Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you a classic
Speaker 1: episode of Invention. Will we'll we'll push aside the uh,
Speaker 1: the cordoning off of bubble tape, step through the line
Speaker 1: and and investigate the world of chewing gum. That's right.
Speaker 1: Where does it come from? What did we chew before
Speaker 1: we had gum? How does gum, you know, influence our lives?
Speaker 1: Those are some of the questions we're gonna explore in
Speaker 1: this classic episode of Invention, which originally published July nineteen.
Speaker 1: Let's dive right in. Welcome to Invention, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, I've got a
Speaker 1: question for you about childhood. Did your elementary school have
Speaker 1: draconian anti gum policies? Um, There was definitely and there
Speaker 1: were definitely anti gum policies, and I and I agree
Speaker 1: with him, And I mean, at the time, I don't
Speaker 1: think I was a big gum cheer at the time,
Speaker 1: so they didn't really impact me all that much. But
Speaker 1: but but ultimately, like I don't like stepping in gum.
Speaker 1: I don't like encountering gum stuck to the bottom of
Speaker 1: deaths or inside deaths. So I never really had a
Speaker 1: problem with it. I think maybe my confused. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't a huge gum cheer as a child, but
Speaker 1: I do remember thinking about the gum rule. This just
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, it's not fair. It was one of
Speaker 1: my first real, uh you know, thought processes of rebelling
Speaker 1: against authority and the rules imposed by the man. Because
Speaker 1: other rules were like, you know, don't hit people, don't
Speaker 1: steal from people, like they all caused harm to someone,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, what harm does it do when
Speaker 1: someone choose gum? Now I understand the adult perspective. It's
Speaker 1: I think primarily because it's like gross, and because the
Speaker 1: gum ends up somewhere. It shouldn't right. The gum ends
Speaker 1: up somewhere, it should be Uh. There's also just especially
Speaker 1: if it's bubble gum. I don't know. I still I'm
Speaker 1: kind of anti bubble gum, Like there's not okay. It
Speaker 1: can be fun to blow a bubble, I guess, but
Speaker 1: it's just kind of weird. I don't know, And I've
Speaker 1: I've taught before, and I don't specifically remember encountering gum chewers.
Speaker 1: Maybe I did, but I think if if I didn't
Speaker 1: find it annoying, I feel like I would find it annoying,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's like just looking out
Speaker 1: there and there there's somebody chewing, and then it's probably
Speaker 1: if if you've ever experienced any level of miss aphonia,
Speaker 1: like gum chewing can definitely set off miss aphonia, especially
Speaker 1: if it's like gum smacking, you know where it's like
Speaker 1: open mouth chewing of the gum. I am less annoyed
Speaker 1: by memories of students chewing gum, which I don't really have.
Speaker 1: I do remember students in my classes eating just eating
Speaker 1: lunch and stuff, which I never knew if I should
Speaker 1: make a big deal about that or not. It's just
Speaker 1: one of those things that in retrospect I probably should
Speaker 1: have forbidden but didn't. On the other hand, I do.
Speaker 1: I chew a lot of gum today, Like if I'm
Speaker 1: in the car, I will probably even if I don't
Speaker 1: really need it, I'll generally grab a piece of sugar
Speaker 1: free gum and and chew it a bit. And it's uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not even like a breath freshening exercise. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like this morning, I put one in my mouth on
Speaker 1: the way into work, and I had looked just brush
Speaker 1: my teeth, so there was no like real like freshness
Speaker 1: issue at hand. It was just I just wanted the
Speaker 1: sensation of chewing the gum. It's a good way of
Speaker 1: getting the goat blood off of your teeth. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, it is I think it's super handy to
Speaker 1: be able to turn the gum if you know you
Speaker 1: need a little something to freshen your breath up after
Speaker 1: you've just set a meal out and you don't have
Speaker 1: access to toothpaste and toothbrush. Um, it can be It
Speaker 1: can also be be great while working. It's you know,
Speaker 1: while you're studying, writing, etcetera. And then I've also I've
Speaker 1: heard of other people like growing to depend on it
Speaker 1: in certain tasks. Like here's one I've never quite understood,
Speaker 1: but I have heard that some professional wrestlers not only
Speaker 1: chew gum while wrestling, but depend on it. Like if
Speaker 1: they are not chewing the gum, it like throws off
Speaker 1: 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 their events. I think one thing that's
Speaker 1: funny but big League chew is that it's the most
Speaker 1: unnecessarily macho of candies. And yet if you look back
Speaker 1: in history, there is often a very gendered component to
Speaker 1: people's judgment of gum chewing behaviors in which gum chewing
Speaker 1: is uh is, in many points and societies and history
Speaker 1: associated with women and especially young women, and looked on judgmentally.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I've got a little ditty from the British
Speaker 1: Medical Journal in you want to hear some gum hate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. Okay. The question has been raised whether
Speaker 1: there is any reason for supposing that the practice of
Speaker 1: gum chewing so prevalent in the United States, is on
Speaker 1: the increase in this country. We have made some inquiries
Speaker 1: and have ascertained that many young women, students, actresses, and
Speaker 1: others appear to have acquired this disgusting habit and are
Speaker 1: inveterate chewers. We have examined specimens of chewing gum obtained
Speaker 1: from various fashionable sweet shops in London and find that,
Speaker 1: as a rule, it consists of rubber flavored with aniseed
Speaker 1: or peppermint or some o their aromatic substance. Now, I
Speaker 1: catch more than a hint of misogyny and all of that,
Speaker 1: especially singling out um students and actress actual system. It's
Speaker 1: like like women in society, independent, young women that are
Speaker 1: that have some level of independence are the ones that
Speaker 1: are being singled out as being disgusting gum chewers. And
Speaker 1: the gum itself, like you're talking about like peppermint flavored, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rubber. I mean, what's that? It sounds pleasant?
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound that disgusting with this disgusting habit. I've got
Speaker 1: a response to this article from the British Medical Journal.
