0:07

Hey, Welcome to Invention. My name is

0:09

Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

0:11

and today we're bringing you a classic episode

0:14

of Invention. Will we'll we'll push aside

0:16

the uh, the cordoning off of bubble

0:19

tape, step through the line and and investigate

0:22

the world of chewing gum.

0:24

That's right. Where does it come from?

0:27

What did we chew before we had gum?

0:29

How does gum, you know, influence our

0:31

lives? Those are some of the questions we're gonna explore

0:33

in this classic episode of Invention, which originally

0:35

published July nineteen.

0:38

Let's dive right in. Welcome

0:43

to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio.

0:49

Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert

0:51

Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, I've got a

0:53

question for you about childhood. Did

0:55

your elementary school have draconian

0:58

anti gum policies? Um,

1:01

There was definitely and there were definitely anti gum

1:03

policies, and I and I agree with him,

1:05

And I mean, at the time, I don't think

1:07

I was a big gum cheer at the time, so they didn't really

1:09

impact me all that much. But

1:12

but but ultimately, like I don't like stepping

1:15

in gum. I don't like encountering

1:18

gum stuck to the bottom of deaths or inside

1:20

deaths. So I never really had a problem

1:22

with it. I think maybe my confused.

1:24

I mean, I wasn't a huge gum cheer as a child,

1:27

but I do remember thinking about

1:29

the gum rule. This just doesn't make sense,

1:32

it's not fair. It was one of my first

1:34

real, uh you know, thought

1:36

processes of rebelling against authority

1:39

and the rules imposed by the man. Because

1:41

other rules were like, you know, don't

1:44

hit people, don't steal from people,

1:46

like they all caused harm to someone, and

1:48

I was thinking, what harm does it do when someone

1:50

choose gum? Now I understand the adult

1:52

perspective. It's I think primarily because

1:54

it's like gross, and because the gum ends

1:57

up somewhere. It shouldn't right. The gum ends

1:59

up somewhere, it should be Uh. There's

2:01

also just especially if it's bubble gum. I

2:03

don't know. I still I'm kind of anti bubble

2:05

gum, Like there's not okay.

2:08

It can be fun to blow a bubble, I guess, but it's just

2:10

kind of weird. I don't know, And

2:12

I've I've taught before, and

2:14

I don't specifically remember encountering gum

2:17

chewers. Maybe I did, but I

2:19

think if if I didn't find it annoying,

2:22

I feel like I would find it annoying, you know what I'm saying.

2:24

It's like just looking out there and there there's

2:26

somebody chewing, and then it's probably if if you've

2:28

ever experienced any level of miss aphonia, like

2:31

gum chewing can definitely set off

2:33

miss aphonia, especially if it's like gum smacking,

2:35

you know where it's like open mouth chewing of the

2:37

gum. I am less annoyed by memories

2:41

of students chewing gum, which I don't really have. I

2:43

do remember students in my classes eating

2:45

just eating lunch and stuff, which I

2:48

never knew if I should make a big deal about that or

2:50

not. It's just one of those things that in

2:52

retrospect I probably should have forbidden

2:54

but didn't. On the other

2:56

hand, I do. I chew a lot of

2:59

gum today, Like if I'm in the car,

3:01

I will probably even if I don't really need it, I'll

3:03

generally grab a piece of sugar free

3:05

gum and and chew it a bit. And

3:08

it's uh. Sometimes it's

3:10

not even like a breath freshening exercise.

3:13

Uh. Like this morning, I put one in my mouth

3:15

on the way into work, and I had looked

3:18

just brush my teeth, so there was no like real

3:20

like freshness issue at hand. It was just

3:23

I just wanted the sensation of chewing

3:25

the gum. It's a good way of getting the goat blood

3:27

off of your teeth. Now

3:29

that being said, it is I think it's super handy to

3:31

be able to turn the gum if you know you need a little

3:33

something to freshen your breath up after you've just

3:35

set a meal out and you don't have access to toothpaste

3:38

and toothbrush. Um, it

3:40

can be It can also be be great

3:42

while working. It's you know, while you're studying,

3:45

writing, etcetera. And then I've also

3:47

I've heard of other people like growing

3:49

to depend on it in certain tasks. Like

3:52

here's one I've never quite understood, but I

3:54

have heard that some professional

3:56

wrestlers not only chew

3:58

gum while wrestling, but depend

4:01

on it. Like if they are not chewing the gum, it like

4:03

throws off their their their

4:05

rhythm or something choking hazard. Right,

4:07

well, one would think, right, I mean I

4:11

as a as a father, like I definitely

4:13

if my son were running around chewing gum, I would

4:15

probably decide said to give him the whole, like you're

4:17

going to choke on that if you if you run. But uh

4:20

yeah, there's this whole thing with with professional

4:22

refers professional athletes. I mean,

4:24

it's obviously big League Chew's

4:28

named for uh, you know, for big

4:30

for Major League Baseball players, who I guess

4:33

we're you know, generally chewing tobacco

4:35

in the old days, but but still chew gum. You'll

4:37

still see professional athletes chewing

4:39

gum during their events. I think one

4:41

thing that's funny but big League chew is

4:44

that it's the most unnecessarily

4:47

macho of candies. And yet

4:49

if you look back in history, there is

4:51

often a very gendered component

4:53

to people's judgment of gum chewing behaviors

4:56

in which gum chewing is uh

4:58

is, in many points and societies

5:01

and history associated with

5:03

women and especially young women, and

5:06

looked on judgmentally. Uh

5:09

So, I've got a little ditty from the British

5:11

Medical Journal in you want

5:13

to hear some gum hate? Yeah, let's hear it. Okay.

5:17

The question has been raised whether there is

5:19

any reason for supposing that the practice

5:21

of gum chewing so

5:23

prevalent in the United States, is

5:25

on the increase in this country.

5:28

We have made some inquiries and have ascertained

5:30

that many young women, students,

5:33

actresses, and others appear

5:35

to have acquired this disgusting habit

5:38

and are inveterate chewers. We

5:40

have examined specimens of chewing gum

5:42

obtained from various fashionable sweet

5:44

shops in London and find that, as a rule,

5:47

it consists of rubber flavored with

5:49

aniseed or peppermint or some o their

5:51

aromatic substance. Now, I catch

5:53

more than a hint of misogyny and all of that,

5:56

especially singling out um

5:58

students and actress actual system.

6:00

It's like like women in society,

6:02

independent, young women that are that have some

6:05

level of independence are the ones that are being singled

6:07

out as being disgusting gum chewers. And

6:09

the gum itself, like you're talking about like

6:11

peppermint flavored, Uh, you know,

6:13

rubber. I mean, what's that? It sounds pleasant?

6:16

Doesn't sound that disgusting with this disgusting

6:18

habit. I've got a response to this article

6:21

from the British Medical Journal. This response

6:23

is in the North American Practitioner

6:25

the next year eight just

6:28

a couple of selections from it.

6:31

Our English contemporaries are taking our

6:33

people to task as well they may, for the

6:35

vile, as they term it, the American

6:38

habit of gum chewing. We

6:40

submit no defense to the charge and are

6:42

only consoled by the fact that the habit is less

6:45

disgusting than that of tobacco chewing.

6:47

Our confreres have our profound

6:50

sympathy in their efforts to promote reform.

6:52

At the same time, we prefer to see jaw

6:54

jumpers consigned to the minor bad

6:57

rather than the bad irremediable.

7:00

We regret that this fat is classed as an

7:02

American industry. Nevertheless,

7:04

the fact is too patent for denial,

7:06

and there is no accounting for taste jaw

7:09

jumpers. Never heard that before, But

7:11

I think I get what they're saying, because

7:13

did you know the kid when you were in elementary school

7:16

who didn't just chew gum but did

7:18

the like exaggerated a

7:20

huge up and down movement of the jaw that

7:24

I guess I vaguely remember you know

7:26

saying, But I was sometimes I would

7:28

think that that's part of just having too much gum in

7:30

your mouth or deciding to refresh in

7:33

a you know, like a completely drained

7:35

piece of gum with a second piece of gum, which

7:38

you know might have seen like a good idea when you're a kid.

7:41

One more follow up to the b m J article. I

7:43

was reading about this in a book by Carrie

7:45

Cgrave called Chewing Gum in America eighteen

7:48

fifty nineteen twenty uh. This books

7:50

from so it notes that this

7:52

original British Medical Journal article

7:54

was reprinted in the Daily Mail shortly

7:57

after appearing in the b MJ, and the printing

7:59

actually prompted an editorial response

8:01

that included an interview with this

8:03

guy named Hubert Beaumont, who

8:06

was managing director of a retail shop

8:08

called Fuller's which sold chewing

8:11

gum, and Beaumont was defensive.

