Latest / Ridiculous History / A History of Pregnancy Cravings, Part 1: Pickles and Ice Cream

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A History of Pregnancy Cravings, Part 1: Pickles and Ice Cream · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. We've got our super producer
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Speaker 1: Max Williams in the house, live and direct on the zoom.
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Speaker 1: I'm Ben Boland And who is this other handsome guy
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Speaker 1: on the zoom looks like he just got a haircut?
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Speaker 1: Oh my god, bad Are you talking about me? Are
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Speaker 1: you talking about me? Yes? You are only I'm the
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Speaker 1: only other person I did get a haircut. I don't
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Speaker 1: know why I was so over excited about that. I
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Speaker 1: think I was maybe doing a bit. It didn't really land,
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Speaker 1: but I did get a haircut. Ben, Um, you've got
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Speaker 1: a haircut too. We joked that we got haircuts side
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Speaker 1: by side while holding hands, holding holding hands, But that
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Speaker 1: didn't really happen. But you can. I leave it to
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Speaker 1: the imagination of the listening public. Yes, please picture our
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Speaker 1: fresh haircuts the entire time you are listening to this
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Speaker 1: week's two part episode, Max Noll and I are tackling
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Speaker 1: something that is going to doubtlessly be familiar to a
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Speaker 1: lot of folks listening to the show today. For anybody
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Speaker 1: in the audience who has ever been a part of
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Speaker 1: a pregnancy or has been expecting a child. You know
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Speaker 1: that it can bring some well it can it can
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Speaker 1: bring some big changes into your life. And one of
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Speaker 1: the funniest changes that pregnancy can bring is a change
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Speaker 1: in cravings. Right, this is an ancient idea, Like Max Noll,
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Speaker 1: you've you probably we have some stories in your family
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Speaker 1: about odd cravings. Maybe your mother's had some like very
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Speaker 1: specific cravings while you were on the way to Earth. Like,
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Speaker 1: do you guys have any uh anecdotes about you know,
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Speaker 1: your mom all of a sudden saying I can only
2:18
Speaker 1: eat pickled flavored ice cream? Do they make pickle flavored
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Speaker 1: ice cream? Because that sounds like an absolute culinary travesty.
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Speaker 1: I guess if they did, it would probably be for
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Speaker 1: this reason. But I know that ice cream flavors are
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Speaker 1: getting all kinds of weird these days. I don't know.
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Speaker 1: I don't really talk to my mom about that kind
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Speaker 1: of stuff. We have sort of weird relationship, Max, I
2:34
Speaker 1: refer to you. You seem to have a very friendly
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Speaker 1: and open relationship with your family. Did your mom tell
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Speaker 1: you about weird craving she had when you or your
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Speaker 1: brother were in the womb? So she definitely has told
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Speaker 1: me I cannot off the top of my head. Remember,
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Speaker 1: but my mom had so my brother's only eighteen months
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Speaker 1: older than me, so it's like rapid concessions. So she's like, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I was pretty much pregnant. I had like a few
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Speaker 1: days off and being pregnant. Then I was pregnant again.
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Speaker 1: It was like a three It was like a three
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Speaker 1: year period. I was pretty much pregnant, and then I decided,
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Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna have two kids. I thought
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Speaker 1: about having four or five or six now after you Max, especially,
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Speaker 1: I was the larger of the two still to this day,
3:10
Speaker 1: the larger the two. And she's like, after you, Max,
3:13
Speaker 1: you were enough of a pain that I decided two
3:18
Speaker 1: kids is good. Two kids is good, and you've continued
3:20
Speaker 1: being a pain to this day. No, I'm kidding, he's exactly.
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Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like I I, yeah, I'm a dad,
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Speaker 1: and I went through a lot of this stuff with
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Speaker 1: my daughter's mom um, who I've mentioned before. We're not married,
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Speaker 1: but we're very, very close, and I it was such
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Speaker 1: a kind of traumatic, intense time that I almost think
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Speaker 1: I've like blocked a lot of it out of my memory,
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Speaker 1: not not because it was like bad. It was just
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Speaker 1: very intense and there's a lot going on, and also
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Speaker 1: the first like year or so of like all the
3:51
Speaker 1: late night feedings and all that stuff. But I definitely
3:55
Speaker 1: remember she was into like spicy food. She's always been
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Speaker 1: in a spicy food. But I would cook care a
4:00
Speaker 1: lot of like thaipe food, and we would order a
4:02
Speaker 1: lot of like really spicy Indians. I think that's a
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Speaker 1: pretty common one for sure. Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating
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Speaker 1: because you know, we are lucky enough to have some
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Speaker 1: expecting parents in the audience today, and while some of
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Speaker 1: our fellow ridiculous historians are listening to this week's series,
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Speaker 1: you may be experiencing cravings of your own. You may
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Speaker 1: be waking up at three in the morning saying I
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Speaker 1: need French fries and gummy bears stat sending and sending
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Speaker 1: your partner out to pick those up for you. There's
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of um cultural commentary that comes into
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Speaker 1: the idea of pregnancy cravings. And if you go online today,
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Speaker 1: if you go to forums like what to Expect all
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Speaker 1: one word, then you will find no shortage of very
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Speaker 1: specific pregnancy cravings, old food related and you'll find a
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Speaker 1: lot of um speculation about this too, from biologists to psychologists. Right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: you sure well. And it's not it's not like a
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Speaker 1: new thing. It really has been around as long as
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Speaker 1: we've been documenting on a on a bit more high level.
