Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: you welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I've got a question for you.
Speaker 1: In what way are humans most like cats? Oh? I
Speaker 1: don't know, Joe, in what way are humans most like cats? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll answer the riddle myself then, since you thought it
Speaker 1: was a joke, No, it's not a joke. No, it's
Speaker 1: that both actually love packaging material of like gifts and
Speaker 1: packages more than what's inside it. Because with the cats,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you ever had a cat on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day when presents are being open, of course you have. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is your experience and my experience,
Speaker 1: they always want to get in the wrapping paper and
Speaker 1: go to war with But with us humans, it's not
Speaker 1: the wrapping paper. It's that darn bubble wrap. That stuff
Speaker 1: is so intoxicating, the tactile pleasure of it, the gentle
Speaker 1: popping sounds. It's like it's a drug from another universe. Well, um,
Speaker 1: first of all, on on the cat issue, yes, I
Speaker 1: can definitely testify that cats love packaging material. Uh, they
Speaker 1: also really love or at least. My cat really loves
Speaker 1: uh instruction manuals for the assembly of furniture, um like
Speaker 1: Ikea manuals and kind of like Ikea manual or like
Speaker 1: a Lego instruction book. When you start, when you pull
Speaker 1: everything out of the box, that's right where she goes.
Speaker 1: If you have the most comfortable couch in the world,
Speaker 1: and then there is an Ikea instruction manual somewhere on
Speaker 1: that couch, it's the instruction manual that she will lay on. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's part of the larger trend of
Speaker 1: cats always wanting to be between you and what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and how they don't want your attention until you're really
Speaker 1: trying to focus on something else and then they need
Speaker 1: to get on top of that thing and in your
Speaker 1: face possibly. And of course they love boxes and all
Speaker 1: I understand because they are you know that they're they're
Speaker 1: both predator and prey and uh and so they you know,
Speaker 1: they want little places to hide out in to hide
Speaker 1: from predators, but also you know, places of ambush for
Speaker 1: the things that they would be hunting. Do you have
Speaker 1: this memory when you were a little kid of like
Speaker 1: the early early years of playing with bubble wrap and
Speaker 1: just the intense fixation with popping every single bubble on
Speaker 1: the sheet. Yeah. I mean I don't remember necessarily like
Speaker 1: the feeling like I had to pop every bubble, but
Speaker 1: I remember like this vague sense of almost disappointment at
Speaker 1: having completely popped all of the bubbles and there being
Speaker 1: something like fresh and exciting about a complete unpopped sheet
Speaker 1: of bubble wrap. So yeah, I have some fond memories
Speaker 1: of it. And as you know, as as a former child,
Speaker 1: but also as the parent of a current child, especially
Speaker 1: when he was younger, you know, we would we get
Speaker 1: some bubble wrap. You give him some bubble wrap and
Speaker 1: just just tell him here and go for it, and
Speaker 1: he would have fun popping it. Um. It's better than
Speaker 1: any twenty toy, It's yeah, yeah, Core. As as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: we see less full on bubble wrap these days, we
Speaker 1: see in another type of of packing material that is
Speaker 1: plastic inflated with air. We still get a decent amount
Speaker 1: of bubble wrap here in the office because we often
Speaker 1: get books delivered to us in the office in those
Speaker 1: bubble wrap lined envelopes. Oh yeah, I guess we do, um,
Speaker 1: which is always kind of silly because I don't, especially
Speaker 1: if it's a you know, a review copy book. He
Speaker 1: broke my book, and I don't. I don't mind if
Speaker 1: it gets beat up a little bit. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: since outside of work, when I order a book for myself,
Speaker 1: I always order like the whatever the cheapest used copy is,
Speaker 1: so you know, I get something in that has like
Speaker 1: a weird odor to it and coffee stains. I love
Speaker 1: And yeah, I love it when when a book has
Speaker 1: been you know, the various package of passages that are
Speaker 1: underlined and highlighted and little notes at it in summaries. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I really don't care if it is you know,
Speaker 1: if it is you know, completely protected from the you know,
Speaker 1: the physical dangers of transit. But but yeah, we still
Speaker 1: so we still get a lot of of bubble wrap
Speaker 1: like material. In fact, we get so much that it
Speaker 1: can be a little you know, overbearing at times. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like once a week I have I'm like
Speaker 1: a you know, an executioner in my house going around
Speaker 1: to the various inflatable bits and just stabbing them all
Speaker 1: to get the air out so I can stuff the
Speaker 1: plastic in the and the recycling and then a similar
Speaker 1: case with freezer bags for for food that is shipped,
Speaker 1: you know, having to to gut those and get all
Speaker 1: of the the the the the unfrozen material out of
Speaker 1: there so I can stuff those plastic bags into the recycling.
Speaker 1: I totally know what you're saying. My childhood fascination with
Speaker 1: and love of bubble wrap has in many ways been
Speaker 1: replaced by an adult guilt complex about packaging materials. I
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, this probably isn't good for the planet.
Speaker 1: I've gotten too much stuff shipped to my house and
Speaker 1: and I don't know what to do about it. Now
Speaker 1: it's here, I guess I just gotta pop this and
Speaker 1: try to recycle it if I can. Yeah, So, on
Speaker 1: today's episode, as as you can can tell, we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss bubble wrap. And before you turn off and
Speaker 1: say like, I don't you know that sounds dreary, No, No,
Speaker 1: it actually has a surprising origin story which we'll get into,
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss what came before bubble wrap, and and
Speaker 1: where we've gone, where we're going post bubble wrap, and
Speaker 1: what that sort of future holds for us. All right, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should go straight to the origin story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is a more recent invention. So this is
Speaker 1: not going to be one where you know the the
Speaker 1: inventors are lost to the myths of prehistory. No we
Speaker 1: know their names. So the story of bubble wrap begins
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties with a pair of business partners.