8:13

He insisted that the British Medical

8:15

Journal was wrong that chewing gum was

8:17

not made out of rubber, but out of

8:19

sap that came from a tree that grow in Mexico.

8:22

Quote it is a purely vegetable

8:24

substance and perfectly harmless. And

8:27

he also defended gum chewing from

8:29

the charge that it was disgusting, basically saying,

8:31

hey, people have been chewing stuff for a long

8:33

time exactly. So that's what we're

8:35

gonna look at for the rest of today's episode, the

8:38

history and invention of various

8:40

forms of chewing gum. Look

8:42

at the history of this disgusting habit, the

8:45

invention of several different versions of

8:47

gum across the years, and what are

8:49

gums says about us. I do

8:51

want to say that another time when I usually

8:54

have to chew gum or I really prefer to

8:56

chew gum, is if I am

8:58

you know, flying or driving up

9:00

into the mountains and the sort of thing where

9:03

you're gonna anxiety. Well, I mean we're encountering

9:05

pressure changes and uh, you

9:07

know it's it's great to can help relieve

9:09

leave pressure in the in the ears.

9:12

You know, I'm doing large part because chewing

9:15

it and certainly feel your face the next time you're

9:17

chewing. I mean, it is a uh, it involves so many

9:19

different muscles of the head and face

9:21

like it's a it's it's a it's a major muscular

9:24

activity. That's a really good point about the pressure

9:26

change. I did not go there. I thought you were going to

9:28

go to anxiety I know you're you can get a little

9:30

anxious on an airplane. Oh no, well, there

9:32

are other things. I prefer to gum for

9:35

that. But but I don't know that.

9:37

There are those who speak maybe we'll get into this a little

9:39

later that speak to the anxiety. Um.

9:41

Uh, the use of gum to at least mildly

9:44

treat anxiety. Well, I mean, I think about

9:46

the behaviors of some animals

9:48

where symptoms of anxiety

9:50

or anxiety like conditions in some

9:52

animals can manifest as chewing behaviors.

9:55

Oh yeah, well, let's let's talk about

9:57

about chewing itself, because alto

10:00

only, that's the main activity

10:02

at play here. So chewing is

10:05

good, chewing is necessary, It's

10:07

okay, No, it's it's great. It's grateful

10:09

for the members of the animal kingdom that engage

10:12

in chewing, which of course includes us. It

10:14

allows us to take the first steps toward digestion.

10:17

So you're breaking your food down into smaller

10:19

pieces and also increasing the overall surface

10:22

area of the food, and this will speed up the

10:24

effectiveness of digestion. And

10:26

then chewing also releases

10:28

flavors, you know, often very pleasurable

10:31

flavors. And uh, and this

10:33

is all part of the sensory perception

10:35

of the material that we're testing out and potentially

10:37

eating. And that's easy to forget, like why

10:39

do we taste things. We taste things to figure out

10:42

to know what they are. You know, this mix

10:44

of taste and smell that's happening inside

10:46

your skull as you mash

10:48

the lea for the stem or

10:50

maybe a bug or a piece of flesh.

10:53

As you be chew it up, as you masticate

10:55

it um, You're you're sensing it. You're

10:57

getting a sense of what this is

11:00

and and ultimately this is supposed to play into

11:02

the decision whether or not to form

11:04

it into a bolus with your your

11:06

tongue in the back of your throat and send

11:08

it down to the next step. Very appetizing

11:11

to think about while you're actually eating. Yes,

11:13

I hope everybody's eating while they

11:15

or maybe you're at least chewing gup. But there's also,

11:18

in addition to just the pure mashing with

11:20

the teeth, there's a little bit of sort of chemical treatment

11:22

of the food as you're you're chewing it up to right,

11:25

Yeah, the act of chewing produces saliva, which plays

11:27

a key role in this first phase of digestion and

11:29

again the ultimate preparation of the bolus that

11:32

will pass onto the realms below

11:35

and so final. For these reasons, chewing is especially

11:37

important to herbivores and omnivores. Right,

11:40

so if you want to like mash up tough fibrous

11:43

plant material with your teeth so you

11:45

can get more nutrients out of it. You notice

11:47

there are some animals that don't chew at all, and

11:50

they tend to be carnivores. Yeah, and I think

11:52

I think about like snakes. So I don't

11:54

know if there may be some cases of snakes doing

11:56

something like chewing, but generally you know they're going to be

11:58

swallowing their prey mostly hall right.

12:00

Yeah. Another big example of course the sperm

12:03

whale, you know which one, just inhale.

12:05

A lot of fish also fish also

12:07

do this as well, an inhalation

12:10

of the entire organism. The

12:12

ending of anaconda wouldn't be quite the same if

12:14

John Voyd had been chewed up before being

12:16

swallowed exactly. There is cinematic

12:19

payoff to that, for sure. Now, there

12:21

have been those who put you know,

12:23

excessive emphasis

12:26

on chewing. For instance, I

12:28

have to mention the work of Horace Fletcher. Who's

12:30

he Oh he lived eighteen forty nine through

12:32

nineteen nineteen, and he was known as

12:35

the Great Masticator for and

12:38

he was known as by this moniker because

12:40

of his teachings of a fletcherizing.

12:44

So basically his idea was that

12:46

not only did you need to chew your food, because

12:48

we've all heard that, right, and you know we've we've heard

12:50

somebody say that to a child. Makes yeah,

12:53

chew too, your food to your food, don't just you

12:56

know, swallowed. But he was he would he

12:58

would have argued that you need to chew your food to

13:00

the point of liquefication in order

13:02

to properly digest it and just count your choose,

13:04

etcetera. And uh

13:07

he he had some nice slogans for this, like this

13:09

was his big issue, and one of them was

13:12

nature will castigate those who don't

13:14

mastigate. Um. Wait,

13:18

so this is this is the first smoothie king, Well

13:21

before you had blenders. This guy is

13:23

doing an organic smoothie revolution.

13:25

Yeah, he would have loved a vitam x you know. But

13:28

but he was also you know, arguing that

13:30

that chewing, you know, it's releasing the saliva

13:33

and you need a certain amount of saliva to be produced.

13:35

So he was all all part of it had to do with this with

13:37

the idea of like all the things that chewing is actually

13:39

doing and some of these things, you know, saliva is

13:41

important. Is it's so important that you

13:43

need to chew your drinks

13:46

like that, because that was something you are like, if you're you're

13:48

you're having a you're drinking something, you

13:50

need to chew your drink as well, just

13:53

to make sure the saliva is being produced. But

13:56

a lot of a lot of people were, you know, we're

13:58

sucked in by this this line of thinking,

14:00

including Dr John Harvey Kellogg. That's

14:03

not a surprise. Yeah, he was an adherent, though

14:05

Kellogg eventually abandoned

14:07

fletcherizing because he realized

14:10

that that wh he decided that fiber was more important

14:12

and that fletcherizing might get

14:15

in the way of taking in that necessary

14:17

fiber. Well stopped clock rule. I mean,

14:20

John Harvey Kellogg was mostly a crank.

14:22

But fiber is very important, important

14:24

to have a lot in your diet. But also wasn't

14:27

John Harvey Kellogg an advocate of like boring

14:29

foods. Didn't he suggest

14:32

like you need to eat foods that aren't going to like

14:34

excite the libido and stuff. He

14:36

had a lot of ideas,

14:38

some of which, uh no, some

14:41

of them were definitely um, you know, quackery

14:43

like fletcherizing. Um.

14:45

Yeah, he also got into abstinence

14:48

being an essential part of his

14:50

his his his plan for a better life.

14:53

But then you know, also we got cereal,

14:56

some cereals out of the mix. Yeah.

14:59

So so yeah, chewing is important, but not

15:01

fletcherizing level of important. As

15:04

we said already, mastication entails

15:06

a whole host of facial merchant muscles,

15:08

so a certain amount of energy goes into the act.

15:11

And if you just look around at our fellow humans,

15:13

yes, you'll see a lot of gum chewing, but you'll also

15:15

probably notice a lot of other things whin wind

15:17

up being chewed by humans. Things

15:20

like tobacco for sure, but also various

15:23

herbal chooes, pencils, pins,

15:26

toothpicks. Oh, don't chew toothpicks,

15:28

folks. I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying,

15:30

you see it happened. No, I know we're not recommending

15:32

any of these, but especially don't chew toothpicks.

15:35

Um. You'll see people chewing uh pacifiers.