Speaker 1: This response is in the North American Practitioner the next
Speaker 1: year eight just a couple of selections from it. Our
Speaker 1: English contemporaries are taking our people to task as well
Speaker 1: they may, for the vile, as they term it, the
Speaker 1: American habit of gum chewing. We submit no defense to
Speaker 1: the charge and are only consoled by the fact that
Speaker 1: the habit is less disgusting than that of tobacco chewing.
Speaker 1: Our confreres have our profound sympathy in their efforts to
Speaker 1: promote reform. At the same time, we prefer to see
Speaker 1: jaw jumpers consigned to the minor bad rather than the
Speaker 1: bad irremediable. We regret that this fat is classed as
Speaker 1: an American industry. Nevertheless, the fact is too patent for denial,
Speaker 1: and there is no accounting for taste jaw jumpers. Never
Speaker 1: heard that before, But I think I get what they're saying,
Speaker 1: because did you know the kid when you were in
Speaker 1: elementary school who didn't just chew gum but did the
Speaker 1: like exaggerated a huge up and down movement of the
Speaker 1: jaw that I guess I vaguely remember you know saying,
Speaker 1: But I was sometimes I would think that that's part
Speaker 1: of just having too much gum in your mouth or
Speaker 1: deciding to refresh in a you know, like a completely
Speaker 1: drained piece of gum with a second piece of gum,
Speaker 1: which you know might have seen like a good idea
Speaker 1: when you're a kid. One more follow up to the
Speaker 1: b m J article. I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: a book by Carrie Cgrave called Chewing Gum in America
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nineteen twenty uh. This books from so it
Speaker 1: notes that this original British Medical Journal article was reprinted
Speaker 1: in the Daily Mail shortly after appearing in the b MJ,
Speaker 1: and the printing actually prompted an editorial response that included
Speaker 1: an interview with this guy named Hubert Beaumont, who was
Speaker 1: managing director of a retail shop called Fuller's which sold
Speaker 1: chewing gum, and Beaumont was defensive. He insisted that the
Speaker 1: British Medical Journal was wrong that chewing gum was not
Speaker 1: made out of rubber, but out of sap that came
Speaker 1: from a tree that grow in Mexico. Quote it is
Speaker 1: a purely vegetable substance and perfectly harmless. And he also
Speaker 1: defended gum chewing from the charge that it was disgusting,
Speaker 1: basically saying, hey, people have been chewing stuff for a
Speaker 1: long time exactly. So that's what we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: for the rest of today's episode, the history and invention
Speaker 1: of various forms of chewing gum. Look at the history
Speaker 1: of this disgusting habit, the invention of several different versions
Speaker 1: of gum across the years, and what are gums says
Speaker 1: about us. I do want to say that another time
Speaker 1: when I usually have to chew gum or I really
Speaker 1: prefer to chew gum, is if I am you know,
Speaker 1: flying or driving up into the mountains and the sort
Speaker 1: of thing where you're gonna anxiety. Well, I mean we're
Speaker 1: encountering pressure changes and uh, you know it's it's great
Speaker 1: to can help relieve leave pressure in the in the ears.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm doing large part because chewing it and
Speaker 1: certainly feel your face the next time you're chewing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a uh, it involves so many different muscles
Speaker 1: of the head and face like it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a major muscular activity. That's a really good
Speaker 1: point about the pressure change. I did not go there.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to go to anxiety I
Speaker 1: know you're you can get a little anxious on an airplane.
Speaker 1: Oh no, well, there are other things. I prefer to
Speaker 1: gum for that. But but I don't know that. There
Speaker 1: are those who speak maybe we'll get into this a
Speaker 1: little later that speak to the anxiety. Um. Uh, the
Speaker 1: use of gum to at least mildly treat anxiety. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about the behaviors of some animals
Speaker 1: where symptoms of anxiety or anxiety like conditions in some
Speaker 1: animals can manifest as chewing behaviors. Oh yeah, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about about chewing itself, because alto only, that's
Speaker 1: the main activity at play here. So chewing is good,
Speaker 1: chewing is necessary, It's okay, No, it's it's great. It's
Speaker 1: grateful for the members of the animal kingdom that engage
Speaker 1: in chewing, which of course includes us. It allows us
Speaker 1: to take the first steps toward digestion. So you're breaking
Speaker 1: your food down into smaller pieces and also increasing the
Speaker 1: overall surface area of the food, and this will speed
Speaker 1: up the effectiveness of digestion. And then chewing also releases flavors,
Speaker 1: you know, often very pleasurable flavors. And uh, and this
Speaker 1: is all part of the sensory perception of the material
Speaker 1: that we're testing out and potentially eating. And that's easy
Speaker 1: to forget, like why do we taste things. We taste
Speaker 1: things to figure out to know what they are. You know,
Speaker 1: this mix of taste and smell that's happening inside your
Speaker 1: skull as you mash the lea for the stem or
Speaker 1: maybe a bug or a piece of flesh. As you
Speaker 1: be chew it up, as you masticate it um, You're
Speaker 1: you're sensing it. You're getting a sense of what this
Speaker 1: is and and ultimately this is supposed to play into
Speaker 1: the decision whether or not to form it into a
Speaker 1: bolus with your your tongue in the back of your
Speaker 1: throat and send it down to the next step. Very
Speaker 1: appetizing to think about while you're actually eating. Yes, I
Speaker 1: hope everybody's eating while they or maybe you're at least
Speaker 1: chewing gup. But there's also, in addition to just the
Speaker 1: pure mashing with the teeth, there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: sort of chemical treatment of the food as you're you're
Speaker 1: chewing it up to right, Yeah, the act of chewing
Speaker 1: produces saliva, which plays a key role in this first
Speaker 1: phase of digestion and again the ultimate preparation of the
Speaker 1: bolus that will pass onto the realms below and so final.
