December 26, 2023 • 46 mins
There's nothing quite like the fizzy kick of soda -- since ancient times, cabonation beverages have always delighted and fascinated humanity... even though soda certainly isn't the healthies drink. In the first part of this two-part episode, Ben kicks soda as he, Noel and Max dive into the history of these amazing drinks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy Holidays. Thank you always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer
Max the Atlanta Sanna Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
O La La la la. Indeed, man, you've been back
pocketing that one, Ben, just for the holiday time.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Off the Dome, Off the Dome Freestyle days. Thank you. Noel,
I am Ben Bullen. You are Noel Brown. This is candidly.
This is a little bit of a weird therapy thing
for me because I have kicked soda again and it's
crazy uphill.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, I mean I do it every now and again,
just like for a treat like the salami for the cats,
if anyone remembers that meme. But by and large I
am a Seltzer guy. Seltzer has replaced soda for me.
I have a soda stream, but I never put in
the I never put in the syrups. I just like
a good old fashioned regular plane Seltzer. Plane.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Old Seltzer is a way to go. Yeah, Ben, how's
the dreams going?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean to tell you about this.
Nola has heard this from the last Tomic with soda.
But the thing I didn't expect where the weird soda
withdrawal dreams. Probably the strangest one was I was in
a fight with a vampire very like climactic Stephen Kink's
Midnight Mass style, okay, and then part way through the fight,
(01:53):
I'm like, you know, wave it like fighting it off
with like a quarter staff thing as a cross on it,
And part way through the vampire pauses and says time out.
And then it took from somewhere a can of Coca Cola,
opened it and did the iconic coke drink where you go,
and then put it down, and the dream continued. I
(02:15):
had a sponsored ad and a dream.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, yeah, that's we're not too far from that, irl.
But not to like editorialize your dream too much. But
wouldn't it have been fun if the vampire had just
sunk his fangs into the can itself. That would have
been a fun little twist, it would have. It would
have Speaking of vampires and being good at fighting, I
think all three of us have been enjoying Skyrim lately,
and in one of my very first journeys out into
(02:39):
the wilds of Skyrim, I was attacked by a vampire,
and I guess they got to hit in because a
little bit later I kept getting a notification that you
are starting to grow weary as the sun comes up,
and you have a strange craving.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
It's when they do that spell. They they kind of
suck on you, like spell they can give you vamp purists.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I forget what the name of it. In the s
it seems to have subsided though I didn't really do
anything about it. No, I don't think I did. But
maybe will the the potion to cure all diseases fix
that for you? Yeah, okay, I must have done that. Then.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
It's one of these things that if you take care
of it in you know, a couple of days, it's fine.
But if you kind of don't, you know, it's like
most things, if we don't take care of it, it
can turn out really good.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Where some people go that route though, right where they're like,
I want to do this and I miss I imagine
if you service it correctly, it gives you special perks
to some degree. But then you do have to feed
on human blood.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Without spoiling too too much.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I was very into the vampire quest line. I wanted
to love the were wolves, but I chose vampire and
have got You can become a vampire lord, and so
you do get some you get some cool perks.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They have their own boots, the vampire boots, so you know, yeah,
but Sun, yeah, well you can fix that problem too.
But one thing the vampires do not have in Skyrim,
despite all their cool stuff, is soda pop. Because you know,
the world of Elder Scrolls in Skyrim is fascinating and
(04:16):
endless and so cool, but it has a severe lack
of soda. They have a lot of beverages, but they
don't have carbonated's mead all toe wine is a popular choice.
You guys. You know, I think we are not allowed
to just casually do this out of nowhere, but I
really love people from a certain part of the country
that calls soda uh just pop. I think that would
(04:40):
be a little bit too much, even a form of
cultural appropriation, if we just started casually referring to Coca
Cola as pop.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I guess I could kind of, because I.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Mean, Michigan, You're a Michigander.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I have family who call it pop. It's it's kind
of cringe when I hear it.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I honestly think.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It's it's like it's with the Midwestern accent. It's very
it's a little Mickey Mouse, you know what I mean.
It's a little like ah shucks, right, it really is.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
There's also I mean, you know, when in Rome do
as the Romans do, so I've I've referred to it
as pop. I still think that's better that when I'm
traveling there. I still think that's better than the tendency
we see sometimes in the in the South to call
every soft drink a coke.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I just call it soda. But I do have to
walk back my claim of having kicked soda entirely full
sugar soda, I have kicked entirely, but I do drink
diet coke still on a pretty regular basis. Call them
DC's nice.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
I like it not to be confused with R C Cola,
which will going to name check later in our exploration. Folks,
soda pop is just amazing. It's not healthy, and a
lot of people probably drink too much of it. I
sure did back in the day, but can we blame them.
If you, like us, spent some formative years in the
(05:58):
Georgia or Atlanta area, you're probably most familiar with Coca cola.
But that is only the beginning of the story. The
world of soda is wide and vast. We've been texting
each other in our little group chat with sort of this,
remember this vibe, but what happened to this one? And
it's the history of this is bub bubbling to the
brim with ridiculousness. So let's pop the top and get started.
(06:22):
Maybe we talk with the terms like soft drink, soda,
pop itsever.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, I got to imagine, just right off the rip,
that a soft drink refers to anything that like isn't alcoholic,
you know, because it's a soft It's like if it's
for kids, you know, it's a soft drink. Also, it's
a little bit of a backhanded, almost disc kind of
it's like you you're soft. One thing, just another Skyrim reference,
a term of abuse thrown around a lot in that
(06:48):
game is a milk drinker. Being a milk drinker it
means that you're a little baby boy who doesn't like
to consume or and bube, you know, the hard stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
My new favorite, my new favorite anachronistic insult that I
recently learned is calling someone fatherless.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Geez. That's kind of like a baster, right, Yeah, it's
it's almost worse though it's more direct.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, it's worse than that, you know, I don't know. Well,
use that one carefully, folks. Soft drink, No, you're absolutely right,
is an umbrella term for any number of non alcoholic beverages.
That's their primary commonality. They're usually carbonated, but not always,
and they'll often nowadays, they'll have some kind of angle,
(07:34):
some flavor profiles, so it's not just carbonated water. There
will be all kinds of natural or artificial flavors. They
might add some juice if they're getting fancy, and there's
almost always a sweetening agent, whether it's corn syrup or
actual cane sugar, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I love this term you threw into the dock here
ben edible acids. That that seems like an umbrella term
in and of itself. It could perhaps refer to things
that might make you see stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
There we go, shout out to our friends at the
at Britannica. There we gotta, we gotta do a history
of Britannica one day.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That way, well, and speaking of rule Britannia or Britannica,
you know, you'll often hear people referring to a soft
cider in the UK as being you know, a cider
still have some alcohol in them, but they are a
little bit of a lighter alcoholic beverage. So soft cider
as a term I've seen used a lot in like
BBC stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, and there was another one historically. I think it
was weak beer, which sounds kind of like an insult,
but it was just a normal phrase back in the
day and week sauce man weak sauce and not everything
that fits these commonalities counts as a soft drink because
coffee is not a soft drink, or not refer to it,
(08:54):
not referred to as one, tea, milk, hot chocolate, straight
up vegetable or fruit juice, those don't count in general.
The main thing is, as you described, is that a
soft drink was meant to be a distinguishing description from
hard liquor.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely. I mean, we certainly know too. Historically there was
a time where people drank beer, you know, like water
because of the fact that the fermentation process killed all
the bad stuff that would have been in the normal
water supply. So, you know, especially in like Nordic times
or whatever, you know, you'd have people that were just
stay and toasty all day long because it was really
(09:36):
the only alternative to drinking, you know, kind of putrefied water.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
M Yeah, it's kind of like the choice between dysentery
and day drinking, and history decided for.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
A while, right, there should be a rapper with the
name mc dysentery, but dis you know, nice? I like
that one.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's a good one. Also, there was really interesting cherry
picked historical fact I've found and I haven't verified it,
but someone was like when the Irish first discovered whiskey,
they didn't do anything for two hundred years.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
It was like man discovering fire, you know, right, fire water.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
And it's strange because going into this, I don't know
about you guys, but I think a lot of people
would assume that soda pop is a pretty recent invention.
But the story really starts back in the seventeen hundreds,
and the idea of carbonating stuff is way way older.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's right. Beer and champagne, of course, are both alcoholic
beverages that are best enjoyed carbonating or actually the I
believe the very process of the fermentation creates some amount
of carbonation, if I'm not mistaken, right, it gives you
sort of a natural amount of bubbles. Those drinks, of course,
have been around for centuries. By the seventeenth century, street
(10:59):
vendor in Paris were selling lemonade, which has its own story.
I believe we've done a history of lemonade and lemonade stands.
