Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Robert, I've got a question for you about childhood.
Speaker 1: Did your elementary school have draconian anti gum policies? Um,
Speaker 1: there was definitely and there were definitely anti gum policies,
Speaker 1: and I and I agree with him. I mean, at
Speaker 1: the time, I don't think it was a big gum
Speaker 1: cheer at the time, so they didn't really impact me
Speaker 1: all that much. But but but ultimately, like I don't
Speaker 1: like stepping in gum, I don't like encountering gum stuck
Speaker 1: to the bottom of deaths or inside deaths. So I
Speaker 1: never really had a problem with it. I think maybe
Speaker 1: my confused. I mean, I wasn't a huge gum cheer
Speaker 1: as a child, but I do remember thinking about the
Speaker 1: gum rule. This just doesn't make sense, it's not fair.
Speaker 1: It was one of my first real, uh you know,
Speaker 1: thought processes of rebelling against authority and the rules imposed
Speaker 1: by the man. Because other rules were like, you know,
Speaker 1: don't hit people, don't steal from people, like they all
Speaker 1: caused harm to someone. I was thinking what harm does
Speaker 1: it do when someone choose gum? Now I understand the
Speaker 1: adult perspective. It's I think primarily because it's like gross,
Speaker 1: and because the gum ends up somewhere, it shouldn't right.
Speaker 1: The gum ends up somewhere, it shouldn't be Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also just especially if it's bubble gum. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I still I'm kind of anti bubble gum, Like there's
Speaker 1: not okay. It can be fun to blow a bubble,
Speaker 1: I guess, but it's just kind of weird. I don't know,
Speaker 1: And I've I've I've taught before, and I don't specifically
Speaker 1: remember encountering gum chewers. Maybe I did, but I think
Speaker 1: if if I didn't find it annoying, I feel like
Speaker 1: I would find it annoying, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like just looking out there and there there's somebody chewing,
Speaker 1: and then it's probably if you've ever experienced any level
Speaker 1: of miss aphonia, like gum chewing can definitely set off
Speaker 1: miss aphonia, especially if it's like gum smacking, you know
Speaker 1: where it's like open mouth chewing of the gum. I
Speaker 1: am less annoyed by memories of students chewing gum, which
Speaker 1: I don't really have. I do remember students in my
Speaker 1: classes eating just eating lunch and stuff, which I never
Speaker 1: knew if I should make a big deal about that
Speaker 1: or not. It's just one of those things that in
Speaker 1: retrospect I probably should have forbidden but didn't. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, I do. I chew a lot of gum today.
Speaker 1: I like, if I'm in the car, I will probably
Speaker 1: even if I don't really need it, I'll generally grab
Speaker 1: a piece of sugar free gum and and chew it
Speaker 1: a bit. And it's uh sometimes it's not even like
Speaker 1: a breath freshening exercise. Uh Like this morning, I put
Speaker 1: one in my mouth on the way into work, and
Speaker 1: I had looked just brush my teeth, so there was
Speaker 1: no like real like freshness issue at hand. It was
Speaker 1: just I just wanted the sensation of chewing the gum.
Speaker 1: It's a good way of getting the goat blood off
Speaker 1: of your teeth. Now that being said, it is I
Speaker 1: think it's super handy to be able to turn the
Speaker 1: gum if you know you need a little something to
Speaker 1: freshen your breath up after you've just said a meal
Speaker 1: out and you don't have access to toothpaste and toothbrush. Um.
Speaker 1: It can be it can also be be great while working.
Speaker 1: It's you know, while you're studying, writing, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: I've also I've heard of other people like growing to
Speaker 1: depend on it in certain tasks. Like here's one I've
Speaker 1: never quite understood, but I have heard that some professional
Speaker 1: wrestlers not only chew gum while wrestling, but depend on it.
Speaker 1: Like if they are not chewing the gum, it like
Speaker 1: throws off their their their rhythm or something choking hazard. Right, well,
Speaker 1: one would think, right, I mean I as a as
Speaker 1: a father, like I definitely if my son were running
Speaker 1: around chewing gum, I would probably decide said to give
Speaker 1: him the whole, like you're going to choke on that
Speaker 1: if you if you run. But uh yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: whole thing with with professional refers professional athletes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obviously big league Chew's named for uh, you know,
Speaker 1: for big for Major League Baseball players, who I guess
Speaker 1: we're you know, generally chewing tobacco in the old days,
Speaker 1: but but still chew gum. You'll still see professional athletes
Speaker 1: chewing gum during the events. I think one thing that's funny.
Speaker 1: But big league chew is that it's the most unnecessarily
Speaker 1: macho of candies. And yet if you look back in history,
Speaker 1: there is often a very gendered component to people's judgment
Speaker 1: of gum chewing behaviors in which gum chewing is. Uh
Speaker 1: is in many points in societies and history associated with women,
Speaker 1: and especially young women, and looked on judgmentally. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I've got a little ditty from the British Medical Journal
Speaker 1: in you want to hear some gum hate? Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: hear it. Okay. The question has been raised whether there
Speaker 1: is any reason for supposing that the practice of gum
Speaker 1: chewing so prevalent in the United States, is on the
Speaker 1: increase in this country. We have made some inquiries and
Speaker 1: have ascertained that many young women, students, actresses, and others
Speaker 1: appear to have acquired this disgusting habit and are inveterate chewers.
Speaker 1: We have examined specimens of chewing gum obtained from various
Speaker 1: fashionable sweet shops in London and find that, as a rule,
Speaker 1: it consists of rubber flavored with aniseed or peppermint or
Speaker 1: some of their aromatic substance. Now I catch more than
Speaker 1: a hint of misogyny and all of that, especially singling
Speaker 1: out um students and actress actresses. So it's like, like
Speaker 1: women in society, independent, young women that are that have
Speaker 1: some level of independence are the ones that are being
Speaker 1: singled out as being disgusting gum chewers and the gum itself,
Speaker 1: like you're talking about like peppermint flavored, uh, you know, rubber.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's that? It sounds pleasant, doesn't sound that
Speaker 1: disgusting with this disgusting habit. I've got a response to
Speaker 1: this article from the British Medical Journal. This response is
Speaker 1: in the North American Practitioner the next year eight just
Speaker 1: a couple of selections from it. Our English contemporaries are
Speaker 1: taking our people to task as well they may, for
Speaker 1: the vile, as they term it, the American habit of
Speaker 1: gum chewing. We submit no defense to the charge and
Speaker 1: are only consoled by the fact that the habit is
Speaker 1: less disgusting than that of tobacco chewing. Our confreres have
Speaker 1: our profound sympathy in their efforts to promote reform. At
Speaker 1: the same time, we prefer to see jaw jumpers consigned
Speaker 1: to the minor bad rather than the bad irremediable. We
Speaker 1: regret that this fat is classed as an American industry. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the fact is too patent for denial, and there is
Speaker 1: no accounting for taste. Jaw jumpers never heard that before,
Speaker 1: but I think I get what they're saying, because did
Speaker 1: you know the kid when you were in elementary school
Speaker 1: who didn't just chew gum but did the like exaggerated
Speaker 1: a huge up and down movement of the jaw that
Speaker 1: I guess I vaguely remember you know saying, but I
Speaker 1: was sometimes I would think that that's part of just
Speaker 1: having too much gum in your mouth, or deciding to
Speaker 1: refreshing a you know, like a completely drained piece of
Speaker 1: gum with a second piece of gum, which you know
Speaker 1: might have seen like a good idea when kid. One
Speaker 1: more follow up to the b m J article. I
Speaker 1: was reading about this in a book by Carrie Segrave
Speaker 1: called Chewing Gum in America eighteen fifty nineteen twenty uh.