Speaker 1: Now these were an American inventor named Alfred W. Fielding
Speaker 1: and a Swiss chemist named Mark Chavon. Now, Fielding and
Speaker 1: Chevon were playing around with an idea for an innovation
Speaker 1: in interior decorating, not in packaging material, not in childhood entertainment,
Speaker 1: but in interior decor. They wanted to explore new frontiers
Speaker 1: in wall paper. Now, wallpaper has gone in and out
Speaker 1: of style over the course of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: actually has gone in and out of style. I guess
Speaker 1: before then is it in right now? I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a little bit and I I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: feel like these days, the modern sensibility, it tends to
Speaker 1: be more sort of like solid painted muter color walls.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, maybe it's coming back. I don't
Speaker 1: know that much about interior design. I feel like I
Speaker 1: I've been encountering it more like when when I go to, say,
Speaker 1: like a new restaurant or something you know where there's
Speaker 1: clearly been a lot of recent energy put into the decor.
Speaker 1: I will sometimes find wallpaper and I'll think, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: this is this is a sign of things to come.
Speaker 1: I don't know, well, it used to be more of
Speaker 1: a sign of luxury and interior decorating, but then it
Speaker 1: became cheaper and more popular in the twentieth century, appearing
Speaker 1: in more and more homes. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: coming back, and if it is coming back, I wonder
Speaker 1: what that says. But anyway, in nineteen fifty seven, these
Speaker 1: two guys Fielding and Chavan, we're trying to see if
Speaker 1: they could make a new kind of weird artsy three
Speaker 1: D textured wallpaper out of sheets of plastic layered over
Speaker 1: paper backing, and so modern accounts of their efforts, including
Speaker 1: an article I was reading by David Kindy and smith
Speaker 1: Sony in about this invention, but a bunch of other things,
Speaker 1: they all identify the beat generation as the target market
Speaker 1: of this wallpaper. And I don't know if that goes
Speaker 1: back to something that Fielding and Chavan themselves said at
Speaker 1: some point, but it's gets repeated a lot. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to exact imagine exactly what that means from like a
Speaker 1: mass market consumer style point of view. Obviously they weren't
Speaker 1: just trying to sell this to Alan Ginsberg and his friends,
Speaker 1: because when you think Alan Ginsberg, you think can bubble
Speaker 1: at well, I mean maybe maybe, because so I would say,
Speaker 1: for some reason, we today tend to think of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties as an extremely square time in the history
Speaker 1: of like American arts and culture. But in reality, it
Speaker 1: seems to me like it was exactly the opposite. Mid
Speaker 1: century architecture and design, like the late forties through the
Speaker 1: early sixties really seems to me to be absolutely crammed
Speaker 1: with bizarre experimental styles that would be far too weird
Speaker 1: for most new businesses or homeowners today. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: that that's sort of the landscape imagining, Like I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if this experimental textured wallpaper might have fit in with
Speaker 1: elements of the mid century futurist architectural style known as googy,
Speaker 1: which if you're trying to picture that, think like classic
Speaker 1: architecture and designs in Las Vegas that you can still
Speaker 1: see on some of their signs right right the the
Speaker 1: the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign is a
Speaker 1: prime example of googy. And by the way, googie is
Speaker 1: spelled g o O g i e. A word that
Speaker 1: pretty much any search engine will try to insist does
Speaker 1: not exist. They're like main Google right right now, I
Speaker 1: mean googie. Uh and this is googie. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is probably the most readily available example of googy. That's
Speaker 1: just going to be in your mind right now. If
Speaker 1: you play video games. There's a bunch of googie design
Speaker 1: that shows up in the Fallout game because they're going
Speaker 1: for that nineteen fifties retro futurist style. There there are
Speaker 1: other sort of names for related or overlapping mid century styles,
Speaker 1: like mid century Modern, which is I think broader than googie,
Speaker 1: or what is sometimes apparently now called ray gun Gothic.
Speaker 1: I think that's a coinage by William Gibson. Interesting. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is important to This is actually something
Speaker 1: that I always have to continually remind myself that the
Speaker 1: creative minds of the nineteen fifties, the nineteen forties and
Speaker 1: and other decades as well, for the most part, we're
Speaker 1: just as as weird and as inventive, if not more so,
Speaker 1: than anybody working today. Uh, you know, some of my
Speaker 1: favorite artists that I've discovered it, such as Irving nor
Speaker 1: It was you know, surrealist, dark surrealist painter, and he
Speaker 1: was active, he would have been active at this time
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. And you look at his work
Speaker 1: now and it looks it's it's difficult, it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's weird and dark and uh and and
Speaker 1: and you know, undercutting in a way that you might
Speaker 1: not expect from the nineteen fifties if you're just picturing,
Speaker 1: like you know, the sort of the atomic family scenario,
Speaker 1: the atomic family, the nuclear family family, it's the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you made me think of fallouts. I'm thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: the idea more about atomics, I guess. But but also
Speaker 1: like there's there are all these other strange styles that
Speaker 1: are flourishing at the period, like like the tiki aesthetic. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this definitely lines up with the same era. So for
Speaker 1: those of you are not aware, mid century tiki was
Speaker 1: a post War War two aesthetic fad that most memorably
Speaker 1: gave us tiki drinks, but also in an entire aesthetic
Speaker 1: vibe that's firmly rooted in the cultural appropriation of Polynesian culture,
Speaker 1: they drinks themselves. However, as tiki drink master Beach Bumbari
Speaker 1: points out in his excellent book Portions of the Caribbean, Uh,
Speaker 1: these drinks are firmly products of the Caribbean and Caribbean products,
Speaker 1: particularly rum, while the design is assembled from Pilford bits
Speaker 1: of Polynesian aesthetics. Now, now, I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: tiki drinks myself. I think they're fun to make, fun
Speaker 1: to drink and share. And then the history of of
Speaker 1: each individual cocktail tends to be interesting with its sort
Speaker 1: of you know, they're they're they're the stories of like
Speaker 1: feuding bartenders in the fifties and sixties, etcetera. Um. But
Speaker 1: just as the products that make up a tiki drink
Speaker 1: are problematic in their roots in Western exploitation of the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: so too is the style rooted in the exploitation of
Speaker 1: Polynesian people's. So uh, you know, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: ruin tiki for anyone, but I'm just saying imbibe with
Speaker 1: a shot of self reflection. And by the way, I'd
Speaker 1: love to actually cover tiki and more detail on another episode.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we could do an episode on invention of the
Speaker 1: my tai. Really yeah, it has an interesting history, Okay,
Speaker 1: trade secret swarring, tiki bartenders. Uh yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: world there. Uh. And of course again Beech Bumbari is
Speaker 1: a wonderful authority on all of these, highly recommend his books. Interesting, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we could come back. But so thinking about wallpapers specifically,
Speaker 1: I mean connecting it back to the to the teaky aesthetic.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a blog post by writer named
Speaker 1: Katherine Brooks that was collecting wallpapers throughout history, and she
Speaker 1: had a couple of examples of wallpapers selected from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and they are very strange. One has this
Speaker 1: complex design with kind of green and black tropical garden motif.
