How Cinnamon Works

In another commodities edition of SYSK, Josh and Chuck dive into the world of cinnamon, once the world's most prized and pricey spice. But did you know it was really just dried up tree bark?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry So it's Stuff you
should Know the never ending year. Man, I am sleepy today.

(00:25):
I do a little whiskey last night. Oh that will
make you sleepy. Really nice bourbon. Ok I can't remember
the name of it, but you know, one of those
small batches. It's I wish I could because the bourbon
and not right. I'd love to plug it. And it
was bourbon. It was delicious, Okay, cool, so very smooth.
Let me let you in on a little, little little
known fact you've told me, but tell everyone else about. Yeah,

(00:48):
it's a big deal, man. I think we need to
spread the word. So you know, all those little small
batch distilleries that make rye, and they all have these
crazy back stories and all that stuff all almost across
the board lies most of the small batch rye and
sold in the United States by craft distilleries is made

(01:11):
in a single factory in Indiana. Josh is using a
lot of air quotes then, including on Indiana, which I
didn't quite get. And then they sell it to these
people who like put a new label on it, mark
the price whatever they want, even though it's the same
thing you're drinking, whether it's this craft distillery, that Crestility,
it's literally the same rye. Put a folksy backstory on

(01:33):
and then you're a chump for buying it. That's that's
not truth, bourbon, it's just this rye. But a good
giveaway is is the ry you're drinking five year old
rye and the distillery has only been around since last year.
Probably a pretty good bet that they bought and rebottled it.
And that is a true Josh fact. Not like the

(01:54):
cigars are supposed to be inhaled when that's yes, that's
it's tobacco. What do you think you do with tobacco?
Cigar writers right in? Yeah, man, I will forever stand
behind You're supposed to inhale cigars. All right, all right?
I mean you're just puffing your mouthful of smoke for
no reason. Why Why would you do that? What's the

(02:18):
point of that? I don't know? Man. Well, okay, so
not only can you do you have to write in
and say yes, you're you're just supposed to puff on
a cigar, not inhale. You have to explain them what
the point of a cigar is. You know, you can
read up on this. It's pretty easy. That's fine. Okay.
I don't need to breathe them. I know that. I'm right. Okay, okay,
So you sit in your flooded yard and inhale cigars

(02:40):
all day long. It's right. We should just have an
episode where we do this and just shoot the breeze.
I think this is called arguing, not shooting the breeze.
Shooting the breeze is talking about football scores and the
weather and all that stuff. We could argue about football scores.
There is a did the Falcon win or did they lose? Dude?

(03:01):
They lost to the Browns. Yeah, they played the Browns,
but it was a close gaming for a while, right.
It was a heartbreaker. The terrible, terrible, terrible team. I
hate them. See, that's shooting the breeze. Right, So you
mentioned cigars, which actually provides a segway. So let's walk
it back to it. Okay, there's actually if you think
of cinnamon, which is what we're talking about today. Yeah,

(03:23):
one of our commodity podcasts. Yeah, which is the original
name for the house stuff works TV show. Yeah, little known,
little known fact. Um. But if you think cinnamon, you
think of like, you know, you go up to the
grocery store and you pick up like that metal cannam
ac cormicks and you shake it and it makes that
nice hollow tinny sounds. Yeah, okay or yeah. I guess

(03:44):
you can think of ground cinnamon too. I forgot about
that stuff. But when you think cinnamon sticks, that's what
you think of, right, And you pop the top open
and you shake a couple out and you look at
them and it's like a it looks like a little stick,
and if you look really closely, like curled, right, and
then like you um, put it back in the can
and put it back on the store shelves and wipe

(04:05):
your hands and go walk away. But what you would
probably be surprised, I find, would be if you dumped
one of those out into your hand and it looked
kind of like a cigar, like rather than hollow and curled.
When you're looking down the barrel, it looks stuffed like
a cigar. But if you did see that, what you
would have just come across is clon cinnamon, also and

