alcohol producers are making gin instead of vodka or whiskey.

"Gin has a flavor profile. But it doesn't require the lengthy aging process you get with a whiskey or a brandy," says Frank Coleman of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

So it has more personality than vodka, but it doesn't take the time to produce that brown spirits demand. With gin, you can distill today and sell tomorrow. And Coleman says the big brands are happy to see these new guys pop up on the scene.

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Bottles lined up at the Thames Distillery in London, waiting to be filled. Ari Shapiro/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR

Bottles lined up at the Thames Distillery in London, waiting to be filled.

Ari Shapiro/NPR

"It's sort of like the farm team, you know? In the past, they spent millions of dollars, in some cases, to develop new brands. Now they look at the marketplace and they can just buy a brand if they want to incorporate it into their portfolio."

In the U.S., Coleman says, more than 45 states now have small new distilleries. There is no reliable data on how many of those new distilleries are gin, but Coleman believes the percentage is high, since gin is so easy and quick to produce relative to other alcohols.

One strange quirk of this boom is that people are not, overall, drinking more gin than before. Instead, people are drinking a wider range of gins and paying more for the privilege. That is, the slices of the pie are getting smaller, and each slice is becoming pricier.

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Desmond Payne, master distiller for Beefeater. Ari Shapiro/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR

Desmond Payne, master distiller for Beefeater.

Ari Shapiro/NPR

The Salt

New York Toasts Long-Awaited Revival Of Its Distilleries

On the London gin scene, the wise old man is Beefeater — for decades, the only distiller left in the city limits. Today there are eight. Desmond Payne is the master distiller, tasting the brew every day to make sure the blend is just right.

"Every drop of our 2.6 million cases comes from this distillery," he says, standing in a massive room surrounded by ancient bulbous copper stills. The air smells like juniper and orange peel.

Payne believes part of the new interest in small-batch gins comes from a broader locavore, farm-to-table trend.

"I think people are far more interested in what they eat and drink, and how it's made, and what the ingredients are and where they come from," he says.

It's easy for him to be generous about the newcomers. Small distilleries are still only a tiny fraction of the total gin market. And the big brands have watched many of them come and go over the decades, as fickle drinkers slurp up a trend, then leave it at the bar.

And now, some gin recipes straight from the source.

Desmond Payne from Beefeater: Negroni

25ml Beefeater

25ml sweet vermouth

25ml Campari

Stir and strain

Rocks glass

Cubed ice

Orange slice or twist

Charles Maxwell from Thames Distillers: Tom Collins

2 oz gin

1 oz lemon juice

1 tsp superfine sugar

3 oz club soda

1 maraschino cherry

1 slice orange

Combine the gin, lemon juice, and sugar in a shaker with ice. Shake well. Strain into a collins glass almost filled with ice cubes. Add club soda. Stir and garnish with the cherry and the orange slice. Tip: You probably want a beefier, big gin.

Giovanni Cascone, from Graphic Bar: Corpse Reviver #2

Equal parts gin, lemon juice, triple sec (commonly Cointreau), Kina Lillet, and a dash of absinthe. Tip: "I use a Beefeater – you want a citrusy gin in this case."

mixed drinks

locavore

gin

Most auto recalls usually involve one carmaker at a time, but a massive recall this week affects not just one, but 10, ranging from BMWs to Toyotas.

At the center of it is Takata, a little-known but extremely important auto parts maker. The company makes more than one-third of the air bags in all cars.

Nearly 8 million vehicles have been recalled to have defective air bags fixed, and Congress is now opening an investigation into the problems.

Another big issue that sets this recall apart, says Karl Brauer, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book, "is that there's essentially nothing you can do to kind of mitigate the potential damage or danger from these air bags if they fail" — there's no big habit you can change or quick fix you can make.

The other thing that makes this different, Brauer says, is the basic fact of what happens when the air bags fail. They're supposed to cushion you during an accident, but instead the defective ones send metal shrapnel flying.

