Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
Speaker 3: and we're back with part two of our discussion of
Speaker 3: cotton candy. In part one, we talked about the chemistry
Speaker 3: of candy making, how sugar syrup heated and reduced to
Speaker 3: a precise, precise consistency gets turned into everything from saltwater
Speaker 3: taffy to lollypops to sponge sugar. We talked about the
Speaker 3: properties of crystalline sugar versus sugar glass, and we described
Speaker 3: the standard process for making cotton candy in a dedicated machine.
Speaker 3: And we also got into some historical predecessors of cotton candy,
Speaker 3: like sponge sugar, and especially the Chinese culinary invention known
Speaker 3: as Dragon's beard candy. And we're back today to talk
Speaker 3: about more, rob did you end up eating any cotton
Speaker 3: candy between our two parts here?
Speaker 2: You know I did not. I was like it, surely
Speaker 2: we can make it out to the place where I
Speaker 2: know there's a Japanese cotton candy machine, because these are
Speaker 2: quite quite impressive. Japanese cotton candy is known as watame
Speaker 2: and there are these nice automated machines that make it
Speaker 2: no humans involved in the process at all, comes out
Speaker 2: like super colorful. I don't know about the taste. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming the taste is still very much cotton candy but sugar. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I know where one is in Atlanta, and I
Speaker 2: was like, we can go out and try it out.
Speaker 2: But our weekend ended up just being super busy, so
Speaker 2: we did not make it out to try cotton candy.
Speaker 2: But as is always the case, we ask any listeners
Speaker 2: out there, if you have experience with cotton candy, Japanese
Speaker 2: or otherwise, right in and give us your feedback on
Speaker 2: the sugary treade.
Speaker 3: Now, we promised in today's episode we would go into
Speaker 3: a little more depth on thevention of the cotton candy machine,
Speaker 3: and I figured maybe that's the place we should start today.
Speaker 3: Or you gained for that, Rob, Let's do it. Let's
Speaker 3: spin it up. Okay, okay. Now, in the previous episode,
Speaker 3: we talked a bit about how cotton candy is made
Speaker 3: with a dedicated machine in a manner that is somewhat
Speaker 3: similar to the industrial method of producing fiberglass. So your
Speaker 3: standard cotton candy machine consists of a large, deep metal
Speaker 3: dish with tall sides. Think halfway between like a dog's
Speaker 3: water bowl and a kiddie pool, kind of a large,
Speaker 3: you know, wash basin sized. This large outer dish will
Speaker 3: remain stationary, but in the middle of that large outer
Speaker 3: dish and there is a small secondary dish which spins
Speaker 3: rapidly and contains a heating element. This inner dish is
Speaker 3: known as the spinner. And to make the candy, you
Speaker 3: take a sugar mixture. This is something you usually just
Speaker 3: buy fully prepared. Maybe some people make artisanal cotton candy
Speaker 3: sugar mixtures, but usually you just like buy a box
Speaker 3: of this powdered stuff and so it's like sugar with
Speaker 3: some coloring and flavoring included, and you pour that into
Speaker 3: the spinner. Inside the spinner, the sugar gets melted by
Speaker 3: the heating element, and then once melted sugar, glass leaks
Speaker 3: out of extremely tiny holes in the walls of the
Speaker 3: spinner because it's being driven outward by centrifugal force. I
Speaker 3: think sometimes also there's a fourst air component that's kind
Speaker 3: of blowing it out of these little holes. And as
Speaker 3: the melted sugar flies out into the colder air outside
Speaker 3: the spinner, it rapidly cools and it solidifies into tiny
Speaker 3: hair like strands of sugar glass. And these are they
Speaker 3: collect in the outer dish. And then you can watch
Speaker 3: the operator kind of you know, take a stick or
Speaker 3: a cone and wave it around, almost like they're dusting
Speaker 3: for cobwebs. They're just collecting all of the strands onto
Speaker 3: the eating utensil, and then they hand it to you.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's ever marked get it as such,
Speaker 2: you know, if you want to like really goth up
Speaker 2: your cotton candy install of cobwebs. Yeah, candy cobwebs and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, we'll have to look that up afterwards.
Speaker 3: But as we've said, so, when you get cotton candy,
Speaker 3: it's almost always made with a specialized machine. It's not
Speaker 3: really something as far as I could find, that you
Speaker 3: can easily do with just you know, repurposed home equipment.