15:39

Sometimes adults will two pass fires that

15:41

light up. Uh. And then also night

15:44

you never heard that, Well, you see some people

15:47

like it's like a raver. I

15:49

don't know if it's still done, but I used to

15:51

one would see it. And then uh, then

15:53

I myself, I use a night guard at night,

15:55

and sometimes I think of that as chewing,

15:57

Like basically I'm putting a chew toy in my

16:00

mouth and chewing it all night. But

16:03

I do have to drive home that this is actually

16:05

bruxi is um, which is excessive

16:08

teeth grinding or jaw clenching, and it's

16:10

unrelated to eating. Likewise,

16:12

there are various chewing disorders and animals

16:14

as well that shouldn't necessarily be

16:16

confused for examples of normal eating

16:19

or anything resembling recreational

16:21

chewing. And I was wondering about

16:24

this though, so so, yeah, if if we see

16:26

humans chewing things in many cases

16:28

seemingly purely for the act

16:31

of chewing, Like you're chewing on the end

16:33

of that pin, why you're not gaining

16:35

any nutreents from that pin? You just much you

16:37

want something to chew. Uh, And

16:39

I wonder, sorry, I just don't know.

16:41

I thought about ice chewing, ice

16:44

chewing, ice chewing freaks me out.

16:46

I know millions of you out

16:48

there probably do it, but it's just please

16:50

don't do it around me. It gives me the creepy Well, there's

16:53

there's But my point is there's a lot of stuff

16:55

we chew and why, And so I was wondering

16:57

about this, and I wonder if, to a certain

16:59

extent this is because this

17:01

is like stemming back to a time

17:04

in our prehistory in which we were always

17:06

gathering edible materials. You

17:08

know, we were hunter gatherers, and as

17:10

we gathered, perhaps we were

17:12

eating a little bit as we went, we were tasting,

17:14

chewing things to see what they were, or

17:17

you know, certainly if we recognize what they were

17:19

and knew that they had, say like a mild stimulant to

17:21

them, perhaps we need to do to chew on that to

17:23

keep going. But we probably also a lot

17:25

of high fiber potential foods.

17:28

Yeah, yeah, you kind of like, you know, you

17:30

would need to be chewing all the time, right. I

17:33

was also I recently learned on a mushroom

17:35

and herb foraging tour via

17:38

a licensed turbalist that an experience

17:40

forger can chew, taste, and spit a

17:42

variety of substances, so not necessarily

17:45

chewing, uh, you know, not chewing to eat,

17:47

but chewing to sort of taste and help identify

17:49

a particular substance, even a mushroom

17:52

um, because if you're if something

17:54

a lot, if you if you chew it and spit

17:57

it, you know, you can get a sense of it. Is it a bitter

17:59

or is putrid? Whatever the taste

18:01

happens to be, and that would aid and experienced

18:04

individual in identifying that substance.

18:07

Well, so I've got a question. Do bears

18:09

chew gum? I

18:11

mean, what are there are there examples

18:14

of gum style

18:16

recreational chewing in the animal

18:18

world outside of humans? Well?

18:21

Um, I looked around for examples

18:23

of recreational chewing in animals and there

18:26

wasn't a lot to report. Most of it seems

18:28

to be in the aid of food selection and consumption,

18:31

or to do to some manner of malady

18:33

or the effects of being kept in an enclosure. I

18:36

thought to my own cat, and occasionally, you know, my cattle

18:38

do this thing where she takes the food

18:40

in her mouth, chew it, let's it drop out, and then

18:42

maybe she'll eat it. But I think

18:44

that's ultimately part of her

18:47

tasting the substance and then deciding

18:49

whether to eat it. Now, I do think

18:51

that there there seemed to be some behaviors

18:53

in dogs and perhaps

18:56

other carnivores that seem to me to be

18:58

non feeding for chians, of chewing

19:00

where they'll chew on a you know, bone or a

19:02

stick or something. Yeah, um,

19:04

And I wonder if that has to do with like dental

19:07

health or something about the teeth what you do there

19:09

is there's an element of dental health

19:11

and some animals, probably the best example

19:13

being that of you know, to a certain extent,

19:16

uh, you know, birds and dogs chewing

19:19

on different items obviously, like

19:21

a for a like a cat. And

19:23

you often see feathers brought up as an example

19:26

of something they would kind of chew on roughly,

19:28

you know, as it was a way of helping to keep

19:30

their teeth clean. Dogs are going to chew

19:32

on bones obviously, But then

19:35

hamsters, for example, it's an animal

19:37

that needs to chew in order to keep its ever

19:39

growing teeth healthy. It's like sharpening your

19:41

knives. Yeah, yeah, I guess if your knives

19:43

kept growing, if your knives kept growing out

19:45

of your skull exactly. But

19:48

dogs, though you you encourage

19:50

me to look into this little bit more because I'm not a dog

19:52

owner, but you're a dog owner. Does your dog

19:54

like to chew on things in the house. Yes, he's

19:57

not as big a chewer as some dogs are, And

20:00

I would make a strong distinction, I guess, between things

20:02

that are in some way kind of a

20:05

food or food analogy, like

20:07

something that is flavored or

20:09

something, uh, you know, raw hide

20:11

or something like that, versus just

20:13

chewing on like chew toys, which which

20:16

Charlie didn't do very much, but some dogs

20:18

do a lot of. Yeah. I was reading a little

20:20

bit a bit about this, so on one have a level

20:22

like food chew toys that are made out of

20:25

some sort of edible material, Like

20:27

they'll break those down. Like I was

20:29

surprised that that's basically eating. Yeah, I was surprised

20:31

as a non dog owner. Like one day I brought

20:34

this like edible chew

20:36

toy over to a friend's house and I was like, Oh, this

20:38

will be great this The dog will love this for weeks

20:40

and weeks. And the dog proceeded to just

20:43

just break it into pieces and eat

20:45

the whole thing, and I was I

20:48

was impressed. A big nasty

20:50

bloody wet muzzle when it's done.

20:54

But but there's this

20:56

whole issue of course dogs chewing

20:58

things they're not supposed to chew is actually shoes

21:02

and I found, um, I found an article

21:04

in Live Science so where they were talking to Calling

21:07

Tennant, a chairman of the UK Canine

21:09

and Feline Behavior Association, and

21:12

uh. They pointed out that

21:14

okay, so yes, dogs chew things, uh,

21:17

but a lot of times they're chewing things in order to

21:19

sense them. And it comes down to not

21:22

only the not really the taste necessary, but the smell

21:24

potential of a dog. They

21:26

said that when a when a dog choose on something,

21:29

it's like a quote, a human opening a

21:31

door and looking into a room. So

21:33

we have to remember that all

21:36

these other animals they're living in their own different

21:38

sensory worlds with different levels

21:40

of sensory input, and a dog lives in a

21:43

you know, a high level olfactory

21:46

universe. And so chewing

21:48

on something and releasing the smells

21:51

of that thing and the tastes of that thing, um

21:53

like, they're interacting with it in a way that we can

21:56

scarcely really imagine. And

21:59

Tennant says, you know, a lot of the chewing

22:01

such as the chewing of shoes is also done out

22:03

of anxiety. So ultimately

22:05

a dog is a pack animal, and it needs the

22:07

pack for security. And you

22:10

humans that you know that live with

22:12

the dog, well you are its pack. And

22:14

so they might chew on a shoe in order

22:16

to engage with the smell of their humans,

22:19

which is comforting. But then the extra

22:21

level of complication there is that

22:23

a lot of times our shoes are made out of leather,

22:26

which leans into their natural inclination

22:28

to chew on meat, bones, etcetera.

22:31

But but I think that's interesting. I really never really

22:33

had thought about that before, Like in the same way

22:35

that if we're away from our loved ones, we

22:37

might pull up a picture and stare longingly

22:40

at them, or listen to them

22:42

on the phone, listen to our recording brafts, because

22:44

we're we're an audio visual leaning

22:46

species. But what does an olfactory

22:49

species do? Uh? You know, they may chew

22:51

They're going to chew on a remnant and

22:53

uh and and engage with the smell. Uh

22:55

you know, it's we can It's difficult

22:58

to imagine how how humans would

23:00

operate if smell was our prime was

23:02

one of our more forward sensory

23:05

perceptions something I think about a lot.

23:07

I mean, when you walk a dog, it's

23:09

kind of it's it's hard not to notice that

23:12

the dog is just by sniffing

23:14

the world opening many sort of

23:17

cases. Uh, it's like, you

23:19

know, you're detective and you're out like opening

23:21

a case constantly by investigating

23:23

something that I don't know if those cases ever

23:25

get closed or how much information

23:28

is being provided, but clearly there's just all

23:30

kinds of streams of smell

23:32

based information that the dog is benefiting

23:35

from just on you know, walk down the sidewalk

23:37

that you're not picking up on at all. On

23:40

the other hand, maybe you can enjoy spearmint

23:42

gum in a way that a dog can't. So

23:45

maybe we should take a break. Yeah, let's take

23:47

a break, and when we come back, we will discuss

23:49

some of the earliest known examples

23:52

of something like chewing gum.