Speaker 1: It seems to be evoking sort of like a like
Speaker 1: a tiki a fascination. It's got palm trees and stuff.
Speaker 1: But then another one of these wallpapers is just one
Speaker 1: that shows pine spriggs and it's apparently embossed. It has
Speaker 1: some kind of three D texture. So maybe three D
Speaker 1: textured wallpapers were already sort of a thing in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. But to come back to our inventors Fielding
Speaker 1: and Chivon, they were working out of a garage in Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, in nineteen fifty seven to come up specifically
Speaker 1: with a heat based ceiling process to press together two
Speaker 1: layers of plastic shower curtain with paper backing, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the final product they came up with did not have
Speaker 1: the aesthetic properties they were looking for in a wallpaper.
Speaker 1: The hot lamination of the flexible plastic ended up trapping
Speaker 1: air bubbles between the layers, which doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: great texture for wallpaper. Or maybe it does. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what it was they were trying to do,
Speaker 1: but the popable walls sounds bad. Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not great, but it's not horrifying. And it does make
Speaker 1: me think of the walls and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
Speaker 1: You know where you had the flavored illustrations on the wallpaper.
Speaker 1: I don't remember this part. You have flavored walls. It
Speaker 1: was like lickable walls. Nice. This what the snores berries
Speaker 1: tastes like Snorm's berries or whatever. Um, so you canberriesberries,
Speaker 1: So you can imagine like snawsberry bubble wrap walls where
Speaker 1: you could go up and you pop this, uh this
Speaker 1: this pimple on the wall and in it emits this
Speaker 1: uh this the smell, this odor, if not this taste
Speaker 1: of whatever, you know, the you know, the suite happens
Speaker 1: to be. Oh okay. So it's like perfume sample walls.
Speaker 1: It's like popable or scratch off kind of mechanics, but
Speaker 1: for your house. No, we're not saying that's what Fielding
Speaker 1: and Chavon had in mind. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: they were thinking, but they wanted to create this beat wallpaper,
Speaker 1: and they did get patents for their process, but the
Speaker 1: wallpaper did not really catch on. And Howard Fielding, the
Speaker 1: son of Alfred Fielding, was a young kid when his
Speaker 1: father brought home a sample of one. At some point
Speaker 1: they had this invention that was the layers of plastic
Speaker 1: with bubbles in it. And speaking to David Kindy of
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine, how Ward Fielding recalls this sort of psycho
Speaker 1: tactle tractor beam allure of the plastic bubbles when he
Speaker 1: first saw them. He says, I remember looking at the
Speaker 1: stuff and my instinct was to squeeze it. I say,
Speaker 1: I'm the first person to pop bubble wrap, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that's true. The adults in my father's firm
Speaker 1: likely did so for quality assurance, but I was probably
Speaker 1: the first kid. They were really fun to pop. The
Speaker 1: bubbles were a lot bigger than so they made a
Speaker 1: loud noise. And I think it's always interesting when the
Speaker 1: extent to which the people associated with a product or
Speaker 1: a company actually talk about or promote it's sort of
Speaker 1: off label use. Like this whole thing about the people
Speaker 1: who make Q tips. They probably know that people are
Speaker 1: sticking those in their ears all the time, but they
Speaker 1: don't talk about that because you're not supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: You're requested not to stick them in your ears. But
Speaker 1: who actually thinks that's not going on? I mean no,
Speaker 1: I mean they have other uses to be sure, you know,
Speaker 1: it can be used makeup and um, and I use
Speaker 1: them sometimes when I'm working on painting miniatures and all.
Speaker 1: But that kind of code of silence is not going
Speaker 1: on with bubble wrap. In fact, I noticed that whenever
Speaker 1: their interviews with people involved with the company that still
Speaker 1: makes bubble wrap, or you know, the Sealed Air Corporation,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a minute, or people who
Speaker 1: were involved in the invention of bubble wrap always talk
Speaker 1: about the popping. They're like, it's like that. They admit
Speaker 1: I like to pop the bubbles too. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that is. It seems to be almost part of
Speaker 1: their marketing. Yeah, I mean, in a way, this is
Speaker 1: not the reasoning, but you can know, you could know.
Speaker 1: You could look at it like, well, you're when you
Speaker 1: pop all the bubbles and a piece of bubble wrap,
Speaker 1: you render it useless, thus requiring the the purchase of
Speaker 1: additional bubble wrapping for any packaging you're going to do. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: make up make a product that the children will destroy. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a break and then we come back.
Speaker 1: We can explore what happened with this failed wallpaper with
Speaker 1: the bubbles in it. Alright, we're back. We've been discussing
Speaker 1: the history of wallpaper or what initially comes right before
Speaker 1: wallpaper in this quest to create this ideal beat generation
Speaker 1: wallpaper that has air bubbles in it? What comes before wallpaper?
Speaker 1: Or did you mean bubble wrap comes before bubble rap? Okay,
Speaker 1: And I guess in a sense it would have been
Speaker 1: like what would have been what it would have come after?
Speaker 1: Like this is gonna be the next evolutionary step for wallpaper. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and instead it becomes the birth of something new. This
Speaker 1: was gonna be the wallpaper you put on the side
Speaker 1: walls of your like moon Igloe or whatever. But no,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out that. It was not successful. It
Speaker 1: didn't prove to be a popular product. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they ever sold any of it. So the lamination
Speaker 1: process was not successful at making a desirable wallpaper. But
Speaker 1: they did get patents for their process, and they tried
Speaker 1: to see if their system of making bubbly sealed layers
Speaker 1: of plastic could be used for other stuff. Well, my
Speaker 1: mind instantly turns to fashion. Didn't Barbarella where some one
Speaker 1: of her outfits they didn't have like air bubbles in it.