Speaker 1: For these reasons, chewing is especially important to herbivores and omnivores. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you want to like mash up tough fibrous
Speaker 1: plant material with your teeth so you can get more
Speaker 1: nutrients out of it. You notice there are some animals
Speaker 1: that don't chew at all, and they tend to be carnivores. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think I think about like snakes. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if there may be some cases of snakes
Speaker 1: doing something like chewing, but generally you know they're going
Speaker 1: to be swallowing their prey mostly hall right. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: big example of course the sperm whale, you know which one,
Speaker 1: just inhale. A lot of fish also fish also do
Speaker 1: this as well, an inhalation of the entire organism. The
Speaker 1: ending of anaconda wouldn't be quite the same if John
Speaker 1: Voyd had been chewed up before being swallowed exactly. There
Speaker 1: is cinematic payoff to that, for sure. Now, there have
Speaker 1: been those who put you know, excessive emphasis on chewing.
Speaker 1: For instance, I have to mention the work of Horace Fletcher.
Speaker 1: Who's he Oh he lived eighteen forty nine through nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: and he was known as the Great Masticator for and
Speaker 1: he was known as by this moniker because of his
Speaker 1: teachings of a fletcherizing. So basically his idea was that
Speaker 1: not only did you need to chew your food, because
Speaker 1: we've all heard that, right, and you know we've we've
Speaker 1: heard somebody say that to a child. Makes yeah, chew too,
Speaker 1: your food to your food, don't just you know, swallowed.
Speaker 1: But he was he would he would have argued that
Speaker 1: you need to chew your food to the point of
Speaker 1: liquefication in order to properly digest it and just count
Speaker 1: your choose, etcetera. And uh he he had some nice
Speaker 1: slogans for this, like this was his big issue, and
Speaker 1: one of them was nature will castigate those who don't mastigate. Um. Wait,
Speaker 1: so this is this is the first smoothie king, Well
Speaker 1: before you had blenders. This guy is doing an organic
Speaker 1: smoothie revolution. Yeah, he would have loved a vitam x
Speaker 1: you know. But but he was also you know, arguing
Speaker 1: that that chewing, you know, it's releasing the saliva and
Speaker 1: you need a certain amount of saliva to be produced.
Speaker 1: So he was all all part of it had to
Speaker 1: do with this with the idea of like all the
Speaker 1: things that chewing is actually doing and some of these things,
Speaker 1: you know, saliva is important. Is it's so important that
Speaker 1: you need to chew your drinks like that, because that
Speaker 1: was something you are like, if you're you're you're having
Speaker 1: a you're drinking something, you need to chew your drink
Speaker 1: as well, just to make sure the saliva is being produced.
Speaker 1: But a lot of a lot of people were, you know,
Speaker 1: we're sucked in by this this line of thinking, including
Speaker 1: Dr John Harvey Kellogg. That's not a surprise. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was an adherent, though Kellogg eventually abandoned fletcherizing because he
Speaker 1: realized that that wh he decided that fiber was more
Speaker 1: important and that fletcherizing might get in the way of
Speaker 1: taking in that necessary fiber. Well stopped clock rule. I mean,
Speaker 1: John Harvey Kellogg was mostly a crank. But fiber is
Speaker 1: very important, important to have a lot in your diet.
Speaker 1: But also wasn't John Harvey Kellogg an advocate of like
Speaker 1: boring foods. Didn't he suggest like you need to eat
Speaker 1: foods that aren't going to like excite the libido and stuff.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of ideas, some of which, uh no,
Speaker 1: some of them 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 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
Speaker 1: uh pacifiers. Sometimes adults will two pass 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 nutreents from that pin? You just much 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 mild stimulant
Speaker 1: to them, perhaps we need to do to chew on
Speaker 1: that to keep going. But we probably also a lot
Speaker 1: of high fiber potential foods. Yeah, yeah, you kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, 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 an experience
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 a
Speaker 1: particular substance, even a mushroom um, because if you're if
Speaker 1: something a lot, if you if you chew it and
Speaker 1: spit it, you know, you can get a sense of it.
Speaker 1: Is it a bitter or is putrid? Whatever the taste
Speaker 1: happens to be, and that would aid and experienced individual
Speaker 1: in identifying that substance. Well, so I've got a question.
Speaker 1: Do bears chew gum? I mean, what are there are
Speaker 1: there examples of gum style recreational chewing in the animal
Speaker 1: world outside of humans? Well? Um, I looked around for
Speaker 1: examples of recreational chewing in animals and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot to report. Most of it seems to be in
Speaker 1: the aid of food selection and consumption, or to do
Speaker 1: to some manner of malady or the effects of being
Speaker 1: kept in an enclosure. I thought to my own cat,
Speaker 1: and occasionally, you know, my cattle do this thing where
Speaker 1: she takes the food in her mouth, chew it, let's
Speaker 1: it drop out, and then maybe she'll eat it. But
Speaker 1: I think that's ultimately part of her tasting the substance
Speaker 1: and then deciding whether to eat it. Now, I do
Speaker 1: think that there there seemed to be some behaviors in
Speaker 1: dogs and perhaps other carnivores that seem to me to
Speaker 1: be non feeding for chians, of chewing where they'll chew
Speaker 1: 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 chewer as some dogs are,
Speaker 1: And I would make a strong distinction, I guess, between
Speaker 1: things that are in some way kind of a food
Speaker 1: or 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 level like food chew toys
Speaker 1: 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 eat the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and I was I was impressed. A big nasty bloody
Speaker 1: wet muzzle when it's done. But but there's this whole
Speaker 1: issue of course dogs chewing things they're not supposed to
Speaker 1: chew is actually shoes and I found, um, I found
Speaker 1: an article in Live Science so where they were talking
Speaker 1: to Calling Tennant, a chairman of the UK Canine and
Speaker 1: Feline Behavior Association, and uh. They pointed out that okay,
Speaker 1: so yes, dogs chew things, uh, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times they're chewing things in order to sense them. And
Speaker 1: it comes down to not only the not really the
Speaker 1: taste necessary, but the smell potential of a dog. They
Speaker 1: said that when a when a dog choose on something,
Speaker 1: it's like a quote, a human opening a door and
Speaker 1: looking into a room. So we have to remember that
Speaker 1: all these other animals they're living in their own different
Speaker 1: sensory worlds with different levels of sensory input, and a
Speaker 1: dog lives in a you know, a high level olfactory universe.