"So if you're in an unavoidable or an unpredictable accident, in the blink of an eye an air bag fires, and in that firing, it throws shrapnel at you at a high rate of speed, there's really nothing you can do about it," he says.

The Two-Way

NHTSA Adds More Than 3 Million Vehicles To Air Bag Recall

"One minute you're driving, the next minute, there's an accident — bang, boom! — an air bag pops and there's shrapnel thrown."

Takata, a Japanese auto supplier that serves the global auto industry, is responsible for more than 30 percent of car air bags. It's one of only three big air bag suppliers.

"If one of those three suddenly needs to recall and replace a whole bunch — like, tens of millions of air bags that they've already produced — plus keep up with ongoing new vehicle air bags that they're already kind of at capacity producing, there ... isn't a solution," Brauer says. "There's no pressure relief valve that they can turn to easily to make the old air bag replacements, while continuing to make the new air bags for new cars."

Four deaths have been linked to the defect. The problem seems to be triggered by humid conditions. The Department of Transportation has taken the unusual step of urging owners of millions of vehicles who live in areas with high humidity — such as Florida, other Gulf states and Hawaii — to act immediately.

The warning cautions drivers not to use their vehicles until they are serviced by a dealer.

Ellen Bloom, senior director of federal policy with Consumers Union, says she's worried that drivers have grown too apathetic about recalls.

For instance, in the big General Motors recall that affects tens of millions of cars, only about half have been brought in to be fixed.

"The idea that air bag can explode and send pieces of metal into your flesh is troubling to say the least," Bloom says. "Again, while no one should panic, we think it's a serious safety issue and that people should address it."

Bloom says the government and carmakers need to do a much better job of informing the public about and resolving recall issues — and urges consumers to check on recalls at safercar.gov.

David Whiston, an equity analyst with Morningstar, says car companies' stock prices or sales are unlikely to be affected, as most of the vehicles covered under the recall are older models.

The background to this recall, Whiston says, is a movement to standardize parts across the globe. That's helpful for carmakers, "but, when something goes wrong, it will now go wrong across a much wider number of vehicles than people are used to hearing about in the news for a recall," he says.

The main pressure in today's auto industry is to realize economies of scale, he says.

"It's a viciously competitive industry; there really aren't a lot of weak players anymore. So, because of that, I think ... it's worth the automakers taking the risk of having more recall volume in exchange for getting more economies of scale," he says.

Whiston expects high-volume car recalls to continue — but you really need to pay attention to this one.

Takata

air bags

air bags

crash safety

auto accidents

recalls

auto industry

It's the weekend, which means it's time to look back on the week in technology that was. As your handy NPR One listening app says, here we go...

ICYMI

Please Do Not Leave Voice Mail: As part of our ongoing #newboom series, Rachel Rood reports on how annoying voice mail is to millennials. If it's important enough, just text me, younger generations say.

Online Gaming And Women: The Pew Research Center released its first ever study on online harassment and found that there's one online space where people don't perceive women and men are treated equally — gaming. In light of the ongoing, sprawling #Gamergate crisis, it probably surprises no one.

The Big Conversation

Apple Pay Debuts: With Apple's new mobile payment system, a major shift away from credit cards and wallets could be happening. But as Aarti Shahani noted on Morning Edition, other vendors have tried this before and failed.

iCloud And The Chinese?: A group claims the Chinese government supported an attack against users of Apple's iCloud service, and experts fear it may be a harbinger of more attacks to come.

Curiosities

BuzzFeed: Facebook Rebukes DEA For Impersonating Woman Online

The company isn't happy the Drug Enforcement Administration created a phony Facebook page using a real woman's name, without her knowledge.

Wired: New Tablet Case Recognizes Sign Language and Translates It Into Text

A California startup is developing a case for tablets that can serve as a virtual interpreter for deaf people.