Speaker 1: This books from so it notes that this original British
Speaker 1: Medical Journal article was reprinted in the Daily Mail shortly
Speaker 1: after appearing in the b MJ, and the printing actually
Speaker 1: prompted an editorial response that included an interview with this
Speaker 1: guy named Hubert Beaumont, who was managing director of a
Speaker 1: retail shop called Fuller's, which sold chewing gum, and Beaumont
Speaker 1: was defensive. He insisted that the British Medical Journal was
Speaker 1: wrong that chewing gum was not made out of rubber,
Speaker 1: but out of sap that came from a tree that
Speaker 1: grow in Mexico. Quote it is a purely vegetable substance
Speaker 1: and perfectly harmless. And he also defended gum chewing from
Speaker 1: the charge that it was disgusting, basically saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: people have been chewing stuff for a long time. So
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna look at for the rest of
Speaker 1: today's episode, the history and invention of various forms of
Speaker 1: chewing gum. Look at the history of this disgusting habit,
Speaker 1: the invention of several different versions of gum across the years,
Speaker 1: and what are gums says about us? I do want
Speaker 1: to say that another time when I usually have to
Speaker 1: chew gum, or I really prefer to chew gum, is
Speaker 1: if I am, you know, flying or driving up into
Speaker 1: the mountains, and the sort of thing where you're gonna. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we're encountering pressure changes, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's great to can help relieve leave pressure in
Speaker 1: the in the years. You know, I'm doing large part
Speaker 1: because chewing it and certainly feel your face the next
Speaker 1: time you're chewing. I mean, it is a uh, it
Speaker 1: involves so many different muscles of the head and face
Speaker 1: like it's a it's it's a it's a major muscular activity.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point about the pressure change. I
Speaker 1: did not go there. I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: go to anxiety. I know you're you can get a
Speaker 1: little anxious on an airplane. Oh no, well, there are
Speaker 1: other things I prefer to gum for that. But but
Speaker 1: I don't know that. There are those who speak maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get into this a little later that speak to
Speaker 1: the angs siety um, the use of gum to at
Speaker 1: least mildly treat anxiety. Well, I mean, I think about
Speaker 1: the behaviors of some animals where symptoms of anxiety or
Speaker 1: anxiety like conditions in some animals can manifest as chewing behaviors.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, let's let's talk about about chewing itself,
Speaker 1: because ultimately that's the main activity at play here. So
Speaker 1: chewing is good, chewing is necessary, It's okay, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's great. It's grateful for the members of the animal
Speaker 1: kingdom that engage in chewing, which of course includes us.
Speaker 1: It allows us to take the first steps toward digestion.
Speaker 1: So you're breaking your food down into smaller pieces and
Speaker 1: also increasing the overall surface area of the food, and
Speaker 1: this will speed up the effectiveness of digestion. And then
Speaker 1: chewing also releases flavors, you know, often very pleasurable flavors
Speaker 1: and uh. And this is all part of the sensory
Speaker 1: perception of the material that we're testing out and potentially eating.
Speaker 1: And that's easy to forget, like why do we taste things.
Speaker 1: We taste things to figure out to know what they are.
Speaker 1: You know, this mix of taste and smell that's happening
Speaker 1: inside your skull as you mash the leaf for the
Speaker 1: stem or maybe a bug or a piece of flesh,
Speaker 1: as you chew it up, as you masticate it um,
Speaker 1: you're you're sensing it. You're getting a sense of what
Speaker 1: this is. And and ultimately this is supposed to play
Speaker 1: into the decision whether or not to form it into
Speaker 1: a bolus with your your tongue in the back of
Speaker 1: your throat and send it down to the next step.
Speaker 1: Very appetizing to think about while you're actually eating. Yes,
Speaker 1: I hope everybody's eating while they or maybe you're at
Speaker 1: least chewing gup. But there's also in addition to just
Speaker 1: the pure mashing with the teeth, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of sort of chemical treatment of the food as you're
Speaker 1: you're chewing it up to right. Oh, yeah, the act
Speaker 1: of chewing produces saliva, which plays a key role in
Speaker 1: this first phase of digestion and again the ultimate preparation
Speaker 1: of the bulus that will pass onto the realms below
Speaker 1: and so fetal. For these reasons, chewing is especially important
Speaker 1: to herbivore as an omnivores. Right, so if you want
Speaker 1: to like mash up tough fibrous plant material with your
Speaker 1: teeth so you can get more nutrients out of it.
Speaker 1: You notice there are some animals that don't chew at all,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be carnivores. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: I think about like snakes. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: there may be some cases of snakes doing something like chewing,
Speaker 1: but generally, you know, they're going to be swallowing their
Speaker 1: prey mostly whole, right, Yeah. Another a big example, of course,
Speaker 1: the sperm whale, you know which one, just inhale. A
Speaker 1: lot of fish also fish also do this as well,
Speaker 1: an inhalation of the entire organism. The ending of anaconda
Speaker 1: wouldn't be quite the same if John Voyd had been
Speaker 1: chewed up before being swallowed exactly. There is cinematic payoff
Speaker 1: to that, for sure. Now, there have been those who put,
Speaker 1: you know, excessive emphasis on chewing. For instance, I have
Speaker 1: to mention the work of Horace Fletcher, who's he Oh,
Speaker 1: he lived eighty nine through nineteen nineteen, and he was
Speaker 1: known as the Great masticator for and he was known
Speaker 1: by this moniker because of his teachings of fletcherizing. So
Speaker 1: basically his idea was that not only did you need
Speaker 1: to chew your food, because we've all heard that, right,
Speaker 1: and you know we've we've heard somebody say that to
Speaker 1: a child. Makes yeah, chew, cheo your food to your food,
Speaker 1: don't just you know, swallowed. But he was he would
Speaker 1: he would have argued that you need to chew your
Speaker 1: food to the point of liquefication in order to properly
Speaker 1: digest it and just count your chooes, etcetera. And uh
Speaker 1: he he had some nice slogans for this, like this
Speaker 1: was his big issue, and one of them was nature
Speaker 1: will castigate those who don't masticate. Um, wait, so this
Speaker 1: is this is the first smoothie king, well before you
Speaker 1: had blenders. This guy's doing an organic smoothie revolution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have loved a vitam X, you know. But
Speaker 1: but he was also you know, arguing that that chewing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's releasing the saliva and you need a
Speaker 1: certain amount of saliva to be produced. So he was
Speaker 1: all all part of it had to do with this,
Speaker 1: with the idea of like all the things that chewing
Speaker 1: is actually doing and some these things you know, saliva
Speaker 1: is important. Is it's so important that you need to
Speaker 1: chew your drinks like that, because that was something you
Speaker 1: are like, if you're you're you're having a you're drinking something,
Speaker 1: you need to chew your drink as well, just to
Speaker 1: make sure the salive is being produced. But a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of people were, you know, we're sucked
Speaker 1: in by this h this line of thinking, including Dr
Speaker 1: John Harvey Kellogg's a surprise. Yeah, he was an adherent,
Speaker 1: though Kellogg eventually abandoned fletcherizing because he realized that already
Speaker 1: decided that fiber was more important and that fletcherizing might
Speaker 1: get in the way of taking in that necessary fiber.
Speaker 1: Well stopped clock rule. I mean, John Harvey Kellogg was
Speaker 1: mostly a crank. But fiber is very important, important to
Speaker 1: have a lot in your diet. But also wasn't John
Speaker 1: Harvey Kellogg an advocate of like boring foods. Didn't he
Speaker 1: suggest like you need to eat foods that aren't going
Speaker 1: to like excite the libido and stuff. He had a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas, some of which, now some of them
Speaker 1: were definitely, um, you know, quackery, like fletcherizing. Um yeah.
Speaker 1: He also got into abstinence being an essential part of
Speaker 1: his his his his plan for a better life. But
Speaker 1: then you know, also we've got cereal, some cereals out
Speaker 1: of the mix. Yeah, so so yeah, chewing is important,
Speaker 1: but not fletcherizing level of important. As we said, already,
Speaker 1: mastication entails a whole host of facial merchant muscles, so
Speaker 1: a certain amount of energy goes into the act. And
Speaker 1: if you just look around at our fellow humans, yes,
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of gum chewing, but you'll also
Speaker 1: probably notice a lot of other things whin wind up
Speaker 1: being chewed by humans. Things like tobacco for sure, but
Speaker 1: also various herbal chooes, pencils, pins, toothpicks. Oh, don't chew toothpicks, folks.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying, you see
Speaker 1: it happened. No, I know we're not recommending any of these,
Speaker 1: but especially don't chew toothpicks. Um. You'll see people chewing uh, pacifiers,
Speaker 1: Sometimes adults will cho past fires that light up uh.
