Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Almost everyone has a morning routine.
Speaker 1: They wake up, take a shower, get dressed, and, perhaps
Speaker 1: the most important step of all, they make some coffee.
Speaker 1: Some may even forego the homemade stuff and instead opt
Speaker 1: for a professionally prepared brew at their local coffeehouse. From
Speaker 1: chain stores to mom and pop, there's something special about
Speaker 1: settling into a comfy chair and sipping a piping hot latte.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the smell of the beans brewing, or the
Speaker 1: din of the surrounding conversations that makes these spaces so alluring.
Speaker 1: Not everyone finds them enjoyable, though, King Charles the Second
Speaker 1: was faced with a dilemma in six five. The English
Speaker 1: coffee houses were responsible for paying significant taxes, but they
Speaker 1: also became hotbeds of political activity. Dissidents had been known
Speaker 1: to meet inside them to conspire against the King. It
Speaker 1: wasn't uncommon for such establishments to face closure or increased
Speaker 1: taxes as a result. During the mid eighteenth century, Swedish
Speaker 1: King Adolph Frederick banned coffee outright. He claimed it made
Speaker 1: his subjects behave improperly. Unsurprisingly, that didn't stop the rich
Speaker 1: from drinking it and the poor from bootlegging it. When
Speaker 1: Gustav the Third ascended the throne years later, he too
Speaker 1: made sure coffee stayed out of the mouths of Swedish people.
Speaker 1: He believed it was so unhealthy that had actually killed
Speaker 1: those who consumed it, and to prove it, he came
Speaker 1: up with an experiment. He chose two men who had
Speaker 1: been sentenced to death for murder. One was told to
Speaker 1: drink three pots of coffee each day. The other was
Speaker 1: given three pots of tea to drink each day. Not
Speaker 1: exactly torture, but Gustav thought it would be. When he
Speaker 1: saw that the coffee drinker was still alive and well
Speaker 1: at the end of the experiment, he was furious, and
Speaker 1: the prisoner didn't just survive his harrowing ordeal. He outlived
Speaker 1: King Gustav, who was assassinated by masked men during a
Speaker 1: masquerade ball. A short while later in Germany, though coffee
Speaker 1: was not considered poison and coffee houses weren't known as
Speaker 1: dens of conspiracy. They were places to gather and enjoy
Speaker 1: each other's company. One particular house became the hottest spot
Speaker 1: in Leipzig, but it wasn't because of the coffee. It
Speaker 1: was called Cafe Zimmerman, owned and operated by man named
Speaker 1: Gottfried Zimmerman in the early seventeen hundreds, the cafe was
Speaker 1: a popular destination for middle class gentlemen interested in a
Speaker 1: fine cup of coffee and frequently live music. Women were
Speaker 1: not allowed to visit coffee houses at the time unless
Speaker 1: they were attending live concerts by local musicians. In fact,
Speaker 1: Cafe Zimmerman became a hotspot in what was essentially a
Speaker 1: college town, drawing university students who were part of the
Speaker 1: Collegium music Um. The collegium was founded in seventeen o
Speaker 1: two by George Philip Telemann, German composer who wrote over
Speaker 1: three thousand pieces of music over the course of his life.
Speaker 1: But after several years with his organization, he passed his
Speaker 1: duties onto another director, and each new director of the
Speaker 1: Collegium music Um held the title for a short time
Speaker 1: before handing it on to the next composer in line.