Speaker 3: You kind of need a cotton candy machine to make
Speaker 3: cotton candy. So where did these machines come from? Well,
Speaker 3: that question takes us back to the Saint Louis World's
Speaker 3: Fair of nineteen oh four. This was the first big
Speaker 3: public debut of what inventors William J. Morrison and John C. Wharton,
Speaker 3: both of Nashville, Tennessee, called the Electric Candy Machine, a
Speaker 3: machine for making a novelty confection that they called fairy Floss,
Speaker 3: which at the nineteen oh four World's Fair was sold
Speaker 3: in boxes for twenty five cents of serving, and as
Speaker 3: pointed out in a blog post by Morgan Earn for
Speaker 3: the Tennessee State Museum, a ticket for the nineteen oh
Speaker 3: four World's Fair was fifty cents, and so a box
Speaker 3: of cotton candy is twenty five cents. This is this
Speaker 3: is a candy treat that cost half as much again
Speaker 3: as the full admission price.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, so depending on where you're going,
Speaker 2: like you can compare this with like paying like five
Speaker 2: to ten bucks for it these days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what canton candy usually costs.
Speaker 3: On one hand, I think it's amazingly cheap to Bruce,
Speaker 3: it's just like, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty five cents feels good. It feels reasonable by
Speaker 2: today's standards. Yeah, like that's probably the material cost. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's costing three to four bucks, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably it was fair prices. So that everything's jacked
Speaker 3: up to so maybe it's ten bucks. Who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a meltdown on a stick though for a
Speaker 2: kid like you know what you're getting into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But anyway, So over the six months the fair
Speaker 3: was open, they sold almost seventy thousand boxes of this stuff.
Speaker 3: And just a few funny notes about the nineteen oh
Speaker 3: four World's Fair. We've talked about the weird culture of
Speaker 3: triumphalist futurism at these near turn of the century World's
Speaker 3: Fair events. One that we talked about extensively on the
Speaker 3: show in the past was the famous World's Columbian Exposition
Speaker 3: in Chicago in eighteen ninety three. We did a live
Speaker 3: show in Chicago one time where we talked about various
Speaker 3: aspects of that event. But you can see a lot
Speaker 3: of that same spirit in the nineteen oh four fair
Speaker 3: in Saint Louis as well, with its naming conventions. So
Speaker 3: the fairy Floss machine was an exhibit at what was
Speaker 3: called the Palace of Electricity. Now, while nineteen oh four
Speaker 3: was the big the year that the cotton candy machine
Speaker 3: made a big public impression, the two Inventures had actually
Speaker 3: created the machine many years before the fair, way back
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety seven. I found some more detail about
Speaker 3: the history here in an entry for the cotton candy
Speaker 3: machine within a reference book called Technical Innovation in American
Speaker 3: History and Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, edited by Roseanne
Speaker 3: Welch and peg Lamfear. The cotton candy entry is by
Speaker 3: a scholar named Stepka Zanova, and according to Zenova here,
Speaker 3: the better known of the two inventors was William Morrison,
Speaker 3: who lived eighteen sixty to nineteen twenty six. And just
Speaker 3: from the little bit of detail we get here about
Speaker 3: his life, I'm picking up on something. He sounds to
Speaker 3: me like one of those real late nineteenth century Renaissance eccentrics.
Speaker 3: So he was a dentist and a children's book author
Speaker 3: and a prolific inventor, having drafted a novel process for
Speaker 3: extracting cottonseed oil, among other patents. But then Zenova also
Speaker 3: mentions that he received credit for creating his hometown's first
Speaker 3: water purification plant, and he was also active in Tennessee
Speaker 3: based professional associations for dentists. So I don't know if
Speaker 3: this is right or not, but I'm kind of getting
Speaker 3: a picture of like the town wizard that sounds like
Speaker 3: his partner in the creation of the fairy floss machine
Speaker 3: was a Nashville based confectioner, a candy maker named John Wharton,
Speaker 3: and together they filed for a patent on December twenty third,
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety seven. Their machine worked basically the same way
Speaker 3: the machines do today. There's not a whole lot of difference.
Speaker 3: That modern machines are pretty close to what they originally
Speaker 3: came up with. You you have a central spinner with
Speaker 3: a heating element inside walls perforated by tiny holes to
Speaker 3: let the threads of melted sugar glass stream out. They
Speaker 3: freeze in the cooler air of the surrounding dish. However,
Speaker 3: one thing that Senova notes is that while Wharton and
Speaker 3: Morrison are usually credited as inventors of the electric cotton
Speaker 3: candy machine, their original design in the eighteen ninety seven
Speaker 3: patent was not exclusively to be used with electric power,
Speaker 3: and instead included a mechanism to operate on foot power.
Speaker 3: So I think that means there was like a foot
Speaker 3: operated pedal or pump, though they specified that a different
Speaker 3: power source could be applied without changing the core mechanics
Speaker 3: of the device. So when this machine made it to
Speaker 3: the Palace of Electricity at the nineteen oh four World's Fair.