(04:26):
appropriately known as true cinnamon. Yeah, also known as tree
bark yeah, which to me is the fact of the podcast.
I had no idea that cinnamon was tree bark. Yeah,
But think about it now that you know that, When
you think about what cinnamon sticks look like, it makes sense.
It looks like curl up tree bark, which is exactly

(04:48):
what it is. Man. We could quit now and people
have gotten their zero dollars worth. I know, I know,
it's like lightning in their headphones. But we won't because
we're gonna tell you more than you ever needed to
know about cinnamon. Obviously. The stick form is how you
can buy it. Also, buy the powdered form and sprinkle
it on some bread with some butter and sugar. Yes,

(05:13):
salmon toast delicious. If you have an orchid that you've
ever over watered um, you want to take some scissors
and trim off any rotted roots and then dab them
in cinnamon and it staves off any infection. I just
recently brought an orchid back using cinnamon as an anti
microbial or fungal. I guess Emily has made an all

(05:35):
natural flea uh preventative, preventive, preventative preventative for our dogs.
It's Uh, it's got cinnamon oil, essential oil, and some
other I think eucalyptus and maybe camp for And then
you know something that's all distilled or not distill but
mixed with olive oil and water and uh it's like

(05:57):
all natural. We splayed on a spread on a little
bandana and tying around next. Nice. Um. It's also a
proven mosquito repelling and killer of mosquito larva and natural pesticide. Right.
Plus it's a dynamite name for a pet. Cinnamon, it's
pretty much got at all. That's pretty good. Again, we

(06:17):
could stop here, but we won't. Uh. So cinnamon the
commodity spice. It has a pretty long history actually, Um,
I read that it first pops up in writing in
b C C b C b C. Yeah, that's a

(06:39):
long time ago, in a Chinese text about botanical medicines. Yeah,
that makes sense because of all the things we just
mentioned you can do with it. Yeah, and then Moses
was messing around with it in the Old Testament. Yeah,
he used it in his anointing oil, his uh Moses
brand anointing oil right that he got rich off of.
And uh, Egyptians supposedly used it for embalming. For so,

(07:03):
I looked that up because it stica was kind of
like in the weird and um, I think they used
it to mask the smell of embalming during embalmment. It
makes a little more sense. Well, that's used in embalming,
I guess just as but not as the agent embalming agent, right,
but it may have been part of the embalming agent. Okay, Well,
they definitely used it to when they would burn, uh

(07:26):
with funeral pires when they had burned bodies, they would
use cinnamon because it's so aromatic and pungent and dead
burning bodies are stinky, right, But it was also extraordinarily expensive.
Apparently Pliny mentioned that, um at is there any other uh?
He mentioned that at some point the cost of cinnamon

(07:46):
a pound, the equivalent of a pound of cinnamon would
have been ten months wages for the average Roman. Um
So they I mean they used it, but they used
it fairly sparingly, which is to say, um Nero burn
Euro who didn't fiddle while Rome burned? By the way, No, no, uh,
he burned apparently like a year's supply worth when on

(08:08):
his wife's funeral. Higher just basically basically show off, I
would guess. Yeah, I was thinking that while I was
reading this about how I thought it was kind of
funny how spices used to be so like the trade
and so expensive, and then when I go to the store,
it was like, spices are still kind of expensive some
of them. Yeah, ten months wages worth it. No, but

(08:28):
it's not a lot of slavery associated with it. No.
But if you're paying like I guess it's because of
the size of the thing you're paying, like sometimes like
six dollars for a little no, I know what you mean,
a little tiny jar of it, or what's the like
compared to affron Man super expensive it is, although Trader
Joe's has some for a reasonable price. Yeah, they have
a little uh a little mini fistful, a baby's fistful.