24:00

Alright, we're back. So the short answer is that,

24:02

yes, even in ages past deprived

24:05

of big league chew and similar items

24:07

um, you still have people who are chewing

24:10

gum. But they were chewing natural

24:12

gums and latexts and sometimes

24:14

harder materials as well, and

24:16

they did it for reasons that I you

24:18

know, I think we can in many cases say we're recreational,

24:21

though it's is

24:24

is kind of the case in our recent stuff to Blow Your Mind

24:26

episodes on Tilt with

24:28

psychedelics and certain drugs. The term

24:30

recreational is difficult in

24:33

contemplating like why humans consume

24:36

things or engage in things. It

24:38

can be used to say like, this is something that you're doing

24:40

purely, you know, for no good reason.

24:43

Whereas when you really analyze things

24:45

that we classify as recreation, be it

24:47

something we drink, something we eat, or

24:50

something we do like a social engagement,

24:53

there's often more to it. It's often more important

24:55

than that. A recreational is often

24:57

used to mean trivial and

25:00

doesn't necessarily mean that right as

25:02

a as the psychedelic enthusiast Bob

25:04

Jesse I think would say what's wrong with recreating

25:07

myself exactly? But

25:09

then on top of that, we're going to see some examples

25:12

of chewing gum and gum

25:14

like materials for hygienic

25:16

reasons, um, even even

25:19

health reasons, medics, medicinal

25:21

reasons. Yeah, and we see this across many different

25:23

cultures. Yes, So uh,

25:26

I want to talk for a bit about Otsy, the

25:28

so called ice man you know, of course,

25:31

is great. I would see a wonderful individual

25:34

to study, uh because you

25:36

know, he he preserves some of

25:38

the activities that

25:40

that ancient humans engaged in that we still engage

25:42

in today, such as uh tattoos

25:44

for instance. Oh yeah, I mean there's

25:46

so Otsi if you're not familiar, is

25:48

a Stone Age mummy from

25:50

the late fourth century not fourth

25:52

century, sorry, the late fourth millennium

25:54

BC E, discovered in the

25:56

early nineteen nineties frozen with

25:59

his head part of his body sticking

26:01

out of a glacier in the Italian

26:04

Alps. Like way up in the Italian

26:06

Alps, and Ossie is a fascinating

26:08

subject in so many ways, as you allude to. Um.

26:11

We could return to him in a

26:13

number of ways in either one of our podcasts,

26:15

but included among the many fascinating

26:17

questions about him are what was he

26:20

doing so high up in the mountains, especially

26:22

since cat scans of the mummy revealed

26:24

that he's got an arrowhead lodged

26:27

in his shoulder, and he had other

26:29

injuries that occurred right before death,

26:31

showing that he almost certainly died by

26:33

homicide, and so like well,

26:35

you know, this like what six

26:37

thousand year old murder mystery or five

26:40

thousand year old murder mystery. That that's pretty

26:42

cool. But one of the other things

26:44

about Otzi that's really interesting is his

26:46

tool kits. So of course he is a

26:49

stone age guy up in the mountains

26:51

and he's got stone age tools with him and they're very

26:53

well preserved. So this includes an

26:56

axe that he carried with them that had an

26:58

awesome copper blade, and

27:00

the copper blade has been traced back to its

27:03

origins in southern Tuscany,

27:05

which of course is hundreds of miles from where

27:07

Elsie lived. And this copper

27:09

blade was secured to the half of

27:11

the acts by a couple of means, so it

27:13

was wrapped with leather straps, but

27:16

it was also secured there by a type of

27:18

stone age glue made

27:20

of tar that was created from

27:23

the bark of the birch tree. And

27:25

I want to focus on this birch bark

27:27

tar for a second, because we could probably do an

27:29

episode of this show on

27:31

stone age adhesives ancient glues.

27:34

I mean, isn't glue a fascinating

27:36

invention in its own right? It comes

27:38

thousands of years after the byface

27:40

or knife, but it's sort of like it's

27:43

the it's the inverse knife. Yeah,

27:45

how do we put things back together

27:47

or how do we assemble things as opposed

27:50

to and disassembled them. Yeah.

27:52

So, birch bark tar is this black,

27:54

sticky plastic substance

27:57

that's made from the destructive distillation

27:59

of arc from the birch tree. And

28:02

practically what this means is that your Stone age

28:04

human would create this stuff through

28:06

a delicate proto industrial process

28:08

by which they would heat birch bark

28:11

over a temperature controlled fire inside

28:14

an airtight container or at least

28:16

a low oxygen environment.

28:19

And the tar produced by this process

28:21

functions is a thermal plastic, meaning

28:23

it's solid at room temperature, but

28:25

the more you heat it up, the softer and more

28:27

pliable it gets, so you can, you know, you heat

28:30

it up enough, and it can basically become kind of

28:32

like a viscous liquid that you can apply

28:34

like a glue. Now, obviously having

28:36

this tar based adhesive would be useful

28:39

in the ancient world. Think of all the stuff you can

28:41

do with glue. Sure, you can

28:43

glue shards of broken pottery back together,

28:45

but in the case of Stone

28:47

Age action heroes like oatsy. You

28:50

can use this birch bark tard glue

28:52

fletching onto aarow shafts, and

28:54

you can also use it in conjunction with the

28:56

straps I mentioned half to your copper

28:58

axe head and hold it in place while you do

29:00

your whack in on whatever you do your whack into.

29:03

Another use would be for waterproofing

29:06

things. Yes, as a ceiling exactly.

29:08

So the ancient uses of birch bark tar

29:11

and tree bark tars in general are are

29:13

extensive, but one of the most

29:15

interesting was a use we have surprisingly

29:17

clear evidence of. So I was reading about

29:20

it in a paper by

29:22

Elizabeth M. Aveling and Carl Herron

29:24

in the journal Antiquity in nineteen called

29:27

Chewing Tar in the Early Holocene

29:30

and Archaeological and Ethnographic Evaluation.

29:33

So from all throughout sites in Northern

29:36

Europe, including Scandinavia, southern

29:38

Germany and Switzerland, archaeologists

29:40

have recovered lumps of what appears

29:43

to be ancient tar with

29:45

human tooth impressions, and

29:48

they date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic

29:50

periods. They attached to the underside

29:52

of Neolithic desks. You

29:55

know you wonder about that, right, like uh,

29:58

if they had had more infrastructure, would

30:00

be all over the place. I imagine two. In Neolithic

30:03

times, it was possible to step on somebody's

30:05

chewing material, step on somebody's

30:07

chewing gum, and be like, yeah,

30:11

well, I mean, I guess that's assuming we know that

30:13

this was gum, But I'm gonna make the case it very

30:16

likely was um. So

30:18

so yeah, So they date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic

30:20

periods, that's the middle of the Late Stone Age,

30:23

going back about as far

30:25

as roughly nine thousand years ago, and

30:27

they're all described as these amorphous

30:29

masses, black or brown in color,

30:32

that have indentations left by human

30:34

teeth. So why we're human teeth

30:36

biting down on these lumps of ancient

30:38

tar, We think very likely it was for

30:40

some form of chewing gum, and the authors

30:43

suggests this as well. Quote. Although the

30:45

primary function of teeth is to bite,

30:47

chew, crunch, and grind food, chewing

30:50

plant or animal products serves a number

30:52

of alternative roles, such as cleaning

30:54

teeth and gums, freshening

30:56

breath, quenching thirst

30:59

a levi aiding dental ailments and

31:01

sore throats, and as a means

31:03

of delivering medicinal and psychoactive

31:06

agents to the body. Now

31:08

they talk about maybe there are a couple of counter

31:11

explanations for why you might find tooth

31:14

marks on old bits of tar, and

31:16

these these tooth marks might have reflected

31:18

some kind of functional or practical use.