Speaker 3: It was a huge hit. It won the fairs Novelty
Speaker 3: of Invention prize and to make the final sale numbers,
Speaker 3: I've read they must have sold something like three hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy five boxes of cotton candy a day. Though
Speaker 3: it wasn't called cotton candy yet, it was still fairy floss. Actually,
Speaker 3: the name cotton candy came from another dentist in cotton
Speaker 3: candy business. This was a guy named Joseph Lascaux who
Speaker 3: was based in Louisiana, who tried to introduce improvements on
Speaker 3: Morrison and Wharton's design, though apparently his modifications did not
Speaker 3: catch on. T Zanova's entry here casts doubt on whether
Speaker 3: his improvements were actually improvements or not, but he kind
Speaker 3: of tried to say, no, here's the way you should
Speaker 3: do these machines. His machine didn't stick, but the name
Speaker 3: did so. In the US. Now basically everybody calls it
Speaker 3: cotton cane, and though in some other places in the
Speaker 3: world of fairy floss or candy floss is still the
Speaker 3: more popular name now, Rob I'm attaching here an advertisement
Speaker 3: for a version of Wharton and Morrison's machine that appeared
Speaker 3: in the program for the nineteen oh seven Tennessee State Fair.
Speaker 3: You can examine, but I wanted to include because this
Speaker 3: has a lot of good text on it. So at
Speaker 3: this point they're calling the device the Wonderful Electric Candy Machine.
Speaker 3: It's being sold by the Electric Candy Machine Company of Nashville,
Speaker 3: and it explains the virtues of their product as follows quote.
Speaker 3: The candy made by this machine is absolutely pure. Granulated
Speaker 3: sugar is poured into the spinner and is instantly changed
Speaker 3: into flossy filaments of pure candy without the touch of
Speaker 3: a contaminating finger. Ah what I'm kind of wondering if
Speaker 3: this is going back to what we talked about in
Speaker 3: part one that old confectioners used to test the temperature
Speaker 3: and consistency of their boiling sugar syrup by feel, which,
Speaker 3: once again, please let us emphasize, do not try this
Speaker 3: at home. You can get horribly, horribly burned.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, also just the I guess the novelty
Speaker 2: of it. Like here, candy is spun out of at
Speaker 2: of thin air. You know, it's not made by human
Speaker 2: fingers and hands, It's not shaped by by a druggist's
Speaker 2: hands or anything. Nope, it's just you just stick the
Speaker 2: cone or the stick in there and you just spin
Speaker 2: it up. And of course, like I was saying, modern
Speaker 2: cotton candy machines have taken this to and even they
Speaker 2: have got a step beyond, like it's just completely automated.
Speaker 2: No one's even sticking a stick in there.
Speaker 3: Maybe that is it. There just seemed something old fashioned
Speaker 3: and unsanitary about a human having to be involved in
Speaker 3: the making of your candy. And you know, it's just
Speaker 3: like the machine does it all, except it doesn't. You've
Speaker 3: got it. You still somebody had to pump the pedal
Speaker 3: on this thing.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe that by this time, in nineteen oh
Speaker 3: four or nineteen oh seven, it was the fully electric model.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure which way this is.
Speaker 2: I mean, the poster is advertising to me the wonderful
Speaker 2: electric candy machine. So yeah, and electric candy, electric candy machine.
Speaker 2: Which part is the electric part? I mean, it seems
Speaker 2: like the candy itself is kind of electric.
Speaker 3: Why not the electric candy machine acid test?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The advertisement also tells us these machines are expressly made
Speaker 3: expressly for here's the list druggists, fruit stands, confectioners, and hotels. Hotels,
Speaker 3: my god, but think of the cleaning staff. There's something
Speaker 3: cotton candy at hotels. Also, I love fruit stands because
Speaker 3: cotton candy is my favorite fruit. Also, they make a
Speaker 3: special appeal coming back to the druggists. I think they say,
Speaker 3: make the soda fountain space pay in winter. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: so that's an interesting pitch. They're probably saying, like, you're
Speaker 3: going to sell a lot of cold soda in the summer,
Speaker 3: but you know nobody wants to come in for a
Speaker 3: soda in the winter. So what do you do instead
Speaker 3: that space? You have a cotton candy machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is I guess it comes out hot. I
Speaker 2: don't think it stays hot long, but yeah, at least
Speaker 2: it's not cold.
Speaker 3: Also, this ad is full of ludicrously aggressive small texts.
Speaker 3: Can I read you the intellectual property section? It says
Speaker 3: our machines are fully protected by our patents. A number
Speaker 3: of pirates have infringed on our patents. We prosecuted the
Speaker 3: first who attempted it. The United States Court at Saint
Speaker 3: Louis has just rendered judgment sustaining our patents and perpetually
Speaker 3: enjoining infringements. We own the exclusive right to the only
Speaker 3: method of making floss or spun candy and will prosecute
Speaker 3: every maker and user of infringing machines. Man, that's coming
Speaker 3: on hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they like the villains in a Willy Wonkam movie here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a number of pirates have tried. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: after going into more depth about how cotton candy has
Speaker 3: made you know, what its characteristics are, and the history
Speaker 3: of it, I thought maybe we should come back to
Speaker 3: a question I asked at the beginning of part one,
Speaker 3: and that question is why is cotton candy particularly associated
Speaker 3: with fairs and carnivals in a way that other candies
Speaker 3: and treats are not. I mean, you know some other
Speaker 3: treats are I guess you think funnel cakes. That's especially
Speaker 3: fairs and carnivals within the United States at least, But
Speaker 3: why cotton candy more so than most other candies. I
Speaker 3: now have a series of thoughts on that. First of all,
Speaker 3: we just have this history that cotton candy began its
Speaker 3: life as a fair grounds attraction, winning fame and publicity
Speaker 3: as such. You know, most people in their very first
Speaker 3: encounter with cotton candy was probably learning about it at
Speaker 3: this World's Fair exhibit, or it's some subsequent fair or
Speaker 3: public event.