Speaker 1: The group was comprised mainly of university students who performed
Speaker 1: works by the current director and other famous composers of
Speaker 1: their time. They would meet at Cafe Zimmerman several times
Speaker 1: a week to play for the gathering crowds. The cafes
Speaker 1: owner even bought some of the larger instruments to have
Speaker 1: on hand, the kinds that musicians might only have used
Speaker 1: at school due to their size or cost, like harpsichords
Speaker 1: and double bays, and if you step back and think
Speaker 1: about it, Cafe Zimmerman was home to some of the
Speaker 1: first open mic nights, albeit without the mic. It gave
Speaker 1: student musicians, people who might not have been ready to
Speaker 1: play in grand theaters and opera houses, the chance to
Speaker 1: perform for live audiences. The activity became so popular that
Speaker 1: other collegiate music com were formed. They too began performing
Speaker 1: at Cafe Zimmerman for the evening crowds. The original collegium, however,
Speaker 1: the one started by Telemann, had a sure fire away
Speaker 1: to draw the biggest audiences to the shop. It was
Speaker 1: all thanks to its latest director, George Shot. One of
Speaker 1: shots friends was a composer in need of some help.
Speaker 1: He had written a series of cantatas with large orchestrations,
Speaker 1: but no way of performing them. Conveniently, Shot had a
Speaker 1: group of musicians at his disposal. He and his group
Speaker 1: put on several concerts at Cafe Zimmerman where they performed
Speaker 1: these new cantatas, and they were a hit. It was
Speaker 1: no surprise though, after all, his friend had composed the
Speaker 1: famous Brandenburg Concertos only a few years earlier, and in
Speaker 1: seventy nine, when Shot left the group to take on
Speaker 1: a new role elsewhere, that same friend stepped in as
Speaker 1: the new director. Perhaps he liked how they performed his
Speaker 1: pieces and his name, Johann Sebastian Bach. Prohibition was a
Speaker 1: bad time, at least for yeast. That's what got the J.
Speaker 1: Walter Thompson Company together in nineteen nine because they had
Speaker 1: been brought in to turn things around, and they weren't
Speaker 1: playing for small bills. Know their clients was the biggest
Speaker 1: in the yeast business. Whatever size other yeast merchants were
Speaker 1: in American cities and towns, they had barely risen past
Speaker 1: five percent of the bakers and home cooks who were
Speaker 1: ordering yeast in American catalogs and buying it off grocery
Speaker 1: store shelves by J. Walter Thompson's accounting their client and
Speaker 1: had more than nine of the yeast sales in America,
Speaker 1: and they got that way on purpose. As their business
Speaker 1: grew from the late eighteen hundreds to nineteen nineteen, their
Speaker 1: yeast salesman had proliferated across the country and undercut the
Speaker 1: sales from smaller operations. Now they controlled yeast, and in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds that also meant distilled liquor and beer.
Speaker 1: They were raking in money from all directions. But prohibition
Speaker 1: was set to hit the next year nine and the
Speaker 1: Yeast Kings knew it would reduce the very profitable liquor
Speaker 1: side of their business. Anyone in their business who wanted
Speaker 1: to fill in the gap in profit that would have
Speaker 1: been left there would have to figure out what else
Speaker 1: yeast could do besides fermenting alcohol. So that's what brought J.
Speaker 1: Walter Thompson to the table. You see, they were advertisers.
Speaker 1: When there was something to sell, they were the best
Speaker 1: in the business, and now they would be pitching yeast.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for the Yeast Kings, the ad men at J.
Speaker 1: Walter Thompson had some ideas. It started with some novel
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about food that had bubbled up since
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven. That's when a Polish biochemist named Casimir Funk
Speaker 1: coined a new term that we've all heard of, vitamin.
Speaker 1: For a while, there was some debate about what exactly
Speaker 1: it meant for there to be vitamins and food. They
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be something you could taste, and there
Speaker 1: wasn't any way to know if they were actually in there.
Speaker 1: But now nutrition scientists were saying that you couldn't just
Speaker 1: judge your food by how filling it was or how
Speaker 1: good it tasted. And a series of stories about vitamins
Speaker 1: was published in Good Housekeeping in nineteen fourteen, which convinced
Speaker 1: readers across America that they needed to find these mysterious
Speaker 1: things called vitamins, and they had to eat as many
Speaker 1: of them as they could, and that's something that an
Speaker 1: advertiser can work with now. The Yeast company sold their
Speaker 1: products in compressed cakes wrapped in tinfoil, so J. Walter
Speaker 1: Thompson launched a campaign to tell Americans that those little
Speaker 1: blocks of yeast were the keys to health, wealth, and success,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like they had nothing to go on.