Speaker 1: And so chewing on something and releasing the smells of
Speaker 1: that thing and the tastes of that thing, um like,
Speaker 1: they're interacting with it in a way that we can
Speaker 1: scarcely really imagine. And Tennant says, 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 our recording brafts,
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 may
Speaker 1: chew They're going to chew on a remnant and uh
Speaker 1: and and engage with the smell. Uh you know, it's
Speaker 1: we can It's difficult to imagine how how humans would
Speaker 1: operate if smell was our prime was one of our
Speaker 1: more forward sensory perceptions 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 are 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 is 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 or 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 doesn't necessarily mean that right
Speaker 1: 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, medics, medicinal reasons. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: see this across many different cultures. Yes, So uh, I
Speaker 1: want to talk for a bit about Otsy, the so
Speaker 1: called ice man you know, of course, is great. I
Speaker 1: would see a wonderful individual to study, uh because you know,
Speaker 1: he he preserves some of the activities that that ancient
Speaker 1: humans engaged in that we still engage in today, such
Speaker 1: as uh tattoos for instance. Oh yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: so Otsi if you're not familiar, is a Stone Age
Speaker 1: mummy from the late fourth century not fourth century, sorry,
Speaker 1: the late fourth millennium BC E, discovered in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties frozen with his head 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. Um.
Speaker 1: We could return to him in a number of ways
Speaker 1: in either one of our podcasts, but included among the
Speaker 1: many fascinating questions about him are what was he doing
Speaker 1: so high up in the mountains, especially since cat scans
Speaker 1: of the mummy revealed that he's got an arrowhead lodged
Speaker 1: in his shoulder, and he had other injuries that occurred
Speaker 1: right before death, showing that he almost certainly died by homicide,
Speaker 1: and so like well, you know, this like what six
Speaker 1: thousand year old murder mystery or five thousand year old
Speaker 1: murder mystery. That that's pretty cool. But one of the
Speaker 1: other things about Otzi that's really interesting is his tool kits.
Speaker 1: So of course he is a stone age guy up
Speaker 1: in the mountains and he's got stone age tools with
Speaker 1: him and they're very well preserved. So this includes an
Speaker 1: axe that he carried with them that had an awesome
Speaker 1: copper blade, and the copper blade has been traced back
Speaker 1: to its origins in southern Tuscany, which of course is
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles from where Elsie lived. And this copper
Speaker 1: blade was secured to the half of the acts by
Speaker 1: a couple of means, so it was wrapped with leather straps,
Speaker 1: but it was also secured there by a type of
Speaker 1: stone age glue made of tar that was created from
Speaker 1: the bark of the birch tree. And I want to
Speaker 1: focus on this birch bark tar for a second, because
Speaker 1: we could probably do an episode of this show on
Speaker 1: stone age adhesives ancient glues. I mean, isn't glue a
Speaker 1: fascinating invention in its own right? It comes thousands of
Speaker 1: years after the byface or knife, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: like it's the it's the inverse knife. Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: we put things back together or how do we assemble
Speaker 1: things as opposed to and disassembled them. Yeah. So, birch
Speaker 1: bark tar is this black, sticky plastic substance that's made
Speaker 1: from the destructive distillation of arc 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 aarow 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 into. Another use would
Speaker 1: be for waterproofing things. Yes, as a ceiling 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 nineteen 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, archaeologists have
Speaker 1: recovered lumps of what appears to be ancient tar with
Speaker 1: human tooth impressions, and they date from the Mesolithic and
Speaker 1: 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, would be all over the place.
Speaker 1: I imagine two. In Neolithic times, it was possible to
Speaker 1: step on somebody's chewing material, step on somebody's chewing gum,
Speaker 1: and be like, yeah, well, I mean, I guess that's
Speaker 1: assuming we know that this was gum, But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make the case it very likely was um. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: So they date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, that's
Speaker 1: the middle of the Late Stone Age, going back about
Speaker 1: as far as roughly nine thousand years ago, and they're
Speaker 1: all described as these amorphous masses, black or brown in color,
Speaker 1: that have indentations left by human teeth. So why we're
Speaker 1: human teeth biting down on these lumps of ancient tar,
Speaker 1: We think very likely it was for some form of
Speaker 1: chewing gum, and the authors suggests this as well. Quote.