And also ciders were not that hard to come by either,
But the very first drinkable man made glass of carbonated
water wasn't around until more along the lines of the
(11:20):
seventeen sixties.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, shout out to what was that episode Rise
of the clown Pants.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh, yes, sir, that was a gross one. Check it
out though, it's a good classic, And yeah, I love
the idea. You know, people refer too often as one
of their favorite characteristics of a soda pop or of
seltzer is that burn of the of the carbonation. People
call it the bite and the burn, and it was
referred to back in the day as sort of a
(11:47):
being almost spicy. And I have heard little kids say, oh,
that's spicy, but they're referring to more of the way
it hits the throat, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, that sensation of effervescence was a huge factor in
the creation of modern soda pop because in the days
of the Greco Romans, people believe that natural mineral water
had curative medicinal properties. Because you feel the little bubbles,
(12:16):
it feels like something is happening, so people assumed it
was good. If people thought the effervescence, if they assumed
that tingly feeling was bad, then we might not have
soda pop.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, it's almost like it feels like it's doing something,
you know, it feels like there are curative properties at work.
And you know, mineral water is still around today. Of course,
you know Perrier and San Pellogrino. I have a little
bit more mineral content in them because I believe of
the source and some you know, carbonated water, they believe
they come out of the ground carbonated you know, there
(12:49):
are these like kind of bubbling springs where that stuff
comes out like that. If I'm not mistaken, I might
be overstating the case. I know you're correct, I think.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And so in this meliueuring soft drink invenors wanted to
reproduce this health enhancing quality or perception. It wanted to
make really kind of a patent medicine, and they first
started using chalk and acid edible acid we assume to
(13:17):
carbonate water.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Shock weird. Okay, So the first soft drinks that were
actually mass marketed came around in the seventeenth century as
a mixture of water and lemon juice with a little
bit of honey added to sweeten the deal. In sixteen
seventy six, the Compigni de Lemonadillos was formed in Peri
(13:39):
and granted a monopoly. They were given a monopoly to
produce and sell these products, and vendors would carry around
tanks of the stuff on their backs, like an early
predecessor to the camelback from which they dispensed these cups
of lemonade. That would you know, they'd reuse the cups.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And everybody knew when they started working on soda as
a concept, everybody knew the primary thing was the bubbles.
That is how you made it feel official and medicinal.
And a lot of people worked on just the concept
of carbonation. We're talking about academics, we're talking about independent
scientists kind of doing their renaissance man thing. You can
(14:24):
see the first time someone used the term gas to
talk about this carbon dioxide stuff. That was a Flemish
scientist named Jean Baptista Van.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Oh, my gosh, what a great name. You know, it's funny.
In Germany, carbonated water is referred to as mit gas.
That just means with gas with bubbles and also, guys,
isn't it funny? How if you accidentally drink some coke
(14:58):
that has gone flat, it is disgusting. The bubbles make
all the difference. It's a psychological thing. It's weird. It's
literally making you think that something tastes better than it
actually tastes. It's an illusion of the mind, an.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Illusion of the mind. Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because
soda shares something a similar quality to French fries. Right,
they're good while they're fresh, and then they turn into
just regular oddly cut potatoes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I sat let them get cold. So there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Guy named Robert Boyle who occurs in the stories of
philosopher and scientists. He later helps found modern chemistry. He
talks about mineral waters in a book with a cartoonish title,
Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters.
Rolls off the talk.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, yeah, that was in sixteen eighty five, and in
that book there were sections about examining some of these
mineral springs that we were talking about, and you know,
looking into the properties that this water contain as well
as their effects on the human body. And to quote
the book of the Imitation of Natural Medicinal Waters by
(16:11):
Kamic and other Artificial wys, this is like old English
stuff at its finest, chemic good chym i col and
ways as wayes. So let's fast forward a little bit
to talk about the kind of rise of the soda industry.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, okay, there's a guy named Joseph Priestley. He was
an English clergyman and a scientist, and his street name
now is the father of the soft drinks industry, because
he demonstrated how you could take the fermenting vats from
a brewery and experiment with the gas that they created,
(16:49):
like you're saying, during the fermentation process. So it's seventeen
seventy two. He's hanging with the College of Physicians in
London and he says, look at this, I've made a
corbinate apparatus and if only I had a pump, I
could have more high impregnation of fixed air within the water.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I mean, he basically invented the prototype for the soda stream, right,
you know, because I mean, it's so cool. It's also
like if it's fun, it's like almost like doing your
own little science project at home. You get these can
these these well I guess, these kind of metal tanks,
miniature tanks of CO two, and then you put it in,
(17:29):
You put the bottle in, and it essentially imbues, you know,
or injects the water with this gas, and then it
creates carbonated water.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And this this is all interesting, right, this is all
very ted talkie. Look at the world we could create
in the future. But it's still just a series of
proofs of concept. The brand of sort of the first
like production of carbonated water comes from a guy named
Thomas Henry, and he cribbed Priestley's work, or we should
(17:59):
say he read it and then he applied it. He
made his water in these twelve gallon barrels. And then
someone heard about Priestley, someone heard about Henry, someone heard
about some other guys. One of the main characters in
the history of soda Jacob Schwepp, a Swiss jeweler who said, hey,
I can play along at home. He started selling his
(18:21):
artificial mineral waters, still unflavored, to people in Geneva where
he lived, and then later he started his own business
in London, which makes Sweps super old and the oldest
soda brand still around today.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's honestly still one of the best. You know, I
think that the Ginger Sweps ginger Ale is, you know,
pretty universally considered one of the best, and it's just
the most popular one you see on the shelf. You'll
see Seagrums every now and then. But it's funny how
like even coc Cola purchase I believe put coca and
pepsi they own Schweps and Seagrums, respectively. I can't remember
(19:00):
which owns which, but they didn't make it themselves because
this pre existing legacy company had already kind of cornered
the market and the recipe on ginger Ale.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, and Schweps in this regard reminds me a little
bit of Henry Kissinger Jimmy Carter, because it outlived so
many of its competitors rivals. Some folks will tell you
there's another another brand that deserves the title of first
soda or oldest soda, and that's something called Verners, which
comes about.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, really popular war I'm certain I believe in Michigan
had to.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Do very big in Michigan. That's a very very very popular.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
They make a spicy one. If I'm not missing incredibly spicy. Great.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I don't drink sod at all, but you know I
will have a Werner's a fresh. Verners just don't get
the two leader of it, because after you crack it open,
it goes from spicy to.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Not that's and then it's just then it's just weird,
gross spicy fla favored water exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And also so we wanted to give Verners their due,
and we want to note that in the great swep
Verner's Debate, it really depends on how we define soft drink,
and there have been some serious debates about it. You
can find them online. It's amazing how people spend their time.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Don't we know it? Right? Yeah? I mean look at us. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So this was again mostly these kinds of drinks were
considered medicinal, and people would make different grades of carbonated water.
There was a letter written by a business tycoon named
Matthew Bolton to the philosopher Erasmus star When in seventeen
eighty four, and Noel, I thought you would enjoy this
(20:42):
when they break down the types of carbonated water.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, Jay Schwepp prepares his mineral waters in three varieties.
Number one for common drinking with dinner, Number two for
nephritic nephritic patients. Help me out with that one, any problems,
got it? Okay? And because once again we're still leaning
into the medicinal aspect of these products at this point.
(21:06):
And number three contains the most alkali, given only in
more violent cases. I don't know what that means. I
don't either, what the use your imagination?
Speaker 1 (21:18):
You are fatherless in a violent case, Yes, you have
a violent kidney. So these things were humming along, but
we still haven't reached the age of modern soda quite yet.
The first US patent for the creation of what they
called imitation mineral water comes around eighteen ten.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
That's so funny because it really is they're trying to
duplicate again from the earliest days, the effects of a
very natural process. So I love that. You know, the
whole idea for this racket comes from nature. So yeah,
to your point, The first US patent comes through around
eighteen ten. Then in eighteen nineteen, a guy named Samuel
(21:57):
Fanstock creates the modern day roughly soda fountain.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, which is cool because it's older than I thought.
I guess I assumed it was late eighteen hundreds or
post Civil war, but they were. People were already expanding
all aspects of this industry. Nobody knows to this very day,
nobody knows exactly who started adding flavoring and sweeteners to soda,
(22:23):
and no one knows exactly when they did it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But we know that by.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, people were already
selling wine with carbonated water.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
They were Lincoln the weird to me. I don't know why.
I mean, I guess Champagne, you know, honestly, unless it
comes from the Champagne region of France, it's usually just
considered a sparkling wine, so a white. But can you
imagine drinking carbonated red wine? That seems just wrong.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I saw I saw someone at a party, I want
to say, who was drinking some kind of like die
coke red wine thing.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That's the thing I have heard about that. Yeah, coc
and red wine is a thing. Maybe I'll try it.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
What do you guys think of those people who put
coffee in their coke?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah? I actually just heard about that watching a new
show called Murder at the End of the World from
Oh Gosh, the woman and her directing partner who did
like another Earth and sound of my voice and the
OA it's good. But there's a whole scene involving a
character putting coke into their coffee or vice versa, and
then the other person in the scene tries it and
(23:33):
find it disgusting. But you may recall there was a
brief period where a Coca Cola had a coffee coke hybrid. Right,
it was black. I wanted to like it.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It was not good. It was not good. I don't
know how that got off the drawing board.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
But well, because I think it's one of those things
like people just do and they're like, well, what if
we just give it to them? Give people what they want.