31:20

Instead of showing that the tar was chewing

31:23

gum, for example, it might have been

31:25

related to their use as an adhesive. Since

31:27

birch bark tar is thermoplastic,

31:30

maybe chewing softened the

31:32

tar so that you could apply it as

31:34

an adhesive or ceilant. It's sort of like the

31:36

hot glue gun is your mouth. You

31:38

know, you put the glue stick in, you chew it up, you

31:40

heat it with your mouth, and you spit it out. But

31:43

the authors don't seem convinced by this because

31:46

quote experiments have suggested that a coding

31:48

of saliva actually reduces the

31:50

capacity of the tar to adhere. Another

31:53

possible explanation they mentioned is that quote

31:56

amorphous aggregates formed a stock

31:58

of tar to be you reheated

32:00

from time to time to facilitate

32:03

the removal of smaller pieces for

32:05

use. Once sufficiently softened,

32:07

it would then be easy to bite a piece

32:09

off. So right, so like your ammunition

32:12

of tar to use out in the field as this big

32:14

piece, and then you could heat it up

32:16

a little bit and bite a piece off to remove

32:18

it from from your bandalier of tar

32:21

basically h So that might

32:23

be a possibility, but there seems to be pretty

32:25

good evidence that this was just chewing

32:27

gum uh. And there's

32:29

some evidence that chewing tar and tree resin like

32:31

this has been passed down through generations in Northern

32:33

Europe as a treatment for sore

32:36

throats and dental complaints even into the

32:38

twentieth century, like the author's

32:40

site Ethnographic studies of tar and

32:42

resin chewing behavior conducted

32:44

by Vilcuna in nineteen sixty

32:47

four in the Lap area of northern Sweden,

32:49

and I want to read a quote here quote.

32:52

Vilcuna also notes an eighteen

32:54

seventeen account written by Goldland

32:57

of a church service in Finland

33:00

which half of the congregation, all women,

33:02

were chewing resin to keep themselves awake.

33:05

So if you've got a really boring minister who's

33:07

putting everybody to sleep, you chew resin so

33:10

that you don't fall asleep and and get in trouble.

33:12

Gotland noted that people chewed

33:14

to pass the time, to keep teeth

33:17

white, to prevent the invasion of scurvy

33:19

into the gums, and to relieve stomach

33:21

pains and heartburn. The most enthusiastic

33:24

chewers were adolescents and old women.

33:27

The preparation of chews required practice,

33:30

so older women often pre chewed

33:32

the resin for children. Cool.

33:36

Well, you know I have chewed

33:38

things for my son before. Really, yeah,

33:40

I mean it's not that uncommon. It makes sense

33:43

really like chewed with your mouth. I'm not judging

33:45

mean, well, like okay, well, like

33:47

if you need to say, for instance, my son's

33:49

going through the phase right now where his teeth, uh,

33:52

he's changing out his teeth, he's losing the baby teeth

33:54

and grown up teeth are coming in. And they made a couple

33:56

of times where he hasn't been able to like bite into

33:58

an apple. And if the apple's only snack

34:00

that I have around that I have at times

34:03

like and I don't if I don't have a knife or something i'man, which

34:05

I usually don't, I'll bite a piece

34:07

off of the apple, take it out of

34:09

my mouth, give it to him. And there's

34:11

actually like a well that's so

34:13

sweet. But but even like an earlier

34:15

ages, like the sort of preaching chewing or

34:17

mild pre chewing of food, not like a complete baby

34:20

birding type of situation. There's

34:22

the argument that you're passing on vital enzymes to

34:24

the young child. Uh So,

34:26

yeah, I think it's not

34:29

that weird that grandma would

34:31

be passing off a piece of resin to a child

34:34

and during church that's cool.

34:36

So you know, grandma choose it in the first half

34:38

of church, and then when it's time for the sermon to get

34:40

going, you pass it off to the kids maybe

34:42

so keep them occupied. Okay,

34:45

picking back up with this quote, though, Although the majority

34:48

of Vilcuna's ethnographic cases relate

34:50

to chewing tree resins, reference is also

34:52

made to the chewing of birch mark tar for

34:54

similar purposes. In nineteenth century Siberia.

34:57

The tar had to be prepared in a specific

35:00

manner and only women could be present.

35:02

So that's kind of interesting, like this gendered secret

35:05

ritual about the preparation of the tar for

35:07

chewing. Other interesting

35:09

facts include the fact

35:12

that the teeth marks and most of the Stone Age

35:14

tar lumps appear to have been left

35:16

by young people, children and adolescents

35:18

roughly ages six to fifteen, and

35:21

finally, to bring it back to Otsy the

35:23

author's site speculation by an author

35:25

named Spindler in nineteen ninety four

35:28

that quote polished sections on

35:30

the incisors and canines of the frozen

35:32

remains of the Neolithic body from

35:34

the Austrian Italian Alps may

35:37

have occurred as a result of chewing birch

35:39

bark tar. And I think this is referring to Otsy

35:41

himself, to the Iceman. But

35:44

so I think this looks like a really good case

35:46

that going way back into the Stone Age,

35:49

people were chewing these lumps

35:51

of tar made from tree bark resin

35:53

as maybe for medicinal purposes,

35:56

maybe just recreationally, maybe for aesthetic

35:58

or hygiene purposes, but they were definitely chewing

36:01

them, right, And you can also have multiple, uh,

36:03

you know, purposes in play, Like maybe

36:05

it starts off as just a way of you know, heating

36:07

up the material, we're having it handy for

36:10

you know, use in repairing items and whatnot,

36:12

but then it just becomes something recreational

36:15

in nature or you know, they

36:17

pick up on the fact that it, uh you know, makes

36:19

your teeth appear or feel

36:21

healthier. Yeah, but we

36:23

should say tar are produced by tree bark

36:26

and resin in northern Europe is not

36:28

the only gum that predates modern industrial

36:30

chewing gum. There are actually a number of different

36:32

gum and resin showing traditions around

36:35

the world. Right. One of them is

36:37

a bitumen, which, uh, there's

36:39

evidence that the Aztecs chewed it. This is

36:41

a black, viscous mixture of hydrocarbons

36:44

um that you know is often it can be

36:46

obtained naturally or is it or is it residue

36:49

from petroleum distillation. We've

36:51

talked about bitumen on the show before its

36:53

role and it's been used basically for a

36:56

number of different purposes throughout

36:59

human history, from you know, very industrial

37:01

type uses to make up to the

37:04

preparation of mummies, that

37:06

sort of thing. I think we talked about how it figured

37:08

into some hypotheses of the explanation

37:10

of Greek fire. Yes, I believe it did.

37:13

Yeah, well, I think that was on stuff to blow your mind.

37:15

It was, yes, But but that's a great

37:17

episode because that's essentially an invention episode.

37:19

So go listen to that if you want a nice ancient

37:22

military secret exploration.

37:25

But anyway, the Aztecs are thought to

37:27

have obtained the bid amen from

37:30

natural seepages along the Gulf coast,

37:32

and females especially were said

37:34

to have chewed the bitumen to sweeten their breath.

37:37

There's like a strange like gendered element

37:39

again to chewing gum traditions. I

37:41

wonder too, this makes me because I'm

37:43

also thinking about other South

37:46

and meso American practices

37:48

involving chewing, and I'm instantly reminded

37:50

of the like the lengthy process of

37:53

creating chocolate, which

37:55

is something I would love to just do a whole episode

37:57

of Invention on chocolate one day. But chewing

37:59

is an evolved and I wonder if

38:01

it, like if this plays into like,

38:04

uh, you know, the division of of labor

38:06

between male and female

38:08

members of society, and like the

38:11

processing of plants might be something that was

38:13

done like by perhaps children in some

38:15

cases and or older people back

38:17

at the camp, while more able bodied people

38:20

engaged in like hunting and gathering. Yeah,

38:22

that's interesting. Let's keep that in mind because

38:24

actually I think we're about to talk about another meso

38:27

American chewing tradition that has

38:29

at least as been recorded with some social

38:32

gendered elements. And that substance,

38:34

of course is chickle, which is

38:36

totally that's the basis of chicklets,

38:38

right, I believe, I guess so I did. Yeah,

38:40

chicklets. Yeah, I remember chickolates

38:43

more. I remember from from my childhood.

38:46

But I believe they still make them. I think it's still a thing. But

38:48

yeah. The the Aztecs and the Maya were

38:51

also said to have chewed cured latex

38:54

or chickle from the tropical sapodilla

38:57

tree. Yeah. That tree is also

38:59

known as the men Elkara zapota.

39:01

I think that's the scientific name. And it's found

39:03

primarily in Central America and

39:05

the Yucatan Peninsula. And you

39:07

can collect the latex

39:09

from this tree by hacking these

39:12

Z shaped cuts in the bark higher

39:14

up along the trunk, and this allows the latex

39:17

to trickle down into a receptacle, after

39:19

which it can be boiled to the appropriate

39:21

viscosity and then prepared for chewing.