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Speaker 1: I don't know that we have like chromagnet cravings or
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Speaker 1: anything like that, but as far back as like the
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Speaker 1: sixteenth century, we as a culture have been very much
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Speaker 1: aware of this idea of these very specific cravings and
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Speaker 1: urges that hit women when they're you know, with child Right,
5:34
Speaker 1: and that form you mentioned too in it kind of
5:38
Speaker 1: did a round up of some of the more popular
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Speaker 1: weird ones, and there were things like sour gummy worms,
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Speaker 1: French fries, fried chicken, watermelon, Mexican food and water and
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Speaker 1: salad bend. What is that? Is that like a dish
5:52
Speaker 1: or is it literally just like glasses of water and
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Speaker 1: like plates of greens? I believe it is a salad
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Speaker 1: and a class of water. But let me hop on
6:01
Speaker 1: this hobby horse. Real quick salad just means a mixture,
6:06
Speaker 1: uh salad. The I think here in the US, a
6:10
Speaker 1: lot of people imagine, you know, like a nice Caesar
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Speaker 1: salad with some graded Palmer song maybe a couple of
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Speaker 1: fancy crutons when they think of salad. But in other
6:19
Speaker 1: parts of the world there are things like milk salad.
6:22
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up. Folks, google milk salad. It's
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Speaker 1: a real thing. It's weird. I'll give that one a pass.
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Speaker 1: But the thing has been to your point, the there
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Speaker 1: is somewhat of a rhyme and reason to it. The
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Speaker 1: idea of you know, pregnancy being divided into the tri masters, right,
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Speaker 1: the three tri masters, and each one kind of having
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Speaker 1: an escalating sort of vibe of these cravings, I believe
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Speaker 1: typically the first one is much more savory type of stuff,
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Speaker 1: the second one is sweet, and the third one is salty. Again,
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Speaker 1: mileage may vary. Um, people are different. But that is
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Speaker 1: somewhat of the conventional knowledge behind it in terms of
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Speaker 1: the modern, you know, study of this phenomenon. Yes, so
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Speaker 1: today we are going to dive into the storied history
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Speaker 1: of pregnancy food cravings. And before we do, we have
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Speaker 1: to point out that, no, I like the phrase you used,
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Speaker 1: your mileage may vary. This is not a culturally universal experience.
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Speaker 1: There are cultures where pregnancy food cravings as a concept
7:28
Speaker 1: don't really exist or they're not really reported. And if
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Speaker 1: you go from culture to culture, you will find that
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Speaker 1: where these cravings do exist, they are often wildly different.
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Speaker 1: For instance, in Japan, when expecting mothers are reporting a craving,
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Speaker 1: they're usually craving rice other than you know, water and salad.
7:51
Speaker 1: It's right, and you know, I just want to double
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Speaker 1: back ever so slightly when I said that the kind
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Speaker 1: of conventional scientific understanding is this, you know, division of
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Speaker 1: the three trimesters of the different kind of flavor profiles.
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Speaker 1: That's really just an observation kind of of like you know,
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Speaker 1: typical cycle of these types of craving. But the actual
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Speaker 1: scientific explanation as to why, you know, physiologically these happen
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Speaker 1: still somewhat up in the air. What we do know universally,
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Speaker 1: and it makes sense for rice as well, is that
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Speaker 1: women um tend to crave calorically dense things, things that
8:27
Speaker 1: have that pack a lot of calories and carbohydrates for
8:31
Speaker 1: example into you know, a small package, things like animal proteins, pizza. Again,
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Speaker 1: these calorically dense things, the kinds of things that new
8:41
Speaker 1: tells you to avoid, like the plague if anyone is
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Speaker 1: aware of that. That is, like the lesson that I
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Speaker 1: learned in my week on noon, my failed week on noon.
8:50
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to eat calorically dense things, which would
8:52
Speaker 1: be things like steak or you know, heavy carbs. Um.
8:55
Speaker 1: But peanut butter is a great, great example. But outside
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Speaker 1: of that is it's kind of anyone's guests And you're right.
9:03
Speaker 1: Then women in Japan reported liking more rice, which is
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Speaker 1: a staple food of that culture, obviously because it is
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Speaker 1: plentiful and packs a lot of nutrients and calories into
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Speaker 1: a pretty small package. To say, what want more of that? Yep, yep,
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Speaker 1: And shout out to the psychologist who came to some
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Speaker 1: of these conclusions, Natalia see Orlof and Julia M. Horns.
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Speaker 1: They wrote that researchers need to consider culture in looking
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Speaker 1: at what women crave while pregnant, and they make a
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Speaker 1: great point when they say, there is a complex ecosystem
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Speaker 1: of pre existing ideas about pregnancy, pre existing ideas about food,
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Speaker 1: and of course pre existing ideas about what it means
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Speaker 1: to be a woman in general. And it makes sense
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Speaker 1: when you think about it, that your body is in
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Speaker 1: an extraordinary situation and your body is making additional demands.
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Speaker 1: You know what, I mean, like, listen to your body
10:06
Speaker 1: when it tells you what it was. One study of
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Speaker 1: Tanzanian women in a rural environment found that they were
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Speaker 1: reporting desires for, like you said, animal proteins, staples, grains, fruits,
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Speaker 1: and vegetables, and the psychologist found that there was a
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Speaker 1: a social significance cultural significance to providing these foods for
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Speaker 1: expecting mothers, like if you're if you're the husband, or
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Speaker 1: you're the husband's family or the male partners family, then
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Speaker 1: it's not only expected for you to provide those foods,
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Speaker 1: but you get a bit of social cash in doing so.
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Speaker 1: So around the world and throughout history, it turns out
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Speaker 1: that people have some unifying factors were not all that different.