(08:52):
I think it's the the unit of measurement on the
bottle for like six bucks, that's super cheaper. And I
think one of the since spices are still kind of pricey,
as many of them, including cinnamon, are still uh not mechanized,
are still very labor intensive the harvest. Well, the reason
cinnamon came down in price because even even still even

(09:13):
I think there was one of the Roman emperors decreed
he set maximum prices for the whole Roman Empire, and
at the time that basically meant for the whole world, right, um.
And he set the price at about half or a
third of what playing he said was the peak basic
right for well, yes, um and uh. Even still it

(09:37):
was extraordinarily high, like you had to be one of
the well the aristocracy basically to afford sentiment. But then
it came down in the late I believe the late
eighteenth century, by the time the English got into the game. Um.
And we'll talk a little more about this right after this.
And this is not a message price, so everybody chill out.
But um, it came down in price because original there's

(10:00):
just the true clon cinnamon. And then people said, well,
there's this other cinnamon in Indonesia and Vietnam. Vietnam hasn't
been established as a country yet, but there's still people
living here and have been for thousands of years, and
they got their own kind of sentiment. Uh. And then
there's another kind of sentiment in China. And all these
are types of cashia, but it's so close to cinnamon
and even more pungent that everybody in Europe saying, well,

(10:24):
accept this as a substitute. So all prices came down
because the supply became more widespread. Gotcha. So that brings
us to a very good point. There are two types
of cinnamon. The clon what you mentioned in the casha,
which you mentioned. The salon is Southeast Asian native, but
it is not the kind that you're going to find

(10:46):
in the grocery store. Correct. Uh. The ceylon, and I'm
really high in grocery store you'd find it, but mostly
you I haven't found it because I don't shop at
those places. Well you, I mean, you could probably find
it at whole Foods. But if you're gonna spend the
money for ceylon cinnamon, you're probably gonna want to buy
it in stick for him because there's a lot of
unscrupulous spice dealers out there, and like they could powder

(11:11):
anything and just tell you it is, but you wouldn't
know the difference. This the street corner spice dealers, their
knockoff nutmegs, the ones who like opened the side of
their trench, like what do you want? What do you want?
I got baby spitsch to saffron right here, I've got
salon cinnamon. I can take care of you. Um, the
cashia is cheaper and it's stronger an odor and flavor.

(11:33):
And uh, those aren't the only types of cina. Apparently
there are more than a hundred wild types of cinnamon
trees all over the world. Yeah, and there's not all
over the world, but in many parts of the world.
So there's and there's true cinnamon, which is in Sri Lanka,
and there's Indonesian casha. Then there's also Vietnamese casha, in
Chinese casha, um, and all of those are commercially available.

(11:55):
If you're here in the United States or in Canada,
you're probably eating um cash right. And when you say
true cinnamon, that's just not you being snooty. It's called
true cinnamon. No, no, no, thank you for pointing that.
And then if you're in Mexico and Europe you're probably
eating clon. Those are the most popular varieties. Oh yeah, nice.

(12:17):
So I mentioned earlier on one of what I think
is the fact of the podcast is that it's tree
bark and how you cultivate it. It's pretty interesting and
we will detail that right after this message break. So
if you want to get edible cinnamon, it's pretty neat
you basically cut the tree back to a stump, cover

(12:41):
it with dirt, and wait a year, and that makes
it grow like a bush and these shoots are gonna
pop out and it's gonna if if you've ever seen
these things online, it looks like it starts to curl already,
like off the branch. I mean, it looks like cinnamon
just waiting to happen, because it is. And they strip

(13:01):
off that bark and set it out to dry in
the sun, and then that's what it curls up like, um,
what's the white tree with the real paper like birch. Yeah,
it sort of looks like that, not like pine bark.
Is it a birch? I know exactly what you're talking about.
I think it is a birch. Birch tree, Yeah, very pretty. Uh.