Speaker 1: Although the primary function of teeth is to bite, chew, crunch,
Speaker 1: and grind food, chewing plant or animal products serves a
Speaker 1: number of alternative roles, such as cleaning teeth and gums,
Speaker 1: freshening breath, quenching thirst a levi aiding dental ailments and
Speaker 1: sore throats, and as a means of delivering medicinal and
Speaker 1: psychoactive agents to the body. Now they talk about maybe
Speaker 1: there are a couple of counter explanations for why you
Speaker 1: might find tooth marks on old bits of tar, and
Speaker 1: these these tooth marks might have reflected some kind of
Speaker 1: functional or practical use. Instead of showing that the tar
Speaker 1: was chewing gum, for example, it might have been related
Speaker 1: to their use as an adhesive. Since birch bark tar
Speaker 1: is thermoplastic, maybe chewing softened the tar so that you
Speaker 1: could apply it as an adhesive or ceilant. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like the hot glue gun is your mouth. You know,
Speaker 1: you put the glue stick in, you chew it 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 you reheated from time to time
Speaker 1: to facilitate the removal of smaller pieces for use. Once
Speaker 1: sufficiently softened, it would then be easy to bite a
Speaker 1: piece off. So right, so like your ammunition of tar
Speaker 1: to use out in the field as this big piece,
Speaker 1: and then you could heat it up a little bit
Speaker 1: and bite a piece off to remove it from from
Speaker 1: your bandalier of tar basically h So that might be
Speaker 1: a possibility, but there seems to be pretty good evidence
Speaker 1: that this was just chewing gum uh. And there's some
Speaker 1: evidence that chewing tar and tree resin like this has
Speaker 1: been passed down through generations in Northern Europe as a
Speaker 1: treatment for sore throats and dental complaints even into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, like the author's site Ethnographic studies of tar
Speaker 1: and resin chewing behavior conducted by Vilcuna in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four in the Lap area of northern Sweden, and I
Speaker 1: want to read a quote here quote. Vilcuna also notes
Speaker 1: an eighteen seventeen account written by Goldland of a church
Speaker 1: service in Finland which half of the congregation, all women,
Speaker 1: were chewing resin to keep themselves awake. So if you've
Speaker 1: got a really boring minister who's putting everybody to sleep,
Speaker 1: you chew resin so that you don't fall asleep and
Speaker 1: and get in trouble. Gotland noted that people chewed to
Speaker 1: pass the time, to keep teeth white, to prevent the
Speaker 1: invasion of scurvy into the gums, and to relieve stomach
Speaker 1: pains and heartburn. The most enthusiastic chewers were adolescents and
Speaker 1: old women. The preparation of chews required practice, so older
Speaker 1: women often pre chewed the resin for children. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: you know I have chewed things for my son before. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not that uncommon. It makes sense really
Speaker 1: like chewed with your mouth. I'm not judging mean, well,
Speaker 1: like okay, well, like if you need to say, for instance,
Speaker 1: my son's going through the phase right now where his teeth, uh,
Speaker 1: he's changing out his teeth, he's losing the baby teeth
Speaker 1: and grown up teeth are coming in. And they made
Speaker 1: a couple of times where he hasn't been able to
Speaker 1: like bite into an apple. And if the apple's 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'man, which I usually don't, I'll bite a
Speaker 1: piece off of the apple, take it out of my mouth,
Speaker 1: give it to him. And there's actually like a well
Speaker 1: 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: of 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 choose it in the first half
Speaker 1: of church, and then when it's time for the sermon
Speaker 1: to get going, you pass it off to the kids
Speaker 1: maybe so keep them occupied. Okay, picking back up with
Speaker 1: this quote, though, Although the majority of Vilcuna's ethnographic cases
Speaker 1: relate to chewing tree resins, reference is also made to
Speaker 1: the chewing of birch mark tar for similar purposes. In
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Siberia. The tar had to be prepared in
Speaker 1: a specific manner and only women could be present. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting, like this gendered secret ritual about
Speaker 1: the preparation of the tar for chewing. Other interesting facts
Speaker 1: include the fact that the teeth marks and most of
Speaker 1: the Stone Age tar lumps appear to have been left
Speaker 1: by young people, children and adolescents roughly ages six to fifteen,
Speaker 1: and finally, to bring it back to Otsy the author's
Speaker 1: site speculation by an author named Spindler in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: four that quote polished sections on the incisors and canines
Speaker 1: of the frozen remains of the Neolithic body from the
Speaker 1: Austrian Italian Alps may have occurred as a result of
Speaker 1: chewing birch bark tar. And I think this is referring
Speaker 1: to Otsy himself, to the Iceman. But so I think
Speaker 1: this looks like a really good case that going way
Speaker 1: back into the Stone Age, people were chewing these lumps
Speaker 1: of tar made from tree bark resin as maybe for
Speaker 1: medicinal purposes, maybe just recreationally, maybe for aesthetic or hygiene purposes,
Speaker 1: but they were definitely chewing them, right, And you can
Speaker 1: also have multiple, uh, you know, purposes in play, Like
Speaker 1: maybe it starts off as just a way of you know,
Speaker 1: heating up the material, we're having it handy for you know,
Speaker 1: use in repairing items and whatnot, but then it just
Speaker 1: becomes something recreational in nature or you know, they pick
Speaker 1: up on the fact that it, uh you know, makes
Speaker 1: your teeth appear or feel healthier. Yeah, but we should
Speaker 1: say tar are produced by tree bark and resin in
Speaker 1: northern Europe is not the only gum that predates modern
Speaker 1: industrial chewing gum. There are actually a number of different
Speaker 1: gum and resin showing traditions around the world. Right. One
Speaker 1: of them is a bitumen, which, uh, there's evidence that
Speaker 1: the Aztecs chewed it. This is a black, viscous mixture
Speaker 1: of hydrocarbons um that you know is often it can
Speaker 1: be obtained naturally or is it or is it residue
Speaker 1: from petroleum distillation. We've talked about bitumen on the show
Speaker 1: before its role and it's been used basically for a
Speaker 1: number of different purposes throughout human history, from you know,
Speaker 1: very industrial type uses to make up to the preparation
Speaker 1: of mummies, that sort of thing. I think we talked
Speaker 1: about how it figured into some hypotheses of the explanation
Speaker 1: of Greek fire. Yes, I believe it did. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that was on 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 bid amen
Speaker 1: from natural seepages along the Gulf coast, and females especially
Speaker 1: were said to have chewed the bitumen to sweeten their breath.
Speaker 1: There's like a strange like gendered element again to chewing
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 an evolved and I wonder if it,
Speaker 1: like if this plays into like, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: division 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 chicklets, right, I believe, I guess
Speaker 1: so I did. Yeah, chicklets. 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 men Elkara zapota.
Speaker 1: I think that's the scientific name. And it's found primarily
Speaker 1: in Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula. And you can
Speaker 1: collect the latex from this tree by hacking these Z
Speaker 1: 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 rules
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: there was an association with it being seen as a
Speaker 1: feminine or something, so that men wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: use it in public or would be shamed if they did. Wow.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting in geographic areas as far as
Speaker 1: separated in times like the Vastic Empire versus in Stone
Speaker 1: Age Northern Europe. In Stone Age Northern Europe, it looks
Speaker 1: to us like the primary chewers of chewing gum. Then
Speaker 1: we're children, and here it's it seems like it was mainly, uh,
Speaker 1: something that was only publicly acceptable for children and some women. Now.