But it turns out maybe there aren't that many people
that want that.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, maybe they're sample size was weird. Maybe they talked
only to the twelve people who like that. But we say,
as coffee lovers folks, by the way, so we know
that coke when they made coke black, and when pepsi
makes pepsi clear and all those things. They're really just
doing iterations of a centuries old phenomenon. Which is adding
(24:22):
flavors and any kind of kick to to regular old
seltzer water. Ginger becomes popular in eighteen twenty is a flavoring,
then lemon, and then tonic.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, and to your point about the soda fountain, you
know what we have today that are still referred to
as fountain drinks. All of that stuff is mixed kind
of by machine or like by these you know, this
process where it just injects the flavoring into the carbonated water.
Which is also why you'll find that a fountain drink
version of a particular soda tastes different a lot of
(24:56):
times than the canned or bottled version because it the
mix isn't always scientifically a curio, but the soda fountain
early days, it was, you know, a person that was
hand mixing these things, you know, like the old soda jerk.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Also, not to turn anybody into germophobes, but a lot
of the variants in soda, in soda from a fountain
depends on whether or not the fountain is clean exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
You ever had like a diet coke from a soda fountain,
and it tastes a whole hell of a lot like
regular coke. That's because there's some what's the word contamination.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Going on there, and people quickly realized that they could,
with relatively little effort, they could turn one product line
of plain old saltz water into a monopoly of different
spicy flavored drinks pineapple, orange, lemon, apple, just like picture
(25:59):
of fruit. And at some point someone decided it should
also be a soda.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, now you know, we've again with the kind of
craze of you know, just Seltzer's one joke that I
always love to repeat. I don't remember where I heard it,
but they say, like Lacroix flavored Lacroix tastes like somebody
whispered the name of a fruit from the next room.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Whatever, take with that, do with it what you will.
But of course, these you know, syrup based.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Drinks, you guys never had the lemon. I hate it
and I don't like Yeah, there's no quiz.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's too much, it's too heavy, and it tastes more
like oil, like like it says it's like you're drinking
essential oils or something that's sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I'm also, just to be honest, I'm not the biggest
fan La Croix is ever gonna have. I respect people's
right to enjoy what they want, but I'll just drink
water and then eat whatever fruit that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Propos to be smart. I like Polar, I think better
than Lacroix. Polar is pretty good. They're on black cherry.
Montanees is a local Seltzer company outfit here and the
lad But what I was saying, the syrups in question
here that we're being used in the eighteen sixty five
incredibly sweet. And that was by design. Yeah, that was
the whole idea. It was really like a treat kind
(27:12):
of a drink.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And they're figuring it out as they go, As we
say in Corporate America, they're sort of building the plane
while they're flying it, and they make a lot of
great breakthroughs, but of course there are also a lot
of mistakes along the way. Probably the most infamous mistake
in the history of soda occurs in eighteen eighty five
when a guy named Charles Alderton, who must have been
(27:32):
having a terrible day, invents something that is called doctor Pepper.
It was originally called Waco and people are still drinking
it of their own volition. You don't I get I mean,
if you're going to have that many ingredients make a
couple of them not.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Poop fair enough. I don't know about that. We'll get
to it. But to me, Doctor Pepper always I think
was it was kind of one of those things where
it's like, what is this supposed to taste? Like it's
vaguely black cherry but sort of not. Let's hear more
about this, Ben, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
This is this is the side note. Yeah, I'm really
glad you talked about the taste.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
This is. This is so weird.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Uh, but we do know what Alderton was attempting to
do with Waco now known as Doctor Pepper. The story
is no true this is. But the story is that
he was working in a in a pharmacy and he
was trying to recreate the He wanted the soda to
(28:30):
taste the way that the pharmacy smelled.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Okay, so medicinal like cleaning product like bleach. What are
we talking about here?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I see there's a there's a method to the madness, Noll.
There's a reason that I'm dunking on Doctor Pepper. Also,
I'm leaning into it. I just should get a funny
but uh but yes, and you know, honestly, Doctor Pepper
went on to have an amazing uh product, but the
(29:02):
whole game changed very shortly afterwards. Like doctor Pepper invented
eighteen eighty five, just one year later, a guy in Atlanta,
Georgia in eighteen eighty six he invents something called coca cola,
and he does it. The rumor is to help him
kick his war feet out.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Oh weird. What's the guy's name again? I always forget
the coke guys?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
John Pemberton.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Pemberton, that's right. So, yeah, you've got some nice ub
let's call them honorifics. I guess he've made up for
the Spello, the Gretzki of guzzle, Oh, the tiger Woods
of tonic water, the Kobe Bryant of soda. Yeah, no, accurate.
This guy really did change the game for better or worse.
In eighteen eighty six, John Pemberton did just that. He
(29:50):
invented coca cola, and the history of coke is rife.
You know, we've all heard the rumors that are largely
true that the original recipe of coca cola did in
fact contain cocaine in addition to the cola nuts, not
to be confused with koala nuts. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Also, cocaine had a much less sinister reputation.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
They gave you a papa, It gave you a little zip.
It was in a lot of stuff back then. It
sure was a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Of metals, a lot, a lot of medicine. Yeah, and
this all happens during the period of rapid expansion. By
eighteen sixty, there are one hundred and twenty three bottling
plants for soft drinks in the US, and then just
ten years later there are three hundred and eighty seven.
By nineteen hundred, there are almost three thousand different plants
(30:46):
just making soda.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, popular stuff. It really did kind of kick off
a bit of a craze, but still doesn't quite explain
the absolutely meteoric rise of soda and how I just
became such a staple. And believe it or not, we
really owe a lot of credit to the temperance movement,
(31:15):
the idea of being a teetotaler and soda being sort
of a mandated I guess, substitute for alcoholic beverages. People
needed something to take the edge off, and it did
contain you know, chemicals, you know, caffeine, sugar. Obviously, it
made you feel something. It's better than you know, not drinking.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah right, these party police here's how I picture it.
I picture it like they're kind of militant. They had
a reputation.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Oh I'm sorry. They they had cocaine in them too.
By the way, they really did make you feel something better, right,
carry on there.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
It's weird because I'm picturing in my mind a media
of teetotalers and they're worried about their public image, and
they're like, guys, people are saying that we're not fun,
and well, don't listen to them. They're drunk, and they say, no,
we need something, We need something positive. So we're not
a movement that's just dedicated to eradicating something. We need
(32:16):
an alternative. So let's get the kids hanging out at
pharmacies and selling soft drinks a soda fountains. That made
those places wholesome social hanging spots, like going to a
community center or something. And then that made in the
teetotaler calculus that made bars and later speakeasies even worse.
(32:37):
These were like the last refuges of low lifes and
degenerates before they reached the grave.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I mean, they're not wrong, you know, there are certain
type of dive bar situations that are the sort of
roosting places for you know, the problematic elements, you know,
folks that are maybe what you might call problem drinkers.
You're more likely to see a fight or a knifing,
you know, break out in one of these spots than
(33:04):
you would say, at a soda fountain or what we
call it.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Like, I feel like I've worked in many of these places.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, you certainly have, Max, That's where we first became
acquainted with one another, and you worked at a pretty
reputable joint. But there are certain spots that, you know,
especially in bigger cities, where you may well not be
welcome if you're not a known quantity.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I actually got to jump in here because I legitimately
cannot remember the name of this place in Chicago, so
I can't really slander them. But there's this bar in Chicago.
It's cash only, and you have to I forget that
there's a way to get in. But there's like the
big thing about it is it's everyone knows like everything
they're doing inside is illegal, Like they're selling like boozze,
Like after hours, you can't smoke inside any building in Chicago.
(33:47):
People are just chain smoking, and there's all the sides
up from the said like, oh, all this stuff. But
it's just so funny to walk in because it's like
there's this facade and everyone knows this is a total facade,
but as soon as you walk in, it's like nope.
And the one thing is all the bartenders are all
really old and they're all really mean.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, there's stuff I've seen. I've seen similar things, Like
in London, I stumbled onto a place through through contact
and it was you were able to smoke cigarettes inside,
probably other stuff too. I didn't stay too long. It's
a weird vibe and they were doing after hours things.
