Chew on This

The most curious things are hidden inside the ordinary, and today's tour will make that abundantly clear.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to

(00:27):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Earworms. There are those songs you
get stuck in your head and just can't seem to shake.
I'll spare you the torture of mentioning the names of
a few, knowing what sort of impact they might have

(00:47):
on your day, But I think we can all agree
that earworms exist and can really burrow their way into
our minds. There's no science behind it, from what I
can tell, it just seems that every so often the
composer happily stumbles upon a few notes arranged in just
the right way that produce an almost infectious tune. Kids

(01:07):
love to share them, adults love to hate them, and
everyone does their best to avoid them if they can.
One early version of an earworm started out life in
France in the early seventeen hundreds. It was a folk
song written to lament the death of the first Duke
of Marlborough, who had been rumored to have died during
a battle in seventeen o nine. Even though his death

(01:29):
wasn't true, the song struck a chord and stuck around
for many decades. It floated on the fringes of French society,
known only by a few. It wasn't printed or included
in collections of other songs. It was just the sort
of tune you heard at a friend's house or at
a local gathering, and if you remembered it, you might
share it with someone else. And of course all the

(01:50):
best earworms are really easy to remember. Then something changed
in the seventeen eighties. The simple tunes started to get
pulled into new compositions of the day, sort of a
calling card that composers knew their listeners would understand and
relate to. But things really took off when King Louis
the sixteenth and his Queen Marie Antoinette had a new

(02:10):
baby in sevent You see, Little Louis the seventeenth had
his very own wet nurse, a poor woman from a
small village south of Paris. One of the skills that
she brought to the job was her knowledge of lesser
known folk songs, and this one, the ear worm we're
talking about today, known as the Marlborough has Left the
War song, was a tune that had been floating around

(02:33):
in her village for a very long time, so she
sang it to little baby Louis, which of course meant
that Marie Antoinette heard the tune in the process, and
the earworm took roots. She started humming and singing it
as she walked around the palace, infecting others in the process.
From there, the song went viral in away most social
media influencers could only dream of. It showed up in

(02:56):
plays and musicals, It could be heard in the background
at fancy dinner parties of the wealthy elite, and it
was heard by tourists and travelers, so much so that
some of them complained that the song was everywhere and
they were sick of it. But that's not how earworms work.
You can't just make them go away, can't you. From France,
the little Song spread to England and from there out

(03:19):
even further. Charles Dickens included it in an issue of
his weekly magazine Household Words, and in Spain it's sometimes
even sung at birthday parties But the biggest change, and
the one that made it memorable to just about everyone
around the world, was the new set of English lyrics
that replaced the original French ones. Now no one really
knows who wrote them. The words aren't a translation of

(03:42):
the French words, just an entirely new set of lyrics
paired up to the old folk song's melody, and the
mood definitely changed since the original French song was about
the death of a nobleman, and the new English version
is more of a general celebration song, a celebration of
someone great, someone special, someone jolly. But the rich story

(04:05):
behind the song means that every time we sing it,
we draw a line backwards in time to the early
seventeen hundreds and straight through some of the most memorable
figures in history. You might sing it at an office
party or a gathering to celebrate a retirement, or maybe
you just like the way the tune sounds and can't
seem to get it out of your mind. It's an earworm,

(04:28):
after all, one of the first, and I doubts it
will ever go away. The song for He's a jolly
good fellow. Everyone needs a hobby, something they can do

(04:52):
to unwind and channel their creativity into Albert Einstein played
piano and violin. Humphrey Bogart was an avid chess player,
even once coming to a draw with noted Polish grandmaster
Samuel Raszewski and actor Daniel day. Lewis left his craft
in the mid nineteen nineties for ten months to pursue
one of his passions, shoemaking. And then there was Horace

(05:16):
born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in eighteen forty nine. Horace didn't
play an instrument or hustle amateurs at chess. No, he
didn't cobble together shoes In Italy, Horace Fletcher like to chew.
As a young man, Fletcher traveled around performing odd jobs
following his interests. He worked as a writer and artist,
and even managed in New Orleans opera house for a time.

(05:39):
He loved to read, and he indulged in many of
life's pleasures, mainly food. It was this pleasure, however, that
inflicted some of the worst pain he'd ever experienced in
his life. For one, as he got older, he struggled
with obesity and its side effects, such as chronic stomach pains.
He also found himself being refused coverage from a life

(05:59):
insurance policy, a rejection that sounded alarm bells for him.
He quickly realized it was time to make a change.
One day, while traveling to Chicago on business, the middle
aged Fletcher began chewing his food. He'd always chewed his
food before, but this time was different. He kept chewing,
and chewing and chewing until all that was left was

(06:20):
a liquid e goo on his tongue. He believed that
this was the key to proper digestion and weight management.
According to this new practice, which he dubbed Fletcherism, all
food needs to be chewed until it has been turned
into a liquid. Any solid particles were deemed unnecessary and
could be spat out. It sounds absurd today, but at

(06:42):
the time Fletcherism caught on, he became known as the
Great Masticator and argued that his practice could increase a
person's strength despite reducing the amount of food they actually ate.
He also had strict rules about when to consume sustenance.
Followers were instructed to avoid eating when they were sad
or angry, and to wait until they reached a point

(07:03):
that Fletcher called good and hungry. No midnight snacks for him.
He started touring the United States giving lectures on his methods,
methods which were scoffed at by doctors and scientists as
nothing more than self important hokum. That didn't matter, though
Fletcherism had reached far more important spokespeople than doctors. Celebrities

(07:23):
and titans of industry had begun chewing with wild abandoned.
Among them were John D. Rockefeller and author Upton Sinclair.
Even Mark Twain was considered a friend. But something as
important as eating healthy couldn't rely on word of mouth
from business men and writers alone. Fletcher needed to show
its merits definitively. With the help of Yale University's athletic department,

(07:46):
the sixty year old master Cator put on a demonstration
of his system and how it had reinvigorated his youthful stamina.
He performed a series of strength and endurance tests, even
competing alongside Yale's own athletes. According to the stories, he
outperformed all of them, going so far as to lift
three hundred pounds of dead weight with his right calf

(08:07):
over three hundred times, quite a feat. Meanwhile, Fletcherism was
working its way overseas, where London diners would throw munching parties. There,
people would eat together in one big room, seated close together,
chewing their food hundreds of times a minute until it
had been reduced to liquid. Stop watches were even implemented

(08:28):
to time how long people chewed. Fletcher continued to elaborate
on his system. He devised menus where he listed how
many choose it, took the breakdown specific foods, and pushed
low protein diets. Although Fletcherism made its founder a millionaire,
though the fad eventually fell out of favor. Physicians advocated
against it, not only because it lacked empirical evidence to

(08:50):
back up its claims, but also because its followers were
at risk for things like constipation and other elements. Fletcherism
was just one in a long line of food fats,
right up there with Lord Byron's vinegar and water diet
and the popular grapefruit diet of the nineteen thirties. And
that's the problem with food fads. They promise good health

(09:12):
and weight loss, but in reality their flaws simply make
them too hard for people to swallow. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was

(09:33):
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.