Speaker 1: And then also night you never heard that, Well, you
Speaker 1: see some people like it's like a raver. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's still done, but I used to one
Speaker 1: would see it and then uh. Then I myself, I
Speaker 1: use a night guard at night, and sometimes I think
Speaker 1: of that as chewing, Like basically I'm putting a chew
Speaker 1: toy in my mouth and chewing it all night. But
Speaker 1: I do have to drive home that this is actually
Speaker 1: bruxi is um, which is excessive teeth grinding or jaw clenching,
Speaker 1: and it's unrelated to eating. Likewise, there are various chewing
Speaker 1: disorders and animals as well, that shouldn't necessarily be confused
Speaker 1: for examples of normal eating or anything resembling recreational chewing.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering about this though, so so, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if we see humans chewing things in many cases
Speaker 1: seemingly purely for the act of chewing, like you're chewing
Speaker 1: on the end of that pin, why you're not gaining
Speaker 1: any nutrients from that pin? You just must you want
Speaker 1: something to chew? Uh? And I wonder, sorry, I just
Speaker 1: don't know. I thought about ice chewing. Ice chewing. Ice
Speaker 1: chewing freaks me out. I know millions of you out
Speaker 1: there probably do it, but it's just please don't do
Speaker 1: it around me. It gives me the creepy. Well, there's
Speaker 1: there's But my point is there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: we chew and why, And so I was wondering about this,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if, to a certain extent this is
Speaker 1: because this is like stemming back to a time in
Speaker 1: our prehistory in which we were always gathering edible materials.
Speaker 1: You know, we were hunter gatherers, and as we gathered,
Speaker 1: perhaps we were eating a little bit as we went,
Speaker 1: we were tasting, chewing things to see what they were
Speaker 1: or you know, certainly if we recognize what they were
Speaker 1: and knew that they had, say like a mout stimulant
Speaker 1: to them, perhaps we needed to chew on that to
Speaker 1: keep going. But we probably also a lot of high
Speaker 1: fiber potential foods. Yeah, yeah, you kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: you would need to be chewing all the time, right.
Speaker 1: I was also I recently learned on a mushroom and
Speaker 1: herb foraging tour via a licensed turbalist that in experienced
Speaker 1: forger can chew, taste and spit a variety of substances,
Speaker 1: so not necessarily chewing, uh, you know, not chewing to eat,
Speaker 1: but chewing to sort of taste and help identify particular substance,
Speaker 1: even a mushroom um, because if you're if something a lot,
Speaker 1: if you if you chew it and spit it, you know,
Speaker 1: you can get a sense of it. Is it a
Speaker 1: bitter or is it putrid? Whatever the taste happens to be,
Speaker 1: and that would aid and experienced individual in identifying that substance. Well,
Speaker 1: So I've got a question. Do bears chew gum? I mean,
Speaker 1: what are there are there examples of gum style recreational
Speaker 1: chewing in the animal world outside of humans. Well, um,
Speaker 1: I looked around for examples of recreational chewing in animals
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a lot to report. Most of it
Speaker 1: seems to be in the aid of food selection and consumption,
Speaker 1: or to do to some manner of malady or the
Speaker 1: effects of being kept in an enclosure. I thought to
Speaker 1: my own cat, and occasionally, you know, my cattle do
Speaker 1: this thing where she takes the food or mouth chew it,
Speaker 1: let's it drop out, and then maybe she'll eat it.
Speaker 1: But I think that's ultimately part of you know, her
Speaker 1: tasting the substance and then deciding whether to eat it. Now,
Speaker 1: I do think that there there seemed to be some
Speaker 1: behaviors in dogs and perhaps other carnivores that seem to
Speaker 1: me to be non feeding versions of chewing, where they'll
Speaker 1: chew on a you know, bone or a stick or something. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that has to do with like
Speaker 1: dental health or something about the teeth what you do
Speaker 1: there is there's an element of dental health and some animals,
Speaker 1: probably the best example being that of you know, to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, uh, you know, birds and dogs chewing
Speaker 1: on different items obviously like a for a like a cat,
Speaker 1: and you often see feathers brought up as an example
Speaker 1: of something they would kind of chew on roughly, you know,
Speaker 1: as it was a way of helping to keep their
Speaker 1: teeth clean. Dogs are going to chew on bones, obviously,
Speaker 1: but then hamsters, for example, it's an animal that needs
Speaker 1: to chew in order to keep its ever growing teeth healthy.
Speaker 1: It's like sharpening your knives. Yeah, yeah, I guess if
Speaker 1: your knives kept growing, if your knives kept growing out
Speaker 1: of your skull exactly. But dogs, though, you you encourage
Speaker 1: me to look into this little bit more because I'm
Speaker 1: not a dog owner, but you're a dog owner. Does
Speaker 1: your dog like to chew on things in the house? Yes,
Speaker 1: he's not as big a cheer as some dogs are,
Speaker 1: And I'd make a strong distinction, I guess, between things
Speaker 1: that are in some way kind of a food or
Speaker 1: food analogy, like something that is flavored or something, uh
Speaker 1: you know, raw hide or something like that, versus just
Speaker 1: chewing on like chew toys, which which Charlie didn't do
Speaker 1: very much, but some dogs do a lot of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit a bit about this.
Speaker 1: So on one have a le level like food chew
Speaker 1: toys that are made out of some sort of edible material,
Speaker 1: Like they'll break those down. Like I was surprised that
Speaker 1: that's basically eating. Yeah, I was surprised as a non
Speaker 1: dog owner. Like one day I brought this like edible
Speaker 1: chew toy over to a friend's house and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this will be great. This. The dog will love this
Speaker 1: for weeks and weeks. And the dog proceeded to just
Speaker 1: just break it into pieces and beat the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I was I was impressed, big nasty, bloody, wet
Speaker 1: muzzle when it's done. But but there's this whole issue
Speaker 1: of course dogs chewing things they're not supposed to chew,
Speaker 1: especially shoes, and I found, um, I found an article
Speaker 1: in Live Science so where they were talking to Colin Tennant,
Speaker 1: a chairman of the UK Canine and Feline Behavior Association,
Speaker 1: and uh they pointed out that okay, so yes, dogs
Speaker 1: chew things, uh, but a lot of times they're chewing
Speaker 1: things in order to sense them, and it comes down
Speaker 1: to not only that not really the taste necessary, but
Speaker 1: the smell potential of a dog. They said that when
Speaker 1: a when a dog choose on something, it's like a
Speaker 1: quote a human opening a door and looking into a room.
Speaker 1: So we have to remember that, you know, all these
Speaker 1: other animals, they're living in their own different sensory worlds
Speaker 1: with different levels of sensory input, and a dog lives
Speaker 1: in a you know, a high level olfactory universe, and
Speaker 1: so chewing on something and releasing the smells of that
Speaker 1: thing and the tastes of that thing, um like they're
Speaker 1: interacting with it in a way that we can scarcely
Speaker 1: really imagine. And Tennant says that, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the chewing, such as the chewing of shoes, is
Speaker 1: also done out of anxiety. So ultimately, a dog is
Speaker 1: a pack animal, and it needs the pack for security.
Speaker 1: And you humans that you know that live with the dog,
Speaker 1: well you are its pack. And so they might chew
Speaker 1: on a shoe in order to engage with the smell
Speaker 1: of their humans, which is comforting. But then the extra
Speaker 1: level of complication there is that a lot of times
Speaker 1: our shoes are made out of leather, which leans into
Speaker 1: their natural inclination to chew on meat, bones, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: but I think that's interesting. I really never really had
Speaker 1: thought about that before, Like, in the same way that
Speaker 1: if we're away from our loved ones, we might pull
Speaker 1: up a picture and stare longingly at them, or listen
Speaker 1: to them on the phone, listen to a recording brafs,
Speaker 1: because we're we're an audio visual leaning species. But what
Speaker 1: does an olfactory species do? Uh? You know, they make chew.