In their loophole was that they are a private club
(34:24):
or they're a private property kind of thing, so they're
not quote unquote open to the public.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I think they had something similar to that. But I
think their loophole was they had some hands in organized crime.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, there you go. Not unusual and yeah, I mean,
of course, you know we talk about these speakeasies, right
and once you know, the temperance movement took hold and
the laws changed and alcohol was illegal, that did become
a hotbed of organized crime. A lot of these locations
were run by you know, the mob or mob like elements.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And just like with boot lagging, transportation played a big
role in the rise of soda because for a while,
you could only get this stuff if you were living
in proximity of some sort to a factory and there
was a horse drawn carriage that could reach you. But
now all of a sudden, we have gas powered trucks
and automobiles. The American shipping industry is experiencing a revolution,
(35:22):
and the reach of soda extends as well. So by
nineteen twenty, the US alone is home to more than
five thousand bottling plants, and that's all they do, day in,
day out. They make weird Sodas the first vending machines
come along, they put soda into cups. And I can't
say cups for some reason without remembering that amazing meme
(35:43):
of the lizard drinking out of cups. I think we
talked about this on stuff. They want you to know.
Oh it's classic, not all of it aged well, but
it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Okay, So let's take a quick pause in the history,
just talk a little bit more about process. We talked
about injecting the bubbles. You know, into still water to
kind of mimic the effects and qualities of this naturally
carbonated stuff. But you know, these early processes were much more,
you know, kind of single serving. Right, We're now in
(36:12):
a situation where we've got to mass produce this stuff.
So how does the technology start to evolve to meet
the demand. Oh?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, it starts with the water. Of course, often that's
coming from a safe processed municipal supply, but just to
be certain, these companies also will process it further, so
it's weird without getting two in the weeds. Sometimes they
just run it through a sand filter to get rid
of solid matter, and then they run it through an
(36:45):
activated carbon purifier to get rid of chlorine color and
other taste or odors, except in the case of course
Doctor Pepper, where I think they just go to a
sewer and start scooping stuff up with a lab.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
How do you really feel about Doctor Pepper?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
We had to pick one. We had to pick one
to dunk on. Max is giving a thumbs down. Wait, Max,
are you the I know?
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I I don't think so at all.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
No.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I hate Doctor Pepper because they have like the most
annoying commercials of all time to play NonStop during college football.
I've also adopted this thing where I don't buy products
that advertise during college football fa So I've continued to
not buy doctor Pepper, and.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
That is a reasonable bias. It is not something that
I necessarily reached for when I'm having my little soda treat.
But I don't hate it, perhaps as much as you
guys do. And there are better versions of it, like
what is it? You know, geez not Werners, but there's
another you see him at like cool like Delis like
in New York. It's got this weird bearded man on
(37:44):
the on the like, but they have a really good
black cherry Doctor Brown Doctor Brown's good. That's not the
one that is very similar, very much in the same wheelhouse.
They also Doctor Brown's has an excellent black cherry soda.
So of course, all of this starts, like you said,
with water. Oftentimes, as we know, even with bottled water
(38:08):
made by these soda magnates that they got into the
business and hey, let's just sell the stuff that we
make the stuff out of. It just comes from the
good old fashioned municipal water supply, though it is oftentimes
processed a little bit further in order to maintain some
sort of standards for the finished product. Impurities within water
(38:29):
supplies for different parts of the country. Municipalities can of
course vary from time to time, and there are allowable
levels of impurities that can vary as well by municipality.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, so in most plants these days, the water is
going to go through a process called super chlorination and coagulation.
For two hours. The water gets exposed to a cartoonishly
high amount of chlorine and to something called a floculent.
Floculant is just a fancy word for thing that removes
algae and bacteria and then it goes back through this
(39:04):
sand filter carbon thing. But at that point you still
don't have something you can sell as soda. You need
the bubbles, you need the magic. And I'll be honest,
this got me watching the old school Gene Wilder, Willy
Wonka or Charlie in the chocolate factory. It holds up, man,
it's really good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
So now we've purified the water to some degree, let's
talk about how we get those bubbles, which is kind
of the feature of the whole product into said water.
Carbon dioxide gas gives these beverages that sparkle that bites.
And also it makes it more shelf stable, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
It really does. Yeah, And the carbonation is created by
chilling the liquid and then cascading it in thin layers
over a series of plates in this enclosure that has
pressurized carbon dioxide gas. It's a really cool like how
stuff gets made opportunity. You know, you can see videos
(40:06):
of this on YouTube. And the amount of gas the
water will absorb depends on how high the pressure is
and how low the temperature is. So it's fascinating science.
We're still not done. Now we've got basically selter our
imitation mineral water, but everybody's selling seltzer. How do we
hush it up a little? How do we add some
(40:28):
so an angle?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
You know? Yeah, syrups right, and you know, of course
we've got syrups that are naturally occurring, like maple syrup,
you know, from the sap of the maple tree. But
when you're talking about concentration of flavor, you know, to
get that sort of essence of like a particular type
of flavor with be a lemon, black, cherry, raspberry, or
(40:52):
what have you, we're talking about creating this stuff. First,
you have a simple syrup which is a great thing
in and of itself. I'm a big fan of using
simple syrup and iced coffee or even regular coffee, which
is basically just cooking down sugar into sort of a
more viscous solution, right.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, yeah, it's a solution of water and sugar, and
you can take some other steps. You can treat this
simple sugar with carbon you can filter it if sugar
is not you know, top quality, and all the other
ingredients are added in a precise order to create what's
called the finished syrup. This is where stuff like a
(41:30):
secret recipe comes in, because it's not just what you
put in. It's when you combine these things your order
of operations.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Oh yeah, hence the Willy wonknness of it all. And
there are two methods for producing that finished syrup. In
the first method, the syrup is diluted with water and
then the product gets cooled carbonated. You know, it's cooked
right like I said, with making the simple syrup, and
then it's cooled down, carbonated and bottles. And in the
(41:59):
second to the maker actually measures a precise amount of
syrup into each bottle. You got the carbonated water separately,
then you fill it with the syrup or add it
and first then you know, dilute it with the carbonated water.
In either case, the sugar is about fifty one to
sixty percent of the syrup and it is reduced to
around eight to thirteen percent in the finished beverage, So
(42:22):
it is considerably I guess, packing a lot of punch.
It's a very dense like it's like dark matter, you know,
when it comes to flavoring.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Right, yeah, yeah, if you ever, if you ever worked
in a restaurant or hospititality industry, you may have heard
of people who just tried the straight syrup. It's very
much not as cool as the soda. It's just too concentrated, right,
And one twelve ounce soft drink can contain more than
(42:55):
forty grams of sugar as a result. Here, that's a
lot of sugar, right.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Seeing those images in like health class where it's like
it shows you the pile of sugar, the physical pile
of sugar that would go into forty grams of sugar
physically to look at is a frickin' ant hill of sugar.
I saw.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I saw Bernie Sanders, the politician Bernie Sanders recently and
his his rant for the day was soda and children.
And he had like a twenty ounce Coca cola bottle
that buddy yeah, and he was, yeah, it's what he asked,
Coca cola bottle.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
And he's like, this single bottle of Coca cola alone
contains fourteen tea spoons of sugar. That's far more than
is recommended or even allowed for twoldren.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
That's ten percent of the five percent of the one
percent of the allowable limits of sugar intake for the
American people.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And then he'll bet his percentages.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
It's Bernie Sanders catchphrase.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
And shout out to who whatever genius is cutting his hair.
I'm kidding, I'm I'm personally hey.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
He doesn't. He just kind of runs his fingers.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I find him just such a fascinating historical.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Is not the best thing ever. It was BID's inauguration.
He wore these ned and yeah, they got him on.
Colbert got him on like right afterwards. Ask him and
he's like he like said who it was, and then
he very quickly tried to retract it because he's like
everyone's like flooding this woman asking for more, and she
(44:33):
just made she like knitted them for him, and everyone's like,
can we get some of these herself? And she's like, no,
this is just something I did. I like to knit.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, he really is.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
He always looks like in so many appearances, I I
can't disassociate him from his cousin's fantastic show Curb Your Enthusiasm,
and I always feel like he's sort of in a
Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I say her distant cousins that, I think, yeah, I say, though, yeah,
they definitely have a vibe that they share. So we've
got this mega, mega concentrated flavor you know, crack that
is now you know, uh, injected into the carbonated water.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yeah, and look, politics aside, our Palbernie is absolutely correct
about the health concerns surrounding soda. It's delicious, it's interesting,
it's it's a heck of a treat, but it is
not healthy. And here we're going to pause, not for
a soda break. We're staying strong throughout this episode. But
(45:38):
this is gonna have to be a two parter because
we're setting up the history, some of which is ridiculous,
but we have yet to get to the most ridiculous part,
which is the sodas of yesteryear.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's right, and the Yeah, there's a lot of interesting
history there too, and just a lot of absurd marketing
that goes into this kind of stuff, and we'll talk
a lot about the nostalgia factor of it all is well.