Speaker 1: Oh she might have I don't quite remember, but that
Speaker 1: would seem to be Yeah, that would make sense. I
Speaker 1: know there was at least I kept reading references to
Speaker 1: There was one Playboy cover at some point that had
Speaker 1: an actress or model dressed in bubble wrap. Uh. So
Speaker 1: clearly there's some kind of alternative fashion uses for it.
Speaker 1: But one thing that they tried to do when they
Speaker 1: were marketing it was as insulation. They tried to so
Speaker 1: Fielding and Chavon tried to market it as insulation material
Speaker 1: for greenhouses. This failed to attract much interest, apparently just
Speaker 1: wasn't great at insulating um. But Fielding and Chavon did
Speaker 1: not give up in trying to find a use for
Speaker 1: their plastic product. And I think it's interesting that here's
Speaker 1: an example of the kind of like supply side drive
Speaker 1: in in find in innovation, right where they're like, we've
Speaker 1: got this process, we've got this invention, but we don't
Speaker 1: know what it does yet. It's the opposite of the
Speaker 1: idea that necessity is the mother of invention, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So they're like, we know how to make this stuff,
Speaker 1: but we don't know if it can do anything useful,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to find a use for it. So
Speaker 1: they didn't give up, and they continued making business moves
Speaker 1: to support the development of this product in the in
Speaker 1: the following years. So in nineteen sixty they founded a
Speaker 1: company called the Sealed Air Corporation, which still exists. And
Speaker 1: it was this year, in nineteen sixty and that Mark
Speaker 1: Chavon had his breakthrough insight about a new use for
Speaker 1: the textured wallpaper. And this is as told in a
Speaker 1: two thousand ten New York Times City Room piece by
Speaker 1: James Barron. Apparently, Chavon was on a small propeller plane
Speaker 1: flying from Ohio to New York, New Jersey, and the
Speaker 1: story is that Chavon was watching out the window as
Speaker 1: the plane was coming in toward New Jersey and he
Speaker 1: saw clouds and in that moment, in his mind, the
Speaker 1: clouds seemed to be cushioning the planes controlled descent through
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. It was a soft cushion and of gas.
Speaker 1: And according to a manager with the Sealed Air Corporation
Speaker 1: named Ron Schellenberger, this was how Chivan realized that bubbly
Speaker 1: plastic could be useful for its cushioning properties during the
Speaker 1: shipping of products. The lift under the airplane was quote
Speaker 1: like bouncing across the bubbles. Okay, I'll allow it. I'm
Speaker 1: always a little suspicious of idea origin, story depend upon,
Speaker 1: you know, these Eureka moments of observation. Not to say
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen, but sometimes it is used to I think,
Speaker 1: to just add an artificial sense of myth and mystery. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: as I said, this is the story they tell. It's
Speaker 1: hard to know if that was really what was going
Speaker 1: through his mind. Rather than uh, you know, somebody sitting
Speaker 1: in the seat next to him was like, hey, you
Speaker 1: should use that bubble wrap to ship products. So they
Speaker 1: branded their air filled plastic sheeting as bubble wrap, which
Speaker 1: is still a company trademark today. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those things like clean X for tissue paper, popsicle for
Speaker 1: quiescently frozen treats. I think it's one of those brand
Speaker 1: terms that's just sort of become a worldwide generic term
Speaker 1: against its will. Technically, some of the stuff we call
Speaker 1: bubble wrap is air cushioned packaging material made by other companies.
Speaker 1: I was reading a two thousand six article in Forbes
Speaker 1: by Monty Burke that reported that counterfeit bubble wrap I guess,
Speaker 1: being sold under the trade name but allegedly manufactured in China,
Speaker 1: had been found in a home depot in California. Counterfeit
Speaker 1: bubble wrap. Like, why would you go to the trouble?
Speaker 1: This doesn't bring to mind? You know, we were joking
Speaker 1: earlier about pitching a horror story, a horror of franchise
Speaker 1: about about bubble wrap, that this is the angle you
Speaker 1: could take. Illicit bubble wrap that was created by another
Speaker 1: manufacturer and the bubbles, I don't know, contain some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, terrible gas that drives people crazy or something.
Speaker 1: It's bubble wrap from the todash darkness. There you go.
Speaker 1: Is he basically rights itself. So how did it go
Speaker 1: from failed kitchen wallpaper and failed insulation two cushioning material
Speaker 1: for packaging even after they had this idea. Well, according
Speaker 1: to company history, this was mostly due to a relationship
Speaker 1: with a single very important customer that Sealed Air acquired
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen sixties, and that was IBM. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, IBM introduced an extremely successful line
Speaker 1: of early computers used by businesses and institutions around the world.
Speaker 1: This was the IBM four hundred series, the first major
Speaker 1: model uh in which was the fourteen oh one. It
Speaker 1: was a variable word length decimal computer that some sources
Speaker 1: now refer to as like the Model T of computers
Speaker 1: because of its early widespread use, mostly for data processing
Speaker 1: by businesses. Obviously, this was before the home computer era,
Speaker 1: and the story goes that a marketer named Frederick W.
Speaker 1: Bowers saw potential here and he pitched IBM on the
Speaker 1: advantages of bubble wrap as a cushioned packing material. For
Speaker 1: the fragile, expensive computers and computer parts. It was now
Speaker 1: shipping to businesses and institutions around the world, and the
Speaker 1: pitch worked. IBM became bubble Wraps first major client, and
Speaker 1: then over the following year's bubble Wrap became a standard
Speaker 1: cushioning material to protect delicate stuff in transit, and the
Speaker 1: company flourished. So we often like to ask on the
Speaker 1: show what came before? This is one where it's not
Speaker 1: a super complicated at answer. Before bubble Wrap, the most
Speaker 1: commonly used packing material to cushion stuff was stuff like
Speaker 1: watted up newspaper. This had the advantage, of course, of
Speaker 1: being cheap or essentially free if you use the newspapers
Speaker 1: people through away, but it came with multiple disadvantages. First
Speaker 1: of all, it was not actually very good at cushioning stuff,
Speaker 1: especially you know, a newspaper can be compressed, so if
Speaker 1: you're shipping something that's both heavy and delicate, it can
Speaker 1: kind of compress the newspaper until it's sort of flattened it.