39:24

Now, historical records indicate there are a number

39:27

of reasons why the chickle was chewed. It was

39:29

to prevent thirst in some cases,

39:31

to suppress appetite or hunger

39:33

in other cases, uh sometimes to

39:36

sweeten breath. It's reported that the Aztecs

39:38

had many complicated social rules

39:40

about how it could be chewed and by who

39:43

and when. Uh. There there were gender

39:45

based expectations and taboos. Apparently

39:48

chewing chickle in public was okay for

39:50

single women and for children, but

39:52

married women and widows could only use it

39:55

in private as a supposed breath

39:57

freshener or something, and that

40:00

there was an association with it being seen as

40:02

a feminine or something, so that men wouldn't

40:04

be able to use it in public or would be shamed

40:07

if they did. Wow. So this is interesting

40:09

in geographic areas as far as separated

40:12

in times like the Vastic Empire

40:15

versus in Stone Age Northern Europe.

40:17

In Stone Age Northern Europe, it looks to us

40:19

like the primary chewers of chewing gum.

40:21

Then we're children, and here

40:23

it's it seems like it was mainly, uh,

40:26

something that was only publicly acceptable

40:28

for children and some women. Now. Another

40:30

example of of a chewing

40:33

substance from history, The Greeks

40:35

chewed mastic, which is a plant

40:37

resin obtained from the mastic tree, and

40:40

it was also known as the tears

40:42

of chios Um, which

40:44

is its name for the Greek island of chios

40:47

from which a lot of it was apparently

40:49

harvested. Uh and it was a call

40:52

that because the way was harvested like that, you would

40:54

you would have these droplets coming down from the tree

40:57

and um from the branches, and they

40:59

would kind of you know, solidify

41:02

and then when you hack them off, they continue to look

41:04

like little droplets or tears.

41:07

But it apparently had a bitter taste. It was

41:09

followed we followed by kind of a pine wood

41:11

after taste that people liked. So

41:13

it seems to have been used as a as

41:15

a way of sprucing up your breath, but

41:18

also was had some medicinal

41:20

properties. Uh and and

41:22

uh and was you know, used medicinally and

41:24

may have had a value to dental health. I believe

41:26

there they've actually been some studies that have looked

41:28

into like to what degree it actually it still

41:31

has, you know, a verified impact

41:33

on dental hygiene. Yeah. And

41:35

now there was some chewing traditions also farther

41:38

north in the North America

41:40

among the indigenous people's, some

41:42

of whom chewed the residin of the spruce

41:44

trees. The early European colonists

41:46

to North America picked up on the practice of

41:48

chewing spruce tree residin as well, and

41:50

then eventually spruce tree resin

41:53

was turned into an early version

41:55

of commercial chewing gum. I think

41:57

it was in like the eighteen forties that there was

41:59

this guy named John Curtis who developed

42:02

a process for commercially

42:04

producing spruce tree gum that would involve

42:06

like boiling down the resin and

42:08

then cutting it up into strips

42:10

and coding them in a in a powder that would

42:13

keep them from sticking together. And I

42:15

guess he made some money. Now, obviously we're not gonna

42:17

have time to discuss everything that humans

42:19

have chewed and continue to chew on

42:22

the podcast here, but I do want

42:24

to just point out that, uh,

42:27

you know a few examples that come to mind in

42:29

part because of their uh they're they're

42:31

stimulating properties. So a

42:34

crayon nut and beetle leaf chewed

42:36

together. This goes back to thousands

42:38

of years in East Asia and

42:40

the Indian subcontinent and still

42:43

is in You still see people doing this today.

42:45

When chewed, it releases a mild stimulant

42:47

much like nicotine, but also

42:50

it has a carcinogen in it that's

42:52

bad, you know, ultimately bad for your health. Uh.

42:54

Sometimes additional herbs were also added

42:56

to it for flavor. Likewise,

42:58

chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco leaves

43:01

dates back to pre Columbian times in North

43:03

and South America, again chewing

43:05

it in order to release a mild

43:07

stimulant. And then yet another example,

43:10

the coca leaf, from of course,

43:12

from which you know, one can brew it into a

43:14

tea to create coca tea. Cocaine

43:16

is also derived from the coca coca

43:19

plant, but chewing

43:21

it, chewing the leaves was a longstanding

43:23

way of acquiring uh this the

43:25

stimulant properties, and ultimately chewing

43:29

has always been a way of of, you

43:31

know, dipping into the powers of a particular

43:33

plant or substance. You know, if

43:35

there's some sort of medicinal property, some sort

43:37

of stimulant property, uh, some

43:39

sort of psychoactive property, chewing

43:42

it is in many cases a way to release

43:44

it, especially if the

43:46

substance is not something you really want to swallow

43:48

and digest, but you do want some

43:51

of the chemicals inside it. Well, another way

43:53

of thinking about that is that chewing again, as part

43:55

of our defense mechanism against poisons,

43:57

right, a way of determining are their toxins

43:59

here? And of course part of the

44:01

large part of human history is figuring out which

44:04

toxins you like, which toxins

44:06

are useful, uh, and in and in what

44:08

quantities? Uh. And this goes beyond

44:11

like medicines and drugs obviously, but you

44:13

know, like just flavoring peppers and

44:15

uh, you know, all matter of things that we used

44:17

in our culinary traditions, their toxins

44:19

we acquired from the environment, figured out

44:22

exactly how we wanted to use

44:24

these evolved chemical weapons for

44:26

our own culinary purposes. All right,

44:28

well, I think we need to take one more break and then we come

44:30

back. We'll see how Santa Anna figures

44:33

into this story.

44:40

Alright, we're back, and yes, you heard that right,

44:42

Santa Anna, the Santa Anna. Yeah.

44:45

It's one of these just really

44:48

I think, ultimately kind of unexpected and

44:50

quirky collisions in history.

44:52

Yeah. So the next big page in

44:55

the story of Chewing Gum takes us

44:57

to meet this unexpected figure, an Tonio

44:59

Lope Day Santa Anna, the larger

45:01

than life nineteenth century Mexican

45:04

military commander, revolutionary

45:06

politician, statesman president

45:08

of Mexico who fought for Mexican independence.

45:11

Went on to be President of Mexico I think multiple

45:14

terms. Uh, And then of course

45:16

later got exiled. In eighteen sixty

45:18

nine, Santa Anna was exiled in the United

45:20

States and living on Staten Island, and

45:23

sometime around then he became interested

45:26

in the idea of trying to develop chickle,

45:28

the cured latex from that tree. Chickle he

45:31

wanted to develop as an industrial

45:33

substitute for rubber in the production

45:36

of tires, and Santa

45:38

Anna thought that the profits he reaped

45:41

from the development of a rubber substitute

45:43

based on chickle would be enough to fund

45:46

him in a return to power in Mexico,

45:49

and he somehow became connected to

45:51

an American inventor named Thomas

45:53

Adams who lived eighteen eighteen and nineteen

45:56

o five. Adams was based in New York

45:58

and Adams try had to do this. Adams

46:01

tried to develop a volcanization process

46:03

for chickle. Adams was also a photographer.

46:05

I understand, Oh really, yeah, I didn't know

46:07

that, which makes sense, you know, given that timeframe,

46:10

you know, given what we've discussed in the show about photography

46:12

and the sort of minds that you

46:14

know, in creative types and inventive thinkers

46:17

that had attracted chemistry in

46:19

the eighteen sixties and seventies, that would

46:21

be photography too. Yeah,

46:23

uh so I can see that. But of course he did

46:25

not succeed in coming up with a vulcanization

46:28

process for chickle. So when

46:30

it became clear that there weren't going to be any real

46:32

profits off of the off of trying

46:34

to create a rubber substitute of chickle, Sam

46:37

and a lost interest in the venture, but

46:39

Adams stuck with it. He Adams went on

46:41

to discover that the treated chickle

46:44

had interesting properties of its own.

46:46

So it was not water soluble, so it wouldn't

46:48

dissolve in a wet environment like the mouth,

46:51

and it was very plastic and very stretchy.

46:54

And by this time there was already

46:57

chewing gum. To find out in the world

46:59

many a mayor Parkins had become accustomed to

47:01

chewing gum based on that old spruce

47:03

tree resin we were talking about, but also

47:06

manufacturers had largely substituted

47:08

sweetened paraffin, wax and other

47:11

substances for the original spruce

47:13

resin. And in eighteen seventy one

47:15

Adams got on this train. He patented

47:18

a process for preparing chickle

47:20

for chewing, and he sold it as an

47:22

alternative to paraffin wax

47:25

for gum chewers, and originally I think his recipe

47:27

was unsweetened gum, but

47:30

by the eighteen eighties Adams chickle

47:32

based gums were nationally distributed

47:35

and chickle remained one of the most common ingredients

47:37

in chewing gum until later, I think around the middle

47:39

of the twentieth century, when more synthetic

47:41

materials became more common.

