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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know

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Speaker 1: from how stuff Works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, staff writer here at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And with me for the first

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Speaker 1: of what I only hope will be many times is

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Speaker 1: my fellow staff writer staff writer extraordinary actually, Charles Bryant. Great,

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Speaker 1: those very kind things. Yeah, yeah, well thanks for coming.

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Speaker 1: Appreciate it. So, Chuck, I have a question for you.

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Speaker 1: When you were a kid and you popped a piece

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Speaker 1: of gum in your mouth, were you ever told that

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Speaker 1: if you swallowed it that it would stay in you

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Speaker 1: for seven years? I was. I was told that all

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Speaker 1: the time, and I don't choose them today for that reason. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's that's horrible, because, as it turns out, that's a

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Speaker 1: that's a lie perpetrated by adults on young children, which

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Speaker 1: is terrible in and of itself. But um, you want

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Speaker 1: to tell us what gum is, Well, yeah, I'm really

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Speaker 1: not sure why they would say things like this because

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Speaker 1: gum is really kind of harmless. I don't know who

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Speaker 1: started that whole the whole lie, but gum is really

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Speaker 1: just four different things. Josh. It's it's a flavor, it's sweetener,

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Speaker 1: it's softener, and it's the gun base. And uh, the

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Speaker 1: good news is that three of those things can be

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Speaker 1: broken down by our body. Yeah, and uh it's you know,

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Speaker 1: when those things break down actually is when gum loses

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Speaker 1: its flavor, which is when most people toss come out.

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Speaker 1: But I understand you actually swallow your gum. I loved

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Speaker 1: to swallow my gum. I haven't spent a piece of

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Speaker 1: gum out since I was like two years old. So

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Speaker 1: when I was researching this, I was I was really

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Speaker 1: glad to find, you know, personally that that that it

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Speaker 1: isn't true at all. I bet, I bet that was

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Speaker 1: pretty scary before it was for you. You know that

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Speaker 1: that basse you were talking about. The the component in

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Speaker 1: question right actually dates back to about eighteen sixty a

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Speaker 1: guy named General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Does that

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Speaker 1: name ring a bell? Uh? You know, I think I've

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Speaker 1: heard of him. But what he was the guy who

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Speaker 1: captured the albuma actually slaughtered all of the defenders inside

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Speaker 1: right were remember him? Well? No, you you remember the

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Speaker 1: guys who are defending it. Actually that probably depends on

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Speaker 1: whether you're from Mexico or the US. Uh yeah, two

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Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. But anyway, Uh. Santa Anna

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Speaker 1: achieved later fame, well kind of fame, by introducing chickle

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Speaker 1: to a guy named Thomas Adams, and his name might

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Speaker 1: also ring a bell. He made that awful gum what

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Speaker 1: a black liquorice gum. But Adams made a mint off

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Speaker 1: of it, and he actually had a contract with Santa Anna.

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Speaker 1: Um too, I guess sharing the proceeds since Santa Anna

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Speaker 1: introduced him introduced a chickle to him. But chickle is

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Speaker 1: you know, it's the gum base Yeah cheek lay actually,

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Speaker 1: uh it was. It basically took gum into the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century or the twenties century, now the twenty feet century.

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Speaker 1: So um. Thomas Adams actually didn't honor his contract, and

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Speaker 1: by this time Santa Anna, who was in exile and

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Speaker 1: um had lost a leg, was now left any listen

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Speaker 1: destitute New York thanks to Adams getting us penny listen

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Speaker 1: and legless penny listen legless. Yeah, not a good combination, um,

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Speaker 1: But long story short, Santa Anna introduced this component uh

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Speaker 1: that that that mothers everywhere have lied to their children

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Speaker 1: about not being digestible to gum. So, I mean, if

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Speaker 1: we have this base, if we have this uh, this

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Speaker 1: this item in question, what you know that can't be

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Speaker 1: broken down? You know? Why? Why doesn't it stick around? Well,

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Speaker 1: it's basically like anything else you put in your mouth,

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Speaker 1: josh uh. It goes down your esophagus and into your stomach,

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Speaker 1: and enzymes and acids kind of start bubbling up and

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Speaker 1: they break everything down. So far, so good. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: then what can't be broken down there um gets broken

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Speaker 1: down in the intestines. Um, Your liver and pancreas kind

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Speaker 1: of help out the intestines there. And then what's left

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Speaker 1: after that is just the gun base, and that moves

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Speaker 1: into your colon and it's pretty much a one way

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Speaker 1: street from there. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to go

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Speaker 1: the other way because they could be very bad. And

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Speaker 1: actually there have been a couple of occasions that that

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Speaker 1: support from this this old wives tale at gum stays

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Speaker 1: in you for seven years. The poor kid as we

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Speaker 1: call him, we yeah, we've been calling him around the

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Speaker 1: office poor kid, right uh and and quite rightly. Poor

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Speaker 1: Kid was a four year old who had suffered intense

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Speaker 1: constipation for half of his life, two years, and it's

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Speaker 1: no wonder why No, Actually, his parents, it turns out,

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Speaker 1: had been um potty training him and any time he

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Speaker 1: was successful, they gave him a piece of gum. And

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Speaker 1: apparently this kid was really successful. He was good on

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Speaker 1: the potty, Yeah he was. He was getting like five

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Speaker 1: to seven pieces of gum a day and swallowing all

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Speaker 1: of them. So I guess his parents were really focused

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Speaker 1: on the potty training and not the fact that he

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Speaker 1: wasn't spinning this gum out. And you know what was

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Speaker 1: the result, Well, well, poor kids taken to the doctor.

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Speaker 1: The doctors finally, I guess, crack them open and they

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Speaker 1: find um, which is, I guess described by the finest

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Speaker 1: assemblage of words I've ever seen in my entire life,

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Speaker 1: a taffy like trail of fecal material real and poor kid, yeah,

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Speaker 1: ter right. So well, the good news is that they

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Speaker 1: were able to suction all this out of his rectum

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Speaker 1: and send him along his merry way, which I imagine

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Speaker 1: was a life changing experience for poor kiddy. He does

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Speaker 1: stand as a cautionary tale, though, although he didn't crack

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Speaker 1: the seven year mark, he was only four when this

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Speaker 1: procedure was done, which is, I guess a good thing

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Speaker 1: for everybody, right, and the world will never know. It's

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Speaker 1: like a tipsy pop right, how many lives? If you

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Speaker 1: want to know any more gross stuff about gum and

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Speaker 1: digestion get rida? Does gum really stay in you? For

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Speaker 1: seven years on how stuff works dot com. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send

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Speaker 1: an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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