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams, his brother Alex Williams,
who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Big Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter, Big
Big thanks to A. J. Jacobs aka the Puzzler. Check
out our friends over on Ridiculous Crimes Aaron Elizabeth, Dan
Dave if you want to hear more ridiculous often heist
related history. And I'm hoping that we can. We've been
(46:26):
talking about forever, but I'm hoping we could get a
crossover going with them in the New Year.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think that's definitely gonna happen. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy Holidays. Thank you always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer
Max the Atlanta Sanna Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
O La La la la. Indeed, man, you've been back
pocketing that one, Ben, just for the holiday time.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Off the Dome, Off the Dome Freestyle days. Thank you. Noel,
I am Ben Bullen. You are Noel Brown. This is candidly.
This is a little bit of a weird therapy thing
for me because I have kicked soda again and it's
crazy uphill.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, I mean I do it every now and again,
just like for a treat like the salami for the cats,
if anyone remembers that meme. But by and large I
am a Seltzer guy. Seltzer has replaced soda for me.
I have a soda stream, but I never put in
the I never put in the syrups. I just like
a good old fashioned regular plane Seltzer. Plane.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Old Seltzer is a way to go. Yeah, Ben, how's
the dreams going?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean to tell you about this.
Nola has heard this from the last Tomic with soda.
But the thing I didn't expect where the weird soda
withdrawal dreams. Probably the strangest one was I was in
a fight with a vampire very like climactic Stephen Kink's
Midnight Mass style, okay, and then part way through the fight,
(01:53):
I'm like, you know, wave it like fighting it off
with like a quarter staff thing as a cross on it,
And part way through the vampire pauses and says time out.
And then it took from somewhere a can of Coca Cola,
opened it and did the iconic coke drink where you go,
and then put it down, and the dream continued. I
(02:15):
had a sponsored ad and a dream.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, yeah, that's we're not too far from that, irl.
But not to like editorialize your dream too much. But
wouldn't it have been fun if the vampire had just
sunk his fangs into the can itself. That would have
been a fun little twist, it would have. It would
have Speaking of vampires and being good at fighting, I
think all three of us have been enjoying Skyrim lately,
and in one of my very first journeys out into
(02:39):
the wilds of Skyrim, I was attacked by a vampire,
and I guess they got to hit in because a
little bit later I kept getting a notification that you
are starting to grow weary as the sun comes up,
and you have a strange craving.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
It's when they do that spell. They they kind of
suck on you, like spell they can give you vamp purists.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I forget what the name of it. In the s
it seems to have subsided though I didn't really do
anything about it. No, I don't think I did. But
maybe will the the potion to cure all diseases fix
that for you? Yeah, okay, I must have done that. Then.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
It's one of these things that if you take care
of it in you know, a couple of days, it's fine.
But if you kind of don't, you know, it's like
most things, if we don't take care of it, it
can turn out really good.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Where some people go that route though, right where they're like,
I want to do this and I miss I imagine
if you service it correctly, it gives you special perks
to some degree. But then you do have to feed
on human blood.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Without spoiling too too much.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I was very into the vampire quest line. I wanted
to love the were wolves, but I chose vampire and
have got You can become a vampire lord, and so
you do get some you get some cool perks.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They have their own boots, the vampire boots, so you know, yeah,
but Sun, yeah, well you can fix that problem too.
But one thing the vampires do not have in Skyrim,
despite all their cool stuff, is soda pop. Because you know,
the world of Elder Scrolls in Skyrim is fascinating and
(04:16):
endless and so cool, but it has a severe lack
of soda. They have a lot of beverages, but they
don't have carbonated's mead all toe wine is a popular choice.
You guys. You know, I think we are not allowed
to just casually do this out of nowhere, but I
really love people from a certain part of the country
that calls soda uh just pop. I think that would
(04:40):
be a little bit too much, even a form of
cultural appropriation, if we just started casually referring to Coca
Cola as pop.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I guess I could kind of, because I.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Mean, Michigan, You're a Michigander.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I have family who call it pop. It's it's kind
of cringe when I hear it.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I honestly think.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It's it's like it's with the Midwestern accent. It's very
it's a little Mickey Mouse, you know what I mean.
It's a little like ah shucks, right, it really is.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
There's also I mean, you know, when in Rome do
as the Romans do, so I've I've referred to it
as pop. I still think that's better that when I'm
traveling there. I still think that's better than the tendency
we see sometimes in the in the South to call
every soft drink a coke.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I just call it soda. But I do have to
walk back my claim of having kicked soda entirely full
sugar soda, I have kicked entirely, but I do drink
diet coke still on a pretty regular basis. Call them
DC's nice.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
I like it not to be confused with R C Cola,
which will going to name check later in our exploration. Folks,
soda pop is just amazing. It's not healthy, and a
lot of people probably drink too much of it. I
sure did back in the day, but can we blame them.
If you, like us, spent some formative years in the
(05:58):
Georgia or Atlanta area, you're probably most familiar with Coca cola.
But that is only the beginning of the story. The
world of soda is wide and vast. We've been texting
each other in our little group chat with sort of this,
remember this vibe, but what happened to this one? And
it's the history of this is bub bubbling to the
brim with ridiculousness. So let's pop the top and get started.
(06:22):
Maybe we talk with the terms like soft drink, soda,
pop itsever.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, I got to imagine, just right off the rip,
that a soft drink refers to anything that like isn't alcoholic,
you know, because it's a soft It's like if it's
for kids, you know, it's a soft drink. Also, it's
a little bit of a backhanded, almost disc kind of
it's like you you're soft. One thing, just another Skyrim reference,
a term of abuse thrown around a lot in that
(06:48):
game is a milk drinker. Being a milk drinker it
means that you're a little baby boy who doesn't like
to consume or and bube, you know, the hard stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
My new favorite, my new favorite anachronistic insult that I
recently learned is calling someone fatherless.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Geez. That's kind of like a baster, right, Yeah, it's
it's almost worse though it's more direct.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, it's worse than that, you know, I don't know. Well,
use that one carefully, folks. Soft drink, No, you're absolutely right,
is an umbrella term for any number of non alcoholic beverages.
That's their primary commonality. They're usually carbonated, but not always,
and they'll often nowadays, they'll have some kind of angle,
(07:34):
some flavor profiles, so it's not just carbonated water. There
will be all kinds of natural or artificial flavors. They
might add some juice if they're getting fancy, and there's
almost always a sweetening agent, whether it's corn syrup or
actual cane sugar, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I love this term you threw into the dock here
ben edible acids. That that seems like an umbrella term
in and of itself. It could perhaps refer to things
that might make you see stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
There we go, shout out to our friends at the
at Britannica. There we gotta, we gotta do a history
of Britannica one day.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That way, well, and speaking of rule Britannia or Britannica,
you know, you'll often hear people referring to a soft
cider in the UK as being you know, a cider
still have some alcohol in them, but they are a
little bit of a lighter alcoholic beverage. So soft cider
as a term I've seen used a lot in like
BBC stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, and there was another one historically. I think it
was weak beer, which sounds kind of like an insult,
but it was just a normal phrase back in the
day and week sauce man weak sauce and not everything
that fits these commonalities counts as a soft drink because
coffee is not a soft drink, or not refer to it,
(08:54):
not referred to as one, tea, milk, hot chocolate, straight
up vegetable or fruit juice, those don't count in general.
The main thing is, as you described, is that a
soft drink was meant to be a distinguishing description from
hard liquor.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely. I mean, we certainly know too. Historically there was
a time where people drank beer, you know, like water
because of the fact that the fermentation process killed all
the bad stuff that would have been in the normal
water supply. So, you know, especially in like Nordic times
or whatever, you know, you'd have people that were just
stay and toasty all day long because it was really
(09:36):
the only alternative to drinking, you know, kind of putrefied water.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
M Yeah, it's kind of like the choice between dysentery
and day drinking, and history decided for.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
A while, right, there should be a rapper with the
name mc dysentery, but dis you know, nice? I like
that one.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's a good one. Also, there was really interesting cherry
picked historical fact I've found and I haven't verified it,
but someone was like when the Irish first discovered whiskey,
they didn't do anything for two hundred years.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
It was like man discovering fire, you know, right, fire water.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
And it's strange because going into this, I don't know
about you guys, but I think a lot of people
would assume that soda pop is a pretty recent invention.
But the story really starts back in the seventeen hundreds,
and the idea of carbonating stuff is way way older.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's right. Beer and champagne, of course, are both alcoholic
beverages that are best enjoyed carbonating or actually the I
believe the very process of the fermentation creates some amount
of carbonation, if I'm not mistaken, right, it gives you
sort of a natural amount of bubbles. Those drinks, of course,
have been around for centuries. By the seventeenth century, street
(10:59):
vendor in Paris were selling lemonade, which has its own story.
I believe we've done a history of lemonade and lemonade stands.