Speaker 1: And now it doesn't provide much cushioning, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: when you and I've tried to cushion things with newspapers
Speaker 1: before and and it really becomes this whole task of
Speaker 1: like I can't you know, obviously, just can't throw a
Speaker 1: newspaper in there. You have to take each individual page
Speaker 1: and you have to watch it up, but don't watch
Speaker 1: it up too much and find a like optimal level
Speaker 1: of wadding where it's nice and springy, and keep doing that,
Speaker 1: uh you know, for you know, however long it takes.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, if you if you spend the money
Speaker 1: on some sort of a manufactured packaging material, you can
Speaker 1: certainly cut down on your time. Especially even instead of
Speaker 1: packaging like the odd box of valuables for your you know,
Speaker 1: once in a decade moved instead your packaging objects every
Speaker 1: day some sort of product to send out to consumers.
Speaker 1: And another big problem with wadded up newspaper is that
Speaker 1: it ends up smeering ink everywhere. I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1: So one of the huge advantages though, of newspaper packaging
Speaker 1: is um I don't know if you've experienced this, but
Speaker 1: if you order something, particularly if you order something like
Speaker 1: via e pay, sometimes you get uh you know, foreign
Speaker 1: newspapers in there, and that that can become like a
Speaker 1: fun bonus. I a few years back, I ordered some
Speaker 1: miniatures to paint, and they came from somewhere in Russia,
Speaker 1: so it was packaged. The little figurines were were cushioned
Speaker 1: by these wadded up newspapers and when you, uh, you
Speaker 1: unlatted them, you saw the you know, the cyrillic on
Speaker 1: the page. It was in it for a fun experience. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: bubble wrap, it's you know, I guess you could pop
Speaker 1: it and be like, mrs where is this air from
Speaker 1: its air from New Jersey, But it's just not the same. Uh. Well.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, air filled plastic did prove superior resisting compression
Speaker 1: and protecting fragile objects from impacts, and over the years,
Speaker 1: the Sealed Air Corporation has done some interesting like marketing
Speaker 1: stunts to show off the superior protective capabilities of bubble
Speaker 1: wrap over competing materials. One example is that this was
Speaker 1: reported in that Forbes piece I was talking about. In
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, they entered this big public pumpkin
Speaker 1: dropping contest in Iowa, and I'm like, what is that.
Speaker 1: I guess that the goal is to keep a falling
Speaker 1: pumpkin from being smashed when it hits the ground. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find a lot on this but it looks like
Speaker 1: they're engineering departments at some universities that have similar contests
Speaker 1: where Yeah, and and high schools as well. Sometimes with
Speaker 1: eggs are popular. Yeah, throwing some eggs or throwing melons
Speaker 1: off the roof, and it becomes a science project to
Speaker 1: figure out the best way to cush in it and
Speaker 1: protect it from injury, to like make a protective container
Speaker 1: or protective landing zone or something with within certain design constraints. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty great engineering project for his kids because
Speaker 1: it involves like doing something totally against the rules, throwing
Speaker 1: stuff off the roof of the school, with like just
Speaker 1: a fun engineering challenge. How do you keep the inevitable
Speaker 1: from happening? Uh? Yeah, so I'm all in favor of it. Well,
Speaker 1: the story here is that the engineers from Sealed there
Speaker 1: did a demonstration where they dropped an eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen pound pumpkin named gord Zilla from my height of
Speaker 1: thirty five feet, cushioned only by bubble wrap. CEO William
Speaker 1: Hickey told Forbes quote the pumpkins survived the drop. The
Speaker 1: problem was that it bounced and then there's no more information.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is that? What is that problem? Then
Speaker 1: did it bounce and land on somebody's card and bounce
Speaker 1: and turn it? And did it come to life? I
Speaker 1: know I was looking around too, because I mean, just
Speaker 1: the mention of gord Zilla, I had to to find
Speaker 1: more and I wasn't able to find anything. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: this is like nearly two decades ago, and I know
Speaker 1: that it maybe the videotaping of everything wasn't quite as ubiquitous,
Speaker 1: but it seems like if they were going to the
Speaker 1: trouble to drop fifteen pound Gordzilla off of a roof,
Speaker 1: they would have filmed it, and that that footage would
Speaker 1: be probably displayed somewhere. Unless indeed, something really terrible happened,
Speaker 1: like it killed somebody or came to life. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feel extremely betrayed if I find out that former
Speaker 1: Sealed Air CEO William Hikey is making up details of
Speaker 1: the story. I demand proof of Gordzilla. That's what That's
Speaker 1: what I am demanding. Are they a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: I think they are. Yeah. I think that the stockholders
Speaker 1: should demand proof Gordzilla. The documents. Okay, so the company
Speaker 1: still makes bubble wrap. The bubble wrap represents only a
Speaker 1: small part of its revenue. Now I've seen estimates maybe
Speaker 1: around ten or fift something like that. That's what i've
Speaker 1: They've transitioned largely to food packaging. Actually, they own the
Speaker 1: Cryovac brand, so there's a lot of food packaging. But
Speaker 1: there have been interesting developments. It's not just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we figured out how to make bubble wrap and then
Speaker 1: they just coasted on that forever. One example of developments
Speaker 1: in the history of bubble wrap is, for example, the
Speaker 1: former CEO of Sealed Air, William Hicky we just mentioned.
Speaker 1: He told Forbes in two thousand six that Alfred W.
Speaker 1: Fielding always wanted to be able to create a way
Speaker 1: to put air into the bubble when you needed it
Speaker 1: instead of when it was manufactured, right, so that like
Speaker 1: you could ship out flat bubble wrap and then it
Speaker 1: could be inflated on site. Now, why would that be important?
Speaker 1: We'll think about like volume and density and shipping. Imagine
Speaker 1: you run a factory that ships out delicate products and
Speaker 1: you need to use air cushioning material to pack it.