Speaker 1: A chemist named Atherton Sidell had actually published some research
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen showing that brewers yeast had enough nutrients
Speaker 1: in it to help people recover from some vitamin deficiencies
Speaker 1: behind conditions like scurvy. Soon enough, the Yeast for Health
Speaker 1: campaign had begun. Advertisements flew out to readers across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeast will cure your indigestion. Yeast will give you energy.
Speaker 1: But it didn't stop there. Soon enough, eating yeast cakes
Speaker 1: right from the foil was being declared a miraculous cure
Speaker 1: for that scourge of teenagers everywhere acne. Yeast was even
Speaker 1: proclaimed to be a cure for the common cold. After all,
Speaker 1: it was full of those new vitamins people kept hearing about.
Speaker 1: The Yeast company even paid for a professor at Jefferson
Speaker 1: Medical College in Philadelphia to publish a study saying that
Speaker 1: yeast was proven to cure all these problems, and a
Speaker 1: special booklet called Yeast Therapy soon followed. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: the ads worked. Care sales did fall during Prohibition that
Speaker 1: even in the years of the Great Depression, the sales
Speaker 1: of yeast cakes tripled. The Yeast for Health campaign pushed
Speaker 1: compressed cakes into the hands and mouths of kids and
Speaker 1: adults at unprecedented levels. But when this new burst of
Speaker 1: sales leveled off at the end of the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: J Walter Thompson shifted into a higher gear. The next
Speaker 1: round of advertisements featured pictures of stern European doctors with
Speaker 1: the miracle testimonies of how yeast had healed even more
Speaker 1: severe and mysterious conditions for their patients. By the final
Speaker 1: ad campaigns, they were declaring that yeast was even better
Speaker 1: for you than fruits and vegetables. It would cure and
Speaker 1: this is a quote, bad tongue, bad breath, bad skin
Speaker 1: because of all those vitamins. I'm sure the Yeast for
Speaker 1: Health made them rich and a campaign did them proud.
Speaker 1: The Federal Trade Commission less, so in nineteen thirty one
Speaker 1: they issued a cease and desist the ads, they said
Speaker 1: were misleading at best. Soon enough, the FTC was locked
Speaker 1: in a fight with the yeast Kings, a battle that
Speaker 1: lasted years as the government tried to scale back the
Speaker 1: level of falsehoods that were being printed in papers across
Speaker 1: the country. While the ad agencies then struggled mightily to
Speaker 1: keep sales rising with more and more outlandish claims. The
Speaker 1: Yeast for Health campaign came to an end in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, and soon enough yeast cakes were out as well.
Speaker 1: But the yeast Kings landed on a new innovation, active
Speaker 1: dried yeast, and ironically, the enemy of our old campaigns
Speaker 1: became a major client because a Second World War in
Speaker 1: Europe was just beginning and armies needed food, so in
Speaker 1: the U s government was purchasing huge amounts of active
Speaker 1: dry yeast to ship with their military supplies. Not to
Speaker 1: mention the new revenue flow thanks to the end of prohibition,
Speaker 1: it kept the Yeast Kings alive. Eventually, the Fleischmann family
Speaker 1: sold the brand name to their innovative yeast products to
Speaker 1: other food conglomerates, and the liquor side of the business
Speaker 1: was spun off on its own in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: But the sales kept rising, so much so that you
Speaker 1: can still buy yeast under the same brand name today.
Speaker 1: Fleischmann's Active Dry Yeast is on your grocery store shelf
Speaker 1: right now, just waiting for you to pick up and
Speaker 1: get cooking. Even if it actually won't cure what ails you.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,