Speaker 1: Another example of of a chewing substance from history, The
Speaker 1: Greeks chewed mastic, which is a plant resin obtained from
Speaker 1: the mastic tree, and it was also known as the
Speaker 1: tears of chios Um, which is its name for the
Speaker 1: Greek island of chios from which a lot of it
Speaker 1: was apparently harvested. Uh and it was a call that
Speaker 1: because the way was harvested like that, you would you
Speaker 1: would have these droplets coming down from the tree and
Speaker 1: um from the branches, and they would kind of you know,
Speaker 1: solidify and then when you hack them off, they continue
Speaker 1: to look like little droplets or tears. But it apparently
Speaker 1: had a bitter taste. It was followed we followed by
Speaker 1: kind of a pine wood after taste that people liked.
Speaker 1: So it seems to have been used as a as
Speaker 1: a way of sprucing up your breath, but also was
Speaker 1: had some medicinal properties. Uh and and uh and was
Speaker 1: you know, used medicinally and may have had a value
Speaker 1: to dental health. I believe there they've actually been some
Speaker 1: studies that have looked into like to what degree it
Speaker 1: actually it still has, you know, a verified impact on
Speaker 1: dental hygiene. Yeah. And now there was some chewing traditions
Speaker 1: also farther north in the North America among the indigenous people's,
Speaker 1: some of whom chewed the residin of the spruce trees.
Speaker 1: The early European colonists to North America picked up on
Speaker 1: the practice of chewing spruce tree residin as well, and
Speaker 1: then eventually spruce tree resin was turned into an early
Speaker 1: version of commercial chewing gum. I think it was in
Speaker 1: like the eighteen forties that there was this guy named
Speaker 1: John Curtis who developed a process for commercially producing spruce
Speaker 1: tree gum that would involve like boiling down the resin
Speaker 1: and then cutting it up into strips and coding them
Speaker 1: in a in a powder that would keep them from
Speaker 1: sticking together. And I guess he made some money. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we're not gonna have time to discuss everything that
Speaker 1: humans have chewed and continue to chew on the podcast here,
Speaker 1: but I do want to just point out that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know a few examples that come to mind in
Speaker 1: part because of their uh they're they're stimulating properties. So
Speaker 1: a crayon nut and beetle leaf chewed together. This goes
Speaker 1: back to thousands of years in East Asia and the
Speaker 1: Indian subcontinent and still is in You still see people
Speaker 1: doing this today. When chewed, it releases a mild stimulant
Speaker 1: much like nicotine, but also it has a carcinogen in
Speaker 1: it that's bad, you know, ultimately bad for your health. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes additional herbs were also added to it for flavor. Likewise,
Speaker 1: chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco leaves dates back to pre Columbian
Speaker 1: times in North and South America, again chewing it in
Speaker 1: order to release a mild stimulant. And then yet another example,
Speaker 1: the coca leaf, from of course, from which you know,
Speaker 1: one 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 psychoactive property, chewing it
Speaker 1: is in many cases a way to release it, especially
Speaker 1: if the substance is not something you really want to
Speaker 1: swallow and digest, but you do want some of the
Speaker 1: chemicals inside it. Well, another way of thinking about that
Speaker 1: is that chewing again, as part of our defense mechanism
Speaker 1: against poisons, right, a way of determining are their toxins here?
Speaker 1: And of course part of the large part of human
Speaker 1: history is figuring out which toxins you like, which toxins
Speaker 1: are useful, uh, and in 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, an Tonio
Speaker 1: Lope Day Santa Anna, the larger than life nineteenth century
Speaker 1: Mexican military commander, revolutionary politician, statesman president of Mexico who
Speaker 1: fought for Mexican independence. Went on to be President of
Speaker 1: Mexico I think multiple terms. Uh, And then of course
Speaker 1: later got exiled. In eighteen sixty nine, Santa Anna was
Speaker 1: exiled in the United States and living on Staten Island,
Speaker 1: and sometime around then he became interested in the idea
Speaker 1: of 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 o five. Adams was
Speaker 1: based in New York and Adams try had 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 timeframe,
Speaker 1: you know, given what we've discussed in the show about
Speaker 1: photography and the sort of minds that you know, in
Speaker 1: creative types and inventive thinkers that had attracted chemistry in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties and seventies, that would be photography too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so I can see that. But of course he
Speaker 1: did not succeed in coming up with a vulcanization process
Speaker 1: for chickle. So when it became clear that there weren't
Speaker 1: going to be any real profits off of the off
Speaker 1: of trying to create a rubber substitute of chickle, Sam
Speaker 1: and a lost interest in the venture, but Adams stuck
Speaker 1: with it. He Adams went on to discover that the
Speaker 1: treated chickle had interesting properties of its own. So it
Speaker 1: was not water soluble, so it wouldn't dissolve in a
Speaker 1: wet environment like the mouth, and it was very plastic
Speaker 1: and very stretchy. And by this time there was already
Speaker 1: chewing gum. To find out in the world many a
Speaker 1: mayor Parkins 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 to other
Speaker 1: health problems as well. Yeah, when we've been talking about
Speaker 1: gum for you know, people using it for dental health purposes,
Speaker 1: I would suspect 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 Company.
Speaker 1: Was called there Adams California Fruit Chewing Gum. I think
Speaker 1: this ad was one featured on the Wikipedia page for
Speaker 1: the Atoms Fruit Company or the Atoms Chewing Gum Company.