And also ciders were not that hard to come by either,
But the very first drinkable man made glass of carbonated
water wasn't around until more along the lines of the
(11:20):
seventeen sixties.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, shout out to what was that episode Rise
of the clown Pants.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh, yes, sir, that was a gross one. Check it
out though, it's a good classic, And yeah, I love
the idea. You know, people refer too often as one
of their favorite characteristics of a soda pop or of
seltzer is that burn of the of the carbonation. People
call it the bite and the burn, and it was
referred to back in the day as sort of a
(11:47):
being almost spicy. And I have heard little kids say, oh,
that's spicy, but they're referring to more of the way
it hits the throat, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, that sensation of effervescence was a huge factor in
the creation of modern soda pop because in the days
of the Greco Romans, people believe that natural mineral water
had curative medicinal properties. Because you feel the little bubbles,
(12:16):
it feels like something is happening, so people assumed it
was good. If people thought the effervescence, if they assumed
that tingly feeling was bad, then we might not have
soda pop.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, it's almost like it feels like it's doing something,
you know, it feels like there are curative properties at work.
And you know, mineral water is still around today. Of course,
you know Perrier and San Pellogrino. I have a little
bit more mineral content in them because I believe of
the source and some you know, carbonated water, they believe
they come out of the ground carbonated you know, there
(12:49):
are these like kind of bubbling springs where that stuff
comes out like that. If I'm not mistaken, I might
be overstating the case. I know you're correct, I think.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And so in this meliueuring soft drink invenors wanted to
reproduce this health enhancing quality or perception. It wanted to
make really kind of a patent medicine, and they first
started using chalk and acid edible acid we assume to
(13:17):
carbonate water.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Shock weird. Okay, So the first soft drinks that were
actually mass marketed came around in the seventeenth century as
a mixture of water and lemon juice with a little
bit of honey added to sweeten the deal. In sixteen
seventy six, the Compigni de Lemonadillos was formed in Peri
(13:39):
and granted a monopoly. They were given a monopoly to
produce and sell these products, and vendors would carry around
tanks of the stuff on their backs, like an early
predecessor to the camelback from which they dispensed these cups
of lemonade. That would you know, they'd reuse the cups.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And everybody knew when they started working on soda as
a concept, everybody knew the primary thing was the bubbles.
That is how you made it feel official and medicinal.
And a lot of people worked on just the concept
of carbonation. We're talking about academics, we're talking about independent
scientists kind of doing their renaissance man thing. You can
(14:24):
see the first time someone used the term gas to
talk about this carbon dioxide stuff. That was a Flemish
scientist named Jean Baptista Van.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Oh, my gosh, what a great name. You know, it's funny.
In Germany, carbonated water is referred to as mit gas.
That just means with gas with bubbles and also, guys,
isn't it funny? How if you accidentally drink some coke
(14:58):
that has gone flat, it is disgusting. The bubbles make
all the difference. It's a psychological thing. It's weird. It's
literally making you think that something tastes better than it
actually tastes. It's an illusion of the mind, an.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Illusion of the mind. Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because
soda shares something a similar quality to French fries. Right,
they're good while they're fresh, and then they turn into
just regular oddly cut potatoes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I sat let them get cold. So there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Guy named Robert Boyle who occurs in the stories of
philosopher and scientists. He later helps found modern chemistry. He
talks about mineral waters in a book with a cartoonish title,
Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters.
Rolls off the talk.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, yeah, that was in sixteen eighty five, and in
that book there were sections about examining some of these
mineral springs that we were talking about, and you know,
looking into the properties that this water contain as well
as their effects on the human body. And to quote
the book of the Imitation of Natural Medicinal Waters by
(16:11):
Kamic and other Artificial wys, this is like old English
stuff at its finest, chemic good chym i col and
ways as wayes. So let's fast forward a little bit
to talk about the kind of rise of the soda industry.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, okay, there's a guy named Joseph Priestley. He was
an English clergyman and a scientist, and his street name
now is the father of the soft drinks industry, because
he demonstrated how you could take the fermenting vats from
a brewery and experiment with the gas that they created,
(16:49):
like you're saying, during the fermentation process. So it's seventeen
seventy two. He's hanging with the College of Physicians in
London and he says, look at this, I've made a
corbinate apparatus and if only I had a pump, I
could have more high impregnation of fixed air within the water.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I mean, he basically invented the prototype for the soda stream, right,
you know, because I mean, it's so cool. It's also
like if it's fun, it's like almost like doing your
own little science project at home. You get these can
these these well I guess, these kind of metal tanks,
miniature tanks of CO two, and then you put it in,
(17:29):
You put the bottle in, and it essentially imbues, you know,
or injects the water with this gas, and then it
creates carbonated water.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And this this is all interesting, right, this is all
very ted talkie. Look at the world we could create
in the future. But it's still just a series of
proofs of concept. The brand of sort of the first
like production of carbonated water comes from a guy named
Thomas Henry, and he cribbed Priestley's work, or we should
(17:59):
say he read it and then he applied it. He
made his water in these twelve gallon barrels. And then
someone heard about Priestley, someone heard about Henry, someone heard
about some other guys. One of the main characters in
the history of soda Jacob Schwepp, a Swiss jeweler who said, hey,
I can play along at home. He started selling his
(18:21):
artificial mineral waters, still unflavored, to people in Geneva where
he lived, and then later he started his own business
in London, which makes Sweps super old and the oldest
soda brand still around today.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's honestly still one of the best. You know, I
think that the Ginger Sweps ginger Ale is, you know,
pretty universally considered one of the best, and it's just
the most popular one you see on the shelf. You'll
see Seagrums every now and then. But it's funny how
like even coc Cola purchase I believe put coca and
pepsi they own Schweps and Seagrums, respectively. I can't remember
(19:00):
which owns which, but they didn't make it themselves because
this pre existing legacy company had already kind of cornered
the market and the recipe on ginger Ale.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, and Schweps in this regard reminds me a little
bit of Henry Kissinger Jimmy Carter, because it outlived so
many of its competitors rivals. Some folks will tell you
there's another another brand that deserves the title of first
soda or oldest soda, and that's something called Verners, which
comes about.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, really popular war I'm certain I believe in Michigan
had to.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Do very big in Michigan. That's a very very very popular.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
They make a spicy one. If I'm not missing incredibly spicy. Great.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I don't drink sod at all, but you know I
will have a Werner's a fresh. Verners just don't get
the two leader of it, because after you crack it open,
it goes from spicy to.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Not that's and then it's just then it's just weird,
gross spicy fla favored water exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And also so we wanted to give Verners their due,
and we want to note that in the great swep
Verner's Debate, it really depends on how we define soft drink,
and there have been some serious debates about it. You
can find them online. It's amazing how people spend their time.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Don't we know it? Right? Yeah? I mean look at us. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So this was again mostly these kinds of drinks were
considered medicinal, and people would make different grades of carbonated water.
There was a letter written by a business tycoon named
Matthew Bolton to the philosopher Erasmus star When in seventeen
eighty four, and Noel, I thought you would enjoy this
(20:42):
when they break down the types of carbonated water.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, Jay Schwepp prepares his mineral waters in three varieties.
Number one for common drinking with dinner, Number two for
nephritic nephritic patients. Help me out with that one, any problems,
got it? Okay? And because once again we're still leaning
into the medicinal aspect of these products at this point.
(21:06):
And number three contains the most alkali, given only in
more violent cases. I don't know what that means. I
don't either, what the use your imagination?
Speaker 1 (21:18):
You are fatherless in a violent case, Yes, you have
a violent kidney. So these things were humming along, but
we still haven't reached the age of modern soda quite yet.
The first US patent for the creation of what they
called imitation mineral water comes around eighteen ten.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
That's so funny because it really is they're trying to
duplicate again from the earliest days, the effects of a
very natural process. So I love that. You know, the
whole idea for this racket comes from nature. So yeah,
to your point, The first US patent comes through around
eighteen ten. Then in eighteen nineteen, a guy named Samuel
(21:57):
Fanstock creates the modern day roughly soda fountain.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, which is cool because it's older than I thought.
I guess I assumed it was late eighteen hundreds or
post Civil war, but they were. People were already expanding
all aspects of this industry. Nobody knows to this very day,
nobody knows exactly who started adding flavoring and sweeteners to soda,
(22:23):
and no one knows exactly when they did it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But we know that by.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, people were already
selling wine with carbonated water.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
They were Lincoln the weird to me. I don't know why.
I mean, I guess Champagne, you know, honestly, unless it
comes from the Champagne region of France, it's usually just
considered a sparkling wine, so a white. But can you
imagine drinking carbonated red wine? That seems just wrong.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I saw I saw someone at a party, I want
to say, who was drinking some kind of like die
coke red wine thing.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That's the thing I have heard about that. Yeah, coc
and red wine is a thing. Maybe I'll try it.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
What do you guys think of those people who put
coffee in their coke?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah? I actually just heard about that watching a new
show called Murder at the End of the World from
Oh Gosh, the woman and her directing partner who did
like another Earth and sound of my voice and the
OA it's good. But there's a whole scene involving a
character putting coke into their coffee or vice versa, and
then the other person in the scene tries it and
(23:33):
find it disgusting. But you may recall there was a
brief period where a Coca Cola had a coffee coke hybrid. Right,
it was black. I wanted to like it.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It was not good. It was not good. I don't
know how that got off the drawing board.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
But well, because I think it's one of those things
like people just do and they're like, well, what if
we just give it to them? Give people what they want.