NPR: Mark Zuckerberg Shows Off His Mandarin Chinese Skills

During a visit to a Beijing university, the Facebook co-founder and CEO conducted a full Q&A in Mandarin Chinese. It's tonally cringe worthy, but he got a lot of props for his commitment.

tech week

Coming up on the end of a year marred by bitter quarrels over royalties for online music, Pandora is now making a play for artists' goodwill.

On Wednesday, Pandora announced the launch of AMP (Artist Marketing Platform), a free service that pulls back the curtain on the widely popular streaming service and gives musicians access to data on who is listening to their music, when and where.

The Oakland-based streaming service is not the first to the analytics game — Spotify partnered with Next Big Sound in 2013 and acquired The Echo Nest in March — but Pandora has, by far, the largest audience. The company reports that more than 76 million listeners tune in to Pandora for an average of 20 hours each month. In June 2014, that amounted to about 1.6 billion listener hours.

AMP offers artists daily updates on the number of listens for each song, demographic and geographic data on listenership, and the number of fans making artist playlists. Pandora says the service will enable artists to target cities with large fan bases for tours, strategize album and single releases and better engage with audiences.

"With AMP, the goal is simple: We want to harness the power of our scale and data to make artists' lives easier," says Pandora founder Tim Westergren in a press release.

So will this change anything for Pandora listeners? That depends on how much AMP wins over musicians and persuades more artists to join the service.

With profits from music sales far lower than decades past, artists are looking to data as they try to squeeze as many dollars as possible from everything else — touring, merchandise sales and other profit streams driven by audience engagement. Pandora's move to offer artists data might help, and could improve relationships with musicians.

The Record

Can Streaming Services Make Money?

"Especially now that everyone's listening habits are shifting to streaming, if they're giving bands and their teams access to data as well, that's great," says John Chavez of Ground Control Booking, who manages touring for bands like Real Estate and Titus Andronicus.

It's no secret that Pandora had been using its data before opening up the information to artists. With midterm elections coming up, political ads have been targeting Pandora listeners based on preferences. If you're listening to jazz, reggae, or electronic music, odds are that a Democratic candidate will be staring at you from a corner of your computer screen this week.

The Record

Paying The Piper: Music Streaming Services In Perspective

Musicians reasonably might want to get in on the same data pool. With the largest audience of any online music service, Pandora's AMP holds the potential to make an outsize contribution to musicians' data arsenal.

"Artists need data to work for them," says Mark Mulligan, co-founder of MiDiA Research, which consults on digital media strategy in the music industry. "Put it into a music service like Pandora or Spotify, then that impact becomes multiplied."

If Pandora wants to truly win over musicians, however, it will need more than data. Other services are offering features such as links to artists' websites for direct music sales.

The Record

Pandora Buys A Radio Station, Songwriters' Group Calls It A 'Stunt'

"I hope [AMP] is Part 1," says Mike King, an instructor at Berklee Online and author of Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail. "I really hope there's Part 2, where [Pandora says] let's monetize this, or let's give these fans the option to opt-in to your email list, which is something a bit deeper."

Ultimately, AMP is unlikely to lure musicians to the extent that listeners would see a huge jump in Pandora's limited catalog anytime soon.

"It's not suddenly going to transform Pandora into a darling of artists and songwriters," Mulligan says.

Still, AMP may be an attempt by Pandora to recover from its damaged relationships with artists and labels over royalty battles. Westergren, himself a former touring musician, has been criticized for leading a company that some have seen as detrimental to artists' bottom lines.

"In 2009, Tim Westergren could kind of do no wrong," King says. "Over time, I think he lost some support; there wasn't a lot of continuity between what Tim Westergren was saying and what Pandora was doing."

While Pandora may not relinquish any ground in the royalties game, with AMP it can still offer more to musicians.

"Whereas Pandora may not be able to offer as much to artists in pure dollar terms, what it can do is value-in-kind, which is data," Mulligan says.

Robert Szypko is an intern on NPR's Business Desk.

Pandora