Speaker 2: And this seems to have played a role in then
Speaker 2: allowing it to spread out around the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another thing is what we talked about last time.
Speaker 3: Cotton candy is very delicate and sensitive to heat, moisture,
Speaker 3: even just to humidity in the air. Remember the sugar
Speaker 3: here is hygroscopic, so it will attract moisture, will pull
Speaker 3: humidity out of the very atmosphere around it. So if
Speaker 3: it is not sealed inside a tight moisture barrier, within
Speaker 3: just a few hours, cotton candy will lose its fluffiness
Speaker 3: and shrivel down and transform into a sticky, disgusting blob.
Speaker 3: Remember those slow death of cotton candy time lapse videos
Speaker 3: we talked about in the last episode. Now, you can
Speaker 3: make it last longer if you seal it up tight
Speaker 3: inside plastic, But at that point your packaging costs are
Speaker 3: going to increase. And I would also imagine that cotton
Speaker 3: candy is not super efficient to ship in its spun
Speaker 3: form because of its volume relative to its weight. You know,
Speaker 3: I imagine that would be kind of like shipping trucks
Speaker 3: full of pre inflated balloons.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like, just as a quick example from today's
Speaker 2: candy market, there's all sorts of stuff that is labeled
Speaker 2: cotton candy that you can buy prepackaged and have shipped
Speaker 2: to your house. But I mean, it's it's clear that
Speaker 2: it is not at all the same as fresh spun
Speaker 2: cotton candy. It you could almost classify it as a
Speaker 2: different sort of candy, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And also, I mean, not to judge people's products,
Speaker 3: but even though you can buy this cotton candy in
Speaker 3: sealed tubs, however similar or dissimilar it is from the
Speaker 3: cotton candy you get at the fair, it just seems
Speaker 3: that generally this pre made stuff is not a very
Speaker 3: appealing and probably not a super cost effective product. So
Speaker 3: ideally cotton candy should be made right when and where
Speaker 3: you're gonna eat it. You know, you need to get
Speaker 3: it fresh. Where is ideal for that well, lot of
Speaker 3: turnover exactly. Yeah. So you can't really make cotton candy
Speaker 3: with regular kitchen equipment. You need a special machine. And
Speaker 3: most people do not want to eat cotton candy or
Speaker 3: don't want their kids to eat cotton candy often enough
Speaker 3: that they're going to buy a machine for the home. So,
Speaker 3: you know, we mainly like it for the novelty, the
Speaker 3: visual and textual novelty, not because it's delicious. So it's
Speaker 3: a you know, it's a lark. It's a once every
Speaker 3: now and then weird, interesting little experience. So you need
Speaker 3: to sort of have a system where people go where
Speaker 3: the machine is. So where does it make sense to
Speaker 3: have the machine. It's probably where you have a lot
Speaker 3: of turnover, where people can do a lot of business,
Speaker 3: ideally in a space that the operator of the machine,
Speaker 3: you know, will not have to clean up sticky messes
Speaker 3: left by the customers later on. So an outdoor fair
Speaker 3: is kind of perfect. The customer takes the mess with
Speaker 3: them and it's outdoors anyway. So that's where I'm at.
Speaker 3: The more I think about it, the more it absolutely
Speaker 3: makes sense that cotton candy is carnival food. It's fair food.
Speaker 3: It comes from that world, and for a number of
Speaker 3: practical reasons, it probably will stay in that world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you can think of other fair and carnival foods,
Speaker 2: and a number of those kind of transcend the limitations,
Speaker 2: you know, like the corn dog. Yeah, corn Dog's totally
Speaker 2: a fair and carnival type of food. But yeah, you
Speaker 2: can buy it frozen, you can make it at home.
Speaker 2: It's you know, all those things are possible, and it's
Speaker 2: just as good, if not better, in those situations. But
Speaker 2: cotton candy, again, the technology limits you and it. And
Speaker 2: also it's just not the kind of thing you'd want
Speaker 2: to eat on even a semi regular basis. Or you
Speaker 2: might want to if you're a child, but as an adult,
Speaker 2: like you said, you don't want your children having ready
Speaker 2: access to this. Meltdown on a stick.