Speaker 1: How do you get the material? Well, if it's getting
Speaker 1: shipped to you in trucks or something, the space in
Speaker 1: the truck is going to be mostly taken up by
Speaker 1: bubbles of air. It's not very efficient. But by the
Speaker 1: twenty one century, uh Fielding's dream of on site inflatable
Speaker 1: bubble wrap was actually achieved. The Sealed Air Corporation originally
Speaker 1: called this stuff new air I b uh, and it
Speaker 1: is apparently much more space saving than the original. According
Speaker 1: to that two thousand six article, one truckload of the
Speaker 1: inflatable bubble wrap is the same as forty truckloads of
Speaker 1: the already inflated bubbles. Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 1: I've also seen this referred to as fill air products. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when you start thinking about this about like the
Speaker 1: quantities and the efficiency, you do start to see the
Speaker 1: downsides of all this packaging material. Right. There's a claim
Speaker 1: in that two thousand six Forbes article that the company
Speaker 1: UH that they insisted that at the time they produced
Speaker 1: enough bubble wrap every year to circle the Earth at
Speaker 1: its equator ten times. They do not say it what width,
Speaker 1: though that seems important information. And then is it did
Speaker 1: the big bubble, the fat bubble or the little teeny bubble?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I guess it's probably whatever
Speaker 1: their most common width of material is. But no matter
Speaker 1: what with it is that's a lot of plastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a lot of plastic. And then that that
Speaker 1: continues to be one of them the major concerns I
Speaker 1: guess with with with platt with bubble wrap, but also
Speaker 1: these other like fill air products. One of the articles
Speaker 1: I was looking at was an article that was published
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic by Boree Lamb that's l a M.
Speaker 1: Titled about those air cushions and Amazon packages everywhere and
Speaker 1: this is from and In this article, Lamb discusses how
Speaker 1: the colossal growth of e commerce has indeed benefited the
Speaker 1: packing material industry as often it was a five point
Speaker 1: six billion dollar industry and sealed air is the biggest
Speaker 1: market shareholder. Uh and uh and at this time there
Speaker 1: said she said that bubble wrap itself was only fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the business, with more of an emphasis being
Speaker 1: placed on the fill air products. For instance, like you'll
Speaker 1: find in Amazon packages, most of your Amazon packages that
Speaker 1: you're receiving today, so like one big bubble in in
Speaker 1: a piece of plastic. Well, or it's like it's or
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it's like the paper towel roll
Speaker 1: equivalent right where it's like each segment has clearly been inflated,
Speaker 1: and its minimal plastic. Uh. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: after you order anything, you find yourself ritually stabbing all
Speaker 1: of the air bladders so that you can recycle the material.
Speaker 1: So plastic sacrifice, the plastic sacrifice. So Lamb says that
Speaker 1: the fill air products like this are very popular for
Speaker 1: several reasons. First of all, economically, it's a cheap way
Speaker 1: to package goods, both in terms of material and shipping weight,
Speaker 1: and the machines that inflate the material uh and then
Speaker 1: again on site such as that the shipping facility. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that this these machines don't take up that
Speaker 1: much room in the facility, so that's that's another huge advantage.
Speaker 1: And as far as the environment goes, uh, it is
Speaker 1: preferred over styrofoam, and the plastic is at least recyclable.
Speaker 1: Does it get recycled very often? That's that's part of
Speaker 1: the problem. So like in my house when we do it,
Speaker 1: first of all, I have to ritually sacrifice all of
Speaker 1: the air bladders, which takes a little time, but okay,
Speaker 1: I do it. And then once you get them sacrificed,
Speaker 1: you can't put them in with your or at least
Speaker 1: we can't put them in with their normal curb side recycling. Instead,
Speaker 1: we have to put in a separate container, and then
Speaker 1: I have to take that container periodically to the trunk
Speaker 1: of my car. And then once my trunk of once
Speaker 1: the trunk of my car is completely filled with plastic bags,
Speaker 1: then I remind myself, oh, I need to go to
Speaker 1: the grocery store and go to their their area where
Speaker 1: they will take plastic bags for recycling. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a big thing, right, It's not
Speaker 1: as easy to recycle it. A lot of people are
Speaker 1: probably just throwing these in the garbage, or they're throwing
Speaker 1: them maybe into their curbside recycling, which of course is
Speaker 1: just gonna end up in the carbage that way as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, the average person is just
Speaker 1: swamped with so much of it it becomes a personal assle,
Speaker 1: plus a growing reminder of just how much plastic waste,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of cardboard waste we're producing and demanding
Speaker 1: all for the convenience of e commerce. Now, Lamb in
Speaker 1: this article does point out that you know, we do
Speaker 1: there are studies that back up the idea that you're
Speaker 1: still depending on less energy in many cases when you're
Speaker 1: when you're doing e commerce firstus going to a traditional
Speaker 1: brick and mortar store because you know, ultimately the supply
Speaker 1: chain exists. No matter what the shape of the supply chain.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're still dealing with goods that are produced
Speaker 1: somewhere that have to be shipped somewhere else and then
Speaker 1: shipped to another location. So you know, when you start
Speaker 1: doing the math on all of that, it becomes a
Speaker 1: bit complicated. But that being said, just on a personal level, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when when you start accumulating a lot of plastic, a
Speaker 1: lot of cardboard, you begin to ask questions to megett
Speaker 1: to wonder like is this sustainable? Is this? Is this?
Speaker 1: Am I making good choices? And and are we making
Speaker 1: good choices as a culture? Uh? If this is the
Speaker 1: kind of waste we're producing, well, I know that what
Speaker 1: I'm about to say is absolutely a secondary concern to
Speaker 1: the just massive use of it, whether it's necessary or not.
Speaker 1: But I will I noticed that, like we're saying, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times there are plastic filled air
Speaker 1: products that are in packages I received that don't seem necessary.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll get a package that's a cardboard box
Speaker 1: that has inside it's something that just really doesn't seem
Speaker 1: very fragile or breakable, and there's filled air plastic inside it. Well,
Speaker 1: part of that is that there are standard box sizes,
Speaker 1: and you know, whatever you have ordered generally have to
Speaker 1: go in a standard sized box. And if there is
Speaker 1: space in that box, that space needs to be filled,
Speaker 1: they would prefer to fill that with more merchandise, obviously,
Speaker 1: but if there's not not additional merchandise, that means there's
Speaker 1: going to have to be additional padding via these inflatable
Speaker 1: air bladders, because also they don't want it. Otherwise your
Speaker 1: item is knocking around in there, which might be fine,
Speaker 1: but it also ah might cause the object to be
Speaker 1: damaged in some either legitimate or at least perceived manner,
Speaker 1: at which point you would then return it, which of
Speaker 1: course costs the the company money. So you know, it
Speaker 1: becomes a situation where for them, the most reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to do is to inflate some air bladders, shove them
Speaker 1: in there, and then send you your comic book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's cheaper to fill a hundred air bladders than
Speaker 1: it is to have one customer return a product. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably. I mean, I don't you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have the math on that in front of me, but
Speaker 1: it's probably something along those lines. Yeah, I wonder if
Speaker 1: sometimes people, Uh, I guess this is probably less the
Speaker 1: case now because you've got the big, you know, single
Speaker 1: single chamber bladder. But I wonder if there were times
Speaker 1: when people used to order cheap products just because they
Speaker 1: wanted to get the bubble wrap to pop it. Because
Speaker 1: you can't go to the store and buy bubble wrap,
Speaker 1: can you? Yeah you can't. Wait, you can. You can
Speaker 1: go to can store and you can buy bubble wrap.