(13:24):
And then once you have it dried out, you're gonna
cut it up into your sticks and from there you're
gonna package it according to what kind it is and
like how good it is, basically how strong it is
and um, so that's casha for um ceylon true cinnamon.
It's actually the inner bark. So you peel the outer
bark off and just like throw it away or light

(13:46):
a fire with it or something like that. Then you
go after the inner bark. And for um millennia there
was actually one cast in Sri Lanka whose job it
was was to harvest cinnamon. No one else could do
it either you were too low on the total polar
too high on the totem pole. And when the Portuguese
came along, because the spice trade had been cut off
by the Turks, and about the Portuguese came along, found

(14:09):
the source of cinnamon, which is a huge thing chuck
before everybody just basically thought they fished it out of
the nile. People thought there were cinnamon birds that made
cinnamon sticks, but it was because the traders along the
silk route of Silk Road where um, they'd make up
these stories and people would believe it. So finally the

(14:29):
Portuguese find out to keep them from finding out, yes, yes,
and to justify the ridiculously high prices of cinnamon, like that,
well we have to go harvest these sticks from a
cinnamon bird's nest and we can get killed, right. So um,
the Portuguese come along and they're like, well, we can
point to at least one inefficiency. How about we enslave

(14:52):
all of you and put you all the work rather
than just this one cast of your society to harvest
cinnamon and that up cinnamon product. And but what's funny
is it took the Dutch to come along in and
out the Portuguese and then they themselves can continue to
enslave the Sri lankans um. They they thought maybe we

(15:13):
could cultivate these trees elsewhere, like nobody had thought told
to take these trees and plant them elsewhere and then
expand the supply like that. They just figured, all, we'll
just let mother nature do it. They're like Suparu drivers.
They're just leaving it up to mother nature rather than
cultivating the stuff. It took hundreds of hundreds of years. Now.

(15:33):
I remember there was that stupid commercial where the guy
just let his super get dirty when he was like
mudding and going camping and hiking and all that stuff.
And then he's like, and I don't wash my car.
I just leave it up to the universe. And then
it starts raining and like gets all the dirt and
dust off of his car. That's that's great. Yes, you know,

(15:55):
Elvis used to shoot the TV when Robert Goolay came on,
when he was really mad. He'd shoot like a toaster,
oven or the dishwasher or whatever. But if he was
watching TV and Robert Gooley came on, he would shoot
his TV. Did you see that thing I posted on
her Facebook page of the day about his drug intake
at the end. He was prescribed almost nine thousand pills

(16:16):
or injectables in the last three months before he died.
That's a lot like that would just take up most
of your time in jesting all of those. Yeah. I
think I calculated it was something like a thirty thirty
five pills a day or something or injectables. It's a lot.
But my grandmother still says, God rest her soul. You know,
Elvis's doctors killed him. Yeah, And I didn't have the

(16:36):
heart to tell her that Elvis was a big fat junkie.
You know. She was from Memphis, and they like still
were like, oh no, his doctors they just had him
going every which way. Oh yeah, yeah, No, I was
really love taking those pills. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah,
it's sort of like the Michael Jackson thing. Yeah, he
liked his milk. Alright, So back to cinnamon. Oh yeah.

(16:59):
They have a grading system called the Freelankan grading system,
and that divides it into these quills into sizes, the Alba,
which is point two inches or less in diameter, the Continental,
which is point six Mexican almost point eight inches, and
then Zahambug, which is one point three inches around. That's

(17:22):
that's some serious quill. It's like a cigar. Yeah, and
some of these things they use like circular sauce to
cut these in production sometimes. Really Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
That's super impressive. Um, the the clon is sold and
quill form and it's uh gonna have that crumbling texture.
It's really easy to grind up in the Cashia is

(17:45):
the ground cinnamon that you're going to find in your
grocery store, but it's too hard to grind your Yeah,
it's the entirely true. I ground them up the other day,
Jean Recipe. I tried probably not powdery though, was it
still pretty chunky? It was? Yeah, I mean got it,
broke it down pretty well. After reading this, I was like, well,
I explains why I didn't get at all. But I'm
glad I didn't mess up my coffee grinder. Oh yeah,

(18:07):
you know, you really can't believe me. What what'd you make? Uh,
all of them preserved lemon ten It was pretty good.
It was hotter than I expected. Um, and I think
they should have mentioned that in the rusty, like this
is very hot because the preserved lemons I used were
hot in and of themselves, and so the whole thing
was really hot. So you mean and I are eating

(18:30):
and our noses are running. Is so good? But I
can't feel my face anymore? Yeah, but it was. It
was good. That was used to shoot his cook when
she made things too hot. Right, that's not true. He'd
also inject preserved lemons. He probably did. I know he
injected peanut butter and banana fluff. Yeah. Um, so well

(18:50):
that brings just cooking with slemons what you were just
talking about. Um, it's a lot a lot of time.
It's used in baking here in the States or the
quote West unquote right, like as a baking like sugary
desserts and stuff like that, or maybe in a drink
like a toddy but like anything at Starbucks. Yeah, that's true.