Speaker 3: Contradict us. Folks, let us know, do you have a
Speaker 3: cotton candy machine in your house? I don't want to
Speaker 3: hear about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and maybe you do if you also
Speaker 2: go out to the fair and sell it, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: otherwise it just seems like a lot of machinery to
Speaker 2: have just sitting around. I mean, maybe there's some sort
Speaker 2: of a smaller apparatus for it, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe if you've got a fancy home theater, arcade set
Speaker 3: up something like that. But it's like people who have
Speaker 3: a fancy home theater and they've got like one of
Speaker 3: those popcorn carts in it.
Speaker 2: I think it comes down to kitchen space because I'm
Speaker 2: just looking around now doing a little shopping for cotton
Speaker 2: candy machines. I'm sure this is going to screw up
Speaker 2: all sorts of targeted advertisements for me. But it looks
Speaker 2: like you can get one that's on a cart. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming this is maybe like low end of the professional spectrum,
Speaker 2: but you know, you can get like a cart based
Speaker 2: cotton candy machine for something like three hundred bucks. And
Speaker 2: they do have models that are more from like the
Speaker 2: seventy dollars to one hundred and thirty dollars range that
Speaker 2: look like you could have room for it in your kitchen.
Speaker 2: I don't have room for it in my kitchen, but
Speaker 2: you might well have kitchen with enough space where it
Speaker 2: makes sense to fire this thing up every now and again.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Okay, I'm looking for the bottom shelf stuff.
Speaker 3: You can get a cotton candy maker at Walmart for
Speaker 3: thirty bucks.
Speaker 2: See yeah, okay, well you know it's possible, but oh boy, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's like you can get you can get
Speaker 2: waffle makers for really cheap, but they are exciting to
Speaker 2: use in a way. That you just might not want
Speaker 2: that level of excitement too many mornings out of your week.
Speaker 3: This strikes me as something that, again, maybe I'm totally wrong,
Speaker 3: but my guess is that the majority of people who
Speaker 3: buy cotton you know, like domestic cotton candy machines for
Speaker 3: the home, are buying it essentially to use one time
Speaker 3: at a party they're throwing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that would make sense. You're doing you're
Speaker 2: doing kids birthday party. You're like, well, for thirty bucks,
Speaker 2: we can do this. So yeah, I understand that maybe
Speaker 2: there's a case to be made where there's some sort
Speaker 2: of special treat you're making where you're going to utilize
Speaker 2: that cotton candy on top I don't know, like some
Speaker 2: sort of a a trolls head muffin or something, I
Speaker 2: don't know. But beyond that, you know, cotton candy is
Speaker 2: just one of those things. It just doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: they are that many applications, right, It's just this sugar retreat.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really have any beneficial qualities beyond sugaring up kids,
Speaker 2: and you know, the novelty of the spectacle of watching
Speaker 2: it made. But you know, I was a little surprised
Speaker 2: by this there do seem to be some applications. I mean,
Speaker 2: you would be forgiven if you assume that no health
Speaker 2: benefit or medical application existed or was possible for these
Speaker 2: miraculous clouds of pure sugar. But there's actually been some
Speaker 2: pretty interesting research into a cotton candy based artificial organ
Speaker 2: technology that, fittingly like the twentieth century cotton candy machine itself,
Speaker 2: has at least partial Tennessee roots.
Speaker 3: Oh nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of the research that I'm about to
Speaker 2: talk about here is taking place in Nashville. It is
Speaker 2: at Vanderbilt Universe. So you might have caught some science
Speaker 2: headlines about this over the years, because the headlines and
Speaker 2: the leads basically right themselves. You know, some sort of
Speaker 2: cotton candy based you know, organ transplant. It raises strange
Speaker 2: images in the mind of human organs replaced with candy.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of the old mister Bones candy
Speaker 2: from the nineties. This was, like I distinctly remember, like
Speaker 2: a little plastic casket that said mister Bones, and inside
Speaker 2: there were interlocking candy bones and sometimes a heart, you know,
Speaker 2: shaped like a heart emoji. And you would assemble these
Speaker 2: and then you would look at it and then you
Speaker 2: would eat it, and then you could keep the little
Speaker 2: plastic casket and you know, sometimes you could fit a
Speaker 2: little toy in there.
Speaker 3: I am paralyzed now by unexpected nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 3: You have brought my brain to a halt with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I only ever got to get this
Speaker 2: like once. This is another one of those like how
Speaker 2: often are you gonna have mister Bones candy? The candy
Speaker 2: itself was not good. It was like, you know, Pez
Speaker 2: Dispenser candy, which is another example. It's like nobody loves Pez.
Speaker 2: It's the mechanism. It's a spectacle.
Speaker 3: Look at this little plastic coffin. Though I want this
Speaker 3: right now, I oh, oh, my feelings.
Speaker 2: They may have. It's just one of those things that
Speaker 2: may have come back to varying degrees. I don't know
Speaker 2: with the whole you know, ups and downs of nostalgia
Speaker 2: based marketing. But anyway, now, this is not about making
Speaker 2: organs or tissues directly out of candy, as grotesquely amazing
Speaker 2: as that may sound. But it's also a lot closer
Speaker 2: to the idea than you might assume, because you know,
Speaker 2: obviously headlines are going to be quick to capitalize on them.