Speaker 1: They're going to chew on a remnant and uh and
Speaker 1: and engage with the smell. Uh. You know it's we
Speaker 1: can It's difficult to imagine how how humans would operate
Speaker 1: if smell was our prime was one of our more
Speaker 1: forward sensory perceptions. It's something I think about a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you walk a dog, it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's it's hard not to notice that the dog is
Speaker 1: just by sniffing the world opening many sort of cases. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're detective and you're out like
Speaker 1: opening a case constantly by investigating something that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if those cases ever get closed or how much
Speaker 1: information is being provided, but clearly there's just all kinds
Speaker 1: of streams of smell based information that the dog is
Speaker 1: benefiting from just on you know, walk down the sidewalk
Speaker 1: that you're not picking up on at all. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, maybe you can enjoy spearmint gum in a
Speaker 1: way that a dog can't. So maybe we should take
Speaker 1: a break. Yeah, let's take a break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will discuss some of the earliest known
Speaker 1: examples of something like chewing gum. Alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: the short answer is that, yes, even in ages past
Speaker 1: deprived of big league chew and similar items, um, you
Speaker 1: still have people who were chewing gum. But they were
Speaker 1: chewing natural gums and latexts and sometimes harder materials as well,
Speaker 1: and they did it for reasons that I you know,
Speaker 1: I think we can in many cases say we're recreational,
Speaker 1: though it's as is kind of the case in our
Speaker 1: recent stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes on Tilt with
Speaker 1: psychedelics and certain drugs. The term recreational is difficult in
Speaker 1: contemplating like why humans consume things, were engage in things.
Speaker 1: It can be used to say like this is something
Speaker 1: that you're doing purely, you know, for no good reason.
Speaker 1: Whereas when you really analyze things that we classify as recreation,
Speaker 1: be it something we drink, something we eat, or something
Speaker 1: we do like a social engagement, there's often more to it.
Speaker 1: It's often more important than that a recreational is often
Speaker 1: used to mean trivial, and it doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: right as a as the psychedelic enthusiast Bob Jesse I think,
Speaker 1: would say what's wrong with recreating myself exactly? But then
Speaker 1: on top of that, we're going to see some examples
Speaker 1: of chewing gum and gum like materials for hygienic reasons, um,
Speaker 1: even even health reasons, medicinal reasons. Yeah, and we see
Speaker 1: this across many different cultures. Yes, So, uh, I want
Speaker 1: to talk for a bit about Otsi, the so called
Speaker 1: ice man, you know, of course is great. I would
Speaker 1: see a wonderful individual to study, uh because you know,
Speaker 1: he he preserves some of the activities that ancient humans
Speaker 1: engaged in we still engage in today, such as uh
Speaker 1: tattoos for instance. Oh yeah, I mean there's so Otsi,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar, is a Stone Age mummy from
Speaker 1: the late fourth century and not fourth century, sorry, the
Speaker 1: late fourth millennium bc E, discovered in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties frozen with his head and part of his body
Speaker 1: sticking out of a glacier in the Italian Alps like
Speaker 1: way up in the Italian Alps and Ossie is a
Speaker 1: fascinating subject in so many ways, as you allude to,
Speaker 1: um we could return to him in a number of
Speaker 1: ways in either one of our podcasts, But included among
Speaker 1: the many fascinating questions about him are what was he
Speaker 1: doing so high up in the mountains, especially since cat
Speaker 1: scans of the mummy revealed that he's got an arrowhead
Speaker 1: lodged in his shoulder and he had other injuries that
Speaker 1: occurred right before death, showing that he almost certainly died
Speaker 1: by homicide, and so like, well, you know this like
Speaker 1: what six thousand year old murder mystery or five thousand
Speaker 1: year old murder mystery? That that's pretty cool. But one
Speaker 1: of the other things about Otzi that's really interesting is
Speaker 1: his tool kits. So of course he is a stone
Speaker 1: age guy up in the mountains, and he's got stone
Speaker 1: age tools with him and they're very well preserved. So
Speaker 1: this includes an axe that he carried with them that
Speaker 1: had an awesome copper blade, and the copper blade has
Speaker 1: been traced back to its origins in southern Tuscany, which
Speaker 1: of course is hundreds of miles from where Elsie lived,
Speaker 1: and this copper blade was secured to the half of
Speaker 1: the ax by a couple of means, so it was
Speaker 1: wrapped with leather straps, but it was also secured there
Speaker 1: by a type of stone age glue made of tar
Speaker 1: that was created from the bark of the birch tree.
Speaker 1: And I want to focus on this birch bark tar
Speaker 1: for a second because we could probably do an episode
Speaker 1: of this show on stone Age adhesives ancient glues. I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't glue a fascinating invention in its own right? It
Speaker 1: comes thousands of years after they face or knife, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it's the it's the inverse knife.
Speaker 1: How do we put things back together? Or how do
Speaker 1: we assemble things as opposed to and disassembled them. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: birch bark tar is this black, sticky plastic substance that's
Speaker 1: made from the destructive distillation of bark from the birch tree.
Speaker 1: And practically what this means is that your stone age
Speaker 1: human would create this stuff through a delicate proto industrial
Speaker 1: process by which they would heat birch bark over a
Speaker 1: temperature controlled fire inside an airtight container or at least
Speaker 1: a low oxygen environment. And the tar produced by this
Speaker 1: process functions is a thermal plastic, meaning it's solid at
Speaker 1: room temperature, but the more you heat it up, the
Speaker 1: softer and more pliable it gets, so you can you know,
Speaker 1: you heat it up enough, and it can basically become
Speaker 1: kind of like a viscous liquid that you can apply
Speaker 1: like a glue. Now, obviously having this tar based adhesive
Speaker 1: would be useful in the ancient world. Think of all
Speaker 1: the stuff you can do with glue. Sure, you can
Speaker 1: glue shards of broken pottery back together, but in the
Speaker 1: case of Stone Age action heroes like Oatsy, you can
Speaker 1: use this birch bark tard glue fletching onto aero shafts.
Speaker 1: And you can also use it in conjunction with the
Speaker 1: straps I mentioned half to your copper axe head and
Speaker 1: hold it in place while you do your whack in
Speaker 1: on whatever you do your whack in two. Another use
Speaker 1: would be for waterproofing things. Yes, as a sealant exactly so.
Speaker 1: The ancient uses of birch bark tar and tree bark
Speaker 1: tars in general are are extensive, but one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting was a use we have surprisingly clear evidence of.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about it in a paper by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth M. Aveling and Carl Herron in the journal Antiquity
Speaker 1: in nine called chewing tar in the Early Holocene and
Speaker 1: archaeological and ethnographic evaluation. So from all throughout sites in
Speaker 1: northern Europe, including Scandinavia, southern Germany and Switzerland, archaeol just
Speaker 1: have recovered lumps of what appears to be ancient tar
Speaker 1: with human tooth impressions, and they date from the Mesolithic
Speaker 1: and Neolithic periods. They attached to the underside of Neolithic desks.
Speaker 1: You know, you wonder about that, right, like, uh, if
Speaker 1: they had had more infrastructure, then would be all over
Speaker 1: the place. Like imagine two in Neolithic times, it was
Speaker 1: possible to step on somebody's chewing material, step on somebody's
Speaker 1: chewing gum and be like, yeah, well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that's assuming we know that this was gum, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make the case it very likely was um.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, so they date from the Mesolithic and
Speaker 1: Neolithic periods, that's the middle of the Late Stone Age,
Speaker 1: going back about as far as roughly nine thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And they're all described as these amorphous masses, black or
Speaker 1: brown in color, that have indentations left by human teeth,
Speaker 1: So why we're human teeth biting down on these lumps
Speaker 1: of ancient tar. We think very likely it was for
Speaker 1: some form of chewing gum, and the authors suggests this
Speaker 1: as well. Quote. Although the primary function of teeth is
Speaker 1: to bite, chew, crunch, and grind food, chewing plant or
Speaker 1: animal products serves a number of alternative roles, such as
Speaker 1: cleaning teeth and gums, freshening breath, quenching thirst, alleviating dental
Speaker 1: ailments and sore throats, and as a means of delivering
Speaker 1: medicinal and psychoactive agents to the body. Now they talk
Speaker 1: about maybe there are a couple of counter explanations for
Speaker 1: why you might find tooth marks on old bits of tar,
Speaker 1: And these these tooth marks might have reflected some kind
Speaker 1: of functional or practical use. Instead of showing that the
Speaker 1: tar was chewing gum, for example, it might have been
Speaker 1: related to their use as an adhesive. Since birch bark
Speaker 1: tar is thermoplastic, maybe chewing softened the tar so that
Speaker 1: you could apply it as an adhesive or ceilant. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the hot glue gun is your mouth.
Speaker 1: You know, you put the glue stick in shoot up,
Speaker 1: you heat it with your mouth, and you spit it out.