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Speaker 1: But this being a history show, we are going to
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Speaker 1: dive into some history on pregnancy cravings. Like you said, Noel,
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Speaker 1: I think we can go back as far as the
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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, right, correct, Yeah, I mean that's definitely when
11:22
Speaker 1: you know there's started to be more of an emphasis
11:25
Speaker 1: on measurement and more of an emphasis on um the
11:28
Speaker 1: idea of kind of getting to the root of what
11:31
Speaker 1: makes us tick. And this was one of the goals
11:34
Speaker 1: of Nicolas Culpepper, who was a very popular medical writer
11:37
Speaker 1: at the time. Again, we know that a lot of
11:39
Speaker 1: these ideas are not gonna pan out, you know, over time,
11:43
Speaker 1: and suddenly the some of us, they're gonna sound absolutely ridiculous.
11:46
Speaker 1: But that is kind of one of the words in
11:47
Speaker 1: the name of the show. So I think we're good there. Um.
11:49
Speaker 1: But this dude, Nicholas Culpepper, he kind of had a
11:53
Speaker 1: theory on what these cravings were. He described them as
11:56
Speaker 1: one of the chiefest signs of conception. So I guess
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Speaker 1: he's using that as a marker of like, Okay, you
12:02
Speaker 1: are in fact pregnant, because you know, again it was
12:06
Speaker 1: kind of a they didn't have pregnancy tests back then.
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Speaker 1: You really had to this kind of like hope for
12:10
Speaker 1: the best and then wait for the signs, right, And
12:12
Speaker 1: this would have been one of the early indicators according
12:15
Speaker 1: to Culpepper. Um, And he said, what would then follow?
12:19
Speaker 1: According to another writer, historian, I believe of this era,
12:24
Speaker 1: John Sadler, would be then the quote longing desire for
12:29
Speaker 1: And I love this term strange meats strange meats uh yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: And I think again some language differences in the usage
12:39
Speaker 1: of words like this, But back then, I think the
12:41
Speaker 1: term meats would have just been a word to describe
12:45
Speaker 1: food in general. Like if you think if you hear
12:47
Speaker 1: people talk about sweet meats, that literally just means like candy,
12:51
Speaker 1: you know, So meats would have been a kind of
12:53
Speaker 1: a generalized term for food stuffs. Bring me an ortalan
12:58
Speaker 1: I'm only exactly. Yeah, this is interesting. So the very
13:05
Speaker 1: first known pregnancy test as we would understand it today,
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Speaker 1: comes from ancient Egypt, where women would check to see
13:15
Speaker 1: whether they were pregnant by urinating on barley or wheat seeds,
13:20
Speaker 1: and if the seeds sprouted quickly, then they would say,
13:25
Speaker 1: this means I am pregnant. That sounds kind of crazy, right,
13:28
Speaker 1: that sounds relatively unscientific, but turns out that was a
13:33
Speaker 1: pretty good predictor of pregnancy. Yeah, it was right about
13:37
Speaker 1: seventy of the time. But still, you know what, what's
13:42
Speaker 1: that old say? A mother knows, right, So you know
13:47
Speaker 1: what your body is telling you, and if your body
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Speaker 1: is like I need these strange meats, then you know
13:52
Speaker 1: you know that you know that something has changed. And
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Speaker 1: we we also know that by late sixteen hundreds, this
14:02
Speaker 1: was a very common conversation in Europe, Like people people
14:09
Speaker 1: knew about pregnancy cravings. People joked about them. In six
14:13
Speaker 1: two there was the satirical piece think of it like
14:18
Speaker 1: an onion headline, folks, when you hear the title the
14:21
Speaker 1: Ten Pleasures of Marriage, and in the Ten Pleasures of Marriage,
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Speaker 1: the authors suggests that cravings are so common that quote, oh,
14:31
Speaker 1: women when they are with child do fall commonly from
14:35
Speaker 1: one loading to another. And then the guy the author
14:39
Speaker 1: here he complains about this is so like classic stand up.
14:44
Speaker 1: He's complaining about his wife, right, and he's like, they're gonna,
14:50
Speaker 1: you know, one day they'll crave oranges from China. The
14:53
Speaker 1: civil lemons, whatever those are s I V I L L.
14:59
Speaker 1: Is this some kind of a alien lemon, like a
15:01
Speaker 1: lemon cello or something like that. It's lowercase in our notes,
15:04
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure. I think it's spelled the same
15:06
Speaker 1: as now. It's not now I'm wrong, But anyway, let
15:10
Speaker 1: us listeners. But you know, we know that fruits have
15:13
Speaker 1: changed over time and in various different strains that have
15:17
Speaker 1: become more prominent or maybe the civil lemon was huge
15:20
Speaker 1: at the time. But speaking of things that were huge
15:22
Speaker 1: at the time, another one that is in this list
15:24
Speaker 1: is something known as the largest asparagus. I can only
15:28
Speaker 1: assume this is a very large asparagus that probably makes
15:31
Speaker 1: your pea smell really bad. It's not large enough. We
15:34
Speaker 1: need the largest one. You're on this Max, stop the recording.
15:39
Speaker 1: We need the largest asparagus that's got Yeah, yeah, thanks,
15:44
Speaker 1: But uh, this sounds decadent. I'm kind of into this.
15:47
Speaker 1: Strawberries with wine and sugar and cherries of all sorts,
15:51
Speaker 1: and I like the pause and ellipses, plums, plums. It's
15:57
Speaker 1: It's interesting because at the time that this was written,
16:01
Speaker 1: these fruits, along with wine and sugar were extravagant. They
16:05
Speaker 1: were they were premium items, you know what I mean.