Speaker 1: Imagine you can buy bubble wrap at some of the
Speaker 1: larger stores as well. I'm not saying I've done this,
Speaker 1: by the way, but I am shocked that you can
Speaker 1: buy bubble rap at the store. I've never heard of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it. It's out there. I mean you can
Speaker 1: even I mean, I imagine you can go to crafting
Speaker 1: stores to and get some because you have the colorful
Speaker 1: bubble wrap as well. Yeah, you blew my mind. All right,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a break and then we come back.
Speaker 1: We can talk briefly about bubble wrap psychology. Alright, We're
Speaker 1: back this episode of invention is about bubble wrap. We've
Speaker 1: discussed where it came from, its origins as a as
Speaker 1: the future of wallpaper. Uh, and we've discussed you know,
Speaker 1: our our current situation with bubble wrap and other types
Speaker 1: of cushioning materials, and you know, given our craze for
Speaker 1: e commerce. But now we're coming back to a more
Speaker 1: you know, visceral relationship that we have with bubble wrap,
Speaker 1: and that is the popping of bubble wrap and why
Speaker 1: it is so satisfying, Why is almost everyone drawn to it.
Speaker 1: That's a strange thing to have a like near universal
Speaker 1: psychological drive for. Yeah, you don't encounter people, or at
Speaker 1: least I have not encountered anyone who hates it. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of anyone who like has a phobia
Speaker 1: of bubble wrap? And maybe they are people with balloon phobias, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the other are so I mean, there's probably someone, but
Speaker 1: you don't hear about people hating bubble wrap. And really
Speaker 1: the most negative thing that could be said about the
Speaker 1: experience of bubble wrap is that you give a child
Speaker 1: some bubble wrap and they can make some shockingly loud
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, unexpected noises. They may startle you well,
Speaker 1: I have read cases where police were called or say
Speaker 1: a military base was shut down or something because sounds
Speaker 1: of bubble wrap were popping were mistaken for gunfire, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: where that could be the case. Yeah, because it is
Speaker 1: a it is a like a popping you know, the
Speaker 1: popping cracking sound can can be confusing. There's actually been
Speaker 1: a little bit of research on the psychological effects of
Speaker 1: popping bubble wrap, and doesn't look like we're going to
Speaker 1: get anything super solid or earth shattering, but there have
Speaker 1: been a couple of studies. So in nineteen two, a
Speaker 1: researcher named Kathleen Dylan published in the journal Psychological Reports
Speaker 1: a study called Popping sealed air capsules to Reduce Stress.
Speaker 1: This was a small sample of thirty undergraduates participated in
Speaker 1: this study to find out whether popping plastic air capsules
Speaker 1: like bubble wrap would relieve stress. And study found that
Speaker 1: after a session of popping bubbles quote, subjects reported feeling
Speaker 1: significantly more energized, less tired, and more calm and according
Speaker 1: to Dylan quote, some advantages to this technique over existing
Speaker 1: ones include that this technique involves minimum ability essentially no
Speaker 1: training or practice, and a little likelihood of paradoxical anxiety
Speaker 1: effects that have been shown to a company meditative relaxation
Speaker 1: techniques in some subjects of this, the comparative advantage of
Speaker 1: therapeutic bubble popping versus just say traditional meditate meditation like
Speaker 1: the idea being I guess that if you're trying to
Speaker 1: meta take, your mind might be distracted by all the
Speaker 1: things you're trying to get away from via meditation, and
Speaker 1: therefore the experience could be frustrating and anxiety inducing, whereas
Speaker 1: bubble rap is going to like pretty much nail it
Speaker 1: every time. It's yeah, it's it's a sure thing. But
Speaker 1: I would say the same thing might be true of
Speaker 1: just like playing Tetris or something. Yeah, I mean it,
Speaker 1: And I could be having covered Tetris. We did two
Speaker 1: episodes of it for Stuff to Blow your Mind, and
Speaker 1: we really went deep on the psychological effects of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you could see some sort of you know, there are
Speaker 1: some obvious parallels. Well, I would say part of the
Speaker 1: appeal of a good video game controller, like the A
Speaker 1: B buttons on a game Boy that people used to
Speaker 1: play Tetris on. Uh, A controller really needs to have
Speaker 1: the right button feel and the right kind of button
Speaker 1: feel is kind of similar to the feeling of a
Speaker 1: sealed air capsule on bubble wrap. It's a good point.
Speaker 1: But while I've seen quite a few articles referenced this
Speaker 1: study by Dylan in ninety two, I've seen fewer reference
Speaker 1: this one from nineteen by Taylor person or Bollock called
Speaker 1: could Popping air capsules affect State anxiety and Psychological Reports?
Speaker 1: They looked into whether bubble popping has an effect on
Speaker 1: test subjects on their level of state anxiety, and the subjects,
Speaker 1: again were university students, and the test group popped air
Speaker 1: capsules for five minutes. Control group did nothing. Afterwards, the
Speaker 1: test group actually showed higher levels of anxiety than the
Speaker 1: control group, which was the opposite of the expected effect.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I would not try to conclude anything with
Speaker 1: high confidence about the psychological effects of bubble popping from
Speaker 1: just these two studies, But just the fact that the
Speaker 1: studies exist, I think demonstrates that something people have the
Speaker 1: intuition that something's going on here, there was something psychologically
Speaker 1: significant about the bubble popping activity and why people are
Speaker 1: so drawn to it. I don't have any strong evidence
Speaker 1: to support this. This is just a sort of hunch
Speaker 1: of mine, But I have a hunch that the bubble
Speaker 1: popping drive might be rooted in an instinct for grooming
Speaker 1: behaviors like you know, picking lice and other bugs, the
Speaker 1: kind of like pimple popping, the kind of like small
Speaker 1: intense finger you know, fingertip pressure application, kinds of things
Speaker 1: that would come along with social grooming behaviors and primates.