Speaker 2: You know, the candy connection. But it does have a
Speaker 2: pretty strong candy connection.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the research in question here was at least initially
Speaker 2: the work of doctor Jason Spector, a reconstructive surgeon at
Speaker 2: New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Leon Bellin, a graduate student
Speaker 2: at Cornell at the time of the idea's creation and
Speaker 2: now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University
Speaker 2: in Nashville. And so there have been multiple reports on
Speaker 2: this research over the years, and some of them have
Speaker 2: been reported on in the mainstream media. Is reported on
Speaker 2: NPRS All Things Considered. Back in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: Bellin got the idea for the approach based on previous
Speaker 2: work with nanofibers and observations about cotton candy. As it
Speaker 2: turns out, the fine sponge sugar in cotton candy we've
Speaker 2: discussed about how it's hair like, it's very thin. Well,
Speaker 2: the nanofibers here are about the same thickness as various
Speaker 2: blood vessels in human tissue, so about one tenth the
Speaker 2: diameter of a human hair.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this would not be talking about your thicker
Speaker 3: main veins and arteries, but sort of the little blood
Speaker 3: vessels that branch out from them to feed all the
Speaker 3: tissues in the body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about capillaries, like tiny capillary blood vessels
Speaker 2: that you know, with their thin walls, deliver oxygen and
Speaker 2: nutrients to cells and carry away waste and the threads.
Speaker 2: According to Bellin and a Vanderbilt University Medical Center release
Speaker 2: from twenty sixteen, Yeah, they have the size, the density,
Speaker 2: and the complexity that matches up with capillary blood vessels.
Speaker 2: So the creation of artificial capillary systems like this would
Speaker 2: be absolutely necessary for the creation of living artificial organs. Specifically,
Speaker 2: we're talking about hydrogel based scaffoldings upon which the organ
Speaker 2: is grown. But to put it roughly, you can build
Speaker 2: a mansion, you can build an enormous home, but you've
Speaker 2: got to have bathrooms in it. And for those bathrooms
Speaker 2: to mean anything, you've got to leave room for the plumbing.
Speaker 2: And so the plumbing inside of a working human organ
Speaker 2: that's complex. And so what we're talking about here is
Speaker 2: a way to to grow like not just the and
Speaker 2: I'm putting it like crudely and roughly here, not just
Speaker 2: the meat of the organ, and not just to say
Speaker 2: here's a lump and this lump is liver, This lump
Speaker 2: is kidney. But to say, this lump of kidney also
Speaker 2: has all the plumbing necessary for the organ to live
Speaker 2: and have the necessary blood supply that it needs.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, over.
Speaker 2: The years they've devised and apparently, as of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: demonstrated the use of a cotton candy based technique to
Speaker 2: create quote micro fluidic networks that mimic the three dimensional
Speaker 2: capillary system in the human body in a self friendly fashion,
Speaker 2: according to the the UMC release that I referenced earlier.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I'm seeing the visual analogy between the sugar
Speaker 3: glass strands made made by a cotton candy machine and
Speaker 3: the tiny capillaries that infuse an organ, But like, how
Speaker 3: do you actually make how do you make this? How
Speaker 3: do you make the capillarias with a cotton candy like process?
Speaker 2: All right, so, as of twenty sixteen, the method didn't
Speaker 2: involve sugar spun into this delicate network, but spinning it
Speaker 2: out of something called the abbreviation is p N I
Speaker 2: P A M penny PAM I'm gonna go with and
Speaker 2: this stands for poly in isopropyla crylamide, a cell friendly
Speaker 2: polymer frequently used for biomedical applications, though it also has
Speaker 2: other sort of like nano applications. I've seen studies that
Speaker 2: are talking about using it for you know, very small
Speaker 2: you know, triggers and so forth in nano constructions and
Speaker 2: so forth. But the key to it is that it
Speaker 2: is insoluble at temperatures above thirty two degrees celsius or
Speaker 2: eighty nine point six degrees fahrenheit, and soluble below that temperature.