(19:12):
They've got that shaker cinnamon out for a reason. Use it.
But like you were saying, uh, in the East, like
an Eastern dish, like that. It's used a lot to
like flavor meat and and curries and stuff. Yeah, which
is kind of a in the idea that the West
only uses it to sweeten or for desserts or that
kind of thing is um relatively new because during the
Middle Ages in Europe, uh, the the elite again, we

(19:36):
use cinnamon especially to um cover up preserved meat, and
it maybe even to preserve meat. But they used it
on like meat and savory dishes back back when. Then
at some point it made the transition to dessert. I
get it. It's nice on an apple pie. Yeah. And
uh sportast like I mentioned, and horg chatta that's good

(19:57):
stuff with cinnamon horche out of regular right, Jerry thumbs up. Uh.
If you buy centiment in the store and you want
to preserve it, you store it in a glass air
tight container would be the best deal. It's gonna keep
it nice and fresh and flavorful. Uh. And it can
stay fresh those sticks for about a year if you

(20:17):
store it right, which is awesome. If it's ground, it's
uh last about half of that that long. Yeah, it's
I've had centiment in my cupboard for a long time.
Ancient sticks. It's like that in the bay leaves. You know.
The thing is is the difference I think between like
fresh bay leaves and and dry bay leaves or is significant.

(20:37):
I know. But why did they sell you thirty bay
leaves when you need to for any given dish? I know,
I don't know. I always want to like post on
social media like I'm cooking with bay leaves, so please
come by and get some bay leaves because they're just
gonna end up in the trash right now. I know,
anytime I've ever gone to your house, you've always given
me bai leaves. Stay all Bailey kind of what you're

(20:58):
now for. Um. I put a little cinnamon in the
in our chili recipe too. Yeah. I think the Cincinnati
chili is famous for that. Oh yeahs and curries. It's
really good in curries too, uh and um, just basically
any Indian dish or Bangladeshi dish. Yeah, A little goes
a long way though, by the way, like just a

(21:20):
pinch or so in some of these dishes, you can
really taste the flavor. If you overdo it, you're you're
gonna be tasting nothing but cinnamon, right if you use casha.
That's another big distinction. I think you already said it,
but it's worth touching upon again. Salon cinnamon is known
to be much subtler and less pungent than cautious cinnamon. Um,

(21:41):
and it's it's kind of more it has. It offers
a more subtle flavor. So um, you actually might want
to use casha for a dish where it's gonna it
could fade into the background and then you just ceylon
for like a t Yeah, you know, because it'll melt
right into your your teacup there on it. Plus, it
may or may not aid in digestion, which is a

(22:03):
pretty great segue to this next part, the health benefits
the cinnamon, which we'll talk about all right after this.
All right, Josh, health benefits. Um. Now, a lot of
this in the article says some believe may or may not.

(22:25):
But didn't you find some pretty good hard evidence of
some of the stuff. There's been a lot of peer
reviewed studies done on cinnamon that have turned up some
pretty awesome things about it. Yeah, so let's talk about them.
Antioxidants for one, fighting free radicals that damage cells. Yeah,
we should do an episode on that. There's a whole
so the whole idea that why we age and why

(22:48):
we die eventually is because we we get bombarded with
like ions and free radicals like adams that are unstable
and are bouncing around our bodies and just wearing down cells.
That's why we age and that's why we die. Apparently
that's been coming under attack lately. So yeah, so I
think we should we should do an episode on on
free radicals and the free I think it's called the