47:44

I think that the whole like unsweetened sweetened

47:47

divide is really interesting because it

47:49

seems here it starts off as being essentially

47:52

just purely recreational chewing, right, I

47:54

mean, yeah, you can make a sense, you know, an argument

47:56

for you know, basic like basic dental

47:58

hygiene and the freshening

48:00

of the breath. Certainly, but it's

48:03

not it's not you know, contain, it's

48:05

not full of tobacco. It doesn't have a stimulant

48:07

property to it. But then

48:10

you add the sugar, and in doing so

48:12

and adding a sweetener to the gum,

48:14

uh, you make it a vehicle for

48:17

this addictive substance that

48:19

also has plenty of detrimental

48:21

uh uh, you know health

48:24

impacts. You know that is going to ultimately

48:28

lead to the deterioration

48:30

of your teeth, and it can lead to to other

48:32

health problems as well. Yeah, when we've been

48:35

talking about gum for you know, people using

48:37

it for dental health purposes, I would

48:39

suspect that whatever those

48:42

purposes, those valid purposes, maybe

48:44

the introduction of sugar probably counteracts

48:47

all of that, does more damage than good.

48:49

And then it's ultimately it's it's as much

48:51

about the sugary sweet rush as it is about

48:54

anything else. I mean, even with you

48:56

know, sugar free gums today. Uh, you

48:58

know, I admit that it's that that that

49:00

rush of artificial sweetener is

49:02

sometimes part of the enjoyment of

49:05

it, Like you anticipate putting that

49:07

fresh, untouched piece of gum

49:09

into your mouth because you're going to

49:11

get that just fresh burst of flavor.

49:13

Yeah, Robert, I found an ad

49:16

for for the Adams Chewing

49:18

Gum Company. Was called there Adams California

49:21

Fruit Chewing Gum. I think this ad

49:23

was one featured on the Wikipedia page

49:25

for the Atoms Fruit Company or the Atoms Chewing

49:27

Gum Company. And this,

49:30

uh, this ad is crazy.

49:32

It looks like something from a much later time

49:34

because it's got it's like this goddess

49:38

in ecstasy, putting it

49:40

looks like fruit into her mouth. But I guess it's

49:42

suggesting it's the gum. I'm not quite sure.

49:44

Interesting, so again via the

49:47

goddess imagery, there's this kind of

49:50

you know, feminization of chewing gum.

49:52

Yeah, well, I mean this would have been so

49:55

if this was in the late eighteen hundreds, this

49:57

would have been around the time that we

49:59

got the wash the article in the

50:01

British Medical Journal and the other publications

50:04

talking about chewing gum being

50:06

this like disgusting thing that young

50:08

women do. You know, it's interesting

50:10

to to to think about like dental health

50:12

concerns because it brings me back to our

50:15

episode on toothpaste and about

50:17

just like the the increasing need

50:19

for toothpaste or an effective

50:21

substance like toothpaste to keep

50:24

up with the the influx

50:26

of sugars and other um, you

50:28

know, mainly sugars into the

50:30

human diet, uh and leading

50:33

to a lot of dental problems.

50:35

And of course one of the problems with having poor

50:38

dental whole hygiene is you're going to have poor

50:41

breath as well, You're gonna have halitosis and

50:43

uh uh. And so perhaps

50:45

there was an increase I mean once tempted

50:48

to think there might have been an increase

50:50

in the demand for some sort of breath freshening

50:52

product. But at the same time, when

50:54

we see that that outside

50:56

of the European context, it seems

50:58

like there's always been or there

51:01

there has long been a need for some sort

51:03

of breath freshening product. So

51:06

I'm not sure we're exactly to land on that, but

51:09

without a doubt, the influx of sugar into

51:12

uh, the diet, of the European

51:14

diet during this time would have led

51:17

to some bad breath, no doubt about

51:19

that. And remember again, um brushing

51:21

teeth with toothpaste was not a

51:23

really widespread common practice

51:27

until like the twentieth century, right right,

51:29

So we're kind of in the dark ages of

51:32

like that where where the where the diet

51:34

had grown worse, but the but

51:36

the the dental hygiene practices had not

51:39

risen up to meet the demand. Yet, you

51:41

know, I was just thinking another thing that

51:43

I suspect very

51:45

likely to be opera ended, like that British

51:47

Medical Journal article and and the other ones

51:49

talking about the actresses and

51:51

and young ladies students chewing gum is probably

51:54

just the same sort of like sexist

51:57

trend detection that causes

51:59

like adult men to think that girl

52:02

younger girls are always on their

52:04

phones, not noticing that boys are

52:06

just as much men are

52:08

on on their phones all the time as well. Yeah,

52:11

yeah, I think you're right. There's probably a word

52:13

for that, like sex selective

52:15

print trend detection. I'm not sure what

52:17

the it's probably out there. Oh but hey,

52:19

we gotta talk about Wriggley's Oh yeah,

52:21

bring it on. So another big name

52:23

in the history of chewing gum, of course is William

52:26

Wriggley Jr. Uh, Wriggley

52:28

is just a great last name. It

52:31

implies that you're some kind of eel like

52:33

writhing around and you can't can't

52:36

get a grip on you. So Wriggley

52:38

of course began as a salesman. You know, there are

52:40

a lot of salesman making it big around this

52:42

time. In the eight nineties, he was

52:44

trying to establish himself as a

52:46

seller of commercial goods, and he ran

52:48

like Bogo style promotions where

52:50

customers you'd buy one product, you get

52:53

another product, right so maybe, but

52:55

I don't know what they really You might buy a velocipede

52:57

and you get a free box of snuff. But

53:00

but apparently one of his very popular

53:02

promotional giveaways was chewing gum.

53:04

And Wrigley was so impressed with how popular

53:07

the chewing gum was as a promotional giveaway

53:09

that he was like, well, I should just sell chewing gum.

53:11

So he decided to get into the gum business,

53:13

launching brands of his own, including

53:15

brands like Wriggly, Spearmint uh.

53:18

And I was reading a history dot com article

53:20

by Elizabeth Knicks about some of his marketing

53:23

practices. I just want to quote this because

53:25

this is so great. H So

53:27

those from Nick's article quote. Because the

53:29

chewing gum field had grown crowded

53:31

with competitors, Wrigley decided

53:33

he'd make his products stand out by spending

53:36

heavily on advertising and direct marketing.

53:39

In nineteen fifteen, the Wrigley

53:41

Company kicked off a campaign in which

53:43

it sent free samples of its gum to millions

53:45

of Americans list listed in phone

53:47

books. Another promotion entailed

53:50

sending sticks of gum to US

53:52

children on their second birthday. I

53:55

hadn't really thought about how easy it

53:57

is to mail a piece of gum, but of course it

53:59

is an can stick it in a pack of

54:01

baseball cards. It's it'll stick in an envelope

54:04

as well. Second birthday?

54:06

Did I read that right? Second

54:09

birthday? Should kids beat you in gum

54:11

when they're two? I

54:14

mean, probably not. I

54:16

don't remember letting my son have

54:18

have gum. I kind of I

54:20

kind of discourage gum now and he's seven,

54:23

but but he really he wants it, you know, like

54:25

when he sees one of those big gumball machines, of course

54:27

he wants to get a giant gumball and stick it in

54:29

his mouth. I mean, I'm no expert on raising

54:32

children, but something seems wrong there. I

54:34

don't think two year olds are supposed to have

54:36

gum right fresher than the mail though,

54:40

But still isn't genius direct marketing? Yeah,

54:42

you should have been in the direct marketing

54:44

of cocaine. That would work even better. I'm glad

54:46

you brought that up. I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to

54:48

that question. Well, I mean, so after this period

54:50

we get more into the modern styles

54:53

of gum were you know, after World War

54:55

two or so, many natural gum bases

54:57

like chickle were largely being replaced

55:00

east with new sym synthetic rubbers

55:02

and waxes, and that sort of led us to the

55:05

gum world we have today. Of course, we've got you

55:07

know, all kinds of other things, artificial

55:09

sweeteners and all that. Yeah, you

55:11

get your spicy gums, you get your fruit gums, you

55:13

get your flavor crystals, you get your gravy

55:15

flavored gums. Maybe

55:17

there's a lot of novelty gum. There's a lot of novelty

55:19

gum. It's sure, it sure is. But then you

55:22

still have like the very traditional juicy

55:24

fruit style gum. Like it's really

55:27

we live in a golden age of chewing and bubble

55:29

gum. Now.