Speaker 1: But the authors don't seem convinced by this because quote
Speaker 1: experiments have suggested that a coding of saliva actually reduces
Speaker 1: the capacity of the tar to adhere. Another possible explanation
Speaker 1: they mentioned is that quote amorphous aggregates formed a stock
Speaker 1: of tar to be reheated from time to time to
Speaker 1: facilitate the removal of smaller pieces for use. Once sufficiently softened,
Speaker 1: it would then be easy to bite a piece off.
Speaker 1: So right, so like your ammunition of tar to use
Speaker 1: out in the field as this big piece, and then
Speaker 1: you could heat it up a little bit and bite
Speaker 1: a piece off to remove it from from your bandalier
Speaker 1: of tar. Basically, uh So that might be a possibility,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be pretty good evidence that this
Speaker 1: was just chewing gum. Uh. And there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: chewing tar and tree resin like this has been passed
Speaker 1: down through generations in Northern Europe as a treatment for
Speaker 1: sore throats and dental complaints, even into the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Like the author's ethnographic studies of tar and resin chewing
Speaker 1: behavior conducted by Vilcuna in nineteen sixty four in the
Speaker 1: lap area of northern Sweden, and I want to read
Speaker 1: a quote here. Quote. Vilcuna also notes an eighteen seventeen
Speaker 1: account written by Goldland of a church service in Finland,
Speaker 1: at which half of the congregation, all women, were chewing
Speaker 1: resin to keep themselves awake. So if you've got a
Speaker 1: really boring minister who's putting everybody to sleep, you chew
Speaker 1: resin so that you don't fall asleep and and get
Speaker 1: in trouble. Gotland noted that people chewed to pass the time,
Speaker 1: to keep teeth white, to prevent the invasion of scurvy
Speaker 1: into the gums, and to relieve stomach pains and heartburn.
Speaker 1: The most enthusiastic chewers were adolescents and old women. The
Speaker 1: preparation of chews required practice, so older women often pre
Speaker 1: chewed the resin for children. Cool. Well, you know I
Speaker 1: have chewed things for my son before. Real Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not that uncommon. It makes sense really, like
Speaker 1: chewing with your mouth, well like okay, well, like if
Speaker 1: you need to say, for instance, my son's going through
Speaker 1: the phase right now where his teeth, uh, he's changing
Speaker 1: out his teeth. He's losing the baby teeth and growing
Speaker 1: up teeth are coming in. And then in a couple
Speaker 1: of times where he hasn't been able to like bite
Speaker 1: into an apple, and if the apple is the only
Speaker 1: snack that I have around that I have at times
Speaker 1: like and I don't if I don't have a knife
Speaker 1: or something, I mean, which I usually don't, I'll bite
Speaker 1: a piece off of the apple, take it out of
Speaker 1: my mouth, give it to him. And there's actually like,
Speaker 1: well that's so sweet. But but even like an earlier ages,
Speaker 1: like the sort of preaching chewing or mild pre chewing
Speaker 1: a food, not like a complete baby birding type of situation,
Speaker 1: there's the argument that you're passing on vital enzymes to
Speaker 1: the young child. Uh so, yeah, I think it's not
Speaker 1: that weird that grandma would be passing off a piece
Speaker 1: of resin to a child and during church that's cool.
Speaker 1: So you know, grandma choosing in the first half of church,
Speaker 1: and then when it's time for the sermon to get going,
Speaker 1: you pass it off to the kids. Keep them occupied. Okay,
Speaker 1: picking back up with this quote, though, although the majority
Speaker 1: of Vilcuna's ethnographic cases relate to chewing tree resence, reference
Speaker 1: is also made to the chewing of birch bark tar
Speaker 1: for similar purposes in nineteenth century Siberia. The tar had
Speaker 1: to be prepared in a specific manner and only women
Speaker 1: could be present. So that's kind of interesting, like this
Speaker 1: gendered secret ritual about the preparation of the tar for chewing.
Speaker 1: Other interesting facts include the fact that the teeth marks
Speaker 1: and most of the Stone Age tar lumps appear to
Speaker 1: have been left by young people, children and adolescents roughly
Speaker 1: ages six to fifteen. And finally, to bring it back
Speaker 1: to Otsy, the author's site speculation by an author named
Speaker 1: Spindler in nineteen ninety four that quote polished sections on
Speaker 1: the incisors and canines of the frozen remains of the
Speaker 1: Neolithic body from the Austrian Italian Alps may have occurred
Speaker 1: as a result of chewing birch bark tar. And I
Speaker 1: think this is referring to Otsy himself, to the iceman
Speaker 1: interesting but so I think this looks like a really
Speaker 1: good case that going way back into the Stone Age,
Speaker 1: people were chewing these lumps of tar made from tree
Speaker 1: bark resin as, maybe for medicinal purposes, maybe just recreationally
Speaker 1: maybe for aesthetic or hygiene purposes, but they were definitely
Speaker 1: chewing them, right, and you could also have multiple, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, purposes in play. Like maybe it starts off
Speaker 1: as just a way of you know, heating up the material.
Speaker 1: We're having it handy for you know, use in repairing
Speaker 1: items and whatnot, but then it just becomes something recreational
Speaker 1: in nature or you know, they pick up on the
Speaker 1: fact that it, you know, makes your teeth appear or
Speaker 1: feel healthier. Yeah, but we should say tar are produced
Speaker 1: by tree bark and resin in northern Europe is not
Speaker 1: the only gum that predates modern industrial chewing gum. There
Speaker 1: are actually a number of different gum and resin chewing
Speaker 1: traditions around the world. Right. One of them is a bitumen,
Speaker 1: which there's evidence that the text chewed it. This is
Speaker 1: a black, viscous mixture of hydrocarbons um that you know
Speaker 1: is often it can be obtained naturally or is it
Speaker 1: or is a residue from petroleum distillation. We've talked about
Speaker 1: bitumen on the show before its role and it's been
Speaker 1: used basically for a number of different purposes throughout human history,
Speaker 1: from you know, very industrial type uses to make up
Speaker 1: to the preparation of mummies, that sort of thing. I
Speaker 1: think we talked about how it figured into some hypotheses
Speaker 1: of the explanation of Greek fire. Yes, I believe it did. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that was un stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: It was, yes, But but that's a great episode because
Speaker 1: that's essentially an Invention episode. So go listen to that
Speaker 1: if you want a nice ancient military secret exploration. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the Aztecs are thought to have obtained the bitumen from
Speaker 1: natural seepages along the Gulf coast, and females especially were
Speaker 1: said to have chewed the bitumen to sweeten their breath.
Speaker 1: There's like a strange like gendered element again to wing
Speaker 1: gum traditions. I wonder too, this makes me because I'm
Speaker 1: also thinking about other South and meso American practices involving chewing,
Speaker 1: and I'm instantly reminded of the like the lengthy process
Speaker 1: of creating chocolate, which is something I would love to
Speaker 1: just do a whole episode of Invention on chocolate one day.
Speaker 1: But chewing is involved, and I wonder if it, like
Speaker 1: if this plays into like, uh, you know, the division
Speaker 1: of of labor between male and female members of society,
Speaker 1: and like the processing of plants might be something that
Speaker 1: was done like by perhaps children in some cases and
Speaker 1: or older people back at the camp, while more able
Speaker 1: bodied people engaged in like hunting and gathering. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's keep that in mind because actually, I think we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about another Meso American chewing tradition that
Speaker 1: has at least as been recorded with some social gendered elements.
Speaker 1: And that substance, of course is chickle, which is totally
Speaker 1: that's the basis of chickolates, right, I believe, I guess
Speaker 1: so I didn't, Yeah, chickilates. Yeah, I remember chickolates more
Speaker 1: I remember from from my childhood. But I believe they
Speaker 1: still make them. I think it's still a thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the Aztecs and the Maya were also said to
Speaker 1: have chewed cured latex or chickle from the tropical sapodilla tree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That tree is also known as the manuel Carra zapota.
Speaker 1: I think that's the scientific name, and it is found
Speaker 1: primarily in Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula. And you
Speaker 1: can collect the latex from this tree by hacking these
Speaker 1: Z shaped cuts in the bark higher up along the trunk,
Speaker 1: and this allows the latex to trickle down into a receptacle,
Speaker 1: after which it can be boiled to the appropriate viscosity
Speaker 1: and then prepared for chewing. Now, historical records indicate there
Speaker 1: are a number of reasons why the chickle was chewed.