16:08
Speaker 1: The average person living in Europe at this time would
16:13
Speaker 1: have considered orange is pretty fancy. They were not. They
16:17
Speaker 1: were not on the crazy level of opulence that a
16:20
Speaker 1: pineapple was, which was a whole other deal. But they were,
16:24
Speaker 1: you know, they would be considered a premium food. And
16:30
Speaker 1: and this guy who's writing this piece is saying he's
16:35
Speaker 1: complaining about the same thing like a stand up comedian
16:39
Speaker 1: would complain about in the nineteen eighties. He's like, now
16:42
Speaker 1: I've got a trot out way after dark, because all
16:46
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's three am. And uh and my
16:49
Speaker 1: gal once strawberries with wine and sugar. So and the
16:56
Speaker 1: largest asparagus. Max, you came back, Do you have it? Uh?
17:00
Speaker 1: Still working on it. I had like the third and
17:02
Speaker 1: the fifth largest one, but I'm still working out again
17:04
Speaker 1: the largest. Okay, we need the biggest one. Though. This
17:07
Speaker 1: is the results driven producer right here. I appreciate that, Max.
17:11
Speaker 1: But the thing is, I think what a lot of
17:13
Speaker 1: you out there are thinking right now is like, but
17:15
Speaker 1: what about like regular people they got pregnant too. They
17:20
Speaker 1: couldn't have access to civil lemons and China oranges and
17:25
Speaker 1: the largest asparagus and strawberries and wine. I imagine they
17:30
Speaker 1: were probably eating whatever they could get their hands on,
17:33
Speaker 1: which would have been, you know, just staple foods. And
17:35
Speaker 1: also we know that pregnancy is often uh in these
17:39
Speaker 1: days before the intervention of you know, much more effective
17:43
Speaker 1: medical science didn't go well, you know for people in
17:48
Speaker 1: the lower class. I'm so glad you brought this up. Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 1: because this is something this is something that I think
17:54
Speaker 1: stays with the species today, and it's an incredibly important point.
18:01
Speaker 1: So cravings can only exist in a society or culture
18:07
Speaker 1: that has a variety of food or an access to
18:12
Speaker 1: varieties of foods. And there are many places in the
18:16
Speaker 1: world historically and as we record today that do not
18:20
Speaker 1: have the privilege of that access, do not have the
18:24
Speaker 1: privilege of that variety. You know what I mean, Like
18:27
Speaker 1: when whenever you see a show about cuisine and uh,
18:32
Speaker 1: you see very fancy, elaborate preparations of things. That is
18:37
Speaker 1: very much a luxury. And when we are exploring this story,
18:42
Speaker 1: we want to make sure that we acknowledge that. So
18:45
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that point, Noel. We know that there
18:48
Speaker 1: were some stereotypes in Europe about pregnancy cravings. One of
18:53
Speaker 1: them was apricots. People like it became kind of a
18:59
Speaker 1: a trope in fiction of the sixteen hundreds, Like John
19:03
Speaker 1: Webster had a play called The Duchess of Malfi, And
19:08
Speaker 1: in The Duchess of Malfie there's this scene where one
19:11
Speaker 1: of the characters tries to figure out whether the Duchess
19:14
Speaker 1: is pregnant, and this is how he does it. He
19:18
Speaker 1: just walks up to her with a bowl of apricots.
19:21
Speaker 1: Because at the time people are like, you know what,
19:24
Speaker 1: pregnant people love apricots, bro And that was like so
19:28
Speaker 1: common and so understood that if you were watching this play,
19:33
Speaker 1: you would know what the scene was about. If you
19:37
Speaker 1: just walked into the room while that scene was happening,
19:40
Speaker 1: you would see a guy, he'd have some apricots, he'd
19:43
Speaker 1: be in front of this lady, and you'd be like, uh,
19:45
Speaker 1: somebody's expecting Sure, sure that was a thing in like Shakespeare,
19:49
Speaker 1: for example, like all kinds of stock characters, and you know,
19:52
Speaker 1: these little in jokes that that only people of the
19:55
Speaker 1: time would have fully been aware of, and when you
19:57
Speaker 1: read them disconnected, it feels very very dated. Obviously, so
20:00
Speaker 1: much of that work is very universal, but things like
20:03
Speaker 1: apricots being very specifically tied to pregnancy would not read
20:07
Speaker 1: into a modern audience unless you listen to this episode,
20:10
Speaker 1: in which case, congratulations for being in on the historical joke.