(23:10):
free radical theory of aging. Yeah, that's great because, um, people,
everyone says antioxidants, but nobody knows what that means. Well,
supposedly those stabilized unstable atoms, and so they therefore go
after the free radicals and clump onto them or stabilize them,
and then your cell is saved, you know. But whether

(23:32):
or not that's actually does anything or is real, the
jury is still out apparently to look for that. And right, yeah, um,
it is definitely known as an anti microbial and antifungal. Yeah,
antiseptic as well, antibiotic, a stringent. It's got lots of
neat properties. But you don't want to like take pure

(23:54):
cinnamon essential oil and put it on your skin because
you want to elude it. Some Yeah, it also can
like blister. I mean it's pretty severe Emily has in
her shop. And just the smell of it, it doesn't
It's one of those things that it's like it didn't
even smell like cinnamon and concentrated. Yeah. Um, it doesn't
take much essential oil actually, uh to have an antiseptic effect.

(24:16):
Apparently the one study found a ten percent concentration of
cinnamon oil and the active ingredient. Know if we said
is cinamalde hyde. Yeah we did not. Um, so it's
not the only the only ingredient in there, but cinamalde
hydes the big boss active ingredient and cinnamon's antiseptic properties
and I think what gives it its taste. Um. But

(24:39):
the cinamalde hyde or the ten percent cinnamon oil uh
concentration has been shown to kill staff E Coli mersa strep.
Those are some big time players and making you sick mersa.
It's apparently been found a ten percent dilution can kill
um other kinds of abiotic resistant bacteria. It's like the

(25:03):
real deal. And apparently did you see that thing on
thieves oil that I sent you from the New York Times? Uh?
I did not read that one. It was pretty cool. Um.
There's this thing called thieves oil from the Middle Ages.
Apparently people used to steal jewelry off of dead bodies.
Keeps themselves from getting sick from having to stick their
hands literally neck deep into a corpse to get a

(25:27):
necklace off. Um, they would use this stuff called thieves
oil was like basically a hand sanitizer that consisted of
a cinnamon, lemon oil, and eucalyptus and it really worked
and they would not get sick after they looted bodies. Yes,
because they'd have a glove of that stuff on. We
should have saved that for our Christmas episode does the season? Um.

(25:49):
It Also, cinnamon has something called calmera cameron c O
U M A r I N which is toxic. Though.
So while cinnamon has a lot of great helpful properties,
you can overdo it and it can cause liver damage,
kidney damage. In dust form, you can cause asthma. Um.

(26:12):
There was a study done by workers, not by workers
on cinnamon workers, and I think they studied forty workers
with an average of four year service, and eighty seven
point five percent had some sort of negative symptom like
liver kidney. No. Nine of them uh, had asthma, irritation

(26:34):
to skin, thirty seven percent loss of hair, um, smarting
of the eyes, and loss of weight. That was the
most common finding. So that's the jury is still out
on that and whether or not cinnamon can help you
actually lose weight. It help them, um, but I don't
think in a good way, right Yeah. Well, I mean

(26:54):
some people like I believe you should take tape worms, um,
but they're not. Cinnamon actually helps is kind of Um,
I don't know. The science is still out on it,
but there's a little more science too. Cinnamon being helpful
for type two diabetes because apparently taking I think a
gram or something of or six grams of cinnamon, which

(27:16):
is a decent amount with a meal, um, prevents your
food from being digested quickly, so you'll still feel full,
but your food doesn't enter it doesn't hit your bloodstream
in a big spike, which means that your blood sugar
levels don't spike either. It's just kind of like it all.
It turns your food into like slow release nutrition. Interesting. Yeah,

(27:40):
so that's it could actually be very helpful for people
with type two diabetes because it basically arrests the spike
in the glycemic index that comes from eating foods. Are
they recommending that at this point or is it like
they look into it. They're looking into it still. I mean,
depending on the website you go to, it recommends it
or else. I don't. It doesn't seem like anybody's not

(28:00):
recommending it. I think if anything, they're they're including a warning, like,
if you're gonna do this, use true cinnamon, because cash
is the stuff that has the more kumaran in it,
Like salon cinnamon has point zero one seven grams per
kilogram of kumar in. But if you get the Saigon cinnamon,
which is fairly um widespread, which is a type of cash,