Speaker 1: It was to prevent thirst in some cases, to suppress
Speaker 1: appetite or hunger in other cases, uh, sometimes to sweeten breath.
Speaker 1: It's reported that the Aztecs had many complicated social rule
Speaker 1: about how it could be chewed and by who and when. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there were gender based expectations and taboos. Apparently, chewing
Speaker 1: chickle in public was okay for single women and for children,
Speaker 1: but married women and widows could only use it in
Speaker 1: private as a supposed breath freshener or something. And that
Speaker 1: uh that there was an association with it being seen
Speaker 1: as a feminate or something, so that men wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to use it in public or would be shamed
Speaker 1: if they did so. This is interesting in geographic areas
Speaker 1: as far as separated in times like the Vastic Empire
Speaker 1: versus in Stone Age Northern Europe. In Stone Age Northern Europe,
Speaker 1: it looks to us like the primary chewers of chewing gum.
Speaker 1: Then we're children and here it's it seems like it
Speaker 1: was mainly uh, something that was only publicly acceptable for
Speaker 1: children and some women. Now another example of of of
Speaker 1: a chewing substance from history, the Greeks chewed mastic, which
Speaker 1: is a plant resin obtained from the mastic tree. And
Speaker 1: it was also known as the tears of chios Um,
Speaker 1: which is its name for the Greek island of Chios
Speaker 1: from which a lot of it was apparently harvested. Uh
Speaker 1: and it was a call that because the way was
Speaker 1: harvested like that, you would you would have these droplets
Speaker 1: coming down from the tree and um from the branches
Speaker 1: and they would kind of you know, solidify and then
Speaker 1: when you hack them off, they continue to look like
Speaker 1: little droplets or tears. But it apparently had a bitter taste.
Speaker 1: It was followed we followed by kind of a pine
Speaker 1: wood after taste that people liked. So it seems to
Speaker 1: have been used as a as a way of sprucing
Speaker 1: up your breath, but also was had some medicinal properties.
Speaker 1: Uh and and uh and was you know, used medicinally
Speaker 1: and may have had a value to dental health. I
Speaker 1: believe there are there have actually been some studies that
Speaker 1: have looked into like to what degree it actually it
Speaker 1: still has, you know, a verified impact on dental hygiene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now there was some chewing traditions also farther north
Speaker 1: in the North America, among the indigenous people's, some of
Speaker 1: whom chewed the resin of the spruce trees. The early
Speaker 1: European colonists to North America picked up on the practice
Speaker 1: of chewing spruce tree residin as well, and then eventually
Speaker 1: spruce tree resin was turned into an early version of
Speaker 1: commercial chewing gum. I think it was in like the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties that there was this guy named John Curtis
Speaker 1: who developed a process for commercially producing spruce tree gum
Speaker 1: that would involve like boiling down the resin and then
Speaker 1: cutting it up into strips and coating them in a
Speaker 1: in a powder that would keep them from sticking together.
Speaker 1: And I guess he made some money. Now, obviously we're
Speaker 1: not gonna have time to discuss everything that humans have
Speaker 1: chewed and continue to chew on the podcast here, but
Speaker 1: I do want to just point out that, uh, you
Speaker 1: know a few examples that come to mind in part
Speaker 1: because of their their their stimulating properties. So a crayon
Speaker 1: nut and beetle leaf chewed together. This goes back to
Speaker 1: thousands of years in East Asia in the Indian subcontinent
Speaker 1: and still is in You still see people doing this today.
Speaker 1: When chewed, it releases a mild stimulant, much like nicotine,
Speaker 1: but also it has a carcinogen in it that's bad,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately bad for your health. Uh. Sometimes additional
Speaker 1: herbs were also added to it for flavor. Likewise, chewing tobacco.
Speaker 1: Chewing tobacco leaves dates back to pre Columbian times in
Speaker 1: North and South America, again chewing it in order to
Speaker 1: release a mild stimulant. And then yet another example the
Speaker 1: coca leaf, from of course, from which you know, one
Speaker 1: can brew it into a tea to create coca tea.
Speaker 1: Cocaine is also derived from the coca coca plant, but
Speaker 1: chewing it, chewing the leaves was a longstanding way of
Speaker 1: acquiring uh this the stimulant properties, and ultimately chewing has
Speaker 1: always been a way of of you know, dipping into
Speaker 1: the powers of a particular plant or substance. You know,
Speaker 1: if there's some sort of medicinal property, some sort of
Speaker 1: stimulant property, uh, some sort of psych go active property.
Speaker 1: Chewing it is in many cases a way to release it,
Speaker 1: especially if the substance is not something you really want
Speaker 1: to swallow and digest, but you do want some of
Speaker 1: the chemicals inside it. Well, another way of thinking about
Speaker 1: that is that chewing again as part of our defense
Speaker 1: mechanism against poisons, right, a way of determining are their
Speaker 1: toxins here? And of course part of the large part
Speaker 1: of human history is figuring out which toxins you like,
Speaker 1: which toxins are useful, uh, and and and in what quantities? Uh.
Speaker 1: And this goes beyond like medicines and drugs obviously, but
Speaker 1: you know, like just flavoring peppers and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all matter of things that we used in our culinary traditions.
Speaker 1: Their toxins we acquired from the environment, figured out exactly
Speaker 1: how we wanted to use these evolved chemical weapons for
Speaker 1: our own culinary purposes. All right, well, I think we
Speaker 1: need to take one more break and then we come back.
Speaker 1: We'll see how Santa Anna figures into this story. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, and yes, you heard that right. Santa Anna,
Speaker 1: the Santa Anna. Yeah, it's one of these just really
Speaker 1: I think, ultimately kind of unexpected and quirky collisions in history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next big page in the story of Chewing
Speaker 1: Gum takes us to meet this unexpected figure, Antonio Lopez
Speaker 1: de Santa Anna, the larger than life nineteenth century Mexican
Speaker 1: military commander, revolutionary politician, statesman, president of Mexico who fought
Speaker 1: for Mexican independence, went on to be President of Mexico
Speaker 1: I think multiple terms. Uh, and then of course later
Speaker 1: got exiled. In eighteen sixty nine, Santa Anna was exiled
Speaker 1: in the United States and living on Staten Island, and
Speaker 1: sometime around then he became interested in the idea of
Speaker 1: trying to develop chickle, the cured latex from that tree.
Speaker 1: Chickle he wanted to develop as an industrial substitute for
Speaker 1: rubber in the production of tires, and Santa Anna thought
Speaker 1: that the profits he reaped from the development of a
Speaker 1: rubber substitute based on chickle would be enough to fund
Speaker 1: him in a return to power in Mexico, and he
Speaker 1: somehow became connected to an American inventor named Thomas Adams
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen eighteen and nineteen oh five. Adams was
Speaker 1: based in New York, and Adams tried to do this.
Speaker 1: Adams tried to develop a volcanization process for chickle. Adams
Speaker 1: was also a photographer. I understand, Oh really, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that, which makes sense, you know, given that
Speaker 1: time frame, you know, given what we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show about photography and the sort of minds that you know,
Speaker 1: in creative types and inventive thinkers that had attracted yeah,
Speaker 1: chemistry in the eighteen sixties and seventies, that would be
Speaker 1: photography too. Yeah, uh so I can see that. But
Speaker 1: of course he did not succeed in coming up with
Speaker 1: the vulcanization process for chickle. So when it became clear
Speaker 1: that there weren't going to be any real profits off
Speaker 1: of the off of trying to create a rubber substitute
Speaker 1: of chickle, Sam and a lost interest in the venture,
Speaker 1: but Adams stuck with it. He Adams went on to
Speaker 1: discover that the treated chickle had interesting properties of its own.