20:14
Speaker 1: But these there was some superstition behind these types of
20:19
Speaker 1: cravings too, Ben. This wasn't you know, it was almost
20:22
Speaker 1: considered a heresy or somehow challenging the gods. You know,
20:28
Speaker 1: because again, and we know even in the upper class,
20:30
Speaker 1: pregnancies would often go awry because there just wasn't the
20:34
Speaker 1: kind of medical intervention that we have today, and they
20:36
Speaker 1: did things pretty weirdly and incorrectly sometimes. Um, although we know,
20:41
Speaker 1: you know, it is possible for a mother to just
20:43
Speaker 1: give birth on our own with no doctor. We see it,
20:46
Speaker 1: you know, every now and then it happens in like
20:49
Speaker 1: movies where someone is left to their own devices or
20:51
Speaker 1: gives birth in captivity or something like that, and they
20:54
Speaker 1: don't usually die, but there can be complications, significant complications,
20:59
Speaker 1: and all Fentimes folks would blame things like that on
21:03
Speaker 1: superstitious or supernatural factors, right, yeah, yeah, because you know,
21:09
Speaker 1: the separation of science and spirituality is a relatively new
21:14
Speaker 1: thing for this species. If you look at if you
21:17
Speaker 1: look at the narrative arc of humanity, so back in
21:21
Speaker 1: the day, science and what we would recognize as religion
21:25
Speaker 1: or spiritual belief systems, they were inextricably intertwined. So if
21:31
Speaker 1: you are a midwife or a lay healer at this time,
21:36
Speaker 1: you don't really have an established like medical academy. You
21:42
Speaker 1: don't go to university. You learn on the job. And
21:46
Speaker 1: if you are referring to text rather than oral traditions,
21:52
Speaker 1: right or experiential learning, then you are looking at some
21:56
Speaker 1: very old works. You're looking at Aristotle, right, and and
22:01
Speaker 1: things of that nature, and then you're you're also treating
22:06
Speaker 1: superstitions the same way you would treat scientific research. So this,
22:12
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, leads to some weird conclusions. Like
22:16
Speaker 1: early writers of what we would consider the modern era
22:20
Speaker 1: spent tons tons of time and and oceans of ink
22:25
Speaker 1: speculating on what pregnancy cravings could mean, and these incorporated
22:31
Speaker 1: superstition and science together. People believed that you could sort
22:37
Speaker 1: of tell what a child's personality was going to be
22:41
Speaker 1: like based on the cravings of the mother while that
22:44
Speaker 1: child was in And I love the way you pronounced
22:46
Speaker 1: it earlier, all the whim, yes, the hum. Indeed, what
22:50
Speaker 1: do you think the giant asparagus child is gonna grow
22:52
Speaker 1: up to be? Like? Ben? Well, there's giant exparagus and
22:55
Speaker 1: then there's the largest asparagus. You're gonna, you know, ridiculously,
22:59
Speaker 1: Come on, men, is what I assume ridiculous history. We're
23:03
Speaker 1: doing to three men in a baby thing. So that's
23:06
Speaker 1: what we're doing. Now, we're gonna we're gonna raise this
23:09
Speaker 1: kid with a max is so done with this. We're
23:12
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna raise this kid and I mean Ted Danson, Yeah,
23:17
Speaker 1: of course if you want, But I think it's cool
23:20
Speaker 1: when you're you bro. Well, but we're doing the okay,
23:23
Speaker 1: so we can just do our own three men in
23:25
Speaker 1: a baby scenario. We don't have to Who else was
23:27
Speaker 1: it who's doing a mustache? Tom? Tom's selling tom Selle
23:34
Speaker 1: three in a baby, Maybe there's another baby. There's the
23:38
Speaker 1: third man? Who's the third man? Sorry, this is an
23:41
Speaker 1: important tangent. YEA, let's just really quick right here. Steve
23:47
Speaker 1: Goudenberg dance Steve Gudenberg. Nobody remember Steve Guttenberg. I will
23:52
Speaker 1: take the director credit because it was directed by Mr
23:56
Speaker 1: spock Letter. I didn't at least know that's that's seem
24:03
Speaker 1: to remember that. Leonard Nimoy, Max with the Facts, Max
24:07
Speaker 1: with the Facts in the Largest Desparagus. Also shout out
24:11
Speaker 1: to Leonard Nimoy's musical career. I don't know if anybody's
24:15
Speaker 1: ever listened to his music. But it's not what you're expecting,
24:19
Speaker 1: and it's a fun right. I like Leonard Nimoy a
24:21
Speaker 1: lot um. But it's true, Ben, we're talking about superstition.
24:27
Speaker 1: We're talking about things like humors and bodily fluids and
24:31
Speaker 1: you know, like having too much bile that has to
24:33
Speaker 1: be drained or whatever, and blood letting in the and
24:36
Speaker 1: the like. So I mean this is very rudimentary, uh,
24:38
Speaker 1: stuff based on this idea of the balance of these
24:41
Speaker 1: bodily fluids and if if you have too much of one,
24:45
Speaker 1: then you have to balance it out with the other
24:47
Speaker 1: or else you're gonna, you know, be colicky or something.
24:50
Speaker 1: But with pregnancy, you're right, then a lot of of
24:53
Speaker 1: of emphasis was placed on things like the maternal imagination,
24:59
Speaker 1: which I love, the theory of the maternal imagination, which
25:02
Speaker 1: was the notion that experiences experienced by the mother could
25:07
Speaker 1: actually affect the baby, you know, in utero. Yeah, and
25:11
Speaker 1: and and have experiences to be kind of transmitted from
25:14
Speaker 1: the mother to the fetus, and those could be carried
25:18
Speaker 1: with the child into adulthood for good or for ill.
25:22
Speaker 1: An extreme version of this comes to us from Joseph Merrick,
25:26
Speaker 1: whom history remembers as the elephant Man. Merrik famously explained
25:33
Speaker 1: his condition by saying his mother was startled by an
25:38
Speaker 1: elephant while she was carrying him. So people did believe
25:43
Speaker 1: that this is interesting, we should spend just a little
25:46
Speaker 1: bit of time on this. People for a long time
25:49
Speaker 1: believed that the experiences all the sensory input and all
25:54
Speaker 1: the nutrition that went into an expecting mother affected the
25:59
Speaker 1: child that they would produce. And it turns out, oddly enough,
26:04
Speaker 1: as as superstitious as this sounds, it turns out that
26:09
Speaker 1: humanity was not entirely wrong about this. The study of
26:20
Speaker 1: epigenetics teaches us that what happens to a person their
26:25
Speaker 1: life experiences can influence the expressions of genes that their
26:31
Speaker 1: descendants will bear. Like it's it is true, but people
26:35
Speaker 1: understood this way before they had any concept of gene
26:39
Speaker 1: theory or epigenetics. But they knew something was up and
26:42
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out what was going on.