Speaker 1: And this, uh, this ad is crazy. It looks like
Speaker 1: something from a much later time because it's got it's
Speaker 1: like this goddess in ecstasy, putting it looks like fruit
Speaker 1: into her mouth. But I guess it's suggesting it's the gum.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure. Interesting, so again via the goddess imagery,
Speaker 1: there's this kind of you know, feminization of chewing gum. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this would have been so if this was
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds, this would have been around
Speaker 1: the time that we got the wash the article in
Speaker 1: the British Medical Journal and the other publications talking about
Speaker 1: chewing gum being this like disgusting thing that young women do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting to to to think about like
Speaker 1: dental health concerns because it brings me back to our
Speaker 1: episode on toothpaste and about just like the the increasing
Speaker 1: need for toothpaste or an effective substance like toothpaste to
Speaker 1: keep up with the the influx of sugars and other um,
Speaker 1: you know, mainly sugars into the human diet, uh and
Speaker 1: leading to a lot of dental problems. And of course
Speaker 1: one of the problems with having poor dental whole hygiene
Speaker 1: is you're going to have poor breath as well, You're
Speaker 1: gonna have halitosis and uh uh. And so perhaps there
Speaker 1: was an increase I mean once tempted to think there
Speaker 1: might have been an increase in the demand for some
Speaker 1: sort of breath freshening product. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: when we see that that outside of the European context,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's always been or there there has
Speaker 1: long been a need for some sort of breath freshening product.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure we're exactly to land on that,
Speaker 1: but without a doubt, the influx of sugar into uh,
Speaker 1: the diet, of the European diet during this time would
Speaker 1: have led to some bad breath, no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: And remember again, um brushing teeth with toothpaste was not
Speaker 1: a really widespread common practice until like the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: right right, So we're kind of in the dark ages
Speaker 1: of like that where where the where the diet had
Speaker 1: grown worse, but the but the the dental hygiene practices
Speaker 1: had not risen up to meet the demand. Yet, you know,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking another thing that I suspect very
Speaker 1: likely to be opera ended, like that British Medical Journal
Speaker 1: article and and the other ones talking about the actresses
Speaker 1: and and young ladies students chewing gum is probably just
Speaker 1: the same sort of like sexist trend detection that causes
Speaker 1: like adult men to think that girl younger girls are
Speaker 1: always on their phones, not noticing that boys are just
Speaker 1: as much men are on on their phones all the
Speaker 1: time as well. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. There's
Speaker 1: probably a word for that, like sex selective print trend detection.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the it's probably out there. Oh
Speaker 1: but hey, we gotta talk about Wriggley's Oh yeah, bring
Speaker 1: it on. So another big name in the history of
Speaker 1: chewing gum, of course is William Wriggley Jr. Uh, Wriggley
Speaker 1: is just a great last name. It implies that you're
Speaker 1: some kind of eel like writhing around and you can't
Speaker 1: can't get a grip on you. So Wriggley of course
Speaker 1: began as a salesman. You know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of salesman making it big around this time. In the
Speaker 1: eight nineties, he was trying to establish himself as a
Speaker 1: seller of commercial goods, and he ran like Bogo style
Speaker 1: promotions where customers you'd buy one product, you get another product,
Speaker 1: right so maybe, but I don't know what they really
Speaker 1: You might buy a velocipede and you get a free
Speaker 1: box of snuff. But but apparently one of his very
Speaker 1: popular promotional giveaways was chewing gum. And Wrigley was so
Speaker 1: impressed with how popular the chewing gum was as a
Speaker 1: promotional giveaway that he was like, well, I should just
Speaker 1: sell chewing gum. So he decided to get into the
Speaker 1: gum business, launching brands of his own, including brands like Wriggly,
Speaker 1: Spearmint uh. And I was reading a history dot com
Speaker 1: article by Elizabeth Knicks about some of his marketing practices.
Speaker 1: I just want to quote this because this is so great.
Speaker 1: H So those from Nick's article quote. Because the chewing
Speaker 1: gum field had grown crowded with competitors, Wrigley decided he'd
Speaker 1: make his products stand out by spending heavily on advertising
Speaker 1: and direct marketing. In nineteen fifteen, the Wrigley Company kicked
Speaker 1: off a campaign in which it sent free samples of
Speaker 1: its gum to millions of Americans list listed in phone books.
Speaker 1: Another promotion entailed sending sticks of gum to US children
Speaker 1: on their second birthday. I hadn't really thought about how
Speaker 1: easy it is to mail a piece of gum, but
Speaker 1: of course it is an can stick it in a
Speaker 1: pack of baseball cards. It's it'll stick in an envelope
Speaker 1: as well. Second birthday? Did I read that right? Second birthday?
Speaker 1: Should kids beat you in gum when they're two? I mean,
Speaker 1: probably not. I don't remember letting my son have have gum.