But it turns out maybe there aren't that many people
that want that.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, maybe they're sample size was weird. Maybe they talked
only to the twelve people who like that. But we say,
as coffee lovers folks, by the way, so we know
that coke when they made coke black, and when pepsi
makes pepsi clear and all those things. They're really just
doing iterations of a centuries old phenomenon. Which is adding
(24:22):
flavors and any kind of kick to to regular old
seltzer water. Ginger becomes popular in eighteen twenty is a flavoring,
then lemon, and then tonic.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, and to your point about the soda fountain, you
know what we have today that are still referred to
as fountain drinks. All of that stuff is mixed kind
of by machine or like by these you know, this
process where it just injects the flavoring into the carbonated water.
Which is also why you'll find that a fountain drink
version of a particular soda tastes different a lot of
(24:56):
times than the canned or bottled version because it the
mix isn't always scientifically a curio, but the soda fountain
early days, it was, you know, a person that was
hand mixing these things, you know, like the old soda jerk.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Also, not to turn anybody into germophobes, but a lot
of the variants in soda, in soda from a fountain
depends on whether or not the fountain is clean exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
You ever had like a diet coke from a soda fountain,
and it tastes a whole hell of a lot like
regular coke. That's because there's some what's the word contamination.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Going on there, and people quickly realized that they could,
with relatively little effort, they could turn one product line
of plain old saltz water into a monopoly of different
spicy flavored drinks pineapple, orange, lemon, apple, just like picture
(25:59):
of fruit. And at some point someone decided it should
also be a soda.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, now you know, we've again with the kind of
craze of you know, just Seltzer's one joke that I
always love to repeat. I don't remember where I heard it,
but they say, like Lacroix flavored Lacroix tastes like somebody
whispered the name of a fruit from the next room.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Whatever, take with that, do with it what you will.
But of course, these you know, syrup based.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Drinks, you guys never had the lemon. I hate it
and I don't like Yeah, there's no quiz.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's too much, it's too heavy, and it tastes more
like oil, like like it says it's like you're drinking
essential oils or something that's sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I'm also, just to be honest, I'm not the biggest
fan La Croix is ever gonna have. I respect people's
right to enjoy what they want, but I'll just drink
water and then eat whatever fruit that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Propos to be smart. I like Polar, I think better
than Lacroix. Polar is pretty good. They're on black cherry.
Montanees is a local Seltzer company outfit here and the
lad But what I was saying, the syrups in question
here that we're being used in the eighteen sixty five
incredibly sweet. And that was by design. Yeah, that was
the whole idea. It was really like a treat kind
(27:12):
of a drink.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And they're figuring it out as they go, As we
say in Corporate America, they're sort of building the plane
while they're flying it, and they make a lot of
great breakthroughs, but of course there are also a lot
of mistakes along the way. Probably the most infamous mistake
in the history of soda occurs in eighteen eighty five
when a guy named Charles Alderton, who must have been
(27:32):
having a terrible day, invents something that is called doctor Pepper.
It was originally called Waco and people are still drinking
it of their own volition. You don't I get I mean,
if you're going to have that many ingredients make a
couple of them not.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Poop fair enough. I don't know about that. We'll get
to it. But to me, Doctor Pepper always I think
was it was kind of one of those things where
it's like, what is this supposed to taste? Like it's
vaguely black cherry but sort of not. Let's hear more
about this, Ben, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
This is this is the side note. Yeah, I'm really
glad you talked about the taste.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
This is. This is so weird.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Uh, but we do know what Alderton was attempting to
do with Waco now known as Doctor Pepper. The story
is no true this is. But the story is that
he was working in a in a pharmacy and he
was trying to recreate the He wanted the soda to
(28:30):
taste the way that the pharmacy smelled.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Okay, so medicinal like cleaning product like bleach. What are
we talking about here?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I see there's a there's a method to the madness, Noll.
There's a reason that I'm dunking on Doctor Pepper. Also,
I'm leaning into it. I just should get a funny
but uh but yes, and you know, honestly, Doctor Pepper
went on to have an amazing uh product, but the
(29:02):
whole game changed very shortly afterwards. Like doctor Pepper invented
eighteen eighty five, just one year later, a guy in Atlanta,
Georgia in eighteen eighty six he invents something called coca cola,
and he does it. The rumor is to help him
kick his war feet out.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Oh weird. What's the guy's name again? I always forget
the coke guys?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
John Pemberton.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Pemberton, that's right. So, yeah, you've got some nice ub
let's call them honorifics. I guess he've made up for
the Spello, the Gretzki of guzzle, Oh, the tiger Woods
of tonic water, the Kobe Bryant of soda. Yeah, no, accurate.
This guy really did change the game for better or worse.
In eighteen eighty six, John Pemberton did just that. He
(29:50):
invented coca cola, and the history of coke is rife.
You know, we've all heard the rumors that are largely
true that the original recipe of coca cola did in
fact contain cocaine in addition to the cola nuts, not
to be confused with koala nuts. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Also, cocaine had a much less sinister reputation.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
They gave you a papa, It gave you a little zip.
It was in a lot of stuff back then. It
sure was a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Of metals, a lot, a lot of medicine. Yeah, and
this all happens during the period of rapid expansion. By
eighteen sixty, there are one hundred and twenty three bottling
plants for soft drinks in the US, and then just
ten years later there are three hundred and eighty seven.
By nineteen hundred, there are almost three thousand different plants
(30:46):
just making soda.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, popular stuff. It really did kind of kick off
a bit of a craze, but still doesn't quite explain
the absolutely meteoric rise of soda and how I just
became such a staple. And believe it or not, we
really owe a lot of credit to the temperance movement,
(31:15):
the idea of being a teetotaler and soda being sort
of a mandated I guess, substitute for alcoholic beverages. People
needed something to take the edge off, and it did
contain you know, chemicals, you know, caffeine, sugar. Obviously, it
made you feel something. It's better than you know, not drinking.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah right, these party police here's how I picture it.
I picture it like they're kind of militant. They had
a reputation.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Oh I'm sorry. They they had cocaine in them too.
By the way, they really did make you feel something better, right,
carry on there.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
It's weird because I'm picturing in my mind a media
of teetotalers and they're worried about their public image, and
they're like, guys, people are saying that we're not fun,
and well, don't listen to them. They're drunk, and they say, no,
we need something, We need something positive. So we're not
a movement that's just dedicated to eradicating something. We need
(32:16):
an alternative. So let's get the kids hanging out at
pharmacies and selling soft drinks a soda fountains. That made
those places wholesome social hanging spots, like going to a
community center or something. And then that made in the
teetotaler calculus that made bars and later speakeasies even worse.
(32:37):
These were like the last refuges of low lifes and
degenerates before they reached the grave.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I mean, they're not wrong, you know, there are certain
type of dive bar situations that are the sort of
roosting places for you know, the problematic elements, you know,
folks that are maybe what you might call problem drinkers.
You're more likely to see a fight or a knifing,
you know, break out in one of these spots than
(33:04):
you would say, at a soda fountain or what we
call it.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Like, I feel like I've worked in many of these places.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, you certainly have, Max, That's where we first became
acquainted with one another, and you worked at a pretty
reputable joint. But there are certain spots that, you know,
especially in bigger cities, where you may well not be
welcome if you're not a known quantity.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I actually got to jump in here because I legitimately
cannot remember the name of this place in Chicago, so
I can't really slander them. But there's this bar in Chicago.
It's cash only, and you have to I forget that
there's a way to get in. But there's like the
big thing about it is it's everyone knows like everything
they're doing inside is illegal, Like they're selling like boozze,
Like after hours, you can't smoke inside any building in Chicago.
(33:47):
People are just chain smoking, and there's all the sides
up from the said like, oh, all this stuff. But
it's just so funny to walk in because it's like
there's this facade and everyone knows this is a total facade,
but as soon as you walk in, it's like nope.
And the one thing is all the bartenders are all
really old and they're all really mean.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, there's stuff I've seen. I've seen similar things, Like
in London, I stumbled onto a place through through contact
and it was you were able to smoke cigarettes inside,
probably other stuff too. I didn't stay too long. It's
a weird vibe and they were doing after hours things.