(28:23):
it's got seven grams per kilogram of kumaran and that's
the stuff that can hurt your liver and kidneys. So
I guess if you're going to add that to your
diet as a diabetic, you should probably definitely use the
cylon cinnamon. Yeah, and one thing he definitely don't want
to do is the cinnamon challenge, like these morons on YouTube,

(28:46):
including the governor of Illinois who took the challenge, Robovich
broad name, Yeah, I remember it was a few years back.
He was um he got him for corruption. Yeah, I'm
not sure if that was him or not. He was
trying to sell Barack Obama's old seat when he became president.

(29:06):
Oh yeah, I remember that guy, I don't know or not. Wow,
it's almost like you're vomiting the name out, Peter Badanovitch. No,
that's easier to say. Don't do the cinnamon challenge. That
is a stupid thing on YouTube where I think you're
tasked with. Is it a tablespoon of swallowing a tablespoon
of cinnamon in a minute, which is uh, not good

(29:30):
for you at all and harder than it sounds. Uh.
In two thousand and twelve, just the first six months,
there were a hundred and seventy eight emergency calls UH
to poison control centers around because of the cinnamon challenge.
And that is because it contains cellulose and it can
lodge in your lungs. Because you're not your body is

(29:51):
not gonna break down that cellulose and UH Dr lip Schultz,
who was consulted in this article there read said it's
code with a caustic cinnamon oil, and it's gonna lead
to chronic inflammation and eventual scarring of your lungs pulmonary fibrosis,
and he basically says it's equivalent to emphysema, and it
can trigger an asthma attack and if you have bad

(30:12):
asthma can kill you even plus also, um, consuming cinnamon
and excess can cause nausea, vomiting, redness of the face,
lip swelling. Yeah, you know want that and it's tree bark. Yeah,
it tastes lovely in a pinch, but um, don't don't
do that. That's that's stupid. Don't do what the governor
of Illinois does. Yeah, if it was that same guy,

(30:35):
then we can recommend that how many levels because he
did a lot of dumb stuff. Cinnamon. That's it. I
got nothing else. Uh. If you want to know more
about cinnamon, type that word into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar,
it's time for d That's right. We're gonna finish up

(31:02):
today saying thank you all of you who have sent
us nice things, from postcards to books, to music to
mug rugs. We get a lot of stuff and we
always appreciate it. So here we go Ketra Oba Landa
for our her original artwork. I'm assuming Ketra as a lady,

(31:23):
but maybe not um as part of her art of
generosity experiment. And she even said, like I remember that.
She's like, I don't need to shout out or thanks
or anything. I'm just doing this as part of art
for generosity. Yeah, I think she does. It's like one
thing a week. Or wasn't there like some rules to it.
There were rules, but I didn't memorize there's something like that.

(31:44):
And she yeah, she specifically said not to say thank you,
but we're saying thank you, thank you. Did she specifically
say not to her say she didn't need one, because
if she said not to, we really shouldn't thank her. No,
I don't think she said not to. She said I
really don't need it. We want to give big thanks
to Marty from Hawaii for sending us real Hawaiian see salt.
We got red and black from Pacifica, Hawaii. That's right.

(32:08):
I've used that on my food good stuff. Thanks to
Melissa Climber for sending us the book Free Will by
Sam Harris um and we've been exercising our free will
by not reading that yet. BAM. Peter McGraw and Joel
Warner sent us a copy of their book The Humor Code,
and a whoopee cushion. Go check that out and you

(32:29):
can follow them on Twitter too. We got a whoope cushion.
Uh huh, I just thought that was Holly from stuff
you miss a history class. I know you thought that.
Everyone knows you thought that. Emily and the Flaba for
the ikea postcard in the well wishes. Yes, Tyler Murphy
has sent us a bunch of stuff. Ummh he's the man. Yes,