Speaker 2: The machine, however, is described as essentially being a cotton
Speaker 2: candy machine in its core functions, so it's still spun
Speaker 2: out and created via the same process. And the interesting
Speaker 2: thing is, if you look at older writings about this research,
Speaker 2: prior experiment such as the one profile by NPR back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, actually involved sugar based cotton
Speaker 2: candy that then had a liquid polymer poured over it
Speaker 2: and then the sugar was washed out.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so you'd make cotton candy and then you'd
Speaker 3: use that as a mold and then you would melt
Speaker 3: the sugar away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So these really thin threads, again, thinner than a
Speaker 2: human hair standing in for the capillaries. You gel something
Speaker 2: around that and then you just melt out all the sugar,
Speaker 2: but those then those tiny little tunnels will remain and
Speaker 2: those can serve essentially as the capillary blood vessels for
Speaker 2: the organ that you would grow there.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently they managed to make that old method
Speaker 2: work to some extent and not just dissolve the candy
Speaker 2: capillaries before you could make use of them. But this
Speaker 2: pinipam method, this makes it more viable because this stuff
Speaker 2: is not going to disintegrate when a hydrogel is poured
Speaker 2: directly around it. So they describe this hydrogel as a
Speaker 2: gelatine with human cells in it, so like, and this
Speaker 2: is their description to jell O with bits of fruit,
Speaker 2: except the fruit is human cells. And this is poured
Speaker 2: around this capillary matrix that you've made this cotton candy essentially,
Speaker 2: and it's gelled in an incubator at thirty seven degrees
Speaker 2: celsius and then when it's brought out, it's allowed to cool,
Speaker 2: and when it's allowed to cool, that pin and pam
Speaker 2: floss in there, well, it dissolves, leaving behind that intricate
Speaker 2: network of microscale channels that could serve as artificial capillaries amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so Bellin's work and the work of his colleagues,
Speaker 2: this continues, and I'm to assume this technology, or something
Speaker 2: that has evolved out of it, remains part of their work.
Speaker 2: They might be getting away from the cotton candy comparisons,
Speaker 2: at least in the peer reviewed papers. But I was
Speaker 2: looking at a Vanderbilt A affiliated twenty twenty four paper
Speaker 2: in Biofabrication, the journal Biofabrication, on which Bellin was a
Speaker 2: co author, and it speaks of quote, solvent spinning to
Speaker 2: process the thermo responsive polymer solaplus into a sacrificial microfiber mesh,
Speaker 2: which is then employed to pattern a hydrog gel matrix.
Speaker 3: Okay, sounds like a similar principle.
Speaker 2: It sounds like, yeah, the similar principle, if not the
Speaker 2: same thing. So it seems like this isn't This doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be a case where we've abandoned the what
Speaker 2: at least began as cotton cut candy based artificial capillaries.
Speaker 2: It seems like this technological journey still ongoing, but it is.
Speaker 2: It's pretty exciting. I think we've talked about the idea
Speaker 2: of artificial organs on the show before and the idea
Speaker 2: of growing these out over some sort of scaffolding. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like you can again, you can build a big
Speaker 2: old house, but you've got to have working plumbing. You've
Speaker 2: got to have the wiring, and this is about making
Speaker 2: sure the wiring is in place. And as crazy as
Speaker 2: it may seem, cotton candy may have been the inspiration
Speaker 2: that will help make that possible down the road.
Speaker 3: Truly could not have known we would end up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like I said, biomedical applications for cotton candy,
Speaker 2: I did not expect it to be a thing, but
Speaker 2: it is. So that's inner space with cotton candy. But
Speaker 2: we also can go into outer space.
Speaker 3: Take me there, Rob, I don't even know where you're
Speaker 3: going with this.
Speaker 2: Well, well, we have cotton candy planets, or we have
Speaker 2: we have exoplanets that are sometimes described as cotton candy planets,
Speaker 2: more formally known as super puffs, which also sounds a
Speaker 2: bit silly puffy jupiters, also pretty silly cool. And then
Speaker 2: you'll find headlines that go as far as to call
Speaker 2: them clown planets.
Speaker 3: Surely the origin of the of the much discussed killer
Speaker 3: clowns exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, we don't know what their home world looks like.
Speaker 2: We have not We haven't gotten to see it in
Speaker 2: any of the Killer Clowns media to my knowledge, So
Speaker 2: this may be where they come from. All right. So
Speaker 2: obviously the idea of clown planets, cotton candy planets, or
Speaker 2: what have you, this brings brings to mind a lot
Speaker 2: of images. But what are we actually talking about here
Speaker 2: when we get past the headlines here. Well, essentially, these
Speaker 2: are lower mass gas giant sized exoplanets. Sometimes you'll see
Speaker 2: them described as cotton candy planets. They're older and less
Speaker 2: massive than hot Jupiter's. Possible explanations include atmospheric dust making
Speaker 2: them appear larger than they really are. They are also
Speaker 2: possible explanations that involve ring systems that serve to make
Speaker 2: them register as larger than they actually are, in either
Speaker 2: case making an Earth mass world registering as large as
Speaker 2: Neptune or bigger.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting. So basically just the idea is lower density
Speaker 3: planets than we would normally expect to see. We have
Speaker 3: a basic idea of how planets normally form, and we
Speaker 3: and they have a certain predictable type of density, and
Speaker 3: these are showing up as like kind of bigger and
Speaker 3: less massive.
Speaker 2: Right right, like, so they like their size as such,
Speaker 2: they're like the radius is such that they're on the
Speaker 2: scale of Jupiter's. But when we're looking at for them
Speaker 2: with say radial velocity, that's where we're looking at a
Speaker 2: star's spectrum as its planet's orbit and then shifts pointing
Speaker 2: to massive planets, like, they don't read as massive via
Speaker 2: the radial velocity.