Speaker 1: I kind of I kind of discourage gum now and
Speaker 1: he's seven, but but he really he wants it, you know,
Speaker 1: like when he sees one of those big gumball machines,
Speaker 1: of course he wants to get a giant gumball and
Speaker 1: stick it in his mouth. I mean, I'm no expert
Speaker 1: on raising children, but something seems wrong there. I don't
Speaker 1: think two year olds are supposed to have gum right
Speaker 1: fresher than the mail though, But still isn't genius 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 east with new sym synthetic rubbers
Speaker 1: and waxes, and that sort of led us to the
Speaker 1: gum world we have today. Of course, we've got you know,
Speaker 1: all 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's 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 in a
Speaker 1: desk working that it can help focus your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this has actually been the subject of a lot
Speaker 1: of research. Strangely enough, I wonder how much of it
Speaker 1: is funded by the chewing gum industry, I think, right,
Speaker 1: But there have been ton of studies in in psychology
Speaker 1: and uh, I don't know what other fields this would
Speaker 1: apply to. I guess would be in psychology, where the
Speaker 1: question is does chewing gum make people do better on
Speaker 1: various kinds of cognitive tasks? And there appears to be,
Speaker 1: at least as far as I was reading, some evidence
Speaker 1: that there's a little bit of a cognitive boost that
Speaker 1: people get from chewing gum. But it appears to apply
Speaker 1: for a few minutes after gum has been chewed, not
Speaker 1: while you're chewing gum, or at least that's what I
Speaker 1: found in for example, I studied from two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: published an appetite by Hour at All called Cognitive Advantages
Speaker 1: of Chewing Gum. Now you see them, now you don't uh,
Speaker 1: And so it was talking about giving people a battery
Speaker 1: of cognitive tests either while they were chewing gum or
Speaker 1: after they chewed gum, compared with the performance of controls
Speaker 1: who didn't chew anything at all, and the right quote,
Speaker 1: chewing gum was associated with performance advantages on multiple measures
Speaker 1: when gum was chewed five minutes before but not ring
Speaker 1: cognitive testing. The benefits, however, persisted only for the first
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty minutes of the testing session. And did
Speaker 1: not extend to all cognitive domains. To explain this pattern
Speaker 1: of results, it's proposed that the time limited nature of
Speaker 1: performance benefits can be attributed to mastication induced arousal. Maybe
Speaker 1: Fletcher was right. Yeah, well, I mean it comes back
Speaker 1: to the fact that when you're chewing, you're using a
Speaker 1: whole lot of muscles in your face, you're producing saliva.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I could see, yeah, it's it's waking you
Speaker 1: up a little bit. I mean, it's the comes back
Speaker 1: to chewing gum and church, right. Yeah. But then also
Speaker 1: there's probably a conflict the author's thing going on when
Speaker 1: you're trying to chew gum while you're doing a task,
Speaker 1: because you might be benefiting from some arousal, but you're
Speaker 1: also sort of lightly dividing your attention if you're also chewing. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's true. And then when you're done chewing, you're you're
Speaker 1: revved up. Now you're ready to go. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: have this mild increase. So yeah, it seems to me
Speaker 1: that there might be a little bit of a cognitive
Speaker 1: boost from from chewing gum a little bit after you chew,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem earth shaking. I wonder why this
Speaker 1: hasn't though led to more Like I'm sure there's some
Speaker 1: products out there that are marketed as being like a
Speaker 1: like a performance enhancing gum, and uh, I assure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but performance enhancing everything. But given how how much marketing
Speaker 1: is out there regarding you know, various you know, attention boosting,
Speaker 1: memory boosting, uh, herbal supplements and so forth, Like, why
Speaker 1: am I not being bombarded with marketing for gums that
Speaker 1: contain the same thing? Because when you look back to
Speaker 1: our history of chewing things again, in many cases we're
Speaker 1: chewing things in order to get some sort of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a mild stimulant out of the material we're chewing.
Speaker 1: You look even to nicotine gum today used as a
Speaker 1: way of, you know, of of getting people off of
Speaker 1: off of cigarettes and having them consume their nicotine through
Speaker 1: chewable gum, which you would chew I think for like
Speaker 1: fifteen min it's at a time I think that's the uh,
Speaker 1: the idea. Uh So why don't we Why haven't we
Speaker 1: seen more drug delivery through chewing gum during the history
Speaker 1: of chewing gum? I wonder if it falls back into
Speaker 1: like the gender divide that seemed to be there is
Speaker 1: that why we didn't have cocaine gums. I wonder, I
Speaker 1: mean I when when you talk about the performance enhancing
Speaker 1: gum concept, I mean cynical part of me wonders if
Speaker 1: it's just cheaper to make placebo pills than it is
Speaker 1: to make placebo gums. Yeah, but who knows what the
Speaker 1: future will hold. It is worth pointing out with the
Speaker 1: cannabis gums are already on the market, it should not
Speaker 1: come as a surprise to anybody um. And then likewise,
Speaker 1: there's continued research into things we might be able to
Speaker 1: do with gum. For instance, there's some studies looking at
Speaker 1: using gums containing um uh phospho peptide, amorphous calcium phosphate,
Speaker 1: and xylotol as a way of creating gums that are
Speaker 1: even healthier for our dental hygiene. That it could be
Speaker 1: you know, mark get even more for dental health. Likewise,
Speaker 1: chewing gum may also impact our wearable technology. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen Time article by Alexandra uh Sifferlan
Speaker 1: who discussed Applied Materials and Interfaces Journal article in which
Speaker 1: the researchers treated chewed gum like pre chewed gum that
Speaker 1: one of the researchers that chew they treated it with
Speaker 1: ethanol and carbon nanotubes to create a sensor that could
Speaker 1: quote detect body motion and humidity changes, which could be
Speaker 1: used to track breathing. Uh. But in this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not so much the gum is a thing that's chewed,
Speaker 1: but as coming back to the material itself, you know,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting interesting to look at this chain,
Speaker 1: you know, from from things we chew two glues and
Speaker 1: rubbers back into chewing gum and then perhaps into meta
Speaker 1: materials that will be useful in the future. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to know this was going to get into
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube based chewing gum, smart gum of the future.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if there's been any cool slife
Speaker 1: by treatments of that, like some sort of smart chewing
Speaker 1: gum that you chew it up and now it's activated
Speaker 1: and you can use it for all sorts of elaborate things. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I only chew VANTI black. Well,
Speaker 1: it does remind mcgiver would use a bubble gum, right,
Speaker 1: maybe use chewing gum to fix things 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 hopefully not. Hopefully not. But here's
Speaker 1: one thing that that's for certain. Everybody out there listening
Speaker 1: to this episode probably has something to share, you know
Speaker 1: about either your personal relationship with gum, what you like,
Speaker 1: what you don't like, or other chewable substances. What's your
Speaker 1: relationship with them. Perhaps you're from a culture that has
Speaker 1: a 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 coco leaves? Uh
Speaker 1: in uh 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 mother ship. That's where we
Speaker 1: find all the episodes of this show. And if you
Speaker 1: want to support Invention the best things you can do
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Speaker 1: make sure you're telling your friends about it. And if
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Speaker 1: assortment of stars or a nice review wherever you got
Speaker 1: this podcast, well 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 feed back on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is
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