(32:50):
he's the man. He sent us a copy of the
DVD c s A Confederate States of America sent us
the book The Mind of Adolph Hitler, which is a
very hard to find World War two analysis like psychoanalysis
of Hitler, and very nice letter, and a half pound
of Dark Canyon Highlander grog coffee which is bo bam. Yeah.
Tyler's awesome. He's a teacher as well, which means he's

(33:12):
super cool. Uh. And he works at a putt but
over the summer. Oh yeah, like pirates cover something. Yeah.
I was like, what do you do? He's like, you know,
hand out the putters and stuff. Yeah, that sounds like
a great job. That place is great. Uh. Congratulations to Mina. Uh.
When and Blake Rosendahl on their wedding and they invited
us and we appreciate that and we're sorry we couldn't

(33:33):
make it. Elliott Nice Bodziani, who is actually from Adult
Swim pr Oh. Yeah, they sent us to the Rick
and Morty episodes and one of my prize possessions, the
Book of Boring Science Stuff. Pretty great that you opened
up a couple of pages in Bam, it's carved out.
There's a Rick and Morty flask inside's right, and I've
got that sitting on my bar at home. Thank you

(33:56):
to Andrew uh goh o go golf one of the
two I would say golf. Um. He sent us coffee
to from the Reverie Coffee coffee roasters. Yeah, then we
liked our coffee. Good stuff. Yeah, thanks Andrew Um. Joanna

(34:16):
and Jared from Boogie sent us boogieboard jot eight point
five inch l c D writers. All three of us
got those. It was a huge present. Yeah. I've got
that on my fridge actually, yeah, because it's magnetic. Thomas Shaw,
thanks for the illustrations that your brother made. They were
really awesome and you can go to Imagine Illustrations dot
com to check those out. Uh, we got two more one.

(34:39):
Bethany Jones of the Base Element from Ontario gave us
five types of handmade caramels. They were delicious. We got
him a long time ago. We ate them a long
time ago. There was fudge vanilla, Florida cell and ginger
and then cinnamon fudge and they were awesome. I recommend him.
You can go to the dot based dot element at

(35:00):
gmail dot com and by go to, I mean email
that address. And then lastly, Caleb Bowler Bowler from Roanoke,
Indiana sent us some beautiful cobalt blue ceramic mugs that
unfortunately arrived in a million, billion, trillion pieces. Yeah, he
knows too. He was like, they broke, didn't They went yep?
They old man. I think you need a new word

(35:23):
to describe what happened to those things. Broke doesn't say it.
Uh yeah, huge thanks to Brian bishop Man. Yes he is. Uh.
He actually works with Adam Corola. Yeah, fellow podcaster and
went through cancer and wrote a book called Shrinkage, Manhood,
Marriage and the Tumor that Tried to kill Me. And
it's a really funny book. It's got a forward by
Adam Carolla and Brian is just super awesome. It made

(35:45):
us feel good that he listens to our show. Yeah,
because he's a big shots podcasting So thank you very
much for that, Brian. I've got another one too. Garrett
Nice just sent us some um homie brownies. Yes, Garrett
is uh. I think he's like eleven or twelve years old.
Garret is very nice and I think he begged him himself.
He also had some other things to offer. I can't remember,
but it was like brownies or his own pancake batter

(36:08):
or something weird like that. That is nice. Yeah, and
my final one is thanks as always two Little Bit
Sweets handmade candy in Brooklyn, New York. They've been friends
and supporters for years and they are growing and they're awesome.
You can visit them at Chelsea Market. Yeah, I got
to Chelsea Market, or just go to look up a

(36:29):
Little Bit Sweets on the internet and buy some of
their delicious, delicious candy and candy bars. Yeah. Man, their
honeycomb candy is as addictive as it kids. Yeah, and
I've said it a million times. The King Bar to
me is the best candy bar on the planet Earth.
So good all right? Uh So that's it for administrative details.
We're cleared out. No one send us anything unless they're

(36:52):
Christmas cookies. I guess for the rest of the year, Mona.
So we can start over again fresh in two thousand
and fifteen. Okay, anyway, if you want to get in
touch with this, you can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
dot com, and as always, joined us at our home

(37:13):
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com.