55:31

To come back to something we we touched on at the very beginning

55:34

is that it's this idea

55:36

that chewing gum also helps you

55:38

focus, you know, not merely you know,

55:40

in a pro wrestling ring or or you

55:42

know, on on the sports field, but

55:45

but like just you know, say, setting in a desk working

55:47

that it can help focus your mind. Yeah,

55:50

and this has actually been the subject of a lot

55:52

of research. Strangely enough, I wonder

55:54

how much of it is funded by the chewing gum industry,

55:56

I think, right, But

55:59

there have been ton of studies in

56:01

in psychology and uh,

56:04

I don't know what other fields this would apply to. I guess would

56:06

be in psychology, where the question is does

56:08

chewing gum make people do better on

56:10

various kinds of cognitive

56:12

tasks? And there

56:15

appears to be, at least as far as I was reading,

56:17

some evidence that there's a little bit

56:19

of a cognitive boost that people

56:21

get from chewing gum. But it appears

56:23

to apply for a few minutes

56:26

after gum has been chewed, not

56:28

while you're chewing gum, or at least

56:30

that's what I found in for

56:32

example, I studied from two thousand eleven published

56:35

an appetite by Hour

56:37

at All called Cognitive Advantages of Chewing

56:39

Gum. Now you see them, now you don't uh,

56:42

And so it was talking about giving people a battery

56:44

of cognitive tests either

56:46

while they were chewing gum or after they chewed gum,

56:48

compared with the performance of controls who

56:51

didn't chew anything at all, and the right

56:53

quote, chewing gum was associated with performance

56:55

advantages on multiple measures when gum

56:57

was chewed five minutes before but not

57:00

ring cognitive testing. The benefits,

57:02

however, persisted only for the first fifteen

57:04

to twenty minutes of the testing session. And

57:06

did not extend to all cognitive domains.

57:09

To explain this pattern of results, it's proposed

57:12

that the time limited nature of performance

57:14

benefits can be attributed to mastication

57:17

induced arousal. Maybe

57:19

Fletcher was right. Yeah, well, I mean

57:22

it comes back to the fact that when you're chewing,

57:24

you're using a whole lot of muscles in your face, you're

57:26

producing saliva. It's uh,

57:28

I could see, yeah, it's it's waking you up a little bit.

57:30

I mean, it's the comes back to chewing gum and church,

57:33

right. Yeah. But then also there's

57:35

probably a conflict the author's thing

57:37

going on when you're trying to chew gum while

57:40

you're doing a task, because you might be benefiting

57:42

from some arousal, but you're also sort of

57:44

lightly dividing your attention if you're also

57:46

chewing. Oh, that's true. And then when you're done

57:49

chewing, you're you're revved up. Now you're

57:51

ready to go. Yeah, so you have this mild

57:53

increase. So yeah, it seems to

57:55

me that there might be a little bit of a

57:57

cognitive boost from from chewing gum a

57:59

little bit after you chew, but it

58:01

doesn't seem earth shaking. I

58:04

wonder why this hasn't though led to more

58:07

Like I'm sure there's some products out

58:09

there that are marketed as being like a

58:11

like a performance enhancing

58:13

gum, and uh, I

58:15

assure, yeah, but performance

58:18

enhancing everything. But given how how

58:20

much marketing is out there regarding

58:22

you know, various you know, attention

58:25

boosting, memory boosting, uh,

58:28

herbal supplements and so forth, Like,

58:30

why am I not being bombarded with marketing

58:33

for gums that contain the same thing? Because

58:36

when you look back to our history of chewing

58:38

things again, in many cases we're chewing

58:40

things in order to get some sort

58:43

of uh, you know, a mild stimulant

58:45

out of the material we're chewing. You

58:47

look even to nicotine gum today

58:50

used as a way of, you know, of of getting

58:52

people off of off of cigarettes

58:55

and having them consume their nicotine through

58:57

chewable gum, which you would chew I think for like fifteen

58:59

min it's at a time I think that's the uh,

59:02

the idea. Uh So why don't

59:04

we Why haven't we seen more drug delivery

59:06

through chewing gum during the history of chewing

59:08

gum? I wonder if it falls back into like the

59:10

gender divide that seemed to be there is that why

59:12

we didn't have cocaine gums. I

59:15

wonder, I mean I when when you talk about

59:17

the performance enhancing gum concept,

59:19

I mean cynical part

59:21

of me wonders if it's just cheaper to

59:23

make placebo pills than it

59:25

is to make placebo gums. Yeah,

59:29

but who knows what the future will hold. It

59:31

is worth pointing out with the cannabis gums are already

59:33

on the market, it should

59:36

not come as a surprise to anybody um.

59:38

And then likewise, there's continued research into

59:41

things we might be able to do with gum. For instance,

59:43

there's some studies looking at using

59:45

gums containing um uh phospho

59:48

peptide, amorphous calcium

59:50

phosphate, and xylotol as

59:53

a way of creating gums that are even healthier

59:55

for our dental hygiene. That

59:58

it could be you know, mark get even

1:00:00

more for dental health. Likewise,

1:00:03

chewing gum may also impact our wearable technology.

1:00:06

Uh. There's a two thousand fifteen Time article

1:00:08

by Alexandra uh Sifferlan

1:00:10

who discussed Applied Materials and Interfaces

1:00:13

Journal article in which the researchers

1:00:15

treated chewed gum like pre chewed

1:00:17

gum that one of the researchers that chew they treated

1:00:20

it with ethanol and carbon nanotubes

1:00:22

to create a sensor that could quote detect

1:00:25

body motion and humidity changes, which

1:00:27

could be used to track breathing. Uh.

1:00:32

But in this, you know, it's not so much the gum

1:00:34

is a thing that's chewed, but as coming back

1:00:36

to the material itself, you know, which

1:00:38

is an interesting interesting to look at

1:00:40

this chain, you know, from from things

1:00:42

we chew two glues and

1:00:45

rubbers back into chewing gum and

1:00:47

then perhaps into meta materials

1:00:49

that will be useful in the future. Interesting.

1:00:51

Yeah, I had to know this was going to get into carbon

1:00:53

nanotube based chewing gum, smart

1:00:56

gum of the future. I mean, I wonder

1:00:58

if there's been any cool slife by treatments of that,

1:01:00

like some sort of smart chewing gum that you chew

1:01:03

it up and now it's activated and you can use it

1:01:05

for all sorts of elaborate things.

1:01:08

Well, you know, I feel like I only chew VANTI

1:01:10

black. Well, it does

1:01:12

remind mcgiver would use a

1:01:14

bubble gum, right, maybe use chewing gum to fix

1:01:16

things and there, you know, and and

1:01:18

in that he's kind of getting it kind of brings us back

1:01:21

to the iceman and potential applications

1:01:24

of the material they were chewing. So,

1:01:27

uh, you know, it all comes full circle. Well,

1:01:29

this episode has certainly provided me with

1:01:31

some things to chew over. I

1:01:33

hope we didn't I hope we didn't bite off more than

1:01:36

we could chew. Uh

1:01:40

hopefully not. Hopefully not. But here's one

1:01:42

thing that that's for certain. Everybody

1:01:44

out there listening to this episode probably

1:01:46

has something to share, you know about either

1:01:48

your personal relationship with gum,

1:01:51

what you like, what you don't like, or

1:01:53

other chewable substances. What's

1:01:56

your relationship with them. Perhaps you're from a culture

1:01:58

that has a has a traditional chewed

1:02:01

substance. If if that's the case,

1:02:03

let us know. I'd love to hear from you if you ever uh

1:02:05

have you ever chewed coco leaves? Uh

1:02:08

in uh you know in South America?

1:02:10

Uh, you know, in a while on a hike. I

1:02:12

would be interested to hear about that. Are you a former

1:02:15

tobacco chew or do you have any insights about that

1:02:17

habit? Uh? Maybe you didn't like something we said

1:02:19

and you were going to write in to chew us out. At

1:02:23

any rate, whatever your feedback might be uh,

1:02:26

we would love to hear from you uh, and you can

1:02:28

reach out to us, but before you do,

1:02:31

be sure to check out invention pot dot com.

1:02:33

That's the mother ship. That's where we find all the episodes

1:02:35

of this show. And if you want to support

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1:02:45

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1:02:48

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1:02:50

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1:02:52

that really helps us out huge Thanks as

1:02:54

always to our excellent audio producer,

1:02:56

Maya Cole. If you would like to get in

1:02:58

touch with us with feed back on this episode

1:03:01

or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1:03:03

or just to say hello, you can email

1:03:05

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1:03:14

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