26:46
Speaker 1: One of the old school beliefs that is hopefully enjoyable
26:50
Speaker 1: and not scary in the modern day is this, if
26:54
Speaker 1: you were in the Middle Ages, then you would have known,
26:59
Speaker 1: according to medieval lore and word on the street, that
27:03
Speaker 1: the foods and expecting mother eats will influence the appearance
27:09
Speaker 1: of her child, the way the kid looks. So, for instance,
27:13
Speaker 1: if you eat rabbit's heads while you're pregnant, then you're
27:17
Speaker 1: gonna end up with a kid that has a split
27:20
Speaker 1: lip or a hair lip, or a cleft palate. And
27:23
Speaker 1: if you eat fish heads. Then you get I love
27:27
Speaker 1: this phrase. Then you're gonna end up with a kid
27:30
Speaker 1: who has something called a trout pout. Have you guys
27:33
Speaker 1: heard of this? Yeah, it's like the It's like the
27:35
Speaker 1: historical version of duck lips. I think, right, I have
27:39
Speaker 1: no ideas like your I guess right now, I guess
27:43
Speaker 1: your mouth is turned down like a fish. Like nobody
27:47
Speaker 1: can see this because we're an audio podcast, or you're like,
27:51
Speaker 1: I can see that. What does a Google image search
27:56
Speaker 1: get us for the trout pouts? It's yeah, you know what,
28:01
Speaker 1: hell boy, uh got it all over the place. Um.
28:07
Speaker 1: Some of these images do appear to be uh, plastic
28:10
Speaker 1: surgeries that have not gone particularly well. Um, so that
28:14
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been in play. But yeah, it is pretty
28:16
Speaker 1: much kind of just a thick, full lip that is
28:20
Speaker 1: maybe not particularly malleable, let's say, sort of stuck in place,
28:25
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like blue steel. Remember that look
28:27
Speaker 1: that Zoolander would do. Yeah, you have to turn That's
28:31
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking if I recalled Zoolander. Yeah, and then
28:34
Speaker 1: there's another thing, like the idea of eating soft cheese.
28:38
Speaker 1: Expectant mothers were sometimes told, hey, watch out for that
28:43
Speaker 1: soft cheese because if you eat too much soft cheese
28:47
Speaker 1: then your son will have small genitalia. Okay, well that
28:51
Speaker 1: you know, uh what would they have put stock in
28:54
Speaker 1: the size of genitalia back in those days? Ben? Would
28:58
Speaker 1: that have been an important feat? Sure? Do you think? Well,
29:02
Speaker 1: it was, at least in Europe at the time. It
29:04
Speaker 1: was an important enough concern that that people were people
29:09
Speaker 1: were associated with soft cheese and pregnancy. Uh. Seriously, though,
29:15
Speaker 1: while while we are joking a little bit, most modern
29:19
Speaker 1: doctors will tell you that if you are expecting, you
29:23
Speaker 1: should air on the side of caution when it comes
29:25
Speaker 1: to soft and unpasteurized cheese. Not because it will affect
29:30
Speaker 1: your kids Australia, but because there is a link between
29:34
Speaker 1: cheese and listeria, right, and also things like on like
29:38
Speaker 1: raw milk. You know that would be a big now now,
29:41
Speaker 1: And what's the deal with raw milk? Man? And it's
29:42
Speaker 1: it's technically illegal in some places like uh, well, I
29:48
Speaker 1: mean yeah, yeah, it's it's illegal because it hasn't been
29:54
Speaker 1: pasteurized and the process of pasteurization will kill harmful bacteria.
30:00
Speaker 1: But people in the US and abroad I swear by
30:03
Speaker 1: raw milk. They think it's top notch. So we've talked
30:07
Speaker 1: about the idea of superstition being wrapped up in these cravings,
30:11
Speaker 1: the idea of using them to kind of read the
30:13
Speaker 1: tea leaves of what you know your boy's penis is
30:16
Speaker 1: going to look like, or what kind of personality your
30:19
Speaker 1: your daughter is going to have, or whether there will
30:21
Speaker 1: be some kind of birth defect. Right, this is all things.
30:23
Speaker 1: Are all things that a lot of stock was put
30:25
Speaker 1: in by these or they called ben wise women, sort
30:28
Speaker 1: of the like next step up from the midwife. You
30:30
Speaker 1: had the midwife, and then you had these wise women
30:33
Speaker 1: who are not medically trained, and we're using a lot
30:36
Speaker 1: of kind of you know, mysticism in this practice. Correct.
30:41
Speaker 1: I would argue that, well, we know that wise women,
30:44
Speaker 1: as they were called, did a lot of things that
30:48
Speaker 1: we would associate with first aid, being a first responder
30:52
Speaker 1: in your community, also being a midwife or a doula.
30:56
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, I would argue that if you
31:01
Speaker 1: are living in this time, your odds of success, if
31:04
Speaker 1: you're seeking medical treatment, are going to be better with
31:07
Speaker 1: a midwife than with the barber surgeons of the day.