Speaker 1: So it was not water soluble, so it wouldn't dissolve
Speaker 1: in a wet environment like the mouth, and it was
Speaker 1: very plastic and very stretchy. And by this time there
Speaker 1: was already chewing gum to find out in the world,
Speaker 1: many Americans had become accustomed to chewing gum based on
Speaker 1: that old spruce tree resin we were talking about, but
Speaker 1: also manufacturers had largely substituted sweetened paraffin wax and other
Speaker 1: substances for the original spruce resin. And in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: one Adams got on this train. He patented a process
Speaker 1: for preparing chickle for chewing, and he sold it as
Speaker 1: an alternative to paraffin wax for gum chewers. And originally
Speaker 1: I think his recipe was unsweetened gum, but by the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties adams chickle based gums were nationally distributed, and
Speaker 1: chickle remained one of the most common ingredients in chewing
Speaker 1: gum until later, I think, around the middle of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, when more synthetic materials became more common. I
Speaker 1: think that the whole like unsweetened sweetened divide is really
Speaker 1: interesting because it seems here it starts off as being
Speaker 1: essentially just purely recreational chewing, right, I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can make a sense, you know, an argument for you know,
Speaker 1: basic like basic dental hygiene and the freshening of the breath, certainly,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not you know, contain, it's not
Speaker 1: full of tobacco. It doesn't have a stimulant property to it.
Speaker 1: But then you add the sugar, and in doing so
Speaker 1: and adding a sweetener to the gum, uh, you make
Speaker 1: it a vehicle for this addictive substance that also has
Speaker 1: plenty of detrimental uh uh you know health impacts. You
Speaker 1: know that is going to ultimately lead to the deterioration
Speaker 1: of your teeth, and it can lead to other health
Speaker 1: problems as well. Yeah, when we've been talking about gum
Speaker 1: for you know, people using it for dental health purposes,
Speaker 1: I would suspect act that whatever those purposes, those valid purposes,
Speaker 1: maybe the introduction of sugar probably counteracts all of that,
Speaker 1: does more damage than good. And then it's ultimately it's
Speaker 1: it's as much about the sugary sweet rush as it
Speaker 1: is about anything else. I mean, even with you know,
Speaker 1: sugar free gums today. Uh. You know, I admit that
Speaker 1: it's that that that rush of artificial sweetener is sometimes
Speaker 1: part of the enjoyment of it, Like you anticipate putting
Speaker 1: that fresh, untouched piece of gum into your mouth because
Speaker 1: you're going to get that just fresh burst of flavor. Yeah, Robert,
Speaker 1: I found an ad for for the Adams Chewing Gum
Speaker 1: Company was called there Adams California Fruit Chewing Gum. I
Speaker 1: think this ad was the one featured on the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: page for the Atoms Fruit Company or the Atoms Chewing
Speaker 1: Gum Company. And this, uh, this ad is crazy. It
Speaker 1: looks like something from a much later time because it's
Speaker 1: got It's like this goddess in ecstasy putting it looks
Speaker 1: like fruit into her mouth. But I guess it's suggesting
Speaker 1: it's the gum. I'm not quite sure. Interesting, so again,
Speaker 1: via the goddess imagery, there's this kind of feminization of
Speaker 1: chewing gum. Yeah. Well, I mean this would have been
Speaker 1: so if this was in the late eighteen hundreds, This
Speaker 1: would have been around the time that we got those
Speaker 1: at the article in the British Medical Journal and the
Speaker 1: other publications talking about chewing gum being this like disgusting
Speaker 1: thing that young women do. You know, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: to to think about like dental health concerns because it
Speaker 1: brings me back to our episode on toothpaste and about
Speaker 1: just like the the increasing need for toothpaste or an
Speaker 1: effective substance like toothpaste to keep up with the the
Speaker 1: influx of sugars and other you know, mainly sugars into
Speaker 1: the human diet, uh and leading to a lot of
Speaker 1: dental problems. And of course one of the problems with
Speaker 1: having poor dental whole hygiene is you're going to have
Speaker 1: poor breath as well. You're gonna have halitosis and uh uh.
Speaker 1: And so perhaps there was an increase, I mean once
Speaker 1: tempted to think there might have been an increase in
Speaker 1: the demand for some sort of breath freshening product. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, when we see that that outside
Speaker 1: of the European context, it seems like there's always been
Speaker 1: or there there has long been a need for some
Speaker 1: sort of breath freshening product. So I'm not sure we're
Speaker 1: exactly to land on that, but without a doubt, the
Speaker 1: influx of sugar into the diet of the European diet
Speaker 1: during this time would have led to some bad breath,
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. And remember again, um, brushing teeth
Speaker 1: with toothpaste was not a really widespread common practice until
Speaker 1: like the twentieth century, right, right, So we're we're kind
Speaker 1: of in the dark ages of like that where where
Speaker 1: the where the diet had grown worse, but the but
Speaker 1: the the dental hygiene practices had not risen up to
Speaker 1: meet the demand. And yet you know, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking another thing that I suspect very likely to be
Speaker 1: opera ended, like that British Medical Journal article and and
Speaker 1: the other ones talking about the actresses and and young
Speaker 1: ladies students, chewing gum is probably just the same sort
Speaker 1: of like sexist trend detection that causes like adult men
Speaker 1: to think that girl younger girls are always on their phones,
Speaker 1: not noticing that boys are just as much men are
Speaker 1: on on their phones all the time as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. There's probably a word for that,
Speaker 1: like sex selective print trend detection. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the it's probably out there. Oh but hey, we gotta
Speaker 1: talk about Wriggley's Oh yeah, bring it on. So another
Speaker 1: big name in the history of chewing gum, of course,
Speaker 1: is William Wriggley Jr. Uh. Wrigley is just a great
Speaker 1: last name because it implies that you're some kind of
Speaker 1: eel like writhing around and can't can't get a grip
Speaker 1: on you. So Wriggley, of course began as a salesman.
Speaker 1: You know, they're lot of salesmen making it big around
Speaker 1: this time in the eighteen nineties, he was trying to
Speaker 1: establish himself as a seller of commercial goods, and he
Speaker 1: ran like bogo style promotions where customers, you'd buy one product,
Speaker 1: you get another product, right so maybe, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what they really You might buy a velocip and
Speaker 1: you get a free box of snuff. But but apparently
Speaker 1: one of his very popular promotional giveaways was chewing gum.
Speaker 1: And Wrigley was so impressed with how popular the chewing
Speaker 1: gum was as a promotional giveaway that he was like, well,
Speaker 1: I should just sell chewing gum. So he decided to
Speaker 1: get into the gum business, launching brands of his own,
Speaker 1: including brands like Wriggly, spearmint Uh. And I was reading
Speaker 1: a history dot com article by Elizabeth Knicks about some
Speaker 1: of his marketing practices. I just want to quote this
Speaker 1: because this is so great. So those from Nick's article quote.
Speaker 1: Because the chewing gum field had grown crowded with competitors,
Speaker 1: Wrigley decided he'd make his products stand out by spending
Speaker 1: heavily on advertising and direct marketing. In nineteen fifteen, the
Speaker 1: Wrigley Company kicked off a campaign in which it sent
Speaker 1: free samples of its gum to millions of Americans list
Speaker 1: listed in phone books. Another promotion entailed sending sticks of
Speaker 1: gum to US children on their second birthday. Huh. I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about how easy it is to mail
Speaker 1: a piece of gum, but of course it is, and
Speaker 1: you can stick it in a pack of baseball cards.
Speaker 1: It's it'll stick it in an envelope as well. Second birthday?
Speaker 1: Did I read that right? Second birthday? Should kids beat
Speaker 1: you in gum when they're two? I mean, probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't remember letting my son have have gum. I
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of discourage gum now and he's seven,
Speaker 1: but but he really he wants it, you know, like
Speaker 1: when he sees one of those big gumball machines, of
Speaker 1: course he wants to get a giant gumball and stick
Speaker 1: it in his mouth. I mean, I'm no expert on
Speaker 1: raising children, but something seems wrong there. I don't think
Speaker 1: two year olds are supposed to have gum right fresher
Speaker 1: than mail though, but still is ingenious direct marketing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should have been in the direct marketing of cocaine.
Speaker 1: That would work even better. I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to that question. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so after this period we get more into
Speaker 1: the modern styles of gum were you know, after World
Speaker 1: War two or so, many natural gum bases like chickle
Speaker 1: were largely being replaced with new sym synthetic rubbers and waxes,
Speaker 1: and that sort of led us to the gum world
Speaker 1: we have today. Of course, we've got you know, all
Speaker 1: kinds of other things, artificial sweeteners and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get your spicy gums, you get your fruit gums,
Speaker 1: you get your flavor crystals, you get your gravy flavored gums.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a lot of novelty gum. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of novelty gum. It's sure, it sure is. But then
Speaker 1: you still have like the very traditional juicy fruit style gum.
