The particular segment in question starts at about 28:00 minutes into the episode.
I regret not being able to provide a shorter clip, but for anyone interested, this was from the methamphetamine episode of Hamiltons Pharmacopeia.
This is another rough outline of a procedure which is not provided in its entirety or in full detail, so it is not meant to be a recipe or set of instructions to follow. I don't know amounts and portions, or anything about the theory or mechanisms behind this reaction. It is yet another concept I'd like to throw at the community for discussion:
1) The first step of Festers synthesis is the oxidation of toluene. Lead electrides are immersed in an aqueous manganese ammonium sulfate solution and a rectifier is used to maintain a constant current.
*Current flows through the solution and the mandanese salts are converted from the +2 to the +3 oxidation state. The manganete ammonium sulfate affects a cascade of one electron oxidations of toluene, beginning with a benzyl radical followed by a phenyl carbenium ion that undergoes a nucleophilic attack by water, forming benzyl alcohol, a benzoxyl radical, and finally the product, benzaldehyde.
"Oh, there is definitely a cherry smell in there now, so it's time to add more toluene."
Encouraged by the characteristic cherry-almond tang of benzaldehyde, Fester extracts the crude reaction mixture with toluene, and treats the extract with an aqueous solution of sodium bisulfite hoping to observe the formation of an insoluable bisulfite adduct.
Fester doesn't end up getting anything out of this experiment and "opts to distill his benzaldehyde from an almond extract product." in the following synthesis, which I have posted the write up/captions for here: https://bbgate.com/en/threads/updated-version-of-cooking-crank-with-fester-captions.14392/