31:13
Speaker 1: That's a fact, in case you haven't heard it before, Folks,
31:16
Speaker 1: back in Europe, for a long time people assumed that
31:20
Speaker 1: if you were qualified to cut hair, you were also
31:22
Speaker 1: qualified to pull teeth, to draw blood and to cut
31:26
Speaker 1: off people's limbs, right, which is, if I'm not mistaken,
31:29
Speaker 1: where that curly comer red and white barber pole comes from,
31:32
Speaker 1: the red being for blood letting. They were the ones
31:34
Speaker 1: who would give you a little snip snip and a
31:36
Speaker 1: little drip drip, and then send you on your merry way,
31:39
Speaker 1: and you know, theoretically you'd be all cure. But Ben,
31:42
Speaker 1: I love that point you make about midwifes being much
31:45
Speaker 1: more suited to deal with pregnant women because they were
31:48
Speaker 1: women and they knew their bodies. Therefore, they could at
31:52
Speaker 1: least translate feelings and experiences that they'd had, most likely
31:55
Speaker 1: many of them had given birth before to the women
31:58
Speaker 1: they were helping. So we're not trying to nag in
32:01
Speaker 1: any way midwives, because it's still today very much a
32:05
Speaker 1: valuable and valid profession. I've known many women who have
32:08
Speaker 1: chosen to go with a midwife or do LA rather
32:11
Speaker 1: than um, you know, have have their baby in the hospital.
32:15
Speaker 1: But we are talking about these superstitious associations with cravings
32:20
Speaker 1: and One of them was that if you didn't appease
32:24
Speaker 1: these cravings, almost as if it was some sort of
32:26
Speaker 1: offering to the gods, bad things could happen. Oh yes, yeah,
32:31
Speaker 1: if you didn't appease these cravings, there would the belief
32:36
Speaker 1: wind be negative consequences for your unborn child. So they
32:42
Speaker 1: are high stakes here, you know what I mean. You're
32:44
Speaker 1: an expecting mother and you've got this list of these
32:48
Speaker 1: dudes and dolts. You know, watch out for strawberries or cherries.
32:52
Speaker 1: They may give your kid birth marks. But you can't eat.
32:56
Speaker 1: You can't not eat the stuff you want to eat
32:59
Speaker 1: because if you don't listen to your body, your kid
33:02
Speaker 1: may come out with some sort of medical condition or malady.
33:07
Speaker 1: And you would hear contradicting information, which still happens today.
33:13
Speaker 1: I mean, look, expecting parents out there in the crowd today,
33:17
Speaker 1: we've got your back. I know that the forums are
33:21
Speaker 1: full of contradictory information. It was the same thing in
33:25
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds. You'd have one person saying, look, if
33:28
Speaker 1: you eat strawberries or if you get them thrown on
33:33
Speaker 1: your face, and you're an expectant mother, then your baby's
33:36
Speaker 1: gonna have birthmarks. And then someone else would be like,
33:38
Speaker 1: oh no, wait, the thing is if you don't eat
33:42
Speaker 1: the strawberries, then your kid's gonna get birthmarks. They were
33:46
Speaker 1: referring to a real thing something we would now probably
33:49
Speaker 1: call strawberry nevis because it was people believed it, that's right,
33:55
Speaker 1: and then they still referred to off in a strawberry birthmarks.
33:58
Speaker 1: Billy Corgan from The Smashing punk Is actually has one
34:01
Speaker 1: on his hand that you often don't see because I
34:04
Speaker 1: think he's his makeup to cover it up, as does
34:06
Speaker 1: the absolutely twisted and incredible British comedian Chris Morris, who
34:12
Speaker 1: has a really seriously kind of almost like proto Tim
34:16
Speaker 1: and Eric Um comedy series called Jam and he also
34:19
Speaker 1: played the boss on the first few seasons of The
34:23
Speaker 1: I T. Crowd. But he has one of these birth
34:25
Speaker 1: marks on his entire face and you almost never see
34:28
Speaker 1: him without some kind of cover up makeup on um,
34:31
Speaker 1: but but you will. You can't find some images of
34:32
Speaker 1: it and see what it looks like, and it is
34:34
Speaker 1: very much this kind of like uh, freckled, red, splotchy
34:39
Speaker 1: kind of like thing that spreads, you know, all all
34:41
Speaker 1: over the face and and it can be elsewhere on
34:43
Speaker 1: the body. But you're right then, um that at the
34:47
Speaker 1: time would have been attributed to lack of or over
34:50
Speaker 1: abundance of strawberries during pregnancy. And we have some accounts,
34:54
Speaker 1: some historical counts from a particularly well known midwife who
34:58
Speaker 1: wrote a book called A Complete Practice of Midwiffery, which
35:03
Speaker 1: I love the word midwiffery. Um. I don't know if
35:05
Speaker 1: it's so much of a book, as this was a
35:06
Speaker 1: collection of her notes, but she, you know, went through
35:10
Speaker 1: countless births. Her name was Sarah Stone in the eighteenth century,
35:14
Speaker 1: and she worked in the United Kingdom in the areas
35:17
Speaker 1: of Taunton and Bristol. And she in those notes once
35:20
Speaker 1: described a woman who was eight months pregnant and started
35:23
Speaker 1: having significant bleeding, loss of blood, and she referred to
35:28
Speaker 1: it as a great flooding. And she fully believed that
35:32
Speaker 1: this was the direct result of some kind of unfulfilled
35:36
Speaker 1: craving or longing that her patient had, even if she
35:39
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, and and Sarah didn't know
35:42
Speaker 1: what it was, the patient claimed to not know what
35:44
Speaker 1: it is, what it was, the patient said that she
35:46
Speaker 1: wasn't wanting for anything. So Stone really kind of started
35:51
Speaker 1: putting on her midwife detective hat Um and started to
35:54
Speaker 1: really dig in as to what she might have possibly
35:57
Speaker 1: been lacking that could cause this complication. And finally the
36:02
Speaker 1: mother was like, well, I mean, there was this one
36:04
Speaker 1: time I saw a young boy hold a peapod up
36:08
Speaker 1: to the sun and I thought it looked beautiful and
36:11
Speaker 1: strangely delicious. So I want to step back here as
36:15
Speaker 1: we're as we're getting closer to the end of the
36:18
Speaker 1: first part of this two part series and give a
36:21
Speaker 1: shout out to, uh, the king of birth marks, one
36:25
Speaker 1: of the most famous birthmark havers, Mikhail Gorbachev. You guys
36:30
Speaker 1: remember Gorbachev Max, maybe a little before this guy takes
36:35
Speaker 1: it to the paint with his not an intentional pun
36:40
Speaker 1: with his birthmark. You know, I respect him for having
36:43
Speaker 1: that kind of pork colored archipelago of a birthmark on
36:47
Speaker 1: his forehead. And he never he never wore makeup to
36:51
Speaker 1: cover it. He also played, you know, a huge role
36:55
Speaker 1: in geopolitics. But now I'm wondering what, you know, what
36:59
Speaker 1: is its diet was like when they were expecting, did
37:02
Speaker 1: someone throw strawberries at his mom? As the old saying goes, uh,
37:08
Speaker 1: what the old saying of throwing strawberries I don't know,
37:10
Speaker 1: this is old saying. Well, I was saying earlier the
37:13
Speaker 1: idea that throwing strawberries at an expectant mother could result
37:17
Speaker 1: in birth marks for the child, but then also not
37:19
Speaker 1: eating strawberries or cherries or wine could give the kid birthmarks.