Speaker 1: Like it's really we live in a golden age of
Speaker 1: chewing and bubble gum. Now, to come back to something
Speaker 1: we we touched on at the very beginning is that
Speaker 1: it is this idea that chewing gum also helps you focus,
Speaker 1: you know, not merely you know, in a pro wrestling
Speaker 1: ring or or you know, on on the sports field,
Speaker 1: but but like just you know, say, setting it a desk,
Speaker 1: working that it can help focus your mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this has actually been the subject of a lot of research.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, I wonder how much of it is funded
Speaker 1: by the chewing gum industry, I think right, But there
Speaker 1: there have been tons of studies in in psychology and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what other fields this would apply to.
Speaker 1: I guess would be in psychology, where the question is
Speaker 1: does chewing gum make people do better on various kinds
Speaker 1: of cognitive tasks? And there appears to be, at least
Speaker 1: as far as I was reading, some evidence that there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a cognitive boost that people get
Speaker 1: from chewing gum. But it appears to apply for a
Speaker 1: few minutes after gum has been chewed, not while you're
Speaker 1: chewing gum, or at least that's what I found in
Speaker 1: For example, I studied from two thousand eleven published an
Speaker 1: appetite by Hour at All called Cognitive Advantages of Chewing Gum.
Speaker 1: Now you them, now you don't, uh, And so it
Speaker 1: was talking about giving people a battery of cognitive tests
Speaker 1: either while they were chewing gum or after they chewed gum,
Speaker 1: compared with the performance of controls who didn't chew anything
Speaker 1: at all, and the right quote. Chewing gum was associated
Speaker 1: with performance advantages on multiple measures when gum was chewed
Speaker 1: five minutes before but not during cognitive testing. The benefits, however,
Speaker 1: persisted only for the first fifteen to twenty minutes of
Speaker 1: the testing session and did not extend to all cognitive domains.
Speaker 1: To explain this pattern of results, it's proposed that the
Speaker 1: time limited nature of performance benefits can be attributed to
Speaker 1: mastication induced arousal. Maybe Fletcher was right. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean it comes back to the fact that when you're chewing,
Speaker 1: you're using a whole lot of muscles in your face,
Speaker 1: you're producing saliva. It's uh, I could see, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's waking you up a little bit. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the comes back to chewing gum and church, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then also there's probably a conflict the author's thing
Speaker 1: going on when you're trying to chew gum while you're
Speaker 1: doing a task, because you might be benefiting from some arousal.
Speaker 1: But you're also sort of lightly dividing your attention if
Speaker 1: you're also chewing. Oh, that's true. And then when you're
Speaker 1: done chewing, you're you're rebbed up. Now you're ready to go,
Speaker 1: so you have this mild increase. So yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: to me that there might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a cognitive boost from from chewing gum a little bit
Speaker 1: after you chew, But it doesn't seem earth shaking. I
Speaker 1: wonder why this hasn't though, led to more like I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's some products out there that are marketed as
Speaker 1: being like a like a performance enhancing gum, and uh,
Speaker 1: I assume sure it's there. Yeah, but performance enhancing everything.
Speaker 1: But given how how much marketing is out there regarding
Speaker 1: you know, various you know, attention boosting, memory boosting, uh,
Speaker 1: herbal supplements and so forth, why am I not being
Speaker 1: bombarded with marketing for gums that contain the same thing.
Speaker 1: Because when you look back to our history of chewing things, again,
Speaker 1: in many cases we were chewing things in order to
Speaker 1: get some sort of uh, you know, a mild stimulant
Speaker 1: out of the material we're chewing. You look even to
Speaker 1: nicotine gum today used as a way of you know,
Speaker 1: of of getting people off of off of cigarettes and
Speaker 1: having them consume their nicotine through chewable gum, which would choo.
Speaker 1: I think for like fifteen minutes at a time, I
Speaker 1: think that's the uh the idea. Uh So, why don't
Speaker 1: we Why haven't we seen more drug delivery through chewing
Speaker 1: gum during the history of chewing gum? I wonder if
Speaker 1: it falls back into like the gender divide that seemed
Speaker 1: to be there, Is that why we didn't have cocaine gums?
Speaker 1: I wonder? I mean I when when you talk about
Speaker 1: the performance enhancing gum concept, I mean cynical part of
Speaker 1: me wonders if it's just cheaper to make placebo pills
Speaker 1: than it is to make placebo gums. Yeah, but who
Speaker 1: knows what the future will hold. It is worth pointing
Speaker 1: out with the cannabis gums are already on the market,
Speaker 1: should come it should not come as a surprise to
Speaker 1: anybody um, And then likewise there's continued search into things
Speaker 1: we might be able to do with gum. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's some studies looking at using gums containing um UH
Speaker 1: phospho peptide, amorphous calcium phosphate and xylotol as a way
Speaker 1: of creating gums that are even healthier for our dental
Speaker 1: hygiene that that could be you know, marketed even more
Speaker 1: for dental health. Likewise, chewing gum may also impact our
Speaker 1: wearable technology. Uh. There's a two thousand fifteen Time article
Speaker 1: by Alexandra uh Sifferlan who discussed Applied Materials and Interfaces
Speaker 1: Journal article in which the researchers treated chewed gum like
Speaker 1: pre chewed gum that one of the researchers that chewed,
Speaker 1: they treated it with ethanol and carbon nanotubes to create
Speaker 1: a sensor that could quote detect body motion and humidity changes,
Speaker 1: which could be used to track breathing. So uh. But
Speaker 1: in this, you know, it's not so much the gum
Speaker 1: is a thing that's chewed, but as coming back to
Speaker 1: the material itself, you know, which is an interesting interesting
Speaker 1: the look at this chain you know, from from things
Speaker 1: we chew, two glues and rubbers back into chewing gum
Speaker 1: and then perhaps into meta materials that will be useful
Speaker 1: in the future. Interesting. Yeah, I had to know this
Speaker 1: was going to get into carbon nanotube based chewing gum
Speaker 1: smart gum of the future. I mean I wonder if
Speaker 1: there's been any cool sci fi treatments of that, like
Speaker 1: some sort of smart chewing gum that you chew it
Speaker 1: up and now it's activated and you can use it
Speaker 1: for all sorts of elaborate things. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like I only chew vana black. Well, it does
Speaker 1: remind mcgiver would use a bubble gum, right, maybe just
Speaker 1: chewing gum to fix things here and there, you know,
Speaker 1: And and in that he's kind of getting it kind
Speaker 1: of brings us back to the Iceman and potential applications
Speaker 1: of the material they were chewing. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it all comes full circle. Well, this episode has certainly
Speaker 1: provided me with some things to chew over. I hope
Speaker 1: we didn't. I hope we didn't bite off more than
Speaker 1: we could chew. Uh hofbly not hopefully not. But here's
Speaker 1: one thing that's for certain. Everybody out there listening to
Speaker 1: this episode probably has something to share, you know about
Speaker 1: either your personal relationship with gum, what you like, what
Speaker 1: you don't like, or other chewable substances. What's your relationship
Speaker 1: with them. Perhaps you're from a culture that has a
Speaker 1: has a traditional chewed substance. If if that's the case,
Speaker 1: let us know. I'd love to hear from you if
Speaker 1: you ever uh have you ever chewed cocoa leaves? Uh?
Speaker 1: In um, you know in South America? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in a while on a hike. I would be interested
Speaker 1: to hear about that. Are you a former tobacco chew
Speaker 1: or do you have any insights about that habit? Uh?
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't like something we said and you were
Speaker 1: going to write in to chew us out. At any rate,
Speaker 1: whatever your feedback might be, uh, we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Uh. And you can reach out to us,
Speaker 1: but before you do, be sure to check out invention
Speaker 1: pot dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we find
Speaker 1: all the episodes of this show. And if you want
Speaker 1: to support Invention the best things you can do or
Speaker 1: of course, make sure you you have subscribed to it,
Speaker 1: make sure you're telling your friends about it. And if
Speaker 1: you have the ability to leave us a nice you know,
Speaker 1: assortment of stars or a nice review wherever you got
Speaker 1: this podcast, will we urge you to do so because
Speaker 1: that really helps us out huge Thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer, Maya Cole. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello. You can email us at
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