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Everyday Abundance: The hidden stories behind everyday technologies: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Virginia Postrel and Charles C. Mann
Everyday Abundance explores the hidden histories behind everyday activities and the technologies we don’t even know are technologies. Virginia Postrel and Charles C. Mann dive into the surprising stories behind everything from brushing your teeth to music and driving your car.
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- 1 weeks ago35 min
Brushing Your Teeth: The 12,000 Year War
When George Washington was inaugurated, he had only one natural tooth left—a condition far more typical in the past than modern people realize. For thousands of years, tooth pain was simply part of human life. A primary reason for the problem: effective tooth-cleaning methods simply didn’t exist. Join Virginia and Charles as they celebrate two overlooked but vitally important technological innovations: the toothbrush and toothpaste. Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance As schoolchildren learn, the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago was among the great turning points in the human story. Farming created reliable food surpluses that allowed for the creation of big cities and states. It also wrecked humanity’s teeth. The new agricultural diet—full of carbohydrate- and sugar-rich cereals and grains—triggered an explosion of tooth decay. Millennia of oral misery ensued. Painful jaws were an inescapable part of daily life, and nothing could be done about it. As recently as the 1970s, most American 70-year-olds didn’t have a single tooth in their head. Then the dental outlook changed—slowly, at first, then rapidly. In 1780, William Addis, an English rag trader, was thrown into jail, supposedly for inciting a riot. Confined in London’s infamous Newgate Prison, he carved a chicken bone into the prototype for a now-ubiquitous occupant of contemporary bathrooms: the toothbrush. He began selling them soon after he was released. Then, in 1873, came the first mass-produced commercial toothpaste: Colgate (yes, the same Colgate sold today). And the world began to change, or at least the world’s mouths did. Subjects discussed include: The Grisly Dental Aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo Apparent Failures of Evolution Charles’s Astounding Dentists Early Modern English Prison Conditions Proper Stick Etiquette Origin of George Washington’s False Teeth Tidal Wave of Dental Exemptions from Second World War Draft Statistical Failures in Twentieth-Century Oral-Hygiene Testing The Fluoride War(s) References, further reading, and credits: From Mount Vernon (Washington’s home, now a museum), a full exploration of the president’s false teeth, replete with images and videos. The story, surprisingly interesting, of how our teeth evolved: Peter Ungar’s The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, 2018. Scholarly history of the toothbrush: Aditya Tadinada, et al. The evolution of a tooth brush: from antiquity to present: a mini-review, Journal of Dental Health, Oral Disorders & Therapy, 2015. The wince-inducing tale of dentistry: James Wynbrandt, The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, 2000. World War II military video in which the army instructs recruits on how to brush their teeth. “Whatever it is, the majority of you fellas simply refuse to look after your teeth.” Virginia’s Bloomberg Opinion article on t... Chapters - Agriculture vs. Your Teeth - Why People Brushed With Urine - The Invention of the Toothbrush - The Army Discovers America Has No Teeth - Nylon Changes Everything - Crest and the Fluoride Revolution - The Great Fluoride Controversy - From Flossing to the Future
- 1 weeks ago40 min
Making a Meal of the Family Meal: Cooking Dinner
Evening after evening, billions of people march into the kitchen and cook dinner. Standing over the stove seems like a timeless activity—an impression reinforced if one comes across old TV shows like those starring Lucille Ball or Dick Van Dyke. Watching those black-and-white families in the kitchen, it’s easy to believe you are looking through the screen into the long-ago past. But for most of human history, people neither cooked nor ate the way modern families do. Kitchens were hidden, meals were irregular, and “family dinner” barely existed. Sit at the table with Virginia and Charles as they serve up a survey of the long line of convulsive changes that led to the “long-standing tradition” of cooking dinner in the kitchen. Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance Zillow photographs today routinely feature glamorous expansive kitchens with islands, track lighting, and gleaming appliances, inviting viewers to imagine gathering friends and family for dinner. Historically, this is extremely strange. For most of human history, people neither gathered around the table for a family meal nor hung around the kitchen. Instead, they mostly ate whenever they wanted, with whomever they wanted (although, to be sure, people have always celebrated communal feasts). Far from flaunting their cooking areas, the first thing anybody with money did with the kitchen was to hide it—outdoors, if possible, in a separate space, where its smoke and smell would be unnoticeable. In the 19th century, the kitchen was brought indoors, but even then it was kept away from view. It was a place for servants. But over the twentieth century the entire interior of the house inverted itself… Subjects discussed include: The Honeymooners Charles’s Pilgrim Ancestors Starches and Cellulose, Ripping Apart Slow Horse Digestive Systems Tiny Human Teeth Algonkian Stews No Chimneys, No Nails Virginia’s ‘70s “Breakfast Nook” Raw Carbs The Kitchen Triangle Biochemical Sugars RISD’s Universal Kitchen Project References, further reading, and credits: Ground-breaking examination on the role of fire in cooking and the rest of our lives: Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, 2009. Scholarly study of oldest known pottery: O.E. Craig, et al., Earliest Evidence for the Use of Pottery, 2013. Archaeologists on Natufian feasting: David Eitam and James Schoenwetter, Feeding the Living, Feeding the Dead: Natufian as a Low-Level Food Production Society in the Southern Levant (15,000–11,500 Cal BP), Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, 2020 More than you could imagine knowing about Plains communal hunts: Eleanor Verbicky-Todd, Communal Buffalo Hunting Among the Plains Indians, 1984. Algonquian cooking: Thomas Hariot, Chapters - Why Humans Cook - Cooking Before Kitchens - The Myth of the Family Dinner - From Hearth to Kitchen - The Invention of the Modern Kitchen - Julia Child and the Open Kitchen - Why Kitchens Became Glamorous
- 1 weeks ago38 min
Working Out: The Invention of Exercise
I worked out after work: Few sentences would have been more baffling to people in the 19th century, especially if spoken by a woman. Join Virginia and Charles as they explore a little-noticed revolution in daily life: the transformation of hard physical labor from a daily burden to an emblem of personal virtue—and a globe-spanning, multibillion-dollar industry whose omnipresence is as much a sign of our time as social media beefs or flying drones. Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance They are everywhere: women carrying gym bags filled with sneakers, sports bras, and high-waisted leggings; men hauling duffels stuffed with performance joggers and training gear. So ubiquitous today is exercise culture—and so large the industries that support it—that it is hard to realize that they are thoroughly new phenomena, enabled by recent breakthroughs in textiles and materials. A century ago, people expended so much effort in their daily lives that the idea of seeking out more was literally unheard-of. A few isolated souls promoted “physical culture,” but exercise was not a common ideal, especially for women, until the arrival of one of the more important U.S. cultural figures in the 20th century: Jack LaLanne, who launched the first televised workout program in 1953. And then came the 1960s, the discovery of “fitness,” and a revolution that literally reshaped the human body. Virginia and Charles explore how exercise evolved from necessity to aspiration—and how gyms, Lycra, bodybuilding, aerobics, and athleisure conquered the modern world. Subjects discussed include: Virginia as Class Traitor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Body-Fashion Icon Charles Dickens’s Ideal Life Impact (Astounding, Decades-Long) of University of Oregon Track Team Indolence as Ambition Spandex, Empire of Jogging, its Rise and Fall Jane Fonda, Lioness of Leotards A Tiny Bit of Polymer Science and Engineering References, further reading, and credits: Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America, by Shelly McKenzie “The Long-Run Growth in Obesity as a Function of Technological Change” by Tomas J. Philipson and Richard A. Posner “Americans' waistlines have become the victims of economic progress,” Virginia’s 2001 New York Times column explaining this research (gift link) Arthur Jones, New York Times obit (gift link), Seattle Times obit Frank Bond obits here and here Kathrine Switzer’s account of becoming the first woman to officially enter the Boston marathon (registering as K.V. Switzer) in 1967. She was attacked by the race manager but finished the race. Lycra by Kaori O’Connor “ Chapters - When Exercise Was Unthinkable - The New Ideal Body: From Clark Gable to Schwarzenegger - The Fitness Panic of the 1950s - The Invention of Jogging and Aerobics - Nike, Phil Knight, and the Air Shoe Revolution - How Gyms Became Mainstream - Jane Fonda, Lycra, and Women's Fitness - New Exercise Fabrics
About Everyday Abundance: The hidden stories behind everyday technologies
Everyday Abundance explores the hidden histories behind everyday activities and the technologies we don’t even know are technologies. Virginia Postrel and Charles C. Mann dive into the surprising stories behind everything from brushing your teeth to music and driving your car.
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