Speaker 1: This is a great point. Yeah, I've I've thought about
Speaker 1: this fair amount with in regards to two pimples and boils,
Speaker 1: because if you look around on YouTube, and I suggest
Speaker 1: you do, you'll find that there are quite a few
Speaker 1: videos of people, um, you know, grooming themselves. I think
Speaker 1: there's even like a reality show that came out of this,
Speaker 1: like pimple Popper Empty or something like that, Dr pimple
Speaker 1: Popper or some boy. I have not watched it, but
Speaker 1: I know that it exists. But all this like tends
Speaker 1: to show that, like it or not, we have this
Speaker 1: fascination with the popping of of of of boils and
Speaker 1: pimples and and and and we all know that you're
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to really do that. You know, we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to just go and start squeezing every odd
Speaker 1: mark on our face, or you know, if we get
Speaker 1: to boil, you know, or not so much boil, but
Speaker 1: say a blister. You're not supposed to mess with it
Speaker 1: like that, um, you know, for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: And yet we have this impulse to do so. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if it is tied in with this, um,
Speaker 1: this desire for personal grooming, but even social grooming. I
Speaker 1: mean I have I have heard, you know, anecdotal reports
Speaker 1: of in say locker room environments where they'll be like
Speaker 1: a communal experience of dealing with someone's pimples, like like
Speaker 1: back or something. Yeah. Uh, this is what comes of
Speaker 1: following um reports of of the pro wrestling world. But
Speaker 1: but in another area that I was thinking about this too,
Speaker 1: is uh, is when it comes to another stress relief device,
Speaker 1: that being um, some sort of a squeezeable object. Like
Speaker 1: right now, I tend to have a squeezable object, uh,
Speaker 1: stress relief squeezy in my hand when we're recording. Not
Speaker 1: so much that, you know, because I'm like rapped with
Speaker 1: anxiety during recording session, but because like my hands need
Speaker 1: to be doing something and if I'm not squeezing this ball,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to be messing around with my pin
Speaker 1: and dropping in and making a noise. While if I
Speaker 1: dropped this, it makes makes basically no sound. But I
Speaker 1: want fidgeting with fingers thing in general. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it but it makes me wonder if this too has
Speaker 1: like some root in our experience of the flesh, you know,
Speaker 1: like the it is soothing to to squeeze this fleshy
Speaker 1: ball because it is like squeezing flesh. That's that's as
Speaker 1: far as I've come. I actually looked into I tried
Speaker 1: to find some studies on this a while back, thinking
Speaker 1: we could do an episode of one of our shows
Speaker 1: on squeeze balls, and I really couldn't. I found some
Speaker 1: stuff that was specialized towards um, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: treatment of certain certain conditions, but nothing like general about
Speaker 1: like the human experience of needing to uh you know,
Speaker 1: to manipulate a fleshy ball in your hand. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: another thing I would say is that the tradition of
Speaker 1: things like fidget spinners is not new. All kinds of
Speaker 1: cultures have small handheld objects that are carried as carried
Speaker 1: or or you know, just like messed around with during
Speaker 1: rituals or even when you're not doing anything else, maybe
Speaker 1: you just walk around with little stones in your hands.
Speaker 1: That this is not a culturally uncommon thing. What are
Speaker 1: these things for? What is the rosary for? Where does
Speaker 1: that come from? Well, part of it is you said,
Speaker 1: what are these four? Think of the hands, what are
Speaker 1: these hands for? Like you look at human evolution and
Speaker 1: and the reason we have this shape here that we have,
Speaker 1: the reason we have this this ultimately like less than
Speaker 1: healthy posture of standing upright is so that we could
Speaker 1: use these hands for things. And then you enter a
Speaker 1: modern life experience of not having things to do with
Speaker 1: your hands like that. It's it's no wonder that that
Speaker 1: would be a little perplexing that you would need to
Speaker 1: have something in your fingers because we just went through
Speaker 1: this tremendous evolutionary process to be able to use these
Speaker 1: hands while we're doing other things. Yeah, within our evolutionary
Speaker 1: history is standing there not using your hands for anything?
Speaker 1: Is that kind of like standing on one foot? It's
Speaker 1: just naturally kind of puts you off balance a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're really insulting the gods, right, or at least insulting
Speaker 1: the evolutionary process if you're not using your hands for
Speaker 1: something at all times, at least talk with him, at
Speaker 1: least make wild gestures. At least make yourself crazy gloves
Speaker 1: with fidget spinners at each fingertip. Tin Spinners. That's my
Speaker 1: new band, Tin Spinners. Okay, I could see that working.
Speaker 1: I really is. This is one area where I really
Speaker 1: wish we had some more solid science on this. I
Speaker 1: couldn't you know, I couldn't find anything else really on
Speaker 1: the bubble popping drive. And maybe there's some studies out
Speaker 1: there that I wasn't able to locate. If so, if
Speaker 1: you're you know, experienced in this area, please contact us
Speaker 1: with these. I would like some something with more meat
Speaker 1: on it. Well, maybe when we do an an Invention
Speaker 1: episode on the Blackhead Remover, then we can like the
Speaker 1: black Head Gun, then we can we can get into
Speaker 1: this more. Okay, I don't know if I want to
Speaker 1: find out what that is. My understanding, it's like a
Speaker 1: little device for like sucking um um, you know, the
Speaker 1: like the darkened you know, material out of your pores. Amazing. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's gotta be it for just a Simpsons joke about it, right?
Speaker 1: I mean where they I don't know. I think Aunt
Speaker 1: Selma has one, Okay, we're done. That's the end, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to other episodes of Invention,
Speaker 1: you can find them at invention pod dot com. That
Speaker 1: is our home page. Of course, you can find the
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Speaker 1: that because that also helps to stat as well. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producers, Maya Cole
Speaker 1: and Seth Nicholas Johnson. If if you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hi, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
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