In their loophole was that they are a private club
(34:24):
or they're a private property kind of thing, so they're
not quote unquote open to the public.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I think they had something similar to that. But I
think their loophole was they had some hands in organized crime.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, there you go. Not unusual and yeah, I mean,
of course, you know we talk about these speakeasies, right
and once you know, the temperance movement took hold and
the laws changed and alcohol was illegal, that did become
a hotbed of organized crime. A lot of these locations
were run by you know, the mob or mob like elements.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And just like with boot lagging, transportation played a big
role in the rise of soda because for a while,
you could only get this stuff if you were living
in proximity of some sort to a factory and there
was a horse drawn carriage that could reach you. But
now all of a sudden, we have gas powered trucks
and automobiles. The American shipping industry is experiencing a revolution,
(35:22):
and the reach of soda extends as well. So by
nineteen twenty, the US alone is home to more than
five thousand bottling plants, and that's all they do, day in,
day out. They make weird Sodas the first vending machines
come along, they put soda into cups. And I can't
say cups for some reason without remembering that amazing meme
(35:43):
of the lizard drinking out of cups. I think we
talked about this on stuff. They want you to know.
Oh it's classic, not all of it aged well, but
it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Okay, So let's take a quick pause in the history,
just talk a little bit more about process. We talked
about injecting the bubbles. You know, into still water to
kind of mimic the effects and qualities of this naturally
carbonated stuff. But you know, these early processes were much more,
you know, kind of single serving. Right, We're now in
(36:12):
a situation where we've got to mass produce this stuff.
So how does the technology start to evolve to meet
the demand. Oh?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, it starts with the water. Of course, often that's
coming from a safe processed municipal supply, but just to
be certain, these companies also will process it further, so
it's weird without getting two in the weeds. Sometimes they
just run it through a sand filter to get rid
of solid matter, and then they run it through an
(36:45):
activated carbon purifier to get rid of chlorine color and
other taste or odors, except in the case of course
Doctor Pepper, where I think they just go to a
sewer and start scooping stuff up with a lab.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
How do you really feel about Doctor Pepper?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
We had to pick one. We had to pick one
to dunk on. Max is giving a thumbs down. Wait, Max,
are you the I know?
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I I don't think so at all.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
No.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I hate Doctor Pepper because they have like the most
annoying commercials of all time to play NonStop during college football.
I've also adopted this thing where I don't buy products
that advertise during college football fa So I've continued to
not buy doctor Pepper, and.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
That is a reasonable bias. It is not something that
I necessarily reached for when I'm having my little soda treat.
But I don't hate it, perhaps as much as you
guys do. And there are better versions of it, like
what is it? You know, geez not Werners, but there's
another you see him at like cool like Delis like
in New York. It's got this weird bearded man on
(37:44):
the on the like, but they have a really good
black cherry Doctor Brown Doctor Brown's good. That's not the
one that is very similar, very much in the same wheelhouse.
They also Doctor Brown's has an excellent black cherry soda.
So of course, all of this starts, like you said,
with water. Oftentimes, as we know, even with bottled water
(38:08):
made by these soda magnates that they got into the
business and hey, let's just sell the stuff that we
make the stuff out of. It just comes from the
good old fashioned municipal water supply, though it is oftentimes
processed a little bit further in order to maintain some
sort of standards for the finished product. Impurities within water
(38:29):
supplies for different parts of the country. Municipalities can of
course vary from time to time, and there are allowable
levels of impurities that can vary as well by municipality.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, so in most plants these days, the water is
going to go through a process called super chlorination and coagulation.
For two hours. The water gets exposed to a cartoonishly
high amount of chlorine and to something called a floculent.
Floculant is just a fancy word for thing that removes
algae and bacteria and then it goes back through this
(39:04):
sand filter carbon thing. But at that point you still
don't have something you can sell as soda. You need
the bubbles, you need the magic. And I'll be honest,
this got me watching the old school Gene Wilder, Willy
Wonka or Charlie in the chocolate factory. It holds up, man,
it's really good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
So now we've purified the water to some degree, let's
talk about how we get those bubbles, which is kind
of the feature of the whole product into said water.
Carbon dioxide gas gives these beverages that sparkle that bites.
And also it makes it more shelf stable, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
It really does. Yeah, And the carbonation is created by
chilling the liquid and then cascading it in thin layers
over a series of plates in this enclosure that has
pressurized carbon dioxide gas. It's a really cool like how
stuff gets made opportunity. You know, you can see videos
(40:06):
of this on YouTube. And the amount of gas the
water will absorb depends on how high the pressure is
and how low the temperature is. So it's fascinating science.
We're still not done. Now we've got basically selter our
imitation mineral water, but everybody's selling seltzer. How do we
hush it up a little? How do we add some
(40:28):
so an angle?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
You know? Yeah, syrups right, and you know, of course
we've got syrups that are naturally occurring, like maple syrup,
you know, from the sap of the maple tree. But
when you're talking about concentration of flavor, you know, to
get that sort of essence of like a particular type
of flavor with be a lemon, black, cherry, raspberry, or
(40:52):
what have you, we're talking about creating this stuff. First,
you have a simple syrup which is a great thing
in and of itself. I'm a big fan of using
simple syrup and iced coffee or even regular coffee, which
is basically just cooking down sugar into sort of a
more viscous solution, right.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, yeah, it's a solution of water and sugar, and
you can take some other steps. You can treat this
simple sugar with carbon you can filter it if sugar
is not you know, top quality, and all the other
ingredients are added in a precise order to create what's
called the finished syrup. This is where stuff like a
(41:30):
secret recipe comes in, because it's not just what you
put in. It's when you combine these things your order
of operations.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Oh yeah, hence the Willy wonknness of it all. And
there are two methods for producing that finished syrup. In
the first method, the syrup is diluted with water and
then the product gets cooled carbonated. You know, it's cooked
right like I said, with making the simple syrup, and
then it's cooled down, carbonated and bottles. And in the
(41:59):
second to the maker actually measures a precise amount of
syrup into each bottle. You got the carbonated water separately,
then you fill it with the syrup or add it
and first then you know, dilute it with the carbonated water.
In either case, the sugar is about fifty one to
sixty percent of the syrup and it is reduced to
around eight to thirteen percent in the finished beverage, So
(42:22):
it is considerably I guess, packing a lot of punch.
It's a very dense like it's like dark matter, you know,
when it comes to flavoring.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Right, yeah, yeah, if you ever, if you ever worked
in a restaurant or hospititality industry, you may have heard
of people who just tried the straight syrup. It's very
much not as cool as the soda. It's just too concentrated, right,
And one twelve ounce soft drink can contain more than
(42:55):
forty grams of sugar as a result. Here, that's a
lot of sugar, right.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Seeing those images in like health class where it's like
it shows you the pile of sugar, the physical pile
of sugar that would go into forty grams of sugar
physically to look at is a frickin' ant hill of sugar.
I saw.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I saw Bernie Sanders, the politician Bernie Sanders recently and
his his rant for the day was soda and children.
And he had like a twenty ounce Coca cola bottle
that buddy yeah, and he was, yeah, it's what he asked,
Coca cola bottle.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
And he's like, this single bottle of Coca cola alone
contains fourteen tea spoons of sugar. That's far more than
is recommended or even allowed for twoldren.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
That's ten percent of the five percent of the one
percent of the allowable limits of sugar intake for the
American people.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And then he'll bet his percentages.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
It's Bernie Sanders catchphrase.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
And shout out to who whatever genius is cutting his hair.
I'm kidding, I'm I'm personally hey.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
He doesn't. He just kind of runs his fingers.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I find him just such a fascinating historical.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Is not the best thing ever. It was BID's inauguration.
He wore these ned and yeah, they got him on.
Colbert got him on like right afterwards. Ask him and
he's like he like said who it was, and then
he very quickly tried to retract it because he's like
everyone's like flooding this woman asking for more, and she
(44:33):
just made she like knitted them for him, and everyone's like,
can we get some of these herself? And she's like, no,
this is just something I did. I like to knit.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, he really is.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
He always looks like in so many appearances, I I
can't disassociate him from his cousin's fantastic show Curb Your Enthusiasm,
and I always feel like he's sort of in a
Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I say her distant cousins that, I think, yeah, I say, though, yeah,
they definitely have a vibe that they share. So we've
got this mega, mega concentrated flavor you know, crack that
is now you know, uh, injected into the carbonated water.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yeah, and look, politics aside, our Palbernie is absolutely correct
about the health concerns surrounding soda. It's delicious, it's interesting,
it's it's a heck of a treat, but it is
not healthy. And here we're going to pause, not for
a soda break. We're staying strong throughout this episode. But
(45:38):
this is gonna have to be a two parter because
we're setting up the history, some of which is ridiculous,
but we have yet to get to the most ridiculous part,
which is the sodas of yesteryear.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's right, and the Yeah, there's a lot of interesting
history there too, and just a lot of absurd marketing
that goes into this kind of stuff, and we'll talk
a lot about the nostalgia factor of it all is well.
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams, his brother Alex Williams,
who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Big Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter, Big
Big thanks to A. J. Jacobs aka the Puzzler. Check
out our friends over on Ridiculous Crimes Aaron Elizabeth, Dan
Dave if you want to hear more ridiculous often heist
related history. And I'm hoping that we can. We've been
(46:26):
talking about forever, but I'm hoping we could get a
crossover going with them in the New Year.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think that's definitely gonna happen. We'll see you next time, folks.
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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