Speaker 3: So then cotton candy, because cotton candy is low density,
Speaker 3: is whis correct?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, they're not necessarily they're not pink or purple,
Speaker 2: though I think I saw some accompanying illustrations which showed
Speaker 2: kind of like pink or purple worlds, which you know,
Speaker 2: fair enough, it helps bring in the eyeballs. But there
Speaker 2: are some examples of these. The main one I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about is WASP one ninety three B great
Speaker 2: name for a planet discovered in twenty twenty three. It
Speaker 2: is approximately one and eighty one light years from Earth,
Speaker 2: orbiting an F type star called WASP one ninety three
Speaker 2: in the WASP one ninety three system. It is a
Speaker 2: big planet. It is one point four sixty four times
Speaker 2: the radius of Jupiter. It is officially classified as a
Speaker 2: gas giant, but is discussed by Jennifer Chew for MIT
Speaker 2: News in twenty twenty four article Here is Astronomers spot
Speaker 2: a giant planet that is as light as cotton candy.
Speaker 2: Again the headlines will like to play up the candy.
Speaker 2: The two points out that it may be half again
Speaker 2: as large as Jupiter, but it is about a tenth
Speaker 2: as dense. Wow, and this is apparently extreme even so
Speaker 2: far as puffy jupiters are concerned. This made it more
Speaker 2: difficult to detect again coming down to the radial velocity,
Speaker 2: and the likely explanation that was at least discussed at
Speaker 2: the time was that it just had a highly inflated atmosphere,
Speaker 2: and this of course means we need to study its
Speaker 2: atmosphere in greater detail, you know, looking at how easily
Speaker 2: light travels through it and so forth. But apparently the
Speaker 2: very existence of worlds like this challenge some of what
Speaker 2: we hypothesize about planetary formation, you know, by some estimates,
Speaker 2: like we shouldn't be running into puffy jupiters, but they're
Speaker 2: out there and forces us to to look again at
Speaker 2: everything we thought we knew about planet formation. Another one
Speaker 2: is hat P one B. This one is five hundred
Speaker 2: and nineteen light years away from Earth. It's half the
Speaker 2: mass of Jupiter, but twenty percent larger. I don't know
Speaker 2: if this would directly qualify as a science fiction example
Speaker 2: of this, but it made me think about something I
Speaker 2: saw in the recent series Star Wars Skeleton Crew, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, is a lot of fun. Of you
Speaker 2: out there is at least halfway interested and you haven't
Speaker 2: watched it yet. It has kind of like a Goonies
Speaker 2: esque quality to it. Kids on an adventure in the
Speaker 2: Star Wars universe, their space pirates. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: We really enjoyed watching it. But at one point, only
Speaker 2: mild spoilers here, you do encounter a world that looks
Speaker 2: like it's some sort of a gas giant, but it's
Speaker 2: actually an earth like world at the center of a
Speaker 2: essentially like an artificial ring system or some sort of
Speaker 2: a disguise system that's set in place, so sort of
Speaker 2: an artificial puffy Jupiter to some extent stealth planet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it's there's something hidden there, you know, like pirates, treasure,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Now that's not to imply that, yes.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I think we both at the same time thought
Speaker 3: where people might be running with this, not to imply
Speaker 3: there's any reason to think that about these exoplants.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, I did not see anybody even chatting about
Speaker 2: the possibility that puffy jupiters are you know, are are
Speaker 2: some sort of artificial structure or or potentially a signal
Speaker 2: of any kind of like alien technology. No, that doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be the case at all. But they are
Speaker 2: mysterious in their own right, and again possibly in our
Speaker 2: estimates the home worlds of the killer Clowns.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I fell silent for a second because my mind
Speaker 3: has been spinning. And here's what it was. What happens
Speaker 3: to you if you are one of those who is
Speaker 3: a maker and user of infringing machines, infringing upon the
Speaker 3: intellectual property of the Electric Candy Machine Company of Nashville.
Speaker 3: I think they send the clowns after you.
Speaker 2: Probably so, they're probably the enforcers. As we discussed in
Speaker 2: the last episode, they use cotton candy based weaponry.
Speaker 3: You're out there whipping up a cone and the children
Speaker 3: fall silent, you hear ten? All right?
Speaker 2: Well, I think on that note, we have we have
Speaker 2: finished our cotton candy exploration here. But again, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there. What is your relationship
Speaker 2: with cotton candy, your nostalgic memories, your current frustrations, your
Speaker 2: your very what if your travels reveal? What kind of
Speaker 2: cotton candy do they have in your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2: Have you tried Dragon's Beard candy or any of the
Speaker 2: various international cotton candy adjacent treats, all of it's fair game.
Speaker 2: Send your thoughts, to send your pictures. We'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from you.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact app Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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