37:24
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the thing. Because it was unscientific,
37:27
Speaker 1: Just like the peapod belief, people were experiencing a bit
37:31
Speaker 1: of confirmation bias, right. There wasn't really enough research there
37:36
Speaker 1: to prove or disprove these beliefs, so people went with
37:40
Speaker 1: what seemed plausible. And that's something that kind of continues today.
37:45
Speaker 1: It does. And and uh, to that point been in
37:48
Speaker 1: terms of the research, I mean, this midwife, you know,
37:50
Speaker 1: really was being pretty methodical with her documenting of all
37:54
Speaker 1: of these cases, and in her notes, this was the
37:57
Speaker 1: only documented case of she she did get the peepod,
38:01
Speaker 1: by the way, so like the she she held them,
38:03
Speaker 1: she sees she realized, okay, I'm creating this peopod. The
38:05
Speaker 1: midwife had a local farmer bring in some peapods and
38:08
Speaker 1: she ate them and then immediately felt better. But in
38:11
Speaker 1: her notes she said that it was the only example
38:15
Speaker 1: like this where the one time talking about confirmation bias,
38:18
Speaker 1: where feeding her the thing that she supposedly lacked, completely
38:22
Speaker 1: got rid of the you know, the dangerous um complication.
38:26
Speaker 1: But yet she says in her notes collected as the
38:30
Speaker 1: complete practice of Midwiffery, that she was confident that quote
38:34
Speaker 1: such things as these frequently happen without like any evidence whatsoever,
38:39
Speaker 1: except for the one that's like the very definition of
38:41
Speaker 1: confirmation bias, except he usually requires a couple of instances.
38:44
Speaker 1: I would think, right, well, there's there's something else to
38:48
Speaker 1: play here, of course, which is the unfortunate rate of
38:51
Speaker 1: infant mortality at the time. So the harsh truth of
38:55
Speaker 1: it is that you know, a lot of times people
38:59
Speaker 1: did not have a successful birth, or people had a
39:04
Speaker 1: child who had, you know, a very very serious medical condition,
39:09
Speaker 1: and just like parents today, they were searching for answers
39:13
Speaker 1: as to why this could have happened, you know what
39:16
Speaker 1: I mean, and hoping to arm themselves with knowledge so
39:19
Speaker 1: that they could avoid these calamities in the future. And
39:25
Speaker 1: you might be listening now, and you might be expecting,
39:28
Speaker 1: if so, congratulations, uh, and you might be thinking, dang,
39:32
Speaker 1: this whole thing really makes me want a weird flavor
39:36
Speaker 1: of ice cream. Let's see, we started with pickled ice cream.
39:38
Speaker 1: So someone saying I want ice cream that also tastes
39:41
Speaker 1: like pickles, Well, now is your chance to go find
39:46
Speaker 1: that ice cream if it exists. Because Noel, Max and
39:50
Speaker 1: I are going to pause, chase down our own food
39:53
Speaker 1: cravings and return with part two of this two part
39:58
Speaker 1: series and spoil or alert fellow ridiculous Historian's next part
40:03
Speaker 1: gets weird? When't you say no? Next part? I think,
40:05
Speaker 1: is it's fair to say it gets weird? Yeah, if
40:08
Speaker 1: you think cannibalism is weird, it gets a little weird. Um.
40:12
Speaker 1: But until then, we hope you all stay weird and
40:16
Speaker 1: huge thanks to you super producer Max Williams. The largest asparagus,
40:21
Speaker 1: The largest asparagus? What's the deal with that? We'll wait,
40:23
Speaker 1: we'll get an updated in episode two. But he's, you know,
40:25
Speaker 1: one of the weirdest people we know in the best
40:27
Speaker 1: possible way. I always use that word and as as
40:29
Speaker 1: a compliment. Huge thanks to Max's bro Alex Williams, who
40:33
Speaker 1: composed this theme. Big Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland's a
40:38
Speaker 1: k a. The Whister. Big thanks to our research associate Gabelusier.
40:43
Speaker 1: Shout out to our super producer Casey Pegram and well,
40:47
Speaker 1: you know what I would say, Shout out to all
40:49
Speaker 1: the expecting parents out there. You know it's a tough time,
40:53
Speaker 1: but it's an exciting time and uh, I'm wishing you
40:56
Speaker 1: the best, folks. I indeed, we'll see you next time, folks.
41:00
Speaker 1: M For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the
41:07
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
41:10
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.